“We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:6)
In this verse the emphasis is on the believer’s ability to discern between a spirit of truth and a spirit of error, heresy, apostasy, lies and cleverly disguised deceptions such as modern evolutionary materialism (Darwinism) and methodological naturalism.
The spirit of truth is relatively easy to discern as such people come willingly to the Light of Truth (John 3:21). Having a heart for truth, they really and truly want to know and embrace Truth. On the other hand, the spirit of error is more difficult to discern because the taproot and energy of this spirit is in Satan, the father of lies, of false gods, hatred, envy, sophistry, false science and dehumanizing evolutionary conceptions, the New World Order with its genocidal death-wishing, heresy, apostasy, lawlessness, chaos, rebellion, and murder.
Satan is the great deceiver (Rev. 12:9). He uses his servants of deception to manipulate, confuse, propagandize, and mislead (Ephesians 4:14). Today his most powerfully influential servants are the world’s occult Transhuman ‘elites’ but are also found throughout the secular, Christian, cult and occult New Age arenas. (2 Cor. 11:14-15)
One of Satan’s important servants, the evangelical apostate Alice Bailey (1880-1949), is a major architect of today’s rapidly spreading serpent-powered occult New Age movement, a spiritual juggernaut effecting a counter-conversion of consciousness that closes the soul to Jesus Christ while opening it to powers of darkness.
According to Bailey’s contemporary apostles, the ‘Plan’ telepathically revealed to Bailey for the coming New Age can be traced back to the fall of Lucifer and his angels from heaven. Bailey’s demon-master, the Tibetan, described the revolt of the angels against the Holy God as part of the “divine plan of evolution,” by which angels “descended from their sinless and free state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness on earth.” (Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 224)
In this total reversal and inversion of the Revealed Word of God, the Fall of man was really an evolutionary ascent to liberating knowledge by which man’s eyes were opened to good (Satan) and evil (the Holy God). Thus Helena Blavatsky, another important servant of Satan and architect of New Age spirituality concluded that it is but natural,
“…to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it was he who was the ‘Harbinger of Light,’ bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah…Indeed, (mankind) was taught wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the ‘Fallen Angel.” As man’s benefactor, Lucifer continues to assist man’s evolution. In the words of the apostate evangelical, now New Age theologian David Spangler, a disciple of both Blavatsky and Bailey, Lucifer is ‘the angel of man’s evolution.” (ibid, pp. 224-225)
From the time of the Apostles of Jesus Christ to our own day, an unbroken chain of Satan’s servants have disguised themselves, for example, as super apostles, ambassadors, government leaders, philosophers, and ministers of righteousness, who as always are,
“…the inventors of impure heresies (the) profaners and apostates (who open) their mouths wide against the divine glory”. ...Church Father Cyril of Alexandria
These spirits hate Truth and most generally elevate themselves into high positions of power and authority and among God’s family so as to lead gullible souls astray and lead believers into compromise and conformity with the pagan world system.
On behalf of what Satan’s contemporary ministers term ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ they sweep away the essentials of the faith necessary both for salvation and the recognition of evil. (2 Peter 2:18) And without the grace and spiritual discernment born of true faith, Satan ceases to exist in the eyes of the spiritually blind, whether secular or Christian.
Commenting on the incredible blindness of our scientifically enlightened, theologically compromised and apostate modern society, the cultural theorist Denis de Rougemont (1906-1985), author of “The Devil’s Share, An Essay on the Diabolic in Modern Society” observed:
“What appears to me incredible is not the Devil, not the Angels, but rather the candor and the credulity of the skeptic, and the unpardonable sophism of which they show themselves to be the victims (they say) ‘The Devil is a gent with red horns and a long tail; now I cannot believe in a gent with red horns and a long tail; therefore I don’t believe in the Devil.’ And so the Devil has them precisely where he wants them.” (The Coming Darkness, John Ankerberg and John Weldon, p. 61)
When believers find spiritual Truth trivialized and diminished, marginalized and ridiculed in the church, some will go in search of a faithful church, some will fall away entirely, and others will turn to cults and the occult.
Tragically, since Satan’s ministers ridicule and reject the authority of God’s Word, the second and third groups have no guidelines for evaluating and testing the occult/Eastern spiritual experiences and devices they encounter such as the Enneagram, Jungian psychology, the MBTI, kundalini yoga, mindfulness meditation and other meditation techniques already popular in our culture, apostatizing churches and steadily creeping into compromised churches. Thus they can easily stumble into the spirit world and if not already fallen away, then onto the broad smooth way of apostasy.
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1
In his best-selling book “Strange Fire,” Pastor John MacArthur masterfully chronicles the unsavory history underpinning the modern Charismatic/Apostolic Movement (NAR) and its false prophets. The New Apostolic Reformation is both a breeding ground for scandal, bad doctrine, and spiritual chicanery and the fastest growing “Christian” movement in the world. MacArthur lays out a chilling case for rejecting its false prophets and for exposing their errors to the cleansing light of Truth.
Fr. Seraphim Rose notes that the spiritist manifestations (i.e., impartation, holy laughter, drunk in the spirit, roaring, barking, hissing, slain in the spirit) experienced in Charismatic/Apostolic churches are found in the occult New Age movement. The spirit that invaded the Charismatic movement during the ‘Toronto Blessing’ is not the Holy Spirit, said Rose, but the kundalini spirit (serpent power), the same spirit that ancient Egyptians, Hindus, yoga practitioners, and New Agers are familiar with.
From the time of the ancients serpent power has been important to religious and mythological symbolism all around the world. Within the Egyptian mysteries, serpent power was associated with,
…“the elemental forces that were in play before the creation of the world.” (Carl Teichrib, Gods of Ancient Egypt, p. 182)
In his book, “The Sign of the Serpent,” Mark Balfour relates how pervasive serpent symbols are within India and the Hindu religion:
“Any observant traveler who moves from the snow-tipped Himalayas in the North to the sun-soaked sands of Cape Comorin at India’s southern tip, will encounter – particularly in the rural areas and at sacred centres of pilgrimage wherever Siva, God of both Divine Wisdom and regeneration, is the presiding Deity – the serpent motif sculptured within shrines, impressed on myriads of stone implants in the ground and depicted in art.” (A Short Guide to Occult Symbols: Serpent Power, Carl Teichrib, 2005, Kjos Ministries)
Balfour elaborates on this belief:
“In Hinduism, the Cosmic Serpent – Ananta Sesha – symbolic of timeless eternity, carries the world on his 1000-fold [Cobra] hood…As the creative impulse stirs within the great Serpent in the Sky – when passive idea becomes active thought – the forces of attraction and repulsion come into play as ‘spirit’ begins its involution into “matter.” (ibid, Teichrib)
Moreover, Kundalini yoga, a discipline within Hinduism, teaches that latent serpent power lies at the base of the etheric human spine,
“…like a coiled serpent, ready to spring.” (Harper’s Dictionary of Hinduism, p. 156, ibid, Teichrib)
Through strenuous yoga techniques, serpent power uncoils and rises through seven “chakras” or power centers within the human body. Serpent power is considered,
“(to be a) concentrated field of intelligent cosmic, invisible energy absolutely vital to life beginning in the base of the spine as a man or a woman begins to evolve in their first incarnation.” (The Donning International Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary, p. 343, ibid, Teichrib)
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field…” – Genesis 3:1
Serpent power is imparted by laying on of hands, or Shakti-pat. The demon-possessed Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajineesh was called the “divine drunkard” by his disciples, and according to Tal Brook, author of “Riders of the Cosmic Circuit,” by his millions of worshippers in India, America, and Europe and throughout the world. Rajineesh encouraged his devotees to come and drink from him, meaning, receive his touch:
“His spiritual ‘wine’ was often passed on with a single touch to the head (Shakti-pat), at which his followers would collapse in ecstatic laughter. Another famous guru, Swami Muktananda, would hold meetings at which thousands of his followers from around the world came to receive his touch. They experienced uncontrollable laughing, roaring, barking, hissing, crying, shaking, as well as falling unconscious.”(Rose, p. 217)
These demon-possessed gurus were imparting to their adoring worshippers experiences they had undergone during initiation rituals and which they attributed to spirit-possession.
Veteran researcher Brooks Alexander observes of Rajineesh, Muktananda and other gurus:
“All of these gurus espouse a similar philosophy, and they all turn it into practice in a similar way. It is a pattern that we find not only in tantra (Indo-Tibetan occultism), but in European Satanism, antinomian Gnosticism, and ancient pagan sorcery as well.”(Book Review: Riders of the Cosmic Circuit,” in SCP Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1987, p. 39)
According to Alexander, Satan’s servants have successfully assimilated occult Eastern teachings and techniques into our church and our culture. With remarkable speed and ease, Eastern and occult ideas and spiritist techniques for contacting spirits such as trance music, brain-altering drugs, meditation and yoga are being propagated to undiscerning Westerners and Americans, within and without the church, on a mass scale:
“…they are filtered through the pervasive secularism of our culture. In this way they are demystified without changing their essential content. The basic components of an Eastern/occult world view are recast in forms of expression that are naturalistic, scientific, and humanistic…Occult philosophy is being secularized and psychologized with increasing refinement….Their underlying themes run through contemporary science, economics, politics, art, psychology, and religion.” (The Coming Darkness, p. 55)
“Be sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8
Satan’s servants are out in the open today. They have successfully initiated a devastating assault upon the whole body of the Christian church and by extension, upon Western and American society in ways that to previous generations would have seemed unthinkable.
Therefore,
“Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11
And though all may seem dark, hopeless and lost, fear not, for the faithful believer, the one who seeks and perseveres in Truth, is of God:
“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)
updated 2023© Linda Kimball