PART 2
EMERGENT CHURCH MOVEMENT
“It is the end of something and the beginning of something totally Other--a transformation of spirituality--a creative mutation driven by God�?(Thomas Hohstadt, futurechurch website) emphasis mine
Totally Other! A Mutation! Is that God driven? Birthing a new spirit. This can transform our spirituality to something totally different than what has been delivered.
It’s time to see this for what it is- The church is under attack from within by those who think the Holy Spirit and Bible are nor longer sufficient for our spiritual life and Growth. They are more than willing to use what is not written then what is written. In fact, they challenge the literal written word by changing its interpretation to be something very different, more hip to our time. Its application is often an introduction to something the Bible never intended.
Just as in Christianity- you are either a missionary or a mission field - in the new age you are either pupil or a teacher. It’s time for us to question why these men want to bring Yoga, meditation or Mantras into the church. Do we not have union with Christ Jesus through His Spirit already? Mysticism always claims to give a spiritual experience that one cannot receive another way. It doesn’t matter if one is a Christian or not, nor does it matter whether the mystical experience comes from anyone of these sources- drugs, yoga, meditation, channeling or a near death experience; in the end the results are often the same: the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ are altered.
Benjamen Creme stated "Times as you know are changing and the changing times bring new personalities indifferent ways into the world of all conceptions of the bible story and the gospel and so on have to change, the people that will find it probably hardest of all to accept Maitreya are the leaders of the Christian and Jewish organizations. ..they had the same problem 2,000 years ago with Jesus, Jesus was there among them and they didn’t recognize him." (Art Bell broadcast, July 10, 1998).
Change and evolution seem to go hand in hand in the new mysticism. What does God say in the Bible? “I the Lord do not change.�?So what is influencing this change?
"God is not dead-, but HE CHANGES." In a letter to a friend, he referred to "the transformation... of the 'God of the Gospel' into the 'God of Evolution (Ursala King towards a new mysticism Teilhard de Chardin and eastern religions p.172)
A New Order of Spirituality
The old order is passing but not without some struggles and challenges. Bailey said, �?I>This Inherent fanaticism (found ever in reactionary groups) will fight against the appearance of the coming, world religion ... (Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 453)
They are aware that many who KNOW Jesus (the real one), truly know Him and will resist this fog that is indiscriminately blanketing the land.
Benjamen Crème says, There must be no pessimism as to the future of mankind or distress over the disappearance of the old order�?(Reappearance of the Christ, p. 179)
The New age movements promoters want to see the old order gone (Christianity) for the new world and the new man and religion to come forth. The new spirituality is the goal and there are many ways to arrive at it.
�?/FONT>The new spirituality does not reject the earlier patterns of the great universal religions. Priest and church will not disappear; they will not be forced out of existence in the New Age, they will be ABSORBED INTO THE EXISTENCE OF THE NEW AGE.�?(William Thompson, in the Introduction of David Spangler, Rvelation: The Birth of the New Ag ). We should note that Leonard Sweet states he has corresponded with David Spangler and quotes him several times favorably in his book Quantum Spirituality. Sweet says in his footnotes #86. I am grateful to David Spangler for his help in formulating this “new cell�?understanding of New Light leadership.�?/P> David Spangler who Sweet favorably quotes also speaks of Lucifer as: “The true light of this great being can only be recognized when one's own eyes can see with the light of the Christ, the light of the inner sun. Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness, and as we move into the New Age, which is the age of man's wholeness, each of us is brought to that point which I term the Luciferic Initiation, the particular doorway through which the individual must pass if he is to come fully into the presence of his light and his wholeness.
Lucifer comes to give us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it, then he is free and we are free, that is the Luciferic Initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation into the New Age. (David Spangler, Reflections on the Christ, Findhorn Lecture Series, 3rd ed., 1981; p. 45)
Why any Christian would quote someone who is so against the Jesus Christ of the Bible is beyond me. How can any Christian who loves the lord and the truth in His word receive understanding from a man who thinks the way to Christ is through a Luciferic initiation! The implications are more than just being wrong, for Spangler is pointing to the one who opposes God and His church.
Have you been Experienced?
The initiation into the realm of darkness (occult) involves an experience of light, Lucifer is the giver of this spiritual light and he has fooled many into thinking it is Christ (Jesus). New Age adherents talk of an experience of light (revelation) that binds them together. Once they are �?I>experienced�?they see nearly everything including the New Testament in a different light. It has been called by them a paradigm shift of consciousness.
It can be a flash, a revelation, an impression that can deceive even the most sincere and noble of people. A sense of oneness is almost always tied to nature and/or self- realization. Consider Forrest Shaklee who started the Shaklee vitamin company, born with Tuberculosis he was not expected to live. His parents moved to more fresh air, from a coal mine to a farm. The fresh food and air and family folk remedies attributed to his health improving. It was there on the farm as a very young man that he learned to tune in to what he called the creative intelligence of nature�?(audio of Shaklee's leader banquet Minneapolis in 1971). I was still young chap and the folks still lived on the farm and I came home upon Easter vacation and Easter Sunday afternoon. I walked out into the fields out into the meadows of the hay lands where they hay had been freshly cut. And climbed up upon to a stack of hay lying there flat on my back breathing watching the wildlife the swan the crane the geese the ducks all winding there way to the northland for their home breeding ground. I remember the thought came to me what guides those birds back to the same place their parents had deposited the eggs from they came. What is it that will cause them in the fall to come back to the Wintry quarters? There was a question in my mind. Has man lost something that the birds have? From that moment on I began to think and feel and endeavor to interpret the meaning of nature. It became a part of me I began to realize that I was a part of nature. Not something �?set apart on the mountain the high spot to judge the rest of the animals of the earth. For I too was product of nature perhaps no better than the old cow on the hillside. Being a product of nature it behooved me to cooperate with nature.�?nbsp;
Forrest Shaklee had a mystical type of experience of oneness that changed his worldview and his place in it. His vantage point changed and is similar to many who have journeyed into mysticism and came to the same realization.
Frank B. Robinson (of the Psychiana movement) went into his room and closed the door. lamenting “O God,�?he exclaimed, if I have to go to hell, I'll go with the consciousness that I went there earnestly trying to find you!"
�?/FONT>As the moments passed he stood perfectly still, hopefully waiting for he knew not what. Then he fell to his knees, closed his yes, and heard himself say, "The spirit within me is the Spirit of God, the same spirit that has moved in the lives of all great men. I have confessed this Spirit for many years, but I have also suppressed it. I want to express it from this moment on-fully, completely, perfectly.�?/FONT>
Kneeling there, he felt his mind cleansed of every thought save the thought of the presence of God. His eyes filled with tears and he found himself breathing deeply, repeating with very inhalation words which seemed to have been whispered to him, "I believe in the Power of the Living God!"
He had the vivid feeling that he was not alone in the room. He could sense the Presence of something or someone, although lie could see no one nor hear anything but the words he so earnestly repeated. Yet something had drawn aside a curtain deep within him and he seemed to be standing face to face with the Power that is life. No longer, he said later, did he feel a limiting consciousness; he felt only a single, specific sense of complete unity with God. In that gashing moment of insight, he realized as never before that he was the inner counterpart of a divine creative power. From then on he was convinced that he was the personalized activity of cosmic force. Those who have experienced something similar call it conversion. Others refer to it as a religious experience, or the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Robinson called it "talking with God" and after that Sunday afternoon he was a changed man.�?(p.159 Strange Sects and Curious Cults by Marcus Bach, Dodd, Mean & Company, New York 1962)
There are many who claim to hear hear a soft voice, see a light or are enraptured in an experience of beauty and believe it to be God. Despite the feeling they received or the knowledge gained, if it is not related to the Bible and tested they have been deceived by the master of of all deceptions.
Richard Foster says he read 300 books on prayer in a few months, Classical books. �?I>I have read everything I could lay my hands on about formation prayer and covenant prayer adoration prayer and sacramental prayer and centering prayer and meditative prayer, intercessory prayer healing prayer authoritative prayer and so much more.�?Foster has become a major influence behind the scenes in this Emergent church movement.
On his audio set Richard Foster tells a story of Paddy Chayefsky, a play writers experience with what Foster believes is God. Foster prefaces this with “Who lived his life as if God did not exist ..total self centerness using people.�?/FONT>
One night while he was writing in his park avenue apartment the living God came roaring into Paddy chayefsky’s life with hurricane force and experience with both his head and his heart the wild passionate pursuing love of God for him�?He was caught up in an ecstasy of Joy. God loved him just the way he was.
He tore up what he was writing, wrote a new play that ran on Broadway for 2 years called Gideon. Chayefsky projects himself into the lead character Gideon his own decisive encounter with God.
Gideon has a life of abusing and using other people for his own selfish pleasure. Gideon cannot think of one single action in his life where he ever tried to be kind, or loving or caring or thoughtful. But that night out on the desert the God who made the Pleiades and Orion come tearing into Gideon's life and Gideon experiences the unconditional love of Jesus Christ for him personally that he loves him just the way he is, not the way he is supposed to be�?that he loves him beyond fidelity and infidelity�?/FONT>
Gideon cannot sleep all night. �?I>I want to take you into my tent wrap you up and keep you all to myself. God will you tell me again that you love me. God answers �?I love you Gideon�? Say again to me God , “I love you Gideon�? Finally Gideon scratches his head, �?I don’t understand God- why, why do you love me?�?“God scratches his head and answers I really don’t know�?(Foster laughs) And then God adds- Gideon sometimes passion isn’t reasonable, sometimes my Gideon passion is unreasonable�?(Richard Foster- Prayer- Finding the Hearts True Home, audio, Zondervan publishing 1992)
Does God not know something; especially why He loves us? Does he not tell us the why He sent His Son to die for us! This God did not know anymore than Gideon.
I looked up Paddy Chayefsky on the web to see if there was ever a hint of his converting to Christ from Judaism. There was none. Believing in God is not the same thing as knowing Christ through the gospel. One can invent their own view-point of whom they want God to be. It was stated- Only one of the members of Chayefsky's minyan-Hirschman, the venerable Cabbalist-openly professes belief in God...
His play on Gideon was described as a dramatization of the biblical story of Gideon, Chayefsky arranges a philosophical debate between the reluctant Gideon and God over issues of free will, obedience, and self-sacrifice.
I also found this in the Commentary Digital Archive- 398. �?I>God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half. 21. I don't know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about truth. I just want to know the momentary fact of things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual. It's sensual. It's alive!�?/I>
Why would Foster use this story about Paddy Chayefsky as if it was an authentic experience with God in his prayer series? The answer is simple- Richard J. Foster is a Quaker minister who is into mysticism and experiences. Foster has made himself acquainted with Medieval mystics which he refers to as �?I>masters of the interior life,�?he is convincing many to believe this way. Foster quotes numerous mystics - Teilhard de Chardin, Meister Eckhart (a Dominican monk who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who ranks among the great Roman Catholic mystics.) Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the order of the Jesuits. Teresa of Ávila, John Woolman, George Fox, and St. John of the Cross, Agnes Sanford and others.
Foster teaches the techniques found in the New Age such as quietism, centering, Buddhism, Yoga, mantras. In his book Celebration of discipline foster endorses the rosary and prayer wheel use (p. 64); promotes Roman Catholic practices such as use of “spiritual directors,�?confession, and penance (pp. 146-150, 156, 185).
Foster says, �?I>Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it.�?Foster is educated enough to know the difference. Emptying the mind in eastern thought gives one leeway to the spirit world and brings on counterfeit (mystical) experiences. Christian meditation is thinking and pondering on the Scripture, the very opposite.
Foster is convinced of other methods, that use imagination, visualization, dreamwork, centering, and breathing can all be useful by Christians for spiritual growth. He cites their use in church history (Christian mystical traditions). Foster encourages centering exercises and concentrating on one's breath, also a common Eastern technique: Another meditation aimed at centering oneself begins by concentrating on breathing. Having seated yourself comfortably, slowly become conscious of your breathing. This will help you to get in touch with your body and indicate to you the level of tension within. Inhale deeply, slowly tilting your head back as far as it will go. Then exhale, allowing your head slowly to come forward until your chin nearly rests on your chest. Do this for several moments, praying inwardly something like this: "Lord, I exhale my fear over my geometry exam, I inhale Your peace. I exhale my spiritual apathy, I inhale Your light and life." Then, as before, become silent outwardly and inwardly. Be attentive to the inward living Christ�?(193:25, Celebration of Discipline. reference “Can you trust your Doctor by Ankerberg and Weldon)
This is right in line with new age disciplines of meditation. Nowhere does the Bible instruct us to do this type of exercise, neither does it teach that we receive peace in this way.
Foster Explains his view of celebration: �?I>We of the New Age can risk going against the tide. Let us with abandon...see visions and dream dreams....The imagination can release a flood of creative ideas [and] be lots of fun.�?(Celebration of Discipline, Harper & Row, 1978, p. 170)
We of the new age! A revealing a statement. Numerous books and speakers have gained access to the church, introducing strange and mystical practices to our young and old. These men are using new revelations, new methodologies to achieve a spiritual life, maturity and experiences. None of which are spoken of in the Scripture. We should heed the words of Paul who tells us not to exceed what is written.
Many of the emergent movements leaders look to Foster for a spiritual influence for their direction. What Foster is teaching opens up one's belief to accept things outside the faith delivered to the saints. Why would any Christian recommend practices or books that are not from Christian teaching in the Bible.
As Christians (those who believe and follow Christ as our life) we should be careful to avoid the use of practices found in other religions. We should even avoid if possible the same language used in the occult and mystics, lest we be misconstrued as approving these practices or be identified with them.
LET US REASON MINISTRIES
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