From Mysticism into Occultism

Down the Slippery Slope of Mysticism
Mark Dinsmore writes in the current issue of the Berean Call:
“Yoga, Centering Prayer, Lectio Divna, Evangelical Monasticism, Practicing the Presence, Stations of the Cross, Labyrinth Prayer. These are but a few of the teachings and techniques we’ve noted that are bombarding evangelical churches of all denominations, largely in association with the Emerging Church Movement. But while much recent biblical discernment has been focused on the errors and excesses of the ECM, another “renewal” has been taking place in the revived Latter-Rain and Kingdom-Now camps related to C. Peter Wagner’s “New Apostolic Reformation” that poses equal concern with regard to the Emerging Apostasy…These hold key beliefs in common!” He then writes, “Not surprisingly then, is perhaps their greatest common denominator: an affinity for (and outright embrace of) Contemplative Spirituality. A visible example is the …organization of Patricia King called “Extreme Prophetic”….Her ministry promotes not just ordinary miracles but “extreme signs and wonders” as taught by a variety of Christian seers and psychics-such as interpreting dreams, providing spiritual readings for the lost, opening the heavens to release the manifest presence of God (oil and glory dust), working with angels, raising the dead, spirit-traveling to the third heaven (throne room of God), communicating with departed saints, and more.”
This is New Age occultism, but may becoming commonplace. “One of the more recent and blatant examples of new-paganism in the church is Patricia King's endorsement and embrace of trance-dancing as a Christian form of worship that she and Caleb Brundidge, one of her itinerant ministers call “Ekstasis Worship.” Brundidge is a traveling “prophetic” D.J. that calls his show “Club Mysterio”.” Repetitive “rave” or trance” music has been so-called because night clubs around the world use it to enable patrons to enter a euphoric altered state of consciousness-with or without the assistance of drugs such as “ecstasy”-though extended freestyle and sensual motion set to repetitive music tracks. It doesn't take an anthropologist to recognize parallels between modern trance dancing and ancient forms of ritual dance that is still used in many cultures to produce identical altered states and “spirit travel.” But what many may not know is the increasing popularity of “yoga trance dancing”, which could well become the “jassercize” that turns this form of Hindu worship into an aerobic activity for “everyday” gym members."
Here is a Brundidge quote or three from trance dancers:

“In searching for my personal connection with Shiva Nataraj, to best explain these roots of trance dancing from ancient India. I felt I needed to go deeper than books, however.”

“You no longer have to study the Word, when you're inside of an infused atmosphere, it becomes part of you.”

“Ekstasis worship is worship that when you go outside of your mind, and just release yourself into abandoned worship with God, going into the ecstasy [as in sensual union] of God.”

How did we get this way in the Evangelical church? Maybe this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch under People in the News explains. It is headed by Lynch foundation to fund meditation scholarships:

Director David Lynch says his nonprofit foundation will donate $1 million to fund scholarships for students who want to learn a meditation technique taught at the Maharishi University of Management. Lynch, who directed “The Elephant Man,” “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” movies and the “Twin Peaks” TV series, is a longtime practitioner of Transcendental Meditation.
Lynch, 62, plans to give $1 million in scholarships for students to attend the university in Fairfield, Iowa, and learn TM. He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005.

Mystical Practices Enter the Christian Culture

PIETY AND EXPERIENTIAL ZEAL

The pietism movements of the middle ages progressed rapidly in Roman Catholicism. This, in turn, produced an experiential theology among monastics and others that exhibited great zeal on the part of the participants. But Christian zeal can be misplaced when based on other than the scriptures. In the Christian church today it has produced a lack of proper moderation and balance. Ephesians 4 indicates this with an outline of God's method for moderation. This is not new to the New Testament. There are many sources in the Old Testament which testify to the need for scriptural knowledge and balance (Ho 4:6; Isa 29:13 and Mt 15:8). Mysticism in the modern church has many fingers and is producing a pendulum effect from one extreme to the other:

• Academic versus Experiential


• Reason versus Faith


• Objective versus Subjective


• Mind versus Heart

As it goes back and forth, we are reminded that God made all things very good (Gen 1:31), then it was perverted by sin. Things are not sinful, but the use of them, including the intangibles of thoughts, reason, motivations and even philosophy can be unclean (Rom 14:14), just as in the amoral issues.

MYSTICAL PERVERSIONS

We have mentioned before contemplative prayer, labryinth praying, imagination and visualization. Now add piety and experiential zeal. Rom 10:2 says, "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Knowledge of the Word of God with good rules of interpretation is paramount.

Piety is the desire to have the Chrisian life experienced as more than just an academic, theological or intellectual discussion or feeling. It occurs in the modern church because of the decline into ritual, confession and cold intellectual discourse. It has its roots in four pivotal players of pietistic practice:

• Arndt - looked for the Kingdom of God within; zealous for a changed life
• Spener - was more aggressively experiential
• Francke - expanded the emphasis on changed life and missions
• Von Zinzendorf - spoke of and developed the "theology of the heart"

The children and grandchildren of pietism generated first the use of the Scriptures for the basis of their experience while still advocating the need for individual experience. Second generations of children stressed experience but often without a proper biblical basis. And the grandchildren in the third generation questioned the practice or individual experience not backed by authority to have it. The Scripture has been lost as the authority to them, and a new authority is sought. The "default" of the human experience is the flesh, consequently in the absence of scriptural authority human reason or subjective experience fills the void. The pendulum is swinging, swinging and swinging. Where it stops nobody knows.

The great-grandchildren of Pietism is deism, skepticism and rationalism. In the fourth generation by following the logical path of their forebears, they are now "liberated" from the traditions of the previous generations. They are free to experiment with new and "better" experiences. It becomes more "mystical", ...in feelings, experience and relationships. Here are the new freedoms:

• Freedom #1 - deism: God is there but transcendent and not dictating what experiences are proper so one can use his own reason to get to a religious experience if one is desired; if not just be rational and live your life
• Freedom #2 - skepticism: Who knows if God is there anyway? Doubt replaces certainty; authority is one's own mind. Nothing can be certain except you probably will not have to answer for anything, will you?
• Freedom #3 - rationalism: The charade is over; you and your reason are all that is left. Matter is the only absolute and morals are baseless except as agreed upon principles of reasonable parameters of behavior. Pragmatism reigns or is preparing to reign.
• Freedom #4 - Freed from the shackles of the absolutists and their mindless subjection to tradition but repulsed by a world that has no "spirit", reason is abandoned for the more spiritual subjective experience. Knowledge, too, has been abandoned.
• Freedom #5 - Insecure with no tether to hold them, a new generation seeks the old ways with a robust skepticism toward both human reason and emotional excesses. Thus, a new, revived pietism begins all over again.

When will the pendulum stop?

:Understanding Mysticism

VISUALIZATION
The end of the thought process of those who are really into mysticism is visualization. There is a legitmate use of visualizing things as done by the artist, the architect, the farmer or the athlete. They visualize the end product and then use their gifts or talents or hard work to make them into a reality. But visualization is also an occult practice shaped by demonic activity of altering the natural world, people in it, conditions under which one lives by casting spells, having visions, contacting spirits, and other means without personal work to get it done.

It was and is a genuine foundation for the positive- and possibility-thinking gurus such as Peale, Schuller, and even Zen Buddhism. Further, in the world of sports it is the plan for bettering yourself. In some mega-churches the zeal for self-betterment sounds off in improvement of self-esteem and urging to find the "better you". Today, in the Word-Faith Movement, it is often the creation of a new reality:

• In the spirit of man, a new concept or desired item is imagined and then visualized in the mind of one. An action or reality is now conceived.
• Faith is applied to this visualized item and it is now in incubation.
• Through faith, the item visualized and conceived in the spirit world is now realized or birthed in the natural world and is spoken into being. This is increasingly popular in Word-Faith churches.
• The visualized item is now materialized in the natural world. "We have what we see; we get what we speak."

Mysticism is the tool for bringing the spirit world into the natural world:

• The mystic clears his mind as with the method in contemplative prayer.
• He is now free to receive images from God.
• He may visualize "Jesus" so much that he senses he is not only having a direct communication with Jesus but can actually "touch or feel" Him.
• The visualized object may not and usually is not Jesus but another manifestation such as a deceased relative, famous person or one unknown to the mystic who guides him into some "new truths" he is to live by or some revelation of conditions about which the mystic knew nothing prior to this experience.

Understanding Mysticism

IMAGINATION
Imagination is the gift of God to every individual who was created in God's image. It is part of our being made in His image:

• God created all material things out of the "nothing" - He "imagined" what they looked like and made them that way
• It is the foundational tool in our ability to "create" things - invention, etc.
• It is the foundational tool for teaching our children the way of life - Psalm 19:17
• It is the tool whereby we can understand the appearance or nature of an item being described to us by another
• It is one of the tools used to understand the Word of God
• It is the tool Moses had to use when making the items for the tabernacle from the things which he had seen in God's presence
• It is one source from which we are able to create art, literature, drama and music

Our imagination like the rest of our being has been stained and affected by sin:

• As with other items of nature which can be seen in Romans 14, imagination is not sinful but our use of it can be
• It is the tool in which people have imagined themselves carrying out some sin
• It has been the tool for creating unspeakable inventions of terror and suffering
• It has been the source of much deceitful behavior and stories
• It is the tool for creating fear in ourselves and in others
• It is the source of idolatry - Rom 1:21
• In sinful use, it is the source of all manner of wickedness - Gen 6:5
• Sinfully, it is used by the adversary to deceive us - 2 Cor 10:3-5
• Trained only by sin, it is the prison of the "gentiles" - Eph 4:17ff
• It is also a tool to enter into the realm of the "mystic"

The use of imagination is and has been a hotly contested issue over the centuries of church history and development. Next time.....visualization.

Mysticism-a Scourge of the Modern Church

In a recent copy of The Berean Call, T. A. McMahon titles his article “All mystical roads lead to Rome”. He then traces his own experiences as a Roman Catholic before conversion on to the evangelical church today, covering the ecumenical movement (and mentioning many names) and The Passion of the Christ movie. He does not mince words as he names more names in the Emergent and Seeker Sensitive movements by pointing out that Catholic mysticism is thoroughly subjective and experiential like its parent Eastern mysticism. “...the goal of mysticism is union with God, i.e., the merging of one's soul into God. This is an impossibility that reveals mysticism's pantheistic and panentheistic roots, that God is everything and is in everything. No, God is infinite and transcendent, absolutely separate from His finite creation.”

He then goes on to comment on such things as The Sacred Way, Centering (or contemplative) Prayer practiced by the popular Beth Moore, the Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina, Ignatian Examen, Prayer Labyrinths, and occultism (that is, occultic practices of mysticism).

A member of my SS class brought in a brochure for a Catholic Taize Prayer Evening, to experience prayer in the style of Taize. Bill Keller appeared on a Fox News broadcast this past week to comment on the New Age mystical approach of America's most popular woman, Oprah Winfrey. He tried to present the basis of the gospel in Jesus alone by faith alone, but the Fox reporter was too busy defending Oprah to give him any leeway or to listen to him.

I received a prayer rug (made out of paper) from the St. Matthews Churches of Tulsa, OK a short time ago. Promising health and wealth, all I had to do was to enter into their prescribed repetitive prayers, put my offering in the envelope and mail it in. “Look into Jesus' Eyes you will see they are closed. But as you continue to look you will see His eyes opening and looking back into your eyes.” This is the height of mysticism.

Why does Mysticism exist?
Since the fall of man, man has attempted to connect himself to the “other” realm of reality: the Absolute, the Divine, the All. Rather than come humbly by faith to the Creator of man and all that is, he attempts to find that reality in his own terms and with his own power as was done in the garden of Eden. He knows there is a transcendent, unseen reality concurrent with this existence that is greater than his own existence and usually defines or has created the world in which he lives. Man seeks to create a harmony with his out-of-harmony world and the harmonious world of the other reality. The end result is a surrendered ego-less state in which, in the mind of the seeker, the external world synchronizes with the mystic's assumed true nature and purpose.
Characteristics of Mysticism
One aberrant output of the Emergent Church is a pilgrimage or the journey of mysticism. This is an awakening to the possibility that the world as it has been explained or taught to him may not be true (cf. Satan in the garden denying the reality of death and slandering the character of God). It brings a kind of self-awareness to one's imperfection, finiteness and unworthiness -what can be done? It is said to bring illumination -consciousness of the “other” reality and the gaining of a new world view and future. Another describes the dark night of the soul – a period of purging or suffering in which the seeker experiences confusion, helplessness, stagnation of the will and withdrawal from the Presence however it has been understood by the seeker. Finally, comes union with the divine, the absolute, the other. But, what “other”?

Mysticism in the church has a new vocabulary with new words, and new meaning to old and familiar words. Like some secret organizations, there can be rites of passage, from initiation through the deepest levels. And it does not neglect superstitious practices believed to invoke or appease the power (s) of the “other”.

Mysticism also includes purification practices, re-education into a new definition of reality; a new worldview – not a biblical worldview. And finally in this regard, we see the establishment of shamans or mystical leaders as those believed to be in union now with the “other” in such a way as to invoke its powers and declare its will and teachings, however bizarre.
All involve rituals, visual symbols, paranormal experiences, contemplative prayer techniques, meditations and mantras, and the ascetic. Indeed, all roads lead to Rome and practices from the Eastern cults developed over the centuries. Experience, not the Word, is the name of the game.