In Manhattan, I lived only a few blocks west of the Scientology “embassy” on 48^th Street. I’d often pass cult members standing out on the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes. They always seem to be dressed in dark navy slacks--or skirts if the women chose-- and white cotton dress shirts.

I remember one Saturday night I found myself in step behind two Scientologists making their way down Eighth Avenue through thick pedestrian traffic. I could see they were repeatedly snickering among themselves and I thought, “Listen for what they’re saying.” I couldn’t make out much of it, but the general gist was something like, “Yeah, people just aren’t open to our ‘higher truth.’ They’re blinded, only interested in basic survival.”

This is exactly what New Agers in general believe: “We’re enlightened; you’re not. You’re in bondage to a lower plane of existence, mentally enslaved by whatever religion and/or philosophy you were raised in as children. You haven’t developed your sensitivity and spiritual acuity to move beyond the superficial.”

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Probably the top calling-card Bible phrase of the New Age Movement is, “The kingdom of God is within you,” adapted from Luke 17:21. Of course, it is taken completely out of context with no biblical literacy in its application.

As Bible teacher Keith Blades writes in an article on his website www.enjoythebible.org, “You could probably get rich if you were given a dime for every time someone brings up (this verse) in connection with questioning whether the ‘kingdom of God/kingdom of heaven’ spoken about in God’s program with Israel is really the literal and physical establishment of God’s kingdom on this earth.

“And for those who do not merely question this, but are determined to deny the literal, physical reality and nature of that kingdom in favor of a spiritual ‘in-the-heart’ type reigning of God, these verses are a stronghold. Since the Lord says that ‘the kingdom of God is within you,’ then the argument is that it cannot be a literal, physical, external kingdom, but only a spiritual one in men’s hearts.”

The reality is there are dozens upon dozens of passages in the Bible making explicit reference to the literal, physical nature of God’s kingdom on earth. In this particular verse from Luke, Jesus Christ is addressing the unbelieving Pharisees who were enemies of God. They had refused to look at the evidence surrounding them for three-plus years that demonstrated the climactic stage of Israel’s program had arrived—exactly as foretold by the Old Testament prophets.

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A kingdom verse you likely won’t hear a New Ager quote is Matt. 13:19: “When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.”

Blades explains, “All the proofs for the reality of the coming of ‘the kingdom of God,’ (if the Pharisees of Luke 17 had honestly sought any proofs), were in their own hearts. They had been placed there over the course of the previous three-plus years by the effectual working of both ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ and the signs of it.

“That therefore is the place where they needed to be looking to see the reality of the kingdom being ‘at hand.’ They needed to honestly deal with what had been placed in their hearts by ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ and its signs. Hence, the Lord said to them, ‘for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’ ”

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Scientologists say reality is relative. Of course, this type of hokum plays big to those who are frightened by the world and its instability and yet don’t want the security God offers through belief in His Son. Instead, they like the notion that they are God. That way they don’t have to be accountable to anyone and are free to do whatever they deem right. There’s nothing new at all to this delusional doctrine of Satan’s.

As Gail Riplinger writes in her 1993 book New Age Bible Versions, “Eve became the first ‘moralist,’ as she chose to decide what is good and what is evil. Rebels, like Eve and Lucifer seek ‘the good’. . .God spoke these words (‘Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.’ Deut. 12:8) because the heathen perennially chose their mores over the laws of God.

“ ‘Taoists maintain morals are relative.’ The Hindu Bhagavad Gita ‘teaches the supremacy of freedom over morality.’ Its dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna concludes: ‘There can be no absolute moral values because all things are changing, evolving. A particular moral value represents only a particular perspective offered by a particular time at a particular level of evolution.’

“From the bushmen to the bookmen like Boehm, Blake, Nietzsche, Heidigger and Sartre, man rejects the mandates of God for a man-made morality. A confederacy of educators, carrying Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ banner, have captured today’s students. In a national religious survey, half of the college students polled affirmed that: ‘Truth is basically relative; what is right and true for you might not be right and true for me.’ ”

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Out of people’s deep-seated loneliness and misery—heightened by their separation from God as non-believers—they try to escape from themselves through knowledge, through different forms of belief and through identification with a “special” group. This explains the appeal of cults like the Church of Scientology.

Riplinger writes, “The carnal spirit of Gnosticism, that is, the desire for hidden knowledge others do not have, is prevalent in the New Age and the church. New Agers try to get a word from ‘God’ through some ‘hidden’ wisdom from ‘far off’ gurus living ‘beyond the sea’. Christians search for the ‘hidden’ meaning of a word in Greek lexicons from ‘far off’ Egyptian manuscripts from ‘beyond the sea’.”

In another passage, she notes, “New Ager Vera Alder say of the ‘New’ world religion: ‘It is likely that a new kind of religion will develop in which man will discover and work out his own sermons for himself’. . .Seth, an entity now being channeled in New Age circles echoes: ‘There is no authority superior to the guidance of a person’s inner self.’

“This wizard ‘peeps’ as cultists and textual scholars ‘mutter’ the same monotonous declamation. Hare Krishna devotees listen to see if a Bible version has a ‘ring of truth.’ Hort (the Bible revisionist behind the corrupt modern versions) used his ‘instinctive’ powers to determine if a verse had a ‘ring of genuineness.’

“J.B. Phillips touts the reader of his forward to the NASB Interlinear Greek-English New Testament to ‘try to make his own translation,’ looking for The Ring of Truth (the title of his autobiography). Westcott (the other Bible revisionist from the late 1800s) recommends using your ‘intuitive powers’ as a sounding board. . .

“Westcott thinks Plato has a clear source of ‘truth,’ which for us is ‘blurred and dim.’ He writes that this ‘truth’ stems from Plato’s, ‘. . . communion with a divine and super-sensuous world. . . [with] those beings who occupy a middle place between God and man. . . [A]ll fellowship which exists between heaven and earth is realized through this intermediate order. . . These spirits are many and manifold’. . .

“One of Plato’s most well-known philosophies is his concept of ‘the Idea’ wherein the outside form of things merely veils ‘the idea,’ which alone is real. Westcott expresses this Eastern and Gnostic world view saying, ‘There is. . . a serious danger in the prevailing spirit of realism which leads us to dwell on the outside form, the dress of things, to the neglect of ‘ideas’ which are half-veiled. . . Eternal life is. . .the potential fulfillment of the ‘idea’ of humanity.’

“The TV mini-series The Power of Myth ‘programmed’ potential New Agers with Plato’s concept of ‘the idea’. Joseph Campbell, its author, also wrote Hero with a Thousand Faces. Both try to popularize Westcott’s Platonic idea that, as Westcott says, God appears, ‘not in one form, but in many.’ [Buddha, Krishna, Mary]

“If you missed the mini-series reruns, your college psychology class will present the same concept under the guise of Carl Jung’s ‘archetypes’ welling up from the ‘universal unconsciousness’. ”