News-Record.com

One of the most effective proselytizers drawing Christians away from the faith today is not a minister, mullah, or rabbi. She is entertainer and New-Age guru Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah calls herself a Christian, but she evangelizes for the New Age. For years she has intermingled false spirituality with makeovers, menus, and interviews. While her television show blends the bland with the bad, her daily radio program offers the full package in the form of A Course in Miracles, led by her friend Marianne Williamson. The course is also available on her website.

Although Miracles claims to be "mind training," even a cursory review exposes it as warmed-over values clarification (VC) and mind control. The purpose of VC is to throw out the past and start over. There are no good or bad values; there is no such thing as doctrine. The individual discovers his own values, not through reason but through feeling. Man is his own god, his own savior.

The course, which uses self-hypnosis techniques, begins by eliminating the past. Nothing has meaning, neither the things in the world nor the person’s own thoughts. By lesson 10, the mask is lifted: “This idea [that my thoughts don’t mean anything] will help to release me from all that I now believe.” If this sounds like brainwashing, it is.

The course also mimics the language of faith, but meaning is twisted. By lesson 45, titled God is the mind with which I think, the individual is morphing into god. Several lessons later he is the light of the world whose function is to save it. No need for Jesus; man is the world’s savior. And that’s only lesson 64; there are 301 to go, one for each day of the year. Anyone following the daily exercises to create his own reality would befuddle his mind, the perfect milieu for controlling it.

No longer anchored in truth, a follower can be swept up easily by every new fad offered by the pleasure-seeking world, no matter how deceptive or destructive. Those without doctrinal truth -- the house built on rock -- are easily swayed to accept abortion, gay marriage, contraception, every lie offered by the world. How many have heard a person tempted to commit a serious sin say, "I don't know what I believe any more." In truth, the problem is not that he does not know what he believes; the problem is that what he believes is in conflict with what he wants.

Miracles prepares the soil so the seeds of temptation can take route and flourish, which is exactly what the prince of the world, Satan, desires. When the people of Israel were following other Gods, Joshua challenged them to "decide today whom you will serve… As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." Miracles trains people to be controlled by the evil one who uses every kind of pleasurable vice to enslave them in sin, at the same time fostering the delusion that they are in control of their own lives.

What makes the program even more dangerous is that it mixes truth with lies. Those not grounded solidly in Christian doctrine can easily be taken in. Williamson sounds Christian; she is not. In fact, according to Carrington Steele, author of Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid, Williamson has described herself saying “I’m a magical witch, and I can feel it in my bones.”

Oprah’s New-Age promotion does not end with the Williamson course. In January, with the zeal of a missionary, she began a 10-week program with Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth. The live program allows viewers to ask questions and actively participate. Already over 2 million log on for the 90-minute class, which includes guided meditation.

According to Steele, Oprah’s and Eckhart’s show teaches, “Heaven is not a location” but an “inner realm of consciousness.” Jesus on the cross is an “archetypal image” who represents “every man and every woman.” Steele documents other teachings from Eckhart’s website: “My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. My holiness is my salvation. My salvation comes from me. Let me remember that there is no sin. Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’ The only message of the cross is that you can overcome the cross.”

Oprah is running the largest weekly church service in the world, complete with meditation and the “liturgy” of the word. The richest woman in the United States, with 15-20 million viewers, has a television show, a website, a radio station, a YouTube presence, and who knows what else? Her New-Age promise of peace and happiness is seducing millions of people away from Jesus Christ, and many of her followers are impressionable teens and young adults. Christians must expose this danger and work to rescue the vulnerable who can fall prey to it.