Mysticism Run Amuck

Mysticism as Frantic Spirituality and Its Spread into Christianity

Alright, well tonight I'd like to talk about mysticism and I've entitled the message tonight Mysticism Run Amok. Amok just basically means frenzied. It's aggressively taking over basically the world including Christianity and when it comes to mysticism it's easy to spot when it comes in Hindu forms.

You'll know these forms when Obi-Wan 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 control everything and it would be easy for us to say that kind of mysticism, Hinduism, new age stuff is bad.

We'd all acknowledge that. We'd also know it would be bad in the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda said to Luke for my ally is the force and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow.

It's 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 we would all say that's just, it's just dumb, it's stupid, we don't go for that.

But it is harder to see mysticism when it's cloaked in Christian verbiage, when it puts on the clothes and the livery of Christianity. For instance, Bernard of Clairvaux. It's a little harder when you critique him because he's talking about the Song of Solomon and how God loves man and how God kisses, God as it were, and God kisses man with the kisses of his mouth and you go into St. Francis of Assisi, it's a little bit harder.

But it is the most difficult to try to find mysticism when it's in evangelical circles. Gary Gilley has done a great study and he's basically said that mysticism, Christian mysticism was injected into Christianity in about 1978, modern day times, Christianity was injected into Christianity, mysticism was injected into Christianity by Richard Foster who wrote a book called Celebration of Discipline, The Path to Spiritual Growth.

Anybody know the book? It's very, very popular. Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline. Christianity Today said it was one of the top 10 books, you'll like this, Steve, of the 20th century. And those who read Christianity Today were polled and they said it was the third most influential book after the Bible.

And so here it comes mainstream. Mysticism comes mainstream and you have Richard Foster doing all kinds of crazy things. One quoting this guy named Thomas Merton and saying, you know, Thomas Merton, when it comes to prayer, he had it right.

Thomas Merton, I don't know if you know him, is the one who said Buddhism and Christianity are exactly the same, whichever one you like is fine by him. And so Foster said Merton's book on prayer was a must book.

And he said perhaps, quote, he has done more than any other 20th century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood. And so now you've got Christianity Today and these other well-known authors starting to inject some of this mysticism into the mainstream of Christianity.

So much so, Wheaton College, who knows Wheaton College? Many know Wheaton College. Professor Robert Weber at Wheaton College said about Richard Foster, 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.

I can't understand Christianity with propositional truth statements. I have to kind of understand Christianity in this contemplative prayer is what they'll call it. What is contemplative prayer? Do you contemplatively pray?

Well, if that's to use your mind, that's one thing. But here's how you contemplatively pray. According to Richard Foster, the third most influential book of the readers of Christianity Astray, excuse me, Today, always gets a laugh.

It is Christianity Today, though. You want to know what Christians are thinking today? Read Christianity Today. Here's 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's 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.

What you do is you say, well, so far, I kind of get that. See, that's the trick of this mysticism. But when I tell you this next statement, you're going to go, I can't believe it. Foster loves Brennan Manning.

And in the signature of Jesus book by Brennan Manning, Roman Catholic mystic. Here's what he says when it comes to contemplative prayer. This is the first thing you need to do. So if you really you're tired of the old book and black and white propositional truth, antithetical statements, right and wrong, black and white, all this doctrine, you just want to know Jesus better.

Here's the first step. Quote, the first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer. Robert said, that's deep. Oh, that's deep. Contemplative prayer, he said, tends to emphasize the need for a change in consciousness.

I don't even know what he means by this. We must come to see a reality differently. Choose a single sacred word. Repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly and often and enter into the silence of God. And people like the ex-professor at Bethel Seminary, Greg Boyd, has bought into all this as well.

Sometimes he says, I rest with the Lord and he might say something to me unexpected, like, are you ready for more of my freedom? Friends, when you abandon this objective black and white word, you are in big trouble.

When you say our mind can't get our thoughts around God to any degree, you have sunk the ship. You may say, like with Francis Schaeffer, I can't know God exhaustively, but I can know him certainly. I can know him truly.

You don't want to do this Christian meditation. And so tonight what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about Christian mysticism. I don't want you to buy the trap that Malcolm McLaren, pardon me, Brian McLaren.

Malcolm McLaren was a rock star manager. How is he in my brain? He is. He was. Brian McLaren, we said, 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, I don't want you to do that.

I think as Francis Schaeffer said, it is a fool's errand, a fool's mission to escape from reason. So tonight I'd like to warn you about some of the dangers found in mysticism. One of the things that will happen to you if you're into mysticism, you will move away from the scripture and you will move away from sanctification.

Sanctification Through the Word and the Need for Discernment

Let's turn to John 17 just for a moment. Why as a pastor would I want you to be in the word and not in some kind of contemplative prayer thing? If you want to think when you pray, fine, but that's not what I mean by contemplative prayer, emptying your mind.

That's mysticism. That's new age mysticism. I want you to not reject the truth, but to embrace it because I don't want you to be a spiritual dwarf. I don't want you to be a Christian midget theologically.

When God sanctifies us, he sanctifies us through the word. What does John 17, 17 say? Sanctify them in truth. What? Thy word is truth. If you'd like to grow, your growth is directly, let me state that again, directly proportionate to the intake of the word as the spirit of God applies it to you.

Secondly, I don't want you to have a lack of discernment. Discernment is something that's good. David Wells said, quote, 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.

If you don't know the word and you're just off contemplating your navel, you're in big trouble. You say, well, you know, you talk about mysticism. You talk about all these words. I don't even know what mysticism is.

Can you please give me a definition of mysticism? Here it goes. Lewis Brown, this is for you. Mysticism. It begins with a mist and ends with a schism. Sorry. Okay. What is mysticism? John MacArthur said the mystic disdains rational understanding.

And here's the definition right here. And seeks truth instead through the feelings, the imagination, personal visions, inner voices, private illumination, and other purely subjective means. Mystics say I don't know truth because it is revealed and given from God, a source outside of me.

Mysticism says truth is on the inside of me. I can know truth from the inside out. It is human religion from the inside, not a response to divine revelation. And I think the Bible is sufficient. I think the Bible is everything we need.

I think it is certain. I think it is sure. I think we have everything we need. So why do we go elsewhere? Why do we want something more? And when you give up this book, you give up everything. One man said, once a congregation or a person sees scripture as less than the final, complete, infallible authority for life and faith, it has thrown open the door to absolute chaos.

And when we go inside, there's a lot of problems. One being we're fallen. Two being we shouldn't trust ourselves. So we need to make sure that Christianity has always, I'll say it again, has always rested its foundation on external truth, external authority, never internal.

It has never said I've had an experience and therefore it's true. It has said this is the truth and I evaluate everything through that paradigm of truth. Turn to Mark chapter 12 for a moment and I want to show you a very powerful passage.

And I say the word powerful on purpose. As the pastor, I want to just force you to stick to the word and stick close to it. And as a congregation, you do. I'm very pleased for that. Listen to what Jesus said in Mark chapter 12, verse 24, and how Jesus is affirming and confirming something very important to us.

And as MacArthur says, he almost affirms it in a backhanded way. Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are mistaken that you do not understand the scriptures or the power of what? God. As you understand the scriptures and the truth of God, you experience his power.

And here's where everything comes together for me. Those who say I want something new because the Bible isn't enough. Can I just throw it out there in hyperbolic pastoral terms that are kind of maybe sound a little mean?

Here's the reason why people do it. If it's not out of ignorance, it's out of laziness. When you don't want to dig in the word, when you don't want to be a workman who's not ashamed, and you want to know about God and experience God, and you don't want to put in the work, you'll go inward because it's easy.

You don't have to study and mine and dig and look up and try to figure out, well, it's in a different historical context, different geographic context, different language context, different everything context.

I just want to sit here and just kind of think about something. It is pure laziness. And now you take someone's laziness and then you add on top of it demonic deception. This is a recipe for trouble. For trouble when people are so lazy they don't want to study and you know Satan's prodding them on, you're in big trouble.

And here's what I also think as I'm just thinking out loud. When you take Christianity in general now, the fluff, Christianity fluff, it's all full of sugar, it's really not good for you, and you put in whatever fluff book you want, Wild at Heart, Purpose Driven, Prayer of Jabez, and you read these things and they're not full of the word at all, you eat them and it's like Chinese food.

Soon you want more food, right? At least that's what happens with me. I eat Chinese and I'm hungry again. You can't eat fluff morning, noon, and night without saying eventually, I'm kind of hungry, right?

And so you think these books kind of have the Bible, Christianity gobbles them down left and right, and then they realize, I'm still hungry, so where do I go? These books say they have the Bible. It must not be enough, so I'll go within myself.

These books have every chapter of Purpose Driven Life, starts with a verse of the Bible, and then you dig into it and you realize, you know what? This is empty, it's a fad, it didn't help me, it doesn't help me with anything in my life, and so I need to go someplace else.

And so instead of turning to the real word, which causes a lot of work to be done, they turn to themselves in mysticism and then try to say it's holy. Paul knew all about this in 2 Timothy 4, for the time will come when they will what?

Not endure sound doctrine. So you've got our own craving, our own laziness, and then demons coming to help. Let's turn there for a second, 2 Timothy 4, please. 2 Timothy 4, verse 3, I read a book by Jay Adams recently, and he said, some people in the congregation said, say, pastor, you know what?

You don't feed me with your sermons. You don't feed me with your sermons. And Jay Adams said, well, you know, I preach the Bible, maybe not as well as other people do, but I try to be faithful to the Bible.

And he said, here's what you want. You don't want me to feed you, you want me to spoon feed you. These people here want to be spoon fed things that they love. You know, it's the preach the word passage.

And then in verse 3, for the time will come when they will not endure hygienic sound doctrine. Who wants doctrine, doctrine schmachten? We don't want that. We want to have our ears tickled, say smooth things, nice things.

You're wonderful. Best life now, all these things. So what do you do? If you've got a guy that keeps giving you the Bible all the time, and you want to have your consciences smoothed over and assuaged, you've got to get rid of Bible preacher, and you've got to hire what?

Man after your own choosing. And they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires. They can't endure sound doctrine. They don't want to hold on to it. It gets tiring to grab with your hands and squeeze really tight.

And you show your white knuckles and you think, you know, I don't want to grab hold of that anymore. It's too hard. I want something else. I don't want something sound. It's diseased. And I want to be tickled and smooth and soothed.

Something new. It's like in Jeremiah 5, an appalling, a horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority. And my people love it so. And as snow accumulates in a big storm, so too does the snow of bad doctrine come flying down in the form of teachers.

They accumulate teachers. They're in piles. They're in hordes. You know, I don't get cable TV. Sometimes I wish I would, but it's just more accumulation for bad teachers, bad channels. So many false teachers.

Misery loves company. So does the sin of heaping up teachers. Heaping, piling on. I like what Vincent said. Teachers of all kinds swarm like the flies in Egypt. The demand creates a supply. The hearers invite the shape and shape their own preachers.

If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf maker is readily bound. Bound. Like ants to the sugar are drone bees to the queen. Verse four says, and they'll turn their ears away from the truth, the truth, propositional, rational truth from the outside revealed by God, and they'll turn aside to myths, whether they made them up in their own hearts or somebody else made them up.

They want something new. They want something packaged better. They've got to have better truth. These days, people don't even say there is truth. I'll give you a few quotes that just will should rock your world.

Shirley MacLaine, truth as an objective reality simply doesn't exist. How about LSD guru, Timothy Leary? Reality is whatever you make it. Crosby, Stills, Nash, love the one you're with. Does that fit in here?

I don't know. President Clinton to Georgetown University. Nobody's got the truth. You're at a university which basically believes that no one ever has the truth. Ever. We are incapable of ever having the entire truth.

You believe this, I believe that. We all get along and everybody has their own validation. We all feel comfortable now. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. What's the age of Aquarius, by the way?

There's no evil, no good, liberation from all ethics, from all mores, from God. And Nietzsche was right when he said, you know, what we've got to do since we're immoral, we've got to get rid of God so we can sin with pleasure.

That's why Voltaire said, not until the last priest is hanged with the entrails of the last king will mankind finally be free. Get rid of all the kings, get rid of all the religious leaders, and we can finally be free.

Jeremiah 23, for you will no longer remember the oracle of the Lord, because every man's own word will become the oracle. And you have perverted the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God.

That's exactly what mysticism does. This is what God says in the scripture. I don't like it. This is what I feel like I want. And therefore, I'll put God and I'll put the word God in front of that. And then now I'll do what I want.

Call it God. Wouldn't be so stupid to say it's not God, but I'm God. Well, what do we do? These Hindus, they're obvious. Shirley MacLaine's obvious. Richard Foster, to me, it's obvious. But what do we do when mysticism sneaks in to ministries that, for the most part, are evangelical and conservative?

I just think you should beware. And so I want to give you a few examples of why I think someone who, for the most part, comes across as fine, upstanding Christian. I think she's dynamic. I watched some of her YouTube tapes this week.

I think many things she says is true. I don't think she's a word faith, a heretic. But I think there's some things that if you look at her, you'll be able to say, wow, that is mysticism. And I should run from mysticism if I want to learn and grow.

Beth Moore, Women Teaching Men, and the Authority of Scripture

So let me give you several examples why I think Beth Moore is a modern mystic. And if it was up to me, I don't have some kind of theological police running around here. But if it was up to me, I wouldn't see you read a Beth Moore book unless you're critiquing it.

You may ask yourself the question, why are there no Beth Moore books on the front table? Answer, because the elders don't want you to get spiritual cavities. That's why. Example number one, why I think Beth Moore is mystical.

Again, you might say to yourself, I can't believe you're using her by name and all these other things. It's very often that people are called out by name. And my charge is to pastor you. So if you're all into something that's not good for you, and I say something, I'm going to say who they are by name.

And by the way, I think it's fine to critique somebody's theology. Critique mine anytime you want. I'm going to refrain from saying, you know, her mother wears army boots and all these other kind of things.

That's not how you do it. It is, that would be sin. But you can say, what does that person believe? I hope you maybe even did that today. Here's what Pastor Abendroth said Sunday morning. And here's how it matches up with to the word.

What should we do about it? It's find your critique. You ought to. Bereans were commended for critique. Yes, we are to examine everything carefully. There's a brand new person at the church. And they said, you know, I don't know anything.

I came to the church thinking I know something. I don't even know what prayer is. I don't know how to think about God, who Jesus is. I need to start from ground zero. And I said, well, you need to just study your Bible and make sure you test what I say.

Because I don't want to be the latest person in a long line of, well, you know, I believed you because you're my latest pastor. Don't trust me as far as you can throw me. You need to check. I think that's fine.

This is not a character assassination. This is a pastor warning his flock. Be careful of these things. Example number one, as you know, or don't know, Beth Moore teaches men and women. Her study started off as an aerobic Bible study.

Anybody could come. I don't know why that's funny. Houston First Baptist Church, 1984, Southern Baptist Church. No comments about that. People didn't like it. Some didn't like it. Many did like it. Here's what she said on why she teaches men.

You tell me if you think it's mystical or not. Thank you for your inquiry about my stand on women teaching men. As you may know, the ministry to which God has called me is geared to women. My conference and weekly Bible studies are entirely focused upon women.

The only exception to an entirely female audience is my Sunday school class. I don't know if this is when she was preaching on Sunday night or not, but we'll just take it as face value. Quote, men continue to come and sit in the back.

We never sought them, but did not know how to deal with them. Would Christ have thrown them out? I just didn't know. I handed the problem over 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, I'll tell you what, Beth, you worry about what I tell you to say, and I'll worry about who listens. My ministry is to women. That's where my heart is.

I make no bones about it. But what if men come and sit down? Do we stop and throw them out? I really don't know. I just place myself under the authority of my husband, my pastor, and my God, your servant, Beth Moore.

How am I to argue with that when God himself told her, if the pastor says it's okay for me to sin by teaching men, then I guess it's okay for me to sin. Not just her problem, but the pastor's problem.

One man said, here's the only thing that Beth Moore would have to say is this. My dear brothers, I ask that you not come to my class, for that would dishonor my God. If you will not leave, then I cannot teach.

Biblically solved problem. She basically gets around 1 Timothy, and let's turn there to see if it's true. Is it actually true? 1 Timothy 2, it's very clear. Nobody argues about it. You might not like the verse, but we can't argue because it is clear.

It is authoritative. We are not supposed to have women teach men. If you want to have women evangelize men, that's fine. It's a different context. But here in the local church context, according to 1 Timothy 3, verse 14, 15, and 16, Paul says, don't teach men, women.

Chapter 2 says it. Verse 11, a woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. Two reasons.

Number one, creation order. It was Adam who first created, and then Eve, that was before any sin came into the world. And it was not Adam who was deceived. Adam was just stupid. Adam was just following his wife, but he was not deceived.

He knew darn well what he was going to do. But the woman being deceived fell into transgression. So when you believe in your heart, when you say God is going to tell me something outside Scripture, you can now take, I do not allow a woman to teach, and turn it into, I do allow a woman to teach.

When you make your authority outside the Bible, you are a mystic. I prayed about it, and God told me, and he contradicted his word. Example 2. Turn your Bibles to Exodus chapter 33, please. And we want to look at the tent of meeting.

Exodus chapter 33. Beth is on a video called Be Still. It's a DVD. And she basically says, Moses had a tent of meeting where he talked with God. And guess what? You can have a tent of meeting, and you can talk with God.

And by the way, one of the first things I can't stomach for the most part is people who don't know anything about Bible interpretation. They start teaching the Old Testament. You need to run from those kind of teachers.

And they go to the Old Testament, they can make anything say anything. And leadership lessons from Nehemiah and other things. I'm just thinking, what is going on? Show me a false teacher, and I'll show you them flying out with Old Testament verses.

I don't think Beth Moore is a false teacher, but she teaches this falsely. Falsely. Every believer can have their own tent of meeting with God, and a two-way conversation with God. Sounds kind of cool, but it can't be done.

Let's take a look at Exodus chapter 33. Verses 7 through 11, we'll look at. But here, let me say what Beth Moore says first. 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, 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 want to be in that tent of meeting. She doesn't understand that prayer is talking to God. The Bible is God talking to you. God does not talk to you in prayer. If he does, it's verses. And so look at what happens to this verse here.

It's just upside down. Exodus 33 .7. Now, Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp. And he called it the tent of meeting. You could probably be reading along and you think, oh, that's cool for Moses.

I want what Moses has. And, you know, God doesn't change. And he called it the tent of meeting. And it came about that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Don't have the tabernacle yet. Moses pitches the camp, the tent. And there's no sacrifices here. This is kind of a prophetic thing that's going to go on. And it came about, verse eight, whenever Moses went out to the tent that all the people would rise and stand each at the entrance of his tent and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent.

And it came about whenever Moses entered the tent, verse nine, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship each at the entrance of his tent.

Why do you think they'd do that at the entrance of their own tent? So God didn't strike him down dead. That's why, verse 11, with us, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face just as a man speaks to his friend.

When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of none, would not depart from the tent. If you don't understand that something described in the Bible is not necessarily for you, you're going to be in a heap of trouble.

That is to say, just because something is in the Bible, it doesn't mean it's written to you. It's for you and for your own good that you might know about God and how he deals with people, but it's not necessarily to you.

And Beth, sadly, doesn't even understand that. She doesn't understand there's a difference between description and prescription. Every believer, according to Beth Moore, can have a private discussion with God in the tent of meeting, where God will come and speak and it'll be back and forth.

Now, you say, that's no big deal. I don't understand why you're getting so fussy about it. Did the people of Israel ever go to Moses and say, hey, hey, hey, wait a second. God only speaks to you. We want our own private tent of meeting with God.

We want that. We demand that. Who do you think you are that God only speaks to you? Did that ever come up in the Old Testament? Turn to Numbers chapter 12, because the answer is yes. This is something unique.

This is something Moses did. This is Moses, the prophet of whom there would be a second prophet coming, Deuteronomy 18, that would be Christ. And Numbers chapter 12 needs to be taught. If Beth is going to teach Exodus chapter 33, I don't think you want to go up to God and say, because Moses had it, I do too.

New King James chapter 12 of Numbers, then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married. Verse 2, so they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?

Somebody was listening because he's always listening. And who was that somebody listening? And the Lord heard it. Now, the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who are on the face of the earth.

Suddenly, the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, come out, you three to the tabernacle of meeting. You want a tent meeting to talk? Here's the tent meeting to talk. Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both went forward.

You think they were afraid or you think they were high fiving? Little baby fingers, baby dollars, kind of like, right on. They're scared. I would be. Ten of meeting. I don't know what that sound is. Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud.

They both went forward. Verse 6, then he said, hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream. Not so with my servant, Moses.

He is faithful in all my house. I speak to him face to face, not you, even plainly and not in dark scenes. And he sees the form of the Lord, not you. Why then were you not afraid to speak to my Moses, my servant Moses?

You shouldn't even talk about this, let alone thinking you can saunter on in and have a little audience with God. God chooses who will approach him. And it's not you. You say, well, was God really that man?

Verse 9, so the anger of the Lord was aroused against them, and he departed. And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly those desiring their own tent of meeting, Miriam became leprous as white as snow.

Then Aaron toward turned Miriam, and there she was a leper. Hey, God, we want to have some personal revelations. It shouldn't just be Moses. How about Numbers chapter 16? Turn to Numbers chapter 16. I'm not so sure you want a personal tent meeting with God.

I don't think you really want to claim that. I don't think you really want to name that. I think you want to just stick far away from saying whatever happens to Moses doesn't necessarily happen to me.

And if I'm supposed to pray to God and I don't get some kind of warm fuzzies when I pray, and I don't see any kind of visions when I pray, and everybody else is running around saying, I get more of God than you do.

We have the inside dope. We've got the extra stuff. You don't have any of that. Well, then we just have to stay with what the word says. What about these people that all think they should have these revelations from God?

Kind of protesting Moses's involvement. Moses, you can't be this kind of unique man. You know the story of Numbers 16. I'll just read you some of it. Now Korah, the son of Esau, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan, and Abraham.

Wait, how do you pronounce that? Abraham, the son of Eli, are on the son of Pelleth, sons of Reuben, took men. They rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, 250 leaders. Men of renown, the text says.

Verse three, they gathered together against Moses and Aaron and said to them, you take too much upon yourself for the whole congregation is holy. Every one of them and the Lord is among them. And when then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?

Why then do you do that? Hey, we're all the same. God's all among us. You make yourself a big shot and God only speaks through you. We don't go for that. Moses knew exactly how dangerous this was because verse four says, when he heard it, he did what?

Fell on his face. He's afraid of them, right? He was slain in the spirit, right? No, he's praying. He spoke to Korah and all his company saying, tomorrow morning, the Lord will show you who is his and who is holy.

You say all the people are holy. We'll find out and we'll cause him to come near to him. You want to know who it is who gets to come near to God? I think God's going to tell you real soon. The one to whom he chooses, he will cause to come near to him.

Jump down to verse 28. Moses said, by this, you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works for I have not done them of my own will. If these men die naturally, like all men, or if they are visited by the common fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me.

But if the Lord creates a new thing and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up and all that belongs to them and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord and they've rejected the word of the Lord that says, I speak through Moses and you're on the sidelines.

Now, it came to pass after speaking all these words. It's almost like with understatement in verse 31. Moses finishes speaking and then what happens? That the ground split apart under them and the earth opened up its mouth, swallowed them up with their households and all the men with Korah with their goods, men, women and children falling down into the pit.