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THE NEW AGE’S VAIN DREAM

With the turn of the twenty-first century there has been a dramatic increase in the popularity and influence of New Age thought. It is also called Human Potential, New Spirituality, Self Spirituality, Self Empowerment, Alternative Spirituality, and Global Transformation.

Two decades ago the New Age seemed to be more the doctrine of Hollywood movie stars (Shirley MacLaine’s “I am God”) and Star Wars enthusiasts (“may the force be with you”) and the magic-crystal pop culture of rock & roll hippies than the philosophy of the average person or something to be taken seriously in churches.

As we will see, this wasn’t true then, and it definitely isn’t true today. The New Age is on the move!

The New Age philosophy has permeated the self-help, personal transformation field; it has leavened education and reached deeply into business, health care, psychological counseling, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, politics, government, sports, even the military.

Neil Anderson says: “It is safe to say that the prevailing religion in America ... is no longer Christianity but is instead New Age” (Christ Centered Therapy, 2000, p. 61).

Sue Monk Kidd is a very popular writer. Her first two novels, The Secret Life of Bees (2002) and The Mermaid Chair (2005), have sold more than 6 million copies and the first one is being produced as a movie. She has also written two popular books on contemplative spirituality: God’s Joyful Surprise (1988) and When the Heart Waits (1990).

She 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 Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.

It is “contemplative spirituality” that changed Kidd’s life, and her experience is a loud warning about flirting with Catholic mysticism.

Republished June 24, 2010 (first published September 11, 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. 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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Thomas Merton (1915-68), was a Roman Catholic Trappist monk whose writings are influential within Catholicism, the New Age movement, the peace movement, as well as the centering prayer movement that lies at the heart of the emerging church and that is permeating evangelicalism. Richard Foster quotes Merton at least 14 times in his popular book Celebration of Discipline.

Merton was a prolific author. Nearly 70 of his books were published during his lifetime or posthumously. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, sold 600,000 hardbound copies in its first year and millions of copies since. It has been continually in print since 1948. His books have been translated into at least 29 languages.

Merton was involved with the peace movement during the Vietnam War. He was closely associated with the pacifist anti-Americans Daniel and Philip Berrigan and Dorothy Day. The Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice carries on this philosophy.

Merton has been called “the most influential proponent of traditional monasticism in American history” (Ursula King, Christian Mystics, p. 229).

In an undated blog that I viewed on May 17, 2010, Sweet complains about his critics and pretends that he is being wrongly persecuted. He rejects the charge that he is a New Ager and says he does not believe in the divinity of man. He further (and amazingly) pretends that he is theologically sound.

Actually, the man is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He is a master of doublespeak.

“We were introduced to homeopathy recently by some folks in our church. We go to an independent fundamental Baptist church and some of the ladies in the church introduced my wife to this approach to medicine. It sounded too good to be true. My wife and I went to a meeting recently when the person presented homeopathy. She didn’t go into the occult side of things but did mention a couple times about an ‘energy.’ We were then approached by a brother in our church who said they heard that the idea of homeopathy was spreading quickly through the church ladies and warned me against this approach to medicine. He gave me an article to read from Logos which blasted homeopathy as occultic. Other articles, written by evangelicals, said it was a good approach to medicine and wasn’t occultic. So we are a little confused.”

Homeopathy is definitely associated with occultic principles. (We would note that the terms “homeopathy” and “naturopathy” are sometimes used interchangeably, but we are using them according to their official meanings.)

The man who wrote to us said, “She didn’t go into the occult side of things but did mention a couple of times about an “energy.” That is the occult side of things! Traditional medicine does not have a mystical energy!

Illustration above:

German physician Samuel Hahnemann was the founder of homeopathy. A vitalist, Dr Hahnemann believed that disease and disorder were triggered when the "vital force dominates the human body in an unopposed and dynamic way". Homeopathic healing methods are inspired by the so-called law of similars: Similia similibus curantur ["like cures like"]. Homeopaths claim that the cause of a disease-like sign or symptom in a healthy body is itself capable of curing the sign or symptom. This notion has ancient historical antecedents but is medically unsupported. Prudently, Hahnemann demanded payment of his fees in advance. from www.general-anaesthesia.com

FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1181-1226) was the founder of the Order of Friars Minor, commonly known as the Franciscans. He was canonized in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX and is the patron saint of animals, merchants, and the environment. Some Catholic churches hold ceremonies honoring animals on “the saint’s feast day,” which is October 4.

Born to the family of a wealthy nobleman, he was named Giovanni di Bernardone by his mother but Francesco by his father. When in his twenties Francis allegedly saw Jesus looking at him through the eyes of a crucifix, telling him to repair a ruined church. Absconding with a load of expensive colored drapery from his father’s shop, he sold it for gold and tried to give it to the church. His father was not pleased, and Francis, after returning the gold, renounced his father and his patrimony. He dedicated himself to celibacy and married “the Lady Poverty.”

Francis founded his religious order on the command of Christ in Matthew 10:9-10, but this is not a command for believers in this present time: Jesus said: “Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.” Francis ignored the fact that this command pertained only to the preaching of the kingdom in Israel. Jesus instructed them, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles ... But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mat. 10:5-6). They were to preach, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mat. 10:7). This is not the preaching of the gospel; it is the proclamation that the Jews should repent because their King and Messiah was in their midst! Israel rejected the preaching of the kingdom and Christ turned His attention to making the Sacrifice on Calvary that would provide salvation for all that believe. After He died and rose from the dead, Christ gave a different commandment to the disciples, instructing them to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, not just Israelites (Mk. 16:15; Acts 1:8).

HENRI NOUWEN

May 6, 2009 (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) -

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 and evangelicalism at large through his writings, and he has been an influential voice within the contemplative movement. A Christian Century magazine survey conducted in 2003 found that Nouwen’s writings were a first choice for Catholic and mainline Protestant clergy. Nouwen is promoted by Christian leaders as diverse as Robert Schuller and Rick Warren (who highly recommends Nouwen’s contemplative book In the Name of Jesus).

Nouwen’s biographer said that he “had a homosexual orientation” (Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet, 1999).

Nouwen did not instruct his readers that one must 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. Nouwen wrote:

“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).

CHIROPRACTIC

Updated March 25, 2009 (first published February 17, 2009) (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) -

Chiropractic is hugely popular. There are about 70,000 licensed practitioners in America alone, and several million people are treated annually.

Most patients who visit for the first time do so for lower back pain, neck pain, and headaches.

Chiropractic was developed in the late 19th century by Daniel D. Palmer (1845-1913), an occultist who attended spiritualist meetings. Chiropractic was an outgrowth of his “magnetic healing” or practice of hypnotism. The first chiropractic school was a part of Palmer’s magnetic healing infirmary.

At a coroner’s inquiry in 1905, Palmer refused to take the oath “so help me God,” protesting, “I don’t want any help from God” (“Osteopathy and Chiropractice,” Nov. 11, 2004, http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2004/11/osteopathy-and-chiropractic-little.html).

“The chiropractic vertebral subluxation complex has been a source of controversy and confusion since its inception in 1895 with critics both inside and outside the profession due to ITS METAPHYSICAL ORIGINS and claims of far reaching effects” (Wikipedia).

 
Palmer’s son, Bartlett (1882-1961), who was also involved in the occult, was responsible for popularizing chiropractic and establishing it as an acceptable medical practice.

“The U.N. has coddled brutal dictators, anti-Semites, state sponsors of terrorism, and nuclear proliferators--while excluding democratic countries from membership and turning a blind eye to humanitarian tragedies and gross violations of human rights around the globe. I refuse to sit idly by while Americans are forced to host Islamofascist dictators, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so they can spew anti-American rhetoric just blocks from Ground Zero. ... If the U.N. is so keen to accommodate the foreign policy demands of rogue nations and dictatorships, perhaps the world body might be more comfortable relocating to one. I’m sure Ban Ki-Moon will have no trouble securing a new location in downtown Pyongyang or Tehran” (“Bill Would Boot U.N. from U.S.” WorldNetDaily, Sept. 24, 2008).

Republished December 3, 2008 (first published May 16, 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) -

Note from the FBIS editor: A couple of years ago I witnessed the sad breakup of a Christian home, and one of the problems which came out of--and perhaps helped lead to--the breakup was the "inner healing" confusion dealt with in the following article. The wife left a fundamental Baptist church and became involved with charismatics (a Wimber group). After going through inner healing sessions she became convinced that she remembered being sexually abused by her father. Not a hint of such a thing had ever come out before. She called her father and told him she knew dogmatically and without a doubt that he had abused her! What a shocker! How did she know such a thing? Her mind had been occultically manipulated by one of these false teachers. And just as the Bobgan's testify, this wife will not listen to the voice of reason. What wickedness, confusion, and division this inner healing movement is creating. North America, having turned away from the Word of God, is being engulfed with Freudianism and other forms of self-worship. We are thankful for the Bobgans and others who are exposing this wickedness. The Bobgans’ address is Eastgate Publishers, 4137 Primavera Rd., Santa Barbara, CA 93110, http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/
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INNER HEALING: ILLUMINATION OR ILLUSION?
By Martin and Deidre Bobgan

Across America parents are receiving phone calls and correspondence that plunge them into a nightmare of accusations of abuse and incest. These are not parents of young children or teenagers. They are parents of grown children who throughout their lives had had no recollection of being sexually molested by their mother or father. Now, seemingly out of the blue, their bizarre stories are stunning their parents. These adult children, usually daughters, now claim to remember precise details of one of their parents sexually abusing them. Where do they get such ideas? Where do those sordid memories come from? What brings them to the surface? Inner healing and other forms of regressive-type therapy lurk behind this surge of family horror stories.

At first the parents are stunned. They are being accused of sexual exploits that they declare they would never even think of doing. But when they try to talk to their son or daughter, their words fall on deaf ears. They are accused and condemned without a trial--all based upon alleged memories discovered through inner healing. And now they are helpless in their concern over the welfare of their adult child who will have nothing to do with them.

With the media accentuating and exaggerating the numbers of women who have been molested, nearly anyone who cries "incest" is believed beyond a doubt. And why should anyone doubt a grown woman's sudden "recall" of a memory hidden in her unconscious? After all, isn't the memory like a tape recorder or computer that faithfully records and retains every event in some deep unconscious vault of the mind? Aren't there reliable techniques that enable a person to recall past events accurately? Or, are there some problems with those assumptions?

IS THE MIND A COMPUTER?

While many writers of pop psychology continue to equate the human mind with a tape recorder or computer, those are poor and misleading analogies. Dr. John Searle, in his Reith Lecture "Minds, Brains, and Science," explained:

"Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it.

"In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ("What else could it be?") And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer. ...

"The computer is probably no better and no worse as a metaphor for the brain than earlier mechanical metaphors. We learn as much about the brain by saying it's a computer as we do by saying it's a telephone switchboard, a telegraph system, a water pump, or a steam engine" (John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Science," The 1984 Reith Lectures, London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1984, pp. 44,55,56).

What Searle is getting at is the fact that the brain is not a mechanical piece of technology.

Medical doctor-researcher Nancy Andreasen, in her book The Broken Brain, declares that "there is no accurate model or metaphor to describe how [the brain] works." She concludes that "the human brain is probably too complex to lend itself to any single metaphor" (Nancy Andreasen, The Broken Brain, New York: Harper & Row, 1984, p. 90).

Current research demonstrates that computer memory and biological memory are significantly different. In his book Remembering and Forgetting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory, Edmund Bolles refers to the human brain as "the most complicated structure in the known universe" (Edmund Bolles, Remembering and Forgetting, New York: Walker and Company, 1988, p. 139). He says,

"For several thousand years people have believed that remembering retrieves information stored somewhere in the mind. The metaphors of memory have always been metaphors of storage: We preserve images on wax; we carve them in stone; we write memories as with a pencil on paper; we file memories away; we have photographic memories; we retain facts so firmly they seem held in a steel trap. Each of these images proposes a memory warehouse where the past lies preserved like childhood souvenirs in an attic. This book reports a revolution that has overturned that vision of memory. Remembering is a creative, constructive process. There is no storehouse of information about the past anywhere in our brain" (Ibid., p. xi). [Emphasis added by authors]

After discussing the scientific basis for memory and how the brain functions, he says:

"The biggest loser in this notion of how memory works is the idea that computer memories and human memories have anything in common" (Ibid., p. 165).

He goes on to say, "Human and computer memories are as distinct as life and lightning" (Ibid.).

IS MEMORY RELIABLE?

Unlike a computer, the memory does not store everything that goes into it. First, the mind sifts through the multitude of stimuli that enter it during an actual event. then time, later events, and even later recall color or alter memories. During the creative process of recall, sketchy memories of events may be filled in with imagined details. And, an amazing amount of information is simply forgotten--gone, not just hidden away in some deep cavern of the mind. Memory is neither complete nor fixed. Nor is it accurate. As researcher Carol Tavris so aptly describes it:

"Memory is, in a word, lousy. It is a traitor at worst, a mischief-maker at best. It gives us vivid recollections of events that could never have happened, and it obscures critical details of events that did" (Carol Tavris, "The Freedom to Change," Prime Time, Oct. 1990, p. 28).

Yes, memories can even be created, not from remembering true events, but by implanting imagined events onto the mind. In fact, it is possible for implanted and enhanced memories to seem even more vivid than memories of actual past events.

Under certain conditions a person's mind is open to suggestion in such a way that illusions of memory can be received, believed, and remembered as true memories. Hypnosis, guided imagery, and inner healing are as likely to cause a person to dredge up false information as true accounts of past events. In a state of heightened suggestibility a person's memory can easily be altered and enhanced. This happens under hypnosis, through guided imagery, in age regression therapies (such as primal therapy) and during certain forms of inner healing.

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

Bernard Diamond, a professor of law and clinical professor of psychiatry, says that hypnotized persons "graft onto their memories fantasies or suggestions deliberately or unwittingly communicated by the hypnotist." Not only may they have new memories, but Diamond declares that "after hypnosis the subject cannot differentiate between a true recollection and a fantasy or a suggested detail." He notes that court witnesses who have been hypnotized "often develop a certitude about their memories that ordinary witnesses seldom exhibit." Diamond declares, "No one, regardless of experience, can verify the accuracy of the hypnotically enhanced memory" (Bernard Diamond, "Inherent Problems in the Use of Pretrial Hypnosis on a Prospective Witness," California Law Review, Mar. 1980, pp. 314,333-337,348).

The certainty of pseudomemories and the uncertainty of real memories render such activities as hypnosis and inner healing questionable at best and dangerous at worst. Because memory is so unreliable, methods of cure that rely on unearthing so-called hidden memories not only open up the possibility of human creativity but also expose the mind to possible demonic suggestion. Even though the hypnotist or inner healer may wish to protect the person from receiving false material, he cannot avoid implanting human suggestion. Nor can he prevent demonic suggestions from entering the vulnerable mind of the person who is in a heightened state of suggestibility.

Even if there are people in the room praying for the person undergoing hypnosis or inner healing, the possibility of lies and fantasies being engrafted into the memory remains. That is because of the involvement in occult activity, which is forbidden in the Bible. Hypnosis and guided imagery are both occult activities, and inner healing may involve hypnotic suggestion, guided imagery, and occult visualization. Hypnotherapist Dr. Joe M. Persinger says that the field of hypnosis "includes meditation, visualization, guided imagery, relaxation, biofeedback, and breathing techniques" (Joe M. Persinger, quoted by Sheri Graves, "Hypnosis: Exploring Deep Levels of the Mind," Santa Barbara News-Press, Sept. 20, 1989, p. D1).

Regarding the relationship between guided imagery and hypnosis, Dr. David Bressler, an authority in the field of hypnosis and imagery says, "I think they're the same thing. It's that simple." He also says, "Imagery is at the heart of all magic" (David Bressler, "The Inner Adviser Technique: The Healer Within," InfoMedix tape, Garden Grove, Calif., 1983).

John Weldon and Zola Levitt say, "We would expect that most if not all of those who are occultly healed are likely to suffer either psychologically or spiritually in some way" (John Weldon and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, Chicago: Moody Press, 1982, p. 195).

REALITY OR ILLUSION?

Those who practice inner healing should not be surprised at the possibility of altering or enhancing the memory, because there are times when they purposely attempt to replace bad memories with good memories. They do this through guided imagery and visualization. In fact, one of the seemingly attractive forms of inner healing is to have Jesus enter a painful scene from the past. The inner healer helps the person recreate the memory by having Jesus do or say things that will make the person feel better about the situation. For instance, if a man's dad had neglected him when he was a boy, an inner healer may help that man create a new memory of Jesus having played baseball with him when he was a boy. Through verbal encouragement he would regress him back to his childhood and encourage him to visualize Jesus pitching the ball and praising him for hitting a home run. Some inner healers regress people back to the womb and lead them through rebirthing by guided imagery and imagination. Thus inner healers should recognize the danger of unwittingly enhancing or engrafting memories through words or actions that mean one thing to the inner healer but may communicate something else to the highly vulnerable subject.

It is very likely that people who remember sexual abuse and incest through inner healing are remembering an illusion or distortion of reality, a destructive suggestion accidentally placed there by the inner healer, or created through a combination of stimuli, such as in a nightmare, or worse yet, implanted by demonic influence. Yet they have no doubts about their newly discovered dark memory. In fact, the certainty of the alleged memory has the mark of an hypnotically engrafted memory rather than of a distant reality. And who can or will reveal the truth to them? Probably not their church or other Christians if they have been either supportive or ignorant of inner healing.

THE TRAGIC INFLUENCE OF INNER HEALING

Many Christians have been influenced by such best-selling authors and inner healers as John and Paula Sandford, Rita Bennett, and David Seamonds. Unfortunately those Christians believe such statements as this one from Seamands:

"The realization of grace cannot be maintained in some people without an inner healing of the past. God's care cannot be felt without a deep, inner reprogramming of all the bad conditioning that has been put into them by parents and family and teachers and preachers and the church" (David Seamands, Healing for Damaged Emotions, Wheaton: Victor Books, 1981, p. 85).

Such Christian writers perpetrate false information and encourage erroneous beliefs. In spite of brain research to the contrary, they teach that the mind is like a computer and that there is an unconscious reservoir of hidden, but very powerful memories that highly influence a person's thoughts, attitudes, and actions. And they are convinced that the memories they dredge up are accurate.

This tragic example of people with newly unearthed "memories, caught in a black hole of anger, resentment, unforgiveness, accusations, separation, and confusion, is part of the picture of the damage wrought by those who honestly believe they are helping people. Inner healing practices of regressing into the past, fossicking about in the unconscious for hidden memories, conjuring up images, acting out fantasies and nightmares, and believing lies, resemble the world of the occult, not the work of the Holy Spirit. An imaginary memory created under a highly suggestible, hypnotic-like state will only bring imaginary healing. It may also plunge people into a living nightmare.

We were approached by a woman one day who asked if we knew of a Christian psychiatrist. Months earlier she had enthusiastically exclaimed how she and her daughter had attended an inner healing seminar and had been healed of all kinds of things that they did not even know existed. Now she was desperate. Her daughter was trying to deal with all of the rot that had materialized during inner healing.

The people who are most vulnerable to inner healers are those who are at a low point in their spiritual walk or who are experiencing difficult circumstances. The inner healers entice through all kinds of direct and implied promises for healing damaged emotions, healing roots in the past that prevent personal growth, and enabling a person to have a closer walk with God. They circle about congregations like vultures, waiting for the opportunity to swoop down on those who are near to dropping from spiritual exhaustion. They assure their prospective victims of their sincere desire to help and they communicate a biblical facade by using butchered Bible verses and Christian-sounding conversation.

However, once their talons pierce the person, a penetrating parasitic process begins. And the host/parasite relationship continues as long as the host continues to look to the inner healer to make him emotionally well and spiritually whole.

Instead of being healed, however, there is a very strong possibility that the recipients of inner healing are now living on the basis of a lie from the pit of hell. Inner healing is not based upon truth. It is based upon faulty memory, guided imagery, fantasy, visualization, and hypnotic-like suggestibility. And while the inner healers may conjure up a Jesus and recite Bible verses, such inner healing is not biblical. Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32).

We pray that those who have suffered under the abuse of inner healing will be set free through the truth that is in Christ Jesus.

[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]

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]

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]

CARL JUNG

July 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) -

The following is excerpted from our book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.
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Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology, has been influential, not only in society at large, but also in the New Age movement and within almost all aspects of Christianity. Jung has influenced both modernists and evangelicals. His writings are influential within the contemplative movement. He has been promoted by Paul Tillich, Morton Kelsey, John Sanford, Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell, John Spong, Richard Foster, Agnes Sanford, and Gary Thomas, to name a few. Jung’s psychological typing provides the underpinning for the Personality Profiling part of Rick Warren’s SHAPE program, which is used by countless churches and churches and institutions.

Jung (pronounced Young) has been called “the psychologist of the 21st century” (Merill Berger, The Wisdom of the Dreams, front cover).

Ed Hird says, “One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism and the New Age Movement” (Hird, “Carl Jung, Neo-Gnosticism, and the Meyers-Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI),” March 18, 1998; reprinted in Who’s Driving the Purpose Driven Church by James Sundquist, Appendix C).

Jeffrey Satinover says:

“Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity--and thus on Western culture--has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy--have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology” (Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240, quoted from Ed Hird).

Jung collaborated with Sigmund Freud from 1907 to 1912, but after a falling out they went their separate ways.

In true New Age fashion, Jung explored Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, I Ching, astrology, Spiritualism, Gnosticism, alchemy, dream interpretation, mandala symbolism, Theosophy, Greek Mythology, and more. He spent time in India studying eastern religion and folk lore. He wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism. He amassed one of the largest collections of spiritualistic writings found on the European continent (Jeffrey Santinover, The Empty Self, p. 28). Jung used the divination methods of I Ching in the 1920s and 1930s and the training program of the Jung Institute of Zurich originally included this practice (Richard Noll, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, 1994, p. 333, quoted from Ed Hird). In a letter to Freud, Jung said: “I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. ... I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively projected into the heavens” (Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong, 1995, p. 385). Beginning in 1911 Jung quoted G.R.S. Mead, a practicing Theosophist, “regularly in his works through his entire life” (Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 69).

Jung communicated with spirits all his life. He “experienced precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and haunting” (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience). His mother and maternal grandmother were “ghost seers.” His mother spent much of her time in her separate bedroom, “enthralled by the spirits that she said visited her at night” (“Carl Jung,” Wikipedia). Her family was heavily involved in séances. For many years Jung attended séances with his mother and two female cousins (John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, 1993, pp. 50, 54, quoted from Ed Hird). His grandmother, Augusta Preiswerk, “fell into a three-day trance at age twenty, during which she communicated with spirits of the dead and gave prophecies” (Harper’s).

As a child Jung felt that he had two personalities, one was himself the schoolboy and the other was a man from the 18th century. This other personality, named Philemon, had a life of its own and talked with Jung. Obviously it was a familiar spirit. When Jung had a breakdown following his separation from Sigmund Freud and was nearly suicidal he renewed communication with this spirit and Philemon became his guide. Jung said, “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. ... It was he who taught me psychic objectivity” (James Sundquist, A Review of the Purpose Driven Life). Philemon appeared to Jung variously as “an old man with the horns of a bull ... and the wings of a fisher” and as Elijah and as Salome. The latter addressed Jung as Christ (C.G. Jung: Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 86, 98).

After Jung’s split from Freud, he suffered a six-year-long breakdown “during which he had psychotic fantasies” and experienced “numerous paranormal phenomena” (Harper’s). He became immersed in “the world of the dead” and wrote the book Seven Sermons to the Dead under the name of a Gnostic writer named Basilides.

Jung’s father was a pastor, but he doubted the Christian faith. Jung openly rejected Christ. He said:

“Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart [referring to a reoccurring immoral dream he had]. ... Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death. ... Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 13).

There are other things that Jung said in relation to Christ that are even more abominable but I do not want to quote them. It is enough to say that he was a demonically-deceived blasphemer and Christ rejecter of the highest order.

Jung considered all religions to be myths, but he felt they were useful. He believed that the secret of life is found “at the mystical heart of all religions” and that it consists of a “journey of transformation” to find the true self and bring it into harmony with the Divine.

Jung said that man should love himself for in so doing he is loving Jesus, because Jesus is “you” (Bill Isley, “The Ragamuffin Gospel: A Critique,” PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries Newsletter, July-August 2003).

Jung said that Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse are all “pillars of the spirit” and that he “could give none preference over the other” (John Dourley, C.G. Jung and Paul Tillich, p. 65).

Jung believed in the “Collective Unconscious,” which is supposedly the universal consciousness of mankind that lies at a subconscious level. It apparently consists of the sum total of man’s thinking since he evolved from animals, and through psychiatry and mystical religion man can delve into this realm. Jung defined the collective consciousness as “the sediment of all the experience of the universe of all time, and is also the image of the universe that has been in process of formation from untold ages” (Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, “The Psychology of Unconscious Process,” p. 432).

This, of course, is one of the foundational doctrines of the New Age and doubtless came from Jung’s study of eastern religion and various forms of occultic mysticism such as Theosophy.

The “collective unconscious” is pure myth. Richard Webster wisely observes that “the Unconscious is not simply an occult entity for whose real existence there is no palpable evidence. It is an illusion produced by language--a kind of intellectual hallucination” (Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong, p. 250, quoted from Ed Hird).

Jung was heavily involved in trying to understand “the psyche” through dream analysis. It is a part of “depth psychology” which seeks to understand the hidden or deeper parts of human experience. He believed that dreams reflect both the personal and the “collective” unconscious and that they contain revelations as well as fantasies.

Jung held to the blasphemous gnostic belief that good and evil can be reconciled.

“For Jung, good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced, cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis. This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality, hence morality, within man himself. Hence ‘the union of opposites’” (Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240).

Jung held to the New Age-emerging church principle that “both paths are right” (Dourley, C. G. Jung and Paul Tillich, p. 279). The emerging church calls this “orthoparadoxy.”

Jung believed in reincarnation and “drew many of his beliefs from the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mysticism).

Jung believed in the power of visualization. He said that holding the mental images of Jesus and Mary has power for overcoming negativity and producing good (Bob Guste, Mary at My Side, p. 58).

Jung believed we are entering the Age of Aquarius. In a 1940 letter to Godwin Baynes he said: “1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age” (Merill Berger and Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, p. 162, quoted from Ed Hird). Jung “feared greatly for the future of humankind, and said the only salvation lay in becoming more conscious” (Harper’s). This is a reference to attaining a higher state of consciousness through psychology and mysticism.

Later in life Jung became interested in UFOs and wrote a book on the subject entitled Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.

Jung was married to the same woman for 52 years, but he had illicit relationships with other women.

His last words were, “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cjung.htm).
_________________

The following is excerpted from our book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.

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AGNES SANFORD

July 22, 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) -

Agnes White Sanford (1897-1982) was an Episcopalian faith healer who has had a great influence within the charismatic movement, the contemplative prayer movement, and the recovered memory movement. For example, Richard Foster recommends Sanford, saying, “I have discovered her to be an extremely wise and skillful counselor in these matters. Her book The Healing Gifts of the Spirit is an excellent resource” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, footnote 1, p. 136). Foster includes an entire chapter by Sanford in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home.

Her widely read books were published in the following order: The Healing Light (1947), Behold Your God (1959), Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966), Lost Shepherd (1971), Sealed Orders (1972), Healing Power of the Bible (1976), The Healing Touch of God (1983).

In her autobiography she claimed that God had given her “sealed orders” to be “an explorer and a way-shower along the paths of healing and miracles.”

SANFORD’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL BEGINNING IN CHILDHOOD

She grew up in China, the daughter of fundamentalist Presbyterian missionaries, and as a child she had several experiences that prepared her for the reception of very radical and unscriptural doctrines and practices.

The first experience was at age 11 when she decided that her parents were wrong to teach that the age of apostolic miracles was past. She thought that Christians today should do the same miracles that Jesus did (Sealed Orders, pp. 13, 26). She was dissatisfied with simply living by faith and accepting what God gives us in answer to prayer on the basis of His sovereign will. She refused to understand that though the apostolic miracles have ceased because their purpose has ceased (2 Cor. 12:12), this is not to say that God no longer does miracles or that we don’t believe in God’s miracle-working power. While the gift of healing is not operative today as it was in the days of the apostles, God still heals in accordance with James 5. But He has not promised always to heal and He did not always heal even in the days of the apostles (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:7-10; 1 Tim. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:20).

The next experience involved the rejection of biblical discernment and reproof. This occurred when the modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick visited China and her family heard him speak. Afterwards her parents criticized Fosdick’s theology at the dinner table, and she brazenly rejected what they were doing.

“Dr. Fosdick preached on Christian love, but he was not sound because he did not mention the Blood of the Lamb in about every third sentence. This went on and on until finally, I burst into tears and left the table, to the utter consternation of my parents, for such a thing I never did” (pp. 30, 31).

She grossly mischaracterized this situation. Her parents were not criticizing some very minor error in a preacher. In reality, Fosdick denied practically every doctrine of the Christian faith, including Christ’s deity, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and bodily resurrection. As for the Blood Christ, Fosdick NEVER mentioned it except to ridicule it! In 1945 Fosdick wrote the following to an individual who inquired about his beliefs: “Of course I do not believe in the virgin birth or in that old-fashioned substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, and I know of no intelligent person who does” (quoted in Chester Tulga, The Ethics of Modernism, 1981, p. 40).

Sanford was rebelling against her parents and the clear teaching of the Bible. She was rejecting the very thing that protects us from falling into error, and that is testing everything carefully by God’s Word. She said that though her parents “were completely Christ-centered and Bible-centered, believing every word of Holy Writ from cover to cover,” something was wrong with their kind of Christianity (p. 31). In fact, the problem was with Sanford and not with her parents.

Another important event was when she determined that she would not worry about “snakes” and would pursue whatever path she chose.

“I made a decision in those early days from which I have never wavered. I would not go all of my life in the bondage of treading only a known path lest I step upon a snake. I would go through untrodden country toward the goal of my choice, whether or not I trod upon a snake” (Sealed Orders, p. 32).

This was a very significant decision that was contrary to the Bible. It is fine to be willing to go in new paths if it is God’s will and it is not contrary to Scripture, but we are warned repeatedly to beware of false teachers, to try the spirits, to be sober and vigilant against demonic deception. There is plenty to be afraid of and to beware of in the Christian life, and we are not free to go where we please and presume that God will protect us.

Another significant experience involved praying to Buddha. The rebellious little girl actually snuck off and prayed to an idol.

“One day I entered the temple alone. No monks were there, droning their ‘O-me-to-fu’ with half-shut eyes and vacant faces. ... And a thought came to me--What if these idols had some power after all? How could I know whether my parents knew the truth about them? What would happen if I myself were to worship the great Buddha? ... I folded my hands together, bowed before the serene gilded idol, who apparently paid me no attention whatsoever, and murmured ‘O-me-to-fu’ as the monks did.

“Nothing happened. Or did it? For gradually there came to be within me another voice, sneering, despising, scorning me”

“... there gradually developed in my mind a certain cynicism concerning piosity, a cynicism which lasts to this day” (pp. 15, 26).

This is a frightful thing. She claims that she was a believer in Jesus Christ from her earliest memories, but a true believer does not pray to idols. She was communing with devils, and doubtless this experience tainted her mind and spirit. Later she admitted that she might have been demonized at that point, and as an adult she thought that perhaps demons were cast out of her through prayer (Sealed Orders, p. 110). But she did not renounce the views that she developed while under demonic influence, views that eventually led her to the most radical fringe of charismatic heresy and beyond.

The next significant experience was a series of mystical insights during her teens whereby she saw and felt herself to be one with the universe. This is a common experience of Catholic contemplatives, but it is unscriptural and doubtless occultic.

In the first of these she “entered into a state of indescribable dreamy bliss wherein I was one with the tall crisp grass, and with the tiny creatures that lived within it, and with the high blue sky...” (Sealed Orders, p. 33). In the second experience she “entered into a state of high ecstasy” and sensed God “flowing into me from bamboo and from rock, from ferns and moss and tiny orchids hiding in the grass” (p. 33). The third experience occurred while she was lying on a ship’s deck at night. “I was one with the stars--I was one with the universe. I felt in me the life of the strange creatures within the sea and beneath the waves and flying above the waves” (p. 40).

The Bible says that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and “by him all things consist” (Col. 1:17), but it nowhere says that God is in all things. He created all things; He is aware of all things; He is in ultimate control of all things; He cares and provides for all things; there is nowhere we can flee from His Spirit (Psa. 139:7); but He is not IN all things. The believer sees the glory of God in the creation (Rom. 1:20), but God does not flow into us from the creation nor is God in the creation itself.
That is the heresy of panentheism.

Sanford was learning to trust her mystical experiences regardless of whether they lined up with Scripture.

Another important event was a course she took in psychology.

“In the very practical course in psychology, I learned the basis of those methods of study which to this day I use” (Sealed Orders, p. 42).

She is not even talking about “Christian” psychology; she is referring to secular psychology, and there is nothing godly about it. It is permeated with false theories from top to bottom. It does not begin with the correct understanding of man as a creation of God that has sinned against the Creator and become estranged, a sinner whose heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), a sinner destined either to heaven or hell depending on what he does with Jesus Christ. How, then, can psychology form the basis for any legitimate Christian ministry?

The fact is the Sanford’s doctrine was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology, which is deeply occultic. Her son, Jack (d. 2005), was an influential Jungian psychologist.

Jung explored Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, I Ching, astrology, Spiritualism, Gnosticism, alchemy, dream interpretation, mandala symbolism, Theosophy, Greek Mythology, and more. He communicated with spirits all his life. As a child he felt that he had two personalities, one was himself the schoolboy and the other was a man from the 18th century. This other personality, named Philemon, had a life of its own and talked with Jung. Obviously it was a familiar spirit. When Jung had a breakdown following his separation from Sigmund Freud and was nearly suicidal he renewed communication with this spirit and Philemon became his guide. Jung said, “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. ... It was he who taught me psychic objectivity” (James Sundquist, A Review of the Purpose Driven Life).

Jung openly rejected Christ. He said:

“Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart [referring to a reoccurring immoral dream he had]. ... Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death. ... Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 13).

There are other things that Jung said in relation to Christ that are even more abominable but I do not want to quote them. It is enough to say that he was a demonically-deceived blasphemer and Christ rejecter of the highest order.

Agnes Sanford borrowed dream analysis from Jung. This is a part of “depth psychology” which seeks to understand the hidden or deeper parts of human experience. Jung believed that dreams reflect both the personal and “collective” unconscious and that they contain revelations as well as fantasies. (For more about Jung see The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.)

The next significant event in Sanford’s downward spiral was the healing of her child’s infected ears by an Episcopal priest named Hollis Colwell. He laid his hands on the child’s ears and asked Jesus to heal him. Then he said, “Thank You, Lord, for I believe that You are doing this, and I see these ears well as You made them to be” (Sealed Orders, p. 108).

We believe in healing according to James 5 and we have experienced such healing, but the healing described by Sanford was by means of charismatic positive confession, and it is not Scriptural. Further, the child continued to have problems with its ears, so it was a strange kind of “healing”!

This experience eventually broke down Sanford’s barriers to the ministry of Episcopalian charismaticism, which is deeply heretical. She says that at first she was hesitant and perplexed. “I did not know what queer business I might be getting into.” She should have listened to those mental warnings.

The next event in Sanford’s life that related to her journey away from Scripture was an emotional healing that she experienced through the same Episcopal priest. Through the laying on of hands, visualization, and positive confession he “healed” her of depression (though she struggled with depression for a long time thereafter!). He then taught her to practice this on others. She was to picture in her mind what she wanted and thank God that it was going to happen.

The next step on the downward path was delving into New Thought and the occult. She attended séances and studied Christian Science. She said that she couldn’t understand the latter very well, but she does not “scorn Christian Scientists” and “am grateful to them” for recovering the doctrine of healing (Sealed Orders, p. 113).

She was deeply impressed with Emmet Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount, saying that “it thrilled my soul” (p. 113). It teaches the heresy that there is a “spiritual body” within the physical body, and that the physical body can be healed by addressing the spiritual body.

“Therefore when I prayed for healing, I could accept the healing as already accomplished in the spiritual body, and so could know that it would be transferred to the physical body. ... One time, for instance, I went forth from the dining room to the cloister in an agitated frame of mind, and banged the heavy door shut on my finger. ... I said, ‘I have a spiritual body, and in the spiritual body this finger is perfect.’ Immediately there appeared a tiny hold in the base of the fingernail and all the black blood oozed out, and from that time forth the finger did not hurt at all” (Sealed Orders, p. 115).

There is not a hint of such a doctrine in the Bible.

Emmet Fox was a New Thought teacher who believed that God is all and man is God. He taught about a “mystic mind power” that “can teach you all things that you need to know.” He promised: “It is your right and your privilege to make your contact with this Power, and to allow it to work through your body, mind, and estate, so that you need no longer grovel upon the ground amid limitations and difficulties, but can soar up on wings like an eagle to the realm of dominion and joy” (Find and Use Your Inner Power).

The next step in Sanford’s journey toward heresy was meeting a female healer who instructed her that she had to “visualize her patients well or they would not be healed. “... unless you can learn to see them well, you only fasten the sickness upon them” (Sealed Orders, p. 164). This she learned how to do.

From there she went deeper and deeper into error, including charismatic tongues, radical ecumenism with Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and you-name-it, and sacramentalism.

SANFORD’S MISUSE OF SCRIPTURE

Sanford claims that God gave her a great illumination of the Scripture, but in fact she misused it on every hand.

I did not find one instance in her book The Healing Light in which she used Scripture properly. In every case she twisted it out of context and forced a strange meaning on it.

For example, she quoted Ephesians 5:8, “walk as children of light,” but she interpreted this to mean that believers are “to live as if they were made of a living, moving energy like light” (The Healing Light, p. 17).

Elsewhere she said that “we learn to cure our diseased bodies by seeing, in our own flesh, God” (p. 61). As evidence for this statement she quoted Job 19:26, “in my flesh shall I see God,” but Job was not talking about this present life; he was talking about the resurrection! There is not a hint in the Bible that Job cured himself through visualizing prayer and positive confession.

SANFORD’S CONFUSION ABOUT SALVATION

Sanford was confused about salvation. At times she used biblical terminology about salvation, but other times she described salvation in heretical terms.

On one hand she claimed that she was saved when she put her faith in Christ as a nine-year-old girl.

“I, too, knew Jesus. I had been converted while on furlough at the age of nine. Though remembering nothing of the public school to which I had presumably been subjected, I did remember very well the gentle Presbyterian minister who had made sure of my salvation and who had given me the right hand of fellowship and received one into the Southern Presbyterian church” (Sealed Orders, p. 12).

But she also claimed that she came to know God through a mystical experience by a lake.

“There beside the dancing waters of the lake I prayed that God’s life would enter into me through the sunlight. ... I was filled with such unbearable bliss that I thought, ‘If this doesn’t stop, I’ll die. But I don’t want it to stop, I don’t want it to stop.’ ... It passed. I was myself again, yet never again quiet the same. From this time forth I knew God” (Sealed Orders, p. 147).

Further, she claimed that she received Jesus through sacraments and mysticism.

“My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation. In other words, I have learned to combine the sacramental with the meditative approach” (The Healing Light, p. 167).

SANFORD’S HERESIES

1. She believed that healing is guaranteed if performed properly, just as a light bulb will come on when a lamp is in working order and connected to electricity. If healing doesn’t come, it is because there is something wrong with the technique.

“How long should we continue praying for healing? Until the healing is accomplished” (The Healing Light, p. 14).

“Let us understand then that if our experiment [of prayer] fails, it is not due to a lack in God, but to a natural and understandable lack in ourselves. ... the lack of success in healing is not due to God’s will for us but to our failure to live near enough to God so that He can accomplish perfection in our spirits and bodies” (The Healing Light, pp. 8, 10).

Sanford even claimed that believers could “live above death and above the illness and pain that lead to death” (The Healing Light, p. 72).

As for the case of Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Sanford, though a very convoluted pattern of thought, claimed that this doesn’t actually mean that God didn’t want to heal Paul. Instead, it means that God would heal him a little at a time and that since he was old by then, he wasn’t completely healed before death took him (The Healing Light, pp. 35-38). In reply to this we would say, first of all, that the idea that Paul was old when the event described in 2 Corinthians 12 occurred is presumptuous, because the Bible doesn’t say how old he was. Second, Paul plainly testifies that God told him that it was NOT HIS WILL to remove the thorn in the flesh, so Paul concluded that it was good for him to glory in and take pleasure in “infirmities.” The same Greek word translated “infirmities” in 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10 is elsewhere translated “sickness” (John 11:4) and disease (Acts 28:9). No amount of scripture twisting can do away with the effect of this passage. It refutes the doctrine that healing is always God’s will.

2. She rejected the idea that it is ever God’s will for us to be sick, mischaracterizing “that” God as a bully.

“If we think of God as a heavenly stage manager, jerking us about like puppets upon strings, this is a natural and indeed an inevitable conclusion. God can do whatever He likes. We have asked him to make us well. He has not done so. Well, then, He must like us to be sick” (p. 10).

She claims that it is always the will of Christ to heal children that are brought to Him by their parents (p. 11).

3. She promoted visualization and positive confession as the key to healing success.

She claimed that negative thoughts produce a negative reality, whereas positive thoughts produce a positive reality.

“We must re-educate the subconscious mind, replacing every thought of fear with a thought of faith, every thought of illness with a thought of health, every thought of death with a thought of life. ... Therefore it we find ourselves thinking, ‘One of my headaches is coming on,’ we correct that thought. ‘Whose headaches?’ we say, ‘God’s light shines within me and God doesn’t have headaches” (pp. 33, 34).

Her technique for healing required visualizing the desired result in one’s mind and then affirming it by thanking God that it is going to happen. This is positive confession.

“From that time forth I set myself to learn to ‘see them well.’ This required mental training. I would exercise my visual faculty, that part of the creative imagination that is most like God. I would create in my mind a definite and detailed picture of each person for whom I prayed, seeing the whole body radiant and free and well, with light in the eyes and color in the cheeks and a swinging rhythm in the walk. I would raise him in my mind from a hospital bed and see him walking, running, leaping. By an act of will I would hold this picture in my mind until it outshone the picture last suggested to me by my eyes or by a letter” (pp. 142, 143).

“... we must never question it, let we stop the work that He is doing through us. ... we must keep on giving thanks that this is so” (pp. 52, 53).

“And we remember that ‘Amen’ means ‘So be it,’ and is therefore a command sent forth in the name of Christ” (p. 52).

If she spilled hot oil on her hand in the kitchen, she confessed: “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).

When her children misbehaved she would “in my mind the picture of the child as he was at his best” and “make in my mind the image of a child at peace and project it into reality by the word of faith” (pp. 54, 55).

She described an occasion when she was on an elevator and a woman entered who was tired and discouraged. She said that she thought in her mind: “I bless you in the name of the Lord. I see you as a child of God, strong and refreshed and joyful, for through my prayers His strength is entering into you” (p. 57).

When she found a neighbor near death because of heart failure she did the following: “As soon as my hands were firmly upon his heart, I felt quiet, serene, in control. ... I talked informally to the heart, assuring it quietly that the power of God was at this moment re-creating it and that it need labor no longer. Finally, I pictured the heart perfect, blessing it continually in the name of the Lord and giving thanks that it was being re-created in perfection” (The Healing Light, p. 87).

She recommends the same thing for the healing of nations:

“First we make in our minds a picture of the nation as we would have her be, so that she may best further the establishment of peace. We see an aggressor nation, for example, shrinking back in her borders and sending out into the world little golden arrows of trade and commerce and financial cooperation. We do this in the same way that we see a sick body well, making the picture clear, concrete, vivid and simple. It is a child-like method, the method of happy visioning” (p. 164).
She called this “the prayer of faith” and “love-power.”

If this were a true biblical practice, believers could bring in the kingdom of God through the power of visualization, but it is not a true practice and all of the power visualizing they want to do will not change the foundational character of this world one iota. The world system will only be changed when Christ returns in glory and not a moment before. We are not God. We don’t have the power to create reality with our minds!

4. She taught that God’s “energy” can be channeled by the laying on of hands.

She said that the universe is made up of “the creative energy of God” and that the individual can connect with this energy and channel it to others by the laying on of hands.

“The same principle is true of the creative energy of God. The whole universe is full of it, but only the amount of it that flows through our own beings will work for us” (The Healing Light, p. 1).

“Oh, take your hands away!” cried the little girl. “It’s hot.”

“That’s God’s power working in your knee, Sally,” I replied. “It’s like electricity working in your lamp. I guess it has to be hot, so as to make the knee come back to life. So you just stand it now for a few minutes, while I tell you about Peter Rabbit.” By the time the erring Peter had returned home without his shoes and his new red jacket and had been put to bed with castor oil, the pulsation of energy in my hands had died away. ...

“How do you turn on God’s electricity in your hands?” she asked me at my next visit

Once I was called to see a baby girl ill with pneumonia. I knelt beside her crib in silence, laid one hand upon the small, congested chest and slipped the other one beneath her back, and asked God to come into her. Soon the waxy frame of the baby was filled with a visible inrushing of new life. Even the hands and feet vibrated, as if an electric current were entering into her (The Healing Light, pp. 19, 20).

There is nothing like the flow of electricity and heat and pulsations through the laying of hands in Scripture, but it is common to the world of the occult. It lies at the heart of Chinese chi and Hindu prana.

5. She taught that unbelievers can exercise these powers as effectively as believers.

The occultic nature of Sanford’s practice is evident in that unbelievers can exercise them effectively.

“One does not need to be a saint or a scientist in order to do this” (The Healing Light p. 21).

She describes a wounded soldier she met in a hospital. Though he admitted that he didn’t know God, she got him to admit that he believed in “something” and then taught him to do the following:

“Ask that Something to come into you. Just say, ‘Whoever you are or whatever you are, come into me now and help nature in my body to mend this bone, and do it quick. Thanks, I believe you’re doing it.’ Then make a picture in your mind of the leg well. Shut your eyes and see it that way. See the bone all built in and the flesh strong and perfect around it. And play like you see a kind of light shining in it--a sort of a blue light, like one of these neon signs, shining and burning and flowing all up and down the leg. ... that’s the way you make it happen. No matter what you want to make, you first have to see it in your mind ... Then after you see the leg well, give a pep talk to all the healing forces of your body. Say, ‘Look here, I’m boss inside of me and what I say goes. Now get busy and mend that leg” (The Healing Light, pp. 22, 23).

She instructed an unbelieving mother who had a problem child:

“Make the picture of the child as you want her to be, and say, ‘My love brought this child into the world, and through my own mother-love I re-create her after this image!’” (p. 56).

This is not biblical Christianity; it is pagan occultism.

6. She taught that silent meditation is an essential part of the prayer for healing.

“The first step in seeking to produce results by any power is to contact that power. The first step then in seeking help from God is to contact God. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Let us then lay aside our worries and cares, quiet our minds and concentrate upon the reality of God. ... quiet the mind and concentrate the spiritual energies on God. Let us sit comfortably with the head at rest and the hands folded in the lap. ... He will notice as he relaxes that even his breathing is altered, becoming slow, thin and light as if to leave room for the Spirit of God within. ... So we speak gently and soothingly to the nerves all the way up the body and in the head. And in the same quiet way we bid our conscious minds be still” (pp. 7, 24, 25).

This is similar to the quieting meditation methods that Yogis and Zen Buddhists use to enter into transcendental states, bodily relaxation, controlled breathing, visualizing the quieting of the body. She quotes Psalm 46:10, but the psalmist is not describing silent meditation; he is simply exhorting us to trust in God.

She taught that in this meditative state God would enter one’s being. This sounds very much like a demonic visitation.

“We may be conscious of an inrushing current of energy, like electricity. ... But before we have learned to perceive these physical sensations, we will be conscious of His entering into us upon the footsteps of peace. We will know by the stirrings of hope within our minds that He is there” (pp. 27).

The Bible nowhere teaches the believer to expect God to enter him in this (or any other) fashion through prayer.

7. She was a female preacher.

After she began her healing ministry she started preaching to mixed congregations of men and women, and after the publication of The Healing Light she traveled widely on preaching engagements. She admits that her husband didn’t like it at first.

“My husband, being a good man and a faithful priest, let me go on these occasional missions or trips, feeling no doubt that it was his duty and mine. But he did not like it. ... But the larger call drove me on, prodded me on, forced me on. For Christian people must know that Jesus lives and heals today--they must!” (Sealed Orders, p. 156).

She felt compelled to preach in spite of her husband’s resistance, but it was a compulsion that was contrary to God’s Word. First, the Bible forbids the woman to teach or to usurp authority over the man (1 Timothy 2:12). Further, the Bible commands the wife to submit to her husband (Eph. 5:22). The only exception is if the husband is commanding her to do something clearly contrary to God’s Word, and in that case God’s Word is the higher law. But in Sanford’s case, her action was not supported by Scripture and she should have submitted to her husband’s will.

But Sanford had long before learned to disregard the Bible and anything else for her inner compulsions and mystical experiences.

8. She seemed to be a universalist, believing that all men are children of God.

When she met a Jewish soldier in a hospital she said: “I imagined Jesus there beside me and talked to Him. ‘Here you are and HERE’S YOUR CHILD,’ I said inwardly. ‘Please lay your own hands on him and do whatever you want to do through me’” (p. 135).

Not once in her book The Healing Light, which is her guide to performing miracles and transforming the world, does she say that those without personal faith in Christ are lost and hell bound or give any instructions about trying to lead them to salvation.

9. She was a founder of the dangerous field of healing of memories.

Sanford’s work The Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966) was foundational to this movement. She taught that the recovery of hidden memories of past events hold the key to emotional suffering and psychological problems in the present.

“Something is troubling the deep mind. There is no question about it. Some old unpleasant memory is knocking on the doors of the consciousness. Some need of the soul is arising as a dark shadow that will overwhelm us if we do not let it out into the light of understanding” (The Healing Gifts, p. 108).

Sanford taught that the individual should ask Jesus to go back through all of the stages of his or her life and heal everything, even to birth and beyond.

“Follow the soul of this Your child all the way back to the hour of birth and heal the soul even of pain and the fear of being born into this darksome world. ... And if even before birth the soul was shadowed by this human life and was darkened by the fears or sorrows of the human parents, then I pray that even those memories or impressions may be healed, so that this one may be restored to Your original pattern, the soul as free and as clean as though nothing had ever dimmed its shining” (The Healing Gifts, pp. 122, 123).

Of course there is not a hint of such a thing in Scripture. It has no biblical authority whatsoever. “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” (Deut. 29:29).

Through the practice of recovered memories countless lives have been ruined, families torn apart, fathers and mothers and grandparents and other family members wrongly condemned. Some have been gone to prison on the basis of “recovered memories” that have turned out to be completely bogus. Some victims of “recovered memory” delusions have committed suicide.

For more on this see the PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries -- http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/inner82.html.

10. She didn’t care about doctrine, believing that all professing Christians should get along regardless of what they believe.

She mentions Roman Catholic nuns and the Mass in a positive manner (The Healing Light, pp. 127, 137). She describes a Catholic soldier she met in an army hospital. When she learned that he was Catholic, she didn’t explain the true gospel to him. Instead, she told him: “I’ll ask my friends the Sisters to pray for you every morning at the Mass. And that Life will go from the Mass right through their prayers into your spine. You’ll see!” (p. 127). The Mass is an unscriptural ritual whereby the Catholic priest supposedly turns a wafer into the very body of Jesus Christ. The typical Roman Catholic is trusting his baptism and works and the sacraments of the church for his salvation. It is criminal not to warn them of Rome’s false gospel and to point them to the truth.

11. She was a sacramentalist.

She joined the Episcopalian Church and learned to confess her sins to a priest and participate in the Eucharist. She believed that she was thereby receiving Christ.

“My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation. In other words, I have learned to combine the sacramental with the meditative approach” (The Healing Light, p. 167).

“So I made a first confession, very uncomfortably, with the shades of my Scotch Presbyterian ancestors peering around the corners. ... Whereupon the priest made one statement and only one. He said, ‘Although so few people know it, the church through Jesus Christ really does have the power and authority to forgive sins. Therefore I am sure that these your sins will be forgiven.’ ... I had hardly gone out of the place before I was flooded from head to foot with the most overwhelming vibrations. I felt a high ecstasy of spirit such as I had felt before when very spiritual people had prayed for me. I felt a deep inner burning which I had felt when receiving a ‘healing treatment’ from someone who had the faith to set free the healing power of God in prayer. I knew by the inner warmth and tingling that my nerves and glands were being healed of their overstrain and weakness” (pp. 119, 120).

Observe how that she was convinced that this was a legitimate practice by the mystical experience. This is what she followed from her childhood. Though she thought of herself as a Bible believer, in reality she was a mystic who pursued truth beyond the pages of Scripture through experience. How many souls have been led astray by a mere fleeting feeling!

12. She taught that a new age is being born through the power of visualization and positive confession.

“A certain engineer was once surveying in a field when a bull charged his party with lowered had and thundering hoofs. There was no tree to climb. There was no fence to jump. So the engineer stood his ground, filled his min with the love of God and projected it to the bull. ‘I am God’s man and you are God’s bull,’ he thought in silence. ‘God made both of us, and in the name of Jesus Christ I say that there is nothing but loving-kindness between us.’ The bull stopped abruptly. ...

“‘If an armed burglar broke into your house with intent to kill,’ the old question goes, ‘what would you do? Fight him, or lie still and let him kill your wife or child?’ Silly old question. One would do neither. One would project into the burglar’s mind the love of God, by seeing him as a child of God and asking God to bless him. And if one were strong enough in faith and love, the burglar’s mind would change. He would leave the family unharmed and go away. ... A new age is being born. The day has come when love-power, at the command of ministers and surveyors and children and everyone, is sufficient to change hearts here and there in the world about them. This is the beginning of a new order. ... as more and more of us see God, live in harmony with Him and show forth His perfection in our bodies, minds and spirits, the ‘normal’ processes of growth, maturity, old age and death will be altered” (pp. 49, 72).

Agnes Sanford is dead, but her influence lives on in the charismatic movement, the contemplative movement, and the recovered memory movement.

[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]

FROM SOUTHERN BAPTIST TO GODDESS WORSHIP: SUE MONK KIDD

July 15, 2008, 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) -

Sue Monk Kidd is a very popular writer. Her first two novels, The Secret Life of Bees (2002) and The Mermaid Chair (2005), have sold more than 6 million copies and the first one is being produced as a movie. She has also written two popular books on contemplative spirituality: God’s Joyful Surprise (1988) and When the Heart Waits (1990).

She 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 Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.

It is “contemplative spirituality” that changed Kidd’s life, 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 that 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 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).

Of Merton’s book New Seeds of Contemplation she says, “[It] initiated me into the secrets of my true identity and woke in me an urge toward realness” and “impacted my spirituality and my writing to this day.”

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. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because ‘God is not a what,’ not a ‘thing.’ This is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no ‘what’ that can be called God” (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 says 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.

The involvement in Catholic contemplative practices led her to the Mass and to other sacramental associations.

“I often went to Catholic mass or Eucharist at the Episcopal church, nourished by the symbol and power of this profound feeding ritual” (p. 15).

There is an occultic power in the mass that has influenced many who have approached it in a receptive, non-critical manner.

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 spent much time with a friend who had a feminist mindset and was “exploring” feminist writings, and she began to read ever more radical feminists, such as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Elaine Pagels, and Rosemary Radford Ruether.

We are reminded of the Bible’s warning, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33).

She says, “I began to form what I called my feminist critique” (p. 59). She learned to see “patriarchy” as “a wounder of women and feminine life” (p. 60).

She determined to stop testing things and follow her heart, rejecting the Bible’s admonition to “prove all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

“I would go through the gate with what Zen Buddhists call ‘beginner’s mind,’ the attitude of approaching something with a mind empty and free, ready for anything, open to everything. ... I would give myself permission to go wherever my quest took me” (p. 140).

She rejected the doctrine that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice. 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 determined that she was willing to lose her marriage, if necessary.

“I would not, could not forfeit my journey for my marriage or for the sake of religious acceptance or success as a ‘Christian writer.’ I would keep moving in my own way to the strains of feminine music that sifted up inside me, not just moving but embracing the dance. ... I felt the crumbling of the old patriarchal foundation our marriage had rested upon in such hidden and subtle ways. Though both of us would always need to compromise, there was no more sacrificing myself, no more revolving around him, no more looking to him for validation, trying to be what I thought he needed me to be. My life, my time, my decisions became newly my own” (pp. 98, 125).

In her case, her husband stayed with her and came to accept her feminist vision, even leaving his job in the Christian college and becoming a psychotherapist, but in many other cases the feminist philosophy has destroyed the marriage. She says, “I’ve met women who in such circumstances have stayed and others who’ve left. Such choices are achingly difficult, but I’ve learned to respect whatever a woman feels she must do.” It is amazing how a person can come to the place where he or she is convinced that it is a righteous thing to renounce a solemn marriage vow that was made before God and man.

She rejected God as Father.

“I knew right then and there that the patriarchal church was no longer working for me. The exclusive image of God as heavenly Father wasn’t working, either. I needed a Power of Being that was also feminine” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 80).

She came to believe in the divinity of man.

“There’s a bulb of truth buried in the human soul that’s ‘only God’ ... the soul is more than something to win or save. It’s the seat and repository of the inner Divine, the God-image, the truest part of us” (When the Heart Waits, 1990, pp. 47, 48).

“When we encounter another person ... we should walk as if we were upon holy ground. We should respond as if God dwells there” (God’s Joyful Surprise, p. 233).

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).

“To embrace Goddess is simply to discover the Divine in yourself as powerfully and vividly feminine” (p. 141).

“I came to know myself as an embodiment of Goddess” (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, Jesus, 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).
She even believes that the world can be saved by the divine mother.

“I know of nothing needed more in the world just now than an image of Divine present that affirms the importance of relationship--a Divine Mother, perhaps, who draws all humanity into her lap and makes us into a global family” (p. 155).

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter ends with the words, “She is in us.”

According to this book, Kidd’s daughter, too, has accepted goddess worship.

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 Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.

[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]

FROM FUNDAMENTALISM TO ECUMENISM: A WARNING ABOUT THE EMERGING CHURCH FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT WEBBER

July 2, 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 from the new book we are finishing up entitled What about the Emerging Church?
____________________

Robert Webber (1933-2007) was a professor at Wheaton College for about 30 years and taught at Northern Seminary in Chicago the last seven years of his life.

He is one of the fathers of the contemplative movement and a very influential voice in the emerging church. In his book Common Roots (1978) he argued that the early church era of A.D. 100-500 has “insights which evangelicals need to recover.” Those “insights” include monastic “contemplative spirituality.”

Webber continued this line of thinking in Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church (1985), Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (1999), Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (2002), and The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (2006).

Webber promoted a very broad ecumenism:

“Paradigm thinking sets us free to affirm the whole church in all its previous manifestations. ...This search for a common heritage allows for the emergence of a new understanding of unity and diversity. ... So while we are all Christians, some of us are Roman Catholic Christians, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Reformation Christians, twentieth-century Christians, or some other form of modern or postmodern Christians” (Ancient-Future Faith, pp. 16, 17).

“A goal for evangelicals in the postmodern world is to accept diversity as a historical reality, but to seek unity in the midst of it. This perspective will allow us to see Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches as various forms of the one true church...” (Ancient-Future Faith, p. 85).

“We evangelicals need to turn our backs on the old separatist model” (Ancient-Future Faith, p. 86).

“Today evangelicals and Catholics are enjoying spiritual camaraderie that was nonexistent a few years ago. ... Evangelicals in a postmodern world will increasingly feel at home with Catholics, Orthodox, and other Protestant bodies...” (Ancient-Future Faith, p. 87).

“... evangelicals need to go beyond talk about the unity of the church to experience it through an attitude of acceptance of the whole church and an entrance into dialogue with the Orthodox, Catholic, and other Protestant bodies” (Ancient-Future Faith, p. 89).

Before he died Webber organized “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future,” an effort to challenge evangelicals “to strengthen their witness through a recovery of the faith articulated by the consensus of the ancient Church and its guardians in the traditions of EASTERN ORTHODOXY, ROMAN CATHOLICISM, the Protestant Reformation and the Evangelical awakenings.”

To arrive at this radical ecumenical position, Webber traveled far from his roots. In the books Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail and The Divine Embrace he described the move away from a strict biblicist position.

Webber grew up in a fundamental Baptist home. His father, who was born in 1900, was involved in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and was a separatist. He left the liberal American Baptist Convention and joined the Conservative Baptists. Webber’s parents were missionaries in Africa for the first seven years of his life. The family moved back to the States when one of their children became seriously ill and the father pastored the Montgomeryville Baptist Church, located about 25 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After high school Webber attended Bob Jones University.

Describing his childhood he says:

“I went to Christian schools and palled around with Christian friends from my youth group. The boundaries of home, church, and school were very tight” (The Divine Embrace, p. 150).

“I was the kid who couldn’t go to the movies, the kid who had to keep Sunday as a holy day (no sports), the kid who had to watch everything I did and said. But I wasn’t just a preacher’s kid. I was also a fundamentalist Baptist. From an early age, it was thoroughly ingrained within me that I was both a fundamentalist and a Baptist. Being Christian wasn’t enough. ... Catholics were pagan. Episcopalianism was a social club. Lutherans had departed from the faith. Presbyterians were formalistic. And Pentecostals were off-center” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 13).

“One central conviction of my parents was that our fundamentalist way was the only faith that stood in continuity with the New Testament. All other viewpoints were distorted at best and some, especially Roman Catholicism, contained no connection with New Testament Christianity whatsoever” (The Divine Embrace, p. 199).

What he was taught about Rome was true. How did he get from there to the point where he considered the Roman Catholic Church a genuine church and the Protestant Reformation “a tragedy”? He describes the steps in his books.

Lack of Clarity about Personal Salvation

One thing that is missing in the biographical account of his youth is a biblical testimony of salvation. Never does he give a biblical, life-changing testimony of being born again and walking with Christ in sweet fellowship through faith in God’s Word. The closest he comes is a description of an event that occurred when he was 13. His father talked to him about the need to be baptized. He did not seek out baptism because he had experienced a born again conversion; rather, his father talked him into it.

“I remember going out on the back porch that night, looking up into the stars, and asking myself whether or not I really believed, whether or not I was willing to take up my cross and follow after Christ. The prospect of my own baptism caused me to choose Christ again in a more intense way, to determine once more to follow him” (pp. 45, 46).

This is a works orientation to salvation. A determination to follow Christ is not the same as acknowledging one’s utter sinfulness and surrendering oneself into His care and trusting Him exclusively as one’s Saviour.

Webber argued that salvation does not have to be a dramatic conversion experience and he admitted that he didn’t have such an experience. He said that repentance “can have a dramatic beginning or can come as a result of a process over time” (The Divine Embrace, p. 149). He saw salvation is a sacramental process that begins at baptism, and this is one reason why he left the Baptist church and joined the Episcopalian and was perfectly comfortable with Roman Catholicism.

Webber described many experiences he had with his students, but he doesn’t give any examples of counseling them about personal salvation. Consider something that happened to him in 1968, during his first year of teaching at Wheaton College. As Webber was giving proofs for the existence of God, a student raised his hand and said that he didn’t believe that God exists and that the proofs didn’t mean anything to him (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 27). When Webber asked the class if anyone else agreed, “several other hands slipped into the air.” What is even more amazing than the fact that several Bible college students were atheists or agnostics was Webber’s response. He asked them what they wanted him to teach and allowed them to guide him in a “search for a more profound and deeper meaning in life” by “tuning into the questions of meaning asked by the artists of our generation.” Pathetically, he even says, “I can’t say we came to adequate conclusions” (p. 28).

What he did not do is question these students’ salvation and try to lead them to Christ, which should have been the very first thing he did.

Once-for-all personal regeneration is absolutely foundational to “experiencing God,” but it is glaring in its absence in Webber’s writings. What we have instead is an emphasis on sacramental terminology.

“... the sacrament ... is a means through which Christ encounters us savingly” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 50, 51).

“He who saved me at the cross continues to extend his salvation to me through the simple and concrete signs of bread and wine” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 51).

“In the Eucharist I feel both saved again and compelled to live in the Eucharistic way. Both justification and sanctification are communicated to me” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 84).

“Baptism is the spiritual rite of conscious and intentional union with Jesus ... and reception of the Holy Spirit ...” (The Divine Embrace, p. 67).

“When baptism is enacted in faith, the spirit of God performs, ascribes, and accomplishes the very meaning of baptism--a forgiveness of our old identity is made real, and a new identity with Jesus is actualized” (The Divine Embrace, p. 152).

Webber even warns that it is possible to “overstress conversion.” He describes how that in 1983 Jon Braun of the Evangelical Orthodox Church spoke to Webber’s class at Wheaton about his pilgrimage into Orthodoxy.

“He was speaking about his upbringing in a Christian home and the fact that as a young person he had always believed but had had no dramatic experience of salvation. His parents, anxious for him to have a dramatic conversion experience, began to push him toward a decision. ‘This,’ he said soberly, ‘actually pushed me out of the church and made me think for a temporary period of time that I was an unbeliever.’ He then went on to say that placing too much emphasis on a dateable experience of salvation can be dangerous if we do not take into account that many who grow up in Christian homes grow into faith without such an experience” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 76).

Jesus said that salvation is something you are supernaturally born into, not something you grow into. Webber should have encouraged parents who want their children to have a clear new birth experience, but instead he casts aspersion on such a thing and even says that it might be dangerous. To say that “I have always believed” is an unscriptural testimony. You might not know the exact date, but you certainly should know when and where it happened and how that it clearly changed your life (2 Corinthians 5:17). You should be able to testify how that you acknowledged your sin against God and repented of it and put your faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the gospel, and called upon Him for salvation (1 Corinthians 15:1-4; Romans 10:12-13; Acts 20:21). That is the only type of “conversion” that is described in the New Testament.

Webber says that “a dramatic experience of the saving reality of Christ is not to be denied or minimized” (p. 76), but he does deny and minimize it by indicating that there are other ways of salvation such as growing into faith and sacramentalism and by confusing justification with sanctification.

Lack of clarity about personal salvation is a foundational error of the emerging church.

Rejection of Separatism

Webber’s first step to ecumenism was in rejecting the biblical doctrine of separation. He describes how that at Bob Jones University he heard the accusation that “Billy Graham is the greatest tool of the devil in the twentieth century” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 70). They warned that Graham was flirting with modernism and compromising the gospel through cooperative evangelism, which is absolutely true, but Webber rejected that argument in his heart.

He mislabels the call for separation from disobedient compromisers like Graham as “second degree separation.” In fact, it is not second degree but first! The Bible warns God’s people to “mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). That is exactly what Billy Graham has done throughout his ecumenical career. He has taught a generation of evangelicals to downplay doctrine and to fellowship with heretics, and that is directly contrary to the doctrine that we learned from the apostles. Paul exalted doctrine and taught us to be very strict about it (1 Timothy 1:3) and he condemned heretics in the boldest, plainest manner (e.g., 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 2 Timothy 2:16-18).

Rejection of a Pure Church

Another thing that occurred when Webber was at Bible College was his rejection of the doctrine of a pure church.

“Why, I wondered, were we always so busy defining the perimeters in which truth and a right relationship to God were accurately defined? Was it really possible, I wondered, to have a pure church? The more I thought about this the more I felt that to be truly pure was an impossibility. ... How can anyone except God himself be pure and uncontaminated from false belief, ethical error, and incomplete judgment? For me the so-called concept of the purity of the church was a strait-jacket that made me increasingly uncomfortable” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 71).

His question is answered plainly and simply in Scripture. Paul wrote to the church of Corinth and reproved and corrected them for their sins and errors. He urged them to be pure. He instructed them put the fornicator out of their midst (1 Corinthians 5) and to deal with the false teachers (2 Corinthians 11). Paul said:

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

It is God’s will that the churches be pure, and even though we don’t live up to this in a perfect manner in this present world, that must always be the goal. We are to continually purge out the old leaven.

The doctrine of a pure church is not a strait-jacket for those who love Christ and want to please Him. Christ addressed seven of the churches in Asia in Revelation 2-3 and He reproved them for their sin and errors and called upon them to repent. He warned that He would reject those that did not repent (Revelation 2:5). This is the standard for the entire church age. It is not the will of Christ that we ever grow complacent about sin and error in the churches.

The doctrine of a pure church is only a strait-jacket to those who want to be careless about doctrine for the sake of pursuing an ecumenical agenda.

Attending the Wrong Schools

Though he was raised in fundamental Baptist doctrine, Webber pursued theological graduate training in non-fundamentalist and non-Baptist schools (Reformed, Lutheran, Episcopal). This is a perfect recipe for going out of the right way. While attending Protestant seminaries he rejected the Baptist faith and became a Protestant. That is not a surprise!

And it was at these seminaries, as we shall see, that Webber was taught about ecumenism and sacramentalism.

It was at these seminaries, too, where he also learned to think and write and speak in a complicated, philosophical manner. He writes far over the head of the ordinary Christian. His books could not help the simple village people in Africa that his parents helped by preaching simple Bible truth. He has complicated the simplicity of the faith (2 Corinthians 11:3). He forgot that God has revealed His truth to babes (Mat. 11:25), that God has chosen to confound the wise of the world through the simple preaching of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:17-29).

Falling in Love with Calvin

First Webber fell in love with John Calvin.

“I was particularly attracted to John Calvin. ... At the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. I studied under Robert K. Rudolf, a master teacher and a walking encyclopedia of Calvinist theology. By his magnetic personality and his deep devotion to logically consistent truths I was soon drawn into the teaching of John Calvin” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 60).

Calvin came out of Rome, but he clung to many of Rome’s errors, including infant baptism, sacramentalism, the priesthood, church statism, and amillennialism. He did not understand properly the doctrine of salvation or the church or Bible prophecy, among others. Calvin did not have a personal testimony of salvation other than his infant baptism and he was an avowed enemy of Baptists. He imprisoned them and put them to death, burning one of them at the stake. Calvin’s allegorical interpretation of prophecy does away with the imminency of the return of Christ, which is a very important doctrine and has a great impact on Christian living.

To fall in love with Calvin is a definite step away from the simple New Testament Christian faith and church and a definite step toward Rome.

Studying the Church Fathers

Another stepping stone toward ecumenism was the study of the Church Fathers. Many of those who have converted to Rome have testified that the Church Fathers helped them in this venture. In reality, most of the so-called church fathers of the early centuries were tainted with heresies such as sacramentalism, sanctification through ascetism, infant baptism, sacerdotalism (priestcraft), hierarchicalism, inquisitionalism, and Mariolatry. They represent a gradual falling away from the apostolic faith and a preparation for the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. (See the article “Who Are the Church Fathers” at the Way of Life web site.)

Webber said that he stopped looking back on church history in a “judgmental manner” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 61, 62). That was a great error, because the Bible says we are to “prove all things” (1 Thess. 5:21).

Attending an Ecumenical Prayer Fellowship

Another turning point in Webber’s life occurred in 1965 when he attended an ecumenical prayer community, invited by one of his seminary professors. Benedictine monks formed half of the group. Instead of obeying Romans 16:17 and 1 Corinthians 15:33 and many other Scriptures, Webber agreed to attend. He says, “As time went on my prejudices against the Roman Catholics began to fall by the wayside. I had encountered real people who were deeply committed to Christ and his church” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 64). Dedicated Roman Catholics are obviously real people who are committed to Christ, but what Christ? Rome teaches that the consecrated wafer is Christ. And they are obviously committed to the “church,” but not the church that we see in the Bible.

Over the course of the next two years Webber’s thinking completely changed (The Divine Embrace, pp. 199, 200).

In October 1972, he preached a sermon at Wheaton College entitled “The Tragedy of the Reformation.”

The Mystical Mass

Having become sympathetic to Roman Catholicism, he disobeyed God’s Word to separate from heresy and attended a Catholic Mass where he had a life-changing mystical experience. This occurred at a Catholic retreat center. He said he was “surprised by joy” and “never had an experience like that in my life” and “was surely the richer for it” (Signs and Wonders, 1992, p. 5). At another Mass at St. Michael’s Church in Wheaton, Webber said he experienced “something deeper than anything else I had been through” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 39).

The Mass is at the heart of Rome’s occultic mysticism, and many converts to and sympathizers with Rome have testified that the Mass had a part in breaking down their resistance.

Lou Ann Elwell, counselor of students at Wheaton College, is quoted by Webber as saying, “In the sacrament of the Eucharist I feel close to the Lord, almost like he’s saying, ‘I’m here’” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 43).

David DuPlessis, who was instrumental in breaking down the wall of separation between Pentecostals and Rome, described an experience he had during Mass at the Vatican. He said that his heart broke and he literally wept during the performance of the Mass at a session of the Second Vatican Council. By this mystical experience he was purged entirely from suspicion about Catholic doctrine and thereafter he could readily accept Catholic priests as brothers in Christ without any judgmentalism (A Man Called Mr. Pentecost, pp. 215, 216). It was certainly not the Spirit of Truth that met DuPlessis in the Mass and taught him not to judge doctrine and practice.

Webber developed a craving for sacramentalism. He says: “I felt a need for visible and tangible symbols that I could touch, feel, and experience with my senses. This need is met in the reality of Christ presented to me through the sacraments” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 15).

Instead of being satisfied with faith in God’s Word, Webber wanted signs and symbols. He wanted a physical experience. But the Bible says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith comes by God’s Word (Romans 10:17). It is the “evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Webber joined the Anglican Church, but some of his former students have followed the sacramental path he blazed all the way to Mother Rome.

Contemplative Practices

Another thing that brought Webber into a radical ecumenical philosophy was his involvement with the Catholic contemplative practices, such as centering prayer and the Jesus Prayer. He recommends resting the chin on the chest and gazing at the area of the heart and repeating the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”) “again and again.” He says, “I feel the presence of Christ through this prayer” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 83). Mysticism is an attempt to experience God, and it is never satisfied with a faith walk based on God’s Word. Further, Christ forbade repetitious prayers (Matthew 6:7-8). When we go beyond the Bible and get involved in practices that are forbidden in Scripture, the devil is always ready to meet us in his guise as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Anointing with Oil by a Charismatic Female Preacher

Another turning point for Webber was in 1974 when a charismatic Episcopal deaconess named Leanne Payne anointed him with oil and prayed over him and healed his memories. This occurred when he was deeply troubled over his future church affiliation.

“Starting in my pre-school years through high school, college, and seminary, we prayed through my spiritual journey, asking God for a sense of direction. I began to feel a sense of release from the past. To this day the effects of that prayer are still with me. For the confusion about my spiritual identity was laid to rest, and my feeling of being drawn into the Episcopal church was confirmed. ... For more than an hour Leanne prayed for me as I brought back to mind the wounds I had received by those who attempted to malign my faith pilgrimage and by those who sought to impede my journey into a wider, more inclusive sense of the Christian faith. After prayer, I felt free, even delivered” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 44, 45, 65).

Observe that he considered himself “wounded” by fundamentalist types who had tried to warn him about the ecumenical, sacramental direction he was going, and this Episcopal deaconess healed him of the “wounds” inflicted by those mean-spirited Biblicists. In fact, it was not wounds that they had given him but treasures. When someone cares enough to reprove us for sin and error, that is a great gift, but he rejected their kindnesses and sought healing from them through an occultic ritual that has no support in Scripture.

There is nothing like the “healing of memories” in the Bible. Christ and the apostles and prophets of the early churches taught nothing about this, and if it were as necessary as its proponents say it is, the Bible would not be silent about it.

Webber describes how that his ecumenical activities broadened his thinking and made him more tolerant and accepting of all the denominations.

Rejecting the Bible as the Sole Authority for Faith and Practice

Eventually Webber came to the place where he was no longer satisfied with the doctrine that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice. He was no longer satisfied with a faith walk with Christ based on Scripture. He wanted an experience that went beyond this. He had been led astray through ecumenism and sacramentalism and contemplative spirituality.

The following is a very frightful thing and is a warning for those who are tempted to flirt with ecumenism.

He said that in 1969 he was preparing a sermon for Wheaton College chapel. He decided on a two-part message. The first part would be an evaluation of contemporary culture, and the second would be the biblical answer. In the second part he wanted to answer the question, “What can we tell a world of despairing people?” (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 28). His outline began with the fact that God created the world and that the world, therefore, is meaningful, that God made man in His own image, that man fell away from God, and that Christ came to redeem men from their sins. That is precisely the answer given in the first three chapters of the epistle of Romans, but suddenly Webber became dissatisfied with these foundational Bible truths.

As I continued to redefine the answers, I asked myself, ‘Webber, why don’t these answers do anything for you?’...

The next morning I dragged my tired and weary body, mind, and soul to my office. I sat there at my desk and looked at those yellow, legal-sized pages of notes. ... I said to myself, ‘Webber, you’ve got to be honest about those answers. You can’t preach that with integrity.’

I stretched my arm across the desk, picked up the sermon manuscript and separated the two parts of the sermon. ... Then, in a moment of conviction, I stood to my feet, grabbed the answer part of my sermon in both hands, and vigorously crumpled the papers. Raising my right hand and arm high above my head, I tossed those answers with all my power into the wastebasket. I dropped back into my chair and sobbed for several hours. I had thrown away my answers. I had rid myself of a system in which God was comfortably contained. ... ‘God,’ I cried, ‘where are you? Show yourself to me. Let me know that you are.’ I was met by an awful silence. But it was not an empty silence. It was the silence of mystery--a silence that closed the door on my answers and broke the system in which I had enslaved God. I wept and I wept. ...

The next day I stood before the student body and delivered the first part of my sermon. Then I closed my notebook, looked at them directly, and told them what had happened to me. I told them that the answers don’t work, that what we need is not answers about God, but God himself. And I told them how God was more real to me in his silence than he had been in my textbook answers. My God was no longer the God you could put on the blackboard or the God that was contained in a textbook, but a maverick who breaks the boxes we build for him (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 28, 29, 30).

This is one of the saddest, most frightful testimonies I have ever read.

How unwise to say that what we need is not answers about God, but God himself. How can we possibly know God apart from the revelation He has given in Scripture? Anything beyond that is blind mysticism rather than biblical faith. We need sound doctrine based on the Bible, and we need a living walk with God through Christ based on that doctrine. Countless Bible believers have found deep satisfaction and a fruitful spirituality in this. To set the one against the other is heresy.

God has not revealed Himself in silence; He has revealed Himself in the Bible. And the Bible never exhorts us to try to experience God in silence. We are to meditate on His Word day and night (Psalm 1:3). We are to walk in fellowship with Him by praying without ceasing. Christ taught His disciples to pray by saying words, not by sitting in silence. In his epistles Paul described many of his prayers for an example to us, and they were always prayers of words. God is known by His own infallible revelation, and biblical faith is believing that revelation and knowing God through that revelation.

God is not contained in the Bible, but God is revealed in the Bible. God cannot be put on a blackboard, but God’s Word can be written on a blackboard and believed in the heart.

To accept the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice is not enslavement; it is freedom from deception. It is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

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