Category: paganism

Mysticism and The Coming World Religion – Part 2 (Revised)

May 1, 2023

T. A. McMahon

Originally published November 1, 2016

As noted in Part 1 of this series, there is a coming world religion (CWR), and it is advancing rapidly. One of the significant elements that expedites its growth is mysticism, which is a belief system that ultimately rejects teachings that involve objective laws, rules, requirements, obligations, dogmas, doctrines, and the like, in favor of subjective experiences and intuitive feelings.

The goal of the CWR (also known as the religion of the Antichrist) is to bring all religions under its patronage and control. Since all religions have doctrines that separate them from one another, even to the point of hostility in some cases, their doctrines must be compromised or altered in order to be acceptable to all—or they must be removed altogether. Mysticism facilitates doctrinal compromise because of its subjective nature. In other words, the objective meaning of a doctrine must give way to one’s subjective interpretation, i.e., how one feels about it. When such a belief system is in place, there can be no absolute truth; so-called truth is whatever an individual feels it is. It’s in the mind of the beholder.

Religions that are heavily legalistic in their theology must change in order to fit in with the ecumenical CWR. Two such religions are Roman Catholicism and Islam. In part one of this series we documented how the Church of Rome is well along the way of shifting from its highly legalistic system of rules and obligations toward a more mystical process. The Catholic Church has more than a billion followers, and they also must be included in the religion of the Antichrist. Islam, too, has greater than a billion adherents, so it also must become a part of the CWR. However, it is legalistic—and aggressively so—in its doctrine and practices, far more so than any other religion in the world. Consequently, many doubt that it could ever change.

Some have suggested, therefore, that the religion of the Antichrist will be Islam itself. For that to happen, the conversion of the world to Islamic beliefs would follow its historical method, which is at the point of a sword. Although that worked to a large degree in the past, it falls far short of what is necessary to spiritually transform the entire world. Additionally, there are obvious problems for this belief system regarding the coming religion of the Antichrist. The fact that the entire world will worship the Antichrist as God is inconsistent with and opposed by the Muslim worship of Allah. Sharia law, which is the Islamic code of law, is derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Muhammad’s teachings and examples). Consequences for disobeying Sharia laws are the harshest among religions. Its rules are overtly abusive regarding women. Furthermore, Islam’s collectively intense hatred of Jews and Christians, as well as “all infidels,” is diametrically opposed to the CWR’s necessary ecumenism. These doctrines of Islam work against its efforts to attract followers to the coming world religion. What then, if anything, is there within Islam that might reconcile the billion-plus Muslims to the religion of the Antichrist, with its mystical underpinnings? The answer is Sufism.

Sufism is the mystical Islamic belief and practice through which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge by way of a direct personal experience with Allah. This is Islam in the throes of experiential and subjective beliefs and practices. Being functionally at odds with Sharia laws and practices, many Sufi practitioners reject the rules of Sharia outright, regarding mysticism as the most direct way to achieve union with Allah. Moreover, where it has been historically practiced throughout the world, Sufism has had no problem coexisting with other religions. This is not the case, as we’re well aware, for Islamic Sharia Law.

One mystical aspect of Sufism is for its practitioners to put themselves into an ecstatic trance or altered state of consciousness through whirling. These individuals are known as Whirling Dervishes. According to one source, “The hundreds of the Dervish twirling rotations (20-30 per minute) coincide with the theta rhythm in the brain, and the chanting (they repeat the word ‘God’ [more likely ‘Allah,’] about 99 times) makes the dancers dissociate from reality and enter a different state of mind. When the ceremony is over, the dervishes return, side by side, in front of the sheikh [master and guide] and then move to another room to meditate. The physiological goal of the whirling is for the dervish to ‘empty’ himself of all distractions” (https://bit.ly/3ZgY9sm). It should be obvious that this is just another form of Eastern mystical meditation along with the contemplative forms practiced by more and more professing Christians in the West.

The various exercises of mysticism are similar throughout the world, even where there has been no connection between the cultures or people groups. For example, Sufi meditation and yoga employ the same lotus sitting position and a hasta mudra (with the thumb curled and touching the tip of the forefinger). Sufi whirling has the same effect as the uncontrollable shaking in the Dynamic Meditation practiced by the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Sufi Shaykh is similar to the guru in yoga in terms of the practitioner’s absolute submission to him and obedience to the guidance given. In some practices, the Shaykh is a transcended spiritual entity channeled by the meditator. 

The Encyclopedia of Islam lists a number of manifestations found within the meditation practices of Sufism, e.g., “barking and howling” (MacDonald, D. B. “Darwish [Darwesh],” Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition, edited by: P. B. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs, Brill Online, Augustana, 21 Sept 2009), behavior that was also exhibited through the so-called impartation of the Holy Spirit in places such as the Toronto Airport Vineyard, Pensacola and Lakeland, Florida, International House of Prayer (IHOP), and Bethel Church in Redding, California, among numerous others. 

These experiences taking place throughout the world should offer more than a hint that spirit entities, contacted through altered states of consciousness and meditation, as well as some people’s faith in the false signs-and-wonders methods, have been facilitating Satan’s goal of seducing and controlling the consciousness and beliefs of mankind. “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy:4:1).

Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, is someone whom I would describe as the poster boy for everything that I’ve been noting in this article, which is the acceptance of all religions in the formation of a one-world religion. He is a Muslim—a Sufi Muslim. He is also a New Ager and a national spokesman for Transcendental Meditation or TM (https://bit.ly/3GjqXKc). TM is the pseudo-scientific title conjured up by Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi, who came to fame as the spiritual advisor and guru to the Beatles, began teaching meditation in US schools as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, but it was shut down because the courts realized that it was clearly a religion. The Maharishi simply renamed it The Science of Transcendental Meditation (emphasis added). This incredibly important alteration was not only successful in promoting his Hinduism in schools, but it also opened the door for other pseudoscientific forms of meditation such as Mindfulness and MindUP, which have been overwhelmingly accepted by our school systems here in the US.

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A Trip to India—to Learn the Truth About Hinduism and Yoga

By Caryl Matrisciana

Thirteen years had passed since my family had left India. Now I found myself on an airplane returning there. I was filled with excitement and nostalgic memories. Would I bump into old friends with whom I had lost contact over the years? Would anything have changed?

I was travelling with a small group of international cult experts. We had received a grant enabling our research group to travel around India, visiting gurus and their ashrams.

Calcutta
Our plane landed in Calcutta, the former capital of the British Indian Empire and the city of my birth—I was breathless with excitement. Yet my enthusiasm was tinged with fear and apprehension: I knew the India I would encounter over the next few weeks would be a very different India from that of my youth.

This time I would experience the hardships of living an ascetic life with gurus and their disciples, a lifestyle as foreign to me as it was to my companions.

We planned to examine various popular-in-the-West gurus. We would interview them as well as their disciples, trying to glean a basic understanding of their teachings, so that we could better educate our various organizations back home.

I anticipated hardships, knowing that many gurus hid themselves in the outbacks of India’s countryside. I knew that the diets and accompanying Hindu religious activities would be arduous and draining. If all this weren’t spiritually exhausting, it would definitely take its toll physically.
Any disappointments I expected certainly didn’t match up to the overwhelming reality, which I soon encountered. Calcutta is named after the frightful Hindu goddess Kali, the female counterpart of the male god Shiva. Both depict death and destruction, and the city clearly reflects this. Kali also has the benign title of Mother of Love. Calcutta, or Kali-ghat, “the steps to Kali,” embodies all the complex contradictions of the Hindu god-goddess makeup. Calcutta is also one of the biggest cities in the world, with a population of nearly thirteen million. Its harbors and industries make it a key center of Eastern commerce.

The first thing to overwhelm me as I stepped into Dum Dum, the bustling Calcutta airport, was the wild confusion resulting from overpopulation. Being in the midst of shoulder-to-shoulder people was a sensation I had almost forgotten after spending years in the West.

I recalled a conversation with an Indian friend who had visited America. He had commented on the emptiness of American streets. “Where are all the people?” he had asked in bewilderment. “I see houses with cars parked outside, open shops, offices, and restaurants . . . but where are all the people?” That question might seem peculiar to those who have not experienced India’s swarming mass of humanity.

My thoughts were soon flooded with other unpleasant recollections. Besides the pushing and shoving, we had to deal with stealing and lying—almost-forgotten aspects of my childhood memories.

Upon swift recall of necessary survival instincts, I made immediate efforts to beat the corruption of “the system.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough to protect our little group from the first “criminal.”

One of our party was taken in by a fellow claiming to be a porter. Our naïve traveling companion had paid an up-front deposit. Without hesitation, the imposter had proceeded to put our collective baggage onto a trolley. He had then wheeled it off down the road toward points unknown.

Because I was fluent in Hindi, I was assigned the recovery operation. Eventually, I caught up to the thief and ordered him to return our baggage to the airport lobby. He did so, but, of course, we lost the deposit. He stubbornly claimed it had not been paid to him. After this incident, I quickly learned to stay on my toes.

The next minor incident (our last show of naiveté) was a deliberately elongated taxi drive from the airport. Since I vaguely remembered the surroundings enough to put our cab driver back on course, we were spared the expense of being driven around and around the city. But, oh, the streets of Calcutta we drove through. Pitiful shacks made up of sackcloth, rags, and sticks engulfed the sidewalks and spilled onto the streets.

When our cab stopped for a moment at a traffic light, I was able to peek into the dark interiors of some of those “homes.” I was still horrified, after all the years, to see the number of people living inside. Sisters and brothers were curled against each other like young gerbils in a cage. I saw one pathetically skinny child in tattered rags with cow-dung matted in her hair. She was attempting to soothe a wailing toddler. She cuddled and caressed him, with a comforting smile on her sweet, sad face.

How could the Western spiritual seekers I had spoken to in England, Europe, and America overlook so much tragedy? How could they bypass it to focus on the “wisdom and love” of the East? Couldn’t they see that it was the very aloofness and madness of India’s religion, her so-called wisdom and love, that created such obvious agony for the poor and such cruel apathy in the rich?

They had only to look at any of the ever-present beggars. As a member of one of the largest professions there, each beg­gar belongs to a master. He is assigned to a specific territory where he collects money for his owner. In return, he is provided with a cramped space in some hovel for sleeping and an occasional meager meal.

Some of these homeless derelicts are horribly diseased. Others are intentionally mutilated by their masters. Some children are maimed from birth in order to elicit sympathy from prospective donors.

Equally heartbreaking are India’s prostitutes. According to one government-commissioned study, there are three million prostitutes in India, with many of them between the ages of twelve and fifteen.1 Young girls are often recruited by pimps who tour rural villages, making wild financial promises to poverty-stricken parents. Male prostitution in India is on the rise too.

In Mumbai, there is an infamous street where young girls are kept behind iron bars. Cage after cage exposes scantily clad, heavily made-up teenagers. Some are extraordinarily beautiful. Others are barely ten years old. Many have been beaten and tortured into submission.2

How does the higher class Indian deal with all this cultural madness? With sure escape in mind, he does what any Westerner might do when stressed—he goes to the movies!

India has the largest film industry in the world, far surpassing the number of films made in the United States, and there are over 13,000 theaters. Every three months a billion people in India buy tickets to the cinema.3 Even in the poorest regions of the country, people would go short of food rather than give up their night with the movie stars.

In an impoverished, starving country some films cost their producers tens of millions of rupees. The controversial 1981 film, Gandhi, was all the rage in fashionable Indian circles. One-third of the film’s nine million pound (English sterling) budget was paid for by the Indian government.4 Such were India’s political priorities.

Meanwhile, alluring tourist propaganda puts out impressive statistics documenting India’s achievements. But these glowing reports fail to address the nation’s most sobering problems.

India is the seventh largest landmass in the world. Her population of over 1.1 billion makes her the second most inhabited country on earth.5

Yet, in spite of her size, a spectacular array of natural resources, and economic growth due to developing technological industries, India places twelfth among the economies of the world.6 And although India is rising economically, malnutrition, lack of educational opportunity, and overall poverty is still extremely high: nearly half of India’s children are underweight for their age;7 there are seventeen million child laborers in India; less than half of India’s children between the ages of six and fourteen go to school; more than one in three women in India and over sixty percent of the children in India are anemic.8

Ashrams of India
The first ashram our group visited was the Sivananda Ashram in Monghyr. Also known as the Bihar School of Yoga, it was founded in 1964 by Tantric Swami Satyananda Saraswati. When we arrived there, the powers-that-be required that we pay the exorbitant overnight accommodation fees in advance. We consented. We were tired and hungry and didn’t have the energy to complain over the high costs. We had had an exhausting overnight train journey from Calcutta. Jamalpur Junction, the train station nearest the ashram, was located six miles away. To make matters worse, we had arrived in the wee hours of the morning.

The station guard had warned us not to venture out of the station. “You’ll be robbed or murdered!” he had declared. He said that the State of Bihar was one of the most violent in all of India. Our kind friend felt it would be wiser if we stayed on the station platform until dawn. We did so, along with hundreds of other passengers.

Tired, but grateful for the sage advice, we settled down for a long night’s vigil. The gangways were festooned with sleeping bodies and the debris of luggage. The only place we could find to sit in was the filthy, dimly lit station restaurant. This was a far cry from the crisply clean and hygienic eating houses of my childhood I recalled so vividly.

A waiter appeared, wearing the same uniform of three decades past. It looked as though it hadn’t been laundered for almost that long! His faded red turban and cummerbund sadly reflected years of deterioration. It was barely discernible that his gray, permanently stained tunic had once been white. His gloves, once a colonial symbol of cleanliness, were almost too filthy to look at; the frayed seams at his fingertips exposed grease-stained nails.

I looked up into his face. “How many years have you been working for the railroad?” I asked him in Hindi.

“Since I was a child,” he smiled proudly. “Since the time of the British Raj.” His eyes looked back into the past and filled with sorrow at the reminiscence. “Things have changed a lot.” He looked around him, waving his arm slowly as if pointing out something. He glanced at the bedraggled uniform that he still wore with an element of pride, and shrugged. “Things have changed,” he repeated. Then he sighed and smiled in weary resignation, “What would you like to order, Mehemsahib?” His tiny, blunt pencil was poised above a pad that had been written on over and over again.

As dawn brightened the skyline, we collected our small bundles of luggage and hailed a rickshaw-puller. He took us a mile or so short of the Sivananda community. We walked the rest of the way.

The accommodations at the ashram were sparse; the spiritual tasks were arduous. All the disciples were Westerners who had to work hard for their keep. They did the most menial chores—cleaning lavatories, peeling vegetables, sweeping floors. All the jobs that my family’s untouchable servants had done in my youth were done by the residents there. Any Indians present were presumably the guru’s aides. They held “higher” responsibilities. The Westerners regarded their work as religious service. This fell under the category of Karma Yoga, the Yoga of “selfless labor” performed for the sake of “spiritual evolution.”

I slept in a large dormitory with about ten other girls. We were awakened at 4:00 a.m. each morning; some of the disciples gathered in meditation classes, while others involved themselves in private practice. On our first morning, the girl in the rope bed next to me woke me up. Her quiet alarm clock had sounded, making her sit bolt-upright. She then pulled her blanket over her head. She was getting herself poised in a lotus position, ready for her own brand of Yoga.

The girl sat still for quite some time, long enough for me to get comfortable and doze off to sleep again. Then she started an uncanny humming, low and monotonous. She hardly seemed to breathe in at all. She just kept blowing out one long, scary tone. It sent goose bumps up and down me. At last I could stand it no longer. I got up and watched the morning activities in the rest of the ashram.

There were those who practiced neti, the cleansing of the nose with warm salted water. The small container used could hold up to two cups of water and had a long spout. It looked rather like a strange teapot. The spout was shoved up the nostril. (It looked most uncomfortable to me.) The devotee breathed in and out, sneezing, choking, coughing.

Neti is said to cleanse the membranes inside the nose and to stimulate and strengthen the surrounding area, which includes the eyebrow center. To Hindus this is an important contact point for the anja chakra—the third eye.

Physical perversions are aspects of Kriya Yoga—the type Gandhi practiced. Perhaps it was part of the madness that had led him to administer enemas to his favorite female devotees. His weird sexual quirks had had him sleeping with nude teenage girls in an attempt to confirm his celibacy. And his extraordinary perspectives on fitness caused him to prescribe cow-dung pills for health!9

Gandhi had been a guru with his own ashram long before he became a political figure. Like a score of other god-men, he had believed that Kriya Yoga balances the psychic energies and awakens the chakras.

A young Australian girl sat next to a neti disciple as I spoke with him. Later that night she paid me an unexpected visit. Perched on a log with my rationed half-bucket of water, I was contemplating how to wash my face, teeth, hair, and underwear. Can I accomplish such a feat? I was wondering when I heard the cracking of a twig nearby. In a few seconds, I saw someone hesitantly come out of the shadows.

I recognized the girl and warmly asked her to join me. She did. There was probably about a minute of silence. Then she gathered up enough courage to say shyly, “You seem as though you have come from another planet. You’ve got such a warm and friendly glow of color all around you.”

I had learned not to laugh at such statements. I dipped my washcloth into the bucket and started wiping my face.

“You’ve got a different kind of life in you. Where are you from?” she questioned. We ended up talking for a couple of hours, until regulations caused the ashram to fall silent at 9:00 p.m.

I learned that Premananda was only twenty-one. She had been a disciple of Satyananda for five years, recruited while still at school. There are numerous branches of this guru’s ashram in many different countries. How quickly the different schools of Yoga are growing all over the world, I thought. That very morning I had read a large sign there at the ashram that said: “Yoga will emerge as a mighty world power and will change the course of world events.”10

“Do you practice all the methods of Kriya Yoga, such as Amoroli?” I asked the young girl. By that time, she trusted me.

“Well, I’m meant to do it,” she said apologetically. “But it tastes so terrible that it makes me feel sick.”

Poor girl, I thought. What a ghastly spiritual duty. Those poor devotees had to drink urine as part of their Yogic discipline. They had been taught that it contained redemptive qualities.

“Do you know what urine really is?” She shook her head. “Well,” I tried to explain, “it’s the body’s waste product. There’s nothing in it that the body needs anymore. So of course it makes you feel sick. And how can it possibly save you?”

Premananda went on to confide that one of her friends had been told to drink her guru’s urine. “I wouldn’t know what to do if that were to happen to me!” Her eyes grew wide at the prospect.

My research had shown that it was believed anything that touched the body of a guru was holy, from the dust of his feet to his dirty dishes. Drinking a guru’s bathwater is said to be enlightening. Should the guru desire sex, the disciple (whether male or female) is to look upon the act as a step up his spiritual ladder. So I knew that drinking the guru’s urine was a devotional duty of great significance.
All these specifics are spelled out in the Guru-gita, a Hindu scripture. “Meditate ceaselessly on the form of the Guru,” this ancient document commands. It also states:

[A]lways repeat his name, carry out his orders, think not of anything except the Guru. . . . Through service at the feet of the Guru the embodied soul becomes purified and all its sins are washed away.11

After a few days, we moved on to the next ashram, leaving behind many spiritual prisoners. I couldn’t help but pray for those poor victims. I also thanked God for the opportunity to speak to a handful of them. Some of the followers were closed, like the neti disciple. Others were open, like Premananda. Her guru, Satyananda, had demanded that his devotees cut themselves off from the outside world, but I had been able to encourage her to get in touch with her parents. I was able to activate her conscience regarding the rights and wrongs of some of her practices. Perhaps it would help her reconsider her commitment to a god of India.

Orthodox Hinduism teaches four stages of life: the learning stage of childhood, the stage of marital responsibilities, the stage of career obligations, and the stage of spiritual preparation for death. The Yoga disciplines teach how to cease the body’s functions, in preparation for death, or as Hindus believe, to enter into reincarnation. The traditional purpose of the Indian ashram had always been to teach people how to die through Yoga meditation.

West Goes East
It was only after the 1960s that young Westerners, inspired by the Beatles, began to flood India’s ashrams to sit spellbound at the feet of gurus. Initially, they used India’s spiritual communities as hostels. They provided cheap accommodations for the young seekers while they explored their mystical whims.

By the 1980s, their presence had changed the traditional atmosphere at many ashrams. Along with the youthful Westerners came children and a more family-oriented environment. The influx of Westerners also altered the ashrams’ structure: new requirements for ashram life and the practice of Yoga bypassed the ancient Brahmin qualifications; regardless of sex, nationality, caste, or creed, everyone was accepted. And what was once only available to elderly Hindus became available to all.

Although ashrams have been made available to outsiders, the message of the gurus and the purpose of Yoga remain unchanged. People in the West have been deceived into thinking it is the art of living; but to people in the East, it is the art of dying.

Many of the Western converts to Yoga have helped spread it in the West. One Westerner who spent time in a Hindu ashram and has had significant influence upon the Western world is Michael Ray, a Stanford University professor. Ray created the “Creativity in Business” course, which takes “much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophies, mysticism, and meditation techniques.”12 Ray describes his ashram experience:

I attended a meditation-intensive day at an ashram to support a friend. As I sat in meditation in what was for me an unfamiliar environment, I suddenly felt and saw a bolt of lightning shoot up from the base of my spine out the top of my head. It forced me to recognize something great within me . . . this awareness of my own divinity.13

Ray now tells his students they can get in touch with their “inner person” or “spirit-guide,” who will guide them through life.14 Since his visit to an ashram, Ray has passed on his Eastern wisdom to thousands through books and seminars.

Even Christianity has been indirectly affected by Ray. In 1982, Jim Collins, a speaker at Christian conferences, took Ray’s course, “Creativity in Business.” He was so inspired by the course that he wrote the foreword for Ray’s 2004 book The Highest Goal. Collins says he discovered “the path to my highest goal” by reading the book. What is this highest goal that Michael Ray speaks of? His “own divinity.” In The Highest Goal, Ray speaks openly about Eastern meditation techniques and quotes Hindu gurus such as Ram Dass, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Swami Shantananda.

Silence: The Only True Religion?
The influence of Eastern thinking and Yoga upon the West continues in many forms. In October 2007, television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey introduced fifty million viewers to a book titled, Eat, Pray, Love. The book, written by Elizabeth Gilbert, recounts how she left her husband and former way of life and found what she came to call the only true religion: the silence. Her journey took her around the world, and finally to India where she learned to meditate in an ashram.

Gilbert explained that the first step in her journey was to go on an eating binge in Italy:

I would not have been able to physically do the Yoga, the meditation, the hard rigor of spiritual work. So I went to Italy first and I ate my guts out for four months.15

From Italy, Gilbert traveled to India where she learned to meditate:

There was something about that Yoga path that really appealed to me—and you do that through silence and the discipline of meditation—and I really wanted to go pursue that full out.

None of this works without stillness . . . One of the great teachings that I learned in India is that silence is the only true religion.16

During her time at the ashram, Gilbert had a meditative experience in which she says, “the scales fell from my eyes and the openings of the universe were shown to me.”17

Interestingly, Gilbert related a story of how a newfound meditating friend experienced “colors,” “sounds,” “whirling,” and “twirling” during his meditation times.18 This is a description of the kundalini (meaning serpent power in Hinduism) effect experienced by Yoga practitioners. Kundalini is said to be lying dormant, coiled at the base of the spine. When it is awakened and encouraged up the spinal passage it ultimately achieves cosmic union with the third eye. The serpent’s journey passes through ‘chakras’ or psychic centers. And mystical powers are aroused as it progresses. A similar experience led to mystic and Catholic priest Philip St. Romain hearing the voices of other beings, which he called his “inner adviser[s].”19

Eat, Pray, Love was on the New York Times Best Sellers List for over 200 weeks and has sold over ten million copies thus far. Sadly, a popular Christian writer and speaker, Anne Lamott, wrote an endorsement for the book, which sits on the back cover. Lamott is best known for her own book, Traveling Mercies. Of Eat, Pray, Love she says: “This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight.”20 But the “spiritual insight” from Gilbert’s book is the same “insight” the Hindu gurus teaching Yoga in India have been passing along to the masses for centuries.

The aim of all Hinduism is to escape the hopeless cycle of reincarnation, wherein the soul passes on from body to soul, to body to soul, over and over again. The purpose of Yoga is to prepare a person to cut off the relationship between himself and the physical world, in preparation for death. He is trained to stop his life processes, to stop thinking, to stop the senses, to stop breathing. Hindus believe the escape from all this living and dying is through Yoga.

Returning to India after thirteen years as a Christian on a research team, I was able to recognize how complicated and contradictory the philosophy of Hinduism really is. Through Yoga, the practitioner trains himself to slow down and eventually stop his life processes. Even the breathing exercises taught in Yoga are not intended to be a health benefit. They are not designed to enable one to breathe more efficiently, but to control one’s breathing. The purpose is to enable one to slow the breathing down to a minimum in order to stop it one day altogether. Yoga’s gift is merely a form of suicide.

In contrast, Jesus said He came to give those who follow Him life. He is the antithesis of death—His resurrection is a powerful illustration of this:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (John 11: 25, 26)

Source: Lighthouse Trails Research Ministry

Endnotes
1. Upasana Bhat, “Prostitution ‘increases’ in India” (BBC News, Delhi, July 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5140526.stm).
2. Robert I. Friedman, “India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe” (The Nation, Vol. 262, No. 14, New York, April 8, 1996).
3. Central Board of Film Certification (Government of India, http://www.cbfcindia.tn.nic.in).
4. G.B. Singh, Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity (Prometheus Books, 2004), p. 76.
5. “Population of India,” from http://www.indianchild.com/population_of_india.htm.
6. List of countries by GDP (nominal): taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal), the CIA’s World Factbook for 2007.
7. “Work Among Children” (South Asian Council for Community and Children in Crisis, http://www.sac-ccc.org/2006/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=33).
8. Ibid.
9. Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” (“Commentary,” March 1983, published monthly by the American Jewish Committee, New York, NY, http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt).
10. Quote by Satyananda Saraswati, accessed at http://www.7centers.com/10daytransformation.html.
11. The Gura Gita passages, accessed at: http://www.srinannagaru.com/articles/gurugita/gurugita.pdf.
12. Michael Ray, Creativity in Business (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1986, 1st Edition), back flap.
13. Michael Ray, The Highest Goal (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004), p. 28.
14. Michael Ray, Creativity in Business, op. cit., p. 37.
15. Elizabeth Gilbert, quotes from Oprah Winfrey’s website: http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/slideshow1_ss_20071005_350/6.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Philip St. Romain, Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (Crossroad Pub. Co., 1995), p. 39.
20. Anne Lamott, on the back cover of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

“The Bible Is a Dirty Book”: Unbelief and Hatred for the God of the Bible

KASPARS OZOLINS

This month, Loren Seibold, editor of Adventist Today, wrote a provocatively titled piece: “The Bible Is a Dirty Book: …which also contains the words of eternal life.” This title, while clearly intended to grab attention, in no way exaggerates the author’s true feelings toward Scripture. For as I read it, I was taken aback by the content no less than I was shocked by the title. Thus it is that the formerly feigned reverence for the Word of God by progressive Adventists gives way to unveiled contempt.

Seibold’s article gives some initial examples of explicit wording and sexually graphic content from Scripture, before moving on to his real objection to the Bible (what he calls “the worst pornography”): its graphic violence. Particularly objectionable to the author is the fact that God is portrayed as commanding the Israelites to slaughter their enemies, seemingly indiscriminately. Seibold cites Deuteronomy 20:16–18 as an example (in the outdated KJV for maximum effect): 

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee…

The three dots at the end of the quotation conceal the entirety of verse 18. This was probably done by Seibold in order to make God’s command appear as unreasonable and offensive to modern ears as possible. The inhabitants of these cities were decreed by God for destruction “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God” (v. 18). Sin is deadly, and a deadly serious matter, at that. But that’s not at all how a modern religious person would view these things.

Seibold is equally incensed at another passage, Numbers 31:17–18: 

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

His response is incredulous, outraged, and mocking: “Seriously? God said you should ‘keep the little girls alive for yourselves’? Since their virginity is particularly noted—uh, what exactly did God intend you to do with them?” Seibold completely leaves out the entire context of Numbers 31, namely that it was commanded as a response to the Midianites’ incitement to sexual sin and spiritual adultery at Baal Peor (Numbers 25).

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men.

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men. Instead, this passage protects the innocent Midianite women who had not participated in this horrific sin against the Israelites. However, it seems that Seibold does not care about these details, but is instead trying to drive home his point: The Bible is a dirty book.  

A Christian attitude toward Scripture

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue. When we read the text faithfully and contextually, good solutions often present themselves, as shown above. But even when we may not get the full picture, or when the solution is not as satisfactory as we might wish, the Bible’s inner theological coherence keeps us grounded. 

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue.

God is the author of all life. God gives life, and takes life. God has the right and prerogative, as Creator, to take human life (especially in a context of human sin and rebellion). Furthermore, God has the right to use human instruments as a chosen vehicle of divine justice. Governments are charged with carrying out God’s judgment, for example (Rom 13:4). So the difference between vigilante vengeance and legitimate justice is partly due to whether or not God has authorized a particular agent (such as the Israelites) to carry out his judgment. 

Noted Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman helpfully describes some of what is going on in these difficult narratives: “We should not be amazed that God ordered the death of the Canaanites, but rather we should stand in amazement that he lets anyone live. The Conquest [of Canaan] involves the intrusion of the ethics of the end times, the consummation, into the period of common grace. In a sense, the destruction of the Canaanites is a preview of the final judgment.” Notice that the Israelite conquest represents something out of the ordinary. But sooner or later, judgment will come to all sinners, hence our dire need for the gospel. Listen to the sobering words of the Lord Jesus, in response to the crowds who told him about a horrible thing that Pilate had done to some Galileans (Luke 13:2–5):

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

One day God will set to right every injustice. But that includes the injustice of every sinner, both great and small. That is why these stories about God’s righteous judgment being executed in this life ought to fill us with wonder at the gospel. They ought to make us love the Savior who bore our own judgment in his body so that not one drop of condemnation would fall upon those who believe.

This is what I mean by a Christian attitude toward Scripture. It is fine to have unresolved questions, to seek answers from the text, to wrestle with Scripture. But it is never right for a Christian to question Scripture’s trustworthiness or its goodness, because to do so is to question the trustworthiness and goodness of its Author. There is a very particular attitude toward Scripture which God has promised to honor: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word” (Isa 66:2).

An unbelieving attitude toward Scripture

If you dig down deep enough (though it is perhaps surprising to some), one key aspect of false religion and unbiblical worldviews is an unmistakable hatred for the God of the Bible and for what the God of the Bible has said in his Word. I said “dig down” because sometimes this reality is hard to uncover, though it truly is there. Some individuals, after reading Seibold’s article, might counter that he doesn’t really hate God, only that he has misunderstood what the Bible actually claims about God and his interactions with human beings. 

While I do think Seibold has twisted the sense of some of the passages he cites in his article, he seems to have a much bigger and fundamental issue with the Bible than merely the odd verse. Listen to his fairly clear evaluation of Scripture:

Someone is going to say here, “You’re trashing the Bible.” No, I’m trashing one very bad way of reading it. The Bible contains the words of eternal life, but not every word in the Bible is a word of eternal life. Much of it is terribly hard to understand—but even when understood, there’s a surfeit of really bad theology, a horrible lack of respect for human life, and much that is utterly irrelevant to spiritual growth. In its pages some great “holy men of God” did convey to us the astonishing love of God and God’s desire to save us. But it appears some of the words in the Old Testament and Revelation were written by angry, vengeful men—or, in Ezekiel’s case, possibly even mentally ill men.

Things are even further clarified when one pays careful attention to the author’s use of pronouns throughout the article: 

  • “[this] surely isn’t inspired by my God”
  • “a God worthy of our worship has to be better than the god [sic] pictured in Numbers 31:17-18.”
  • “our God isn’t always accurately depicted in the book that was written about him.”

Those are fairly shocking admissions. Sometimes Seibold seems to even move past the idea of the God of the Bible merely being a literary invention of its authors: “Undoubtedly some angry person thought God felt that way, but I’d want nothing to do with a God who actually thought that was a good idea [emphasis added].” And again: “It is impossible for me to believe that God insisted on so much violence—and if God did, that’s not a God I can worship or regard as holy in any way [emphasis added].” 

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept?

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept? His instructions at the end begin with a summary statement: “[T]o be a holy and godly person takes more than just following the Bible.” Ultimately, he claims “we Christians must read it through the lens of Jesus.” In fact, Seibold explicitly sets up a sharp contrast between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament:

When Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” he was correcting the Old Testament. He was illustrating, by his life, that that picture of God was erroneous. That’s why he didn’t say, “If you’ve seen what the Father did in the Old Testament, well, that’s what I’m like.” Because he wasn’t.

Nevertheless, even Jesus can be a fallible guide to what Seibold’s God is like. For among his illustrations of the Bible as a “dirty book” is even a passage from the New Testament (Revelation 19:19–21). This prompts him to lament: “The New Testament, which introduces us to the wonderful figure of Jesus, is not entirely free of taint in this regard either.”

Ultimately, the only fully reliable guide to what Loren Seibold’s God is like is Seibold himself (along with his like-minded Adventist friends). The technical term for this mode of thinking is idolatry. 

The Doctrine of Scripture and the Doctrine of God

The rejection of the trustworthiness of Scripture is not peculiar to progressive Adventism, but lies at the very heart of the entire movement, as its prophetess acknowledges:

The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen. Look at the different writers (Ye Shall Receive Power, p. 225).

Adventists can (and do) make adamant claims about Ellen G. White’s high view of Scripture, as did GC President Arthur Daniells, at her funeral in 1915: “No Christian teacher in this generation, no religious reformer in any preceding age, has placed a higher value upon the Bible.” But White’s teaching of “thought inspiration” is not an isolated phenomenon. It is fundamentally linked to her vast universe of writings that present an alternative worldview (the Great Controversy), an alternative god (“the three great worthies”), and an alternative salvation (the Three Angels’ messages). 

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God.

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God. And at the very heart of a faulty doctrine of God is a rejection and hatred of the God of the Bible. As Calvin famously stated: “When the Bible speaks, God speaks.” 

To reject the words of the Bible is not merely to claim to have a different hermeneutic; it is to reject the God of the Bible Himself. †

Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins was born in Latvia to an Adventist family. They moved to Los Angeles where Kaspars attended Adventist elementary and high schools in Glendale, California, and his father was an Adventist pastor. He met Ieva, his wife, while studying in Latvia before pursuing a doctorate at UCLA in historical linguistics. After Kaspars completed an M. Div. at The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, California, he served as a research associate at Tyndale House in Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. He is now on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation.

Martin Luther: God Hater to God Lover

Martin Luther was one of the famous Reformers in the Protestant Reformation. He unknowingly started the Reformation on October 31, 1517. 

There was a time in his life when he confessed:

“I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…” 

In 1505 he became a Roman Catholic monk by entering a monastery at Erfurt in Saxony Germany.  In 1533 he described his life as a monk:

“I was indeed a pious monk and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can say: “If ever a monk gained heaven through monkery, it should have been I. All my monastic brethren who knew me will testify to this. I would have martyred myself to death with fasting, praying, reading, and other good works had I remained a monk much longer.”

Luther was a very pious, moral, Roman Catholic monk trying to work his way to heaven. A heaven which is ruled by a righteous God who he confessed hating.

Why did Luther hate God? At the root of it was his ignorance. Apostle Paul writing about the unbelieving Gentiles says they are “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” them (Ephesians 4:17-18). Such was Luther’s case. The following explains, in his own words, what happened:

“Meanwhile, that same year I had again turned to the exposition of the Psalter, confident that after the academic treatment of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans and Galatians and the Epistle of the Hebrews I was better trained. Certainly, I had been possessed by an unusually ardent desire to understand Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Nevertheless, in spite of the ardour of my heart I was hindered by the unique word in the first chapter: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it.’ I hated that word ‘righteousness of God’, because in accordance with the usage and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand it philosophically as meaning, as they put it, the formal or active righteousness according to which God is righteous and punishes sinners and the unjust.”

“As a monk I led an irreproachable life. Nevertheless, I felt that I was a sinner before God. My conscience was restless, and I could not depend on God being propitiated by my satisfactions [good works]. Not only did I not love, but I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…. Thus a furious battle raged within my perplexed conscience, but meanwhile I was knocking at the door of this particular Pauline passage, earnestly seeking to know the mind of the great Apostle.”

“Day and night I tried to meditate upon the significance of these words: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written: The righteous shall live by faith.’ Then, finally, God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely, faith and that this sentence -The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel – is passive, indicating that the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: ’The righteous shall live by faith.’ Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise. In the same moment the face of the whole of scripture became apparent to me. My mind ran through the scriptures, as far as I was able to recollect them, seeking analogies in other phrases, such as the work of God, by which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.”

“Just as intensely as I had before hated the expression ‘the righteousness of God’, I now lovingly praised this most pleasant word. This passage from Paul became to me the very gate to Paradise.”* 

In another place Luther writes about this experience,

“At first whenever I read or sang the Psalm: ‘Deliver me in thy righteousness’, I was frightened, and I hated the words ‘the righteousness of God’ and ‘the work of God’, for I believed that the righteousness of God meant his severe judgment.  Were he to save me accordingly, I should be damned for ever. But the words ‘the mercy of God’ and ‘the help of God’ I liked better. Thanks to God, when I understood the matter and learned that the righteousness of God means that righteousness by which he justifies us, the righteousness bestowed as a free gift in Jesus Christ, the grammar became clear and the Psalter more to my taste.”*

And in one last place he writes,

“These words ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness of God’ struck my conscience as flashes of lightning, frightening me each time I heard them: if God is righteous, he punishes. But by the grace of God, as I once mediated upon these words in this tower and heated room: The righteous shall live by faith’ and the ‘righteousness of God’, there suddenly came into my mind the thought that if we as righteous are to live by faith, and if the righteousness of faith is to be for salvation to everyone who believes, then it is not our merit , but the mercy of God. Thus my soul was refreshed, for it is the righteous of God by which we are justified and saved through Christ. These words became more pleasant to me. Through this word the Holy Spirit enlightened me in the tower.”*

As we can read, Luther goes from a ‘God hater’ to a ‘God lover’ once he is no longer ignorant of the following verse:

‘For in it [the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.’ (Romans 1:17)

Martin was no longer “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” him. By the Lord’s revelation to him, Martin went from being a lost Roman Catholic monk seeking to be saved by his good works to a person who was saved by God’s grace by faith ALONE. He says this truth ‘became to me the very gate to Paradise’.  Now he could participate in the life of God with a clear conscience knowing that his sins were forgiven in Christ. He realized his good works amounted to nothing when it came to being saved from the guilt and penalty of his sin.

All of his anger and hate toward God was due to not properly understanding God’s ‘righteousness’. The Roman Catholic doctors who had taught Luther only understood one side of the ‘righteousness’ coin. In His heart Luther knew he was a sinner and he had been taught that this “righteousness” was responsible for God punishing sinners and the unjust. And he said he hated this righteous God because of this.

Unfortunately, Luther’s teachers had received an unbiblical, false work-based salvation from their Roman Catholic ancestors and could not teach Luther the other side of the “righteous” coin. This being that when sinners place their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross ALONE for salvation, this very righteousness is imputed or credited to their account and thereby they stand before God legally as if they had never sinned. All because of what Jesus Christ did and they are now in Him through their faith and God’s grace.

His teachers did not believe this.

The believer becomes the ‘righteousness of God’ in-Christ Jesus (II Corinthian 5:21).  All of God’s moral excellence and virtue is imputed or credited to the believing sinner’s account. Hallelujah!

What about you?

Is your ignorance about God hindering your relationship with Him?

Do you have a clear conscience before Him or in your heart of hearts you know something is not right, maybe very, very wrong.

Have you ever checked God and Jesus Christ out by reading the New Testament yourself? If not, I encourage you to do so.

If your relationship with the God of the Holy Bible needs a correction or is non-existent, I pray that you will not rest until you are at peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ alone.

“The Lord … is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (Peter – II Peter 3: 9)

Carl

* Martin Luther quotes from Hans Hillerbrand, Editor, The Reformation – A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers And Participants (Baker Book House, 1972) pp. 27-28

Conversation With a Truth Seeker

As a result we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by the craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ…..  (Ephesians 4: 14-15)

It is a blessed thing to see Christians who are builded up by the spirit of God and accordance with the truth. But so many always seemed to be running after some new thing, never seeming to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case.

 Years ago as I sat in my office in Oakland there came in through the book room a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders, and a long unkept beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not like to be interrupted, for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some religious oddity. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth seeker, and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”

“You are mistaken,” I said; “I am not a truth seeker at all.”

“Oh, you are not; may I ask why you are not?”

“Why, because, sir, I have found him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth seeker, but now I am a truth finder, for I know Christ.”

“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”

“Oh, yes; there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher, and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through his Word.”

 “Well, as for me, I am always seeking; I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”

 “Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”

“Of me?”

 “Yes.”

 “What did it say about me?”

“It said, ‘Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”

“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.

“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found him and have been found of him.”

Then he began to impart some of his weird gospel to me and said, “But you don’t know who I am.”

“No,” I said; “beyond what is written here I do not know who you are.”

“I am one of the 144,000 of whom you read in Revelation.”

“What tribe, please?” I asked.

“Well, the Lord knows; I don’t,” he said.

“Then you will have to excuse me for not taking your word for it and really believing that you are one of the 144,000.”

“But have you not heard that the first resurrection has already taken place?” he asked. “I am in my resurrection body.”

“Oh, I am dreadfully disappointed,” I said. “I never thought it would look like that. I thought it was to be something beautiful.”

Maybe I was a little discourteous to the poor old gentleman, but he was so indignant he turned and cursed me in the name of the Lord and tramped out knocking his shoes against the floor to shake off the dust as a witness against me.

“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:7)

Source: H. A. Ironside, LITT.D, In The Heavenlies [Ephesians] (Loizeaux Brothers, 1937) pp. 197-199

If you are a truth seeker seeking to know the truth of the universe, let me point you to Jesus Christ who made the universe. He is, as revealed in the Holy Bible, The Truth. Once you meet Him, your journey will be at an end.

Speaking of Jesus, it is written:

And He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities –all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. (Colossians 1: 15-18)

Following The Teacher,

Carl

Ex-psychic repents of ‘demonic’ fixation on numerology: ‘A desire for control’

By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter

Unsplash/Scott Rogerson

Two former psychics who turned away from the occult and became Christians say the New Age practice of numerology is “demonic,” “deceptive” and addictive because it can potentially lead to an unhealthy fixation on satanic influences that are far from God. 

Former psychic Doreen Virtue joined ex-psychic Jenn Nizza on a recent episode of Nizza’s “Ex-Psychic Saved” podcast, where they warned listeners about what they say are the harmful effects of numerology. 

Numerology is the belief in a mystical relationship between numbers and their symbolism in people’s lives and futures. Both women shared that they know firsthand how tempting practicing numerology can be when someone is lured into the practice. 

“I was a psychic medium. I was not a numerologist. … But, I went to many. And then, when I would be doing psychic medium readings, numbers would be used because then, I had some sort of New Age understanding of what the demons told numerologists — what was channeled — and they would use numbers in my readings,” Nizza shared. 

Even though she wouldn’t describe herself as a former numerologist, Nizza said when she was a psychic medium, she taught a divination class in which she would use numbers and specific equations that she received from demons to deliver messages to her clients. 

At that time, Nizza said she desired wisdom that always seemed unattainable, and she would chase after what she believed was psychic knowledge. 

“That’s what divination really is. … You’re getting information. You’re wanting control. You don’t have it. You want power. This person thinks they have power. And then, you have to go to other psychics, probably, after that, or do manifesting, and you keep going back to the problem for the solution. … That’s my story with numerology. And of course, angel numbers and so on and so forth,” Nizza shared. 

Virtue said she too wanted power that always seemed out of reach. 

“This is a desire for control. It’s a desire for secret wisdom and hidden information, just like the serpent offered to Eve in Genesis 3. And so, I was no different. I was looking for a way to predict the future to control the future, manifest the future,” Virtue said.  

Virtue said she was led into numerology after having a detailed dream about her grandmother Pearl. Looking back now, 20 years later, she said she knows she did not really see her grandmother but rather a demon impersonating her grandmother.  

After having the dream, Virtue said she was led to study Pythagoras, which led her to explore numerology. 

“I learned the classical numerology, which by the way, is different for different teachers. And that’s another reason why New Age is not valid because …  depending on who you talk to, five could mean ‘change’ or five could mean ‘death’ or, you know, six can mean ‘materiality’ or in the Bible, it can be ‘the mark of the beast 666.’ The same number can mean different things to different systems. So, that shows you right there that the interpretation is not valid,” Virtue said. 

For her book Angel Numbers, Virtue said she would meditate on numbers and notice her thoughts and visions. And she would believe that “so-called Angels” were sending her messages. She later realized that the “angels” were really “Satan’s demons or minions” masquerading as angels of light. 

“I have a BA and MA in counseling psychology and I studied, you know, human psyche. … The mind looks for patterns because it’s wanting control. So, if you notice three’s all day long, your mind is going to want to try and pigeonhole what does this mean and try and find meaning out of it in a meaningless world, meaningless universe,” Virtue explained.  

“The only meaning of this universe is that it’s God’s universe. God made it and our purpose is to glorify Him, and doing divination is the opposite of glorifying God. He commanded us not to do any form of divination or look for signs or omens. That’s in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the reason is because He loves us and doesn’t want us to be misled by the demons.” 

Instead of turning to “demonic” and “occult” practices, such as, numerology, God “wants us to turn to Him for wisdom through His Word, through His book, the Bible, and not to try and lean on our own understanding,” she continued. 

“It’s absolutely a trap. I followed numerology. I taught numerology. I repent and apologize that I was wrong.” 

Virtue advises listeners struggling to turn away from numerology to seek Christ and surrender their sinful desires to Him. 

“People all the time, ask me: ‘How do I get the obsession with numbers out of my head?’ Because once you learn these angel number patterns or numerology patterns and then, you know, let’s say you leave New Age — praise the Lord — [people in these scenarios] they have a hard time letting go of noticing the license plates, and the receipts and the telephone number patterns,” Virtue said. 

“As we talked about your brain goes to patterns trying to make order out of this world. So, what you want to do with any thoughts, whether it’s sexual tension, thought or selfish thought or a hateful thought is you always want to lay that at the foot of the cross,” she continued.  

“You can get on your knees and repent. Repent, of course, in Greek means metanoia, change your mind. You are apologizing to God, just like David showed us in the songs how he poured his heart out to God. He wasn’t worried about being politically correct. He was just raw with God and we want to be the same.”

Virtue said that numerology and divination are sinful acts that are punishable by God, as noted in Deuteronomy 18, Acts 16:16, Acts 19:19 and Revelation 22:15.  

“What you want to do is you can ask God, … to relieve you of these recurring patterns that are in you. You can ask Him, like in Psalm 139, to ‘purify you.’ You can ask God; ‘please purify my heart. Please purify my mind. Please purify my intentions,'” Virtue advised. “We have to understand what’s a biblical thought and what’s a nonbiblical thought and take them all to God.”

Nicole Alcindor is a reporter for The Christian Post. 

‘I was dead inside’: Ex-astrologer on bold mission to slay evil, demonic forces after escaping witchcraft, New Age

By Billy Hallowell, Contributor

istock/Thanumporn Thongkongkaew

Tailah Scroggins felt dead inside. After growing up in a Christian home, she somehow fell into the occult, embracing astrology, witchcraft and the New Age.

But after embarking on a dark journey and losing the will to live, she had an incredible interaction with Jesus that changed everything.

Today, Scroggins is an online evangelist, writer, and truth-teller on a mission to help others escape evil. She recently shared her story with “Billy Hallowell’s Playing With Fire Podcast,” explaining how she was raised in a Christian home and believed in God before stumbling into the occult.

She said she was first introduced to the New Age in high school when someone she trusted in her family told her about astrology.

“They had this big … textbook of everything astrology, and they were like, ‘This describes my personality so perfectly — look what it says about you,’” Scroggins said. “I was caught off-guard, and I remember … I was like, ‘But how can this be true? If God created all of us and he made our personalities, how can a planet dictate my future or dictate my personality?’”

She said this was the first “seed of deception” the devil planted in her life, and her perspective started to shift. With her family friend stating God created astrology as a system “He put in order,” she started down what she now believes was a dangerous path.

“They provided me some explanation that was totally false, but I didn’t know the word of God enough,” Scroggins said. “I knew a lot about God, but I didn’t know … what the Bible said about the occult — about the darkness, about the battle. I just knew the good things, and so I became an astrologer.”

Scroggins spent 11 years as an astrologer, describing it as her “worldview” and “life.”

Still, she attended church and clung to some Christian ideas. She said the entire experience opened her up to “so much deception and confusion” as she lived life as a “lukewarm Christian” plagued by her occultic practices.

As Scroggins entered college, she said she was disappointed in God, feeling frustrated He hadn’t answered her wants and whims on her timeline.

“It’s spiritual immaturity,” she said of her perspective at the time. We don’t trust God’s timing, and so I’m young, I’m 18 at this time, and I’m mad — I’m mad that God didn’t open the door that I wanted Him to open, and that’s just kind of part of being a baby Christian.”

Her spiritual immaturity also led her to join in on the party lifestyle. Scroggins said “the enemy lied” and she “took his bait” and began down a negative path, getting drunk every weekend.

“The more I rebelled and lived in this party lifestyle, the more I craved astrology, the witchcraft, the divination, and all of that,” Scroggins said. “It was like this hunger exploded … it was like this black hole … I needed to be consuming it.”

She said depression soon took hold and suicidal thoughts reigned. Scroggins would find herself crying for two hours every day for no reason, as she grappled with the emptiness left by the abandonment of her relationship with the Lord.

Scroggins added, “It was like I had no reason to live.”

A family friend aware of her situation ended up intervening — and the experience brought Scroggins true healing. The woman was at Scroggins’ home one day, and she candidly spoke with the then-college student.

“She just looked at me one day, and she said, ‘Today is the day of your freedom,’ and I said, ‘OK, I don’t know what that means, but I have no will to live,’” Scroggins recalled. “I hadn’t attempted to do anything or take my life, but I was dead inside. And so I was like, ‘You can pray and do whatever you want to me because there’s nowhere else for me to go. I’m already at rock bottom,’ and so she prayed for me.”

Those invocations, which Scroggins described as “deliverance prayers,” had a profound impact. Scroggins said they “cast every spirit of death and depression out,” and she immediately felt “huge weights being lifted off.”

She now believes the entire experience was “supernatural,” leading her to a fruitful and meaningful relationship with Christ.

“The depression never came back, the suicidal thoughts never came back — ever,” she said. “It’s been over six years. I was delivered.”

Scroggins continued, “God completely healed me, set me free.”

Over time, she abandoned her occultic practices and clung close to Jesus. A few years later, though, she found herself alarmed by how many others were being enraptured by the same world she had escaped.

Scroggins said she was shocked during COVID-19 to see how interest in witchcraft, Tarot cards, crystals, and the occult exploded online.

“It grieved me because that was my story,” she said. “I was into New Age. I was into the false spirituality in witchcraft.”

Realizing she had been “set free … by Jesus,” she decided to counter occultic videos getting millions of views with content of her own that would instead point people toward Jesus.

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna share my testimony, and I’m going to expose astrology. I’m going to expose the New Age, I’m going to expose all of it,’” she said. “And I just started telling people what I went through and what God saved me from. And what came into my life when I started doing those practices — and it was all evil.”

Listen to Scroggins explain her journey and why she’s openly shared her testimony.

This article was originally published by CBN’s Faithwire.

Source: Christian Post

Jesus: Moral Teacher or God?

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.” C.S. Lewis

Yes, everyone has to choose. Is Jesus God come in the flesh to earth or was He just a good, moral Jewish sage who taught His followers how to live in this world? Liberal or progressive Christianity says that Jesus is just a model for living more than an object for worship. In other words, Jesus was not divine.

Who do you say Jesus is? Moral teacher or God? If you do not know, I would suggest you read the New Testament and decide for yourself.

I believe you will see that Jesus’ moral teaching only works when we retain his identity as Lord. And if He is Lord, He is worthy of your worship.

Who do you say He is?

God bless – Carl

Source: Michael J. Kruger – The Ten Commandments of Progressive Christianity (Cruciform Press, 2019)

Praying to the Departed Conjures Fallen Angels

When a quarterback throws a pass in a football game, he is obviously trying to get the ball to one of his teammates. It is never his intention for a player on the opposing team to intercept it, but sometimes that is exactly what happens. The quarterback meant well, but the result of his pass ended up benefiting the other team.

Likewise, many well-meaning religious people throw various “prayer passes” in hopes of gaining spiritual assistance. Among these religious people are of course a number of Christians. Some of them have been taught to only “throw the ball” to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These believers pray only to God Himself. Others have been taught that it is acceptable and even beneficial to pray to certain saints in heaven who are thought to be able to intercede on our behalf and grant us assistance.

So what is going on here? What really happens with prayers to the departed that are prayed everyday by religious people all over the world? Simply put, some prayers which are assumed to be prayers of “intercession” are in reality prayers of “interception.” That is, these prayers do not reach the intended “receiver.” Instead, they are intercepted by fallen angels. One of the many activities of evil spirits is to encourage religious people to pray to “dead” believers. The Bible does not encourage such a thing, but instead warns against it.

“But wait,” someone may say. “Believers in heaven are not dead, but alive.” True, and thankfully so. Their earthly body died, but their spirit is alive in heaven and will be granted a perfect heavenly body at the end of time. (see 1 Cor. 15:42-53) So yes, they are not really dead. But that doesn’t mean they hear our prayers, or provide even the slightest bit of assistance in answer to our prayers, regardless of how noble their lives may have been while on earth.

God doesn’t use saints in heaven to bless saints on earth. Instead, God utilizes His holy angels to minister to His children on earth. (see Hebrews 1:14) God would have told us in His Word if He wanted us praying to angels, or praying to believers who have gone before us into heaven. We have a much better mediator, “the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5) He is fully God, and fully Man. And He is more than able to hear millions of prayers at the same time from Christians all over the world, and to provide exactly what we need in answer to them.

So should I pray to the Father, or to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit? Actually, yes. Christians can pray to each of them individually, but you can also pray to them together as One. They are three Persons in One God. So just pray to God. And while it’s fine to thank Him for the faithfulness of believers who have gone before us, there is simply no good reason to pray to those saints. That sort of thing will only invite “our opponents” in the spiritual realm to come alongside us in our prayers. Those wicked angels are attracted anytime they see that they can “pick off a pass” from one of God’s children. They are drawn in anytime religious practices which are contrary to Scripture get carried out by anyone.

Always remember this about religion. Fallen angels want people to carry out religious activities, just so long as those activities don’t please the Lord and draw on His power. False religious practices are just as dangerous, if not more so, than living life with no religious practices. The counterfeit activity keeps the person from even thinking about his need for the genuine practice. It would be similar to using counterfeit money, but not knowing the bills are counterfeit. In that situation, why would I try to get genuine bills if I thought the bills I was already using are the real thing? Spiritual counterfeits, like financial counterfeits, always provide a dangerous and false sense of security.

Do some Christians fall prey to unbiblical and unhealthy spiritual practices? Of course. It happens all the time, not only by praying to the departed, but in an assortment of other mystical and magical practices which tend to creep into both Protestant and Catholic traditions. For example, some believers in certain churches have been taught to “sow a seed” of financial giving in order to receive whatever answer to prayer they desire. In essence, rub the bottle and make the genie appear. I don’t think so. It’s fanaticism, plain and simple. Appealing yes, but beneficial no. Just like prayers to the departed, this practice only draws in the participation of the opposing team in the spiritual realm. The Holy Spirit will never be found in such gimmicks by spiritual leaders, who are actually just religious hucksters.

For whatever reason, praying to the departed is equally appealing to many religious people. It energizes folks who do it. They get drawn deeper and deeper into it. Before they know it, they are hooked. But it was not God who led them to start praying to the departed. God never leads anyone to do such a thing.

If any saint who has gone before us is able to compete even slightly in your heart and mind with your focus on the Lord, then the opposing team has accomplished a victory of sorts on the “playing field” of your soul. One of their biggest goals when it comes to religious people, including Christians, is to tempt us to view something or someone other than God as a means of receiving blessings from heaven. If Jesus is not our “all in all,” we will fall for counterfeit methods of being spiritual and attaining grace.

In reality, no one has ever received even a tiny bit of God’s grace or blessing by praying to departed saints. Every one of those “prayer passes” has been intercepted by the other team. That doesn’t seem to stop many people from calling that same legalistic play over and over again. Such is life in the realm of religious fanaticism whenever Protestants or Catholics take their eyes off Christ alone, and utilize magical methods in hopes of achieving spiritual victories.

Prayers to the departed never reach St. Paul, or St. Augustine, or the mother of our Lord, or the brother of our Lord, or St. Francis of Assisi, or any other saint. All those prayers do is attract fallen angels into the spiritual atmosphere around your soul. Those angels hover over anyone who chooses to pray to the dead. It opens a spiritual door through which those angels enter your space. If you have prayed such prayers, simply talk to the Lord about it and ask Him to close any doors you have opened out of ignorance. And choose to be wise from this day forward by only praying to God, but never again to departed saints.

Remember, there is another team on the spiritual playing field and they have an intense hatred for Jesus Christ, and an equally intense fear of Him. After all, He defeated them at the cross. (see Colossians 2:15) These spiritual forces (evil angels) will try just about anything to convince you to seek blessings through someone other than Christ, or in addition to Christ. They can even increase your spiritual feelings and sensations when you do things that invite their participation. Part of the deception is that it makes you feel like you are connecting with those departed saints. Evil spirits can definitely give you a “spiritual buzz” and a real new age experience. That is one reason to never trust feelings, but only trust Jesus as you rely upon God’s objective Word rather than man’s subjective emotions.

How does all of this sound to you? Even if you are not yet totally convinced that praying to departed saints is dangerous, would you be willing to stop doing it “just in case” you are wrong? Or are you already hooked on that magical practice? If so, it’s time to recognize how this religious addiction only leads to interceptions, but never to God-pleasing intercession.

It’s also time to get back to the huddle (God’s Word) and call a new play. You have a receiver on your team who will never allow even one of your passes to Him to be intercepted, and His name is Jesus. If I were you, I would call His number every time. That is the safe play for every Christian.

Come to think of it, why would a Christian even think about throwing to another receiver, even if that man or woman did have a prominent role in Christian history? So what? Don’t start praying to him or her just because God used that person in a special way. No one, and I mean no one, can provide intercession between you and the Father other than Jesus Christ. Believers have access to the Father only because of what Christ accomplished for us on the cross. If you attempt to add or subtract to Christ’s work at Calvary, you miss out on eternal salvation. (see Galatians 3:1-14)

If God wanted His children praying to departed saints, He would have certainly told us so in His Word. That is God’s love letter to His family. He would not have left out something that important. By not placing it in the Bible, but instead warning believers about trying to communicate with the dead, God has made it clear how He feels about His children praying to the departed.

There are saints, and then there is Jesus. There is intercession, and then there are interceptions. Don’t “throw your prayers” where the enemy can pick them off. It is nothing less than spiritual deception to believe that any receiver other than Jesus can actually catch those prayers, and answer them.

Draw near to God with confidence through faith in the blood of Jesus, and resist any temptation you may feel to dabble with a magic formula that involves praying to the departed. While such superstitious prayers will likely increase your spiritual sensations as a result of the presence of fallen angels, it will do nothing to bring you God’s grace or blessing. Do not be deceived just because it happens to be a spiritual activity. There are actually a number of religious practices which attempt contact with dead people, and all of them are extremely dangerous to your soul.

Just because an activity is “spiritual” doesn’t make it beneficial. If that were the case, every religion would lead to God and to heaven. Those other religions are Christ-less. Only Jesus is priceless. You can place full confidence in this approach to prayer because it comes right out of God’s playbook. It’s no wonder the angelic dark side has worked so cleverly over the centuries to seduce religious people to offer prayers to created beings rather than praying only to the Creator Himself.

Dan Delzell is the pastor of Wellspring Lutheran Church in Papillion, Neb. He is a regular contributor to The Christian Post.

Does Mary command Catholic mystics and angels to obey her?

Maria of Agreda was a 17th-century Franciscan nun and spiritual writer. She claimed that private messages were dictated to her by Mary, the humble and “highly favored” (Luke 1:28) mother of our Lord. As a noted mystic of her era, Maria’s best known single work is The Mystical City of God, consisting of eight books.

Endorsed by many renowned Popes, including Pius IX and Pius X, “no other Catholic work has received as much analysis and approval by Church authorities.” The Vatican Secretary of State issued a statement in 1999 assuring Catholics that The Mystical City of God contains no errors of faith or morals.  

Maria was initially reluctant to transcribe the transcendental messages she was receiving. She felt “most unworthy,” and yet somehow, she “resolved and attempted to write of divine and supernatural things” (Introduction, #1). Maria even sought Mary’s assistance:

“I fled in this affliction to our Queen and Lady as to my only refuge in all troubles, and after I had manifested to her my way of life and my desires, she deigned to answer me in these sweetest of words:

‘My daughter, console thyself and do not be disturbed in thy heart on account of this labor; prepare thyself for it and I will be thy Mother and Superior, whom thou shalt obey; and the same I will be to thy subjects. In all thy temptations and troubles, thou shalt take refuge with me, confer about them with me, and take the advice, which I will give thee in all things. Obey me, and I will favor thee and will continue to be attentive to thy affliction.’” (Introduction, #7).

The Apostle Paul wrote much of the New Testament, and yet never once instructed believers to converse with Mary, pray to her, or obey her. Nevertheless, Maria was convinced that she was in regular dialogue with Mary and with various angels. In her passionate zeal to obey Mary, Maria sought greater revelations. She prayed, “Speak therefore, O Lady, that thy servant may hear with an ardent desire to obey thee” (Introduction, #13).

Maria described a time “the Queen stood near by … and said to me: ‘My daughter; I desire that thou be my disciple and my companion, and I will be thy Teacher; but remember that thou must obey me courageously.’” (The Conception, Chapter 1, #7).

Maria’s response was emphatic. “I prostrated myself before the throne of the King and Queen of the universe and I offered to obey her in all things” (The Conception, Chapter 1, #7).

Does God want Catholics to become Mary’s disciples? According to Maria, even angels must obey Mary. “The holy angels obeyed their Queen and, visible only to her, stood in attendance” (Chapter 22, #762). 

The 17th-century French Roman Catholic priest, Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort, explained: “Mary has the authority over the angels and the blessed in Heaven … God has made her Queen of Heaven and Earth, leader of his armies, keeper of his treasure, dispenser of his graces, mediatrix on behalf of men, destroyer of his enemies …”  

Scripture knows nothing of such fanciful superstitions.

In reality, it was extremely unwise for Maria to pursue conversations with angels. She described “consulting about my doubts with the holy princes and angels, whom the Most High had appointed to direct this work of writing the history of our Queen” (Introduction, #8). “On many other occasions the prince Saint Michael informed me …” (#9). 

Consulting with angels, including one claiming to be Michael the archangel, invites spiritual deception. New Agers often consult with angels. The problem is that fallen angels are skilled at pretending to be someone else, while insisting they have nothing but good intentions. Once they gain a person’s trust, these deceptive angels direct people to place their full confidence in anyone but Christ and his sacrificial death on the cross.

After much dialogue with her invisible spirit guides, Maria expressed her supreme confidence in Mary. She wrote, “In thy hands do I place my salvation, O Mistress and Queen! Do thou take charge of it to the end; for thy desires are holy and powerful on account of the merits of thy most holy Son” (Chapter 19, #311).

The Holy Spirit has never led anyone to place their salvation in the hands of Mary. Such misplaced confidence can stem from conversations with entities who pretend to be holy angels or saints in Heaven. The Apostle John wrote, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). 

Maria dearly wanted her fellow Spaniards to become fully devoted to Mary. She wrote, “would that all thy inhabitants unite in a burning devotion to the most holy Mary! How greatly would thy glory then shine forth! How much wouldst thou be enlightened! How valiantly wouldst thou then be protected and defended by this Queen” (Chapter 19, #306).

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recorded many words of the Savior. Jesus never once directed his followers to rely upon Mary for assistance or protection. And in Jesus’ seven letters to seven churches in the Book of Revelation, there is not a single reference to Mary. Instead, Jesus addressed matters pertaining to salvation and genuine discipleship, as I explained in my 2014 CP op-ed, “What Would Jesus Say to Churches Today?” 

In comparing The Mystical City of God to Scripture, one points to Mary, and the other to Jesus. 

Did Mary dictate private messages to Maria, or was it a fallen angel claiming to be Mary who convinced Maria to willingly become a medium? It is not uncommon for a medium to go into a trance, “varying from light to deep, permitting spirits to control their mind.” “Throughout the 1620s Maria would repeatedly lapse into deep trances.” “The young Franciscan remained motionless and insensible for two or three hours. The ecstasy came along with levitation. She was elevated from the floor …”

Anthony William is known as the “Medical Medium.” He said, “Give the angels your true consent, and they will intervene.” As one psychic and metaphysical teacher stated: “You need to come from a place of open-heartedness, you need to be willing to ask…you need to be willing to receive the energies that will begin flowing to you.”

If a fallen angel deceived Maria of Agreda, how many other dictated messages or apparitions of Mary have also come from fallen angels? And what about devout Catholics who love Jesus, yet remain enthralled and enchanted by superstitions about Mary, even though such tales are found nowhere in Holy Scripture? Spiritual discernment is needed to see through the fog.

(I addressed a related topic 10 years ago in a CP op-ed titled, “Praying to the Departed Conjures Up Fallen Angels.”)

Dan Delzell is the pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska. 

Yoga opens ‘demonic doors’ to ‘evil spirits,’ warns ex-psychic who became Christian

By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter

While some think of yoga as a form of exercise or a way to clear the mind, others view it as a “demonic door” that opens its practitioners to and oppression.

For former psychic-turned-Christian Jenn Nizza, yoga was once a ritualistic exercise she purposely used to connect to evil spirits. After leaving the occult and turning to Christ, Nizza is using her platform to speak out against the idea that yoga is simply all fun and innocent movements. 

“I used to do yoga ritualistically, and the meditation aspect really opened me up and helped me to receive communication from evil spirits,” Nizza detailed in an episode of Billy Hallowell’s “Playing With Fire” podcast. 

“Yoga is a Hindu spiritual practice and the word ‘yoga’ is rooted in Sanskrit. It means ‘to yoke to’ or ‘to unite with.’ And what they’re doing is … they have deliberate postures that are paying tribute, honor and worship to their false gods,” she explained.  

According to Nizza, Hinduism has “over 330 million false gods, which are demons, and they’re honoring them with these postures. That’s what yoga is, and it is not just stretching and breathing.” 

Nizza cited yoga as violating the biblical teaching in Exodus 23, which she summarized as commanding the faithful “not to worship any gods before our one true God” and “not to have any other gods before Him.” 

“You’re opening demonic doors by practicing yoga because those postures that you’re doing are worshiping other little ‘g’ gods; not the one true God, of course, but Hindu demons,” Nizza said. 

“The whole thing with the demonic spirits and in the Church and everything else, I think it seems that people either over-demonize or under-demonize,” Nizza added. “We’re not looking for a demon behind every corner. But we can’t be ignorant to the fact that they’re there and that there are practices that invite them and invoke them.”

“When you give the permission to do that and invite them into your space, you’re signing up for the consequences that follow. And that’s why the warning is so, so important.”

Nizza addressed Christians who believe yoga is merely a series of physical postures and harmless as long as there is no malicious intention. She advised them to read Jeremiah 17:9, which she summarized as stating, “The heart is deceptive.” 

“It’s not like you can take yoga and blast worship music and cry out to Jesus. Or you say you’re praying while you’re doing these exercises,” Nizza maintained. “People say to me, ‘Well, God knows my heart, God knows my heart.’ That’s right, and you should be concerned about that.”

“My friend Doreen said once, ‘You wouldn’t put Scripture on a Ouija board and think that it’s OK to do it.’ … This is a real spiritual practice and super deceiving, especially because it has infiltrated the Church. Many people in the Church, many churches, are supporting yoga. It’s very heartbreaking.” 

When someone practices yoga, they “open the door or sign up or give permission to demons to come into your space,” according to Nizza. She stressed that anyone who practices yoga “will be vulnerable to demonic oppression” and the variety of symptoms it causes.

Nizza listed many ways that demons can harm a person as a result of them practicing yoga.

“Anxiety, confusion, planting seeds of doubt, sickness sometimes even; they can actually affect your health. Again, as the Christian, spiritual confusion, spiritual vulnerability, not wanting to go to church or open your Bible, anything that will be leading you away from God, that’s what the battle is.” 

Demons, she said, intend to “get you away from God, get you into disobedience to God as well and then get you into sin,” adding: “It’s so, so dangerous to do that.” 

“And then of course, as a former psychic medium, when you go through … any form of New Age meditation, you’re opening yourself up to communication with demons as well, where maybe you’re hearing things or seeing things in your home, and you’re bringing that home with you. And my concern is for the soul of the person and also for their children, by the way, who you’re bringing that demonic oppression home to.”

Nicole Alcindor is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: nicole.alcindor@christianpost.com.

The Druid’s Empty Box

About four of us, two from MCOI and two from Haven Ministries attended Paganicon 2023 [in March]. After we returned, I emailed Twin Cities Pagan Pride and asked if they have an attendance count and was told 1,000 had registered. Carl Teichrib at Forcing Change attended Paganicon in the past and contributed two articles on the event, Journeys in Paganistan -Part 1 and Journeys in Paganistan – Part 2. In Carl’s first article, he described: “a reality beyond books and TV screens – a spiritual worldview that honors creation over the Creator. Is a new Pagan age dawning? It appears so.”

What happens at Paganicon? Attendees gather to connect as a community with a shared spirituality. They participate in a variety of workshops to learn about paganism’s “ancient history,” how to better engage in ritual and worship – and how to connect with the deity or deities of their choosing. Many of them are looking to find a personalized faith – unlike their experience in Christian churches, which ideally still believe in and present “the faith once delivered to the saints.”…But some pagans just read a new and happier (in their thinking) understanding into the ancient book without throwing the whole thing out. There is a melding going on, as Carl points out: “This workshop reinforced something I would hear more than once; that many who formerly identified as Christians now follow Pagan paths….”

This is not only occurring within the pagan community but, as we already mentioned, Christians are embracing some pagan practices within the church as well. One of the workshops I attended was “Shamanic Journeying” and was led by Shaman Sherry L.M. Merriam, MA, LPCC, TCHI. She described the reason for these spiritual journeys:” Shamanistic journeying is to receive new personal revelation from spirit beings instead of information from an old religious book.”

As Shaman Sherry was preparing the group to enter into the spiritual realm for a short Shamanistic journey, she said that those who have practiced Contemplative Meditation will be familiar with these techniques….I raised my hand and asked Merriam what would happen if someone inadvertently encountered an evil spirit while on this “journey?” She assured the attendees this would never happen because each of us will have a “spirit guide.” I then asked how we would know our spirit guide is good, and she responded: “The spirit guide is always good and is your protector from evil spirits.”Even Rocky the flying squirrel knew to ask Bullwinkle if the spirits he was calling up were “friendly,” but perhaps that simple precaution is lost on people today.

 I also want to give a word of precaution. In the silent contemplation of God we are entering deeply into the spiritual realm, and there is such a thing as supernatural guidance that is not divine guidance. While the Bible does not give us a lot of information on the nature of the spiritual world, we do know enough to recognize that there are various orders of spiritual beings, and some of them are definitely not in cooperation with God and his way!

I say these things not to make you fearful but to make you knowledgeable. You need to know that “like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour,” (1 Peter 5:8). You also need to know that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world,” (1 John 4:4).

We spent over an hour with Jean (Drum) Pagano, who is a member of the Reformed Druids of North America. He describes himself as a polytheistic pantheist, one who believes in many gods and believes that God is in the cosmos and all things. After our conversation, he presented his workshop, “An Introduction to Devotional Polytheism.” He described the various rituals he performs in his attempts to build relationships with deities. During our initial discussion, he explained that often when he teaches about Paganism, he takes along a box that is labeled “The History of Paganism.” At the beginning of his presentations, he lets the audience know that he is going to show them all the information we have about ancient paganism and ritual. He opens the box to reveal it is empty. There is, in fact, very little actual information about ancient Paganism passed down from ancient practitioners. Pagano and the other pagan groups are, in truth, creating their own traditions, deities, and practices today.

In another workshop, “Lessons from the Indigenous Pagan Survivals,” offered by Andras Corban-Arthen, Andras mentioned that he has traveled to 67 countries in search of information on ancient Pagan practices. His findings could not add anything to Jean Pagano’s empty box.

Not only is it the ancient history of paganism and its rituals that is an empty box, but the newly minted paganism itself is devoid of anything that can enrich one’s life or save a lost and seeking soul. As we met and spoke with a variety of Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Druids, and Satanists, I noted that none of them understood Christianity in the least. They don’t see themselves as sinners needing salvation and assert that all religions are essentially the same at the core (perennialism).

We leave those with whom we shared the gospel with God. We clearly presented the gospel to many people and are praying for them. However, we are merely ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). God may use us to plant the seed and others to water while He causes the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).

https://midwestoutreach.org/2023/03/30/the-druids-empty-box/