In this heavily documented article Apprising Ministries traces some odd, and close, associations over the past couple of years.
The question then becomes: Could we be seeing the start of a new ecumenical evangelical magisterium?
Under Construction
Chuck Swindoll Points Us To Roman Catholic Mystic Henri Nouwen…Again
(Ken Silva – Apprising Ministries) Apprising Ministries continues to point out that syncretism, which is rooted in the love of self (cf. 2 Timothy 3:2), is really beginning to get out of hand within contemporary evangelicalism. Know nothing good will come of it.
It seems this truth from the Master has been forgotten — Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). Notice we are to beware of false teachers, not turn to them.
Why? I’m glad you asked; because God has already told us — A little leaven leavens the whole lump (Galatians 5:9). It’s important to note the inspired Apostle Paul wrote that concerning the Galatian church and the Judaizers.
A few years ago I had told you that on page 13 of his book So, You Want To Be Like Christ? Essentials to Get You There (SYW) respected Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll makes some rather odd citations and recommendations.
In SYW, the pastor of the nondenominational megachurch Stonebriar Community Church, heartily endorses the work of Dallas Willard along with his spiritual twin, Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster.
You may know that, through their corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) masquerading as so-called Spiritual Formation, this dubious duo comprise key mentors of the neo-liberal cult in the Emerging Church.
However, it’s beyond question that the CSM of Foster-Willardism actually germinated in the so-called “Desert Fathers” and would then later blossom throughout various monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism.
Swindoll informs us in SYW:
I came across Dallas Willard’s excellent work The Spirit of the Disciplines. Bedside reading it is not. This convicting piece of literature is not something you plop down on the sofa and read alongside People magazine. Willard’s words make you think. ((Charles Swindoll, So, You Want To Be Like Christ?: Eight Essentials to Get You There [Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005], 13.))
Sadly Swindoll, who ought to know better, calls Willard’s fables “excellent work.” Christian apologist Bob DeWaay completely dismantled the “disciplines” of Foster-Willardism when he reviewed Willard’s book:
Dallas Willard bases his entire spiritual disciplines book on his understanding of Matthew 11:29, 30,… The spiritual disciplines are not taught in Matthew 11:29, 30 (Willard’s primary proof test), and even Willard admits they cannot be found elsewhere in scripture…
Dallas Willard is excited to tell us that finally, through the lead of people like Richard Foster, we are having a revival of the use of spiritual disciplines… To hear evangelicals like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster tell us that we need practices that were never spelled out in the Bible to become more like Christ or to get closer to God is astonishing.
What is more astonishing is that evangelical colleges and seminaries are requiring their students to study practices that are relics of Medieval Rome, not found in the Bible, and closely akin to the practices of many pagan societies…
These ideas are more akin to Eastern Religion than Biblical Christianity… The idea of practicing spiritual disciplines was imported to the text, not found there. We live in an age of mysticism. People lust for spiritual reality and spiritual experiences.
The danger is that unbiblical practices will give people a real spiritual experience, but not from God. (source)
DeWaay is dead-on-target; this mythology of Foster-Willardism simply was not taught by Jesus Christ, nor was it taught by His Apostles. So we now have all the more reason to question the discernment of Chuck Swindoll here.
Especially so after Swindoll tells us in his SYW about “Richard Foster’s meaningful work Celebration of Discipline.” ((Charles Swindoll, So, You Want To Be Like Christ?: Eight Essentials to Get You There [Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005], 15.)) Here’s the correct view of Foster’s fables from Dr. Gary Gilley:
Celebration of Discipline alone, not even referencing Foster’s other writings and teachings and ministries, is a virtual encyclopedia of theological error. We would be hard pressed to find in one so-called evangelical volume such a composite of false teaching. These include faulty views on the subjective leading of God (pp. 10, 16-17, 18, 50, 95, 98, 108-109, 128, 139-140, 149-150, 162, 167, 182); approval of New Age teachers…; occultic use of imagination (pp. 25-26, 40-43, 163, 198);
open theism (p. 35); misunderstanding of the will of God in prayer (p. 37); promotion of visions, revelations and charismatic gifts (pp. 108, 165, 168-169, 171, 193); endorsement of rosary and prayer wheel use (p. 64); misunderstanding of the Old Testament Law for today (pp. 82, 87); mystical journaling (p. 108); embracing pop-psychology (pp. 113-120); promoting Roman Catholic practices such as use of “spiritual directors,” confession and penance (pp. 146-150, 156, 185); and affirming of aberrant charismatic practices (pp. 158-174, 198)…
Foster and company have taken many far afield in pursuit of mystical experiences that lead to a pseudo-Christianity that has the appearance of spirituality but not the substance. (Online source)
Well, I guess other than that Foster’s work is “meaningful.” In his SYW we will also see Chuck Swindoll quoting favorably from the book The Way of the Heart by the late Roman Catholic monk and mystic Henri Nouwen.
Let me now fill you in concerning Nouwen’s own practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer, meditation in an altered state of consciousness, which is exactly what mystics mean while talking about “silence and solitude.”
In Dallas Theological Seminary Faculty Recommends Henry Nouwen With His Contemplative Prayer I told you that, from his books, Henry Nouwen—even today—remains a veritable superstar teacher of this spurious CSM.
Nouwen’s main claim to fame was teaching the practice of so-called “Christian” meditation aka CCP; transcendental meditation lightly sprayed with Christian terms. This is what he means by silence and solitude.
And this CCP was at the very heart of the spirituality of the mystic Henri Nouwen. His practice of it would ultimately lead him to teach universalism. Near the end of his life Nouwen would muse:
Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God. ((Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey [New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1998], 51, emphasis mine.))
Swindoll quite obviously is familiar with Nouwen’s work because in his 2006 article The Depths Of God for the aforementioned Dallas Theological Seminary he would write:
In his book The Way of the Heart Henri Nouwen does a splendid job of analyzing the downside of what he calls “our wordy world.” (source)
In fact it’s a part of this same quote, which Swindoll introduces into his article, that appears on page 10 of SWY; just a bit before his citation of Dallas Willard mentioned earlier. But you say, “so what, that was years ago.”
True; it was. But just ten days ago the below appeared at the Insight for Living website, which is, “The Bible Teaching Ministry of Charles R. Swindoll.” We read:
(source)
If you follow that link back you will see this is an excerpt from a 2001 book by Chuck Swindoll; the devotion on page 31 to be exact:
So it appears that as early as 2001 Chuck Swindoll was already extolling the twisted teachings of universalist Roman Catholic Henri Nouwen. In fact, the rest of that devotional reads as contemplative as Nouwen himself.
The problem is, Swindoll ends up sowing confusion because he’s importing his own definitions into Nouwen’s teachings on CSM. Those of us who’ve studied the language of the mystics know solitude and silence means CCP.
Nouwen taught the alleged “inward journey” of meditation inherent within this spurious CSM. Essentially this mythology holds that those who practice CCP, meditation in an altered state of consciousness, meet God this way.
Let me point you to someone who knows Nouwen’s work much better that Chuck Swinsdoll. Nouwen biographer Wil Hernandez, who “teaches a course on the spirituality of Henri Nouwen at Fuller Theological Seminary” says:
This deep experience of ourselves captures the nature of our inward journey. Henri Nouwen himself embarked on what journalist Philip Yancey calls a form of “inward mobility” wherein “[h]e withdrew in order to look inward, to learn how to love God and be loved by God.” Such movement is best realized in the context of solitude. In solitude, we can pay closer attention to our inner self and consequently become present to our own experience…
Our inward ability to relate to and be at home with our own self is what enables us to live from the center of our existence and thereby relate with others in terms of who we are and not so much by what we do… Reaching into our inmost being connects us to the reality of our own soul—that mystical reality that Henri Nouwen simply calls the heart. ((Will Hernandez, Henri Nouwen: A Spirituality of Imperfection [Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2006], 22, emphasis mine. ))
The fact is, mystics absolutely reject sola Scriptura in favor of experiences they have in the solitude and silence of contemplative meditation. However, the genuine Christian faith doesn’t teach us to go on some journey inward.
Bob DeWaay is right when he explains:
The Bible nowhere describes an inward journey to explore the realm of the spirit. God chose to reveal the truth about spiritual reality through His ordained, Spirit-inspired, biblical writers. What is spiritual and not revealed by God is of the occult and, therefore, forbidden…
This sort of meditation is not meditating on what God has said, but uses a technique to explore the spirit world. In other words, it is divination. (source)
Mystics seek after an alleged “true self” supposedly “untouched by sin,” as Roman Catholic mystic Thomas Merton dreamed. ((See THOMAS MERTON AND THE GOSPEL COALITION BLOG.)) The Christian knows his true self is a hopeless sinner; so we look outward to Jesus on the Cross.
The fact is it’s past time for people like Chuck Swindoll, sowing confusion by pointing people to mystics, to repent.
Related
CHARLES SWINDOLL: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
Further reading
Christ Must Make A Stir
Sealed Continuously
More Idolatry in the Roman Catholic Church
There is a very common misconception in the professing Christian community today that to expose error is to be a “hater.” It is true that we do hate false doctrine; however, all Christians should, because God hates it.
You need to know it’s because we love the people caught up in false doctrine that we devote the hours and hours we do to this pretty thankless task.
My own personal view is, I do this so that others won’t have to. Apprising Ministries prays God will open the eyes of these you’ll see in this post concerning the RCC in China.
The Plea For Forgiveness
Concerning One Thousand Gifts By Ann Voskamp
Bil Cornelius Welcomes Word Faith Preacher David Crank to his Bay Area Fellowship
The Problem of Spiritual Debt
Dallas Theological Seminary Faculty Recommends Henry Nouwen with his Contemplative Prayer
Christian, Wear Your Shield, Persevere
History of the Doctrine of Justification
As you see in Southern Baptists Assist The Roman Catholic Church To Infiltrate Evangelicalism sinful ecumenicism is becoming the rule within apostatizing contemporary evangelicalism.
Apprising Ministries reminds you that the differences with the Church of Rome involves her anathematizing the Gospel itself. In this piece Dr. John Gertsner teaches the history of this vital doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls.
T.D. Jakes’ Word Faith Pastors and Leadership Conference 2012
Apprising Ministries reminds you again that syncretism because of the love of man (cf. 2 Timothy 3:2) is really beginning to get out of hand within contemporary evangelicalism. Here’s a vivid example in this new article.
Since the fiasco of the ecumenical Elephant Room 2 in late January Word Faith mogul and reputed modalist T.D. Jakes has been given an evangelical okay. This by some men who simply elected themselves to speak for that community.
You’re about to see, again, that the evidence just does not back up the implied idea that Jakes has repented of his WF/self help unbiblical preaching. Wait until you see the video clips of some of the speakers, and their shenanigans that went on, at Jakes’ recently concluded P&L 2012.
See if you think you’d wish to be led by such as these. And if T.D. Jakes is not a Word Faith prosperity preacher then I am well-loved in the Elephant Room.
The Sermon on the Mount, Part 13
4 Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, Cease from your consideration of it. 5 When you set your eyes on it, it is gone. For wealth certainly makes itself wings Like an eagle that flies toward the heavens. Prov. 23:4–5, NASB
Happiness is a temporal condition of ‘rightness’ based upon circumstances. On the other hand, Christians are taught all through God’s Word to pursue the Joy of the Lord, which is not based in the temporal, therefore, it is in no way based upon our circumstances. Instead, “Joy is both an outcome of our relationship with the Lord and our source of strength for our obedience of Him.” This is a quote from my post What is Joy? from January 2006. However, in my many years as a Christian, I have known countless professing believers who sought their fulfillment completely in the temporal and, because of that, were easy prey of those false teachers of the ‘Health, Wealth, and Prosperity “Gospel”.’ As we have seen as we have dug deep into our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, there are many forms of religion that men create that they insist are ‘Christian,’ but they are another religion and their ‘Jesus’ is not Jesus Christ because they are man-made, not God ordained.
The Roman Catholic Church Hasn’t Changed Its Condemnation Of The Gospel
As ecumenicism slithers deeper and deeper into the mainstream of the Protestant evangelical community, and with it, we’re seeing a romanticizing of the apostate Roman Catholic Church.
One of the fruits of practicing contemplative spirituality is convincing people that the Church of Rome is now part of the Body of Christ.
Apprising Ministries encourages those who want to know the truth to make the time to look at the facts from the Vatican library in this well-documented and must read article.
Three Aspects of the Divine Will
Examine Yourselves
The Sermon on the Mount, Part 12
1 “But be careful of demonstrating your righteousness before men with the aim to be seen by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father in heaven.” 2 “Therefore, whenever you do give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may be glorified by men. Amen I say to you, they have their reward. 3 But when you do give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, 4 so that your alms may be in secret and your Father, the one seeing in secret, will repay you.” Matt. 6:1–4, Possessing the Treasure New Testament v1
We come now to Matthew 6:16–18, which is like the second slice of bread of a sandwich around the meat of our Lord’s teaching on prayer and forgiveness in Matthew 6:5-15 with the top slice of bread being Matthew 6:1-4 (above). Most “Study Bibles” with outline sections will correctly label Matthew 6:16-18 as “Fasting,” but if you read it in the context of what comes before, it is a continuation of our Lord’s teaching against pietistic efforts by the religious to approach God according to their own efforts and, in their hypocrisy, use their visible piety to elevate themselves in the eyes of others. As we saw in Understanding the Basics of Pietism, “There are no extraordinary Christians; but being an ordinary Christian is an extraordinary thing.”
The Sermon on the Mount, Part 11
36 Τότε ἔρχεται μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς χωρίον λεγόμενον Γεθσημανὶ καὶ λέγει τοῖς μαθηταῖς· καθίσατε αὐτοῦ ἕως [οὗ] ἀπελθὼν ἐκεῖ προσεύξωμαι. 37 καὶ παραλαβὼν τὸν Πέτρον καὶ τοὺς δύο υἱοὺς Ζεβεδαίου ἤρξατο λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν. 38 τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς· περίλυπός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου· μείνατε ὧδε καὶ γρηγορεῖτε μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ. 39 καὶ προελθὼν μικρὸν ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ προσευχόμενος καὶ λέγων· πάτερ μου, εἰ δυνατόν ἐστιν, παρελθάτω ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο· πλὴν οὐχ ὡς ἐγὼ θέλω ἀλλ᾽ ὡς σύ. Matthew 26:36–39, NA27
36 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go there to pray.” 37 And having taken Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be grieved and to be distressed. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is very sad to the point of death. Remain here and keep awake with me.” 39 And having gone forward a little, he fell upon his face praying and saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, but not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:36–39, Possessing the Treasure New Testament v1
I have been a Christian quite a long time (since January 1986). Even though I began serving first as a Bible teacher then as a deacon while still teaching only a few years after God had mercy on me, I must confess to everyone that as I evaluate my walk prior to 2004 in light of my pilgrimage on the narrow path since then, I shudder. Of course we cannot go back and change our past. We can’t travel back to some specific point in time to meet ourselves in the midst of some self-focused nonsense and ask the poignant, “What are you thinking?” There were high points to be sure, but these were followed by long stretches of self-focused living with my religiosity just being part of that.
Don’t Conform to the World or to Foster-Willardism
Dr. Gary Gilley reviews Tim Keller’s Book The Prodigal God, Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Shane Hipps teaching a “Spirit of Reality” at Willow Creek
A couple of weeks back CRN Associate Editor Erin Benziger covered the story of Mars Hill Bible Church “pastor” Shane Hipps preaching at Willow Creek Community Church.
I actually assisted her with the video clips and had them up at You Tube. Apparently Willow Creek wanted to keep a lid on what Emerging Church apostate Shane Hipps taught there.
They complained to You Tube and got the video pulled. Because these clips are within fair use Apprising Ministries has now republished Benziger’s insightful article complete with the illustrative video clips.