Honest! I was a little girl once and we played all kinds of silly games. I mention a game to a little girl today and she looks at me like I was crazy. I asked a six year old girl what she would be doing when she got out of school. Nothing! It's boring.

Do you play hopscotch? No. Cutouts? No. Jacks? No. Kids DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY ANY MORE! What's my point? I was a little girl and I did play games. I did enjoy them for a while but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted something more. In a sense, I was bored, too. I wanted excitement.

I didn't really like my life. I pretended it was something different. I lived in the future of what might have been instead of what was. 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. Bt that time you are hooked.

I did play games when I didn't have my nose in a book. I like Nancy Drew detective books, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz. When I became a teenager, I leaned toward ones with excitement and romance in them, especially the Gothic ones. They always had some supernatural scenes in them, enough to give you goosebumps. 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 what music they listen to. 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 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 an enchanter or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard or a necromancer." Divination means witchcraft or trying to tell the future by occult means. Occult means mysterious, beyond human understanding or hidden.

I lost track of time and events as to know what and when it happened. This must have been after I was "saved". I had quite a few penpals. One woman was practically crying for help. Her husband was a male witch. I think she wanted out but was too scared to try it. A new Christian, I thought I could help her. I talked about Jesus and salvation. I said I would pray for her. She wrote back and told me to quit writing to her. She was afraid for my life. She said if he got hold of my letters, he could use them to take possession of my body. I dropped a penpal. Isaiah 15:23 "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry." How many kids are rebellious and stubborn today? How about grownups? I've been guilty of both.

I began reading my horoscope every day. I wanted to know what to expect. I said I didn't believe it; it was just fun. Just the same I was careful about what I did that day. I had my first part time job as waitress at 16. I made 35 cents an hour. At 17 I was offered a job as telephone operator for 75 cents an hour. That was a big jump and a lot of money at that time., so I took it. I went to school in the daytime and worked after school. At my age I wasn't allowed to work past 9 P.M. My parents made me pay $10 a week for rent. Whatever I had left over, I could spend it anyway I wanted to.

I bought all the books I could find on astrology.
I wanted to learn how to chart my own life and for anyone else who was interested. My biggest thrill was to take a train into Pittsburgh to take dance lessons at Arthur Murray's. Of course I had to eat. I found a quaint little Mystic tea room around the corner from the dance studio. I don't remember the food but the place had an exciting atmosphere about it with gypsy fortune tellers and all. Getting my fortune told with tea leaves or cards came with the dinner. Some of the things did come true, but then again they are very good understanding human nature and could draw information out of you. Some of it you can switch around to fit your own style.

Just for fun, at that age, started to go to other fortune tellers I could find, like at a carnival or even private homes. I began to tell fortunes with cards. I was becoming pretty good at it. My mother still didn't know what I was doing. I had a curious mind and wanted to know about many things.

I played with the Ouija board. It can scare 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 THINK you see a tree but it's rally only in your mind. You can just as easily make it disappear---so they say. I never tried it but I didn't doubt it could be so. Before opening your mail, you use ESP on it, thinking what your mail is before you open it. Same with the telephone.

One experiment I had to make was to put two candles on either side of a mirror on a mantle. All other lights are turned off. You look straight into your own eyes and tell them what you saw. I saw the devil; leering at me as if to say: "Ha! Ha! I gotcha now." That scared me. I ran and turned every light in the house on. I quit that route.

I tried hypnosis and the hypnotist, with a pretty good practice, wanted me to take over. She was getting too old. It just struck me now. If she really believed what she was teaching and doing, she wouldn't be getting old. It fits tightly in with reincarnation.

I went to a different one. Before I went into her office, I imagined what I thought it was like never having seen her or her office before. That scared me because it was just like I had pictured it---Egyptian decor. She was Egyptian and scared me. Do you get the trend? Fear figures in all of this. II Timothy 1:7 "For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and a sound mind."

The new hypnotist told me about her many lives before this one. She looked young but with an evil look. I worked at another restaurant at the time. She was one of my closing time customers. I did not like to wait on her. She kept watching me and made me nervous.

Hypnosis 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 liked reincarnation because it gave sense (so I thought) to my messed up life. I believed I was having a rotten time now because I was rotten in my past life. Maybe my next life would be better until I reached my nirvana---a place or condition of great bliss or peace; paradise if you will.

You cannot reach that state except through Jesus Christ. John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to 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. I can prove it. (only after I got out of all this devil's work)

I lived in a bad town right next door to hard core drug pushers and users. Some of them would come up my back steps and jump over to a roof next to me. Many other crimes were committed all around me. But I slept good at night. I never knew what was going on until someone told me but i was at peace. I never worried about it. I knew God had His angels surrounding me.

I had a habit of going out the back door to check the weather every morning to see what I should wear to go to work. I came home that evening and went to bed. Next morning I went to the back door. It was standing wide open! It must have been opened for 24 hours! No body bothered me. I believe my angels scared them off.

Jesus is in the fiery furnace with us or in the lion's den. Psalms 23:4 "Though i walk through the valley of death, I will feel no evil." This whole world is like that valley of death until we belong to Jesus.

Before that I got interested in UFO's, walk-ins, space brothers (was told Jesus was one and I believed it!) I got involved in the Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Bahai's (another Jesus with a different name.) to name a few. Finally I was ready to get into the new Age---anything goes and I was my own god; so they say. But they were really the controllers. Anything to make you forget God, our Creator.

I found an ad in a U.F.O. magazine. 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 Wednesday. I got the impression to cancel that check. I knew it was from God. I argued that I wasn't going to do anything about it. I was just curious as to what they would say. A few days later I got the same impression but louder and stronger--- rather angry. I thought came into my mind that said: "You have to make up your mind whether you are going to serve me or Satan. I had been sitting on the fence. I wanted the best of both worlds. THERE IS NO BEST ON THE WRONG SIDE.

Monday came and I cancelled the check. I got a letter from them saying you don't go to the doctor, get the work done and refuse to pay. I wrote and said the Holy Spirit will tell me my mission in life and I don't have to pay for it. They did not write again.

Each baby step I took led me one step forward until I tried to take the big giant step into the occult. My legs weren't long enough to go the whole way in. I gave up and quit playing the "game". We can not laugh it off as a big joke. T.V. shows like Bewitched and other witch "comedies" , seem to be funny and you can get to the point you begin to thing witches and magic are cute and all so normal.

I laughed as much as the next guy until I saw it one Halloween night. Endora blasphemed God by saying she didn't know why people made such a fuss over Christmas when Halloween was the biggest and best holiday. Christmas itself, is derived from a pagan holiday. She took it as the Christian celebration of Jesus's birth. It was God the Son she was attacking not the holiday itself.

Any little thing that has any hint of the occult is a dangerous thing. It can be planted subtly into your mind and it grows steadily every time you see or hear anything related to that subject.
IT IS NO GAME. It should have poison marked on it. Then you stay away from it as far as you can get.

I thank God that He got me out of all of that. It's like being in prison. You are being fed poisonous food and your body and soul both rot away. I pray for anyone trapped in that bondage that they will let Jesus release them and set them free. Mark 4:18b "he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives".

Please don't take that first baby step. God loves you and wants to bless you. Hold fast to Him.

 To contact the author write to jmor@connecttime.net