NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Demonic Origins Of New Ageism And Yoga
Aired: 2020-11-25
Duration: 40:09


=== New Age False Teachers (14:29) ===

[00:00:00]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:00:04]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:00:11]  All right, this is Pastor Joel Webbin with another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:16]  Today we have as a very special guest Doreen Virtue.
[00:00:20]  We're going to be talking about New Ageism.
[00:00:23]  And she has come out of the New Age movement, used to not only be a connoisseur, but a leader in the movement.
[00:00:28]  And God has done a remarkable work in her life.
[00:00:31]  She helps many.
[00:00:34]  People in that movement and Christians who have come out of that as a discernment minister of sorts, very similar to things that Kosti Hinn or Justin Peters would do, helping people recognize false teachings that are often so subtle and creep into even the church.
[00:00:51]  And so that's some of what I'd love to talk about today.
[00:00:53]  So without further ado, Doreen Virtue, would you just tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe even a little bit of your testimony and how Christ saved you?
[00:01:01]  Absolutely.
[00:01:02]  Thank you, Pastor Joel.
[00:01:04]  Thank you, everyone at Right Response Ministries.
[00:01:06]  It's an honor to be with you.
[00:01:07]  And it is a miracle that I'm saved.
[00:01:10]  I mean, all salvation is a miracle, but I was a very hard case.
[00:01:15]  I was raised in Christian science with just the heresy that Jesus is just a man, a role model.
[00:01:23]  And that's what I believed.
[00:01:24]  And yet, my mother told my family that we were Christians.
[00:01:28]  We always had a King James Bible on the shelf, we would read from it.
[00:01:31]  We went to church every Sunday, testimony meetings on Wednesdays.
[00:01:35]  And then, as an adult, I segued right into the New Age, which is basically it's all Gnosticism.
[00:01:42]  Christian science is Gnosticism, New Ages Gnosticism, and it borrows from all different cultures.
[00:01:49]  It borrows from Hinduism, from shamanic, you know, Native American spirituality, from ancient Celtic spirituality, you name it.
[00:01:57]  And it puts a little bit of Christianity and also mystical Catholicism in it.
[00:02:03]  And so I was always identified myself as a Christian.
[00:02:07]  I called myself an open minded Christian.
[00:02:10]  I thought of born again Christians as being fear based, negative.
[00:02:15]  They were asleep and we were woke.
[00:02:18]  And I would listen to Christian radio and then I would also listen to Hindu gurus.
[00:02:23]  You know, I was mixing, trying to mix all this, and they don't mix, of course, with my main message today.
[00:02:30]  And I heard an Alistair Begg sermon in January 2015 that pierced me and really started my road to sanctification and salvation.
[00:02:41]  He was doing an expository sermon on 2 Timothy 4 that in the end times people.
[00:02:46]  Will want their itching ears tickled by false pastors, false teachers.
[00:02:52]  And he listed out what a false teacher was, and it just got me.
[00:02:58]  He was talking about me, and I realized I was a false teacher.
[00:03:01]  I went home and told my husband, I said, you know what, let's go to church, not a new age church like we've been going to.
[00:03:08]  Let's go to a real church, I called it.
[00:03:12]  And that was really what saved me was reading the Bible.
[00:03:17]  And when I got to Deuteronomy 18 10 through 12, The list of things that Moses listed that the Israelites were not to do as they went into Canaan, he was describing me and all of the methods I was using mediumship, divination, interpreting omens.
[00:03:40]  And so then, of course, Deuteronomy 18 says God finds people who do those things an abomination, detestable.
[00:03:49]  And I had thought, like most New Agers you talk to will say that they're doing God's work.
[00:03:55]  They don't know God.
[00:03:56]  I didn't know God.
[00:03:58]  In the New Age, you think God is an energy.
[00:04:01]  You think of him as the universe.
[00:04:03]  And so I thought I was doing God's work because people in the New Age always told me that I was comforting them and that it was very accurate.
[00:04:13]  And to find out I was actually the opposite, that I was an abomination to God, just broke me like I needed to be broken, humbled me to just the dirt.
[00:04:23]  And I got on my knees and I repented right then.
[00:04:26]  And I just said, I don't know what I'm doing.
[00:04:28]  Obviously, please, Lord Jesus, take over my life, be my Lord and Savior.
[00:04:33]  And I renounced the New Age.
[00:04:35]  I got fired by my publisher.
[00:04:36]  I was the top selling New Age author at that time.
[00:04:39]  Wow.
[00:04:40]  Not to brag, but I was the top, and I was touring with all the same New Age teachers for two decades.
[00:04:49]  You know, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, Marion Williamson, the guy who wrote Conversations with God, the person who was kind of the kingpin of the secret.
[00:05:01]  The law of attraction, all these people were friends, you know.
[00:05:04]  I was touring with them and just walked away from all that.
[00:05:08]  I had a big ranch in Hawaii, 50 acres.
[00:05:11]  My husband and I just left it and moved to the Pacific Northwest with my parents and my mother in law.
[00:05:18]  So we got two houses that were together under one roof.
[00:05:22]  And then, uh, it's just been an interesting ride being a Christian, it's not right, that's for sure.
[00:05:30]  Yeah, it's cost you something, it's actually cost you something.
[00:05:34]  You had to, well, because.
[00:05:36]  You were going against God and you were accumulating fame and fortune and those kinds of things.
[00:05:42]  But I love your testimony because a lot of times there are people who are in the church who would profess to be Christians and perhaps they're an immature believer, but they've never had a real reckoning with the severity of their own sin.
[00:05:57]  They've never come to see their sin as heinous as it is in the sight of God.
[00:06:02]  And I love how you said that it's not just these practices of divination that God detests, but the people.
[00:06:08]  Who actually practice them.
[00:06:09]  I'm always, as a pastor, reminding people when I'm preaching that forever in hell, God will not be punishing the entity of lust.
[00:06:18]  He will be punishing adulterers.
[00:06:20]  He's not going to be punishing the entity or the spirit of murder, but murderers.
[00:06:25]  It is not just the sin, but the sinner that God abhors.
[00:06:30]  And to realize that is coming into Christianity, especially if you've been going against God.
[00:06:39]  It gets worse before it gets better.
[00:06:42]  There's that immediate peace and relief of being adopted as his son or daughter, but it's costly.
[00:06:48]  It's painful.
[00:06:49]  When the Lord reveals your sin to you, it cuts.
[00:06:52]  When Peter was preaching in the New Testament and the book of Acts, it cut men to the heart.
[00:06:58]  It's painful, but it's worth it.
[00:07:03]  Yeah, I always say to people, it's not easy, but it's necessary.
[00:07:07]  Yes.
[00:07:08]  I think Charles Spurgeon used to say, A man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ until he first comes to see the necessity of Christ.
[00:07:17]  And really, seeing the necessity of Christ, much of that is contingent upon seeing the severity of our sin.
[00:07:23]  People won't appreciate the beauty of the good news of the gospel unless they have really come to terms with the bad news of sin.
[00:07:34]  Go ahead.
[00:07:36]  What you're saying, I completely agree with, of course, is the opposite of what New Age teaches.
[00:07:41]  New Age.
[00:07:43]  A lot of New Agers are women, first of all.
[00:07:45]  It's probably 90% women.
[00:07:47]  And a lot of broken women from trauma, abuse, abandonment.
[00:07:53]  And the New Age seems like a promise of propping you up.
[00:07:57]  It offers promises of healing.
[00:08:00]  It offers promises of soulmate love.
[00:08:03]  It offers promises of a life purpose, career, abundance.
[00:08:08]  It's very much focused on money.
[00:08:10]  And it offers all these promises, it's just Genesis 3 to expand it.
[00:08:17]  And so people get into the New Age because they feel bad about themselves.
[00:08:20]  A lot of the people I met who were at my workshops.
[00:08:24]  Were people who told me they were recovering Catholics or former Protestants who felt like the church was beating them up with all fire and damnation.
[00:08:34]  But now I see that it's, when I go to church, you know, when we're visiting different cities, of course, my husband and I are Reformed Baptists now, but when we visit, yeah, we visit sometimes, you know, just an evangelical church and we're shocked.
[00:08:55]  At how lukewarm it is.
[00:08:56]  It's basically the new age.
[00:08:58]  So that's one of the reasons I spend almost every day warning people that the new age has crept into the church.
[00:09:05]  And it's very dangerous.
[00:09:07]  It's leading people away from the true Jesus and to the prophesied false Christ.
[00:09:13]  I apologize for my dog.
[00:09:15]  It's okay.
[00:09:16]  It's okay.
[00:09:17]  So you said that a lot of people who seem to, the new age seems to be appealing to them, attractive to them.
[00:09:24]  It's less about them looking for a savior because they actually recognize themselves to be.
[00:09:29]  A sinner, but it's more so wanting to be saved from their feelings of guilt, their feelings of insignificance.
[00:09:37]  It's wanting abundance, it's wanting fulfillment, significance, importance, value.
[00:09:43]  And so it seems like the new age almost preys on people who have heard the gospel and have heard true biblical preaching, but have not, I don't know, who have been offended by the gospel.
[00:09:58]  They don't like the idea that they're a sinner.
[00:10:00]  And the new age sweeps in and says, oh, no, no, you're not.
[00:10:03]  You're totally fine because you were making it sound like a lot of the people who kind of came into the movement were people who were fleeing the church, so to speak.
[00:10:13]  Is that true?
[00:10:15]  Yeah, absolutely true.
[00:10:17]  And so the New Age even goes farther than that and teaches there's no such thing as sin.
[00:10:24]  The only sin is a negative thought here on earth.
[00:10:27]  Wow.
[00:10:28]  And that heaven and hell are metaphors, but at the same time, they also teach that there's a literal heaven.
[00:10:34]  And they go on near death experience reports rather than the Bible to back up their universalist, pluralistic claims that everyone goes to heaven, that all paths lead to heaven.
[00:10:45]  You see, Oprah and the darling of evangelical circles, Richard Rohr, says this that all paths lead to heaven.
[00:10:56]  You just need to be a good person and you go to heaven.
[00:10:59]  The New Age defines a new person as someone who recycles and is good to animals.
[00:11:04]  That's how they do it.
[00:11:05]  I knew you said that you're going to heaven.
[00:11:07]  Yeah, so a Californian.
[00:11:09]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:10]  And heaven is a, they believe it's just a metaphor for having a negative life and that you attracted those negative experiences from having negative thoughts.
[00:11:22]  That makes sense.
[00:11:23]  As you were talking, it just made me think of 1 John 1, verse 8 if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
[00:11:32]  Verse 9, but if we confess our sins, he that is Christ is.
[00:11:36]  Faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
[00:11:41]  And then the last verse of 1 John 1, verse 10: if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
[00:11:51]  And I've noticed that even in the church, not only a message that says that you, verse 8 says, if we have no sin, so like that we currently, presently are free from sin.
[00:12:05]  That's one message.
[00:12:06]  But verse 10 says, if we say we have not sinned, that we've never sinned, even our past.
[00:12:11]  And I've noticed that so much of what we see in our culture today is there's a fight for controlling a narrative.
[00:12:20]  And I think that whether it's new age or anything, that's.
[00:12:23]  What we do is we impute to someone, we don't just console someone.
[00:12:28]  A false teacher doesn't just console someone that they currently don't have sin, but they equip them with a new lens, a new frame of reinterpreting their entire history, their entire past, like this new narrative now, to where not only are they reassured that they currently are free from sin, but they're now convinced that they've actually never sinned.
[00:12:48]  They've always been a victim, or they've always, it's always been something else, or really, like you said, the only real sin, the only real crime that they've ever committed is.
[00:12:57]  Just thinking too lowly of themselves and not believing in themselves and not believing that they are valuable and worth it, and those kinds of things.
[00:13:06]  And it's sad to see that that message is not too rare in pulpits.
[00:13:12]  No, I would say it's growing in popularity.
[00:13:16]  Growing up in Christian science, and then unfortunately I passed the deception along, that we took Genesis 1 26 27 about the image of God, Imago Deo, and we twisted it to say that because God is sinless, God's healthy, God's perfect, whole, and complete.
[00:13:32]  Therefore, a true self is sinless.
[00:13:35]  A true self is.
[00:13:36]  And so we just disregard, we've swept right by the fall.
[00:13:40]  Right.
[00:13:41]  Right.
[00:13:41]  The first two chapters of the Bible and from Genesis 3 on, you know, the Bible got it wrong.
[00:13:47]  So, yeah, I understand.
[00:13:49]  So, another thing I wanted to pick up on that you said earlier as we were discussing, you said that women seem to be the kind of the primary clientele, if you will, for.
[00:14:02]  New ageism?
[00:14:03]  Why particularly do you think that is?
[00:14:05]  You were talking about maybe abuse in their past or things like that.
[00:14:08]  Why is it that women seem to be more attracted to the message of, because as a man, I think, you know, like, you know, the idea that I've never done anything wrong and that I'm significant and valuable, like, that sounds like a universal message, but I agree with you.
[00:14:25]  It does seem to predominantly prey on women.

=== Prone to Deception (03:14) ===

[00:14:30]  Why is that?
[00:14:30]  Why do women seem to be more attracted to the new age message?
[00:14:36]  Well, I think it's the Eve syndrome.
[00:14:38]  I think that we, as the second creative, the creation order, we're more prone to being deceived.
[00:14:45]  Yoga classes, same thing, which is very new age.
[00:14:48]  We'll talk about yoga, hopefully.
[00:14:50]  I was going to ask you about yoga.
[00:14:51]  I wanted to talk about that.
[00:14:53]  They're probably 90% women and then maybe 5% men who are preying on those women.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:59]  Yeah.
[00:15:01]  And so we're more prone to deception.
[00:15:04]  I mean, I have my theories.
[00:15:05]  My theories are that because we have to have nonverbal communication with our babies.
[00:15:10]  That perhaps maybe we're a little more prone to focusing on feelings.
[00:15:15]  Yeah, maybe.
[00:15:17]  It's all about with mystical Catholicism, which is very highly revered in the New Age and in the lukewarm progressive churches, is about having experiences way more than what Scripture says.
[00:15:32]  Right.
[00:15:33]  Right.
[00:15:33]  You're right.
[00:15:34]  Yeah, that's super common.
[00:15:37]  So, who are some people, maybe as like a, I don't know, as a loving warning to some of our listeners?
[00:15:44]  Who are a couple people who you would say, I read their writings or I listen to their podcast, and it's just drenched in New Age thought and ideas.
[00:15:56]  But this person professes to be a Christian, and I see lots of Christians today following their teaching.
[00:16:04]  Is there anyone like that?
[00:16:05]  Because there are some people, it's like, I know that person is New Age.
[00:16:07]  I know that person's not even really propping themselves up as a Christian.
[00:16:12]  So for me, as a pastor, I'm always concerned for the sheep.
[00:16:15]  With it seems like the most dangerous lies are the ones that are the most subtle, the ones that creep in.
[00:16:20]  And so, are there any people right now that you're like, man, a lot of your ministry, I warn people about so and so or this particular book?
[00:16:29]  Is there anything like that that you could cue us in on?
[00:16:34]  Well, I'll first start with the overall umbrella.
[00:16:38]  Phil Johnson of New Apostolic Reformation, Bethel, I mean, he's hands down, he openly admits that he uses New Age methods and.
[00:16:49]  Terminology.
[00:16:51]  In fact, he's written in When Heaven Meets Earth that he thinks the New Age stole their pagan practices from Christianity, which, you know, what?
[00:17:01]  And so anyone in the NAR and also Word of Faith is clearly teaching New Age, what's called the Law of Attraction, the Name It and Claim It.
[00:17:13]  Joyce Meyer is one.
[00:17:15]  Of course, Joel Osteen, T.T. Jakes, Kepler Dollar, all the folks that we should be staying away from.
[00:17:23]  We've listened to the sermon.
[00:17:24]  Ministers like yourself who warn us.
[00:17:28]  And also, as I mentioned, Richard Rohr and the whole progressive Christianity movement.
[00:17:34]  If you go on, and I don't recommend this unless someone's really grounded in the word, but go on progressivechristianity.org and read their doctrine statements.

=== The Kenosis Debate (05:31) ===

[00:17:44]  And it begins with that Jesus is just a man, a role model, a moral teacher.
[00:17:50]  They completely discard the Bible as being inerrant God's word.
[00:17:54]  And it just, it even goes downhill from there.
[00:17:56]  It's heresy.
[00:17:57]  Yes.
[00:17:57]  And it's new age.
[00:17:58]  Heresy.
[00:17:59]  Because in the New Age, we're taught that the Bible was tampered with by the Roman Catholic Church to try to control us.
[00:18:06]  There's this whole story about the Council of Nicaea, the Ecumenical Council of Constantine.
[00:18:12]  He had it out for us, so he took out references to reincarnation, but he left a few clues with the spirit of Eliza.
[00:18:20]  I mean, just complete fabricated stories in the New Age to keep you from reading the Bible or trusting it.
[00:18:26]  Wow.
[00:18:27]  Yeah, you're right.
[00:18:27]  So a lot of those.
[00:18:29]  Prosperity preachers that you named, I've noticed, and we'll talk about this when I'm honored that you're going to have me also with your show.
[00:18:37]  And we're going to be talking about Christology.
[00:18:39]  And one of the doctrines that has seeped into the church today is the kenosis of Christ.
[00:18:44]  So looking at like Philippians chapter two, he emptied himself.
[00:18:47]  So Paul's talking about the kind of mind, the mindset that Christians should have, a mindset of humility.
[00:18:53]  And so he sets Christ up as the premier example of humility.
[00:18:58]  And he talks about You know, in Philippians chapter 2, that Christ did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
[00:19:10]  And, you know, we also have that with Mark, I believe it's chapter 10 or chapter 12, where the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.
[00:19:18]  And so, what a lot of heretical teachers have done with the doctrine of the kenosis, the emptying of Christ, is they've looked at Philippians 2 and they've said, well, you know, Jesus.
[00:19:30]  He didn't count equality with God, the Father, as something to be grasped.
[00:19:33]  But what the language literally means there is not something to be clinged to.
[00:19:37]  So, Paul's not saying that God the Father was superior to Christ in his essence, in his divine nature, and Jesus, the Son of God, was looking to God the Father and realized, oh, I can't even achieve or attain to your status.
[00:19:53]  No, no, the language is not grasp or attain, it's cling to it.
[00:19:57]  It means to hold on.
[00:19:59]  And so, basically, what Paul is saying is that Jesus did have equality with the Father and does have equality with the Father, and because he was equal with the Father, He didn't view that equality as something that needed to be preserved, it needed to be clinged to, but rather he was willing to empty himself.
[00:20:16]  But Orthodox teaching says that it's empty, it's subtraction by addition.
[00:20:23]  That emptying of the divine nature, it's not a real emptying, it's simply the Son adding to himself a second nature, namely the human nature.
[00:20:31]  As Augustine said, it's divinity wrapped in flesh.
[00:20:35]  And so there's no less of the divine nature of Christ in the incarnation.
[00:20:41]  All of God, very God to very God, very light to very light, as the Nicene Creed says.
[00:20:45]  It's the whole God man, but with man being added.
[00:20:49]  And so it's subtraction by addition, but it's not in objective terms.
[00:20:54]  There's no real subtraction.
[00:20:56]  There's no less status between the Son and the Father.
[00:21:00]  Jesus was and is equal to the Father.
[00:21:03]  But what prosperity teachers do is they talk about the kenosis.
[00:21:07]  And so basically, what Bill Johnson, especially, what I've noticed he'll do is he'll say, You know, Jesus completely emptied himself, right?
[00:21:14]  Because if Jesus was doing all these miracles and if he was living a sinless life and if he was teaching the truth of God, but he was doing all this as God, well, then we could never look at that example and follow it because he's cheating in essence because he's got the divine nature.
[00:21:29]  So what Jesus did was he showed us the example of being a perfect man by emptying in real terms, actually forfeiting his divinity.
[00:21:37]  And so everything Jesus did was not, none of it was coming from the divine nature.
[00:21:42]  It was all coming from just a reliance on.
[00:21:44]  The Holy Spirit, and you and I, we can do that very same thing.
[00:21:48]  So there's not one thing that we ever see Jesus teaching or doing or miracles that he's performing that Christians should not aspire to today.
[00:21:58]  And boom, it sounds really good, but immediately what seeps in is this mentality of, like Bill Johnson calls it, the Jesus theology.
[00:22:06]  And so any kind of teaching that doesn't prescribe that we can do exactly what Jesus is doing, he's going to reject and say, well, that's not.
[00:22:15]  Bible, that's not Jesus.
[00:22:16]  And so then you have a bunch of Christians going around saying, My life should literally look exactly like the Son of God's life here on earth, which is, it sounds good.
[00:22:27]  That's just, it's too black and white of a statement.
[00:22:30]  Yes, we should follow the example of Christ, but no, we're not going to be multiplying food and feeding 5,000 people.
[00:22:36]  That's just, that's insane.
[00:22:39]  And so I've just noticed it seeped in so subtly and it sounds so good and, and, A lot of Christians seem to be falling for it.
[00:22:49]  Do you have any comments or follow up or thoughts on that?
[00:22:52]  Yeah, I mean, I was shocked when I left the New Age because I toured on stages of mind body spirit festivals for 22 years.
[00:23:01]  And when I first saw Bethel TV and I saw Heidi Johnson and some of the prophets and prophetesses up there, I said, that's exactly what I left.
[00:23:11]  That's a mind body spirit festival.
[00:23:13]  And there's no difference.

=== Prosperity Gospel Appeal (03:36) ===

[00:23:15]  These prophets.
[00:23:17]  First of all, they have nothing to do with biblical prophets.
[00:23:21]  If you compare them, which we're supposed to do, like Bereans, compare everything to scripture, biblical prophets didn't tell people about their soulmate or their life purpose or anything like that.
[00:23:33]  They were not stroking people's egos, they were calling people to repent and to come to the covenant, or destruction would happen horrible destruction.
[00:23:43]  So, when people call themselves prophets or self appointed apostles, and especially when they have schools where you can buy a certificate to be a certified prophet, certified apostle, it's so much what Martin Luther was dealing with.
[00:23:59]  Yeah, you're right, indulgences.
[00:24:02]  Indulgences, yes, right.
[00:24:04]  Your relatives out of purgatory.
[00:24:07]  Can you hear their screams in purgatory?
[00:24:10]  Every time a coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory springs.
[00:24:16]  Yeah.
[00:24:17]  The teachings of Tetzel that Luther was combating.
[00:24:20]  It's sad.
[00:24:21]  It's charlatan work.
[00:24:22]  It really is just taking advantage.
[00:24:26]  Do you think a lot of women seem to be attracted to the New Age movement?
[00:24:31]  Taking aside men and women, do you think young versus old, rich versus poor?
[00:24:37]  Have you noticed anything like that, or in that sense, does it seem to be just a blanket universal?
[00:24:42]  Like, were there a lot of poor people who were just really attracted, or were there a lot of successful, powerful, rich people?
[00:24:49]  You know what I mean?
[00:24:51]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:52]  I toured all around the world.
[00:24:54]  I toured, you know, South Africa, all around Asia.
[00:24:58]  I was in Australia all the time, touring in North America, you name it.
[00:25:03]  I was giving workshops there, and everywhere I went consistently, it was women.
[00:25:09]  Of all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different ages.
[00:25:14]  I mean, they'd be from preteen to senior citizens everywhere I go.
[00:25:19]  And so I don't think it had any kind of class divisions at all.
[00:25:24]  I mean, I think so, but there were very wealthy people and celebrities at my workshops consistently.
[00:25:30]  What do you think is the appeal for somebody who already has fortune, already has fame?
[00:25:36]  Is it a way of just maybe they're not trying?
[00:25:39]  So for some people, maybe new age, like prosperity preachers, It's a lotto ticket.
[00:25:46]  It's an opportunity, a hope, a chance to gain wealth or to gain the approval of man.
[00:25:52]  But would you say that maybe for those who already have fame and fortune, that prosperity preaching, which is really just New Ageism in the church, would you say that maybe the appeal is just a way to assuage the conscience, to deal with guilt?
[00:26:09]  Like, I already am famous and wealthy, and by doing this, I also get to be.
[00:26:16]  A good person and not feel bad about my celebrity status, or did I have more than others?
[00:26:22]  Do you think that might be the appeal?
[00:26:23]  I think that's part of it.
[00:26:25]  You rarely hear anyone admitting they feel guilty in the new age.
[00:26:31]  The thing with the new age is that it's mind control to stay positive 100% of the time.
[00:26:37]  So your relationships are super superficial.
[00:26:40]  You would never go to someone and admit you have a problem or that you felt bad even because they would say you're being negative and they would chastise you.
[00:26:47]  Really, what was going on with the new age was just a hunger for God.

=== Mixing Faith and Yoga (10:58) ===

[00:26:52]  I mean, it was a real existential emptiness looking back.
[00:26:56]  And so, trying, I mean, I don't like that, that, that, where they say the God shaped hole.
[00:27:03]  It really wasn't.
[00:27:04]  It was just people trying to fill themselves up with empty promises and externals and trying to find love in a divine sense and looking for love in a fleshly sense.
[00:27:18]  Gotcha.
[00:27:18]  All right.
[00:27:19]  So, let's do it.
[00:27:20]  You brought it up already.
[00:27:21]  Let's do the yoga talk.
[00:27:23]  I listened to you with Ali Beth Stuckey talking about yoga, and I thought it was so interesting.
[00:27:28]  And I've had those thoughts myself with my wife.
[00:27:31]  I mean, it's been a few years now, but I was like, babe, I don't want you doing yoga.
[00:27:37]  I think there's something else that you can do to have some cardio, you know.
[00:27:42]  And so it just, especially, my wife never went to a studio or anything like that, but especially, but it seems like from listening to you, even some of the poses, but especially people go to a studio where, I mean, the instructor is, it's a religious, it seems like a religious ceremony.
[00:27:58]  So what are your thoughts on yoga?
[00:28:01]  Christian women, I'm just stretching, Doreen.
[00:28:03]  It's nothing religious.
[00:28:04]  What would you say to them?
[00:28:06]  Oh, so much.
[00:28:09]  So it's not just stretching.
[00:28:10]  It's not just exercise.
[00:28:12]  It is a religion.
[00:28:13]  It is Hinduism.
[00:28:14]  And then pluralists go crazy when I say that.
[00:28:16]  And they're like, well, what's wrong with Hinduism?
[00:28:18]  You're being a bigot.
[00:28:20]  And when I point them to John 14, 6, when Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life, no one gets to the Father except through me.
[00:28:28]  New Agers then point to near death experiences.
[00:28:31]  The reports say anyone goes to heaven.
[00:28:33]  And of course, we know that's demonic deception.
[00:28:36]  Yoga is a way to worship the 330 million Hindu gods and goddesses.
[00:28:44]  And people who are from India, who are true yogis, are shocked that American so called Christians would indulge in this.
[00:28:53]  That just doesn't even make sense to them.
[00:28:55]  So there's this thing called holy yoga or Christian yoga, which is a farce because you can't take paganism and scrub it.
[00:29:03]  It's like saying that there's Christian astrology or Christian Ouija board.
[00:29:09]  In that we're told, I mean, our purpose is to honor God, to glorify God in all things we do.
[00:29:15]  And yoga in no way, shape, or form glorifies God.
[00:29:18]  We have a jealous God who will not share his glory with anyone, especially idols.
[00:29:25]  And when you do yoga, you are normally doing the sun salutation series.
[00:29:30]  And that includes three poses called the warrior poses.
[00:29:33]  In Sanskrit, they're called Vera Bhadrasana.
[00:29:37]  And Vera Bhadras is a demon, a Hindu demon, who murdered.
[00:29:43]  One of their deities, and the three warrior poses are acting out the murder scene where you are playing the part of a murderous demon.
[00:29:51]  Now, how is that glorifying God?
[00:29:53]  And there's ways to stretch.
[00:29:55]  There's a friend of mine named Caitlin Engelbert who has a yoga, who was a holy yoga instructor until she was convicted that she couldn't mix Christianity with yoga.
[00:30:06]  And so she has a YouTube channel called Non Yoga Stretches now.
[00:30:10]  But stretching is normal.
[00:30:12]  Arms out straight in a warrior pose, that's not natural.
[00:30:16]  That's not normal.
[00:30:17]  And another friend of mine who's an ex yoga teacher, Christian, she has a study on her TruthBehindYoga.com website that showed that the average person starts yoga for innocent reasons, stretching, exercise, and within about six months, they are inculcated into the Hindu spiritual beliefs.
[00:30:38]  It's just, it works on you.
[00:30:40]  They're also introducing it into schools.
[00:30:43]  There's a Hindu.
[00:30:44]  That is paying schools money to put yoga into the schools where prayer is not allowed in schools.
[00:30:50]  And yoga is Hindu prayer.
[00:30:52]  So it's outrageous.
[00:30:53]  No, no Christian should be doing yoga.
[00:30:56]  Yeah, that's really helpful.
[00:30:58]  Thank you.
[00:30:58]  Thank you for warning our audience.
[00:31:00]  I've felt that way for a while.
[00:31:02]  I remember I included my commentary on yoga as a portion of one of my sermons about two years ago.
[00:31:08]  And I had a lot of women who were very frustrated with me in our church.
[00:31:13]  So I'm glad that they get to hear it from someone besides me.
[00:31:16]  So God bless you for saying that.
[00:31:18]  You know, I did yoga for 20 years in the new age.
[00:31:21]  I've done my research.
[00:31:23]  I would never do yoga now as a born again Christian.
[00:31:25]  Never.
[00:31:26]  Because I love God.
[00:31:27]  And Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey me.
[00:31:30]  And it's just a chance to use your body like an idol like that.
[00:31:34]  Yeah.
[00:31:34]  What fellowship does light have with darkness?
[00:31:36]  I kept thinking of that verse also.
[00:31:38]  It's just, there are some things, because of the doctrine of common grace, because of the Imago Dei, God does create man in his image.
[00:31:48]  That image is marred, it's tarnished because of original sin, but it's not utterly lost.
[00:31:54]  And so there is an image of God that remains in every single human being.
[00:31:58]  And so even the unbeliever, because of the Imago Dei, because of common grace, we're capable of doing.
[00:32:04]  Wonderful things.
[00:32:05]  A non Christian could build an incredible suspension bridge that I, as a Christian, knowing that that person is at enmity with God and their heart of hearts hates God, because they've still, even as an unbeliever, are made in the image of God, I'm going to trust that suspension bridge and I would be willing to drive my family over it.
[00:32:24]  And so there are some things because of common grace that they're not Christian necessarily, but all truth is God's truth.
[00:32:32]  And so I always want Christians to realize all truth is God's truth.
[00:32:36]  And so even a non Christian can.
[00:32:38]  Build a suspension bridge.
[00:32:39]  They can do many wonderful things.
[00:32:41]  And as Christians, we can discern and see okay, that's ultimately a non Christian may be doing it, but that non Christian has simply discovered something that ultimately belongs to God.
[00:32:51]  It's all truth is God's truth.
[00:32:53]  But there are certain things that do not belong to God.
[00:32:57]  And so I think Christians have to keep that because a lot of Christians will think, well, let's redeem it, right?
[00:33:01]  So there's things that we need to preserve, there's things that we need to redeem, and there are other things that we need to entirely reject.
[00:33:11]  And discard.
[00:33:12]  And I think Christians sometimes have a hard, they have difficulty with that rejection piece.
[00:33:17]  They're like, well, you know, why can't yoga be redeemed?
[00:33:21]  And, you know, like you've already said so wonderfully, yoga is not like a suspension bridge.
[00:33:26]  It's not mathematics, a universal truth.
[00:33:28]  It ultimately stems from God who is truth.
[00:33:31]  But rather, these are physical poses.
[00:33:34]  So even you take the instructor and the running commentary, you know, blasphemous commentary out of it, and you're still doing it, you're just doing it in your home.
[00:33:41]  It's just the physical posture.
[00:33:42]  Well, just the physical posture is still a position of worship to false deities.
[00:33:48]  There's no redeeming of that.
[00:33:51]  And so, when I heard you say that, when I was just looking at some of your content, I was so encouraged to hear that because it just gave me another weapon in my arsenal to be able to try to encourage and plead with Christians to walk away.
[00:34:06]  So, thank you for that.
[00:34:08]  Any other thoughts?
[00:34:10]  Yeah, Enneagram is also in the same category.
[00:34:14]  Let's do that.
[00:34:15]  That would be wonderful because that's like the new, I feel like that's the gospel 2.0 for a lot of Christians today.
[00:34:21]  I hear all the time about the Enneagram.
[00:34:23]  What are your thoughts?
[00:34:25]  Well, it's, you know, let's look at the roots, the basis of it.
[00:34:28]  Some people would discount the basis of something, but some would, like me, want to take a look at it.
[00:34:33]  So it's a geographical shape, I mean, a geometrical shape that was added to by a man named Claudio Naranjo, who openly admits, and I've got a video of him admitting this, that he found the Nine personality enneotypes through automatic writing, which is an occult practice of channeling, where you empty your mind, you go into a trance, and you write down whatever comes in.
[00:34:58]  So, the basis of the enneagram is a cult, and that should be enough for any Bible believing Christian to reject.
[00:35:04]  But let's just say they say, well, that doesn't matter.
[00:35:07]  Let's look at the effects of the enneagram.
[00:35:10]  First of all, you've got pride.
[00:35:13]  How many times have you heard people bragging and boasting about what enneagram number they are?
[00:35:17]  I have heard.
[00:35:18]  You know, I'm an eight.
[00:35:20]  I'm wonderful.
[00:35:21]  And I hate ones.
[00:35:22]  And my husband's a six.
[00:35:23]  Oh, that explains everything.
[00:35:24]  They're talking like people who follow astrology and they're bragging about being a Virgo or Scorpio.
[00:35:30]  I mean, they're identifying as something other than a child of God, as an adopted son of Christ.
[00:35:38]  This is not biblical.
[00:35:39]  And so then people go to, well, the benefits.
[00:35:42]  And I hear this all the time about Christians who want to defend using New Age methods.
[00:35:49]  And they always say, but it brings me comfort.
[00:35:51]  It helps me in my relationship, helps me to understand myself.
[00:35:55]  But, but, but.
[00:35:56]  But we can't justify sin.
[00:35:59]  There's no benefit that can justify any kind of sin.
[00:36:03]  And so hopefully, any Christian will be convicted by hearing this and will stay far, far away from Enneagram because it's being popularized by Richard Rohr, who is a universalist, a perennialist.
[00:36:18]  He teaches that all people, no matter what, go to heaven.
[00:36:23]  And that's dangerous.
[00:36:24]  That could lead unsaved people to hell, that kind of teaching.
[00:36:29]  Yeah, it's become incredibly popular in the church today.
[00:36:32]  I hear Christians always talking about, you know, what's your, you know, what, what, what, I don't even know the word for the Enneagram, but what, what don't you call each of the nine things?
[00:36:42]  Enneotypes.
[00:36:43]  Enneotypes, okay.
[00:36:44]  So I hear that kind of language and those conversations quite often.
[00:36:48]  And to me, it always seems like an excuse to, to, well, because I'm this, I can't really be expected to overcome this particular weakness, this particular sin.
[00:37:00]  It's all, it almost seems to be, Used often as a way of justifying certain sins.
[00:37:06]  Whereas we don't have nine Bibles, you know, written to nine different personality types.
[00:37:11]  We have one Bible, and it seems as though God has His final word to all people, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of gender, regardless of personality type.
[00:37:23]  It just seems like it's just one more way to divide people and to, in some sense, come up with justifications for those parts of our hearts and our lives that aren't.
[00:37:35]  In line with God's word.
[00:37:37]  And so I've always been kind of concerned about that when I hear people, well, you know, yeah, I show with that, but that's because I'm, you know, blank.
[00:37:46]  And I'm like, what does that have to do with anything?
[00:37:47]  I don't see the relevance.

=== Rejecting Channeled Material (02:18) ===

[00:37:50]  So, all right, well, this is what, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:37:53]  I was just going to say, you know, this channeled material in the church, Jesus calling, I would put that as a top priority for Christians to speak out against.
[00:38:04]  And if anyone's watching or listening and has Jesus calling, Please get rid of it because it contradicts scripture, and that's impossible if it was the real Jesus, because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
[00:38:16]  So, how could he contradict scripture?
[00:38:18]  And Sarah Young, who said she was basically wanting more than the Bible, that the Bible's not sufficient to her.
[00:38:25]  Right.
[00:38:25]  I mean, it's just not a good look.
[00:38:30]  If you ever find the words coming out of your mouth wanting more than the Bible, just go ahead, count backwards from 10, take a break, sit a play out because you're out of line.
[00:38:41]  So, this is what we do, Doreen, typically on our shows.
[00:38:44]  We interview our guests, we have a conversation like we just have, and then at the end, we kind of whet our listeners' appetite by having a couple bonus questions, and then we go ahead and conclude our interview.
[00:38:58]  And so, would you be willing to, after this show, stay back on for maybe just 10 more minutes for a couple bonus questions?
[00:39:05]  I'd love to.
[00:39:06]  Okay, great.
[00:39:07]  So, real quick, as we end the episode, could you let our listeners know how they can follow you, your ministry, keep up with you, and the things that you're doing?
[00:39:16]  Absolutely.
[00:39:17]  My website is DoringVirtue.com.
[00:39:19]  Instagram, DoringVirtue.
[00:39:21]  Facebook and YouTube are Doreen Virtue 4, F O R, Jesus.
[00:39:27]  Great.
[00:39:27]  Thank you, Doreen, for coming on.
[00:39:28]  We really appreciate it.
[00:39:30]  Thank you.
[00:39:31]  Thanks for tuning in to Right Response Ministries.
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