Ghost in the Graveyard: Grave-Sucking and Dia De Los Muertos

One of the most bizarre rituals being observed by people on the eccentric fringe of the Charismatic movement is the practice of Grave-Sucking. They go visit the graves of famous people of the Pentecostal persuasion in order to soak in their spirit and receive their anointing.  This practice is also called mantle-grabbing and grave soaking. I am including a link of them visiting the grave of Smith Wigglesworth so that you can see what I am talking about. The leader uses some slick Christianese language, but what he is doing is anything but Holy. Notice that they are "imparting" the anointing of a dead person. He is functioning like a medium to channel power from a dead person. Notice how they cackle like a coven of Salem witches in the middle of the prayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=311&v=LrHPTs8cLls

I was always taught that a cemetery is a solemn place where you should behave respectfully and that you should never step on a grave, yet I see pictures of people sitting and lying down among the graves and on top of headstones. Benny Hinn claimed that an anointing came on him from visiting the graves of two women named Amy Semple MacPherson and Katherine Kuhlman.

Bill Johnson, Senior Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California teaches that claiming a spiritual inheritance from previous generations enables us to start our Christian life at spiritual levels that might normally have taken us years to reach. He goes on to say: There are anointings, mantles, revelations and mysteries that have lain unclaimed, literally where they were left... Many of the pictures of grave-sucking are attributed to students from the school of supernatural ministry at Bethel. It seems that grave soaking is one of the ways which Bethel endorses of claiming these anointings and mantles. Cal Pierce, an Elder from Bethel is quoted as praying to receive the anointing from the bones of a man named John Lake and a visit to Lake's grave, led by Bill Johnson is reported to be the beginning of the practice. 

Isaiah 8:19-20 instructs:
When they say to you, "Inquire of the mediums and the spiritists who chirp and mutter," Shouldn't a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? Go to God's instruction (law) and testimony! (The Bible)

The word pray means to ask, or inquire. It is wrong to pray to anyone other than God. Why would anyone seek the Holy Spirit from a dead and rotting corpse, or being channeled through a medium when we have direct access because of the cross of Christ? This makes no sense. It is just a sneaky way for occult practices to enter the church and any "spirit" that is obtained this way will not be Holy. 

As usual, those who engage in the rite of grave-sucking have taken a verse of Scripture wildly out of context to support their strange ritual. In 2 Kings 2:13 we find out that when Elijah was taken up to heaven, Elisha picked up his cloak, or as the older translations say, his mantle. This was a visual representation of the fact that the anointing that had rested upon Elijah, would now rest on Elisha. In 2 Kings 13:20-21, we learn that Elisha had now died and was buried, long enough that the flesh had rotted from his skeleton. Some Moabite raiders were about to get caught and so they threw the corpse of one of their dead friends into Elisha's grave. When the man's lifeless body touched Elisha's bones, He revived and came back to life. The Moabite man did not receive Elisha's mantle or anointing, he just came back to life. Looking back, with New Testament eyes, we understand that the mantle or anointing Elisha had was the Holy Spirit. The point of the passage was to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit has resurrection power and to show that the power Elisha had was from the Spirit of God. It was a unique testimony to pagans about the power of God.

Since I have moved to Texas, I have also become aware that Christian members of the Mexican and other Latin-American communities go to graveyards to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, in order to commune with their dead relatives, a day on which Ofrendos, ritual altars, are built to the dead and offerings are given to them. This is absolutely pagan in every way. I realize it is also called all Saints day---but it is still a completely pagan and inappropriate activity for a Christian to engage in. Our culture and heritage is found in Christ and when we become part of God's family, we must leave behind such practices.  

No where in the Bible are believers taught to engage in grave-sucking or any other such boneyard practice, in fact, it is forbidden.

Isaiah 65:3-4 describes such practices as provoking God's anger:

These people continually anger me to my face, sacrificing in gardens, burning incense on bricks, sitting among the graves, spending the night in the monuments.

Sitting among tombstones and hanging out in graveyards at night are forbidden activities for Christians. 

Mark 5 tells the story of the Gerasene demoniac. The man was possessed by evil spirits and lived among the tombstones. When Jesus cast out the demons, he returned to dwell among the living. The impulse to stay in the graveyard was an unnatural one. Once he was restored to his right mind, he was delivered and set free from this demonic desire.

Numbers 19:11 teaches that, under the Old Covenant, anyone who touched a dead body would be considered unclean for 7 days. Then they had to go through a special purification process.

Leviticus 21 and Ezekiel 44:25-27 teach that priests were not to make themselves unclean by going near the bodies of their dead relatives or near the body of any dead person, except members of their immediate family. And then, they would have needed to go through the purification process. They would not have been able to perform priestly duties or minister before the Lord for 7 days. 

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 teaches that no one should be found among God's people who is a medium or spiritist or who inquires of the dead. Leviticus 19:31 also says: Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the LORD your God. Necromancer is also translated as spiritist, or one who consults with spirits of the dead. Leviticus 20:17 required the death penalty for anyone committing these sins. Any sort of contact with the spirits of dead people is strictly forbidden by God's word. Leviticus 20:6 describes these people as playing the harlot against God and declares that they will be cut off from His people. 

Under the New Covenant, because of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection, we are made clean. We don't have to worry about becoming unclean by attending a funeral or sitting at the bedside holding the hand of a loved one as they depart from this life. We are free to place flowers on the graves of those who have passed and we can even respectfully visit the final resting places of important people in our faith and learn about our history. 

If Dia de los muertos is celebrated in your family, I recommend taking a day to remember family members that have passed on or placing flowers on a grave to show that you care about them, but leave out the altars and offerings and certainly do not try to communicate with them. Have a nice family meal celebration and discuss happy memories, but know that if they have passed on in Christ they are now part of the great cloud of witnesses with the Father and you must not try to speak with them. 

What we cannot do, is sin by participating in rituals, séances, ceremonies or interactions with dead people or their spirits. There is tremendous danger in seeking spiritual power or wisdom any other way than directly from God. Grave-Soaking is likely to open a person up to the influence of evil, demonic spirits. That is why Deuteronomy 18:10-11 forbids every possible method of seeking supernatural wisdom, knowledge, power or insight except for receiving it directly from God. 

It is true that in the medieval church, con-artists made great profits off of selling relics, or bones of saints. This is nothing but a form of pagan ancestor worship. By the way, the word pray, means to ask or inquire. So when a person prays to a Saint, they are inquiring of the dead and directly sinning against God. It is an insult to pray to or through another person when God's word forbids it AND He has given us direct access to the throne of God through Jesus Christ. 

I mentioned before that this practice of grave-sucking or grave-soaking is also called mantle-grabbing. A mantle is simply a robe or covering. Elisha's mantle was the power of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 61 promises us that God will take away a spirit of heaviness and give us Garments of praise. He tells us that God will clothe us with garments of salvation and cover us with robes of righteousness. Do you remember when Jesus told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high? Acts chapter 2 records His followers receiving their mantles, their powerful spiritual clothing from the Holy Spirit. There is no need to visit the graves of dead saints to receive a mantle, ALL Christians already have one. There's another word for a mantle: an Anointing. Under the New Covenant, all believers have the very same Holy Spirit that Elisha had. 1 John 2:20 assures us You have an anointing from the Holy One and all of you know the Truth. 

If you are a Born-again, Baptized follower of Jesus Christ, you already have the same anointing and the same mantle as Elisha. If you want to grow in that anointing and mature in your faith, then you need to get it directly from God through prayer, worship, fellowship with other believers (living ones) and reading God's word. Soak in that. 

In Luke 9:59-60, Jesus said to a man Follow me. Lord, he said, First let me go and bury my father. But he told him, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim everywhere the Kingdom of God. 

There is nothing we can do to help the dead. But we can help the living. Jesus was teaching that there is an urgency about sharing the good news of salvation. There is no time to waste. Since he was still under the Old Covenant, this man would have needed to go through the 7 day-purification process if he stayed to bury his father. If the urgency was so serious that this man needed to depart immediately to follow Jesus before his own father's funeral, then surely those who call themselves by the name of Christian should not be wasting precious time messing around with ridiculous, sinful nonsense such as grave sucking, ancestor worship, and other pagan practices. If we have truly been clothed with power from the Holy Spirit, then we need to be about the Lord's business because we have already been given all that we need. 

Black Panther: The Positive and The Pagan

Black Panther is perhaps Marvel's most epic and visually spectacular offering to date. It contains timely and cutting social commentary and the much needed addition of a headlining Black superhero to the Marvel Comics Universe is long overdue and welcome indeed.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The Positive
T'Challa, the young King of Wakanda, continues the journey of personal growth he began in Captain America: Civil War. His path of maturing to become a wise and thoughtful leader is a highlight of the movie and its driving force.

His love interest Nakia is a humanitarian who is more than willing to give up material comforts, the love of her life and even the possibility of becoming queen in order to devote herself to helping others. She rescues victims of human trafficking, cares for the poor and speaks up for them boldly.

The pair comes to realize that Wakanda must no longer be selfish with it's resources and that they should not use them to conquer or provide weapons, but should employ them to help the downcast in society and improve the lives of people all over the world. The film draws a critical picture of the way our world utilizes wealth and resources and calls for action.

Because of the abundance of white, male superheroes, I was very glad to see the addition of such a strong and fantastic woman to the Marvel Comics universe and I was hopeful that The Black Panther would turn out to be a role model as well. While his character and resolve is admirable, it is unfortunate that the writers chose to include some very dangerous pagan practices in the movie, which tarnish its otherwise positive message and noble protagonists.

The Pagan
The people of Wakanda worship the false goddess Bast. In Egyptian mythology and worship, she was the cat goddess. In fact, they worshipped cats because of her. In the world of Wakanda, she is portrayed as the panther goddess. She is credited with giving the Black Panther his powers to protect the people. My concern is that they have used an actual false diety from the real world as the object of worship in this movie. Exodus 34:14-15 forbids the worship of any god but the one true God.

For you shall not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God--Do not make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land, or else when they prostitute themselves with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices

Young T'Challa and his entourage also engage in ancestor worship. They venerate their ancestors, seeking dead people out for wisdom and advice. This is an extremely serious offense that blatantly defies God. 

No one among you is to make his son or daughter pass through the fire, practice divination, tell fortunes, interpret omens, practice sorcery, cast spells, consult a medium or a familiar spirit, or inquire of the dead. Everyone who does these acts is detestable to the LORD, and the LORD your God is driving out the nations before you because of these detestable acts.

In the movie, men take a drug made from a type of flower that puts them into a near-death or comatose, trance-like state. They are then buried and speak to their dead ancestors. This is similar to what the Ba'al worshippers did, lacing wine with drugs to get high and communicate with false gods and spirits to receive visions. The ancients also used mediums  and other practices to communicate with the dead. Some Native American tribes continue to engage in a similar practice using peyote to get high, go into a trance and communicate with their "spirit guides," who Christians understand to be demonic, evil spirits. As we read in the passage above, these practices are explicity forbidden by Scripture. Speaking to spirits or the dead is a serious sin and it is unfortunate that they included such a dangerous, real-life religious practice in this movie. After the trance, the men are re-born as the Black Panther and given special god-like abilities. 

These practices do not free or strengthen people, they enslave them. As evil and disgusting as the institution of physical slavery is, spiritual slavery, the enslavement of a human soul, is far worse. Over the millennia, millions of human beings have been enslaved by these pagan, occult practices. True freedom is found in Jesus Christ.

Using mythology in a superhero story is nothing new as we have seen in Thor, Wonder Woman and other movies. The problem with Black Panther is that the practices it depicts are real, pagan acts of worship which have taken place for thousands of years. When a person engages in any type of necromancy, séance or trying to commune or speak with the dead, they open themselves up to demonic influence and spiritual harm. The word pray means to ask or inquire. This is why Christians should never attempt to pray to a Saint. The only time an ancestor ever answered a prayer in the Bible is when Saul used a medium, the witch of En Dor, to attempt to conjure up the ghost of Samuel. Samuel appeared and pronounced God's judgement on Saul. 1 Chronicles 10:13 informs us that consulting with this medium was one of the reasons Saul was rejected by God and killed. In addition, when a person worships a diety other than the one true God, they open themselves up to the influence of Satan and grant him power in their lives. 

I really like the character and noble actions of T'Challa and Nakia. I hope they prove to be interesting, virtuous, dialogue-inspiring additions to the Marvel franchise. The pagan aspects of this origin story are a continued source of concern which will need to be monitored.