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Pokémon GO Goes Viral

Posted By Pastor Hal Mayer On In Briefings,Prophetic Intelligence Briefings | 10 Comments

By Betsy Mayer and Pastor Hal Mayer

An augmented reality (AR) game, Pokémon GO, which blends the physical world with digital objects, is taking the young adult world by storm. “Pokémon GO” (Pokémon means: Pocket monsters) is now the top free app on apple’s iTunes, and has more users than Twitter, by one count. And that’s just since its release on June 06. It has become so popular that it has glued users even more to their mobile phones than before, and now generates GO-themed bar-crawls and other meet-ups for users.

Players use their smart phone GPS and camera devices to capture, battle, and train virtual creatures, such as goblins, fish and frogs who live in trees, rivers, rocks and sky, and who appear on their screens as if they were in the same real-world location as the players. Approximately ten percent of all Android smartphone users have downloaded Pokémon GO. Forbes reports that 46 percent of US players are between the ages of 18 and 29, 45 percent of them make over $50,000 per year, and 63 percent are female.

The game is, in a way, a religion, specifically, Japanese animism. They represent the gods of nature, and therefore you find them in the great outdoors. If you feed the Pokémon and offer them incense, they become your allies, giving you points and items you can use in the game. If you ignore them they can turn vindictive, run away and resist capture. Pokémon even have names that sound like they could be demons; Bulbasaur (frog), Whiscash (a water/ground catfish), shiftry (a goblin), barboach (loach), quagsire (seal) and Corphish (crab), which are quite similar to the gods of Japanese mythology. It’s a kind of “tecno-animism,” says Anne Allison, scholar of contemporary Japan.

But it is more than that. Pokémon GO is preparing users to communicate with devils. In the ‘90s, Pokémon was a popular handheld game with the object of catching and training anime monsters with occult powers to fight against other trainers and their Pokémon. A whole generation of children raised on Pokémon and Harry Potter can now revisit occult themed entertainment as adults in the new world of augmented reality (AR).

Unlike decades of virtual reality (VR) where gamers shut themselves off from the outside world, interacting only with other gamers, AR enthusiasts tout the benefit that Pokémon GO forces you to get outside and travel, enhancing what you see, hear, feel, and smell.

Why is the game so popular with young adults? It offers an escape, or “palliative diversion,” from the continual and depressing cycle of murder, mayhem and political trash talk that drives the news, and gives disillusioned millennials a sense of power in a world where they often feel powerless.

Similarities to the paranormal are significant. Pokémon GO suggests that there are beings in the world around us lurking just outside our vision and just beyond the reach of science. And if we are “connected,” we’ll be able to communicate with, fight or capture them. Pokémon GO creates a world around us that parallels the true spiritual world of unseen realities. With the right tools (i.e. smartphone technology) that reach beyond our five senses, it teaches that this normally unseen “spiritual” world is now accessible to everyone. “The only way to engage in this world existing side-by-side with us, is to extend our senses through the use of smart phone technology.” Pokémon GO permits the user to inhabit both worlds at the same time. And that’s the occult. It is spiritualism in modern technology. It is not just an innocent game.

Games with occult themes offer a false sense of power by controlling, manipulating, and destroying others. When Christ’s disciples were awed by their power over demons, Jesus warned them not to take pride in this, but to rejoice because their names were written in heaven. Luke 10:17-20.

While Pokémon GO and similar forms of occult fantasy seem harmless, it gives satanic agencies that seek our destruction access to our lives. Worse, it squanders time and our more productive and useful lives. Instead, we should transform our reality by blessing and uplifting others and preparing them and ourselves for the ultimate reality of heaven and the new earth. While the pocket monsters of Pokémon cannot touch us, Satan can, and through them ensnare those who do not recognize his tools.

Satan uses augmented reality to blur the difference between the real world and the world of unseen demons bcalled Pokémon, and gets people acclimated to interacting with them. This does not teach them the truth about the great controversy. Pokémon GO is a “lying wonder” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). It does not reflect the truth concerning the unseen realities.

Cares, riches, pleasures, all are used by Satan in playing the game of life for the human soul. The warning is given, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 1 John 2:15, 16. He who reads the hearts of men as an open book says, “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life.” Luke 21:34. And the apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit writes, “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. Christ’s Object Lessons, page 55, 56

Source References

  • ‘Pokémon Go’ Number of Downloads: How Many People Are Playing It? [7]
  • Pokémon Go tops Twitter’s Daily users, sees more Engagement than Facebook [8]

    • Article Updated: Our article previously stated. “Approximately ten percent of all smartphone users worldwide spend an average of one or more hours a day hunting for Pokémon (pocket monsters).”