God and the Evolving Universe
A BOOK REVIEW
This book, written by James Redford and published by Bantam Books, is
one of several others by the same author. Their titles include ‘The Celestine
prophecy: An Adventure’, ‘The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision’, ‘The secret
of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight’, ‘The Celestine Vision: Living
in New Spiritual Awareness’, etc. As the titles of these books suggest, the
author is interested in exploring ‘spiritual’ themes. The question naturally
arises at this point: from which basis does the author approach his subject – does
he view things from the perspective of the Bible, or does he come from another
direction? A great deal rests on the answer.
The author sets out the two main aims for which he wrote his book: 1. To
discuss a wide range of capabilities and experiences which are available to
humans, and 2. to ‘actualize’ these capabilities. He thinks that when people
utilize, or take control of, their newly-found capabilities, they will enter “a
new evolutionary step – a step as significant as the emergence of life from
inorganic matter and the rise of humanity from the first tiny cells, a step
that would bless us with spectacular new abilities and levels of experience.”
So before we even start into chapter one of this book, we know that the
author is an evolutionist, and that he believes Man can rise by his own efforts
into a higher plane of existence. Both these views are the antithesis of what
the Bible teaches. The Bible story begins not with a random process of
evolution, but with the command of a Creator. According to the Bible life is no
accident, but a highly sophisticated and designed thing, with a purpose. As to
the other view, the Bible describes not a gradual improvement of Mankind, but a
fall from perfection into the toils and troubles of sin. Into this fallen
world, estranged from God by its own willful rejection of God’s law and love,
the Creator regularly intervenes to help and heal out of sheer mercy and
compassion.
………………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter One looks at various times of heightened awareness, or
epiphanies, which people occasionally experience, and the inference is made
that these startling and memorable moments are a glimpse of some future stage
in human evolution. Again the assumption is made that “Science has enjoyed no greater
triumph than the discovery of evolution,” yet this statement has been hotly
contested by many of the world’s greatest scientists, and is by no means a
proven part of true science. As far back as Louis Pasteur, the theory of
biogenesis – life arising from non-life – was demonstrated to be a fallacy.
Life is utterly beyond chance, and even a single living cell is more
complicated than a city the size of
Most people are unaware that theories of evolution have hidden beliefs.
These beliefs are religious and are deliberately kept from the general public
who have been indoctrinated to accept evolution as science, and science as
having nothing to do with religion.
Much as I would prefer not to spend so much time on the subject of
evolution, I think it is necessary because the author of the book being
reviewed has built his entire book on evolution. I will try to be as brief as
possible.
Evolution is based on the belief that the past can be totally understood
by reference to the present day events. This belief has the technical label of
uniformitarianism. Some books call it “the present is the key to the past.”. In
the New Scientist magazine, June 1982, Mark Ridford from the Zoology department
wrote, “Uniformitarianism is not an empirical principle; it is trusted because
of its obvious logic . . . the theory of evolution stands or falls with
uniformitarianism.” Here we have a clear statement to the effect that
uniformitarianism is not empirical, that means, not provable, or ‘we cannot
test it’. This means it is non-scientific, or, a religious belief. And notice
that Mr. Ridford says evolution “stands or falls” on this belief.
Evolution is also based on atheism, or its twin sister, naturalism. 99%
of all television programs and public school textbooks, when they cover the
origin of the universe and life, make no reference to a Creator. Evolution is
implicitly atheistic. It says, in the fine print, ‘there is no God’, and ‘there
is no need of God’. Life, says evolution, can make itself, and Man is the
master of his own destiny, answerable to nobody but himself. Evolutionary
material seldom slips up by saying outright that evolution and a religious view
of origins go hand in hand, because this would reveal the real purpose of
evolutionary teaching, and expose evolutionists for what they are –
non-scientific.
The renowned evolutionist Isaac Asimov said “I am an atheist, out and
out, - I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly
suspect he does not I don’t want to waste my time.”
Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology,
Carl Sagan, in his TV series ‘Cosmos’ promotes as scientific his idea
that the universe has evolved several times over, but he fails to inform the
audience that he has a soft spot for eastern religions, such as the Brahman in
which life is repeatedly reincarnated.
Page 7 of the book tells us that “some 15 billion years ago, from a
mysterious something no larger than a single atom, our universe exploded into
existence, and within a second was millions of years across.”
The origin of the universe was never observed, and its supposed
explosion from a single point is a hypothetical argument based on carefully
selected data. In other words, that everything came from an explosion is just
another theory, which happens to fit rather nicely with the atheistic theory of
evolution. Matter created itself? Where did the original matter come from? No
scientist was there at the beginning to observe the event, and no scientist can
repeat the explosion. Once again we have non-science dressed up to look like
science, and the public is fed this lie as if it is proven.
Logic would suggest that explosions produce disorder, rather than the
opposite. The universe ought to be a chaotic mess of rubble, a mighty scattering
of dust and debris, but we see instead order, balance and what looks very much
like design. Are we to believe that, contrary to present day observations,
explosions in the past did not behave the way they do today? Why would that be?
Some of the latest photographs taken by the Hubble Orbiting Telescope show that
even the most remote reaches of the universe display not greater degrees of
dust and decay, but galaxies showing exactly the same amount of order and shape
as any galaxy close by. Evolutionary scientists expected the opposite, since
their theory demands that the leading edges of the ‘explosion’ would be
traveling faster, and therefore be in greater disarray, but they were totally
wrong.
Page 7-9 outlines the typical Darwinian evolutionary plan – explosion,
matter, formation of planets, life arising from non-life, sea creatures, land
creatures, apes, Man . . . but this idea that living things can gradually
change from one thing into another has several very solid and very scientific barriers
in its path.
One barrier is based on the DNA. As we all know these days, everything
we are physically is passed on to us through DNA and expressed as genes. Every
species has a certain number of genes, and within the genes are many possible
variations. Hence we have the dog species, but many different types of dogs,
and we have the pigeon, or horse species, but many different kinds of pigeon or
horse. This shows that it is possible to have variation within a species, but
then we also know that because of the DNA and the genes, no two different
species can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. All Man has ever seen is
variation, but never anything like a new species.
It would be very handy for evolutionists if different species could interbreed,
because that would give rise to new forms of life with the greatest of
potential to evolve further, but this never happens.
Another area in which the DNA prevents evolution is the way it limits
the number of possibilities it can produce. Because of careful selective
breeding some plants and animals have been bred to the extreme of their
potential, but once that maximum is reached, it is absolutely impossible to go
any further. For example, a horse may grow only so big, a sugar beet may contain
only a certain amount of sugar, and a human brain may be only so large.
Evolution cannot cross this barrier, and unlimited time makes no difference.
A third area in which DNA forbids evolution is in the area of adding new
organs or other features. For example, for a lizard to fly, it would need a
huge amount of new DNA to provide for the growth and maintenance of wings. A
wing requires a blood supply, bones, skin, feathers and muscles. Just as a
human might draw up many detailed plans for a new style seat for a car,
evolution needs an enormous amount of new DNA information in order to supply a
plant or creature with new features. This information is never produced. It has
never been seen to form, and the fact that if it were to accumulate it would have
to be intelligently written into the DNA to integrate it exactly with all the
other millions of bits of information, destroys the whole idea that evolution
is random.
Evolutionists cling to the sinking ship of mutations to explain how
random differences in DNA can lead to a new organism, but geneticists have
found that random differences are either useless, or a hindrance, or deadly.
Evolution demands that any change be a random or chance happening. The
mathematical possibility that chance alterations to chemicals could produce
something living, or that such random changes could alter legs to wings has
been shown to be zero since 1967. (
In today’s terms, think what happens if you randomly, or accidentally
alter a computer program. It never improves the program. The hereditary
information for a living organism is in the code – DNA. If you continue to make
chance alterations to it, it only gets worse – never better.
And finally, the great barrier against evolution in terms of DNA is the
fact that present-day observations have never seen a trend from less complex to
more complex. In fact observations have shown that the trend is exactly the
opposite way. Very complex organisms tend to degenerate, lose DNA, lose
information, and trend away from the direction which evolutionists would prefer
– ‘upward’ and onward, into greater and greater complexity.
The fact that species are locked into their set of DNA, and the fact
that all the general trends for living things are downward, is evidence for the
Bible story of original creation, and the fall into sin, with God’s judgement
on all creation.
Page 10 briefly touches on the
supposed fossil evidence for evolution. “Scientists . . . have found exciting
fossil remains from thousands of plant and animal species ranging in size from
microscopic organisms to tyrannosaurus rex.”
Most people still believe the fossil record provides the major proof for
evolution. But Charles Darwin was very puzzled by fossils. He wrote, in 1859,
“geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain and
this perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be used
against my theory.” Since then further study of the fossil record has supported
this view, and despite the confidence most people have that the fossil record
proves evolution, it’s a simple fact that it does not.
David Raup, Curator of the Field of Natural History Museum, Chicago,
which has one of the world’s best collections of fossils, said, “instead of
finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time and
geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record;
that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change
during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”
Likewise Professor Heribert-Nilsson from
So even after 160 or so years of intensive study, the transitional forms
have never been found – no intermediate forms of life linking one plant with
another, or one animal with another. This fossil evidence is far better proof
of the Bible account of a global flood. God created plants and animals,
complete and finished, and they then went on to breed true to their species,
but the flood destroyed the planet, burying trillions of living things in
sediment, which hardened into rock. Today the fossil-hunters are busy chipping
the remains of these plants and animals out of the rock, but instead of seeing
them as evidence of a global flood, they look in vain for transitional forms –
forms they will never find.
Page 17 “The earth’s collision with a meteor sixty-five million years
ago . . .caused the dinosaurs to vanish.”
Since evolutionists claim that humans appeared on earth about 4 million
years ago, there must have been a gap of nearly sixty million years from the
time of the extinction of the dinosaurs to Man. Unfortunately there are many
reasons why this theory cannot be true.
The Bible describes what appear to be two kinds of dinosaur – Job 40,
41, and there are many cave drawings and rock carvings around the world which
depict dinosaurs. As well as this there are many stories from
But the fossil evidence is also suggestive of extinction by water. In
order to form a fossil, a living thing must be buried quickly, and sealed from
the air before decomposition can take place. As most of us know, even an
elephant will not last long if it dies in a field. Natural decay and scavengers
work very quickly to dispose of the tissues, and the bones are destroyed by
nature’s little recyclers and the weather. But dinosaur fossils are chipped out
of sedimentary rock. There are billions of tons of fossils trapped in
sedimentary rock all round the world, including fish, plants, birds, insects
and dinosaurs. Sometimes the dinosaur bones are found in strata which also
contains the remains of plants and animals living today. The fossil evidence
points not to a meteor, but to a flood, and the fact that no transitional forms
of any dinosaur have ever been found suggests creation rather than evolution.
Page 19 contains the statement, “At the core of this book is our belief
that the universe has a telos, a fundamental tendency to manifest its latent
divinity.”
By these amazing words, the author rejects the evolutionary view that
life is an accident, and adopts the New Age view that behind evolution is some
guiding principle, some Mind, some Deity, but he labels that Mind a “divinity”
and leaves us to decide just what exactly he means by this word. He cannot mean
the God of the Bible, because this God has already declared clearly why He
created the universe, and what Man is, so the author has rejected this true and
living God, and chosen a god of his own making – this is called idolatry. The
author has shaped a god with his own hands, just as heathen people chip a face
into a block of stone and then bow to it.
But surely we cannot have it both ways? Evolution has no God. It is
absolutely random. As John Lennon said “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if
you try, no hell below us, above us only sky,” The universe, if we are faithful
to
So, by his own admission, the author cannot live comfortably with his
own premise, and has added a “divinity” to compensate. By doing this he commits
an act of great dishonesty, and also undermines any credibility he might have
built up in his defense of Darwinian evolution.
Chapter two.
“Evolution entered a new domain with the appearance of humankind.
Intelligence, communication skills, and other attributes of animal life
advanced dramatically as our species formed newly creative social groups, harnessed
fire, developed new tools, learned to speak, and tried to make greater sense of
the world around them.”
The Bible presents a view which stands in stark contrast to this. God
created the first humans and placed them in a specially designed area of the
planet. At that stage the first humans were sinless, physically and
intellectually and spiritually perfect, and as such they enjoyed a beautiful
communion with their Creator. But they chose to disobey God and as a result
they and their world were punished. The evidence of this punishment is easy to
observe today – disruptive weather, burning sun, tornados, storms, floods,
extremes of temperature, poisonous plants and animals, carnivorous creatures,
sickness, deformities, death, and in the realm of humans crime, war and hate in
all its permutations.
But Mankind fell from perfection into its present state because of sin,
whereas evolution cannot speak of sin, and must push Man from apelike
beginnings towards ultimate Manmade glory – all without God.
By rejecting the Bible account, the author has plunged himself into a
morass of difficulties. Just one of these difficulties involves the appearance
of language. For any human to learn a language, they need to be taught it by
others who already speak it. The same can be said of reading. If you speak and
read English, chances are you learned from people who could already speak and
read English. Left to yourself you would not have a language, except perhaps a
few grunts and gestures. So the origin of language is quite mysterious, if we
try to explain it in terms of evolution, but its origin is far more reasonable
if we see it as a creation by God. The fact that humans have a speech center in
their brain and are therefore ‘pre-wired’ for language is also significant. No animal
could ever speak, because they lack the brain part to process a language.
There are many distinct and different languages in the world. Each has
its own set of thousands of words; each has its own forms of grammar,
inflexions, vowels and parts. While there seems to be a scattering of words
which all languages seem to have in common, by far the greater portion is
unique to its own language family, and so no speaker in any one language can
understand the speech of another language – unless they learn it. And it is
hardly any help learning one distinct language in order to learn another
because they are all so different from each other.
The complexity and differences found in and between languages cannot be
explained by evolution, yet it fits exactly with the Bible account of a time
when God “confounded the languages” of the people, and caused them to separate
and travel to different parts of the world where they spoke their common
language and built their separate civilizations.
Chapter three explores the limits of our perceptions, noting some of the
‘enhanced’ moments when physical senses occasionally seem to be amplified above
their normal level, but page 82 points out that, “We can experience and develop
clairvoyance and the perception of subtle energy.” The dictionary tells us that
clairvoyance is “The abnormal faculty of seeing what is out of sight; deep
insight or penetration.”
Clairvoyance is probably a universal phenomenon, because Man is a
complex being, and the world is full of mysteries. Many religions have
different stories to tell of ‘second sight’, and the ability to see more than
others, to feel, hear and sense deeper things, and this is what we would expect
if we believe the Bible account. God created Man, and the world, and since the
fall the vast powers of Adam and Eve have been suppressed somewhat, but every
now and then a little more than the average breaks through and for a brief
moment humans enjoy a glimpse of what might have been. The evolutionary approach
sees these things as a slight progression into a higher state of being, but
logically, if one holds the evolutionary view, there can be no such thing as
‘progress’. By its very claims, evolution can have no direction, either
forwards or backwards. It is a totally random process, in which ‘progress’
cannot exist.
On page 91 the author suggests that shamans working during the ‘Stone
Age’ used ‘remote viewing’ to find game, and goes on to tell us that “it is
considered to be a real power in most Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, and Taoist
contemplative traditions, and it has often been attributed to Jewish and
Christian mystics.” On page 92 the author pulls together ‘remote viewing’,
telepathy, UFOs and reference is made to an encyclopedia about extra-sensory perception.
This is typical of the style of the book. The author passes like an avid
shopper over a grab-bag of subjects, collecting them as fast as he can and
dropping them uncritically into his trolley as if they are all as true and
credible as each other.
To many people, all religions are basically the same. It is commonly
said that all roads lead to God, and that it doesn’t matter which road one
takes. This common view has led many people to believe that Christianity has no
more to offer than Hinduism or Islam, and that ‘spirituality’ is more important
than dogma.
The fact is, when one sorts out the core beliefs of the different
religions, Christianity stands alone. It is possible to find many minor strands
linking it with all the other religions, because humanity is bound by the same
moral laws inherent in all hearts, but when one examines the fundamentals of
the religions, the differences are so stark they appear as black to white.
Just briefly, we will run through the main religions and point out some
of the main differences. There are not that many to look at: Hinduism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Judaism and Islam. (In another group we
could place Agnostics, Atheists, Secular Humanists and Marxists. In the cults
group we could place Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and many other popular
followings, but these are separate headings and will not be dealt with in this
essay.)
For a Hindu to be saved, he must either: follow knowledge, become one
with Brahman, be devoted to a deity, or follow ceremonial works. There is no
salvation in Hinduism, only a seemingly endless cycle of birth, death and
rebirth. Christianity teaches salvation by grace, and good works follow out of
love and gratitude. A Christian can never earn salvation because it is a gift,
received by faith.
For a Buddhist to be saved he must follow the five precepts, which are
quite virtuous and if he is a monk he can add another ten. A Buddhist sees Man
as worthless, having only temporary existence, and there is no place for
redemption. A Christian has no set of rules, except only one, and that is to
love others and do to them as he would have them do to him. To a Christian, man
is infinitely valuable, because it took the death of God’s own Son to redeem
fallen
The Confucian has an ethical system which, if more people followed it,
would make the world a much safer and better place to live in, but the ethical
philosophy taught by Confucius is one of self-effort, leaving no room for, or
need of God. Confucius taught that Man can do it all by himself simply by
following “the way of the ancients”, but Christianity teaches that man does not
have the capacity to save himself. Confucius taught an ethical philosophy which
rejected the supernatural, but Christianity teaches that there is a mighty, and
righteous God, who can accept sinful Man only in terms of the salvation He has
provided.
Shintoism is a Japanese religion made of a mixture of other religions.
One of its basic doctrines is the superiority of the Japanese people, as
descendants of the gods, and their land above all others on earth. This fosters
a feeling of pride, which is a barrier to accepting salvation by faith alone.
Christianity teaches the equality of all people, and gives their origin as the
offspring of only two created people. Shinto teaches the basic goodness of
people as children of the gods, whereas Christianity teaches the basic
sinfulness of people and hence their need of a Saviour.
Judaism reveres the Old Testament and believes in a still-to-come
Messiah. Judaism accepts that Man is sinful, but looks for salvation in such
things as sacrifices, penitence, good deeds and a little hope in God’s mercy.
Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Messiah, and that His sacrifice on the
cross ended Man’s search for atonement once and for all time.
Islam has some 450 million followers, and its name means ‘submission;’
or ‘surrender’. While Islam has many things to commend it, and many things in
common with Christianity (such as a belief in one God, angels, respect for
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, a resurrection, rewards for the good and
punishments for the bad) it diverges from Christianity in other crucial areas.
It cannot accept Jesus as the Son of God, and they think Judas, not Jesus was
crucified. Muslims live in a legalistic system and must earn their salvation,
keeping the ‘Articles of Faith’ and the ‘Pillars of Faith’, and sin is seen as
a failure to obey. Christianity teaches that we are all sinners regardless of how
hard we try not to be, and that Jesus is the only one who can save sinners.
Islam was founded by a now dead man claiming to be a prophet, while
Christianity was founded by God the Son, now risen from the dead and alive for
ever more. The founder of Islam based his teachings on untrue and inaccurate
interpretations of the Bible. It presents a twisted view of the true God and
robs him of His love, mercy and compassion.
The author moves through various supernormal experiences, touching
briefly on them as he goes along. He mentions ‘the life force’, ‘ecstasy’,
‘love’, ‘out of body experiences’, ‘radiant heat’, and so on, then he moves
into ‘transcendent’ experiences and quotes from the Indian mystic Sri
Ramakrishna and who tells of his disciple Narendra. “Narendra, because of his
Brahmin upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with
his Creator. One day at the temple garden he said to a friend”: “How silly.
This jug is God? Whatever we see is God? And we too are God? Nothing could be
more absurd.” Sri Ramakrisnna came out of his room and gently touched him.
Spellbound (Narendra) immediately perceived that everything in the world was
indeed God . . . “
The Bible does not agree. It says that God created all things, and
sustains all things, but it also tells us that God is separate from His
creation. Logically, if all is God, then nothing has any real freedom to make
choices, and all freewill is but an illusion. The gospel gives people the
opportunity to either choose or reject Jesus as Saviour, but if God is
everything, then there can be no choice. Interestingly, the account quoted
above comes from a book called ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’, which shows
that it sets itself up as an alternative gospel to the Christian Gospel.
The author moves through more of the same, filling pages with quotes
from far and wide, reinforcing the same themes of self-enhancement, and the
ability we all share of harnessing the latent supersenses available to us,
tapping into dreams, and energies, finding transcendent identity and seeing
apparitions of the dead.
This last is on page 190, where we are told, “Osis and Haraldson found
that many people near death have visions of departed friends, relatives or
religious figures who come to “take the patient away,” helping them pass to
another mode of existence.” A brief summary of this phenomena follows, and then
on page 192 the author tackles the subject of reincarnation. Some interesting
material is given which seems to support the idea that after death people pass
into another level of existence, which is somehow related to a previous or
following rebirth, or another life. The author, as always, takes care not to
commit himself to any of the material he provides, leaving the reader free to
accept of reject it, but the very fact that the author supplies this material
gives one the impression that he thinks it is believable.
Reincarnation is an idea which began, according to the Bible, almost as
soon as there were humans in the world. God warned Adam that if he or Eve ate
of the fruit, they would “die”, and Satan said “you shall not die.” The Hebrew
meaning for the word “die” as pronounced by God is “dying you shall die,” which
means a progressive process leading to death, and this is precisely what
happened. Adam and Even ate the fruit and began to die, living for a few
hundred years as age gradually claimed them.
Satan’s lie has continued in many different forms ever since that first
contradiction, and today we have people who believe in spirits, ghosts,
poltergeists and various kinds of afterlife. A recent movie ‘What dreams may
come’ starring Robin Williams depicted an afterlife in which a man stumbled
about in a fantasy world looking for his wife who had gone to hell simply
because she had committed suicide. People often talk about some dead departed
being “up there looking down at us,” and many funerals give the impression that
godly Christians and even the worst of sinners fly from earth to a heavenly
realm as soon as they die.
The Bible teaches that death is the end of life, and consciousness,
until the resurrection. It also teaches that the dead cannot contact the
living. The Bible warns people not to try to contact the dead, because they may
become entangled with evil spirits, phantoms, evil angels, apparitions,
ectoplasmic visions, or demons, who often impersonate the dead departed. And
the Bible says people live only one life, then die, and then come back to life
at the end of the age for judgement.
Reincarnation, if it were true, would obviate a day of final judgement,
because one could simply jump endlessly from life to life and never be
accountable. Reincarnation opposes God’s words about death, and offers an
alternative to people who reject God’s Word.
The remainder of the book covers some methods whereby the reader might
be able to enter into some of the areas of psychic ability and supersensory
experience already covered, then follow 67 pages of suggested readings.
From the Christian point of view, this book “God and the Evolving
Universe’ is just another New age publication among many thousands of other
similar books, with the same old familiar themes. It promotes the occult,
dressing it up in the garments of science, pseudo-science, religion and
philosophy. By way of concluding this book review I would like to look briefly
at the subject of the occult, and then add a little advice.
The word “occult’ comes from the Latin ‘occultus’ meaning hidden,
secret, or mysterious. In this sense, the occult can apply to operations or
events which seem to depend on human powers that go beyond the five senses, or
with supernatural effects. Under the heading of occult we can place such things
as ‘witchcraft, magic, palm reading, fortune telling, ouija boards, tarot
cards, Satanism, spiritism, demons and the use of crystal balls, astrology,
numerology, necromancy, palm reading, horoscopes, and divining to name just a
few things.
C.S.Lewis wrote, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our
race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. He
other is to believe, and to feel an unhealthy interest in them. They themselves
are equally pleased with both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with
the same delight.”
The Bible categorically denounces any and all occultic practices, see
Deut.18:9-14, Galatians 5:20, Acts 13:6-12
The book under review promotes many of the things forbidden by the Bible,
which raises the question as to just who the author is working for? Obviously
he is not working to promote God’s Word, but in every way actually undermines
its authority, so it seems he is an enemy of God and a rejecter of God’s Word.
While he never tries to promote any single path to the “divinity” he claims
lies behind the universe, he also throws every religion into the pot as if
there is no particular way to that “divinity”, and by so doing he totally
obscures the unique claims of Christianity. This is a common ploy by the
enemies of Christ, who, like the Pharisees, add so much tradition to the truth
they effectively bury it.
In today’s modern world the new Age movement has had a huge effect on
the thinking of millions, though it is not easily defined. It has n specific
founder, no headquarters, no definitive statement of beliefs and no regular
meetings, yet it has a generally cohesive message. It holds many occultic
beliefs, but also many other beliefs, and it seems to satisfy people from all walks
of life. As David Spangler, a New Age spokesman said, “The new Age is a concept
that proclaims a new opportunity, a new level of growth attained, a new power
released and at work in human affairs, a new manifestation of that evolutionary
tide of events which, taken at the flood, does indeed lead on to greater
things, in this case to a new heaven, a new earth, and a new humanity.”
To understand the New Age movement we have to first of all see that it
is not really “new” at all. The Time magazine said it is, “a combination of
spirituality and superstition, fad and farce, about which the only thing
certain is that it is not new.” Behind all its packaging, terminology, and
plans, it is simply ancient occultism. Every so-called ‘spiritual truth’ in the
New Age movement can be traced back to some pagan mystery religion. These
satanically energized methods of obtaining otherwise unobtainable knowledge are
paraded before the public like sweets – they include astral projection,
psychometrics, radiance therapy, channeling, crystal therapy, iridology and
acupuncture.
Satan knows that he cannot capture people into his web of deceit by
directly marketing his products, so he dresses them up under new names, and
sells them in modernized wrapping. This way he can smuggle his poisons into the
‘modern’ mind without being exposed for what he is – a liar, a murderer and a
destroyer.
But the most serious error propagated by Satan is his teaching about
salvation, because compared to this one, all the others are but red herrings.
They occupy and ‘use up’ people’s lives, entertaining and intriguing their
minds all the way to the grave, and once dead there is no longer a remedy. But
if a person finds God’s salvation, they are set free from sin, death, the
occult, and all the deceptions of philosophy and religion. If a person embraces
Jesus as Saviour and begins to follow Him, they find a road which leads into
ever-increasing light.
New Agers reject the Christian doctrine of humankind’s need for
salvation. They believe humans are not fallen creatures, but in reality divine,
or at least partly divine. Their brand of salvation means being rescued from
ignorance, or being enlightened with ‘spiritual’ knowledge, or ‘becoming one
with the universe’ (Hinduism). New Agers seek freedom from ignorance of one’s
godhood, which they sometimes call ‘god-realization’. As Douglas Groothius
writes, “To gain this type of transformation, the three ideas that all is one,
all is god, and we are god, must be more than intellectual propositions; they
must be awakened at the core of our being,”
This transformation is achieved by first looking “within” where all
reality and truth exists, so salvation comes from one’s own self. In order to
find this inner salvation, New Age people employ a huge number of different
consciousness-changing techniques, or ‘psychotechnologies’ to aid the body,
mind and spirit, including meditation, yoga, chanting, guided imagery, ‘energy’
alignment, and hypnosis. They draw into this bag of methods reincarnation and
karma. The first is a “cyclical evolution of a person’s soul as it repeatedly
passes from one body to another at death. This process continues until the soul
reaches a state of perfection.” Karma is the ‘debt’ which accumulates or
diminishes depending on whether one lives a ‘good’ life or a ‘bad’ life.
So salvation for many New Agers is a long process of many lives until
one reaches a stage when one no longer needs a new birth. As George Harrison
sang “ . . . keep me free from birth.”
But the Bible says that there
will be some who are saved and some who are lost (Matthew 7:21-23, 25:31-34)
Jesus said that on the day of judgement he would send some false followers away
(Mat.7:23) There are no second, third or fourth chances for those who knowingly
reject Jesus. Heb. 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto men ONCE to die, but after
this the judgement.”
Ere is the essence of the New Age movement: all religions are acceptable
because each one teaches essentially the same thing. Since all is one, and one
is “God”, “God” (or divinity, or the Mind, or some other word for God) can be
reached in many ways. All religious leaders are equal – Buddha, Mohammed,
Zoroaster, Confucius,
The New Age movement talks about a new world,
a new religious emphasis, one planet, Gaia, and harmony with the cosmos. It
talks about world peace, sexual liberation, freedom to do one’s own thing,
disarmament, prosperity, and inner peace, and for many people these half-truths
and deceptions are enough to keep them happy. But the Bible is the written Word
of God, and whether we get an emotional buzz out of it or not, what the Bible
says is true. If people want to chase ecstatic and supersensory experiences
they will probably find them, but they will never be saved through them. What
people really need is the written assurance from God that their sins are
forgiven, whether this promise makes them feel good or not.
………………………………………………………………………………..
The advice I would like to offer to all sincere seekers of truth, is to
read the Bible, preferably one of the gospels, and listen to the words of Jesus
as you read. Compare his claims with what you have been taught by other people.
He claims to be God the Son, the only Saviour of the world, the way to God, the
truth about God and the life of God. If you are truly seeking after God and an
experience of Him in your life, begin with Jesus. It will save you wasting your
life chasing counterfeits and twisted, useless substitutes, and it will also
rescue you from an eternity of regret.