The Third Preaching Tour

150:3.1The Sab­bath ser­vices of the apos­tolic party had been put in the hands of the women by An­drew, upon in­struc­tions from Je­sus. This meant, of course, that they could not be held in the new syn­a­gogue. The women se­lected Joanna to have charge of this oc­ca­sion, and the meet­ing was held in the ban­quet room of Herod’s new palace, Herod be­ing away in res­i­dence at Ju­lias in Perea. Joanna read from the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing woman’s work in the re­li­gious life of Is­rael, mak­ing ref­er­ence to Miriam, Deb­o­rah, Es­ther, and oth­ers.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.31. The courses of the stars in the heav­ens have noth­ing what­ever to do with the events of hu­man life on earth. As­tron­omy is a proper pur­suit of sci­ence, but as­trol­ogy is a mass of su­per­sti­tious er­ror which has no place in the gospel of the king­dom.

150:3.42. The ex­am­i­na­tion of the in­ter­nal or­gans of an an­i­mal re­cently killed can re­veal noth­ing about weather, fu­ture events, or the out­come of hu­man af­fairs.

150:3.53. The spir­its of the dead do not come back to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies or their one­time friends among the liv­ing.

150:3.64. Charms and relics are im­po­tent to heal dis­ease, ward off dis­as­ter, or in­flu­ence evil spir­its; the be­lief in all such ma­te­rial means of in­flu­enc­ing the spir­i­tual world is noth­ing but gross su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.75. Cast­ing lots, while it may be a con­ve­nient way of set­tling many mi­nor dif­fi­cul­ties, is not a method de­signed to dis­close the di­vine will. Such out­comes are purely mat­ters of ma­te­rial chance. The only means of com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual world is em­braced in the spirit en­dow­ment of man­kind, the in­dwelling spirit of the Fa­ther, to­gether with the out­poured spirit of the Son and the om­ni­pres­ent in­flu­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

150:3.86. Div­ina­tion, sor­cery, and witch­craft are su­per­sti­tions of ig­no­rant minds, as also are the delu­sions of magic. The be­lief in magic num­bers, omens of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and un­founded su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.97. The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of dreams is largely a su­per­sti­tious and ground­less sys­tem of ig­no­rant and fan­tas­tic spec­u­la­tion. The gospel of the king­dom must have noth­ing in com­mon with the sooth­sayer priests of prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

150:3.108. The spir­its of good or evil can­not dwell within ma­te­rial sym­bols of clay, wood, or metal; idols are noth­ing more than the ma­te­rial of which they are made.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.

150:3.1210. He ex­posed and de­nounced their be­lief in spells, or­deals, be­witch­ing, curs­ing, signs, man­drakes, knot­ted cords, and all other forms of ig­no­rant and en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tion.