Very great difference existed between the witchcraft of Bible times and
that of Christendom fifteen hundred years after John recorded the
Revelation. The difference was almost as marked as that between the devils
of those two periods.
The word witch seems primarily to mean, "a _knowing_ one," and perhaps has
always hinted at knowledge or power acquired by some mysterious method.
Witch has generally meant, not only a _knowing one_, but also any person
who gets knowledge or help by processes which are mysterious. Witch_craft_
has been the utterance of knowledge, or the application of power, thus
obtained. But neither all such utterance, nor all such application of
force, was, in biblical times, called witchcraft. Far, very far different
from that. Daniel, Ezekiel, and John the Revelator, all obtained knowledge
mysteriously from the lips of departed men; their promulgation of it,
however, was not called _witchcraft_, but the _word of God_.
Neither do the Scriptures speak of the woman of Endor as a witch or
practicer of witchcraft, though she had both a familiar spirit, and such
clairvoyant powers that at her call Samuel rendered himself visible by
her; and he either used her organs of speech, or impressed her to use
them, in utterance of rebukes to Saul and prediction of his coming fate.
This was not biblical _witchcraft_; though, departing from biblical
precedent, the modern world has fallen into the habit of calling the woman
of Endor a _witch_, while that epithet is not applied to her in the Bible.
His lawgiver said to Moses, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live;" but
if that teacher furnished any very clear definition of either witch or
witchcraft, it has not come down to us. Tempting to _spiritual whoredom_,
so far as we can determine, constituted the crime of witchcraft among the
Jews. The people of Israel were regarded as being _wedded_ to the God of
Abraham; therefore persons who by _signs_, by marvelous utterances and
acts, tempted Jews to be false to their marriage relations with their God,
were witches. The crime of witchcraft was not involved in simply putting
forth knowledge, signs, and wonders by the help of familiar spirits,
because prophets and apostles often did that when they put forth "the
word of God." Witchcraft was application of supernal knowledge and powers
for the special purpose of seducing and tempting people to worship Moloch,
or some other god of the heathen. (See Lev. xx. 5, 6.) Bible witchcraft
was _use of mysterious acquisitions in teaching_ HERESY.