The Bible teaches that God is present, but separate from His creation. 

In my very first semester of Bible College, I was emphatically taught two biblical terms: Immanence and Transcendence.

  • Immanence means that God is totally present in His creation.
  • Transcendence means that God is totally different than His creation.

God dwells everywhere, but the omnipresence of God does not mean that He blends with His creation.  This truth is clearly taught by many of the prophets and apostles in the Bible.  It is affirmed by all conservative theologians.  However, it somehow does not completely sink into the hearts of many believers in the church. 

Many Bible teachers shy away from teaching on God’s omnipresence and its full implications because they are afraid it will confuse people.  Speakers often water it down into nothing more than a passing thought, largely due to the fear that God’s people will confuse God’s omnipresence with an old heresy called pantheism. 

Pantheism is the belief that god is nature and nature is god.  I’m very concerned that when I write about God’s omnipresence my readers may mistake God’s omnipresence for pantheism.  The Bible is explicitly clear that God and creation are not the same, no matter how powerful created elements may be.  Consider Elijah’s encounter with the Lord in 2 Kings 19

[1].  In it, Elijah encounters:

  • Wind so strong that it tore off pieces of a mountain
  • An earthquake
  • A fire

Here we have Biblical examples of kinetic energy, seismic energy and thermal energy.  These are three of the most potent forms of natural energy on earth and in each case the prophet reports that God was not in the energy.  He’s different than this created energy and set apart from it.

This is highly relevant to us here in the Verde Valley because pantheism is the foundation for many New Age and Eastern belief systems.  Upon further study, I discovered that the modern New Age movement often adopts the pantheistic belief that nature is god and that god is nature. 

New Age Pantheists actively seek spiritual experiences derived from nature that completely ignore or exclude the Holy Spirit.  Let me ask you this, do you really want to have a spiritual experience that does not involve the Holy Spirit?  (In the best case scenario, it’s completely meaningless.  In the worst case, it’s demonic.  Personally, I don’t want to mess with it!)

New Age Pantheists believe in a god that is completely united with the natural world.  They figure that if God is everywhere, then they can worship anything and be worshiping god.  New Age Pantheists worship red rocks!  They believe that if they are touching a leaf or a stone that they are touching God.  It is an utter distortion of the doctrine of God’s omnipresence.

Many of them believe that we are as much a part of this god-energy as a rock, a star, a leaf, or the solar system.  So, it is right and fitting to worship ourselves.  Some New Agers even pray to themselves (or they meditate, thinking only of themselves).  They believe that their connection with a universal god-like-energy makes them able to manipulate this energy and therefore answer their own prayers.  This is a spiritually dangerous and heretical belief system.

On a somewhat related note: My kids have given me a critique of the Lego-movie song that if everything is awesome that means that in reality, nothing is awesome.  Everything is just the same.  In the same way, if everything is God then nothing is God.  Everything is made out of the same stuff.

Pantheists degrade the incorruptible Deity of God in order to make all things divine.  In doing so, they eliminate divinity from the world entirely.  The truth is that while God is present in the world, He is infinitely and entirely different from the world.  However closely He might be associated with the works of his hands, no matter how powerful those works may be, His works are altogether other than He Himself.

God is a person.  He is not a strong impersonal force.  He has the power to think, act, and exercise free will.  His being and His personality are completely separate from His creation.

  • God is not His gifts
  • God is not His works
  • God is not nature

John 4:24 says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

There are many people in Christian churches who believe in a form of pantheism without even being aware of their heretical thinking.  There are pantheists here in our valley who are so greatly deceived that they believe they are following a super-heightened form Biblical Christianity when they are far from it.

 

[1] 2 Kings 19:10-12

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Mark Stafford

Senior Pastor