Herescope

PLURA SCRIPTURA

2012-01-26T16:12:00.002-05:00

Neologisms for Neoevangelicals

PLURA SCRIPTURA ([ploor-uh] [skrɪpt ər’ uh])

[(1350–1400; Middle English < Latin plūrālis, equivalent to plūr-, stem of plūs plus + -alis -al); (1250–1300; Middle English < Latin scrīptūra writing. See script, -ure) ((Latin ablative, "by Scripture plus more")*

1. Consisting of, containing, or pertaining to more than the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; the Scriptures plus something else.

2. The doctrine that the Bible contains knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness, and that superior spiritual insight may be found through the supplementation of revelation, dream, impression, experience, contact with the afterlife, voice, signs and wonders, psycho-social constructs, new theory, new thought, etc.

3. The idea that the doctrines to be admitted or confessed in the Christian faith are found directly within Scripture as well as other authorities considered co-equal, co-relevant, and or sublimely inspired, thus creating new revelation.

4. The doctrine of the authority of the personal witness of the Holy Spirit or spirit to the heart of each man as a necessary embellishment to the biblical text.

5. The teaching that all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; and that only the learned, the elect, or the leadership elite may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

6. The evolutionary philosophy that the positive future of man, including world peace, is predicated upon the unity of world religious beliefs; syncretism.

*Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura and www.dictionary.com

NOTE: The original posting can be found HERE. Several members of the Discernment Research Group have been collaborating with Pastor Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries to develop a descriptive vocabulary for the new doctrines, practices and heresies of the emerging evangelical church.

BREACHED!

2012-01-17T18:18:00.006-05:00

The Symptoms of Seduction by Spirits

“Now it came about when Jerusalem was captured in the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it; in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the city wall was breached.”

Jeremiah 39:1-2, NASB

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments
Read Part 1: Normalizing Necromancy
Read Part 2: The “Canaanization” of the Church
Read Part 3: Spontaneous Spiritualism
Read Part 4: Interpretation by Imagination

Read Part 5: Spiritualism's Slippery Slope

By the Discernment Research Group

“It was toward the end of the reading that I first noticed the whirling sensation over my head. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away. It was a strange but not unpleasant feeling that seemed to flutter and vibrate and even tingle above me. I was startled when Bonnie [my psychic reader] picked up on it.

‘Are you aware that there is a ball of light over your head?’

I was dumfounded. A ball of light? Is that what I was feeling? This was getting a little wild. I told Bonnie that I had been feeling something over my head but didn’t know what it was. She said it again.

‘It’s a ball of light.’

For a moment I tried to understand what a ball of light was doing over my head. Then I asked the obvious.

‘Why is there a ball of light over my head?’

‘You are being shown that you have a lot of help on the other side,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘What do you mean by “the other side”?’

‘The spirit world,’ was her quick reply. ‘Family and loved ones who have passed away, as well as angels and other spirits who for whatever reasons are sympathetic to your life. They are making themselves known to you. They are reaching out to you and letting you know that they are available if you want their help’.”

—Warren Smith, The Light That Was Dark[1]

Introduction

One of life’s most difficult experiences is the death of a loved one, especially the death of one’s own child. Yet Scripture promises Christians that,

“the God and Father the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [has]... according to His abundant mercy... caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5, NASB)

Appropriated by faith, this “blessed hope” is the source of strength and comfort to Christians grieving over the death of a believing loved one who also trusted in the salvation offered by and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This series of articles has been difficult for the Discernment Research Group to publish. As we read the account of Pastor Steve and Sarah Berger’s loss of their teenage son Josiah in a tragic car accident, our hearts stirred with sympathy for them and their family, for their church and their friends. Yet we rejoiced with them in their assurance that Josiah, a professing believer in Jesus Christ, was in Heaven and in the legacy he had left here on earth.

However, amidst our sympathy for them and thoughtful consideration, we decided it necessary to rebut the New Age view of Heaven that was publicly being spread amongst the evangelical community in the Bergers’ book, Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth.[2] Openly endorsed by such high-profile church figures as James Robison, Chuck Missler and Greg Laurie,[3] and promoted by various media outlets[4] and Koinonia House,[5] this book required a public response.[6]

In a point-by-point biblical and theological analysis and commentary, Have Heart was reviewed by Pastor Larry DeBruyn in his 5-part series “Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?” The Discernment Research Group thought this review of the Bergers’ book was necessary because the issues it introduces to America’s evangelical community; namely a New Age understanding of Heaven that allows for visitations from Christian loved ones who have entered the afterlife.

From our perspective, we are sorry that the grief and anguish of their son’s death has opened the minds of the family, their friends and their audience to “the other side”[7] for the term “other side” derives its meaning from the occult world of Spiritualism, a religious phenomena that has been around for centuries.[8] As a movement, Wikipedia describes the rise of Spiritualism to prominence in the 1840s as follows:

Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living. Anyone may receive spirit messages, but formal communication sessions (séances) are held by “mediums”, who can then provide information about the afterlife.[9]

Under the subheading “Syncretism,” the Wikipedia entry also notes that Spiritualism was a forerunner to the New Age movement, with which it shares many similarities and overlapping connections, and that in the past it gained a foothold in many liberal Christian churches whose membership contains so-called “Christian Spiritualists.”[10] So herein resides our concern: the door to the doctrines and practices of Spiritualism is now being opened amongst unsuspecting evangelicals because of the information and experiences communicated by the Bergers’ book. In other words, the spiritual security of the evangelical church has been breached. This breach not only includes descriptions of their son Josiah’s afterlife appearances here on earth, but also credits to occult sources in the book and new teachings about Heaven described by the authors. Because several members of the Discernment Research Group have come out of the New Age movement and have personally experienced the psychic world, we recognize Spiritualism when we see it, no matter how its tenets might be labeled. So we became alarmed enough to write more on this topic in order to warn others of the dangers inherent with courting the beliefs and practices of Spiritualism. The following summary covers some spiritualist activities that concern us.

The Symptoms of Spiritualism

Apparitions
In Spiritualism, “apparitions” is the term commonly employed to describe that the dead in some manner, shape or form, make appearances to those who are still living. But its meaning can extend beyond this. As a term, apparition “covers all visionary appearances, hallucinations, clairvoyance, and similar unusual perceptions.”[11] This broadly includes the experience of sounds, voices, visions or images, dreams, impressions or feelings, etc. An apparition has commonly been associated with a “ghost” of a human being, a.k.a. a “familiar spirit.”[12] Contact from animals (often associated with animism), extra-terrestrials, mythological creatures and gods, and even inanimate objects have also been reported. In analyzing the vast array of historical and cross-cultural reports about apparitions, one occult source explains why these apparitions are feared: “Almost invariably the spirits of the deceased are thought to be unfriendly towards the living, desirous of drawing the souls of the latter, or their shadows, into the spirit-world.”[13] The analysis concludes:

Thus it will be seen that ancient and modern ideas on apparitions differ very little in essential particulars, though they take colour from the race and time to which they belong.... [T]he laws which govern their appearance are the same, and the beliefs concerning them are not greatly different, in whatever race or age they may be found.[14]

Universalism
Implicitly or explicitly, the widespread phenomenon of apparitions suggests salvific universalism.[15] In a recently posted 5-part series on Herescope, Pastor DeBruyn explained why biblical Christians are not to condone the appearances of apparitions (in whatever form). The Bible expressly forbids association with apparitions! But the door to this type of universalistic thinking has been opened, perhaps unwittingly, when in their book the Bergers fail to acknowledge the existence of Hell. This tragic omission could imply the idea of Christian Universalism[16], that all will be saved. For those who have lost unsaved family members, this presents a particularly enticing temptation; readers may be led to embrace a false hope and hence, be distracted from the true gospel. Furthermore, Have Heart does not warn of the possibility of seducing spirits and demons impersonating loved ones, disguising themselves as angels “of light” to the grieving. (2 Corinthians 11:14; 1 Timothy 4:1) Interestingly, the premise that familiar spirits impersonate demons is prominent in occult lore.[17] Thus, the warning of 1 John 4:1 is particularly relevant to these types of experiences: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

Spontaneity
The Bergers’ use of “spontaneity” to legitimatize a visit from a loved one is not a valid test because it doesn’t take a séance or a medium to invoke an apparition![18] Occult lore is filled with stories of apparitions which were not solicited. One source states: “Sometimes the familiar [spirit] annexed himself voluntarily to a master, without any exercise of magic skill or invocation on his part....”[19] In fact, so prevalent were the stories of uncalled-for visits from dead loved ones, that in the late 1800s societies for “psychical research” were formed for the purpose of studying apparitions.[20] These psychical research societies cataloged these reports of visitations, including encounters which warned of impending danger or delivered prophetic utterances. Shortly after a person’s death, most often the specter of that dead person came unbidden and unsolicited to loved ones. In short, they just showed up.

In the overall context of Spiritualism, the Bergers’ stories about visits from Josiah bear eerie similarity to reports collected and categorized over the past several centuries of psychic and occult research.[21] This fact may disappoint those who read the Bergers’ book and put their hope in the new way Have Heart imagines Heaven even as it sanctions visits from deceased Christian loved ones. Yet it remains a fact that these types of experiences cannot be supported by Holy Scripture and they manifest characteristics of the occult world.

Earthly Afterlife
Another common thread is Spiritualism’s belief that hauntings by departed loved ones (i.e., “apparitions”) indicate that they still have an active purpose here on earth. One occult source explains it this way:

If no definite message is conveyed, the apparition may be explained by a continued interest in earthly occupations. The spirit apparently cannot adjust himself immediately to his new surroundings, he may be seen for a while in his favorite haunts or at his usual work, being somehow enabled, when recently free from the body, to enjoy a fuller perception of earthly scenes than it is afterwards possible to retain.[22] (Emphasis added)

It is precisely at this point where the teaching of Have Heart crosses over to “the other side”. The authors assert that their son Josiah is still actively engaged in earthly affairs. He isn’t just in Heaven alive, active and aware (which biblically is true), but they go on to assert he, as others, make visits and go on missions to earth. This they validate by the various accounts of people who have had paranormal experiences with him.

The Bergers re-cast all of these post-mortem Josiah appearances into a Christian context, explaining them in terms of ministry and mission for the Master. They write, “Josiah is ministering and working to help others... He’s doing it from Heaven!”(HH, p. 5) And also, “He was fully alive on earth, and now, he is fully alive in Heaven and encouraging others [presumably on earth, ed.] to awake, arise, and receive the Light.”(HH, p. 18) Have Heart relies heavily on the ideas in an 1800s book by Rebecca Ruter Springer called My Dream of Heaven which teaches that “saints in Heaven go on ‘invisible missions’ to earth,” and who reported that her brother Frank was engaged in post-mortem “heavenly ministry... to make trips to earth for the Master.”(HH, p 89-90)[23]

The descriptions of paranormal hauntings in occult literature strongly resemble the reports of Josiah’s activities in Have Heart. The idea of loved ones coming back to comfort the bereaved, or help those on earth, is often cited as a purpose for visitations in the occult world. New Age occultist Shirley MacLaine, in her famous 1983 book, Out on a Limb (Bantam), records a conversation with her trance-channeler Kevin Ryerson:

“Do you believe everyone has spiritual guides?” I [MacLaine] asked.

Kevin looked surprised. “Why sure,” he said, “that’s what the soul does after it passes out of the body. Souls that have died, so to speak, help those who are still in the body. Why, that’s what spiritual understanding is all about.”
(Emphasis added, p. 184)

The Bergers state that they “believe that Josiah is participating in the ‘catching’ of unbelievers for Jesus Christ.”(HH, p. 87).[24] While it is true that Josiah’s life’s legacy remains as a good testimony to his Christian walk on earth (we think of the love he shared with others, his donated organs and the orphanage established in his name), the Bergers then leap into the paranormal by recording how Josiah’s ninth-grade English teacher dreamed a dream in which Josiah’s spirit told her that, “he was in Thailand because that is where he was needed.”(HH, p. 90) There are no recorded incidents in Scripture of the spirits of the dead traveling to specific locations on earth,[25] but as noticed by psychics, stories like this abound in the occult world.

Frightening Phenomena[26]
The experiences of Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, reveal his lifelong connection with Spiritualism. His psychotherapeutic method grew out of his obsession with connecting with “the other side.” His family background was steeped in occult tradition,[27] and by the time he was a young man, he had begun to employ spiritualist techniques in a series of experiments with a young cousin “Helly”. Coinciding with when his father lay on his deathbed, Jung and Helly tried their first séance, which rapidly went out of control as manifestations of frightening occult activity occurred. In the midst of her trance, Helly reportedly “embarked on a ‘magical flight’” with their dead grandfather “in order to save the soul of another.” The flight included a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil (Compare Luke 16:27-31.).[28]

Imagination
From these experiments with the occult, Carl Jung would go on to develop his concept of “active imagination.” As a result of studying the “trance” states of his cousin Helly during their experiments of connecting with the dead, Jung developed his technique for “visioning.” This trance method was later used by Jung to gain access (“initiation”) into the pagan mystery cults.[29] Jung believed “active imagination” was a way to suspend

...the critical function of the conscious ego to allow images and feelings to arise from the subconscious mind. One’s inner voice could also be found in this way and like a medium, one could speak to it and establish an ongoing dialogue with it....[30] (Emphasis added)

Today we would identify this trance technique as a classic method of meditation or contemplation the intent of which is to induce altered states of consciousness. In the occult world there is a spiritual purpose for this. Jung hoped that such a state would lead to the “creation of a New Man” in a spiritual occult sense.[31] Jung’s legacy has directly impacted evangelicals as evidenced by their widespread use of his “visualization” and “imagination” techniques.

Employing the same kind of imagination-visualization technique to connect with “the other side,” the Bergers state:

Our minds need to be stretched to the other side. I coined a term to illustrate the need to break out of the box and allow God to maximize our view of Heaven: “sanctified imagination within the confines of biblical truth.”(Emphasis added, HH, p. xxii)

The modern-day evangelical movement is precariously susceptible to the suggestive new theologies of the Bergers about connecting with the dead. Why? Because evangelicals are widely participating in “imaginative” activities like contemplation, visualization and other meditative methods that produce mystic states of altered consciousness.[32] In a vulnerable trance-like state induced by contemplative practices, new ideas, imaginations, revelations, doctrines and practices are introduced to the practitioners’ souls. Truth becomes “sourced” within. Not surprisingly, the spirit world uses such trance states to alter orthodox Christian beliefs even as it engrains anti-Christian beliefs in people’s hearts.

The Bergers explain that “Mr. Jim” received his visitation from Josiah when he was already very vulnerable; he was “tired, questioning, and drained.”(HH, p. 100) By itself, grief produces overwhelming feelings that can throw a person off emotionally, physically and spiritually. This is a normal fact of our human nature and explains why Christians should tangibly minister to those who have recently lost loved ones. But this is also a state where people can be more susceptible to false hopes. When combined with attainment of an altered state of consciousness, the agony of grief can become a recipe for spiritual disaster!

New Age psychic Ainslie MacLeod, in his book The Instruction: Living the Life Your Soul Intended, includes a story about his altered-state susceptibility to an apparition of his departed Uncle John:

The psychics had always told me that my deceased Uncle John was one of my spirit guides. Kathleen Loughery, a trance channeler I met on the island of Kauai, was no different. Toward the end of my session with her, she said, “Your uncle is here, and he’s ready to start working with you.”

I left Kathleen and walked out into the glaring sunshine in what I recognized to be a slightly altered state. I drove (cautiously) to Borders bookstore and, as I stood facing a bookshelf, suddenly saw a face to my right.

I froze in amazement. It was my Uncle John.... The image was dimensional and sharp, though it lasted a second or two at the most. At the same time I got a message, “Let’s get started.”[33]

(The fact that MacLeod’s book contains a front page endorsement by Dr. Mehmet Oz, a well-known New Age physician who is overseeing Rick Warren’s health care reform plan, The Daniel Plan, should be of additional concern to evangelicals.[34])

Synchronicity and “God Nods”
Have Heart teaches that God provides grieving loved ones with “special, supernatural moments” that “radically contribute to the healing process. They come spontaneously and when we least expect them.”(HH, p. 113) These “God Nods” are said to come in the form of “experiences”(HH, p. 114), particularly when God, in his “spontaneous sovereignty... allows gifts from the land of the living, Heaven, to touch those in the land of the dying, this earth, to bring comfort and peace.”(HH, p. 20) As related by the Bergers, these experiences had an aspect of timeliness of them, often coming in the form of dreams or impressions.

As pointed out in the 5-part review of and commentary on Have Heart, the idea of “God Nods” bears a striking similarity to the New Age concept of Synchronicity, often referred to as “meant-to-be” experiences that seem more than coincidental and therefore spiritual. Marilyn Ferguson, whose book The Aquarian Conspiracy brought the New Age movement to the fore of American culture, defined “synchronicity” as “guidance” for mystics.[35] In her book, she connects synchronicity to psychic phenomena such as clairvoyance, remote viewing, precognition and psycho-kinesis, and describes it as a “meaningful coincidence, a composite of the other phenomena.”[36] The New Age occult world ascribes an evolutionary purpose to Synchronicity. New Ager James Redfield in his 2011 book The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision, records a conversation that explains:

[I]f we follow the Synchronicity, we will be able to learn from those in Heaven in a direct way, and that will elevate us into the next level of consciousness.[37] (Emphasis added)

While Christians believe in the absolute sovereignty of God—Who directs all of our lives—the idea of God employing paranormal encounters with the dead to influence or direct our spiritual walk resides outside the parameter of Holy Scripture. Are we Christians to believe that the Word and the Spirit are insufficient guides of faith for us?

Syncretism
Opening the door of Spiritualism not only facilitates the merging of evangelicalism with its belief system, but also its near spiritual cousin, New Age Religion. Much of the evangelical church today is now primed for a great convergence or synthesis of religious systems; i.e. Syncretism. For example, The Elijah List, which promotes the activities and beliefs of the New Apostolic Reformation, recently advertised a “School of the Supernatural,” described as a “POWERFUL ONLINE PROPHETIC MENTORING CLASSES, DELIVERANCE OR ON-LOCATION SUPERNATURAL ENCOUNTERS PURPOSED TO STRETCH YOUR PERCEPTION, FREEDOM AND INTIMACY WITH GOD!”[38] Supernatural encounters described by the New Apostolic Reformation have included a wide variety of paranormal experiences, including voices, revelations, impressions, visitations, dreams, strange phenomena, manifestations and a wide variety of encounters with the spirit world.[39]

Arcangel’s Afterlife
The Bergers cite Dianne Arcangel’s book Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences.(HH, pp. 94-95) At one of her websites, Arcangel’s bio describes her as:

Former hospice chaplain, psychiatric hospital therapist, and Director of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Center of Houston, Dianne is an international presenter on the topics of death, dying, grief, and afterlife encounters.[40]

This bio is significant because Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who encouraged the formation of the hospice movement in this country and is best known for her book Death and Dying, later delved into the afterlife. It is reported that “In the late 1970s Kübler-Ross became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism and in other ways attempting to contact the dead.”[41]

This presents a huge problem for the Christian reader. The Bergers offer little warning about Arcangel or her book; however, immediately after citing her psychical research findings, they do qualify that they are “not talking about channeling, séances, or mediums trying to contact the dead.”(HH, pp. 94-95) Because of the lack of specificity in their mild disclaimer, readers might conclude that Arcangel’s book is being generally recommended as a good source regarding matters of the afterlife. This might prove disastrous to a new believer, or one who is not a discipled or discerning Christian. In reading Arcangel’s book, they could be attracted to and influenced by her appealingly-packaged New Age Spiritualism.

Arcangel’s book details her research results, which the Bergers cite in a positive way.(HH, p. 94) In Afterlife Encounters, Arcangel continues in the tradition of the societies for psychical research which sought to investigate and catalog encounters with the dead. To do her research, she admits that she turned to this “psychical” research (p. 278). Chapter 2, titled “The Survey Reveals,” gives it all a positive New Age spin:

Whether real of imagined, paranormal beliefs enhance mental health. Simply believing in the hereafter is life enhancing. Experiencing an afterlife encounter (AE) is a significant element for transcending loss. It, furthermore, offers a leap toward enlightenment.

The 1990s spiritual movement, with its focus on contacting the dead, brought a groundswell of attention surrounding the tremendous value of afterlife encounters.... [42] (Emphasis added)

Accentuating this same ideal, Arcangel’s Preface explains it in terms of world peace. “Afterlife encounters are beacons of life” she writes. “They are catalysts offering a more peaceful, loving and compassionate world.”[43] The book itself is a compendium of afterlife encounters, all cast in a most positive light. In a chapter “The World of Mediumship,” Arcangel records her private session with George Anderson, “an internationally recognized medium” who was “highly respected among [Arcangel's] Elizabeth Kübler-Ross colleagues.”[44] This medium tells Arcangel:

You have a lot of people over there. They all send their love and are proud of who you are and the work you are doing. They're helping you from the other side....[45] (Emphasis added)

Psychic Science
Arcangel’s book continues the historical tradition of the institutes for psychical research which sought to find “scientific” reasons behind the occult research findings about afterlife encounters. There were divisions between those who wanted to place all of these extrasensory experiences in the realm of the brain (psychology) and those who gave credence to the reality of the spirit world. Theories abounded about the various causes for these afterlife experiences: hallucinations, hysteria, telepathy, hypnotism, mesmerism, psychic forces, pathological conditions of the brain or nerves, trances, the cosmos, the encounters with the gods and the power of myths, split-personalities, the unconscious mind, dementia praecox, etc.[46]

Regardless of whether these afterlife encounters were explained by psychology or parapsychology, the overriding conclusion was that these contacts profoundly altered the person who had these experiences. The encounters became a pivotal, life-changing event; an experience so powerful and revelatory that Carl Jung sought to turn them into a rite of initiation into pagan mysteries.[47]

In our era, the New Age Movement has provided an over-arching platform for all of these diverse theories about the afterlife and has ascribed a global purpose to the experiences. In this context, then, the Bergers' book Have Heart finds a unique niche in the evangelical world, positing a new theology about the afterlife that comfortably merges it with the entire Spiritualism paradigm, and promising that these encounters are part of God’s “kingdom work” and “redemptive plan.” (HH, p. 91-92)

Intimidating Experiences
The problem with encountering those in the afterlife, whether spontaneous or sought after, is that things can rapidly get out of control and become scary. Occult lore is filled with accounts of frightening experiences with apparitions. While the Bergers focus on the comforting aspect of the many dreams, impressions and visitations of Josiah, there is another side of this story. One occult source summarizes the deception inherent in these experiences:

About the true nature of apparitions we do not know much. As Andrew Lang stated: “Only one thing is certain about apparitions, namely this that they do appear. They really are perceived.” How are they seen? When Lord Adare submitted this question to the control of D.D. Home, he received the following answer “At times we make passes over the individual to cause him to see us, sometimes we make the actual resemblance of our former clothing, and of what we were, so that we appear exactly as we were known to you on earth; sometimes we project an image that you see, sometimes you see us as we are, with a cloudlike aura of light around us.”[48]

But other experiences, perhaps more frightening, include encounters with ghosts, poltergeists, demons, familiar spirits and goblins, witches, werewolves, vampires, apparitions, etc., all of whom reportedly wreak spiritual havoc, cause psychological damage, and can do bodily harm (See Mark 5:1-13.). Furthermore, these appearances are often reported to be accompanied by divination and curses.[49] It is quite obvious that once one begins flirting with the afterlife, dire things can happen. A loved one might be solicited, but other spirits can show up! Ex-New Age follower Warren Smith records his frightening experience with a disembodied evil presence in his testimony The Light That Was Dark:

In the late evening hours, I was startled out of my sleep by an awful evil presence pressing in upon me. I bolted upright and in a horrified, broken voice called out, “Help me, God!”

Joy sprang out of bed in a flash and was immediately by my side. She knew exactly what was going on. Looking directly at me, she addressed the unseen presence, “In the name of Jesus Christ, leave Warren alone!”

And woosh! It... left as soon as Joy called on the name of Jesus.[50]

Another Jesus, another gospel
Some apparitions even claim to be “Jesus”. Warren Smith’s testimony recounts how he encountered a “false Christ” and “another Jesus” when he was a seeker in the New Age movement. He also relates how Helen Schucman heard an “inner voice” that said, “This is A Course in Miracles. Please take notes.” The voice, which later identified itself as “Jesus,” proceeded to dictate a body of material that completely contradicted the real gospel of Christ and whose oppositional teachings could only be characterized as “another gospel,” “another spirit,” and “another Jesus.”

[M]ost of us never knew the Bible's explicit warnings that false Christs and false prophets would arise in our midst and seduce us with supernatural signs and wonders to make us think their teachings came from God. Those signs and wonders would be so convincing that “if it were possible” they would fool even the most faithful believers of the real gospel and the real Christ.[51]

Conclusion

The warning is plain. There are false voices, impressions, experiences, prophecies, and signs and wonders that cleverly counterfeit themselves to be authentic-experiential encounters with the afterlife. These spiritual experiences can seem genuinely real, perfectly timed and intimately personal as they speak to our needs and comfort our hearts. But even as they may seem to meet our emotional and spiritual needs, we must acknowledge our vulnerability to spiritual deception and therefore measure these experiences by the full counsel of God’s Word, all the while knowing that such encounters are unprecedented in and therefore unsanctioned by Holy Scripture, which reveals to human hearts the true work of the Holy Spirit (See John 5:39; 15:26).

Dr. Harry Ironside, pastor of Chicago’s Moody Memorial Church from 1930-1948, emphasizes the fact that truth mixed with error results in “all error”:

Error is like leaven, of which we read, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Truth mixed with error is equivalent to all error, except that it is more innocent looking and, therefore, more dangerous. God hates such a mixture! Any error, or any truth-and-error mixture, calls for definite exposure and repudiation. To condone such is to be unfaithful to God and His Word and treacherous to imperiled souls for whom Christ died.[52]

“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times
some will fall away from the faith,
paying attention to deceitful spirits
and doctrines of demons....”
1 Timothy 4:1, NASB

Endnotes
1. Warren Smith, The Light That Was Dark: from the New Age to Amazing Grace (Mountain Stream Press, 2005), p. 16-17, emphasis added. This initial experience with a psychic served to propel Smith into the New Age movement. For more information on his testimony, see http://www.mountainstreampress.org.
2. Steve and Sarah Berger, Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth (Franklin, TN: Grace Chapel, Inc., 2010).
3. In the Introduction to this series, we wrote on Herescope, “But perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of the Berger book is the endorsements of high profile leaders such as Calvary Chapel Pastor Greg Laurie and longtime Bible teacher Chuck Missler. Not surprisingly, The Shack’s author Paul Young is also listed alongside Laurie and Missler as an endorser of the book.” (http://herescope.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-new-age-new-year-2012.html). Elsewhere we have written about James Robison, who has deep ties with the New Apostolic Reformation. See: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/08/denying-dominionism.html
4. In the Introduction to this series, we wrote on Herescope: “It has already been featured on several widely viewed television programs like Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power and Canada’s Huntley Street. In addition to these and other venues, Steve Berger was invited to speak about his book at a 2011 National Worship Conference that featured a number of Emergent and evangelical leaders like Chuck Smith Jr., Miles McPherson, Chuck Fromm, and which advertised as a keynote speaker the “Christian” New Age sympathizer Leonard Sweet.” (See http://herescope.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-new-age-new-year-2012.html and follow the links).
5. There are many interconnections between the Bergers and Chuck Missler and Koinonia House. On page 55 of the Koinonia Institute Handbook, Berger is listed as teaching a course BTE 509 Heaven, http://www.studycenter.com/downloads/KI_Handbook.pdf. For more interconnections, see also: https://www.studycenter.com/courseList.html, http://tn.kiregional.com/resources, http://tn.kiregional.com/grace-chapel, http://www.gracechapel.net/ministries/?p=detail&id=24, http://www.khouse.org/6640/KIDVD23-2/, http://www.khouse.org/articles/2010/922/print/, page 2 of http://www.studycenter.com/spyglass/Spyglass_Monthly_November_2010.pdf, and http://www.khouseafrica.com/PDF%20Newsletters/eJUN2009RSA.pdf.
6. Matthew 18:15-17. In the past, some have impugned Herescope as being guilty of not going personally to the offending party as Jesus ordered. “Did you not approach the people you are writing about privately, as the Lord commanded?” they ask. Such an accusation is irrelevant for two reasons: First, the matters under discussion are not personal within the confines of a local church. Second, in that the viewpoints expressed by the Bergers in Have Heart have been made public and publicly endorsed by other ministries, they demand a public response. A private response regarding a public matter is both non sequitur and unproductive as regards the worldview asserted by the authors and their endorsers. If Matthew 18 is applicable to this situation, then we are already at the third stage where Jesus said, “tell it unto the church” (Matthew 18:17).
7. “Our minds need to be stretched to the other side,” say the Bergers in Have Heart, p. xxii. Their use of the term “the other side” parallels its use in Spiritualism.
8. “The other side” is a very common term in Spiritualism to describe contact with the dead or other spiritual entities. For example, note the following book titles: Todd J. Leonard, Talking to the Other Side: A History of Modern Spiritualism and Mediumship: A Study of the Religion, Science, Philosophy and Mediums that Encompass this American-Made Religion (Universe, 2005); John B. Buescher, The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience (Skinner House Books, 2004); Maurice Leonard, People from the Other Side: A History of Spiritualism (The History Press, 2009).
9. “Spiritualism,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism) [links not included].
10. Ibid.
11. Leslie Shepard, Ed., Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology: A Compendium of Information on the Occult Sciences, Magic, Demonology, Superstitions, Spiritism, Mysticism, Metaphysics, Psychical Science, and Parapsychology, with Biographical and Bibliographical Notes and Comprehensive Indexes, Vol. One A-L (Gale Research Company, 1978), p. 37.
12. “Familiar spirit” connotes “family” and implies close kinship. In the Old Testament, contact with "familiar spirits" is specifically forbidden, in verses such as: Lev. 19:31, 20:6; 1 Sam. 28:3, 9; 2 Kings 21:6, 23:24; Is. 8:19; 19:3.
13. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, p. 37.
14. Ibid., p. 39.
15. In New Thought, Universalism “teaches that there is a common thread of truth at the heart of all religions.” Also, “Universalism is a term used to identify particular doctrines considering all people in their formation.” See “Universalism,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism).
16. Ibid.
17. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology lists a multitude of examples, including the story of a Sicilian man in 1585 whose familiar spirit was “a daemon, who in various ways, endeavoured to annoy [the] man,” performed all sorts of dreadful haunting antics, and “vaunted himself to be a daemon,” p. 323.
18. Pastor Larry DeBruyn delves into this matter in some detail under the subheading “Happenings From Heaven” in Part 3 of his series, “Spontaneous Spiritualism.” (http://herescope.blogspot.com/2012/01/spontaneous-spiritualism.html).
19. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, p. 323.
20. See, for example, The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) entry on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_for_Psychical_Research).
21. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology cites numerous stories cataloged by these psychical research societies, and many of the accounts bear remarkable similarity to the experiences with “Josiah” described in Have Heart.
22. Ibid., p. 43.
23. Rebecca Ruter Springer, My Dream of Heaven: Intra Muros (United Kingdom: White Crow Books, 2010).
24. This is reported in the context of the dream of a Muslim man named Sammy who saw Josiah with a fishing pole and told Sarah Berger that “Josiah has a job, and Josiah fishes,” which the Bergers interpreted to mean that Josiah was still being a fisher of men in the biblical sense, but from beyond the grave. See Have Heart, pp. 83-90.
25. In Acts 8:39-40, when Philip was caught up by the Spirit of the Lord and transported him to Azotus, he was living, not dead.
26. This phrase comes from Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (Random House, 1997), p. 22.
27. For example, Jung’s maternal grandfather, Rev. Samuel Preiswerk, “regularly spoke to spirits.” And, “[a]ccording to family legends, he would talk to the spirit of his deceased first wife in weekly séances while locked in his study, much to the dismay of his second wife.” Ibid., pp. 24-25.
28. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
29. Ibid., p. 121. Author Richard Noll makes an elaborate and extremely well-documented case for this in his two books about the life of Carl Jung. His other book is titled The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (Princeton University Press, 1994).
30. The Aryan Christ, p. 155.
31. Ibid. This becomes the consciousness aspect of transhumanism.
32. See “Altered States: A Different Gate,” Herescope (http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/04/altered-states-different-gate.html).
33. Ainslie MacLeod, The Instruction: Living the Life Your Soul Intended (Sounds True, 2007), p. 9.
34. Ibid., Front Matter. For more information on Dr. Oz and his association with Rick Warren, see http://www.mountainstreampress.org/weighed-and-found-wanting/ and Herescope posts such as http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/03/woo-factor.html and http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/03/rick-warrens-new-age-health-gurus.html.
35. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (J.P. Tarcher, 1980), p. 114. This book has often been cited on Herescope posts for its widespread influence in officially outing the New Age Movement.
36. Ibid., p. 174.
37. James Redfield, The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011), p. 178.
38. The Elijah List e-mail, January 8, 2012, which links to http://www.schoolofthesupernatural.com/ and http://www.warriorsinternational.com
39. For example, see the Herescope series “Divorcing Baal,” beginning at: (http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/07/divorcing-baal.html).
40. See http://www.arcangel.net/. Also see: http://www.afterlife-encounters.com/.
41. “Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubler-Ross) [links deleted].
42. Dianne Arcangel, Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences (Hampton Roads, 2005), p. 16. This book was endorsed by Dean Radin, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a group which helped to usher in the New Age movement. This group had already impacted evangelical leaders in the late 1970s, which we described in a Herescope series in the Fall of 2006. See for example, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html.
43. Ibid., p. xiii. See also the Introduction to this series and read the quote from James Redfield's book The Twelfth Insight.
44. Ibid., p. 176. The subheading to this section is titled “George Anderson—The Stradivarius of Mediums.”
45. Ibid., p. 183.
46. See The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, p. 39 and numerous citations in Noll's The Aryan Christ.
47. As previously noted, described in historical detail in Richard Noll’s two books about Carl Jung: The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement and The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung.
48. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, p. 40. Note that a “control” has to do with possession, meaning demonic possession, usually referring to the entity that enters a medium’s body (summarized from page 185). Punctuation resident in the source as quoted.
49. Ibid. There are numerous scary experiences described in this encyclopedia.
50. The Light That Was Dark, pp. 129-130. While this experience was not with a dead loved one, it is quite similar to those experiences ascribed to the dead in occult sources. As we stated earlier, apparitions come in all sorts of guises.
51. Ibid., p. 152.
52. Quoted in The Berean Call, April 2008.

Spiritualism’s Slippery Slope

2012-01-11T10:25:00.003-05:00

Part 5, Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

Have Heart: bridging the gulf between Heaven and earth
A Review and Commentary (continued)

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments
Read Part 1: Normalizing Necromancy
Read Part 2: The “Canaanization” of the Church
Read Part 3: Spontaneous Spiritualism
Read Part 4: Interpretation by Imagination

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

“Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel. For [among other abominations] he . . . practiced witchcraft, used divination, practiced sorcery, and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.”

(2 Chronicles 33:1-2, 6, NASB)

In addition to misusing particular texts of Scripture while ignoring others, Have Heart contains an obvious eschatological (eschatology deals with events which are future) problem. As the Bergers propose, to be able to make “supernatural visitations” to the living-in-Christ requires that the dead-in-Christ possess “supernatural bodies” now, that their soul-spirits reside in a glorified materiality in which they can make trips from Heaven to earth and back (the Bergers call these trips missions). But as the New Testament explains, the bodies of dead-in-Christ have not yet been raised unto glory. Their bodies remain asleep in the grave. Nevertheless, to demonstrate that the dead-in-Christ possess the materiality to manifest themselves to the living-in-Christ, the authors propose an eschatology for the resurrection which departs from the New Testament.

When the Resurrection Body?
Resurrection “Now”
If the living in heaven could make “supernatural visitations” to their loved ones on earth, it would require two things: that they possess the supernatural “materiality” and familial “connectivity” to do so. If that were the case, then just as Jesus appeared in His glorified body to His disciples and loved ones after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:5-8), so in like manner the “dead in Christ” could visit their family and friends. In these resurrected and glorified bodies, the souls of the dead-in-Christ in Heaven would possess “the technological transport” to make their presence known to the living-in-Christ on earth.

Because of Supernatural Materiality
Have Heart proposes that because the dead-in-Christ possess bodies “characterized by glory and honor and power and supernatural abilities,” they have the capacity to appear to loved ones and friends on earth. (HH, 62-65) The Bergers state:

This is so radically important for us to understand as we go through the grieving process: you will be raised to Heaven with this new and better body, and all the believers who have gone before you already have theirs. They are raised in glory, living gloriously right now with God. (Emphasis added, HH, 63)

Again, the book states:

When you think about Christ’s resurrected body, with all of its unique abilities—including miraculously appearing (John 20:26), instantly disappearing (Luke 24:31), and flying (Acts 1:9)—its pretty exciting to think we’ll have the same kind of body and that our loved ones who are with Jesus have one right now. (Emphasis added, HH, 64)

In the aftermath of the death of a loved one, the Bergers believe the grief-stricken on earth may find comfort when in their “supernatural” bodies, the deceased make their “presence” known to them, as when their son Josiah appeared that evening to Mr. Jim in Grace Chapel’s sanctuary. That the dead in Christ can make such appearances is premised upon Jesus’ appearances to His disciples after His resurrection, but the Bergers also employ diverse experiences to back up their revised interpretation of Scripture.

Because of Familial Connectivity
For the Christian dead to make “supernatural visitations” to loved ones on earth also depends upon their being “connected” to those living on earth. The Bergers derive this connectedness from Paul’s rich theological expression (used scores of times by the apostle) that Christians are together “in Christ.” (HH, 108-109) “We are one body,” write the Bergers, “connected in Heaven, and connected between Heaven and earth.” (Emphasis added, HH, 110) Because all “are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5, NASB), the Bergers then leap to infer that the in-Christ-in-Heaven have “visitation rights” with the in-Christ-on-earth. Whether by dreams, visions or visitations, those in Heaven can supposedly manifest themselves to their family and friends on earth. We are family!

Resembling the Roman Catholic doctrine of the “communion of the saints,” this connectivity is the “maximum” view of what Heaven is like, they say. If Christians do not accept this “connectivity scenario,” their view of heaven is “minimalist,” and in today’s consciousness-expanding world, what Christian wants to be thought of as narrow-minded? But not surprisingly, the New Testament does not support such a view of Heaven. According to God’s Word, the resurrection, the reception of a glorified body by all those in Christ, has not yet happened (See 2 Timothy 2:16-18.). It’s future.

Resurrection “Not Yet”
It may surprise those fascinated by this enticing resurrection scenario created by the Bergers that according to the Bible “the dead in Christ” do not possess “supernatural bodies” with “supernatural abilities” at this point in human history. They have not yet been physically resurrected. Jesus said this will occur at “the last day” (John 6:40), at a time coordinate with His Second Coming, also known as His Parousia or Second Presence.[62] About the timing of the resurrection of believers and their reception of a glorified body, the New Testament is unequivocal. Paul coordinates the timing of the resurrection and translation of all those “in Christ” with the Parousia. Read the Apostle’s words to the Corinthians:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming [Literally, “at the parousia his”]. (1 Corinthians 15:22-23; See Matthew 24:3, 7.).

Note two things stated in this timing text: first, in the “firstfruits” analogy, Paul states that the type of resurrection body believers are to receive will be like Christ’s; second, as to time, these resurrection bodies will be created by God at Christ’s coming (i.e., His Parousia).

The Apostle also times the resurrection of “the dead in Christ” to be contemporaneous with the translation of the living-in-Christ (a.k.a. the Rapture of the Church). Paul states the simultaneous translation of the living-in-Christ and the dead-in-Christ at Jesus’ Parousia as follows:

The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.... (Emphasis added, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

Furthermore, when all those who were, are or will be “in Christ” appear “with Christ,” then their true identity will be revealed. In that moment of truth, their physicality will reveal their spirituality. Every observer will be aware of a Christian’s true identity in Christ. As Paul states, “the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19, NASB). As he told the church at Colossae, “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear [Greek, phaneroo], then shall ye also appear [Greek, phaneroo, “to make visible what has been hidden or unknown”] with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). In a similar vein, John wrote:

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear [phaneroo] what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear [phaneroo], we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2)

So in light of the coming manifestation of the “sons of God,” John exhorted believers against hypocrisy. He told them:

“And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear [phaneroo], we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming [parousia]” (1 John 2:28).

The point of this whole discussion is this: departed Christians can’t visit loved ones on earth in glorified bodies because they do not yet possess them. Currently, their bodies are “asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:6, 18; 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 15). Christ’s appearing will be our unveiling, and all those “in Christ” from all ages will be glorified together, and not before the time the Lord has determined.

Why “Not Yet”?
Scripture pictures the bodies of believers, no matter how they might have been lost at the end of this life—cremation, incineration, cannibalized, lost at sea, etc.—to be asleep awaiting resurrection at Christ’s Second Coming. Though from earth’s perspective their bodies are asleep (not consciously present on earth), they are, as the Bergers and the Bible point out, alive, active and aware (consciously present in Heaven). I think the apostle Paul pictures “the dead in Christ” as asleep for at least two reasons.

First, though Christians rightly sorrow at the sting of death, they do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Their loved ones who died in Christ are merely taking their beauty rest. When Christ returns, their bodies will wake up!

Second, Paul describes the bodies of the dead in Christ to be asleep so that there will be no confusion as to their activity, whether ethereal or material, on earth. They do not appear and make visits to loved ones and friends. They are asleep. That the bodies of the dead in Christ are asleep insulates the Bible against endorsing apparitions in any form, period. Why? Because Christians live by faith, and the death of Jesus on the Cross for their sins and His resurrection for their justification is sufficient cause for them to believe. That’s the Gospel!

Then, when Jesus comes again, all glory and honor will be accorded to Him when at the end of time, He brings the bodies of all the dead in Christ back to life “together.” (2 Peter 3:9-13.). But until that day, the day of Jesus’ Parousia, the dead in Christ are not present and active on earth. This may not be how Have Heart imagines the afterlife, but it is as the Bible illumines it. In the meantime, we need to let the dead alone and let them sleep. As Samuel rebuked Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Samuel 28:15).

What is Heaven like Now?
All that is known about the state of a person’s soul after it is separated from the body (death is the separation of the pneuma from the soma, James 2:26, “the body without the spirit is dead”), is what God has revealed to us. As Dr. René Pache (1904-1979) informs:

None of those raised in either Old Testament or New Testament times recounted a thing, as far as we know, about the experience of going through death into the abode of the dead. Our curiosity could well make us want to question them about it, but God has not permitted this.[63]

We are informed little about the afterlife because we live by faith, and “faith is... the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). In our present state of being, we only “see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Intermediate Bodies?
Though I am aware many theologies represent the dead in Christ to be alive in a “disembodied state” in Heaven now, there is biblical evidence that may not be the case.[64] For instance, Jesus revealed the state of Lazarus and the Rich Man to be “bodied” (Lazarus had a “finger,” and Dives [the rich man] had a “tongue,” Luke 16:19-31.); Matthew refers to the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3-8); Moses and the historian refer to the translations of Enoch and Elijah respectively (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11); Jude tells of the contest between Michael and the devil over Moses’ remains (Jude 9); and John sees that deceased believers are dressed in “white robes” (Revelation 6:11; 7:9, 13, 14). It’s difficult to see how robes (materiality) hang on souls (immateriality).

Further, Paul tells us “that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Obviously, if the “tabernacle” refers to believers’ earthly bodies, then “building” may correspond to their heavenly bodies.

Because of this biblical evidence, some Bible teachers postulate that, short of the glorified materiality that will be given their bodies at their resurrection at Christ’s Parousia, saints who die “in Christ” and are in Heaven possess an intermediate and temporary body. If that is the case, then in contrast to a dualistic belief which holds that matter is evil and spirit is good, possession of some intermediate materiality in the afterlife would highlight that God views the union between matter and soul-spirit to be “good” because He created it so!

Conclusion
Consolation
When facing the death of a loved one, the relief for grief is belief, belief in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ, who by His resurrection conquered death. With the prospect of His death at hand, Jesus told His disciples in the Upper Room, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me” (Emphasis added, John 14:1). Based upon Jesus’ words to His disciples, Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) offers this compelling counsel:

Faith in the Lord Jesus is the only sure medicine for troubled hearts.... To believe more thoroughly, trust more entirely, rest more unreservedly, lay hold more firmly, lean back more completely—this is the prescription which our Master urges on the attention of all His disciples. No doubt that little band which sat round the table at the last supper had believed already.... Yet what does their Lord say to them here? Once more He presses on them the old lesson with which they first began: ‘Believe! Believe more! Believe on Me!’[65]

After Lazarus’ death, Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (Emphasis added, John 11:25-26).

Why does the Lord place so great an emphasis upon belief amidst grief? Because, “The just shall live by faith” (Emphasis added, Romans 1:17) and “faith is... the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith deals with the unseen, with those things not entered into by direct physical experience. The Christian expectation regarding the afterlife rests upon Jesus Christ’s resurrection and His promised coming again. The retrospect of His resurrection and the prospect of His return are our assurances “of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1, NASB). Reported visitations to and from Heaven both distract and subtract the believer’s attention from the “blessed hope... the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

When David’s young son dies (a child born out of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba), he, after mourning, praying and fasting that the boy’s life might be preserved, states:

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. (Emphasis added, 2 Samuel 12:22-23)

We observe David’s words of faith: I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. David knew his son would neither visit nor appear to him after he died. But David believed that when he died, he would go to be with his son.

Caution
I fear, with the growing emphasis on reports of Christians visiting Heaven, or of receiving visits from Heaven, whether solicited or not, that the evangelical church is stepping onto the “slippery slope” leading to spiritualism and spiritism, something practiced by the Canaanites and forbidden by God’s Law (Deuteronomy 18:9-15; Leviticus 19:31; 20:6.). In 1970, Victor Ernest offered these cautionary words:

Spiritualism is very attractive because it promises knowledge of the future and communication with dead loved ones. Many people will be influenced by demonic spirits in this way without realizing it.[66]

This explains why John told early Christians, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). Ernest further noted: “God has forbidden humans to try to communicate with the departed dead; such attempts result in communication with deceitful spirits, known a ‘familiar’ spirits....”[67] The spirits are called “familiar” because people think they know them from life! There is an intimate disguise to the spirits’ guise, “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel [messenger] of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

"Thus saith the Lord:

And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."
(Isaiah 8:19-20)

Stay tuned for the conclusion to this whole series. . . .

Endnotes (continued):
62. Three New Testament terms refer to Christ’s Second Coming: parousia, which means arrival or presence (Matthew 24:27); apokalypsis, which means unveiling or disclosure (2 Thessalonians 1:7); apiphaneia, which means appearing (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
63. Pache, Future Life, 194.
64. Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2005): 1036-1043.
65. J.C. Ryle, Heaven, Large Print Edition (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2000): 6-8.
66. Victor H. Ernest, I Talked with Spirits (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970): Preface.
67. Ibid. 86.

Interpretation by Imagination

2012-01-09T10:27:00.010-05:00

Part 4, Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

Have Heart: bridging the gulf between Heaven and earth

A Review and Commentary (continued)

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments
Read Part 1: Normalizing Necromancy
Read Part 2: The “Canaanization” of the Church

Read Part 3: Spontaneous Spiritualism

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

“Our minds need to be stretched to the other side. I coined a term to illustrate the need to break out of the box and allow God to maximize our view of Heaven: ‘sanctified imagination within the confines of biblical truth’.”

(Steve Berger, Have Heart, p. xxii)

“Communicating”
Resembling the Roman Catholic teaching on “the communion of the saints,” the Bergers' premise that the dead-in-Christ can communicate with the living-in-Christ is based upon their being in union one with another.[50] The Bergers find precedent for such “connectivity” between living and dead in Christ in several biblical texts which they twist together, including Hebrews 12:1 (“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses”), Ephesians 3:15 (“Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named”), and Romans 12:5 (“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”). To the authors of Have Heart: bridging the gulf between Heaven and earth, these Bible verses indicate, “There is one family, one name, one body, and we’re all eternally connected on both sides of the veil.” (Emphasis added, HH, 109) Because the dead and living “in Christ” share this connection, they conclude, “Our loved ones may show up in dreams or visits or other ways (who can limit God’s imagination?)....” (HH, 110)

The Bergers call such visitation phenomena, “God Nods.” (HH, 113-121) The “nods” they record include the apparition of their son Josiah coming via dreams to a friend and his sister, a visit to another sister, and Pastor Berger’s sight of “a huge white crane” which visited the family pond one morning. A few days after his son’s death, Pastor Steve had prayed for a sign. Then, for the first time since moving to their home, a magnificent white crane appeared in the pond. Later, Steve learned that Josiah had been learning a type of martial arts called White Crane from his Children’s Pastor.[51] (HH, 115-121) We turn now to some of the biblical passages the Bergers employ to demonstrate that the dead can be aware of and present with the living.

Shock and Awe!—Saul, the Witch and Samuel
To support the dead appearing to the living, Have Heart employs the incident when, in violation of both God’s (Deuteronomy 18:10-11) and his own law (1 Samuel 28:3, 9), Saul visited a witch at the town of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3-25). (HH, 95-96) Upon that visit, and to both his and the witch’s shock, Samuel appeared. “It was Samuel coming from Heaven... Samuel showed up,” they write. (HH, 96) As Saul’s biographer in 1 Samuel indicates, this incident confirms and caps the earlier words Samuel uttered to the disobedient king, “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1 Samuel 15:23).

Yet, as the chapter title indicates, the Bergers employ this incident to show of deceased saints that, “They are Aware and Present.” (HH, 93-104) That dead persons, both saved and unsaved, are alive is not in question (See Luke 23:43.). Neither are the issues of whether they are active (See Revelation 7:9-12.) or aware (See Luke 16:19-31; John 8:58.). As the book points out, the state of the dead in Heaven involves all of the aforementioned.[52] (HH, 51, 54, 92, 95, 98, 102) But, as will be shown, whether the dead are aware of and present among the living is a matter of an altogether different sort.

Earlier in the book, the authors opine that Christians commonly “imagine” the saints in heaven to be “resting in peace instead of participating in God’s kingdom work.” (HH, 92) Apparently, their view of “kingdom work” includes the dead not only being active in Heaven but also active and taking mission trips to earth. The Bergers support this theory from Samuel’s manifested presence to Saul; this despite the prophet’s expressed annoyance with the king, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Samuel 28:15). Samuel, it appears from his rebuke of Saul, was more at rest and not as “present” as Have Heart supposes.

To substantiate their belief in manifested presences of the dead like that which Samuel made to Saul, the authors refer to the research of hospice chaplain and psychotherapist Dianne Arcangel and her book, Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences (mentioned previously in this review).[53] (HH, 94) They state their agreement with the research in her book which they think agrees with the Bible. In affirming their belief in continuing presences of the dead, the Bergers protest that they’re “not talking about channeling, séances, or mediums trying to contact the dead,” and that “Deuteronomy 18:10 forbids seeking those types of encounters.” (HH, 94-95) Yet inconsistently, perhaps disingenuously, they illustrate their belief in ongoing presences of the dead by referring to Saul’s unlawful visit to a witch!

By any Old or New Testament standard, Samuel’s coming from the dead to Saul was exceptional, not normal. In the prophet’s coming, it can be noted that the protocol of a séance was not followed. Samuel did not communicate with Saul through the witch. In a séance-turned-sermon, Samuel addressed the king directly. God’s prophets do not employ mediums! In contrast to the comfort sought by those seeking to contact those who have entered the afterlife, and in the face of Saul’s wanton disobedience, Samuel offered no comfort or hope for Saul. Rather, Samuel announced to Saul that the Lord had departed from him, that he was being dethroned by David, that his armies would be defeated by the Philistines, and that both he and his sons would die the next day—not exactly consoling news for the king (1 Samuel 28:16-19). This contrasts to Arcangel’s statement in which she tells people, “Qualified mediums can benefit the bereaved population. They provide evidence for survival of bodily death, which reduces anxiety.”[54]

Neither did Samuel share anything specific about the afterlife with the king. In fact, Samuel’s message is way out of sync with what many believe postmortem presences of the dead have to offer the living, namely, that of communicating to and comforting them about the afterlife. As the French theologian Dr. René Pache (1904-1979) observed from Scripture: “None of those raised in either Old Testament or New Testament times recounted a thing, as far as we know, about the experience of going through death into the abode of the dead.”[55]

No matter how much we might wish it were otherwise, Samuel’s unique appearance to Saul gives no biblical precedent for imagining the dead are present with the living. Indeed, as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes informs us, the dead “no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:6, NASB).

The Crowd in the Clouds
In the chapter “Connected” (HH, 105-112), and to establish that the dead remain present with the living, Have Heart employs the opening line of Hebrews 12: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses...” (Hebrews 12:1). The Bergers interpret these “witnesses” as those who are deceased, and therefore are “universal companions” with saints alive on earth. (HH, 107) The Bergers say that these witnesses are “alive, active, and aware,” and that those in Heaven become “onlookers” of those on earth. (HH, 107) Earth below becomes theater above as these heavenly inhabitants watch how the lives of their loved ones are playing out on earth. But based upon Hebrews 12, this scenario is implausible.

First, the conjunction “wherefore” ought to be noted. The inferential conjunction connects chapter 12 to chapter 11. The “witnesses” therefore refer to those Old Testament persons who exemplified what it means to live by faith in chapter 11 (This chapter might be called “The Hall of Faith” chapter.). Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Emphasis added, Hebrews 11:1). By drawing upon the example of these "witnesses,” the author of Hebrews encourages his readers to be faithful to the Lord, no matter what the cost. The heavenly faithful serve as models to, not spectators of, believers on earth.

Second, the word “witnesses” means martyrs (Greek, martus). Had the author of Hebrews meant the dead are spectating our lives, he might have stated that we are surrounded by a great cloud of eyewitnesses (Greek, epoptes), as for example, when Peter and two other apostles personally witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16; See Luke 1:2); or that we are surrounded by a great cloud of onlookers (Greek, blemma), as when Lot lived amongst the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and saw and heard the “the filthy conversation of the wicked” (2 Peter 2:7-8); or that we are surrounded by a great cloud of spectators (a nominal form of Greek verb, theoreo, from which the English word theater derives), as when Peter observed the grave clothes of the resurrected Christ in the empty tomb (John 20:6).[56] But instead, the author uses the word “martus.”

Third, the phrase in Hebrews reads: we are surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses.” We note the plural witnesses. Though they are many, they are corporate. Together, they form a singular cloud-crowd.

Fourth, there’s a world of difference between those in heaven having visage of brethren on earth and making visits to them. Even if it is conceded that saints in heaven might be able to observe their brethren on earth, the crowd of “spectators” would be limited to the names in chapter 11.[57] That they are “witnesses” does not suggest that individuals might separate themselves from the grandstand above to visit the playing field below. Based upon the context of the passage in which “witnesses” occurs, theologian W.H. Griffith Thomas (1861-1924) cautioned,

It has been tempting to many writers to speak of our race being run in an arena surrounded by spectators, as though those who have passed on before are still interested in our welfare. But, however attractive the idea, it is impossible to derive it from this passage.[58]

Missions for the Master
Scripture records how Moses and Elijah appeared to the disciples and talked with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13). In the sixth chapter of their book about the dead (“They are active”), the Bergers ask, “So do saints in Heaven go on invisible missions to earth?” (HH, 90) Yes, they do, say the authors as they employ the dreams and reports of others along with Matthew’s record of Moses and Elijah’s appearing in support. But reports and dreams are what they claim to be—personal experiences and, absent confirmation by two or three witnesses, are not verifiable. Note in the Gospel record that three disciples—Peter, James and John—witnessed Moses and Elijah’s coming to Jesus (2 Corinthians 13:1, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”).

While Moses and Elijah “appeared” to the three disciples, they came and spoke only to Jesus (Matthew 17:3, “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him,” NASB). Their stay on the mount was not prolonged (Matthew 17:8, “And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.”). Furthermore, Moses and Elijah never appeared to the disciples or spoke to Jesus again. For this reason, Christians need to be careful of making a rule out of an exception, of setting a spiritual precedent out of a single biblical incident.

By their coming, Moses (the typical representative of the Law) and Elijah (the eschatological representative of the Prophets) glorified Jesus Christ! Their appearing bore witness to Jesus’ coming resurrection (Matthew 17:9) even as it gave the disciples a foretaste of their coming glorification (John 17:24). While in some respects the appearing of Moses and Elijah might have been for the disciples, it was to the Lord. Jesus was the center attraction. If the Lord of Glory had not been present, then Moses and Elijah would not have come (See Malachi 4:4-6; Matthew 17:10.).

Did Abraham Watch Jesus?
Much of what the Bergers say in the Introduction and first six chapters of Have Heart peaks in chapter seven. Of the dead in Christ, the chapter title tells readers, They are aware and present. (HH, 93-104) To support this chapter’s message, the authors preface it with Jesus’ statement to Jewish leaders who resisted Him even as they gloried in their descent from Abraham. Jesus told His enemies, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to [in order that he that he might, NASB margin] see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56).[59] (HH, 93) From this biblical verse, the Bergers deduce that just as Abraham observed Jesus’ ministry on earth, so also others in Heaven are aware of and present with their loved ones on earth. But what does the biblical record actually say?

Among the Pharisees, controversy erupted over Jesus’ statement, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). For making such a bold assertion, Jesus’ enemies charged Him perjury, denied His heavenly origin, slandered Him as a Samaritan, accused Him of demon possession, and wanted to stone Him (John 8:13-14, 23, 41, 48, 59). To refute the charge that He bore false witness, Jesus verified He was “the light of the world” by calling upon two witnesses: His Father and Abraham. If Abraham had rejoiced that he might see Jesus’ day, then why didn’t they?

But according to John’s Gospel, Abraham was not an ongoing spectator of Jesus’ life. If Abraham had been, we might have expected John’s record of Jesus’ statement to read, Abraham rejoices to see my day; he sees it and is glad (present tense), or Abraham was rejoicing to see my day; he was seeing it and was glad (imperfect tense). But John records the verbs in the aorist tense (rejoiced... saw... was glad...). As time markers, the aorist tense is “like taking a snapshot of the action while the imperfect [tense] (like the present [tense]) takes a motion picture, portraying the action as it unfolds.”[60] What Abraham saw and rejoiced in was completed when in his lifetime he saw it. Respected scholar D.A. Carson comments that, “Some scholars... propose that John 8:56 means Abraham was already in paradise, seeing Jesus in his ministry....” But he adds, “There is no biblical sanction for this perspective....”[61] Furthermore, it can be noted that the Jews understood Jesus’ claim to be that He saw Abraham, and not vice versa (John 8:57-58).

So the question arises, what was involved in Abraham seeing and rejoicing in the day of Jesus Christ? Hebrews states that, along with other Patriarchs of the faith, Abraham saw the promise of Christ from a distance before he died (Hebrews 11:13). Their faith looked forward. At the time Abraham saw and rejoiced in Christ, it was not up close and personal, but foreshadowing. Abraham’s sight of and rejoicing in Jesus’ day was premised upon God’s promise of a seed (Genesis 12:3, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”) and a son, that even though both he and Sarah were beyond their child bearing years, their progeny would some day bless to the world (Genesis 17:16; 18:10; Romans 4:19-25). Perhaps Abraham's sight of and rejoicing in Jesus’ day culminated when, as he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, God intervened and provided a lamb in his son’s stead (Genesis 22:13-18).[62] But in all of this, Jesus’ statement about Abraham does not support the idea that in some ever-present way he was spectating and rejoicing over Jesus’ life.

A Great Gulf Fixed
As is perhaps being alluded to in Have Heart’s subtitle (bridging the gulf between Heaven and earth) (Emphasis added), in His revelation of The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Jesus mentions “a great gulf” which separated Hades and Heaven in the afterlife. The Old Testament deceased lived in parallel, but separate realities.[63] The gulf Jesus revealed between the existences of Hades and Heaven was impassible, was “locked down.” But as the book’s subtitle implies, the gulf is not “fixed” between earth and Heaven. The Bergers believe that souls located in Heaven can visit loved ones and friends on earth; that a spiritual freeway runs between the two realities, one above and the other below.

It can be noted that the New Spiritualists of the New Age believe that there are no separate existences of Heaven on the one hand and creation on the other, that the reality of “whatever is” is one and therefore, that God and humanity are not distinct, but integrated.[64] But according to the Bible, this is not so! Throughout the Gospel of John as well as the rest of Scripture, the two realities of Heaven above and creation below are disintegrated and find integration only in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:3; 3:31; 8:23; 19:11).

Thus, one key aspect of Jesus’ teaching must be reckoned with by those who believe that the gulf between Heaven and earth can be bridged by the Christian dead possessing “visitation rights” to loved ones on earth. Would Father Abraham allow Lazarus to leave Paradise to visit the Rich Man’s five brothers on earth and warn them of the peril awaiting them in the reality of the afterlife? Read the answer: “They [the Rich Man’s five brothers] have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.”(Luke 16:25). Then the Rich Man remonstrates to Abraham: “Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent,” to which Abraham then finalizes his verdict that a visit will not be allowed by Lazarus to the Rich Man’s five brothers. He said to the Rich Man: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:27-31). From this dialog, what is to be learned from Jesus’ revelation about the afterlife?

First, the alive in Heaven do not make “up close and personal” visitations to earth. Lazarus was not allowed to make such a visit, even with the peril of the destiny of the Rich Man’s brothers weighing in the balance. Of this incident, Ron Rhodes writes: “The dead and the living could not contact each other. A visitation to earth (in this case to warn five brothers) was not an option.”[65]

Second, only the Word of God, the Scriptures and the Savior, bridge the gulf between the realities of Heaven and earth. In matters of life and death, either we take God at His Word or we do not. Abraham told the Rich Man: “They [your five brothers] have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them....” (Luke 16:29). In matters regarding the afterlife, either God’s Word is sufficient or it is not. Isaiah framed the issue like this:

“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:19-20)

Third, if in His revelation regarding the afterlife Abraham had visited the Rich Man’s five brothers, Jesus would have opened a Pandora’s Box for the cult of spiritualism to flourish (Contra Deuteronomy 18:9-14.). Satan and his hosts want the box open. But in this revelation about the afterlife, Jesus Christ made sure the box stayed shut. In His revelation regarding the afterlife, Jesus didn’t break out of the box, did He?

Fourth, the Bergers’ book may imply a kind of universalism. Only Jesus Christ bridges the gulf between Heaven and earth. A “medium” cannot become the Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5). Only Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Anticipation of visitations from “beyond” by any other person is a sideshow and distracts people from the One who is the only true Bridge. To hope the deceased, whether saved or unsaved or in whatever form, whether material or ethereal, will visit us is an anticipation that is fraught with spiritual peril.

“None of those raised in either Old Testament or New Testament times recounted a thing, as far as we know, about the experience of going through death into the abode of the dead. Our curiosity could well make us want to question them about it, but God has not permitted this. In the whole realm of the future life, the Scriptures, in their sober restraint, have to satisfy us.”

Dr. René Pache[66]

Stay tuned for Part 5 . . . .

Endnotes (continued):
50. The doctrine of the communion of the saints derives from a later version of the Apostle’s Creed (circa fifth century) which in its Western expression reads, “I believe in... the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints....” The earlier Eastern version, which it is claimed originated from the apostlic era, reads: “I believe in... The holy church.” See Henry Bettenson and Chris Maundet, Editors, Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, Third Edition, 1999): 26. Legitimately, the later version of the creed denotes the union of all believers in Christ, living and dead, as it stresses “their common life in Christ and their sharing of all the blessings of God.” See Walter A. Elwell, Editor, “Communion of Saints, The,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984): 257. Illegitimately, the unbiblical practice of praying for the dead or the novel applications of “connectivity” taught in Have Heart cannot be extracted from even the creed’s later version.
51. As to the significance of the White Crane, it is noted that, “Since ancient times, because of the Birds connection to the sky, they have been thought of as a supernatural link between the heavens and the earth.” See “Birds as A Spiritual Symbol of The Divine,” Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/divine-birds). As to the place of the White Crane in Chinese spirituality, “The Chinese believed that spirits and immortals rode about on cranes and that they conveyed departed souls to the heavens. Heavenly Cranes (tian-he) and Blessed Cranes (xian-he) were symbols of wisdom. Their powerful wings were said to convey people to higher levels of consciousness.” Emphasis added, see Kirsty Sloman, “The Symbolic Bird of China,” White Crane Martial Arts (http://www.whitecranemartialarts.co.uk/wcrane/?p=1325). As to the place of cranes in the martial arts, “The crane is a very special bird. Our whole system is an embodiment of this creature whose movements have provided inspiration for a whole series of fighting techniques that are designed to swiftly take out an opponent.” Ibid.
In all of this spiritual symbolism, the words of Jeremiah might be considered: “Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord” (Jeremiah 8:7).
52. The Bible does not support the doctrine of soul sleep.
53. Arcangel, Afterlife Encounters.
54. Ibid. 200.
55. Pache, Future Life, 194.
56. In all, Vine lists eleven categories for the verb “see.” Witness (Greek, martus) is not among them. See W.E. Vine, Merril F. Unger, William White, Jr., An Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984): 1009-1010.
57. Based upon a few usages in the New Testament where the word martus can mean eyewitness (Hebrews 10:28; 1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 2:2)1), Australian evangelical Leon Morris (1914-2006) stated that “the idea of ‘spectator’ is hard to eliminate....” He concludes: “All in all, it seems that the author includes the idea here that the heroes of the faith are aware of what we are doing as we maintain the struggle in our age that they had in theirs. It is something like a relay race where those who have completed their run watch their successors.” See Leon Morris, Hebrews: Bible Study Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983): 119-120.
58. W.H. Griffith Thomas, Hebrews: A Devotional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, n.d.): 157.
59. The infinitive phrase “to see my glory” (iva + subjunctive) explains why Abraham rejoiced. See Daniel B. Wallace, The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000): 206.
60. Ibid., 239.
61. D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991): 357.
62. To this reviewer, there are at least two lessons to be learned from this incident in Abraham’s life. First, human sacrifice, as commonly practiced among the ancients, was not an acceptable approach to God. Second, Abraham (as well as those who by faith are Abraham’s children), are to look to God’s Lamb as the one true and necessary sacrifice for sin. As John the Baptist exclaimed: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
63. By saying this I do not affirm the two compartment theory. In my estimation, “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22) was a synonym for Paradise, the Jewish designation for Heaven (2 Corinthians 12:4). Jesus told the thief being crucified on a cross next to His, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43, NASB).
64. One can note the New Spirituality website by Allan, Bridging Heaven and Earth: an International Television Format of Awakening. See: http://www.heaventoearth.com/home.html. The website contains these lines: “We are all made of love, God is love, and We are God.” See: http://www.heaventoearth.com.
65. Ron Rhodes, The Truth Behind Ghosts, Mediums and Psychic Phenomena (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2006): 76.
66. Pache, Future Life, 194.

Spontaneous Spiritualism

2012-01-06T18:50:00.006-05:00

Part 3, Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

Have Heart: A Review and Commentary (continued)

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments
Read Part 1: Normalizing Necromancy

Read Part 2: The “Canaanization” of the Church

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

Via dreams and visions, God communicated His word to true prophets (Jeremiah 23:28). But the dreams of false prophets originated in their own subconscious (“they speak a vision of their own imagination,” Jeremiah 23:16, NASB) or were inspired by false gods and spirits (“they prophesied by Baal,” Jeremiah 23:13, NASB). Based upon dreams and visions, the measure between a true and false prophet was this: false prophets told rebellious people, “You will have peace” (Jeremiah 23:17, NASB); but the word of true prophets fell “like a hammer which shatters a rock” upon the rebels (Jeremiah 23:29, NASB). As a rule of thumb, false dreams comfort while true dreams convict.

Questions

In the aftermath of Josiah’s accident, the Bergers received e-mails from other parents who dealt with a similar tragedy, emails containing questions like, “Can my son hear me when I talk to him? Is he always around me, and can he see me? Is there any good way to communicate with him? Will he come to visit me? Or do you believe in us getting signs?” (HH, 43) In the next five chapters of their book, the authors promise they “will give answers to these and many other questions.” (HH, 43)

Answers
Dreams[40]
The Bergers’ book Have Heart recounts people’s dreams around the time their son Josiah died.[41] Right after the accident, a friend reported he saw the hospital room with his friend lying there. He saw Jesus calmly enter the room and whisper something in Josiah’s ear. The friend then asked Jesus what He told Josiah. Jesus replied, “That’s just between Siah [Josiah] and Me.” “The dream ended” reports the friend, “with Josiah getting up and walking out with Jesus.” (HH, 13)

Another lady, whom the Bergers did not personally know, also saw a vision that “aligned” with the friend’s—a dream in which Josiah turned to the lady and said, “Tell Mom and Dad that I love them.” (HH, 15) Another friend of the family in Idaho, suddenly and intuitively became aware of the life and death decisions the Bergers were making in the organ donor process. (Unbeknownst to them and in the eventuality of his death, Josiah had committed to be an organ donor.)

Choices
In the midst of making those important decisions, and meanwhile admitting the idea is without biblical precedent, the Bergers state their belief that Josiah “decided” to leave earth and go to Heaven. (HH, 15) His “decision” resulted in his being “alive in Heaven” and for reason of donating his organs to others, of also being “alive on earth”. (HH, 15) As the first chapter’s title indicates, Josiah was “ready to be outta here!” This raises an obvious question.

Though persons might decide when to die (euthanasia, suicide), does it lie with human providence to decide whether or not one shall die? Though for a time life may be a choice, in the end it is not. Death is an appointment everyone will keep (Genesis 3:19; Job 14:14; Hebrews 9:27). Ultimately, God controls birth, life and death (Ecclesiastes 3:2).

Despite the best medical care, health foods, exercise regimen and lifestyle habits, the time will come for all of us when life will move beyond our limited control. Excepting the translation generation which will be living when Jesus returns, we shall all die (1 Corinthians 15:51-54). So isn’t it wonderful that by faith we can yield control of our lives to Jesus Christ? For He stated and promised:

“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

“God Nods”
The Bergers state that their son’s ministry and legacy did not end with his death, but lives on. In addition to having donated his organs and an orphanage having been established in his name in the Dominican Republic, “People all around us have enjoyed wonderful experiences and dreams involving Josiah,” the Bergers relate. Then the authors explain that these encouraging paranormal experiences—whether involving a dream or a sensation stimulated by a picture or a painting—are what they call “God Nods.” (HH, 20) A God Nod is a term they coin to describe God’s so-called “spontaneous sovereignty” in which He directs people to “pay attention and look deeper... It’s God saying, ‘Check this out’.” (HH, 21) These various visions of and encounters with Josiah seemed to occur at key moments when people’s grief made them emotionally vulnerable. People reported that it was as if Josiah saying to them, “I am here; you just can’t see me.” (HH, 22)

By helping people see “the blessings of God in the midst of... pain and suffering,” the Bergers claim these “God Nods” are an effectual antidote against “bitterness, unknowing, or doubt,” and counteract the development of a “victim mentality.” (HH, 22) Based upon the Holy Spirit bringing to life the power of Scripture amidst the agony of tragedy, they say “we will not listen to the doubt and negativity that Satan whispers in our ears” and our “mourning” will be turned “into dancing”. (HH, 32-33)

It should be noted that the timing of these “God Nods” can illustrate the New Age belief in and experience of synchronicity (referred to previously in Part 2)—the teaching that a confluence of coincidences can shift a person’s perspective into a new awareness and cosmic-spiritual consciousness. As hospice chaplain and psychotherapist, Diane Arcangel (whose book, Afterlife Encounters, the Bergers refer to and endorse in part, HH, 94), states:

Simply believing in the hereafter is life enhancing. Experiencing an afterlife encounter (AE) is a significant element for transcending loss. It, furthermore, offers a leap toward enlightenment.[42]

Spoiling the Celebration
People beset by tragedy should avoid cultivating a “victim mentality,” say the Bergers. (HH, 37) In the aftermath of bad situations, people can choose not to be healed of their grief by nursing a grudge against life. In the opinion of the Bergers, the paralyzed man by the pool of Bethesda cultivated a “victim mentality” (John 5:1-9). For thirty-eight years he laid by the pool waters, popularly believed to provide healing when stirred by an angel. In words suggesting a name-it-claim-it belief, the Bergers state, “It’s our opinion that this fellow didn’t want to be made well.” (HH, 37)

Beside the fact that we don’t always get what we want out of life, this aberrant opinion begs the question, why then did the paralytic stay by the pool so long? For all that time, was he only seeking sympathy as he wallowed in his self-pity? Yet the paralytic told Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me” (John 5:7). John’s record of this miracle does not indicate a “victim mentality” on the part of the man. More to the point, the incident indicates indifference toward the man’s plight on the part of the crowd around him as well as their selfishness when they cut in line ahead of the paralytic to get healed. He was a victim all right—not of himself, but of others!

Regardless of whether people are victims in life or death, it does not mean that the grieving manifests an unspiritual “victim mentality.” Painful as it might be, grieving is a process which involves accepting the death and loss of a loved one. Yes, Christians grieve, but not “as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). To suggest otherwise is unrealistic regarding people’s emotions, whether they are Christians or not.

Furthermore, a question remains: Does it lie within people’s power to reverse every grievous disadvantage of life? Remember the words of Eliphaz to Job: “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). For example, do children or their parents choose autism or Down’s syndrome? What about soldiers who bear in their bodies and souls continuing injuries of war? While the false teaching that healing is a choice may be popular among Word of Faith teachers and their audiences (the name-it-claim-it crowd), introducing such teaching (the paralytic didn’t want to be made well) in a book about the tragedy of death and grief exacerbates agonizing questions about God’s providence, questions that will remain unresolved this side of Heaven. The just shall live by faith, even though life’s circumstances might cause the disadvantaged or wounded in life to doubt God’s providence and goodness amidst the agony they feel in their hearts.

Visions—Isaiah and Uzziah
In their chapter “Heaven Revealed,” the Bergers cite Isaiah’s vision of Heaven in the year when King Uzziah died (circa 740 BC), when the prophet saw “the Lord sitting upon a throne” (Isaiah 6:1-8). In that nobody can see God (John 1:18), the Apostle John interpreted that Isaiah saw the pre-incarnate Christ (John 12:41). But, when speaking of the significance of Uzziah’s death, the Bergers teach that, “Sometimes it takes the passing of a loved one for us to clearly see heavenly things.” (HH, 46) In the words of the authors, “The passing of King Uzziah triggered a bigger event. It gave Isaiah answers and a vision of Heaven.” (HH, 46) But is this true?

First of all, in the historical reality, it is doubtful Uzziah was a “loved one” of the prophet. After his fifty-two year reign, the king’s death signaled that, “the times were a’ changing.” But before the Lord called Isaiah to prophetic ministry, He had disqualified Uzziah from worshipping in His house by smiting him with leprosy because the king had transgressed into the priestly office (2 Chronicles 26:16-21). The prophet’s dating of his vision of the Lord to have occurred “in the year that king Uzziah died” served historical notice of when God called Isaiah to the prophetic ministry (Compare Isaiah 14:28, “In the year that king Ahaz died . . .”).[43] The death of a so-called “loved one” did not stimulate Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly reality.

Nevertheless, the Bergers suggest that Isaiah, for reason of going public with his claim to have seen the Lord, risked being mocked by his contemporaries as being “delusional, hysterical, or worse, heretical.” (HH, 46) But, “Like Isaiah,” they say, “we’re willing to share our ongoing experience, risking the potential ridicule of some in order to bring hope to the hurting.” (HH, 46-47) This unorthodox reading of Isaiah’s heavenly vision provides the “biblical” license for the Bergers to go public with their “discoveries” about Heaven, the implication being that those who might not believe the reports of their “ongoing experience” might be deriding them.

Resurrected “Now”
Because those who die in the Lord go immediately to Heaven (Luke 23:43), Scripture marks the dead in Christ to be “alive, active, and aware” with the Lord. Combining the Bible and their “sanctified imagination,” the authors of Have Heart describe Heaven and explore what it means to be absent in the body and present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).

Correctly, the Bergers claim that the dead in Christ are more alive in Heaven than they ever were on earth. (HH, 59) They suggest a new vocabulary is needed when speaking of deceased persons, words that reflect biblical truth. “We need to replace ‘dead’ and ‘was’ with ‘living’ and ‘is’.” (HH, 60)

In citing John 14:3 (“I go to prepare a place for you.”), the Bergers ask: What is Jesus “preparing? Is it an estate? Is it a house with an ocean view?” (HH, 62) Then they answer, “Maybe, but it is also most definitely a new body.... We will get amazingly new spiritual bodies that are just like the resurrected body Jesus has.” (HH, 62) From their equating place with “new spiritual bodies,” serious theological questions arise. When will those who have died in Christ receive their amazing new bodies? What will these bodies be like? Will they be essentially spiritual or essentially material?

As to when, the Bergers state that the dead in Christ are “raised in glory, living gloriously right now with God.” (Emphasis added, HH, 63, 64) As to what these bodies will be like, the authors state they will be just like Jesus’ (1 Corinthians 15:48-49; Philippians 3:2—21; 1 John 3:2). As whether these bodies are spiritual or physical, the authors opt that both are true. They note that Jesus’ appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus indicates “the tangible nature of the body of the resurrected Lord,” that He “has flesh and bones, and thus He is no vapor-like spirit/ghost.” (HH, 65) Their son Josiah’s embodiment in Heaven, as evidenced by dreams and apparitions, comforted Steve Berger for in the aftermath of donating his son’s vital organs to others, Josiah’s physical body was cremated.[44]

Missions
Regarding Heaven’s activities, the authors note “that our God is the God of the Living and not the God of the dead.” (HH, 92) In Heaven, they are “forever is.” (HH, 59) The activities of the “is-in-Christ” include praying (Revelation 5:8; 6:9-10; 8:3), worshipping (Revelation 5:13; 7:9-12), rejoicing (Luke 15:10) and serving (Revelation 22:3). (HH, 73-92) But the Bergers take serving a step further claiming that saints in Heaven make mission “trips to earth for the Master.” (HH, 89)

That those in Heaven travel to earth, the Bergers base primarily upon a book My Dream of Heaven by Rebecca Ruter Springer, written at about the time of the Civil War, a book they claim Billy Graham endorsed.[45] (HH, 89-90) To buttress the argument that people in Heaven “go on invisible missions to earth,” the Bergers also refer to dreams and experiences people have had with their dead son Josiah, as well as the biblical appearance of Moses and Elijah at Jesus’ Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13). From this eclectic mix of dreams, experiences and one biblical incident, the authors conclude that those in Heaven “know things” happening on earth, and that “They surround us.” (HH, 92) As the next chapter tells readers, “They are aware and present.” (HH, 93-104)

“Aware and Present”
To validate the claim that persons in Heaven are aware of and present with what’s happening on earth, the Bergers again draw upon an eclectic mixture of clinical, experiential and biblical data. They refer to Diane Arcangel’s book Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences, in which the former director of the Kübler-Ross Center, hospice chaplain and psychotherapist reports her clients’ “tangible experiences with their loved ones, such as dreams or symbols or sounds.”[46] (HH, 94) To further support the idea of the awareness and presence of the dead, the Bergers then cite Samuel’s visit to Saul when the king attended a séance conducted by the witch at Endor (1 Samuel 28:15-19). (HH, 95-96) They also retell a story in the book Heaven and the Afterlife, by Christian authors James (Jim) Garlow and Keith Wall.[47] (HH, 96-98)

All this then, forms the context in which the Bergers report their son’s visit with “Mr. Jim” that evening in the church sanctuary. This smorgasbord of evidence (eclectically derived from a spectrum of sources ranging from fundamentalist-Christian like John R. Rice to New Age like Diane Arcangel) supposedly supports the assertion that the dead can become present to the living. But how does one know whether such presences are authentic, fanatic or demonic?

Tests for Discerners
Acknowledging the sovereignty of God and that He can do whatever He wills, the Bergers propose that presences (appearances) of the deceased must pass two evidentiary tests: Scripture and spontaneity. They propose that experiences with the dead in Christ must

“line up with Scripture,” and
be unsolicited (spontaneous). (HH, 94, 101-103)

“It’s the spontaneity . . .” they write “that makes the difference from condemned by God to orchestrated by God.” (HH, 102) In this manner the Bergers say they’re “not talking about channeling, séances, or mediums trying to connect with the dead,” activities Scripture forbids (Deuteronomy 18:10). (HH, 94, 101-103)

They propose that because these presences are spontaneous, they do not qualify to be works of the flesh (i.e., witchcraft and sorcery), activities which the apostle Paul condemned (“they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” Galatians 5:20-21). (HH, 102) Their message thus becomes: if this experience just happens to you, and you didn’t ask for it, you are absolved from the charge of necromancy. Yet, the “spontaneity” test they invent does not thereby exempt the experiencer of an apparition from God’s prohibition.

The Nature of Scripture
Notice that the Bergers’ spontaneity test resembles how many postmodern evangelical leaders approach the Scriptures as they teach exciting new doctrines. By employing a method that starts with a Scripture and then mixes in something else—be it an experience, a dream, a revelation or a new understanding—these teachers go beyond plain biblical truth and expand the meaning of the Gospel (Contra Galatians 1:6-9.). Regarding any knowledge “out there,” Diane Arcangel states her premise for knowing: “Experience is stronger than faith, and faith is the gift the following experiencers [the cases of people recorded in her book] offer you.”[48]

Common among many new evangelicals is a belief that Scripture does not possess a propositional and objective reality outside the human heart, but that the Bible is a compilation of individual narratives that record people’s personal and subjective experiences with God, and that in a contemporary way, as people experience God, they too contribute to a grand narrative, an ongoing and developing story of the religious experiences of all people. Through your personal experiences, you become a participatory part of the Story. In accord with this conception of the Bible, the Bergers precariously advise their readers to look outside of Scripture for an experiential confirmation of the Truth! They suggest: “If Satan is attacking one of God’s promises in your own heart, ask Him to confirm the truth in your spirit by whatever means He deems best. It may be through a dream, or He may use some other method to deliver His message.” (HH, 71)

Happenings from Heaven
Because presences just “happen”—as when C.S. Lewis experienced “supernatural visitations from his wife” after she died (citing someone’s experience) or as when Jesus appeared to his disciples after His death and resurrection (citing Scripture, Luke 24:36-43)—they are legitimate, say the Bergers.

However, this disclaimer rings hollow in light of the Bergers account of Josiah’s visit to “Mr. Jim” during a mid-week service. Previous to the visit, the guest worship leader prayed that Josiah would come! (HH, 99-101) Neither does the biblical example they employ pass the spontaneity test. By visiting the witch at Endor, Saul solicited Samuel’s presence! On this point, any reader of Have Heart must struggle with the spontaneity test invented by the Bergers. In two of the authors’ examples, one experiential and the other biblical, neither Josiah nor Samuel just showed up. Those who saw them desired their presence. Indeed, many apparitions occur as a consequence of “wishful thinking.”[49] On the downside, Have Heart might conceivably tempt readers to desire contact with a loved one who has passed on, and if that would be the case, then any apparition would flunk the spontaneity test. Because a coming of a dead person just happens does not exempt it from what God’s Law forbids (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).

Though people can court contact with the dead via séances with mediums, similar “communications” can also spontaneously happen. After his son’s suicide, Bishop James A. Pike (1913-1969) experienced unsolicited visitations. Strange phenomena, which Pike grew to believe were interactions from his dead son, began to occur in the apartment they once occupied together—objects moved (telekinesis), the bangs of a sleeping secretary were singed off in a straight line, fingernails cut, etc. When these phenomena began to happen, the Anglican Bishop did not even believe in the afterlife![50] As regards the phenomena for psi (the Greek letter Y which refers to all extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinetic movements) as well as poltergeists and hauntings, Dr. Dean Radin, Director of Consciousness Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, notes that most of those experiences are “spontaneous.”[51]

So at this juncture the biblical Christian should realize that even though they be spontaneous, apparitional comings of dead persons can be altogether differently sourced—“earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15). Because they just happen does not authenticate them as being from Heaven. In fact, quite the opposite might be the case. As the case of Bishop Pike demonstrates, they could be from Hell. In 1970, Victor Ernest, once himself a spiritualist, warned: “A familiar spirit in the service of Satan knows human beings so well that he can disguise himself as those people . . .”[52] And herein lays a very serious and sober warning to any believer who might be flirting with divination: Satan’s method is ever one of deception through disguise (John 8:44; 2 Cor. 11:14). He will employ any method to perpetuate The Lie—surely you will not die.

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.”

Paul, 2 Timothy 2:15-18 (emphasis added)

Stay tuned for Part 4 . . . .

Endnotes (continued):
40. Noory and Guiley state that, “there is a long history of dream visitations. Dreams, it seems, are one of the communication methods most often used between the living and the dead.” Noory and Guiley, Talking to the Dead, 14.
41.In the Bible and as a means of divine communication, dreams and visions occurred. But in contrast to surrounding cultures (i.e., Egyptian, Canaanite and Babylonian), Thomson and Wright observe that “one is impressed by the Hebrews’ lack of preoccupation with this phenomenon.” See J. G. S. S. Thomson, “Dream,” The New Bible Dictionary, J. D. Douglas, Editor (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962): 323.
The distinction between dreams and visions is slight. Generally, dreams occurred when the recipient was asleep (Jeremiah 31:26) while visions when the recipient was awake (Isaiah 1:1). In the Old Testament, dreams were associated with prophets, both true and false (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Via dreams and visions, God communicated His word to true prophets (Jeremiah 23:28). But the dreams of false prophets originated in their own subconscious (“they speak a vision of their own imagination,” Jeremiah 23:16, NASB) or were inspired by false gods and spirits (“they prophesied by Baal,” Jeremiah 23:13, NASB). Based upon dreams and visions, the measure between a true and false prophet was this: false prophets told rebellious people, “You will have peace” (Jeremiah 23:17, NASB); but upon the rebels, the word of true prophets fell “like a hammer which shatters a rock” (Jeremiah 23:29, NASB). As a rule of thumb, false dreams comfort while true dreams convict.
Because dreams are personal, they lack confirmation by two or three other witnesses, something the apostle Paul writes is important in establishing “every word” in the church (2 Corinthians 13:1). Because dreams can either be true or false, Christians must be on the alert to discern their validity.
42. Diane Arcangel, Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 2005): 16.
43. It can be noted that Isaiah is the only prophet to give such historical notice.
44. In that cremation in the Old Testament era was linked to a pagan beliefs and rites (matter is evil, spirit is good), “it was odious to the Israelites.” Because God created the body (Genesis 1:26; 2:7), the Israelites cared for the body, even in death. Burial of the body seems to best respect the dust to dust description of life, creation and curse (Genesis 3:19). Though this scruple needs to be respected, Christians ought to realize that cremation has nothing to do with salvation. See René Pache, The Future Life, Helen I. Needham, Translator (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1962): 198.
45. Rebecca Ruter Springer, My Dream of Heaven: Intra Muros (United Kingdom: White Crow Books, 2010). Translating the Latin phrase, the book’s title reads: My Dream of Heaven in Heaven. During a time of life threatening illness, Springer reports what she saw and experienced while visiting Heaven in her dreams. Billy Graham’s so called endorsement reads: “The book, in its quaint early nineteenth-century style, was fanciful, but it captured biblical truths with emotional impressions.” Emphasis added, see Billy Graham, Facing Death and the Life After (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, a Division of Thomas Nelson, 1987): 175.
46. Diane Arcangel, Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 2005) xv + 276 pages + Appendix.
47. James L. Garlow and Keith Wall, Encountering Heaven and the Afterlife: True Stories from People Who Have Glimpsed the World Beyond (Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers, a division of the Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI, 2010). 279 pages + Acknowledgements and Endnotes.
48. Arcangel, Afterlife Encounters, Acknowledgements.
49. Dean I. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (San Francisco, CA: HarperEdge, 1997): 280.
50. Merrill F. Unger, The Haunting of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971): 7-22.
51. Radin, Conscious Universe, 280.
52. Victor H. Ernest, I Talked with Spirits (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970): 87.

The “Canaanization” of the Church

2012-01-04T17:52:00.005-05:00

Part 2, Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

Have Heart: A Review and Commentary (continued)

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments

Read Part 1: Normalizing Necromancy

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

As the religion of the Canaanites tested Israel’s fidelity to Jehovah, so the emerging New Age Religion of our culture—which merges the realities of earth and heaven (As above, so below) and blends the spirituality of what’s out there with what’s down here—tests the faith of today’s Christian in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Reality and Our Culture

Death is a regular visitor in an irregular world. In our culture with its cultic fixation upon youth, health, beauty, brains and brawn, Christians, of all people, should be prepared to cope with death. To help others deal with the loss of a loved one who is a believer, Pastor Steve and Sarah Berger have written Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth. Using the Bible and their “sanctified imagination,” the authors inform readers how they are dealing with the death of their beloved son, Josiah. In a public forum, at what they perceive to be the risk of ridicule, they state their case that those in Heaven are aware of and can actually be present with loved ones on earth.

In both the culture at large and amongst growing numbers of evangelical Christians, interest in the “connectivity” between this life and the next, between earth and heaven, is on the rise.[15] Both children and adults report visiting Heaven.[16] A few even claim they’ve been to Hell and back.[17] Others report “conversations” with Jesus.[18] But, the highway between earth and heaven appears to be run both ways. Deceased persons are now also reportedly appearing to earthly family, friends and acquaintances. One CNN writer calls these postmortem visits “crisis apparitions.”[19] Numbers of publications claiming to connect this life with the next can be noted, books bearing titles such as The Spirit Whisperer: Chronicles of a Medium, After Life: Answers from the Other Side, One Last Time: a Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost, and Crossing Over: the Stories behind the Stories.[20]

Sometimes, living persons initiate ritual contact with deceased loved ones through mediums and séances. On other occasions, as the CNN writer reports, apparitions just “happen.”[21] It is claimed that these ethereal appearances—whether in or out of a body, no one knows—support that after death, there’s “life and love.” While such experiences are increasingly contemporary, they are not new.[22] For centuries apparitions of Mary, as well Jesus and others, have been reported throughout the world.[23]

In their book, God and the Evolving Universe, New Age Spiritualists James Redfield (author of The Celestine Prophecy), Michael Murphy (cofounder of the Esalen Institute) and Sylvia Timbers (a long time counselor to the terminally ill) write that in the “face of life’s brevity, mysteries, and misfortunes,” humans have, “Since the Stone Age... sensed that physical death might not be the end but a transition—that some part of us, a spirit or soul, survives the body’s passing.”[24] From ancient to modern times, the world’s literature contains,

accounts of phantom figures that threaten, inspire, guide, or support those who encounter them. Apparitions have long reminded humankind that there is more to life than our senses perceive, more than our immediate desires reach for, more than the ordinary self conceives.[25]

Humans remain fascinated by what might lie ahead for them in a postmortem continuation of being. Since death first entered into human existence, from the time when Satan told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4), the desire to “know” about life after death remains embedded in the hearts of humanity (See Genesis 3:19; 4:8; 5:5; etc.; Romans 5:12 ff.). So the curious have designed methods to penetrate the mystery which shrouds death. Developed in and practiced from olden times, these methods are known as the occult arts (i.e., of, relating to, or dealing with supernatural influences or phenomena). Nations in antiquity, especially the Canaanites, the people Israel displaced in the Promised Land, pursued these practices as Satan and his messengers continued promoting to them the Edenic lie—surely you will not die.

The Conflict of the Ages
Because Satan is “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” an ongoing conflict exists between God and the Devil, between His good angels and Satan’s evil spirits (Ephesians 2:2). Paul taught that the Christian’s struggle is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12; Compare Revelation 12:7, ff.; Daniel 10:13; Jude 9; etc.).[26] Whether they are aware of it or not, Christians are involved in a war with Satan’s deceivers. We know so for two reasons: first the Bible tells us; and second, at one time or another, many Christians have been drawn into what has been called the conflict of the ages. Though for the most part the war between Satan and his demons and God and His angels remains invisible (Daniel 10:1-21), sometimes it becomes manifest.

Against the backdrop of this occult war (occult means hidden or secret), “crisis apparitions” must be evaluated, for to perpetuate the lie that all will not die, one means that Satan employs is disguising himself a messenger of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). In the Old Testament era, God called upon Israel to fight this war.

Israel and the Conflict
The Surrounding Culture—the Old Canaanites
Among other of the “secret arts,” the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 18:9-14, *11) consulted with “familiar spirits” (communicated with ghosts) and practiced “necromancy” (sought oracles from the dead), perhaps by “visiting their graves (Isa. 65:4).”[27] Of “necromancy,” Merrill F. Unger (1909-1980), Old Testament scholar who thoroughly researched and wrote about occult and demonic activities, comments:

This practice is called “spiritualism” today; actually, it is “spiritism” (traffic in spirits). Occultism was part and parcel of the debauched Canaanite religion, which was honeycombed with demonism, sexual perversion, and violence, as Ugaritic literature recovered from Ras Sharma (ancient Ugarit) attests.[28]

So, poised to enter the Land of Canaan, the Lord informed Israel through Moses that while He was giving the land to Israel, He was not giving the nation permission to engage the occult arts and practices of the Land’s inhabitants (Deuteronomy 18:9, 14).[29] Totally and without compromise, God forbade the Israelites “to do after the abominations of those nations,” “to imitate the detestable things of those nations (Emphasis added, NASB)” (Deuteronomy 18: 9). As Leviticus commanded the Israelites, “Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:31).[30] God forbade them to engage in Old Age Spirituality, to imitate the secret arts in any way. Old Testament scholar and commentator J.G. McConville notes of the covenant between God and His people that,

The emphasis is upon integrity of relationship... [showing]... the prohibitions in these verses have their meaning in the context of a choice between devotion to Yahweh and allegiance to other gods.[31]

Would Israel be faithful to Yahweh, or would they adopt the Old Age Spirituality of the Canaanites? Unfortunately, in choosing to imitate the wicked and occult arts of their neighbors, the Israelites entered into “relationships” with gods in addition to the One they had covenanted with.[32] Old Testament history chronicles how the Hebrew people imitated the seductive spiritual practices of the Canaanite as they refused to wait in faith for the coming of The Prophet whom God promised would more fully explain the mystery of the afterlife and “whatever’s out there” to them (Deuteronomy 18:15). As curiosity got the better of them, the Hebrew people, via the machinations and manipulations of the occult arts, chose to explore the afterlife on their own.

For their unfaithfulness to Him, the Lord punished the Israelites; first by allowing the Northern Kingdom (Israel) to be taken captive by the Assyrians (B.C. 722), and then by allowing the Southern Kingdom (Judah) to be conquered by the Babylonians (B.C. 586).

Christians know Jesus Christ is The Prophet who, with His words and by His death, burial and resurrection, explained the postmortem reality all persons face. Therefore, from the example of Old Testament history (1 Corinthians 10:11), a great question arises for Christians living in this culture: will we trust the word of The Prophet regarding the afterlife, or will we attempt, by whatever means, to explore it for ourselves?

Christians and the Conflict
The Surrounding Culture—the New Canaanites
Amongst the New Age/New Spiritualists—to whom the realities of earth and heaven are merging, where what’s up there is blending with what’s down here—truth is evolving in an ever emerging dialectic. Opposites like heaven and earth no longer exist. Therefore, it is not unnatural to believe that in handling the grief of life, the dead (those out of their bodies) can communicate with the living (those in their bodies).

In his new novel, The Twelfth Insight, New Age leader and writer James Redfield chronicles the search by two characters, Hero and Will, for “The Document,” a compilation of writings from various spiritualities that will aid its readers in experiencing “Synchronistic Flow” (a.k.a. “the Zone, Heightened Perception”). This synchronistic consciousness Hero defines as,

a sudden elevation in one’s experience, wherein we transcend the ordinary and find a higher meaning in the flow of events. This Synchronistic perception “centers” us in some way and feels beyond what could be expected from pure chance—as though a higher “destiny” is unfolding.[33]

Upon entering The Flow, Rachel, another character in The Twelfth Insight, explains that,

The Document says we can begin to communicate with those in the Afterlife and clear all our resentments and issues with them. All we have to do is use more of our power to tune in and have a conversation. It’s never too late. And there is so much more they want to communicate to us.[34]

Dr. Oz provides another cultural indicator. Only two months after helping Rick Warren launch his Daniel Plan, Dr. Oz featured well known medium and psychic John Edward on his TV program, Indicating sympathy for spiritualism, Oz’s program was titled, Psychic Mediums: Are They the New Therapists?[35] Based upon that program which featured Edward with Dr. Oz, the website Dr Oz Fans asks:

Do you believe you can talk to the dead? And if you can, does it help you get over the death of a person?... Could talking to the dead be the best medicine for grief?[36]

This is our culture—one fascinated by the possibility of talking to the dead, by soul travel between earth and heaven, by the potential of transhumanism (i.e., that man can realize divinity), and by the possible existence of parallel universes. Fascination with the paranormal has become epidemic in our society for reason of the publicity the media and Hollywood give it (i.e., Harry Potter, Star Wars, White Noise, etc., ad nauseam). As such, one can expect that Christian personalities will desire to “get in on the action” and tap into the paranormal world people claim to be experiencing, despite the Bible’s warning against doing so (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).

The “Canaanization” of the Church
The religions of the ancient nations—the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites, etc.—all shared an occult connection (Exodus 7:11; Isaiah 47:12-13; Deuteronomy 18:1). If there was a state religion among the ancients, it was the occult. And in that day, the Lord called upon His people to separate themselves from that spirituality. But as indicated by the prophets, Israel ignored God’s Word and absorbed the secret arts into her national religious life. Jeremiah told Judah, “Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream” (Jeremiah 29:8). Christians must beware that what happened to God’s people in that day might also be happening among those naming the name of Christ today.

New Testament Scripture warns against it. Paul admonished the Corinthians: “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 6:17). In this verse, Paul quoted the prophet Isaiah when, after seventy years of exile, the Jews were preparing to leave Babylon and return to the Promised Land (Isaiah 52:11). The Lord warned Israel against taking the idols and secret arts of Babylonian religion with them back to their homeland (See Daniel 2:2, 10; 5:7.). Upon exiting Babylon, they were not even to “touch the unclean thing.”[37] Touching upon the realm of the demonic (Zechariah 13:1-2; Matthew 10:1), the word “unclean” (Hebrew, tame'; Greek, akathartos) means to be contaminated by physical, moral, ritual and/or spiritual impurity thereby making people, animals, objects or activities unfit for worshipping the Holy One of Israel.

The Prophet Jesus denied that Heaven and earth are one—i.e., “as above, so below”.[38] He declared the realities of Heaven and earth to be separate and not equal. He told the religious leaders of His day: “Whither I go, ye cannot come... Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:22-23). Nevertheless, contemporary Christians, never wanting to be “left behind” by the culture, never content with letting the Christian faith be the Christian faith, are seeking to “connect” Heaven and earth—some by claiming to have visited Heaven, others by claiming to have experienced visits from Heaven.[39] Yet despite Old and New Testament prohibitions, New Age Religion is subtly influencing how many Christians view their spirituality these days. They are being seduced by the New Spirituality. They are touching the “unclean thing.” They are becoming “Canaanized.”

Apostasy
As the religion of the Canaanites tested Israel's fidelity to Jehovah, so the New Age Religion of our culture—which in its spirituality merges the realities of earth and heaven (As above, so below) and blends what's up there with what's down here—tests the faith commitment of today's Christians to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the last days, the time period between Christ’s first and second comings, Paul describes that apostasy will occur in the church because people will follow “seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1). This is exactly why John commanded Christians, “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). As Jesus did in His temptation (“it is written,” Matthew 4:4, 6, 7, 10), Christians are to discern the spirits by the Word of God only. The potential of apostatizing from the faith is the spiritual reality of the evil age in which we live, and it will remain so until Jesus comes again and binds the Deceiver for one thousand years (Ephesians 6:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Revelation 20:1-3).

"Moreover, Josiah removed the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord."
(2 Kings 23:24, NASB)

Stay tuned for Part 3 . . . .

Endnotes (continued):
15. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D., Life after Life: Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001) 174 pages. With a Foreword written by Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Moody’s book was first published in 1975.
16. Kevin and Alex Malarkey, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2010) 210 pages + Afterword and Scripture Appendix. Don Piper with Cecil Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2004) 204 pages + notes.
17. Bill Wiese, 23 Minutes in Hell: One Man’s Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in that Place of Torment (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 206) 136 pages, Appendixes and Notes.
18. Lloyd Gardner, Face to Face: A Dialogue with Jesus (Tollhouse, CA: Eliezer Call Ministries, 2009) 174 pages. Reviewed by Larry DeBruyn, “Dialog with Deception,” Guarding His Flock Ministries, January 25, 2011. Online: http://guardinghisflock.com/2011/01/25/dialog-with-deception/#more-1518.
19. John Blake, “Do Loved Ones Bid Farewell from Beyond the Grave?” September 23, 2011. CNN.com. Online: http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/23/living/crisis-apparitions/index.html?hpt=hp_c2.
20. John Holland, The Spirit Whisperer: Chronicles of a Medium (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2010). .John Edward, After Life: Answers from the Other Side (New York, NY: Princess Books, 2003). John Edward, One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost (New York, NY: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1998). John Edward, Crossing Over: The Stories Behind the Stories (San Diego, CA: Jodere Group, Inc., 2001). Edward has hosted a TV program by the same name.
21. Blake, “Do Loved Ones Bid Farewell . . .?” After his son, James Pike, Jr., committed suicide, incredible things just happened in the flat he had lived in with his father, even though at the time, Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike didn’t believe in an afterlife. See Merrill F. Unger, The Haunting of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971): 7-22.
22. George Noory and Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Talking to the Dead (New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2011): 14.
23. On December 8, 2010, Bishop David Ricken of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin announced that, “I declare with moral certainty and in accord with the norms of the Church that the events, apparitions and locutions given to Adele Brise in October of 1859 do exhibit the substance of supernatural character, and I do hereby approve these apparitions as worthy of belief (although not obligatory) by the Christian faithful.” Then explains the report: “Today’s declaration makes Our Lady of Good Help at Champion the first and only site in the United States of an approved apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” See “Worthy of Belief: Bishop Ricken approves Marian Apparitions at Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help,” Diocese of Green Bay, http://www.gbdioc.org/home.html. See also “Strange Encounters: Do People Really See Jesus Today?” by Pastor Larry DeBruyn, Guarding His Flock Ministries, http://guardinghisflock.com/category/discernment/.
24. James Redfield, Michael Murphy and Sylvia Timbers, God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2002): 182.
25. Ibid. 191-192.
26. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
27. J. Ridderbos, Deuteronomy: Bible Student’s Commentary, Ed M. van der Maas, Translator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984): 205.
28. Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament, Volume I, Genesis-Song of Solomon (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981): 257. Because “Spiritualists” believe in postmortem conversations with departed human souls, they do not accept the designation of “Spiritism,” that they are in contact with spirits, whether good or evil. See Raphael Gasson, The Challenging Counterfeit: Can We Communicate with the Dead? (South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Publishing Inc., 1966): 31-44.
29. The same word (Hebrew, nathan) occurs in Deuteronomy 18:9 and 14. Other English versions translate the word’s incidence in verse 14 as “suffered” (KJV), “allowed” (NASB), “permitted” (NIV), “appointed” (NKJV), etc.
30. The Law also demands: “Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them” (Leviticus 20:27, NASB). On this point, we ought to note this law is not applicable to contemporary society. Israel was a theocracy while our government is in theory a representative democracy. When dealing with witchcraft, the Gospel demands discernment of the spirits not the death of the witch.
31. Emphasis added, J.G. McConville, Deuteronomy: Apollos Old Testament Commentary 5, David W. Baker and Gordon J. Wenham, Editors (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002): 302.
32. On this point, it is important to note that idolatry begins with imagination. God’s verdict over the antediluvian generation was “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). The word “imagination” (Hebrew yetser means to form or make) can refer to making idols (Habbakkuk 2:18).
33. James Redfield, The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision (New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2011): 5.
Ibid. 179.
34. “Psychic Mediums: Are They the New Therapists,” The Dr. Oz Show, March 15, 2011, (http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/are-psychics-new-therapists-pt-1).
35. Cited by Warren B. Smith, A “Wonderful” Deception: The Further New Age Implications of the Emerging Purpose Driven Movement (Magalia, CA: Mountain Stream Press, 2011): 198.
36. Dr Oz Fans, “Dr Oz: John Edward Psychic Medium: Can You Talk To The Dead?” Dr Oz Fans: The Unofficial Source for Everything Dr Oz, March 15, 2011. Online: http://www.drozfans.com/dr-ozs-advice/dr-oz-john-edward-psychic-medium-can-you-talk-to-the-dead/
37. As an adjective, unclean is opposite from pure and, “in the religio-cultic sense is a technical term denoting a state of being ceremonially unfit.” See W.E. Vine, Merril F. Unger, William White, Jr., An Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984): 446.
38. “As above, so below” summarizes the worldview that, “everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else . . . Divine powers understood variously as “energy” or “light” pervade the whole. This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines “As above, so below.” This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism . . .” Emphasis added, see Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001) 13.
39. Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2010) 157 pages. Judy Franklin and Beni Johnson, Experiencing the Heavenly Realm: Keys to Accessing Supernatural Experiences (Shippensburgh, PA: Destiny Image, Publishers, Inc., 2011) 218 pages. Dennis and Nolene Prince, Nine Days in Heaven: The Vision of Marietta Davis (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 2006) 121 pages + Appendixes and Notes.Choo Thomas, with Foreword by Dr. David Yonggi Cho, Heaven is So Real! (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 2003, 2006) 253 pages.

Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

2012-01-03T19:55:00.005-05:00

Normalizing Necromancy
Part 1

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth

A Review and Commentary

[Steve and Sarah Berger, Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth (Franklin, TN: Grace Chapel, Inc., 2010) xxiv + 144 pages + Endnotes.]

Read Herescope's Introductory Comments

"Our minds need to be stretched to the other side."
(Have Heart, p. xxii)

Introduction

The story of Have Heart was born out of immense personal and family tragedy. In August of 2009, weeks before he was to matriculate at the University of Tennessee, Pastor Steve and Sarah Berger’s nineteen-year old son Josiah was fatally injured in a one car accident. Have Heart relates how the parents, family and friends are coping with his death, an ongoing story intended to comfort others who have or are facing similar life tragedies. As the book’s subtitle indicates, one aspect of “bridging the gulf between heaven and earth” involves reports that after he died, Josiah communicated with family and friends from Heaven.

This book is one of the latest among popular books being published for evangelical audiences on the subject of the afterlife involving visitations to and from Heaven and the connection between the living and the dead. Of this genre, this book is one of the most emotionally charged books, and exemplifies how gut-wrenching stories can shut down rational thinking. As the high-intensity story captivates the reader into a feelings-driven state, the book’s contents subtly facilitate a change in worldview as it suggests novel interpretations of Scripture.

Previously, I reviewed a book in this same genre, The Shack by Wm. Paul Young, which evoked similarly strong emotions with its storyline, subtly disarming readers, thereby enabling the author to introduce new concepts about the nature of God, the Trinity, salvation, spirituality and the cosmic reality in which we live, move and have our being.[1]

Do the Dead Visit the Living?
Among other experiences which contribute to Have Heart’s story line, the book recounts a visitation from the dead. One evening at a service set aside for a prayer and worship at Grace Chapel, a guest worship leader played the song, “It’s Gonna Be Worth It.” “The song really touched me and took me to a deeper place with the Lord,” related Jim Sterling, the Executive Pastor at the church. In his heart and mind, he remembered how in the aftermath of Josiah’s accident he, along with many others at the hospital, wrestled with God in prayer. With Josiah’s life hanging in the balance, he prayed, “God, this better be worth it.” So stimulated by the song he was hearing, Pastor Jim asked God, “Lord, is it worth it?” Then, according to Pastor Jim’s account, something amazing happened. “The next thing I knew,” relates “Mr. Jim” (as Josiah affectionately called him), “Josiah came into the sanctuary.” He continues to describe his coming:

It wasn’t like he just appeared there. It was a sense of him coming into the aisle, and he got down on one knee and bent into my ear. He said, “Way worth it, Mr. Jim.” Then, as quickly as he came, he left. It wasn’t that he disappeared; rather, it was a sense of him leaving the sanctuary.... He had a sense of speed about him, not that he was hurried, but as if life on earth was much slower than in Heaven—it’s a different place, a different plane.

I stood up and went over to my wife and told her, “Josiah was just here.”[2]

In the aftermath of Josiah’s “appearing,” the Bergers relate how they informed the guest worship leader, Rita Springer, about Josiah’s visit with “Mr. Jim” that evening. She then told the Bergers about the prayer request she made to God before the service. “Father, could Siah [Josiah] come worship with us tonight?” (HH, 101) God seemingly granted her request. Regarding the implications of this reported incident and others like it, the Bergers reach the novel theological conclusion, “Yes, the residents of Heaven are personally present, they are aware, and they are near!” (HH, 100-101)

Normalizing Necromancy?
From this paranormal occurrence, and similar ones recorded in the book, necessary questions arise:

Can the dead communicate with the living?
To what degree do such reports ascribe a normalcy to necromancy?
Are the Bergers’ laying the theological groundwork for an evangelical acceptance of necromancy?

Have Heart’s story line is that, by various forms of communication, the dead do bridge the gulf between Heaven and earth because those in Heaven are aware of and present with loved ones and friends on earth. This new understanding obviously has great appeal to those who are grieving for the loss of loved ones and who therefore desire continuing communication from them. Thus, for the bereaved, the book’s appeal lies in the possibility of receiving communications from those loved ones who have passed from this world into Heaven.

Note: Have Heart contains no mention of Hell. That the book is written for Christians may account for the omission. Yet, Jesus warned that not all who name His name are going to be with Him in Heaven (Matthew 7:21-23). That Hell is not mentioned might be accounted of for reason of belief in salvific universalism (there is no Hell and that ultimately, everyone is going to Heaven) emerging amongst contemporary evangelicals (as in Wm. Paul Young’s book, The Shack, or as in Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins).[3] The exclusion of any discussion of the condition of unchristian loved ones in the afterlife manifests indifference to the eternal plight of the unsaved (Contra Luke 16:27-28.).

The Book in Brief
In the Bergers’ words, belief in receiving such communication with the dead draws upon a “sanctified imagination within the confines of biblical truth.” (HH, xxii) On this basis, the authors hypothesize that the dead in Heaven are able to present themselves to loved ones on earth. As I see it, the book’s essential argument goes like this:

Persons “in Christ” are never more alive and active than when they die. At death and like Jesus, God gives them resurrected bodies possessing unique powers and supernatural abilities. Because of the indissoluble connectedness between the Church in Heaven and on earth, glorified members of Christ’s heavenly Body are aware of and present with loved ones on earth. Because of unbelief, Christians should not miss out on the comfort these familiar visitations can offer.

Background
There used to be a sign commonly posted along America’s highways which read, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” How tenuous life can be, for all of us, including the life of this author.[4] But on that summer evening in 2009, life was especially tenuous for Josiah Berger when he was involved in a single car accident on his way to meet friends at a familiar burger joint. When they received the call from the Vanderbilt Medical Center, Pastor Steve and Sarah Berger sensed the news was not good. Medical reports indicated that nineteen-year-old Josiah suffered severe injury to his brain. Amidst an outpouring of concern and love from friends, for three days the family prayed the “Lazarus prayer,” that the Lord would resurrect their son back to life. But in God’s perfect providence, that was not to happen.

Had he lived, Josiah intended that the word “Have” would have been tattooed over his heart. So as part of their son’s legacy, the Bergers hope the message in their book Have Heart will help the grief stricken not to “lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:16, NASB, NIV, NKJV), as well as “stretch” the minds of Christians “to the other side.” (HH, xxii) However, such emotional mind-stretching can lead to adopting unbiblical beliefs about the afterlife, one of which is that for the living, contact with the dead is both desirable and possible.

Have Heart is a compelling and emotive account written with the hope that others beset by similar losses in life would be helped. (HH, xiii.) Because the Bergers’ story arouses intense sympathy in readers as they identify with their loss, it becomes difficult to disengage one’s feelings from their teachings about the afterlife. When the authors employ their “sanctified imagination within the confines of biblical truth,” important issues are raised about postmortem existence. The authors believe that breaking away from traditional “in box thinking” about the afterlife gives God an opportunity “to maximize our view of Heaven.” (HH, xxii) But in breaking out of the box, Christian readers must beware lest they will also break away from the Bible.

Heaven’s “Exciting Realities”
Have Heart speaks about the “exciting realities” of Heaven, “its inhabitants, and its activity.” (HH, xvii) The authors state that “the church doesn’t know how to deal with death.” (HH, xviii) Having officiated at hundreds of funerals over a lifetime of ministry, I agree with the authors’ point. For Christians and their believing loved ones, any funeral involves an emotive mix of solemnity and celebration. The “sting of death is sin” even as “to die is gain” (1 Corinthians 15:56; Philippians 1:21).[5] Nevertheless, “It’s time,” say the authors, that “believers become heavenly minded” and know that the saints are “alive, active, and aware” in Heaven. (HH, xviii, 51, 54, 92, 95, 98, 102) But they take this knowledge a step further as they delve deep into their and others’ experience.

Heaven and Earth—Bridging the Gulf
The Bergers quote the words of Philips Brooks (1835-1893), which are found in the introduction of Rebecca Ruth Springer’s (1832-1904) book My Dream of Heaven, which narrates her dreams and experiences of visiting Heaven. A Methodist all her life, Springer wrote the book in the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-1865). In this war, which saw 620,000 soldiers and countless other civilians die, concern about the afterlife heightened. An ill woman most of her adult life, it was not unnatural that Springer shared this concern too. Brooks’ words form the foundation of Have Heart’s message. As the following quote reveals, the well-known liberal clergyman questioned the gulf between the living and the dead:

Shall we stop at that poor line, the grave, which all our Christianity is always trying to wipe out and make nothing of, and which we always insist of widening into a great gulf? Shall we not stretch our thought beyond, and feel the life blood of this holy church, this living body of Christ, pulsing out into the saints who are living there, and coming back throbbing with tidings of their glorious and sympathetic life? (HH, xix)[6]

The Bergers intend for Have Heart to stimulate the church’s thinking beyond the grave so that Christians will become “heavenly minded” (Colossians 3:1-2)—to feel the “connectivity” between the Body of Christ on earth and in Heaven. In this connected state and as the subtitle suggests (bridging the gulf between heaven and earth), it can be expected that loved ones in Heaven will visit loved ones on earth, telling them about the glorious afterlife they’re experiencing. The book’s subtitle alludes to the “great gulf fixed” which Jesus said separated Lazarus and the Rich Man in the afterlife (Luke 16:26). Though that gulf Jesus alluded to separated Heaven and Hades, the gulf Have Heart desires to bridge is between Heaven and earth, between the afterlife and this life. How do the Bergers describe bridging this gulf?

“Connectivity”—A Two Way Street
This way of connecting the living and the dead is also popular in contemporary culture. George Noory, host of Coast to Coast AM, and Rosemary Ellen Guiley, author of Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience, have co-authored a book, Talking to the Dead. Indicating how the culture views the afterlife, they state:

To us, the evidence is clear; we already have the tools for establishing real-time, two-way contact with the dead, as well as entities who perhaps live in parallel worlds to ours, and possibly even with versions of ourselves in parallel dimensions.[7]

According to Noory and Guiley, an experiential superhighway runs between Heaven and earth in both directions. But does it?

One Direction—Earth to Heaven in “The Shack”
It should be noted how the bestselling book The Shack taps into this “connectivity” with “the other side.” In this religious allegory, Mack, the novel’s main character, encounters his dead father from whom he had been estranged on earth.[8] In another incident (the earthly shack below having morphed into a heavenly resort above), Mack is also given a vision of Missy, his little daughter who had been abducted, violated and killed by an intruder while the family was on a camping trip (Mack’s great sadness). Though his vision of her is “one way”—like a one-way mirror of an interrogation room, he sees her, but she doesn’t see him—Mack observes Missy frolicking in heaven with other children. The beautiful judge Sophia tells Mack, “She (Missy) knows that you are here, but she cannot see you. From her side, she is looking at the beautiful waterfall and nothing more. But she knows you are behind it.”[9]

Numbers of Christian leaders and pastors endorsed The Shack, one being Pastor Steve Berger of Grace Chapel of suburban Nashville, Tennessee, the author of Have Heart and father of Josiah. It is apparent that The Shack impacted his thinking about life and death for he lauded that religious book as follows:

Wrapped in creative brilliance, The Shack is spiritually profound, theologically enlightening and life impacting. It has my highest recommendation. We are joyfully giving copies away by the case.[10]

Like freeways, endorsements usually run both ways too, and to this point we note that the author of The Shack also endorsed Steve and Sarah Berger’s new book, Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth.[11] Of their book, Paul Young offers the following recommendation: “Framed within the most intimate of loses, this book allows its readers to peek into life-and-death perspectives of those who follow Jesus.”[12] It should also be noted that Pastor Greg Laurie, Harvest Christian Fellowship; Chuck Missler, Koinonia Institute; Wm. Paul Young, author of The Shack; and James Robison, LIFE Outreach International, all endorsed the Bergers’ book.

The Other Direction—Heaven to Earth in “Have Heart”
Have Heart opens the possibility that those who have gone on to Heaven will be visiting loved ones on earth. And playing with the emotions and feelings of readers like The Shack, it draws readers into the story at a heart-felt level.

From my pastoral perspective, Have Heart tells a story that will appeal to many who have experienced the tragic death of a loved one. As the Apostle put it and the Bergers believe, to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). The memorial service to Josiah bore testimony that for Christians death is victory, not defeat (1 Corinthians 15:51-57).[13] Admirably, and unbeknownst to his parents, Josiah willed that his vital organs be donated to others in the eventuality of his death. By his death, Josiah gave life. Despite these positive examples amidst a heart rending story, Have Heart contains matters that ought to concern Christian readers; that is, if Scripture is our sole guide in matters of the afterlife.

The Bergers dutifully remind their readers: “Remember, anything we think God is saying or revealing [through personal experiences] must line up with the Word and the nature, character, and will of God.” (HH, 44) But the book contains material which does not agree with this assertion.

Because of the sympathy aroused in readers as they identify with the Bergers’ loss (I even speak of my experience while reading the book), it becomes very difficult to orient one’s emotions to the Word of God. Nevertheless, there are matters in Have Heart that do not line up with Scripture. In brief, I do not see that the Word of God supports the notion that postmortem, persons in heaven come back—whether in the body or out of the body, no one really knows—to visit loved ones and friends on earth. (HH, 97-104, 109-112, and 114-115) In saying this, I realize that I am opening myself up for criticism of not “having heart,” of not accepting how the Bergers are coping with their loss, of being categorized as a minimalist, or of even being under Satan’s influence.[14] (HH, 108) Indeed, to examine this book’s contents from an objective, biblical perspective opens one up to the criticism of being unsympathetic and uncaring, perhaps even cruel, to those who are bereaved.

In contradiction to the claim that loved ones, whether they are Christians or not, make postmortem presences or appearances, intuitive or actual, to loved ones or friends on earth, the following biblical and theological evaluation is offered. In doing so, biblical texts used by the authors to substantiate the claim that the dead in Heaven are aware of and present with the living on earth must be evaluated. But before dealing with specific texts appearing in Have Heart, the modern and ancient contexts of the issue of visitations from the dead should be compared.

Stay tuned for Part 2. . . .

The Truth:

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the Word which by the Gospel is preached unto you. (1 Peter 1:23-25)

ENDNOTES
1. Pastor Larry DeBruyn, Unshackled: Breaking Away from Seductive Spirituality (Indianapolis, IN: Moeller Printing Company, Inc., 2009). The book is available through, Discernment Ministries, P.O. Box 520, Canton, Texas 75103-0520. Telephone: (903) 567-6423.
2. Steve and Sarah Berger, Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth (Franklin, TN: Grace Chapel, Inc., 2010): 99-100. Subsequently in the review, quotations from or allusions to Have Heart will be documented as follows: (HH, page numbers).
3. See Pastor Larry DeBruyn, “Love Loses, The Quantum Spirituality of Rob Bell: A Review of ‘Love Wins’,” Guarding His Flock Ministries, (http://guardinghisflock.com/2011/05/09/love-loses/#more-1774). James B. De Young, “Lost at the Back of The Shack: A Torrent of Universalism,” February, 2008 (http://www.ericbarger.com/back_of_the_shack_deyoung.pdf).
4. On November 9, 2006, I caught a vicious flu while on a teaching mission in Hungary. Dehydration caused blood clots to form and I suffered a major coronary infarction. On a one and one half hour ride to a public hospital in Budapest, my heart had to be defibrillated seven times. By God’s sovereign intervention I survived. But, because my heart attack occurred the “old way” without the administration of needed medications I developed Dressler’s Syndrome (the accumulation of excess fluids around the heart and lungs which constricts breathing). This required seven subsequent hospitalizations upon returning to the United States. On two of those hospitalizations, my life was also endangered.
5. Unless otherwise noted, scriptural citations will be taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible. In reference to Philippians 1:21, we note the verb in italics. Christ’s resurrection life is so current within Christians that, life Christ, die gain!
6. Emphasis added, Philips Brooks cited by Rebecca Ruter Springer, My Dream of Heaven: Intra Muros (United Kingdom: White Crow Books, 2010): 8.
7. George Noory and Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Talking to the Dead (New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2011): 15.
8. Wm. Paul Young, The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity (Los Angeles, CA: Windblown Media, 2007): 7-8, 214-216. With the help of Sarayu (the Spirit), Mack and his “mean-alcoholic-cussing-church-elder” father were reconciled in Heaven.
9. Ibid. emphasis added, 167.
10. Ibid. Front Matters, “What Others are Saying about The Shack.”
11. Berger, Have Heart, Front Matters.
12. Ibid. ii.
13. On this point, I note that I watched and listened to Josiah’s moving memorial service presided over by his father and others (“Josiah David Berger Celebration,” Pastor Steve Berger, August 18, 2009 Grace Chapel, Leipers Fork, TN). Online: http://gracechapel.net/teaching/index.html?p=detail&id=205.
14. Berger opines: "I (Steve) believe satanic attack has so infiltrated the church that there are even some believers today who want to minimize Heaven’s unlimited glory. Why try to minimize anything about Heaven or its inhabitants when everything about heaven is maximized?” See Have Heart, 108.

Happy New (Age) New Year 2012!

2012-01-02T11:31:00.004-05:00

Normalizing Necromancy:

Tempting the Church to Talk with the Dead

The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world,

would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy

should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.

(Lamentations 4:12)

Welcome to the year 2012—the much-publicized year of the Mayan writings that prophesy the End of the World as we know it. But what is our spiritual adversary really up to? And how does he attempt to accomplish his plan to infiltrate and overturn Biblical Christianity, replacing it with his “new” worldview—a worldview that will attempt to scientifically prove through quantum physics that “we are all God” because God is “in” everything—a new worldview that states that humanity is about to take a “quantum leap” into a newly evolved state of being (counterfeit of “born again”) that will usher in a “New Age” of world peace. The Devil’s “Christ” —Antichrist—will, of course, be the centerpiece of this counterfeit millennium—this New World Order.

Who would have believed even just a short time ago, that today’s professing evangelical Church would be buying into this New Age deception and exponentially imploding the way it is—literally catapulting a once biblical church into the heretical panentheistic teachings of the New Age? For example:

Robert Schuller featured New Age leader Gerald Jampolsky on his worldwide television program Hour of Power. On another program, Schuller stated that “God is in every single human being.”
Schuller’s disciple Rick Warren teaches that God is “in” everything and uses Eugene Peterson’s The Message as his primary “Bible” translation in his book The Purpose-Driven Life. Eugene Peterson inserted the key to all magic and mysteries—the key occult/New Age phrase “as above, so below” that signifies that God is “in” everything—into his “translation” of The Lord’s Prayer.
Meanwhile Warren has developed partnerships with global internationalists. And this past year he brought on three "guru doctors" with deep ties to the New Age to direct his health care plan.
Rick Warren and Emergent leader Brian McLaren heretically echo New Age matriarch Alice Bailey’s teaching that prophecy is none of our business.
Controversial “evangelical” leader Leonard Sweet, with deep roots in the Leadership Network, introduced the New Age tactic of using quantum physics to seemingly “prove” that God is “in” everything while citing New Age patriarch Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as “20th century Christianity’s major voice.” Sweet also cites numerous New Age leaders as his “role models” and “heroes.”
Bible teacher Gayle Erwin endorsed Paul Young’s unbiblical novel The Shack, stating that it “teaches powerful theological lessons.” Evangelical Pastor Steve Berger describes The Shack as being “spiritually profound” and “theologically enlightening.”
Merging “Emergent” leaders like Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and Tony Jones have run roughshod through the church wresting Scripture from unstable souls as they demean the reality of Hell and “churchy things like doctrine.”
Rick Warren’s doctoral mentor C. Peter Wagner, regarding himself as a modern-day apostle, flew to Lakeland, Florida to anoint Todd Bentley—a man who kicked the “Holy Spirit” into people with his combat boots and was about to divorce his wife.
Wagner has set up a global apostolic movement with the goal of taking over the 7 mountains of culture in the world, and his IHOP disciples have now mainstreamed themselves into the Christian Right in America.
Evangelical church leaders are becoming involved in the same New Age 2012 date-setting that the New Age leaders are promoting, and some are even expecting visits from extraterrestrials.
Rodney Howard Brown and the so-called Toronto Blessing’s mid-1990’s “Holy Laughter” revival was a sign of the times as the enemy of our souls laughed through professing Christians and mocked the church. And the latest fad is to divorce Baal!

The list goes on and on as church pastors and Christian leaders sat by in silence and let it all happen. Some even denied any of this was going on! Deceived and deceiving, today’s church, while attempting to reach the world has become the world.

Encountering the Dead

Unbelievable as it sounds, one of the latest New (old) Age temptations to confront both the world and the church is to encourage spiritual and religious seekers to talk with the dead. In this maneuver we can see the adversary’s ploy is to further open the door to a seducing spirit world (1Timothy 4:1). Demonic spirits that impersonate deceased loved ones will attempt to convey “new understandings” and “new revelations” that will contribute to a “new worldview.” This will ultimately lead to a deceptively contrived world peace. This deceptive “peace” plan was warned about in the Bible (Daniel 8:25, Matthew 24:3-5, 1 Thessalonians 5:3, 1 Tim 4:1, 1 John 4:1, Revelation 13, etc.).

This temptation to talk and listen to the dead has already entered the church. And it is entering through mainstream evangelical doorways. Pastor Steve Berger and his wife Sarah have written a book entitled Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth. In this book they describe how their recently deceased son, Josiah, has appeared to them and to members of their church in a variety of ways. These appearances are described as missions from God as Josiah allegedly makes visitations, worships with the church, and imparts spiritual information to those who will listen. The book then details a long series of apparitions of Josiah that have reportedly appeared to people in dreams or revelations across America. In their book, the Bergers attempt to make the case that this is normal and this is biblical—even synchronistic (what the Bergers call “God Nods”)—and that believers should expect these visitations from their loved ones from Heaven.

Bergers book endorsed by Christian leaders

If Pastor Steve Berger was an obscure pastor with a tiny congregation and a low-profile book, we would not be issuing this warning about what he and his wife are writing and what it portends for the church. But this is not the case. The Bergers have a large congregation of over 4,000 people in Leipers Fork, Tennessee and their book legitimizes and normalizes, even encourages the idea of believers interacting with the dead. It has already been featured on several widely viewed television programs like Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power and Canada’s Huntley Street. In addition to these and other venues, Steve Berger was invited to speak about his book at a 2011 National Worship Conference that featured a number of Emergent and evangelical leaders like Chuck Smith Jr., Miles McPherson, Chuck Fromm, and which advertised as a keynote speaker the “Christian” New Age sympathizer Leonard Sweet. But perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of the Berger book is the endorsements of high profile leaders such as Calvary Chapel Pastor Greg Laurie and longtime Bible teacher Chuck Missler. Not surprisingly, The Shack’s author Paul Young is also listed alongside Laurie and Missler as an endorser of the book.

Walking into the New Age trap

In his 2011 novel The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision, New Age leader James Redfield tells of an ancient manuscript that describes “a secret approach to spirituality that is silently arriving in the second decade of the twenty-first century.”(p. 178) Rachel, a main character in Redfield’s book, attempts to legitimize talking with the dead as a means of getting updated information from Heaven. The dead will provide information—in the form of new revelation—that would explain God’s real plan for bringing world peace to a dangerously troubled world. Rachel explains:

“[I]f we follow the Synchronicity, we will be able to learn from those in Heaven in a direct way, and that will elevate us into the next level of consciousness.”(p. 178)

Later in that same conversation, Rachel relates an incident regarding her deceased mother:

“And then one day, without anything pointing out the way, I just decided to tell her how I felt out loud, as though she were there. Immediately, I began to intuit what she might say back to me, only I realized it wasn’t something I would necessarily have been able to guess. That’s when I realized that I was having an interaction with her.”

“The idea of communication with the Afterlife seemed too strange at first, and I stopped for a while, but the memory of the experience was so energizing and profound, I gradually began to communicate with her more often. Eventually, she told me how much she regretted the way she had raised me to think of men. She said it was all a mistake that tormented her, and that now she holds the Agape and speaks from truth—and she wishes she had known earlier, so she could have taught me this new way.”

“…Don’t you see?... The Document says we can begin to communicate with those in the Afterlife and clear all our resentments and issues with them. All we have to do is use more of our power to tune in and have a conversation. It’s never too late. And there is so much more they want to communicate to us.”

“In fact, my mother said they desperately need to speak with us, right now, at this crucial point in history. They know the real Plan for the human world, and it’s time for us on this side to understand.”(p. 179)[emphasis added]

Because a similar kind of talking and interacting with the dead is now being introduced into the church by the Bergers, and because their book is being endorsed by Greg Laurie, Chuck Missler and others, the Discernment Research Group has asked Pastor Larry DeBruyn to do a book review of the Bergers’ book Have Heart: bridging the gulf between heaven and earth. While sympathetic to the Bergers, and to any who have lost loved ones, Pastor DeBruyn will explain how our adversary can use something like the Bergers’ tragedy to introduce new teachings into the church. To be specific, Pastor DeBruyn will scripturally refute the unbiblical practice of interacting with and listening to spiritual entities that claim to be deceased loved ones. He will also address a number of the other new scriptural interpretations the Bergers introduce to make their case that it is now normal, even desirable, to encounter loved ones that have passed on.

Follow-up articles on the Herescope blog will expose how similar tactics are currently being used by New Age leaders to present New Revelation to convince people that the world is not coming to an end, but just to the end of the age and the beginning of the New Age. These New Age leaders argue that these new understandings and New Revelations are being brought forth through channelers, psychics, mediums—and yes, even those who have passed on.

What these deceived New Age leaders are saying is that, armed with these new revelations and understandings, the world will be able to avert what would otherwise be worldwide crisis and disaster. They say December 22, 2012 will be the first day of the new beginning, the new era—the New Age.

Pastor DeBruyn’s article will warn how books and teachings like Have Heart can actually lead the church into this deceptive New Age scenario.

Stay tuned . . . .

The Discernment Research Group

The Night of Nights

2011-12-23T15:44:00.000-05:00

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

As reenacted in nativity scenes and Christmas pageants down through the history of western civilization, this story, in various ways, whether in part or whole, is told:

God promised Israel a coming Messiah. God chose a teenage virgin to be the mother of Israel’s promised Messiah. The virgin was engaged to a young and moral carpenter. A crisis pregnancy occurred. An angel of the Lord alerted Joseph that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Angels announced Messiah’s birth to shepherds on a night vigil near a little Judean town of Bethlehem. Magi from the East visited the infant. To preserve the rights of his royal family to reign, paranoid King Herod ordered the infanticide of all male children under two years of age.

On the very night of our Savior’s birth, Luke, a physician turned historian, records that, “there were some shepherds out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). Possessing gnarled and scared hands and countenancing weather-beaten faces, these ordinary men worked the grave-yard shift protecting their sheep, some of which were probably marked for eventual sacrifice at the temple about six miles away. With slings, crooked staffs, and studded clubs, these men risked their lives to protect their sheep from predatory animals and criminal rustlers.

Unbeknownst to them, one particular night was a holy night. The sheep were resting comfortably. The only sound that penetrated the quiet night was an occasional “baaaa!” of a sheep. Whether standing or sitting, these nameless shepherds breathed in the crisp night air as they fought off sleep’s beckoning call. It was a night like many others until . . . .

The night sky suddenly exploded with the light of God’s glory, a bright light that revealed the menacing form of an angel standing nearby. The sight of the angel terrorized these veteran guardians of the night. Had the angel of death come for them? This season, Hallmark will design, print, distribute and sell millions of Christmas cards. Many of these cards will bear images of cuddly, winged, and romantic looking angels. I doubt that any will bear the intimidating visage of “an angel from the Lord” who frightened to death those veteran shepherd-warriors, and who therefore uttered to them, “Do not be afraid” (Luke 2:9-10).

In contrast to the warm and fuzzy feelings people experience during this time of year, it might strike a disconcerting note to even the casual reader of the gospels that fear was a pervasive emotion of the first Christmas. Matthew records that, “[A]n angel of the Lord appeared to [Joseph] in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife’” (Matthew 1:20). When he saw an angel of the Lord, Luke records that, “And Zacharias was troubled when he saw him, and fear gripped him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias’” (Luke 1:12-13). The angel also told Mary, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30).

Contact with the supernatural angel from the Lord was unnerving. Maybe we have come to feel too cozy with the Christmas story. Perhaps we ought to be a bit more unnerved when we hear the recounting of when God visited this planet in the form of an infant who upon reaching mature manhood, would be crucified for the sins of His people.

The shepherds were ordinary men God allowed to experience an extraordinary visitation that night. James S. Stewart asks, “And is there not a world of meaning in the fact that it was very ordinary people, busy about ordinary tasks, whose eyes first saw the coming of the Lord?” Then he answers,

It means, first, that the place of duty, however humble, is the place of vision. And it means, second, that it is men who have kept to the deep, simple pieties of life and have not lost the child heart to whom the gates of the Kingdom most readily open.

To these herdsmen, God first entrusted the Good News that a baby had been born nearby during their night vigil, an infant “Savior who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). That Baby lying in an animal feeding trough signaled to them the birth of God’s only Messiah (See Romans 10:9-10.).

To these shepherds God first entrusted the gospel message, and it was their vocation that would provide the intimate and pastoral illustration of Jesus’ relationship with His followers. He is the Good Shepherd who calls and cares for those sheep who “hear his voice” (John 10:1-14). And for reason of His call and His care, we need not fear either.

Reprinted with permission. Original posted HERE.

ADDENDUM ERRATUM

2011-12-09T14:14:00.002-05:00

C. Peter Wagner's “Theology”

Exhibit A: "Kingdom Demonstration for Transformation"*

"If... the ecumenical philosophy is correct and a believer cannot be certain of sound doctrine, the commandments and promises of God make no sense."

- Brother David Cloud, Way of Life Encyclopedia, p. 160.

On December 7, 2011 C. Peter Wagner, head of the New Apostolic Reformation, issued an “Addendum”[1] to his previous statement in an e-mail issued from his “Global Spheres” entity, titled “NAR – What are its beliefs?” (11-20-11).[2] Wagner says that he released this Addendum because he “received responses from friends (not critics, mind you) that suggested the Global Spheres statement was incomplete because it omitted certain doctrinal issues that the respondents felt were primary.” He then posits his own definition of theology:

"Theology is a human attempt to explain God's word and God's works in a reasonable and systematic way."

The remainder of Wagner's letter is an exercise in postmodern thinking. Wagner defines theology as a human endeavor that is “always susceptible to flaws.” He provides a one-paragraph superficial history of the Council of Nicea. And then he launches into one of his favorite topics, the Lausanne Congress of 1974, which issued a “Covenant” that gave the modern evangelical church a secondary mandate to that of preaching the Gospel, which was social action. This social action gospel has now become, for Wagner and others, the theological opening for Dominionism. Wagner concludes his little dissertation on theology with a paragraph from one of his books:

Please allow me to summarize my thoughts here with a quote from my book, Changing Church. In it, I have a chapter, "From a Heavy Doctrinal Load to a Lighter Load," and here is my conclusion:

"A whole new generation of believers in the Second Apostolic Age is not nearly as interested in the fine points and details of theology as past generations have been. Few people choose their church these days because of what it believes about open theology or Calvinism or modes of baptism or church government or the pretribulation rapture or sanctification or predestination or the forensic theory of justification. If God is our Father and if we are saved through Jesus' blood shed on the cross and if we are daily filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, I am convinced we can find a way to work together despite our theological differences" (p. 161).

Wagner’s “Ground Rules for Theology”

In his 1996 book Confronting the Powers,[3] Wagner challenges orthodox theology and its ground rules. On page 41 he offers the same humanistic definition of theology as he quotes in his Addendum: "Theology is a human attempt to explain God's word and God's works in a reasonable and systematic way." Wagner explaines:

“Can we first agree on a definition of theology? This would be an excellent starting point…. If we do agree on this definition, it will make a difference in our attitudes…. Through such a definition we become acutely aware that our findings have limitations because they are mere human positions, as opposed to something divinely inspired. Furthermore, we become aware that we are at best engaged in an attempt that by nature welcomes future revision, as opposed to a dogmatic conclusion forever set in concrete.” (pp. 41-42)

To agree with Wagner’s definition of theology, then, means that one must agree that it is a human thing, not a God thing. As soon as one agrees with this basis for theology, then all else becomes shifting sand, open to revision or new revelation, evolving, subject to human whims and nature, and no longer absolute. Wagner has just played a postmodern mindgame with his readers. If they agree to his ground rules and definition, they have just agreed that doctrinal truth is human and therefore not absolute, and that “theology” (i.e., doctrine) is therefore subject to evolving semantic understandings. Theology/doctrine has just been divorced from Biblical Truth and put it into the esoteric/existential realm. This is the essence of postmodernism.

And this is precisely what Wagner has done throughout his entire life. He has opened traditional orthodoxy to new words, new understandings, new doctrines, new practices, new eschatologies, and new gospels.[4] For example, in his 1988 book The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit[5] Wagner admits that he obtained his doctrines about spiritual warfare from extra-biblical sources outside of the Canon of Scripture. He cites the apocryphal Acts of Peter where he says there were highly vivid descriptions of “a spiritual ‘shootout’” and “confrontational theatrics” in the forum, and the apocryphal Acts of John where there was a “power encounter… in the temple of the goddess Artemis” resulting in it splitting in pieces “and half of the whole temple” falling down. (pp. 80-81). He says that including such extra-biblical supernatural stories can be "used to bring people to conversion to Christianity." (p. 82)

Wagner also based his life work on man-made methods for evangelism. His evangelism became mixed with the social gospel. Therefore he believes that man-centered humanistic methods of changing worldview will achieve results for his social action gospel. In fact, Wagner was one of the poster boys for Leadership Network[6] while he was developing his New Apostolic Reformation network in the 1990s. Wagner wrote in his 1983 book On the Crest of the Wave[7] that:

“Methods must be selected on largely pragmatic considerations since the Bible does not pretend to give twentieth-century instructions. Therefore, it is good strategy not only to set measurable goals but also to build in from the start of the effort instruments for measuring its success or failure. Only by doing this will it be possible to look back and know which methods God has blessed and which methods He has not blessed. (p. 119)

The ultra-pragmatic Leadership Network spawned not only the New Apostolic Reformation but also the Emergent movement,[8] both of which also contain an intrinsic mystical component that drives this new postmodern theological paradigm forward. To do this, biblical theology must be deconstructed and discarded. Wagner has just shown us how he did it.

The Truth:

Brother David W. Cloud in his Way of Life Encyclopedia[9] explains the term “doctrine” in the context of the whole postmodern worldview. His comments are excerpted below:

DOCTRINE. Doctrine simply means teaching, but the biblical usage refers to sound teaching based on the Word of God. The two Greek words translated "doctrine", didaskalia and didache, are also translated "teacheth" (Ro. 12:7) and "learning" (Ro. 15:4). These words are used more than 140 times in the N.T., which shows how important doctrine is before God. Other terms which refer to doctrine are "truth" (1 Ti. 2:4), "the faith" (1 Ti. 3:9; 2 Ti. 3:8; Tit. 1:13), "wholesome words" (1 Ti. 6:3), and "sound words" (2 Ti. 1:13). Doctrine (and its companion terms) is referred to 59 times in the Pastoral Epistles alone. "The truth" is referred to 10 times in 2 and 3 John alone.

OTHER TERMS WHICH REFER TO DOCTRINE. "Truth" (1 Ti. 2:4), "the faith" (1 Ti. 3:9; 2 Ti. 3:8; Tit. 1:13), "wholesome words (1 Ti. 6:3), and "sound words." (2 Ti. 1:13).

CAN WE KNOW SOUND DOCTRINE? ...The Lord Jesus Christ... said that a believer can know sound doctrine. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John 7:17). The requirement to know sound doctrine, according to this verse, is to be willing to obey the truth.... [T]he Lord will give him wisdom so that he will know sound doctrine from false....

BIBLE FACTS ABOUT DOCTRINE. We can know right doctrine (Jn. 7:17). We are to continue in the Apostles' doctrine (Ac. 2:42). The Apostles filled Jerusalem with doctrine (Ac. 5:28). We are saved by believing the right doctrine (Ro. 6:17; 1 Jn. 5:20; 2 Jn. 9). We are to separate from those who teach false doctrine (Ro. 16:17). We must be careful of winds of false doctrine (Ep. 4:14). No false doctrine is to be allowed (1 Ti. 1:3). Sound doctrine is good (1 Ti. 4:6). The preacher is to give himself to doctrine (1 Ti. 4:13). The preacher is to take heed to the doctrine (1 Ti. 4:16). Preachers who labor in doctrine are to be rewarded (1 Ti. 5:17). Sound doctrine is to be adorned with godly living (1 Ti. 6:1,3; Tit. 2:1). The Bible is given for doctrine (2 Ti. 3:16). The Bible is to be preached with doctrine (2 Ti. 4:2). The last days is characterized by a turning from sound doctrine (2 Ti. 4:3). The preacher must be able to use doctrine to edify and protect the church (Tit. 1:9). Our doctrine is to be uncorrupt (Tit. 2:10). We abide in Christ by sound doctrine (1 Jn. 2:24-27). True Christian love is grounded in truth (2 Jn. 1; 3 Jn. 1). The Apostles had no greater joy than to see the Christians walking in the truth (3 Jn. 3-4). Those who abide not in sound doctrine are not of God and are not be to received (2 Jn. 9-10).

Endnotes:
1. "THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION: What Are Its Beliefs? ADDENDUM," by C. Peter Wagner (12-6-11), http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=iscjkybab&v=001cQDW1aEI0uUrmgn_6zBlChlZkrQIikk_6MMTLQcaBMxQmstAOPx5gn_Flq0e9ARd15EXeZ0iyaUg6LlMF6Xyaj-TUWp9Z-fz8GZyPbeJLfj4rmjX6nDphA%3D%3D
2. See previous Herescope for details, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/12/spiritual-warfare-eschatology.html
3. C. Peter Wagner, Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the POwer of Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare (Regal, 1996).
4. See, for example, "The Agenda & Teaching Of The New Apostolic Reformation, transcript of C. Peter Wagner, Arise Prophetic Conference, Gateway Church, San Jose, CA, 10-10-2004, with forward by Sandy Simpson, 5/23/05," http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/arise.html. Also see: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005/11/c-peter-wagner-concocts-another-new.html where Wagner is quoted as saying, “It seems that God is constantly moving us into new times and seasons. He is pouring out new wine, and we are trying to keep up by developing as many new wineskins as we can.” (Freedom from the Religious Spirit. Also see http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/wagnerquotes.html "C. Peter Wagner - Quotes & Notes  compiled by Sandy Simpson & Mike Oppenheimer."
5. C. Peter Wagner, The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit (Vine Books, 1998).
6. See Herescope posts: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/08/c-peter-wagner-spins-nar.html and http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/09/documenting-dominionism.html and http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/08/denying-dominionism.html
7. C. Peter Wagner, On the Crest of the Wave: Becoming A World Christian (Regal, 1983).
8. See this post at Apprising Ministries for comprehensive documentation and details: http://apprising.org/2009/07/10/herescope-the-emerging-church—circa-1970/
9. Brother David Cloud, Way of Life Encyclopedia (Way of Life Literature, 2002), "Doctrine" entry, pp. 160-161. Some of this entry is reproduced here: http://www.biblebelievers.net/Doctrine/kjcdoct1.htm

* This is illustrative of the new theologies of C. Peter Wagner. "Give Me This Mountain" With Bill Hamon, Lance Wallnau, Tim Hamon, Pat Francis and More! October 20-23, 2009 -- Santa Rosa Beach, FL. Paid Advertisement on The Elijah List issued Jul 18, 2009, http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word_pf.html?ID=7826. Click to enlarge this exhibit. The purpose was billed as:
"Give Me This Mountain!"

Kingdom Demonstration for Transformation

Our International Gathering is a hallmark of transition for the Body of Christ! It serves as a "spiritual birthing center" for the next level of the apostolic and prophetic in the earth.

Join us as we hear revelation on our next level in God from seasoned apostles and prophets! Possess your promised inheritance in government, family, business, education, arts & entertainment, media and religion.

Spiritual Warfare Eschatology

2011-12-03T11:11:00.001-05:00

The Destiny of Enforcing a Kingdom

2012 will be a year of the release of heavenly authority to many who have turned from religion to the reality of life in God.

The enemy was in the garden with Adam and Eve but was completely powerless until he deceived Eve and then Adam. The devil must deceive human beings to usurp the authority given to mankind to rule in the world. To usurp our authority, he must separate us from the reality of life with God and entice us to follow him. The more he can make his false religion look like the reality of life in God, the more easily he can deceive people into following him and releasing their God-given authority to rule in this world.

“ [T] he manifest presence of God will lovingly bond together and prepare His people to endure the hard times immediately ahead and to eventually plant the kingdom of God solidly into the entire world.

Beyond the season of devastation, in another season to come, the fullness that is developing under cover will be released into the world. The clearing and the deep plowing of the land of this world will leave little to none of the previous world order and fully prepare the soil of this world to receive the seed of the kingdom planted by the prepared people of God. The Bride City of God will become a reality on earth.[1]

This above quotation from the December 1st newsletter released by Ron McGatllin, whose own apostolic network is working alongside C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation, who takes a classic Dominionist position that Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden was a matter of keeping the church from ruling the world – thereby thwarting the church's divine destiny and purpose. The Dominionist strategy is to re-take the world via any vehicle upon which they can hitch a ride – community and civic involvement, peace promotion, political and social action, cultural and worldview change, societal engineering, corporate and philanthropic endeavors, partnerships and collaborations with global entities, etc. These methods for achieving Dominion are often called “spiritual warfare.” Additionally, various forms of esoteric, hyper-spiritual altered-state-of-consciousness activities, are practiced within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR/IHOP) Dominionist camp under the term “spiritual warfare.”

In his most recent newsletter McGatlin, like an increasing number of New Age/NAR/IHOP and evangelical leaders, is giving credence to the significance of the year 2012. Under his brand of eschatology, the “Bride of Christ” is to “manifest the presence of God” and “eventually plant the kingdom of God” on earth. In this worldview, spiritual warfare it something that is waged against external threats to the church. Lip service may be given to traditional understandings about resisting sin, but the over-riding Dominionist principle of spiritual warfare is based on the heretical premise that enemies of the Lord (however this is defined by various groups) must be conquered and ruled over, including ultimately sin and death. This, of course, negates the necessity of Christ's salvation, His shed blood for our sins on the cross. Dominion becomes a method of reversing the effects of the curse.

NAR Issues Strange Statement of Faith
In the past month, C. Peter Wagner has reiterated all of this. He issued a doctrinal defense of his New Apostolic Reformation last week. In an e-mail issued from his “Global Spheres” entity, titled “NAR – What are its beliefs?” (11-20-11) Wagner expressed dismay that some have considered him a heretic. He also explained why he has not previously issued an official NAR statement of faith; he says it is because it is a movement, not an organization. That is, by the way, the chief advantage of his downline networking structure. The NAR is a network that superimposes itself upon existing denominational and doctrinal divides and networks them under a new hierarchical structure, thereby supplanting (and eventually eliminating) denominational distinctives. This is a virulent new form of structural ecumenism.

In classic Leadership Network-trained fashion, C. Peter Wagner claims to affirm the “classical Christian Creeds.” This is a clever bait-and-switch technique devised by the change agents, who promote the idea of putting forth a conservative-sounding “public statement,” meanwhile freely embracing additional doctrines (i.e., heresies) that supersede or compromise the original. It is a very slick maneuver.

In articulating the doctrine of the NAR, C. Peter Wagner refers people to his Global Spheres, Inc. document called “The Belief system … The Revelation That Advances the Above Kingdom Entities Forward and Constitutes the Foundations for our Future.” The peculiar use of language and terminology in this document is, to say the least, exceptionally unorthodox and not technical in scholarly sense. Amazingly, the document points to books written by leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation for its source of theology rather than simple Scriptures. This whole document is strange, and very uncharacteristic of a traditional “statement of faith.” For those who are not converted, or who are biblically illiterate or dumbed down, it is an unfortunate and grievous document because it does not teach the Gospel of Salvation.

This NAR belief system document also teaches this new spiritual warfare eschatology. Here are a few snapshots:

God provided a specific order and alignment for these gifts (first apostle, second prophet, third teacher...) so that His people can be equipped to function as a mighty army in the earth.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND APOSTOLIC GOVERNMENT - We serve a King who is advancing a Kingdom. The King has chosen to position His Kingdom within humankind. He sends those who have His Kingdom within them into every aspect of society's culture. The Kingdom of God is here now! The seven mountains of society are meant to be influenced and dominated by the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom has Jesus Christ as the cornerstone and apostles properly related to prophets form the foundation of the Kingdom. Apostles create and execute God's prototype plan in the earth and through each nation of the earth until there is a house of prayer built for every people group. Jesus taught us to pray that God's Kingdom would come to earth as it is in heaven. (To learn more about the Kingdom of God we recommend you read Apostles Today and Apostles and Prophets.)[link added]

SPIRITUAL WARFARE - Because we represent a Kingdom, we are at war to enforce Kingdom principles and plans in the earth. We are at war and must be equipped to stand against the enemy. Accomplishing God's purposes on earth is not without opposition. . . . [emphasis added]

THE COMMISSION TO DISCIPLE and HEAL NATIONS - From the beginning of God's covenant with Abraham, His plan was to bless all the nations. One of the purposes of the nation of Israel was to show the other nations how they could relate to God. They were to live in such a way that the glory of the Lord would be on them and Gentiles would be drawn to them (Is. 60). His House was to be a joyful House of Prayer for all the nations (Is. 56:6-7). When the Jews rejected Jesus, they missed fulfilling this portion of their destiny…. Jesus sent His disciples out to fulfill this promise and commanded them to disciple the nations - helping whole nations to be disciples of the Lord. From generation to generation, the Lord develops His Church to disciple the nations until the fullness of His plan has been completed and all nations have been restored.

In the NAR/IHOP world some of this deception becomes very subtle indeed. The Elijah List just released a promotional advertisement for a January 4-7 "Breakthrough 2012 Global Celebration" event with Lance Wallnau of seven mountains dominion fame, along with a lineup of prominent NAR leaders, which says:

This gathering is for the express purpose of revealing and imparting *everything* that is available through the out-of-all-proportion solution that Jesus provided for us on Calvary.

The stated purpose sounds like it has included the cross. But read the fine print, which states that "Jesus died to make you more than a conquerer." It isn't talking about sin. This is about Dominion![3]

What is Biblical Spiritual Warfare?

It might surprise those who have only been steeped in the error to learn what the church taught during the Protestant Reformation, now sadly dying off at a rapid pace, about what Scripture says about spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare teaching in the Bible is actually the exact opposite of what is being taught in the NAR/IHOP church world today. The Scriptures teach that man cannot perfect himself in the flesh, and the Bride of Christ cannot perfect herself on the earth, nor can she perfect the earth itself. In fact, spiritual warfare wars against this very mentality and heresy!

In the 1858 Gospel Pulpit sermon of J.C. Philpot titled simply “Spiritual Warfare”[4] one can read the old truth, what Scripture says about spiritual warfare. Below are some excerpts. The entire sermon is downloadable HERE.

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. (Gal. 5:16-17)

It is sad to a spiritual person to look around and see how that, through the legality of our nature, and through the veil of ignorance spread over our carnal mind, men are constantly seeking to make that perfect in the flesh, which they think deficient in the spirit. They feel how short they come in knowing, feeling, and enjoying what they would know, feel, and enjoy. And in order to obtain this blessedness, they have recourse to all sorts of expedients which are not only foolish, but altogether opposed to the spirit of the gospel. Now the issue of all these attempts to make that perfect by the flesh, which is begun in the spirit, is to lead men to fall into sin; for men, being unable to live nearer to God by attempts of legal obedience, actually fall into the other extremity.

The reason of this is, as the Apostle explains in the seventh chapter of the Romans, because the movements of sin are by the law; for the law comes to condemn and curse; but God never promised any strength in the law. The only strength he promised is that which he gives in and by the gospel.…

Now the Apostle tells them a more excellent way, that which the law was never meant to give,—to walk in the spirit—and what will be the blessed fruit? Ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh: because by walking in the spirit there will be such an influence and power given that you will not actually be able to fulfil the lust of the flesh; for there is no inclination then to do so. He goes on to open up the conflict and struggle which takes place between these two principles, one of which he calls the flesh, and the other the spirit, and he tells us that the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; and that these are contrary the one to the other, diametrically opposite, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would….

So, the spiritual battle is not to take over the world, the culture, the nations! The spiritual battle is in our flesh, which is constantly being tempted. Below, note how Philpot describes the actual events in the Garden of Eden. His biblical teaching runs completely counter to the heresies currently taught by the NAR/IHOP leaders:

By the flesh we are to understand that corrupt principle which we inherit from our fallen sire, Adam. God created him innocent, there was no sin in his nature. He did not possess holiness; for that is a new covenant gift produced by the Holy Ghost through the gospel; but he was a partaker of sinless innocence, it being impossible for God to create anything but what was pure. God was not bound to give him grace; for he needed not grace; but God could do no other as being pure, than create a being which was pure also; but he created him subject to sin. He knew from all eternity that he would sin. He had no hand in the matter. He did not tempt man to sin; for he tempted no man with sin; but he permitted Satan to do it, and allowed him to fall under that foul fiend. But this is a deep mystery, and therefore I will not enter more minutely into it.

We still feel the fall, we know that we are fallen creatures, for every movement of sin in our carnal mind tells man that he is fallen; sin works in him all the day long, and every movement of sin in his heart is a proof to him that he is a fallen sinner; so that you need not go further than yourself, you need look no higher, you need look no lower than your own heart to know that you are a fallen sinner before God. And not only so, but being a fallen sinner, your flesh is diseased to the very core; it is true of you as it was true of the church of God of old that the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is nothing but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores. This then is the flesh—all we were and have as inherited from our fallen ancestor—everything we have, every faculty of our mind, every power of our body, all that we are in this time and state and have derived from Adam is comprehended in that expression used here and elsewhere,—the flesh—but still so called because our bodies are composed for the most part of flesh, and therefore the Holy Spirit has used that expression to stamp the whole of the human body and soul in what man is as having a fallen nature, and inheriting sin and death from his father Adam.

…[A] child of God has not merely the flesh that is a wholly corrupt nature and whose every member contains in itself a proof of its corruption; but he has also another principle called here the spirit, and called by Peter the divine nature, and the new man by Paul. All these expressions refer to the same thing—that spirit which is born by the Spirit, and lodged in the heart of the sinner, and just as the flesh is the seat of everything base and evil, polluted and vile; so the spirit is the seat of everything gracious, spiritual, and holy, "In me, that is, in my flesh," says the Apostle, "dwelleth no good thing."

…[T]he Apostle represents the child of God as carrying in his bosom these two opposing principles; he views them as continually in movement one against the other, two opponents who are always fighting hand to hand, one desiring to spill the blood and see the death of the other. The flesh wars against the spirit because the spirit is against it; therefore the flesh is striving against the spirit; because it is always being checked by it, and it will not be checked; the more it is tied the more it raves against the spirit which binds it. Whereas the spirit is continually striving and contending against the inward movements of the flesh, against what are the lustings of the flesh, everything that is evil, the gratification of every sensual desire, and every other wickedness, for there is nothing too evil, too base, for this flesh always to be lusting after….

The spirit is continually prompting to everything good, to prayer, to reading of the Scriptures, to calling upon God's name, to believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, to hoping in his mercy, to loving him with a pure heart fervently, to watchfulness, prayerfulness, and patience in God, and to anything that is good. All this lies in the spirit, and the flesh lusteth against it….

Now there is a spirit that keeps lusting against the flesh and desiring everything contrary to the flesh, a sweet manifestation of the blood and love of Christ, a sense of God's presence, a tenderness of conscience, to walk in the straight and narrow way; and both these are opposite the one to the other; the spirit lusting toward God and the flesh toward carnal objects, these two are directly contrary the one to the other, the one loving everything that God loves, and the other loving everything that God abhors…. The flesh is always running against the spirit; but the spirit is always running against the flesh. These two can never be at peace; nor does God mean them to be so…

The spirit keeps the flesh from doing what it would, or it would break free entirely from all control, would cast away all religion, throw off all restraint; but the spirit will not permit it; therefore it puts a check upon it and holds it back, and will not suffer the flesh to rush forth into these tracks of evil, work out its desires, and speak and do as it wishes. So you will find that your flesh would work evil; but your spirit will not let you do it. When you would burst into a passion, and wicked words spring up into your heart, when you would do evil and infidelity arises in your mind, there is an internal principle that checks you: the flesh may say, "What use is prayer and reading the Scriptures? What good will that do for you? Be like other people; what do you want to be tied down to all this religion for? to be thus continually reading and praying, always going upon your knees before God?" But you say, "I cannot leave my room without bending my knees, and I must read God's word." Here is the flesh casting off everything that is good; and the spirit holding it under restraint; as the horse is held by the horseman, and held back by a powerful hand; so the spirit holds back the flesh.

Thus there is a continual struggle between the flesh and the spirit, the flesh suggesting evil courses and the spirit acting in the fear of God, and thus counteracting the motions of sin and for the most part getting the best of the day…. Looking then at one side of the picture it seems gloomy and dark; but turning the canvass then you see the evil you cannot do; so that you are kept in a straight though rough and rugged path, and the Lord will be on the side of the spirit. He will not let you be tempted above that you are able.

But now I pass on to our last point, which is to "walk in the spirit." There is a walking in the spirit, that is to walk in the light of the spirit, in the way of the spirit, in the midst of it, to be spiritually minded, which is life and peace. Now you may feel at times all the lust of the flesh, in the baser and more usual sense of the term; the movements of the mind, whether pride, or worldliness, anger, evil temper or general carnality, these are all the lust of the flesh from the early bud to the ripe crop. Now our desire in our right mind is not to fulfil the lust of the flesh. We cannot help feeling the lust; because it is not only not dead; but it thinks, moves and acts. You don't carry a dead weight of corruptions; but a principle that breathes, moves; acts, and works, and all towards evil; and you wish as much as lieth in your power not to fulfil what the flesh desires. You want to walk in a path where the flesh shall not have the power to seduce you into words and acts which are unbecoming of a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, never to fulfil the lust of the flesh by bringing forth those wretched fruits that the flesh is ever bringing forth. And you want to know how this is to be done.

The Apostle says—"Walk in the spirit" that is—live, move, think, act, dwell, walk in and by the spirit; but how? You cannot do it, God must work it in you, he must give you strength and power to walk, and act, and think, and dwell in the spirit, and then the flesh will become weakened and crippled, and unable to do the things it would….

Endnotes:
1. “Ron McGatlin, “2012 Reality Replacing Religion,” e-mailed newsletter, OpenHeaven.com Digest, December 01, 2011.
2. C. Peter Wagner, newsletter, “NAR – What are its beliefs?” November 21, 2011, including a doctrinal document issued from Global Spheres, Inc.Global Spheres Center: An Oasis for the Nations Glory of Zion International Ministries, Inc.: An Expression of One New Man, “The Belief System ...The Revelation That Advances the Above Kingdom Entities Forward and Constitutes the Foundations for our Future.” Posted here: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=iscjkybab&v=001BowwB-ubI_GiU7RaLho3RSyf939VH0_M70hU4kw6YxMblxRI_3MJrR9mVInTgz_g3lQ4FTaLUtLa386atph85JVHtGQhGkQdaj7W9YCvAOffboEsYeC_QJTy_Xix2HLU
3. The Elijah List, Dec. 2, 2011, advertisement, "Breakthrough 2012, San Francisco, CA, January 4-7, 2012, with Georgian and Winnie Banov, Heidi Baker, Kris Vallotton, Patricia King, and Lance Wallnau." http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=4xrw9udab&v=001WeBrwlP3VB0NXDSrP-2hFTusRB85DxcJzysmxvsarAmTKdqE087tgJJpqp_IeyjrrEsUiy7AUbr7fxOSPOJUM2QM_EOvJ516xziUJOeCGS3wxcpTxTKd8b8yzLnwL62846i2Ufh8iutIQ3deJkSsMKVTih6xGcwN449W20mG6kbCjTh7-H0Zg2GUnAsrRuRzGdNo63xsLc-axRxLrmuxyF_IzQbXWvPKhOFSKKwAVsb21_n5YZJcIg%3D%3D
4. J.C. Philpot, “Spiritual Warfare,” Preached at North Street Chapel, Stamford, on Thursday evening, October 13, 1858. Published in Gospel Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 14 (Old Paths Gospel Press, 406-466-2311), pp. 125-134. Also downloadable here: www.paradisepbc.org/Articles/Philpots%20Sermons/JCP145.doc

New Age and Latter Rain

2011-11-28T21:59:00.003-05:00

Two Complementary Eschatologies

"I call upon you to activate the capacities to save the world from self-destruction. I call upon you to undertake a mission comparable to the first disciples of Jesus. They were the first to carry the message of the reality of our potentials to the nations. You are to be the last to carry the message. They lived at the beginning of the change. You live at the 'end times,' when the old shall pass away and the new shall appear....

"You are to become natural Christs. You are to communicate to the world its potential to restore the Earth, free the people, and impregnate the universe with new life. You are to participate in the Instant of Co-operation, the Planetary Birth, the Second Coming.

"You are to bring on the shared contact with me. You are to ascend to the New Jerusalem. You are to overcome physical death. You are to be in touch with your universal brothers and sisters. You are the first sons and daughters of humanity to become the Sons and Daughters of God, as a new norm."
- GUESS who said this?**

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Ed. Note: The article below is Part IV of a 1995 6-part series called "The Laughing Phenomenon," by Ed Tarkowski.* It was originally published in The Christian Conscience magazine in the Herescope column. Tarkowski's article was a 6-part series that covered the history of the "laughing revival" at Toronto. The entire series provides a close scrutiny of the busy activities of John Wimber during this era after he had connected with the "Kansas City Prophets" movement (now IHOP and its many offshoots). This article is being run without any links, but for those who are our regular readers, you'll notice the remarkable parallels to current posts we have run the past several years.

__________

Evolutionary Models

By Ed Tarkowski

NEW BEGINNINGS:
New Age and Latter Rain
"Birthing" is becoming a common term in the Laughing movement. In Part II of this series, we discussed prophecies of a fresh new revelation of God's impregnation of the Church, followed by a period of gestation and the birth of "Isaac." In Part III, we pointed out the connection between "Isaac" and the Latter Rain's replacement of Jesus with the Church as the seed of the Abrahamic Covenant. As well as bringing the Covenant "blessings" to the nations through the Toronto Blessing, that seed's celebration of Tabernacles will result in the unity necessary to manifest the Sons of God. In turn, they will establish the Kingdom and cleanse the earth of evil (eliminating the Tribulation period) so Christ can return.

All of this is disturbing, to say the least. By the use of Replacement Theology, Latter Rain sees the Church as the "New" Israel inheriting all of God's promises to Abraham. Israel has no more part to play in the endtime scenario, except as it becomes part of the New Breed, the one New Man to be birthed through the Church: the Manifest Sons of God.

We have already discussed the upcoming unity in the Global Church, but now we must ask, is there another, deeper unity ahead, being sought by spirits not of God? After all, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the regions above (Eph. 6:10-13). Are the "non-church" principalities working in cahoots with the "churchy" ones? We could get a clue by comparing the vocabulary and goals of both. For instance, in documenting the start of the Toronto Blessing, Vineyard's John Wimber writes:

"Seventeen times [the Lord] spoke in the same context and said that this would be a 'SEASON OF NEW BEGINNINGS.' The Lord was saying, 'I'm going to start it all over again. I'm going to pour out my Spirit in your midst LIKE I DID IN THE BEGINNING.'...

"I had brought this MESSAGE OF NEW BEGINNINGS to our AVC National Board and Council meeting in November of 1993 at Palm Springs. Then the Lord confirmed this word in the hearts and minds of our national leadership. . ."(1)

And in New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard's book, The Revelation, her "Christ" also promised a season of New Beginnings:

"Those of you who hear these words are to carry on the commandment given to John two thousand years ago. You are not only to prophesy the end, the tribulations, and the New Jerusalem, you are to act it out. You are to discover the blueprint and become co-creators with God. You are to see the first fruits of the NEW BEGINNING."(2)

"Now is the time. More of the Book of the Gods shall be revealed to you, dearly beloved, for the end is coming and the NEW BEGINNING is dawning in your lifetime."(3)

THE EVOLUTIONARY MODEL:
Godhood Realization

Barbara Marx Hubbard's New Beginnings are based on the evolution of man into godhood, and the newly energized Latter Rain movement is bringing this evolutionary model into the Church. The only differences lie in the outworking of the concept. In the Latter Rain doctrine, man must first receive Christ and then mature to the point where he incarnates Him. In Hubbard's version, man is born a god, and must only come to a realization of the fact. This may seem to be a point of contention, but in the grand scheming of the Deceiver, it's merely an example of his principle that "the end justifies the means." The end is Eden revisited, and the adversary still has the same motive in mind: to get man to believe that "Ye shall be as gods."

In his new book, Weighed and Found Wanting. . . Putting the Toronto Blessing in Context, Bill Randles makes the point that this "revival" was started primarily to bring Christians into their fullness in Christ (godhood), and not necessarily for the conversion of sinners. According to Latter Rain teachers, attaining this fullness is not through accepting Christ alone, but by growing into a maturity that God will finally accept. Randles writes,

"A major tenet of the 'Latter Rain' teaching is the restoration concept. According to this erroneous view, down through the centuries, the church 'lost' different concepts and experiences in the Lord, like justification by faith, sanctification, divine healing, speaking in tongues, and apostolic ministry. But, gradually, God has restored these things.... But the work of restoration is not over yet, according to Latter Rain thinking. Davidic worship, teaching, ministry, evangelists, and prophets and even apostles in all of their authority are currently being restored. According to a commonly held misconception of Acts 3:21, Jesus can't come back even though He wants to because WE haven't fully 'restored all things.'

"Thus, the 'Latter Rain' Revival centered around the following themes, restoration of the fivefold ministry (Eph. 4), and especially apostles and prophets....

"If you buy the restoration concept, it inevitably sets up for the evolutionary church concept, a deluding, intoxicating idea that makes the current expression of the church feel that she is the ultimate center of God's purposes, over and above all other expressions of the church.

"Think about it. If restoration and Latter Rain is true, that means we are more anointed and equipped and more powerful than any other church in history.

"...The church is the family of God, which is in heaven and on earth at the same time. She is not, nor has ever had to 'progress in maturity.' She has always been 'complete in Christ' and yet on an individual basis, the members of the body have always been at various stages of personal maturity. If you hear a statement like, 'In the Book of Acts, we have the church in her infancy,' you are hearing a form of evolution.... According to Galatians, the Old Testament of Law was infancy and childhood. But, the New Testament faith is mature manhood. The true church has always been complete!....

"An interesting example of the evolutionary model of the church is a little book written in 1951 by George Warnock called The Feast of Tabernacles.... According to Warnock, the feasts of Israel described in Leviticus 23, are a pattern of progress of the church through time."(4)

It is a fact of Scripture that when a person receives Christ, he receives a share in the fullness of Christ which makes him complete, although always short of godhood (Colossians 2:9-10). Each member is vitally united to Christ by the Spirit through faith in Christ's finished work. But Latter Rain teachers say otherwise, calling for much more than just following the Holy Spirit. Theirs is a call to godhood realization, where God fully indwells the Christian and makes him the ongoing incarnation of Christ. It is this state of maturity which will bring about the manifestation of the Sons of God and set creation free from corruption.

Hubbard's teachings say the same things, although they're couched in different words. In the first 3 parts of this series, we've discussed the impregnation, gestation and birth of "Isaac." But what this process does to the Church is place it in the evolutionary model of the New Age. In a like manner, the Church's move through the Feasts of Atonement, Pentecost and into Tabernacles is an evolutionary process. Latter Rain teaches that Christ Jesus comes to the individual at Pentecost only to incorporate him into the unity of the Army of Sons formed in Tabernacles.

The evolutionary model was evident in the 1980s restoration teaching which lead up to this laughing "revival," i.e., the restoration of the apostles and prophets, their "new" revelations, the new wave of signs and wonders, power evangelism, individuals "progressing" into a maturity pleasing to God, men overcoming death in the physical realm, and finally, the Church conquering the world for Christ and reigning as Him on earth. Now the laughing phenomena connected with the Feast of Tabernacles has become the driving force behind the Church's move toward Christification. But the key to Latter Rain realizing its goals is the evolutionary birthing process itself. This is New Age philosophy, Christianized to make it palatable to the Church.

THE CHILD:
Key To The New Beginnings
John Wimber's revelation of the "season of new beginnings" was vitally connected to a word of new life he'd received:

"Last fall (1993),... [in] my spirit, I felt like Abraham might have felt when he was waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. The New Testament credits Abraham with not wavering in his faith. He had faith that God was going to do it, but I'm sure Abraham and Sarah had a few moments when they wondered how it was going to come together. (That's how Ishmael came about.) Anyway, I was looking at my age-59, going on 90....

"But I looked at myself, and I'm out of energy. In my spirit I was just murmuring 'Oh God, oh God.' And at that point (mid January) the Lord gave me a word. I heard myself say: Shall I have this pleasure in my old age? The very words that Sarah laughingly said to herself when she overheard the LORD say she was going to have a son from her 90-year-old womb by her 100-year-old husband. (Gen. 18:10). This was a word of life from the Lord, and it touched me deeply."(5)

Wimber felt like Abraham awaiting the fulfillment of God's promise through the birth of Sarah's child. But this also reflects Barbara Marx Hubbard's New Age revelations. In another of her books, a section entitled The Lineage of Founders of a New Order of the Future has one of her sources of the "New Beginning" also pointing to Abraham and Sarah:

"We were present when Abraham and Sara understood that their relationship with God was a partnership for the transformation of the world."(6)

I'd never read much of Hubbard before researching this article, but I was intrigued by her statements on birth as a new beginning, and dug a little deeper. Her work is overwhelmingly based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom she considers to be a "life-saver" because of his theory that the human race will one day reach the place of Christification. Look at a sample of Teilhard's writing:

"As the centuries go by it seems like a comprehensive plan is indeed being slowly carried out around us. A process is at work in the universe, an issue is at stake, which can best be compared to the process of gestation and birth; the birth of that spiritual reality which is formed by souls and by such material reality as their existence involves. Laboriously, through and thanks to the activity of mankind, the new earth is being formed and purified and is taking on definition and clarity."(7)

What is this "spiritual reality . . . formed by souls" through the "process of gestation and birth"? Is it the same as Judson Cornwall's "truth"? He'd told Pat Robertson that God is "now impregnating some of my mature, older ministers with truth. . . . to carry that truth to full gestation."(8)

In Hubbard's search for answers, she'd asked herself, "What in our age is comparable to the birth of Christ?"(9) Then, after coming out of a dreamlike state, she said she heard these inner words clearly:

"Our story is a birth. It is the birth of humankind as one body. What Christ and all great beings came to Earth to reveal is true. We are one body, born into this universe."(10)

But Hubbard says that being born as one humanity is not the end of the road for man. The Christ, she said, had revealed to her that

"This tiny band, this brave congregation, of souls attracted to the future of the world are my avant garde - the New Order of the Future.

"These are self-selected souls who have come to Earth to carry the miracle of resurrection into action as the transformation of humanity from Homo Sapiens to Homo Universalis."(11)

We've already described how Cornwall's "truth . . . carried to full gestation" and "raised up" after delivery, will become the corporate Christ of Christianity, the endtime Joel's Army.(12) Now the New Age prophetess Barbara Marx Hubbard gives us her version of the same objective, the endtime "Homo Universalis." Hubbard's Christ exhorted her:

"I call upon you to activate the capacities to save the world from self-destruction. I call upon you to undertake a mission comparable to the first disciples of Jesus. They were the first to carry the message of the reality of our potentials to the nations. You are to be the last to carry the message.
"They lived at the beginning of the change. You live at the "end times," when the old shall pass away and the new shall appear....

"You are to become natural Christs. You are to communicate to the world its potential to restore the Earth, free the people, and impregnate the universe with new life. You are to participate in the Instant of Co-operation, the Planetary Birth, the Second Coming.

"You are to bring on the shared contact with me. You are to ascend to the New Jerusalem. You are to overcome physical death. You are to be in touch with your universal brothers and sisters. You are the first sons and daughters of humanity to become the Sons and Daughters of God, as a new norm."(13)

As I read this Christ's words, I realized this was Manifest Sons doctrine in New Age terms, the same doctrine coming through the church's global "move of God." Or was it vice-versa? I couldn't tell. The "avant-garde" of the New Age Christ was no different than the Manifest Sons of God of the Latter Rain movement. The joy, the fire, the glory, the transformation to Christ incarnate, the overcoming of death, taking the message to the nations of the world "to bring on the shared contact" with "the Christ;" Hubbard was preaching the Manifest Sons doctrine! Or was Latter Rain based on New Age doctrines like Hubbard's? The terminology and processes were different, but the outcomes were the same:

Latter Rain's global move of God teaches:

"The completion of the incarnation of God in the world must be in His church. . . Jesus Christ is the firstfruits, but without the ongoing harvest, the incarnation will never be complete."(14)

The goal of the Latter Rain appears to be the the bringing about of a global community that is God's. This seems rather apparent, since, under this doctrine, God will cleanse the earth of all that refuse to follow His ways. That this is the goal of the the New Age is shown in Hubbard's words:

"Who is this child? This child is the Christ-child within who has emerged victorious, fully born, incarnated as every member of the human race who evolves."(15)

Other likenesses between the new "global move of God" and Hubbard's revelation quickly came to light:

A. THE CHILD OF JOY AND LAUGHTER

LATTER RAIN GLOBAL MOVE OF GOD: "Prophetically, the child Isaac, which means 'Laughter,' is being released in nation after nation as the new wine is being passed."(16)
HUBBARD: "It was a planetary smile - like the smile of a new born baby. . . Now for the first time, we were seeing it together. Ecstatic joy rippled through the planetary body - and through me as one of its billions of members."(17)

If one equates "Laughter" being released in nation after nation with the New Age planetary body being filled with ecstatic joy, then this aspect of both moves are the same.

B. JOY AS A POWERFUL FORCE

LATTER RAIN GLOBAL MOVE OF GOD: "[God said,] The Day of Atonement is over and Tabernacles is coming, and I'm getting ready to laugh and I'm getting ready to roar, and I tell you this whole world is going to feel the shaking of that laughter and the power of that roar."(18)
HUBBARD: "An uncontrollable joy will ripple through the thinking layer of Earth. The co-creative systems, which are lying psychologically dormant in humanity, will be activated. From within, all sensitive persons will feel the joy of the force, flooding their systems with love and attraction."(19)
HUBBARD: "Joy is essential right now. Lightness of heart will help you overcome the heaviness of life during the tribulations to come."(20)

Ecstatic and uncontrollable joy - An irresistable force flooding people's systems - Billions of members - Was this Toronto and the global laughing phenomena based on Latter Rain? Or was it Hubbard and the New Age Christ? It was obvious; it was both - it was the same.

C. FIRE

The experience of heat and fire to the point of even taking off some clothing is common in the Laughing move of God:

LATTER RAIN GLOBAL MOVE OF GOD: Reported by an observer of three of the four nights at the Seattle "Fire and Reign" conference (February 14-17, 1995): "They were 'midwifing', and 'birthing the baby' there. The most incredible scenario I have ever witnessed. . . . Reports I've heard from other Fire conferences lead me to believe they are all going that far once they get the 'fire' started. Wes [Campbell] had the people divide into groups the second and third nights. He called the groups 'nests.' They were to pray and wait for the fire to 'spark' in someone, and when they saw the spark, they were to 'fan' it into life. They blew on people, fanned them, in the most extraordinary gestures, and repetitive (as in shamanistic) ritualistic, ways. It was completely bizarre. Others were in states of 'labor,' I think."(21)

Feeling the fire was part of Rodney Howard-Browne's experience of God that empowered him for this "move of God." And his brother experienced this heat for six hours during one service while being unable to move, pinned to the floor. But so has Barbara Marx Hubbard:

HUBBARD: "The purpose of our new powers is to give birth to universal life.... Deep empathy arose between me and the audience. I was not simply telling about the future. We were experiencing ourselves as universal beings at the next stage of evolution, now. These evenings had a profound effect on my biological system.... After each performance, I would notice a strange phenomenon. My body heated up. I was filled with inner radiation.... These affirmations were evolving now."(22)

D. WATER

Notice in these quotes the description of an internal source of "living water" that rejuvenates and renews and brings life to the nations:

LATTER RAIN GLOBAL MOVE OF GOD: "Then one more thing . . . [ISRAEL] did was this. They... were also recognizing that God was the source of supernatural water. They also went further to call out on God that they might drink of this living water, and that finally, by drinking of the living water, they might become rivers of life to the nations."(23)
HUBBARD: "The 'living fountains of water,' the source of ever-evolving life in each of you, is waiting to be turned on. It is the mechanism for rejuvenation and renewal."(24)

E. "IT"

In both moves, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as an impersonal force called 'IT", a dead give-away that the Spirit of God is not in operation:

LATTER RAIN GLOBAL MOVE OF GOD: "There IT is! Take IT! Take IT! Take IT!" The use of the word "IT" when referring to the Holy Spirit is common in the laughing phenomena meetings.(25)
HUBBARD: "Then I heard the inner words, which seemed to flow from the heart of the cosmos directly into my heart: 'Thank you, Barbara.' I felt ecstasy, joy, beatitude. The pain that I had felt since my mother's death healed in that instant. Instead I felt warmth, mother's love, yet at a far different scale. There is a relationship between me and IT. I am not alone. I am not abandoned, I am part of this cosmos. My desire is its expression. Its expression is my desire. I and It are connected! ...The aching void was, at least in that moment, filled. This was the 'good news' that my restless mind had so desperately sought."(26)

THE LATTER RAIN AND THE NEW AGE
PHILOSOPHY: A Comparison

Beginning this year [1995], the dual agendas will begin to be implemented, so the Church must prepare itself in order to warn others who are taking their stand for our Lord Jesus Christ. Below are the distinctive doctrines of the Latter Rain (see fuller doctrine in Part II), each followed by excerpts from Barbara Marx Hubbard's book, The Revelation: Our Crisis Is A Birth. Familiarize yourself with this doctrine so you can recognize it and share it with others. The New Age and Latter Rain scenarios will soon be meshing, as the apostate Church continues on its way to destruction.

Remember that the terminology of the teachings may differ, but the end result is the same. For example, Latter Rain calls the incarnated person a Manifest Son of God, while the New Age says he is Christed, the Universal Human, or Homo Universalis.

The same idea is true regarding "immortality." In the Latter Rain, there is a "fresh" receiving of the "Holy Spirit" and then maturing into Christ until one becomes immortal. But in the New Age, the seed of immortality is said to be already present at birth and must only be realized. These are two different means to immortality, but the adversary's desired result is the same: "godhood." The end, therefore, justifies the means. The devil has always changed the names and ways of his deceptions, but the goals and purposes he set for himself in the Garden continue.

A. REPLACEMENT: Latter Rain teaches that the Church replaces Israel. In Latter Rain, it is the Church that inherits the blessings of Abraham and, instead of Christ, takes that blessing to the nations. But Hubbard's Christ also replaces Israel with another body of people as heirs of God apart from Christ:

HUBBARD'S CHRIST - "It is not as biological Jews, nor as biological Christians, that you will be selected."(27)
HUBBARD'S CHRIST - "Who do you suppose those 'children of Israel' are, dearly beloved? They are you who love God above all else, your neighbor as yourself, and yourself as me. You are sealed in your foreheads. . . . "O Israel, awaken to the reality of your potential to be heirs of God!"(28)

B. FORMER, LATTER RAINS: Latter Rain teaches that the New Testament Pentecost was the "former rain," leaving the "latter rain," the Feast of Tabernacles, yet to come. As in the Latter Rain there is a joining of individuals into a corporate body of great rejoicing:

HUBBARD - "There shall be a great rejoicing among Jews and Gentiles as we approach the Quantum Transformation.... They will join as individuals [as at Pentecost] who are attracted to the potential of humanity for universal life as heirs of God [as at Tabernacles]."(29)

C. TABERNACLES: The celebration of this feast fulfills these phases:

unity,
the "latter rain" revival,
harvest of joy and gladness,
the invisible and spiritual coming of Christ to indwell His corporate Body (Joel's Army),
defeat of the Church's adversaries,
establishment of the Kingdom.

HUBBARD "...A time will come when the elect from all nations will be gathered together and consciously coordinated so the perfect alignment of aspiration occurs.... This unity of the elect is the key to the transformation from Adam to Christ, from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis, from creature to co-creator, from self-centered to whole centered beings."(30)

As in Latter Rain, there is a gathering together that unites everyone into one corporate body. In Latter Rain, Christ is the Pattern Son, and Hubbard's Christ is a model. The "millions of members" spoken of below by Hubbard is complimentary to the Latter Rain revival, which leads to the incarnation of Christ in humanity. And, as does Latter rain, Hubbard's philosophy based on a Cosmic Christ also says now is the time for the harvesting of the earth.

HUBBARD - "During the transition, millions of members of the body awaken to their power to be natural Christs, full humans in the model of the first person to manifest the next stage in the development of humanity...."(31)
HUBBARD'S CHRIST - "Now, this has been tried by my disciples for two thousand years, and it has not worked - yet. Why? Because it was not yet the fullness of time. The idea was not wrong; it was premature. The vines of the Earth were not ripe to be harvested. Now they are."(32)
HUBBARD - "All is silent to see if a second miracle can occur comparable to the birth of Christ. That miracle is the gentle second coming of Christ through the rapid evolution of enough humans linked up by the planetary nervous system, so that the social body will flood with empathy, healings will abound, and the world will smile with joy. The people will know they are whole, they are good, they are capable, they are loved, they are needed."(33)

We have shown the similarities of the birthing process in both the New Age and Latter Rain movements, leading to the birth of a corporate body that will transform the earth.

HUBBARD - "The power of the self-centered human has become a universal aberration, a dragon that can destroy the natural Christ and prevent the birth of the future human.... The dragon is the misuse of the powers of the intellect and individuality at the conclusion of the phase of self-centeredness from which we are soon to emerge. The dragon is the instrument of evil - Satan - God's selection process, which will weed out the self-centered from the God-centered. It is up to us how long the dragon of selfish power is permitted to prevail. In the end it will surely be defeated, for God's will shall be done on Earth as it is in Heaven [the Kingdom]."(34)

This is an interesting quote because the word from Toronto about a coming Civil War in the Church attributes those opposing the move to relying on their "intellect and individuality." These are the "grays." It is through this Civil War that the grays will be eliminated and the Blues selected as the ones to establish the Kingdom after this War. There is little or no difference between this and what Hubbard's Christ stated in the last quote.

D. RESTORATION: The restoration of the offices of Apostles and Prophets. These would bring about the perfection of the saints. Both movements are prophesying a birth on a global basis, a joining together being brought about by the prophets of both moves.

HUBBARD - "All of you who are now awakening to your own evolution are to gather. Find one another. Join spiritually... You will be guided from within as to the design of the Planetary Birth and your roles in it. From every race, nation and religion you will prophesy that the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis is now occurring. Your prophecy will call people to experience in your life time the Planetary Birth."(35)

E. REVELATIONS: The new, progressive or evolutionary revelations of the Latter Rain Apostles and Prophets.

HUBBARD - "The text of the New Order of the Future is the Story of Creation. The first chapter is revealed in the religions of the world, especially the Judeo-Christian which foresaw the future most clearly. Its vision as stated by Paul is true. Behold I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed.' Revelation shall be unfolded in evolution through the marriage of faith and knowledge in each of you."(36)

"The text" referred to here is Hubbard's book, The Revelation, which is the second part of a work entitled, The Book Co-Creation. It in itself is about 350 pages of new revelations from a spirit who says he is Christ, revelations being given to humanity through the New Age prophets. Faith and knowledge undergird both moves, but it is a faith and revelatory knowledge that denies the truth of Scripture.

F. IMMORTALITY: Latter Rain teaches death is overcome by the Manifest Sons, who attain immortality by incarnating Christ before His return. It is important when considering this Hubbard quote to remember the End-Justifies-The-Means principle we spoke of earlier.

HUBBARD - "The memory of immortality is in every cell in your body. It dates back to the first self-replicating cell that divided to reproduce and did not die. The memory of immortality was activated in the creature/human and will be acted upon by the co-creative, Christlike human in the fullness of time."(37)

G. UNIFICATION: Church unity on a global basis is absolutely essential to Latter Rain doctrine, because Christ cannot incarnate in a divided body. It is also essential Hubbard's move toward world unity. See earlier quotes.

H. ESCHATOLOGY: The changing of the physical body, which brings immortality to the adherents of both Latter Rain and the New Age philosophy, is key to both movements. Incarnation of Christ in the person is said to bring about the revelation of the corporate Christ. As in Latter Rain, a kingdom is established which is ruled over by a humanity which has reached its purpose: godhood.
In Latter Rain doctrine,

Jesus cannot return until after He incarnates in the Church,
the Church replaces the evil heavenly powers,
the earth is made a footstool for His feet. Latter Rain discounts the classic understanding of the Second Coming and its events.

HUBBARD'S CHRIST - "The 'church' is the congregation of believers in their power to be me. I cannot consummate my union with you until you become like me. I cannot join my body to your body until your body becomes comparable to mine."(38)
2) HUBBARD - "The devil, Satan, will be overcome.... He will be released from his anger and reunited to God.... The consciousness defect of the illusion of separation will be corrected once and for all. You will never go back again."(39)
3) HUBBARD'S CHRIST - "If the positive scenario comes true, if those sealed with the seal of the living God do their work in time, I shall be enabled to come not to you, but with and through you to empower the people of the world to rule themselves. My message is: you are King of Kings, you are Lord of Lords. I have no desire to return to earth in the role of ruler over you. That is a failure. That is treating you as a regressive child."(40)

I. RELIGIOSITY: The religious "Old Generation" will either be destroyed by the Manifest Sons or "converted" by the prophets.

HUBBARD - "Dearly beloved of the existing churches, do not reject the saviors of the world, the natural Christs who are springing up among you, as well as among peoples who, though they have not been institutionalized as Christians, yet hold God consciousness in their attention at all times."(41)
HUBBARD - "First you may have to decide to save the child by destroying those elements which are unhealthy. If you are a surgeon delivering a child whose umbilical cord is wrapped around his neck, you must operate quickly, or the child will be strangled by the cord that connects him to the past. The operation to save humanity is also painful. You do not want to kill bodies but to change minds, yet the 'good' will also suffer as you eliminate self-centeredness that would destroy the whole body."(42)

THE PLANETARY PENTECOST

We've already explained the evolutionary model above, but would add this discussion on George Warnock's The Feast of Tabernacles from Bill Randles:

"This book is a virtual primer of Latter Rain, Manifested Sons of God teaching, . . . a pattern for the progress of the church through time. Starting at Passover, which is Calvary, the church has been passing through the different feasts over the years, to Pentecost. Warnock writes that we, the church, still have got to go through the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Trumpets, and come into the Feast of Tabernacles, which to him represents God's consummate purposes for us, the Last Days Church. When we come into Tabernacles, which was a tremendous time of celebration for Israel, God will finally dwell within His people."(43)

So according to Warnock, God's ultimate indwelling of His people in the midst of Celebration is His "consummate purpose for us"; the corporate Child of the Latter Rain will be born. This global birth will be possible by the Latter Rain's seed of Abraham taking the Holy Spirit to the nations which destroys seprateness and ushers all nations into the Kingdom of God. Once established, Christ will return to an established kingdom. But as it is with Latter Rain, so it is with the New Age philosophy. Barbara Marx Hubbard's Christ calls this shared contact the Instant of Co-operation, or the Planetary Pentecost:

"The Instant of Co-operation begins, empathy floods the feelings of the whole body of Earth, separateness is overcome, and I appear to all of you at once. I appear to you from within as a voice, and as a vision of yourself as an evolving being. I appear to you from beyond as the light being that I now am. Your electronic media will pulse with light - the same light your mystics see.

"The promise I made is of a personal future in a transformed body. This means that you will also have what I have now. I am real. I am tangible. I am alive. I can speak to each of you through your inner ear if you listen. I can appear to each of you through your inner eye if you look.

"At the moment of cosmic contact, I will appear to you both through inner experience and through external communication on your mass media - the nervous system of the world.

"You will all feel, hear and see my presence at one instant in time, each in your own way.

"...The planetary celebration will begin for the birth of humankind in the universe, a blessed Cosmic Child eagerly awaited by the evolved beings through the universe without end. Hallelujah. Amen."(44)

Though the New Age was virtually unheard of when Warnock published his book in 1951, this evolutionary model is now the norm among the New Age futurists who believe, along with the Latter Rain and its rejoicing, celebrating followers, that the human race as a whole is birthing the next stage of man's evolution: Godhood.

The Truth:
Be aware of the depth inherent in the words of the Church's true Savior and Lord, the true Shepherd, Who emphatically warned:

"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before"
(Matthew 24:23-25).

Endnotes:
(1) John Wimber, "Seasons of New Beginnings," File NEWBEG.TXT, 23879 Bytes, Compuserve, CIN-4, Lib 2. Originally published in the May/June 1994 edition of Vineyard Reflections newsletter published by Association of Vineyard Churches. John Wimber, Publisher; Bill Henderson, editor.
(2) Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Book of Co-Creation: The Revelation - Our Crisis Is A Birth, "The Christ" comments on Rev. 10:8-11 (Novato, CA: Nataraj Publishing, 1993), p. 158.
(3) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 10:1-4, p. 150.
(4) Pastor Bill Randles, Weighed and Found Wanting . . . Putting the Toronto Blessing in Context, 1995, pp. 57-59.
(5) Wimber.
(6) Barbara Marx Hubbard, Teachings From The Inner Christ for Founders of a New World Order of the Future (A Work In Progress) - A Complement to The Book of Co-Creation, "The Lineage of Founders of a New Order of the Future" (Greenbrae, CA: Foundation for Conscious Evolution, 1994), p. v.
(7) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, (London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., and NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Harper Torch Books, 1965), p. 93.
(8) Pat Robertson interview with Judson Cornwall, 700 Club, Family Channel, June 9, 1994.
(9) Hubbard, The Revelation, "Planetary Birth Experience," p. 37.
(10) Ibid., p. 39.
(11) Ibid., Prologue, "The Christ" comments, pp. 13-14.
(12) See Part II, prophecy segment on the birth of the corporate child.
(13) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 22:6, p. 290-291.
(14) Randles, p. 65 citing Earl Paulk commenting on the incarnation on Morris Cerullo Video, 1991, "Manifested Sons Of God."
(15) Hubbard, The Revelation, "The Christ" comments on Rev. 21:4, p. 253.
(16) Master Potter, Prophetic Insights For The '90's: Quarterly Perspectives from Jill Austin, "The Great Intruder" Passion & Fire Conferences, Summer '94.
(17) Hubbard, The Revelation, describing what she saw while in a dreamlike state, p. 39.
(18) Cassette tape of Alan Vincent service, 1994. Location unknown.
(19) Hubbard, The Revelation, "The Christ" revealing the aspects of the soon-coming Planetary Birth, p. 234-235.
(20) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 7:9-17, p. 141.
(21) Nancy Flint, personal eyewitness testimony, Seattle Fire & Reign Conference, Seattle, WA, February 14-17, 1995.
(22) Hubbard, The Revelation, Hubbard comments on "The Theater For the Future," pp. 53-54.
(23) Vincent.
(24) Hubbard, The Revelation, "The Christ" comments on Rev. 7:9-17, p. 141.
(25) Quote from Rodney Howard-Browne, often heard during his meetings.
(26) Hubbard, The Revelation, Hubbard comments on "The Inner Voice Awakens," pp. 31-32.
(27) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 7:1-4, p. 139.
(28) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on 1 Cor. 15:45, p. 164-165.
(29) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 3:9, p. 104.
(30) Ibid., Hubbard comments on Rev. 4:6, p. 117-118.
(31) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 20:4-5, p. 237-239.
(32) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 20:1-3, p. 231.
(33) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on 1 Cor. 15:45, p. 165.
(34) Ibid., Hubbard comments on Rev. 12:3-4, p. 174.
(35) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 10:8-11, p. 159.
(36) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on A New Order of the Future, p. 64.
(37) Ibid., Hubbard comments on Rev. 4:8, p. 118-119.
(38) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 19:6-8, p. 218.
(39) Ibid., Hubbard comments on Rev. 20:1-3, pp. 235-236.
(40) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 19:14-16, p. 226-227.
(41) Ibid., "The Christ" comments on Rev. 3:13, p. 106.
(42) Ibid., Hubbard comments on Rev. 8:7-9; 9:1-4, p. 145-146.
(43) Randles, pp. 58-59.
(44) Hubbard, The Revelation, "The Christ" comments on Rev. 20:1-3, pp. 236-237.

*Ed Tarkowski, "THE LAUGHING PHENOMENA: Its History and Possible Effects on the Church: Part 4: Laughing: Deeper Realities," The Christian Conscience, May 1995. Some minor formatting and textual changes were made for the purpose of blog posting. The article is also published online at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh4.html. For the other articles in this series by Ed Tarkowski, see http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh1.html, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh2.html, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh3.html, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh5.html, and http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh6.html. Ed Tarkowski has many articles published online that give very important history on the background, history and theology of what is now called the New Apostolic Reformation. Should the Lord permit, we will endeavor to scan in some of the original articles that ran in The Christian Conscience magazine, with sidebars and illustrations, and post them online at the Discernment Ministries website in the future. For more information about Barbara Marx Hubbard, see Warren B. Smith's book False Christ Coming at http://www.mountainstreampress.org/books/.

**ANSWER: Barbara Marx Hubbard's "Christ", The Book of Co-Creation, pp. 290-291. Did you think it was one of the New Apostolic Reformation prophecies? Notice the similarities?!

The "Selection Process"

2011-11-26T12:59:00.004-05:00

New Age Eschatology

What is Oneness?
Oneness is more than a beautiful word.

Oneness is the energy of love that lies within and connects all of life, enabling us to recognize ourselves in everything. The universe is one being and we are all its cells, all essential and responsible for the well-being of the whole.

Mystics of all traditions have experienced and spoken of the concept of Oneness throughout the ages.

And, now, this idea of oneness is being reinforced by leading-edge science. Scientists now tell us that we are connected in remarkable ways, from the genes we inherit to the air we breathe to the consciousness we share. The worldview in which we are competing for survival is giving way to one in which we are collaborating to thrive....

When we see and celebrate our oneness with all of life, we are more likely to serve all of life. From this place, it becomes very difficult to harm another when you recognize that you are deeply connected with that “other.”

Whether it’s another person, an animal or a tree in a forest, when you recognize that we truly are ALL ONE, you act with love and compassion towards all your relations.

—2nd Annual Global Oneness Day, featuring Barbara Marx Hubbard & Neale Donald Walsch*

Humanity is facing unprecedented, evolutionary changes. It is amazing—out of the famous Mayan prophecy has come the indication that we are facing the end of this world as we know it and the beginning of the new world by 2012. This date corresponds to environmental and social predictions of breakdowns and breakthroughs now widely known. Let’s assume there is some validity in these prophecies. What vision of the future, of the new world, might we see so that we can place our attention upon this vision as a strange attractor to carry us through this critical transition?

The Evolution of Consciousness
We notice that crisis precede transformation. Problems are evolutionary drivers. Intensifying pressure leads either to devolution and extinction or evolution and transformation. This is one reason that 2012 might be earthshaking and shocking to some. Furthermore, we see that evolution creates radical newness. Life out of prelife, human life out of animal life. Is it possible that from our species, a new human and a new humanity are now emerging? We can see the sequence from Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthal, Homo sapiens, to Homo sapiens sapiens. Why should it stop with us? Is it possible that a new species has been gestating in the womb of self-consciousness through the great avatars, mystics, and visionaries for thousands of years, and that now, due the crisis, this new human is being born in millions of us? It has been predicted as Homo progressivus (Teilhard de Chardin), Gnostic Human (Sri Aurobindo), Homo sapiens, sapiens, sapiens (Peter Russell), Homo noeticus (John White), Homo universalist (my own favourite name). It is possible that the basic shift point in this prophecy is the emergence of the “universal human,” by whatever name it is called, as a “new norm.” Perhaps we will reach critical mass for this human by 2012.

—Barbara Marx Hubbard, "A Vision for Humanity."**

Barbara Marx Hubbard:
Her New Age Christ’s Selection Process

By Warren B. Smith***

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.
—John 16:2

SELF-described “futurist” and “conscious evolutionist” Barbara Marx Hubbard writes that in 1966 she heard an “inner voice” that came in response to a question she had asked aloud and directed to God—“What is our story? What in our age is comparable to the birth of Christ?” After asking the question she said she fell into a dreamlike state and was given an intense vision of the future.[1]

In the vision, Hubbard saw the earth from a distance. She was made to understand that the earth was a living body and that she was a cell in its body. Feeling her “ oneness” with the earth, she experienced its pain and confusion. When her vision abruptly fast-forwarded into the future, she could see the earth and its people were now surrounded by a radiant light. She watched as the whole planet was “aligned” in “a magnetic field of love” and lifted up by the brilliant light. Widespread healings took place as individuals experienced the merging of their own “inner light” with the bright light that was surrounding them. A tremendous “ force” emanating from the light sent powerful currents of joyful energy “rippling” through the body of humanity. The world celebrated as all the earth was “born again.” The pain and confusion were gone. Love had prevailed. The “inner voice” told her to spread the message of the vision. It said:

Our story is a birth. It is the birth of humankind as one body. What Christ and all great beings came to Earth to reveal is true. We are one body, born into this universe. GO TELL THE STORY OF OUR BIRTH. . . Barbara![2]

In 1977 Hubbard began to hear this “inner voice” regularly. At one point she was told:

Have utter faith in my design. Achieve deep peace. Be prepared for a great force to enter your life to do this work. It cannot enter till you have achieved deep peace. Your reward for peace, which can only be achieved by faith, is contact with the great force and the other forces waiting in the wings.[3]

On Christmas Day in 1979, she had a revelation that the presence in her 1966 vision had been “Christ.”[4] Then in February of 1980, at an Episcopalian monastery in Santa Barbara, California, she describes how in the midst of “an electrifying presence of light” her higher self “voice” transformed into the “Christ voice.”[5] Over the coming months the “Christ voice” gave her more information and insight about the vision she had in 1966 and more first-hand detail about what will one day be taking place in the world. Hubbard understood that it was her mission to continue telling the story of humanity’s “birth.”

Since 1966, Hubbard has fulfilled her commission from “Christ” to tell his New Age/New Gospel story. From NASA to the former USSR to the United Nations, she has spoken to thousands of people and hundreds of groups and organizations about the “planetary birth experience” she had been shown in her vision. In the process, she has become a respected “world citizen,” known and loved by many for her insights about “God” and “Christ” and the future of humanity.

Hubbard is a co-founding board member of the World Future Society.6 In 1976 she seriously contemplated a run for the U.S. presidency.[7] In 1984, her name was placed in nomination for Vice-President at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.[8] Her speech, based on her “ Campaign for a Positive Future,” was carried live on C-Span.[9] Today she is on a first name basis with many world leaders and proudly describes herself as part of the “New Order of the Future.”[10] At least three of her books were funded by her benefactor, the late Laurance S. Rockefeller, through his Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit. She thanks Rockefeller in her books for his generous support over the years. And she specifically thanks him for his “intuition about the ‘Christ of the 21st Century.’”[11]

THE ALTERNATIVE TO ARMAGEDDON

THROUGH the years Hubbard has received voluminous information from her “Christ.” In her 1993 book, The Revelation: Our Crisis Is a Birth (later renamed The Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium), Hubbard and “Christ” “rewrite” the Bible’s Book of Revelation. In The Revelation, Hubbard’s “Christ” provides specific instructions on how a united humanity, purposefully partnering with God, can literally re-create the future. This “Christ” teaches that the “violent” Armageddon script described in the Bible does not have to happen, that it is only a “possible” future, emphasizing that a more “positive” future can and will manifest when humanity—without exception—openly declares its “ oneness” with him and all creation. This positive scenario and the means to attaining it is called “the alternative to Armageddon.”[12]

Hubbard’s “Christ” describes how planet earth is at an evolutionary crossroads. He states that the world is about to make an evolutionary leap that will take all creation to a new level. Those who awaken to their own divinity, by aligning themselves as one with God and one with each other, will evolve. Those who continue to believe in “ fear” and “ separation,” rather than in “love” and “ oneness,” will not evolve. Hubbard’s “Christ” claims that with his help most of mankind will choose to evolve, calling this evolutionary leap “the Planetary Birth Experience.”[13] He refers to it as the coming time of “ Planetary Pentecost.”[14] The “birth experience” is a shared event in the future, an “ Instant of Co-operation,”[15] when everyone on the planet will be mysteriously changed in “the twinkling of an eye,” as humanity is collectively born again into a new creation. Those who evolve will actually become a new species as Homo sapiens is collectively transformed into Homo universalis, or the “ Universal Humanity.”[16] The “ Universal Humanity” will live together as a community of “natural Christs” in the “New Heaven” on the “ New Earth” that is the “ New Jerusalem.”[17]

THE “SELECTION PROCESS”

BUT Hubbard’s “Christ,” while describing the “birth experience” and professing his love for all mankind, nevertheless warns that there will be no place in the “ New Jerusalem” for those who refuse to see themselves and others as a part of God. He describes, therefore, the necessity of a “ selection process” that will select out resistant individuals who “choose” not to evolve. This “ selection process” is a “purification” that will be accomplished through “the shock of a fire.”[18]

“Christ” states that those who see themselves as “separate” and not “divine” hinder humanity’s ability to spiritually evolve. Those who deny their own “divinity” are like “cancer cells” in the body of God.[19] “Christ” warns that a healthy body must have no cancer cells. Cancer cells must be healed or completely removed from the body. He describes the means of removal as the “ selection process.” The “selection process” results in the deaths of those who refuse to see themselves as a part of God.

After the “ selection process,” the spirit bodies of the departed individuals will continue to be “purified” in the spirit realm. Hubbard’s “Christ” emphasizes that they will not be given another physical body and they will not be able to rejoin humanity until they rid themselves of all “ self-centeredness.” He defines “ self-centeredness” as “the illusion” that one is “separate” from God. The self-centered temptation to see oneself as “separate,” and not as a part of God, is “ evil” and must be “overcome.” He also refers to self-centeredness, or this illusion of separateness, as “ Satan.”

In this future described by Hubbard’s “Christ,” anyone who refuses to see themselves and others as “God” and “Christ” will be removed by the “ selection process.” Those professing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour would be subject to this process, as would traditional Jews, Muslims, and all others who refuse to see themselves as a part of God.

THE GLOBAL RENAISSANCE ALLIANCE/PEACE ALLIANCE

BARBARA Marx Hubbard, politically well-connected and extremely influential, is a major figure in the emerging field of New Age/New Gospel/New Spirituality politics. Her “ Campaign for a Positive Future” is still going strong. And her formal involvement with Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch, and other New Age/New Gospel leaders in The Global Renaissance Alliance represents a new kind of spiritual activism that is rapidly developing into a social and political movement. In 2005, The Global Renaissance Alliance transitioned into The Peace Alliance. Hubbard’s continued political interests are revealed in an article she wrote in a 2000 book titled Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century. In the article, a woman very close to her own description becomes President of the United States after a successful campaign for a “positive future.” Her character’s campaign embraces the slogan “Resolve to Evolve—The Only Solution is Our Evolution.” This president is unique in that she is the lead person in a first time ever team presidency.[20]

Hubbard, through her writings and lifelong spiritual and political lobbying, continues to implement the teachings and principles she received from her “Christ.” She is presently dedicated to the process of incorporating these New Age/New Gospel teachings into her own local community of Santa Barbara, California. With high hopes that her Santa Barbara “seed group”[21] will become a working model for other communities around the world, Hubbard will no doubt be looking for opportunities to showcase her project.

The fact that Oprah Winfrey has a home in the Santa Barbara area should definitely increase Hubbard’s chances of getting some exposure. In a New Age world that says “there are no coincidences,” it is interesting to note that Marianne Williamson, Oprah Winfrey, and Barbara Marx Hubbard all have houses just minutes from each other in the Santa Barbara area. If Oprah does for Hubbard what she did for Williamson, we will all be hearing a lot more about Barbara Marx Hubbard, her Santa Barbara “seed group,” and the New Age Gospel plans her “Christ” has for this world.

Endnotes:
1. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium (Novato, CA: Nataraj Publishing, 1995), pp. 40–43; Hubbard, The Hunger of Eve: One Woman’s Odyssey Toward the Future (Eastsound, WA: Island Pacific NW, 1989),
pp. 66–68
2. Hubbard, The Revelation, op. cit., p. 42.
3. Ibid., p. 55.
4. Ibid., p. 59.
5. Ibid., p. 64.
6. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1998), p. 279.
7. Hubbard, The Hunger of Eve, op. cit., p. 150.
8. Ibid., p. 196.
9. Hubbard, Conscious Evolution, op. cit., p. 116.
10. Hubbard, The Revelation, op. cit., pp. 67–69.
11. Ibid., p. 350.
12. Ibid., pp. 264–265.
13. Ibid., p. 298.
14. Ibid., p. 157.
15. Ibid., pp. 243–245.
16. Ibid., pp. 44 and 78–79.
17. Ibid., p. 258.
18. Ibid., pp. 240 and 267.
19. Ibid., p. 255.
20. Marianne Williamson, ed., Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century (U.S.A.: Rodale, Inc., 2000), pp. 381–391.
21. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2001), pp. 118–121.

*See: http://globalonenesssummit.com/feature/Neale-Donald-Walsch, sponsored by The Shift Network in partnership with Humanity's Team, including New Age leadersw Neale Donald Walsch and Barbara Marx Hubbard as speakers.

**Barbara Marx Hubbard, "A Vision for Humanity," published along with a notification of "Barbara Marx Hubbard Joins Faculty of 2012, Tipping Point Prophets Conference, Vancouver," at http://www.greatmystery.org/nl/vancouver2012barbara.html and www.greatmystery.org/events/vancouver2012.html. Italics in the terms was added. To catch the significance of this New Age reference to the year 2012, see the following series of posts on Herescope: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-age-date-setting.html and http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/06/doomsday-datesetters-2012.html and http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/09/militant-prayer.html

*** This article is a chapter in a book by Warren Smith. It is being posted as part of the ongoing series on aberrant eschatologies. Excerpted with permission from False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care?, pp. 25-30. Retitled and slightly reformatted for blog posting. Original posted at Warren Smith's new website: http://www.mountainstreampress.org, go to http://www.mountainstreampress.org/barbara-marx-hubbard-her-new-age-christs-selection-process/#more-1364

To connect some fascinating dots, read related articles on this topic, see:

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-than-reformation-purification-of.html

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/04/tinker-with-theology-tinker-with-man.html

HTTP://HERESCOPE.BLOGSPOT.COM/2006/01/LEADERSHIP-NETWORK-SPAWNS-EMERGENT.HTML

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-create-emergent-movement.html

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/01/emerging-from-tradition-to-transition.html

http://apprising.org/2010/10/02/michael-dowd-spencer-burke—integrity-and-evolutionary-christianity/

http://apprising.org/2010/10/09/michael-dowd-spencer-burke—integrity-and-evolutionary-christianity-part-2/

http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/geneology.html

http://www.erwm.com/EvangelicalsandNewAgers.htm

http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain12.htm

A Disturbance in the Force

2011-11-21T15:10:00.007-05:00


A SATIRE [1]

__________

Heavenly Directive #1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: Ouranos (Heaven)

To: Ge (Earth)

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

We regret to inform the peoples of the Earth that there has been a disturbance in the Force. Events unforeseen have occurred which have caused immediate and irrevocable damage to the Almighty. The Ad Hoc Throne Committee has completed an initial survey of the disaster and reports that God’s attributes have sustained significant injury to His Being.

On the positive side, we report the following attributes of God appear to be intact: Eternal, Righteousness, Faithfulness, Goodness, Mercy, Justice, Love, Holiness and Incomprehensibility. On the negative side, we have located a power failure in the following Almighty attribute grids: Omnipotence, Immutability, Omniscience, and Omnipresence. Truth and Grace are in the workshop in an attempt to salvage some aspects of these attributes.

In short, the Almighty God the Father has sustained irreversible damage during a critical phase on Earth known as the Latter Days. The Alpha and the Omega has been abridged to lower-level functioning as Alpha and the Omicron. Due to this emergency, a Strategic Planning Committee has been set up to conduct trouble-shooting, engage in long-range planning, and launch a transformational initiative upon planet Earth to ensure the Almighty’s Plan for the Last Days is fulfilled according to His timetable. We acknowledge that this timetable has been kept a secret, and that given the damage done to Omniscience we are collaborating with the heavenly angels, the 4 beasts, and the 24 elders who are before the throne in an attempt to piece together this chronology. We ask your forbearance as we engage in this phase of sustained reconstruction.

Due to the severe nature of this unprecedented attack, we have moved the Son and the Holy Spirit to an undisclosed location. Although Omnipotence was quite damaged, we have managed to pull together some pivotal experiences for key Christian leaders which should accomplish the fulfillment of the Great Commission. (Pay no attention to that man behind the screen.)

To meet the needs of the body of Christ on Earth, particularly regarding the missing attribute Omnipresence, we have instituted production quotas via a computer simulation which will assist the organizational development of transformative innovation. Change can be difficult. Special forces and enhanced capabilities will ensure that coalition strength is maintained throughout this difficult transition. Collaboration is key to the success of this effort.

Should you need further assistance with the fulfillment of your prayer requests and petitions, we refer you to the World Prayer Collection Archive where each and every prayer request is databanked pending the Almighty’s future recovery.

__________

Heavenly Directive #2

For Immediate Release

From: The Throne Committee

To: Coalition Members

Our most recent records indicate that there has been a corresponding disturbance in the Force which has profoundly damaged the Church on planet Earth. We request immediate corrective steps be taken to compensate. Beware: traditional methods of operation have been highly counterproductive to the achievement of future goals. Changes must be implemented immediately. Souls are being lost!

Our surveys have found a disturbing depletion of the following “fruits of the Spirit”: peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness and temperance. The Committee has been working overtime and has now discovered a method of manufacturing fruits. Orders will be filled shortly.

Love, joy, goodness and faith appear to be slightly altered, but primarily intact. In the meantime, we have issued ration tickets for these fruits pending a comprehensive assessment of their effectiveness.

Finally, it is requested by our Strategic Planning Committee that all references to the “works of the flesh” be immediately omitted from future sermons, as these are apparently creating some cosmic disturbances. Additional instructions will be forthcoming.

__________

Heavenly Directive #3

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: The Strategic Planning Committee

To: Earth Leadership

We have completed our damage assessment.

Effective immediately new standards have been issued for personal living. These standards have been significantly revised for the sake of clarity and uniformity. Old standards can be discarded, as they are considered obsolete. Due to concerns about potential local disruptions, the Revised Standards for Personal Living comes in the same packaging as the old, which should ensure that the replacement process will go more smoothly. Your personal copy of this document will be issued shortly.

As an additional precaution, we have located several facets of the missing attributes of Vengeance and Judgment and will immediately make them available to maintain the civic order while these standards are being instituted. Each allotment of these attributes will be doled out to Earth Leadership who fit the following criteria: 1) successful completion of the accredited leadership training course through the Global Shepherds Network, or 2) special anointing as Apostle or Prophet. There appear to be some slight irregularities with Mercy, but we believe that compensatory steps can be taken to overcome this lack.

Also, on a related note, we have received numerous complaints about the unreliability of the old system of communications, so a new and better replacement has been invented. Each morning a personally edifying ourascope (heavenly report) will be issued through instant text-messaging to Earth Leadership. No more uncertainties and vagaries about heavenly intentions! No more difficulties divining the heavenly Will.

Prophets, please make sure that your group receptors are set on “high.” Thank you for your cooperation.

__________

Heavenly Directive #4

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: Throne Room Damage Assessment Committee

To: Ad Hoc Earth Management Committee

A glitch in our mainframe hard drive indicates that at some point in the history of mankind a worm virus entered the operating system. Both the Old and New Covenants appear to have been compromised. The source for this infection is still being investigated.

Given the on-going, unresolved difficulties in the Omniscience power grid, we have rushed to establish a temporary covenant collection site. A special archive for signatures has been set up at hhh.signupnow.com. Various menu options are available to accommodate denominational preferences.

__________

Heavenly Directive #5

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: Heavenly Leadership Forum

To: Mission World Coalition

Effective immediately there is an “open heaven” of response to fervent, united prayers of the people, a keen sense of divine favor. Due to these providential circumstances, we now have a working definition of “transformation,” and a conviction about the new ecclesiology of the “city church.”

Transformation – the measurable supernatural impact of the presence and power of God on human society, sacred and secular. In the church, this is characterized by increased holiness of life, accelerated conversion growth, reconciliation in relationships, mobilization of gifts and callings, and an increased relevance to and participation in greater society. In the culture, this may be characterized by pervasive awareness of the reality of God, a radical correction of social ills, a commensurate decrease in crime rates (evidence of authentic biblical justice, as described in Isaiah 58), supernatural blessing on local commerce, healing of the brokenhearted (the alienated and disenfranchised), and an exporting of kingdom righteousness. To this end, a catalytic core of saints typically embrace a lifestyle of persistent repentance, humility, prayer and sacrificial servanthood that attracts the favor and presence of God, and breaks the predominating influences of the ruling power structures of human flesh and the devil.

Emergence of the “City Church” – Clearly, the Holy Spirit is initiating an historic restoration of the geographic integrity and responsibility of the one Body of Christ in a city or region, calling leaders to walk together in the spirit of the Great Commandment, and work together to more effectively fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission. God is calling leaders to embrace a shared and sustainable vision to faithfully shepherd and disciple the collective souls of a city.

This restoration requires a holy dissatisfaction with the status quo, a hunger to see Jesus’ prayer of John 17:21-23 fulfilled, and leaders who are bold enough to begin to “paint outside the box” of existing ecclesiologies.[2]

__________

Heavenly Directive #6

For Immediate Release

From: The Throne Committee

To: Coalition Members

Post-crisis teams have been working on an innovative model to re-create the presence of the Lamb before the Throne. The results have been quite spectacular.

We hereby formally announce the presence of a new Lamb in Heaven which matches the description of the Lamb in Revelations chapter 5. After full consideration of the meaning of these verses, our crisis team determined that it was important to illuminate the qualities of the Lion as described in verse 5. Every effort was taken to achieve the full effect of the Lion in Lamb’s garb, including the snowy white wool coat. Because we are rapidly approaching the Latter Days, the crisis team has chosen to emphasize the distinctive leonine attribute of roaring.

A corresponding emphasis on the positive attributes of Sheep will be upheld in the Body to ensure future compatibility for the Lamb’s upcoming marriage. Because the Holy Spirit is currently inaccessible, we have engaged special task forces on Earth who will begin to perfect the Bride. Special criteria to designate what is clean, white and wooly have been developed and will be globally enforced.

__________

Heavenly Directive #7

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: The Latter Days Preparation Committee

To: First Earth Battalion

Our angels are presently sharpening their sickles for the final Harvest.

Due to unforeseen mechanical difficulties with the transporters, our angels are unable to wield their sickles upon Earth at this time. In order to fulfill the quotas for the final Harvest, Prophets and Apostles are to begin whetting their swords and sharpening their sickles.

Ongoing data transmission errors have obliterated the criteria for determining the difference between wheat and tares. Immediate preparations must be taken to devise valid sorting instruments on Earth. Prophets and Apostles are requested to begin assessing grain at once.

__________

Endnotes:

1. Text copyright 2004. This satire is published with permission as part of our ongoing series on variant eschatologies. Slightly modified for blog use, including the addition of several links. Original satire was included in the monograph The Pied Pipers of Purpose: Part 1: Human Capital Systems and Church Performance by Lynn D. Leslie, Sarah H. Leslie and Susan J. Conway (Conscience Press, 2004), pp. 6, 11, 17, 22, 30, 37, 44. Read the whole monograph at: http://www.discernment-ministries.org/Purpose_Driven.pdf

2. Satirical use, only slightly modified for publication, of “A Synopsis of the Advanced Practitioner’s Sub-Track of Building Effective City Coalitions,” National Leadership Forum of the Mission America Coalition, Oct. 5-8, 2003, “Track 19 Level 2 Advanced City Reaching.” Wacky though this may be, it is representative of the pervasiveness of the new doctrines and experiences propelling church transformation forward. This eschatology is found in a mainstream mission group, not just the New Apostolic Reformation. See "Dominionism and the Rise of Christian Imperialism" posted at http://www.discernment-ministries.org/ChristianImperialism.htm

*A special thanks to Pastor Ken Silva of apprising.org for his assistance with the graphic art in this post.

The Vatican and the New World Order

2011-11-17T14:52:00.002-05:00

“Europe, the Holy Father recalled, had had its eras of greatness when a common faith had animated the hearts of its peoples. Europe, he urged, could have its geopolitical greatness again, refurbished and burnished anew, if it could create a new heart. Europe, he intimated, could again forge a supernal, common and binding faith.

"Inwardly, the [six foreign] ministers winced. Pius [XII] had pointed to the greatest difficulty facing the EEC [European Economic Community] upon the day of its birth [March 25, 1957]. Beneath his words lay the warning that neither democratic socialism nor capitalist democracy nor the prospect of the good life nor a mystic 'Europa' of the humanists could provide the engine to drive their dream [for a new world order based on a unified Europe]. Practically speaking, their new Europe lacked a glowing center, a superior force or principle to bind it together and drive it forward. Practically speaking, their Europe lacked what this Pope had. Lacked what he was."

- Malachi Martin, Windswept House[1]

Unfolding Biblical Eschatology*

The Bible paints quite a clear picture of the major events that precede the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth. While many of the smaller details may be difficult to interpret, the major events concerning the world’s religious, economic and political future are evident in Revelation, chapters 13, 17 and 18.

The False Prophet

A world religious figure will rise to prominence. He unites all the world’s religions into one universal religion. This religious leader looks like a man of God. He performs miracles and even looks similar to Jesus Christ (Revelation 13:11; 5:6). But, he receives his power from the Antichrist and, ultimately from Satan. He is known as the False Prophet (Revelation 19:20).

The Beast or Antichrist

A second figure comes on the scene. Whereas the first world leader is religious and unites all people under a single world religion, the second man is political and unites the world’s people under a single world government. We commonly know him as the Antichrist. The Antichrist does not only unite the world under one political system, but he establishes a single world monetary system which abolishes all private or individual business transactions that are not part of the global system (Revelation 13:17).

Strange Bedfellows

The relationship between the False Prophet and the Antichrist is an interesting one. The Antichrist (political) empowers the False Prophet (religious). But ultimately the False Prophet causes the whole world to worship the Antichrist (Revelation 13:12). The False Prophet also encourages the people of the world to subscribe to the world financial and economic system and to receive the mark of the Beast (Antichrist) which gives them access to the financial system. Thus the global economy, political authority and religion become intertwined. This all happens in the name of a unity which sounds good but is not. It is a bad unity because it is man-centered and is a unity that plots against the Lord and His Anointed. As the Psalmist asks, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” (Psalm 2:1-6)

How do we move from a world of separate economies, religions and governments to a single planetary system? This will not happen by military might, but as individual governments cede their sovereignty to become part of a one-world government. Three factors will dictate this to happen:

First, world citizens will seek peace from terrorism through unity.
Second, the nations will be deceived into believing that the Antichrist holds the key to the world’s prosperity, that he will solve the world’s political and financial woes. And
Third, this unity will happen because of God’s plan: “For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled” (Revelation 17:17).

The G20 Summit

Practically, the world’s leaders will realize that their individual economies are so intertwined and the only way to solve the ever-increasing financial crises is to bring all the separate economies under one roof. Those informed regarding world affairs will recognize there exists an ever-increasing number of influential leaders who have begun to promote the idea of a global economy. The most significant of these is the G20 which in recent years has made several statements advocating such a global economy.

The Vatican

But the most startling statements were recently made in a 41 page “note” by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, published in several languages on October 24, 2011. Speaking for Pope Ratzinger, the Council’s document is filled with legal verbiage and complicated language, but is an amazing document to read. It is amazing because almost word-for-word, it bears upon the prophecies of Revelation 13, 17 and 18, and places Rome at the center of the prophetic drama![2]

The first half of the note deals with background and related philosophical issues. But the second half (points 3 and 4) calls for a single world government (point 3) and for a single world financial system (point 4)! Had we not read and studied the document, we would not have believed the statements made in it. We hope in the following few lines to summarize these points.[3]

A Call for a Single World Government

The document quotes several recent Popes to show how support for a single world ruler is very much part of the precedent and philosophy of Rome. For instance, John XXIII (1881-1963) “...also expressed the hope that one day ‘a true world political authority’ would be created.” In the document’s context, this means that John XXIII wanted to see a single world government. The document continues to state that today this teaching (of a single world government) is “even more vital and worthy of urgent implementation”

The Council continues to say that the current Pope (Benedict XVI, 1927- ) also expressed the need to “create a world political authority.” In the same paragraph the Council lists all the reasons why a single world government is desirable, things like peace and security, disarmament and arms control, the protection of human rights, the protection of the environment, the management of the world economy, the “universal common good,” [emphasis added] the protection of weaker nations from the power of stronger nations, etc.

John XXIII is further quoted as saying that in order for such a world government to be effective “it should be endowed with structures and adequate, effective mechanisms equal to its mission.” Simply stated, this means that unlike a United Nations type organization possessing little ability to enforce its will upon the community of nations, the new political structure needs to be government with “teeth” and real authority over the world’s peoples. The document concedes that the United Nations is the agency to bring this world government about, but at the same time, it needs to be a real government unlike the current UN which functions as a large committee.

They continue to say that such an Authority must have “global reach,” not by “force, coercion and violence but should be the outcome of free and shared agreement....” Revelation 17:17 says that the world’s nations will willingly hand over all their authority to the Antichrist. Note the Council's use of the word “Authority” with a capital letter. This is their term for what the Bible calls the Antichrist. Variously, the Council employs the terms “Authority,” “world Authority,” “world public Authority” and “global Authority,” always with a capital “A”. Revelation 13 and 17 speaks seven times about the Antichrist having “authority”.

The document speaks about the need for all nations to be part of this system and that none should be excluded: “…the world Authority should consistently involve all peoples....” Revelation 13:7 says: “And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation.” The note says that policies must be binding on all and that the Authority should have “universal jurisdiction.”

A Call for a One World Financial System

In the fourth section that deals with a global economy they say there is a need for “...the commitment to create some form of global monetary management” and “one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of “central world bank” that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges....” They then speak of the need for such a world economy to be under the control of the world government. Revelation 13:16-17 says that the False Prophet “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” In this document, The Vatican pledges its commitment for planetary financial control, calling for the fulfillment of this prophecy to the letter!

A One World Religion

Before continuing with the closing comments of this document, note that Revelation 17:5 refers to “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots.” In the past, many have believed that this unequivocally references the Church of Rome (the mother of harlots) and that the “daughter harlots” are the rest of the false religions. Many have believed that Babylon is not necessarily a reference to Rome alone, but to all forms of false religion. However, this document is causing many to reconsider their view.[4] Had we not verified that this document indeed was produced in the Vatican at the very highest levels, we might have discounted it as a fake. It seems simply too surreal that the note calls for the implementation of prophecy in such minute detail. We must assume that the Pontifical Council knows what Revelation teaches on this subject, and yet is willing to identify itself intimately with the False Prophet, the Great Harlot and Babylon the Great.[5]

May we also remind you that the tower of Babel was man’s attempt at “global” unification centered on man, and against God, and that the Lord was so displeased that He made them speak different languages that caused division and the scattering of mankind. God is all for unity, but it has to be a godly unity centered on the Lord Jesus Christ. God is against unity that has man as the focus, especially when that unity is used to oppose God as they did at Babel and as they will in the last days. Babel is the Hebrew name for Babylon—they are the same place, but more than that, Babylon is a philosophy and a spirit. The Babylon(s) of Revelation 17 and 18 are a revival of the Babel of Genesis 11, and represent the same anti-God and man-centered philosophy. Both are the pinnacle of all anti-God and Antichrist structures (puns intended).

Conclusion

The Vatican document concludes with the following lesson: Referring to Genesis 11, they spin the tower of Babel to mean that diversity (as opposed to unity) is as a result of selfishness and leads to division. It further states that Babel is a warning of what happens when we don’t stick together and when nations choose to separate. The document very clearly calls for mankind to reverse the effects of Babel and to return to the process of building a unifying (and God-defying) structure. To sum up, they are literally calling for the rebuilding of Babylon, not of physical Babylon in modern day Iraq, but a political, financial, and spiritual Babylon pictured and prophesied of in Revelation 17 and 18!

Quoting the final sentence of the document verbatim: “Only a spirit of concord that rises above divisions and conflicts will allow humanity to be authentically one family and to conceive of a new world with the creation of a world public Authority at the service of the common good.”[Emphasis added]

The goal this document calls for is not a pipe dream. It will come to pass, precisely as the Bible has predicted and exactly as they are envisioning it. Keep in mind that Rome is not isolated from the rest of the world’s religions.[6]

All this indicates that the end is closer than we like to think, and that everything is ready for the fulfillment of the final end-time prophecies. “And I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her (Babylon), my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues’.” (Revelation 18:4).

“And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, ‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!’. . . The kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’ And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore”
(Revelation 18:2, 9-11)

*This article was a joint project of the Discernment Research Group, and is based primarily on an original article by Pastor Anton Bosch, "Vatican Fulfills Prophecy," issued November 14, 2011. This article is included in the context of an ongoing article series on eschatological doctrinal aberrations.

Endnotes:

1. Malachi Martin, Windswept House, (Main Street Book, 1996), p. 2, describing a 1957 meeting with the Pontiff and the six Foreign Ministers who were "partners in the creation of a new Europe" signing "the treaties of Rome... to create the European Economic Community" (p. 1). The statements in brackets are our own for purposes of clarity. This quotation is interesting for several reasons, including the behind-the-scenes-history, but also to illustrate the point that in order to achieve a new world order there must be a global religion to bind people to its unified vision and purpose. Martin's book is a frightful look at a false church arising.

2.The full text can be read on the official site of Vatican Radio: http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-note-on-financial-reform-from-the-pontif

3. We have paraphrased their statements simply to strip the text of verbiage and make it more accessible to readers who are not lawyers or theologians. We have endeavored to not alter or exaggerate anything they have said.

4. A fascinating history of Rome's ecumenical activities engaging all the world's religions, from the perspective of an orthodox Catholic who opposed this, can be found in Malachi Martin's book The Jesuits (Simon & Schuster, 1987).

5. No small wonder, then, when the "apostles" of the New Apostolic Reformation are boldly calling for a global church order that sits atop seven mountains, in a literal fulfillment of Revelation 17:9: "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth."
6. In The Berean Call of November 2011, Dave Hunt provides detailed evidence that many influential evangelical leaders in America support and endorse Rome, its leaders and its agenda.

Field of Dreams

2011-11-07T15:10:00.011-05:00

Dominion Eschatology

By Dr. Orrel Steinkamp

"Our field of dreams had become a field of nightmares!"
-- Lou Engle*

Dream Time for the NAR Apostles and Prophets
In the very popular movie of 1989 titled Field of Dreams, an Iowa farmer began hearing voices. This voice turned out to be a baseball player from the ill-fated baseball players of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team later dubbed the Black Sox because of their reputation of having taken bribes. In this movie the Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner thinks he heard the player say "If you build it, he will come." The farmer began building a baseball diamond in his cornfield. In time the Black Sox ghost players emerge from the cornfield and play on the "Field of Dreams" that the Iowa farmer built. (Interestingly, this field in Iowa used in the film has just been sold.)

In Dominion Latter-Rain end-time teaching, the apostles and prophets are also hearing voices and the essence of this is simply a supposed prophecy (dream, sometimes referred to as "God's Dream") that if the restored apostles and prophets successfully complete and build the Kingdom of God on earth, God will reappear. "If you build it, HE will come." The Dominion prophets and apostles are blindly attempting to build it (the kingdom on earth) so that the End of Days can come. They call for a perfected church to finish up the Kingdom of God.

The term "Dominionism" has recently surfaced in the American political arena. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas chose to enlist a whole bevy of religious leaders from the current expression of Dominion teaching called NAR, that is the New Apostolic Reformation, a term coined by C. Peter Wagner in which he repackaged Domionion teaching first expressed by the New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR) in the 1950s. But the NAR & IHOP (International House of Prayer) Dominion apostles and prophets did not want the voting public to know about their Dominion teaching and its relationship to their anointed leader Rick Perry.

Sure enough the secular media began to discover and explain the term "Dominionism." The politically sensitive NAR & IHOP apostles and prophets began to spread the word that "Dominionionism" was just a term created by the liberal media. C. Peter Wagner offered himself to be interviewed by the media and panned off Dominionism as just wanting to have "influence" in the public square -- no more or no less. Wagner opined in an October 3 Fresh Air interview on NPR with Terry Gross : "We believe in working with any political system there is... just the way they are, but [want] to have Kingdom people in influence...."

Now we know the apostles have learned well the art of a political spin (otherwise called lying). Wagner, the worldwide presiding "apostle has written a whole book simply titled Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World, which he published in 2008, in which he states: "Because it takes a government to overthrow a government.... In war the victors plunder the enemies' camp, and God will cause this to happen as never before." (pp. 6-7)

It's All About Eschatology!
Cindy Jacobs false prophetess and false apostle Lou Engle, tasked by Peter Wagner to lead the apostles and prophets in the USA, are joining the volunteer choir to "take America back" from the forces of evil and returning America to its Christian roots. The latest Engle The Call rally 11-11-11 (note the occult numerology -- many other NAR events are also scheduled this same day) is scheduled in Detroit at Ford Field. Their advertisement reads "thousands will gather at Ford Field daring to believe American could turn back to God." Speakers for a "Mobilization Gathering" to get things off the ground, according to the Transformation Michigan website (pulled, but e-mailed 7/28/11) included Rick Joyner, Barbarba Yoder, Francis Frangipane, Rick Pino and other leaders. Controversy is already swirling around this upcoming 11-11-11 Lou Engle event.

Understandably, this spiritual/political message resonates with rank and file evangelicals. True believers genuinely do sense the American populace is drifting into moral decline. There are issues of morality that the church is supposed to address. Christian citizens getting involved in political activities is an American freedom.

But I am concerned that the NAR is co-opting and using the American political ferment, particularly these highly volatile moral issues, to enlist ordinary evangelicals -- already biblically challenged -- for the NAR leadership's larger goal of End-time Dominion. Note that in their teaching and preaching these leaders are clearly more concerned about their apostles and prophets ruling the earth than having compliant politicians elected to save America.

Wagner and the NAR/IHOP have cleverly repacked and papered over biblical teaching with an eschatology that has no reference in Scripture. In actuality it contradicts Scripture. Their eschatology is not just a minor divergent end-time alternative such as Dispensational, Premillenial views or arguments over who is and who isn't the Anti Christ. Their eschatology is a radical and heretical teaching that begins with Post-Millenial eschatology as a jumping off spot, and then plunges deeply into heresy that has more in common with Theosophy and the Gnostic Kabbalah than any biblical eschatology.

Indeed, there have always been movements and teachers with differing end-time teaching preoccupied with date setting (a la Harold Camping) and end-time chronological absolutes. One New Testament scholar sees end-time teaching as a "sign post pointing into a fog" (N.T. Wright, who ironically has his own utopian End-time eschatology). This is an unfortunate statement.

But NAR Dominionism is light years beyond the minor eschatological twists and semantic debates about Pre-Trib, Mid-Trib or Post-Tribulation, etc. return of Christ. Dominion eschatology comes from a wholly different playbook. To be sure the Dominionists use biblical categories. But it's like trying to use the rules of American football in a celestial soccer game. They both have a goal to be scored but there the similarity ends.

Nevertheless, Dominion eschatology is cleverly coded and overlaid with acceptable evangelical terms so that revival-starved Post-Modern evangelicals see it as the only option to save both America and the Christian faith. But bad theology usually sneaks in under the guise of familiar language.

It reminds me of a noxious weed called the dandelion. The early English immigrants brought it to the new world as a pretty flower. Dandelions can look inviting and beautiful in the first days of spring. But rapidly dandelions take "dominion" over the field and choke out the legitimate plants. It's not good enough to mow down dandelions. They only re-emerge from their underground root system and increase by reseeding, and then proceed to take dominion over lawns. Dandelions must be eradicated by exposing and eliminating their root system.

Likewise, the root system of the current Dominion/NAR is very deep and underground. Many of the apostles and prophets and leaders of this heresy are well aware of their Latter-Rain historical roots. But they conceal this from public view and from the ordinary people in their movement. Nevertheless, there is an elite group that understand the fullness of this aberrant eschatological departure from traditional biblical views. The Latter Rain of the 1950s is their playbook. The elite leadership know it well, but just as a NFL coach along the sidelines hides his play sheet from the public, so also the apostles and prophets hold their playbook close to their chest. What is played out on the field has its source in the secret playbook guarded assiduously from the public and the press.

The current dependence and linkage of the apostles and prophets to the Latter Rain root system can be detected but it involves digging up the Latter Rain historical roots. These roots are well hidden by the apostles and prophets. It takes patient research and dedicated effort. One must go back and quote from the Latter Rain pioneers of the 1950s and set their teaching beside the current teachers in order to see the totality of this end-time false teaching.

Current NAR/IHOP Dominion teaching clearly can be traced back to the New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR) in the early '50s. So we will give our attention to the eschatological teaching of NOLR and then develop how it has been rebranded and developed into to its current expression today. Let me warn you that the early NOLR of the '50s also grafted into their root system other foreign sources that are more radical and heretical than their own views. The NOLR taproot goes deeper yet into history and is rooted in Theosophy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Kabbalism. The linkage of the NOLR and these theosophical/kabbalistic roots is too extensive for this article. (See these two articles on the Internet: "The NAR’s Fairy Godmother? Jane Leade & The Philadelphian Society," and Bob DeWaay's "The Roots and Fruits of the New Apostolic Reformation." See also the online book Strange Fire: The Rise of Gnosticism in the Church by Traverse and Jewel van der Merwe)

By Their Roots You Shall Know Them
The Latter-Rain was a fringe Pentecostal movement at mid-century. It originated at the Sharon Orphanage and School in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. The leaders of this mid -century revival movement were George Hawtin, P.G. Hunt and Herrick Holt. After receiving an impartation by the laying on of hands from William Branham, the Latter Rains began to descend. A number of new teachings emerged creating controversy to the point that the Assemblies of God repudiated it. The term "Latter Rain" was actually a borrowed and reiterated name from the Latter Rain teaching that attended the historical beginning of Pentecostalism at Azusa Street in the early years of the last century.

Latter Rain was an allegorical template derived from the former and latter rains of the growing season in Palestine. Old Testament biblical writers simply used the words "early" and "latter" rains as a descriptive reference to the totality of the growing season. But that phrase from the Old Testament was allegorized to become a template called Latter Rain and was used at the turn of the century to depict the Pentecostal Revival as a latter (end of the ages) or final end-time repeat of Pentecost at the end of the ages.

But in 1914 the early Pentecostal leaders discarded this Latter Rain eschatology template and returned to traditional biblical Premillenial views of the end-time. But then, some 50 years later, the Latter Rain of the midcentury added many aspects that were not part of the turn of the century idea of Latter Rain. As stated above, the source of these new teachings can be traced to 17th century occult sources. For our purposes there are 3 new eschatological teachings espoused by the Latter Rain of the 1950s:

A latter day order of restored apostles and prophets who will govern and give on-going revelations to the church.
The latter-rain last generation church, with the leading ("alignment") of apostles and prophets and new ongoing revelations, will war against and defeat all the enemies of the church (including sin, Satan and demons), and this final terminal generation (called the "New Breed" or "elect seed") will conquer the last enemy death itself (NOTE: all of this will take place without the bodily return of Jesus from heaven). This is also known as taking DOMINION!
The last generation of NOLR believers will become end-time incarnations of Christ and together with other perfected "Sons of God" (also known as the Manifest Sons of God) will become (or emerge into) a "Corporate Christ;" thus making the bodily return of Christ unnecessary as well as the rapture of saints into the air to meet the returning glorified Christ from heaven.

In 1951 George Warnock, who had been at the Latter Rain Sharon Camp Meetings in Canada and who had been the personal secretary of Ern Baxter (an associate of William Branham's ministry), took up residence at the Sharon Orphanage and School doing office work, etc. He then proceeded to write a book titled The Feast of Tabernacles. In this book he laid out a systematic doctrine of the NOLR. Warnock stated the premise as:

"Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles typify the whole church age, beginning with the death of Jesus on the cross, consummating in the [the Feast of Tabernacles] the Manifestation of the Sons of God. These 'Overcomers' will become perfected and step into immortality in order to establish the kingdom of God on the earth." (The Feast of Tabernacles, pp. 14-20)

Warnock also taught a transformation of the body of Christ into a Corporate Christ upon the earth. When Warnock talked of a perfected church he actually believed these last day Latter Rain believers would mature into "fullness" to become Christ (the Corporate Christ, or in evangelical lingo this is referred to as "incarnating Christ"). In other words we become intrinsically one with Christ, not merely one in fellowship with Christ but one in substance. We become God just as much as Christ is God. Warnock wrote:

"To many, of course, this truth of our identification with Christ the Head is nothing less than blasphemy. But this is to be expected. When Jesus called Himself the Son of God they said, 'Thou blasphemest'. And yet now we hail Him King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Man of very Man, and God of very God. And the ages to come are going to reveal what is now revealed by the Spirit to those having understanding and have been quickened, that Christ is the body - the whole body."

Warnock was apparently saying that we are to become God every bit as much Christ is God. George Hawtin described the Latter Rain in these words:

"When the Sons of God are manifested... the saints will take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever... the Sons of Yahweh, one like the Son of Man - not the lonely and blessed Yeshua of Nazareth alone, but the complete body of Sons - Yahweh's masterpiece of the ages, the body of Yeshua, the house not made with hands - My Father's house of many mansions, each one whether individually or collectively a habitation of Yahweh through the Spirit - the Sons of Yahweh are indeed the 'One like the Son of man.'" (George Hawtin, New Beginnings)

This is the undeniable new revelation of the end-time teaching of the leaders of the Latter Rain in the 1950s. Today's version of Dominionists are focusing on conquering the 7 Mountains of Culture. This is however, only a temporary sub-plot of the current apostles and prophets. They have not discarded the full blown template of the end-times that they received from the NOLR. Prior to the most recent fixation of conquering the 7 Mountains of Culture (derived from a supposed new revelation from Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright), the Dominionists were caught up with working their way through the subdivisions of the Feast of Tabernacles including "the blowing of trumpets" and "the Day of Atonement."

The "Resurrection-Translation" of the NAR/IHOP
Bill Hamon is a living connection to Latter Rain teaching in the present. Hamon was born in 1934. At 19 he was reportedly ordained. This means that he began his ministry right after Warnock wrote the Feast of Tabernacles. At that time he became a Latter Rain teacher and so is today a living connection to the NOLR. He has written numerous books but his two books, Day of the Saints, and Apostles, Prophets, and the Coming Moves of God, are instructive. In Hamon's book The Day of the Saints, in chapter 11 "Omega Transition Generation," Hamon states:

"Transition means passage from one place or state of being to another - a change or process of change... [the] last generation of the mortal church [is] the one in which they experience the transition from mortality to immortality.... God has predestined a generation that will never die.... They will be a 'transitional generation' that will make the transition from mortal life to immortal life without going the way of the grave...." (Saints, p.386)
"The Manifested Sons of God doctrine teaches that these Sons will be equal to Jesus Christ: immortal, sinless, perfected Sons who have partaken of the divine nature. They will have every right to be called gods and will be gods." (Hamon, Prophets and the Prophetic Movement)
"The [New] Apostolic Reformation will cause believers to manifest the supernatural grace, gifts and power of God." (Apostles, Prophets, p 13)
"God has released the Holy Spirit to bring His revelations and activation to the end-time church. This will bring forth the last generation church of mortal people, with unlimited power...."(Apostles, Prophets, p 18)

Hamon's speaks of what he calls "the Resurrection-Translation" (R-T) of the last generation saints. This quote does not mention a rapture or the physical return of Christ. This R-T resurrection ostensibly refers to deceased Christians. This apparently appears to happen simply by the expression of God's power without any reference to the bodily return of Jesus from heaven. Hamon states:

"the R-T is for the purpose of immortalizing their bodies. This will remove all earthly limitations, enabling the saints unlimited abilities. They will be able to travel in all space realms of the heavenlies the same as Jesus and the angels do now. They can move in and out of all dimensions of the natural and spiritual realms as Jesus did in His resurrected flesh and bone body." (Hamon, Apostles, Prophets, p 264-650)
"God's great end-time army is being prepared to execute God's written judgments with Christ's victory and divine judgment decrees that have already been established in heaven."(Hamon, Apostles, Prophets, p 252)

Earl Paulk, the now totally discredited Latter Rain teacher, nevertheless was able to speak clearly about what seems obtuse in Hamon, and clearly states what Hamon's R-T really means. Paulk wrote:

"Christ in us is God's continuing incarnation.... The Church is Christ's body, the incarnation of Christ today.... The mystery of this generation is Christ in us. We never understood that mystery fully. We pray to a 'God beyond the clouds in heavenly places' when Christ is [already] in us. The hope of glory is not in the heavenlies - the hope of the heavenlies is on earth." (Paulk, Held in the Heavens, p. 171)

On June 5, 2001, I received a very cordial letter from C. Peter Wagner writing as the Presiding Apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles. Among other things he wrote: "I never even heard of the Latter-Rain... apostles and prophets, Manifested Sons of God.... Now since I have become an advocate for contemporary apostles and prophets, all of these things have been coming up.... I have asked [apostle] Bill Hamon about these things.... but I never really was able to make sense of it until I read your article.... " This letter was a total surprise to me. Wagner surely is a quick study and an academic. Still, he must be lightning fast to understand Bill Hamon's book Day of the Saints in a matter of months and write a glowing endorsement for the book. He joined Cindy Jacobs and others to laud Hamon's work. He went from 0-100 in a short time in processing Hamon's book. Wagner's endorsement of Hamon's book "Day of the Saints" is without any qualification. He writes:

"The Day of the Saints has my vote for the book of the year. [Apostle] Bill Hamon has outdone himself...This book will help launch the Body of Christ into a dynamic and exciting era unknown since the days of Jesus and the apostles."

It is interesting that Wagner was joined by Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso, Tommy Tenney and others to write endorsements for this book. Suffice it to say, Wagner went from saying he was not understanding the term Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God to a full-throttled endorsement of the NOLR in record time. (See the article by Sandy Simpson posted HERE about these fascinating denials by Wagner.)

Wagner's political spin during his NPR interview points to the apparently agreed talking points of the current prophets about the recent media exposure of the term Dominion. His apostle Lance Wallnau and others recommend only using the term "Dominion" to "speaking to the choir," but use the term "influence" when speaking to the wider public.

But the fact is undeniable. Dominion Eschatology, though it has some minor variations a la IHOP's Mike Bickle and his "Forerunner Apostolic Premillenialism" still rests on Warnock's end-time template. This is not the biblical teaching of 2Thess. 2:3 of the "falling away" just prior to the resurrected Jesus Christ descending and rapturing the saints, and granting new resurrected bodies, etc. Rather, Dominion Eschatology calls for a last generation Dominion by the church, eradicating all evil demons, etc. and finally conquering death itself.

Conversely, Scripture has a totally different view of the end-times. 2Thess. 2:3 affirms: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." "Falling away" from what? Unbelievers cannot "fall away;" they were never there to begin with. And surely this refers to the state of the church prior to the personal bodily return of Jesus.

The current NAR/IHOP apostles and prophets do not publicize defeating death. This heretical doctrine is filed away from prying eyes. But it is still part of the template from which Dominion moves. This complete and unabridged template of NOLR eschatology is only for the elite and more mature Dominion apostles and prophets. Likewise, the Body of Christ incarnating into the "Corporate Christ" is normally expressed by code words which only the elite Dominionists understand. Even Warnock knew "the Corporate Christ" teaching would be called blasphemy. Nevertheless he affirmed it. This, "Corporate Christ" is considered the hidden manna that only the elite can handle, and it is rarely spelled out in explicit terms.

Some may say I have gone a bridge too far. Indeed, most of NAR/IHOP teaching are given over these days to Dominion themes. But if "Manifest Sons" and "Corporate Christ" teaching is a bridge too far, then the Hamon/Wagner connection is also meaningless. Are we supposed to believe that Wagner didn't understand Hamon's book Day of the Saints which he read and endorsed?

Indeed, Dominionism is much more than spiritual warfare as some people assume. Spiritual warfare is simply part of the modus operandi of the current apostles and prophets to pursue Dominion. Spiritual Warfare is the selling point of the 7 Mountains teaching. But Dominion, for the mature elite apostles and prophets, promises not only the defeat of Satan and his demons but also the last enemy -- death. Dominion also calls for the last generation church becoming a "Corporate Christ" who then replaces a resurrected physical Jesus returning from heaven.

"The Return of Christ" thus becomes a code phrase pointing to Jesus incarnating into the perfected Body of Christ ("Bride") on earth, which becomes a "Corporate Christ" reaching maturity as the Sons of God upon the earth. The leaders give lip service about how Dominion must happen before Christ can come back. But ultimately the literal physical Return of Christ is not a part of this NAR/NOLR template. The "Corporate Christ" upon the earth is their return of Christ. The return of Christ becomes Jesus coming spiritually INTO His church, not FOR His church. The return of Christ is a spiritual coming in this scenario. Corporately, the overcoming saints acquire Sonship just as did Jesus when he came to earth. It is this overcoming mature Corporate Son who executes judgment and dominion upon the earth.

So, what is all of this latter-day Dominionism about really? "If you build it, he will come"? Who will come? Jesus Christ physically bodily for his bride? Or a false christ that manifests and incarnates through a false body on earth? Or a warrior bride body manifesting, that has conquered territories and "influenced" cultural spheres, to prepare the way for an anti-Christ? This sounds like a field of nightmares, not a field of dreams!

The Truth:
"Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." (1 John 4:2-3)

* Lou Engle, Digging the Wells of Revival (Destiny Image, 1998), p. 100 in a section of the book where he explains his early connection with the Kansas City Prophets (IHOP).