Cultish: Gods of the New Age, Pt. 2

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Is Protestantism Heresy? Pt. 3 - The Pope | Collision w/ Jeff Durbin

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My name is Harinandas. There is only one way to welcome him.

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By the grace of Jesus Christ. By the grace of Jesus Christ. Have faith. Faith is the most important thing.

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If you don't have faith, nothing will happen. Faith is the most important thing. Brother, do you want to translate?

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We have all sinned against God. No matter how much puja we do, no matter how much we fast and pray, we cannot go to God.

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It's only by the blood, by the death of Jesus Christ, that we can have hope. Please translate, brother.

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This guy is tricked out.

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All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, entering the kingdom of the cults.

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My name is Jeremiah Roberts here. And I'm one of the co -hosts here. And still kind of, wow, just watching the footage of the audio that you heard.

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I'm here as always with Andrew, the super sleuth of the show. Andrew, it's good to have you back, man.

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How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. I'm just extremely thankful right now that God places people in certain places to preach his gospel.

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I'm very thankful for that. I'm thankful that he has different people doing different things. And it's very awe -inspiring and it's humbling as well.

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So I'm very thankful. Oh, 100%. 100%, most definitely. And I think what you just heard there is a discussion that our guest, if you guys are now just joining here, this is part two of our episode,

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Gods of the New Age, talking. This is our guest, Daniel Stephen Kearney, and he is on the ground,

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I believe, in Nepal, talking with someone who would be kind of one of many gurus, enlightened people.

02:03

Daniel, could you just bring us into the context of this conversation and explain what's happening here in this brief clip for anyone who is either hearing it via audio or maybe just saw it when this debuts on YouTube?

02:18

Right. So we are in the oldest temple in Nepal. There are burning bodies.

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They're being cremated right behind us. And this gentleman, we approach him with a

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Bible and a track, and we admonish him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, because all have sinned and God is holy,

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I'm telling him, and only through Christ is there salvation, I'm telling him, in the Nepali tongue.

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And he's talking about the power of faith, and he's not receiving clearly what we're saying.

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And he's clearly under great evil influence. Yeah. And he's a tragic man.

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So that's the long and short of it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's just something when you almost, it's not just, you know, you don't talk about man looks at the outward appearance, but the

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Lord looks at the heart. It's like you almost see like the spiritual climate of this, of what this, of this person that you're engaging with.

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And so what we're going to kind of do in part two of this episode is that we kind of went into the very first part, kind of laying the foundation, giving some intriguing backdrop into the spiritual history of India, explaining and defining terms in regards to Hinduism, what the

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Vedas are, beliefs in there's different gods, Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. And everything else that entails with that.

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And now we're going to kind of look into the different practices in many ways, and also talk about just the kind of the spiritual history.

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And also I'm sure you've got stories behind that too. So one of the things too, in the very opening segment of Gods of the

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New Age, they talk about India really being kind of centered around the guru or different gurus.

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So you mentioned Gandhi. That's usually what most people think about when they think about someone who's a guru from India.

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That comes to mind. But yeah, maybe what do you see as far as that culture?

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Because you've seen that in many ways sort of work its way over here. When you look at the

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Rajneesh, when they had that Hindu cult that was featured in the documentary Wild Wild Country, that was based here in Oregon in the 80s.

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You look at the Bikram, there's a documentary that came out of, there's someone who's kind of a guru and started a lot of those

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Bikram yoga places. And so that's just something that the West just finds very, very alluring.

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But over in the East, that's just something that's centralized. So from your perspective, maybe just kind of tell us about where does this guru culture stems from, how it's connected to Hinduism, and how do you see that carried out on a day -to -day basis?

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I mean, similar to that video that we kind of opened, an audio that we opened up with. Right. Well, according to the

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Vedas, according to one of the Upanishads, the mind is God. And it's the first instance of the doctrine of solipsism in recorded history.

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This idea that the only thing that you can know is that you know, in the words of Descartes, I think therefore

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I am, kajito ergo sum. That philosophy is just regurgitated from the

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Vedas. And the irony of the New Age movement is that it's not new at all.

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It's actually just a repackaging of the oldest, one of the oldest faith traditions in the world. As the scripture says, there's nothing new under the sun.

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There's absolutely nothing new about the New Age. It's the most ancient religion, just repackaged for the

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Western palate. So the guru movement is a consequence of this extremely egotistical, narcissistic, and solipsistic philosophy embedded in ancient

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Indian thought, Vedic thought, that a man can realize, he can be self -actualized, self -realized that he actually is

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God. That's the goal of the yogi. The goal of the yogi, again, the word yoga is related to the word yoke in English.

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It's from the same root word, to yoke or to unite with Brahman, which is Brahman is the ultimate reality, transcendent consciousness, impersonal consciousness.

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Not to be confused with Brahma, the creator personal God, or Brahman, the highest caste.

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So anyway, the goal of the yogi is for Atman, which means self or spirit,

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Atman to be unified with Brahman. When that happens, then the devotee, the yogi has attained moksha.

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And yes, the yogi is basically egotism and narcissism, religiously sanctioned narcissism.

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And so the guru movement is literally cults of personality. It's personality cults run amok.

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And that's what you see. You see with the guru movement, these men that I've talked to, for example,

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I remember I was once at a train station in northern India, in Godekpur Junction, the largest train station in Asia.

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And the Hindu guru tells me, I said, what's your name? He says, my name is Bhagwan, which means

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I'm God. And I told him, you know, there's only one true God. He says, yeah, I'm the one true

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God. Just to get you an idea of how egotistical this

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Hindu guru movement is. At one time I was debating with two

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Hindu gurus at another train station. And the Hindu guru said to me, we have never partaken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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You have. We've never partaken of it. Wow. The goal of the yogi is to attain what they call vidya.

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Vidya is knowledge. Again, it's related to Veda. And where we get a word video, for instance, knowledge to see is to know, right?

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Vidya. We Christians, to them, are in a state of avidya, a state of ignorance.

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But the irony is, the paradox is, they think that we are in ignorance for knowing that there is such a thing as sin and moral absolutes.

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And they say, oh, we are in a state of knowledge. We know that there is no moral absolutes.

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You see the contradiction inherent. It's not even a paradox. It's a pure contradiction. It's nonsensical.

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Nonsensical. We're enlightened. And it's like Isaiah chapter 5 says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil and who put light for darkness and darkness for light.

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And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing a great inversion. And one other anecdote. One other anecdote.

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One time I was talking with a medical doctor in India. A very wealthy, successful medical doctor who had his own hospital.

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He owned a hospital, right? Very, very wealthy man. But he had his own private guru. And he followed his guru, you know, religiously, of course.

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And I was talking with this doctor. And I said, doctor, are you going to tell me with all of your medical knowledge, with all of your degrees, et cetera, you're going to tell me that you believe that that idol, that statue is actually

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God, that that thing's alive? And he acknowledged to me, he actually said, no, my faith creates life in the idol.

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I imbue the idol with life by the power of my faith. That's what my guru taught me, the power of faith.

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And I said, don't you see what you're doing here? You're putting the cart before the horse. God, by definition, is the creator.

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You don't create God. Then you're the God. And it just is a remarkable guy as an advanced medical degree.

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You see, this is not a matter of intellect or IQ. This is just a spiritual and willful suppression of truth, as Romans 118 teaches.

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No, definitely. Andrew, do you have any thoughts real quick? Because I had a couple of mine as well, too, of where I want to go with this. Yeah, essentially what

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I'm thinking about here is that we have – what happens with people when they're spiritually oppressed, right?

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You can't even think straight. The spirit of Mormonism essentially does the same thing to many people.

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They start going to this relative circle of logic, which is in pure contradiction.

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And we see that Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? The Bible clearly defines that there is truth and truth was a person named

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Christ. And when people who are spiritually oppressed or they're living in such a climate that breeds this illusionary world that they're living in, when they come into combat with the truth, it's groundbreaking, really.

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You're going out there and you're in India or Nepal even right now, and you're actually going out there and you're preaching some spiritual true reality to people who are sons and daughters of Adam that they can actually be restored to God through the

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Messiah. And that's the truth. That's the truth. But for some reason, the illusion, the spirit of Hinduism creates literally an illusion of reality.

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They're living in cognitive dissonance. With cognitive dissonance, really, it's kind of like what I was thinking about when you were talking about your story there.

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Excellent. And then another question I had too, just to jump into that. Thank you for that perspective, Andrew.

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Again, Daniel, you've seen just the being over here in the

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West as well, too. And you're talking about getting your perspective from the East in regards to the

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Guru. Why do you think it is, too, why in the Western world, what's the allure over here?

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Is it different and distinct in any way from how it is over in Nepal and India over here?

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Because, I mean, again, you mentioned the whole history of the Rajneesh, the wild, wild country, or the whole story behind the

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Guru, behind Bhikram. There's tons, there's a plethora of New Age Gurus, even people flock to today, that are all over the place.

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Is there any uniqueness, do you think, to the appeal over here in the West? Right. Well, the

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New Age movement, again, which is just a misnomer, because it's just a rehashing of one of the oldest traditions, it's cherry -picked.

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They pick and choose elements, like, for example, yoga. They want to have the calisthenics and the exercise divorced from the faith tradition, but that's not how it works.

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You buy it hook, line, and sinker, and that's what it is. It's a trap. It's a bait.

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And people are oblivious to this. They just lack discernment, as Hosea 4 -6 says, my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.

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And so people are not, we're not a God -fearing people anymore. Western civilization has, yes, degenerated into this post -modern pluralistic insanity, madness.

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And, yes, so Eastern mysticism and Eastern meditation practices in the

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West are traps. They're traps, man. They're bait. And Western people think that they can isolate it from its demonic origins.

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But it's not innocuous. These faith traditions that have destroyed this part of the world will result in the destruction of Occidental society as well.

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Go ahead, look at what happened in 2020. Look at the burning of cities. Look what happens when this leftist worldview, this leftist post -modern worldview that rejects any sense of absolute truth and even rejects a sense of reality.

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I mean, literally, this is a consequence, again, of that doctrine of solipsism, that the only thing

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I can know is that I know. And everything else is up for interpretation. For all we know, we're living in a simulation or whatever, multiverse.

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And look at the consequence of just pure madness. So it's the destruction of what our forefathers who spilled their blood to build our country,

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Vietnam and Korean War vets fighting communism. Now we're flirting with the very thing that our fathers died to protect us from.

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And yet we see the burning, the raising of society. That's why, brother. And look at these Green New Deal policies.

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Like I'm from New York, right? And we have the infamous Senator Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez and her

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Green New Deal. And they want to fill up New York City with a bunch of bicycles and scooters. And I go to New Manhattan and I'm like,

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I feel like I'm in India. Like when I'm trying to drive, I have to dodge all these bicycles. And I'm not saying it's wrong to commute on a bicycle.

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I'm just making an observation that Western cities, American cities are becoming more and more – they're looking more and more like third world cities.

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Yeah. It blows my mind because literally it's almost like the book of Judges in a sense.

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Like God brings people into a promised land and then people get – they're comforted by the things that they're given.

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But in their comfort, they forget the giver of the gifts, right? And then end up worshiping the gifts or searching after other gods.

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Like in our country, we would see the influence of Eastern philosophy, let's say probably from,

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I don't know, like the 50s, 60s and 70s. Like we can think of Jim Jones and some of his theology. We can think of Rajneesh and that cult.

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And it was very blatant then. Like there was people literally wearing oranges. They're jumping up and down, closing their eyes for 30 minutes, then being silent together.

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Like you can – you look out of your way and you go, that's a cult. But today it's like the cultists are all wearing button -up suits, right?

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Like for example, we go to the abortion mill and we preach the gospel out there. And there'll be people who come and they're telling you this is not a child inside of you.

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This is my choice, right? My choice to kill another life. They're no different than the Eastern philosophy that we've seen infiltrating our world, at least in the

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West, coming from the 60s and 70s. They're just not wearing an orange jumpsuit. These are like people who are extreme narcissists who have bought to the solipsism that you're talking about.

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It's what I believe. It's what I think. I think that's how we see the infiltration today is like people aren't going out of their way, at least in the

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West, to follow specific gurus and look a specific way. But instead they're so narcissistic that they're their own guru.

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You know what I mean? I think that's almost like a direct result of the East and what happened with the 60s and 70s and so on.

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It's kind of blowing my mind. Yeah, exactly. The gurus, as that film pointed out, are the missionaries.

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They're like the Jesuits are to the Roman Catholics. So these gurus are the missionaries of Hinduism pushing their

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Eastern meditation practices like Osho, Rajneesh and the terrorists, man.

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I mean, literally a terrorist. The first instance of bio warfare ever on US soil was by Osho in his

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Oregon compound. So, yeah, they're mission. And now they're undercover.

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They've gone stealth. Like you said, they're not wearing their obvious orange robes. They're clandestine now.

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They're like Satan, the most subtle beast of the field. It was cute back in the 60s because the

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Beatles, like you said, they went to see Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and they frequented India.

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And so it was cool then. That's why I tell people the so -called British invasion wasn't merely a British invasion.

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It was also an Indian invasion, a Hindu invasion. It was part of the package. It was in there.

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And that's the origins behind his song, My Sweet Lord. When all of a sudden in that stanza he puts together

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Hare Krishna and Hallelujah together to sort of show that, oh, Hinduism, Christianity, they're compatible.

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They work together. But also speaking of invasions as well, too, a lot of people, when you look at one of our initial episodes on Jim Jones and the

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People's Temple, a lot of people have tried to characterize him as some sort of radical Christian sect.

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And, Andrew, you can attest, too, that that is not the case at all. In fact, a lot of his underlying worldview, it was sort of a combination of Marxism and also a lot of very

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Hinduistic ideas put together that really formulated who he was.

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And that even carried over to what happened with him really calling himself

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God. And so back down in Guyana, when the mass suicide happened, when

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Jim Jones were telling his people to drink this potassium cyanide, when that happened, they believed it was

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God telling them to do it. So what you really saw was that culture of death, that worldview, really being propagated down in Guyana.

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In fact, Andrew, you remember our first—remember through Jones Colored Glasses? You remember how you talked about people were a bunch of little

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Jim Joneses walking around? Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, it is true that in the same way now,

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I think in today's world, with becoming just more of the East invading it and becoming postmodern and with the

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Stoicism, is that what you're seeing is really a bunch of people. Now you've got 330 million

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Hindu gods. Now you have millions upon millions of people saying,

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I'm my own God. I can do what I want. I'm autonomous. And like in the Book of Judges, everyone was doing what's right in their own eyes.

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And so you definitely see that. So next thing I just want to jump and talk with you about, Daniel, is you mentioned just some of your experiences in the initial video.

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You were out there talking to this guru at this specific temple. Just kind of give us a walkthrough of just some of the temples that you've seen, both in Nepal or some of the ones that you're knowledgeable about in India.

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And I know you have a couple of stories behind some of those too, some conversations you had with a guru. But there's also one too that sort of resembles

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Revelation. That fascinated me. Tell us about that. Right. So in the state that my wife is from, the state where I lived for six years, well, eight years, that was our base.

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We lived there for eight years. There is a temple called the Tirumala Venkateswara Mandiram.

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It's a mouthful. It's the largest religious site on the planet. Now, when

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I say that the largest religious site, what I'm referring to is to the number of pilgrims, the number of devotees that frequent there every day.

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So every single day of the calendar, there's up to half a million people visiting this particular religious site.

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Far more than the Vatican or Mecca or Salt Lake City. Far more devotees, pilgrims go to this site.

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And this particular temple is built on seven hills.

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Seven hills. And according to the mythology surrounding the temple, the seven hills represent seven heads of a serpent god called the

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Nagaraj or Adisesha. They say that the god, one of the gods of the place is a seven -headed snake, seven -headed cobra.

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And the seven hills represent that. And that's literally the narrative in Revelation chapter 17.

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The seven hills are the seven heads of the beast. And like, for instance, I remember one time

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I was sharing the gospel with a man in Andhra Pradesh. And I said, you know, what's your name?

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What's your name in Telugu? He said, my name is

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Yerukunda. Yerukunda literally means seven hills. So that would be like literally talking to someone in America and saying, you know, my name is

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Dan. What's your name? Oh, my name is Seven Hills. His name was Seven Hills in honor of that site, of that city and of that temple.

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And there's billions of dollars worth of gold and silver and precious stones that have been contributed for at least a thousand years in the vault, in the treasure underneath the temple.

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And there's many temples like this in India. There's also the Padma Shri Temple on the Malabar Coast in Karnataka state.

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The Padma Shri Temple also has billions of dollars worth of precious metals and gold underneath.

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But the Indian government permits no one to access that because they believe that, you know, the money is sacred and it'll bring about the end of the world.

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There's a door actually underneath the temple in my wife's state, the Seven Hill Temple, that they believe if you open that door, it will bring about the end of the world.

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So, you know, like, I've always been tempted to moonlight as Indiana Jones and go in there and do a temple raid to distribute all that to the starving poor in India.

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But you see how idolatry impoverishes the people? I mean, you see when Israel came out of Egypt, the

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Bible says that Israel plundered the Egyptians. The Lord told them to ask everyone for their gold. And what did they do?

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They threw their gold in the fire. And out came this calf. In the famous words of Aaron, out came this calf. And it just, yeah, idolatry impoverishes the people.

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There's billions of dollars worth of raw wealth, you know, money with intrinsic value, precious metals, gold, silver, precious stones.

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And it's forbidden. And the people are starving, man. Yeah. Andrew, didn't you pull up an article when you were doing some brief super sleuth thing about some current

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Indian gurus from India who kind of are at least going under some sort of controversy regarding amount of, like, money withholdings or the amount of money they're bringing in?

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I saw a couple articles you shared with me. What did you pull up about that? Yeah, I can't remember off the top of my head.

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It was mainly just, like, the richest gurus that are there. One of them is, like, the founder of a company. So it was almost like the company is mixed with science and religion in a weird way.

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I forget what the guy's name is. I wouldn't be able to pronounce it, just like I would not be able to pronounce that temple that you just pronounced about five minutes ago,

24:18

Daniel. I don't know how you did that, but you should get an award for that. But, yeah, but you would see, for example, in wild wild country with the

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Rajneesh, the guru who is the head honcho there, is that his thing, he had a thing for Rolls Royces, right?

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He had, like, 30 Rolls Royces. It was just so extra. And many a time, you're talking about the amount of money just via the temples.

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You see also, too, a hypocrisy in these gurus, where in many ways they'll probably tell their followers, you need to strip yourself of material possessions, and so you're not connected to anything materially.

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But then you actually look at the houses or the cars or their lifestyle, and it's totally polar opposite.

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Have you seen that, or just tell us what that looks like? Exactly. I'm familiar, of course, yes, with the narrative of Osho, and he claimed that he was detached from material possessions and that he did not need them.

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Therefore, he was entitled to them, and that others were still in the grip of materialism.

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Therefore, they had to be living impoverished lifestyles. So, yes, in India, you'll see that.

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As a matter of fact, is it possible for me to share a screen with you? I want to show you.

25:35

Yeah, let's give it a shot. Let's see if we can do it. If not, we'll fix it in post, and you can share with us.

25:42

Let's go for it. This will give you an illustration. What I'm about to show you basically is there's a

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Hindu guru in India. Well, now he's in prison on a life sentence, but this

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Hindu guru had such a following that he had a private army. He was engaged in all manner of illegal trafficking and sex crimes, but he's also a prolific filmmaker.

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He made many films, and I'm going to show you one of the trailers to one of his movies, and it's called

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MSG, A Messenger of God. He calls himself Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, and I'm going to show you.

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You're going to get it. People think that Trump had a big ego. Make sure it's on 1080p.

26:30

You got to see this in high def. Oh, yeah. It's not a joke to kill him.

28:03

Okay. Messenger of God.

28:46

Oh, wow. Andrew. Okay, let me give you my initial thoughts real quick.

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I don't know if anyone watching has ever seen the movie Idiocracy, and I'm not trying to be mean, but I don't know.

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Idiocracy paints the picture of the future, and it's just like people are just so over the top.

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People aren't drinking water. They're drinking purely Gatorade because water is for the toilet. Weird stuff.

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Things that just don't make sense. Everything's over the top, and that was like that. I was like, is this real?

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People are doing that stuff? I didn't even know something like this existed right now, and that was 2015.

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What's happening now? That was seven years ago. What's going on now? I can only imagine.

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My initial reaction. I don't know if Gabe's filming it. We might have to do another picture -in -picture reaction to something, but I think about the times,

29:42

Daniel, where I've been on a flight where you're in flight. You have in -flight movies, and sometimes, depending on the airline, you can watch movies from Bollywood.

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It was almost kind of like this weird sort of Bollywood production of like – it's a combination of like WrestleMania and like Bollywood and Hinduism and the guru.

30:07

I mean it just – that was extra, and like I said, there's a level where it's almost comical because it's silly, but if you think about like in a seriousness of the spiritual nature of Hinduism, how it creates these like gods, but it's almost like God looks at the different kings of the nation or the people or the – whatever you want to call them, like conspiring, he like laughs.

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So I feel like there's almost – there's a warranted serrated edge where we're not trying to appeal to some sort of separate standard of piety.

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Like I think there's a level for almost sort of laughter because it's so silly, but at the same time, there is a seriousness behind it.

30:45

But yeah, wow. Can I ask a question real quick? I'm sorry. I even have to ask this, but is this loosely based on a true story or is it pure fiction?

30:52

Well, it's based – those are all his disciples, like that massive assembly of people that he found in a movement that – and he actually had like gun battles with police, like hundreds of people died.

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His devotees are willing to die for him, and he's involved in all types of illegal trade, weapons trafficking, sex trafficking, and he's in prison now on a life sentence, that man.

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And brother, go to Google and type in – I can send you the link. He's got other videos. That's just like his first MSG.

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He's got sequels to that film, and there are even more over the top, the other trailers. At the end of the trailer, it says directed by Saint Singh.

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It says filmed by, screenplay, stunts by, and his name is on every single thing.

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Wow. It's so sad, man. Look at the egotism, man. It's just insane, man.

31:46

Unreal. Unreal. Yeah, so just another question too, just in regards to the temple and the – any other observations of just the

31:55

Hindu temples or what takes place? Are there just things you observed in your ministry, aside from the seven hills on seven heads of snake or any other observations you have?

32:05

Right. I just want to make one other point about the gurus. By the way, the prosperity preachers like Kenneth Copeland, who have $300 billion worth, and Joel Osteen, they are eerily similar in their manner to these gurus.

32:21

You understand this? Yeah. This cult of personality. These preachers who are on this level above everyone else, they claim to be prophets, and they even come out and say we're little gods.

32:31

Yeah. It's Kundalini spirit. Notice it's the charismatics too, the charismatics who do all these antics that they look like – it looks like you're in a funny farm or something.

32:43

You're in a hospital. Everybody's dancing around. That's exactly what you see in the charismatic churches.

32:51

And by the way, there's a Facebook page called No Conversion. No Conversion, it's a radical Hindu site that's targeting

32:57

Christian mission activities in India. If you go to that site, you're going to see they're always posting clips of crazy charismatic meetings where people are rolling around on the floor, and they're saying, look,

33:10

Christians are psychos. It's just like 1 Corinthians 14 says. If you speak in an unknown tongue without interpretation, you'll be seen as mad.

33:19

So the Hindus are exploiting that. But the irony is, yeah, the Hindus themselves, especially in the guru movement, they look almost identical to charismatics.

33:30

And the prosperity preachers are almost identical to the gurus in their egotism and the disproportionate amount of wealth they've accumulated for themselves.

33:38

And this idea you need more faith, it's – they just criticize the vocabulary.

33:44

And a point about the temples and about Hindu rituals, for example. I read the biography of a

33:52

Hindu yogi who was saved, and he talked about the Shaktipat. The Shaktipat is something that gurus or Brahmins will touch someone's forehead, and they'll fall backwards.

34:03

They'll touch their Ajna Chakra. Shakti means power. Shakti force, Shaktipat. And the people will fall backwards.

34:09

It's identical in form to being slain in the spirit. So there's all kinds of overlap.

34:15

The kundalini spirit is alive and well in these charismatic churches, my friends, and healings, etc.

34:23

About temples in India, yeah, I've been to many temples. I've spoken another – one time

34:30

I spoke with a Brahmin priest in the temple. And when you try to reason with these men, they are unreasonable in the sense that they're irrational, almost anti -rational,

34:42

I should say. Against, yes, logic and sound deduction. And you speak with them, and they speak of vibrations, and they speak of the stars.

34:50

Astrology figures largely into the Hindu metaphysics. And these men, they're completely –

34:56

I'm sorry, but they're devoid of sanity when you engage these Brahmin priests. It's sad.

35:03

Almost every Hindu temple has the Shiva Lingam as a centerpiece, where they bow before the reproductive organs of the god and the goddess.

35:11

Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. And just one thing to also just mention too as we kind of jump over to the next topic is that a lot of people who do come out of the

35:21

New Age, who get saved out of the New Age just because of their inclination towards – of supernatural experience, of things that they've done and they've experienced, that they just tend to be drawn to or inclined to charismatic churches.

35:34

And again, we have people who listen in who are Pentecostal and who are charismatic. We've had our brother Josh Lewis talking about how do you practice discernment as a charismatic?

35:45

So, I think there are a lot of concerns and issues too because how do you differentiate? If you're going to base everything off experience, how do you differentiate what is from God and what isn't?

35:54

So, I think that is a huge thing, and I think that's also a great connection too that you made about Kenneth Copeland and the dangers of what he's doing in many ways.

36:03

He's talking about people kind of giving things and selling seeds, right? Well, what seeds is he selling?

36:09

He's there with all his possessions, private jets and all that. And there's definitely – you could even say behind a lot of that is even demonic in nature.

36:18

And so, one thing I also want to just ask too, and these are two practices that are primary, is that Walter Martin had two different lectures.

36:27

You guys can look them up online if you're listening into this. They're fantastic lectures. One is just kind of overall on transcendental meditation and contemplative prayer.

36:37

That is something that's just so huge and prominent now here in the West. You think of all the different classes on meditation.

36:44

You download the whole self -care movement. There's always some sort of aspect of meditation that people want people to get into.

36:52

And a lot of times, people can be unsuspecting and think, oh, this is just another way for me to help improve my mental health.

36:58

I'm going through anxiety or depression or any different aspect of that. So, Daniel, what are some examples of meditation?

37:07

How do you see the practice over in India, where that stems from? And from your perspective, what are the dangers of that?

37:14

And how do you see that carried out just in the ministry that you've done? Right. Well, meditation, yes, figures largely in the guru movement, the yoga movement, of course.

37:23

And when the devotee meditates, they're supposed to sit in the lotus position, which you'll see frequently with the bottoms of their feet facing upwards.

37:34

And it's fascinating because in Asian culture, to direct the bottom of your feet towards someone is insulting.

37:44

You don't touch someone with your feet. You don't point your feet at someone. And it just it stuck out of my mind that when they do yoga, they sit with their feet facing upwards.

37:52

It's an insult to God. This claim that I'm going to be God, I'm going to realize that I am

37:58

God. This posture, the yoga, the lotus position, it's an affront to the true

38:04

God. And yes, meditation, it doesn't solve the hopelessness around here.

38:10

It's an attempt to escape the real, tangible, palpable suffering, affliction, the medical emergencies, the utter poverty.

38:20

The suicide rate is extremely high in this part of the world.

38:26

And with all of their contemplated prayers and all their esoteric meditation, they cannot find real peace.

38:33

They try to, you know, it's cowardly. It's all it is. Understand yoga and meditation is cowardice.

38:40

It's religiously sanctioned cowardice and escapism. It's just saying, I'm going to shut out the outside world.

38:46

I'm not going to deal with it. I'm going to just focus on myself, myself, and try to realize that I'm God.

38:52

I am God, like Sharon Stone famously says, I am God, I am God. It's the ultimate cowardice and egotism and narcissism, all of that.

39:02

Now, that's huge. And just, we did an episode a while back talking with someone who actually works at the studios, Jeff's assistant,

39:08

Christine. But she was someone who had a lot of experience just in health and wellbeing and health and wellness, very knowledgeable.

39:17

But there was a time where she was heavily, heavily into yoga. And now she is like, no, this is not this.

39:25

This is something that's fundamentally spiritual. You know, some people will articulate that, oh,

39:31

I can sort of separate the two from each other. Right. And so we would articulate, we did this in a previous episode, that while yoga is not just, it's not just a physical practice.

39:42

It just so happens to have some spiritual elements you can separate yourself from. It's fundamentally a spiritual practice and what you're seeing with the different poses and everything that goes from that.

39:54

And you've seen over there, not the non -Westernized version. Would you agree, is there a way you can separate the two from each other?

40:02

Or are they intrinsically, there's no way you can separate the two or just give us your thoughts and any other thoughts that you have? It is dangerously naive to assume that you can extricate the mythology and the demonic influence from the practice of yoga.

40:19

They're inextricably bound. It is an exercise in futility. It's dangerous.

40:24

It's dangerous. And granted, there are, of course, if you've been a Christian a long time and you're familiar with the nature of these things and you want to do some of the exercises, that's one thing.

40:36

But to go to a yoga club and to participate in this mass gathering of people doing yoga is extremely dangerous, especially for a neophyte.

40:45

You know, for a new Christian, it's particularly dangerous. My friend here in Nepal, one young lady, after she got saved, she refused to do yoga and they required her to do yoga in her school.

40:56

And she says, I'm a Christian. So she conscientiously objected and she was persecuted for her stand.

41:03

And the Lord honors that, my friends. The Lord honors that resolve. They're indissolubly linked.

41:08

And to attempt to vacate the mind is an attempt, ultimately, that results in the sucking in, the drawing in of evil influence and demonic possession even.

41:20

The mind is not supposed to be empty. It's supposed to be filled with the knowledge of God, with the praise of God, with scripture, with prayer.

41:27

And when they say meditation, that's almost a misnomer because meditation implies an object.

41:33

You know, you're meditating on something. You're meditating on a psalm or you're meditating on a scripture passage.

41:39

But to meditate on nothingness, that's a misnomer, if you will. Meditation requires an object of meditation.

41:46

You can't meditate on nothing. That's like saying I'm going to eat nothing, for example.

41:51

Yes. Oh, you're going to eat? I'm going to eat nothing. That's nonsensical.

41:57

That's foolishness. That's a good point. So it's like meditation in itself, trying to get to emptiness.

42:03

What you're really doing is you're just opening yourself up to demonic possession and oppression. Essentially, it's just a tool that's used in order to have something or someone have influence over you.

42:13

Because there's always an object in the meditation and it's not the God, the triune God of scripture. It's something evil, opposite and counterfeit.

42:22

It's that tri -idol that you were talking about earlier, right? Exactly. There's a proverb that says a man who has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.

42:34

And what is a city that's broken down without walls? It's vulnerable to any alien invasion.

42:41

And that's what we're seeing, my friends. It's a tragic thing. And then, of course, yes, they'll use narcotics to aid in their attempt to unify with God.

42:53

Yeah, I hear your kids in the background there. And so I appreciate you taking the time here.

42:59

Just a couple other questions here. You mentioned the mind science, yoga. I think we talked about this on our

43:05

Zoom call too. Over here in the West, astral projection, you think about that practice.

43:10

And again, this was sort of articulated in the initial Doctor Strange movie where the guru says to Doctor Strange, and you see his astral body go out of his physical body.

43:21

And there's a lot of people, if you even look up on TikTok and YouTube, there's a lot of people in the younger generation and people that are millennial age who are just really getting into this.

43:31

And Steven Van Kars and Josh Peck talked about this in their experiences in their book, Second Coming to the

43:36

New Age, which is an excellent resource. But in what ways have you seen any aspects of that practice over in India?

43:44

What does that look like over there? Is there any emphasis you can give on that? Well, yes,

43:49

I've seen people during religious processions, like their eyes roll back and they indulge in glossolalia.

43:56

They start uttering gibberish, unknown tongues. It's common in these Hindu flights of ecstasy and flights of trance lights, altered states of consciousness.

44:10

It's common here. It's tragic. I've spoken with many Hindus who have burned themselves and cut themselves, attempting to appease their

44:18

God, to pacify, placate their angry, temperamental child God. It breaks your heart, my friend.

44:25

It will break your heart. And I've seen that as well.

44:33

It's heartbreaking, my friend. This motivates us to preach the gospel to the people. Yeah. No, absolutely.

44:40

And then also just another aspect. And you mentioned earlier about the aspects of reincarnation, about how people are even sort of not helping the less of these, which is the primary focus as a

44:51

Christian. You think that's in the lens that we view that through ultimately is the incarnation. God became one of us and he is the one who took on flesh.

45:00

And so you see that really carried out to the fullest extent. But now you see the exact opposite of that.

45:06

Well, it just leaves someone alone. They're sort of paying out their sentence, you know, if they're suffering or if they're doing anything like that.

45:14

Walter Martin mentioned too that you would have times where there's either himself or someone that he knew observed in India, there's a child with the fleas.

45:25

And the parents wouldn't remove the fleas from the child because what if I killed a flea and somehow that is going to interfere with someone's karma that's going to sort of throw off the karmic circle.

45:38

And rather than care for your child, you're stuck within this system. So, yeah, that's something

45:44

I've seen. Is there anything else you want to say? You mentioned earlier about the reincarnation. Is there anything else you want to lay emphasis on before we kind of jump on to the next topic and head towards the end of this?

45:53

In regards to reincarnation. Yes. Just the idea of yoga and karma go hand in glove.

46:02

People are suffering due to their sins and cosmic justice is being outworked in their life.

46:08

So don't interfere. Don't interfere. It's a philosophy of non -interference and other people's troubles.

46:14

And yoga, of course, just shut yourself out from the outside world and attempt to realize yourself and acknowledge that reality is not really reality.

46:23

And so it's just a dismissal of the obvious. It's painful cowardice.

46:30

Yeah. Now, thank you for that, Daniel. And then one last aspect, and we talked about this, is the role of psychedelics.

46:38

That's really being popularized here in the West through people like Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, a lot of these sort of modern gurus.

46:47

But, you know, the use of psychoactive substances, I mean, is something that goes back all thousands and thousands of years, not just in India.

46:55

But you had mentioned, too, about the there's interesting connection between Hinduism and kind of the areas that you minister to in the use of cannabis.

47:04

And it's related to the war on drugs. This really fascinated me. Just tell us about that real quickly.

47:11

Right. So cannabis is used heavily in meditative practices in this part of the world.

47:16

As a matter of fact, it used to be legal in Nepal for marijuana to be sold.

47:22

And so this was the end of the hippie trail in the 60s and 70s. People would drive their

47:27

VW vans all the way from London, for example, or Amsterdam, whatever,

47:33

Paris. And they would drive over through India and eventually reach Kathmandu, where they could smoke and go to the mythical Shangri -La, a paradise of delusion.

47:44

And, yeah, 1973, President Nixon pressured the king of Nepal to criminalize it because, well, during the

47:54

Vietnam War and people were draft dodging and running to Nepal and getting high. Yeah.

48:00

And so and now it's illegal, for instance, in Nepal to buy or sell marijuana, except for one day of the year,

48:08

Mahashivaratri, which means the great night of Shiva. And that video I sent you with the man covered in ashes, that was the day of Mahashivaratri.

48:15

That was the biggest festival in the oldest temple in Nepal. And we're there, we're street preaching in the temple complex, inside, distributing

48:23

New Testaments, talking to these people. And that's the only day of the year that you're allowed to smoke gunja so that it will help you in your quest of union with Brahman, with the ultimate transcendence.

48:35

It's madness, my friend. Psychoactive drugs destroy your logic engine, your brain.

48:41

You know, God gave us our brains to reason and to seek God. And it's an attempt to destroy the very tool we need to think and to reason.

48:49

So come now, let's reason together, right? Isaiah 118. Let's reason together. No, definitely, definitely.

48:55

And then just one last question, too, as we wrap up here is that, you know, we've covered a lot of topics. And, again,

49:00

I really appreciate you taking the time and getting up early, especially since we're on a radically different time zone here.

49:06

And, you know, I can hear your kids in the background, your wife's doing what she can to make sure they're taken care of, fed, getting whatever they need to get their day going.

49:15

You know, when you—again, we'll play some video, too, on our social media. But, again, I just want to emphasize, man, there is—it's like a picture is worth a thousand words.

49:23

I really feel that the videos of a lot of the ministry that you do is worth even more because you see the need and the hunger in their eyes to hear the gospel.

49:37

And, again, we are very—we are a non -neutral podcast. We are a Christian -based podcast dealing—bringing the gospel into the world of the kingdom of the cults, the world of the occult.

49:48

And when it comes to really dealing with the God of the New Age, I truly also believe as well, too, the only way to counteract all of these different beliefs, whether it's in the

49:57

East or the West, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, maybe as we wrap up here, just maybe share with us your heart in regards to what you do and knowing how you've seen the gospel transform people's lives.

50:11

Maybe give us some examples of that. And maybe from your perspective, I'm sure you agree, what's the importance of the role of the gospel in combating the gods of the

50:23

New Age as we wrap up here? Amen. Well, our primary function these days is we are training local leaders.

50:33

We're training young men, preparing them to go back to their unreached villages or their villages that are surrounded by unreached villages and to go penetrate those unreached areas with the gospel.

50:45

We are engaged in, yes, training young men and then child care and girls who are at risk of being trafficked, orphans, semi -orphans.

50:55

And I've seen, yes, the power of the gospel. The Word of God just simply needs to be unleashed.

51:01

Like Spurgeon says, you don't have to defend a lion.

51:07

Just unleash him or defend himself. And just when we preach the gospel, open air preaching has figured prominently in my ministry in the past 11 years in South Asia.

51:17

And on several occasions, I've seen the transformative power of the gospel. I personally have baptized nearly 300 people, most of those as a direct result of open air preaching,

51:28

Muslims, Hindus. And I remember on one occasion, a woman telling me, she says to me,

51:35

I preached a message and in my message, and this was actually a

51:42

Sunday morning sermon. And it wasn't in my notes, but I began to preach against suicide.

51:49

I just felt prompted to preach against suicide. And after my message, the lady approaches me and says, how did you know last night

51:55

I tried to kill myself? And I praise God that we were able to baptize her that day.

52:02

She followed the Lord and believers baptism. She followed Christ. And on many occasions, we've been able to intercede for people who attempted suicide.

52:13

And they were at the end of their rope, and they heard a street preaching, and we were able to baptize them.

52:18

And I've seen the blood of a martyr. I've seen another street preacher in India, his blood on the floor.

52:24

He was killed. They attacked his wife. He was stabbed. His blood was on the floor. But we know, as Tertullian said, the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church.

52:32

And so we will continue to raise a clarion call to be harbingers of truth and to proclaim from the rooftops what we hear whispered in the air and to speak in the light what we hear spoken in the dark.

52:45

And yeah, brother, I've seen God's power. I've seen people on two occasions raised from the dead that had gone into cardiac arrest.

52:55

And one was in an ICU ward in India. I saw this man. His heart stopped. And he was a friend of my friend's son.

53:02

And we were all night with him in the hospital because his son was dying. And I was praying for him.

53:09

And the EKG machine flatlined, beep. And as we're praying for him with our hand on his chest, his heart rate came back, beep, beep, beep, beep.

53:18

And the doctor said, this is not possible. He said in English, how is this possible? He said, this is not possible is the exact words.

53:24

And yeah, man, we were able to call to the other people in the hospital there in the ICU ward in the

53:29

Telugu language, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the power of Christ. This is his resurrection power.

53:36

And we saw many people call upon the Lord as a direct consequence of that instance. And so the word of God is powerful.

53:44

And yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. And yeah.

53:52

So I know we're wrapping things up here. And this is why you got up early as well, too.

53:58

But yeah, thank you again so much. And I really appreciate the fact of just everything that you said.

54:04

And I could not agree with you more. And I think this is just it's encouraging, inspiring for me that, you know, this is something that we're passionate about.

54:13

And, you know, we're doing what we can. I'm doing a lot of different aspects of ministry over here in Arizona.

54:19

You know, there's a lot of what Andrew's dealing with now in Utah. One of the largest Hare Krishna temples in the world is based in Utah.

54:27

And Andrew, you were just there recently doing a film, doing some filming there. So even what you're talking about here, that like that inspires us.

54:35

I know it inspires me and inspires you, Andrew, that we need to go out and, you know, start conversations with our friends, with our family, with our neighbors, you know, who are in, who are being susceptible by these gods, the new ways.

54:46

We definitely want to get the gospel out. So thank you again so much, Daniel. And also just as we wrap up here, tell us again, where can people find you if they want to find out about your ministry and how can they get ahold of you?

54:58

Right. Just you can email me at gospel of glory missions at gmail .com gospel of glory missions at gmail .com.

55:07

My Facebook page is Daniel Stephen Kearney. You can message me there. It'd be the best way to contact me.

55:13

And my YouTube channel, of course, is Fool for Christ. Fool for Christ. Excellent action.

55:19

Well, thank you so much, brother. And thank you all for listening. If you like this, our latest, the first series of 2022

55:25

Gods of the New Age. Definitely leave us a review on iTunes, let us know what you thought, comment on our social media. And as always, a program like this cannot continue without your support.

55:34

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55:39

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