Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD. You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans. (Isaiah 2:5-6)

Eastern-Style Meditation As The Bridge To Unite All Religions And Transform Mankind

Building on It’s High Time To Realize The Importance of Mysticism, a post over at the Apprising Ministries outreach Christian Research Net, below we will show you that when Dr. Marcus Litz, Director, Goethe-Institut, says the Eastern-style meditation of mysticism “could also facilitate an East-West dialogue and could be a bridge between Islam and Christianity” he’s hardly alone. He has many likeminded cohorts in the Emerging Church and postevangelicalism.

For example you may recall in his 2004 book Speaking My Mind Tony Campolo wrote:

a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other…

I don’t know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?… The founder of this movement was Hasan Al Basri (A.D. 642-728)… [Basri’s] attempt to bring about religious reform very much paralleled the path of Francis [of Assisi], both in style and spiritual direction. Both men sensed a sacred presence in everything and claimed to have experienced a mystical union with God. (149, 150, emphasis mine)

This is precisely what Trappist monk Thomas Merton, one of most highly prized Golden Buddhas of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) and master of Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP) was after; and do you really think it’s some kind of an odd coincidence that Merton is a hero to Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster? At the heart of his brand of spurious of Spiritual Formation, which is given a veneer of scholasticism by Foster’s spiritual twin Dallas Willard, is ecumenicism; and for the more hardcore mystics meditation that will, in their minds, quite literally transform people by leading us to a higher consciousness resulting in an improved version of mankind.

Previously I brought out in Richard Foster and Gnostic Mysticism that as a mystic wannabe Foster himself would indeed be quite acquainted with mystic Meister Eckhart’s conjecture concerning an alleged “great underground river” of divinity inside of all mankind. Undoubtedly Guru Foster is also very well versed in the mystic musings of George Fox, who started the spiritually corrupt Quakers. Fox also taught about this “great underground river” present within all men, although through alleged divine revelation he called it the “Inner Light.”

As a matter of fact, in his book Streams Of Living Water (SLW) while “Christian” Roshi Richard Foster is discussing what we might call his generous ecumenicism he begins by enlightening us about various “faith traditions,” allegedly flowing from Christ, which are coming back together now into one mighty river of the Spirit. Christian researcher Ray Yungen does a great job of connecting the dots of deception for us in his own work A Time for Departing:

Richard Foster emanates his hoped-for vision of an “all inclusive community that he feels God is forming today. He sees this as “a great, new gathering of the people of God.”

On the surface this might sound noble and sanctifying, but a deeper examination will expose elements that line up more with Alice Bailey’s vision [of the New Age] than with Jesus Christ’s. Foster prophesies:

I see a Catholic monk from the hills of Kentucky standing alongside a Baptist evangelist from the streets of Los Angeles and together offering up a sacrifice of praise. I see a people.

The only place in “the hills of Kentucky” where Catholic monks live is the Gethsemane Abbey, a Trappist monastery. This also, coincidentally, was the home base of Thomas Merton. (130)

Yeah, what a surprise, eh. And finally, for now, I will remind readers that in Roman Catholicism Spawned the Current Apostasy in Evangelicalism AM showed you that years before all of the above the late “Spiritual Master” M. Basil Pennington, along with associate apostate Thomas Keating—yet another of these Living Spiritual Teachers, wrote about the true goal of CCP in their book Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer:

In the course of the years, sitting in silent prayer, beyond where words can interfere, men and women of many diverse traditions have come together. In that deeper place a oneness is experienced that gives assurance and heart to our feeble ecumenical efforts and interreligious dialogues. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has said that if one percent of the people would meditate we will have peace. Jesus spoke of the leaven that will leaven the whole. (10,11, emphasis mine)

Seriously, it’s not like these mystical Emerging fools have been doing all of this in secret. Nope; the fact is they’ve been holding court in your evangelical seminaries for years now. We can only hope that God can manage to penetrate the fear of a few pastors who will finally find the guts to come forward publicly and to tell you themselves that Celebration of Discipline, the encyclopedia of theological error that is the textbook for The Cult of Guru Richard Foster, was used positively in their classes even in the eighties. As was the man-centered Self Esteem: The New Reformation by Robert Schuller.

Neo-orthodox (at best) professors have all along been ever so slowly bringing the water to a boil while conditioning your pastors who are themselves right now trying out this CSM on your youth. They have done so by introducing them to the corrupt contemplative musings of the postliberal cult of the Emerging Church; men who are apostatizing, at best, such as Rob Bell and his pal Doug Pagitt. 

Men and women, if you truly love your kids then I would strongly suggest that you begin bothering to pay attention; if not to me, then one of the other “evil” ODMs, because we’re trying to show you these doctrines of demons have a very definite goal. And further, there was also good reason why this Emergent rebellion against the Bible would initially coalesce around quasi-universalist Doug Pagitt. 

See also:

KEN SILVA: FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH PODCAST ON ROB BELL

THE TERMINOLOGY TRAP OF “SPIRITUAL FORMATION”

THE EMERGING CHURCH SOWING ITS NEO-ORTHODOX CONFUSION ON SCRIPTURE

RICHARD FOSTER: IMAGINATIVE MEDITATION DISAPPEARED; WELL NOW, IMAGINE THAT

IS ROB BELL EVANGELICAL?

DOUG PAGITT: AFTER DEATH NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BELIEVER AND UNBELIEVER

TONY CAMPOLO: “CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM” TRUMPS THE BIBLE (PART 2)

THOMAS MERTON AND THE BUDDHAS