When God quizzed Job about how much he knew, that should clue us all in to the limits of our philosophy.
“Esoteric knowledge” just plain gives me the willies. I have quite enough difficulties (though by the grace of God, less and less as time goes on) with the bible, thank you very much. What good does it do to know all that stuff and to neglect a salvational relationship to our Savior.
FTFY. My experience with Gnostics is that they don't, actually, know something the rest don't. In my opinion, rather, authentic Christianity is exactly the opposite; it removes all the arcane rules and secret whatevers and is starkly plain.
Our rational, egoistic nature tries to rebel against the simplicity of Salvation, almost screaming "that's too easy! It must be more complicated than that" and in recent example Skinhead O'Connor's Muhammedan diatribe boasts the minute regulation of everything that is Muhammedism.
Of course when one says it must be complicated two things happen:
It's easy, which of course makes it challenging to us, to discern; the rule is in 1 John 4: "Try the spirits whether they are of God: … Ever spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God..."
Everyone can readily admit that they don't know all of God's plan; but at the same time it's not too hard to see what it *isn't*; and among the things it *isn't* are super-secret mystic knowledge He didn't tell us and behavior entirely at odds with everything He did.
Good point. And there is a bottomless pit of knowledge and information related to ancient secret knowledge, Kabbalah, Sitra Achra, gnosticism, etc. There are some very interesting and informative things there, some of which are useful to know about. But in the end, it is of marginal benefit at best, and a deadly distraction at worst compared to seeking a salvational relationship with Jesus, as you say.