More disturbing contemplative, Catholic comments from IHOP’s Mike Bickle

According to IHOP founder Mike Bickle:

When I was in my 20s I was asked to pastor a church and I never officially went back to the Catholic Church, but I also don’t feel like I intentionally left it either. At the House of Prayer, I encourage people to learn the teachings of the Catholic saints, as the experts on contemplative prayer, such as Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. (Source)

Call it a false spirituality or some of the intertwined tendrils of a rising counterfeit Christianity, the point is that contemplative prayer, Catholicism, and the New Apostolic Reformation movement are beginning to stream together. Mike Bickle is very much a “forerunner” in this.

And encouraging the young IHOP people to “learn the teachings of the Catholic saints, as the experts on contemplative prayer” is spiritual madness. You can read about Teresa of Avila here.

Contemplative prayer is not prayer at all. It is really the same practice as Eastern or New Age meditation. Here the object is to stop active thought, often by repeating a word or phrase over and over. Many in the church have been lured into contemplative deception because so-called Christian contemplatives don’t say “Ommm” over and over, but rather a Christian word or phrase. The effect is the same. When thought is stilled, the person enters what is known as the silence, and it is here that incredible spiritual deception can occur. This can affect and even determine one’s theology and this is what is happening at IHOP and elsewhere.

Let me put it bluntly: Contemplative prayer results in spiritual blindness, and this is why “leaders” such as Rick Warren, Beth Moore, and Mike Bickle are simply unable to comprehend the vast difference between Catholic teaching and biblical Christianity.

The contemplative “Christ” is a false Christ. A wonderful, terrible deception, a giver of  false visions and false prophecies.

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. (Matthew 24:4-5)