DOCTRINES OF DEMONS IN TODAY'S CHURCH

I'm inspired to collect my usual list of the Doctrines of Demons I believe the true Church has been laboring under for a long time, that we need to repent of, that we need to correct.  Yes, this is just my own opinion, but I can muster quite a bit of evidence and have done so on many of my blogs. 

BARE-HEADED LADIES IN THE CHURCH
BOGUS BIBLES ACCEPTED AS GENUINE
ROMANISM ACCEPTED AS CHRISTIAN

1)  The denial of the head covering for women that I blog about at Hidden Glory.  I'm putting this first because although it may be the least of the deceptions in the Church, I keep having the suspicion it's not, that it's the toe in the doorway that has allowed others to push their way in.  This one has seduced many of the best preachers of our time.  Women sit bare headed in the vast majority of true Bible-believing Christian assemblies these days, an affront to God's Creation Order, an affront to the Glory of God, as expressed in verse 7 of 1 Corinthians 11:

For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man.

Therefore her head should be covered in the worship service, so that not man's glory but God's glory may be on display.  Isn't it a clue that after two millennia of Christian understanding of Paul as requiring women to cover our heads, we stopped doing this about the middle of the twentieth century when feminism was taking off?

2)  The acceptance of the Bible versions that have come down from the Revision of 1881.   I've been coming to think of this as the devil's biggest triumph against the Church these days, getting true believers to accept his own clever undermining of the English Bible, from the assault on it by Westcott and Hort in 1881 through all of today's increasingly worse "translations." 

Westcott and Hort built their abomination of a "revision" on their preferred but bogus Greek manuscripts, against the instructions given to the revising committee which they came to dominate; along with an inexcusable mangling of the English in 36 thousand unnecessary changes, also against the instructions.  All to destroy the King James which they hated.  Well, they succeeded.  Now modern preachers have accepted their frauds as genuine, even to impugning the King James and its Textus Receptus as the erroneous Bible.  Oh do read John Burgon, and do listen to Chris Pinto.  Consider carefully that the devil is very smart and that there can be conspiracies clever enough to deceive us all where there is a will to undermine the true work of God.

3)  The Dragon-Sized Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is the acceptance of Roman Catholicism among true Christians.   This one is common among Charismatics, which may be the main door through which the dragon has entered.  John MacArthur has been one of the most faithful opponents of this trend in the church while other big-name preachers have been guilty of embracing as orthodox the very system that was the reason for the Protestant Reformation. 

Chris Pinto (Adullam Films and Noise of Thunder radio) has opened my eyes over the last year or so to the fact that the Roman Church has been tirelessly working without a break to destroy the Reformation and restore their former power, while true believers are taught to think of the Roman "church" as just another Christian denomination, and its Inquisition that tortured and murdered some fifty million true Christians along with another seventeen million others (yes these statistics can be supported), as dead history we can safely ignore.

There are plenty of apostate movements, cults and heresies that threaten true Christian doctrine these days, but for the most part they are recognized and rejected by true Christians and under scrutiny by many Discernment ministries.  What I'm listing are hidden insidious influences WITHIN the true Church.  The above are the top three on my list although I keep thinking I'm forgetting something. 

I could, and may, add the Charismatic Movement along with its Word-Faith/Prosperity Gospel version,  which the recent Strange Fire Conference did such a good job of exposing, even possibly Dispensationalism, which is also accepted as true Christian doctrine, and perhaps Evolutionism insofar as it has undermined the belief of true Christians in the inerrancy of the Bible.

Praise God for the resurgence of Reformed thinking in the churches, but even the Reformed are susceptible to many of these deceptions.  We need a New Reformation, we need a Revival with Holy Spirit conviction of the sins of false doctrine (that it seems to me do feed individual propensity to personal sins, which is a whole topic I've been thinking about -- but Romans 1 is a clue), and with Holy Spirit inspired repentance from all these errors.  We need Fear of God, we've lost our Fear of God.

May be back to add or correct.

Heaven Stories posts continue to attract denouncers. In answer to the latest, this post is about Akiane Kramarik

I got another comment on my main blog post about the stories of children's visits to heaven.

Bob Barker has this to say to me:

I think its disgusting to go calling Akaini's [sic] work, the other child's heaven experience and 90 minutes in heaven demoniacally inspired.

Where is your proof that Akainie is tied to Hinduism and new age deception?

You mention that some of these people have a lot to answer to God for. But how about yourself, speaking against Gods chosen servants like this? ...

Saturday, November 12, 2011

In response I decided to do a whole post on why Akiane Kramarik's visions are NOT Christian.

First I need to explain that Akiane Kramarik is another who claims to have been to heaven at a very early age -- I've seen both age three and age four at different sources -- just like the two boys who have had books written about their experiences. Akiane has an amazing artistic ability, or really a technical skill at painting realistic images, that seems to have "come from God" in a more direct sense than we usually mean that expression. She also writes poetry which she says comes to her already composed. She is now about seventeen and apparently still communicates with "God."

Since I've been challenged on this so much I want to make the case for the demonic inspiration behind the heaven visits and visions, although I think what I've already written on the general subject ought to suffice. Apparently it needs to be spelled out more clearly because there is such an amazing lack of discernment about these things on the part of many Christians.

First of all there should be major questions asked about such claims since there is no Biblical reason whatever why God should give anyone a vision of himself these days. Instead we get books published by supposedly reputable Christian publishing companies presenting them as perfectly acceptable Christian experiences, which in itself no doubt influences Christians to accept them uncritically. Such visions were very rare even in Old Testament times, given to specially chosen prophets such as Moses and Isaiah, and in the New Testament there was only the Transfiguration witnessed by three of Jesus' disciples, Paul's encounter on the Damascus road, and then the visions of John recorded in the Book of Revelation. These visions had very specific objectives in the furtherance of God's revelation to humanity, AND they provoked amazement and fearful worshipful awe in those who witnessed them -- attitudes we NEVER see in ANY of the current supposed experiences of God or heaven. The credulity given to a "prophet" such as Joseph Smith in our time is indefensible enough, but now apparently many thousands of people who ought to know better are all too easily accepting that some small American children have been allowed to visit the true heaven.

There is really no other possibility than demonic influence. Small children could not imagine or make up these things on their own, they had to come from outside, just as Akiane and the boys who have had such experiences claim. There is also a general agreement between the separate accounts of "heaven" about the nature of "God" and "Jesus" which is also evidence that they were not simply made up, but came from some outside source. So, was that outside source God or the devil? This post is to give my reasons why it had to be the devil.

Here's at thread at EvC forums where I posted a number of comments on Akiane Kramarik and her art a few years ago. I got the same kind of responses there that I get on my post about the heaven stories here, that is, with few exceptions denouncing me for my point of view. Most of the posters there are unbelievers but I know one of my critics on that thread is a believer, apparently as undiscerning as other believers I know of who accept these heaven experiences so uncritically. Most who have commented on these phenomena here are probably Christians, but they don't provide enough information for me to know for sure. Some may not be Christians at all, but generic New Agey God-believers, deists or cultists who don't believe in the God of the Bible anyway.

Here is a page on Akiane's own web site where her experiences are described but in much vaguer terms than I remember finding earlier. She's described as having had a "spiritual transformation" at the age of four but not a direct experience of heaven which I recall is what she'd first described -- so I think they've toned it down:

•At 4, had a life-changing spiritual transformation, bringing the family to God.
•Her poems often arrive fully conceived.
•The inspiration for her art and literature comes from her visions, dreams, observations of people, nature and God.

•Her biggest wish: "that everyone would love God and one another".
•Her life goal: to share her love for God and people around the world.

This God she knows through visions and dreams is an awfully vague generic sort of God, the God of the cults, the God of the New Age, with no specific attributes that would connect him with the God of the Bible. She paints a man she calls "Jesus Christ," usually against a background of stars and galaxies -- which in itself is a hint that we are not talking about the UNCREATED God who made all things, who is outside all of it -- only the false gods are part of the cosmos. She claims to be inspired by her very unspecific nebulous "God," and her "Jesus" is no more than a handsome not-very-authoritative-looking man (in fact he's perhaps rather befuddled-looking, no Christ he). Christ is not described as the Savior in anything she says there, far from Almighty God who came to die for the sins of His people.

Here's a short You Tube video about her in which she says she believes God wanted to show her what he's like and what he's done with this world or something like that. Not a word about sending the Son of God to die for our sins. There is nothing Christian at all about her generic God, he's just a typical empty amorphous New Agey "God" with all the pseudoChristian cant words like "helping people" and "love."

There is also her experience of having the poetry come to her already written as it were. When does God do such things? But it's very common in occult practices, the doings of demons, much like "automatic writing" and even more like the whole books that were dictated directly to Jane Roberts (The Seth Books) and Helen Schucman (A Course in Miracles). Demons do these things, God does not.

What makes Akiane's vision specifically "New Age" is her notion about Jesus' supposed "missing years:" Here's another You Tube video about her. She describes her experiences starting at 6:10. At 6:40 is her painting called The Missing Years. This is that New Age notion, which I'll say more about farther down the post.

On that same video Akiane says right after the Missing Years painting that God gave her many ideas she doesn't understand at all, mentioning one about "pyramids." I have to suppose she didn't understand the "missing years" idea either, that it was given to her without her understanding, just as her poetry is also given to her.

Since her website is so vague about her early experiences of visions of God I'm including this link to a critic because at least he mentions what I know I had read some time back, and I think on her website, about her claim to have had an actual visit to heaven and personal encounter with God.

What makes Akiane so fascinating is not so much how well she paints, but rather the subject of her work and her inspiration. Akiane claims to have met God when she was just 3. He told her that she needs to paint and help the less fortunate. He also noted that he’d be there to guide her along the way.

It gets more bizarre when you discover that her mother is an Atheist and her father a recovering Catholic. Religion was never discussed in the house and the kids are all home schooled.

Wikipedia gives pretty much this same information, along with the same vague concept of "God."

Here's a report about her from April of this year. I see that most of the material in this article is taken from one at Christianity Today. They too just believe this stuff? I suppose this IS unfortunately the level of an awful lot of today's Christianity. Has nobody any discernment any more?

When asked how she knows that it's God who is speaking to her she said, "Because I can hear His voice....quiet and beautiful."

This ought to be a dead giveaway that we are not talking about the God of the Bible. Is this to be accepted as proof that it is God who communicates with her? "Quiet and beautiful?" Don't they know that scripture says the devil appears as an angel of light? That's his specialty. He was originally the most beautiful cherub in heaven. He can still muster an impression of that original beauty of form, voice, whatever, certainly enough to deceive an innocent child.

The article describes her finding a model for her paintings of Jesus, and one of the boys who had similar visions to hers said her paintings look exactly like the Jesus he also met:

The painting is startling. The eyes are loving and patient, but also piercing and fierce. He is beautiful. In fact, when Colton Burpo, the little boy who says he went to heaven at age three (see articles Part One and Part Two), saw the painting, he declared it to be the only one that ever captured what Jesus looks like. There have been many paintings since that one, though Prince of Peace is probably her most famous.

She also gives a generic vague explanation of why she believes she's been given these experiences:

People may wonder, “Why did Jesus choose to contact Akiane?"

“I have been blessed by God,” she said simply. “And if I'm blessed, there is one reason and one reason only, and that is to help others. I am donating a big portion of money to charity and to combat poverty," she said. "I want to help people. I want people to find hope in my paintings and draw people's attention to God."

There is no reason for Jesus to appear to anyone these days that I know of, certainly not to anyone who has access to a Bible and plenty of preachers and teachers such as we have in America, but let's say at a minimum if it really were Jesus talking to her He'd show her his nail wounds and tell her He died for her salvation, none of this mumbojumbo about "helping people." ALL the cults teach "helping people," the true God offers REAL TRUE TRANSFORMING salvation through the death of Christ, salvation that saves us from our Adam-inherited sin nature. Akiane is not saved, she's merely being exploited by a demonic intrusion into her mind.

The Supposed "Missing" Years of Jesus
What Akiane has learned through her visions is certainly NOT Christian. It's basically a New Age kind of teaching, which has roots in spiritism, theosophy and the like, and the mere mention of the notion of any supposedly "lost" or "missing" years in Jesus' life is a red flag clue to this. Akiane herself probably had no notion of its anti-Christian meaning when she first received this from her otherworldly communicant. Christians do not believe there were any "missing" or "lost" years in Jesus' life. There is simply a long period of His childhood that is not described in scripture simply because it is not of importance to the gospel, from age twelve to the beginning of his ministry around age thirty. New Age writers have claimed he traveled during those years and learned Eastern religion during that time, but the entire context of his life and ministry as shown in the Bible is the Old Testament, nothing outside that context. Clearly we are to assume he lived the life of a Jewish boy learning his earthly adoptive father's trade of carpentry and His heavenly Father's calling on His life through attendance at synagogue and temple.

Here's Wikipedia on the subject of the supposed Missing Years. It claims Jesus traveled in Tibet and India and learned from their sages and "holy men." This is taught in the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ written in 1908 but now part of New Age lore such as in Elizabeth Clare Prophet's teachings. The Aquarian Gospel was supposedly learned from the akashic records which is the name for an other-dimensional "library of knowledge" some people claim to be able to access. I think Edgar Cayce the psychic healer of the early 20th century claimed to get his healing knowledge from some such source out there in cosmic neverneverland. It might be tempting to suppose there is such a record "out there" that practiced Riders of the Cosmic Circuit can tune into, except for the fact that it's lying about who Jesus Christ is and that proves its satanic origin: end of story.

The message about the Aquarian Christ is not Biblical at all, but obviously based on Eastern religion. It supports a belief in reincarnation, for one thing, a direct contradiction with the Bible, and treats Christ as merely a sage who came to save through his example and teaching, concepts utterly at odds with the Biblical Christ but familiar in all the false religions. Eastern religion, spiritism, theosophy, pseudoChristian cults, channeling of spirits, all feed into today's New Age. It's all demonically inspired at its root.

The Christ of the Bible, of Christianity, is God Himself, God the Son -- yes, THAT God, the God of the Old Testament -- who came to be born in human flesh through the virgin Mary, who grew up in the teachings of the Old Testament and fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah promised from Eden through all the prophets recorded there, and died on the cross to pay for the sins of His people. Everything He taught comes from the Old Testament. He quotes nothing but Old Testament scripture and He quotes from just about every book, treating it all as literally true.

Christ lived a perfectly sinless life and then laid it down as a sacrifice as prescribed in the Old Testament so that those who believe on Him can inherit eternal life through Him. There is no other way. It is ALL based on the revelation of the Old Testament. Only someone totally ignorant of Christianity or consciously determined to distort its truth could accept the utter stupidity of trying to link His message and life purpose with Eastern religion.

There is no other kind of "salvation." We are fallen, we lost our connection to God through our first father Adam who disobeyed and plunged us all into spiritual and physical death ever since, through our simple genetic inheritance from him. We are subject to sin ourselves as a result of the sin nature we inherited from Adam, we are corrupted and blinded to God by nature. We have NO ability to save ourselves. The most holy man's example couldn't save us even if we were able to follow it because he's fallen too. ONLY a sacrifice of a perfect sinless Victim as decreed by God to pay for our sins could abolish the sin and death that separates us from God and restore our original spiritual fellowship with God.

Clearly these other notions of Christ MUST be demonically inspired, there is no other possibility. And this must be because the demons do not want anybody to learn how to be saved and they love to make us feel like we can do it all ourselves, be "gods" in our own right, which was Satan's lie to Eve in Eden.

Akiane was an innocent young child deceived by a demonic counterfeit of God, the same way the other innocent young children have been whose stories of visits to heaven have become so popular. It's also the way Joseph Smith was deceived, but he was a grownup and a con man to boot, and there are others who have been deceived the same way. Because in this case these are children, people are more than usually indignant against critics of their experiences and want to protect them from such as me, but they should want to save them from the devil's deception instead. You should be outraged at the devil's exploitation of children, which includes one child suffering terribly as the Malarkey boy is, rather than outraged at someone who calls it like it is. And you should be outraged at yourselves for trying to shut up this attempt to expose what is really going on. Pray for these children that they be set free and find the true Christ. Start with praying for yourselves, that you be disabused of your spiritual blindness.

Too many of today's "Christians" need a good sharp slap upside the head. WAKE UP!

The frequency with which such experiences are coming to people these days is certainly part of what is to be expected of the last days when the powers of Antichrist are coming to the fore.

Counterfeit "heaven" stories deceive even Christians

They believe they really went to heaven, you believe they really went to heaven, but have you made any effort to compare what they said with scripture or are you uncritically trusting in your own emotional reaction?

Out-of-body experiences and experiences of "heaven" are fairly common these days -- seems we hear of one every few years at least. Now there's the story of Colton, a boy who had such an experience during a life-or-death surgery at the age of four, met family members he'd never known, including a sister his mother had miscarried although he'd known nothing about that, and saw "God" and "Jesus." He's now seven and talking about it to the press.

The most distressing thing about these reports, it seems to me, is that sometimes Christians believe them. There are usually plenty of signs that the experiences are bogus but what happens is that people become dazzled by the mere idea of being out-of-body or transported to another dimension.

Part of the experience may be the kind of out-of-body experience in which the person, lying unconscious on an operating table, finds himself above the scene looking down on it, can see himself unconscious, can see other people in the area and hear what they are saying. Afterward those other people report that the unconscious person's observations were correct, and what happens then is that others believe the story and think such details make the whole thing valid.

So then if during that same episode there is also an experience of going to "heaven," that is also believed. In this boy's case there are the apparently validating elements of his having talked to someone who claimed to be his sister that his mother had miscarried, and a great grandfather he had never met. Afterward his parents confirmed both stories. It turned out that the boy recognized a picture of the great grandfather when he was young though not when he was old, the idea being that "in heaven" everyone is young, and in the case of the sister his mother's miscarriage was confirmed by his parents.

I have the bad habit of spending time studying something, such as this phenomenon of visits to "heaven," only to leave it behind for something else so that when it reappears it catches me off guard and I'm surprised that anyone still takes it seriously. Years ago I was a member of a charismatic "parachurch" organization and heard the "testimony" of other members which usually include supernatural elements and in one case involved an experience of "heaven." I accepted these stories, including the one of heaven, but found over time that I had an increasing unease about much of what was being said, which finally came to such a pitch that I prayed for clarity and was then able to see the errors in them.

1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Clues to deception come to light when you pray
The credulity with which these stories are so easily accepted does have the effect of suppressing criticism, in spite of the fact that scripture counsels us to "test the spirits" and not be gullible. I was finally led to pray over my doubts and began to recognize deceptions that convinced me finally to leave the organization -- and the charismatic movement in general. The questions I was having were all about the supernatural experiences, including the experience of "heaven."

It had occurred as so many of them do, when she was very sick. She was taken out of her body and supposedly shown the throne room of heaven. She gave teachings to the group based on her experience, and the main tip-off to its counterfeit nature was her teaching on the "steps to the throne of grace." I hadn't questioned it when I heard it but when I prayed about it I saw that it contradicts the call in scripture to "come boldly to the throne of grace," instead of having to laboriously meet the requirements of a series of "steps" to get there.

Heb 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Then other elements of the story also showed themselves to be counterfeit, although unfortunately I don't have any notes handy to remind me of them so I can't be very specific about them. As I recall, however, the Holy Spirit in this person's vision was reduced to an empty image rather than a Person, in the form of a corner of a great train that was part of the garment of God that "filled the throne room" -- a piece would break off and fall in the shape of a dove down to earth. I think imagery may be an important deceptive element in these experiences as it can mislead people into accepting a falsification of major doctrine, in this case the Trinity, by charming them with fascinating irrelevancies. That is, the common idea that "seeing is believing" is a perfect set-up for deception. There was also a part of this person's vision that involved pigs, which I think ought also to have been a tip-off but unfortunately that part is less clear in my memory than the reduction of the Holy Spirit to a piece of cloth.

These things are most likely demonic
Since everyone in the group accepted this story without criticism, including me until I prayed about it, I appreciate how easily even Christians are deceived by such demonic shenanigans. And that is without doubt what they are. I don't doubt that people have such experiences, and that they are REAL experiences, experiences of another dimension of spiritual reality, not hallucinations and not inventions of the human psyche, but I have learned to expect that they will turn out to be the work of demons.

In some cases there may be fraud involved, but there is no need to assume this as so many unbelievers do. For instance, Fox News has been ridiculed for accepting Colton's story so uncritically, and rightly so but for the wrong reasons. They are sure it must be fraud. Well, it COULD be, but there is no reason to assume that it is. On the surface it sounds more like other experiences along the same lines that have the marks of demonic manipulation. And there are the usual "test" elements, his meeting people he knew nothing about otherwise.

There is nothing beyond the powers of demons to convey such knowledge to a little boy, and nothing beyond their motives to deceive either. They can easily impersonate people. That's how the spirits of "dead people" appear in "haunted houses." They are demonic impersonations of the people who once lived there (people who were most likely actually possessed by the demons who now impersonate them). In Colton's case they also included in their deception false images of "God" -- visualized as so "big" he can hold the Earth in his hands, and of "Jesus" "whose smile lights up the heavens" and has "sea blue" eyes. What disgusting poppycock, but CHRISTIANS believe this pap? Colton himself doesn't even seem to believe it as he just rattles off the empty phrases by rote. Perhaps he actually experienced them and is simply tired of repeating it -- or maybe as some suggest it's a sign that it was made up and imposed on him. I don't know. His father is supposedly a pastor. A deceived pastor obviously. But whatever the source, the images of God and Jesus are ridiculously phony.

It's similar to what psychics practice
This is typical of the work of psychics too. Again, much of that may also be fraudulent but to the extent that there is reality to some of it the source of that reality is demonic activity. That is, psychics really can have knowledge of things that their clients know nothing about, OR can know things that ONLY the client knows, because demons convey the knowledge to them. I've wondered if sometimes there may also be a merely human psychic power that for some reason is developed in certain individuals and not others, but I think the most common cause is demonic intervention. This seems to have been the case with the "witch of Endor" who had a familiar spirit (a demon) who supplied the knowledge or perhaps even faked the appearance of a dead person to deceive her clients, just as all mediums have, but in the case of King Saul was pre-empted by the appearance of the REAL prophet Samuel, to her amazement and fear.

Some think a child is too innocent to be deceived by demons but this is a big mistake. Children are members of the fallen human race, after all, and may also inherit a special vulnerability to demonic activity through their fallen ancestors as well. They are in fact the perfect set-up for demonic deception because people do sentimentalize them as innocent. Satan and his demons have no scruples. They are out to deceive and kill and they have no tender feelings for humanity. There are many stories out there of people who had frightening experiences as children, of demonic beings that would visit them at night, shake their beds and do other frightening things. Demons do not leave children alone.

Sometimes special talents are imparted, even to children
There is another story about a four-year-old's visit to heaven, the story of Akiane Kramarik now a teenager, whose unusual talents as a painter and a poet she ascribes to that visit. Her experience and amazing talents convinced her own atheistic family of the reality of "God" and she has dedicated herself to bringing her message of "God" to the world.

Can demons impart such talents? Well, Akiane says she sometimes simply receives her poetry fully written as it were. This is the same way the channelers of the religious doctrines, A Course in Miracles, the Seth Books, Urantia, and the teachings of Rael, also received their messages. As for the painting, I once talked to a woman deeply involved in Hindu / New Age practices who was also an artist and created similarly impressive realistic images, in her case sculptures, a talent she also attributed to "God."

But the main problem with Akiane's art is that her message is New Age although people mistake it for Christian because it includes images of "Jesus." This is a romanticized "Jesus," just as Colton's "Jesus" is, a Jesus without the cross, a Jesus who didn't die for sin but just mushily "loves" everyone. She even believes and promotes the New Age lie about Jesus' supposed "lost years" in which they claim he went to India and was taught Hinduism. The truth is that Jesus grew up as a Jew, studying Torah in the Temple, learning carpentry from His earthly adoptive father Joseph. It is ridiculous to put Him in India instead, but that's what the demons who inspire New Age phony religion have done. ANYTHING TO DECEIVE, even deceive the very elect who aren't paying attention or who aren't well taught by their pastors.

Take it to the Bible with prayer
A place to start to recognize such deception may be the few Biblical reports of experiences of heaven and supernatural realities. Start with Paul's experience of visiting the "third heaven." He said it was unlawful to describe it -- there is a reverence for holy things in that attitude we simply do not find in any of the recent claims to have seen heaven. Then there is John who was taken up to the throne room of God, as he reports in Revelation chapter 4. He also saw the Lord Jesus in chapter 1, who gave him the messages to the seven churches before he was called up to heaven. Even encounters with true angels of God inspire awe and the impulse to worship from mere mortals because of their dazzling beauty and power, as both John and the prophets of the Old Testament attest. Encounters with the true God inspire even deeper awe, and a profound sense of personal sin and fear of judgment. Take a look at Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel and more. There is NOTHING of this sort of feeling in the recent spate of out-of-body experiences. Instead we get the most casual of descriptions and a sort of breathless excitement over their mere supernatural unusualness. Or we get the nonsense of Shirley MacLaine who was taught through her encounters with otherworldly beings that SHE is "god." Oh brother. NonChristians who reject the Bible may fall for this demonic deception, but Christians should not. And yet some do.

"Christian" sources are guilty of promoting these lies
Here's an article on the popularity of books on these things which indicates how far Christians may be deceived by them and not warned by people who should warn them:

Interest continues to grow in afterlife books Written by Eric Tiansay
Tuesday, 19 October 2010 10:02 AM EDT

New offerings on heaven and hell titles target people 'fascinated' with eternal subjects

Publishers continue to release and market titles on the afterlife as interest on the topic show no signs of dying.

Sounds like they are willing to feed this continuing "interest" just because there is a market for it, quite apart from whether the books have any real value in a Christian life. Of course they must have rationalized the topic as having such value, although it's a pretty thin rationalization when examined in the light of scripture.

This month, Thomas Nelson releases Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Nebraska pastor Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent. In the book, Burpo recounts the near-death experience of his 4-year-old son, Colton, who began surprising his parents with detailed accounts of Jesus, places described in the Scriptures and departed relatives, including meeting his sister in heaven—a girl lost in a miscarriage before he was born.

Got to comment here that Christians are called to faith in what scripture teaches us, and that includes knowing that Heaven is "for real" without having to have it experienced by anyone. Scripture gives us the story of Thomas who refused to believe what he was told by those who had seen the risen Christ and would only believe when he himself actually saw Him. Jesus graciously granted him that experience but when He did He also admonished him that it was more blessed to have believed the reports. That is an admonishment to all of us, to believe the testimony of God's word, including that story. Jesus also told a story about a rich man who died and went to Hell and begged to be allowed to come back long enough to warn his family of its reality, but Jesus answers him that if they hadn't believed Moses neither would they believe even someone who came back from the dead. Faith means having ears to hear, not seeing. And a pastor, Colton's father, ought himself to have recognized that immediately. Was he carried away by its being his own son who had the experience?

The book follows the July release by Tyndale House Publishers of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven—co-authored by Kevin Malarkey.

What a GREAT name for the author of such a story! The story is very sad, however, and it's doubly sad that the malarkey in it is being exploited.

The book details the story of Malarkey's 6-year-old son, Alex, whose skull was detached from his spinal column in a car accident. While comatose, the boy says that he experienced God's voice, otherworldly music and heaven's gates.

The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven reached the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction best-seller list, with more than 97,000 copies in print after three printings already, Tyndale officials said.

Meanwhile, Bethany House Publishers/Baker Publishing Group released in May Ken Gire's Flight to Heaven, an account of Capt. Dale Black's near-death experience in a plane crash at age 19. Bethany House then followed that with the August release of Encountering Heaven and the Afterlife by James Garlow and Keith Wall—a collection of stories of the afterlife inspired by the pair's 2009 Bethany House release, Heaven and the Afterlife.

Elsewhere, Strang Book Group's Charisma House 2006 title, 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese, recently passed the 1 million mark in sales.

I have to admit that I'm more likely to believe an experience of Hell than of Heaven, just because it seems less likely to gloss over the danger faced by those who are not saved by Christ, but since I don't know what the book says I can't be sure its impact is what I imagine it to be, and the same rule applies anyway -- we are to believe God's word and not believe anyone's experience over that.

Matt Baugher, vice president and publisher of nonfiction for Thomas Nelson, told Christian Retailing that there are "surface similarities" between the two new books about two boys experiencing heaven, but they are "actually quite different."

"The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven is more about a traumatic experience in the life of a family and trauma, which continues to this day because of Alex's ongoing physical struggles," Baugher said. "It's also more a book written for people who are already committed Christians. Heaven is for Real was written for a wide audience, and for those who are curious and yet unsure."

Are these really Christians who are saying such things? How can they be so gullible? Whatever happened to the authority of scripture and the admonition to walk by faith and not by sight?

He declined to say the number of the first printing for the book, but "it is significant." "We expect strong sales, and the buzz is already developing," Baugher said. "We expect the pass-along rate on this title to be very high."

Heaven is for Real features a tie-in with Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry—a 2006 Nelson book by Akiane Kramarik, a child prodigy who at age 8 had painted a picture of Christ. In Heaven is For Real, Burpo's son, Colton, detailed accounts of Jesus matches the portrait of Christ painted by Akiane.

Sigh. You don't think demons get together and compare notes? If they don't, at least they take orders from up the chain, and their superiors are going to concoct such similarities to deceive the gullible.

"To have another child who had actually been to heaven verify the accuracy of the portrait was astounding," Baugher said. "This connection sealed the deal for us as a company. Since we had published (Akiane's) book, we not only knew the family, but were partners in sharing their story. Akiane is now 16, and (along) with her parents, Mark and Foreli, (want) to help us with the continuing conversation about Christ."

OK, now I'm suspecting this isn't really even a Christian publishing company (I guess now I have to research it). This degree of gullibility is too much.

Meanwhile, a Spanish edition is in the works for The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, and a documentary DVD was released by Tyndale House in conjunction with the book.

Going to have a LOT to answer to God for there, Tyndale House, and all the rest of you, in misleading Christians, and worse, most likely misleading others away from Christ when you should be leading them TO Him.

"It's probably an overstatement to say that books about kids dying and going to heaven have become a trend," Tyndale Associate Publisher Janis Long Harris told Christian Retailing. "But it's clear that people are fascinated with and find comfort in the topic of heaven. We've certainly seen that here at Tyndale."

You should be pointing them to scripture for that comfort instead of leading them down the primrose path to this bogus "heaven" of mere experience and demonic plots.

Harris cited Randy Alcorn's Heaven, which has been through 17 printings, totalling more than 675,000 copies, since it was released in October 2004,

Joel Kneedler, a literary agent for Alive Communications, told Christian Retailing that he pitched Heaven is for Real to Nelson because he thought "it needed to be told." He added that both the book and The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven "are remarkable and deserve to be told."

"I do not see a specific trend," he said. "Books about heaven have a way of comforting Christians and increasing our faith. It's natural to wonder about heaven, what it will be like, who we will meet. … I think Don Piper's book opened a door in the trade book market for books on heaven."

Following its release in 2004 by Revell/Baker Publishing Group, Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven was a mainstay for three years on the New York Times Paperback Nonfiction best-seller list. It has more than 4.5 million copies in print in softcover, Spanish, hardcover, audio and large-print editions.

Here is a gospel-centered review of Piper's book, and here is the crux of that review:

But what true, lasting assurance can we find in the dubious experiences of another mere human? Our assurance is to be in God and His promises through Scripture, not in man.

I do believe Don Piper is a sincere man and one who loves God. He seems to sincerely believe that he experienced heaven and has been called by God to share his experience with others. But I do not believe that he did see heaven. I cannot say what his experience was, whether it was purely psychological or whether it was even some type of demonic deception. What I do know is that the Scriptures are wholly sufficient for believers. We do not need to see or experience heaven in this life. Nor should we desire Don Piper’s heaven.

I see no reason to believe that God wants us to know more about heaven than He has revealed to us in His Word.

Exactly!

Christian Retailing concludes:

"God always has a message for us, but it seems right now it's about the hope we have in Him—the hope of heaven," Baugher said. "We've come to understand that many people have these near-death experiences, but not all get to see as much as Colton did. "

Again, how sad it is that Christians are so willing to abandon faith for sight -- which always sets us up for deception.

And why should we trust publishers either? Something comes to mind about the love of money ...

But since it is so hard to get anyone to listen to any of this who is enamored of these stories, I also have to comment on how sad it is that there are so many Christians who think Christians aren't supposed to judge one another on Christian doctrine, or judge whether someone is a Christian or not. Where is that in scripture? We are told we will judge angels, so much the more we are to judge true and false Christian doctrine. Christians accept others as Christians who are not Christians and show it in many ways, even in the grossest of false doctrine. This is SO sad. All one can do is pray that God will give light. But such basic gullibility also explains why there is no discernment about bogus visions of "heaven" as well.

Perhaps the worst thing about all this is the PRIDE these gullibles show who react indignantly against anyone who tries to set them straight. All they can do then is keep digging themselves further into deception and getting further from recognizing the truth. OK, best I not accuse people of pride or other attitudes that can't be proven. Maybe it isn't always pride, but just naivete. The problem is it's such a stubborn naivete that won't yield.