Doreen Virtue

David W Ebel: Welcome to the God Says Yes Podcast. You are welcome here. This is another ⁓ chapter in the God Says Yes podcast story. My name is David Ebel and I am your host. After 50 plus years of ministry, I've learned to love people in all kinds of ways. But my biggest concern is that I want everyone to know what I've found. It took me 20 years to find out that God custom made me to love and He custom made you to love. That there's no accidents. God doesn't have an oops in Him. Everything He does is intentional. And he created us from the inside out, custom made to love. That's why we don't have to look like the same on the outside, because that's not the part he's measuring. He's measuring us from the inside out, because we're made in his image, from the inside out. Therefore, his love is our love. And matter of fact, he tells us that if we can't love people, he can't love us. Because we're not lovable if we don't shine his love. So we're glad you're here, whether you've been through hard times, betrayed, belittled, whatever. If how you got here isn't the concern today, what's going on in your life today onward, that is of great concern because hope is already planted in your heart, whether you realize it or not. And now is the chance for you to use that little bit of hope and to discover that Jesus is real. You may have been at a church that had some knuckleheads in it that really weren't good examples. Well then learn from those and don't be that. But don't throw out church because the person was bad. Go find a place where you can find Jesus and know it's real. You'll know because you'll witness it. You'll feel it. You'll see it in the people. The genuineness will be there. But in the meantime, today in this next time, I have one of my good friends, Doreen Virtue. Doreen has been through a lot of story. She's experienced a lot. And she's here to tell us who she was, what happened when she met Jesus, what's happened ever since, and what hope can we gain from it. Welcome, Doreen. Thank you, Brother David. It's great to be with you. So would you introduce yourself to us so we know more? Absolutely. ⁓ The fact that I'm here as a saved Christian is God's miracle because I was raised in a false church believing I was a Christian for 58 years until God saved me at age 59. I was raised in what's called the New Thought Churches. It's not name it and claim it, but it's this belief that Jesus was just a mortal man who came to teach us to be miracle workers like him. There's some truth in that, but they twist it so that it's me-centered. It's all about what formula can we get from Jesus. We were that church Christian science that was not allowed to go to doctors. up, this was in the 1960s and 70s, people in the Christian Science Church were not allowed to go to health classes in public schools because the belief was if you learn about ⁓ disease or any kind of illness that you will manifest it. They used that actual word. So they didn't want that in your head so you wouldn't have it. therefore if anything happened to you in your health they blamed you, it was your fault for having what they called a malpractice of your thoughts. And so I grew up with that way and it was very rigid and ⁓ fundamental that we were not allowed to say anything that they considered negative or think anything negative or read anything negative. And we read the Bible every day, but we only read cherry-picked verses that were considered quote positive and we skipped the crucifixion, we skipped the fall of Genesis 3. So I was told I was a Christian, we went to church twice a week. We looked like a Christian family, but we didn't know Jesus and we didn't know the gospel. And all this time I thought I was a Christian. I grew up and went to college and earned a bachelor and master's in psychology, became a therapist specializing in women's issues such as eating disorders. So I started to write books about women's ⁓ self-help issues about eating disorders and just different women's psychology books. And I was on Oprah, Winfrey, and CNN. in the View and back then it was Geraldo and Ricky Lake and Sally Jesse Raffia, all those shows. And through that I was asked to start speaking at what's called a Mind Body Spirit Festival that was a traveling group of self-help and New Age authors traveling through North America and speaking at different convention centers. And while I was on tour with all these folks, I started to learn from them about New Age methods like I became a Reiki master, which is an energy. healer. learned about yoga, started to do that every day and learned about all these chakras, past life regression, all the different things that I considered to be kind of exotic and it was that Gnostic appeal for secret hidden wisdom that got me. And after a while I started to teach these things to other people and I started to write books about New Age concepts and so I was a new thought for 33 years. and new age for 26 years. ⁓ by the time that God saved me, I was one of the top new age teachers traveling with the real famous teachers like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, ⁓ all the famous psychics. We had movie stars and rock stars and models traveling with us or backstage. I had learned psychic development, so I was giving readings to stars and just this real high life where it's seemed like ⁓ I was a success and people were telling me that my work was helping them and comforting them and I was mostly teaching about angels but from a not the true biblical standpoint. I was confused about what angels were. I was believing in angels like they were spirit guides that were genies that would help you instead of and so it was like 2nd Corinthians 11, 14 and 15. The devil masquerades as an angel of light and that the people who serve the devil can appear to be workers of righteousness. Those two verses absolutely describe who I was back then because people thought that I was ⁓ angelic myself. I really did have a heart to help people, but I was absolutely being used by the devil to point people away from the true gospel. And I was pointing people to the new age Jesus, who's considered to be a ascended master ⁓ that is basically like a ⁓ butler almost. I mean, it's so heretical and blasphemous, I can barely stand to think about it. But that's what the New Age thinks of Jesus, that he's a wish-granter. And people are always talking about that they love Jesus too in the New Age, but they don't know who Jesus is. I didn't know who he was until I absolutely went into God's Word, studying His Word every single day since the day I was saved in 2017. And then I ended up going to seminary to learn how to rightly divide God's Word since I'd been reading the Bible my whole life. but I'd been reading it through the lens of Christian science. So I went to seminary and got a master's degree so I could learn the biblical truth, the gospel centered biblical worldview. And ever since then I've been warning people who've got ears to hear that the New Age does not offer anything. It promises a lot. It promises instant healing. It promises a soulmate love relationship. It promises financial abundance and prosperity, but it's a trap. absolutely taking you out of... it takes your eyes off of the real Jesus if you're a professing Christian and if you're not a Christian it puts it it gives you this false assurance that you are safe that everything's okay in the New Age when it's not. It's funny I ran into somebody not too long ago at an art gallery and She was really happy to meet me and liked my work and everything until she saw scripture on it. You'd have thought I poured boiling oil on her. She got away from me so fast, she almost ran out of the building and I didn't say a thing. later, her sister came in and said, don't mind her. And I said, why? And she said, her beliefs and my beliefs don't match. I want to buy a couple of your pictures, but I had to wait until she was home. And I said, what's the difference? And she said, she has the picture of Jesus in her head. And the picture is not written in truth. It's just a picture that she's been told and she's bought into it. I, on the other hand, met Jesus. And I know the truth. But I love my sister and somebody's got to be there to tell her the truth when she's ready to listen. So I keep hanging around, waiting. I thought that is really, really matured to be willing to, you know, wade through the mud with her without, as long as doesn't affect her spiritually, to be there to be brave for her sister is an honorable thing. But it reminded me right then how easy it is to be led astray, to be. The Bible even tells us in the end days that there's going to be people who were bright lights and amazing leaders who get led astray and get sucked into stuff that it is not God. Some of the new leaders that are quote the scripture like crazy are also promising things that you can't find within the cover of the Bible. That's right. Yeah, no, it's true. ⁓ Right here I was raised with twisted scripture and I continued to promote twisted scripture as a new age teacher. I was one of the few new age teachers who was using biblical language and I was always pro-life too. So I was kind of an anomaly as it was. I was woke and very liberal in my thinking culturally and politically, but ⁓ people would come to my workshops, David, because they would think that I was a Christian. I thought I was a Christian. I would say that. would pray opening my workshops. to ⁓ God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but not knowing who they were. I didn't know who the Holy Trinity was. was like this person you talked about, just my own idea. And I was really influenced by the New Age ⁓ counterfeits that are out there. Like there's this book that's considered to be the New Age Bible called A Course in Miracles that Oprah Winfrey and Marianne Williamson popularized. And it is supposed to be a book that's channeled of Jesus. telling everyone what he really meant to say in the Bible. And I read that book almost every day for 20 years and it really, really confused me. And of course, God is not the author of confusion, the devil is. And so there's all these counterfeits in the New Age that make you think that, ⁓ well this is okay because it talks about Jesus or it talks about the angels, but it's not biblical at all. These are demons masquerading. And that's what I got trapped into and praise God that he opened my eyes and saved me. I mean, I was hellbound in taking people with me. I did not deserve to be saved. It was absolutely God's grace and mercy. had, I was, as an evangelist, I was on the road for a long time and I remember going to a church and they had horoscopes in the bulletin. Wow. And I asked him, I said, I'm surprised to see that there. And he said, well, ⁓ We have people in our church who believe in this stuff very much and I would rather have it in there and have them still show up than take it out and lose them. And I said, well, how about a compromise? What's that? Why don't you just love them and not put things that are Old Testament forbidden in the middle of your scripture? And he said, you know, I never thought of it that way. I went, mmm. You probably need to think a lot about that because if it's not from God, there's only one other author. So if it's not from God, then it's from hell. That's right. And there's nothing in between. I know that sometimes I offend people when I'm that direct about it, but it's kind of like I have a glass of poison and I have a glass of antidote. You get one. You can't have both, but you can have one. Which one do you want? the poison of this world or the antidote in Jesus Christ. If you've had this, there is an antidote. The old way can be changed into the new way. But if you refuse the new way, all you've got is poison. And it's an eternal poison. It's not something that you just live till you die and push up daisies. Our souls are forever. And so we need to have a forever mindset about how we live our lives now and then available for them. Yes. Yeah, it's really tough to evangelize to people in the new thought and new age because you are brainwashed in those movements to, first of all, you're taught there's no such thing as hell, no such thing as the devil or demons, and there's no need for repentance because sin is a made up concept from the Roman Catholic Church to try to control people. That's what they believe. They also believe that the Bible corrupt with missing books and mistranslation. So to try to get through to a new-ager is an act of God. And it really comes down to sharing the gospel of Jesus's perfect life, his sinless life, who came born of a virgin to earth and he was the only one qualified to take the wrath on the cross that we all deserve because we've all sinned. And he actually died on the cross and was buried as prophesied for three days in a tomb. And then he bodily rose from the grave. resurrected the first one to do so and he conquered sin and death on our behalf and now he's ascended to the right hand of our Father God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit three in one co-equal co-eternal our Holy Trinity our God and when we share the gospel it is the power of God for salvation and it bypasses the defenses of a new-ager because it is planting a seed that only God can nurture and When people get the gospel they might push back I did when I heard it I did not want to hear the gospel. I considered it to be negative. And in the New Age, you're so paranoid if you have something negative that you'll attract something bad to you. So every time I heard the gospel, I'd just put my fingers in my ears and wouldn't listen. But God's Word does not return void. So people who shared the gospel with me, including my own brother who was saved 20 years before I was, he shared the gospel with me. I was so offended. I was so angry with him. him every time we talk because he had the love and the boldness to share the truth with me even though he knew it would be not accepted. He planted that seed and God nurtured it. Praise God, hallelujah, and I pray that other people who are in the new age, God will open their eyes too and give them the sight in their heart that who Jesus really is because everything they're chasing in the new age, they're chasing after peace, they're chasing after truth, that's Jesus that they want. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except by Him. And when new-agers are saved and they finally find the truth of Jesus, they are overjoyed, they rejoice because hallelujah, they finally found it. Amen. I'm so grateful that you're sharing it so directly ⁓ because what's happened is we don't want to offend anymore. We live in a world where offenses everywhere. So if we're too bold, we're concerned that we're going to run people off. But if I see a child running for an ice cream truck and there's traffic, I don't care how much that child wants that ice cream truck. I'm not going to let the kid get to the ice cream truck because he's not seeing the big picture. He's just seeing ice cream. We who are growing up in Ingon, we finally figured it out. When we see people who are heading in the wrong direction, we can't just say, no, no, no, because that's not going to stop them from... We need to be honest. We don't need to be brutal. We don't need to be vicious. We need to kindly help them understand that the truth is the truth. Right, and New Agers are really dense, and I'm saying that because I was one. Some Christians say, ⁓ I'm just going to show how peaceful I am, but subtlety is lost on New Agers. They don't notice that modeling. They need to the Gospel. There's just no other way. So how do you reach a New Ager with the Gospel? Well, you pray with them. So either if you're having a meal with them at Grace, you incorporate the Gospel into the saying, Grace, or you notice if the new ager seems troubled, they won't ever admit they had troubles because new age is programmed. Never admit you have troubles because that's negative. ⁓ if they're saying, you just say to a new ager, is there something I can pray with you about? New agers love to be prayed over. It's like they consider that like a spa treatment. And so they'll say yes. And then you either, ⁓ if you're praying for them over the phone or in person, you just ⁓ pray for them. Thank you father that Sally is here with me today opportunity to pray with her and we thank you so much Lord for your mercy and your grace and we pray Lord that you would help Sally through the situation by coming to know you by coming to know that your son Jesus you sent him to earth to die for the forgiveness of our sins while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us and hallelujah he resurrected and all who turn from their sins and repent and turn to Jesus confess him as their Lord and Savior shall be saved Hallelujah. Thank you so much Lord for your hand on Sally's life and your hand on her soul and her her heart and we say these prayers in the name of our Redeemer our Savior our Lord Jesus Christ amen and so you say that while Sally is is kind of just passively receiving this prayer you've planted a seed and it's never going to be void and then you pray pray pray have other people pray too for Sally's salvation pray for God to that seed that you planted and bring her to the true saving light of Jesus. Amen. Well, I am I'm glad that you're explaining all this because it's one thing to know it in your head, it's another thing to apply it in your life. And sometimes we we get to the point where I've already told it to thousands of people, why do I need to tell one more? Yeah. And if we're not careful we lose our edge. We're no longer eager to tell about the love of God. We know we're supposed to, but we're busy. We have things to do, and we find a lot of reasons to slow down on the most important thing of all, which is sharing the love of God. Yeah, it's the most loving thing you can do, as you did with your illustration about the traffic and the child. The most loving thing we can do is point people to Jesus and to the real Jesus. When a new-ager says to you or anyone, I love Jesus too, it would be very appropriate to say, please tell me about Jesus. Just ask the new-ager and then she'll start to give you this crazy science fiction-like description of Jesus in Mount Shasta. That's what they believe, he's in Mount Shasta with other ascended master gurus and that Jesus is ⁓ helping to everyone to ascend to their DNA to reconnect. mean, just absolutely delusional beliefs in the New Age that I was a part of. I can't even believe what I used to believe, David. But if you ask a New Ager to explain who Jesus is, and then if you can reign yourself in to not exhibit any stress or fear, because the New Ager sniffs that out, and if they sense that you're afraid or stressed, they'll say, aha, this person is negative, so therefore they don't know the truth. And they won't listen to to they'll shut down. But if you can just be loving like you are promoting on your Say Yes to Jesus show, if you can be loving like we're commanded in the Royal Commandments and patiently listen to them tell this crazy story about who they think Jesus is and then lovingly take them through who Jesus is. And it takes so much patience, you've got to pray for patience while you're going through this, the patience of Job, right? To walk it. It's not a one-shot deal, it's a continuous It's like one plants and other waters and God brings the harvest You don't know who who's gonna be the fuck the one who gets to see the end result But you know, you know that somebody if you do your part God can then bless it and more can happen and lives will be changed So our job is to love people It's it's not like notches in your Bible you the gunslingers used to put a notch in there in there in there There were about the gun belt every time they they shoot somebody it's we used to at a time when I first gave my life to Christ, I prayed with 30 people this week. they said, that's great. But the problem is, who did we follow up with? How many of those people were more than a prayer? And when I realized that I had been led that way at the beginning of my walk, I started rethinking everything. And as an evangelist, you go, you preach, you love, and you leave. but I made it my business to make sure that whoever was going to follow up knew what to say. I even gave them templates of letters to say, we need to see you again. We loved having you there and we had a great time, but this is the beginning of a friendship and we really look forward to seeing more of you. And people would come back and hand the letters to the pastor and say, you wrote me a letter. And you're thinking, yeah, well, that's how are you going to love somebody if you never even talk to them again? Yeah, yeah, new-agers, a lot of them have come from traumatic backgrounds and ⁓ abuse or... ⁓ just abandonment and a lot of them feel really bad about themselves and the new age makes you feel like you are absolutely the golden child. It love bombs you and lifts you up and makes you very prideful in the end. But a lot of people are craving that human connection, the discipleship that you're describing and the hospitality that we are commanded to do. So I'm really happy to hear what you're doing David to encourage the church to continue with inviting, being hospitable, and discipling. It's so important. Well, the church used to call it follow-up. I'm not sure the... you know, I've been retired a while, so... but the idea is that you don't come and show up and that's it. You come and show up and you start building bridges. You start gently loving people. You don't know where they came from, you don't know who they are, you don't know anything about them. But you'll never know if you don't build bridges, if you don't earn the right to be heard. And more in this culture now than ever, earning the right to be heard is really mandate. Because they hear so much, they don't even know how to sort the vegetables out of the soup. They don't know what's what. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the New Age teaching finds it easy home, is because no one's got discernment to be able to figure out what's what yet. And once you do have the discernment to be able to tell the difference, it's shocking that you actually, I used to drink that, I used to eat that. And you're like, I would never. But then you realize you were led astray. It wasn't like you did it to yourself. Someone somewhere taught it to you, and you believed it. And it doesn't matter who delivered the message. The message was the message. And that's what we have to help people find is that there's a real message, not a counterfeit one. There's a real truth, not ⁓ a replica. And I remember going as an evangelist to a church for a week. ⁓ the first thing they said is, you can't do this, and you can't do that, and you can't do this, and you can't say this. And I said, then I need to go home. They said, no, no, no, no, no, we want you to come and do what you do, but you can't do these things. Then I can't do it. Well, why? said, because then I'd be lying. But our church teaches, then find someone for your church, because I'm going home. And they said, no, no, please stay. And I said, well, then let's come to an agreement right now. I'm going to do what I do everywhere I go, and I'm going to tell the truth every way I can. and you'll find everything I say in Scripture, can even find it literally within little numbers in front of it. Everything I say is going to be truth. Now if it doesn't match your truth, then one of us has got a problem and it's not me. And I got to stay and at the end we had an altar call. had, you know, the first wonder church had had in 50 years. And we had over 200 people come forward, including Sunday School teachers, all kinds of people. And they said, we didn't know we could. No one ever told us we could. No one told us that we needed to have Jesus in our hearts. No one told us. So we thought we were doing it all right. And see, where that spiritual warfare thing comes in, where the lie pollutes the truth. In every lie there's an element of truth. That's what makes it believable. Yeah, the counterfeits is where it is at. mean, it's basically Genesis 3 lies on repeat over and over and over again. The devil really is not creative when it comes down to it. He just keeps doing the same promise he did to Eve in the garden, that you too can be like God and that you can have access to secret wisdom. And it's just, it seems like just human nature to want the inside information, to want to be the one who is in the know. And the devil keeps coercing people with that. And that's why astrology that you mentioned is so popular and seems so normalized with horoscopes and every woman's magazine. is divination is what it comes down to. It's trying to predict and control the future. And really what its essence is, is horoscopes and astrology are saying you don't trust in the Lord when we're exhorted to trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. God's creation, stars and planets. Instead, in Romans 1, 25, says that we are not to serve the creations or the creatures, we're to serve the Creator, God. And people get it all mixed up, they start to make the creations like ⁓ crystals and stars and moon, they make them into idols, thinking those idols have magical properties apart from God. And that's idolatry, which is, as you know, as a Bible scholar, David, that from the old and the new all the way to Revelation 21 and 22, idolatry is condemned to the point where it says, sorcerers and idolaters will not go to the new heaven, they will go to the lake of fire for eternity. So idolatry is something that's key to New Age ⁓ belief systems, is making yourself an idol, first of all, in the New Age, because they teach the answers are within you. And they teach this blasphemy called Christ consciousness that believes that you can be your own Christ. If you just send your mind high enough and that if you just listen enough you can get all the answers within not from God Because you can listen and get God's guidance and the Holy Spirit of course is within all believers But this is different. This is listening to the heart that Jeremiah says is deceitful Because it is sick beyond all measure and and people listen to that and they do things that God hates like divorce They get irresponsible quit their job and move to Peru to you know study with shaman and stuff. They do crazy stuff because they're listening to their heart instead of trusting the guardrails of God's Word. And it's really dangerous. I'm so concerned about people in the New Age and then leading other people astray too because in the New Age you're built up so much with pridefulness that everyone is told the same message, that you're a healer, you are going to be a famous New Age teacher, and then that comes true. And then the next person who's deceived starts starts to be the Pied Piper of this false teaching that leads people to hell and the broad road. just, it makes me so upset that the new age is becoming increasingly popular, that people have accepted witchcraft as being trendy and cool and normal, and they're even introducing witchcraft to their children. And it's absolutely like a snowball now, where there's more and more people who, even professing Christians, argue with me every single day that it's okay for them to do yoga as long as they have ⁓ prayers that they're doing or Saint Bible verses. When yoga is a pagan worship practice taken straight out of the ancient Hindu scriptures that says that every yoga pose is glorifying one of their 330 million deities and we are exhorted in the Bible to glorify God with our bodies and to not worship other gods or have graven images of other gods that we worship. But yoga is literally, it's not just stretching. I did yoga for over 20 years every day. It is not natural stretching. Stretching is good, I still stretch, but the yoga poses are a pagan worship practice. But the Christian women who are rebellious and do not want to be told what to do, even by God's Word, they always are arguing with me that it's okay, you can redeem yoga like you redeem the meat in 1st Corinthians 8 and 10, but they don't realize that that passage is not saying that you can do something pagan. That's prohibited in Old and New Testament. What was redeemable was the meat, but the pagan temples and the pagan prayers were never redeemed in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. Instead they were condemned. so when women are arguing with me that it's okay to look at their horoscopes because God made the stars and they want to argue that the Magi were astrologers, no you can't twist things like that. God clearly says in Not only the Old Testament Deuteronomy 18, and we have it in Leviticus, no divination, he says it in Acts 16 and Acts 19. He condemns witchcraft and sorcery and mediumship in the Old and New Testament. And so Christian cannot go see Teresa Caputo no matter how much your heart is grieving for a person you lost because that'll be a demon impersonating your loved one. You cannot go to an astrologer to get your chart done no matter how much you are concerned about your future and you want to peek into it. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart is what it comes down to. Only worship God. With everything you do, glorify God. And when we follow that, Bible exhorts us and the commandments, we will not get involved with New Age practices at all. We can't blend them. The other one I want to say, David, I know I'm running at my mouth now, but I have so much to say. Is that I was a Reiki master. I mentioned that earlier. Reiki is an energy ⁓ system, energy healing system. And in my surveys of women who got involved with the New Age and later were saved by God's grace, the number one way they said they got into the New Age in the first place was they were seeking to be healed, either physically or emotionally. So they got involved with yoga, they got involved with reiki. Those are the two entry points for women getting deceived. And once you're in that pipeline of the devil, he keeps taking you down at darker and darker and darker. It can seem normal to go to yoga. You might even call it Christian yoga, but you can't Christianize paganism. You just can't. Do Pilates instead. We have to do Pilates or physical therapy stretches. But reiki fools so many women into that new age pipeline. because there are journal articles that says it's effective. There are professing Christians who say it's okay to do Reiki like I was. I would tell people I'm a Christian and even though I didn't know who Jesus was and then it does seem to work. And so the basis of Reiki is that a man named Macau Asui in Japan in the 1800s, he was a spiritualist who thought he was channeling a spirit called Medicine Buddha. And from this channeling he got a vision of some symbols and he decided to explore that and he found that by meditating on these symbols that there was this pulsating feeling that he was palpable. And he decided to teach other people and initiate them into Reiki, which means universal force, thinking that all the healing came from the universe, again, God's creation, not the Creator. And so he He made all these people into Reiki practitioners. And one of his students took Reiki to the United States to popularize it there. She started in Hawaii. And this was in the early 1900s when people were a little more guarded about the occult. And so she told everybody a lie that she later admitted was a lie. That Mikhail Asui was a Christian seminary professor. So it was okay to do Reiki because it's Christian. And then their lies kept coming that they said that Jesus did Reiki for his miracles and healing. And people still believe those lies to this day. But Reiki is a demonic, it's witchcraft. No professing Christian should have anything to do with Reiki. don't care how, I mean I do care how desperate you might be for healing. My heart goes out to you. But do not go into the trap. It's like one of those roach motels. They go in and they don't come out. Do ⁓ not go into the Reiki trap. ⁓ directors use it, massage therapists use it, so-called energy healers use it. Please, as a former Reiki master, I urge people who are listening who have ears to hear to just stay far away from all these forms of energy healing. And I want to just say one other pushback I get to dispute it is that people then accuse me, they say, well, you say, no, Reiki, you must be pro-pharma, you must be pro-big pharmacy, you must be pro-Western medicine, and you know they're corrupt. And I say, yes, I know that there's corruption in big pharma. I know there's corruption in big medicine my two elderly parents I cared for them at my home. They lived with me for seven years before they passed I went to the doctor's offices with them. I was in the hospital with them. I saw Western medicine and its limits I saw you know things that may concern me, but that doesn't mean we should go to the other Kooky extreme the dangerous extreme of Reiki there's other things that we can do that God has provided for us such as preventative medicine, sunshine, organic foods, exercise, and if we have a debilitating condition such as you're dealing with David, you learn to grow and you learn to draw closer to God with it. Like Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 1, 9, where he thought he was going to die, but God used his experiences of just absolute crises to let Paul know that he couldn't depend on himself. He had to depend on God. And that's where a lot of the blessings can come from our trials, physical illness, injury, debilitating situations, or like myself, I've gone through complete traumas in my life. Not physical issues, but emotional traumas. What God can do is use those traumas to draw us closer to Him, to smash our idols, and to know that He is the one we can trust and follow. And so I just pray that anyone listening to this, David, will hear this. and stay away from these new age methods because I'm telling you, it's a dark, dangerous tunnel that you don't want to enter in the first place. In some ways, it's addictive like other addictions are. When someone says, hey, you're cool, I'll let you do this for free. You're going to love it. And then a little while later, I want more. Well, it's not all going to be free. You're going to have to invest a little bit. And slowly but surely, it goes from a little bit to a whole lot more. you can't live without it. And in a lot of the other gods of this world, the ones with the small g, the ones that we use as substitutes for the real God, ⁓ that's what they do. They lead us in like a piece of cheese to a mouse. It's tempting, it sounds good, it feels good, it must be okay because nothing happened to me. But they don't realize that it always starts out innocent. But it doesn't stay that way because it doesn't have healing, doesn't have grace, doesn't have forgiveness, it doesn't have mercy, it doesn't have compassion. The things that God's nature automatically have, I hear people all the time, well, if God was a good God, he wouldn't let people suffer or he wouldn't, the reality of this, God is a really, really good God because when know what right is, we do the wrong thing, that's a sin. And though God loves us, he hates sin. So no sin gets to go into heaven. So that means something has to happen. So that we can get to heaven, something has to, there has to be an exchange. And the Bible tells us that without the shedding of innocent blood, there's no forgiveness for sin. Well, you look around this world, show me some innocent blood. It's really hard to find, I'm sure. But the key is that Jesus lived his life innocently and he died innocently. And he shed his blood. which was innocent blood. And when he rose from the dead, that blood has washed away the sins. The shed blood of Jesus is the only thing that can remove sin. And he wants us all to come to him. People say, well, God doesn't want so-and-so to end. No, no, no, you're playing God. God gets to pick who goes in. And Jesus died so that God can pick any one of us who's willing. That's right. That's right. So during, ⁓ if we were to, is there something in particular that you would like to leave with our listeners, like a golden nugget, something important that you'd like them to consider to mull over to, even after the program is done, that you'd like them to know about? My big life verse is behind me, David, ⁓ trust in the Lord with all of your heart. And that can seem like a beautiful aphorism, but applying it every single day, I think we get so many opportunities every day with even little decisions to turn it over to God and pause and God, what is it you want? it's not letting Him lead you because we can't let God do anything, but it's really trusting Him that He He knows better. It reminds me of ⁓ the pilot follows the air traffic controller who can see in front of you, either side and behind you. And why would a pilot try to do anything on their own? I mean, they're trained in VFR, but they should absolutely be ⁓ flying by what the air traffic controller unit says. And so much greater is it for us to live our lives according to what God said in His Word, which we need to be reading daily. of listening to audios of the Bible. The audio of the Bible is really helpful to hear things that you may have missed when you're reading and to pray continuously, Lord help me to trust you, help me to know you. I really think that a lot of women get involved with New Age because they don't know who God is. And the only way to know who God is is by studying his attributes in the Bible and praying for God to help you to know him. forgot to help you to draw closer to Him and to trust Him with all of your heart. Amen. Now Doreen, tell me about your book. Yes, I wrote a book. Let me just kind of back up on this. So when I was a new-age teacher I wrote a lot of books. I was very prolific. Once I was saved in 2017, I told my publisher, and my publisher let me go because I was now offending their customers with my evangelism. So my US publisher took down my work, put it out of print, praise God, but they had licensed it to 38 foreign publishers. And some of them, I think, I wrote to all the publishers and said, okay, I'm a Christian, please don't publish my book or sell it anymore. I told them it was dangerous for them to do so This was blasphemy heresy I used to teach and I think some all but a few of the foreign publishers have stopped selling my work But there's people selling old copies of my work that I cannot control. Yeah people bought it and This was all 2017 and earlier so it's been nine years now as we're filming this So some people are still selling my old work and then my ex publisher contacted me and said that there's bootleg printers who are illegally printing their catalog and including some of my old work, and they're selling it online. You can tell it's old because it's 2017 or earlier, and it's got a QR code on the back of it, which they never did before. But the blessing, the Romans 828 blessing, is that my old work has my website on it, DoringVirtue.com, and people are buying my old work still through bootleggers or used copies, and they go to my website and they read the Last year I was a speaker at Ken Ham's Ark encounter in Kentucky at the Women's Conference there. It's called Answers in Genesis Women's Conference. And I met three women there, David, who had bought my old work, went to my website, and God used it to point them away from New Age and to His Kingdom. And so here we were at a Women's Christian Conference, hugging each other as sisters in Christ because of my old product still being out there. But I'm saying that because because there's still some of my old products from 2017 or earlier still on Amazon that I can't seem to get off. My ex-publishers tried to remove it, but these bootleg printers, they go in and out of business. Anyway, so I've written a new book, praise God, called The New Age is Old Age. The New Age isn't new, it's the same sorcery and idolatry and false prophecy that you see in the Bible. So I went through I went through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation and took Bible stories and then showed how that's the same thing as New Age today. Show how ⁓ it's condemned by God and why it's spiritually dangerous and it's a counterfeit. So the book is called New Age is Old Age and it's free of charge on Kindle Unlimited. I have a few books I've written that are, you know, devotionals for Christian women. I have a book on spiritual warfare because I went through it terribly when I first saved especially and and an epics called armor of God biblical help for spiritual warfare but these books are all free of charge on Kindle unlimited so you can just look at my name if if you're not a Kindle unlimited person and you want to get them there is a that's there is a fee if you want to get a paperback I tried to keep it as low as possible for each of them because I'm the same with my book I'm yeah you too I'm not here to make money I'm here to share the gospel gospel and warn people about the deception of New Age and New Thought and occultism. I'd like to add a couple of your books to my library because I can see people I talk to who I could say, I've got a book for you. Yes. Yeah, that's what they are. They're books for apologetics and evangelism and biblical counseling. Well, obviously this will not be the last time that we get to talk. I would love to have you back on. scratch the surface of all the important things that need to be said. Thank you, Brother David. And I enjoyed hearing your testimony, too, and those clown photos behind you. That was you with your youth ministry and such. So it's been a joy to meet you, dear friend, and best to your wife. Thank you for her time, too, I'm sure. And then to Bill, your engineer. It takes a village to make things like this. So I appreciate it. Well, we're really grateful that you came to be among us. And let's pray and close this up. continue this another time. Heavenly Father, as we come in Jesus name, we are grateful that we had a chance to encourage. We also had a chance to shine the light of the truth from your Word so that people can sort out what's real and what's not real. What's a copy of the original instead of the original? Satan has always been trying to deceive every time with every generation. We're being deceived again by generationally and Lord we just pray that you'll call the hearts of the people who need to know you and that you through your Holy Spirit you'll love them back close to you and reveal yourself to them. Bless the efforts that Doreen's ministry is doing and help us Lord in everything we say and do to reflect your love and be someone to bring you glory, honor and praise in Jesus' And together we are saying amen. Amen. And folks, ⁓ as my closing always is, if you really want to know Jesus, seek for him. He will be found. This has been the God Says Yes Podcast with David Ebel. Connect with David, email him at Godsaysyespodcast.com. You can get his latest book, When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes.