The eighth of our ‘top-ten’ hallmark teachings in the satanic New Consciousness/neo-Gnostic scene is that because man was created in the image of God, there is something of the essence of God in each one of us — known in neo-Gnostic jargon as ‘the Divine Consciousness’, ‘Christ Consciousness’, ‘the Christ within’, ‘the Doctrine of the Inner Light’ or ‘the Higher Self’. As has already been shown in the previous chapter, the claim is made that we can readily tap into this ‘inner divinity’ through consciousness-altering techniques and thereby attain personal Godhood. This teaching of ‘the God within’ is not only the most fundamental of all the tenets of the New Gnosticism, but it has been the mainstay of the ancient Gnosticism, Shamanism and Eastern mysticism for millennia. It has long been my strong conviction that during the coming years, this teaching — along with the parallel idea that everyone is essentially good, if given the chance — will become one of the prime ways that the corrosion of the Christian Gospel and its inconvenient teaching about the depravity of human nature will be hastened, especially among spiritual seekers, in an attempt to deter them from discovering the truth. For this reason, it is most important for God’s people to be able to refute entirely the idea that all people from birth have God indwelling them. For if this were true, then it removes the exclusive nature of Christian salvation over against the claims of world religions, along with many other groups and cults which teach that God indwells all people unconditionally and that we simply have to ‘plug’ into it through various techniques to render it available to us.

Once again, we find that this concept has come about through the diabolic characteristic of plucking texts from the Bible, then applying them out of context in order to support a personal philosophy and to claim biblical endorsement for teachings which are entirely at variance with the mind of God. Three main Old Testament passages are used by neo-Gnostics to support their claim that all people have a spark of indwelling divinity. Let us examine these texts.

A prime Old Testament passage used to support the Gnostic idea of God indwelling every creature occurs in Psalm 46:10, from which an erroneous rendering is constructed so that it reads: “Be still and know God”. The idea is that all people have to do is to “be still” — which is usually interpreted in neo-Gnostic circles as the act of transcendental-style meditation, eyes closed, blissed-out, or other activity to numb the mind — and then they will attain “God-consciousness”, i.e., ‘know’ that they are God. Again, this is a perversion of the Scripture, removing it from its true context. The text does not advise readers to “be still and know the God within”. Instead, as the context makes clear, the Lord is commanding His enemies (and those of His people) to cease from their battling and recognise His divine authority and power in the earth. The Hebrew word translated as “still”, רָפָה, raphah, means “cease” or “desist”. So when the text says, “Be still, and know that I am God”, He is really saying here: “Cease from all your foolish turmoils and recognise that I am God, and that you cannot resist Me or confound My people”. The text is encouraging us to give obeisance to the transcendent God who is out there rather than trying to discover an imaginary one which dwells within! So the reading of this text by the neo-Gnostic is entirely false.

The second Old Testament text used by Gnostics to prove the doctrine of the ‘god within’ occurs in Job 34:14-15, in which some translations of a saying of Elihu can give the impression that God’s Spirit indwells every person. Turning to the original Hebrew, a literal translation reads: “If He sets His heart on man, if He gathers to Himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again to dust”. It is the spirit and breath of man — his God-given life-force — which is being referred to here as being withdrawn, not the indwelling Holy Spirit of God (note the capitalisations of the pronouns referring to divinity in the text). As John Gill points out in his comment on this verse, the “spirit” which is “gathered in” to God in Job 34:14 is

“not His own Spirit and breath, drawing in and retaining that within Himself, and withholding the influence of it from His creatures; but the spirit and breath of man, which are from God, and which, as He gives, He can gather when He pleases”. [John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, Mathews & Leigh, 1810, Vol. III, p.466].

In support of this, Elihu makes a statement earlier in his speech in Job, saying, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). This does not at all imply that Elihu believes that God has imparted a spark of divinity into his being. It simply refers to the creative and upholding power of the Spirit in his life. King Solomon also refers to the same phenomenon when he says that at death “the spirit (or breath) will return to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Although human life is certainly created and upheld by God’s Spirit, it is the spirit of man to which Solomon is referring, not the Holy Spirit of God or any form of indwelling Divine essence.

This same idea holds true in Psalm 104:29-30, another text alleged to support the Gnostic doctrine of ‘the God within’. Here, in a wonderful outburst extolling God’s creation and His sovereignty over it, the psalmist says to the Lord, “You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth”. However, there is no suggestion here of the pantheistic notion of indwelling divinity in God’s human creation. All that these verses show is that all life is dependent on God for its sustenance, and that it is the Spirit of God which is involved in creation and renewal.

However, having shown that these texts in the Book of Job and the Psalms refer to the lifeforce which God upholds by His Spirit rather than the indwelling Spirit of God, it would be most beneficial for us to turn our attention to the original creation of the first man Adam. For, in doing so, we will learn much about the true nature of the spiritual relationship between God and man, as well as about Satan’s strategy in respect to this doctrine of ‘the God within’.

In the Book of Genesis, there is one verse on this matter which says: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath [spirit] of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). When the neo-Gnostics come to this text, they read it as if it proves that the “spirit of man” is of the same essence as the Spirit of God. For example, the Franciscan monk Brother Ramon states:

“God breathed his life-giving ruach [Hebrew for spirit or breath] into Adam’s nostrils and he became a living soul… In the Bible the breath of man is a manifestation of the breath of the Eternal Being”. [Brother Ramon, A Hidden Fire: Exploring the Deeper Reaches of Prayer, Marshall Pickering, 1985, pp.71-72].

Here he assumes that the human spirit (the “breath of man”) is directly identified with the Spirit of God and that this is every person’s natural heritage. This is tantamount to the deification of Man. Neo-Gnostics claim that through the degeneration of human consciousness human beings have lost contact with that original ‘god within’ allegedly imparted to Man. Having been obscured by the development of a ‘false self’, they assert that ‘rediscovering’ it through meditation and other techniques will radically alter our consciousness and bring us once more into contact with our alleged ancient heritage. How do these claims square up to the biblical data?

It is certainly the case that Adam must have had the indwelling Holy Spirit as part of his original creation when God breathed the breath of life into him; but this is not at all to be identified with the Gnostic’s ‘god within’ or the mystical notion of a universal indwelling ‘spark of divinity’. The teaching that Adam had the indwelling Holy Spirit is surely a fundamental canon of the Christian faith, resting primarily on the relationship between Adam and Christ. The Apostle Paul says that Adam, to whom he refers as “the first man Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), was “a type of Him who was to come” (Romans 5:14), that is, the Lord Jesus, whom he refers to as “the last Adam”. In Romans 5:12-14 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-49, Paul shows the clear analogy between the two Adams: The first Adam brought sin and death into the world through his seduction by Satan; the Last Adam overturns this through His obedience and successful resistance toward Satan. If the last Adam had the Spirit, then by analogy the First Adam must have done also. As George Smeaton puts it in an analysis of Genesis 2:7 in his excellent work on the Holy Spirit:

“The doctrine that man was originally, though mutably, replenished with the Spirit, may be termed the deep fundamental thought of the Scripture-doctrine of man. If the first and second Adam are so related that the first man was the analogue or figure of the second, as all admit on the authority of the Scripture (Romans 5:12-14), it is clear that, unless the first man possessed the Spirit, the last man, the Healer or Restorer of the forfeited inheritance, would not have been the medium of giving the Spirit, who was withdrawn on account of sin, and who could be restored only on account of the everlasting righteousness which Christ brought in (Romans 8:10)… No one, in fact, can read the action of Christ on the first evening after His resurrection, and consider the symbolic breathing on the disciples [John 20:21-22], and the words which fell from Him in conveying a new gift of the Spirit, without an impress that these two acts were counterparts — the one [in Genesis 2:7] the original gift, the other [in John 20:22] the restoration of what was lost”. [George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Banner of Truth, 1974, pp.15-17. George Smeaton was Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh from 1857-1889. His two books on the Atonement (Banner of Truth) and that on the Holy Spirit cannot be recommended enough. They shed a good deal of highly original light on the Scriptures, yet never straying beyond them].

Does all this mean that all people have God unconditionally indwelling them, as the Gnostics would claim? Not at all. For the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from Adam as a result of his fall into sin. The one who had been made in the pure image of God could no longer be described as such. Now it could be said of him: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurably sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), and “every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). From the following generation onwards, men could only cry out: “Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful from when my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5; cf. Psalm 58:3). It is clear from the Bible that only those who repent and believe have this original gift of the Holy Spirit restored to them and are thus made “a new creation”, having “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24), unlike before they came to Christ when they were “dead in trespasses and sins” and slaves to their old unregenerated selves (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 1:21).

The Lutheran Formula of Concord (1580) makes a sweeping affirmation on this post-Fall human condition, which brilliantly sums up its totality:

“Original sin in human nature is not only a total lack of good in spiritual, divine things, but at the same time it replaces the lost image of God in man with a deep, wicked, abominable, bottomless, inscrutable, and inexpressible corruption of his entire nature with all its powers, especially of the highest and foremost powers of the soul in mind, heart and will. As a result, since the Fall, man inherits an inborn wicked stamp, an interior uncleanness of the heart and evil desires and inclinations. By nature every one of us inherits from Adam a heart, sensation, and mindset which, in its highest powers and the light of reason, is by nature diametrically opposed to God and his highest commands and is actually enmity against God, especially in divine and spiritual matters” [Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article I, §11].

In the Scots Confession of 1560 there is a similar emphasis concerning the result of the Fall on the image of God in man:

“Because of this transgression, commonly called Original sin, the Image of God was utterly defaced in man, and he and his posterity of nature become enemies to God, slaves to Satan, and servants unto sin”. [Scots Confession, Article III].

Far from continuing to possess the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit — which Gnostics and Mystics interpret as a spark of original God-given divinity or a ‘Hidden Self’ which can be tapped into through meditational techniques — the Belgic Confession (1561) boldly states:

“Since man became wicked and perverse, corrupt in all his ways, he has lost all his excellent gifts which he had once received from God. He has nothing left but some small traces, which are sufficient to make man inexcusable. For whatever light is in us has changed into darkness, as Scripture teaches us: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:8); where the apostle John calls mankind darkness”. [Belgic Confession, Article 14].

Consistent with this verdict, in the Heidelberg Catechism, the question is asked: “But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil?” To which the answer is given: “Yes, unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God” (Belgic Confession, Article 14). The condition of man as bereft of the Holy Spirit and no longer in the pure image of God has spread to every man and woman after Adam and Eve. This is why the Lord could say, shortly before the judgement of the Flood, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is flesh” (Genesis 6:3). Man had so descended from grace as a result of the Fall that he was indeed just “flesh”, bereft of the indwelling Spirit of God. This is corroborated by Jude when he describes unregenerate human beings as “not having the Spirit” (Jude 19). The Lord Jesus clearly differentiated between two classes: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6); the one is merely “in Adam”, the other “in Christ”. From the First Adam, the human race has inherited a physical body; from the Last Adam, God’s people inherit a spiritual body also (1 Corinthians 15:45). And Paul also made a clear distinction between those who do not have the indwelling Spirit and those who do:

“Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the flesh, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Romans 8:8-9).

Those who do not have the Spirit of Christ are those who are merely the physical descendants of Adam — once born — whereas those who do have the Spirit of Christ are those who have been “born again” (or “born from above”, as signified in the Greek) through the regenerating power of God (John 3:3). The original sin of the First Adam caused the withdrawal of the Spirit from man; the (sinless) Last Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) restores the Spirit in those who come to Him in faith and repentance. It is only those who repent and believe that have this original gift restored to them (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). All this means that the neo-Gnostic claim of a universal “God within” is a sheer fantasy which goes against both the plain evidence of the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Church.

Perhaps we can now recognise the importance of upholding this original indwelling of the First Adam by the Holy Spirit and the subsequent loss of the Spirit at the Fall. For the only way one can have the indwelling Holy Spirit today is through His restoration in those who believe in and become disciples of the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Strangely, the doctrine of Adam’s original possession of the Holy Spirit has received little recognition since the writings of a great many of the Church Fathers who vigorously upheld it. It may be that the neglect of this doctrine is because of a fear that it and appears to support the Gnostic world-view of universal indwelling divinity. [For example, the Jewish philosopher, Philo, who lived at the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, argued against the idea that it was God’s Spirit which was breathed into man, on the basis that such an interpretation deifies sinful man (Allegorical Interpretation, 1:13). But there are two oversights here. In the first place, Adam was not sinful when he was created and did not become so until he was seduced by Satan’s lies. Secondly, Philo makes the typical pagan error of imagining that to have the indwelling Holy Spirit means that a person becomes deified, becomes a god. It is precisely this error which has been propagated in the Gnostic approach to those texts which speak of the relationship between the Spirit and mankind].

But this fear of pandering to a Pantheistic view of creation is unfounded when the relationship between Adam and Christ is properly understood, and the full effects of the Fall have been grasped. Indeed, the proclamation of this doctrine actually works against the view of the Gnostic, as it clearly places every one of them outside the realm of those who have the Spirit of God!

One of the New Testament texts advanced by the Gnostics in support of their doctrine of “the God within all” is that saying of the Apostle Peter that through God’s precious and very great promises “…you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). However, yet again this passage works against the neo-Gnostic view because it is not addressed to all people everywhere but to “those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours” (2 Peter 1:1), which would immediately exclude all neo-Gnostics! Even on their own admission, Gnostics uphold the idea of knowledge (gnosis) rather than faith for salvation. So all the promises in this letter have no application to those who propagate the New Gnosticism, who do not rely in faith on the imputed righteousness of Christ for their salvation, but on their own systems and techniques. True disciples of Christ, by having the imputed righteousness of Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, become — through their fellowship with Christ — partakers in the divine nature. But this does not at all mean that they are partakers in the divine essence. This distinction is absolutely crucial. For being a “partaker in the divine nature”, as one Christian writer has put it so well,

“does not mean that man shall give up one nature and assume another, but that he shall become the recipient, through grace, of what the Bible has termed “the glory” of God. What Christianity proclaims is an eternal participation in the Life of God — but not an identity”. [Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion, TAN Publishing, 1988, p.128].

That is the fundamental difference between the orthodox, biblical, Christian concept of the relationship between God and man, and the ‘divinisation-of-man’ conjecture of all the Satan-inspired religions and cults of the world. To be a participant in the life of God and a recipient of the glory of God — as Adam was and as all true believers are — is very different from the notion that one can achieve divinity through contacting the alleged ‘God within’.

There is one further New Testament text which is used in support of the Gnostic claim that all human beings unconditionally have a spark of God indwelling them which is waiting to be kindled into flame by consciousness-altering techniques. This is the statement by the Lord Jesus to the Pharisees that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The rendering of the Greek, ἐντὸς ὑμῶν, entos humon,as “within you” in the King James Version is technically imprecise, especially within this particular context. A far more reliable translation, as it is in most modern translations, is “in the midst of you” or “among you”, in support of which J.P. Lange states the following three grounds:

“1) That in this way the antithesis between the external coming [of the kingdom] and the being already actually present is kept more sharply defined; 2) That the kingdom of God had not been truly set up in the hearts of these Pharisees; 3) That in John 1:26; 12:35; Luke 7:16; 11:20 the same thought which is expressed in our translation is expressed in another way; while, on the other hand, for the apparently profound but really not very intelligible statement, that the kingdom of God is found in the man, no other proofs are to be found in our Lord’s words”. [Lange’s Commentary on the Scriptures, Vol.VIII, Part.2, Zondervan, 1975, p.266].

An important factor in these verses is that Jesus is not speaking of the inwardness of the kingdom, but of its presence. He was telling those present that the kingdom of God was personified right there in their midst through the presence of Christ, their Messiah. The kingdom of God does not exist within all people (and especially within those Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking!), as the mistranslation would imply — for that is occult mysticism. Rather, a person comes into God’s kingdom at the time of his or her regeneration, as can clearly be shown from many other places in Scripture, which I hope you will consult (cf. Colossians 1:13; Matthew 25:34; John 3:5; Acts 14:22). The problem is that the idea of achieving the illusion of personal divinity through one’s own efforts always seems more enticing to the narcissistic unregenerate mind rather than simply dwelling in a spiritual kingdom which has been created by the omnipotent God whom they reject.

Thus, the successful refutation of the Gnostic teaching of the universal ‘God within’ is an absolute necessity for diligent disciples of Christ today. For many foundational aspects of Christianity are nullified if this concept of the ‘universal God within’ is held to be true. A few examples can be given here:

  • If it can be proved that all people at every stage in history have had an indwelling spark of divinity, then the entire biblical concept of the Fall and subsequent loss of the indwelling Holy Spirit is denied.
  • The loss of the Holy Spirit in the wake of the Fall meant that man would die spiritually as well as physically. The restoration of the indwelling Spirit in followers of Christ is their guarantee of eternal life (Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Corinthians 5:5). If all people still have a spark of Divinity which can be activated through various techniques, then this removes the need to receive eternal life from Jesus Christ, who is described as a “life-giving spirit” (Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Corinthians 5:5).
  • The need for the incarnate Son of God is rendered entirely meaningless in the face of a universal ‘Inner Christ’ who is available ‘on tap’ to all people at every stage of history, without the need for repentance and regeneration. In fact, the incarnation of Christ is a massive slap in the face for those who make the claim of a universal ‘Christ-consciousness’ or the ‘God within all’. For if the first Adam had not lost the indwelling Holy Spirit as a result of sin, then there was no need for the last Adam (Christ) to be manifested in the flesh and to restore the Holy Spirit to those who would follow Him.
  • If all one needs to do for salvation is to ‘tap into’ the ‘God/Christ within’ through certain foolproof techniques, then the necessity for the historical event of Jesus’ atonement for sin is swept to one side.

If the teaching of the universal ‘God within’ is true, the list of Christian teachings which would fall are numerous. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that it has come to play such a prominent role in the satanic strategy of the Gospel Age and now even more so in this time of apostasy. For at the heart of this teaching we find the original satanic lie that human beings can become like God (Genesis 3:4-6).

When Satan told our first parents that they would be like God and never die if they obeyed him rather than their Creator, no sooner had they done so than God’s judgement brought decay into the world and the indwelling Holy Spirit was taken from them — the complete opposite of what the devil had originally promised! Truly, he was a liar par excellence; and he continues to be so today by hoodwinking his subjects into believing that they still have the original ‘spark of divinity’ — which is how Gnostics will always erroneously view the indwelling Holy Spirit — which was given to Adam, though it is not the same. And when they ‘tune-in’ to this ‘God within’, the ‘Higher Self’, in order to awaken it, the Old Serpent ensures that they will have all the fancy experiences necessary to perpetuate the Lie, complete with an imaginary ‘enlightenment’ — Satan’s perfect ‘magic illusion’ act. Fooling people into believing that they can achieve spiritual ‘enlightenment’ through the practice of humanly-devised techniques is the perfect satanic prank.

So, the eighth hallmark of the New Gnosticism is the notion that all people are born with a spark of divinity which just needs to be rekindled with various techniques. The ninth hallmark involves the hoax of reincarnation, to which we will now turn.

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[The above article is extracted from the 1,042-page Second Edition complete rewrite of my 1994 book “The Serpent and the Cross”. It is nine pages (4,400 words) from a 50-page chapter giving ten hallmarks of the New Gnosticism, of which this is the eighth. If you want to see more details about this book, which will hopefully be printed by the end of September, you can download a pre-publication PDF brochure here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2025/07/04/pre-publication-information-brochure-for-the-serpent-the-cross-now-available-for-distribution/ ].

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[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]

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