When ex-New Ager Warren Smith wrote a key post on November 9 “‘Oprah and Friends’ to Teach Course on New Age Christ,” he detailed concerns about the 365 day curriculum that would be taught by Oprah’s good friend Marianne Williamson beginning in January 2008 which is based on A Course in Miracles. A Course in Miracles is, as we described in the previous post, an extensive psycho-spiritual curriculum that systematically indoctrinates people into a New Age mystical mindset based on the teachings of a false Christ.
All of this is relevant because of Reverend Robert Schuller’s continuing fascination and flirtation with A Course in Miracles, a fact which is described in detail in Chapter 9 of Warren Smith’s book Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church. Because Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral is promoting a Rethink Conference, the whole concept of rethinking–and its key role in facilitating New Age transformation –has come to the forefront once again. And A Course in Miracles is the foremost occult curriculum on how to rethink.
Marianne Williamson describes her involvement in this Course in Miracles in her 2004 book The Gift of Change. Several times she credits Oprah Winfrey with direct assistance in furthering her work. In “Acknowledgments” Williamson writes: “To Oprah Winfrey, for creating my national audience to begin with and for continuing to support my work” (p. ix). And at the end of the book Williamson explains how,
“Thanks to Oprah Winfrey and her generous enthusiasm for the book, my world changed. Money came that I had never had before, along with press attention and a slight celebrity status.” (pp. 227-8)
To her credit, Marianne Williamson openly admits that A Course in Miracles is not Christian:
“In 1978 I became a student of a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy called A Course in Miracles; in 1992 I wrote a book of reflections on its principles called A Return to Love. Claiming no monopoly whatsoever on spiritual insight, the Course is a psychological mind training based on universal spiritual themes. It teaches people how to dismantle a thought system based on fear and replace it with a thought system based on love. . . .
“Although the Course uses traditional Christian terminology, it is not a Christian doctrine. Its terms are used in a psychological context, with universal meaning for any student of spiritual principles, regardless of whether they have a Christian orientation. . . .
“Twenty years ago, I saw the guidance of the Course as a key to changing one’s personal life; today, I see its guidance as key to changing the world.” (pp. 4-5) [emphasis added]
Williamson explains that “a change in our perception holds the key to a world made new” (p. 11). Like other New Agers, Williamson promotes the transformation of the mind as a crucial factor for the future of the planet:
“as we learn the lessons of spiritual transformation and apply them in our personal lives–we will become agents of change on a tremendous scale. By learning the lessons of change, internally and externally, each of us can participate in the great collective process in which the people of the world, riding a wave of enlightened understanding, see the human race on a destructive course and turn it around in time. (pp. 11-12) [emphasis added]
To construct this new mindset requires demolishing the old. The old, of course, being biblical Christianity. First, one must become open to other truths, other ways:
“The miracle worker’s task is this: to consider the possibility there might be another way.” (p. 18) [emphasis added]
Then “He” (presumably the “Christ” of A Course in Miracles) will “reprogram us at the deepest levels. . . through the alchemy of the divine curriculum. . . .” (p. 21) [emphasis added]. Williamson explains that first one must empty the mind, a classic brain-altering technique:
“The idea of emptying one’s mind is fundamental to all meditative practice. For once we have surrendered our extraneous thinking, then God’s truth can move into the vacuum. We substitute His Mind for our mind, and thus they become one.”(p. 78) [emphasis added]
This is the basic occult idea that we become God:
“The Christ within us a newborn self, fathered by God and mothered by our humanity, here to express the divine potential that exists inside us all.” (p. 103) [emphasis added]
And on the next page, in a subsection “The Christ,” Williamson acknowledges that
“The conversion to Christ need not entail a conversion to the Christian religion. The word is a symbol for the Child of God within us, our true identity and a space of remembrance of all that is divine. . . .
“God’s one begotten son is who we are.” (p. 104-105) [bold added, italics in original]
Williamson readily asserts, “We are here to participate in a glorious subversion of the world’s dominant, fear-based thought forms.” ( p. 16) Presumably this means the subversion of biblical Christianity, since her book The Gift of Change is a manual in New Age thought.
Williamson’s book contains several statements of classic New Age futurist foreboding which tell of doom and gloom for planet Earth unless people undergo this transformation of their minds:
“An underground revolution is sweeping the hearts and minds of the people of the world, and it is happening despite the wars and terror that confront us. This revolution is a fundamental change of worldview, and it carries with it the potential to reorganize the structure of human civilization. It brings a basic shift in the thoughts that dominate the world.” (p. 199) [emphasis added]
“To some this might feel like the period of a Great End, perhaps even at times an Armageddon, but in fact this is the time of a Great Beginning. It is time to die to who we used to be and to become instead who we are capable of being.” (pp. 11-12) [emphasis added]
Attorney Constance Cumbey, who is credited with first exposing the revival of Theosophy through the modern New Age movement, and who has been warning evangelicals for over two decades about it, wrote in a column for NewsWithViews yesterday, “Shirley MacLaine’s ‘Karma-Geddon,'” that “I have long warned that the New Agers view monotheists as ‘cancerous cells on the global brain.'”
“Too many purporting to warn the Christian community have told them far too often to go back to sleep, nothing’s happening. Folks, it is happening. It is here. We are looking, I fear, at a movement of mass possession. All the ‘meditation,’ Reiki, yoga, est, channeling, Silva Mind Control, Feldenkreis, earth reverencing movements, et al, etc., have done their work and those entering into altered states are receptive to the mindset exemplified. Paul Hawken has been singing the same songs along with David Spangler as long as I have been looking at the New Age Movement, since the early 1980s. He brags that this is a movement that nobody saw coming.
“It is the exact same song the New Agers have been singing since the first day, 1970. The planet is overpopulated. ‘Christianity is a root cause of the problem.’ Too many alleged Christians have been delivering ‘amens’ and helping the New Agers set up the very structures intended for our destruction under the guise of ‘Christian stewardship.'”
The rest of this Cumbey article is worth a read. Warren Smith’s online book Reinventing Jesus Christ, gives a similar warning. In a day and age when evangelical leaders are playing footsie with New Age gurus, and using the same terminology and practices of the New Age, these warnings become even more serious.
Nowhere is this garbled confusion in terminology more evident than in A Course in Miracles. When Marianne Williamson launches the 365-day version of this New Age Course on “Oprah and Friends” this January, many will be deceived because the language sounds so biblical. But heretical teachings are mixed up in such an intricate way that it is virtually impossible to pick out all of the leaven.
It is more important than ever that people take heed and exercise true discernment, for here is what they are getting into: Williamson, in describing troubles with insomnia, wrote:
“During the wee hours of the morning, both angels and demons take shape. . . .
“In those hours that I’ve lain so inconveniently awake, I think I’ve begun at last to know what awakened means. Noting the witching hour–4:15–at which I awake more often than not, stealing outside to look at the stars and marvel at the moon, I return again to my ancient self. In those hours, I am not a menopausal nutcase, I’m a magical witch, and I can feel it in my bones.” (pp. 242-244) [emphasis added]
The Truth:
“Moreover, Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures;
And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures:
And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that, He was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all He was seen of me, also as of one born out of due time.” (I Corinthians 15:1-8)