Observers of current trends discern a constantly rising tide of interest in the supernatural. Reputable city bookstores feature shelves full of books on various aspects of occult practice. Not only are witchcraft, astrology, and other occult phenomena attracting widespread popular attention; school and university courses on the history of occult subjects are increasingly popular, helping to give such subjects an aura of respectability.
That this tide of occultism bodes ill for mankind if it is not turned back is the considered opinion of many solid thinkers. Not only some believers in God, divine Spirit, as the only governing power of the universe, and students of the Bible who accept the Scriptures as the utterance of divine wisdom, but some natural scientists and psychologists who have little or no religious belief are denouncing as pernicious the study of such scientifically unfounded subjects as witchcraft and fortunetelling by the stars. In an effort to counteract humanity's current unhealthy gullibility, some are even urging schools and colleges to provide a wider choice of courses designed to educate students to be more alert and proficient in critical and scientific thinking.
Ever since Moses' time, God, or Truth, has been recognized by perceptive individuals as demanding that the occult be outlawed. "Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them," Lev. 19:31; the Mosaic law represents God as saying to the children of Israel. In Jeremiah's day, King Josiah discerned the need to banish the wizards from Judah and Jerusalem.II Kings 23:24; But fascination with wizardry repeatedly allowed it to creep back into favor, only to be denounced again by the faithful worshipers of the one God.
