In 2017 an American woman called Doreen Virtue went from being one of the most popular New Age spirituality authors and teachers with a huge range of books and card packs (used for divination), to making a very public about turn to become a follower of Jesus Christ. I remember this happening while I was still caught up in new age practices, working as a spiritual life coach. I wondered what on earth happened to her, but I carried on using her ‘Goddess’ card pack almost daily.
Since then, God has been gathering thousands of (ex) new agers into His kingdom, with the movement only gaining more and more souls as each year passes. A quick search of ‘New Age to Jesus’ on YouTube will bring up a plethora of testimonies, with more being added almost daily. Many precious people have been brought out of spiritual darkness into His glorious light, and with New Age spirituality becoming so popular and mainstream, the need for God’s truth to be shared with new agers will only become more imperative.
People getting tempted by seductive spiritual forces is far from a new phenomenon – the Bible is full of stories about sorcery and occult practices. There are however also examples of people leaving spiritual darkness to follow God in both the Old and New Testaments.
King Manasseh of the line of David was not immune to these temptations, and even though he was a King of Israel he chose the forbidden practice of sorcery and set up altars for the worship of idols. He later repented as shown by 2 Chronicles 33 15-17 “He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel. The people, however, continued to sacrifice at the high places, but only to the Lord their God.”
The people of Ephesus were heavily into sorcery, magic, and occultism, and worshipped their goddess Artemis. But when some of them heard and believed the Gospel, the converts then publicly burned their magical books as shown in Acts 19 18-20 “Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.”
New Age to Jesus is far from a new story. In fact, it started in the garden when Adam and Eve were tempted to be ‘as God’ – “when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” Genesis 3 & 4. I don’t have the space to go into what exactly the New Age is but at its core it is this same lie. So, it is not new at all!
My own testimony took place during 2021 where I did a spiritual 180. Being a coach, I was used to helping people ‘a few steps behind me’, and once I believed in Jesus and that He is the truth, I wanted to throw a life jacket back to the people who were still where I had been. This came in the form of a facebook group called The Bridge, which quickly grew to over a thousand people. In the past few years, we have run retreats, meet ups, and an evangelism event and later this year in November we are hosting a New Age to Jesus conference. We will be launching a book at the conference called ‘New Age to Jesus; ten true stories of redemption’, which will be a great evangelism tool to give to those in the new age as well as being informative for those supporting those who have left the new age. The conference also has the mandate of equipping churches, so they can support ex new agers in their new faith as it is a unique journey.
The conference is at Stroud Baptist Church on the 15th of November, and you can find tickets here: www.thebridgeministry.org.uk
We also have a website: The Bridge Ministry
Lucinda Button – Founder of the Bridge Ministry
