The New Age Movement

Transcript

GRM 289
12/3/1989
The New Age Movement
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

As I mentioned this morning, I want to talk a little bit about the New Age tonight and I was hesitated to do something like this because it is not just the study of the word, but I hope that it will be profitable. The way I am going to do it is basically read you I am afraid, so I hope that you will be able to follow along. Some of you have read a lot on the New Age, so what I am going to say will just be a review of what you’ve already read, but I would like all of us at least to have a general understanding of what the new age movement is all about. We read about it, we are exposed to it in every facet of our lives these days. It is beginning, I am afraid, to condition our thinking as believers, one of the major points and if we have time, I want to look into this more in detail, but one of the major points in the New Age Movement is relativity, and we as believers in Jesus Christ, as believers in the Bible, as the authority to word of God, are constantly under unrelenting pressure to give on the issue of the final absolute authority of the word of God in every area that it speaks and I think that part of that is due to the acceptance of the philosophy we call the New Age Movement. It also fits with what we’ve been talking about with relationship to the one world government, the Apostate church which mosses told one unified religion particularly that will focus within the revived Roman Empire and related areas.

In last night’s paper there was an article, I know several of you saw it because you drew it to my attention as well. New Agers called part of spiritual awakening and this article was drawing comparisons between the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement and the New Age Movement. Some of the articles, and I’ve just clipped out a couple, on animal rights lately, this becomes a big issue. Animal rights, and I clipped an article out of, well, one out of USA Today from November 24th on the editorial page, a Face of the ferrous fly, one person writes it’s morally wrong for people to wear fur, the other person writes, people have a moral right to wear fur and you know, personally I could care less, I don’t wear any, but there is an underlying issue at stake here, we would get caught up in doing battle over animals, killing animals, not animals, but there is a basic underlying approach to life that conditions the two, the person riding about the people have the right to wear further says the Animal Rights Movement argues that such use is immoral, they contend man has no right to make use of animals because every animal is man’s equal “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy” says Ingrid Newkirk founder of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The question is asked, are we prepared to equate our children with pigs, dogs and rats. You don’t need to answer that, we’re just reading the article. North Carolina State philosophy professor Tom Regan, a long time animal rights activist was asked, if a baby and a dog were in a boat and the vessel capsize, which would you save first? If it was a retarded baby and a bright dog, I would save the dog, he replied. Now, that is by a man who is a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University. Now, you see for him, he is functioning and living out his life on the level that there is no difference between a dog and a human. Animals and human are all part of life and if I have to come to choose between one or the other, well, then I have to decide whether it was a better dog or a better person.

That was the only basis for decision. Not the people or human beings are superior to animals but perhaps this particular animal superior to this particular person. I have to make every decision on an individual basis. Newkirk asks in an article in Vogue magazine to describe his organization’s position on the use of animals in medical research, even if it leads to a cure for AIDS would be against it. Now, I mention that, to us it seemed extreme and radical, but it is consistent with the teachings and belief of the New Age Movement and they are becoming more radical, and I feel that some Christians have given credence to this with our attitudes and promotion of civil disobedience as right. Now, that of the Omaha World-Herald, this came from the same day, November 24th, I must have been reading the newspapers that day, animal rights militants linked to sabotage from Nevada, militant vegetarians and animal rights activists are being blamed by the FBI for a growing problem with sabotage and vandalism on Western ranches, apparently aimed at undermining the region’s beef and wool-growing industries. Richard Whitaker of the FBI office in Las Vegas warned the Annual Cattlemen’s Association of Nevada convention last week that recent attacks on remote ranches are believed to be the work of the same people already suspected of torching meat plants and bombing offices in California and Nevada.

Animal rights advocates conceded that point in interviews. Whitaker said that any livestock operator is a potential target for militant vegans, people who shun meat, dairy products, eggs or cheese and do not wear leather or wool. Such people, he asserted are determined to slow or stop human use and consumption of livestock. That’s a long article. You can see this on column after column. Again if when I carefully get into a debate over the validity of, you know, eating animals or not eating animals, wearing fur, not wearing fur, but the underlying issue is much more basic. If you are of the opinion that all life is one life, in fact all is one and all is God, then you don’t have any basis to make any other decision than the decision these men are making, but of course you’ve got to die for animals, just is rationalists dying for a person and you carry that over, you may have to die for a tree. We would talk more about that, not dying for trees but the philosophy.

Clipped an article out it’s a year old now December 5, 1988, US News & World Report, The Twilight Zone in Washington. There are some important people in government who have enlisted psychics’ help. And it’s one, two, three, four pages on the involvement of psychic people, the use of mediums by government leaders and so on. At any given time, about one fourth of the members of Congress are actively involved in psychic phenomena, be that healing, prophecy, remote viewing or physical manifestation of psychic powers such as bending spoons or erasing computer tapes. Guess it has some practical help. Then of course many of you saw this is two years old, now I have to rude out my files. Time magazine, The New Age, featuring Shirley MacLaine, Faith Healers, Channelers, Space Travelers, crystals galore and tells you all about the new age. It just everywhere, I have some more current articles that reflect on us right here in our city if we have time.

There is abundance of material on the new age today and I started out trying to read all I could and I was going to assimilate it and then come up with my version and after reading half a dozen books I realized that everything is becoming redundant, so I just picked out one of the books, two of the books really, but I am going to focus on one of them and I am simply going to use this as representative of the position, main book I am going to refer to and quoting from is Unmasking the New Age by Groothuis, the other one that I may read from, from time to time is by Chandler, Understanding the New Age which is the most thorough of any of them that I’ve read. I don’t agree with everything that he has to say, but he does a very thorough job, he is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I believe. But I’d be referring to these books and basically quoting from Unmasking the New Age by Groothuis.

Picture twenty five normal first graders peacefully lying in silence on their classroom floor, it takes a little bit of imagination anyway. Twenty five normal first graders peacefully lying in silence on their classroom floor, must have been a bus accident or something. I shouldn’t joke about that. It’s not a fire drill or an air raid, but part of the new curriculum. The children are being guided through a meditation in which they are instructed to imagine the sun radiantly shining toward them. They are then told to gaze into its brightness without being hurt by the light. Next the children are asked to try to bring the sun down into their bodies and feel its warmth, power and illumination. Imagine that you are doing something perfect, the teacher commands, and that you are perfect. The children are told to see themselves as resplendent with light. They should feel at peace, for they are perfect, they are reminded that they are intelligent, magnificent and that they contain all of the wisdom of the universe within themselves.

This exercise actually took place in a Los Angeles public school. The designer of the meditation, the late Beverly Galyean, and she did this with federally funded money, for her program of “confluent education”. Now what does she say she is doing. Here is her explanation. Once we begin to see that we are all God, that we all have the attributes of God, then I think the whole purpose of human life is to reown the Godlikeness within us, the perfect love, the perfect wisdom, the perfect understanding, the perfect intelligence, and when we do that, we create back to that old, that essential oneness which is consciousness. Now, that’s significant because here is a federally funded program that was being carried out in a public school system and the originator of the program says that the purpose was to enable us to see that we are all God and that we all have the attributes of God. Now that if she wants to believe that that’s her right, if she wants to teach that that’s her right, but to take federally funded money and use it in the public schools becomes a real question. I don’t think there is any hope to turn the tide back.

Purpose of our study on this is not to encourage you to do that, really, but to make you aware of what is going on, so you can be alert to it. Shirley MacLaine, who has become very visible in the New Age Movement. One of the things that has made the New Age Movement so popular is that the entertainers, both from the movies and from the music industry had become very visible in promoting this, and the entertainers command tremendous followings and they give a tremendous credibility. People say, well if a person of their stature is involved in it, it can’t be something flaky and they are very open to it and if you read any of the New Age material, you can read the name after name after name of the well known celebrities from these fields that are involved. Shirley MacLaine, her central message is four fold.

First you are god, and now you may not know it, and you may be ignorant of it, that’s part of her plan to make you aware of what you are, but you are God. Secondly, you have lived before and will live again, reincarnation. Third, there is no death. Now we’ve made fun of the Christian scientists who happened to be our neighbors over here, and we talked about going over and using their building for additional Sunday school space, because they are not really there anyway, and they don’t even have a building if they are consistent, but now you see it’s becoming acceptable, there is no death and Shirley MacLaine says, perhaps our belief in death is the greatest unreality of all, and it’s all part of the cycling process. Fourth, there are many realities as there are people since we create our own reality, where I mentioned that we who are committed to the authoritative scriptures are constantly being brought with the idea there is no authoritative standard. Well that’s one of the points that she makes.

There are many realities as there are people, because you create your own reality, you are creating God and reality for you is what reality is for you, and reality is for me what reality is for me, and they may not be the same, but that’s all right, now they will blend as we become more harmonious. We’ll talk about that. Whether from eastern religion to the occult, the new psychologies, the frontier theories of science, New Age politics, New Age versions of Christianity, various ideas with a common theme are converging on our culture, pressing their way to the philosophical and ideological center of society. A new world view is in the offing, a revolution in consciousness beckons. All is one, both good and evil.

We’ll see this when the characteristics of the New Age Movement is, there is no good and evil. There is only the harmonious one. Now I need to be aware that as believer because I wonder, how can people live such immoral lives? Because from where they are, it is not immoral. There is no good, there is no evil, so don’t talk to me about being immoral. There is only the oneness that is there. The mind controls everything, we are all God. This has consequences for our whole life, he says. They are shaping the lives of more and more westerners. Now my concern is that we as believers not be shaped by these ideas. Groothuis lists six distinctives of New Age thinking. Walter Martin in his book lists ten basic doctrines related to the New Age when the other books had four, but basically the same ideas pull together, note these identifying ideas of the New Age Movement, so at least, you know, what are we talking about with the New Age Movement? Really it’s an eclectic movement, it gathers from a variety of sources, not everybody who is in the New Age Movement would fit into everyone of these exactly the same, but nonetheless this is a good summary I believe of the New Age Movement.

The basic foundational idea of New Age thinking is, All is one. That’s the basic idea. All is one. Every area is permeated by this basic thought. Another name for this is monism. Mono means one. So monism is the belief that All is one. All is interrelated, interdependent, interpenetrating. Ultimately there is no difference between God, a person, a carrot or a rock. They are all part of one continuous reality that has no boundaries, no ultimate divisions. Any perceived differences between separate entities, between a man and a woman or a man and a tree or between God and a woman, are only apparent, not real. So that’s foundational. Now let’s get pumped out in various ways, and he uses the example of the movie The Dark Crystal, which was produced by Jim Henson, he was the creator of the Muppets. Some of you saw the movie The Dark Crystal, and you remember how that movie ended up? You had the two groups, the Skeksis and the Mystics, and one was bad and one was good, but do you know how the movie ended up? They weren’t really good and bad, but they were different sides of the same thing and the crystal brought them together. I must say well, that wasn’t a cute movie, yes, maybe it was, but what it really did was convey an idea, there is not really good and evil, just different ways of looking at the same thing and what happens in the right situation that the crystal brings it together so there is a blending and you don’t do all the away with evil and good does not overcome evil, they just blend together because there is no good and evil in reality, only our perceptions.

They begin to think, I think this is nonsense. Well, I do too, but that’s because our thinking is oriented to a biblical way of thinking of right and wrong, truth and error, good and evil, God and creation, but that’s not where the world is moving in its thinking. All is one, ultimate reality is beyond good and evil, this is the essential teaching of much Eastern religion and occultism. It is being advocated by a host of New Age scientists. Monism, the basic premise of the New Age Movement is radically at odds with the Christian view of reality. A Christian world view asserts or affirms that God’s creation is not an undivided unity, but a created diversity. And we are aware of that as Christians, we believe God created the world, he created it differently, he created the animal world and the animals multiply after their kind, he created the plant world, the vegetation, he created the heavenly bodies, they are distinct aspects of his creation. What gives unity to creation is the creating God, not creation itself, an important distinction, but that’s the first premise in the New Age thinking. All is one. It’s the pervasiveness.

Now the next step builds on that. If all is one, all is God. Once we admit that all is one, including God, then it’s a short step to admit, all is God and this is pantheism. Plants, animals, birds, fish, people, lecterns, chairs, it’s an all pervasive oneness and all is God, so we all partake of the divine essence, everything, not just humans, everything partakes divine. This becomes important when we get to the ecology movement as well as the animal rights people. Now when I am just talking about every human being is God, we are telling about everything is God. Nature is God. Therefore we are at one with nature, then I have the responsibility to defend nature, to promote nature, and it becomes more than just a concern for taking care of our environment. Going further, it is argued that if everything is one and if all dualities in reality dissolve into the cosmic unity, then so does the idea of personality or dualities, another words, there is not good and evil for example.

Everything dissolves into cosmic unity, there is only the oneness. That’s what happens to personality. Personality can only exist where it defines itself in relation to other beings or things, but there aren’t any differences. All is one. So that’s why he who says what’s ridiculous, you mean this lectern is God, like this person is God, I can see how people would say, well a person is God, now you’ll say this lectern is God. Well, you see what happens when all blends into oneness, you have no basis to make a distinction, in it all in our mind, in our thinking, the idea of a personal God is abandoned if favor of impersonal energy, force or consciousness. Remember the Star Wars movies? Now, don’t get upset, those of you who don’t go to movies, saying, you shouldn’t be encouraging going to movies. I am not encouraging going to movies, but what did they say, maybe, the force be with you, and all of a sudden he had a tie in to that force, he had to learn to become one with that force.

Well, that’s the same kind of concept that we are talking about here is not a personal God, it’s an impersonal force that we are dealing with. What do you have here? You have what Paul talked about in Romans Chapter 1. They worshipped and served the creation more than the creator. We are worshipping the creation, man, and every other part of creation. We are saying that’s God and we defy it. That’s what’s talking place. All is God, so we’ve got all is one, all is God, the next step, you could fill in the blank, Humanity is God. This is one of the seductive claims of the New Age, we are not only perfect, we are in fact Gods. We are Gods in disguise. Only ignorance keeps us from realizing our divine reality. So one of the promoters of the New Age thinking, that has been incorporated into some of the business programs that are being used in our society says “kneel to your own self, honor and worship your own being, God dwells within you as you”. God dwells within you. Well, we’d say, yes, we believe that as a believer, no, God dwells within you as You, why? Because the only God there is, is you, but you’ve tied into the essential oneness that pervades everything, God is everything.

The New Age raises the placard of pantheism high, you are God, in their numerous quotes that I won’t take time and the scripture is so clear, God speaking. Perhaps you have to look at one or two passages, Isaiah 14, what If I am assuming is that we are aware of the conflict that this teaching has with scripture, but this is so radical. Isaiah 14, the sin of Lucifer, in Verse 13 of Isaiah 14, you said in your heart I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the recesses of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high. Basic sin, I am going to make myself God, and the result was the fall. In Ezekiel 28, you have the same basic issue and Lucifer is dealt with in Ezekiel 28 as well, but in the opening verses of Ezekiel 28, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of Man, say it to the leader of Tyre, thus says the Lord God, because your heart is lifted up and you have said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of the Gods, in the heart of the seas yet you are a man and not God although you make your heart like the heart of God.

Hear the condemnation there, taken himself deity, declaring himself to be deity. You remember Herod in Acts Chapter 12 in the New Testament. Let me read it for you, in Acts Chapter 12, Verse 22, the people kept crying out, the voice of a God, not of man, attributing deity to Herod, and immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, he was eaten by worms and died, but the word of the Lord continued to grow and multiply. Now God is gracious and if not there would be a lot of worm eating people in some of these meetings, but their basic teaching is, we are all God, humanity is God because all is God. Now what you have to do is, come to understand that, so the next point, the fourth point is a change in consciousness. Now note this point because I want to read to you from some material later from our own school system that is oriented to this.

This was going on in the example I read to begin with in the Los Angeles school system, where the children were meditating and seeing themselves undergoing this change, because what we have is a problem, we are gods but we are ignorant of it, we have to have a change in consciousness. All is one, all is God, we are God, simple enough, then why don’t we know ourselves is Gods, what is our problem. The answer is simple, ignorance. Western culture has shaped our consciousness, trimming our experience and taming our metaphysics. But there is hope. This metaphysical amnesia can be reversed by techniques designed to alter ordinary consciousness. These techniques open the doors of perception so that we can see true reality. This change in consciousness whatever the means leads to an awareness of oneness and spiritual power. Say I have to be reprogrammed in my thinking, so that I now mentally tie into this oneness, and I come to understand and realize I am God, I am perfect and I become one in my perception with the oneness that is, that’s the transformation that is going on in all the meditation and related kind of activities that are talking place.

Some believers made a terrible mistake in trying to equate meditation from the eastern religions with the believers who meditate on the word. There is no similarity at all. Totally different, one has nothing to do with the other. To gain this kind of transformation, the three ideas that all is one, all is God and we are God must be more than intellectual presuppositions or propositions. They must be awakened at the core of our being, such an experience may either be spontaneous and unplanned or the result of disciplined practice in meditation, yoga or some other consciousness raising technique, and there’s many names for this transform experience, cosmic consciousness, God realization, self realization, enlightenment, illumination, nirvana, one-ment, whatever the name, the new level awareness is said to be vital for the resurrection of western civilization and the world. What are we to do? We are to look within and as an aside and I didn’t pull this out because I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding that I am riding an old hobby horse.

If you read any of the New Age Movement, you’ll find significant emphasis on its relationship to psychology. Men like Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow and the emphasis is we look within. Christians would pick that up. Now the New Age Movement tells us that we look within for the solution, now the Bible tells us that our problem is within, but the Bible never tells us to look within for the solution, but someone in the guides of Christian psychology have picked up the problems within and we look within to resolve it. So first you got to go back and peel back layers, you got to dig into your past and all of that. We’ve adapted the thought of the day. We are to look within. The answer is not reconciliation with the God different from ourselves, but the realization that we ourselves are God.

The self is the cosmic treasure of wisdom, power and delight. The realization of oneness and divinity leads to spiritual power and well-being, tension subsides, claims transcendental meditation. When man meditates twice daily, the true God self consumes the troubles of every day life. Once the true knowledge or gnosis of reality is realized, higher powers are activated within. The limitations have supposedly # perfect being fade into the limitless potential of truly enlightened being. The awesome expanses of parapsychology opened before us, telepathy, ESP, telekinesis and others, now let me go down, though some may qualify this statement. New Age thinkers agree that the one is beyond with the normal intellectual grasps, it must be experienced not discussed. So the fact will say this doesn’t seem logical, irrational, is irrelevant because you see, you create your own reality, I create my own reality and this doesn’t function under rational, intellectual level, this functions on the experience level and that’s why much of Christianity has been washed over and prepared for New Age thinking. Why?

We become experience oriented, people go to church, they want to go away with a good feeling. Well that’s the level the New Age operates on. It’s not the level God operates on and never has. He has never bypassed intellect. He gave his revelation in propositional truth that takes the exercise of intellect to understand, comprehend and obey, but the New Age Movement is something to be experienced, not discussed, very similar to much of the charismatic movement. Biblically the dilemma of humanity is not ignorance of our divinity but the reality of our sin. We’ve rebelled against our holy God is moral law, that’s the biblical answer. A fifth principle. All religions are One. This prepares the way for the unification of the church. All religions are one, New Age gurus frequently claim that all religions are one and at their core, teach the one for all. This is called Syncretism.

Consequently the distinctiveness of Christianity must be denied, claims of uniqueness and exclusiveness must be dissolved into the cosmic unity, then they incorporate Jesus Christ into this system. He is no longer to be the only begotten son, the God man, Lord and Savior, he is merely one of many appearances and manifestations of God throughout the millennia. His mission was to alert the sleeping masses to their innate divinity. Jesus is thus reverentially enshrined in the pantheistic pantheon where he echoes the chorus of the enlightenment, All is One. The Christ to the Bible is redefined and made the ventriloquist’s puppet for the New Age. So finally we talk about Christ, yes, you can worship and serve him, sure. He is one of the enlightened ones, he has lead the way along with Buddha and others, in our increased awareness of the cosmic oneness that we are part of. So we are not talking about the same Christ, no, we are not. But many people don’t go any deeper than the superficial, yes, they talk about Christ and they honor Christ, yes, like they honor Buddha and they honor the other gurus. The sixth point that this man mentions his cosmic evolutionary optimism and basically that we have the power to take over the reigns of evolution.

There was a leading Catholic theologian who got into trouble with the Catholic church because of his teaching on this and our power as God to control evolution and we are evolving and that’s part of the reincarnation idea, but now we can take control of that with our powers. We come to be in charge, and follow through on this, even a thing like suicide or murder is not bad. So a person who commits suicide has just opted to move on to his next manifestation, just accelerated the process and even within that framework, murder is not so bad because all you’ve done is moved the cycle along and say how can a society function like that, well, you see, they are presupposing there’s no such thing as evil. Such as no such things is good. There is only the oneness there and we have problems because people haven’t tied into the oneness, but once they do, then all these issues become non issues, and are just part of the ongoing movement.

Well, I’ll skip that page. Let me tie this to politics since we’ve talked about the reunification, they are one world government. May I read to you some excerpts, I just pulled out of chapter on politics, they have a whole of it, you read chapter on health, holistic medicine, psychology, education, I’d picked out one on politics since it fit to what we are doing. We haven’t talked a lot about this. Religion can never be severed from politics. Political vision stems from our deepest believes concerning reality and value. Politics follow faith, we want to realize it. We get so upset with what is going on with the political realm and the course our governments taken, but politics follow faith. They’ve abandoned any faith related to revelation from God, Judaic or Christian scriptures and so on. So what has happened is they have reoriented their faith and their politics are following.

We are still doing battle with the politics, but politics follow faith, I think he has a very valid point. Having penetrated the fields of psychology, science and medicine, the New Age is seeking to enter and capture the world of politics. In short, the New Age political message is, our consciousness is unlimited and our responsibility is total. As Gods come of age we must transform the planet. The root idea of the New Age is oneness, unity and holiness, the one for all, this unified view leads to several distinctives. First, ecological issues of conservation and pollution control become crucial concerns in the political agenda. We must identify ourselves with nature and find our inter relation with all other life. So you understand why has ecology become such a major issue. It is more than just a concern like you might have, I might have as a believer. It’s part of their faith.

This is part of the oneness, I am destroying what I am when there is any destruction of nature, because there is only the oneness and anything that’s destroyed is destroying the oneness. Now we’ve seen this in the eastern religions and mark the fact that people were starving to death with a cow walking down the street, but they can’t kill the cow. Now we’ve just incorporated here into the western world, that you can’t do harm to anything. In fact you are obligated to defend and it’s just as important to protect that tree in your yard as it is protect your child, because the tree is just as much part of the oneness as you are as your child is. Second, first is the ecological issues, second, the traditional polarities between masculine and feminine must be transcended. Patriarchy must be replaced with an awareness of male, female equality or even in some cases female superiority. I think the modern feminist movement stands on its own, rides out here and nothing to do with the movement of ecology, they are blended together, part of the agenda of the New Age Movement.

There is only the oneness, the issue between masculine and feminine has to be absorbed. This has been part of eastern religion, the Ying and the Yang, for those of you who have read this. Well, got to do away with that. There is not male and female. There has to be total equality of blending or if there is going to be any movement to the female superiority, because tied with this is the mother nature God has worship, that is behind it, and so we find the elevation of the woman, then of nature, it’s not a separate issue. Believers get involved in things they don’t even understand what’s going on. They have a basic underlying belief system that’s controlling that. This is just one of the manifestations of it. One of them writes, “the experiences inherent in women’s sexuality are expressions of the essential, holistic nature of life on earth. They are body parables of the profound oneness and interconnectedness of all matter energy.

So you see, that’s their view of things. Here is one of the women uses a pantheistic monism to justify abortion because of this the New Age emphasis on more relativism, its political agenda generally supports abortion on demand. Well, everything is morally relative when we get to that. So you can’t say abortion is wrong, can’t say it’s right, everything is relative besides you are only moving the cycle along in abortion. You haven’t broken the cycle, you haven’t destroyed a life, you’re just recycling and helping move them on to the next step. So that’s not so bad. Other issues such as population control, nuclear disarmament could be added, it can be safely said that the heart of New Age politics beats with the liberal political pulse. The idea of strict national boundaries and divisions between nations and peoples must be transcended by the realization of unity and interdependence. That’s why I begin to see it play with the Apostate church.

New Age politics then emphasizes the need for a political order consonant with the cosmic order, oneness. New Age political thinkers point toward a new world order where the nations are united politically and economically. Strategies of nuclear disarmament must be implemented if the new global societies to live as one in peace. So now the disarmament movement fits into this very well as well. The idea of having one world government is far from merely theoretical. A host of organizations are energetically implementing the goal of a new world order. The fact remains that a growing number of theorists and activists are stumping FOR THE ONE, where there be in the area of world order, ecology, feminism, disarmament, or the teaching of meditation in the public schools. New Age political unity is not so much organizational as it is ideological. It’s difficult to gauge the successive New Age politics.

Many of those who agree with New Age concerns, global unity, ecology, feminism and so on may not share the pantheistic world view. Yet New Age ideas are finding their way into civil government and are being funded by our taxes. All this is built on the idea of pantheism of God being everything rather than the God being separate from his creation. You and I as believers have to realize what we are up against and the conflicts that are there and I don’t have time to read the rest of that although it’s very interesting. Let me just say something about absolute relativity. Granting all opinions, equal status, the true one counts no more than the false one. Indeed the belief only in opinions admits of no truth at all, the fear of being wrong is replaced by the fear of being right and appearing to be an idea log.

Note that the fear of being wrong is replaced by the fearing of being right, why? Then you look like you are an idea log and there is no room for that because there are only opinions. How can you be so dogmatic? How can you be so opinionated? Here is some of this was done in the book, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, that some of you may have read, it analyzed American higher education, analyzed the breakdown of discernible moral norms and a crumbling of the belief that truth exists to that matters. The danger that they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. You heard that, anywhere lately? We are more concerned about somebody maybe being intolerant then they are about error, but you know that’s just an absorbing, that’s idea of the day? It’s much more serious as someone be an intolerant person, then you deal with the issue of right and wrong of error and truth, and believers are effected by this in our thinking, we are, and I get afraid that people are going to say, oh, it’s too dogmatic because that is out of step with the world, arguing that few students wrestle with what is good, what is true or what is right, Bloom says the self has displaced the soul an openness and autonomy has usurp authority.

Note this, it is difficult to set a moral agenda in the prevailing American intellectual climate. Now this is way Christians have been frustrating, it is difficult to set a moral agenda in the prevailing American intellectual climate. There is no foundation for a moral agenda. The foundation has been removed for morality. The United States was founded upon a twin commitment to enable human rights and the Calvinistic belief in an ultimate and divinely reveled moral right and the obligation of sinful beings to follow right conduct. These faith principles were incorporated into the declaration of independence and the constitution, and then some interesting quotes from Charles Colson on what has happened here but I don’t have time to read all that. Things went wrong in the poisonous subjectivism introduced by the German philosophers Nietzsche, Weber, Haidinger, Charles Colson writes. I believe this is from Colson, what has happened, let me summarize that all moral distinctions were equally valid and equally invalid since all were equally subjective.

That’s basically what’s come out at German philosophy. Everything is valid, everything is invalid, everything is equally subjective, so what foundation in you have to talk about morals, right and wrong. How can I try to make them understand that abortion is wrong? Everything is morally relative, everything is subjective, and there is no evil. So there is no good, there is the only one, I am trying to tell them you are murdering, you are taking a life, and they don’t even have any foundation to relate to that. You know, so I can talk in Chinese. There is no connecting point. The quiet victories won by the are the most deadly and they include confusing equality with egalitarianism, freedom of license and truthful opinion.

Relativism is appealing because this is an age when objective truth are considered passé and bad manners if not divisive. Religion is opposed to traffic only in options. New Age relativism also appeals because of its optimistic view of human nature and concomitant rejection of guilt and the need of atonement for sin. Then how this leads to the unhealthiest kind of dictatorship, reincarnation is the engine that drives much New Age opinion on such matters, the machine of more relativism. With this logic, suicide becomes simply a decision not to go ahead with a life plan, but instead recycle to another to complete ones calm and here one of the channels from the New Age Movement says, murder isn’t really wrong or evil, if you believe in the continuation of life reincarnation, it’s a different story.

So you know, you realize how can I talk to this person about the wrongness of murder and abortion. They don’t even believe murder is wrong when you murder anybody. I mean it’s just the continuation of life to its next phase, might be different if I shot them but here is one that was interviewed for the New Age Movement, when a reporter asked them if there was any room for absolute truth, he said “the absolute truth is that we are all Gods in our own rite”. That’s the only room they have in their system for absolute truth, that I am God in my own rite. Well then I don’t have any foundation to you within. Everything else I have to come at with is this is right, this is wrong and there are none of those things. The only absolute truth is I am a God and you are a God, so you make your own reality. Well I can’t keep reading on and on. Blooms can the education of waste land and proceeds that what students lack is so simple and yet so elusive that only the more gifted teachers can spot its absence.

What these students lack is truth. I do not mean that their beliefs are false. I mean that the idea of truth is simply not there, that truth exists and can inform and even replace opinions, the foundational error of the New Age world view is the assumption that there is no absolute truth out there that need concern us. The loss of objective authority and a transcended morality has infected our national ethical foundations with a sickness under death. New Agers rights, I will read that. Let me just read an example or two for how this impacts us. This comes from the Lincoln Public Schools and I am not on a program against the Lincoln Public School, just to realize it just doesn’t go on in California. This is a program for coping with conflict and interpersonal skills development program, Great Five elementary guidance and this was a field testing program. We thanks to the staffs of Arnold Belmont Clinton Homes Park, West Lincoln School for assisting in fuel testing this program.

Let me just read you some excerpts with their saying about how this works in the schools, here is how to handle conflicts, so here is suggestion in implementing this program, have parents and children experience together a relaxation and imagery exercise, direct everyone to sit in a comfortable position, close their eyes gently, breathe in a relaxed and peaceful way, taking these deep breaths to begin then letting their breathing happen in a naturally relaxed way. Playing rainbow butterfly in the background might help create a feeling of calmness. They say “in order to create”, this is what you are supposed to say in this. In order to create a calm and peaceful atmosphere in our class room and at home, we are first going to take time to get very still. Let your body relax, let a warm, calm, peaceful feeling flow through every part of you. From the tips of your toes to the top of your head, listen to your own breathing, listen to the perfect silence and calmness in our room, now take a moment and think about what peace feels like to you. Ask everyone to open their eyes after giving them a moment of silence. Then if there is time, in a large piece of paper entitled what peace feels like to me. Record their answers, accept anything but try to guide people’s answers away from stereotype concepts of peace, because there is no objective standard anyway.

This is one for great six, same schools were involved. Teacher directs students to sit with head, neck and back erect. Students were asked to place their feet flat on the floor and their hands in their laps, teacher instructs students to close their eyes, breathe through their noses, students are told to say to themselves sub-vocally “I am”, on each inhalation and “calm”, on each exhalation. Allow approximately three minutes for the exercise, I will send no, we have got a chant going. Now here this I have to read you from the imagine lyric sheet and you listen to the imagine lyric sheet written by John Lennon in 1971. It’s going to come up later in the program, so you have to listen. Imagine there is no heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today, imagine there is no country, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, no, no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.

You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one, I hope some day you’ll join us and our world will be one. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world, you may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one. I hope some day you will join us and the world will live as one. Now we go on. Students are asked to take five deep breaths through their noses. Teacher plays class developed themes on. Imagine. So now we’ve added, imagine there is no heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky, through this lyric sheet, now as the children are breathing you play this in the background. Now we read the basic beliefs of the New Age Movement. Could you not recognize that? There is no heaven, there is no hell. Everybody lives for today, imagine all the people living for today, nothing to kill or die for, no, no religion too. You don’t need religion.

We are all part of the oneness. Imagine all the people living in peace, no possessions. He had a hard time living with that one. Here we are, lesson five, teacher directions, sit quietly with your eyes closed and listen to the sounds that surround you, the humming of the lights, the noise is from the hallway, your own breathing. Listen to all sounds at once. Give equal attention to all of them, become enveloped in the various noises. Let no one sound become more than any other, do not analyze or spend more time thinking about any one sound or other. See what happens, you are trying to blend in to the energy that is, and recognize you’re at oneness with all there is. Teacher instructs students to say to themselves, I am aware of all the sounds that surround me and I remain peaceful and calm.

Lesson nine, students are asked to take five slow deep breath through their noses. The teacher plays the class developed themes on. Imagine. The entire group discussion on how itself to practice each of the roles, discussion points, being yourself, being in charge of your own life, feeling free, knowing what you want and don’t want, creating your own peaceful lifestyle, beliefs and ways to act. You see there is no outside authority, you are creating your own peaceful lifestyle, beliefs and ways to act. Now this is being tested in public schools, that is markedly different from the foundation system that we one time had. I don’t believe it’s possible to undo it in any real way when the foundations are gone, but we are to be aware of it as read where in Russia, in communist countries, parents would sometimes stay up half the night with their children, re-teaching them what they have learned in school and undoing what they had learned, but in our day, we just assume that everything is okay, they are going, they are getting input. I wonder it was like you sat down and 820 went through with your children to point out this is what is happening there, this is where the flaw, this is what they are teaching you. So that if they are exposed in that environment, doing something be compatible. We just let it go on, we wonder what’s happened to our generation? Why the spreading immorality even among Christian young people in our society? Well we are constantly being conditioned that there is no morality, there is no immorality, there is no morality, everything is on moral. You make your own reality, you create your own beliefs, just what was a part of the purpose in what is going on here. It’s less than eleven.

Teacher begins the following guided imagery activity. Guided imagery, you read on the New Age Movement, if you are not familiar with guided imagery. Directing students to sit with the head, neck, back aligned, students are requested to close their eyes, breathe gently evenly through their noses. Teacher reads the following script at a slow pace using a general voice. Imagine you are at the top of ten wooden steps, overlooking the ocean. It’s a very warm day. There are no clouds in the sky and the only sound you hear are an occasional seagull and the ocean waves. You have nothing on your mind and no place you need to be. Your swimsuit is all you have on.

This allows you to feel the warmth of the wooden steps and your bare feet, the warmth of the sun rays on you face, backs, arms and legs together we are going to walk down the steps to the ocean shore. With each step you take, you get closer to the ocean, you feel more relaxed, more peaceful. Take hold of the wooden handrail. Take your first step down, let the sun warm you. See what all this, you feel it in your feet, and you touched the handrail, the sun, what is happening and becoming one with all of my surroundings, the steps, the handrail, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the ocean, I am beginning to blend in, I am becoming one, with the oneness, now slowly take another step down enjoying the clear bright blue sky above you, gently take another step down and another remembering that with each step you are becoming warmer and more relaxed, more peaceful.

Take one more step down and sit on the step, feel the warmth of the step heated by the sun on your bare legs, enjoy the contented feeling of not wanting to be any place else, listen to the peaceful sounds of the waves lapping on the beach, slowly stand up, take one more step down to the beach with each step closer to the beach, the warmth of the sun heated, sand rises to meet you, steps that warmth of the sand, rises to meet you, rather sun rays pour into your body from above, slowly take another step down, feeling more relaxed and peaceful, quietly and gently go down steps seven and eight and nine, pause, look out over the ocean, listen to the waves, experience that soothing, peaceful, warm contented feeling, step off into the sand, feel the warm sand, well we have already felt that earlier, it was rising to meet me. When I was on the steps, see what happened, I was blending into that oneness even when I am not there, lying way down now the sand is coming up and I am just blending in so now at the time I get to the sand, that contented feeling, feel the warm sand on the bottoms of your feet squeezing up between your toes, now the sun has warmed your body, slowly walk close to the ocean, sit down in the sand, let the warm sand heat the back of your legs, lean back, let your hands rest in the sand, allow your palms and fingers to become warm, sit quietly for a few minutes enjoying the warm and heavy feeling of your body, watch the ocean experience the peace, contentment that comes from when being completely relaxed, the teacher passes then instructs students to slowly and gently open their eyes, allow approximately ten minutes for the activity. What are we doing, why this? Why just denies to have the kids relaxed and think something peaceful. No, there’s something a lot and more going on here. What? You are becoming one with everything, the steps, the banister, the sky, the sand, the ocean, the sound, I am blending in, everything is peaceful.

There’s more of this. I will read you one more, this is one, after I check and see if I get anything else to mark to read. Yes I will just read to you one more. I think there isn’t anything else more. Teacher directs students to sit with head, neck and back erect. Students were asked to place their feet and flat on the floor, hands in their laps. Always go through the same procedure. So they will say here, maybe not, it’s not meditation, you are not sitting in a yoga position, but you note they they’ve established a position to identify with relaxation. The teacher then requests students to close their eyes, breathe through their noses. Students are asked to recall a time when they were extremely angry.

Remember the circumstances as clearly as they can, remember the feeling, now imagine the feeling contained inside a red ball, now with each exhalation, see and feel a piece of the angry red ball float out of your body. With each inhalation see and feel calmness and control and strength rushing into your body, continue to breathe out the angry red ball until it’s completely gone. Continue to breathe in, peace and control until your body and mind is completely filled. It’s an example, now this is a test program for public schools, At least you as a parent, we as believers ought to be aware what’s going on around us, otherwise we’d say, oh, it’s nice, yea my kids are learning to relax, no, they are learning something more than relaxation, they are learning an alternative religion that with that comes the concept that they’ll create their own world, their own morality. No wonder why my kids aren’t accepting the truth of the scripture, the moral stands of the scripture, because they are being taught something else and that’s creating a foundation for them to make decisions upon, and we as adults are bombarded by this and all of a sudden I can’t take that authoritative, arrogant preaching any longer. That’s not what I want, why? They are right, yes.

I don’t need this absolutism any more, and even as a believer I will say what in the world has happened? I just want to go and have a good feeling and worship the Lord and go away feel it that I was in church, and I say, yes, there is a great New Ager, but you can’t be a biblical Christian and function that way. I will suddenly say, see the church being pressed into the world’s mould, we’d say, oh we wouldn’t do that, I am not a pantheist, no, but I begin to absorb parts of their system into mine and wonder what happens to the biblical Christianity and the generation that grows up with that. Oh, they’ve had no foundation.

I had another one that had the chant that was for the health education in the junior high program, here with committee members from Goodrich and Palms Schools here in Lincoln. They tell you how to use the chat in your contemplation as you teach students how to relax, we won’t read that. Exciting days to be believers. God’s truth is truth, it’s absolute truth. There is right and wrong, the only hope for people is to see that the issue is sin. Solution, there is no solution in saying I am God, that is as you are aware and not the answer, the problem is still there. Sin is sin. I am a sinner. I am under condemnation. There is an almighty Eternal God to whom I am accountable.

I want to be aware of what is going around me, so that I realize, I need to have my feet planning. I am going to become more of a person who is out of step and Christianity will become more unacceptable in this society, because you cannot be a biblical Christian and not take a stand on more absolute and the whole movement and society in mass the movement of the world is against moral absolutes and anyone who would be so dogmatic as to hold to those moral absolutes. So more and more we will be identified as those who are out of date and out of step and we become more unacceptable to society by our arrogant authoritative approach to life, but it’s not our approach, it is God’s approach. There is right and wrong, his truth is truth, always will be truth and you and I need to be sure that our lives are built upon it, the lives of our families are built upon it, that our children understand it and are taught it and recognize what is going on around us.

You’ve been studying the Bible with Dr Gil Rugh. If you would like additional studies, contact Sound Words, Box 5949, Lincoln, Nebraska - 68505