NEW AGE MOVEMENT—What are its aims and significance?

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The so-called “New Age Movement” is a strange religion, or complex of religions, that has come into increasing prominence in recent years. This phenomenon is actually a combination of modern science and mathematical physics along with astrology, occultism, religious mysticism and nature worship. Supposedly offered as a reaction against the materialisms of Western thought, the New-Age Movement appeal both to man's religious nature and his intellectual pride, as well as his physical appetites.

It is gaining a host of followers all over the world and aims eventually to become the world’s sole religion.

Although “New-Agers” have a form of religion, their “god” is Evolution, not the true God of creation. Many religious sects are involved in this movement to one degree or another. It includes such pseudo-Christian cults as Divine Science, Unity, New Thought, and Religious Science, and also various Eastern and occult religions such as theosophy, spiritualism, Hare Krishna, Rosicrucianism and assorted guru cults.

Many Western New-Age followers regard the controversial Evolutionist priest, Teilhard de Chardin, as their spiritual father. He was passionately devoted to Evolution as the “general postulate to which all systems must henceforward bow.” He and other leading neo-Darwinians, including John Dewey (the architect of our modern public education system), regarded the Evolutionary process as having “come to consciousness in man,” who could now guide it into the development of an ideal socialistic world order. Evolution is now viewed by these modern pantheist as the “cosmic mind” which has orchestrated the Evolutionary progress of the universe and its many systems over endless ages.

Modern physicists have contributed to this religion with their promotion of what they call the “anthropic principle,” which seeks to show that the constants and processes of the universe are inescapably bound up with the Evolution of intelligent man. Sir Julian Huxley, who was the first Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and who was also probably the most important Evolutionist of the twentieth century, lent his great influence and prestige to the promotion of Evolutionary humanism as (eventually) the only allowable world religion, synchronizing all the religions and philosophies of the world into one great man-deifying system of faith and practice under a coming world government.

The younger generation of Evolutionists is now promoting a revolutionary type of Evolution rather than the old gradualism of evolutionary capitalism as the favored rationale of both past and future Evolutionary progress toward this goal. Since all of this if fully consistent with the older ethnic religions of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism, they are incorporating the ancient pagan notion that sudden upsurges in new order can be achieved through the chaotic disintegration of old orders.

The amalgamation of Eastern evolutionary pantheism into Western Evolutionary scientism was greatly facilitated also by the “Aquarian Age” emphasis of the student revolution of the 1960s. Although many of the scientific and humanistic advocates of the New Age philosophy are not yet willing to accept all the astrological and occult aspects of this movement, there has been a steady growth in these pagan accompaniments of its revived pantheism.

In the ancient religious, pantheism—the religion of Gaia, the Earth Mother, Mother Nature—on the intellectual level, was commonly associated with polytheism, astrology, spiritism, witchcraft and even Satanism, on the popular level. This is happening again, as all these practices are developing a great following today, especially among devotees of rock music and the drug culture.

Furthermore, all this complex synthesis of scientism and paganism is being implemented with the pervasive controls made possible by modern computerized systems technology and networking economics. Suddenly the global goals of Evolutionary humanism seem very imminent indeed.

The Bible, of course, also warns of a coming world government that will be based on Evolutionary humanism, when a great king "shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods." Instead of acknowledging responsibility to the Creator, he will “honor the God of forces” (Daniel 11:36, 38).

This "man of sin," who considers himself to be greater than God, is called, by God, “the beast” (II Thessalonians 2:3, 4; Revelation 13:2). As the world's representative Man, the highest supposed product of natural forces and a beastly ancestry, he will personify humanism in its full flower. However, it will not really be human science and philosophy through which he and his system gain power over the world. "The dragon (i.e., the Devil) gave him his power, and his (throne), and his great authority."

The ultimate source of Evolutionary humanism and all its religious representatives, whether in ancient paganism or modern scientism, is none other than Satan himself, the old Dragon, who has been seeking since the beginning to destroy the God of creation and become the cosmic deity himself. For a brief moment Satanism will finally become the world's religion.

“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast: and they worshipped the beast” " (Revelation 13:4).

The whole monstrous system will endure very briefly in this eventual apparent triumph of globalism, humanism and Evolutionism. "Then shall that Wicked (One) be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonder, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (II Thessalonians 2:8-10).

New-Age Evolutionism is not so new, after all, and Mother Nature is really nothing but one of the faces of ancient Babylon, “the mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth” (Revelation 17:5), the age-old religion of God's ancient enemy, “which deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9).

The real new age will come when Christ returns!

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Excerpt from The Bible Has the Answer, by Henry Morris and Martin Clark, published by Master Books, 1987

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Article Version: May 18, 2019