by Texe Marrs
The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God...
I would like to emphasize the importance of the verse above. What the Lord Himself stated through Ezekiel is substantially this: that the man who says “I am a god” deceives himself for he is only a man, a fact which will no doubt be borne out in due time. For, when we continue in Ezekiel, in the same chapter (28) we see that this Prince of Tyrus, who erroneously believed himself to be divine, came under the judgment of God. God ruled that the “terrible of the nations” would draw their swords against this ruler and his nation so that they should be brought “down to the pit” and should die there. The Prince of Tyrus was to be slain by his enemies as a fitting penalty for his blasphemy and rebellion.
In Ezekiel, the Lord made a stunning and revealing declaration that should certainly be heeded by those in the New Age cults and religions who are tempted to say “I am God.” The Lord asked this question: “Will thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? But thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee. Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hands of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 28:9-10).
Should Not A People Seek Unto Their God?
In addition to the “I am God” doctrine, another unholy practice common to most New Age groups is that of spirit channeling, or communication with spirits from beyond. Once again the Bible has the answer to whether this is a healthy and safe practice. Isaiah 8:19, 22 records:
And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto those who are mediums, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? Should they seek on behalf of the living to the dead?... And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.
The consequences of seeking after spirit channellers, mediums, sorcerers, wizards, and the like are dire: “... they shall be driven to darkness.”
The Nature of Jesus
Then we get to the subject of the nature of Christ Jesus. The Bible makes absolute, flat-out statements that Jesus is fully and wholly God, Paul declaring that in Him is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (see Colossians 2:9-10). Yet, most New Age groups deny that Jesus is wholly God, contending that He was simply a perfected man, only one in a succession of Christs, and so forth. An example comes from Annie Besant, former head of Theosophy, who in her book, Esoteric Christianity, claimed that Christ was not God but was simply a man who perfected himself and came to give the Mystery Teachings to us. Besant asserts that another being actually had inhabited the body of Jesus:
That Mighty One who had used the body of Jesus as His vehicle, and whose guardian care extends over the whole evolution of the fifth root race of humanity, gave unto the strong hands of the Holy Disciple who had surrendered to Him his body the care of the infant church. Perfecting his human evolution, Jesus became one of the Masters of Wisdom ... He was the Hierophant in the Christian Mysteries, the direct teacher of the initiates. He is the inspiration that kept alive the Gnosis in the church...
What Besant is proclaiming here is that there is a Mighty One, whom she declines to name, who merely used the body of Jesus as his vehicle. Yet, the first chapter of the Gospel of John tells us quite forthrightly that Jesus came in the flesh as God and that there is no other God but Him. It reveals that He was the Word that was made flesh, the Word that was with God from the beginning, and also that Jesus is God. Jesus, therefore, did not “perfect His human evolution,” He did not become one of the “Masters of Wisdom.” The only half-truth we can find in Annie Besant’s statement is that Jesus did in fact take Christianity under His special charge, though not in the sense that Besant implies.
The New Age Revival of Gnosticism
It is interesting that New Agers such as Besant would mention “Gnosis in the church.” For in essence, the New Age is a revival of the gnosticism that was prevalent in the days of Paul and the early apostles. This is even admitted by many New Age elitists who boast that they are gnostics and what they have come to do is bring people to “know” their divinity through a process of Gnosis. For example, in Omni magazine recently, author Christopher Lash penned an article, “Soul of a New Age,” in which he stated:
The influence of the gnostic tradition on New Age thought is unmistakable. The transpersonal (New Age) psychologist Ken Wilber, described by an admirer as the “Einstein of Consciousness,” draws heavily on gnosticism in books The Atman Project (1980) and Up From Eden (1983). A summary of his cosmology reveals the extent of his indebtedness to gnostic mythology: “Human life is moving up from Eden, not down. The fall... was nothing less than the involuntary descent of God into matter—the creation of the universe itself... The universe is involved in the mighty drama of awakening and reunion... Salvation represents a progression... to awareness of our prior union with God.”
Lash also notes that another prominent New Ager, Robert Anton Wilson, author of The Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati, traces the history of New Age thinking all the way back to the Rosicrucians, the Renaissance magic societies, medieval witchcraft, the Knights Templar, etc., to Gnosticism, and hence back to the Greek Mystery religions and the Egyptian cults. Lash concludes that:
The New Age movement is best understood...as the 20th century revival of an ancient religious tradition, gnosticism; but it is a form of gnosticism considerably adulterated by other influences and mixed up with imagery derived from science fiction—flying saucers, extraterrestrial intervention in human history, escape from the earth to a new home in space...
Where second century gnostics imagine the Savior as a spirit mysteriously made flesh, their 20th century descendants’ conceive him as a visitor from another solar system. Both believe, moreover, that visitors from space built Stonehenge, the pyramids, and the lost civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis.
While Omni magazine’s Lash correctly identifies the gnostic influences of the New Age religion, he fails to note that the gnostics believed that Christ did not actually come in the flesh but was more on the form of a “phantom.” The New Age updates this view to declare that all of us can become phantoms once we achieve the perfect spirit state, thereby rejecting all matter, including our bodies. At that point, like Jesus, we may ourselves become “Christs,” partakers of the Cosmic Consciousness, also called Christ Consciousness, attained through our tapping into and linking up with the divine. The divine, naturally, is simply the earth, the stars, the galaxy, and everything contained therein. So in essence, we arrive back to the pantheistic view that man is part of the All, the All is God, and therefore, man is his own God and is the creator of his own universe, having created it with his own magical thoughts and inner conceptions.
An Impersonal Force as God
If man is the creator of his own universe, then, of course, there can be no personal God, and this is exactly the teaching of the New Age. Dorothy Thomas, founder and director of the Keyes Institute, which bills itself as a “Human Potential Center,” alludes to this cardinal New Age teaching when she writes in a recent newsletter:
I feel a great depth of gratitude to that which I call ‘God.’ Maslow defined God not as a person, but as a force, a principle, a gestalt-quality of the whole of Being, an integrating power that expresses the unity and therefore the meaningness of the cosmos, the dimension of depth. I love what unfolds in that place of surrender to the will of THAT...
Clearly, Thomas’ definition of God, shared by human potential psychologist Abraham Maslow, would deny the personal God of the Bible. The New Age God, the Divine Intelligence, is not a personality but is defined by such terms as a Force, a Principle, a Quality, an Integrating Power, an Expression of Unity, the Divine Intelligence, The Presence, or a Dimension of Depth. Finally, Thomas expresses th
e ultimate rejection of the true God when she exclaims that she is more than willing to surrender to the will of “THAT.” So we see God being relegated in the New Age to being a THAT.
This is certainly a great departure from the Mighty and Holy God of the Bible who sits in heaven overseeing the minute affairs of men and ruling and reigning in all things according to His Supreme Will. This God came in the flesh as Jesus. He is the only way to heaven (see John 10:9; and John 5:39-40). This same Jesus who is God Almighty warned that in the last days many false cults would arise (Matthew 24:5). His prophecy is now being fulfilled by the multitude of the New Age cults and religions that are a plague upon our land.
“But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God ... The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish ...” (Jer. 10:10-11).
New Age vs. True Christianity: 12 Vital Differences
It is unquestionable that the doctrines and teachings of the New Age diverse sharply with those of biblical Christianity. On pages 46 through 48, I provide a chart outlining 12 vital differences between the New Age cults and religions and biblical Christianity. There are many more than 12, of course, but most of these 12 are so crucial that the huge chasm and gulf between true Christianity and the New Age religion stands out visibly and in sharp contrast.
The Best Book on Cults
In a recent issue of The Discerner, an outstanding Christian newsletter published periodically by Religion Analysis Service, a Minnesota-based Christian group with over 40 years experience analyzing and exposing cults, cult expert Ewald Eisele wrote an article entitled “Recognizing Occultism or Heresy.” In it he related the following:
We are often asked which is the best book on cults ... The answer is always the same. If a Christian knows the Word of God, he has not only the answer to the cultist or recruiter for the cults, but he also has the Sword of the Spirit with which to attack as well as defend. Knowledge of the Word should be the highest priority for a believer.
Ewald Eisele is absolutely correct. It is my intent in Texe Marrs’ Book of New Age Cults and Religions to enable Christian believers to understand the false teachings of the New Age and its deceptions, and encourage them to go out and boldly witness in love, compassion, and wisdom to those deceived by the New Age. But the best book by far exposing the cults is the Holy Bible. The cultist may indeed ridicule and reject the Bible, God’s Word, but as Eisele wisely remarks, “He will never change it and if a Christian knows the Truth he will always be pleasing his Lord when he uses that Truth against a lie of Satan.”
Even the most extreme of New Age cults and religions is to be confronted successfully with the overpowering might of Scripture. Recently a woman phoned and told me that she needed to research satanism. “Is there a book you would recommend on the subject,” she inquired. “Yes,” I responded immediately, “the Bible.”
The fact is, we can never understand the depths of depravity involved in Satan worship unless we first come to grips with what God says about the nature of satanic powers—and the ultimate fate and doom of those powers. The Bible records the wisdom of God and demonstrates His strength in relationship to the Adversary. It records the Truth and guidance we need for everyday living. In its manifold pages is the evidence and ammunition we need to confront the cult recruiter face-to-face. It provides the strength we must have to lovingly but with authority challenge the cultist with the absolute, unvarnished, life-changing Truth.
Yes, I thank God that He called on me to write this book unmasking the New Age cults and religions; yet, mine and any book is only a pale substitute for God’s Word. If we are truly to understand what is the New Age and recognize the dangers inherent in its cults and religious sects, we must turn to what God says in His Bible.
Chapter 6: Unholy Bibles of the New Age
Peter advised us that God’s Word is like a light that shines in the dark place, for Scripture comes from God (2 Peter 1:19-21). Meanwhile, John, in Revelation 22:18-19, warned men against adding to or subtracting from the Bible:
If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away the words of the book of this prophesy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life.
Peter also cautioned: “There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1).
Regardless of these admonitions, the New Age cults and religions have published and are using a great number of false bibles and scriptures. New Age teachers have always used the standard texts of the Eastern religions such as the Hindu Baghavad-Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as well as the writings of Jewish mysticism called the Kabbala and the gnostic scriptures often called the Apocrypha. However, many of the newer bibles supposedly come from the spirit world, being dictated to human contacts through automatic writing. Other New Age bibles come from the vivid imaginations of various New Age leaders. Whatever their source, all of these false bibles are designed to take man’s attention away from the true Word of God and direct it instead to untruths, half-truths, and distortions.
Throughout this book, as we look at individual cult groups and religions, we will examine the various false bibles and scriptures being promoted by each. It is important to realize that these bibles have not been hastily thrown together. Clearly, demonic powers using arcane knowledge and sophisticated occultic philosophies have been involved in the production of these books. For example, one New Age bible, Oahspe, is 1,088 pages in length and filled with mysterious symbols and strange diagrams. Oahspe bills itself as “a New Bible in the Words of Jehovih” (Jehovih is Oahspe’s “true” name for Jehovah). Oahspe is today distributed by the New Age religious group known as Kosmon. The book was first printed in 1882. So we see that the false bibles of the New Age are not revolutionary new phenomena—some of them have long and infamous histories.
In Part II of this book I will discuss more of the origins and claims of the Oahspe bible. I will also examine The Keys of Enoch, a beautifully illustrated book of some 600 pages supposedly given to a New Age leader by two spirits who identified themselves as “Enoch” and “Metatron.” We will unravel the gross and outrageous claim of the Christ Foundation concerning its unique set of scriptures, A Spiritual Sex Manual, and we will delve into the odd background and current popularity of the Urantia Book, a 2,097 page set of scriptures which presents a rather bizarre account of the lives of Jesus and Lucifer.
Intended to Confuse
Many New Age bibles are no doubt intended by the Adversary to confuse, deceive, and keep people away from the one true Bible. They are also useful in introducing a mass audience to the concepts and beliefs of the New Age religion. For example, a group called New Age Light in New Zealand publishes a false bible entitled The New Age Testament of Light. Supposedly dictated to a man named Arthur Garside by a spirit who boasted of being “the Universal I AM.” The other-worldly author of The New Testament of Light proclaims:
I Am indeed the Light Force, Intelligence, and Divine Light of the Universe, and there is no other one thing outside of or beside me I Am the universe itself and all that is in it Jesus, the Master/Teacher served Me by performing My Will to perfection...Jesus of Nazareth was the greatest of all the Masters to manifest on Earth.
Clearly, these are not the words of God at all since they suggest that Jesus was only a “Master” and that God is the entire universe, indistinct from His creation.
One New Age bible that is quite interesting because of its name and supposed authorship The New American Bible, subtitled Ecology of Mind. Attractively bound with a glossy green cover and gold embossing, its authorship is shown on the front cover of the book to be: “By God and Michael Mathiesen.” In this 442-page volume, Mathiesen insists that while sitting at his computer one day, God came and took over the computer screen and proceeded to give him messages. These messages became the te
xt of The New American Bible. Again we see the undeniable traces of New Age influence when the “God” of Mr. Mathiesen describes himself in this book as “Universal Mind” and insists that man will be punished severely unless by the year 2000 he organizes himself into a World Government.
Perhaps one of the most widely distributed bibles in the New Age is The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, whose author identifies himself simply as “Levi,” but was born as Levi H. Dowling in 1844 in Bellville, Ohio. In The Aquarian Gospel, Levi writes that a great being called “Visel, the Goddess of Wisdom,” came to him and said “Oh Levi, son of man, behold, for you are called to be the message bearer of the coming age—the age of spirit blessedness.”
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ embraces a number of New Age doctrines including reincarnation. It purports to be the true story of Jesus but its account is radically different than the one in the Holy Bible. The Jesus of The Aquarian Gospel tells his disciples that God is everywhere and that all people in fact worship him, regardless of their different religions. The universal God, says this false Jesus, is simply “Wisdom.” This new Jesus travels to India to teach and learn from the gurus, and also journeys to Persia, Assyria, Ur in the Chaldees, and finally to Egypt.