July 25, 2016
Hebrews 6:4-6
(All scripture is from the New King James Version unless otherwise indicated.)
Hebrews 6:4 through 6:
…it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted
the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and
have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come,
if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify
again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
This passage has always scared me – not for myself, because I discipline my time to stay close to my Lord Jesus Christ. It scares me for others, who seem to come to the Savior for awhile, but then fall away. It says here that “…it is impossible…to renew them again to repentance….” Considering that impossibility, they would then forever remain lost and headed for hell, and nothing would ever change that!
About twenty years ago I was reviewing some of the literature published by Unity Church. A friend had become more and more involved in this ‘church,’ and I was concerned. In the literature available to me at that time I found some disturbing statements. So I delved deeper into the teachings of this religion founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1889. Here are a some of their basic tenets I discovered (from the webpage of Unity Christ Church, serving Minneapolis, St. Paul, MN area):
• “God, Divine Mind, is the Source and Creator of all….What is called ‘evil’ is a limited or incomplete expression of God or good. Evil’s origin is ignorance.”
• “…Jesus Christ…the Way-Shower…was a special person in history who expressed perfection and thereby became the Christ….”
• “…Unity teaches that the spirit of God dwelt in Jesus, just as it indwells every person; and that every person has the potential to express the perfection of Christ, as Jesus did….”
• “The Bible is…accepted as a body of history, as a moral and ethical teaching, and as a great literary work. Beyond this, Unity finds deep significance in the Bible through its metaphysical interpretation, wherein names of places and people and their experiences symbolize the unfoldment of human consciousness.”
• “The blood of Jesus Christ represents the spiritual energy of God-life that purifies or redeems the body through a cleansing and renewal of the consciousness by the spoken word. Regarding the ‘spilled blood,’ or the ‘ransom of many,’ the emphasis in Unity is not so much on the death of Jesus as on His life. He did not relieve us of the necessity of working out our own salvation, but His example and teachings show us the way.”
• “…the virgin birth is spiritually interpreted as the birth of the Christ consciousness (the awakening of the awareness of God’s Spirit within) in the purified soul.”
• “Unity interprets the religious terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit metaphysically, as three aspects of mind action: mind, idea, and expression.”
• “Sin is our separation from God in consciousness, caused by our belief in the ‘devil’ or a power other than God, the good….Heaven and hell are states of consciousness, not geographical locations.”
• “Charles FIllmore (Unity’s co-founder) stated that, ‘The belief that Jesus in an outer way atoned for our sins is not salvation. Salvation is based solely on an inner overcoming, a change in consciousness.’ ”
From Beliefnet.com, the thread of Salvation in Unity :
• “Many of us…do not believe in a god that has or would ever require a blood sacrifice to atone for sins. Such a god was born out of the fearful minds of man who made god in fear’s image….Through the evolution of His Soul, Jesus became the Christ – that is, He became the perfect Idea of man in the flesh and LIVED that Idea in everything that He did. This ‘divine potential’ abides in each of us as our highest perfection…In fact, Christ is who we really are.”
I think you can see that Unity is not traditional orthodox Christianity!
I brought up some of these teachings to my friend, and emphasized what I had found – Unity’s claim about a bloodless salvation that can be achieved without the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross! My friend said, “Yes, I believe you don’t need Jesus dying on the cross to gain salvation! ” His mother, who had been listening to our exchange, then exclaimed, “But you accepted Christ as your Savior when you were a teenager!” He angrily shouted back at her, “Then I un-accept Him! ”
Based on our featured Scripture, Hebrews 6:4-6, my friend’s vehement statement shook me to my shoes! I will relate in the next blog what has happened since this incident about 20 years ago.
By the way, stay away from Unity! It is a dangerous cult that denies Jesus Christ and God’s salvation procured through the sacrifice of laying down the Savior’s life on the cross! Otherwise, you are Playing With Fire! – the fire of hell!