Mysticism (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

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The Rise of Mysticism in the Church

Welcome back to No Compromise Radio Ministry. We're here for another half hour talking about all kinds of issues that are biblical, provocative, stimulating, controversial, and propositional. How about that?

My name's Mike Abendroth. You can always email us at info at nocompromiseradio .com, or you can find your way to our website at wvne .net. Today, I'd like to talk about something that's an interesting phenomenon, a predictable phenomenon, but I wanna talk about mysticism.

I think there's mysticism everywhere you look these days, not just outside the church, not just in India, but in America too. Furthermore, mysticism has found its way into the fabric, into the nooks and crannies of mainline evangelicalism.

And so this mysticism of a Hindu flavor, similar to Obi-Wan Kenobi when he said, "'The force is an energy field created by all living things. "'It surrounds us, penetrates us. "'It binds the galaxy together.

"'It is all powerful and controls everything.'". I think Obi-Wan Kenobi was almost a prophet of how Hindu-like mysticism has controlled evangelicalism. In the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda explained to Luke Skywalker how the force works, quote, "'For my ally is the force, and a powerful ally it is.

"'Life creates it, makes it grow. "'Its energy surrounds us and binds us. "'Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. "'You must feel the force around you, here, between you, "'me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.

"'Yes, even between the land and the ship.'". And so when we take a look at that, we listen to it and we enjoy the movie, but we think, you know, kids, we don't buy into the New Age guru Hindu stuff. But evangelicalism, when it has Hinduism in it, or mysticism in it, it's a little tougher to spot because it's wrapped up in the garb of Christian terms.

And so what we do today is we look at mysticism. Are you a mystic? What is mysticism? Should you even care? I think you'll be quite interested as we move along the program today. One of the earliest mystics in the Christian church is known by his name, Pseudo-Dionysius.

And here's what he taught. The soul must lose the inhibitions of the senses and of reason. God is beyond the intellect, beyond goodness itself, and it is through unknowing and the discarding of human concepts that the soul returns to God and is united with the ray of divine darkness.

It is through unknowing. That's a very fascinating quote, but not much different than Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century, who took the Song of Solomon and turned this erotic love story between a man and a woman, turned it around to a story about God and man and described the moment of union as the time when the believer is kissed with the kisses of his mouth.

And so it's full bore. Meister Eckhart, Juliana of Norwich, Thomas A. Akempis, Teresa of Avila Hill, they're all mystics. And today we have people like Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Brennan Manning doing the same kind of things.

I have to give my hat tip to Gary Gilley. He has some excellent things written on that and lots of quotes that I found are directly in his work. Christian mysticism. I think this is something that you need to watch out for when Quaker minister Richard Foster writes this book called Celebration of Discipline, The Path to Spiritual Growth, you need to watch out for that kind of book.

When Christianity Today says that's one of the 10 best books of the 20th century, you need to watch out. Can you imagine that readers of Christianity Today voted Richard Foster's mystical book, Celebration of Discipline, the third most influential book after the Bible?

And you've got a book here called the Celebration of Discipline, quoting Merton, M-E-R-T-O-N, quoting other Roman Catholic mystics. Merton, he was a guy who was just head over heels in love with Buddhism and he had no problem seeing Buddhism and Christianity side by side.

Foster considered Merton contemplative prayer, quote, a must book. Merton has perhaps done more than any other 20th century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood, end quote. So I think we want to be careful.

Why Mysticism Rejects the Sufficiency of Scripture

Mysticism at its core has a dissatisfaction. It promotes a dissatisfaction with the word. Today there's a modern day love affair, even with the Manhattan Declaration, with the Roman Catholic Church. And that love affair starts with the doctrine of salvation.

It moves to the doctrine of sanctification. And then now it's moved to the doctrine of prayer. Evangelicals can't run fast enough to Roman Catholics and their mystic view of prayer. And words like the divine center, the divine opening, the dark night of the soul, keeping journals to listen to the thunder of God's silence, these kind of things need to make you say, I better watch out.

When people talk about our rational faculties are inadequate and spirit touches spirit, small s is touched by capital S spirit, we need to be careful. And so when this book comes out, it's promoted by Wheaton College Professor of Theology, Robert Weber, we need to be careful.

He said, over the past two decades, my own personal spiritual pilgrimage has taken me away from the propositional and rationalistic mindset that proclaims an intellectualized, proof-oriented faith towards a Christianity of practice and experience.

To me, that's a sad statement. That is a very sad statement because Richard Foster in his book, in the original 1978 edition, Celebration of Discipline, he said, Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it.

And I don't think you'll see that anywhere in the writings of Solomon, the psalmist, Moses, Jesus, Paul. That's not exactly how they would write, would they? No, not at all. Listen to this technique for contemplative prayer.

I find it best to sit in a straight chair with my back correctly positioned in the chair and both feet flat on the floor. Place the hands on the knees, palms up in a gesture of receptivity. Sometimes it is good to close the eyes to remove distractions and center the attention on Christ.

At other times, it is helpful to ponder a picture of the Lord or to look out at some lovely trees and plants for the same purpose. I want to send out a warning. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

Here's the warning. Watch out for that kind of stuff and get off that bandwagon if you're on that bandwagon. Brennan Manning in the book Signature of Jesus says, the first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer.

Wow, did you just hear that? The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer. So you would be praying to, you would be praying about, you would be talking to your own navel? I don't think so.

Your own gizzard? I doubt it. When you talk to God, it's called prayer and it's not called prayer if you're not talking to God. The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer, Manning says.

Contemplative spirituality tends to emphasize the need for a change in consciousness. We must come to see a reality that's different. Choose a single sacred word. Repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, often.

Enter into the great silence of God. Alone in that silence, the noise within will subside and the voice of love will be heard. So what you're gonna do is forget thinking about God. Forget being controlled by the word as you contemplate God and then begin to be silent.

And I'll tell you, when people are silent in prayer, they begin thinking about themselves and their own hearts and their own feelings and the depravity of man will take over like a tsunami. So let's choose a single sacred word.

So we don't wanna use the word God because we can't think about God. And so we'd like to pray better. And by the way, everyone struggles with prayer and so this is the easy way out to be some kind of mystic instead of the hard work of prayer.

And so you choose a single sacred word. What would be a single sacred word that you could repeat inwardly, slowly, and often? Since this is radio, I'll have to promote it outwardly, say it outwardly, because if I do it inwardly, you'll just change the channel.

So let's just think of a word. What word might we think of? How about communion, communion, communion, communion, communion, communion. I don't know about you, but I'm getting quite sleepy. This head cold is not helping either.

It's just ludicrous. It's dumb, it's infantile, it's immature, and it is unbiblical and it is selling like hotcakes. It is selling like sweet potato pie does in the South with pecans and whipped cream on top.

Mysticism in Youth Ministry and the Emergent Church

1990s Youth Specialties is a youth organization and they teamed up with San Francisco Theological Seminary for a three-year test to do a new kind of youth ministry. After all, the Bible, discipleship, we don't want to do that kind of boring old youth ministry.

So we want contemplative prayer practices in youth ministry. And they actually got an endowment by the Lilly Endowment Fund. Mike Iaconelli, co-founder of Youth Specialties, he wanted to work on this and so he read a book by Henry Nowen and off they went.

And so it's just everywhere. Greg Boyd has written a similar book, Seeing is Believing, this kind of visualization. Boyd's thesis is, quote, It's not what we believe intellectually that impacts us, it's what we experience as real.

He gave an example like this, quote, And so now God actually is talking and saying things like that to Boyd as people like Boyd and Manning and Foster abandon the word of God. It's like taking water out of a boat with a bucket and just throwing the word of God overboard.

And that's exactly what the emergent church does. Brian McLaren says, We must therefore never underestimate our power to be wrong about God when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry.

So all that you've learned from the Bible, never underestimate the power of thinking about God the wrong way. And so what happens is when you think about God outside revelation, you look in the scriptures and you say, no, I want to consider God a different way, my way.

I don't like that kind of God. I like an extra love God. I like a God who wants to be a sweet commuter with me, the mother of all wisdom kind of God. I don't want a God who's righteous, always righteous, immutably righteous.

He's holy, always holy, immutably holy. I have my own God. There's a word for that, and that word is called idolatry. God is very strict about what he wants you to think about God. And when you think about God in a way that's not found in the Bible, you need to repent of that.

That's why regular Bible reading is good. So you think about God from a biblical perspective, from a divine perspective. Idolatry is a sin. It should not be popular. It should not be cool. Francis Schaeffer said, the true fool's mission is escape from reason.

That's exactly right. This is foolish. Once you abandon truth, true truth, you are done. Mysticism is a way of having an experience religiously that does not require any kind of intellectual, theological, biblical definition.

And so when you see things about, well, old truth, propositional truth, Bible truth, they cloak it in a wonderful way so you don't say it as overtly. But when they say you want something new and novel and exciting, you better watch out.

Schaeffer went on to say, all the new theology and mysticism is nothing more than a faith contrary to rationality, deprived of content and incapable of communication. And so how can you communicate non-propositional truth?

I don't think you can because you have to experience it. And so we want to be careful that when it comes to mysticism, that we relegate mysticism to where it should be relegated to and that's in the waste management dumpster, not even to be recycled.

When you abandon truth, you abandon the way you think about God, you abandon the means you have for spiritual maturity because God's word is truth. Sanctify them, Jesus said in truth, thy word is truth.

And when you throw out the word, you throw out your sanctification. We're to look at this with a biblical discernment like those at Berea who were commended for their discernment and like those at Thessalonica who were commanded to examine everything carefully.

David Wells says, the heretics of old, one suspects would be sick with envy if they knew of the easy pickings that can now be had in the church. You don't want to be easy pickings now, do you? You don't want to be someone who is caught up in some kind of new age mysticism, some kind of Bible study that disdains and hates and looks down upon rational intellectual understanding.

Am I looking for only intellectualism with no emotions, with no feelings? I, of course not, but feelings have their place and that is the caboose to the mind. You've been given a mind and a will and those things will control the way you feel, not the other way around.

One man said, mysticism presses beyond the external forms of a religion to an attempt to direct knowledge of God. That's right, forget seeing God's power in nature, forget knowing about God intimately in Scripture.

We'll bypass those because we want to know Him directly. Mysticism is bad for that reason. It denies sola scriptura. It denies that God has finished speaking to His people because God has finished in the Bible and we've gone for 2 ,000 years without God speaking.

God doesn't need to speak to His people anymore. The Bible, in other words, is sufficient, isn't it? It's certain, it's sure. Do we really have everything we need in the canon of Scripture? If the answer is yes, you don't need mysticism.

If you believe that the Bible is exhaustive and authoritative, final, reliable, then you don't need mysticism. Our church constitution has this statement of faith and that's from the 1689 London Baptist Confession which says, the sum total of God's revelation concerning all things essential to His own glory and to the salvation and faith and life of men is either explicitly set down or implicitly contained in the Holy Scripture.

Why do you want to look for something more? And I would say, A, laziness, B, a desire for something novel. When you abandon the Word of God as final, authoritative, sufficient, and complete, you open the door to mysticism.

You open the door to a mystic view of the world. There are only two kinds of religions. Basically, a religion that comes from you. You think about who God is based on your own feeling, experience, intuition, contemplative nasal gazing, and that's called mysticism.

Or there's a religion that's called Christianity where we have a revealed, rational source of truth and that is from God, outside of ourselves. See, we are fallen. Our heart is desperately wicked. We can't know it.

So why do we want to know God through our own heart? We're to trust God with all our heart and lean not on your own understanding like contemplative prayer. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He'll direct your paths.

That's Proverbs chapter three. Our only reliable sure guide that contains power is the scripture. And if you're battling sin and temptation with contemplative prayer, you're up against panzers with a rubber band.

You're not going to win. Everywhere you go, you see a shallow, insipid, dumbed-down Christian church. And in those churches, you see shallow, insipid, dumbed-down Christians who can't stand up to temptation, who act carnally and who imbibe wild at heart, prayer of Jabez, purpose-driven life, and everything else that comes down the pipe.

Just like a goose would be force-fed some kind of grain for pate, these church pastors, quote-unquote, force-feed their people all this nonsense. And so we shouldn't be surprised, I guess. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.

So you want to be careful. You don't want your ears tickled with truth. You want them boxed with the truth and burned with the truth and changed as they hear the truth. Be careful of mysticism. Sadly, misery loves company, and so does the sin of heaping up false teachers like these mystics.

We want to be careful. There are many rebellious men, empty talkers, and deceivers, Paul said to Titus. And it is a pastoral concern I have that people are abandoning truth. When you open up your heart to internal subjectivism, that means there's no real truth.

Almost every day of my life, maybe every week of my life, I hear someone say, God told me something outside of Scripture. I just heard it on the radio today, and it's amazing. We'd all say, when someone says, truth is not objective and it doesn't exist, Shirley MacLaine, everybody would pounce on that.

We'd all say, oh, she's wrong. But this whole God told me, when God never said anything out loud, he never wrote anything, he didn't send a messenger, it's just somebody's own feelings, we really are in trouble.

It's no different than the LSD guru, Timothy Leary, who said, reality is whatever you make it. God speaking to me is in whatever way I want him to. Reminds me of Crosby, Stills, and Nash song, Love the One You're With.

And here it's love yourself so much, you make yourself out to speak for God. You make yourself speaking for God. That is horrible. One man called that fish and chips theology. I'll fish around and everyone chips in, including your own depraved self.

And so we wanna make sure we're very, very careful that we don't allow mysticism to influence us. And now, here comes the drum roll. One of the most popular yet covert ways mysticism can come into the church is through Beth Moore.

Yes, you heard me right, through Beth Moore. Now, of course, you always have to have caveats in radio and on the blog so you're not unloving. Many things Beth Moore says are true. I don't think she's a word faith heretic like Joyce Meyer is.

I think Beth is a saved woman, she's a Christian, she has a dynamic personality, but she has bought in to mysticism. She has bought in to mysticism. Forget that she teaches men, she ought not to teach men.

By the way, her mysticism has allowed her to teach men in contradiction to 1 Timothy 2. She says on her website in response to the 41105 teaching men thing, I handed over the problem to my pastor and under his authority, he said to allow anyone to come who chooses.

I have wrestled with this and the Lord finally said to me. So first of all, the pastor says, you know what, it's okay to sin, Beth. And then second of all, the Lord said to me, I tell you what, Beth, you worry about what I tell you to say and I'll worry about who listens.

That's mysticism. How do you get around the commands of scripture? Clear commands of scripture, bold commands of scripture. You just ignore it. Well, I guess you could do that. You could just say, well, God told me.

What if I were to tell you God told me he didn't say that to Beth? And so Beth should have said, thank you for coming to the class. It's an honor for me, but a dishonor for God and I cannot teach until you leave and God bless you.

That would have solved the problem, but God has told her. Beth Moore in her Be Still DVD talks about Exodus 33 and she says that every church believer today can have their own tent of meeting where you can have a two-way conversation with God.

Quote, it says, all of them could have approached, but as Moses approached, they would stand back and watch. The Lord would speak to Moses face-to-face as a man speaks with his friend. That is part of contemplative prayer.

When we sit back and realize that it is not just that we have something to say to God, it's that God has something he has to say to us. I wanna be in that tent of meeting. Well, I do if it was the real tent of meeting, but the own made-up tent of meeting means extra revelation now and mysticism.

This is mystic. We have to be very, very careful. You don't wanna buy into that. Beware of people who teach the Old Testament. That's what you need to be careful of, especially when they don't understand authorial intent, especially when you don't say to yourself, what does God mean when he wrote those things?

We need to be careful of those who go to say, well, you can have your own tent of meeting. No, you cannot have your own tent of meeting. Back to Beth Moore, she thinks every believer can have their own private, non-literal tent of meeting where God comes and speaks directly to them.

That claim is fallacious. That claim is false. That claim is not true. Moses was the unique mediator under the Old Covenant. And God said to Moses in Deuteronomy 18, this is according to all that you ask of the Lord, your God at Horeb on the day of your assembly, saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God.

Let me not see this great fire any more lest I die. And the Lord said, they have spoken well. In the context there, God is prohibiting divination. God is the one who says, I speak through Moses. And when there's a new prophet who's going to come, you listen to them.

And in Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well and the Lord heard it? The issue is, oh, we want to hear too. God speaks through everybody.

And you know what happened to Miriam? It wasn't too nice. It wasn't too good because it was bad. You need to stay away from mysticism. God speaks to you in the Bible alone through nature's power and the Bible.

Beware of the mystic inside of you.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

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