Week 11

New Age Movement

This is really “a believe what you want” religion. It contains a lot of Buddhism and Hinduism in it. It is really hard to say exactly what the New Age Movement is, because you can really believe what you want. The most common thread in there is the beliefs of no absolutes. My truth is not your truth. As long as I am not hurting you and it gets me closer to some sort of spiritual state then it is good. It reminded us a lot of Oprah and her religion.

There is a lot of belief in reincarnation in the New Age Movement. Most believe that your soul keeps progressing until you get it right. However most don’t believe you can go backward on the evolutionary scale or should I say the reincarnation scale. Hey, if you’r going to make something up, why make it hard on your self. We know the truth is salvation comes from putting your faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior (see Rom. 3:24,25; Eph 2:8,9).

A common phrase in the New Age Movement is “God is us and we are God” and that Jesus is just one of many teachers. Even scarier is that all roads lead to heaven. Jesus said that he is the only way (John 14:6). The bible also talks about God being separate from His creation (Isa. 45:6, Rom 1:25).

This is not anything new. In the Garden the Serpent asked if God really said she couldn’t eat from tree (see Gen 3:1-5). We can be like gods and can have our “eyes open”.

Our Visit

We attempted a visit that we tried a few weeks ago. A school family, the son is in my daughter’s class. Last time we had trouble finding it. That was because it was their store address. I called before hand and she was excited about us coming by. She owns a convenience store/gas station. One thing to note, her store is one of very few that doesn’t sell beer. She was told that she’d never make it if didn’t. She said her and God will prove them wrong. Great faith!

They already attend a church and seemed to love it so we didn’t talk much about the church except where it fit in with the school. It was a good visit, very friendly family. Her sister came into the store just as we were about to pray, so we prayed blessing on her family and her business. I gave my bible to her sister before she left.

Prayer Request

Pray for my step-father-in-law. He is battling cancer and is having trouble with his back. Pray for our country, school and our solders and friends overseas.

The Greatest Show on Earth

We had a chance to hand out some bible tracts at a large event in North Little Rock. A couple friends and I meet up every other week to share the gospel on the streets. This time we chose the Circus at Alltel arena.

There were a lot of people there. We handed out a few hundred tracts in just a couple hours. Even though there were so many people, we still didn’t have a chance for any one-on-one conversations. With it being the just before show time, people were in a hurry, but people were very excited to get our Million Dollar Bible Tracts. We even had a new zillion dollar and the incredible shrinking dollar, which is great for the down turn in the economy.

It was so cold I have to get something to warm me up, so I walked to a conveiant store next to Alltel. I gave the cashier a million for the good service. He made such a big deal out of it I have to give everyone there one.

Week 10

Mormonism
Most people today believe that Mormons are just another “Christian” denomination. It is not only not part of Christianity, but it is anti-Christian. They have twisted the most fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Here are a few

Source of Authority-They don’t take the bible as the infallible word of God and they don’t believe scripture was closed with the bible. They have 3 additional books; the Book of Mormon (which has changed in 4000 places since it was written in 1830), the Doctrine of Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Their belief is that the Bible is correct as long as it is translated correctly. If the bible contradicts their teachings or their other books, then they fall back on “it is an incorrect translation”.

Trinity-Mormons believe in polytheism, many gods. The universe has many gods that produce spirit children. They believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but they believe that these are three different Gods.

God-Their view is that God was once a man like us. Through self-effort and the father-god of his plant was able to work his way to receiving his own planet and now has a physical resurrected body. They believe through their own good works and the atoning work of Jesus we to can be god and have our own planet.

Christ-They acknowledge the divinity of Christ, but not by the bible’s standard. They believe that Christ, Lucifer, the demons, and mankind are all bothers and are spirit babies from our father-god. They believe that Christ was conceived by sexual relations between god and Mary. They also believe Jesus had many wives; Mary and Martha (the sisters of Lazarus) and Mary Magdalene.

Heaven and Hell-Mormonism teaches that there are three degrees of glory: Celestial (for good Mormons able to cease sinning in this lifetime), Terrestrial (for good people who do not comply with all the teachings of Mormonism), and Telestial (for those who have lived unclean earthly lives). They don’t really believe anyone will go to hell but a few that can’t be redeemed, sons of perdition. They used to put blacks in this category up until 1978. Their belief is that the people that half-heartily fought when Lucifer got mad at God’s decision to select Jesus and fought against Him and Michael were the black race.

There are many differences these are just a few. The main thing to realize is that the lingo is the same. They use works like “salvation through Jesus”, Grace, and Trinity, but their definitions are totally different

Our Visit
Joanna and I picked up Josh this time out to make our three person team. We were scheduled to visit a family from the Church’s school. The husband was there with their 2 children. We had a good visit. When I asked what his understanding of how a person goes to heaven, he gave a “faith” answer, in Jesus only. I asked him if he as put his faith in Jesus and he told us that he has recently done that and was starting learn more and grow as a Christian. He already had a Church that he was attending and was about to start a new bible study. We didn’t want to pull him away from his church, but did tell him about Victory since the school and church were connected, this way if he ever needed anything he would know a little about us. We prayed with him and encouraged him in his new walk with the Lord.

Prayer Request
Pray for the family of a boy that was just saved. Pray for my step-father-in-law. He has is battling cancer and is taking chemotherapy. Pray for our family has we go through this with him. We only have a couple weeks left pray for our FAITH teams.