Customer Reviews

Invasion of Other Gods

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

It's very easy to fall into the trap of what seems to be a "new" way of thought. This book exposes the truth about the "new" religions: they are old ones with a new look, feel and sound. This is a good book to read if you're witnessing to someone who is caught up in New Age philosophy or religion.

Invasion of Other Gods is a great resourse for becoming familiar with all the various facets of New Age Spirituality. Dr. Jeremiah touches all aspects of the "New Age" in an easy to understand format. A good, comprehensive overview.

This book was very well written. I love the way he points things out without condeming anyone who is caught in the newage web. Some books are hard hitting and very blunt not bad but this book was written with as much love I believe that one could've written in.

David P. Jeremiah (born 1941) is an evangelical Christian author, evangelist, and senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California. (C.C. Carlson is a famous Christian author/ghostwriter.)

He writes in the Introduction to this 1995 book, "As we more toward the end of the twentieth century, even the most optimistic observers are concerned about the spiritual direction of our nation. We also seem to have ignored the warnings of God... This book is about those other gods---the humanistic and occultic influences---that have made inroads into our homes, schools, businesses, and even our churches... I hope you will see the tears in this book as you are confronted with the growing seduction of the New spirituality."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"I became increasingly aware that ideas once considered 'bizarre' were finding their way into our American culture. New Age devotees have turned in their headbands and icons and donned business suits. Their targets are the schools, the media, corporate America, government, healthcare, and our churches. New Age is no longer standing outside the door; it has stepped into the home and invaded mainstream America..." (Pg. 14)
"Is it dangerous? Should we assign channeling to the scrap heap of discarded junk? Listen to what happened a few years after (J.Z.) Knight and Ramtha's rise to fame and fortune: J.Z. Knight establithed the Ramtha School of Enlightenment at her estate... Stories of sleep deprivation, brainwashing techniques, and fear-based teachings were reported... A few years later, fear permeated her teachings. She began to talk of space aliens who were in conspiracy with the U.S. government and who fed on human beings. She called on people to build secret underground shelters stocked with two years' worth of food so they could protect themselves when the aliens invade. She warned of a war over the human race between the aliens who view humans as cattle they have raised and gods from another planet who created people to be their slaves." (Pg. 67)
"My co-author and I have felt the oppression of studying about the New Spirituality, but we do not want to be consumed by it. We are going to walk away from this research, knowing that the information is there if we need it. We hope that you are more sensitive now to what's going on in the world around us." (Pg. 196)

THE AUTHOR HAS GOOD INTENTIONS AND MAY EVEN SATISFY THE CURIOUSITY OF THE READER WHO WANTS TO TOUCH THE SURFACE ON THIS SUBJECT,BUT THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO DO SERIOUS RESEARCH ON NEWAGE RELIGION INVADING OUR CHRISTIAN HERITAGE, THE BOOK JUST DID NOT SEEM TO HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION ON THE CHAPTER TITLES, IT IS MORE LIKE ONE BIG COMPLAINT RATHER THAN AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE.

Up front: I'm not a follower of or adherent to any soi-disant "new age" philosophy or spirituality, though I do remain open to "new age" ideas about mind-body medicine, meditation, and alternative dispute-resolution. I happened across this book in the "spirituality" section of a chain bookstore which shall remain nameless, while temporarily assigned to duty at the culturally-benighted Ft. Bragg, N.C. To my mind it is a paradigmatic example of one of the most terrifying and pernicious ideas I've ever encountered - the closed-minded, narrow, fear-driven confusion of "protection" with ignorance.

What is it about this stream of Christianity that so doubts itself and its truth that it must throw up walls against a wider world? If the Gospel of Jesus is self-evidently and transcendentally true from the perspective of its believers, it need fear no competition in the marketplace of lesser ideas. To want to deprive one's family of access to information is to express contempt and disrespect for them, and is simultaneously an admission regarding one's true feelings about the relative robustness or utility of faith.

Conflating Hinduism or Buddhism with UFO worship, the Moonies, and the Jonestown cultists, further, is merely ignorant and insulting.

I wish Christians would be secure and comfortable enough in their faith that they wouldn't seek to deny the validity of others' paths to understanding, however flaky they might be.

This is horrible little piece of ethnocentric provincialism masquerading as education for parents. If you're the kind of parent who burns your children's rock music because the Christian Right tells you to, you'll love this book. If your worldview is something other than doctrinaire fundamentalist Christianity, you'll want to look elsewhere for an objective overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the New Age movement and modern alternative spirituality in the West.

I'm not a New Ager. This is just a bad book for people who think, unless you wanted to use it as an example of a poorly reasoned polemic.

This is a horrible little piece of ethnocentric provincialism masquerading as education for parents. If you're the kind of parent who burns your children's rock music because the Christian Right tells you to, you'll love this book. If your worldview is something other than doctrinaire fundamentalist Christianity, you'll want to look elsewhere for an objective overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the New Age movement and modern alternative spirituality in the West.

I'm not a New Ager. This is just a bad book for people who think, unless you wanted to use it as an example of a poorly reasoned polemic.