ACTS 17:22-31
“Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
Acts 10:9-16,28
“The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again…… (v28)Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.”
Do all faiths bring us to God? No! But all of us are from and of God, but how we understand who we are and what authority and power we have can be influenced by what we believe. Do all people have power and authority? Simply put, yes. However, how they use it and how they understand it can be detrimental to themselves and to others. 1 Timothy 4:10 says that although we are all saved, the greatest benefit is to those who believe. The concepts expounded from other sources generally require humanity to ‘become’ in some way or other; either to be better or to be a priest or high something-or-other, yet the Good News is that we are ALL already within and are one with God and that is from the beginning and cannot be lost or destroyed, except within our own understanding.
All this means that we all can exercise our power and authority for things like healing, for example, New Age, Hindu, Wicca etc can perform healings, but do they then attribute that power to sources that detract from the truth of who they really are within the Godhead? This false understanding then continues to keep them captive within their understanding, not allowing them to be totally free of the lie of Satan. It also keeps them separated from everyone else, creating division, an us and them mentality. This is what Satan’s lie did to Adam: made him see himself as separate from God, though he never had been. To use a focus provided by a crystal or a statue or an incantation may be beneficial for the focussing of faith, but is ultimately unnecessary if we have the true understanding of our authentic nature.
