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Significant Scriptures Concerning Animism

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Exodus 20:1-6
-- And God spoke all these words:
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land
of slavery.
"You shall have no other gods before me.
"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall
not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous
God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand
generations of those who love me and keep my commandments."
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Deuteronomy
18:9-15 -- "When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving
you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the
fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in
witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritists or who
consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the
Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive
out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord
your God. The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice
sorcery or divination. but as for you, the Lord your God has not
permitted you to do so. The Lord your God will raise up for you a
prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to
him."
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Psalm 86:5-10
--
You are forgiving and good, O Lord,
abounding in love to all who call to
you.
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
listen to my cry for mercy.
In the day of my trouble I will call to
you,
for you will answer me.
Among the gods there is none like you,
O Lord;
no deeds can compare with yours.
All the nations you have made
will come and worship before you,
O Lord;
they will bring glory to your name.
For you are great and do marvelous
deeds;
you alone are God.
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Psalm 106:34-41
--
They did not destroy the peoples
as the Lord had commanded them,
but they mingled with the nations
and adopted their customs.
They worshiped their idols,
which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
They shed innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of
Canaan,
and the land was desecrated by their
blood.
They defiled themselves by what they
did;
by their deeds they prostituted
themselves.
Therefore the Lord was angry with his
people
and abhorred his inheritance.
He handed them over to the nations,
and their foes ruled over them.
Their enemies oppressed them
and subjected them to their power.
Many times he delivered them,
but they were bent on rebellion
and they wasted away in their sin.
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Jeremiah
10:1-16 -- Hear what the Lord says to you, O house of Israel. This
is what the Lord says:
"Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the
sky,
though the nations are terrified
by
them.
For the customs of the peoples are
worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest,
and a craftsman shapes it with his
chisel.
They adorn it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails
so it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a melon patch,
their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried
because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them;
they can do no harm
nor can they do any good."
No one is like you, O Lord;
you are great,
and your name is mighty in power.
Who should not revere you,
O King of the nations?
This is your due.
Among all the wise men of the nations
and in all their kingdoms,
there is no one like you.
They are all senseless and foolish;
they are taught by worthless wooden
idols.
Hammered silver is brought from
Tarshish
and gold from Uphaz.
What the craftsman and goldsmith have
made
is then dressed in blue and purple--
all made by skilled workers.
But the Lord is the true God;
he is the living God, the eternal
King.
When he is angry, the earth trembles;
the nations cannot endure his wrath.
"Tell them this: 'These gods, who did not make the heavens and the
earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.'"
But God made the earth by his power;
he founded the world by his wisdom
and stretched out the heavens by his
understanding.
When he thunders, the waters in the
heavens
roar;
he makes clouds rise from the ends
of the
earth.
He sends lightning with the rain
and brings out the wind from his
storehouses.
Everyone is senseless and without
knowledge;
every goldsmith is shamed by his
idols.
His images are a fraud;
they have no breath in them.
They are worthless, the objects of
mockery;
when their judgment comes, they
will
perish.
He who is the Portion of Jacob is not
like
these,
for he is the Maker of all things,
including Israel, the tribe of his
inheritance--
the Lord Almighty is his name.
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Isaiah 8:19-22
-- "When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who
whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why
consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the
testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no
light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land;
when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will
curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth
and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be
thrust into utter darkness."
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Zephaniah 1:4-6
--
"I will stretch out my hand against
Judah
and against all who live in Jerusalem.
I will cut off from this place every
remnant
of Baal,
the names of the pagan and the
idolatrous priests--
those who bow down on the roofs
to worship the starry host,
those who bow down and swear by the
Lord
and who also swear by Molech,
those who turn back from following the
Lord
and neither seek the Lord nor inquire
of
him."
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2 Kings 17:33
-- [The people of Samaria] worshiped the Lord, but they also served
their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they
had been brought.
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Matthew
12:22-29 --
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was
blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and
see. All the people were astonished and said, "Could this be the
Son of David?"
But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is
only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out
demons."
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every
kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household
divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he
is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And
if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them
out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out
demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
"Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house
and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?
Then he can rob his house."
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Colossians
2:8-15 -- See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and
deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic
principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the
fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness
in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you
were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a
circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by
Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through
your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you
were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God
made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having
canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and
that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And
having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of
them, triumphing over them by the cross.
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1 Thessalonians
1:9 -- [The Thessalonians] turned to God from idols to serve the living
and true God.
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Revelation
12:7-12 -- And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.
But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The
great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or
Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth,
and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
"Now have come the salvation and the
power and
the kingdom of our
God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God
day and
night,
has been hurled down.
They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to
you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is
short." |

Revised
December 10, 2001.
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