Another refreshing testimony of the power of the gospel to save:
Chinese woman leads dozens to Christ with 70¢ tract
Posted on Jan 28, 2011 | by Sue Sprenkle
THAILAND (BP)–No one notices the young Chinese woman silently crying in the back pew. It’s the only place she finds solace from her deep depression and fear of death.
She’s not even sure why she sits in this church every afternoon; her communist education and Buddhist religion teach against a belief in God. Yet something keeps drawing Lily Wang* here.
She pulls a Bible from the pew. It’s not in her native Mandarin, but she flips it open anyway. She learned to read a little Thai after moving to Thailand a few years ago to teach school, but she hasn’t learned enough to really understand this.
So many questions cloud her mind that she finally musters enough courage to speak to a man carrying the same book. He brushes past the petite woman and goes about his business. The rejection reinforces everything she’s feeling — no one is interested in her; no one cares.
Distraught and angry, Wang walks to the foot of the cross and screams, “Are you real?
Amidst apostasy and Satan’s plans, Jesus is still at work in the world, sanctifying and cleansing with the washing of water by the word those who are called by His name. How refreshing…
BELIEVERS FINDING IDENTITY IN CHRIST
January 27, 2011
by David Bell
A small, but strong core of new Uriay believers in Papua New Guinea is being taught a couple of times a week about their identity in Christ, and is discovering that they have a divine mission in the Uriay community.
“Oh Yahweh,” Stiben prayed at a believer’s meeting last week, “we are getting together to listen to Your Talk. The true talk is in Your Book only. You are the One that is able to give us straight thinking. Many of our family members are still standing in Satan’s canoe. They are stubborn and won’t listen. Oh Yahweh, break this thinking so they too will come to hear Your Talk and will know you.”
A healthy tension exists between believers and unbelievers that cuts through family and clan groups. Boni, the village leader, and his wife, Kamayo, are seeing the new life in Jesus that family members have received. Sadly they are staying at a distance as Satan continues to darken their thinking.
But the Uriay believers are grasping the truth that God is listening to them and interacting with them on a personal basis.
In his recent call to Christians, Rick Warren says we need to fall in love with Jesus and have an awakening. The problem, says Warren, is that “today many Christians are lethargic, they’re burned out and they’re living lives no different than those of unbelievers.” (Source: Christianity Today)
In light of the latest spiritual compromise at his church, we must wonder what pastor Warren means by this. How is he teaching his flock to be faithful and helping Christians to fall in love with Jesus by partnering with those who practice methods that are in opposition to what Jesus teaches? If unbelievers of the world are watching Oprah and looking to New Age spirituality and meditation for answers, how should Christians be different and set apart? Does falling in love with Jesus include introducing the church to teachers who practice New Age and eastern meditation?
What are the spiritual implications for a pastor who partners with the world and sends Christians to the Daniel Plan doctors websites that welcome them to learn eastern meditation and energy healing techniques? And what about the philosophies behind the belief systems of these practices? These practices also involve an ‘awakening,’ a New Age enlightenment which opens the door to a new consciousness. Their roots go much deeper than shedding a few pounds or sitting in a chair and centering your thoughts on your heartbeat, as one of pastor Warren’s Daniel Plan partners recently demonstrated with Deepak Chopra.
For example, it’s already been established that Dr. Ehmet Oz, a Muslim, follows the teachings of Swedenborg. It’s also no secret that he practices Reiki, TM and yoga, something which Rick Warren’s staff could have easily found out by simply browsing the internet and reading e-magazine articles such as AARP:
“Oz believes the greatest medical advances of the next decade will come from manipulating the body’s flow of energy, as Chinese practices such as acupuncture seem to do. “I’ve always been frustrated that we’ve not been able to measure energy,” he says. “But I’m not willing to write off what a billion people think is possible, just because we can’t measure it in the West.”” (e-magazine page 2, Dr. Oz: America’s Hardest-Working Doctor)
In addition to these practices, we see further how opposite from Christianity the belief system of Rick Warren’s ‘Daniel Plan’ doctor is, if we listen to the following interview of Ken Wilber whose empty ‘New Age’ philosophies Dr. Mehmet Oz admires:
Philosopher Ken Wilber
By Dr. Mehmet Oz
Oprah Radio | January 01, 2008
Widely considered to be the world’s leading integral philosopher, Ken Wilber has written more than 16 books on psychological, philosophical and spiritual traditions. Ken talks with Dr. Oz about his latest book, The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe, and Everything. Plus, Ken talks about his philosophy of combining Eastern and Western traditions to create a framework that can be used to enhance all areas of life, from work to relationships to health. http://www.oprah.com/oprahradio/Philosopher-Ken-Wilber_1
For those who don’t know about Ken Wilber, his philosophy has been influenced by Buddhism and he has practiced Buddhist meditation methods. Here are the seven points of timeless wisdom according to Ken Wilber:
1. Spirit exists.
2. Spirit is found within.
3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, and duality–that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state.
4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation.
5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which–
6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and which–
7. issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.
In the following video, Ken Wilber talks about how this rebirth or enlightenment is possible since, for the first time in history, we have access to all the spiritual traditions; Shamanic techniques, wisdom traditions, yoga, east and west, and contemplative traditions are all ‘available’ to us:
Wilber – Integrating the world’s transformative techniques
If you didn’t take the time to watch the video, in it Ken Wilber said: “This era will be known as the first great attempt to integrate, synthesize, coordinate the entire heritage of human transformative techniques….when the world religion…world spirituality…world philosophy, started to come together.”
The Bible warns us about being taken captive by such traditions, techniques and philosophies.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:6-8
Is this the kind of philosophy that Dr. Oz, Rick Warren’s Daniel Plan doctor, admires?
One of Wilber’s major theoretical accomplishments has been to create what he calls the “neo-perennial philosophy” by integrating the views of mysticism by Aldous Huxley‘s ‘The Perennial Philosophy‘ with an account of cosmic evolution akin to that of the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo. (See Ken Wilber, Wikipedia) Huxley coined the term ‘perennial philosophy’ which is a theory that sees all religious truth or experience as one and the same.
Huxley, the author of Brave New World, was a Fabian socialist who pushed Zen meditation and psychedelic drugs, which he referred to as “modifiers of conscience”. He was tutored by occultist and Satanist Aleister Crowley, who is rumored to have introduced the young Huxley to peyote, the mind altering drug used in native religious ceremonies. Huxley believed in alternative types of consciousness and wrote in a book about his LSD experiences called The Doors of Perception: “The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.” Many of Huxley’s questionable insights dealt with education and transformation.
Hofmann’s Potion – Aldous Huxley and the Doors of Perception
In review, we have seen that the integration of Aldous Huxley’s philosophies are a main interest of Ken Wilber. We have also seen that Dr. Mehmet Oz admires Ken Wilber’s philosophies. Now we have Rick Warren who puts Dr. Oz in a position in his church where biblically illiterate, unhealthy people look up to his teaching, and eventually his philosophies, for hope and wellness. It doesn’t take a philosopher to figure out what the spiritual repercussions of this might be.
Besides healthy foods, it looks like Saddleback church, and hundreds of Christians who are following the Daniel Plan, are gobbling up the words of men who hold to philosophies of this world that are not based on the Bible, but on the traditions of men. If you are a Christian, don’t be led by Rick Warren (in the name of health) over the bridge of global transformation into the New Age practices of these Daniel Plan teachers. Their spiritual pathway of enlightenment, awakening and rebirth has nothing to do with being born again through Jesus Christ. You may unknowingly be opening dangerous doors into the world of the occult, which may be just what the enemy is planning on. Once you have been ‘transformed’ by this spiritual ‘awakening,’ you may indeed never be the same. You will be deceived, and because you choose a lie, God will give you over to a greater delusion.
Instead, examine everything, and be transformed by the renewing of your minds, but only in Christ Jesus, not TM or yoga. If you truly love Him, be different than the world, like the real Daniel of the Bible, and have nothing to do with the Saddleback ‘Daniel Plan.’ Will you take the popular, purpose driven road to ‘awakening,’ or will you enter by the narrow gate?
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13,14
The 
Muddy Streams 