I met Jack Hennessey face to face in 2006. It was the Fourth of July weekend and he was in Coronado, California for his mother’s memorial services. For the past year we had read and responded to each others posts on a Universal Reconciliation Forum called Tentmaker. I had been drawn to several brothers and sisters on Tentmaker. Many used pseudonyms, such as Kept, RedLetter, Reb, StainedGlass and Sparrow. Then there was JACK whose favorite quote seemed to be. "What you see is what you get!" And truly we did "get" what Jack said.........lol
My greatest scriptural interests at the time were the teachings on the lake of fire, hell, Hades, eternal torment and outer darkness. At Tentmaker these topics were dissected and discussed with thoughts I never heard in my Charismatic, Word of Faith, Kingdom Now, world!
The Lord himself finally showed me the truth that “ALL” would be saved, using the parable of the lost sheep. How dear was the day he asked me, if he left the 99 sheep and went to find the one lost sheep how many would he have when he got back? My answer… was 100. He said, well change that to 100%...it was shouting time!!!!.......I was finally able to see other scripture that bore that same truth. My whole world rocked and changed ….as did my love and view of my Heavenly Father.
By 2008, I began to see a shift at Tentmaker as the first new age teachings began to emerge on the forum. The Administrator resigned after months of refuting the blood of Jesus and the work of the cross. Then many others left embracing the teachings of NEW AGE. I felt like I was in a Tidal Wave. Over and over Jack pointed to the error. I struggled to see what was being said. I cried, prayed and wondered if I too would be deceived. I could not seem to understand what newagers believed, contrasted with what I believed, as they used some of the same words and concepts I used.
I finally found Terry Crisp’s website where I would immerse myself in articles dealing with the error of the New Age. Terry is gifted as no other in detailing the error.
I still longed for something I could put in my children's hands that was simple and to the point. I found that summary this past week in an Elwin Roach article titled, "And Their Eyes Were Opened and They Knew" Part 3.
I have copied that part below.......
Be Blessed. Joian
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Elwin Roach~
"The New Age terminology can be mistakenly taken for Kingdom Truth. They speak much of the kingdom of God within man, of Christ within man, of love, mercy, goodness, and spiritual perfection and oneness with God. The ancient serpent is wise, shrewd, crafty and subtle, and he knows that the most effectual way to instill error into the minds of the unwary is to use old and precious words and put a new meaning into them. So when his messengers, masquerading as ‘ministers of righteousness,’ seek to lead, if possible, the very elect astray, they use the old precious words, but put an entirely different and false meaning. When they talk about God and our heavenly Father they don't mean the God of the Bible, the personal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They mean the impersonal energy that is resident in all things animate and inanimate. They talk of atonement, but they do not mean at all the redemptive death of Jesus Christ on our behalf by which we are reconciled to God by His blood. They mean the at-one-ment in which we recognize our oneness with all things, a cosmic unity, not with the Creator, but within ourselves and with the creation. Jesus has nothing to do with it at all, except as a great Teacher, a Way-shower, revealing to us the divine potential inherent in every man. They believe there are many ways to God - Jesus is merely a way given to Christians - one of many ways to God.
"What do the New Age people look to for salvation? A complete or perfect union with this ‘inexorable principle’ or ‘divine energy’ permeating all things, which is their god! It is the same thing as Nirvana of the Buddhist, Brahma of the Hindu - an imaginary god-consciousness, into which all will finally be absorbed. And this is attained by discovering and developing your ‘inner self’ — which ‘inner self’ is the corrupted soul rather than the regenerated spirit! And when they talk about Christ, they do not mean at all our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the actual historic Jesus who lived and died for us, who rose from the dead, ascended up to the right hand of God, and came back again in mighty spirit-power. Oh, no! They mean an ‘ideal Christ, or a ‘Christ principle’ that is in every man! They mean the ‘inner self’ of the soul! They see God as the life principle of every man and Christ is the name that is given to man once he has awakened to his godhood. Now, it is true that the seed of God is in every man! But no man is ‘Christ,’ that is, an anointed one, until the seed of God in him is quickened, germinated, and empowered by the infusion of God's Holy Spirit! Jesus, in the New Age view, was no more the Son of God than the drunk in the gutter. He was simply a good man, a highly developed man, a ‘Master-Spirit’ who developed the Christ principle within him and showed men how to awaken to their true inner self. According to their teaching Jesus was a man who went through many incarnations. These incarnations of Jesus took the form of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, David, and many others. These lives were his days at school, and he arrived at a state of consciousness, while manifesting as Jesus of Nazareth, where he remembered his past lives. They see no need for Jesus as the Lamb slain, for redemption, justification, regeneration, new birth, sanctification, baptism in the Holy Spirit, or any other New Testament experience. Men don't need to be saved, reconciled to God, or cleansed by the washing of regeneration - just awakened to the god within! What the New Age movement has done in America and other western nations is to combine Christian terminology with the tenets of various eastern religions, wrap them all up in a new package, and put a label on the package which guarantees everyone salvation without a Saviour! And what some in this Kingdom walk have done is create their own hybrid strain of sonship, speaking Kingdom truth deadly laced with pagan New Age concepts!
"The New Age movement is a modern form of eastern pagan religion — mingled with the darkness of the occult. While they do espouse some principles that contain truth, these are at best but half-truths, which are more deadly than the outright lie! All true reality of the living Jesus Christ is missing - they know not the Lord Jesus as Saviour, nor the cleansing power of His blood, nor the quickening, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, nor the authority of His name, nor the baptism in His Spirit, nor the fellowship of His body, nor the truth of the Holy Scriptures — in short they are at best bastard sons, subtle counterfeits, and there is no light in them for the light they do have is darkness, merely their own supposed inherent godhood, unquickened and unregenerated, which is the godhood of the self, old Adam - not the true and living God! This ‘inner self’ of all men is the ‘Cosmic Christ’ of the New Age!
"No truer words have been penned than those by Bob Torango wherein he writes, ‘I don't care how much it grieves some to think about having a Lord over themselves, no matter how much it makes their flesh to rebel, there is only one Lord over all heaven and earth, and that is Jesus Christ. It is not your perceived higher self, your I Amness, your shifted consciousness, your universal oneness, your metaphysical self, neither is it your egotistical, sinless, Adamless, fleshless self. Let me go down on record and say that there is only One worthy of honor and glory and adoration, only One to be worshipped and exalted, and it is not YOU. It is Him. If you cannot see Him beyond YOU, then you have a problem, and we need to talk. We don't have to exalt ourselves to feel better about our status in the kingdom. If we would only exalt Him, then He would lift us above our woeful self and bring us into His glory and crown us with everlasting joy. Isn't that enough? Do you really need to lower Jesus in rank and file in order to set yourselves up as kings? Must you continue to try to find another door, another way into God? He is the door, and it is wide open for all. Walk through Him, sit down with Him and drink the new wine and eat the bread of the kingdom. It is enough.’
"The book of Revelation is not the revelation of this Cosmic Christ, nor of a Christ principle, nor of the old inner self of unregenerated men - it is the revelation of the crucified, risen, ascended, glorified, spiritualized, universalized JESUS CHRIST who is Saviour of all men and Lord of all! It is the revelation of Jesus Christ as Head and body in the earth by the power of the spirit of His sonship! Remember, dear ones, that there is no truth beyond Jesus Christ! He has been given the name which is above every name in the heavens and in the earth! To Him has been given all power and all authority in heaven and in earth! Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved! He is the Head of all principality and power! He is the prince of the kings of the earth! He is the firstborn among many brethren! He is King of kings and Lord of lords! He is the Mighty God and the Everlasting Father! In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily! We are the body in which His fullness is revealed! Those who seek an ultimate truth beyond Jesus Christ, an ultimate reality beyond Him, will discover to their dreadful dismay that they have taken a fearful detour into the realms of outer darkness!" — End quote.
