ROMAN CATHOLICS IN LOVE WITH EASTERN RELIGIONS
October 29, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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The Vatican II Council in the 1960s opened the door for interfaith dialogue, and since then a growing number of Roman Catholic leaders have developed intimate relations with their counterparts in the pagan eastern religions, particularly Hindu, Buddhist, Tao, and Sufi. These Catholics have been paganized far more thoroughly than the pagans have been Romanized. Actually there is a great blending and merging going on throughout the religious world in preparation for the one world religion of the antichrist.
THOMAS MERTON
One of the fathers of this movement is Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk whose writings are vastly influential within Catholicism, the New Age movement, and the centering prayer movement that lies at the heart of the emerging church and that is permeating evangelicalism.
Born in France, Merton had no religion growing up. During World War II he moved to America, began attending Mass, and became a Roman Catholic in 1938. He was received as a monk in the Trappist order and spent the last 27 years of his life in a monastery devoted to Mary (The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky). The first time he visited the monastery he described it as “the Court of the Queen of Heaven” (John Talbot, The Way of the Mystic, p. 221).
Merton was a student of Zen master Daisetsu Suzuki and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Merton also studied mystical Islamic Sufism. He said, “I’m deeply impregnated with Sufism” (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, 1999, p. 109).
In fact, Merton claimed to be both a Buddhist and a Christian. The titles of his books include Zen and the Birds of the Appetite and Mystics and the Zen Masters.
Merton said:
“I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can” (David Steindl-Rast, “Recollection of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West,” Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969, quoted from Lighthouse Trails).
“Asia, Zen, Islam, etc., all these things come together in my life. It would be madness for me to attempt to create a monastic life for myself by excluding all these” (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 41).
Like Hindus and Zen Buddhists, Merton defined mysticism as an experience beyond words. In a speech to monks of eastern religions in Calcutta in October 1968 he said: “... the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. IT IS WORDLESS. IT IS BEYOND WORDS, AND IT IS BEYOND SPEECH, and it is beyond concept” (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1975 edition, p. 308).
Merton believed that the key to interfaith dialogue is to ignore doctrine and dogma and focus on mystic contemplative experience.
“Personally, in matters where dogmatic beliefs differ, I think that controversy is of little value because it takes us away from the spiritual realities into the realm of words and ideas ... But much more important is the sharing of the experience of divine light ... It is here that the area of fruitful dialogue exists between Christianity and Islam” (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 109).
In 1969 Merton took the trip of his dreams, to visit India, Ceylon, Singapore, and Thailand, to experience the places where his beloved eastern religions were born. He said he was “going home.”
In India Merton met the Dalai Lama three times and said there “there is a real spiritual bond between us” (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1975 edition, p. 125). The Dalai Lama agreed. When he eventually visited Merton’s grave at Gethsemani Abbey, he prayed, “Now our spirits are one” (http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jan1997/feature1.asp 10/8/2002).
In Sri Lanka Merton visited a Buddhist shrine by the ocean. Approaching the Buddha idols barefoot he was struck with the “great smiles,” their countenance signifying that they were “questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace ... that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything--without refutation--without establishing some other argument” (The Asian Journal, p. 233).
This alleged wisdom is a complete denial of the Bible, which teaches us that there is truth and there is error, light and darkness, God and Satan, and they are not one, and true wisdom lies in testing all things and rejecting that which is false. Proverbs says, “The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going” (Prov. 14:15).
Merton described his visit to the Buddhas as an experience of great illumination, a vision of “inner clearness.” He said, “I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination” (The Asian Journal, p. 235). Actually it was a demonic delusion.
Six days later Merton was electrocuted in a cottage in Bangkok by a faulty fan switch. He was fifty-four years old.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
Anthony de Mello (1931-87) was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist whose writings are influential in the contemplative movement. By 1998 more than two million copies of his books had been sold in 35 languages. He was the director of the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counseling in Poona, India. Sadhana is a Hindu term that refers to the practices of a sadhu or one who is seeking spiritual enlightenment (yoga, chanting, pooja or idol worship, asceticism, etc.).
Like Merton, De Mello defined mysticism as a spiritual experience that goes beyond thinking. Consider some of his statements:
“... revelation is not knowledge. Revelation is power; a mysterious power that brings transformation. ... The head is not a very good place for prayer. ... YOU MUST LEARN TO MOVE OUT OF THE AREA OF THINKING and talking and move into the area of feeling, sensing, loving, intuiting” (Sadhana: A Way to God, pp. 15, 17).
“Don’t ask questions. Do what you are asked to and you will discover the answer for yourself. Truth is found less in words and explanations than in action and experience” (p. 20).
Actually this is a sure recipe for spiritual delusion! The Bible warns, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8), and exhorts us to “prove all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
De Mello’s teaching is an interfaith mixture of Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Sufi.
His book Sadhana: A Way to God is subtitled “Christian Exercises in Eastern Form,” referring to the pagan influence from eastern religions. He readily admits to borrowing from Buddhist Zen masters and Hindu gurus. One of the exercises he recommends is based on Hindu monism, the doctrine that God is everything:
“Think of the air as of an immense ocean that surrounds you ... an ocean heavily colored with God’s presence and God’s being. ... While you draw the air into your lungs you are drawing God in” (Sadhana: A Way to God, p. 36).
He recommends the Hindu lotus posture as the most ideal (p. 24) and suggests chanting the Hindu word “om” (p. 49).
He even instructs his students to communicate with inanimate objects:
“Choose some object that you use frequently: a pen, a cup ... Now gently place the object in front of you or on your lap and speak to it. Begin by asking it questions about itself, its life, its origins, its future. And listen while it unfolds to you the secret of its being and of its destiny. Listen while it explains to you what existence means to it. Your object has some hidden wisdom to reveal to you about yourself. Ask for this and listen to what it has to say. There is something that you can give this object. What is it? What does it want from you?” (p. 55).
Though some of De Mello’s doctrine was condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he remained a Jesuit priest in good standing and his books are sold widely in Catholic bookstores. His biography was published in 2005 by Jesuit J. Francis Stroud.
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EDWARDS, TILDEN
Tilden Edwards (1940-2005) was the Roman Catholic founder of the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C., which trains spiritual directors. Ray Yungen says: “The Shalem Institute is one of the bastions of contemplative prayer in this country and has trained thousands of spiritual directors since its inception in 1972” (A Time of Departing, p. 65).
In the book Spiritual Friend (1980), Edwards said that the contemplative prayer movement is “THE WESTERN BRIDGE TO FAR EASTERN SPIRITUALITY” (p. 18).
Edwards urged the adoption of eastern pagan practices and called the interfaith dialogue the “wider ecumenism.”
“In the wider ecumenism of the Spirit being opened for us today, we need to humbly accept the learnings of particular Eastern religions. ... What makes a particular practice Christian is not its source, but its intent. ... If we view the human family as one in God’s spirit, then this historical cross-fertilization is not surprising. ... selective attention to Eastern spiritual practices can be of great assistance to a fully embodied Christian life” (Living in the Presence, 1987, acknowledgements page).
“The new ecumenism involved here is not between Christian and Christian, but between Christians and the grace of other intuitively deep religious traditions” (Living in the Presence, p. 172).
Observe that Edwards believed that the human family is one in God’s spirit. That is a pagan concept and is contrary to the Bible’s teaching that man are estranged from God because of sin and can only be reconciled through faith in Jesus Christ. Edwards thought that paganism has much to offer to the Christian life, whereas the Bible informs us that the Scripture itself is able to make the man of God “perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Further, the Bible warns God’s people not to learn the way of the heathen (Jeremiah 10:2).
Of Buddhism Edwards said:
“Some Buddhist traditions have developed very practical ways of doing so that many Christians have found helpful ... offering participants new perspectives and possibilities for living more fully in the radiant gracious Presence through the day” (Edwards, The Center for Spiritual Development, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Fall 2004 - Spring 2005, p. 4).
In fact, Edwards said that Buddha and Jesus are friends:
“For many years, I have kept in my office an ink drawing of two smiling figures with their arms around each other: Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha, with the caption: ‘Jesus and Buddha must be very good friends.’ They are not the same, but they are friends, not enemies, and they are not indifferent to one another. From the very beginning of Shalem, I have been moved to affirm that statement... Particular Buddhist practices that I have experienced in the last 26 years have, with grace, shown me such an ‘inclusive’ mind” (Edwards, “Jesus and Buddha Good Friends,” Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation newsletter, Winter 2000).
In Spiritual Friend, Edwards recommends the book Psychosynthesis by Robert Assagioli, an occultist.
FINLEY, JAMES
James Finley is a Roman Catholic clinical psychologist and former Trappist monk. He spent six years at the Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, two of those years under the direction of Thomas Merton. He has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary.
He conducts silent contemplative retreats and is affiliated with The Contemplative Way community at the Roman Catholic parish of St. Monica, California.
He is the author of Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, and The Contemplative Heart.
Two of his retreat lectures are “Meister Eckhart: Living in Union with God” and “The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.”
Finley says that meditation is entering experientially, beyond thought, into the divine oneness that exists between God the Father and Son.
“At the heart of the Gospel is Jesus saying ‘I and the Father are one.’ The early Christians understood this as a call to enter into Christ’s divine oneness with the Father. They felt they could respond to that call by entering into that oneness experientially; even on this earth they could realize something of this eternal oneness with God that Christ came to reveal and proclaim. And they sought to experience this through meditation and prayer. Christian meditation is way of experiencing God beyond what the ego can grasp or attain. It’s beyond thought, beyond memory, beyond the will, beyond feeling” (Lisa Schneider, “Experiencing God through Meditation: Interview with James Finley,” Beliefnet.com).
When asked if it is possible for meditation to be “inviting the devil in,” Finley replies:
“Sometimes I will tell people who express that--well why not try it? Why not try to just quietly and sincerely and silently open your heart to God and see for yourself if you sense something dangerous or bad or dark. And you might discover that the opposite’s the case” (“Experiencing God through Meditation: Interview with James Finley,” Beliefnet.com).
This counsel is unbelievably dangerous and unscriptural. The Bible warns that the devil takes on the persona of an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-16). The only way to discern the difference between true and false spirits is to carefully test them by the Bible, and the Catholic mystics such as Finley, Merton, and Johnston don’t do that and, in fact, don’t know how to do that.
JOHNSTON, WILLIAM
William Johnston is a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and an authority on Zen Buddhism. He promotes the syncretism of western (Catholic) contemplative practices with eastern paganism.
He teaches meditative practices in his books such as The Still Point (1970), The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing (1978), and The Inner Eye of Love: Mysticism and Religion (1978), and The Mystical Way: Silent Music and the Wounded Stag (1993).
He believes that everyone is called to pursue mysticism, calling it a “universal vocation,” and says that “the Spirit of God is working in the modern world to create a need” for mystical experience.
He says that meditation “goes beyond ordinary reasoning,” that it is entering “into silence--without words, without reasoning, without thinking,” that it is entering “into the nothingness, into the emptiness, into the darkness” (“Interview with William Johnston,” Compass, Mar. 2, 1997).
He says:
“When one enters the deeper layers of contemplative prayer one sooner or later experiences the void, the emptiness, the nothingness ... the profound mystical silence ... an absence of thought” (Letters to Contemplatives, p. 13)
Johnston’s mysticism is deeply syncretistic and his own doctrine has been heavily influenced by his close association with pagan religions.
He makes the New Age proclamation, “For God is the core of my being and the core of all beings” (The Mystical Way, 1993, p. 224).
Johnston’s book The Book of Privy Counseling is described by the publisher, Doubleday, as “a text on the way to enlightenment through a total loss of self and consciousness only of the divine.”
Johnston admits that Catholic mysticism borrows from eastern pagan religions.
“The twentieth century, which has seen so many revolutions, is now witnessing THE RISE OF A NEW MYSTICISM WITHIN CHRISTIANITY. ... For the new mysticism has learned much from the great religions of Asia. It has felt the impact of yoga and Zen and the monasticism of Tibet. It pays attention to posture and breathing; it knows about the music of the mantra and the silence of Samadhi” (The Mystical Way: Silent Music and the Wounded Stag, foreword).
He directly associates the practice of Catholic centering prayer with Hinduism and Buddhism:
“What I can safely say, however, is that there is a Christian Samadhi that has always occupied an honored place in the spirituality of the West. This, I believe, is the thing that is nearest to Zen. It is this that I have called Christian Zen” (Lord, Teach Us to Pray, 1991, p. 54).
Samadhi is the Hindu concept of achieving oneness with God through yoga.
In The Inner Eye of Love (1981), Johnston uses Hindu terminology of “the third eye” to describe meditative practices. He says the third eye is between the eyebrows and is “an eye of insight where you see more deeply into things.” He says:
“I believe the Gospel is speaking about the third eye. And that’s where enlightenment comes; that’s where the awakening comes. That’s where the seeing comes, in the third, the ‘inner eye.’ Now in the Western tradition, in the Gospel, it’s not precisely located, but in Hinduism and so on, it’s here. They sometimes have the red spot in the third eye. I think it’s quite an important concept for mysticism--the notion of awakening” (Compass, Mar. 2, 1997).
In The Inner of Eye of Love Johnston describes contemplative practices in Hindu-Buddhist terms as a never-ending “downward journey” that brings the practitioner into union with God. He also associates “Christian” mysticism with that “of all the great religions.
“In the mystical life one passes from one layer to the next in an inner or downward journey to the core of the personality where dwells the great mystery called God--God who cannot be known directly, cannot be seen (for no man has ever seen God) and who dwells in thick darkness. This is the never-ending journey which is recognizable in the mysticism of all the great religions. It is a journey towards union because the consciousness gradually expands and integrates data from the so-called unconscious while the whole personality is absorbed into the great mystery of God” (p. 127).
MAIN, JOHN
John Main (1926-1982) was a British-born Benedictine monk and priest. His birth name was Douglas Main. After studying law at Trinity College, Dublin, he joined the British Colonial Service. While stationed in Malaysia in 1955 he met Hindu Swami Satyananda, who taught him how to use a mantra to achieve a meditative stillness and alleged connection with “the divine.”
Main described the objective of his Hindu guru’s meditation:
“For the swami, the aim of meditation was the coming to awareness of the Spirit of the universe who dwells in our hearts, and he recited these verses from the Upanishads: ‘He contains all things, all works and desires and all perfumes and tastes. And he enfolds the whole universe and, in silence, is loving to all. This is the Spirit that is in my heart. This is Brahman’” (Main, Christian Meditation, p. 11).
Thus, Hindu meditation seeks to bring the practitioner into union with God, believing that all men are a part of God and that God is within all men.
In 1959 Main began preparations to become a Benedictine priest and took the name of John. He was ordained in 1963. In the early 1970s he studied the writings of John Cassian and The Cloud of Unknowing and saw parallels between the Catholic mystic meditative practices and that of Swami Satayananda. He said Hindu meditation was like the Cloud of Unknowing in “the Cloud’s use of a single repeated word to overcome thought” (Christian Meditation, p. 51) and “the concept of prayer as listening and being rather than speaking and thinking” (p. 10).”
Main syncretized contemplative practices with yoga and in 1975 began founding meditation groups in Catholic monasteries. These spread outside of the Catholic Church and grew into an ecumenical network called the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).
He taught the following method:
“Sit still and upright, close your eyes and repeat your prayer-phrase (mantra). Recite your prayer-phrase and gently listen to it as you say it. DO NOT THINK ABOUT ANYTHING. As thoughts come, simply keep returning to your prayer-phrase. In this way, one places everything aside: INSTEAD OF TALKING TO GOD, ONE IS JUST BEING WITH GOD, allowing God’s presence to fill his heart, thus transforming his inner being” (The Teaching of Dom John Main: How to Meditate, Meditation Group of Saint Patrick’s Basilica, Ottawa, Canada).
NOUWEN, HENRI
Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Roman Catholic priest who taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Notre Dame. Nouwen has had a vast influence within the emerging church through his writings, and he has been an influential voice within the contemplative movement. A Christian Century magazine survey conducted in 2003 indicated that Nouwen’s writings were a first choice for Catholic and mainline Protestant clergy.
Nouwen did not instruct his readers that one had to be born again through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ in order to commune with God. The book With Open Hands, for example, instructs readers to open themselves up to God and surrender to the flow of life, believing that God loves them unconditionally and is leading them. This is blind faith.
“When we pray, we are standing with our hands open to the world. We know that God will become known to us in the nature around us, in people we meet, and in situations we run into. We trust that the world holds God’s secret within and we expect that secret to be shown to us” (With Open Hands, 2006, p. 47).
Nouwen did not instruct his readers to beware of false spirits and to test everything by the Scriptures. He taught them, rather, to trust that God is leading in and through all things and that they should “test” things by their own “vision.”
Nouwen claimed that contemplative meditation is necessary for an intimacy with God:
“I do not believe anyone can ever become a deep person without stillness and silence” (quoted by Chuck Swindoll, So You Want to Be Like Christ, p. 65).
He taught that the use of a mantra could take the practitioner into God’s presence.
“The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart ... This way of simple prayer ... opens us to God’s active presence” (The Way of the Heart, p. 81).
He said that mysticism and contemplative prayer can create ecumenical unity because Christian leaders learn to hear “the voice of love”:
“Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen to the voice of love. ... For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required” (In the Name of Jesus, pp. 6, 31, 32).
In fact, if Christians are listening to the voice of the true and living God, they will learn that love is obedience to the Scriptures. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3).
Nouwen, like Thomas Merton and many other Catholic contemplatives today, syncretized the teaching of eastern gurus with ancient Catholic practices. In his book Pray to Live Nouwen describes approvingly Merton’s heavily involvement with Hindu monks (pp. 19-28).
In his foreword to Thomas Ryan’s book Disciplines for Christian Living, Nouwen says:
“[T]he author shows a wonderful openness to the gifts of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Moslem religion. He discovers their great wisdom for the spiritual life of the Christian and does not hesitate to bring that wisdom home” (Disciplines for Christian Living, p. 2).
Nouwen taught a form of universalism and panentheism.
“The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is the same as the one who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being” (Here and Now, p. 22).
He claimed that every person who believes in a higher power and follows his or her vision of the future is of God and is building God’s kingdom:
“We can see the visionary in the guerilla fighter, in the youth with the demonstration sign, in the quiet dreamer in the corner of a café, in the soft-spoken monk, in the meek student, in the mother who lets her son go his own way, in the father who reads to his child from a strange book, in the smile of a girl, in the indignation of a worker, and in every person who in one way or another dreams life from a vision which is seen shining ahead and which surpasses everything ever heard or seen before” (With Open Hands, p. 113).
“Praying means breaking through the veil of existence and allowing yourself to be led by the vision which has become real to you. Whether we call that vision ‘the Unseen Reality,’ ‘the total Other,’ ‘the Spirit,’ or ‘the Father,’ we repeatedly assert that It is not we ourselves who possess the power to make the new creation come to pass. It is rather a spiritual power which has been given to us and which empowers us to be in the world without being of it” (With Open Hands, p. 114).
The radical extent of Nouwen’s universalism is evident by the fact that the second edition of With Open Hands has a foreword by Sue Monk Kidd. She is a New Ager who promotes worship of the goddess! Her book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine was published in 1996, a decade before she was asked to write the foreword to Nouwen’s book on contemplative prayer. Monk Kidd worships herself as a goddess.
“Today I remember that event for the radiant mystery it was, how I felt myself embraced by Goddess, how I felt myself in touch with the deepest thing I am. It was the moment when, as playwright and poet Ntozake Shange put it, ‘I found god in myself/ and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely’” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 136).
“Over the altar in my study I hung a lovely mirror sculpted in the shape of a crescent moon. It reminded me to honor the Divine Feminine presence in myself, the wisdom in my own soul” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 181).
Sue Monk Kidd’s journey from the traditional Baptist faith (as a Sunday School teacher in a Southern Baptist congregation) to goddess worship began when she started delving into Catholic contemplative spirituality, practicing centering prayer and attending Catholic retreats.
Nouwen taught that God is only love, unconditional love.
“Don’t be afraid to offer your hate, bitterness, and disappointment to the One who is love and only love. ... [Pray] ‘Dear God, ... what you want to give me is love--unconditional, everlasting love’” (With Open Hands, pp. 24, 27).
In fact, God’s love is not unconditional. Though God loves all men and Christ died to make it possible for all to be saved, there is a condition for receiving God’s love and that is acknowledging and repenting of one’s sinfulness and receiving Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Saviour.
Further, God is not only love; He is also holy and just and light and truth. This is what makes the cross of Jesus Christ necessary. An acceptable atonement had to be made for God’s broken law.
In his last book Nouwen said:
“Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God” (Sabbatical Journey, New York: Crossroad, 1998, p. 51).
PENNINGTON, M. BASIL, AND THOMAS KEATING
M. Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating are very influential in the field of centering prayer. Both are Trappist monks and priests. They co-authored Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer. First published in 1978, this book has had a wide influence.
PENNINGTON (1931-2005) entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance in 1951 at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. This Order is also called Trappist after the name of the location of their founding, which was the Abbey of Notre Dame de la Grande Trappe.
The Order is dedicated to contemplation. The monks dedicate themselves to silence and solitude and meditation under the Rule of Saint Benedict. This Rule teaches salvation and sanctification through ascetism. Chapter 7 of the Rule presents a 12-step ladder of virtue and ascetism that “leads to heaven.” These include repression of self-will, submission to superiors, confession, stifling laughter, and speaking only when asked a question. Under the Rule of Benedict everything is regulated, including sleeping, waking, meal times, quantity and quality of food, clothing, work, and recreation. The Rule forbids the ownership of any private property or the receipt of letters or gifts without permission of the abbot.
Pennington became professor of Theology at St. Joseph’s in 1959, professor of Canon Law and professor of Spirituality in 1963, and Vocation Director in 1978.
In 2000 he was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. This was founded in 1944 by 20 monks from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where Thomas Merton lived.
Pennington returned to St. Joseph’s after his retirement in 2002, and died in 2005 in a car crash.
Pennington believed that hell is separation from God and feelings of isolation in this present life.
“Many people don’t know that much of the emptiness or longing desire that they suffer from is because they are not in touch with God or whatever name they give Him. Separation is a very real form of suffering in this life” (interview with Mary NurrieStearns, “Transforming Suffering,” 1991, Personal Transformation website, http://www.personaltransformation.com/Pennington.html).
Pennington taught that man shares God’s divine nature.
“We are united with everybody else in our human nature and in our SHARING OF A DIVINE NATURE, so we are never really alone, we have all this union and communion. Getting in touch with that reality is the greatest healing. We can adopt meditative practices which enable us to begin that journey of finding our true inner selves or transcending our separate selves and leave behind some of the pain and suffering” (Interview with Mary NurrieStearns)
Pennington said, “... the soul of the human family is the Holy Spirit” (Centered Living, p. 104).
Pennington taught that the meditative practices of all religions bring one into the experience of the same God:
“It is my sense, from having meditated with persons from many different [non-Christian] traditions, that in the silence we experience a deep unity. When we go beyond the portals of the rational mind into the experience, there is only one God to be experienced” (Pennington, Centered Living, p. 192).
In fact, there is the “god of this world” who assumes the persona of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Pennington promoted a radical interfaith ecumenism. He called Hindu swamis “our wise friends from the East” (Finding Grace at the Center, p. 23). He said, “We should not hesitate to take the fruit of the age-old wisdom of the East and capture it for Christ. Indeed, those of us who are in ministry should make the necessary effort to acquaint ourselves with as many of these Eastern techniques as possible ... Many Christians who take their prayer life seriously have been greatly helped by Yoga, Zen, TM and similar practices” (p. 23).
THOMAS KEATING (b. 1923) entered the Cistercian Order in 1944 and was appointed Superior of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, in 1958.
In 1961 he was elected abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey. The centering prayer movement began at St. Joseph’s in the 1970s. Trappist monk William Meninger found a “dusty copy” of The Cloud of Unknowing, and he and Keating and Pennington began developing a system of contemplation based on that as well as the writings of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. They saw that this type of contemplation was very similar to that of the Buddhist and Hindu mystics they were associating with.
Keating, Pennington, and William Meninger began holding retreats to teach centering prayer and invited pagan meditation masters, including Zen Buddhist Roshi Sasaki, to teach at some of the retreats.
They also began writing books. In addition to co-authoring Finding Grace at the Center, Keating has written Open Mind, Open Heart (1986), The Mystery of Christ (1987), Invitation to Love (1992), Intimacy with God (1994), The Human Condition (1999), Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit (2000), and St. Therese of Lisieux (2001).
Keating intermingles contemplative practices with humanistic psychology, eastern religion, and New Age. He believes that man has a “false self” built up through one’s life experiences and this false self is filled with guilt because of a false sense of sin and separation from God. The guilt supposedly is not real and the false self is “an illusion.” The objective of contemplative techniques is to reach beyond this false self to the true self that is sinless and guiltless and already in union with God.
Keating says:
“As we evolve toward self-identity and full self-consciousness, so grows the sense of responsibility, and hence guilt, and so grows the sense of alienation from the true self which has long ago been forgotten in the course of the early growth period. This whole process of growth normally takes place without the inner experience of the divine presence. That is the crucial source of the false self. ... There’s nothing basically wrong with you, it’s just that your basic goodness has been overlaid by emotional programs for happiness which are aimed at things other than the ultimate happiness which is your relationship with God” (Keating interview with Kate Olson, “Centering Prayer as Divine Therapy,” Trinity News, Trinity Church in the City, New York City, volume 42, issue 4, 1995).
Keating and Pennington’s writings are one reason why it is popular today for evangelicals to seek meditative experiences in Catholic monasteries.
Keating has been deeply influenced by his pagan associations. He describes thoughtless meditative prayer in Hindu terms as being united with God in a mindless experience.
“Contemplative prayer is the opening of mind and heart, our whole being, to God, the Ultimate Mystery, BEYOND THOUGHTS, WORDS, AND EMOTIONS. It is a process of interior purification THAT LEADS, IF WE CONSENT, TO DIVINE UNION” (Keating interview with Kate Olson, “Centering Prayer as Divine Therapy,” Trinity News, Trinity Church in the City, New York City, volume 42, issue 4, 1995).
Keating describes centering prayer is “a journey into the unknown” (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 72).
Keating wrote the foreword to Philip St. Romain’s strange and very dangerous book Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (1990). Keating says, “Kundalini is an enormous energy for good,” but also admits that it can be harmful. He recommends that kundalini “be directed by the Holy Spirit.” He postulates that the meditative prayer practices of Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross might have been associated with kundalini energy. Keating concludes by saying: “This book will initiate Christians on the spiritual journey into this important but long neglected dimension of the transforming power of grace.”
Kundalini is a Hindu concept that there is powerful form of psychic energy at the base of the spine that can be “awakened.” It is called the serpent and is purely occultic and has resulted in many demonic manifestations.
Its own practitioners warn repeatedly about its dangers. The Ayurveda Encyclopedia says, “Those who awaken their kundalini without a guru can lose their direction in life ... they can become confused or mentally imbalanced ... more harm than good can arise” (p. 336). The book Aghora II: Kundalini warns many times that “indiscriminate awakening of the Kundalini is very dangerous” (p. 61). It says: “Once aroused and unboxed Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the genie will not fit back into the bottle. ... Those who ride Kundalini without knowing their destination risk losing their way” (p. 20). In fact, the book says “some die of shock when Kundalini is awakened, and others become severely ill” (p. 61). It is likened to a toddler grasping a live wire (p. 58).
Keating retired as abbot in 1981 and co-founded (with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar) the Contemplative Outreach to promote centering prayer.
Keating is heavily involved in interfaith dialogue and promotes the use of contemplative practice as a tool for creating interfaith unity. He is one of the founders of the Snowmass Interreligious Conference at St. Benedict’s Monastery. He is past president of the Temple of Understanding, founded in 1960 by Juliet Hollister. The mission of this New Age organization is to “create a more just and peaceful world” by achieving “peaceful coexistence among individuals, communities, and societies.” The tools for reaching this objective are interfaith education, dialogue, experiential knowledge (mystical practices), fostering mutual appreciation and tolerance, and promotion of the contempt of global citizenship.
Keating is also past president of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), which is sponsored by the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries of North America. Founded in 1977, it is “committed to fostering interreligious and intermonastic dialogue AT THE LEVEL OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE.” This means that they are using contemplative practices and yoga to promote interfaith unity and to help create a new world. The MID works in association with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Consider one of the objectives of the MID:
“The methods of concentration used in other religious traditions can be useful for removing obstacles to a deep contact with God. They can give a better understanding of the oneness of Christ as expressed in the various traditions and CONTRIBUTE TO THE FORMATION OF A NEW WORLD RELIGIOUS CULTURE. They can also be helpful in the development of certain potencies in the individual, for THERE ARE SOME ZEN-HINDU-SUFI-ETC. DIMENSIONS IN EACH HEART” (Mary L. O’Hara, “Report on Monastic Meeting at Petersham,” MID Bulletin 1, October 1977).
In January 2008 the MID web site featured Thomas Ryan’s book Interreligious Prayer: A Christian Guide. It contains “resources from eight religions that might be used in varying kinds of interreligious services.” The religions are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Baha’i, and Native American. A review of the book at the MID site says:
“It is as one human family ... that we are called to live in harmony and to bring about justice and peace in our one world; and, as the author points out, finding one another in God in prayer ‘is the shortest way between humans’” (Katherine Howard, “Book Review: Can We Pray Together,” MID Bulletin 80, January 2008).
In an article entitled “Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding” (Fellowship in Prayer, April 1996), Keating proposed eight points of interfaith agreement, including the following. All of these are contrary to the Bible.
* The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate reality to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, Absolute, God, Great Spirit.
* Ultimate Reality cannot be limited to any name or concept.
* The potential for human wholeness--or in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana--is present in every human person.
* Prayer is communion with Ultimate Reality, whether it is regarded as personal, impersonal or beyond them both
SHANNON, WILLIAM
William H. Shannon is a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Rochester, New York. He is emeritus professor of theology at Nazareth College.
Shannon is a disciple of the Buddhist Catholic Thomas Merton. He founded the International Thomas Merton Society and has written at least four books about him: The Silent Lamp: The Thomas Merton Story (1992), Something of a Rebel: Thomas Merton’s Life and Works (1997), Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation (2000), and The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia (2006).
He has also written other books on Catholic contemplative practices: Seeking the Face of God: The Path to a More Intimate Relationship with Him (1999) and Silence on Fire: Prayer of Awareness (2000).
Silence on Fire (1991) is about “wordless prayer.” In this book Shannon described his counsel to an atheist:
“You will never find God by looking outside yourself. You will only find God within” (p. 99).
Shannon has been so deeply influenced by Merton and his pagan contemplative practices that he has come to believe that man is God.
“This forgetfulness, of OUR ONENESS WITH GOD, is not just a personal experience, it IS THE CORPORATE EXPERIENCE OF HUMANITY. Indeed, this is one way to understand original sin. We are in God, but we don’t seem to know it. We are in paradise, but we don’t realize it” (Seeds of Peace, p. 66).
Shannon is very bold in his rejection of the God of the Bible:
“This is a typical patriarchal notion of God. He is the God of Noah who sees people deep in sin, repents that He made them and resolves to destroy them. He is the God of the desert who sends snakes to bite His people because they murmured against Him. He is the God of David who practically decimates a people. ... He is the God who exacts the last drop of blood from His Son, so that His just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased. This God whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger. THIS GOD DOES NOT EXIST” (William Shannon, Silence on Fire, pp. 109, 110).
SHANTIVANAM ASHRAM
The Shantivanam Ashram (Forest of Peace) in India was founded by Roman Catholic priests to integrate Catholic and Hindu contemplation principles. It was established by Jules Monchanin (1895-1957) and Henri le Saux, both of the Benedictine order. The ashram was built in Tamil Nadu on the banks of a “holy river.” The original name of the ashram, Saccidananda (bliss in consciousness of Being), “expressed their intention of identifying the Hindu quest of the Absolute with their own experience of God in Christ” (Ursula King, Christian Mystics, p. 239). The liturgy at the ashram includes readings from Hindu scriptures.
The two Catholic priests took the names of Hindu holy men, with le Saux calling himself Swami Abhishiktananda (bliss of the anointed one). He stayed in Hindu ashrams and learned from Hindu gurus. In 1968 le Saux left Shantivanam and became a hermit in the Himalayas, living there until his death in 1973. He was involved in ecumenical retreats and interfaith work, attempting to reconcile Christianity with Hinduism. “He sought to penetrate the mystical experience of East and West at the deepest level and believed that Christianity would be renewed from its contact with Hindu spirituality” (Christian Mystics, p. 240).
His books Prayer: Hindu-Christian Meeting Point, Further Shore, and Saccidananda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience continue to be published.
After the departure of le Saux, the Shantivanam Ashram was led by ALAN RICHARD “BEDE” GRIFFITHS (1906-93). He called himself Swami Dayananda (bliss of compassion), went barefoot, and was clothed in an orange-colored robe after the fashion of a Hindu holy man.
He was born in England and studied at Oxford under C.S. Lewis, who became a lifelong friend. In 1931, while at Oxford he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The next year he joined the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey near Gloucester and was ordained a priest in 1940. The name Bede was given to him when he entered the Benedictine order. It means prayer.
Griffiths had a large influence in promoting the interfaith philosophy in Roman Catholic monasteries in America, England, Australia, and Germany through his books and lectures. He wrote 12 books on interfaith dialogue, the most popular being Marriage of East and West.
He accepted the Hindu concept of the interrelatedness of everything and the unity of man with God.
“He loved to quote the Chandogya Upanishad (8,3) [Hindu scriptures] to show that while our body takes up only a small space on this planet, our mind encompasses the whole universe: ‘There is this city of Brahman (the human body) and in it there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus, and within can be found a small space. This little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars; fire and lightening and wind are there, and all that now is and is not yet--all that is contained within it” (Pascaline Coff, “Man, Monk, Mystic,” http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
At a talk he gave in 1991 Griffiths said:
“I saw God in the earth, in trees, in mountains. It led me to the conviction that there is no absolute good or evil in this world. We have to let go of all concepts which divide the world into good and evil, right and wrong, and begin to see the complimentarity of opposites which Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called the coincidentia oppositorum, the ‘coincidence of opposites’” (http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
Griffiths promoted a New Age integration of Christianity with evolution and eastern religion.
“We’re now being challenged to create a theology which would use the findings of modern science and eastern mysticism which, as you know, coincide so much, and to evolve from that a new theology which would be much more adequate” (Renee Weber, Dialogues With Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity (1986), p. 163).
At the end of his life he came to believe in a Mother goddess. This was the fruit of his communion with idolatry. In 1990, after a stroke, he began to speak of the awakening of his repressed feminine.
“Intimating it was a mystical experience which could not properly be put into words, Father [Griffiths] used symbolic language to try and express the depth of the experience. The two symbols he used were the Black Madonna and the Crucified Christ. He said these two images summed up for him something of this mysterious experience of the Divine feminine and the mystery of suffering. When he first spoke about the Black Madonna, he said his experience of her was deeply connected to the Earth-Mother, to the forms of the ancient feminine found in rocks and caves and in the different forms in nature. He likened it to the experience of the feminine expressed in the Hindu concept of Shakti--the power of the Divine Feminine. Later Father wrote these reflections on the Black Madonna: ‘The Black Madonna symbolizes for me the Black Power in Nature and Life, the hidden power in the womb. ... I feel it was this Power which struck me. She is cruel and destructive, but also deeply loving and nourishing.’
“A few months later Father again wrote: ‘The figure of the Black Madonna stood for the feminine in all its forms. I felt the need to surrender to the Mother, and this gave me the experience of being overwhelmed by love. I realized that surrendering to death, and dying to oneself is surrendering to Total Love.’
“Regarding the image of the Crucified Christ, Father made the statement that his understanding of the crucifixion had deepened profoundly. He wrote: ‘On the Cross Jesus surrendered himself to this Dark Power. He lost everything: friends, disciples, his own people, their law and religion. ... He had to enter the Dark Night, to be exposed to the abyss. Only then could he become everything and nothing, opened beyond everything that can be named or spoken; only then could he be one with the darkness, the Void, the Dark Mother who is Love itself’” (http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
This is exactly the experience that Sue Monk Kidd had when she traveled from Catholic contemplative practices to goddess worship. She found a great love for the Black Madonna. This is because the Madonna was borrowed from pagan idolatry, from the ancient mother goddess mystery religions that stemmed from Babel.
ST. ROMAIN, PHILIP
Philip St. Romain is a Roman Catholic substance abuse counselor, lay minister, and retreat master, and the author of Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (1990).
Through Catholic contemplative practices St. Romain has been led into very dark demonic spheres. He believes that he came in touch with “kundalini energy.” He calls it “a natural evolutionary energy inherent in every human being.”
In his foreword to the book, Thomas Keating postulates that meditative prayer practices of Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross might have been associated with kundalini. He claims that “kundalini is an enormous energy for good” and concludes by saying: “This book will initiate Christians on the spiritual journey into this important but long neglected dimension of the transforming power of grace.”
In fact, centering prayer and other forms of Christian Zen or Christian yoga initiate people into spiritual darkness and deception.
St. Romain began to have strange experiences through the practice of centering prayer, which involves emptying the mind and centering down into oneself. He said that after he had “centered down” into silence that gold lights would appear and swirl in his mind, forming themselves into captivating patterns. “Wise sayings” popped into his mind as if he were “receiving messages from another.” He felt prickly sensations that would continue for days. After studying Hinduism he came to the conclusion that he was dealing with kundalini.
“From the Hindu literature, I learned that what I was calling the true self, they called enlightenment, advaita, or Self-realization (sat-chit-ananda). This awakening is the goal of Hinduism, and the various kinds of yogas are disciplines to lead one to realize this goal. I came into contact with a very deep, holistic understanding of human nature and its various systems of energy and intelligence which helped me to understand myself better. Hinduism teaches one how to work with these various levels to come to the experience of enlightenment.”
Kundalini is a Hindu concept that there is powerful form of psychic energy at the base of the spine that can be “awakened.” It is described as a coiled serpent and is called “serpent power.” It is supposed to be located in the first of the seven “chakras” or power centers in the body. If the kundalini is awakened through such things as yogic mediation, intensive chanting and dancing, and the laying on of hands, it can be encouraged to move up the spinal column, piercing the other chakras, eventually reaching the seventh chakra at the top of the head, resulting in spiritual insight and power through “union with the Divine.” The most powerful yogis are supposed to have the ability to keep the kundalini energy flowing, providing them with extraordinary knowledge, power, and bliss.
Kundalini is purely occultic and has resulted in many demonic manifestations. It is said to create sensations of heat and cold, tingling, electric current, internal pressures, inner sounds and lights, buzzing in the ear, compulsive bodily movements and expressions (such as grimacing), uncontrollable emotional outbursts, loss of memory, a sense of an inner eye, drowsiness, and pain. The Inner Explorations web site tells of a man who, while dabbling in the activation of kundalini energy, experienced touches by invisible hands and animals that would attach themselves to him or bite him or lick his face (http://www.innerexplorations.com/ewtext/ke.htm).
St. Romain believes that through yogic mediation he can reach beyond the “false self” and connect with “true self” or the Ground of Being, which is God. He says, “The Ground that flows throughout my being is identical with the Reality of all creation.” Thus he believes that God flows in all things and is one with all things. This is a Hindu concept.
St. Romain became dependent on his “inner adviser” or “inner eye” that allowed him to see in a spiritual manner.
“I cannot make any decisions for myself without the approbation of the inner adviser, whose voice speaks so clearly in times of need ... there is a distinct sense of an inner eye of some kind ‘seeing’ with my two sense eyes” (Kundalini Energy, p. 39).
In a postscript to “Kundalini Energy,” Lisa Romain, Philip’s wife, describes how she learned to deal with her husband’s kundalini experiences. She says:
“When he told me a few years ago about seeing lights in his head (which he later called mandalas), buzzings in the ears, crying for hours at night, energy fizzing from the top of his head, the ‘crab’ in his brain, the pressure inside his ears, I found it all very strange.”
She says that she was puzzled and awed by these things, but she has concluded that “God leads us on the journey” and “we follow with trust.” Sadly, this “trust” is a blind leap into the dark rather than biblical faith.
In the afterword to the Romain’s book, James Arraj says that the mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism and Jungism with Christianity WILL CREATE THE “TRUE GLOBAL CULTURE.”
We have no doubt that this is true and it is described in Revelation 17 as a harlot religion riding the antichrist!
TEASDALE, WAYNE
Wayne Teasdale (1945-2004) was a Roman Catholic lay monk whose writings are influential in the contemplative movement.
As a student in a Catholic college in Massachusetts, he began visiting St. Joseph’s Abbey near Spencer and came under the direction of Thomas Keating, one of the founders of the centering prayer movement. This eventually led him into an intimate association with pagan religions and the adoption of Hinduism.
As a candidate for the Ph.D. in Theology at Fordham University, Teasdale wrote his dissertation on Bede Griffiths, the Benedictine priest who moved to India and became a Hindu-Catholic, changing his name to Swami Dayananda, going barefoot, wearing the orange robe, practicing yoga, and eventually believing in ancient goddess religion. (See the previous study on Shantivanam Ashram.) Eventually Teasdale visited Shantivanam Ashram and lived in a nearby Hindu ashram for two years, following in Griffiths’ footsteps. In 1989 he became a “Christian” sanyassa, which refers to a Hindu monk who dedicates his entire life to spiritual pursuits.
Teasdale taught at various Catholic institutions (DePaul University, Columbia College, Benedictine University, Catholic Theological Union) and was never disciplined by the Catholic hierarchy for his interfaith philosophy.
Teasdale lived for a decade at the Hundred Acres Monastery in New Hampshire.
Teasdale was deeply involved in interfaith activities, believing that what the religions hold in common can be the basis for creating a new world, which he called the “Interspiritual Age” -- a “global culture based on common spiritual values.”
He coined the term INTERSPIRITUALITY to describe this agenda and believed that the Catholic Church is the key to bringing it about.
“She [the Catholic Church] also has a responsibility in our age to be bridge for reconciling the human family ... the Spirit is inspiring her through the signs of the times to open to Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Taoists, Confucians, and indigenous peoples. As matrix, the Church would no longer see members of other traditions as outside her life. She would promote the study of these traditions, seek common ground and parallel insights” (A Monk in the World, 2002, p. 54).
Like New Agers, Teasdale believed that interfaith unity is necessary for the world’s future:
“The Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Jew, the Jain, the Sikh, the Christian and the agnostic all belong to the same planetary environment. ... It is essential for the future for all the religious traditions to recognize this underlying unity” (“The Meeting of East and West: Elements of a Relationship,” Spirituality Today, Summer 1986).
Teasdale believed that mystical contemplation is the key to interspirituality and that this will unlock the door into the New Age.
“In the silence is a dynamic presence. And that’s God, and we become attuned to that” (Michael Tobias, A Parliament of Souls in Search of a Global Spirituality, 1995, p. 148).
Teasdale developed this agenda in the book The Mystic Heart: Finding a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions. The foreword was written by the Dalai Lama, who urged all religions to join forces to “create a more spiritually evolved and compassionate planet” (Amazon.com review).
Teasdale was involved in many interfaith organizations and projects the North American Board for East-West Dialogue, Common Ground (publisher of Interreligious Insight), and the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
He was well acquainted with the Dalai Lama and assisted the Dalai Lama and Thomas Keating and others in creating the Universal Declaration on Nonviolence to promote world peace based on the philosophy of the Hindu leader Gandhi (“Wayne Teasdale,” Wikipedia).
He helped found the Interspiritual Dialogue in Action (ISDnA), one of the many New Age organizations affiliated with the United Nations. (Its UN NGO sponsor is the National Service Conference of the American Ethical Union.) Its objective is to promote the “the Interspiritual Age,” and toward this end it is using three of the New Age tools, which are interfaith dialogue, education, and networking or community building. (See our book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.) It is committed “to actively serve in the evolution of human consciousness and global transformation” (web site).
The ISDnA partners with One Spirit Learning Alliance and Interfaith Seminary in New York City to create a New Age educational curriculum. The curriculum combines the mystic interfaith doctrine of Teasdale with the New Age doctrine of Ken Wilber, Don Beck, and others. It promotes such things as evolution, reincarnation, the divinity of man, all religion as myth, the integration of science, psychology and religion, and the coming of a New Age. Courses titles include “Integral Spirituality: Exploring the Common Core of Human Wisdom” and “The Evolutionary Journey from Dirt to God.”
The One Spirit Learning Alliance and Interfaith Seminary defines God as a “vast presence of energy and intelligence.” It claims that all religions, at their core, “are committed to the common values of peace, tolerance, wisdom, compassionate service, and love for all creation.” It aims to develop an interfaith “spirituality” that will help build a new world. Its web site features symbols of all religions above the statement “We are all children of the one universe.” The One Spirit Interfaith Seminary is participating in a Cosmic Mass NYC scheduled for September 19, 2008. This is a multimedia worship experience that “celebrates the Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine” and “the concept of Peace through the prism of many faith traditions.” It will begin at 7:30 sharp with “a procession of costumed dancers, jesters and celebrants” and will features “wild, rave-like dancing,” entering the sacred darkness and emerging into the energy of compassion, and being “anointed as prophets” and “sent out to join the dance of all creation.”
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The previous is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY AND THE NEW AGE
CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY AND THE NEW AGE
October 28, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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The contemplative mysticism that is permeating evangelicalism is a bridge to the New Age. It has been called the “Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality” (Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friends, p. 18).
In a 2005 interview Tony Campolo said:
“I got to meet the head of the Franciscan order. I met him in Washington. He said let me tell you an interesting story. He told me about one of their gatherings, where they bring the brothers of the Franciscan order together for a time of fellowship. About eight years ago they held it in Thailand and out of courtesy, they really felt they needed to show some graciousness to the Buddhists, because they were in a Buddhist country. So they got Buddhist theologians together and Franciscan theologians together and sent them off for three days to talk and see if they could find common ground. They also took Buddhist and Franciscan monastics and sent them off together to pray with each other. On the fourth day they all reassembled. The theologians were fighting with each other, arguing with each other, contending there was no common ground between them. The monastics that had gone off praying together, came back hugging each other. IN A MYSTICAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, THERE IS A COMING TOGETHER OF PEOPLE WHERE THEOLOGY IS LEFT BEHIND AND IN THIS SPIRITUALITY THEY FOUND A COMMONALITY” (“On Evangelicals and Interfaith Cooperation,” Cross Currents, Spring 2005).
Mystical experience is exalted over doctrine and is seen as a key to radical ecumenical and interfaith unity. But if you turn your back to Bible doctrine and try to reach beyond it through mysticism, you are entering the realm of spiritual delusion with no sure light to lighten your path.
Thomas Keating, one of the most influential voices in the contemplative movement, is past president of the Temple of Understanding, a New Age organization founded in 1960 by Juliet Hollister. The mission of this organization is to “create a more just and peaceful world” and its tools are New Age instruments such as interfaith dialogue, visualization, and community building.
Thomas Merton spoke at a Temple of Understanding conference in Calcutta, India, in 1968. He praised the interfaith atmosphere and his fellow pagan religionists.
Shambhala Publications, a publisher that specializes in Occultic, Jungian, New Age, Buddhist, and Hindu writings, also publishes the writings of Catholic mystics, including The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton, The Writings of Hildegard of Bingen, and The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.
The Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, which is sponsored by the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries of North America, is associated with the North American Board for East-West Dialogue (NABEWD). At the NABEWD’s first meeting in January 1978 at a monastery in Clyde, Missouri, Robert Muller, a New Age leader at the United Nations, was selected as the organization’s advisor. Muller believes in the divinity of all men.
New Ager Caroline Myss (pronounced mace) has written a book based on Teresa of Avila’s visions. It is entitled Entering the Castle: Finding the Inner Path to God and Your Soul’s Purpose. Myss says, “For me, the spirit is the vessel of divinity” (“Caroline Myss’ Journey,” Conscious Choice, September 2003).
Mary Coelho, a third generation Quaker, pursued contemplative mysticism from the Quaker inner light through Catholic contemplative practices all the way to the New Age. Today she believes that man is a product of billions of years of evolution, a process that is reaching a new stage in our day. She denies the Bible’s teaching on creation, the fall of man, and salvation only through faith in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.
On April 15, 2008, emerging church leaders and contemplatives Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt joined the Dalai Lama for the New Agey Seeds of Compassion InterSpiritual Event in Seattle. It brought together Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, and others. The event featured a dialogue on “the themes common to all spiritual traditions.” The Dalai Lama said, “I think everyone, ultimately, deep inside [has] some kind of goodness” (“Emergent Church Leaders’ InterSpirituality,” Christian Post, April 17, 2008).
New Ager Ken Wilber, who believes that man is divinity, is intimately associated with the contemplative movement.
In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell recommends that his readers sit at Wilber’s feet for three months!
“For a mind-blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything” (Velvet Elvis, p. 192).
Wilber was invited to write the foreword to The Common Heart, a book that describes the interfaith dialogues conducted at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, under the direction of Thomas Keating.
Wilber also conducted a Mystic Heart seminar series with Catholic contemplative monk Wayne Teasdale. In the first seminar in this series Teasdale said, “You are God; I am God; they are God; it is God” (“The Mystic Heart: The Supreme Identity,” http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7652038071112490301&q=ken+Wilber).
In Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution (1981, 2004), Ken Wilber calls the Garden of Eden a fable” and the biblical view of history “amusing” (pp. xix, 3). He describes his “perennial philosophy” as follows:
“... it is true that there is some sort of Infinite, some type of Absolute Godhead, but it cannot properly be conceived as a colossal Being, a great Daddy, or a big Creator set apart from its creations, from things and events and human beings themselves. Rather, it is best conceived (metaphorically) as the ground or suchness or condition of all things and events. It is not a Big Thing set apart from finite things, but rather the reality or suchness or ground of all things. ... the perennial philosophy declares that the absolute is One, Whole, and Undivided” (p. 6).
Wilber says that this perennial philosophy “forms the esoteric core of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, AND CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM” (p. 5).
Thus, this New Ager recognizes that Roman Catholic mysticism, which spawned the contemplative movement within Protestantism, has the same esoteric core faith as pagan idolatry! And there is no doubt that this true. It is a blind leap into the dark.
Thomas Keating and Richard Foster are involved in the Living Spiritual Teachers Project, a group that associates together Christians of various stripes, Zen Buddhist monks and nuns, universalists, occultists, and New Agers. Members include the Dalai Lama, who claims to be the reincarnation of an advanced spiritual entity; Marianne Williamson, promoter of the occultic A Course in Miracles; Marcus Borg, who believes that Jesus was not virgin born and did not rise from the grave; Catholic nun Joan Chittister, who says we must become “in tune with the cosmic voice of God”; Andrew Harvey, who says that men need to “claim their divine humanity”; Matthew Fox, who believes there are many paths to God; Alan Jones, who calls the gospel of the cross a vile doctrine and says there is no absolute authority; and Desmond Tutu, who says, “... because everybody is a God-carrier, all are brothers and sisters.”
Rick Warren has yoked up with mystic Ken Blanchard on various occasions, and Blanchard is intimately associated with New Age paganism. Blanchard visited Saddleback in 2003 and Warren told the church that he had “signed on to help with the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, and he’s going to be helping train us in leadership and in how to train others to be leaders all around the world” (Ken Yungen, A Time of Departing, pp. 162, 163). Warren teamed up with Blanchard in the Lead Like Jesus conferences and audio series. Warren used Blanchard’s materials in a Preaching and Purpose Driven Life Training Workshop for Chaplains at Saddleback in 2004 (A Time of Departing, p. 167). Warren also endorsed Blanchard’s book Lead Like Jesus.
Blanchard, in turn, has strong New Age associations. He wrote the foreword to the 2007 edition of Ballard’s book Little Wave and Old Swell, which is inspired by Hindu guru Paramahansa Yogananda. This book is designed to teach children that God is all and man is one with God. In the foreword Blanchard makes the following amazing statement: “Yogananda loved Jesus, and Jesus would have loved Yogananda.” I was a disciple of Yogananda before I was saved, and there is no doubt that he did NOT love the Jesus of the Bible!
Blanchard’s recommendation appears on the back cover of Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. He wrote the foreword to Ellen Ladd’s book Death and Letting God, which promotes clairvoyance. He endorsed the 2005 book Zen of Business Administration, which is subtitled “How Zen practice can transform your work and your life.”
Blanchard joined members of the New Age occultic project The Secret in January 2008 for a one-day seminar entitled “Your Best Year Ever” (“Ken Blanchard Joins ‘The Secret’ Team,” Lighthouse Trails, Jan. 14, 2008). Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret, thanked “Esther Hicks and the teachings of Abraham.” Abraham refers to a group of spirit guides that Hicks channels. The Secret teaches the New Age doctrines that man is god. “You are God in a physical body ... You are all power ... You are all intelligence ... You are the creator” (p. 164).
Lighthouse Trails wisely observes:
“Did Rick Warren know of Blanchard’s sympathies when he brought him in to help at Saddleback? Of course he did. And do you think that Rick Warren and Ken Blanchard are going to train their ‘billion’ soldiers for Christ how to practice New Age mysticism and learn how to go into altered states of consciousness? You bet. And that is definitely something to be concerned about” (“Rick Warren Teams up with New Age Guru,” Lighthouse Trails, April 19, 2005).
Warren is also closely associated with New Age mystic Leonard Sweet. He teamed up with Sweet in 1994 to produce the Tides of Change audio set published by Zondervan. A photo of Warren and Sweet are pictured on the cover. Warren endorsed Sweet’s book Soul Tsunami, the endorsement appearing on both the front and back covers. Warren invited Sweet to speak at the 2008 Saddleback Small Groups Conference called Wired.
Sweet promotes a New Age spirituality that he calls New Light and “the Christ consciousness.” He describes it in terms of “the union of the human with the divine” which is the “center feature of all the world’s religions” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 235). He says it was experienced by Mohammed, Moses, and Krishna. He says that some of the “New Light leaders” that have led him into this thinking are New Agers Matthew Fox, M. Scott Peck, Willis Harman, and Ken Wilber, plus the Catholic-Buddhist Thomas Merton. In his book Quantum Spirituality Sweet defines the New Light as “a structure of human becoming, a channeling of Christ energies through mindbody experience” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 70). He says humanity needs to learn the truth of the words of Thomas Merton, “We are already one” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 13). Sweet draws heavily from Catholic mysticism. He says:
“Mysticism, once cast to the sidelines of the Christian tradition, is now situated in postmodernist culture near the center. ... In the words of one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, Jesuit philosopher of religion/dogmatist Karl Rahner, ‘The Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he will be nothing’” (Quantum Spirituality, 1991, p. 11).
Observe, then, how close are the ties between contemplatives and the New Age! And contemplative spirituality is the bridge.
This is only a tiny glimpse into this frightful matter. Rick Warren does not believe that all religions worship the same God or that man is God, but his enthusiasm for contemplative practices and his lust for the newest thing have brought him and his followers into close association with those who do. He is promoting the same type of “spiritual” practices that are nurturing the New Age and his thinking is being corrupted by this illicit association.
Evangelicals who are reading and recommending books by mystics would be wise to take heed to this warning. If they delve into Catholic contemplative practices they are in great danger of being corrupted by this illicit endeavor.
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The previous is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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I AM NOT YOUR PASTOR: AN EXHORTATION TO MY READERS TO ACT WISELY IN THE CHURCHES
I AM NOT YOUR PASTOR: AN EXHORTATION TO MY READERS TO ACT WISELY IN THE CHURCHES
September 24, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
The following are some truths that I consider very important and that I would like for all of my readers to take to heart. Please keep in mind the fact that I am not your pastor. I hope to be a helper in Christ, but I am not your pastor. And I want to give an exhortation about how to act wisely in the churches.
Most of you know these things and live these things, but sometimes I hear things from pastors and others that cause me to realize that some of my readers need this exhortation. At the same time, I don’t have any particular case in mind, so there is no need to write and try to explain yourself to me. Rather, let us be doers of the word and not hearers only.
I DO NOT SUPPORT THOSE WHO SEPARATE FROM ALL CHURCHES TODAY.
Let me make this very clear: I do not support those who separate themselves from all churches today. While I believe that God’s people must be discerning and cautious and not overlook error, at the same time we are to be patient and faithful to God’s ordained institution, the church, and to God-ordained pastoral authority, and I believe we should strive as much as possible for unity and not disunity among true believers. Both things are emphasized in Scripture, though it is not always a simple matter to obey both of them at one time.
If you think that you are justified to separate from all churches today because of David Cloud’s writings, you are mistaken. I do not preach that and I am not pleased when people do that.
In some cases there might not be a sound, spiritually-healthy, Bible-believing church within commuting distance, and I do not expect God’s people to attend a church that would undermine their faith or hinder their spiritual lives or that of their children.
But my recommendation in such cases has always been to find a way either to help start a good church or to move to a place where there is one. It is said that “where there is a will there is a way,” and that is usually true. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13). When God tells us to do something, He provides a way, and the church is God’s program for this age. It is mentioned more than 100 times in Scripture. Most of the New Testament is written to churches. We are commanded not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb. 10:25) and to obey them that have the rule over us (Heb. 13:17). Those Scriptures take for granted that we will be in a church. The first believers continued steadfastly in the fellowship, prayers, and breaking of bread in the church (Acts 2:42). Paul commended Phebe to the church at Rome, and she was a servant of the church at Cenchrea (Rom. 16:1). That is the example that is put before us in Scripture.
I have been saved for 35 years and I have always found a way to be faithful to a sound New Testament church, and there have been times when I have had to attend a church that I wasn’t very excited about, to say the least, but in light of the Bible’s emphasis on the church, I am not going to neglect God’s program, and I exhort all of my readers to follow this example!
Folks, sheep need sheepfolds and shepherds, and that is what God has provided in the church.
BE WISE AND CAUTIOUS AND PATIENT IN DEALING WITH PROBLEMS AND ERRORS IN CHURCHES.
It grieves me when I hear that readers of Way of Life materials are causing trouble UNWISELY in good Bible-believing churches and are doing it in my name!
Please observe that I DID NOT say that it grieves me to hear that readers of Way of Life materials are causing trouble in churches. Sometimes trouble is godly. There are churches that urgently need some of the members to step up the plate and try to bring godly change. In no way do I want to discourage the hearts of God’s people who are trying to stand uncompromisingly for truth and righteousness in this evil generation, but there is a right and wrong way to do things.
One man wrote to me and said, “Your medicine is strong and needful; it just needs to be administered carefully.” I agree with that 100%.
That man told me about some people he has known who have tried to change the soul winning program in some churches to bring in an emphasis on repentance and to turn the churches away from what I call “quick prayerism” (quick to lead people in a sinner’s prayer whether there is any obvious conviction or even much interest, quick to pronounce people saved even when there is no evidence thereof, quick to announce “salvation” statistics even when a large percentage of them are bogus). This man claimed that these people just ended up causing trouble for the churches and not accomplishing anything good. Since I am not personally familiar with those situations, I don’t know if he is giving an accurate picture, but I asked him what exactly was wrong in those particular cases, in his estimation. He answered as follows:
“They were not working from the top down and were being too strong/dogmatic. I’m right; you’re wrong. One can be right and not be righteous about it and thus make of none effect the desired change. This one talks to that one and causes a division prior to the matter getting to the pastor. Now he has a compounded problem with division in the church. We need to work from the top down with humility and grace, knowing that it takes time to change the course of a ship. With the strong medicine we need to also teach the tact to administer it so that it gives the greatest benefit and least harm. Hopefully we won’t look back and say, ‘The operation was a success; we cut out all the cancer; too bad the patient died’! Your well done biblical work has shaped many of the things I do and believe. It is profitable and needful. We just need it at the right dosages to be the most effective.”
I agree with these thoughts and I have written about this type of thing many times. The articles “Keys to Fruitful Church Membership” and “The Pastor’s Authority and the Church Member’s Responsibility” deal with this, for example. I have written a lot about the importance of the church and how to conduct oneself as a member.
One suggestion I would make is this: it is important that we not just criticize what is in place in the church, but that we have a positive plan for something better. Consider, again, the soul winning issue. I believe an example of the right way to try to bring this type of change to a church is contained in the following e-mail:
“Right now, my wife and I are in a church where we have seen a pastor shift his thinking on this important issue. A good friend and I are regulars on Thursday night, and just through gentle conversation and asking innocent questions, there’s been a total turnaround in soulwinning methodology here.
“Instead of merely inviting lost people to ‘worship’ with us, our entire Thursday night soulwinning is Gospel-focused. It has been a singular joy to see everyone come to life on the doorstep! We now seek to present the Gospel at every door, and plow the soil on sin, judgment, and repentance. Instead of slammed doors, we find that a compassionate explanation of sin in concrete terms makes judgment seem reasonable, opening the door for the Gospel. Following with repentance and faith just feels biblical and powerful. Number of ‘prayers’ is down, but we can all see that we're reaching a much deeper sense of clarity with each contact.
“No longer are we stuck with nowhere to go when someone says, ‘Oh, I asked Jesus into my heart when I was little.’ Many have, but never repented. With that person, it is so important to have an understanding of biblical soteriology -- that it’s not enough to pray the prayer. They may still be lost, and we find it’s typically easy to uncover that with only a few more questions. By our unscientific numbers, maybe 60% of people have made some commitment to Jesus, but 90% of those have no convincing evidence that the Author of faith is finishing anything in them. The easy-prayerist checks these off their list and implicitly endorses false conversions!
“Thanks for advancing these very biblical ideas in our fundamental Baptist culture. We are nearly overrun with people who say, ‘Well, at least they’ll be in heaven, even if they won't have any fruit.’ Enough of that!”
To that I say amen! In this case the problem was approached in a wise manner and the fruit has been good.
There is no simple one-two-three list of suggestions I could give that would solve the problem of how to correct errors in churches. It is never easy, and it is largely a matter of spiritual maturity and attaining and applying godly wisdom under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Paul said to the church at Rome: “And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another” (Rom. 15:14).
Thus, to be able to admonish others in a fruitful manner requires that we be filled with goodness and filled with knowledge. This refers to spiritual maturity and a solid foundation of Bible knowledge. If I try to “straighten out a church” without these two things, I will not only fail, I will cause more harm than good!
New Christians, in particular, must be very cautious about trying to exhort others, especially his spiritual leaders. New Christians are often very zealous, and I don’t want to dampen that zeal, but zeal must be tempered with godly wisdom and new Christians simply don’t have much of that. They are called babes in Christ in God’s Word, and they are exhorted to drink milk and grow to maturity (1 Pet. 2:2). That is what a babe in Christ needs to focus his attention on, rather than trying to straighten out other people!
Once I almost split a church, and it is one of the things that I regret the most in my Christian life. It was a long time ago, and I was young in the Lord. I was zealous, as I have always been by God’s grace, but I was lacking in experience and maturity. I got it into my mind that my pastor at the time was unqualified, because he didn’t study enough, to my way of thinking, and his preaching ministry wasn’t strong and solid enough, to my way of thinking. I was measuring him by myself. My strong suit is study, so why shouldn’t every preacher be just like me! The church wasn’t very old and the dear pastor was a personal friend who had done a lot for me, but I unwisely talked to a couple of the key church members about the matter. I talked to him, too, but I was dead wrong in trying to stir up the people against him. He was deeply offended at my action, of course, and though I was sorrowful and realized that I had been wrong, the damage was done. Our friendship was ruined (he wasn’t very forgiving!) and I moved my membership to another church. The problem was that I was just too young and immature and inexperienced in the Lord to have tried to bring change to that particular situation. It’s true that the pastor wasn’t a great student, but he had other important pastoral qualifications that I was overlooking.
Again, I want to emphasize that I am not trying to discourage God’s people who are trying to take a stand against error in a godly manner. I know many people who have tried to do this in the right manner and they were wrongly branded as trouble-makers and treated with a great lack of respect by the pastors and churches in question. It is never an easy matter to challenge the church leaders, and it is a sad fact that leaders who have chosen a path of error rarely turn back from it.
There is a great problem among fundamental Baptist and fundamentalist Bible churches today, in that so many that were once sound are moving in the direction of New Evangelicalism and the contemporary church growth philosophies. They are bringing in the modern Bibles and modern music and modern dress standards. They are allowing women to lead in ways the Bible forbids. They are creating worldly youth ministries that pamper and entertain the flesh rather than challenge the young people to true biblical discipleship. When God’s people rise up against these things, more often than not they are despised and discarded.
So please do not misunderstand what I am trying to say in this article. I DO NOT want to discourage or hinder God’s people in taking a scriptural and wise stand for truth in this wicked day. I am just trying to urge wisdom.
IT IS SCRIPTURAL AND RIGHT TO QUESTION ONE’S PASTOR ABOUT ISSUES IN THE CHURCH, BUT THERE IS ALSO A RIGHT WAY TO DO IT.
If the pastor won’t listen and doesn’t want to be challenged about things, and if he requires “unquestioning loyalty,” I would strongly suggest that you leave that church. Such a man is a Diotrephes, and staying in that church will cripple your spiritual life and turn you into something like a cult member. (At the Way of Life web site see the articles “Unquestioning Loyalty to Pastoral Leadership the Mark of a Cult” and “Another Warning about Unquestioning Loyalty.”)
If, on the other hand, you have godly, humble pastor(s) who are qualified by God’s standards and open to challenges from their people, be very patient with them. You must always remember that you are not the pastor. He, not you, will be held accountable for the church before God. He, not you, has to bear the burden of the ministry, and I can assure you that there is probably not a more difficult job in the world than leading a church and dealing with PEOPLE! He, not you, has the call of God to make the major decisions about the church’s ministry.
I advise that you always give pastors the benefit of the doubt. Not every issue that comes up in the church is as black and white as we might think. God gives pastors wisdom. They understand the overall picture of the condition and needs of the church in a way that you do not. At the same time, pastors are just sinners saved (hopefully) by grace. They are learning and growing like the rest of God’s people. God lets us make mistakes to teach us lessons; shouldn’t we give the same freedom to pastors to some wise degree? I am not talking here about clear biblical error and heresy or the type of sin that calls for church discipline. I am talking about things like allowing music that you think might be borderline, and perhaps being too “patient” with new converts about cleaning up their lives, and not dealing with issues as much as I think he should, and bringing in preachers that I don’t like, and having or not having a youth ministry, and assigning people to jobs that I don’t think they should be assigned to, and not having the soul winning program exactly to my suiting, and doing things at Christmas that I wish the church would not do, and not emphasizing enough about the King James Bible and maybe even giving a better or different rendering once in a while, etc.
A qualification for the pastor is that he not be self-willed (Titus 1:7). This means that he is to rule the church by God’s will and not his own will, by God’s Word not by his own thinking. The self-willed man wants to run over other people and control them. It is a matter of the heart’s attitude. It is a matter of pride and lack of compassion and godly patience.
At the same time, the church members also should not be self-willed. If God has not called me to be a pastor, I should not try to rule the church! I am not saying that the church member should not have complete liberty to express his opinion about things. I am not saying that the church is not a body and that each member should be treated with godly consideration. I am simply saying that the church member needs to check himself and make sure that he is not trying to be something in the church that God has not called him to be.
“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Romans 12:3).
Women must be doubly careful about this matter, because God’s Word forbids them to teach or to usurp authority over the man (1 Timothy 2:12). The woman might be more spiritual than the men and might know more, but God has not given her the liberty to teach men. She thus has to be patient and submissive and be a great prayer warrior in order to move the heart of God to intervene THROUGH THE MEN when there are errors and problems.
This does not mean that a woman cannot go to her pastor and other church leaders if she has questions and issues, but she simply is not allowed by God to become their teacher. She can recommend materials so that the men can learn from other men, if they are willing to look into the issue, but she cannot become their teacher.
I realize this is a very sensitive matter, and many women have written to exhort and teach and rebuke me, but they are out of bounds, regardless of how much they think they know and how right and how close to God they think they are.
What I am trying to say here, and what I am trying to exhort my readers to do, is to be very wise and godly and patient in dealing with church leaders.
“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:14-16).
God has given pastors authority (Heb. 13:7, 17). Some of them have abused their authority, but pastoral authority is God-ordained, nonetheless. Not everyone in the church has the same authority. This does not mean that we overlook things that we believe are wrong. Pastors are not popes and do not have unlimited authority; their authority is limited by the Bible; and churches must not follow pastors into error. But as a church member, I must always remember that the pastor has authority that I do not have and that he, not me, will give an answer to God for pastoral decisions.
THERE IS A TIME TO LEAVE A CHURCH WHEN IT IS COMMITTED TO A PATH OF SERIOUS ERROR, BUT THERE IS ALSO A RIGHT WAY TO LEAVE.
There is a proper time to leave a church, if it is not following God’s Word, but there is a proper way to leave and many times people leave churches for carnal reasons and in a carnal manner.
If someone leaves a church for biblical and spiritual reasons, the fruit will be characterized by the description in James 3:17-18--purity, peaceableness, gentleness, easy to be entreated, mercy, without partiality, without hypocrisy. Someone leaving in this mode will speak the truth in love. He leaves because he is convinced it is God’s will, but he does so in a peaceable and godly manner. He is respectful of the leaders even if he doesn’t agree with them, and he harbors no ill will toward the leaders or the church.
But if someone leaves a church for carnal reasons the fruit will be characterized by the description in James 3:14-16--bitterness, envy, strife, confusion, and other evil works. This is not of God! Many times I have observed this. People get upset at something and they leave a church, but they do not do so in a godly manner. They cause all sorts of trouble and try to hurt the church, both before they leave and after. Many times they won’t even talk about the matter with the leaders in a gracious, open manner. They are not “easy to be entreated.” All of the love they once had for the church and its leaders disappears. They deal deceitfully. They go behind the pastor’s back and despise his position.
I realize that compromised Christians can be quite vicious and can tell lies about men and women who try to correct error. They have told lies about me countless times, but we must be careful that we do not give occasion to the flesh and fight error in an unspiritual and unwise manner.
If you have to leave a church, do so in a godly manner and leave a good testimony “as much as lieth in you.” And if you feel that you have to leave, do your best to find a better church. It makes no sense when people claim they are leaving a church because of error, but they join a worse church.
DO NOT THINK THAT THE CHURCH SHOULD BE LIKE WAY OF LIFE LITERATURE.
A part of my ministry, the warning part, is somewhat unbalanced of necessity. That is the nature of the Fundamental Baptist Information Service and of O Timothy magazine. I have no intention of trying to be completely “balanced” with that part of my ministry. Those are voices of warning and exhortation. There are plenty of “positive, encouraging” ministries out there. That part of the equation is very well taken care of today. But there is little by way of serious and pointed warning.
As I say in the footer to each Fundamental Baptist Information Service article: “Our goal in this particular aspect of our ministry is not devotional but is to provide information to assist preachers in the protection of the churches in this apostate hour.”
O Timothy magazine, which we began publishing 25 years ago, has exactly the same objective. The magazine’s title, taken from 1 Timothy 6:20, describes the burden of the magazine, which is urging men in these last days to keep the faith once delivered to the saints and to avoid the error which is on every hand. “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” Paul’s burden for Timothy was that he keep the old paths and avoid error. That is our burden through O Timothy magazine. The aim is to help protect churches from end-time apostasy through doctrinal preaching and carefully researched and well-documented reports.
Therefore, the Fundamental Baptist Information Service and O Timothy magazine are geared for PREACHERS and for WARNING. These are not Christian family publications. They are not devotionals. They are not general interest materials. They are geared to providing information that preachers can use to protect their churches in an hour of deep apostasy and subtle compromise.
The name of Way of Life Literature came from my Bible reading one day about 31 years ago, when I read the words in Proverbs 6:23: “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.” I thought, that is what we need more of today; we need more reproofs of instruction, and, praise God, such reproofs are the way of life. If done in a godly manner, reproof is not destructive but is edifying and life giving. To warn people of danger is to help them, if they will receive it.
Thus, a part of my ministry is quite “negative” and focuses on pointing out error, exhorting to separation, and such things.
At the same time, I would not want to be in a church that focused on these things. And I would not want to see anyone try to make the Fundamental Baptist Information Service their “church.” Please understand, I am not your pastor! In fact, I am not anybody’s pastor. I am a missionary church planter, but I am not a pastor.
A church should most definitely preach against error plainly and warn about things, and most churches today fall short of doing what they should in this area. I am convinced that each church should make literature such as O Timothy and the Way of Life books available to their people so they will be properly educated and protected. But dealing with such things is certainly not all that a church should be doing or even mostly what it should be doing. Ecclesiastical separation is a necessity, but separation in and of itself is nothing. Separation is merely the wall of protection that we put around the Lord’s work, but having separated, we must busy ourselves with that work itself, which is described particularly in Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; Acts 1:8, but also in all the rest of the New Testament Scriptures!
When I preach in the churches we have started in South Asia, I don’t preach very often on the type of things that appear in the Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Only rarely do I preach on “issue” type things, such as the charismatic movement or contemporary Christian music or the ecumenical movement or Roman Catholicism or the emerging church or contemplative mysticism or the New Age movement, though I do intermingle brief warnings about some of these things into the messages by way of application.
The overwhelming majority of my week-by-week preaching in our churches involves exegesis of books of the Bible. I am just finishing up a series of about 30 messages from the book of Ephesians, for example. And the topical messages are about such things as prayer, love for Christ, communion with Christ, holiness, separation from the world, evangelism, church planting, faithfulness to the Lord’s work, and sound Bible doctrine.
Even in my writing ministry, I do not focus exclusively on warning. The Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible & Christianity and Things Hard to Be Understood and the Way of Life Advanced Bible Studies Series, for example, took more time to produce than probably all of the other things I have written combined, and they are tools for Bible study and general Christian living. Thus, even my writing ministry is by no means strictly a warning ministry.
The 19 Advanced Bible Studies Series courses deal with such things as “How to Study the Bible,” “Bible Prophecy,” “Bible Doctrine,” “Church History,” and “The History and Geography of the Bible.” These courses have been written over the past five years and total over 5,200 pages.
It should be obvious that as a preacher a large percentage of my time is spent on things other than exposing and warning of error.
Do you see what I am saying? Every church should warn plainly about error, but a church is not merely a warning station. Please don’t measure your church by the Fundamental Baptist Information Service or O Timothy magazine in the sense of thinking that your pastor should be like Brother Cloud. In that particular aspect of my ministry I am not a pastor; rather, I am exercising, I believe, a “prophetic” type ministry (not referring to prophecy as fore-telling, of course, but as forth-telling).
My aim and desire is to be a help and blessing to pastors in providing them well-researched information to assist their ministries, knowing at the same time that there is much more to their ministries than warning about error.
LASTLY, I DO NOT WANT MY READERS TO THINK THAT I AM ANYTHING.
I have no desire to create a following of any sort. I hope there are no Cloudites! I do not consider myself better than anyone. In fact, I am confident that some of the people that I warn about are better Christians than I am in some areas of their lives and ministries. I am a big failure in many ways. I own no Christian perfection of any sort. I am just a man who was saved by God’s undeserving grace and called to preach His Word.
When some people from Africa wrote to me years ago and said they were going to start a David Cloud church, I was not impressed, to say the least!
I am convinced that God called me to this difficult ministry and I intend to accomplish it by His grace and I do think that I have exercised some zeal for it and am biblically qualified for it, but I was a nothing when God called me and I am a nothing today apart from His grace.
I do not preach myself and I have no intention of doing so; I preach God’s Word. I do not measure things by my puny standard, but by that of God’s Word. At least that is my desire and intention. I want to measure myself by the same standard, and I invite my readers to measure me and other men by that same rule. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). John the Baptist was wise and godly when he said, “I must decrease.” That is what every preacher needs to say and mean from the bottom of his heart.
The apostle Paul said, “Follow me as I also follow Christ,” and we can and should say that; but we must also acknowledge that we are not apostles today. The only infallible authority is the Scriptures. There is no infallible preacher.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 23rd year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org ]
MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM’S ROLE IN THE BREAKDOWN OF MORALITY
MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM’S ROLE IN THE BREAKDOWN OF MORALITY
October 23, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
In our book For Love of the Bible we document the defense of the King James Bible and the opposition to modern textual criticism for the past 200 years.
One of the men that defended the KJV in the late nineteenth century was George Sayles Bishop, the pastor of the First Reformed Church of Orange, New Jersey. A brilliant preacher and a mighty defender of the Protestant faith, he fought valiantly against the Higher Criticism that was permeating Christianity in his day. Like John Burgon XE "Burgon, John" and many others, Dr. Bishop plainly understood the intimate association between Higher Criticism and Textual Criticism.
In a discourse preached on June 7, 1885, “The Principle and Tendency of the Revision XE "English Revised Version" Examined,” Bishop issued a devastating charge against the Westcott-Hort critical Greek text and the new English version that was founded thereupon (the English Revised Version).
In this address he observed that most Christians did not understand the true character of modern textual criticism and its role in the revision of the English Bible. He warned that textual criticism appeals to scholarly pride. He considered the principles of modern textual criticism to be “twaddle.” He refused to accept the witness the Vaticanus manuscript because of Rome’s utter apostasy.
Bishop stated that the objective of the prominent Unitarian and Modernistic textual critics was to undermine the divine inspiration of Scripture and to weaken the doctrine of Hell, and he observed that if this objective succeeded, it would result in the complete moral breakdown of society. He understood that modern textual criticism’s tendency to break down the authority of God’s Word has devastating consequences.
Events have proven Bishop correct in every point.
Consider the following excerpts from this 120-year-old sermon, which is as relevant today as when it was first preached:
“I have set before myself a simple straight-forward task—to translate into the language of the common people and in lines of clear, logical light the principles involved in the new version of the Bible and just in what direction it tends. This thing is needed. Nothing at the present time is more needed nor so needed, for I am convinced that the principle at the root of the revision movement has not been fairly understood, not even by many of the revisers themselves, who, charmed by the siren-like voices addressed to their scholarly feeling, have yielded themselves to give way, in unconscious unanimous movement, along with the wave on which the ship of inspiration XE "Inspiration" floats with easy and accelerating motion, toward rebound and crash upon the rocks” (p. 60).
“That a few changes might be made in both Testaments, for the better, no man pretends to deny; but that all the learned twaddle about ‘intrinsic and transcriptional probability,’ ‘conflation,’ ‘neutral texts,’ ‘the unique position of B’ (the Vatican manuscript) ... that all this theory is false and moonshine and, when applied to God’s Word, worse than that; I firmly believe” (p. 61).
“Because I am a minister of Christ ... BECAUSE MY BUSINESS IS TO PREACH AND TO DEFEND THIS BOOK, I CANNOT AND WILL NOT KEEP SILENCE. ‘If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?’” (p. 62).
“THE REVISED VERSION XE "English Revised Version" OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IS BASED UPON A NEW, UNCALLED FOR, AND UNSOUND GREEK XE "Greek" TEXT—that mainly of Drs. Westcott and Hort XE "Westcott-Hort" , which was printed simultaneously with the revision and never before had seen light and which is the most unreliable text perhaps ever printed—one English critic says, ‘the foulest and most vicious in existence’” (p. 66).
“I WILL OPPOSE B THE VATICAN MS. FIRST, FOREMOST, ALTOGETHER, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS THE VATICAN MS., BECAUSE I HAVE TO RECEIVE IT FROM ROME, BECAUSE I WILL HAVE NO BIBLE FROM ROME, NO HELP FROM ROME AND NO COMPLICITY WITH ROME; BECAUSE I BELIEVE ROME TO BE AN APOSTATE. A worshipper of Bread for God; a remover of the sovereign mediatorship of Christ; a destroyer of the true gospel, she teaches a system which, if any man believes or follows as she teaches it, he will infallibly be lost—he must be. ... I will not take my Bible—not the bulk of it—from her apostate, foul, deceitful, cruel hands. ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’—I fear the Latins bearing presents in their hands” (p. 69).
“I have been confirmed in what had before been A GROWING CONVICTION—THAT THE REVISION MOVEMENT, DATING FROM THE FINDING OF TISCHENDORF’S [Aleph], unconsciously to most, but consciously to the Unitarian XE "Unitarian" —to the Messrs. Vance Smith XE "Smith, G. Vance" , Robertson Smith XE "Smith, W. Robertson" , etc.—liberal members of the New Testament Company, was RUNNING STEADILY IN ONE DIRECTION THROUGH THREE POINTS: 1ST. TO WEAKEN AND DESTROY THE BINDING FORCE OF INSPIRATION IN THE VERY WORDS. 2d. To weaken and destroy the five Points of Grace founded on ‘Free Will a Slave.’ 3d. To weaken and destroy the old-fashioned notion of Hell as a place and a state of immediate, everlasting and utterly indescribable torment into which impenitent men go at once the moment they die” (p. 74).
“The Revised Version XE "English Revised Version" weakens and removes the deity of Christ in many places—one I mention in particular. 1 Timothy 3:16 XE "First Timothy 3.16" XE "Christ’s deity" XE "God was manifest in the flesh" , ‘Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.’ The Revised Version [as do all modern versions] leaves out Theos, God ... Dr. Scrivener XE "Scrivener, F.H.A." , the foremost English critic, says it is Theos. ... That conviction of Dr. Scrivener is my conviction and on the very same grounds—A CONVICTION SO DEEP THAT I WILL NEVER YIELD IT, NOR ADMIT AS A TEXT OF MY FAITH A BOOK PRETENDING TO BE A REVELATION FROM GOD WHICH LEAVES THAT WORD OUT. THE HOLY GHOST HAS WRITTEN IT—LET NO MAN DARE TOUCH IT—GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS, GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH” (pp. 78-80).
“WHAT THEN IS THE GRAND SUMMING UP OF THIS ... AS TO THE TENDENCY OF THE REVISION?
“1. A general weakening all along the line toward Rome XE "Roman Catholic" . This must be, if Rome is to furnish the basal document which is to determine our Bible. ... No wonder I say that men have gone up valiantly to Church Courts to overturn if possible, the declaration of the Old School Assembly of 1845 by a vote of 173 to 8, that Rome is apostate and her baptism as a baptism into an apostate system is utterly invalid.
“2. A second Tendency of the Revision XE "English Revised Version" is to loosen the Revelation of God from the letter, and to cast it floating out upon the winds. How can God inspire thoughts, ideas, but by words? Did you ever have a thought in your mind, an idea that was not in words? Never. If Inspiration is not verbal, in the very words, it is nowhere.
“3. The tendency is to remove from men that fear of penalty, which, say what we please, is the kingbolt of the Divine Government over the world. TAKE AWAY THE DOCTRINE OF HELL-FIRE AND THE WORLD WOULD BECOME ONE GREAT SODOM. ...
“The time has not come for a New Translation of the Holy Scriptures. The Church is not spiritual enough. The Principle has not been settled, and the Data are not all in” (George Sayles Bishop XE "Bishop, George" , “Sheol: The Principle and Tendency of the Revision XE "English Revised Version" Examined,” The Doctrines of Grace and Kindred Themes, 1910, pp. 60-87).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
DID FULLER GET HIS VIEWS ON THE KJV FROM A CULTIST?
DID FULLER GET HIS VIEWS ON THE KJV FROM A CULTIST?
Updated October 22, 2008 (first published December 30, 2000) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
Some of the men fundamentalists are promoting modern textual criticism, such as Bob Ross, Gary Hudson, Doug Kutilek, James Price, and the editor of “From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man,” have made the amazing charge that the current King James Bible defense is based upon the views of Benjamin Wilkinson, a Seventh-day Adventist professor. They claim that Wilkinson authored the view that the Received Text is the preserved Word of God that can be traced through history, and that J.J. Ray and David Otis Fuller picked up this teaching and promoted it to the “KJV Only” crowd.
In his 1930 book, “Our Authorized Bible Vindicated,” Wilkinson defended the text of the King James Bible and gave some evidence of its textual primacy among Bible believers through the centuries. Large portions of Wilkinson’s book were republished in David Otis Fuller’s 1970 book, Which Bible.
That much is fact. Whether Fuller was right or wrong in reprinting some of Wilkinson’s writings (and hiding the fact that Wilkinson was an Adventist) is something each reader will have to decide for himself.
I believe that he was wrong. Wilkinson’s writings added nothing of substance to the debate and by using Wilkinson’s book Dr. Fuller gave his enemies something to use against him and his position on the Bible.
Further, Wilkinson was wrong in some of his facts, having leaned heavily upon the writings of Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White. (I have obtained the vast majority of the books cited by Wilkinson for my own library with the objective of checking his documentation.) It is not true, for instance, that the Waldenses had a perfect Bible that is exactly like the King James. While the Waldensian New Testaments were much closer to the King James than to the modern versions, they were not exactly like the KJV. I have had the privilege of examining two of the seven extant Waldensian Bibles--the one at Trinity College, Dublin, and the one at Cambridge University. Both are based on Latin and have the textual corruptions that pertain to Latin. For example both omit “God” in 1 Timothy 3:16. Wilkinson claimed that the Waldensian Bibles were based on an “old Latin” rather than the Latin vulgate and were textually perfect, but this is not true (if we believe that the Greek Received Text is pure).
At the same time, to claim that Fuller’s views on the Bible version issue were derived from Wilkinson and to make Wilkinson the father of King James Bible defense is pure unadulterated nonsense.
Further, I am convinced that it is MALICIOUS nonsense, because even though this silly little myth has been refuted (such as in my book For Love of the Bible, first edition 1995 and second edition 1999, as well as in this article, which was first published in 2000) the aforementioned men continued to perpetuate it. As of September 8, 2008, their articles purporting this myth are still on the web.
THE DEFENSE OF THE KJV PRE-DATED BENJAMIN WILKINSON
First of all, long before Benjamin Wilkinson wrote on the Bible version issue, there were pastors and Christian leaders defending the King James Bible in the same way that Dr. Fuller defended it. I have carefully and extensively documented this in my 440-page book For Love of the Bible: The Defense of the KJV and the Received Text from 1800 to Present.
One example is the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) of England. The Society was formed in 1831 from a conflict within the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) over the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus Christ. The BFBS refused to take a stand against Unitarianism, and those men who were concerned for doctrinal purity left to form the TBS. In the early years of the TBS, the matter of different Bible texts and versions was not a serious issue in the sense it was to become at the end of the nineteenth century. Though there were textual critics in the first half of that century, they did not exercise wide influence in ordinary Christian circles. The battles faced by Trinitarian in its earlier years were in other directions.
With the publication of the English Revised Version New Testament and the Westcott-Hort Greek text of 1881, the TBS began to take a more active position on texts and versions. A number of articles were published in the TBS Quarterly Record at the turn of the century critiquing the ERV and supporting the Received Text. Some of these drew heavily upon John Burgon’s Revision Revised, as well as the research of F.C. Cook and F.H.A. Scrivener. From that time to this, Trinitarian has stood solidly behind the Received Text and the King James Bible. Their published writings have promoted all of the major points commonly given in defense of the KJV. Consider a couple of selections:
“The architects and advocates of the modern English translations of the Holy Scriptures often assure us that their numerous alterations, omissions and additions do not affect any vital doctrine. While this may be true of hundreds of minute variations there is nevertheless a substantial number of important doctrinal passages which the modern versions present in an altered and invariably weakened form” (God Was Manifest in the Flesh, TBS Article No. 10).
“For too long the ‘science’ of Textual Criticism has been in bondage to the authority of a small class of ancient manuscripts, with the Sinai and Vatican copies at their head, which are in thousands of instances at variance with the Greek Text preserved in the great majority of the documents now available for ascertaining the true text. ... The result has been that even in the ‘evangelical’ seminaries generations of theological students have been encouraged to accept without question theories which involve the rejection of the historical text and the adoption of an abbreviated and defective text cast in the mold of the Vatican and Sinai copies” (Many Things, TBS Article No. 33).
“No evangelical Christian, learned or unlearned, would wish to follow [modernistic] writers along the perilous paths of infidelity in which they strode with such presumption. There is another danger, no less serious, in that Textual Criticism, the evaluation of the actual manuscripts in the ancient languages, the preparation of printed editions of the Hebrew and Greek Text, and the modern translations now being made in English and many other languages, are very largely conducted under the direction or influence of scholars who by their adoption of these erroneous theories have betrayed the unreliability of their judgment in these vital matters. WE MUST NOT PERMIT OUR JUDGMENT TO BE OVERAWED BY GREAT NAMES IN THE REALM OF BIBLICAL ‘SCHOLARSHIP’ WHEN IT IS SO CLEARLY EVIDENT THAT THE DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF THE PRESENT CENTURY ARE MERELY REPRODUCING THE CASE PRESENTED BY RATIONALISTS DURING THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS. Nor should we fail to recognise that scholarship of this kind has degenerated into a skeptical crusade against the Bible, tending to lower it to the level of an ordinary book of merely human composition” (If the Foundations Be Destroyed, TBS Article No. 14).
It is obvious that defense of the King James Bible and its underlying text predated Benjamin Wilkinson in the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Another example was fundamentalist leader William Aberhart (1878-1943), who stood for the Received Text and the King James Bible in western Canada during the first half of the twentieth century. Aberhart was a pastor, Bible school dean, radio Bible teacher, and a greatly beloved political leader. He was Premier of Alberta from 1935-43. In the late 1920s Aberhart separated from the Regular Baptists over issues such as Bible inspiration and prophecy, and in 1924 he established the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. The first student enrolled in this Bible Institute was Ernest Charles Manning, who eventually became the premier of Alberta, holding that position from 1943 until 1968. Aberhart also founded the 1,250-seat Bible Institute Baptist Church, which often featured the preaching of well-known fundamentalist leaders such as William B. Riley and Harry Rimmer.
Aberhart trained his people and his students to have confidence in the divine preservation of the Bible. He defended the King James Bible as the preserved Word of God. A summary of Aberhart’s teaching was given to me personally by Pastor Mark Buch (1910-1995), who was educated by Aberhart in the 1930s. Buch was the founder and pastor of the People’s Fellowship Tabernacle in Vancouver, British Columbia. This church was a stronghold for biblical fundamentalism in western Canada from the time it was founded in 1939. Buch knew and preached with many of the well-known Fundamentalist leaders of the last century, including J. Frank Norris, G. Beauchamp Vick, and Bob Jones Sr.
When I was doing research for my book For Love of the Bible, I had the pleasure of interviewing Pastor Buch on a number of occasions. Buch had taken the second year Apologetics course Aberhart taught on the subject of inspiration and preservation at the Prophetic Bible Institute. Note how Pastor Buch described Aberhart’s position on Bible preservation:
“Mr. Aberhart was one of the greatest Bible teachers in Canada. He was the first person I came in contact with WHO KNEW THE TRUE STORY OF THE DIVINE INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION OF GOD’S HOLY WORD. He explained how it came down from the first apostolic faultless autograph, its safe keeping through the Byzantine church, the majority reformation copy by Erasmus of Rotterdam, William Tyndale’s translation, the Authorized committee of mental and spiritual giants, and the resultant glorious treasure—the Authorized Version” (Mark Buch, In Defence of the Authorized Version, People’s Fellowship Tabernacle, Vancouver, British Columbia, p. 25).
The position William Aberhart held on the Bible version issue in the 1920s is exactly the position that David Otis Fuller taught, and Aberhart was writing and teaching this several years before the publication of Wilkinson’s book. In the course of my research, I looked into the sources of Aberhart’s position. One of his sources was the writings of John William Burgon, whose book The Revision Revised was first published in 1881 and was reprinted many times. Mark Buch testified to me that Aberhard used Burgon’s material in his Bible institute classes.
TO SAY THAT FULLER WAS BRAINWASHED BY ANY ONE CERTAIN MAN OR BOOK IS TO IGNORE THE FACTS
While it is true that David Otis Fuller published some of Wilkinson’s writings, he also published the writings of a wide variety of men on the Bible version issue, and to focus on Wilkinson as the basis for Fuller’s views is something that is done to demagogue Fuller and other defenders of the KJV.
By his enemies, David Otis Fuller (called “Duke” by his friends) is made out to be some sort of scheming madman, and an ignorant one at that! The fact is that he was a graduate of Princeton Seminary and a noted pastor, author, and Baptist associational leader. He obtained the Master of Divinity degree at Princeton and was honored with a Doctor of Divinity degree by Dallas Theological Seminary. He pastored the prominent Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 40 years (1934-74). While there, he founded the Grand Rapids Baptist Institute, which later became the Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College (today called Cornerstone). Fuller co-founded the Children’s Bible Hour radio program in 1942 and for 33 years was its chairman. For 52 years Fuller was on the board of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. He was on the Council of 14 in the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Fuller published between fifteen to twenty books.
When he first began investigating the Bible version issue for himself in the 1960s, Fuller came across not only Wilkinson’s work, but also Philip Mauro’s Which Version, John Burgon’s Revision Revised, and Alfred Martin’s doctoral dissertation against the Westcott-Hort Text. Martin was Vice President of Moody Bible Institute and refuted modern textual criticism in his doctoral dissertation to the faculty of the Dallas Theological Seminary graduate school. Martin corresponded with Fuller on the Bible text issue and allowed Fuller to publish a condensation of his dissertation in Which Bible.
To say that Fuller was brainwashed by any one certain man or book is to ignore the facts. Whatever Fuller accepted from Ray or Wilkinson or anyone else he accepted because he felt that it was affirmed by other reputable sources.
Fuller was only a man, with the faults and weaknesses of a man. I respect him but I do not idolize him. The eternal treasure is held in “earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7) and those who preach the Word of God are “subject to like passions as we are” (Jam. 5:17). But there can be no doubt that Fuller was a scholarly individual who studied the Bible Version issue from many angles. He even visited the British Library to seek out John Burgon’s unpublished works. “It was the privilege of this compiler, after struggling through several rounds of red tape, to see for myself three of the sixteen folio volumes Burgon had written in his own hand, a compilation of eighty-seven thousand quotations from the early Church Fathers. I make bold to say there is no other collection like this in existence” (Fuller, Counterfeit or Genuine, introduction, p. 11). (I examined two of those massive volumes myself on a visit to the British Library in March 2003.)
Altogether Fuller edited three major volumes totaling 900 pages on the Bible version issue: Which Bible? (1970), True or False? (1973), and Counterfeit or Genuine? (1975). These volumes are evidence of Dr. Fuller’s diligent research on the subject of texts and versions. He located many books long out of print and made the contents available to his generation. Fuller’s three volumes on this subject contain the full or summarized works of many older authorities on the textual issue, including John Burgon, Herman Hoskier, Philip Mauro, Joseph Philpot, Samuel Zwemer, and George Sayles Bishop, as well as the works of a number of contemporary writers, including Edward Hills, Terence Brown, and Wilbur Pickering. Dr. Fuller was influential in obtaining and publishing several post-graduate theses that defended the TR and the KJV in opposition to the modern versions. These include the following:
A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory—Alfred Martin’s dissertation to the faculty of the Graduate School of Dallas Theological Seminary, May 1951.
The Preservation of the Scriptures—Donald Brake’s dissertation to the faculty of the Department of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Theology Degree, May 1970.
An Evaluation of the Contribution of John William Burgon to New Testament Textual Criticism—Wilbur Pickering’s thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Dallas Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Theology Degree, May 1968.
Contrary to the wild-eyed caricature that many have drawn of him, Dr. Fuller did not claim that the King James Bible was given by inspiration or that it contains some type of advanced revelation or that it could not be improved or changed. He claimed simply that it is the only reliable English translation of the preserved Greek and Hebrew text of Scripture. He did not believe the KJV has errors, but he differentiated plainly between improvements and errors.
“We do not say that the KJV does not permit of changes. There are a number that could be AND SHOULD BE made, but there is a vast difference between a change and an error” (Fuller, Is the King James Version Nearest to the Original Autographs? nd., p. 1).
I don’t share Dr. Fuller’s position that the KJV should be changed; my objective here is to define his position as carefully as I can and to refute the many lies that have been told about him.
Fuller believed that versions other than the King James could be used in study, if used carefully:
“I do not say that you cannot profit from reading other versions. You can. But if they are based on the Westcott and Hort text, they are immediately suspect and you should be mighty careful that you check that version with the KJV as closely as possible” (Fuller, Which Bible Is Preserved of God, message preached in the 1970s).
Dr. Fuller’s position on Bible versions is given on pages 5 and 6 of his first book, Which Bible:
“The compiler of this book, and the able writers whom he quotes, all contend that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant and authoritative word of God and that there has been a gracious exercise of the divine providence in its preservation and transmission. They are also deeply convinced that the inspired text is more faithfully represented by the Majority Text—sometimes called the Byzantine Text, the Received Text or the Traditional Text—than by the modern critical editions which attach too much weight to the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and their allies. For this reason the reader is encouraged to maintain confidence in THE KING JAMES VERSION AS A FAITHFUL TRANSLATION BASED UPON A RELIABLE TEXT” (Fuller, Which Bible? pp. 5,6).
“A faithful translation based upon a reliable text.” That is what David Otis Fuller believed about the King James Bible. For various reasons, many have not been content to allow D.O. Fuller to state his own position. Instead they have caricatured him as a wild-eyed traditionalist who believed that every word of the KJV was penned by direct inspiration. One would think that Dr. Fuller went around saying, “If the KJV was good enough for Paul it was good enough for me.” This caricature is convenient as a straw man that those who despise the Authorized Version can pummel in a very grand and pompous manner.
A more honest evaluation of Fuller’s Which Bible? was given by Dr. John Holliday in the Gospel Witness:
“WHICH BIBLE? is not a repudiation of scholarship. It is not an argument for the inerrancy of a translation. It is not a defense of out-dated forms of speech. It is an exposure of the presence of enemies in the field of Bible translation. It is a warning against adulterated versions of the Scriptures, particularly versions which show evidence of having been deliberately corrupted in order to destroy belief in vital Biblical truths. It is a long-overdue defense of the worth of the old Authorized Version ... A DEFENSE THAT IS GROUNDED UPON THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF ITS UNDERLYING TEXT AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF THE TRANSLATION.”
David Otis Fuller was powerfully conscious of the fact that he stood before God in his life and ministry. He was not an armchair theologian; he was a soul winner and a pastor. He died leading a little Sunday School girl to Jesus Christ. His chief concern was for the authority of God’s Word in the lives and hearts of people. He believed that the Bible text issue must be approached by faith and not by science falsely so-called. His wisdom was not ivory tower; it was down-to-earth. It was with D.O. Fuller as it was in the days of Jesus, in that the common man heard him gladly.
D.O. Fuller loved the blessed Word of God. It was not merely another book to him, and a great many men who think of themselves as scholarly today simply do not understand a genuine, heart-felt zeal for the Bible. As with the late Lester Roloff, to “Duke” Fuller the Bible Version issue was not merely about scholarship, about conflation, recension, inversion, eclecticism, conjectural emendation, intrinsic and transcriptional probability, interpolation, harmonistic assimilation, cognate groups, and genealogical methods. It was about the inspired, infallible, living Words of God. Roloff testified that he looked upon the King James Bible as he looked upon his mother (1 Pet. 1:23). It was a heart-felt issue with him. He was no more willing to look upon omissions and changes in the Bible text with scholarly calmness as he would look upon someone trying to cut a few “unnecessary” pieces off of his mother!
This is the way that David Otis Fuller felt about the King James Bible. Consider the following quotation:
“Please remember this. You and I are facing, as I have said before, the most vicious and malicious attack upon the Word of God that has ever been made since the Garden of Eden, and the modern attack began with the publication of the Revised Version of 1881. This is an unpopular cause at present in Christian circles. I have found this out again and again, and I am going to find it out in the future. But I can say as far as I am concerned it doesn’t make any difference what happens to me, but it makes a whale of a difference what happens to the cause of Jesus Christ. And someday you and I, my friend, will have to stand before a holy God and give an account to what we did or did not do in seeking to open the eyes of people to the facts that have been covered up for so long concerning His holy, indestructible, impregnable Word” (D.O. Fuller, letter to Dr. Paul Tassell, National Representative of the GARBC, Jan. 8, 1982).
Some have questioned Dr. Fuller’s motives in his stand for the King James Bible, but I had the privilege of corresponding with him before he died and of having a close relationship with some men who knew him well and of having diligently studied all of his writings on the Bible version issue; and I have seen no evidence that he was motivated by anything other than principle. He said he was motivated by love for the Bible. Those who knew him best believed this. I have looked at the evidence (including the statements by many of his critics), and I am convinced that for those who are not predisposed to vilify the man or to despise his position on the Bible, all of the evidence points to one conclusion: Dr. Fuller was a brave Christian gentleman who was motivated by his God-given conviction that the King James Bible is the preserved Word of God in English and that the modern versions are corruptions.
If he made some mistakes along the way, can that be surprising? Every book that has ever been written by a man has had to be revised, usually sooner than later and usually more often than less often. The only exception is the 66 books that make up the Holy Bible.
Fuller certainly did not gain anything, from an earthly perspective, for his stand for the King James Bible. He was a highly respected pastor and Christian leader BEFORE he published Which Bible, True or False, and Counterfeit or Genuine. He certainly did not gain in personal prestige or influence, speaking in a general sense. Rather, he was mocked, ridiculed, slandered, and ostracized, even by many of his own fundamentalist and Baptist brethren. He made no personal financial gain from the sell of his books, turning all of the profit back into the printing ministry.
Countless Christians today who have confidence in their Bibles, who have been delivered from the fog of critical textual theorizing and from the confusion of an unsettled text of Scripture, have David Otis Fuller to thank.
I close with the words of Pastor Robert Barnett, Calvary Baptist Church, Grayling, Michigan, who knew “Duke” Fuller well:
“One may not have understood the arguments and details Dr. Fuller was presenting, but when you left the room, you knew that God was real to Dr. Fuller, and the King James Bible was his infallible authority in every area in which it spoke. You also knew that Dr. Fuller had a genuine concern for both your soul and your life” (Pastor Robert Barnett, Calvary Baptist Church, Grayling, Michigan, March 1990).
Having studied the Bible Version issue diligently for 30 years and having built a library on this subject that contains most of the material that has been published on all sides of the issue for the past 200 years, I am convinced that David Otis Fuller’s enemies today have a spiritual disease. It is a disease that he identified and labeled. It is a disease that, as Princeton educated man, he had to fight in his own flesh. It is a disease called “scholarolatry.”
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
“Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.” Proverbs 26:12
“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. ... Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.” Jeremiah 17:5, 7
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:20-21
For more information see the following articles (and many others) under the Bible Version section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life web site:
http://www.wayoflife.org/
“Old-Time Fundamentalists Who Defended the King James Bible”
“Answer to Challenge on Preservation Article”
“Textual Criticism Is Drawn from the Wells of Infidelity”
“Examining James White’s ‘The King James Only Controversy’”
“Are Modern Versions Based on Westcott and Hort?”
“Can Evangelicals Be Trusted on Bible Versions?”
“Is the Received Text Based on a Few Late Manuscripts?”
“Which Edition of the Received Text Is the Preserved Word of God?”
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
PETER VS. THE POPES
PETER VS. THE POPES
Updated October 21, 2008 (first published September 3, 1996) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The Roman Catholic Church claims that its popes have inherited the seat and authority of the apostle XE "Apostles" Peter. That this is a gross error is evident by a simple comparison of Peter’s life and teaching with the lives and teaching of the popes.
1. There is no evidence that Peter was the bishop at Rome XE "Rome" , and there is no evidence in the New Testament that there was anything special about the congregation at Rome, but the popes rule in Rome, claim that Peter was the first bishop at Rome, and claim that it is the “mother church.” Peter’s first epistle was written from Babylon, not from Rome, and the popes’ claim that “Babylon” stands for Rome is mere conjecture. The biblical evidence that Peter was not the pastor or bishop at Rome is overwhelming. Paul wrote TO the church at Rome in A.D. 58, but though he mentions 27 people by name, he does not mention Peter. That would have been an inexcusable affront if Peter had been the pope at Rome. Later, Paul writes FROM Rome to the churches of Galatia, the church of Ephesus, Philippi, and Colosse, as well as to Philemon, but not once does he mention that Peter is in Rome. In 2 Timothy 4:16 Paul said that no man stood with him and all forsook him when he answered his charges. Where was Pope XE "Pope" Peter? The fact is that Peter was not a pope and he was not the bishop at Rome.
2. Peter was married (Matthew 8:14), but the popes are forbidden to marry.
3. Peter said Holy Scripture is the sure Word of God and to this alone we are to give heed (2 Peter 1:19-21), but the popes say we are also to heed their uninspired traditions.
4. Peter warned of false teachers who would make merchandise of God's people (2 Peter 2:1-3), but the popes have made massive sums of money by selling their religion, by their masses and their prayers for the dead and their indulgences and their pilgrimage sites and countless other things.
5. Peter had neither silver nor gold (Acts 3:6), but the popes have massive amounts of both.
6. Peter said baptism XE "Baptism" is a figure, a symbol, and that it is not water that saves us, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21), but the popes say that baptism itself brings salvation and that it is not merely symbolic.
7. Peter refused to allow men to bow down to him (Acts 10:25-26), but the popes have accepted honor and bowings and kissings and have allowed themselves to be treated almost as gods.
8. There is no hint in the Bible that Peter had a throne, but the popes have at least two--one at St. Peter’s and one at the Lateran Palace.
9. Peter taught that salvation is strictly through the free righteousness of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:1), but the popes claim that their sacraments are also necessary for salvation.
10. Peter taught against hierarchicalism, warning the pastors against “being lords over God's heritage” (1 Peter 5:1-4), but the popes have set up a system of ecclesiastical lordship over the churches, and have added many offices that are never mentioned in the New Testament (e.g., cardinal, archdeacon).
11. Peter taught that the only priesthoods in the New Testament dispensation are the High priesthood of Jesus Christ and the general priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9), but the popes say that their “church” has a special priesthood that is ordained to distribute sacraments.
12. Peter taught that Jesus Christ is the rock upon which the church is founded (1 Peter 2:4-8), but the popes say that Peter was the rock.
13. Peter taught that men are born again through the Word of God (1 Peter 1:23), but the popes say that men are born again through baptism XE "Baptism" .
14. Peter taught that Christ has “once suffered for sins” (1 Peter 3:18), and “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24); but the popes say that Christ is sacrificed anew in each mass and that having Jesus Christ and his cross is not enough, that a believer also needs the Roman Catholic Church and its sacraments and priesthood.
15. Peter taught that the believer has a living hope, that he has an inheritance reserved in heaven, and that he is kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:2-5); but the popes say that a believer cannot know for sure that he has a home in heaven.
16. Peter taught that the believer is not to be a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a busybody in other men’s matters (1 Peter 4:15); but the popes have been all of these things.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
THE CHARACTER AND PHILOSOPHY OF ROCK & ROLL MUSIC
Updated October 20, 2008 (first published October 8, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
When I was converted in 1973 from a life of foolish rebellion, one of the first things the Lord dealt with me about was my music. I began listening to rock in 1959 and had lived and breathed it for many years. I started on 50s rock and country rock-a-billy and journeyed through 60s rock and part way through 70s rock before I was saved. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was in the 9th grade. The year I graduated from high school was “the summer of love.” When I was drafted into the Army two years later, the Woodstock movie was sweeping the land. During the year and a half I spent in Vietnam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. I was a clerk in a military police unit attached to MACV headquarters, the control center for the entire South Vietnam U.S. military operation. We lived at the R&R out-processing center, and the unit’s job was to keep drugs from leaving the country on soldiers bound for R&R and in personnel containers being shipped to the States. We had access to every conceivable luxury, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts, racket ball, gym, movie theater, photo processing labs, you name it. I even had almost full-time use of a jeep for trips to Saigon. (Yes, it was rough duty but someone had to do it!) One of the facilities I used extensively was the reel-to-reel recording studio. The Army had a massive library of music, and soldiers who lived at or visited MACV headquarters could record as much as they wanted. I spent countless hours there recording rock music. I also utilized the PX system to purchase a sophisticated stereo system. By the time I was discharged from the Army, I was all set to stock my first hippie pad in Hollywood, Florida, with wall-to-wall rock music. My hippie heaven didn't last long, though. My buddies and I were buying and selling drugs, and two of us were arrested for possession of illegal drugs and public drunkenness. Though I got off lightly because it was my first arrest, I began to live in constant fear of being caught again and going to jail for a long time. I started to drift around. On one trip, I hitchhiked all the way to northern California and back to central Florida. Returning from California, I met some young people from India who introduced me to reincarnation and the Self Realization Fellowship Society. I began to practice meditation and study eastern religion, and I excitedly made another trip to California to visit the headquarters of the Self Realization Fellowship Society in Los Angeles. On the way there I won roughly $70 in a slot machine in Las Vegas and I thought it was an answer to my prayers!
Everything I was doing and thinking was supported by rock music--drugs, eastern religion, rebellion against parents and government, licentious living, long hair, communism (I collected Mao's Red Book and other communist propaganda during my stay in Vietnam and was very sympathetic to that philosophy). Rock music never encouraged me to be an obedient, submissive, God-honoring person. It taught me, rather, that I was “born to be wild,” born to follow my natural impulses, born to live without rules.
After I was saved I understood that rock music is intimately associated with everything that is evil and rebellious and anti-christ, that rock music perfectly fits the biblical definition of the worldliness which the Christian is not to love: the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2:15-17).
The first book I wrote as a young Christian was Mom and Dad Sleep While the Children Rock in Satan's Cradle, a warning about the dangers of rock music (not currently in print). Thirty-two years later I am more convinced than ever that secular rock music is spiritually destructive and that “Christian rock” is a misnomer. Rock music is not a proper medium for singing the praises of a holy God.
I have given my own testimony about the evils of rock music. Now consider the following statements from a wide range of other people about the character and philosophy of this music. Most of these are NOT fundamentalist Christians. In fact, many of these statements are from rock stars, and they are not naive about the nature of rock as many Christians are and they do not have an agenda to whitewash rock as some Christians do.
The book Rock Facts, which is published by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, admits that rock is not just a type of music, IT IS A LIFESTYLE. “… rock and roll has truly become a universal language … rock and roll also refers to an attitude, a feeling, a style, a way of life…” (Rock Facts, 1996, p. 7).
“I’m free to do what I want any old time” (Rolling Stones).
“The main ingredients in rock are … sex and sass” (Debra Harry, Hit Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31).
“Rock is the total celebration of the physical” (Ted Nugent, rock star, Rolling Stone, Aug. 25, 1977, pp. 11-13).
“That’s what rock is all about--sex with a 100 megaton bomb, the beat!” (Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, interview, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock and roll’s corrupt degenerate lifestyle is fueled by the language of a certain kind of music” (Leonard Seidel, Face the Music, Springfield, VA: Grace Unlimited Productions, 1988).
“At the very least, rock is turning sex into something casual” (James Connor, Newsweek, May 6, 1985).
“Sex has been rock music’s number one message since the medium was born” (Why Knock Rock? P. 67).
“The whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (John Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61).
“The best rock & roll music encapsulates a certain high energy--an angriness--whether on record or onstage. That is, rock & roll is only rock & roll if it’s not safe. … Violence and energy--and that’s really what rock & roll’s all about” (Mick Jagger, as told to Mikal Gilmore, Night Beat, p. 87).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 19).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is all sex. One hundred percent sex” (Debbie Harry of the rock band Blondie, cited by Carl Belz, “Television Shows and Rock Music,” as it appeared in The Age of Communication, William Lutz, Goodyear Publishing Company, 1974, p. 398).
“The themes of rock 'n' roll include rebellion, homosexuality, satanism, the occult, drugs, murder, suicide, incest, vulgarity, sadomasochism, anti-patriotism and above all, free sex” (Fletcher Brothers, Rock Report, Lancaster: Starburst Publishing, 1987).
“... the whole idea of rock 'n' roll is to offend your parents” (Rock drummer King Coffey, The Truth about Rock, p. 30).
“Its admirers want to make rock appealing by making it respectable. The thing can’t be done. Rock is appealing because it's vulgar ... Rock is the quintessence of vulgarity. It’s crude, loud, and tasteless” (Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity, 1987, preface, p. 4).
“Rock concerts are the churches of today. Music puts them on a spiritual plane. All music is God” (Craig Chaquico, Jefferson Airplane guitarist, Why Knock Rock?, p. 96).
“[Our music is intended] to change one set of values to another … free minds … free dope … free bodies … free music” (Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, cited by Ben Fong-Torres, “Grace Slick with Paul Kantner,” The Rolling Stone Interviews, 1971, p. 447).
“At base and at its best, rock 'n' roll is a celebration of human sensuality” (Gail Pellert, Christian Rock, New York: Gannett, 1985, p. 23).
“… rock ‘n’ roll is more than just music--it is the energy center of a new culture and youth revolution” (advertisement for Rolling Stone magazine).
“There is no question in my mind about the hypnotic effect of these songs” (Dr. Granville Knight, cited by John Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel, Durham: Evangelical Press, 2nd ed. 1989, p. 20).
“Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis” (Andrew Salter, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20).
“Rock music in particular has been demonstrated to be both powerful and addictive, as well as capable of producing a subtle form of hypnosis in which the subject, though not completely under trance, is still in a highly suggestive state” (John Fuller, Are the Kids All Right?, New York: Times Books, 1981).
“Pop music is the mass medium for conditioning the way people think” (Graham Nash of Crosby Stills & Nash, Hit Parader Yearbook, No. 6, 1967).
“What is undeniable about rock is its hypnotic power. It has gripped millions of young people around the world and transformed their lives” (William Schafer, Rock Music, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972, p. 79).
“Atmospheres are going to come through music, because the music is a spiritual thing of its own ... you hypnotize people to where they go right back to their natural state which is pure positive the subconscious what we want to say ... People want release any kind of way nowadays. The idea is to release in the proper form. Then they'll feel like going into another world, a clearer world. The music flows from the air; that's why I connect with a spirit, and when they come down off this natural high, they see clearer, feel different things...” (Jimmy Hendrix, rock star, Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74).
“An incessant beat does erode a sense of responsibility in much the same way as alcohol does. ... You feel in the grip of a relentless stream of sound to which something very basic and primitive in the human nature responds” (David Winter, New Singer, New Song).
“Rock music involves a neurophysiological conditioning in connotation or felt meaning, linking aggression and sexuality. aggression linked with sexuality. ... Our basic claim is that the rock music itself induces a behavioral link between aggression and sexuality” (Drs. Daniel and Bernadette Skubik, The Neurophysiology of Rhythm).
“Rock'n roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them” (Little Richard, The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 29, 1978, p. 14A).
“Rock 'n' roll is 99% sex” (John Oates of the rock duo Hall & Oates, Circus, Jan. 31, 1976).
“Listen, rock 'n roll AIN'T CHURCH. It's nasty business. You gotta be nasty too. If you're goody, goody, you can't sing or play it...” (Lita Ford of heavy metal group The Runaways, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1988).
“Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention, Life, June 28, 1968).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is pagan and primitive, and very jungle, and that’s how it should be! The moment it stops being those things, it’s dead … the true meaning of rock … is sex, subversion and style” (Malcolm McLaren, punk rock manager, Rock, August 1983, p. 60).
“In a sense all rock is revolutionary. By its very beat and sound it has always implicitly rejected restraints and has celebrated freedom and sexuality” (Time magazine, Jan. 3, 1969).
“Rock 'n' roll is a beast. Well-intentioned people thought you could pick it up and cuddle it. They forgot it had claws of the bands--The Slits, The Damned, Bad Manners, The Vibrators, The Stranglers and Meat Loaf. ... I know, because I was one of them. Behind every sweet doowop and bebop is an unfettered sexuality and sympathy for the devil: a violently anarchic--in the face of all harmony, peace and progress. People could see that when it first happened and it hasn't changed. Anybody with a penn'orthy of grey matter could see it was trouble” (Ray Gosling, BBC Radio 4 program “Crooning Buffoons,” The Listener, Feb. 11, 1982).
“Most of it [rock music] is used as a vehicle for anti-Christian propaganda” (Graham Cray, appendix to J. & M. Prince, Time to Listen, Time to Talk, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 86).
“Rock music has got the same message as before. It is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic and anti-morality. But now I understand what you have to do. You have to put the message across with a little honey on it” (John Lennon, spoken not long before his death in 1980, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 84).
“Heavy rock is body music designed to bypass your brain and with an unrelenting brutality induce a frenzied state amongst the audience” (Dave Roberts, Buzz columnist, Christian rock magazine in Britain, April 1982).
“Rock is the perfect primal method of releasing our violent instincts” (Ted Nugent, rock musician, Circus, May 13, 1976).
“Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message. ... I’ve been stoned on the music many times” (Timothy Leary, New Age guru and promoter of LSD, Politics of Ecstasy).
“Rock 'n' roll, if not actually inventing the teenager, split the pop followers into the under twenties and the rest” (Bob Dawbarn, Melody Maker, Feb. 10, 1968).
“Rock music has widened the inevitable and normal gap between generations, turned it from something healthy--and absolutely necessary to forward movement--into something negative, destructive, nihilistic” (George Lees, music critic, High Fidelity, February 1970).
“The [rock] medium is so anti-Christian in its ethos--libertarian, anti-authoritarian, equating infatuation and sexual attraction with love, and on the drug-culture fringe--that when Christians assume that ethos to communicate the message of self-denial, cross-bearing and following Christ then it utterly mangles the message” (Colin Chapman, “Modern Music and Evangelism,” Background to the Task, Evangelical Alliance Commission on Evangelism, 1968).
“... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later” (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 73).
“Although the music has changed over the years, the rebellious urges that created it remain the same. ... I was reminded once more of the basic appeal of rock and roll--its irreverent, nose-thumbing quality” (Ellen Willis, TV Guide, January 1979, p. 15).
“We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and the rock experience is essentially erotic” (Simon Frith, Sound Effects, New York: Pantheon Books, 1981, p. 164).
“There is a great deal of powerful, albeit subliminal, sexual stimulation implicit in both the rhythm and [the] lyrics of rock music” (Dr. David Elkind, chairman of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University in Massachusetts, The Hurried Child, Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1981, p. 89).
“[The Rolling Stones] are raw, sloppy, savage, oppressively intense, base, bolsh, scurvy, mean, mesmerizing, cold, perverse, raunchy, decadent, and self-indulgent revolutionaries. ... Their music is rugged, sinewy, insinuating ... IT REFLECTS THEIR WAY OF LIVING” (Michael Ross, Rock Beyond Woodstock, p. 13).
“The [hippie] counterculture is the world’s first amplified music” (Timothy Tyler, “Out of Tune and Lost in the Counterculture,” Time, Feb. 22, 1971, pp. 15-16).
“Rock is visceral. It does disturbing things to your body. In spite of yourself, you find your body tingling, moving with the music. ... To get into rock, you have to give in to it, let it inside, flow with it, to the point where it consumes you, and all you can feel or hear or think about is the music. ... Such open sensuality” (Tom McSloy, rock music performer, “Music to Jangle Your Insides,” National Review, June 30, 1970, p. 681).
“If any music has been guilty by association, it is rock music. It would be impossible to make a complete list, but here are a few of the 'associates' of rock: drug addicts, revolutionaries, rioters, Satan worshippers, drop-outs, draft- dodgers, homosexuals and other sex deviates, rebels, juvenile criminals, Black Panthers and White Panthers, motorcycle gangs, blasphemers, suicides, heathenism, voodooism, phallixism, Communism in the United States (Communist Russian outlawed rock music around 1960), paganism, lesbianism, immorality, demonology, promiscuity, free love, free sex, disobedience (civil and uncivil), sodomy, venereal disease, discotheques, brothels, orgies of all kinds, night clubs, dives, strip joints, filthy musicals such as 'Hair' and 'Uncle Meat'; and on and on the list could go almost indefinitely” (Frank Garlock, The Big Beat, pp. 12-13).
“Rock music has always held seeds of the forbidden. … Rock and Roll has long been an adversary to many of the basic tenets of Christianity” (Michael Moynihan, Lord’s of Chaos, p. x).
“When you’re in a certain frame of mind, particularly sexually orientated, there’s nothing better than Rock and Roll because that’s where most of the performers are at” (Aerosmith’s manager David Krebbs, Circus, Oct. 17, 1978, p. 34).
“Rock music is sex and you have to hit them [teenagers] in the face with it” (Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, Time, April 28, 1967, p. 54).
“Unlike X-rated movies and books, [rock & roll] is broadcast, performed in concerts and available on records to any listener, regardless of age” (U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 31, 1977).
“‘Rockandroll,’ itself a bluesmusic term for sex, suggested rebellion and abandon as much as it did a new style of music when it first jarred adult sensibilities in the 1950s. ‘When you’re growing up,’ says Jerry Kramer, a prominent director of music videos, ‘you like rockandroll for one reason: Because your parents don’t’” (“What entertainers are doing to your kids,” U.S. News & World Report, October 28, 1985, page 47).
“The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation--a sleezy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 19).
“A new music emerged, again completely nonintellectual, with a thumping rhythm and shouting voices, each line and each beat full of the angry insult to all western values … their protest is in their music itself as well as in the words, for anyone who thinks that this is all cheap and no more than entertainment has never used his ears” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, pp. 188, 189).
“Rock music is evil because it is to music what Dada and surrealism are to art--atheistic, chaotic, nihilistic” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 42).
“The great strength of rock ‘n’ roll lies in its beat … it is a music which is basically sexual, un-Puritan … and a threat to established patterns and values” (Irwin Silber, Marxist, Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
“Rock radicalized teenagers, because it estranges them from the traditional virtues which they no longer see as relevant” (Martin Perlich, The Cleveland Press, July 25, 1969, p. 1N).
“[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Steven Tyler of the group Aerosmith, Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
“Rock ’n’ roll is synonymous with sex and you can’t take that away from it. It just doesn’t work” (Steven Tyler, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is sex. Real rock ‘n’ roll isn’t based on cerebral thoughts. It’s based on one’s lower nature” (Paul Stanley, cited by John Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 44).
“Rock ‘n’ roll marked the beginning of the revolution. … We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason, and that’s a combination hard to beat” (Jerry Rubin, Do It!, 1970, pp. 19, 249).
“The preachers and moral guardians who in rock’s infancy warned us of the evils of the music weren’t that far off base. Rock--at least as practiced by The Who and a few others--is defiant, it is antisocial, it is revolutionary … Anarchy, that’s what The Who is all about” (Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Times, Aug. 24, 1979, p. 6C).
“There is actually very little melody, little sense in the lyrics, only rhythm [in rock music]. The fact that music can both excite and incite has been known from time immemorial. … Now in our popular music, at least, we seem to be reverting to savagery … and youngsters who listen constantly to this sort of sound are thrust into turmoil. They are no longer relaxed, normal kids” (Dimitri Tiomkin, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Aug. 8, 1965; Dr. Tiomkin is a famous composer and conductor).
“Everyone takes it for granted that rock and roll is synonymous with sex” (Chris Stein, rock manager, People, May 21, 1979).
“Pop music revolves around sexuality. I believe that if there is anarchy, let’s make it sexual anarchy rather than political” (Adam Ant, From Rock to Rock, p. 93).
“Living on the brink of disaster at all times is what Rock ‘n Roll is all about” (Kevin Cronin, REO Speedwagon, Newsweek, Dec. 20, 1976).
“Gimmicks are only part of the best way to sell rock and roll. Sex and style are crucial too. That’s what kid’s want. So I’m determined to be sexy and stylish. Sex is really an exciting part of rock and roll. When I dance onstage, I dance to turn people on. When I’m dancing, I turn myself on as well. Dancing is a sexual thing to do, you know” (Adam Ant, Rock Fever, May 1984, p. 13).
“Why do young people go to these rock shows? Because it’s their idol; it’s their god, in other words. They love rock and roll” (Chick Huntsberry, former bouncer, The Truth about Rock, p. 60).
“What made rockabilly [Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, etc.] such a drastically new music was its spirit, a thing that bordered on mania. Elvis’s ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ was not merely a party song, but an invitation to a holocaust. … Rockabilly was the face of Dionysus, full of febrile sexuality and senselessness; it flushed the skin of new housewives and made pink teenage boys reinvent themselves as flaming creatures” (Nick Tosches, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 58).
“After ten years of bland, brilliant music, we were back to what Rock ‘n’ Roll should be--nasty, crude, rebellious people’s music” (Tom Robinson, punk rocker, Dictionary of American Pop/Rock, p. 294).
“Violence and rebellion have been shaking their fists at the world through rock music since its inception. Though rebellion, in one form or another, is present in the lives of many of today’s youth, constant meditation on anger and alienation, through listening repeatedly to rock music, magnifies and distorts those feelings” (Why Knock Rock? P. 65).
“Rock and roll is the darkness that enshrouds secret desires unfulfilled, and the appetite that shoves you forward to disrobe them” (Timothy White, Rock Lives, p. xvi).
“The main purpose of rock and roll is celebration of the self” (Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates, interview with Timothy White, 1987, Rock Lives, p. 594).
“If you think rockabilly is just music, you’re wrong. Rockabilly’s always been an attitude” (Billy Poore, RockABilly: A Forty-Year Journey, p. 113).
“For white Memphis, the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street had always come wrapped in the pulsing rhythms of the blues. … Elvis’s [rock & roll] offered those pleasures long familiar to Memphians to a new audience” (Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 154).
“Elvis Presley was one of the few people in our lifetime who changed things. You hear Mantovani in every elevator, but so what? Elvis changed our hairstyles, dress styles, our attitudes toward sex, all the musical taste” (David Brinkley, NBC News, cited by Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 216).
“But now, ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’ you know what that means. I had my mind on this girl in the bedroom. I’m not going to lie to you. Listen, man, I wrote them kind of songs. I was a dirty cat” (Roy Brown, composer of “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” 1948, cited by Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 15).
“Rock and roll aims for liberation and transcendence, eroticizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the erotic, because that is its ecumenical birthright” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 72).
“Rock and roll challenged the dominant norms and values with a genuinely Dionysian fervor. Compared to an ancient Dionysian revel--trances, seizures, devotees tearing sacrificial animals to pieces with their bare hands and eating the meat raw--a rock and roll performance is almost tame. … We must never forget our glorious Dionysian heritage” (Rock & Roll an Unruly History, pp. 150,155).
“… fifties rock was revolutionary. It urged people to do whatever they wanted to do, even if it meant breaking the rules. … From Buddy the burgeoning youth culture received rock’s message of freedom, which presaged the dawn of a decade of seismic change and liberation. … Buddy Holly left the United States for the first time in 1958, carrying rock ‘n’ roll--the music as well as its highly subversive message of freedom--to the world at large. … laying the groundwork for the social and political upheavals rock ‘n’ roll was instrumental in fomenting in the following decade” (Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly, pp. 4,6,131).
“Rock and roll is fun, it’s full of energy, it’s full of laughter. It’s naughty” (Tina Turner, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Mystery and mischief are the two most important ingredients in rock and roll” (Bono, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Rock and roll is simply an attitude” (Johnny Thunders, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 14).
“Rock and roll was something that’s hardcore, rough and wild and sweaty and wet and just loose” (Patti Labelle, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 17).
The Bill Haley song “Rock the Joint” encouraged young people to throw off all restraints. “It was a song about having such a good time that nothing mattered: ‘We’re gonna tear down the mailbox, rip up the floor/ Smash out the windows and knock out the door.”
Janet Jackson’s song “Control” presents the rock & roll philosophy: “This is a story about control. My control. Control of what, I say? Control of what I do, and this time I’m gonna do it my way. … got my own mind. I want to make my own decision; when it has to do with my life, I want to be the one in control…” (Janet Jackson, “Control”).
Gene Simmons of Kiss said: “What I write is pretty much a belief in a certain lifestyle which is a free soul, a free person, doing basically what he wants to do without hurting anybody else” (WCCO-TV, Five P.M. Report, Feb. 18, 1983).
“Sex, violence, rebellion—it’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll” (John Mellencamp, Larson’s Book of Rock, p. 170).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is like a drug. When you’re singing and playing rock ‘n’ roll, you’re on the leading edge of yourself. You’re tryin’ to vibrate, tryin’ to make something happen. It’s like there’s somethin’ alive and exposed” (Neil Young, cited by Mickey Hart, Spirit into Sound).
“Rock & roll is about striking out independently, not caring about your parents’ disapproval” (Pop Machine, quoted in “Metallica? OK, but we still don’t like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 2008).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE SAVED THROUGH CHRIST WITHOUT BELIEVING IN CHRIST?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE SAVED THROUGH CHRIST WITHOUT BELIEVING IN CHRIST?
October 16, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
A popular doctrine among evangelicals, emergents, and contemplatives today is the idea that a sinner can be saved through Christ without actually believing in him.
In January 2007 Tony Campolo told the Edmonton Journal (Alberta, Canada) that he is not sure who will go to heaven. Asked by the paper, “Do you believe non-Christians can go to heaven?” Campolo replied:
“That’s a good question to ask because the way we stand is we contend that trusting in Jesus is the way to heaven. However, we do not know who Jesus will bring into the kingdom and who He will not. We are very, very careful about pronouncing judgment on anybody. We leave judgment in the hands of God and we are saying Jesus is the way. We preach Jesus, but we have no way of knowing to whom the grace of God is extended” (“Canada’s Different Evangelicals,” Edmonton Journal, Jan. 27, 2007).
This is contradictory emerging church gobbly-gook! If we believe that “trusting Jesus is the way to heaven,” then we most definitely DO know who Jesus will bring into the kingdom. He will bring those that trust Him and He will not bring those that do not trust Him. As for pronouncing judgment on people, it is not our judgment; it is God’s.
Brian McLaren says, “I don’t think it’s our business to prognosticate the eternal destinies of anyone else” (A New Kind of Christian, p. 92) and offers a quote from a C.S. Lewis novel as his authority. In this novel Lewis’s character was a soldier who served a false god named Tash all his life, but he was accepted nonetheless by Aslan, who represents Christ.
“Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou has done to Tash, I account as service done to me. ... Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.”
According to C.S. Lewis, who is deeply loved by all branches of the emerging church, an individual might be saved even if he follows a false religion in this life and makes no personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
Karen Ward XE "Ward, Karen" says:
“I affirm no other Savior than Jesus Christ, yet at the same time, I feel no need to know with certainty the final destination of those of other faiths who either have no knowledge of Christ or who do not accept the Christian claims of the atonement” (Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, p. 46).
This is typical emerging church gibberish. Ward thinks she can hold these contradictions in perfect harmony, but it is impossible. If Jesus Christ is the only Saviour, then we CAN know with certainty the final destination of those who do not receive Him, and that destination is Hell! This is not our judgment; it is Almighty God’s as revealed plainly to us in Scripture!
Leonard Sweet XE "Sweet, Leonard" says:
“One can be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ without denying the flickers of the sacred in followers of Yahweh, or Kali, or Krishna” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 130).
What does this mean? Have those “flickers of the sacred” put their adherents into saving relationship with Almighty God and take them to heaven?
Henri Nouwen XE "Nouwen, Henri" , whose writings are constantly referenced by the emerging church and the contemplative movement, said:
“Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, ALL HUMAN BEINGS CAN WALK THROUGH THAT DOOR, WHETHER THEY KNOW ABOUT JESUS OR NOT. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God” (Sabbatical Journey, New York: Crossroad, 1998, p. 51).
Dallas Willard also holds this heresy. In an interview he was presented with the following question:
“I still struggle with how I should view those who have other beliefs. I’m not sure I am ready to condemn them as wrong. I know some very good Buddhists. What is their destiny?”
To this he replied XE "Universalism" :
“I am not going to stand in the way of anyone whom God wants to save. I am not going to say he can’t save them. I am happy for God to save anyone he wants in any way he can. IT IS POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT KNOW JESUS TO BE SAVED. But anyone who is going to be saved is going to be saved by Jesus” (“Apologetics in Action,” Cutting Edge magazine, winter 2001, vol. 5 no. 1, Vineyard USA, http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=14).
REFUTATION OF THIS HERESY
The idea that someone might be saved who doesn’t know Jesus might sound wise and compassionate, but it is plainly refuted by Scripture and is therefore a fool’s dream.
Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The new birth is a very real spiritual event, and it happens only when a sinner consciously puts his faith in Christ. In the same passage Jesus explained how to be born again. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He plainly stated, “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).
Therefore, if a person does not consciously believe in Jesus Christ he is condemned. Jesus concluded that sermon by saying, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Words could not be clearer.
Jesus said further:
“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:9).
A man can enter in through Christ and find acceptance with God, but any other door leads to destruction. And to say that an individual could enter into salvation through Christ and not know it is as ridiculous as it is unscriptural.
John said:
“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:10-12).
The person that “hath the Son” is the person who believes on him, and the person that “hath not the son” is the one that does not believe. There is no such thing as “unconscious saving faith.”
There is simply no other way of salvation than to put one’s faith in Jesus Christ and to receive Him in such a manner that one is born anew.
Beware of those who refuse to accept the plain teaching of God’s Word. They are heretics, regardless of how cleverly they cloak their unbelief.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY: DANCING WITH DEMONS
CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY: DANCING WITH DEMONS
October 15, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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The Bible repeatedly warns about the danger of spiritual delusion and exhorts believers to be very careful. Consider the following:
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15).
“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matthew 24:4-5).
“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24).
“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him” (2 Corinthians 11:3-4).
“For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).
“That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Ephesians 4:14).
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6).
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1).
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
To be sober means to be in control of one’s mind, to be spiritually and mentally alert. It means to be on guard against danger. It is the opposite of emptying one’s mind and letting’s one’s imagination run wild and using a mantra to keep one’s thoughts at bay.
The Bible warns that demons transform themselves into angels of light (2 Cor. 11:13-15). It warns of false christs and false spirits (Mat. 24:4-5; 2 Cor. 11:3-4).
When emergents see “Jesus” in their contemplations, how can they be certain that it is the Jesus of the Bible and not a false christ or a demonic delusion? The only way to be certain is by making the Bible the central authority and carefully testing everything by it, but mysticism does not provide such certainty.
In Scripture, error is often referred to in terms of cunning deception. We are warned that wolves hide in sheep’s clothing (Mat. 7:15). See Matthew 24:11, 24; 2 Corinthians 4:2; 11:13; Ephesians 4:14; Colossians 2:4, 8; 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10; 2 Timothy 3:13.
In light of these warnings, we see the danger and folly of the contemplative practices.
Some of them, such as Centering Prayer, attempt to shut down the mind. The very title of the popular 14th century meditative book The Cloud of Unknowing refers to the practice of blotting out conscious thoughts in an attempt to enter into the depths of mindless meditation and transcendental communion with God.
“I urge you to dismiss every clever or subtle thought no matter how holy or valuable. Cover it with a thick cloud of forgetting because in this life only love can touch God as He is in Himself, never knowledge” (The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 8).
The Cloud of Unknowing instructs the contemplative practitioner to choose a one-syllable word and to repeat it as a mantra to “beat down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting” (chapter 7, p. 56).
The practitioner is instructed NOT to focus his attention on the meaning of the word or to use “logic to examine or explain this word ... nor allow yourself to ponder its ramifications” (chapter 36, p. 94).
It also says, “Have no fear of the evil one, for he will not dare come near you” (chapter 34, p. 92).
Centering Prayer involves “moving beyond thinking into a place of utter stillness” (The Sacred Way, p. 71).
Note the following excerpts from Finding Grace at the Center by Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, which emphasize the unthinking aspect of centering prayer:
“It is best when this word is wholly interior without a definite thought or actual sound” (p. 39).
“We are quite passive. We let it happen” (p. 39).
“As it goes beyond thought, beyond image, there is nothing left by which to judge it” (p. 43).
“By turning off the ordinary flow of thoughts ... one’s world begins to change” (p. 48).
“Go on with this nothing, moved only by your love for God” (p. 49).
“The important thing is not to pay any attention to them [thoughts]. They are like the noise in the street...” (p. 51).
“Any thought will bring you out [of the deep waters of silence]” (p. 52).
“[Centering prayer] leads you to a silence beyond thought and words...” (p. 53).
“Firmly reject all clear ideas, however pious or delightful” (p. 54).
“As soon as you start to reflect, the experience is over” (p. 56).
In light of the Bible’s warnings about the great potential for spiritual deception and the necessity of constant sobermindedness, I cannot imagine a more dangerous spiritual practice than centering prayer.
When asked if it is possible for meditation to be “inviting the devil in,” James Finley replies:
“Sometimes I will tell people who express that--well why not try it? Why not try to just quietly and sincerely and silently open your heart to God and see for yourself if you sense something dangerous or bad or dark. And you might discover that the opposite’s the case” (“Experiencing God through Meditation: Interview with James Finley,” Beliefnet.com).
This counsel is unbelievably dangerous and unscriptural. The Bible warns that the devil takes on the persona of an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-16). The only way to discern the difference between true and false spirits is to be born again and walking in the Spirit and to carefully test them by the Bible. Catholic mystics such as Finley, Thomas Merton, and William Johnston don’t do that and, in fact, don’t know how to do that.
Some of the contemplatives do give warnings about the potential for spiritual delusion, but their warnings are ineffectual.
Richard Foster warns that contemplative prayer is “entering deeply into the spiritual realm,” and he says that not everyone is ready and equipped to enter into the “all embracing silence” of contemplative prayer (p. 156). He admits that there is the possibility of meeting dark powers, but his suggested solution to this danger is exceedingly shallow and unscriptural. He recommends that practitioners ask “God to surround us with the light of His protection” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 23). He suggests the following prayer: “All dark and evil spirits must now leave” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 1992, p. 157).
It is not enough to pray that God will protect us from spiritual danger; we must obey His Word. If we pursue practices that are contrary to Scripture, all the prayer mantras in the world will not keep us from the evil that we will experience there! To pray for protection and then walk in disobedience is not faith but presumption. In such a situation, a prayer of protection is no more effective than holding a crucifix or fingering prayer beads.
Roger Oakland wisely observes:
“I wonder if all these Christians who now practice contemplative prayer are following Foster’s advice. Whether they are or not, they have put themselves in spiritual harm’s way. Nowhere in Scripture are we required to pray a prayer of protection before we pray. The fact that Foster recognizes contemplative prayer is dangerous and opens the door to the fallen spirit world is very revealing. What is this--praying to the God of the Bible but instead reaching demons? Maybe contemplative prayer should be renamed contemplative terror. ... Foster admits that contemplative prayer is dangerous and will possibly take the participant into demonic realms, but he gives a disclaimer saying not everyone is ready for it. My question is, who is ready, and how will they know they are ready? What about all the young people in the emerging church movement? Are they ready? Or are they going into demonic altered states of consciousness completely unaware?” (Faith Undone, pp. 99, 100).
The Roman Catholic contemplative monk John Michael Talbot gives an even stronger warning about the potential danger of contemplative prayer. He says:
“IT CAN BE MOST DESTRUCTIVE IF USED UNWISELY. I CAN ALMOST PROMISE THAT THOSE WHO UNDERTAKE THIS STUDY ALONE WITHOUT PROPER GUIDANCE, AND GROUNDING IN CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY, WILL FIND THEMSELVES QUESTIONING THEIR OWN FAITH TO THE POINT OF LOSING IT. SOME MAY FIND THEMSELVES SPIRITUALLY LOST. IT HAS HAPPENED TO MANY. For this reason, we do not take the newer members of The Brothers and Sisters of Charity through this material in any depth as part of their formation, but stick squarely to overt Catholic spirituality and prayer teachings. I would not recommend too much integration of these things without proper guidance for those newer to the Catholic or Christian faith” (Talbot, “Many Religions, One God,” Oct. 22, 1999, http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/Reflections/index.asp?id=135).
Talbot thus recognizes the extreme danger of contemplative practices, yet he thinks he is capable of using them without being harmed by them. He should listen to the words of Scripture: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
I AM CONVINCED THAT THOSE WHO PARTICIPATE IN SUCH THINGS OPEN THEMSELVES UP TO DEMONIC INFLUENCE.
David Hunt sounds an important warning about visualizing prayer. He gives the example of a man who visualized Jesus and was surprised when “Jesus” began to interact with him.
“I began to visualize myself as a boy of eight. ‘Now see if you can imagine Jesus appearing,’ [the seminar leader] instructed. ‘Let Him walk toward you.’ Much to my amazement Jesus moved slowly toward me out of that dark playground. He began to extend His hands toward me in a loving, accepting manner. I NO LONGER WAS CREATING THE SCENE. The figure of Christ reached over and lifted the bundle from my back. And He did so with such forcefulness that I literally sprang from the pew” (Robert L. Wise, “Healing of the Memories: A Prayer Therapy for You,” Christian Life, July 1984, pp. 63-64, quoted from Hunt, The Occult Invasion).
Hunt observes:
“That this was more than imagination is clear. The one who originally visualized the image of ‘Jesus’ was surprised when it suddenly took on a character of its own and he realized that he was no longer creating the image. This ‘Jesus’ had its own life and personality. There can be no doubt that real contact had been made with the spirit world. We may be equally certain that this being was not the real Jesus Christ. No one can call Him from the right hand of the Father in heaven to put in a personal appearance. The entity could only have been a demonic spirit masquerading as ‘Jesus’” (The Occult Invasion, “Imagination and Visualization”).
Morton Kelsey taught the use of visualization and exhorted his readers not to fear when the visualizations took on a life of their own! He quoted from Carl Jung, who communicated with a spirit guide throughout his life:
“In the same way, when you concentrate on a mental picture, IT BEGINS TO STIR, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely your own invention” (Jung, Analytical Psychology, quoted in Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence, p. 226).
Kelsey then comments:
“It is usually not too difficult for most people to start the process by concentrating on something graphic. The hard part comes in realizing THAT SOMETHING COULD MOVE UNEXPECTEDLY INSIDE US WITHOUT OUR CONSCIOUS DIRECTION. That is why it is so vital in developing imagination, meditation, or contemplation TO REALIZE THAT OUR EGO IS NOT THE ONLY FORCE OPERATING WITHIN US” (The Other Side of Silence, p. 227).
Since Kelsey didn’t believe the Bible, viewing it largely as myth, he didn’t understand that when images “stir” and “move unexpectedly” and take on a life of their own it is became one has entered the realm of the demonic.
Consider the practice of guided visualization. A leader instructs the practitioners to get comfortable and then to do something like the following:
“Imagine yourself walking down a road. It’s the path of your life. Imagine what the path looks like. Is it curvy? Or straight? Hilly? Flat? Is it wide or narrow, surrounded by trees or by fields? You look down. Is the path rocky? Sandy? Is it dirt? Maybe it’s paved. What does it feel like under your feet? And up ahead, what’s in your path? Does it look clear or are there hurdles in your way? Something is in your hands. You’ve been carrying it a long time--it’s something you brought with you, in your spirit, up to camp. Look at it. What does it look like? What does it feel like in your hands? Is it hot? Cold? Warm? Is it smooth? Prickly? Sharp? Rough? Is it heavy or light?
“Now look up ahead. A figure is moving toward you. You can’t quite make out who it is, but he seems to know you and his pace quickens as he recognizes you. Now you can see--it’s Jesus! He’s coming closer. What’s the expression on his face as he walks toward you? How do you feel? He says a word of greeting to you. What does he say? How do you feel? Do you say anything back?
“Now Jesus is standing in front of you. What does he say? Now he’s holding his hands out--he wants you to put what’s in your hands into his hands. How does it feel as the object leaves your hands? Do you say anything to Jesus?
“Now you and Jesus start to walk together--he’s holding the object of yours. As the two of you walk along, what do you talk about? Imagine the conversation” (Tony Jones, The Sacred Way, pp. 83, 84).
This is either pure fantasy and therefore of no value, or it moves into the realm of the occult. Tony Jones describes how that Jesus allegedly appeared to him during one such episode and spoke to him face to face (The Sacred Way, p. 79).
Al Dager of Media Spotlight gives a discerning warning about the extreme danger of contemplative practices:
“Unfortunately, all these exercises serve to do is open the person up to demonic influences that assuage his or her conscience with a feeling of euphoria and even ‘love’ emanating from the presence that has invaded their consciousness. This euphoria is then believed to validate that the person is on the right spiritual path. It may result in visions, out-of body experiences, stigmata, levitation, even healings and other apparent miracles.”
The guided prayer techniques are exactly the same as the techniques I was taught by disciples of the Hindu guru Paramahansa Yogananda before I was converted. We were supposed to use these techniques to view events in our past lives. The yogic meditation led me into dark realms farther and farther from the holy God of the Bible, the God who is light and in whom “is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). I repented of it completely after I came to Christ. I wrote to the Self-Realization Fellowship Society, testified to them of my Christian conversion, and asked them to drop my name from their rolls.
Emergent leader Nanette Sawyer unwittingly gives a frightful testimony along this line. She said that she is a Christian (of the liberal brand) because she was taught meditation techniques by a Hindu. She said that while “sitting in meditation, in a technique similar to what Christians call Centering Prayer, I encountered love that is unconditional, yet it called me to responsible action in my life” (An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, p. 44). This occurred AFTER she had rejected biblical Christianity and the gospel that Jesus died for our sins (p. 43). She said that she found love and Jesus through Hindu meditation, but it was not the Jesus of the Bible nor was it the love of God as described in the Bible. It was another gospel, another Jesus, and another spirit (2 Cor. 11:4). John warned, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1), and the only sure way to try the spirits is to test them by the Bible. As for true love, John defined that, too. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3).
THE FACT THAT ITS PRACTITIONERS CALL CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY “DARKNESS” IS A LOUD WARNING TO THOSE WHO HAVE EARS TO HEAR.
Brennan Manning calls centering prayer a “GREAT DARKNESS” (The Signature of Jesus, p. 145) and an entire chapter of his book is devoted to “Celebrate the Darkness.” He claims that the darkness of centering prayer is caused by the human ego being broken and spiritual healing being achieved, but since the practice is not supported by Scripture that is presumption and not faith.
The sixth century Syrian monk called Dionysius the Areopagite said that asceticism and mystical practices can penetrate the mystery of God’s “DARK NO-THINGNESS.” This man has had a major influence on Catholic mysticism.
The Cloud of Unknowing uses the terms “BLIND” and “DARKNESS” and “NOTHING” repeatedly.
Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello calls centering prayer “DARK CONTEMPLATION” and descending “into THE DARKNESS” (Sadhana: A Way to God, pp. 32, 33). He says those who practice centering prayer “expose themselves, in BLIND FAITH, to THE EMPTINESS, the DARKNESS, the idleness, THE NOTHINGNESS” (p. 31).
Catholic monk William Johnston says that meditation is the art of passing from one layer to the next in an inner or downward journey to the core of the personality where dwells the great mystery called God ... WHO DWELLS IN THICK DARKNESS” (The Inner Eye of Love: Mysticism and Religion, 1981, p. 127).
God did hide Himself in thick darkness in the Old Testament era because of man’s sin and the fact that Christ’s atonement had not yet been made (Exodus 20:21), but in reality God is light and not darkness. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It is sin that separates the sinner from God and His glorious light. The people in Moses’ day had to stand away from Mt. Sinai when God gave the Law and God wrapped Himself in darkness, because the Law of Moses can only reveal sin and cannot justify the sinner (Romans 3:19-20). The Old Testament temple signified this separation. God dwelt in the holy of holies, and no man could enter therein except the high priest and that only one time a year, on the Day of Atonement. There was a thick veil that barred the way into the holy of holies.
But when Jesus Christ came and died on the cross and shed His blood to make the perfect atonement for man’s sin, the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, signifying that man now has free entrance into God’s very presence if he comes through faith in Christ (Mat. 27:50-51).
If a contemplative encounters darkness in his mystical journey, that darkness is not God; it is sin and the devil. The darkness of this world is the devil’s domain, but God has turned the believer “from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). He has “delivered us from the power of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and called us “out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Now we are “children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:5).
Pierre Teilhard described his practice of meditation as “going down into my innermost self, to THE DEEP ABYSS” (The Divine Milieu, p. 76). He said: “At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me.” At the end of the journey he found “a bottomless abyss at my feet.”
This is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear. Though the mystic believes that he is touching light and truth through contemplative practices, in reality he is fellowshipping with darkness and lies and demons. Who were these “persons” who were distinct from Teilhard himself and who did not obey him? From a biblical perspective, we have to conclude that the man was communicating with demons. This is why he taught such demonic doctrines as evolution and a “cosmic” christ that is something different than the person of Jesus.
John Michael Talbot, the popular Roman Catholic CCM musician and contemplative promoter, recommends the use of eastern religious practices such as yoga but, as we have seen, he admits that such experiences “can be most destructive if used unwisely.” He even says: “SOME MAY FIND THEMSELVES SPIRITUALLY LOST. IT HAS HAPPENED TO MANY” (Talbot, “Many Religions, One God,” Oct. 22, 1999, http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/Reflections/index.asp?id=135).
Anything with that type of power for evil and spiritual destruction should be avoided like the plague!
Philip St. Romain, the Catholic lay minister who wrote Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (1990), has experienced many strange things while practicing centering prayer. After “centering down” into silence, gold lights would appear and swirl in his mind, forming themselves into captivating patterns. He felt prickly sensations that would continue for days. “Wise sayings” popped into his mind as if he were “receiving messages from another.” After studying eastern religions he came to the conclusion that he was dealing with kundalini energy, and we have no doubt that he was, because mindless centering prayer brings one into the same dark realm as Hinduism’s yoga. The “inner adviser” that one encounters through centering prayer is demonic.
Even the heathen practitioners of kundalini warn about its dangers. The Ayurveda Encyclopedia says, “Those who awaken their kundalini without a guru can lose their direction in life ... they can become confused or mentally imbalanced ... more harm than good can arise” (p. 336). The book Aghora II: Kundalini warns many times that “indiscriminate awakening of the Kundalini is very dangerous” (p. 61). It says, “Once aroused and unboxed Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the genie will not fit back into the bottle. ‘After the awakening the devotee lives always at the mercy of Kundalini’” (p. 20). In fact, the book says that “some die of shock when Kundalini is awakened, and others become severely ill” (p. 61).
St. Romain is communing with demons and he got there, not through Hindu yoga, but through Catholic contemplative mysticism, the same kind of mysticism promoted by the Quaker Richard Foster and the Southern Baptist Rick Warren.
St. Romain has come to depend on the voice that he hears in contemplative prayer.
“I cannot make any decisions for myself without the approbation of THE INNER ADVISER, whose voice speaks so clearly in times of need” (Kundalini Energy, p. 39).
The Ayurveda Encyclopedia explains that one can encounter internal voices through yogic mediation, and the practitioner is instructed to listen to the voices and follow their counsel.
“Just as with all spiritual experiences that are out of the norm of supposed societal acceptance, THE HEARING OF INNER SOUNDS OR VOICES (nada) has generally been associated with mental illness. Spiritual counseling reassures a person that their experiences and feelings are spiritual--not abnormal. Understanding nada helps persons feel comfortable when hearing any inner sounds. ... If a sound is heard, listen to it. If many sounds exist, listen to those in the right ear. The first sound heard is to be followed. Then, the next sound heard is also to be followed” (p. 343).
I have never read a more effective formula for demon possession and spiritual delusion, and “contemplative” practices such as centering prayer and visualization and guided imagery are no different in character than Hindu yoga. In fact, many contemplative practitioners admit this.
John Michael Talbot says:
“For myself, after the moving meditations of Hinduism and Taoism, and the breath, bone-marrow, and organ-cleansing of Taoism, I move into a Buddhist seated meditation, including the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. I do all of this from my own Christian perspective...” (Come to the Quiet, p. 237).
Meditation practitioner W.E. Butler, in Lords of Light, says that mystical contemplation “brings with it a curious kind of knowing that there is somebody else there with you; you are not alone” (p. 164).
Indeed, but that “somebody else” that the unsaved meditation practitioner encounters is certainly not Almighty God.
Tony Jones admits that the practice of silence often results in spiritual oppression. He mentions “the dark night of the soul” which comes through meditation and says, “It seems one cannot pursue true silence without rather quickly coming to a place of deep, dark doubt” (The Sacred Way, pp. 41, 82). He quotes Thomas Merton as follows: “The hermit, all day and all night, beats his head against a wall of doubt. That is his contemplation” (p. 41).
We are reminded of Mother Teresa, who was called a living saint by Catholics and Protestants alike during her lifetime and is on a fast track for canonization in the Catholic Church. She practiced a very serious level of contemplative spirituality all her life, but she found only darkness. This is documented in the shocking book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, the Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta (2007), which contains statements made by the nun to her Catholic confessors and superiors over a period of more than 65 years.
In March 1953 she wrote to her confessor: “... THERE IS SUCH TERRIBLE DARKNESS WITHIN ME, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work.’”
Over the years she had many confessors, and she continually referred to her spiritual condition as “my darkness” and to Jesus as “the Absent One.”
In 1962 she wrote: “IF I EVER BECOME A SAINT -- I WILL SURELY BE ONE OF ‘DARKNESS,’” and again, “How cold -- how empty -- how painful is my heart. -- Holy communion -- Holy Mass -- all the holy things of spiritual life -- of the life of Christ in me -- are all so empty -- so cold -- so un-wanted” (Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, p. 232).
In 1979 she wrote: “THE SILENCE AND THE EMPTINESS IS SO GREAT -- that I look and do not see, -- Listen and do not hear.”
Her private statements about the spiritual darkness she encountered in contemplative prayer continued in this vein until her death, and they are the loudest possible warning about the danger of contemplative mysticism.
Contemplative practices are vehicles to bring the practitioners into contact with demons.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES HAVE EVEN LED SOME TO GODDESS WORSHIP.
This is what happened to SUE MONK KIDD (b. 1948), and her experience is a loud warning about flirting with Catholic mysticism.
She was raised in a Southern Baptist congregation in southwest Georgia. Her grandfather and father were Baptist deacons. Her grandmother gave devotionals at the Women’s Missionary Union, and her mother was a Sunday School teacher. Her husband was a minister who taught religion and a chaplain at a Baptist college. She was very involved in church, teaching Sunday School and attending services Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday. She describes herself as the person who would have won a contest for “Least Likely to Become a Feminist.” She was even inducted into a group of women called the Gracious Ladies, the criterion for which was that “one needed to portray certain ideals of womanhood, which included being gracious and giving of oneself unselfishly.”
But for years she had felt a spiritual emptiness and lack of contentment. Prayer was “a fairly boring mental activity” (Kidd’s foreword to Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands, 2006, p. 10). She says,
“I had been struggling to come to terms with my life as a woman--in my culture, my marriage, my faith, my church, and deep inside myself” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 8).
She was thirty years old, had been married about 12 years, and had two children.
Instead of learning how to fill the emptiness and uncertainty with a know-so salvation and a sweet walk with Christ in the Spirit and a deeper knowledge of the Bible, she began dabbling in Catholic mysticism. A Sunday School co-worker gave her a book by the Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton. She should have known better than to study such a book and should have been warned by the brethren, but the New Evangelical philosophy that controls the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches created an atmosphere in which the reading of a Catholic monk’s book by a Sunday School teacher was acceptable. Their thinking goes like this: Who are we to judge what other people read, and who is to say that a Roman Catholic priest might not love the Lord?
Kidd began to practice Catholic forms of contemplative spirituality and to visit Catholic retreat centers and monasteries.
“... beginning in my early thirties I’d become immersed in a journey that was rooted in contemplative spirituality. It was the spirituality of the ‘church fathers,’ of the monks I’d come to know as I made regular retreats in their monasteries. ... I thrived on solitude, routinely practicing silent meditation as taught by the monks Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating. ... For years, I’d studied Thomas Merton, John of the Cross, Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, Ignatius, Eckhart, Luther, Teilhard de Chardin, The Cloud of Unknowing, and others” (pp. 14, 15).
Of Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, which she read in 1978 for the first of many times, she says,
“My experience of reading it initiated me into my first real awareness of the interior life, igniting an impulse toward being ... it caused something hidden at the core of me to flare up and become known” (Kidd’s introduction to New Seeds of Contemplation, 2007, pp. xiii, xi).
Merton communicated intimately with and was deeply affected by Mary veneration, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism, so it is not surprising that his writings would create an appetite that could lead to goddess worship.
In The New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton made the following frightening statement that shows the great danger of Catholic mysticism:
“In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that HE NO LONGER KNOWS WHAT GOD IS” (p. 13).
What Catholic mysticism does is reject the Bible as the sole and sufficient and perfect revelation of God and tries to delve beyond the Bible, even beyond thought of any kind, and find God through mystical “intuition.” In other words, it is a rejection of the God of the Bible. It claims that God cannot be known by doctrine and cannot be described in words. He can only be experienced through mysticism. This is a blatant denial of the Bible’s claim to be the very Word of God.
This opens the practitioner to demonic delusion. He is left with no perfect objective revelation of God, no divinely-revealed authority by which he can test his mystical experiences and intuitions. He is left with an idol of his own vain imagination (Jeremiah 17:9) and a doctrine of devils.
Kidd’s own first two books were on contemplative spirituality--God’s Joyful Surprise (1988) and When the Heart Waits (1990).
The involvement in Catholic contemplative practices led her to the Mass and to other sacramental associations.
She learned dream analysis from a Jungian perspective and believed that her dreams were revelations. One recurring dream featured an old woman. Kidd concluded that this is “the Feminine Self or the voice of the feminine soul” and she was encouraged in her feminist studies by these visitations.
She rejected the doctrine that the Bible is the sole authority. In church one day the pastor proclaimed this truth, and she describes the frightful thing that happened in her heart at that moment:
“I remember a feeling rising up from a place about two inches below my navel. ... It was the purest inner knowing I had experienced, and it was shouting in me no, no, no! The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible; it is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period. ... That day sitting in church, I believed the voice in my belly. ... The voice in my belly was the voice of the wise old woman. It was my female soul talking. And it had challenged the assumption that the Baptist Church would get me where I needed to go” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, pp. 76, 77, 78).
She began to think that the Bible is wrong in its teaching about women and that women should not take the subordinate position described therein. She came to believe that Eve might have been a hero instead of a sinner, that eating the forbidden fruit had actually opened Eve’s eyes to her true self. Kidd came to the conclusion that the snake was not evil but “symbolized female wisdom, power, and regeneration” (p. 71). She was surprised and pleased to learn that the snake is depicted as the companion of ancient goddesses, concluding that this is evidence that the Bible is wrong.
She began to delve into the worship of ancient goddesses. She traveled with a group of women to Crete where they met in a cave and sang prayers to “the Goddess Skoteini, Goddess of the Dark.” She says, “... something inside me was calling on the Goddess of the Dark, even though I didn’t know her name” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 93).
Soon she was praying to God as Mother.
“I ran my finger around the rim of the circle on the page and prayed my first prayer to a Divine Feminine presence. I said, ‘Mothergod, I have nothing to hold me. No place to be, inside or out. I need to find a container of support, a space where my journey can unfold’” (p. 94).
She came to the place where she believed that she is a goddess.
“Divine Feminine love came, wiping out all my puny ideas about love in one driving sweep. Today I remember that event for the radiant mystery it was, how I felt myself embraced by Goddess, how I felt myself in touch with the deepest thing I am. It was the moment when, as playwright and poet Ntozake Shange put it, ‘I found god in myself/ and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely’” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 136).
“I came to know myself as an embodiment of Goddess” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 163).
“When I woke, my thought was that I was finally being reunited with the snake in myself--that lost and defiled symbol of feminine instinct” (p. 107).
She came to believe in the New Age doctrine that God is in all things and is the sum total of all things, that God is the evolving universe and we are a part of God.
“I thought: Maybe the Divine One is like an old African woman, carving creation out of one vast, beautiful piece of Herself. She is making a universal totem spanning fifteen billion years, an extension of her life and being, an evolutionary carving of sacred art containing humans, animals, plants, indeed, everything that is. And all of it is joined, blended, and connected, its destiny intertwined. ... In other words, the Divine coinheres all that is. ... To coinhere means to exist together, to be included in the same thing or substance” (pp. 158, 159).
She built an altar in her study and populated it with statues of goddesses, of Jesus, of a Black Madonna -- and a mirror to reflect her own image.
“Over the altar in my study I hung a lovely mirror sculpted in the shape of a crescent moon. It reminded me to honor the Divine Feminine presence in myself, the wisdom in my own soul” (p. 181).
Her book ends with the words, “She is in us.”
Sue Monk Kidd is quoted by evangelicals such as David Jeremiah (Life Wide Open), Beth Moore (When Godly People Do Ungodly Things), and Richard Foster (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home). Kidd’s endorsement is printed on the back of Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines. She wrote the foreword to the 2006 edition of Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands and the introduction to the 2007 edition of Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.
Another example of how Catholic contemplative spirituality has led to goddess worship is the sad story of ALAN “BEDE” GRIFFITHS.
He was born in England and studied at Oxford under C.S. Lewis, who became a lifelong friend. In 1931, while at Oxford he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The next year he joined the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey near Gloucester and was ordained a priest in 1940. The name Bede, meaning prayer, was given to him when he entered the Benedictine order.
He moved to India and became a Hindu monk (while remaining a Catholic priest), calling himself Swami Dayananda (bliss of compassion), going barefoot, wearing an orange-colored robe, practicing yoga, taking the tika, and refusing to eat meat.
He accepted the Hindu concept of the interrelatedness of everything and the unity of man with God.
“He loved to quote the Chandogya Upanishad (8,3) [Hindu scriptures] to show that while our body takes up only a small space on this planet, OUR MIND ENCOMPASSES THE WHOLE UNIVERSE: ‘There is this city of Brahman (the human body) and in it there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus, and within can be found a small space. This little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars; fire and lightening and wind are there, and all that now is and is not yet--all that is contained within it” (Pascaline Coff, “Man, Monk, Mystic,” http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
He rejected the Bible’s doctrine that there is good and evil:
“I saw God in the earth, in trees, in mountains. IT LED ME TO THE CONVICTION THAT THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE GOOD OR EVIL IN THIS WORLD. We have to let go of all concepts which divide the world into good and evil, right and wrong, and begin to see the complimentarity of opposites which Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called the coincidentia oppositorum, the ‘coincidence of opposites’” (1991, http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
At the end of his life he came to believe in the validity of mother goddess worship. This was the fruit of his communion with idolatry through contemplative spirituality. In 1990, after a stroke, he began to speak of the awakening of his repressed feminine.
“When he first spoke about THE BLACK MADONNA, he said his experience of her was deeply connected to the Earth-Mother, to the forms of the ancient feminine found in rocks and caves and in the different forms in nature. HE LIKENED IT TO THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FEMININE EXPRESSED IN THE HINDU CONCEPT OF SHAKTI--THE POWER OF THE DIVINE FEMININE. Later Father wrote these reflections on the Black Madonna: ‘The Black Madonna symbolizes for me the Black Power in Nature and Life, the hidden power in the womb. ... I feel it was this Power which struck me. She is cruel and destructive, but also deeply loving and nourishing’” (http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).
Griffiths had a large influence in promoting interfaith philosophy in Roman Catholic monasteries in America, England, Australia, and Germany through his books and lectures. He wrote 12 books on interfaith dialogue, the most popular being Marriage of East and West.
Griffiths’ love for the Black Madonna is interesting. Sue Monk Kidd, too, as she traveled from Catholic contemplative practices to goddess worship, experienced a great love for the Black Madonna. Thomas Merton did the same thing in his journey into Roman Catholic mysticism and beyond to Zen Buddhism.
This is not surprising because the Madonna was originally borrowed from pagan idolatry, from the ancient mother goddess mystery religions that stemmed from Babel.
Contemplative practices are encouraging the spread of such heresies, and this is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear.
I would urge my readers in the strongest possible way not to dabble in contemplative practices. There really is no telling where it might lead. It can lead to Rome or Buddha or even to Artemis.
(For more about Sue Monk Kidd and Alan Griffiths see the chapter “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics.”)
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This article is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
SOLOMON MALAN: AN EARLY DEFENDER OF THE KJV
SOLOMON MALAN: AN EARLY DEFENDER OF THE KJV
October 9, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The defense of the King James Bible is not new. The following is excerpted from For Love of the Bible: The Battle for the King James Version and the Greek Received Text from 1800 to Present. The fifth edition (October 2008) is revised and updated and fully illustrated. This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143 (toll free), www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
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Solomon Caesar Malan, D.D. (1812-1894), Vicar of Broadwindsor, published A Vindication of the Authorized Version, from Charges Brought against It by Recent Writers (1856), A Plea for the Received Text XE "Received Text" and for the Authorized Version of the New Testament (1869), and Seven Chapters of the Revision XE "English Revised Version" of 1881 Revised (1881). The first of these was Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" ’s reply to a call for revision that had come in 1856 through William Selwyn XE "Selwyn, William" and James Heywood XE "Heywood, James" . About that same time, five other Anglican XE "Anglican" ministers were lobbying for revision. These were Charles Ellicott XE "Ellicott, Charles" (later the New Testament Revision Committee chairman), Henry Alford XE "Alford, Henry" , W.H.G. Humphry XE "Humphry, W.H.G." , John Barrow XE "Barrow, John" , and G. Moberly XE "Moberly, G." . This group was brought together in 1856 by Ernest Hawkins XE "Hawkins, Ernest" , secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and between 1857 and 1863 they published several revised portions of the English Bible. These were issued under the title of Revision of the Authorized Version, by Five Clergymen. Malan wrote in opposition to this work, which has been called “the germ of the 1881 revision.”
Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" exhibited a learned grasp of the unique and glorious heritage of the Authorized English Version. He well understood the seriousness of any attempt to revise it. Let’s go back in time 150 years and listen in as this brilliant man gives a defense of the King James Bible:
“It [the KJV] stands as yet unrivalled among other modern versions for the devout spirit in which its authors rendered the original texts; for the simple beauty of its style; and for the dignified and easy flow of a language that was in a great degree formed from it, and that singles it out from among other translations of the Bible, even as a mere literary composition. It is free from the ruggedness and from the archaisms of the older English versions; and at the same time it possesses at least an equal merit with them, for its faithful rendering of the original. But it has this great advantage over some of them, that whereas they were the work of single individuals, this was made by a goodly company of nearly fifty of the most pious and learned men of that time; who, together, availed themselves of the labours of their predecessors in order to raise their own production to a higher degree of excellence. ...
“It may, indeed, be taken down; but, if so, never to be rebuilt as it was. It might, it is true, have a more modern appearance; but then, it would lose the solemn look of age. It might also possibly be better adapted to the fastidious taste of the present day; but then, unbroken associations of two centuries and a half, together with much of national individuality, would perish for ever; and those persons who think the Authorized Version antiquated XE "Archaic (words in the KJV)" , would be the first to regret the change. ... And they would lament the day when, for the sake of novelty, they had abandoned those sweet and solemn words of warning blended with their earliest recollections of childhood, by renouncing their trust of a national treasure, committed to them in the safe keeping of the Authorized English Version of the Bible. ...
“So much care, so much earnestness, in the due performance of this important task [the creation of the King James Bible], were not bestowed in vain. They have stamped the work with a character for excellence to which no modern version, and but one or two of the older ones, can lay claim. As regards the Old Testament, the Authorized Version is, generally speaking, less paraphrastic, and is therefore a more correct rendering of the Hebrew XE "Hebrew" , than the Septuagint and the versions that follow them wholly or in part; such as the Armenian, the Ethiopic, the Coptic, the Vulgate, the Arabic, and even the Syriac. ... And, as regards the New Testament, the English Bible agrees best with the old versions, which are of the highest value, on account of their faithfulness and accuracy. ...
“[I]t stands pre-eminent when side by side with more modern versions,—not only for its devout adherence to the original texts, but also for the beauty of its style. ... So true is this, that whereas neighbouring nations have had, within a short period, a succession of versions of the Bible in their respective languages, to the detriment of union and of uniformity among the readers of the Bible in those countries, the English Version has stood on its own merits, and has shone of its own lustre for nearly two centuries and a half. ...
“Thus it is that it has entered into the very substance of the nation. It is interwoven with its sinews, and forms more than any other book ever did—an unseen, by many perhaps, unacknowledged, or even neglected, but still a living, element in the prosperity of the people. ... THESE LASTING AND WHOLESOME EFFECTS ARE THE RESULT OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE BEING ONE AND THE SAME FOR ALL. IF, INSTEAD OF ONLY ONE BIBLE, ENGLAND HAD, LIKE SOME OTHER COUNTRIES, MANY BIBLES, THAT VARIETY ALONE WOULD BREED AND FOSTER ENDLESS DIVISION. ...
“Their reverence for the Sacred Scriptures induced them [KJV translators] to be as literal as they could, to avoid obscurity; and it must be acknowledged that they were extremely happy in the simplicity and dignity of their expressions. Their adherence to the Hebrew XE "Hebrew" idiom is supposed at once to have enriched and adorned our language; and, as they laboured for the general benefit of the learned and the unlearned, they avoided all words of Latin original when they could find words in their own language ...
“Thus, then, the English Bible has not only stood for centuries, and NOW STANDS, ON ITS OWN MERITS AS A TRUE WITNESS OF THE INSPIRED TEXT OF SCRIPTURE; but it is also strong of its own strength, in being, as the highest authorities tell us, ‘the best standard of the English language.’ ... For ‘our translators,’ says Dr. Adam Clarke, ‘not only made a standard translation, but they have made their translation the standard of our language. THE ENGLISH TONGUE, IN THEIR DAY, WAS NOT EQUAL TO SUCH A WORK; BUT GOD ENABLED THEM TO STAND AS UPON MOUNT SINAI, AND CRANE UP THEIR COUNTRY’S LANGUAGE TO THE DIGNITY OF THE ORIGINALS, so that after the lapse of two hundred [and fifty] years, the English Bible is, with very few exceptions, the standard of the purity and excellence of the English tongue. The original, from which it was taken, is alone superior to the Bible translated by the authority of King James.’...
“Such considerations, however, have no weight whatever with many who are willing to sacrifice much to the love of change; or at all events, who seem to take pleasure in aiming blows at everything that is not of yesterday. Everything now must keep pace with the age; even the word of God. ... And yet wisdom neither came with us, nor will die with us. As regards the Authorized Version then, and those who find fault with it, ‘let us not too hastily conclude,’ says Mr. Whittaker XE "Whittaker, J.W." , ‘that the translators have fallen on evil days and evil tongues, because it has occasionally happened that an individual, as inferior to them in erudition as in talents and integrity, is found questioning their motives, or denying their qualifications for the task which they so well performed. ... It [the KJV] may be compared with any translation in the world, without fear of inferiority; it has not shrunk from the most rigorous examination; it challenges investigation; and, in spite of numerous attempts to supersede it, it has hitherto remained unrivalled in the affections of the country.’
“And God grant it may long continue so, for the good of the people to which it belongs! ...
“I purpose therefore ... to look into the charges thus brought forward against the English Bible, with those who cling to it as they ought, affectionately and devoutly; in order to assist them in expelling from their mind all doubt on the subject. Meanwhile, they may rest assured that, hitherto, all attempts at improvement upon their Bible, have come far short of it in language, in style, in truthfulness, and above all, in a generally correct and devout rendering of the original texts” (Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" , A Vindication, pp. i-xvi, xxii-xxvi).
Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" answered the various arguments that were being put forth in advance of a revision of the Authorized Version. For example:
“... we now hear from many, that the English Bible is no longer suited to the exigencies of the present day, but that our advanced state of knowledge loudly calls for a new revision. An evil day that will be when it comes. However, Bishop Middleton holds out no encouragement to them, when he says: ‘The style of our present version is incomparably superior to anything which might be expected from the finical and perverted taste of our own age. It is simple, it is harmonious, it is energetic; and, which is of no small importance, use has made it familiar, and time has rendered it sacred.’ ... its words are ‘household words,’ ... its simple and hallowed language is understood and loved alike, by the poor peasant and by the august Sovereign, whom it binds to Her people. England XE "England" has not ‘a Bible,’ one of many to choose from, like her neighbours; but ‘the Bible’ is in every English home; and ‘my Bible,’ in English, means that one Book, the very words of which are the same for all” (Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" , A Vindication, pp. xviii, xix).
Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" plainly saw the danger of loosing from the ancient moorings of the Received Text XE "Received Text" and the Authorized Version.
“Who will be bold, or I might almost say hardened enough, if not perhaps to pull down, yet even to whitewash the stately edifice of the English Bible? ... It might possibly be better adapted to the fastidious taste of the age; but then, unbroken associations of two centuries and a half, together with much of national individuality, would perish for ever; and those persons who think the authorized version antiquated XE "Archaic (words in the KJV)" would be the first to regret the change. ... For independently of the words of the Bible being sacred in all languages, the language of the English Bible in particular is consecrated ... the vernacular translation of the Bible has formed and fixed the language of the country” (Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" , A Vindication of the Authorized Version, 1856, pp. iii, iv, xiv).
Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" pointed out the unsettled, ever-changing character of modern textual criticism, observing: “In other words, the translator chooses his own text, which he renders as he thinks fit; so that, in fact, he has it all his own way. ... Mill is thought by some to be antiquated XE "Archaic (words in the KJV)" , Griesbach XE "Griesbach, J.J." out of date, and Tischendorf XE "Tischendorf" even not exactly to their taste” (Malan, A Vindication of the Authorized Version, p. xxi).
Malan “takes exceptions even to the quite prevalent custom of ministers’ criticising the present translation before their congregations, on the ground that it ‘needlessly unsettles the mind of their hearers on a subject in which comparatively few of them can ever be fair judges’” (Bissell, The Historic Origin of the Bible, p. 350).
In the second book, Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" directed his remarks to a critique of Henry Alford XE "Alford, Henry" ’s sixth edition Greek XE "Greek" New Testament (published in 1868) which followed Tischendorf XE "Tischendorf" and gave heavy preference to the Vaticanus XE "Vaticanus" and Sinaiticus XE "Sinaiticus" manuscripts. Malan comments on some of Alford’s readings in the Gospels and the book of Titus. The following two examples illustrate the tone of the whole:
“[Matthew 1:25] ‘Till she had brought forth her first-born son,’ A.V. is changed by Dr. Alford XE "Alford, Henry" to ‘till she had brought forth a son’! His reasons for this change are, that the Vatican MS. and a very few others make it; whereas the reading of the Auth. Version, which is that of the Received Text XE "Received Text" , is far better supported, and by many more MSS. The English reader may refer to p. 37 for a discussion on this passage; but if he knows no Greek XE "Greek" , he may rest assured the Authorized Version is right and far better than the Dean’s alteration ‘till she brought forth a son’...” (Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" , A Plea for the Received Text and for the Authorized Version of the New Testament, p. 103).
“[Mark 13:14] ‘Spoken of by Daniel XE "Daniel" the prophet,’ A.V., ‘omit,’ Dr. Alford XE "Alford, Henry" . This clause is not, indeed, in the Vatican MS., but is found in others, as well as in the Syriac, Georgian, Slavonic, and Ethiopic versions. So that we need not obey Dr. Alford’s peremptory order to omit it” (Ibid., p. 142).
Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" ’s conclusion offers a window into the sympathies of a great many nineteenth-century preachers toward the attempts to undermine the Greek Received Text XE "Received Text" :
“A man who, like him [Henry Alford XE "Alford, Henry" ], sets to a work of this kind, apparently without the slightest hesitation or misgiving in his own powers, thinking it the easiest thing in the world to make wholesale changes in the Greek XE "Greek" text and in the joint labours of more than fifty learned men of old, instead of dealing with the utmost reverence and caution, not only forms an unworthy estimate of the work he undertakes—but he also recklessly wounds the feeling of deep respect and affection with which men, nowise his inferiors in judgment or scholarship, still continue to look upon the Received Text XE "Received Text" and the English Bible.
“Both these have, indeed, lasted more than two centuries; a long time, in truth, for those who think that wisdom, learning, and scholarship have only just dawned on the land, and that, until now, all was darkness and ignorance. Wise men, however, do not think so but rather take the long life of those two monuments of ancient piety and learning as a proof of their real merit and excellence. ...
“[A] better acquaintance with his [Alford XE "Alford, Henry" ’s] work only tends to deepen their reverence and to strengthen their affection for their old friends and companions, the Received Greek XE "Greek" Text of the New Testament and the Authorised Version of it—neither of which they ever intend to give up; not even at the Dean’s bidding” (Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" , A Plea for the Received Text XE "Received Text" and for the Authorized Version of the New Testament, pp. 210, 11).
When the 1881 English Revision XE "English Revised Version" appeared, Malan XE "Malan, Solomon" was not swayed from his earlier position. “The learned writer charged the Revisers with having ‘looked upon’ their work ‘in the light of a Greek XE "Greek" exercise,’ and with having ‘taken pleasure in making as many changes as they could, with little or no regard for cadence, rhythm, style, or even grammar.’ He pronounced the result to be ‘little short of a great failure’” (Samuel Hemphill XE "Hemphill, Samuel" , A History of the Revised Version of the New Testament, p. 96).
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This is excerpted from For Love of the Bible: The Battle for the King James Version and the Greek Received Text from 1800 to Present. The fifth edition (November 2008) is revised and updated and fully illustrated. This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143 (toll free), www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
RICHARD FOSTER: EVANGELICALISM’S MYSTICAL SPARKPLUG
RICHARD FOSTER: EVANGELICALISM’S MYSTICAL SPARKPLUG
October 8, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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Richard Foster’s writings have been at the forefront of the contemplative movement since the 1970s. No one has done more than this man to spread contemplative mysticism throughout Protestant and Baptist churches XE "Foster, Richard" \b .
Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, which has sold more than two and a half million copies, was selected by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the 20th century. (For this review I obtained multiple editions of Celebration of Discipline, plus three other books by Foster.)
The Quaker Connection
He grew up among the Quakers XE "Quaker" (the Religious Society of Friends), was trained at George Fox College, has pastored Quaker churches, and has taught theology at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and at George Fox. One website calls him “perhaps the best known Quaker in the world today.”
The Quaker connection is important, because one of their peculiar doctrines is direct revelation via an “inner light.” XE "Inner Light" This is defined in a variety of ways, since Quakerism is very individualistic and non-creedal, but it refers to a divine presence and guidance in every man. There is an emphasis on being still and silent and passive in order to receive guidance from the inner light. Other terms for it are “light of God,” “light of Christ,” “inward light,” “the light,” “light within,” “Christ within,” and “spirit of Christ.”
George Fox XE "Fox, George" used the expression “that of God in everyone.” In his journal Fox said, “I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward light, spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation, and their way to God; even that divine Spirit which would lead them into all Truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any” (The Journal of George Fox, revised by John Nickalls, 1952, p. 35).
Another prominent Quaker, Robert Barclay XE "Barclay, Robert" , called this “the light of the heart” and said “there is an evangelical and saving Light and grace in all.”
Isaac Pennington said, “There is that near you which will guide you; Oh wait for it, and be sure ye keep to it.”
The inner light teaching is said to be based on John 1:9 -- “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Yet this verse does not say that there is a divine light in every man. It merely says that Christ gives light to every man. The epistle of Romans tells us more about this. There is the light of creation (Romans 1:20), the light of conscience (Romans 2:14-16), and the light of the Scripture (Romans 3:2). When men respond to the light that they have, they are given more light (Acts 17:26-27).
Because of the fall, man’s heart is darkened and foolish (Rom. 1:21; Eph. 4:18).
The inner light teaching was exalted above reliance on the Bible. Martin Meeker says, “... the early Quakers’ reliance on the Bible as a source of spiritual knowledge and inspiration was secondary to their belief in the Inner Light as the primary path to salvation and communication with God” (The Doctrine of the Inner Light).
George Fox would say to his listeners:
“You will say, Christ saith this and the Apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?”
Fox claimed that he received the doctrine of the inner light without help from the Scriptures (The Journal of George Fox, revised by John Nickalls, 1952, pp. 33-35).
This is an unscriptural and very dangerous position that opens the door for every sort of heresy. The Scripture is able to make the man of God perfect; obviously, then, nothing more is needed (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The early Quakers misinterpreted 2 Corinthians 3:6, claiming that the “letter” referred to the Scripture in general.
“Along these lines, we might note that early Quakers tended to give an expansive reading of 2 Cor. 3:6, which states that God has made us ‘ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.’ This verse, if ‘letter’ is taken to mean ‘Scripture,’ obviously places strong limits on the use of Scripture while extending preference to Spirit, at the very least. One thus is not surprised that it is a favorite of early Quakers, appearing as an allusion in the postscript of the Letter from the Elders of Balby, cherished by many contemporary Friends” (Stephen Angell, “Opening the Scriptures, Then and Now,” QUEST, Fall-Winter 2007-2008).
If the “letter” of 2 Corinthians 3:6 refers to the Scripture in general, it would mean that Paul was exalting “the Spirit” above the Scripture. It would mean that the Scripture is not the sole authority for faith and practice, but it is only one authority and that men are free to follow their inner lights.
This is a gross misinterpretation of the passage. In truth, 2 Corinthians 3 contrasts the Law of Moses with the Gospel of Grace, the Old Covenant with the New.
2 Corinthians 3:7 leaves no doubt about this, which tells us that the “letter” that killeth is “the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones.” That refers, of course, to the Law of Moses given on Mt. Sinai. It was a covenant of death because it requires of fallen sinners what they cannot perform, which is perfect holiness. It was not given to provide a way of salvation but to show men their sinful, lost condition (Romans 3:19-20).
To interpret the “letter” of 2 Corinthians 3:6 as a reference to the Scripture in general also contradicts the fact that verse 11 says the “letter” has been “done away.” Obviously the Scripture has not been done away with, but the Law of Moses has. Its purpose was to act as a “schoolmaster” to lead men to Christ and once it performs that glorious function its work is finished (Galatians 3:24-25).
It is easy to see how the Quaker philosophy paved the way for Foster to accept Catholic mysticism. It did this by its emphasis on an “inner light” and its tendency not to judge things in an exacting manner with the Bible.
Other Quakers have followed the same path, and some, like Mary Conrow Coelho XE "Coelho, Mary" , have followed it all the way to the New Age XE "New Age" . Conrow believes in evolution XE "Evolution" , the oneness of the universe, and the unity of man with God, and she traces her New Age mysticism to deep third generation Quaker roots and its inner light teaching:
“The adults in our Quaker community spoke often of the Inner Light, the seed of God, the indwelling Christ. [Thomas Kelly] XE "Kelly, Thomas" said, ‘It is a Light within, a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us’” (“Of Leadings and the Inner Light: Quakerism and the New Cosmology,” http://www.thegreatstory.org/QuakerMetarelig.html).
(Richard Foster quotes Thomas Kelly favorably and frequently in his books, and the Renovarè Spiritual Formation Bible quotes Kelly as saying: “Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center.”)
From its inception Quakerism was a heretical movement that downplayed the Bible and exalted personal revelation, and Foster is a product of that heresy even though he is on the “evangelical” side of Quakerism.
In this light it is not surprising to find him promoting Roman Catholic mystics who exalted their tradition and mystical revelations above the Scripture.
Salvation Not Clear
One thing that is glaring in its absence from Foster’s books on spiritual living is a clear biblical testimony of salvation and a clear exhortation for his readers to be born again.
When he does mention salvation XE "Salvation" , he speaks of it in a confused manner.
He says, for example, that reconciliation has already been achieved in Christ.
“In some mysterious way, through shedding his blood Jesus took into himself all the evil and all the hostility of all the ages and redeemed it. He reconciled us to God, restoring the infinitely valuable personal relationship that had been shattered by sin” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 42).
This is not true. Though the redemption price has been paid, sinners are not reconciled until they individually put their faith in the gospel (John 3:16, 18, 36).
Foster also speaks of salvation as a process.
“One more thing is needed, namely, our response of repentance--not just once but again and again. Martin Luther declares that the life of the Christian should be one of daily repentance” (Prayer, p. 42).
We must understand that the previous statement is made in the context of a discussion of salvation. Foster makes no clear distinction between the one repentance for salvation (Acts 17:30; 2 Peter 3:9) and continual repentance for sanctification (2 Cor. 12:21). Foster’s statement describes either universalism or sacramentalism, but it is not the once-for-all new birth doctrine of the New Testament.
Further, Foster describes salvation in terms of an emotional experience and in association with baptism. In Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Foster tells of a non-Christian who attended one of his contemplative seminars. Part way through the course the following event transpired.
“Throughout the weekend the Spirit of God rested tenderly upon the entire group, so much so that on Sunday afternoon this same gentleman asked quietly, ‘Would you pray for me that I might know Jesus the way you know Jesus?’ What were we to do? None of the normal responses seemed appropriate. We waited in silence. Finally one young man stood up and gently placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. I have never forgotten his prayer. I felt like taking off my shoes--we were on holy ground. Strange as it may seem, he prayed a commercial. He described a popular advertisement of the day for NesTea in which different people, sweltering from the summer sun, would fall into a swimming pool with a thirst-quenching sense of ‘ahhh!’ on their faces. He then invited this man to fall into the arms of Jesus in the same way. The gentleman suddenly began to weep, heaving deep sighs of sorrow and grief. We watched in reverent wonder as he received the gift of saving faith. It was a tender, grace-filled moment. Later he shared with us how the prayer touched a deep center in his past relating to his baptism as a child” (pp. 48, 49).
While it is true that the Bible describes salvation in terms of drinking and eating of Jesus, the scene described by Foster is confusing at best. What was this man trusting? What was he receiving? He mentions his infant baptism. Had he come to believe that his baptism had brought him into a saving relationship with God that he was only now learning to enjoy? What Jesus was he trusting? What gospel? What was the nature of his faith? The Bible warns that the devils believe in God. Only a certain kind of faith is saving faith. Foster doesn’t clarify any of this. His doctrine of salvation is exceedingly murky at best. When the unbeliever asked the group to pray for him, why didn’t they share with him the gospel? They didn’t need to pray about what to say. They didn’t need to hesitate. Jesus has already commanded us to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15). Why did they preach a NesTea commercial rather than the gospel?
And while we are talking about Richard Foster and the gospel, if he believes the true gospel of the grace of Christ without works, why does he constantly and uninhibitedly promote Catholic mystics who hold to a sacramental gospel? If he doesn’t believe Rome’s gospel of process salvation, why does he never warn about it plainly?
Personal salvation is foundational to prayer and Christian living. It is criminal to write books on these subjects for broad public consumption and not make salvation absolutely clear.
Roman Catholic Mysticism
Foster advocates Roman Catholic mysticism with absolutely no qualms, building his contemplative practices unequivocally upon this heretical foundation.
He recommends Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Genoa, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Madame Guyon, Thomas à Kempis, Catherine Doherty, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus de Liguori, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Henry Newman, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, G.K. Chesterton, Andrè Louf, Henri Nouwen, Dorothy Day, Karl Rahner, John Main, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, Brennan Manning, John Michael Talbot, and many others.
Foster’s recommendation of these Roman Catholic mystics is not half-hearted. In the introduction to the 1998 edition of Celebration of Discipline, he says that they taught him spiritual depth and substance (pp. xiii, xiv), and he calls them “Devotional Masters of the Christian faith.” Of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, XE "Ignatius of Loyola" Foster says, “... it is a school of prayer for all of us” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 59).
There is no warning of the fact that these mystics trusted in a works gospel, venerated Mary, worshipped Christ as a piece of consecrated bread, believed in purgatory, and scores of other heresies. (For extensive documentation of this see the chapters “A Description of Catholic Monastic Asceticism” and “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics.”)
Bible Not Sole Authority
Like his Roman Catholic friends, Foster’s foundational error is in not exalting the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice. XE "Bible as Sole Authority" Nowhere in Celebration of Discipline or Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home does he instruct his readers that the Bible alone is God’s infallible revelation and that everything must be carefully tested by it. This should be the very starting point for books on Christian spirituality and worship, but it is glaring in its absence. Foster encourages his readers to find revelation beyond Scripture through meditation, dreams, and personal prophecies.
Foster describes how Francis of Assisi found spiritual guidance. When he was puzzled as to whether he should devote himself exclusively to contemplative practices or also to engage in preaching missions (which is plainly answered in Scripture), he sent word to two “trusted friends” and accepted their replies as the very will of God. Foster says that Francis “was seeking a method that would open the gates of heaven to reveal the mind of Christ, and he took it as such” (Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 1978, pp. 154, 155). Nowhere does Foster chide Francis of Assisi for depending on the word of man rather than the Scripture.
Neo-Orthodox Approach to Scripture
Foster’s approach to Scripture is a neo-orthodox, XE "Neo-Orthodoxy" existentialist one. It is not by accident that he quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer frequently and non-critically. (He also quotes the other two fathers of neo-orthodoxy, Karl Barth XE "Barth, Karl" and Emil Brunner XE "Brunner, Emil" .)
“This is not a time for technical word studies, or analysis, or even the gathering of material to share with others. ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer XE "Bonhoeffer, Dietrich" said, ‘... just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did. That is all. That is meditation’” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 26).
Yet the Bible is not merely a love letter. It is much more. It is the infallible Word of God, and we are commanded to “analyze” it. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).
Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries exposes the error of Foster’s approach:
The idea expressed above by Bonhoeffer of accepting Scripture subjectively as spoken to you is completely in line with the flawed view of the text of the Holy Scripture spread by neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth. In neo-orthodoxy the Scripture only becomes the Word of God when the Holy Spirit illuminates it. We can sum up this wrong idea this way: ‘The Bible is a divine mailbox in which we receive letters from Heaven.’ But no, it isn’t. The Bible itself--in full--is the letter, the message, from God.
In his book Reckless Faith Dr. John MacArthur hits the target dead on as he shows why neo-orthodoxy is a perfect fit for contemplative mysticism as well as why it’s a necessity for it to flourish:
‘Neo-orthodoxy is the term used to identify an existentialist variety of Christianity. Because it denies the essential objective basis of truth--the absolute truth and authority of Scripture--neo-orthodoxy must be understood as pseudo-Christianity. ... Neo-orthodoxy’s attitude toward Scripture is a microcosm of the entire existentialist philosophy: the Bible itself is not objectively the Word of God, but it becomes the Word of God when it speaks to me individually. ...
‘Thus while neo-orthodox theologians often sound as if they are affirming traditional beliefs, ... they relegate all theology to the realm of subjective relativism. ... Mysticism is perfectly suited for religious existentialism; indeed, it is the inevitable consequence. The mystic disdains rational understanding and seeks truth instead through the feelings, the imagination, personal visions, inner voices, private illumination, or other purely subjective means’ (MacArthur, Reckless Faith) (Ken Silva, “Contemplative Mysticism in the Southern Baptist Convention,” April 30, 2008, http://www.apprising.org/archives/2008/04/contemplative_m.html).
Instead of seeing the Scripture as divinely inspired and profitable in every part as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, and therefore studying it diligently in order to rightly divide it as 2 Timothy 2:15 commands, neo-orthodoxy sees the Scripture as inspired only as it speaks to me experientially through a mystical approach.
Foster’s School of Contemplative Mysticism
Foster invites his readers to “enroll as apprentices in the school of contemplative prayer” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 13), promoting thoughtless centering prayer, visualization, guided imagery, the repetition of mantras, silence, walking the labyrinth, even out of body experiences.
Foster says, “Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it XE "Meditation, Silent" ” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 15).
Apparently Foster got some criticism for this statement, because in the next edition of Celebration of Discipline he omitted it and tried to contrast Eastern meditation with Christian meditation with the following words:
“Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different” (Celebration of Discipline, 1988, p. 20).
This sounds nice and tidy, but it contradicts the practice of Catholic contemplation. In reality, both Eastern meditation and Catholic meditation are an attempt to empty the mind in order to arrive at a transcendental experience. Consider the following quotes from the mystics that Foster heartily recommends:
Thomas Merton: “... the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. IT IS WORDLESS. IT IS BEYOND WORDS, AND IT IS BEYOND SPEECH, and it is BEYOND CONCEPT” (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1975 edition, p. 308).
The Cloud of Unknowing: “I URGE YOU TO DISMISS EVERY CLEVER OR SUBTLE THOUGHT no matter how holy or valuable. Cover it with a thick cloud of forgetting because in this life only love can touch God as He is in Himself, never knowledge” (chapter 8).
John Main: “Recite your prayer-phrase [mantra] and gently listen to it as you say it. DO NOT THINK ABOUT ANYTHING. As thoughts come, simply keep returning to your prayer-phrase. In this way, one places everything aside” (The Teaching of Dom John Main: How to Meditate, Meditation Group of Saint Patrick’s Basilica, Ottawa, Canada).
Teresa of Avila: “All that the soul has to do at these times of quiet is merely to be calm and MAKE NO NOISE. BY NOISE I MEAN WORKING WITH THE INTELLECT to find great numbers of words and reflections with which to thank God. ... in these periods of quiet, the soul should repose in its calm, and learning should be put on one side” (The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, chap. 15, pp. 106, 107, 108).
Foster’s attempt to set Catholic contemplation apart from pagan mysticism cannot be sustained.
Foster encourages his readers to go deep into their inner world of silence XE "Meditation, Silent" and explore it:
“[W]e must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In their writings, all of the masters of meditation strive to awaken us to the fact that the universe is much larger than we know, that there are vast unexplored inner regions that are just as real as the physical world we know so well. They tell us of exciting possibilities for new life and freedom. They call us to the adventure, to be pioneers in this frontier of the Spirit” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 13).
Amazingly, he says that these practices are not only for believers but also for unbelievers.
“We need not be well advanced in matters of theology to practice the Disciplines. Recent converts--for that matter people who have yet to turn their lives over to Jesus Christ--can and should practice them” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 2).
Since the contemplative practices are supposed to enable the practitioner to commune with Christ within himself, how could an unsaved person “practice them”? This is evidence of Foster’s Quaker belief in an “inner light” in every man.
Some might protest that I have only focused on the more controversial parts of Foster’s teaching and have ignored the truth contained therein. I will admit that Foster’s books contain some true insights about traditional biblical prayer that in another context could be helpful, but this is ruined by his promotion of Catholic mysticism, Jungian dream interpretation, healing of memories, and other heresies. Anyone that uses his writings is in imminent danger of being snared by error.
And though he does give many lessons about traditional biblical prayer, he considers this a shallow level of Christian living. To reach the truly “deep” levels, he urges believers to aspire to move beyond normal conversational prayer. He quotes C.S. Lewis XE "Lewis, C.S." :
“I still think the prayer without words is the best--if one can really achieve it. ... [But to] pray successfully without words one needs to be ‘at the top of one’s form’” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 156).
In reality, contemplative practices are beyond the bounds of Scripture and are completely “off the deep end.”
Visualization
Foster encourages the exceedingly dangerous practice of guided imagery and visualization: XE "Visualization"
“The inner world of meditation is most easily entered through the door of the imagination. We fail to today to appreciate its tremendous power. The imagination is stronger that the conceptual thought and stronger than the will. ... In his autobiography C. G. Jung XE "Jung, Carl" describes how difficult it was for him to humble himself and once again play imagination games of a child, and the value of that experience. Just as children need to learn to think logically, adults need to REDISCOVER THE MAGICAL REALITY OF THE IMAGINATION. ...
“Ignatius of Loyola XE "Ignatius of Loyola" in his Spiritual Exercises constantly encouraged his readers to VISUALIZE THE GOSPEL STORIES. Every contemplation he gave was designed to open the imagination. He even included a meditation entitled ‘application of the senses,’ which is an attempt to help us utilize all five senses as we picture the Gospel events. His thin volume of meditation exercises with its stress on the imagination had tremendous impact for good upon the sixteenth century.’ ...
“Take a single event like the resurrection, or a parable, or a few verses, or even a single word and allow it to take root in you. Seek to live the experience, remembering the encouragement of Ignatius of Loyola to apply all our senses to our task. ... As you enter the story, not as a passive observer but as an active participant, remember that since Jesus lives in the Eternal Now and is not bound by time, this event in the past is a living present-tense experience for Him. Hence, YOU CAN ACTUALLY ENCOUNTER THE LIVING CHRIST IN THE EVENT, BE ADDRESSED BY HIS VOICE AND BE TOUCHED BY HIS HEALING POWER. It can be more than an exercise of the imagination; IT CAN BE A GENUINE CONFRONTATION” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, pp. 22, 23, 26).
Note that Foster recommends Carl Jung, who followed a demonic spirit guide, as well as Ignatius of Loyola, who founded an organization dedicated to blind obedience to the pope at the very height of the murderous Inquisition. The “spirit realm” to which these men connected through meditative practices was the realm of darkness.
Foster recommends Loyola’s practice of visualizing a personal encounter with Jesus, which is presumptuous foolishness. We don’t even know what Jesus looks like and we are not supposed to. Faith is simply believing God’s Word (Romans 10:17). Faith is not putting oneself into the biblical account and letting one’s imagination run wild.
(For more about visualization and the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises see “Ignatius of Loyola” in the chapter “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics.”)
Interpretation of Dreams
Foster promotes the interpretation of dreams XE "Dream Interpretation" , which is not surprising in light of his recommendation of Carl Jung.
“In learning to meditate, one good place to begin is with our dreams, since it involves little more than paying attention to something we are already doing. ... If we are convinced that DREAMS CAN BE A KEY TO UNLOCKING THE DOOR TO THE INNER WORLD, we can do three practical things. First, we can specifically pray, inviting God to inform us through our dreams. ... Second, we should begin to record our dreams. ... That leads to the third consideration--how to interpret dreams. The best way to discover the meaning of dreams is to ask. ‘You do not have, because you do not ask’ (Jas. 4:2). ... Benedict Pererius XE "Pererius, Benedict" , a sixteenth-century Jesuit XE "Jesuit" , suggested that the best interpreter of dreams is the ‘...person with plenty of experience in the world and the affairs of humanity, with a wide interest in everything human, and who is open to the voice of God’” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, pp. 23, 24).
Though God did speak from time to time to the prophets of old in dreams, the New Testament does not encourage God’s people to seek revelation in dreams nor does it instruct us in how to interpret dreams. Foster takes James 4:2 out of context applying it to the interpretation of dreams, though it has nothing to do with such a thing. He quotes a Jesuit heretic who held a false gospel of sacramentalism. The fact is that we do not need dream revelations for we have the perfect and sufficient “voice of God” in the Scriptures. It is “a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed” (2 Peter 1:19).
Dream interpretation is one of the things that led Sue Monk Kidd astray as she pursued the contemplative path. She came to believe that God was speaking to her through weird dreams, and those dreams led to self-deification and goddess worship! (See “Sue Monk Kid” in the chapter “Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics.”)
Communing Face to Face with God in Outer Space
Foster even urges the contemplative practitioner to commune face to face with God the Father.
“A fourth form of meditation has as its objective to bring you into a deep inner communion with the Father where you look at Him and He looks at you” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 27).
Foster says that this amazing feat can be accomplished via visualized XE "Visualization" XE "Imagination" \t "See Visualization" out of body experiences XE "Out of body experience" \t "See Astral Projection" XE "Astral Projection" .
“In your imagination, picture yourself walking along a lovely forest path. ... When you are able to experience the scene with all your senses, the path breaks out onto a lovely grassy knoll. Walk out into the lush large meadow encircled by stately pines. After exploring the meadow for a time, lie down on your back looking up at blue sky and white clouds. IN YOUR IMAGINATION ALLOW YOUR SPIRITUAL BODY, SHINING WITH LIGHT, TO RISE OUT OF YOUR PHYSICAL BODY. Look back so that you can see yourself lying in the grass and reassure your body that you will return momentarily. IMAGINE YOUR SPIRITUAL SELF, ALIVE AND VIBRANT, RISING UP THROUGH THE CLOUDS AND INTO THE STRATOSPHERE. Observe your physical body, the knoll, and the forest shrink as you leave the earth. Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in His presence. Listen quietly, anticipating the unanticipated. NOTE CAREFULLY ANY INSTRUCTION GIVEN ... Do not be disappointed if no words come; like good friends, you are silently enjoying the company of each other. When it is time for you to leave, audibly thank the Lord for His goodness and return to the meadow. Walk joyfully back along the path until you return home FULL OF NEW LIFE AND ENERGY” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, pp. 27, 28).
Foster thus claims that the believer can go into outer space and receive direct revelation from Almighty God! Who needs the Bible and who needs faith when we can actually meet Christ in the center of our being, talk face to face with God the Father, and have personal revelations from Almighty God?
(The previous passage was dropped out of subsequent editions of Celebration of Discipline, but to my knowledge Foster has never renounced the practice. My e-mail to him about this was not answered.)
This technique is occultic. It is exactly what I was taught by Hindu gurus in the early 1970s.
In Out on a Limb New Ager Shirley MacLaine describes an out of body journey to the moon that follows the same playbook!
Consider the following description of what Brian Flynn was taught when he was training to be a psychic before his conversion to Jesus Christ:
“Carolyn then instructed us to lie on the floor, close our eyes and imagine we were lying in a field of wildflowers on a beautiful summer’s day. The wind was calm, and the smell of flowers awakened our senses. As we were lying in the field, she asked us to now leave our bodies and look down upon ourselves. Carolyn then guided us to raise our souls to the heavens and to leave our earthly bodies behind. When we reached what we believed to be the outer edges of the universe she told us to ask for a message from the universe and what we needed to know at this time. ‘Listen to the voice inside you. Ask what it is you need to know to help you release the burdens you carry,’ she said softly” (Flynn, Running against the Wind, 2005, p. 50).
There is no significant difference between the psychic practice and Foster’s so-called contemplative practice. When we go outside the realm of the Bible we put ourselves in the way of spiritual harm and deception.
Other Occultic Practices
Foster recommends other occultic practices.
One is channeling the light of Christ through visualization. Consider his description of how he taught visualizing prayer to a little boy:
“Imagination opens the door to faith. If we can ‘see’ in our mind’s eye a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it is only a short step to believing that it will be so. ... I was once called to a home to pray for a seriously ill baby girl. Her four-year-old brother was in the room and so I told him I needed his help to pray for his baby sister. ... He climbed up into the chair beside me. ‘Let’s play a little game,’ I said. ‘Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that He is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on Him. When we see Him, we start thinking more about His love than how sick Julie is. He smiles, gets up, and comes over to us. Then let’s both put our hands on Julie and when we do, Jesus will put His hands on top of ours. WE’LL WATCH AND IMAGINE THAT THE LIGHT FROM JESUS IS FLOWING RIGHT INTO YOUR LITTLE SISTER AND MAKING HER WELL. Let’s pretend that the light of Christ fights with the bad germs until they are all gone. Okay!’ Seriously the little one nodded. Together we prayed in this childlike way and then thanked the Lord that what we ‘saw’ was the way it was going to be” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 37).
This is not biblical prayer; it is occultism. Mind Science practitioners and New Agers have promoted this type of thing for a century.
Biblical prayer is not the attempt to accomplish something through the power of our minds. It is talking to God and asking Him to accomplish things. There is a vast difference between these two practices, as vast as the difference between God and the Devil.
Foster recommends that parents pray for their sleeping children after this fashion:
“Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence is relaxed” (Celebration of Discipline, p. 39).
There is not the hint of support in Scripture for this practice. To attempt to bypass “the conscious mind” is occultism.
Foster’s descent into occultism is further evident by his recommendation of “flash prayers XE "Prayer, Flash" ” and “swish prayers XE "Prayer, Swish" ”:
“Flashing hard and straight prayers at people is a great thrill and can bring interesting results. I have tried it, inwardly asking the joy of the Lord and a deeper awareness of His presence to rise up within every person I meet. Sometimes people reveal no response, but other times they turn and smile as if addressed. In a bus or plane we can fancy Jesus walking down the aisles touching people on the shoulder and saying, ‘I love you...’ Frank Laubach has suggested that if thousands of us would experiment with ‘swishing prayers’ at everyone we meet and would share the results, we could learn a great deal about how to pray for others. ... ‘Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance’” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 39).
This depicts prayer as an occultic entity rather than a simple communication addressed to God.
Foster also recommends a practice called “palms up, palms down.” The practitioner is instructed first to hold his palms down in order to “release” his worries and concerns, such as anger, lack of finances, or fear of an upcoming event.
“Whatever it is that weighs on your mind or is a concern to you, just say, ‘palms down.’ Release it. YOU MAY EVEN FEEL A CERTAIN SENSE OF RELEASE IN YOUR HANDS” (Celebration of Discipline, 1998, p. 31).
Then the practitioner is to turn his palms up in order to “receive from the Lord.”
“Perhaps you will pray silently: ‘Lord, I would like to receive your divine love for John, your peace about the dentist appointment, your patience, your joy.’ Whatever you need, you say, ‘palms up.’”
There is not a hint of support for such a thing in Scripture, but this practice is found in New Age and pagan religions.
Palms up, palms down is used in walking the labyrinth (http://www.lessons4living.com/three_fold_path.htm).
It is used in Nia Technique to channel energy fields (http://www.nianow.com/teachers/continuingedu/sharingthejoy/0606/t_tip.html).
It is used in Tai Chi to manipulate the flow of the occultic chi energy (http://groups.ku.edu/~kungfu/instructions/instructions.htm).
Sufi dervishes hold one palm up and one palm down while whirling in order to channel their mystical experiences. I have observed this in Turkey.
Union with God
Foster has adopted the contemplative doctrine of union with God. XE "Union with God" To the question, “What is the goal of Contemplative Prayer?” Foster answers:
“To this question the old writers answer with one voice: UNION WITH GOD. ... Bonaventure XE "Bonaventure" , a follower of Saint Francis XE "Francis of Assisi" , says that our final goal is ‘union with God,’ which is A PURE RELATIONSHIP WHERE WE SEE ‘NOTHING’” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 1992, p. 159).
The “old writers” are old Catholic writers, but the Bible nowhere describes or encourages such a practice. The believer’s complete relationship with God is an accomplished fact in Christ.
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:6-10).
We receive Christ by faith in the gospel, and Paul says that we are to walk in Him in the same way. It is a walk of faith. We walk “from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17). God gives the believer many wonderful “experiences” along the way, but we are not to seek after experiences; we are to be content with knowing Christ by faith.
The believer is complete in Christ and his “union” with Christ, is an accomplished fact. It is not something we have to pursue through mysticism.
Further, the believer’s relationship with Christ in this world is not an experience of “seeing nothing.” It is, rather, an experience of knowing the Saviour through faith in His written Word and through the power of the indwelling Spirit. It is an objective, mindful experience. As former Catholic priest Richard Bennett says, “Seeing ‘nothing’ [is] just an Evangelical rehashing of Catholic irrational superstitious myth.”
Promoting Heretics
God’s Word commands us to mark and avoid those who cause divisions contrary to the apostolic faith (Romans 16:17), but Foster ignores this and draws his material from a bewildering assortment of heretics.
The following are just a few of the many examples we could give of the man’s disturbing, dangerous, and unbiblical habit of quoting heretics in the most recommending manner.
For a starter, as we have noted, he asks his readers to join hands with Catholic “saints” and mystics (all of whom are committed to a gospel of works and many of whom are pantheists, panentheists, and universalists). (See the chapter “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics” for studies on Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Catherine of Genoa, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Madame Guyon, Thomas à Kempis, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Karl Rahner, John Main, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, Brennan Manning, John Michael Talbot, and others cited by Foster.)
Foster quotes ALPHONSUS DE LIGUORI XE "De Liguori, Alphonsus" (he spells his name Luguori) at least three times in Celebration of Discipline (1978, pp. 132-134). Liguori was one of the greatest worshippers of Mary XE "Mary" the Roman Catholic Church has ever produced. His book The Glories of Mary (1750) is a simply blasphemous. Note the following quotations:
“... though the sinner does not himself merit the graces which he asks, yet he receives them, because this Blessed Virgin asks and obtains them from God, ON ACCOUNT OF HER OWN MERITS” (The Glories of Mary, edited by Eugene Grimm, Brooklyn: Redemptorist Fathers, 1931, p. 73).
“IT WAS THEN BY THIS GREAT OFFERING OF MARY THAT WE WERE BORN TO THE LIFE OF GRACE; WE ARE THEREFORE HER VERY DEAR CHILDREN, SINCE WE COST HER SO GREAT SUFFERING” (p. 59).
“This was revealed by our Blessed Lady herself to St. Bridget, saying, ‘I am the Queen of heaven and the Mother of Mercy; I AM THE JOY OF THE JUST, AND THE DOOR THROUGH WHICH SINNERS ARE BROUGHT TO GOD” (p. 43).
“Let us, then, have recourse, and always have recourse, to this most sweet Queen, IF WE WOULD BE CERTAIN OF SALVATION ... LET US REMEMBER THAT IT IS IN ORDER TO SAVE THE GREATEST AND MOST ABANDONED SINNERS, who recommend themselves to her, that Mary is made the Queen of Mercy” (pp. 43,44).
Foster heavily promotes the Catholic Trappist monk THOMAS MERTON XE "Merton, Thomas" , recommending many of his books and quoting from him frequently, at least 15 times in Celebration of Discipline, not giving the slightest warning about the man. Foster says that Merton “has done more than any other twentieth century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood” (Spiritual Classics, pp. 17, 21). He calls Merton’s Contemplative Prayer “a must book” and What Is Contemplation “an excellent introduction to contemplative prayer for everyone.” In Meditative Prayer, Foster gushes that “Merton continues to inspire countless men and women.” Foster includes an entire chapter by Merton in his book Spiritual Classics.
Foster does not tell his readers that Merton was at the forefront of interfaith dialogue, that he claimed to be both a Buddhist and a Catholic, that he had powerful mystical experiences while meditating before Buddha idols, and that he was a universalist. Nowhere did Merton say that Buddhists and Hindus and Sufis worship false gods or that they are hell-bound because they do not believe in Jesus. When writing about Zen Buddhists, Merton always assumed that they were communing with the same “ground of Being” that he had found through Catholic monasticism.
Foster recommends the universalist mystic MEISTER ECKHART XE "Eckhart, Meister" , quoting him at least two times in various editions of Celebration of Discipline and saying, “Today Eckhart is widely read and appreciated, not so much for his theological opinions as for his vision of God” (Spiritual Classics, p. 206). How can Eckhart have had a proper vision of God when he believed that God is everything and that man is divinity?
Foster recommends the universalist DOROTHY DAY XE "Day, Dorothy" . He has an entire chapter by and about her in his book Spiritual Classics. Day wrote:
“Going to the people is the purest and best act in Christian tradition and revolutionary tradition [she is referring to Marxism] and is the beginning of world brotherhood. Never to be severed from the people, to set out always from the point of view of serving the people, not serving the interests of a small group or oneself. ... It is almost another way of saying that we must and will FIND CHRIST IN EACH AND EVERY MAN, when we look on them as brothers” (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness).
Foster promotes KARL RAHNER XE "Rahner, Karl" . There is a chapter by him in Spiritual Classics. Yet he believed in evolution and in salvation apart from faith in Christ. He spoke of the “anonymous Christian,” referring to an individual who unconsciously responds to God’s grace operating in the world, though he might even reject the gospel.
Foster promotes Benedictine priest JOHN MAIN XE "Main, John" , saying that he “understood well the value of both silence and solitude” and he “rediscovered meditation while living in the Far East” (Spiritual Classics, p. 155). Indeed, he did. Main learned meditation from a Hindu guru! Main combined Catholic contemplative practices with yoga and in 1975 began founding meditation groups in Catholic monasteries based on this syncretism.
Foster recommends HILDEGARD OF BINGEN XE "Hildegard of Bingen" . There is an entire chapter by her in Spiritual Classics. She had wild-eyed visions and wrote as the direct mouthpiece of God, yet her prophecies taught Catholic heresies, including the veneration of Mary. One of her songs was entitled “Praise for the Mother.”
Foster recommends AGNES SANFORD XE "Sanford, Agnes" , saying, “I have discovered her to be an extremely wise and skillful counselor in these matters” and calls her book The Healing Gifts of the Spirit “an excellent resource” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 136, footnote 1). Foster includes an entire chapter by Sanford in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home and another chapter by her in Spiritual Disciplines. Sanford delved deeply into New Thought, Jungian psychology, and other dangerous fields. She said that she got her doctrine that there is a “spiritual body” within the physical body from New Thought teacher Emmet Fox XE "Fox, Emmet" (Sealed Orders, p. 115), who also believed that man is God. Sanford was a universalist and the founder of the dangerous field of healing of memories. She taught healing XE "Healing" through meditation, visualization XE "Visualization" , and positive confession. She said that if she spilled hot oil on her hand in the kitchen, she would confess: “I’m boss inside of me. And what I say goes. I say that my skin shall not be affected by that boiling fat, and that’s all there is to it. I see my skin well, perfect and whole, and I say it’s to be so” (The Healing Light, p. 65). (For more about Sanford see the report “Agnes Sanford” at the Way of Life web site.)
Foster recommends MARTIN MARTY XE "Marty, Martin" , who wrote the foreword to Streams of Living Water. Yet Marty is a relativist and a modernist who denies the divine inspiration of the Bible and eternal judgment in hell. Marty supports abortion and the ordination of homosexuals, and in an interview with Playboy in 1974 he recommended adultery in some situations.
Foster quotes HARVEY COX XE "Cox, Harvey" , who repudiates the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith and has described himself as a fellow traveler of the Hare Krishna movement.
Foster also quotes sympathetically and non-critically from the psychoanalyst CARL JUNG XE "Jung, Carl" who rejected the Bible as mythical and communicated intimately throughout his life with a spirit guide.
Foster even recommends New Age mystics. He quotes MARTIN BUBER XE "Buber, Martin" , who rejected the God of the Bible and the fall of man and believed that God is found through interaction with human society and non-doctrinal mysticism. Buber believed that the Bible is largely mythical.
Foster quotes ELIZABETH O’CONNOR XE "O'Connor, Elizabeth" , who was a universalist and praised the Hindu guru Krishnamurti. O’Connor believed that Christ has saved all of mankind and is creating a new world through social-justice action. There is no need for individuals to be saved; they are already children of God and merely need to find God’s will for their lives and see “the divine life throbbing in the whole of the world” (O’Connor, “Each of Us Has Something Grand to Do,” Faith At Work magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1979).
Foster recommends the writings of DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD XE "Hammarskjöld, Dag" (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 62; Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 33; Spiritual Classics, p. 156, 251-260). He was a universalist who built the UN Chapel XE "United Nations" XE "United Nations Chapel" XE "New Age" in 1952 as a New Age meditation center. There is a six-and-a-half ton block of iron ore in the center of the room, the polished top of which is lit by a single beam of light from the ceiling. The light depicts “divine wisdom,” and the block depicts an empty altar representing “God worshipped in many forms” (http://www.aquaac.org/un/sprtatun.html). The iron ore also represents the metal from which weapons are made and the New Age hope that through the power of meditation world peace can be achieved XE "Disarmament" . Hammarskjöld said, “... we thought we could bless by our thoughts the very material out of which arms are made.”
Foster recommends PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN XE "Teilhard, Pierre" . He includes a chapter by him in Spiritual Disciplines. Teilhard taught that God is the consciousness of the universe, that everything is one, and that everything is evolving in greater and greater enlightenment toward an ultimate point of perfection. He called this perfection CHRIST and THE OMEGA POINT. Teilhard spoke much of Christ, but his christ is not the Christ of the Bible XE "Omega Point" . For this reason, Teilhard is a favorite with New Agers.
Foster also recommends the writings of pagan mystics LAO-TSE XE "Lao-tse" of China (founder of Taoism XE "Taoism" ) and ZARATHUSTRA XE "Zarathustra" of Persia (founder of Zoroastrianism XE "Zoroastrian" ) (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 62).
These are only some of the heretics that Foster quotes and recommends in his books!
“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17).
Renovarè: Foster’s ecumenical program
In 1988 Foster founded RENOVARÈ XE "Renovarè" (pronounced ren-o-var-ay), which is Latin, meaning “to make new spiritually.” This is an ecumenical organization that promotes spiritual renewal through contemplative exercises, charismatic practices, and other things.
Renovarè’s ecumenical thrust XE "Ecumenism" is radical. Its objective is “to work for the renewal of the Church of Jesus Christ in all her multifaceted expressions.” Its slogan is “Christian in commitment, international in scope, ecumenical in breadth.” Renovarè’s ministry team represents men and women “from Mennonite to Methodist, Roman Catholic to Church of God in Christ, Assembly of God to American Baptist.”
Foster describes the breadth his ecumenical vision in these words:
“God is gathering his people once again, creating of them an all-inclusive community of loving persons with Jesus Christ as the community’s prime sustainer and most glorious inhabitant. This community is breaking forth in multiplied ways and varied forms. ...
“I see a Catholic monk from the hills of Kentucky standing alongside a Baptist evangelist from the streets of Los Angeles and together offering up a sacrifice of praise. I see a people” (Streams of Living Water, 2001, p. 274).
In his book Streams of Living Water Foster “celebrates the great traditions of the Christian faith.” These are contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational, claiming that all are “true streams flowing from the fountain of Jesus Christ.” In emerging church fashion, he believes that these “traditions,” which represent diverse and contradictory doctrines and practices, are “complementary” and needed.
At the October 1991 Renovarè meeting in Pasadena, California, Foster praised Pope John Paul II XE "John Paul II" and called for unity in the Body of Christ” (CIB Bulletin, December 1991).
In Renovarè Foster works closely with Dallas Willard XE "Willard, Dallas" . Willard attended Foster’s Quaker church in the 1970s, and today he is one of Renovarè’s Ministry Team members. The Renovarè web site in March 2008 advertised an upcoming “conversation” between Willard and Foster.
Willard says that “it is possible for someone who does not know Jesus to be saved” (“Apologetics in Action,” Cutting Edge magazine, winter 2001, vol. 5 no. 1, Vineyard USA, http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=14).
Anti-Dispensationalism/Kingdom Gospel
Foster calls Dispensationalism a “heresy” XE "Anti-Dispensationalism" (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 46, footnote). Thus, he believes that Christians are building the kingdom of God today and that Christ’s coming is not imminent.
Dallas Willard believes the same thing. In his book The Divine Conspiracy he preaches a “kingdom gospel” that downplays the centrality of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. (He calls it a “theory.”) The apostle Paul said that if anyone preaches a different gospel than the one given to him by God he is accursed (Galatians 1:6-9). Paul’s gospel is plainly stated in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, and it is not a kingdom gospel. It is the gospel of personal salvation through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
We have refuted the kingdom gospel error in What Is the Emerging Church, which is available from Way of Life Literature.
Accepting the Catholic Mass
Foster allows for Rome’s abominable doctrine that the consecrated wafer of the Mass is actually the body of Christ. XE "Mass" He says it doesn’t matter to him what one believes about the “eucharist”:
“Christian people of honest heart have long differed over how the life of Christ is mediated to us through the Communion feast. Complicated words are used to make important distinctions: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, memorial, and the like. ... I have no desire to unsettle the convictions of any person, irrespective of the tradition by which he or she is able to enter fully into the Communion service” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 112).
Foster’s position sounds sympathetic and kind, but it is blantant disobedience to God’s Word, which commands us to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). The apostle Paul received directly from the Lord the teaching that the Lord’s Supper is a memorial (1 Cor. 11:23-25). Christ is not “mediated” through the Lord’s Supper in any sense, and we are not authorized to allow heresies and private doctrines not supported by Scripture. Foster refuses to exercise this obligation. He is willing to allow his Catholic readers to believe that a piece of bread becomes Christ through priestly hocus pocus and that it is perfectly acceptable to pray to this piece of bread and to venerate it as Jesus, which is what all of his Catholic mystic friends do.
The Pentecostal-Charismatic Connection
Foster is closely associated with the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. He believes this movement has wonderful and important things to offer to the “body of Christ” and he accepts some of the most radical charismatic practices, including spirit slaying, holy laughter, and spiritual drunkenness. He calls these things the “prayer of the heart” but they are actually doctrines of devils.
“Another expression of the Prayer of the Heart XE "Spirit Slaying" is what is sometimes referred to as ‘resting in the Spirit.’ It is the experience of being taken up by the Spirit’s power in such a way that the individual loses consciousness for a time. Some enter a trancelike state; others lie quietly on the ground or floor. ...
“‘Holy laughter’ is still another expression of the Prayer of the Heart. The joy of the Spirit seems to simply well up within a person until there is a bursting forth into high, holy, hilarious laughter XE "Holy Laughter" . It sometimes is given to the individual in personal prayer, but more frequently it comes upon the gathered community. That is as it should be, for laughter is, after all, a communal experience. To the uninitiated it might appear that these people are drunk, and so they are--with the Spirit” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, pp. 138, 139).
See the book The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: History and Error for a biblical refutation of these practices. This is available from Way of Life Literature.
Healing of Memories
Foster believes in the heresy of the “healing of memories,” XE "Healing of Memories" which he doubtless learned from the aforementioned Agnes Sanford XE "Sanford, Agnes" .
“My first experience was with a man who had lived in constant fear and bitterness for twenty-eight years. He would wake up at night, screaming and in a cold sweat. He lived in constant depression, so much so that his wife said that he had not laughed for many years.
“He told me the story of what had happened those many years before that had caused such a deep sadness to hang over him. He was in Italy during the Second World War and was in charge of a mission of thirty-three men. They became trapped by enemy gunfire. With deep sorrow in his eyes, this man related how he had prayed desperately that God would get them out of that mess. It was not to be. He had to send his men out two by two and watch them get killed. Finally in the early hours of the morning he was able to escape with six men--four seriously wounded. He had only a flesh wound. He told me that the experience turned him into an atheist. Certainly, his heart was filled with rage, bitterness, and guilt.
“I said, ‘Don’t you know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lives in the eternal now, can enter that old painful memory and heal it so that it will no longer control you?’ He did not know this was possible. I asked if he would mind if I prayed for him--NEVER MIND THAT HE WAS AN ATHEIST; I would have faith for him. He nodded his consent. Sitting beside him with my hand on his shoulder, I invited the Lord Jesus to go back those twenty-eight years and walk through that day with THIS GOOD MAN. ‘Please, Lord,’ I asked, ‘draw out the hurt and the hate and the sorrow and set him free.’ Clmost as an afterthought I asked for peaceful sleep to be one of the evidences of this healing work, for he had not slept well for all those years. ‘Amen.’
“The next week he came up to me with a sparkle in his eyes and a brightness on his face I had never seen before. ‘Every night I have slept soundly, and each morning I have awakened with a hymn on my mind. And I am happy ... happy for the first time in twenty-eight years.’ His wife concurred that it was so. That was many years ago, and the wonderful thing is that although this man has had the normal ups and downs of life since then, the old sorrows have never returned. He was totally and instantaneously healed” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p. 205).
The bottom line is that this experience is strictly and profoundly unscriptural. There is not a hint of such a thing taught in the Bible.
Some are impressed with the results of such practices, but if the only standard for the truth of a practice is its effectiveness, then we are left with no certain standard, because the devil can imitate many “spiritual” things. Psychics and psychoanalysists have produced the same results that Foster achieved with his “healing of memory prayer.” Note that he does not say that the man was scripturally born again through this experience. He just became happy, and the manipulation of the emotions is easily within the realm of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Foster’s Interfaith Activities
Foster is involved in the LIVING SPIRITUAL TEACHERS PROJECT XE "Living Spiritual Teachers Project" , a group that associates together Roman Catholics, liberal Protestants, Zen Buddhist XE "Buddhism" monks and nuns, universalists, occultists, and New Agers XE "New Age" . Members include the Dalai Lama, who claims to be the reincarnation of an advanced spiritual entity; Marianne Williamson, promoter of the occultic A Course in Miracles; Marcus Borg, who believes that Jesus was not virgin born and did not rise from the grave; Catholic nun Joan Chittister XE "Chittister, Joan" , who says we must become “in tune with the cosmic voice of God”; Andrew Harvey, who says that men need to “claim their divine humanity”; Matthew Fox, who believes there are many paths to God; Alan Jones, who calls the gospel of the cross a vile doctrine and says there is no absolute authority; and Desmond Tutu, who says, “... because everybody is a God-carrier, all are brothers and sisters.”
God’s Word unequivocally reproves Foster’s activity with the commandment, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).
Conclusion
Richard Foster believes he is promoting a true spiritual revival within Christianity, but he is the blind leading the blind. His writings are an exceedingly dangerous mixture of truth and error. Pastors and teachers need to warn their people to stay away from him, for “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9).
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This report is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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VISUALIZATION OR IMAGINATIVE PRAYER
VISUALIZATION OR IMAGINATIVE PRAYER
October 7, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
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Visualization or imaginative prayer is becoming popular throughout evangelicalism.
Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello calls it “fantasy prayer” and says that many of the Catholic saints practiced it (Sadhana: A Way to God, pp. 79, 82, 93). Francis of Assisi imagined taking Jesus down from the cross; Anthony of Padua imagined holding the baby Jesus in his arms and talking with him; Teresa of Avila imagined herself with Jesus in His agony in the garden.
This type of thing is an integral part of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. The practitioner is instructed to walk into biblical and extra-biblical historical scenes through the imagination and bring the scene to life by applying all five senses, seeing the events, hearing what people are saying, smelling things, and touching things--all within the realm of pure imagination. He is even to put himself into the scene, talking to the people and serving them. Ignatius encourages practitioners, for example, to imagine themselves present at Jesus’ birth and crucifixion.
Consider some excerpts from Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises:
“Imagine Christ our Lord present before you upon the cross, and begin to speak with him ...” (First Week, 53).
“Here it will be to see in imagination the length, breadth, and depth of hell. ... to see in imagination the vast fires, and the souls enclosed ... to hear the wailing ... with the sense of smell to perceive the smoke ... to taste the bitterness ... to touch the flames” (First Week, fifth exercise, 65-70).
“I will see and consider the Three Divine Persons, seated on the royal dais or throne of the Divine Majesty ... I will see our Lady and the angel saluting her. ... [I will see] our Lady, St. Joseph, the maid, and the Child Jesus after His birth. I will make myself a poor little unworthy slave, and as though present, look upon them, contemplate them, and serve them...” (Second Week, 106, 114).
“While one is eating, let him imagine he sees Christ our Lord and His disciples at table, and consider how He eats and drinks, how He looks, how He speaks, and then strive to imitate Him” (Third Week, 214).
Thomas Merton gave an example of this in his book Spiritual Direction and Meditation. He said the individual can use this technique to communicate with the infant Jesus in His nativity.
“In simple terms, the nativity of Christ the Lord in Bethlehem is not just something that I make present by fantasy. Since He is the eternal Word of God before whom time is entirely and simultaneously present, the Child born at Bethlehem ‘sees’ me here and now. That is to say, I ‘am’ present to His mind’ then.’ It follows that I can speak to Him as to one present not only in fantasy but in actual reality. This spiritual contact with the Lord is the real purpose of meditation” (p. 96).
Merton claims that this type of thing is not “fantasy,” but it is nothing else but fantasy. It is true that Christ is eternal, but nowhere are we taught by the Lord or His apostles and prophets that we should try to imagine such a conversation.
Richard Foster recommends visualizing prayer in his popular book Celebration of Discipline:
“Imagination opens the door to faith. If we can ‘see’ in our mind’s eye a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it is only a short step to believing that it will be so. ... I was once called to a home to pray for a seriously ill baby girl. Her four-year-old brother was in the room and so I told him I needed his help to pray for his baby sister. ... He climbed up into the chair beside me. ‘Let’s play a little game,’ I said. ‘Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that He is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on Him. When we see Him, we start thinking more about His love than how sick Julie is. He smiles, gets up, and comes over to us. Then let’s both put our hands on Julie and when we do, Jesus will put His hands on top of ours. We’ll watch and imagine that the light from Jesus is flowing right into your little sister and making her well. Let’s pretend that the light of Christ fights with the bad germs until they are all gone. Okay!’ Seriously the little one nodded. Together we prayed in this childlike way and then thanked the Lord that what we ‘saw’ was the way it was going to be” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 37).
This is not biblical prayer; it is occultism.
Foster recommends that parents pray for their sleeping children after this fashion:
“Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence is relaxed” (p. 39).
Foster describes “flash prayers” and “swish prayers” as follows:
“Flashing hard and straight prayers at people is a great thrill and can bring interesting results. I have tried it, inwardly asking the joy of the Lord and a deeper awareness of His presence to rise up within every person I meet. Sometimes people reveal no response, but other times they turn and smile as if addressed. In a bus or plane we can fancy Jesus walking down the aisles touching people on the shoulder and saying, ‘I love you...’ Frank Laubach has suggested that if thousands of us would experiment with ‘swishing prayers’ at everyone we meet and would share the results, we could learn a great deal about how to pray for others. ... ‘Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance’” (Celebration of Discipline, p. 39).
This depicts prayer as an occultic entity rather than a simple communication addressed to God.
THE ERROR OF VISUALIZATION PRAYER
Visualization prayer has become very popular within the modern contemplative movement, but it is heretical.
First of all, visualization prayer is disobedience. The Bible contains everything we need for faith and practice. It is able to make the man of God “perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The Bible contains everything we need to learn how to pray correctly, and it says nothing whatsoever about imagination prayer. This is not the type of prayer that Jesus taught us to pray (Matthew 6:9-15).
Second, visualization prayer is vain and foolish because it is pure fantasy. We can’t imagine Jesus’ birth beyond the simple facts described in Scripture. We don’t know what Mary or Joseph or baby Jesus or the room or the manger or the angels or the shepherds or the wise men looked like. We don’t know what they said to one another. We don’t know the temperature or the exact smells and tastes. If I try to imagine such things I am entering into the realm of pure fantasy.
Third, visualization prayer is not faith. Faith is not based on imagination; it is based on Scripture. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). God has given us everything we need in Scripture and our part is to believe what God says. “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31). We have everything we need to know about Christ for the present in the Scripture, and we accept it by faith. “Whom HAVING NOT SEEN, ye love; in whom, THOUGH NOW YE SEE HIM NOT, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).
Fourth, visualization prayer is presumptuous because it goes beyond divine Revelation. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” By going beyond what the Bible says and trying to delve into Bible history through the imagination, I am leaving the revealed things and entering the secret things.
Fifth, visualization prayer is dangerous. It is dangerous because it adds to Scripture. If I get in the habit of visualizing Bible scenes, I can easily think that my visualizations are authoritative. I can fall into Rome’s error of accepting extra-biblical revelations. It is also dangerous because demonic entities can involve themselves in my vain imaginings.
Consider an example given by emerging church leader Tony Jones in his book The Sacred Way. His friend Mike King made John 1:37-39 the focus of contemplative practices at a spiritual retreat. While practicing the Ignatian exercise of imaginative prayer he put himself into the biblical scene. He imagined himself sitting around John’s breakfast fire with the disciples, listening as they carried on an imaginative conversation. He imagined seeing Jesus approach and embrace John. He imagined hearing them tell stores of their childhood. He imagined them laughing. Then he imagined Jesus getting up and leaving, with John’s two disciples following. He imagined them walking into the desert and coming to a clearing, when suddenly the imagined Jesus turned around began interacting with him.
“When Jesus turned around, the two disciples of John whom I was following parted like the Red Sea and Jesus came right up to me, face to face. Jesus looked past my eyes into my heart and soul: ‘Mike, what do you want?’ I fell at the feet of Jesus and wept, pouring my heart out” (The Sacred Way, p. 79).
Notice that the imaginative prayer practitioner feels at liberty to go far beyond the words of Scripture to fantasize about the passage, creating purely fictional scenes. And observe that the Jesus that he imagines (which is certainly not the Jesus of the Bible because we do not know what that Jesus looks like and nowhere are we instructed to imagine seeing him) takes on a life of its own and interacts with him. This is either pure fiction and therefore absolutely meaningless, or it is a demonic visitation akin to a vision of Mary.
King says that he was powerfully affected by this imagined event. “That day changed me profoundly and is something I will have for the rest of my life, for Jesus said, ‘Come, and you will see...”
He thus pretends that Jesus actually said this directly to him, when in fact he only imagined it in a purely fictitious sense.
Following is an example from Youth Specialties, a large evangelical youth ministry organization. They encourage young people to imagine a conversation with Jesus along the following line:
It's a normal day like any other. You’re busy doing what you do. But as you go about your daily routine, you sense someone wanting to spend time with you. He wants you to come to him. He wants you to be with him. You definitely recognize his voice, but it's been a while since you've spent any real time together. Doesn’t he know how busy your life can be? After all, you’ve been busy doing what you do.
He sits there, hunkered down in the corner of your room waiting for you. He’s certainly not pushing himself on you, but you can definitely tell he longs to spend some time with you. You tell him that you don’t think you’ll have time to meet with him today as you head out the door again.
When you get back from your day, he’s there again, waiting for you. He smiles at you as you come in the door and asks you how your day has been. He invites you to sit down and rest for a while. You can tell he wants to hear about your day and everything else you’ve got going on in your life. He seems very proud of who you are becoming. He asks you about what seems to be pressing in on you and weighing you down. You can tell he genuinely cares about you. He wants what’s best for you. So you finally decide to sit down for a few minutes to talk with him.
You start by telling him that you can’t talk long because you still have a lot to do before bedtime. But after a few minutes of talking together, your whole world and all the worries of your day seem to simply melt away. You haven’t felt this relaxed in a long time. You find yourself pouring your heart out to him. And then he looks you right in the eyes and tells you how proud he is of you. He tells you how much he loves you and enjoys spending time together.
At that moment you realize this friend who has been waiting to talk with you day after day is Jesus. He has never made you feel guilty about blowing him off day after day. He looks at you and smiles. Its’ at that moment that you can tell for the first time in your life that you have a true friend who cares about you for who you are. The time seems to fly by as you continue talking together late into the night (“Something for Your Heart: Guided Meditation,” Youth Specialties Student Newsletter #330, Feb. 25, 2008).
This is heretical foolishness. The Lord Jesus Christ is not hunkered down in someone’s bedroom. He is enthroned in heaven at the right hand of the Father. He is not a non-judgmental Big Buddy who exists to build up my self-esteem. He is the Lord of Glory. He is kind and compassionate, but He does not exist to pamper me; I exist to glorify Him!
Observe that this guided meditation mentions nothing about the confession of sin or repentance from sin, nothing about the necessity of obedience and walking in the fear of God and separation from evil in order to maintain fellowship with Christ. The Bible, though, says:
“If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:6-9).
Calvin Miller claims that “imagination stands at the front of our relationship with Christ.” He says:
“I drink the glory [of Christ’s] hazel eyes ... his auburn hair. ... What? Do you disagree? His hair is black? Eyes brown? Then have it your way. ... His image must be real to you as to me, even if our images differ. The key to vitality, however, is the image” (The Table of Inwardness, InterVarsity Press, 1984, p. 93).
Each individual can therefore have the christ of his own making through the amazing power of imagination!
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The previous is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature. This is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
FRANKLIN GRAHAM'S UNSCRIPTURAL ECUMENISM
Republished October 6, 2008 (first published February 26, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
Franklin Graham is following closely in his famous father’s footsteps, which, sadly, have led further from the Bible with each passing decade. In 1996 Franklin was named the first vice-chairman of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This was a new position with direct succession to become chairman when Billy Graham became incapacitated. Of course, this has now occurred.
Franklin Graham told the Indianapolis Star that his father’s ecumenical alliance with the Catholic Church and all other denominations “was one of the smartest things his father ever did” (“Keeping it simple, safe keeps Graham on high,” The Indianapolis Star, Thurs., June 3, 1999, p. H2).
He said: “In the early years, up in Boston, the Catholic church got behind my father’s crusade. That was a first. It took back many Protestants. They didn’t know how to handle it. But it set the example. ‘If Billy Graham is willing to work with everybody, then maybe we should too’” (The Indianapolis Star, June 3, 1999).
Franklin Graham’s ecumenical direction is evident from the various forums he frequents, the same ones attended by his father. In 1997, for example, he spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters in January, at Moody Bible Institute's Founder's Week in February, and at a Promise Keepers conference in Birmingham, Alabama, in May. That was at a time when one of the directors of Promise Keepers was a Roman Catholic.
Franklin’s 1998 crusade in Adelaide, Australia, left no question about his direction. Present at the media launch for the crusade were Catholic Archbishop Leonard Faulkner and Anglican Archbishop Ian George. The Festival South Australia News said, “The Archbishops agreed that Festival SA with Franklin Graham next January would be the greatest event the churches have seen in this State’s history.” Almost 400 churches registered for Graham’s Christian Life & Witness Course which was conducted in preparation for the crusade. Twenty-three denominations were represented. The churches included 49 Roman Catholic (false grace plus works gospel), 82 Uniting Church (ultra liberal), 30 Churches of Christ (baptismal regeneration), 25 Anglican (mostly liberal), 1 Greek Orthodox (sacramental gospel), and 3 Seventh-day Adventist (Ellen White is a prophetess, death is only sleep, and punishment in hell is not eternal).
These churches, taken as a whole, represent a hodgepodge of apostasy and doctrinal error. God plainly forbids His people to yoke together with such confusion. “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 9-11).
The Uniting Church in Australia is very modernistic and apostate. The Uniting Church in Paddington, Australia, for example, recently placed a 12-foot-square banner over its entrance declaring that the church is a SAFE PLACE for homosexuals, a place they are accepted and can be open “about their sexuality” (Australian Beacon, Feb. 1998, p. 2). The Paddington Uniting Church’s pastor, Rod Pattenden, told the media, "We want to let gays and lesbians know that they are very welcome in this parish." He said that at least one-third of Paddington’s Eastside Parish is made up of homosexuals.
The Roman Catholic Church is a false “church” with a false gospel (grace plus works, faith plus sacraments), a false authority (the Bible plus Catholic tradition), and a false head (the pope). The New Catholic Catechism says: “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation” (1129). Our book Evangelicals and Rome reviews Catholic heresies which were reaffirmed by the Vatican II Council and the New Catholic Catechism.
Those who responded to the Gospel invitation at the Franklin Graham crusade were sent to the aforementioned sponsoring churches for "discipleship." Thus we again have the strange sight of a supposed shepherd happily and willfully giving his sheep into the hands of wolves. This is the most spiritually-doctrinally confused hour which the world has ever seen.
The Vice-Chairman for the Franklin Graham Festival in Lubbock, Texas, April 28-30, 2000, was Paul Key, evangelism director for the Catholic Diocese of Lubbock. At least three of the local leaders for the “festival” are Charismatics. The Chairman was Rick Canup, an elder at Trinity Church, a charismatic congregation which formerly had ties with the Assemblies of God. The pastor of this church, Gary Kirksey, was also on the Executive Committee. Pastor Jackie White of the Charismatic Church on the Rock was another of the Vice-Chairmen (E.L. Bynum, “Franklin Graham Festival,” Plains Baptist Challenger, April 2000, p. 1). Paul Key was a Presbyterian minister for 18 years before converting to Catholicism. He has written a book entitled “95 Reasons for Becoming and Remaining a Catholic.”
Roman Catholics participated in Franklin Graham Festivals in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 2005, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2004 (“Central Canada 2006 Franklin Graham Festival Background and Pastoral Notes for Catholic Clergy and Workers,” by Luis Melo, Director of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Affairs, Archdiocese of Saint Boniface, n.d.).
Many Roman Catholics were trained as counsellors for the Franklin Graham Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, July 7-9, 2006. Catholic priest Erik Arnold of the Church of the Crucifixion in Glen Burnie, Maryland, led the team of 225 Catholics who participated in the crusade. He said, “It was a great opportunity for the Christian churches to show their unity in leading people to Christ” (“Catholic Counselors Attend Billy Graham Festival,” The Catholic Review, July 12, 2006). The Graham organization delivered the names of 300 people to the Roman Catholics for “follow up,” and these received a letter from Cardinal William Keller “encouraging them in their faith and inviting them to get involved in the church.” They will be taught, among a multitude of other heresies, that it is acceptable to pray to Mary. In fact, some of the counsellors are from the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore.
Roman Catholics also participated in the Franklin Graham Festival in Winnipeg, Canada, in October 2006. The previous year the Graham team approached the Catholic bishops in Winnipeg soliciting their support and involvement (“Central Canada 2006 Franklin Graham Festival Background and Pastoral Notes for Catholic Clergy and Workers,” by Luis Melo, Director of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Affairs, Archdiocese of Saint Boniface, n.d.). In response, each archdiocese in central Canada had official representation on the Festival Executive Committee, and various parishes provided workers to be trained as counsellors and to provide follow up. The Catholics were told: “Following in the footsteps of his father, Franklin Graham will present basic Christianity. The Catholic will hear no slighting of the Church's teaching on Mary or authority, nor of papal or Episcopal prerogative; no word against the Mass/Divine Liturgy or sacraments, nor of Catholic practices or customs” (Ibid.).
In an interview with Katie Couric on NBC television on April 2, 2005, Franklin Graham praised the late Pope John Paul II and claimed that they preach the same gospel. Graham said: “We disagree on a lot of doctrinal issues and I guess those disagreements will always be there. At the same time we did agree on the fundamentals that Jesus Christ is the son of the living God who came to this earth to die for our sins and when he died on that cross and shed his blood he took the sins of the world with him on the cross; and if we confess our sins and repent and by faith receive Christ into our hearts God will forgive us and cleanse us. These are fundamentals of the faith we agreed on and support and we appreciate this man and the stand he has taken on so many of these moral issues.”
We are glad that Franklin believes and preaches the gospel described in this testimony (apart from the “receiving Christ into the heart” part, which is not scriptural), but he seriously misrepresented the Pope’s gospel. The late Pope believed that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through Christ alone by faith alone is heresy (the anathemas of the Council of Trent against the gospel of grace alone have never been rescinded). He believed that the sacraments are a necessary part of salvation, beginning with baptism, whereby one is born again, continuing in Confirmation, whereby one receives the Holy Spirit. Speaking at the confirmation of 800 young people at Turin, Italy, Sept. 2, 1988, Pope John Paul II said: “Jesus comes close to us; he enters our history precisely by means of these concrete, visible sacramental signs. ... Confirmation is your personal Pentecost. Today you receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who on the day of Pentecost was sent by the risen Lord upon the Apostles. Every baptized person as a believer needs to receive the moment and mystery of Pentecost; it completes and perfects the gift of Baptism” (L’osservatore Romano, N. 38, Sept. 19, 1988, p. 16). Nine days later, speaking in Harare, John Paul II said to the crowd gathered in Borrowdale Park: “You have thus become a new people, reborn in the Sacrament of Baptism, nourished by the Holy Eucharist, living in loving communion with God and with one another with the Successor of Peter and the Catholic Church throughout the world” (Ibid., p. 2).
In an April 5, 2005, appearance on Hannity & Colmes on the Fox News television network, Franklin Graham was asked the following question by Sean Hannity (who is Roman Catholic): “Let me ask you this, what are some of the disagreements -- we only have 30 seconds this segment -- between, say, Catholicism and evangelical Christians? Or is it just more that you agree on than disagree on?” Graham replied: “Well, there are a lot of doctrinal issues that we disagree on. But the things that we do agree on are the cross, that Jesus Christ was the son of the living God who went to the cross, took our sins, died on that cross, was buried on the third day, according to the scriptures, rose again. And this is the essence. This is what we agree on and we can work together on and can build on.”
It is commendable for Graham to preach the Gospel on television, and I understand that he had limited time (although his time on the show did not end with that segment) and wanted to focus on the Gospel; but that does not excuse the fact that his reply was artful, erroneous, and dangerous. It was artful in that he refused to state any of Rome’s serious doctrinal heresies. It was erroneous because he said the Roman Catholic Church believes in the cross and salvation the same way that “evangelicals” do, which it certainly does not. This erroneous statement would have given Graham’s Roman Catholic listeners a false sense of security in their faith-works-sacraments gospel. Graham’s statement was dangerous because he said that evangelicals and Catholics need to work together and build on their agreements, whereas the Bible commands God’s people to separate from heresy and apostasy (e.g., Rom. 16:17; 2 Tim. 3:5) and an unscriptural unity plays more into the hands of the antichrist than Christ.
Franklin Graham not only praised the late Pope, he attended the coronation of the new one. Speaking on Larry King Live, April 2, 2005, Billy Graham said: “I don’t have the physical strength to go, and I have been invited. I was invited about six or seven months ago by the Vatican ahead of time. And they’ve asked that I come. So I’m asking my daughter, Anne Lotz, to go [to Pope John Paul II’s funeral]. ... And then my son, Franklin, will be going to the enthronement of the new Pope [Benedict XVI].”
More than any other one man, Billy Graham paved the way for the widespread acceptance of a Catholic Pope by Protestants and Baptists. Graham’s groundbreaking ecumenical evangelism, which downplayed doctrine and exalted experiential religious unity, stretches back more than half a century.
Though bolder than his famous father in some respects, Franklin is walking in this same disobedient path in the ecumenical realm.
For more information see the following:
“Billy Graham’s Disobedience to the Word of God” - http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns/fbns15.html
“Billy Graham and Rome” - http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/grahamrome1.htm
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
HYPNOSIS AND HEALTH CARE
HYPNOSIS AND HEALTH CARE
October 1, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The following is excerpted from the August 2008 edition of THE NEW AGE TOWER OF BABEL by David Cloud. This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
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This is “an induced altered state of consciousness in which the subject becomes passive and is responsive to suggestion” (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience). The term hypnosis comes from hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, and was coined by James Braid, a 19th-century British mesmerist.
Hypnosis is used widely in medicine and psychology. Donald Connery, in Exploring Hypnosis, says, “There is greater interest in and employment of medical hypnosis than ever before in history.” The American Medical Association approved the use of hypnosis in 1958. Courses on hypnosis are taught in many medical schools and an estimated 20,000 medical and psychological specialists use it (“Hypnosis,” Encyclopedia of new Age Beliefs).
It is used in pain relief, anesthesiology, drug and alcohol abuse treatment, weight control, birth control, sleep therapy, physical healing, psychological healing, self improvement, human potential, regression therapy (healing the present through recovering the past), and many other ways.
When used in the field of modern health care, the idea is that the practice of hypnotism itself is innocent and useful and can be divorced from its occultic associations, but this is impossible. Hypnotism arose from occultism and remains intimately associated with occultism. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology says: “Hypnotism is no longer classed with the occult sciences. ... Nevertheless its history is inextricably interwoven with occultism, and even today much hypnotic phenomena is classed as ‘spiritualistic.’”
The history of hypnotism extends back to ancient pagan religions. The Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs observes: “In various forms, hypnotism can be found in every culture in every age. Historically, it is typically associated with the occultist or psychic, the one who exercises power over things or persons, such as the shaman, magician, witch doctor, medium, witch, guru, or yogi.”
In the 18th century, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) communicated with spirits through a trance state induced by breath control. It was called somnambulance. In 1788, a Swedenborgian society in Stockholm reported to a sister society in France a number of cases in which somnambulists had transmitted messages from the spirit world (Slater Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism).
Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an astrologer and occultist, proposed a healing technique through hypnosis and the flow of “animal magnetism” from the practitioner to the patient. He held the occultic view that there are thousands of channels in our bodies through which an invisible life force flows and that illness is caused by blockages. The practitioner of animal magnetism could allegedly cure sicknesses by overcoming the obstacles and restoring the flow. The term “to mesmerize” is based on Mesmer’s hypnotic practices, and the field of modern hypnotism stemmed from his techniques.
Mesmerization or hypnosis produced two occultic movements in the 19th century.
One of these was the New Thought or Mind Science movement. Phineas Quimby (1802-66), a student of Mesmer, called his “mind healing” theories the Science of Health and had a deep influence on Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
The other occultic movement produced by hypnotism was spiritism. Another Mesmer student, Andrew Jackson Davis, published a book in 1847 which he said was dictated to him by spirits while he was in a mesmeric trance. The Encyclopedia of Psychic Science says, “The conquest by spiritualism soon began and the leading Mesmerists were absorbed into the rank of the spiritualists.”
The spiritist revival in Brazil also began with hypnosis. French educator Leon-Denizarth-Hippolyte Rivail was led through hypnosis to communication with spirits. His spirit guide instructed him to take the name Allan Kardec, and under this name he wrote the very influential The Book of the Spirits (1857).
John Ankerberg observes: “Mesmerism, then, paved the way for occult revival. And there is an ominous parallel today in the great upsurge of interest in hypnotism as both an occult method and a medical-diagnostic tool. ... Whatever their differences, one fact is admitted by all. The phenomenon of mesmerism is today known as hypnotism” (The Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs).
The danger of hypnotism is evident from the fact that it can produce a wide variety of occult phenomena, including past life experiences, multiple personalities, speaking in unknown languages, automatic writing, clairvoyance, telepathy, seizures, spirit possession, astral projection, and psychic diagnosis (“Hypnotism,” Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs).
One famous example of multiple personalities that developed through hypnosis is Susan Houdelette. She was a normal woman who sought the help of a therapist to quit smoking, but when placed under hypnosis she developed 239 different personalities!
There is an entire field of repressed memory syndrome whereby supposed hidden memories are recovered through hypnosis and other techniques. What has often been recovered, though, are fantasies that are then seen by the patients as reality. “... there are thousands of victims today who, because of hypnotic regression, only think that they were subject to sexual or satanic abuse as children. This has resulted in great tragedies, including ruined families (where parents were the alleged abusers or Satanists) and patients who committed suicide. Because thousands of families have been torn apart by things like this, a national organization has been formed specifically to draw attention to the problem and to help victims of what is termed the ‘false memory syndrome’” (Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs).
Many support hypnotic therapy because “it works,” but just because something works does not mean it is right. There are innate powers within man that can be manipulated and there are Satanic powers. The magicians in Egypt were able to perform amazing feats and could even duplicate some of the divine miracles (Exodus 7:10-12, 19-22; 8:5-7).
Further, it must be understood that hypnotic healing often results in “symptom substitution,” whereby victory in one area results in defeat in another. One woman who lost her fear of spiders developed a strong addiction to alcoholic. Another who found relief from gall-stone pain began to suffer from terrible outbursts of rage. Dr. Kurt Koch, a Christian expert in occultic phenomena, warned: “I could quote many examples like this involving so-called harmless hypnotists. ... The unfortunate thing is that occult hypnosis is often used as a means of obtaining healing. The apparent success of the hypnosis, however, is accompanied without fail with all sorts of mental and emotional disturbances” (Demonology Past and Present, 1973, p. 128).
Even though hypnotism has been “secularized” and brought into the fields of health care and education, it is still intimately associated with the occult.
It is one of the most prominent techniques in the New Ager’s toolbox. It is used as the door to astral planes, as the key to uncovering UFO abductions, and as a wonder tool to help people develop psychic powers. Simeon Edmunds, author of The Book of Hypnosis, says the first step to the development of psychic power is to enter the deepest possible level of hypnosis. In Hypnotism and the Supernormal, Edmunds says that “many of the most famous spiritualistic mediums began their psychic careers as hypnotic subjects, and hypnosis has been used with marked success in the development of a number of others.”
Hypnosis is used by channelers to prepare themselves for communication with spirits. For example, Esther Hicks, the channeler of Abraham, makes contact with her spirits through self-induced hypnotic trance. Further, various channeled spirits have actually recommended the practice of hypnosis.
Hypnosis is used to recover the events of alleged past lives. As a member of the Self-Realization Fellowship Society before I was converted to Jesus Christ, I was taught a method of hypnosis or guided imagery which was supposed to allow me to investigate my past lives. Some who have used this technique have actually seen places in their “imagination” that they have never before visited only to discover them later while traveling.
This is a fearful demonic deception, because the Bible says man lives once and then faces judgment (Heb. 9:27). If reincarnation is true, the Bible is a lie.
Yet hypnosis persistently results in past life recovery. One study of 6,000 hypnotized subjects found that 20% reported “earlier lives” (Deidre and Martin Bobgan, Hypnosis and the Christian, p. 23). And this is true even when it is used by therapists who don’t believe in reincarnation. For example, psychologist Diana Denholm first used hypnosis to help people stop smoking and lose weight and other such things, but when some of her patients experienced “past lives” she became convinced of its reality. She now uses regression therapy regularly (Raymond Moody, Coming Back: A Psychiatrist Explores Past-Life Journeys, pp. 12-13). Psychiatrist Brian Weiss, author of Many Lives, Many Masters, is another example. He became a believer in reincarnation when one of his female patients, while under hypnosis, described past lives.
The fact that hypnosis is so intimately associated with the occult and communication with spiritual realms forbidden in Scripture is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear (Leviticus 19:31; Deuteronomy 18:10-12). The wise Christian will stay far away from anything savoring of the occult! Playing with such things is like a child playing with fire.
The Bible exhorts the believer to be sober (1 Peter 5:8). To be sober means to be in control of one’s mind, to be spiritually and mentally alert. It means to be on guard against danger. It is the opposite of allowing oneself to be put into a trance or emptying one’s mind in “contemplative devotion.” The Bible warns that demons transform themselves into angels of light (2 Cor. 11:13-15). Unless the believer remains sober and vigilant, he is in danger of being deceived. Thus, even a “mild” level of hypnotism can be spiritually dangerous.
The fact that hypnosis is used today by Christian psychologists and doctors, does not justify it. We live in an apostate age of illicit ecumenism, syncretism, and interfaith dialogue, an age in which multitudes of professing Christians have turned their ears from the truth and have turned to fables (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Instead of standing on the Bible alone as the sole authority for faith and practice, professing Christians are delving into forbidden realms and mixing the truth together with lies. The white of truth and the black of error have been intermingled to become the gray of compromise.
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The following is excerpted from the August 2008 edition of THE NEW AGE TOWER OF BABEL by David Cloud. This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]