NEW BOOKLET: Oneness vs. Separation Heresy “Now” in the Church

NEW BOOKLET:  Oneness vs. Separation Heresy—Now in the Church by Warren B. Smith is our newest Lighthouse Trails Booklet. The Booklet is 14 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are as much as 50% off retail. Our Booklets are designed to give away to others or for your own personal use. Below is the content of the booklet. To order copies of Oneness vs. Separation Heresy—Now in the Church, click here.

As soon as you—all who know your potentials—can tell this vision on television, you will have begun your real work in the world.1—The False New Age “Christ”

On the March 12, 2017 episode 5 of Trinity Broadcast Network’s long running Restoring The Shack television series, Shack author Wm. Paul Young stated that it is a “lie” to believe that God is “separate” from His creation.2 Invoking a vision that was reputedly given by “God” to friend and fellow author C. Baxter Kruger, Young described this alleged lie as the “lie of separation.” But as a former New Ager, I recognized what Young was calling the “lie of separation” was in and of itself a lie. What he was teaching had nothing to do with biblical Christianity and everything to do with the deceptive anti-christ teachings of the New Age/New Spirituality/New Worldview. What Young was attempting to convey to countless TBN viewers was the same thing I had been taught when I was a part of the New Age movement—that there is “no separation” between God and creation because God is “in” everyone and everything. But God is not “in” everyone and everything.3

As I came out of the New Age and saw through this pervasive God-“in”-everything deception, I came to understand how our Spiritual Adversary had turned the Bible’s 2 Corinthians 6:17 instruction to “Be ye separate” into a lie that turns the whole notion of biblical separation upside down. Now, years later, taking the word “separation” and using it in a wholly unscriptural context, false teachers like Wm. Paul Young are bringing this New Age “lie of separation” into the church.

The God “in” Everything Heresy
This heretical teaching that God is “in” everything—and therefore not separate from creation—is the foundational lynchpin doctrine of the New Age/New Spirituality/New World Religion.4 Incredibly, this heretical teaching is taught in Wm. Paul Young’s best-selling novel, The Shack. Young’s cleverly contrived “Jesus” falsely teaches that God is “in” everything when he states, “God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things.”5 Most people reading The Shack don’t see that this statement is actually an unbiblical New Age lie. Yet Young puts this false teaching right in the mouth of his “Jesus.” Thus, by virtue of this occult utterance alone, it becomes immediately evident that Young’s “Jesus” is a false Jesus—“another Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:4)—who is not the real Jesus Christ. Shack readers should also note that Young never identifies his “Jesus” as Jesus Christ. In fact, the word “Christ” cannot be found anywhere—not even once—in Young’s whole Shack story.6 The family cat is named Judas7, but Young’s Jesus is never named Christ. Go figure.

The New Age Doctrine of Oneness
Because God was said to be “in” everyone and everything, our New Age teachers taught us that we were all “One” and that our “Oneness” with God—our union with God—connected us to everyone and everything. We were told that because of this “Oneness” connectivity, there was—therefore—no “separation” between God and creation. And so it was this concept of “Oneness” that singularly expressed our New Age belief in the “universal” divinity of all things. It seemed very logical. We were all One because we were all connected—in union with God—because God was “in” everyone and everything. We were all universalists because we honestly believed that a universal acceptance of this universal God-“in”-everything teaching would bring a universal peace.

Completely deceived by this New Age lie, we sensed that humanity was beginning to “awaken” and “shift” into accepting this “emerging” concept of universal Oneness. We believed if this God-“in”-everything New Age/New Spirituality was passionately, wholeheartedly, and universally embraced by all the world’s religions, it could save the world. But contrarily, those who refused to subscribe to this New Worldview of universal “Oneness” would majorly hinder—and ultimately prevent—the attainment of this otherwise realizable goal of what was being described by our New Age teachers as “God’s Dream” for world peace. The New Age “God” and “Christ”—channeling through their designated New Age leaders—specifically warned that the only people who stood in the way of world peace were those who were stuck in their own delusional dreams of “separation”—who had been deceived into believing this “lie of separation.” But what New Age leaders were teaching about separation was in and by itself a delusion and a lie.

Doctrine of Separation
This deceptive New Age “lie of separation” was cunningly devised by the father of lies. It’s purpose is to isolate, denigrate, and ultimately persecute those who do not believe that God is “in” everyone and everything. To not believe that God is “in” everyone and everything is to not believe that everything is “connected” and “divine” and “One.” To not believe that everything is “connected” and “divine” and “One” is to not believe in “Oneness.” To not believe in “Oneness” is to believe in “the lie of separation.” It is all a very seductive and devilish spiritual trap. And the false New Age “Christ” warns that the consequences for those who ultimately refuse to believe that God is “in” everyone and everything will be extremely severe.

Oneness vs. Separation
Thus, from a New Age perspective, “Oneness vs. Separation” juxtaposes two prevailing but opposing worldviews against each other. “Oneness,” being hailed as the “loving” and spiritually correct worldview, will produce global unity, world peace, and a “happy” humanity. Contrarily, “Separation” is described as a “hateful” and spiritually divisive worldview that prevents global unity, prevents world peace, and produces a “fearful” and unhappy humanity. As seen in the quotes below, the false New Age “Christ” makes his strategic case for “Oneness” while simultaneously threatening those who subscribe to what he calls the “sin” and “hatred” of “separation.” This false Christ states:

The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There is no separation of God and His creation.8

The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power.9

Let us together show the world: that the need for war is past; that the instinct of man is to live and to love; that hatred is begotten of separation.10

I shall drive from this Earth forever the curse of hatred, the sin of separation.11

Separation Is Satan?
In the New Age, we didn’t believe in an actual Devil—a real Satan. The only thing that was said to be “Satan” was to not believe in the divine “Oneness” of all creation. The only “Satan” were those who had been deluded into believing the “lie of separation”—the belief that God was not “in” everyone and everything. Thus, the New Age “God” and “Christ” equate Satan with anyone who refuses to submit to their anti-christ Doctrine of Oneness. Consequently, biblical Christians become a specific and immediate target as they are conveniently and diabolically labeled as being under the “illusion” of a lie—the “lie of separation.” The New Age “God” and “Christ” boldly and blasphemously state:

The mind can make the belief of separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the “devil.”12

When at last you see that there is no separation in God’s World—that is, nothing which is not God—then, at last, will you let go of this invention of man which you have called Satan.13

Your triumph over Satan, that is, over the illusion of separation, will be a victory for the universal community.14

Thankfully, I was ultimately shown that while God is near and ever-present, He is not “in” everyone and everything. And while He is definitely separate from His creation, His Holy Spirit is sent to dwell within those who repent of their sins and confess the true Jesus Christ. However, those who accept the true Jesus Christ are not divine or in any way God or God Himself. Thus, I came to realize that this heretical God-“in”-everything Doctrine of Oneness was the real lie. But most Christians watching Wm. Paul Young on the fifth episode of TBN’s Restoring The Shack television series had no idea that the “lie of separation” he introduced on that program was devised by a deceptive false Christ and was totally fraught with New Age meaning.

“Dam” Vision/Damnable Heresy
As I watched the March 12th, 2017 fifth episode of Restoring The Shack on TBN, Wm. Paul Young used the same spiritual terminology that parallels—and directly dovetails—with the heretical New Age Doctrine of Separation. Young tried to make his case for the “lie of separation” by recounting what friend and fellow author C. Baxter Kruger said he was shown in a vision from the “Lord.” Young stated:

And Baxter had a visual, and he was looking at this massive mountain range, and he could see a beaver dam that was big enough to block the entire Mississippi—massive—and he asked the Lord, “What is that?”

And he heard the response inside his heart, “That is the lies of pastors and theologians and the institutional church system that has been damming up the rivers of living water in the western world.”

And Baxter was looking at the very bottom where these huge monster redwoods—and there was one at the center of the bottom, and Baxter said, “What is that?”

And he heard, “That Baxter is the lie of separation. The western world has convinced itself that it has separated itself from God. There has never been separation. That is absolutely a myth. You take that one out, and the whole beaver dam will start to crumble.” Because for a lot of us, the gospel was about separation. That was the assumption.15

Unbelievable! Young was now telling countless Christian viewers that Kruger’s vision came directly from the Lord—that it was God Himself who told Kruger it is the “lie of separation” that has undermined the true Gospel and is “damming up the rivers of living water in the western world.” Yet this was exactly what we had been taught by the New Age “God” and “Christ.” Same terminology. Same concept. Same deception.

True to the scriptural warning, Wm. Paul Young and C. Baxter Kruger were “deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13) as they presented Kruger’s alleged revelation from the Lord. But what Kruger saw and heard in his vision and that Wm. Paul Young passed on to TBN viewers was not from our one true Lord. Absolutely no way. Having come out of the New Age movement with all of its spiritual deception, I learned the hard way that voices purporting to be from God can be “seducing spirits” bringing “doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1)—like the heretical doctrines of “Oneness” and “Separation.” Today—a little over a year later—I am still astounded by what Young did that day on TBN. And I have yet to hear anyone speak or write about what happened. Did anyone even notice? Did anyone care?

There is a Deceiver, and the Bible warns us to “believe not every spirit but to try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The voice C. Baxter Kruger heard was teaching the same thing that the false New Age Christ taught us in the New Age about separation. Kruger’s alleged vision from “the Lord”—this purported “lie of separation”—was setting the church up for the real lie—the heretical lie of Oneness vs. Separation. And this is exactly what the apostle Peter is describing when he warns about “cunningly devised fables” like The Shack (2 Peter 1:16) and “damnable heresies” (2 Peter 2:1) like the “lie of separation” that would be brought in by “false teachers among you.” What irony that it is Kruger’s “dam” vision that Young used to bring in this “damnable” heresy regarding separation.

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies. (2 Peter 2:1)

Same Separation Language
It is important to note the obvious similarities between the “lie of separation” concept Young and Kruger attribute to “the Lord” and the New Age “lie of separation” concept. The following are several examples of what the New Age “God” and “Christ” have previously stated about separation:

A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct.16

The only solution is the Ultimate Truth: nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else.17

This is your assignment. This is your work. You are to destroy the illusion of separation.18

Separation and Sickness
The New Age “Jesus” states that sickness results from believing you are “separate” from God. Healing—according to this New Age “Jesus”—comes from recognizing and rejecting the “lie of separation” and believing in the truth of “Oneness” instead:

A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick.19

Sadly, ironically, and tragically, Wm. Paul Young’s Shack therapy for what he describes as his and the world’s “Great Sadness” parallels this New Age healing proposed by the channeled teachings of the New Age “God” and “Christ.” Young and Kruger—like their New Age counterparts—would have the church “awaken” from the “lie of separation” and “shift” into seeing that God is at “One” and in “union” with everyone and everything. But their Shack therapy is a heretical anti-christ therapy that is not from God.

C. Baxter Kruger
For those not familiar with C. Baxter Kruger, he is a self-described Mississippi theologian who is the Director of Perichoresis Ministries and the author of nine books that include The Shack Revisited: There is More Going On Here Than You Ever Dared to Dream. A number of his many joint speaking appearances with Wm. Paul Young are easily found on the Internet. In his introduction to The Shack Revisited, Young writes that Kruger’s book will help the reader to better understand the “perspectives and theology that frame The Shack.”20 While Kruger’s account of the beaver dam vision and the “lie of separation” don’t appear in The Shack Revisited, they do show up in Kruger”s 2016 book Patmos.

In Patmos, Aidan, “a burned-out, suicidal theologian” from Mississippi, time travels to the first century and lands in a cave with the apostle John. Kruger conveniently puts his own words and his own theology in John’s mouth—much like Young did with “Papa,” “Jesus,” and “Sarayu” in The Shack. By the end of his novel, Kruger transforms the apostle John into an apostate John—most especially when it comes to a conversation Aidan and John have regarding separation. After Aidan tells John how he had to “escape the twin clutches of fundamentalism and modernism,”21 Kruger’s John tells him, “There is only one battle”—“Union or separation.”22 He tells Aidan that the world’s problems all revolve around one crucial matter—“Ourselves and our ideas about separation from God.”23 Kruger’s apostle John then contrasts the Oneness that comes from believing that Jesus is “in” everyone with the “lie of separation.” Kruger’s John gives the time traveling Aidan the following New Age message:

[The] lie of separation from God is the chief of all lies. 24

Dear brother, either Jesus is in us or we are separated from him.25

At one point, Aidan asks John, “This mess, this historical quagmire of religions, wars, abuses, lust, and fear, all grows out of a single untruth?”

John answers Aidan, “Indeed my son. . . .The lie that we are separated from Jesus and his Father.”

Aidan responds, “So in your gospel and letters, you’re trying to help us see through the lie of separation.”26

In another exchange, John tells Aidan, “The assumption of separation is the great darkness.”27 Never referring to Satan as Satan, but only as “Ophis,” Kruger’s “John” makes it look like the “lie of separation” is at the heart of Satan’s scheme to deceive the world:

This is Ophis’s chief trick—blind us to how close the Lord is, closer than breath: we’re in him, and he’s in us. Ophis deceives the nations by one lie—separation. 28

Talks Like New Age
Thus Kruger—by putting his own words in the apostle John’s mouth—has John teaching what the New Age has been teaching for decades—that there is no separation between God and creation because God is “in” everyone and everything. But what Kruger is teaching is not true and not from God. He and Wm. Paul Young are not exposing the deception—they have become part of it. The real lie that is in the process of deceiving the world and deceiving the church is “Oneness”—the heretical teaching that God is “in” everyone and everything. And this just happens to be what The Shack’s “Jesus” tells Shack readers when he authoritatively states that “God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things.”

The parallels between what the New Age is saying about Oneness and Separation and what Kruger and Young are saying should be deeply disturbing to anyone who loves the truth. And while Young and Kruger would probably deny that man is God and that what they are teaching is New Age, it is a simple matter of semantics. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and a “God” who “dwells in, around, and through all things”29 is still the false unbiblical New Age “God” of universal “Oneness.”

The Selection Process
The upshot of all this upside-down twisted teaching is that one day people may very well live or die based on what they believe regarding the battle between “Oneness” and “Separation.” The New Age Christ threatens that there will be no place in the “New Jerusalem” for those who are into “separation”—those who know that God is “separate” from creation because God is not “in” everyone and everything. In my 2002 book Reinventing Jesus Christ: The New Gospel (republished in 2011 as False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care?*), I described how this false New Age Christ warns that those who refuse to subscribe to his gospel of “Oneness” will be handed over to his “selection process”: He states:

Dearly beloved, I approached the crucifixion far more easily than I approach the selection. The crucifixion was done unto my body. The selection will be done unto yours.30

Cynics, disbelievers, those who fear and cannot love: know that the mercy of God almighty is with you now. The second death, for you, is a purification, an erasing of the memory of fear, through the shock of a fire.31

[T]he fundamental regression is self-centeredness, or the illusion that you are separate from God. I “make war” on self-centeredness.32

At the co-creative stage of evolution, one self-centered soul is like a lethal cancer cell in a body: deadly to itself and to the whole.33

The surgeon dare leave no cancer in the body when he closes up the wound after a delicate operation. We dare leave no self-centeredness on Earth after the selection process.34

The crime of separation, of division, of lawlessness must go from the world. All that hinders the manifestation of man’s divinity must be driven from our planet. My Law will take the place of separation.35

I shall drive from this Earth forever the curse of hatred, the sin of separation.36

Thus, “separation” becomes a pejorative and pernicious label to denigrate and persecute anyone who refuses to subscribe to the Doctrine of Oneness—God “in” everyone and everything. The huge sign of the times is that what was being pushed by New Age leaders in the world is now being pushed by men like Young and Kruger in the church.

Contrary to what most Christians believe, the New Age did not disappear. It is now charging full steam ahead into the church through books and movies like The Shack and into people’s living rooms through television programs like Restoring the Shack. In the meantime, the Bible warns us to “be not deceived” by men who come in the name of Christ but who are “deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13), who in the name of Christ are actually opposing Christ.

The First commandment states we are to have no other gods before us. But the God of “Oneness”—this God who is “in” everyone and everything—is another god, a completely different god, a false God. No matter how much the church may want to deny it, there is a false Christ coming, and he is already preparing the way for his ultimate appearance. The Shack is much more than a “bad” book—it is the breath of Antichrist as he descends on a church that is fast asleep.

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. (Ephesians 5:11-13)

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

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Endnotes
1. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium (Novato, California: Nataraj Publishing, 1995), p. 74.
2. Restoring the Shack television series, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), episodes that were originally broadcast in 2017. Originally at https://www.tbn.org/programs/restoring-shack, but TBN removed the archive links and now sells it in DVD format.
3. Warren B. Smith, Be Still and Know that You are not God: God is Not in Everyone and Everything (Eureka, MT: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2015. Order online at www.lighthousetrails.com or visit https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=17572 to read online. This booklet provides a history and scriptural refutation of the false New Age teaching that God is in everything).
4. Neale Donald Walsch, Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (New York: NY: Atria Books, 2004), pp. 31-32.
5. William P. Young, The Shack (Los Angeles, CA: Windblown Media, 2007), p. 112.
6. Warren B. Smith, “The Christless Shack” (Article posted at warrenbsmith.com).
7. William P. Young, The Shack, op. cit. p. 231. Warren B, Smith, “A Cat Named Judas” article posted at warrenbsmith.com.
8. A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume [Text, Workbook for Students, Manual for Teachers] (Glen Ellen, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992), p. 147 (Text).
9. Ibid., p. 125 (Text).
10. Messages From Maitreya the Christ: 140 Messages (Los Angeles, CA: Share International, 2001), p. 108.
11. Ibid., p. 104.
12. A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume, op. cit., p. 50 (Text).
13. Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: Book 3 (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 1998), p. 56.
14. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation, op. cit. p. 193.
15. Restoring the Shack television series, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), episode 5, March 12, 2017. Beaver dam discourse starts around the 19 minute mark. Transcribed by author.
16. A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume, op. cit., p. 14 (Text).
17. Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: Book 2 (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), p. 173.
18. Neale Donald Walsch, Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999), p. 21.
19. A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume, op. cit., p. 56 (Manual).
20. C. Baxter Kruger, The Shack Revisited: There is More Going On Here Than You Ever Dared to Dream (New York, NY: Faith Words, 2012), p. ix.
21. C. Baxter Kruger, Patmos, Three Days, Two Men, One Extraordinary Conversation (Jackson, MS: Perichoresis Press, 2016), p. 90.
22. Ibid., p. 91.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 93.
25. Ibid., p. 92.
26. Ibid., p. 93.
27. Ibid., p. 91.
28. Ibid., pp. 91-92.
29. William P. Young, The Shack, op. cit., p. 112.
30. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation, op. cit., p. 197.
31. Ibid., p. 267.
32. Ibid., p. 233.
33. Ibid., p. 255.
34.Ibid., p. 240.
35. Messages From Maitreya the Christ, op. cit., p. 248.
36. Ibid., p. 104.

To order copies of Oneness vs. Separation Heresy—Now in the Church, click here.

*False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care? is available through Lighthouse Trails and most major book outlets.

Warren B. Smith (B.A. University of Pennsylvania; M.S.W. Tulane University)—A veteran who worked at the White House Communications Agency and later became a community social worker, serving as a program coordinator for people with special needs, directing several homeless programs, and working as a Hospice social worker in New Orleans and on the California coast. After leaving the New Age movement and becoming a Christian, he began writing extensively on the subject of spiritual deception. He has written six books and numerous booklets and has spoken on radio, television, and at seminars and conferences for the last twenty-five years. For more information, visit www.warrenbsmith.com.