How do you witness to people with spiritual experiences in other religions?

Maria Billingsley

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New Age people
You should know by now that Satan comes as an angel of light. New age people are deceived and not the least bit interested in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That being said, sin ways heavy on the conscience of people no matter what they believe in. Sin relief is the way to truth my friend.
 
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jamiec

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Many Christians emphasize the importance of having an actual relationship with God/Jesusas opposed to merely being religious. The question What is the origin of the "religion vs. relationship" dichotomy?attests very well to this fact. But what about when people from other religions claim to have similar personal relationship experiences with their deities? For example, a Muslim claiming to have a personal relationship with Allah, a Hindu claiming to have a personal relationship with Brahman, a Hare Krishna claiming to have a personal relationship with Lord Krishna, a New Ager claiming to have a personal relationship with the Universe, their spirit guides, their higher self, etc.
In how many of these religions do people think in those terms, though ?
Qualitatively speaking, what sets the Christian relationship with Godapart from relationshipexperiences that people claim to have in other religions? What makes the Christian relationship with Godspecial and unique? Are people in other religions just having counterfeit, deceitful experiences?
1) Christ is the difference. The difference is not in what man does or thinks or believes - the difference is in Christ, and is Christ. If a Christian has any experience of God, what gives that any specialness it may have is not the recipient, but the One Who gives it.

Christ is why the the Christian relationship with God is special - as a matter of religious sociology & psychology, there is nothing very special about Christianity: other religions have holy books, prophets, saints, seers, martyrs, miracles, holy places, sacrifices, mysticisms, prayers, hymns, holy meals, washings, dying gods, rising gods, salvations, rebirths, & so forth. Even in His manner of death He was not unusual. The ordinariness of His Earthly Life is one of the most striking things about it. And almost all of it has gone unrecorded.

2) As for “being religious” - the term is (like so many) ambiguous. A Christian who lives by the faith he professes, is religious. To put into practice one’s beliefs in whatever deity or deities one worships, is to act religiously.

When some Evangelicals say “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion”, they may be confusing the practice of the Christian Faith with the vices of formalism & merely routine religious practice which are occasional features of its practice. Christianity in the NT and in all the “liturgical” Churches unites both the relational aspect of Christianity, & the practice of it. To separate the two, is a sign of something wrong.

Love of spontaneity, dislike of set prayers, unease with Church liturgies, seem to be related to the Protestant search for true inward religious sincerity & godliness, and perhaps owe something to Protestant aversion to Rome & its ways. The Puritans were profoundly Protestant - they also valued set forms of prayer, and very highly valued true inward religion & godliness: their zeal for “true religion” is what made them Puritans.

The love of spontaneity seems not unrelated to the kind of Christianity that highly values emotions & alleged wonders. FWIW, that kind of religious practice is not confined to Christianity: ecstatic religion is well known from pre-Christian Greek religion.

From a purely human POV, Christianity is not special. Christ is all that is special about it. And that changes everything.

3) The virtues of unbelievers, if they are genuine at all, are genuine virtues: love of justice, in a pagan, is as really a virtue as in a Christian. Justice ought to be loved; by loving & seeking it, people do something good. That too is a grace of God.

IMHO, all who come to Christ do so because the whole of their lives before coming to faith in Him has been a preparation for coming to Him.

Everything in creation, ISTM, before the Birth of Christ, was a preparation for that one event. Why did God create the heavens and all that is in them ? For Christ. That is an indication of how valuable & how important He is. The conversion of the individual, is a result of, and a detail within, that event. Because He has come to us, it is possible for us to go to Him.

4) Are there counterfeit experiences of God among non-Christians ? It would be very remarkable if there were not. And so are there among Christians. This is why discernment of spirits, and at times exorcism, and caution in judging such matters, are so necessary.
Lastly, how can a Christian evangelize or witness to a person who claims to have a "personal relationship with God" and all sorts of spiritual experiences in a different religion?
5) God is Lord of every instant of all parts of all Earthly lives - not just of the Christian/religious/orthodox bits. If people have a genuine experience of God’s grace, that is from God alone. If they are open to God’s grace, that is itself a grace of God. The entirety of human salvation, in all its parts, for every human being ever, is a gift of God’s grace. Everything good that Christians or others have, comes, insofar as it is good, from God. All truth is God’s, no matter what its human source.

God bestows His grace, not as we might think good, but as He judges good. It is possible to judge a religious system to be false as a whole, without judging all of its parts to be false. There are many reports of miracles in Roman history: if any reported miracles were truly supernatural, then they were truly the work of God.

Another angle from which to see your question: perhaps we should see “a "personal relationship with God" and all sorts of spiritual experiences in a different religion?” - if genuine - as Christian things in non-Christian settings ? By this reckoning, pagan piety and wisdom may be Christian things, in pagan settings. Dying gods may be satanic frauds, as some of the Fathers thought; they might equally well be foreshadowings, sent by God, of the Death of Christ, the only dying god with a date in history.

Whether one regards non-Christianity benignly, as incomplete Christianity; or (less benignly) as human folly or demonic fraud, is partly a matter of emphasis. From a Christian POV, all were and are governed by Divine Providence.

So rather than trashing or ignoring the graces people have received already, ISTM that would-be evangelisers should point them out as signs of God’s Favour, & value them, & build on them.

Apologies for length.
 
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