Cultish: Gods of the New Age, Pt. 1

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India, land of mystery, is the seventh largest landmass and second most populated nation in the world.

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It is rich in resources and manpower, yet its people are among the poorest and most suffering on earth.

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Millions of Indians suffer from malnutrition, disease and poverty. The people are apathetic because their religion has taught them to be detached observers, disregarding the agonizing lifestyle which imprisons them.

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All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the Kingdom of the Cults. My name is

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Jeremiah Roberts. I am one of the co -hosts here. I am joined, as always, by Andrew the

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Supersleuth of the show up in Harriman, Utah. Andrew, it is good to see you. We're recording a little bit later than usual, but it's good to see you as always.

01:14

Yeah, man. First recording of 2022. Very excited. Yes, super excited for this episode.

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And so what you just heard there was a small clip from a documentary produced by Jeremiah Films, same name as myself, but around the time

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I was born, probably. And it's a documentary called Gods of the New Age. The premise of the documentary, if you listen to it, you can look it up on YouTube, it's very well done.

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And it really just has an emphasis on the spiritual history of India, because that's where a lot of the

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New Age practices that we see, like beliefs in reincarnation, meditation, yoga, a lot of these ideas that are becoming so popularized right now, its origination is in India.

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So we have with us today to talk about that, kind of an updated version of 2022, an updated version of Gods of the

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New Age. We have with us Daniel Stephen Kearney, who's actually coming to us from India right now.

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Daniel, how are you, my friend? It's good to have you on the podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here.

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Yes, by the grace of our Lord, I'm doing well. And by the way, I'm actually in the country of Nepal, just kicked out of India.

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Oh, OK, gotcha, gotcha. And that's why we need to have you make sure you give us all the ins and outs of all that.

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So, but yes, it's currently it's 6 p .m. It's a little after 6 o 'clock.

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What time is it there right now? 6 .42 a .m. OK, excellent.

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And so just tell me, I kind of gave a description. You're over there. You're someone as a missionary and you have spent quite a bit of time in India.

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You have a very unique vantage point. But give everyone the quick CliffsNotes LinkedIn resume of who you are, what you do and what you're all about.

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All right, brother. So, yeah, yes, I am. My name is Dan Kearney and I'm originally from New York.

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The Lord saved me as a boy when I was 12 years old and he put a burden on my heart for South Asia, particularly

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India. And 2009, I got a one way ticket and flew to India.

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And we've been living here with my family for close to going on 11 years now.

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And my wife is a native to India and found my wife in India. We were married in India.

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Yeah. Yeah. God bless us with six children. And we've been involved in church planting, leader, leader training, indigenous leader training, open air preaching and philanthropy and social works.

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We've seen three orphanages started and we've drilled wells and engaged in relief missions and humanitarian works.

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Of course, coupled with the preaching of the gospel and going to making mission trips to unreached areas.

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This is what we've been doing. OK, so maybe if you could and I appreciate you kind of giving that that that description there.

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Explain just real quickly, because it sounds to me like I'm a little bit behind in my. It's been a while since I've done a full geography class because we're gonna be talking about primarily

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India. But just kind of tell us about the general geographical locations, because you mentioned Nepal. And again,

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I for some reason, I assumed it was a state in India, but just kind of tell you. But tell us just a little about that geographical location and where it is in conjunction,

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India. OK, so Nepal is basically the small

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Himalayan country. It was the world's last Hindu kingdom. It's sandwiched between the behemoths of China to the north and India to the south.

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The two most populous countries on Earth. Yeah. So Nepal is literally between a rock and a hard place.

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And so, yeah, the British attempted to conquer Nepal, but they could not conquer

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Nepal. And it has been a independent sovereign land for for for history throughout history.

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So now the Communist Party controls the country. Oh, wow. But as far as the geography goes, it's right there between China and India.

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OK. Yeah. And so could you just say we talked a little bit in initially on Zoom. It's kind of just kind of get some ideas in preparation for the podcast.

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So starting at the very beginning, you know, you look at just India as a whole.

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When you think about the primary religion coming out of it, it's the religion of Hinduism, as you just mentioned. And and from that, a lot of the prominent new age practices, worldviews and just a lot of things that you're seeing now here in the

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West, because you've done not only you've not only been Nepal and in those areas, but you've also have been doing work in the

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West. And I'm sure there's many ways in which you've seen that take root as far as new age practices here.

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But start at the beginning. Maybe you can kind of give us a background because you were talking about India and its connection to ancient

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Greece. Tell us just a little bit about that. Give us a quick some cliff notes, history of India and also its relationship to where it really became a

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Hinduistic sort of empire. Right. Well, the history of India is very ancient.

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It's one of the three original most ancient civilizations right alongside the Mesopotamian and Egyptian society.

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The Harappan civilization dates back to as far as around 2000

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B .C. And the Hindu scriptures, specifically the

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Vedas, specifically the Rig Veda is dated at 1700 B .C.

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So it's very, very ancient document around the time of Moses is when these

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Hindu scriptures came to be. And so Hindu society, Hindu civilization,

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Hindu culture has been, yes, for millennia around for millennia. And there's been a lot of invasions into the in the

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Indian subcontinent, particularly by the Indo Aryans from the north, from Iran.

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And yes, when they invaded, they stratified society, they stratified their subjects into castes so that they would preserve their ethnic and racial purity in their mind.

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And the word caste comes from a Sanskrit word, which means color. The word varna in Sanskrit means color.

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Sanskrit is basically the source code of all Indian languages. It's like the as Latin is to Romance languages.

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So Sanskrit is to South Asian Indian languages, even also the language of Nepal and the language of Sri Lanka.

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Yeah. So, yeah, this is the history. And Islam conquered

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India for about a thousand years. The Mughal rulers, Mughal Empire ruled the different kings who ruled throughout

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India. And then, of course, the European colonizers came, the Dutch, the

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Portuguese, the French and finally the British East India Company. And then there was a mutiny in 1857 and the mutiny of 1857 resulted in the

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Queen of England, Queen Victoria, taking direct control over India and India being called the

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Empire of India and the Queen being called the Empress of India. There's no longer through the

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British East India Company. And and then in August 18th, 1947 is the date of India's independence from British rule.

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And wow. Yeah, is that so is there areas to and you can jump in here as well to like when you think about remnants of history.

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When I think about India, I think about just the history and it being really a primarily spiritual occasion.

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Look at the different, you know, temples and the different areas, especially people in the West. You think about the people like George Harrison, who made trips over to India, you know, when he was around.

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And that's just the perception a lot of people have now. But are there remnants similar if you went to like Gettysburg?

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I remember going there as a being in high school. And there's times where the tour guide would say you can be out, you can be walking the grounds, you'll find a random, you know, just just like a random musket ball or just some of the remnants of the past.

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In regards to the previous occupations, whether it was the British colonial occupation and their time there or the or when

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Islam had conquered it as well, too. Can you kind of see remnants of that or are there anything indicative in that area of what you see or is that just kind of a long really for the most part long lost?

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Oh, no, there are many vestiges of the previous rulers and yes, previous governments over India.

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Oh, definitely. The architecture is reflected in the architecture. Yes, battlegrounds.

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It is quite remarkable. I mean, of course, the icon of India, the Taj Mahal was built and was built by Shah Jahan, a

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Muslim ruler. And he burned, he was a radical

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Muslim. He burned down many Hindu temples in his day. He was, you know, a

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Muslim zealot. And so you see that, for instance, the Muslim architecture, you see vestiges of those pasts throughout

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India. Oh, definitely, brother. Yes, sir. I got a question, too. So throughout the time of India going through different kingdoms, conquering it and things of that nature, how did they retain their

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Hinduism? Did Hinduism stay? Was it did it stay similar or did it amalgamate from different cultures over that time?

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Right. Hinduism very essentially is syncretistic, so it tends to absorb other worldviews, other religions.

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It doesn't refute them. It doesn't seek to distinguish itself from other faiths.

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Rather, it absorbs other faith traditions and augments them to its existing worldview.

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And it's existed by, yes, absorbing these different worldviews into itself in that way.

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Gotcha. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. And then one of the things, too, I wanted is before we kind of get into,

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I definitely want to hear some of your stories. So if anybody is friends with you on Facebook and I've been there for a couple of years, that is you have quite a unique ministry.

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I mean, you're kind of going into really sort of these back areas of not the touristy side of India, but really kind of going into these back cities, you know, and just talking about these areas.

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We'll get into that in a second. But it's something that's very unique and you have a unique vantage point. But one of the things

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I want to articulate is that you're seeing an underlying worldview. I mean, the demographic and the geographical location, what you do in ministry, and we'll show some clips of your ministry on our social media when you record this, is just you're seeing an environment that's been radically affected by the

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Hinduistic worldviews. So we're going to spend a little time defining terms. So the primary scriptures in Hinduism are the

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Vedas. And so we actually just pulled, this is from God Answers, but it's just saying the main texts of Hinduism are the

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Vedas. And it mentions a couple others. And it's a compilation of hymns, incantations, philosophies, rituals, poems, and stories which the

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Hindus base their beliefs. Other texts used in Hinduism include the Brahmas, the

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Sutras, and the Aryan Yakas, I believe that's how you pronounce it. What I'd be curious about,

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Daniel, is give us a general description of the

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Vedas from your perspective. And also, what is it like culturally in India? Are people really familiar with the

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Vedas? Is it something that they just kind of know in passing? Or are there sections where it's very poor in decency, where people are illiterate?

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What does it look like in real life for you over there in the ministry that you do?

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Well, the word Veda is from a Sanskrit root Ved, which means knowledge.

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And we have a remnant of that word in our word video, for example. The word video comes from a Proto -Indo -European word, which is cognate or relation to the word

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Ved, which is knowledge. So the Vedas, they believe, yes, were sources of knowledge. The Rig Veda, the most ancient one, written around 1700

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BC. And this particular Veda is basically songs and melodies composed to their various Vedic deities.

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And the gods of Vedic India are different than the gods of India today. There was the god

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Igni Fire, the god of lightning was Indira. These are the ancient

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Vedic gods. And it's fascinating, the

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Vedas are not known by most Indians. The Vedas are written in Sanskrit.

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And only the Brahmin caste, the priestly caste, knows Sanskrit and are allowed to read

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Sanskrit. So the lower caste, which the vast majority of India's population is from the lower three castes.

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I think something like 80 % of the Indian population is not Brahmin.

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As a result, they do not have access to the Vedas, nor are they allowed to read the Vedas. But everyone will recite mantras, which are just basically like verses of song.

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And they believe they have magical properties and create vibrations that will be auspicious and will be good luck.

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And they will drive away bad omens and drive away evil and misfortune. If they say these particular mantras, they repeat these mantras mindlessly.

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Or repeat the name of God as the Ishkan cult does, the Hare Krishna. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, for example.

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So that's the Vedas. The very popular book, the book that Hindus aggressively distribute in India is not the

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Vedas. It's the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita, which is like the core text of the larger epic called the

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Mahabharata. That is the most aggressively distributed, aggressively disseminated

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Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, which means the song of the Lord. And by the way, collectively, all of Hindu scripture is about seven times larger, seven times more voluminous than our

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Bible. So there's a lot to it. But it's very,

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I'm sorry to say, very incoherent, very contradictory. And the

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Bhagavad Gita is a war epic. Many of the Hindu scriptures, the Ramayana, the

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Mahabharata, they are war epics. And they call for war. And this is why, in my experience, the

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Hindus have been extremely violent. It's a misconception, my brothers, to think that Hinduism is a nonviolent religion.

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And that misconception came from Gandhi, the so -called father of India, Mahatma Gandhi, which they call

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Mahatma, which means great spirit. His name is Mohandas Gandhi. But Gandhi coined a word called

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Ahimsa. Ahimsa means nonviolent resistance. He called for the nonviolent resistance of India against the

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British rule. But his philosophy of nonviolent resistance was adopted and adapted from the

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Sermon on the Mount. Gandhi loved the Sermon on the Mount. He loved the

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New Testament. Gandhi used to sleep with a copy of the New Testament under his pillow. And he said that Jesus was the greatest religious and moral philosopher the world has ever seen.

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And he believed, as many Hindu gurus do, that the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest piece of religious text and the greatest moral sermon the world has ever known.

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And so Gandhi appropriated the Sermon on the Mount and the doctrine of turn the other cheek.

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And he stole that from Christianity. And so today people say, oh,

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Hinduism is a very nonviolent, very peaceful religion. No, that's in spite of, not because of Hindu doctrine.

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Hindu doctrine is actually quite violent, quite xenophobic. The whole caste system is based upon xenophobia and based upon hostility and rejection of people of a different ethnic group.

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And so this doctrine of nonviolent resistance was appropriated from the Sermon on the Mount. And it's a misconception because in my experience, brothers, the

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Hindus are extremely violent, extremely violent. They resort to bullying tactics.

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And yes, they've made many attempts on my life as I've preached the gospel in India. Oh, wow.

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Andrew, what questions do you have here just from what Daniel has talked about so far? The Bhagavad Gita is available to all castes?

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Yes, yes, yes, that's right. Now it's been translated into English. I mean, it's available to all castes.

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It's not considered having like the magical properties that the Vedas have. But the Bhagavad Gita, that's basically like the four gospels or the

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Torah, if you will, of the of the Hindu scriptures. That's the most popularized. That's the most read.

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And when Westerners convert, you know, go to India, like we saw in that film, Gods of the New Age, when the

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Westerners come over, it's that text that they read. That text has been translated into English. I was on a train once in India, right?

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I was on the train and this guy comes up to me in these saffron robes, these orange robes.

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And he's a German guy. He's a white guy. And I inquired. He told me he's from Germany.

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And he's over here trying to sell me a copy of an English translation of the Bhagavad Gita. And when the prime minister of India met the previous prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, he gave him a copy of the

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Bhagavad Gita. He didn't give him a copy of the Vedas. He gave him a copy of the Gita. Because the prime minister of India is trying to spread

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Hinduism. He's a Hindu missionary. And in reference to the Vedas, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, believes that the myths of the

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Vedas are actual, factual history. He believes that there were airplanes in ancient India, that there was advanced technology.

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He believes, get this, get this, like, for example, that the god Ganesh, who is depicted as having an elephant's head attached to a human body, that this creature actually existed thousands of years ago in ancient

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India. And that this corroborates the fact that apparently that there were plastic surgeons and geneticists who were able to manipulate, you know, matter and able to put human heads, hybrid animals, hybrid creatures.

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He believes that's actual, factual history. I can send you a quote to that effect. This is the level of stupidity we're dealing with.

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I'm sorry to say, I'm sorry to say, spiritual blindness, man. Very smart Indian people. So do you think people coming from like America, they go to visit

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India, do you think there's like a massive like awakening to them where they go, wow, this isn't necessarily the peaceful place that I thought it was going to be, like there's a weird disconnect going on?

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Right. Well, when people come to India, the thing is the power of bias and preconception is significant.

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And in their mind, you know, India is the land of mystery. It's an exotic land of paradox and everything is illusion.

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And so they're already determined to interpret India in this way.

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They're not objective because to any objective observer, when you come to this part of the world,

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India or Nepal, as soon as you land here and as soon as you leave the airport, you're overwhelmed by the sights, the sounds, the smells, by the despair, by the poverty, by the disorder, the cacophony of traffic and the sad condition and the sad living conditions.

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It breaks your heart. The obvious disorder that is a direct consequence of this demonic

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Hindu worldview. Wow. One more question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jerry. No, you're good. You're good.

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When you said caste means color. Is there anything specific to like the color of the skin showing like the lineage and like people with darker skin or lighter skin get treated differently within the caste society?

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Does that mean anything? Definitely. And it's very common, especially in South India, where people are much darker than North India.

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For young ladies, for example, they put powder, they put white powder, like talcum powder on their face before they go outside.

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They want to look fairer. It's everyone's attempt to, yeah, they want to be upwardly mobile.

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They want to look fairer. I mean, you know, while Americans go to tanning beds to look darker, over here, people want to look fairer.

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Wow. Another question, too, just coming back on what you said earlier with the

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Bhagavad Gita being contradictory. Give us some examples of where that would be contradictory and where do you think those contradictions stem from?

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Is this something to do just with the underlying worldview of it being pantheistic, where there's not really an absolute, with basically having a worldview of one -ism?

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Well, right. Basically, the thesis of the Bhagavad Gita is that there's a great battle called the

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Karukshetra battle. There are five kings, the Pandavas, and they are engaged in a civil war with another kingdom that are closely related.

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They're all basically one big family. This is a large -scale family feud.

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That's what the theme of the Bhagavad Gita is. It's a narrative book. And Arjuna, one of these kings, is an archer.

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He shoots arrows. And the god Vishnu descends in one of his ten avatars, because according to Hinduism, the god

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Vishnu, the preserver, has ten avatars, and one of them being Krishna, probably his most prominent avatar.

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The word avatar means descent, and we understand it as an incarnation of a deity.

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So Vishnu comes down as Krishna and is his charioteer. He's his chariot driver.

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While Arjuna shoots his arrows, he drives him into the battlefield. And the book is basically a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, where Arjuna is very hesitant to go to fight.

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He's like, I don't want to go and kill my teachers, my uncles, my brothers, my family.

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And Krishna is basically rebuking his apparent cowardice, saying, you know, man up. You've been brave in battle before.

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Don't worry about killing these people because they're going to be reincarnated anyway. And it's their karma.

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They're going to get what's coming to them. And so I like to tell people the Bhagavad Gita teaches people to kill their family, where our

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Lord taught us to love our enemies. It's a quite tragic reality.

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The Bhagavad Gita is a war epic, and it calls for and advocates for violence. This conception of Hinduism as a peaceful religion, it's a misconception.

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That was, again, a result of Gandhi appropriating the Sermon on the Mount and attempting to augment it to his

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Hindu beliefs. And so you mentioned initially with the origins of the caste system, as you mentioned earlier, is that also is directly connected to the level of spirituality or awakening?

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You're talking about the people who were in the higher caste systems versus the lower systems. They would have maybe more access on some level.

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I mean, I would say almost like a priesthood access on an esoteric level in the higher caste versus the lower caste.

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Is it kind of set up in that way? Because you mentioned that too in relation to the people having more access to the Sanskrit in the higher classes.

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Precisely. The goal of reincarnation, what's known as samsara, and this is the Sanskrit word for reincarnation, is to be born up the caste scale, up the caste ladder.

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If you're a lower caste person, you need to be reborn into a higher caste, a higher caste, eventually as a

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Brahmin. And then after that, you are released, which is moksha.

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You're released from the wheel, the endless wheel of reincarnation. Of course, there's a there's a few, you know, quick, what do you call it?

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Shortcuts. There's a few shortcuts, like, for instance, if you're a widow in ancient India and you just, you know, managed to commit ritual suicide after your husband died, you threw your body on his funeral pyre.

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And what was called what was known as sati, she would get instant release from the wheel of reincarnation.

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Instant heaven. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very tragic. Wow. It's almost like the missionary

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William Carey. I'm sorry to cut you off real fast, but the missionary William Carey, the great father of modern missions, he was the one who lobbied against the practice of sati or the widow burning and successfully lobbied against it.

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So it's no longer allowed in India. Christian missionary who did that. Wow, that's good, man.

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It's it shows you what the spirit is behind this force of Hinduism.

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Right. The spirit is not the spirit of God, man. It's selling women to throw their bodies as widows under the burning pyre of their husbands and they'll reach salvation of some type.

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That is that is a scary, scary thing to think about. Wow. Yeah. It'll break your heart, my friend.

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It's that they consider widows to be a burden on society. Women in general are considered to be less valuable than men.

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And to this day, female infanticide, sex selective abortion is rampant throughout

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India. It's common for people even to murder their post born little girls to strangle them and to dispose of their body.

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In my church in India, the church I was sent out from, there was a man, he was using the restroom and he heard the crying of a little baby.

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And he realized that that was a girl who had been abandoned, left out in the open, just like the ancient Romans did. They're still doing to this day in this part of the world.

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And he adopted her and took her in his home. The beautiful story. Wow. It's common in India to.

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Yeah, yeah. Another question I have, too, because we're mentioning the caste system and some of the roles of the

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Vedas in the Bhagavad Gita, is just the nature of the Indian language of Sanskrit.

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Just because I know that there are certain gurus and even people who are popular today, you kind of put an emphasis just on that language as a whole of it having on some level, some sort of esoteric value to it.

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And Andrew, just so you guys know, too, Andrew's son poet is probably the biggest fan of Spider -Man you could possibly imagine.

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And where I'm going with this, Andrew, is that you saw you saw Spider -Man No Way Home, right? Yes. So in Doctor Strange towards the very end, when they're trying to get all the different characters back to the different multiverses, when they got those circles or portals, the lettering on all the portals is

28:42

Sanskrit. So because Doctor Strange in the Marvel Universe, he's a fictional character, but a lot of the spirituality that's actually depicted in those films, you know,

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I don't know if you've seen those, but it's talking about real tangible spirituality that a lot of people are into and practice.

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So the level while it is fictional, it's also not fictional. But just back to the issue of Sanskrit, just from what you know about the history and also talking about the different demonic activity we'll jump into in a second.

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But is there any is there any credibility that you see in connection to just Sanskrit or the way that people kind of look up or sort of adhere to that language as it's some sort of holy writing on the wall?

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Correct. It's considered a holy language, much like the Roman Catholics venerate

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Latin, and they believe that Latin is the holy language and they do their mass often in Latin.

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It corresponds to the Indian conception of Sanskrit or, for example, the Muslims, how they venerate

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Arabic and how there's madrasas that teach Muslim children to read and speak

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Arabic, even in India, for example. You'll see madrasas where the Muslim children have to learn Arabic. So for Hindus, Sanskrit is their holy language.

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That's the language that the mantras are encoded in. And so you're going to memorize certain phrases.

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And our Lord Jesus, of course, taught in Matthew, chapter six. The Gentiles think that they'll be heard for their much speaking, but do not heap up empty phrases.

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Your father knows what you need before you ask, and they think they'll be heard for their much speaking.

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We see that exactly happening in India with people mindlessly repeating mantras or like, again, the

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Ishkan, the Hare Krishna's saying, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna. They think they'll be heard for their much speaking.

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It's just, as the scripture says in 1 Corinthians 14, if I'm going to pray, I'm going to pray with my understanding also.

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It's tragic. Like the late great Dr. R .C. Sproul says, the Lord calls us to the renewal of our minds, not the removal of our minds.

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That's why you see this whole pluralistic worldview coming in. It's all an import from India, from Eastern religion.

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Wow. Do you see the constant mantras and all of these things and going with samsara, trying to go move up the caste system, do you see it as being a very selfish religion?

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Like the reason why all of these things are taking place is so you can continue to move up for yourself, right?

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And then reach a Mokshi that you're saying earlier? Milkshake.

31:29

Do you find that though, like in the culture itself, there's a lot of maybe selfishness in a sense?

31:36

Exactly, brother. The goal of the yogi, the goal of the

31:41

Hindu devotee is to escape this wheel of reincarnation and to acknowledge that all of what the senses interpret as reality is actually not reality.

31:55

It's an illusion. It's maya. And the word maya means that which is not in Sanskrit. It's an illusion.

32:02

And that suffering is actually good for the poor. The poor and the lower castes, they suffer.

32:08

If they're blind, they were born blind. That's because of sins in a previous incarnation. So in this way,

32:14

Hinduism discourages charity and mercy and acts of compassion, acts of benevolence.

32:21

Because according to the Hindu soteriology, the doctrine of Hindu salvation, a person is suffering, they're working out their own salvation.

32:32

Don't interfere with cosmic justice. That person is begging, that person squats in the mud, that person is blind or lame as a result of sins that need to be atoned for.

32:44

And since they have no savior, they have no substitute for their sins as we do our Lord Jesus, they believe they have to be afflicted.

32:51

And so if someone comes along and tries to alleviate their suffering by showing mercy, and giving charity to them, helping them, they are actually hurting them.

33:00

They're in a sense, they're prolonging their suffering.

33:07

They need to suffer. They need to just burn away their sins.

33:12

It's almost as if they're living in purgatory on earth and let them suffer. Well, it's almost as if they're spiritual felons, like from a past life.

33:22

Where there's certain people, all of a sudden you get a felony, and maybe whatever the consequences are, there's certain jobs you can't get anymore, you can't own a firearm, what have you.

33:33

But then now, it's like the same situation. You see people on the street, and that would make sense.

33:39

Because I think whenever you see anything happening in the world, whether it's charity, whether it's people in destitution, whatever the climate is, there's always an underlying worldview that's really creating that climate for what it is.

33:56

And so I think even when you kind of look at the last two years, on a total side note, just with COVID and the polarization of us versus them, on everything from the mandates to everything going on in Canada right now as we speak, to even things that you had to face with some of the challenges you've had recently, with your time in New York, there's an underlying worldview behind you doing the ministry that you do, and also the people that you're talking to and how they're reacting, for sure.

34:28

Another question I have, as we kind of scroll down here, is just kind of defining terms, and we'll kind of go into as well, too, how this has affected

34:37

India, and also ways in which you kind of see this carrying over into the West. So Hinduism, next to Mormonism, is probably the most polytheistic religion in the world.

34:47

And so you've got, you know, three on 30 million gods, but there tends to be a focus around gods specifically.

34:56

So can you go ahead and just give us the outline? We're talking about Brahma, you have Shiva, and you have

35:03

Vishnu. So maybe kind of go and help us define those terms, because when you think about Hinduism and those specific gods, those come to mind.

35:13

So just tell us all about those and how that's actually carried out in India as a whole and Nepal.

35:19

Right. So the three primary deities in Hinduism, they're called the Trimurti. Trimurti is the

35:26

Sanskrit word for trinity, or three idols, specifically. Tri, like a word, the prefix tri, like in trinity or trilogy.

35:35

And then Murti. Murti is the word for idol, actually, three idols. Brahma is considered the creator god.

35:45

Vishnu is the preserver god. And Shiva is the destroyer god. Due to a curse,

35:53

Brahma does not have many temples in India. Very, very few temples. Very few people directly worship

35:59

Brahma. Due to some curse that's found in the Puranas. It's fascinating. Vishnu is worshipped greatly in India, specifically with regards to his ten avatars.

36:10

He has specifically ten incarnations. One of them is Krishna. One of them is a great turtle, by the way, which according to Hinduism, there was a great global flood.

36:21

And Krishna manifests himself as a turtle and saved the world on his back. OK, that's one of his.

36:27

Another avatar, Vishnu, is a giant boar, a giant wild pig. Another avatar, get this, is the

36:33

Buddha. They believe that Vishnu incarnated as the Buddha as a punishment for disobedient

36:40

Hindus. So he incarnated as a false prophet to lead them astray. That's right.

36:46

Wow. That's. I never knew that. Yeah, yeah.

36:52

That's one of his avatars. They're anticipating the final avatar of Vishnu, which will bring in what's called the

37:02

Kali Yuga, or the time of Kali, where the goddess Kali will ride on a white horse and bring in the end of the world.

37:10

Just like the Muslims have the Mahdi riding a white horse. Now the Hindus also have a mythology of a white horse at the end of time.

37:19

Obviously, ripoffs, satanic imitations of Revelation 19, when our Lord rides a white horse.

37:25

It's fascinating. So what happens real quick at the end of the consummation of all things in Hinduism?

37:31

What happens then with people who are still in samsara, right? Like, do they just, like, what do they believe, right?

37:39

Like it just ends, their chances are over, and then there's like gone or something? That's a good question.

37:46

I have not studied that particular question in depth. Presumably, exactly. Yeah, your time's up.

37:52

If you didn't get out of the wheel of reincarnation by now. There is hell. Oh, the Hindus believe in hell, my friend.

37:59

So hell is a very legitimate concept in Hinduism. It just shows how conscience is on the minds of all of God's creatures, of all humans.

38:13

So yeah, they'll be thrown into hell if they've not escaped the wheel of reincarnation. And then there's

38:18

Shiva, the third God, who is considered the destroyer. And they say he has a third eye, and when he opens his third eye is when the world will be destroyed.

38:29

They have different takes on the end of the world. They have different eschatologies. And there's the Shiva cult, the Vishnu cult.

38:34

There are some who worship Shiva more than the other gods. And Shiva is depicted as kind of a rough character.

38:43

He's depicted as a long -haired dude that is covered in the ashes of the dead and who smokes ganja.

38:51

He's considered like a disreputable character, you know, an indecent fellow. Brahma and Vishnu are depicted as very conservative in their appearance, in their hairstyle, in their manners.

39:04

But Shiva is like this rough -looking dude, a dirty guy.

39:10

And so the Shiva cult has spawned many of the gurus, for instance, in the

39:18

Nagi cult. These gurus who put the ashes of the dead on them, and they cut themselves, and they smoke ganja, and they follow tantric rituals and heterodox rituals.

39:32

This is under the Shiva cult. So all Hindus will worship all three.

39:38

And most Hindu temples in India have what's called the Shiva lingam in the temple. The Shiva lingam, my friends, is

39:45

Shiva's phallus, man. It's an ithya phallus. It's a reproductive organ, and it's in a dish, and that plate is called the yoni.

39:53

Yoni is the Sanskrit word for a woman's reproductive organ. So in most temples, there's a

39:59

Shiva lingam. It's a cone and in a dish. And so they're worshiping reproductive organs.

40:07

It's a fertility cult. And most Hindus have no idea. They don't know that they're actually bowing before a representation of supposedly their god's reproductive organ.

40:19

It's so driving, man. Wow. That's why they need the gospel, man. It's being handed over to a debased mind.

40:25

Have you ever had any conversations with the people who put the ashes of the dead on themselves and cut themselves and things like that?

40:32

Have you ever talked to anyone in that? Oh, many times. Many, many times. We were in the oldest temple in Nepal last year.

40:39

It's called Pashupatinath. And, oh, man, the word Pashupatinath actually means animal husband.

40:49

Because, by the way, the Hindu mythology is filled with instances of bestiality, instances of homosexuality, transgenderism.

40:58

Shiva and Vishnu, for instance, had a sexual relationship where Shiva, he changed his appearance into a beautiful woman.

41:08

See, transgenderism and all of this is found in the Hindu mythology. But to answer your question, yes, many of these sadhus, we call them sadhus or rishis or sanyasis or gurus, they cover themselves with the ashes of the dead.

41:25

And, yeah, we've given the gospel to many of them. We've given them Bibles and tracts and spoken at length with them.

41:31

And you look in their eyes, my friends, and their eyes are like glossed over. And many of them, they're on drugs.

41:38

They've lost their minds, bro. You just look in their eyes, their eyes seem so empty, man. They're just filled with evil, man.

41:46

Yeah, and speaking of that, one of the things I just want to also emphasize, too, is that when you're talking about the gender confusion or the distortion of the male and female and even them worshiping, that one is neutrality is a myth, right?

42:01

You're going to worship something. In the same way in Scripture when it talks about to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, every religion on some level, it demands obedience and allegiance of your body.

42:14

You think about even like statism, like the state. A lot of times when you look at an oppressive state, they demand allegiance of your body in one way or another.

42:22

You need to go do this, take this, or else. You think about all those examples, but also you mentioned about the origins of transgenderism and distorted sexuality.

42:33

I think that's a direct result, too, brother, of what it talks about in Romans 1, verses 18 through 32, where Paul gives the direct, is explaining paganism in such a way that's relevant to all aspects, whether it's

42:49

Hinduism or any sort of distorted view, Gnostic view or what have you, but it's talking about they worship the creation rather than the creator.

43:00

And then one of the immediate results, too, it says God gives them over to a debased mind.

43:06

And then what you immediately have is a distorted view of sexuality and the distortion and confusion between the roles of the male and the female.

43:14

I'm assuming you're very familiar with that passage, too, brother. Explain, too, just as a whole, what that actually looks like with your missionary work in India.

43:24

Maybe you have a story or two as well, too. Right. It is most tragic to engage with these

43:34

Hindu gurus, for example, and the radical Hindus. And yes, they are often the ones who foment lynch mobs to violently oppose the preaching of the gospel.

43:46

Brothers, if you come here and you open air preach, you take a Bible and you stand in the public square, you will instantly attract a crowd.

43:55

Our Lord Jesus said a prophet has no honor in his own country among his own family. Not that we're prophets, but the phenomenon is the same in this culture.

44:06

If you open the Bible and you speak, conversely, because you're in a foreign country, you get great respect.

44:15

You've piqued their curiosity. This foreigner will come and talk. So a large gathering of people will gather, eager to listen.

44:24

But it's always a radical element in the crowd, particularly a

44:29

Brahmin priest or a guru who becomes jealous. Just like you see in the book of Acts, the

44:34

Jews are constantly provoked to jealousy because Paul is getting all the attention. Christ is getting all the attention, rather.

44:41

And they're moved to jealousy that they're losing their influence, their sway over the mobs.

44:47

And so then they, you know, what do they do? They foment a riot. And this has been our experience in India on so many occasions.

44:55

I remember particularly one time I was preaching in Hyderabad.

45:02

And usually I lead a team of preachers, but that day no one was available. So I said, I'm not going to just stay home.

45:07

I'm going to go out. Souls are dying, man. So I got my box of Telugu New Testaments, Telugu being the local language, about 100

45:14

New Testaments. I got my amp. I got my stepladder. And I went into the downtown area at a major intersection.

45:22

I began to preach. And after I had preached for maybe 45 minutes, then

45:27

I learned the Telugu language. Then I began to distribute Telugu New Testaments and engage in one -on -one conversations with the people.

45:37

And someone comes up to me and he grabs me by my arm. And he says, what do you think you're doing? And then he says, why are you spreading this white man religion in our

45:46

Hindu holy land? And I said, sir, I'm just here to propagate the truth.

45:52

I'm here to preach the truth, is what I said. And at that point,

45:58

I attempted to de -escalate the situation and attempted to walk away. And as I walked away, he grabbed me again.

46:05

And he screamed with like this blood -curdling scream, where do you think you're going? Why are you trying to escape?

46:11

Why are you trying to escape? Only if you've done something wrong are you trying to escape. And at this, there's a mob of like 30 to 40 men.

46:20

And they pulled me by the amplifier neck strap through the intersection.

46:26

And they began to punch me and they began to hit me. And they're saying, we're going to kill you and all these things.

46:33

And I was holding on to vehicles that were passing by in the intersection. I grabbed onto a motorcycle that was stopped in traffic at the intersection.

46:43

I said, please help me. Please help me. Call the police. Do something. And no one would help me. And they're dragging me, beating me.

46:49

And they said, you must say – you must utter these words, Jai Sri Ram. Praise Lord Rama.

46:55

I said, oh, we're going to kill you. You have to say this or we're not going to let you go. And I said,

47:01

I'm a disciple of my Lord Jesus. I will not say such a thing. And they punched me in the face again. And they're dragging me, and they're dragging me in front of their

47:10

Hindu temple. And they said they're going to force me to receive tikka on my forehead.

47:18

And this is – brothers, this is the modus operandi of Hindu operatives in India. What they do is they take

47:24

Christians and they beat them and they intimidate them. And they bully them into taking tikka on their forehead.

47:31

And they make a video of it. They livestream it or they record it. And they circulate it and they say, look at these

47:37

Christian cowards. It's just – it's a very cruel method of attempting to demoralize

47:45

Christians in India. You understand? When you say tikka, is that the typical red dot that's on the forehead?

47:52

That's what that is? Okay. What they call the Ajna Chakra, the kundalini model of the human body, the third eye supposedly of wisdom.

48:01

And so they're over here beating me. And by God's grace, one of our church members saw what was happening and he called the police.

48:09

And the police were able to rescue me right at the right time because they were trying to – they were trying to physically force me on my knees in front of their temple to receive their mark on my forehead.

48:19

And I will not. I call it a mark of the beast, I tell people. And so, yeah, and I was pleading with them.

48:28

Oh, get this, brothers. They were telling me – they're saying, why do you come to our land and you forcibly convert our people?

48:34

I said, really? Really? You're over here beating me bloody and threatening to kill me, and you're accusing me of forcibly converting people?

48:44

You're the one over here threatening to kill me unless I praise your God. You know, when I said that, it actually caused them to think.

48:51

But most of them all were drunk. Just like in the Book of Acts, you see when riots are fomented, it says they gather worthless fellows, like drunkards or whatever.

49:02

Yeah. Andrew, did you have a thought real quick? I'm just like, brother, I'm so glad that you're okay, number one.

49:10

Number two, I'm sure you have multiple stories of things like this happening to you. And, man,

49:16

I'm speechless, man. I'm thankful for you, number one. I'm thankful for the Lord Jesus for saving you and placing you there to preach the gospel.

49:24

One question is, did you ever go right back to that place, the same spot, and preach again? Yes. Oh, I went back to that same spot.

49:33

Matter of fact, the very next day, I knew one of the men in the mob was beating me. And I knew him personally.

49:39

He was kind of a neighbor. I lived right near this place. And I went to his house with a bag full of fruit. And I said,

49:45

I just want you to know that I care for you, and I don't hold against you what you did to me.

49:51

Because my Lord taught me, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink. And it was like his jaw dropped. He was shocked that I would do that.

49:58

To God alone be the glory. But, yes, I went back to that exact corner many times after that as well.

50:03

Oh, yeah. No, excellent. And so one thing I want to also ask, too, as we kind of wrap up the first part of our discussion, is that when you're looking at what your experience is like and things that you've experienced, and you think about your unique vantage point versus just a generic world religions class, where you'll say, oh,

50:26

Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism. Oh, these are just what people believe, and it is what it is.

50:34

But when we actually look at your experience and your vantage point and what you're seeing, we have a unique worldview that actually gives explanations to what is going on, both in the seen realm and also in the unseen realm.

50:48

And so I mentioned, too, in Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, when I was talking about when

50:54

Paul's kind of giving his thesis on paganism, when you also look at the gods of the New Age, we have an explanation for it, too, in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 16 through 17.

51:04

It says, And so, you know, in your case, would you make the case, too, that with your experience and just what you've seen with all the different practices, all the different temples, that there are also, these aren't just statues of, you know, whether it's

51:36

Krishna, whether it's any of these Hindu gods, that there's actually forces behind, demonic forces behind them.

51:45

Like, what sort of case would you make for that, both from either scripture, but also what experiences would you say would validate that as well, too?

51:52

Right, well, yes, to reiterate what you're saying, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 20 corroborates exactly, it reinforces,

52:01

I should say, the passage you just read, where Paul says, So Paul is very explicit, just like Deuteronomy, of course, you know, perfect consonants and harmony between the scriptures.

52:17

These are worshiping idols. I remember when I first came to India, gentlemen, and I was living in this hut in the village for several months.

52:25

And every morning at 5 o 'clock in the morning, we would get up, the pastor and I, and I would preach through the book of Psalms, and he would translate for me.

52:33

Indians, especially in the villages, they rise very early. And at 5 o 'clock in the morning, gentlemen, you're going to hear several things.

52:39

You're going to hear Hindus doing their mantras over their loudspeakers on the top of their temples. They're going to,

52:44

Om, Nama, Shiva, Om, and they're going to have Nama, Shiva, and they're going to have these chants, 5 o 'clock in the morning, right? Then you're going to hear the mosque with the

52:53

Adhan, the morning call to prayer, and the recitation of the Shahada, Allah.

52:59

So literally, you've got 5 o 'clock in the morning, you've got Muslims bombarding you, and you've got Hindus bombarding you.

53:05

And then, not to be outdone, the Christians are up at 5 o 'clock in the morning, and either they're playing a recording of a

53:12

Christian song, or they're out there preaching. And so that's what we did. So I would, every morning, for several months, at 5 o 'clock in the morning,

53:21

I would preach. And so the Hindus, the local Hindu Brahmins, they put a curse outside of my house.

53:28

And they broke a coconut, and they put a curse on me. And it's spiritual warfare.

53:35

And not long after that, I was accosted by people. I was on my bicycle in town, just a few miles away, and they rammed into me from behind, man.

53:45

They knocked me off my bicycle. They got out of their vehicle, about four to five men, and I was ready to defend myself.

53:52

You know, army training. But the verse came to my mind, because this was the first instance of violence ever

53:58

I experienced in India. The verse came to my mind, the son of man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

54:03

And I didn't come to India to be a street fighter. So I said, I'm not going to defend myself. And so these guys, they took a tire iron, man, and they clonked me in the face.

54:14

I have a scar on my forehead. They beat me unconscious. They left me for dead in broad daylight.

54:21

And when I woke up, a police officer was pouring water on my face. I came to, I checked my clock.

54:26

I had been unconscious for about nearly 30 minutes. And they had beaten me while I was unconscious, because I had bruises all over my body.

54:33

And I came to, blood's coming out of my mouth. They beat me really severely, man. And because I was the only white man in the town.

54:41

These people, like the villages I go to, they've never seen a white man before. This is off the beaten path, gentlemen. And so the nature of spiritual warfare is very real, very tangible in India.

54:53

It's very potent. Yeah, man. And yeah, they do their incantations.

55:01

But we know that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. It's like here I am today. I'm still alive after many attempts in my life, even in the

55:08

U .S. The FBI tried to prevent me from coming here. Just literally three weeks, two and a half weeks before I flew back to Asia, the

55:18

FBI invaded my home. About 12 guys in body armor on. Some of them had their hands on their weapons.

55:23

If I had resisted, probably wouldn't be here right now. They invaded my home. They took me into custody, okay, the

55:29

FBI now. And they released me the same day after a hearing with a judge on a computer screen in their field office.

55:38

And then when I was at the airport ready to fly back, I was at my departure gate and three federal agents,

55:46

U .S. Customs and Border Patrol agents. It's just so ironic, you know, people entering the country illegally.

55:55

Customs and Border, they've got nothing better to do but harass a missionary. Were you going to say that? Yeah. Why would they think you're such a threat?

56:02

Like what in the world? Brother, you know, it's not us. It's truth. Truth is a threat.

56:09

Just truth. This postmodern age of preference and pluralism as being prevailing principles.

56:19

Yeah, they consider us truth speakers a threat. They said you're not allowed to leave the country.

56:24

And by God's grace, my phone was charged and I was able to bring up the federal order. I specifically requested of the judge, please allow me to return to my work.

56:33

I am a career missionary. That's my job. And I sent him many videos, many of our YouTube videos to the federal judge.

56:40

I said, look, look, we did earthquake relief. Look, we have our orphanage. These children, these little girls are at risk of being sex trafficked.

56:46

We've rescued these girls. Look at this. And the judge said let him go back to his work. You know, I have no criminal history.

56:52

There's no indication that I'll be in contempt of court. Everything is going to be online for years in New Jersey.

56:59

And so no weapon formed against the president. Here I am today back where I want to be, back where my family wants to be.

57:05

And so, yes, they do do spiritual warfare, and often that manifests as physical warfare.

57:11

I mean, just physical violence. But the Lord protects us. Not one hair of our head falls to the ground without our

57:16

Heavenly Father knowing. And, yeah, so he keeps us, gentlemen. Amen. Excellent.

57:22

Absolutely. Andrew, do you have any last thoughts or questions before we wrap up the first episode or any thoughts on what we discussed in this first segment?

57:29

No, brother. I'm speechless right now. I'm speechless. No, this is really good. And I think what you're seeing here, and we'll delve into this in the next episode, is that a lot of when we talk about the

57:40

New Age, even what we've talked about in previous episodes, you're kind of seeing small aspects of it, but very much in a filtered through the

57:49

Western world. It's almost very much a westernized version of the New Age. And so I think what's really helpful for you,

57:57

Daniel, is that I think you have a very unique perspective being on the ground.

58:03

This is like a Frontlines report. This is like the Walter Cronkite on the grounds of the hub center of the gods of the

58:11

New Age. So, Daniel, just real quick before we jump into part two, I mentioned at the very beginning, if people want to find out about you, what you're all about, and are interested in just seeing the ministry that they do, how can they get a hold of you?

58:26

Well, they can contact me via email, and my email is gospelofglorymissions at gmail .com,

58:33

gospelofglorymissions at gmail .com. My Facebook name is

58:39

Daniel Stephen Kearney, my name. You can friend request message me there. That would be the easiest way.

58:45

And I'm just an unprofitable servant, gentlemen. I've failed in many ways, and, you know, it's just the

58:50

Lord, man. It's just the Lord. I'm an unprofitable servant.

58:55

Our Lord, brothers, He's the one who has saved us, and He's the one. It's His spirit in us. If it wasn't for Him, I'd be worshiping these devils right along with them.

59:04

He saved me from my sin. And it's just He's mighty to save, and His grace is great.

59:12

And we just want to tell everybody about Him. So, yeah, that's the best way to contact me. Excellent.

59:18

Well, I appreciate that. And so thank you for hanging out with us, everyone. And we will talk to you in Part 2 of Gods of the

59:26

New Age as we, next time when we talk, when we join up on Cultist, we're answering to the