Berean Call Newsletter

(Excerpted from America, The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice: The Rise of New Age Shamanism) Even the most enthusiastic promoters of the consciousness revolution admit that there are bad trips. It takes only one disaster—and there have been thousands—to contradict the basic New Age teaching that we’re tapping into a benevolent and good “Higher Self” through “altered states of consciousness.” Why, then,...

The following are excerpts from America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice: The Rise of New Age Shamanism. Written in 1988, the book documents America’s turning to concepts and practices that are rooted in Eastern Mysticism. There should be little doubt that the West is being overrun by the beliefs of the East, in particular that we are all God, which we have allegedly forgotten. It’s imperative there...

In 2015 I wrote about an article from the New Yorker magazine titled “The Trip Treatment,” subheading: “Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is now yielding exciting results.” What drew my attention to the New Yorker article was not so much my interest in the drug scene of 2015 but rather how it relates to what the Bible has to say about the increasing use of drugs in the End Times....

It’s interesting that for many the thought of God is only brought to mind when their situation is bad news. He’s at fault. He could have done something about it, but He didn’t. He obviously didn’t care enough to get involved.

There are many factors that make up the growing apostasy and seduction of the church. One of the most alarming, least understood, and fastest spreading errors is the teaching that this present earth, instead of heaven, is the ultimate home for the church. Accordingly, her goal is to take over the world and establish the kingdom of God. Only then, it is said, can Christ return—not, however, to take...

In 1983, I wrote a book titled Peace, Prosperity, and the Coming Holocaust. The first chapter was called, “A Contrary Scenario,” which I based on my understanding of Scripture. Here was the situation as I recall it: interest rates in the US were over 20 percent; the stock market was around 700 on the DOW, and the experts were predicting a crash that would make 1929 seem like prosperity; the housin...

The idea that kindness seems to be vanishing in our day and in our country is not a matter of a pessimistic outlook but one of everyday observation. Political differences, as an all-too-obvious example, appear to have reached a new level of ugliness. Kindness hasn’t disappeared altogether, yet neither has it taken society by storm. For many people, an act of kindness is little more than a “nice” o...

Belief in God as Creator and in His authority as well as in our responsibility to Him is almost universal among men. The fact that our daily lives do not measure up to God’s standards is also quite generally conceded, but the solution to this evident shortcoming is the subject of many theories and religious practices: “How can a man please God and be accepted of Him?” “What does God want of me?” T...

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves...." - 2 Timothy 3:1-2

For the last couple of months I have been writing and speaking about a “Christian” gathering of nearly 50,000 young adults at a stadium on February 23, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. This is a summation of my observations made after viewing hours of video of the assembly as well as my knowledge of the producers and speakers of the 12-hour, one-day event. It began with an enthusiastic exhortation given...

For various reasons, Christians of different sorts have tinkered with “the gospel of Christ” as though it needed adjustments. Not major alterations, most will tell you, but just some minor tweaking here and there. The changes often begin by one’s declaring that there is no real change involved, simply a shift in emphasis. Yet no matter what the rationale may be, the end result is being “ashamed of...

Atheists argue that according to the “myth” of the Garden of Eden, evil had too innocent a beginning to be the root from which all the wickedness on this earth could possibly have grown. Adam and Eve merely ate some forbidden fruit—an act hardly worth getting upset about.

There’s a Latin saying that is similar to what it means to be a Berean. The Bereans were Jews to whom the Apostle Paul spoke in the synagogue in the Greek city of Berea. Luke commended them (Acts 17:10-11) for listening to what Paul and Silas had to say and then for searching the Scriptures to discern whether or not their words were true to what was written therein. In a secular sense, that’s what...

A staff member handed me a couple of the latest magazine issues we received in order to review them. They were Christianity Today (CT) and Charisma Magazine (CM). We subscribe to them in order to keep up to date regarding teachings that are being disseminated throughout Christendom...

We have noted that the ecumenical movement plays a key role in forming the Antichrist’s world religion, which will be a paganized Christianity such as was developed under Constantine and became Roman Catholicism. It is therefore not surprising that behind the scenes, the Catholic Church has been pushing ecumenism for years. It is not only drawing the “separated brethren” of Protestantism back into...

Most of us understand that “missing the mark” is one of the biblical definitions of sin. The Apostle Paul uses the Greek verb hamartano for sin in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” That may seem to some as a bit unfair, since rarely would we think that not measuring up to a goal or standard is sin. “Missing the mark” doesn’t seem like much of an offense, consi...

A false idea exists in both the world and in the church that faith and reason do not go together when, in fact, one cannot exist without the other. When God called out, “Adam, where art thou?” it was not Adam’s physical location He was asking about but his moral and spiritual relationship with his Creator. As a bumper sticker says, “When you feel far from God, guess who moved?”

Let’s say I were to voice the question, “Heard from God lately?” to a very large crowd that had a mix of Christians and non-Christians. Among the crowd would be professing Christians, biblical Christians, cessationist Christians, charismatic Christians, pentecostal Christians, contemplative Christians, progressive Christians, conservative Christians, as well as a few agnostics, skeptics, and athei...

I’m extremely blessed to have friends who are very knowledgeable about science and whose calling it is to use their knowledge to reach the lost and to help believers stay the biblical course in the spiritual battle between beliefs in creation and evolution. I’m blessed because science is hardly in my comfort zone, and my friends are always there for me with explanations that I can understand (no s...

What is ecumenism, and why should it be updated? Ecumenism is a movement that began as an attempt to bring about unity within the denominations and groups that call themselves Christian. In the mid-20th century, however, a change took place (led, for the most part, by the Roman Catholic Church), expanding the goal of ecumenism to include all religions. That may seem like a worthy objective, but it...

We understand through the Word of God and through the evidence that daily surrounds us that God’s love for each one is the same and that His love for all of mankind is personal...

It has been suggested that the unique ability to form conceptual ideas and to express them in speech separates mankind from all lower creatures by a chasm that no evolutionary process could ever span. Although that is true, there is another capacity that separates man...

Among the many things that separate biblical Christianity from every religious belief system, two truths stand out to me as wonderfully significant. The first is that our infinite God and Creator has communicated directly to us, His created finite beings, through His Word—the Bible. The second is that we are told throughout His Scriptures that not only can we know about Him, but we can also have a...

During one of the Apostle Paul’s missionary trips he entered the Greek city of Berea. There he preached in the synagogue of the Jews. Luke, writing in the book of Acts...

I’m a fundamentalist…and I hope that all who consider themselves to be biblical Christians would declare that as well. The term, however, is used in a derogatory way by many people today. I don’t know why, other than the fact that many simply don’t like Christianity, especially biblical Christianity. But regardless of what its detractors think, fundamentalism is a very valuable concept.