Unbelievable and largely unseen ecumenical coalitions and ad hoc alliances are forming. These alliances are being forged by a small cadre of seeker-driven megachurch celebrity pastors/authors. These vision-casting celebrities are in effect acting as power brokers in forming ecumenical coalitions. As with all coalitions these players are attempting to gain something for themselves and their “ministries” and the expanding of their personal reputations. They are willing to exchange their platforms and pulpits with other celebrities of like class and clout. These platform exchanges often cross boundaries into false and even heretical territory. Consequently, these celebrities become an endorsement of false teaching to the masses of low information evangelicals who are fans of these various Christian celebrities.

The opportunity for these maneuvers is that classical evangelicalism as a theologically descriptive word is becoming near meaningless. Gregory Thornbury, now president of Kings College states: “the evangelicalism I signed up for is gone forever…. In fact many leading theologians today see evangelicalism as a relic of a bygone era.” (Thornbury, Recovering Classic Evangelicalism, Crossway, 2013, pp. 223)

The vacuum created by the disappearance of classical evangelicalism, unfortunately has been filled by TV ministries, bookstores, stadiums rallies, mega churches and extended mega church campuses and their media promotions.

These new media leaders have launched their own media outlets replete with fully equipped transportable entourages. If you can’t attend the events you can get it all on GodTV, TBN or a DVD for a price. These efforts are the beginnings of a back door ecumenism, an unpublicized ecumenical convergence. A sort of reverse ecumenical big bang is upon us. There is an unseen and undocumented ecumenical contraction in Christendom. This phenomena is unreported and even mostly an unspoken practical ecumenism. It’s as if there is a gravitational pull that draws even the most unlikely supporters together.

There is a handy deniable component built into this in that it is promoted by sharing a stage or platform. These coalition partners promote each other by inviting other celebrities to their platform of their mega church or stadium conferences. Some rush in to say that such so-called “platform ecumenism” is guilt by association. It is that, but more, so their presence together on a platform shouts for all to hear a guilt by endorsement. It is like forming a shadow government. This ground level ecumenism is not the product of denominational leaders. In fact denomination leaders in this postmodern era have been essentially relegated to the sidelines. The sheeple (the sheep as people) blindly follow their celebrities. They pay little or no attention to their unknown denominational leaders. Beyond that many denominational leaders join right in. The sheeple are out there. They can be organized to follow their leaders. Indeed sheep follow other sheep.

The seeds of this home grown ecumenical gravitational pull did not however burst on the scene from nowhere. One can trace this back many decades. The seeds planted earlier are now are maturing. The media megastars are now stage managing not only huge stadium filled extravaganzas, but in the process they are engineering a major ecumenical event without even using the term.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was among the earliest efforts that pointed in this direction when it made a major ecumenical ground breaking decision to include Roman Catholic prelates on their crusade platforms and assigned Catholic responders to the Roman Catholic churches for follow up. Sorry, but it was in effect giving away a baby to a stranger.

The Charismatic Renewal

The Charismatic Renewal of which I was a part had the unintended experiential effect of promoting ecumenism. The best way I can describe this is the spectacle of Father Pearson pleading with the Virgin Mary to help a seeker be released in tongues. This did more to endorse Romanism that any words could convey. What a sight when Catholic nuns in full habits spoke at Full Gospel Businessmen meetings speaking in some unknown tongue. The believers that pray “in a spirit” together also stay together. This is ecumenism beyond any denominational sanction or effort. One could write page after page of the how we have gotten to where we are today. But now we have to consider some the very recent events that point to more ecumenical chickens coming home to roost.

Contemplative Prayer

“Spiritual Formation” has been taking evangelicals by storm for some years now. Richard Foster and his seminal book Celebration of Discipline has been an attempt to fashion a Catholic Contemplative prayer experience for Protestants. The often used term Spiritual Formation is simply a code word for Contemplative Prayer, and Contemplative Prayer is a revived form of early Catholic meditation going back to the early third and fourth centuries of Catholic Monastics called the Desert Fathers, who borrowed a form of meditation from interaction with Eastern mystics in Egypt. The source of Contemplative Prayer is Catholicism. But ironically there are probably more evangelicals pursuing this prayer method than Catholics.

In recent times Catholic monks, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen devoted their entire lives to this prayer method and now many evangelicals are devoting themselves to Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. Contemplative Prayer is essentially a meditative discipline with a desire to attain an altered state of consciousness by entering the “silence.” In this silence, and out of this silence, one supposedly attains oneness with God. But entering the silence is not easy and so an innovative Catholic monk, Thomas Keating, employed a centering prayer technique of repeating a chosen word (mantra). What formerly took monks months and years can now be attained in 20 minutes of centering prayer and repeating over and over a mantra. In the silence one supposedly finds God living deep in their unconscious being.

The rub is this – this internal god is also supposedly deeply buried in the unconscious of every other human alive today on the planet and even actually inhabits all created things. So this form of panentheistic meditative ecumenism eventually connects the contemplative not only to Catholicism but all of creation. Catholic monks Merton, Nouwen and Keating are like the trinity of Contemplative Prayer. This practice of Contemplative Prayer blurs the line between Catholics and and Protestants.

Peter Scazzero, senior pastor of New Life church Queens NYC, an evangelical and graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, among others introduces this long neglected spirituality to evangelicals. But Scazzero doesn’t mention Catholicism but he quotes favorably and often from the Contemplative trinity noted above in his books. He attends a Trappist monastery in Massachusetts each year. He has made available a skinned down version of a Benedictine Daily Office for evangelical devotional use. Via DVD, Scazzero was introduced to our local AOG church. No one knew what it was all about but it did seem a little strange to a few. Scazzero’s pitch is that American Christians need to slow down from the daily grind and the best method is essentially contemplative meditation techniques. Scazzero has held conferences for AOG pastors, CMA pastors and Focus on the Family, etc. If people would note his dependence on Merton, Nouwen and Keating they would know the source of this new prayer technique. For our purposes Contemplative Prayer has proved to be a very effective ecumenical tool. It tends to legitimize Romanism. For further information the net is full of good explanations of Contemplative Technique prayer. I have an article that can be accessed on the net at my “Plumbline Newsletter Archive” called “Scazzero Scares Me.”

Gary Gilley states: “On the contrary, Merton demonstrates that there is much to fear when we try to mix truth with error. Merton saw that Buddhism, a religion with little interest in theology or truth offered the same mystical experiences that contemplative Christianity did. They both used similar methods…. In the end Father Merton came to the idea that because doctrine did not matter and only experience did… Buddhism and his understanding of Christianity was offering the same thing.” This is just the problem. Christian Contemplative techniques are not even hinted at in the teaching of scripture. Searching for something more from ancient and modern “holy men” can only eventually end badly.

The Elephant Room initiative

The Elephant Room was the brain-child Rev James McDonald the megapastor of Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago. McDonald’s brain child was to bring together celebrity pastors and have a television media event in which the celebrities spared with each other asking hard hitting questions. Someone described it as prize fight. Television provided everyone with a ring side seat. No (holds) questions barred. These episodes were full of hipster coolness. In Elephant Room One megapastor Perry Noble was challenged for his featuring the demonic band AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” on Easter Sunday. But in the end the celebrities decided that Noble’s pragmatic prank was just a matter of personal choice. It appears that the elephant in the room was a disregard for the fear of the Lord.

McDonald surprised everyone in Elephant Room Two with his cheek to invite TD Jakes. Jakes was well known for his Word/Faith teaching and someone who denied the Trinity. Jakes has a well-earned reputation as a “Jesus only” modalist. In modalist teaching the Trinity is denied by teaching that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just different “manifestations of God; at various times the one God appears as a different mode or manifestation. The Father is manifested as the Creator, The Son is a manifestation of God as the Saviour and the Holy Spirit is the manifestation for the church age…. Pentecostal Jesus Only followers are thus named “Oneness Pentecostals” because “Jesus only” is God. McDonald and Driscoll, however, merely tossed Jakes slow toss softballs and Jakes was allowed to say he believed in the Trinity but preferred to explain it with the term manifestations rather than persons. Mark Driscoll and McDonald could have simply asked Jakes one simple question: “Do you think the Son existed before the Son came to earth at Bethlehem?” But for whatever reason that never happened.

I have no idea what McDonald and the other celebrities had in mind when they staged the Elephant Rooms. But there is no doubt the result let Perry Noble and TD Jakes off the hook. In fact Elephant Room 2 was hardly over before the celebrity pastors were rushing to invite Jakes and other Word/Faith personalities to their megachurch platforms. Jakes was invited to McDonald’s platform, Pastor Steven Furtick, another participant of Elephant 2, also publicly called Jakes his favorite pastor. Christine Caine from Hillsong in Sydney, Australia, also a Word/Faith megachurch down under, and other famous Word/Faith personalities were suddenly invited to a wide range of megachurch platforms including Osteen’s Lakeland in Houston. The result was to mainstream Word/Faith heretics world wide. I will explain why I feel Word/Faith teaching is heretical.

Mainstreaming Word/Faith Heretics

Word/Faith teaching was brought to us by Kenneth Hagin. Hagin based his views on the writings of E.W. Kenyon and the plagiarizing of Kenyon’s writings. Before Hagin began to promote Kenyon’s views he was an AOG minister. Hagin’s teachings then became known as Word/Faith. Until recent times Word/Faith has generally existed on the periphery of pan-evangelicalism on a parallel track. But now rather than a close parallel movement it has essentially gained full acceptance. This is alarming because Word/Faith teaching remains throroughly heretical.

Based on Kenyon’s works Hagin taught, among other things, that when Adam was created he was a fully divine person and an exact replica of God. In the fall Adam lost his divinity and the human race lost the potential of divinity. Word/Faith teaching asserts that when Jesus died on the cross He died physically but more important Jesus died spiritually on the cross and lost his divinity. Jesus then descended into hell and was tormented by satanic beings for three days. Then the Father intervened and restored Jesus lost divinity and Jesus became the first born-again man. Now anyone who is born-again is rewarded with restored divinity on a par with Jesus and even God (that is God with a small g). This is why Kenneth Copeland and others aggressively claim divinity. This is also why Word/Faith believers claim they can create new realities, because they are now born-again replicas of the Father even as Adam was before the fall. This heretical teaching is wide spread among the Word/Faith faithful, TBN, etc. This teaching is emphasized by some Word/Faith teachers more than others, like Joyce Meyer. But any web search can find this teaching in almost all of them.

The reason I call Word/Faith heresy is because it is changing and editing the work of Jesus completed on the cross. Gary Gilley states: “Faith teachers like to teach that Christians are little gods.” Gary Gilley summarizes Word/Faith aberrant views about Jesus and His death:

• Christ was recreated on the cross from divine to demonic. Jesus took upon himself the very nature of Satan.
• Your redemption was not secured on the cross but in hell.
  Jesus was born-again in hell.
• Christ was reincarnated through his rebirth in hell and those who like Christ are born-again can be reincarnated as well” (See Gary Gilley, http://www.rapidnet.com)

Consequently this is infinitely much more serious than say holding a different view regarding the time of Jesus return, etc. Once again a simple question will do the job. “Did Jesus complete His atonement on the cross or later in Hell?”

Kenneth Copeland and James Robison and Pope Francis

Tony Palmer is a former director of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in South Africa. Later Palmer became a bishop in an Anglican Charismatic group of churches. As an Anglican charismatic Bishop Palmer became a close friend of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the future pope Francis, while working with Catholic Charismatics in Argentina. Earlier this year the pontiff invited Palmer to the papal residence and recorded on his I Phone a message to Kenneth Copeland’s annual pastors meeting at Copeland’s Eagle Mountain megachurch near Forth Worth. On this recorded message pope Francis pleaded in tears for a unity of brothers in Christ with the charismatic pastors. Copeland responded by praying in tongues (uninterpreted) to the group and then asked Palmer to record a response (this apparently was all set up) to the pontiff. Palmer then announced to these Word/Faith pastors that “the protest (code for Protestant Reformation) is over, is it over for you? The over 1000 Word/Faith pastors at the meeting can be seen standing and cheering.

A few days later James Robison also televised this same I Phone message on his daily TV program “Life Today.” Shortly after this Palmer arranged for a papalvisit for Copeland, Robison and others. Copeland later reported of the meeting: “I am blessed! What Jesus asked the Father for in John 17:21 ‘that we all be one in Him’ is finally coming to pass.” JoelOsteen, Word/Faith, prosperity pastor, who recently was also granted a Papal visit, has also entered the Post-Elephant Room ecumenical fall-out of mainstreaming all things Word/Faith. As an aside, Co-Pastor Victoria Osteen recently gave voice to a Freudian prosperity slip telling their Houston Lakewood mega-church faithful: “when you worship Him [God] you are not doing it for God really. You are doing it for yourself.” (World Net Daily, 8-31-14).

There are two major forces within worldwide visible Christianity today: The Roman Catholic church (1.2 billion members) and the sign-gift Word/Faith prosperity larger Charismatic community (584, million, members). The Pontiff is a friend of Charismatics and at the same time a member of the Jesuit order. These two groups comprise the majority of all visible Christians” (“Copeland Rolls the Dice with Rome,” Rev. Bob Litchow). Word/Faith teaching is fast becoming the largest Protestant presence in Africa.
Postscript: Not many days after the papal visit Bishop Palmer was killed in a motorcycle accident in England. May God grant his family special grace.

Franklin Graham’s Three Rivers Festival Hope

Lighthouse Trails has learned that at the August 15-17 gathering in Pittsburg PA, Franklin Graham, who led the organized event, brought Catholic Bishop David Zubik to give the opening prayer on stage (my emphasis) During the Bishop’s prayer he acknowledged that Catholics and Protestants are all the same church.” (Lighthouse Trails, 8/27/14). In a later news release Zubik stated: We felt as long as there was a Catholic component to this crusade those who “respond to Rev. Graham’s invitation to make a decision to Christ who identify as Catholic will be given the opportunity to go to Epiphany Church adjacent to the Console Energy Center for the sacrament of reconciliation.” (8/10/14)

These assorted media episodes are very visible and silently without words they shout out: “I am essentially suggesting that this ministry is accepted.” This is simply guilt by endorsement. Though some may retort that they only have different styles and message emphasis and we are simply different battalions in the one army of The Lord.

All of these events noted above appear to have little specific planning at least as far as we know. Indeed, the megachurches are all about becoming bigger and more visible in the culture. Perhaps some of it is simply keeping up with the Jones and striving for market share. But in any case the sheeple are just going along for the ride wherever the celebrity pastors and authors will take them. The apostle Paul referred to professing Christians in Galatia who were calling for Gentiles to be circumcised as “false brothers” (Gal. 2:4).

These “false brothers” believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But still Paul called them anathema (accursed). They only wanted to add circumcision to the salvation message. Seems small compared to praying to Mary, and re-offering Christ as a sin offering each time in the Catholic Mass. Conversely, however, the Catholic Church in their Post-Reformation Council of Trent, still today calls anyone who holds to “faith alone” as anathema. False teachers have always folded ecumenical leaven into the whole loaf. But a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. What is happening today in platform ecumenism is the leavening of false teaching into an ecumenical loaf.

As the cardinals were in holy conclave in Rome, Rick Warren called for prayer for God’s choice of a Pope. After Pope Francis was chosen, self appointed celebrity NAR Prophet Kim Clement gave his oracle: “This man has been appointed to join the hearts of the Protestant faith – Catholic – those who are Spirit-filled.”

This invisible gravitational pull toward ground level ecumenism surely will continue and at an increasing pace. It will not come by denominational negotiations, but will just move unofficially. It will happen for the most part by the actions of postmodern evangelical media personalities. It will happen for example as it did with Francis Chan, a Neo-Calvinist media star who was invited to IHOP for a major conference. This becomes a public legitimation for all the people that Chan represents and vice versa.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

Have you ever heard of “panentheism”? It sounds a lot like pantheism but there are those two additional letters “en” inserted after “pan.” The word broken into its constitute parts is pan=all, en=in, and theos=God. Panentheism is the belief the universe is contained within God and that the universe is part of God. Unwittingly protestant and evangelical leaders are embracing panentheism, thinking it just an ancient form of prayer, and discipleship flying under the radar with the alias of “Spiritual Formation.” It appears that the pragmatics and superficiality of the seeker sensitive, market driven church has prompted a need for mystical medication. Larry Crabb, a popular evangelical Christian psychologist of the last decade and author of many books, has apparently graduated to the contemplative. He expresses clearly the bankruptcy of pragmatic seeker sensitive spirituality. For him the mindless mysticism of Contemplative Prayer has brought him reality he apparently never found in pragmatic seeker sensitive spirituality. Here is his description of his former prayer-life.

“[Biblical] praying to God is something like e-mailing a relative you’ve never met, who lives in a place you have never been…Your relative never sends a picture of himself, never sends a picture of his house or land, and always writes a generic letter addressed to ‘my much loved relatives,’ like the ones we receive every Christmas. His emails never come only to you and are therefore never addressed only to you. He never calls, and you can’t call him. He has no phone.” (Crabb, The Papa Prayer). It amazes me that silent nothingness of the contemplative solves his problem.

The antidote to Crabb’s unbelief appears to be an openness to mystical experiences repackaged centuries later from the so-called Desert Fathers and Mothers of 3rd and 4th centuries. These Christian monastics migrated and lived as hermits in the Egyptian wilderness. Here these Catholic monastic mystics interacted with eastern monastics and mystics. Living as hermits these Desert Fathers developed “hesychasm” from the Greek word meaning “stillness” and “silence” (Wikipedia). Hesychasm was the practice of interior silence. It didn’t become a formal movement until the 14th century. Now centuries later these Catholic mystics have been elevated to the status of celebrities tasked with saving us from the superficiality of pragmatic church growth spirituality. Unfortunately, these Catholic mystics down through the centuries also engendered an alien non-Christian worldview which has gained the name of panentheism. These ancient Catholic mystics as well as Catholic mystics in later church history never used the term panentheism. But their experience and writings clearly exhibit what we now call panentheism.

Today, panentheism is enjoying a phenomenal resurgence even though it never employs the term panentheism. This panentheistic worldview is well hidden by such terms as “Spiritual Formation” and “Spiritual Disciplines” etc. But though well hidden, panentheism is the undeclared foundational worldview of the so-called “Spiritual Formation” movement now becoming wide-spread in evangelical circles. Furthermore, panentheism is the worldview of the myriads of versions of the New Age. It is also the foundational worldview of eastern religions. These 4th century hermit/monastics such as John Cassian and Anthony the Great apparently reasoned that if the eastern monks with whom they had contact could find mystical union with their god why couldn’t the same techniques be successful to find mystical union with their Christian God. These monastic fathers, however, fell into oblivion for centuries only to be resurrected by other Catholic mystics in later centuries (14th-15th centuries). Now in the later part of the 20th century these ancient Desert Fathers and Mothers and other Catholic mystics are being heralded as the harbinger of a new spirituality. Many trace this current revival of contemplative meditation to 1974 when Father William Menninger, a Trappist monk, found an ancient book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing in the library at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass. This 14th century book of an unknown author offered a means by which contemplative mystical practices, long used only by ancient Catholic monks, could be taught to lay people. As Menninger began teaching these contemplative practices, his Abbot Fr. Thomas Keating and Fr. Basil Pennington began teaching and promoting these contemplative techniques to the laity both in the west and the east. Thus, was born the use of centering prayer and a mantra (repeated word) as the means to enter a mystical union with God. Centering prayer and meditation using a mantra became a short-cut method for meditation for Catholics as well as New Age mediators.

These New Monks have not only brought these ancient techniques into popularity and prominence into Catholic circles, but now these promoters have spawned a pandemic revival within protestant, evangelical and New Age circles as well. Father Flanagan who was involved in both contemplative prayer and TM says: “contemplative prayer is TM in Christian dress.”

But the fame and distinction for introducing Contemplative Prayer into the evangelical world goes to Richard Foster. Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline was first printed in 1978 and launched Contemplative Prayer among evangelicals. The evangelical periodical Christianity Today acknowledged Foster’s book as one of the ten best books of the 20th century. Foster, a Quaker with affinity to mysticism, was able to insert Contemplative Prayer as hidden yeast into the loaf of evangelical spirituality. He and his now myriads of evangelical comrades suggest that bible study only feeds the head, but if one wants to feed the heart, they must enter the silence of Contemplative Prayer. This revival of contemplative spirituality of course means a revival of the accompanying panentheistic worldview. But as already asserted, panentheism is a world view that Catholic contemplative spirituality does not own as its own. Panentheism today is a widespread worldview with many editions and versions beyond Catholic church history. Panentheism works well and provides a congenial mystical foundation for many varieties of mysticism for Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus and all the varieties of New Age spirituality. It is like panentheism is a long table and on this table is a smorgasbord of varieties of panentheistic spiritualities.

Some are Catholic, some New Age, and others eastern mysticism. But all rest on the one worldview table of panentheism. The long historical tradition of Catholic monastic mystics, now resurrected from ages gone by, have become a spiritual movement not only in Catholic circles, but also among a burgeoning protestant and evangelical market. In what appears to be a sweeping phenomenon, evangelical leaders are embracing these ancient prayer and mystical practices as if they are new toys or new versions of an iPad. Still, the underlying panentheistic worldview remains hidden from view, papered over with more appealing terms such as Christian meditation or prayer disciplines and most often vaguely called “Spiritual Formation.” This underlying philosophical worldview clashes directly with a biblical view of creation and theism.

Classical Biblical Theism Contrasted to Philosophical Panentheism

Biblical theism asserts that God alone is absolutely self-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, all powerful and all knowing. Although He does not need the world, God eternally and freely chose to create it from nothing and sustain it through time. The bible teaches that God is distinct from his creation. He is not part of it, for he has made it (out of nothing, ex nihilo) and rules over it. Fraulein Maria, in Sound of Music got it all wrong when she sang “nothing comes from nothing.” (ex nihilo, nihilo fit.) Very simply, theism requires God as far “above” the creation and is independent of it. (Grudem p.1270) In distinction from theism, panentheism, a term coined by Karl Krause (1781-1832) means “the being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part exists in Him.” (John W. Cooper Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers p. 127).

Unfortunately, biblical and theological unfaithfulness among protestants and yes, also among evangelicals, has allowed this new spirituality, sufficiently veiled by the term “Spiritual Formation,” to make deep and unbelievable penetrations among evangelicals. If contemplative prayer is taught at Saddleback or Willow Creek (and it is), then it is apparently endorsed for all. Church growth needs churches to grow, right? Evangelical leaders of all stripes take it on board always looking for a new gig or a new toy for their ministries. Panentheistic and contemplative practices have been given the evangelical version of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. The writings of Catholic monastic panentheists have been adopted and promoted by evangelical celebrities and so the door is opened for contemplative spirituality among evangelicals.

Richard Foster, the evangelical godfather of the contemplative, exudes confidence when he states:

“By now enough water has gone under the Spiritual Formation bridge that we can give some assessment of where we have come and what needs to be done. When I first began writing in the field in the late 70′s and early 80′s the term Spiritual Formation was hardly known, except for highly specialized reference in relation to the Catholic orders. Today, it is a rare person who has not heard the term. Seminary courses in Spiritual Formation proliferate like baby rabbits. Huge numbers are seeking to become certified as Spiritual Directors to answer the cry of multiple thousands for spiritual direction.” (online source, The Ooze).

Catholic/Contemplative/New Age Leads to Monistic Universalism

A unifying element of Catholic/New Age mysticism is the panentheistic view that “everything” is one. In philosophy this is called “monism” derived from the Greek word “monos” meaning “one.” The pre- Socratic Greek philosophers asserted that reality was “One.” This is the teaching of monism which states that there is no distinction between god, men, animals or things… These are the “One.” This is ultimately and completely opposed to the Judeo-Christian revelation from God that all creation is distinct from the creator. The ancient Greeks and Hindus and Buddhists are all monists. Catholic New Age mysticism with its roots in the 3-4th century Desert Fathers is also monistic. They qualify this in saying they are not pantheists. But they are still monistic panentheists. The contemplative way of Foster, Willard and Scazzero to find union with the “One” is through wordless, silent meditation. This the contemplatives share with Eastern mysticism. Merton quotes Trich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist contemplative): “Buddhists and Christians know… the Kingdom of God as a mustard seed planted in the soil of consciousness. The Buddhist sutras speak of the Buddha nature as the seed of enlightenment that is already in everyone’s consciousness.” (Merton Introduction to Contemplative Prayer, Doubleday, 1996, p. 5).

But the result of this is realizing the “unity of all that is.” Henri Nouwen tells us that this leads to the “unity of all things”. Henri Nouwen, whom Ravi Zacharias calls one of the greatest saints of the church, died a universalist. When liberal theologian Paul Tillich was interviewed shortly before his death, he was asked, “Dr. Tillich, do you pray?” He responded, “No, I meditate.” Tillich called his god “the ground of all being.” Tillich’s view of God was monistic. It is interesting the author of The Shack identifies God as the “ground of all being” as well. Yet The Shack’s author is a common speaker in our churches. Even Bill Johnson’s Bethel church in Redding CA. invited him to his church. The pastor of a huge AOG church passed out copies of The Shack to his whole congregation.

Dr. Robert Morey has offered the solution to all this apostasy:

“With all the paganism around us today, now is not the time to water down the Gospel or deny the historic concept of God. The Church must arise and put her armor on… She must take up the shield of faith to quench all the fiery darts of doubt… to do this, the Christian Church needs truth – not error; courage not cowardice; doctrinal vigilance, not sentimentality; sacrifice – not sacrilege; faithfulness – not betrayal; and strength not weakness.” (Robert Morey, Battle of the Gods, 1989).

Distinguishing Panentheism from Pantheism

Historic pantheism simply means that all matter is God. All matter is impersonal and that is all there is. There is nothing beyond matter and the universe. But panentheism is a variant view to pantheism. The two are strikingly similar. Their differences are about as significant as the difference between an agnostic and an atheist. The pantheists and panentheists share the view that the universe and everything in the natural world and universe is pervaded by divinity. This is the view that the universe is contained within God and that the universe is a part of God.

For panentheists, God is located in all matter and the universe, but in some way, God is greater than the universe. God is like the head and creation the body. Krause, the originator of the term panentheism stated “everything is in God and God is in everything, but God is more than everything… God in essence contains the entire universe within Himself, but is not exhausted by it. The medieval Sufi (Islamic mystic) Kabir once noted “all know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean also merges into the drop.” All matter becomes inspirited – it breaths divinity. Earth becomes alive and sacred and offers us holiness in everything both upon the earth and the universe.

How did I learn about “panentheism?

It wasn’t easy. About 10 years ago, I became embroiled in a controversy over the inner healing ministry of John and Paula Sandford. I was forced to read their book The Transformation of the Inner Man. I was shocked by their psychological regression therapies based directly and unashamedly on Freud and Jung. I began a wide-ranging investigation of the Sandfords and their ministry. In the process, I happened upon some transcriptions of tapes by the Sandfords. These tapes and other Sandford books revealed a thorough going panentheistic worldview.

In one of the tapes, Dan M, the interviewer, asks Sandford about a statement made in the Sandfords’ book Elijah Task in which the Sandfords state: “Every plant and bit of earth, all seas and winds each animal and thing has intelligence, will, and desire in it.” (Elijah Task, p. 144). John responds: “You need to understand that God has so created everything and that his Spirit is redolent in it…all things have intelligence.” Sandford continues: “And in criminology they have found they can bring 4 suspects before plants and the plants will tell them who the criminal is… But they can’t use it in court. Can you imagine, “I was convicted by a rhododendron.” (tape 57). In these tapes Sanford refers to “animal spirits” which he says are looked after by Satan and others by angels. Sandford even allows for spirits of the departed to attach themselves to living persons, justifying this from the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras.

The Sandfords’ book The Transformation of the Inner Man and related materials were used in a local church and, as a regional minister with oversight, I confronted this and received a rebuke and curse from the Sandfords for my efforts. Initially, I called Sandfords’ view pantheism. But I found out later it was not pure pantheism as stated above but a close variant called panentheism which is a difference that is only slightly different.

Finally, I again encountered Contemplative Prayer ideas in a church nearby. It presented itself in a well-disguised form and became the basis of an 8-week series of sermons and bible study groups. The source was Peter Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and an introduction video and a self- published prayer guide called the Daily Office. I found out later that Scazzero, a graduate of Gordon- Conwell Seminary and his wife go on meditation retreats to a Trappist monastery each year. The Trappist monks and monasteries have become centers of contemplative prayer. The Daily Office, Scazzero’s workbook title, should have been a dead giveaway in that “Daily Office” is a well-recognized Catholic term used by monks for daily devotion. But for me, it was the end notes of The Daily Office that concerned me in that it was loaded with copious quotes from many current Catholic purveyors of Contemplative Spirituality including Merton, Nouwen, Keating and DeMello etc. These Catholic monks and mystics are the source of the current fad of Roman Catholic mystical teaching called Contemplative Prayer. These endnotes in The Daily Office were of no meaning to anyone in this bible study group but me. It turns out that Scazzero has a full agenda for his ministry of introducing Contemplative Prayer to evangelicals. I found that Scazzero has led retreats sponsored by Focus on the Family and at Saddleback Church. Scazzero is well schooled in the Desert Fathers etc.

The bait and cover for evangelicals is found in Scazzero’s book titled, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. The appeal is to believers drained emotionally and needing a place of quiet and stillness. Contemplative Prayer and stillness seem to be the answer for these emotionally challenged evangelicals. Historic Contemplative Prayer promises to help us slow down and enter quietness and find a new victory for our harried lives. In a congregation of 1200, as far as I know, no one realized what was going on. The pastor was able to loosely preach from the Scazzero’s book and retranslate Scazzero’s teaching back into familiar Christian evangelical terminology. I am not sure he was aware of what he was doing. For him it was an honest attempt to help people get off their treadmill existence an refocus spiritually. Who was to know that this study material was a clever introduction to an evangelical church of the historic practice of contemplative spirituality? Indeed, in his book, Scazzero does refer to “Centering Prayer” and entering into silence (p. 45). But who knows what “centering prayer” and entering “The Silence” actually is? Who would know that Merton, Nouwen, Keating and DeMello and others listed in the endnotes were the new catholic monks and mystics who are panentheistic practitioners?

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was the forerunner among the New Monks promoting the Contemplative Spirituality. He became a monk at age 26 just three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Merton advocated moving the practice of Contemplative Prayer from its use by cloistered monks to a broader use by the common man. During his years practicing mystical contemplative prayer, he became more and more drawn to Buddhist and Hindu mystics. Ultimately, he saw no real difference between Christianity and Buddhism. He once visited the Dalai Lama to “discover truth in dialogue.” (Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul, pp. 269-277). He actually was electrocuted while on a teaching trip among Buddhist monks. Shortly before his death, he acknowledged that he was more Buddhist than Catholic. Merton was to the current Contemplative Spirituality what Henry Ford was to the automobile. Merton stated: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusions – a point of pure truth. This little point is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everything.” (quote from Merton and Sufism, Rob Baker and Gray Henry…1999, p. 109). At an interfaith conference in Thailand, Merton stated: “I believe that by openness to Buddhism and to Hinduism and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about these traditions. We stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our Christian tradition.” (William Shannon, The Silent Lamp, The Thomas Merton Story p. 276). By the way Scazzero quotes Merton 8 times in his devotional The Daily Office.

Henri Nouwen

Nouwen, also deceased, like Merton has been able to influence evangelicals with his deep homespun spirituality. He is widely read by evangelicals. Even someone in my family relishes his spirituality. One of his biographers revealed in 1994 that Nouwen ranked second only to Billy Graham in his influence. In his book The Way of the Heart, Nouwen advised his readers: “the quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart… That way of prayer…opens us to God’s active presence.” Nouwen displays his panentheism by stating: “The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is the same as the one who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being.” (from Here and Now, p. 22). Nouwen further states: “Prayer is soul work because our souls are those sacred centers where all is one. In the heart of God, we can come to the full realization of the unity of all that is.” (Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, Harper, San Fran, 1997). Nouwen’s phrase “all is one” is pure panentheistic monism.

Fathers Keating and Basil Pennington

These two monks have honed the method of “centering prayer” to the point that mystical silence and union with God that took cloistered monks sometimes years to achieve can now through “centering prayer” and a repeated word (mantra) achieve it in days. Pennington and Keating have written a popular classic on centering prayer entitled Open Mind Open Heart. Keating boasts that by 1991 he had taught 31,000 people the art of “centering prayer.” Keating attended the 6th annual conference on Christian and Buddhist meditation held in Boulder, CO, August 10, 1986, with Christian and Buddhist attendees making contributions which included Keating’s presentation on “centering prayer.”

Keating and Pennington’s major contribution to the contemplative movement is the technique of “centering prayer.” Brennan Manning, a former Catholic monk, calls it wordless prayer involving breathing exercises and the chanting of a sacred word or phrase. The purpose, as Keating asserts, is to speed up the sensitizing of the unconscious. After reading a published description of “centering prayer”, a psychology professor said: “Your question is, is this hypnosis? Sure, it is.” (from The Danger of Centering Prayer, by Rev. John Dreher, pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church in Coventry, Rhode Island.)

The Centering Prayer Process

Brennan Manning provides a step by step process for centering prayer. The first step is to stop thinking about God (Signature of Jesus, p. 212). The second step is breathing exercises and choosing a sacred word or phrase and inwardly and often repeating it (p. 218). Finally, close with the Lord’s Prayer or a Psalm. The result of this practice is the practitioner becomes less interested in objective spiritual knowledge as found in the bible and more interested in mystical revelation. Richard Foster speaks of “letting go of all competing distractions, even good ones… This can be done by focusing on a name, word or phrase.” (Foster, Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer, p. 15). Deepak Chopra, a popular New Age Hindu who is a panentheist and believes all creation is God and divine, recommends the Catholic contemplative manual The Cloud of Unknowing and considers Christian centering prayer techniques to be the same as Hindu yoga. Chopra asserts: “There is no doubt that people resist the whole notion of God being an inner phenomena…” Yet its importance is stated eloquently in the medieval document known as ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’ written anonymously in the 14th century… The writer (Cloud of Unknowing) informs us that ANY THOUGHT IN THE MIND SEPARATES US FROM GOD, because thought sheds light on its object…we are advised to go into a cloud forgetting anything other than the silence of the inner world… (How to Know God, 2000, pp. 94, 95, 98). In the same book, Chopra says, “I believe that God has to be known by looking in the mirror” (p. 9). Thus, Chopra is describing meditative methods whereby the individual can allegedly come into contact with his “higher self” or “divinity,” yet he advises using Catholic mysticism to get there. And the same manual, The Cloud of Unknowing, is one of the most popular manuals among evangelical contemplatives.

Richard Foster and Dallas Willard

These two men plus many others as well are kept busy introducing contemplative prayer techniques to the evangelical world. They have combined in establishing a contemplative training institution and a study bible called Renovare. They promote all forms of Catholic Contemplative Prayer and encourage people to read the likes of Merton, Nouwen, Rich Rohr and the full range of historic Catholic mediators. This newsletter could never list all the intrusions of Contemplative Prayer into evangelical circles. But I encourage you to acquire the book A Time of Departing by Ray Yungen. If you want a scholarly treatment of panentheism you should read Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers by John W. Cooper, who is a consistent biblical scholar.

Panentheism is everywhere in the evangelical world. David Cloud (online source, Evangelicals turning to Catholic Spirituality) asserts the following evangelical celebrities as either direct participants of Contemplative Prayer or endorsing it. I couldn’t believe the names on his list. I checked it out on the net and he is absolutely correct. We start off with Foster, but he is hardly a lone voice for Contemplative Prayer. Here are the others: Dallas Willard, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, Beth Moore, Max Lucado, Ed Young, Gary Thomas, Charles Stanley, Leighton Ford and Phillip Yancey. Yancey in his book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference, favorably quotes Richard Rohr, proponent of the “Cosmic Christ”, the 14-century contemplative manual called The Cloud of Unknowing, and Teresa of Avila whose meditation included erotic mysticism. This erotic mysticism echoes Lou Engle and Mike Bickle and IHOP bridal mysticism. This, however, at least has its source in the Song of Solomon but encourages IHOP young people to marry Jesus.

Check out the children’s books on Contemplative Prayer at NavPress. Dr. Gary Gilley, in an article on Spiritual Formation, lists the various evangelical publishers providing Contemplative materials (namely Nelson, Zondervan, NavPress, IVF by a wide range of authors). Even Rick Warren, the ultimate pragmatic church growth proponent, feels obliged to get involved in breath prayers and promote Contemplative Prayer. Foster, Willard, Sweet, Scazzero and a host of others, fill their calendars speaking in evangelical conferences and churches. The horse has bolted. The dike has been breached. Many evangelical pastors have not a clue that panentheism is actually the worldview base of Spiritual Formation. Panentheism has been sugar coated for evangelical appetites. Many of the rank and file will never actually pursue contemplative prayer practices for themselves. But others will take it up assuming it is a legitimate ancient/modern prayer method. But you will never hear the term panentheism. Rather, you will hear innocuous terms like Spiritual Formation and spiritual disciplines. It will all be retranslated into evangelical terminology, but of necessity it carries panentheism in its saddlebags, an anti-biblical worldview even though it is found only in the fine print. Each time someone recommends Merton, Nouwen, Foster, Dallas Willard, Sue Monk Kidd, Leonard Sweet, Manning, Leighton Ford, Larry Crabb etc., etc., just remember that each of them also have knowingly or probably unknowingly left biblical creation behind. Panentheism is hostile to and opposed to biblical creation and the gospel of Jesus Christ no matter how spiritual it appears and how much they talk about Jesus.

Biblical prayer could not be more contrastive. We don’t need to learn techniques from ancient masters and hermit monks. There is no need to vacate our rationale minds and enter a mystical Silence and enter altered states using mantras from the east. We have direct access to the throne of grace won for us at Calvary. Here we present our needs in audible form. God biblically answers with the Word of the Lord in scripture or He works all things according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Contemplative prayer could not be more antithetical to the revealed Word of God. Panentheism is a worldview that has no connection with the God of the Bible.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

The Bridge across the Tiber back to Home Sweet Rome is now open for traffic

The title and subtitle are metaphoric symbolism. Crossing the Tiber River near Rome is often used for Protestants returning to Roman Catholicism. Scazzero is an Italian name for Peter Scazzero who is senior pastor of New Life Church in Queens, New York City. Rev. Scazzero has not claimed Rome for his official residence, but makes many trips across the Tiber. Scazzero’s stated mission is to introduce Catholic contemplative prayer and practice to evangelicals. Scazzero avoids the term Catholic for obvious reasons but uses “Contemplative Prayer” freely, assuming probably correctly, that evangelicals will not know the meaning of the term.

Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality recounts how after his seminary experience at Gordon-Conwell, he launched into growing an evangelical church in Queens. However, as the years went by, his marriage nearly collapsed and his time-consuming ministry was brought to a standstill. I am not sure why he and his wife Geri took a 6-month sabbatical and visited monasteries overseas including Taize in France. They came home, however, converted to Contemplative Spirituality (henceforth CS). They assumed that their church would refuse this but the elders were open to try it. The rest is history.

They implemented a Benedictine Daily Office devotional routine, a Sabbath experience and a Rule for Life. All of this is presented as the solution to Scazzero’s insufficient experience in traditional evangelical spirituality. Going further, Scazzero is convinced that living a life of contemplative rhythms and discipline is the primary way to bring evangelical emotional and spiritual lives into health.

Scazzero has found that he is in demand among evangelical pastors nationwide. He has been invited to speak to AOG pastors’ conferences, CMA pastors’ meetings, and even to Focus on the Family retreats. He quotes primarily from famous Catholic monastic mystics both living and dead, and he proudly announces that he attends a Trappist monastery in MS on a regular basis participating in the rigors of monastic life. It appears that his audiences have no problems with the source of his material. Trappist monks, and other emergent universalists get generous quotes in his writings and are ALWAYS quoted favorably. One can only assume he sees their teaching found in their writings as beneficial and that his evangelical audiences either don’t care or know to whom he refers in his writings.

The wider context of this is that there have been years of efforts to bring about a practical union between Rome and evangelicals. The prominent person in this endeavor has been and continues to be Chuck Colson. He has spearheaded this effort of some years now called ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together). One could say that Colson built the bridge over the Tiber and now Scazzero and others have widened the bridge and taken down any warning signs still remaining so that evangelicals can easily go back and forth. Now evangelicals can shoot across the Tiber and land in some of the historic monasteries. All of this now without even a waking or a stirring among evangelicals who owe their existence to the Protestant Reformation. Only a few “hard hats” so-called make a few grunting noises.

Given the quiet intrusion of postmodern deconstruction of almost all truth claims in the church and the prevailing winds of tolerance, the deal can now be sealed sooner rather than later. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli are quietly relegated to the scrap heap of ancient church history. The Reformation can be buried as an unfortunate mistake, and an inconvenient episode in church history. Many evangelicals are convinced CS is just a way to slow down and have quiet devotions in a busy life style. But for people who know, it is not remotely like a quiet bible study. It would only take a few minutes on a computer to establish that CS is not really an option.

Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, the big two of monastic mystics leave no doubt that “entering the silence” is essentially an eastern way of eliminating all conscious thought so that we can uncover God’s presence already buried deep in all humans and in all living things (panentheism). Scazzero’s quotes are from nearly all the luminaries of CS. But he does not go on to describe in detail their practices and teachings, however. This is unfortunate, for very quickly that would nail down a few undeniable features of CS.

First, by meditative techniques and disciplines there is a desire to reach an alternate state of spiritual consciousness in which unknowing rather than knowing is the goal. In past centuries, that monastic goal often took years to attain. But in recent times, Father Thomas Keating, quoted freely by Scazzero (Thomas Keating, Intimacy With God: An Introduction To Centering Prayer, in Daily Office by Scazzero, p. 44) along with Father M. Basil Bennington [famous quote: “The soul of the human family is the Holy Spirit], found a way to attain mental silence and unknowing in about 20 minutes. Father Keating attended the 6th annual Christian-Buddhist meditation Conference recently. Here he presented this centering prayer short cut to “Nirvana” to Asian Buddhist monks. Father Keating was praised as a good bridge between Christianity and Buddhism. An attendee stated that his centering prayer seemed to tie in with Transcendental Meditation, yoga mantra meditation, the Jesus prayer and Hindu readings on meditation.

Tilden Edwards, founder of Shalem Institute who is also quoted in Scazzero’s book, p. 170, states in his book that “This mystical stream (CS) is the western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality” (Spiritual Friend, NY, NY, Paulist Press, 1980, p. 18). Scazzero on page 160 of his book recommends centering prayer. He states: “I often spend 5 minutes centering down…I follow James Findley’s guidelines…” (James Findley is a former Trappist Monk and promoter of inter-spiritual contemplative monk Thomas Merton.) Relying on James Findley, Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality states: “Sit still, sit straight, Breath slowly and deeply…When you find your mind wandering, let your breathing bring your mind back…” (p. 160,161).

Finally, contemplatives ALWAYS end up in universal salvation. Thomas Merton, Scazzero’s apparent favorite and most quoted contemplative, simply says, “At the center of our being (every human) is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin…” [Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 157].

Why am I writing now about CS? Well! It so happens Scazzero and his books and Daily Office are the basis of an 8 week attempt to recapture emotional and spiritual health in our very evangelical/Pentecostal church.

Contemplative Prayer Movement and Its Origin – Compiled by S.E. Ray

There is a prayer practice that is becoming popular within the evangelical church. It is primarily known as contemplative prayer. It is also known as centering prayer, listening prayer, breath prayer and prayer of the heart. The practice is now widely embraced and taught in secular and professed Christian seminaries, colleges, universities, organizations, ministries and seminars throughout the United States. Academic promoters have introduced these practices in the fields of medicine, business and law, while countless secular and Christian books, magazines, seminars, and retreats are teaching people how to incorporate these techniques into their daily lives. Promoters promise physical, mental and spiritual benefits.

The essential function of contemplative prayer is to enter an altered state of consciousness in order to find one’s true self, thus striving to find God. Proponents of contemplative prayer teach that all human beings have a divine center and that all, not just born-again believers, should practice contemplative prayer.

To achieve the state of emptiness, they employ a “mantra,” a word repeated over and over to focus the mind while striving to go deep within oneself. The effects are a hypnotic like state: concentration upon one thing, disengagement from other stimuli, a high degree of openness to suggestion, a psychological and physiological state that externally resembles sleep, but in which consciousness is interiorized and the mind subject to suggestion.

In the early Middle Ages during the 4th through the 6th centuries, there lived a group of hermits in the wilderness areas of the Middle East. They are known to history as the Desert Fathers. They dwelt in small isolated communities for the purpose of devoting their lives to God without distraction. The contemplative movement is traced to these monks. They were the first to promote the mantra as a prayer tool. [These desert fathers reasoned that as long as the desire for God was sincere anything could be utilized to reach God. If a method worked for the Hindus to reach their gods, then Christian mantras could be used to reach Jesus] (Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing).

Some of the most influential writers who have popularized contemplative prayer in the evangelical church are Richard Foster and Brennan Manning. Both these men have written popular Christian books about contemplative prayer. And both quote the Catholic mystics such as Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating.

Through the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Father Keating and Father Bennington met together with an effort to understand the mass defection of young Catholics at the time these people were drawn in part to the East’s meditation practices. Their research led Keating, at the time an abbot at a Massachusetts monastery, to begin unearthing a similar meditative method based on a Christian tradition [the Desert Fathers]. The East was mixed with Catholicism to yield new appeal to the defecting younger generation of the time.

Contemplative prayer differs from Christian prayer in that the intent of the technique is to bring the practitioner to the center of his own being. There he is, supposedly, to experience the presence of God who [already] dwells in him. Christian prayer, on the contrary, centers on God in a relational way, as an independent power apart from oneself but realized intimately through the Holy Spirit.

The confusion of this technique with Christian prayer arises from a misunderstanding of the indwelling of God. The fact that God indwells us does not mean that we can capture His presence by mental techniques. Nor does it mean that we are identical with Him in our deepest self.

Silence, appropriate body posture and above all, emptying the mind through repetition prayer – have been the practices of mystics in all the great world religions. And they form the basis on which most modern spiritual directors guide those who want to draw near to God…Silence is the language God speaks…says Thomas Keating who taught “centering prayer” to more than 31,000 last year. “Keating suggests that those who pray repeat some ‘sacred word’ like God or Jesus.” (Newsweek, January 6, 1992, “Talking to God” p. 44).

The God Who is [Already] There

Francis Schaeffer once wrote a book entitled, The God Who IS There (emphasis added). Now, conversely, the Contemplative mystics teach that God is already there, namely He indwells every human in his inner and “higher self.” But furthermore, they teach that God not only indwells every human, but He indwells all his creation. This is not exactly pantheism, but a variant called panentheism.

Pantheism teaches that God is all things. But Pantheism has now been combined with Theism (God is a personality) and this produces panentheism, which attempts to retain God’s personality but adds that He also indwells every created thing.

Contemplatives fully schooled in the Contemplative paradigm embrace panentheism. Dr. Ken Kaisch, a prominent teacher of the contemplative, has written in his book, Finding God: “The first and important result [of this prayer] is an increasing sense of God’s presence in all things.” William Johnson also states in his book The Mystical Way, that: “God is the core of my being and the core of all things.” (compiled from Ray Yungen).

But this teaching undermines the biblical teaching of the sinfulness of all men and makes the atonement at the cross unnecessary. Furthermore, if God is in every human and all things, then he is in all religions. Tony Campolo and others see that this is a necessary corollary and Campolo has stated: ‘Mysticism provides hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam.’ (Speaking My Mind).

The lure of mysticism of all varieties belies a huge hollowed out vacuum in current evangelical spirituality, courtesy of Seeker-Sensitive. What else can account for the seeming insatiable hunger for all things mystical and particularly physical techniques leading to some kind of mystical and altered state of ecstasy. Across the evangelical spectrum people are signing on to various expressions of the contemplative. Below are a series of examples that defy understanding:

– Brennan Manning in his book “The Signature of Jesus” which explicitly gives training for centering techniques has his book endorsed by Max Lucado and Amy Grant.

– Youth Specialties has gone aggressively for contemplative spirituality being supported by Zondervan. The president of Youth Specialties, M. Oestreicher, is quoted as saying that ‘Christianity is an eastern religion.’ He dismisses criticism in the following quotes: ‘If a Buddhist is using a breathing exercise to bring some peace to her life – bless her. But that shouldn’t have any bearing on whether I chose to focus on my God-given breath.”

But, Mike Perschon, an Edmonton associate pastor of a Mennonite church, describes in a magazine “Youth Worker” his contemplative experience: “I built myself a room – a tiny sanctuary in a basement closet filled with books on spiritual disciplines, contemplative prayer and Christian mysticism. In that space, I lit candles, burned incense, hung rosaries and listened to tapes of Benedictine monks. I meditated for hours on word, images, and sounds. I reached the point of being able to achieve alpha brain patterns.”

This appears much more than focusing on my God-given breath. Though some may pursue contemplative as a way to be silent, etc., the origin of all this is ancient Catholic mysticism borrowed from Eastern mysticism in the 4th century and mixed with a Catholic tradition of monasticism.

The Contemplative Paradigm

– God lives deeply inside every human.
– Man’s problem: All man’s problems are from not being in contact with God inside.
– By ancient prayer techniques man can restore union with God within.
– Sin is neglecting to establish union with God within.

The Gospel Paradigm

– God requires righteousness.
– Man’s problem: since Adam, all have sinned and stand condemned before a holy God.
– Christ died to pay the debt of man’s sin.
– Christ’s righteousness is credited to the believing sinner’s record.
– God regenerates sinners who believe the Gospel and gives them the indwelling Holy Spirit.
– Man is thus accepted in God’s sight.
– Believers now focus on God and what He has done for them.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

A “world-view” is an arrangement of ideas in and through which a person interprets and judges reality. It is a background “script” that undergirds consciously or unconsciously, more or less consistently, a person’s thoughts and actions. In the jargon of biblical/theological studies there is a long German word heilsgeschichte (holy history), meaning roughly “salvation history.” Salvation history is the series of events and truths that portray God’s redemptive plan across the ages, a worldview focused specifically on the elements of salvation. From it is drawn the church’s historical teaching about salvation. It is broad in its scope, usually beginning with creation and the fall and moving on through the incarnation of Christ, His substitutionary death for human sin, His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the founding of the church by the apostles, the second coming of Jesus, the final resurrection and judgment, and the final state of glory. But beware.

In recent decades a radically different script of salvation, a different worldview, has entered the church. It is called the Dominion Mandate. Unfortunately, it is rarely recognized as being outside the boundaries of orthodox belief. It has many things in common with traditional Christianity, but its underlying heilsgeschichte is fundamentally different. It is a rival salvation history, which promotes a false gospel. The current evangelical culture of downplaying theology in favor of pragmatic strategies is a main reason why this alien salvation history is often undetected when it creeps, or strides boldly, into the church.

The Dominion teachers have a unique and consistent theological viewpoint which underlies and undergirds all they do, and an unwritten standard by which they interpret and judge everything. Prayer walking, spiritual mapping and whole-city reaching and transformation efforts are connected to the heresy of restored offices of apostle and prophet. This teaching is a mutant form of the Latter Rain, a radical fringe movement of Pentecostalism that flourished at mid-20th century and then went underground for a period of time. It then resurfaced unrecognized in the Charismatic Renewal, and now comprises all independent churches organized under a top-down pyramid structure known now as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Although Dominion participants often have their own ministries and don’t always identify with the NAR they are linked together and know and recognize each other as comrades in the Dominion Mandate. They all know each other and recognize that they are part of an large extended family. They draw support from one another to develop dominion strategies. They all zealously propagate the new “revelations” of their leaders, the apostles and prophets, and recognize fellow apostles (whether publicly named or not) who exercise authority among themselves. They religiously believe God has reserved all of this for the very last days of the church age. [2]

Robert M. Bowman Jr. has given us a condensed summary of the Kingdom/Dominionist ideology.

“In the very beginning God created the universe and populated it with spirits (or angels) who lived in perfect obedience to Him. However, a third of these angels, led by Lucifer, rebelled against God’s authority, becoming demons. The angelic rebellion occurred in a “gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The result was that the earth, which was the headquarters of the demonic Evil Empire, was brought into chaos. In order to win back unchallenged dominion over the universe, God introduced into the earth, Man, a race of creatures which God intended to become a resistance movement that would conquer the Devil’s home planet and thus lead the way in taking back dominion over the entire universe. Man was to be a race of little gods exercising authority, thus overwhelming the devil’s forces.

Unfortunately the father of this race (Adam) was tricked by the devil into forfeiting Man’s place in this plan and actually brought God’s first plan to naught. God was then forced to come up with plan B to take back dominion. His solution: to introduce into this fallen race a man in whom the divine nature dwelled fully, who would become the prototype of a new race of human beings in which the original godhood of Adam was restored. This divine Man was Jesus, a perfect manifestation of God the Father and the “first fruit” of the incarnation of God.

This race of little gods who are spiritually united with Christ as members of His body is the church, constituting collectively with Him the complete incarnation, a corporate manifestation of God in the flesh, which together will overcome the devil and restore God’s dominion unchallenged on the earth. Ultimate victory over the devil, then depends finally upon the church accepting the calling to be little gods.It further depends on the church submitting to the restored apostles through whom God is seeking to mobilize the church into a unified army prepared to take dominion back from the devil.” [3]

After Adam had given it away, God didn’t have any more authority, according to this heretical teaching. This “false identity” teaching suggests that Jesus was taken to Hell after his death. Here Jesus was not only tormented by Satan, but he became a sinner. (Further study: The Born-Again Jesus of the Word-Faith Movement) But this caused Him to be born-again and he was raised to life as the first born-again man becoming a prototype or pattern son for all believers. Believers, according to this worldview, are meant to partake of the same power and authority as Jesus. But the church, like Adam, has botched the plan because of its unbelief and ignorance. Finally now, at the end of the age, in the time of the purported “Latter Rain” (since the 50’s), the church has been given new “prophets” and “apostles” to lead a united church to establish God’s lost rule, i.e. dominion, in the earth. Using spiritual warfare techniques, newly revealed to chief apostle of the NAR, C. Peter Wagner, [4] the church will take whole cities and nations for God, and will at long last take control of the heavenlies, having cast Satan down.

“Apostle” Ed Silvoso has said:

“The church has now been placed potentially in control of the heavenly places once ruled by the prince of the power of the air. But this reconstituted church must engage and defeat the enemy and retake the heavenlies in the name of her Lord.” [5]

This Dominion mythology is totally at odds with biblical teaching.

1. Dominion teaching paints a false view of Adam and his fall. It pictures him as a god who lost his godhood when Satan tricked him.

The Bible, on the other hand, teaches Adam fell into sin by rebellion and this resulted in judgment and death for him and his posterity. (Romans 5:12f).

2. Dominion teachers assert that by Adam’s failure God lost His legal authority over the earth to Satan.

However, multiple texts in Scripture show God has ongoing control over his creation. Job 37:15, Matt. 10:29, Daniel 4:17. Jesus has authority in earth and heaven (Matt. 28:18).

3. Dominion teachers view man as an extension of the incarnation of Jesus.

But there is no biblical teaching that Jesus is a ‘pattern son.’ (or that individual believers are “little gods”) Christ indwells His church through the Holy Spirit. (i.e. the church is not Jesus, the Head)

4. Dominion mythology teaches that the church has been given authority to invade and conquer the heavenly places.

But there is no biblical warrant for this fairy tale.

This constitutes the basis of Dominion mythology and it is the master plan behind all Dominion teaching and practices. [6] This mythology is constantly being refreshed by new and absurd “revelations”. But these wild revelations still fall and remain within the dominion mythology.

Endnotes:
1. Mark Pfeifer, “Theology of Reclaiming 7 Mountains: The Dominion Process,” http://www.reclaim7mountains.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=41538&columnid=4347
2. The extensive historical documentation on the points made in this paragraph, and the one above, can be found in Al Dager’s excellent book VENGEANCE IS OURS: THE CHURCH IN DOMINION (Sword, 1990), available here: http://home.etcable.net/hestervanboven/Books.htm
3. Robert M Bowman Jr., “The Gospel According to Paulk – A critque of Kindom Theology,” The Christian Research Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1998, p. 8. Quotation reformatted for blog use.
4. To see an example of C. Peter Wagner’s teaching on this topic, see the lead quotation at the top of this Herescope post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/cultural-mandate.html
5. Ed Silvoso “That None Should Perish” audio cassette, 1982.
6. See more quotations illustrating this mythology at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com and also see: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/premilpostmil.html

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

It was Palm Sunday in our local church, and the focus of the entire service was the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The pastor painted a verbal picture of Holy Week in Jerusalem, including the agony in Gethsemane and the political and religious intrigue regarding the interaction between the Jewish authorities and the Roman government. Finally he gave a description of the crucifixion, focusing on the technique as it applied to the victim. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this pastor certainly painted a graphic one.

The account of the crucifixion itself was so well done that I could almost hear the crowd crying out “give us Barabbas,” and I could almost feel Jesus’ struggle on the cross as he tried to get His breath. I knew the historical resources that the pastor used as the palate for this spellbinding picture, and even though I had not seen Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” still I felt I was there “when they crucified my Lord.” Then the pastor abruptly pivoted toward his conclusion and appeal. He gave only a passing nod to Jesus’ death for our sins and having provided for our eternal life as he launched into his application.

Here are his actual words: “He died for you so you could approach Him today with whatever it is that is weighing you down. Maybe it is a relationship that is not right at home or school or work. Maybe it’s a financial crisis. Maybe your kids are breaking your heart. Maybe you are disappointed in yourself. You can’t get over the hump, or some behavior in your life. You are lonely, sick, or grieving. The cross is where God’s best meets man’s worst as we see the cross with fresh eyes.”

I have no idea what view this pastor holds regarding the atonement, but it really doesn’t fit any of the historical views. Maybe one could dub it the “life application atonement.” This type of appeal becomes more significant in the current environment now that we observe an open, frontal attack on the cross itself as the propitiatory sacrifice and substitutionary death that pays the penalty for our sins.

Inside evangelicalism, with its plethora of odd and often heretical teachings, we now have at least major skirmishes breaking out regarding the meaning of the death of Christ—if not all-out war. Many major voices identified and accepted as fellow evangelicals now chime in to challenge and target the Penal Substitutionary Atonement (hereafter referred to as PSA)……

Two books written by evangelicals were the two precipitating factors; one was published in the United Kingdom, and the other in America. In The Lost Message of Jesus, widely known British evangelical Steve Chalke opposed PSA. His inflammatory statement that PSA was a form of “cosmic child” abuse caused concern and open controversy among other British evangelicals.

In the U.S., Joel Green and Mark D. Baker recently authored “Recovering the Scandal of the Cross,” published by InterVarsity Press. Green and Baker’s thesis is that the New Testament displays a rich array of interpretations of the cross. Some have called their view the “kaleidoscope atonement.” Their burden is to show that a monopoly exists on the view of the atonement (PSA) and that there actually are many other biblical metaphors that can enable us to communicate the cross in fresh ways to our postmodern culture. Green and Baker are not content to place PSA in the mix of cross metaphors. They are suggesting that PSA is based on a mistaken concept of God’s wrath. They see PSA as promoting a “divisive child abuse model of the atonement” (p. 181).

Green is a professor at Fuller Seminary, and Baker, at Biblical Seminary. These authors and a growing list of evangelicals who endorse them represent voices of dissent from a long strain of mainline evangelicals. They assert that PSA is unbecoming of a God of love, and not an adequate expression of the biblical view.

Those attacking PSA cleverly begin their assault on PSA by emphasizing that a variety of views of the atonement exist in the scriptures. As we will see shortly, there are other truths taught in scripture regarding the cross. But these critics then proceed to call for the rejection of PSA and wish to eliminate PSA altogether. Most challengers suggest PSA is repulsive—making God into a psychopath or a cosmic child abuser. Other challengers employ the bouquet of roses metaphor as a full bouquet of atonement stories—differing colors and differing fragrances can appeal to a wider range of individuals. However they press for plucking out and discarding the PSA rose entirely and are bent on purging PSA from the church.

Perhaps here we need to define PSA more specifically. Tom Schreiner provides the following definition:

The Father, because of His love for human beings, sent His Son, (who offered Himself willingly and gladly) to satisfy His justice, so that Christ took the place of sinners. The penalty we deserved was laid on Jesus Christ instead of us, so that at the cross both God’s holiness and love are manifested….

I am not claiming that it (PSA) is the only truth about the atonement taught in the scriptures, nor am I claiming that PSA is emphasized in every piece of literature, or that every author clearly articulates PSA. But I am saying that PSA functions as the anchor and foundation for the other dimensions of the atonement. I define penal substitution as follows: The Father, because of his love for human beings, sent his Son (who offered himself willingly and gladly) to satisfy his justice, so that Christ took the place of sinners. The punishment and penalty we deserved was laid on Jesus Christ instead of us, so that in the cross both God’s holiness and love are manifested.

Wayne Grudem offers this definition:Christ’s death was ‘penal’ in that he bore apenaltywhen He died. His death was also a ‘substitution’ in that He was asubstitutefor us when He died. This has been the orthodox understanding of the atonement held by evangelical theologians, in contrast to other views that attempt to explain the atonement apart from the idea of the wrath of God or payment for the penalty for sin. This PSA view is sometimes called thevicarious atonement.

A vicar is someone who stands in the place of another or who represents another. Christ’s death was therefore ‘vicarious’ because He stood in our place and represented us. As our representative, he took the penalty that we deserve. (Grudem,Bible Doctrine,(p.254).

Indeed, as Dr. Schreiner stated, PSA is not the only teaching in scripture regarding Jesus’ death. There are truly other aspects to Jesus’ death. But the atoning death of Jesus stands alone in that it is the centerpiece of reconciling sinners to our holy and heavenly Father. Other matters that are corollary such as Christus Victor exist, but cannot serve as replacements for the central issue of PSA. We shall discus them.

The Moral Influence Theory

This view of the atonement limits Christ’s death to a radical example of His love that influences sinners morally but does not pay any price on their behalf. God’s justice demands no payment for sin. First Peter 2:21 is the primary text for this view. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example.” But just a few verses later (v. 24) Peter refers to the subsitutionary aspect of the cross, “He Himself bore our sins in his body on a tree…” Even in this primary passage regarding the moral influence of Christ’s death, it can’t stand alone without the central message of substitution.

Christus Victor

This view attempts to limit Christ’s work on the cross to the defeating of the powers of evil. Indeed, Col. 2:15 assets; “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him.” Indeed Christ’s death defeated the powers of darkness. But directly preceding this statement in verse 14, Paul points to the substitutionary aspect of the cross by stating, “By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside,nailing it to the cross.”Here as in other contexts, PSA stands in the central place.

These two views (Christus Victor and the Moral Influence Theory) are indeed presented in scripture. But they can’t stand alone. These views are only complementary to the sacrificial death of Christ. Someone over the course of my studies referred to the various presentations of the cross as a choir in which all the biblical references to the cross are harmonious. I would like to adjust the metaphor and suggest that the sacrificial death of Christ is the “soloist” and the other biblical references to the cross are “background singers” that enhance the soloist’s voice.

The Governmental Theory

This view states that there is no actual payment of sin at the cross. Rather, the cross was a public display of God’s grief because of our sin and that His government is based on law. In this view this public display of Jesus’ suffering is intended to cause people to feel sorry for their sin and repent. This view has no reference point in scripture.

The Ransom to Satan Theory

This theory was first put forward by Origen in the post- apostolic era and suggested that Satan was tricked into accepting Christ’s death in exchange for the souls of sinners, not realizing that Christ would rise from the dead. Origen based this on a misunderstanding of Mark 1:45 and 1 Timothy 2:6. In recent years this view has been revived by various Word-Faith teachers, especially Kenneth Copeland. They teach that Christ purchased a ransom for sinners by literally suffering in Hell after his death on the cross in order to render a payment to Satan (Phil Johnson).

They also teach that Jesus became a sinner in Hell, and after becoming a ransom and Satan’s tormenting of Him, Jesus became “born-again.” By this view Copeland can assert that Jesus did not pay for our sins on the cross. Jesus, the one who became a sinner in Hell after suffering there, was born again by the Father and later was raised to life on the third day. Jesus, while still in Hell became the original born-again sinner. The application point among Word-Faithers is that as Jesus was born-again, the “first born among brethren,” so also every born-again believer becomes a son of God with the same power and authority as Christ. But the whole theory is flawed because Jesus became a sacrifice to God. Satan has no rights in God’s redemptive scheme.

Paula White, a divorced Word-Faith TV personality, recently added a bizarre dimension to what Jesus did on the cross. In her new book The Seven Places Jesus Shed His Blood she refers to Jesus’ seven wounds and shamelessly asserts, for example, that “Jesus’ hands were pierced for your total dominion.” She states “If you want dominion, and want to break the spirit of poverty, sickness, disease, generation curses, God really did this for you on Calvary.” Larry Hutch, on the TV program with her, then asserts “Jesus is not the only begotten son of God. He is not. I am also a son of God for he is the first- born of many.” Like the Governmental Theory, the Ransom to Satan theory has absolutely no reference point in scripture.

Concluding Remarks

“In summary, Christ died instead of us (substitution) as a sacrifice that took away the guilt of our sins (expiation), the wrath of God (propitiation), God’s alienation from us (reconciliation), and delivered us from our captivity to the curse of the law, the penalty of sin, and the pollution of sin, (redemption)… The objectors to PSA openly dismiss the view that Christ alone, in a unique ministry, representing His people, stood in for us under the judgment of God, and by His blood atoned for us, satisfying God’s justice by his substitutionary death. Either Christ has endured God’s justice for us on the cross, or we must do so for ourselves in hell… They must assume God will accept what Paul calls ‘rubbish’ in Phil. 3:8. They shamelessly replace what Christ has done for us with what we can do for ourselves.” (David Linden)

“The bottom line is this: God does not dismiss his wrath against sin and sinners by a wave of his hand. Mercy is no magical wand that causes the holiness and justice of God to disappear. Either Jesus Christ is my substitute, has endured and suffered in himself and thereby satisfied the wrath of God I deserved, or I must do so forever in Hell.” (Sam Storms).

“…There was but one way to bring about the desired salvation which would be in harmony with God’s character, the law of God, the nature of sin and the needs of man. This one way was by the substitutionary blood atonement of the incarnate Son of God.” (Robert A. Morey,Studies in the Atonement, p.9)

End Notes: 1. http://theologica.blogspot.com/2005/schreiner-on-penal-substitutionary.html

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

There exist today hundreds of people in Christian think tanks and agencies whose whole view of ministry is to promote and induce cultural change into the church. It is called contextualization or transformation. But transformation is basically inducing change into the Christian church. Pastors who are properly trained in transformation and contextualization principles are known as transformational pastors. Pastors are also called to be “change agents.” For further reading on this topic, please refer to my earlier newsletter, entitled “Transformation Thinking for Dummies.”

The overriding feature of seeker-sensitive and transformational activities is to change the church to resemble the culture as closely as possible and thereby insure survival and success in today’s changing society. There is more to it than outward appearances. Seeker-sensitive churches low key their doctrinal statements, lest they scare away the seekers. Although doctrinal stances do not officially change, the week-by-week teaching exhibits the church as fellow travelers in the culture. The process of transformation calls not only for change but perpetual, ongoing change; in order to entice an ever-changing seeker population. Forgotten entirely these days, is the fact that God’s people are meant to be a leaven within the culture, a pocket of resistance to the foibles and ethos of the flesh. However, I suspect there are still some seekers left who expect to find something unique and noticeably different at church than in the world at large.

One area of dramatic transformation has been in congregational worship. Churches that are not even officially seeker-sensitive have introduced the style and ethos of seeker-sensitive worship. Music companies and popular Christian musicians have made the change in churches almost complete. Only resistant liturgical hard liners have escaped this particular transformation. If you question this, just listen to any Christian radio station. When some people exit a church some of them whisper to one another “That felt like a rock concert.” But that’s the point! It is Christian Rock Lite. The loud and pulsating instrumentation of first rock and then Christian rock has been wedded with new limited tune ranges and limited lyrics. If it wasn’t for the beat, many of these songs would die a natural death; and most will die quickly as they are succeeded by newer and more novel songs.

The rays of new music can be seen on the horizon. A new transformation lurks from a growing movement called the emergent church. The emergents have had enough of “ra ra” mega-church music. They eschew what they call electronic worship – they have been there and done that. Their agenda calls for a change in the church and church services, using only acoustic guitars forgoing the usual loud electronic music. The movement is scary because, being wedded to postmodern thought, they reject the Bible as the only source of truth. But in their call for reform and change, many young people are being attracted to a worship style with more subdued expression. So even as many churches don’t identify themselves as seeker-sensitive and have adopted seeker-sensitive music; so also many churches will reject the teaching of the Emergent movement but adapt their music.

The emerging churches often characterize themselves as “ancient-future.” They hope to restore the treasures of the medieval and patristic periods. At a recent emergent conference, convention goers attempted to recreate the medieval labyrinth. They passed from the fluorescent daytime of the convention hallway into the darkness of sacred space and dimly lit candles. One by one, the participants filed in to walk the ancient path of prayer. But unlike the ancients, these postmodern pilgrims carried portable CD players that guided them and provided ancient medieval prayer music for the journey. The emergents are calling for a return to ancient worship forms like candles, incense, chanting, and labyrinths (gardens of prayer are already sighted). The emergents find their following among youth and young adults, and they appear to be the next cultural elite who will be copied to varying degrees. This is simply because they represent change and the new and the novel. The shelf life of the seeker-sensitive service and borrowing of Christian Rock Lite is about over.

So! Are you ready to pack up the drum sets, electronic bass guitars and the mixing boards and trot off to Wal-Mart for candles? The emergent’s call for reform and change will grow in the ensuing years. I wish it were not true because they reject huge areas of biblical doctrine. But when you wed yourself to perpetual, ongoing change, you need to always have your bags packed.

And the Beat Goes On and On and On

In the worship wars, there is little room for negotiation. I realize that to even write briefly about it I risk stepping on mines and spiritual IED’s. I know that Scripture does not contain much teaching regarding the style of congregational worship. I also realize that congregational worship music has always drawn from the surrounding culture. But there are some guiding principles that may shed some light for us. First of all, New Testament worship seems to have been primarily with the human voice. Hymns, songs and spiritual songs are the only kind of worship referenced in the NT. The non-instrumental wing of the Church of Christ has taken this verse as normative and has historically not even used pianos and has sung a capella. That would seem extreme to most of us. However, modern congregational worship music has also moved to the extreme.

In the evangelical church, the beat goes on and on to the point where one proponent of contemporary church congregational musician announced with apparent glee that the evangelical church has now been taken over by pop music. Let me describe a city-wide night of praise and worship I attended recently. There was an orchestra, and a lady playing the keyboard. The drummer was ensconced behind a Plexiglas cage, supposedly to temper the noise, and electrical guitars were all over the place. I think it was the bass electric guitar that produced those low thumping, pulsing, booming sounds similar to when a carload of young people drives up next to you at a stop sign and you wonder where that booming sound is coming from. It’s revealing that sound mixers and drummers are advised to wear earplugs in church. One sound mixer states: “As a sound engineer in a church I wouldn’t be caught in the building without good ear plugs.” This person then expressed his concern for moms bringing young children down front during the services.

The lady who led the worship was attired in a long, flowing black gown. She literally pranced the stage as she tried to get her audience to get on with the beat. The lyrics were projected on two double jumbotrons, giving not only the lyrics, but also fast-paced scenic sights. The lyrics were limited and were repeated over and over again. Mostly they were good as far as lyrics go. So, those who say that lyrics are everything could be satisfied. Some of the lyrics were odd, however. A popular praise song depicts God dancing over us as well as believers dancing with Jesus. I can’t find the source of this either from Scripture or church history. We were all asked to stand for the entire worship time, which encompassed 45 minutes. I noticed many people were not singing. The songs were new, recently downloaded from the Integrity website, and not known to the rank and file. But the congregation dutifully kept standing and kept their hands raised lest they be seen as unspiritual. But after song after song, first the older people sat down and then one by one others sat down until only a handful were still standing. Twice relatively muted songs started up and then after 30 seconds there was a slight pause and the worship leader said: “Are you ready church? Now here were go,” and suddenly the instrumentation boomed loud as the worship leader suddenly took on the role of cheerleader.

After we had been standing well over a half an hour, a young lady appeared up front and center, attired in a dress that was made up of strips from the waist down, and began to dance. It appeared that her dance moves came from choreographed dance routines seen on TV. Her dress of strips showed her very supple and beautiful body as she went through her routine. Obviously, all eyes (especially the men) couldn’t really keep their minds on the song, but it mostly consisted of the excessively loud electronic music anyway. In the end however, thankfully they closed with “Amazing Grace.” For me, it saved the evening. The melody line of this old favorite is catching, appealing and easy to sing. The drummer and the electric guitar players sensed that they should cease, and the words poetically and clearly announced the full-orbed message of salvation. For this classic everyone stood up and sang the words with great gusto. There are hundreds of gospel songs that are in same class as “Amazing Grace”, but they have been mostly discarded. Too often I come out of services feeling a bit jarred, like I have just been to a rock concert. I come away feeling bombarded and I wonder if anyone else feels the same. But to even suggest displeasure would not be seen as good evangelical etiquette.

Recently, I was in the car and a fine Christian youth was listening to a Christian radio station. He was apologetic to us older folk, saying he knew we weren’t into it. No one could possibly hear the lyrics because of the blaring electric guitars. Apparently the initiated have learned the words so they don’t have to hear them any longer. There was basically no tune line. It sounded to me like someone endlessly laying on a car horn. But then out of the din came a very different number. It had some instrumental accompaniment, but only in the background. It was a clear and crisp voice singing the gospel song “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim.” It was more beautiful than normal because of the context. But alas! That was enough of that kind of clear praise music and it was back to the “car horn” music once again. In between these offerings there were announcements of special services at the local Baptist church, etc. etc.

Some churches still successfully present a good mix of hymns, gospel songs, choruses, and the new genre. They employ some of the familiar Scripture choruses, which are very sing-able and have great melodies. In each case, the base guitar and drums are relatively muted. Those congregations are to be commended. But all too often, in too many places, congregational music is similar to that described above.

It is the melody and the tune line that seems to be missing–the essence of a melodic song presents itself in pleasurable configurations of sounds. One musicologist asserts that there are three elements of song writing: melody, melody and melody. Scripture actually employs the word “melody” in many places. Isaiah 51:3 references “the voice of melody”, and the only text in the NT regarding congregational worship, Ephesians 5:18-19, refers to “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs”, which are intended to be “melody” in our hearts.

Psychologist Matthew Schulkind asserts that music is made up of a group of about 6 notes that encapsulates a single music idea (a melodic tune). These notes are short enough to stay in the short-term memory, and they are also complete and self-contained, just like phrases in language. Do any of you remember the radio/TV program “Name that Tune”? First, just two notes of a song were played on the piano. More notes were added until someone could “name that tune.” Since the new genre of music is very weak in melody, it would be nearly impossible to name that tune.

So how did this happen? Did some pastors and theologians get together and decide on these songs? Did the people in the pews call out for contemporary congregational music with ear-splitting drums and blaring electronic guitars? No, the driving force is money. Large financial forces market this music, and large musical corporations spend huge sums of money to promote their songs. As good marketers, they then receive a huge profit in return. In the highly competitive nature of evangelical church growth, when one successful church uses the latest music, other worship leaders clamor to not be left behind. The local music ministry, lest they appear to be behind the times, wants to keep up with the times and introduce the latest on the praise and worship hit parade.

Let’s also remember that congregational music probably was never meant to be a $4-5 billion-dollar retail bonanza. Let us never forget that drummers and electric guitar players were never meant to supplant the clear voice of believers singing in harmony. There is a place for instrumentation, but it should focus on the melody and allow people to hear the lyrics.

Finally, for whatever reason, most of the lyrics in these new songs are overly repetitive. A farmer from the country went to a big city and attended a church with a contemporary worship service. When he returned home, his wife asked him to describe the congregational singing. He thought for a moment and then said, “It’s like this: Martha, Oh! Martha, Martha Oh! Martha, the cows are in the corn, the cows are in the corn, and the cows are in the corn. Oh! Martha, Martha, Oh! Martha, Martha the cows are in the corn.” This was his impression of praise and worship in the big city.

Church music is not a theological question. But it is an important matter nevertheless. Gospel music should be a melodic expression, of more than a few repeated phrases, that includes a number of verses. Someone recently called praise and worship 7-11 music: 7 words repeated 11 times. Congregational music should also be designed for the young and old to sing together. Instrumentation should stay in the background and loudness should not be the point of the music.

Obviously, I have pretty definite opinions on the matter. Many churches have attempted to blend the old with the new and have done a great job. Not every church has imported loud instrumentation, but some have rather tried to use the best of the past and the best of the present. I am not calling for turning the clock back to the fifties. But I do think Christians old and young deserve melodic music that they can all sing together. I don’t think that loud instrumentation is the point, but the human voice should be the focus. Congregational worship music should fit within the boundaries of a psalm, a hymn or a spiritual song, with accompaniment. It should EASILY allow us to make MELODY in our hearts to the Lord.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

The above parody of Paul’s words: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” (1Cor. 3:6) is an attempt to show the linkage and progression of the Church Growth and Seeker Sensitive model of ministry in America . The Evangelical, some liberal Protestant, some Roman Catholic churches and even a few Jewish synagogues have come to rely on these method-driven paradigms to attain numerical success. For some years now evangelicals have been flexing their muscles and learning how to mix it up politically, relying on their patrons in Washington to attempt to change the culture. This obviously is very ego inflating, but all this belies the fact that pastors and leaders, desperate to increase their numbers and thus validate their ministries have with the best of intentions altered the focus of the Gospel.

The facts, however, suggest to discerning observers like David Wells and others, that like the church in Laodicea , organized evangelicalism says “I am rich, I have prospered…etc” but actually they are really “poor, blind and naked.” Presently evangelicalism is rarely attacked from the outside, for it has curried many friends in the world. But internally it is laced with widening fissures that will surely produce further fragmentation. This frenzy to grow in numbers and cultural influence has fostered a reliance on a pragmatic methodology that the church has never before known. How did we get here? It’s a long trail, but the Schuller, Hybels, and Warren nexus is what is currently driving things in that direction. Church Growth is obviously a worthy goal, but it must be pursued with absolute reliance on Jesus the Head of the church and the guidance of His word. Conversely, direct borrowing from current marketing gurus suggests loud and clear that the church has decided that reliance on Jesus, the faithful announcing of His word, the working of His Spirit and prayer just doesn’t work anymore in the post-modern competitive environment. Hence, there has developed a perceived need to shift dependence to methods and techniques that have their source in the culture, borrowed from sources that have no Christian world-view. Gone are the days of expository preaching, praying, fasting, etc. and a looking to God to give the increase. It all relates to “reliance.”What do we think will give the increase? Obviously, the church will use the tools of the culture. We all know that computers, overheads, etc. are neutral. You can use a hatchet to destroy a tree or pound a tent stake. But in the work of the Gospel we should not place our reliance on physical tools and principles (“not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord”). The problem is not in the physical tools of the culture. Rather it is reliance on ideologies and marketing schemes. Even though it is vehemently denied, ultimately, our dependence is placed in schemes and paradigms to give us the increase. Well-intentioned people depend on the well-oiled chariots of Egypt rather than to wait upon the Lord to confirm the truth of His word. Observably, our trust has shifted to imported marketing and psychological therapies abounding in the society. But when these models become what we rely upon, the focus gradually and sometimes imperceptibly shifts to these imported methods rather than the “Word of the Lord.”

Schuller pioneered the adaptation of Church Growth Principles and societal/contextualization from the foreign mission context of McGavren/C. Peter Wagner as taught at Fuller’s “ School of World Mission .” He adapted these growth principles to his own theology of self esteem and fashioned a gospel presentation to lure southern Californians into his church. He then taught this model yearly at the Crystal Cathedral pastors’ conferences. Among his most famous students were first Bill Hybels and then Rick Warren. Schuller’s creation of the Church Growth model for America was clearly a theological departure from historic evangelical doctrine. He off-loaded the doctrine of sin in order to make room for a self esteem gospel. Hybels and significantly Warren did not publicly and officially off-load theology. Rather they marginalized doctrine. They maintained an orthodox position for the record but it was put on ice in favor of personal fulfillment sermons, (posted on line for pastors to replicate to their congregations) and designed for a post-modern audience. For example the doctrine of the cross is accepted, but is then referred to only in passing and placed on the periphery. In practice their preaching is very similar to Schuller, but care is given to keep an acceptable doctrinal statement on reserve like a spare tire lest the seeker friendly message is challenged.

But all of this concern is overshadowed by the apparent reliance and dependence upon imported sociological, marketing/business and therapeutic models which then displace a robust reliance on the teaching and preaching of the Gospel and reliance upon the work of the Spirit. The method (medium) has become the message. In actual practice the mission statement replaces the word of God. God is not relied upon and is relegated to a spectator who is given a box seat to watch the church apply pragmatic schemes from the culture on His behalf. Martin Luther used a brilliant illustration that is pertinent to this discussion. He referred to a tuning fork used to arrive at middle C on a harpsichord from which all the other notes were based. For Luther, the two vibrating prongs of the tuning fork were the Word and the Spirit. The Word and the Spirit resonated together to produce a spiritual middle C from which all other spiritual notes agreed. Seeker-Sensitive enthusiasts have apparently changed the two prongs to cultural strategies on the one hand, and the churches ability to process them into numerical success on the other.

Paul in his letter to the Romans announced that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel, for IT is the power of God unto salvation.” (Romans 1:16a)

Paul also reminds Timothy that the word of God is “profitable for doctrine for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, in order that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16 NKJV).

Bible Believing Liberals – by Todd Wilken

“When a thing grows weak and out of date, it is obviously soon going to disappear. That’s also true of churches. If a church cannot change, it will eventually die.” [Rick Warren, Baptist Press, Sept 22, 2003]

“Clearly change in both liturgy and structure is inevitable, and this change will probably be radical, if not total… the forms the Church assumed in the past inevitably must die.” [John Shelby Spong, Why Christians must Change or Die, Harper, 1998, p. 198]

One of these statements comes from a famous Christian liberal and the other comes from a famous Christian conservative… which statement belongs to the conservative and which belongs to the liberal? You can’t tell, can you?

How can this be? One is against abortion, human cloning, embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage and against removing the words, “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” from the currency. The other is in favor of all these things. One calls himself “Bible-believing.” The other thinks the Bible is a myth. Yet both say that the church must change or die. Full-blown liberal Christians are easy to spot. They will tell you up front that they don’t believe what the Bible says. But what about liberals who think that they are conservative? What about the liberals who claim to be Bible- believing Christians?

Many Christians today think of themselves as conservative. They are pro-life, pro-family. They listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They watch FOX News. They vote traditional values. For the bible-believing liberal the difference between political parties is serious, but the differences between denominations are petty. While they insist on a strict literal interpretation of US constitution, they play fast and loose with the Bible and its theology.

But can you be political, socially and morally conservative without being theologically conservative? Oh, yes you can.

Meet the Bible-believing liberals. While they believe that the culture needs to return to its historic tradition, they think the Church needs to abandon hers. While maintaining that the flag should be proudly displayed, they fear that a cross in church might offend seekers…

A Contradiction in Terms

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Bible-believing liberal” is an oxymoron, right? You can’t be truly Bible-believing and be liberal at the same time. THAT is the point. You see, many Christians think of themselves as conservative Christians. But they have confused cultural conservatism with theological conservatism. Theologically these Bible-believing Christians have a lot in common with liberals… Yes, they [Bible-believing liberals] still affirm the divine revelation of the Bible in principle, but …they have adopted the liberals’ way of thinking.

The fact that so many otherwise “conservative” Christians fail to see the similarity between themselves and liberals is remarkable. The fact that so many Bible-believing liberals fail to see the disparity between their cultural beliefs and their theological beliefs is astonishing.

“While evangelicals and other conservative Protestants hold to a high doctrine of Scripture in principle, the last two decades have especially seen a growing disregard for making their sermons expositions of Scripture; rather, it’s often the case that the Bible is used as a sourcebook of quotations for what we really want to say.” Horton, [A Better Way, Baker, 2002, p.218]

You see, you can affirm Scripture’s authority in principle even while denying it in practice. Bible-believing liberals aren’t liberal in what they say about the Bible, Bible-believing liberals are liberal in how they use the Bible…

Doctrinal Minimalism and Meiderlin’s Maxim

“In all things essential: unity; in doubtful: liberty; in all things: charity.” This is a truism for many Christians today. It is often attributed to Saint Augustine . But Augustine never said it. In truth, this saying’s origins are more recent – in early German liberalism. The real author of this sentiment was a 17th century Lutheran, Peter Meiderlin who was disturbed by the doctrinal debates taking place and who thought that insistence on doctrinal purity was satanic. Meiderlin counseled a minimalist approach to doctrine: “In a word, were we to observe unity in essentials, liberty in incidentals, and in all things charity, our affairs would be certainly in a most happy situation.”

Liberal Christians have taken Meiderlin’s maxim to heart. But so have many Bible-believing Christians. When it comes to doctrine, they don’t sweat the details. And, just like liberals, when Bible-believing Christians talk about “unity in essentials” it isn’t altogether clear what those “essentials” are. Bishop T.D. Jakes was the keynote speaker for the Willow Creek’s August 2004 Leadership Summit. Jakes is a best selling author, a mega-church pastor and a popular televangelist. The only problem is that Jakes denies the biblical doctrine of the trinity. Is the Trinity “essential” or “incidental” at Willow Creek? To be sure, Willow Creek affirms the Trinity in its public statement. But remember, what Bible-believing liberals affirm in principle, they often deny in practice. Rick Warren downplays “supposed theological conflicts” between Christians. He sees them as a product of our limited knowledge of God. He dismisses such differences by appealing to how “awesome” God is:

“On earth we ‘see through a glass darkly’ so we all need a large dose of

humility in dealing with our differences. God’s ways are awesome and far

beyond human capabilities. He has no problem reconciling the supposed

theological conflicts that we debate when ideas don’t fit neatly into our

logical rational systems.”

[Rick Warren, Purpose-Driven® Preaching, Preaching, Sept/Oct 2001]

This sounds broadminded but is it really inadequate? Can God reconcile a theology that says man is totally depraved with one that says he isn’t? [i.e. Schuller]. Can God reconcile a theology that teaches faith alone with one that teaches faith and works? [Roman Catholicism]…

Don Matzat summed up the doctrinal minimalism of Bible-believing liberals well:

“Successful evangelical pastors like Bill Hybels and Robert Schuller are really no different than the successful modern liberal clergy, like Sloan Coffin and Harry Emerson Fosdick. While Coffin and Fosdick built their congregations by appealing to human reason, Hybels and Schuller ‘grow a church’ by appealing to the feelings [felt needs] and experiences of people. While the classic liberal pastor questioned on the basis of reason the truth of traditional Christian doctrine, the postmodern pastor ignores doctrine and focuses on methods which produce success.”

[Matzat, The New Liberals, Issues and Etc. Vol. 3 #2, 1998]

The Mission Justifies the Means

In 2004 Pastor James Perry made an impassioned plea to his church:

“What would it be like if we had a moratorium on issues that divide us, and spent all our time and energy focusing on reaching out to those in our world who feel like outcasts, and share God’s love with them? It is my hope that we will be more concerned about extending God’s grace than getting it right.”

[Proceedings of the General Council, UMC, Daily Editions, Vol. 4, #6]

Was Perry arguing for more evangelism? Was Perry pleading for greater mission efforts? Not really. Perry was speaking at the 2004 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Pittsburg , arguing for the full inclusion of active homosexuals in the church… Mike Horton describes this mindset well:

“Increasingly, we hear that what unites us is mission, not theology. Doctrinal diversity is encouraged, as long as we can all agree on the mission and its methods…[Horton, A Better Way , p.215]

George Barna likewise urges the Church:

“It is critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of communication: the audience, not the message, is sovereign…our message has to be adapted to the needs of the audience”… [G. Barna, Marketing the Church, NavPress, 1998, p.145]

C. Peter Wagner agrees:

“…We ought to see clearly that the end DOES justify the means. What else possible could justify the means? If the method I am using accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method…” [Wagner, Your Church Can Grow, Regal Books, 1976, p. 137]

“God Loves You” – A Gospel without Sin

John Shelby Spong, perhaps the most liberal Christian alive today, writes:

“The language of sin and atonement has emanated from Christian circles for so long that it has achieved the status of sacred mantra…Yet upon close inspection, these sacred concepts involve us in a view of human life that is no longer operative.” [Spong, Why Churches must Change, p.44]

Joel Osteen, a “Bible-believing Christian and pastor of the largest mega-church in America , says nearly the same thing in simpler language:

“We’ve heard a lot about the judgment of God and what we can’t do and what’s going to keep us out of heaven. But it is time people start hearing about the goodness of God, about a God that loves them. A God that believes in them. A God that wants to help them.” [Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now, 2004, p. 57]

And why does the perfect and holy God love us with all our faults and weaknesses? Is it because Jesus lived a perfect life and died a perfect death in our place? No! [apparently not.]

Apparently for Joel Osteen, sin is simply not a problem to God or for us. Bill Hybels, on the other hand, certainly believes that sin is a problem. But what Bible-believing liberals affirm in principle, they often deny in practice. When an internal survey of Willow Creek members revealed that “large percentages of singles” (25% of singles, 38% of single parents, and 41% of divorced individuals) admitted having illicit sexual relations in the last six months, Hybels failed to focus on the seriousness of sin:

“Hybels did not call the congregation to repent for their rebellion against a holy God. Instead he emphasized God’s compassionate love: ‘We are a love-starved people, with broken hearts that need the kind of repair that only he can give long-term…” [ Prichard , Willow Creek Seeker Services, Baker, 1996]

Yes, the members in the survey certainly have been “love-starved people, with broken hearts… All this is true, of course, but it’s not the whole truth. What’s missing? Is this gospel? We are presented as unsatisfied, unable, needy, restless, longing, wounded and fearful but not sinful. This is a gospel without sin. A gospel without sin satisfies sinners, but doesn’t save them…A gospel without sin requires a Jesus who is merely sympathetic, not our substitute at the Cross. A gospel without sin is a gospel wherein Christ crucified is unnecessary. John Spong realizes this; he has done away with the cross.

“God loves you” isn’t the Gospel. The world is full of unbelievers who firmly believe God loves them. Prichard writes in his study of Willow Creek, “all the seekers or weekend attenders I interviewed were convinced that God loves them. They held this belief before coming to Willow Creek.” [G.A. Prichard, Willow Creek Seeker Services, Baker, 1996, 2002, p. 264].

“God loves you” will not do. What unbelievers need to know is how God loves them: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice [propitiation] for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10).

We have heard liberals say it for years: “The Church must change or die. The culture calls the shots. We must re-read the Bible to fit the culture. When it comes to doctrine, don’t sweat the details. Our differences don’t matter anyway. After all, doctrine divides; it is the mission [statement] that really unites us. And when it comes to that mission, we are justified in using means we deem necessary. Remember, people just need to know that God loves them. Now we’re hearing Bible-believing Christians saying the very same things.

The old-line liberals consider the Gospel irrational: Bible-believing liberals consider it irrelevant. The old-line liberals criticized the Gospel. Bible-believing liberals are trying to give it a make-over. The old-line liberals tried to deconstruct the Gospel; Bible-believing liberals are trying to re-invent it…

Do Bible-believing liberals realize how liberal they really are? No. Are they well-intentioned? Certainly! But some of the old- line liberals were well-intentioned too…

When the Church follows the advice of liberals – Bible-believing or otherwise – the Gospel message suffers. When liberals – bible-believing or otherwise – have their way, the cross ends up obscured. When the cross is obscured sinners go unsaved.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.

John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart has been and continues to be near the top of most evangelical bestseller lists. Since its publication in 2001, it has sold over a million copies. In 2003, the Christian Booksellers Association placed this book as third among the top 50 books, number one in the “Christian Living” category. Often prominently displayed in most Christian bookshops, it has wide appeal across the country; a quick scan of Google postings shows that Wild at Heart has become a resource among most evangelical denominations and independent churches. A Wild at Heart field manual and video series are the basis of many men’s ministries; small groups around the country have recently been renamed: Imago-Dei Fellowships.

Eldredge, raised in a home where his father was an alcoholic, found employment at Focus on the Family (which now sells and promotes Wild at Heart) after his conversion. He went to see Larry Crabb, a well-known Christian psychologist, who referred him to another counselor named Brent Curtis. Eldredge and Curtis pursued their love of the wilderness and outdoor life, but in 1988 Curtis died when a mountain precipice gave way, plunging him 80 feet to his death. After Curtis’s death, Eldredge studied with Larry Crabb and others, completing a degree in counseling. He began a counseling ministry in his home, authored a number of books, and established a ministry headquarters called “Ransomed Hearts.” From there, his books and videos are promoted and he conducts seminars and wilderness retreats for men.

With this in mind, take a look at Wild at Heart. The basic contention is that God created man with a wild heart, and God did this because God Himself is wild at heart. An idea central to Eldredge’s message (and quoted from the inside dust jacket of the book) is that every man must have “a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live. That is how he bears the image of God.” Eldredge holds up Braveheart hero William Wallace as an example of a real man, in contrast to the late Mister Rogers, the soft-spoken children’s TV personality, as a weak, modem Christian man.Eldredge claims that if Christian men are going to change from a pitiful bunch of “really nice guys” to men who are made in the image of God (imago Det) they must re-examine their false presumptions about God’s character to recover their true, God-given, male identity as wild hearts. Eldredge’s message is permeated with his outdoor experiences, mixed with selected ideas gleaned from a variety of sources, including the neo-pagan offerings of several secular men’s movement writers and movies (especially, Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, and Gladiator). He combines this with loosely-interpreted Bible passages and evangelical “christianese.”

Eldredge quotes from Isaiah 63, which describes God wearing blood-stained clothes, spattered as though he had been treading a wine press. Then he writes: “Talk about Braveheart. This is one fierce, wild, and passionate guy. I have never heard Mister Rogers talk like that. Come to think of it, I never heard anyone in church talk like that, either. But this is the God of heaven and earth.” Eldredge discounts and mocks the “nice guy” who works at a regular job, and implies that a man who doesn’t rappel from rock cliffs, shoot whitewater rapids, or hunt elk is living according to his false self and not his liberated true and wild self. It is nice that Eldredge and his companions have found fulfillment living in the wilderness, but Eldredge extrapolates from his own outdoor experiences more than he should in developing his contention that God is a wild, unpredictable, risk-taking deity, that man is made in His image to be the same.

Eldredge relies heavily on stories, often taken from movies, to illustrate his message. This technique certainly does establish a common connection with his readers, but the question is in how these stories are used. In the first chapter, of his book, Eldredge uses the movie Legends of the Fall to illustrate his theme that men need to recover their true and wild self.

In the film, Brad Pitt plays Tristan, the ‘wild man’ whose immorality, criminal conduct, and selfishness leads to the deaths of several characters in the movie, ­including his own wife-as a result of his bootlegging operation. He is a godless man whose only involvement in spiritual matters is his dabbling in Native American spiritism. The two other brothers are Alfred … and Samuel… Both try to live decent and honorable lives. Samuel, however, is killed in World War 1, and Alfred becomes a responsible businessman and runs for Congress.

At the movie’s end, Tristan has gone off into the wilderness leaving his child to be cared for by his father mid surviving brothers. He eventually is mauled to death by a grisly [sic] bear, and the Indian narrator in the film applauds this tragic and senseless end as a ‘good death.’ Tristan has left nothing but destruction to all those around him-but Eldredge views him as a heroic character and claims most Christian men really wish to be like Tristan.

According to Eldredge, ‘I have yet to meet a man who wants to be Alfred or Samuel. I’ve yet to meet a woman who wants to marry one.’ Tristan, says Eldredge, ‘is wild at heart.’ If what Eldredge says is true, it is a very sad commentary on the spiritual state of those who profess to be Christians. Tristan was certainly wild at heart. But more proper descriptions of Tristan would be: pagan, uncivilized, primitive, selfish, rebellious, and barbaric. Is this a proper role model for a Christian man?” 2

Before exploring Eldredge’s thesis and theology further, it’s interesting to note that a focus on a primal, masculine Christianity is not a new ‘ idea. During the Victorian Era, a concept called “Muscular Christianity” promoted masculinity among Christian men (while traditional morality was considered to be feminine). Rather than flowing out of Scripture, Muscular Christianity (MC) was itself informed by Plato’s concept of thumos–theprimal and virtuous manly force associated with belligerent and aggressive attitudes and behaviors. At the turn of the 20th century, the British Empire, in particular, was steeped in Muscular Christianity, but MC faded away as its emptiness was exposed during the aftermath of World War 1.

All too many English-speaking Christians had sacrificed a clear presentation of the Gospel on the altar of masculinity, and what it supposedly meant to be a ‘manly man.’ We’re still paying the price for it today.

A century ago, the proponents of Muscular Christianity syncretized Christianity with Victorian culture and Platonic thought, which resulted in spiritual bankruptcy. Today, John Eldredge syncretizes Christianity with Hollywood cultural and occultic/NewAge thought and the result is the same.”3 (my emphasis]Remember that few “new and radical” ideas are truly new. Often, seemingly new teaching that is “off” is an older idea that is just repackaged and recycled.

Eldredge’s focus is flawed. Let’s shine some light selectively on two major flaws in Wild at Heart: Eldredge’s non­-Christian sources and his redefinition of biblical categories.

1. NEW AGE/PAGAN SOURCES

Much of what Eldredge presents in Wild at Heart is imported from non-biblical sources, in particular, neo-pagan writers of the secular/New Age men’s movement. He quotes these writers without pointing out their neo-pagan worldviews. From Eldredge’s writings, the unsuspecting reader would never know that these non-­Christian writers hold world-views that oppose Christianity. This is irresponsible, to say the least. Lifting certain scripture verses out of context and wrapping them around secular/pagan ideas does not “Christianize” the ideas–it only twists the Word of God, leaving men with distorted pictures of God and of themselves.

Eldredge has built his wild-heart paradigm on the works of Jungians like Robert Bly, Sam Keen, Brennan Manning, and other New Agers. Robert Bly, well-know for his book Iron Man(a best-seller, published in 1990), who could be described as a Freudian/Jungian, neo-­pagan poet, was very popular in the burgeoning secular men’s movement of the 1980s. For Bly, contemporary men have been submerged and repressed into being “nice guys” and have abandoned the old macho version of manhood. Bly’s writings, favorably quoted in Eldredge, are near the center, if not actually the core, of Eldredge’s view of what it means to be a real man with a wild heart.

Sam Keen is a self-confessed Jungian, a follower of the teachings of occultic psychologist Carl Jung who actively explored the spirit world and credited his spirit-guide, Philemon, with many of his insights. Keen, the author of the book Fire in the Belly, (which appeared about the same time as Iron Man), is also referred to favorably. Keen urges men to be fierce; Eldredge urges them to be wild.In addition to Bly and Keen, Eldredge quotes Brennan Manning as a trusted source. Manning is the author of Ragamuffin Gospel, published by the evangelical Multnomah Press. Manning is a former Franciscan monk who is now dubbed “the new monk of mystic Protestantism” by Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP). SCP is a discerrunent ministry headed by Tal Brooke, formerly a New Age pagan practitioner, but now a convert to Jesus Christ.”… John Caddock explained the heretical and pagan roots of Mannings’s religious beliefs in the spring 1998 issue of the SCP Journal. According to Caddock, Manning’s promise of intimacy with God ‘is a mixture of Eastern Mysticism, psychology, New Age theology, liberation theology, Catholicism and Protestantism. 4a

Caddock details one of Mannings techniques for achieving intimacy with God. This is called centering prayer, and it is a technique that Manning learned from Trappist Monks Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. This involves using the Zen Buddhist technique of emptying one’s mind as a way of supposedly gaining intimacy with God.

In addition, Manning teaches a new extra-biblical doctrine called “false self’ versus the authentic self, which he apparently adapted, in part, from Basil Pennington’s book True Self/False Set: ­Unmasking the Spirit Within. Manning also quotes favorably from Carl Jung…John Eldredge devotes a considerable amount of time discussing this ‘false self and ‘true self.’ It rises, says Eldredge, out of the ‘wound’ each of us receives from our father or from life’s tribulation. According to Eldredge, each man is wounded and has created for himself a ‘false self’ that is a pose directly related to the kind of wound he received. His goal is to help men become free of this false self and discover the so-called true self.” 4Back in 1991, Jackie Alnor said that Brennan Manning also discredited himself with the vulgarity he uses in his book Ragamuffin Gospel. She cited Manning’s words on page 137 of that book: “I go before the Lord. And he whispers, ‘You ungrateful turd.”‘ She also cited page 46 of his book, and then asked, rhetorically, “Does it edify the Body of Christ to read a detailed account of how the author learned to masturbate?” 5

Manning is popular and respected in the Evangelical world. He was a featured speaker this summer at the historic 70th annual Okaboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference in Iowa. Why? Why did Multnomah not only print but promote the teachings of Manning, which are a mixed brew of Eastern mysticism, psychology, and new age nostrums? Why did Word print and market Wild at Heart? Indeed, why do other publishers print and market similar books? Moreover, with this kind of material readily available and widely accepted, what can we expect of local pastors and men in the pews?

Why do sincere evangelicals, who pride themselves on being biblical, not see how unbiblical these books really are?

Christian men and women have a clear and authoritative standard, a plumbline to guide and guard their doctrine and lives:”All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,rebuking,correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV

2. REDEFINITION OF BIBLICAL CATEGORIES

It follows that if one imports into Christianity ideas that are not consistent with the biblical record, one must adapt and change biblical ideas. Eldredge does just this in many places. In order to make his case, Eldredge finds it necessary to redefine the character of God, the character of Christ, the Fall, the Gospel, and the two natures of believers.

a. THE CHARACTER OF GOD

In the opening pages of his book, Eldredge portrays God as one who loves wildness. Eldredge argues that the fierceness of certain animals (killer whales, bull mousses [sic], white sharks) and the untamed nature of certain parts of creation (the woods at night, the Great Barrier Reef) reflect the fierceness and untamed nature of God (p.29). Eldredge contends that the wildness of creation is God’s way of letting us know he rather prefers adventure, danger, risk, the element of surprise (p. 30).” 6The ferocity of nature surely reflects the post-creation Fall more than the eternal character of God. Furthermore, the biblical teaching of the eternal state has no suggestion of wildness in heaven:

“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them” – Isaiah 11:6 NIV

The violence and pain of post-creation nature will be gone forever. So how can we say that wildness is a part of God’s intrinsic nature? “What Eldredge claims about God reduces the Lord of heaven and earth to the wild man upstairs.” 7 Eldredge’s view and descriptions of God as an adventurous risk-taker may be emotionally thrilling, but this is hardly a biblical view. A risk suggests the possibility of failure. This is so very close to Open Theism teaching, also regrettably given a place in much evangelical thought today. However, if God is a risk-taker, then faith in such a god would also be a risk. Thank God that He is sovereign, always acts in agreement with His word, and that saving faith in Christ is not risky!

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. … Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Hebrews 6:19 and 11:1 NIV

b. THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST

Rut Etheridge summarizes Eldredge’s view of Christ:”Eldredge essentially summarizes his view of Christ on page 203 [Wild at Heart] by calling Him fierce, wild and romantic to the core. … Eldredge … likens Christ’s fierceness to that of movie heroes such as William Wallace from Braveheart. … Is Christ wild? Since Christ is in absolute control of all things (Mark 4:39-41), the term ‘wild’ just does not apply to Him. Further, when we examine the distinctive personhood of Christ and His Messianic role, we see not wildness, but pure and complete submission. Jesus said and did only what the Father wanted Him to (John 8:28, 29; Philippians 2:7, 8), and He lived in complete submission to the Law (Matt 5:17, 18). … Sure, Christ railed against Pharisaical hypocrisy and drove the moneychangers from the temple, but are those things really indicative of wildness … or self-controlled, passionate obedience to the Father? How can the very personification of meekness, humility, and absolute power be considered wild?” 8

Our Lord Jesus Christ said,”Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”–Matthew 11:29 NIV

c. THE FALL AND THE GOSPEL

Eldredge fast-forwards past the traditional view of the Fall-mankind’s sinful rebellion against God’s authority, resulting in death. For Eldredge, the Fall amounts to being wounded deep in one’s spirit-his version of the Fall is echoed in his recurring theme of woundedness from one’s earthly father. Eldredge assumes that all men have been, in some way, wounded by their fathers-in his case, those wounds would be from his own alcoholic father. Even though this “father-woundedness” is obviously not one’s own fault, it nevertheless needs healing. Thus, it is not surprising that, for Eldredge, the purpose and mission of Christ is to come and heal us of something that is not our fault. This distorts the purpose of Jesus’ death. Jesus Christ came to save his people from sin and from the sins for which they are each personally culpable.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities…–Isaiah 53:5 NIV

According to Eldredge, Christ comes to restore man’s supposed true masculinity–to save their good, true, and wild hearts from the overweening Milquetoast within them. Eldredge drains the blood from the true and revealed meaning of the Atonement so that he can apply this “atonement” to his own felt­ needs, identified by the neo-pagan authors he references. Man, made in God’s image (imago-dei), was born to be wild and free according to Eldredge; the Fall, then, is that man has been domesticated and tamed. This tamed self is what Eldrege calls the “false self.” This “false self is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise” 9 that turns men into posers. For Eldredge the biblical concept of the “flesh” is a poser and not the real you. The secret of manhood is to slough off the false self and restore the wild and free identity that is an image, a copy, of God’s wild and fierce nature.”

He [Eldredge] develops a theology of not ‘the devil made me do it’ but ‘my poser/girlie-man/false self made me do it.’ … But given the psychologically ­drenched, pop-culture fueled, theologically-shallow immaturity of most weak-kneed evangelicalism, it seems odd to remind guys that they aren’t really so bad. Doesn’t the publishing house have a theologian on retainer to check for this sort of shoddiness? (Well … this is the same publishing house that brought us Gwen Shamblin and Benny Hinn, fudging on silly little notions like the Trinity.” 10

For Eldredge, then, the cross is not a propitiation for the sins of the world, but the release of men from their false selves.

d. THE TWO NATURES

Mr. Eldredge says, ‘The real you is on the side of God against the false self.” This odd psychobabble apparently presuming a neo-Jungian, Blyian view of the self, leads Eldredge to confuse what classic theology calls our two natures.” 11

Eldredge never tells us to put to death the flesh (so very much like a selfish wild hearty-an absolute contradiction of biblical teaching, which shouldn’t get a pass from or get past those who hold Scripture to be authoritative. Mr. Eldredge should take Peter’s advice into his wild heart:

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled, set your hope fully on the grace to be given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” –I Peter 1:13-14 NIV

Finally, in addition to an over-reliance on illustrations from movies, Wild at Heart addresses men as though they all have the same temperament and interests, namely those of the author. Eldredge absolutizes his own outdoor experiences as being normative and a restoration of the image of God in man. Men who don’t particularly enjoy repelling or hunting (or movies for that matter) can be true heroes living noble and respectable lives; some have even died noble martyrs’ deaths.

Rut Etheridge observes:

“We live in a day and age in which sincerity is valued more than truth … Undoubtedly many have benefited from Wild at Heart, but at what cost? To buy completely or even partially into the core principles of this book is to abandon crucial aspects of biblical Christianity for an ill-conceived masculine self-realization. A work cannot be judged by its superficial benefits; after all, many cults boast of happy families and fulfilled lives, but they are rooted in false teaching and thus are deceiving those who look to them for help. We must look beneath the surface to the biblical integrity of a work or movement to determine its true value, and Wild at Heart is sorely lacking in biblical integrity. …

Of those who would view this critique as unnecessary and harmful, I ask, Can something be truly helpful if it is not based on and guided by God’s truth? …

Another more fundamental question must also be asked. If something is not true according to the Scriptures, should we as Christians want anything to do with it, regardless of how much we think we get from it? If the price of our happiness is the violation of God’s Word, and we are willing to pay that price, then [sic] we have revealed ourselves as worshippers not of God, but of ourselves. …

I hope, as worshippers ol’ the One who is the way, the truth, and the life, that we cling to that truth no matter what falls apart around us, and in so doing prove that we love our Savior and His Word more than we love ourselves. God has given us what we need to know from Him in Scripture, and if we would just take the time to truly know His word, we will … find the true help and healing we need. Men will learn how to be real men, women how to be real women, and we will be working toward a goal beyond our own personal feeling of fulfillment. …

We’ll be working toward the goal to which every Christian aspires, the glorification of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” 12

In our culture and in the Church there is undoubtedly an unhealthy feminizing trend and Christian men do need to be Christian men. That being said, the way for Christian men to accomplish this is NOT to turn to non-Christian or un­-Christian secular sources, but to study Scripture for a clear understanding of what it means to be a Christian man yesterday, today, and in the future.

“And this is my prayer. that your love may abound more and more In knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-4o the glory and praise of God.” –Philippians 1:9-11 NIV

1 Douglas LeBlanc, “Wildheart” Christianity Today, Vol. 48, No. 8, August 2004, p. 34. (B22) Wild at Heart, p. 12.
2 Don Veinot and Ron Henzel, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. Journal “Wildly Unbiblical” Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 2003, p.6.
3 Ibid.
4 Veinot & Henzel, p. 7
4a John Caddock, “The New Monk of Mystic Protestantism,” Spiritual Counterfeits Journal, Spring 1998.
5 Jackie Alnor, “Multnomah Press: Covering up for False TeacherBrennanManning” p.2
http://cultlink.com/sentinel/multnomah.htm
6 Rut Etheridge III, “God in Man’s Image, A Critique of John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart” p.1
http://www.churchofthegoodshepherd.info/WAHcritique.htm
7 Etheridge, p.3
8 Etheridge, p. 6.
9,10 Byron Borger, “John Eldredge’s Wild Heart: A Critique,” p. 5of9
Coalition for Christian Outreach http://www.ccojubilee.org
11 Borger, p.8of 9
12 Etheridge, p. 9.

The Truth of False Teachings

For more about the “whistle blowing” ministry of 4 Truth Ministry, please see our About page as well as our False Movements page which lays out several false teachings/teachers found within evangelicalism.

Another great “whistle blowing” ministry is Christian Research Network.