I would like to share a testimony with you, I was asked to preach in a Dorset village called Lychett Maltravers. I had never been there before so I decided to visit the church the day before I was scheduled to preach. I found the church down a very narrow lane, I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord, what word do you want me to preach to these people.” He told me in my mind to enter the church. On entering the church I met the cleaner, who told me that I was welcome to have a look around. I walked over to the pulpit and noticed the communion rail, then the Lord began to speak to me again and said, “You see this communion rail,” I replied, “Yes, Lord.” “Well, when you preach tomorrow, you must tell the people that many times in the past they have come to the communion rail to receive the bread and the wine, but this time they must come to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, publicly, for where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst,” saith the Lord.

Well, the following day I did as the Lord had said, I began to preach my sermon, then I remembered what the Lord had said, so I told them that Jesus is standing by this communion rail, and as they had received the bread and the wine in the past, today, they were to receive Jesus, fully into their lives. I stood to one side of the rail, and we all began to sing Amazing Grace ! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see. Then one lady who had been attending that church for many years came to the front and knelt down, and gave her life fully to Jesus. Praise God. It reminds me of a scripture, where Jesus said, “ I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance,” {St Luke 15 v 7}.

Now, for those who did not receive Jesus that day, they became very troubled. I received a letter from one of the Elders who could not understand how I could of heard Jesus speaking to me. He said, “Who do you think that you are? God doesn’t speak,” Obviously he was not listening to God’s word; I perceived that he to needed to come to Jesus. Another gentleman came to my home, and he was very troubled as well, he said, “Now that this lady is saved, how are you going to disciple her? For we are not going to.” Well, I thought to myself, it is Jesus who saves, and it is Jesus who keeps us, for Jesus said, “That it is He who has begun a good work in us and it is He who will finish it.” So I guess that this gentleman needed to receive Jesus as well. Maybe many others in that church should have responded to the altar call that day; my prayer is that they don’t leave it too late. But as for me, I’m going to rejoice with the angels in heaven over that one soul that was saved. Praise God.

Oh Jesus, Lord and Saviour, I give myself to Thee; For thou, in Thine atonement,
Didst give thyself for me; I own no other Master, My heart shall be Thy throne,
My life I give, henceforth to live, O Christ, for Thee alone.

EVANGELIST BILLY BOLITHO
http://www.evangelistbillybolitho.blogspot.com

Dr Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist when she had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke - where language and thinking occur - but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.

What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having”", and thanks to this wonderful book, I can! Thank you Dr. Taylor, and thank you Eckhart and Oprah.

I am in the process of reading the book and reviewing it on my site. By itself, the book is not “that bad” if it was just sitting on the new age shelf at your nearest bookstore. It would not have gotten much notice because, honestly, it is nothing new that has not been covered many times before by various new age writers and in the same light none of them have ever challenged Christianity.

The problem become that little sticker on the cover that reads “Oprah Book Club”; that in itself puts the book sales in the millions. But to complicate this even further, Oprah and Tolle are pushing this as “modern Christianity” and holding their own “Sunday school classes” to convert the masses to their way of thinking. It is no where near what the bible tells us. Yet, many people just nod along and agree with the queen of TV because she is Oprah….and she knows all!

Beliefnet actually did a survey and 33% of the people polled said their would trust Oprah more than their own clergy in spiritual matters. That is an issue!

I hope this helps and you can always reach me at http://beyondfaith.wordpress.com or beyondjustfaith@gmail.com.

God Bless,
Hunter

I find it interesting, though, how new age philosophies try to bend the word of Jesus to be their own or validate their beliefs. Its amazing how, if you read the whole passage, you get a completely different meaning than what they tell you it means.

My church is now interested in me teaching a class on A New Earth, Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, and the modern media’s affect on the Christian Culture. Should be interesting!

God Bless,
Hunter

I have a suggestion, you will note that there are a couple of chapter by chapter critiques of “A New Earth” on this blog. You could do the week to week reviews along with the reading of “A New Earth” with your friend. That way you could have the advantage of having access to what I consider a balanced response to the book from a Christian perspective but at the same time, you both could gain some first hand experience of why it is so important to understand what the Bible does say and how easily one can be lead away from the truth if there is no such understanding of the truth in God’s Word. I am assuming that you are a young adult. If you are younger, I would recommend doing the reading with a Christian adult that you feel comfortable with. And, a prayer for some guidance on how to safely go forward with this would be a prudent step too. And to answer your question, no, I see no reason to fear this book, just be aware of what Eckhart Tolle says and what God’s Word says. Some of this discussion can get pretty heavy, so doing a chapter a week is a nice pace. Hope that helps.

Katie

I have to admit that you paint quite the picture. The understanding that you have arrived at is quite different from mine. I will take the liberty of posting some of the background material that I have summarized which addresses in part, some of your more ardent suppositions.

With regard to the origin and the use of the word Yahweh,I provide the following:

In Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title. It represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relation of God to the Jewish people. To show the sacredness of the names of God, and as a means of showing respect and reverence for them, the scribes of sacred texts took pause before copying them, and used terms of reverence so as to keep the true name of God concealed. The various names of God in Judaism represent God as he is known, as well as the divine aspects which are attributed to him.

The name YHWH is often reconstructed as Yahweh, based on a wide range of circumstantial historical and linguistic evidence. Most scholars do not view it as an “accurate” reconstruction in an absolute sense, but as the best possible guess, superior to all other existing versions, and thus the standard convention for scholarly usage. A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech. It appears, therefore, that in the tradition followed by the Israelite historians, the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshipers of Yahweh before the time of Moses. The surmise that the name Yahweh belongs to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, is a significant possibility. There is, however, no certain evidence that the Israelites in historical times had any consciousness of the primitive significance of the name.

Yahweh is a common vocalization of God’s personal name based on the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH. Tetragrammaton (from the Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning ‘[word of] four letters’ (tetra “four” + gramma (gen. grammatos) “letter”), refers to יהוה, the name of the God of Israel, written with four letters, as preserved in the Hebrew Masoretic Text where it appears over 6,800 times.
Yahweh is an English rendition of יהוה, as preserved in the Masoretic Text. Opinions differ as to the most appropriate vowels to be used with the four-letter tetragrammaton. Because of Jewish concerns for avoiding blasphemy, the name was often avoided and replaced with “LORD” (equivalent to the Hebrew Adonai). Also some other names for God used by Christians are Father, Lord, Heavenly Father, or the Holy Trinity.

By contrast, the translation “Jehovah” was created by adding the vowel points of “Adonai.” Early Christian translators of the Torah did not know that these vowel points only served to remind the reader not to pronounce the divine name, but instead say “Adonai,” so they pronounced the consonants and vowel points together (a grammatical impossibility in Hebrew). They took the letters “IHVH,” from the Latin Vulgate, and the vowels “a-o-a” were inserted into the text rendering IAHOVAH or “Iehovah” in 16th century English, which later became “Jehovah.”

The original consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was provided with vowel marks by the Masoretes to assist reading. In places where the consonants of the text to be read (the Qere) differed from the consonants of the written text (the Kethib), they wrote the Qere in the margin as a note showing what was to be read. In such a case the vowels of the Qere were written on the Kethib. For a few very frequent words the marginal note was omitted: this is called Q’re perpetuum.

All modern denominations of Judaism teach that the four-letter name of God, YHWH, is forbidden to be uttered except by the High Priest in the Temple. Since the Temple in Jerusalem no longer exists, this name is never said in religious rituals by Jews, and the correct pronunciation is disputed. Orthodox and Conservative Jews never pronounce it for any reason. Some religious non-Orthodox Jews are willing to pronounce it, but for educational purposes only, and never in casual conversation or in prayer. Instead of pronouncing YHWH during prayer, Jews say Adonai.

The first early modern English Bible translators to transcribe God’s name into English did not contact Jewish scholars, and did not know of the Q’re perpetuum custom, but transcribed “יְהֹוָה” into English as they saw it. It therefore became Iehouah in 1530 (Tyndale’s translation of the Pentateuch), Iehovah in 1611, and Jehovah in editions of the King James Bible dated 1670 or so.

Jesus (Iesus, Yeshua, Joshua, or Yehoshûa) is a Hebraic personal name meaning “Yahweh saves/helps/is salvation”. Christ means “the anointed” in Greek. Khristos is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah.

With regard to your statement that reads. “I won’t even bother to remind you of the terrible offense that these poor Canaanites had committed to deserve their obliteration from the earth. I’ll give you a clue- it supposedly was all about the “curse of Ham” by this same deity placed on him and his descendants for viewing his father‘s (Noah) nakedness. How utterly indefensible!”
I would submit the following:

Worship of Baal and Asherah

After Joshua’s generation had died out, “the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths” (Judges 2:11-13).

Why the seemingly irresistible tendency for the Israelites to worship Baal over Yahweh? Again, archaeology sheds much light on the Canaanite religion and helps us understand the deadly allure the indigenous religious practices held for the Israelites.

In 1929 excavations began in Ras Shamra (the ancient port town of Ugarit) in northern Lebanon. This work continues. The remains of a palace discovered in the first year of excavation yielded a library containing hundreds of ancient documents that provided a wealth of information about the Canaanite religion. What did these tablets reveal? “The texts show the degrading results of the worship of these deities; with their emphasis on war, sacred prostitution, sensuous love and the consequent social degradation” (The New Bible Dictionary, Tyndale House Publishers, 1982, p. 1230).

Forbidden worship

The pagan religion was enticing to the Israelites for two primary reasons. First, it was not as morally demanding as the biblical religion. Second, the Israelites fell victim to a superstitious respect for the gods that supposedly controlled the land of the Canaanites.

“The Canaanite religion was completely different from the Israelite. So far, no evidence has been found in Canaanite culture of a series of rules of conduct similar to the Ten Commandments . . . It was a great temptation for the Israelite invaders to respect the existing gods of the land which were regarded as being responsible for the country’s fertility. In addition, the worship of these gods was much less demanding than the rigid Israelite laws and rituals. Consequently, many of God’s people yielded to this temptation. The result was a gradual moral decline of the nation” (The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible, Lion Publishers, 1983, p. 153).

Recognizing the great danger to fledgling Israel, God insisted that His people destroy every aspect of the degenerate native religion. “According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances. You shall observe my judgments and keep My ordinances, to walk in them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 18:3-4).

“And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire (be sacrificed) to Molech . . . You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination . . . Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants” (verses 21-25).

Sexual perversion as religion

The corruption found expression in grotesque cultic sexual practices. “The pagan world of the ancient Near East worshipped and deified sex.” So intertwined were sex and religion that “the term ‘holy ones’ (was used) for its cult prostitutes” (Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, Abingdon Press, 1971, p. 79).

Although the details are crude, they reveal why biblical proscriptions against the Canaanite perversions are so pervasive. “(A) ritual involved a dramatization of the myth . . . (and) centered in sexual activity since the rainfall attributed to Baal was thought to . . . fertilize and impregnate the earth with life just as he impregnated Asherah, the goddess of fertility, in the myth. Canaanite religion, then, was grossly sensual and even perverse because it required the services of both male and female cultic prostitutes as the principal actors in the drama.

“Unlike the requirement in Israel, there was no one central sanctuary. Baal could be worshipped wherever there was a place especially visited by the numinous presence of the gods. These places were originally on hills (hence, ‘high place’) but later could be found in valleys or even within the cities and towns” (Eugene
Merrill, Kingdom of Priests, Baker Book House, 1987, pp. 160-161).

Infants sacrificed to Molech

Included in these Canaanite practices was child sacrifice, described in the Bible as having children to “pass through the fire to Molech” (Jeremiah 32:35). The Ras Shamra tablets also mention the god Molech. Some unrighteous kings in Israel instituted the practice of sacrificing infants to Molech. God, through the prophet Jeremiah, denounced this ghastly ritual. “For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,” and “they have built the high places of Tophet (related to Molech worship) . . . to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart” (Jeremiah 7:30-31).

In the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage–part of the Canaanite culture–some 20,000 urns containing the remains of sacrificed children were found. The archaeologists at the site apprise us that “the Carthaginian Tophet is the largest of these Phoenician sites and indeed is the largest cemetery of sacrificed humans ever discovered. Child sacrifice took place there almost continuously for a period of nearly 600 years” (Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff, Biblical Archaeological Review, January-February 1984, p. 32).

Kleitarchos, a Greek from the third century B.C., described this sacrifice as the heating up of a bronze statue with outstretched arms. Infants placed into these red-hot arms quickly perished.

Struggle for a nation’s heart

Obviously, God did not want the Israelites to destroy their own offspring. When righteous kings such as Josiah ascended the throne, they obeyed God and abolished the practice. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (in Jerusalem), that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech” (2Kings 23:10).

Some might think the prophets were overly harsh in condemning the Canaanite religion. Yet now, with detailed evidence of Canaanite practices found by archaeologists in this century, it is clear why the prophets were uncompromising.

“The prophets and chroniclers tended to be thought of as men who, in their zeal for Yahweh and their anger against foreign religions, had probably gone too far,” writes one author. “This objection was leveled at the Bible right up to the present day . . . With us it is accepted as a matter of course that every half civilized community controls the morality of its citizens. But in Canaan in those days the cult of sensuality was regarded as the worship of the gods, men and women prostitutes ranked as ‘sacred’ to the followers of the religion, the rewards for their ‘services’ went into the temple treasuries as ‘offerings for the god.’

“The last thing the prophets and chroniclers did was to exaggerate. How well founded their harsh words were has only become fully understood since the great discoveries of Ras Shamra . . . What temptation for a simple shepherd folk, what perilous enticement! . . . Without its stern moral law, without its faith in one God, without the commanding figures of its prophets, Israel would never have been able to survive this struggle with the Baals, with the religions of the fertility goddesses, with the Asherim and the high places” (Werner Keller, The Bible as History, Bantam Books, New York, 1980, pp. 286, 289).

Thus the periodic backsliding of Israel into Baal worship described in the book of Judges is a realistic depiction. The description draws support from the archaeological finds that document the struggle for the soul of Israel. God persevered in sending His messengers to warn His people of the dangers of Baalism. An apt description of this struggle was penned by Nehemiah:

“And they took strong cities and a rich land, and possessed houses full of all goods, cisterns already dug, vineyards, olive groves, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and grew fat, and delighted themselves in Your great goodness. Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against You, cast Your law behind their backs and killed Your prophets, who testified against them to turn them to Yourself; and they worked great provocations.

“Therefore You delivered them into the hand of their enemies, who oppressed them; and in the time of their trouble, when they cried to You, You heard from heaven; and according to Your abundant mercies You gave them deliverers (judges) who saved them from the hand of their enemies. But after they had rest, they again did evil before You. Therefore You left them in the hand of their enemies . . . Yet when they returned and cried out to You, You heard from heaven; and many times You delivered them according to Your
mercies” (Nehemiah 9:25-28).

“How utterly indefensible!”, I would submit, you might want to rethink or investigate a little further before you make a statement of that magnitude.

The violence that is displayed to us in the Old Testament is not always easy to understand. Greg Boyd comments on a book written by Peter Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament, as part of a broader discussion on the problem of violence in the Old Testament.

http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2008/05/negative-option-lesson-review-of.html

While it may not address all of the areas of your criticism, it may be helpful in showing you an alternate understanding with regard to violence in the Old Testament.

You and I have exchanged viewpoints previously Wayne, and as you stated in your response to Will at another blog, “I wish to apologize for my haughty remarks that you duly note and am inclined to agree with you that they “sound” pompous, indeed. Again, my apologies. The only excuse or justification I can offer is that I still have remnants of an ego intact, it resurfaces in fact quite often. The process of disidentification so well articulated by Tolle is not an easy process. Old habits die hard.”

Obviously Wayne, you are an intelligent individual. What I see in your numerous exchanges (on this and other blogs) is an intellectual contempt for any individual who does not adhere to your enlightened reasoning and unfortunately that contempt comes through in your frequent and ill thought out use of words such as “utterly unconcious and ignorant” or “incredulousness” etc. You are not the only person who possesses intelligence Wayne, there are actually others of us out here, and we do investigate and examine and endeavor to reason. You might want to entertain throwing a little recognition of this fact into your future postings.