Understanding Deceptive Spiritual Experiences with Pastor Mike Shreve

0:00 And I thought I was experiencing ultimate reality. I thought I was experiencing God. Now I realize that was totally a deceptive experience given to me by a satanic spirit that was involved in my life at that time. Pastor Mike Shreve, it's great to have you here on Charisma News. Now we've asked you to come on here because there is a lot of occult practices, witchcraft, new age things that are basically rising to the top of culture during this time of year. And we wanna be able to bring a Christian perspective, a spirit-filled Christian perspective and to really shed some true light on these things.

0:41 And you've got an amazing testimony of how God has brought you out from a new age, yoga, spiritist, mysticism type thing. I actually kind of forget all the stuff that you've told me, but we're gonna kind of dive into that here. And let you do some really pulling back the curtain on these practices that are made popular at this time of year. So Pastor Mike, thanks you for being here on Charisma News. Oh, it's my privilege always to be with you. I appreciate my covenant connection with Charisma and our work together through the years. Yeah, and that's what we really wanna do in this conversation is reveal the true light in a time of the year where darkness is celebrated.

1:26 Pastor Mike, one of the things that has really intrigued me and it's kind of come up in the news or definitely on viral shorts and videos on the internet right now is this concept of astral projection. I actually heard a pastor friend of mine tell a story of a witch doctor had astral projected into his bedroom to cast some spells and it's a wild testimony there, but he unknowingly had allowed some connections with that witch doctor when he was on a mission trip. And so tell us a little bit about what astral projection is and what is the, if that's the counterfeit, what is the real?

2:16 I believe that I experienced astral projection when I was a yoga teacher for universities. I, of course, have come out of all of that and renounced all of that, but back in 1970, I was running a yoga ashram in Tampa, Florida. I was spending 12 to 14 hours a day in meditation and chanting mantras and doing things that were geared toward experiences of the supernatural, such as astral projection. And there were a couple of times I had the strong impression that I had actually left my body and was in a spiritual realm. And I have a graph in my book that I think illustrates what happened.

2:59 I have a book called In Search of the True Light. I believe in three heavens. The first heaven I interpret to be the atmosphere around the earth and the universe, the cosmos beyond the natural universe. Then the third heaven is the manifest presence of God, which Paul also referred to as paradise. But in between the two heavens, you have a second heaven that is never addressed in scripture. We don't really know what it is, and all religions promise some kind of experience of the supernatural. And I believe at times through various practices, through various rituals, through various meditative processes, et cetera, they penetrate the second heaven because they have experiences of a spiritual realm that I know now as a Christian is dominated by angelic and satanic activity.

4:00 I personally do not believe Satan reigns in hell. There's no scripture that depicts him as a king in hell, directing demons from hell up to the earth, as you see in many Christian plays, of course. But he is called the prince of the power of the air. However, we don't see him jumping from one cloud to another up in the air. So it must be a concentric realm or a spiritual realm that is just a little bit higher than our physical perception of the atmosphere, the air. And I interpret that to mean the second heaven, where there's conflicts between angels and there's conflicts between demonic attacks and angelic responses over regions, over individuals.

4:49 And I believe when I had my experiences during meditation that possibly, that's the explanation, possibly I penetrated that realm, but it's inevitable if you try to move into the supernatural through seances, through spiritualism practices, through meditation practices, et cetera, you're going to be deceived because that is a realm dominated by Satan and a cloud of demonic influence all around the world. So they are very adept at giving false experiences of the supernatural. One time I went into this brilliant, intense white light that felt like a force, just a force, an impersonal force.

5:36 And I thought I was experiencing ultimate reality. I thought I was experiencing God. Now I realize that was totally a deceptive experience given to me by a satanic spirit that was involved in my life at that time. So I'm not saying people can have legitimate experiences, but they're inevitably going to have satanically inspired deceptive experiences if they attempt to go a different way. Because Jesus said, I am the door. And by me, if any man enter any will be saved. And he also said, I am the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father but by me. So if you attempt any other way, you're a thief and a robber.

6:19 Well, I was not intentionally trying to steal something spiritually that was not rightfully mine, but whether it was intentional or not is irrelevant because I was trying to encounter a realm that I had no spiritual or legal right to enter as an unregenerated child of Adam. But the thing about it is when you're born again, instead of you penetrating, trying or attempting to penetrate the spiritual world, the third heaven and the God of the third heaven bridges that gap and comes down into your heart.

6:59 And so all religions are man's effort to reach God, but Jesus is God's effort to reach man. And then you have a true experience of heaven on earth. In fact, the Bible said we become seated with Christ together in heavenly places. I hope that's a suitable explanation. Amen, amen, it does. And I've got a follow-up question for you. And I think this one is gonna really help people, especially this time of year, because there's a lot of things that look like fun in this Halloween season where there's ghouls and goblins and people were playing around and dabbling, I guess, with the occult and witchcraft and things like that.

7:42 My question for you is about the deception, okay? Because the Bible talks about a great deception. And you said that while you were in this experience, you were deceived, but that was like, it was a demonic thing that looked good, that felt good at the time. But now that you're on the other side of that and you know who Jesus is and you've had redemption and Jesus has become a Lord of your life, the savior of your life, the forgiver of your past and the leader of your future, now you can look at that and say, I was deceived. There's a lot of people that are deceived right now, especially with these things.

8:22 How can you approach somebody and help them that they think that they're just having fun, they think that they're having a fun experience that feels good at the moment? How can you help them to get past the deception and know that this was, that's a demonic thing and we need to have the focus on the real? Well, actually, one of the basic things I always try to establish when I'm talking to a New Ager or a Hindu, it revolves around the idea of truth. Is truth subjective or objective? The whole generation we're a part of loves to come up with this supposed axiom, this pithy wise statement that you can have your truth and I can have my truth and we can both be right.

9:09 Well, I believe that's both theologically and logically absurd because there's no way truth can just be personally developed or personally, how can I say it, personally created, that you create your own truth. And one of the ways I address quite often to prove that is the difference in opinion between the nature of the solar system by Ptolemy in the second century or Copernicus about a thousand years later. Ptolemy taught that the earth was a center and the sun revolved around the earth. Copernicus came along and said, no, the sun is a center and the earth revolves around the sun.

9:52 If they were contemporaries, they never could have sat in the same room and discuss their beliefs and Copernicus would not have said to Ptolemy, you can have your truth and I can have my truth and we can both be right. One is right at the expense of the other being wrong and there's no other response to that. Well, in like manner, Eastern religions and New Age spirituality teach that the presence of God or an essence of divinity is already within every human being. So to find God, you look within. On the opposite end of the pole, Christianity teaches that God is external. He is outside of the physical universe and outside of us, our sins have separated us from God, Isaiah 59 verse two says.

10:38 And so in order to come back into a relationship with God, he enters into us from with that. Those two scenarios are so contradictory, there's no way they can both be true. Either God is already in me or God is outside of me and will enter into me, but both cannot be right. And I contend when I share with New Agers about my experience that I found out when I invited the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart that the biblical approach was the correct approach. It worked, I had an experience of the true God for the first time in my life. And I was convinced by that encounter that the biblical way is the right way.

11:26 So whenever there's people that are dabbling with the occult practices and things like that, what could we do as friends and family are playing around with this stuff? Other than just saying, no, don't do that, that's wrong. People aren't gonna necessarily understand that. How can we help people kind of come out of that? Well, there's a whole array of subjects that need to be addressed. And John, I have a website, thetrulight.net, that's T-H-E-T-R-U-E-L-I-G-H-T, thetrulight.net. And I address many, many subjects, especially in the section on podcasts, the archives of the podcast, and a section called writings where I have articles on subjects like, well, let me take one for instance, chanting mantras.

12:19 Chanting mantras is something people think is totally harmless and very helpful and brings peace of mind. And some people think it can cause manifestations of what you desire in your life. But I do a teaching on what chanting mantras really is and how Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter six, verse seven, actually pinpointed that and said, "'Use not vain repetitions like the heathen do, "'for they believe that they'll be heard "'for their much speaking.'" Why did he warn against it when he was teaching the disciples how to effectively pray?

13:01 Because the idea of chanting mantras is based on the idea that God is an impersonal force on the highest level. And if that were true, then chanting a mantra would make sense because it's like a computer code that you enter into your computer to bring forth the desired results. But God is not a machine and God is not a computer that you manipulate and control with the right incantation. If I was trying to communicate with you right now, and I repeated the same phrase 100 times in a monotone voice, you would say, we can't use this interview. There's no relevance to what you're doing.

13:44 Because you don't communicate with a fellow human being that way, there's a flow of conversation that involves a creative expression of words that address certain ideas in a logical fashion. Well, if God is a person, we should approach him the same way. There should be a creative flow of praise and worship and petition to him that makes sense, not just a repetition of some monotonous sound to try and manipulate or control a power or a force into manifestation. Star Wars popularized the idea of God just being a force. And a lot of people who are into the occult believe that.

14:26 They believe that God is really subordinate to man, that it's a power, a force that we are in control of and that we manipulate or control by certain occult practices. And that's just absolutely an insult to him. That's why in Deuteronomy 18, God forbade the involvement of his people in occult practices like contacting the dead, like witchcraft and so forth. Yeah. You know, Pastor Mike, I wanna give people hope right now too. And I'm gonna ask you to share your story of how you came out of that life and you met Jesus.

15:06 And just a little bit of time that we have left for this segment, I just wanna let you share the gospel through your testimony. Oh, I love sharing it. I never grow tired of sharing it and I've been sharing it over 50 years. It was divinely orchestrated in a very remarkable way. I, as I mentioned, was teaching yoga at four universities and running a yoga ashram in Tampa, Florida. And I had about 300 students who considered me their guru. And the word guru comes from two roots, goo and rue that means out of darkness into light. But the problem was I wasn't in the light yet so I couldn't lead anyone else there.

15:48 And I had left college to study under an Indian guru myself and then I became one of his subordinate teachers. And a friend of mine had left college at the same time for the same purpose, but studied under a different guru. And he writes me a letter with this very surprising announcement. He tells me that he walked in a church, heard an audible voice say, Jesus is the only way. And he was quote unquote, born again, which was completely new to me. I'd never heard that terminology before having been raised Catholic. And so it intrigued me. And he talked about how the spirit of God had entered into him from without.

16:33 And so that immediately grabbed my attention. I thought that's a different approach altogether. So I pondered that letter that I received for days. Now simultaneously, something else was happening. The Tampa Tribune newspaper had done a half page article on me, which was a huge amount of advertisement for free in an area where, I don't know, a couple of million people probably got that paper. So I thought for sure, my classes were going to mushroom in attendance. Instead, God used that article to alert a spirit-filled prayer group in Tampa, Florida to begin praying for me.

17:15 And they cut the article out of the paper, pinned it to their prayer board, and assigned somebody to be fasting and praying for me every hour of every day. They had a 24-hour prayer chain. So I'm being soaked with intercession, in a sense, for almost a month. Now I get this letter from Larry, and I'm already the object of intercessory prayer. And God just responded to that and used that letter to trigger a desire in my heart. So one day I just dedicated the day to Jesus. And instead of doing any of my yoga practices, my normal asanas, which are physical exercises, or pranayama, which are breathing exercises, I decided I wasn't gonna chant mantras, I wasn't gonna meditate.

18:02 All I was going to do was read the Bible and pray to Jesus all day long that if He was the truth, He would give me a sign. And that afternoon I was hitchhiking to go teach a yoga class. And one of the members of the prayer group who just happened to be a former yoga student himself who had gone deeper than me into the experience was two miles away. And he was part of that prayer group praying for me. And he's walking into a laundromat with an armful of dirty clothes, and God speaks to his heart and says, "'Get back in your van and start driving. "'I've got a job for you to do.'" That's all the instructions God gave him. So he got behind the wheel obediently and started driving and turned whenever he felt an impulse and saw me hitchhiking about two miles down the road and felt compelled to pick me up.

18:52 He pulled over and I'm still praying, John. I'm still saying, Jesus, if you're the answer, show me today, give me a sign. I opened the door to the van and looked in and my heart jumps because on the ceiling of the van is a picture of Jesus. And I knew this is my son. And a few minutes later, he began witnessing to me and within about a half hour, I was on my knees in the back of the van with him, praying, seeking God, asking Jesus for this experience of being born again. And the Catholics teach that it happens when a child is sprinkled at birth. That didn't happen to me. It happened when I consciously invited Jesus into my heart where I repented of my sins and claimed his blood, washing my soul clean from sin and told him I believe he had risen from the dead and that he was Lord of my life.

19:48 That changed everything. I went back to my classes that week, told them that from that point forward, they were no longer going to be conducted, that I had become a follower of Jesus. They were quite shocked. Most of them became Christians also. And I shut down my ashram within a day or two. I just backed out of my rental agreement and shut it down and no longer functioned in that realm because I don't believe in quote unquote Christian yoga. I believe that's an oxymoron. You cannot blend the two worldviews. It's like trying to put the Ark of the Covenant in the same building as Dagon, the false god.

20:32 You can't mix two worldviews like that. Yeah, wow, so you had a tremendous, tremendous testimony of God had his, the hounds of heaven were after you for sure by that prayer and intercession group. And the thing that you thought was gonna bring you fame and fortune as a yogi, which I'm sure that's actually counterintuitive to what the yogi practices. But you were thinking that that was gonna grow, but God actually used that as an opportunity for you to get saved and then lead more people to Christ. And now you're a pastor and you've got these great podcasts. You've got books that are really helping people get past the deception points in so many different ways because you have a great just perspective of how and how to explain these things to people that, let's face it, there's so many other religions and strange beliefs out there that it's very good to have somebody like yourself that can help Christians understand that in a safe way for somebody that has been studied.

21:43 And Pastor Mike, we just thank you so much for being a part of the Charisma family and being able to share with this. And I know we're gonna have another conversation, another point to talk about your book, the beliefs of the Catholic Church. You coming out of the Catholic Church is a big part of your testimony as well, but really you have a love for the Catholics. And so we're gonna talk about that in another conversation. But Pastor Mike, thank you so much for being here on Charisma News. May I mention one last thing? Yes, sir. I did not go into a lot of detail about my testimony, but I have a free book, a free book available called The Highest Adventure Encountering God.

22:25 And it's a mini book about 64 pages that's available on thetrulight.net. And it's there in 12 languages. In fact, it's Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese. And we've had thousands upon thousands of people worldwide download that book, The Highest Adventure Encountering God. And I would really appreciate it if people came and took advantage of that free book and shared it with people who are searching through New Age spirituality. Absolutely. I think for that will be in the description of this video and we'll put it up on the screen as well as we were talking about it. So Pastor Mike, thank you so much for being here with us today on Charisma News. And we look forward to our next conversation.

23:08 Thank you very much and God bless you, John.