By Edwin Noyes, MD
Did you know that many popular alternative health therapies are based on the first lies Satan told Eve in the Garden of Eden? Specifically, therapies that claim to balance your inner life force or realign your body and mind with universal energy fields?
How did something as innocent as the practice of healing get mixed up with those lies? Let’s examine the lies Satan told Eve in a little more detail to discover the answer.
Masquerading as a talking serpent, Satan offered Eve forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and through his lies convinced her to eat it: “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Gen. 3:4–5, NKJV, emphasis supplied.
Where did Satan find such a clever deception—that godlike wisdom is a mixture of good and evil?
Satan saw that there was harmony by the presence of opposites, such as light and dark, day and night, land and water, sun and moon, warm and cool, and in procreation, male and female. He then spun a web of falsehood claiming that God had withheld the knowledge of evil because, when balanced with good, it would bring enlightenment and even godhood for created beings. In addition, the evil of disobedience wouldn’t cause death. God was just using the threat of death to scare Adam and Eve from this godlike wisdom of combining the opposites—good and evil.
Satan promised that this “balance” of good and evil would bring transformation, completeness, enlightenment, immortality, and finally godhood for humanity. Did it? The Bible tells us that by accepting Satan’s lies, humanity was plunged into sin and brought under the penalty of death. Gen. 3:17–19; 1 Cor. 15:21–22.
Satan’s deceptions still mix good with evil and truth with error. And he’s used this very successfully in the field of alternative health and healing.
Anciently, Satan worked to promote his version of the origin of man. In his fabricated worldview, creation was not a six-day event and did not involve a sovereign God. Instead, God was an essence pervading all nature and nature was god; therefore, human beings were gods and only needed to learn how to bring this “god within” to its full potential. The view that a divine essence pervades all nature is known as pantheism and is sprinkled through every pagan religion in the world.
Alternative healers call this essence universal energy. They claim their therapies balance, unblock, restore, infuse, or otherwise manipulate these “invisible energies” which allegedly exist or circulate within the human body.1 By dabbling in therapies and practices based on the philosophy of “divine energy” such as reflexology, acupuncture, and Reiki to treat disease, even Christians who claim to believe in the Creator God have been influenced by these satanic concepts.
However, the concept of universal energy is not biblical. It is a pagan concept that traces back to the ancient tower of Babel and the occult practices of astrologers who promoted the supposed connection of human health and destiny to the movement of heavenly bodies. After God confounded their languages, they took these concepts with them into every corner of the globe.
The 19th-century Christian health educator Ellen White clearly explained the difference between God’s power and the deceptive concepts of universal energy, a deception that was regaining prominence even in her day:
“The mighty power that works through all nature and sustains all things is not, as some men of science claim, merely an all-pervading principle, an actuating energy. God is a spirit; yet He is a personal being, for man was made in His image. As a personal being, God has revealed Himself in His Son. Jesus, the outshining of the Father’s glory, ‘and the express image of His person’ (Hebrews 1:3), was on earth found in fashion as a man. As a personal Saviour He came to the world. As a personal Saviour He ascended on high. As a personal Saviour He intercedes in the heavenly courts. Before the throne of God in our behalf ministers ‘One like the Son of man.’ Daniel 7:13.”2
And if God is a person, He cannot be reduced to universal energy. Nor can we manipulate the power of God by sticking acupuncture needles in our skin, massaging pressure points in our feet or hands, sitting in the yoga position, or by breathing exercises.
In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus mentioned deception three times when listing the signs preceding His second coming. We often emphasize the physical signs, like earthquakes and pestilences. But Jesus’ major emphasis was on the great end-time deceptions calculated to overwhelm even the elect. The deceptions would be so cunning that people would naively follow Satan, the prince of this world, and reject salvation through Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul warned, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.” 1 Tim. 4:1, NKJV.
Let’s take reflexology and acupuncture as an example of Satan’s deceptions.
Today we find evidence that astrologers who fled the doomed tower of Babel spread pagan concepts of “universal energy” everywhere.
At the heart of these alternative therapies is the doctrine of correspondence (associations or sympathies) between the cosmos, earth, and man. This concept is central to the term life force energy. In theory this energy emanates from the cosmos, from which all things are said to be made, and within which all are one (pantheism). Therapies are undertaken to “unblock” anything in man from receiving this “life force energy.”
In Chinese medicine (based on Taoism), the human body was divided into multiple microcosms known as meridians, which could be influenced by universal energy (chi) channels through cosmic correspondence.
Since it was believed that physical disease is a condition of unbalanced life force due to congestion or blockage of energy flow, correction of the imbalance could be achieved by manipulating points of correspondence in the body. This is the foundation of acupuncture, acupressure, reflexology, and several other techniques collectively labeled soma (body) therapies.
Reflexologists, for example, claim that massaging different areas of the foot can realign corresponding organs in the body with universal energy. A good foot rub is relaxing and without ill effects and shouldn’t be avoided if you enjoy it. But accepting reflexology’s premise of universal energy leads away from God’s system of health and from our need of God’s power and salvation.
When carefully examined, the theory of universal energy, or pantheism, is at complete odds with the Bible and its revelation of salvation. Again, Ellen White plainly laid this out to naive Christians dabbling in pantheistic theories over a century ago:
“If God is an essence pervading all nature, then He dwells in all men; and in order to attain holiness, man has only to develop the power that is within him…. These theories, followed to their logical conclusion, sweep away the whole Christian economy. They do away with the necessity for the atonement and make man his own savior. These theories regarding God make His word of no effect.”3
The danger is that if people feel helped by these types of therapies, they begin to believe the philosophy behind them. This leads them into Satan’s counterfeit health system, the “right arm” of his false message of salvation.
Paul warned: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” Col. 2:8, NKJV.
Satan has been stealthily working to condition people’s thinking until total control of their minds and the rejection of God and His law is accomplished. For years the West has seen changes in education, including an open attack on the Creator God. In the entertainment industry, Christian concepts and morals have been devalued and atheistic and pagan ideas elevated. This same philosophy of universal energy is also seen in the environmental movement.
The question isn't, “does the therapy work?” it's “whose power brought healing?”
Satan has developed his plan to deceive until almost all external influences in our civilization are used as entry points to bring acceptance to his worldview and to prepare the world for his final deceptions.
So, how can we determine if a method of natural healing originates with Satan? After all, many claim to have been helped using these very methods. Yes, people do get better and apparently receive healing at times. So the question isn’t “Does it work?” The issue is, Whose power brought healing?
A comment often heard is “Well, I just take the good out of XYZ therapy.” But any technique distinctly connected to Satan’s counterfeit health message cannot be considered neutral. Participating in these methods ventures on Satan’s ground and gives him access to your life.
The most powerful deterrent to becoming bewitched by Satan’s deceptions in health and healing is to know God’s methods so well that it becomes easy to detect the counterfeit. God’s remedies involve the use of pure air, sunlight, temperate use of good substances, avoiding the injurious, rest, exercise, proper diet, the use of water inside and outside the body, and trust in God’s power.
Satan’s methods sometimes incorporate some of these remedies. The difference is the explanation given for the source of the power for healing. If it’s from some energy within us, or if we are seeking to balance that power from within, then it is certainly from Satan’s counterfeit plan.
Here’s a list of questions to aid you in determining the source of a healing therapy:
1. From what and where are the therapy’s roots?
2. Which other healing modalities keep company with this therapy in clinical use and in books and literature describing it?
3. Does the method claim to activate the innate powers within myself, or does it direct me to recognize the power of the Creator God in healing?
4. Is its method of action in harmony with the known laws of physics and science?
5. Does it claim to balance, polarize, manipulate, unblock, and correct energies, electromagnetic frequencies, or vibrations?
6. Is it a technique that involves altering my consciousness or rational thought process to impede control of my mind, or to alter whose power controls me?4
Compiled from the well-researched and comprehensive book Exposing Spiritualistic Practices in Healing by Edwin Noyes, MD, MPH. Find it on Amazon.
1. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Can You Trust Your Doctor? (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991), p. 67.
2. Ellen G. White, Education (Pacific Press, 1952), p. 113.
3. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8 (Pacific Press, 1904), p. 291.
4. These questions were first printed in Mystical Medicine by Warren Peters, MD, Hartland Pub., 1988 (reprinted by Teach Services in 2012).
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Edwin Noyes is a retired family physician. He has presented seminars on nutrition and lifestyle for 45 years, and for the past 20 years, seminars revealing spiritualistic practices in health and healing.