What's Wrong With Inner Healing?

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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.