The pastor of the last Korean American church—initially a UMC church—I had served genuinely believed that Jesus had gone to India, thereby believing that Jesus’ teaching was directly influenced by ancient vedas, this pastor had attempted to learn Sanskrit. At the time, I didn’t think much of it since he initially told me that he was actively trying to teach proper Biblical studying methods to his liberal colleagues, and his interest, just like mine, seemed to be in learning languages. However, as months turned into years, I slowly realized that he merely put up a thin façade with coded language to cover up his proclivity for fringe. Of course, as he got bolder about his unorthodox beliefs and things became more apparent with his aggressive attitudes against those who genuinely wanted to plainly learn from the Bible, I made a beeline for exit. This was my final exit from the Korean American church, a ground that has been made toxic with theological progressivism and the worship of worldly credentials.¹

The idea that Christ had gone to East to learn from gurus was initially fabricated by a Crimean Jewish traveler named Nikolai Aleksandrovich Notovich, aka Nicolas Notovitch in English. He published a book called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ in 1894, where Jesus had supposedly left Galilee for India and studied with Buddhists and Hindus, then returned to Judea. According to his writings, he had discovered a manuscript titled Life of Saint Issa (Issa is the Arabic name for Jesus) which documents Jesus’ travel (between ages 12 to 30) to India and studying with Brahmins and Buddhists. He later, albeit allegedly, confessed to fabricating the evidence. I guess this idea of Jesus studying abroad sound favorable to some Korean American pastors who have come overseas to study in the U.S. themselves. Even though we have the biblical record of Jesus’ family taking refuge in Egypt—about 370 miles away—people at the time rarely traveled outside of their home region. For Israelites at the time, this meant about 70 miles from east to west, and 250 miles from north to south. The distance from Israel to India is over 2,400 miles. We do have a tradition stating that one of the disciples of Jesus, namely Thomas, was martyred in southern part of India, and if one were to make an extrabiblical argument such things would be used to add credibility to that notion. In fact, this idea of Jesus studying in the East lives on in theosophical circles (i.e. Madame Blavatsky, Levi H. Dowling, Swami Abhedananda, etc.) and they stand directly opposed to biblical worldview. Only apostates put worldly ideas above the Word of God.

First of all, we have a clear warning about altering the Word of God, as found in these texts:

You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your God which I am commanding you.

Deuteronomy 4:2 (LSB)

None other than the Creator himself is making the warning here. And John of the Patmos also warns the same:

I bear witness to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.

Revelation 22:18-19 (LSB)

Some may argue that Jesus studying overseas is not altering of the text, but merely a supplementary material, just like the extrabiblical additional materials from the field of ANES (Ancient Near East Studies), or from archaeological findings, but such assumption necessarily presents with Christ that is different from what the Scripture clearly teaches us. If it is incongruent with what we clearly find from the written Scriptures on Christ, then we’re in fact indirectly altering what the Word of God clearly teaches by choosing to place the worldly teachings about Christ above the Scripture. Sadly, this type of undermining of the authority of the Scripture is far too common within today’s church, and few even go one step farther by pushing people into Satanic domain.

There are known cases where Christian pastors and Catholic priests teach that in trying to imitate Christ, we ought to learn from Eastern or pagan religions, even including witchcraft. I think that Korean American pastor I had mentioned also believed this, since he genuinely believed that Jesus had Vedic influences. (He also didn’t seem to have done anything when I had reported a New Age occult practice—use of crystals—incorporated into Christian communion at a Methodist youth retreat.) These folks teach that Christ “went to east, and studied with gurus in India… studied with lamas in Tibet… went to Egypt and studied with the magicians there. That’s how he was able to raise the dead, to walk on water , and to do all these miracles.”² This may be one extreme example, but the baseline starts with the idea that Jesus had gone to India.

What would be the most effective way for Satan to infiltrate the church and dethrone Christ? Just have so-called Christian pastors, bishops, and priests to believe such lies about Christ: he is less than an omniscient Son of God since he had to learn from Hindu gurus and Buddhist monks. It’s that simple, and this is exactly what has happened with Christian churches today. Underneath their benign sounding sermons and virtue signaling with banners of love everywhere lies such a shattered Christology, and underneath it, a tattered Bibliology. It’s not any wonder why the churches are impotent and ineffective witness for Christ.

1. The same pastor had lied about his degree from Harvard Divinity School. To a lackadaisical congregational response, he had confessed to this soon after the church had disaffiliated from UMC to join GMC. It seemed a mere sophisticated exercise in virtue signaling and not much more. You find them everywhere, but Korea just seems to have more of plagiarism, fake credentials, and dry labbing than other countries. In spite of all of the modern progress, the old habits die hard. ↩︎
2. An interview with Dr. William Schnoebelen ↩︎