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Channeling: Revelations
Of Deception
.
By: Doug Groothuis
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All of us sense our need for some
life-giving truth. We have a hunger for something certain and something solid
that we can embrace.
We need a proper object in which to put
our trust in life and in death, in joy and in suffering.
We especially feel this during times of
crisis, such as job loss, the death of a relative, or when we face turning
points in life like moving, marriage, divorce, or the birth of a child.
We may turn to God’s revelation or to
counterfeits.
As Scripture says, “Where there is no
revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds
wisdom’s instruction” (Proverbs 29:18).
Christians find this “pearl of great
price” in the triune God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the Holy
Bible.
As Francis Schaeffer put it, “the
infinite-personal God” is our “sufficient integration point” for all of life.
He has
revealed what we need to know in order to be redeemed and to love Him and our
neighbor as we ought (Matthew 22:37–40).
Truly, Christianity is a “knowledge
tradition,” as J. P. Moreland has emphasized.
But counterfeits of divine revelation
abound in a fallen world.
Humans desire and seek out revelations
for their lives that are not authorized by God Himself. Thus, the Bible warns
of
false disciples (Matthew 7: 21–23),
false gospels (Galatians 1:6–11),
false prophets (Deuteronomy 13:1–5; 18:15–22),
false angels (2 Corinthians 11:14),
false teachers (2 Timothy 4:3–4; 1 John 4:1–6), and even
false Christs (Matthew 24:24).
One such source for false revelation is
known as channeling.
Channeling is a New Age practice in which
someone serves as a channel, conduit, or medium for communication from the dead
or from some other disembodied spiritual being or realm of knowledge.
These communications are taken to be
special and beyond the normal human ken. Thus, they are taken as authoritative
and suitable for guidance.
For example, Edgar Cayce (1877–1945)
claimed to be a medium for spiritual
revelations about Jesus, salvation, and the afterlife.
He was also called the “sleeping
prophet,” since he would go into a sleeplike trance while giving his purported
revelations, which included unbiblical stories about Jesus and unconventional
health remedies.
The word Spiritism is
also used for contacting the dead.
This movement began in the nineteenth
century in America and taught that the dead communicate with the living through
various means, such as knocking, moving tables, spirit photography, and more.
More recently, the three-volume set
called A Course in Miracles (1965) was said to be
channeled by Helen Schucman who was writing what Jesus Himself dictated to her.
The popular New Age teacher and
Democratic presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, takes these teachings
to be the basis of her worldview. She recounts this in her book, A Return to Love (1992).
A more intellectually sophisticated
worldview was received by the occult German philosopher, Rudolf Steiner
(1861–1925), a Goethe scholar, prolific writer, and founder of Waldorf
education.
Steiner called himself a “clairvoyant”
and claimed to fetch his esoteric information from “the akashic records” — a
kind of celestial hard drive that contained the record of everything that ever
happened.
Traditional or indigenous religions —
formerly called primitive religions — always involve some form of shamanism, in
which a shaman contacts spirits in order to fend off evil or bring good for his
tribe.
The spirit or spirits take possession of
the shaman, who serves as an intermediary between the spirit world and the
human world.
In this sense, traditional religion
relies on a kind of shamanism as well.
With the rise of Neopaganism, this form
of channeling becomes attractive to many desiring contact with the spirit
realm.
I could go on about the various instances
of channeling.
In all cases, people claim to gain access
to knowledge through their ability to listen to spiritual beings or consult
spiritual sources of otherwise unavailable facts.
Some specially gifted person is taken to
be mediator of these communications.
The messages may be given to particular
people in one-off situations or published in books or distributed through other
media.
What should we make of this phenomenon?
There are only three possibilities to explain what is going on.
First, people may fake contact with
spirits or spiritual realms for financial or other purposes. Fraud is just as
common in religion as elsewhere — perhaps more common.
Second, channelers may suffer from mental
illness that makes them think they are conduits of other entities when, in
fact, they suffer from a schizoid disorder in which one part of the personality
breaks off from the other parts and thinks itself separate from the whole
person.
Third, channelers may be in contact with
objectively real entities who are neither human nor divine. This category is
made up of angels, fallen or unfallen.
While unfallen angels appear and
communicate with people throughout Scripture, they do not require a human
mediator to speak or act.
For example, the angel Gabriel spoke to
Zechariah in the temple about his son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:8–20).
Angels ministered to Jesus after He was
tempted by the devil in the wilderness, but we don’t know what they said (Matthew 4:11).
In light of this, the idea of anyone
“channeling an angel” (which was a trend about twenty years ago) makes no sense
biblically and should, thus, be rejected.
Channeling and angelic activity are two
different categories.
Fallen angels are demons or evil spirits;
they follow Satan himself, who is “the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Jesus frequently cast them out of people
throughout His earthly ministry and out-argued the devil himself when He was
tempted in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13).
Jude tells us something about them: “The
angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper
dwelling — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for
judgment on the great Day” (Jude 6; see also 2 Peter 2:4).
Nevertheless, the devil and demons are
active in the world today, as Paul warns us when writing about false leaders.
“For such people are false apostles,
deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself
masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants
also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their
actions deserve” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15; see also 1 John
4:1–6).
The Bible condemns communicating with the
dead, which is known as necromancy. This covers some kinds of channeling.
God says this through Isaiah, the
prophet: “When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who
whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the
dead on behalf of the living? Consult God’s instruction and the testimony
of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no
light of dawn” (Isaiah 8:19–20).
In the Mosaic Law, God said, “Do not
turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.
I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus
19:31).
In sinful desperation, King Saul
solicited the witch of Endor to conjure up the spirit of the deceased Samuel in
order to ask the prophet about Saul’s fate in battle.
Samuel appeared and condemned Saul once
again, since he had turned away from the Lord (see 1 Samuel
18:16–19).
As Stephen Dempster writes, “The
depths to which Saul had sunk in seeking counsel from a witch prove Samuel’s
prophetic words when he was alive and first condemned Saul because of
disobedience: ‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and arrogance like the
evil of idolatry’” [1 Samuel 15:23].
The most comprehensive prohibition of
occult activities in the Bible is placed in a warning to the Israelites not to
be like the pagan nations they were displacing.
All forms of occultism, including
communicating with the dead or other spirits, are strictly and sternly banned.
It is worth quoting in full:
“When you enter the land the Lord your
God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations
there.
“Let no one be found among you who
sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or
sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a
medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
“Anyone who does these things is
detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord
your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before
the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy
18:9–13)
The Prophet Jeremiah warned of false revelations
as well: “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
‘Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not
listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying
lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,’ declares
the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:8–9).
When the apostle John writes of the final
state of the redeemed and unredeemed, he has strong words to say about any
occult practice, which includes channeling: “Blessed are those who wash
their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may
go through the gates into the city. Outside are the
dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers,
the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Revelation 22:14–15).
Fallen mortals need a sure and
trustworthy revelation beyond themselves in order to navigate life properly.
We are not sufficient unto ourselves, and
we make very poor gods and goddesses.
The sixty-six books of the Bible are
God’s communication to us about what matters most, for time and eternity.
As Paul wrote to Timothy, “the Holy Scriptures…are able to make you
wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is
God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15–17).
Why settle for the counterfeit of
channeled deceptions when God Himself has made His truth known to us by His
Word?
Douglas
Groothuis, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and the author
of twelve books, including Unmasking the New Age (IVP, 1986),
Confronting the New Age (IVP, 1988), and Jesus in an Age of
Controversy (Harvest House, 1996).
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