Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. (John 16:13)

Over the years I have had a number of impromptu counseling sessions or discussions about religion that occurred because I was wearing a clerical collar in a public setting. Most recently, while sitting in the Atlanta airport on a layover, a well dressed forty-something woman struck up a conversation. Discovering I was an Anglican she told me she had been raised Episcopalian. What she said next was most interesting. "I'm not into religion anymore", she said, "but I am still a very spiritual person. " This is not the first time I have heard this reasoning. It is in fact quite a common position. It is interesting that today, in many people's minds, a distinction exists between spirituality and religion. In fact, spirituality is often seen as somehow being opposed to religion. In fact, to folks like this lady, spirituality carries positive connotations, supposedly being less dogmatic and open to what are called "new ideas" and being more pluralistic than any historic or organized religion. The woman in question went on to tell me that she believed all religions were just human explanations foe the great mysteries of the universe and that there were many "spiritual paths" available that led to god.

There is a word for this. This is what we often call "New Age" belief, in which the Zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age" is used to replace the words "religion" and "faith" with the word "spirituality."

Sadly, many people who call themselves "Christians" endorse this view. Some, such as retired Bishop, John Shelby Spong, see it as the only way to salvage any kind of religion for the current age. Bishop Spong has just written a new book "A new Christianity for a New World" which stresses just such "spirituality" over belief of any kind. Among the topics Spong examines is whether or not one must even be a theist to be a Christian. He claims that one must not actually believe in God (in the Biblical sense) to be a person of faith.

Spong, and others, claim that basing one's religion on one's own perceptions of God and on the fellowship of the church community allows people to circumvent what are seen as the "barriers" of doctrine and dogma, so as to get directly to God on their own terms without intellectual compromise.

The problem with calling this a so-called "spiritual" approach," no matter how it is described, is that it cannot be squared with the Holy Scripture, and cannot possibly lead anyone to Jesus Christ.

New Age spirituality applies individual preferences to supposedly take "the best parts" of every religion and arriver at some kind of truth in a subjective way. Yesterday's truth is disposable and replaceable by tomorrow's truth. Truth is therefore entirely subjective and is whatever makes me feel good about things today.

The Church, on the other hand, uses terms like "religion" and "faith" to describe everlasting and objective things. The Church claims there is a eternal and transcendent God who has revealed Himself in History through the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and in the Word made flesh, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ: "Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again…"

Let us state the obvious: the claims of the Christian religion are either true or they are false. Furthermore, since the word "religion" is from a Latin word that means to "tie or bundle together". Religion is that which provides a framework of reference, a world view, a moral code and authority that "binds" or "ties" all of life together and allows both the individual and society to live in relationship with each other and with God. In the strictest sense no two "religions" can be true at the same time. For example, either the God of the Bible is God, or the god of Islam is god. Both cannot be true. In the same vein, either Jesus Christ is the Son of God or He is not. If Christ is Lord, and is the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, by definition, all religions except the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God are false.

I realize this flies in the face of what we are taught in school and that which is proclaimed on a daily basis by the media. Muslims understand this. Increasingly, we in the West do not. They really believe in their god. We increasingly do not. This is the reason the West seems so powerless to resist the evil forces of Islamo-Facism.

In fact, radical Islam is the prefect example that spirituality can be evil. Whatever else we can say about Islam, we cannot deny the spiritual power it wields over its adherents.

Likewise, lots of so-called Christians have a belief system, perhaps one that claims to believe in god (but not the God of the Bible, of course.

But belief is not in and off itself enough. The key principle of our faith isn't merely "belief" that God exists. As St. James writes, "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble" (James 2:19).

Satan and his minions know about God and even believe in God, and yet they are damned forever. Why? Because long ago they rebelled and placed their "faith" on someone other than God. What Satan and his followers worship is themselves. They sought to usurp that which belongs to God by worshipping their own will. Evil can be, and is often spiritual.

Christianity is, of course, spiritual, but not as that word is often being used today. When people say, "I'm not into religion, but I am into spirituality" or "I'm not religious, but I am very spiritual"; they really saying, "I intend to exempt myself from the objective consequences of religion and faith and create my own subjective truth" This exemption, however, is impossibility.

Many well meaning people, and some who are not well meaning, tell us that "all religions are true" and "all religions give us an experience of God." The Apostle Paul did not think so. In I Corinthians 10:20, Paul writes "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils"

Truth is not pluralistic. Both St. Paul and the New Age crowd cannot both be right. If we side with Paul, we must conclude that the New Age crowd is in fellowship with the works of darkness, and not God's truth.

People like Spong, the new TEC Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and other revisionists tell us, "all paths lead to God," even though our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ clearly taught, "no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). It is again stating the obvious to declare that both of these claims cannot be true. And if one is true, the other must be false. In fact, if Jesus is the Son of God, the "other paths" universalism the new spiritualists are all dead ends in the most literal sense – in that they lead to spiritual death now and eternal death eventually.

The Spongs declare that, "every spiritual experience is good and leads to God," despite an explicit warning from St. John: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (1 John 4:1). The utter foolishness of the "all spiritual experiences are good" can be compared to a parent saying to a child, "Whenever a stranger offers you a ride, just climb into his car because something good will always happen."

People who claim to be spiritual but not religious have actually made an idol of their own experiences. Additionally, their position is essentially irrational in that no rational person can say that every experience is good. Many experiences are bad. While we may learn from bad experiences, they are only beneficial if they teach us to seek truth. The "spirituality" crowd cannot admit that Jesus Christ is who he is, for then they would also have to admit that their "other paths" are a waste of time.

In rejecting Christ, the "new spirituality crowd," reveals itself as just a new manifestation of a very old error. Remember Paul 's address to the Greeks in Acts 17? Almost two thousand years ago, St. Paul visited Athens, where amidst all of the pagan idols there was an altar dedicated "To the Unknown God" (Acts 17:23). The Greeks were very open minded. They were very inclusive, making allowances for every possible religious idea. In so doing, they were reducing all religion to inconsequential irrelevance and insignificance, and exempting themselves like the modern spiritualists from the final judgment of their beliefs by a true God.

St. Paul calls this what it is. Paul said to them then, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious" (Acts 17:22). "Superstition" is from a Greek word that has the underlying meaning of "a fearful respect of demons."

Then as now, the basic errors of superstition are an addiction to powerful emotional experiences, and an need to placate the various gods and goddesses of nature. These errors are magnified and compounded, however, when the Christian faith is made captive to a system of superstition and false spirituality in an attempt to evade God's authority.

True spirituality involves the being in relationship, "communion" in the ultimate sense, with God through intercession of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. It does not focus primarily on either the emotional experiences of human beings or their private "spiritual insights." True spirituality does not tolerate the notion that human beings have a "spiritual power" or and "inner god" of their own, and make a false god of the human ego and intellect.

In many cases, we see such people effectively portray the Holy Spirit as being in opposition to God the Father and God the Son.

At the heart of the "spiritualistic" crowd in its Christian context, we see people who call themselves "Christians" while claiming that their personal "experience" of "the Holy Spirit" contradicts some particular teaching of Jesus Christ or some commandment of God as revealed in the Scripture.

However, as God told Malachi, "I am the LORD, I change not" (3:6). God does not change in either his good will towards men or in his revelation of himself to them. Thus, the Holy Spirit cannot speak against what God and his Christ have already revealed. They revealed it, after all, by the Holy Spirit, who is God himself (with the Father and the Son), and who with them as the LORD God does not change.

Consider the verse from today's Gospel with which we began: "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come." The Holy Ghost does not speak for himself, but for and with the Father and the Son.

As our Lord Jesus Christ said of the Holy Spirit, in this same excerpt from his Last Supper sermon: "He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you" (John 16:14). But even Jesus Christ the Son of God has no separate truth of his own, since all of the Truth begins with God the Father. And so our Lord explains, "All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he [the Holy Spirit] shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you (John 16:15).

We are only a few days from Pentecost. On that first Pentecost, the Spirit of Truth that descended upon the Church was God the Holy Ghost, who Christ promised would lead the Church and her members "into all truth." This truth is not some "new truth," but the same perfect Truth revealed by the Blessed Trinity in the Holy Scriptures. No "spiritual experience" coming from God will ever speak against or contradict the Truth of the Holy Scripture because that is the changeless Truth of the one and only changeless God.

In the same way, no prophecy of "things to come" can ever be true or from God unless it is consistent with what God has already revealed, consistent with the glorification of God in his own good purposes, and consistent with the Biblical prophecy that Jesus Christ will return on the Last Day to judge the quick and the dead according to his Father's revealed will. Every other prophecy will be a lie, and come from the "spirit of antichrist," rather than from the Holy Spirit of God.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.