115. Popular New Age Beliefs vs The Bible

“All paths lead to God” sounds loving and open minded, but I don’t think it’s harmless. I’m Danielle Venables, and I’m sharing why I believe some of the most popular New Age beliefs are not just different options for spirituality but counterfeits that can slowly pull us away from Jesus while still feeling bright, moral, and empowering.

I walk through five big ideas I once believed myself: every religion leads to the same destination, Jesus as an enlightened teacher or ascended master, the “you are divine” and co-creator message, the claim that good and evil are illusions, and the assumption that anything labeled light work must be good. Along the way I contrast those beliefs with Scripture like John 14:6, John 1:1, Isaiah 43:10, Genesis 3:5, Isaiah 5:20, and 2 Corinthians 11:14, and I explain why “it worked for me” isn’t the same thing as “it’s from God.”

If you’ve experimented with tarot, divination, Akashic Records, energy healing, or channeled spiritual teaching and you’re wrestling with why it felt helpful, you’re not alone. I also share how my perspective shifted, why discernment matters, and why I think real peace looks different when it’s grounded in the living God rather than self as the final authority. I’m also teeing up a part two, because there’s more to unpack.

Listen, share this with someone who’s spiritually curious, and if it raises questions for you, reach out. Subscribe to Counterculture Mama Podcast and leave a review so more people can find these conversations.

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Transcript

How Counterfeits Pull You Off Course

All Paths Lead To God?

Jesus As Ascended Master Claim

The You Are Divine Doctrine

Is Evil Just An Illusion?

Light Work And The Angel Of Light

The Frog In Boiling Water

Seeking Jesus From A New Age Start

Closing Thoughts And Part Two

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hello and welcome to another episode of Counterculture Mama Podcast. I am your host, Danielle Venables, and for those of you who are new here, I will give just a little bit of a backstory. So I was raised Catholic, left the church when I was about 15 or so, and spent the subsequent 14 years sort of considering myself agnostic, believing that there was truth in multiple different religions and that they were all pointing to the same God, and that maybe they just disagreed a little bit about the details, but that it was all, you know, pointing to the same place. After sort of journeying through and holding that belief system for quite a while, then I found myself in the new age. I was doing psychic readings, I wrote and published an oracle deck. And so that part of my journey, you know, I was I was full-time like running a business centered around new age spiritual principles and success and wealth and those kinds of things. Um and then as my oracle deck actually was in the process of going into circulation, I was called back to Jesus. So you can find testimony videos on my channel already. I do plan to re-record those because there are pieces that have even changed and shifted since the last one that I did a few months ago. Um but that gives you a little bit of a cliff notes of where I am coming from today. And the purpose of today's episode is going to be a little bit different. What I want to do is highlight some of the key new age beliefs and contrast them with the truth. Because what often happens is Satan will distort, he will actually like craft and make things look really convincing and make things look really good, like basically close enough to the truth that you'll believe it and you'll take the bait. Um so as opposed to an outright opposition, right? Where okay, if if God says this is good, then Satan's gonna say this is terrible. Instead, what he's gonna do is he's gonna say, he's gonna present an idea that is very similar to what God has deemed good because we are coded with the moral code of God. Um, but he's he's gonna take that and he's gonna make a counterfeit. And that counterfeit is gonna be similar enough that it's almost gonna be imperceptible to most people that maybe there's a dark side to that or maybe that's not 100% true, and he's gonna package it up as appearing good while directing you just like one or two degrees off of the truth. And the reason that he does that is to slowly guide you away. So, like I said, by design, we are coded with God's moral code, which means that we do have an innate discernment for right and wrong. Even as kids, when you're doing something that you know is wrong, like you know deep down that it's wrong. But part of what happens as humans is that we can be desensitized to evil, right? So by presenting things as good and slowly luring you into evil over time, it's a way to slowly desensitize you, slowly like calibrate your mind to accept different forms of evil and to lower your defenses as far as your discernment. And all of a sudden, when that discernment starts to get kind of messed up, a little bit upside down, um, you know, then he can take you farther and farther away from God, and that's where things start to get bad. So if you have watched other New Age to Jesus testimonies, like the story's always the same. And I actually saw recently some comments of oh, it's it's textbook, it's exactly what every other New Age to Jesus person is saying, blah, blah, blah. And like as if we're somehow all brainwashed, or as if we're somehow all being deceived in the exact same way. But what I would say about that is that actually it's because we all came back to the same one truth. So where in New Age, it's like, oh, I'm I'm gonna live my truth, or you know, I'm gonna seek truth, or the truth of non-duality, or the the truth of like whatever, all of that is deception. And the reason that we're all at different layers of truth isn't because there's different layers of ascension, it's because there's different layers of deception, and how deceived you are will determine your truth. And and and honestly, the original deception is that there's more than one truth. Like at the end of the day, there is an objective moral law that was created by the creator of the universe, God, and we have to get really twisted and distorted and do a lot of mental gymnastics that we don't necessarily realize that we're doing in order to adopt this agnostic, open, super tolerant, your truth, my truth type of mentality. Like we have to we have to be discipled away from God's objective truth in order to embrace and adopt those things. So stick with me. I'm gonna go through like a couple of the main new age beliefs. And like I said, because new age is so like, you know, pick your own um adventure, it's it's not gonna necessarily be universal for for all, but these are some of like the key new age beliefs that a lot of people have at least been exposed to, if not subscribed to. And I'm going to challenge those with the Bible because I find that there are a lot of people in New Age, and like well-meaning people, I'm not I'm not saying this to cast judgment, um, but there are a lot of people in New Age who will say, oh, well, Jesus actually stood for this or Jesus actually represented this, right? Like he was just, he was an ascended master. He showed us what it was like to tap into Christ consciousness, things like that. So I'm gonna be addressing some of those things in this podcast episode because I think it's really important to be clear about not what this channeled false Jesus is from the New Age. And I will say, like, the creator of the universe, and as a result, the son of the creator of the universe, Jesus, um, is not he's not video on demand, right? Like he's not Netflix. You can't just channel whatever you want from him and call it truth when we have historically verified documents from both uh Christian sources but also atheist sources um that confirm the historical um legitimacy of these scriptures and of the Bible and of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. All of these things can be found historically, and I think that's a very important thing to remember is that he's not just some made-up mascot for a cause. He is literally the son of God who came and died for us because the wages of sin is death. And when we sin, when we make decisions that separate us from God, that's all sin is, right? It's just a decision to dishonor God, it's a decision to offend God, and it's a decision to turn our backs on God. And some of them are done consciously, some of them are done unconsciously because we're we're human and it's human nature, and that's why he created a plan of redemption for us. Um but when we choose that sin, like we are separating ourselves from the truth of God, right? And so we're numbing our consciousness and things like that. So I am going to just get started. Um, so the first New Age belief that I believed and that I hear a lot is that all paths lead to God. Every religion leads to the same destination. Jesus was one enlightened teacher among many. Um, this is this is really common. And like I said, when I was an agnostic, I was like, yeah, I think there's some truth in all religions. And what I've come to learn in reading the Bible, which again is a historically corroborated document that has been passed down for thousands and thousands of years, that has been meticulously copied. There are thousands of manuscripts, and they all say the same thing, right? Like this is not just some thing that got pulled out of somebody's butt, like this is real. Um, so in the Bible, in John 14, 6, it says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, the Father meaning God the Father. Um, Acts 4.12 says, There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. And so these are early works of the apostles when they were um being persecuted for believing in Christ. And they all essentially marched to their death because they knew Christ. They knew he was the Son of God, they knew there was something different about him, and they didn't just die like for nothing, right? Like they witnessed this with their own eyes, and that turned them into believers that could not deny him. Um this quote, I am the truth, the way and the life, no comes through the Father, that is Jesus' own words. So in the Bible, that is in red letter. That is something that Jesus is recorded as having said. Um, so you know, another like sort of sub-argument on this is that people are like, oh, well, you know, Christianity is just about Paul. It's just about the people who like survived after, and it's not actually about Jesus. Like Christians aren't actually following what Jesus said, they're following everybody else and all this other doctrine. And at the end of the day, Jesus Christ himself says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes through to the Father except through me. So he didn't present himself as one path of many. He claimed to be the only path. And again, he is the only historical figure who has risen from the dead. So it's important to kind of listen to that, right? Because it means that Jesus was either telling the truth or he was wrong. And you're free to believe what you want, but then don't go taking Jesus and quoting his other words and ignoring the fact that he straight up tells us who he is and how to ascend to God, right? Um, the second one is that Jesus was an enlightened master or that he was an ascended master, right? And um just this idea that he reached a higher consciousness and showed others how to awaken to their own inner divinity, right? It's that Christ consciousness doctrine. And in John 1.1, it says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. This echoes back to um Genesis 1, and it is drawing a parallel between the creation of the earth and the beginning of Jesus as God in this incarnation. Um, Colossians 2 9 says, For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. So again, saying with certainty that he is the son of God, like he is God in human form. Um and then in John 10 30, again, this is a red letter um piece of scripture. Jesus says, I and the Father are one. So how do you deny that? And there are probably false prophets that have said similar things, that have claimed to be the Messiah, that have claimed to be the Son of God, but again, when they die, they die. They don't ascend again, they just die. And not only that, but their followers also scatter. When that false prophet dies, the apostles scatter, they're gone, like they they don't they don't follow that to the grave because deep down they knew. Deep down they knew, right? It's not worth dying for. And so the Bible never describes Jesus as someone who discovered divinity. It never even describes like Jesus never even describes himself as someone who's like, oh, just come and ascend with me, or um, you know, like he doesn't say that. He says, I and the father are one, I am God. Um, which brings me into the third point, which is you are divine or you are God. And the this you are God doctrine, I mean, I feel like there was a point in my new age journey where I would have denied that wording. I would have been like, no, I don't think I'm God, but you are divine. Um, you know, connect to your inner divinity, um, you are a co-creator with God. Like all of that circles back to the same doctrine that is you are God. Like essentially it's putting you in the position of God, right? And um, that we are divine beings and we have to remember our true nature, and that's like the secret to enlightenment. And biblically responding to that, there's our Isaiah 43, 10, which says, Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me. And I want to say about the prophets like Isaiah, um, it was literally punishable by death, not only um by like a justice system, but also like God himself would come and strike people down in the Bible, um, if they were uh, you know, blaspheming him in some way. And so when Isaiah is prophesying, he is, you know, at under the threat of death if he delivers a false prophecy. If anything that he says comes to doesn't come to be, um, he's under the threat of death. Um, so before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me. And then um in Genesis 3, that's a really good chapter as a new ager um to kind of go in and and dissect that. But Genesis 3, 5 says you will be like God. And what this is is the serpent in the Garden of Eden coming up and saying, Oh, like surely you won't die. Like you'll just you'll just know good and evil. You'll know more, you'll you'll have the access to this hidden knowledge. And so you'll be like God, like because God has access to that knowledge. And so, like, if you eat this fruit, like you'll have access to that secret knowledge. And um, there were some other like deceptions in there, like this the serpent said, like, surely you won't die, even though God originally, uh, I believe in Genesis 2 said, Don't eat from that, you will die. You will surely die. Um, you know, so Satan again turns around and says, Oh, surely you won't die. Um, so again, not in direct opposition, but at the same time, like planting those seeds of doubt. Like, did God really say that? Like, surely that's not the case. Um, and so you will be like God is the first lie ever spoken by Satan in the history of the Bible. So um literally the core New Age message is the same lie used by the serpent in Eden, right? Of you, you are God. You can co-create just like God. You, your divinity within um, you know, makes you this co-creator in your life. That is all the same lie as Genesis 3:5 of you will be like God. So, you know, this is well-documented scripture. This is scripture, for those of you who aren't familiar with your Bible, Genesis is actually from the Hebrew Bible. Um, so these are scriptures that have been long accepted by the Jews way before Christianity, way before Jesus was born, and like way before um the new covenant that we live under as Christians. So it's it's really important to kind of note that like this is a really ancient story and warning against seeking hidden knowledge and against elevating yourself into a position of God. Like that is that is the moment that caused the fall of humanity. That is the moment that introduced death into the world. And like I said in the in the opening, like the Bible says the wages of sin is death. And so it all starts to come together when you realize that all of these different books from all of these different authors over thousands of years, all inspired by this one same God, are all pointing in the same direction. Number four, good and evil are illusions. So um the new age idea is that everything is just energy and perspective, and there is no objective evil. This is hugely problematic because it literally contributes to the dulling of your conscience. Um, it turns everything else, it it disorders you instead of having a hierarchy of okay, God is at the top, he is the creator of the universe, he is like the ruler of everything, right? If he created us, he has he has the authority, right, to tell us what is good and evil. And what it does when we elevate ourselves to God and when we sort of flip that on its head, then there is no good and evil because we're just good is what is subjectively good for us, and evil is what is subjectively evil for us. And when we start to distort our perspective from focusing on what the God of the universe deemed as orderly, and instead we start to see ourselves as like essentially the God of our lives, objective morality goes out the door. And that I mean, I I I shouldn't even really have to explain why that is problematic. Because what if the god of self says that it's okay to murder? What if the god of self, and I know some of you are like, oh, I would never, right? I would never justify murder, or I would never justify whatever, but at the end of the day, when you're worshiping the god of self, you can't say that for certain. And that should be really sobering. Um, not because I'm saying that any of you would stoop to that level because I still believe that we are um coded and calibrated still to the objective sense of good and evil, but as we start to dull our consciences, we become less sensitive to good and evil, to sin and righteousness. And when that starts to get dulled, um, we start to make different decisions, we start to move differently, and that gives the devil a stronghold in our lives, right? Whether that is for money, whether that is for wealth, whether like I just said the same thing twice. Money and wealth are the same thing, but um, you know, whether it's for success, whether it's for recognition, if we start to um form our morality against what we subjectively want or what we subjectively feel, then things start to dull out, where God gives us very clear boundaries of what is good and what is evil. And um, you know, when we operate within those confines, we are tethered to an objective reality. So the Bible says in Isaiah 5.20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. And in 1 Peter 5.8, it says your adversary, the devil, prowl prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. So the Bible treats evil as real and personal, not just an imbalance of energy. Um I mean that speaks for itself. You don't um you don't just need to go balance your chakras to recalibrate to good and evil. Um, it really is an objective thing. And when you start to distort that in your life, things start to get murky. Point number five is that light work and spiritual energy are good. Um, anything connected to the light, energy healing, spiritual power must inherently be good if it's used for good. And this is one that I really got hung up with when I was first feeling the call back to Jesus because I was working in the Akashic Records, I was doing, you know, psychic readings, oracle and tarot card readings, things like that. And it was genuinely helping. Like I would be on an Akashic call with somebody, and we would clear a money block, and the next day they would manifest$600. And I was like, How can that be bad? How can that be evil? Like, how is that demonic? And so I would look at Christians who were calling things demonic, and I'd be like, but that doesn't make sense. I'm a light worker. Um, and what I will say about that is it is deception. Um, I think I've talked about this before, but in the book of Exodus, um, I can't remember what chapter, but there are these ten plagues that God brings down on Egypt for afflicting his people. And um in the first couple of plagues, like the um Aaron and Moses, the the two like Israelites that were sort of holding the power of of God, um would, you know, bring down this plague, and then the magicians of the Pharaoh would basically replicate um their their plague. So um, you know, one of them is like there were um like frogs. So if there's a bunch of frogs that are coming in and um basically just like plaguing the land, like an absurd amount of frogs, well, what would the magicians do? They would also do frogs, right? They would add more frogs, more destruction to the plague instead of fixing it or making it better, right? Like, so they had power, and even in the Bible, these magicians had power, their power worked. But what they were doing is they were connecting to false gods or demons, because anything that is not the god and the holy spirit is an unholy spirit and therefore a demon. Um, and so they have a degree of power, but those powers come at a cost, and they come as like at with a punitive edge to them, right? Like, notice how the magicians in these in these chapters in Exodus they can't restore anything from the plague, they can't fix anything, they can't make anything better, they can't remove the affliction off of their land and their people, but they do have power, and so the pharaoh was looking at that and saying, Oh, see, like my guys can do it too. Like, obviously, like I don't need to be scared of your God because my gods over here are also doing the same thing. And it's like at the end of the day, when he would finally beg for mercy, only the one true God could actually clear the plagues, right? Like, the Pharaoh would go to Moses, be like, please make it stop, and um, and then Moses would intercede for them and ask God to stop, and they would stop. And so 2 Corinthians 11 14 says even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. And this verse is what hit me the hardest. Because again, I was asking, How could I be doing this good? How could I be getting these results? If I was communing with demons, or you know, like whatever, right? Like, if it's so bad, if divination is so bad, if sorcery is so bad, like why am I getting results? Why why does it appear to be doing good in people's lives if it's actually evil? And so I really had to spend a lot of time wrestling with that, studying about it, looking into why are these practices condemned? Are my spiritual gifts not from God? All of these things. And when I found that verse, something switched for me. And I was like, he already warned us about this, right? Like, it's not just what does it appear to be, or what does it feel to be, or does it look like it's helping people, but is it from God? And am I operating within the constraints of what God expects of us? And when I started to look at it from that lens, not does it feel like light, but does it come from God? I started to notice the ways in which God's boundaries for us, his commands in the Bible, aren't to suppress us, they're to warn us. That hey, this guy's this guy over here is tricky. The enemy's tricky. And once you start to commune with him, he's gonna take you farther and farther away from you. And it's gonna come at a cost. It's gonna come at the cost of your mental health. It's gonna come at the cost of your relationships. It's gonna come at the cost of your overall just peace and sense of joy. And I'm not saying that when I was in it, I realized how dysfunctional all of those things were in my life. But by contrast, when I started to walk with the Lord, when I started to walk with Jesus, I noticed such a difference in myself, in my energy, in how I was feeling internally. And I'll go more into that in like a more vulnerable share in another video. But it's it's kind of like the the boiling water, like the frog analogy with the boiling water, where it's like if you throw a frog into hot water, it'll jump right out, it'll be like no, that's not for me. Um where if you put it in a pot in a pot of cool water and then you turn the burner on and it gradually gets hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter, it'll actually boil itself to death. And I was the frog in the cold pot with the heat turned on that was getting hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. And if Jesus didn't come and scoop me out of that water and put me back on the ground or in a pond, then I wouldn't have realized how hot it was getting in there, you know, like that that ultimately, and so you know, I would see people again with their testimonies, and I would be like, Well, I feel free, I feel happy, I feel whatever, right? Not realizing how much affliction I was actually facing, um, because I felt like I had it all under control and I didn't know any better, or I didn't notice how much things changed. But then when you get out of it and you come to the other side and you come to Jesus and He frees you from your bondage, it's like all of a sudden you look back and you're like, how did I not see all of that? How did I not see how dark, how heavy, how difficult that was, like how devoid I felt of joy and true peace. It's like you don't know peace until you know Jesus. Like you can think you're at peace, and I did for a long time. I thought I was at peace, I thought I was a joyful person. But it is on an entirely different level when you get to know the living God, and that's something that like I can sit here and I can tell you, and you can roll your eyes and be like, yeah, okay, whatever. And that's fine, that's your choice. But it is something that like you have to you have to go through it to know it. Like, you literally, until you're walking it, it it you can't even put it into words, and I think that's why so many new age to Jesus testimonies sound so similar. And if you're anything like me, you'll listen to them. And at the time I wasn't ready, and I would say they were just doing it wrong, you know. Maybe they had a bad psychedelic trip, or you know, they channeled something dark because their spiritual protection wasn't good enough, or you know, whatever. When I tell you I was a master of my craft, I I studied, I honed in, I was, you know, discerning all of these things, but you can only be so discerning when you're in that because at the end of the day you're still communing with the darkness, even if it feels like light. You can have this illusion of oh, I'm I'm a light worker, I'm whatever, but at the end of the day, it is all darkness. And um my hope with this video is that some of you are starting to wake up to that, some of you are starting to maybe feel that nudge, or feel curious about what could life with Jesus look like. Maybe you've watched some of the testimonies, maybe you've just felt it on your heart, or you're just curious. Maybe, like me, you started to feel drawn to Mary Magdalene, and then Mary Magdalene led you to Jesus. You know, maybe you're still reading those new age channeled books about Mary Magdalene and about Jesus' life. And I'll d although those aren't historically accurate, although those aren't scripturally accurate, and they're not quite frankly spiritually accurate, at the same time, that's where I started. It was probably in about 2022. I read a book called I Remember Union, and it was channeled about Mary Magdalene, and you know, there's a lot of heresy in there. I'm not gonna lie to you, but I felt drawn and I felt activated, and that was kind of the beginning of my journey. It was the beginning of me like being okay with God again and being okay with Jesus again, and starting to explore what I call mystic Jesus, which again is not the real Jesus, but at the same time, it's a starting point, it's a curiosity. There's a verse in Matthew 7 that says, like, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened. And um, if you are truly seeking him, even in that little way, even in a way that like maybe you're you don't really trust the Bible, you don't really trust Christians, you don't really trust the church. I mean, fair enough, I still wrestle with um with my relationship with the Catholic Church. Um, and there's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of bad churches out there. But if I was a Christian for because of other Christians, I wouldn't be a Christian. You know, like, but there are people out there who genuinely love Jesus and genuinely share the word of God and read the word of God and live to the best of their human ability in line with the word of God. And those people's lives are absolutely beautiful, they are inspiring, they are full of peace and love and unity. Even during the hard times, I'm not saying that you know Jesus is some magical solution where all of a sudden you're not afflicted anymore. But God doesn't promise us to take away all our problems, he promises to be with us through them. And uh that just makes us appreciate him so much more. And so, no matter where you're at in your journey, um, rejecting Jesus, exploring mystic Jesus, like whatever it is, like there's no judgment for me because I've been in all of those places. I have judged the people who went through their transformations and shared their testimonies. I have said I would never, I would never go back to such a closed-minded religion. I would never be brainwashed the way that those women are brainwashed. Like, I was in that position. And I said all those things out loud and in my head. Like, I rejected everything about it. I thought it was so fake. I thought it was so that those women were being deceived, that they were being brainwashed. And let me tell you, this journey of finding him has just been the most transformational, humbling. I didn't realize how much ego I had caught up in my new age stuff, where like I was rejecting him just from a place of ego, from a place of no, I don't need Jesus. I've got this, I'm a good person, I'm whatever. But at the end of the day, like we all fall short of the perfect creator of the universe. Like, we do. There is no way to earn his favor, there is no way to work on yourself or enlighten yourself to be good enough for him. We are made in his image, but we need to be cleansed by the blood of his son, and that's the gospel. Um, so I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm gonna do a part two at some point. Um, my voice is not up for it right now. I'm still recovering from being sick, but um I hope that something here lands. I hope that something here plants a seed with you. And if you have any questions about it, like please reach out to me. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, send me a message. I'm happy to like voice message back and forth, not from like this weird pressure place of like, I'm gonna tell you why you're wrong and why I'm right, but just to answer questions. Um, some of my favorite conversations since my conversion have been just talking about what changed for me, about my own experiences, or people asking questions, like, well, what about this or what about that? And just answering from a biblical standpoint, not to convince, not to push, not to shame, but literally just from what I've learned. Um, I love those conversations, those are my favorite. So feel free to reach out at any time. I am always, always, always here to have those conversations with you. And yeah, I hope I hope that this uh blesses you in some way. And stay tuned for part two.