A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose is a best-selling book, by Eckhart Tolle. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and his book is in Oprah’s Book Club. This outstanding book presents an open, loving, expansive conception of God and spirituality vs. religion. Religion is restrictive while spirituality is freeing. Religion is about controlling people’s lives to conform to religious rules and traditions while spirituality is about empowering people to become the best they can be. This is the same totally loving conception of God and expansive view of spirituality articulated by Boyd C. Purcell in his book, Spiritual Terrorism: Spiritual Abuse from the Womb to the Tomb. Dr. Purcell also presents the Biblical truth that there will be a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1).
Literal-minded Christians also believe that there will be new a heaven and a new earth but they relegate this happening to the “Millennial Reign of Christ” (Rev. 20). This means that human beings will not have learned to live in peace with each other so Christ will have to return to save humans from blowing each other off the planet. He will then set up his one-thousand year rule to enforce peace on earth. Consequently, human beings not having learned to live peacefully with each other without God enforcing the rules, will again go to war with each other at the end of Christ’s one-thousand year reign. Only by divine intervention and power can peace be accomplished and maintained. George MacDonald, the “master” of C.S. Lewis, wisely said that if God has to conquer even one square foot of the cosmos by force and fear, God will have to rule it the same way. But, therein is a huge problem for God since God’s kingdom is a realm of love and light, not fear and force.
God will, therefore, fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of peace on earth (2:4) by the power of love, not military might. The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord” (4:6). Love is the most powerful force in the universe. God’s goal is to cast out all fear and perfect all people in His unconditional, everlasting, perfect love (I John 4:18).
Einstein said that if there is ever a World War III we will fight the war after that one with sticks and stones. Thus, in the nuclear age, we will have bombed ourselves back to the Stone Age. If we, as human beings, insist on fighting and killing each other that may well happen since God will not violate our free will. That could be the way we finally learn to live in peace with each other. But that is not necessary; there is the easy way, rather than the hard way, of having peace on earth. The Bible records God saying, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and will seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (II Chron. 7:14). As Purcell contends, God eventually, as sinners willingly turn to Him, will forgive all sins and heal the whole world!
Tolle stated that religion tends to be divisive rather than a unifying force in our world racked by religious strife. Purcell stated that ultimately mankind will discover the power of love which will be the greatest unifying power the world has ever seen. This will even be greater than the discovery of fire. When religious use of the word “fire” is understood symbolically, rather than literally, universal peace on earth and universal salvation in heaven are clearly the teachings of Christianity and all major world religions! Let us learn the true meaning of religious words and then use these words to heal relationships and our world rather than to divide and destroy.
HEALING OR DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF WORDS WORDS
With words I wield destructive force
With words I can tear lives apart
With words I change history’s course
With words I reveal my inner heart
Words can heal, words can destroy
Words can make us calm
Words can comfort, words can annoy
Words can be a healing balm
Miracle and curse
Praise and perverse
Words are the window of the soul…
Bobby A. Miller, II, M.D., Author of
A Christian Psychiatrist’s Prayer
Emotional Healing Through Poetry
In the meaning of the word “Buddhism”—
enlightenment—everyone in the whole world will become God enlightened!
In the meaning of the word “Christian” as a
follower of the Christ—the Incarnation of God—
everyone in the whole world will become Christian!
In the meaning of the word “Islam”—submission to
God—everyone in the whole world will become Islamic!
In the meaning of the word “Muslim”—
one who submits to God—everyone in the in the whole world will become Muslim!
In the meaning of the Hindu word “Krishna”—
God consciousness—everyone in the whole world will become conscious of God!
In the meaning of the Hebrew word “Messiah”—
God’s Anointed One—everyone in the whole world will become Jewish–Messianic!
In the meaning of the word “Atonement”—
at-one-ment—everyone in the Whole Universe will become at one and live in oneness with God and all created beings!