HISTORY 

Helen Schucman, a Jewish atheistic psychologist from Columbia University, began in 1965 to channel messages from a spirit that she claimed identified itself as Jesus Christ.  She produced from this “voice” well over a thousand pages of “revelation” during a period of seven years.  Since Schucman took down this dictation from her “Spirit Guide”, people like Marianne Williams, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky and many others, have made it their mission to bring growing numbers of Christians into spiritual confusion and convince them of a need to find their own “spirit guides”, while leading them to exchange the truth for a lie.

BELIEFS

The Course uses Christian terminology and the claim that the message comes from Jesus to promote their unbiblical teachings in such a way that it has resulted in a number of denominations within Christendom accepting the Course as legitimate and introducing it into their churches.  How a Christian church could accept such heretical teachings is beyond me.  The Course teaches such things as, God did not create the world, we are all equally Christ, Jesus is not the only Son of God, and Jesus did not suffer and die for man’s sin – All contrary to core beliefs of the Christian faith clearly taught in the Bible.

The Course follows the New Age in teaching that only love is real and all that is negative is illusion.  The negative in life simply does not exist.  According to the Course, sickness, hate, pain, fear, guilt, and sin are all illusions.  As it is with the New Age movement, The Course eliminates accountability for sin and any need for salvation by simply making sin and the resulting guilt a Christian might feel, an illusion that is only there because people allow it to be in their minds.

Similarly, The Course teaches that evil does not exist.  It is an illusion that must be overcome by right thinking.  Volume I of the Course reads, “Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist.  So, evil is only real if you believe in it.”  So, I guess you could say a rape victim created her own evil situation and thereby caused her suffering.  The victim is guilty and the perpetrator didn’t really do anything.

The Cyclopedia In A Course in Miracles states that “Illusions are investments.  They will last as long as you value them”.  It goes on to say “The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw all investment from them, and they will have no life for you because you will have put them out of your mind.”  So, murder, rape, and other forms of evil do not exist because they do not come from “love”.  Try explaining that to a rape victim or the family who has lost someone to the evil act of a murderer.

Because there is no sin or evil in the reality taught by The Course, followers are also taught that there is no need for guilt.  Guilt is only a reality for those who don’t believe they are a part of the divine.  In volume one of The Course you will read “no one is punished for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners”.  This eliminates any need for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  According to the Course in Miracles there was never sin in the world that needed to be dealt with by God, only mistakes.  How Satan must delight in such teaching.

The goal of the Course is to completely reverse the beliefs of Christians by using Christian terminology to pervert the Word of God.  Volume 3 of the Course (The Manual for Teachers) says, “It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought.”  The Course offers a form of Spirituality without the need for any change in actions or accountability for oneself.  Only a change in thought is needed.  Instead of accepting that we have all sinned and are in need of forgiveness and the salvation offered through Christ’s sacrifice, the Course teaches that we are a part of the divine, and sin and evil are a figment of our imagination.

The Course also teaches that there is no absolute truth.  In fact, truth is relative and is determined by one’s experience.  Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love, states in her book, “There’s only one truth, spoken different ways, and the Course is just one path to it out of many.”  In other words, all religious traditions lead to the same truth, even if they teach vastly different and conflicting messages, because truth is relative.

Just like the other ecumenical faiths of today, The Course teaches that Jesus is only one of many enlightened beings. According to Marianne Williamson’s book on A Course in Miracles, Jesus is just one of our enlightened masters and one of our evolutionary elder brothers.  Williams goes on to say on page 41 of her book that “A Course in Miracles does not push Jesus.  Although the books come from him, it is made very clear that you can be an advanced student of the Course and not relate personally to him at all.”  The Course completely eliminates a need for a relationship with Christ and affords our Lord only the status of an “enlightened example” who is there to show us the way to an elevated evolutionary state.  Satan once again uses his favorite lie – that we may become gods ourselves.  The Manual For Teachers states that “Jesus became what all of you must be”, and continues “Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you.”

In Course philosophy, biblical words undergo drastic changes of purpose.  New meanings are often the opposite of their biblical meaning.

Examples:

Atonement no longer refers to Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross for sin.  In A Course in Miracles, atonement means the exact opposite.  The course teaches that one is not, and never has been, separated from God, so the term atonement refers to correcting the belief that men are separate from God, which is presumed to be a false belief.

The Course also teaches that sin is not an evil to be punished but merely a lack of love - a mistake to be corrected, not punished.  They deal with sin by saying that the world is not real and that there is no reality behind separation and guilt.  They teach that the story  of Jesus' death on the cross was not to pay for sin but to show that sin and death had no affect on Him. 

Using this logic, they warp the meaning of salvation making it instead a result of overcoming the illusion of sin, death, sickness, fear and pain.

A BIBLICAL RESPONSE