Ep 267 ｜ New Age vs. Christianity, Part 2： 'The God of Self' ｜ Guest： Steven Bancarz
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Summary
In this second half of our conversation, we discuss the differences between Christian and New Age spirituality and the New Age approach to self-discovery. We discuss the difference between the two and how they affect our relationship with the self.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. This is part two of the two-part interview series that
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I am doing with Stephen Bancar. So this is the second half of our conversation. Equally
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as powerful, if not even more powerful than the first half. And I know that you guys are
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going to gain a lot of insight out of this. So I hope you enjoy.
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I think that it's important to make the distinction as Christians between, for example,
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working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing it is God who works in us,
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and constantly obsessing over self-discovery and taking assessment after assessment,
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personality test after personality test, looking at our different zodiac signs to try to find out
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who we really are on the inside. So there are two different ways that we kind of have the
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relationship with the self. Like you said, one that I think is Christ-centered, that is focused on our
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own sanctification through the Holy Spirit, our own relationship with God, and even the talents
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that he has given us uniquely. I think all of that is good. And that is very different. And
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not just in its methods, but also in the peace that it offers versus the new age way of doing that,
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or really just the secular world's way of doing that, which is saying that the road to self-discovery
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is going to be your end destination. And also, it's also going to give you the peace and fulfillment
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that you're looking for. And it just won't. You can know yourself as much as possible.
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That in and of itself is not going to give you peace. Do you agree with that?
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Yeah, I would agree. Unless on your path to knowing yourself, you come to the realization that
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you're a fallen human creature and that you need salvation. But that's not where that path is taking
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you. That path is trying to pump your tires up and inflate your sense of self, right? An honest path
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of self-discovery is the path to, I'm broken. I'm a sinner. I'm in need of salvation. I need someone
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to help me. I need help. Versus, I'm intrinsically good. You know, I'm a good person. Right. I have
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God or the spark of divinity, or I'm a fragment of the creator itself. Right. And I'm the center of
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the universe, and I should be the center of my universe. And I have the answers hidden within me
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somewhere. And I just have to have them drawn out. Versus, if you actually examine yourself
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from an honest, moral, and spiritual lens, you're going to see that you're depraved. You're going to
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see wickedness in your own heart. You're going to see lying, thieving, adultery of heart, murder of
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heart, all kinds of wickedness. Yeah. And blasphemy against God. And that was the self-discovery I really
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needed. And that's the self-discovery that, you know, when I read the Gospels, and I read the
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New Testament, I was like, where was this idea coming from that my entire spiritual system was
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premised on? That I'm God by nature, which is an ontological error. That I'm connected to God by
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nature relationally, which is an error of, you know, understanding our relational separation between
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God and myself. And also this idea that I'm intrinsically good. Like, where did that come from?
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There's like 30, 40 verses in the New Testament that completely overthrow that. And that takes the
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weight off. Once again, it's supposed to. It's supposed to take the weight off because there's
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freedom in the biblical worldview. Like Jesus says, you will know the truth and the truth will set you
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free. It says, take my yoke upon you, my teaching upon you, for you will find rest unto your souls.
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So the teaching of Jesus is that you're not enough. You're not expected to be enough. You're expected to
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turn to Christ and rely on Christ who is enough. And that's a major spiritual living difference between
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new age spirituality and Christian spirituality. Um, is that Christianity is you're focused on
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someone else who's not you and someone else's goodness. Who's not you versus this narcissistic
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self-focus where it's me and my goodness and my, my nature and my potential. And that's the
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gravitational pull of my spiritual life. My life, my life is centered around that versus no, I'm fallen.
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I have problems. I need help. It's centered about someone else's goodness, someone else's spiritual
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work. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm personally, to be honest, I've only been saved four and a half
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years, but I'm still having to come out of these old mindsets still like the renewal of the mind as a
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process where I can focus on how am I doing spiritually this week? Have I done enough spiritually this
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week versus am I folk? Am I Christ focused this week? Instead of like grading myself based on how
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many hours it should be, how Christ focused am I in my heart? Right. Instead of this kind of system,
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we set up of performance and that we grade ourselves against some standard we've made up in our own
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minds and God's up there. Like, what do you, why are you so focused on you? And it's a habit we can get
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into as self-centered human creatures. Yeah. And the new age movement capitalizes on that. Yeah.
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And feeds it with this false understanding of your intrinsic goodness, because we like being
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self-centered. Absolutely. You know, it's our, it's our fallen nature. And the new age movement
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is really based around that. It's based around that selfish desire where we want to be self-sovereign.
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Yeah. We want to be the center of the universe. We don't want someone telling us what to do.
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We want to be the arbiter of truth, the arbiter of morality. Yeah. And this is very general speaking
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in very general terms, but that's really what the new age movement is premised on. Not just that man
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is God by nature, but that man is God of his life, functionally speaking. I have a couple more. Oh,
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sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I would just say it's a horrible God to have. Right. Your, yourself is a
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horrible God to have. You can't tell yourself anything you don't know. Yep. You're really
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unqualified to be your own God. And I am too. Right. And there's only one who's qualified.
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There's only one who's all knowing, all loving, all good. And it's not us. Right. And there's
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freedom in that. There's so much freedom in that. The God of self is, its burdens are heavy and its
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yoke is, is very difficult. We are unmerciful gods. We're ungracious gods. We don't, we're not
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omniscient gods. We're not omnipotent gods. We can't deliver ourselves. We can't even
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understand our own hearts. We can't lead ourselves in the right way. And so as empowering as it might
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seem, as you've said so many times so wonderfully, is actually very burdensome. And the true freedom
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comes from the truth of Christ who promises to bear our burdens. And how gracious is he
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Um, I want to ask you how the journey has been after you, you know, posted on your Facebook
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page saying, you know, I was wrong about all of this. What was the immediate reaction? And
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then what has been some of the pushback that you've experienced since then?
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Yeah. So when I made that post on Facebook, um, on all my social media accounts, I had a joint
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following of about a million people. And I was hit with, I mean, I knew no Christians. I had no
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Christians follow me. It was nothing but new agers. And they're hearing that their worldview,
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Sorry. One quick question. Since you said no Christians follow you, would you say that
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some new agers though, still identify as Christians as well?
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Yeah. I would say some do because they have an understanding. I meant no, no Christians
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followed me at that time when I made that post, but some new agers would say, well, I'm a Christian,
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but what they really mean is I adhere to the Christian ethic.
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Right. So when Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and life, what he really means is
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his way of life is the way, right? So I believe we should be forgiving people and taking the role of
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the servant and loving people. So I'm a Christian insofar as I agree with this certain set of
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moral principles that existed for thousands of years before Jesus even got here. When that's
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not what it means to be a Christian, you have to believe in a certain set of theological
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distinctives. Jesus is God in the flesh. He died on the cross for human sin. He rose on the third day
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and all who believe in him, who repent and believe in him will have eternal life. That's what it
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really means to be a Christian and actually be born again. But for them to be a Christian means to
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agree with the general moral and spiritual inclination of Jesus toward loving people, which by the way,
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I would, you, I don't think there's a single verse in all of the gospels, and I've looked,
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where he talks about loving people as an end in itself. It's always meant to go to the glory of
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God. Right. Right. Forgive others so that your father in heaven will forgive you. If you don't
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forgive others, your father won't forgive you. Right. When you do good works, do them so that your
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father in heaven may be glorified. Right. Even the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do
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unto you, uh, and love your, uh, love your neighbor as yourself for on these hang the law and the
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prophets. Right. So the old Testament law, 613 laws that were given to God's people and the prophets
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referring to the prophets of God and the authors of the old Testament scriptures, or some of them were
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prophets, um, that all of that is fulfilled. The entire old covenant with man that God made is lived
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out through loving our neighbor as ourself. But these verses are never taught in isolation.
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They're always taught within a very specific religious framework. And people want to isolate
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these moral values from the religious and theological framework Jesus placed them in and then say,
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oh, well, I live by those general airy fairy principles that existed before he got here.
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Okay. Well, what's the second half of that verse you quoted from, right? Like what is Jesus actually
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trying to communicate here? That these are the, to love your neighbor as yourself is the greatest
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command next to loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, right? Love your neighbor as
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yourself. Okay. Well, what's the, what's the command Jesus has is greater than that one. And who does he
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mean by God? He defines God as being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So are we willing to love
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the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as much as we're willing to love our neighbor as ourself? If not,
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you're not a Christian, right? You're a Christian in title because you've redefined what Christian
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means anyway. So people will call themselves that incorrectly. Yes. But people saw when I made these
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posts online, um, and emails, I was sending out emails to people, uh, you know, an email list of
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like 90,000 people. And to just see my inbox the next day blow up with craziness, people telling me,
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I mean, swearing at me like crazy, but telling me to go kill myself, telling me to rid myself off the
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fear of the earth. Oh my gosh. Right. And what I quickly realized was that inclusivity and love
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applies really to everyone except Christians. Um, like there was so much talk about all religions
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are equally valid. All religions lead to the same destination in the end. You know, we should all
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be unified with one another and we hate anything that causes division and strife and disunity for
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religious or spiritual reasons until someone comes out and says you're wrong and that there's only
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one path to God. And then you are no longer able and willing to live by that same standard
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that you want to enforce on others. And that's obviously Jesus says, you know, Jesus says the
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world hates me because I testify of it, that its works are evil. Right. And so, you know, the servant
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isn't greater than his master. And so by us being Christians, we're implying that there's something
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in their life that needs to change, that they need to surrender, that they need to repent for,
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and they don't like that. Um, a good analogy might be, you know, we run away from God like a guilty
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criminal runs away from the police. Um, we don't want to be seen by God. We don't want to be known
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by God because if we come to the light, it's going to be made evident that our works are done in
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darkness. So we hate the light, you know, John three, this is the judgment that light has come
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into the world. People love darkness rather than light. So anyway, that's being provoked in people's
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soul and in people's consciences because this is their identity. This is this, they get their
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identity from their new age spirituality, right? This is who I am. I am a God or a goddess.
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They get their security from it. This is what gives me comfort and helps me self-soothe and self-medicate.
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A lot of people in this movement are trauma survivors. This is people's source of, um, you know,
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love and community and power. This is how they empower themselves, right? We need to be empowered
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by what God says about us in scripture, right? Instead of these false narratives we create about
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ourselves. What does God say about us now that we're in Christ? Are we a holy nation and a royal
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priesthood? You know, are we children of God? Are we accepted in the beloved? You know, in one sense,
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you can say that's empowerment, but it's just the truth. But they use false narratives to empower
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themselves and you take away their power structure, their crutches that they're keeping themselves afloat on
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and they just lose it. And so a lot of people just completely lost their minds. Um, and the kind of
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like mockery and, you know, laughter and name calling is just off the charts. I don't even remember a lot
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of it, to be honest. Every friend that I had of the new age movement, um, that ended. And yeah, it was a
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long time before Christian started following me. It started when I made a testimony video and released
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it on my YouTube channel explaining to the new agers what happened to me and where I came from.
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And then I started making videos for them because they kept coming at me with the same objections
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over and over and over again. Well, you know, didn't Jesus teach Christ consciousness? Wasn't
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he teaching us how to reach a state of divine awareness that he had through self-discovery and
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practicing the correct ethic that he, that he practiced? So I would answer this question of
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Christ consciousness going from scripture. Well, what about the second coming? Isn't that a metaphor for
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Christ consciousness incarnating in a sense in people around the world as they awaken to their
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own divinity? Like Eckhart Tolle teaches, like Deepak Chopra teaches, like Marianne Williamson teaches,
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like Oprah Winfrey teaches. So I'd have to answer that as the second coming of metaphor. So I made all
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these videos, um, answering them and eventually Christian started supporting me and, uh, getting a
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hold of some of my content. And it has been nice to have some actual support instead of just tens of
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thousands of people mocking you and debating with you all day, every day. I bet. Yeah. But people
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went crazy. But here's the thing is that our problem isn't with people. Right. Right. Ephesians
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six, our problem is spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. So when people mistreat you,
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um, you are not their enemy. Really their enemies, God, right? They're at enmity with God in their hearts
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and in their minds. Um, they're hostile to the law of God. So their problem is getting close to you
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and hearing you reminds them of the sin that remains in them, that they don't want to deal
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with. They don't want to face and iron that stuff out before God. But also we have to understand that
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a lot of people are demonically oppressed by one spirit or another. I wouldn't say every single
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person. There's not an unlimited amount of demons, but, um, Satan is the deceiver. You know, Satan is
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the one who blinds the mind, the blinds, the eyes of unbelievers. Second Corinthians four, four,
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right. Second Timothy two versus 25 to 26 tells us to, um, address our opponents with gentleness
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that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to knowledge of the truth that they may
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escape from the snare of the devil. Right. And so when I'm talking to someone who's not saved and
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they're freaking out at me, I have to know that they're, they're hurting, they're hurting broken
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people. First of all, second of all, the problem is with God and not me. And third of all, they're
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probably spiritually oppressed. Yeah. And so it's easy, easy to not take things personally. It's like
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if you're walking down the street and a blind person bumps into you, you're not going to be upset
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with them. Right. The Bible says that people who are unsaved, they're spiritually blind. They literally
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can't see. They're not able to see what you see. And so reading all these verses about the depravity
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of man, whether we want to call it total depravity or radical depravity, depending on what side of the
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sense we lean on, but seeing all these verses about man's state without God, right? Dead in sin,
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Jude 19, devoid of the spirit, right? Luke 1, I believe it's 70 something. They sit in the valleys
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of the, in darkness of the shadow of death. Like they have no light in them. And so having that as my
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basis for enduring persecution, it was very helpful. Right. The truth, the full scope of the truth about
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man's depravity, the biblical worldview is meant to comfort us and as believers. And it did for me.
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But a lot of people also were curious and they were like, Hey, you know, we've trusted you for a
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while. Let's stick around and see what you have to say. Yeah. And I've had people message me saying,
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you know what? I hated you when you came out and started talking about Jesus. But a few years later,
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I realized what you were saying was true and I've come to Christ now. And so there's been a lot of
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people who've come out of the new age movement who used to follow me when I was a new age,
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who came out shortly after, including Doreen Virtue, who you had on your channel. And that
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was crazy to me because she said that my videos helped give her courage to come forward with her
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testimony. Yeah. And I was, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to encourage you with just how the Lord
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works because after my interview with Doreen Virtue, most listened to episode that I've ever done. And
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that's really saying something because I've been doing this for over two years, most listened to
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episode that I've ever done. And just last week, I actually got an email from a friend whose friend
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who is not a Christian, very into the new age, very into yoga as a spiritual practice, was, you know,
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maybe had considered herself in line with some Christian values, but was not a Christian. I came to
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her friend and said, you know, I listened to this interview that Ali Stuckey did with Doreen Virtue.
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I dug into Doreen Virtue's YouTube videos, and I realized that I was believing all of this stuff,
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and I wasn't a Christian, and now I am. And so how amazing of the Lord that he worked through
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your testimony, which affected Doreen Virtue, and her testimony, which now has affected, you know,
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thousands of people as well as yours has. And people are realizing the truth, and the truth is
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setting them free. So I just want to thank you, first of all, for your willingness to use a platform
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that you have to share what the Lord has done in your life. Yeah, thank you. And what it comes down
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to really is the Lord's love for people. He has a salvific love for people. He wants to be
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reconciled with people. You know, Paul says that Christians have been given the ministry of
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reconciliation, right? God wants to see people restored unto himself, and you can't be restored
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unto God through any other way except the cross of Christ, right? God's holy, he's just, he requires
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a price to be paid for our moral offenses, for our sins, and that was paid in full by Jesus when our
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sins were imputed to Christ on the cross, right? So he judged Jesus as though Jesus were us. Jesus was
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our substitute and died as our proxy, right? Our sin was laid upon him. God's wrath and justice was
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satisfied in the death of Christ. And, you know, something I heard Paul Washer talk about one time,
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it was an interesting way to think about it. You have Christian martyrs who would rejoice and sing
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hymns on their way to being executed, and be singing and praising God as they're being burnt alive.
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But then you have Jesus weeping in the garden, you know, tears of blood, as it says, which is a
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medical condition when pores end up bursting because of such high degrees of stress. And he's
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saying, take this cup from me, let this pass from me, right? So how is it that Christian men and women
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throughout history counted all joy to die on behalf of the God of the Bible, but here's Jesus in the
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garden crying saying, don't let this happen to me, right? He wasn't scared of what man, his stress and
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his anxiety was not that he was going to have his beard pulled out and be hit in the face and be hung
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crucified. That was not his beef. That was not his problem. His, what he was concerned about was not what
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man was going to do to him on the cross, but what God was going to do to him on that cross. What's it going
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to be like to have the sin of the world laid on my shoulders to bear their sin in my body? What's it
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going to be like, Isaiah 53 10, to have Yahweh crush me? It pleased Yahweh to crush him as his soulmate
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in offering for guilt. So there was a spiritual transaction that happened on the cross between
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our sin and Jesus. And the point is that the reason why Jesus did all this and God loves all,
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did all this is because he loves us. He wants relationship with us, right? Because of the great
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love with which he loved us, he did this. And so he wants to be in relationship with us. And the point
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is that the new age movement can't offer that. The new age movement cannot offer a reconciliation
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between man and God. It's a false theology. It's a false worldview. Your guilt is still with you.
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What do you do with your sin before a holy God after living life as a new ager? You're going to stand
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and you're going to give an account for your life. And you're going to be judged guilty and not
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innocent because the blood of Jesus hasn't been applied to you, hasn't been appropriated to you
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through faith, through repentance and faith. And so the new age movement is going to leave you
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in a worse position than you were to begin with, unreconciled with God. Now, the new age movement
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will define God to be an energy in nature or some impersonal force that dwells within you.
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And you'll live your life trying to cultivate a relationship with what you think is God.
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And then you're going to be thinking that every time some kind of synchronicity or coincidence
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happens in your life, that that is that thing, that idea of God that you have working in your life.
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You know, he protected me and he's leading me and he's guiding me and I can just see it. I just know
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it. And when I close my eyes and I pray and I think about him, I just feel at peace in my soul.
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You have an idol, an image in your head that you're using to self-medicate, basically. And
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you're looking for things that aren't there and you're putting together pieces that aren't there
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to create this narrative that's not true, that God has been active in your life and involved in
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your life. And that was such an ego blow for me as a new ager coming to Christ. I had to admit to
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myself, I didn't know God. God was not active in my life in the way that I thought he was.
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Absolutely. God's plan is to draw you and to lead you to Christ and everything else is just,
00:23:03.560
No, that's okay. I didn't know. I thought that you had finished, but if you need to finish the
00:23:10.060
No, I was just going to say it's easy for us to be self-deceived thinking we have a relationship
00:23:13.820
with God when we have a relationship to an image we have in our minds and that creates positive
00:23:19.220
emotions in us. And then we mistake those emotions as being the love of God itself.
00:23:24.200
And it's a very easy deception to fall into. And that is really what is driving this self-empowerment
00:23:31.380
movement around this false God and the new age movement itself. You have a relationship to an
00:23:35.380
idol in your mind. It's therapeutic. It's helping you be a better person. But in the end, it's not God.
00:23:46.580
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How do you see the new age kind of subtly seeping into the Christian church? What would you say that
00:25:26.780
Christians should look out for? Definitely look out for yoga in the church. That's a big one. And
00:25:33.860
that's not so subtle. You'll have A, Christian ministries teaching yoga, but B, churches themselves
00:25:40.600
opening up their sanctuary to either yoga studios or to teach yoga to their own congregants. I was
00:25:48.120
visiting a church recently. They built a new one up the street. I popped in. I wanted to see what was
00:25:52.400
going on. They had people come in with yoga mats. They were doing a yoga class for their congregants.
00:25:56.780
And tell everyone what's wrong with that for those who don't know.
00:26:01.400
Yeah. So the word yoga means union, and it refers to union between the personal self and the universal
00:26:06.860
self. It refers to union between the Atman and Brahman, right? So the Hindu worldview is that all is
00:26:13.920
Brahman and Brahman is all. It's pantheistic. You're ultimately Brahman. And the goal and purpose of yoga is
00:26:19.340
not just to be physically fit and to stretch out and to feel better in your body. The goal of yoga,
00:26:25.340
those things are all a means to an end to realizing you are unified with Brahman and to live from that
00:26:30.700
state of being unified with Brahman, which they would call moksha. So we live in a state of maya,
00:26:36.200
which is self-deception, which is delusion. We're ignorant of our true nature. And the goal of yoga
00:26:40.680
is to help you reach a state of consciousness called moksha, where you are self-realized as Brahman.
00:26:45.840
And a lot of these postures people are holding, the warm-up routine is a sun salutation
00:26:50.720
posture. You know, you have warrior pose, one, two, and three. This is actually a polytheistic
00:26:57.060
murder scene that you're imitating with your body, right? It's called Virabhadrasana one,
00:27:01.860
Virabhadrasana two, Virabhadrasana three. And people go to yoga studios and they're, you know,
00:27:06.400
practicing this thinking it's, you know, helping me be more in shape and helping me with back pain,
00:27:13.020
But you're actually, yeah, exactly. But these postures are meant to invoke the properties,
00:27:20.040
the essences, and the qualities of these gods, these deities into your life.
00:27:26.640
So Virabhadrasana, let me give just one quick example, very, very common yoga pose,
00:27:30.780
warrior one, two, three, very popular sequence, universal sequence. And so you have Shiva who wanted
00:27:37.760
to marry Daksha's daughter, whose name was Sati, but Daksha either didn't attend the wedding or
00:27:43.420
wouldn't let them get married. There's different understandings of this mythology. But Shiva was
00:27:49.500
really upset at Daksha for interfering with his marriage with Sati. So he turned himself into this
00:27:56.100
thousand-headed monster called Virabhadrasana. And he walked over to Daksha and took out a sword and
00:28:02.260
cut off his head and then placed it on a stake. And when you're doing the warrior sequence,
00:28:07.140
in yoga, your first pose is you preparing yourself for battle, which is this, I believe. The second
00:28:14.860
pose is you're stretched out and that's, you're getting ready to attack. And then the third pose
00:28:20.460
is you're outstretched forward and you have your hands stretched out in front of you and your back
00:28:25.680
leg is outbalanced behind you. And that is to imitate Shiva or Virabhadrasana, putting the head
00:28:31.740
of Daksha on a stake. So how can you imitate God in your body, or sorry, imitate God? How can you be
00:28:37.580
an imitator of God and glorify God in your body? Like the Bible says, if you're imitating a polytheistic
00:28:44.160
murder scene with your body, how can you do that in the name of Jesus unto the glory of God
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What are some other ways in addition to yoga that you see the New Age seeping into the Christian
00:30:18.920
church? Under the guise of contemplative prayer, that would be another one. And there's a difference
00:30:24.920
between praying contemplatively and contemplative prayer, which is a practice that was created by
00:30:31.840
a group of Roman Catholic mystics in the 20th century. And some of them have passed on now,
00:30:38.840
Merton and Keating and these other guys. But basically, the point of contemplative prayer
00:30:43.420
and the practice of it, you're going to pick a word and you're going to repeat this word in your head
00:30:48.420
over and over and over again. It's going to kind of act as your anchor and your grounding word.
00:30:52.620
And you're going to try to still and shift your own consciousness through repeating this word
00:30:59.600
over and over in your head. They use this in transcendental meditation, by the way.
00:31:03.080
You pick a word and you repeat it over and over to shift your consciousness. And the point is,
00:31:06.960
is they will say that God is not known in an object-subject distinction. God is known in a deeper
00:31:13.360
state of consciousness that they'll call pure consciousness or pure awareness. That's where God
00:31:18.420
kind of intrinsically dwells. And some of the quotes that they've said in their primary works are just
00:31:23.900
unbelievable. But they believe that the self, in one sense, is ultimately God. And so since God is
00:31:30.920
something within you, when you pray contemplatively, you pick a sacred word, they'll call it, and repeat
00:31:36.700
it in your head over and over to try and still and change the makeup and state of your own
00:31:42.340
consciousness. And God is known in that altered state.
00:31:47.900
You do, right? And I guess we could talk about that a little bit as well, is that the word of faith
00:31:54.920
movement is premised on some things that are very, very close to the law of attraction.
00:32:01.500
For example, you will have, you know, E.W. Kenyon, the grandfather of the word of faith movement,
00:32:09.160
saying that you have what you profess. Only once you profess something do you have something and do you
00:32:15.560
receive something. So the idea there is that words have effectual power to bring something into your
00:32:23.720
Yeah. I've seen some churches, not a prosperity church, but kind of people in the realm of Bethel
00:32:30.100
declare something to make it manifest, is kind of the language that I hear. Is that what you're
00:32:36.920
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Thinking that my words and my, especially like
00:32:44.260
my emotions as well, but my spoken word in particular, when I declare that and I speak
00:32:50.520
that out, since faith is a force, like gravity, the spoken word carries a force with it. And that's
00:32:59.520
going to interact with this set of spiritual laws that God has set up in the universe and bring into
00:33:04.720
my reality whatever I'm declaring and confessing with my mouth. And that's why Kenneth Hagin,
00:33:09.560
really the father of the word of faith movement, says you can have what you say, and that he has
00:33:13.680
seen unbelievers achieve success by practicing these same principles, even though they don't know
00:33:20.240
And the whole declaration-based spirituality is silly because there's no vertical connection
00:33:24.720
made between you and God. It's not prayer. It's not supplication. He's up there in the heavens
00:33:29.960
thinking, what are you doing declaring and decreeing? I'm up here. Ask me for something.
00:33:35.020
You have not because you ask not. And not to mention there's seven different conditions,
00:33:39.300
at least seven different conditions God puts in scripture on whether or not he'll even lend
00:33:42.980
an ear to our prayer. Right? Like Proverbs 28, for example, says if a man departs from the law of
00:33:48.140
the Lord, even his prayer becomes an abomination to him. Right? If you're not treating your wife
00:33:52.580
properly, Bible says treat your wife properly for the sake of your prayers. Prayer said for attention
00:33:57.980
or to be seen by people, you've received a reward in full. Prayer said for the wrong reasons. Right?
00:34:04.980
You have not because you ask not, and you receive not because you seek to spend it amiss.
00:34:11.300
So there's a scope in which God is willing to operate, and he tells us how we should cooperate
00:34:16.300
with him as his children. And the declaration-based spirituality, it's more similar to the law of
00:34:22.120
attraction in the New Age. We've been taught by books like The Secret than it is biblical Christianity,
00:34:27.500
because it's premised on the idea that words have intrinsic, effectual power to bring something
00:34:32.940
to pass in the material world. And there's actually a whole book called The Physics of Heaven,
00:34:37.380
which I've done a review of on another channel, that literally says-
00:34:46.280
Okay. I thought that it was someone from Bethel, and I don't remember if it's actually
00:34:50.020
Bill Johnson or not, but I just wanted to make sure that we clarified that just in case
00:34:55.740
people were curious. Yeah, no, he's featured in the book. He has a segment in the book. It's
00:35:00.480
a joint collaboration effort. Chris Vallotton from Bethel wrote the foreword, and they believe
00:35:06.220
that when you declare and decree things, you're popping quiffs in the quantum field is the way
00:35:15.560
that they'll describe it. So basically, I'm going to try and give Cole's Notes version here.
00:35:20.460
In quantum mechanics, there is a spooky relationship between human consciousness and
00:35:25.860
subatomic particles like an electron, for example. Electrons possess what's called wave-particle
00:35:30.980
duality. They can exist as a wave smeared out in space or as a solid-stable object that can be
00:35:36.000
measured in one location in space. And when you try to observe a particle after having just measured
00:35:42.100
it as a wave, you try to observe, why is it acting as a wave? Consciousness or the presence of a
00:35:47.540
conscious observer collapses the wave function of the particle. And now this electron can be measured
00:35:52.340
once again as a solid-stable object in one location. And that's pretty interesting. You
00:35:59.860
know, why is it that when I'm not trying to consciously observe it, I can measure it as
00:36:03.060
smeared out as a wave creates an interference pattern, as it's called. But when I'm trying to
00:36:08.260
observe it with a microscopic camera, all of a sudden it collapses again, and it's solid and stable.
00:36:12.440
That's really spooky. They want to, first of all, that doesn't apply to atoms. It doesn't apply to
00:36:18.960
molecules. It doesn't apply to macroscale objects like this cup, for example. It's not like when I
00:36:25.680
don't look at this cup, it exists as a sea of quantum soup until I look at it. Deepak Chopra
00:36:31.580
believes that. I'm sorry, it's hilarious. Saturn is not some ball of soup now because no one's
00:36:36.500
observing it. That's silly. But what they will say in the Physics of Heaven book is that they mistake
00:36:44.540
observation of subatomic particles for intention and desire for macroscale objects. So now my desire
00:36:52.620
and my intention is what brings to pass possibility, possible realities. I can select possible realities
00:36:59.640
and make them become physical through my awareness, my desire, and my intention. Right? And so that
00:37:06.480
is a mechanism of God answering prayers, really. By you making declarations and decreeing,
00:37:10.460
you're popping quiffs in the quantum field and causing possibilities to come out into the natural
00:37:14.680
world. Wow. And not everyone teaches that strong of a law of attraction parallel, but I did a whole
00:37:22.820
podcast series on apologia where we compare and contrast the word of faith movement and primary
00:37:29.440
doctrines with the law of attraction and New Age spirituality. We go through primary quotes from
00:37:35.160
word of faith teachers and New Age teachers. So word of faith brings in law of attraction. Your
00:37:39.240
words have no effectual power. As a Christian, the power of life and death is in the tongue
00:37:44.240
means that your thoughts and your words have great influence. Your words, sorry, have great influence
00:37:50.100
over the thoughts and emotions of other people. Just a few chapters later in Proverbs 16, it tells us
00:37:55.720
that a gentle tongue is a tree of life. That doesn't mean I can speak trees of life into existence with
00:38:01.120
my tongue. It means that a soft, gentle word turns away wrath and brings healing to the bones,
00:38:06.800
right? And it says in Proverbs as well, that mere talk is useless. What do we do with that one? What
00:38:14.940
do we do with Revelation chapter three? This is a really big knockdown argument against word of faith
00:38:19.520
and the secret type spirituality, which is law of attraction, which is a staple doctrine in the New
00:38:25.580
Age movement. You look at Revelation three, Jesus is rebuking a church in Laodicea. And he says,
00:38:32.640
you say, I am rich. I am healthy. And I am in need of nothing. You are making positive declarations
00:38:39.140
and you are making positive decrees and you believe them in your heart. And he says, but I say you are
00:38:44.900
poor, you are sick, you are wretched, and you haven't come to me. And it's very, very telling what
00:38:51.540
if the law of attraction was true and word of faith theology was true, they should be having
00:38:56.520
what they're confessing. They believe it in their heart. They're confessing. It should be manifesting.
00:39:00.740
It should be manifesting. And Jesus told them your faith and your confession is erroneous,
00:39:05.440
right? But that is, where does that come from? Where does this word of faith idea come from?
00:39:11.280
It comes from E.W. Kenyon who had a fascination and drew influence from the metaphysical cults
00:39:17.440
of the late 1800s. He had an extensive metaphysical library, and these influenced how he understood
00:39:23.380
these scriptures. And that's undisputable. That's just a historical fact. So the word of faith movement
00:39:28.780
draws from New Age spirituality, and that's another way we see this manifest in the church.
00:39:33.660
We can declare and decree things that we have a right to declare and decree. We can only decree and
00:39:39.380
declare that which were guaranteed. For example, I decree that God will work things, not decree,
00:39:45.160
I should say declare that God will work all things together for the good of those who love him and
00:39:50.580
are called according to his purpose. I can declare that God will never leave me nor forsake me. I can
00:39:56.700
declare that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I can declare the goodness of
00:40:02.460
God, the promises of God, the character of God over myself and over my life. And that's self-edifying,
00:40:08.900
and that's a good thing to do. But I can't declare a new job or a new car or a new partner into
00:40:14.200
existence or say, I declare this over your life and I decree that over your life. Or, Lord, we're in
00:40:18.960
this space right now, we decree this and we decree that and we declare this. You don't have that
00:40:23.020
authority. You don't have that position. We're human creatures, fallen, and we appeal to God who
00:40:27.760
alone is sovereign and all-powerful. But that idea that man's words carry intrinsic effectual power to
00:40:34.780
bring something to pass in the material world, that's New Age. That's another big way that the New
00:40:39.580
Age is working its way into the church. And I would ask, I would get people to consider maybe
00:40:42.620
how many people listening right now, this is an interesting one, would believe in the idea of
00:40:48.460
karma, would believe in this general idea of what goes around comes around. That comes from
00:40:53.560
Eastern philosophy and the idea that what you do in this life, any sin you commit in this life,
00:41:00.520
will have to be repeated back to you either later on in this life or in a future incarnation.
00:41:07.620
And so you will always have what's coming to you. So if you abuse someone, you're going to
00:41:11.500
receive abuse in this life or the next life. If you have been taking advantage of people
00:41:16.900
financially, you're going to have to be poor in this life or the next life versus Christianity
00:41:22.660
talks about sowing and reaping. But sowing and reaping is not the same as what goes around
00:41:26.580
comes around. Sowing and reaping just merely says there's going to be consequences to your
00:41:30.360
actions. But those consequences aren't always realized on this side of heaven. There's a lot of
00:41:35.260
people who live greedy lives and die greedy and die comfortable after just making a mockery of
00:41:42.480
God's creation, of God's people, and they just die very comfortable. But there is going to be some
00:41:48.320
kind of internal spiritual consequence at the very least in terms of your relationship with God.
00:41:53.220
Like the Bible says, whoever commits adultery destroys his own soul. There's going to be a
00:41:57.340
hardening, a self-hardening effect. But you're not always going to see the full effects of your sin
00:42:02.580
manifest in your life on this side of heaven. That just doesn't happen. And Christians as well,
00:42:07.340
we would need to also realize that Jesus Christ paid our debt in full, right? Mark 10 45, the Son
00:42:13.220
of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many, right? The ransom is what you would pay to a slave
00:42:19.500
owner to release the slave or the bond servant, we should say. Definitely should say bond servant in
00:42:24.820
times like this, because that's what it was. The bond servant from the debt that they owed their
00:42:33.020
master, right? We have an outstanding moral debt of justice between us and God. Jesus gave his life
00:42:37.300
as a ransom to pay off all our debt, right? Colossians 2 14 says that the record of offenses
00:42:42.640
that stood against us was nailed to the cross and done away with, with its legal demands. So if Jesus
00:42:48.520
Christ paid for our sin in full, and all my sin was imputed to him and judged him, God's not going
00:42:54.980
to judge me for the same set of sins here to judge Christ for. Right. So if I get stolen from when I'm
00:43:00.180
35 years old, and I stole from someone when I was 14, that's not the universe or some metaphysical
00:43:06.720
mechanism built into the universe, making sure I receive what I've put out. And it's not God holding
00:43:13.420
me accountable for that same sin that I did when I was a kid, because, you know, I'm saved now. Yeah,
00:43:19.180
Christ paid for that sin. Yeah. And so but this idea of what goes around comes around in karma. I mean,
00:43:24.360
probably 80 90% of the population believes in that, but it comes from Eastern mysticism. Yeah, which got
00:43:30.560
brought over through theosophy, Helena Blavatsky in the late 1800s. And, you know, so there's more subtle
00:43:37.740
ways like that, too, where it becomes so ingrained into our thinking, we don't even, you know, stop to consider
00:43:42.540
where did this idea come from? Oh, there's so many more things that I could ask you about. Okay,
00:43:47.720
let me just say, just give me a very quick take, because you talked about theosophy. And I think
00:43:54.280
you mentioned someone at the beginning of the episode that reminded me of this Enneagram. Is
00:44:01.780
it something that Christians should take part in? That is something that I haven't looked into fully
00:44:08.680
enough to be able to give an answer to it, though everyone who I respect in the faith has a
00:44:12.480
problem with it. Yeah, everyone I respect in the faith who has done thorough research into this.
00:44:17.440
I had an organization send me a book they produced recently on the Enneagram, very respected authors
00:44:23.780
that I regard highly saying, would you review this book and take a look at some of this information.
00:44:29.520
And it's basically universally recognized as this does have its roots in the New Age movement.
00:44:34.840
Apparently, this was created by a New Ager for the purpose of bringing people into relationship with
00:44:40.600
spirit. And it was channeled to him, that this entire modality was channeled to him when he was
00:44:48.380
in an altered state of consciousness. Basically, you allow some other foreign spirit or foreign entity
00:44:54.320
to override your cognitive faculties. It's called channeling, or automatic writing.
00:45:01.400
Of course, in Miracles, a very popular book, promoted by Marianne Williamson, and advertised by Oprah
00:45:07.300
Winfrey would be an example of a book that's channeled material. So would the Celestine
00:45:10.900
Prophecy, which has sold 27 million copies, by the way. But they believe that this healing modality or
00:45:17.100
this personality test modality was deduced from channeling. So that to me is obviously a major,
00:45:24.400
major red flag. If this person believes some entity or spirit, you know, influenced his consciousness
00:45:30.760
to dictate to him some spiritual system that's meant to unify us with spirit or some higher
00:45:35.960
self version of us, I would stay away from that. So I haven't researched it too much though, but...
00:45:42.280
That's okay. If anyone is listening to this and they're curious about that, I did ask Doreen Virtue,
00:45:47.060
who has done videos of herself or on her own talking about that. So I encourage people to go listen to
00:45:53.660
that episode where I am talking to Doreen Virtue. You can also go watch her videos on YouTube. The episode is
00:45:59.620
called Dangers of the New Age. And so she does have a take on that. I just know that's something that's
00:46:04.300
very popular in Christian circles. And of course, I don't think that everyone who has ever... I used to
00:46:09.880
use the Enneagram a lot because, you know, thought that it was a great tool. And there are still people
00:46:14.740
that think that, and I'm not wholesale condemning them, of course. But like you said, I do think that
00:46:19.300
it is very important for Christians to look into and to know the roots of the things that we are using
00:46:24.340
as so-called spiritual tools. Can you just tell everyone where they can find you?
00:46:29.620
Yeah. I'm on Instagram. I have a YouTube channel under my name, Stephen Bancars, where I have
00:46:35.560
quite a few videos addressing and explaining New Age thought and New Age practice from a biblical
00:46:41.580
perspective. I actually have a book out as well, an apologetics book on the New Age movement called
00:46:47.260
The Second Coming of the New Age, which dives into things a little bit more deeply than we have time
00:46:52.320
to do in an interview like this. I'm on Facebook and stuff like that as well. And I do have a website
00:46:57.460
called reasonsforjesus.com, which is a general apologetics website. But you will find a lot
00:47:04.020
of helpful resources on there pertaining to New Age spirituality as well.
00:47:08.800
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I know that this is going to be a conversation
00:47:13.780
that people are going to love. Yeah. Thanks for having me.