Smith on the New Age Movement

How does one get saved out of the New Age Movement? Hear the wonderful spiritual journey of guest Warren Smith on the show Christ in Prophecy.

Last aired on March 10, 2013.

Video References

Mountain Stream Press

Transcript

Dr. Reagan: We’ve all heard about the New Age Movement, but what is it? What are its characteristics and its dangers? And how has it impacted the modern day church? Stay tuned for an interview with a former member of the movement.

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Part 1

Dr. Reagan: Greetings in the name of Jesus our blessed hope and welcome to Christ in Prophecy and our special guest, Warren Smith, an expert on the New Age Movement who was delivered from the spiritual bondage of the movement by the Lord Jesus Christ. Warren welcome to our program.

Warren Smith: Thank you, it’s good to be here.

Dr. Reagan: And my colleague, Nathan Jones is also with us today. Nathan is going to assist me in interviewing Warren. And, Nathan why don’t kick off the whole thing with the first question, okay?

Nathan Jones: I’d love to. Good to have you on Warren. I would love to know your personal story about how you got into the New Age Movement.

Warren Smith: Well I wish I could say it was some kind of great spiritual journey on my part but it had to do with a waitress that I was fascinated with.

Nathan Jones: Isn’t it always a woman?

Warren Smith: I’m afraid that sometimes it is. And I asked her out and had her over to my house for dinner. And in the course of the evenings conversations she said that she had a friend of a friend who was coming into town and she was a psychic and would I like to have a psychic reading? And I really probably coming from Westport Connecticut a fairly conservative town I was a little bit reluctant to get involved with a psychic. But to ingratiate myself with the waitress I said, “Sure, why not?” So I had the psychic reading. The woman was from Canada and in the midst of her telling me all sorts of things about myself that she had no business knowing. I mean these were not things that I shared with the waitress; these were not things that she would know. I was totally enraptured with what she was telling me because I am going, “Wow, she is really in touch with something.” And then as she was going through this reading there was a tingling sensation over my head that I had never experienced before, it was very bazaar. And I’m sitting there going, “What is going on?” And she turns to me and she says, “Do you realize that there is a ball of light over your head right now?” I said, “I don’t know what that is but I can feel there is something up there.” And she said, “It’s a ball of light.” And I said, “What’s the ball of light doing there?” And she said, “You have a lot of help on the other side.” I said, “What do you mean by the other side?” And she said, “Angels, loved ones that have passed on, spiritual beings that are interested in your welfare that want to help you, and want to come into your life.” And she said, “But you have to ask them, it has to be voluntary on your part.”

Nathan Jones: They were kind of knocking on the door so to speak? Hoping to be invited in?

Warren Smith: Yeah, it was kind of like you have to do it of your own volition. So that night I lived in a canyon in Northern California and I had a flat roof house and I lay on the flat roof of my house looking up at the starry night sky, I kind of flashback over my whole life, all the things that have brought me to that point. I felt like I was about to do something very, very significant and it was but I didn’t realize that it was dangerous. I said, “All you on the other side I want your help in my life. I want to be more spiritual I want to grow.” And anybody watching this show that knows the dangers of the New Age and the Occult knows what I just did was kind of like a reverse sinners prayers. I did the opposite of asking Jesus Christ into my life which I had no idea what that was about at that point and time.

Nathan Jones: So you had no Christian background beforehand?

Warren Smith: The only background I had was a very liberal, liberal church that never talked about the reality of evil, or a devil, or a victory on the cross of Calvary. It was just a very washed out, we sang a few hymns. When I left church and went to college I had my back to the church. I never thought of going to church when I was in college. I was in a fraternity, just the whole thing. So right after I did that prayer, in the coming weeks and months all of sudden I started getting spiritual experiences, meeting people, it’s like I was being jet propelled into a whole new spiritual experience. And that is one of the dangers of the New Age is the fact that you go on spiritual experience. And you go on meant to be experiences, like things would happen where you would go, “Oh, it was meant to be.” These coincidences line up. And that is how I got involved in the next step of my journey which was with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Indian guru.

Nathan Jones: Oh, it’s a guru, sounded like a deli.

Warren Smith: He was in India at the time that I got involved with him. But the circumstances are fairly complicated but I ended up on the top of a mountain on New Year’s Eve in Big Sur, California one of the most beautiful spots on the California coast. And I had just bought a book by an Indian Master Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh because I wanted to start the New Year off spiritual. And I had this book in my hand and usually people stay down in these cabins in the bottom of this Deetjen’s Lodge. But the owner came up to me and he looked deep into my eyes and he said, “How would you like to stay on top of this mountain tonight?” And I went, “Sure.” So at sunset way up the mountain and there was a cabin up there. And when we got up there it was like being in Heaven there were just clouds just from horizon to horizon it was an incredible setting. I had never heard of this guy Rajneesh and I had this book in my hand. I went into the cabin up there and put my suitcase on the ground and by the bedside there was another book by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and it was kind of like, “Whoa, whoa, you know this is meant to be.” And I just want to caution people that when somebody gives you a copy of a supposed Christian book and it’s not. And I’m give an example, like The Shack, and we will talk a little bit more about that so people understand why I consider that book to have some really problematic issues. Just because somebody in the morning says, “Hey have you read The Shack?” Or somebody later in the afternoon says the same thing don’t think that God is saying, “Hey you should read The Shack.” Its like meant to be from God. It’s meant to be from the Devil. Anyway all these things were being laid out in front of me. I got very involved. I started doing meditation. I got involved with the Rajneesh Movement. I was a fairly day to day Social Worker in my life and all of a sudden I am dyeing my clothes orange. I even dyed my socks orange. I was in a state–

Dr. Reagan: You were showing up at work in orange clothes?

Warren Smith: More than that I put my desk on my floor and I had a picture of Rajneesh over my desk. And my boss was so dumbfounded it took him 30 days to tell me, “Get that desk out of here.” But I was like the token spiritual guy in the office and I was bringing all this new stuff in. This was fairly early New Age. This was like early 1980’s, I’m dating myself. So I got involved with Rajneesh and in the New Age you sort of move into one thing and then you move into another, and everything piles together. And even though you might be involved with a psychic or a guru or A Course in Miracles which is my next step, all the bottom lines are the same. Which is you are taught that God indwells His creation. God is in everyone and everything that’s the bottom line. I got involved with A Course in Miracles, the Course in Miracles, it’s very important that I explain this because people need to be aware of this because this is what Oprah Winfrey has been pushing.

Nathan Jones: Very strongly.

Warren Smith: Very strongly since 1992, I heard one Christian leader, Christian figure anyway say that, “Oprah has been involved with so many different things she doesn’t really know what she believes.” Absolutely untrue, she absolutely has a bottom line New Age philosophy and she has been outing it for years, it all fits together. And everything I did fit together. A Course in Miracles was new revelation that was supposedly delivered by Jesus Himself to a woman psychologist, a female psychologist in New York City at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, a psychologist.

Nathan Jones: Schucman right? Helen Schucman.

Warren Smith: Helen Schucman and she heard an inner voice saying, “This is a course in miracles please take notes.” So for seven years she took down the notes and it was a whole new philosophy about life. It was a whole new religion if you will. It was New Age Christianity, that’s really there is no such thing as New Age Christianity, what is the term you use when something contradicts itself within itself.

Dr. Reagan: Oxymoron.

Warren Smith: Oxymoron. You know anyway this Jesus and I accepted these teachings because they came to me in the same way. I was handed a book by Gerald Jampolsky called, Love is Letting Go of Fear, in a massage practitioner program that I was in. And this book had all sorts of little spiritual stuff that really felt good and he said, “Everything I am telling you in this book was inspired by A Course in Miracles.” So I went out and got the Course in Miracles and started reading it. The Jesus of the A Course in Miracles, through Schucman in her writings says the following things and they are not true, “The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. The journey to the cross should be the last useless journey.”

Dr. Reagan: Useless.

Warren Smith: Remember this is Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Winfrey has said these teachings from A Course in Miracles can change the world.

Nathan Jones: And you bought into all of this?

Warren Smith: Yeah, I had no reason not to. I mean I thought it was new revelation. I thought hey I guess there really is a Jesus and He’s bringing these things to a world that’s in trouble.

Dr. Reagan: You know this is all done in the name of Jesus.

Warren Smith: All in the name of Jesus. So there is another thing that Jesus of The Course of Miracles said, “Do not make the pathetic error of clinging to the Old Rugged Cross.” Now these things are total blasphemy to believers. But somebody who didn’t know what happened on the cross didn’t know that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and defeated the Devil and sin on the cross; I just accepted it. Then there was a most interesting statement He said, “There is no sin. There is no evil. And there is no Devil.” Ok, you have pretty much turned the Bible upside down, all in the name of what? Love, it is all in the name of love. But the one thing that he said that is really significant especially today is that when this Jesus was asked are you Christ? He said, “Yes, along with you.”

Dr. Reagan: Along with you.

Warren Smith: Along with you.

Nathan Jones: So back to that old Garden lie from Satan that we can be gods.

Warren Smith: We are all God, we are all Christ. We save ourselves by recognizing that we are God. The only thing Satanic is not believing in your own divinity. Oprah Winfrey said that, “These teachings can change the world.” She actually had A Course in Miracles, taught on her program on her radio program daily for a year by Marianne Williamson.

Dr. Reagan: So you are really saying that Oprah is a High Priestess of the New Age Movement.

Warren Smith: Oprah Winfrey has been outing everything that I was involved in probably since 1987, it’s just incredible.

Nathan Jones: She has the biggest audience of almost any person right?

Warren Smith: Yeah and she has brought on one Betty Eadie who actually made her way into the Church with Embraced by the Light, a book that came out I think in the early 90’s. And she had a near death experience, this Betty Eadie she was actually was a Mormon, a New Age woman but she presented herself as a Christian. And she said that in her near death experience she was told that God was in her, in the plant, and everything, God indwells His creation. So her book Embraced by Light was in Christian bookstores and received quite a bit of attention.

Nathan Jones: Did you read it?

Warren Smith: I read it from critical standpoint because at that point I was a believer, that was in the early 90’s.

Dr. Reagan: But you got really involved in The Course of Miracles, even as a teacher didn’t you?

Warren Smith: My wife and I, she was my girlfriend at the time were in a course group, one of the early course groups in a Course of Miracles. And every Tuesday night we would get together with our teacher and we would study The Course in Miracles. So we didn’t realize that The Course in Miracles was the Bible upside down all in the name of love, peace, and happiness. And I want to say you know that there may be someone watching that doesn’t realize that the Bible says that Satan comes as an angel of light. 1 Timothy 4:1 warns about seducing spirits. And I realized later that Helen Schucman had been seduced by this voice saying that it was Jesus. In the psychic reading the ball of light was Satan coming as an angel of light but we were riding high, we were doing workshops in our town. We were teaching The Course in Miracles to anybody that would listen. I was running around my workplace. I worked with developmentally disabled clients, people who had autism, and were at that time the term was mentally retarded, developmentally disabled now. And I would have these guys doing Sufi dances at the shelter workshop, and the director of the shelter workshop they would look out the window at lunch, and I would be all dressed in orange with all the clients dancing.

Nathan Jones: That hippy out there.

Warren Smith: Dancing around, and they would go, “Oh, my! What is going on out there?” So I was telling everybody about The Course in Miracles, I was like an evangelist for the New Age.

Dr. Reagan: Yes, right.

Warren Smith: And there were so many people that are just like me, they might not be dressed in orange. A lot of us that were involved with Rajneesh a lot of them were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, very successful people. They are now CEO’s, they are now the people that are running all sorts of things out in the world and they are dressed normally. The work in Silicon Valley and they have this philosophy. Steve Jobs actually, had gone to India and was very involved with New Age teachings. So everything was just flying high, everything was going really well. And all of sudden there was some sort of an ominous almost kind of a dark presence that seemed to hover particularly or plague my wife. And it was like in the New Age it is important to understand that when you encounter something that seems dark or evil it is not evil because there is no evil in the New Age, it’s a manifestation of something within yourself. So you have to go inside yourself to figure out what your fear is and why you are projecting that out into the world. So we did that, is there something we are afraid here? Is there something inside us that is manifesting? We did all of our affirmations that we were perfect; that we were God, that there is no evil, there is nothing to fear. And you know just because you affirm something it doesn’t make it true. But that was our affirmation. It didn’t go away. We went to our Course in Miracles group leaders they did a little ceremony where we stood in a circle and he prayed a little prayer and sent love and light to whatever was going on. Nothing really happened. As we walked to the door I turned around and the Course in Miracles group leader was heavily involved with Edgar Casey and a lot of cultic stuff and I said, “Isn’t there anything else we can do?” And his wife says, “Put on the full armor of God and stand fast against the wiles of the Devil.”

Dr. Reagan: What?

Warren Smith: I said, “What?” But more than me saying it her husband said, “Now honey. Now Honey.” She said, “I’m sorry but,” she says, “there is a Devil, stand fast and put on the full armor of God; read Ephesians 6.” And we kind of left and we drove down to her house. And I’m going, “What was that all about?”

Dr. Reagan: Yeah.

Warren Smith: I said, “You know let’s read it anyway.” So we had a Bible one of my clients mothers had asked me at work one day, I was visiting her house and she said, “Warren do you love God?” And I said, “Oh, yeah.” She said, “Well tell me about him.” And I told her everything about The Course in Miracles and everything and she just tried to hide her horror and she said, “Would you excuse me just 1 minute?” And she came back from the other room with a big blue King James Bible. And she said, “Would you please take this?” And looked at it and I saw that the color perfectly matched my Course in Miracles book and I said, “Sure.”

Nathan Jones: There you go.

Dr. Reagan: There you go, whoa.

Warren Smith: So we had this Bible that we could read. And we read Ephesians 6 and my conclusion after reading it was you know Trudy must have gone to a church and she must have gotten that from church you know, whatever that was sweet of her and we just dismissed it. So meanwhile we are still dealing with this occasional presence coming in. And in 1983 at Christmas time we drove down to my girlfriend at the time, my wife Joy now to her moms and we figured we would leave this behind. Uh-uh we were there just a day or two and I could see that it was there again. And I said, “Joy, are you feeling that thing?” And she said, “Yeah.” And her mother who had never met before, you know we are meditating, her daughter is kind of acting weird. And she is going, “Oh, this is the new boyfriend.”

So one day Joy went to visit a friend and I went down to a bookstore and I was trying to figure out what is this all about? And I went to the New Age section of the bookstore and I saw this book called, The Beautiful Side of Evil, by a woman name Johanna Michaelsen never heard of her but the title intrigued me and I pulled it down. And what I started reading was an account of a woman who had a spiritual journey much like our own. And I just sat down on the floor and I started reading. And I went, “Wow.” And I got my notebook out. And she was in the psychic phenomenon, you know spirits appearing she was into drama and at this theater one night there was a spirit. And I’m going through the whole thing and then she hit the wall and all of a sudden she is dealing with darkness. She was a psychic healer in Mexico City and people were getting healed and everybody was Hermeneto the spirit guide who was working through a women named Pachita a channeller and everybody was seemingly getting healed and then one day a Christian woman came in something went awry and Johanna said that all of a sudden there was this presence of evil, the benevolent spirit guide that seemed so wonderful all of a sudden all of a sudden had a very ominous kind of. So I’m just going whoa. So then all of a sudden she is going over to Switzerland and she is starting to recite Scripture. And I’m writing down the Scriptures and I’m reading, “Wow, seducing spirits and deception and all this stuff.” And I’m writing down notes.

And all of a sudden a homeless mentally ill guy that I had seen on the streets just a couple days before came into the bookstore, came over to where I was reading this book and started screaming at me, “Are you going to buy this book or what? Are you going to buy this book?” I just went, “Man does evil know that I’m reading about it? Can evil orchestrate a man right off the street to come in and harass me so I won’t read it?” And all I could think of was, “I guess so.” So I had worked with the homeless I’ve been a Social Worker my whole life and I was able to dismiss him pleasantly, if it was possible and he just left. And I had the solution to dealing with evil that I had written down from Johanna’s book. And I went back the next day when Joy was feeling this presence again. I said, “Joy lets go out in your mom’s backyard I want to try something just a little bit different. Don’t be scared.” So addressing this presence I said, “Satan in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,” reading from my notes, “I command you to leave. I forbid your presence here I claim the blood of Jesus Christ upon us, leave and go to where Jesus would send you.” And it was like whoosh, it was like gone. And Joy said, “It’s gone. What was that?” I said, “I’m not exactly sure but it has something to do with the victory that Jesus Christ won on the cross of Calvary over evil and over Satan.”

Dr. Reagan: Hallelujah!

Warren Smith: And I said, “We need to start reading the Bible.” Which we did and we started reading the Bible. I mean Christians that are maybe watching this program are going, “Didn’t get on your knees and ask the Lord?”

Nathan Jones: Yeah.

Warren Smith: As New Agers we are hardcore. We kept reading The Course in Miracles; we keep reading the Bible we became convicted but it took us a number of months before we actually did that. And people have asked me this, “Well wait a second Warren you weren’t a believer how can you?”

Nathan Jones: I was wondering that.

Warren Smith: “Yeah, how can you do that? And I think there are two answers one I thought of the Ethiopian eunuch.

Dr. Reagan: Yes.

Warren Smith: He was reading the book of Isaiah didn’t really understand it. Philip was brought along side explained it to him and what happened? He believed and what? And was baptized right there on the spot. So I believe that Johanna Michaelsen as a believer came alongside me, ok she was in a book but I believed what she was writing and what she was telling me. More importantly I believed the Scriptures and the Scriptures described everything that we had been involved in; from the ball of light, the psychic, The Course in Miracles, all that stuff, at some level I was getting it that there is deception, there is spiritual deception and that we need to be really, really careful.

The other thing that I really need to mention is that in my senior year in college a number of us were going to go out drinking one night. And we were told that we had a mandatory fraternity house meeting and that we had to attend and we were really upset because, “Well what is it?” And they said Campus Crusade for Christ is coming into the house. We said, “Campus Crusade for Christ? We are going out drinking we don’t have to go to that.” They said, “No you’ve got to be there, you’ve got to be there.” So we went and there were three guys and the first two guys gave their testimony and we are back there going, “Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.” We are looking at our watch. The third guy all I heard him say was, “What do you have to lose by asking Jesus into your life tonight?” And I was just deeply impressed, obviously by the Holy Spirit but at that time all I knew was that I was just impressed. And I said to myself, “I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve got nothing to lose.” That night upstairs in the fraternity house for the first time probably in years I prayed. Now I didn’t get the stuff about sin. I didn’t get the stuff about repentance. I didn’t get the stuff about victory on the cross or whatever else he may have talked about in his testimony but I asked Jesus sincerely, “If you’re out there come into my life.” And as I did it a cherry bomb went off in the alleyway next door. And on the radio You Never Walk Alone, was playing. And I went, “Whoa, whoa.” It was my first meant to be experiences and they might have been real. And then I went to sleep and the next morning I woke up and it was like the sower and the seed by the wayside, taken away, I didn’t even think about it. I guess Campus Crusade didn’t come back; they were brave enough to come into our fraternity house in the first place. They didn’t come back and I just forgot about it.

But years later after we got saved and we are witnessing to our friends and we are seeing so many of our friends and co-workers going into the New Age, and very few are hearing our testimony. A few did, but so many are going, “Thanks for sharing Warren. Thanks but no thanks.” You know that was the attitude. But we are going, “But did you hear what happened?” And we are laying it out. So I am driving to work and I’m going, “Lord what’s going on? How come people don’t get it? How did we get out of the New Age?” And that was brought to my mind, you asked me to come into your life back then and I’ve been with you through thick and thin. And then I went whoa. I almost went to India to be with Rajneesh but I didn’t. I almost became a channeller but I didn’t. I almost became psychic but I never really had that much fascination. I never really worshipped the figures that I was involved in. It was like a parent with their child on a tether at the ocean. And I feel like the Lord just allowed me to go my way and then kept me from the real danger because I had asked Him. I didn’t say, “Be my Savior.” But I said, “Come into my life.” And I think He took that literally and really was a Savior and did save me and ultimately I was saved. So that was a long time ago that was 1984.

Nathan Jones: Praise the Lord.

Dr. Reagan: Warren let’s pause there for a moment and we’ll come back and pick up where you left off.

Closing

Dr. Reagan: Welcome back to our interview with Warren Smith who is a former member of the New Age Movement and now is a writer about the New Age Movement. And Warren I tell you we really appreciate you being with us. We appreciate your tremendous testimony. I didn’t interrupt you any when you were going through that because I was just fascinated by it and I’m sure our people were. And I want to say that if you are interested in finding out more about Warren’s testimony you can find it in this book here. It’s called, The Light that Was Dark, and the subtitle is From the New Age to Amazing Grace. And I tell you what I met Warren at a conference up in the far part of Canada about a year and a half ago he gave me copy of that book and I just read it transfixed on the airplane as we were coming back and decided right then and there I had to get this guy before a television camera. And I’ll think you’ll find this book absolutely fascinating. And we’ll tell you have to get a copy of it later on. Warren why don’t you just look directly into that camera in front of you and tell our viewers how they can get in touch with you and your ministry.

Warren Smith: We have a website: mountainstreampress.org, its: mountainstreampress.org and there is an e-mail there if people have questions or want to make some kind of comment they are free to e-mail to me and usually respond to people. And what are some additional books that you have written? I wrote a book called, A Wonderful Deception that really goes into great detail on how a lot of the New Age stuff has come into the church. I have a book False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care? Because all of the things that we are talking about right here, the things that happened to me aren’t just unique to me they happen to a tremendous numbers of people and it has come into the Church. And years ago like in 1976 Chuck Smith wrote a book where he talked about Antichrist Revealed: Conditioning the World for an Antichrist, this is all part of the conditioning process.

Dr. Reagan: I’ll tell you what how about coming back next week and us talking about the impact of the New Age Movement on the Church.

Warren Smith: Ok, I would be glad to.

Dr. Reagan: Ok, great. Well folks that’s our program for this week until next week the Lord willing this is Dave Reagan speaking for Lamb & Lion Ministries saying, “Look up, be watchful, for our redemption is drawing near.”

End of Program

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