Test The Spirits

by Warren B. Smith


www.newagetograce.com

Not long after our conversion, my wife and I sat down one day and talked about the ultimate spiritual deception described in the Bible--the great "falling away" of the church and the coming of Antichrist. We agreed that for someone like Antichrist to be credible in the world, he would need a majority of the people who call themselves Christians to believe that he was Christ. If he could get enough Christians--especially Christian leaders--to follow him, he could then discredit and marginalize those who oppose him. But to get people who call themselves Christians to believe that he was Christ he would first have to successfully redefine Christianity. To do that he would have to introduce non-Christian teachings and practices into the church, while at the same time make them appear Christian. His obvious goal would be to convert undiscerning and unsuspecting believers into a more eastern and mystical, New Age "Christianity." While invoking the name of "God" and "Christ" he would actually turn the Bible upside down--just as we had seen in A Course in Miracles and in our New Age teachings.



Christianity would become a more "positive" New Age "Christianity." This New Age Christianity would have "a form of godliness" but it would actually deny the true faith (1 Timothy 3:5). This New Age Christianity/New Spirituality would use Christian terminology but it would be under the spell of "another Jesus," "another spirit," and "another gospel" (2 Corinthians 11:4). This New Age/New Gospel/New Spirituality would be the ultimate counterfeit and the ultimate deception. It would be what the real Jesus warned his followers to watch out for.



The New Age/New Spirituality has continued to make great inroads into the church--particularly in the area of meditation and so-called "contemplative prayer." Despite grave warnings from many of us that came out of the New Age movement, the church remains extremely vulnerable to deceptive, supernatural experiences that appear to come from God.



We knew from our own New Age involvement that powerful, seemingly "meant to be" spiritual experiences had often been used to draw us closer into the New Age and its various spiritual practices, including meditation and contemplation. And we knew that the same seductive experiences which had led us into the New Age, continued within our meditations and contemplations. Because our spiritual experiences felt so good, we just assumed that what we were experiencing was coming from God. Our meditations and contemplations soon became the primary connecting force that gave us "the feeling" we were on the right track. These daily meditations and contemplations served to reinforce our emerging New Age beliefs, and had the effect of leading us deeper and deeper into the teachings of the New Age/New Spirituality.



For most of us in the New Age, meditation was an integral part of daily life. Because it was so relaxing and felt so good we had no idea that our meditations were opening us up to great deception. Looking back on it now, meditation was the major pipeline through which deceptive spirits impressed upon us their New Age thoughts and teachings. The spiritual "high" that often accompanied our meditations and contemplations seemed to corroborate our emerging New Age belief that we were all "one" because God was "in" everyone and everything. In fact, in my very first meditation I experienced a "mysterious sense of oneness" that I perceived to be my "divine connection" to that oneness. One of the daily lessons I contemplated from A Course in Miracles was "Let me remember I am one with God."Click here for source material and to continue reading ...

Let me say, (Sandra) that for more information on the terms used by the emerging community, you can go to

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/researchtopics.htm

I use data from this site by their permission. It is a really good site to learn more about this false teaching.  And while you are there, go to the publishing site where they sell books about this. Everyone should read Faith Undone by Roger Oakland. It will open your eyes.

Sandra