Are You Religious or Spiritual?

Tom: Thanks Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth, to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

We are currently going through, in this segment, we are going through Dave Hunt’s book Seeking and Finding God, a new book. Partly a combination of the Non-Negotiable Gospel and An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith. And Dave, as you mentioned last week, this is a book that we want to be able to give to anybody who may be seeking or searching after God or somebody that at least is open to some information about what they need to do to receive the gift of eternal life, which God provides.

Dave: Tom, it is THE book that I would give to people that I meet who are interested. They are seekers, whether they’re atheists, agnostics, thinking they’re Christians, or whatever. I meet an awful lot who have been turned off by religion; turned off by Catholicism, turned off by televangelists, and so forth, but they haven’t given up. They still think there must be a God out there but they would like some evidence.

Tom: Now, Dave, is this a seeker-friendly book?

Dave: I don’t think so. Seeker-friendly—it’s not trying to butter them up or water down the gospel. It’s the straight stuff, Tom.

Tom: The non-negotiable gospel.

Dave: Right.

Tom: What the Lord says. Last week, we were in…about halfway through chapter 3, and Dave, we were going over the lies of Satan that, you know, I think we could go over once again, and why don’t you just set that up for us.

Dave: Well, we noted that, and in fact, we’re not the ones that noted—the New Agers themselves, the channelers—you can get a number of books on channeling. Supposedly these people have reached a state of consciousness or evolutionary spiritual state where they can make contact with spirit entities out there, who—who knows who they are—some of them claim to be extraterrestrial intelligences; some of them claim to be ascended masters from the past, from the Temple of Wisdom out there. That’s what Napoleon Hill was in touch with. The temple….

Tom: Think and Grow Rich.

Dave: Yeah, the Temple of Wisdom and he’d been under their guidance for years and finally they manifested themselves, and you had some of the most brilliant businessmen in the history of America who got his book and read it and went by it.

Tom: Former presidents, a number of them.

Dave: Yes, and he would sit these people, in his mind, around a table—these were his counselors—great men from the past—and then consult them. Okay, but whatever it is, “channeling” is the modern terminology for it now. It’s rather interesting that there is a philosophy that comes out. We quoted Terrence McKenna, who’s sort of the—taken over for Timothy Leary. A brilliant Ph.D. scientist—he’s traveling around the world taking various psychedelic drugs in order to check what they do, see what happens, and to talk with those and watch those who are taking them in various cultures. And he said, “You know they all lead you into contact with some nonphysical entities.” And then he said, “They’re trying to teach us something. And there is a common message that all of these entities—I don’t care whether you encounter them in yogic trance, under hypnosis in a psychiatrist’s office, whether you are simply going into an altered state using New Age techniques, whatever it is, they all have the same message. Okay?

And that message basically boils down to four points: 1) God is not personal, but a force. 2) You don’t really die. 3) You are evolving, we’re all evolving upward to godhood. And 4) you can accelerate this evolutionary process to godhood by knowledge.

Tom: Dave, can we make a distinction of the second point you have written here. “There is no death, we don’t die but survive in the spirit world.” Well, it’s true isn’t it?

Dave: No, not true. Because there is a judgment, and furthermore, Revelation 20 tells us, John says, “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.” So these people are dead. They’re really dead. They have not been resurrected. They are facing judgment. Whereas, as you know, spirit survival teaches there is no judgment. We just move on. You meet a white light, you go through this tunnel. They give various descriptions, and this white light or this white being—you can’t really see him, but there’s a sense of acceptance, no matter who you are or what you’ve done. You simply move on and continue to learn your lessons—move on into graduate school, and so forth.

For example, Bishop Pike’s son who committed suicide—Bishop Pike, the Episcopalian Bishop of California was into this sort of thing, communicating with the spirit world, because his son committed suicide.

And Pike stayed in his apartment in London, I mean just trying to find out, trying to understand what happened. Strange things began to happen. Of course, he was living in that apartment with his mistress, but anyway, Pike was. But strange things began to happen, and finally he consults a medium, a spirit medium, would be what the old terminology was, Anna Twig, and what do you know—the son’s voice comes through. And he tells things that only Bishop Pike and the son knew about unless Anna Twig is reading his mind, which would be another psychic phenomenon, rather amazing, and Bishop Pike becomes convinced that the spirit of his dead son is communicating with him.

What does his son say? It’s actually a demon impersonating his son, but he thinks it’s his son and the son said, “Dad, I’m not here for a pleasant afternoon’s conversation. I have a mission. My mission is to let you know certain truths. You’ve been deceived. There is no death, number 1. We don’t die. We move on into a higher dimension. Number 2, Jesus is not God. He’s not the Savior of the world. He’s just another person. He’s on a higher plain. I haven’t yet arrived there. I’ve heard about him, and he’s just on a higher plain.”

And you get the same lies all around the world, independently of one another. People who have never had any contact with one another, but they think they’re in contact with the spirit world, and out come these same lies. Now these lies just happen to be (amazing coincidence)—just happen to be the same lies that the Serpent deceived Eve with in the Garden of Eden.

And I think that gives us a very good indication of who these entities are. They are the henchmen of Satan. Satan isn’t everywhere at the same time and they have a common purpose: that is to turn man from worshipping the true God and from knowing that he’s a sinner and from worshipping Christ, acknowledging that Christ died for his sins and receiving forgiveness through the penalty Christ paid, and looking to themselves as little gods. It’s not redemption through the blood of the Lamb, but you’re not really a sinner, you’re just out of touch with yourself. You don’t recognize your true potential. This is the whole human potential movement; the New Age movement, and these are the very lies that the serpent told, and this is what comes through everywhere, and you can call it the New Age movement.

Tom: Dave, let me give you a—I don’t want to throw you a curve ball here, but (laughing) I’ve had Seventh Day Adventists and some Jehovah’s Witnesses saying, “We don’t buy into any of that. And the reason we don’t buy into any of that is because once you die that’s it. You are annihilated; you cease to exist,” and so on, and they think that covers that erroneous idea.

Dave: Yeah, but of course we know that that isn’t true for many reasons.

First of all, David tells us, you know, his—the little baby died. And David says, “He’s not going to come back to me; I am going to go to him.” Now “go to him” is meaningless if you cease to exist. Paul says, “I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.” How would it be far better to go into an unconscious state? Paul says, “I’m in a straight betwixt two,” this is Philippians 1. “I would like to depart and be with Christ, but to remain in the flesh is more needful for you.” Now, if Paul is having, and he was having, a very fruitful ministry serving Christ, what more could he want than that, if to die is to become unconscious or cease to exist, but Paul specifically says, “To die is gain….” And Hebrews:9:28So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
See All..., I guess it is, 27 or 28, says, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment.” Now you don’t judge people that don’t even exist. And, Tom, as you know, we could give many other examples.

Tom: Yeah, well one other example I think that is worth talking about, because I’ve had this point brought up, and they try to dismiss it. And that is when Saul goes to the witch of Endor, and she—you know, we think this is an exception—but she raises up Samuel. You know, I don’t think that is just a parable, or it’s just a kind of a story.

Dave: Well, it is an exception. Because a spirit being….

Tom: Well, it’s an exception with consequences.

Dave: That’s right. But spirit mediums do not have the right or the ability or the power to call back from the dead the spirits of these people. They are either—Jesus made that very clear. He told the story, and it wasn’t a parable because he named Lazarus—this guy has a name, this was a real person—a rich man and Lazarus, and it says “in hell.” The rich man died, and “in hell, he lift up his eyes, being in torment,” and Jesus gives you the picture that Hades, the place of the departed, the souls and spirits had two compartments. One was called Paradise. Jesus in fact, said to the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” Well, “be with me in paradise?” What does that mean if it’s a non-existent state?

So that was called Abraham’s bosom. That’s where Abraham went, the father of the faithful. And on the other side of this great gulf that was fixed were the damned. And then Revelation 20 says, “Death and Hades give up the dead that are in them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. The books are open.” They are judged out of this.

So, according to the Bible, there is a judgment, and there is a continuing existence. And ultimately those who—you either go to heaven or to hell: “Absent from the body, present with the Lord,” as you quoted. Or you will spend eternity in heaven with Christ or in the lake of fire, because finally death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the scripture says.

So, Tom, you can see the purpose of these demons impersonating the dead. Tom, you know as well as I do, I mean, we could quote you all kinds of top psychiatrists who have bought into this. Or we could think of Bernie Segal, medical doctor from Yale University, and he got in touch with apparently a young intern in a skullcap, you know, and medical garb, and he has a ministry for Bernie Siegel to fulfill. That is to let people know you don’t really die.

Tom, it is so pervasive, and it is so persuasive that, as you know, President Lincoln bought into it.

Tom: Right.

Dave: Queen Victoria had her own medium and so forth. But it is a lie from the serpent, and the Bible laid it out for us: Eve is in contact with a spirit, Satan, through a talking serpent, and this is what it says. And it’s the same thing that is being said today. It hasn’t changed. The lie of Satan hasn’t changed because the truth doesn’t change. And the lie is designed to combat the truth.

Tom: Dave, as you point out in your book—and people can check it out, just observe, go back through history, spiritism has always been and still is the prevailing belief among indigenous peoples, but we find it, whether it be New York City, we find professionals and so on, whether it’s through Santeria or Macumba, Voudon, you know, all of these beliefs, that they contact spirit entities.

Dave: Just a Ouija board.

Tom: Right.

Dave: They think they’re in contact with someone.

Tom: Yeah.

Dave: Or you could go to a party, and people have had a shot of whiskey and then they turn the glass upside down and put their fingers on it and begin to communicate with something. These are educated people. So it’s everywhere Tom.

Tom: Right.

Dave: There’s no doubt about it.

Tom: One of the things—you know, I’d like you to tell this story to give people an idea of how pervasive these ideas are, among Christians even. I’m talking about reincarnation.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: Many Christians believe in reincarnation. Dave, how does that fit with the Scripture?

Dave: Right. Well, it sounds like you wanted me to mention—do I do it in the book? I don’t think so.

Tom: I don’t think so.

Dave: The story of—? Well, I was being interviewed by a local station in Los Angeles, a TV station. It was to be a debate with a couple of experts on reincarnation, and as I walked up to the studio—this was on a Monday morning, and as I walked up to the studio—you know, if you’re a guest on the show, you go in one door, and then the audience goes in another door. And I’m walking into my door, and here comes a lady down the sidewalk. She says, “Oh, Dave, I was there yesterday when you were preaching!” I was preaching Sunday morning somewhere. And, “Wow, I thought that was just terrific. My father was a Baptist minister,” and so forth and so on she goes into the audience.

Well the talk show host, before we get started in the discussion, says, “Just to see where people are in the audience, how many of you believe in reincarnation?” I think most of the hands went up. And I saw this young lady’s hand go up. Furthermore, that Sunday morning before I had been introduced—the pastor was away; the assistant pastor first, before introducing me, he introduced his elderly aunt, and told me what a godly woman she was! What an influence she had been on his life down through the years! And she’s in the audience. And I saw her hand go up.

Reincarnation is a very appealing lie. Why not? And you have, of course—as you know, Tom, you’ve done the research—some psychiatrists who have specialized in this. We even had Soviet psychiatrists regressing people back.

Tom: “Past lives therapy,” Dave.

Dave: Yeah, “reincarnation therapy,” they call it. And under hypnosis, you do come out with this. Factual memories. I mean they regress you back into the past, and suddenly this person is describing a little village in India. They’ve never been there. Tell you where the ladies go down the little path to the water, you know, and…or where the well was, and even name some names. Wow! This is very convincing! Well it must be true. We must have lived back there then—this person must have lived there. No, a demon is speaking through them that knows all about that. Knows that history, and so forth.

Well, how did that come about, Tom? We didn’t talk about—and I don’t know whether we mention it in the book here—an altered state of consciousness. Remember Sir John Eccles describes the brain as a machine that a ghost can operate, and in a normal state of consciousness, you are the ghost, the spirit being inside, that operates this mechanism, which other neurosurgeons have described as a machine or a computer that is programmed by something independent of itself, the mind. Okay?

But when you get into this altered state under drugs or under hypnosis, in yoga, various Eastern meditation techniques, you have loosened the normal connection between you and your brain. And you have allowed a gap. In fact, I was talking to someone just last night, a woman, who was saying she had started going to—she’s got some medical problems—she started going to an M.D. right here in Bend, and he was getting her into the New Age. And he was teaching her meditation—but not contemplation, but you’ve got to empty yourself, he’s been telling her. And she’s a bit concerned about that.

But anyway, so you loosen the connection, the normal connection in a normal state of consciousness between you and your brain, and that opens the door to another nonphysical entity. We are not—our minds are not alone in this universe. We are not the only nonphysical beings, intelligent beings. And there are demonic entities, and they, then, can interpose themselves, begin to tick off the neurons in the brain, create an illusionary world of psychedelic colors and experiences and revelations and so forth.

Tom: Scenarios that seem to be historic.

Dave: Tom, I’ve talked to guys who, on LSD, half a dozen of them in the room, same room, they all dropped LSD together. And suddenly, they are all in the same landscape experiencing together the same adventure, meeting the same creatures! Now you do not explain that by protein molecules and electrical current activating the neurons and so forth. There is a common source, and it is a delusion.

So we have to talk about that in this book because when we mention that you are a non-physical entity—that you don’t die, that you continue. I mean your body dies. Well, you do die if you’re not a Christian. But that doesn’t—death is not a cessation of consciousness or a cessation of being. And then people say, “Well, sure, yeah, I believe in reincarnation or I believe in spirit survival. It’s very convincing, and I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve read the books by spiritists, by the spirit mediums,” and so forth.

So we have to deal with that, Tom. There are so many young people. It started in the ‘60s that on drugs—mescaline, peyote, LSD—they suddenly were catapulted into another dimension of existence, and they had no doubt it was real. They were experiencing things that changed their lives. And that really prepared the way for the gurus from the East. They came and they built on this wave of drugs and spiritism, and you know that the druggies from America, they went off to Goa Beach in India, and they became the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Sai Baba, and these other gurus out there.

Tom: Oregon’s own Rajneesh from Pune, India.

Dave: Yeah, Bhagwan Rajneesh, yeah. Oh I didn’t tell you Tom, maybe I shouldn’t say it on this program—oh, it’s okay. We stayed in a bed and breakfast recently in Germany and the—wonderful host—wow! He had a fabulous house, and he told us, he said Sheela stayed there!

Tom: This is Rajneesh’s right-hand woman.

Dave: Right, and with about twenty-four of her followers. Wow, she had piles of money, and she wasn’t there very long before the police came (laughing), and he was telling us, “Wow, we were right on the front porch here when she was being arrested, and all the TV cameras,” and so forth!

Any anyway, I said, “Wow! I’m from Oregon, not too far from where Rajneesh had his headquarters!” Anyway, Tom, it’s all part of the same picture. It began with the Serpent in the Garden deceiving Eve. The world is still being deceived, and the Bible doesn’t try to give us some spiritual experience. It gives us truth. And that’s why this book is subtitled In Search of the True Faith.

Tom: Dave, when we come back next week in this segment, we want to go over the law of karma. Because it isn’t just that this is a demonic deception and delusion—this is irrational. This is bad news for somebody who thinks Oh, reincarnation—this is a good thing. It’s a bad thing.

Dave: You get to come back and try again.

Tom: Right.