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It first began when I was very small: Thinking about God, the universe and all that. I must have been about eight when I first posed the question: "Why am I me and no one else?" I could see -- in my simple childish way -- that we each have our own space in the world, which every one of us is condemned to occupy for the whole of our lives. If I had a separate existence, with my own consciousness, then surely there must be a reason for it, a purpose to my life? "Why am I me and no one else?" No reply. That silence was an awesome chasm which needed to be filled. Little did I know then that I would have to wait another twenty-seven years to discover the answer! Never once in my entire life have I ever doubted the existence of God. In my childhood, God was a real person who was definitely "out there". My parents taught me that. Just from the forces of nature and the miracle of life, I knew there had to be a Creator. Even then, I also knew there had to be such a thing as Divine justice. When I got sick or bad feelings I used to wonder if it was because I'd been naughty and He was punishing me! I also remember announcing to my parents when I was around ten years old that of all the religions of the world, only one could be right, or else they are all wrong. Even then, I knew that there were only these two possibilities. But I never knew how to apply that truth. I grew up in a Jewish home. We weren't "Orthodox". I heard "Next year in Jerusalem" recited each Passover ó but we never went. I longed for something deeply spiritual during my boyhood. I used to stand in the synagogue every Saturday waiting for it to happen. One Sabbath morning, not long before my Bar Mitzvah (Jewish coming of age ceremony) I heard a man there praying over and over again: "Please God, big boom". His prayer life was centred on the expansion of his business interests. It was the beginning of the end of any hope for me in secular Judaism. Three years later my world exploded. I was a passenger in a car which was being driven by an older friend. When he asked me to get something out of the glove compartment I discovered a book which was to take me on a pathway for the following two decades. It was a paperback copy of the "Tao te Ching" by Lao Tsu. This was what I thought I'd been searching for. It led me to a thousand and one other books which took me down a labyrinth of spiritual exploration. Inner space: THAT was the realm in which to travel. At last! I could get in touch with God, as I thought ó but He wasn't "out there" anymore; He was somewhere within me! Soon I became enthralled with the idea of spiritual evolution ó that the human race is steadily advancing towards perfection here on earth, and that each one of us goes through an ever-improving series of lifetimes until that perfection is reached. I spent more than twenty years avidly devouring anything which I believed would get me further down that road. I became involved at various times with Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, various Hindu gurus, Reichian therapy, Bioenergetics, Existentialism, the peace movement and many other fringe New Age activities. I was a classic product of the "Swinging Sixties" ó the "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" era, the "ME" generation who were around twenty years old when Timothy Leary first said: "Tune in, turn on and drop out". However, alongside all this spiritual investigation, two things kept coming home to me. The first was that somehow I never felt wholly involved in any of these activities. There was a sense in which I was always an outsider "looking in". It was as if there was some invisible barrier which prevented me from participating ó as if I was being protected from an all- consuming involvement (which I now realise to be the case). This is something of which I was always aware from as far back as I can remember. The second thing that repeatedly came home to me was that, in spite of the benefits which were claimed for all the things I got into, the fact was that my life never really improved. In fact, it worsened drastically and somewhere in the midst of it all there was a heart of darkness which I could not yet identify. Looking back with the aid of hindsight I now realise that I deluded myself into believing that I was changing but, in truth, I was a sad, self-centred dilettante. By the time I reached the thirty-fifth year of my life I was a burnt-out, ageing hippie with a massive record collection but no lasting relationships, plus an increasing disillusionment with everything I had ever been involved with. I felt as if there was nowhere left for me to run. Everywhere I looked I saw pretence and hypocrisy, especially in myself. I knew so much about magic, meditation, catharsis, liberation; but I couldn't break free from the prison of who I was, from the total emptiness within me. By now, I felt more in common with the existential "outsider" than with the mystical time-traveller. This was the beginning of the end of the journey which had begun with the Tao of glove compartments. Around this time I had begun to throw myself into self-destructive situations. Like Roquentin ó the central character in Jean-Paul Sartre's "La NausÈe", a book which had became very influential on my thinking ó I liked to live dangerously solely to promote an existential crisis. When a friend invited me to stay at one of the occult-inspired Rudolf Steiner residential schools deep in the heart of the countryside, I jumped at the chance to escape a world which was closing in on me. They soon asked me to leave as they couldn't tolerate hopeless romantics who spend their time wandering the fields writing poetry and dreaming about a better world. But there was a particular night that I remember when I sat on the edge of my bed before getting in it. I looked down at my feet and saw myself as I had never done before. I remember feeling that I was at the very end of my tether. I suddenly realised that I had reached the end of the line in life. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to be, unless something cataclysmic happened. I felt as if the next event in my life could only involve being plunged into a well-deserved vortex of death. Suddenly, in the midst of all that despair, for some inexplicable reason, I prayed to Jesus Christ and asked Him to help me. I had never done anything like it before; neither had I heard of anyone else doing so. The only "christ" I had ever known was the Gnostic Christ who I believed to indwell all people unconditionally. Yet there I was, praying to the Man, Jesus Christ. I had only ever known Him from the few New Testament Bible passages I had read in the battered "New English Bible" which somehow had always been in my library. The Gospel of Mark chapter thirteen had always held a strange fascination for me. It portrayed Christ in bold colours. In those days, when I read the verses which described wars, earthquakes, famines and pestilences and which culminated in the words: "These are the birth pangs of the new age", they meant something very different to how I now understand them. Later, after that stuttered, makeshift prayer, I cried myself to sleep. A few days afterwards, I visited a bookshop which specialised mainly in works on the occult and other related religious books. On the shelves I spied a book that I had never seen before. It was called "The Dark Night of the Soul" by John of the Cross, and was a work of Roman Catholic mysticism. I had always been interested in Eastern Mysticism but I had never before come across Christian Mysticism. I entered a strange new world of "ladders of perfection" spattered with Bible quotations. I got my dusty old Bible off the shelf and began to read it. Shortly after this I moved to live in a small community on an old farmhouse north of York, while trying to piece together the shattered fragments of my life. The Bible reading intensified and I began to experience a peculiar sensation. I felt as if I was being contacted by "spirits from beyond". At the time, this was the only way I could describe it ó although I would come to understand it differently later on. Feeling rather spooked, I needed to get to the bottom of this. I remembered seeing an advertisement for the Churches Fellowship for Spiritual and Psychical Studies on a health-food shop notice board. I phoned up the local branch and asked them if they could recommend anyone I could speak to about the weird feelings I was having. They suggested consulting a spirit-medium to find out the identity of the mysterious force. A little while later I was walking down a street in London (attending a New Age massage 'workshop') when I noticed a visiting card face down on the pavement. When I picked it up I saw that it contained the phone number of a well-known clairvoyant and medium. I now realised that something extraordinary was happening. I immediately telephoned the woman and said I wanted to make an appointment. She said she had been expecting me and that I was to come first thing the following morning. She also revealed that she had an important message for me. That night I could hardly sleep. I felt as if I was being assailed on all sides spiritually. It seemed to me that I had become the battleground for contrasting forces of darkness and light. I knew that I was on the brink of some remarkable discovery and was filled with trepidation and awe. As I descended a staircase in the morning I felt an invisible force attempt to hurl me to the foot of the stairs. I had to cling to the banister all the way down. What on earth was happening? It was as if something was powerfully trying to prevent me from getting to this woman. But who or what? And for what reason? The medium welcomed me at the door. She looked as if she hadn't slept for a month. She had sunken eyes circled with darkness. She spoke with a strange accent and wore black. When we sat down she proceeded to tell me many things about my life, going back to my early childhood, which were 100% true. Then she fell silent. She looked at me intently and said that she had just one thing to tell me which even she found puzzling and was not the kind of advice which she would normally give to her "clients". All she was getting through from her "spirit guide" was that I should read the Bible. When I heard that I was amazed; because that was already what I was doing. In fact my reading of the Bible was going to be the crucial turning-point in my spiritual salvation. From that point on, everything began to change rapidly. I embarked on a long period of intense Bible study which revealed to me that all the spiritual pathways I had previously explored were nothing whatsoever to do with religious truth. I discovered a Christian bookshop and began to read Christian literature, the first item of which was Matthew Henry's Commentary. I knew no Christians at this point. All I had was my Bible and these new-found books. I soon realised that John of the Cross's book which I had found in the occult bookshop missed entirely the foundations of the Bible. It was as if I was being shown right at the outset that the whole sphere of Christian mysticism is a gross misrepresentation of Christianity which ignores the central truths of the Bible ó namely, the Incarnation of the Son of God and His atonement on the Cross. It had, however, under God's sovereignty, served its purpose in drawing me to the Bible, which I would otherwise have continued to ignore. My big discovery at this point was that there is a mighty spiritual battle in this universe of which most human beings are wholly ignorant. I found that there had been a fall of angels near the beginning of the creation and that this had led to a fall of human beings. I soon realised that the "Ascended Masters" and other discarnate entities (including the beings currently posing as "ETs" or "aliens") which have been so influential in the development of the New Age Movement and the "New Spirituality" are actually lying spirits, fallen angels whose main work is to deceive the human race into believing that they can rebuild a better world for themselves right here on this planet. (The only truly "Ascended Master" is the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has ascended to heaven where he sits at the right hand of the God the Father Almighty). God plainly showed me through the Bible that there is only one spiritual way of salvation. I saw that God Himself had come in the flesh as a human being into this world in order to take the penalty for my sins as there was no way of me doing so myself. I set about praying to God to forgive me for all the foolish ways of my life, for having wandered so far from His truth, for having committed so many offences against His holiness. I couldn't repent enough! It was so wonderful to feel cleansed of all the occultism and other forms of darkness which had overtaken my life for so many years. I then came to realise that my earlier feeling of being contacted by "spirits from beyond" was nothing to do with "spirits" contacting me; but that it was God Himself. I had simply perceived Divine communication in the only way I knew at the time. Filtered through my warped understanding, when God "tapped me on the shoulder" (as it were), I read it as an occult experience. The Lord Jesus Christ said that no one can come to Him unless God the Father draws him (Gospel of John, chapter 6, verses 44-65). And draw me He did! He even neutralised that medium's evil "spirit-guide" and instead induced her to tell me to read the Bible! When I look back over all the elements of my long and often wayward search for God and His truth, I realise how the Lord Himself "tailor-made" so much of my journey, in order that I should eventually be fully drawn to Him. All these things ó the gradual disillusionment with the New Age, the Peace Movement and with Eastern Mysticism, the discovery of the book in the occult bookshop, my drawnness to the Bible, the strange feelings of spiritual communication, the discovery of the visiting card in the street, the consultation with the medium ó these were really stepping-stones by which the Lord wooed me to Himself, as it were. This does not mean that all these elements are in any way condoned by Him. But just as He overrules the sin of human beings and orders them to be helpful to His own divine plan (e.g. the plot against Joseph by his brothers in the Book of Genesis, chapters 37, verses 15-21), so He also demonstrates His control of the pre-conversion pathway of those He is pleased to draw to Himself. I realised that an organisation such as the "Churches Fellowship for Spiritual and Psychical Studies", in linking the churches of Jesus Christ with the occult, is a gross affront to spiritual truth and the purity of God. My visit to the medium was certainly contrary to God's law, which forbids the consultation of witches. But God, in His sovereignty and providence, can overrule even the most sinful of human events for His own special purposes. Especially is this necessary when ignorant unbelievers are being drawn to Him. I realised then that God was not some force which is inside everyone unconditionally ó some "higher self" which can be kindled into action through inward-directed meditations but that He was instead a personal Being who had a close concern and love for me personally. I realised that He is a God "out there" with whom I can communicate and have a personal relationship. I also realised that the great problem of the human race is that we are all born into this world estranged from God, opposed by nature to His laws and in desperate need of being saved from this pitiful condition. Around this time I remember driving in my car while listening to a Mozart choral work. It was a piece I had listened to many times and had enjoyed for many years even before my interest in Christianity. I knew the words well; but that day they came to mean something to me that they had never done before. When I heard the choir solemnly intone the words: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis" ("Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us"), I was overwhelmed. I felt that this was the cry of my own heart, a cry which needed to be heard from the highest heaven. I was so awash with tears that I had to pull over to the side of the road. All I could say was: "Oh Lord, it's all true. I know it. It's all true. You have taken the punishment for my sins. You have saved me". At that point, the words of Jesus, "You must be born again", became a living reality. I knew that I had been made anew. I had been both saved and assured of that salvation. It was around that time that I found my way to a healthy church where I had fellowship with other Christians for the first time in my life and where I could learn more of the truths of the Bible and grow in grace. It was also around that time that I met a young cellist who had recently been initiated as a Tibethan Buddhist, having spent some years exploring New Age avenues. But as she listened to me unfold the story of how I came to faith in Christ, she was drawn to explore the Bible for herself. It was not long before she too had renounced her Buddhism, having believed the Word of God and dedicated her life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Eighteen months later we were married in the Lord. From that time onwards our lives have been dedicated to the God of my salvation and also to exposing the false spiritual pathways which ensnared us for so many years. I had finally been shown the answer to my childish question: "Why am I me and nobody else?" The reason: It is because each one of us has been made uniquely to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Meanwhile the world pitches headlong into ever deeper confusion and rebellion against the one true God and the truth He reveals in the Bible. I firmly believe that the religious explosion which began in the 1960s involving hallucinogenic drugs, Eastern mysticism and self- exploration and which has bewitched so many impressionable young people from that time to the present was fabricated by the powers of darkness to bring that generation, and those ensuing, under their evil influence. The "New Spirituality" ó and the "New World Order" which parallels it in the political sphere is a dark work of the fallen angels as this rebellious world moves towards the climax of all history. For Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is going to return and bring things to a swift conclusion at the Day of Judgement, when all those who have renounced these works of darkness ó confessing their need for salvation by a personal God who is "out there" and praying to Him for forgiveness and new life will become the population of the new universe which He will create out of the ashes of this present evil world. That will be the TRUE New Age! It is my earnest prayer that all those reading this brief testimony will join me on this eternal journey, so that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be glorified and shown to be the REAL Master(s) of the Universe. Finally an overview of New Age beliefs: PREMISES OF THE NEW AGE WORLD VIEW The New Age World view is Syncretistic. In other words it blends elements of other world views. Russell Chandler, author of "Understanding the New Age", suggests the following beliefs make up some but not all of the components of this movement: - All is One (monism). The Cosmos is pure, undifferentiated, universal energy - a consiousness or "life force". Everything is one vast, interconnected process. All life is of equal value. - All is God (pantheism). God is an impersonal principal, a conciousness, lifeforce, Energy. Everything that is, is God. - Humans, nature, spirits, ET's, the earth, etc. are infused with or of the same essence as God. (polytheism). Humans have unlimited potentials being one with the One." We are God, "affirms many within this movement. Other enlighten beings, entities, etc. which share this divinity can also guide, instruct and empower those who opened the door to other side. Paranormal experiences are often sought and experienced when encountering these guides, assorted spirits, ET's and unknown entities. - All religions are essentially One. Jesus, Krishna, Buddaha, Lao- tsu, and all the mystics old and new, realized and taught this Oneness. All spiritual paths are equally valid. Dogmas and doctrines which cause separation should be de-empasized in favour of personal or communal unitive experiences of at-one-ness. There is a need, say some, for a New Age which will bannish intolerance and promote harmony and unity. Reincarnation is believed to expalain suffering and karma. Mystical experiences will be the glue to bring all world religions together to promote peace and unity and thus becoming the foundation philosophy of a political New World Order. - Humanity's problem is not sin but ignorance. We have forgotten we are one with God and we ...have infinite potential at our fingertips if we allow it to flow. Therefore we need to reject the self limitations and beliefs of the old ways of perception and embrace a "paradigm shift': a distinct new way of thinking. - How does humanity embark upon a paradigm shift? Through an "awakening experience" each individual may "actualize" his or her divine nature and achieve union with his or her divine nature with the Ultimate Unifying Prnciple by applying a plethoria of Consciousness- changing techniques, or "psychotechnologies', to body mind and spirit. - Some examples of what Ferguson calls "intentional triggers of transformative experiences" are: meditation, Yoga,chanting, mood-altering music, mind expanding drugs, esoteric systems of religious mysticism and knowledge, guided imagery, balancing and aligning"energies," hypnosis, body discipines...radical seminars designed to obliterate former values, etc...The pathway to godhood lies not in left-hemisphere logic but in right hemisphere's intuitive 'knowing' and creativeness.' - The sequel to expanded personal awareness is planetary tranformation, charaterized by mass enlightment and social evolution.... Many of the world's problems: overpopulation, the envoirmental crisis, war, economic problems etc. may be solved by realizing our Oneness and untapped potentials. A New Planetary Order or New World Order which calls for an emerging global civilizaton and one world government is in the agenda. When a "critical mass" is achieved through world wide New Age events like the Harmonic Convergence, or the World Peace Meditations, or Mind Body Conferences, Earth Day, etc...then we will arrive at the New Age. Millions have already participated in these events and some of them are annual and ongoing..there are countless new age communities, conferences, peoples, and publications in many countries "networking" to achieve critical mass or the "Hundreth Monkey Effect" as it often called. Although at this present time there is no one leading group or indivdual guiding this movement...it, never-theless through networking... is becoming a powerful force in society and the world. CRACKS IN THE NEW AGE WORLD VIEW - the assumption that all is One and it's implications are true. If God is impersonal or all is One, there is no basis for absolutes in terms of truth, ethics or understanding reality. Reality, truth or right or wrong becomes whatever a New Age person perceives it to be. A Oneness which encompasses all and is all must also embrace evil. Ethical relativsm is illogical and unworkable. Try it sometime in a relationship or in society and see the fruit of anarchy and chaos... Nor do we need abitrary absolutes given to us by an authoritarian elite...If there is no higher law than the state or an New Age elite then democracy is obsolete...we must return to the concept of Lex Rex which states that those that govern are also subject to revealed moral laws...If All is One, then there is no difference between cruety and non cruelty... Charles Manson said "if all is One then nothing is wrong"...he was more consistant with his pantheistic beliefs than most new age people you meet. - Man is not God. Human imperfection, finitude, falliblity, and fallenness are the observable human condition. Humanity may with God's grace may become more saintly..ie. God's Spirit may enable men and women to bear the fruits of peace, love, goodness and experience God's miracles of healing etc... but man will not attain Godhood. The finite will not become the infinite. We have potential not unlimited potential. Where is evidence of human perfection or compassion in Roman Ceasars or others who also claimed to be God? ...all you see is human folly and the corruption of power. - There are distintions within the created order. Not all life is of equal value as taught by new age Deep Ecologists or sometime by reincarnation believers. Relativism-plugged into reincarnation theory-denigrates the value of human life by reducing all life to the lowest level. . Although all life is to valued as part of nature, nature is not perfect and can produce pestilance and harmful mutations..perhaps we are reaping the fruit of this as man tries to play God tinkering with genetic engineering...or planting new species in the wrong eco-systems. Panthesism says all life is equal...so man becomes no more valuable than the grass we trample on or burn... - Jesus did not teach that all paths lead to a pantheistic Oneness or that man will achieve Godhood. (see John 14, Matt 7:14,) His teaching has to be distored to suggest that Christ taught New Age philosophy as many within New Age circles try to imply...by taking his teaching out of context. Not all religions promote panthesitic monistic beliefs...as suggested by uninformed teachers within the movement... -The Altered State of conciousness reached through meditation and other psychotechnologies often negates critical thinking and reason, often dulling the individual's ability to discern between truth and deception. It also allows for the possiblitiy to contact deceptive or masquarading spirits (many within the movement acknowledge the existence of negative or evil entities) or be possessed by them as may happen in the channeling phenomena. A old proverb states "a man without self- control is like a town without defences". A person in ASC who is passive is more vulnarable to suggestiblity and outside control by whatever controllers human or non human that might happen to be around. Real spirituallity involves the mind, intellect and heart...critical thinking, not scepticism or mind-less-ness is - necessary for spiritual discernment. - Utopian notions of man and utopian New Age political goals may lead to totalitarian systems that would grow increasingly intolerant of those who would critize it. It was the belief in the fallenness and falliblity of human leadership in Europe during the Reformation and afterwards that led to ideas of democracy and freedom, as well as the need for checks and balances in government 7. This may be lost as New Age ideas are more and more embraced in society. Some kind of hierarchy of so called "enlighted" beings are trying to guide us into the NEW AGE claim many within this movement. The question is how do we know that the spirit guides, ET's or whatever, are what they appear to be...there is growing evidence that they are not so enlightened after all, and may have some other more sinister motives in mind when providing guidance and so called "transformative" experiences. - Reincarnation and evolutionary beliefs instead of bringing real love and unity to mankind may create elitist feelings and a callowness to human suffering. Karma supposedly determines a persons caste or position in life. To try to help those who are suffering, is to interfere with their karma. Unenlightened people are already called "cancer cells"2.* in body of Gaia by some within the movement...with the implication that a "cleansing" is coming or needed..we heard that before from Adolf Hitler... who in his time wanted to usher in a New Age..(Hitler also claimed he was guided by voices from the other side) ..There are presently some prominant leaders guided by powerful entities in this movement who are presently taking on or promoting Messianic leadership...as well as the "cleansing concept" ..their spirit guides are saying this is necessary...John Randolph Price, the primary moving force behind the "World Instant of Cooperation," was told by his favorite spirit guide, "Asher," that "nature will soon enter her cleansing cycle...." These individuals [the two billion human beings who do not have the 'ring of protection' around them] with their lower vibratory rates will be removed during the next two decades...2*. " Please read some of the references listed below ...there are many people already who are unknowingly caught up in this spiritual pandora's box...wake up don't be one of them. Many persons exploring New Age beliefs are sincere and pleasant people.. and are not throwing their lot in with the more dangerous elements of the New Age...there are people being hurt by these beliefs and by cultic leaders.. as well as seductive entites...I've dialoged with many of them in several countries...so I encourage compassion for victims...we may disagree and be discerning and helpful but not be arrogant, for in the eyes of God we all fall short of perfection...for it's only by God's grace that we are able to see the many of the pitfals of a fallen world.. If you are following New Age beliefs ask God's Spirit to guide you in your quest for truth and reality... Also do your own research as others have below...some listed below were formally in the New Age Movement and in leadership positions...some experiencing powerful paranormal experiences until they woke up to the deception. References below:
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