Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

There have been a few times in my life where I was privileged to attend the infamous play "The Phantom of the Opera". I always enjoyed attending these events. If you're not privy to "The Phantom", bascially, the title tells all: There is an opera house that many people believe is haunted by a ghost or phantom. People become enraptured by this phantom and some grow terribly frightened by it, especially after they think it is communicating it's desires to them. Of course, there is more to it than that but I need not go into detail here. I wonder if, on a number of levels, this is a good analogy (and play on words) for critiquing Oprah Winfrey and her new spiritual pal, Eckhart Tolle. Have the two (Winfrey and Tolle) become a sort of destructive duo? Are they lurking around the halls of Churches and Christian homes (via book and T.V.) and slowly getting people to their personal desires, desires to see Christianity and Buddhism brought together? I think so. The ...

As I noted in my previous post on this series , Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle are nothing but pluralistic, false-prophets. Neither of them have qualified religion, theology or Bible degrees. They are both amateur spiritualists who want to seem knowledgeable and make a quick buck. Other than not having a clue about Buddhism or Christianity, which they are bent on mixing, they are just incredibly arrogant. Yet, this is another thing that I think makes their program sell. What do I mean when I say they are arrogant? Well, actually, they are arrogant in the same way that pepole like the "Left Behind" guys and John Hagee are arrogant. With the "Left Behind" guys and Hagee, you have a group of people who take an ancient document, the Bible, and attempt to make it say all kinds of things about the 21st century west that it never intended to. They read Revelation like it was written for those living in America today, not those living in the 1st century Mediterranean. I th...

At present, I have a few ongoing series on Pisteuomen (e.g. Images of Antiquity , Studies in Mark and Thoughts On Adoption ) and today I am going to add one to the list. This series might be surprising to some but I think it is an important issue. The title of this series will be "Critiquing The New Earth Movement". If you are unaware, The New Earth Movement is a religious trend that is being set and established by Oprah Winfrey and her pal, Eckhart Tolle. Both are celebrities, not educated religious scholars but as you and I know, with enough fame and money, often comes the ability to can convince many gullible people. Their new movement seeks to "awaken" and "enlighten" people to the power within. They claim that at this point in human history, we are in a position like never before, because we know how to transcend our evolutionary roots. If nothing else, this alone seems quite arrogant to me. Anyway, because so many people are reading their books and ...