Remote viewing is a term used to describe a mystical clairvoyance related to extrasensory perception (ESP) in which a person can supposedly see hidden or remote objects with an inner eye or through an out-of-body experience. For example, remote viewers claim to be able to identify objects hidden in containers in other rooms. Some literature calls remote viewing telesthesia or traveling clairvoyance.
The term came about in the 1970s when Stanford physicists and parapsycologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff studied such activities. However, enough evidence shows flaws in their work and it is not accepted by other scientists.
Remote viewing is filed under pseudoscience, though some governments, including the United States, have funded efforts to investigate it and other paranormal activity. In the U.S., between 1975 and 1995, the Stargate Project studied remote viewing, but stopped after no military application was found.
Even so, there are people who believe in remote viewing and offer anecdotal evidence that it is real. Such belief is rooted in the human desire to evolve into god, or toward god-ness, similar to some eastern mysticism and other religious teachings, but not to Christianity. Many theologians classify remote viewing as occultist.
God speaks against these types of practices. Deuteronomy 18:9–12 is clear instruction from God to the Israelites: "When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of the abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you."
God's spiritual care for us is complete, and He wants us to look to Him for understanding through faith. God is the power we should seek, not some other type of spiritual ability when we do not know its source.
John warned, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. …" (1 John 4:1–3).
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