What is the "New Age Movement"? Is it a world beast power in the making? Briefly, the New Age Movement is not a new cult or an organization but a philosophical direction which blends ideas from many Eastern cults and religions with ancient pagan backgrounds. New Ageism is a major thrust in the developing "one world religion." The power and prevalence of New Age ideas permeate the world, including Christianity and most other religions. Few in the religious scene have understood what New Age ideas are about, and how widespread they really are. What are New Age doctrines? How and why are they contrary to Biblical beliefs?

The present "New Age Movement" may be traced back to Helena Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. From 1867 to her death in 1891, she was said to have received telepathic instruction from "Masters," spirit beings or humans who had died and evolved into a "higher plane," such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, etc. Along with evolution, she taught that all religions have common truths, especially the eastern Indian religion. Her central theme was that man can save himself because he is a god.

Communism, Nazism, secular humanism, Perestroika and many other modern movements all have common ground with Madam Blavatsky. Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy is considered the "Bible" of the New Age Movement. Actress Shirley MacLaine is one of its chief ministers. Other prominent "New Age" writers are Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme, David Spangler and Ruth Montgomery. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev could be considered a "high priest" of the movement.

Reincarnation, Eastern Mysticism, Channeling, Psychic Phenomena, the Occult and other aspects of the New Age Movement are sweeping the western world. Normally, we would not recommend books covering these topics in detail. If you are the type of person who is likely to get "bug eyed" and go too deep into this subject, you should stop reading this article right now.

There is a perverse curiosity in human nature to understand the "mysteries" of Satan. We know one Sabbath-keeping minister who brags that he had read hundreds of books on the topic of witchcraft and the occult. However, the Eternal commends those who have not known the depths of Satan, Revelation 2:24. We should, as Texe Marrs says, "major on Christ, minor on the devil."

Nevertheless, we should be aware of what is going on, without dwelling on evil. We need to have enough knowledge to be aware of Satan’s devices, II Corinthians 2:11. Wherever you are, you cannot escape New Age philosophy and teaching. Satanists sacrificed a dog a few miles from our home. While traveling through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I had to walk through a public causeway with mood-altering lights and New Age music. Schools, media, even American businessmen are espousing eastern religious philosophies previously unknown to the Western world. Even Sabbath-keeping organizations promote New Age ideas.

We need to know our enemy, but not live with him!

Texe Marrs’ book, Mystery Mark of the New Age, Satan’s Design for World Domination, describes the symbols used by New Agers and how this is a coordinated part of Satan’s master plan for world domination. Ravaged by the New Age, Satan’s Plan to Destroy Our Kids, reveals the Satanic plan to conquer the world through turning our youth to witchcraft and Satanism.

Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon’s book, America, The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice. The Rise of New Age Shamanism, shows the fallacy and error of New Age philosophy, how it is a "new" version of the old "perennial religion" of pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, witchcraft and others. In reality, there are only two religions which vie for the mind of mankind: naturalism versus supernaturalism. In the following outline, I have crystallized major doctrines of the New Age Movement, showing the contrast between these two diametrically opposite ways of life. I have put the New Age position in italics, and the Biblical position in normal type.

  Based on human Subjective Experience, New Ageism masquerades as "science" yet is a religion. "If it feels good, do it!" Forget about doctrine and the Bible, experience "freedom" to do as you want.

  Based on Objective Criteria, true religion is based on faith, and backed up by evidence. The Bible reveals God’s doctrines which we must live by.

Let us compare the New Age Naturalistic philosophy with the supernatural doctrines of the Bible. In the following comparison, the New Age position is in italics, while the Bible position is in normal text..

Supernaturalism. We are awed by nature and seek to know the Creator in order to worship Him.

God is the supreme power. We are apart from God but can join His divine family. His laws are absolute, and if broken will surely exact a penalty. In the words of Yul Brenner in the movie "The Commandments": "His god is God!" There is only one God. Judgment will fall on those who fail to distinguish between the Creator and His Creation, Romans 1:18-32 and especially those who claim to be God, Isaiah 47:8-10.

God is Supreme Ruler, but has allowed Satan sway over mankind for 6,000 years. Satan is a personality, and is "The Force" contrary to God’s Laws. We should surrender to God and seek Him through prayer. The purpose of true worship is to learn more about God and His ways, praise and thank Him for His blessings, confess our sins, increase our love for others, and build outgoing concern.

Only God is God, there is none else, Isaiah 40:13-31, 45:5-19. God reproves those who aspire to take over His place, Ezekiel 28:2.

Jesus is the Son of God, He lived a perfect life, died for our sins, was resurrected from the dead and He is alive for evermore. Gurus deny the existence of sin, while Christ condemns sin and calls sinner to repentance, and died for the sins of the world. Gurus are vegetarians, whereas Jesus was not. Gurus teach there are many ways to God, but Jesus says He is the way the truth and the life, the only way to the Father.

Overcoming is not magic but building character by the Holy Spirit, learning faith and patience through overcoming trials and tests. God’s power supersedes the laws of nature.

We can become a child of God through accepting God’s gift of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins, changing our natural, carnal mind through the power of the Holy Spirit. Paradise will be restored by the return of the Savior to rule all nations with a rod of iron.

The truth is, that ASC is more dangerous than cocaine or LSD. The "inner guide" is the voice of Satan and his demons. Our natural mind is enmity to God’s Laws, and results in misery and unhappiness. God’s Spirit does not coerce, it leads us to do good. We must yield ourselves to God, resisting Satan the Devil. While in an "altered state," group leaders are able to implant new ideas and alter the thinking processes of their followers. Don’t let others do your thinking for you! The battle for the mind can be won through Christ. Man cannot find the way to peace, which can only come through obedience to the Law of God. Listen to God and His Word, the Bible. Choose life.

God is separate from nature, which He created. He is a personality. Each human being is a distinct responsible person. There is no salvation apart from the Savior, Acts 4:12.

We have no inherent power to live beyond our few years of physical life. God is the source of all power, who may be petitioned through prayer, but cannot be made to conform to our will.

Men shall be lovers of their own selves, denying God. He who loves his own life more than God shall lose it. We are nothing, but through God’s love, we become His children and will inherit all things.

There is only one true religion. All others are false, and take you to one place — the lake of fire.

Sin is the transgression of God’s Law. We are responsible for our sins and cannot use the pitiful excuse, "the Devil made me do it!" Forgiveness from God through Christ’s blood is the only way to get rid of guilt. Only God is holy, and only He can clean up our vile imaginations and evil deeds.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says the "self-deification of man as supreme" has led to a decline of Western morals. God has laws for our own good, He is a God of mercy, justice, equity. God’s laws demand justice. His mercy is available through Jesus, but He will execute judgment on those who refuse to repent.

The Bible prophesies of the "spirit of disobedience" in the last days, the "man of lawlessness" who will declare he is God, II Thessalonians 2. The Beast will persecute true believers. Christians are enemies of the New Age Movement because they cannot accept religious leaders other than Jesus of Nazareth. We must be separate from the one world religious system. Keeping the Sabbath and Holy Days, and not keeping the pagan celebrations keeps us apart from the world, and makes the world hate us.

The fool has said in his heart there is no God. There are two ways: eternal life and eternal death. God’s one way of life as described in Bible is the only way to participation in the Family of God.

Eve led Adam in the first sin. Man has a God-given leadership role. The Bible has a masculine point of view. Women have been given a special role in training children to be God-fearing and thus have a vital role in the redemption of mankind.

Some are willingly ignorant of the many proofs of creation. Even agnostics are debunking the theory of evolution, showing it to be unscientific and unsupported by the evidence. We seek to know the Creator in order to worship and obey Him. Man was created by God with free moral agency, the ability to choose right or wrong. "From slime to divine" makes man an animal and God a human. There is a contradiction in evolution: man is supposed to be the "highest form" of life, but has "lost" his survival instincts and threatens to destroy all life on the planet. Man is devolving downward, not upward.

We should have mercy, love and compassion. Take care of the poor, needy, blind, deaf, crippled. All are equal in the sight of God. A mentally retarded person is no less precious in God’s sight than a gifted intellectual.

Salvation is open to all whom God calls and who truly seek Him.

"Come let us reason together." Paul reasoned with them out of the Scriptures. Follow no man.

Reincarnation is amoral, senseless and hopeless. Under God’s Law, each has one chance to receive salvation. Few are being called in this age. Most will have their only chance during the Great White Throne Judgment. The second death in the lake of fire is a final and total cessation of one’s consciousness for all eternity.

The dead know not anything. The Bible condemns mediums and those involved in necromancy. Those who attempt contact with the spirit world are seeking demons. Without repentance, they will reap the death penalty.

It is shocking how many tenets of the New Age Movement have sprung up in the Church of God. Modern religious groups have helped pave the way for the New Age. In an effort to gain membership, some are convinced the good news should be presented without any negative aspects, rather than thundering calls for repentance and denunciations of sin as the prophets of old.

Although they once knew the truth, I know of a church organization that now preaches a pablum gospel, extolling the virtues of the "vast human potential," and avowedly is working for world peace. Their new "apostle" jets around the world speaking nice things to world leaders. Their leading scholar goes to Tibet and has cordial relationships with Buddhist monks, and believes in "pre-Adamic man" ideas, co-existing with evolutionary theory. This church ridicules "anti-Catholic" books such as Hislop’s The Two Babylons as being divisive.

They have few miracles because medical science is lauded above the healing power of the Almighty. There is a veil of secrecy as the "dumb sheep" of the lay people are kept in the dark as to the real inner workings of the church. Those who can manipulate the system can work their way up into positions of power in the church and become an elite class above the common herd. There is an amoral double standard, as the elite church leaders can lie, steal, commit adultery and live in luxury while the lay people are subjected to an authoritarian, compassionless church government. Their leaders claim to be "above the Law" of God, worshipped by the membership.

The New Age Movement has virtually taken over some Sabbath-keeping churches of God!

Satan and his followers hate true Bible believers. They say the Christian age (so-called Age of Pisces) will soon be replaced by the enlightened Age of Aquarius. New Agers are open to everything. Everything, that is, except Bible believers, whom they sneeringly call "fundamentalists." New Agers will not tolerate those who believe the Bible and the absolute necessity of following the Eternal’s Law.

Why do followers of the New Age hate us? Because they want freedom from judgment and freedom from the conviction of their sins. New Agers are unwilling to accept their guilt; they want to do their own thing. Even without uttering a word, the true follower of Jesus of Nazareth is a living light, showing the New Ager that sin is real and that God hates sin, that there is a real personal Eternal who will judge every man for his deeds. Moreover, the true believer will not give an inch and grant that non-believers' views are equally valid. This drives the naturalistic pantheists wild with rage.

This is why New Age writing is full of bitter language against Christians. Bible followers are called parasites which must be exterminated. New Agers claim all religions except the Bible lead to godhood. All of the world’s problems are said to be caused by bigoted fundamentalists. Christians are held to be primitive, stupid, and interfering with intelligence, creativity, joy and having a good time. Those who criticize witchcraft and the occult are said to be against social progress.

So-called Christians who willingly accept New Age doctrines will be spared. But New Agers say those who stubbornly stick to their "erroneous" belief that Yahshua is the only Messiah, and His way is the only way will have to be put to death. According to New Age belief, such staunch Christians are the only evil there is.

What a tragedy that many so-called Christian fundamentalists are indeed bigoted, narrow minded, rejecting the very Bibles they thump. They fuel the New Age fire sweeping the world.

We need to understand where persecution will come from, and why. After reading Texe Marr’s book, Mystery Mark of the New Age, I can understand why people today, as men of old, extol the "noble" traditions of the Greeks who practiced infanticide and rampant homosexuality, the Babylonians and Canaanites who had human sacrifices and threw their children into fires to appease their gods, the temple prostitution of Rome, Pergamos and Corinth. I can now understand why New Agers today hate "obstinate" Bible believers. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel.

What we see today in the New Age Movement is a direct fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Isaiah 2 is an end time prophecy. Verses 1-5 describe the establishment of the Kingdom of God on this earth, with its capital at Jerusalem. Verses 6-22 prophesies of the events just prior to the kingdom age. The "house of Jacob," i.e., modern Israel, will be forsaken by the Eternal. Why? Isaiah 2:6, "because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers." Or, as the Amplified Bible has it, "they are filled with customs from the east." Verses 7-9 describe the end time idolatry: great wealth and materialism, which is idolatry. Modern Israel, the Anglo-Saxon peoples and others in Northwestern Europe, have long observed pagan holidays and customs. But in the last days, the Eternal says they will become literally saturated with eastern religions. Every one of the New Age ideas come from the east, particularly India, home of the world’s pagan religions.

Notice also Isaiah 2:10-22. At Messiah’s return, He will humble proud and lofty men who claim "all is God, we are God."

In Hosea 12:1, Ephraim, one of the leading tribes of Israel (identified by some as the British Commonwealth, by others as the United States) follows after "east wind." Now "wind" is used in Scripture as a symbol of false doctrine, Ephesians 4:14. False religious doctrines from the East will corrupt modern Israel during the last days.

II Timothy 3:1-7 adds that in the last days, men will be lovers of their own selves. Man has not always been this way. Self-sacrificing pioneers have colonized new territories, made great technical achievements for the progress of mankind, often with little recognition or remuneration. But in the last days, "love thyself" becomes the great commandment for reprobate man.

It is interesting to note that the Beast will honor the "god of forces," Daniel 11:38. All these scriptures cannot be mere coincidence. They are "dead ringers" for what is going on today.

It is not difficult to discover what the Creator thinks of the "New Age" movement and similar paganistic, occult Satanic cults. The Bible lambasts such practices.

Sorcery, wizardry, witchcraft, enchantments, charms, clairvoyance, soothsaying, fortune telling, divination, prognostication spirit channelling, necromancy, mediums, spiritualism, astrology, star gazing and the like are thoroughly condemned in the Bible.

Here’s some of the many scriptures that cover this topic: Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 18:21, 19:26, 31; Deuteronomy 12:30-32, 17:2-5, 18:9-12, 20-22; I Samuel 15:23, 28:1-25; II Kings 17:17, 21:6; I Chronicles 10:13-14; II Chronicles 33:6; Isaiah 8:19, 19:3, 47:8-15; Jeremiah 27:8, 9; Micah 5:12-15; Acts 16:16-18; Galatians 5:19-21; Revelation 21:8.

Why is the Western world rejecting its Biblical roots? Because churches, supposedly Bible-based, have rejected God’s word. Look at the demise of religion, the Jim Bakkers, Jimmy Swaggerts, Armstrongs, etc. No wonder thinking people are looking elsewhere for answers to life’s questions. One of the five reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was the decay of religion, faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people. Franz Cumont’s Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans describes the crumbling classical world in "New Age" terms: "In the declining days of antiquity the common creed of all pagans came to be a scientific pantheism, in which the infinite power of the divinity that pervaded the universe was revealed by all the elements of nature."

Hunt & McMahon show that the Bible is the basis of true faith, which grows out of a relationship of obedience to God, when we become an instrument of His will rather than making Him the instrument of our wills. We need to abdicate the throne of our lives to God. Only He has right solutions. Christians should not look to themselves for the answers, or let a religious guru do their thinking for them. We cannot exercise free choice if we don’t really understand what we believe, I John 5:20. Therefore, we must get our noses in the Bible!

Spirit "entities" contacted by New Agers in their spiritual encounters endlessly repeat the three-fold lie of Satan: There is no death, man is God, knowledge of the self leads to one’s own divinity, transformation, salvation and power.

There is nothing "new" about New Age ideas. The movement is merely a re-hash of Satan’s twisted concepts. Individually we must fight back and win our personal battles against the devil. There are only two religions: naturalism or supernaturalism. Which one will you choose? W

Thoughts to consider:

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch [sorcerer] to live" Exodus 22:18.

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these . . . idolatry, witchcraft . . . they that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" Galatians 5:19-21.

Bible Study Index