THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
RED DAWN 2015 EXPOSED~THIS TIME IT'S THE ENEMY WITHIN
WOULDN'T YOU LIKE THE COLLECTIVIST CAMARADERIE OF
AN ADULT FEMA DETENTION CAMP?
Hillary Clinton Calls For Re-Education Camps March, 2015:
Hillary Wants Fun Camps, FEMA Domes, Nuclear War
They Live, We Sleep: A Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
Published on Aug 26, 2015
All is not as it seems. In this week's vodcast, John W. Whitehead looks back on John Carpenter's iconic film 'They Live' and examines the striking parallels between Carpenter's nightmarish vision of reality with the current, perilous state of America.
Tens of thousands of pro-life supporters engaged in prayerful protests at Planned Parenthood abortion clinics across the country on Saturday. During the nationwide prayer events, which took place from 9 to11 a.m. local time, an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 people gathered in front of more than 350 Planned Parenthood facilities located in 47 states.
USA Today interviewed Mark Harrington, the national director of Created Equal, one of the organizations coordinating the prayer protests, who said:
We don’t believe this will be solved in Washington D.C., or the state legislatures. This will be solved in local communities when they take ownership over their own communities. That’s why we are trying to empower local organizers and pro-life organizations.
Monica Miller, the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, one of the groups participating in the event, told USA Today that although there have been thousands of individual protests against Planned Parenthood, this is the first time she knows of there were hundreds of demonstrations on the same day.
“We want to draw attention to the injustice of legalized abortion,” said Miller. “The American public needs to be awakened to the atrocity of what is happening to innocent unborn children.”
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, performing 327,653 abortions in a recent year, according to the organization’s 2013-2014 annual report. It has become the subject of increased controversy recently after undercover videos recorded by the Center for Medical Progress. One video showed Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, discussing the harvesting of body parts of aborted babies. In the second video, Mary Gatter, the medical director at the Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley (California) Planned Parenthood affiliate, is seen in discussion with undercover investigators who posed as officials with a biotech company that served as a middleman to sell aborted baby body parts to universities and other research facilities.
Planned Parenthood was quick to respond to critics and Eric Ferrero, a vice president of the organization, said in a statement:
These rallies are meant to intimidate and harass our patients, who rely on our nonprofit health centers for basic, preventive health care. The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion, and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.
Those who have been active in the pro-life movement immediately will see several fallacies in Ferrero’s statement, including:
• It is difficult to see how a group of people standing well back from Planned Parenthood’s private property on public sidewalks, engaged in prayer barely above a normal conversational level, can “intimidate” or “harass” a patient driving past them into the facility’s parking lots, which generally are located several hundred feet away from those who are praying.
• While it is true that the pro-life people taking time out of their day to pray in front of Planned Parented want to ban abortion — just as abolitionists of the 19th century wanted to ban the awful practice of slavery — they never “block” anyone from accessing “basic reproductive health care.” In fact, the demonstrators cannot and do not even block anyone from obtaining an abortion, which those who value human life would only consider to be “healthcare” in the sense that Dr. Joseph Mengele, in his capacity as a physician at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, provided “health care” to his victims there.
• As for any genuine healthcare, following his failed attempt to have Planned Parenthood defunded earlier this month, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pointed out that any other health service (other than abortion) that Planned Parenthood offers is “already done by another government agency” or by community health centers. The issue here is not whether the federal government should be funding other health services (constitutionally the federal government should not be doing so); it is simply that the the fedearl government does not have to fund Planned Parenthood in order to fund basic health services for women.
“We have 9,000 community health centers,” said Paul. “There is no reason for one penny ever to go to Planned Parenthood.”
This writer and his wife, who have been active in the pro-life movement almost as long as there has been a pro-life movement, joined a group of more than 500 people engaged in prayer who had formed a long line on the sidewalks on either side of and across the street from Planned Parenthood’s large facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Without exception, the prayer warriors followed the law to the “T” and respected the property rights not only of Planned Parenthood, but of adjacent medical buildings and the large hospital across the street. We noted with much irony that a facility engaged in the callous taking of human life has ensconced itself among medical facilities dedicated to preserving life and health, as if it were just another respectable medical practice. Its large sign bearing the Planned Parenthood name in unabashed letters at least two-feet high seemed to mock the neighboring medical practices. Such effrontery could only be attributable to the widespread ignorance of exactly who and what Planned Parenthood is. Knowing what regularly occurs at that facility, we could not help being flooded by a sad emotional reaction, lamenting how our once-Christian society is sinking to the depths of the Roman Empire at its lowest level.
We were offered signs to hold up that had served double duty for use at the annual National Life Chain that is held on the first Sunday in October across the nation. The signs carry a number of messages in both English and Spanish, including: “Abortion Kills Children”(El Aborto Mata Niños”), “Abortion Hurts Women,”and “Pray to End Abortion.” Because our signs had been recycled from the National Life Chain, printed on the backside were guidelines and a code of conduct formulated for that event, but that also applied to Saturday’s prayer protest — including asking the demonstrators to maintain a quiet, prayerful demeanor, to not engage any counter protestors, and to respect all private property.
The event went on peacefully for two hours, with small groups of people quietly praying among themselves. We joined a nearby family with young children in their prayers. Though the organizers had notified the Fort Worth police in advance about the event, not one police car drove past, probably because the police were familiar with these pro-life events and knew from past experience that pro-lifers are peaceful people who don’t cause trouble.
We learned afterwards that these prayer vigils were held all across the country, and among the cities where prayer protest took place were St. Paul, Minnesota; Aurora, Illinois; Houston, Texas, Plano, Texas; Falls Church, Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio; Lincoln, Nebraska; Washington, D.C., Lansing, Michigan, Boston, Massachusetts, and Worcester, Massachusetts.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Satan worshipers launched a counter-protest against pro-lifers outside the Detroit and Ferndale, Michigan Planned Parenthood locations Saturday.
Clad in black robes, members of the Satanic Temple of Detroit drenched bound women with milk, simulating water-boarding to “illustrate the theocratic agenda imposed upon female bodies.” The milk symbolized breast milk, one of the protest organizers explained on Facebook.
The group attached a symbol of their temple to the American flag and held up a sign that read, “America is not a theocracy. End forced motherhood.”
At one point during the protest, a man claiming to be a sheriff unsuccessfully attempted to move the Satan worshippers along.
Members of the Satanic Temple drew inspiration for their “political theatre” from the nationwide anti-Planned Parenthood protests Saturday. Tens of thousands showed up to protest Planned Parenthood at over 300 locations across the country after a series of undercover videos revealed the abortion giant was harvesting and selling fetal organs and tissue.
The pro-life protesters hope to end Federal taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which currently receives over half a billion dollars per year. Michigan state senators, some of whom appeared at the protests Saturday, have launched their own bill to defund the organization.
“The Satanic Temple strongly opposes the promotion of misinformation and believes that all people are entitled to make informed decisions about their health, family and future without coercion,” says the group’s web site. “We consider our action a form of worship; the rejection of tyranny is an affirmation of selfhood. So long as perverted theocratic systems of power attempt to manipulate our communities and distort truths for political gain, we will rebel.”
Satan worshipers believe that “Satan is representative of the eternal rebel, enlightened inquiry and personal freedom,” proclaims the Satanic Temple’s web site.
In yet another indicator that Alaska is not immune from the insanity that has gripped much of the rest of the nation, the Anchorage school district is implementing a directive from its “Compliance/Equal Employment Opportunity Office” mandating that boys (or girls) who prefer to use the restrooms or locker rooms of the opposite sex be allowed to do so.
This policy appears to be compulsory. In fact, the “guidelines” state that “staff should not require a transgender or gender nonconforming student/employee to use a separate, nonintegrated space unless requested by the individual student/employee.” This mandate is underlined. In other words, even if a little girl, or her parents, objects to a boy using shared shower space with that girl, those objections are ignored and the preferences of the child with the sexual disorder/perversion are honored.
Effectively, the Anchorage school district is saying, “To Hell with the privacy rights of a child of the opposite sex who wishes to avoid being ogled by her perverted classmate.”
Incredibly, the Equal Opportunity Office also provides that:
Any transgender or gender nonconforming student/employee who is uncomfortable using a shared restroom or locker room regardless of the reason; shall, upon request, be provided with a safe and non-stigmatizing alternative. This may include, for example, addition of a privacy partition or curtain, use of a nearby private restroom or office, or a separate changing schedule.
LTRP Note: We post this because it is important for people to understand what the deception looks like that young Christians are being saturated with through individuals such as Rob Bell. Bell’s tour, Everything is Spiritual, is panentheistic in nature but disguised in some Christian vernacular. Bear in mind, Rob Bell isn’t the only one who is bringing this “new” progressive spirituality to young people today. There is a deluge of “hip” “relevant” leaders out there who are changing the way young Christians think, moving them away from biblical Christianity. It’s happening in our churches, in our colleges and seminaries, on the radio, and in para-church organizations. By L. Sharp
Photo taken by L. Sharp at the 2015 Everything is Spiritual Tour
On Aug.10, 2015, Rob Bell made his final stop on his whirlwind 31-city “Everything is Spiritual Tour,” which began in Los Angeles (6/24) and ended in San Francisco (8/10). In 2006, he had done the same tour, but nine years later, his 2015 talk brought people more clearly into the “cosmic One-ness,” that “One Community Personality/Personhood” that Bell claims the universe has been moving forward towards for the past 13 billion years. The main thrust of the 2-hour monologue was not exactly what Bell had advertised on his website: “On the Everything is Spiritual Tour . . . Bell make(s) surprising connections between the universe you’re living in and the life you’re living, showing how science and spirituality are long lost dance partners . . . ” 2-Hour Monologue with Whiteboard The 2,500-capacity theater was nearly full. Prior to the 8:30 pm start time of Bell’s 2-hour monologue, there were alcoholic drinks served in the rear, and about 30% of the 2,500 were millennials (under 30), but a majority were in their mid-30s to mid-40s. Bell hopped on stage with his usual dramatics and pulled out his black marker (with ensuing oohs and aahs from the audience). It seemed most of the crowd had either seen Bell’s 2007 DVD “Everything is Spiritual” or had been aware of his previous 2006 tour, where his marked-up whiteboard became its own sensation amongst Bell followers. Bell began by affirming the crowd by telling them: “I’m so glad you came . . . you probably were told you were a heretic because you came, but I’m glad you are here!” He then pulled out his infamous black marker and progressively moved on the whiteboard from left to right: starting from one black point (which he claimed was the “Big Bang” that created the universe 13 billion years ago) to particles, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to human beings, where he, at the end of the talk and at the far right of the whiteboard, drew a CIRCLE WITH PEOPLE IN IT (Author’s note: this is the “cosmic One-ness”). Bell then defined his terms. He said:
Atoms are a relationship of energy. You are a relationship of energy interacting with another person who is another complex relationship of energy. We all exchange more than words with each other . . . We are made of the same substance as rocks and stars . . . We are an exotic cocktail living on this planet . . . We live in this universe which is a self-transcending reality . . . For 13 billion years, this universe has been: 1) Increasing in complexity 2) Increasing in depth (layers of community) 3) Increasing in unity An example of increasing depth (layers of community) is when birds share a “community brain,” that only emerges when birds fly together as flocks. It is called “epi-phenomenon.” Humans are “epi-phenomenon.” Since the universe has been increasing in unity over billions of years [evolution], this is why we all know deep down that loneliness is not the direction the universe is headed. Racism is the failure to bond with others of the same or like essence. It is not the direction the universe has been going for 13 billion years [Loud applause and cheers ensued after this comment]. The universe has been moving forward for billions of years . . . Jesuit scientist and priest Pierre Teilhard De Chardin said: “Progress is the soul of the universe.” Why has the universe been moving forward? What is at work bringing the whole universe forward? LOVE. Love is the force, the spirit driving everything. Love is to orient yourself towards another in a way that is self-transcendent . . . it helps you see the world more complexly, more completely . . . new things emerge between you and the one you love, that transcends the two of you . . . one plus one equals infinity God is love . . . Jesus didn’t just talk about his death and the cross, etc. When Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God expanding, around you, within you . . . was Jesus talking about the universe moving forward, moved by LOVE? Is the universe done after 13 billion years, or is the whole thing still moving forward and are there new realities or layers that are yet to unfold? What would that be? The next new layer would emerge if people bonded with other people of like/same substance. Is there something that WE, when we bond properly, causes EMERGENCE,an unfolding of a new layer (of community)? New layers always contain properties of the previous layer . . . So, this new layer will have a personality and a personhood . . . ARE WE FORMING SOMETHING TOGETHER, WITH A SINGULAR PERSONALITY AND PERSONHOOD? The first Christians kept talking of Christ as an animating energy, an energy universal, as a personal,cosmic Christ . . . a universal human body . . . Were they talking of us forming a NEW SINGULAR BODY? A NEW HUMANITY? LOVE is the force that drives everything . . . Love is lining yourself up to the universe’s expansion, openness . . . Become more aware of the moments where you can stay in the groove of LOVE . . . Don’t stay in the constant fear of the EGO . . . If you are afraid people are going to call you a heretic, you will not LOVE . . . You will become dangerous when you don’t let the fact they call you a heretic close you up to LOVE . . . What is present in you, in embryo, genetic form, that is yet to EMERGE? When you become your true best self, others can then become their true best selves . . . .
My Comments Bell’s main point was that “LOVE” (which he defines in New Age terms as: transcending the ego or self, to bond with others of like/same substance (or energy)), has been driving, and is driving the universe’s and humanity’s forward progress. In other words, man has been spiritually evolving, and progressing, and we have to all connect our unique energies (since Bell claims we are all basically atoms of energy put together in a human form), to cause this new “cosmic One-ness” to emerge. According to Bell, the emergence of this “cosmic One-ness” has yet to be seen, since we haven’t evolved or progressed far enough yet . . . Bell makes this future “cosmic One-ness” sound so noble. Bell said earlier in describing LOVE between two people: One plus one equals infinity . . . When we are alone, we have two eyes. In relationship with one person, we have four eyes . . . We then can see more complexly, more completely, what we couldn’t see alone . . . Bell’s main point is that humanity must be interconnected . . . Loneliness is not the will of the universe . . . the universe cannot move forward if there are solitary people who do not jump on the bandwagon of this “cosmic One-ness.” What are the implications for biblical believers who are not convinced of Bell’s “cosmic One-ness”? Clearly, as Bell said, these types of people will hinder the entire universe from moving forward, from progressing. According to Bell, solitary biblical believers, need to let go of their self or ego and become of the same like/same substance or energy of others who are part of this “cosmic One-Ness” that is emerging. The universe is moving in this direction. We cannot be alone . . . we must become part of this “cosmic One-ness.” If we do not “wake up” to our true destiny as part of this emerging new “cosmic One-ness,” then we are hindering the progress of the entire universe. And, we are also hindering others from becoming who they were meant to be, as the universe or “god” intended. As bible-believing Christians, we must continue to stand on the truth of the Bible that shows us that there is no “cosmic One-ness,” but rather a last-days one-world religion is on the forefront that will be ruled by the Antichrist. We must warn others to not join with this last-days delusion, despite feeling more and more marginalized. We can stand firmly on the Bible’s truth as our foundation, amidst this pressure to move towards this “Cosmic One-ness.” Rob Bell is just one of the heretical proponents that the Enemy has used to infiltrate, to snare, and to deceive God’s people (especially young people) in these last days of apostasy we are in. We are not alone. God is with us. And God has preserved a remnant in these days that is still standing on God’s Word, committed to His truth. Rob Bell’s 2015 Everything is Spiritual Presentation: (Click here if you cannot view this video.)
Letter to the Editor: Lighthouse Trails Has Exaggerated Condition of Christian Missionary Alliance
REFUTED
SEE:http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2015/newsletter20150824.htm; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes: Dear Editors at Lighthouse Trails: I stumbled onto your website while looking for a video from this year’s Alliance Council featuring John Stumbo. In your writings, you largely promote the idea the C&MA is espousing the emergent church, contemplative prayer, spiritual formation blather. I have never, ever heard this in my church. EVER. So, for you to paint the C&MA with such a wide brush is sensationalistic, to say the least. Perhaps occasionally a misled pastor will go down that road. Such a pastor needs to be brought into line, in my opinion. The colleges that “teach” these courses—are they teaching them to promote them, or are they teaching these classes in a effort to enlighten students as to the evils that can weave their way into ministry? You don’t say which in your writings which I find, again, sensationalistic. Never once have I heard or read anything from John Stumbo promoting any of this emergent church ‘trend’. Defend yourself. I’ll be waiting for a reply. SN Dear SN: We wish we were being sensationalistic and exaggerating the issue. Unfortunately (and sadly), Christian and Missionary Alliance (and most other evangelical denominations) have been embracing contemplative prayer, Spiritual Formation, and the emerging “new” spirituality for quite some time, and we see no signs of this letting up. A few denominations are just dabbling in it, but most, including C&MA, are well immersed as Lighthouse Trails has been documenting for over 13 years. Does this mean that every church in each of these denominations is involved in this? No, and Lighthouse Trails has always maintained that. But in virtually every case where a denomination is moving in this direction, there is evidence that it is existent in upper leadership. A case in point is C&MA. Just visit the main C&MA website, search through their magazine archives, books they are selling, and so forth, and you will find numerous contemplative/emergent references, such as an article written by the late (d. 2011) C&MA Senior Pastor from Salem, Oregon Donald Bubna titled “The Journey” where Bubna states:
To learn from others on the spiritual journey, I have discovered and devoured the writings of Henri Nouwen, Philip Yancey and Thomas Merton on the issue of full surrender to the deeper life.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
A stilled, receptive spirit may prove elusive in the bustle of an academic semester, but during the annual Fall Spiritual Emphasis Days, that is exactly what planners hoped to foster. With the theme Listening to God, the flurry of activity on the Ambrose campus ground to a standstill as students, faculty and staff took a break from classes to come together as a community for two days. From workshops to worship to facilitated mealtime conversations, corporate, small group and individual activities gave rich context to campus opportunities for acts of service. Rev. Steve Kerr, an alumnus of Ambrose University College, pushed even further the theme of Listening to God while serving as this year’s keynote speaker. Kerr is the lead pastor of Gateway Church in Caledonia, Ontario.
New Campus Pastor Dr. Gordon Grieve explains the felt need for contemplation among a student population. “Students are incredibly busy. The majority of Ambrose students are commuters. Many students are juggling studies, jobs, relationships. It is so easy for the life of the spirit to be crowded out by multiple demands. I know I speak with the planning team when I say that our prayer has been that students discover the delight of communing with Christ – not only during scheduled “quiet times’ but also throughout the day. As Steve emphasized, every human being has a profound thirst that God intends to be satisfied in a relationship with Himself.”
Rev. Kerr presented his keynote addresses in such a way as to make “contemplation” and “stillness” anything but sleepy. “He brought many things to the table. He was able to engage everyone from the get-go, demonstrating a deep grasp of the full scope of God’s revelation in Scripture and making it interesting and relevant. His humor and transparency kept listeners interested and responsive.”
While Rev. Kerr preached during plenary sessions about Listening to God, Ambrose faculty and staff facilitated further opportunities for learning, reflection and growth. Students were invited to participate in a diverse array of workshops, like “Centering Prayer: A Pathway to Experiencing God’s Presence,” taught by Dr. Miriam Charter. Students learned that “Centering Prayer is a gift to us from the Desert Fathers who sought a way to deepen their relationship with the living Christ. It is “listening” prayer that may become for the serious pilgrim a pathway for receiving and experiencing the gift of God’s Presence.”
Additional workshops included “Hear the Divine Voice…Make the Right Choice,” by Dr. Charles Nienkirchen, “Hearing God through Nature: A Walk Through the Ambrose Aspen Stand,” by Wally Rude, “Making (Some) Sense of the Pain: Hearing God in Times of Difficulty and Suffering,” by Dr. Gordon Smith, “Lectio Divina” (Divine Reading) with Kevin Cawthra, “Going Global? A Conversation about Discerning God's call to Serve Internationally,” and “Hearing the Voice of Jesus through Imaging,” with Joy Ulrich.
Faculty and staff members also hosted lunch discussions while other faculty and staff members served the students lunch; this parallel current of service was crafted to flow organically from the explorations of the interior life. An Operation 5:16 project offered students the option to engage in a community clean-up. More horticulturally-inclined students were invited to help plant bulbs in the “1000 Yellow Daffodils” project with a goal to “bring some spring joy to the Ambrose community as well as to our Springborough Community neighbours.” Handmade thank-you cards were delivered to the neighbouring Springborough Professional Building, and a table was set up for students to utilize materials for crafting encouragement cards.
Dr. Grieve celebrates the widespread campus involvement. “The strong attendance of students and their high level of engagement throughout the two days was very gratifying to the planning team. After all, while attendance was certainly encouraged, it was voluntary!”
Planners hope that the themes of listening, centering and service fleshed out during the Spiritual Emphasis Days will bear fruit throughout the rest of the school year.
For more information contact:
Pastor Gordon Grieve
Campus Chaplain
Email: ggrieve@ambrose.edu
Tel: 403.410.2000
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research
purposes:
Introduction
The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) is an evangelical denomination founded in 1887 by A. B. Simpson. Born out of Pentecostalism, the deeper life movement, and the divine healing movement, the C&MA has roots in Christian mysticism and contemplative Christianity. [1] A.B. Simpson wrote, “There is, in the deepest centre of the soul, a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter in and hush every other sound, we can hear His still, small voice.”[2] This is mysticism by its very definition.
According to mysticism, truth comes from within and can be discovered by disengaging the mind and clearing the mind of conscious thought. John MacArthur gives the following explanation of mysticism:
Mysticism is a system of belief that attempts to perceive spiritualreality apartfrom objective, verifiable facts. It seeks truth through feelings, intuition, and other internal senses. Objective data is usually discounted, so mysticism derives its authority from within. Spontaneous feeling becomes more significant than objective fact. Intuition outweighs reason. An internal awareness supersedes external reality.[3]
Scripture on the other hand teaches that truth does not come from within but is external, objective, and unchanging and is found in the Word of God (John 17:17). In the Christian worldview, truth is not discovered by emptying one’s self of conscious thought but rather by engaging the mind in the careful study of God’s revealed Word. The C&MA and Mysticism
Rev. David John Smith, currently the pastor of Rose Hill Alliance Church in Minnesota, writes that “God can and does speak to us in multi-level methods as we open up all the vents of our soul to listen.”[4] He goes on to list thirty ways in which God supposedly speaks to believers, including mental pictures, imagination, visions, and even journaling conversations with God.[5] All of these mystical practices are unorthodox and unbiblical—even anti-biblical—and are being embraced by the C&MA as a denomination.
In recent years, the C&MA has exhibited a disturbing trend back to its roots in contemplative Christianity and mysticism, also integrating elements of the heretical emerging church movement, new-age spirituality, and postmodernism. Seminaries affiliated with the C&MA are openly and actively promoting mystical practices and contemplative and emergent spirituality. The Lighthouse Trails Research Blog listed the C&MA as one of the top 50 organizations with a significant role in bringing contemplative Christianity to the church. Also included on this list were such organizations and denominations as Mike Bickle’s International House of Prayer, the Emergent Village, and the highly liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Presbyterian Church (USA). As defined by the Lighthouse Trails Research Project,
Contemplative Spirituality [is a] belief system that uses ancient mystical practices to induce altered states of consciousness (the silence) and is rooted in mysticism and the occult but often wrapped in Christian terminology. The premise of contemplative spirituality is pantheistic (God is all) and panentheistic (God is in all). Common terms used for this movement are “spiritual formation,” “the silence,” “the stillness,” “ancient-wisdom,” “spiritual disciplines,” and many others.
Contemplative Prayer
One of the mystical doctrines being embraced by the C&MA is contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer, also known as soaking prayer and centering prayer, is the unbiblical and mystical practice of emptying one’s mind of conscious thought and turning to one’s inner self to find the presence of God.
Contemplative prayer is being practiced and taught at official Alliance seminaries. Because all Alliance pastors are trained at one of these official schools, the false doctrines imparted to these students will eventually permeate the local churches affiliated with the denomination.
Ron Walborn, dean of Alliance Theological Seminary, endorsed a book by James P. Danaher entitled Contemplative Prayer: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Danaher is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Nyack College, an official school of the C&MA. Incidentally, the postmodernist Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr also endorsed Danaher’s book. Rohr is an advocate of “alternative orthodoxy,” a supporter of homosexuality (even presiding over a lesbian “marriage”), and the author of The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See—a book that Danaher unapologetically taught to his class at Nyack College.
Postmodernism
Furthermore, James Danaher is also the author of the book Eyes That See, Ears That Hear: Perceiving Jesus in a Postmodern Context, intended for “Christians who are looking to understand Jesus in light of a postmodern perspective.” Richard Rohr also endorsed this book. The following is a telling quotation from the book’s description:
In his book, James Danaher successfully shows that a post-modern perspective, which questions the cultural, historical, and linguistic presuppositions involved in interpreting the Gospels, frees us to hear anew the culturally subversive, yet ultimately transformative message of Jesus’ Good News.
The author carefully uses postmodern insights to illustrate that what we see in the Gospels is largely a product of how we see, and how we see comes from our social constructs, not what we interpret to be God’s objective revelation.
Danaher has abandoned the crucial biblical concept of absolute truth and replaced it with the postmodern concept that truth is changing. This is the perspective being embraced and communicated by institutional centers affiliated with the C&MA and will continue to have a progressive impact on the denomination as the students trained at these institutions are installed as pastors in local churches.
Spiritual Formation
Moreover, official Alliance colleges and seminaries such as Nyack College, Ambrose University College, Toccoa Falls College, and Simpson University are all incorporating “Spiritual Formation” into their academic programs. While the term “Spiritual Formation” may sound harmless enough, it is essentially a cryptic word used by advocates of emergent and contemplative spirituality to infiltrate the unsuspecting church with their heresy.
The Lighthouse Trails Research Project states that Spiritual Formation is
[a] movement that has provided a platform and a channel through which contemplative prayer is entering the church. Find spiritual formation being used, and in nearly every case, you will find contemplative spirituality and its “pioneers” such as Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Henri Nouwen. Spiritual Formation is based on “spiritual disciplines” that can be practiced by people of any faith to make them more “Christ-like.” Rebirth through Jesus Christ and regeneration through the Holy Spirit are not essential. Rather it is a works-based “theology” that has strong roots in Roman Catholicism and ancient paganism.
Some of the stated goals for the Spiritual Formation program at the Alliance Theological Seminary are to increase awareness of “your personal spiritual reality” and to nurture a “continuing desire to grow beyond your current spiritual reality.” Again, while the reference to a “spiritual reality” may seem innocuous, the concept of spiritual reality is rooted in Eastern mystical religion. Mysticism teaches that spiritual reality is a transcendent metaphysical order that may be known by emptying one’s self of conscious thought and desires.
Conclusion
All of the elements of mysticism being introduced into the church are not Christian. Rather, they are an intrusion of false religion brought about through the subtlety of false teachers (1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Peter 2:1). Nowhere in Scripture do we find any type of warrant for the mystic beliefs and practices being adopted by the C&MA.
Christian mysticism is simply a contradiction in terms and is a heresy secretly being introduced into the church by false teachers (2 Peter 2:1). It is our duty to exercise discernment and to call out these false teachers and warn Christians of their presence (1 Tim. 1:3).
Related resources from Pro Veritate:
[1] Smith, D. J. (1998, February 17). Listening Prayer: Listening to God for Life and Ministry. Retrieved August 17, 2014, from https://online.ambrose.edu/alliancestudies/dsmith/djs_prayer.html
[2] Simpson, A. B. (1924). The Holy Spirit, Or, Power From On High. New York: The Christian Alliance Publishing Co., 160.
[3] MacArthur, John. (1993). Charismatic Chaos. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 35.
[4] Smith. Listening Prayer. Retrieved August 17, 2014, from https://online.ambrose.edu/alliancestudies/dsmith/djs_prayer.html
[5] Ibid.
