One World Religion/New Spirituality: Part 2 (History and development)
Introduction
As we discussed in Part 1 of this short series, Western culture has been hijacked by a spiritual ideology that Peter Jones calls Neo-Paganism and of which John Frame says:
. . . is an historical and worldwide movement of enormous cultural power, one that has sought for centuries, and still seeks, to dominate our world.
In the foreword to the book ‘On Global Wizardry,’ Frame goes on to say:
These movements are parallel to one another, even congruent. So they form a single movement in effect. They work together, drawing on one another for support and inspiration, affirming one another, while they unite in opposing biblical Christianity.
Globalist theologian Lloyd Geering says:
If the global society emerges, it will require humanity to develop a new consciousness and a new form of spirituality
In just one generation, Judaeo-Christian Western culture has become an incubator of revived New Spirituality paganism. In one form or another, the leaders of the emerging One World Religion/New Spirituality are impacting every sphere of society – government, education, law-making, health-care, globalisation, media, business, interfaith religion, psychology, sociology, ecology, science, arts, entertainment, sports and even the Church.
A programme of globalisation, mystical inter-spirituality, social justice and world peace is proposed as the answer to all man’s ills, which can only be achieved through the establishment of global governance and One World Religion.
History and development
The following eleven ‘road signs’ in the on-going development of the emerging One World Religion/New Spirituality are representative of the general trend:
1. The role of the Secret Societies
2. The Perennial Philosophy, Pantheism and Religious Pluralism
3. The growth of False religions and cults from 1800 onwards
4. The legacy of the Theosophical Society
5. The rise of Gnosticism
6. The 60’s, Postmodernism and Eastern mysticism
7. The radical Feminist Movement/Goddess worship
8. The liberal wing of the Emerging Church
9. The mushrooming New Age Movement
10. The growing Interfaith Movement
11. The role of the United Nations and former world leaders
There’s considerable overlap between each aspect, indicating that there's a single entity or power at work behind the scenes 'pulling it all together.' Here at Christian Spectrum we'd suggest that this is Satan and in particular the demonic stronghold or spirit known as 'Jezebel,' as generally understood by those involved in 'spiritual warfare' within the Church. We believe that all religious movements are impacted by this particular demonic spirit. There are many Christain books on the market written on spiritual warfare that may be helpful to the reader and we would direct you to these for more on this.
1. Secret societies
Spiritual darkness is increasing and becoming more sophisticated, but the strongholds that the enemy uses are deeply rooted in the actions of past generations. We can’t go back too far before the influence of the secret societies becomes apparent.
The earliest recorded secret societies have roots in pre-history and reflect prehistoric fertility cults and spirits of the dead. They are known as 'chthonic,' meaning 'under the earth' to distinguish them from the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Chthonic cults characteristically used arcane rituals, sacred spaces (caves) and shamanistic rituals such as ecstatic dance and psychedelia to commune with the other world. Some of these practices were passed down to later secret societies.
There are many parallels between the ancient mysteries (Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt and Babylon) and the secret societies. Mithraism - the worship of the god Mithras was related to the ancient mystery cults of the Greeks. Originally a sun god from the Persian Pantheon, Mithras became very popular in the Roman Empire and the Mithraic religion flourished from the second century AD rivalling Christianity until the latter got the upper hand. The Mithraic cult had many important parallels with modern secret societies such as the Freemasons.
Both the ancient mysteries and the later secret societies are idolatrous and worship Lucifer. Manley P Hall, a 33rd degree Mason and undoubtedly the leading writer on Masonry in the 20th century, says this about each individual Mason in his book ‘Lost Keys of Freemasonry’:
The seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands and before he may step onwards and upwards he must prove his ability to properly apply (this) energy.
In the West, the rich variety of philosophy, religion and mysticism in the ancient world gave way to a much more uniform, monolithic arrangement in the post-Classical world, as a Christian orthodoxy took shape and the Church established itself, first as the religion of the Roman Empire and later as the unifying force of the Dark Age era.
It was in this era that the mysteries, Mithraism and Gnosticism were all suppressed and the exoteric forms of religion (those played out in the open, and publicly accessible to all) largely won out over esoteric forms - those hidden forms available to only a few. But, as the mythologist Joseph Campbell explained in 'The Masks of God':
. . . the mysteries, like a secret stream, went underground.
Western Esoteric Tradition
The creation of what scholars of the occult call the 'Western Esoteric Tradition,' was the result of being driven underground. This is the chain of descent of mystical and magical knowledge from the Classical era down to the modern day, a span of around 1700 years.
During much of this period the Western tradition included knowledge that was considered dangerous, immoral and often illegal, so that those who followed this tradition had to be extremely careful.
Many of the best known societies today major on personal development, spiritual self-exploration, the study of mysticism and occult, and the establishment of a new world order/religion.
Implementation
The more influential societies like the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians are extremely influential and use legitimate power structures and leaders to implement their secret plans for a New World Order/Religion - Presidents, Prime Ministers, Church leaders, government officials, oligarchs, bankers, etc. These societies will continue to play a significant part in the on-going development of the New Spirituality.
2. Perennial Philosophy, Pantheism and Religious Pluralism
Many of today’s thinkers, including some within the liberal Emerging Church, have embraced the Perennial Philosophy. This philosophical concept claims that each of the world’s religious traditions shares a single universal truth; that there exists a single divine foundation for all religious knowledge. In other words an underground well feeds all religions irrespective of their cultural or historical context; each religion is simply a different interpretation of this knowledge.
Prince Charles believes that the Perennial Philosophy will restore the wisdom of ancient pagan religions to our spiritually starved world. According to Peter Jones in his book 'One or Two':
The worldview clash is clear - the revealed religion of the Bible against the occultist Perennial Philosophy of religious naturalism. Biblical Two-ism clashes with esoteric spirituality, which claims both the democratic right to influence public policy and the ideological right to silence the traditional view as ‘hate speech.’
In primitive cultures, paganism has been practiced for millennia in its animist/spiritist forms. Its more subtle but more virulent form is perhaps found in the US, where it has been spruced up and ingeniously promoted by intellectuals and civic leaders with a fully developed ideology for the global future.
Anti-Christian all-inclusive paganism
To save the planet, paganism must have full control and so it seeks to undermine Christianity. Christianity as a social force is under attack and in decline. Here in the West, we're no longer post-Christian, but anti-Christian and religious paganism which is basically idolatry (the worship of anything other than the true God) is rapidly filling the gap and ready to take political, social and religious power.
Pagans derive their name from those who worshipped the Gods of the 'pagus,' which means ‘locality’ in Latin - those who worshiped local gods. According to Vivianne Crowley paganism has four core beliefs:
i The divine has made itself manifest through many deities in different places and at different times. No one deity can express the totality of the divine. This is called polytheism
ii The divine is present in nature and in each one of us. This is called pantheism - the divine is everywhere
iii The divine is represented as both female and male. The two major aspects of the divine are the goddess and god, although the divine is beyond limitations of gender
iv The Pagan Ethic (also called the Wiccan Rede) is followed: If it harm none, do what you will. This means a pagan cannot cause harm to anyone or anything, including themselves.
In his book 'One or Two,' Peter Jones says:
Neo-pagans are the darling of a variety of movements. They lead the way in the ‘green’ movement, in systems of wealth distribution, in planetary programmes for social justice, in solutions to supposedly man-made global warming, in interfaith conferences, in the normalisation of all sexual expressions and in the promotion of globalist theories through the United Nations (UN). Kernels of truth in these theories give politicians and power brokers an excuse to seize geopolitical power.
Massive economic, ethnic, religious and environmental problems not only create fear, but stimulate a search for global solutions and this is where the mystics and pagans come into their own. Religious Pluralism becomes the way ahead.
Pantheistic Mysticism
A significant development in the drive towards a One World Government results from the rise in pantheistic mysticism. For more on this, see our articles on One World Religion, Evil: progression and limitation, and the Emergent Church. Put briefly, the religion of the New Age is pantheism – the belief that God is in the sum total of all that exists. Gary Kah explains:
According to pantheism there is no personal God, instead their concept of God consists of what they refer to as a god-force (or life-force). They teach that this energy, or god-force, flows through all living things – plants, animals and human beings. Since this god-force flows through all of us, they rationalise, we must therefore be gods, or, at least, part of God.
The god-force pantheists believe in can only operate completely when there is global unity, so they are in favour of a One World Government. Once that came about, they believe humanity would then take a ‘quantum leap’ to a higher level of existence. The new enlightenment, or a New World Order, would then be born.
Pantheism has received much wider acceptance in the West than Satanism, although ultimately they’re the same thing, because pantheism doesn't have obviously evil overtones. Today, with the glut of psychic fairs, alternative health clinics and the high media endorsement of anything mystical, few people even question whether mysticism and occultism have anything in common.
Yet altered states of consciousness, a unifying factor among many different New Age beliefs and practices, basically opens up the spirit to demonic influences and invites them in - see Emergent Church.
The spread of pantheism
From his research into pantheism, Gary Kah says:
It was interesting to discover that all of the ancient mystery religions from the Bible era were pantheistic. Pantheism originated in the ancient city of Babylon in Mesopotamia and from there spread rapidly in all directions to cover the face of the earth.
Hinduism is one of the off-shoots of the original Babylonian pantheism (via the Aryans of ancient Persia). And Buddhism is an off-shoot of Hinduism. All of the Eastern religions of today are ultimately traceable to ancient Babylon, where the post-flood rebellion against God began.
Pantheistic mystery religions developed their own distinctives depending on the societies where they took hold, but they concurred over the importance of an occult priesthood which ruled the territory in association with an appointed priest.
All priests had to go through a series of secret rituals and initiations. When they reached the inner circle or highest level of the priesthood they gained knowledge of the secret doctrine, which always included worship of Lucifer (sometimes referred to as the God of Hades or God of the Underworld).
Altered states of consciousness gave the priests access to messages from Satan or other divine messengers, and these messages were kept alive by secret societies for millennia.
Religious Pluralism
Religious Pluralism is the philosophical concept that states that various world religions are formed by their distinctive historical and cultural contexts and thus there is no single, true religion. There are only many equally valid religions. Each religion is a direct result of humanity’s attempt to grasp and understand the incomprehensible divine reality. Therefore, each religion can hold an authentic but ultimately inadequate concept of divine reality, producing a partial understanding of the universal truth, which requires syncretism to achieve a complete understanding as well as a path towards salvation or spiritual enlightenment.
The liberal Emerging Church has embraced Religious Pluralism and is seeking to create a modified Gospel as part of a pagan programme of spirituality, social justice and human unity.
Defining spirituality as a combination of social justice and mystical experience
The Church meanwhile is criticised for having focussed on personal salvation at the expense of social justice. Defining spirituality as a combination of social justice and mystical experience is the essence of the new religious paganism. The ideology of the media and academia was, for a time, driven by anti-Christian secular humanism, but now it is mainly driven by anti-Christian all-inclusive paganism. A pagan programme of mystical spirituality, social justice and world peace is being proposed as the answer to all man’s ills.
A number of significant people/events can be cited to illustrate this on-going development. A key player was Aleister Crowley who developed the occult organisation know as the Order of the Golden Dawn. He authored many books between 1911 and 1940. He was a self confessed Satanist and sought a religion to replace Christianity. Biographer Lawrence Sutin says that Crowley ‘anticipated the spread of Eastern spirituality in the West.’
3. The rise of false religions and cults from 1800 onwards
While much of our world has been steeped in the occult throughout its history, the ‘Christian’ West has been responsible for birthing many false religions over the last couple of centuries.
Mormonism
The first significant one, and even today one of the fastest growing religions worldwide, is Mormonism. Their book, ‘Pearl of Great Price’ states that Jesus was the spirit brother of Lucifer before he entered the world. Other Mormon publications show, amongst other things, their belief in the pre-existence of the soul and the polygamous nature of the gods.
Spiritualism
Spiritism, which emphasises contact with the dead (in realitycontacting demonic spirits) became an organised religion known as Spiritualism in 1848. It has grown in credibility and now many world leaders and personalities consult spiritualists on personal and political matters.
Others
Mary Baker Eddy began her ‘Christian Science’ teachings in the 1860s, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who deny the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, started in 1879, and the Unity Church was organised in 1886.
4. Theosophical Society
Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891)
One of the most influential figures in the evolving New Spirituality was Russian Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky claimed to have psychic abilities and connected esoteric spiritual knowledge with the new science of evolution. James Herrick, in his chapter ‘Modern Shamanism’ in the book 'On Global Wizardry,' says that:
Blavatsky labelled Christianity and the biblical tradition a spiritual aberration that deviated from its ancient mystical and pantheistic sources.
She founded the Theosophical Society to promote esoteric teaching, religious philosophy and mysticism. Theosophy holds that all religions are attempts by the Occult Brotherhood to help humanity evolve to greater perfection, and that each religion therefore has a portion of the truth. These teachings, which she called ‘The Ageless Wisdom’, had previously only been available to Secret Societies, but she obtained them from ‘enlightened mystics’ during her travels to Egypt and India. She is reported to have said:
I wouldn’t be a slave to God himself, let alone man . . . Woman finds her happiness in the acquisition of supernatural powers. Love is but a vile dream, a nightmare.
The ‘truth’ Blavatsky imparted to the world came largely via spirit guides, whom she believed were highly evolved beings who had been through many reincarnations and had now left the earth’s plane in order to guide mankind. In a nutshell, these ‘masters’ have taught the world through Theosophy that they have:
Depersonalised God and created various planes of spiritual progression culminating in universal salvation and reconciliation through reincarnation and the wheel concept of progression borrowed unblushingly from Buddhism. (Martin, ‘The Kingdom of the Cults’)
The society’s magazine was called ‘Lucifer.’ Blavatsky in her book ‘The Secret Doctrine,’ said:
Satan and his rebellious host will thus prove to have become the direct Saviours and Creators of divine man . . . It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God. Satan (or Lucifer) represents the Centrifugal Energy of the Universe, this ever-living symbol of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity.
One of Blavatsky’s followers was Adolf Hitler, who kept a copy of her book ‘The Secret Doctrine’ at his bedside. His anti-Semitism stemmed from her teaching.
Alice Bailey (1880-1949)
Alice Bailey joined the Theosophical Society in 1919. She reportedly coined the phrase ‘New Age’ and through her occult Tibetan spirit guide, Djwal Khul, she said:
The New Age is upon us and we are witnessing the birth pangs of the new culture and the new civilisation. This is now in progress. That which is old and undesirable must go . . . The spirit has gone out of the old faiths and the true spiritual light is transferring itself into a new form which will manifest on earth eventually as the New World Religion.
We would suggest that this could also describe the spirit behind the apostate edge of the liberal Emerging Church and what it’s endeavouring to do. Bailey’s ten point strategy was designed to set people free from what she called ‘Christian restrictions.’ We would suggest the liberal Emerging Church is trying to do something very similar today!
Bailey also said through her occult Tibetan spirit guide:
The day is dawning when all religions will be regarded as emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will inevitably emerge. Then there will be neither Christian nor heathen, neither Jew nor Gentile, but simply one great body of believers, gathered out of all the current religions.
Bailey’s spirit guide communicated with her over a 30 year period (1919 to 1949) by means of telepathic communication resulting in her writing 19 books.
It is worth noting that Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey were both Freemasons. Cardinal Rodriguez, Archbishop of Chile, who researched Freemasonry extensively, noted in this book: 'The Mystery of Freemasonry Unveiled':
. . . the theosophical docctrines on the nature of God and the soul and the relationship between God and the soul, are the same doctrines as taught in Masonry. It is enough to read the books dealing with the history of Theosophy to see that each theosophical centre is founded, almost without doubt, by members of the Lodge.
The spiritual links between them are therefore clear.
The Avatar
She encouraged her followers to prepare for the appearance of a world saviour, in the Aquarian Age (astrological age of enlightenment and peace) whom she referred to as ‘The Coming One.’ In Hinduism the Avatar referred to a descending deity. She said that he would unite all mankind and would embody all the principles of occultism, chiefly the divinity and perfectibility of man. This sounds very similar to the coming Antichrist!
The United Nations and the Lucis Trust
She received revelation from her spirit guide that the world would be saved through the United Nations. She founded the organisation and publishing house known as the Lucis Trust. This was originally called the Lucifer Trust. It’s an offshoot of the Theosophical Society and has supervised the UN Meditation Room (see below) since 1952. It aims to bring all religions and nations together under a One World Government/Religion.
Age of Aquarius
Freemason Foster Bailey, Alice Bailey’s husband, predicted that the Age of Aquarius would herald the ‘restoration of the mysteries.’ According to research by Nicholas Campion, most published material on the subject of the Age of Aquarius postulates that it started sometime in the 20th century. Many of today’s astrologers believe that the Age of Aquarius has dawned.
A global organisation
The Theosophical Society is now active in over 50 countries. Anyone can join the society providing they are ‘seekers after truth!’ The aims of the society are:
i To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour
ii To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science
iii To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man
Members, or former members, include:
Henry Wallace: Vice-President of the US
Carl Gustav Jung: founder of analytical psychology
Mahatma Gandhi: leader of India
Jawaharlal Nehru: first Prime Minister of India
George Lansbury: leader of British Labour party
Shirley MacLaine: film actress
Thomas Edison: inventor of the electric light
Lyman Frank Baum: author of The Wizard of Oz
Lewis Carroll: author of the Alice books
Gustav Mahler: symphonic composer
Jean Sibelius: Finnish musical composer
William Butler Yeats: Anglo-Irish poet and playwright
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: author of Sherlock Holmes
James Joyce: Irish novelist
D. H. Lawrence: English novelist
T. S. Eliot: poet and critic
Carl Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For the occult and destructive New Age philosophy of Blatavsky and Bailey to be taken seriously, serious scientists needed to endorse it and Carl Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who were both theologians and scientists, provided this.
Jung (1875-1961) developed a mystical religion based on his occult experiences. He developed subjective ‘going within’ to gain spiritual truth. He became convinced that God was a type of universal myth. He strongly believed in obtaining guidance from interpreting his own dreams.
Chardin (1881-1955) became obsessed with evolutionary theory and as a Jesuit priest he always tried to blend the physical and spiritual worlds under the banner of evolution. He spoke of serving the earth in the same way that Christians talk of serving God. He saw everything and everyone moving forward to what he coined the Omega Point. For him, Christogenesis (the process by which the universe turns completely into Christ) is simply the last phase of evolution. His popularity has caused many to believe in a coming golden age. Chardin said:
One could say that a hitherto unknown form of religion . . . is gradually germinating in the heart of modern man, in the furrow opened up by the idea of evolution . . . Far from feeling my faith perturbed by such a profound change, it is with hope overflowing that I welcome the rise of this new mystique and foresee its inevitable triumph.
5. The rise of Gnosticism
At the heart of gnosticism is secret knowledge (the Greek word 'Gnosis' means knowledge). Hans Jonas in his book 'The Gnostic Religion,' describes the formation of Gnosticism in the centuries just before the birth of Christ as the meeting of Eastern religions (Mysticism) and the rational culture of the Greek West. It began to have a major impact in Alexandria around the first century AD.
Gnostics believe in the dualism of flesh and spirit - with the flesh being evil and something to be freed from, while the eternal spirit is seen as good. Gnostics, in general, believed that the purpose of human existence was to return to the spiritual realm from whence all originated. Death, then, was seen as liberation of the spirit.
It follows then that if life beyond the grave is assured, how this life is lived makes little difference. Gnostic texts do not refer to notions such as sin. The 'Fall' to the Gnostic was not an ethical event, but the fall of spirit into matter over which humans had no control.
This form of dualism influenced the Knights Templar and the Freemasons. Some versions of Gnosticism were also significant in the development of other secret societies, such as the Manicheans, Bogomils and Cathars.
Nag Hammadi: 1945
Many of the Gnostic writings were rediscovered when a cache of ancient Gnostic texts from the second and third centuries was found in the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi in 1945. These texts have given rise to questions about the foundations of Christianity and the identity of Jesus.
Gnosticism caused havoc in the Early Church - much of Paul and John’s writings counter this heresy. Modern authors who believe gnosticism was the true, original Christianity - an idea with no historical support incidentally - love to portray early Christian apologists (Irenaeus and Tertullian for example) as hateful, jealous defamers of true gnostic beliefs. Gnostics claim the Church stole the true identity of Jesus. We would argue that Gnostics are trying to reinvent Jesus as a pagan prophet.
Worshippers of Satan
Gnosticism takes many forms, but all are ultimately united in adoration of Satan and hatred for Jesus. Gnostics believe the physical world was created by an evil spirit and it inverts traditional Christian belief in creation whereby Jesus is seen as Lucifer and Yahweh the evil corrupter.
Peter Jones in his book 'Stolen Identity,' says:
Just as Gnosticism in its purest and clearest form describes the Creator God of the Bible as the Devil, and worships the Serpent, so Christianity dismisses the Serpent as the epitome of evil and worships the Creator as blessed forever . .
To enter the 'Kingdom,' a Gnostic must deny or renounce the world. This is not the 'world, the flesh and the Devil' - a world of moral evil. This is the world of created reality, of sexual and moral distinctions, of marraige and family, of anything that reminds you of the Creator's 'evil' work . . .
The Gnostic kingdom stands for a mystical state of super-consciousness in which you receive gnosis about the transcendent nature of your being.
In his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,' he says:
The Naasenes (the ancient Gnostic worshippers of Satan) are roaming the land again. Already Madame Blavasky, who died in 1891, but whose writings are held in high esteem in the New Age Movement, attributed redemption to Satan.
Blavatsy is reported to have said:
The appellation Satan . . . and 'Adversary' belongs by right to the first and crulest 'Adversary' of all other gods - Jehovah; not to the serpent which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom . . . The Great Serpent of the Garden of Eden and the 'Lord God' are identical . . . Satan, the serpent . . . is the real creator and benefactor, the Father of spiritual mankind. For it is he who opened the eyes of Adam.
Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,' says:
This kind of theological reversal is so often these days the end result of a commitment to feminist ideology. Feminist liberation is true and everything else can be jettisoned - traditional family values, biblical canonical authority, the wisdom and goodness of God the Creator and the very definition of the source of evil.
Technique driven Contemplative Prayer
New Ager Shirley MacLaine in her book 'Going Within,' describes Gnostic thinking:
God lies within, and therefore we are each part of God. Since there is no separateness, we are each Godlike, and God is in each of us . . . We are literally made up of God energy, therefore we can create whatever we want in life because we are each co-creating with the energy of God - the energy that makes the universe itself.
Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,' comments on MacLaine's words:
This is a perfect example of pantheistic monism, which denies that God is the personal, unique Creator, distinct from creation.
The goal of the Gnostic is to bypass the rational mind and to spark the divine essence within in order to achieve ‘enlightenment’ or ‘gnosis.’ They seek an inner mystical experience, communion with and meditation upon the higher self - in other words technique driven Contemplative Prayer. Like Hindus they believe the mind separates them from God.
In his book 'Stolen Identity,' Peter Jones says of Gnostic Mark Gaffney, an ex Roman Catholic:
Gaffney believes that the real Jesus initiated his disciples into the esoteric worship of the Serpent. The Gnostic Naassenes emphasize with great clarity what all Gnostics believe: that the true voice of Jesus was first heard in the Genesis Serpent, who promised to Adam and Eve an experience of death-defying soul transformation. Against the lies of Yahweh, the Serpent of Eden brought true wisdom to the original couple. His message of life revealed to Adam and Eve that they possessed true spiritual life within themselves and that if they would only realise it and unleash the inner spiritual power, they could save the world . . .
Gaffney makes a case for understanding the Gnostic serpent spirituality in terms of the Hindu yoga tradition of 'kundalini energy.' This energy, believed to be coiled at the base of the spine, lies dormant until aroused by techniques of concentrated medition. The serpent energy is said to ascend from the base of the spine through the other six 'chakra' points, leading to the point of 'maximum focus and concentration' where one experiences the 'indivisable point,' above the head, where all distinctions are compressed into a 'singularity,' or 'the void.' Here personal identity and the identity of God are fused.
For more on Mysticism see Part 5 of the series Emerging Church/New Spirituality.
Peter Jones in his book ‘Spirit Wars,’ says:
I continued to note the striking parallels between the ancient heresy of Gnosticism and the spirituality of New Age thinking and the postmodern worldview.
Gnosticism invading the church
Gnosticism is experiencing a revival in the church despite the fact that the Early Church leaders appeared to deal it a death blow. A growing number, including the liberal Emerging Church, are now developing a composite Jesus with elements from both the Gnostic and biblical accounts. Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,' says:
A small but growing number of very influential New Testament scholars who have apparently never found the source of life in the classical apostolic gospel are finding in this gnostic view of Jesus a 'new lease of life.' We can expect that this novel interpretation may well represent the scholarly wave of the future.
If they have their way, and they probably will, under the powerful growing impact of feminism there will be a move to open the Church's canon for the inclusion of a certain number of these ancient egalitarian 'Christian' Gnostic documents. And then the struggle for orthodoxy will take on proportions of difficulty the Church has rarely known.
Caitlin Matthews, a pagan priestess of Isis, says in her book 'Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom':
Gnosticism serves most admirably as a bridge for paganism to infiltrate Christianity.
Marcus Borg (Jesus Seminar) in his book 'Me and Jesus,' says:
Now I see that it is not a question of belief, and there is much that I do not believe. I do not believe that Christianity is the only way of salvation, or that the Bible is the revealed will of God, or that Jesus is the unique son of God.
Gnostics see Jesus as appearing from nowhere, teaching the wisdom of pagan religion like an ancient guru. They do not believe that Jesus was divine (any more than the rest of us) and his resurrection was purely 'spiritual.'
Gnostics and sexuality
Gnostics do not believe that Jesus had a physical birth and some believe that sexual intercourse, even in marriage, is evil. Some believe that the divine spark was imprisoned in their physical body and this led to celibacy. Others believed the body could not affect the pure spirit within and therefore sanctioned total moral and sexual licence. To some, sex was related to the promotion of ecstatic spiritual trances.
For others, androgyny was and is the preferred sexual gender - both male and female, an ambiguous sexual identity, a joining of the opposites (marriage of opposites) and the denial of gender. Forget same sex marriages - the ultimate goal of the homosexual/lesbian lobby is androgyny!
Pantheism and Kabbalah
Gnosticism is the most effective and widely accepted form of pantheism and according to Albert Pike (leading Freemason 1809-1891) who wrote the Freemasonry manual ‘Morals and Dogma,' Gnosticism was an offshoot of Kabbalah. In his book he says:
The Kabbalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabbalists.
In essence, Kabbalah was a version of the ancient mysteries designed to deceive the Jews. Gnosticism similarly sought to lead Christians into deception. Pike said of Gnosticism in his book:
The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabbalah, and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek and Jewish doctrines, which the New-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident.
Versions of Gnostic Christianity, as we have said, are still practised today and Islamic Sufism and Jewish Kabbalism keep the Gnostic traditions alive. Here at Christian Spectrum we believe that Gnosticism is a form of religious paganism and not, as it is often proposed, an authentic varient of the Christian Gospel. In essence, it's idolary.
6. The 60’s, Postmodernism and Eastern mysticism
Western society developed its love affair with Postmodernism and Eastern mysticism during the 1960s, following what some perceived as the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. See Part 3 of the series Emerging Church/New Spirituality for more on Postmodernism and Part 5 of the same series for more on Mysticism.
In one generation, according to Dr Peter Jones in his Book ‘One or Two’:
A culture largely defined in the public square by patriarchal, heterosexual and Judaeo-Christian presuppositions in the 60's has been replaced by an egalitarian, omnigendered, pansexual, multi-religious belief system which has turned our world upside down.
After centuries of a worldview that Jones calls biblical Two-ism (God is outside his creation), he says:
. . . the West is rushing headlong into the brave ’new’ world of pagan One-ism (God is the creation).
Witchcraft
In 1951 the Witchcraft laws in England were repealed and since that time it's flourished. Linda Harvey in her chapter on ‘The Global Mainstreaming of Witchcraft’ in the book 'On global Wizardry,' says:
By 1986, three wiccan priestesses held faculty positions at Harvard Divinity School, which was founded in the seventeenth century to prepare men for Gospel ministry. More recently the school sponsored a woman’s spirituality conference, where Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim and Wiccan feminists contributed to the effort to recover the history of religion in American feminism.
She goes on to say:
An astonishing recent trend is the number of people who openly practice Witchcraft within Christian churches, often encountering little resistance.
A record number of (mostly American) witches and pagans attended the Parliament of the World Religions in Barcelona in 2004. Ray Yungen in his book ‘A Time of Departing,’ says:
Once obscure and underground, Wicca is now on a roll.
Scott Cunningham’s book ‘Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner,’ has sold over 600,000 copies since 1988 and is now in its 37th printing. Very few Christians are aware of this rapidly growing spiritual revolution. Yungen goes on to say:
God’s people have been slow in responding to the shifts that occur in culture. A consequence of this naivety is a growing spill-over effect from this phenomenon into the evangelical Church, appealing to those who hunger for ways to walk closer with God.
The Woodstock Music Festival
The Woodstock Music Festival held in 1969 was called ‘An Aquarian Faire’ by its founders. It attracted the hippie subculture. The sixties counter cultural revolution involving youth, music, sex and drugs was essentially a spiritual movement.
Whilst Christianity was largely rejected, spirituality was not. The keynote speaker was Swami Satchidananda, an Indian guru and popular Yoga expert. He taught the vast audience to meditate and chant the Hindu mantra ‘Om.’
7. The radical Feminist Movement/Goddess worship
The Feminist Movement has evolved through three distinct phases:
i First-phase Feminism (19th through early 20th century) largely concerned with sufferage. Virginia Woolf was associated with this phase. In her book 'A Room Of One's Own,' she describes how men socially and psychically dominate women and the argument of the book is that women are simultaneously victims of themselves as well as victims of men.
ii Second-phase Feminism (1960s-1980s) was concerned with gender inequality in laws and culture. What helped trigger this second wave was the book 'The Feminine Mystique,' written by Betty Friedan in which she describes the dissatisfaction of educated, middle class wives and mothers like herself who, looking at their nice homes and families, wondered guiltily if that was all there was to life.
iii Third-wave Feminism (early 1990s) arose in response to the perceived failures of the second-wave feminism and the rallying of the young was an emphasis of this phase.
Feminist theology and Christian Feminism
Feminist theology grew out of the Feminist movement and reconsiders the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about God, determining the place of women in relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the religion's sacred texts.
The Christian Feminist movement which arose out of Feminist theology chose to concentrate on the language of religion because they viewed the historic gendering of God as male as a result of the pervasive influence of patriarchy. Rosemary Radford Ruether provided a systematic critique of Christian theology from a feminist and theist point of view. In a lecture given at Loyola Marymount University in 2006, she said:
Christianity is riddled by hierarchy and patriarchy . . .
This created a social order in which chaste women on their wedding night were, she said, in 'Conscience magazine,' in 2003:
. . . in effect, raped by young husbands whose previous sexual experience came from exploitative relationships with servant women and prostitutes . .
Modern societies have sought to change this situation, allowing women education, legal autonomy, paid employment and personal freedom. But the sexual morality of traditional puritanical patriarchal Christianity has never been adequately rethought.
Goddess worship
Reverence for the goddess is becoming more prevalent in our day. The goddess is embraced by witchcraft, radical feminism, the occult, and the liberal church. The Age of Aquarius, according to the occult world, will be a feminine age. Those who hold this view believe that this current, Piscean Age, has been a masculine age and that it has been an age of destruction and broken relationships among humanity.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, in her book 'Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology,' states that:
It is to the women that we look for salvation in the healing and restorative waters of Aquarius. It is to such a New Age that we look now with hope as the present age of masculism succeeds in destroying itself.
Starhawk, a feminist and a practising witch, in her book 'The Spiral Dance,' says:
The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The goddess does not rule the world; She is the world.
Orthodox Christianity teaches that God is transcendent, is separate from nature and is represented to humankind through masculine imagery. Paganism, including New Age and witchcraft holds a pantheistic view of God. God is nature, therefore God is in all things and all things are a part of God. However, this God is in actuality a goddess.
A fundamental belief in witchcraft is the idea that the goddess predates the male God. The goddess is the giver of all life and is found in all of creation. Starhawk goes on to say:
The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed. The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, and our anger as purifying. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions.
For many in the feminist world, the goddess is an object of worship. Carlos Vidal Greth in an article entitled 'The Spirit of Women,' says that those in the women's spirituality movement:
. . . reject what they call the patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition, deploring sexist language, predominantly masculine imagery and largely male leadership.
According to Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back':
James Lovelock a New Age spokesman calls for a return to Goddess spirituality to avoid the destruction to which the Semitic/Christian God will inevitably lead.
He goes on to say:
Much of radical feminism is borne along by a mythology of the woman as saviour. The essential myth, masquerading as history . . . sees a past golden age that was matriarchal, matrilocal and matrilineal. God was infact a goddess, peace reigned and women were equal with or superior to men. This idyllic society was overthrown by male-dominated war-like societies worshipping male gods, hence our present problems of crime, drugs, immorality, greed and wars of destruction.
Joan B Townsend in her book 'The Goddess: Fact, Fallacy and Revitalization Movement,' says:
If society is to be saved and world destruction avoided . . . it remains for women to reinstate Goddess worship in order to establish equal religious rights and socio-political positions of equality with men, if not dominance.
The Goddess forms of ritual focus around which women can identify and unify to save all of us from destruction and bring about the millennium . . . the peace and harmony of control by women.
Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back' says:
Malevolent female power . . . is an essential element of Aquarian eschatology. The ultimate incarnation of antichrist may well be a woman!
8. The Liberal wing of the Emerging Church
The liberal wing of the Emerging Church has aligned itself with the New Spirituality and so has become the enemy of the one true organic Church. It has bought into Postmodernism hook, line and sinker and become morally ambiguous, culturally syncretised and politically correct.
In rejecting reason, objectivity and transcendent truth in favour of experience, emotions, image, narrative and subjective feelings, the liberal Emerging Church has compromised the objective and exclusive claims of biblical Christianity.
It embraces ancient pagan mysticism and spirituality whilst jettisoning many fundamentals of the Christian faith. It waters down the moral teachings of the Gospel. It denies the exclusivity and uniqueness of Christ. In rejecting biblical authority, revelation and inerrancy it's become theologically heretical.
In rejecting God’s self-revelation in the Bible – it's created God as a figment of their own imagination – a counterfeit and distortion. It has become the enemy of the true Gospel. For more on this see the series on the Emerging Church/New Spirituality.
9. The New Age Movement
The New Age is a Western spiritual movement that came to prominence in the latter half of the 20th century. Alice Bailey, as we have already stated, reportedly coined the phrase ‘New Age.’ The origins of the movement can be found in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly through the works of esotericists like Blavatsky and Bailey. They laid some of the basic philosophical principles that have influenced the movement.
Peter Jones in his book 'The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,' says:
. . . I have discovered that New Age religion and Gnosticism, separated by some fifteen hundred years, nevertheless resemble one another like two Siamese cats, sometimes even to the smallest detail.
The New Age holds to 'a holistic worldview,' emphasising that the mind, body and spirit are interrelated and that there is a form of Monism (the universe is really just one thing; there is one God with many religious manifestations) and unity throughout the universe.
The movement gained further momentum in the 1960s through the rise of metaphysics, self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health and the various Indian gurus who visited the West during that decade.
It also draws on ancient, Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Its aim is to create a spirituality that is inclusive and pluralistic (all religions are valid) and attempts to create a worldview that includes both science and spirituality.
Over the last couple of generations, the kind of techniques formerly used only within secret societies, have become popular in the West. Through occult meditation and altered states of consciousness, unwitting as well as knowledgeable hosts have had occult experiences which are part of Satan’s strategy for driving the New World Order.
The number of practitioners who come into contact with demonic spirits in the course of meditation is probably much higher than we realise. Sadly, many people who are passionately concerned about the environment, holistic health, world peace, yoga and other forms of meditation, TM, etc have become embroiled on the fringes of the New Age movement without realising the dangers inherent within it.
The Musical 'Hair' in 1967
The production of the musical 'Hair' in 1967 with its opening song 'Aquarius' and its memorable line 'This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,' together with Shirley MacLaine's book 'Out on a Limb' published in 1983, raised public awareness of the New Age Movement. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marianne Williamson, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna and Deepak Chopra move the New Age forward today.
Whilst many believe that the New Age peaked by the 1990s and was no longer a serious threat to Christianity, in reality New Age teaching has continued to spread. It's made significant inroads through mystical practices including yoga and technique driven meditation and Contemplative Prayer. It's having a major impact on mainstream business, government, psychology, health care, religion, education, etc. Twenty percent of Americans today are tied in to various forms of New Age spirituality with over twenty million practicing Yoga. Paganism is now a respected academic discipline.
David Spangler the Director of the Planetary Initiative at the United Nations, and one of the founding fathers of the New Age Movement, says:
Lucifer comes to give us the final . . . Luciferic initiation . . . that many people now and in the days ahead, will be facing - for it is an initiation into the New Age . . . No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer . . .
Being a hotchpotch of Eastern-influenced theologies and philosophies, the New Age is bound together by ‘universal tolerance’ and ‘moral relativism.’ It teaches that humans have evolved biologically and must now evolve spiritually. Man is viewed as divine, and progressing toward a kind of 'godhood' or ‘Christ-consciousness.’
Change in human consciousness
The New Age believes that we passed a threshold on the date 21 December 2012 when a great change in human consciousness relating to positive change took place.
New Age practices include Astral Projection (training your soul to have out-of-body experiences), Astrology, contacting spirit guides, Reflexology, T'ai chi ch'uan, Feng Shui, Tantra, Meditation, psychic energy (sometimes through Ley Lines), using crystals to purify your body and mind’s energy systems, paganism, goddess worship, vegetarianism, Sacred geometry, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Witchcraft, Gaia hypothesis, technique driven Eastern Contemplative Prayer, Yoga, Reiki, Hypnosis, Therapeutic touch, Homeopathy and Acupuncture.
Edgar Cayce and holistic medicine
Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), through psychic readings, often diagnosed illnesses and prescribed treatments although he was uneducated and knew nothing of medicine or anatomy. He has been likened to the 16th century Nostradamus because of his predictions of future cataclysmic events. The following was revealed to Cayce during his excursions while out of the body and as told in Thomas Sugrue's book 'There is a River':
The system of metaphysical thought which emerges from the readings of Edgar Cayce is a Christianised version of the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, India and Greece. It fits the figure of Christ into the tradition of one God for all people, and places him in his proper place, at the apex of the philosophical structure; he is the capstone of the pyramid (referring to the eye of Osiris or symbol of Lucifer, on the capstone of the pyramid on the back of US dollar bill).
Cayce opened the way for the healing arts to be widely accepted. Holistic health, the ‘new’ medicine, has redefined energy (a key word) as the life force which flows through all living things. New Agers see health problems as a misalignment of this latent energy in the body. Today millions in the West look to be healed by submitting to the belief behind all holistic medicine that ‘all is one and connected’ through mystical divine energy. The chakra centres of yoga and the meridians of acupuncture are examples of this energy flow concept.
The Planetary Commission
Back in the 1960s, New Age ideas were seen as too ‘far out’ to be widely accepted. But while the events of the Cold War took the world’s attention, John Randolph Price penned ‘The Planetary Commission’ which charted the course for humanity to achieve the ‘quantum leap’ into the Aquarian Age, or Omega Point mentioned by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
To move towards immortality, Price planned a massive worldwide event which took place in 1986. It was the World Healing Day and was advertised as a gathering to promote world peace. In fact, it was the catalyst for New Agers to create the momentum necessary to usher in their new world order. It was the inspiration for the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 and the Parliament of World Religions Conference in 1993.
John Price
Price’s theology emphasises man’s God-like qualities. His book ‘Empowerment’ includes this quote:
You are a spiritual being embodying all the power of the universe within you. Will you not accept the truth and start living as the light of the world that you are? The Dawn is approaching . . . it is time to awaken to your inheritance.
Price was taught by his spirit guide about the destructiveness of negative thought patterns and he believed 1987 would be a significant year for reversing that trend. He believes that it is negative thought power that causes wars, famines, tornadoes and violent crime.
The World Healing Day was a meditation to reverse the polarity of the force field causing negative energy, by achieving a critical mass of positive energy. He hoped 500 million people throughout the world would give mental consent for the healing of the planet at the same time. He believed the world would be transformed into a heaven if they did.
Fewer than expected participated in the event. Nevertheless, Price boasts that the movement towards a global society and a world religion is progressing rapidly. His aspirations for world peace based on his new theology, however, exclude the ‘self-centred, separatist’ Christians who, his spirit guide has intimated, may need to be ‘cleansed’ from the earth.
Barbara Hubbard
Hubbard, a follower of Chardin, has been an advisor to the Federal Energy Administration, the House of Representatives and the Senate. She now directs the Center for Conscious Evolution. Her vision is to bring about global unity through a restructuring of world governments. She managed to contact all the heads of religious groups in the world to encourage them to support World Healing Day, working in conjunction with Joseph Goldin who had a similar vision.
Hubbard and Goldin shared the view that the end of 1986 would be a ‘Planetary Pentecost’ when people would have the power of Christ to heal, raise the dead and have transformed bodies. Their view of the second coming is that it’s a phenomenon where a new energy field will seed human consciousness causing it to become ‘Christ.’ Hubbard’s contribution to the development of One World Religion is that she eclipsed her occult revelations and Christian theology, reinterpreting the major tenets of the Christian faith.
The legacy of the 1980’s
World Healing Day turned out to be the climax of 1986 – the year the UN designated as the International Year of Peace. All the occult events that year served to shift human consciousness into seeing the world as one interdependent whole. Other events that year included the Million Minutes of Peace (pledging ‘thoughts of peace’ regardless of belief, tradition or political differences); Peace the 21st (guided meditations on 21st day of certain months); the First Earth Run (passing a torch to unite people around the earth); the Vatican Interfaith Conference (when Pope John Paul II called religious leaders of all faiths together to fast and pray for peace) and the Harmonic Convergence (with the theme of unity and oneness with nature).
In the years since these events occultists have become more outspoken and militant against Christians who stand in their way and refuse to co-operate with their efforts. Interestingly, it was in 1986 that the Nine O’Clock Service started in St Thomas’ Anglican Church in Crookes, Sheffield. See our series of articles on the Emerging Church/New Spirituality.
10. The Interfaith Movement
Interfaith dialogue in one sense is as old as the hills, but the Interfaith Movement that we know today began in 1893 when the Parliament of World Religions was convened in Chicago, bringing together major world religions, including the Theosophical Society.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions/faiths and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism. It involves local, regional, national and international initiatives. Many are formally or informally linked and constitute larger networks or federations.
The World Council of Churches was founded in 1948 and was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and influenced by the Masonic Lodge. Its purpose was to create the right religious atmosphere for implementing a new world order. The president of the WCC in 1975 was also an honorary sponsor of the Provisional World Parliament, further evidence of the one world agenda behind the WCC.
The Second Vatican Council in 1962 was another key event. Basil Pennington, a Catholic monk (he wrote the book ‘Finding Grace at the Centre’ with Thomas Keating - a book on Centring Prayer) urged the delegates to preserve and promote all that is good in other religions.
The Inter Faith Network for the UK was founded in 1987 to:
. . . promote good relations between people of different faiths . . . Its member organisations include representative bodies from the Baha'i; Buddhist; Christian; Hindu; Jain; Jewish; Muslim; Sikh; and Zoroastrian communities; national and local inter faith bodies; and academic institutions and educational bodies concerned with inter faith issues.
Pope John Paul II supported the interfaith movement and in 1993 when the Parliament of World Religions met, it attracted 5,500 religious leaders of every type and persuasion. The keynote speaker was Robert Muller (see below).
The inner circle of religious authorities in the Parliament, known as the Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, produced a document: ‘Towards a Global Ethic, An Initial Declaration.’ It called for 'a common set of core values . . . found in the teachings of all religions’ and represents 'an irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families and communities, for races, nations and religions.’
Drafted by Catholic theologian Hans Küng, and signed by Muller, the document states:
Any form . . . of Church conservatism is to be rejected . . . To put it bluntly: no regressive or repressive religion - whether Christian, Islamic, Jewish or of whatever provenance - has a long-term future . . . What we need is an ecumenical world order.
Rev William Swing
Public education is the means by which this agenda is being implemented. Muller’s vision went further, however. His dream was to get an alliance between all the major religions and the UN and to this end he started the United Religions Initiative in conjunction with Rev William Swing of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco.
Swing was considered the most politically correct Protestant to work with the Vatican, the Gorbachev Foundation and the UN to culminate the project. He is committed to creating a United Religion which parallels, in spiritual ways, the UN, and is heavily involved in an NGO known as the World Conference on Religion and Peace. He says:
Interfaith work ultimately becomes dangerous because it threatens every authority: sacred writing, ecclesiastical structures, ethnic purity.
Apostate church
Wrapped up in the legitimate and laudable aspirations of world peace and ecumenical harmony, Christians of all traditions are being lured into the agenda of New Age one world religion protagonists. Particularly since Vatican II, the Vatican has more openly endorsed the ecumenical vision.
The fact that the Pope and Mikhail Gorbachev (see below) were linked in being responsible for bringing the Cold War to an end has done much to further their cause. Many believe that the Holy See will be the means of ushering in world peace, but also introducing the new political and religious world order.
Other interfaith organisations include: Parliament of the Worlds Religions, International Interfaith Centre, Peace Council, Temple of Understanding, United Nations Spiritual Forum, World Faiths Development Dialogue, World Conference on Religion and Peace, World Congress of Faiths, etc.
One hundred and twenty different religions (including witchcraft) met at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, but interestingly, evangelical Christianity was not invited! Jean Houston a New Age feminist guru is a board member of the Temple of Understanding which is connected to the Theosophical Society whose goal, as we have said, is the promotion of One World Religion.
In July 2008 an historic interfaith diologue conference was initiated by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to solve world problems through concord instead of conflict. The conference was hosted by King Juan Carlos of Spain in Madrid and attended by religious leaders from all the major faiths.
In January 2009 the Dalai Lama inaugarated an interfaith 'World Religions-Dialogue and Symphony' conference to explore ways to deal with the discord among major religions.
11. United Nations/politicians
The creation of the United Nations gave secret societies and other organisations a focal point for rallying world religious leaders. Following two world wars, the UN was presented as the only hope for peace and unity between nations and religions.
Many at the UN had predicted that the 21st century would be led more by issues of spirituality than materialism. In line with this, political and economic leaders are drawing religious leaders into the debate at the global level.
Robert Muller (1923-2010)
Robert Muller, mentioned earlier, was a follower of Alice Bailey. He is best known for his role as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and it was his spirituality that led him to take on this job. He was a leading ‘earth spiritualist’ and according to Peter Jones:
From his long held position of enormous authority and influence, he promoted as a model for the future planetary community the holistic worldviews of the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations.
These civilisations worshipped the powers of the earth and their worldview included human sacrifice to placate their nature gods. Muller's ideals are encapsulated thus:
See the world with global eyes. Love the world with a global heart. Understand the world with a global mind. Merge with the world through a global spirit.
He worked closely with Lucile Green, another pantheist, and together they progressed the new world order agenda through the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA). This body uses ‘grassroots’ pressure to speed up the efforts of the UN to create a global government. Muller endorsed the WCPA back in 1992 by saying that it would provide ‘salvation for the world from its present chaos and a metamorphosis into a new, appropriate world order to cope with the massive global problems confronting us’ (quoted by Kah in 'The New World Religion').
Robert Muller was the point man for the UN not only in religion, but also for education. He believed that the youth of the world needed to be re-educated, so he organised a campaign to eject the old style curriculum in the West which promoted national identity and Christian values, to be replaced with a new curriculum promoting world government and pantheistic religion.
The World Core Curriculum for education, which he wrote, includes many New Age religious ideas. This has been endorsed by the UN and is currently being implemented by groups and individuals worldwide.
Muller was given a special peace prize for education in 1989. Robert Muller Schools, founded to promote his vision, are taught by staff who are recognised as ‘those who are bringing about a needed and radical change in the consciousness of the world’s children.'
Gloria Crook, in her book, ‘The World Core Curriculum In the Original Robert Muller School,' says:
Each student needs to grasp the wide diversity while holding to the idea of the Unity of the Human Family. They will realise that every religion is representative of the ways humanity has kept an inner approach to the Infinite, Supreme Being, Intelligence, Spirit, or that One, who is called, by many of us, ‘God.'
Muller's convictions were fuelled by the works of Alice Bailey and Teillard de Chardin, but his greatest influence was UN Secretary-General U Thant, a Buddhist. He was convinced that world unity could only be achieved if there was a one-world government and a one-world religion. In his book, ‘New Genesis’ Muller writes:
If Christ came back to earth, his first visit would be to the UN to see if his dream of human oneness and brotherhood had come true. He would be happy to see representatives of all nations, North and South, East and West, rich and poor, believers and non-believers, young and old, Philistines and Samaritans, trying to find answers to the perennial questions of human destiny and fulfilment . . . There is a famous painting and poster which shows Christ knocking at the tall UN building, wanting to enter it. I often visualise in my mind another even more accurate painting: that of a UN which would be the body of Christ.
Muller’s belief in the UN being the ‘vision-light of the Absolute Supreme’ never wavered. His view was strengthened by another UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld and by Father de Breuvery, a Catholic priest heavily involved with the UN.
In his book ‘The Desire to be Human,’ he says:
And God saw that all the nations of the earth, black and white, rich and poor, from north or south, from east and west and of all creeds were sending their emissaries to a tall glass house on the shores of the River of the Rising Sun, on the island of Manhattan (i.e. the UN headquarters in New York) to stand together, to think together and to care together for all the world and all its people. And God said: ‘That is good.’ And it was the first day of the New Age of the Earth.
According to Muller, the altar in the UN Meditation Room is ‘dedicated to the god whom man worships under many names and in many forms.’ Sri Chinmoy, Hindu mediator and chaplain at the UN, said:
The United Nations is the way, the way of oneness that leads us to the Supreme Oneness. It is like a river flowing towards the source, the Ultimate source. The United Nations becomes for us the answer to world suffering, world darkness and world ignorance. A day will dawn when the vision of the United Nations will save the world.
The World Council of Religious Leaders
People with a similar worldview to Muller continue to dominate the thinking of UN bureaucrats and powerful Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as they look for a Utopian Dream (the ideal society). The World Council of Religious Leaders was established in 2002 and works with the UN. It is a direct outcome of the Millennium World Peace Summit. The Council is charged with being a strong resource for, and a collaborator with, the UN and other national and international organisations whose purposes include promoting peace, harmony, tolerance, and mutual respect among human beings and the evolution of world social and economic justice.
Bawa Jain, its founder, believes that religions need to accept the validity of all beliefs to attain world peace and that all religions and spiritualists, as well as assorted witch doctors, shamans and medicine men, draw their wisdom from the same source. A shaman incidentally, through a state of trance acts as a medium between the visible world and the invisible spirit world, practising magic or sorcery for purposes of healing, divination, or control over natural events. To some, the shaman is a model of spirituality in the 21st century.
He applauds efforts to outlaw proselytising (the making of converts) and believes that the way to usher in the peace of the New World Order is through religious universalism.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev, mentioned earlier, is probably best known for perestroika (economic and political reform) and glasnost (a new policy of openness in the media). These initiatives brought democratic reform to Soviet government and society and culminated in the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989.
However, Gorbachev’s world peace initiatives, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, were by his own admission designed more for ‘outward consumption’ than for internal change. He remarked that ‘our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep’ (from a speech to the Politburo in 1987). In reality, Gorbachev is committed to seeing a world government in this century, brought about by manipulating us all into accepting a new world order in the guise of saving the planet from environmental catastrophe.
Global Security Programme
In 1994 he unveiled his plans for his Global Security Programme to the US Council on Foreign Relations. These included a tax on conventional arms production and empowering the UN to fund new UN agencies and authorities which would be part of a new world system. His plans have been endorsed by many world political and spiritual leaders.
The launch of his programme was basically a world government planning session led by Gorbachev and it was so successful it’s now an annual event. His vision is to reinvent the world through unity in diversity. A new international law requiring total allegiance would cover rich and poor, cultural differences and selected religious beliefs. His web site states:
We need a new system of values, a system of the organic unity between mankind and nature and the ethic of global responsibility.
The Earth Charter/The Rio Earth Summit 1992
Gorbachev’s intention is to use man’s concern for the environment to further his world government agenda. He has admitted that the environmental crisis is the cornerstone for the new world order. Environment is the one issue every nation is concerned about. Global environmental laws would be relatively easy to ratify.
The environmental vision is the Earth Charter, and has been dubbed ‘Gorbachev’s Baby’, even though it was initiated and perpetuated by Maurice Strong (founder of the Earth Council) and endorsed strongly by then US Vice-President Al Gore. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles are strong supporters.
The Earth Charter was the result of UN summits and international meetings, many organised by Maurice Strong. These included the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Besides advocating any means possible to halt the destruction of the environment, UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali remarked:
The spirit of Rio must create a new form of good citizenship . . . To the ancients, the Nile was a god to be venerated, as was the Rhine, an infinite source of European myths, or the Amazonian forest, the mother of forests. Throughout the world, nature was the abode of the divinities that gave the forest, the desert or the mountains a personality which commanded worship and respect. The Earth had a soul. To find that soul again, to give it life, that is the essence of Rio.
Other events werethe Global Forum (1992) (for NGOs that wanted the Earth Summit to go further in protecting ‘Mother Earth’) and the Rio+5 (1997) at which the Earth Charter was presented.
The Earth Charter has spiritual as well as political implications. It presents as a kind of Bill of Rights for mankind, but as Gary Kah remarks in ‘The New World Religion,’ if implemented, the environment (as an entity) would have far greater rights than people.
According to Gary Kah on His Hope For The World website:
(Gorbachev) came to the United States to establish the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, better known as The Gorbachev Foundation . . . Gorbachev is systematically unveiling his blueprint for a world government in the twenty-first century. This blueprint, as we shall see, involves manipulating the earth's inhabitants into accepting a new world order in the name of saving the planet from environmental catastrophe.
In order to accomplish his goal, Gorbachev is calling for a global perestroika, a complete restructuring of our world and lives - including our economy, political system, and religious views.
World Conference on Global Governance (1998)
The purpose of the world conference called by the UN some years after the initial Earth Summit, was to agree the recommendations so they could be implemented by the turn of the century. These recommendations have far-reaching results, such as loss of national sovereignty, property rights, individual freedom, etc, all for the sake of saving the environment. Gary Kah, in the same book, published in 1999, said:
If the Earth Charter and its supporting programs are implemented, sovereign nations would no longer exist – at least not in the traditional sense. Private property and the ability to choose what to do with your land would be severely limited. The right to decide your child’s schooling, and what your child is taught – even at home – would be restricted. This state control would also extend into the realm of personal beliefs. Christianity – saying that Jesus Christ is the only way to reconciliation to God – would not likely be tolerated; in fact, it might be made a crime.
Just 11 years into the 21st century, we’re seeing some of what he said take place.
Tony Blair
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation promotes respect and understanding between the world’s religions through education and multi-faith action. His foundation puts multi-faith at the heart of globalisation. Tony Blair has worked with Bill Clinton and more recently with Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Church) – Warren’s known as ‘America’s pastor.’
Global citizens
The new world order depends on global co-operation. The environment crisis, the need for a stable international financial system, the quest for lasting peace, the push to eliminate world hunger – these are all unifying issues. It is thought that if man was unified around these, the ‘planetary shift in consciousness’ might be realised. Alice Bailey identified (via her spirit guide) three institutions which would be the ‘agents of change’ – Freemasonry, Education and the Apostate Church.
Babylon and Rome
As good as the motivation of some might be, once again man can be seen to be acting independently of God in seeking to build a city and to make a name for himself.
Western culture today has rightly been compared to that of biblical Rome. The birth of Christianity coincided with the world dominance of the Roman Empire. Here at Christian Spectrum we believe that Rome was simply a further manifestation of ancient Babylon.
Dr Peter Jones says:
If ancient Rome is the biblical paradigm for the coming planetary empire, then the Bible hardly leaves us in the dark as to what the future holds. In understanding Rome, we can understand the essential nature of the global village.
Rome thrived on bread, circuses and totalitarian control - excessive wealth, entertainment and the police state - but ultimately collapsed from moral failure. Rome carried everything to an extreme - feminism, all forms of sexuality, adultery, divorce, abortion, exercise and human sacrifice for sport.
Rome was the home of all things spiritual - a meeting place of the gods. The worship of the great mother goddess and the power of the occult. There were few atheists in Rome and politicians were pagan priests. Rome embraced the mysticism of the East.
The mystery religions flourished, particularly the worship of Isis. Syncretism and pantheism thrived. Religious tolerance was an accepted way of life apart, that is, from when it came to Christianity. Sounds familiar?
Rome had developed the largest free trade market the world had ever known with the help of the Greek language and culture - think of what is achievable today through means of the English language. Travel and communication had mushroomed under Roman rule - think of the Internet and satellite technology today. Rome thought and acted globally and we would suggest was a microcosm of what we see taking place today.
One world religion
World peace, environmental harmony, an end to world poverty – all these are things we have a God-given mandate to pursue, as good stewards of the earth. We need to be discerning, however, since we know from the scriptures that these things will only come in their fullness when Jesus returns to rule the earth. The end we long for could not be more different than that of those caught up in the sinister agenda at work which we’ve addressed in this article
As radical theologians were declaring the death of God and the Bible in the 60's others were announcing the return of the gods and goddesses of ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome.
Today's theologians declare that religion is not in decline but simply in a process of reformation. As in ancient Rome social and religious forces have joined together - Western capitalism with Eastern meditation. With the rebirth of pagan goddess worship and Christianity in decline, or at least being re-imagined, we are, we would suggest, set to see the great apostasy spoken about by Jesus (Matt 24:12) and the harlot One World Religion under the Antichrist.
................................................................................................................................
Part 1 in this series discusses General Introduction
Part 2 in this series discusses One World Religion and the New Spirituality
The rise of false christs and prophets will help establish alliances between all the false religions which include the occult, New Age, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and liberal ‘Christianity’ with a commitment to moral tolerance that paves the way for a one world religion . . .