This short post is related to the Apprising Ministries article Biola University Now Drifting From Evangelical Protestant Roots? Over at From the Lighthouse… we’re informed:

On October 21st, someone from the Media Relations department at Biola University contacted Lighthouse Trails because of articles we have posted about Biola’s promotion of contemplative spirituality. The person, who asked not to be identified in our articles, said that statements Lighthouse Trails has made are libelous. Upon asking for examples of libelous statements, none were given. Biola’s media person did say that our definition of contemplative spirituality (eastern-style mysticism) is not what they mean by contemplative.

To supplement our previous articles (see links at bottom) and to show that Biola is indeed promoting and introducing students to contemplative mystical spirituality, the following links are provided… (Online source) 

I’ve pointed this out before and I’m glad to point it out again. Jesus in His humanity was a practicing Jew so we know from history He would not have been involved with meditation, which is the type of “prayer” neo-Gnostics like Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic “Roshi” Richard Foster are talking about when they yammer on about contemplative “silence and solitude.” Men and women, don’t let these practioners of this Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) masquerading as supposed Spiritual Formation e.g. taught by Foster’s friend Dallas Willard fool you.

The burden of proof is on them to show you from any reliable historic sources that their form of “Christian” transcendental meditation aka Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP) was ever practiced by Jews at the time of Christ. And they can’t produce such sources because they don’t exsist. As a matter of fact in his book The Sacred Way Emergent Church theologian Tony Jones, who practices CSM as does his own pastor Doug Pagitt, tells you where CCP came from:

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)

So we have confirmation here that CCP “grew out of the reflections and writings” of apostate Desert hermits who were already in violation of Christ’s command to His Church — Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Anybody recall Jesus of Nazareth separating Himself from the world to live selfishly in caves occasionally emerging to have “interspiritual” dialogues with practitioners of pagan religions as to how they “experience” God? And many of you familiar with Apprising Ministries will have heard me using the term semi-pelagian recently.

With good reason; consider the following from “The Semi-Pelagian Theology of John Cassian,” whom Jones cited above: 

John Cassian was a contemporary of St. Augustine in Gaul (modern France). A Semi-Pelagian monk and founder of many monasteries, he wrote The Institutes and Conferences and slightly modified Pelagius’s teachings. “The Semi-Pelagian doctrine taught by John Cassian (d. 440) admits that divine grace (assistance) is necessary to enable a sinner to return unto God and live, yet holds that, from the nature of the human will, man may first spontaneously, of himself, desire and attempt to choose and obey God. They deny the necessity of prevenient but admit the necessity of cooperative grace and conceive regeneration as the product of this cooperative grace.” A.A. Hodge
(Online source)

Sounds just like the belief of the average Christian today, does it not? As it regards our subject of prayer below I will first give you the answer Jesus gave to His disciples when they asked Him, “Teach us to pray.” This will be followed by Swami Foster so you can see for yourself his neo-Gnostic answer to that question is so far out there we aren’t even able to get a radar fix on it. 

Yet this is the foolish, existential, highly subjective, and focused on the self CSM—which originally flowered in the antibiblical monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism—to which evangelicalism—and this includes Biola University—is now running. And if you think I’m overstating this then why not go into the silence and contemplate Tony Campolo To Enlighten Southern Baptists In Virginia; see for yourself just what’s going on right now within entire state conventions of the pretending “Protestant” Southern Baptist Convention itself.

See also:

MANAGING EDITOR FOR BIOLA MAGAZINE CONFIRMS CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY/MYSTICISM AT BIOLA

EVANGELICALS EMBRACE MYSTICS WITH GUEST PASTOR KEN SILVA (CROSSTALK AMERICA)

CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY/MYSTICISM AKA CHRISTIAN MEDITATION AS “COMMON GROUND”

WHO IS RICHARD FOSTER?

DELUSIONS OF DALLAS WILLARD

ORIGIN OF CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER