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 See The Message of The Bible
Picking out a random phrase or two, all too many think 'love' was Jesus' core message. Unfortunately, although ‘love’ featured strongly it was not Jesus’ central message. He never stopped talking about the "kingdom of God", a phrase used over 50 times in the four Gospels alone. He even said that the proclamation of the Kingdom was the reason He was sent to earth (Luke 4:43). But what and where is this kingdom? Far from being outdated, out of touch, and largely irrelevant to modern society, Christianity promises exactly the utopian world most men and women can only dream of. Most people (if they think about it at all) heaven is some ethereal place 'somewhere out there'. It isn’t! According to the Scriptures He intends to establish His kingdom right here on earth. It will be a place of peace and safety, where there will be no crime, war, hunger, disease, and above all - no death. In other words, a world most men and women wished they live in.
Oprah Winfrey and Her Self Help Saviors... Making The New Age Normal
Every aspect of Winfrey's empire has the noble aim of helping women become inspired and improve themselves. Unfortunately, this mission has taken her — and by default, the nation — on a spiritual trek through the questionable theology of the New Age.
Oprah and The Spirits of Negro Slaves (Below)
Oprah Winfrey’s Promotion of the New Age
Much of the popularity of New Age topics can be laid squarely at the door of the self styled guru of the New Age - Oprah Winfrey, whose influence on the genre can hardly be understated. For example, when she announced she had purchased 1,000 copies of her Marianne Williamson's book, Return to Love, the publisher is said to have received over 200,000 orders by the end of the day. Deepak Chopra’s book sold 130,000 copies the day Oprah promoted it on her show. [06]
As her show progressed, Oprah gradually began to feature more and more new age guests such as
Shirley MacLaine - who in the 80's chronicled her conversion to New Age thought in several best-selling autobiographies and multiple media appearances, which helped bring the New Age perspective into the limelight" [07]
Eric Butterworth - As far back as 1987 Oprah Winfrey endorsed Unity minister Eric Butterworth’s book Discovering the Power Within You, reiterating his view that "Jesus did not come to teach how divine he was, but came to teach us that there is divinity within us'. Butterworth's book is dedicated to Charles and Myrtle Fillmore - foreword written by Maya Angelou.
Marianne Williamson author of A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. In 2008, Marianne Williamson began teaching the 365 lessons from the New Age Bible, A Course in Miracles, on Oprah's XM Satellite Radio. Page 147 of the Course Text teaches that we are "God": "The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. " See A Return to Love and A Course in Miracles
Rhonda Byrne - whose book 'The Secret' can be summarized by the statement 'thoughts become things.' Page 164 states: "You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh" See The Secret
Deepak Chopra - widely recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda -a system whose guiding principle is that the mind exerts the deepest influence on the body. [08] He is a prominent figure in the New Age movement.
Dannion Brinkley and Betty Eadie - both authors of several books on near-death experiences.
Marilyn Ferguson- best known for her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy that literally became the bible of the New Age movement
Kevin Ryerson - a trance channeller See Channeling
Sara Breathnach called "the Martha Stewart of the soul" by Time Magazine,
James Van Praagh - clairvoyant and spiritual medium
Gary Zukar - a 'spiritual teacher' has appeared more than 30 times on Oprah's Show to discuss transformation in human consciousness etc..
Eckhart Tolle - Oprah also launched an online course with metaphysical teacher Eckhart Tolle that was based on his book The New Earth: Awakening to Your Soul's Purpose. In addressing the Bible, Tolle attempts to play both sides of the street. Although, he does not directly state it, he clearly does not believe that the Bible is an accurate revelation of the character of God and the nature of the universe. His worldview is totally contrary to the Bible in most areas, so he clearly does not consider it an authoritative source. But, knowing that much of his audience has a Christian background, he quotes the Bible over 25 times in this book. In most instances, he takes the verse out of context and misinterprets it to align with his viewpoint and the overall worldview is directly counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jack Canfield co-author of the Chicken Soup book series appeared on the Oprah show in December 2015. To date the Chicken Soup book series have sold "well over 100 million books" in the U.S. and Canada alone". Although the books contain a great deal of common sense, Christians should be aware that they are also steeped in a spirituality completely opposed to biblical Christianity. Canfield promotes meditation, centering, mandalas (psychic pictures), yoga, and spirit guides. He once wrote
"As we flew home on Cathay PacificChicken Soup For The Soul Airlines I began to think to myself, "We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha,' a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self."
The promotion of those beliefs are blatant examples of Canfield's New Age world view, but his focus on "self-esteem" is more subtle and, therefore, more insidious. See Chicken Soup For The Soul
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Oprah: America's Beloved False Teacher
Sue Bohlin on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 00:00
Tomorrow is the last episode of the Oprah Winfrey show on network TV. Oprah will be throwing her considerable energies and resources into her own cable network (OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network). But she has left a huge footprint on the culture and on the hearts of minds of millions of loyal fans.
People have said for years that they wished Oprah were their next door neighbor or their best friend. And for good reason: she is winsome. She is open and transparent. She is incredibly generous. She not only asks the questions you would ask of her guests, she has the power to draw some of the most powerful and influential people to her stage, ranging from U.S. presidents to Billy Graham.
But she is so much more than a talk-show host. She sees herself as a teacher, and she certainly has used her pulpit to teach and preach - worldwide, as evidenced by the outpouring of love and attendance at her recent tour of Australia.
The problem is that what she's teaching, both personally and through the spiritual gurus she has brought into the limelight, is poisonous. It not only keeps unbelievers in the dark, but she has the power to draw undiscerning, untaught Christians into her spiritual gravity field of heresy.
Oprah is a false teacher of postmodern religion, an a la carte spirituality where people pick and choose their beliefs from a cafeteria line of offerings. She started out with a strong foundation in the Baptist church, but over time she drifted into unbiblical New Age beliefs. She mentions God a lot, but she defines Him in her own way.
She has become a Christian-flavored pantheist, one who believes that an impersonal god, ("however you choose to describe him") is a universal force or energy.
She embraces karmic destiny from Zen Buddhism.
She helped launch "The Secret," the best-selling book promising that wishing will make it so through "The Law of Attraction" - the belief that you attract whatever you think about, whether good or bad. See The Secret
And she enthusiastically proclaims religious pluralism: "One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe that there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to what you call God." See Religious Pluralism
One of Oprah's buddies is Marianne Williamson, a teacher of A Course in Miracles. In 2008, on her XM Satellite Radio show "Oprah and Friends," listeners were offered a year-long course of study on this book which was channeled from a demon. At the same time, she and author Eckhard Tolle offered a webinar featuring his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. This book is Eastern mysticism, which is incompatible with biblical Christianity, but many Christians can't tell the difference.
See A Course in Miracles. Also Note Marianne Williamson is the author of A Return to Love
Oprah's response to a question about reconciling A New Earth with her Christian background was not only eye-opening, but it also shows her point of departure from biblical truth:
"I've reconciled it because I was able to open my mind about the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call ‘God.' I took God out of the box because I grew up in the Baptist church and there were, you know, rules and, you know, belief systems indoctrined. And I happened to be sitting in church in my late twenties . . . And this great minister was preaching about how great God was and how omniscient and omnipresent, and God is everything. And then he said, ‘And the Lord thy God is a jealous God.' And I was, you know, caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said 'jealous.' And something struck me. I was thinking God is all, God is omnipresent, God is - and God's also jealous? God is jealous of me? And something about that didn't feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love and that God is in all things. And so that's when the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me.
See The Jealousy of God
When we use the word ‘jealous’, we use it in the sense of being envious of someone who has something we don't have or perhaps even resenting them for having it. However, when used in reference to God, this is not the intended meaning of the word jealous
"And I love this quote that Eckhart has, this is one of my favorite quotes in chapter one where he says, 'Man made god in his own image, the eternal, the infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my god or our god.'
"And you know, it's been a journey to get to the place where I understand, that what I believe is that Jesus came to show us Christ consciousness. That Jesus came to show us the way of the heart and that what Jesus was saying that to show us the higher consciousness that we're all talking about here. Jesus came to say, ‘Look I'm going to live in the body, in the human body and I'm going to show you how it's done.' These are some principles and some laws that you can use to live by to know that way. And when I started to recognize that, that Jesus didn't come in my belief, even as a Christian, I don't believe that Jesus came to start Christianity. So that was also very helpful to me.
"Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity."
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). That's either true, or it's false.
And not even "the divine Miss O" can get around that. Please join me in praying that she will return to the Lord of truth - and please stay discerning about anything and everything Oprah says. If God doesn't agree with it, it's false. And it's dangerous.
Addendum, Post-Finale show:
In the hour-long sermon of her farewell show, Oprah was consistent with her values and her perception of herself as teacher. It was filled with her inspirational "you can do it" rhetoric that has endeared her to us for 25 years.
She did address the spirituality issue. She said that when people ask how she lasted, how she did it for 25 years, she answers, "My team - and Jesus." She added, "Nothing but the hand of God has made it possible." Her life is permeated by awareness of God's presence and grace in her life, but she has been deceived by the lies of the enemy. She said, "People want to know, which God are you talkin' about? The same one you're talkin' about: the alpha and omega, the omniscient, the omnipresent, the ultimate consciousness, the source, the force, the all of everything there is, the one and only Gee Oh Dee. That's the one I'm talkin' about."
This description of her God is a combination of the biblical God (alpha and omega, omniscient, omnipresent) and the impersonal divinity of pantheism (the source, the force, the all of everything there is). Note that "the one and only Gee Oh Dee" is not the way God reveals Himself to us in His word - as Father, Son and Spirit.
Oprah invokes her memory of Jesus as a warm and fuzzy throwback to her childhood, like a beloved teddy bear that you love but keep on the shelf as a reminder of younger days. She's not dealing with the Jesus who insisted He is the only way to the Father!
John Piper makes a great point about how people (in this case, the five thousand whom Jesus had miraculously fed) choose their own Jesus, as I suggest Oprah does:
Because the enthusiasm these people have is not for who he really is. This is so important for our day and for your life. People can have a great enthusiasm for Jesus, but the Jesus they're excited about is not the real biblical Jesus. It may be a morally exemplary Jesus, or a socialist Jesus, or a capitalist Jesus, or an anti-Semitic Jesus, or a white-racist Jesus, or a revolutionary-liberationist Jesus, or a counter - cultural cool Jesus. But not the whole Jesus who, in the end, gives his life a ransom for sinners. And if your enthusiasm for Jesus is for a Jesus that doesn't exist, your enthusiasm is no honor to the real Jesus, and he will leave you and go into the mountain.{1}
As I mentioned in my blog post, Oprah's point of departure from orthodoxy was hearing in church, "The Lord thy God is a jealous God." Instead of checking her reaction to this statement with a pastor or someone more theologically taught then she, Oprah slammed the door on the fundamentals of Christianity and gave herself permission to pursue a god more to her taste. What a difference it would have made if she had allowed someone to assure her, "No, Oprah, God is not jealous of you. He is jealous for you! He loves you so much, He wants your full and undivided heart. Let go of your misunderstanding and embrace the Father who loves you more than you can imagine."
Instead, she has embraced a vague and impersonal divinity who is indistinguishable from the universe. In fact, one of the prayers of her life has been, "What would You - God - the universe - have me do?" The problem with this is that God and the universe are not the same thing. God is the creator of the universe. He is before, above, and outside the universe. The universe is part of His creation. There is no point in asking a part of creation what it would have her do, because the universe is a fellow creature of the Most High God along with Oprah.
Much has been made of her farewell words, "Until we meet again." But those were not her last words.
The final words of her finale were, "To God be the glory." And I truly do think she means it.
I think that Oprah is not evil, she's deceived. And I will continue to pray for her.
Note
1. John Piper, "The All-Providing King Who Would Not Be King," www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/the-all-providing-king-who-would-not-be-king.
Oprah and The Spirits of Negro Slaves
Excerpt from a 1998 Time magazine article by Ron Stodghill called Daring To Go There [All Emphasis Added]
"There are times, though perhaps not many, when even the Queen of Talk is at a loss for words, when her lively brand of armchair wisdom collapses under the weight of personal revelation. Oprah Winfrey calls these her "go there" moments, spiritual episodes of divine guidance that far transcend the chatty exchanges with her studio audiences - about her fiancé Stedman, her best friend Gayle or even her dogs Sophie and Solomon - that often masquerade as intimacy. It is during these moments, usually while jogging the winding trails on her Indiana farm, that Winfrey becomes overwhelmed by the sense that old spirits are trying to get in touch with her. And it is during these moments that the woman who loves to talk stops dead in her tracks simply to listen.
Sometimes the epiphanies carry the voices of Negro slaves - Joe and Emily and Dara; Sue and Bess and Sara. Winfrey says she has come to know each of them personally and calls them in at will to guide her in her work. The spirits began visiting her a few years ago, shortly after she bought the property records of various plantations at a Sotheby's auction. A collector of slave memorabilia, Winfrey cherishes the slave papers because these documents serve as the best vessel for connecting her - through name, age and price - to the real human legacy of slavery. While filming Beloved, she kept the slave inventory in her trailer on the set. She dedicated scenes to individual slaves by lighting a candle and praying aloud to them. Often, though, she became so emotional that she couldn't perform the scene." [Daring To Go There By Ron Stodghill/Chicago Sunday, June 24, 2001. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989225-1,00.html]
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