Be wary of Oprah's gospel

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most visible and successful women in the world.

USA Today recently reported, “After two decades of searching for her authentic self – exploring New Age theories, giving away cars, trotting out fat, recommending good books, and tackling countless issues from serious to frivolous – Oprah has risen to a new level of guru. She has emerged as a spiritual leader for the new millennium, a moral voice of authority for the nation.”

Forbes magazine lists Oprah as the world’s richest female entertainer with an estimated worth of $1.5 billion. She has also been referred to as the most admired entrepreneur in the world.

Oprah was born in a small town in Mississippi and raised in Nashville, Tenn. At the age of 17, she began her career in broadcasting and two years later became the youngest person and the first African-American woman to anchor the news at Nashville’s WTVF-TV.

She moved to Baltimore in 1976 and co-anchored the six o’clock news at WJZ-TV. Soon thereafter, she made the switch to doing talk shows, hosting the local “People Are Talking.”

In 1984, Oprah relocated to Chicago to host “AM Chicago,” a morning talk show on WLS-TV. Within just one month, Winfrey’s show had surpassed “Donahue” as the #1 local talk show, and within a year, it was renamed “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

A year later, it entered national syndication and became the highest-rated talk show in TV history. It has remained the number one talk show for 18 seasons, won dozens of Emmys, seen by an estimated 49 million viewers a week in the United States, and broadcast internationally in 122 countries.

Last month Oprah launched a new television show entitled “Oprah’s Big Give.” The premiere broadcast was viewed by 15.7 million people and was the third-largest audience for any series premiere this season.

In addition to being a television pioneer, Oprah is the founder and editorial director of O, The Oprah Magazine; a film producer and actress with her own production company, Harpo Films (Harpo is Oprah spelled backwards); a television programming creator; a satellite radio programmer with her own channel on XM Radio; a Broadway producer; and a philanthropist with her own charitable foundation.

For the past several years, Time magazine has listed Oprah among the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Oprah is benevolent, warm-hearted, personable, charismatic, and remarkably connected with people all over the planet.

While there are many good things that can be said about Oprah, I would warn you to be wary of her theology or philosophy of life. It is not Christian. She was raised as a Baptist, but somewhere along the way she departed from what she was taught as a child. For example, she does not believe in the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, she may be the champion of universalism.

I issued a warning about this in an editorial in May of 2005, but decided to sound another alarm, because on a recent television broadcast Oprah told her audience, “One of the mistakes that human beings make is that there is only one way to live … but there are many paths to what you call God.”

On this program Oprah quoted Marianne Williamson, who is one of the most prominent personalities on Oprah’s XM Radio channel. On New Year’s Day, Williamson got 2008 off to a stimulating start as she began to systematically teach the New Age principles of “A Course in Miracles.” Both Oprah and Williamson have openly stated that they believe the principles taught in this course can change the world.

“A Course in Miracles” is reputedly a “new revelation” from “Jesus,” that was channeled through a university professor in New York City by the name of Helen Schucman. Time magazine writer John Koffend wrote an article entitled, “The Gospel According to Helen Schucman” and described the course as a “veritable supermarket of cults, religions, and psycho-mystical movements.”

In actual fact, the course is a reversal of much of what the Bible teaches. It teaches that “a slain Christ has no meaning” and that “the journey to the cross should be the last useless journey.” Its teachings state that “there is no sin” and that “the recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.”

In her very first lesson on Jan. 1, Williamson avoided mentioning the Bible, but indicated that on her program she would be methodically “dismantling a thought system based on fear.” She emphasized that the dismantled thought system would be replaced by “a thought system based on love” – essentially a thought system that would be inspired by the New Age teachings of “A Course in Miracles.”

I decided to go to the Oprah and Friends Radio website and randomly picked the lesson for March 7 to read and was amazed at what I found.

Williamson writes, “Today’s idea is a complete and accurate statement of what you are. This is why you are the light of the world. This is why God appointed you as the world’s savior. This is why the Son of God looks to you for his salvation. He is saved by what you are.”

This is the message that is being preached on Oprah’s XM Radio channel. It is apparently what she now believes and is heresy and extremely dangerous. I saw one poll that suggested that 33 percent of the people surveyed believed Oprah had a more profound spiritual impact on their lives than the clergy.

No wonder America is suffering from a spiritual malaise. Many have become enamored by a humanistic gospel that deifies man and humanizes God. Beware of such foolish twitter and twaddle.