Some simple questions. Can a person know an event before it happens? The answer is no, because God withheld this vision from humans, and before it existed, it did not exist. It exists in the freedom of those who have the ability to have it, and it may not be in their design to pass from their brains to us. Nothing exists before it exists.
According to this principle, ruqyah (raqwa in colloquial terms) is a form of divination. The soothsayer is the astrologer who claims knowledge of the unseen that God has controlled. This is similar to reading a cup of coffee, as if the threads or drawings on the cup resulting from the movement of the lips on the cup indicate something. The Bible called divination a sin in 1 Samuel 15:23, and Jeremiah in 14:14 made it synonymous with false vision, as did Ezekiel. It was stated in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul cast out a demon by a witch (16:16-18).
كذلك قراءة الأبراج المتفشية في صحف ومنشورات تجعل لك طبعا من الطبائع وتنبئ بأحداث مرتبطة بيوم ولادتك وساعتها ووضع فلكي محدد. قد يكون للنجوم تأثير ما على طبعك ولكنك انسان حر وليس من قَدَر يحتّم عليك كيف تكون. هناك من حاول في فرنسا في السوربون ان يجعل من التنجيم علما، غير ان اعتقادنا الديني انك لست بآلة وان شيئا ليس محتما عليك وان لك “حرية ابناء الله” كما يقول بولس الرسول. قراءة خطوط الكف من هذا القبيل، فعمرك نتيجة الوضع الصحي الذي تكون عليه، وقد يكون هذا مسجلا في المورثات او علم الجنات وهو الذي ينبئ باستعدادك لهذا المرض او ذاك ولاسيما السرطان. فهناك تدخل في الجنات وهو علم بات متطورا في السنوات الأخيرة. انت تولد مع برنامج جيني ولا ينقش شيء من هذا على كفك.
As for reading your character from your handwriting, it is possible because if you are classified as this or that character, it may affect your writing of letters and words, but this does not reveal knowledge of the future. I do not think that anyone who examines your writing will think anything else.
وفي المنحى نفسه مناجاة الأرواح وتحرّمها الكنيسة تحريما مطلقا، فعندنا انك تخاطب القديسين بالصلاة ولا تتحكم بروح أحد وليس لك سلطان على روح فالأرواح في سلطان الله وحده. يضاف الى هذا ان تعاطي هذا الأمر جعله في بلد كالبرازيل دينا قائما بذاته وجعله هنا وهناك نوعا من السكر او التخدير. مناجاة الأرواح لون من ألوان السِحر لأن السِحر هو عينا ان تنسب الى نفسك قدرة يستأثر الله بها. جاء في كتاب الله: “لا يوجد فيك من يحرق ابنه او ابنته في النار ولا من يتعاطى عرافة ولا منجّم ولا متكهن ولا ساحر، ولا من يشعوذ ولا من يستحضر الأشباح او الأرواح ولا من يستشير الموتى، لأن من يصنع ذلك هو قبيحة عند الرب” (تثنية الاشتراع 18: 10-12). ويؤيد العهد الجديد ذلك اذ يرصف سفر الرؤيا القاتلين مع السَحرة وعبّاد الأوثان (12: 8).
The basic idea in the New Testament is that magic is the belief that if you say some words and make some movements, what you want to happen will automatically happen. This contradicts our belief that the Lord alone, through His word, changes what is in nature. Prayer differs from magic because it is hope and it cannot accomplish anything except by the grace of God. Nothing is sanctified for us simply because the priest recited a prayer or read a passage from the Bible. He invokes the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine, and they are transformed into the body and blood of the Lord by the grace of the Spirit and not by mere recitation. This is the basic difference between magic and religion.
In this logic, no envious eye is capable of harming you, and therefore it is a violation of faith to hang a blue bead around your neck or to place a horse’s calf on the door of your house, because such things do not protect you from harm. If you wear a cross around your neck, this is a testimony that you belong to Jesus. It does not have an automatic action in itself, because the sign of the cross must be coupled with prayer. There is no miracle except through your faith in the Lord Jesus.
There is something else that is not magic or sorcery, which is telepathy, which is the transmission of thoughts, emotions, or images from one mind to another at a distance. An example of this is that a British woman saw, or as if she saw, that her husband, an officer in India, was stabbed in the back by an Indian with a dagger, and a few days later the military command informed her of this happening at the time when she felt this matter. These are natural forces similar to television broadcasts. Some people have the ability to take pictures from afar. There is also the ability of some people to drop a bunch of grapes just by looking at it. This is not a miracle. Other than this telepathy, every movement like this that we described previously is magic, sorcery, or a lie, and all of it is spiritual harm.
Metropolitan George Khader
About my parish bulletin
Sunday, January 18, 2004