Hamo’s post on the book The Celestine Prophecy is worth a look.
He’s currently reading the new age novel and believes it has potential as a way of pointing people towards Jesus.
There is huge potential to use this book redemptively. It clearly taps into the spiritual desires of people and articulates something they are longing for. If every culture has its ‘Jesus myths’ then perhaps this is a significant one from our culture?…
He has very cleverly taken some of the ‘yearnings’ expressed in the novel and linked them to ways in which they can be satisfied through Jesus.
It reminds me of the passage in Acts 17 where Paul uses the flawed spiritual understanding of the people to preach the gospel.
22 So Paul, standing before the Council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious, 23 for as I was walking along I saw your many altars. And one of them had this inscription on it – ‘To an Unknown God.’ You have been worshiping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him.
24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs – for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need there is. 26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.
27 “His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him – though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. As one of your own poets says, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone. 30 God overlooked people’s former ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone everywhere to turn away from idols and turn to him. 31 For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1996.
Our immediate reaction is very often to dispute the spiritual understanding of others trying to replace it with our own.
God has placed the same yearnings inside all of us. Obviously the author has sought to satisfy those yearnings in a way contrary to scripture but that doesn’t negate the yearnings.
To be able to take the God given longings for him expressed in those pages and direct them toward his way of salvation is surely what we are called to be doing.
I would in no way suggest any form of universalism, rather suggest that we lead people beyond their current understanding to the gospel.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
