Mike Oppenheimer has hit the nail on the head again. When it comes to discerning the truth about the growing trend and dangers of Eastern mysticism being embraced in the church (through Emergent circles), Mike articles ought to be read and heeded!!!
Before Mike was saved he was involved in the New Age and Yoga, etc. Now he writes extensively on discernment issues and has done a tremendous service in warning the body of Christ about satanic trojan horses creeping into Western churches. Spiritual fusion - East Comes West tells it like it is, Eastern mysticism in being embraced by undiscerning Christians everywhere.
~ Chris at SRN
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Spiritual fusion - East Comes West
by Mike Oppenheimer at Let Us Reason
http://www.letusreason.org/current78.htm
Where does the church go to get the answers? There is a host of new speakers and books today that are trying to feed the spiritual hunger of seekers of a spiritual life. But they are not leading them to Jesus Christ (and His Word- the way it was written) but to a convergence, a synthesis of religious practices. We need to know what the people’s books we read are about and listen carefully to what they are teaching, and watch how they practice their spiritual life to know what they to actually believe. A synthesis of other spiritual practices borrowed from other religions was unacceptable by the apostles and the early church. This Emerging movement is not a return to renew our pure devotion to Christ or apostolic teaching but a “smoothie Christianity,” where they are taking the ingredients of other religions and putting it into a blender to invent a new drink-which some believe is refreshing, drinking it to quench their thirst.
Consider these new statistics “A strange god indeed, as it turns out. In his book, Third Millennium Teens, Barna revealed this stunning fact: 63 percent of church-going, supposedly Christian teens said they believed "Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and all other people pray to the same God, even though they use different names for their god... ...However, the sad fact is that very few of the nation's youth appear to be Bible-believing Christians... Barna found that only 4 percent of U.S. teens can be considered evangelicals. More distressingly, that number is actually trending in the wrong direction. That 4 percent figure "is a far cry from the 10 percent measured in 1995," he said. How could teenagers who go to church so often know so little -- or at least believe so little -- of the historic Christian faith? And whose fault is it?” (A Strange Faith -- Are Church-Going Kids Christian? http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/11/152005a.asp)
Read Entire Article at Let Us Reason
