Month: July 2019

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Heretics

“The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

Why do certain people cross your path?–J. Vernon McGee

“Have you ever stopped to think in your own personal life why God permits certain people to cross your path? Do you wish that you had never met certain people? Are there people whom you would call your enemies? Someone may have caused you sorrow, but it is all for His purpose. God has permitted all that for a particular purpose. Learn to recognize the hand of God in your life.”
― J. Vernon McGee, Jeremiah and Lamentations

Liberalism’s Warm Fuzzy God (Reprise)

This article by CRN managing editor Marsha West was first published May 11, 2015.

For a number of years a woman I know, I’ll call her Rachel, has wrestled with giving her life to Christ. She admits she really wants to, but how can she when she’d have to serve a God who allows murderers into heaven and sends “good people” to hell? It would be awkward to have to explain to her husband, family and friends that they’re bound for hell if they reject Christ. In other words, Rachel won’t play by God’s rules because His rules make her uncomfortable. In her way of thinking the God of the Bible is too punitive for her sensibilities. And besides, what kind of God would allow a serial murderer into heaven who professed a belief in Christ only minutes before going to the gas chamber while at the same time condemn “good people” to hell for their unbelief? (Continue reading article)

Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola and AA co-founder Bill Wilson

We have seen the contemplative influence of the Oxford Group and God Calling in relation to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Interestingly enough, Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder, may have been familiar with the contemplative teachings of Ignatius of Loyola.

According to Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., author of Soul of Sponsorship, “In his essay on Step 11, Bill wrote of a way to pray with a pause after each phrase of ‘Make me an Instrument of Thy Peace.’ He may have seen the same method of prayer in the Longridge edition of the Spiritual Exercises which [Father Ed] Dowling sent him in 1952. This book was one of about thirty books on a shelf above the window to the left of his studio desk.” (pg.66)

The author notes that Bill ended one of his letters to Father Ed Dowling with “a request for the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.” (pg. 57)

Here is an excellent Pastor Gary Gilley article on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. http://svchapel.org/resources/articles/133-spiritual-formation-movement/796-ignatius

Occultist Swedenborg’s influence on A.A.’s co-founder Bill Wilson

“In January of 1918 Bill and Lois were married in the Swedenborgian church in Brooklyn, New York.”[1]

“Bill learned that [Lois’ family] were all Swedenborgians, and the mystic aspect of the faith so fascinated them they vowed to explore it more deeply one day.”[2]

A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson married into a Swedenborgian family, and Swedenborgian spirituality left a lasting imprint upon him. Significant Swedenborgian and New Thought influence render absurd any notion about Bill Wilson having been a born again Christian.

So, first, just to get a sense of how far removed Swedenborgianism is from biblical Christianity, here are some of this religion’s teachings:

“God has many names, depending on the beliefs/religion of the individual; the Holy Spirit is not God; the Trinity does not exist; Jesus Christ’s death did not atone for our sin; salvation comes by practicing what you believe, whatever religion it might be; the afterlife is spiritual, but dependent on how well you lived in your physical body.” Source

As noted in the article, Lois Wilson’s grandpa’s Swedenborgian book:

“This is not to say that Bill Wilson became a Swedenborgian per se, yet his obsession with spiritualism and view of Christ and the Bible must be at least partially attributed to exposure to Swedenborgian teachings. Wilson’s understanding of the Bible was further twisted by his acceptance of the Scripture-quoting but Christ-rejecting teachings of New Thought purveyor Emmet Fox.” (Source)

It can be said that Swedenborg is not only the father of modern day spiritualism, but perhaps the father of the New Thought movement as well.

Swedenborg’s influence upon Bill Wilson can be observed during the 1950s when Wilson was experimenting with LSD as a means of helping alcoholics. One of the basic Swedenborgian terms is “influx.” Swedenborg wrote about both physical and spiritual influx.

Here are four of Swedenborg’s statements about “influx,” which I have numbered below:

1. What is meant by spiritual influx cannot be better seen than by means of the natural influxes which take place and appear in this world-as by the influx of heat from the sun into all things of the earth. H.S. 6190

2. There is a continual influx of virtue from Jesus Christ Himself, as from the head into the members, and from a vine into the branches; (Posthumous theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg Volume One Sess. vi.18) pg. 540)

3. “These he has from the faculty of receiving influx from the Lord through the angelic heaven…” (The Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, Volume 2)

4. What meaning would there be in all this if man were to stand with his hands hanging down, like a sculptured statue with movable joints, and wait for influx? the joints meanwhile being inwardly excited to something that is not of faith, without being able to apply themselves to the reception of the influx.(Swedenborg’s Works: True Christian Religion, pg. 484) (emphasis mine)

Now, let’s see how Bill Wilson described the hoped for effect of LSD on alcoholics. Note also Wilson’s complete lack of comprehension concerning the grace of Jesus Christ.

Wilson surmised, “It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God’s grace possible. If, therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going–well, that might be of some help.”[3] (emphasis mine)

It is doubtful the use of the word “influx” is simply coincidental.

Was Wilson a Swedenborgian? No. Neither was he a biblical Christian.

Source Notes:

1. DOCTRINAL RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, THE OXFORD GROUP, AND THE NEW CHURCH, Robert D. Merrill

2. Robert Thomsen, Bill W., pg.85

3. PASS IT ON, pg. 370

A.A.’s spiritual principles in opposition to Christ

“Twelve-Step programs are in essence…Archetypical precursors of a one-world religion,” wrote Martin and Deidre Bobgan. [1]

Three anti-biblical principles are percolating away in Alcoholics Anonymous. We find them in the Steps themselves. These are: 1) denial of the biblical Savior, Jesus Christ; 2) generic, Christ-less versions of “sin” and “repentance”; and 3) the use of spiritually deceptive meditation.

So, where is all this in Alcoholics Anonymous theology? Let’s take a look:

Spiritual Principle Number One: Alcoholics Anonymous promulgates the “higher power” concept (3rd Step). This can be anything from a bird to Buddha to bubble bath; a spirit, a new age “Jesus,” the universe or … you get my point here. In A.A. theology, Jesus Christ is reduced to one higher power among many. In other words, it does not matter what you believe in, only that you believe in something.

And that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:11)

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

Spiritual Principle Number Two: The twelve steps feature generic replacements for biblical repentance and sin (5th, 6th, and 7th Steps):

Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the nature of our wrongs.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects or character.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove all these defects of character.

Through the dominance and proliferation of twelve step programs, we already have millions of “spiritual, not religious”* people who have been taught it is okay to design or imagine a higher power; and who believe they are right with their “god” because they have confessed “wrongs” and asked the higher power to remove “defects of character.”

The biblical Savior, sin, and repentance are unpopular subjects in the vast majority of twelve step meetings.

Yet, without Christ, there is no forgiveness of sin. The Bible tells us: For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6)

Spiritual Principle Number Three: Meditation (A.A.’s 11th Step).

Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

A proverb from “the Hindu spiritual tradition” [2] is the beginning of the popular A.A. meditation book, Twenty-Four Hours A Dayby Richmond Walker. Walker’s book, published in the 1940s, encourages entrance into the contemplative silence. Much of Twenty-four Hours A Day is based on the blasphemous book, God Calling, which was written via the occultic practice of automatic writing.

Richmond Walker, like A.A. co-founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, had been a member of the ecumenical Oxford Group, which was at the heighth of its popularity in the 1930s.

Initially presented by pro-A.A. author Dick B. and others as a Christian movement, the Oxford Group should be viewed as an anti-biblical root of Alcoholics Anonymous.**

In his sermon, The Oxford Group Movement: Is It Scriptural?, Pastor H.A. Ironside stated that the Oxford Group “appeals to people who reject the inspiration of [the Bible] as well as to those who profess to believe it; it appeals to people who deny the Deity of Christ as well as to those who acknowledge it; to those who deny the eternal punishment of sin as well as to those who believe in it. Here in our city it is openly endorsed by the Swedenborgians and by the leaders of the Unitarians.” [3]

Yet, in terms of influence upon A.A., it is the Oxford Group’s approach to meditation that has far too often been overlooked. H.A. Ironside also gave this warning: “Each [Oxford Group] member is urged … to sit quietly with the mind emptied of every thought … waiting for God to say something to them…. Sometimes they tell me nothing happens, at other times the most amazing things come. Tested by the Word of God, many of these things are unscriptural. They lay themselves open for demons to communicate their blasphemous thoughts to them.”[4] (bold mine)

Since early A.A. members came out of the Oxford Group, did this dangerous and deceptive meditation practice come with them?

“In A.A. circles however, ‘meditation’ also took on some of the characteristics of what the Oxford Group called ‘having a morning quiet time.’ So A.A. members might in fact, not only read and think about what the reading for the day said in their meditational book, but also spend a short time blanking out all their conscious thoughts and just remaining still and quiet in God’s presence, while waiting for God’s guidance to give them instructions for the day,” wrote A.A. historian Glenn C. [5]

A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson encouraged alcoholics to seek meditative knowledge wherever it could be found–so this could be in Hinduism, Buddhism, distant libraries, the local Catholic church, or anywhere else. He states, “The actual experience of meditation and prayer across the centuries is, of course, immense. The world’s libraries and places of worship are a treasure trove for all seekers.” [6]

Obviously, A.A. does not emphasize adherence to biblical meditation. During biblical meditation, the mind remains active as we ponder and ruminate upon Scripture. This is far, far removed from mind-emptying New Age/Eastern meditation and so-called “contemplative prayer.”

Contemplative prayer is essentially the same as New Age/Eastern meditation, but is presented with Christian terminology. In the New Age/Eastern/contemplative practice, the goal is to enter into the silence, and it is here that profound spiritual deception can occur.

Not every single A.A. member engages in the wide-open meditation of the 11th Step. Still, it should be understood that two spiritual factors have torn through the culture and the Body of Christ, dictating for many the very understanding of God. These factors are meditation and “higher power” theology.

Both, as we have seen, can be found in Alcoholics Anonymous.

(For more on A.A.’s unholy origin and teachings, go to this blog’s search engine and type in Alcoholics Anonymous)

Endnotes:
1. Martin and Deidre Bobgan, 12 Steps to destruction, pg. 116
2. Richmond Walker and the Twenty-Four Hour Book by Glenn C.
3. The Oxford Group Movement: Is It Scriptural? (Sermon by H.A. Ironside)
4. The Oxford Group Movement: Is It Scriptural? (Sermon by H.A. Ironside)
5. Twelve-Step Meditation, Part 1, Meditation in traditional spirituality by Glenn C.
6. Bill Wilson, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 98

* This A.A.cliche has gone mainstream.

** Walter Houston Clark noted, “Neither is [the Oxford Group] concerned with what a person’s beliefs are or even that he have a belief at all. If a person remonstrates that he cannot believe in God, he is told to act as if there were one, and to see what happens. The Group practice of religion is highly pragmatic…” (Walter Houston Clark, The Oxford Group: Its History and Significance, pgs. 110-111)

When self-help fails

“God will allow us to follow self-help, self-improvement programs until we have tried them all, until we finally come to the honest confession, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t be righteous in my own strength!’ It is then, when we admit our utter powerlessness, that we find hope. For it is then when the Lord intervenes to do a work that we could not do for ourselves.” ~ Chuck Smith

Pastor imprisoned in Turkey “astounded” by mounting hostility to Christian faith in the U.S.

DENVER — Andrew Brunson, the U.S. pastor who spent two years in a Turkish prison, said Friday he was “astounded” by the escalating hostility toward Christians in the United States, saying they have become the “target” of activists,” writes Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times.

“I’m really astounded at the speed at which the U.S. is imploding,” said Mr. Brunson at the Western Conservative Summit, held annually by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. (click here to continue reading the rest of Valerie Richardson’s article)