Tonight I happened to watch part of a PBS show entitled: “Jesus and the Awakening to God Consciousness with Deepak Chopra.” Apparently, Chopra has authored a new book, titled “The Third Jesus.” Chopra was being interviewed by a pastorette, named Rev. Wendy Craig Purcell. And what those two were saying about Jesus, about my Lord and Savior, was very, very disturbing.
It was disturbing to hear Jesus talked of merely as a spiritual teacher who had some form of advanced enlightenment and had the gift of healing.
It was disturbing to hear fundamentalist Christians dismissed as wackos who believed the Bible was the actual Words of God because obviously, as the “enlightened ones” explained, everyone knows that the Bible is just a collection of stories passed down through time and altered as needed, just like every other world religion.
It was disturbing to see people in the audience nodding along in agreement, as they were being led blithely down a path to hell like sheep to the slaughter.
It was all such utter and complete false doctrine, and yet these two people sat there talking as if they were sharing this great wisdom with everyone else. Enlightenment … spirituality… mysticism … consciousness … world peace … blah blah blah. Nothing about a cross, nothing about salvation, nothing about a resurrection from the dead, nothing about heaven and nothing about hell — and certainly nothing about our sinful natures.
If people actually believe THIS about Jesus, that he’s just some great spiritual teacher, then they will be spending their eternity in hell. They don’t know Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t know them. My husband had a knock-it-out-of-the-park sermon about this last Sunday, and if you call yourself a Christian of any stripe or denomination, you need to read it.
Someone on the amazon.com review of The Third Jesus (Exactly who are the first and second Jesus, by the way?) reminded readers of the classic and totally applicable C.S. Lewis quote from his book “Mere Christianity”:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
Deepak Chopra is promoting a complete and utter load of religious crap. He leading people directly away from God, and he is an anti-christ. I pray that people don’t believe what he has to say, and I pray that Christian pastors preach against this kind of “Jesus as spiritual teacher” thinking.
I know my husband will.
8 comments
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November 22, 2008 at 10:44 pm
apwrightflame
Emily, I could not agree wih you more. We are near the end now I believe.
Check out my book. it’s sold on Amazon.com called The Flame of Heaven by Andrew P. Wright
Or at the following address
http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheFlameOfHeaven.html
God bless
November 23, 2008 at 7:05 pm
granolablonde
Thank you for blogging about this!
November 23, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Perry
Hi,
I read your blog on Chopra with deep interest. I found it through one of my google alerts. I am interested in understanding the reasons why you so feverently believe what you believe, especially about The Bible. Please, I don’t mean to offend. I’m only curious: What amount of study have you done to know what you know about The Bible and where it came from, how it was compiled and why? I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just really curious about the origin of such staunch belief or faith.
I’m not a follower of Chopra, or any other spiritual leader, so I’m not here to defend him. I’m more interested in you and your faith. So, if you don’t mind, I’d be interested in reading your reply.
I believe we are quickly coming to the end. But it’s not the end I get the sense Christians expect or hope for. But that’s another topic.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts should you choose to do so.
Perry
November 24, 2008 at 10:46 am
Emily
Hi Perry,
Thanks for your heartfelt comment. I will respond more fully later, but my baby and I have an appointment very soon. I’ll put up a more detailed response to your question in the next 24 hours or so.
But, until then, may I point you in the direction of my husband’s blog? You can find him at http://pastorstrey.wordpress.com , and click on his blog category “Apologetics and Theology.” My husband has a strong interest in the defense of the Christian faith, referred to in scholarly circles as Christian Apologetics. I think that might give you a start to some of your questions.
~ Emily
November 25, 2008 at 11:30 am
Emily
Hi Perry, Thanks for your heartfelt question.
You ask a good question: Why should anyone believe that the Bible really IS true? How can a book so old still be accurate? And how can any book claim to be the Word of God? Why are some books in the Bible and not other books? Who decided what makes up the Bible, and why do most Christians today believe that the right books were chosen?
The answers to these questions are vitally important, because if the Bible IS the true Word of God, then one had better listen to what it has to say, or risk spending eternity in hell.
I’ve asked these same questions myself in the past, and I have been blessed to be married to a guy who has the inclination and reason to do that kind of research. He has willing shared what he’s learned with me, which is helpful since I am kept busy raising my two young children and don’t have the time I wish I had to study the history of the Bible. So, I will share with you some things that I’ve learned from my pastor-husband:
One fact that my husband has shared with me is that there is more evidence for the Bible as a historical document than there is for any other piece of writing from that time. Bible scholars will be quick to point out that there are differences between many various copies of the NT from that time period. This is true; there are differences between copies. But remember that ALL copies of ANY book before the mid 1500’s were created by hand, so errors were not unusual. Yet with all the early copies of the Bible that still exist today, there are fewer differences between copies than any other comparable book of that time, works such as Homer’s “Illiad” and “Odyssey,” and Herodutus’s “Histories.” Plus, there are many more copies of the NT that are still around today than there are of those other works. Great care and attention was put into making sure that the words of the Bible were recorded accurately.
Another interesting fact pertains to Jesus’ death and resurrection, a key belief of the true Christian faith. Jesus was executed by the Roman government, which gives his death an air of respectability, if you will. His death wasn’t some lynching done in the woods at night – it was a public spectacle. Furthermore, his grave was guarded by Roman soliders. One can’t argue that Jesus’s body was just stolen by some of his followers, who then told people that Jesus had risen from the dead. No, there were actual, legitimate soldiers guarding his grave.
Finally, a point that makes the death and resurrection of Jesus worth taking a second look at is the fact that almost all of Jesus original disciples died because they believed in Jesus and willingly risked their lives to tell others about him. If the disciples HAD faked this entire story about Jesus for reasons their own reasons, why then would ALL of them be willing to die for this fake story?
One of my husband’s favorite apologetic books is entitled “The Defense Never Rests: A Lawyer’s Quest for the Gospel” by Craig Parton. This book takes on the task of whether or not the Bible, as a book of factual evidence, specifically of evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, would indeed stand up in a court of law. The Resurrection is the one event in Christianity that cannot be explained away by anything other than an absolute miracle of God. And if the Resurrection is true, then Jesus truly is God, not just another good teacher. And if Jesus truly is God … well, then He and his word have to be taken seriously. By the way, Mr. Parton is a trial lawyer practicing in Santa Barbara, CA, and he is Associate Director of the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism and Human Rights.
Two other good Christian Apologetic books are “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel and “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis.
Jesus never claimed to be merely a teacher. He taught his disciples many things, but he always claimed to be the Son of God who had come into the world to save the world from its sins. He did miracles, and he did those miracles in public, in front of many different people. Jesus life and death was predicted all through the Old Testament, and the facts of his life and the spread of the Christian church in the years following Jesus’ ascension into heaven are documented in the New Testament.
Sadly our post-modern world doesn’t like to believe anything that makes us uncomfortable, anything that might make us feel that we have to change. Many people in today’s world want to live however they want, so they create their own ideas of what constitutes good, moral behavior. In order to appease their consciences, they change Jesus from the one and only true God whom they should believe in and obey – into a non-threatening moral teacher, on the same par with Mohammed and Buddha and other “spiritual teachers,” teachers who did not look to Jesus as true God. Deepak Chopra is a good example of this. Chopra is promoting a Jesus who was merely a good man, a good moral teacher, and overall, fairly harmless. Chopra never mentions sin, never mentions Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross, never mentions Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, never mentions how Jesus claimed to be the only path to heaven, and never mentions how those who don’t believe in Jesus are going to spend eternity in hell. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the father except through me.” (John 14:6) In doing so, Chopra promotes a Jesus who isn’t really Jesus at all. And anyone who follows what Chopra says and believes in the Jesus that Chopra promotes – doesn’t know the real Jesus. And when these people are standing at the door to heaven, asking to be let in, Jesus won’t know them, either.
Perry, I hope that helps! Feel free to ask me any more questions.
~ Emily
November 26, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Perry
Thank you kindly for the time you invested in providing such a complete response. I also appreciate that you are eloquent in your writing style, and obviously, your husband knows his subject very well. I am humbled. And while your response was complete, I do have more questions, yet I don’t want to take you away from raising your children, so feel free to ignore this reply if you will, and continue investing your time in what matters.
I have read much of CS Lewis and have appreciated his works, thank you for directing me to “Mere Christianity” which I have read before and thoroughly enjoyed. Hugh Prather is another favorite of mine. Although he may be too “New Age” for you.
I will have to take a look at your husband’s blog as well for there may be good information there. But intellectual or factual knowledge is not what I’m asking about. As a result, I’m left with my original questions still unanswered. I don’t dispute the facts you laid out (whether they are true facts or not doesn’t matter with regard to my questions). And I’m awed by your husband’s knowledge. But that’s his knowledge, not yours and so, we could agree you’re your knowledge of his knowledge is second-hand information, which he got from another human being…
So, what I’m much more interested in, deeply so, is: Why you have such strong belief? Are the facts that you laid out what makes you believe so strongly in Jesus that you’re willing to publicly accuse another human being as being the anti-Christ? Are the miracles, his crucifixion and ultimate ascension your foundation for believing (or at least suggesting in your writing) that the Christian moral behavior is the right behavior for everybody? Or is it the belief that The Bible is the word of God that has you say so staunchly and with such conviction willing to condemn people to hell? Certainly the facts you laid out, which you and your husband believe to be true aren’t the source of the power and conviction with which you’re willing to publicly condemn Deepak and those who you believe “don’t know Jesus”, is it? There has to be something deeper in you which you are connecting with, that has you write what you have written. This is what I’m curious about. If you can, I’d like you to enlighten me on what it is that YOU know to be – not what your husband knows – that has you defending Jesus, who, in actuality needs no defense…
I’ll reiterate that I will understand if you don’t reply. Taking care of the next generation is much more important than responding to the questions of a stranger.
Perry
December 9, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Emily
Yes. I believe the Bible to be God’s words to the world. So if God says it, if God says Jesus is the only way to heaven and that those who don’t believe in him will go to hell, I believe it.
Jesus’ miracles, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension prove that he is God. And if he is God, I had better listen to him. And if he says that the moral behavior that he lays out is how he wants his followers to live, then I will do my humble, sin-filled best to live that way. As far as whether or not everyone should live that way, I believe that the world will be a more harmonious place if everyone lives a life according to the morals laid out in the Bible. However, I do NOT believe that merely living a moral life makes one a Christian. A person becomes a Christian via faith.
To be specific, I’m sure that Deepak Chopra lives a very moral life. He is kind to others, he’s not killing, or stealing, or coveting. Perhaps he’s sleeping around, I don’t know. But in the general world’s view, he’s leading a pretty good life. However, all of that means nothing to God if Chopra doesn’t have faith. The same thing applies to each and every person on earth.
Yes. But my words don’t condemn people to hell — God does. But when Chopra talks the way he does, it’s obvious that unless he changes what he believes, he’s on a path to hell.
Yes, the facts that I laid out, the facts that prove that the Bible is a true and believable document, and therefore the words the Bible says are true and believable as well, those are definitely the source of the conviction with which I’m willing to publicly condemn Chopra and anyone else who doesn’t know Jesus.
However, don’t think that it gives me any joy to condemn Chopra and others in this way. Hell is a horrible place, and I don’t wish anyone to go there. But if people don’t speak up and say, “Hey, you’re on the wrong path!” how are people to know? It’s the same as a doctor telling a patient who is living an unhealthy life, “Hey, you need to change how you’re living your life or else you’re going to die.” This is me saying to Chopra, you, and any other unbeliever out there, “Hey, the Bible is proveable and believable, and you should believe it and change your ways so you don’t end up in hell.”
That’s 21st century post-modern thinking. Post-modern thinking says that emotions are more important than facts, how you feel is more important than what can be proven right or wrong. Post-modern thinking says, “Connect with your inner self! Find the truth deep within you! What’s true for you may not be true for me!’ Post-modern thinking is very subjective; it is not based on any objective fact. Post-modern thinking says that two plus two may be four for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s four for me. And, sadly, post-modern thinking says that people are their own gods and create their own reality.
There is nothing “deeper” within me that I am “connecting with” outside of Jesus living in my heart through faith. I don’t create my own truth. Jesus is who he is, not who I wish to make him out to be. Jesus is objective truth. And if I change who he says he is (as Chopra has done), then I have changed the essence of Jesus, and I have lost Jesus entirely.
Again, this is post-modern thinking. What I know to “be” is what the Bible says to “be.” My own thoughts and feelings about that truth don’t play a role.
The Bible says that we are all sinners, sinners from the moment of our conception, and we are all in need of a Savior. We cannot save ourselves, and we cannot by ourselves live the holy life that God requires. God saw our miserable condition, saw that there was no way for mankind to save itself, so God decided to create a plan of salvation on his own. God promised to send a Savior, and that savior was Jesus, whose coming we celebrate at Christmas. Jesus lived the perfect, sin-less life that we could not. He died the death that we deserved. He rose from the dead on Easter morning, to prove his victory over sin, death, and the devil. He ascended into heaven to resume his place at God’s right hand, and he will return again on the Last Day (Judgement Day), to bring all those who believe in him to heaven.
Anyone who believes anything different than this cannot be saved, and I take no joy in saying that, just as God takes no joy in sending anyone to hell. God “wants all [people] to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) But there IS only one way to heaven — Jesus. Jesus [said], “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) There is absolute truth; and it is found in Jesus.
I hope the Holy Spirit works through the Word of God to create faith in your heart, Perry. Have a Merry Christ-mas!
~ Emily
December 19, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Perry
Hmm. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. You did so with complete thoroughness and I appreciate the time you took to do so.
Perry