New Age Movement
Seek the Truth with all your heart.
Ref. Charisma News:
It’s common knowledge that the New Age movement has a strong foothold in our culture right now. Bookstores are lined with best-selling titles teaching people how to use crystals, how to meditate and cultivate ‘higher consciousness,’ and how to make contact with spirit guides, while people like Jim Carrey and Oprah Winfrey continue to push things like ‘Christ-consciousness’ and meditation onto the masses.
Popular teachers like Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle continue to sell millions of their books teaching the idea that GOD is an impersonal force in the universe and that we are to cultivate relationship with this ‘force’ by shifting our consciousness and practicing things like ‘mindfulness,’ ‘presence,’ ‘yoga’ – which has underlying agendas, and other practices.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’ including 35 percent of Protestant Christians. This is one of the fast growing spiritual-religious demographics in the West right now. In fact, the number of those who identify as witches or pagans is continuing to increase, as those who identify as Protestant Christian continues to decrease.
Pew Research surveyed Americans to see what they thought about the following four New-Age beliefs:
1. Spiritual energy exists in physical things.
2. Psychics have reliable insight into the future.
3. Reincarnation.
4 Astrology.
Sixty two percent of the general public hold to at least one of these New Age beliefs.
Sixty one percent of professing Christians also held to one.
Almost one-third of the professing church of Christ believes they will live again in another body in another life on this planet, even though the Bible says in
Hebrews 9:27-28 ‘Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgement, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.’
Reincarnation contradicts the entire gospel. Four in 10 professing Christians believes in psychics as a viable means of foretelling the future, even though the Bible repeatedly condemns this practice.
Only four New Age beliefs were tested for, in this study which did not test for things like: Pantheism - the idea that GOD is a force that is present within nature.
One-ism - the idea that all spiritual paths lead back to GOD and are equally valid. Karma - the belief that there is a force in the world balancing the scales of good and evil. The belief that man is divine by nature.
If we were to take other such New Age beliefs into account, it is a conservative estimate that at least eighty percent of the professing church holds to at least one New Age belief, which is theological crisis in the church. Atheism isn’t the problem anymore in our culture, and neither is naturalism. Sixty-two percent of Americans hold to New Age beliefs, while only three percent of the American population is atheist. New Age is the religion of the future, and it is beginning to invade our culture and infiltrate the thought-life of Christians.
Our threat is this new wave of spiritual philosophy that draws from whatever religious tradition and practice it wants, while promising its followers supernatural experiences and ascension into some hyper-spiritual state where they can attain paranormal powers and rise up the ranks of ‘godhood.’ The threat is those teaching that we can follow any path we want because GOD has revealed Himself in all world religions and is present in the universe as the energy of life.
Part of the problem is that Christians don’t know what is ‘New Age’ and what isn’t. Nor do they know how to navigate or confute New Age ideas once they are identified. The Christian Church is underequipped to deal with the type of spirituality that is taking over the culture, and now deceptively making its way into the churches.
New Age people refer to the ‘goddess within,’ and ‘spirit guides.’
Prophetic Link:
The days are fast approaching when there will be great perplexity and confusion. Satan, clothed in angel robes, will deceive, if possible, the very elect. There will be many ‘gods,’ many ‘lords.’ Every wind of doctrine will be blowing. Those who have rendered supreme homage to “science - falsely so called” will not be the leaders then. Those who have trusted to intellect, genius, or talent will not then stand at the head of rank and file. They did not keep pace with the light. Those who have proved themselves unfaithful will not then be entrusted with the flock. In the last solemn work few great men will be engaged. They are self-sufficient, independent of GOD, and HE cannot use them. ‘Testimony for the Church,’ Vol. 5, page 80.