The Mystery of Iniquity by David Cloud

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ANYONE in a teaching position in a church should read this book! 
It would serve as an invaluable aid!

The Mystery of Iniquity

July 26, 2011

David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org

THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY

July 26, 2011, 2011 (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 NEW AGE TOWER OF BABEL (BOOK). This book documents the explosive growth of the New Age movement in our day. God’s people need to be able to identify the New Age and refute it with Scripture so that they can protect themselves, their churches, their loved ones, and their neighbors in these dark last days. Far too many are unequipped for this task. Two decades ago the New Age seemed to be more the doctrine of Hollywood movie stars (Shirley MacLaine’s “I am God”) and Starwars enthusiasts (“may the force be with you”) and the magic-crystal pop culture of rock & roll hippies than the philosophy of the average person or something to be taken seriously in churches or politics. As we document in the book, this wasn’t true then and it definitely isn’t true today. The New Age is on the move!  

The New Age philosophy has permeated the self-help, personal transformation field; it has leavened education (from lowest to highest levels) and reached deeply into business, health care, psychological counseling, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, politics and government, athletics and sports, even the military. A trip to the average national-chain book store will verify this. 

 New Age philosophy is found not just in the religious, spiritual, occult and metaphysical sections. We trace the origins of the New Age from the Devil’s conversation with Eve in the Garden of Eden to the Tower of Babel following the flood. We carefully examine its more recent origin in the nineteenth century, in the Mind Science cults, Christian Science, Theosophy, Unity, and New Thought. We then look at its growth in the twentieth century and now the twentieth first century through key personalities such as Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Edgar Cayce, Carl Jung, J. Krishnumurti, Paramahansa Yogananda, Levi Dowling, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swami Prabhupada, Sri Chinmoy, David Spangler, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Werner Erhard, Buckminster Fuller, Jose Silva, Shakti Gawain, Shirley MacLaine, J.Z. Knight, Jean Houston, Maxwell Maltz, John Canfield, John Gray, Anthony Robbins, John Templeton, Hans Kung, Benjamin Creme, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Helen Schucman, Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch, M. Scott Peck, Esther Hicks, James Redfield, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, and Rhonda Byrne. 

The book examines the explosive growth of New Age philosophy in education, health care, politics and government, business, and the military. We look at how the New Age has been spread through rock & roll and Hollywood. We take a close look at popular New Age doctrines and practices such as Ayurveda, Reiki, yoga, homeopathy, reflexology, iridology, acupuncture, naturopathy, chiropractic, rolfing, applied kinesiology, channeling, positive thinking and positive confession, guided imagery, visualization, mantras, hypnotism, reincarnation, UFOs, global transformation, and community building. 

We show that the New Age has gained a stronghold in churches through such things as ecumenicalism, interfaith dialogue, the contemplative movement, Norman Vince Peale-Robert Schuller positive thinking, and the human potential market. We document the infiltration of the New Age into evangelical Christianity. 

The section on contemplative mysticism is extensive and documents how that mysticism is an end-times ecumenical, interfaith glue. Contemplative practices such as centering prayer have brought evangelicals into intimate association with Roman Catholicism, while at the same time Roman Catholic mystics are in intimate association with Zen Buddhism and Hinduism. 

The last chapter contains an extensive biblical refutation of New Age principles laid out in a format that could be used in Sunday Schools, Bible Institutes, and Home Schooling. The book features an extensive index. Third edition, September 2008, 530 pages, $19.95

THE NEW AGE TOWER OF BABEL (DVD). This video presentation is based on the aforementioned book. A multiplicity of photographs of individuals, books, and video clips are professionally mixed into this high-quality video presentation to illustrate the message. 3 DVDs, $29.95

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The New Age is not one unified religion or doctrine. It is a religious philosophy that comes in a bewildering variety of forms. At its heart is the divinity of self, so the individual is free to build whatever individualized brand of New Age he pleases.

The New Age has been discredited time and again since its inception. Its channelers have often proven to be charlatans. Its prophecies have often been false. It has demonstrated a frightful level of gullibility and rampant quackery. It is filled with contradictions. Its gurus and organizations have failed by the thousands. It is faddish and has been highly commercialized and is often simply ridiculous. Its practitioners are hypocritical in the extreme, claiming that they are gods when they live like the devil, calling for world harmony when they can’t get along with their own neighbors, calling for global peace when they can’t maintain peace in their own marriages, saying that truth is not found in doctrine while publishing shelves upon shelves of New Age doctrine, calling for tolerance while they are viciously intolerant not only of dogmatic Bible truth but often even of competing New Age philosophies.

Yet the New Age keeps growing, and the reason is that it is one aspect of the “mystery of iniquity” that is prophesied in Scripture.

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12).

The term “mystery” in the New Testament means something that was formerly hidden but is now revealed. The mystery of iniquity is the revelation that the spirit of antichrist would be at work throughout the church age. John said, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (1 John 2:18).

We see that there will be one antichrist, singular, at the end of the age, but there are even now antichrists, plural, in the world.

2 Thessalonians chapter 2 calls these “antichrists” the “mystery of iniquity.” The coming of Christ will be preceded by the appearance of the antichrist, singular, a world ruler who is called many things in Scripture. In 2 Thessalonians he is called “that man of sin” and “the son of perdition.” He will announce that he is God and will sit in the rebuilt Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Elsewhere in Scripture, we are told that he will require that the whole world worship him on pain of death (Revelation 13).

Preceding the appearance of the antichrist, singular, is the “mystery of iniquity,” which was already at work in the apostle Paul’s day. This describes the devil’s activity in preparing the way for the antichrist. The Bible says that this demonic activity--this mystery of iniquity, this resistance against the true Jesus Christ, this attack upon the gospel--will increase throughout the church age until it finally blossoms into the full-blown antichrist government described in Revelation 13.

2 Timothy 3:13 describes the course of the church age as the gradual growth of error. “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”

On the one hand, Christ is at work in the church age through Bible-believing churches to call sinners to salvation before it is too late. By this means the body of Christ is being filled up with saved people from the ends of the earth. On the other hand, the devil is at work trying to hinder the gospel and preparing men’s minds for the rise of the antichrist.

Paul tells us that there is one who “letteth,” which is an old English word meaning to restrain. There is one that is in the world and that has the power to restrain the devil’s program until God is finished with His work for the church age and the body of Christ is complete. That one is none other than the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, who came down from heaven on the day of Pentecost 2,000 years ago to empower the work of world evangelism. After His resurrection Jesus said:

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We are now standing somewhere toward the end of the church age. Multitudes have been redeemed out of every nation on earth, out of every tribe and tongue. Soon the Lord Jesus Christ will begin to open the seals of the book that contains the title deed to the overthrow of the present world system and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth (Revelation 4:1-5). And the 24 elders representing the church will sing the wonderful song of redemption before the throne of God in heaven.

“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 4:9).

Before the Great Tribulation described in Revelation 6-19 occurs, Christ will catch away all living church age saints and will resurrect those who are dead (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Until that glorious day the divine work of worldwide gospel preaching must continue and the demonic work of the mystery of iniquity will proceed apace.

Understand that the mystery of iniquity is far more than the New Age movement. It is anything that undermines the authority and sufficiency of the Bible, that downgrades Jesus Christ, and that promises a way of salvation different from Scripture.

The mystery of iniquity is theological modernism and universalism and evolution and atheistic communism and Hinduism and Islam and Buddhism and anything else that stands in contradiction to God’s Holy Word. All of this and much more is preparing men’s minds and hearts for the antichrist.

And part of this iniquitous business is the New Age in all of its illicit glory.

In her book The Aquarian Conspiracy New Ager Marilyn Ferguson describes the movement as “a leaderless but powerful network working to bring about radical change.”

That is somewhat true from a human standpoint but from a spiritual standpoint the New Age definitely has a leader, and his name is Satan.  

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Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. 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, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/subscribe.html .  TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE ADDRESSES, go to the very bottom of any email received from us and click "Manage My Subscription." If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. 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 28th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/publications/index.html. 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 only from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/makeanoffering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org

WAY OF LIFE LITERATURE SHARING POLICY: Much of our material is available for free, such as the hundreds of articles at the Way of Life web site. Other items we sell to help fund our very expensive literature, video, and foreign church planting ministry. Way of Life’s content falls into two categories: sharable and non-sharable. Things that we encourage you to share include the audio sermons, video presentations, O Timothy magazine, and FBIS articles. You are free to make copies of these at your own expense and share them with friends and family. You are also welcome to use excerpts from the articles. All we ask is that you give proper credit. Things we do not want copied and distributed freely are items like the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library, print edition of our books, PDFs of the books, etc. These items have taken years to produce at enormous expense in time and money, and we need the income from the sale of these to help fund the ministry. We trust that your Christian honesty will preserve the integrity of this policy.

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The Foundational Issue in Apologetics is God Himself by David Cloud

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The following quote best describes David Cloud's article:

"If the Bible had said 

that Jonah swallowed the whale,

I would believe it!"

- William Jennings Bryan

INDEED, I WOULD! 

THERE IS NOTHING MY GOD CANNOT DO!

The Foundational Issue in Apologetics is God Himself

July 27, 2011

David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org

The foundational issue in apologetics is to introduce men and women to God through Christ, and we must never lose sight of this objective.

If you believe in the Almighty God of Scripture, it is a simple matter to accept what the Bible says, whether it a six-day creation or Christ’s virgin birth, bodily resurrection and Second Coming, or everything else. The fact is that these are all things that pertain to the supernatural and they cannot be tested by natural science.

D.B. Gower, Ph.D. in biochemistry and D.Sc. from the University of London, writes:

“It was about this time, in the mid-1960s, that my ideas of the greatness of God were transformed. No longer was He a ‘pocket’ God who did things as I could imagine from my ‘human viewpoint,’ but He had staggeringly great power, far beyond anything I could possibly comprehend. If God is so great, then there is nothing He could not do” (In Six Days, edited by John Ashton, p. 266).

This hits the nail on the head. The problem with people who can’t believe in the miracles of the Bible, including a six-day creation, is that they believe either in no God or a “pocket” God. When you believe in the Almighty God revealed in Scripture, it is easy to believe that the world was made in six days. In fact, it is easy to believe that it was made in six micro-seconds, if the Bible said so.

Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, one of the greatest biblical scholars of the 20th century, proficient in dozens of ancient languages, divided men into two categories: big-godders and little-godders, and that pretty much sums it up.

“One of the students of Princeton Theological Seminary professor Robert Dick Wilson had been invited to preach in Miller Chapel 12 years after his graduation. Dr. Wilson came and sat near the front. When chapel ended, the old professor came up to his former student, cocked his head to one side in his characteristic way, extended his hand, and said, ‘I'm glad that you're a big-godder. When my boys come back, I come to see if they're big-godders or little-godders. Then I know what their ministry will be.’

“His former student asked him to explain. Wilson replied, ‘Well, some men have a little God, and they're always in trouble with Him. He can't do any miracles. He can't take care of the inspiration and transmission of the Scripture to us. He doesn't intervene on behalf of His people. Then, there are those who have a great God. He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands fast. He knows how to show Himself strong on behalf of them that fear Him. You have a great God; and He'll bless your ministry.’ He paused a moment, smiled, said, ‘God bless you,’ and turned and walked out” (John Huffman, Who’s in Charge Here?).

The Christian apologist’s objective is to make “big-godders” of people.

This comes through knowing God personally by faith in Jesus Christ. We are separated from God by our sin, both inherited and personal, and Christ died to pay the price God’s Law demands so that we can be reconciled to Him. When a sinner repents of his sin and puts his faith in Jesus Christ as only Lord and Saviour, a dramatic change occurs. He is born again and receives the indwelling Holy Spirit as his Teacher. His thinking is changed. This happened to me in 1973 when I was 23 years old. Before that I was antagonistic toward the Bible. I doubted the Bible’s teaching on things such as judgment, salvation, and the future, but those doubts were resolved by my new relationship with God in Christ.

Christ instructed us to be witnesses of Him (Acts 1:8). We must inform people of who He is and why He came to earth. Apologetics can remove barriers that people have that keep them from considering Christ, but our goal is not to win arguments about evidences; our goal is to introduce people to Christ.

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Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. 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, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/subscribe.html .  TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE ADDRESSES, go to the very bottom of any email received from us and click "Manage My Subscription." If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. 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 28th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/publications/index.html. 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 only from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/makeanoffering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org

WAY OF LIFE LITERATURE SHARING POLICY: Much of our material is available for free, such as the hundreds of articles at the Way of Life web site. Other items we sell to help fund our very expensive literature, video, and foreign church planting ministry. Way of Life’s content falls into two categories: sharable and non-sharable. Things that we encourage you to share include the audio sermons, video presentations, O Timothy magazine, and FBIS articles. You are free to make copies of these at your own expense and share them with friends and family. You are also welcome to use excerpts from the articles. All we ask is that you give proper credit. Things we do not want copied and distributed freely are items like the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library, print edition of our books, PDFs of the books, etc. These items have taken years to produce at enormous expense in time and money, and we need the income from the sale of these to help fund the ministry. We trust that your Christian honesty will preserve the integrity of this policy.

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Evolution is Humanism Dressed Up in a Lab Coat by David Cloud

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Evolution is Humanism Dressed Up in a Lab Coat

July 27, 2011

David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org

The following is the testimony of Gary Parker, Ed.D. in biology/geology from Ball State University:

“I wasn’t just teaching evolution, I was preaching it. ‘It was millions of years of struggle and death that brought mankind and all the other animals and plants into being,’ I told my college students. I praised Darwin for being the first to understand how evolution worked. ... I let students freely express their religious beliefs, but would not let them use their personal faith to challenge what I considered the rock-hard science of evolution. I thought it was part of my duty as a science teacher to deliver my students from silly old superstitions, like taking the Bible literally and trying to refute evolution with ‘creation science.’

“The change began when Dr. Charles Signorino, a chemistry professor at the college where I was teaching biology, invited my wife and me to his home for Bible study. ... I started studying the Bible, primarily to criticize it more effectively. ...

“Make no mistake about it--creation/evolution is a salvation issue. I do not mean you have to have a detailed knowledge of creation science to be a Christian; I simply mean that belief in evolution can be for many, as it was for me, a powerful stumbling block to accepting (or even  considering) the claims of Christ. Paul warned Timothy to avoid the oppositions of science falsely so-called, which some have erred concerning the faith (1 Tim. 6:20-21). Evolution is really ‘humanism dressed up in a lab coat,’ a man-centered worldview that uses scientific jargon to put man’s opinions far above God’s Word (as Eve did in the Garden).

“My extensive knowledge of, and zeal for, evolution certainly prevented me from even considering that God might be real and the Bible true. So what happened. Well, Dr. Signorino, the colleague who invited me to the Bible study, was not only a superb Bible teacher, he was also a scientist respected internationally for his work in chemistry. He challenged me to look again at the science I thought I knew so well. Confident that science would support evolution and refute ‘4C’ biblical literalism, I gladly accepted the challenge.

“The battle began. For three years, we argued creation/evolution. For three years, I used all the evolutionary arguments I knew so well. For three years, I lost every scientific argument. In dismay, I watched the myth of evolution evaporate under the light of scientific scrutiny, while the scientific case for Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ just got better and better. It’s no wonder that the ACLU (actually the anti-Christian lawyers union) fights by any means to censor any scientific challenge to evolution! ...

“About that time, I got a copy in the mail of the first book I ever wrote, a programmed science instruction book called DNA: The Key to Life. Up until that time I thought people who wrote books, especially textbooks in science, knew what they were talking about. I had a nearly straight A average and earned numerous academic awards, and my book had been reviewed by experts on DNA, but I knew all the uncertainties that went into it. (Indeed, when I published the second edition five years later, I put the first edition aside and started fresh, so much additional knowledge about DNA had been gained.) It finally dawned on me: if experts in science can write books that have to be continually corrected, revised, and updated, perhaps God could write a Book in which He said what He meant and meant what He said: eternal and unchanging truth, an absolutely sure foundation for understanding life useful to all people at all times in all places!

“Looking now at the Bible as the truly true ‘History Book of the Universe,’ I was lifted out of the prison of time, space, and culture, and enabled to see past the shallow and ever-changing words of human experts to the deep and never-changing Word of the Lord God, Maker of heaven and earth! I experienced who Jesus is and what Jesus meant when He said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:32). ...

“I could now look at familiar facts in unfamiliar ways--ways that made more sense scientifically and helped me to solve some of the origins problems that had puzzled me as an evolutionist. As I looked at biology with the blinders of evolution finally removed, the biblical theme of Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ was reflected everywhere! ...

“... some said that if I only knew more about fossils, I would give up this ‘creationist nonsense’ and accept the ‘fact of evolution.’ Then the Lord did something fabulous for me: a fellowship from the National Science Foundation for 15 months of full-time doctoral study. With fear and trembling, I added a doctoral minor in geology, emphasizing paleontology and origins, to check out the fossil evidence firsthand. I had excellent professors, including some Christians, but all assumed evolution without question. However, what they taught me about fossils made it hard to believe in evolution and easy to accept the biblical record of a perfect creation, ruined by man, destroyed by the Flood, restored to new life in Christ. ...

“At the end of my geophysics unit on radiometric dating, the professor was going over the long list of assumptions required to convert any measurement of radioisotope amounts into some estimate of age. Midway through the list of unwarranted assumptions and inconsistent results, the professor paused to joke that if a Bible-believing Christian ever became aware of these problems, he would make havoc out of the radiometric dating system! Then he admonished us to ‘keep the faith.’

“Keep the faith. At bottom, that is all there is to radioactive decay dating: a faith the facts have failed. At bottom, that’s all there is to evolution: a faith the facts have failed. Evolution was only able to get a toe-hold on science because of 19th-century ignorance of molecular biology, cellular ultra structure, ecology, and systematics. Discoveries in these fields completely crushed evolution as a science, but it persists only too well as a secular religion protected from contrary evidence by the anti-American censorship lawyers united” (Gary Parker, Persuaded by the Evidence, edited by Doug Sharp and Jerry Bergman, pp. 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258, 260, 261).

____________________________

Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. 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, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/subscribe.html .  TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE ADDRESSES, go to the very bottom of any email received from us and click "Manage My Subscription." If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. 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 28th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/publications/index.html. 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 only from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/makeanoffering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org

WAY OF LIFE LITERATURE SHARING POLICY: Much of our material is available for free, such as the hundreds of articles at the Way of Life web site. Other items we sell to help fund our very expensive literature, video, and foreign church planting ministry. Way of Life’s content falls into two categories: sharable and non-sharable. Things that we encourage you to share include the audio sermons, video presentations, O Timothy magazine, and FBIS articles. You are free to make copies of these at your own expense and share them with friends and family. You are also welcome to use excerpts from the articles. All we ask is that you give proper credit. Things we do not want copied and distributed freely are items like the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library, print edition of our books, PDFs of the books, etc. These items have taken years to produce at enormous expense in time and money, and we need the income from the sale of these to help fund the ministry. We trust that your Christian honesty will preserve the integrity of this policy.

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Overcoming Addiction by Bryan Denlinger of Bible Believers Fellowship

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Take Time to Be Holy

Overcoming Addiction

Bryan Denlinger Bible Believers Fellowship 
SUN 07/24/2011

Sermon Details:

In this sermon we look at two different types of "addiction". First we look at many common BAD addictions such as; Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking, Pornography, Gambling, and even some lesser addictions like TV and Movies, Video Games, Caffeine, Gluttony, and Debt. We look at some scriptures which discuss these addictions, and talk about ways to eliminate them. Then in the last part of this sermon, we look at some GOOD addictions. 1 Corinthians 16:15 talks about being "addicted to the ministry". We speak about three different things which every Christian shouldn't want to forsake for even one day. These three spiritual addictions are; Prayer, Bible Study, and Soul-Winning Ministry. The best way to eliminate a sinful addiction is NOT to try and quit, but rather to REPLACE it with a GOOD spiritual addiction!

Sweet Hour of Prayer

Uploaded by wildcat139 on Jul 3, 2010

 

Andy Griffith religious selection

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A Sobering Salvation Message by Chester Dean Osgood

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Oh! I am so very blessed by the people with which I find myself surrounded!

Brother Greg Miller is a never-ending fountain of Godly knowledge, whose sermons and videos I have posted on this blog. It is awesome to also have him on Facebook, where he never ceases to share the word of God as it applies to us in these perilous days!

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Greg's Profile · Greg's Wall

Greg Miller

Did you know that the whole "self love" fad (cult) is a sign of the end times? See 2 Timothy 3:1-5 in the King James Bible.

¹This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  ²For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
 ³Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
 ⁴Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
 ⁵Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 (King James Bible)

21 hours ago via BlackBerry · ·

• 
  
• You and 2 others like this.
• • 

    Greg Miller ‎"This know also, that in the LAST DAYS perilous times shall come. For men shall be LOVERS OF THEIR OWN SELVES,...
    "...lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;..."
    
    Are we not seeing this phenomena today? These are the last days.

    21 hours ago · · 1 person
  • 

    Chester Dean Osgood Sad to say, but ever since God created man, we have seen this, although in today's world it is more pronounced. as it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of man. This is also another indication that Jesus is coming soon.

    21 hours ago ·
  • 

    Helga Hickman I just pray He tarries no more! This has become a horrible world, and I am mighty tired of living in it!
    
    Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

    21 hours ago · · 1 person
  • 

    Greg Miller Aobsolutely true, Chester. Some discount certain signs of the end times because some involve sins and events that have always existed but, as you point out, they are now more PRONOUNCED (or extreme and prevalent) and worsening exponentially with each passing year.

    20 hours ago · · 2 people
  • 

    Greg Miller And AMEN Helga!

    20 hours ago ·
  • 

    Chester Dean Osgood

    Helga, it is a tough world and I am also looking forward to His coming, and he will come in his own time. He is not a time God, but an eternal God that created time for us. Today is the accepted time of salvation, and i am glad that He gave me that time. I have known many that thought time was on their side.... an Aunt, pregnant with child, that was cut in pieces and buried in different counties... A Uncle that was climbing a ladder, had a brain hemorrhage and died before he hit the ground... a friend that was showing a neighbor his new shotgun when he was accidentally killed... heart attack,,, cancer...etc. For those that read this, do you know for SURE that you have five years left? How about, two? or one? do you know for SURE that you have an hour left? a minute? the next heart beat? Time is not on your side. It does not take long to die. Death is just one heart beat away. The question is Where will you spend eternity? Romans 10:9,10. For those who do not KNOW FOR SURE if they are a Christian, but only hope so, God's Word says "these things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may KNOW that ye have ETERNAL LIFE, and that ye may believe on the name of The Son of God" I John 5:13. God says that when you are saved that you will have ETERNAL LIFE, not a hope so religion, but eternal life, and that you have the right to KNOW this.

    20 hours ago · · 3 people
  • 

    Helga Hickman

    My God! I am in tears reading what you have written, Chester! Indeed, I often think myself very selfish wishing that He'd come, soon, when, had he come just 12 years ago, I could not say then "I am saved!" praise God!
    
    Chester, I have a nice blog through which I pray many come to know Jesus. It is viewed widely. It was devised, at first, mainly for the Roman Catholics, which is what I was just 12 years ago.
    
    Would you allow me to post what you have written on it?
    I would be very grateful! It is very much to the point, and extremely sobering!
    
    Here, you may view it:
    http://rainhadocanto10-eva​ngelicalchristian.blogspot​.com/

    19 hours ago · · 2 people

Related sites:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bbbfohio
http://www.eleventhhournews.com

http://www.kjvbiblebelievers.com
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermonsspeaker.asp?keyword=gregory+a+miller

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Contemplative Spirituality: Dancing With Demons by David Cloud

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Contemplative Spirituality: Dancing With Demons

Republished July 20, 2011 (first published October 15, 2008)

David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org

 

The following is excerpted from our book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond. $19.95

 

 

___________________

The Bible repeatedly warns about the danger of spiritual delusion and exhorts believers to be very careful. Consider the following:

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15).

“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matthew 24:4-5).

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24).

“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him” (2 Corinthians 11:3-4).
    
“For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).

“That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Ephesians 4:14).

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6).

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1).

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

To be sober means to be in control of one’s mind, to be spiritually and mentally alert. It means to be on guard against danger. It is the opposite of emptying one’s mind and letting’s one’s imagination run wild and using a mantra to keep one’s thoughts at bay.

The Bible warns that demons transform themselves into angels of light (2 Cor. 11:13-15). It warns of false christs and false spirits (Mat. 24:4-5; 2 Cor. 11:3-4).

When emergents see “Jesus” in their contemplations, how can they be certain that it is the Jesus of the Bible and not a false christ or a demonic delusion? The only way to be certain is by making the Bible the central authority and carefully testing everything by it, but mysticism does not provide such certainty.

In Scripture, error is often referred to in terms of cunning deception. We are warned that wolves hide in sheep’s clothing (Mat. 7:15). See Matthew 24:11, 24; 2 Corinthians 4:2; 11:13; Ephesians 4:14; Colossians 2:4, 8; 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10; 2 Timothy 3:13.

In light of these warnings, we see the danger and folly of the contemplative practices.

Some of them, such as Centering Prayer, attempt to shut down the mind. The very title of the popular 14th century meditative book The Cloud of Unknowing refers to the practice of blotting out conscious thoughts in an attempt to enter into the depths of mindless meditation and transcendental communion with God.

“I urge you to dismiss every clever or subtle thought no matter how holy or valuable. Cover it with a thick cloud of forgetting because in this life only love can touch God as He is in Himself, never knowledge” (The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 8).

The Cloud of Unknowing instructs the contemplative practitioner to choose a one-syllable word and to repeat it as a mantra to “beat down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting” (chapter 7, p. 56).

The practitioner is instructed NOT to focus his attention on the meaning of the word or to use “logic to examine or explain this word ... nor allow yourself to ponder its ramifications” (chapter 36, p. 94).

It also says, “Have no fear of the evil one, for he will not dare come near you” (chapter 34, p. 92).

Centering Prayer involves “moving beyond thinking into a place of utter stillness” (The Sacred Way, p. 71).

Note the following excerpts from Finding Grace at the Center by Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, which emphasize the unthinking aspect of centering prayer:

“It is best when this word is wholly interior without a definite thought or actual sound” (p. 39).

“We are quite passive. We let it happen” (p. 39).

“As it goes beyond thought, beyond image, there is nothing left by which to judge it” (p. 43).

“By turning off the ordinary flow of thoughts ... one’s world begins to change” (p. 48).

“Go on with this nothing, moved only by your love for God” (p. 49).

“The important thing is not to pay any attention to them [thoughts]. They are like the noise in the street...” (p. 51).

“Any thought will bring you out [of the deep waters of silence]” (p. 52).

“[Centering prayer] leads you to a silence beyond thought and words...” (p. 53).

“Firmly reject all clear ideas, however pious or delightful” (p. 54).

“As soon as you start to reflect, the experience is over” (p. 56).

In light of the Bible’s warnings about the great potential for spiritual deception and the necessity of constant sobermindedness, I cannot imagine a more dangerous spiritual practice than centering prayer.

When asked if it is possible for meditation to be “inviting the devil in,” James Finley replies:

“Sometimes I will tell people who express that--well why not try it? Why not try to just quietly and sincerely and silently open your heart to God and see for yourself if you sense something dangerous or bad or dark. And you might discover that the opposite’s the case” (“Experiencing God through Meditation: Interview with James Finley,” Beliefnet.com).

This counsel is unbelievably dangerous and unscriptural. The Bible warns that the devil takes on the persona of an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-16). The only way to discern the difference between true and false spirits is to be born again and walking in the Spirit and to carefully test them by the Bible. Catholic mystics such as Finley, Thomas Merton, and William Johnston don’t do that and, in fact, don’t know how to do that.

Some of the contemplatives do give warnings about the potential for spiritual delusion, but their warnings are ineffectual.

Richard Foster warns that contemplative prayer is “entering deeply into the spiritual realm,” and he says that not everyone is ready and equipped to enter into the “all embracing silence” of contemplative prayer (p. 156). He admits that there is the possibility of meeting dark powers, but his suggested solution to this danger is exceedingly shallow and unscriptural. He recommends that practitioners ask “God to surround us with the light of His protection” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 23). He suggests the following prayer: “All dark and evil spirits must now leave” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 1992, p. 157).

It is not enough to pray that God will protect us from spiritual danger; we must obey His Word. If we pursue practices that are contrary to Scripture, all the prayer mantras in the world will not keep us from the evil that we will experience there! To pray for protection and then walk in disobedience is not faith but presumption. In such a situation, a prayer of protection is no more effective than holding a crucifix or fingering prayer beads.

Roger Oakland wisely observes:

“I wonder if all these Christians who now practice contemplative prayer are following Foster’s advice. Whether they are or not, they have put themselves in spiritual harm’s way. Nowhere in Scripture are we required to pray a prayer of protection before we pray. The fact that Foster recognizes contemplative prayer is dangerous and opens the door to the fallen spirit world is very revealing. What is this--praying to the God of the Bible but instead reaching demons? Maybe contemplative prayer should be renamed contemplative terror. ... Foster admits that contemplative prayer is dangerous and will possibly take the participant into demonic realms, but he gives a disclaimer saying not everyone is ready for it. My question is, who is ready, and how will they know they are ready? What about all the young people in the emerging church movement? Are they ready? Or are they going into demonic altered states of consciousness completely unaware?” (Faith Undone, pp. 99, 100).

The Roman Catholic contemplative monk John Michael Talbot gives an even stronger warning about the potential danger of contemplative prayer. He says:

“IT CAN BE MOST DESTRUCTIVE IF USED UNWISELY.  I CAN ALMOST PROMISE THAT THOSE WHO UNDERTAKE THIS STUDY ALONE WITHOUT PROPER GUIDANCE, AND GROUNDING IN CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY, WILL FIND THEMSELVES QUESTIONING THEIR OWN FAITH TO THE POINT OF LOSING IT. SOME MAY FIND THEMSELVES SPIRITUALLY LOST. IT HAS HAPPENED TO MANY. For this reason, we do not take the newer members of The Brothers and Sisters of Charity through this material in any depth as part of their formation, but stick squarely to overt Catholic spirituality and prayer teachings. I would not recommend too much integration of these things without proper guidance for those newer to the Catholic or Christian faith” (Talbot, “Many Religions, One God,” Oct. 22, 1999, http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/Reflections/index.asp?id=135).

Talbot thus recognizes the extreme danger of contemplative practices, yet he thinks he is capable of using them without being harmed by them. He should listen to the words of Scripture: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

I AM CONVINCED THAT THOSE WHO PARTICIPATE IN SUCH THINGS OPEN THEMSELVES UP TO DEMONIC INFLUENCE.

David Hunt sounds an important warning about visualizing prayer. He gives the example of a man who visualized Jesus and was surprised when “Jesus” began to interact with him.

“I began to visualize myself as a boy of eight. ‘Now see if you can imagine Jesus appearing,’ [the seminar leader] instructed. ‘Let Him walk toward you.’ Much to my amazement Jesus moved slowly toward me out of that dark playground. He began to extend His hands toward me in a loving, accepting manner. I NO LONGER WAS CREATING THE SCENE. The figure of Christ reached over and lifted the bundle from my back. And He did so with such forcefulness that I literally sprang from the pew” (Robert L. Wise, “Healing of the Memories: A Prayer Therapy for You,” Christian Life, July 1984, pp. 63-64, quoted from Hunt, The Occult Invasion).

Hunt observes:

“That this was more than imagination is clear. The one who originally visualized the image of ‘Jesus’ was surprised when it suddenly took on a character of its own and he realized that he was no longer creating the image. This ‘Jesus’ had its own life and personality. There can be no doubt that real contact had been made with the spirit world. We may be equally certain that this being was not the real Jesus Christ. No one can call Him from the right hand of the Father in heaven to put in a personal appearance. The entity could only have been a demonic spirit masquerading as ‘Jesus’” (The Occult Invasion, “Imagination and Visualization”).

Morton Kelsey taught the use of visualization and exhorted his readers not to fear when the visualizations took on a life of their own! He quoted from Carl Jung, who communicated with a spirit guide throughout his life:

“In the same way, when you concentrate on a mental picture, IT BEGINS TO STIR, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely your own invention” (Jung, Analytical Psychology, quoted in Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence, p. 226).

Kelsey then comments:

“It is usually not too difficult for most people to start the process by concentrating on something graphic. The hard part comes in realizing THAT SOMETHING COULD MOVE UNEXPECTEDLY INSIDE US WITHOUT OUR CONSCIOUS DIRECTION. That is why it is so vital in developing imagination, meditation, or contemplation TO REALIZE THAT OUR EGO IS NOT THE ONLY FORCE OPERATING WITHIN US” (The Other Side of Silence, p. 227).

Since Kelsey didn’t believe the Bible, viewing it largely as myth, he didn’t understand that when images “stir” and “move unexpectedly” and take on a life of their own it is became one has entered the realm of the demonic.

Consider the practice of guided visualization. A leader instructs the practitioners to get comfortable and then to do something like the following:

“Imagine yourself walking down a road. It’s the path of your life. Imagine what the path looks like. Is it curvy? Or straight? Hilly? Flat? Is it wide or narrow, surrounded by trees or by fields? You look down. Is the path rocky? Sandy? Is it dirt? Maybe it’s paved. What does it feel like under your feet? And up ahead, what’s in your path? Does it look clear or are there hurdles in your way? Something is in your hands. You’ve been carrying it a long time--it’s something you brought with you, in your spirit, up to camp. Look at it. What does it look like? What does it feel like in your hands? Is it hot? Cold? Warm? Is it smooth? Prickly? Sharp? Rough? Is it heavy or light?

“Now look up ahead. A figure is moving toward you. You can’t quite make out who it is, but he seems to know you and his pace quickens as he recognizes you. Now you can see--it’s Jesus! He’s coming closer. What’s the expression on his face as he walks toward you? How do you feel? He says a word of greeting to you. What does he say? How do you feel? Do you say anything back?

“Now Jesus is standing in front of you. What does he say? Now he’s holding his hands out--he wants you to put what’s in your hands into his hands. How does it feel as the object leaves your hands? Do you say anything to Jesus?

“Now you and Jesus start to walk together--he’s holding the object of yours. As the two of you walk along, what do you talk about? Imagine the conversation” (Tony Jones, The Sacred Way, pp. 83, 84).

This is either pure fantasy and therefore of no value, or it moves into the realm of the occult. Tony Jones describes how that Jesus allegedly appeared to him during one such episode and spoke to him face to face (The Sacred Way, p. 79).

Al Dager of Media Spotlight gives a discerning warning about the extreme danger of contemplative practices:

“Unfortunately, all these exercises serve to do is open the person up to demonic influences that assuage his or her conscience with a feeling of euphoria and even ‘love’ emanating from the presence that has invaded their consciousness. This euphoria is then believed to validate that the person is on the right spiritual path. It may result in visions, out-of body experiences, stigmata, levitation, even healings and other apparent miracles.”

The guided prayer techniques are exactly the same as the techniques I was taught by disciples of the Hindu guru Paramahansa Yogananda before I was converted. We were supposed to use these techniques to view events in our past lives. The yogic meditation led me into dark realms farther and farther from the holy God of the Bible, the God who is light and in whom “is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). I repented of it completely after I came to Christ. I wrote to the Self-Realization Fellowship Society, testified to them of my Christian conversion, and asked them to drop my name from their rolls.

Emergent leader Nanette Sawyer unwittingly gives a frightful testimony along this line. She said that she is a Christian (of the liberal brand) because she was taught meditation techniques by a Hindu. She said that while “sitting in meditation, in a technique similar to what Christians call Centering Prayer, I encountered love that is unconditional, yet it called me to responsible action in my life” (An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, p. 44). This occurred AFTER she had rejected biblical Christianity and the gospel that Jesus died for our sins (p. 43). She said that she found love and Jesus through Hindu meditation, but it was not the Jesus of the Bible nor was it the love of God as described in the Bible. It was another gospel, another Jesus, and another spirit (2 Cor. 11:4). John warned, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1), and the only sure way to try the spirits is to test them by the Bible. As for true love, John defined that, too. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3).

THE FACT THAT ITS PRACTITIONERS CALL CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY “DARKNESS” IS A LOUD WARNING TO THOSE WHO HAVE EARS TO HEAR.

Brennan Manning calls centering prayer a “GREAT DARKNESS” (The Signature of Jesus, p. 145) and an entire chapter of his book is devoted to “Celebrate the Darkness.” He claims that the darkness of centering prayer is caused by the human ego being broken and spiritual healing being achieved, but since the practice is not supported by Scripture that is presumption and not faith.

The sixth century Syrian monk called Dionysius the Areopagite said that asceticism and mystical practices can penetrate the mystery of God’s “DARK NO-THINGNESS.” This man has had a major influence on Catholic mysticism.

The Cloud of Unknowing uses the terms “BLIND” and “DARKNESS” and “NOTHING” repeatedly.

Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello calls centering prayer “DARK CONTEMPLATION” and descending “into THE DARKNESS” (Sadhana: A Way to God, pp. 32, 33). He says those who practice centering prayer “expose themselves, in BLIND FAITH, to THE EMPTINESS, the DARKNESS, the idleness, THE NOTHINGNESS” (p. 31).

Catholic monk William Johnston says that meditation is the art of passing from one layer to the next in an inner or downward journey to the core of the personality where dwells the great mystery called God ... WHO DWELLS IN THICK DARKNESS” (The Inner Eye of Love: Mysticism and Religion, 1981, p. 127).

God did hide Himself in thick darkness in the Old Testament era because of man’s sin and the fact that Christ’s atonement had not yet been made (Exodus 20:21), but in reality God is light and not darkness. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It is sin that separates the sinner from God and His glorious light. The people in Moses’ day had to stand away from Mt. Sinai when God gave the Law and God wrapped Himself in darkness, because the Law of Moses can only reveal sin and cannot justify the sinner (Romans 3:19-20). The Old Testament temple signified this separation. God dwelt in the holy of holies, and no man could enter therein except the high priest and that only one time a year, on the Day of Atonement. There was a thick veil that barred the way into the holy of holies.

But when Jesus Christ came and died on the cross and shed His blood to make the perfect atonement for man’s sin, the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, signifying that man now has free entrance into God’s very presence if he comes through faith in Christ (Mat. 27:50-51).

If a contemplative encounters darkness in his mystical journey, that darkness is not God; it is sin and the devil. The darkness of this world is the devil’s domain, but God has turned the believer “from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). He has “delivered us from the power of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and called us “out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Now we are “children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:5).

Pierre Teilhard described his practice of meditation as “going down into my innermost self, to THE DEEP ABYSS” (The Divine Milieu, p. 76). He said: “At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me.” At the end of the journey he found “a bottomless abyss at my feet.”

This is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear. Though the mystic believes that he is touching light and truth through contemplative practices, in reality he is fellowshipping with darkness and lies and demons. Who were these “persons” who were distinct from Teilhard himself and who did not obey him? From a biblical perspective, we have to conclude that the man was communicating with demons. This is why he taught such demonic doctrines as evolution and a “cosmic” christ that is something different than the person of Jesus.

John Michael Talbot, the popular Roman Catholic CCM musician and contemplative promoter, recommends the use of eastern religious practices such as yoga but, as we have seen, he admits that such experiences “can be most destructive if used unwisely.” He even says: “SOME MAY FIND THEMSELVES SPIRITUALLY LOST. IT HAS HAPPENED TO MANY” (Talbot, “Many Religions, One God,” Oct. 22, 1999, http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/Reflections/index.asp?id=135).

Anything with that type of power for evil and spiritual destruction should be avoided like the plague!

Philip St. Romain, the Catholic lay minister who wrote Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (1990), has experienced many strange things while practicing centering prayer. After “centering down” into silence, gold lights would appear and swirl in his mind, forming themselves into captivating patterns. He felt prickly sensations that would continue for days. “Wise sayings” popped into his mind as if he were “receiving messages from another.” After studying eastern religions he came to the conclusion that he was dealing with kundalini energy, and we have no doubt that he was, because mindless centering prayer brings one into the same dark realm as Hinduism’s yoga. The “inner adviser” that one encounters through centering prayer is demonic.

Even the heathen practitioners of kundalini warn about its dangers. The Ayurveda Encyclopedia says, “Those who awaken their kundalini without a guru can lose their direction in life ... they can become confused or mentally imbalanced ... more harm than good can arise” (p. 336). The book Aghora II: Kundalini warns many times that “indiscriminate awakening of the Kundalini is very dangerous” (p. 61). It says, “Once aroused and unboxed Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the genie will not fit back into the bottle. ‘After the awakening the devotee lives always at the mercy of Kundalini’” (p. 20). In fact, the book says that “some die of shock when Kundalini is awakened, and others become severely ill” (p. 61).

St. Romain is communing with demons and he got there, not through Hindu yoga, but through Catholic contemplative mysticism, the same kind of mysticism promoted by the Quaker Richard Foster and the Southern Baptist Rick Warren.

St. Romain has come to depend on the voice that he hears in contemplative prayer.

“I cannot make any decisions for myself without the approbation of THE INNER ADVISER, whose voice speaks so clearly in times of need” (Kundalini Energy, p. 39).

The Ayurveda Encyclopedia explains that one can encounter internal voices through yogic mediation, and the practitioner is instructed to listen to the voices and follow their counsel.

“Just as with all spiritual experiences that are out of the norm of supposed societal acceptance, THE HEARING OF INNER SOUNDS OR VOICES (nada) has generally been associated with mental illness. Spiritual counseling reassures a person that their experiences and feelings are spiritual--not abnormal. Understanding nada helps persons feel comfortable when hearing any inner sounds. ... If a sound is heard, listen to it. If many sounds exist, listen to those in the right ear. The first sound heard is to be followed. Then, the next sound heard is also to be followed” (p. 343).

I have never read a more effective formula for demon possession and spiritual delusion, and “contemplative” practices such as centering prayer and visualization and guided imagery are no different in character than Hindu yoga. In fact, many contemplative practitioners admit this.

John Michael Talbot says:

“For myself, after the moving meditations of Hinduism and Taoism, and the breath, bone-marrow, and organ-cleansing of Taoism, I move into a Buddhist seated meditation, including the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. I do all of this from my own Christian perspective...” (Come to the Quiet, p. 237).

Meditation practitioner W.E. Butler, in Lords of Light, says that mystical contemplation “brings with it a curious kind of knowing that there is somebody else there with you; you are not alone” (p. 164).

Indeed, but that “somebody else” that the unsaved meditation practitioner encounters is certainly not Almighty God.

Tony Jones admits that the practice of silence often results in spiritual oppression. He mentions “the dark night of the soul” which comes through meditation and says, “It seems one cannot pursue true silence without rather quickly coming to a place of deep, dark doubt” (The Sacred Way, pp. 41, 82). He quotes Thomas Merton as follows: “The hermit, all day and all night, beats his head against a wall of doubt. That is his contemplation” (p. 41).

We are reminded of Mother Teresa, who was called a living saint by Catholics and Protestants alike during her lifetime and is on a fast track for canonization in the Catholic Church. She practiced a very serious level of contemplative spirituality all her life, but she found only darkness. This is documented in the shocking book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, the Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta (2007), which contains statements made by the nun to her Catholic confessors and superiors over a period of more than 65 years.

In March 1953 she wrote to her confessor: “... THERE IS SUCH TERRIBLE DARKNESS WITHIN ME, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work.’”

Over the years she had many confessors, and she continually referred to her spiritual condition as “my darkness” and to Jesus as “the Absent One.”

In 1962 she wrote: “IF I EVER BECOME A SAINT -- I WILL SURELY BE ONE OF ‘DARKNESS,’” and again, “How cold -- how empty -- how painful is my heart. -- Holy communion -- Holy Mass -- all the holy things of spiritual life -- of the life of Christ in me -- are all so empty -- so cold -- so un-wanted” (Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, p. 232).
  
In 1979 she wrote: “THE SILENCE AND THE EMPTINESS IS SO GREAT -- that I look and do not see, -- Listen and do not hear.”

Her private statements about the spiritual darkness she encountered in contemplative prayer continued in this vein until her death, and they are the loudest possible warning about the danger of contemplative mysticism.

Contemplative practices are vehicles to bring the practitioners into contact with demons.

CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES HAVE EVEN LED SOME TO GODDESS WORSHIP.

This is what happened to SUE MONK KIDD (b. 1948), and her experience is a loud warning about flirting with Catholic mysticism.

She was raised in a Southern Baptist congregation in southwest Georgia. Her grandfather and father were Baptist deacons. Her grandmother gave devotionals at the Women’s Missionary Union, and her mother was a Sunday School teacher. Her husband was a minister who taught religion and a chaplain at a Baptist college. She was very involved in church, teaching Sunday School and attending services Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday. She describes herself as the person who would have won a contest for “Least Likely to Become a Feminist.” She was even inducted into a group of women called the Gracious Ladies, the criterion for which was that “one needed to portray certain ideals of womanhood, which included being gracious and giving of oneself unselfishly.”

But for years she had felt a spiritual emptiness and lack of contentment. Prayer was “a fairly boring mental activity” (Kidd’s foreword to Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands, 2006, p. 10). She says,

“I had been struggling to come to terms with my life as a woman--in my culture, my marriage, my faith, my church, and deep inside myself” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 8).

She was thirty years old, had been married about 12 years, and had two children.

Instead of learning how to fill the emptiness and uncertainty with a know-so salvation and a sweet walk with Christ in the Spirit and a deeper knowledge of the Bible, she began dabbling in Catholic mysticism. A Sunday School co-worker gave her a book by the Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton. She should have known better than to study such a book and should have been warned by the brethren, but the New Evangelical philosophy that controls the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches created an atmosphere in which the reading of a Catholic monk’s book by a Sunday School teacher was acceptable. Their thinking goes like this: Who are we to judge what other people read, and who is to say that a Roman Catholic priest might not love the Lord?

Kidd began to practice Catholic forms of contemplative spirituality and to visit Catholic retreat centers and monasteries.

“... beginning in my early thirties I’d become immersed in a journey that was rooted in contemplative spirituality. It was the spirituality of the ‘church fathers,’ of the monks I’d come to know as I made regular retreats in their monasteries. ... I thrived on solitude, routinely practicing silent meditation as taught by the monks Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating. ... For years, I’d studied Thomas Merton, John of the Cross, Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, Ignatius, Eckhart, Luther, Teilhard de Chardin, The Cloud of Unknowing, and others” (pp. 14, 15).

Of Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, which she read in 1978 for the first of many times, she says,

“My experience of reading it initiated me into my first real awareness of the interior life, igniting an impulse toward being ... it caused something hidden at the core of me to flare up and become known” (Kidd’s introduction to New Seeds of Contemplation, 2007, pp. xiii, xi).

Merton communicated intimately with and was deeply affected by Mary veneration, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism, so it is not surprising that his writings would create an appetite that could lead to goddess worship.

In The New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton made the following frightening statement that shows the great danger of Catholic mysticism:

“In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that HE NO LONGER KNOWS WHAT GOD IS” (p. 13).

What Catholic mysticism does is reject the Bible as the sole and sufficient and perfect revelation of God and tries to delve beyond the Bible, even beyond thought of any kind, and find God through mystical “intuition.” In other words, it is a rejection of the God of the Bible. It claims that God cannot be known by doctrine and cannot be described in words. He can only be experienced through mysticism. This is a blatant denial of the Bible’s claim to be the very Word of God.

This opens the practitioner to demonic delusion. He is left with no perfect objective revelation of God, no divinely-revealed authority by which he can test his mystical experiences and intuitions. He is left with an idol of his own vain imagination (Jeremiah 17:9) and a doctrine of devils.

Kidd’s own first two books were on contemplative spirituality--God’s Joyful Surprise (1988) and When the Heart Waits (1990).

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

She learned dream analysis from a Jungian perspective and believed that her dreams were revelations. One recurring dream featured an old woman. Kidd concluded that this is “the Feminine Self or the voice of the feminine soul” and she was encouraged in her feminist studies by these visitations.

She rejected the doctrine that the Bible is the sole authority. In church one day the pastor proclaimed this truth, and she describes the frightful thing that happened in her heart at that moment:

“I remember a feeling rising up from a place about two inches below my navel. ... It was the purest inner knowing I had experienced, and it was shouting in me no, no, no! The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible; it is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period. ... That day sitting in church, I believed the voice in my belly. ... The voice in my belly was the voice of the wise old woman. It was my female soul talking. And it had challenged the assumption that the Baptist Church would get me where I needed to go” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, pp. 76, 77, 78).

She began to think that the Bible is wrong in its teaching about women and that women should not take the subordinate position described therein. She came to believe that Eve might have been a hero instead of a sinner, that eating the forbidden fruit had actually opened Eve’s eyes to her true self. Kidd came to the conclusion that the snake was not evil but “symbolized female wisdom, power, and regeneration” (p. 71). She was surprised and pleased to learn that the snake is depicted as the companion of ancient goddesses, concluding that this is evidence that the Bible is wrong.

She began to delve into the worship of ancient goddesses. She traveled with a group of women to Crete where they met in a cave and sang prayers to “the Goddess Skoteini, Goddess of the Dark.” She says, “... something inside me was calling on the Goddess of the Dark, even though I didn’t know her name” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 93).

Soon she was praying to God as Mother.

“I ran my finger around the rim of the circle on the page and prayed my first prayer to a Divine Feminine presence. I said, ‘Mothergod, I have nothing to hold me. No place to be, inside or out. I need to find a container of support, a space where my journey can unfold’” (p. 94).

She came to the place where she believed that she is a goddess.

“Divine Feminine love came, wiping out all my puny ideas about love in one driving sweep. Today I remember that event for the radiant mystery it was, how I felt myself embraced by Goddess, how I felt myself in touch with the deepest thing I am. It was the moment when, as playwright and poet Ntozake Shange put it, ‘I found god in myself/ and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely’” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 136).

“I came to know myself as an embodiment of Goddess” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 163).

“When I woke, my thought was that I was finally being reunited with the snake in myself--that lost and defiled symbol of feminine instinct” (p. 107).

She came to believe in the New Age doctrine that God is in all things and is the sum total of all things, that God is the evolving universe and we are a part of God.

“I thought: Maybe the Divine One is like an old African woman, carving creation out of one vast, beautiful piece of Herself. She is making a universal totem spanning fifteen billion years, an extension of her life and being, an evolutionary carving of sacred art containing humans, animals, plants, indeed, everything that is. And all of it is joined, blended, and connected, its destiny intertwined. ... In other words, the Divine coinheres all that is. ... To coinhere means to exist together, to be included in the same thing or substance” (pp. 158, 159).

She built an altar in her study and populated it with statues of goddesses, of Jesus, of a Black Madonna -- and a mirror to reflect her own image.

“Over the altar in my study I hung a lovely mirror sculpted in the shape of a crescent moon. It reminded me to honor the Divine Feminine presence in myself, the wisdom in my own soul” (p. 181).
Her book ends with the words, “She is in us.”

Sue Monk Kidd is quoted by evangelicals such as David Jeremiah (Life Wide Open), Beth Moore (When Godly People Do Ungodly Things), and Richard Foster (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home). Kidd’s endorsement is printed on the back of Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines. She wrote the foreword to the 2006 edition of Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands and the introduction to the 2007 edition of Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.

Another example of how Catholic contemplative spirituality has led to goddess worship is the sad story of ALAN “BEDE” GRIFFITHS.

He was born in England and studied at Oxford under C.S. Lewis, who became a lifelong friend. In 1931, while at Oxford he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The next year he joined the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey near Gloucester and was ordained a priest in 1940. The name Bede, meaning prayer, was given to him when he entered the Benedictine order.

He moved to India and became a Hindu monk (while remaining a Catholic priest), calling himself Swami Dayananda (bliss of compassion), going barefoot, wearing an orange-colored robe, practicing yoga, taking the tika, and refusing to eat meat.

He accepted the Hindu concept of the interrelatedness of everything and the unity of man with God.

“He loved to quote the Chandogya Upanishad (8,3) [Hindu scriptures] to show that while our body takes up only a small space on this planet, OUR MIND ENCOMPASSES THE WHOLE UNIVERSE: ‘There is this city of Brahman (the human body) and in it there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus, and within can be found a small space. This little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars; fire and lightening and wind are there, and all that now is and is not yet--all that is contained within it” (Pascaline Coff, “Man, Monk, Mystic,” http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).

He rejected the Bible’s doctrine that there is good and evil:

“I saw God in the earth, in trees, in mountains. IT LED ME TO THE CONVICTION THAT THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE GOOD OR EVIL IN THIS WORLD. We have to let go of all concepts which divide the world into good and evil, right and wrong, and begin to see the complimentarity of opposites which Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called the coincidentia oppositorum, the ‘coincidence of opposites’” (1991, http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).

At the end of his life he came to believe in the validity of mother goddess worship. This was the fruit of his communion with idolatry through contemplative spirituality. In 1990, after a stroke, he began to speak of the awakening of his repressed feminine.

“When he first spoke about THE BLACK MADONNA, he said his experience of her was deeply connected to the Earth-Mother, to the forms of the ancient feminine found in rocks and caves and in the different forms in nature. HE LIKENED IT TO THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FEMININE EXPRESSED IN THE HINDU CONCEPT OF SHAKTI--THE POWER OF THE DIVINE FEMININE. Later Father wrote these reflections on the Black Madonna: ‘The Black Madonna symbolizes for me the Black Power in Nature and Life, the hidden power in the womb. ... I feel it was this Power which struck me. She is cruel and destructive, but also deeply loving and nourishing’” (http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm).

Griffiths had a large influence in promoting interfaith philosophy in Roman Catholic monasteries in America, England, Australia, and Germany through his books and lectures. He wrote 12 books on interfaith dialogue, the most popular being Marriage of East and West.

Griffiths’ love for the Black Madonna is interesting. Sue Monk Kidd, too, as she traveled from Catholic contemplative practices to goddess worship, experienced a great love for the Black Madonna. Thomas Merton did the same thing in his journey into Roman Catholic mysticism and beyond to Zen Buddhism.

This is not surprising because the Madonna was originally borrowed from pagan idolatry, from the ancient mother goddess mystery religions that stemmed from Babel.

Contemplative practices are encouraging the spread of such heresies, and this is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear.

I would urge my readers in the strongest possible way not to dabble in contemplative practices. There really is no telling where it might lead. It can lead to Rome or Buddha or even to Artemis.

(For more about Sue Monk Kidd and Alan Griffiths see the chapter “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics.”)

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This article is excerpted from our new book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond, which is available from Way of Life Literature in print and eBook editions.
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