November 22, 2008
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I received this. I hope that some of you can help me out with this because it’s caused me great turmoil and distress over the last few days. It appears to be a letter of some kind.:
“To the inmates on death row,
The warden is not slack concerning his duty as some count slackness, but he’s righteous toward you, not willing that any should escape, but that all should be executed.”
I must admit; this note has me a bit uneasy. There is no question that it says that “The warden is… not willing that any should escape, but that all should be executed.” What are we going to do, people? Clearly this means every single person on the face of the earth is going to be executed by this warden! I’m not sure what to do. I read this, and I just get hysterical at what is clearly laid out as his plan of what is going to happen. If you could all pray for me, I’d greatly appreciate it.
…now, what if I were to come to you with this concern? What would you tell me? Would you agree with me that this letter clearly lays forth the fact that this warden is coming to execute my family, friend, and me?! Or would you look at it and say, “Lane, I believe you’re taking things out of context and acting upon them. Clearly the letter is addressed to a certain people. The warden even takes the initiative to say ‘you’ before he says ‘not willing that any should escape, but that all should be executed.’ You’ve taken the letter out of context and are using it in a way that is different than what the letter is meant to convey. It’s obviously talking about a select group of people, namely the ‘inmates on death row’ whom the letter is addressed to.”
I would agree with your advice…
…I would submit to you that the verse 2Peter 3:9 is abused by many people in the self same manner. Let’s look at it:
In 2Peter 1:1, we read: “Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:” (2Pe 1:1) To whom? Oh, the letter is “to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:” So does that mean that it’s to unbelievers, too? Well, not according to Peter. 2Peter 3:9 (of the same letter) reads: “The Lord is not slow concerning his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2Pe 3:9)
Here we have the word “you” just like in our letter from the warden hypothetical. So let’s look back to that hypothetical letter. Would you have advised me as the wise person did who told me that I was taking something out of context and reacting upon it, or would you have congratulated me for being earnest and honest with the text and the intention the author wished to convey to me? Let’s now place the letter from the warden and the verses from 2Peter side by side:
“To the inmates on death row,
The warden is not slack concerning his duty as some count slackness, but he’s righteous toward you, not willing that any should escape, but that all should be executed.”
“To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, (2Peter 1:1b)
The Lord is not slow concerning his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2Peter 3:9)”
What differences between the two do you see? Is there any? If not, and you would have advised me that I was acting foolhardily in the first hypothetical, why would you not hold that it is likewise foolish to take the verses in 2Peter in the self same way? If consistency matters to you, this should trouble you greatly indeed. If you hold that after all this 2Peter 3:9 is still meant to be taken in the way many do declaring that “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (meaning every single person who has ever lived and who will ever live), then you better be phoning me now seeking to console me for the imminent danger which is coming… that is if you care about being consistent, anyway.
I’ll leave you now with three videos to help you deal with this subject of 2Peter 3:9 and the various erroneous ways in which it’s taken out of context and interpreted. If you take verses out of context in the Bible, hey, you can even make it even say that we’re supposed to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9) It’s something to think about. Ponder your ways. If you can’t account for your interpretation without leaving words out of Scripture and taking it out of context, it might be time to let your interpretation conform to the Bible instead of the Bible conforming itself to you.
November 22, 2008
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Sanctify them by the Truth; Your Word is Truth. (John 17:17, KJV)
Caution: Truth May Be Even Bigger Than You Believe
In his book A Theory of Everything philosopher and quasi-Buddhist Ken Wilber, whose work is held in high regard by Emerging Church icon Rob Bell, explains:
In this Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace, a genuine T.O.E. (140)
Unfortunately this pie-in-the-sky dream of some kind of human utopia—another Tower of Babel—hits a dead end in the Risen Christ Jesus of Nazareth. In what follows I’ll show you why these mystic dreamers are so desperately trying to get rid of the critical reasoning skills inherent within so often vilified “Western thought.”
The above is essentially a summation of Ken Wilber’s integral theory (IT) of mankind, which he developed from the work of Dr. Clare Graves. The idea at its core is to integrate i.e. bring together all of mankind by turning them from egocentric (self-centeredness) to global-centric (world-centeredness). You’ll even hear Bell talk about this in his October 18, 2008 sermon Beware the dogs.
You see, the idea that “everybody is right” and everything (including all religions) “has some important pieces of truth” does appear true at first; and in a sense it is. Be careful to stay off this rabbit trail: “So, as a Christian you are saying there’s no truth outside your religion and the Bible.” But we aren’t saying this at all.
Of course there are things outside the Bible that are true; certainly other religions have some teachings within them that are true, but as Christians we also know that everything in the Bible is true. And as such, all truth is to then be measured by what God as Creator has revealed in His Word (see—Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Here’s where IT and its phony tolerance completely disintegrates. The Apostle John, an eyewitness, quotes Jesus of Nazareth as saying that Holy Scripture inspired as it is by God the Holy Spirit—His Word—is Truth. And in His Word we find John 14:6 where Jesus says —“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Note Jesus, as God in human flesh, proclaims that not only does He teach truth; Christ is, in very fact, the Truth in Person. This is precisely why the genuine Christian can never agree with Wilber and his myth of some integral approach to mankind.
And it is because only Christianity, which is not religion but rather a relationship with God in Christ, teaches that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life—and no one can have a relationship with God apart from Him—that it can never, ever, be integrated with the religions of mankind.
See also:
CROSSTALK RADIO: KEN SILVA ON ROB BELL AND WARNINGS ABOUT THE EMERGENT CHURCH MOVEMENT
ROB BELL RESOURCES FROM APPRISING MINISTRIES
IS ROB BELL EVANGELICAL?
ROB BELL CONTROVERSY OVER DOCTRINE
A LANE CHAPLIN PRODUCTION: CHRIS ROSEBROUGH AND KEN SILVA ON FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH PODCAST CONCERNING ROB BELL AND EASTERN-STYLE MYSTICISM
EMERGING EASTERN-STYLE MEDITATION FOR GLOBAL PEACE…AND WORSE…
ROB BELL: MYSTICS ARE THE ENLIGHTENED ONES
November 22, 2008
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So reads the headline of a story in The Sun reporting “the king of pop” has converted to Islam. The Telegraph informs us:
The singer, who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, converted to Islam in a ceremony at a friend’s house in Los Angeles. He is said to have sat on the floor and worn a small hat while an imam officiated. According to The Sun, the ceremony took place while Jackson, 50, was recording an album at the home of Steve Porcaro, a keyboard player who composed music on his Thriller album…
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November 22, 2008
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The saints in supplicating God, seem to appeal to their own righteousness, as when David says, “Preserve my soul; for I am holy,” (Ps. 86:2). Also Hezekiah, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in [...]
November 22, 2008
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The message to the Christian throughout the New Testament is to deny self, to view with contempt the temporal or world system, to understand that love of the temporal and genuine discipleship are mutually exclusive because it is from the former which all genuine believers are being delivered. This deliverance is progressive mortification of all carnal affections and impediments. This must be so in order for the Christian to attain more speedily the heavenly Kingdom of Christ. It is to Christ’s Kingdom that all believers are called by the grace of God and it is revealed to them in His Son. All believers have received this by faith, possessed it by hope, and are therein confirmed it by Holiness of life.
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November 22, 2008
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ABC News features a video of Pastor Ed Young lounging on a bed during his sex challenge last week to his church. At the sight of this “pastor” lounging around on the bed on ABC News, I felt the gag reflex kick in. Ed Young informed ABC News that he wanted to talk about sex because it was a topic that the church had been “silent” on? Really, Ed? You mean no pastors have ever preached on Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery? Do you really believe that no Christian pastor has ever provided the whole counsel of God on the need for purity and respect for sexuality because God commands it in His Word? Your the only one who has broken this terrible taboo in 2000 years? Due to the culture wars around us, I have heard more talk about God’s view of sexuality in the last 20 years than ever before. But there’s a difference. Godly pastors reference the verses about adultery, purity and the fact that the marriage bed is undefiled. What they don’t do is make fools of themselves on national news by erecting billboards with naked feet sticking out of the sheets, passing out cards with tips to jazz up your sex life, dragging beds onto the “stage” and lounging around in the most embarrassing manner imaginable, and getting involved in areas that no pastor or for that matter, any third party, has any right to enter. Young’s bed lounging on stage is simply a prelude to the next act in evangelical church sex campaigns. You’ve been warned.
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November 22, 2008
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If there was any doubt about the Eastern spirituality in the work of Richard Foster, and/or the influence of Thomas Merton upon his views of contemplative spirituality, this well-documented piece from Apprising Ministries removes it.
November 22, 2008
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If there was any doubt about the Eastern spirituality in the work of Richard Foster, and/or the influence of Thomas Merton upon his views of contemplative spirituality, this well-documented piece from Apprising Ministries removes it.
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November 22, 2008
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There are many of us who’s hearts are heavy as evangelicals remain in the pot of contemplative spirituality as men like Tony Jones ever so slowly bring it to a boil. Over at DefCon Coram Deo begins his post:
As a follow up to my short piece entitled The Effeminate Church and as a corollary to The Pilgrim’s article called Militant homosexuals bring the persecution I believe it’s both important and timely for the Body of Christ to spiritually face down the growing apostate contention that unrepentant sinners of every variety – including practicing homosexuals – can simultaneously be regenerate, born-again Christians. This concept is a Biblical impossibility…
November 22, 2008
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They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans. (Isaiah 2:6)
“But Don’t Go Confusing Me With The Facts; I’ve Already Made Up My Mind!”
Apprising Ministries, in the time we have left, will continue alerting the Body of Christ to the dangers of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) with its chief practice Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP) currently invading our Lord’s Church through a spurious Spiritual Formation (SF) advanced by Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic “Roshi” Richard Foster and his spiritual twin ordained Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard. For more I will refer you to Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism As Methodology For Spiritual Formation.
In approaching this subject factually as one would in building a court case it’s beyond any shadow of a doubt that this contemplative spirituality aka spiritual formation of Foster/Willard actually originated with people in the East often called “the desert fathers and mothers.” One need only peruse as I have the multitudinous references to these Eastern hermits within the vast amount of literature flooding the evangelical market in support of this decidedly non-Protestant approach to prayer in order to establish this as fact.
Unless you are not at all familiar with the Emerging Church movement you will also at least have heard of Brian McLaren, one of the leading theologian/spokesmen for the Emergent Church. As of this writing his latest book is entitled Finding Our Way Again: The Return of Ancient Practices, which concerns the practices of CSM. A while back on his website McLaren answered a reader’s concerning the subject of McLaren’s own writings in the field of so-called Christian mystics:
Brian,
In some of my readings, both of books authored by you and others, I have read about Christian mystics. Who are the predominant Christian mystic authors?
Answer: If you pick up Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” and his other work via Renovare, you’ll get a great exposure to the Christian mystical tradition. “The Spiritual Formation Workbook” is a great resource too. Tony Jones’ “The Sacred Way” is also a sturdy introduction to contemplative practices. (Online source, emphasis added)
For our purposes here I wish you to note what I highlighted above as a recognized authority within the Emerging Church first recommends Richard Foster, whom elsewhere he calls a key mentor of the Emerging Church and then points to Emergent Church theologian Tony Jones as having written “a sturdy introduction” to the subject of CSM. Below Jones will now confirm for us from his aforementioned book, whose full title is The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life, that the origin of CCP was indeed these hermits from the Eastern desert:
“Like the Jesus Prayer, Centering Prayer grew out of the reflections and writings of the Desert Fathers. John Cassian (c.360-c.430) came from the West and made a pilgrimage to the desert to learn the ways of contemplative prayer … Cassian was deeply influenced by his time in the desert, and he wrote his book The Conferences about his conversations with the Desert Fathers to acquaint Western Christians with their teachings. (70, emphasis mine)
Slavery To Reimagined Roman Catholic Mysticism And Repainted Quaker Mysticism
Now with this firmly documented from those personally involved with CSM we’ll turn specifically to establish the high esteem with which Richard Foster holds Thomas Merton as a proper source of authority for the contemplative spirituality at the very heart of the so-called spiritual formation taught to your pastors, not by a Protestant evangelical, but is instead an extremely ecumenical Quaker. And you need to understand that what follows from the witness I call next is not heresay; rather, it is the eywitness testimony of what he personally heard Foster say to him.
You may judge for yourself as to it’s accuracy but Christian Researcher Ray Yungen tells us:
In 1994, I had been alerted to Foster by a youth pastor friend who had read Celebration of Discipline and began to practice its contemplative methods. The youth pastor became alarmed when while repeating a phrase over and over, he began to drift into an altered state of consciousness and realized such a mystical practice was more of an eastern style method than one endorsed in Scripture.
It was after this that I attended a local seminar where Richard Foster was speaking. At the end of the meeting, I approached him. Wanting to know more about Foster’s beliefs, I asked, “What do you think about the current contemplative prayer movement?” Foster emphatically told me, “Thomas Merton tried to awaken God’s people!” (Online source)
Now it should appear obvious that Foster accepts Merton, a Roman Catholic priest, as a genuine Christian teacher whom God used to try and “awaken God’s people.” The question you should now focus upon would be: What is it Foster thinks God was allegedly using this Roman Catholic priest to try and awaken His people to? It’s Foster’s contention that it was contemplative prayer/contemplative spirituality; and, when one considers these are practices largely gleaned from figures of the Counter Revolution it should give “Protestant” evangelicals serious pause for further conscious contemplation.
The following is from the introduction to a teaching by Thomas Merton called What Is Contemplation? On page 17 of the Renovare book Spiritual Classics edited by Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin we read:
Thomas Merton has perhaps done more than any other twentieth-century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood… During his college years he was deeply attracted to Christian belief and became a Roman Catholic (1938) and later a Cistercian (Trappist) monk (1941)… His interest in contemplation led him to investigate prayer forms in Eastern religion. Zen masters from Asia regarded him as the preeminent authority on their kind of prayer in the United States…
Merton’s reputation [is] as a gifted teacher and practitioner of prayer. Do not be concerned as you read the following selection on contemplation, about making precise definitions of “meditation” and “contemplation.” Recognize that different teachers and writers define these terms in different ways… Notice how [Merton] emphasizes the normal, natural quality of contemplative prayer. (Online source)
Now let’s make sure we are clear on a few things above: 1) Richard Foster is “Founder and Chair” of Renovare (Online source); 2) he was personally involved in what you just read, and as such, 3) Foster considers this teaching by Thomas Merton, an apostate (at best) Roman Catholic monk, to be a “spiritual classic.” We also can see 4) Thomas Merton is said by Foster to be one who, as a gifted teacher, made the life and practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer “known and understood.”
In other words, according to Richard Foster when Thomas Merton speaks on the subject of CCP we should listen and learn from one whom even “Zen masters from Asia” regarded as “the preeminent authority” on this “contemplative prayer.” And as one studies this CCP we then find that it is a wordless form of “prayer” in silent contemplation aka meditation, which also just happens to be the “kind of prayer” practiced by those masters of Eastern Zen Buddhism. If time and funding permit, as this investigation into the murky mysticism of the current craze of contemplative spirituality within the visible church of Jesus Christ moves forward we’ll talk more about the goals and practices of contemplative aka centering prayer itself.
But in closing this for now, the following by Dr. Gary Gilley from his accessive, but scholarly, five part series Mysticism will prove helpful placing what I see growing as The Cult of Guru Richard Foster into a proper Protestant perspective. Concerning Foster’s textbook of contemplation Celebration of Discipline and our subject of Foster being rooted in the teachings of Thomas Merton I say Gilley is dead on target when he writes:
Medieval mysticism has managed to survive within small pockets of Roman Catholicism for centuries but has gone largely unnoticed by evangelicals. It is true that a few groups, such as the Quakers, have always kept some aspect of mysticism within range of evangelical awareness, and elements of mystical practices have actually thrived in charismatic circles right down to the ranks of Fundamentalism. But classical mysticism was virtually unknown in Evangelical circles until 1978 when Quaker minister Richard J. Foster published Celebration of Discipline, the Path to Spiritual Growth. Hailed by Christianity Today as one of the ten best books of the twentieth century and voted by the readers of that magazine as the third most influential book after the Bible, Celebration of Discipline has blown the doors off evangelicals’ understanding of spirituality.
What Foster has done, in essence, is reintroduce to the church the so-called “masters of the interior life” as he likes to call the Medieval mystics. He declares that they alone have discovered the key to true spiritual life and slowly, over the last few years, convinced multitudes that he is right. It seems to me that Foster’s recipe for Christian living has been simmering in the pot for over two decades but as of late has caught fire…
Celebration of Discipline alone, not even referencing Foster’s other writings and teachings and ministries, is a virtual encyclopedia of theological error. We would be hard pressed to find in one so-called evangelical volume such a composite of false teaching. These include faulty views on the subjective leading of God (pp. 10, 16-17, 18, 50, 95, 98, 108-109, 128, 139-140, 149-150, 162, 167, 182); approval of New Age teachers (see Thomas Merton below); occultic use of imagination (pp. 25-26, 40-43, 163, 198); open theism (p. 35); misunderstanding of the will of God in prayer (p. 37); promotion of visions, revelations and charismatic gifts (pp. 108, 165, 168-169, 171, 193); endorsement of rosary and prayer wheel use (p. 64); misunderstanding of the Old Testament Law for today (pp. 82, 87); mystical journaling (p. 108); embracing pop-psychology (pp. 113-120); promoting Roman Catholic practices such as use of “spiritual directors,” confession and penance (pp. 146-150, 156, 185); and affirming of aberrant charismatic practices (pp. 158-174, 198).
However, all of these are minor in comparison to the two main thrusts of Foster’s book and ministry…but first [meet one] of Foster’s mystical champions…
Thomas Merton
Foster cites and/or quotes Merton on at least nine separate occasions in Celebration of Discipline, yet Merton was not a Christian as far as we can tell. He was a twentieth-century Roman Catholic who had so immersed himself in Buddhism that he claimed he saw no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity and intended to become as good a Buddhist as he could. But despite his doctrinal views and New Age leanings Foster considers Merton’s Contemplative Prayer, “A must book,” and says of Merton, “[He] has perhaps done more than any other twentieth-century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood.” Merton wrote, “If only [people] could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.” (Online source)
See also:
EVANGELICAL RIP VAN WINKLES EMPLOY QUAKER MYSTIC RICHARD FOSTER FOR BEDTIME FABLES
RICHARD FOSTER AND QUAKER BELIEFS
THE TERMINOLOGY TRAP OF “SPIRITUAL FORMATION”
LIVING SPIRITUAL TEACHERS AND RICHARD FOSTER
THE CULT OF GURU RICHARD FOSTER
DELUSIONS OF DALLAS WILLARD
QUAKER MYSTIC RICHARD FOSTER: CIRCUMNAVIGATE INCONSISTENCIES IN THE BIBLE
November 22, 2008
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Part 1
Part 2
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November 22, 2008
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November 22, 2008
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A quick scan of news sites this morning is surreal. First we have Associated Press reporting on the teenager promoting himself as the reincarnation of Buddha. It’s the lead story on Yahoo News today. Then we have ABC News reporting that hard times are sending women into brothels by the truckload to make a living, because after all, you can make more money at the Mustang Ranch in Vegas than you can “flipping burgers.” Then, in my quest for hard news on world issues from ABC, I see this spine chilling account of…the stock market this week? No, it’s an interview with a Texas woman who claims to have been abducted by aliens who have long skinny fingers and who tumble through her windows in a “fetal position.” She even dusted for fingerprints so she can prove it. I had to check the URL on that one. Was I seriously at ABC News or the Sci Fi Channel website? The economy is crashing in a history making fashion, we have a socialist President who this morning has announced his comprehensive plans to remake America, Iran has a long range missile capable of hitting Israel, and ABC News is reporting on a woman who has an alien mother ship hovering over her house? Next up on World News Tonight: Cokie Roberts interviews a Viking warrior named Sven who has just been thawed out from an iceberg in Greenland after spending 2,000 years in a state of suspended animation. She has his birth certificate to prove it.
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November 22, 2008
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There is disagreement in Nepal as to whether Bomjam, the teenager whose followers claim he is the reincarnation of Buddha, is the real deal. AP news reports. At the height of his meditation fame, reporters saw him eating fruit and taking a nap, despite claims of uninterrupted mystical contemplation. His handlers (modern day Buddhas need those) claim that the collection box at his feet is only to handle things like “security”, “food” and “maintenance”. If the boy has really been sitting and meditating without food or sleep for months on end, I’m not sure exactly what sort of maintenance that would entail. Presumably, Buddha would not get cavities, or need a bath or haircuts. The mystery deepens as Bomjam heads back to the jungle for further contemplation.
This highlighted sentence from the AP story really says it all:
Despite being officially secular under the new Maoist government, Nepal — where around 80 per cent of people are Hindu and 11 per cent are Buddhist — remains a deeply spiritual place.
“This is a country where people worship idols and stones, and everyone educated or not believes in the supernatural,” the Buddhist scholar said.
Some 7,000 people gathered Friday to hear the youth speak.
“Materialism has brought forth fear, worry and disputes and has created war in this country. One should follow religion and philosophy for inner happiness,” Bomjam told the crowds in a 15-minute address.
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November 22, 2008
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