Tattoos & Demonic Studs
God instructed Israel about the dangers of selling oneself to the devil.
A whole raft of commands and reminders are written in Leviticus,
particularly in chapters 18-20, warning against doing things that harm
you. The whole purpose of these was to protect people. God said:
Therefore you shall keep every
commandment which I command you today, that you may be strong...
(Deut 11:8.)
...that it may be well with you...
(Deut 6:18).
One of the stipulations God singled out
was this:
You shall not make any cuttings in
your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the Lord
(Lev 19:28).
Today, however, just such practices are
again in vogue. Many young people follow their rock idols who sport
tattoos and metal studs. They don’t realise that with each one of these
a demon lays claim on you. You are his, and you bear his mark of
ownership. He has persuaded you to accept a pagan practice, and he
pierces you with an awl to receive his badge of possession.
In Israel, a slave wore an ear-ring or
similar stud in his ear, as evidence that he was owned (Ex 21:6). So
likewise, body piercings, metal studs, nose-rings, and even some
ear-rings (not necessarily ones that women wear just for personal
adornment) are Satan’s marks by which he lays claim to you.
Jeremiah referred to one of the pagan
practices which Israelites were adopting in lamenting the dead (Jer
16:6), against God’s express warnings. “Cutting themselves” was a rite
of self-mutilation in which mourners would gash themselves (inspired by
demons) and behave irrationally.
Today’s worship of the dead is hardly
noticed as such. It has influenced national custom in remembering the
dead of two world wars – not remembering God, but remembering people,
most of them sinners who didn’t know God or keep His commands. People
hold elaborate funeral ceremonies, as if the dead were more important
than the living, and the deceased are eulogised.
What is seen, of customs that Satan has
duped mankind to accept, are tattoos... and metal studs and other body
piercings, in defiance of scripture, because they are marks of demonic
bondage and ownership.
Tattooing “...as is done by the Arab
females of the present day and the different castes of the Hindoos ...
[are] in honour of some idol...” (Jamiesson, Fausset and Brown’s
Commentary, p 101, on Lev 19:28).
Your body should be the temple of
God’s Spirit (1 Cor
3:16), not a mausoleum of demon
worship.
You are commanded to glorify Him, not
demons (1 Cor 6:19), for whoever “defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him” (1
Cor 3:17).
It’s God’s mark of ownership you need,
not that of demons:
Therefore you shall lay up these
words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a
sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes
(Deut 11:18).
Malcolm B Heap
|