http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/11/oprah-and-friends-to-teach-course-on.html
By
Oprah Winfrey will be letting out
all the stops on her XM Satellite Radio program this coming year. Beginning
January 1, 2008, “Oprah & Friends” will offer a year-long course on the New Age
teachings of A Course in Miracles.1
A lesson a day throughout the year will completely cover the 365 lessons from
the Course in Miracles “Workbook.” For example, Lesson #29 asks you to
go through your day affirming that “God is in everything I see.”2 Lesson #61 tells each person to
repeat the affirmation “I am the light of the world.”3 Lesson #70 teaches the student to
say and believe “My salvation comes from me.”4
By the end of the year,
“Oprah & Friends” listeners will have completed all of the lessons laid out
in the Course in Miracles Workbook. Those who finish the Course will
have a wholly redefined spiritual mindset—a New Age worldview that includes the
belief that there is no sin, no evil, no devil, and that God is “in” everyone
and everything. A Course in Miracles teaches its students to rethink everything they believe about God
and life. The Course Workbook bluntly states: “This is a course in
mind training”5 and
is dedicated to “thought reversal.”6
Teaching A Course in
Miracles will be Oprah’s longtime friend and special XM Satellite Radio
reporter Marianne Williamson—who also happens to be one of today’s premier New
Age leaders. She and Conversations with God author Neale
Donald Walsch co-founded the American Renaissance
Alliance in 1997, that later became the Global Renaissance Alliance of New Age leaders, that changed
its name again in 2005 to the Peace Alliance. This Peace Alliance seeks to usher in an era of global
peace founded on the principles of a New Age/New Spirituality that they are now
referring to as a “civil rights movement for the soul.”7 They all agree that the
principles of this New Age/New Spirituality are clearly articulated in A
Course in Miracles—which is fast becoming the New Age Bible. So what is A
Course in Miracles and what does it teach?
A Course in Miracles is allegedly “new revelation”
from “Jesus” to help humanity work through these troubled times. This
“Jesus”—who bears no doctrinal resemblance to the Bible’s Jesus Christ—began
delivering his channeled teachings in 1965 to a Columbia University Professor
of Medical Psychology by the name of Helen Schucman.
One day Schucman heard an “inner voice” stating,
“This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”8 For seven years she diligently
took spiritual dictation from this inner voice that described himself as
“Jesus.” A Course in Miracles was quietly published in 1975 by the
Foundation for Inner Peace. For many years “the Course” was an underground cult
classic for New Age seekers who studied “the Course” individually, with
friends, or in small study groups.
As a former New Age follower and devoted student of
A Course in Miracles, I eventually discovered that the Course in
Miracles was—in reality—the truth of the Bible turned upside down. Not
having a true understanding of the Bible at the time of my involvement, I was
led to believe that A Course in Miracles was “a gift form God” to help
everyone understand the “real” meaning of the Bible and to help bring peace to
the world. Little did I know that the New Age “Christ” and the New Age
teachings of A Course in Miracles were everything the real Jesus Christ
warned us to watch out for. In Matthew 24 Jesus warned
about false teachers, false teachings and the false “Christs”
who would pretend to be Him.
When I left the New
Age “Christ” to follow the Bible’s Jesus Christ, I had come to understand that
the “Jesus” of A Course in Miracles was a false “Christ,” and that his Course
in Miracles was dangerously deceptive. Here are some quotes from the
“Jesus” of A Course in Miracles:
Most Christians
recognize that these teachings are the opposite of what the Bible teaches. In
the Bible, Jesus Christ’s atoning death on the cross of
I was introduced to A
Course in Miracles by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky’s book
Love is Letting Go of Fear. Jampolsky declared
in his easy-to-read book how the teachings of A Course in Miracles had
changed his life. As an ambassador for A Course in Miracles over the
years, Jampolsky has been featured not only in New
Age circles but at least twice on Robert Schuller’s Hour
of Power. While Schuller introduced Jampolsky and his “fabulous”18 Course in Miracles-based
books to his worldwide television audience, it was Marianne Williamson’s
appearance on a 1992 Oprah Winfrey Show that really shook the rafters.
On that program, Oprah
enthusiastically endorsed Williamson’s book, A Return to Love: Reflections
on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. Oprah
told her television audience that Williamson’s book about A Course in
Miracles was one of her favorite books, and that she had already bought a
thousand copies and would be handing them out to everyone in her studio
audience. Oprah’s endorsement skyrocketed Williamson’s book about A Course
in Miracles to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Ironically,
all of this was happening after I had left the Course and the New Age.
In fact, I was doing the final editing on my book The Light That Was Dark that warned about
the dangers of the New Age—and in particular A Course in Miracles.
After being
introduced to the world on Oprah, Marianne Williamson has continued to
grow in popularity and, as previously mentioned, has become one of today’s
foremost New Age leaders. Williamson credits Winfrey for bringing her book
about A Course in Miracles before the world: “For that, my deepest thanks
to Oprah Winfrey. Her enthusiasm and generosity have given the book, and me, an
audience we would never otherwise have had.”19 In her 2004 book, The Gift of Change, Williamson
wrote: “Twenty years ago, I saw the guidance of the Course as key to changing
one’s personal life; today, I see its guidance as key to changing the world.
More than anything else, I see how deeply the two are connected.”20
Thus the New Age
teachings of A Course in Miracles are about to be taught by Marianne
Williamson to millions of listeners on Oprah’s XM Satellite Radio program.
Listeners are encouraged to buy A Course in Miracles for the year-long
course. An audio version of A Course in Miracles recited by Richard
(John Boy Walton) Thomas is also available on compact disc. Popular author
Wayne Dyer told his PBS television audience that the “brilliant writing” of A
Course in Miracles would produce more peace in the world.21 Williamson’s New Age colleague, Neale Donald Walsch, said his
“God” stated that “the era of the Single Saviour is
over”22 and that he (“God”) was
responsible for authoring the teachings of A Course in Miracles.23 Meanwhile, Gerald Jampolsky’s Course in Miracles-based book, Forgiveness, continues to be sold in
Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral bookstore as Schuller prepares to host a January 17-19, 2008, “Rethink
Conference” at his Crystal Cathedral.24
At this critical time
in the history of the world, the New Gospel/New Spirituality is coming right at
the world and the church with its New Age teachings and its New Age Peace Plan.
But this New Age Peace Plan has at its deceptive core the bottom-line teaching
from A Course in Miracles that “we are all one” because God is “in”
everyone and everything. But the Bible is clear that we are not God (Ezekiel
28:2; Hosea 11:9). And per Galatians 3:26-28, our only oneness is in Jesus
Christ—not in ourselves as “God” and “Christ.” What Oprah and Marianne
Williamson and the world will learn one day is that humanity’s only real and
lasting peace is with the true Jesus Christ who is described and quoted in the
Holy Bible (Romans 5:1).
Oprah Winfrey’s
misplaced faith in Marianne Williamson and the New Age teachings of A Course
in Miracles is a sure sign of the times. But an even surer sign of the
times is that most Christians are not taking heed to what is happening in the
world and in the church. We are not contending for the faith as the Bible
admonishes us to do (Jude 3). It is time for all of our Purpose-Driven and Emerging church pastors to address the real issue of the
day. Our true Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is being
reinvented, redefined, and blasphemed right in front of our eyes and hardly
anyone seems to notice or care. If we want the world to know who Jesus Christ is,
we need to also warn them about who He is not. There is a false New Age
“Christ” making huge inroads into the world and into the church. The Apostle
Paul said that “it is a shame” we have to even talk about these things, but
talk about them we must (Ephesians 5:12-16).
If people want to
follow Oprah Winfrey and the New Age “Christ” of A Course in Miracles
they certainly have that right. But let them be warned that the New Age
“Christ” they are following is not the same Jesus Christ who is so clearly and
authoritatively presented in the pages of the Bible.
Warren Smith is a
former New Age follower who at one time was deeply involved in the New Age
teachings of A Course in Miracles. He is the author of The Light That Was Dark: From the New Age to Amazing
Grace and Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the
Purpose-Driven Church. His book Reinventing Jesus Christ: The
New Gospel is available free online at www.reinventingjesuschrist.com
Endnotes:
1. http://marianne.com/book/index/htm
2. A Course in
Miracles: Combined Volume (Glen Ellen, California: Foundation for Inner
Peace, 1975), (Workbook), p. 45.
3. Ibid., p. 102.
4. Ibid., p. 119.
5. Ibid., (Text), p. 16.
6. Ibid., (Preface), p. ix.
7. Neale Donald Walsch, Tomorrow’s
God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (
8. Robert Skutch, Journey Without
Distance: The Story behind “A Course in Miracles” (Berkeley, California:
Celestial Arts, 1984), p. 54.
9. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume, (Workbook), p. 183.
10. Ibid., (Text), p. 425.
11. Ibid., p. 52.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., (Teachers Manual), p. 58.
14. Ibid., (Workbook), p. 45.
15. Ibid., (Text), p. 147.
16. Ibid., p. 125.
17. Ibid., p. 237.
18. http://www.hourofpower.org/interviews/interviews_detail.cfm?ArticleID=3079
19. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the
Principles A Course in Miracles (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1996), p. ix.
20. Marianne Williamson, The Gift Of Change:
Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life (
21. Wayne Dyer, “There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem,” Public
Broadcasting System broadcast in 2001.
22. Neale Donald Walsch, The New Revelations: A Conversation with God (
23. Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations
with God: an uncommon dialogue, Book 1 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1996), p. 90.
24. http://www.rethinkconference.com (See also
WorldNetDaily.com 10/30/07 “What is Robert Schuller
‘rethinking’?”