“I had to write this book. I do not believe that the world can have true peace until the common universal principles have been firmly established. Today, I consider myself a Christian–yet also to a large extent a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim–really a friend and fellow member of all true religions. Like a growing number of people, I see myself as a trans-religious seeker, an aspect of spirit who seeks and loves spiritual truth wherever it is found.”

–C. David Lundberg, author of What God Really Wants You to Know

From a press release about the book received today:

Here are just a few of the 33 key principles he has identified as common to all the religions of the world:

Life, with God, is Good. Life is good, joyful, meaningful, and positive – with God.
Love creates joyous living: We are to love and be loved.
We are responsible for all we create and for how we act and behave towards each other.
We are a part of God. We are sons and daughters of God.
Our destiny is to fulfill our divine potential.
There is only one god. We all have the same God.

Mystical, New Age, cultic and Word of Faith spirituality assumes that humans either are or can become gods. Through meditation, mystical devotees attempt to realize their divinity by looking into their souls through The Third Eye. One Norwegian website explains, “During deep meditation, the single or spiritual eye becomes visible within the central part of the forehead. This omniscient eye is variously referred to in scriptures as the third eye . . .” The website asserts that the Lord is in heaven. But where is heaven? How can heaven be found? “Gliding inside oneself in the right way should ‘work wonders’,” the university explains. How can someone “glide within” to discover heaven and the Lord? By meditating with the assumption that you are “the image of God inside yourself.” To prove all persons are divinities within, the website quotes Jesus who both asked of and asserted to the Jews, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’?”
 
When in John 10:34 he told the Jews, “You are gods“, did Jesus mean to affirm that they possessed an essential divinity that awaits their discovery by taking a meditative journey into “inner space”? To support their claim that man is or can become God, teachers of the “man-is-god” doctrine have seized words which Jesus intended only for the Jews, ignored their true meaning, and arrogantly applied them to themselves. Without conscripting Jesus words to make them conform to our preconception of what we want them to say, what did Jesus really mean when he said to the Jews, “You are gods“?

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USA Today reports that “mindfulness” meditation is now being used by school children and also in hospitals. The pagan religious practice, once limited to eastern religions, has gone mainstream in America.

Herescope is featuring Part 4 on Spiritual Excitements: The Sights, Sounds and Spectacles of Spurious Spirituality by Pastor Larry DeBruyn.

By ignoring the Word the Holy Spirit inspired (2 Peter 1:21), and those He has gifted to minister that Word (1 Corinthians 12:11, 28), the right-brain emphasis short circuits the whole process of Christian growth. In the journey to spiritual maturity, there can be no growing where there is no knowing (Romans 6:3, 6, 9, 11). To put it bluntly, spirituality stinks when it doesn’t think!

We received a press release today promoting a minister/lecturer who is making the media rounds claiming that you don’t have to die to find heaven, you need to find it here on earth. John Robinson’s message has the same themes as emergents who want all of us to stop watching for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and instead, create heaven here on earth. Why is this crowd so insistent that heaven is not “up there?” It’s really the same spiritual idea the Wiccans use when they draw their “sacred circle” in the dirt and declare that all is one and one is all. To these rebels, we don’t need a vertical relationship with God where He is on His throne and we are his creation below. In this worldview, we are all ultimately god and we have no need of anything outside of ourselves.

Here is what Mr. Robinson is claiming. He is seeking media outlets to help him sell his new book and carry his message.

But before you watch this clip, remember the words of Jesus Christ Himself:

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
–John 14:2-3

Willow Creek Community Church and Bill Hybels will be honoring Tony Blair at its annual Leadership Summit in August. Tony Blair’s “Third Way” was a failure, and he left his country in shambles, but as this article points out, his one singing success was gay rights.

In April, Tony Blair had the audacity to lecture the pope on homosexuality, telling him to get the Catholic church up to speed on gay rights.

Bill Hybels doesn’t care where people are being led at his “Leadership Summits.” He’ll feature anyone who is an international celebrity, no matter that they are moral failures. Bill Clinton’s visit to Willow Creek comes to mind. That’s because Hybels long ago departed the faith once delivered to the saints in exchange for his own celebrity status and sense of importance.

Tony Blair is no example of biblical leadership. His new Faith Foundation is dedicated to interspirituality and the promotion of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

He added that the foundation would focus on the “Abrahamic faiths” of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism, and that it would help people of those faiths “discover what they share” and “help partner those within any of the faiths who stand up for peaceful co-existence and reject the extremist and divisive notion that faiths are in fundamental struggle against each other.”

This is what Bill Hybels is promoting at Willow Creek as leadership for Christians to follow. God help us.

Within the evangelical movement, especially on the part of the emerging church, we hear a lot of talk about “spiritual formation.” The difference I have with the spiritual formation movement is not regarding the destination–Paul wrote that Christians need to grow-up “to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13)–but over the journey, the means emerging evangelicals are proposing to get there. For the journey, we need God’s GPS system in Holy Scripture because in sanctification, success is the destination, and I have grave doubts that human devices will get us there. As through the Scriptures the Holy Spirit incorporates Christ within and among believers, He sets Christ-likeness as the objective for every believer because that is the very meaning of the name, “Christian.”

The problem with so many evangelicals today is that they are not Christ-like. Three decades of “pop worship,” with its emphasis upon entertainment at the expense of edification from God’s Word, has led to spiritual-emptiness that is now giving rise to spiritual directors, spiritual formation, and spiritual disciplines in the emerging evangelical church. “Happy church” has created a spiritual climate for the spiritual formation movement to flourish as the emerging church embraces the mystery of faith in a postmodern culture. To their credit, some evangelicals are at least recognizing that happy church does not make for a holy church.

Recently, I listened to a pastor explain to his congregation why they were not an emerging church.* In his conversation–they no longer call it preaching–he referenced Paul’s statement in Galatians 4:19 to justify employing methods of spiritual formation in the congregation. The text reads: “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you . . . for I am perplexed about you” (Italics mine, Galatians 4:19-20). Connect the dots–formed . . . formation. At the surface of it, the pastor assumed Paul was a kind of spiritual director who was advocating spiritual formation practices to the Galatians. His assumption caused me to look at the biblical text to see whether or not by his use of the phrase, until Christ is formed in you, Paul was promoting spiritual formation. Ironically, what I discovered turned out to be opposite from what this pastor inferred the text to say.

*Mike Erre, “Position Papers: Is ROCKHARBOR Becoming an Emerging Church?,” (http://www.rockharbor.org:80/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=79&Itemid=109).

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There’s an interesting article about new dialogue between world religions in Canada’s National Post newspaper.

The Jeddah meeting agreed with Hans Kueng’s contention that there can be “No peace among nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions. No dialogue among the religions without understanding of the foundations of the religions.” Two octogenarians — a Catholic priest and a Saudi King — are lighting a way that future generations must follow.

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

Some have wandered away from . . . a sincere faith and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. (1 Timothy 1:5-7, NIV)

Among emergent church leaders there exists a growing trend to merge the secular with the sacred, to mingle the unspiritual and the spiritual. Emergent reality is viewed to be a monistic whole. For example, Rob Bell states that, “everyone is spiritual.” He says,

Maybe you’ve heard somebody say, “I’m just not into spiritual things.” Are you . . . are you a human being? Yea! Too late! The issue is not whether you’re a spiritual being, or you have a spirituality. The issue is whether your eyes are open and you’re aware of it. You cannot deny what is central to your make-up as a human being. In the Hebrew language there is no word for spiritual. If you would have said to Jesus, “Jesus, how’s your spiritual life?” What? What do you mean? Because to label one area spiritual is to label areas not spiritual. It’s absolutely foreign to the world of the Scriptures. It’s absolutely foreign to the worldview of Jesus. The assumption is that you are a fusion of two realms. And a human being occupies a totally unique place in the universe . . . Everything we do, we do as an integrated being—one-hundred percent physical, one-hundred percent spiritual.

To prove his everything/everyone-is-spiritual templet, Bell quotes Colossians 3:17 where Paul states, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus . . .” He then concludes,

What were they saying? Every act is a spiritual act. It’s whether or not you’re aware of the implications of what you’re doing.[1]

While in contrast to the Greek language (adjective, pneumatikos), there is no Hebrew word spiritual per se, that does not mean that the concept of it is foreign to the Old Testament. Paul wrote of the Exodus Israelites:

Moreover brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. (Emphasis Mine, 1 Corinthians 10:1-5, KJV)

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For those who wonder why it is the Emergent Church, now Emergence Christianity, labors so hard to broaden the narrow way with contemplative spirituality and why things e.g. like the Cross, repentance, sin, and regeneration, show up so little – often not at all – in this “new reformation” of Emergence, please make the time to read this article.

A short post concerning Quaker mystic Richard Foster and how his contemplative spirituality impacts today’s evangelicalism.

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.

You’ll never see as many ringleader mugshots of the emerging evangelical apostasy as you will on this page promoting the National Pastors Convention. February 10 is the start of  the annual Zondervan marketing blowout only thinly disguised as a gathering for pastors. In reality, it is Zondervan’s greatest opportunity to market its books and products and earn even more money. If they can get the pastors to take home their latest rubbish to their churches, the publisher’s clever pyromarketing strategy will be successful. The fact that Zondervan, owned by Harper Collins, is hosting spiritually aberrant speakers and leaders who have hijacked biblical Christianity bothers them not at all. There’s big money in spiritual error these days, and the tanned, blow-dried wonders who will take the stage in San Diego have a whole lot more to give.

Brian McLaren, who denies cardinal doctrine like the atonement of Christ, the existence of hell and the Second Coming of Christ, will tell pastors how to live out “Christianity” in their every day lives. (Apparently pastors are a bit vague on that these days.) In that what McLaren teaches is anything but Christianity, this will be something of an accomplishment.

Shane Claiborne will be bringing his dreadlocks as well as his leftist political positions to San Diego to extol the virtues of socialism and natural fibers.

Rob Bell, whose skin has apparently taken on a permanent greenish tinge, (too many shots of wheatgrass juice?) will be sporting the latest pair of utterly cool glasses as well as his New Age beliefs. So many pastors to convert to New Spirituality, so little time.

Bill Hybels, fresh from his latest permatan spraydown, comes to the National Pastors Convention with something of a False Teacher Emeritus status. After all, he was one of the first to re-invent evangelical Christianity into something completely alien to the Scriptures way back in the 1970’s. There is apparently still some financial juice to be squeezed from the Elder in Error before he retires to a life of golf.

Those are just three of the glitterati who will be hawking their teachings and products in San Diego. Each year at this convention, there are always more young seminary grads with stars in their eyes who dream of being the next Erwin McManus, Brian McLaren or Rob Bell. Thanks to the prostitutional ways of publishers like Zondervan, that next batch of apostate teachers is right around the corner!

Warren Smith has written a timely article for Lighthouse Trails that addresses the seducing spirit of our times. We were warned by our Savior about the false christs that would abound. That is certainly the case today.

Today it is very sad to see so many believers falling under the influence of the same spirit that influenced me when I was in the “new age.” This spirit says that it is a time for “breakthroughs” and for the fulfillment of our “destiny”; that there is something “new” and exciting in the wind. This teaching claims that we are in the midst of a great “transition” that will result in a “paradigm shift,” and that through “new revelation” and “personal experience” God is in the process of taking the church to a “new dimension” and to a whole “new level.” Many Christian leaders these days are so sure that what they are hearing and experiencing is from God, they are rarely testing the spirits, or even considering the possibility that they are being deceived.

Read the doctrinal statement at Glenview New Church, and meet the new spirituality in all its, uh, splendor. They call this “A New Christianity.”

The Church – The Lord’s universal church includes all people who live a good life according to their own religious beliefs. One teaching of the New Church says, “Every person is saved who acknowledges God and lives well.” The Lord makes sure that all people have the opportunity to learn these two most basic principles of religion, working through many churches in many nations. Yet He offers us much more than the “basics.” The New Church is where you will find specific teachings about what He asks of us and how He leads us.

I have news for them. This isn’t Christianity at all but an apostate counterfeit. If all religions lead to God and heaven, Jesus Christ could have saved Himself a lot of trouble by never coming to earth to be crucified. Everybody could have just gone Buddhist and embraced a fat little idol. Or they could have become Thetans with Scientology and watched for their mothership returning to earth. Or they could have become Muslims and blown themselves up to the greater glory of Allah. The possibilities are endless, but none of these paths lead to the one true God.That path is found by faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. All else is error.

We’re going to see more and more of this foolishness posing as Christianity in the days to come, as the exlclusive message of Christ in the Gospel is rejected in favor of an “all paths lead to God” universalism. It’s being promulgated within evangelicalism now by emergents like Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt and friends.

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.

Readers, for years I have been telling Christians about Share International and its claims that the “World Teacher”, international man of peace, Maitreya, is coming on the scene. I have quoted founder Benjamin Creme, a man I have interviewed, and told you how in recent days, the Presidency of Barack Obama is being heralded as the beginning of a new era of this supposed world teacher. Supposedly, Maitreya made an appearance in Kenya, back in the 80’s.

Imagine my surprise to see this press release posted as news at a financial website. Here is the press release at Marketwatch.com. They moved the article from its original URL, but a reader found it again. It looks like the world media is more than ready to shill for this false christ.

This article by Berit Kjos features numerous alarming quotes from Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals:

Walter Russell Meade, in a piece I would recommend this month called God’s Country subtitled ‘The Evangelicals,’ says the most important dialogue that needs to occur is between evangelical Christians and Muslims. … The    fundamentalists have a pessimistic view of future and they have this perception, unlike evangelicals and liberal Christians, that there’s an unbridgeable divide between the believer and the unbeliever. So you put together, you see, those two factors, no wonder the Left Behind series has the general secretary to the U.N. as the anti-Christ. That is really craziness, but you see that combination of pessimism and that unbridgeable divide between the fundamentalists is really what has disenfranchised, you see, evangelicals from the bigger conversation because people think we believe that. We don’t believe that. We believe… there’s a common ground that evangelicals have with the rest of the world, especially Muslims….

He is also quoted in a CNN interview calling on evangelicals to “go beyond tolerance, to go beyond even this principle pluralism…”

“I believe in principle pluralism. And from there, I would say one step even further, which is to say partnership, partnership which acknowledges that God can actually work through other people and other faiths to accomplish his purposes in the world and that is intentional on his part. But in face-to-face dialogue then and subsequently, I truly believe that we have a meeting of the minds.”

Richard Cizik is quoting, nearly verbatim, emerging church leaders such as Doug Pagitt who openly declare that God is working in pagan religions as well as Christianity. This is the cosmic christ of the New Spirituality, being flagrantly introduced by the leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik’s error on moral issues such as abortion and gay rights flows from a core spiritual problem: he is in rebellion to the Word of God. The exclusive message of salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ is being replaced with a social gospel of inclusivism/universalism that is taking the church into a state of complete apostasy. It is that serious.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fn3QyzMmEQ[/youtube]