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Is Oprah starting her own cult?

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By Roger Friedman:

Oprah Winfrey may have gone too far in exploiting and distributing the teachings of a questionable New Age writer.

On Monday night, Winfrey conducted her weekly Web “event” seminar with New Age writer Eckhart Tolle. His message: “Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”

Got that?

The seminar was No. 7 in a series of 10. On the first 90-minute Webcast with Tolle, Oprah extolled the author’s virtues, calling his best-selling “New Earth” book “one of the most important books of our time,” the seminars one of “the most exciting things I’ve ever done.”

Imagine that Winfrey considers her conversations with Tolle, a man with a shady and un-checkable background, more important than her schools in Africa and Mississippi for underprivileged children, more important than her Angel Charity network or her zillion-dollar syndicated TV show. Tolle must be something else!

But it’s not like Winfrey is endorsing Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison, serious, educated artists with portfolios. Tolle is more like Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut’s science-fiction crackpot alter-ego.

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Church of Oprah – New Age Purpose
Eckart Tolle’s books, The Power Now and Stillness Speaks, provide the doctrine for what many regard as the “Church of Oprah.” In his latest bestseller, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Tolle “draws from the guiding principles of multiple religions.”¹ The super-star talk show host Oprah Winfrey predicts, “I think he [Tolle] is a prophet for our time.”² Her XM satellite station began January 2008 — teaching a course in miracles (concurring with New Age teaching). Her 10-week Internet course based on Tolle’s “New Earth” book began March 3, 2008.

During her Oprah & Friends (Soul Series) radio program, Oprah revealed her purpose in life: “I’m so excited to tell you about my newest book club selection, A New Earth . . . I believe and try to live by the message of this book . . . it caused a greater sense of awakening for me.”³ Oprah’s believes her life purpose is to awaken the entire world to “your life’s purpose.”

Church of Oprah – The Beliefs
If the church of Oprah actually does exist, then how do Oprah and Tolle envision the “awakening” of their disciples? Tolle responds:

Minimize Your Thoughts – “You are no longer possessed by the thinking mind . . .You don’t rely on thought anymore; you go beyond thinking . . . You suddenly find there’s another dimension deeper than thought inside you . . . I call it stillness . . . an aware presence, nothing to do with past or future.”⁴
Live for the Moment – “A continuous refocusing on what really matters . . . which is the present moment. People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future . . . The present moment is your life. It’s nowhere else — never, ever.”⁵
Let Your Consciousness Evolve – “Our ability to think more and more, so that gradually we became identified with thinking, was how we lost a deeper connectedness with life — with Paradise. . . we are now at an evolutionary transition where far more human beings than ever before are able to go beyond ego into a new state of consciousness.”⁶

Church of Oprah – Comparison to the Bible
Eckhart Tolle’s beliefs characterize the church of Oprah which coincides with the New Age doctrine of evolutionary Godhood, as well as the union of earth and nature as “Gaia.” These ideas are contradictory to the teachings in the Bible.

Religion is man reaching out to God. Salvation, as presented in the Bible, is God’s love and mercy reaching out to imperfect man:

Christ’s Mind – Instead of abandoning the thought-process, the Bible tells us that when we have a relationship with God, we gain understanding because we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:14–16). Any past guilt and future fears dissolve as we place our trust in God who created our bodies as well as our minds (Isaiah 26:3; Philippians 4:6–7).
New Hope And A Future – Each one of us has struggled with our past. But God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, not only sets us free from condemnation, but offers us a new life and future (2 Corinthians 5:16–18). We are so highly valued by God that He actually custom-designed your life (Jeremiah 29:11–13).
A Transformed Life – We can never form a connection for ourselves to heaven (Paradise) through meditation, rituals, or philanthropic deeds. We are imperfect humans, sinful by nature. So Jesus’ perfect, sinless life was offered in our place, “giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 3:22–24; 5:21).

In her own words, Oprah’s “religion” teaches: “There are many paths to what you call God . . . Her path might be something else and when she gets there she may call it ‘light’ . . . If her loving, kindness, and generosity bring her to the same point, it doesn’t matter if she calls it God or not.”⁷ The Scriptures say false teachers “will cleverly teach their destructive heresies about God . . . In their greed they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction is on the way” (2 Peter 2:1–3).

Learn More about New Age!

¹ ”The Book that Changed Oprah’s Life,” Good Housekeeping’s Quick & Simple, April 29, 2008, p. 18.
² Oprah Winfrey, “Oprah Talks to Eckhart Tolle, O, The Oprah Magazine, May 2008, p. 298.
³ ”Oprah’s New Religion – You will not believe your Ears!” – Video
⁴ (Oprah Winfrey, pp. 298–299).
⁵ (Oprah Winfrey, p. 344).
⁶ (Oprah Winfrey, p. 346).
⁷ You-Tube Video Interview with her audience “The Church of Oprah Exposed”

Tolle’s top-selling books may draw more people into the occult than any previous guru the world has known. Yet, it’s all part of an ongoing spiritual war! Our eternal sovereign God reigns over all, but His created opponent does all he can to tempt, trick and test humanity during his allotted time.Taken from…..

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