Eckankar vs. Christianity

QUESTION: Eckankar vs. Christianity – Are they compatible?

ANSWER:

Christianity is a religion of God’s love towards us and our love towards others.

There is no other religion that shows the love of God like Christianity does. Other religions show our separateness from God, and the vengeance of God. Or they teach that god is an impersonal force one must learn to manipulate. But Christianity shows that God is Love. 1 John 4:9 tell us that God showed how much He loved us by sending his Son into the world. He loved us enough to do something about our sinful and separated state.

Eckankar and Christianity agree on one thing. Both say that mankind has become separated from God. Eckankar says that mankind is on a journey back to God. And the Bible says, “For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard” (Romans 3:23).

Eckankar adherents do many things on their path of self-development. They go through an initiation ceremony where they see lights and hear sounds in their heads. They are taught how to do astral projection, now called soul travel. They try to discover what they did wrong in past lives, and try to correct that in this life. However, they mistake psychic phenomena for the presence of God. The dark forces are quite capable of producing psychic phenomena, and posing as angels of light. The devil even showed Jesus the most beautiful sights. He wanted Jesus to have it all, all the kingdoms of this physical, and non-physical world. He told him,” You can have all of this if you do things my way. Just bow to me” (author’s paraphrase of Matthew 4:8). Jesus knew better than to accept.

Christianity says you can’t work yourselves back into God’s presence. It says in the Bible “For no one can ever be made right in God's sight by doing what his law commands. For the more we know God's law, the clearer it becomes that we aren't obeying it” (Romans 3:20). And it is in that state of disobedience, we are banned from God’s presence. Yet God loved us so much that he couldn’t stand to lose any of us. So He made a way for us to be reunited with Him. He wanted to have fellowship with us again, as He had in the beginning. In order for that to happen, He had to send His Son, Jesus to enable us to once again come into His presence. Jesus is the enabler. He said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me“ (John 14:6).

God sacrificed the life of His Son, Jesus, to buy us back from the devil’s trap, the trap which mankind had fallen into. It is written “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

That is Love!