CharismaNews: It’s common knowledge that the New Age movement has a strong foothold on 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, as people like Jim Carrey and Oprah Winfrey continue to push things like Christ-consciousness and meditation on the masses.
Popular teachers like Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle continue to sell millions of copies of 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” or yoga…
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 population 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 and 4) astrology.
Not only did 62 percent of the general public hold at least one of these New Age beliefs, 61 percent of professing Christians held one as well.
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 that “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this comes the judgment”. Reincarnation contradicts the entire gospel. We will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Four in 10 professing Christians believes in psychics as a viable means of foretelling the future, even though the Bible repeatedly condemns this practice…
If this isn’t troubling enough, we have to remember that only four New Age beliefs were tested for in this study. This study did not test for things like pantheism (the idea that God is a force that is present within nature), oneism (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) or 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 80 percent of the professing church holds to at least one New Age belief, which is nothing short of a 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 3 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 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. Furthermore, they don’t know how to navigate or confute New Age ideas once they are identified. As a church, we are admittedly underequipped to deal with the type of spirituality that is taking over the culture and is now making its way into the churches…
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 gods many and lords many. 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.