Abstract
The Christian church in its present formation needs to understand the revealed ‘anatomy’ of the (original) Temptation (Gn 3) in order to discern this temptation’s historical trajectory through biblical and world history. This historical reflection is urgently needed if the Christian church wants to be able to equip Christians and non-Christians in Africa for an appropriate defensive response against occult temptation that is part of this ‘new age spirituality’ . This article wants to: (1) Teach to understand: The anatomy of ‘The temptation’ (from God’s revelation); (2) Help to discern: Recognise the historical trajectory of ‘The temptation’; (3) Prepare to be vigilant: To be defensively prepared for the current offensive.
Highlights
Our world is facing a spiritual paradigm shift
Christianity has left behind its Christendom phase (Smith 2003:76), it is establishing a new and rapidly growing presence in the majority world. It is the new formation of global Christianity (Jenkins 2011), or the coming of the ‘Third Church’ (Bühlmann 1977; 1986) and it is challenged by a ‘new age and postmodern spirituality’
The church ‘cleans house’ roughly every 500 years, holding, what she calls a ‘giant rummage sale’, deciding what to dispose and what to keep, making room for new things. It seems that the so-called new age spirituality resurfaces every time that the world faces a paradigm shift
Summary
Our world is (again) facing a spiritual paradigm shift. Christianity has left behind its Christendom phase (Smith 2003:76), it is establishing a new and rapidly growing presence in the majority world. We urgently need biblical teachings – not the reinforcement of a pagan religious worldview.21 Bauer (2016:1) fear, that our unwillingness to talk about witchcraft issues, our ignorance concerning the protecting power of God, our embrace of a powerless (nominal IWF) Christianity, the church’s weak grounding in the Word of God, permitted witchcraft and occult practices to exist within our world. He is asking a very important question and presupposes a negative answer: What has the church done to prepare its members for this onslaught? This highlights the urgent need for real biblical training and teaching on this subject. Kohnert (2003:30) is, of the opinion that the current ‘witch craze’ coming from new charismatic churches, are confusing, but that there are competing witchcraft theories being propagated (Kohnert 2003:40), and this situation does not bring calm to societies but increases the social stress experienced
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