As further evidence of how even secular media recognize the spiritual shift taking place towards eastern religious practices, here’s a new piece from Newsweek.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: “Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.” A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur’an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” Americans are no longer buying it…

So only the “most traditional, conservative Christians” believe that Jesus meant what he said about being the way, the truth and the life. The rest of the “Christians” think He was what? Lying? Deluded? That is, however, just how bad it’s gotten. Supposed “Christians” who wouldn’t even know who Jesus was without the Bible, completely reject what Jesus Christ had to say. What kind of religion is that where you can make things up as you go and discard your own supposedly sacred text?

HT: Lighthouse Trails

Christianity Today Online is featuring what amounts to a promotional piece on “spiritual directors” that caught my attention. The article introduces the practice of using spiritual directors to evangelicals, most of whom have never heard of them. The piece details the author, Alice Fryling’s, warm and positive experiences with the spiritual director she encountered in a mainline church near the University of Wisconsin many years ago.

At first glance, who would argue with a ministry that supposedly puts people in touch with hearing and seeing God in their lives? But looking at it all a little more closely, problems emerge. Nowhere in the article is there a caution about the dangers of spiritual direction that takes you away from the truth of the Word of God. There is much in the piece about the author’s feelings spiritually and how the spiritual direction affected her emotionally, but never does she tell readers to be careful about the counsel they are receiving from these individuals who are giving spiritual guidance. Nowhere does she recommend asking, “to where am I being directed spiritually by this person?” or tell readers how to know if they are being directed into grave spiritual error.

The vast majority of “spiritual directors” operate within the Roman Catholic and Episcopal traditions. Other mainline churches (apostate) have followed with their own brand of spiritual direction. All of it is rooted in contemplative spirituality. It is easy to see why. The Reformation brought us the crucial emphasis on the authority of Scripture in the lives of believers. Contemplative spirituality removes that landmark and replaces it with subjective mystical experiences. That’s why a “spiritual director” is a key part of the contemplative spiritual package.

I remember reading Karen Mains’ book, Lonely No More, many years ago, long before there was much of any information available on contemplative spirituality within evangelicalism. At that time, the Mains’ program, Chapel of the Air, was on hundreds of stations nationwide. Formerly conservative evangelicals, Karen and her husband, David, converted to the Episcopal church, and the book detailed her new found enthusiasm for contemplative spirituality. She talks about going to visit a nun/spiritual director and Jungian psychotherapist who counseled her. She describes using her imagination to conjure up an image of Jesus Christ, sitting at a table as a bald, drooling idiot child, among other bizarre things detailed in her writing. She also describes her personal spirit guide who appears in her dreams numerous times,

He was tall … well formed and trim, somewhere in his early thirties … His fine, dark hair fell in a thick lock across his forehead … his blue-gray eyes looking earnestly into mine…You are everything I have ever wanted spiritually,’ he said before I started to drive away…

Karen Mains writes that this creature in her dreams had a “positively profound effect” on her that caused her to seek further spiritual direction. The clear cut Word of God was no longer enough for Karen, and the disturbing fruit of her mystical proclivities was all over her book. Unrepentant years later, she writes about the book here:

…Lonely No More looks those lies finally in the eye and begins to deal with them honestly. “If my marriage is as perfect as I say it is, why am I so lonely?” “What are these dreams, these painful emotions, these attractions pointing to?” This book was extremely controversial in certain sections of ultra-conservative Christianity so I warn you, read it carefully. I stand behind every word, despite the controversy. It may even shake the ground beneath your feet. I will probably never write anything this well again. But I have certainly paid for the effort to be excellent, to be lovingly truthful, to want God.

Source

After Chapel of the Air became a venue for promoting contemplative spirituality, VCY America removed it from our network. The program was removed from numerous other stations and ultimately went off the air. But within another 10-15 years, the contemplative spirituality Karen had embraced had been mainstreamed within evangelicalism. That’s why Christianity Today has been promoting “spiritual direction” without any qualms about controversy today. Most Christian radio stations today would have little problem with what Karen Mains was promoting back then. Lighthouse Trails Research includes this warning on spiritual direction:

A 2003 Christianity Today article, Got Your Spiritual Director Yet?, confirms two things, one that spiritual direction is contemplative, and two that it is becoming a part of evangelical Christendom. The article explains that popular Christian author Larry Crabb is changing his views. Once a believer in psychology he is switching to spiritual direction. The article credits contemplatives (mystics) such as John Cassian and Ignatius of Loyola for getting spiritual direction into the church and suggests that we can learn more about it from Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, and Dallas Willard – with this we completely agree. As Rick Warren stated in his book, Purpose Driven Church, Foster and Willard are key players in the Spiritual Formation movement, but while Warren says that this movement is a vital wake up call for the church, we say it is a terrible seduction for the church.

Source

For a closer look at the contemplative spirituality we and others have been warning about, visit the Shalem Institute, an inter-spiritual organization dedicated to promoting spiritual formation through spiritual direction and all of contemplative spirituality. It is anything but rooted in the authoritative Word of God, and it is leading to a New Spirituality that runs counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If Christianity Today is not intending to promote what the Shalem Institute is teaching, where are the warnings? Where is the counsel to be vigilant about those who are promoting a broad spiritual path in opposition to the Word of God? Before you jump on the contemplative/spiritual direction bandwagon, you need to answer that question.

A group of Jewish rabbis and mystics have taken to the skies over Israel to try to stop the H1N1 flu. BBC News reports.

This piece is not from Lighthouse Trails Research or any other discernment ministry online. It’s from the Denver Post, and it confirms the sweeping influence of contemplative eastern spirituality on Christianity and Judaism.

Buddhist scholar Judith Simmer- Brown, a professor at Naropa, said Christian denominations are working hard to rediscover contemplative traditions as one way to combat people leaving their churches.

“They literally have rebuilt their Christian meditative forms,” Simmer- Brown said. “Some borrow heavily from Buddhism.”

Here’s another telling quote from the article.

“There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed,” said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age.”

So the next time you read some sneering emergent detractor online who is attempting to make our warnings about contemplative spirituality look like paranoid foolishness, check out what secular media is reporting. The push for interspirituality is real, and it is in opposition to the narrow way spoken of by Jesus Christ.

Lighthouse Trails reports on the Times article claiming that mysticism is quickly replacing Christianity. Read it here.

Apprising Ministries with some thoughts in this short post concerning a defining issue of the time in which we now find ourselves.

A short, but thorough piece, that talks about the growing mystical connection involving Sufi Islam and the contemplative spirituality of men like Tony Campolo and Rob Bell, as well as, the key role mysticism will play in Emergence Christianity.

A new book arrived yesterday entitled, Jesus in the Lotus: The Mystical Doorway Between Christianity and Yogic Spirituality. You can read more about it here. These lines in the promo materials were particularly interesting because of  ”Christian” Yoga proponents who deny the Hindu roots of the practice.

Paul begins by establishing that Yoga is far more than the practice of therapeutic postures that most Westerners associate with the term.  He explains that it is derived from Hinduism, the third largest religion in the world behind Christianity and Islam.  And while it is true that Yoga is universal in its application and therefore not a religion, he stresses the importance of remembering its roots, “Yoga, which developed in the fire of Hindu spirituality, was shaped by its philosophies and is ensconced in the Hindu way of life.”

The publisher continues:

Jesus in the Lotus presents a pathless path that blends the wisdom of Christianity and the spiritual teachings of Yoga for a holistic daily spiritual practice.  By demonstrating that these two seemingly separate and irronconcilable religions can actually unite in one person’s spiritual practice at the core of his life–as they did for him–he offers an alternative to religious intolerance and strife as well as hope for personal liberation.

The false churches of today that refuse to preach the actual content of Christian doctrine from the Bible have softened up the soil for the seeds of  interspirituality as presented in Jesus in the Lotus. Emerging church emphasis on mysticism has also contributed to it. Circus churches are not harmless. They serve to push thinking people away from the foolishness into something they perceive as deeper and more meaningful. Unfortunately, without the truth of the Word of God, such people will be spiritually deceived.

As a follow up to the Slice piece Abortion Clinic Story Horrifies, But Why?, more closely related than many realize, Apprising Ministries with a couple of interesting and thought-provoking video clips in this post from John MacArthur where he shows how Hitler and the Nazi’s give us a bit of a peek at the coming Antichrist . Within he teaches us that seducing spirits of the occult and its contemplative mysticism used these tools of the Devil with their doctrines of demons.

Caryl Matrisciana is the guest on Crosstalk today, talking about her new book Out of India: A True Story About the New Age Movement. As the co-founder and co-producer of Jeremiah Films for 23 years, Caryl contributed research and expertise to more than 55 documentaries and also served as the Creative and Marketing Director.  In 2002, she founded Caryl Productions, which produces cutting edge video journalism and information to help discern the times in which we live.

“Born and raised in India, Caryl Matrisciana was surrounded by a strange and mystical religion, seeing firsthand the effects Hinduism had on the people of that nation.  After leaving India as a young adult, she became involved in the counter-culture hippie movement, only to find that the elements of Hinduism and the New Age were very much the same.  Eventually, Caryl would discover that this same spirituality had entered not only the Western world, but th echristian church as well, unbeknownst to most people.

Out of India succinctly identifies the mystical religious roots behind Yoga, which is being practiced today by millions of people, many of whom are Christians.

This book shows the underlying beliefs of the New Spirituality and the move toward an interspiritual world “peace” brought through mystical practices.”

(From Lighthouse Trails Publishing)

You can listen live at our website at 2pm Central time or hear the archived show later.

The cowboy church trend I reported on several years ago is really taking off according to the Christian Post. The article gives some clues about the popularity of these churches.

Some Baptist leaders say their cowboy churches have grown so quickly because they offer an alternative for those who associate churches with long sermons and pressure to donate or accept Jesus as their savior.

That’s right, folks. If you don’t have long sermons (the article says the churches give “short devotions”), feature rodeo entertainment, don’t teach on tithing or present the need for Jesus as Savior, you can have a humdinger of a church. Yee ha.

Churches are now themed like amusement parks. Find one that’s fun for you. Churches like Saddleback led the way for picking your own personal worship preference. Don’t like cowboy churches? How about a Hawaiian-themed service with hula praise dancers and a luau afterward? Don’t laugh, they’ve already done the hula “island worship” theme at Saddleback. If the islands thing doesn’t suit your tastes, how about a Parisian café theme? The worship leader could stroll among small tables with a concertina while worshipers sip the best of the Loire Valley and munch croissants. Not into the Euro-snob scene? A Pirates of the Caribbean feel might be right for you. A swashbuckling pastor could dramatize all his sermons in a piratey sort of way, and the decor could be based on a pirate ship complete with a Jolly Roger hanging from the ceiling. Critics could be made to walk the plank.

A cutting-edge idea would be to have a dual-theme church where men and boys go off to the pirate service and women and girls go to a Disney princess service. There could even be some dramatic interplay between the two where pirates kidnap a damsel and Prince Charming rides into the service on his white horse to rescue the maiden. The sermon potential here is rich.

Lord, save us from this foolishness. Church worship was never supposed to be about us and our tastes, but a command performance for the King of kings. My objection to the cowboy themed churches is not that people are worshiping in jeans in a barn somewhere. It is the contrived nature of all of this, where people are encouraged to wear their spurs and chaps to fit in and come hang with Jesus for a few minutes before the rodeo. If people have a problem with long sermons and being taught about sin and hell, their greatest need is not accommodation—it is repentance. Sadly, few will hear that message in these circus-driven churches.

Mystic occultist, Neale Donald Walsch, made his cash and his fame by claiming to have had mystical encounters with a voice he calls “God”. His Conversations with God series was wildly popular for years, and he still travels the world claiming that there is no hell, that even Hitler is in heaven, because all, in the end is love…except, that is, if you are a fundamentalist. They, you see, go straight to hell.

He was in Milwaukee once, and I remember laughing openly while he was talking to a breathless crowd of fans at a bookstore. After giving his “all is love” talk, he then turned to the subject of Christians and began jeering at their ridiculous doctrines. He had the whole assemblage laughing uproariously at the stupid fundamentalists. The whole thing was a farce, but, unfortunately, Mr. Walsch and his disciples couldn’t see their own inconsistency.

Now Walsch is making headlines as a plagiarist after ripping off an essay this Christmas about, what else, “love”. The cool thing about being a mystical New Ager is that you can always claim you are “mystified” as to how it happened. The words just somehow drifted into your mind, you see. It was a supernatural thing. You didn’t deliberately lift the incident described, because perhaps, in an earlier life, the very same incident happened to you. Who’s to say?

The plagiarized author isn’t so kind and seems unimpressed with Walsch’s New Age ethics. I love this quote:

“Speaking of Mr. Walsch, she asked: “Has the man who writes best-selling books about his ‘Conversations With God’ also heard God’s commandments? ‘Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not covet another author’s property’?”

Apprising Ministries offers a bit more perspective in this post on a letter from RZIM Speaking Team/Associate Writer Margaret Manning and how it applies to Henri Nouwen and contemplative spirituality.

In this interesting piece concerning proper Protestant spirituality, Daniel Chew, author of Driven Away by Purpose, begins:

I recently had my personal spiritual retreat on Monday afternoon (December 29th), in order to seek God especially for His direction for the new year (2009). I have been clearing leave during this season so I have had the free time to slow down and take stock of this passing year, and Monday afternoon was the time I had set aside to seek God exclusively for an extended period of time…

The idea for this post came about in the course of the retreat itself as I prayed over the terrible blight of spiritual poverty in the [Visible] Church. It must be admitted that modernist Evangelicalism, with all its positive thinking, 12-steps-to-this and 7-steps-to-that programs, is spiritually bankrupt and the thirst for true spiritual reality has swept many professing Evangelicals into the contemplative camp in search of spiritual satisfaction yet all they receive are counterfeit trinkets…

As you’ll see in this post containing the latest response from RZIM they continue dismissing the results of study by Apprising Ministries into Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) as well as that of others who belong to what RZIM calls “various ‘watch’ groups.”

Unfortunately RZIM is still equivocating with words as they go on defending Ravi Zacharias’ claim that Roman Catholic monk Henri Nouwen (1932-1996)—a superstar of CSM—was, “One of the greatest saints of recent memory.” But this does not involve a mere source quote because the statement clearly means Zacharias accepts Nouwen as a regenerated Christian.

Apologist Ravi Zacharias continues to defend his praise of mystic Henri Nouwen as, “One of the greatest saints of recent memory.” And in addition RZIM is still spreading misinformation concerning the Contemplative/Centering Prayer Nouwen practiced and taught.

In this short post from Apprising Ministries are the facts as to where this antibiblical practice actually originated.

For those wondering about the strength of concern about Henri Nouwen and his defenders like Ravi Zacharias, here is an excerpt of a new book from David Cloud about this new mystical fascination in evangelicalism. This is taken from a press release regarding the book:

The following is excerpted from our new book CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM: A POWERFUL ECUMENICAL BOND. Contemplative mysticism, which originated with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox monasticism, is permeating every branch of Christianity today, including the Southern Baptist Convention. In this book we document the fact that Catholic mysticism leads inevitably to a broadminded ecumenical philosophy and to the adoption of heresies. For many, this path has led to interfaith dialogue, Buddhism, Hinduism, universalism, pantheism, panentheism, even goddess theology. One chapter is dedicated to exposing the heresies of Richard Foster: “Evangelicalism’s Mystical Sparkplug.” We describe the major contemplative practices, such as centering prayer, visualizing prayer, Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina, and the Labyrinth. We look at the history of Roman Catholic Monasticism, beginning with the Desert Fathers and the Church Fathers, and document the heresies associated with it, such as its sacramental gospel, rejection of the Bible as sole authority, veneration of Mary, purgatory, celibacy, asceticism, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and moral corruption. We examine the errors of contemplative mysticism, such as downplaying the centrality of the Bible, ignoring the fact that multitudes of professing Christians are not born again, exchanging the God of the Bible for a blind idol, ignoring the Bible’s warnings against associating with heresy and paganism, and downplaying the danger of spiritual delusion. In the Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics we look at the lives and beliefs of 60 of the major figures in the contemplative movement, including Benedict of Nursia, Bernard of Clairvaux, Brother Lawrence, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Siena, Dominic, Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi, Madame Guyon, Hildegard of Bingen, Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Keating, Thomas a Kempis, Brennan Manning, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Basil Pennington, John Michael Talbot, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Lisieux, and Dallas Willard. The book contains an extensive index. 482 pages, $19.95

This book can be ordered online, by phone, or by e-mail with a credit card, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org, www.wayoflife.org

Excerpt:

“Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Roman Catholic priest who taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Notre Dame. Nouwen has had a vast influence within the emerging church and evangelicalism at large through his writings, and he has been an influential voice within the contemplative movement. A Christian Century magazine survey conducted in 2003 found that Nouwen’s writings were a first choice for Catholic and mainline Protestant clergy. Nouwen is promoted by Christian leaders as diverse as Robert Schuller and Rick Warren (who highly recommends Nouwen’s contemplative book In the Name of Jesus).

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

Nouwen did not instruct his readers that one must be born again through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ in order to commune with God. The book With Open Hands, for example, instructs readers to open themselves up to God and surrender to the flow of life, believing that God loves them unconditionally and is leading them. This is blind faith. Nouwen wrote: read all »

Margaret Manning at Ravi Zacharias Ministries identifies as part of Ravi’s Speaking Team and an Associate Writer for the ministry. Yesterday, a reader sent me a copy of a letter sent out over her signature that is downright shocking. The letter was in response to a listener to Ravi’s show who was concerned after hearing Ravi refer to Universalist and quasi-Buddhist, Henri Nouwen, as one of the “greatest Christian saints.” Read the letter here.

“Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.”

—From Sabbatical Journey, Henri Nouwen’s last book
page 51, 1998 Hardcover Edition

“The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is the same as the one who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being.”

Here and Now by Henri Nouwen; page 22

I’ll bet you didn’t know that Christians can pray better standing on their heads. Yahweh Yoga yogi (yogette?), Courtney, will be glad to show you how in this clip. Nothing will make a better Christian out of you than Hindu worship.

Here we have something entertaining called the Yahweh Yoga Faithful Flow Crow Clip. No, this is not satire. These yoga devotees seem to spent an amazing amount of time with their behinds in the air. This is the new mystical piety, friends, in all its, uh, glory.

This little gem just dropped into my email. The New Spirituality occultists are on the march and they want you. The link in the quote below will take you to their online edition of the new magazine which you can page through by following the arrows at the top of the page. This is what Phyllis Tickle means when she talks about the Great Emergence. The emergent leaders’ role is to pull evangelicals into this, their ultimate goal for world spirituality.

From the scientific pursuit of singularity to the spiritual practice of yoga, ideas that once seemed futuristic and esoteric are creating a new global meta-culture of “early adapters.”

The self-selecting members of this emerging market defy conventional demography and are moving political, scientific, social and spiritual inquiry beyond the traditional borders that have typically divided us.

Enter EnlightenNext, a new magazine for evolutionaries who are taking reality by the reigns, and exploring the evolution of consciousness itself and the impact that will have on the human experience and the future of life on Earth.