Are More Americans Turning to the Stars Instead of to the One Who Made the Stars?
Many Americans, declares an article in the New York Times (11/24/17), are "Leaning on the Stars to Make Sense of the World." Personally I'd rather "lean" on the One Who made the stars to make sense of the world. He has revealed Himself not only in the stars, but much more clearly in His Word.
The NYT.com article states: "One appeal is that [the stars] offer some order in an otherwise chaotic city and volatile world, said Galit Atlas, a clinical assistant professor in New York University's postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.... 'Especially in a time when the world doesn't feel safe, we tend to search for an order that makes sense.'"
In short,
Get Our Latest News for FREE
My long-time pastor, Dr. D. James Kennedy, once preached a series on "the Gospel in the Stars." The idea was that God had revealed the Gospel in the heavens---before the corruption of the Zodiac. The twelve signs are found in ancient cultures and countries.
As D. James Kennedy Ministries puts it, "All nations had the same twelve signs, representing the same twelve things, placed in the same order. Archaeologists, historians and antiquarians have searched the dustiest libraries, uncovered the oldest tablets, ciphered the most difficult hieroglyphics, and have failed to discover how it is that in nations all over the world the same signs exist. Dr. Kennedy explains that the real meaning of the Zodiac was to reveal God's plan of salvation in Christ. Meanwhile, he also denounces using horoscopes. The stars point to the Creator."
Kennedy said, "The idea that the alignment of the planets and stars can somehow affect our future and our destiny causes even the average man to sit up and take notice. But what is behind it all? Is it science or occultism?" His answer for modern astrology and horoscopes is "occultism," or even deliberate fraud.
Kennedy was blunt in his criticism of people living by horoscopes. For example, he quotes Isaiah in the Bible: "Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame."
I once interviewed a former astrologer, Marcia Montenegro. She taught astrology; she served on the Board of Astrology Examiners in the City of Atlanta, which licenses astrologers. She was chairperson of that board for three years and was very active in the Metropolitan Atlanta Astrological Society.
She lived by her charts and made decisions based on the movements of the planets. To give a taste of how theologically and metaphysically confused she was, consider this portion of an article she wrote about the blasphemous 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ: "I believe that The Last Temptation of Christ is part of the symbolic 'second coming' of Christ. Christ has not returned in the clouds, but in a film. It is an ingenious Piscean way of returning to the mass of consciousness...This Christ does not match the Sunday School illustrations of the sainted ethereal figure...As a society, we are the Children of Pisces on our quest of the true self, the Divine Self."
Montenegro honed and practiced her craft and was interviewed by numerous media outlets, including CNN, as a spokesperson for astrologers. Despite all this, she began to feel an inexplicable urge to go to church---an urge which she fought for months. She finally gave in and was eventually converted by reading the Gospels, and became released from what she calls "the bondage of astrology." She discovered the joy of living by God's Word, not by the stars.
God's Word has all the key answers to life. Who am I? Why am I here? What should I do with my life?
As a young man, I discovered the Word of God, and I was fascinated by it. Even just in reading it, I realized that so many of our expressions and bits of everyday wisdom that are right and good come from it. Like "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and other great truths we easily take for granted.
To my way of thinking, it makes more sense to find the answers to life's mysteries in God's Word than in the stars, which are mere created things.
As Abraham Lincoln once put it when he received a Bible as a gift, "In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to men. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong."
