More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 6 - September 20, 2019
Jesus clearly thinks division is fine if it is a result of siding with the truth.
Unity has become the god of the New Age movement by exalting the absence of conflict over the presence of truth.
A false peace is enforced by eliminating every idea that may cause some level of separation between us and our fellow man, even if these ideas correspond to reality. Disagreement is the enemy because it breeds negativity, so to avoid disagreement, “tolerance” is redefined to mean “complacency”—even in the presence of error.
We can love the person and hate the belief.
In fact, it’s precisely because we have thought and acted incorrectly that Jesus died for us.
We are to correct in gentleness without being quarrelsome.
People are to be tolerated; false ideas are to be refuted.
The New Age movement is intolerant of every idea that it perceives as intolerant.
Jesus taught that the single most important thing to do is to believe in Him for the forgiveness of sins.
The reason for this is that Jesus was the sacrifice for human sin
These statistics cause concern, to say the least, because reincarnation contradicts the gospel. We don’t have sin we need to be saved from if we can save ourselves from it with good deeds in the next life. If we can work our negative karma off in a future incarnation, then Jesus died for nothing. We can pay for our own sins. But if we have a moral debt to God that only Jesus can pay, then reincarnation serves no hypothetical purpose. Jesus’ death is absolutely necessary if, after we die once, we face judgment with no atonement for our sins available apart from the blood of Jesus.
It also implies that maybe we shouldn’t try to prevent activities such as child abuse. After all, perhaps a child willfully chose that life in advance and our interference might impede upon the lessons he or she is trying to learn by being sexually abused by their relatives. In other words, our intervention may spoil the purpose of someone’s incarnation. This philosophy implies that the maturity of a child’s soul will be violated if we protect it against the abuse it has chosen to receive. We may be unknowingly sinning against people by helping them. This has a terrible moral application.
The journey of souls as taught by Jesus ultimately places each person before the throne of God where he or she faces two eternal destinations. It is not a long list of potential destinations, but two possible dwelling places that await the soul at the final decree of Yahweh. The “wages of sin” is death, not reincarnation (Romans 6:23). We die once and once only, then face the judgment of our God, to whom we all must give an account.
Do not allow yourself to pass from this life without making sure your name is in the Book of Life. Do not allow yourself to suffer the Lake of Fire. Instead, see the worth and value in investing your into the person of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to know everything; no Christian has perfect theology. All you need is a belief in Jesus. Call upon His name and be saved. Be a part of the promise that is to come.
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
to
Jesus Himself was without blemish, so He had to have been born through a perfectly human bloodline. Satan tried to corrupt the entire world and knew if he could do that, the Savior could not be born. Satan was nearly successful until God stepped in, preserved the last uncorrupted bloodline by means of the worldwide Flood, and destroyed all corruption Satan had wrought upon the earth.
Even John Calvin once said no theologian is more than 80 percent correct. It is safe to say that we are at least 20 percent wrong in our theology, and if this is the case, we would naturally appreciate someone to demonstrate to us why that 20 percent is wrong rather than demonizing us, as a person, for being in error. We want our idea to be addressed, not our person to be addressed.
Additionally, we never know what kind of influence we might have with these teachers, no matter how famous and untouchable they seem to be. I often think of the viral videos in which someone attends a megachurch service then, part of the way through the sermon, stands up and shouts at the pastor, causing a scene. What does this accomplish? Are they really “heretics,” or do they just underemphasize or overemphasize certain doctrines in their teaching? Its great click-bait online, sure, but no actual ideas are exchanged. No thoughtful debates are had. Nobody in the audience really understands
what is going on. No one has learned anything.
New Age theology is infiltrating the Church right now disguising itself as a progressive spirituality.
I (Steve) have had the privilege of seeing Doreen Virtue come to Jesus within the last year and a half. She was a New Age teacher of two decades with more than publications, an all-time best-selling author for the major New Age publishing house called Hayhouse.Famously known for the angel card decks she used in intuitive readings as a medium, she would ask to hear from “spirit” or the “angels” when giving advice to her clients, which is not much different than what is going on with Christalignment.
At first, I tried to walk in both worlds of New Age and Christianity. I rationalized that if I prayed to God while shuffling the oracle cards, that would make divination okay. But I soon realized that New Age and Christianity are like oil and water. How can they mix? After all, New Age is all about glorifying yourself and Christianity is about glorifying God (Isaiah 47:8–15).
We have to first understand that yoga is not a physical practice with a spiritual component. It is a spiritual and religious practice with a physical component.
As we have already established, we are not God. We are humans made by God, and we are fallen. “You are that, God himself; Meditate this within yourself,” says the Vivekachudamani. “Ye shall be as gods” said Satan to Eve. Yoga is Hinduism by definition, and Hinduism echoes Satan’s first lie. More troubling is that some yoga poses are named after Hindu gods. In addition to the Hindu theistic goals of yoga, some positions are meant to honor and invoke the properties of false deities. Famous yogic guru B. K. S. Iyengar says that some yoga positions “are also called after gods of the Hindu pantheon
...more
Nor is a pond worthy of adoration because it contains fish. We don’t owe thanks to our fuel lines for giving our cars engine gasoline; we owe thanks to the men and women who created companies to provide this service. We don’t thank “Mother Earth” for sustaining us; we thank God. The difference between these two is idolatry and obedience: “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14).
While we certainly have a degree of responsibility from God to be good stewards of His created world, we shouldn’t revere the Earth as its own deity. It’s a material space rock under the curse of God. He will one day destroy it in judgment in preparation for a New Heaven and a New Earth. Saving the planet is not on God’s agenda; saving people is. Time will tell how this kind of language may be used to shape a one-world, “green” economic system in our future.
The Pope is presenting a type of theology that puts the presence of divinity in the natural world and uses this to catapult an idea of a suffering mother. The Earth is an unconscious “it,” not a pseudo-conscious, quasi-divine “her.” The talk of Mother Earth and a false understanding of God’s omnipresence reflect a culture pervaded with paganism whose backbone has become that of New Age substance, and these concepts have worked their way into the Church from the highest levels of religious influence.
This
It’s God who heals through faith, not faith itself that heals.
It’s also noteworthy that bringing consciousness to things like breath, mental objects, and sensations in an attempt to shift a person’s psychology is not prayer. Prayer, properly defined, “is communication with God in worship.”[338] A repeated word is not evidence of our “sincere intention” to be in the presence of the Lord. A broken, repentant, contrite spirit is (Psalm 51:17). A godly sorrow over sin is (2 Corinthians 7:10). A fear of the Lord and His commandments is (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Additional Teachings from Another Jesus Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for professing Christians to claim to receive direct, word-for-word messages from Jesus in ways that resemble channeling and automatic writing. While in deep prayer or a trance-like moment of stillness, they claim to hear the Lord speaking to them they begin to write the words down in the form of best-selling “Christian” books speaking in the place of Jesus.
Jesus is not a person we channel, He’s a Lord we follow.
I was replacing a good relationship with God with mystical experiences and astral projection. I believed this ability made me unique. I had been brought up in an incredibly broken home, so New Age was giving me the sense of worth I had been denied as a child. New Age played to all the worst parts of me that had been developed through the tough times of my childhood. It allowed me to take my own lack of self-worth and turn it into selfishness, my want for love into greed, my trauma into a victimhood mentality, my fear into substance abuse, and my depression into a lack of faith. New Age did not
...more
They are not enemies. They only need to be introduced to Jesus.
It is tempting, as Christians, to take the moral and theological high ground from New Agers and talk down to them, mock them, or use sarcasm to win an argument. This is ineffective and, in many cases, is the attitude that has driven so many people to New Age in the first place. All Christians should ask: Do I want to win an argument or do I want to win a soul?
New Agers esteem love above all else. Ram Dass once said, “I’m interested in only being love.”[348] Many followers got into New Age in the first place because they were looking for love and community. Love, to the postmodern, New Age thinking, is evidence that a person is operating in the truth. Those who are unloving are trapped in ego and cannot have the truth. If they feel unloved during the conversation, they, like most people, shut down and become unwilling to listen to what any Christian has to say. We don’t want to be unloving people talking about an unloving God to people who value
...more
valuable in the eyes of God. Something underneath all their brokenness and sin was worth the blood and body of Jesus to the Father. This incredible goodness and kindness of God toward us as broken people leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). God is willing to forgive them, give them a new spiritual rebirth, be in relationship with them, and spend eternity in Heaven with them because of His great love for them. When we communicate to New Agers, should do so in the spirit of gentleness (2 Timothy 2:24–26). They will not want to hear from us if their community is able to love better than we are.
...more
The Law of God as an expression of the holiness of God is a great place to engage with someone in the New Age movement, because everyone understands that a perfectly loving being must be perfectly good, and a perfectly good being must be perfectly fair. If we can agree that a loving God must
be fair, we can help them recognize their need for a Savior.
Just as a good, fair judge in court must hold a criminal morally accountable for his crimes, our crimes must be punished by God who is judge of all (James 4:12). A criminal can’t be released from murder charges because he is sorry and will try his best not to murder again. Any judge who wants to keep his job will sentence the murderer to prison, even if he regrets his criminal actions. Likewise, a moral judge will not acquit the murderer on the grounds of his ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The holiness of God has the ability to awaken people from believing that God is whoever they define Him to be, because the Law of God bears witness with their conscience that they have fallen short of His glory. Their own consciences testify of a holy, personal God who is the foundation of moral values and duties. A friendly discussion on the holiness of God helps bring these suppressed intuitions to light and confronts the individual with the truths about God that they have not allowed themselves to
He dwells in us (John 14:16–17); He teaches us (John 14:26); He bears witness about Jesus (John 15:26); He convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8); and He bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God (Romans 8:17). Following Jesus is not about white-knuckle gripping your life and biting your lip to avoid doing all the things you want so you can go to Heaven. It’s about being supernaturally born again by the Spirit of God (John 3:3–6) so that we have a new heart and a new mind that is gradually transformed by the indwelling Spirit through a process called
...more
Members of the New Age movement are thirsty for supernatural experience and don’t feel they can have that within a church, by reading the Bible, or through worship, prayer, and fasting. The Holy Spirit is so helpful and crucial to the life of a Christian that Jesus said it was better for Him to leave this Earth so that the Holy Spirit could be sent to us (John 16:7). What an under-expressed tool in evangelism—that people Jesus didn’t just die to get us into Heaven, but that He died to get Heaven inside of us.
Christianity Is Different from Every Other Religion One thing that makes Christianity different from every other religion in the world is that it maintains that we are supernaturally transformed (regenerated), saved (justified), and brought back into right-standing with God (reconciled) through faith and faith alone. Every other religion involves works and a constant striving to earn the approval of and relationship with God. Those in the New Age movement are continuously told to do the following to have a spiritual life: • Raise your vibration. • Practice mindfulness. • Balance and cleanse
...more
Disidentify from the thought, emotion, and ego. • Study Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, and other wisdom traditions.
Christianity is the only system of faith and worship that maintains that a person is made entirely right with God through faith and faith alone. We are “justified,” which means that we are declared innocent and righteous through nothing more than sincerely believing. We are then brought back into supernatural relationship with God on the basis of Christ’s substitutionary work on the cross in our place where He bore our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Since everything was taken care of in the representative life of Jesus (Romans 5:19), even moral works of righteousness do not contribute to our
...more
What if God loves you and took care of everything so that all you have to do to be saved is believe and receive with a repentant heart?
This verse needs to be contextualized by others for us to understand what Jesus meant by coming “through” Him. This simply means that faith in Him as the Messiah is the only way we can have access to God:
If the presence of spiritual idolatry is actually spiritual adultery with demons in the spirit realm (1 Corinthians 10:20–22), is it possible that the presence of spiritual adultery in my house enables me to be influenced by them, at least to a degree? Could it be that the object themselves bridge the natural and the spirit world where demons are seeking to manifest their power through these objects? If this is a possibility, then occult objects may contribute to oppression, distortion, or spiritual health by virtue of the beings the objects refer to in the spirit realm.
