The Need to Address Alternative and New Religious Movements

There is a necessity to address the "distinctive" doctrines of New Thought metaphysics as it relates to contemporary African American "Word of Faith" religion.  It is a "religion" simply because many of its predecessors have attempt to create their own brand of religion by borrowing "heavily" from various religious traditions and philosophical ideology (1 Tim. 6:20). The foundation from which many New Thought teachers and leaders derived that of their own particular brand of religion is from a "Gnostic" source: that of what is revelatory knowledge (2 Pet. 1:20).  Most Gnostics throughout the first and second century church claim to receive such "secret" knowledge that are veiled from the spiritual immature or the "unenlightened."  In so many words such knowledge ("gnosis") are accessible to the spiritually elite; not to ordinary people who are spiritually "unenlightened."  Such knowledge ("