Friday, March 21, 2008

What is Oprah teaching about Easter?

Check out this from the Herescope blog site;

During this Easter week, it is important to understand what Oprah Winfrey, Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle are teaching about Jesus Christ and Easter.

This week and daily throughout this whole year, Oprah has enlisted Marianne Williamson to teach from the A Course in Miracles, on her Oprah & Friends XM Satellite Radio. A Course in Miracles is reputedly "new revelation" that was channeled from a "Jesus" through a New York psychologist by the name of Helen Schucman.

Oprah is also in the midst of a ten-week New Age Internet class that she is co-teaching with "spiritual teacher" Eckhart Tolle, which is based on his new book The New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Plume, 2006). According to Tolle, Jesus' teaching of "salvation" means "a radical transformation of human consciousness" (p. 13) and the process of "rebirth" is "reincarnation." (p. 252)

The "Jesus" of A Course in Miracles teaches the following things about the Easter story:

"This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and the acceptance of the truth. Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion of God's Son, but happily in the celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning." (ACIM Text, p. 425)

"In you the knowledge lies, ready to be unveiled and free from all the terror that kept it hidden. There is no fear in love. The song of Easter is the glad refrain the Son of God was never crucified. Let us lift up our eyes together, not in fear but in faith." (ACIM Text, p. 428)

"The crucifixion did not establish the atonement; the resurrection did. Many sincere Christians have misunderstood this." (ACIM Text, p. 36)


"For the undoing of the crucifixion of God's Son is the work of redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value." (ACIM Text, p. 209)


"Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious." (ACIM Text, p. 37)


"The journey to the cross should be the last 'useless journey.'" (ACIM Text, p. 52)


"Do not make the pathetic error of 'clinging to the old rugged cross.'" (ACIM Text, p. 52)


"The Atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that,
never having sinned, he has no need of salvation." (ACIM Text, p. 237) [all emphasis added]

This is not what Easter is about. This is not what salvation is.