The New Age Movement

[0:00] Genesis chapter 3 starts with verse 1.

[0:10] It talks about the serpent. Now, number one, we see authority.

[0:34] Authority is questioned. Authority is questioned. The source of truth is under attack today. The Bible, the Word of God, the source of truth for mankind, for humankind, is the Word of God, the Word of life.

[0:48] And like it was way back in Genesis 3 verse 1, the Word of God is under attack. Satan questions God's Word. He says, Have God said.

[1:00] Satan questions God's authority. Now, Satan's original name is Lucifer. It means light bearer. He disguises himself, it says in Corinthians, as an angel of light.

[1:15] And he's busy today. Watch out. If you get an angel of light, come and visit you. It might not be one of God's angels. And I want to explore Genesis 3 in the first part here by tying it in with what's happening now on planet Earth in the New Age movement.

[1:40] The New Age movement. Today's New Age movement, the New Age, is really the old lie. It's the same old lie that Satan used in the Garden of Eden.

[1:53] It twists the truth. The New Age movement is really a mishmash of all kinds of ideas and philosophies and belief systems, pagan ideas.

[2:05] There are no moral absolutes. That's what the devil is saying to our world, to our planet today. There's no moral absolutes. The New Age movement.

[2:44] All you need is within. That's what people like Oprah are telling people today in her show and many other voice pieces of the enemy.

[2:57] The New Age is all around you. It's all about you. It's in the airwaves, in the news, in the TV, in the radio, in the world that we live.

[3:07] It's conditioning our planet, getting the planet ready. For the New Age, there's no absolute truth. Truth is relative.

[3:18] It's what you interpret it to be. Whatever you call truth is truth for you. It's your subjective experience. Your experience, that's your truth.

[3:33] But, is that right? Are we to follow a fallible human being, ourselves, whose opinions are only as trustworthy as the next person's?

[3:47] Or oughtn't we rather to seek the one who created life, who gave us the source of truth, the ground of authority? It's about authority. And we know in our lawless society where authority is questioned, where even police are not respected and governments, that authority is under attack, but especially the authority of God's Word.

[4:09] The ground of authority is the Word of God. And we need to defend the faith, to earnestly contend for it. Because fact is, people today, we are living in a pagan nation.

[4:22] Australia is not a Christian nation. It never was. There were some elements of faith in the early days, but Australia is a pagan nation.

[4:37] It's a godless nation. And our decline as a nation is the end result of our neglect of the Word of God. That is why we're in such a bother today as a nation.

[4:51] Because we've abandoned the Word of God, the truth of God. Even in the church, in the church world, we need to regain that sense of the authority of Scripture.

[5:01] This is authoritative. This is authoritative. There's no adding to it, taking away from it, redefining it, rephrasing it to make it more palatable.

[5:16] If God says it, that's it. End of story. There's no questioning. There's no entering into dialogue about what it says. If it says something, it says something.

[5:28] There's no question, no excusing, no allowing of sin. If God says it's sin, if God says it's an abomination, it's an abomination. End of story. Period.

[5:39] Full stop. And we are living in a day when there's a neglect of the truth. Hath God said, he's still saying that today to planet Earth, to humankind.

[5:50] Hath God said, the sense of the authority of the Scriptures. We must get back to the Word of God. There is no other foundation. And we need to esteem the Bible, to hold it up, to elevate it.

[6:03] He lifted it up above his name. The Word is so precious. It's so vital. So essential. And we need to esteem it. Historically, prophetically, it's accurate.

[6:15] It's unlike any other book. Unlike any other. Yet sadly, even in some church circles today, some promote absolute unity as more important than absolute truth.

[6:29] Friends, when it's a question between unity and truth, truth must be what we stand upon. Truth is what is vital, what is essential. Sometimes there's a cobbled together kind of unity where people kind of excuse their differences, but when it's at a compromise of the truth of God, then that's dangerous and that's wrong.

[6:57] Yet we're seeing that today where feelings and fellowship are more important than faith and facts. where love, so-called love, is measured not by loyalty to Christ and obedience to His Word, but to a loyalty to a group and a common consensus, to a conformity to the consensus.

[7:19] That's the problem when the authority is questioned. And that's what we're seeing, as I say, even in the church world, even in the church world, where the authority is questioned, then there's danger, great danger.

[7:33] Instead, we should aim for a unity in the truth, a uniting together in the truth, a love for the truth, a unity that is not at the expense of the truth, at the expense of it.

[7:47] So we see in Genesis 3, authority was questioned. The authority came into doubt for mankind. Hath God said, did He really say that?

[8:00] You know, Adam and Eve, and then Adam blames Eve, and then Eve blames the serpent, but friends, hath God said it? If God said it, we need to obey it.

[8:11] We need to believe it. We need to practice it. We need to put it into our action, into our lives. So authority is number one. Secondly, accountability. Accountability was also questioned in Genesis 3.

[8:24] At that beginning time, at the beginning of creation, creation. In Genesis 3, verse 4, and the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. Satan disputes that death was going to be the result of disobedience.

[8:42] He fools her, he tricks her into thinking, there's going to be no bad consequences for your disobedience, for your sin. Accountability. That's another area that is at stake today, in our world today, where there's no accountability.

[8:59] There's no one to give an account to. There's no one to answer to. In the new age. New age is believed in reincarnation. That you're reincarnated after death.

[9:12] That your souls will come back in some other form, in some other body, to continue their spiritual learning, their involvement. They deny the existence of sin, of evil, of hell, and of judgment, of accountability, of someone to answer to.

[9:31] Yet the word of God is clear that every one of us shall give account of himself to the Lord. We will have to give account. And as it says, it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the judgment.

[9:50] There's only one chance in life. There's not various chances or various evolutions or reincarnations. I'm not going to come back as a cow or as a butterfly or as a good looking woman or something.

[10:08] I'm not going to come back. I'm not going to have another chance. I'm not going to come back and have another go at it. It says, friends, today, that you get one go at it, one chance at it, one life that you live, and after that, the judgment.

[10:25] So, there's an accountability. And rather than having to be answerable to God, Genesis 3, the serpent tries to tell Eve, in verse 5, he says, for God does know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

[10:48] Satan offers a special kind of knowledge, some kind of secret knowledge, secret truth. Now, the word, occult means secret. It means secret. And, I don't know if any of you have seen this DVD that's doing the rounds called The Secret.

[11:04] You know, we got given one by some well-meaning folk. The secret. And really, occult means secret. And that's really the underlying message of this same thing I can tell you about if you're interested later.

[11:17] But this is what the devil tried to give, this secret knowledge, this occult knowledge, this hidden knowledge, that man can be enlightened. Man can be like God.

[11:28] And the New Age movement tells people today this supposed enlightenment. It tells people all is one. One is God. And you are God.

[11:40] You are God. You can be like God. They're telling you this now. Everyone is God. You shape your own destiny.

[11:52] You're capable of overcoming all your problems. This is what they're calling it the Gospel of Oprah. She's one of the main promoters of it now, apparently, in this talk show, Oprah's talk show.

[12:05] And there's many other voices of this kind of message, of human potential. You can be whatever you want to be. You've got great potential. You can be like God.

[12:16] Just like the devil told Adam and Eve. And it's the ultimate philosophy of the me generation. The me generation of our world. Of this selfish, self-centered generation.

[12:31] Since the God in you makes all the decisions, then whatever you decide is right. There is no objective truth. It's whatever you believe it to be.

[12:42] Whatever you make of it. You can become conscious of how powerful you are, capable of overcoming any problem. This is what they call the human potential movement.

[12:54] It's one of the features of the New Age movement. No accountability. The New Age movement, it's a selfish movement. It's a religious movement centered in self.

[13:05] There's no defined order of sin, of repentance, of salvation. There is no right or wrong. You become your own God.

[13:17] This is what the devil is telling the world today. And it's widespread. It's got broad appeal. And it's in many shapes and forms the New Age movement.

[13:28] It offers light, but it truly brings darkness. Just like the angel of light wants it to. And the Bible constantly urges you, people today, to be alert, to be aware that there is great deception.

[13:41] Great deception that is at work in our world today. And God's Word urges you to test the spirits, to try the spirits, to see what is of God.

[13:54] There's one preacher who described this influence that is at work in our world today. and he described how in some measure you can see it at work within the church, within the Christian church, within the church at large today, that there really is a choice today between a God-centered spirituality and a man-centered spirituality.

[14:19] We're seeing that in the flavors of some churches where it's all about entertaining the people and drawing the crowd. In the new man-centered view of God, God isn't angry.

[14:33] He loves you with an unconditional love. He longs to help you. He longs to meet your needs. That's the message. Now, of course, we know there's an element of truth to that. But the Bible preachers had a different emphasis.

[14:49] They had an emphasis on the wrath of God. God is angry at the wicked every day. He's angry about the sin. And we should tremble in our boots before him in awe of his holiness, of his majesty, of his wonder, of the great creator, of the great judge with whom we have to give account, to whom you have to answer.

[15:15] In man-centered Christianity, so-called Christianity, man is lost yet seeking. There's a lot of talk about make it seeker-sensitive.

[15:27] Make the church so seeker-sensitive that they'll think they've just walked into the local pub or disco that, hey, they feel right at home here. Well, it's seeker-sensitive. There's nothing threatening here about church.

[15:41] They think that man is lost yet seeking, not able to find what he's looking for. And yet, in the God-centered Christianity, God-centered Christianity sees lost humanity as not seeking, but rather running from God.

[15:55] As it says in the Word, there is none that seeketh after God. Really and truly, there are no seekers after God. You know, our natural inclination is to run from Him, to run away from Him, to not seek Him.

[16:10] And yet, the new emphasis now in church circles, across the board, by and large, is on the felt need, the felt need of the people.

[16:23] Tickle their ears. Tell the people what they want to hear. Now, there's times when maybe I'll do that, but there'll be times when I won't do that. You know, I might tell you some things that you don't like to hear, and that will be good for you.

[16:38] It'll be good for me, too. Alright? It's not about your felt needs. It's not about making you feel comfortable and cozy and snug and comfortable in your Christianity.

[16:49] There's a sense where the comforter comes and discomforts us sometimes. It talks about sin and righteousness and judgment. The comforter will discomfort us sometimes so that we can get uncomfortable with our sin, with our Christlessness, with our godless sustain, and we'll seek Him, we'll cry out in response to that conviction.

[17:10] And so, the old message wasn't so much on the felt needs about making people feel comfy. It was about the need to face up to our sin and of our great need to be forgiven, our great need of the saving grace of God.

[17:29] Felt needs, such as loneliness, emptiness, and so on, are appealed to in the new gospel, but usually without any reference to the law or the character of God, which should be our great focus should be on His glory and of what He would want for our lives, not for what we would want.

[17:49] You know, there's lots of talk as we know in these days in many circles about God wants you to be wealthy and prosperous and successful, and yet, it's getting away from the whole point of what really matters, what really counts.

[18:04] And in a real way, the man-centered view of man puts us as earnestly seeking but lost victims, but the God-centered view, how God paints man in the Bible, is that we're utter rebels in denial of what God has shown us.

[18:20] For example, you could see in Romans 1 from verse 18, tells us about the world and about the character of man today. It doesn't sound like he's seeking God.

[18:34] It says, Romans 1 18 to 32, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. The wrath of God. He's angered. He's angry. He's revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them.

[18:55] For God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

[19:07] So that they are without excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.

[19:34] Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness. I could go on to read the rest of that chapter, but the picture is clear, friends, that man is in a hopeless estate.

[19:45] And as it says in Romans 10, there is none, good, there is none that seeketh after God. We're all as an unclean thing.

[19:57] Friends, man's great need, man is in utter rebellion and Christless rejection of God. And we've got great need. And yet, today we're seeing a shift, a shift even in the church world, as I say, in the philosophy of ministry to people.

[20:16] From a so-called courtroom style, which has us as guilty sinners, standing before our judge, condemned, to a relational style, which sees us as needy victims, getting in touch with our felt needs, which God longs to meet.

[20:34] Now, of course, God does long to meet your greatest need. Your greatest need is salvation. And, friends, really, He is a judge to whom we have to give account. Friends, that's where we've got away from in our world today.

[20:47] We're following the New Age kind of thinking that there is no God to answer to. And yet, Christ has come to satisfy the wrath of God. That's why He came, to bear our punishment, to bear our judgment, to bear that due payment and pay for it, for it, to save us from the consequences of our sins.

[21:10] He is our prophet, priest, and king. And yet, as this preacher puts it, in the man-centered view, the Lord Jesus is outside, cap in hand, hoping that you will one day get around to inviting Him into your heart.

[21:28] He's standing out there just waiting, powerless, helpless, waiting for you to make Him a part of your life. It's kind of the wrong emphasis, isn't it? Because, really, He is the Almighty.

[21:41] We should be quaking before Him. We should be trembling before Him. We should be weeping before Him in our great need of Him, in our great lack, in our great emptiness without Him.

[21:53] And it's the balance needs to be shifted again. That He's not some helpless person that is waiting for us to invite to be part of our life.

[22:07] He deserves our all. He deserves our every heart. He deserves your complete surrender. Does God command all men everywhere to repent?

[22:22] That's what it says here. He commands all men everywhere to repent. Or is He asking us to invite Him into our heart? You know, it's kind of, of course, there's, I'm not denying that there's some truth to that.

[22:38] Of course, there's some truth to that. But it's about the emphasis there. He's commanding all men everywhere to repent. There is one that you are accountable to, that you will give account to.

[22:49] friends today. And we see that in Genesis 3, there was the questioning of authority. Secondly, we see there was the questioning of accountability. And thirdly, we see that there's the great need of man for atonement, for atonement, for the New Age movement.

[23:08] Sin and evil does not exist. And we see back in Genesis 3, that our Lord says that one day, the prophecy is there, that Christ will come and he will gain victory over Satan.

[23:21] We see that even in Genesis 3, that God will gain the victory over Satan. And that's through the atonement, through the cross of Christ. Yet in the New Age movement, sin and evil does not exist.

[23:33] It's peace and love. They're the ultimate realities. It's man's two essence that is inwardly good and divine and perfect. That's what they'll tell you.

[23:44] That's what the New Age movement, in its various shapes and forms, will say, man is not sinful, he's a potential God. He creates his own reality. Yet Paul said, in me dwells no good thing.

[23:57] There's nothing good dwelling in me. And the Lord Jesus says, I have come to seek and to save that which was lost. It's the sin factor that he's come to deal with. That's his mission, not to give us a higher consciousness.

[24:12] The New Age movement, it's a one world religion. God is an impersonal energy source. God is all and all is God.

[24:23] The New Age movement tells you that you are divine. You are part of God. And friends, we've got some preachers saying much the same kind of thing today. People like Kenneth Copeland saying that you can be a God.

[24:36] Virtually, when you read what he says and you actually analyse what he says. It's New Age talk. It's New Age philosophy. And it's coming in with the faith movement type preachers.

[24:46] They're bordering on the same stuff. They're saying the same kind of thing. The New Age movement tells you that you are divine. Mankind's only real problem is that we do not realise that we are divine.

[24:58] Humans like all creation are an extension of the divine oneness. That's what the New Ages will tell you. And friends, we're seeing it, it's hidden by and large.

[25:10] And it's very deceptive but it's underlying a lot of what's going on in our world today. For example, New Ages hold the Mother Earth.

[25:21] The Mother Earth. Another name is an actual name of a god that they give Mother Earth, Gaia. Gaia. Actually, there's people who worship the goddess Gaia.

[25:35] Mother Earth today. It's all of nature. All of nature can be worshipped as god. That's what the New Ages extremists believe.

[25:46] There's much scaremongering going on today too about planet Earth. Much scaremongering about this amongst extreme environmentalists today. The climate change scares.

[25:58] Protect the environment. It's all a smoke screen. It's a smoke screen for what their agenda really is. Because beyond personal transformation for the New Age goal is planetarian transformation.

[26:11] That we are, and these are the phrases, the kind of terminology they use, that we are all planetary citizens, living in the one global village. It sounds good, but really there's an agenda there.

[26:25] There's a globalism, there's a one world agenda, a New Age movement, a New World Order agenda, that is coming across, it's in the media, it's intrinsic in much of what we hear.

[26:38] It doesn't catch our ear so much now because you hear these words so often. The New Age movement, it's more of an agenda than an organisation, and its ultimate agenda is globalism.

[26:52] Globalism, a one world government and a one world religion. The same goal as we see in Revelation what the Antichrist has. It's the same goal.

[27:03] One world religion, one world currency, one world government, one world courts, one world police, one world army. The same goal as the Antichrist really has.

[27:16] Friends, will we find the superstitions and magic of the New Age? As I say, it comes in various forms and guises, whether it's beliefs and practices, it includes things like this.

[27:28] These are what you can look out for. Take attention to this now. With its beliefs and practices, they're things like astrology. Astrology, reading your stars.

[27:40] People might think it's pretty harmless, just a bit of fun, but astrology is specifically told to us to not partake in that. The Bible is very clear about astrology.

[27:52] Things like Buddhism, crystals, gurus of various kinds, hypnosis, mind power, mysticism, reiki, spiritism, tarot cards, transcendental meditation, witchcraft, and yoga.

[28:11] All of these things, they've got their roots in the New Age movement. Things like, you see, pyramids, pyramid power, and all this kind of talk today. It all comes from the same foundation, the same basis.

[28:26] God has always warned his people not to dabble with those things. Through the education system today, the movies, even the modern cartoons, it's in the modern cartoons.

[28:38] It might sound like, you're going over the top now, but you look at the cartoons and analyse them. There's a lot of talk about forces. And I know some talk about earth, wind, and fire.

[28:49] There's various cartoons. They're conditioning our kids to believe this stuff, to accept the philosophies of the force. I know even what some might consider completely harmless, like the Star Wars movie.

[29:03] The man who wrote Star Wars, he was a New Ager. And right through Star Wars, there's all these symbolisms to do with the New Age philosophies that he holds to.

[29:14] And especially there's talk about the force. May the force be with you. And so on. We know really the force they're talking about is certainly not God. It's the other one.

[29:27] And friends today, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie declared, we must recognise the work of the same spirit at the centre of all faiths.

[29:42] He was talking positively about it. promoting an ecumenical unity that the same spirit is at working all faiths. Whether you're Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, who knows what.

[29:56] Christian, so-called, it's all the same spirit. Friends, it's not the same spirit. We've got to test the spirits, we've got to try them, we've got to be very alert to this. And the New Age is that one day, one day their ultimate vision, their dream, their goal, is that one day enough people on earth are going to believe, they're going to have this consciousness that they are a god, their consciousness of being god, and that one day this great energy of all the citizens of the world having this belief that they are god, is going to bring the world peace and prosperity, a sudden solution of all the problems of the world, a new world order, a one world system with peace and harmony, a universal religion for the global village, even immortality.

[30:50] This is what they're believing, what they're promoting, what they're ultimately heading towards. That's why they've got this agenda to condition everything, politics, education, government, everything about society, the green movement, all of these things, it's all aiming for that globalist agenda of the new age system that is coming in.

[31:17] And we know as the word of God tells us, Christ is coming, the real Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming. The new age thinks that Christ is coming too.

[31:30] The Lord Maitreya, they call him. they think that this end time Messiah is going to be the answer to our prayers.

[31:43] He's going to be another apparition of Buddha who the Buddhists are expecting. He's going to be the Mardi that the Muslims are expecting.

[31:57] and he's going to be Christ. That the Christians are expecting. He's going to be Krishna. That the Hindus are expecting.

[32:10] He's going to appear and I can imagine that he's going to have an appeal, a worldwide, a global appeal. whatever shade of belief you might have, I'm sure that he might have some appeal to you, whatever your belief system might be.

[32:30] yet we know that the Bible says the Antichrist is coming. The Antichrist is coming. And I've heard it said that when it says Antichrist, the word anti, it means standing alongside of Christ or like another, like a copy of Christ or a mimic kind of of Christ.

[32:52] So he's going to be like Christ. He's going to look like Christ. He's going to be miracle working. He's going to have super natural features about him that's going to appeal to the broad humanity across the planet.

[33:08] And you could imagine him being embodying in himself all that would appeal to all of these different religions and belief systems and the New Age movement across the world. But friends, the Antichrist is coming, but for you that believe, for you that believe it says that Christ is coming, he's going to come with the clouds, he's going to meet us in the air, and will be forever with him.

[33:32] And we can have that great hope, that blessed hope, that happy and joyful hope of his certain returning. And yet, friends, today, the New Age movement, just to recap real quick, authority is at stake.

[33:45] Authority, the word of God, if you believe it, believe it. Don't try to question it or take it piecemeal. Believe it from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation and everything in between, the covers of your Bible.

[33:59] Believe it. It's got authority for your life and mine. There is no higher authority and here's the absolute authority. There is absolute authority, though the devil questioned it and still does today.

[34:11] There is accountability. You will give account of yourself to him. Every one of us shall give account of ourselves to him. There is one that we have to answer to.

[34:21] It's not the God within. It's not the kind of fluffy, fuzzy God that the world would glibly say when the politicians say, God bless you, God bless America.

[34:32] What God are they talking about? We're talking about the God of the Bible that we have to give account to. We're accountable. We have accountability. And lastly, there is an atonement, an atonement, a vital atonement.

[34:43] We need to be saved. There is no other hope for you. There is no other answer for you. There is no other gospel for you. There is a hope, an everlasting hope, an everlasting Savior if you'll trust him, if you'll cry out to him and plead his mercy and surrender your all to him today.

[35:02] Let us pray. Lord, we praise you today. We thank you, Lord, that there is that happy hope for us that believe that. We know you're coming back for a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

[35:13] Lord, we thank you that we can trust you today by your blood, that you can wash our stain and sin. You can make us guilt-free and shameless and guiltless in your presence today, Lord, and righteousness can be by the virtue of what you have done.

[35:28] Lord, we thank you for that great mercy you showed to us at the cross. Thank you, Lord, that we can stand on the authority of your word. Lord, that we can know that we can give account and that we can say, yes, we've trusted you.

[35:41] Lord, we can trust in that great and wonderful salvation. salvation. And we pray, Lord, that we'll trust in that atonement, that atoning work of Calvary for our sin, not by any virtue of our own.

[35:53] Help us, Lord, in this world that's beset with so many lies and deceptions to be discerning, to be alert to the enemy's work, to see the angel of light for who he is and to be alert to that.

[36:06] Help us, Lord, to choose that which is right and pleasing in your sight, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.