A Tantalizing Trick
Mama Bear is back and means business. There’s an idea gaining influence in the church these days that really needs to be addressed. Sometimes it's vaguely described as “going beyond words.”
Hmmmm. Sounds lofty, even
intriguing—on the surface, maybe. It's time to scratch below the surface, and expose it for what it really is.
The basic gist of this twisted idea goes like this:
"Knowing God through the Bible
is dry and meaningless.
The
written Word of God is lifeless and boring.
If you’re stuck in the traditional and old standby ways of
knowing God through His Word,
you’re totally missing out.
You need to go beyond words.
You need an experience without words
where you communicate with God
through a mystical soul connection in silence or through 'contemplative prayer.'
That’s how
you really listen to God."
(I previously wrote here about what "contemplative prayer" is and why “contemplative prayer” is neither prayer nor meditation by any Biblical standard.)
Here's the problem.
This idea goes against everything we know
about the way God has communicated with people since the dawn of time.
The word of God
has been an active agent and central player in history since the first recorded
day of creation when God said,“Let
there be light.” Throughout the
years, the Word of the Lord has come
to many people, and the prophets are famous for saying, “Thus says the Lord . . .” The disciple John calls Jesus simply, “the Word,” in John chapter 1. And Hebrews 1, in introducing the
uniqueness of Jesus, says that, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and
in many ways, in these last days has spoken
to us in His Son . . .”
Jesus made it clear that remembering what He said was a high
priority when He explained what the Holy Spirit would do in His disciples after He
returned to heaven. “But the
helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach
you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you”
(John 14:26). Matthew’s and
John’s recorded gospel accounts and the letters from Peter and John are
evidence of this work of the Holy Spirit through His disciples.
Yet there are those today who dare to say that knowing our
Lord through the written word of God is dry and unfulfilling. Just imagine for a moment what Jesus
would say to that!
Peter Anticipated This Deception
Peter was very concerned that believers in our Lord Jesus
Christ understand the importance of and pay close attention to what the
disciples wrote and taught. In
light of the fact that false teachers would inevitably come, Peter was
passionate that the accurate message from God—delivered by His true prophets
and by Jesus’ disciples—should continue to be the essential lifeline of the
church.
"This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of a reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles." (II Peter 3:1-2)
Knowing that He didn’t have much longer on the earth,
Peter’s consuming passion was to urge the Church to stay faithful to the
teaching they had received from Jesus’ disciples. He was determined that after he went on to Heaven the
believers would always be able to remember what He had told them. And
Peter reminded them that he and the other disciples hadn’t been propagating cleverly
devised tales, but that the disciples had been eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life and
teachings.
Listen again to more from Peter’s impassioned end-of-life plea for our
diligent attention to the truth of God’s message that had been revealed in
Jesus before his very eyes.
“Therefore, I will
always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know
them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. I consider it right, as long as I am in
this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the
laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ
has made clear to me.
And I will also be
diligent that at any time after my departure you will be able to call these
things to mind. For we did not
follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory
from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic
Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”—and we ourselves
heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the mountain.
So we have the
prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a
lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises
in your hearts. But know this
first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own
interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men
moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
But false prophets
also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among
you, who will secretly introduce heresies, even denying the Master who bought
them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves” (II Peter 1:12-2:1).
We are given no instruction anywhere in Scripture to
disregard previous Scripture or to “go beyond words.” The methods used to "go beyond words" are the very same
techniques used by persons involved in the occult to contact demons. It is no wonder that Paul writes in I
Timothy 4:1 that, “the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will
fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines
of demons.”
A Ticket to Trouble
The surest way to fall prey to false teaching is to
circumvent and ignore the Word of God as the source of our knowledge of Him,
His will, and His ways. And how
like Satan to push, with only slightly updated packaging, his same old lie that
we’re missing out on something by sticking to what God has already said.
If you're wondering if any false teaching has already come from contemplative prayer, wonder no more. So-called "Christian" practitioners of contemplative prayer/contemplative spirituality "awaken" to accept the idea that humanity's problem is not what the Bible calls "sin" at all. No, instead they become convinced that people's main spiritual problem is that they do not yet realize that they are actually already divine. Practitioners also "awaken" to accept the idea that all religions are essentially the same at the core, and that all religions are essentially just separate wells into the same "wisdom stream."
Claiming to receive personal sightings and messages from God forms the perfect cover for lies, for teachings that completely contradict God's written revelation in the Bible. People who get their own messages through contemplative/mystical means see no need to test what what was revealed to them against what God has already said because they have already rejected the written Word as outdated and irrelevant. Their experience is a real super-natural experience (albeit originating from the demonic realm), so no one can argue that they didn't experience something. The problem is that, as Paul pointed out, Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
Please, friends, be warned! If
you choose to go beyond words, you choose to enter a spiritually dark fog where
you’re more likely destined to find yourself over a cliff with no way out, and taking direction from demons, than
to end up in any sort of truly enlightened state.
