Luis Palau and Rome
In an April 24, 2001 interview with Ed Flynn of “Talk of the Town” on radio station 1320 AM, promoters of the Palau festival in Waterbury, Connecticut, said that the evangelist is “a uniter, not a divider,” that he is “nondenominational” and sends his converts “right back to the churches they come from.”
Christianity Today for Dec. 19, 1975, reporting on Palau’s Managua, Nicaragua, crusade, said: “It enjoyed the support of most of Managua’s 125 Protestant churches and many Catholics. Catholic charismatic groups attended.”
While covering Amsterdam ‘86, Fundamental Evangelistic Association reporter Dennis Costella asked Luis Palau if he would cooperate with Roman Catholics. Palau replied that he certainly would and admitted that it was being done. He went on to mention specific plans for more extensive Catholic involvement in his future crusades (Foundation, Jul.-Aug. 1986).
The 1987 Palau crusade in New Zealand was reportedly “the first time the Catholic Church has ever backed a major evangelical Christian mission” in that area. Catholic Bishop Dennis Browne of Auckland accepted an invitation to join the mission’s advisory board along with leaders of many other denominations (Challenge Weekly, April 18, 1986, reprinted in Australian Beacon, May 1986).
In 1992, the Arizona Republic gave the following description of Palau’s relationship with the Roman Catholic Church:
“Palau’s form of worship presents such a broad Christian message that it appeals to Protestants and Catholics alike ... But unlike other Evangelicals who have actively tried to lure ... Catholics away from their churches, PALAU AIMS TO KEEP PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN CHRISTIAN CHURCHES—REGARDLESS OF DENOMINATION ... ‘on the core of Christianity, we are one,’ Palau said in a recent interview. ... Palau represents a growing trend among religious groups ... that do not want to alienate Catholics... [Palau] CAREFULLY AVOIDS THE CONTROVERSIAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS. ... Protestants of Palau’s type have a message that does not require abandoning church membership. ... Bible studies are deliberately held at times that would not conflict with Masses and controversial subjects like the Virgin Mary are avoided. Instead there’s an attempt to find a common ground in the Bible” (The Arizona Republic, October 31, 1992).
Evangelist Palau claims that “at the core of Christianity, we are one”; yet Christian denominations have widely differing definitions of the gospel, of biblical inspiration, of Christ’s atonement, of biblical miracles, of God’s holiness, of Heaven and Hell, and many other core things.
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John Piper's Contradictory Position on Contemplative Prayer
[T]here is a spiritual seeing, or what we would call contemplation. This is where, when you read your Bible, you pause and you see in and through the words to the reality with your heart, and you apprehend spiritual reality. And this gives rise to a kind of praying that is spiritual and authentic and personal and warm and strong.
In the video, Piper says he is “ticked” with Christian seminary classes that turn “mainly” to the “mystical Catholic tradition in order to find this kind of depth and this kind of personal connection with the living God that is both rational and supra-rational and very mystical in its communion.” He adds, “You don’t have to embrace bad theology, namely Roman Catholic historic bad theology, in order to find amazing representatives of those who’ve known God at this level.”
The obvious question that was not answered in this snippet is whom does Piper believe are some of these “amazing representatives” who can teach us about “good” contemplative prayer? Thanks to our keen-eyed reader, who sent us a link to Piper’s church’s bookstore, we found that answer, at least in part--none other than Richard Foster, whose book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home is being sold on the Bethlehem Baptist Church’s bookstore website. Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home is one of Foster’s primers on contemplative prayer. In that book, Foster tells us: “You must bind the mind with one thought” (p. 124). Foster’s advice echoes mystics such as Anthony DeMello as Ray Yungen points out in A Time of Departing (p. 75). Yungen warns that this binding the mind (getting rid of distractions and thoughts) is no different than classic Hindu meditation.
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Was King James a Homosexual?
Actually, since he fathered eight children, he couldn’t have been much of a homosexual! He wrote love letters to his wife and obviously enjoyed her most intimate company. He referred to her as “our dearest bedfellow” (Gustavus Paine, The Men Behind the King James Version, p. 4). When John Rainolds questioned the phrase in the Anglican marriage service, “with my body I thee worship,” King James replied: “... if you had a good wife yourself, you would think that all the honor and worship you could do to her would be well bestowed” (Ibid.).
In a book that the king wrote for his son Henry (entitled Basilikon Doron, or A King’s Gift), he made the following statements about the importance of sexual purity:
“But the principal blessing [is] in your marrying of a godly and virtuous wife … being flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. … Marriage is the greatest earthly felicity” (p. 43).
“Keep your body clean and unpolluted while you give it to your wife whom to only it belongs for how can you justly crave to be joined with a Virgin if your body be polluted?” (p. 44).
“When you are married, keep inviolably your promise made to God in your marriage” (p. 45).
“Abstain from the filthy vice of adultery; remember only what solemn promise ye made to God at your marriage” (p. 54).
The king wrote plainly against the sin of homosexuality.
“Especially eschew to be effeminate” (Basilikon Doron, p. 46).
“There are some horrible crimes that ye are bound in conscience never to forgive: such as witchcraft, willful murder, incest, and sodomy” (p. 48).
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Carolyn Arends and the Dangerous Waters of Contemporary Music
She credits Billy Graham for helping change her view from that of six-day, young-earth creation to theistic evolution. In a November 2012 blog she explained how that she discussed the issue with her son as follows:
“‘Have you considered the possibility that God may have used evolutionary processes in his creation of the world?’ I asked.
“‘No! Mom! I believe the Bible!’
“‘Me too,’ I assured him. ‘But I think it's possible that Genesis 1 and 2 are more about the who of creation than the how.’
“Later that night, I read him something Billy Graham wrote in 1964: ‘I don’t think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think … we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say …. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story …. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process … makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.’
“... it's actually been biblical scholarship that has convinced me that Genesis does not prescribe any particular scientific view. A significant number of Hebrew scholars who affirm the authority of Scripture argue that the biblical creation accounts simply are not concerned with the science of creation at all, having been written long before the dawn of enlightenment empiricism” (Carolyn Arends, “God Did It, But I Don’t Know Exactly How the World Was Created,” Nov. 19, 2012).
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John MacArthur and Cultural Liberalism
Recently I received an e-mail from a father who said that his church is switching its Sunday School to material from John MacArthur. He asked, “Should a parent like myself be concerned?”
I replied: “I would be extremely concerned if a church started using MacArthur's material. Not only is he a staunch Calvinist, but he is a worldly rock & roll evangelical.”
Bible-believing parents should be deeply concerned about building bridges to John MacArthur.
The first part of the following report is from the Middletown Bible Church, Middletown, Connecticut (no date), http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/separate/macrock.htm
John MacArthur hosts a youth conference which is called the "Resolved Conference." Thousands of young people attend and listen to Christian lyrics sung to the heavy drum beat of rock music. There is no question that rock music is accepted and approved by John MacArthur and his church. This can be verified by going to the "Resolved" website [http://www.resolved.org].
Peter Masters, Pastor of London’s famous Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Spurgeon preached, wrote an article entitled, "The Merger of Calvinism with Worldliness." An excerpt from this article follows:
“When I was a youngster and newly saved, it seemed as if the chief goal of all zealous Christians, whether Calvinistic or Arminian, was consecration. Sermons, books and conferences stressed this in the spirit of Romans 12.1-2, where the beseeching apostle calls believers to present their bodies a living sacrifice, and not to be conformed to this world. The heart was challenged and stirred. Christ was to be Lord of one’s life, and self must be surrendered on the altar of service for him.
“But now, it appears, there is a new Calvinism, with new Calvinists, which has swept the old objectives aside. A recent book, Young, Restless, Reformed, by Collin Hansen tells the story of how a so-called Calvinistic resurgence has captured the imaginations of thousands of young people in the USA, and this book has been reviewed with great enthusiasm in well-known magazines in the UK, such as Banner of Truth, Evangelical Times, and Reformation Today.This writer, however, was very deeply saddened to read it, because it describes a seriously distorted Calvinism falling far, far short of an authentic life of obedience to a sovereign God. If this kind of Calvinism prospers, then genuine biblical piety will be under attack as never before.The author of the book is a young man (around 26 when he wrote it) who grew up in a Christian family and trained in secular journalism. We are indebted to him for the readable and wide-reaching survey he gives of this new phenomenon, but the scene is certainly not a happy one.
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Prominent BJU-Associated Pastor Defends Use of CCM
Pastor Fuller writes: “If I recall correctly, it was at our 2003 New England Leadership Conference that Dr. David Parker sang How Deep the Father’s Love for Us to a capacity crowd of New England fundamentalists. A chorus of hearty ‘amens’ followed this theologically robust text and appropriate tune by Stuart Townend. That was 2003. This is 2012. You see, 2003 was a somewhat blissful time when the ‘association’ or ‘source’ question of the original style of modern hymns wasn’t being necessarily fingerprinted. That benevolent spirit of heartily affirming the truths of these modern hymns has all but evaporated, unfortunately. Frankly, as a believer I feel a little ‘robbed’ that the spiritual gift I received in hearing that hymn back in 2003 has now been flagged as a potential stumbling block to other believers. Beyond the ‘offense’ objection, I have discovered that there seems to be a political element to this issue. In attending conferences and fellowships, I have noticed the ‘source and association’ issue of modern hymnody is raised with rapidity and frequency. If not stated explicitly, the attitudinal implications of some of the discussions are that there is little room at the table for a difference of opinion. A pastor’s ‘true-blue’ separatism might be questioned if he discerningly embraces these modern hymns. There is a definitive suspicion that is detected from others about your teetering on the ‘slippery slope’ if you view the source and association elements as mostly irrelevant, illogical or extra-biblical” (“Of Modern Hymnody at Trinity, Feb. 13, 2012).
Fuller went on to defend the Getty/Townend “contemporary hymn movement” as being (allegedly) different in character than the Contemporary Christian Music field.
In this he is dead wrong. As we have documented in The Directory of Christian Worship Musicians, Stuart Townend is an out-and-out Christian rocker, a radical charismatic, and a rabid ecumenist who associates with Rome and promotes the Alpha program and is therefore building the one-world church. By their intimate and non-critical association with Townend, the Gettys have demonstrated that they are one in spirit.
The people who are writing the “contemporary hymns” are not separated from the wider field of CCM. They are ALL holding hands. They are ALL the same rebellious spirit. NONE of them are friends of a fundamentalist position. ALL of them are avowed enemies of biblical separation. ALL of them have an ecumenical, charismatic mystical agenda. This is not mere opinion. We have studied these things “from the horse’s mouth” for nearly 40 years and have carefully documented our warnings.
To not consider “the source” of the contemporary music is unscriptural foolishness. God’s Word forbids us to associate with end-time apostasy. We are to touch not the unclean thing. To be careful about associations is the very heart and soul of biblical separatism.
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
The use of CCM is definitely a “slippery slope” toward compromise and error, and those who are playing with it are playing with fire.
This warning has nothing to do with “politics.” I can’t speak for others, but I know that my motive in warning against the slippery slope of CCM is a passion for the truth that I found in Christ.
The Church Fathers, A Door to Rome
The Catholic apologetic ministries use the “church fathers” to prove that Rome’s doctrines go back to the earliest centuries. In the book Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, David Currie continually uses the church fathers to support his position. He says, “The other group of authors whom Evangelicals should read ... is the early Fathers of the Church” (p. 4).
The contemplative prayer movement is built on this same weak foundation. The late Robert Webber, a Wheaton College professor who was one of the chief proponents of this back to the “church fathers” movement, said:
“The early Fathers can bring us back to what is common and help us get behind our various traditions ... Here is where our unity lies. ... 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, 1999, p. 89).
The fact is that the “early Fathers” were mostly heretics!
This term refers to various church leaders of the first few centuries after the apostles whose writings have been preserved.
The only genuine “church fathers” are the apostles and prophets their writings that were given by divine inspiration and recorded in the Holy Scripture. They gave us the “faith ONCE delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The faith they delivered is able to make us “perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We don’t need anything beyond the Bible. The teaching of the “church fathers” does not contain one jot or tittle of divine revelation.
The term “church fathers” is a misnomer that was derived from the Catholic Church’s false doctrine of hierarchical church polity. These men were not “fathers” of the church in any scriptural sense and did not have any divine authority. They were merely church leaders from various places who have left a record of their faith in writing. But the Roman Catholic Church exalted men to authority beyond the bounds designated by Scripture, making them “fathers” over the churches located within entire regions and over the churches of the whole world.
The “church fathers” are grouped into four divisions: Apostolic Fathers (second century), Ante-Nicene Fathers (second and third centuries), Nicene Fathers (fourth century), and Post-Nicene Fathers (fifth century). Nicene refers to the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that dealt with the issue of Arianism and affirmed the doctrine of Christ’s deity. Thus, the Ante-Nicene Fathers are so named because they lived in the century before this council, and the Post-Nicene, because they lived in the century following the council.
All of the “church fathers” were infected with some false doctrine, and most of them were seriously infected. Even the so-called Apostolic Fathers of the second century were teaching the false gospel that baptism, celibacy, and martyrdom provided forgiveness of sin (Howard Vos, Exploring Church History, p. 12). And of the later “fathers”--Clement, Origen, Cyril, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Theodore, and John Chrysostom--the same historian admits: “In their lives and teachings we find the seed plot of almost all that arose later. In germ form appear the dogmas of purgatory, transubstantiation, priestly mediation, baptismal regeneration, and the whole sacramental system” (Vos, p. 25).
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Beware of Brian McLaren
McLaren grew up in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren home. His grandfather was a old-fashioned Brethren missionary who believed in a pre-Tribulational Rapture. In an interview in 2009, McLaren told me that he holds his forefathers in high regard, but the fact is that he has completely rejected his grandfather’s Christianity and is doing everything he can to tear down the faith of anyone today who holds to that type of Christianity.
If McLaren’s missionary grandfather was right about his belief in such things as a verbally-inspired Bible, the necessity of the blood atonement of Christ for salvation, and the imminency of the return of Christ and a literal fulfillment of prophecy, then Brian McLaren is an apostate and a heretic. McLaren doesn’t like black and white type Christianity, but his grandfather did, and his grandfather was right.
A REVIEW OF “A NEW KIND OF CHRISTIAN”
McLaren’s book “A New Kind of Christian: a Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey” won a Christianity Today Award of Merit in 2002 and has found a wide and approving audience in “evangelical” circles.
“A New Kind of Christian” presents theological liberalism in the guise of a wiser, kinder, gentler type of Christianity called “Postmodern.” The semi-fictional account is about an evangelical pastor who has a crisis of faith and submits himself to the guidance of a liberal Episcopalian who is a graduate of Princeton Divinity School and a former Presbyterian pastor. This Postmodern guide, who is named “Dr. Neil Oliver,” is called “Neo” by his friends. Neo resigned the pastorate because he was too liberal for his denomination and is teaching high school when we meet him in McLaren’s book.
The book recounts the evangelical pastor’s journey from a position of faith in the Bible as the absolute standard for truth, a position in which doctrine is either right or wrong, scriptural or unscriptural, to a pliable position in which “faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally right” (from the back cover of “A New Kind of Christian”).
Gary E. Gilly hit the nail on the head in his review of “A New Kind of Christian” by observing: “More specifically, McLaren rejects absolute truth, authority, theology, objectivity, certainty and clarity. He embraces relativism, inclusivism, deconstructionism, stories (to replace truth), creative interpretation of Scripture, neo-orthodoxy, and tolerance.”
As the evangelical pastor in “A New Kind of Christian” begins his sad journey into theological liberalism (which he wants to call “postmodern”) he describes himself in these words:
“I feel like a fundamentalist who’s losing his grip--whose fundamentals are cracking and fraying and falling apart and slipping through my fingers. It’s like I thought I was building my house on rock, but it turned out to be ice, and now global warming his hit, and the ice is melting and everything is crumbling” (p. 22).
When he first begins talking with “Neo,” the evangelical pastor admits that he is afraid that Neo’s ideas are corrupting him and turning him into a heretic (p. 26), but he quenches the fear and proceeds down the path of error.
Instead of opening his Bible and seeking the face of God alone and finding out what God has to say in His Word and re-orienting himself to the eternal Word of God, instead of confiding in a man of God who believes the Bible, this evangelical pastor turns, in his hour of doubt, to a clever unbeliever and is led into the deepest error.
This is exactly what is happening to men and women throughout the evangelical world, because they have been brainwashed to think that separation from false doctrine is mean-spirited and that a “positive, non-judgmental” approach to Christianity is preferable. As a consequence, evangelicalism, over the past 50 years, has been infiltrated with every sort of heresy.
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Donald Whitney
What Schmidt fails to say is that Donald Whitney, a New Evangelical Southern Baptist Calvinist, is a bridge to some extremely dangerous things. He has some sound and helpful things to say, like any prominent New Evangelical, but the truth is mixed with error and he has no solid boundaries, having rejected “separatism.”
By this glaring omission and by recommending Whitney so highly, Schmidt and Lancaster Baptist are helping people to cross the bridges that Whitney has built.
Lancaster is doing the same thing with literature that they are doing with music. They are messing around with the wrong stuff. It is the same “soft separatism” that destroyed Highland Park Baptist Church which we describe in the free eBook Biblical Separatism and Its Collapse. By dabbling around with New Evangelical writings and adapting contemporary worship music they are building bridges to great spiritual dangers and many of their young people, adult church members, and followers will doubtless cross these bridges.
(See the video presentations “The Transformational Power of Contemporary Worship Music” and “The Foreign Spirit of Contemporary Worship Music,” which are available from Way of Life Literature, www.wayoflife.org.)
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Bill Nye The Comic Guy
Recently Nye continued his comedic role in posting a YouTube video entitled “Creationism Is Not Appropriate for Children” in which he calls upon parents not to teach their children creationism, claiming that it makes it more difficult for them to “build stuff and solve problems.” Nye bemoans the fact that a majority of Americans believe in creationism, pretending that this is impeding the nation’s scientific progress.
While many have taken Nye’s statements seriously, it is obvious that he made this video in the role of a comedian, because it is thoroughly refuted by the facts.
First, it is impossible to prove that the widespread belief in creationism has limited America’s scientific progress in that America has long been at the forefront of scientific progress. Other nations should look at this fact and conclude that they should emulate America and seek to have less belief in evolution and not more if they want to increase their scientific prowess!
Second, modern science was invented by men who believed in divine creation.
CCM Pioneer Bridge Builder Thomas Dorsey
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In 1999 CCM Magazine labeled Thomas Dorsey a major pioneer of contemporary Christian music. “It’s entirely arguable that Christian music would not exist if it were not for the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey” (Thom Granger, “Say ‘Amen,’ Somebody, Thomas Dorsey Remembered,” CCM Magazine, July 1999, p. 12).
Dorsey was a pioneer in CCM in that he popularized the integration of sacred lyrics with sensual party music.
Dorsey was a filthy blues musician who performed under the name of Georgia Tom and joined hands with the likes of Tampa Red (Hudson Whitaker) and Ma Rainey. They enflamed the sinful passions of the patrons of juke joints, whorehouses, and gambling dens with vulgar lyrics set to a sensual, body-jerking backbeat blues rhythm.
“The two [Dorsey and Tampa Red] became so notorious for their cunningly erotic blues they coined a word for the style [hokum] and went on to name their duo after it, the Famous Hokum Boys” (We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers, p. 180).
Pious blacks who took Jesus Christ and the Bible seriously and who were faithful to biblical churches, condemned the blues because of its intimate association with immorality and drunkenness and violence. This is clear from the histories that have been written of that time, such as the following:
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The Schaap Case - Troubling to This Preacher
The following is republished by permission of Pastor Bobby Mitchell, Jr., Mid-coast Baptist Church, Brunswick, Maine, bobbymjr@gmail.com
www.midcoastbaptistchurch.com
www.apurechurch.com
TROUBLING TO THIS PREACHER
August 6, 2012
I want to go on record with preacher friends and acquaintances concerning what I find most troubling about the wickedness of Jack Schaap. First, it is troubling that many are writing about his "fall" as if he were a man of God that sinned. Matt Olson and Paul Chappell are two that have weighed in on this and referred to this as a "fall.”
The truth is that Schaap didn't fall from anything. A cursory glance at his doctrine and deeds over the last eleven years would have revealed to any discerning Christian that he was a false prophet, a wolf, a viper, a dog, and an evil worker. Those are Biblical words. It is sad that he used the name Baptist but he was no more a Baptist than was Balaam. It is sad that he hurt many people and has misrepresented Christianity, but his preaching and practice plainly evinced that he was never what he claimed to be.
Second, it is troubling that so many refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that Schaap was the product of the belief and behavior of his father in law. If Scripture is our authority then we must agree with it in its condemnation of the preaching and practice of Jack Hyles. If you don't know what I'm writing of, then it is time to do your research for Hyles has been a major influence in leavening Baptist churches. You have no excuse for remaining in ignorance if you have read Matthew 7, Acts 20, Philippians 3, I and II Timothy, Titus, 2 Peter 2, I, II, III John, and Jude.
Hyles' Daughter Exposes the Cult
August 8, 2012 (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)
Recently I watched a very sad testimony by the daughter of the late Jack Hyles. Today her name is Linda Murphrey and it appears from this testimony that she has rejected biblical Christianity because of the hypocrisy she witnessed growing up in the home of the man who said God had given him “the steering wheel of fundamentalism” and who boasted that his church “was the greatest church in the history of Christianity.”
In her life story Linda mentions God only once and entirely leaves out Jesus Christ, the Bible, the new birth, and salvation through the cross.
Rejection of the truth of the Bible is oftentimes the fruit of a “Christian” cult, but it doesn’t have to be. Everyone growing up in a Christian home sees some type of hypocrisy and witnesses some level of less-than-perfect Christian living, because at his or her best the Bible-believing Christian is only a sinner saved by God’s grace. That’s not an excuse, but it is a fact. The apostle John said, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8). The apostle Paul, who in my estimation was the greatest Christian who ever lived, called himself the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) and said, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18).
Darby on the Judgment Seat of Christ
The following is from J. N. Darby’s (1800-82) Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, which was written between 1857-1862. Darby’s five-volume Synopsis with the complete index volume is available as part of the Treasure of Dispensational Commentaries in the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library from Way of Life Literature:
We must all be manifested before the tribunal of Christ, in order that each may receive according to that which he shall have done in the body, be it good or evil. A happy and precious thought, after all, solemn as it may be; for, if we have really understood grace, if we are standing in grace, if we know what God is, all love for us, all light for us, we shall like to be in the full light. It is a blessed deliverance to be in it. It is a burden, an encumbrance, to have anything concealed, and although we have had much sin in us that no one knows (perhaps even some that we have committed, and which it would be no profit for any one to know), it is a comfort--if we know the perfect love of God--that all should be in perfect light since He is there. This is the case by faith and for faith, wherever there is solid peace: we are before God as He is, and as we are--all sin in ourselves alas! except so far as He has wrought in us by quickening us; and He is all love in this light in which we are placed; for God is light, and He reveals Himself. Without the knowledge of grace, we fear the light: it cannot be otherwise. But knowing grace, knowing that sin has been put away as regards the glory of God, and that the offence is no longer before His eyes, we like to be in the light, it is joy to us, it is that which the heart needs, without which it cannot be satisfied, when there is the life of the new man. Its nature is to love the light, to love purity in all that perfection which does not admit the evil of darkness, which shuts out all that is not itself. Now to be thus in the light, and to be manifested, is the same thing, for the light makes everything manifest.
We are in the light by faith when the conscience is in the presence of God. We shall be according to the perfection of that light when we appear before the tribunal of Christ. I have said that it i a solemn thing--and so it is, for everything is judged according to that light; but it is that which the heart loves, because--thanks to our God!--we are light in Christ.
Dallas Willard
The following is excerpted from the book CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM: A POWERFUL ECUMENICAL BOND, which is available from Way of Life Literature. Contemplative mysticism, which originated with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox monasticism, is permeating every branch of Christianity today, including the Southern Baptist Convention. In this book we document the fact that Catholic mysticism leads inevitably to a broadminded ecumenical philosophy and to the adoption of heresies. For many, this path has led to interfaith dialogue, Buddhism, Hinduism, universalism, pantheism, panentheism, even goddess theology. One chapter is dedicated to exposing the heresies of Richard Foster: “Evangelicalism’s Mystical Sparkplug.” We describe the major contemplative practices, such as centering prayer, visualizing prayer, Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina, and the labyrinth. We look at the history of Roman Catholic monasticism, beginning with the Desert Fathers and the Church Fathers, and document the heresies associated with it, such as its sacramental gospel, rejection of the Bible as sole authority, veneration of Mary, purgatory, celibacy, asceticism, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and moral corruption. We examine the errors of contemplative mysticism, such as downplaying the centrality of the Bible, ignoring the fact that multitudes of professing Christians are not born again, exchanging the God of the Bible for a blind idol, ignoring the Bible’s warnings against associating with heresy and paganism, and downplaying the danger of spiritual delusion.
A major section of the book is entitled “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics” which deals with dozens of the current-day contemplative promoters as well as the ancient “saints” and mystics that are being resurrected today, including the following:
Angela of Foligno, Anthony the Great, Augustine, Benedict of Nursia, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ken Blanchard, Bonaventure, Brother Lawrence, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Siena, Larry Crabb, Anthony De Mello, Dominic, Meister Eckhart, Tilden Edwards, James Finely, Richard Foster, Matthew Fox, Frances de Sales, Francis of Assisi, Alan Griffiths, Madame Guyon, Hildegard of Bingen, Ignatius of Loyola, Willigis Jager, John of the Cross, William Johnston, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Keating, Morton Kelsey, Thomas a Kempis, Sue Monk Kidd, Peter Kreeft, John Main, Brennan Manning, Thomas Merton, J.P. Moreland, Henri Nouwen, Basil Pennington, Eugene Peterson, Karl Kahner, Thomas Ryan, William Shannon, Henri Le Saux, Philip St. Roman, David Steindl-Rast, Henry Suso, John Michael Talbot, Johann Tauler, Wayne Teasdale, Pierre Teilhard, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Lisieux, Majorie Thompson, Phyllis Tickle, Robert Webber, Dallas Willard, and John Yungblut.
The book contains an extensive index.
It is available in print and eBook editions from Way of Life Literature.
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DALLAS WILLARD (b. 1935) is a philosophy professor who has had an influence on the emerging church and evangelicalism at large through his writings on contemplative spirituality and the kingdom of God. Brian McLaren has called Willard and Richard Foster “key mentors in the emerging church.”
Willard is a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Southern California. He has taught at Fuller Theological Seminary and elsewhere.
He is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister.
Sexton's "Irreducible Body of Truth" Friendship Program
This report could also be titled “What Is Missing from Sexton’s Friendship Conference” or “Friendship vs. Truth.”
The third annual Independent Baptist Friends International Conference is being held this week (April 15-20, 2012) at Crown College in Tennessee with the objective of urging independent Baptists to unite in friendship for local and world evangelism.
Pastor Clarence Sexton, the founder of the Friends conferences, says he is not trying to create a large movement or to unify all independent Baptists. He doesn’t want to create a new organization. He does not want to control anyone or to abuse anyone’s conscience. He simply wants to urge IFB preachers in all parts of the world to partner together in their towns and regions for the furtherance of evangelism.
In preparation for this year’s conference Dr. Sexton said:
“There is AN IRREDUCIBLE BODY OF TRUTH (e.g., who God is, what His Word is, what He says about salvation, the local New Testament church). There are a number of things that are in THIS IRREDUCIBLE BODY OF TRUTH. And I believe that all over the world that God will raise up circles of friends. They have the truth; people need the Lord; and they are going to work together. ... This should happen in every state, on every continent, among every people group” (Sexton, “On the High Road with a High Vision of God,” YouTube.com, April 9, 2012).
He gave examples of how that preachers are coming together in various places in answer to this challenge.
He said that this is a vision that God has given him, but the underlying philosophy is unscriptural. It is the “in essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty” heresy that has been so effective in uniting evangelicals. Sexton refers to the “essentials” around which unity and joint ministry is possible as “an irreducible body of truth.”
The Fruit of Hylesism
The following is excerpted from the new book The Two Jacks: Hyles and Schaap, which is available as a free eBook from the Way of Life web site -- www.wayoflife.org.
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The fruit of the Hyles model and methodology has often consisted of moral and spiritual shipwreck.
Multitudes of former members of Hyles-type churches, having witnessed so much error and hypocrisy, have abandoned church altogether. Or they have explored the contemporary emerging philosophy, having allegedly found more spiritual reality in those circles than they witnessed in “fundamentalism.”
Being the products of shallow evangelism, many of these have never been biblically converted. They have prayed a sinner’s prayer but haven’t been converted. Having never had a real and dynamic relationship with Christ, they are man-followers, and when the man fails, they are offended and quit, sometimes blaming Christ and the church for something that is man’s fault alone.
Even if they were truly saved, they were not properly discipled and grounded in the Scriptures and in solid truth. All too typically they have been used or neglected and sometimes abused, but not shepherded.
The solution to this problem is not to abandon church or to capitulate to a contemporary style of Christianity that is conformed to the world. The “newest” part of the true Christian faith is 2,000 years old; it isn’t going to be contemporary cool!
When I was saved in 1973 out of a “hippie” background, I was perfectly cool by the world’s standards. I was a real “dude.” I had my long hair; had my self-centered attitude and my New Age philosophy; had my sensual party music; had my drug-using, hitchhiking background. But after my conversion I didn’t search for a cool type of Christianity. I had truly repented of my foolish ways and my rebellion against God. I had drunk deeply of “this world” and I was fed up with it. I wanted something different: something eternal rather than temporal, solid rather than shallow, unbending rather than plastic.
Beware of Jack Hayford
Jack Hayford (b. 1934) is the influential Pentecostal pastor of Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, and the author of many popular books and contemporary praise songs, including “Majesty.”
(The song “Majesty,” lovely though it is, promotes the unscriptural “kingdom now” philosophy, in which Christians are thought to be able to exercise kingdom authority over sickness and the devil in this present hour. This is what the words “kingdom authority” refer to in Hayford’s song.)
Hayford belongs to the Four Square Pentecostal Church, a denomination founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in direct disobedience to the Word of God. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Tim. 2:12).
Christianity Today magazine calls Hayford “The Pentecostal Gold Standard” (Christianity Today, July 2005), but when his theology and practice are examined we find that his position is not the untarnished gold of Scripture but the rust and corrosion of extra-biblical “revelation.”
Kevin Prosch and Prophetic Music
The following is excerpted from THE DIRECTORY OF CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP MUSICIANS, which is available as a free eBook from the Way of Life web site -- www.wayoflife.org
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The fact that “another spirit” controls the contemporary praise music movement is nowhere more evident than in the ministry of Kevin Prosch, whose praise songs include “Harp in My Heart,” “Show Your Power,” and “Love Is All You Need.” Some of Prosch’s music is published by Integrity.
Prosch is said to have “influenced more worship artists than any other leader in this decade,” including Martin Smith of Delirious, Matt Redman, and Darrell Evans.”
He lives in Amarillo, Texas, owns a recording studio, is associate senior pastor at More Church, and pursues hobbies that include “fishing, lots of camping, and a good glass of Lagavulin” (Scotch whiskey).
Prosch breaks down the walls between the holy and unholy in a shocking way. His former band the Black Peppercorns is described as “a group that played in pubs and bars and sang songs that blurred the lines between sacred and secular and saw folks in those bars have genuine encounters with the Spirit” (“Kevin Prosch, the Black Peppercorns, and Emergent Charismatics,” jonathanstegall.com).
To blur the line between the sacred and secular is to follow “another spirit” (2 Cor. 11:4). Israel’s priests were reproved when they “put no difference between the holy and profane” and showed no “difference between the unclean and the clean” (Ezek. 22:26). There are many clear lines that are to be drawn in the Christian life, but the CCM crowd wants to erase lines. We are to choose the spirit over the flesh (Gal. 5:16-17). We are to “abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Rom. 12:9). We are to love God and not love the world (1 John 2:15-17).
Frank Viola and the Organic Church
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The “organic church” is a concept promoted by Frank Viola and his associates. Part of the larger house church movement, it has been called “church with little organization, little structure, and loose doctrine,” which is true and would be dangerous enough in itself; but there is far more to the organic church than that, and the “far more” is insidious.
A major principle of the organic church is that every member has equal authority and there is no office of pastor or elder. It is defined as “Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership” (Viola, Pagan Christianity). Each member, male or female, is encouraged to contribute to the services as “the Spirit moves.”
Viola has promoted the organic church in popular books such as Jesus Manifesto (2010, co-authored with Leonard Sweet), Pagan Christianity (2002 and 2008, co-authored with George Barna), Reimagining Church (2008), The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Revise Us Again, Finding Organic Church, Rethinking the Wineskin, and So You Want to Start a House Church.
Having become increasingly aware of the growth and influence of “the organic church,” I read the first three of these books as research for this report, in addition to extensive online investigations.
The organic church claims to be geared toward putting God’s people under the headship of Christ, but in reality it woos them out from under the protection of God-called leaders, affiliates them with bogus “apostles” and “prophets,” and thrusts them unwittingly into the treacherous waters of end-time apostasy.
Continue reading this article……
Beth Moore's Ecumenical Philosophy
Beth Moore is one of the most popular female Christian speakers and authors. Her Bible-study books have sold more than 4.5 million copies. Her Living Proof Live conferences, hosted by LifeWay (Southern Baptist), draw thousands of attendees. Christian Reader magazine called her “America’s Bible Teacher.”
In disobedience to 1 Timothy 2:12, she teaches a co-ed Sunday School class at First Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. The Scripture says, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” According to this verse, women in the churches are forbidden to do two things. They are forbidden to teach men and they are forbidden to usurp authority over men. Many of the popular speakers today, such as Beth Moore and Billy Graham’s daughter Anne Lotz, though they are not pastors, disobey the Scriptures by teaching mixed groups of men and women.
Moore’s meetings are attended by people from “every denomination,” because she “doesn’t get caught up in divisive doctrinal issues” and “steers clear of topics that could widen existing rifts between different streams in the body of Christ” (Charisma, June 2003).
This is the unscriptural “positive-only” ecumenical philosophy that is so helpful in furthering end time apostasy and building the apostate one-world church. Paul exhorted Timothy not to allow any other doctrine, but Mrs. Moore knows better than to be so intolerant and narrow-minded (1 Tim. 1:3).
Moore’s worship leader, Travis Cottrell, “has a uniquely fresh approach to worship that brings the church together,” an approach “that permeates every denominational wall” (LifeWay Christian Resources web site).
John Templeton
One of the greatest promoters of the New Age and interfaith unity and global spirituality is John Templeton (b. 1912), the founder of the annual one and a half million dollar Templeton Prize for Religion.
Though he is a committed Presbyterian, he is also an evolutionist, pantheist, and universalist. His biographical sketch says, “Templeton’s goal has been nothing less than to change mindsets about the concept of divinity,” meaning that man is divine. He says that the Bible was written by men who “were limited by cosmologies long since discredited” and whose writings were “ignorant and primitive” (The Humble Approach, 1995, p. 135).
Templeton has also said:
“Evolution is accelerating ... traditional Judaism and Christianity are losing their powers to inform the contemporary mind. ... The main purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to encourage enthusiasm for accelerating discovery and progress in spiritual matters. ... THE NEXT STAGE OF HUMAN DIVINE PROGRESS ON THE EVOLUTIONARY SCALE NEEDS ... GENIUSES OF THE SPIRIT [WHO] CAN DEVELOP A BODY OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT GOD THAT DOESN’T RELY ON ANCIENT REVELATIONS OR SCRIPTURE [such as the Bible] ... that is scientific ... and is not disputed because of divisions between religions or churches or ancient scripture or liturgy. ... To encourage progress of this kind, we have established the Templeton Foundation Prizes for Progress in Religion” (The Humble Approach, pp. 37, 38).
“Time and space and energy are all part of God ... God is five billion people on Earth ... God is untold billions of beings on planets of millions of other stars ... God is the only reality ... GOD IS ALL OF YOU AND YOU ARE A LITTLE PART OF HIM” (The Humble Approach, pp. 37-38.)
Continue reading this article……
Ed Stetzer- Evangelical Bridge Builder
Ed Stetzer is one of the “conservative evangelicals” being praised by wanna-be evangelicals not yet bold enough to entirely renounce fundamentalism.
Dr. Stetzer, head of the SBC’s LifeWay research department, holds to the “in non-essentials liberty” philosophy, despises separatism, and associates with pretty much anybody and everybody. He is a bridge to the “broader church” that is filled to the brim today with ancient and end-times heresies (such as baptismal regeneration, popery, Mariolatry, sacramentalism, anti-Trinitarianism, universalism, Catholic mysticism, kingdom now reconstructionism, Charismaticism, theistic evolution, fallible inspiration of Scripture, panentheism, the non-judgmental “Shack” god, and Christian homosexuality).
As far as I know, Ed, as a “conservative evangelical,” doesn’t hold to these heresies, but he is a bridge to the broader “evangelical church” where an individual can easily be influenced by any and all of these. He is a path to the treacherous waters.
Most of these heresies are represented by the authors featured in any LifeWay Bookstore and certainly by those with whom those authors are directly associated.
Consider some of Stetzer’s associations. He is closely affiliated with Mark Driscoll, who is “culturally liberal” (e.g., ushering in the New Year through champaign dance parties), hates the doctrine of the Rapture, and promotes Catholic contemplative mysticism, among other things. Stetzer is affiliated with fellow Southern Baptist Rick Warren, who in turn is closely affiliated with New Agers and universalists (e.g., Tony Blair, Mehmet Oz, Daniel Amen, Mark Hyman, Leonard Sweet) and promotes Catholic contemplative mysticism, among many other things. Stetzer is non-critically affiliated with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which in turn is affiliated with the papacy and has turned thousands of “converts” over to the Catholic Church. Stetzer is also affiliated with the most liberal of emergents, who deny the infallible inspiration of Scripture, the substitutionary atonement, a literal hell, and many other fundamentals of the faith. Though Stetzer criticizes their heresies, he does so in gentle, intellectual, dialoguing terms and refuses to disassociate from them. He won’t stand up on his hind legs and reprove them in no uncertain terms for the rank and wretched heretics they are! For example, Stetzer participates in Shapevine, an emerging church blog that features liberal emergents such as Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Sally Morganthaler, Alan Hirsch, and Leonard Sweet. Shapevine is called “a global community of collaborators.” “Conservative Southern Baptists” like Stetzer are right in the middle of this unscriptural collaboration (Romans 16:17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 2 Timothy 3:5). (See our book What Is the Emerging Church? for documentation of the dangerous heresies of the aforementioned emergent leaders.)
John Piper and Christian Hedonism
John Piper (b. 1946) has a rapidly-growing influence among fundamentalists in general and Independent Baptists in particular.
A 2005 survey of roughly 1,100 “young fundamentalists,” found that John Piper has a significant influence. Almost 50% agreed with the statement, “John Piper’s ministry has been a help to me.”
The survey largely represented graduates of Bob Jones University (29% of those surveyed), Maranatha Baptist Bible College (22%), and Northland Baptist Bible College (21%). (For more on this see the report “A Survey of Young Fundamentalists” at the Way of Life web site.)
Kevin Bauder of Central Baptist Seminary has used his blog to praise “conservative evangelicals” such as Piper.
John Piper is the senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is so wishy-washy that the board of elders proposed in 2002 that the constitution be amended to allow a candidate to reject believer’s baptism by immersion if he “sincerely and humbly believes that it would be contrary to Scripture and conscience--and not just contrary to family tradition or desires--to be baptized by immersion and thus to count his infant baptism or his adult sprinkling as improper or invalid.” The proposal did not pass, but the fact remains that Piper and the elders were willing to entertain infant baptism in some instances, which is a heretical position for a so-called Baptist church to take. The Greek word “baptizo” means immersion and baptism is called a burial in Scripture (Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12). Immersion is not just a mode of baptism; it is baptism; and there is not one example in Scripture of an infant being baptized. To the contrary, the requirement for baptism is faith in Christ and an infant is clearly incapable of that (Mk. 16:16; Acts 8:36-39; 16:30-33). Though many sincerely believe that their infant baptism or adult sprinkling is a genuine baptism, they are sincerely misled and should in no wise be encouraged in their error by Baptist preachers.
Steve McVey's Corruption of Grace
Steve McVey is influential. He is the founder of Grace Walk Ministries, located in the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. He has published a half million books in 15 languages, has a radio ministry, a pod cast, a GraceVine newsletter, and travels widely “sharing the wonderful message of God’s grace.” McVey’s Grace Walk Groups, which are located in many states as well as overseas, are cliques of people who follow his teaching. Practically anyone can become a Grace Walk Group leader by watching three informational videos, submitting one’s name and contact information, and taking further training from McVey’s web site.
McVey is yet another of the countless enemies of any type of fundamentalist church. He even promotes a “Grace Walk Recovery Ministry” which is geared, not to help people quit drinking and abusing drugs, but to assist those who are “addicted” to Christ’s service. This “addiction” is broken by introducing people to McVey’s heresies and convincing them that his definition of “legalism” is sound. (Too bad McVey wasn’t around 2,000 years ago so he could “deprogram” the household of Stephanas who had unwittingly “addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,” 1 Cor. 16:15.)
McVey’s books contain a lot of truth interspersed with a lot of error. Continue reading this article……
Steve Jobs, The New Age Techno Wizard
As the inventor of the personal computer, iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, as a mover/shaker in the Hollywood fantasy business (as owner of Pixar films and as a collaborator with Disney), and as a pioneer in the field of digital books, Steve Jobs had a massive influence on modern society.
Jobs represented the merger of New Age philosophy, the sexual revolution, the me generation, drugs, music, and technology.
According to his sister, Jobs’ last words were “Oh wow; oh wow; oh wow.” Many commentators have tried to figure out the meaning of these enigmatic words. They could have meant that he was merely high on pain killers or that he was having a glimpse into a beautiful afterlife or that he realized at the very end that he was going to give account to a holy God without benefit of the Saviour.
The Bible is the only book that allows us to look into the next life, and it plainly states that death is a journey and there are only two destinies, Heaven or Hell, the destiny being determined by one’s relationship with the only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jesus boldly testified, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The Bible says of Him, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Chappell Says Treat Critics Like Bubblegum
The latest slightly disguised onslaught against godly reproof of fundamental Baptist error is from the pen of Paul Chappell, pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church, Lancaster, California.
In a blog entitled “Questions to Ask When Criticized,” August 8, 2011, Chappell advises that God’s people treat “critics” like “bubble gum.” More about that at the end of this article.
Chappell offers a list of 33 questions that should be asked when deciding how to receive “criticism.”
Now, we know that it is wise to weigh criticism. I have no doubt that I have far more critics and receive far more criticism than most preachers do, and some of it I take more seriously than others. And, sure, we tend to take heed to criticism from a source of sterling repute and from someone we know personally more quickly than from one who is less reputable or from a stranger, but the proper test of criticism is not to ask dozens of questions about the critic and his motives. The proper test is whether the critic is speaking the truth. Even if the critic is Balaam or Balaam’s ass, if he is speaking the truth I need to to take heed. Period.Continue reading this article……
Rob Bell's New God
Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins has stirred up something of a hornet’s nest of controversy, which we find puzzling. The man has been denying eternal hell and teaching a universalistic faith for a long time.
In a 2005 interview with Beliefnet, Bell said “the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever.”
In his influential book Velvet Elvis, which is popular with a great many Southern Baptists, he described a marriage that he conducted for two pagan unbelievers who told him that “they didn’t want any Jesus or God or Bible or religion to be talked about” but they did want him to “make it really spiritual (p. 76). Bell agreed with this ridiculous request and said that his pagan friends “are resonating with Jesus, whether they acknowledge it or not” (p. 92).
Love Wins is just more of the same. Not only does he preach near-universalism, he preaches a false god, a false christ, a false gospel, a false heaven, a false hell, you name it. He is a master of taking Scripture out of context and shoehorning his heresies into a text.
Franklin Graham's Unscriptural Ecumenism
Franklin Graham is following closely in his famous father’s footsteps, which, sadly, have led further from the Bible with each passing decade. In 1996 Franklin was named the first vice-chairman of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This was a new position with direct succession to become chairman when Billy Graham became incapacitated. Of course, this has now occurred.
Franklin Graham told the Indianapolis Star that his father’s ecumenical alliance with the Catholic Church and all other denominations “was one of the smartest things his father ever did” (“Keeping it simple, safe keeps Graham on high,” The Indianapolis Star, Thurs., June 3, 1999, p. H2).
He said: “In the early years, up in Boston, the Catholic church got behind my father’s crusade. That was a first. It took back many Protestants. They didn’t know how to handle it. But it set the example. ‘If Billy Graham is willing to work with everybody, then maybe we should too’” (The Indianapolis Star, June 3, 1999). Continue reading this article……
Eugene Peterson and the Message
Eugene Peterson (1932- ) was for many years James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College. He also served for 35 years as founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. Today he is retired and lives in Montana.
The New Testament portion of The Message was published in 1993 and the complete Bible in 2002. It is called a “translational-paraphrase” and is said to “unfold like a gripping novel.”
In fact, it IS a novel!
It was translated by Peterson and reviewed by 21 “consultants” from the following schools: Denver Seminary (Robert Alden), Dallas Theological Seminary (Darrell Bock and Donald Glenn), Fuller Theological Seminary (Donald Hagner), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Trinity Episcopal School, North Park Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Richard Averbeck). Columbia Bible College, Criswell College (Lamar Cooper), Westminster Theological Seminary (Peter Enns), Bethel Seminary (Duane Garrett), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Paul R. House), Covenant Theological Seminary, Westmont College, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute (John H. Walton), Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Gordon College (Marvin Wilson). Continue reading this article……
John Michael Talbot
The following is excerpted from the book CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM: A POWERFUL ECUMENICAL BOND, which is available from Way of Life Literature.
JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT (b. 1954) is a very popular Contemporary Christian Music recording artist, with sales of millions of CDs. He is also influential in the contemplative prayer movement. He represents two of the most powerful glues binding together the ecumenical movement, contemporary music and contemplative mysticism.
Talbot was raised Methodist, but in his book Come to the Quiet he thanks his parents for “installing a great love for world religions with me in my formative years.” From about age 10 he was singing and playing professionally with his siblings in folk bands. At age 15 he dropped out of school and formed the folk rock band Mason Proffit with his older brother Terry. They opened for Janis Joplin, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and other well-known groups and sold hundreds of thousands of records. At age 17 he married, and soon thereafter he began an earnest investigation into religion.
In 1971 Talbot was in a motel room praying, “God, are you a he, a she, or an it?” when he “saw a Christ figure standing over” him (Come to the Quiet, p. 5).
“I saw an image that looked like Jesus--it was a typical Christ figure--an incredible sight. He didn’t say anything--he was just there. ... I had been reading about Jesus and feeling him in my heart, but at that moment I actually experienced his touch. I knew it was Jesus” (Troubadour for the Lord, p. 46).
He says, “From then on, I began calling myself a Christian again, though I didn’t understand Christian theology.”
Oullette's Take on Buzzard Chasing
I am glad that Bro. Ouellette has published this, because it is a critical issue that needs to be aired among Independent Baptists.
Ouellette has been pastor of First Baptist Church of Bridgeport, Michigan, since 1975.
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
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“Chasing Buzzard”
R.B. Oulette
June 2, 2011
I heard someone quote an old preacher who said regarding this text, ‘I believe in chasing buzzards off. I don’t believe in chasing buzzards.’ It seems to me that this text and the thought given by that man of God now in Heaven are especially significant to us today. It is an important part of our ministry to stand against evil (Isaiah 58:1 - ‘Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.’). It is, however, not the only part of our ministry. We are also to ‘feed the flock of God.’ We are to ‘preach the Gospel to every creature.’ We are to ‘comfort the afflicted.’ We are to ‘weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.’ We are to ‘exhort one another.’ We are to ‘comfort one another.’ We are to ‘bear one another’s burdens.’ When we focus on the buzzards, we run the risk of becoming unbalanced and even unscriptural in our ministry. ... I’ll never forget the shock I felt as a young man, realizing that I had been named negatively in a national magazine. It seems to me that this kind of ‘gotcha’ approach is part of what drives some young men away from independent, fundamental Baptist leaders. This blog is part one of some thoughts on this phenomenon.Continue reading this article……
Gaither Artfully Distances Himself From Lesbian Marsha Stevens
On May 4, 2006, Bill Gaither issued a public statement “regarding misrepresentation” about his 2002 meeting with Marsha Stevens. He calls her story “a sad one” and says it is “unfortunate” that she has publicly declared herself to be a lesbian” (“Gaither Issues Statement Regarding Misrepresentation,” SingingNews.com, May 4).
He claims that false reports of what transpired at the December 2002 concert have surfaced on various web sites and says he wants to set the record straight; but in this statement he admits practically everything that Marsha Stevens had reported.
He acknowledges that he admitted her to the backstage area where she and her partner were greeted by him and Mark Lowry.
He acknowledges that he invited the crowd to sing her song later that night and that he told them that the woman who wrote it was in the crowd.
C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today
The late British author C.S. (Clive Staples) Lewis (1898-1963), who was known as Jack, is extremely popular with evangelicals today. In fact, he could be said to be the “godfather of modern evangelicalism.”
In fact, Lewis is loved with an equal fervor by “conservative evangelicals,” hell-denying emergents, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and even some Atheists, a fact that speaks volumes to those who have ears to hear.
Most Christian bookstores feature the writings of Lewis without a word of warning. Though Lewis died in 1963, sales of his books had risen to two million a year by 1977 and had increased another 125% since 2001, with no end in sight.
The December 2005 edition of Christianity Today was devoted to “C.S. Lewis Superstar.” In an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lewis’s birth, J.I. Packer called him “our patron saint” and said that Lewis ”has come to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary Evangelicalism” (“Still Surprised by Lewis,” Christianity Today, Sept. 7, 1998). Continue reading this article……
Schaap Says Independent Baptists Need to Expand the Base and Stop Criticizing
On Wednesday night, May 20, 2009, Jack Schaap, pastor of First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana, preached on the need for fundamental Baptists to broaden their base and stop being so narrow and to not criticize anyone at all. He preached this as counsel for the Hyles Anderson College students who were departing for summer break.
“We refuse to acknowledge that there are other saved people that are O.K. Brother Hyles had a great philosophy. As he got older he preached a sermon called ‘I Copy the Young Jack Hyles.’ I have been going through his books and I have been going through sermon notes and I’ve been going through sermons of when he was a young preacher, and I’ve gone back and copied in so many ways the young Jack Hyles. The young Jack Hyles who came here when the church had over a thousand members and and that church grew from 1959 to 11 years later it was declared the largest Sunday School in the world. And I looked at the people he ran with and the people he talked about and the friends he had and the archives.
Jerry Falwell, Should We Warn or Praise?
Was the late Jerry Falwell’s (1933-2007) overall influence to the Independent Baptist movement good or bad?
Falwell’s spiritual compromise and error was not late in coming and was not small by any measure. It was evident even by the 1970s that the man had made a 180 degree turn from his earlier stand and that he was determined to conduct a broadly ecumenical ministry. He was doubtless sincere in his desire to “bring America back to God,” but sincerity didn’t keep Moses from being judged by God when he struck the rock instead of speaking to it. “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully” (2 Timothy 2:5).
In 1999 I issued a warning report entitled “Jerry Falwell: The Billy Graham of Independent Baptists.”
Though Falwell claimed to be a fundamental Baptist, in reality he was a groundbreaking ecumenist who helped pave the way for the end-time harlot “church.” He happily worked alongside Roman Catholics, Charismatics, unregenerate Jews, Mormons, and religionists of many stripes who are staunchly opposed to the doctrine that he professed to hold in his Baptist church.
In a sermon preached in Evansville, Indiana, on December 12, 1978, Falwell said, “I believe God has called us in this last quarter of the 20th century to bring respectability to fundamentalism” (cited from Don Jasmin, Why Do Fundamental Schools Go Apostate, 2007, p. 171). Continue reading this article……
Carl Jung
Enlarged April 14, 20211 (first published 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 an enlarged edition of the biography of Carl Jung 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” (Ed 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).
Was Mother Teresa a True Christian?
Mother Teresa was born Agness Gonxha Bojaxhiu in what is now Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. Raised in a middle-class Roman Catholic family, she felt the call to be a nun at age 12. Five years later, in 1928, Agness said good-bye to her mother (it was the last time she would ever see her) and made her way to Darjeeling, India, a picturesque town nestled 7,000 feet in the Himalayas, for training. In 1931, she took the new name of Sister Teresa, after the French nun St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower). In 1939 she took final vows and was named mother superior at St. Mary’s School at the Loreto Sisters convent in a suburb of Calcutta.
While traveling to Darjeeling for a retreat in 1946, she felt called to work in the slums; and in 1948 she first put on the namesake white sari with a blue border, and moved into the wretched slums of Calcutta. The Vatican approved her new order, the Missionaries of Charity, on October 7, 1950. In 1952 she opened Nirmal Hriday, her now-famous home for dying destitutes in Kalighat, in south Calcutta. During Mother Teresa’s lifetime, an estimated 54,000 people were brought into Nirmal Hriday.
In 1963 the Missionaries of Charity was expanded to include male workers. Today roughly 4,500 nuns and 500 “religious brothers” work with the Missionaries of Charity operating 600 homes in 120 countries. Continue reading this article……
Rick Warren's Dangerous Judge Not Ecumenism
Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life is a No. 1 bestseller in both Christian and secular markets. It has sold millions of copies and at least two million people have participated in “40 Days of Purpose” campaigns. Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life and his earlier The Purpose Driven Church had sold 26 million copies as of September 2005. In October 2003 and again in September 2004, Jerry Falwell (who is associated both with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist Bible Fellowship) teamed up with Warren for Purpose-Driven “Super Conferences” with the goal of influencing 10,000 church leaders.
Warren is the senior pastor of Saddleback Community Church, a contemporary Southern Baptist mega-church in southern California. I attended a service in August 2003, and the “praise time” reminded me of a night club, with a longhaired “worship” leader, sensually attired women singers, pounding rock & roll, and swirling lights in the background.
EXCERPTS FROM “THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE”
Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life contains extensive documentation of his dangerous and unscriptural “judge not” ecumenical philosophy. Continue reading this article……
Philip Yancey and Dangers in Christian Bookstores
Philip Yancey, one of the most popular evangelical writers, illustrates the spiritual dangers in the typical Christian bookstore today.
Yancey promotes the Catholic contemplative movement in his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (2006, updated 2010). He quotes the Buddhist-Catholic monk Thomas Merton, goddess worshiper Sue Monk Kidd, pantheist Meister Eckhart, David Steindl-Rast (who denies the substitutionary atonement of Christ), and Richard Rohr (who worships as New Age “cosmic” Christ). Yancey also quotes Catholic “saint” Teresa of Avila and the heretical Catholic contemplative text The Cloud of Unknowing, which promotes a mindless communion with “God.” (For documentation see our books Contemplative Mysticism and The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature in print and electronic formats.)
Yancey also promotes the non-judgmental attitude toward homosexuality. In a 2004 interview with Candace Chellew-Hodge for Whosoever, a homosexual publication, Yancey said,
“When it gets to particular matters of policy, like ordaining gay and lesbian ministers, I’m confused, like a lot of people (“Amazed by Grace,” Whosoever online magazine).
Billy Graham's Sad Disobedience to the Word of God
Republished October 12, 2010 (first published in February 1997) (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) –
“And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord” (2 Chronicles 19:2).
I have been warning about Billy Graham’s compromise for decades, and it is a very difficult thing to do. He is one of the most popular men in the world. He is universally acclaimed as a wonderful Christian and a great evangelist. When you say something critical of Billy Graham, many people consider it equal to blasphemy against Almighty God!
The Lord knows, if I thought I could fulfill my obligations before God as a preacher of His Word and still keep my mouth shut about the Billy Grahams of our day, I would do it in a heartbeat! I am convinced, though, that this is not possible, and by God’s grace I would rather please Him than man.
In February 1997, I published an article in O Timothy magazine about Jerry Falwell’s support of Billy Graham. We noted that a watershed of sorts had occurred at Falwell’s Liberty University, in that the 1997 commencement speaker was Dr. Billy Graham, the foremost spokesman for the New Evangelical movement. The announcement in the National Liberty Journal stated:
“It is befitting that Dr. Graham will speak at Liberty’s 1997 Commencement, since his grandson, William Franklin (Will) Graham IV, will be among the graduating seniors. (Another grandson, Roy Graham, is a freshman at Liberty.) ... Dr. Falwell said, ‘This will be Dr. Graham’s first visit to Liberty. THIS COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS WILL NO DOUBT BE REMEMBERED HISTORICALLY IN THE NEXT CENTURY AS ONE OF LIBERTY’S HIGH DAYS. I am grateful that Dr. Graham is taking time from his busy schedule to grace us with his presence” (emphasis added) (National Liberty Journal, December 1996, pp. 1, 17).Continue reading this article……
Riplinger's Prophetic Claims
The following is excerpted from “The Messianic Claims of Gail Riplinger” by Phil Stringer, a message delivered to the Dean Burgon Society annual meeting earlier this year. The video of the complete message is available at:
http://vimeo.com/channels/burgon#13363375
(The audio is bad at the beginning of the video but improves about 1/3 of the way through.)
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We have to come to grips today with the claims that Gail Riplinger is making.
I want to read to you one of her claims from Hazardous Materials, page 42, in which she says, “No knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is required to read this book. ... I have done all of the Greek work for the reader.”
You don’t need to do your own work. She will tell you what it says.
But she had to admit in a May 1994 interview with Dr. Wayne House that she can’t read Greek or Hebrew. But she will tell you what it says. What kind of role would that give her in your life?
Richard Foster: Evangelicalism's Mystical Sparkplug
The following is excerpted from our book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature.
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Richard Foster’s writings have been at the forefront of the contemplative movement since the 1970s. No one has done more than this man to spread contemplative mysticism throughout Protestant and Baptist churches.
Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, which has sold more than two and a half million copies, was selected by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the 20th century. (For this review I obtained multiple editions of Celebration of Discipline, plus three other books by Foster.)
The Quaker Connection
He grew up among the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends), was trained at George Fox College, has pastored Quaker churches, and has taught theology at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and at George Fox. One website calls him “perhaps the best known Quaker in the world today.”
Dr. John Grebe's Challenge to Evolution
The following is excerpted from David Bradbury, “A Reluctant Convert from Evolutionism,” Persuaded by the Evidence (Master Books, 2008), edited by Doug Sharp and Jerry Bergman chapter 2:
In 1949, I graduated from the University of Michigan with a science degree and a firm belief that biological evolution was the proper scientific explanation for life as observed on earth today. ... I was a firm believer in and outspoken defender of chance evolution for the next three decades. Even today I still well recall (now with some embarrassment) the warm glow of intellectual superiority I felt as I confidently assured less well-educated others about how ‘molecules to man’ evolution was well and scientifically established. ...
Continue reading this article……
Oprah Winfrey, The New Age High Priestess
The following is excerpted from our new 500-page book The New Age Tower of Babel, which is available from Way of Life Literature. (Also available in a 9 message series on DVD.)
Book: $19.95
DVD: $29.95
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Few things illustrate the dramatic increase in New Age influence over the past two decades than Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey (b. 1954), the highly successful television talk show host, actor, producer, activist, and businesswoman, has been called “a really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa,” “a symbolic figurehead of spirituality,” a “moral monitor,” “America’s pastor,” “today’s Billy Graham” (USA Today, May 10, 2006).
Her syndicated television show is the highest-rated and longest-running television talk show in the United States, having run since September 8, 1986, for over 22 seasons and 3,000 episodes (“The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Wikipedia). Her show has 49 million viewers in 122 countries and practically any book that she recommends rises to the top rung of the sales charts. Her O magazine readership is about 3 million. She receives 10,000 letters and 4,000 e-mails a week. Her web site is visited 1.3 million times per day. A Gallop poll survey ranked her the number 4 most important woman in history. Continue reading this article……
Is It Wrong for an IB Preacher to Preach in a Southern Baptist Church?
Recently I received the following challenge:
“I want to thank you for your ministry. It has been a help to me much over the years.
I would like to clarify one minor thing with you, though. In your letter to Clarence Sexton, you stated about Andrew Phipps: ‘Another speaker scheduled for the Friends conference in April is Andrew Phipps (shown right). He regularly speaks at Freewill Baptist, Southern Baptist, Christian Unity, Social Brethren, and other types of churches.’
“I do not dispute with you that this man has problems and I agree with you that this pattern of preaching indicates a real problem. It is here that I would like to make a distinction. Though I am an ‘old school,’ separated Independent Baptist, where I preach is between myself and God alone. It is He who called me to preach the gospel. I’ll preach anywhere as long as they don’t mess with my message or invitation. Preaching in a Freewill Baptist church doesn’t make me a Freewill Baptist. Preaching in a Southern Baptist Church doesn’t make me Southern Baptist, etc., etc. Continue reading this article……
Charles Darwin's Deception
In his autobiography, Charles Darwin presented himself as a man who was not deeply influenced by the skeptical environment in which he grew up. He claimed, in fact, to have believed the Bible as a Cambridge student and even during his voyage on the Beagle and only gradually to have become a skeptic solely as the product of independent scientific investigation. This is a self-serving myth.
In fact, he never was a Bible believer, never professed Christ as his Saviour, and was influenced deeply by skepticism from a young age.
Charles’ grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a famous skeptic who worshipped “a distant Deity ... the vast Unknown.” Erasmus’ skepticism was so radical that it even shocked the Unitarian transcendentalist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who called him “an Atheist.” Josiah Wedgewood, Erasmus’ close friend and the grandfather of Charles’ wife Emma, was a Unitarian who rejected the Deity of Christ and the infallibility of the Bible. Josiah’s famous Wedgwood pottery firm honored the infamous Unitarian Joseph Priestly with a medallion featuring his likeness. The two grandfathers bequeathed “a mixture of freethought and radical Christianity to their grandchildren” (Adrian Desmond, Darwin, p. 5). Erasmus published a very popular two-volume work entitled Zoonomia, which presented nearly the same evolutionary theories later popularized by Charles. Erasmus added an evolutionary symbol to the Darwin family’ coat of arms, consisting of three scallop shells and the motto E Conchis Omnia (“all things out of shells”). The meaning was that all things had evolved out of the sea.
Gail Riplinger's Lies to Dr. and Mrs. D.A. Waite
November 24, 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)
INTRODUCTION
Since the early-1990s, Gail Riplinger has been a very bombastic voice for the King James Bible. Her shrill demeanor, mocking tone, and sensational approach have somehow proven popular.
Like Peter Ruckman, Riplinger has probably done more damage to the cause of the KJV than good. She has defied the Bible she claims to uphold by teaching men (1 Timothy 2:12), and, to make matters worse, she has smeared and belittled her opponents in a manner that is not befitting anyone with a Christian testimony.
Now she has now been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be a liar.
C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a Silly Fairy Tale
C.S. Lewis’s fantasy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, made its appearance as a feature Hollywood movie on December 9, 2005, and took in $187 million worldwide in the first ten days.
There is much hubbub about the movie in evangelical circles. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Seminary, is typical in his claim that Lewis’s fiction “stands as a powerful story with clear allusions to the person and work of Christ, to the reality of human sin, to humanity’s desperate need for redemption and to God’s ultimate victory in Christ” (“Aslan Is on the Move,” Baptist Press, Dec. 10).
I could not disagree more strongly. Though I have not seen the movie, I have read the book, and it is nothing more than a silly fairy tale. Continue reading this article……
Brennan Manning
April 29, 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) -
The following is excerpted from the book CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM: A POWERFUL ECUMENICAL BOND, which is available from Way of Life Literature.
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BRENNAN MANNING’S (b. 1934) birth name was Richard Francis Xavier Manning. In 1963 he was ordained to the Franciscan priesthood. In the late 1960s he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld in Spain. This Order spends its days in manual labor serving poor communities and its nights “wrapped in silence and prayer.” He spent six months in solitary contemplation in a remote cave in a desert. In the 1970s he returned to the United States and eventually entered a six month treatment program for alcoholism at the Hazelden treatment center in Minnesota. In 1982 he got married and left the priesthood.
Manning’s foundational error is his false gospel.
His web site features his biography, and what is glaringly absent is any scriptural testimony of salvation. Instead, we find the following statement:
“In February 1956, while Brennan was meditating on the Stations of the Cross, a powerful experience of the personal love of Jesus Christ sealed the call of God on his life.”
Gothard's Confusion About Blessing and Health
Bill Gothard has wielded vast influence among fundamentalists and independent Baptists. Not long after I was converted in 1973 I was invited to one of Gothard’s Basic Youth Conflict seminars and in 1978 I attended a Gothard minister’s conference in Tampa, Florida. His organization claims that more than two and a half million people have attended his seminars, and many more have been influenced by those who have attended and by using his materials.
Long ago we issued warnings about Gothard’s dangerous tendency to intermingle human psychology and his own thinking to a level of authority alongside the Scriptures, his dangerous ecumenism, downplaying the scriptural position of the church*, and other things, but now he has fallen farther off the deep end. Now he is promoting charismatic-style Power of Blessing and Total Health programs.
This is not totally surprising, because as early as 1994 Gothard attended a radically ecumenical conference that featured Charismatics. This was Bill Bright’s Prayer and Fasting conference in December of that year. To understand why Gothard should not have participated in this conference, we have to know something about the man who brought it together. The late Bill Bright had one of the most radically unscriptural ecumenical philosophies and agendas. As early as 1969, Bright said, “We do not attack the Roman Church. We believe God is doing a mighty work in it and will no doubt use millions of Roman Catholics to help evangelize the world” (The Post & Times Star, Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 30, 1969). We mightily wonder how this could be when the Roman Catholic Church preaches a false gospel. At Billy Graham’s Amsterdam '86 conference, Bright said, “There was a day when Protestants and Roman Catholics would not have much to do with one another. But today the Spirit of God is doing such a great work in both the Roman Catholic and Protestant fellowships and communions that I feel very much at home wherever Jesus Christ is honored” (Foundation, Jul.-Aug. 1986).Continue reading this article……
Bruce Lackey, Baptist Pastor, Educator, and Bible Conference Preacher
Bruce Lackey (1930-1988) was a great blessing in my life and I count it a privilege to offer the following biographical sketch of this man of God. The objective is not to glorify a man, but to glorify the God who saved and sanctified and used him.
Dr. Lackey* was a Baptist pastor, educator, and Bible conference preacher.
When he was young he attended a weak Baptist church by himself and made a profession of faith, but no one dealt with him carefully about salvation or discipled him, and it is uncertain whether he was actually saved then. His father died in a fire when Bruce was a boy. After attending community college he played piano at dances on Saturday nights for about three years.
In 1954 Bruce got right with the Lord. Gene Payne, the preacher who invited Bruce to church in those days, described his memory of this event to me in April 2007 as follows:
“When I met Bruce Lackey, I was Minister of Music and Youth at First Baptist Church in Thomaston, Georgia. Thomaston is approximately 75 miles south of Atlanta. Bruce worked in the bank which was located on the city square. The church building where I worked was a half block off the square, and every Monday morning I would go up to the bank where Bruce worked and deposit my check. Bruce was the teller, and I would invite him to church. In those days they had a few bars at the window. I have often stated when in a church service with Bruce, that when I met him he was behind bars. Of course I was referring to the bars at bank window! At that time, Bruce was playing in a dance band in some kind of a night club in Griffin, Georgia, which was located approximately twenty miles north of Thomaston. Bruce would get home late at night and that was an excuse he used for a few weeks for not coming to church. Finally, he came and if my memory serves me correctly he got right with the Lord in the first service. He began to attend church regularly, and I got him to go to jail services with me where he would give his testimony. I dare say that the first soul that Bruce ever led to the Lord was one of those inmates.”
The same year that Bruce got right with the Lord he married Helen Gilbert, who was an employee at the same bank where he worked in Thomaston.
He pastored two churches: Hardison Baptist Church in Byron, Georgia, for a couple of years, and Lakewood Baptist Church in Harrison, Tennessee, for eight years.
He taught at Tennessee Temple for 19 years and was the Dean of the Bible School for about 10 years. He was the Dean when my wife studied there from 1968-1972 and when I was there from 1974-1977. (I didn’t get saved until I was 23, whereas my wife went to Bible College right after high school.)
Dr. Lackey trained many classes of “preacher boys” who revere his name to this day and who thank the Lord for the godly influence that this “man of the Book” had in their lives and ministries. A high percentage of the students at the Tennessee Temple Bible School from its inception in the 1950s through the late 1970s were men who were saved and called to preach in manhood, many coming to Temple from the military. A high percentage of the graduates went on to plant churches throughout the world and today these men form a significant circle within the Independent Baptist fold.
Continue reading this article……
Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating
December 17, 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. Contemplative mysticism, which originated with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox monasticism, is permeating every branch of Christianity today, including the Southern Baptist Convention. In this book we document the fact that Catholic mysticism leads inevitably to a broadminded ecumenical philosophy and to the adoption of heresies. For many, this path has led to interfaith dialogue, Buddhism, Hinduism, universalism, pantheism, panentheism, even goddess theology. One chapter is dedicated to exposing the heresies of Richard Foster: “Evangelicalism’s Mystical Sparkplug.” We describe the major contemplative practices, such as centering prayer, visualizing prayer, Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina, and the Labyrinth. We look at the history of Roman Catholic Monasticism, beginning with the Desert Fathers and the Church Fathers, and document the heresies associated with it, such as its sacramental gospel, rejection of the Bible as sole authority, veneration of Mary, purgatory, celibacy, asceticism, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and moral corruption. We examine the errors of contemplative mysticism, such as downplaying the centrality of the Bible, ignoring the fact that multitudes of professing Christians are not born again, exchanging the God of the Bible for a blind idol, ignoring the Bible’s warnings against associating with heresy and paganism, and downplaying the danger of spiritual delusion. In the Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics we look at the lives and beliefs of 60 of the major figures in the contemplative movement, including Benedict of Nursia, Bernard of Clairvaux, Brother Lawrence, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Siena, Dominic, Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi, Madame Guyon, Hildegard of Bingen, Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Keating, Thomas a Kempis, Brennan Manning, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Basil Pennington, John Michael Talbot, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Lisieux, and Dallas Willard. The book contains an extensive index. 482 pages, $19.95
This book can be ordered online, by phone, or by e-mail with a credit card, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org, www.wayoflife.org
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M. Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating are very influential in the centering prayer movement which is sweeping through evangelical and Baptist churches. Their writings have helped popularize monastic retreats among evangelicals.
Both are Trappist monks and priests in the Roman Catholic Church. They co-authored Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer. First published in 1978, this book has had a wide influence.
PENNINGTON (1931-2005) entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance in 1951 at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. This Order is also called Trappist after the name of the location of their founding, which was the Abbey of Notre Dame de la Grande Trappe.
The Order is dedicated to contemplation. The monks dedicate themselves to silence and solitude and meditation under the Rule of Saint Benedict. This Rule teaches salvation and sanctification through asceticism. Chapter 7 of the Rule presents a 12-step ladder of virtue and asceticism that “leads to heaven.” These include repression of self-will, submission to superiors, confession, stifling laughter, and speaking only when asked a question. Under the Rule of Benedict everything is regulated, including sleeping, waking, meal times, quantity and quality of food, clothing, work, and recreation. The Rule forbids the ownership of any private property or the receipt of letters or gifts without permission of the abbot.
Pennington became professor of Theology at St. Joseph’s in 1959, professor of Canon Law and professor of Spirituality in 1963, and Vocation Director in 1978.
In 2000 he was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. This was founded in 1944 by 20 monks from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where Thomas Merton lived.
Pennington returned to St. Joseph’s after his retirement in 2002, and died in 2005 in a car crash.
Pennington believed that hell is separation from God and a feeling of isolation in this present life.
“Separation from God is the essential suffering and we call it hell. Many people don’t know that much of the emptiness or longing desire that they suffer from is because they are not in touch with God or whatever name they give Him. Separation is a very real form of suffering in this life” (interview with Mary NurrieStearns, “Transforming Suffering,” 1991, Personal Transformation website, http://www.personaltransformation.com/Pennington.html).
Pennington was a universalist who taught that man shares God’s divine nature.
“We are united with everybody else in our human nature and in our SHARING OF A DIVINE NATURE, so we are never really alone, we have all this union and communion. Getting in touch with that reality is the greatest healing. We can adopt meditative practices which enable us to begin that journey of finding our true inner selves or transcending our separate selves and leave behind some of the pain and suffering” (Interview with Mary NurrieStearns)
Pennington said, “... the soul of the human family is the Holy Spirit” (Centered Living, p. 104).
Pennington taught that the meditative practices of all religions bring one into the experience of the same God:
“It is my sense, from having meditated with persons from many different [non-Christian] traditions, that in the silence we experience a deep unity. When we go beyond the portals of the rational mind into the experience, there is only one God to be experienced” (Pennington, Centered Living, p. 192).
In fact, there is also the “god of this world” who assumes the persona of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Pennington promoted a radical interfaith ecumenism. He called Hindu swamis “our wise friends from the East” (Finding Grace at the Center, p. 23). He said, “We should not hesitate to take the fruit of the age-old wisdom of the East and capture it for Christ. Indeed, those of us who are in ministry should make the necessary effort to acquaint ourselves with as many of these Eastern techniques as possible ... Many Christians who take their prayer life seriously have been greatly helped by Yoga, Zen, TM and similar practices” (p. 23).
THOMAS KEATING (b. 1923) entered the Cistercian Order in 1944 and was appointed Superior of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, in 1958.
In 1961 he was elected abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. The centering prayer movement began at St. Joseph’s in the 1970s. Trappist monk William Meninger found a “dusty copy” of The Cloud of Unknowing, and he and Keating and Pennington began developing a system of contemplation based on that as well as the writings of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.
Observing that this type of Catholic contemplation is very similar to that of Buddhist and Hindu mystics, they invited pagan meditation masters, including Zen Buddhist Roshi Sasaki, to teach at some of the retreats.
They also began writing books. In addition to co-authoring Finding Grace at the Center, Keating has written Open Mind, Open Heart (1986), The Mystery of Christ (1987), Invitation to Love (1992), Intimacy with God (1994), The Human Condition (1999), Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit (2000), and St. Therese of Lisieux (2001).
By 2004, St. Joseph’s had become a full-fledged Zen center. This was the fruit of interfaith contemplative dialogue. In April of that year Jesuit Robert Kennedy installed Trappist monk Kevin Hunt as the first American Trappist instructor of Zen (National Catholic Reporter, July 16, 2004).
“Under the ‘protection’ of a Buddha statue and filing in to the cadence of a Japanese drum, the procession reached the Abbey’s Chapter Room. There the installment was made: after the imposition of hands whereby Kennedy made Hunt his successor, the latter received the ‘Robe of Liberation’ -- a black Japanese kimono -- and his teaching staff.
“Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, General Superior of the Jesuits, wrote a letter praising Hunt’s achievement as ‘one that we can all celebrate in thanksgiving to God.’ According to Kolvenbach, it is through Zen meditation that Catholics can become aware of the loving presence of God. HUNT PREDICTS THAT BUDDHISM WILL CHANGE CATHOLICISM” (http://www.traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/A082rcTrapistZen.htm).
Keating combines contemplative practices with humanistic psychology, eastern religion, and New Age, and he has been deeply influenced by his pagan associations.
He believes that man has a “false self” built up through one’s life experiences and this false self is filled with guilt because of a false sense of sin and separation from God. The guilt supposedly is not real and the false self is “an illusion.” The objective of contemplative techniques is to reach beyond this false self to the true self that is sinless and guiltless and already in union with God.
This is a universalistic doctrine that denies the fall and salvation through faith in the substitutionary atonement of Christ.
Keating says:
“As we evolve toward self-identity and full self-consciousness, so grows the sense of responsibility, and hence guilt, and so grows the sense of alienation from the true self which has long ago been forgotten in the course of the early growth period. This whole process of growth normally takes place without the inner experience of the divine presence. That is the crucial source of the false self. ... THERE’S NOTHING BASICALLY WRONG WITH YOU, it’s just that YOUR BASIC GOODNESS has been overlaid by emotional programs for happiness which are aimed at things other than the ultimate happiness which is your relationship with God” (Keating interview with Kate Olson, “Centering Prayer as Divine Therapy,” Trinity News, Trinity Church in the City, New York City, volume 42, issue 4, 1995).
Keating describes thoughtless meditative prayer in Hindu terms as being united with God in a mindless experience.
“Contemplative prayer is the opening of mind and heart, our whole being, to God, the Ultimate Mystery, BEYOND THOUGHTS, WORDS, AND EMOTIONS. It is a process of interior purification THAT LEADS, IF WE CONSENT, TO DIVINE UNION” (Keating interview with Kate Olson, “Centering Prayer as Divine Therapy,” Trinity News, Trinity Church in the City, New York City, volume 42, issue 4, 1995).
Keating describes centering prayer is “a journey into the unknown” (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 72).
Keating wrote the foreword to Philip St. Romain’s strange and very dangerous book Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (1990). Keating says, “Kundalini is an enormous energy for good,” but also admits that it can be harmful. He recommends that kundalini “be directed by the Holy Spirit.” He postulates that the meditative prayer practices of Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross might have been associated with kundalini energy. Keating concludes by saying: “This book will initiate Christians on the spiritual journey into this important but long neglected dimension of the transforming power of grace.”
Kundalini is a Hindu concept that there is powerful form of psychic energy at the base of the spine that can be “awakened.” It is called the serpent, is purely occultic, and has resulted in many demonic manifestations.
Its own practitioners warn repeatedly about its dangers. The Ayurveda Encyclopedia says, “Those who awaken their kundalini without a guru can lose their direction in life ... they can become confused or mentally imbalanced ... more harm than good can arise” (p. 336). The book Aghora II: Kundalini warns many times that “indiscriminate awakening of the Kundalini is very dangerous” (p. 61). It says: “Once aroused and unboxed Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the genie will not fit back into the bottle. ... Those who ride Kundalini without knowing their destination risk losing their way” (p. 20). In fact, the book says “some die of shock when Kundalini is awakened, and others become severely ill” (p. 61). It is likened to a toddler grasping a live wire (p. 58).
Keating retired as abbot in 1981 and co-founded (with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar) the Contemplative Outreach to promote centering prayer.
Keating is heavily involved in interfaith dialogue and promotes contemplative practice as a tool for creating interfaith unity.
He is one of the founders of the Snowmass Conference at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. This organization sponsored contemplative interfaith conferences for 20 years. They met “to meditate together in silence and to share our personal spiritual journeys.”
At the conclusion of the dialogues they published The Common Heart as an expression of their conviction that the things that unite them are greater than the things that divide. Contributors included Keating, Roshi Bernie Glassman (Zen), Swimi Atmarupananda (Hindu), Ibrahim Gamard (Islam), Pema Chodron (Buddhism), Netanel Miles-Yepes (Sufi), and Rabbi Henoch Dov Hoffman (Judaisim).
The foreword to the book was written by New Ager Ken Wilber.
Keating and the Snowmass Conference published eight “Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding,” including the following.
* The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate reality to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, Absolute, God, Great Spirit.
* Ultimate Reality cannot be limited to any name or concept.
* The potential for human wholeness--or in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana--is present in every human person.
* Prayer is communion with Ultimate Reality, whether it is regarded as personal, impersonal or beyond them both
This is blatant universalism, and it is fruit of contemplative spirituality and interfaith dialogue.
Keating is past president of the Temple of Understanding, founded in 1960 by Juliet Hollister. The mission of this New Age organization is to “create a more just and peaceful world” by achieving “peaceful coexistence among individuals, communities, and societies.” The tools for reaching this objective are interfaith education, dialogue, mystical practices, fostering mutual appreciation and tolerance, and promotion of the contempt of global citizenship.
Keating is also past president of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), which is sponsored by the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries of North America. Founded in 1977, it is “committed to fostering interreligious and intermonastic dialogue AT THE LEVEL OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE.” This means that they are using contemplative practices, yoga, Zen, and Sufism to promote interfaith unity and to help create a new world. The MID works in association with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Consider one of the objectives of the MID:
“The methods of concentration used in other religious traditions can be useful for removing obstacles to a deep contact with God. They can give a better understanding of the oneness of Christ as expressed in the various traditions and CONTRIBUTE TO THE FORMATION OF A NEW WORLD RELIGIOUS CULTURE. They can also be helpful in the development of certain potencies in the individual, for THERE ARE SOME ZEN-HINDU-SUFI-ETC. DIMENSIONS IN EACH HEART” (Mary L. O’Hara, “Report on Monastic Meeting at Petersham,” MID Bulletin 1, October 1977).
In January 2008 the MID web site featured Thomas Ryan’s book Interreligious Prayer: A Christian Guide. It contains “resources from eight religions that might be used in varying kinds of interreligious services.” The religions are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Baha’i, and Native American. A review of the book at the MID site web says:
“It is as one human family ... that we are called to live in harmony and to bring about justice and peace in our one world; and, as the author points out, FINDING ONE ANOTHER IN GOD IN PRAYER ‘is the shortest way between humans’” (Katherine Howard, “Book Review: Can We Pray Together,” MID Bulletin 80, January 2008).
The Monastic Interreligious Dialogue is associated with the North American Board for East-West Dialogue (NABEWD). At its first meeting in January 1978 at a monastery in Clyde, Missouri, Robert Muller, a New Age leader at the United Nations, was selected as the organization’s advisor (Pascaline Coff, “Bridging Millennia through Dialogue,” MID Bulletin 71, Sept. 2003). Muller believes in the divinity of all men.
Beginning in 1982 the NABEWD has sponsored exchanges between Catholic and Buddhist monks and nuns. The Buddhists visit Catholic monasteries in North America, while the Catholics visit Buddhist monasteries in Asia. This was done with the approval of the Dalai Lama, who was approached in 1981 while he was participating in a Buddhist-Catholic interfaith symposium at the Naropa Buddhist Institute in Boulder, Colorado. David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Keating also participated in the symposium. When the Catholics asked the Dalai Lama if he and his monks would be willing to participate, he replied, “Yes, but I have no money” (Pascaline Coff, Ibid.). The Catholics volunteered to pay the expenses, and the exchanges began the following year.
[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]
James Lister, An Early Defender of the KJB
December 4, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
The defense of the King James Bible is not new. The following is excerpted from FOR LOVE OF THE BIBLE: THE BATTLE FOR THE KING JAMES VERSION AND THE GREEK RECEIVED TEXT FROM 1800 TO PRESENT. This book traces the history of the defense of the KJV and the Received Text from 1800 to present. The book includes hundreds of testimonies and biographies; sketches of churches, schools, and organizations that have defended the KJV; a digest of reviews and condensations of major books and articles written in defense of the KJV in the past 200 years; excerpts from rare books on this subject which are no longer available; a comprehensive overview of the varied arguments in favor of the KJV. For Love of the Bible also gives a history of the modern English versions, beginning with the English Revised of 1881. Also included is a history of textual criticism, revealing that most of the textual scholars from the 19th-century on were rationalists who denied the infallible inspiration of Scripture. The 46-page annotated bibliography is the most extensive in print on the subject, to our knowledge. A detailed index is also included. The author spent several thousand dollars researching the book and has written several hundred letters in this connection, communicating with men from around the world who stand for the KJV today. Michael Maynard, author of A History of the Debate over 1 John 5:7,8, wrote: “For Love of the Bible is a masterpiece. It ought to be in every academic, public, and special library in the world.”
5th edition, October 2008, 522 pages, 5X8, soft cover. $19.95
This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143 (toll free), www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
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James Lister, minister of Lime Street Chapel, Liverpool, England, defended the King James Bible in 1820 in The Excellence of the Authorized Version of the Sacred Scriptures Defended Against the Socinians (Liverpool: Printed by J. Lang, 1820). This was an edited version of a sermon that Lister had preached at Gloucester Street Chapel, Liverpool, on Wednesday Evening, October 18, 1820.
The purpose of the sermon was to defend the King James Bible against the Unitarian Book Society’s edition of the New Testament founded on William Newcome’s version, which was based on the Griesbach critical Greek text. Lister was one of the many Christians that were stirred up by this publication.
When the Unitarian Book Society was formed, a major objective was the translation of a new English version based on the Griesbach critical text. Abandoning this plan, it published in 1808 an “improved” edition of the 1796 translation by William Newcome of Ireland “chiefly because it followed Griesbach’s text” (Earl Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America, 1952, p. 339; see also P. Marion Simms, The Bible in America, pp. 255-258). The complete title was “The New Testament, An improved version upon the basis of Archbishop Newcome’s new translation with a corrected text and notes critical and explanatory.” This publication “drew the fire of the orthodox by omitting as late interpolations several passages traditionally cited as pillars of Trinitarian doctrine,” such as “God” in 1 Timothy 3:16 and the Trinitarian statement in 1 John 5:7.
After tracing the history of Bible translations in foreign languages (Syriac, Latin, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, Persian, Gothic, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Bohemian, Polish, and Sclavonian or Russian), Lister summarized the history of the English Bible, beginning with Bede. He then described two aspects of the KJV translation that illustrate its excellence, the brilliant biblical scholarship of that time and the fierce religious debates that resulted in extreme caution in translation:
“The time when our translation was completed, though two hundred years ago, was remarkable for classical and biblical learning. The classics from the capture of Constantinople, had been revised, and had been studied with enthusiastic ardour in all the countries of Europe. In the century immediately preceding our version, schools and colleges had been multiplied over all the western world. Manuscripts were explored, compared and edited, and correct copies of the ANCIENT AUTHORS, BOTH PROFANE AND SACRED WERE PUBLISHED WITH A ZEAL AND PATIENCE FAR EXCEEDING ANY THING OBSERVABLE IN OUR TIMES. Oriental literature, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and Greek was deeply studied; and dictionaries, concordances, polyglots, such as the world had never seen before for depth and variety of erudition remain to this day as monuments of the talents, learning and research of our ancestors. Exalted on these monuments, some of our puny scholars, in THESE LATTER DAYS OF GREAT PRETENSION, have taken their lofty stand, and affected to despise the very men by whom these monuments were reared” (Lister, The Excellence of the Authorized Version, 1820, p. 14).
“The time when our authorized version was completed was a time of awful contention between catholics and protestants; a contest in which whole nations were embarked to a man, arranged under their respective civil authorities. Every nerve was strained on both sides to obtain the ascendency. Learning, talents, piety and zeal rushed forth to the conflict. AND THE MIGHTY FIELD ON WHICH THEY MET WAS, ‘THE TRANSLATION OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES INTO THE VULGAR TONGUES.’ In this fearful combat England stood at the head of the Protestant union; and both sides were fully aware of the incalculable consequences connected with an authorized version of the sacred scriptures into the English tongue. The catholics watched every measure of our government, and put every verse of our translation to the severest scrutiny. The Catholics had already sanctioned the Vulgate, and were prepared to inpugn every sentence wherein our version should differ from their authorized text. The mass of protestant learning was engaged on the one side to make our version as fair a copy as possible of the matchless originals; and the mass of popish erudition, on the other side, stood fully prepared to detect every mistake, and to expose without mercy every error of our public version” (James Lister, The Excellence of the Authorized Version, pp. 14, 15).
The fierce religious debates of the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in a zeal for biblical scholarship and a caution about the details of biblical translation that has absolutely no comparison in our day.
Lister then proceeded to give quotations from 11 authorities as to the excellence of the King James Bible. Following are two of these:
“To Dr. Walton may be added [Matthew] Poole in his Synopsis Criticorum 1669: ‘In the English version published in 1611, occur many specimens of an edition truly gigantic, of uncommon skill in the original tongues, of extraordinary critical acuteness and discrimination, which have been of great use to me very frequently in the most difficult texts’” (Lister, The Excellence of the Authorized Version, p. 17).
“Dr. [Joseph] White [1745-1814], Laudian professor of Arabic at Oxford, in a sermon recommending the revisal of our present version, says, ‘When the authorized version appeared, it contained nothing but what was pure in its representation of scriptural doctrine, nothing but what was animated in its expressions of devout affection. General fidelity to its original is hardly more its characteristic than sublimity in itself. The English language acquired new dignity by it; and has scarcely acquired additional purity since: it is still considered as the standard of our tongue...” (Lister, p. 18).
Lister concluded with a review of the Unitarian translation. One of the passages that he examined was 1 Timothy 3:16, where the Unitarians had replaced “God was manifested in the flesh” with “He who was manifested in the flesh.” This, of course, is what all of the modern versions following the critical Greek New Testament have done since that day, beginning with the English Revised of 1881 and the American Standard of 1901. Lister rightly mocks the Unitarian rendition of 1 Timothy 3:16 as meaningless.
“This translation rises far above my weak understanding. ... what is this great mystery according to the Socinian Creed? It is ‘a man manifested in the flesh.’ This is indeed a mystery, compared with which all Calvinistic or Trinitarian mysteries are nonentities; ‘a man manifested in the flesh.’ ... What adds to this mystery is, that this man, this man of clay manifested in the flesh, was seen, truly seen by his messengers that is by the apostles. That a man should be seen, seen by others, this is a mystery in the presence of which all Athanasian mysteries must for ever hide their heads. In the last clause they say of this man manifested in the flesh ‘he was received in glory.’ It is not to be supposed that we Trinitarians can understand such words. No—this is the climax of the Socinian mystery, such as has not entered into the hearts of Trinitarians to conceive” (Lister, The Excellence of the Authorized Version, pp. 28, 29).
Lister concluded his message with this challenge about holding fast to the KJV: “I entreat my candid readers, to be thankful for a version of God’s book so eminently correct and faithful. To God we owe unfeigned gratitude for the instruments, the holy and learned men, whom he raised up at the era of the reformation; not only to preach, but to translate the sacred volume into the English tongue” (p. 31).
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This is excerpted from For Love of the Bible: The Battle for the King James Version and the Greek Received Text from 1800 to Present. The fifth edition (November 2008) is revised and updated and fully illustrated. This book is available from Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143 (toll free), www.wayoflife.org (online catalog), fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Did Fuller Get his Views on the KJV From a Cultist?
DID FULLER GET HIS VIEWS ON THE KJV FROM A CULTIST?
Updated October 22, 2008 (first published December 30, 2000) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
Some of the men fundamentalists are promoting modern textual criticism, such as Bob Ross, Gary Hudson, Doug Kutilek, James Price, and the editor of “From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man,” have made the amazing charge that the current King James Bible defense is based upon the views of Benjamin Wilkinson, a Seventh-day Adventist professor. They claim that Wilkinson authored the view that the Received Text is the preserved Word of God that can be traced through history, and that J.J. Ray and David Otis Fuller picked up this teaching and promoted it to the “KJV Only” crowd.
In his 1930 book, “Our Authorized Bible Vindicated,” Wilkinson defended the text of the King James Bible and gave some evidence of its textual primacy among Bible believers through the centuries. Large portions of Wilkinson’s book were republished in David Otis Fuller’s 1970 book, Which Bible.
That much is fact. Whether Fuller was right or wrong in reprinting some of Wilkinson’s writings (and hiding the fact that Wilkinson was an Adventist) is something each reader will have to decide for himself.
I believe that he was wrong. Wilkinson’s writings added nothing of substance to the debate and by using Wilkinson’s book Dr. Fuller gave his enemies something to use against him and his position on the Bible.
Further, Wilkinson was wrong in some of his facts, having leaned heavily upon the writings of Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White. (I have obtained the vast majority of the books cited by Wilkinson for my own library with the objective of checking his documentation.) It is not true, for instance, that the Waldenses had a perfect Bible that is exactly like the King James. While the Waldensian New Testaments were much closer to the King James than to the modern versions, they were not exactly like the KJV. I have had the privilege of examining two of the seven extant Waldensian Bibles--the one at Trinity College, Dublin, and the one at Cambridge University. Both are based on Latin and have the textual corruptions that pertain to Latin. For example both omit “God” in 1 Timothy 3:16. Wilkinson claimed that the Waldensian Bibles were based on an “old Latin” rather than the Latin vulgate and were textually perfect, but this is not true (if we believe that the Greek Received Text is pure).
At the same time, to claim that Fuller’s views on the Bible version issue were derived from Wilkinson and to make Wilkinson the father of King James Bible defense is pure unadulterated nonsense.
Further, I am convinced that it is MALICIOUS nonsense, because even though this silly little myth has been refuted (such as in my book For Love of the Bible, first edition 1995 and second edition 1999, as well as in this article, which was first published in 2000) the aforementioned men continued to perpetuate it. As of September 8, 2008, their articles purporting this myth are still on the web.
THE DEFENSE OF THE KJV PRE-DATED BENJAMIN WILKINSON
First of all, long before Benjamin Wilkinson wrote on the Bible version issue, there were pastors and Christian leaders defending the King James Bible in the same way that Dr. Fuller defended it. I have carefully and extensively documented this in my 440-page book For Love of the Bible: The Defense of the KJV and the Received Text from 1800 to Present.
One example is the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) of England. The Society was formed in 1831 from a conflict within the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) over the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus Christ. The BFBS refused to take a stand against Unitarianism, and those men who were concerned for doctrinal purity left to form the TBS. In the early years of the TBS, the matter of different Bible texts and versions was not a serious issue in the sense it was to become at the end of the nineteenth century. Though there were textual critics in the first half of that century, they did not exercise wide influence in ordinary Christian circles. The battles faced by Trinitarian in its earlier years were in other directions.
With the publication of the English Revised Version New Testament and the Westcott-Hort Greek text of 1881, the TBS began to take a more active position on texts and versions. A number of articles were published in the TBS Quarterly Record at the turn of the century critiquing the ERV and supporting the Received Text. Some of these drew heavily upon John Burgon’s Revision Revised, as well as the research of F.C. Cook and F.H.A. Scrivener. From that time to this, Trinitarian has stood solidly behind the Received Text and the King James Bible. Their published writings have promoted all of the major points commonly given in defense of the KJV. Consider a couple of selections:
“The architects and advocates of the modern English translations of the Holy Scriptures often assure us that their numerous alterations, omissions and additions do not affect any vital doctrine. While this may be true of hundreds of minute variations there is nevertheless a substantial number of important doctrinal passages which the modern versions present in an altered and invariably weakened form” (God Was Manifest in the Flesh, TBS Article No. 10).
“For too long the ‘science’ of Textual Criticism has been in bondage to the authority of a small class of ancient manuscripts, with the Sinai and Vatican copies at their head, which are in thousands of instances at variance with the Greek Text preserved in the great majority of the documents now available for ascertaining the true text. ... The result has been that even in the ‘evangelical’ seminaries generations of theological students have been encouraged to accept without question theories which involve the rejection of the historical text and the adoption of an abbreviated and defective text cast in the mold of the Vatican and Sinai copies” (Many Things, TBS Article No. 33).
“No evangelical Christian, learned or unlearned, would wish to follow [modernistic] writers along the perilous paths of infidelity in which they strode with such presumption. There is another danger, no less serious, in that Textual Criticism, the evaluation of the actual manuscripts in the ancient languages, the preparation of printed editions of the Hebrew and Greek Text, and the modern translations now being made in English and many other languages, are very largely conducted under the direction or influence of scholars who by their adoption of these erroneous theories have betrayed the unreliability of their judgment in these vital matters. WE MUST NOT PERMIT OUR JUDGMENT TO BE OVERAWED BY GREAT NAMES IN THE REALM OF BIBLICAL ‘SCHOLARSHIP’ WHEN IT IS SO CLEARLY EVIDENT THAT THE DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF THE PRESENT CENTURY ARE MERELY REPRODUCING THE CASE PRESENTED BY RATIONALISTS DURING THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS. Nor should we fail to recognise that scholarship of this kind has degenerated into a skeptical crusade against the Bible, tending to lower it to the level of an ordinary book of merely human composition” (If the Foundations Be Destroyed, TBS Article No. 14).
It is obvious that defense of the King James Bible and its underlying text predated Benjamin Wilkinson in the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Another example was fundamentalist leader William Aberhart (1878-1943), who stood for the Received Text and the King James Bible in western Canada during the first half of the twentieth century. Aberhart was a pastor, Bible school dean, radio Bible teacher, and a greatly beloved political leader. He was Premier of Alberta from 1935-43. In the late 1920s Aberhart separated from the Regular Baptists over issues such as Bible inspiration and prophecy, and in 1924 he established the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. The first student enrolled in this Bible Institute was Ernest Charles Manning, who eventually became the premier of Alberta, holding that position from 1943 until 1968. Aberhart also founded the 1,250-seat Bible Institute Baptist Church, which often featured the preaching of well-known fundamentalist leaders such as William B. Riley and Harry Rimmer.
Aberhart trained his people and his students to have confidence in the divine preservation of the Bible. He defended the King James Bible as the preserved Word of God. A summary of Aberhart’s teaching was given to me personally by Pastor Mark Buch (1910-1995), who was educated by Aberhart in the 1930s. Buch was the founder and pastor of the People’s Fellowship Tabernacle in Vancouver, British Columbia. This church was a stronghold for biblical fundamentalism in western Canada from the time it was founded in 1939. Buch knew and preached with many of the well-known Fundamentalist leaders of the last century, including J. Frank Norris, G. Beauchamp Vick, and Bob Jones Sr.
When I was doing research for my book For Love of the Bible, I had the pleasure of interviewing Pastor Buch on a number of occasions. Buch had taken the second year Apologetics course Aberhart taught on the subject of inspiration and preservation at the Prophetic Bible Institute. Note how Pastor Buch described Aberhart’s position on Bible preservation:
“Mr. Aberhart was one of the greatest Bible teachers in Canada. He was the first person I came in contact with WHO KNEW THE TRUE STORY OF THE DIVINE INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION OF GOD’S HOLY WORD. He explained how it came down from the first apostolic faultless autograph, its safe keeping through the Byzantine church, the majority reformation copy by Erasmus of Rotterdam, William Tyndale’s translation, the Authorized committee of mental and spiritual giants, and the resultant glorious treasure—the Authorized Version” (Mark Buch, In Defence of the Authorized Version, People’s Fellowship Tabernacle, Vancouver, British Columbia, p. 25).
The position William Aberhart held on the Bible version issue in the 1920s is exactly the position that David Otis Fuller taught, and Aberhart was writing and teaching this several years before the publication of Wilkinson’s book. In the course of my research, I looked into the sources of Aberhart’s position. One of his sources was the writings of John William Burgon, whose book The Revision Revised was first published in 1881 and was reprinted many times. Mark Buch testified to me that Aberhard used Burgon’s material in his Bible institute classes.
TO SAY THAT FULLER WAS BRAINWASHED BY ANY ONE CERTAIN MAN OR BOOK IS TO IGNORE THE FACTS
While it is true that David Otis Fuller published some of Wilkinson’s writings, he also published the writings of a wide variety of men on the Bible version issue, and to focus on Wilkinson as the basis for Fuller’s views is something that is done to demagogue Fuller and other defenders of the KJV.
By his enemies, David Otis Fuller (called “Duke” by his friends) is made out to be some sort of scheming madman, and an ignorant one at that! The fact is that he was a graduate of Princeton Seminary and a noted pastor, author, and Baptist associational leader. He obtained the Master of Divinity degree at Princeton and was honored with a Doctor of Divinity degree by Dallas Theological Seminary. He pastored the prominent Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 40 years (1934-74). While there, he founded the Grand Rapids Baptist Institute, which later became the Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College (today called Cornerstone). Fuller co-founded the Children’s Bible Hour radio program in 1942 and for 33 years was its chairman. For 52 years Fuller was on the board of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. He was on the Council of 14 in the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Fuller published between fifteen to twenty books.
When he first began investigating the Bible version issue for himself in the 1960s, Fuller came across not only Wilkinson’s work, but also Philip Mauro’s Which Version, John Burgon’s Revision Revised, and Alfred Martin’s doctoral dissertation against the Westcott-Hort Text. Martin was Vice President of Moody Bible Institute and refuted modern textual criticism in his doctoral dissertation to the faculty of the Dallas Theological Seminary graduate school. Martin corresponded with Fuller on the Bible text issue and allowed Fuller to publish a condensation of his dissertation in Which Bible.
To say that Fuller was brainwashed by any one certain man or book is to ignore the facts. Whatever Fuller accepted from Ray or Wilkinson or anyone else he accepted because he felt that it was affirmed by other reputable sources.
Fuller was only a man, with the faults and weaknesses of a man. I respect him but I do not idolize him. The eternal treasure is held in “earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7) and those who preach the Word of God are “subject to like passions as we are” (Jam. 5:17). But there can be no doubt that Fuller was a scholarly individual who studied the Bible Version issue from many angles. He even visited the British Library to seek out John Burgon’s unpublished works. “It was the privilege of this compiler, after struggling through several rounds of red tape, to see for myself three of the sixteen folio volumes Burgon had written in his own hand, a compilation of eighty-seven thousand quotations from the early Church Fathers. I make bold to say there is no other collection like this in existence” (Fuller, Counterfeit or Genuine, introduction, p. 11). (I examined two of those massive volumes myself on a visit to the British Library in March 2003.)
Altogether Fuller edited three major volumes totaling 900 pages on the Bible version issue: Which Bible? (1970), True or False? (1973), and Counterfeit or Genuine? (1975). These volumes are evidence of Dr. Fuller’s diligent research on the subject of texts and versions. He located many books long out of print and made the contents available to his generation. Fuller’s three volumes on this subject contain the full or summarized works of many older authorities on the textual issue, including John Burgon, Herman Hoskier, Philip Mauro, Joseph Philpot, Samuel Zwemer, and George Sayles Bishop, as well as the works of a number of contemporary writers, including Edward Hills, Terence Brown, and Wilbur Pickering. Dr. Fuller was influential in obtaining and publishing several post-graduate theses that defended the TR and the KJV in opposition to the modern versions. These include the following:
A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory—Alfred Martin’s dissertation to the faculty of the Graduate School of Dallas Theological Seminary, May 1951.
The Preservation of the Scriptures—Donald Brake’s dissertation to the faculty of the Department of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Theology Degree, May 1970.
An Evaluation of the Contribution of John William Burgon to New Testament Textual Criticism—Wilbur Pickering’s thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Dallas Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Theology Degree, May 1968.
Contrary to the wild-eyed caricature that many have drawn of him, Dr. Fuller did not claim that the King James Bible was given by inspiration or that it contains some type of advanced revelation or that it could not be improved or changed. He claimed simply that it is the only reliable English translation of the preserved Greek and Hebrew text of Scripture. He did not believe the KJV has errors, but he differentiated plainly between improvements and errors.
“We do not say that the KJV does not permit of changes. There are a number that could be AND SHOULD BE made, but there is a vast difference between a change and an error” (Fuller, Is the King James Version Nearest to the Original Autographs? nd., p. 1).
I don’t share Dr. Fuller’s position that the KJV should be changed; my objective here is to define his position as carefully as I can and to refute the many lies that have been told about him.
Fuller believed that versions other than the King James could be used in study, if used carefully:
“I do not say that you cannot profit from reading other versions. You can. But if they are based on the Westcott and Hort text, they are immediately suspect and you should be mighty careful that you check that version with the KJV as closely as possible” (Fuller, Which Bible Is Preserved of God, message preached in the 1970s).
Dr. Fuller’s position on Bible versions is given on pages 5 and 6 of his first book, Which Bible:
“The compiler of this book, and the able writers whom he quotes, all contend that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant and authoritative word of God and that there has been a gracious exercise of the divine providence in its preservation and transmission. They are also deeply convinced that the inspired text is more faithfully represented by the Majority Text—sometimes called the Byzantine Text, the Received Text or the Traditional Text—than by the modern critical editions which attach too much weight to the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and their allies. For this reason the reader is encouraged to maintain confidence in THE KING JAMES VERSION AS A FAITHFUL TRANSLATION BASED UPON A RELIABLE TEXT” (Fuller, Which Bible? pp. 5,6).
“A faithful translation based upon a reliable text.” That is what David Otis Fuller believed about the King James Bible. For various reasons, many have not been content to allow D.O. Fuller to state his own position. Instead they have caricatured him as a wild-eyed traditionalist who believed that every word of the KJV was penned by direct inspiration. One would think that Dr. Fuller went around saying, “If the KJV was good enough for Paul it was good enough for me.” This caricature is convenient as a straw man that those who despise the Authorized Version can pummel in a very grand and pompous manner.
A more honest evaluation of Fuller’s Which Bible? was given by Dr. John Holliday in the Gospel Witness:
“WHICH BIBLE? is not a repudiation of scholarship. It is not an argument for the inerrancy of a translation. It is not a defense of out-dated forms of speech. It is an exposure of the presence of enemies in the field of Bible translation. It is a warning against adulterated versions of the Scriptures, particularly versions which show evidence of having been deliberately corrupted in order to destroy belief in vital Biblical truths. It is a long-overdue defense of the worth of the old Authorized Version ... A DEFENSE THAT IS GROUNDED UPON THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF ITS UNDERLYING TEXT AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF THE TRANSLATION.”
David Otis Fuller was powerfully conscious of the fact that he stood before God in his life and ministry. He was not an armchair theologian; he was a soul winner and a pastor. He died leading a little Sunday School girl to Jesus Christ. His chief concern was for the authority of God’s Word in the lives and hearts of people. He believed that the Bible text issue must be approached by faith and not by science falsely so-called. His wisdom was not ivory tower; it was down-to-earth. It was with D.O. Fuller as it was in the days of Jesus, in that the common man heard him gladly.
D.O. Fuller loved the blessed Word of God. It was not merely another book to him, and a great many men who think of themselves as scholarly today simply do not understand a genuine, heart-felt zeal for the Bible. As with the late Lester Roloff, to “Duke” Fuller the Bible Version issue was not merely about scholarship, about conflation, recension, inversion, eclecticism, conjectural emendation, intrinsic and transcriptional probability, interpolation, harmonistic assimilation, cognate groups, and genealogical methods. It was about the inspired, infallible, living Words of God. Roloff testified that he looked upon the King James Bible as he looked upon his mother (1 Pet. 1:23). It was a heart-felt issue with him. He was no more willing to look upon omissions and changes in the Bible text with scholarly calmness as he would look upon someone trying to cut a few “unnecessary” pieces off of his mother!
This is the way that David Otis Fuller felt about the King James Bible. Consider the following quotation:
“Please remember this. You and I are facing, as I have said before, the most vicious and malicious attack upon the Word of God that has ever been made since the Garden of Eden, and the modern attack began with the publication of the Revised Version of 1881. This is an unpopular cause at present in Christian circles. I have found this out again and again, and I am going to find it out in the future. But I can say as far as I am concerned it doesn’t make any difference what happens to me, but it makes a whale of a difference what happens to the cause of Jesus Christ. And someday you and I, my friend, will have to stand before a holy God and give an account to what we did or did not do in seeking to open the eyes of people to the facts that have been covered up for so long concerning His holy, indestructible, impregnable Word” (D.O. Fuller, letter to Dr. Paul Tassell, National Representative of the GARBC, Jan. 8, 1982).
Some have questioned Dr. Fuller’s motives in his stand for the King James Bible, but I had the privilege of corresponding with him before he died and of having a close relationship with some men who knew him well and of having diligently studied all of his writings on the Bible version issue; and I have seen no evidence that he was motivated by anything other than principle. He said he was motivated by love for the Bible. Those who knew him best believed this. I have looked at the evidence (including the statements by many of his critics), and I am convinced that for those who are not predisposed to vilify the man or to despise his position on the Bible, all of the evidence points to one conclusion: Dr. Fuller was a brave Christian gentleman who was motivated by his God-given conviction that the King James Bible is the preserved Word of God in English and that the modern versions are corruptions.
If he made some mistakes along the way, can that be surprising? Every book that has ever been written by a man has had to be revised, usually sooner than later and usually more often than less often. The only exception is the 66 books that make up the Holy Bible.
Fuller certainly did not gain anything, from an earthly perspective, for his stand for the King James Bible. He was a highly respected pastor and Christian leader BEFORE he published Which Bible, True or False, and Counterfeit or Genuine. He certainly did not gain in personal prestige or influence, speaking in a general sense. Rather, he was mocked, ridiculed, slandered, and ostracized, even by many of his own fundamentalist and Baptist brethren. He made no personal financial gain from the sell of his books, turning all of the profit back into the printing ministry.
Countless Christians today who have confidence in their Bibles, who have been delivered from the fog of critical textual theorizing and from the confusion of an unsettled text of Scripture, have David Otis Fuller to thank.
I close with the words of Pastor Robert Barnett, Calvary Baptist Church, Grayling, Michigan, who knew “Duke” Fuller well:
“One may not have understood the arguments and details Dr. Fuller was presenting, but when you left the room, you knew that God was real to Dr. Fuller, and the King James Bible was his infallible authority in every area in which it spoke. You also knew that Dr. Fuller had a genuine concern for both your soul and your life” (Pastor Robert Barnett, Calvary Baptist Church, Grayling, Michigan, March 1990).
Having studied the Bible Version issue diligently for 30 years and having built a library on this subject that contains most of the material that has been published on all sides of the issue for the past 200 years, I am convinced that David Otis Fuller’s enemies today have a spiritual disease. It is a disease that he identified and labeled. It is a disease that, as Princeton educated man, he had to fight in his own flesh. It is a disease called “scholarolatry.”
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
“Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.” Proverbs 26:12
“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. ... Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.” Jeremiah 17:5, 7
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:20-21
For more information see the following articles (and many others) under the Bible Version section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life web site:
http://www.wayoflife.org/
“Old-Time Fundamentalists Who Defended the King James Bible”
“Answer to Challenge on Preservation Article”
“Textual Criticism Is Drawn from the Wells of Infidelity”
“Examining James White’s ‘The King James Only Controversy’”
“Are Modern Versions Based on Westcott and Hort?”
“Can Evangelicals Be Trusted on Bible Versions?”
“Is the Received Text Based on a Few Late Manuscripts?”
“Which Edition of the Received Text Is the Preserved Word of God?”
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Beth Moore on the Contemplative Bandwagon
BETH MOORE ON THE CONTEMPLATIVE BANDWAGON
August 14, 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) -
Beth Moore, a Southern Baptist who is influential with a broad spectrum of evangelical women, is also on the contemplative bandwagon. She joined Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and other contemplatives on the Be Still DVD, which was published in April 2008 by Fox Home Entertainment. Shortly after it was released she issued a retraction of sorts, but she soon retracted her retraction. In a statement published on May 26, 2008, Moore’s Living Proof Ministries said: “We believe that once you view the Be Still video you will agree that there is no problem with its expression of Truth” (http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/bethmoorestatement.htm).
To the contrary, the very fact that it features Richard Foster and Dallas Willard are serious problems!
Lighthouse Trails issued the following discerning warning:
“In the DVD, there are countless enticements, references and comments that clearly show its affinity with contemplative spirituality. For instance, Richard Foster says that anyone can practice contemplative prayer and become a ‘portable sanctuary’ for God. This panentheistic view of God is very typical for contemplatives. ... The underlying theme of the Be Still DVD is that we cannot truly know God or be intimate with Him without contemplative prayer and the state of silence that it produces. While the DVD is vague and lacking in actual instruction on word or phrase repetition (which lies at the heart of contemplative prayer), it is really quite misleading. What they don’t tell you in the DVD is that this state of stillness or silence is, for the most part, achieved through some method such as mantra-like meditation. THE PURPOSE OF THE DVD, IN ESSENCE, IS NOT TO INSTRUCT YOU IN CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER BUT RATHER TO MAKE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HUNGRY FOR IT. The DVD even promises that practicing the silence will heal your family problems. ... THIS PROJECT IS AN INFOMERCIAL FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE, and because of the huge advertising campaign that Fox Home Entertainment has launched, contemplative prayer could be potentially introduced into millions of homes around the world.
“[On the DVD Moore says], ‘... if we are not still before Him [God], we will never truly know to the depths of the marrow of our bones that He is God. There’s got to be a stillness.’ ... [But is] it not true that as believers we come to Him by grace, boldly to His throne, and we call Him our friend? No stillness, no mantra, no breath prayer, no rituals. Our personal relationship with Him is based on His faithfulness and His love and His offer that we have access to Him through the blood of Jesus Christ, and not on the basis of entering an altered state of consciousness or state of bliss or ecstasy as some call it” (“Beth Moore Gives Thumbs Up to Be Still DVD,” http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/bethmoorethumbsup.htm).
In her book When Godly People Do Ungodly Things (2002), Moore recommends contemplative Roman Catholics Brother Lawrence and Brennan Manning.
Of Manning she says that his contribution to our generation “may be a gift without parallel” (p. 72) and calls Ragamuffin Gospel “one of the most remarkable books” (p. 290). She does not warn her readers that Manning never gives a clear testimony of salvation or a clear gospel in his writings, that he attends Mass regularly, that he believes it is wrong for churches to require that homosexuals repent before they can be members, that he promotes the use of mantras to create a thoughtless state of silent meditation, that he spent six months in isolation in a cave and spends eight days each year in silent retreat under the direction of a Dominican nun, that he promotes the dangerous practice of visualization, that he quotes very approvingly from New Agers such as Beatrice Bruteau (who says, “We have realized ourselves as the Self that says only I AM ... unlimited, absolute I AM”) and Matthew Fox (who says all religions lead to the same God), and that he believes in universal salvation, that everyone including Hitler will go to heaven. (For documentation see “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics” in our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Glue.)
If Moore truly wants to disassociate herself from the contemplative movement, that would be a simple matter. Let her issue a statement renouncing Richard Foster and Brennan Manning and their Roman Catholic contemplative friends and unscriptural practices. But don’t hold your breath, dear readers!
In disobedience to 1 Timothy 2:12, Moore teaches a co-ed Sunday School class at First Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. The Scripture says, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” According to this verse, women in the churches are forbidden to do two things. They are forbidden to teach men and they are forbidden to usurp authority over men.
Moore’s meetings are attended by people from “every denomination,” because she “doesn’t get caught up in divisive doctrinal issues” and “steers clear of topics that could widen existing rifts between different streams in the body of Christ” (Charisma magazine, June 2003). This is the popular but unscriptural “positive-only” ecumenical philosophy that is so helpful to the furthering of end time apostasy.
Romans 16:17 and Jude 3 are commandments that are commonly ignored by popular ecumenical speakers, but they will not be ignored at the judgment seat of Christ.
“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Rom. 16:17).
“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).
[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]
Agnes Sanford
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.
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Beware of Tony Campolo
Updated July 4, 2008 (first published March 5, 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) -
Tony Campolo is a popular “evangelical” speaker and author. He is professor emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University and an ordained minister in the liberal American Baptist Convention. According to Wikipedia, he currently serves as an associate pastor of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, whereas his wife attends Central Baptist Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania. In an interview with me at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta in January 2008, he confirmed that he and his wife attend different churches.
Campolo is associated with the emerging church. For example, he co-authored Adventures in Missing the Point with Brian McLaren. McLaren also endorsed Campolo’s book Speaking My Mind: The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians Are Afraid to Face (2004).
Campolo is a master entertainer. No doubt about it. Of course, that is the kind of speaker who is popular in this confused, carnal hour. Campolo is dynamic, interesting, and personable. He appeals to the young and to the old. He can make you laugh, and he can make you cry. He is full of zeal. He can move people. But Campolo is a dangerous man because of his aberrant theology.
A “GRADUAL” SALVATION EXPERIENCE
In Letters to a Young Evangelical Campolo described his own salvation experience in the following words:
“When I was a boy growing up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in West Philadelphia, my mother, a convert to Evangelical Christianity from a Catholic Italian immigrant family, hoped I would have one of those dramatic ‘born-again’ experiences. That was the way she had come into a personal relationship with Christ. She took me to hear one evangelist after another, praying that I would go to the altar and come away ‘converted.’ BUT IT NEVER WORKED FOR ME. I would go down the aisle as the people around me sang ‘the invitation hymn,’ but I just didn’t feel as if anything happened to me. For a while I despaired, wondering if I would ever get ‘saved.’ It took me quite some time to realize that entering into a personal relationship with Christ DOES NOT ALWAYS HAPPEN THAT WAY. ...
“In my case INTIMACY WITH CHRIST WAS DEVELOPED GRADUALLY OVER THE YEARS, primarily through what Catholic mystics call ‘centering prayer.’ Each morning, as soon as I wake up, I take time--sometimes as much as a half hour--to center myself on Jesus. I say his name over and over again to drive back the 101 things that begin to clutter up my mind the minute I open my eyes. Jesus is my mantra, as some would say. ...
“I learned about this way of having a born-again experience from reading the Catholic mystics, especially The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. ...
“After the Reformation, we Protestants left behind much that was troubling about Roman Catholicism of the fifteenth century. I am convinced that we left too much behind. The methods of praying employed by the likes of Ignatius have become precious to me. With the help of some Catholic saints, my prayer life has deepened” (Letters to a Young Evangelical, 2006, pp. 25, 26, 30, 31).
This is very a very frightful testimony. Campolo does not have a biblical testimony of salvation. He plainly admits that is not “born again” in the way that his mother was, through a dramatic biblical-style conversion. Instead, he describes his “intimacy with Christ” as something that has developed gradually through the practice of Catholic mysticism.
For one thing, this is to confuse salvation with spiritual growth. The conversions that are recorded in the New Testament are of the instantaneous, dramatic variety. We think of the woman at the well (John 4), and Zacchaeus (Luke 19), and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8), and Paul (Acts 9), and Cornelius (Acts 10), and Lydia (Acts 16), and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16), to name a few. The Lord Jesus Christ said that salvation is a birth (John 3:3). That is not a gradual thing that happens throughout one’s life; it is an event!
Further, Catholic mysticism itself is unscriptural. Jesus forbad repetitious prayers (Mat. 6:7). He taught us to pray in a verbal, conscious manner, talking with God as with a Father, addressing God the Father external to us, not searching for a mystical oneness with God in the center of one’s being through thoughtless meditation (Mat. 6:9-13).
Campolo’s testimony is more akin to the Roman Catholicism that his mother was saved out of. It is repeating mantas and doing good works and progressing in spirituality. Campolo clearly attributes his “spirituality” to Catholic-style mysticism. He even speaks in terms of experiencing “oneness with God” and entering a “thin place” wherein God “is able to break through and envelop the soul.”
“The constant repetition of his name clears my head of everything but the awareness of his presence. By driving back all other concerns, I am able to create what the ancient Celtic Christians called ‘THE THIN PLACE.’ The thin place is that spiritual condition wherein the separation between the self and God becomes so thin that God is able to break through and envelop the soul. ... Like most Catholic mystics, [Loyola] developed an intense desire to experience A ‘ONENESS’ WITH GOD” (Letters to a Young Evangelical, pp. 26, 30).
Roger Oakland observes:
“This term ‘thin place’ originated with Celtic spirituality (i.e., contemplative) and is in line with panentheism. ... Thin places imply that God is in all things, and the gap between God, evil, man, everything thins out and ultimately disappears in mediation” (Faith Undone, pp. 114, 115).
I suspect that Campolo’s many heresies are largely the product of his unscriptural mystical practices which have brought him into intimate communion with something other than the Jesus Christ of the Bible.
A SHAM EVANGELICAL “TRIAL”
After Campolo published the book A Reasonable Faith some evangelical leaders became concerned that he was teaching universalism. Campolo developed the idea that “Christ lives in all human beings, regardless of whether they are Christians.” He asserted that the resurrected Jesus of history is “actually is present” in each person and said, “Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is being saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving.”
When Campus Crusade for Christ and Youth for Christ cancelled Campolo’s speaking engagement at Youth Congress ‘85, the Christian Legal Society organized a “reconciliation panel” let by J.I. Packer.
After examining the book and questioning Campolo the panel came to the amazing conclusion that though his statements were “methodologically naïve and verbally incautious.” Christianity Today editor Kenneth Kantzer wrote that Campolo was entirely orthodox.
Campolo told Christianity Today,
“I’m worried that evangelical intellectuals will not say anything except the old phrases and the old worn out terminology ... The way evangelical Christianity is doing theology really bothers me. If everybody has to say only things that they know are safely orthodox, if we lose the capacity to be open and to share ideas that people may consider heretical, I think we will lose our creativity.”
This is a foolish statement, and for Christianity Today to leave it unchallenged is inexcusable. To call for a questioning of the “old worn out terminology,” and for theological openness to new theology is the apostasy described in 2 Timothy 4. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
Today’s evangelical leaders do not have the heart nor the spiritual discernment needed to protect the flock of God. They are blind guides and dumb dogs. Christianity Today’s defense of Campolo does not demonstrate his orthodoxy, it demonstrates Christianity Today’s confusion.
Campolo complained that he was being persecuted, even though the theological watchdogs turned out to be pussycats.
On the authority of God’s Word, we say that Campolo was a heretic in 1985 and since then he has proceeded from heresy to heresy, yet he is still accepted as an “evangelical theologian.”
CAMPOLO BELIEVES IN EVOLUTION
When Campolo was examined by the evangelical leaders in 1985, they noted that “while he accepts an evolutionary view of the origin of man and the universe, he holds that this is consistent with Scripture that teaches only the fact (not the method) of Creation” (Christian News, Sept. 23, 1985).
Christianity Today did not see this as a serious problem because they allow room for all sorts of doctrinal error, but it is a very serious matter.
It should be obvious even to a child that the Bible teaches not only the fact of creation, but the method, as well. The Bible plainly teaches that the world was created by God in six days and six nights. There is no room for any sort of evolutionary thinking here, and to allow men such as Campolo to hold such views is folly. The doctrine of special creation is the only view that reveals the nature of man as distinct from the animals and that explains the literal fall of man in a literal Garden of Eden. If there were no literal creation and fall, the atonement of Christ on the cross is without meaning.
CAMPOLO DOESN’T BELIEVE THAT THE BIBLE IS INERRANTLY INSPIRED
In an interview with Shane Claiborne in 2005, Campolo was asked to define “evangelical.” He replied:
“An evangelical is someone who believes the doctrines of the Apostle’s Creed. That outlines exactly what we believe in detail. Secondly, an evangelical has a very high view of scripture THOUGH NOT NECESSARILY INERRANCY. And the third thing--we believe that salvation comes by being personally involved with a living resurrected Jesus. So I’ve defined evangelical in those three terms. There is a doctrinal statement, so that there is some content to what we believe. There is a source of truth, Scripture. And there is a personal relationship with Jesus” (“On Evangelicals and Interfaith Cooperation,” Crosscurrents, Spring 2005, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2096/is_1_55/ai_n13798048).
Campolo’s doctrinal statement is not only exceedingly weak, shallow, vague, and confusing, but it is heretical as well! Further, defining salvation is “being personally involved with a living resurrected Jesus” allows for a world of heresy. It allows for an Orthodox sacramental gospel, a Roman Catholic mystical gospel, a Church of Christ baptismal regeneration gospel, you name it.
In his book Partly Right, Campolo said:
“Abraham’s knowledge of God fit no theological system. It complied with no dictates of knowledge. ... [Kierkegaard] rejected the bibliolatry of those fundamentalists who would make the Scriptures the ultimate authority for faith. Even though he would agree with those who hold to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scriptures, he refused to put the Bible in a higher place of authority than the inward encounter with God” (p. 99).
Thus, Campolo holds to the heresy that the Bible is not the ultimate authority for faith and practice and exalts the liberal-mystical idea that an inward encounter with God is a higher authority than the Bible. He does not explain how it is possible to test the genuineness of an “inward encounter with God” apart from the Bible and fails to acknowledge that “faith” is not a leap in the dark but that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17).
CAMPOLO IS AN ECUMENIST
I attended Missionsfest ‘92 in Vancouver, British Columbia, to hear Campolo speak. Though the participants represented a wide variety of belief and practice, most came under the evangelical label. There were Pentecostals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Anglicans, Lutherans, to name a few. I did not see any Catholic groups, though some of the people we talked to at the booths were strongly sympathetic toward Catholicism.
Campolo spoke on Friday evening to a standing-room-only crowd, and he literally brought the people to their feet. The man is a very effective speaker, which of course makes him all the more dangerous.
He began his talk by noting how incredible and wonderful it was that so many different kinds of Christians had come together for the meeting. He mentioned Pentecostals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Mennonites.
As Campolo stood before this mixed multitude, he did not have one word of warning about the false teaching represented by the various groups that were present. He did say, “If your theology is not right you will be messed up and not be able to follow Jesus adequately.” But he did not explain what he meant, and of course he gave no examples of being “messed up theologically.” He appealed to the people to give themselves to world missions, and he made no exceptions for those who hold to false doctrine.
Not only did Campolo approach this conference in a compromising ecumenical spirit, he did not even clarify the Gospel. He mentioned the Gospel; he referred to the Gospel. But he did not explain what the Gospel is. He did not preach the Gospel. He talked about “giving your life to Jesus Christ,” but that is not the Gospel. He spoke of the necessity of winning people to Jesus Christ, and he said that “missions starts with the declaration that Jesus Christ must be the Lord of your life.” But that is not the Gospel. That kind of language is interpreted many different ways by the various denominations. Campolo said, “I believe in heaven, and I believe in hell.” But that is not the Gospel. He mentioned the cross, but the cross must be explained. Especially is this true in this hour of doctrinal confusion. Even Rome mentions the cross, but Rome, of course, does not preach the biblical gospel.
All of this is not surprising in light of the ecumenism of the conference. If Campolo had preached a clear Gospel, he would have caused problems for some of the participants. He would have caused divisions. He could not preach against baptismal regeneration, because this was held by many of the Lutherans and Anglicans who were present. He could not preach against the heresy of losing your salvation, because this was held by many of the Pentecostals present. Ecumenists speak in generalities and inferences, not in plain doctrinal Bible language. They do not reprove and rebuke (2 Timothy 4:2).
Ecumenism has long been Campolo’s methodology. His American Baptist Convention is the most liberal group of Baptists in the United States and is a member body of the World Council of Churches. Bible-believing Baptist churches long ago separated from this modernistic group.
You can find Campolo practically anywhere--preaching the same ecumenically-popular message: You can find him in a National Council of Churches meeting (he spoke at the NCC-sponsored “A Gathering of Christians,” May 1988, in Arlington, Texas), and you can find him at a National Association of Evangelicals meeting (Campolo spoke at NAE’s annual convention, March 1987, in Wheaton, Illinois). Any lip service Campolo gives to the importance of doctrinal correctness is negated by his constant fellowship with heretics. In practice, the man has no concern for doctrinal purity.
Campolo signed an article in the liberal Sojourners magazine in May 1981, which lambasted the United States and stated that Roman Catholicism was the one bright light in the dark situation in El Salvador.
Campolo was on the editorial board for the production of the film Mother Teresa, which exalted the Roman Catholic nun and contained no warning about her false gospel. Campolo often uses Mother Teresa as an example of biblical Christianity, though she preached a false gospel, believed that all men are children of God, worshiped the wafer of the mass, and prayed to Mary.
Campolo has spoken at self-esteem guru Robert Schuller’s Institute for Church Growth. In 2001 he joined hands with Catholic priest Michael Moynihan at this Institute.
Campolo referred positively to Seventh-day Adventism in his book 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch (chapter 3).
Campolo is exceedingly dangerous because he is an ecumenist who is willing to work with and fellowship with error. He refuses to obey Bible separation. He refuses to lift his voice against heresy. In fact, he often pokes fun at the fundamentalist position. This is wickedness. It is impossible to please God while preaching the kind of positive ecumenical message that Campolo preaches.
CAMPOLO DESCRIBES MAN AS DIVINE
In his 1985 book Partly Right, Campolo used the word “divinity” seven times in one chapter to refer to man. He made the following statements:
“[Robert Schuller] never lets us forget that WE HAVE A DIVINITY ABOUT US and that as sons and daughters of God we are capable of great things. ... [Schuller] affirms OUR DIVINITY, yet does not deny our humanity ... Isn’t God’s message to sinful humanity that HE SEES IN EACH OF US A DIVINE NATURE of such worth that He sacrificed His own Son? ... [Christ] was aware of the filthy side of Mary and her sisters in the world’s oldest profession, but He also saw THEIR DIVINITY” (Partly Right, pp, 118, 119).
Man is made in God’s image, but he is never described as divine in Scripture. Christ did not teach that man is divine. He told the unsaved Pharisees that they were of their father the devil (John 8:44). It is confusion to describe man in such unbiblical terms.
CAMPOLO BELIEVES NON-CHRISTIANS MIGHT GO TO HEAVEN
In a letter to Jerry Falwell that was printed in the National Liberty Journal, August 9, 1999, Campolo said that Romans 2:14-16 “suggests that the work of Christ on the cross may be broader than some of us think.” He quoted Billy Graham as saying that “on Judgment Day, there may be people who enter the Kingdom who have not called themselves Christians.” Campolo stood by his statement on The Charlie Rose Show: “I am not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians” (Calvary Contender, October 1, 1999).
In January 2007, Campolo told the Edmonton Journal (Alberta, Canada) that he is not sure who will go to heaven. Asked by the paper, “Do you believe non-Christians can go to heaven?” Campolo replied: “That’s a good question to ask because the way we stand is we contend that trusting in Jesus is the way to heaven. However, we do not know who Jesus will bring into the kingdom and who He will not. We are very, very careful about pronouncing judgment on anybody. We leave judgment in the hands of God and we are saying Jesus is the way. We preach Jesus, but we have no way of knowing to whom the grace of God is extended” (“Canada’s Different Evangelicals,” Edmonton Journal, Jan. 27, 2007).
This is contradictory gobbly-gook! If we believe that “trusting Jesus is the way to heaven,” then we most definitely DO know who Jesus will bring into the kingdom. He will bring those that trust Him and He will not bring those that do not trust Him. As for pronouncing judgment on people, it is not our judgment. It is God in His infallible Word who has stated such things as, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16), and, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” (John 3:36), and, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12).
To say that we have no way of knowing who Jesus will bring into the kingdom is to play the religious politician and to deny the plain teaching of Scripture. God has already told us, Mr. Campolo! “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Words could not be plainer! The unbeliever does not have to wait until he dies to find out whether or not he will go to heaven. The Bible says he is condemned already (John 3:18), dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), controlled by the Devil (Eph. 2:2), a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3), “having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Revelation 21:8 says the unbeliever will be outside of the eternal city of God.
In about 1996, in an interview with Bill Moyers broadcast on MSNBC, Campolo was asked about whether evangelicals should try to convert Jews. He replied:
“I am not about to pronounce who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. That is not within the realm of any of us. We are not here to declare who is out and who is in. All we are here to say is what is meaningful in our own lives, what has been significant in our own personal experience with God. I have come to know God through Jesus Christ. He is the only way that I know God. And so I preach Jesus, and I not about to make judgments about my Jewish brothers and my Muslim brothers and sisters. I’m just not about to make those kinds of statements. I think we ought to leave judgments up to God and we ought to call people to obedient faith in their own traditions, even as we faithfully preach out own faith to others. I learn about Jesus from other religions. They speak to me about Christ, as well” (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4117713232348817752).
In an interview with Shane Claiborne in 2005, Campolo said: “Evangelicalism is heading for a split… There is going to be one segment of evangelicalism, just like there is one segment in Islam that is not going to be interested in dialogue. But there are other evangelicals who will want to talk and establish a common commitment to a goodness with Islamic people and Jewish people particularly” (“On Evangelicals and Interfaith Cooperation,” Crosscurrents, Spring 2005, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2096/is_1_55/ai_n13798048).
Claiborne then asked Campolo, “When we talk about inter-religious cooperation, does that mean that we need to stop trying to convert each other?” To which Campolo replied:
“We don’t have to give up trying to convert each other. What we have to do is show respect to one another. And to speak to each other with a sense that even if people don’t convert, they are God’s people, God loves them, and we do not make the judgment of who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. I think that what we all have to do is leave judgment up to God.”
If Muslims are already God’s people, then why in the world should we try to “convert” them?
Campolo said further:
“I’ve got to believe that Jesus is the only Savior but being a Christian is not the only way to be saved. ... Now Muslims do not believe that Jesus died on the cross. So we have a difference there. We kid ourselves if we pretend that we all believe the same thing. What we have to do is say that we believe different things. But there is so much goodness in the Islamic community, it cannot be ignored. Those who write off Islamic people are making a serious mistake. ... I don't think you have to compromise as a Christian the belief that Jesus is the only Savior but what I do think we have to say is that the grace of God extends way beyond the limitations of my religious group. Our Muslim brothers and sisters can say Islam is the only true faith but we are not convinced that only Muslims enjoy salvation. I contend that there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ, but I am not convinced that the grace of God does not go further than the Christian community.”
This is exceedingly unscriptural thinking. If Jesus Christ is the only Saviour, then the grace of God extends precisely to those who are in Christ. Jesus IS the grace of God, and salvation is in Him and nowhere outside of Him. It is the sinner that believes on Christ that has eternal life; he that that does not believe is condemned already (John 3:16-18). Ephesians 2 describes the condition of those who have not been regenerated. They are “dead in trespasses and sins” (v. 1). They walk according to their head, the devil (v. 2). They are “by nature the children of wrath” (v. 3). They are “without Christ ... having no hope, and without God in the world” (v. 12). They are “far off” (v. 13).
Later in the interview Claiborne said:
“Rarely are people converted by force or words, but through intimate encounters. Perhaps one of the best things we can do is stop talking with our mouths and cross the chasm between us with our lives. Maybe we will even find a mystical union of the Spirit as Francis did.”
To this Campolo replied:
“Speaking of Francis [of Assisi], here’s a wonderful story. I got to meet the head of the Franciscan order. I met him in Washington. He said let me tell you an interesting story. He told me about one of their gatherings, where they bring the brothers of the Franciscan order together for a time of fellowship. About eight years ago they held it in Thailand and out of courtesy, they really felt they needed to show some graciousness to the Buddhists, because they were in a Buddhist country. So they got Buddhist theologians together and Franciscan theologians together and sent them off for three days to talk and see if they could find common ground. They also took Buddhist and Franciscan monastics and sent them off together to pray with each other. On the fourth day they all reassembled. The theologians were fighting with each other, arguing with each other, contending there was no common ground between them. The monastics that had gone off praying together, came back hugging each other. IN A MYSTICAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, THERE IS A COMING TOGETHER OF PEOPLE WHERE THEOLOGY IS LEFT BEHIND AND IN THIS SPIRITUALITY THEY FOUND A COMMONALITY.
“It seems to me that when we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say, it’s a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of the Christians that I hear. In other words IF WE ARE LOOKING FOR COMMON GROUND, CAN WE FIND IT IN MYSTICAL SPIRITUALITY, EVEN IF WE CANNOT THEOLOGICALLY AGREE, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences?
“So we make sure we don’t compromise what we believe. But we also make sure that in mystical spirituality we find a kind of oneness that we leave judgment of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell in the hands of God and just preach the truth as we understand it” (“On Evangelicals and Interfaith Cooperation,” Cross Currents, Spring 2005).
Campolo exalts experience over doctrine. The reason that he can say that he doesn’t compromise what he believes even while claiming that Buddhist and Muslim mystics are in fellowship with God is that he doesn’t believe anything!
“He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ... He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:18, 36).
CAMPOLO BELIEVES WE ARE BUILDING THE KINGDOM OF GOD TODAY
One of Campolo’s most serious errors is his confusion regarding the kingdom of God. He holds the popular “kingdom now” theology, which is sweeping through much of the evangelical/charismatic world. According to this thinking, the kingdom of God is something that is presently in this world. Campolo places the Bible promises for a future earthly kingdom into the context of this sin-cursed, apostate hour. Thus, Campolo challenges Christians to go into the world and to transform society.
In his message at Urbana ‘87, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s annual youth meeting, Campolo said, “This night is a historical moment. This night God wants to raise up a generation of men and women who will enter into every sector of society as agents of change, transforming the world into the kind of world he wills it to be” (Decision magazine, Mar. 1988).
Campolo claims that believers are saved to change the world:
“Conversion is not basically so that you can go to heaven when you die. The purpose of conversion is so that you can go through the kind of personal transformation that will enable you to be a different kind of a person here on Earth and to become an instrument of God for changing the world” (“Evangelist seeks social justice, preaches conversion,” Toledo Blade, Aug. 2, 2003).
“[Jesus] saved us in order that He might begin to transform His world into the kind of world that He willed for it to be when He created it” (Campolo, It’s Friday but Sunday’s Coming, p. 106).
“Our call is to be God’s agents, to rescue not only the human race but the whole of creation” (Campolo, “Why Care for Creation,” Tear Times, Summer 1992).
Campolo claims that believers are commissioned to build the kingdom of God in this world, and he borrows his theology from all sorts of heretics to prove his point. In How to Rescue the Earth without Worshiping Nature (Thomas Nelson, 1992), he said: “If the Shalom of God and the peaceable kingdom of Isaiah 11 are to become real, then new ways of thinking must be established. With some help from St. Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, we just might make it” (p. 89). Thus he even borrows from Teilhard who worshipped a new age cosmic “christ.”
This is why Campolo says “the kingdom of God is a party.” That is the title of one of his books and is a theme that he brings into many of his messages. To prove this idea, Campolo quotes from the Bible’s references to such things as the Old Testament Jewish festivals and wrongly applies this to our time.
There is no hint in the New Testament that the apostles considered themselves agents of change in society. We don’t see them having a party. They gave their attention to preaching the Gospel and to building churches. They did not protest the problems of the Roman Empire. They did not start new businesses for the poor. They looked upon this present world as one under the imminent judgment of God and they did all they could to snatch brands from the fire, to get men saved before it is too late. Yet, as we shall see, Campolo actually makes fun of this type of thinking.
Campolo claims to believe in a future earthly kingdom of God that will be established when Christ returns, but his kingdom focus is definitely upon this present time. Chapter two of The Kingdom of God Is a Party is called “Signs of the Kingdom.” Campolo relates how he came up with the term “party” in relation to the kingdom of God. He first describes some popular ecumenical definitions of the kingdom of God. He mentions the Shalom concept of the World Council of Churches and the Jubilee concept of liberal social activists such as Ron Sider and John Yoder.
“During the 1950s, another biblical symbol or image came to the fore, as Christian leaders tried to find some new way to express God’s mission in the world and to explain that people like us are to have a part in it. Many main-denominational theologians, particularly those associated with the World Council of Churches, took hold of the concept of Shalom. ... Shalom was that time when the lion and the lamb would lie down together, swords would be reshaped into plowshares, and war would be no more. ... The imagery provided by the word Shalom became a motif around which church leaders organized their activities. Building houses for poor people was done to contribute to Shalom. Fighting racism, supporting the peace movement, participating in efforts to save the environment--all were done to foster Shalom.
“Over the last few years, several neo-evangelical writers have made use of still another word to give expression to what they believe to be the purpose of the Christian mission. They have used the term ‘Jubilee.’ This symbol is especially useful for those who believe that the church should have a primary commitment to meet the needs of the poor and the oppressed. Writers such as Ron Sider and John Howard Yoder have made good use of the concept of Jubilee in their writings...”
Campolo’s only criticism of Shalom and Jubilee involves the difficulty of explaining these things.
“The main problem with this image, or symbol of the Christian mission, is that Jubilee, like the concept of Shalom, requires too much explanation to hammer home its meaning to most people. ... Something that will give a more immediate picture of what God wants to do in this world is needed. I have been groping for a word or image that can do that for us. ... The word is ‘party.’ The Kingdom of God is a party.”
It should be obvious that Campolo is focused on this world when he says the kingdom of God is a party.
Further, an entire chapter in this book is dedicated to an attempt to prove that it is God’s will for Christians to give ten percent of their income for worldly celebrations. This is based on a faulty application of Deuteronomy 14:22-29. Israel was to bring a tithe of the harvest to Jerusalem each year for a great festival. Campolo applies this directly to the hour in which we live.
In another chapter of the book Campolo applies kingdom work to efforts to solve the social problems of the world. Consider this quote:
“If ghetto kids in Philadelphia have little to celebrate because they have hovels for homes and live in the midst of gang violence, then we must do something to change all of that. If blacks in South Africa have to endure humiliation because of apartheid, then apartheid must be destroyed. If the Palestinians are denied human rights and are made into aliens in the very land in which they were born, then we must protest. If Catholics in Northern Ireland are made into second-class citizens by the Protestant majority, then we must work and pray for the restructuring of the Irish social system.” (pgs. 43,44)
It is obvious that Campolo’s focus is upon something that is foreign to the Bible for this present time.
For a refutation of this error, see the article “The Kingdom of God” at the Way of Life web site.
CAMPOLO HATES DISPENSATIONALISM AND REJECTS THE IMMINENT RETURN OF CHRIST
Campolo often pokes fun at fundamentalists who preach doom and gloom from a literal prophetic standpoint:
“Doomsayers at one time in America seemed limited to those who preached the fundamentalist gospel. Leaning on their Scofield Bibles, these preachers of the Word predicted an increasing tendency toward sin and decadence until that day when the world would be so bad that Jesus would have to return to put a stop to it all. There seemed to be a degree of satisfaction in any news that things in this world were falling apart. As they understood it, the faster this world went down the tubes, the more the Lord’s return would be hastened” (The Kingdom of God Is a Party, pp. 132,133).
Speaking at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s annual meeting in June 2003, Campolo said:
“Instead of preaching against Harry Potter I suggest that you people who are preachers start preaching against those really hot sellers in the Christian community, those ‘Left Behind’ books. Nobody wants to say it. You are scared to attack the ‘Left Behind’ books which are false theology and unbiblical to the core. And it is about time you stand up and say so.
In the same sermon he called dispensationalism “a weird little form of fundamentalism that started like a hundred fifty years ago.” He also said, “That whole sense of the rapture, which may occur at any moment, is used as a device to oppose engagement with the principalities, the powers, the political and economic structures of our age” (“Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence,” Baptist Press, June 27, 2003).
CAMPOLO AND THE HOMOSEXUAL ISSUE
Though Campolo believes homosexuality is unnatural, he also believes that homosexuals are usually born that way, that it is not a “volitional” issue, and they should be allowed to join churches and be ordained without renouncing homosexuality as such as long as they remain “celibate.”
Campolo’s wife, Peggy, “argues that the church’s traditional teaching on homosexuality is mistaken--just as the church’s traditional teaching on the role of women, slavery, and divorce is also mistaken” (Wikipedia, source: “Straight But Not Narrow,” keynote address, Evangelicals Concerned, Western Region 1994, audio cassette). Central Baptist Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where Peggy Campolo attends, is “an open and affirming congregation,” meaning that it accepts unrepentant practicing homosexuals as members.
In 2003 Campolo’s wife spoke out in support of a homosexual American Baptist congregation that was starting in the Philadelphia area. The church, called Fusion Baptist Church, held its inaugural service on February 2. It was sponsored by Drexel Hill Baptist Church, another American Baptist congregation. Drexel Hill’s female co-pastor, Jeri Williams, said that God told her, “Start a church downtown where they [homosexuals] could experience the love of Christ and be able to serve Him within the church context.” Williams said she wants the new church to be a place where homosexuals can be safe and not judged. Peggy Campolo is a national leader of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, which urges Baptist congregations to be supportive of homosexuals. Both women are very confused. God invites all sinners to be saved through faith in the blood of Christ, but He also commands them to repent of their sin. Churches should welcome homosexuals to hear the gospel, but they should also preach against the moral perversion of homosexuality and demand that church members give evidence of the new birth. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such WERE some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
When the Pacific Southwest region of the American Baptist Convention (ABC) voted on May 11, 2006, to withdraw from the parent denomination over the issue of homosexuality, Tony Campolo criticized them. The 300 churches in California, Hawaii, Nevada, and Arizona withdraw because of the denomination’s acceptance of churches with lax policies on homosexuality (“Split among American Baptists,” Baptist Press, May 18). Many American Baptist churches accept unrepentant homosexuals as members. Fifty-four ABC congregations are members of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, which encourages the acceptance of homosexuality in Baptist churches. This Association “advocates for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons within Baptist communities of faith.”
Campolo criticized the withdrawal decision, saying that it “runs counter to the prayer of Christ that we might all be one people.” Campolo was referring to Christ’s high priestly prayer in John 17, but there is nothing in this prayer that would encourage unity between those who obey the Bible with those who do not. This prayer is for those who keep God’s Word (Jn. 17:6, 8) and are sanctified through the truth (Jn. 17:19). The Lord Jesus prayed that God the Father would keep them from evil (Jn. 17:15). It is obvious that this is not a prayer for nominal Christians that so disregard the Scriptures that they accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle.
CAMPOLO PROMOTES ROMAN CATHOLIC CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES
Tony Campolo co-authored a book with Mary Darling that promotes contemplative spirituality.
“We finally decided to use the term ‘mystical Christianity’ to distinguish the kind of spirituality we are advocating from other forms known in the Christian community. For instance, using the word mystical makes it clear that the Christian spirituality that we are discussing here is not to be confused with the kind used as a synonym for personal piety, which too often comes with destructive legalism, or scholastic Christianity, which can reduce faith to theological propositions. ... This book is about tapping into the love and reality that goes beyond what rules and reason alone can apprehend. We want to show how daily moments marked by mystical revelations of God’s love reveal the limits of propositional truth” (The God of Intimacy and Action, pp. 3, 4).
Campolo describes “supersaints” as “people who have been caught up into some mystical unity with God,” and he claims that Roman Catholic mystics such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and Catherine of Siena, were supersaints that we should emulate (pp. 9, 10).
In true emerging church contradictory fashion Campolo says, “We must pay serious attention to mystical happenings, and discern, in the context of biblical understanding in Christian community, whether or not we believe they are of God. Discernment is crucial to mystical spirituality. Without it, anything goes. On the other hand, we must learn to doubt our doubts if we are going to be open to the work of the Spirit in our lives” (p. 11).
To “doubt our doubts” cancels out effective biblical discernment!
Campolo practices what he preaches. He says: “I get up in the morning a half hour before I have to and spend time in absolute stillness. I don’t ask God for anything. I just simply surrender to His presence and yield to the Spirit flowing into my life. ... An interviewer once asked Mother Teresa, ‘When you pray, what do you say to God?’ She said, ‘I don’t say anything. I just listen.’ So the interviewer asked, ‘What does God say to you?’ She replied, ‘God doesn’t say anything. He listens.’ That’s the kind of prayer I do in the morning. I empty myself and allow the Spirit to speak to me as Romans 8 says, ‘with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Outreach Magazine, July/ August 2004, pp. 88, 89).
As we have seen in his 2005 interview with Shane Claiborne, Campolo sees contemplative mysticism as a means of interfaith unity.
In his book Speaking My Mind Campolo wrote:
“Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God. ... I do not know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystical experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?” (pp. 149, 150).
CAMPOLO BELIEVES IN FEMALE CHURCH LEADERS
Campolo holds that women can preach. Toward the end of his message in Vancouver in 1992, Campolo said, “Are you suggesting women can preach? A lot better than most men! If they can preach in Africa, they can preach in Vancouver. That’s what I say.”
Campolo is one of the signers of a statement by Christians for Biblical Equality which affirms that “in the New Testament economy, women as well as men exercise the prophetic, priestly and royal functions,” and “in the church, public recognition is given to both women and men who exercise ministries of service and leadership” (Christian News, Apr. 16, 1990).
In an interview with Laura Sheahen entitled “Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked,” published on Beliefnet in July 2004, Campolo said:
“I take issue, for instance, with the increasing tendency in the evangelical community to bar women from key leadership roles in the church. Over the last few years, the Southern Baptist Convention has taken away the right of women to be ordained to ministry. There were women that were ordained to ministry--their ordinations have been negated and women are told that this is not a place for them. They are not to be pastors. They point to certain passages in the Book of Timothy to make their case, but tend to ignore that there are other passages in the Bible that would raise very serious questions about that position and which, in fact, would legitimate women being in leadership positions in the church. ... We don't want to communicate the idea that to believe the Bible is to necessarily be opposed to women in key roles of leadership in the life of early Christendom.”
In fact, Campolo says that those who say women are forbidden to be pastors are “of the devil.” Speaking at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship annual meeting on June 26, 2003, he mentioned groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention which prohibit women preachers and said:
"It’s one thing to be wrong, but that isn’t wrong, that’s sinful. The Bible says, ‘neglect not the gift that is in you,’ and when women are gifted with the gift of preaching, anybody who frustrates that gift is an instrument of the devil” (“Campolo: Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence,” Baptist Press, June 27, 2003).
CAMPOLO SUGGESTS PRAYING TO PEOPLE
In the 2007 book The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice, which is co-written by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling, we find the following heretical statement:
“Wjile pointing out how important it is for Christians to pray for others, [Frank] Laubach makes a bold and intriguing proposal for another way of praying. He suggests that in addition to praying for someone in need of God, that we should consider praying to that person as well. He tells us that God may want to work through the praying Christian as a channel to reach into the heart and soul of the person who is in need of saving grace. Laubach proposes that a person who is resisting God might be open to the spiritual impact of a Christian concentrating God’s power on him or her. It is as though, according to Laubach, a praying Christian might be a lens through whom God focuses saving power into another person’s life. Call it a kind of mental telepathy, but what Laubach is suggesting is that the Holy Spirit flowing into a Christian, as a result of prayer, can stir up spiritual energy in that Christian that can then be directed toward a person who needs Christ’s salvation” (pp 34-35).
CAMPOLO IS VICIOUS IN HIS JUDGMENT OF FUNDAMENTALISTS
At the National Council of Churches “Gathering” in May 1988 Campolo said those who stand firm on absolutes and strongly resist error are doing the devil’s work (Foundation magazine, June 1988).
When Campolo spoke at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s general assembly June 26, 2003, he lambasted fundamentalists, conservative Southern Baptists, and dispensationalists. He said that anyone who resists women pastors is an “instrument of the devil” and is committing sin. He said every Christian should support homosexuals as they “struggle for dignity.” He said that the perpetual cycle of violence in the Middle East is not the result of the Palestinians. He spoke of the “terrorism of the Israeli army” and criticized American military aid to Israel. He said Harry Potter, which is filled with witchcraft, as “good for kids to hear.” He said preachers should warn about dispensational theology and the doctrine of an imminent rapture. He spoke against Christians who do not support the United Nations.
CAMPOLO MAKES LIGHT OF SERIOUS THINGS
Throughout his speeches, Campolo makes light of frightfully serious things. In his speech in Vancouver in 1992, he made light of threatening people with death and hell in order to frighten them into being saved. He told of when he was a kid and was in church and the preacher tried to scare him like this. In his speech to the National Council of Churches meeting in 1988, Campolo said we should hold on to the King James Bible, because it uses “words like ‘imputed’--that’s sexy!” He keeps his crowds laughing at such things.
This was the spirit that permeated Campolo’s message. , Campolo said, “We’ve got enough boring people in the ministry, we need people who can dance.” He called for Christians to “create a joyful celebration for a world that doesn’t know how to celebrate anymore.” According to Campolo, “The kingdom of God is a glorious and gigantic party!”
This is all foolishness. The hour in which we live cries for seriousness, for repentance, for mourning over sin. James 4 speaks of the kind of worldliness that has permeated evangelical Christendom. Missionsfest ‘92 evidenced this worldliness on every hand. There was rock music and the jungle beat everywhere. The evening youth meetings were nothing more than rock concerts. A great many of the women were dressed indecently. Only a handful of women wore dresses. Most had on tight pants. Some of the ushers were young women who were dressed revealingly in leotards and high boots with a jacket-like affair that came only to their buttocks. In the exhibit area, there were all sorts of worldly things for sale, such as T- shirts with weird artwork and mottos.
Listen to the James:
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
What does James say about the worldly crowd? Does he say, “Hey, folks, laugh and clap and shout and dance; the Kingdom of God is a party, man! Be happy” That is Campolo’s message, but James says something quite the contrary to a worldly people:
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (James 4:8-10).
This is not the time to be laughing it up, folks, in the sense that Campolo is calling for. I praise the Lord for laughter, and I’m not calling for a ban on humor or fun; but the hour is one of deep apostasy, wickedness, and shallowness, and if Christ had spoken at Missionsfest ‘92 I am convinced He would have preached a message along the lines of James as quoted above.
Beware of Tony Campolo. He is a dangerous false teacher, all the more dangerous because he claims to believe that the Bible was given by divine inspiration and moves in “evangelical” circles. He is an enemy of Bible Christianity. The kingdom of God is not a Campolo-type of party.
[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://www.wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Bob Dylan
BOB DYLAN
May 29, 2001 (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) –
From my “hippie” days prior to conversion in 1973, I remember rock legend Bob Dylan (1941- ) (real name Robert Zimmerman) very well. It was in 1962 that Dylan legally changed his name and produced his debut album. His famous song “The Times They Are A-Changin” appeared in 1964. I had started listening to rock music intently in the early 1960s, and I was consumed with that type of music until I was saved in 1973. That was the heyday of Dylan’s career, and I still recall the haunting, sensual nature of his music. He helped to popularize the merging of folk and rock music and sang some very immoral songs as well as songs with pacifistic, civil rights, socialistic, humanistic, and New Age themes. He was one of the chief poets of the ’60s rock generation. His songs posed many interesting questions, but he had no answers. In “Blowing in the Wind,” he asked such things as, “How many roads must a man walk down before he is called a man?” What is the answer? “The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind...” What does that mean? It means he doesn’t know the answer and he is not sure anyone knows the answer. Sadly, that is the philosophy of most of Dylan’s fans because they have rejected the Bible.
Dylan’s vast influence has been anything but wholesome and godly. It was Dylan who introduced the Beatles to marijuana (Peter Brown, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles). Dylan “went through some profound drug experiences during 1964-5, taking up Baudelair’s formula for immortality: ‘A poet makes himself a seer by a long prodigious and rational disordering of the senses.’ He … tried just about everything he could to ‘open his head’ as biographer Tony Scaduto puts it” (Waiting for the Man, p. 144). Many of Dylan’s songs were about drugs, including “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
There was even violence at some Dylan concerts. For example, in Slane, Ireland, in July 1984, the police had to barricade themselves inside their station as mobs of Dylan fans besieged them, rioting, breaking windows, and overturning cars.
Dylan’s backup group, which was known only as the Band, was formerly called Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. They “had a reputation for pill popping, whoring, and brawling that was second to none” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 3).
The cover to Dylan’s Desire album (1976) depicts him smoking marijuana in one corner, a black magic tarot card in another corner, and a huge Buddha in the bottom corner. Next to the Buddha are the words: “I have a brother or two and a whole lot of Karma to burn … Isis and the moon shine on me” (Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 167).
Dylan divorced his wife Sara Lowndes in 1977.
In 1978, Dylan attended a home Bible study with girlfriend Mary Alice. She had recently “re-dedicated her life to Christ” and was concerned that she was living with an unsaved man who was not her husband. She invited two assistant pastors from the Hollywood Vineyard Church (associated with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship under the leadership of the late John Wimber) to visit Dylan’s home. Dylan’s testimony was as follows: “One thing led to another ... until I had this feeling, this vision and feeling. I truly had a born-again experience, if you want to call it that. It’s an over-used term, but it’s something that people can relate to” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 160, citing a November 1980 interview with Robert Hillburn of the Los Angeles Times). From this testimony, we can see the influence of false Vineyard theology, which focuses on experiential feelings, visions, voices, personal prophecies, healing, tongues, spirit slayings, and such things. This experiential-oriented theology does not produce stability in the Christian life. Dylan spent three and a half months at the Vineyard church’s School of Discipleship, and his next three albums, Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981), were gospel albums of sorts.
Dylan soon repudiated any claim to the Christian faith and went back to his standard rock music. Dylan never attended church regularly and soon quite altogether. Even rock historian Steve Turner, who has attempted to justify Dylan’s apostasy, admits: “The womanizing and drunkenness that Dylan once saw as evidence of the old life have apparently continued almost uninterrupted” (Turner, “Watered Down Love,” Christianity Today, May 21, 2001). Dylan’s 1983 album was titled Infidels. The July 21, 1983, issue of the Washington Post noted that Dylan believes in reincarnation and that “everyone is born knowing the truth.” An article in the San Luis Obispo (California) Register for March 16, 1983, quoted Dylan as saying: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” In recent years, Dylan has practiced Lubavitch Hasidism, an ultra-orthodox form of Judaism, suggesting he has returned to his Jewish roots.
In September 1997, Dylan performed before Pope John Paul II at a Roman Catholic youth festival in Bologna, Italy. A crowd of 300,000 young people attended the festival. The 56-year-old Dylan sang two songs directly to the Pope. Dylan then took off his cowboy hat and bowed before him. The Catholic organizer of the festival, Cardinal Ernesto Vecchi, said that he had invited Dylan because he is the “representative of the best type of rock” and “he has a spiritual nature.”
David Blue, who played with Country Joe & the Fish and who toured with Dylan as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue, died in 1982 at age 41 of a heart attack while jogging. Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager during the 1960s, died in 1986 at age 39 of a heart attack.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites or sold or placed by themselves or with other material in any electronic format for sale, but may be distributed for free by e-mail or by print. They must be left intact and nothing removed or changed, including these informational headers. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service is a 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. To Subscribe to the Fundamental Baptist Information Service, send an email to lists@wayoflife.org and put “subscribe FBIS” in the subject field. To UNSUBSCRIBE, send an email to lists@wayoflife.org and put “unsubscribe FBIS” in the subject field. To change addresses, simply unsubscribe the old one, then re-subscribe the new one. Or a more simple process is to go to the web site and sign up or change addresses there: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6). Some of these articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 19th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail). 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 ]
Robert E Lee or Martin Luther King
January 21, 1998 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
INTRODUCTION BY BROTHER CLOUD
The following is excerpted from an article by Carmeron L. Horne, a member of Hillsdale Baptist Church, Tampa, Florida. As my readers know, I rarely print anything dealing with politics or American government. One reason is that many of our readers do not live in America. Another is that I believe the root cause of a nation's problems are spiritual, and as a preacher I can do more to help my nation by focusing on things related to strengthening churches than I can by addressing political/social evils. The following article, though, so skillfully exposes the lies promoted constantly by the mainstream humanistic media and the public education system that I want to share it with our readers. It is refreshing to hear some truth amidst the deceptive revisionist history one hears on every side today.
Continue reading this article……
Rick Warren Recommended Book Calss Purpose Driven Opponents "Leaders From Hell”
January 14, 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)-
Transitioning: Leading Your Church through Change, a book by Dan Southerland that is highly recommended by Rick Warren, calls those who oppose the Purpose Driven philosophy that so many pastors are trying to push upon their people as “leaders from hell.”
Southerland is speaking of opposition in general, but it obvious from the overall context that he is referring to those who resist the new philosophies. He is called “the leading expert on implementing the Purpose Driven paradigm in existing churches” (Church Transitions web site).
Southerland says they have experienced two major sources of criticism as they have transitioned churches to the Purpose Driven model: Christians from traditional backgrounds and traditional pastors. He hastens to add that not all of the traditionals oppose them, “just the meaner ones” (p. 116). On page 115 he likens opponents to Sanballat who resisted the building of the walls of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah. Southerland says, “Sanballat is a leader from hell. We all have some Sanballats in our churches. This is the guy who opposes whatever you propose. ... You cannot call this guy a leader from hell to his face--but you could call him Sanballat” (p. 115).
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Bill Gaither's Disobedience to God's Word
Updated and enlarged May 5, 2006 (first published July 30, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
Bill and Gloria Gaither are graduates of Anderson College, a Church of God school, and attend a Nazarene church. They have written some very popular and well-known gospel music, such as “He Touched Me,” “Thanks to Calvary,” and “There’s Something about That Name.” Since the early 1990s, the Gaither’s Homecoming CD and video series has dramatically increased the popularity of Southern Gospel music in this generation.
Sadly, the Gaithers have used their vast influence to promote the lie that music is neutral and thus to encourage the deep inroads that the world has made into Southern Gospel. They have also promoted the unscriptural ecumenical movement with its bogus “judge not” philosophy and its lack of concern about doctrinal purity.
MUSIC IS NEUTRAL
In the 1980s Gaither bought into contemporary Christian music’s foundational premise that “MUSIC IS NEUTRAL” and that any type of raunchy music can be used to glorify God.
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Jesse Jackson's Works Salvation
Political activist Jesse Jackson, speaking at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, told the 1,100 people in attendance that social, political and economic compassion and action must become a reality in their lives in order to get to heaven. An April 20, 1999, United Methodist News Service release stated, “Jackson told the crowd the church must lead the way in aiding the least among society. Only then, he said, will Christians meet the criteria Christ established to gain eternal life in heaven.” Jackson received a standing ovation at the church, his second stop in his series of meetings throughout the South urging ‘hope, healing and racial harmony.” Galloway’s senior pastor, Sam Morris, said, “It was a great celebration of worship. Anyone in the sanctuary felt the presence of God bringing us together.”
Two problems immediately emerge from Jackson’s statements: First, he presents a false gospel to the audience, and second, he completely misunderstands the role of the church in this present age. Jackson twists Scripture in an attempt to justify his social gospel, citing Luke 15:1-7 as society’s mandate to “feed the hungry” and aid the poor through welfare programs such as social security and government health care. However, the Word of God says the church is to proclaim the Gospel to all men and to contend for the faith. The mission of the church is to preach and defend God’s Word, not to reform society nor to provide for the material needs of the unsaved. While all believers should possess an attitude of compassion and live peaceably with all men, the focus and mission of the church must remain clear. To distort the mission of the church, and to pervert the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is to propagate “damnable heresy” (2 Pet. 2:1). This is a grave error that only leads the unsaved to an eternity apart from Christ. (Foundation, May-June 1999).Continue reading this article……
