Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? (Psalm 94:8)

Contemplative Mysticism Spreading Like A Cancer

Apprising Ministries continues documenting how doctrinal lines continue to be erased with great rapidity in what’s becoming The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD). If you actually want to understand how the church visible has become so murky and muddied then it’s also important for you to realize that the sinfully ecumenial Emerging Church aka Emergent Church was a Trojan Horse from which enemy forces unloaded corrupt Counter Reformation Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), which incontrovertibly flowered within long apostate Roman Catholicism.

I’ve already warned you that evanjellyfish is only just beginning to pay a heavy price for its foolish embrace of this spurious CSM ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster, perpetrated now within the mainstream of evangelicalism as supposed Spiritual Formation with an able assist from his spiritual twin SBC minister Dallas Willard. Now, against this backdrop I recently showed you how widespread this anti-sola Scriptura spirituality is becoming in Staff Of Saddleback Church Recommend Mystic Henri Nouwen, Christian Broadcasting Network Peddling Contemplative Spiriutality, and Priscilla Shirer Promoting Contemplative/Centering Prayer.

In this latter post I reminded you that Shirer’s ministry, Going Beyond Ministries (GBM), actually arose from what Shirer called her “inner revival,” which involved the Lord “speaking” to her. As I pointed out in my semi-satirical post Steven Furtick A Prophet Of God, having kicked out sola Scriptura for contemplative mysticism, such is the future of fickle evangelicalism: Dueling revelations. And the lunacy in the Lord’s Name that you read in Doug Pagitt Points Us To Michael Dowd is where this mythical mysticism eventually leads everyone who persists in it. Billing himself as The Evolutionary Evangelist Dowd says:

I emerge out of and still deeply value and indeed cherish the Christian tradition. And I have drunk deeply at the well of Earth-honoring spirituality and Buddhism as well. But the tradition I am grounded in most is no longer any belief-based tradition, but, rather, the worldwide, self-correcting knowledge-based tradition of science. I see science, not the Bible or any other ancient written document, as revealing “God’s Word” for humanity today.

Indeed, I would argue that nothing is driving young people away from a meaningful relationship with Reality (to use religious language: nothing is driving young people away from God further and faster) than the Bible. To be clear: I am neither a theist nor atheist; I’m a post-theist, an emergentist—a religious naturalist. (Online source)

You see, men like Michael Dowd are simply a few steps ahead of those now following the reimagined Roman Catholic mysticism of Foster-Willardism; e.g. people like Jan Johnson, the spiritual guru Priscilla Shirer introduces to her own followers in her GBM blog in a July 23 entry “Submitted by Priscilla” called Wisbits, seen below via screen shot in case it suddenly vanishes:

(Online source)

Shirer begins by telling us that she’s “anxious to connect you with some folks who I think you’ll be so blessed by.” And then she continues:

Years ago, I got a chance to meet Jan Johnson albeit only by phone – and yet in the short time we spent talking, I was encouraged and redirected in so many ways. As a young woman trying to navigate the ins and outs of my relationship with the Lord, Ms. Jan spoke wisdom into my life that was extremely pivotal in my life – personally and in ministry.

While I’ve not had the chance to meet her in person (I’m hoping to attend one of her conferences one day) I’m continually blessed by the word the Lord places on her heart every month through her “Wisbits” – articles she writes for anyone to subscribe to.
(Online source)

Sending The Flock To Gurus And Mystics From Other Religions To Learn Of God

In that earlier post concerning Shirer I covered this in more  depth, so here I’m simply going to tell you that “spiritual director”/guru Jan Johnson informs us that she’s, “a writer, speaker and spiritual director in southern California.”[1] And interestingly enough under “Teaching” at Johnson’s website we read:

Teaching: lectio divina instructor for Dallas Willard’s Fuller Seminary class: Spirituality and Ministry; Senior Teaching Fellow, Renovaré Institute;… Education: BA, Christian education, Ozark Christian College {occ.edu}; journalism courses, UCLA; spirituality courses, Azusa Pacific University; graduate, Academy for Spiritual Formation {upperroom.org/academy/}; Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola 30-day Retreat, 2006; D.Min. Graduate Theological Foundation (Ignatian Spirituality & Spiritual Direction), 2006. (Online source)

Let’s look at what Johnson says in her Pushing the River, which is the post Shirer steers us to. Our spiritual director/guru confesses that she “worked at not trying too hard when I was speaking on a platform” because she had supposedly been trying “too hard” to “sell Jesus.” Then guru Johnson tells us:

I read this quote by Franciscan Richard Rohr:

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river.  It is flowing. We are in it.

He continues in his book Everything Belongs to talk about how the river is the Spirit. (Online source)

Yeah, that “Franciscan” would be  Living Spiritual Teacher and Roman Catholic mystic Richard Rohr; and the Franciscans are as contemplative a bunch as they come. In addition, Rohr is a fellow Red Letter Christian (RLC) along with other apostates such as two-thirds of the unholy trinity of the Emerging Church; EC guru Brian McLaren, and Tony Jones, heretical “theologian in residence” for the third member equally heretical universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt. A Christian universalist himself, Rohr also adheres to the new postmodern form of “big tent” Progressive Christianity—a Liberalism 2.0—sometimes referred to by these rebels against the final authority of God’s Word as Emergence Christianity; and you should understand that the practice of this spurious CSM I’m discussing is something all of these people have in common. The question you need to be asking is: Why is Shirer, who works very closely with Beth Moore, pushing their followers in this direction?

Before I explain to you what Rohr means when he says we are in “the river,” I already showed you in Rob Bell In A Nutshell: Contemplative Mysticism that Emerging Church icon and contemplative Rob Bell himself recommends this book Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (EB). As the title tells you, it’s about a form of meditation in an altered state of consciousness known as Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP); i.e. transcendental meditation lightly sprayed with Christian terminology, and which is the crown jewel of spurious CSM. As he begins to make his case for universalism, which is what he means by Everything Belongs, guru Rohr muses this myth:

The people who know God well—the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found to be an abusive father or a tyrannical mother, but always a lover who is more than we dared hope for. How different than the “account manager” that most people seem to worship. God is a lover who receives and forgives everything.[1]

You couldn’t get a clearer description of the spiritual deception these mystic fools open themselves up to. Translation: I find the god that I want to worship made in my own image; and notice it’s “the mystics” who supposedly “know God well.” Rohr makes no distinction concerning them either, which is why such as these listen to what mystics of whatever stripe say; in fact he opens EB with a quote from a Muslim mystic. Guru Rohr’s disciple Rob Bell put it this way last year, as I cited in Rob Bell And Shane Hipps Teaching Mysticism:

It’s interesting how many traditions (pause) When you read the great enlightened ones; meditation, centering prayer, reflection—in every tradition you can find the mystics—and what’s always at the heart of the spiritual lives, the everyday lives of the great ones was always a period of time. Whether it’s prayers, chanting, meditation, reflection, study—whatever you call it—what is it essentially; it’s taking time to breathe.

As far as the river imagery, Rohr is borrowing from Roman Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), who was even considered heretical by the apostate Church of Rome, whom he served spreading its non-gospel in the antibiblical Dominican monastic tradition. Eckhart, like all classic mystics, was a universalist—are you sensing a theme here. The following from the latest book by Emerging Church leader Samir Selmanovic, who is also a universalist known for his “interspiritual” work, helps explain what Eckhart meant:

Meister Eckhart said that our religions are like houses. Each house has a trap door somewhere down in the basement, and if we go deep enough, we will fall through the trap door into a river that flows beneath all of us. Beautiful, I thought.[2]

Translation: Eckhart is talking about what’s commonly called “a spark of the divine,” which is supposedly within each “house”; i.e. all of mankind, and the flowing “river” is God.[3] Eckhart also clearly contradicts God’s Word in Scripture with a denial of the doctrine of regeneration when he teaches, “Every creature is full of God and a book about God.” So now you know why mystics like Leonard Sweet say things like you’ll see below from a tweet Sweet sent May 12 of this year:

(Online source)

But now you know the direction into which Shirer has sent her large following; yes, they will be going Deeper Still alright, deeper still into spiritual deception.

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Endnotes:

[1] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer [New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003], 131.

[2] Samir Selmanovic, It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian [San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2009], 262.

[3] I refute this Biblically in Understanding The New Spirituality: God Indwells Mankind.

See also:

BUT IT APPEARS LIKE THE REAL THING

TIM KELLER AND CONTEMPLATIVE PASTRIX ADELE CALHOUN

SOJOURNERS OF JIM WALLIS TEACHES US LECTIO DIVINA

DONALD WHITNEY AND EVANGELICAL CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY/MYSTICISM

9 MARKS: INTERVARSITY PRESS SEEMS ADRIFT

MYSTICISM: WHEN GOD SENDS AN EVIL SPIRIT

INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM