Is There A Biblical Mysticism?

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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 today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their in-depth study of the Book of Acts, and “Why did Paul want the soldiers to stay on board a sinking ship?”   In Religion in the News, “Healing with a Holy Leg.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:   “Are home churches good or bad?” We hope you can stay tuned. 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 series of programs addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.”   This week we focus on the question, “Is there a Biblical Mysticism?”   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.   We’ve been discussing “mysticism” in evangelical Christianity in this first segment of our program, particularly mystical techniques that have been introduced by Emerging Church leaders.   Now Dave, let’s start with the term “mysticism,” although the term isn’t found in the Bible, nevertheless there are descriptions that sound mystical like those who have visions and would have profound spiritual experiences.   Prophets, we would call them prophets or seers, etc.   So what’s the difference between the Biblical mystics or prophets and the mystics that are being promoted today?

            Dave:

Well, the prophets hear from God.   They do not try to go into some state of consciousness, or consult ouija boards or whatever, and I’m not saying that the Emerging Church does that, but it’s pretty close.

            Tom:

Yeah, they’re into techniques, as we’ve been talking about for the last couple of weeks.

            Dave:

Right.   So the prophet of the Lord, for example, I think more than 50 times in the book of Ezekiel, he says, “the word of the Lord came unto me saying.”   He doesn’t tell you that he had some technique for getting it.   Mysticism is when you get into a mystical state and it’s something you cannot understand, you’re out there in “la-la” land, it’s an “oooh” experience and you’re really not thinking.   But, the prophets, God is speaking to them rationally.   He’s revealing Himself; He’s revealing His word, revealing His plans, His prophecies, etc.    And that would be just as far from mysticism as you can get.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, there’s another tem that’s related to this.   The Bible talks about mysteries.   And, so we have a Biblical sense of mystery but also the Emerging Church and their leaders have a sense of mystery.   Well, first of all, when the Bible talks about mysteries, what’s it talking about?

            Dave:

Well, it’s not talking about a mystery that we have to solve and it’s not talking about something that will remain hidden.   The word for mystery in the Bible is something that was once hidden and is being revealed.   Paul says “hidden from ages past, but is now revealed through His apostles and prophets.”   So…

            Tom:

For example, “Christ in me, the hope of glory.” The Old Testament saints did not know about the Holy Spirit really taking up residence within the born-again believer.

            Dave:

Right.  

            Tom:

Somebody who’s gone through the spiritual rebirth….

            Dave:

Yeah.   So that’s not a mystical experience. A mystery was hidden in the past, now is being revealed.  

            Tom:

Dave, but isn’t there also a sense of things that we read about in the Bible that go beyond comprehension, although God says in Isaiah, “come let us reason together…” there are still some things that are so, we’re talking about an infinite God here that we can’t really fully comprehend.

            Dave:

Yeah, well, you can even have it without God. For example, I may have mentioned on, maybe not on this radio program, but when I was an undergraduate at UCLA, majoring in math, taking a CPA course by correspondence, thinking rationally I would say there is something phony about this “love stuff.”   You know, I was a bachelor. And I mean, look, here’s a young couple, they stand in front of witnesses and pledge their undying troth and six months later they can’t stand to live in the same apartment together.   Now if that doesn’t prove this “love thing” is phony!   And then I fell in love with the woman to whom I’ve been married for 57, coming up on 58 years.   And I found myself face to face with something I knew was real, but I couldn’t write a partial differential equation.   I couldn’t explain it philosophically even.   There are things that are beyond our ability to explain.   But we can experience them and know them.   And so, this is what Paul is talking about when he’s praying for the Ephesians.   In Ephesians:3:14For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,, well he says, “for this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.”   That’s something you have to experience.   You can’t explain that.   But, it’s not a mystical experience.   “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” Wow!   But to know something that is beyond knowing, but that is not having a mystical experience.   Christ is revealing Himself to us and when I say, well, I know something or I believe in my heart, believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead that goes beyond comprehension, to really know something with an inner conviction.

            Tom:

Dave, as I read the Emerging Church writers, there’s a sense that they’re more comfortable with what they would call “mystery” than objective truth, which many of them deny.   Not all of them, but many of them deny that.   So,—

            Dave:

Well, Tom, that’s why they say, “Well, is homosexuality wrong?   It could take another five years, we have to discuss this.”   So things that are very plain in the Bible, they will not accept them.   They say we must somehow, I don’t know what, get a mystical understanding….

            Tom:

Well, much of it’s based on feeling and emotions, etc., and that’s a great concern we have about this movement.   As I’ve said, not everybody is into it, but, and when you read the writings of those who are really at the forefront of this, that would be the position that they would take that comprehension, don’t be sure of anything, don’t make it black and white, let’s go for something more colorful, etc.   That goes back to Genesis 3, I believe, when Satan’s first words to Eve were, “yeah hath God said?”   No, He didn’t lay anything out specifically, anything you could comprehend, how do you feel about it, Eve?   I mean, this is his game plan and many in the Emerging Church are following after that Pied Piper.

            Dave:

Well, Tom, that’s the whole mystical trip and that’s the cults, the occult.   This is why they made images.   I’ll never forget in India about two in the morning, hearing this noise and I went to the window and here’s a group of fanatical followers of Kali Bourgeau.   This is like the Kali Temple in Calcutta and they’ve got this horrible image.   You remember, she’s got, I think, eight arms.   She’s got shrunken skulls,

            Tom:

A whole garland.

            Dave:

Yeah, hanging around her neck.   She’s got freshly severed heads in a kind of hanging from her belt.   The Hindu says her beauty is in her terror.   They’re trying to depict this goddess who seems to be more powerful than Shiva, is depicted with her heel on Shiva’s neck.   Anyway, it was…I went down there to, got quickly dressed and ran out there to observe this close up.   I’ll tell you, it was a frightening experience.   You’re wondering whether these people are going to turn upon me as not a true worshiper of Kali.   So, why did they make images?   They’re trying to depict this god.   And this is why the God of the Bible says—forbids, “you will not make an image, not a graven image.   You’re not going to try to represent Me in any physical form.”   And yet, unlike Allah, who the Koran tells us and Islam tells us is unknowable .   Jesus says we often quote it, John:17:3And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent., this is in His prayer, “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.”   And another verse I often quote, Jeremiah 9, well, 23, we’ll pass by 23, but 24 says, “ Let him that glorieth glory in this .”   It’s very striking, the wording.   It’s related to what we’ve been saying, it doesn’t say that he knows me “That he understandeth and knoweth me.”   Wisdom is the principle thing.   We often quote that.   “Therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding .”   The God of the Bible,

            Tom:

That’s Proverbs:4:7Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding., by the way.

            Dave:

Right.   The God of the Bible wants us to know Him.   Now, this isn’t the knowledge that Paul is talking about, to know the love of Christ, which passeth all understanding, and yet we’re supposed to understand that which passes understanding.

            Tom:

Dave, the only way we can possibly know these things, is if God reveals them to us.   And He has in His word.   But He says, “come let us reason together” in Isaiah, well, we must be able to reason; we must have some understanding based on His Word.   But, as you mentioned before, Dave, imagery is subjective.   An image doesn’t have a definition.   It’s sort of in the mind of the beholder.   The two of us could look at a painting and you’d get one idea and I’d get another idea, even if it had figures and it was delineated in a very sharp way.   But, nevertheless, this is subjective and that’s where we see the Emerging Church going.   Not only it’s affinity for images, etc., but its pension for moving into mystery and the experiential and feelings, etc.   It’s all a problem.

            Dave;

Yeah, Tom, it reminds me of, and I don’t know whether I’ve ever mentioned this, but it doesn’t matter, I was at the National Gallery in New Zealand, I can’t remember exactly where, I think it was New Zealand not Australia, and there was this painting, it was just a blank canvas, nothing on it, and it’s on display and there was a little note, tiny lettering, in one corner that said the meaning and image of this painting is known only to the artist.

            Tom:

And, I’m not so sure about that.

            Dave:

Right.   Well, that’s mysticism.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

Really.   There’s nothing there and really why should there be something there because we can’t be sure of it anyway and the more unsure you are, the higher you are on the mystical scale.

            Tom:

Dave, as we noted in previous programs on the topic, the mystical techniques are hardly original within the Emerging Church .   I want to give you a quote from Brian McClaren, who you know his works, he’s really probably the most notable of Emerging Church leaders.   Anyway, he writes, “many Christian leaders started searching for a new approach under the banner of spiritual formation.   This new search has led many of them back to Catholic contemplative practices and medieval monastic disciplines.”   Now, that’s a point we’ve made in past programs that Emerging Church leaders have turned to Catholic and Orthodox liturgies and sacramentals for their spiritual formation, whatever that means.

            Dave:

And he’s not critiquing this.   He’s pleased with it.  

            Tom:

Exactly.   Nevertheless, there’s an important question that every evangelical, and this is drawing our young evangelicals in an unbelievable fashion.   They are attracted to this.   But they have to ask themselves the question.   What spiritual truths, and supposedly that’s what they’re looking for, what spiritual truths can be gained from these two religious organizations, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, that have neither, they don’t have the true gospel, nor do they have the Spirit of Christ.   So what are we going to gain from that?  

            Dave:

Mysticism.   Mystical experiences.

            Tom:

Yeah.   But not truth.

            Dave:

What the Catholic Church calls “mystigogy.”

            Tom:

Yeah.   Right.   Dave, my great concern here is having been 30 years a Roman Catholic, knowing the system not only from my experiences in it, but from having studied it, bottom line is, they don’t have the Gospel, the Biblical Gospel.   So, therefore, they can’t have the Spirit of Christ.   So, why would an evangelical, and again my point, why would an evangelical turn to this system that’s bankrupt of the gospel and true spirituality for spiritual enhancement?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, if you’re really not following the word of God, and you are not really led of the Holy Spirit, and I would add, some common sense, as well, this sort of thing is appealing.   This is why they have these beautiful cathedrals, why the priests wear these robes, some of them are fabulous with gold thread and even precious stones on them.   So, there’s the candles—

            Tom:

The incense.

            Dave:

Yeah.   And the—

            Tom:

The music, the Gregorian chants.

            Dave:

There’s just a spiritual aura about this that moves you.   No, it doesn’t move me.   I would resist that kind of movement.   It’s not the movement of the Holy Spirit.   But it’s something that appeals to my flesh, like rock music appeals to the flesh of some people.   Others, oooh, this is really, I’m becoming spiritual.   I’m not religious, I’m not going to follow certain rules, but I’m spiritual.   So, I think that is the appeal, Tom, because they do not want to be tied down to the Word of God, and Paul said it to Timothy.   “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.”

            Tom:

Dave, last week we covered the mystical techniques of the “Jesus Prayer.”   Remember, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”   You repeat that over and over hundreds of times, even thousands of times, and somehow that will put you in a state in which you can hear from the Lord.   All right?     Then there is “centering prayer” which was just a one-syllable word like “God,” or “Jesus,” or, well “Jesus” is actually two syllables, but one word and somehow you go beyond that word to have a mystical experience by repeating it over and over and over again.   Right now I’d like to talk about another technique….

            Dave:

Let me just interject, Tom, because two things the Bible forbids that we’ve mentioned that are involved and one of them, or course, is images, icons, etc., but Jesus said “use not vain repetitions as the heathen.”   Now, there must have been a reason for that and yet these people in disobedience of what Christ said, they have adopted the vain repetitions of the heathen.   Oh, they use “God” or “Jesus” or whatever, but why did He say this?   Because it makes no sense.   It’s not rational and furthermore, as you were saying, Tom, it puts you, it’s like a mantra, and it puts you in a state of consciousness where you get non-rational mystical experiences.

            Tom:

Right.   Dave and I know you know this exercise so-called, but I’m talking about the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius.   Now, for those who don’t know the name Ignatius, Saint Ignatius, Catholic saint was a founder, the founder of the Jesuits, and this was in the 16 ^th century, yet today it’s called, the   Ignatian Examine, these were his spiritual exercises, and all Jesuit priests go through these exercises, but it’s gone beyond that.   Now we have these exercises being promoted in the evangelical church through the Emerging Church teachings.

            Dave:

Tom, I know some ex-Jesuits who told me they were demonized by the spiritual exercises of Ignatius.

            Tom:

Right.   So what are they about?   Really, visualization is the key.   But before we get into the explanation let me give you a quote, a couple of quotes from professing evangelical Tony Campolo, who has done so much damage to our young people with his heretical teaching, not just unbiblical but heretical teachings, very bad.   By the way, he writes:   “I learned about this way of having a born-again experience from reading the Catholic mystics, especially the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.   Like most Catholic mystics he developed an intense desire to experience a oneness with God.”   Now before you comment, Dave, here’s another one:   “After the reformation we Protestants left behind much that was troubling about Roman Catholicism of the 15 ^th century.   I am convinced that we left too much behind.   The methods of praying employed by the likes of Ignatius have become precious to me.   With the help of some Catholic saints my prayer life has deepened.”

            Dave:

Well, Tom, I’d like to know first of all, you’re giving us the quotes, I was not aware of that particular statement from Tony Campolo.   What does he mean, “I learned of being born again” from this?   What are we talking about, born again?   Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God , he’s not talking about that, is he?   I thought he professed to be born again through faith in Christ.   Now he’s telling us—can you read that again, Tom.

            Tom:

Right, “I have learned about this way of having a born-again experience from reading the Catholic mystics.   Now Dave, wait a minute, I have read Brother Lawrence’s book…I’ve read many of these mystics, and I’ve yet to find any declaration of the Biblical gospel ever.   So what are we talking about here?

            Dave:

Well, he got that word experience, so I guess he would say, Well, I was born-again, maybe as a child or whatever, but I learned how to experience being born-again, maybe that’s what he is talking about, how to experience God, and so forth.

            Tom:

From those who, based on their writings—

            Dave:

Know nothing from it.

            Tom:

Dave, you know, I would just—it’s not like I want to encourage people to read these so-called Catholic mystics, but you just look at their biographies.   I mean, they needed to be put away, and some of them were.   For example, Julian of Norwich, supposedly she has these ecstatic experiences and visions.   What does she do then?   She has them put her in a room, seal the room off and she’s there for years, and they are only feeding food to her through a hole in the roof.   Now, come on!   This is insanity.

            Dave:

Yeah.   Jesus said, Go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

He didn’t say, get into a cave, lock yourself in a room, we are supposed to go out, we’re supposed to love people, we’re supposed to give them the gospel, we’re supposed to be like the presence of Christ, representatives of Christ in the world, and this is absolutely contrary.   What they are doing, this mysticism, is contrary to the Word of God.  

            Tom:

Dave, we’re out of time for this segment, but next week, the Lord willing, we’ll come back and deal more thoroughly with the spiritual exercises of Ignatius.   And then prayer labyrinth, we want to cover these techniques that the evangelical church is, not just the Emerging Church , but we find many of these techniques going on in the evangelical church today