Republished December 3, 2008 (first published May 16, 1996) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Note from the FBIS editor: A couple of years ago I witnessed the sad breakup of a Christian home, and one of the problems which came out of--and perhaps helped lead to--the breakup was the "inner healing" confusion dealt with in the following article. The wife left a fundamental Baptist church and became involved with charismatics (a Wimber group). After going through inner healing sessions she became convinced that she remembered being sexually abused by her father. Not a hint of such a thing had ever come out before. She called her father and told him she knew dogmatically and without a doubt that he had abused her! What a shocker! How did she know such a thing? Her mind had been occultically manipulated by one of these false teachers. And just as the Bobgan's testify, this wife will not listen to the voice of reason. What wickedness, confusion, and division this inner healing movement is creating. North America, having turned away from the Word of God, is being engulfed with Freudianism and other forms of self-worship. We are thankful for the Bobgans and others who are exposing this wickedness. The Bobgans’ address is Eastgate Publishers, 4137 Primavera Rd., Santa Barbara, CA 93110, http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/
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INNER HEALING: ILLUMINATION OR ILLUSION?
By Martin and Deidre Bobgan

Across America parents are receiving phone calls and correspondence that plunge them into a nightmare of accusations of abuse and incest. These are not parents of young children or teenagers. They are parents of grown children who throughout their lives had had no recollection of being sexually molested by their mother or father. Now, seemingly out of the blue, their bizarre stories are stunning their parents. These adult children, usually daughters, now claim to remember precise details of one of their parents sexually abusing them. Where do they get such ideas? Where do those sordid memories come from? What brings them to the surface? Inner healing and other forms of regressive-type therapy lurk behind this surge of family horror stories.

At first the parents are stunned. They are being accused of sexual exploits that they declare they would never even think of doing. But when they try to talk to their son or daughter, their words fall on deaf ears. They are accused and condemned without a trial--all based upon alleged memories discovered through inner healing. And now they are helpless in their concern over the welfare of their adult child who will have nothing to do with them.

With the media accentuating and exaggerating the numbers of women who have been molested, nearly anyone who cries "incest" is believed beyond a doubt. And why should anyone doubt a grown woman's sudden "recall" of a memory hidden in her unconscious? After all, isn't the memory like a tape recorder or computer that faithfully records and retains every event in some deep unconscious vault of the mind? Aren't there reliable techniques that enable a person to recall past events accurately? Or, are there some problems with those assumptions?

IS THE MIND A COMPUTER?

While many writers of pop psychology continue to equate the human mind with a tape recorder or computer, those are poor and misleading analogies. Dr. John Searle, in his Reith Lecture "Minds, Brains, and Science," explained:

"Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it.

"In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ("What else could it be?") And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer. ...

"The computer is probably no better and no worse as a metaphor for the brain than earlier mechanical metaphors. We learn as much about the brain by saying it's a computer as we do by saying it's a telephone switchboard, a telegraph system, a water pump, or a steam engine" (John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Science," The 1984 Reith Lectures, London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1984, pp. 44,55,56).

What Searle is getting at is the fact that the brain is not a mechanical piece of technology.

Medical doctor-researcher Nancy Andreasen, in her book The Broken Brain, declares that "there is no accurate model or metaphor to describe how [the brain] works." She concludes that "the human brain is probably too complex to lend itself to any single metaphor" (Nancy Andreasen, The Broken Brain, New York: Harper & Row, 1984, p. 90).

Current research demonstrates that computer memory and biological memory are significantly different. In his book Remembering and Forgetting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory, Edmund Bolles refers to the human brain as "the most complicated structure in the known universe" (Edmund Bolles, Remembering and Forgetting, New York: Walker and Company, 1988, p. 139). He says,

"For several thousand years people have believed that remembering retrieves information stored somewhere in the mind. The metaphors of memory have always been metaphors of storage: We preserve images on wax; we carve them in stone; we write memories as with a pencil on paper; we file memories away; we have photographic memories; we retain facts so firmly they seem held in a steel trap. Each of these images proposes a memory warehouse where the past lies preserved like childhood souvenirs in an attic. This book reports a revolution that has overturned that vision of memory. Remembering is a creative, constructive process. There is no storehouse of information about the past anywhere in our brain" (Ibid., p. xi). [Emphasis added by authors]

After discussing the scientific basis for memory and how the brain functions, he says:

"The biggest loser in this notion of how memory works is the idea that computer memories and human memories have anything in common" (Ibid., p. 165).

He goes on to say, "Human and computer memories are as distinct as life and lightning" (Ibid.).

IS MEMORY RELIABLE?

Unlike a computer, the memory does not store everything that goes into it. First, the mind sifts through the multitude of stimuli that enter it during an actual event. then time, later events, and even later recall color or alter memories. During the creative process of recall, sketchy memories of events may be filled in with imagined details. And, an amazing amount of information is simply forgotten--gone, not just hidden away in some deep cavern of the mind. Memory is neither complete nor fixed. Nor is it accurate. As researcher Carol Tavris so aptly describes it:

"Memory is, in a word, lousy. It is a traitor at worst, a mischief-maker at best. It gives us vivid recollections of events that could never have happened, and it obscures critical details of events that did" (Carol Tavris, "The Freedom to Change," Prime Time, Oct. 1990, p. 28).

Yes, memories can even be created, not from remembering true events, but by implanting imagined events onto the mind. In fact, it is possible for implanted and enhanced memories to seem even more vivid than memories of actual past events.

Under certain conditions a person's mind is open to suggestion in such a way that illusions of memory can be received, believed, and remembered as true memories. Hypnosis, guided imagery, and inner healing are as likely to cause a person to dredge up false information as true accounts of past events. In a state of heightened suggestibility a person's memory can easily be altered and enhanced. This happens under hypnosis, through guided imagery, in age regression therapies (such as primal therapy) and during certain forms of inner healing.

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

Bernard Diamond, a professor of law and clinical professor of psychiatry, says that hypnotized persons "graft onto their memories fantasies or suggestions deliberately or unwittingly communicated by the hypnotist." Not only may they have new memories, but Diamond declares that "after hypnosis the subject cannot differentiate between a true recollection and a fantasy or a suggested detail." He notes that court witnesses who have been hypnotized "often develop a certitude about their memories that ordinary witnesses seldom exhibit." Diamond declares, "No one, regardless of experience, can verify the accuracy of the hypnotically enhanced memory" (Bernard Diamond, "Inherent Problems in the Use of Pretrial Hypnosis on a Prospective Witness," California Law Review, Mar. 1980, pp. 314,333-337,348).

The certainty of pseudomemories and the uncertainty of real memories render such activities as hypnosis and inner healing questionable at best and dangerous at worst. Because memory is so unreliable, methods of cure that rely on unearthing so-called hidden memories not only open up the possibility of human creativity but also expose the mind to possible demonic suggestion. Even though the hypnotist or inner healer may wish to protect the person from receiving false material, he cannot avoid implanting human suggestion. Nor can he prevent demonic suggestions from entering the vulnerable mind of the person who is in a heightened state of suggestibility.

Even if there are people in the room praying for the person undergoing hypnosis or inner healing, the possibility of lies and fantasies being engrafted into the memory remains. That is because of the involvement in occult activity, which is forbidden in the Bible. Hypnosis and guided imagery are both occult activities, and inner healing may involve hypnotic suggestion, guided imagery, and occult visualization. Hypnotherapist Dr. Joe M. Persinger says that the field of hypnosis "includes meditation, visualization, guided imagery, relaxation, biofeedback, and breathing techniques" (Joe M. Persinger, quoted by Sheri Graves, "Hypnosis: Exploring Deep Levels of the Mind," Santa Barbara News-Press, Sept. 20, 1989, p. D1).

Regarding the relationship between guided imagery and hypnosis, Dr. David Bressler, an authority in the field of hypnosis and imagery says, "I think they're the same thing. It's that simple." He also says, "Imagery is at the heart of all magic" (David Bressler, "The Inner Adviser Technique: The Healer Within," InfoMedix tape, Garden Grove, Calif., 1983).

John Weldon and Zola Levitt say, "We would expect that most if not all of those who are occultly healed are likely to suffer either psychologically or spiritually in some way" (John Weldon and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, Chicago: Moody Press, 1982, p. 195).

REALITY OR ILLUSION?

Those who practice inner healing should not be surprised at the possibility of altering or enhancing the memory, because there are times when they purposely attempt to replace bad memories with good memories. They do this through guided imagery and visualization. In fact, one of the seemingly attractive forms of inner healing is to have Jesus enter a painful scene from the past. The inner healer helps the person recreate the memory by having Jesus do or say things that will make the person feel better about the situation. For instance, if a man's dad had neglected him when he was a boy, an inner healer may help that man create a new memory of Jesus having played baseball with him when he was a boy. Through verbal encouragement he would regress him back to his childhood and encourage him to visualize Jesus pitching the ball and praising him for hitting a home run. Some inner healers regress people back to the womb and lead them through rebirthing by guided imagery and imagination. Thus inner healers should recognize the danger of unwittingly enhancing or engrafting memories through words or actions that mean one thing to the inner healer but may communicate something else to the highly vulnerable subject.

It is very likely that people who remember sexual abuse and incest through inner healing are remembering an illusion or distortion of reality, a destructive suggestion accidentally placed there by the inner healer, or created through a combination of stimuli, such as in a nightmare, or worse yet, implanted by demonic influence. Yet they have no doubts about their newly discovered dark memory. In fact, the certainty of the alleged memory has the mark of an hypnotically engrafted memory rather than of a distant reality. And who can or will reveal the truth to them? Probably not their church or other Christians if they have been either supportive or ignorant of inner healing.

THE TRAGIC INFLUENCE OF INNER HEALING

Many Christians have been influenced by such best-selling authors and inner healers as John and Paula Sandford, Rita Bennett, and David Seamonds. Unfortunately those Christians believe such statements as this one from Seamands:

"The realization of grace cannot be maintained in some people without an inner healing of the past. God's care cannot be felt without a deep, inner reprogramming of all the bad conditioning that has been put into them by parents and family and teachers and preachers and the church" (David Seamands, Healing for Damaged Emotions, Wheaton: Victor Books, 1981, p. 85).

Such Christian writers perpetrate false information and encourage erroneous beliefs. In spite of brain research to the contrary, they teach that the mind is like a computer and that there is an unconscious reservoir of hidden, but very powerful memories that highly influence a person's thoughts, attitudes, and actions. And they are convinced that the memories they dredge up are accurate.

This tragic example of people with newly unearthed "memories, caught in a black hole of anger, resentment, unforgiveness, accusations, separation, and confusion, is part of the picture of the damage wrought by those who honestly believe they are helping people. Inner healing practices of regressing into the past, fossicking about in the unconscious for hidden memories, conjuring up images, acting out fantasies and nightmares, and believing lies, resemble the world of the occult, not the work of the Holy Spirit. An imaginary memory created under a highly suggestible, hypnotic-like state will only bring imaginary healing. It may also plunge people into a living nightmare.

We were approached by a woman one day who asked if we knew of a Christian psychiatrist. Months earlier she had enthusiastically exclaimed how she and her daughter had attended an inner healing seminar and had been healed of all kinds of things that they did not even know existed. Now she was desperate. Her daughter was trying to deal with all of the rot that had materialized during inner healing.

The people who are most vulnerable to inner healers are those who are at a low point in their spiritual walk or who are experiencing difficult circumstances. The inner healers entice through all kinds of direct and implied promises for healing damaged emotions, healing roots in the past that prevent personal growth, and enabling a person to have a closer walk with God. They circle about congregations like vultures, waiting for the opportunity to swoop down on those who are near to dropping from spiritual exhaustion. They assure their prospective victims of their sincere desire to help and they communicate a biblical facade by using butchered Bible verses and Christian-sounding conversation.

However, once their talons pierce the person, a penetrating parasitic process begins. And the host/parasite relationship continues as long as the host continues to look to the inner healer to make him emotionally well and spiritually whole.

Instead of being healed, however, there is a very strong possibility that the recipients of inner healing are now living on the basis of a lie from the pit of hell. Inner healing is not based upon truth. It is based upon faulty memory, guided imagery, fantasy, visualization, and hypnotic-like suggestibility. And while the inner healers may conjure up a Jesus and recite Bible verses, such inner healing is not biblical. Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32).

We pray that those who have suffered under the abuse of inner healing will be set free through the truth that is in Christ Jesus.

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]

CARL JUNG

July 23, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is excerpted from our book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.
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Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology, has been influential, not only in society at large, but also in the New Age movement and within almost all aspects of Christianity. Jung has influenced both modernists and evangelicals. His writings are influential within the contemplative movement. He has been promoted by Paul Tillich, Morton Kelsey, John Sanford, Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell, John Spong, Richard Foster, Agnes Sanford, and Gary Thomas, to name a few. Jung’s psychological typing provides the underpinning for the Personality Profiling part of Rick Warren’s SHAPE program, which is used by countless churches and churches and institutions.

Jung (pronounced Young) has been called “the psychologist of the 21st century” (Merill Berger, The Wisdom of the Dreams, front cover).

Ed Hird says, “One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism and the New Age Movement” (Hird, “Carl Jung, Neo-Gnosticism, and the Meyers-Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI),” March 18, 1998; reprinted in Who’s Driving the Purpose Driven Church by James Sundquist, Appendix C).

Jeffrey Satinover says:

“Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity--and thus on Western culture--has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy--have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology” (Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240, quoted from Ed Hird).

Jung collaborated with Sigmund Freud from 1907 to 1912, but after a falling out they went their separate ways.

In true New Age fashion, Jung explored Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, I Ching, astrology, Spiritualism, Gnosticism, alchemy, dream interpretation, mandala symbolism, Theosophy, Greek Mythology, and more. He spent time in India studying eastern religion and folk lore. He wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism. He amassed one of the largest collections of spiritualistic writings found on the European continent (Jeffrey Santinover, The Empty Self, p. 28). Jung used the divination methods of I Ching in the 1920s and 1930s and the training program of the Jung Institute of Zurich originally included this practice (Richard Noll, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, 1994, p. 333, quoted from Ed Hird). In a letter to Freud, Jung said: “I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. ... I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively projected into the heavens” (Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong, 1995, p. 385). Beginning in 1911 Jung quoted G.R.S. Mead, a practicing Theosophist, “regularly in his works through his entire life” (Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 69).

Jung communicated with spirits all his life. He “experienced precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and haunting” (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience). His mother and maternal grandmother were “ghost seers.” His mother spent much of her time in her separate bedroom, “enthralled by the spirits that she said visited her at night” (“Carl Jung,” Wikipedia). Her family was heavily involved in séances. For many years Jung attended séances with his mother and two female cousins (John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, 1993, pp. 50, 54, quoted from Ed Hird). His grandmother, Augusta Preiswerk, “fell into a three-day trance at age twenty, during which she communicated with spirits of the dead and gave prophecies” (Harper’s).

As a child Jung felt that he had two personalities, one was himself the schoolboy and the other was a man from the 18th century. This other personality, named Philemon, had a life of its own and talked with Jung. Obviously it was a familiar spirit. When Jung had a breakdown following his separation from Sigmund Freud and was nearly suicidal he renewed communication with this spirit and Philemon became his guide. Jung said, “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. ... It was he who taught me psychic objectivity” (James Sundquist, A Review of the Purpose Driven Life). Philemon appeared to Jung variously as “an old man with the horns of a bull ... and the wings of a fisher” and as Elijah and as Salome. The latter addressed Jung as Christ (C.G. Jung: Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 86, 98).

After Jung’s split from Freud, he suffered a six-year-long breakdown “during which he had psychotic fantasies” and experienced “numerous paranormal phenomena” (Harper’s). He became immersed in “the world of the dead” and wrote the book Seven Sermons to the Dead under the name of a Gnostic writer named Basilides.

Jung’s father was a pastor, but he doubted the Christian faith. Jung openly rejected Christ. He said:

“Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart [referring to a reoccurring immoral dream he had]. ... Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death. ... Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 13).

There are other things that Jung said in relation to Christ that are even more abominable but I do not want to quote them. It is enough to say that he was a demonically-deceived blasphemer and Christ rejecter of the highest order.

Jung considered all religions to be myths, but he felt they were useful. He believed that the secret of life is found “at the mystical heart of all religions” and that it consists of a “journey of transformation” to find the true self and bring it into harmony with the Divine.

Jung said that man should love himself for in so doing he is loving Jesus, because Jesus is “you” (Bill Isley, “The Ragamuffin Gospel: A Critique,” PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries Newsletter, July-August 2003).

Jung said that Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse are all “pillars of the spirit” and that he “could give none preference over the other” (John Dourley, C.G. Jung and Paul Tillich, p. 65).

Jung believed in the “Collective Unconscious,” which is supposedly the universal consciousness of mankind that lies at a subconscious level. It apparently consists of the sum total of man’s thinking since he evolved from animals, and through psychiatry and mystical religion man can delve into this realm. Jung defined the collective consciousness as “the sediment of all the experience of the universe of all time, and is also the image of the universe that has been in process of formation from untold ages” (Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, “The Psychology of Unconscious Process,” p. 432).

This, of course, is one of the foundational doctrines of the New Age and doubtless came from Jung’s study of eastern religion and various forms of occultic mysticism such as Theosophy.

The “collective unconscious” is pure myth. Richard Webster wisely observes that “the Unconscious is not simply an occult entity for whose real existence there is no palpable evidence. It is an illusion produced by language--a kind of intellectual hallucination” (Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong, p. 250, quoted from Ed Hird).

Jung was heavily involved in trying to understand “the psyche” through dream analysis. It is a part of “depth psychology” which seeks to understand the hidden or deeper parts of human experience. He believed that dreams reflect both the personal and the “collective” unconscious and that they contain revelations as well as fantasies.

Jung held to the blasphemous gnostic belief that good and evil can be reconciled.

“For Jung, good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced, cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis. This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality, hence morality, within man himself. Hence ‘the union of opposites’” (Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240).

Jung held to the New Age-emerging church principle that “both paths are right” (Dourley, C. G. Jung and Paul Tillich, p. 279). The emerging church calls this “orthoparadoxy.”

Jung believed in reincarnation and “drew many of his beliefs from the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mysticism).

Jung believed in the power of visualization. He said that holding the mental images of Jesus and Mary has power for overcoming negativity and producing good (Bob Guste, Mary at My Side, p. 58).

Jung believed we are entering the Age of Aquarius. In a 1940 letter to Godwin Baynes he said: “1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age” (Merill Berger and Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, p. 162, quoted from Ed Hird). Jung “feared greatly for the future of humankind, and said the only salvation lay in becoming more conscious” (Harper’s). This is a reference to attaining a higher state of consciousness through psychology and mysticism.

Later in life Jung became interested in UFOs and wrote a book on the subject entitled Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.

Jung was married to the same woman for 52 years, but he had illicit relationships with other women.

His last words were, “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cjung.htm).
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The following is excerpted from our book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]

AGNES SANFORD

July 22, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Agnes White Sanford (1897-1982) was an Episcopalian faith healer who has had a great influence within the charismatic movement, the contemplative prayer movement, and the recovered memory movement. For example, Richard Foster recommends Sanford, saying, “I have discovered her to be an extremely wise and skillful counselor in these matters. Her book The Healing Gifts of the Spirit is an excellent resource” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, footnote 1, p. 136). Foster includes an entire chapter by Sanford in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home.

Her widely read books were published in the following order: The Healing Light (1947), Behold Your God (1959), Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966), Lost Shepherd (1971), Sealed Orders (1972), Healing Power of the Bible (1976), The Healing Touch of God (1983).

In her autobiography she claimed that God had given her “sealed orders” to be “an explorer and a way-shower along the paths of healing and miracles.”

SANFORD’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL BEGINNING IN CHILDHOOD

She grew up in China, the daughter of fundamentalist Presbyterian missionaries, and as a child she had several experiences that prepared her for the reception of very radical and unscriptural doctrines and practices.

The first experience was at age 11 when she decided that her parents were wrong to teach that the age of apostolic miracles was past. She thought that Christians today should do the same miracles that Jesus did (Sealed Orders, pp. 13, 26). She was dissatisfied with simply living by faith and accepting what God gives us in answer to prayer on the basis of His sovereign will. She refused to understand that though the apostolic miracles have ceased because their purpose has ceased (2 Cor. 12:12), this is not to say that God no longer does miracles or that we don’t believe in God’s miracle-working power. While the gift of healing is not operative today as it was in the days of the apostles, God still heals in accordance with James 5. But He has not promised always to heal and He did not always heal even in the days of the apostles (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:7-10; 1 Tim. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:20).

The next experience involved the rejection of biblical discernment and reproof. This occurred when the modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick visited China and her family heard him speak. Afterwards her parents criticized Fosdick’s theology at the dinner table, and she brazenly rejected what they were doing.

“Dr. Fosdick preached on Christian love, but he was not sound because he did not mention the Blood of the Lamb in about every third sentence. This went on and on until finally, I burst into tears and left the table, to the utter consternation of my parents, for such a thing I never did” (pp. 30, 31).

She grossly mischaracterized this situation. Her parents were not criticizing some very minor error in a preacher. In reality, Fosdick denied practically every doctrine of the Christian faith, including Christ’s deity, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and bodily resurrection. As for the Blood Christ, Fosdick NEVER mentioned it except to ridicule it! In 1945 Fosdick wrote the following to an individual who inquired about his beliefs: “Of course I do not believe in the virgin birth or in that old-fashioned substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, and I know of no intelligent person who does” (quoted in Chester Tulga, The Ethics of Modernism, 1981, p. 40).

Sanford was rebelling against her parents and the clear teaching of the Bible. She was rejecting the very thing that protects us from falling into error, and that is testing everything carefully by God’s Word. She said that though her parents “were completely Christ-centered and Bible-centered, believing every word of Holy Writ from cover to cover,” something was wrong with their kind of Christianity (p. 31). In fact, the problem was with Sanford and not with her parents.

Another important event was when she determined that she would not worry about “snakes” and would pursue whatever path she chose.

“I made a decision in those early days from which I have never wavered. I would not go all of my life in the bondage of treading only a known path lest I step upon a snake. I would go through untrodden country toward the goal of my choice, whether or not I trod upon a snake” (Sealed Orders, p. 32).

This was a very significant decision that was contrary to the Bible. It is fine to be willing to go in new paths if it is God’s will and it is not contrary to Scripture, but we are warned repeatedly to beware of false teachers, to try the spirits, to be sober and vigilant against demonic deception. There is plenty to be afraid of and to beware of in the Christian life, and we are not free to go where we please and presume that God will protect us.

Another significant experience involved praying to Buddha. The rebellious little girl actually snuck off and prayed to an idol.

“One day I entered the temple alone. No monks were there, droning their ‘O-me-to-fu’ with half-shut eyes and vacant faces. ... And a thought came to me--What if these idols had some power after all? How could I know whether my parents knew the truth about them? What would happen if I myself were to worship the great Buddha? ... I folded my hands together, bowed before the serene gilded idol, who apparently paid me no attention whatsoever, and murmured ‘O-me-to-fu’ as the monks did.

“Nothing happened. Or did it? For gradually there came to be within me another voice, sneering, despising, scorning me”

“... there gradually developed in my mind a certain cynicism concerning piosity, a cynicism which lasts to this day” (pp. 15, 26).

This is a frightful thing. She claims that she was a believer in Jesus Christ from her earliest memories, but a true believer does not pray to idols. She was communing with devils, and doubtless this experience tainted her mind and spirit. Later she admitted that she might have been demonized at that point, and as an adult she thought that perhaps demons were cast out of her through prayer (Sealed Orders, p. 110). But she did not renounce the views that she developed while under demonic influence, views that eventually led her to the most radical fringe of charismatic heresy and beyond.

The next significant experience was a series of mystical insights during her teens whereby she saw and felt herself to be one with the universe. This is a common experience of Catholic contemplatives, but it is unscriptural and doubtless occultic.

In the first of these she “entered into a state of indescribable dreamy bliss wherein I was one with the tall crisp grass, and with the tiny creatures that lived within it, and with the high blue sky...” (Sealed Orders, p. 33). In the second experience she “entered into a state of high ecstasy” and sensed God “flowing into me from bamboo and from rock, from ferns and moss and tiny orchids hiding in the grass” (p. 33). The third experience occurred while she was lying on a ship’s deck at night. “I was one with the stars--I was one with the universe. I felt in me the life of the strange creatures within the sea and beneath the waves and flying above the waves” (p. 40).

The Bible says that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and “by him all things consist” (Col. 1:17), but it nowhere says that God is in all things. He created all things; He is aware of all things; He is in ultimate control of all things; He cares and provides for all things; there is nowhere we can flee from His Spirit (Psa. 139:7); but He is not IN all things. The believer sees the glory of God in the creation (Rom. 1:20), but God does not flow into us from the creation nor is God in the creation itself.
That is the heresy of panentheism.

Sanford was learning to trust her mystical experiences regardless of whether they lined up with Scripture.

Another important event was a course she took in psychology.

“In the very practical course in psychology, I learned the basis of those methods of study which to this day I use” (Sealed Orders, p. 42).

She is not even talking about “Christian” psychology; she is referring to secular psychology, and there is nothing godly about it. It is permeated with false theories from top to bottom. It does not begin with the correct understanding of man as a creation of God that has sinned against the Creator and become estranged, a sinner whose heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), a sinner destined either to heaven or hell depending on what he does with Jesus Christ. How, then, can psychology form the basis for any legitimate Christian ministry?

The fact is the Sanford’s doctrine was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology, which is deeply occultic. Her son, Jack (d. 2005), was an influential Jungian psychologist.

Jung explored Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, I Ching, astrology, Spiritualism, Gnosticism, alchemy, dream interpretation, mandala symbolism, Theosophy, Greek Mythology, and more. He communicated with spirits all his life. As a child he felt that he had two personalities, one was himself the schoolboy and the other was a man from the 18th century. This other personality, named Philemon, had a life of its own and talked with Jung. Obviously it was a familiar spirit. When Jung had a breakdown following his separation from Sigmund Freud and was nearly suicidal he renewed communication with this spirit and Philemon became his guide. Jung said, “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. ... It was he who taught me psychic objectivity” (James Sundquist, A Review of the Purpose Driven Life).

Jung openly rejected Christ. He said:

“Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart [referring to a reoccurring immoral dream he had]. ... Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death. ... Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 13).

There are other things that Jung said in relation to Christ that are even more abominable but I do not want to quote them. It is enough to say that he was a demonically-deceived blasphemer and Christ rejecter of the highest order.

Agnes Sanford borrowed dream analysis from Jung. This is a part of “depth psychology” which seeks to understand the hidden or deeper parts of human experience. Jung believed that dreams reflect both the personal and “collective” unconscious and that they contain revelations as well as fantasies. (For more about Jung see The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.)

The next significant event in Sanford’s downward spiral was the healing of her child’s infected ears by an Episcopal priest named Hollis Colwell. He laid his hands on the child’s ears and asked Jesus to heal him. Then he said, “Thank You, Lord, for I believe that You are doing this, and I see these ears well as You made them to be” (Sealed Orders, p. 108).

We believe in healing according to James 5 and we have experienced such healing, but the healing described by Sanford was by means of charismatic positive confession, and it is not Scriptural. Further, the child continued to have problems with its ears, so it was a strange kind of “healing”!

This experience eventually broke down Sanford’s barriers to the ministry of Episcopalian charismaticism, which is deeply heretical. She says that at first she was hesitant and perplexed. “I did not know what queer business I might be getting into.” She should have listened to those mental warnings.

The next event in Sanford’s life that related to her journey away from Scripture was an emotional healing that she experienced through the same Episcopal priest. Through the laying on of hands, visualization, and positive confession he “healed” her of depression (though she struggled with depression for a long time thereafter!). He then taught her to practice this on others. She was to picture in her mind what she wanted and thank God that it was going to happen.

The next step on the downward path was delving into New Thought and the occult. She attended séances and studied Christian Science. She said that she couldn’t understand the latter very well, but she does not “scorn Christian Scientists” and “am grateful to them” for recovering the doctrine of healing (Sealed Orders, p. 113).

She was deeply impressed with Emmet Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount, saying that “it thrilled my soul” (p. 113). It teaches the heresy that there is a “spiritual body” within the physical body, and that the physical body can be healed by addressing the spiritual body.

“Therefore when I prayed for healing, I could accept the healing as already accomplished in the spiritual body, and so could know that it would be transferred to the physical body. ... One time, for instance, I went forth from the dining room to the cloister in an agitated frame of mind, and banged the heavy door shut on my finger. ... I said, ‘I have a spiritual body, and in the spiritual body this finger is perfect.’ Immediately there appeared a tiny hold in the base of the fingernail and all the black blood oozed out, and from that time forth the finger did not hurt at all” (Sealed Orders, p. 115).

There is not a hint of such a doctrine in the Bible.

Emmet Fox was a New Thought teacher who believed that God is all and man is God. He taught about a “mystic mind power” that “can teach you all things that you need to know.” He promised: “It is your right and your privilege to make your contact with this Power, and to allow it to work through your body, mind, and estate, so that you need no longer grovel upon the ground amid limitations and difficulties, but can soar up on wings like an eagle to the realm of dominion and joy” (Find and Use Your Inner Power).

The next step in Sanford’s journey toward heresy was meeting a female healer who instructed her that she had to “visualize her patients well or they would not be healed. “... unless you can learn to see them well, you only fasten the sickness upon them” (Sealed Orders, p. 164). This she learned how to do.

From there she went deeper and deeper into error, including charismatic tongues, radical ecumenism with Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and you-name-it, and sacramentalism.

SANFORD’S MISUSE OF SCRIPTURE

Sanford claims that God gave her a great illumination of the Scripture, but in fact she misused it on every hand.

I did not find one instance in her book The Healing Light in which she used Scripture properly. In every case she twisted it out of context and forced a strange meaning on it.

For example, she quoted Ephesians 5:8, “walk as children of light,” but she interpreted this to mean that believers are “to live as if they were made of a living, moving energy like light” (The Healing Light, p. 17).

Elsewhere she said that “we learn to cure our diseased bodies by seeing, in our own flesh, God” (p. 61). As evidence for this statement she quoted Job 19:26, “in my flesh shall I see God,” but Job was not talking about this present life; he was talking about the resurrection! There is not a hint in the Bible that Job cured himself through visualizing prayer and positive confession.

SANFORD’S CONFUSION ABOUT SALVATION

Sanford was confused about salvation. At times she used biblical terminology about salvation, but other times she described salvation in heretical terms.

On one hand she claimed that she was saved when she put her faith in Christ as a nine-year-old girl.

“I, too, knew Jesus. I had been converted while on furlough at the age of nine. Though remembering nothing of the public school to which I had presumably been subjected, I did remember very well the gentle Presbyterian minister who had made sure of my salvation and who had given me the right hand of fellowship and received one into the Southern Presbyterian church” (Sealed Orders, p. 12).

But she also claimed that she came to know God through a mystical experience by a lake.

“There beside the dancing waters of the lake I prayed that God’s life would enter into me through the sunlight. ... I was filled with such unbearable bliss that I thought, ‘If this doesn’t stop, I’ll die. But I don’t want it to stop, I don’t want it to stop.’ ... It passed. I was myself again, yet never again quiet the same. From this time forth I knew God” (Sealed Orders, p. 147).

Further, she claimed that she received Jesus through sacraments and mysticism.

“My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation. In other words, I have learned to combine the sacramental with the meditative approach” (The Healing Light, p. 167).

SANFORD’S HERESIES

1. She believed that healing is guaranteed if performed properly, just as a light bulb will come on when a lamp is in working order and connected to electricity. If healing doesn’t come, it is because there is something wrong with the technique.

“How long should we continue praying for healing? Until the healing is accomplished” (The Healing Light, p. 14).

“Let us understand then that if our experiment [of prayer] fails, it is not due to a lack in God, but to a natural and understandable lack in ourselves. ... the lack of success in healing is not due to God’s will for us but to our failure to live near enough to God so that He can accomplish perfection in our spirits and bodies” (The Healing Light, pp. 8, 10).

Sanford even claimed that believers could “live above death and above the illness and pain that lead to death” (The Healing Light, p. 72).

As for the case of Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Sanford, though a very convoluted pattern of thought, claimed that this doesn’t actually mean that God didn’t want to heal Paul. Instead, it means that God would heal him a little at a time and that since he was old by then, he wasn’t completely healed before death took him (The Healing Light, pp. 35-38). In reply to this we would say, first of all, that the idea that Paul was old when the event described in 2 Corinthians 12 occurred is presumptuous, because the Bible doesn’t say how old he was. Second, Paul plainly testifies that God told him that it was NOT HIS WILL to remove the thorn in the flesh, so Paul concluded that it was good for him to glory in and take pleasure in “infirmities.” The same Greek word translated “infirmities” in 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10 is elsewhere translated “sickness” (John 11:4) and disease (Acts 28:9). No amount of scripture twisting can do away with the effect of this passage. It refutes the doctrine that healing is always God’s will.

2. She rejected the idea that it is ever God’s will for us to be sick, mischaracterizing “that” God as a bully.

“If we think of God as a heavenly stage manager, jerking us about like puppets upon strings, this is a natural and indeed an inevitable conclusion. God can do whatever He likes. We have asked him to make us well. He has not done so. Well, then, He must like us to be sick” (p. 10).

She claims that it is always the will of Christ to heal children that are brought to Him by their parents (p. 11).

3. She promoted visualization and positive confession as the key to healing success.

She claimed that negative thoughts produce a negative reality, whereas positive thoughts produce a positive reality.

“We must re-educate the subconscious mind, replacing every thought of fear with a thought of faith, every thought of illness with a thought of health, every thought of death with a thought of life. ... Therefore it we find ourselves thinking, ‘One of my headaches is coming on,’ we correct that thought. ‘Whose headaches?’ we say, ‘God’s light shines within me and God doesn’t have headaches” (pp. 33, 34).

Her technique for healing required visualizing the desired result in one’s mind and then affirming it by thanking God that it is going to happen. This is positive confession.

“From that time forth I set myself to learn to ‘see them well.’ This required mental training. I would exercise my visual faculty, that part of the creative imagination that is most like God. I would create in my mind a definite and detailed picture of each person for whom I prayed, seeing the whole body radiant and free and well, with light in the eyes and color in the cheeks and a swinging rhythm in the walk. I would raise him in my mind from a hospital bed and see him walking, running, leaping. By an act of will I would hold this picture in my mind until it outshone the picture last suggested to me by my eyes or by a letter” (pp. 142, 143).

“... we must never question it, let we stop the work that He is doing through us. ... we must keep on giving thanks that this is so” (pp. 52, 53).

“And we remember that ‘Amen’ means ‘So be it,’ and is therefore a command sent forth in the name of Christ” (p. 52).

If she spilled hot oil on her hand in the kitchen, she confessed: “I’m boss inside of me. And what I say goes. I say that my skin shall not be affected by that boiling fat, and that’s all there is to it. I see my skin well, perfect and whole, and I say it’s to be so” (The Healing Light, p. 65).

When her children misbehaved she would “in my mind the picture of the child as he was at his best” and “make in my mind the image of a child at peace and project it into reality by the word of faith” (pp. 54, 55).

She described an occasion when she was on an elevator and a woman entered who was tired and discouraged. She said that she thought in her mind: “I bless you in the name of the Lord. I see you as a child of God, strong and refreshed and joyful, for through my prayers His strength is entering into you” (p. 57).

When she found a neighbor near death because of heart failure she did the following: “As soon as my hands were firmly upon his heart, I felt quiet, serene, in control. ... I talked informally to the heart, assuring it quietly that the power of God was at this moment re-creating it and that it need labor no longer. Finally, I pictured the heart perfect, blessing it continually in the name of the Lord and giving thanks that it was being re-created in perfection” (The Healing Light, p. 87).

She recommends the same thing for the healing of nations:

“First we make in our minds a picture of the nation as we would have her be, so that she may best further the establishment of peace. We see an aggressor nation, for example, shrinking back in her borders and sending out into the world little golden arrows of trade and commerce and financial cooperation. We do this in the same way that we see a sick body well, making the picture clear, concrete, vivid and simple. It is a child-like method, the method of happy visioning” (p. 164).
She called this “the prayer of faith” and “love-power.”

If this were a true biblical practice, believers could bring in the kingdom of God through the power of visualization, but it is not a true practice and all of the power visualizing they want to do will not change the foundational character of this world one iota. The world system will only be changed when Christ returns in glory and not a moment before. We are not God. We don’t have the power to create reality with our minds!

4. She taught that God’s “energy” can be channeled by the laying on of hands.

She said that the universe is made up of “the creative energy of God” and that the individual can connect with this energy and channel it to others by the laying on of hands.

“The same principle is true of the creative energy of God. The whole universe is full of it, but only the amount of it that flows through our own beings will work for us” (The Healing Light, p. 1).

“Oh, take your hands away!” cried the little girl. “It’s hot.”

“That’s God’s power working in your knee, Sally,” I replied. “It’s like electricity working in your lamp. I guess it has to be hot, so as to make the knee come back to life. So you just stand it now for a few minutes, while I tell you about Peter Rabbit.” By the time the erring Peter had returned home without his shoes and his new red jacket and had been put to bed with castor oil, the pulsation of energy in my hands had died away. ...

“How do you turn on God’s electricity in your hands?” she asked me at my next visit

Once I was called to see a baby girl ill with pneumonia. I knelt beside her crib in silence, laid one hand upon the small, congested chest and slipped the other one beneath her back, and asked God to come into her. Soon the waxy frame of the baby was filled with a visible inrushing of new life. Even the hands and feet vibrated, as if an electric current were entering into her (The Healing Light, pp. 19, 20).

There is nothing like the flow of electricity and heat and pulsations through the laying of hands in Scripture, but it is common to the world of the occult. It lies at the heart of Chinese chi and Hindu prana.

5. She taught that unbelievers can exercise these powers as effectively as believers.

The occultic nature of Sanford’s practice is evident in that unbelievers can exercise them effectively.

“One does not need to be a saint or a scientist in order to do this” (The Healing Light p. 21).

She describes a wounded soldier she met in a hospital. Though he admitted that he didn’t know God, she got him to admit that he believed in “something” and then taught him to do the following:

“Ask that Something to come into you. Just say, ‘Whoever you are or whatever you are, come into me now and help nature in my body to mend this bone, and do it quick. Thanks, I believe you’re doing it.’ Then make a picture in your mind of the leg well. Shut your eyes and see it that way. See the bone all built in and the flesh strong and perfect around it. And play like you see a kind of light shining in it--a sort of a blue light, like one of these neon signs, shining and burning and flowing all up and down the leg. ... that’s the way you make it happen. No matter what you want to make, you first have to see it in your mind ... Then after you see the leg well, give a pep talk to all the healing forces of your body. Say, ‘Look here, I’m boss inside of me and what I say goes. Now get busy and mend that leg” (The Healing Light, pp. 22, 23).

She instructed an unbelieving mother who had a problem child:

“Make the picture of the child as you want her to be, and say, ‘My love brought this child into the world, and through my own mother-love I re-create her after this image!’” (p. 56).

This is not biblical Christianity; it is pagan occultism.

6. She taught that silent meditation is an essential part of the prayer for healing.

“The first step in seeking to produce results by any power is to contact that power. The first step then in seeking help from God is to contact God. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Let us then lay aside our worries and cares, quiet our minds and concentrate upon the reality of God. ... quiet the mind and concentrate the spiritual energies on God. Let us sit comfortably with the head at rest and the hands folded in the lap. ... He will notice as he relaxes that even his breathing is altered, becoming slow, thin and light as if to leave room for the Spirit of God within. ... So we speak gently and soothingly to the nerves all the way up the body and in the head. And in the same quiet way we bid our conscious minds be still” (pp. 7, 24, 25).

This is similar to the quieting meditation methods that Yogis and Zen Buddhists use to enter into transcendental states, bodily relaxation, controlled breathing, visualizing the quieting of the body. She quotes Psalm 46:10, but the psalmist is not describing silent meditation; he is simply exhorting us to trust in God.

She taught that in this meditative state God would enter one’s being. This sounds very much like a demonic visitation.

“We may be conscious of an inrushing current of energy, like electricity. ... But before we have learned to perceive these physical sensations, we will be conscious of His entering into us upon the footsteps of peace. We will know by the stirrings of hope within our minds that He is there” (pp. 27).

The Bible nowhere teaches the believer to expect God to enter him in this (or any other) fashion through prayer.

7. She was a female preacher.

After she began her healing ministry she started preaching to mixed congregations of men and women, and after the publication of The Healing Light she traveled widely on preaching engagements. She admits that her husband didn’t like it at first.

“My husband, being a good man and a faithful priest, let me go on these occasional missions or trips, feeling no doubt that it was his duty and mine. But he did not like it. ... But the larger call drove me on, prodded me on, forced me on. For Christian people must know that Jesus lives and heals today--they must!” (Sealed Orders, p. 156).

She felt compelled to preach in spite of her husband’s resistance, but it was a compulsion that was contrary to God’s Word. First, the Bible forbids the woman to teach or to usurp authority over the man (1 Timothy 2:12). Further, the Bible commands the wife to submit to her husband (Eph. 5:22). The only exception is if the husband is commanding her to do something clearly contrary to God’s Word, and in that case God’s Word is the higher law. But in Sanford’s case, her action was not supported by Scripture and she should have submitted to her husband’s will.

But Sanford had long before learned to disregard the Bible and anything else for her inner compulsions and mystical experiences.

8. She seemed to be a universalist, believing that all men are children of God.

When she met a Jewish soldier in a hospital she said: “I imagined Jesus there beside me and talked to Him. ‘Here you are and HERE’S YOUR CHILD,’ I said inwardly. ‘Please lay your own hands on him and do whatever you want to do through me’” (p. 135).

Not once in her book The Healing Light, which is her guide to performing miracles and transforming the world, does she say that those without personal faith in Christ are lost and hell bound or give any instructions about trying to lead them to salvation.

9. She was a founder of the dangerous field of healing of memories.

Sanford’s work The Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966) was foundational to this movement. She taught that the recovery of hidden memories of past events hold the key to emotional suffering and psychological problems in the present.

“Something is troubling the deep mind. There is no question about it. Some old unpleasant memory is knocking on the doors of the consciousness. Some need of the soul is arising as a dark shadow that will overwhelm us if we do not let it out into the light of understanding” (The Healing Gifts, p. 108).

Sanford taught that the individual should ask Jesus to go back through all of the stages of his or her life and heal everything, even to birth and beyond.

“Follow the soul of this Your child all the way back to the hour of birth and heal the soul even of pain and the fear of being born into this darksome world. ... And if even before birth the soul was shadowed by this human life and was darkened by the fears or sorrows of the human parents, then I pray that even those memories or impressions may be healed, so that this one may be restored to Your original pattern, the soul as free and as clean as though nothing had ever dimmed its shining” (The Healing Gifts, pp. 122, 123).

Of course there is not a hint of such a thing in Scripture. It has no biblical authority whatsoever. “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).

Through the practice of recovered memories countless lives have been ruined, families torn apart, fathers and mothers and grandparents and other family members wrongly condemned. Some have been gone to prison on the basis of “recovered memories” that have turned out to be completely bogus. Some victims of “recovered memory” delusions have committed suicide.

For more on this see the PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries -- http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/inner82.html.

10. She didn’t care about doctrine, believing that all professing Christians should get along regardless of what they believe.

She mentions Roman Catholic nuns and the Mass in a positive manner (The Healing Light, pp. 127, 137). She describes a Catholic soldier she met in an army hospital. When she learned that he was Catholic, she didn’t explain the true gospel to him. Instead, she told him: “I’ll ask my friends the Sisters to pray for you every morning at the Mass. And that Life will go from the Mass right through their prayers into your spine. You’ll see!” (p. 127). The Mass is an unscriptural ritual whereby the Catholic priest supposedly turns a wafer into the very body of Jesus Christ. The typical Roman Catholic is trusting his baptism and works and the sacraments of the church for his salvation. It is criminal not to warn them of Rome’s false gospel and to point them to the truth.

11. She was a sacramentalist.

She joined the Episcopalian Church and learned to confess her sins to a priest and participate in the Eucharist. She believed that she was thereby receiving Christ.

“My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation. In other words, I have learned to combine the sacramental with the meditative approach” (The Healing Light, p. 167).

“So I made a first confession, very uncomfortably, with the shades of my Scotch Presbyterian ancestors peering around the corners. ... Whereupon the priest made one statement and only one. He said, ‘Although so few people know it, the church through Jesus Christ really does have the power and authority to forgive sins. Therefore I am sure that these your sins will be forgiven.’ ... I had hardly gone out of the place before I was flooded from head to foot with the most overwhelming vibrations. I felt a high ecstasy of spirit such as I had felt before when very spiritual people had prayed for me. I felt a deep inner burning which I had felt when receiving a ‘healing treatment’ from someone who had the faith to set free the healing power of God in prayer. I knew by the inner warmth and tingling that my nerves and glands were being healed of their overstrain and weakness” (pp. 119, 120).

Observe how that she was convinced that this was a legitimate practice by the mystical experience. This is what she followed from her childhood. Though she thought of herself as a Bible believer, in reality she was a mystic who pursued truth beyond the pages of Scripture through experience. How many souls have been led astray by a mere fleeting feeling!

12. She taught that a new age is being born through the power of visualization and positive confession.

“A certain engineer was once surveying in a field when a bull charged his party with lowered had and thundering hoofs. There was no tree to climb. There was no fence to jump. So the engineer stood his ground, filled his min with the love of God and projected it to the bull. ‘I am God’s man and you are God’s bull,’ he thought in silence. ‘God made both of us, and in the name of Jesus Christ I say that there is nothing but loving-kindness between us.’ The bull stopped abruptly. ...

“‘If an armed burglar broke into your house with intent to kill,’ the old question goes, ‘what would you do? Fight him, or lie still and let him kill your wife or child?’ Silly old question. One would do neither. One would project into the burglar’s mind the love of God, by seeing him as a child of God and asking God to bless him. And if one were strong enough in faith and love, the burglar’s mind would change. He would leave the family unharmed and go away. ... A new age is being born. The day has come when love-power, at the command of ministers and surveyors and children and everyone, is sufficient to change hearts here and there in the world about them. This is the beginning of a new order. ... as more and more of us see God, live in harmony with Him and show forth His perfection in our bodies, minds and spirits, the ‘normal’ processes of growth, maturity, old age and death will be altered” (pp. 49, 72).

Agnes Sanford is dead, but her influence lives on in the charismatic movement, the contemplative movement, and the recovered memory movement.

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS: THE DEVIL’S WINNING TOOL

April 23, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Hegelian dialectics is being used around the world as a tool to break down traditional beliefs with the objective of replacing them with something new.

Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) was a liberal German philosopher who led the German Idealist movement, turning his back on orthodox Christianity and holding to a type of pantheism. He denied that there is such a thing as absolute truth. He said it is “narrow” and “dogmatic” to assume that of two opposite assertions, one must be true and the other false. He rejected the Bible and proposed that man is on an evolutionary journey and that human history is the record of a process of conflict and synthesis that he referred to as the dialectical process of Spirit, believing that man would eventually reach his highest state, ultimately arriving at “the Absolute Idea” which would be so perfect it could not be challenged or synthesized.

The Hegelian system is described as follows:

“It was Hegel’s view that all things unfold in a continuing evolutionary process whereby each idea or quality (the THESIS) inevitably brings forth its opposite (the ANTITHESIS). From that interaction, a third state emerges in which the opposites are integrated, overcome, and fulfilled in a richer and higher SYNTHESIS. This synthesis then becomes the basis for another dialectical process of opposition and synthesis. Hegel believed that the creative stress of opposing positions was essential for developing higher states of consciousness. In the moment of synthesis, the opposites are both preserved and transcended, negated and fulfilled” (Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics, 1994, p. 88).

Hegel believed that this process has a life of its own, in an evolutionary sense, but since the days of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels it has been used as a guided process toward a desired end.

The objective of Hegelian dialectics in this sense is to replace something old with something new (e.g., capitalism with communism, traditional Bible doctrine with theological modernism, a traditional educational system based on moral absolutes with a new one based on relativism, an old age with a new).

Used like this, Hegelian dialectics cannot produce the new thing, but it can destroy the old. Other processes and techniques come into play in actually producing the new thing that is desired.

Hegelian dialectics is used today to create a “paradigm shift” by replacing an old “paradigm” (prevailing belief system) with a new one. It is a technique of “social evolution” and “political transcendence.”

It is not an innocent process. It is used by “change agents” and “facilitators of transformation.” Hegelian dialectics is “the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution” (Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich, “What Is the Hegelian Dialectic?” October 2005, http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm).

Speaking religiously and spiritually, it is an ever-evolving system that never arrives at absolute truth. All is relative and negotiable and the end justifies the means.

It employs a wide range of tactics: dialogue, compromise, consensus forming, conflict resolution, divide and conquer, deceit, redefinition of words, giving new names to objectionable things, crisis creation, obfuscation (concealment of meaning by making something confusing and hard to interpret or by otherwise hiding its true meaning).

It requires non-judgmentalism, tolerance, acceptance, relativism, group mentality.

It is the opposite of and the avowed enemy of dogmatism, absolutism, exclusivism, and separatism.

It is very elitist and complex.

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS IS EMPLOYED BY COMMUNISTS to tear down law-based capitalistic, democratic societies that grant the right to private ownership of property and replace them with communist ones. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ take on the Hegelian philosophy is called “dialectical materialism,” because it focuses on the evolution of economics (materialism) rather than the spirit, as in Hegel’s system. In older communist terms the thesis was CAPITALISM and the antithesis was the PROLETARIAT (workers exploited at the hands of owners and the capitalistic system in general who rise up in resistance). The process of conflict and resolution is supposed to continue until it produces the ultimate synthesis which is allegedly pure communism but in reality is a New World Order of severe communitarianism (collectivism, the politics of community, the individual cared for by the state while his individuality is subservient to the will of society).

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS HAS BEEN EMPLOYED BY EDUCATORS in America since the 1920s to move the educational system from the old concept of moral absolutism and submission to a higher authority to the new philosophy of relativism and constant change. “The collective moulding begins early in life, sustained and refined throughout one’s formal education; a universal curriculum of manipulation can transform and achieve a complete paradigm shift for a whole generation” (Terry Melanson). The influence of the New Age public school system is incalculable.

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS IS EMPLOYED BY THE EMERGING CHURCH to break down the old church “paradigm” so that it can be replaced with the emerging one.

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS IS EMPLOYED BY ECUMENISTS to break down the walls of separation between denominations, between liberals and evangelicals, between Protestants and Catholics, to create Christian unity, and it is used BY INTERFAITH DIALOGUERS to tear down absolute truth and replace it with broadminded religious tolerance.

Dr. Robert Klenck describes how Hegelian dialectics works within the ecumenical setting, and he reminds us that the ecumenical dialectics is not a mere process of chance; it is “facilitated” toward a desired end. Otherwise, the group process could result in faith in dogmatic truth and an absolute Bible, but that is not going to be allowed to happen!

“Briefly, the Hegelian dialectic process works like this: a diverse group of people (in the CGM [Church Growth Movement], this is a mixture of believers and unbelievers), gather in a facilitated meeting (with a trained facilitator/‘teacher’), using group dynamics (peer pressure), to discuss a social issue (or dialogue the Word of God), and reach a pre-determined outcome (consensus or compromise). When the Word of God is dialogued between believers and unbelievers, and consensus is reached--agreement that all are comfortable with--then the message of the Word of God has been watered down, and the participants have been conditioned to accept (and even celebrate) their compromise. This becomes the starting point for the next meeting. The fear of alienation from the group is the pressure that prevents an individual from standing firm for the truth of the Word of God.

“A traditional thinker, when proven wrong with factual information (i.e., Biblical moral absolutes) yields to the facts, and admits that he/she is wrong, and then aligns him/herself to those facts. Because Biblical moral absolutes do not change, traditional thinkers who align themselves to those unchanging absolutes are labeled as ‘resistant to change.’

“On the other hand, transformational thinkers, when proven wrong with factual information, have been conditioned to process that information differently. They automatically question it and dialogue it within themselves; their (deceitful) hearts rebel against it, and then they begin to justify (to themselves and others) why it is that they no longer have to attend to the facts. The natural result of the dialectic process is the searing of the conscience (1 Timothy 4:1-2). These people are then able to justify to themselves why they are no longer bound to Biblical moral absolutes. ...

“... through the process of continual incremental change (using the Hegelian dialectic over and over with the last synthesis becoming the new thesis--the ‘new fact base,’ or ‘new reality’), the Word of God is gradually/incrementally changed from its original intent, and eventually it is interpreted to mean something contrary to its original intent. ...

“The rebellion is subtle at first--simply moving away from the traditional way of ‘doing’ church; later, the ordaining of female ‘pastors’; and eventually it gets to the point of ordaining lesbian ‘pastors.’ Barriers to change must be broken down, and eventually, for the sake of peace and unity, interdenominational barriers and interreligious barriers will be broken down, paving the way for a worldwide ecumenical movement--a one-world church. ...

“A recent example of this paradigm shift in processing factual information was when the ‘Rev.’ Richard Mouw, the President of the Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California (a strong promoter of the church growth movement), was quoted in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune on January 22, 2000: ‘Mouw said he supports rights and benefits for committed same-sex domestic partners, but believes the sacrament of marriage should be confined to heterosexual couples in the Judeo-Christian tradition.’ When leaders of this movement are making statements like this, then we can be sure that the movement is not from God, and is headed in the opposite direction of God’s will. Mr. Mouw already is thinking in the transformational mode. He is able to justify (to himself) a teaching that is contrary to the Word of God” (“What’s Wrong with the 21st Century Church,” August 8, 2000, http://www.crossroad.to/News/Church/Klenck1.html).

Observe, again, that deception is inherent in the dialectic process. Those who initiate and oversee the process have an objective, and they know that it will be resisted, so they resort to deception, especially at the beginning, to break down resistance to the goal. In the case of theological modernists, they present the new theology as a minor issue at first, hiding their real agenda. In the case of Marxists, they describe their desired political system in deceptive terms. They make promises that they have no intention of keeping; they hide the fact that liberties will be curtailed.

Those who use this methodology know that once the process of dialectics has been carried out, the resistance will have been broken down and an atmosphere created for the implementation of the original goal. They adopt the Jesuit philosophy that “the end justifies the means.”

Consider how that Robert Schuller’s January 2008 Rethink Conference employed Hegelian dialectics to further his New Age objectives of syncretizing religion and creating a new type of Christianity and ultimately a new world through the power of human potential.

The conference was “A CONVERGENCE of some of the most influential Christian and global thinkers” (Rethink Conference announcement, Oct. 15, 2007). These great thinkers were also described as “respected icons in media, politics, faith, science, business and technology.” The important fact is that they represented contradictory ideas, and their contradictory ideas were to be the stepping stones to something new. They included evangelicals such as Lee Strobel and Rick Warren’s wife, Kay, Emerging Church leaders Erwin McManus and Dan Kimball, Evangelicals and Catholics Together proponent Charles Colson, media mogul and pornography purveyor Rupert Murdoch, and agnostic Larry King.

The Rethink Conference was clearly described in terms of the Hegelian methodology, though of course the term itself was not used. The idea of the conference was “bring all the different thoughts and ideas and create something cohesive and meaningful” (“Interview with Erwin McManus, Christian Post, January 22, 2008). The process first involved hearing what each speaker said in a 20-minute lecture. The participants were then instructed to “wrestle with it, dialogue about it, agree or disagree with it--then take it a step further and make it your own” (Rethink Conference announcement, Oct. 15, 2007).

Schuller also described his Hegelian methodology in the book Don’t Throw Away Tomorrow: Living God’s Dream for Your Life:

“We need to learn the healing quality of wise compromise. ... Perhaps the only way to deal with contradictions is to combine them creatively and produce something new. That’s ingenious compromise.” (New Age leader Gerald Jampolsky’s endorsement is on the back cover of this book.)

To seek to combine contradictions into something new is Hegelian dialectics. It is a key principle of the emerging church.

If some believe that Jesus is God and others believe he was merely a great teacher, and if some believe that man is a fallen sinner separated from God and others believe he is essentially good and one with God, and if some believe that God is the Almighty who created all things but is not a part of the creation and others believe that God is the sum total of all things -- those are the old contradictions and we must move beyond such things. This is what they are saying.

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS IS EMPLOYED BY THEOLOGICAL MODERNISTS to replace old doctrine with new.

A Lutheran pastor describes how the Hegelian dialectic works in the field of theological training:

“I had fully accepted this ‘New Theology or Thinking,’ having first gone through a traumatic time in which the Christian faith with which I had arrived there [at seminary] was ‘challenged.’ The reason presented for this ‘challenging’ was to bring us to really ‘think through’ our theology, to ‘stretch’ our faith, to ‘move us to a deeper understanding of the faith.’ This was the rational which was presented when more conservative members of the constituency in the synod would question about what was going on when they would hear from outspoken students and vicars what was being taught.

“THIS REALLY WAS DECEITFUL BECAUSE THE AIM AND INTENTION, AS I CAME TO KNOW LATER AS A MORE SOPHISTICATED INITIATE, WAS NOT TO ‘STRETCH OUR FAITH’ BUT TO MOVE US FROM THE HISTORICAL FAITH INTO THE ‘NEW THINKING.’ We all knew this was a great shift; that’s why it was so traumatic; but we presented it as representing only minor doctrinal differences. It actually involves an entirely different way of thinking. I have said many times to my conservative friends: You don’t understand; they think in an entirely different way. You think in terms of one thing which is true and the opposite which is false. They have adopted a dialectical way of thinking in which there is no true and false, only thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. They have effectively adopted Hegel’s dialectical way of thinking. There truly are no absolute truths within their system. They will discuss things with conservatives in a way that gets their opponent to think that they are discussing which of two positions is right. All the while the real issue for them is that there is no certain answer” (The Christian News, April 29, 1985, pp. 1, 3, 4).

We see, again, that the dialectic process is a guided process and that it employs deception to reach its objectives.

Dean Gotcher describes how Hegelian dialectics works in a general setting as well as in the type of egalitarian, non-authoritative Bible classes that are popular in many churches today:

“There is thesis, which is simple; that’s you and your position and facts based on what you believe. Antithesis is somebody who’s different than you. The moment the two of you who are different are in the same room, there’s a potential relationship there. However, the only way you can get to it is synthesis. You and the other person have to put aside your differences for the sake of a relationship and try to find facts or elements of your belief systems that are in harmony. ...

“In seminary I took the equivalent of a total quality management course where I learned how to survey the congregation and find out ‘what do you think and how do you feel?’ ... The moment you go into the dialogue [the dialectic process]--which now is in Sunday School materials as well--about what do you think and how do you feel over what is being taught, you are now allowing the [student] to be a scientist on God, to question the authority of God’s Word, instead of looking at it as it is, and saying, ‘Okay, I don’t understand it; Lord, reveal it to me.’ This has to be what we do instead of gauging how we think and feel. ...

“[The dialectic process] makes faith into a tool to be changed to our human understanding, to change it to meet our felt needs for the sake of a relationship. The agenda that the Berean church revealed to Paul, was that they weren’t hung up on Paul. They weren’t hung up on a relationship. They were hung up on truth. So when the Apostle Paul shared the Gospel, they went to the Word of God and checked him out. Try that with ministers today and they’ll get bent out of shape because you’re not supposed to question their ‘I think and I feel.’ ...

“Theology students drive me nuts because they say, ‘Jesus is a team builder.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute. No, He wasn’t a team builder. Each one of those disciples could stand on their own. They didn’t need the group to make a decision. They died alone as martyrs. They realized there wasn’t a group grade on the day of judgment. They didn’t say, ‘I think and I feel.’ You don’t find that in their ministry. They saw the truth and proclaimed it. They encouraged us through their work to continue to proclaim the truth.’ Jesus’ ministry was not built on ‘I think and I feel.’ It was built on ‘I know’” (Interview with Dean Gotcher, Women’s International Group Newsletter, Sept.-Oct. 1999).

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS IS EMPLOYED BY ONE WORLDERS AND NEW AGERS to prepare the way for world harmony. It is employed to break down national sovereignty and create a globalist mindset, to tear down the old contradictory religious and political systems and replace them with a new syncretized one. Speaking at the UN Conference on Human Rights in 1993 in Vienna, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali spoke of the “challenging dialectical conflict” that required people to “transcend ourselves” and “to find our common essence beyond our apparent divisions, our temporary differences, our ideological and cultural barriers” (Interview with Dean Gotcher, Women’s International Group Newsletter, Sept.-Oct. 1999).

The late New Ager M. Scott Peck, whose books have sold by the millions, believed that man could become God through a process of spiritual evolution. He promoted the religion of scientific “skepticism,” of rejecting the religious faith of one’s parents, regardless of what that faith is, and building one’s own personal religion, of questioning everything.

In his books The Different Drum (1987) and A World Awaiting to Be Born (1993), Peck applied this evolutionary process to world peace. He taught the concept that a new age has arrived in man’s evolutionary process and a spiritually evolved generation can create unity, solve the world’s problems, and bring in an age of peace. The front cover of The Different Drum describes the book’s objective as “the creation of true community, the first step to world peace.” The back cover says, “Dr. M. Scott Peck believes that if we are to prevent civilization destroying itself, we must urgently rebuild community on all levels, local, national and international, and that is the first step to spiritual survival.” The Different Drum has the following dedication: “To the people of all nations in the hope that within a century there will no longer be a Veteran’s Day Parade...” This refers, of course, to the hope of world peace.

Peck described the process whereby the world can allegedly experience peace, and it is the Hegalian dialectic at work. It requires creating New Age communities all over the world in which differences can be resolved and the world transformed. In these communities there is no leader but all are leaders, decisions are reached by consensus, there are no “sides” and everyone is respected and heard (The Different Drum, pp. 71, 72). In these communities the individual is allowed to express any belief or doubt and to act out in his own individual way, to live as he pleases. The New Age community must be a “safe place.” He says the “healing” will only happen when “its members have learned to stop trying to heal and convert” (p. 68). He says true community means that “everyone is welcome” and there is “no pressure to conform” and that “all human differences are included” and “appreciated” and even “celebrated” (pp. 61, 62). True community must incorporate “the dark and the light, the sacred and the profane” (p. 65). Those who believe in homosexual marriage and abortion and evolution and human divinity are to live in harmonious community with those who don’t. He calls this process the politics of “transcendence” (p. 63).

In the New Age community, the only real sin is the sin of exclusiveness and theological dogmatism.

Peck says, “It is not only such ideological and theological rigidities that we need to discard, it is any idea that assumes the status of ‘the one and only right way’” (p. 96).

He says that the greatest hindrance to world peace is “exclusivity” (The Different Drum, p. 61). He warns about “groups that exclude others” because they are “doubters” or “sinners” and that are “defensive bastions against community.” He says that even the refusal to join a group because you don’t agree with it is “destructive to community” (p. 62).

Peck personally conducted scores of community-building workshops to further his objective, and he is only one of many who are involved in this process.

It is easy to see how unacceptable the practice of dogmatic Bible preaching and exclusive evangelism is in such a context! It simply cannot be allowed, because it will disrupt the sense of world community!

For a Bible-believing Christian to say that salvation is through regenerating faith in Jesus Christ alone and to separate his children from the public school system and to disagree with evolution and to refuse to “celebrate” homosexuality is considered a great evil by New Agers, because they think it is hindering the evolutionary progress of the entire world. Dogmatic biblical thinking is the chief obstacle to the establishment of the New Age.

What Saith the Scripture?

From a biblical perspective Hegelian dialectics is gross disobedience to God.

Hegelian dialectics is contrary to the Bible’s teaching that we have been given absolute truth from God and we are not to allow any contradiction. The Bible claims to be the sole divine revelation that God has given mankind and we are to believe it and judge everything by it (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We are to allow “no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). We are to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), which means we are forbidden to give contradictory doctrines any credence.

For the Bible believer, the Bible is THE infallible thesis, and every antithesis is to be rejected and no synthesis allowed!

Hegelian dialectics is contrary to the Bible’s teaching that God’s people are to separate from darkness.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17).

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:14-17).

“Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:5).

“And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen” (1 John 5:19-21).

The Bible asks rhetorically, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). The Ecumenical, New Age, Emerging Church crowd brazenly replies, “Sure, we can make that work.”

But it won’t work. It never has and it never will.

Well does the Bible describe the great departure of the faith as those who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

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“... he was guided by his professor of English literature, William E. Smyser, to works by Emerson and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius for a sympathetic unfolding of the power of the individual mind. ... Peale’s discovery of James and EMERSON, and to a lesser extent Marcus Aurelius, acquired in the atmosphere of romantic idealism that seemed to flourish on the Methodist campus, EVENTUALLY BECAME PART OF HIS MENTAL EQUIPMENT AND THEN A LIFETIME FASCINATION. He would soon encounter the EMERSON OF TRANSCENDENTALISM again in seminary as a shaping force in liberal theology. ...

“Peale’s course of study at seminary was therefore a mixture of theology, philosophy, and social science, of THE MYSTICISM OF PERSONALISM and the activism and ethics of the social gospel. ... it became another means for nurturing A METAPHYSICAL SUBJECTIVISM that had been planted in his religious outlook in his earlier days....

“When he left seminary he described himself as a liberal ... in any conflict with fundamentalists his spontaneous reaction was to side with the modernists” (George, pp. 36-37, 49- 52).

These remarks are very telling. Peale’s faith was mystical and metaphysical. This is New Age. He was powerfully influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was a Unitarian minister who fashioned a religious philosophy that attempted to synthesize pagan religions such as Hinduism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, with Christianity. He held to such heresies and pagan doctrines as the fatherhood of God, the divinity of man, the unity of religions, and man is one with God and has no need of an atonement.

In his 1841 essay “The Over-Soul,” Emerson wrote: “... within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. ... there is no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins” (Emerson, The Over-Soul). Thus, Emerson taught that man’s soul is God and God is man’s soul.
(e) In his message to the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard in 1837, entitled “The American Scholar,” Emerson exhorted scholars to free themselves of tradition (such as the Bible) and to maintain a “self-trust.”

This is pure New Age heresy.

Parents who send their children to liberal schools and who stay in denominations which allow room for modernists and who continue to support the denominational institutions by their tithes and offerings should not be surprised when their children become apostate or at least weakened in faith.

TICKLING THE EARS OF AN APOSTATE GENERATION

Peale’s first pastorate after graduation from seminary was at the King’s Highway Methodist Church in Brooklyn, New York. His populistic, positive message gain instant acclaim: “In the three years he was at King’s Highway, between 1924 and 1927, the church experienced phenomenal growth, increasing from just over a hundred members when he arrived to nearly 900 when he left...” (George, p. 56).

Peale’s biographer notes, “His message was already assuming the contours it would retain; it was a theologically liberal, inspirational talk that emphasized the transforming result of a relationship with Jesus and with the church” (George, p. 57).

The problem was that Peale’s Jesus was the not the Jesus of the Bible, but the Jesus of his own creation. Peale’s Jesus was a Jesus that did not condemn sin; a Jesus that was not born of a virgin; a Jesus that was not the eternal God; a Jesus that did not die and shed His blood for man’s sin.

Peale used the fundamentalist’s vocabulary, but he used the modernist’s dictionary. This is why so many were deceived by the man. Peale’s god was not the God of the Bible, but the god of self. His faith was not faith in the Jesus Christ of the Bible, but faith in faith. His gospel was not the gospel of repentance from sin and faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, but a gospel of self-esteem, self-help, and self-recovery.

PEALE AND THE EVANGELICAL WORLD

In the 1950s Peale was labeled a heretic by the evangelical world. For example, an article in Christianity Today, November 11, 1957, said, “Peale speaks much of faith, but it is not faith in God, but ‘faith in faith,’ which means in your capacities. ... This is neither religion, moralism, or anything more than self-help baptized with a sprinkling of devout-plus-medical phrases. For those who believe in the God of Scripture, the reality of vitality of good and evil, and the grace of God unto salvation, there is nothing here but the frenzy of a guilty life and the misery of creeping death.”

The May 1, 1955, issue of United Evangelical Action, noted with wise and courageous insight:

“Unless one is deeply discerning it will not be noticed that Peale has caricatured God, ignored sin and its needed repentance. Norman Vincent Peale’s philosophy is so high-sounding, so full of secondary gospel truth, that millions of his patrons fail to see that the basic redemptive truth of the gospel is completely ignored. Unless one is deeply discerning it will not be noticed that Peale has caricatured God, ignored sin and its needed repentance. Peale presents a very convenient God who is a sort of ‘glorified bellboy.’”

As the years passed, Peale did not change but evangelicalism did. Peale remained the same heretic he always was, while evangelicalism became increasingly apostate and blind so that in recent decades Peale has been widely hailed as a man of God.

Billy Graham helped raise Peale’s status in the evangelical world by inviting him to give the benediction at a crusade in New York in 1956. At a National Council of Churches luncheon on December 6, 1966, Graham said, “I don’t know anyone who has done more for the kingdom of God than Norman and Ruth Peale, or have meant any more in my life--the encouragement they have given me” (Hayes Minnick, Bible for Today publication #565, p. 28).

Peale’s wife, Ruth, was a member of the Board of Managers of the American Bible Society (ABS). Peale addressed the 171st annual meeting of the American Bible Society in New York on May 14, 1987. In the announcement for this event, the ABS described Peale as “an author who has inspired millions of his fellow human beings the world over to think ‘positively,’ an uplifting radio and TV personality, and for more than 60 years, a preacher of the Gospel of Christ truly filled with the Holy Spirit” (Christian News, Feb. 16, 1987).

In 1988, Eternity magazine, which has a stated goal of helping “believers in America and elsewhere develop a genuinely Christian mind-set,” was taken over by Peale’s Foundation for Christian Living. Well-known evangelical leader James M. Boice, editor of Eternity, wrote a glowing report of the merger which he entitled “An Exciting Milestone.” Boice gave no warning about Peale’s modernism. (By the end of that year, Eternity had ceased to exist.)

The National Religious Broadcasters presented Peale with an Award of Merit.

Eric Fellman, one-time editor of Moody Monthly, resigned in 1985 to become editor-in-chief of Peale’s Foundation for Christian Living, and Moody continued to print articles by Fellman.

Fuller Theological Seminary offers a Norman Vincent Peale Scholarship in recognition of the supposed “outstanding ministry” of this apostate (The Fundamentalist Digest, Sept.-Oct. 1992).

In a review of a biography on Peale, Christianity Today said this of the positive thinker. Observe how dramatically the thinking of Christianity Today had changed since 1957:

“Norman Vincent Peale is a devout Christian, who injected vitality into a church that was losing touch with ordinary Americans--with the salesmen and housewives and schoolteachers who found him so inspirational. Peale spoke their language, much as televangelists and megachurch pastors who followed him have done. But did he pay too high a price to connect?” (Christianity Today, June 21, 1993, pp. 35-36).

This is the typical new-evangelical hallmark of tiptoeing around the hard issues. Unwilling to come out negatively against heresy, Christianity Today merely throws out a mild question for its readers to answer themselves rather than make a plain statement that Peale was an apostate.

Many were deceived by Peale’s winsomeness and his use of Bible terminology. Guideposts magazine goes into the homes of many Bible-believing Christians who are unaware of Peale’s heresies and who do not have pastors brave enough or well-informed enough to warn plainly of heretics. None of the popular Christian publications are willing to lift a voice of clear warning today of the Peales and Schullers and Chos of our time.

PEALE’S THEOLOGICAL MODERNISM, RELIGIOUS SYNCRETISM, AND UNIVERSALISM

Though Peale rarely spoke in clear theological terms, he did on occasion openly deny the Christian faith. In an interview with Phil Donahue in 1984, Peale said: “It’s not necessary to be born again. You have your way to God; I have mine. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine. ... I’ve been to the Shinto shrines, and God is everywhere.” Donahue exclaimed, “But you’re a Christian minister; you’re supposed to tell me that Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Life, aren’t you?” Peale replied, “Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere.” Peale told Donahue that when he got to “the Pearly Gates”, “St. Peter” would say, “I like Phil Donahue; let him in!” Mr. Peale gave comfort to some in the audience who believed that “just so we think good thoughts” and “just so we do good, we believe we’ll get to heaven” (Hugh Pyle, Sword of the Lord, Dec. 14, 1984).

Peale was a Mason and served as Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of New York City and Imperial Grand Chaplain of the Shrine. On September 30, 1991, he was inducted into the Scottish Rite Hall of Honor, and his oil portrait hangs in the House of the Washington D.C. Temple (The Berean Call, Oct. 1992).

In an article that appeared in the Masonic Scottish Rite Journal in February 1993, Peale said:

“My grandfather was a Mason for 50 years, my father for 50 years, and I have been a Mason for over 60 years. This means my tie with Freemasonry extends back to 1869 when my grandfather joined the Masons. ... Freemasonry does not promote any one religious creed. All Masons believe in the Deity without reservation. However, Masonry makes no demands as to how a member thinks of the Great Architect of the Universe. ... men of different religions meet in fellowship and brotherhood under the fatherhood of God.”

This is a true description of Masonry, of course, but it is strictly contrary to Christ’s exclusive claims as the only way to God and the only Savior (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), and flies in the face of such Bible demands as 2 Corinthians 6:14-18:

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? ... Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

In a July 22, 1983, interview with USA Today, Peale was asked, “Do you think herpes and AIDS is God’s punishment of homosexuals and the promiscuous?” Peale responded, “I don’t believe God spends his time revenging himself on people. These things come about because of scientific methodology. God is too big to spend his time in revenge.”

In the same interview Peale said, “The church should be in the forefront of everything that is related to human welfare because the church is supposed to be the spiritual home of mankind and it ought to take care of all of God’s children.”

In an interview with Modern Maturity magazine, December-January 1975-76, Peale was asked if people are inherently good or bad. He replied:

“They are inherently good--the bad reactions aren’t basic. Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil--but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I’ve got great faith in the essential fairness and decency--you may say goodness--of the human being.”

In the same interview Peale said regarding Christ, “I like to describe him as ... the nearest thing to God...”

In 1980 Peale attended a dinner honoring the 85th birthday of Spencer Kimball, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--the Mormons.

Peale endorsed the use of New Age occultic automatic writing: Speaking of Jane Palzere and Anna Brown, co-authors of The Jesus Letters, which professes to be the product of automatic writing under the inspiration of Jesus Christ, Peale said: “What a wonderful gift to all of us from you is your book, The Jesus Letters ... You will bless many by this truly inspired book. ... It little matters if these writings come from Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus of Jane [Jane Palzere] they are all the same consciousness and that consciousness is God. I am a part of God, and Jane and Anna are part of that same God” (advertisement for The Jesus Letters and Your Healing Spirit).

The advertisement quoted above gives this information about the automatic writing recommended by Peale:

“Initial contact from the entity was made with Palzere on February 3, 1978, when she was sitting at her desk in Newington, Connecticut writing a philosophy of healing for a course she was taking. `My hand began to write “You will be the channel for the writing of a book,”‘ she explains. From then on, one message came each day. Palzere reports that `they would be preceded by a tremor in my hand, would come without hesitation and would end when the message was completed.’“

In this strange book the supposed Jesus channeled by Palzere and Brown says, “God does not see evil; He sees only souls at different levels of awareness.”

Of this unscriptural nonsense, Peale gave the following frightful testimony:

“I found myself fascinated, deeply moved and having the feeling that he [the ‘Jesus’ of The Jesus Letters] was also speaking to me as I read” (Ibid.).

Peale was deeply moved by the New Age teaching of a demon masquerading as Jesus.

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