I'm sharing, in this post, a fascinating and important talk on the roots and influence of New Age philosophy in all aspects of modern society and why people are turning away from Christianity.
Over the course of my lifetime (43) years I have seen a huge shift. People have overwhelmingly abandoned traditional Christianity and turned to atheism, agnostism, or new age spirituality.
Why has this happened?
I believe that a major sifting is happening. In the past, people ascribed to Christian beliefs because the church was a force in the culture. There were social privileges that came with being a "good church going Christian" and social sanctions for not being one. People didn't necessarily have to really believe to gain access to these privileges, they only had to put on a good show which led to the kind of hypocrisy that scandalised many and that Jesus, more than anyone spent his life on earth decrying. Jesus hated hypocrisy.
These days the opposite is true. Indeed, to be a true Christian these days means being ostracised by polite society. Much of The Bible is considered either irrelevant, offensive to modern sensibilities or both. Religion is thought to be too controlling and outmoded or just a crutch for the weak.
Behaviour that would have been considered shocking in the past is now acceptable. This has led many people to freely indulge in all manner of activities that would have meant social exclusion in the past. This has prevented a lot of hypocrisy while also revealing the truth of people's hearts.
When given the opportunity to live as we want without any negative social implications and indeed, even with social rewards, what will we do? This "free" cultural atmosphere reveals the truth of souls.
What reveals truth? Revelation. I do believe that we are living in a time that the book of Revelation, the final book of The Bible speaks about. This book is also called The Apocalypse. The Bible prophesies a great apostasy or turning away from the truth in the end days.
Yet, human beings haven't ever lived and cannot live without God. So to fill the need for God on their own terms, they invent their own. Spirituality has taken over from Christianity. This Spirituality doesn't depend on any absolute truths but relative ones which means everyone gets to make their own god or gods with their own attributes that fulfil all the particular specifications of the individual. These gods give no absolute commandments to protect and guide or free the soul from the limitations and bondage of self and sin.
In these self made, customised religions, there is no need for mystery because esoteric knowledge will be given to the initiated. There is no need for guidance or doctrine or the protection of the church because there is only love and light in the spiritual realms. There is no need to pray, because power is manifested from within if you are "enlightened." Eventually, the end result is that people become their own gods. But we cannot save ourselves. We cannot free ourselves from ourselves. We need a Saviour. We need God.
This talk is particularly fascinating to me because it reflects some of my own journey from New Age philosophy, heavily influenced by Anthroposophy, to traditional Catholicism.
These new age philosophies influence music, media, films, fashion and much of modern culture. They are so powerful and able to move so freely because, those in positions of power, the elite, are steeped in them themselves through masonry and they infuse the culture with these beliefs as a form of social engineering.
These new age philosophies which stem from masonic networks are infiltrating Christianity too now and getting mixed up in a modern form of Christianity which contains a lot of heresies. People don't understand the danger of heresy anymore. It sounds like such an outdated word. Yet one small heresy is akin to making the smallest engineering part of a ship a millimetre out of shape. It won't necessarily make an enormous difference at first, yet over the course of years and generations it will lead to major error and turn the course of the whole ship.
Freemasonry influenced that period of history known as "The Enlightenment" which attempted to de spiritualise humanity. Lucifer (one of the names of the adversary - Satan) is known as an angel of light. Yet the light or "knowledge" he gives is false, deceives, leads away from true light and leads to destruction of the soul.
The story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil led them out of the garden of Eden where they could walk with God in truth, beauty, goodness and love to the hard world, where "the prince of this world" causes havoc and the mortal body dies.
But the soul is eternal and how we live in this temporal world effect our soul in very real ways. Jesus came to teach us these eternal truths, He came to guide us and to save us. He said:
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." - John 10:27-28
"The Church is that within which is right order. Outside the puerilities and despairs, even in these, our earthly miseries, we always hear the distant something of an eternal music and smell a native air. Within that household, the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside, it is the night." - Hilaire Belloc