SID: Steven, I know you had all sorts of experiences in the New Age and feelings. Tell me about the feeling you had when Jesus revealed Himself to you and maybe the difference between the two.
STEVEN: The most striking difference was that when I was in the presence of Jesus, I knew I had found the answer to the questions about who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? I was satisfied. I knew I had come into contact with the ultimate truth, the highest truth. There was no more searching. Now, it’s just a matter of growing in that truth.
STEVEN: I remember staring at my bookshelf at all these New Age books and I had peace. For the first time, I had real lasting peace that the New Age practices couldn’t give me because I knew the Spirit of truth Himself. Jesus, who is the truth, was now living in me, and so I knew that this was the highest truth you could possibly attain and reach—was the knowledge of Jesus Christ. It was interesting. When I was in His presence, I felt like I was being crushed like a diamond almost. The word in Hebrew for glory has a sense of, of weightiness to it, and I felt like there was this weightiness that was upon me.
SID: Wait, when it comes on me, sometimes if I’m standing, I have to almost bow down because there’s a weight upon me.
STEVEN: That’s right. It makes you want to bow down.
SID: Yeah.
STEVEN: That’s difference. Nothing I encountered in the New Age movement made me want to bow down and that’s because your spirit man knows when you’re in the presence of the living God.
SID: Tell me some of the New Age practices that have invaded the church, but even before that, you talk about Oprah as a pied piper of the New Age. Explain that.
STEVEN: Yeah, she is. I don’t think there’s anybody who has done more to promote New Age spirituality in the west than Oprah Winfrey, that’s a very strong claim, but from her programs like Super Soul Sunday, the books she promotes and advertises, I’m talking millions and millions, tens of millions of New Age books have been promoted and sold through her book club, through her programs. She’s really running the show in the west right now.
STEVEN: As far as New Age practices getting into the church, a part of that is accredited to just the fact that it’s so prevalent in our culture right now. It happens to leak in there by osmosis. So an example of something would be a mystical practice called contemplative prayer. There’s a difference between praying contemplatively and contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer is essentially where you pick some kind of mantra, like a word, and you repeat this word over in your head over and over and over again. There’s no vertical connection made between you and God. You’re just trying to say this word to shift your consciousness, to dissolve your personal sense of self, and attain what it’s called pure consciousness or unity consciousness, where you achieve unity with God.
STEVEN: Another example would be angel Ouija boards, where, “Hey, rather than contact Satan and demons, here’s a Ouija board, contact your guardian angel.”
SID: Is there a danger to a Christian doing these things?
STEVEN: It’s extremely dangerous because the Bible says that Satan could masquerade himself as an angel of light, so how do you know you’re not contacting Satan when you’re doing these things? If you don’t have the discernment to know in advance, you shouldn’t be going there. You don’t have the discernment to discern what spirit’s coming through from the other side.
STEVEN: Another example of the New Age Movement in the Church would be the practice of yoga, which is controversial, but just on the least, definitionally, [what] Hinduism in practice is. I would say go to a kinesiologist, go to a chiropractor, get some back stretches from a local personal trainer. Scientifically, they’ve been shown to be just as effective in alleviating back pain as yoga. Now, what’s scary, Sid, and what’s dangerous is a lot of these practices, they’re actually named after the gods of Hinduism. When you hold these postures, what it’s meant to do is invoke the character, the properties, and the essences of these certain gods.
SID: So, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
STEVEN: Right. The Bible says, “Flee from idolatry.”
SID: What is Christ consciousness?
STEVEN: Christ consciousness, it’s a staple New Age doctrine, which is this idea that man is intrinsically connected to God by nature and we’re just itself ignorant of it. So, the New Age teachers will tell us, “Not just Jesus was Christ-ed, you can be Christ-ed too.” What’s dangerous about this and scary about this is Jesus actually warns in the last days, people will come. He says, “Many people will come saying, ‘I am Christ,’ and deceive many.”
STEVEN: So, is He referring to the dozen or so cults [whose] followers have all dissolved with time, and have relatively small cult followings, or is He referring to the millions and millions and millions of New Age practitioners who literally believe “I am Christ” and will say “I am Christ.”
SID: Did you believe that?
STEVEN: Absolutely. I believe that was a state I was working toward. I believed I was God. I believed everyone was God.
SID: Isn’t it? What originally Satan told Eve, “You can be like God”?
STEVEN: Absolutely.
SID: That’s where it all goes back. There’s a counterfeit and there’s the authentic. Why would anyone want the cheap counterfeit when they could have the authentic? I want to say a prayer with you and I’m promising you if you say this prayer and mean it to the best of your ability, you can do that out loud, that God is not a man that He should lie, and changes will occur in your life that will be monumental for eternity. Repeat this prayer after me.
SID: Dear God…
Audience: Dear God…
SID: …I’m a sinner…
Audience: …I’m a sinner…
SID: …against you.
Audience: …against you.
SID: And you alone have I sinned.
Audience: And you alone have I sinned.
SID: …and I’m so sorry.
Audience: …and I’m so sorry.
SID: I believe…
Audience: I believe…
SID: …the blood of Jesus…
Audience: …the blood of Jesus…
SID: …makes me clean.
Audience: …makes me clean.
SID: And now that I’m clean…
Audience: And now that I’m clean…
SID: Jesus, come inside of me.
Audience: Jesus, come inside of me.
SID: I make you my Lord.
Audience: I make you my Lord.
SID: I’m so happy to know you.
Audience: I’m so happy to know you.
SID: Amen.
Audience: Amen.