Why Does The Emerging Church Mess With Mysticism?

you're listening to search the Scriptures daily a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God's truth to look to God's Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one's life in a way that is pleasing to him our topic is and has been for a number of weeks the emerging church movement now this is a movement that has goals alleged goals of attempting to make Christianity more accommodating to our culture specifically the culture of the young adults in our society and in the process the movement is leading young evangelicals away from the scriptures and into some unbiblical and even anti-biblical beliefs and practices Dave is we were discussing last week there's no doubt that some of the teachings reflect doctrines of devils as first Timothy chapter 4 verse 1 warns us against in the emerging church movements penchant for mysticism we've been talking about this for the last couple of weeks particularly drawing these beliefs and practices from the Roman Catholic desert fathers and mystical Saints well it's had a major influence on the worship programs and practices within the emergent church movement and last week as you remember I told about my own experience when I attended an emerging church service down in Southern California and I read in last week's program instructions they had a prayer altar there for their emerging church service complete with icons and candles and incense and so on and I read instructions now I'm not going to go over this instructions day but I do want to talk about where the instructions came from and who is influencing these emerging church leaders these were instructions what to do with the prayer station what exactly pray through the icons and it was clear that it was a form of divination that is communing with spirits out there which the Bible condemns very clearly Dave a man who was a great influence among the emerging church leaders but not just the emerging church leaders also men like richard Foster there is a major major development growth whatever you want to call it of mysticism contemplation contemplative approach to spirituality which rich richard Foster and his organization rena vari heads up so this man that I'm going to mention not only influences the emergent church leaders and many leading evangelicals he's a well what about him he's a he's deceased I think it would last and he died about three or four years ago but his name is father Henry a chi NRI neuen nou w en in case you you come across the name well what about him who was he influenced well Rick Warren quotes him favorably a couple of times in the Purpose Driven Life where he talks about some contemplative methods techniques which were concerned about here he also mentions that his wife Kay that Henry neuen is one of Kay's favorite authors has gone through his books and really enjoys them Tony Campolo whom some of our listeners may know about he's been very influential among evangelical youth and others I think he's a primary heretic all you need to do is read his works and agree yeah well he calls father neuen one of the great Christians of our time this is a Catholic priest Henry neuen and a mystic all right yeah seduction of Christianity was it I think maybe not sometime back there we simply quoted Tony Campolo he he was or was he in Haiti I think it was right and he had to get on the plane and he had taken great liking this little orphan I think it was who he would really have liked to take on the plane with him but so he says but he couldn't but he said well but Jesus is living in that a little orphan you know well that's not biblical remember Mother Teresa said every beggar and leper is Jesus in a pitiful disguise and then Tony Campolo just bring them kind of up-to-date on some of these heresies Tony Campolo said Jesus was fully God because he was fully human and he was fully human because he was fully God well I know what he's getting at about that but anyway Jesus is in everybody according to totem pole and Campolo is a teachers sociology professor of sociology and school on the East Coast and the idea here is is that if you're poor and a destitute then you're it's almost like you're a vehicle for Jesus Jesus must be in the poor and so on but as you say Dave this is just one of a number of his heresies and do you remember that Christianity today chided us for being heretic hunters because we addressed some of the heresies overt heresies of Tony Campolo but as I said he calls Henry neuen one of the great Christians of our time and I'm gonna read some quotes later by Campolo compose into mysticism all right among other things no what's wrong with mysticism um well you know you have a question about well I think we need to explain it to okay people a third we talk about mysticism mysticism is it's not rational number one it doesn't have evidence but it's you kind of get yourself in a state of consciousness while you quiet you know let the silence empty your your heart and now you are seeking God God to speak to you it has nothing to do with his word he's not speaking through his word but he's going to somehow speak to you inside when you get in this state of consciousness you don't go by objective truth objective values but you go by a mystical feeling experiences right David and as you know the the heart is any anyone who studies mysticism historically finds that mysticism has a goal and that is the goal that we are going to have complete union with God we are drawn into God we become God that that's been the heart of it from the beginning Henry Newland writes in his book behold the beauty of the Lord praying with icons now we addressed icons briefly last week but icons are paintings for the most part sometimes their reliefs it's a style of art they are Byzantine for the most part though you do find them in Russia they're Russian icons there are various styles but basically they're two-dimensional and they they are paintings of characters biblical characters it might be Jesus to be Mary but they're primarily as I said biblical characters and biblical scenes so you would have some with characters within them that might be symbolic or representative of the Holy Spirit for example that's a very popular icon and but these then are devices they really are a cult devices for divination that as we mentioned last week and no one will Henri noon when I quote him you'll you'll see that these are devices that are they call them openings or gates windows into heaven that somehow we're going to move from this temporal realm into the spiritual realm through these devices manipulation it's a divination without a doubt it's a divination device Tom let me just say another word we talked about this in the past and I don't want to go into great detail but supposedly Saint Veronica you know made her veil to Jesus he wiped his face his face was on it and that would be where the first icon came from now I don't know how many of them they don't seem to follow yes this original face of Jesus because you've got all kinds of pictures of Jesus right but we've talked about that let me just right now Saint Veronica for those out there who may be Catholics may be former Catholics this is a saint I first learned about growing up Roman Catholic in a very sacred ritual in koma Catholicism called the Stations of the Cross and I believe it was station 8 in which the Stations of the Cross would be the the the movement of Jesus from the praetorium of being scourge to the cross and was called the for more information about the berean call call us toll free at our order number or visit our website

Channel: The Berean Call

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Keywords: Dave, Hunt, TheWhy, Does, The, Emerging, Church, Mess, With, Mysticism, Berean, Call, Search, the, scriptures, daily, bible, commentary

Id: DhRR-KTe2zM

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2008