Is the Conversations with God series biblically sound?

Response

The book that initiated everything, Conversations with God, Book 1: An Uncommon Dialogue, remained on the New York Times Best Sellers List for over two and a half years. In 2006, a film based on the book was released. Conversations with God, also known as CwG, was created by Neale Donald Walsch. In 1995, Walsch published the initial book in the series, followed by eight more books, all presented as conversations between Walsch and “God.” The fundamental concept of the series is that God is constantly communicating with everyone, and Walsch began to listen. He penned Book 1 while grappling with suicidal thoughts and pondering the meaning of life.

Walsch asserts that Conversations with God was divinely inspired, claiming that God literally spoke to him (“over my right shoulder”), and he transcribed what he heard as if taking dictation. However, during an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live on April 7, 2000, Walsch acknowledged that he could not be certain it was God speaking and that the books might have originated from his own subconscious.

In Conversations with God, Walsch conveys that a voice informed him that God encompasses everything and everything is God. Thus, we humans are essentially “God.” Every individual around you is essentially “you” in a different manifestation, and we are all “God.” In this context, Walsch echoes one of Satan’s original deceptions, “You will be as God” «for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. », (Genesis 3:5).

Walsch also posits in the Conversations with God series that all life is everlasting. Death is deemed “the great illusion.” There exists no judgment, no punishment, and no hell, as there is no basis for any of those—there is no sin. Following death, an individual transitions to a different plane of existence to “further the evolution of the human soul.” This doctrine in ConversationsWith God is in direct conflict with Hebrews 9:27 and many other passages of Scripture that teach the reality of judgment after death.

Walsch’s defense of Hitler’s actions aligns with his teaching of relativism: Hitler might be called “evil” but only “within the context of our human experience.” And Hitler was commissioned by God “to show humanity to itself for the purpose of lifting humanity above what it had become and what it had sunk to” (Larry King interview, op. cit.). Therefore, in Walsch’s world, Hitler was just another thread of the tapestry and was necessary to help us move forward.

According to the author of Conversations with God, there is no right way to live or one way to come to God. There are many ways, and all of them are equally valid. All the gods of various religions are really the same “God.” Of course, the One True God disagrees with Walsch: “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God’” «Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. », (Isaiah 44:6).

Walsch insists in Book 1 of Conversations with God that words cannot communicate truth. Instead, truth comes as each individual consults his or her own feelings. Everyone is right, and no one is wrong; contradictory “truths” are not a problem in Walsch’s faulty logic. It’s interesting for a man who has given the world nearly 3,000 pages of words to state that words cannot communicate truth. What, then, is he communicating?