Walsch: I decided to write a letter to God. God: Do you really want an answer….? Book 1 was a small press best seller in 1995, before being taken up by a major publisher. By late 1997, more than 800,000 copies were in print. Both books have appeared high on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction. More than that, they are part of an avalanche of Eastern, New Age, and occult literature. While Walsch, like Joseph Smith, is at the forefront of a religious movement, he is not starting a new church. In the spirit of our times, Walsch is opposed to organized religion. Smith professed to have unearthed a long-lost revelation from God; Walsch simply says he has recorded direct talks between God and himself. The 54-year-old Walsch almost seems more interesting than the God with whom he converses. Walsch explains how the Conversations got started: In the spring of 1992…an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life. God began talking with you. I was very unhappy during that period, personally, professionally, and emotionally, and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels. This time…I decided to write a letter to God. It was a spiteful, passionate letter, full of confusions, contortions, and condemnation. And a pile of angry questions…. To my surprise, as I scribbled out the last of my bitter, unanswerable questions and prepared to toss my pen aside, my hand remained poised over the paper, as if held there by some invisible force. Abruptly, the pen began moving on its own. I had no idea what I was about to write…. Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting? So began the Conversations. The books cover a wide range of topics, and each book has a different emphasis. The first would deal with individual life truths and challenges. The second would discuss truths of life as a family on this planet. And the third, I said, would cover the largest truths, having to do with the eternal questions. Walsch: How does God talk, and to whom? God: My most common form of communication is through feeling 1:2—3. Walsch can handle Scripture so cavalierly because society has absorbed the faith-destroying assumptions of higher biblical criticism to an alarming degree. Walsch is wrong here. Modern scholarship has confirmed an early dating of the New Testament Scriptures. You are saying that My Son — who you call the One Perfect One — has saved you from your own imperfection — the imperfection I gave you. Having no concept of the transcendence of the true God, Walsch cannot separate the Creator from responsibility for the Fall. The Bible teaches that Adam and Eve made just that choice, and so sin and death — the results of separation from the source of goodness and life — have entered the world. Walsch and his God deny the doctrine of original sin, or any sin. Consequently, he denies virtually every doctrine of Scripture, including the reality of Satan. Salvation lies in choice: The function of the soul is to indicate its desire, not impose it. The function of the mind is to choose from its alternatives. The function of the body is to act out that choice. When body, mind, and soul create together, in harmony and in unity, God is made flesh 1:175. I am manifested as Three-In-One. Some of your theologians have called this Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your psychiatrists have recognized this triumvirate and called it conscious, subconscious, and superconscious. In its scriptural context Ps. Walsch — along with a host of other New Agers — wrongly sees this affirmation as pantheism: everything is God. In rejecting any value judgment, he has rejected just about everything. These are historical facts that have never been overturned. Salvation lies at the foot of the cross of Jesus, not in denying the reality of sin. Walsch: I love You, You know that? God: I know you do. And I love you 1:158; 2:180. Conversations is clearly not Christian. While it claims to be neither Eastern nor Western, it is saturated with Hinduism and Buddhism. A sampling of topics affirms this and also reveals the enterprise to be in tune with the age: Life and history are cyclical 2:70—71 , rather than linear as the Bible presents them. There is life on other planets, and, yes, it has visited earth and is observing us 1:208. Extraterrestrials are responsible for the technological advances of the past 75 years 2:237. The Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus were spacemen 2:244. Money is OK 1:161. Drinking is not OK. This God of yours sent you to Purgatory if you ate meat on Friday? Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler did the best he could with the knowledge he had. In Book 2, the Walsch-God spells out an extended plan for a unified world government with a unified economy 2:141—234 and elsewhere. We learn that God has a sense of humor 1:88. Walsch has God quoting Shakespeare: To thine own Self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man 2:97. As with the need to be more in touch with our feelings, this is good advice. It finds its most satisfying fulfillment in the application of biblical truths. In following Scripture, we are free to evaluate our feelings, develop ourselves, and deal honestly with others. But to identify feelings with the voice of God and to elevate selfhood to deity is nothing short of idolatry. Walsch: Why do people doubt you? God: Because they doubt themselves 2:241. If people are wondering about subjects such as the use of worldly riches or sex, the Bible speaks to them. From what Walsch says, apparently he has worked through his personal problems and come to some sort of peace with life. It is tragic that he has done so at the expense of the truth and his own soul. Like Joseph Smith, Walsch claims to have introduced to the world a revelation from the divine realm. But the American consciousness has undergone a huge shift from the beginning of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. If that other voice is anyone else, it is, as we have seen, a distorting voice — the devil himself. Halfway between the time of Joseph Smith and our own, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats became involved in channeled writing. Like other modern writers, Yeats was intensely interested in the occult. He saw the changing times as the ushering in of a new age of paganism, as expressed in his poem The Second Coming: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Email: NOTES 1As quoted in Dan Vogel, Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986 , 3. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, revised and expanded Chicago: Moody Press, 1986 , 440-44. Rosenthal New York: Collier Books, 1986 , 90. Christian Research Institute Our Mission: To provide Christians worldwide with carefully researched information and well-reasoned answers that encourage them in their faith and equip them to intelligently represent it to people influenced by ideas and teachings that assault or undermine orthodox, biblical Christianity. Do you like what you are seeing? Your partnership is essential.
