[Prologue: At various points in the text below, I have recommended certain appropriate books and articles that I have written. If I have already said all that I have to say on a given subject in other pieces, there is no point in writing it all out again! I hope that you will follow those links, which you will find are embedded in the book/article titles in the text, so all you need to do is click on them and they will open in a new tab in your browser. All my writings are free-to-download and I make nothing from them, as I do not believe in charging for my spiritual output. I do hope that you will find the article below to be helpful and edifying].

INTRODUCTION: Why this Article?

It has now been almost forty years since I first truly gave my heart and soul to the real Christ, pledging myself to Him and to throw myself entirely behind His plan for this cosmos in these “last days”, serving Him in any way possible. [NB: The “last days” in the sacred texts — not to be confused with the so-called “Endtimes” — entails the entire time between Christ’s ascension and His return, otherwise known as “the present evil age” (Letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, verse 4), which are the words Paul used to describe this period of time. For more about the length of “the last days”, with Scripture proofs, please see my article “Are We Living in the Endtimes?”]. Since then, it has been an interesting journey, to say the least, both as a pastor for nearly a decade and as a spiritual writer throughout my entire time as a disciple of Christ. I have had my own challenges, sidetracks, summits, and valleys. But whatever has happened, or how far I may have occasionally wandered, I have always been brought back to where I am supposed to be.

Since that time of my inception as a disciple of Christ, I have catalogued the movements within the New Age scene and the many incursions of its neo-Gnostic teachings into the “Christian” scene — initially in my encyclopaedic 650-page 1994 book, “The Serpent & the Cross”, published by K & M Books, which is still available on Amazon (both US and UK, from which, btw, I receive no royalties), and since then in numerous other books and articles over the years.

Having counselled many former New Age people at various stages of their journeys, it has been interesting to watch more recent developments in relation to the increasing transition of New Agers to a new life in Christ (the real One, finally!). I have become ever more aware of the comparatively large number of folks who have been making this transition. Even just today, as I am putting the finishing touches to this article, I received a message saying, “A friend of mine reposted something you wrote. I just got born again after 15 years in the new age. Also, might be in your neighbourhood soon in case you’re up for connecting”. Now this is what I love to see. God doing His own wonderful ‘networking’. But why is this acceleration taking place at this time?

I believe that the pandemic of the last three years has played some part in accelerating that, as many New Agers (especially those in a particular category, as I will show below) came to realise that the world is not on the brink of some Great Shift or Great Awakening that they have been promised but is actually falling into increasing deception and depravity (as is also clearly prophesied in the sacred texts). Another element in this acceleration is, I believe, that as the degeneration, depravity, and governmental deception increase (see my article, “You Have Been Spooked” in relation to that deception concerning the Covid pandemic), so does the number of souls who come to Christ. I am not speaking here about a public, global ‘mass revival’ such as the charismatics imagine to be coming on earth. I am referring to something which can almost be said to be ‘underground’ and only to be fully noticed and understood by Christ’s true disciples. Because of this development, I am writing this article to help my fellow disciples of Christ understand more about the background to all this.

I should also say that having come originally from a theosophical background (Alice Bailey, Annie Besant, amongst other philosophies, such as those of Krishnamurti, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Sartrean existentialism) almost forty years ago — and having had a longing since then to reach New Age folks with the “simplicity and purity in Christ” (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 3), even having a ministry to do that — I have a special burden for them. Having also written extensively about related issues, I want to try to smooth the way for these newly ‘released prisoners’ who miraculously cross the void from New Age to a new life in Christ, as it can be quite a culture shock — not to mention that they can find themselves being manipulated by others in the “Christian” scene as it is a real mixed bag of madness and mendacity along with the message of truth.

I also want to help people to understand what dilemmas could be faced by New Agers and others when they step over the threshold of faith. So this article is being written in the hope of providing some forthtelling warning as well as giving a ground-base of healthy teaching. (I have a thing about “healthy teaching”, as you will see further below!).

For those who may not be aware of all this, I first of all want to lay out what I have found to be the three principal paradigms of New Age involvement. Some adherents will be involved on just one level. Others will have involvement with some elements of all three. But they cover the whole gamut of the New Age as a movement.

I.     The Three Principal Paradigms of New Age Involvement

I have found that one can identify three primary paradigms of New Age involvement. One may be able to identify what seem to be others, but I think they all come under one sort or another of these three overarching paradigms. You may say that I am stereotyping or typecasting, but people stereotype themselves by following a fashion; for the New Age movement has many cultlike hallmarks and people buy into a certain style with attendant literature, a blinkered mindset, plenty of peer-pressure and a set of preconceived ideas and prejudices, just like any other religion.

The first of the three main paradigms of New Age involvement is what I call:

1)    The ‘New Wager’

The ‘New Wager’ is the name I give to those who are principally into making loads of money out of New Age practices. The New Age gives them their wage. Bigtime! This is the most superficial end of the New Age spectrum of paradigms, in which people can present themselves as purveyors of a whole range of wacky ‘therapies’ — many being designed as an entrance into altered states of consciousness (because, due to the satanic nature of Eastern mystical teachings, they mistakenly think that getting blissed-out is spiritual, for which see my article “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present”). Examples of these would be guided meditations, Tibetan soundbath, various kinds of massage and floating in water; or claims to be able to ‘read auras’ and your so-called ‘Akashic records’, cleanse your chakras, manipulate your ‘Reiki’, plus many kinds of ‘coaches’ such as “Find Your Inner God/Goddess”, “Identify your Spirit Guide”, etc., and of course all the usual kinds of Yoga to get you in those idolatrous poses which honour Hindu and Buddhist gods and goddesses, or meditation so you can chase an illusory “enlightenment”, which you will never attain, but the chasing of it is certainly a money-spinner.

In fact, there is a LOT of money to be made in this scene due to the prices charged, and the ideal seems to be to get enough moolah together to spend at least half the year in Bali or Tulum. They charge exorbitant prices for their services and then claim that it is the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’ which has brought all that money to them! Little do they realise that it is not their made-up “Law of Attraction” which has given them their windfalls but the fact that Satan is the expert in meeting the extravagant ‘wants’ of his children (but never their needs). ‘New Wageism’ is all very much a fashion, with its own nomenclature, manner of dress, way of speaking, and level of ‘coolness’. It is the perfect hidey-hole for spiritual-bypassing, dyed-in-the-wool narcissists.

The second paradigm of New Age involvement is what I call:

2)    The Heavy-Duty ‘Alice Baileyite’

These are the hardcore ‘professional’ New Agers who are not just in it for the money but are up to their eyeballs in occult philosophy and practice (which is really ‘sanitized’ witchcraft). They follow the teachings of Alice A. Bailey (1880-1949) — or one of her disciples, knowingly or not — who was the first to write bigtime about the ‘New Age’ and that in relation to her heterodox understanding of the Christ. All her many books were written between 1920 and her death. A number were dictated to her via channelling from her ‘Ascended Master’ guide, known as Djwhal Khul. Discerning disciples of Christ will know the real identity of that discarnate entity.

Whereas Pierre Teilhard de Chardin can be called the “father” of the New Age movement, Alice Bailey can be called the “mother” of it. I do not intend to write a great deal about Alice Bailey here as I have already done so in many other places (and about Teilhard too). Suffice it to say that she has spiritualised the notion of the Christ, so that it becomes a divine being who manifested in ‘Master Jesus’ (one of the hierarchy of so-called “Ascended Masters”) and who dwells (so they say) in all of us potentially as ‘Christ Consciousness’ — god manifested within all, if they will only recognise it. This is all a rehash of the late first century Gnosticism of a guy called Cerinthus, which invaded the churches so thoroughly (as I will show in section 8, part iii, below). This is why I call the New Age movement “the New Gnosticism” or “neo-Gnosticism”. Attaining ‘Christ Consciousness’ through the use of some techniques is ultimately a fiendishly clever rehash of what Satan promised Eve in the Garden about attaining ‘godhood’ and God-knowledge and what Eastern gurus have (falsely) promised their disciples for millennia concerning the achievement of “enlightenment”.

Bailey taught that the return of the Christ is imminent, but in the sense of bringing a great spiritual awakening and a huge shift in consciousness across mankind. This is the great “Shift” which the New Age folks are awaiting. According to Bailey, two main conditions are in preparation for that. One is what she refers to as bringing about “a world at peace” and the other is that “some great Teacher, some Saviour, Revealer, Lawgiver or divine Representative must come forth from the world of spiritual realities, because of human need and human demand” (these are Bailey’s own words from chapter 3 in her book, “The Reappearance of the Christ”). It is clear to any Bible student that the “World Teacher” for whom she was drumming up support in all her writings can be none other than the Antichrist, the “man of lawlessness” about whom Paul was writing in the second chapter of his second letter to the Thessalonians.

For the Bible does not picture a world at peace in the run-up to the return of the real Christ, but rather a world in terrible turmoil and tribulation which is under the iron rule of the Antichrist, Satan’s own representative who is actually energized by him: “The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working [Greek: ἐνέργειαν, energeian] of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder, and with every wicked deception…” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 9-10). This will be the most deceptive event to occur in history — making out as if the world has finally come together in peace and unity under a global government — and is entirely in keeping with what Bailey is prognosticating in her literature, except that her “christ” is plainly the Antichrist.

Bailey plainly stated that the coming of her (false) “Christ” and World Teacher (who disciples of the true Christ would recognize as the Antichrist) will be preceded by certain members of the spiritual ‘Hierarchy of Masters’ descending to earth “to complete the final preparations” for that World Teacher’s advent, the preparations of which she said would be “completed by about the year 2025”. That is a timeline of demonic manifestations from their own channelled writings. Interesting times lie ahead.

The real hardcore New Agers who are into all these teachings do not mess around running salt-room sessions or chakra-cleansing retreats so they can ‘summer’ in Bali or Tulum, as those adhering to the first paradigm of New Ageism do. They are instead activists and ‘Truthers’, and they hang out at Findhorn or on Mount Shasta, or read up on Marianne Williamson, Shakti Gawain, Marilyn Ferguson, Esther Hicks, Robert Muller, David Spangler, Carl Jung, Eckhart Tolle, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Neal Donald Walsch, and Louise Hay, etc. They also avidly read that CIA-produced New Age ‘bible’ known as “A Course in Miracles” (see my free-to-download book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times” for more details of all the above and much more). They are actively waiting for and working towards the arrival of the World Teacher, the Coming Shift, the ‘Ascension’ (about which you will find much more on pages 347-377 in my free-to-download book on the Book of Revelation).

Interestingly, many of those adhering to this hardline paradigm of New Age involvement got totally into promoting the QAnon psyop (not even discerning that it was a psyop, despite all their alleged psychic powers!) and they also supported Donald Trump when he was president of the United States, regarding him and his wife, Melania, as “supreme Lightworkers” who have been sent on a mission from another galaxy to overthrow darkness and usher in the Age of Aquarius, which they now claim began with the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction on December 21st, 2020. Wacky as all that may seem, I kid you not! [For example, go and see this “Akashic record” reading concerning Trump on a typical New Age website: https://www.debbiesolaris.com/post/trumpstarorigins ].

There is one notable positive aspect about the New Age philosophy of the Baileyite archetype. It is that the essence of its teaching about a New Age is actually a twisted version of biblical truth. For example, there will indeed be a new age. Although the term has come to be associated with the new false spirituality of the New Age movement, it is yet another example of something good being hijacked to promote something evil or deceptive. (The use of the rainbow to support corrupt enterprises is also a classic example of that). In fact the whole idea of a new age is straight out of the Bible. The disciples asked Jesus a twofold question on the Mount of Olives. He had just told them that the great buildings of the temple would be completely destroyed at some stage in the future. So they said, “When will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 3). Jesus then elaborates on that in a remarkable concatenation of events and circumstances, some of which apply just to the temple being destroyed (as it indeed was nearly forty years later in AD 70), while others apply just to the end of the age and the circumstances surrounding His second coming. Then there are others which can be applied to both events, which each frame this age, beginning and end. This present age (which Paul calls “this present evil age”, Letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, verse 4) is the period of time between Christ’s ascension and His return — His going away and His coming back. It is an age of upheaval and turmoil in many respects, all of which He outlines in that remarkable discourse on the Mount of Olives. So, His second coming will herald the end of this age.

Now an interesting fact comes after Christ has described in that chapter a great many events involving huge upheaval and a degeneration of humanity so that its love grows cold. He then says that these events and upheavals are “the beginning of birth pains” (verse 8). Birth pains of what? What is struggling to be born? Surely, it must be “the age to come”. These “birth pains” in this present age are spoken of that way because they are ushering in the inauguration of the new creation.

This “age to come” is specifically mentioned by Jesus as being after this present one ends (Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verses 29-30), in which He says that those who have sacrificed everything they own for the sake of Christ and His gospel will receive bounteous spiritual compensation, especially in the “age to come” when they will receive eternal life. The Letter to the Hebrews also speaks of the “powers of the age to come” (chapter 6, verse 5). This “age to come” is the true “new age”, and it conforms to the new creation which the Bible calls a “new heaven and new earth” (Book of Revelation, chapters 21-22). In fact, Jesus never came to create a religion (that is the work of the false church) but to transform a whole mass of people (the true Ekklesia) who will be the population of that new creation to come after the present fallen creation has been dissolved and destroyed at the end of this age:

“But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness as you anticipate and hasten the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with God’s promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells”.

Second Letter of Peter, chapter 3, verses 10-13

So the New Age teachers have taken the “new heaven and new earth” teaching from those last two chapters of the Book of Revelation — having the nerve to hijack it from the Bible! — and turned it into their phony Age of Aquarius, their New Age. But it is not the same as the new “age to come” which is in the Bible — just a twisted edition of it. They have also taken from the Bible the Antichrist and made him into their Christ, their World Teacher, which is an attempt to disguise his true identity.

Now you may say “How can all that be positive?” My reply is that the seeds of what should be the truth have already been sown in the New Age mind but in a New Age context. So what happens during the metanoic transition to Christ of a New Age person is that the seed of truth which is in the already-believed New Age teaching then flowers into the fullness of its truth instead of lingering in the haze of fabrications in which it was originally planted. Is that not positive? [NB: Metanoia is the Koine Greek word translated as “repentance”. In the Greek, it literally means a complete change of mind, a total turnabout of the heart, a deep realization of one’s former folly, leading to a sea change in one’s life. That is what one pledges when one is coming to Christ. That is what repentance consists of].

It should also be noted that Alice Bailey grew up with a good knowledge of the Bible and was connected with the Anglican Church and it was only when she suddenly, according to her autobiography, “had a visit from an eastern gentleman in a suit but wearing a turban whom she had not met before” that her life changed. This turned out to be one of the Ascended Masters, known as Kuthumi. Thereafter, her understanding of the Bible took a different turn altogether and the rest is history, part of the occult history of satanic lies and deception.

Those who invest themselves in this paradigm of New Age involvement are the hardest to overcome with the gospel of Christ. So much baloney has been swallowed by them that they have a built-in antipathy to anything which you could present to them about the truths of the Bible or Christ Himself. Whether they have gone beyond the point of no return, only time will tell. Though nothing is too difficult for God!

The third paradigm of New Age involvement is:

3)    The Muddled Spiritual Seeker

Of the three paradigms of New Age involvement, those in this category are the most likely to come to the true Christ — not exclusively but the most likely. This is because they are not looking for a fashion to emulate and, even though they may subscribe to some of the heavier New Age teaching, there is always something which holds them back from being 100% involved. (I speak with personal experience here). One might also even say that there has been some fortuitous spiritual restraint preventing them from going totally overboard on the whole New Age thing. There is some seed of dissatisfaction and a longing for something genuinely spiritual which colours all their actions and thought. This is because there is something in them which is genuinely seeking truth, but they take a long and circuitous route to get there, getting sidetracked down many alleys.

They may even be attracted to Christ but one of the main issues which New Agers have with the teachings of the Bible is that they have been heavily conditioned to spiritualize it all, coupled with the typical Gnostic idea that folks known as “Christians” are on a much lower plane spiritually. When one marries that up with their false belief that the Bible has been tampered with and that some supposedly important books have been deliberately and tendentiously removed (basically, the sensible denial of the Gnostic gospels into biblical canonicity) and that it only exists in its present form thanks to a committee of men in the seventeenth century who stitched it all up (so they believe), then there is a big hurdle to jump if one is to get past that. Not only that but the real Christ’s assertion that one must “deny oneself” in order to advance spiritually cuts completely across the idea of oneself as a little god and how important it is to “love yourself”.

The New Agers who are involved in this paradigm are actually very muddled. They don’t have much faith in ‘the system’ and they tend to be somewhat counterculture, which gives them a feeling of alienation (not a bad starting-point spiritually). If they do put themselves forward as therapists or purveyors of some New Age fashion, they do not tend to charge exorbitant prices like the hardened ‘manifesting’ New Wagers. They often even believe that there is something satanic going on in the world. But the simplicity of the true gospel seems too unsophisticated for those who have been taught to believe that it takes years of complex spiritual exercises to achieve (the false goal of) ‘enlightenment’. That is, until they find themselves in a cul-de-sac of desperation. Then they are potentially ripe for truth to do its thing. And that desperation will come, sooner or later; for there is an empty hole which needs to be filled, and they know it.

This is why suicide is not uncommon in these circles, especially in the shamanic Ayahuasca scene involving imbibing South American plant potions [e.g. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-29-took-life-after-23373050 ]. My heart grieved when I saw that the well-known Ayahuasca shaman from Blue Morpho, Malcolm Rossiter, announced his suicide to the world on his Facebook page, with the following words: “It is with great sadness that I am ending my existence on this earth. I am energetically backed into a place I envision not returning from”. People do not realise that such potions are opening up the mind to demonic input of an extreme nature (as do many other New Age practices). The comments under his suicide announcement are equally harrowing, from so many lost souls, such as, “I have also fallen victim to ayahuasca and am at the end of my rope. Please help if you can”. And then this from another:

“I have literally thought everyday about falling from the golden gate, a weighted day pack, and the body goes straight to the bottom, never to be bothered again. I just haven’t lost ALL hope yet, I keep waiting/hoping for that one thing to come along and transform my life”. 

My friends, just reading these words should spur you on to communicate “that one thing” to come along and transform the lives of these muddled seekers. Those bewildered words are what lie in the hearts of so many New Age folks who, on the outside, keep up appearances and say all the right things to their friends and remain on the treadmill of chasing a fictitious enlightenment, ascension, or “portal”, or “shift”, but on the inside they are screaming. I did leave a gentle reply about Christ to the latter comment above but an aggressive response to me came very quickly with the words, “Go f**k yourself and your belief in jesus. And f**k jesus right in his as**ole”. I am sorry if you find that shocking, but it is the truth of what happened. This is a classic response of someone whose brain and soul have been addled by years of demonic exploits and the taking of so much Ayahuasca that this someone thinks “every day” about throwing himself off the Golden Gate bridge with a weighted backpack. This angry, desperate reaction is one that can be expected when one is dealing with the many chaotic lost and hurting souls in this world. The New Age attracts them as easily as a magnet to a pile of metal shards. They need to be rescued. It is not easy. But it is not a lost cause, as we can see today.

Anyway, the above is a little something about the three main paradigms of New Age involvement. Frankly, it is nothing less than a miracle if someone steeped in New Age ideology realises that the true Christ about whom they scoffed for so long is the real Christ.

However, after having discovered Christ and genuinely repented of their past thoughts and deeds, that is just the beginning of what will be a challenging journey of discipleship through the Badlands and heavenly suburbs of what is now called “The Church”. In the next section, I want to outline the chief pitfalls and challenges which present themselves to the New Ager who has come to Christ. Some of them apply to any new-born babe in Christ. But my main focus here is really New Age folks.

II.    The Eight Potential Pitfalls for New Agers who Come to Christ

When a person formerly affiliated with the New Age movement comes to Christ, they are in for quite a ride. It is tough enough to have to wrestle with one’s own weaknesses and the madness of the world. But the church is also quite a ride too! Yet it should not have to be. It should be the suburbs of heaven. But Satan has attacked the true Ekklesia, as I will show in section 8 below. Here are a number of potential pitfalls into which a New Ager can plummet if s/he is not being guided and counselled with wisdom.

The first potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

1)       The Trophy Trap

If, after stepping onto the pathway of discipleship, one finds one’s way initially to a local church, it is quite possible that New Age ‘converts’ could find themselves being made into ‘trophies’. (I’ve been there!). All eyes will then be on you. You will be some kind of church celebrity — a big fish in a little sea. You may wish that you could walk through the door unnoticed but you will now be made a fuss of and constantly asked to “give your testimony” in public.

I do have some reservations about this whole testimony thing. It can be all about “me and my amazing testimony” — a narcissistic snare. Or it can give a sensationalistic impression and there can be some exaggeration. Often, it can be a concatenation of subjective feelings, especially in Charismatic circles, which are not that reliable. Or, because testimonies always have to be ‘big’, those who have had a quiet but beautiful transition to Christ can wonder if perhaps there is something lacking in their own experience when they hear about all these pyrotechnics about which everyone is raving.

The fact is that God works in unique and mysterious ways. Sometimes there can be ‘a song and a dance’ and other times there can be a very gentle breeze. Just because one person has one particular experience should not imply that others will have the same. I have seen those deemed to have “an amazing testimony” treated like royalty, while others with a more modest metanoia become unspoken second-class members. There is something somewhat cultish about this.

The Trophy Trap. Do not let it happen to you, and do not make anyone into a church trophy. Though we are all trophies of Christ!

The second potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

2)    The Leaven of Legalism

When someone who has led an unclean life of deception, sorcery and narcissism comes to Christ, they can sometimes go in one of two extreme directions. On the one hand, they can become very reactionary and launch themselves into an extremely tight-assed, censorious, inquisitorial form of legalistic living by the letter (rather than the spirit) — a kind of rule-bound, ‘checklist Christianity’. On the other hand, they can go in another direction altogether and embrace a liberalistic, subjectivist form of syncretism, attempting to merge their new-found love for Christ with some pet aspects of their New Age philosophy with which they do not wish to part company. The first reaction is what I am dealing with here. The other reaction I will deal with in the next section, “Adaptive Syncretism”.

This is precisely why new babes in Christ, especially those who have been steeped in the New Age scene for years, need discerning discipleship by a wise, loving, discerning, and insightful pastor-teacher and/or a fellowship with the same noble qualities. (I will develop this necessity in section 5 below).

Because many New Age folks have led somewhat chaotic, demon-inspired, and harmfully spontaneous lives, they can go to an opposite extreme and latch onto an overly conservative fundamentalist fellowship and become rule-bound, uptight, and condemning anyone who isn’t in their new ‘tribe’. I use the word “tribe” deliberately because such folks tend to be those who strongly identify with a close-knit pseudo-family and gain security from identifying with a rigid set of beliefs and with those who share that same mindset.

I remember many years ago, a guy I knew came out of a wacky charismatic church and got involved with a very starchy, zealously ‘doctrinal’, intellectual church with little heart and got caught up in a whole culture of suspicion towards the outside world, while exuding extreme judgementalism towards those who did not follow every jot and tittle of his new-found rigidity. His whole demeanour changed into that Scroogelike hangdog glumness and pasty complexion when one always sees the bad in everyone and everything. Even his voice took on that miserable measured formalism (like a fuddy-duddy authoritarian) as a reflection of his reconstructed personality. On the inside, there was no joy there and very little grace but he had good standing among those with whom he circulated. When he discovered I had described myself as “a troubadour” in relation to my poetry, he actually wrote about it in a letter which he sent out to many people condemning me for that, amongst other things, hoping to destroy my reputation. It both amused and saddened me. Amused me, because when you have been around the ‘Christian’ scene for long enough you learn to ignore the nastiness of so many uptight “Christians” with a wry smile. Saddened me, because it is tragic to watch people do the very opposite of grow while they use the name of Christ and claim to be the last bastion of ‘Christian doctrine’. All of this had come about as an extreme reaction to his former waywardness.

It is so important not be reactionary. I have seen New Age folks change from being laidback Reiki practitioners one minute and the next minute they are wearing a figurative twinset and pearls (or suit and tie), with a leatherbound Bible under their arms and calling anyone a heretic who doesn’t believe in their confession, creed, or catechism. In short, they have exchanged the religion of the New Age for churchianity.

In fact, they have joined what I call the ‘Christianistas’, who have successfully created an idolatrous sect or virtual cult which reveres their shibboleths, idiosyncratic belief-systems, creeds, confessions, doctrines, and dogmas over and above the development of their souls in the discipleship and light of Christ. Christianism involves creating a club with a siege-mentality out of Christ and the Bible. They have a great deal of anger, expressed and suppressed, and pride themselves on being the last bastion of the one true faith. The Pharisees of Christ’s time were the Jewish first century equivalent of the Christianistas of today. They claim that their churches are the sole upholders of ‘doctrinal purity’, safe trenches from where they can hurl their figurative grenades at ‘lesser’ believers and at the ‘hell-bound’ secular world of unbelievers.

It is into this rigid scene that impressionable New Age converts can be sucked if they are not counselled correctly at the outset.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that our knowledge and beliefs should not be protected or that teaching is not important (far from it, as I will show in section 5 below). It is just that there are educational and firm but gracious ways of doing that, rather than creating a ‘cult-in-a-bunker’ way of being which renders our faith as something highly unattractive and which is more indicative of a personality disorder than a spiritual revolution.

The third potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

3)    Adaptive Syncretism

This is the title that I give to the opposite reaction to that in the section above. This is when a newly-converted former New Ager — instead of ditching all of his or her New Age philosophy — tries to integrate those bits regarded as non-negotiable into a syncretised version of ‘Christian’ faith. When one has been steeped in key New Age teachings for many years which seem good and right and attractive, it is not easy to jettison them. The word “seem” is the important one in the previous sentence. For those teachings may “seem” good and right and attractive but that does not mean that they are. Some examples of such deceptive and false New Age teachings which might be ‘carried over’ into his or her ‘Christian’ life would be:

  • That everyone without exception is innately good.
  • That all religions are merely different facets of the one truth and the same ‘God’.
  • That eternal damnation, hell (or, more properly, the “second death”), is just an invention of religious authorities in order to control the masses.
  • That the Bible has excluded great books such as the Gnostic Gospels and this discrepancy should be reversed.
  • That everyone is ultimately going to be saved.
  • That physical healing is our right.
  • That prosperity is for all, for which there are infallible practices to effect it.
  • That it is our duty to ‘save the planet’ at all costs (and so that there is one for Christ to return to!).
  • That we should take away all poverty and transform the world, making it a lovely, peaceful place for everyone to live in.
  • That love and peace will prevail on earth if enough people visualise it (the Hundredth Monkey Effect) and work towards it.
  • That transgenderism and homosexuality are a good thing because people are ‘coming out’ to discover who they really are and so they can finally be themselves, just as God would want them to be.
  • That all bad behaviour (i.e. sin) is only the unfortunate result of traumatic experiences as a child and can be ironed out with a lot of love, the right kind of therapy and an expansion of consciousness.
  • That Christ is the God within all people which merely needs ‘activating’ through various techniques.
  • That there is no such thing as absolute truth, which must always be merely relative.
  • That to criticise anything or anyone is being ‘judgemental’ and that to judge anyone is therefore not spiritual because even Jesus said, “Judge not” and, after all, God is love.
  • That women should be the teachers as they are more in tune with the Divine.

If I was to respond here to each of these fourteen New Age teachings which some would like to synthesize into their new faith in Christ, it would take a book. In fact, I have already done so at one point or another somewhere in my writings. A good start would be my book, “Narrow Gate ~ Pathway Strait”, which shows the key differences between Christian truth and some New Age teachings. It is autobiographical and also has appendices on what Jesus said about judging, on the whole development of feminism/women’s liberation, and also on relative truth vs absolute truth. My commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essential Apocalypse”, also addresses many of the issues in the above bulleted list. You can click on those links to go there and download them free of charge.

The desire to carry over these beliefs into their new Christian lives is often related to the experience they had which introduced them to Christ in the first place. One must realise that very often the circumstances surrounding their ‘conversion’ can be dubious, to say the least. For example, I saw an article on social media about a charismatic church which attended a New Age fair and claimed to be doing evangelism. Their evangelism invoked the practice of leg-lengthening, an old Pentecostal trick which involves the induced use of subconscious micro-movements which make it look as though a leg has been lengthened by the power of God. A New Age fair will be full of confused, fragile, searching people who are easily fooled by such huckster deceptions (which is what a New Age fair is already about anyway!).

Have you ever wondered why all these pseudo-healers never go into hospitals and empty the beds there? It is because what is really happening is mesmerism — powerful suggestion in a highly-charged emotional environment, which is the perfect set-up for psychosomatic events involving impressionable people. If a New Age person attends such an event, they will be impressed because their entire spiritual experience to that point has been based on extreme subjectivism. Obviously, God can use such an event to bring someone closer to Him in the long run, but that is despite the baloney not because of it. They will still, at that point, have only undergone an emotive experience and will not have experienced true repentance and a realisation of the uncleanness of much of their New Age ideas. Then the syncretism begins.

Along similar lines, I have known a number of New Age folks who have had some alleged vision of Jesus (with long hair and beard, in a glowing white robe, like in numerous paintings) visiting them and this forms their conversion experience. They are then full of how they have “met Jesus” and what a blast it was. Now, knowing how their ‘Ascended Master’, Master Jesus (plainly a demonic manifestation), plays an important role in New Age teachings, one has to be very sceptical about such an experience. The New Agers I have known who have undergone this kind of experience become horrified when they hear about such Bible teachings as “the Second Death”, or that “many are called but few are chosen”, or that the world is descending into chaos and tribulation with the satanic Antichrist at the helm of a global government, or that truth is not relative, or that Jesus actually came to cause necessary division in this evil world (for truth always divides on this planet, Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verse 51; Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verse 34), or that there is no such thing as “the innate goodness of humanity”, etc. They say, “All I know is that I have seen Jesus and He is real and He is all about love, peace and unity”. The emphasis is always on this personal relationship they feel they now have with Jesus. Nothing else matters.

Well, here is a reality bomb: You cannot have a ‘personal relationship with Jesus’ without believing in the uncomfortable truths revealed by both Him and His apostles (or you will become a syncretist in a fog of mysticism). It works the other way too: You cannot believe in the uncomfortable truths revealed by both Him and His apostles without having a personal relationship with Jesus (or you will become a legalist mired in a soup of rationalism). But that personal relationship does not come through imagining one has actually met Jesus in the flesh. The fact is that since His ascension to heaven, Jesus is not bodily present on earth during this age, for “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for the restoration of all things, which God announced long ago through His holy prophets” (Book of Acts, chapter 3, verse 21). Jesus is present with us primarily through the Holy Spirit (Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 7). So the visualised Jesus with long hair, beard and a glowing white robe can only be a projection of one’s own expectations and suggestibility (not to mention the way that this image is a medieval portrayal in art!).

This is why I say that the experience people have had which introduced them to Christ in the first place plays a great part in how their journey of discipleship will develop. If you came through an imaginary vision of Jesus, then you will be ‘taken away with the fairies’ and will try to superimpose your New Age beliefs on Christian truths. If you came through imagining that one of your legs has been lengthened, then you will get stuck on a charismatic merry-go-round of mesmeric experiences rather than see that the real healing is the forgiveness of sins. But if you undergo a genuine metanoia repentance, seeing the truth about your previous life, humbly coming to God asking for newness of life and to be a new creation, willing to submit to Him and to healthy teaching, then you will grow in grace and in a knowledge of the truth.

There is a significant number of former New Agers who — even though they claim to have “found Jesus” — will stubbornly refuse to give up some of their New Age teachings and thereby indulge in this ‘adaptive syncretism’. It is every bit as unfortunate as those who get involved with the leaven of legalism. One has to strike a balance; but that balance can only come with a right relationship to God and a solid understanding of who Christ is, what He has come to earth to do, and what He is going to effect in the future. The desire for truth must always eclipse the need to cling on to outmoded and inappropriate teachings.

A big problem is that the New Agers discover that there are already professing “Christians” who hold to some of these ideas in the churches! There are ‘Dominionist’ and ‘Reconstructionist’ types who believe that we should indeed “transform the world, making it a lovely place for everyone to live in and for Jesus to come back to!” (which is not at all the Church’s real focus). There are churches and ‘Christians’ who believe that “transgenderism and homosexuality are a good thing” as God loves everyone. There are churches and many ‘Christians’ who believe in universal salvation. There are many churches which believe (and practise) that women should be pastor-teachers. There are many churches and ‘Christians’ who believe in the innate goodness of all people. There are many churches which believe that physical healing is our right. There are many churches which believe that prosperity is what God wants for all, for which there are infallible practices in order to make it happen (Prosperity Theology). There are also many ‘Christians’ who believe that we should never be judgemental. The list could go on. My point here is that when so many New Age ideas are already rampant in the churches, is it surprising that many New Age folks will continue with those ideas… with their newfound Jesus merely as a kind of ‘add-on’?

The fourth potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

4)    Going ‘Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire’

With this phrase, I am referring to the fact that there are a number of New Age or occult/pagan practices which are also being carried out in many churches. New Agers being attracted to Christ must therefore beware not to go “out of the frying pan into the fire”, as the old saying goes.

When you have been up to your eyeballs in what is effectively a cult, maybe even for years, it is very easy to be inveigled into any of the cultish fads and freak-shows which operate in the ‘Christian’ scene of the visible church. One of the many Charismatic churches or so-called “Messianic” fellowships can seem attractive when one is ignorant about the deceptive nature of their practices and origins. (To learn more about the background to all this, please see my free-to-download books, “Discerning the Signs of the Times” and “Abraham our Father: Jerusalem our Mother”, and the articles “Falling for the Lie: Charismatic Deception”, and the far more detailed “Parallel Psychic Power-Games in the World and in the Church”). So-called “Deliverance Ministries” are another trap for New Agers coming to Christ. That will also be like going ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’. (You will find details of this in section 7 below).

It is important to rediscover the simplicity and discerning ardour of the early church. But it is a huge mistake to try to recreate the unique nature of healing and the casting out of demons which were practised by Jesus and His apostles. Even charismatic rituals such as being “slain in the spirit” (in which one falls down after being zapped by a phony, snake-oil pastor) are rehashes of Eastern mystical/occult-pagan practises, as you can see in this image:

On the right is “the frying pan” and on the left is “the fire”. If you have transitioned from the New Age Movement to the Charismatic Movement, you have simply substituted one set of delusions for another. As I said above: When you have been up to your eyeballs in what is effectively a cult (the New Age scene), maybe for years, it is easy to be inveigled into any of the cultish fads and freak-shows which operate in the Christian scene. This is why wise guidance is paramount for those making this transition right from the outset… and this is the subject of the next section.

The fifth potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

5)    Neglecting the Need for Discerning Discipleship

Here we come to what can very easily be the missing link in the newly-transformed New Ager’s spiritual life. S/he can be so ecstatic about finding the real Christ at long last that his or her subjective feelings can eclipse the mighty need for wise and discerning counselling. I feel the same trepidation about newly awakened disciples going into the “Christian” system as I did when I had young kids going into the school system. They are like fresh meat waiting to be ravaged by a predator.  And in the case of New Agers, they so often are.

If you have now discovered the true Christ, rather than wallowing in your subjective feelings, you need to find a more mature disciple or, better still, a gathering of disciples where discerning simplicity is the undergirding mindset. You need to find a place where there is a wise, no-nonsense, dedicated, loving, humble teacher who is not building a conformist cult and who understands the unique needs of off-beat folks who have a chequered past. You need to find a place where there is a healthy culture of individuality and dedication to unity, where there is devoutness without a trace of pietism or self-righteousness, where there is innocence without naiveté, where there is accommodation but never compromise, where there is openness without gullibility, where there is a resistance to Christian fads and fashions, where wise love is the driving force rather than party-lines, where there is an ardent aversion to deception, and a deep hunger for a knowledge of the truth. I can tell you that finding such a place is hugely difficult at this stage of development in “the present evil age”.

Yes, first, you have to believe the truth about Jesus with all your heart (Letter to the Romans, chapter 10, verse 9). But being a disciple of Christ is so much more than being a mere “believer”. Discipleship to Christ is not merely about what you believe but about how what you believe makes you behave. If I could put it like this, a disciple of Christ is a ‘behaver’! I have seen many New Age folks who become awakened about the true Christ get sucked into an obsession about what is called “sound doctrine” and making severe pronouncements about heretics — what I call ‘Inquisitional Christianity’. They then cease to be the “sweet aroma” of Christ which they should be and just become another unattractive uptight stench of legalism. Discipleship to Christ is not about accruing or learning by rote a vast set of “sound” doctrines. Mere doctrine is religious and is the precursor to indoctrination. Religion is merely doctrine-based. But a disciple is far better and far more than that.

The very phrase “sound doctrine” is a misleading translation of the Greek. For example, in typical translation, Paul tells the young pastor, Timothy, that “The time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires” (Second Letter to Timothy, chapter 4, verse 3). The Greek words there often translated as “sound doctrine” are ὑγιαινούσης διδασκαλίας, hygiainousēs didaskalias, which actually mean “healthy teaching”. Our word “hygiene” is derived from the first word there. The kind of teaching we need is not one which leads to a mere checklist Christianity that we learn by rote. We need rich and deep teaching which promotes spiritual health, a yearning for truth and a profound sense of love and gratitude in the soul. When ‘healthy teaching’ is on the agenda, then there is no need for any Inquisitions or catechising. I am talking about education rather than indoctrination. The true disciple loves and immediately recognises healthy teaching, over which there is no need to become involved in endless squabbles, as so often happens in churches.

This is why I much prefer the word “teaching” to “doctrine”. Practising healthy teaching is infinitely more in keeping with the work of the Holy Spirit than merely imparting doctrine. Always seek out a true teacher rather than a pompous in-doctrine-ator. There are some in the churches who will hate me for saying what I have said above. They are the ones who love to condemn, to point fingers, and find fault — always being on the lookout for your errors, your aberrations of doctrine. But one needs to have one’s emotions cleansed with grace and mercy rising from the soul. Then one will be a teacher rather than an indoctrinator — a disseminator (seed-spreader) rather than an inquisitor.

The sixth potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

6)    The Imposition of Superstition

In the churches, there is a great deal of superstition. In some, it takes the form of ritual — constantly crossing oneself, bowing before a wooden crucifix, praying the rosary, lighting candles for people, bowing to altars, prayers for the dead, and so on. In some churches there is the prevailing idea that one should worship God each Sunday in one’s best clothes. That too is a superstition. I can assure you that God is not remotely concerned about what you are wearing, for worship is from the heart rather than from a tuxedo. Besides, one should be in a state of worship 24/7/365 rather than just one day of the week just for an hour or so!

The charismatic churches are also full of superstitions. They are always doing prayer walks round areas to ward of the demons, so that the areas then become open to evangelism. What a load of old poppycock that is! They also claim that there are demons of this and that sin (demons of porn, demons of greed, demons of anger, demons of drug addiction, demons of fear, etc.), to which you have to chant the name of Jesus to make them go away. This is based not only on a misunderstanding of how demons operate but a misunderstanding of what “the name of Jesus” really means. To chant the name “Jesus” at demons, thinking it will knock them for six, or saying to them “in the name of Jesus” as if that combination of words was a kind of Abracadabra mantra is ludicrous. In the Bible, when one said “in the name of…” it meant by the authority of. It’s like when a policeman tries to apprehend a suspect and says, “Stop, in the name of the law!” It means “I command you to stop, by the authority vested in me by the law”. Chanting “Begone, in the name of Jesus” at alleged demons — thinking that the very words, “in the name of Jesus”, hold some kind of magic power — is the height of superstition and of about as little use against demonic evil as hurling a clove of garlic, waving a cross, or lighting a bunch of sage (smudging)!

So I pity anyone coming into the huge number of wayward churches today. Most especially, I pity the New Age folks who cross the threshold of a church. They will likely first be suspected of having some demons from their previous interests. Even if they have already come to Christ, that suspicion will still be there. Plus there will be a whole lot of superstitious fear concerning artefacts they might have in their homes or on their person.

People have often come to me saying that people in their church told them to get rid of an ornament they bought in India as it would most likely have demons attached to it. Or they have been told that a family heirloom could carry a generational curse. Others have been told to visualize actually putting on a suit of armour and wearing it all day then taking it off at bedtime as that is what it means to wear the whole armour of God. 🙄 Or they have been told never to wear the likes of sharks-tooth necklaces as they could have been assembled by demonised people. Or they have been told to get rid of everything connected with their former life. I remember this happening to me when I was told that I had to get rid of my vast record collection because some of it was rock music which is “of the devil”, and classical music was not liked “because the composers were sinful men”. How far do you take that? Everything in the world has been assembled by sinners of one kind or another! It is all just superstition. All of it.

This common welter of superstitions about demons is so misplaced and faithless, for it implies that the Holy Spirit indwelling disciples has no strength. But this is the Holy Spirit of God about whom we are speaking! Surely, to doubt His power and efficacy is tantamount to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. After all,

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered’. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verses 35-39

That is the reality of a life in discipleship to Christ. The constant superstitions about demons and endless battles with them, having to find out their names, chanting at them, etc., are all manifestations of faithlessness and superstitious stupidity. Of course, they say how wrong I am because of the large number of people who twitch, fall down, scream, etc., in their hothouse tent-meetings. That is their evidence. Of course they do. When you know how mesmerism works and suggestion operates, one knows that one is observing an act of theatre. I have personally counselled many victims of this charismatic/deliverance madhouse. Two articles of four which I wrote about spiritual abuse in the late 1990s catalogued the result of such damaged folk coming to me at the end of their tether, in some cases after supposedly having countless demons cast out of them with many more still to be cast out. Yet, because the charlatans who operate these scams have the authorization of the likes of the Church of England, I am dismissed as a crank and ‘denier of the work of God’.

When a New Age person comes to Christ, there will be many things in their possession which are associated with their former lives. If they are going to be a stumbling-block then that can be difficult. But it is far better to overcome one’s superstitions than to be ruled by them. As Paul says, “I will not be brought under the control of anything” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 12). Superstition is a form of enslavement and that is not fitting for the disciple of Christ. So do not ditch those lovely long flowing skirts and dresses. Just because something was bought from a cart outside a Hindu temple in Goa does not mean that it is demonised! So let’s drop all that nonsense. Besides, it is so rare to see women in lovely flowing feminine clothes (even in churches!) that you will set a great example to others.

What is being ignored by those who encourage this superstition is that even if your bracelet has been handled by hundreds of demonised people, that bracelet will not be ‘possessed’ by any demons and, in any case, the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world (First Letter of John, chapter 4, verse 4). So do not be fazed by the imposition of superstitions which will inevitably plague the New Ager who has first come to Christ. Preferably, you should hotfoot it out of such perfidious churches and find a faithful fellowship which revels in “the simplicity and purity in Christ” (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 3).

The seventh potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

7)    Unnecessary ‘Deliverance’

This word “deliverance” has become a vogue buzzword in the Christian scene. I began writing about it nearly twenty-five years ago in a four-part series about spiritual abuse in the churches. I had received numerous requests for counselling by people whose lives had been broken by churches and organisations offering so-called “deliverance ministry” in which they would allegedly have numerous demons cast out of them. The weird thing was that those who had come to me were not crazed antichristian demoniacs but were actually genuine disciples of Christ who had been persuaded by these snake-oil salespeople that they had a plethora of demons. Really, the Devil must be laughing up his sleeve to see so many in the churches believing that a disciple of Christ has not become a new creation!

The same has been happening to many New Age folks who have come to Christ. It can be very emotive for the New Ager who has come, or is coming, to Christ. If they are approached by the wrong kind of ministry (deliverance or charismatic), they can be persuaded that they must be stuffed full of demons after some years in the New Age scene. Then they get on a dangerous treadmill of being manipulated by these ministries.

Subsequently, I have even seen newly converted New Age people on Facebook who have been influenced by these ‘ministries’ claiming that Christians can be possessed by demons because they witnessed some demonised kind of behaviour in people at a fired-up tent meeting run by some so-called “evangelist”. This will have happened either because those people were not genuine disciples of Christ or because they were immature, untaught disciples who had fallen prey to powerful suggestion and mesmerism. For that is what is happening in such meetings. Anyone can make it happen if they know the techniques to use.

The outrageous claim by anyone (including New Age folks) that genuine disciples can be possessed by demons is because they have become involved with one of these so-called “deliverance ministries” after their conversion or through it. Like I say, entering the church is like going into a madhouse in which there is a sane-room somewhere and you have to find it. So many strange and wacky “ministries” are plying their trade in the churches unopposed, and if you did oppose it (as I have done in a number of articles about spiritual abuse) they will accuse you of being demonised and of hampering God’s work.

There is much that I could say on this issue, but I recently wrote an article about this very subject, entitled “Delivered from Evil”, which asked the question, “Is Exorcism ever necessary for the Disciple of Christ?” Please click on the link in the title above. I would advise you to read it as soon as possible, before any further damage has been done to you or anyone you know. (It would also be worthwhile reading the little book I mentioned above, “Parallel Psychic Power-Games in the World and in the Church”, for details of how suggestion and mesmerism operate in both New Age and professing ‘Christian’ circles).

Suffice it to say that, as Jesus emphatically stated: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 23). That is one secure and protected home right there! Let’s face it, “greater is He [the Holy Spirit] who is in you than he [Satan] who is in the world” (First Letter of John, chapter 4, verse 4). The suggestion to disciples of Christ that they need to have demons cast out of them is surely tantamount to a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, you do not have to cast demons out of people before they are able to come to Christ. The only real deliverance is becoming a disciple of Christ! When you share the gospel with someone, that gospel has a power which is infinitely more powerful than any power of Satan. For it opens people’s eyes (unblinds them)

“so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in [Christ]”.

Book of Acts, chapter 26, verse 18

Job done. The gospel itself is the deliverer! The reason that so much wacky nonsense is taking place in so many churches is because of a denial or ignorance of the power of the gospel, the power of which Satan wants to play down or undo. It is the great revealer of truth and will show the true colours of a person. When we come to Christ, we discover that “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 13-14). The rescue has already taken place. As Jesus said, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 19-20). That is what brings about the real deliverance! All the other stuff is a smokescreen invented by the demonic realm to further its own work and protect it. Which do you think a demon would rather encounter — a so-called exorcism or the monumental power of the Gospel? I think that the answer is obvious.

Satan is real. Demons are real. They can cause mayhem, chaos, and tremendous evil on earth. But Satan and his whole demonic realm are defeated foes who cannot undo the naked power of the truth about Christ. “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (Letter of James, chapter 4, verses 7-8). We can certainly give him “a foothold” if we behave stupidly (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 27); that is on us. But if we are Christ’s, then his potency is hugely reduced. If you feel that you are under some severe attack (and such attacks will come from time to time if you are being a diligent servant of Christ), then find a wise, discerning pastor-teacher to counsel you rather than any of the many “deliverance ministries”; and find other disciples of Christ who are more mature than you to fellowship with, and surround yourself with them.

The eighth and final potential pitfall for New Agers who come to Christ is:

8)    Misunderstanding the Contrast between the true Ekklesia and the Visible Church

This is perhaps the most important of all these eight pitfalls I have given. A big shock for anyone who becomes a disciple of Christ is the stultifying amount of sectarianism, division, backbiting, false teaching, and the seemingly endless number of interpretations of the various teachings in the Bible which occur in the visible church. Former New Age people especially are completely thrown by this, as their background is all about unity at all costs. “Like, everything is one, man. We’re all one”.

So why is there all this mayhem? Why should the very body which claims to belong to Christ as His representation on earth be so riddled with division, infighting, and disparate hermeneutics? This is what I want to address in this final section of the article. So the first element to consider in relation to the contrast between the true Ekklesia and the visible church is that:

    i.     Not All Who Are of Israel Are Israel

Not everything which calls itself “the Church” in this world is identical to the body of Christ, the true Ekklesia. That is the Koine Greek word translated as “church” in the New Testament. In fact, it is a conglomerate word, “ek-klesia” which literally means “the called-out ones”. Called out from what? From the satanic world-system, spiritual Babylon. Ekklesia is used to refer to both an individual gathering of disciples in an area, e.g. “To the church of God in Corinth” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 2) and also to the Church as the body of Christ, e.g. “[Christ] is the head of the body, the church” (Letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verse 18). In my writings, I use the word ekklesia in those settings, using a capital ‘E’ to refer to the church as the body of Christ. When I refer to the church which the world sees, I call it the “visible church”. For there is a great difference between the visible church and the body of Christ, the true Ekklesia which is hidden within it. Not all who are in the visible church are genuine disciples of Christ. Here you get your first big hint as to why there is so much mayhem in the visible church: It is made up of both genuine disciples and false ones!

It was the same in Old Testament times. As Paul stated, “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 9, verse 6). This was why there were so many problems with Israel concerning unfaithfulness and mass rebellion. We see this contrasted perfectly in the differences in attitude and motivation between Saul and David.

It is just the same in the visible church. Not all who profess to be ‘Christian’ are disciples of Christ. In fact, as Paul goes on to show, in the whole body of the children of Israel, God always preserved what is called in Greek λεῖμμα, leimma, meaning a remnant (Letter to the Romans, chapter 11, verse 5). Paul gives the example of God revealing to the prophet, Elijah, who had become depressed with the situation in Israel, that there were still 7000 people of Israel who had not bowed down to the idol, Baal. According to the “Voice of Jewish History”, Rabbi Berel Wein, writing on his Jewish History blog, this meant that 99% of Israel was bowing down to Baal. [See https://www.jewishhistory.org/life-and-times-of-elijah/ ]. In other words, that 7000 represented the fact that just 1% of the children of Israel were faithful. That is a stunning revelation. That was the faithful remnant which was remaining out of all Israel in Elijah’s time. Even if that number of 7000 were to be allegorical — in the sense that seven is the number of God and the completeness of His work, and one thousand is representative of an indefinitely large number which, in God’s providence, represents His full completeness — then it is still going to be an invisible minority as it is also a “remnant”.

Paul then applies that to the situation in his own day. He writes, “In the same way, at the present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 11, verse 5). The parallel between Israel and the visible church is clear. Those who are not genuine disciples of Christ make up the large majority of those who are in the visible church. True believers and disciples of Christ make up a small but significant minority in the visible church, just like the remnant of 7000 in Old Testament Israel. Whether it is as low as 1%, I cannot say. According to all statistics, there are 2.1 billion people who claim to be ‘Christian’ in the world today. 1% of that figure would be 21 million. Well, we cannot be sure of the real statistics. I leave the logistics up to God. All I know is that the remnant of genuine disciples is a minority in the visible church and I want to be in that remnant with all my heart (and I hope you do too)!

So, this is a first explanation as to why there is so much mayhem in the visible church. The vast majority of those in it are not genuine disciples of Christ. Because that majority is so rampant, controlling, and obviously under the power of Satan (for if you are not Christ’s then you are Satan’s; there can be no neutrality), this is bound to cause big hassles in the church.

The second element to consider in relation to the contrast between the true Ekklesia and the visible church is that:

  ii.     The Remnant is “According to the Election of Grace”

In order to understand more deeply about why the visible church is not 100% made up of genuine disciples, as we saw in the words of Paul above, the ‘remnant’ is preserved because of Divine election: “At the present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 11, verse 5). This is a very big subject deserving of an article all of its own. But suffice it to say that both Jesus and Paul espouse the teaching of Divine election, of being chosen by God. “Many are called [by the gospel] but few are chosen [by God]” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verse 14). “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, verse 22). Paul and Peter refer to this election too (First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 1, verse 4; Second Letter of Peter, chapter 1, verse 10, where Peter says that one can prove one’s election by being diligent in one’s life of discipleship).

This teaching about Divine election triggers many people into lashing out at those who mention it. But it is an inescapable reality. Chapters 9 and 11 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans are devoted to an exposition of this teaching, which he uses to explain why there is only a remnant of the faithful. Many are called (via the gospel) but few are chosen by God. Jesus’ words. There is no point in arguing with God about this. I certainly do not. It is His cosmos and He knows what He is doing. We cannot properly understand all His workings. But because I know that God is just and righteous and that everything He does is immaculately perfect, then I have no problem whatsoever with that. Only the faithless would have such a problem. Do you want to challenge God about this? Here is how Paul deals with such a challenge:

“Who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why did You make me like this?’ Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use? What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory”.

Letter to the Romans, chapter 9, verses 20-23

This is holy territory onto which we are stepping with those words. They are part of the deep things of God. This explains so much in relation to why the visible church is such a mixed bag of mindsets. The elect saints in the visible church are those who carry the torch of faithfulness. The rest, being under the power of Satan, are the reason for the visible church’s waywardness.

The third element to consider in relation to the contrast between the true Ekklesia and the visible church is that:

 iii.     There is a Satanic War on the Saints

The presence of those who are not genuine disciples in the visible church is part of a satanic war on the saints. Right from its inception this has been the case. Right from the beginning, there were false apostles (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 13), false prophets (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 15; Book of Acts, chapter 13, verse 6), false christs (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 24), and false believers who followed them (Letter to the Galatians, chapter 2, verse 4).

The early church was full of enthusiasm and joy at a time when the resurrection was still a recent memory. Local gatherings met in people’s homes. As this solidified and meetings became larger, the possibilities arose for people of bad intentions to creep in. That this was instigated by Satan is plainly written in the sacred texts. In chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation we see that the ascension of Christ (verse 5) triggered a war in heaven between the archangel, Michael, with his good angels, and the former archangel, Satan, with his fellow fallen angels (verse 7). Then we see that Satan and his gang of angels lost that battle and were “hurled to earth” (verse 9, i.e. he had no further access to heaven as he had previously). Then a warning is given to the earth that “with great fury the devil has come down to you, knowing he has only a short time” (verse 12). Verses 13-17 show how that fury will be predominantly directed at the people of God (symbolized as a “woman” in that chapter). In fact, it says that Satan “went to make war” against them (verse 17). [There are many more details in that chapter and you can read all about them in my free-to-download 650-page commentary on the Book of Revelation].

That war on the saints by Satan is a spiritual one; and it is brimming over with stealth tactics and extreme deception, along with a level of venom that you would barely imagine to be possible. That war on the saints has taken many forms, operating at both an individual and corporate level. At the beginning, it was all about false apostles and prophets, false teachers, judaisers (trying to bring back the Old Testament law). Then a vast torrent of false teachings hit the church. It was the Gnostic movement of the first and second centuries which first burst upon the Ekklesia in an orchestrated manner as an expression of the rage of the defeated and thwarted Satan. This was so marked that church historian A.M. Renwick has noted that:

“By the beginning of the third century A.D. most of the intellectual Christian congregations throughout the Roman empire were to some degree affected by it”.

G.W. Bromiley ed., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Eerdmans, 1982), Vol.2, p.484

That is an astonishing revelation. If one wishes to look for a doctrine which could ‘seduce the elect’ (if that were possible), one need look no further than Gnosticism, which “in the second century, spread with the swiftness of an epidemic over the Church from Syria to Gaul” [Robert Law, “The Tests of Life: A Study of the First Epistle of St. John”, T & T Clark, 1909, p.26]. And that was just the beginning of Satan’s war against the Ekklesia and against God, along with many other seemingly plausible but ultimately wacky false teachings. Not only such teachings waged war but the very form of the church took on a different quality so that it metamorphosed into an organised religion, with all the rituals, regalia, pomposity, paraphernalia, and imposed false authority from a distance in place of the spontaneity of vibrant local gatherings. Eventually, there was the Vatican and denominations and all the other trappings of the false church. [NB: I am not saying that everyone in those denominations is a false disciple. But the fact that false disciples get themselves into the control of those denominations has determined their directions]. Even at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which was supposed to correct the numerous false teachings and false authority exercised by the Roman Catholic church, each side was burning the other at the stake, while anabaptists were being drowned in the local village pond to teach them a lesson! Nuts, all of it. In the last century or more of our own time, many false and wacky teachings with their inception in influential characters (often from the USA) have plagued the church and eventually found a respectability to which all are expected to adhere. Here are some examples of those false teachings:

  • The secret “Rapture” of the saints so that they do not have to go through major tribulation (see my article, “The Perturbing Pastoral Implications of the Rapture” for details).
  • The coming 1000-year reign of Christ on earth from Jerusalem (see chapter 9 of my book, “The Essential Apocalypse: Making Sense of the Book of Revelation” for details of why that teaching is false).
  • That the modern state of Israel is the revived Israel of the Old Testament and a sign of the soon return of Christ (see my free book debunking these false claims, “Abraham our Father: Jerusalem our Mother”).
  • The spiritualizing of what should be taken literally in the Bible.
  • The literalizing of what should be seen as allegorical.
  • The speaking in gibberish which is falsely claimed to be the biblical ‘gift of languages’ (see my article, “Parallel Psychic Power Games in the World and in the Church” for details).
  • A ‘baptism in the spirit’ experience involving the false modern so-called “tongues” which follows as a secondary experience to being made a new creation in Christ (again, see my article, “Parallel Psychic Power-Games in the World and in the Church” for details of how that is a particularly heinous teaching).
  • That we are to “take the world for Christ” and that Christianity can only be successful if it is seen to be successful via a mass universal awakening across the world.
  • That women can be pastor-teachers.
  • That the Holy Spirit makes people fall down and laugh hysterically en masse.

However, whatever nonsense like the above has happened, no matter how successful it appears to have been, it has never totally eclipsed the true Ekklesia of Jesus Christ, which operates hidden within and outside the visible church which is all that the world sees. In fact, it is not possible for the true Ekklesia to be eclipsed, as Jesus promised that even the gates of Hades could not prevail against it (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18). As E.H. Plumptre (in loc., Matthew 16:18) wonderfully put it in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel:

“This promise declared that all the powers of Hades, all the forces of destruction that attack and, in the long run, overpower other societies, should attack, but not overpower, the ekklesia of which Christ was the Founder. Nothing in our Lord’s teaching is, as measured by man’s judgment, more wonderful than the utterance of such a prophecy at such a time”.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers by Various Writers, Ed. Charles John Ellicott, Cassell & Company, 1905.

So that should give us a great deal of comfort. We do not need to stress about the madness in the churches. It is all doomed in the long run. Meanwhile we are to just continue to make genuine disciples of all nations.

Finally, Jesus Himself vividly declared how the church would contain false disciples. Firstly, He said:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’”

Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verses 21-23

These are people who called Jesus “Lord”, who imagined that they prophesied, cast out demons and even performed many miracles “in Jesus’ name”. Yet, they were plainly not Christ’s as he utters those words which must be the most formidable of all time: “I never knew you”. Disowned. Utterly rejected. Separated from God. For eternity.

Another place where He reveals that the visible church will be overrun with false disciples is in His parable of the wheat and the Zizania (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 24-30, 36-43). It is extraordinary that most English translations of the Bible use the very diluted word, “weeds”, when the Greek text clearly says ζιζάνια, zizania, which refers to a plant known as Darnel, or Lolium temulentum, which grows alongside wheat and looks almost identical until the ear opens (therefore, to harvest in those days would have yielded a corrupted crop, though now harvesters use a filter to prevent this from happening). The big problem is that Darnel is toxic to humans, so that “when people eat its seeds, they get dizzy, off-balance and nauseous, and its official name, L. temulentum, comes from a Latin word for ‘drunk’” (See the link at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wheats-evil-twin-has-been-intoxicating-humans-for-centuries ). So to translate zizania simply as “weeds” is sloppy, to say the least. I actually think it is irresponsible and even highly misleading. They are not any old weeds but counterfeit wheat!

The point of me sharing all this here is to show that the Christ clearly said that the church in the world would grow with ‘wheat’ (genuine disciples) and ‘Zizania/Darnel’ (counterfeit disciples) alongside each other, which outwardly, before the harvest (the return of the Christ), can be difficult to tell apart as many people are good at putting on the act and have got it down to a fine art. In fact, most of them do not even know that they are acting! So the visible church is filled with counterfeit disciples.

The word “weeds” in that context has no descriptive power and is worthless as a translation. For these false disciples are not merely weeds but outright counterfeits! This is why we have, after a couple of thousand years of growth, ended up with a counterfeit visible church which barely even mimics the true spirituality which Christ came to inaugurate — just as Darnel mimics wheat. This does not mean that one has to tolerate outright apostasy! But it is just provided to show that if there is a doubt then we need to exercise caution. We can separate ourselves from the false church and we can even expose it, but we cannot fully expurgate it. That will be Christ’s role at the judgement. In fact, the false church will doubtless still have key roles to play on earth in the welcoming of the Antichrist, the persecution of the true Ekklesia and the parallel coming-to-its-head of all evil in this world, as a precursor to Divine judgement.

So now I hope you can appreciate just what a culture shock it is for a New Age person — many of whom are intelligent, sensitive, searching people who exude “love and light” — to be confronted by a visible church which is chock full of lunatic practices, heavy ‘shepherding’, and a majority of false disciples who have tended to get themselves in key positions, and false teachings being touted by so many who are nothing less than impostors (zizania).

CONCLUSION: The Special Place in my Heart

What a minefield the churches are today! They are a minefield enough for those who have been sojourning in them for years. But for the many who are emerging from a New Age background to discover that the true Christ is the One they have really been seeking after all those years, it is more of a madhouse than a minefield, leading to a maze or labyrinth from which, once entered, it is extremely difficult to extract oneself and which involves the same tail-chasing as that in which they were engaged in their former New Age existence.

As I said in the introduction, I came to Christ nearly forty years ago out of a theosophical New Age-style background, and have had a longing since then to reach New Age folks with the simplicity and purity which is in Christ, which in part is what my ministry is about. They have a special place in my heart. It must be a terrible shock to discover, at the very time you are coming to Christ and thinking that you are finally being cleansed of all the filth in which you have wallowed for years, that you have entered a hall of mirrors and deception. This is why loving, wise and discerning guidance is absolutely vital at that stage.

The vital lesson to be learned here is that when it is said that “the whole world is under the power of the evil one” (i.e. Satan, First Letter of John, chapter 5, verse 19), that ‘whole world’ includes the wayward element in the visible church. It does not include the true Ekklesia, the body of Christ, over which Satan has no real, lasting power whatsoever. Satan can attack it; he can make war against it. He can cause harm to it (e.g. by infecting it with false teachers or by making the world think that it is the same as the corrupted visible church). But he cannot finally eclipse it. He may, by permission of Christ, even cause you to be persecuted and even to be put to death for the faith. But, as Christ assures us in the face of that Satan-inspired persecution, “Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Book of Revelation, chapter 2, verse 10) — the ultimate snub for Satan, whose persecution of you actually led to that crown! Those who “persevere to the end” are the ones who will be saved, having proved that they are the real deal (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 13).

So, dear friends, the above words have been written as a didactic aid to discernment for those transitioning from New Age to new life, and to enable those already in the churches to understand a little better the minefield faced by those entering the household of faith at this watershed time in history. Feel free to contact me at any time. My email address is diakrisis-project@outlook.com . I give you my blessings and very best wishes. 💝

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© 2021, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]