Contemplative Prayer And Meditation (2)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
By Ken Silva
 
We continue now with our look at the grave danger of Gnostic contemplative spirituality that has been spreading like a spiritual wildfire through the Church of our Lord for a few years now. The most prominent purveyor of this so-called "Christian" mysticism is Quaker Richard Foster. In his fine series called Mysticism, which I highly recommend, Gary Gilley does a great job whittling down this massive subject to its most important aspects. Regarding Richard Foster's work Gilley brings out just how deeply Foster was influenced by mystic Thomas Merton:
 
Foster cites and/or quotes Merton on at least nine separate occasions in Celebration of Discipline, yet Merton was not a Christian as far as we can tell.  He was a twentieth-century Roman Catholic who had so immersed himself in Buddhism that he claimed he saw no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity and intended to become as good a Buddhist as he could.
 
But despite his doctrinal views and New Age leanings Foster considers Merton's Contemplative Prayer, "A must book," and says of Merton, "[He] has perhaps done more than any other twentieth-century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood." Merton wrote, "If only [people] could see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time.  There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed….  I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other." [1]
 
Merton's Message
The above quote from Merton comes from his Conjectures Of An Innocent Bystander where Merton also denies the doctrine of original sin as he says at, "the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth." [2] Here's some more information on the message Thomas Merton "received" as a result of his years of transcendental meditation. The following comes from Merton's Message off The Thomas Merton Foundation a website favorable to this deceased heretic:
 
He takes people into deep places within themselves… At the core of Thomas Merton's spiritual writings is the search for the "true self " and our need for relationship with God, other people and all of creation… He concludes that we must discover God as the center of our being to which all things tend…
 
Merton's interests were prophetic,…he foresaw…the source of the problem [we face] is that man "has become alienated from his inner self which is the image of God." [The solution] requires a social conversion,… The first step in this turning is a transformation of consciousness and Thomas Merton is a preeminent guide to us in this first step…[and] a spiritual master whose influence crosses generations and religious affiliations. [3]
 
Of course it would cross "religious affiliations" because there is no mention of the inherent sin nature of man, or the need for being regenerated, or of the Cross of Christ as the only real solution for sin. What we have just read from a Site sympathetic to Merton could be agreed to by virtually anyone from any spiritual background, and this is precisely my point. It is exactly this same message of New Age spirituality that comes through the "transformation of consciousness" to all who practice this transcendental meditation long enough to anger God until He abandons them to a reprobate mind. [4]
 
Contemplative Meditation
What is happening here with men like Richard Foster and others who teach and practice this Gnostic new spirituality is simply equivocation with words. The goal of contemplative spirituality, which is actually meditation for the "Christian" every bit as consistent as that practiced in Zen, is clearly spelled out here in Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience. Meditation we are told consists of any "of the various disciplines of mind and body that enable one to achieve higher states of consciousness." [5] And further, exactly as in Merton's Message above, we see "the goal toward which [meditation] is applied is the transformation of consciousness."
 
And it is precisely this "transformation of consciousness" which is the concern of my work right now at Apprising Ministries. What makes the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Emergent Church so very dangerous spiritually is that we have quite questionable "theologians" like Foster, Tony Jones, and Brian McLaren molding the impressionable minds of young people who are not equipped to see through this neo-pagan spirituality. For that matter it seems, we have very few leaders in the evangelical church itself who appear capable of recognizing the Devil's infiltration into their camp with his Gnosticism all over again.
 
In this generation it is vital that the Church repent of her virtually ignoring the spiritual side of our relationship to the one true and living God as revealed in the Bible. Men and women, to be a born again Christian–by God's grace alone; through faith alone; in Christ alone–is to be personally indwelt by God. And since Jesus of Nazareth–the LORD God Almighty Himself in human flesh–explains that God is Spirit, then it logically follows we will be possessed by another Spirit. As we see people "possessed" by demons (fallen spirits) in the Gospels, so we who have been regenerated are to be possessed by God. [6]
 
And the sooner we get over our fear of this the better, because what has now happened is people have become spiritually hungry for more of God which is a good thing. However, Satan has rushed into this vacuum of spirituality created by a dead orthodoxy in the contemporary Christian Church with his new spirituality within the new evangelicalism which has fast become a The Ecumenical Church of Deceit.
 
 
 
 


[1] Gary Gilley, http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/Articles/read_articles.asp?id=107

[2] Thomas Merton, Conjectures Of An Innocent Bystander (Doubleday, 1989), p. 158, emphasis mine.

[3] http://www.mertonfoundation.org/merton.php3?page=aboutmert_message.ext

[4] see–Romans 1:18-32.

[5] Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience (HarperCollins, 1991), p. 355, emphasis mine.

[6] see–John 14:17; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 5:18.

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