The Kingdom of the Occult brings up a number of thoughts to my head. Overall this book is a good resource, but things bothered me about it. The first thing I noticed was that though it appears that Walter Martin is the author based on looking at the cover, it was really more of an adaptation of his notes by two other people. This was more of an annoyance than anything, but I will move on. For anyone who has read Walter Martin’s famous book, The Kingdom of the Cults, this book has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages I find primarily in the “Case Studies” that are in each chapter. Each chapter on a different branch of occult practices has a true story of a person’s experience with that form of the occult. This sheds light on the reality of the occult, which we find so easy to ignore. A disadvantage that arises is that the book is not as clear in its comparisons to Christianity as Cults was. This may be due to the fact that the Occult is more easily distinguished from Christianity than cults are, but either way I found it lacking. Also, different sections (notably the first chapter) are marked by sub-par exegesis in pointing to the truth of Christianity. Although the heart of the authors was clearly good and they were pursuing a worthwhile cause, I found their treatment of Christianity lacking. Overall this book is good and useful (especially when not talking about true Christianity), but not as impressive or comparable to Cults as I had hoped.
