“The Bible talks about a false Jesus and a false Gospel. Jesus Himself speaks of this in Matthew 24:4-5 and Paul speaks of this in the beginning of his second letter to the Corinthians and warns of a ‘false gospel’ in his letter to the Galatian people. Which Jesus do you follow?” – Melissa Dougherty

Had you asked me ten years ago if I’d ever been taken in by New Age teaching, I would have responded with a resounding, “No!” But now I’m not so sure. It is interesting to look back and see the journey I’ve been on, in the past 13 years — especially 2009-2014. Let me share a little of my story, and I think you’ll agree with me when I say I was duped.

MENTORING FOR FREE

This was a program for network marketers, with an emphasis on personal development. We read a chapter from Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, and wrote a “lesson plan” to share with everyone else on the weekly “mental cleanse” call. Common themes were “thoughts become things”; positive and negative emotions; The Universe; we’re all connected; positive self-talk. I did learn some good things there, but somehow, the mind and intellect — thinking — became the enemy.

MASTER KEY SYSTEM

This was another personal development program based on principles in the book by the same name, by Charles Haanel. Empty your mind; vision boards; manifesting; positive self-talk; Og Mandino. It was even worse than the MFF mental cleanse. Empty your mind completely for so many minutes a day?? Not only is that impossible — it is a highly dangerous spiritual practice. I wanted so badly to be in the MKS program, but once there, the conflicts and resistance I’d felt in the mental cleanse were magnified ten-fold. Nor did I learn the first time through, but signed on for the course a second time. I thought I could muscle my way through the conflicts and come through a winner. BUT NOPE.

DR. JIM RICHARDS

He is a self-proclaimed (?) pastor of a “cyberchurch”. “God is a heart God”; intellect is bad, and dangerous; new knowledge recently discovered (i.e. Gnosticism!). I loved his book, Moving Your Invisible Boundaries. I thought he was the balanced, Christian version of MFF/MKS, teaching true Christian thinking. From the outset there was something I didn’t like about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was only after listening to him for some months that I began to see he was just more of the same, under a thin veneer of Christianity.

I did not know this then, but all of the above were New Age, or New Thought. They had just enough truth in them to resonate with me, but there was so much in them that gave me pause as I sought the right spiritual gymnastic moves to make them “acceptable” in my thinking. I could not do that at all with certain elements in the Master Key System.

THEOPHOSTIC PRAYER MINISTRY

Something else that struck me as wrong during those years is the theophostic prayer ministry of a fellow Bible college grad. She and I were students at Prairie together, though we did not know one another well. But she came highly recommended as a counsellor by another friend from Prairie who had never given me cause to doubt her. Because this counsellor was recommended by her, and because the context was my desire to “experience God”, I contacted her. We talked a couple times, but it made me very uncomfortable to sit there in silence, “waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak directly to me”. I believe the counsellor has the purest of motives, but theophostic prayer sounds a lot like contemplative prayer, or lectio divina, which I know are ’way off base.

Anyway, I have long since left all of those things behind, and desire only to trust in the Lord as He is revealed in His Word. I knew something wasn’t right about each, back then, but could not put my finger on what. Now I know. It’s no longer trickling in, shrouded and disguised. It has thoroughly invaded the Church at large, in a blatant, in-your-face way. In plain sight. It would still be easy enough to be drawn down the wrong path, because my heart is still wicked and entwined with sinful desires. But Christ is my Saviour and Lord, and is far greater and able to keep me on the path He has set forth in His Word.

BACK TO THE QUESTION

Which Jesus do you follow? The Jesus of the New Age, or the Jesus of the Bible? Do you know the difference? Melissa Dougherty does a great job of making the distinctions very clear, in a time when the lines are so often blurred.