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.