Transcription
In the new age, I was very famous. I went on Oprah, all the talk shows, CNN, The View, everything. I was writing about mediumship, teaching it, practicing it. It leads in darker and darker roads. She went from being a housewife to becoming a satanic high priestess through the avenue of my old meditation CDs, tarot cards, Ouija board, astrology. It's hollow, it's shallow, it's idolatry, and it's sorcery. So, we're going to go to Matthew 7 to [music] start with. This is the section, you probably know it, called I never knew you. Matthew 7:21 out of the ESV. "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name?" And then, this is the scariest part of the Bible. Do you you agree? It's verse 23, Matthew 7. "And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." You guys, I came so close to hearing those words. Because I thought I was a Christian my whole life. I was saved at age 59. I'm now coming on 67 next month, eight years ago. I was born literally into New Thought Churches. My parents were infertile for seven years after being married. They went to a New Thought church, put in a prayer request, and they conceived me a month later. And so that just hooked my parents in to New Thought deception. And I'll talk about New Thought versus New Age and what it means.
But I spent the next 33 years in as members of Christian Science Church, Unity Church, Religious Science Church, all coming through the lineage of Phineas Quimby, the hypnotist, and teaching that your thoughts create your reality. And then in the 1990s when I was writing books and I was hired to be a speaker with the Whole Life Expo and we toured the whole North America. We didn't come to Kentucky, which yay Kentucky for having that discernment, but we we went everywhere else to convention centers and I toured with some of the most famous New Age teachers for the next I think 26 years thinking I was a Christian. The whole time I went on Oprah, all the talk shows, CNN, The View, everything. Um, rock stars, movie stars were at my house, you know, we're talking about New Age stuff and um I thought that was my life. And and that whole time I thought I was doing God's will because people told me that the New Age materials that I produced comforted them and seemed to help them and seem to be accurate because the devil is what? A counterfeit. You all know that, right? He counterfeits. We can look at Exodus in Pharaoh's court where the sorcerers were able to mimic the miracles that God was doing through Moses and Aaron to a degree, wasn't he? Right? And he still does that. Genesis 3, "Did God really say that you can be like God?" That's the whole MO of the devil today. You can be like God.
So New Thought is this belief that you can create through positive thoughts, positive feelings, positive actions. It makes you the creator in its teachings. Now I know the Bible talks about the importance of hope and faith. But that's in the context of God as sovereign creator, isn't it? And His will. New Thought says, "Yeah, yeah, there's God, but I'm going to create." And that's the big difference is who do who do you believe is in charge? Do you think that the locus of control comes from our creator or from your positive thoughts, positive mindset, positive words? It's really important. It seems so subtle, but it can mean the difference between what I just read in Matthew 7 or not. We need to know Jesus.
New Age really came out of the spiritualism movement in the mid 18 in mid 1800s in the US. Spiritualism, transcendentalism, uh, New Thought was very popular. Mary Baker Eddy had taken Phineas Quimby's work and made Christian Science. She had also taken Emanuel Swedenberg's work where he claimed to go to heaven and talk to angels and she was she had lawsuits for plagiarism to Swedenberg and Gupinius Quimby. And then at that same time you had people interested in seances in the mid 1800s. You had these these sisters these young girls in New York called the Fox sisters who claimed that they could hear knocking sounds from deceased people. Seances became big. You had a woman named Helena Blavatsky who started the Theosophical Society and she claimed that she could channel she called them these ascended masters from India that were giving her the truth. Uh she started a magazine called Lucifer and her teaching was that Lucifer was a misunderstood evil being. Doesn't that sound familiar? You hear that now? It's really scary stuff. But out of that the New Age was born. And it's not new at all. It's old. It's Genesis 3 repackaged. And the New Age really gets more into it. It overlaps with New Thought. And it gets more into trying to predict and control your future. So it gets into divination.
But what we find the differences between New Age, New Thought and Christianity is this. With New Age, New Thought, it is all about glorifying the self. Glorifying the self. So, you've got your positive affirmations. "You deserve it." "Follow your heart." "You can do it" kind of messages. We'll talk about that because it can be confusing. I get a lot of questions about vision boards. I'm going to talk about that. And the and the difference between New Age, New Thought and Christianity is who do we glorify? As Christians, New Age, New Thought glorifies a self and Christianity glorifies God. Huge difference. That can be your litmus test. Is this New Age, New Thought, or is this biblical? Okay. Is this trying to elevate me or not?
Now, my background is is psychology. Um, I don't believe in traditional psychology anymore, but I earned a BA and an MA from Chapman University in psychology, counseling psychology. I was a psychotherapist for years. And then when I became a New Age teacher, I kind of left that behind. But I noticed that the people who came to the New Age workshops I was doing were trauma survivors. They had been abandoned, abused, um, betrayed. And in psychology, we would have called it low self-esteem. I don't use that terminology anymore, but these were people, women who felt bad about themselves. And they turn to New Age, New Thought because, again, it glorifies self and it makes you feel like a million bucks. People will tell you, "Oh, you're a goddess. You're an angel." They will tell you, they will twist Esther 4 and they'll say, "You were born for just such a time as this." That's not that's not about us. And they they they just try to make you feel like you you have power. The danger with that that whole appetite for power is that it leads in darker and darker roads. The new once you get on the New Age, New Thought hamster wheel. That's what we call it. You get on there, it's a very works-based fundamental system. It says you have to do this, this, and this in order to become enlightened or to they even say to ascend. They use that word ascend, u but not in the way that our Lord has ascended. They talk about yourself ascending. So the New Age, New Thought will give you this whole litany of things you have to do every day. You have to clear your chakras. That's a Hindu concept that says that you have energy wheels inside of you that need to be balanced. Sisters, if you hear anyone talk about chakras, big red flag, okay? That's not Christian. Same with vibrations, vibes, frequencies, quantum anything, that's not Christian. That's New Age, New Thought vi uh vocabulary jargon.
So let's talk about the three practices the Bible condemns that are integral to New Age deception. The first one is idolatry. Idolatry. Now, of course, we see it with the first two commandments. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have any other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself any carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is earth beneath." So idolatry really is the belief that something has power in itself apart from God. Let's talk about crystals for a second. I absolutely know I went through seminary. I got a master's degree that God made crystals and they are in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And they're beautiful, aren't they? So crystals in and of themselves are spiritually neutral. If you're able to have a crystal on your bookshelf and and appreciate it as God's creation, great. But where the New Age comes in is it says that crystal will heal you. That crystal will bring you money or love. That's called idolatry. We want to be very clear about that. And if you're in doubt ever, just pray for the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom. Is am I idolizing this? Yes or no?
Let's talk about oils. Now, the Bible has distilled oils. Distilled oils are different than what we see today. It's called essential oils. We know that God created the flowers and the plants that makes the oils. Got that? But here's what the New Age does. It says, "Well, therefore, since God made it, I can use it any way I want." So, just like with crystals, I I just want to say I use oils myself for fragrance and for cleaning. There's nothing wrong with oils. They are spiritually neutral. Where we get into trouble is when we think that oils have a magical power apart from God. There's a company called Young Living that has a little bottle. It's pink and white. Last time I checked it was $50 and it's called Abundance. And some of the advertising says that if you use this oil in a distiller that you will attract abundance. Not we're not talking abundance of joy here. They're talking about money that you can buy their $50 bottle of oil and you can attract money. That's idolatry. And it gets even worse than that because the second and third things that you see with New Age, not only is idolatry, but the the second thing is you see witchcraft or sorcery. Witchcraft and sorcery are kind of used interchangeably in the Bible. And the third thing is divination.
So with the example of the abundance oil, if you were to go, and I don't recommend this, but if you were to go on a site called Etsy, and you were to type in abundance oil in the search bar of Etsy, what would pop up would be all the witchcraft sites. And they they sell abundance oils to designed to attract money. and they all have pentagrams on them and really dark occultic spells associated with abundance oils. So that's an example where it goes from idolatry to sorcery. This is what we see in both New Thought and New Age is this desire to have power. I have talked to these women. I've had so many friends who were in Wicca and witchcraft and the number one reason they got into that was to have more personal power. They really wanted power. They felt out of control in their lives. They felt like they they didn't believe in God. They believed in um pantheism and pantheism. Pantheism is the belief that God, the divine is in the trees and the rocks and everything. And so the trees and the rocks are therefore divine and they talk with them and they pray to the trees. This is where you see the the tree huggers. Pantheism is the belief that God's in everything and outside of everything instead of the Bible's view that the creator and the creature us are separate. He He did create us. We are God's creations, but God is not inside of us. Like I used to believe in the New Age. That can really mess people up if they believe in pantheism. And unfortunately, there's some false so-called Christian teachers like I'm going to name names. Offense alert. Richard Rohr is teaching that the pantheism and panentheism and the New Age concept of the universal Christ.
>> Authentic Christianity is panentheism. God in all things.
>> Not God is all things.
>> Yes. Very different.
>> It It's very different and it's subtle.
>> We're not saying the tree is God, the grass is God or the sky is God. No, we're not.
>> Saying God is infused above, around, in, and throughout everything.
>> Perfect. God is revealing the Godself through every single creature.
>> That is not biblical. It's very dangerous. Please, until Richard Rohr repents, we do pray for him and do not use his materials.
So, let's talk about other places in the Bible that talk about idolatry, witchcraft, and divination. Now, as I mentioned, I was in New Age, New Thought for 59 years. So, I thought that I had my life set. I had um made my will and um you know, I just thought I would do New Age for the rest of my life. My husband and I were being flown first class around the world um to give sold-out workshops all around the the world. um limousines, penthouse suites at the Four Seasons, shopping at Harrods in Fifth Avenue, New York. I mean, we had the lifestyle of the rich and famous, making huge amount of monies, but spending more than we were making. And all the false teachers that I was with were doing the same thing. Just the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Why? Because we were empty inside. And even though I was talking at these workshops about how to find inner peace, I didn't have inner peace. I was seeking it still as a New Ager because the only way is through who?
>> Christ. Jesus. The real Jesus. The real Jesus.
So, um, in in January 2015, because I identified as a Christian, I would I listen to Christian radio. A lot of it was really bad, but I I loved listening to Alistair Begg. And so in January 2015, I was listening to an Alistair Beg sermon on 2 Timothy 4, "In the end times, people will want their itching ears tickled by false teachers." And he described a false teacher. And you you guys, it was like he was describing me. And it convicted me. For the very first time in my life, I was convicted that I remember. And I I I had been listening in my car. I got home and I said to my husband, I really think we need to go to a real church. We'd been going to New Thought, New Age churches, which are churches in quotes. They're not churches. And so, we didn't know denominations. So, we were flopping around and we went to a really progressive church for two years before we were actually saved. But while we were there, we started studying the Bible. And God used His Word to save not only myself, but my husband, too. And it's just a miracle that I'm here.
When I got to this verse, this is the passage God used to save me is Deuteronomy 18:10-12. "There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his sons or his daughters as an offering." Now, that really is a foreshadowing of today's abortion. I I was a freak in the New Age because I was pro-life since I was a kid and first saw someone showed me an aborted baby and I became instantly pro-life as a kid. So, don't be afraid to show people the truth. Okay? And so that part it didn't resonate with me because of course I'm not going to hurt my babies. But then the next part is what got to me. It says, "Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead." I was doing all those things. I was writing about mediumship, teaching it, practicing it. I was creating these cards that are called angel cards that it's not the angels of the Bible. I didn't know. I knew just enough about the Bible from my Christian Science upbringing to be dumb to use the vocabulary but not the theology. But here's what got me right here after that whole list. It says, "For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord." I was shocked. I really thought that I was, this is so stupid now when I look back. I really thought that I was helping God by teaching New Age because people told me it was comforting and helping them. Was I a fool?
And then after I was saved for a for just a moment, I thought I could blend Christianity with New Age until I continued to study the Bible and the Holy Spirit continued to convict me and I walked away from the New Age, renounced. If you've ever had to apologize, you know it's very humbling. I had to apologize to the whole world because I had toured the whole world for 25 years and my my books and cards were in 38 languages. So I had to say to the whole world I was wrong. I'm sorry. And then the attacks came and you know just the accusations and the slander and we gave back as much money as we could for the first two years. We were already broke because we'd overspent and just trying to deal with spiritual warfare for those first few months, not knowing what's going on. I got tangled up in deliverance ministries. Do not do that. It's not not a good path. And it was just so hard because all of a sudden my friends were gone, movie stars, rock stars who had been at my house gone. Even a couple of my um children gone. They ghosted me for a while because they they had been raised New Age. My mistake. Do not raise your kids New Age. Please, okay? And and so it was it was just a horrible time in my life out here. But inside I had this peace that I had been seeking my whole life. And it was an eye of a storm experience because my whole life was turning turned upside down. Um we had to sell our house. Praise the Lord that my husband got a good job because we immediately got fired from the New Age publisher. Thank you God for your protection and provision.
So that verse is the main verse about idolatry, witchcraft, and divination. Deuteronomy 18:10-12. We can see in 2 Kings 17:17, we can see that the Lord was angry that people were using divination. We can look at First John 5:21 where the Apostle John says, "Little children, keep yourself from idols." That's the end of that chapter. It's an emphasis. I want to turn with you to Galatians. What do we normally think of with that chapter? We think of the fruit of the Spirit, right? But did you ever read right before the list of the fruit of the Spirit? This is about the works of the flesh in contrast of the fruit of the Spirit. Now, the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. Here we go. This is the works of the flesh. Opposite of fruit of the Spirit: idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissension, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. So, idolatry is taken very seriously in the Bible, as is sorcery, witchcraft, divination.
Let's go to Revelation 21. "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." Idolatry and sorcery are right there with murder. It's that taken that seriously. And I'm going to talk about practical examples of idolatry. Again, I'm not a legalist. I promise you. I know we're saved only by grace, not by our works. But I'm very concerned that so many professing Christians who may not actually be saved might be false converts are involved in these processes. And then there's people who are actually saved who don't know any better. Maybe a a well-meaning Christian sister said, "Hey, this healed me." And you go try it. But then you get down that hamster wheel. I'll talk about that in a minute.
Let's go to Revelation 22:15. And this is the end of the Bible. This is where Jesus is talking about the new heaven and the new earth which we want to go to, don't we? There's no more sin, no more tears there, no more death there. But the people who are not going to the new heaven, it says, "Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." Look at that. Idolatry could keep someone out of heaven into the lake of fire and destruction forever. This is serious stuff.
So, let's talk about what idolatry is. We talked about crystals and and um oils. Again, this is not me being a Pharisee trying to ruin anyone's fun. I know some people make their living with this. We want to be careful that we don't look at these objects as having power apart from God. We don't want to have these things on the throne of our heart instead of Jesus. We want to make sure that all glory goes to God, not to the crystal, not to the oil, not to ourselves.
Now, let's talk about vision boards for a minute. Okay? I know that there's a professing Christian woman who says that Habakkuk 2:2 is the Bible's instructions to have a vision board. But let's execute Habakkuk 2:2. That is God's instructions to one of it the minor prophets to write down his visions. All scripture is God-breathed. The prophets received God's word through transmissions through the Holy Spirit and for some of them that was through a vision and that includes Habakkuk. It's a very important chapter of the Bible. Do read it. It's um it's very very um has a lot of practical application, but it's not the practical application of making a vision board. A vision board, for those of you not aware of it, is getting a piece of cardboard, cutting out pictures from magazines or printing them from the internet that represent your goals, and then putting words that represent your goals, putting it on the cardboard, and then you set it somewhere and you look at it every day, and you envision yourself as having those things actually happen. Let me tell you, it does work. I did vision board boards for decades and seemed to manifest fancy cars, fancy vacations, relationships, houses, everything. But it is sorcerer's court, counterfeit. Those things disappear. They are mirages and they are designed to hook people in to get further down the rabbit hole of New Age and New Thought deception. These things do work because demons are behind the scenes using them as Trojan horses for further deception.
I'll give you an example. A woman that I met, I'm not proud of this, by the way. I'm telling you things I'm absolutely not proud of just because I hope people will learn from my mistakes. In the New Age, I was very famous for having New Age meditations and they were recorded on in the old days on cassettes and then they got into MP3s and CDs. And a woman that I met was given one of my meditation CDs from her neighbor who knew that this woman suffered from anxiety. So, she listened to my meditation. I didn't know her then. And then from there, she grew an appetite for more. And she said within a few years her appetite took her down the dark road of deception so far that by the time God saved her, she had become a satanic high priestess. She went from being a housewife to becoming a satanic high priestess through the avenue of my old meditation CDs. And we're friends and she I've apologized to her and of course repented to God. But the point is that it it's a little bit leaven. And what do we know from the Bible what a little bit leaven can do? Okay.
I'm I'm an administrator in a group on Facebook called From New Age to Jesus. If you're an ex-New Ager, it's an excellent support group. It's free, of course. In that group, we asked the people who'd been saved out of New Age. There's several thousand in this group. What was it that got you into New Age in the first place? And what they said was the the quest for physical and emotional healing was what hooked them in in the first place. A lot of us struggle with physical or emotional pain and we get desperate. Things don't seem to work. But that doesn't mean we need to go to the other extreme of these hokey unscientific New Age dangerous methods. And they're dangerous because they point people away from Christ. We need to test the spirits with everything. 1 John 4:1 tells us, "Does this confess Jesus biblically?" Yes or no. As a New Age, former New Age teacher for 26 years, I never confessed Jesus biblically in anything that I did in all my workshops and my meditation CDs and my cards and my books and psychic readings I was given because I didn't know Jesus. I was influenced by New Thought. New Thought Jesus, New Age Jesus says that Jesus is a It's so hard to say this now that I know Him. That Jesus is a created mortal man. It's what they think. And that he's a role model for what we can do because it's all about glorifying self. "If Jesus can do it, these and greater things you can do, too." Twisting scripture all the way. And in the New Age, he's seen as someone who's this chill [snorts] hippie like, "Oh, you can just do what you want to do. You do you. Just be positive. Just be happy. Follow your heart." That's what the New Age Jesus says.
I was shocked the first time that I opened up. Well, let me just kind of back this up. I was raised KJV only. King James Versionist. I still read KJV, but I'm not an onlyist anymore. I've done my research on the different translations. It's a fine translation, but I could not understand it as a little kid. The old Elizabethan language was a stumbling block for me. And so, as an adult, when I first read the New King James Version and I read through the Gospels and my eyes were opened and I said, "Jesus said that He called people a brood of vipers. He called them He said their father is the devil." I this was not the Jesus that I was raised with to think that He was just this laid-back, oh yeah, I love everyone. Love, love, love. He is love. The ultimate love. He gave our lives to us. Jesus who came to earth fully God, fully man. Lived a sinless life. The only one to ever do so. Suffered terribly on the cross to take the punishment that we all deserve for our sins because we've all sinned. Romans 3:23. I didn't believe that in the New Age. New Age teaches that there's no such thing as sin, no devil, no hell. The New Age teaches that that's a concoction of the Roman Catholic Church trying to get people's money or power. But Jesus, He died for these sins that we're talking about. He died for divination and idolatry and sorcery. He died for all this. And then, of course, we know that He was buried in a rich man's tomb as prophesied. And three days later, what happened?
>> He rose again. Hallelujah. He is risen.
He was seen by hundreds of people who touched Him, talked with Him, ate with Him. He physically rose. Not like the Gnostic belief that He was only spiritually risen. He physically rose from the dead. The first to do that, He conquered sin and death. Hallelujah. And then what happened after that? He ascended to the right hand of our Father God where He is the second person of our Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit co-equal, co-eternal. And Jesus will return to judge us all. And we better make sure that we're in Jesus or it's not going to be a good outcome. And now is the time to repent and give our lives to Jesus.
So when we think about sorcery or idolatry, vision boards are an example of that. It is making the the items on your vision board an idol. It's thinking, well, if I get this, I'll be happy. I want to tell you that I got all those things. I had the best-selling books, the sold-out audiences. I was on, you know, all the talk shows, knew all the famous people and and and had the car fancy car and the friends and the health and, you know, everything you could put on a vision board. I got it. But I was still empty inside. Those things do in do not lead to happiness. There's nothing wrong with having a life that will take care of you. There's I'm not trying to promote an ascetic lifestyle, but without Jesus, it's empty. Without the real Jesus, it's pure emptiness. There's no peace. There's no joy. There's no fruit of the Spirit. So the vision board, what it is, the the essence of it is conjuring. It's elevating yourself and thinking, I can make this happen if I just look at these pictures and words long enough. The and this is what the New Age does. The universe, it serves the creature instead of the creation. The universe will give these things to me. Can you see how that's conjuring? And people come up to me all the time and they say, "But isn't it good to have goals?" It depends whose will that goal is. As someone who I feel like I I basically wasted my life going for my own goals. And I know God's redeemed me. I know I'm forgiven by His shed blood. I've got that. But I want people to know that that's a mistake to go for your own goals because it will not give you what you think it'll give you. It's empty. It's hollow. It's shallow. It's idolatry and it's sorcery. You only want goals that are His will. You want to pray for His wisdom and to let Him lead you. You want to trust in the Lord with all of your heart and to lean not on your own understanding. Sisters, if any of you are doing this goal setting, just break that chain right now. Ask Jesus to break the chain and go to His will. That's the only way that we can ever be fulfilled in this world. And honestly, it's the only way that we can be true role models to others.
Sometimes people come up to me and they they want to talk about um First Corinthians 8 and 10. And those, if you're familiar with those passages, that's where Paul talks about the meat that was prayed over in pagan temples that you could eat it because it was redeemed. You remember that passage those passages? Okay. So, they want they come up to me and they're like, "Well, I can do I can do yoga. I can do vision boards because Paul said that we have Christian freedom. We have Christian liberty. I can do whatever I want. You're just being legalistic and silly." [laughter] And so I I always say, well, let's go to those passages. Let's go deep into them. So where does it say that New Age, New Thought, sorcery, divination practices are akin to the meat? Where does it say that yoga is is akin to the meat? It doesn't say that. In fact, the analogy is more that New Age like vision boards, divination cards, pendulums, crystals that they are akin to the pagan temple and the pagan prayers which cannot be redeemed. And what else did Paul say in there? He said that if he knew it would cause someone to stumble, a brother to stumble, he would not engage in eating those things or drinking those things. Sisters, what if if people know that we are Christians or professing Christians and we dabble in this stuff, it could cause someone to stumble. You know, sometimes I'll go to a a professing Christian's home and I'll see a Buddha statue on her fireplace and I know those are trendy and she doesn't mean it in any way. She's not worshiping that Buddha, but that is idolatry. That's a symbol of idolatry. And if other people come to her home and they they see the Bible verses on the wall, they see the cross on the wall and they see a Buddha statue there. That's syncretism. That could cause a sister to stumble. We just don't want to do that.
All right. So, from your home, you want to get rid of any kind of divination objects. We talked about hopefully nobody here has tarot cards, angel cards, divination cards. Hopefully, nobody has a Ouija board. Okay, good. Because they sell those as decorations at Michaels. It's just horrific. Okay. Pendulums. Astrology. We haven't talked about astrology yet. Astrology charts. I know that every woman's magazine has horoscopes in the back. And that people always argue with me. Well, Doreen, the Magi, you know, the Magi, you probably didn't know this, Doreen, but the Magi were astrologers. You didn't I know you don't know that, Doreen, that the Magi are astrologers. Okay, let's go to that section. Where does it say they're astrologers? They followed a star. And then they'll say, "Well, okay. Maybe it doesn't say that Magi are astrologers, but God made the stars, so I can I can follow astrology because He made them." Hear that ipso facto. Therefore, God made this, so therefore I can do this. Let's actually go to the Bible and say what see what God says about astrologers. Okay. Isaiah 47:13 and 14. "You are wearied with your many counsels. Let them stand forth and save you." Listen to this. This is astrology. "Those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons make known what shall come upon you. Behold, these are the astrologers. They are like stubble. The fire consumes them. They cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame." That's about the judgment of the astrologers. If you're into astrology, pray for if you've got like cravings for this stuff, pray for God to deliver you from those cravings because what astrology is is the desire to peek into the future so you can control it and manipulate and master it. But it's the Holy Spirit's power what that we should really be concerned with. And then if we go to the book of Daniel, we see that astrologers are portrayed there as bumbling idiots. When Nebuchadnezzar wanted his dream not only interpreted but to be told what was his dream, astrologers couldn't do that. The sorcerers couldn't do that. Only Daniel, only God speaking through Daniel could say what the dream was and interpret it rightly. So the Bible condemns astrology because it's divination. It's not trusting in the Lord. It's trusting in His creations, His stars.
Numerology is another one I'm seeing a lot of these days. A lot of kids are into angel numbers, which true confession. I coined that phrase back in the 80s. I really regret it. I feel like Dr. Frankenstein now. Katy Perry just came out with an album dedicated to her angel numbers. I am on social media almost every day renouncing all this stuff, warning people. This is not of God. Numerology. So then people will say to me, "Well, Doreen, did you know that in the Bible 12 repeats itself a lot?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I kind of saw that too, this 40 and seven and 12." But they want to do that ipso facto therefore leap again and say, "Well, therefore I can use numbers to give myself a personal private revelation, a divination message." I see sisters in Christ using the Bible in a way that's called bibliomancy. Bibliomancy m-anc y where they say a prayer and then they open the Bible at random and put their finger on it with their eyes closed and say this is my message from God. Don't do that sisters that's divination. Why is that divination? Because that's not how the Bible is meant to be read out of context. And what if you put your finger on Matthew 4 and it's the devil speaking to Jesus in the wilderness. Is that a message for you? Be careful. Okay.
Any books that are channeled and I sometimes people who are not Christians say, "Well, the Bible's channeled." No, it's God-breathed. Channeled books include, now here, I'm going to offend you again. Just a little warning. There's a book that it's just almost exactly like what I used to make in the New Age. It's called Jesus Calling. Maybe you've heard of it. What's wrong with Jesus Calling? It's got Bible verses on it. Well, the 2004 first edition of Jesus Calling, Sarah Young said that she was inspired to make this book because of a book called God Calling, which is a famous occultic book where people thought that they were getting messages from God and she wanted to do the same. She admitted that the Bible was not enough for her. It wasn't sufficient for her. She wanted more. That gets us into trouble every time, sisters, wanting more than what the Bible gives us. I know some people find the Bible boring. But pray before you read, and the Holy Spirit will illuminate scripture, and it is active and alive. It's a scalpel that will reveal sins that need to be mortified. So Sarah Young decided that she would have a conversation with Jesus. And this messages came through that portrayed our Lord and Savior who died for us, portrayed Him as a boyfriend figure that would ask Sarah to gaze into His eyes and engage in visualization and other New Age practices. And even more than that, in the first edition, her so-called Jesus said things like, "This is what I said before I left the earth." and He quoted the wrong part of the Bible. And oops, some some faithful sisters in Christ called out Sarah Young for doing this. And magically, the next printing of Jesus Calling changed what Jesus said so that it would be aligned with the Bible. People will will argue with me and say, "But look, it says a Bible verse at the bottom of each page, so it must be safe." It doesn't say a Bible verse. It says a citation. It might say Isaiah 63, but has anyone ever gone to the Bible and compared what Isaiah 63 says compared to what her so-called Jesus said? Remember how I started out talking about Matthew 7:21-23. Away from me, I never knew knew you. We want to be sure we're following the correct and real Jesus. So, if you've got Jesus Calling and and please, if you're a mom, don't get your kids the Jesus Calling kids books. So dangerous. We don't want to be following the false Jesus. That's the Jesus I followed for 59 years. That boyfriend, best friend type of Jesus. Jesus is our friend, but He's our friend because He died for us and He'll tell us the truth. The false Jesus never tells us the truth. Never tells us to repent. Never warns us that we will go to hell on the path that we're on because he doesn't want to offend anybody.
If you have any kind of idols, I'm talking about any kind of statues. Before I was saved, I actually had pictures that I thought were Jesus on my wall and I would go up to them. I would say, "Hi, Jesus." They were idols to me. I couldn't have them anymore. You you look at you pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal to you whether these statues or paintings you have whether they're idols to you or not. Um any kind of apps that promote New Ageism, get them off your phone, off your devices, any kind of New Age meditation style music. This is important point. The Bible is very clear in at least two places that we need to be sober-minded and alert. Now, at first when I read those, I figured that was about not getting drunk. And that's part of it. Drunkenness is a sin. But really, what being sober-minded and alert means in practical terms, is that the the next part of the verse says in Peter, it says, "Because your adversary," what does adversary mean? Enemy. Your adversary, who is he? The devil. And what is he doing? He's prowling around like a lion seeking someone to devour. Okay, so it's like the analogy is if there's a house robber, someone who robs houses. Your house has all the lights on and you have this big dog and you've got cameras and signs. So if you did that to your house and the bank and the house robber is going down the neighborhood and he saw all that, he would go where? To the next house. And and we don't want our neighbors to be robbed either. But the point is being sober-minded and alert is analogous to having all your lights on in your house and having the big dog and the cameras and the guns and the alarms. Being sober-minded and alert means what it says. A lot of the New Age and New Thought practices, sisters, guide you to go into trances under the guise that it's relaxing and peaceful. And I'm talking about breathwork, mindfulness. I know that shocks a lot of people. Mindfulness, centering prayer, lectio divina, contemplative prayer, Eastern meditations, anything that asks you to let go of your mind and go into a trance. Be very careful. Pray for God's protection or don't do it at all. Be alert for these things.
New Age movies, these are other things to get rid of in your decluttering of deception. Anything that portrays a false Jesus, there's a TV show doing that currently. What's it called?
>> What is it? Oh, you said it. I didn't.
This This is what we're dealing with is a lot of people following the false Christ through Jesus Calling, The Chosen, The Shack. Another one that portrays the Holy Spirit in an unbiblical way. Gosh, we have to be so careful. What else do we need to throw away? Anything with yoga. Um, it's idolatry. It's literally making your body into a graven image to mimic one of the 330 million Hindu deities. I did yoga almost every day for 20 years. My best friend in the New Age owned a yoga studio. I've done my homework on this. I do think stretching is important. I do it every day with Pilates, non-yoga Pilates. Some Pilates does incorporate the asanas of yoga. You've got to be careful with that, too, too. And then jewelry. This is where Hobby Lobby really got to me. Jewelry. They have a lot of New Age jewelry there. Be careful. I've got tons of videos on my YouTube channel on this. And then for idolatry, the New Age appropriates from other cultures. And so Hobby Lobby selling dreamcatchers, these circles that have macrame and they're very pretty. But I interviewed a Mayan man who's a who was saved out of shamanism. He's a solid Christian now. And he told me he would never have a dreamcatcher on his wall because the belief is it catches nightmares. I mean, just the New Age is so delusional. Why would you want something on your wall catching your nightmares? When I look back on what I used to believe before God saved me and gave me a new life and a new heart, I think I was insane back then. It's just so delusional. It makes no sense logically. It's definitely not biblical. And I know we're given Christian freedom and Christian uh liberty, but not to sin. The Bible's very clear on that. We can't engage in condemned practices. And idolatry, divination, sorcery/witchcraft are all condemned. And I just pray that if you are tempted at all to go the way of any of these practices, pay attention to checks in your spirits. Okay? The Holy Spirit is He He was given to us to indwell us, to remind us of Jesus' teachings, and to convict us of sins. And New Age, New Thought is sinful. It cannot be blended with Christianity at all.