TAKE ONE BABY STEP

This is my true story of how I got caught up in occultic ideas.
I don't pretend to be a Bible Scholar. The Holy Spirit is the teacher who leads me into all truths. I will at another time write about how I met Jesus and how God worked on me to make gradual changes as I was ready for them. He didn't do it all at once. He takes us at our own pace. He is a great and loving God.

Honest! I was a little girl once and we played all kinds of silly games. I mentioned a game to a
six year old girl and she looked at me like I was crazy. I asked what she would be doing when she got out of school for the summer. Nothing! It’s boring. Do you play hopscotch? No. What about cutouts or jacks? No. KIDS DON”T KNOW HOW TO PLAY ANYMORE. What’s the point? I was a little girl and I did play games. I did enjoy them for awhile but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted something more. In a sense, I was bored, too. I wanted excitement.

   I really didn’t like my life. I pretended it was something different and I lived in the future of
What might be instead of what really was; a fantasy world. We played a game, “Mother, may I?” I don’t remember it all but “Mother” would say” take one baby step or a giant step or something in-between. The occult is like that. You take one baby step and maybe a few more until you are privileged to take one giant step. By that time you are hooked.

   I did play games when I didn’t have my nose in a book. I liked Nancy Drew detective books; the
scary ones. I also liked “Little Women”. When I became a teenager I liked ones with excitement
and romance in them, especially the Gothic Romances. They always had some supernatural scenes.
Enough to give me goose bumps. I enjoyed that unknown factor of unexplainable happenings. My mother didn’t know what I was reading or what I was interested in. She really didn’t care. Young mothers, please pay attention to what your children are reading and the music they listen to. Give them more loving attention. Let them know you are interested in them. Let them know you think they are something special. I’m not going to lecture you. Instead I am telling you how easy it is to get trapped into the occult. The devil makes it fun for the impressionable young minds.

   Deuteronomy 18:10-11 “There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his
daughter; to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or any enchanter o
witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard, or a neocromancer.” Definitions of divination are witchcraft or trying to tell the future by occult means. Occult means mysterious, beyond human understanding, hidden.

   I began reading my horoscope everyday. I wanted to know what to expect. I said I didn’t believe
in it; that it was just fun. Just the same I was careful what I did that day. I had my first part time job as a waitress at 16. I was very shy. I made 35 cents an hour. At 17, I was offered a job as a telephone operator for 75 cents an hour; a big jump, so I took it. My parents made me pay $10 a week for rent. I had money left over for whatever I wanted to do with it. I bought all the books I could find on astrology. I was going to learn how to chart out my own life and others if they wanted me to.

   My biggest thrill was to take a train into the big city of Pittsburgh to take dance lessons at Arthur Murray’s. Of course I had to eat when I was through. I found a quaint little Mystic Tea Room. I don’t remember the food but it had an exciting atmosphere about it, gypsies and all. Getting my fortune told with tea leaves came with the dinner. Some of the things did come true but then again, they are very good at psychology and could draw information out of you. They understood human nature. Some of it you can easily switch around to fit your own life style.

   Just for fun, at that age, I began telling fortunes with cards. I was becoming pretty good at it. My mother still didn’t know what was going on. I had a curious mind. I wanted to KNOW many things. I played with the Ouija board. It can scare you and thrill you at the same time. Sometime between reading cards and getting married at 22, I joined the Rosicrucians, a mind over matter secret society.
   You see a tree but it’s not really there. You just thought it up in your mind. You can just as easily make it disappear---so they say. I never tried it. You try to use ESP in everything. Before you open your mail box, you try to imagine what mail you got or the same for the telephone. I was getting pretty good at that. One experiment I had to make was to put two lit candles on a mantle with a mirror, one on either side. Turn out all the lights and look closely into your own eyes. Then tell them what you saw. I saw the devil leering at me as if to say “Ha! Ha! Now I gotcha”. That really scared me. I ran and turned on every light in the house. I quit that route.

   It didn’t stop me from trying other things. I tried hypnosis and the hypnotist, pretty well known
in Pittsburgh, wanted me to take over her practice. I was tempted but I turned it down. I went to a different one. Before I entered her office, I tried to imagine what it looked like. That scared me because it was just like I pictured it---Egyptian décor. That is a dangerous practice---a mind control thing. They can make you do and say things you would never do in your right mind.

   I kind of turned to reincarnation. I believed I was having a rotten time in this life because I was
rotten to others in another life. Maybe someday I would get it right and reach my nirvana---a place or condition of great bliss or peace. You can’t reach that state except through Jesus Christ. John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.”

   In spite of all the turmoil and trouble around us, we can have that peace Jesus offers. He is in the fiery furnace with us or in the den of lions. Psalm 23:4 “Though I walk through the valley of death, I will feel no evil.” The whole world is a valley of death until we belong to Jesus. The whole world is still a valley of death. Now we don’t have to walk it alone. Jesus is always there beside us to keep us from harm.

    I have been near where people got murdered four times; once just fifteen minutes after I left. A man shot the clerk in a store because he charged too much for a bottle of wine. One man got murdered sometime after he left the place where I worked. He was stabbed 28 times; a drug related crime. One happened to the left of me just a half block away. The other occurred on a different day, only down the street about another block away. I was never aware of any of it that was going on. I lived alone in dangerous areas but I had no fear. God sent His angels to protect me.

   I got interested in “walk-ins”, UFO’s, space brothers. I got involved in the Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Bai Hai’s; to name a few. Finally I was ready to get into the New Age---anything goes and I
Would be my own god, so they say. But they were really the controllers. They used anything to make you forget God. I found an ad in a UFO magazine I was looking at. It said to send $20 and they would tell you what your mission in life was. I wanted to save the whole world; not let Jesus do it. I sent the money on a Friday then I got the impression in my mind that I had to cancel the check. I answered the thought back that I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I was just curious. Curiosity killed the cat!

   The next day I got the same expression only much stronger, almost angry:
Cancel that check!” “O.K. I’ll do it on Monday.” God was letting me know I had to make up my mind whether I was going to serve Him or Satan. I cancelled the check and wrote them a letter. A woman wrote back and said you don’t go to the doctor and when the work is done, refuse to pay him. That’s exactly what I did. I wrote again and told her the Holy Spirit would tell me my mission in life and it wouldn’t cost me a cent. That was the end of that.

   Each baby step I took led me one step forward until I got to “taking” the big giant step into the occult. We can’t laugh it off as a joke. Even T.V. shows like “Bewitched” or other shows that have even an inkling of the occult in them should be avoided. They seem to be funny and harmless. Your mind becomes dull and you get to the point where you think witches and magic are all normal. I laughed as much as the next guy over Bewitched. That is, until one Halloween I watched it. Aunt Endora blasphemed God by saying she didn’t know why people made such a fuss over Christmas. Halloween was the greatest holiday. Any mention or hint of the occult is dangerous. It can get planted in your head and it grows every time you see or hear anything related to that subject. IT IS NO GAME! It should have poison marked on it.

   Television is warping the children’s minds. They are being fed cultic ideas in their cartoon shows. I can’t forget to mention Harry Potter. Is it really harmless? No way! Parents wake up before the devil takes away your kids. Guard them with your life.

   I thank God He got me out of that. Please don’t take that first baby step. God bless you.