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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, it’s great to have you with us. 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 “Who are the grievous wolves Paul warned us about?” In Religion in the News, “The Post-Rapture Post Office.” We’ll take a look at that story and address the question: “Is Jesus of purely Jewish descent?” 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 their new series of programs addressing the popular spiritual phenomenon known as The Secret . This week we focus on the question, “Is The Secret a recipe for getting what you want?” 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. Welcome to our first segment of our program in which we’re addressing The Secret . If you’ve not heard of The Secret , it’s a recipe for getting everything you want from a god-like power or force. It’s been described by the promoters of The Secret as “a supreme genie with unlimited number of wishes available.”
Dave:
Tom, we’ve got a problem, though. The “secret” is out. So it’s not a secret anymore. How can they call it a “secret?”
Tom:
Oh, Dave, you’re spoiling their marketing.
Dave:
Oh. Ok. Alright. I’m sorry, I interrupted you.
Tom:
Yeah. The Secret —it is out. You know that. It’s no longer a secret. But, it’s an 80-minute video and a book based upon the video, and thanks mostly to really huge publicity given by Oprah Winfrey and Larry King on their TV programs, it’s been on the New Times Best Seller List for 17 weeks,
Dave:
Top of it.
Tom:
For most of those 17 weeks, yes, having sold 6 million copies thus far and the DVD has sold more than 2 million copies. Well, so what is The Secret ? Well, Dave, as mentioned last week, I was up in Canada in Edmonton , that’s pretty far north, and at the airport were stacks of The Secret in the airport bookstore. So, this is out and I understand there’s more to come regarding the “secret,” so everybody will know the “secret” if they don’t know of it as of yet.
Dave:
Well, Tom, let me tell our listeners a secret about The Secret . But, I don’t think it’s a secret, either. It doesn’t work, folks. It doesn’t work. It is a fraud. It’s not true. Ok?
Tom:
Well, but Dave, that’s your opinion. So, I think what we need to do—
Dave:
I can give statistics.
Tom:
Here’s what we’ll do. Let’s go over The Secret and analyze what they present in the book which is, the Lord willing, the next few programs. That’s our aim. It’s our objective.
Dave:
Tom, it’s something like the health and wealth gospel that maybe some of our listeners have heard of, at least, not secular listeners, but, and they say—
Tom:
Well, anybody that has a TV who—
Dave:
Right. Oh, yeah.
Tom:
gets religious programming, most of it is about health, prosperity, send me this, send me that—
Dave:
And you should never be sick. You, I guess, you never get sick then you never die unless to be martyred, but they don’t do that anymore, at least not if you stay away from the Muslims. But, Tom, it’s very simple. All the people who have preached, I can name a lot of them, Katherine Kuhlman would be one, whom I knew,
Tom:
Kenneth Hagin.
Dave:
Kenneth Hagin. Well, he died too, didn’t he?
Tom:
E W Kenyon. You can go down the list.
Dave:
And, there is no evidence that any of the people who believed this and taught it lived any longer than anybody else. You would think they should have at least lived to 150 or 200. I know that some of them have,
Tom:
That would give them some credibility, Dave.
Dave:
Yeah, it would. I know that some of them, whom we won’t name, go to the hospital, they’ve had some face lifts and they’ve had to get, maybe, some contact lenses so you don’t know, and all kinds of operations, and so forth. Tom, that doesn’t work either because it’s not biblical, well, this doesn’t even pretend to be biblical and it doesn’t work.
Tom:
Well, Dave, let’s start from a very basic idea as we talk about “The Secret.” First of all, unlike those that you just mentioned who would right up front claim to be Christian, and this approach would be Christian, “The Secret” comes on as more of a sort of metaphysical, or scientific way of going about achieving all that you want.
Dave:
So called, new thought.
Tom:
Right, that’s what it is. “The Secret” really is a religious world view. The belief system is primarily a form of religious science, science of mind, we talked about Earnest Holmes last week, the originator, not really the originator but a major promoter of those idea.
Dave:
Well, the founder of the church of religious science.
Tom:
Right, anyway that view sys that God is really an impersonal spirit which everyone is a personal expression. So God is a divine mind, or intelligence that has influenced, and even some would say, manipulated by our thoughts, because as an impersonal mind out there it needs personal minds to really make it function.
Dave:
Yeah, so you’ve got the great mind out there that has all this power that you can tap into, but it doesn’t have a mind of its own.
Tom:
No.
Dave:
You can use it however you want like the Star Wars Force.
Tom:
Right.
Dave:
Tom, people believe this?
Tom:
Dave, you know as well as I do, again, not only is it a secret this coming around and around and around. We addressed this big time in The Seduction of Christianity , which was written 22 years ago, and that wouldn’t be the first time is has come on the scene here in the United States. Well, let’s go back to religious science. There were numerous movements related to it: we have Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who influences—well, his deal was mental healing, he influenced Mary Baker Eddy in Christian Science.
Dave:
He was a hypnotist.
Tom:
Right, we have new thought, the transcendentalist such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, a unity school of Christianity , Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. And then of late we have these ideas that have entered into Christianity through men like Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking, his disciple Robert Schuller, possibility thinking, and just the men you didn’t name, well, we named some of them, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Frederick Price, Marilyn Hickey, Joyce Myers, and on and on, and there are variations of that with, even Pat Robertson, for example, talks about the laws of reciprocity, and so on in The Secret Kingdom . So these ideas are not new, it’s not a secret, it’s in the church and it’s big time. But Dave. we could go back to antiquity. As we mentioned last week, I believe, this idea came about in the garden of Eden. This was Satan’s main seduction of Eve, he said, You could be as God, and we’re going to get to that point as we develop our analysis of “The Secret.” So, let’s begin, Dave, and what I’d like to do is we go through the book and talk about some of the basis ideas of it, and you give a perspective. Probably the foremost teaching in this book, video, DVD, is the law of attraction. Now I’m going to give you a couple of quotes from the book, and you just tell me what you think, how legitimate are some of these ideas. “Everything that’s coming into you life you are attracting into your life, and it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking, Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you.” Now, another one of the featured individual in the video says, “Thoughts become things” and of course there’s an absolute that they refer to, It says that “the law of attraction is absolute and there are no mistakes.” How legitimate is all that?
Dave:
Well, Tom, it’s pure nonsense. I mean, we talked about it, I think, our first program in this series. Let’s say we both work for General Motors. I’m going to think I’m going to be president and I’m going to hold that thought. Never mind what education I’ve had or what preparation or what business experience, I’m going to be president of General Motors. But you’re thinking the same thought, you’re going to be president of General Motors, and we’ve got a hundred other people in General Motors. Some of the guys out there on the assembly line, they’re thinking, I’m going to be president of General Motors. Now, how does this work, Tom? First of all, this is competition now, this is not just the big mind out there giving us what we want.
Tom:
I’m going to think harder than you, Dave.
Dave:
Yeah, there you go! See, now Jesus said, Whosoever will say to this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea, and so forth.
Tom:
Oh, by the way, as we go through “The Secret” here is what they promote, they claim to be Christian and claim to be taking their ideas from the Bible. Well, we’re going to get to that later.
Dave:
Yeah, well, I have given the illustration for years: Well, you have faith like a grain of mustard seed you can tell this mountain to move? Okay, Tom we’ve got a mountain over here. We’re going to have faith like a grain of mustard seed, that’s all it takes, a grain of mustard seed. But we’ve got a problem, because you want to move the mountain that way and I want to move the mountain this way. Which way is it going to move? Okay, well, whoever has the most positive thoughts, the most powerful thoughts. So now I am in control of this universe? I thought God created the universe, but now He’s left it up to us to shuffle it around as we please. No, I’ll tell you, Tom, that mountain is going to move when and where God wants to move it. And all it takes is a grain of mustard seed’s worth of faith because that’s real faith that God gives me to know what He wants to do. I wouldn’t dare to pray for a mountain to be moved, and command it to be moved if I didn’t know that God wanted that done. That’s why the Bible teaches we pray according to God’s will. But now this mind of these people doesn’t have any mind, it doesn’t have any will. So what this “Secret” here, it’s a license for every human being to be his own god, as you said, that’s the like of the serpent in the garden, and it doesn’t work. I don’t see anybody that’s doing this. Tom, let me give you an example, okay? Here’s Prentice Molford, and you quoted him earlier. He said, Every thought of yours is a real thing, a force, okay. Let me tell you a little bit about Prentice Molford. He died at the age of 57. Now wouldn’t you think he would want to live a little bit longer, to influence more people, to give them this “Secret” and help them in their lives? He was one of the founders of the new thought movement. He said, We each have a higher self and a lower self, and our selves have been growing, you know, the lower self is connected to the body, the higher self has been growing from eternity, I guess, we don’t know when it even began back there.
Tom:
And it’s far better because it’s not physical, this is not physical, this is Gnosticism, isn’t it, Dave?
Dave:
Yeah, and it received thoughts from the supreme power. Now why did the supreme power allow this self to even exist? Why does this supreme power keep giving this power, this self, over which it has no control apparently, but this self can control the higher power, you know, Star Wars Force, and so forth, to thine own self be true, if you’ve heard that one.
Tom:
Sure.
Dave:
What self are we talking about, the higher or the lower self? Tom, this is pure nonsense, but the man died at the age of 57. I don’t think he wanted to die that soon, I cannot believe that! Now why didn’t he create long life? Tom, we can go down the list of these people like this.
Tom:
Just check their biographies. Somehow there’s not a consistency, there’s not any individual who has promoted this ever, Dave. You would say, Wow, this guy really had it! You know, I mentioned last week that in the Seduction of Christianity , we wrote about Napoleon Hill, and how he developed these ideas, and supposedly was working, I mean, he was the advisor to many presidents. It wasn’t like he didn’t achieve something, but he spent his last 18 years in a nursing home, and supposedly, according to his biographers, he died penniless. Now, what happened here?
Dave:
Well, somehow he lost the thought! I guess that’s like the faith healers where you didn’t keep your faith, same thing. Oh yes, it works but you didn’t work it right. Tom, it is unconscionable that a book like this would be published, and that these people would put their names in there and give their quotations. You’ve got quotations by all kinds of people who are all going to die, I’m sure sooner than they want to, they can’t make it work, and furthermore, it’s just money, money, money, you know.
Tom:
Dave, it’s the carrot on the stick. You know, sadly, I know a number of Christians who think this is the greatest thing that ever came along. Somehow they missed the wave back when, or they missed the positive confession word faith teaching, but now this is a new item. Let’s get on with it because it’s going to really prosper us and heal us, and so on. Dave, my question is, Where do they come up with these ideas? For example, everything that’s promoted in the book, The Secret you would have to ask the question, Well, how do you know that? They are making it up as they go along, aren’t they?
Dave:
No, it’s a secret, Tom, and it’s been passed down on, it’s in the pyramids, it’s here and there, and this lady, she put it all together—Wow!
Tom:
That is the producer of the DVD and the editor really, of the book.
Dave:
Tom, let’s just be rational about this, okay, is that allowed out there radio audience, are we allowed to be rational?
Tom:
How about some critical thinking, would that be okay?
Dave:
Yeah, okay. Now whatever you think you attract to yourself. Maybe we mentioned this last week, I can’ remember, all right, so the Holocaust, six million Jews slaughtered by Hitler. It’s not Hitler’s fault, they were thinking this thought, they were attracting to themselves, the torture and the horror of the Holocaust. Now, this lady that just got raped, plenty of them got raped last night all over the world, the Muslims are right, they stone her because it’s her fault. This is family honor, and you were thinking thoughts of getting raped, and you attracted to yourself what you were thinking. You can’t blame the rapist, I mean, it’s your fault that he did this because you were thinking these thoughts, I mean, the guy ought to be exonerated. Shame on your for thinking such thoughts and attracting this to yourself!
Tom:
What about so called natural disasters? I guess they are not natural after all. I guess the tsunami, you’d have to bring the devastation to certain parts of he world, the deaths untold, unbelievable!
Dave:
Tom, anybody that thinks a little bit, but give us some more quotes about how they say this is what happens.
Tom:
Well, one of the individuals involved says, It has to do with feelings—See, feelings are our thermometer, our best thermometer of how this is, not just working but how we would like it to work, so we need to change our feelings. He says, “It’s really so simple, what am I attracting right now?” “Well, how do you feel?” “If you feel good keep on doing what makes you feel good.”
Dave:
Tom, that is so amoral. I mean, you tell it to the judge—
Tom:
Tell it to your doctor, I’ve got this excruciating pain in my side, doctor. Oh, I’ve just exacerbated the problem, didn’t I? I can’t think about that, because I’m not feeling well.
Dave:
Right, yeah.
Tom:
Irrational, illogical, stupid.
Dave:
It is stupid, and it doesn’t work, and yet why does this go, Tom? I think we quoted it last week maybe, again I keep saying, I can’t remember, I can’t remember anything, but you know what Peter says.
Tom:
Dave, that was a negative confession.
Dave:
Yeah, right. Oh, I can remember, I can remember, I can remember anything—okay, here we go—Oh, my memory has picked up already, and I really feel good about this. I supposed rape feels good to the guy who rapes the woman, he’s just doing what feels good. There is no morals, totally amoral! You make up your own rules. Well, society even knows better than that. This is the law of the jungle, that isn’t going to work. Now why would someone want this? Tom, you mentioned to me, I haven’t been following this, you’ve been following it, it was flying out of Costco, or whatever out there these book stores.
Tom:
After Oprah had her program, my understanding is that Wal-Mart, Costco, and so on, they were completely sold out. Of course that’s what Oprah is about, and she says that, there’s no bones about it, her so called Christianity is really mind science, religious science.
Dave:
So Tom, again, just asking a simple question: How many of these people who rushed in to Wal-Mart or wherever to get this book, what was their motive? Oh, I want to get this so I can share it with others—there are people who are hurting in this world, we’ve got orphans, and so forth, I’m going to bring blessings to them. No. I’m going to bring blessings to my neighbor, the Bible says, Love your neighbor as yourself—do unto others.
Tom:
We are going to see how they pervert that.
Dave:
Tom, No—what was it? Exactly what Peter says. And I know that we commented on this. This is modern language—who through covetousness, that's the guy who is making this promise. Why is she telling you the “secret”? Well, wants to sell a lot of books, a lot of DVD’s. Now she will say, Look, what “The Secret” has done for me, you know, like Hagin and Copeland and all these guys can say.
Tom:
John (Avazenia)
Dave:
Yeah, but they’ve got big mailing lists and they are pedaling this to people on the mailing list.
Tom:
Dave, it simply works best, it prospers those who are pushing and selling it. That’s where the income comes whether you do it in the name of Christianity or the name of mind science or in the name of metaphysics, whatever it might be, it all has to do with the bank account.
Dave:
So, back to 2 Peter chapter 2: “Who through covetousness—that’s the guys—will make merchandise of you.” Covetousness because I want to make some money off of the deal, but your covetousness because you want to get in on this “secret.” That’s really what this is, covetousness, wanting something for yourself. And they tell you that to attract money you’ve really got to love money, remember that in that book? You’ve really got to love money. Now the Bible say, The love of money, it doesn’t say, money, there’s nothing wrong with money in itself, the love of money is the root of all evil. Now we’ve really got a big root being established in a lot of people’s minds, a root of evil through this book and through the DVD, and so forth. Tom, it’s wicked, it’s not logical, it’s not rational, it’s amoral, and it doesn’t work.
Tom:
Greed transcends all of those problems that you have.
Dave:
Tom, you just contradicted The Secret because they say it’s scientifically proven that positive thoughts are a hundred thousand times is it, more powerful than negative thoughts.
Tom:
Well, if that were the case everybody has a positive thought now and then, and if you go by the percentage you’d think the world is becoming a paradise. I don’t see that happening, Dave.
Dave:
Well Tom, you remember, I didn’t even want to talk about this because it’s too stupid, but I guess we have to try to bring a little intelligence and common sense to a few people, hopefully.
Tom:
That’s our prayer.
