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 =Saying that the Gospel is in the stars is paganism=
-The following is an excerpt from a sermon by John Macarthur in which he discusses the subject of the Zodiac:
+John Macarthur tells us:
-:''The Bible actually traces all false religion back to Babylon. From Babylon, you can trace it back to Babel. They rejected the true God, developed their false gods, and the Babylonian mystery cults come out of that, spreading all over the world.
+:'''''God never wrote the gospel in the stars. The heavens declare not the gospel. The heavens declare the glory of God. Why in the world … why would we borrow a pagan concoction and somehow invest it with the gospel? Christian astrology. What a terrible perversion. Finding the gospel in the stars is fantasy. Worse than that, it’s borrowing from paganism.''' But that’s another sermon.<ref>John F. MacArthur Jr., John MacArthur Sermon Archive (Panorama City, CA: Grace to You, 2014).</ref>
-:''When you get into the Book of Revelation, at the very end of human history, at the time of the Tribulation, just before the return of Jesus Christ, we read in the 17th chapter of Revelation, in verse 5, “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” Babylon is seen as the mother of all religious abominations. Abominations.
+The Bible records the existence of astrology, but denies its validity. The Hebrews were exposed to astrology as practiced by the Egyptians. When Moses seems absent on Mount Sinai an inordinate length of time, Aaron, at the request of the people, fashions a golden calf. It is '''Taurus the bull''' that “emerges” from the flames after the smelting process (Exod. 32:24). So grave is the danger that Moses has the image ground to powder, and imposes dire retribution.
-:''Illustration, you can even trace the Roman Catholic mother cult, Mary, mother cult, back to the mother cult of Babylonian mystery religions, not back to the New Testament. And even in the day of Ezekiel, pagan false teachers were worshipping the queen of heaven. That has never been Mary. That is … well, it goes by a number of names, Ashteroth, Simmaramus, Isis, way back in the Babylonian cults.
+Throughout the Pentateuch, and interspersed in the ministry of the prophets, stern, unqualified warnings are given against the practice of astrology. One reason the Hebrews were forbidden interchange with the existing tribes in Canaan was that their religious practices were infected with the astral arts.
+When the godly young Josiah instituted a reformation, he threw out all the astrologers’ paraphernalia. “The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. He did away with the pagan priests … those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts” (2 Kings 23:4–5, NIV).
-:''What kind of religion was this that they had developed with this tower? Well, we don’t know. But there’s some interesting thought about it. My friend, Dr. Jim Boice, who preached here a number of occasions, is now with the Lord, and we miss him greatly, came to the conclusion that this religion was probably the start of astrology, the zodiac, which has surely been connected with Babylon and may go back to Babel.
+The word constellation is equivalent to the signs of the zodiac. Jerusalem had become a center for astrology, directly violating the teachings of the Mosaic Law (Deut. 18:9–12).
+Ezekiel’s account implies that the signs of the zodiac had been inscribed on the Jerusalem temple itself: “So I went in and looked, and 1 saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel” (Ezek. 8:10–11).
-:''He writes this: “Turn to any book on astrology and you will find that it was the Chaldeans,” another name for the inhabitants of Babylon, “who first developed the zodiac by dividing the sky into sections and giving meanings to each on the basis of the stars that are found there. A person’s destiny is said to be determined by whatever section or sign he is born under.” You’re aware of that. Taurus, Gemini, whatever.
+Jeremiah delivers perhaps the most powerful denunciation in the Old Testament of dabbling in the astral arts: “At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves. They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped” (Jer. 8:1–2, NIV).
-:''Boice goes on: “From Babylon, astrology passed to the empire of ancient Egypt, where it mingled with the native animism and polytheism of the Nile. The pyramids were constructed with certain mathematical relationships to the stars. The Sphinx has astrological significance. It has a head of a woman, symbolizing Virgo, the Virgin, and the body of a lion, symbolizing Leo. Virgo is the first sign of the zodiac. Leo is the last. So the Sphinx, which, incidentally, means ‘joining’ in Greek, is the meeting point of the zodiac, first and last, indicating that the Egyptian priests believed the starting point of the earth in relation to the zodiac lay in Egypt, on the banks of the Nile.”
+The craft that went up in flames as a result of Paul’s preaching at Ephesus was apparently of astral importance (Acts 19:19). The New Testament clearly calls on the Christian to resist determinedly the evil forces ranged against him (Eph. 6:12).
-:''You can trace all of this fascinating study of the zodiac back to Babylon through Egypt and very likely, Boice believes, back to the original Babel. By the time the Jews, after 400 years in Egypt, remember, left, they had been greatly influenced by astrology. Remember, now, astrology was invented by Babylonian God-rejecters, Babylonian pagans. It’s a part of their false system.
+Pathetic attempts to show that the prophets were old-time astrologers are not backed by one shred of evidence. In close contact with the living God, these men warned the people against the occult. Predictions they made from time to time came from their contact with the Lord who sovereignly disclosed his intentions to his friends. The claim that the wise men were astrologers is nonsense. They made no references to any conjunctions of the planets, horoscopes, or readings of the zodiac. Possibly they were Gentile converts familiar with the prophecy of Numbers 24:17. They depended not on charts, but on guidance from the Lord God (Matt. 2:12).
-:''But when the Israelites left Egypt, because the tremendous amount of influence had been brought to bear upon them to believe in the stars, there were a series of warnings. In Leviticus 19:31, “Do not turn to mediums or spiritists,” and that’s pretty general. It would include those who read the stars. “Do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.” Don’t go near those deceivers.
+Advocates of biblical Christianity have opposed astrology in any form. Augustine denounced it as mankind’s most stupid delusion. Savanarola preached against it in Florence. And Luther reckoned it to be a shabby art.
-:''Deuteronomy 18, I can’t read all of this, but just a couple of places I think are really helpful. Deuteronomy 18:9, “When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,” and sometimes that’s translated “astrologer,” “one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you.”
+==Four Biblical Criticisms==
-:''Verse 14, “Those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so.” Again, warning about this.
+First of all, despite denial by modern proponents in the West (as contrasted to Hindu astrologers in the East), astrology is basically polytheistic. Its obscure origins stem from the worship of the starry hosts. Such polytheistic worship was a basic reason that God allowed the Hebrews to be carted off into captivity in Babylon. Allusion to “the shrine of Moloch” (representing the sun) and “the star of your god Rephan” (Saturn) is but one illustration (Amos 5:26; Acts 7:43). It is a prostitution of revealed religion, a violation of the first commandment.
-:''Later on, and this will be more familiar to you, in the Book of Daniel, there are a number of references to this. In Daniel 1:20, it says, “As for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them,” this is now in Babylon, or Chaldea, “he,” that is the king’s servant, found Daniel and his friends “ten times better than all the magicians and conjurers,” astrologers. Some of your Bibles will say “astrologers” there.
+Second, astrology paradoxically locks us into a totally mechanistic universe. If we are controlled by the stars as revealed through our horoscopes, whatever will be will be. If time and location linked to the zodiac are determinitive factors behind our temperaments and our careers, we are not responsible for our bad luck if the omens happened to be unfavorable. Some modern astrologers have tried to get around the dilemma by saying that the horoscopes impel but do not compel—mere juggling with words. Human responsibility and choice do not fit into the astrological system.
-:''Astrologers are mentioned again with magicians in 2:2. They’re mentioned again in 2:10. They’re mentioned again in 2:27. They’re mentioned again in chapter 4, chapter 5, I think three times. So astrology, having its roots perhaps at Babel, finds its way to Babylon, finds its way to Egypt, infects, to some degree, the people of Israel, as it continues its influence around the world.
+Third, astrology presents us with an impoverished doctrine of man. The biblical statement presents man as the apex of creation reflecting the image of God, with a mandate to subdue the earth and live for God’s glory (Gen. 1:27–28). The gospel of astrology reduces man to the level of a pawn. The real forces and powers, the main pieces on the chessboard of the universe, are the planets. Astrology purveys no good news, nothing to bring man into harmonious relationship with his Maker and cause deep-seated peace.
-:''Boice goes on to say, “The interesting thing about these Biblical denunciations of astrology is that astrology is identified with demonism or Satanism in the sense that Satan and his hosts were actually being worshipped in the guise of the signs and planets.” You have to remember that.
+Fourth and gravest, astrology is immersed in the occult. This may not be obvious when more sophisticated astrologers are interviewed. But the more widely one delves, the more apparent it becomes that the inspirational forces are the apparatus and thought processes of spiritism and witchcraft: check the advertisements in magazines devoted to astrology, replete with the trappings of sorcery—lucky charms, jewelry of the zodiac, talismen, cartology. So also is information on the whereabouts of witches’ covens with their so-called black and white magic.
-:''“This is the reason for the Bible’s stern denunciation of these practices. Are we to think, then, that Satan was entirely absent from the original attempt to build a civilization without God? Was he absent from the formation of this first non-Biblical religion? I don’t think so. If he wasn’t, then the religion of the tower was actually a Satanic attempt to direct the worship of the human race to himself and those former angels who, having rebelled against God, were now already demons.”
+The person who dabbles in astrology, even in its apparantly innocent forms, endangers his spiritual health. That is why it is so heavily censured in the pages of the Bible.
-:''...[but that the signs of the Zodiac] signify the great story of creation and redemption is impossible. And yet that has been a popular idea, a very popular idea, that you can read the gospel in the stars. Have you heard that? There’s a whole book about it, written by a prominent evangelical. To me, that’s ludicrous.
+Contemplation of the heavenly bodies should cause men, in recognizing their own creatureliness, to entrust themselves to the God of the universe. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:3). Planetary bodies, far from controlling the destinies of man, reveal the splendor of the Lord God. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Ps. 19:1). Job puts it categorically: “He [God] is the maker of the Bear and the Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the South” (Job 9:9).
-:''This popular writer says, “The Bible is God’s little book and the stars are God’s big book.”  '''God never wrote the gospel in the stars. The heavens declare not the gospel. The heavens declare the glory of God. Why in the world … why would we borrow a pagan concoction and somehow invest it with the gospel? Christian astrology. What a terrible perversion. Finding the gospel in the stars is fantasy. Worse than that, it’s borrowing from paganism.''' But that’s another sermon.<ref>John F. MacArthur Jr., John MacArthur Sermon Archive (Panorama City, CA: Grace to You, 2014).</ref>
+What a perversion, when the natural revelation of God is transformed into a complete system that deflects man from the path that leads to God. Astrology will not direct the inquirer to cleansing from sin, repentance, and forgiveness at the cross of Christ. As Isaiah warns, the astrologers and stargazers cannot save themselves; none but the reckless should sit by their fire.
+So far as astrology is concerned — the Bible says No!<ref>J. A. Sargent, “Astrology’s Rising Star,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1983), 38–39.</ref>
 =William Branham's information on the pyramids is also flawed=