They made [the LORD God] jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed to demons, which are not God–gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

The LORD saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters. “I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols (Deuteronomy 32:16-21).

Creating The Mystic Mush God

It would be hard to argue that a major error of the contemporary new evangelical Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD), rooted as it is in the mysticism of the Contemplative Spirituality movement, is an over-emphasis on the New Testament revelation of God. The postmodern religious skeptics who dominate the leadership of the cult of the Emergent Church are particularly guilty of this glaring mistake. In my view it’s really little wonder because the actual holy and just, as well as loving and merciful, Yahweh Elohim–LORD God–revealed in the Old Testament has a tendency to keep getting in the way of the heavily compromised ECoD and their pet doctrine of seeking “common ground” with other religious traditions.

The opening text is clear that these other “gods” worshipped in these so-called traditions are not really gods at all, but rather are demons. I also don’t intend on doing a full apologetic here concerning the unchanging nature of God and the literal fact that the Bible also teaches that Christ Jesus of Nazareth is the LORD God of the Old Testament Himself in human form. This information is readily available elsewhere. My intention is to draw attention to the sappy caricature of a god which has now been developed by the spiritually spineless leadership within new evangelicalism. The disastrous effect of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, Satan’s own twin towers of sentimental selfishness masquerading as self-esteem, has all but crippled the Christian Church in America with their psychobabble theology centered on pleasing man.

What has been happening is that new evangelicalism has been successful in creating a god who is just like us and even thinks like us. Well how convenient for the leadership of the ECoD, now we can be friends with all the other religions and never have to endure any conflict with the world. They think: “After all, since I’d never want anyone to come into conflict with me and I want to be friends with everyone, why that’s how God must be.” So using the carefully selected teachings of Jesus that they happen to like new evangelical preachers have created the mystic mush god of ecumenicism who accepts whatever beliefs people have spiritually as legitimate if they will but approach him/her “sincerely.” Somehow in the preaching of Jesus about the Kingdom of God this is the “message” they have been deceived into seeing.

Denying God And Love Of Man

What I am trying to help you see here is that now God’s attributes of love and mercy have been horribly magnified out of all Biblical proportion at the expense of His absolute holiness and justice. For you see once we create this mystic mush god of “unconditional love” then “evangelical” groups like YWAM can now openly defy the absolute sovereignty of Almighty God while teaching open theism. They tell us God has to wait until His delightful little creatures autonomously decide what they’re going to do each day before He can deal with the future. The Bible however, flatly contradicts this – “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10).

For those who counter: “That’s just the Old Testament, it has to do with Israel.” I believe the Lord would say to you – “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). Because the verse from Isaiah sure seems to be in agreement with Ephesians 1:11, which just happens to be in the New Testament – In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. So now we have YWAM leaders openly contradicting the clear teachings of Scripture from within the Body of Christ warping young minds into thinking God that doesn’t know the future. And all anyone says is, “Ah, no problem let’s just love each other.”

Brazen men like Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and Steve Chalke come emerging from satanic shadows with their own outright denials of our gracious and merciful God’s glorious plan of the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of Christ Jesus of Nazareth upon the Cross. “Oh no,” say more and more corrupt spiritual leaders in the Emergent Church, “that’s not what happened with the crucifixion.” Here again we have a direct contradiction of Holy Scripture, and from the mouth of the Lord Christ Himself no less! I wish to tell you that if the Master Himself didn’t know why He came then you can believe that fools like McLaren and Chalke sure don’t either! But through God the Holy Spirit the only begotten God the Son plainly tells us why He was sent by God the Father – “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Think I’m kidding, check the cover story from the May 2006 issue of Christianity Today. Still I venture that the proper view of our Lord’s atonement is not exactly some difficult idea based on a couple of obscure passages in Old Testament Scripture which requires years of study in biblical hermeneutics to correctly understand. And it’s right out in the light of the New Testament as well. Paul’s pretty clear when he tells us – that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3). Then later the Apostle John, the disciple Jesus loved, tells us unmistakably about Christ’s mission – This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

Readily confessing that I am a skeptical sort by nature myself, we are aware however that John knew Jesus personally and, unlike rubbery new evangelical leaders today, he was actually willing to tell people what he personally believed about God. So with this firsthand information here, it sure seems to me that it is quite likely John was in a much better position to know what our Lord’s true mission was than Emergent Guru Brian McLaren. Unlike his new book of fleshly and mystic musings, I’d offer that what I have just shared from the text of the Bible itself uncovers the Truth that will, not “could,” but will “change everything.” That said, within the ECoD – there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them (2 Peter 2:1). So its not like God hasn’t warned us, and yet despite this we’re told, “Well, we all have a few differences but let’s just love each other.”

Enter The Ecumenical Quaker Richard Foster

So now that we have erected our mystic mush god we have to find a way to make our new religion work, and that’s exactly what this Contemplative Spirituality movement of new evangelical ecumenicism is, another religion entirely. Out goes sola scriptura; out goes the Reformation, and now we have replaced the historic orthodox Christian faith which was once for all delivered to the saints with what mystic Matthew Fox calls a new reformation of “deep ecumenicism.” And within this reemergence of Gnosticism through the practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer (i.e. transcendental meditation for the Christian) we now have yet another fulfillment of Scripture in that the ECoD of new evangelicalism has a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof (2 Timothy 3:5). But what does the rest of that verse tell us to do? Should we invite these Christ-denying vipers into our churches to teach this profane blasphemy of Gnostic mysticism to our unsuspecting young?

God forbid; grow a spiritual backbone won’t you – from such turn away. Did you hear that Southern Baptist Convention? But now that the Devil has established his “deep ecumenical” beachhead of contemplative spirituality through his ECoD within our Lord’s Church they just needed to find themselves a leader who also happens to be an ecumenical contemplative. Ah, this brings us to the Guru of Contemplative Spirituality Richard Foster. Foster, who is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), is even touted by the Pied Piper of Purpose Driven Rick Warren as a leader within the evangelical church itself. You may recall one of my previous articles on Richard Foster Do You Know Where Your Mystic Teachings Come From: Richard Foster. In it I clearly show that the Quakers are as ecumenical a bunch as can be found and I further point out that mysticism is a key component of their worship.

I’d add apostate as well, but I’m not so sure that the Quakers were actualy in the faith to begin with. So for our purposes here let me just share a couple of interesting highlights from an entry of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience (HEMPE). It does seem interesting to me that this particular book is published by HarperSanfrancisco who also happens to publish Richard Foster. HEMPE informs us that the Quakers were “founded about 1650 in England by George Fox.” And that the:

Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, as it is commonly called, stresses a personal, almost mystical knowledge of God and the workings of the Lord’s “inner light” within all people… At about age twenty, George Fox,…began suffering religious misgivings and spiritual longings. He consulted with various Anglican and Puritan ministers and priests, but they dismissed him as slightly deranged. Fox felt entirely alone until 1647, when at the age of twenty-three he heard a voice saying, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition” (556, emphasis mine).

This is exactly where Fox and the Quakers who would follow him jumped track because HEMPE goes on to inform us that “[i]mmediately after, Fox received the first of four insights.” It is so-called insight number four that most concerns this work as we are told:

Fox’s fourth insight was that faith is based solely on firsthand knowledge of Christ as living, personal reality, not on logic, reasoning, historical reporting, or even Scripture. This empirical proof came to be called the Quaker Way: the idea that worshippers need not consult preachers or the Bible to receive knowledge of the Holy Spirit – the so-called “inner light of Christ” present in every human heart (ibid., emphasis added).

Here we have the agreement in Fox’s theology with classic Gnostic mysticism which also taught taught there was an inner light in man that they referred to as “a divine spark within” every human being. If this isn’t bad enough it now gets worse as HEMPE points out that in 1652 Fox “prayed at a place called Pendle Hill” and then “he received a vision explaining his mission to show Christ in the Present Tense as a personal Being.” Following this vision “Fox met with a group of Seekers who, overcome with his message, converted” (ibid.). Yikes based on the response to my previous and quite Biblically sound missive Take Off The Gloves at the Slice Of Laodicea website I shudder to think what might have happened to Fox if he had been around today.

Seriously however, this information is critical to understand the theological background from which Richard Foster himself emerges. This might help explain why being listed at the LSTP might not even bother him in the first place. In closing for now, personally I find it interesting that another of these “living spiritual teachers” is Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. As I have previously pointed out Guru Foster is heavily influenced by the late mystic Thomas Merton. It’s no secret that Merton was friends with Nhat Hahn and we already know how much Foster admires Merton. So maybe this explains why Foster doesn’t really seem to mind his being listed at the LSTP website. I can’t help but wonder; Foster greatly respected Thomas Merton who was also closely yoked with Nhat Hahn, so could it be that Richard Foster himself actually wants to be associated in such a way with this Zen Roshi Thich Nhat Hahn?

…please know this will be continued…