What is the New Age movement?
The phrase "New Age" is used today for a loose spiritual outlook rather than one organised religion, and the writers who describe it trace its ideas back to Eastern religion and to much older errors wearing new names. The questions it raises are the oldest ones: Is man himself divine? Do all religions lead to the same place? And where do such ideas come from?
A Western Version of Eastern Religion
The clearest description in this collection places the movement inside a family of ideas about reality that began in the East. Its basic claim is that everything that exists is one thing, and that this one thing is God.
Fritz RidenourThe second major worldview category comes from the East. It is called pantheistic monism, which says, "All is one, one is all, and all is God." Hinduism and Buddhism share important elements of this worldview. The New Age movement is, in great part, a Western adaptation of Hindu and Buddhist religious and worldview thinking.
Alongside that borrowing sits a habit of mind that refuses to settle anywhere. Ridenour describes people who assemble a private set of beliefs and are untroubled when the pieces clash.
Fritz RidenourThey would prefer to pick and choose what they like about different worldviews and aren't much bothered if the ideas contradict each other. The only thing that counts is "what works for you." These people will say things like, "I don't believe any one system contains all truth."
An Old Error in New Clothes
Some writers see nothing original in it at all. The Gnostics were early teachers who claimed a superior, hidden knowledge of God; one commentator says the same claim has simply resurfaced.
Eugene P. Vedder Jr.The New Age movement today is one more revival of the ancient Gnostic heresies... Satan has not come up with much that is new, he is a counterfeiter and every once in a while he revives some bad teaching. Men were fooled by it a long time ago and they are fooled by it today in some other guise. That is why the Gospel of John and his Epistles are particularly relevant for our day with all the teachings of New Age and Eastern religions which teach that man has somehow to work his way up to God.
The Promise of Divinity
If man is divine, the promise is very old. Writers point back to the serpent's words in the garden, where the bait was not pleasure but promotion.
F. B. HoleThen he supported this denial by the audacious assertion that the real reason for the prohibition was that God knew that if man partook of the forbidden tree he would be immensely elevated — he would have his eyes opened, knowing good and evil and becoming "like God." Though he would not become the Lord God, yet he would become an independent being and an object of veneration himself... He practically asserted that deity in a modified form was a possibility for man.
(Older translations render the phrase "as gods"; the ESV reads "you will be like God, knowing good and evil.")
Many Lives, or One Life?
Reincarnation is one of the movement's best-known imports, and it collides directly with what Scripture says about how a life ends.
Fritz RidenourHinduism teaches that the atman is perfect, free and unlimited, and no matter how many lives it takes, eventually each and every atman will realize its divine nature. The Bible teaches that each person has one life to live, and after this comes the judgment (see Heb. 9:27).
All Roads, One Road
The friendly idea that every sincere path arrives at God is met head-on by Christ's own words.
A J PollockHe is doing His best to get it believed that all religions are practically one and the same, as long as their followers are sincere seekers after God. We are assured that sincere seekers after God will find Him, but it can only be through Christ. He is the Way. There are not several ways—the Hindu way, the Sikh way, the Mohammedan way, the Buddhist way, the Christian way—there is only ONE way. Christ says, "I am THE Way" there is no other.
Watching an early push toward shared temples for all faiths, another writer names where such blending ends.
A. J. PollockFrom various points there are signs that an apostate Christendom, an apostate Judaism and heathen religions will unite in one worship, which will substitute man for God as the object of adoration, and man to be his own saviour, degrading Christ to the level of a great, but fallible, world teacher, denying His redemptive work on the cross.
The Occult Side
Practices attached to this outlook — channelling, astrology, contacting the dead — are treated as old paganism relabelled.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinClairvoyancy, palmistry, astrology, soothsaying, fortune-telling, spiritualistic seances, theosophy, the formulas and treatments of "Christian Science" are a few of the modern names of this ancient demonism. It is awful to see their growth as the end draws near. What is claimed to be "Psychical research," studying "occult phenomena," is nothing less than stepping upon the same territory of evil.
Summary
- Borrowed: At its core it is a Western remake of Eastern thinking — "all is one, one is all, and all is God" — mixed with a pick-and-choose attitude that asks only what works for you.
- Recycled: Commentators see no new content in it, only the old Gnostic claim to superior knowledge revived, with man working his way up to God.
- Repeated: Its offer of hidden divinity repeats the serpent's offer in Eden — deity in a modified form, held out to man as something God withheld.
- Refuted: Endless lives to perfect the divine self cannot stand beside one life followed by judgment, or beside Christ's claim to be the one Way and not one of many.
- Rooted: Its occult practices are named as ancient demonism under modern labels — and the writers expect them to grow as the end draws near.