Shifting Shadows of Darkness increasing in March
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The Power of Now
New Age Guru Challenges Christians to Release the Power of God
By Julia Loren
The days of taking a neutral stance towards the New Age and the supernatural are over. Christians who have experienced the presence and power of God personally need to rise up in boldness and release the power of their testimony – or others will use their counterfeit experiences to lure the world into the dark lord’s kingdom. In fact, television is already shifting the shadows of darkness over the land and this month will see the darkness increasing as never before.
Let go of fear, forget about the past, stop thinking, God is not love, practice the presence of yourself and offer no resistance to the pain of life. Then, according to Eckhart Tolly, you will find true peace and happiness. His message is nothing new. His rise to stardom in recent years is phenomenal; helped along by Oprah Winfrey whose endorsement has catapulted him to the attention of her massive audience. The German-born Tolly who now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia is becoming hotter than Deepak Chopra.
New Age guru Eckhart Tolly is being whole-heartedly endorsed and his books (The Power of Now & A New Earth) promoted by one of televisions most popular talk show hosts, Oprah Winfrey, who will be co-leading an online class with Tolly this March appeals to those who seek a new spiritual path. His teachings are unleashing a whole new wave of an old age movement rooted in Theosophy, an occult-based society popularized in the 1800s that incorporated eastern religions and is the root of the New Age movement. And America is gobbling it up like starving children.
His popularity challenges Christians to take a stand – not against Tolly – but to stand in the brilliance of God’s presence and shine ever brighter to a world that is apparently having trouble seeing the light.
Where did Tolly gain such power to influence? Surely not from God. He claims to have been on the brink of suicide when he awoke one night to hear an inner voice say, “Resist nothing”. His spiritual encounter became the key that miraculously healed his depression and set him on the well worn path of seeking enlightenment through eastern religions.
His teachings are merely a retread of Theosophy that seems to be filling a spiritual void evident in America. His timing is as perfect as Madame Blavatsky’s was in the aftermath of the Great Awakening. [I write about this current explosion of occult activity and its origins in my book Shifting Shadows of Supernatural Power. I encourage you to read it.]
Into the spiritual void left in the waning fervor of the Great Awakening, stepped
Madame Helen Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, the first of the US New Age movements. The Russian born guru, is known as the “mother of the modern spiritualist movement,” who popularized mediumistic and psychic powers and the merging of world religions into what would become the foundation upon which the modern New Age movement rests in America.
She, like Tolly, claims to have been launched into guru stardom after receiving a powerful spiritual experience. Hers included childhood visions of a tall Hindu who eventually materialized in Hyde Park and became her guru and advisor. Traveling throughout the world, Blavatsky picked up on the Eastern teachings and philosophies of India and the Himalayas, eventually making her way back to the US in 1873, at the height of the spiritualist fad that swept the nation at that time. Spiritualism, which owes its beginnings to Emmanuel Swedenborg’s writings on the spirit world, originally focused on the belief that the dead communicate with the living and can be contacted through mediums and séances.
She and newspaper correspondent Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in September 1875, after they attended a lecture on pyramids and their use in conjuring spirits.
The term “Theosophy” is derived from the Greek words ‘theos,’ meaning God, and ‘sophia,’ meaning wisdom. True Theosophists hold that the divine higher self of every mortal man is of the same essence of the gods. Prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers and you have proved God. In short, man can not only be god but is god. Karma and reincarnation are part of their foundational beliefs but they believe we do not regress back into animals after we die. Instead, we review our past and rest for awhile before reincarnating into successive lives. Pagan religions and worship of the earth, the sun, solstices and nature rites are also included in her writings. To Theosophists, the religions of the world are branches on the tree whose trunk is the one ancient – once universal – wisdom religion. According to them, periodically, great teachers (Buddha, Jesus, Dali Lama, etc.) come amongst us to help us in our evolutionary path. They all created another branch on the tree. This idea also seems to be the root teaching of all current New Age gurus.
Tapping into the higher self and reaching into other places of existence seemed to attract those who sought to develop their paranormal faculties or to “bliss out” in trance-like detachment to avoid life’s pain and suffering. Suddenly the quest for power and control over life became accessible to those who would be gods. It is this Theosophical foundation that under girds today’s New Age teachings, Wiccan and pagan religions, and even Tolly’s teachings.
Oddly enough, the Theosophical Society was founded in the same area of New York City where Christian revivalist Charles Finney lived in 1830-1831, the peak years of The Second Great Awakening. Prayer meetings were crowded almost every night. Conversions and confessions of sin were frequent. Demonstrations of the power of the Holy Spirit amazed those who attended the meetings.
By the 1850s, the Great Awakening religious fervor had died down. Many Victorians began rejecting conventional religion and spiritualism flowed into the spiritual void of America and Europe. The religious climate of America had been primed to experience increasing spiritual power but lacked a cohesive structure to sustain either a revival of Christianity or a revival of occult mysticism.
Eventually, criticism made Blavatsky realize that she needed to soften her approach and so she tried to disentangle herself from occult labels that connoted an anti-Christian bias. In writing her voluminous works, she offered to the world a systematic, quasi-academic approach to the study of paranormal phenomena and made spiritualism intellectually appealing. She established the foundation upon which all occult mysticism and 20th century expressions of New Age practices have built their particular kingdoms.
And so now we have Tolly stepping into the current spiritual void, appealing to middle and upper class Americans who are burned out by materialism and exciting a culture that seeks paranormal power and is titillated by the occult. He eliminates the anti-Christian bias and all bias against religions and so appeals to everyone –at least those who have not encountered a personal revelation of Jesus Christ.
The central teachings of Tolly are that there is no presence of God; God is not love because there is no lover and beloved; true salvation is to be who you are; the goal of life is to free yourself from fear and enter into the blissful state of detachment from life and others. He offers his followers a respite from thinking and encourages a meditative state that includes a letting go into the Now – no past, no future, no thinking, a relinquishment of all thoughts.
Despite the fact that he espouses letting go of fear, it is fear that drives people to sit at his feet. Those who feel like God has abandoned the world, or perhaps never existed, are turning towards anyone who offers freedom from fear and suffering. And Tolly offers a pleasant escape from existential despair in a world where there seems to be no compassionate, loving God.
It is this meditation on nothingness that induces a trancelike state that opens the door to occult spirits and prevents people from knowing the true fulfillment in experiencing the overwhelming spiritual experience of being drenched in the true love of Jesus Christ.
Yet, it is not only what he is teaching through Oprah’s vast audience and beyond, that should concern Christians, but why society is embracing Tolly at this point in history.
The spiritual void left by past moves of God’s Spirit seem to be waning and non-Christians as well as marginal Christians who haven’t stepped into past and present moves of God, are increasingly fearful of the future. Scripture speaks of a time of darkness coming on the world characterized by spiritual apostasy, natural and technological disasters, and increasing fear. Many people believe that those days are upon us now and will increase in intensity in the years to come. Fear drives individuals to fight or flee. Tolly appeals to those who long to flee into a detached state of self-induced bliss.
Scripture also speaks of the light of God increasing in this darkness as the people of God become carriers of His light and Presence into the world. The world, apparently, is having a little trouble seeing the light. Anyone with a glittering image of a message that shimmers with promise seems to be a good enough substitute and so they flock to Tolly’s paradoxical, Zen-like doublespeak that serves to open peoples’ minds to “doctrines of demons” that are older than Theosophy.
The days of taking a neutral stance towards the New Age and the supernatural are over. Those who do not know the true presence and power of God’s Spirit will become increasingly subject to the power of the evil one. Those whose fears or doctrines have led them to avoid even the Lord’s supernatural power will soon find themselves and their children easy prey for evil supernatural powers.
Tolly’s popularity speaks clearly of a need for Christians to become who Jesus intended them to become – carriers of His light, His presence and power into a dark and desperate world. It is imperative that we as Christians draw so close to the Lord that we offer the world the power of His love – releasing prophetic words, demonstrating His power through healing the sick and casting out demons, combating fear through words of hope and encouragement, calling forth peoples’ destiny, and releasing miracles to those who are hungry to experience the incredible love and power of God in our day.
It is equally imperative that we increase in faith and decrease in fear. Fear-based theology has nothing to offer the world. And so the world flits away into the teachings of those like Tolly’s, who offer respite from fear.
Rather than rise up against Tolly’s teachings in a negative way, and risk alienating non-Christians, those who consider themselves true Christians should challenge themselves to dwell deeper in the light of God’s overwhelmingly loving presence and radiate His glory outwardly.
If we are not overwhelmed by the love of God, locked away in the heart of God’s affection looking to Him with radiant faces, how can the light of the world shine through us? Become the light of the world that Jesus says you are and then you will push back the darkness. Making God radiant to everyone you meet is part of the plan for your life and the key strategy for defeating the dark lord who is shifting his shadows of darkness over the land.
We have the “power of now”. We owe the individuals we encounter on a daily basis an encounter with God. Christ has commissioned us and empowered us to go into all the world. We will win them over if we take the power of now – the power of the Holy Spirit today – to release the brilliance of God’s glory shining through us to all we meet.
____________________________
Julia Loren is the author of Shifting Shadows of Supernatural Power with contributing authors Bill Johnson and Mahesh Chavda (Destiny Image, 2006). www.julialoren.net.
New Age Guru Challenges Christians to Release the Power of God
By Julia Loren
The days of taking a neutral stance towards the New Age and the supernatural are over. Christians who have experienced the presence and power of God personally need to rise up in boldness and release the power of their testimony – or others will use their counterfeit experiences to lure the world into the dark lord’s kingdom. In fact, television is already shifting the shadows of darkness over the land and this month will see the darkness increasing as never before.
Let go of fear, forget about the past, stop thinking, God is not love, practice the presence of yourself and offer no resistance to the pain of life. Then, according to Eckhart Tolly, you will find true peace and happiness. His message is nothing new. His rise to stardom in recent years is phenomenal; helped along by Oprah Winfrey whose endorsement has catapulted him to the attention of her massive audience. The German-born Tolly who now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia is becoming hotter than Deepak Chopra.
New Age guru Eckhart Tolly is being whole-heartedly endorsed and his books (The Power of Now & A New Earth) promoted by one of televisions most popular talk show hosts, Oprah Winfrey, who will be co-leading an online class with Tolly this March appeals to those who seek a new spiritual path. His teachings are unleashing a whole new wave of an old age movement rooted in Theosophy, an occult-based society popularized in the 1800s that incorporated eastern religions and is the root of the New Age movement. And America is gobbling it up like starving children.
His popularity challenges Christians to take a stand – not against Tolly – but to stand in the brilliance of God’s presence and shine ever brighter to a world that is apparently having trouble seeing the light.
Where did Tolly gain such power to influence? Surely not from God. He claims to have been on the brink of suicide when he awoke one night to hear an inner voice say, “Resist nothing”. His spiritual encounter became the key that miraculously healed his depression and set him on the well worn path of seeking enlightenment through eastern religions.
His teachings are merely a retread of Theosophy that seems to be filling a spiritual void evident in America. His timing is as perfect as Madame Blavatsky’s was in the aftermath of the Great Awakening. [I write about this current explosion of occult activity and its origins in my book Shifting Shadows of Supernatural Power. I encourage you to read it.]
Into the spiritual void left in the waning fervor of the Great Awakening, stepped
Madame Helen Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, the first of the US New Age movements. The Russian born guru, is known as the “mother of the modern spiritualist movement,” who popularized mediumistic and psychic powers and the merging of world religions into what would become the foundation upon which the modern New Age movement rests in America.
She, like Tolly, claims to have been launched into guru stardom after receiving a powerful spiritual experience. Hers included childhood visions of a tall Hindu who eventually materialized in Hyde Park and became her guru and advisor. Traveling throughout the world, Blavatsky picked up on the Eastern teachings and philosophies of India and the Himalayas, eventually making her way back to the US in 1873, at the height of the spiritualist fad that swept the nation at that time. Spiritualism, which owes its beginnings to Emmanuel Swedenborg’s writings on the spirit world, originally focused on the belief that the dead communicate with the living and can be contacted through mediums and séances.
She and newspaper correspondent Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in September 1875, after they attended a lecture on pyramids and their use in conjuring spirits.
The term “Theosophy” is derived from the Greek words ‘theos,’ meaning God, and ‘sophia,’ meaning wisdom. True Theosophists hold that the divine higher self of every mortal man is of the same essence of the gods. Prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers and you have proved God. In short, man can not only be god but is god. Karma and reincarnation are part of their foundational beliefs but they believe we do not regress back into animals after we die. Instead, we review our past and rest for awhile before reincarnating into successive lives. Pagan religions and worship of the earth, the sun, solstices and nature rites are also included in her writings. To Theosophists, the religions of the world are branches on the tree whose trunk is the one ancient – once universal – wisdom religion. According to them, periodically, great teachers (Buddha, Jesus, Dali Lama, etc.) come amongst us to help us in our evolutionary path. They all created another branch on the tree. This idea also seems to be the root teaching of all current New Age gurus.
Tapping into the higher self and reaching into other places of existence seemed to attract those who sought to develop their paranormal faculties or to “bliss out” in trance-like detachment to avoid life’s pain and suffering. Suddenly the quest for power and control over life became accessible to those who would be gods. It is this Theosophical foundation that under girds today’s New Age teachings, Wiccan and pagan religions, and even Tolly’s teachings.
Oddly enough, the Theosophical Society was founded in the same area of New York City where Christian revivalist Charles Finney lived in 1830-1831, the peak years of The Second Great Awakening. Prayer meetings were crowded almost every night. Conversions and confessions of sin were frequent. Demonstrations of the power of the Holy Spirit amazed those who attended the meetings.
By the 1850s, the Great Awakening religious fervor had died down. Many Victorians began rejecting conventional religion and spiritualism flowed into the spiritual void of America and Europe. The religious climate of America had been primed to experience increasing spiritual power but lacked a cohesive structure to sustain either a revival of Christianity or a revival of occult mysticism.
Eventually, criticism made Blavatsky realize that she needed to soften her approach and so she tried to disentangle herself from occult labels that connoted an anti-Christian bias. In writing her voluminous works, she offered to the world a systematic, quasi-academic approach to the study of paranormal phenomena and made spiritualism intellectually appealing. She established the foundation upon which all occult mysticism and 20th century expressions of New Age practices have built their particular kingdoms.
And so now we have Tolly stepping into the current spiritual void, appealing to middle and upper class Americans who are burned out by materialism and exciting a culture that seeks paranormal power and is titillated by the occult. He eliminates the anti-Christian bias and all bias against religions and so appeals to everyone –at least those who have not encountered a personal revelation of Jesus Christ.
The central teachings of Tolly are that there is no presence of God; God is not love because there is no lover and beloved; true salvation is to be who you are; the goal of life is to free yourself from fear and enter into the blissful state of detachment from life and others. He offers his followers a respite from thinking and encourages a meditative state that includes a letting go into the Now – no past, no future, no thinking, a relinquishment of all thoughts.
Despite the fact that he espouses letting go of fear, it is fear that drives people to sit at his feet. Those who feel like God has abandoned the world, or perhaps never existed, are turning towards anyone who offers freedom from fear and suffering. And Tolly offers a pleasant escape from existential despair in a world where there seems to be no compassionate, loving God.
It is this meditation on nothingness that induces a trancelike state that opens the door to occult spirits and prevents people from knowing the true fulfillment in experiencing the overwhelming spiritual experience of being drenched in the true love of Jesus Christ.
Yet, it is not only what he is teaching through Oprah’s vast audience and beyond, that should concern Christians, but why society is embracing Tolly at this point in history.
The spiritual void left by past moves of God’s Spirit seem to be waning and non-Christians as well as marginal Christians who haven’t stepped into past and present moves of God, are increasingly fearful of the future. Scripture speaks of a time of darkness coming on the world characterized by spiritual apostasy, natural and technological disasters, and increasing fear. Many people believe that those days are upon us now and will increase in intensity in the years to come. Fear drives individuals to fight or flee. Tolly appeals to those who long to flee into a detached state of self-induced bliss.
Scripture also speaks of the light of God increasing in this darkness as the people of God become carriers of His light and Presence into the world. The world, apparently, is having a little trouble seeing the light. Anyone with a glittering image of a message that shimmers with promise seems to be a good enough substitute and so they flock to Tolly’s paradoxical, Zen-like doublespeak that serves to open peoples’ minds to “doctrines of demons” that are older than Theosophy.
The days of taking a neutral stance towards the New Age and the supernatural are over. Those who do not know the true presence and power of God’s Spirit will become increasingly subject to the power of the evil one. Those whose fears or doctrines have led them to avoid even the Lord’s supernatural power will soon find themselves and their children easy prey for evil supernatural powers.
Tolly’s popularity speaks clearly of a need for Christians to become who Jesus intended them to become – carriers of His light, His presence and power into a dark and desperate world. It is imperative that we as Christians draw so close to the Lord that we offer the world the power of His love – releasing prophetic words, demonstrating His power through healing the sick and casting out demons, combating fear through words of hope and encouragement, calling forth peoples’ destiny, and releasing miracles to those who are hungry to experience the incredible love and power of God in our day.
It is equally imperative that we increase in faith and decrease in fear. Fear-based theology has nothing to offer the world. And so the world flits away into the teachings of those like Tolly’s, who offer respite from fear.
Rather than rise up against Tolly’s teachings in a negative way, and risk alienating non-Christians, those who consider themselves true Christians should challenge themselves to dwell deeper in the light of God’s overwhelmingly loving presence and radiate His glory outwardly.
If we are not overwhelmed by the love of God, locked away in the heart of God’s affection looking to Him with radiant faces, how can the light of the world shine through us? Become the light of the world that Jesus says you are and then you will push back the darkness. Making God radiant to everyone you meet is part of the plan for your life and the key strategy for defeating the dark lord who is shifting his shadows of darkness over the land.
We have the “power of now”. We owe the individuals we encounter on a daily basis an encounter with God. Christ has commissioned us and empowered us to go into all the world. We will win them over if we take the power of now – the power of the Holy Spirit today – to release the brilliance of God’s glory shining through us to all we meet.
____________________________
Julia Loren is the author of Shifting Shadows of Supernatural Power with contributing authors Bill Johnson and Mahesh Chavda (Destiny Image, 2006). www.julialoren.net.
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