Are you saying that someone, a believer, can go sleep with a prostitute and it wouldn't be right or wrong because he's not under the law anymore?

So if he, if he sleeps with a prostitute but has faith in doing it, then it's okay?

Yeah, it's okay.

Okay, I'm going to ask this again because I want to make sure that I heard you correctly.

Yeah, it's okay.

It would be as long as you have faith.

He can do that.

Wow.

Okay.

You're saying that as long as we have faith, whatever we do in faith is not sin.

Yes.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport, Foreign we are live Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

As we say every week here, I can answer any question that you have about God in the Bible.

If you doubt that, just come up with your most challenging question.

Come to apologeticslive.com click click on the little Streamyard link to join.

Ask me your most challenging question.

I just want you to do one thing.

Remember, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

So with that, this is a Ministry of Striving for Eternity.

I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport, and we are here to get into some good dialogue.

I am joined by a guest and I will bring her in.

Marcia, if you wouldn't mind, we're gonna have you introduce yourself and, and I'm just gonna say how we got.

How we got to meet, which actually we realized I had your email somewhere, many, many years ago.

You said so somewhere we were connected somehow.

Somehow.

But a friend of ours, a mutual friend of ours, Doreen Virtue, I was, as many here know in the regular audience know that I, I have gotten onto a health kick ever got since I got a.

A serious scare with an ER visit.

And it has taken me into, well, what some say are extremes of health.

I do cold plunges.

I do saunas.

Saunas people don't think are extreme.

It's the cold plunges people think I'm nuts with.

And I agree.

I hate the cold, absolutely hate it.

But I do feel great after a cold plunge.

And part of that also got into breathing techniques and something that Doreen Virtue had said on somewhere where I heard her mention it, I went, she was talking about having a basis in Eastern religion.

I went, oh, I better find out.

And after talking with her, she said that I had to have you on to discuss it because you know much on the subject and Then just this week on Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, one of the other podcasts at the Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member.

You were on there talking a whole bunch of subjects that I was like, oh, we may go into lots of different.

Different ways with this.

This is going to be fun.

So let folks know a little bit about you, how you became, how you came first, you kind of first how you got into New Age, and then from the New age, how did you get into Christianity?

And a little bit about your ministry today.

Okay, sure.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on so much, Andrew.

Yes, I was in the New age for a good 20 years.

I got into it gradually.

It was not, you know, an overnight thing.

I had interest in astrology in high school.

I had interest in, like, the paranormal powers of the mind, that kind of thing.

And I.

I had been exposed to churches.

I had gone to churches.

My mother, who had been raised Southern Baptist, believed children should go to church.

And so my sister and I were taken to churches, but we lived in different places.

We lived overseas.

My father was a foreign service officer.

So the kind of churches we went to were.

I'm not even sure what they were.

I know one of them was the Army.

You know, it was the army chapel.

The Protestant.

So the Protestant army thing, whatever they called it, they just called it Protestant, I think, and I don't really remember much of that.

When we got back to Washington, D.C.

and I started going to a Baptist church, I was very.

Well, my mother, of course, kind of.

It was.

It was required.

I mean, I didn't have a choice.

So I got very involved.

I went to Sunday school.

I was in the youth group.

I went to the evening service, usually, always did my Sunday school lessons.

But I just never got the message.

The.

The gospel just never.

I don't know, it just.

It just never made sense to me.

I didn't understand what the gospel was, basically.

And it was all kind of like a story.

It was like these stories about Jesus.

And I did believe Jesus existed, but I didn't understand why he died on the cross.

And I think this church was a fairly conservative church, and it was a Baptist, Southern Baptist church.

And I think the pastor was from South Carolina, and it was fairly conservative, but I just didn't get it, you know, And I started getting interested in other religions, and I had friends who were from other religions in high school.

And so I decided I wanted to explain, explore.

And that's.

That's basically what I ended up doing.

You know, I did some exploration in college.

And then later, of course, I had more time after college, but I also had some paranormal experiences and those, the way those affected me was that it made me aware there is this other world, this spiritual dimension that you can explain Floor And I wanted to know more about it.

I wanted to know how to access that.

So that was, that was one very strong push that came on, you know, when I was really in, in high school and more in college, it was even stronger because I had some more experiences.

And the other area that I was drawn to was Eastern religions.

I got interested in that in college when I did a special project on Gandhi and I got very interested in Hinduism.

And that led later to a lot of reading after college and eventually a belief in reincarnation.

And eventually all of that, all of that led in the, in the Eastern religion direction.

I, I went to a Tibetan Buddhist group that was meeting, I lived in Atlanta, Georgia after, after college and there was a Tibetan Buddhist group there.

And I went there and learned how to do the meditation.

I eventually left that and went into Zen Buddhism and did a lot of reading on that and went to some Zen Buddhist groups and meditated with them.

And at the same time I was doing other things like taking classes in psychic development, class in astrology, class in numerology, palm reading, you know, a whole, whole bunch of things that you would put under the umbrella of divination, which most people call fortune telling.

And I was very involved with that and actually became a professional astrologer after taking a seven hour exam in Atlanta, Georgia.

And so astrolog psychology is pretty much where I landed as far as what I did most of the time.

But I was still doing my Zen Buddhist meditation and reading my Zen Buddhist books and going to the Zen Buddhist meditation groups and so.

And, and then there were other things involved too, because in the new age, it's usually not just one thing.

You, you know, you have a lot, a lot of areas that you're interested in and reading about.

And I was just totally, you know, 100% into this.

I believed in it completely and I was not interested in Christianity.

I thought Christianity was very narrow and that Christians were basically on a less evolved path.

They were not as evil spiritually evolved as, you know, people like me who, who were, were clearly more spiritually evolved because we realized, you know, we have all these different lives to live and we're on this journey, our own journey, nobody's telling us what to believe.

So I felt like, you know, I was definitely more advanced than Christians.

And so I don't know how much detail you want me to go into about how I came out of that.

If you just want me to, I can do a summary or I can give more detail however you want me.

Yeah, no, give, give a summary so we can get into some of the things of how new age is creeping into the church.

Okay.

Yeah.

So basically what happened was God just intervened in my life in a really dramatic way and I, I, I was, I felt a compulsion to go to a church and that eventually led to going to a church, a very open minded church where actually some people were interested in, you know, the fact I was an astrologer.

And there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm leaving out here but people can read it on my, my website ChristianAnswersNewage.com and also there's a lot of, on YouTube, there's a lot of interviews with me where I'm giving my testimony in a lot of detail so they can, you know, look that up if they want all the details.

But that led eventually to me giving astrology up and then reading the Bible.

I started reading Matthew chapter one and then as I was reading a passage in Matthew 8, that's when I saw who Jesus really was.

I turned my life over to Christ and everything changed after that.

And I did find out a few months later that this young man in an office where I was working part time had been praying for me with his young adult fellowship at his church.

So you know, that's an important part of the testimony because they were praying and that ended up being something, of course I didn't know about that.

I didn't know about it till after I had trusted Christ.

In fact, it was almost four months later when I found out.

So that's a very, very, very, very short story of what happened.

And so after I came, after I became a Christian and eventually the Lord led me, gave me a lot of opportunities to speak, speak and that led me into a full time ministry.

I actually operate as a missionary.

My mission agency is Fellowship International Mission in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

They're a wonderful, wonderful mission agency and you know, they've, they've been very, very good at, you know, encouraging me in this ministry.

So I've been doing it full time since 1998 and then several churches partner with me, several churches and individuals partner with me.

So that's how, that's how I do my ministry and it keeps me very busy.

There's a lot of material even, there's even more now than when I became a Christian.

You Know, I thought there was a lot going on then, and it's just, oh, my goodness, there must be 10 times more stuff going on now than there was was then.

Yeah, well, it's.

It's something where I, I will agree with you.

I remember many years ago thinking, well, there seemed like there was so much New Age that was in the churches.

And, and I come to discover it's.

It's not just in the churches.

You know, someone asked me this this past week whether, because I'm from a Jewish background, I was going on to a podcast and the person asked if anyone had questions for me, and someone asked why I'm in Kabbalah, which is a Jewish mysticism.

I'm like, I've never hate to disappoint you, but just because you're Jewish.

Yeah, I mean, it's more people like Madonna who are not Christian nor Jewish that get into Kabbalah.

So.

Yeah, sorry.

But there really seems to be no end to it.

It's interesting because you did mention something.

I had just was out in Oklahoma preaching at a conference that built a conquer conference.

And afterwards I preached in the church.

My text that I had was Colossians 2, 8.

And in there, basically, he's Paul's dealing with the, the mystics of his day, known as Gnosticism.

And just like you had said, I pointed out the.

The problem that Paul was addressing back then is the same one you're addressing today.

The fact that people think, oh, well, I have a more enlightened understanding.

And these people, they're simpletons.

They don't know what I know.

And it's this pride that kind of blinds us to not recognizing the truth.

You know, we can't hear it because we're so busy just going, oh, no, wait, no, we're just going to look at, I'm superior.

I have a knowledge others don't.

And that seems to be very prevalent with the New Age.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, definitely.

I think people in the New Age feel there's an elitism.

They would not admit this, and maybe a lot of them don't recognize it, but you definitely feel that you have this knowledge that most people don't.

And so you see things the way that really is like you are seeing the way things really are.

You see true spirituality and you may think you know, other people and some other religions may, may have some insights.

For example, of course, in the New Age, you New Agers tend to have an admiration for the beliefs of Eastern religions because a lot of the New Age uses the ideas from Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism and incorporates those ideas just like I did.

And so you feel that there's wisdom in those religions.

And my view was, well, those religions are so much more ancient than Christianity.

So, you know, I, So, you know, Christianity doesn't have as much wisdom because it's not as ancient as these other religions.

Although actually Buddhism is not as ancient as Christianity.

Although Buddha lived before Christ.

The writings of Buddhism weren't written down till about 29 AD and so it's not actually older than Christianity in a sense.

But I had, you know, and most, most New Agers have that view and they feel like there was this ancient wisdom way back.

And a lot of them get into the idea of Atlantis and Lemuria is the other place, mythical place.

Atlantis may, may have been a real place, but it's the way the New Agers see it.

It's, it's mythical.

You know, they use crystals for healing and they have, you know, these super psychic powers and things like that.

So there's, there is this reverence for the idea that ancient peoples had a, a special wisdom, or the Egyptians are another one.

The Egyptians have this, you know, secret wisdom.

And you feel in the New Age that you have access to some of this and you understand that this is really, this is really what you need to know in order to know who you are and why you're here, etc.

So same thing with astrology notes is ancient, ancient knowledge and astrology is ancient.

That's true.

So it, you know, it's, it's this reverence for what's, what's ancient and anything that's not Christian unless they, they, you can have a Christian mysticism.

You could see if you see Christ as a mystic and you, you know, you have Christ not, not as who he really is biblically, but you have the New Age Christ, then you have a kind of mystic Christianity.

There are a few New Agers who will call themselves mystic Christians or Christian mystics.

So that, that's there too.

Yeah.

And so for folks who are just joining, we're talking with Marsha Martinagro.

She is with Christian Answers for the New Age.

And so one of the things I, I heard you speaking and this was not what I was planning to talk about tonight, but since I was just listening to Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, which by the way, ladies, if you, if you want an important podcast to be listening to, you should check out Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex.

She, she has the ministry that is designed for women to really address some of the teachings that come into women women's ministry, the.

The different women's teachers and whatnot, and really does a good job of exposing some of the heresy that is taught within many of these women's say, women's ministry.

We may have her on here sometime next month along with a couple other ladies to talk about the if gathering that is happening.

And so she has dived deep.

If you're having that in your church, definitely check out her.

The video.

She has the podcast because she has done several years of a deep dive into the teachings of the if gathering.

And it is scary.

But you, you guys, when you were on her show, there was a name.

I love Melissa.

I really enjoyed enjoying talking to her.

She's very knowledgeable on what's going on.

She does her homework.

Yep.

Yeah, she really does.

Like, she, she does a good quality production of her podcast and really tries to get a lot in there.

Yeah, you guys talked about Dallas Willard.

And I have, I have not read much from him.

I think I only read one book of his and was like in is many, many years ago and just was like, yeah, this is trash.

And, and I remember a guy who challenged me.

He, he, he.

He said that if I would read a Dallas Willard book, he'd be willing to read a book that I gave him.

And he, he of course wanted me to give him one on, you know, by MacArthur, by John MacArthur, because he thought that that would be a thing I'd pick.

And instead I, I gave.

I wanted him to read something more about the fact because he was a.

What we.

It was.

He'd call progressive Christian.

That's a progressive Christian is one that's not a Christian.

They just want to deceive people into heresy.

So I.

Oh, was that too strong of a view?

I'm sorry.

And you know, if.

Anthony, if you're watching, I know you still troll us.

Yeah.

I don't think you're saved.

You can come back in anytime.

We could talk about it.

You need to repent.

But, you know, I've heard of Dallas Willard.

I was listening to some of the things you were saying about him, and I was like, oh, we definitely need to talk about that.

Because he is a name that a lot of people would look to.

Oh, yeah.

As somebody that is a popular Christian author and speaker.

Oh, yeah.

Any concerns with Dallas Willard?

Yes.

And really, you know, when I first heard about him, of course I was a Christian.

I did not know who he was before I was a Christian.

And I would hear people reference him and talk about him.

I mean, he was a philosopher, very highly respected.

He was Baptist, extremely highly respected.

And I kept hearing this talk about him, and I.

So I decided to try to read the Spirit of the Disciplines, one of his books.

And I guess the way I mostly heard about him was people talking about his books, like that book, or the Divine Conspiracy, which I think is probably one of the more popular books.

And I have not read that, but I started reading that, and I was having the hardest time because he was using these Scriptures and saying to back up what he was saying.

And I didn't think the Scriptures backed up what he was saying.

And I.

I was just, you know, I was really struggling with it because I thought, well, maybe it's me.

You know, I had been a Christian maybe at this point about.

I had been a Christian about maybe, I don't know, 12, 13, 14 years.

So I wasn't a really new Christian.

But, you know, I still felt like that was probably not that many years compared to him and a lot of other people.

And so many people liked.

Liked him.

And so I thought I must be missing something because so many people like him and think he's great.

And here I am thinking that he's not using the Scriptures correctly.

And it seems to me that if that were the case, people would be, you know, saying that.

They would be saying, oh, no, don't read him.

Instead of saying, read him.

So it was very confusing for me.

And I gave up about.

I don't know how far in the book I got.

I don't even think I got halfway.

I gave up and just put the book aside.

Later I had a conversation with someone at my church who had the same concerns I did.

And he had read that book, and he lent me his copy so I could look at his notes in the book.

And it made me feel a lot better because I thought, okay, I'm not the only one who felt that there were problems here.

Now, after that, and I didn't really do anything at that point.

I didn't try to read Dallas Willard anymore or look into him, but I was keeping up with this whole, what I call contemplative spirituality or the contemplative movement, because I started looking into that in the late 1990s.

And so then I.

I discovered Dallas Willard, who was putting us.

Was putting spiritual formation programs in these.

These conservative seminaries.

And I had been looking into this whole spiritual formation, spiritual disciplines thing.

I had read Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline.

I found a lot of issues with that.

And he and Dallas Willard worked, you know very closely together at the organization.

Richard Foster founded Renovari, which still exists and is still functioning with these contemplative teachings.

And Richard Foster, I think, has maybe recently retired as the head.

So I'm not sure he's actively the head of it anymore.

But he.

He was for most of those.

Those years.

And he and Dallas Willard became friends early on and worked together, and both on this same issue, this.

The spiritual discipline issue, which is part of this whole contemplative spirituality thing that has many facets to it.

And so then I got very concerned, and as I looked more into things, more concerned, I eventually I did read this book by Dallas Willard called Hearing God.

And I have an article on it on my website now.

I did that after I watched a number of videos of Dallas Willard and Richard Foster at Renavari.

They were doing a whole course there for people who want to go there and.

And be taught the things that they teach there.

And Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, they did videos of all of these talks, and I watched quite a few of them.

And one of them was On Hearing God and Dallas Willard, what he taught was astonishing to me.

I mean, not.

It was nothing from the Bible.

It was absolutely.

There was no connection at all.

I mean, he would reference the Bible, but what he was referencing did not support what he was saying.

And so I was really kind of shocked at some of the things he said.

And he said them so definitively, as though this, you know, with this sort of authority.

And I wrote.

So I wrote an article on that.

Before I read the book, Hearing God, I wrote an article on that video that I saw, and it's still on my website.

So I have that there.

So then when I read the book, I, of course, I saw the same things in the book, because his talk at Renovare was based on his book, which actually came out in 2017.

And it came out under another title.

And then it was.

No, I'm sorry, it came out in 19.

I'm so sorry, 1983.

Thinking of somebody else.

I'm thinking of another contemplative guy, John Mark Comer, in his book God Has a Name, which came out in 2017 and then they republished last year.

It actually came out in 1983 under another name, Searching for Guidance or something like that.

And it was about Hearing God.

And then later the title changed.

And this book has a lot of teachings in it that I do not think are biblical.

So I go into that in my article now.

Melissa and I did.

We talked about Dallas Willard, but we were talking about so many other people, too.

You know, we talked about Richard Foster and John Mark Comer and Thomas Merton and a whole, whole galley of people.

But Dallas Willard, because of his influence, and he influenced, of course, Richard Foster and John Mark College Homer considers him himself kind of a, you know, a student of Dallas Willard.

And actually a lot of what he teaches is very similar to some of the things Dallas Willard taught because of his influence.

That's where a lot of this that we're seeing now is coming from.

It's coming through people like John Mark Comer, who admired Dallas Willard, and John Ortberg, who considers himself a disciple of Dallas Willard's teachings.

And then there are other people, too, who were influenced by him.

And so he's kind of a key person in this whole mysticism.

I consider it mysticism in the church.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting that, you know, the.

The whole thing of Dallas Willard with hearing the voice of God.

Let me recommend, for anyone who is not familiar, an excellent book dealing with the issues that people claim.

Oh, God speaks to me.

A counter to what Dallas Willard would be teaching would be the book God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osmond.

It is a great book that takes every one of the arguments.

They're going to try to claim that where they say, oh, see, this is proof.

The Bible supports the claim that God speaks to me.

And it puts it into the context.

And you realize, oh, wait, it's not saying what you think it's saying.

In fact, it's often the very opposite of what you think it's saying.

Yeah, I've read about two thirds of that book that year by Jim Osman.

I've read about 2/3 of it.

It's very good.

And.

And that's exactly what he does.

He takes the.

The claims of these people and then he shows scripturally how it's not supported.

Yeah.

And so I agree that that's a good book to.

To help people see that, because it's just a misuse.

It's misuse of scripture.

Yeah.

Jim is, in my opinion.

I know people, you know, wife says I shouldn't say this, but I do anyway.

In my opinion, Jim is probably the best preacher alive today that I've heard.

At least he is.

He's one of.

He is my favorite preacher.

So.

But I don't get to.

It's way too cold up there in Northern Idaho to stay there.

I just go for like a month or so.

And then in the summer.

They only have one month of summer.

Yeah, that sounds pretty Cold.

I don't think I would like that.

But.

So for folks who may not be familiar, we got a pretty educated audience.

But in case there's folks that don't know what you mentioned, the, you know, the, the whole contemplative type of, you know, there's the prayer, this whole movement for folks who may not be familiar with it, could you describe what that is and how it's kind of weaved its way into the church?

Yeah, you know, it sounds pretty good.

I mean, when you hear it described, it sounds like it'd be good.

Yes, it does.

I mean, contemplative prayer, you contemplating, you know, praying, meditating on the scriptures.

That's the thing.

It sounds really, really good.

And that, you know, that's part of the problem is because what the words they're using that sound good and that are familiar actually mean something else.

The way they, what they mean by those words is something else.

And the way.

One of the, I think one of the roots of this really started with these three Trappist monks.

And this was Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating and John Menninger.

And they started the Centering Prayer movement, I think in the 70s.

I think it was in the late 70s.

And they did this because they saw young people interested in Eastern meditation and they were concerned with particularly the Catholic young people because they're Roman Catholic.

And they said, you know, we have something in the Christian tradition that is just as good that's the same thing.

And we can show people this, you know, this Christian alternative to the Eastern meditation.

But the thing is, is that they actually use some things from Eastern meditation.

Well, they use the first, they use the Cloud of Unknowing, which is a 14th century anonymous book that they, that people think was written by a monk.

I have read the Cloud of Unknowing.

It is about, it's very mystical.

It's about this journey to union with God, you know, through purgation, illumination and then union.

And it's very, it's.

It's written in, in such a way that you really need, you need to have read it in a book that has footnotes to help you understand some of the language and concepts.

Anyway, they, the.

The Cloud of Unknowing was one of the books they used to start their program.

The other was they were interested in Buddhist meditation and Hindu meditation.

Thomas Keating actually had a monk who had left the monastery and learned Transcendental Meditation and he had him come and teach the monks how to do Transcendental meditation.

Now, for those who don't Know what that is?

That is a meditation that got into this country from the Beatles because they.

The.

The guy that they met in India, who was a guru in India, they made him popular.

They got very intrigued with him, or at least some of the Beatles did.

And so Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was his name, came over to the United States States, and he went to Iowa, and he actually started.

Has a city there.

There's a whole city there called Vatic City in Iowa.

And he has Maharishi University.

Now.

He died a number of years ago.

I think he died in 2011 or something like that, but it's still there.

And he taught Transcendental Meditation, which was a particular form of Hindu meditation that caught on like fire in this country.

I just knew numerous people who did this.

I did not do it, but I have.

I have, you know, read about it, and I've written Facebook posts on it.

And this became very, very popular because you do it two times a day, 20 minutes each time.

So it was the sort of kind of thing that you could fit into your schedule, but it's very, very much based on Hindu beliefs.

And the other thing was the Buddhist meditation.

Thomas Keating had Buddhist monks come and meditate with the monks at his abbey and teach them how to do meditation, because he felt Christians could learn from Buddhists on how to meditate.

And part of this came from his admiration for Thomas Merton.

So Thomas Merton was the other influence on these three monks.

So it was Thomas Merton, the Katava knowing, and the Hindu and Buddhist meditation.

Thomas Merton was a monk also who was very interested in Buddhism, went to Asia, actually met the Dalai Lama.

He learned how to do some Tibetan Buddhist meditation.

He wanted to start a Buddhist meditation center in the United States, but he was killed.

He was actually electrocuted in Thailand.

It was around 19, I think that was around 1968.

And so he never, you know, never made it back to the United States and never started the meditation center.

But I've read.

I've read Thomas Merton, and I read his published letters that were published after his death, which show his very strong leaning towards Buddhism.

I mean, I think actually he was adopting some of the Buddhist ideas, and they.

And so these three monks were very influenced by Thomas Merton, and that's how they got the name Centering Prayer, because of something Thomas Merton said about if you want to go to the center of God, it's.

You go through the center of yourself.

I'm.

I'm not sure I'm remembering that exactly right, but it's something like that, some kind of mystical statement.

And then.

So they called it centering prayer.

And that started up and started attracting people outside the Catholic Church.

I mean, in the Catholic Church, yes.

Even though it got a lot of critics, the Catholic Church never endorsed this centering prayer.

And in fact, a lot of Catholics criticized it.

And there's articles you can.

You can read today from Catholics criticizing this whole centering prayer.

But then it got in outside the Catholic Church.

How that happened, I don't know.

But I actually went and heard Thomas Keating in 2005 at a church in this area, at an Episcopal church, a conservative Episcopal church.

And I heard him speak.

I did an article on it.

It's on my website.

Thomas Keating, by the way, Thomas Keating died in 2018.

So Thomas Keating is a very key figure here because he taught this.

This prayer and meditation.

That is.

That is basically mysticism.

It's not based on scripture.

And a lot of it also comes from medieval monasticism.

So it comes.

It's monastic practice.

It's practices of the monks.

That's.

That's what a lot of this is.

The lectio divina, which now more and more is popping up in evangelical churches, comes from these practices of the monks.

And it's not reading the Bible for context or for meaning.

And so all of these things are gradually.

There's, like, different.

As I mentioned earlier, there's different facets of it.

There's.

Contemplative prayer is one part of it.

Lectio divina is another.

You can also do imagery.

Let's see how they say it.

Imaggio divina.

It's.

It's where you contemplate an image.

So you can do that and you can.

You can.

You know, there's all these different things that.

There's.

Imaginative prayer is another.

Another one.

Guided prayer is another.

There's.

There's tons of facets.

I have a lot of articles.

I have about 15 or 16 articles now on my website just on this topic.

So if you go to my website and in the search box, put contemplative, a lot of these articles will come up.

So Thomas Keating was another key figure, along with Dallas Willard, and they knew each other.

And at one time, the renovari website, which was started by Richard Foster, who also is big on these spiritual disciplines, in fact, he's very big on it, and he's a Quaker, had a link to Contemplative Outreach, which was the website of Thomas Keating.

It still exists.

I'm not sure who's running it, but it's still There, because I've been there.

And there's also another person I'm gonna have to bring in here.

I hope I'm not.

I'm not confusing people with too much, but this.

This whole area is really.

It's big.

It's, like, involves a lot of people, and there's a lot of stuff going on in it.

So it's hard to, like.

It's not just like one or two people or one.

Here's one movement with these three key points.

You know, it has all this stuff which makes it, I think, actually more successful because it has so many branches and facets to it that if you just see this one thing and.

And you think that's a good thing and you go with it, then it can pull you into other areas and you don't even realize it's a.

It's a huge monster with all these different, you know, faces to it.

So Richard Rohr is the other figure.

And Richard Rohr has his own, you know, niche in progressive Christianity, a big influence on progressive Christianity.

He's very big on contemplation.

He and Thomas Keating were very close friends.

He has some of.

On his blog, Richard Rohr's blog, he has some things from Thomas Keating there.

He has referred to and quotes Thomas Keating quite a bit.

So he was influenced by Thomas Keating, and Keating was probably influenced by Richard Rohr.

And Richard Rohr is heretical completely because he is a follower of perennial wisdom.

So then that brings in yet another.

Another.

I'm pulling in this other thing now.

What is.

What is that?

I've not heard of that one either.

A lot of new terms that I have not heard.

So what is perennial Wisdom is actually started in the 1800s with people who believed that there was an original pure religion.

The word for it was way back, like, I think in the 16th.

I can't remember now, the 16th century, maybe somebody coined that term for the idea that there was originally one original religion, but they didn't really have followers, and nobody really developed that idea until the 1800s.

So it's a belief there is one original pure religion, and all religions come from that religion.

And so what these people were doing was they were trying to find what.

What that original religion was and which religion maybe was the closest to it.

And initially, a lot of them were followers of Sufism.

So Sufism is the mystical sect of Islam.

And interestingly enough, quite a few of them who had been Christians or Catholics or Jews or whatever got in, became followers of Sufism.

And this is in the 1800s.

And then in the early 1900s, and then it kind of spread out from there with different teachings.

And so today, people who follow Perennial Wisdom, you can be in any religion.

You could be a Hindu, you could be a Buddhist, you can be a Christian.

This is, you know, from their viewpoint, you can be a Jewish person, you can be, you know, consider yourself a devout Jew and still be a follower of Perennial Wisdom.

Because the idea is that since all religions come from this original religion, you can discover.

You can discover that original religion.

Oh, looks like she froze a bit there.

All right, well, she is frozen on the original religion as part of the.

There we go.

Yeah, there you go.

You're back.

You were said.

Okay, so did you hear that about the.

Today you can be Hindu.

Jewish.

Yeah, yeah, start.

Pick up there.

Yeah, go.

Just cover that again.

Okay, so you could be Hindu, you could be, you know, following Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and still be an adherent of perennial wisdom.

Because the idea is that you can find the truths of this original religion through an inward journey starting in your religion.

But you have to put the outward.

The outward trappings of your religion are just surface things, and they are hiding the fact that all these religions are rooted in this one original religion.

So you have to set aside those outward things.

And like, for example, in Christianity, it would be, you know, that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone.

That would be considered an outward thing that is not going to lead you to the truth.

So you put aside kind of the outward things.

You can incorporate some of your religion in it, but you have to go on this inward journey.

Mysticism.

And I actually had a follower, Perennial Wisdom, on my Facebook page, who was dialoguing with me for a while on this.

When I started posting on it, and he actually said this, I already knew it, but he confirmed for me that mysticism is the bridge between all religions and it's the way to perennial wisdom.

So mysticism means you do these practices, these contemplative practices.

That's why Richard Rohr, who is openly.

Is a follower of Perennial Wisdom.

He's very open about it.

That's why he is so big on this contemplative.

Contemplative stuff.

And I think that's why Thomas Keating and he were friends.

And I also.

I have a suspicion Thomas Keating became a follower of Perennial Wisdom based on a lot of things he said.

So I see that Perennial Wisdom is getting a foot into the door of the church through this contemplative spirituality because a lot of the contemplative teachers that I have read have Said things that sound very compatible with perennial wisdom.

Now, they may not be consciously aware of it.

You know, they may not even know what it's possible.

They don't even know what perennial wisdom is.

Or they may know what it is, but they may not think of themselves as followers of it.

But the ideas of it are there in this contemplative spirituality.

And I even have an article on it, I think it's called.

It's something like contemplative practices.

Does it lead to perennial wisdom or something like that?

Anyway, I have an article showing the connections that I've found, some of the connections.

So.

See, this thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

It's like, yeah, it's like this.

It's kind of like this endless sort of stream of people and ideas that have, that have influenced each other and, and all these different things that have come into the church and they're wrapped up in this very Christian kind of costume so that people think that this, this is biblical.

And of course scripture is used and referred to.

But as I have said for several years, I have yet to see a single scriptural passage used to support any contemplative teachings used correctly.

Any passage used by a contemplative person to support what they're teaching that is part of this contemplative spirituality has been misused, has been taken out of context.

And every single one.

I haven't, I haven't seen one yet that is not misused, which I think says a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, let me, I'm going to bring in Melbatos and for folks who don't know who that is, that's Melissa Lexus.

We were talking about you.

I want to, I'm going to read a quote.

This is a quote that I actually, at the conference that I was, that I was at in Oklahoma, I read this quote at the conference.

Now the topic was evangelism.

And I was talking about some of the, the dangers of people who don't follow a biblical message method when it comes to evangelism.

And so you're talking about this, this whole thing of how this is seeping in and it's the one true religion and whatnot.

And I think that this will be very interesting.

This is, this quote comes, I'll tell you who it's from afterwards.

But this is one of the most well known Christian evangelists in the world.

So now everyone's trying to think who it is.

Let me read this quote.

This evangelist says this quote.

I think everybody loves Christ or knows Christ, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're members of the body of Christ and that's what God is doing today.

He's calling people out of the world for his name.

Whether they come from the Muslim world or the Buddhist world or the Christian world or the non believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they've been called by God.

They might not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they needed that.

They need something that they don't have.

And they turn to the only light that they have and I think they're saved and they're going to be in heaven with us.

Unquote.

Would either of you like to guess who said that?

It sounds very similar to something he's not an evangelist in his dead.

But Dallas Willard has said something very similar to that.

I don't think members of the body of Christ, but he said something very, very similar to that.

Chris Roseberg did a program on, on an interview Dallas Willard did with John or Paul paper where he said that.

But that is from Billy.

Billy Graham.

That's what I was gonna say.

And was it his speech at the Crystal Cathedral?

Didn't he.

But like an interview that he had.

Robert Scholler from the Crystal Cathedral.

Yes, There you go.

I read it.

Okay.

You know, I think I have read that before, but I forgot because it was sounding very familiar when you were reading it.

And this is how, I mean when I say that this stuff is.

Is wor.

Worming its way into Christianity because people would be shocked to think when I usually give that quote, everyone says, oh, that that's wrong, that's heresy.

But they can't believe that someone like Billy Graham would say it.

But it just goes to show how much influence this type of thinking has had within Christianity.

That, that even someone like Billy Graham can't recognize what he's saying in Eric when compared to Scripture.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, you know, I would.

I've heard people say some stuff like what you read and they consider themselves inclusivists.

So they believe.

And I ran into inclusivist this in some churches where I've spoken.

They believe that you can know Christ through other religions without, you know, knowing the historical Christ.

And it's because they think that, you know, somehow the Christ is in these other religions or the ideas are there and it's called inclusivism.

And so that's different from perennial wisdom.

But it's, but it's compatible with it.

So a lot of things can sound like perennial wisdom, like a lot of people think perennial wisdom is like the new age, but it's not.

But there's a lot of compatibility between the two of them.

But they're different, they're distinct.

A question that did come up from Kathy, and by the way, I should say this, Kathy earlier said this.

I appreciate all the information that speaking to you has.

Has on your website.

So she.

She's complimenting you.

Thank you, Kathy.

She asked this question about the perennialism.

Is it tied to pantheism?

Oh, absolutely.

You cannot be a follower of perennial wisdom and not be a panentheist.

So panentheism is not pantheism.

Pantheism is identifying God with creation.

God is creation.

Panentheism is God is contained in creation, and creation is contained in God, but God also transcends creation.

So the.

Richard Rohr is openly a panentheist, but panentheism is a part of perennial wisdom because the belief is that God is in creation.

And they often will call God living wisdom.

And living wisdom permeates creation.

God permeates creation.

God is everywhere.

So we are all part of God.

And this is why Richard Rohr teaches that no one needs salvation and no one has ever been separated from God.

Sin does not separate us from God because we have always been in God and in a sense, part of God, but we have always been in God and we'll go back and be with God.

And since the first incarnation of Christ was creation, that's what Richard Rohr teaches.

So everybody is in Christ already.

We're already part of Christ, so we don't need salvation.

Sin doesn't separate us from God, etc.

Etc.

So Jesus did not die on the cross for sins.

This is all part of his heresy.

And that's why I've, you know, pointed out you cannot follow biblical Christianity and follow perennial wisdom because they're incompatible.

They're just completely incompatible.

But according to perennial wisdom, you could be a Christian.

Then you go into this mystical journey and you could still call yourself a Christian.

You can include Christ as part of this process, this journey.

Of course, it wouldn't be the biblical Jesus, but, you know, they think it's.

It's okay.

So you can hear this talk, but sometimes it's very subtle.

I mean, I was reading the foreword to a book, I can't remember the man's name.

I can't remember the book now.

It was a book on the Enneagram, and there's a big connection with Enneagram and the contemplative movement as well.

And that's a whole other story.

But that's.

The Enneagram, of course, is something I started worrying about years ago for folks.

Who may not be familiar with that, because I do know people that start getting into that and they think it's Christian because it's, it's taught within churches.

And so I help folks understand what that is and what it's kind of source of source thinking is.

Right.

The Enneagram, first of all, is not a personality test.

It never was.

It does not have Christian origins, like pretty much all of the over 100 Christian Enneagram books claim.

They either say it has Christian origins, it might have Christian origins, or the origins are so murky we're not sure.

But the origins are not murky at all.

They're crystal clear.

And they're in our book that I wrote with Don Vino and his wife Joy called Richard Warren the Enneagram Secret Where We Lay It all out, that came out in 2020.

And the Enneagram is a nine.

It's a geometric figure with nine points and each point has a number.

And that's supposed to be.

You're supposed to identify with one of those numbers and then, and then the Christian way of using it.

Then you're supposed to understand yourself through that number, understand your sin patterns, understand other people through their numbers and how you relate to, to them, etc.

So it becomes this personality tool.

But it's also used spiritually because they use it.

Supposedly it's to help you grow as a Christian and become closer to God.

All kinds of claims are made for it, but the actual origin of it is with George Gurdjieff, who was a kind of gnostic mystic in.

He was like a Russian Armenian.

And he lived in the early, the late 1800s, early 20th century.

He died around 1947, 1948.

He came up with the Enneagram as it is used today, but he used it as a spiritual tool to show the movement of the cosmos.

And he said the, the Enneagram contained all the information and secrets of the universe that if everyone understood the Enneagram, you wouldn't even have to have any books.

So he made a pretty big claim for the Enneagram.

But it's, you know, it's very typical of a lot of occult type tools where you have something like that.

They'll say this represents, you know, all this wisdom or this represents this truth or whatever.

And he used it to read all this meaning into.

And he used that with his followers.

And then eventually it went to.

Into the hands of Two other people.

And one of them used it as a tool to find the true self.

The.

And the true self was you.

You identify with one of the numbers.

Let's say you do.

You identify with four.

But then you're supposed to dismantle that because that's your false self.

And you have the true people pure inner essence beneath that.

And so you dismantle the false self to find the inner essence.

And then he taught Claudia Naranjo, who was a Chilean psychiatrist, who then took it more into the realm of using the numbers as types and identifying with a type.

But it was still New Age because he, he brought this, you know, to New Agers are the ones who took, took this teaching mainly.

And they said this was the way to discover your divine self.

So your false self is the personality covering up the divine self.

And he claimed to get his information about the nine types on the Enneagram from his.

He called them higher authorities.

They were his spirit guides.

So he claimed to get them from his spirit guide guides.

And there's a video where he says that.

He actually says it in a couple of videos.

And so that's, that's what the Enneagram is.

It has nothing to do with finding out your personality.

It has absolutely no Christian.

There's no evidence it did not exist back in the, the time of the Vagus Ponticus, which a lot of Christian Enneagram teachers say it did not exist.

As with the desert mother and fathers.

It's interesting how they're trying to connect it to the mysticism, though, because the Desert mothers and fathers are always used, you know, in this, these, these contemplative talks and contemplative material about, you know, well, this goes back to the desert mothers and fathers.

They did lectio divina, you know, they did contemplative prayer, you know, so it's a Christian tradition.

So they try.

So the Enneagram is, is tied to that too.

I mean, mean, supposedly.

But of course it did not exist before 1916.

So 100 and you know what, nine years ago, that's, that's how long it's been around.

So the Enneagram has just become kind.

And a lot of the Enneagram teachers are spiritual directors.

Now.

Spiritual director is another facet of the contemplative spirituality, which comes from the Roman Catholic Catholic Church and from the monasteries.

The monks had spiritual directors.

I think it's also in the Eastern Orthodox churches.

So this was something you never had.

When I became a Christian, there was, there was no spiritual directors in any of the churches that, you know, I knew of, now we have spiritual directors.

So a lot of these Enneagram teachers are spiritual directors.

There's a big overlap with this contemplative stuff and the Enneagram.

So it's really a complicated, kind of a complicated picture because there's so many different angles to it.

Yeah.

So Melissa, you've, you've been looking into if gathering and, and all the speakers there.

Have you seen some of this teaching working its way into what I think I'd be safe to say probably the largest women's ministry gathering around.

Yes.

If Equip or the.

If ministry produces these Bible studies called if Equip.

And one of them is on spiritual disciplines.

And they use Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Ruth Haley Barton.

They quote them and they use their teach, some of their teachings.

It's a short study.

It's, I think, I think it's like six week study and so more devotional type.

But they do include and quote, quote those and just their arguments from the beginning on, on claiming that spiritual disciplines are the way to become more intimate with God and take on Jesus.

Jesus's light yoke, which is a Dallas Willard teaching.

What's, what's the light yoke?

It's not so light.

I mean, I mean Christ spoke of, you know.

Yeah, he, he spoke of being heavy, being the law.

Let me correct.

It's not lay oak.

It's easy yoke.

An easy yoke is, is the term that Dallas Willard uses.

And his teaching is that if you, by taking on such disciplines as prayer, and they mean contemplative prayer, silence, solitude, meditation, which in this study they talk about reading the Bible meditation, but they quote Richard Foster and Richard Foster's meditation is not at all about Bible study or meditating on the word of God.

But the point is you take these on because they're all seen as a sort of means of grace to connecting with God and developing intimacy, but mostly to hear from God and then you.

That is supposed to sort of empower you to live.

It's the.

I'm not saying it perfectly, but it's almost like implying that you live exactly as Jesus lived.

And so one of the arguments I make in the video that I did regarding the disciplines was, well, Jesus and we talked with Marcia, talked, me and Marsha talked about this.

It's not an easy yoke.

It is more law, but not the law that we see in Scripture, not the Ten Commandments, it's just a whole nother law and a light form of asceticism.

But one of the things I found very funny is the argument that Jesus had to do spiritual disciplines, how much more do we.

So they used that as an argument.

But it's like, well, Jesus fulfilled the whole law.

He chose not to eat pig because it says not to eat pig.

So can't I get intimate with God by not eating pig?

Or like he had to be circumcised.

He was obeying that law.

Why are they.

They pick and choose whichever actions Jesus did to claim that it makes them connected with God.

But that's their own picking and choosing when he did so much more.

And it was all to fulfill the law for us.

Yeah, yeah.

The yoke that Jesus spoke about was the yoke of the law for the Old Testament that could not save.

That's why his burden was easy.

His burden was light, was because it is because what Christ did, it's possible.

Whereby the law.

It's impossible.

That's.

That's what the context was.

Jesus, I mean, you know this stuff, folks, if you're listening, maybe you're like me right now and you just, you want to just like bury your head in a pillow.

Yes.

If that's the case for you, may let me recommend that you go and get a my pillow.

And that way at least if you're, if you're getting yourself going to stick your head into a pillow, it will be a good my pillow, which is nice and comfortable, give you a great night of sleep after you stick your head into it and use the promo code sfe not only will you get a great discount, but you'll also let them know you heard about them here when you realized you needed to shove your head into a pillow after all of this nonsense that way, I mean, you don't want to just stick your head into any kind of pillow.

You want it to be a good pillow.

So go to mypillow.com use the promo code SFE to make sure that you let them know they.

You heard about them here.

There are some great products there.

I just, I was in Oklahoma and yes, the person who I shared a room with discovered that yes, I do actually travel with my MyPillow.

So.

But what do you do in the morning after my pillow?

You get a good night's sleep on your MyPillow.

Well, you go to Squirrelly Joe's and you get yourself a great cup of coffee because, well, Melissa needs to wake up in the morning.

I, I don't have that issue.

She, she needs the coffee to get herself wide awake and moving to get those kids ready for school.

And so.

So she needs to go to striving for eternity.org Coffee to get herself a nice cup of Joe.

And if you use the promo code SFE, you either get 20% off or a free bag of coffee.

I don't know which.

He changed it up, but you'll get one of them.

So go to striving fraternity.org coffee and when you do reorder the coffee, Melissa, make sure to continue going there so that you continue to let Squirrelly Joe know you found out about him through this podcast.

So, Marcia, you have never listened to this show.

I could.

I could tell because.

Yeah, no, I haven't.

I.

I haven't.

You were never expecting my transitions, which is always the best part when I have a new.

I thought that was really well done.

I.

Because I was.

I was thinking, yeah, after all this, I'm sure most people would like to put their head down on a pillow.

That sounds.

That sounds very good.

So, you know, that's.

I.

You know, I noticed this question.

What is contemplative prayer?

I wondered if I could.

Could I address that?

I was going to bring that one.

Up before you do.

I'm just gonna say I'm heading out.

I wanted to come in and just say hi to you, Marcia, because you're new.

You're my new best friend, and I don't.

I don't care about Andrew.

I just want to see you.

So much for dropping.

It's nice if I had feelings that.

Could have hurt, but I'm sorry, you.

Know, I'll make it up to you later.

Sometimes you go back and listen to the.

The beginning when, you know, Marcia had some nice things to say about you, but I wouldn't repeat them.

Of course she did.

We're best friends.

Yes, I did.

I gave you a big yes, I'm having you here.

So, yeah, go check out Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex.

It is one of the podcasts you can find@christianpodcastcommy.org the episode that just dropped, like yesterday was with the two of these ladies talking a whole lot of subjects.

So I encourage you to go check that out.

Yeah.

Oh, and I'll just do one other plugin.

I just dropped one this morning.

She mentioned John Mark Comer and she might get to Tyler Satin, which she just released a article on, which you guys should go and check out on Tyler Statin.

But they are Speaking at the IF gathering tomorrow.

I gather 25.

Oh, for the global church gathering.

Right.

Right.

Yes.

So this.

If you're Talking about it entering the church.

It's already there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's just that people don't recognize it.

Thanks, Melissa.

Yep.

See ya.

Bye.

Bye.

Don't blame me.

I love her nickname.

Melba Toast.

Yeah.

So I was going to put this one up because we.

We kind of talked about this a bit, but we didn't dig into detail.

Right.

And so what is completive prayer?

Yes.

So contemplative prayer.

Just so you know, I do have an article on my website, you know, called contemplative prayer.

Is it really prayer?

And this is why it's so deceptive.

It is not prayer as modeled in scripture and it is not true contemplation.

Contemplative prayer is a.

It's really more like Eastern meditation.

And the idea is that you have to set aside your mind, your.

Your thinking.

In fact, I think Basil Pennington said, if you want to pray to God, then you don't want to think about God.

So.

Yeah.

And the idea that's exactly opposite of what the Bible teaches.

Yes, yes, yes, it is.

That's what I mean.

This is just.

It's just.

It's just unbelievable.

These teachings are unreal.

And so contemplative prayer, there's different ways you can do it, but a lot of it involves, you know, breathing, closing your eyes, then you try not to really think.

And the idea is that you're going to go into a state of wordless prayer.

So wordless prayer.

Now you know that really, you know, I understand sometimes you don't have the words for what you want to say to the Lord.

If you're really troubled and you're dealing with something really difficult and you just don't even know how to express it, you know, to God.

You.

You don't even know maybe how to pray.

Well, you just say.

You say.

What I've said is, Lord, I don't.

I don't even know what it is.

I really need to pray.

I don't know how to pray about this situation.

I'm not sure, you know, what's going on.

And I don't even know what, what I should be praying for.

Why then I just tell the Lord that I don't know, you know, and I ask for his wisdom.

But this.

So that's not what they're talking about.

They're talking about, you know, this, this state of just silence.

They're very, very big on silence.

And going into the silence is considered the highest thing where you can really learn to feel God's love, be close to God.

They teach contemplative prayer is superior to normative prayer.

The normal prayers that you're doing now that you hear in your church now, those are all okay.

The contemplative teachers will say, those are fine.

But if you really want to go deeper, if you really want to be closer to God, if you want true intimacy with God, then you have to go into the silence.

You have to be still, and you have to be in solitude.

So they often put silence and solitude together.

And that's why those are two of the big disciplines, the discipline of silence and the discipline of solitude.

Nowhere taught in scripture at all.

What they usually do is they'll point to the verses that talk about Jesus going off to pray, where he.

It says he withdrew into the wilderness to pray.

You know, there's passages, I think, in Mark and Matthew and perhaps Luke that say that.

But when you look at the context, it's usually because he's been healing.

He's been with the crowds, he's there with his withdrawal, he's gone off with his disciples, and then he goes off alone.

And, you know, as I've said before, that's just.

That's just a natural thing to do.

If you want to go pray alone, then you.

And you're with a bunch of people, then you go off by yourself, you know, and that's what he did.

It doesn't indicate he was practicing some kind of special discipline or that he had to do that to be close to God.

That was just a normal, natural occurrence because of his situation and wanting to get away.

And he was living as man.

So he was tired, he felt fatigue.

And so there's nothing there that supports the fact that it's a discipline and that we need to do it.

But this comer and Tyler Stanton and Dallas Willard and Richard Foster will talk about this as though this is what you have to do.

This is just a huge thing.

So contemplative prayer.

If you read my article, it goes into more detail.

I give a lot of references to what these people have said for what it is.

And it is not really prayer.

Prayer, the prayer for a Christian is modeled in scripture.

That's how.

That's how do we know what prayer is?

Well, we look at the Bible and we see the way people prayed, and we see what Jesus said when his disciples said, you know, teach us to pray.

And then he.

He did, and he, you know, gave what we call the Lord's Prayer, which is sort of a template for prayer.

And you can see other prayers in different New Testament books.

When different apostles prayed.

And so we've got the model for prayer there.

We can see what prayer is and how to pray from Scripture.

And this is not what these people are teaching.

This is a mystical.

It's mysticism from monastic teachings.

And then some of the methods are the Eastern meditation methods.

The being still and closing your eyes and breathing a certain way comes from the Eastern spiritual practices.

So they'll, then they'll miscue scripture for all of these, like Psalm 46:10, which says, Be still and know that I am God.

That is the way it's translated in the King James and some other translations.

But, for example, the new American standard says cease driving.

And the idea there is that.

And if you read the whole psalm, which is not very long, you can see that God is basically telling everybody, remember who's in charge.

All of you are.

You know, you're, you're striving, you're.

You're striving against God.

You're trying to do things your way.

I'm the one in charge.

You need to remember that.

So it's kind of actually a, kind of a rebuke.

If you, if you, it's like a rebuke and a reminder from, from, from God.

If you read.

It has nothing to do with prayer or meditation and meditation.

Biblical meditation is meditation on the scriptures.

And contemplation is, is thinking about something and chewing over things.

It's not getting your mind into this, this kind of, this state where you're not thinking and where you're silent and you can't use words.

It's exactly the opposite.

And, you know, one of the things I've noticed in occult and New Age teachings, there's so many parallels with the, with the New Age in this contemplative movement.

I think that's why I, I've been so alarmed by it.

It's not New Age, but there's a lot of parallels with the New Age.

And one of them is the idea that, you know, words are barriers to truth and words can limit you.

So you want to go beyond words, words.

And that's, that's a very new age.

And even a concept in, in Buddhism, for example.

So, you know, that's, that's what we're seeing in these teachings.

So I hope I explained it to that person.

They can go to my website and look at that article.

Yeah, I mean, a listener says that's, that is terrible.

I feel closer to God now because of his word understanding, his saving grace, and how the gospel really is good news.

And this is.

You know, I know they talk about the whole idea of being silent and.

And emptying your mind and being alone.

But then they say, well, there's times where the.

The Spirit needs to pray for you when.

When you just can't do it on your own.

But that's actually not what we see in Scripture.

This is out of James 5, and I.

I don't like the way it's translated here.

It says, is anyone among you sick?

The.

The actual word there is weakened.

And so it could be a thickness.

But the idea here is, any of you among you weak?

Well, why would they be weak?

Well, if you know who James is writing to.

James is writing to people that were in Jerusalem where he was pastoring, and they fled because of persecution.

And I'm saying persecution.

I'm not like the persecution that you think you're suffering, you know, because someone called you a name.

Oh, they didn't give you a promotion because, you know, you're a Christian.

No, no, I'm talking a kind of persecution where they killed you.

Like the real kind of persecution.

Yet that kind.

That's what James was dealing with.

People who had to flee in a time where most people never traveled more than a mile from their home, they would be in one village.

It's not like where we here in America.

You go maybe a few miles and you're into another town.

No, they wouldn't travel to other towns.

And so to leave the Jerusalem and have to go very far out, some of them went, you know, like 100 miles away.

That would take months to get to.

Yeah.

And to do that and be now in an area where you don't know the.

You don't have family, friends.

You're starting.

It's not like you just go and get a new job, because in these towns, people had the job because they grew up there doing that job.

And so it's very hard to go and move like that and to do that.

They're suffering.

They're.

They're being persecuted, and they're questioning.

How do we know they're questioning?

Well, they're questioning their faith, because that's the whole purpose that James wrote the book was so we would know what genuine faith is.

What does he say?

Does he say, hey, are you.

You spiritually weak, just get alone with God?

No, he says, then he must call for the elders of the church, and they will pray, pray over him.

So God's idea of what from James is that we don't just go, oh, what was me?

Let me get alone.

Let Me not think.

Let me clear my mind.

Because what a lot of people teach is in the clearing of our minds, that's when God will speak to us.

And really, the, the voice you're hearing in your head is yourself.

And now you're being, you're being told, no, this is really God, and you're not going to question it.

And so now the very thoughts that even if they're sinful thoughts, you start to believe these are real.

I, I remember speaking to someone who told me who kind of followed this type of prayer and they emptied their mind, and according to them, God spoke to them and, and explained that they should divorce their spouse and marry someone else.

Oh, wow.

That is not God speaking.

That is your own sinful desires that you want to drape in spiritual language.

And this is what I see so much of this New age stuff talking about.

It's just, you know, and this is what I was preaching this past week in Colossians 2, 8.

And, and that sermon will be out on my Rap Report podcast sometime soon.

But it, this is, this is spirit.

A sinful behavior draped in spiritual language.

Yeah.

I can take a scripture verse here and a scripture verse there and, and take it out of context and make it sound like I'm using the Bible and make it sound like I'm using it rightly, when actually what people are doing is living out their, their, their sinful, wicked desires.

But they want it to sound good and sound like it.

God's behind it.

God's not behind that sort of stuff.

No, it's not.

And, and, and, and the way they, they, what they teach you to do.

I just saw a video with Ruth Haley Barton the other day.

I actually came across it accidentally.

I was looking at another video, and I noticed there was.

No, no, no, hold on.

That wasn't accidental.

That's called God's providence.

Yes.

And, and so.

Right.

So.

And she was saying, okay, you know, sit, sit, sit in a comfortable position, maybe put your hands on your knees, you know, take a few slow breaths, close your eyes.

You know, See, this is all from something I did in the New Age when I was doing the Hindu and Buddhist meditation.

And they always incorporate that.

And they talk about the silence.

They really, they really do emphasize that.

And some of them will say, and actually for quite a few of them say, if you're thinking, you know, if you're, if you're busy and you're thinking and you're doing stuff, then God can't get to you.

You won't hear God.

Yeah.

And I.

And it just makes me so mad because I'm like, what do you think God is going to have a problem if he wants to say something to you, that he's not going to be able to say it because you're busy or because you're worried about, you know, the shopping list or something?

I'm like, God is more than able to speak to who he wants.

Does he have any problem in Scripture reaching any.

Anybody he spoke to?

I mean, you know, some of them were, were not even very cooperative, but God.

God was able to get through to them quite clearly.

So it's this.

It's this very strange idea that, you know, where your mind has to be still and you have to be silent.

I just heard, in fact, I think I'm going to do a Facebook post on it.

Tyler Stanton giving a talk on prayer.

And he says, he talks about how Jesus passed by.

He goes to several scriptures where it talks about how Jesus was going to pass by.

Like when he was on the stormy sea, he was going to pass by, but then the disciples saw him and called to him.

And that's the passage where Peter walks on the water.

And then there's another passage where it says, well, Jesus was going on his way, like he wasn't going to stay there with him.

Also on the walk to the two disciples on the road to a mouse, it's in that story, too.

So he brings.

And that's actually that particular idea that you see in Scripture is something that's interesting that you could actually give a message on.

But he uses it to say that, see, look at all the opportunities you may have missed.

Because God's native language, he says, is a whisper.

And so if you are, you know, you're busy or you're thinking and you're not going to be still and quiet, he says, Jesus is just going to pass by.

And since somebody asked about mindfulness, I have four articles, articles on mindfulness on my website.

So if you go to ChristianAnswersNewAge.com and put Mindfulness in the search box, I think I did some, some interviews on mindfulness as well.

So those will all come up with the articles.

But it is a Buddhist form of meditation.

And I did it, okay, I did it for 12 years.

The idea of mindfulness is that it's a meditation.

And in Buddhism, they believe that all life is suffering.

And they do believe in.

In that you need to escape.

The way to escape suffering is to escape rebirth, which is kind of like reincarnation.

So you have, you know, you have these rebirths when you die, then there's going to be a rebirth, even though the actual self does not exist.

But that's.

So I'm getting ahead of myself.

So the idea is that to escape rebirth, you need to cultivate detachment.

Because the reason you are having rebirth is you are attached to this reality and you're attached to the self.

And so that's causing you to keep coming back.

So you have to realize that this reality is not actually real.

It's a construct.

Yourself is a construct.

And the way you do that.

One of the ways you do that is through mindfulness meditation.

And so you breathe.

There's a certain way to breathe.

And you let thoughts go by so that you don't.

You.

If a thought comes, you let it go by.

And then you, as you do that, what happens?

They don't say this, but I'm telling you this.

What happens is you get into an altered state state, and your mind is just open to anything.

And when you do this all the time, when you do this often or every day like I did, it changes your view of reality, which is what it's supposed to do.

It's supposed to deconstruct reality for you.

And that's why mindfulness has ended up with some people becoming psychotic, having dissociation, having nightmares, getting depressed.

Depressed.

It has affected people who do it.

They've come out with studies now, in fact, the last several years.

But it's become more well known that mindfulness can cause even somebody who's mentally healthy with no mental problems at all to have these.

These bad experiences.

But aside from that, it's a spiritual thing and it does affect your mind.

And it is not done for relaxation.

It's not.

The purpose is not to relax.

That's not why you do it.

The purpose is not to help you deal with any anxiety, although that is why it's taught.

And people will teach it and say it's for your anxiety, it's for your trauma, etc.

Etc.

So my advice is very, very strong.

Not to do mindfulness, not do it.

It messes with you.

It's not a normal state when your mind gets into that state.

It's not normal and it's not healthy.

So I, I'm.

My advice is do not do mindfulness.

You know, another question Melissa had asked, you were talking about back with the.

The different enneagrams and all.

What.

What are your thoughts about the five love languages?

Is that New age?

No, it's not New Age.

No, it's in fact the New age would probably laugh at it.

They would consider it really kind of stupid.

So it's not new age at all.

I don't know where he, the guy who wrote that, Gary something.

I can't remember his name, don't remember his last name.

Yeah, he, he, I think he's a psychologist, a Christian psychologist.

I, I, I've been asked about that before and there's several articles online that critique it, that say it's too general.

Some of them say that it's harmful because then if you, you know, you're, you're not seeing your spouse do any of these five love languages or something, you think maybe he doesn't love you?

You know, to me, it's an artificial category thing.

It's, it's, he came up with these categories.

They might be applicable, you know, in some cases, but I think that we, that, that people who are married can figure out their relationship without using the five love languages.

I do not think that's needed.

I think, you know, use scripture and the scripture guidance for marriage and, you know, that, that that's what you need.

So I would just, you know, I'm not trying to be real critical of it because I don't think I know enough about it and psychology is not my area, but I just don't think it's, it's necessary.

Yeah.

And, you know, I don't know, you know, like I said, I think that there's some technology issues.

You, you had trouble getting in through the normal link that I got in, which is weird.

Same with Melissa.

My co host, Aaron doesn't think there's a show tonight for that reason.

So maybe that's why this show is so light tonight.

I know a lot of people are, even the viewers, it's much less like, like half the viewers don't know what's going on.

But there was a comment on Facebook and it's a little bit more, I'll say, sharp in its view.

So I'll put it up here.

We could read it.

This is from Bold Apology of podcast.

He says, when will Marcia withdraw her comments on D.

Virtue's show about the late Michael Heisner, considering that she and those involved blatantly misrepresented what he stood for and, and represented, particularly when she slanderously said that he's a polytheist, which he is not.

So I guess with that it might take explaining a little bit of what in the world's he talking about?

Because I don't know.

Oh, okay.

You missed the whole Heiser storm.

Are you Are you.

Do you know who Michael Heiser is?

I know who he is.

I am.

I'm.

I.

I always get nervous with people that want to talk about the.

The unseen world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, right there, it's like you're talking about things that you can't.

You're just.

You're just speculating.

Yeah.

But when you make the speculation into things that.

And it's.

Look, it's.

It's fascinating to people.

I.

I'll admit that it's very fascinating.

It gets attention, and I get that.

But I just look at it and go, you're just.

You know, I'm not impressed with people that.

That do that.

Now, he might be a very good scholar in other areas, but in those areas, I just go, yeah.

It just seems like a lot of speculation that distracts from.

From court Christian teaching.

That's about all I know.

Okay.

Yes.

Well, I.

I did read his book the Unseen Realm, and I initially did some Facebook posts on the first 15 chapters of it.

And then I later finished the book and wrote an article which is on my website for anybody interested in that.

And then I did.

I did an interview with Doreen Virtue, and she did interviews with other people, and then she put them all together in one big video.

And then later she did a second video.

But it's that first video that probably got the most criticism from the Heizer fans.

And that's what they all say, that we misrepresented Heiser.

I don't think we misrepresented him.

I think they just don't agree with what we said.

They don't like the fact we criticize him because his fans are very, very ardent.

Ardent is a kind of an understatement.

But, you know, if we said anything that was factually wrong, I certainly.

I think I said.

I don't know if I said something factually wrong.

I may have.

But as far as the polytheism goes, yes, I.

This is a theological issue.

He did.

He did believe and he wrote, by the way, Michael Heiser did die, in case you don't know that, Andrew.

He died, I think, in early 2023, I think.

So 20 or 2022.

2023.

I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly when.

And he.

He wrote some other books as well.

But I also listened to his teaching where I feel he completely misused Revelation 12:1 through 3.

He actually says an astrological section, sign in the sky is what is talked about in the Psalms and what Paul was quoting in Romans.

I think Romans 10.

If I remember correctly, I have an article on that.

So I have.

Aside from my article on the unseen Realm, I have an article on that.

But as far as the polytheism goes, he, he taught that, that there really are other gods.

They are created, but they exist as gods and God put them in charge of the nations after the Tower of Babel.

And he says, of course he said he was not a polytheist because he redefined the term.

He redefined it so that polytheism means that you're worshiping other gods.

But actually the definition of polytheism is the belief there is more than one God.

Even if you think that God is uncreated and the other gods are created, it's still, you're still saying there's more than one God.

But it's a, it's really kind of a complicated issue.

But I, I wrote my article on that also.

Interestingly enough, John Mark Comer in his book God Has A Name.

Now his, his thing is the contemplative stuff and I've been writing about him in regards to, to that.

But when I read God Has A Name at the end of the book, he does talk about contemplative stuff, but he has a whole chapter on other gods.

He also believes there are other gods and he uses some of the same arguments as, as Heiser does.

I think that's been refuted by many people.

This is not, this is not a view the Church has held.

It is not a view I don't think is based on the Bible because the Bible.

In the Bible, God says no gods were formed before or after me.

And the, the gods are called false gods because they're not really gods.

You know, just like false teeth is not really teeth, it's false teeth.

So, you know, false gods are gods that are not really gods.

And there's six places in scripture which refer to the false gods as demons.

So when there is a power acting behind an idol or a false God, then that is a demon.

Yeah, creational monotheism is what, that's what John Mark Comer calls his view.

But you know, he has.

I.

In my article on John Mark Comer's book, God Has A Name, I point out some of the, the problems with his arguments.

And I do want to mention, as far as Heiser goes, just because a lot of people probably don't know this, there's a very recent book on the Unseen Realm called the Unseemly Realm by Thomas Howe, who teaches Hebrew and Greek and the Old Testament, is very familiar with the intertestamental period that Heiser wrote about the Books of Enoch, the whole thing.

And he wrote a book called the Unseemly Realm.

And then he came out with a second book called Reversing Heiser, which is based on Heiser's book called Reversing Herman.

And the whole idea of Reversing Herman is from the Book of Enoch about supposedly a pact made of the fallen angels on Mount Hermon and how the ang.

The, These, these watchers, I don't know if they're considered angels, but the watchers there then taught the occult arts to man and they taught the art of war to man.

Etc.

This, it's all, it's this mythical kind of, you know, Book of Enoch.

It's very, it's very mythical and it has a lot of heresy in it.

It's, it's definitely against scripture.

But Michael Heiser used the Book of Enoch, the ancient Near Eastern view, and he used that as a filter to interpret parts of scripture.

So it's really.

The theological issues are massive and I don't.

And, and of course, Heiser fans do not like any criticism at all.

They absolutely, they, they'll call you names.

I, I had to block a lot of people because of the verbal attacks and they weren't engaging in the topics.

They were just this kept telling me I misrepresented Heiser, but nobody's shown me how I've misrepresented.

Well, he says I misrepresented Heiser by calling him a polytheist.

But a lot of people would agree with me, including Tom Howe.

So I would suggest getting that book by Tom Howe, who, by the way, was my Old Testament professor at seminary.

I went to Southern Evangelical Seminary.

I got a master's in religion.

Thomas Howe taught Old Testament.

I took his Old Testament courses and his hermeneutics course.

And he has a book on hermeneutics too, called, I think, Objectivity and Biblical Interpretation.

Okay.

So it's a really, a whole other issue and I'm, I hopefully I've said a few things there.

I hope that's kind of straighten it out a little bit.

But, yeah, I haven't, I haven't changed my mind on.

I haven't read anything to change my mind on what I said about Heiser.

You know, it's interesting, but people will say all the time that, like, they challenge me and say that I'm not asking, answering a question when the reality is it's just.

They don't like the answer that I give.

Yeah.

And so there's a difference between not answering or not liking an answer.

There's a difference between saying someone's slanderous and just not liking what someone says about someone.

Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I, I can't speak to what you said because I, I don't know what it was.

Let's see, another question came up.

I'm just trying to see.

So, so someone is asking this.

We're getting some noise from, from you back there, but.

So it says when, when people follow a teacher with more dedication other than Jesus, that is the attitude that comes out.

I think, I think we call it idolatry.

Okay, so it wasn't really a question for you.

Just.

All right, so.

Yeah, so I, I know that it is a weird night tonight, folks.

No one seemed to be able to get in.

I had to send, I had to send people the direct link, which I never usually have to do.

And Aaron, Aaron Brewster was trying to get in, but it was sending them to last week's show, which is what it did for everybody.

Yeah, that's what it did to me too.

Yeah, it did that for you.

And yet I, I tested the site and it went right in.

So I don't, I don't quite know what was happening.

The, the chat was quite quiet tonight.

Usually you guys are.

There's a ton of people in chat.

It's very lively, there's lots of activity.

I don't know, I guess, you know, something weird was happening.

But.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting that I did a show a couple weeks ago.

This has never happened before.

My Internet kept cutting out about seven or eight times.

I had never had never done that before.

Never.

Yeah, we never.

I, I have, I've never had the mill to show that the rodecaster just kills, you know, just stops and you, you froze up.

So.

Yeah, it'll give me lots of editing to do afterwards.

You will close out and I'll let you just talk about anything you want to promote or, or mention.

Okay.

For the audience.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

You mean right now?

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Well, I mentioned those two books by Thomas Howe, so H o W e is his last name on the Heiser issue.

On my website, articles on mindfulness, articles.

I have an article on the eastern roots of meditation as it's used in the new age.

And I talk about meditation.

I have the contemplative prayer article and all the articles on the different people.

I have a two part article on Ruth Haley Barton.

She's another one who is.

She's kind of behind the scenes Because a lot of people may not really know who she is or know her name, but she's very influential.

She has something called the transforming center.

And she has pastors and church leaders go there and learn how to do these contemplative practices.

Practices.

She takes them on retreats and then they go back and take this to their churches.

And so that's one way it's getting into the church.

And it's also getting into the church through the seminaries.

Because these people who go to the seminary and do the spiritual formation thing, which is required, then if they're going to be a pastor, then they take it to their church.

I mean, somebody even told me this.

She said her pastor was introducing all this material because he learned it at seminary.

So, you know, if you've got.

At the seminaries, right away you've got the problem there because then it's going to go into the churches.

So that's, you know, that's another issue.

So I would just say explore my website also.

I'm very open to.

If you have questions about what we talked about tonight or anything to do with my ministry or with the new age, you can contact me through my website or I'm on Facebook.

You can message me on Facebook.

I have a personal page and I have a page for my ministry.

Yeah, that's my website, ChristianAnswersNewAge.com on Facebook.

If you just put Christian Answers for the New Age, which is the actual name of my ministry, in the search box, you'll get that page right away.

And I'm posting things there about all the topics I deal with.

So my latest article on Tyler Statin, for example, that Melissa mentioned, I posted that.

I posted a link that I was going to be on this program tonight there, and I'll post all my interviews there.

So you can, you can follow that page.

And I would recommend, though, coming to the page and checking because a lot of people are telling me they're not seen it in their feed.

So some people think I've been shadow banned.

I had to look that up because I didn't know what that was.

I know I am.

I.

I know I am.

It is kind of interesting.

As much feedback as I used to.

Yeah.

Kathy is saying that the link she uses to listen to my Rap Report podcast, she couldn't open on three devices.

So I wonder what's.

I wonder what's happening.

I thought all the social media was done with the shadow banding and censorship.

No, no, they're not, folks.

They just say that.

So that they can not be attacked.

You know, like, have to be, like, sued for, you know, violating the law.

But they're still doing it.

Nothing's changed.

Oh, somebody said, what's the name of your site again?

I assume they're asking me Christian Answers, New Age dot com.

That's the name of my website.

The name of my ministry is Christian Answers for the New Age.

And if you put that in Google it, it should come up right away.

So.

But if you, if you want to know the name of the actual website, it's christiananswersnewage.com so thank you for asking.

So I have a lot of articles also on books and movies.

New age books, a lot of movies.

I have stuff on all the Harry Potter books.

I have stuff on all the Twilight books.

I read all of those books.

You know, I.

Okay, so it's interesting.

I did read those.

I read those because someone, it, I guess started over a article in the Onion and the Onion is satire.

Right, Right.

And this woman in my church didn't realize that, and she was telling me, no, this is satanic.

This is teaching witchcraft.

I actually read the books.

And then when I was halfway through the series, there was a series of books, two, two.

Two volume series that came out about the Harry Potter, like, warning people of Harry Potter.

Now here's the interesting thing.

I was like, I concluded this guy didn't actually read Harry Potter because, yeah, he was saying, oh, it teaches.

It teaches the, the, the, like the.

I forget the professor because I don't remember the book.

But the one that was.

No, no, no, the one that was teaching that.

She, she always had a, a premonition about different students and, and she can't remember her name.

She was teaching them how to.

You read palm leaves and, you know, tea leaves and all this stuff.

And, and the irony is, like, this guy was writing about how it's teaching all this stuff, and I'm going.

If you actually read the book, you realize that like, the author mocks that, like none of the students believe.

Like, she's like, oh, you're gonna die.

Oh, I see a curse.

And it's like every year.

She was a divination teacher.

Yes, she does make fun of that, but she does have actual occult concepts throughout the books.

It's really, it's really about sorcery and alchemy and there are very real occult concepts of summoning of the Patronus was something I recognized from the New Age as connected to a spirit guide and also where you kind of conjure up an alter Self an alter alt A L T E R which comes actually from an esoteric Tibetan Buddhist teaching which is probably really from shamanism.

And I forgot, I can't remember what it was called.

Now you get, you get this, you conjure up this self that's not really real but is with you.

But also the patronus is also related to the spirit guide and then some other things that, that were done in there.

There actually was a real alchemist named Nicholas Flamel but to me that wasn't, you know, the, the really, you know that was kind of interesting.

But to me it was the occult concepts there that.

And so I, I very laboriously point them all out in my articles.

I have, I have, I, I very detailed.

When I, when I read the book I took copious notes.

I, I was very clear on you know, what wasn't occultic.

Some of it is just fantasy, some of it is occultic.

It's, you know, it's a mixture.

So I point that out too.

In fact I have an article called, you know, it's Harry Potter.

Is it, Is it fantasy or the occult or something?

I can't remember.

And so I talked about how fantasy is fantasy but fantasy can be mixed with occult concepts.

So anyway I, and I had a lot of people who actually younger, I guess they're young people who emailed me at the time asking me if there was a school that they could go to like Hogwarts.

I guess they, for some reason, I don't know, they didn't.

They noticed I had articles on Harry Potter but they didn't read them so they just, I don't know.

And so they said oh, do you know a school that you know is like Hogwarts where we can go and the Hermione despite the fact that that J.K.

rowling makes fun of the Divination teacher.

Hermione gives Harry Potter a book on numerology which they call arithmancy but it's numerology and he's delighted to get that book anyway, I could go on and on anyway.

So that's all on my Harry Potter.

Yeah, I, the thing, I guess the thing I could, I was critical of this book that I had read or two volume series I read was one he didn't really seem to understand but he was trying to make a distinction between Harry Potter being fantasy and Lord of the Rings or Chronicles Narnia like Lord of the Rings Chronicles Narnia were fine even though they had magic but his issue was just that Harry Potter had magic and I was like, you know, when I read it, here's the thing.

I remember reading a book finding the gospel in the lore, Lord of the Rings, which means if you have to write a.

A book about, like, I can read the Chronicles of Narnia and clearly the gospel is there in the very first book.

But if you have to write a book on finding the gospel in the Lord of the Rings, it's because it's not really evident.

It's not really there.

But when I looked at Harry Potter, you know, if I'm gonna.

If I wanted to make an argument for the Gospel, I could probably do it easier from Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings.

But Lord of the Rings wasn't meant to share.

It was just fantasy.

That's all it was.

Right.

There are, there's clear moral lines in Lord of the Rings, which I read.

And I read it because of Harry Potter and people were asking me about Lord of the Rings.

It's not my kind of.

It's not my genre, but I read it.

There are clear moral lines there, whereas in Harry Potter they're not that it's very amoral.

Harry Potter lies a lot.

He does deceives.

There's, there's all kinds of, of kind of immorality and amorality in, in Harry Potter and there's real occult concepts.

So.

And, and J.K.

rowling admitted that she researched the occult in an early interview.

And then later you couldn't find the interview and she didn't talk about it anymore.

I know she put a lot of mythology in there, but it was mixed in with the occult.

But I do.

I'm not one of those people that says, oh, J.K.

rowling is, you know, a witch or in the occult.

I was on a interview one time about Harry Potter and I could tell that they wanted me to say that.

And I wouldn't say it.

I was like, no.

I said, J.K.

rowling, I think, is a member of the Church of Scotland or something.

And, you know, I, I think that she doesn't understand the occult is actually real.

I think she thinks that.

Correct.

Who do it are just kind of imagining or making things up.

And she doesn't understand that there's a real, real spiritual dimension to it.

I mean, I was an astrologer for eight years.

I had spirit guides.

So I'm.

I am, you know, more than familiar with the fact that the occult has a really demonic foundation to it and that you can engage in, in it.

You know, you can engage with fallen angels through these spirit guides and you can be Given abilities, you know, where I knew things that there's no way I could know when I was doing an astrology reading for a client.

So I, you know, I know all that stuff exists.

I think maybe she doesn't realize it exists.

Well, I think this, and this is a great way to, to end.

Right.

We're talking about how it's how the new age sneaks into the church.

Well, you look at a J.K.

rowlings and for her it's just.

She's.

She's just researching for a book, putting it in because it makes it sound more authentic, whatever.

But she doesn't.

I don't think she really believes in it.

Yeah, but yet it's, you know, takes people that get into it because it is something where there's people like you're saying, oh, they're looking for a school like that when no such school exists.

They're, you know, they're looking for stuff like that.

Although maybe it does exist.

You know, Andrew from down under in Australia says the school Bethel School of.

Of Supernatural Ministry might be Hogwarts.

You know, Andrew, you might have a point there.

Maybe that's Hogwarts.

Yeah, it's a Christianized kind of.

It's a little different, I would say.

But.

Yeah, I know why you say.

I've actually heard people call it Hogwarts, so.

Oh, really?

Yeah, people have called it that.

Yeah.

Well, we should end with this comment from Kathy.

She says, thank you, Andrew.

Marcia, good show.

Appreciate your ministry.

Marcia and SFE also.

So we're glad we all put this on.

Even though it was a weird night tonight.

I don't, I.

For next week.

I don't have anything planned right now.

I will say that we are working on a debate to some.

Someone reached out to me and asked whether they could use this program to do a debate on covenant theology versus dispensationalism.

That will be coming up shortly.

And I will not be the.

I will be the moderator.

So I, I think the person that reached out to me knows my position and yet still reached out to me knowing that I would be a fair, unbiased moderator.

And so I am glad to.

That he felt I could do that.

So we, we are planning to have a debate on that.

I will say that I said a few weeks ago that there was a Jewish rabbi that reached out to me to debate me on whether Jesus is the Messiah.

It has been four weeks.

I have not heard back from him.

He has ghosted me.

So I'm assuming that's not gonna happen.

How unusual.

That someone online would challenge me and not show up.

I know for the regular listeners, you're so surprised, Marcia.

I don't seem that intimidating, do I?

Like, why is everyone scared of me to debate?

No, I, I don't think you're, you seem pretty, pretty laid back to me.

I, that would have been an interesting program to.

That would have been interesting.

Well, we did have, so we did have a Jewish rabbi who came in.

He had emailed the ministry and we dialogue back and forth, forth.

And he actually came in, I think he might even come in twice.

And, you know, he, he, he did reach out to me a few months ago just to let me know he's still out there.

And, you know, but, but the guy who was going that wanted to debate me as rabbi said he heard that program and he had, he could argue better than Ben's.

Was the guy's name Ben?

Rabbi Benson?

I think it was.

And so I guess he could do a better job, but we'll never know, folks, because he didn't show up.

Just saying, you know.

But if folks do want to see certain debates, if you got someone that you want to debate, we do sometimes do that here.

I think they're, they're helpful for people to see how we do apologetics.

I hope.

Think this, this episode was good.

Helpful for you to realize how the New Age works its way into the church, how, how deceptive it can be and, and how it is just throughout the culture so much that people don't recognize it because they, we just think that's just the way things are.

I mean, there's so many things we could have gotten into.

And I, I could trigger Marsha, but, you know, we could talk about yoga, we could talk about, you know, crystals, all this stuff.

It all has a New age background to it.

And if we don't, if we don't know that, then to us it just seems like it's, it's nothing more.

You know, some of you can go back and remember the episode we had with Doreen Virtue where I really changed my view from thinking that yoga is not a big deal, it's just good for stretching into realizing.

No, it's got a lot behind it that all the positions are, or teaching something and you can't just make it into stretching the way you can, like with martial arts, where you can remove it from the, you know, the, the aspect of the, the spiritual aspect of some of it.

And, and you and I talk about that privately.

We, I, I thought we'd spend a lot of time on that.

But once we got into Dallas, once I heard about Dallas Wilder, I'm like, oh, no, we should talk about this.

So completely different road.

Yeah.

Maybe we'll have to have you back out and talk about martial arts.

Well, I could talk about the chi.

That's right.

About martial arts.

And how.

Yeah.

The only two that I warn against are aikido and tai chi.

So.

And, and then you have to talk to.

You have to know how the teacher's teaching the other stuff.

So.

That's correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I.

So my background with karate is ishin roo, which is an Okinawan style.

And I have had two different instructors and very, very differently taught one.

There was none of the spirituality to it.

The other would do, as we talked about, where he would have the, the closing.

Closing your thoughts, opening your mind up, being silent.

And that was just.

So what would I do?

I just pray.

I just talk to Christ, you know, And I, and I, I was only with that instructor for, for about two years, so.

Yeah.

But, Marcia, I do want to thank you for coming on.

Well, thanks for having me.

I, I enjoy it.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

I, I, I don't know that I'm gonna be your new best friend like Melissa, but I can understand.

You know, I'm jealous.

But I, I hope this has been educational for you folks.

I hope you got something from it.

And let me just say, if you're.

You've come in here and you don't know Christ, maybe you just came in because you study New Age and this was shocking to you.

Well, let me just encourage you with this.

Every single one of us that is listening to me has broken God's law.

We lie, we steal, we covet.

And God will judge us as criminals in his sight.

Because of God's standard, every one of us will pay, have an eternal fine to pay, because God is infinitely holy.

And so because of that, I want to challenge you.

If you were to die tonight, and you do not know Christ, if you're one of the160,000 people that, that will die today, you will face God.

And he is an infinitely holy, infinitely just, and infinitely wrathful.

And therefore, you will suffer an eternity in a lake of fire, burning with brimstone, which is called the second death, I don't want that for you.

God is so holy, he's also just.

So he must punish sin.

But guess what?

He's also infinitely merciful and graceful.

And so what he did was He Himself took on flesh, became a man, died in our place, taking the full weight of the punishment of sin upon himself so that he could then set us free.

But what we do is we must turn from trusting ourselves as a good person, trusting in our good works, and turn and trust what Jesus Christ did on the cross as a payment for sin.

Only Jesus can save us.

Our works cannot save us.

Only Christ can save us.

So my encouragement to you, if you have, if this is a new thought to you, you need to turn to Christ and live.

Want to encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we will see you next week.

Have a good night, all.