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August 6 - September 20, 2019
The real Jesus Christ taught a clear distinction between God and mankind. He also taught that He is the only way to God; there is nothing we mere humans can do to attain salvation for ourselves; and we certainly cannot ascend to His level by our own merit, practice, or understanding. Rather, Jesus taught that only through faith in Him can we truly be saved from the penalty and power of sin.
But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:25–26, ESV)
Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10:9–10, ESV)
Many in our culture are becoming more open to seeking spiritual fulfillment within themselves, and they are using supernatural means by which to get there.
When God made us in His image, He “put eternity into [our] heart,” as stated in Ecclesiastes 3:11. He stamped eternity into our very souls, which means that we have an intrinsic awareness that there is something beyond this world. C. S. Lewis once said, “The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can’t supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.” This turns out to be more than poetic theology.
Demons disguising themselves as romantic partners and as other significant people
Astral parasites: Demons attaching themselves to some level of their soul and entering the body as the person returns to the natural realm.
The book Rachel gave was my introduction to New Age theology. I studied that book in far more depth than any book I had read before, including the Bible, and I followed every instruction it contained. I participated in daily breathing exercises and meditation practices, and even became a vegetarian because the book said doing so would help me be able to astral project. Six months and a complete worldview change
However, instead of chasing knowledge and wisdom, I was chasing an experience.
A loud, buzzing sound was taking place in the middle of my forehead, which I had learned from my research was a precursor to out-of-body experiences.
gnosticism
Truth is something we align ourselves with, not something we create for ourselves.
It’s something we discover, not something we fashion.
In the New Age movement, truth is in the eye of the beholder.
If there is no set of facts about the world to which Christ’s teachings ultimately correspond, then we have no reason to value anything He says. If following Christ over Buddha, Gandhi, or Oprah won’t bring us any closer to the truth but only serve to help us construct a worldview that suits our preferences, then what makes Jesus’ teachings so special? We are free to cherry pick from all the teachings we like and disregard those we don’t, since both sets of teachings are neither true nor false. They simply exist as subjective points of view able to be adopted or rejected according to each
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Cause Adam and Eve to doubt their confidence in something God had just said. Overthrow the Word of God as correspondence with reality. Encourage Eve to seek truth and knowledge in subjectivity, apart from an objective standard, as if personal revelation held more authority than divine revelation. Urge them to desire what may serve them rather than what is true. Lie about what the consequences would be of deviating from correspondence with reality.
We don’t always have perfect access to the full consequences of a belief in the moment. It may be serving us to the best of our knowledge while slowly killing us in ways that are hidden.
Our limitations in time and space in the natural realm can cause us to view utility through a very narrow lens and cause us to misjudge the pragmatic implications of a particular belief. A seemingly pragmatic belief may turn out to be eternally destructive. Our cognitive limitations in calculating the full implications of a belief make such judgments of pragmatism near impossible in some instances. There are some things we simply cannot know ahead of time. Yet, the New Age movement tells us to find what “works for us,” even though what “works for us” right this second might have eternal
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This is because many New Age beliefs and practices lack evidence or oppose evidence. The best explanation is one that best explains the evidence, not the one that is void of evidence.
“In other words, the effects reported were a
result of the power of suggestion, not the power of the crystals.”[132]
Truth is not that which serves us, truth is not that which resonates with us, and truth is not relative. Truth is objective, and it corresponds to the way things are.
quantum physics,
If the New Age theological arguments were logical enough on their own, a twisting of science such as this would never need to take place. However, this exposes how weak and flimsy New Age theology is. New Age does not have science on its side. It only has strange twistings and subjective interpretation of scientific facts. Of course, the effort to distort mainstream science into a belief system in order to fool the unknowing public is nothing new.
The theology of New Age spirituality cannot lead people to the Father who made them because it presents a notion of God that is no more personal a microwave.
God makes the point that Job is unable to even face Leviathan and Behemoth. Job, who is mortal and not eternal, does not know enough about spiritual and physical reality to question God’s reasonings. Instead of questioning, therefore, Job should trust that God knows what He’s doing and understand there is information he doesn’t have about the nature of chaos within creation. It is the same for us today.
The Transcendental Meditation technique is an effortless procedure for allowing
God has a will: · “Your kingdom come, your will be done” (Matthew 6:10). · “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). · “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40).
Dr. Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. He is an atheist historian who said the following at a conference on the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus:
Historians Dr. Gary Habermas and Dr. Mike Licona outline forty-two historical sources attesting to the existence of Jesus within 150 years after His death.[178] They list the sources as follows: Traditional New Testament authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, author of Hebrews, James, Peter, and Jude Early Christian writers outside the New Testament: Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Didache, Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Fragments of Papias, Justin Martyr, Aristides, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Quadratus,
Aristo of Pella, Melito of Sardis, Diognetus, Gospel of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, and Epistula Apostolorum Heretical writings: Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, Apocryphon of John, and Treatise on Resurrection Secular Sources: Josephus (Jewish historian), Tacitus (Roman historian), Pliny the Younger (Roman politician), Phlegon (freed slave who wrote histories), Lucian (Greek satirist), Celsus (Roman philosopher), Mara Bar Serapion (prisoner awaiting execution), Suetonius (Roman historian), and Thallus (Roman historian)
Our best secular source about Jesus is the reliable Roman historian and senator Tacitus (c. AD 55–c. AD 117), who mentions Jesus and the persecutions of Christians under the orders of Roman emperor Nero in Annals, Book XV: Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
The entire New Testament, including four biographies of Jesus, was completed around sixty to sixty-five years after his death, as dated by all historians. The first biography written about Buddha was Buddhacarita, a poem written by Aśvaghoṣa dating to the beginning of the second century over five hundred years after Buddha had died.[181]
A desire to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” leads to the rejection of someone whom no expert rejects to avoid the consequences of a historical Jesus. The New Age movement reconciles historical scholarship with the desire to suppress the truth by creating distorted versions of Jesus that suit their own philosophical and theological preferences, and the versions that are postulated are just as far removed from actual history as Jesus mythicism.
I mentioned this also in this book called Discover the Power within You by Eric Butterworth, where he talks about the Christ Consciousness, and up until then, I was like you. I thought Jesus came, died on the cross, that Jesus’s being here was about his death when it really was about him coming to show us how to do it, how to be. To show us the Christ Consciousness that He had, and that that consciousness abides with all of us.[203]
Ontological distinction: Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah (Psalm 9:20) The Egyptians are man, and not God, and their horses are flesh, and not spirit.” (Isaiah 31:3) Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god…. Because you make your heart like the heart of a god, therefore, behold, I will bring foreigners upon you, the most
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to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. (Acts 12:21–23).
Relational separation via sin: But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. (Isaiah 59:2) And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods. (Deuteronomy 31:18) And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our
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God is morally perfect and therefore cannot be in relationship with people who are still in their sin. We are made of a different substance than God and have been cut off from vertical relationship with Him through wicked works. The doctrine of Christ Consciousness teaches that people and God are inherently connected ontologically (which we have seen is false), and that relationship with God can be had instantaneously upon a shift of consciousness from ego to “presence.” This overlooks the function of the cross, the Old Testament sacrificial system, and the entire New Covenant God has made
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And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”… “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” (John 1:19–20, 26–27)
John the Baptist, as the greatest ever, knew a thing or two about the truth, and the first thing he said when he saw Jesus was, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The man whose spiritual life was more refined than any other person denied being Christ and said that Jesus was here to die a sacrificial death for human sin. This is vastly different from the witness the New Age movement bears about Jesus. Shall we believe the testimony of the one whom Jesus personally confirmed, or of those who never met Him and lived two thousand years later?
This is the lie that led to mankind’s separation from God and infected humanity with sin, which Jesus came to abolish in His death and resurrection. The lie that we can be God or be like God ultimately brought sin into the world in the first place and eventually led to the death of Jesus on the cross. It’s ironic to think that the version of Christ taught by the New Age movement actually caused the sin that Jesus said He came to die for in the first place.
Did Jesus Say We Are All “Gods”?
This also debunks Yogananda’s interpretation that all men are “potential gods” through awareness of God’s presence within us, since the judges lacked all knowledge (meaning they had unfulfilled potential) and yet still wore the title “gods.” If those who are ignorant can be called “gods,” then this is not a title for the enlightened. It’s a title for something else. The “gods” to whom Jesus referred meet none of the conditions laid out by New Age teachers.
This doesn’t mean God (elohim) is equal in nature or status to angels (elohim). It’s just a general Hebrew word that apply to both types of spiritual beings. As Dr. Heiser has said: Yahweh is an elohim, but no other elohim are Yahweh…. But why refer to spiritual beings as elohim? The association is not difficult to understand, actually. Since God is a spirit, and in fact the supreme spirit, and he is “father of all spirits” (Heb. 12:9), then the realm of the spirits is “where God lives.” The beings who belong to the spirit realm are therefore “divine.” The best word to capture that conception
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a 89; cf. Deuteronomy 32:8–9, 43; Psalm 58:11) The gods of foreign nations (1 Kings 11:33) Demons (Deuteronomy 32:17) The disembodied human dead (1 Samuel 28:13) Angels (Genesis 35:7; cf. the context of the plural predicator with אלהים [elohim] subject)
According to well-known ancient mythology, Mithra had no virgin birth. In fact, Mithra was not even born in a literal sense; he emerged from a rock, so was only “born” metaphorically. We find many artifacts in the ancient world of Mithra’s petra genetrixes, carvings indicating his birth from a rock. Mithra even emerged from this rock as an adult, not as a baby. Mithra has no real mother, no virgin birth, and no manger.[225], [226] Further, Mithra was never even killed, let alone crucified. As Mithraic scholar Gordon Richard says, there “is no death of Mithras.”[227] If he didn’t die, he could
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Jesus from the dead, leaving an empty tomb. If what Jesus says is true, we cannot save ourselves from the penalty of our own sin.
First, it’s important to know that if we want to show that a position is false, we can’t do so by pointing to the qualities of the person holding that position. In someone’s eyes, it may be arrogant to claim that another person’s path to God is a deception, but that doesn’t mean the claim itself is wrong. Religious fundamentalists may seem bigoted, but that doesn’t mean their worldview is incorrect. They may seem judgmental, but their attitude has no bearing on the accuracy of their beliefs.
evidence.
