Sound The Trumpet : Eastern Mysticism

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“Eastern Mysticism”
by Art Sadlier
November 2nd, 2016

Alice Bailey said in the last century, “The new age is upon us and we are witnessing the birth pangs of the new civilization. This is now in progress, that which is old and undesirable must go. The spirit has gone out of the old faiths and the light is transferring itself into a new form which will manifest itself on earth as the new world religion.”

Many evangelical leaders today are unknowingly furthering Alice Bailey’s teachings and are calling for change to so-called old-fashioned Christianity. This is a rejection of God’s word by men who have no real understanding of God’s design and purpose for the church and the believer, as it is revealed in the Word of God.

In the early 1960’s, through drugs, young people experienced what was termed “expanded consciousness.” They concluded that personal experience was more desirable than the old way of things that were based on absolute truth and objective thinking.

Eastern religions introduced the idea that you can relate to the God, that was supposedly within you, through the altered state of consciousness that is brought on though eastern meditation.

Eastern mysticism (Hinduism) does not believe that man is a sinner, but that rather man is ignorant of his innate divinity. Man has within himself a divine spark that needs to be ignited.

Many moved from a drug induced mystical experience to an eastern meditative induced spiritual experience. Meditation replaced LSD. Drugs were just the introduction to the practice of ancient Hindu mystical experience. They called this mind experience an awakening. It was supposed to be an awakening to the spiritual world, not realizing that they were involved in the world of demons.

In the 1960’s the Beetles became the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After their conversion to eastern mysticism the Beetles discovered that they could get the same mystical

believe that man is a sinner, but that rather man is ignorant of his innate divinity. Man has within himself a divine spark that needs to be ignited.

In the 1960’s the Beetles became the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After their conversion to eastern mysticism the Beetles discovered that they could get the same mystical experience from meditation that they had formerly attained from drugs. They made the following statement, “We want to learn the whole meditation thing properly so we can propagate it and sell the idea to everyone.”

Gurus came over from India and promoted transcendental meditation. From 1974 to 1976 there were 750,000 middle class Americans who enrolled in transcendental meditation classes. The New Age began, at that time, to penetrate the whole of society.

There are basically two world views on religion.

Eastern mysticism (Hinduism): teaches that man is innately good, that we are divine; that all is deity. It teaches we are part of a oneness, a global God consciousness.

The Biblical world view reveals that God is outside of His creation, outside of man and is separated from man, who as a sinner, is separated from God by his sin. Only through God’s plan of salvation can God indwell man and have a relationship with him.

In mysticism we are told that what separates us from God is our ignorance of the fact that we have an internal divinity. This idea of man’s internal divinity must be awakened within him. Through the techniques of eastern meditation man can connect to the oneness that is within him.

Norman Vincent Peale introduced the power of positive thinking. In the 1980’s Robert Schuler morphed this into the “self esteem” movement and brought it into the church with the help of James Dobson. Man has the power within to accomplish anything he desires. This is a thinly veiled belief in man’s divinity. Word of faith teachers came on the scene and boldly proclaimed man’s divinity. They proclaim man to be a god and therefore man can do what God can do.

Psychology promotes the same idea as ancient mysticism. They promote the idea that man is innately good and through regenerating the power within him he can better his life. Out of this concept sprung the self-help movement. Psychology uses this philosophy to try to remedy all of man’s social and psychological disorders. Psychology flooded into the church and replaced the Word of God as the solution to all of man’s problems. Psychology replaced the Bible and the psychologist replaced the pastor.

Rhonda Burns wrote a book that was a huge best seller. It was entitled, “The Secret.” On page 164 she states, “You are a god in a physical body.” Oprah Winfrey endorsed that book and propagated the New Age movement to her 50 - million - people audience for years. Oprah endorsed another book by Eric Butterworth who said, “Jesus did not come to teach us how divine He was, but ...that there is divinity in us.”

Warren B. Smith draws our attention to the fact that Robert Schuler endorsed Eric Butterworth’s book. He reminds us that Robert Schuler was Rick Warren’s mentor. He suggests that there is a stream flowing from Peale to Schuler to Rick Warren, a stream of eastern mysticism.

He quotes Warren from the “Purpose Driven Life.” On page 88 Warren quotes from a paraphrase of the Bible, “The New Century Bible.” He says, “God rules everything, is everywhere and is in everything.” That misrepresents the teaching of scripture and advocates eastern mysticism.

The evidence that Warren is deeply involved in contemplative meditation is found in the fact that he engaged three New Age men to design and administer his health plan, known as the Daniel Plan. These three men are involved in Eastern meditation, Reiki healing and Transcendental Meditation.

Warren claims that there are some 500,000 churches involved to some degree in his purpose driven program. That gives us some indication of the extent of the penetration of Eastern Mysticism or Contemplative Meditation in the evangelical church.

By the turn of the century this new emerging new Christianity became rampant in the evangelical church.

The evangelical discovered contemplative meditation and this new power within and he could now not only change himself, but he could use this new power to change the world. The social gospel of the liberals took root in the evangelical church. The gospel of Christ morphed into the new gospel of the new spirituality.

The truly sad thing is that multitudes of evangelicals have no idea of what is happening in front of them, they cannot see beyond their noses. It is not perhaps that they are involved in contemplative meditation, but that they are unaware of tide that is sweeping down upon the church and the people of God.

Brian McLaren has stated, “In order to reach the postmodern generation we need to reinvent a Christianity that will be acceptable to them.” He wrote a book entitled, “A New Christianity.”

The new emerging Christianity is a repackaging of eastern mysticism which is Hinduism.

Many terms are used for this new spirituality, Contemplative Meditation, Eastern Mysticism, Altered State of Consciousness, New Emerging Christianity, etc. Whatever you call this new spirituality it involves an encounter with demons who pose as a god within you. The purpose behind it all is to bring the whole world together with a sense of oneness. We are all a part of god and therefore we are all one.

The Hindu, the Catholic, the Liberal Protestant, the Evangelical, the secular person involved in Yoga or Transcendental Meditation and all others can be involved in this wonderful new spirituality. We see that our world is rapidly heading toward this incredible unity which will be harnessed by the coming Antichrist.

If Christians are not serious about the Bible they will be seriously deluded by the blanket of deception that is falling over the world. Only the Word of God, believed and obeyed, can prevent you from being deceived by an experience that is not from God.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13