RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.   Today’s item is from The Seattle Times.  Over ten years ago spiritualist J. Z. Knight retreated from critics who said the thirty-five thousand year-old warriors she claimed to receive and channel was probably a figment and perhaps a fraud.  Now, Knight and Ramtha, her alter ego from the spirit world, are returning to public view.  The school Knight started ten years ago is celebrating record enrollments.  Profits from sales of Ramtha books and New Age paraphernalia are increasing and signs of certain legitimacy from the religious establishment that snubbed it in years past have surfaced.  Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, which shares forty-nine pastoral acres with Knight’s Hollywood style home, now draws some 3,000 students a year from around the world.  They pay $1,350 a year to attend seminars and retreats in which an entranced Knight speaks ancient philosophies she says come through her from Ramtha, a disembodied spirit she has been channeling for twenty years.  Knight has 21 full-time and 14 part-time employees.  Her webpage draws 200,000 hits each month.  J. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara and a cult expert, is one of more than a dozen who have come in recent months to speak to students and study the Ramtha philosophy.  Melton recently published a book in which he concluded that Ramtha may or may not be real but the philosophy attributed to him has counterparts in Gnostic religious thinkers of the past.  Gnosticism, which suggests humans are divine beings, was considered heresy by early Christians.  Said Houston Smith, a nationally known religious historian and Methodist minister who was brought to Yelm this past week: “I heard no discordant truths.”  Ramtha students are pleased with the new attention they are getting.  “My family is southern and Christian and for the first time I can send them articles about what I am doing” said Danielle Graham, a former Texan, who has studied at the school since it opened in 1988, and now lives in Yelm.  “They wouldn’t have accepted it before.  They have been resistant to visiting and now my mother has called and wants to come up.”

Tom:

Dave, this is a good example of what we were just discussing.  If J. Z. Knight is actually communicating with a spirit entity, it’s interesting to note that the content of the communication is contradictory to the Bible which is what we have been suggesting about these things.  The fact is, Dr. Melton points out, and much of what she claims to be receiving is Gnostic heresy.  That’s a doctrine of demons which plagued the early church and is still very much alive in professing Christianity today.  The article quotes a minister who is also a religious historian who sees no contradiction with Christian truth.  So, so much for discernment of religious scholars.

Dave:

Well, let me quote a little bit of what Ramtha teaches.  These are the teachings that come from Ramtha.  God is neither good nor bad—He is entirely without morals—He’s non-judgmental—there are no divine decrees—isness is his only business—Hell and Satan are the vile inventions of Christianity—a product of your insidious Book, that is, the Bible, which Ramtha advises his listeners not to read.  He says there is no such thing as evil—nothing you can do, not even murder, is wrong—I am, that’s you, you are God—does not even have the ability to judge you because you would be judging yourself.  Every vile and wretched thing you do broadens your understanding.  If you want to do anything, regardless of what it is, you would not be wise to go against that feeling, and so forth.  So, this is totally contrary to Scripture but, again, it brings us back to the lies of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but it’s interesting.  J. Z. Knight has quite a following and these are wealthy people.  They have moved up there to be in touch with her.  But she’s only one of—I think, in Los Angeles you have about a thousand channelers in Los Angeles alone and they all have their clientele.  Some, not many, get on TV like J. Z. Knight has been but they have their videos and so forth, so there is a big movement.

Tom:

There are a lot of things that concern me about this article but for this young woman whose parents, at least according to her, seem to be warming up to the idea and she says that they are Christians.  That’s what we are trying to encourage here for people to be Bereans, to search the Scriptures.  All these people would have to do is read Isaiah:8:19-20 [19] And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? [20] To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
See All..., where it talks about, you know, God really condemns following or going after familiar spirits.  And that verse 20 says:  “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, the Bible, then there is no light in them.”  The condemnation, the concern, the warning for all of this is laid out for any who would be a Berean and who would search the Scriptures.

Dave:

So Tom, we have a problem in the church today, even within the evangelical church.  You can’t play fast and loose with the Bible.  You can’t be the one that decides—Oh, I think this part of the Bible is valid but not that part—and we have those who (I know this is a little bit off of our topic but it is related) who would say well, I don’t see anything wrong with evolution or I’m not really sure that the flood was universal because, you know, scientists say that it isn’t.  We need to address that sometime if we haven’t already.  But when you begin to say well, I’m not really sure now whether we are going to take the Bible literally, then you open yourself up to deception because we either have an authority or we don’t have an authority.  And, if we have an authority, if the Bible is our authority, then I am going to take what it says about the redemption of man, then I have to take what it says about the fallen man.  If I’m going to adopt the Bible as my authority, and if I don’t have an authority I am out to sea, I don’t have anything.  It would be like consulting a medical doctor who isn’t really an expert or you second guess the medical doctor.  You had better find one who really knows what he is doing and then follow what he says because he knows things you don’t know and so forth.  But now, we have the idea that we don’t take the Bible literally or I am not going to follow it everywhere (and this is even in the evangelical church) or I am going to change my interpretation, my understanding of Scripture because Freud said this or because Carl Rogers and so forth said this.  Then, I have opened myself up to real problems.  Then, I begin to look to some other authority and if it begins to make sense, even though it does contradict the Bible, well, maybe we will go with it because, after all, there are some new truths out there and all truth is God’s truth and so forth.  This is what we are today, Tom, and it does open you up to spirit entities.

Tom:

An example from the article.  A religious, nationally known, religious historian and Methodist minister, looks over this and finds no problem with it.  So, even if you are following after a minister, you are not being a Berean and that’s what we want to encourage people to be.

Dave:

Amen.