Introduction Confessions of a Former False Prophet It’s a miracle that I’m writing this book, and a testimony to God’s sovereignty. I pray that this book will give you insight into the mind of a New Age false prophet so that you can detect and avoid deception yourself.
Unsaved people who follow false teachers may never hear the gospel. They may never learn who Jesus truly is and why He had to die for us. To be saved from eternal damnation that we all earn for our sins (Romans 3:23; 6:23), we must confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 10:9–11).
I surrendered my life to Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I lost almost everything and everyone in order to follow Jesus, as you’ll read in this book.
This is my story of learning to trust God after nearly wasting a lifetime being independent and willful. I stopped trying to predict and control the future and instead learned to lean on God’s sovereignty. Jesus saved my soul from deception and opened my eyes to His truth.
(Born into Christian Science: the heresy of Arianism and the New Age path)
You see, I was born and raised in a false religion (Christian Science), which led me into the New Age. Christian Science was invented by the false prophet Mary Baker Eddy and her teacher, Phineas Quimby.
In my family’s false religion of Christian Science (which is neither Christian nor scientific), I was taught a heresy that I can barely speak of now: the belief that Jesus was just a man who demonstrated a potential that we all could attain. This is called the heresy of “Arianism,” where Jesus is viewed as a created human instead of as He truly is: the second person of our Holy Trinity, who was fully God and fully human during His earthly ministry. Just like the false religions of Jehovah’s Witness and Mormonism, Christian Science was based on one person’s “divine revelations” instead of on the Holy Bible.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I do believe that God does miraculous healing work today. But the Christian Science formula, like the prosperity gospel, puts the focus on our own human power instead of God’s power. It teaches that if you have enough faith and can get your mind above the physical plane, then your health will automatically shift back to being in God’s image of perfect, whole, and complete. If you didn’t heal, it meant that your mind was holding a negative or “mortal mind” belief. You didn’t have enough faith. We never once acknowledged that sickness or injury may be God’s will, because we hadn’t studied the book of Job or the fact that Paul learned to live with a thorn in his side (2 Corinthians 12:7).
Christian Scientists and New Agers don’t consider their eternity or the health of their souls. They just use “positive affirmations” so they won’t think about what they consider to be a “negative” topic. I was also taught that there was no crucifixion, no devil, no sin, and no hell, and anyone who said otherwise was just being negative. The only “sin” was being unkind, fearful, or negative. The fall described in Genesis 3 was just a metaphorical myth according to the Christian Science teachings I grew up learning.
Why would I need a savior if I wasn’t a sinner? Why would I need saving? In my upbringing, the concept of “sin” was an illusion. We humans hadn’t fallen; we’d just become “negative.” So long as I stayed positive, I would be “spiritually safe.” Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet that’s the upside-down doctrine of New Age and New Thought teachings.
were insulting me personally with that word, because according to the doctrine I was raised in, I was God’s perfect child who could do whatever I wanted as long as I stayed positive.
(Eisegesis vs. exegesis: how false teachers twist scripture)
We New Agers also took the fact that the Bible had the word meditate in it as proof that it was okay to indulge in Eastern forms of meditation. Well, there’s a big difference between Eastern meditation practices that involve emptying your mind and biblical meditation. Eastern practices are open invitations for demons to put ungodly ideas into your head. Believe me, I know all about that unfortunate outcome, because my most outrageous teachings were the result of “insights” I received during Eastern types of meditation sessions.
For example, an ambitious person wants to amass great wealth and fame, so he uses Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” as his proof text that God will help him succeed in the worldly sense. That’s an example of eisegesis, where verses are used to support an outside idea instead of interpreted as the author intended.
By reading the passages before and after the verse. This is called exegesis (pronounced: ex-eh-jee-sis).
Philippians 4 is all about how to deal with suffering in godly ways, which is a more valuable lesson than any material gain we could acquire.
Like Mary Baker Eddy, I was a false prophet who taught and wrote whatever entered my mind. As time went on and my popularity grew, I became narcissistic and never questioned the validity of what popped into my head. Anyone who criticized my work was wrong, in my old mindset.
How would you like to tell the whole world that you had been wrong? It was a painful but important process. That’s when people started gossiping about my conversion, analyzing my actions, and speculating whether I was genuinely saved.
I had to tell people that my previous teachings were unbiblical and ask them to burn or toss out my old products so that they’d no longer be deceived by my old work.
(The public reckoning: admitting to the world you were wrong)
One: The Woman at the Well
Two desires drove me as a New Age teacher: helping people and pursuing secret wisdom.
When Jesus saved me, I was like the woman at the well, who had continually thirsted for love but couldn’t find it. Jesus offered her, and all of us, living water. When the woman asked Jesus about the living water, He explained, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). In other words, Jesus quenches our thirst for love, because He offers a love that fills our hearts in a way no mortal relationship can.
While it’s true that our words and our prayers affect our outcomes, it’s essential to ensure that we’re only praying for God’s will to be done. False prophets teach that you can conjure whatever your heart desires, which is a recipe for living against God’s will.
Panentheism also holds to the heretical view that God is “learning” through our experiences.
What woke me out of these false viewpoints was studying one of the oldest books of the Bible: Job. If you haven’t yet read the book of Job, let me highly recommend it to you.
For four chapters, God outlines everything He can do that we can’t do. In the most beautifully therapeutic way, reading these chapters burst my illusion that I was a “cocreator with God,” a common phrase in the New Age. And let me tell you that it was a huge relief to realize that I wasn’t in charge of the universe, as I’d mistakenly believed! God is in charge, which I’m so happy to finally know.
(Ambition, manifestation, and the New Age theology of self-glory)
FOUR Rock-Star Lifestyle I’d worked really hard to become the bestselling New Age author at the top New Age publishing house. For two decades, I’d sat at my computer, writing books instead of going to the movies or parties. Eventually, I made enough money to have an oceanfront home that looked eerily similar to the house I’d seen in my dream with Grandma Pearl.
I was using the formulas I’d learned in Christian Science, the New Age, and from years of studying Norman Vincent Peale to “manifest” my wants. I wasn’t turning to God or asking for His guidance, because God seemed faraway. I thought of God as synonymous with “the universe,” an impersonal but loving and wise energy force. How could you feel close to an energy force? That’s why I’d turn instead to the angels, who seemed so friendly and accessible. If you’re ambitious, please be very careful! Test the spirits—and let your ambitions be purely about bringing glory to God and pleasing Him (Philippians 2:3).
Most New Agers also believe in reincarnation, and that you can do whatever you want without concern about the afterlife because you’ll have other lives to “work out your karma,” and eventually you and everyone else will end up in heaven. The New Age also encourages you to “find your soul mate,” which means an ideal, conflict-free relationship.
Broken and multiple successive marriages are the norm when you’re continually seeking a conflict-free relationship instead of working on the marriage to which you’ve committed.
My pride stemmed from a sincere but misguided desire to be loved. Still, my sin of pride was that I was trying to glorify myself instead of giving glory to God. The New Age fans the flames of self-glory by encouraging everyone to use positive affirmations that we are wonderful, awesome, and amazing. While these affirmations temporarily boost confidence and mood, they’re like eating sugar, which leads to a crash. The high is always followed by a low.
(Obedience as fruit: the clay-and-potter correction)
However, the devil disguises himself in evil-genius ways. One of these ways is by telling you to follow your heart and your dreams. Go ahead. You’ve had a hard life. You deserve the best! he’ll say through the world’s messages. And it’s so easy to agree with these seemingly logical and innocent encouragements.
We are the clay and He is the potter (Isaiah 64:8).
Jesus’ words are alarmingly convicting: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:1–3). In other words, God sees everything we think and do, so if we believe that, our lives will reflect it. Again, it’s not that we’re saved by our obedience, but because we are saved, we want to obey. Our obedience is a fruit of our salvation.