Deceived No More by Doreen Virtue

Author:Doreen Virtue [Virtue, Doreen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2020-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

“I want to go to church,” I said to my husband. “A regular Christian church, not a New Age church.” I was hungry to learn more about Jesus and the Bible.

Over the years, I’d tried to blend New Age beliefs with Christianity. I’d attended various religious services and ceremonies, celebrating them all because of the New Age idea of coexistence. You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker of the various religious symbols side by side with the message that “we’re all worshiping the same God.” This goes along with a similar New Age belief that “all paths lead to heaven,” and my favorite tagline was “the more friends you have in heaven the better,” which meant that I prayed to Jesus along with deities of other religions. Exclusivity just didn’t fit with my worldview that God and Jesus accept everyone equally. I had a lot to learn about God’s love and holiness.

My husband was raised in the Methodist church and had been baptized at age twelve. However, he and his family fell away from church attendance, and Michael developed his own theology. He loveds Jesus and was more familiar with the Bible than I was, but he also held decidedly New Age beliefs. He traveled with me to New Age workshops, where he was on stage with me, playing meditative keyboard music. Michael frequently taught New Age doctrine and gave psychic readings to audience members. At my book signings, people stood in line to ask Michael questions, and he’d happily counsel them from a New Age-Christian blended worldview.

Like me, Michael tried to mix the two. Yet, like oil and water, Christianity and New Age don’t mix. In the appendix of this book, I list the reasons why this is so. The main difference, though, is that the New Age is all about glorifying and empowering yourself, while Christianity is about glorifying God and praising Him for His power.

My point is that Michael and I were both involved in the New Age deception. Some people have insinuated that Michael manipulated me into Christianity. These rumors usually originate from people who can’t accept or understand my conversion. The truth is that Jesus was pulling both Michael and me out of the New Age simultaneously.

We began our church shopping at a Pentecostal Foursquare church. We loved the pastor, a warm and loving man named Sione, which in his native Tongan means “God is gracious.” Pastor Sione would only preach for ten or fifteen minutes each service because his wife was convinced the congregation didn’t want to hear him talk much longer. Michael and I wanted to hear him, though! The rest of the two-hour services were devoted to worship music, prayer requests, and praise reports. Those are all worthy uses of service time, but Michael and I wanted longer sermons.

We tried various churches. In Hawaii where we lived, choices for everything—schools, restaurants, stores, and churches—are limited because the islands are only so big. So there weren’t as many churches from which to choose, compared to a mainland city.

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