Acupuncture

(From Hard Case Witnessing: Winning “Impossibles” for Christ, James R. Spencer, Chosen Books, 1991)

What is acupuncture? Most Americans have heard of it. Many have received acupuncture treatment for a variety of ailments, or to help stop smoking or lose weight. The people I ask generally assume it has something to do with the nervous system: A needle is inserted into a nerve pathway, which interrupts pain or alters the flow of electro-chemical energy. That, however, is not what acupuncture is. Let’s hear it from an acupuncturist, Dr. Ruth Lever, author of Acupuncture for Everyone:

Acupuncture…is a single therapy, using the insertion of needles into the skin to treat a variety of ailments which might be treated by Western doctors with drugs or surgery…The reason it is able to treat all ailments in the same way is because it sees them as stemming from the same cause—a disruption to the energy flow or vital force of the body (p. 11).

Well, our first question should be: “What is the vital force that acupuncture interrupts?” Dr. Lever confirms that it is the Oriental concept of Chi (pronounced chee):

The Chinese see the whole functioning of the body and mind as being dependent on the normal flow of body energy, or life force, which they call Chi (pp. 42—43).

Chi, Dr. Lever says, is a “universal energy which surrounds and pervades everything.” Furthermore, “My Chi is not distinct from your Chi.” Chi is like light energy or radio waves, but it cannot be seen or felt. And it does not disappear at death: “There is a constant interchange between the Chi of the body and the Chi of the environment” (p. 43).

Lever says the Chi force is related to the Eastern concept of Yin and Yang. Chi circulates throughout the body along “meridians.” These meridians cannot be located physically, nor identified electronically. The description of the vital force of the body sounds very much like the soul or the spirit. In fact, the Oriental originators of acupuncture declared Chi to be the spiritual essence of not only the body, but the universe.

It is obvious that the simplest exploration of acupuncture demonstrates that it is a spiritual, not a physical phenomenon. If it is a spiritual phenomenon, where is the Scripture sanctioning it? Where is the protection of the blood of Christ in it?

Those involved in acupuncture are involved in spiritual manipulation of the body. That is the essence of the occult. There is not, in acupuncture, even the pretense of legitimate science.

Many people ask about acupressure. (or reflexology) It is precisely the same as acupuncture without the needles, using the same spiritual “meridians.”