Theological & Metaphysical Writings

Why does God allow Satan and the Antichrist to interact with humanity?

Introducing Satan into this world is God’s way of showing people what evil is and what kind of evil being people become over time when they rebel against God; this encourages people to abandon sin and accept God in ways that they may otherwise not have done.

But evil people will identify with Satan and accept Satan as their leader. This is why God is introducing the Antichrist, the incarnation of Satan, to humanity to see who is attracted and repelled by Satan’s soul.

Introducing Satan is like introducing a magnet that repels people away from sin and towards God and also attracts people who are evil, demonstrating how undeserving of mercy and how deserving of hell these people are.

Of a skeptic challenging the legitimacy of Christianity or my testimony: The best you can do is sound clever while being wrong.

God is Love

Did atoms and molecules all randomly collide with one another, creating humans, sentient life forms who are capable of complex things like love and affection? It takes more faith to believe that all that we see and feel came from random thoughtless nothingness than it does to believe it came from something more.

Is love a chemical reaction, a fluke of nature? Or is love an ancient life form that existed before this universe was created, the same life form that many call God?

Arguably, love is the most important thing in life, and if God is this ancient life form called Love, where all the true love we experience in life is sourced from, then God, along with love, must be the most important thing that exists.

Why love the fruit but hate or dismiss the tree the fruit falls from?

Why does God allow evil to occur?

Two main reasons why God allows evil to occur is to God allows evil so people can learn why evil is evil and why evil should not be done through lived experience.

If God didn't allow beings with free will to do the evil things they want, or if he punished them before they actually did what they were about to do (like in the novel and film “Minority Report”, a story about a society where people are sent to jail and charged with being a criminal before they commit a crime) many sorts of problems would occur.

Here is an example:

Let’s say you had telepathy and could read someone’s mind and see their evil thoughts and know they are evil and unrepentant and unapologetically evil, where you know they are evil before they even commit an evil act, where you are aware of the evil they are scheming to do in the future, and to protect people from any incoming evil, you send them to prison or kill them for being evil, but the rest of the world, who do not have your mind reading capabilities, simply observed you imprisoning or executing a person without seeing any proof that they are evil because you imprisoned or killed the evil one before they showed anyone proof of their evil, so it may appear that you did something terrible to an innocent person and you may look like the villain and not the hero. In order to prove someone is evil to the rest of the world, it appears God allows evil to be evil to demonstrate they are evil to the cosmos, so the angels and the people of the cosmos can witness the evil and understand why this individual is rightfully being sent to Hell.

God may be able to detect who is evil and who is good in ways no one else is capable of doing, and because of this, God knows who is becoming evil and what an evil person is scheming. God could intervene in a few ways:

1) God could punish someone or send them to Hell before they commit an evil action,

2) God could announce to all the beings in the heavens and in the cosmos who is evil before they have committed a crime or demonstrated their evil ways,

3) God could speak to the suspected individual and console them on the evil that is building inside of them before they commit an evil action (but it is likely such an evil individual would claim that God is lying and that there is no evil inside of them, as evil people often do; they try to hide their evil, and if God can already anticipate that the individual would lie about their evil if confronted with it, then there would be no point in consoling an sneaky unrepentant and unapologetic evil individual, therefore, this option is likely not going to be used by God.

From the perspective of the onlookers and all the other angels and people of the heavens and of the world, it may appear that the individual has done nothing wrong, who is either being sent to Hell, punished, or accused of being evil by God. If God were to handle the situation differently, it may appear to a bystander that God is harassing and falsely accusing an innocent person. Yet, if God allows people to demonstrate their evil, God can then show the cosmos, and all the spirits, all the angels, and all of his creations the proof that the evil individual is evil.

God is allowing people to show the world who they are by allowing them to do what they want. By allowing beings to witness why God is punishing someone or why God would send someone to Hell people then can understand the justification why God is handling the situation and the individual is justified (instead of the alternative of God reading their minds and punishing people before they commit an act of evil). People may question God or lose faith in God if they witness sending people to Hell before they ever noticed someone exhibiting any evil tendencies. People could begin to wonder if the person sent to Hell was evil at all and if God made the right choice. As a result, people could live in fear and paranoia wondering if they could be sent to Hell falsely before they did anything wrong. Psychologically, this could be devastating for God’s creations if He terminated beings without demonstrating that they are evil and willing to repent.

And by allowing beings to "mess up" and do wrong things, the world gets to see the chaos unfold and understand why "wrong things" are wrong things. If beings were not allowed to do wrong things or were somehow stopped by God prior to doing something wrong, then created beings would likely never fully understand why something is wrong if they don't get to witness the consequences of their actions. Would people be able to learn what is right if they were not given the time to do wrong? Doing what is wrong allows humans to witness the consequences of doing wrong things and why wrong is wrong and why right is right through lived experience. God temporarily allowing his created beings to experience the chaos of doing wrong things may be the best teaching method to teach his created beings (in this case humans) to learn what is right. The success rate for people converting to goodness may be highest if God orients the world like this, where he rarely shows himself or intervenes or tells people what to do and allows people to figure out good and evil and right and wrong on their own. People also can have problems with taking instruction from others, including God, and can desire to do the opposite of what they are told, where their decision are the product of “reverse psychology”, where if God told people what to do and how to be good, people would decide to do the opposite out of spite and to demonstrate their free will. So, allowing people to do whatever they want and experience the pain of what life is like when people sin and how life does not improve when people do wickedness, people can learn through experience why evil is evil and why it should not be done.

God allows evil to occur to demonstrate why those who are unrepentantly evil need to go to Hell, and to prove that an evil individual is evil. God also allows evil to teach people why not to do evil by experiencing the consequences of evil and why life is better when evil does not exist and why life is better when we do not sin.

How is it ethical and logical that God sends people to Hell for eternity?

Sin destroys society.

Someone who is unrepentant and who will never stop sinning is someone who has mercilessly decided to always destroy society and sabotage everyone else’s ability to live in a world of true peace.

Because these people are mercilessly destroying the lives of everyone around them, God has no mercy for them and they go to hell for eternity just how these people were going to destroying everyone’s lives for eternity.

Why is believing that truth is “relative” harmful? And how are Satan and manipulative people capable of taking advantage of us?

A society of holiness and justice and sanity is achieved by being rational and truthful and grounded in reality. Being led astray from truth and rationality and being grounded in reality leads people away from God and towards darkness and ruin, where people are ultimately ruled by wickedness.

This is what is predicted in The Bible: during a time of great desperation in humanity, an individual (Satan) will manipulate others who have become lost in life, for the lost people of the world will be able to be easily manipulated, and he will use them to do his bidding, this is the big threat that people often do not understand, that this is the cycle of life when people are irrational and lost; without God people become lost, and when a manipulative person comes along and sees so many gullible and easily impressionable people, they can come along and play with people’s minds and lead them into a cult or sorts. Those people who are lost and who have lived lives that have destroyed their minds will be taken advantage of, for they have lived a life of ignoring the truth and indulging and their mental defenses are too damaged to detect that they are being taken advantage of. 

How people perceive reality alters how they form their ethics and decisions they make in life. If people are irrational, irrational decisions will be made and irrational codes of ethics will be made. And irrational ethics is the opposite of what is ethical, which is “unethical”. A false sense of reality leads to an unethical state of existence.

I have heard people say “truth is relative”, is it though? How does this person know “truth is relative”? That’s a self-defeating statement. That’s an absolute statement claiming that there are no absolutes. If it is objectively true that truth is relative, then truth is objective, and not relative, or, how can that statement be true, if truth is relative – from this mere example, we can see how believing that truth is relative is irrational, and how irrationality and “relativism” breeds confusion.

Irrationality and the belief that truth is relative leads to a chaotic fracturing of society. This is what breeds the questionable culture that is arising in society, where truth can be whatever anyone wants it to be, with the idea that there are no consequences to being irrational and believing that the truth is not true, where 1 + 1 = whatever number a person wants it to mean as long as it makes them feel good, where saying the answer is 2 can be considered oppressive or “outdated” or “just a construct”, and the idea that anything can be anything with the ignorance that believing such will have no consequences on society and wont deteriorate society – but someone who believes truth is relative could then say that a “chaotic” or “deteriorated society” is subjective  and that society never had to be anything to begin with – which is essentially an argument for nihilism and indifference disguised as “social freedom”. Living without truth ultimately leads to nihilism and the eradication of holiness and truth and reason. A society of holiness and justice and sanity is achieved by being rational and truthful and grounded in reality. A society of holiness and justice and sanity is achieved by being rational and truthful and grounded in reality. Being led astray from truth and rationality and being grounded in reality leads people away from God and towards darkness and ruin, where people are ultimately ruled by wickedness. 

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” – John 15:5

God has already stated this. God will only tolerate holiness and will no longer give life to those who indulge in what is unholy and irrational. People are only connected to God if they are connected to the truth and the truth is how reality works, and God, who created reality, is the truth of the truth and the ultimate truth of reality. For people who distort reality, distort their perception of God, and distort everything else they see in life, including right and wrong and what is good and bad.

Frank Turek makes a good explanation of this topic.

The Question:

"Why does sin look so good?" 

"Why is sin so tempting?" 

"I am struggling with sin. How do I stay focused on God and stay focused on doing the right thing and no longer sin?”

The Answer:

It is best to think about what person we become when we sin.

Instead of focusing on how delightful or pleasurable or tempting a particular sin is, think about the person you become when you indulge in that sin, and think about how you deteriorate mentally and soulfully when you sin.

If we find ourselves feeling tempted to sin, it is best to think about what we turn into and the mess we create for ourselves and for others when we sin. We contaminate our own minds when we sin and we spread chaos and lawlessness and apathy into the world when we sin.

Think about sin like this: being “holy” is being clean and living in a clean frame of mind, and our frame of mind is our mental living space, our home. When we sin, it is like creating a dog turd in our home and in our “mental living space”; it is creating filth that we then have to live with inside of ourselves. And then we might step in that filth later or we have to pretend that filth is not there inside of us and we have to navigate ourselves around the filth that we create in our own soul. I know that is a bit of a gross and graphic analogy, but sin should be seen as gross so we don’t partake in sin. It is better to not sin so we don’t have to live inside a decrepit environment in ourselves. 

Be wary of sinning, and be weary of thinking that you are such a righteous person, that you could do no wrong; as it is said in Ezekiel:

“If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done.” - Ezekiel 33:13

The more we are aware of what is good and what is evil, the more evil doing evil is; as it is said in The Second Epistle of Peter:

“It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and turned away from the holy commandment passed on to them.” - 2 Peter 2:21

We disgrace ourselves when we sin and when we continue to sin; as it is said in Proverbs:

“As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” -Proverbs 26:11

This motif is found in The Book of Mark, the concept of “What we do, we inflict upon ourselves”:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” - Mark 7:20-23

Sin is perishable. Sin is a thought or emotion or an action that spoils us and rots the world around us like rotting flesh. Sin is a temporary indulgence that leads to temporary perceived “success”, whereas God is timeless and the success that is harvested from living in God’s ways is timeless and eternal. Sin is built on a faulty foundation that collapses. God and God’s ways are built upon a sturdy foundation that lasts forever. If there is a refuge for us to take shelter in, let us find refuge in the timeless protection of God and not the doomed structure of sin; as Eugene Rose stated:

“Everything in this life passes away - only God remains, only He is worth struggling toward. We have a choice: to follow the way of this world, of the society that surrounds us, and hereby find ourselves outside of God; or choose the way of life, to choose God Who calls us and for Whom our heart is searching.” - Eugene Rose

God is the only one who truly lives and lives forever. God is what allows us to be alive. By following God, we live. God gives life to those who follow him. God does not sin. Sin is not where God is. By following sin, we are where God isn’t and where life is not present. Going towards sin is going towards death. 

Sin is the abandonment of virtue and the abandonment of being responsible. The world becomes less bearable as more corrupt the less virtuous and less responsible we are. When people sin, people create a worse world for everyone else and themselves. Being holy is being responsible and understanding that we must always be responsible in knowing how every action has consequences and can impact everyone else we share life with and making the most responsible decisions creates the best world for all of us; as it is said in The First Epistle of John:

“Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” - 1 John 3:4

The structure of society is only sustainable when people are holy, fair, just, loving, thoughtful, responsible and are free from the slavery of sin. Being addicted to sin and lawlessness and pleasure enslaves oneself and everyone else who is a victim of the consequences of the sinner. Society fractures and falls apart when people sin. People who sin do not care about the “greater good”. They may make up excuses to justify how their debauchery and how their evil does not destroy society or harm anyone. They may try to convince themselves and others that they have found an alternative way to live that is just as good or better than how God and God’s angel’s live – they are wrong. Sinners are slaves to their sin, which is their slave master. They will do evil things and lie to themselves and others to continue worshiping sin. And sinning enslaves everyone else in the world. Since sin causes the world to no longer be at peace, those who sin are ruining peace for the rest of the world. And for those who sin, they are not free, but bound by their bad behavior. Sin becomes prison cell, preventing people to grow into someone greater; as Christ said in the Gospel of John:

“Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” - John 8:34

To make sure that the world stays at peace and for society to be sustainable, where people are not living in their own filth, we must not sin, so we can be free of disaster and from living in a perpetual state of experiencing horror, injustice, suffering, incompetence, hatred, indifference, nihilism, existential dread, and struggle.

If you are suffering from sin or desiring sin, when you mind drifts to thinking about those sinful desires, think about the person you become when you indulge in that sin; think about how you become a lesser, more pathetic, version of yourself when you partake in that sin. When we sin, we eventually think in ways that to justify why our sins are good, which can lead us to more delusional thoughts like, “God loves me and accepts me for who I am,” or, “God agrees with how I live. God would not judge me.”

There are people who delude themselves with thoughts where they call Truth a lie; there are people who call lies truth. They create ideas of what God is like and imagine him to be someone who loves the sin they do. They worship a false idol in their mind, a false god who validates and praises the sin they do. These people worship their sin and then try to live in a false reality inside their mind that applauds the life they live; as it is said in Romans:

“But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.... Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools … So, God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So, they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.” - Romans 1:18-32

When we are holy we allow ourselves to experience perfection, so we then can experience the best lives we can live. This is what love is in its true form. Humanity has yet to experience what love truly is. Be holy and experience love.

The world we live in will be as perfect as we are perfect. The world we live in will be as terrible as we are terrible. Our decisions make the life we live in. To live in a perfect world, we then must rise to the occasion and be perfect. How we treat each other creates the society that we live in; as it is said in the Book of Matthew:

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” - Matthew 5:48

To become perfect and live in a better and perfect world, we must continue to rid ourselves of our sins, our evils, and our bad habits. We must not hide our evils from ourselves and ignore, for those evils will not disappear if ignored, but they will grow in size and in ferocity. We must banish sin from our lives and find people who are going through this same process, or who are farther along in this process, and seek them for help, and confess to these trusted people of God our sins, so they can help us overcome them, so we can find God and live with Him forever; as it is said in Proverbs:

“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” - Proverbs 28:13

Repent, dispel and purge the sin within us. Empty our souls of the darkness. Shed the old sinful skin of our past selves and become someone new, as if you have been given a new name and a new face. And do not return to the old self. Do not wear that old face. Do not identify with that old name.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” - 2 Corinthians 5:17

There are a lot of reasons why people turn their backs to God. Some people have this idea that God is a tyrant of sorts - a dictator, or someone who is obsessed with controlling others and is an egomaniac of sorts. And there are some people, some who I have met personally, who believe that Satan is “freedom” and is the one who is trying to free people from the dictatorship of God. But this is not true. And I will go into detail how this is untrue.

God is Good.

Some people accuse God of being evil or being an evil tyrant; what is the truth? What Is God’s character?

Understand Jesus Christ was God in human form. Jesus was God’s temperate and God’s personality in the form of human. What we have recorded in the Gospels of Jesus is God interacting with us. And how did Jesus behave? Jesus did not act like a dictator. He did not act like a cult leader. He did not act like a narcissistic controlling abuser. He acted mature and with dignity who cared about people and wanted the best for people and he was kinder to people than most people ever were to one another - that’s who Jesus was, that’s who God is.

In order to show humanity who God is in a way that humans can understand, God entered this world as a human so the world could witness Him. As I have previously explained, God allows humans to act freely so they can witness their own actions so they learn how to become better people without rebelling further into sin like a rebellious teenager if God was more involved in telling people what to do and to not sin; and because of this, life appears to be horrible to people so they wrongfully and pridefully claim that God is somehow evil, when they are simply observing how evil humanity is and what life is like without God intervening and leading humanity so humanity can know what the alternative is to not following God, so they can better appreciate God. Within the fallen world that humans have created for themselves, God sent Himself in the form of a human, Jesus Christ, so humanity can witness what kind of person He is - that is the true nature of God, and this is the type of person God is outside of the confusion of understanding who God the Father is within the complex nature of this evil world we live in that humanity has created for itself.

In the Bible there is a story of where Jesus feeds 5,000 people and afterword all the people he fed rush to Him and collectively declared Him their king and He declined because Jesus only answers to God and does not take a crown that humans give him. Jesus demonstrated that He was not corrupt or power hungry or did kind things for people so He could incentivize them to make him their king. His true nature was that he wanted to do was to help people find God and learn what love is. God’s true nature is selflessly trying to help people follow the one who is meant to be followed, which is God, without personally and selfishly wanting power for Himself. He rises to place of leadership if it is God’s will and if the situation righteously calls for his leadership.

And notice how Jesus told people that God The Father was the ultimate one people need to follow. Jesus was the type of person who would give authority to someone else if he knew they were a a great leader than Him - that’s God’s character, because that’s what Jesus’ character was. Jesus did not tell people to bow before him nor did he act like he was the most perfect and most great thing in existence, he gave that title to someone else, God The Father. Jesus demonstrated how God does not declare that he needs to be in charge because he wants to be in charge, God is the type of being who would give his power over to someone if they could do the job better, that’s what Jesus demonstrated. That is not the character of an evil person or a tyrant, but the character of someone who is the most humble and most good.

Question:

What does it mean to be responsible?

Why is being responsible important?

Why do people actively avoid responsibility?

The more we understand what it means to be responsible, the more responsible we are for our decisions and ways of life. And the more responsible we are, the more liable we are. The more liable we are for the decisions we make, the greater the consequences are.

This is an intrinsic fact that most people all know, whether they admit it or not.

And because of this logical proof that we all know by instinct, there are people who intentionally try to not know the truth of what it means to be reasonable; they try to divert their attention away from seeing the truth, because in their minds, if they can pretend to not know any better, then they can create the facade of innocence when doing wrong and committing sin. These people try not to listen to the truth when it is given to them. These people try to intentionally misunderstand the truth when they hear it; they ask misleading questions to godly people in an attempt to frame righteousness as wicked and wickedness as righteousness.

Instinctively we all know if we are found guilty, or at fault for something, or are to blame for something, we are expected to change who we are as a person and face consequences and a penalty for our actions. Either, people do not want to be asked to change their lifestyle and their way of thinking, so they try to hide the fact they did something considered wrong, and to avoid consequences.

Another tactic these people use is they will attempt to construct another system of ethics with nonsensical pseudo-logic to try to combat God’s logic, in an attempt to justify their unjustifiable behavior.

Yet, the irony is, no one can ultimately run from responsibility, for the very act of someone trying to run away from reason and responsibility by trying to hide and pretend they do not know any better, is in fact knowing better. People who are actively trying to not understand how the truth is the truth understand, somewhere inside of themselves, that the truth is the truth. So, it does not matter if someone tries to trick God into claiming that they do not know any better when they actively try to run away from understanding what it means to be responsible. If a person did not have ulterior motives for trying to deny the truth and denying what is responsible, they could have a calm thoughtful conversation and easily learn what the truth is, yet a person’s contempt to learn God’s truth is a decision that is no different than saying, “I don’t want to become a better person. I want to stay evil”; if someone were honest they would outright say that, but people often like deciding to be evil while trying to outwardly appear that they are good or at worst negligent and oblivious.

God sees through the trickery.

God sees inside the heart of everyone.

There is no lie that fools God.

God is the light.

God sees all.

Repent.

Be truthful.

Without being truthful, a person cannot repent, just how a person who ignores the answer to a question will not find the answer.

Question:

What is witchcraft?

Is the love of money evil?

What does “Mammon” mean?

What does it mean to worship a false idol?

And how does this all relate to witchcraft and why are all of these things evil?

This question and analyzation arose from comparing two translations of the Bible in Luke 16:13.

The King James Bible translates Luke 16:13 as:

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

The New American Standard Bible translates Luke 16:13 as:

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

What does Luke 16:13 mean?
And what does the word “mammon” mean in the King James version?

The answer:

Mammon is a biblical term for wealth and monetary and materialistic gain. 

Mammon s typically used to reference the evil that is brought into the world by desiring wealth, as if it were a god.

The term has historically been used to mean an evil demon or an evil false god.

The term “mammon” means a “false idol”.

Mammon can be translated as “wealth”, but the pith of what is being spoken to is the “wealth” of desire in people’s hearts that that eclipses their love of God, their virtuous, and their sense of reasons and responsibility for living for the greater good.

A false idol can be lust or a desire that someone worships as their god as if it is their god, like how someone worships money as their master.

A person cannot have two masters because a person cannot ultimately be loyal to God and sin simultaneously. God will ultimately require an individual to give up sin, but if a person is loyal to sin, then they will see God as the enemy for having to give up their sin.

Just how a person is forbidden by God to worship false gods. People primarily worship false gods because they want to imagine that a powerful divine being is giving them divine permission to live just how they want to live and ignore any doubt that they might potentially have to live the sinful life they are living. If a person can create a “god” in their mind that approves how they live, they can trick themselves in living a guilt free life, where they feel venerated and validated to do the wrong things they do without questioning what they are doing and by ignoring using logic and reasoning to find a better way to live.

A person cannot have God as their master and someone or something else at the same time. The two forces compete against one another. In some cases, people will even turn God, Yahweh, the god of the Bible, into a false idol by imagining that God is someone who he is not and by projecting false beliefs about who God is onto God, where someone has a false idea of who God is in order to feel as if their sins are justified. People also do this with scripture, where they twist scripture, and try to do mental gymnastics to interpret the Bible in ways in which it does not truly mean in order to justify what they want to believe in.

Yet, to go back to the question of, “Yes, the love of money evil?”; yes, to answer simply “yes”, the love of money is evil, in a similar way how obsession of power is evil. Money is a form of energy that is able to manifest an interaction. If money is used for purposes of good, then the money is used for good things. Money can be used for good, like how someone could use money to pay people to build a house for homeless people to live in. Or how someone can use money to buy a hungry homeless person food. Money, like energy is a neutral material, like wood or metal, yet, can be used for evil. Money can easily be in the category of witchcraft in the sense of how someone using dark magic tries to cast a spell to alter the laws of physics or control people or attempt to have the power of God or gain the riches of a god. Money is the means that people try to obtain power and control and wealth, like how a spellcaster or a “witch” uses psychic and demonic spellcasting to accomplishing the same thing.

People who follow God do not seek to use witchcraft as if they have the authority to manipulate people or reality in such a way, they pray and ask God for permission first to gain something and do not try to sneak around God to obtain something without God’s permission. They understand there is God’s authority above them; witchcraft is the attempt to circumvent God and his authority and messing around with life. Like how a hacker tries to hack someone’s computer to alter it, infect it, and have control over it, witchcraft is the attempt to hack reality and hack “god’s computer” and to hack God and cause problems for God and everyone existing within reality (which is all of God’s creations), it is the endangerment of everyone. God already has a system for how reality needs to be so reality can be orderly and good, but the tampering of reality destroys order and society, and nearly no one would do such a thing unless they had evil intent.

If were to use the metaphor: reality is a like a computer program that God created that we all exist in, like how people who play a videogame online share the same “program” and share and live within the same simulation, then, people who attempt to hack and disturb the fabric of reality, this “computer program” and this “simulation” that we all share, then they are putting everyone at risk, like how a mad scientist who tries to create a black hole, or attempts to find a way to alter space and time laws of physics, is endangering everyone. Everyone will be affected by such actions, and these people who are attempting to go against God, whether it is their intent or not, are destroying the ecosystem that all life depends on to survive. It is therefore a sin to commit witchcraft or go against God’s laws and to fight against and wage war against God’s intended design.

People who commit witchcraft are also people who typically worship a false god, who they use as a mental crutch to justify why they are doing what they are doing and to give them the confidence that the spells and curses they are trying to cast they are doing will work and to give them the faith that there are powers in the universe that will give them the power to perform these feats.

To be clear, there are evil spirits like Satan and his fallen angels who watch the people who desire to perform witchcraft and may lie and pretend to be the gods that these individuals worship and may perform miracles before the spellcaster to make the spellcaster believe that what they are believing and doing is real. This way evil spirits can manipulate humans more easily. When people are addicted to their sins and their desire for power and manipulation, there are spirits in greater dimensions who prey upon these people. The more sinful an individual is, and the farther away from God they are, the easier it is for other spirits to take advantage of them. The same goes for humans among other humans: it is easier for a human to take advantage of another human when they know other people’s weaknesses and when someone can exploit someone else desires.

When a person has a “false idol” or “false god” or has desires that outweigh their desire for goodness and God, they are greatly susceptible for manipulation. It is ironic that those seeking “freedom” and “power” by indulging in sin and manipulating the laws of physics ultimately become manipulated and the least powerful and the least free and they become people who are enslaved by their sin and their desires.

Breaking away from sin and going closer to God is freedom from a world of darkness. Without God and without following God, life becomes an ouroboros of darkness, a snake eating its own tail, devouring itself endlessly, caught in its own trap, a trap created by its own sin and the destructive actions of one’s own nefarious soul.

Why are there animal sacrifices in the Old Testament (the Tanakh)?

This is a question someone purposed to me. They were puzzled about why God would include animal sacrifices in the spiritual diet of his followers.

To understand the idea behind animal sacrifices, or more one of the possible reasons behind it, is that it is gruesome - it is sad - it is disturbing. Jews were told to sacrifice an animal to cleanse them of their sin - essentially taking something that is innocent to replace the horrible thing they did, which has them reflect on how they are destroying something innocent when they sin, just how when we sin in general, we are destroying ourselves and society and the people around us, because our sins always affect those around us - every time. And animal sacrifices were an eye opener to this sad occasion. It is likely that we are meant to feel bad sacrificing animals so we may live and be right with God, that it is unfair, just how it is unfair that God, in the form of Yeshua (Jesus), was sacrificed on our behalf, how the animals sacrificed where killed on our behalf as well. And just how the animals we eat die on our behalf so we can live, Jesus said, "This is my blood and this is my body. Eat.”

Humanity consumed Christ in a similar way as if he was an animal, so they may survive, and not die from God’s judgement of their sins and the way they seem to perpetually sin and not stop.

This is one of the ways I see animal sacrifices, these sacrifices are a way to humble humanity to understand that someone innocent suffers and pays for the cost of our sins when we sin and when we ask for forgiveness; someone or something dies to redeem us. And witnessing an animal die for what we did wrong helps humans tangibly understand how their sins are hurting other people and causing the soul of humanity to die.

The topic of sacrificing animals reminds me of a scene in the film Full Metal Jacket where the rest of the squadron must physically suffer due to another soldier’s sin. And watching how others suffer in this visceral way helps the sinner confront their sin in a more profound way than if they were physically punished themselves. Since sin causes disorder and chaos and physical and spiritual death for everyone else in the world, seeing how other people suffer and die, or in this particular case animals, is a way for people can understand how their sin is killing others and God’s system of animal sacrificing is a way to confront a person’s sin, the death that they are spreading to others and the innocent, and how it destroys the spiritual equilibrium of the universe.

To quote Alyssa Roat from Christianity.com:

“To understand animal sacrifice, we must start at the beginning. Genesis 3 records the story of the fall of humanity, during which Adam and Eve disobeyed God, bringing sin into the world.

Genesis 3:21 then records the first death in the Bible, when God made clothes for Adam and Eve out of animal skin. Presumably, this would have been shocking and horrifying to the first couple. It was a graphic demonstration of the nature of their sin. Because they sinned, they now had to be clothed, or covered. That covering was only accomplished by the shedding of blood, a metaphor for their spiritual death and a foreshadowing of things to come.
Things only went downhill. By the second generation of humanity, Cain killed his brother Abel in jealousy, which was the first murder.
Mankind grew so wicked that only a single God-fearing man was left.

Hailing back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve, recall that God made a “covering” for the first couple, to cover over their nakedness. They were still sinful, but God had given them a covering. Blood was shed because of their sin. This would become a recurring theme.

The way animals were prepared for different types of offerings was also deeply symbolic, as in the case of the “scapegoat,” in which one goat was slaughtered and another released into the wild, metaphorically carrying away the sin of Israel (Leviticus 6:1-34).

Unlike other deities of the time, an angry God was not being “appeased” by these offerings. Rather, in His love, He offered a way for His people’s sin to be covered over, so that they could approach Him. Rebellion and sin required death. They were not to be taken lightly. In order for the Israelites to gain forgiveness, something had to die.
It was a painful process, yes. That was the point. Sin led to death. It was serious. In order to avoid their own destruction because of their sin, the Israelites had to offer something innocent to die in their place—in this case, an animal without blemish.

Unfortunately, this was not enough. The sinful nature of people led them to sin again and again. No amount of animal blood could completely wash them clean or pay for the death price they owed.
The centuries of animal blood weren’t the only thing that pointed to a need for something greater. The nation of Israel quickly fell apart, and its history was checkered with war, oppression, and serious immorality. In the end, they were carried away into captivity in Assyria and Babylon, and only returned to Israel as a subjugated people, first to Babylon, then Persia, all the way until the Roman Empire. God’s chosen people were a disaster.

There was no natural means for forgiveness. No amount of animal sacrifices would be enough; the blood served as a reminder of the people’s endless guilt, the death that would come to them in the contrast between their own sinful nature and the consuming fire of Holiness.
Israel (now known as the Jews) knew that forgiveness required blood, and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

Mankind, deserving of death, could only be redeemed by the blood of something great enough to cover all humanity, and nothing could be that great but the Divine Himself. When Jesus Christ came, He was the perfect sacrifice, without blemish. As the animals offered had to be pure, He was perfect, without sin. And as death was required, someone had to die. The blood of life had to be poured out on the dead, mankind, and the scapegoat had to take on the sin of the people.

Jesus’ death and resurrection made animal sacrifice obsolete; what more could animal blood add to the cleansing blood of Christ Himself? There is no longer a curtain between the people and the Holy of Holies (Matthew 27:51). Fully cleansed by the blood of Christ, believers can stand in the presence of God.

Animal sacrifice in the Bible reminds us of the horror of sin.
When we look back at the sacrificial rituals of the Old Testament and are rightly horrified, we are reminded of the immense, unpayable debt of sin, and the incalculable amount of blood needed to bring life back to a dead soul.”

Besides what has been discussed, animals were also someone’s livelihood and a valuable commodity and resource for food and materials for clothing, to sacrifice and animal would be a great loss to a person’s wealth and survival. Someone sacrificing something of this value helps a person reflect on their sin and what they lose because of it.