The tarot cards of psychic readers, the crystals of New Age devotees and the amulets of a witch doctor are common in many societies today. Many are following magic to find the power to cope with life.

As the church advances across another cultural threshold, from Hellenistic Jew to half-breed Samaritan (compare Acts 1:8—"in all Judea and Samaria"), it encounters a society steeped in occult magic and syncretistic religious practice. It learns through its missionaries, who must also be theologians, that the power of the gospel is not magic and cannot be bought. In the process it discovers again the true power of the gospel.