*In a phone conversation the other day with a friend in Alabama, she told me of a friend of hers who had recently visited a Southern Baptist church in a nearby town called Albertville and learned the congregation had converted to a New Age "One-World Religion" agenda.

*Not long ago, my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), made the point that up until recent years America has been blessed to live in a culture where the preaching of the gospel literally cleaned up society, and even though the culture itself may not have been populated by a majority of genuinely saved Christian people, it was populated by people influenced by the gospel.

As Jordan said, "That day's over with. The paganizing of America has already taken place. The church the Body of Christ has no influence in the world socially as it once did, at least in our nation."

*On this same subject, Jordan recalled a conversation he had years ago with a missionary who'd spent about 60 years in the mission field, working first in the heart of Africa and later in some of the remotest areas of South America.

"He told me there are certain things that the heathen do," says Jordan. "One is that they take off their clothes. The other is they paint and pierce their bodies. I thought about that. In Leviticus 19, God told Israel they weren't to paint or put tattoos on their body for good or for bad.

"The Christian church has understood that that's a bad idea. You go to the mall today and see even young kids with piercings and tattoos. That doesn't come from the influence of godliness, that comes from a pagan world that people are letting fashion they're thinking.

The influence of that Book to set people apart and make them turn from idols to serve the living and true God has been diminished. . . By the way, there are many countries in the world who are coming out of paganism into a Christian influence."

*I was talking to a street preacher near Times Square recently, asking him about his experiences in passing out tracts to strangers and preaching aboard subway cars, when a man walked by and asked, "Where did Cain get his wife?" As the preacher answered, Adam lived 930 years and he and Eve produced many, many, many children.

*About a week after the last Harry Potter book hit the bookstores, I was in the Barnes & Noble near 86^th and Lexington to use their bathroom. Weaving my way to the back of the store I saw a prominent display devoted to books on magic, wizardry, spell-casting, etc.

Interest in this Satanic stuff will obviously continue to grow as young children are indoctrinated into all things Harry Potter.

Many people aren't aware the Bible speaks specifically about the evil practice of wizardry. In one instance, Isaiah 8:19-20 says, "And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

What Isaiah's saying is, "Israel, you better know some things about God's Word and what He's doing through you, because some people are going to come along and claim to be speaking for God, and they'll speak in an unknown tongue, peeping and muttering, calling it a 'heavenly utterance.' " He warns them, "That isn't where the Word of God is; it's in His Book."

At the time, the nation Israel was being deceived into the religious system of the world which used spiritual phenomena that looked like it was from God to trip them up.

*Another pagan practice many don't realize is oft-addressed in the Bible—and in many different, detailed ways—is the worship of idols. Look at this great passage from Habakkuk 2:18: "What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?
"Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it.
"But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him."

The Israelites thought the idols they'd crafted from wood and stone could talk and teach them, and Habakkuk warns them that their idols are teaching them lies.

In Psalm 115: 5-9, it says,

"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
"They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not:
"They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not:
"They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.
"They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.
"O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield."

The passage's saying they watch their idol and its mouth doesn't move, but they think it's talking. They've been tricked, deceived.

The Corinthians had been deceived by similar occult spiritual phenomena before they got saved. The Apostle Paul writes about this in I Cor. 12:2, stressing, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led."