by Understand the Times with Roger Oakland
Time has a way of bringing about change. Gradual indoctrination takes place over time and eventually brings about a significant shift. Unfortunately, it has happened to Christianity too. For those of us who have lived on this planet for a half a century or more, the changes we’ve experienced are phenomenal. Yet we wonder how our world could have changed so much without many noticing.
I became a Christian in the late ’70s. For me, it was like a light coming on in a dark room. I could see reality for the first time. As an unbeliever, I had been locked into a world of materialism, evolutionism, and secularism. When the grace of God drew me to the Word of God, I experienced an awakening. From the moment I was converted, I was able to see God’s plan to save mankind in contrast to Satan’s plan to deceive the world.
In the early ’80s, I became aware of a major shift in thinking that was sweeping the Western world. Religious pagan practices of the past, once relegated to a world of darkness, were now being embraced as the ways and means of ushering in an age of enlightenment. Instead of physics, it was metaphysics. Rather than believing in God, people were following men who said they were gods. Instead of worshipping the one true God who created everything, they were worshipping everything the Creator had made. All was God, and even man could become god. Every method and therapy imaginable imported from Hinduism, Buddhism and every form of Eastern mysticism suddenly was in vogue. The age of enlightenment had arrived, we were told.
So now that we are into the third millennium, it is interesting to look back. What happened, how did it happen, and what might lie ahead? These are questions that Scripture can answer. Reading through the Old Testament, a pattern emerges. In short, when human beings turn away from God, they will worship anything and everything as God, even themselves. Satan has a master plan to lead man away from God.
There are many verses that can help us understand why Eastern mysticism is gaining a stronghold worldwide. Pay attention to God’s warning to Israel through the prophet Isaiah:
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. (Isaiah 2:5-6)
The Bible explains how God’s chosen people were seduced into darkness by embracing doctrines of demons from the “east” in the past.
In the early ’80s, it became apparent to me that Eastern religion was being widely promoted in the West as something new. While New Agers were enthusiastically advocating yoga, meditation, crystals, spirit guides, and chanting mantras as the ways and means to achieve global consciousness and enlightenment, professing Christians that I knew could see Satan’s strategy. No Bible-believing Christian would ever fall for such deception!
At least that was the way it was twenty-five years ago. Today it is becoming increasingly common to hear about churches promoting Christian yoga or Christian leaders suggesting the best way to enhance one’s prayer life is by getting in tune with God through repeating a mantra. What was once described as New Age and occultic is acceptable now in some Christian circles.
What has happened? Has God changed His Word, or has the Christian departed from it? Or is it possible that Satan has duped Christians and lulled them to sleep? Anyone who cares to do the research will find that yoga and its connection to Eastern religion remains the same. Linking oneself with the universal energy is still its goal. A Christian can believe that yoga is for health and well being if he or she wants, but the facts have not changed.
The amazing thing to me is how quickly Christianity has changed in such a short period of time. Why has this happened? Does it have something to do with the undermining of the Word of God? Christians seem to have joined hands with the New Age, and we now have a New Age Christianity the Bible has always warned us about.
Straying away from the God of Scripture to follow other gods is an abomination unto the Lord, and it will be judged. There is not one verse in the Bible that supports a New Age Christianity. (from Faith Undone, pp. 92-94)
