Guest Speaker: Steven Bancarz | Testimony | Dangers of the New Age & Occult Objects | Sunday Service

good morning good morning how are you guys doing doing well it's good to see you guys well uh if you're on the floor you guys can come on in and the rest of you guys can stand up and we'll pray and get ready to worship dearly father we thank you so much for this morning thank you god for bringing us to this place and bringing us here safely god and i just pray that we could put all the things aside that's on our mind god that might be worrying us or wants to distract from this time of worship and i just pray god that we can fix our eyes on you that we can look to you right now and that we won't just be looking at you but that will praise you from the inside out like that song says we don't want to just put on just raise our hands without our hearts being there but god we do want to express our love whether it's kneeling down lifting our hands singing out god dancing that we can do that in this place that there will be a freedom in this place because of the spirit of the lord because you are here god so i just pray that you fill your people right now you fill them from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet god that we would just be able to not hold back god i just pray that we'll lift you up and that you'll be enthroned upon these praises and i pray against the enemy who wants to deceive and wants to make people fearful from worshiping you god i just pray against his schemes his lies his attacks and we just pray father that you would be here with us and that your presence would be manifest in this place we love you god and we thank you and it's in jesus mighty name i pray and all god's people said amen [Music] over all the earth [Music] is again [Music] you rain [Music] says [Music] i am [Music] over every [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh [Music] over all my dreams [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] jesus is coming soon [Music] like [Music] we [Music] lord jesus [Music] jesus is [Music] we say [Music] is lord jesus comes [Music] the lord jesus come so we wait we wait for you [Music] we [Music] see [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] lord jesus lord jesus christ [Music] lord jesus christ [Music] can we [Music] we [Music] is [Music] [Music] so [Music] it's in front of [Music] revealing your majesty [Music] every [Music] you place the stars in the sky and you know [Music] you are amazing [Music] so [Music] you are [Music] oh [Music] [Music] is [Music] you are amazing [Music] as well [Music] the stars [Music] [Music] in my heart [Music] you are amazing god [Music] [Music] so [Music] nothing can come back [Music] i'll taste it empty of the sweetest of love when my heart becomes free and my shame is [Music] [Music] your glory [Music] [Music] love [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] your presence [Music] dear lord i just pray that you'd make us aware of your presence god right now i pray that we would just depend on you lord with everything that we have god we can do nothing without your spirit without your power and so we just submit to you god right now we ask that you would please fill us all with your holy spirit and enable us god to live for you we just thank you so much that you gave us your holy spirit thank you and the holy spirit that you comfort us and that you're our advocate and that you're our helper so we just we just love you and we just give you this time we ask that we would every day cry out for you god and just please humble a sword we ask that you would just help us to realize just how wonderful you are how powerful you are god and how in desperate need we are of you lord just surrender our hearts and our lives to you right now god in jesus name let us your be let us experience the glory of your goodness let us let us experience the glory of your goodness let us [Music] let us [Music] it's holy spirit [Music] god is what our hearts know for to be overcome by your presence [Music] is [Music] so [Music] [Music] lord i just pray right now that you will feel this place with your presence god we need you we can't do this without you you don't want to sing another song without you god please fill this place god overwhelm us with your love lord i just pray that you will just reveal to your people how much you love them god that you died for them specifically lord that you love us so much that you're you're never ending god you're never changing god i just pray for anyone in here that doesn't feel your love god that just feels rejection and hurt god that you will just overwhelm them lord let them know how deep your love is for them god [Music] that you died for us god you love us so much [Music] [Music] how deep the father's love for us how pass beyond all measure he would give his only son to make a richest treasure that turns his face away as wounds which are the chosen one bring many sons to glory [Music] ashamed [Music] it was until it was accomplished [Music] jesus christ amen [Music] is [Music] [Music] the fish i know with all my heart so [Music] [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] earth [Music] we give you the highest [Music] see there on a tree [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i want to just pray that every breath in our lung will be for you god everything that we say is for you god please help us not say anything that is not of you god please fill us with your holy spirit god let us give you glory that's why we're here today is not for any anyone or any person god but for you and you alone i pray that that will be evident god that we are worshiping you the king of kings and lord of lords god that you will be glorified lord we just lift up our hands to you right now and praise you for all you've done for us god all you've given us for your presence that's enough god lord let us just sing out to you god with every breath that's in my lungs my heart cries out to you belongs the glory [Music] we give you the glory through every loss or victory my soul will rise to only bring you glory only we give you the glory my heart cries out to you [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] you are worthy you are worthy we're amazed by you no one else but you you are worthy you are worthy we're amazed by you no one lord you're else [Music] [Music] here's everyone [Music] you [Music] amen give the lord a clap bless you god good morning how's everyone doing doing good amen god's good [Music] well i want to just say this real quick we stephen was supposed to speak today but he wanted to make sure that you're here for the right reasons so i'm going to speak first and then no i'm just kidding what no just kidding steven speak well i want to say real quick i'm not good at intros but i i met stephen about seven months ago but before that i'd seen him on youtube and you hear me sometimes say if you've been here before that there's a lot of people you know i got saved in the jesus movement and you know i was radically saved and i was saying that you don't see a lot of people get radically saved at least in america too much anymore but as i saw his testimony online i was just blown away because he was just crying about a sin how he was a radical new ager he uh made more in one month on his youtube channel or whatever pod i don't know what you call it but the youtube thing he made more than most of us make in a year so he gave that up for jesus uh how many thanks for that and uh he's just yeah and so i saw it so he was so we uh mariah saw that he was in phoenix about a month after he i we saw him online i said you guys check out this guy this guy's great and i told my family and then all of a sudden he was there we called him up and he said he'd meet with us and we couldn't believe it so we met with them and uh we've kind of had a friendship ever since and i bug him and stalk him all the time but now again but uh so we're really blessed to have stephen he has a book called the second coming of the new age and it's a really good book and i encourage you to read it and uh let's give a warm calvary chapel or a valley welcome to stephen bankers love you man [Applause] all right how are you guys good to see you all good to see some familiar faces too um can we give a hand for worship that was amazing and uh if my eyes look bloodshot because they are it's from worship and not something else i promise so today i want to talk to you guys about my my story my testimony out of new age spirituality um to christianity to jesus and how many people here have also come out of new age spirituality and all right we have some people here how many people have heard of new age spirituality okay yeah pretty much everyone it's all over the place and um it's really one of the most pertinent threats to the church today more so than atheism more so than buddhism um just statistically you know yoga is a 10 billion dollar industry meditation is a billion dollar industry crystals alone are a billion dollar industry astrology is a billion dollar industry like these are dominating our culture right now and so i think it's important we have conversations like this we can equip ourselves and and raise our faith and the goodness of christ and the exclusivity of christ because there's no other path to god except through his blood so i want to talk about what the new age movement is first and foremost when we talk about new age spirituality it's kind of hard to define even for scholars because it's more of an umbrella term it's kind of like a combination of spiritual beliefs and practices it draws from buddhism but it's not buddhism it draws from wicca but it's not wicca and it allows you to be as subjective as you want and kind of pick and draw from different world views and create your own reality by fashioning a world view that happens to suit yourself and whatever season you find yourself in some common new age beliefs would include things like pantheism which is the belief that everything is divine or everything's god by nature reincarnation the belief that we live many many lives on this earth even though hebrews 9 27 says it's been appointed unto each man to live once and after that comes the judgment christ consciousness is another staple new age doctrine promoted by eckhart tolle deepak chopra oprah winfrey jim carrey russell brandt and what christ consciousness teaches is that jesus is divine by nature since everything's god by nature we are too and jesus is someone who realized his own divinity he discovered it that he was intrinsically divine just as we all are and to live from that state of realizing you are god and god is all is to exhibit christ consciousness so jesus is someone who became christ by realizing he was the word made flesh and we're all the word made flesh so these are some staple new age beliefs and practices practices would include lucid dreaming astral projection meditation yoga crystal healing reiki astrology past life regressions tarot cards angel cards psychedelic drugs and so forth and the goal of new age spirituality what people are striving toward what i was striving toward is enlightenment we want to become enlightened and the way they define that in new age spirituality it has to do with what we just talked about with jesus exhibiting god consciousness everything is god god is all all is god and to realize that you're god and live from that state of consciousness the hindus call it moksha the buddha the buddhist call it nirvana and new age spirituality calls it enlightenment and it sounds a little bit crazy it sounds a little bit out there this is something i believed wholeheartedly this is something i taught and i believe they could ground this in certain studies on consciousness and quantum mechanics and i want to read a few quotes here from some new age teachers just to put this into perspective for us here's neil donald walsh and his book series called convert conversations with god has sold over 10 million copies not only jesus of nazareth has been christed you can be christed too the course in miracles which has sold 10 plus million more copies it's basically a staple book in new age spirituality if there was a new age bible it would be this book but there isn't one it tells us is he jesus the christ oh yes along with you so marianne williamson who was actually running as a democratic candidate i was like oh my gosh this is a new age teacher like do people know that she thinks she's christ she literally says that when i'm not operating out of fear christ is who i am christ is what remains she has said and i quote accepting the christ is merely a shift in self-perception so we're all christ we just don't realize it like jesus did um and so when you're in new age spirituality you think that well you know we're all divine and we came to awaken our to our own divine nature but when you go and read genesis 3 as i did when i got saved and i was like wait a minute that sounds a little bit like what satan was telling eve and the first temptation right satan came to eve and was like if you partake of the knowledge of good and evil through special secret knowledge you don't have right now you can become as god or as the gods in the king james version and the new age movement tells us that through special secret knowledge of self of the true nature of reality you can exhibit god consciousness right the new way just takes it one step further though and it says your god right now your god with amnesia you just don't realize you're god um so this is a staple core new age doctrine believed by everybody in the new age movement and i was practicing this stuff i was teaching this stuff and despite the fact that i was raised christian um i want to explain how i got led into new age spirituality because i had really the most christian upbringing i mean homeschooled under a christian curriculum until grade three from grade three to grade six i was uh in a christian private school and when the seventh grade came my parents started attending a messianic synagogue so they were exploring kind of like the the jewish roots of the faith and so for five hours every saturday i would attend a synagogue and we'd pray and sing and recite prayers and and all in hebrew and it would be like a seven eight-hour day and then sundays would come and my parents would have messianic home groups where again we would sing and pray and the home groups would be another three hours and we observed all of the high feast days as a family i remember seeing my mom taking all the bread out of the cupboards for the feast of unleavened unleavened bread and putting them in the freezer and she'd be like sweeping to make sure there's no crumbs in the cupboards as if god cares if you have crumbs in your cupboard see i mean i'm not saying we can't celebrate these things but they're not um obligations god puts on his body and in christ um and so we were keeping the dietary laws as well and uh you know praise god these were a shadow of the things to come because shrimp's pretty good you know what i mean um so so my life was pretty saturated with christianity um prayer my parents were pentecostal charismatic so it wasn't uncommon for uh you know my mom to speak in tongues or pray in tongues and you know we had people come over sometimes for prayer meetings some people would prophesy over us and so forth and so this was kind of my my mom's thinking all the time singing to the lord uh more than i liked sometimes as a kid but it was just really saturated with uh christianity and with the lord like really good christian upbringing and despite this i was still led into new age spirituality um through one topic which i want to share uh ancient astronaut theory um the topic of aliens is what led me into new age spirituality despite my parents being like perfect christian parents um so i just want to share on that i've had people i feel as though christian parents sometimes burden themselves with this idea that well i wasn't strict enough or i was too strict and i didn't do what i could have done for my children or i over exerted things and deterred them from the faith and you know my parents did neither of those things i still i was teaching this stuff for a living right jesus was the will of god in action he said he only said what he heard the father saying he only did what he saw the father doing and he was rejected by his own family they rejected him and his message his own brother didn't believe in him and they tried pushing him off a cliff after he preached his first sermon so you want to talk about like being a perfect example in the lives of those around you jesus was it he was rejected luke 4 he preaches this beautiful sermon and then they try and push him off a cliff and he has to dodge and get away so don't believe this lie that if i would have just been you don't know that you don't know that um and through deception you know we become susceptible to the lies of the enemy when we pass the age of accountability you know we start desiring sin and the lusts of the flesh take over and we become our own man and our own woman to god and we're accountable for our apostasy not not the parents um so i started watching this program on television called ancient aliens and you got the guy with the crazy hair who he's literally a meme he became a meme and uh it was on the history channel and they're teaching this stuff as though it's history and ancient astronaut theory is the idea that you have all these ancient cultures who are talking about you know gods coming down from the sky and chariots of fire or in flying shields and they're talking about how they communicated with them and gave them information and tools some cultures say they even reproduced with human women and they're telling us that you know this is just primitive man's way of explaining extraterrestrial visitations you know the the flying shields and the chariots of fire these are ufos coming to earth and these frog-like spirits and so forth that they're describing these statues they're making to clearly look like you know extraterrestrials so they're describing alien visitations that have apparently been happening since the dawn of human civilization and i was i was looking at some of these you know structures that they were talking about and they were saying there's no way these could have been built by human technology alone like the great pyramids for example or stonehenge some of these megalithic stones that weighed ten thousand times how do you move something like that they must have had extraterrestrial technology and one i just want to give you an one quick example of how this is just they're just lying like they're just straight up lying but not being truthful there's an example they'll use a tribe in mali africa called the dogon tribe and in the 1931-1955 researchers went to the dogon tribe and there was a leader there who was blind and they were interviewing the leader about their culture and they were giving that the blind dogon tribe leader was giving these researchers information that they couldn't have known without modern telescopes they didn't have access to modern telescopes they were giving them information like saturn had rings jupiter had four moons and the serious star sirius a had a sister star that revolved around it called sirius b and the blind dogon man said well we got this information from fish-like water spirits that came from the serious star system so you know ancient aliens all dramatic with their dramatic voice and it had to be extraterrestrials they couldn't have received this any other way but there's some problems with their narrative first of all the dogon tribe was not a secluded tribe in the early 1900s french settlers came and built schools there and we know dogon tribe people started attending french schools where they would have received education on astronomy in the 1930s you had missionaries from england come and they could have received information from that way as well but they were also wrong in some of the things that they were saying they said that saturn was the outermost planet in the solar system which it isn't that's a weird thing for an alien to say um they said jupiter had four moons when it doesn't it has 12 moons so how is it these extraterrestrials solve the gravity problem and were able to travel eight light years from sirius but they couldn't pass a grade one astronomy test like that's pretty weird and so another thing that was wrong with this story is that there was a book written in the 1970s by a guy named robert temple and he took this diagram that the dogon leader drew in the sand of the orbit of sirius b around serie a and he changed it to make it look like the real orbit and said that was the one that they draw when the one they draw was an error and the ancient astronaut theorist and ancient aliens was pushing this fraudulent book and using this to back their theory and the worst part about this is researchers came in 1991 to go ask these people if these stories were in fact true they wanted to confirm these stories and they could not find anyone of the dogon tribe who heard anything about fish-like spirits coming and teaching people from sirius even when they interviewed people from the original research group back in the 50s so this is just one example of how you see these things presented on ancient islands if you have five six seven of these presented in one episode it's deceiving people by the millions and people are being led astray and they're thinking well you know if aliens exist and the universe is teeming with life how do we account for christianity being the only true religion the bible being the only true book and did jesus have to go die on the cross for all these extraterrestrial planets and bear the sins of all the aliens um and so you run into some theological things we have to wrestle through but the church kind of shies away from fringe topics like this because there's taboo around it but statistically this is what people are interested in um i've had young people as young as 9 10 years old asking me about the pineal gland and astral projection and the chakras and so forth and people are interested in this stuff and i believe that we should be prepared to have a response and so i was watching international theories uh theorists and i thought the explanation they were giving was the only game in town i didn't know that we had an explanation from genesis 6 and the fall of angels right i'm not going to go into the book that you're not going to keep it to the bible but book of enoch elaborates and talks about how the fallen the fallen angels taught mankind things like about the stars astronomy gave them tools wisdom it actually tells us that they taught the removal of the fetus in the book of enoch to abortion um weaponry magic arts witchcraft the philosophy of witchcraft and so forth we have a biblical way of explaining some of these things supernaturally if we need to and naturally if we need to as well through modern archaeology and just debunking the lines they're telling but i was just drinking this stuff up i had season one and season two on my ipod i was falling asleep listening to ancient aliens over and over and over again and there was one teacher on that program in particular named david wilcock who was just an explicit new age teacher and i started researching aliens more and i found all these people who are teaching on aliens they're new age teachers it's like a package deal it's like you get it's like a two-for-one combo and i was actually just ancient aliens was on recently and i was watching it because i was like i want to see where they're going with this program now they're on like season 14 or something and i kid you not i sat down it was on the history channel or history two or something and they were telling us that through the pineal gland we have access to the one mind to the field of consciousness and the universe and that through intention and projecting our focus and attention to try and make contact with our mind we can reach uh telepathically to the mind of aliens and extraterrestrials and through transmeditation and the use of psychedelic compounds we can contact extraterrestrials this is being taught on the history channel so this is what really got me into new age spirituality and i was also reading contact material given to us by these apparent extraterrestrials and lo and behold they taught new age doctrine um and it's kind of funny that they traveled so far to get here just to tell us to deny jesus and that the bible got it wrong and that the church got it wrong it's like you think they would tell us how they got here it's like they can't wait to tell you that jesus isn't who he said he is so so i started researching this stuff practicing the stuff i was getting more and more into it um esp researching the pineal gland studies on consciousness quantum mechanics and i'm trying to tie this back to the christian worldview i've been raised with i'm like how does jesus fit into this how who's god how does god fit into this what's true about the afterlife i was reading material by dr michael newton and his journey of souls destiny of souls dr ian stevenson in his reincarnation research i was reading primary source material and i wanted to really rationally ground these new age beliefs and evidence which i would say is faulty evidence or spurious evidence better explained other ways um but i was really involved in this and a practice i was obsessed with was lucid dreaming how many people heard of lucid dreaming okay so this is where i saw a demon face to face was within a lucid dream um so lucid dreaming is the practice where you become consciously aware that you're dreaming as you're having the dream so within the dream consciousness sets in and you think yourself oh my gosh i'm dreaming you can control your own thoughts your own actions within the dream world you can have a certain degree of influence over the dream world and christians are practicing this stuff um christians are teaching people other christians how to practice this stuff if it happens by accident that's one thing but to go out and seek this thing um it's a rabbit trail and to false spirituality so i had this lucid dream where i was driving my car and there was somebody in my passenger seat i crashed my car pulling up to a tim hortons which is like the the canadian coffee shop it's the best if you ever go to can you gotta get timmy's um it's really good stuff get a double double from timmy's that's good so i crashed my car when i pulled up and my passenger was freaking out i'm like don't worry i'm in a lucid dream when we come out of tim hortons it's gonna it's gonna fix itself and i came out and my car had fixed itself and i was sitting in my car and i was so lucid i couldn't tell if i was in a lucid dream anymore it crossed the point where i was like is this is this real life and then i thought to my this super deep thought i had you know if if i can't tell the difference between this in real life how do i know real life isn't one big dream you know super deep so i'm driving my car in my lucid dream and it starts to become like interrupted like there's an outside force interfering with my dream and my car starts kind of glitching down the road and i'm not in control of it anymore and i got pulled up out of my car and i was maybe 50 feet above the house tops everything looked like it did in my neighborhood i was in my neighborhood in my lucid dream and there was a being who appeared in front of me who had um he was in the air with me and out of maybe six feet tall or something he had red skin he was wearing a red cloak he had kind of like a lizard like jaw structure not like a normal job but he was humanoid looking and he had a third eye in the middle of his forehead and i knew from what i was researching that this was a symbol of spiritual enlightenment someone who had awakened his pineal gland or opened his pineal gland chakra and when you do that your third eye opens and now you have you know esp abilities and you can read people's minds and you have psychic powers and so forth so i realized this was like a highly advanced being and that's what i thought when i saw him at least and he closed his two eyes at me after giving me this like disgusting smirk he closed his two eyes and his third eye was the only one open at me and my my awareness like my consciousness got pulled into his third eye like a vortex like a vacuum and there was about three seconds of darkness and i opened my eyes after three seconds of darkness and i found myself hovering four feet over my bed um and i was as you know conscious and lucid as i am right now it was i was actually outside of my body paul says in second corinthians 12 um read there he's speaking in the third person because he's being a little facetious because i know a man who was caught up to the third heaven whether in the body or out of the body i do not know and he says that twice so we do have a theoretical framework coming from the bible of how separation from consciousness and body is at least possible prior to physical death and so i sat up in the air i'm hovering looking around in my bedroom and my my body is lighting up the room a little bit dimly dimly and i realized oh my gosh i'm out of my body i'm terrified because i've never experienced this before i mean it's pretty rare so i'm fighting to try and get back into my body i'm trying to thrust myself back into my bed and i'm seeing my physical leg and my right leg i don't even know what we would call it my spirit man leg my astral leg interacting with my physical leg i'm seeing both of them and i'm trying to get back into my body and for about a few minutes i fought to get back in finally got back in and then i felt this buzzing pressure on my forehead which i knew was a precursor because i was obsessed with studying astral projection material and i knew if you have that get ready to be pulled out of your body i got pulled out a second time and again i wasn't i didn't ask like i was not this was an entity doing this to me right so you know people will tell you just visualize white light around yourself to protect yourself from demons or say positive affirmations when you're in the devil's territory through transgressing the commandments of god and you're practicing things that he says are sin and that are demonic like you're in the devil's playground he doesn't have to play by your rules and he wasn't playing by mine he pulled me out a second time and i was i was scared i was trying to pinch myself couldn't feel anything okay now settled back into my body and ran upstairs and told my parents um my mom was terrified for me because she raised me christian right and she was she's the most devoted christian i've ever met in my life the most prayerful woman always walking in the spirit always interceding um and i don't think my dad really understood the implications of my worldview my practices at the time but my mom was terrified for what i was experiencing i was studying universe philosophy at the time at the university of guelph and in my ancient greek and roman philosophy class that day when i got back in my body we were talking about arguments for the existence of the soul everyone around me is debating about whether or not the soul exists and i felt so self-content and so prideful i was like people have been debating this for three thousand years and here i am with the answers firsthand and it's a very empowering thing because you feel like you got a one-up on everybody else and so my practices and my studies were getting so intense and my little brother's friends kept asking me questions they were upset they were 15 16 years old every time i would see them they just peppered me with questions about the chakras about atlantis about aliens about the pineal gland about meditation about how to practice meditation and so i actually made a facebook page for my little brother's friends and i was like here you can all like this page follow this page i'm going to share with you these studies and these explanations and so i created a facebook page for them um after i did a presentation i had a presentation on my house going through all this stuff for my little brother's friends um and i thought i was helping them right i thought i was doing the will of god i thought i was waking humanity up to higher consciousness and helping them like free themselves from the boundaries of religion and everything else and uh the facebook page i made within about a year i grew to 500 000 followers and i made a friend network of other facebook pages that had similar content we would share each other's stuff and kind of cross-pollinate audiences and so we had this pretty big network of facebook pages and my buddy reached out to me and he was like man you realize when you're doing share for shares with these other pages there's a reason why they're sharing they're giving you articles to share on your page instead of you know photos that they post and he's like it's because they're making money they're making ad revenues like you got to make a website he's like man i just had my first thousand dollar day he's like i'm sure that you'd be able to do pretty well if you made one of these yourself so in january of 2014 i made a website uh called spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com and it was a combination of my research a lot of it had to do with near-death experiences and experiences of people people have in the afterlife where they go into the spirit world and they see different uh dr ebben alexander have anyone heard of proof of heaven by evan alexander should be called proof of heathen it's not a uh it's not a real account and um so i've put about 30 articles on my website and started sharing them around and within the first three weeks i brought in 57 000 in ad revenue and that ended up leveling out to about 40 000 a month and i'm working like two hours a day from home um my own boss i thought this was god rewarding me the universe rewarding me um i dropped out of university in my third year because i was like i'm only in university to do what i'm doing now and i'm making so much money it doesn't make sense to be in school anymore and so obviously it was getting to my head um you know you're that young you're 21 years old and you're making that kind of money um i ended up buying a sports car cash suping it up um bought myself a 4 000 square foot house and i was i was really living the dream from any worldly standard and i was like i don't know a one percenter like that kind of money that young it's like really rare especially in canada and so i was like yeah i'm pretty much set up for life here and i was thinking like this can only grow this could only get bigger i got to make other websites and launch them and obviously this all got interrupted because of jesus but um so when things started to really shift for me i'm still practicing meditation and waking mindfulness and i'm still using you know low doses of psilocybin mushrooms and psychedelics and having lucid dream experiences as i'm making this money and i what really started to change was the sin that was in my life started to come up to the surface and i couldn't suppress it anymore the brokenness and the deception i honestly feel like that was when i'm gonna get emotional okay um looking back i think that's when the father started to draw me um because my conscience was just being quickened um so anyway the new age movement was fruitless and i was experiencing its fruitlessness firsthand um i had a lot of brokenness from my past that it was not helping at all it was making it worse in my past i always kind of felt rejected i felt other than i felt alien to the world i felt like i didn't have a place and i wasn't a good communicator i didn't know how to make friends or talk to people and so i always felt like i was on the outskirts of everyone else and so i felt like there's just something wrong with me i'm just fundamentally inadequate and i'm not enough to have people want to be my friend i'm not enough to have people pay attention to me and so i got to be more than what i am and i have to strive to be something other than i am in order to get people's validation and so i was like well i'll be class clown and after a while i was like well this is kind of getting old i'm in the ninth grade now i can't be classical the rest of my life this is stupid and i'm like okay well i'll be smarter than you or i'll be more athletic than you or i'll talk to more girls than you or i'll lift weights better than you or i'll you know be more angry in my mind and be more aggressive towards you in my mind i was getting picked on and bullied and there was a year in my 10th grade where i didn't even have a friend network i would i would wander the halls at lunch going to my locker a bunch of times to make it look like i was busy because i had nowhere to go um you know eating lunch in the library eating lunch you know by myself because i'd go get picked on in the cafeteria and so i was had this fundamental core belief of i'm just rejectable i'm just an alien to the world and we all experience rejection in our lives from some people it's our peers some people it's a spouse um some people it's a parent and i'm grateful that my parents i didn't experience that from my parents but we end up developing these core beliefs about ourselves and then these act as control points for the enemy in our lives um there's the pain that comes with rejection and then there's the messages and the pain right and it's usually the messages that are in the pain that are more toxic and that are worse right you know god will never love you people never love you you'll never be enough you'll never be accepted um you're you're too broken um you're always gonna fail why bother trying and so these beliefs that i had about myself predisposed me to just sinful habits sinful behaviors and trying to compensate for these beliefs that i had and obviously you're a teenager the lust of the flesh it's a big temptation for for young kids and i didn't have the tools i needed to process pain to process rejection um the biggest tool we need is the holy spirit um i've heard a uh the way i've heard someone say it is the holy spirit is to our emotions what oil is to a car we're not built by god to function apart from the spirit of god um we need the law of god as well you know the law of god enlivens our eyes and refreshes our bones as it says in psalms and it's meant to to give us life and keep us from these sins that harm us i became a sin addict pornography theft i was addicted to theft i would go steal from people's cars they would leave their cars open i'd go wander the at night steal from their cars take gps systems money i'd flip them on you know kijiji and then i'd use that money to go buy cigarettes weed and alcohol and go get high and drunk and do it again the next weekend and that was my life in the 12th grade and just really really depraved and i began to sear my conscience during that time too you start to silence your moral compass and another way my moral compass started to get silenced um was through this habit i developed of if i'm in a relationship with someone i still felt like i needed validation from other people in my life i was just like i'm just going to talk to other women i don't care so i would have girlfriends i would talk to other people on the side and that started steering my conscience as well too and i just started to become really hardened really darkened jesus says whoever commits sin is a slave to sin our problem isn't that we have sin it's that we don't know anything but sin job says we drink down iniquity like it's water it doesn't mean we're as bad as we can possibly be and by god's grace of restraint you know thankfully we're not as bad as we could possibly be but um we're all worthy of judgment we're all worthy of condemnation we all need supernatural deliverance and supernatural power to set us free and people in the new age of events are trauma survivors they're broken like i was they're sin addicts like i was people in my community that i was doing you know work with their drug addicts they had their sexually deviant um dorian virtue who's come out of the new age roofing as well she's been speaking recently on some of the unbelievable moral depravity of big name new age teachers adultery womanizing drug addiction just like things worse than like atheists don't even do these things and you have these people at the top levels of spirituality in the west who are displaying the less the least amount of freedom and morality and that doesn't make sense it doesn't add up but the point is the new age movement is absolutely fruitless we need peace and people in new each woman are looking for peace the peace doesn't come from emptying your mind like i thought it did it doesn't come from ridding your mind of content it comes from filling your mind with the right content peace is a fruit of righteousness peace is a byproduct of being in right relationship with ourselves god and others um and peace is the presence of a person it's not the absence of something it's the presence of someone and so i didn't have peace all i had was brokenness sin addiction a seared conscience and where it started to bubble up in my life when i was in the new age when i was in a relationship at the time and i was in conversation with whoever i wanted to be in conversation with when i was in a relationship with her and all of these um secrets that i was having they started to kind of come up to the surface like i couldn't suppress them anymore and i started i stopped i i cleaned my my act up because i started to feel convicted for the first time i was like that's not that's not this is got to change and i believe that was when god started working on me and it was so near the front of my mind that she was like what are you not telling me are you gonna go to your grave with this like like tell me what is it you're you're suppressing so um she eventually pulled it out of me and i confessed that i've been you know living a double life behind her back for the last year and a half absolutely broke her absolutely broke me and that was like looking in a mirror for the first time you kind of don't realize how depraved you are until you hear it come from your own lips and that's why confession is so important um it's very cleansing on one hand but it also makes you real oh my gosh like i really did that like look at the impact this has on others and so i was just destroyed um she was destroyed and she was really close with my parents and um we drove back home to my mom's house and we shared everything that happened and i told them i have problems they didn't know anything was wrong with me they didn't know i had an obsession with serial killers um they didn't know i had anger problems or lust problems i didn't know anything and so shared with them you know what had happened and uh i remember i don't remember anything in that conversation except me my ex and then my mom in a chair in front of us i'm gonna cry and um she was i just remember asking are you ready to give your life to the lord yet and um i didn't have anything left to lose so i mean other than all the money i was making but other than 50 grand a month but but she led us through i i realized i was so sick that i needed help and if jesus could help me then i wanted that and so she led me through a prayer of salvation and i said it after her and i meant it i meant what i said um but i didn't understand the full effect of what i said i didn't understand the atonement i didn't understand what jesus did on the cross and why why jesus had to die and it was more so an invitation for the lord to invade my life as he really is instead of doing what i was doing before which is i have this new age paradigm and i'm going to fit everything i can into the new age paradigm even if it doesn't actually fit i'm going to fit a square peg into a round hole with jesus because even though he says things like i came to give my life as a ransom for many or this is my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins or no one comes to the father except through me or unless you believe that i am he you will die in your sins or i am the way the truth in life no one comes to the father except for me um i am the bread of life you know unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood unless you accept the atonement my sacrifice you have no life in you all these exclusive statements jesus makes but himself i was like i'm just gonna ignore those and focus on one verse the kingdom of god is within you and okay he was teaching about ask and you shall receive okay he was teaching the law of attraction great you know is it not written in the law that ye are gods in john 10 verses like 30-34 i have a video on that topic if you want to know what he was saying there or at least one of the theories i would fit him into this new age paradigm as all new age teachers do they don't do this with muhammad they don't care about him he's not a threat to their worlds or their conscience they don't do this with buddha nobody tries saying buddha was a monotheistic jew who practiced animal sacrifice or you know that the documents the vedas were perverted they're fine with leaving buddha alone and the vedas alone but it was no it's the new testament that was perverted by you know the roman empire the council of nicea jesus was really agnostic and he happened to look exactly like us as new age teachers wow what a coincidence and so i was like okay lord you know what i'm going to accept you as you are and reveal yourself to me as you are because i i want to be intellectually honest with you for the first time so um about a week passed we can we can have two weeks passed and i was listening to the audio bible and i was like waxing my car and um i was listening to the audio bible and i was like i remember for the first time hearing how much jesus talked about hell and i couldn't believe what i was hearing i was like deepak chopra like when how do you how do you deal with this like there's there's like 40 plus times jesus talks about hell in the gospels he talks about hell more than anyone else in the bible combined and i couldn't believe what i was hearing i couldn't believe hearing john the baptist so jesus comes out and says among those born of women there is no one greater that has arisen than john the baptist and then here john the baptist saying i am not christ i'm not the christ israel says it so i'm like if if john if the greatest man ever is in christ how does deepak cho trophy christ doesn't make sense and i'm hearing things like john the baptist saying when he sees jesus the first time he sees jesus he's not saying behold the the hindu or you know behold the bodhisattva or behold the buddha he says behold the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world and he says this in john 3 is a powerful verse he says whoever believes will be saved here does not believe will be condemned for the wrath of god remains on him and i was like i've never heard this stuff before so i'm getting convicted i'm obsessed with i was listening to a dramatized kjv audio bible you got like uh birds and people talking in the background and it's beautiful but you get to revelation when the angel starts speaking yo every time i would fall asleep i'd wake up to revelation chapter four the angels start speaking i was showing kevin the other day the creepiest voices it's like the scariest thing um and they put all this reverb on their voices it's terrifying so but i'm listening to this i'm getting so convicted and i remember that first night i set a prayer of salvation with my mom we went to a a tent meeting a charismatic tent meeting and the reason why we went to that one is because my mom had met a friend who my girlfriend had met on the bus like four months prior to me saying that prayer she was meditating with her friend in the park and was like god i want the real god i don't want this new age junk i want you reveal yourself to me show me who you are literally like an hour later she's side by side with a born-again christian who starts ministering to her evangelizing to her and she told me she after she came out she told me she was like and he had that look in his eyes he always talked about that look which is like the spirit of god in someone you know what i mean and he had that look and he was you know telling me about jesus and he got off the bus with me and prayed for me and i felt something i never felt and i started crying and um as they were praying a bunch of dogs came out of the bushes and tried to like interrupt their prayer and he was like this always happens when i'm praying you know it's just demonic attacker where and as she was telling me this story i was crying and i was like i was getting moved and he ended up getting connected with my mom somehow and they were doing like intercessory prayer for us like crazy like right before our salvation and so we went to his his church he handled tech at the church and um i started going to that tent and you know had a couple services there and a few weeks passed and and there was something i would go hang out on the land so it was like on this piece of property i'd go there i just spent time with god and i felt like he was telling i had to confess one more thing um that would have landed me in prison and i i was honestly like god i if you want me to share this i'll share this but i'm probably going to go to jail um craig tried to pull it out of me last night i was like nope not doing it man um uh you guys knew i used to steal stuff from cars that's enough as a so you need to know and um so anyway i was like oh my gosh this is really serious and i ended up confessing it and it was like i can't describe i can't describe the pain um that it caused in me that it caused in people um like horrible something's wrong with me kind of stuff and i remember calling my dad i was like i i share with him like what had happened like what i'd done and i was like i'm probably gonna go to prison for a few years and um you know it is what it is if they decide to take it to the police then you know i'd rather live for god in prison than you know live a lie out in the open you know but uh by god's grace i was forgiven by the person and um so i didn't end up going where i should have went where i deserve to go and um you know that was that's when i came to the end of myself and that's when i was like i i i don't have anything i don't have anything apart from from god and um i remember i was oh my gosh okay i was in my closet okay it was really nice closet i missed it that's why i'm crying and there was something in the closet that said the word love on it and i i saw the word love and it like it made me feel like disoriented in my mind because i i did not know what love was and i needed it right love's our greatest need we can't live without it and i saw the word love and i was like i don't know love and everything i've done has been outside of love um then i went outside and fell at the feet of the lord and uh was weeping to him um repenting and crying out for forgiveness saying i'm sorry saying i need you at the same time um i was just a mess like i am now and um about five minutes i was just weeping at his feet i couldn't stand up because his presence invaded and um i was in the presence of the lord for the first time and uh i knew it was him um i knew it was the jesus my parents taught me about when i was running from and suppressing and um it was so it was so simple and i'd made it so complex but i was i was i had this it was the holy spirit reveals jesus to us he testifies of christ and the spirit was i could feel like his presence enter in and then it was filling me at the same time and in my head i'm saying in my head jesus says lord it's so simple how do they miss this um and what's also saying it is the jesus of the new testament jesus of the bible so thank you so i'm getting wrecked and uh i guess i don't know if you'd say that's when i got filled um but i was just completely undone and i felt as though when i was in his presence nature itself was glorifying him and worshipping him so i was like the sounds like the wind going through the trees and like the birds and the crickets and stuff it was at night and um i felt like they were pointing to him in some way and the bible says things in like in romans 8 that creation eagerly awaits a day of redemption and um i've been trying to think of like an analogy for it and and maybe the way we could use it to describe it would be like if you imagine a bunch of like chopped up pieces of lead and you put a magnet through the middle of them all the leads gonna turn toward the magnet right and and it was just all pointing to jesus in that moment and i was like like creation recognized him and i didn't um and i thought creation was god and he shows up in creations worshiping him uh i thought nature was divine and he shows up and he's like no i'm lord over the universe and the universe is subject to me and um so i was just i went back inside and that's when i would that's when i was really all in that's what i was really and i had light bulbs going off in my head like crazy like crazy and one of them was i was like oh my gosh look at all these different cultures that i've been learning about the egyptians the mayans the aztecs the incans they all have the same patterns in them the babylonians the sumerians are all using psychedelics they're all making offerings to like blood offerings to different gods and deities they all have like sacred geometry and snake symbolism in them even hinduism and you have the people of the old testament that they were doing none of these things the people of bible are so set apart and so distinct and i could see so clearly that um sorry that all of the uh the world religions were demonically inspired and set up to keep people away from what i just experienced from salvation in christ and i was like oh my gosh it's all a demonic scheme and i was seeing that these entities that people are contacting in the new age movement ascended masters spirit guides aliens astral enemies and so forth i was like they were trying to keep me away from this and i was thinking about that entity i saw and i was like you overplayed your hand buddy you know i mean like you gave me he thought he was gonna lead me further down deception but jesus came and intervened and now i have this testimony to share and i was like oh my gosh i gotta tell people about this so a few days passed i don't even know if a few days passed maybe the next day i went online and i was like i'm still kind of scattered but i told people i'm sorry for teaching you about all these practices all this material it's all demonic i just met jesus he's exactly who he claimed to be and um and so i told them i'm done teaching this stuff and i had an email list too and uh i had i had about like a million followers joint total of like a million and then i had a email list of 90 000 people and i sent an email list out and i was like i just encountered jesus stay tuned i can't wait to tell you about them the next day i checked my inbox f you go kill yourself literally that's what people were saying people were freaking out and just completely like upset but their problem the problem's not with me it's with jesus right um they're resisting god they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and when we talk about jesus we're reminding them of the god they don't want to submit to the god whom they're guilty before and they don't want god like a guilty criminal doesn't want a police officer and as we start telling them about the gospel time about jesus all of a sudden you know the skeletons they're suppressing in their conscience come to the surface and they're at war with god in their mind they're hostile to god in their mind and i understood that through reading the bible and so i didn't take their feedback very personally because i understood that you know our battle is not against flesh and blood first of all um these people are oppressed whether they know it or not might sound mean might sound judgmental but it's what the bible says and i know because i experienced it so i didn't know any christians online um i didn't have any christian friends i prayed for one friend i was like lord i don't deserve to ask you for anything but give me one friend and then i was in a grocery store at 11 p.m at night looking at for energy drinks perfect time and then this group of guys came up behind me looking for cookies in bulk at 11 pm and they were playing they're actually playing metal off their phones like they're outboard speakers metal um i was a big metal head um whether i still am or not it's not in your business but anyway so anyway um we should we keep it sanctified anyway so uh i was trying to guess the band and they saw a tattoo i have on my arm that i got before i was saved into logo of a christian metal band and they're like oh you know that band and i was like yeah and i was like i just got saved a week ago and uh oh man he was like my buddy his name is josiah and uh sorry he evangelized for me to come to his church and um i ended up meeting three people in the next few weeks um who also went to that same church and i went there i just got wrecked as my god there and uh it's been my home church for five years and um so ever since i got baptized at that church um i decided to start making content online exposing the same deceptions that i used to be teaching people um i made a video in my car it was for new agers to watch who were following me and i was just like hey guys you might know me from this website and i wrote for spirit science um this little cartoon series i used to be friends with the guy and you might know me from helping out with their website and writing articles for them and i was just sharing my encounter with jesus and um it's at about a million views right now that video in my car and um i created a website called reasons for jesus.com and i make videos on my youtube channel just exposing the deception of the new age movement why things that even seem like they're pretty mild like meditation could actually be dangerous and demonic and um yeah i've been when i was in the new age movement i was actually listening to a lot have you guys heard of william lane craig who's sort of william lane craig for musical faith yes okay he's the he's my favorite intellectual defender of the christian faith let's put it that way i was obsessed with his stuff when i was in the new age movement because i liked hearing arguments for the existence of god and arguments for the resurrection of jesus i believed he existed he rose from the dead i believe that he was really related to god in some sense and i loved hearing him defend arguments for god against atheism and so when i came to christ i had like 200 hours worth of listening to this guy under my belt and i was like god this is this is what you've called me to do now to help tell people about you and i had that apologetics as the background and um yeah by god's grace um i'm now able to speak about this stuff and help lead other other people out of the new age movement as well and it's been five years and uh yeah he's been good to me sorry i cry every time um all right uh i want to pray real quick for for people um and then leadership has asked me to speak on one topic in particular that i want to cover which is related to new age which will be of uh interest to some of you i'm sure but i'd like to pray right now just for people who are watching and listening who may be involved in this um but the lord will touch them jesus we come before you and uh we worship you lord we thank you for who you are thank you for your sacrificial work for us on the cross lord and that you shed your blood that we could be forgiven for our sins before a holy god who loves us and we thank you that we have relationship with the father through you we thank you that you're real you're risen that you've given us your spirit that we may know you personally and be in relationship to you personally and we just thank you for giving us the spirit lord and that we might be in a living relationship with you lord and we thank you that you haven't left us with a worldview but you've given us yourself lord and that you're the living god and you can be known and that jesus paid a price that we could know god we just praise you for that jesus and we ask right now that anyone who's listening to this who may be on the fence maybe they've departed from the faith a bit have been entertaining new age doctrines lord we just pray that the holy spirit would pour out his ministry upon them and within them right now lord that there be a conviction of sin a loving conviction of the cross of the person and work of jesus holy spirit that you would just testify of christ reveal christ that you would touch them that they would see their need for forgiveness for entertaining these things their need for a savior and we asked jesus that you would just grant people repentance move in their hearts lord open their eyes open their ears we thank you that you love them we thank you that you died for them lord and we want to see them come to faith right now we just pray that they would repent and believe right now in jesus name and we just pray against as well jesus any uh oppression that they may be carrying from the occult lord we just break that off in jesus name we command those demons to be silent in the name of jesus we ask god just for sovereign deliverance right now over those people who are listening um that the devil would no longer blind their eyes and put scales over their eyes but that jesus you would illuminate yourself in their heart and in their mind we thank you in jesus name amen okay so i'm gonna be talking on uh briefly i mean kind of briefly but on the relationship between occult objects new age tools new age objects and the spirit world um because when i came to christ i was under the impression i'm home free now but often times the work of satan doesn't stop it accelerates um satan doesn't want you taking your new salvation going and making a dent in his kingdom and leading others to christ as well and so i had warfare in my house crazy warfare um it felt like i was looking into a hornet's nest but i would walk into my house i could feel the presence of evil i was having nightmares graphic nightmares sleep paralysis episodes and through a little bit of research and the help of the holy spirit i realized the reason why demons are allowed to be here and granted access into my life is because my house is filled with tools of the occult i didn't want the demons to be there i didn't like that they were there but they had clearance from god if we can say they had an open door to be there because of i was consenting to having these sinful objects these idols in my house and so i needed to repent i didn't need to you know bind and lose something or say a certain special formula of words i just needed to turn from wickedness flee from idolatry and i want to go over i want to ground this principle in scripture and show from scripture why it's important that we rid our lives of these objects of these books of these movies what the consequences of these things are and what the bible really says about these things i'm going to be reading mostly just because i want to be really precise with my language i did make a video on this topic on my youtube channel and my language was just so sloppy so i want to make sure that i'm being really precise with my language here um and and speak from the word of god and have verses to support this principle because there's freedom waiting for us we don't even know is there if we just tighten up our sanctification a little bit right and when i threw away these objects it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders that i didn't know was there and complete peace in my home and so maybe there's things on our bookshelves or things we're entertaining in our lives that the lord would have us dispose of maybe people who are watching who haven't fully 100 repented yet from things in their life and i just want to explain um why this is important to do so in scripture we see that the sin of idolatry is one of the most certain doorways to the demonic realm out of any other sin and all throughout the bible these objects the objects themselves are called holy and unclean the objects are prohibited they're unholy because of the worldview they represent the purpose they're intended to serve and the demons who utilize them so we not only have idolatry as a sin we have the idols themselves possessing the idols as a sin so buddha heads tarot cards dream catchers angel boards a cult board game the cold card decks ceremonial masks we might get from other cultures and vacations um and books of the occult the bible says that these things are an abomination to god and he says we're supposed to rid ourselves not just from idolatry but from the images of idolatry and in my case spiritual warfare was love to happen because i was filling my home with the tools of satan's kingdom which is a sin to do my new age books my dream catcher my buddha and christian statues they were giving demons legal ground to be under my roof and what we mean with legal ground is that they have permission from god to be there god is sovereign over the powers of darkness and they can't do anything in the natural realm without divine permission um [Music] everything that satan wants to do has to first pass through the siphon of god's permissive will and one of the conditions in which god will allow demonic oppression to be present is if there's willful sin present in the person's life so an example of god giving demons permission to do something would be in luke 8 verses 30 to 33 when jesus is speaking to the legion and jesus asked him what is your name and he said legion for many demons had entered the man and they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside and they begged him to let them enter the pigs so he gave them permission then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned we also see in revelation 20 verse 7 when satan will be released from prison so he can go deceive the nations he was restrained by god and then god released him from that restraint because god has a certain redemptive plan and purpose that allowing satan to deceive people fulfills and sin is one of the most certain and biblically supported ways in which demons will grant access into our lives to oppress us the most clear verse is ephesians 4 26 be angry and do not sin do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil so what paul is saying here is that unresolved pent-up anger gives a kind of free scope to the devil in our lives the word used for opportunity is topos in greek which means a place a region or a district in the king james the word is translated to place the niv renders it foothold so the devil is given a place of an opportunity he did not have previously because of unholy anger so at point a prior to unholy anger there's no oppression at point b sinful holy anger is present now oppression is present so the sin of unforgiveness is an example of a sin that gives satan open doors into our lives causing us to be susceptible to demons paul reiterates this in 2nd corinthians 2 verses 10 to 11. anyone whom you forgive i also forgive indeed what i have forgiven if i have forgiven anything has been for your sake in the presence of christ that we would not be outwitted by satan for we are not ignorant of his designs so the plot the strata strategy in the scheme of satan is to outsmart christians by capitalizing on the sin of unforgiveness paul urges christians to quickly forgive so that they do not get taken advantage of by satan which means to live in unforgiveness is to be outwitted of satan and his designs which implies that there's a certain measure of satanic involvement that is involved when that sin is present ephesians 6 14 tells us that righteousness protects us from the devil the blessed breastplate of righteousness and we're not talking about christ's righteousness we're clothed in his righteousness right amen righteousness of god from faith but he's talking about a righteous life lived before god protects us from oppression james 4 7 tells us to submit to god and to resist the devil and then he will flee so you could read that in reverse if you don't submit to god and you don't resist the devil he won't flee right so righteousness is a weapon of our warfare in first samuel 16 and first samuel 18 there's instances where a spirit comes upon saul and drives him crazy and mad to attack david but it's only once saul has become envious and jealous of david in his heart first and a very clear passage which we're going to park on for a minute is first corinthians 10 verses 18 to 22 which is a very important passage when it comes to idolatry paul is speaking to corinth and he's rebuking them for partaking in pagan temple ceremonies so they would set up an altar and have food around the altar to the deity and in the old testament they would the priests who offered sacrifices to yahweh they would then eat from the sacrifices as kind of like an act of worship it was like partition participation in covenant with yahweh and he's saying you're doing the same thing with these pagan deities if you're going to be eating food from around the altars that are offered to these pagan gods and he says consider the people of israel are not those who eat the sacrifice as participants in the altar what do i imply then that food offered to idols as anything or that an idol is anything no i imply that what pagans pagan sacrifice they offered to demons and not to god i do not want you to be participants with demons you cannot drink of the cup of the lord in the cup of demons you cannot partake of the table of the lord and the table of demons shall we provoke the lord to jealousy are we stronger than he now paul's point in this passage is not to introduce the idea that demons exist behind idols he says that but that's not his point they already knew this from the old testament they knew this from places like deuteronomy 32 17 and leviticus 17 7 that says when israel went apostate and started sacrificing unto false gods it says goat demons actually that they were doing so unto demons so this idea that there's demons behind the idols it's present throughout the old testament present throughout second temple literature as well or in inter testamental literature between the old and new testament that the jews would have been aware of this was common knowledge but his point was to say that their participation crossed the line that they didn't know it did he was warning them their actions were more severe even if it was just casual participation even if they didn't intend to have spiritual consequences manifest paul is warning the church that involvement in idolatry even more mild and passive forms causes them to participate with demons even if they lack malicious intent so how is corinth to end this unintentional participation with demons by repenting from attending these pagan temple rituals cessation from sin is how you close the door to demons in your life right righteousness is the weapon of our warfare now all throughout scripture we see that not only is idolatry a sin you see this in dozens of places throughout scripture but having idols themselves is a sin just the object the clearest example of this i think is in deuteronomy chapter seven starting in verse really 24 going to about 28. he says this he's telling israel when you go in to dispossess these nations and you're going to war with them and you dispossess them he's telling them the carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves lest you be ensnared by it for it is an abomination to the lord your god and you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it you shall utterly detest and abhor it for it is devoted to destruction the word used in king james there is accursed so this is an accursed thing it's meant to be destroyed don't bring it into your midst lest you become accursed or devoted to destruction like it this was actually a capital crime in the old testament and we see this happen in joshua chapter seven when king aachen disobeyed this commandment and he kept some of the materials from one of the nations that he dispossessed and god wakes up joshua and he tells him i'm not going to be with you i'm not going to be with your people until judgment comes upon akka in his household it's a pretty graphic scene him and his family and his livestock get stoned and burned with fire now i'm not saying that happens in the new covenant i'm not saying that's god's um judicial command for us to be penalized with the penalty of death now that we're in the new covenant but this is how god saw these objects you see other places like the ten commandments for example the second of the ten commandments you shall not make a graven image um fashioned after the likeness of something in heaven or something on earth you shall not worship it um john 5 verse 21 tells us to keep free from idols second corinthians 6 17 tells us to touch no unclean thing so these aren't references to worship but to objects of worship they aren't references to participation but the objects used in participation the idols themselves are banned devoted to destruction by god so in other words the buddha statues the hindu statues the garden fairies representing the fury the spirits of the forest put fairies in our garden not good stuff the masks we have hanging on our walls are the trinkets we get of little gods little deities from different cultures we visit um and anything that represents a deity or a spirit from any religion is prohibited by god they refer to demons in the spirit world as paul says as it says in the old testament and they're sinful to be in possession of now it's not a long stretch on the basis of these two premises that you know holding on to these banned objects that reference demonic powers masquerading as other spirits that this having these things in our midst that could be inviting these demons into our life or at least some degree of oppression and their activity i think it's extremely conservative to say that other tools used to contact these gods whether statues or not would also necessarily fall under this prohibition against idolatry and objects of idolatry if god tells us to flee from idolatry idolatry in first corinthians 10 14 and we instead fill our bookshelves with books and material teaching us how to harness the power of demons tools of idolatry such as angel cards channel material from the ascended masters or aliens or books telling us how to contact our spirit guides have we really fled from idolatry have we really fulfilled that command if god tells us in first thessalonians 5 verse 22 to abstain from every form of evil does having books promoting sorcery divination witchcraft and channeling in the occult arts fulfilled this command if god tells israel in deuteronomy 18 9 that they shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of pagan nations and we instill instead fill our drawers with crystal wands runes tarot cards and other magic and new age card decks have we fulfilled this command not to follow after pagan practices if our walls are adorned with art that has new age or occult themes in it or our tv stands contain stacks of movies that teach and promote witchcraft or new age ideas or any other false form of spirituality have we really fulfilled the biblical precedent to not set anything evil before our eyes like it says in psalm 101 verse 3 does having any object or material relating to any false spiritual system in any capacity comply with god's command to have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness but to instead expose them in ephesians 5 11. there are probably a dozen or more commands that are being broken by filling our objects with tools of the enemy even if we aren't actively using them and the only biblical precedent we see in scripture for how x occultists treated these objects is in acts chapter 19 verses 18 to 19. also many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices and a number of those who had practiced magikarps brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all and they counted the value of them and found it came to 50 000 pieces of silver which would be about 135 years worth of average wages today so these objects are to be destroyed if we want to live a life pleasing to god this is what the people of god did this is what god says you don't sell these objects so they can be recycled into the satanic kingdom and bring reproach on somebody else's household or be a stumbling block to others god tells us to destroy them now all throughout scripture god tells us that things like spell casting magic witchcraft sorcery and divination are sins worthy of the strictest judgments in the old testament god imposed the death penalty on those who would teach these things in israel to commit these sins is to commit cosmic treason against the creator galatians 5 19 tells us idolatry and sorcery exclude a person from the kingdom of god first corinthians 6 9 tells us idolaters will not inherit the kingdom of god and revelation 21 8 tells us practicers of magic arts will have their place in the lake of fire if we know false spirituality is demonic and we know it's extremely serious to god and we know the tools of false spirituality are banned by countless scriptures could there be spiritual consequences to breaking these commands in our lives could these objects give demons open doors into our lives and into our homes um i broke this down into a couple arguments i want to ask kevin to to bring them up if that's okay um just to kind of tidy it up a little bit in the form of a a philosophical argument because some people kind of press me on this point and i just want to make sure that we're doing things the right way here so the first premise would be some sins give demons a foothold into our life very very clear in scripture premise two idolatry is one of such sins premise three idolatry extends not just to practice but to the ownership of objects and tools of idolatry conclusion therefore ownership of objects and tools of idolatry can give demons a foothold into our lives so if those premises are true the conclusion follows inescapably and logically here's a secondary argument premise one willful unrepentant idolatry acts as an open door to the demonic premise two the ownership of tools of false spirituality is an example of willful unrepentant idolatry therefore the ownership of tools of false spirituality serves as an open door to the demonic now it's not always clear what constitutes an object that would fall under these types of commandments there may be some gray areas and some matters of conscience for people an example might be like a financial self-help book on how to you know i don't know save for retirement or something and there's a few sentences in there about the law of attraction and visualization is this what god means when he says touch no unclean thing and flee from idolatry maybe not could it be a stumbling block to some people maybe um but just because there's gray areas it doesn't mean that there are no black and white areas right we can't speak about middle areas unless we know what the middle isn't and unless and we know that the middle isn't books on ascended masters channel material teachings that come from antichrist spirits or the doctrines of devils books that teach divination how to practice occult arts like spell casting astral projection or esp books teaching how to practice sorcery such as reiki or energy healing the satanic bible the ouija board these are not gray areas so we can't infer that just because there's some gray areas that therefore there's nothing sinful there's nothing in abomination to keep under our roof and that nothing can give demons an open door now secondly there is one scenario in which i think owning books might be permissible um and maybe even responsible this would be for the purpose of learning the content for the purpose of exposing it and ministering to others about it this would be a very very minority view of the body of christ we most people aren't doing this kind of thing um one such person would be carl teichrib i respect him he teaches a lot about the dangers of new age spirituality and its relationship to the new world order and end times agenda he has a pretty extensive occult library and because of that he was able to write a book called the game of gods with over a thousand endnotes because he's able to source primary material and you know thanks to this library he has so people may keep these materials because they want to teach against this false doctrine um but most for most people that's not the case for most people they want to keep them because they have spiritual attachment to them of some kind they have incomplete deliverance and they're still tied to these objects spiritually they're emotionally attached to them through nostalgia it reminds them of you know the simple days and their former life or they have a fascination with this material and keeping this material massages that fascination they like that unholy fascination with the occult they like feeling close to the darkness now i also believe this that god has grace for ignorance namely when we didn't know we were holding on to something that was sinful right maybe it's in a trunk in the attic somewhere um or stored away in a bin in the shed and we had no idea that it was even there and i don't think god is holding us culpable for things that would be unreasonable for us to have knowledge about so i don't believe that you know the reason you have lower back pain today is necessarily because some obscure vague object buried in the recesses of your addict and but i don't want people looking for a demon under every rock or taking this you know being paranoid about this um but to just be responsible about it and you guys have had your knowledge raised today which increases your accountability before god so let's just make sure we're being obedient to the will of god which is to flee from idolatry and to have nothing to do with unfruitful works of darkness let's check our bookshelves check our dvds is this an unfruitful work of darkness i'm to flee from this the bible says that this reference is demons in the spirit world could these demons be giving given legal ground into my life depending on the material for me transgressing the commandments of god to flee from these things yeah absolutely i mean i experienced it people experience it all the time and i think it's a scripture a scriptural argument as well um also there's other ways other reasons to throw these things away as well maybe they tempt us to sin or solicit us to sin that was god's reason one of them in deuteronomy 7 right unless you become ensnared by it maybe they keep us stuck in the past and bound to our former life in our mind or maybe they're a stumbling block to other christians who come into our homes but scripture is clear that we're to clean cleanse our lives um from these tools of idolatry and so i'd actually like to pray right now that god would uh just move on our hearts you know convict our hearts and uh if there's anything that in our lives that the lord wants to cleanse that he would reveal that to us and we could just get right before him so lord we come before you and we thank you jesus for your word we thank you for your law we know god that your commandments are because you love us and because you know what's on the other side of the veil better than we do we know your word is true we know that you see all things that you're omniscient you have all knowledge and lord you're giving us these commandments for a reason you're issuing these warnings to us for a reason because our battle is not against flesh and bloodlords against spiritual forces of wickedness and we just want to submit to your law lord you tell us to flee from these things we want to honor those commandments god we want to be in your will we want to reflect your will in every area of our life god and we ask you to search our hearts right now lord if there's anything we're entertaining any fascination we have any object any book that dishonors you that grieves the spirit in some way maybe an object that gives demons legal grounding maybe there is some measure of oppression in our lives we're opening a door up to the enemy in our lives maybe we don't know it lord would you reveal that object to us would you convict our heart of what we have in our home in our life that is against your will and we just confess these sins to you lord we ask for your forgiveness we ask for your cleansing and we just thank you for protection we thank you for grace we thank you for the blood of jesus that cleanses us from all unrighteousness that cleanses us from dead works we can serve the living god and lord search our hearts search our lives for dead works that they can be exposed and repented of that we can live before you in spirit and in truth in jesus name amen you guys should stand and we'll sing one last song [Music] worthy is [Music] is [Music] see [Music] is [Music] you are [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] is you are my everything [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] jesus name is [Music] is [Music] my [Music] uh [Music] yes [Music] is [Music] which i will show you [Music] amen yes give the lord another clap crazy god

Channel: Calvary Oro Valley

Views: 29,907

Rating: 4.9513044 out of 5

Keywords: New Age, Occult Objects, Testimony, God, Jesus, Steven Bancarz, Holy Spirit, Love, Bible, Teaching, Sermon, Faith, Hope, Born Again, Freedom, Joy, Sanctification, Justified, Redeem, Redemption, Cross, Calvary, Oro Valley, Church, Prophecy, Truth, Light

Id: xFbAoMJsJEo

Length: 124min 19sec (7459 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020