Is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul the main foundation or bases today of modern spiritualism?

I've been reading a book written at the turn of the century by J. Edson White, son of E.G. White, that was supplied to me through Ikan. Thank you again Ikan.

The book, entitled 'Past, Present and Future', is about 500 pages long, and deals mainly with the themes of the great controversy and especially with the role of spiritualism. It is excellent.

One assumption though that White makes is that the only doctrinal underpinning of spiritualism is the immortality of the soul. White points out that this idea is a central tenant of practically all religions, not merely Christianity. I haven’t finished reading the book, but so far he is silent about the extra terrestrial notions that in our day occupy a larger place in the public mind as being a likely explanation for supernatural phenomena. In scanning the occult recently, I am finding that the focus has shifted from the dead to extra terrestrial beings as the main fascination.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this. What has the church done to clearly set out the state of God’s creation being perfectly made, free of sin, and subject to Him? That there are likely innumerable intelligences in the universe but that they are free from the curse of sin, and that all are watching the struggle between good and evil here on planet Earth and in each individual’s heart with deep interest. The Great Controversy I suppose is the best work on this. Are there others?

Given this new interest in the ET, we should be more aware that for many people today, the non-immortality of the soul does not address this other aspect. We should be looking for ways of effectively getting our message out on this issue I think.

Hi Mark,
The idea or shift to ET as found in the New Age theology is nothing new. However it is not so much a shift as much as it would be an added layer to their belief that God does not exist. Allow me to illustrate:
Their (New Agers) 'creation' belief is that man was genetically modified from primates, and that there is not one God but many gods since they 'created' us.
We are nothing more than containers for the soul. Yet they believe that the soul continues so there really isn't a shift in the sense that the belief of the immortality of the soul has been swept under the carpet. It's a deceptive tactic to have the focus shift from Jesus Christ to something else..
I have a book somewhere that goes into the many facets of the new age, but it is not a book to teach you new age theology. It is a book that exposes what it is and where it comes from with historical and archeological information. As soon as I find it I will post the title of the book.

The focus on ET's works its way into things such as :
1. How were the pyramids made.
2. The husge statues on Easter Island
3. Stonehenge
4. Nazca drawings.
5. Drawings of ancient astronauts found in many hieroglyphs of primitive engravings.

This is off the top of my head. I hope this info is useful.

God Bless,
Will

You have a point Will that the immortality of the soul doctrine is hidden but still behind the modern brand of extra terrestrial spiritualism. What I’m suggesting is that there are likely millions of people today, many of them highly trained scientists, in North American and the rest of the post-Christian world that don’t make any connection in their minds between the state of the dead and their efforts to communicate with the cosmos and ET life forms. It is not necessary for them to give any thought to the issue of the state of man in death if the intelligences they are seeking originate outside of our planet. The state of the dead doctrine comes into play, like you point out, in a secondary sense. Thoughts may be buried in their subconscious of what the implications are for their overall world view. The idea that there are good and bad non-angelic intelligences in the universe suggests that those who entertain these ideas either haven’t considered the Bible’s depiction of Christ as the Captain of the Hosts, the rightful Lord of all spirits, or that they have rejected this truth.

This is like atheism. Few atheists will acknowledge that they deify themselves in denying the Creator. But, at the bottom of atheism is self worship, self-deity. As you’ve said, the same is true for spiritualism. In it’s essence, it is self-deification. Given that this is the case, more emphasis should be placed in SDA publications on this issue. Whereas in the past, most of our effort has been to correct spiritualist ideas with the Biblical teaching of the non-immortality of the soul, we need to get more now to the essence of what is taking place: Modern man needs to be warned of his heaven-daring efforts through modern spiritualism to deify himself.

I'll add one more thought. The original deception proffered by Lucifer was that by eating of the tree of knowledge Eve would become as God in terms not only of hidden wisdom, but also in terms of immortality: “You will not surely die” Satan assured her. So these two twin ideas, cosmic enlightenment and immortality are inseparably linked. But if we are to rank them in order of importance or in terms of their essence, I suggest that the primary idea is the notion of self-Deity. ". . .Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil". Gen 3:5.

Good point Mark. The modus operandi of satan was to mix truth with error and we can find 2 elements which are the foundation of modern day spiritualism.
1. Ye shall not surely die (immortality of the soul)
2. Ye shall be like gods (self-glorification)

I have heard and read that they (new ager's) consider them selves to be god's or god like..something like that. This is based on their interpretation of the Bible where we find in Genesis that God made man in His own image.
What I find interesting is also that we have many new age ideas that are being passed as 'harmless' i.e. visualization techniques, bio-feedback etc.
We can also find the common phrase used when a loved one passes away i.e. "If so and so is looking down from heaven they must be happy for you".
However if we go a little deeper and see how spiritualism has been packaged and is being used in other religions we can see things such as inducing trance like states with 'rock music' which consists of a full band. I saw this with my own eyes on tbn and it looked like something out of children of the corn..People standing up sticking their tongues out licking something in the air (fire?), 10-15 girls in all black standing in line with their hands out as if pushing something back (projecting a force?), then the rythym shifts a little slower and all other instruments played really low as to just focus on the base and drums for the added effect. I changed it after I got to see what happens in 'today's modern' churches.

God Bless,
Will

I spoke too soon. Edson White does eventually come round to the role that self-deity plays, especially in Pantheism, Hinduism, Theosophy, Christian Science, and he does make a brief connection to Spiritualism as well. In his day I think the connection between Spiritualism and self-deification was less blatant than what it is today.

I haven't heard, Will, of Children of the Corn. I don't know if that is worth pursuing but I am a little curious about where you saw that - you wrote that you saw it on 'tbn'. What is that.

Hi Mark,
Children of the corn is a movie which is based off of a Stephen King book and it is pretty creepy which is why I referred to that 'sermon' and it's services to be just as creepy as that movie. TBN is Trinity Broadcast Network which is a religious channel found on cable and I think you can access it even if you do not have cable, but in the states. I can't find it up here .

I will post more in a bit.

God Bless,
Will

The cover article in this month’s Popular Mechanics magazine is called “When UFO’s Arrive.” As the title implies, it is no longer a question of 'if' but in the suthor's view, only a question of 'when'. It is the February issue so the article isn’t posted yet on the PM site but it should be there in about a month. http://popularmechanics.com/science/aviation/index.phtml.

I scanned the article while I was in Loblows today and it was interesting. I learned that there is a very active international organization that for the last 20 years has leased time from observatories with radio telescopes around the world to scan the skys for radio communications from ET life. Nothing so far has been received except that in 1995 one telescope started to receive a transmission that was unidentified and thought to be ET, but turned out to be a space probe from our planet beaming back data.

I also learned that most western governments have plans in place today on how to handle the arrival of ET. According to the magazine, ET would be treated as an illegal alien and quarantined, examined, interrogated and sanitized? Possibly. The article was unclear though on what happens if ET is kind and poses no threat or has supernatural powers.

PM doesn’t entertain the possibility that ET may also be SN (Super-Natural) - directly. The author mentions the possibility that ET could appear from ‘another dimension’ at the Super bowl, but quickly moves on and attempts to stay solidly within the boundaries of known science. It should be noted though that ‘appearing from another dimension’ is a way of attempting to characterize the supernatural as something that is really quite normal that we just haven’t considered before.

On the cover of another ‘science’ magazine that I saw today, the article title expands on this notion of other dimensions, with the article being a theory of parallel or dual universes. I didn’t take the time to read it but it seems to me to be a convenient method for those who want to forget the God of creation and His ultimate authority over all spirits, good and bad, to create a theory that will account for the supernatural without acknowledging the God of the supernatural. There could well be something to the idea that the spirits of angels are in a different dimension. But like all theories, they can work to our hurt if the science and laws revealled in Scripture are overruled by human theories.

We can see all around us that minds are becoming open to the idea of ET life forms. A large part of the scientific community is coming to the aid of those who prefer to attempt to communicate with the universe rather than with the God of the universe. My reason for posting briefly what I did above is to say that minds are being molded today very quickly to accept the entrance of the cosmic Christ here on planet earth as a natural evolutionary process that is completely scientific. This is a branch of spiritualism that masks itself as science, and many of it’s adherents are unaware of its roots.

And at the same time as this is taking place, men and women who are overtly spiritualist and new age in their thinking are finding common ground with the scientists. Many seem to be welcoming the theories that the scientific community is too eager to supply that will explain how the natural and the supernatural interface. The primary goal in all of this is the ultimate deception of Lucifer, “You shall be as gods.” So regardless of the angle that the scientific community or the spiritualists begin with, they are pulled into the vertigo of the heady notion that we all have within us the cosmic potential that superior knowledge will unleash. We can perfect ourselves; we can self actualize; we can determine our own fate; we can be and are gods. Could any delusion be more complete and sever one more quickly from a humble dependence on Christ?

More than we realize, it is this hidden knowledge of spiritualism that is creating havoc everywhere because it places men and women under the most direct control of demons. When this builds to a critical mass cruelty rules and liberties are suspended.