A More 'Macho' Church

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Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael, thanks for tuning in. Coming up in today’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Book of Acts, and “Why did Paul want to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost?” In Religion in the News, “A more macho church.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “What is the subconscious mind?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge. We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.

Now, this week’s Cover Article. Tom and Dave continue our series of programs based on their book, Psychology and the Church: Critical Questions, Crucial Answers . This week we focus on the question, “What’s wrong with inner healing?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary . You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. In this first segment of Search the Scriptures Daily, Psychology and the Church has been our topic of discussion and it developed into a series of programs which, the Lord willing, we hope to conclude in the next week or so. So, Dave, as you know, we focused specifically on psychological counseling as practiced by secular psychologists and psychiatrists and those who call themselves Christian psychotherapists, those who attempt to mix their secular education and training in psychology with their Christian worldview. What I’d like to talk about today is the psychologically influenced movements that have led the evangelical church further away from the sufficiency of God’s Word. And that’s why we’ve brought this series to the program because the evangelical church, almost exponentially has left the Word of God for these methods, techniques, ideas of men rather than God’s Word. I’m thinking about movements such as inner healing ministries, twelve-steps programs, Theophostic prayer counseling, Celebrate Recovery, and others, and nearly all of them—and this is my concern, Dave, nearly all of them shroud psychological concepts and techniques in spiritual terms so they seem devoid of psychology, which is far from the case. I’m going to start with inner healing.

Dave:

Yeah, well, Tom, I guess the mother, or the goddess of inner healing would be Agnes Sanford, she was associated with John and Paula Sandford.

Tom:

Episcopalian, right, influenced people like Ruth Carter Stapleton and numerous others, which we will address.

Dave:

Agnes Sanford was so bad it is unbelievable. I used to call her, the charismatics Mary Baker Eddy because it was basically Christian Science that she was teaching, although it was a little beyond that even, New Age.

Tom:

Influenced by Carl Jung, so that’s the psychological connection here, part of it.

Dave:

Yeah, I think she dreamed up a lot of it herself. She grew up in China and she picked up a lot of ideas over there, the Thao, the force. She said God is a life force in everyone and you can do this with your mind, you can project this force to others. She was into visualization—a burglar comes into your house, visualize him as a gentle, kind Christian man. And when you pray for your children, you visualize them as what you want them to be. Now, of course, Yongi Cho still teaches that sort of thing. It’s occultism, it’s an occult technique, not the Bible. You wouldn’t find any gospel in her teaching. Let me just quote from some of the things. She said, “God is a form of energy like electricity, the original force that we call God. We are part of God—not true, He is nature, not true. She talks about confronting a snake and she says, “I was conscious of oneness with God, and therefore with the snake, which God had made.” From Emmett Fox, he calls himself, one of Charles Fillmore’s spiritual children—

Tom:

The founder of Unity School of Christianity, Charles Fillmore.

Dave:

Right, Charles Fillmore. She picked up many ideas, let me quote some of them. “God’s love was blacked out from man by negative thought vibrations.” My gracious, I thought it was sin! And it wasn’t that God’s love was ever blacked out from man. God always loved man. “Jesus lowered His thought vibrations to the thought vibrations of humanity.” No, Jesus became a man, born of a virgin. Tom, she’s got the wrong Jesus, the wrong God, and “through His thought vibrations He accomplished the at-one-ment, the atonement.” But that’s a unity term that Fillmore called, and I’m quoting Fillmore now, “Reconciliation of man’s mind with the divine mind through the superconsciousness of Christ’s mind.” You see, these people don’t believe in Jesus—well, you could say, everyone that confesseth not that Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. Now, you would say everybody believes that. Well, but it means He came once and for all. He didn’t reincarnate. He was resurrected and He was a real man. God and man in one person. Now, she denies that, and she says He came to bring the mind of man together with the divine mind. Now this is religious science that God is the great mind. And it’s amazing, Tom, I could get sarcastic, but this universal mind, they call it by various names, strangely enough does not have a mind of its own. And although it’s in control of everything, because it created everything, this mind, yet we can project our thoughts into this mind and get this mind to do what we want it to do. She commends the prayers of unity and other modern schools of prayer, which, this is her statement, “project the power of God for healing.” She gives four steps for tapping into the God force, the second being, “to turn it on we simple say, Whoever you are, whatever you are, come into me.” So, those who follow those instructions would be inviting demons into them. Even the Hindu’s know better than that. She quotes a scientist, “A vibration of very, very high intensity and extremely fine wave length with tremendous healing power caused by spiritual forces operating through the mind of man is the next thing scientists expect to discover.” See, she’s trying to make it scientific. I’m sorry, I’ve talked too long, Tom. She’s like a Mary Baker Eddy, this is Christian Science.

Tom:

Yeah, and Dave, the connection here, and this is what we’re trying to point out, that Agnes Sanford, among others, they take concepts of psychotherapy, they intermix them with spiritual terms. Most of this is mind science, and in the process Christians buy into it. They say, Well, she doesn’t have anything to do with psychology, she really, you know, on the one hand, she said, No, this is spiritual. On the other hand, she seems to support what she’s saying through psychology. Let me give you a quote from one of her books. She says, ”Oh, my dear, you’re seeing them sick, cried the beautiful minister, If your subconscious mind does not really believe it’s going to be well, you only fasten the illness on him.” This is religious science, mind science, but the subconscious, Freudian idea, Jungian idea, the collective unconscious, this is how this stuff filters down and impacts evangelicals today, and it’s happening big time, Dave, as you know. Now Dave, the other individual that she really influenced greatly was Richard Foster, and I’ll give you a quote from his book. He says, “I’ve been greatly helped in my understanding of the value of the imagination in praying for others by Agnes Sanford, and my dear friend pastor Bill Vaswig.” So, she has had great influence in a really unbiblical way, but she is influencing many people in the interviewing movement. Now Dave, what about memories, repressed memories, that’s a major part of that process?

Dave:

Well, let me give you just one more quote from Agnes Sanford, so people really understand how bad this lady was. She says, “We can be made ill by negative vibrations. We can heal ourselves and others through positive vibrations, now what’s the point of asking God to do it?” See, you mentioned this is science of mind, this is the power of the mind. Look, let me explain it this way: everybody knows what a placebo is. You give a person a placebo, you give a person a placebo—

Tom:

Well, it’s a sugar pill, it’s a pill that has no value whatsoever except that it seems to be a pill.

Dave:

Right, and you tell the person that it is a pain killer. Now, in 50% or more in the cases it kills their pain. And you see the power is not in the pill, but it’s in your belief, what your mind is thinking, so what is the power of the mind? So what she has done, and many others, they’ve reduced God to a placebo. He doesn’t really have to exist, and it doesn’t matter what God you believe in so long as you believe in—like AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, a higher power, never mind what you call it. Then your mind, it’s your belief in this placebo that does the work. So, she said: “We can heal ourselves and others through positive vibrations, and we could even forgive the sins of others and turn them into Christians in the same way.” She says, for example: Project—here’s a burglar that has come into your house—“Project into the burglar’s mind the love of God, by seeing him as a child of God, and asking God to bless him.” Then she goes on and says: “A new age is being born when love power projected at the command of ministers and surveyors of children and everyone, it’s sufficient to change hearts. This is the beginning of a new order, dawning of a new day.” Tom, you want to make a connection. There’s a connection because, as we’ve tried to explain, what is psychology? What are they dealing with? Well, it’s self! They will says, Well, you don’t use 90% of your brain, you know, and so forth. But anyway, what they are trying to do is get the person thinking in the right direction. Now it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. Tom, it reminds me of the hospice movement. It doesn’t matter what you comfort the person with just so you comfort them. Now you can’t comfort them with eternal life, you can’t comfort them with, you will awaken in heaven, you can’t comfort them with, Christ died for your sins and He loves you— No, that would be religion. So you just try to smooth everything over and comfort them. Now that’s the power of the mind, and what Agnes Sanford taught, and really it’s in psychology. There is no reality out there because psychology is atheistic. And now Christians are going to try to take this atheistic, materialistic, humanistic movement and its ideas and somehow apply them to the Bible, integrate them to the Bible as though the Bible is not sufficient.

Tom:

Well, Dave, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, yes, it’s atheistic on the one hand, on the other hand it’s very spiritual. We talked about the religions of the East coming to the West and psychological concepts and terms. Now, here’s a quote from Agnes Sanford, this is out of, The Seduction of Christianity : “Wise men of India, for many centuries have trod the lofty peaks of meditation developing their psycho spiritual powers, giving birth to their over souls, spirits of those dead for whom we have prayed on earth are working through us.” And this is an integration of Eastern mysticism, of mind science, which is really—that goes back to Eastern mysticism doesn’t it?

Dave:

Right. Okay, Tom, so when we exposed this in, The Seduction of Christianity everybody was against us. They were upset and at Joan Wimber’s Vineyard fellowship—I don’t know about today, but her books were selling well. They are probably still selling well in—at one time they were best sellers—Christian bookstores. Does no one have any discernment? And John and Paula Sanford, they were associated with her for years, they have denounced us, and yet they admit that she was involved in Unity, in spiritualism, in occultism. John even declared that she had been unsaved and demon possessed at the time she wrote The Healing Light , and founded the schools of pastoral care where he taught with her and that he led her to Christ and cast the demon out in 1964! Yet they are studying inner healing and learning it from this woman!

Tom:

Right. Dave, one of the tragedies of this movement, especially as it was taken to heart in many Christian circles, was repressed memories and healing of memories.

Dave:

Right, she’s the one who led the church into the healing of memories.

Tom:

Exactly. Dave, I want to move on to 12-Steps. Throughout the church, the evangelical church, we have all kinds of Steps programs, and so on and so forth, and 7-Steps—Well, I’ll get into some of them, but 12-Steps, that whole thrust goes back to Bill Wilson who was one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, and again, what we’re trying to do here is show you the connection, show our listeners, our viewers, the connection between psychotherapy, psychological counseling ideas, concepts, and so on, and what’s happening in the church today. Here’s a letter that Bill Wilson wrote to Carl Jung. Because we said, AA had its origins in really the master occultist, spiritualist Carl Jung psychiatrist. Anyway, Bill Wilson writes to him: “AA actually started long ago in your consulting room, and it was directly founded upon your own humility and deep perception. You will also be interested to learn that in addition to the spiritual experience, many AA’s, that is those in Alcoholic Anonymous, report a great variety of psychic phenomenon, the cumulative weight of which is very considerable. Other members have, following their recovery in AA—and of course, you never fully recover, you’re always in recovering—been much helped by Jungian analysts—that is those who follow the concepts and teachings Carl Jung—a few have been intrigues by the I Cheng, and your remarkable introduction to that work. Letter from Bill Wilson, co-founder AA, to Carl Jung. So, Dave, in other places I’ve read, psychological journals, and so on, they give Carl Jung credit for really being the founder, in a sense, of AA.

Dave:

All right, let’s make another connection. Carl Jung had his own spirit guide, well, he probably had quite a few of them actually.

Tom:

He did.

Dave:

And he was in touch with them, he got his inspiration from them, much of which Christian psychologists study and pass on to their followers today came from Carl Jung who got it from the demonic world. And this is where Agnes Sanford got her wisdom and what she passed on into the church.

Tom:

Now Dave, as—well, I guess we didn’t mention it, I thought we mentioned it before the program went on, but her son John Sanford, an Episcopal priest, was also a Jungian, Carl Jungian analyst.

Dave:

Right. Tom, it’s beyond comprehension. Now you mentioned, Celebrate Recovery, well, you went to the course, you took the whole thing, and this is just from Alcoholics Anonymous. They deny that its involved with the 12-Steps? Tell us what you learned there.

Tom:

Well, this is interesting because, again, what we’re trying to demonstrate here is how in these programs that have been spiritualized they actually come out of psychology. And it really goes back to occultism, to Eastern mysticism, and so on. In a 12-Steps program, would it be AA, or some derivation of it within the church, you have not psychotherapists running these programs, but you have basically those who are in recovery. Now, as you said, I went through Celebrate Recovery, which is Rick Warren’s program that has influenced 4,500 churches around the world. It’s part of Prison Fellowship, they have a contract with Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship. So this has been introduced into the church in a heavy way. You have basically, psychobabble, psychological ideas and concepts now that are being taught, not by psychiatrists or psychotherapists, but those who are in recovery of some form or another, whether it be sexual addiction or alcohol or drug abuse, whatever it might be.

Dave:

Everybody is in recovery because you never recover.

Tom:

Right, and the terminology to thinking is all psychological ideas, psychological counseling. Sometimes they put in Jesus, and so on, but at best it’s a mixture. At worst it just destroys anybody’s belief in the sufficiency of God’s Word to solve their problems.

Dave:

Now, Tom, I’ve read some literature, I didn’t take the course like you did, but if I recall, a church that doesn’t have Celebrate Recovery, well then you should go to Alcoholics Anonymous, shouldn’t you?

Tom:

We were instructed to take that counsel as I was going through the program.

Dave:

And didn’t they begin with a quotation or statement acclimation?

Tom:

All the small meetings start with repeating the 12-Steps out of AA.

Dave:

Now Tom, I’m astonished, because I sent material to Rick. I love Rick, I believe he loves the Lord, but how could he get involved in this, and I tried to tell him where it came from, Bill Wilson of course. It was dictated to him from the demonic world.

Tom:

That’s why in this letter he talks about spiritual experience. He was into séances, he was into any way he could contact the spirit realm, but not the biblical world.

Dave:

But the man in charge of Celebrate Recovery—well, from which it spread from Rick’s church all over the world—he’s in recovery still and Tom, tell us how every testimony begins.

Tom:

Well, Dave, through the program it began by, as it happens in AA, you have to identify yourself as somebody who is going through or dealing with an addiction problem. So consequently, you acknowledge that you’re—you give your name and you say that I am going through this particular addiction to sex, or addiction to alcohol, or whatever it might be, but now it’s Christianized or at least you are dealing with this in the name of Jesus, and so on. Everybody who was instructing from this had to begin their introduction of themselves by saying that they are in this form of recovery.

Dave:

Tom, it reminds me of Larry Crabb. I met with Larry Crabb also. One of the strange things he says, he talks about everybody has been abused, everybody has something they’ve got to recover from. It’s the same idea. And he mentioned a young man who, No, he says, I haven’t been abused, I don’t have anything to recover from, and Larry Crabb says, Those are the really hard cases!

Tom:

Sure, because that’s why you have to announce what you’re going through because if you don’t you’re in denial, if you don’t lay it out front for everybody.

Dave:

Now this is real fundamentalism, real dogmatism, but it’s contrary to the Word of God.

Tom:

Dave, it’s psychobabble, it’s the concepts and ideas of the world that have been introduced into the church, and again, the heartbreak here is, first and foremost it undermines the sufficiency of the Word of God and transform a life.

Dave:

And of Christ. Where does Jesus Christ fit into this? Tom, just one quick question I would like to ask you. Where did the gospel come into this? In other words, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We preach the gospel and people come to faith in Christ and their lives are transformed. What part did that play in Celebrate Recovery?

Tom:

Dave, the focus is on the procedure. The focus is on the steps. So, even for those in small groups, and they have meeting after meeting after meeting, there is no time for Bible study, there is no time for central issue of the gospel, that’s a sad situation.

Dave:

And it’s really taking over the church.

Gary :

This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. Still to come, answers to your questions in Contending for the Faith, and in Understanding the Scriptures, Dave and Tom will resume their conversation on God’s Salvation. In addition to this radio program we publish a monthly newsletter, which we make available free for charge. We also produce and distribute a wide variety of teaching materials including books in print, e-book and audio book formats, CD’s, DVD’s, and other items to encourage the serious study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials or to get a copy of today’s broadcast write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, call our toll free order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org . If you would like a copy of this broadcast on compact disk ask for Program #2107, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. And now, if you would like to watch Dave and Tom, our weekly broadcast is available on DVD, ask about a subscription when you contact us. You can also download both audio and video podcast at our website. If you receive television programming from Sky Angel you will be able to view our video, A Woman Rides the Beast, featuring Dave Hunt, on June 24 ^th starting at 12:00 noon Eastern, we invite you to tune in. We are planning our second prophecy conference for this August 9 ^th through the 11 ^th , here in Bend . The Judgment Day Conference will again feature Dave and Tom plus special guest archeologist and Middle East expert Randall Price, former Israeli General Shimon Erem, and former PLO militant Walid Shoebat, imprisoned for acts of terror and violence against Israel , he is now an advocate for his former enemy. All the information is at our website, or ask about registration when you call or write. We’ll repeat this information at the end of the program.

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Associated Press, April 7, 2007 , with a headline: Men Only Church Timed Sermons Meets in Gym, the following are excerpts. No hymnals, no pews, no steeple, no stained glass windows, and no women. This ain’t your grandma’s church. Organizers of the Church for Men say that guys are bored stiff in many churches today. We try to make it interesting for them, we meet in a gym and we talk about issues that mess men up, said Mike Ellis, 46, the church’s founder. The Church for Men meets one Saturday evening per month drawing about 70 guys dressed in everything but straight laced and neckties. The service features a rock band, a shop clock to time the preacher’s message, and a one hour in and out guarantee. Long church services also cause men to leave the fold, said Ellis, who first got the idea for a “man only” church six years ago. I have the attention span of a flea, he said, they say that if you don’t get a man’s attention in 6 to 8 minutes you’ve lost them. To that end, followers at Church for Men meet on a basketball court, a large score board with a time clock insures the preacher’s message is delivered in 15 minutes, and the same rock band that opened for Bad Company and the Georgia Satellites a month ago, bangs out a three song set of hard rocking tunes. Other churches with a male bent include Grove Community Church in Peoria , Illinois . Members there don’t have a pastor, they have a coach who integrates a healthy life-giving masculine spirit throughout the entire church, according to the church’s website.

Tom:

Dave, there is so much of this going on, it raises the question: What’s the point of going to church? why have a church? Or let’s do whatever we can to make the church as attractive as we can. But it still comes back to, What’s the point of a church, Dave?

Dave:

Well, they meet together to worship the Lord, to fellowship with one another, and they pray for one another and with one another, and to talk to the Lord in prayer, to edify one another. We were reading, last week, wasn’t it? Or the week before, I can’t remember, Tom, but Paul preached all night, went down past midnight until the sun was up in the morning and they loved it! Why?

Tom:

You mean, there was no shop corner, there was no—

Dave:

They are in love with the Lord and they want to study His Word.

Tom:

Amen.

Dave:

Now, this is just catering to the weaknesses and the lack of understanding and spirituality of men. The Psalmist said: My soul thirsts for God, as the hart pants after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, Oh God. David said: “One thing have I desired, Psalm:27:4One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple., of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” Tom, if they went to a basketball game, shot clock, sure, to keep the thing moving along, but if that game went into overtime, especially if their team is in behind and just tied it up the last minute— how long does a basketball, NBA takes at least two hours, more than that, and these guys, you’ve got to do it in 15 minutes! There is something basically wrong with their whole attitude.

Tom:

Well, Dave, it’s really simple, they are attracting the men on the basis of feeding their flesh. And then they say, Well, where are we going to do it for 15 minutes so we can get to their spirit because their spirit can only handle it for 15 minutes or 30 minutes. And let’s take other churches, we have the same program, you attract them in on the basis of the flesh and then you think that you are going to speak to them spiritual things that they are going to take heart to or be under conviction by? Not that that can’t happen, but Dave, you know the axiom, what brings them in keeps them in. You bring them in with feeding the flesh, it’s a bottomless pit, you’ve got to keep feeding it.

Dave:

And as you began, Tom, what’s the point? What’s the point? Jesus said: I will build my church, on this rock I’ll build my church. Peter confessed, You’re the Christ, the Son of the living God, and you think of that. Jesus said: Where two or three are gathered together in my name—I don’t know whether they meet in the name of Jesus, I don’t think Jesus would approve of this, but anyway—there am I in the midst of them. Now, what does Jesus have to do with this? What does the fact that He died for our sins on the cross have to do with this? What is the fact that, If any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation, old things have passed away, all things have become new. There’s a difference between a Christian and the world, but these men are in the world. They still want to live like the world, think like the world, act like the world, and well, we might just squeeze a little bit of spirituality in there, but don’t overdo it because this is a Church for Men. Now, the Bible says that the man is the leader of the house, he is supposed to be the spiritual head and leader and inspire her for the church as well. And this pastor, I guess that’s what they call him—No, no, he’s a coach.

Tom:

Well, some churches they call him coach, because we don’t want to intimidate people by a preacher.

Dave:

He says he has the attention span of a flea. Now I don’t know about a flea or how much their attention span is, but he’s boasting of this? And he hasn’t been able to train himself to do any better? I tell you, if he ever stood in the presence of God, his attention would be focused, he would be on his face. Or if Jesus showed up to one of their meetings, they would be on their faces. There is no reverence, they is no fear of God. Tom, they are lacking a basic understanding of what the whole thing is about. Man is a sinner, rebellious, separated from God—All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned to our own way. These guys want to take their own way, and maybe throw in a little Jesus along the way. But Tom, this is Christianity today, unfortunately, to a very large extent and it’s going like this more and more.

Tom:

Dave, we just had some friends from Hong Kong, a Chinese church in Hong Kong, churches over there, and we’re going to be there in August, the Lord willing, and he said: You guys can talk for 2 or 2 1/2 hours whatever the Lord puts on your heart, and he said, I will tell you they will be riveted. Now if they are riveted on my preaching, Dave, that would be a surprise, but— No, I’ll take that back because if I’m speaking the Word of God by the whole power of the Holy Spirit, even I can keep their attention for a time. I know you will, but the point is that they are looking forward to it, they have a hunger and a desire for that.

Dave:

Amen, that’s the way it ought to be.