Who Is Maitreya?

Q

I have been truly blessed by your website. I want to personally thank you for allowing the Lord to use you in such a tremendous way. There are so many things that I have learned here and one of them is to trust your judgment. I have a question about the person called Maitreya. Can you give me some insight on this person and how his being in existence and seemingly waiting for something shows us how close Jesus coming for his bride actually is? Thanks in advance for your help.

A

Lord Maitreya Christ, as some call him, is believed by the New Age movement to be the one that all religions of the world have been expecting for generations. They claim that Christians know him as the Christ, Jews await him as the Messiah; Hindus as Krishna; for Buddhists he’s Maitreya Buddha; and many Muslims think of him as al Mahdi. Although the names are different, New Age believers say that they all refer to the same individual: the “World Teacher, whose personal name is Maitreya.”

They believe he came to Earth in 1988 and has made hundreds of appearances since. The way he’s described fits with some of the Biblical descriptions of the coming of the anti-Christ. However, his followers are quick to point out that Maitreya has no political or religious leadership aspirations. They say he has come to help us “create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation.”

The people he sees as his primary obstacle to achieving this are the “religious fundamentalists” who insist on adhering to their own dogmatic ways. There is a view among New Agers that when the time is right these fundamentalists will be suddenly whisked off to another dimension to clear the way for Maitreya to accomplish his work.