April 10, 2012
“So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” Psalm 81:12
Dear brothers and sisters, this letter is of great concern to me because I am becoming increasingly alarmed by the spread of heresy in the church, especially through the contemplation method. In the last weeks and days, I have become aware that it is much worse and much more widespread than I could have imagined.
Some time ago, a sister happened to use the expression “listening prayer”; I was curious to know what that means, but forgot about it. Then one church announced that one of their elders would carry out a prophetic seminar on the topic of “Hearing God’s voice” or this “listening prayer”. It was immediately clear to me that I had to attend this seminar to know what was going on. Thankfully it wasn’t expensive, but surprisingly, each time you have to sign a statement that you will not talk about or spread around what you have heard there! The money didn’t remain in the church itself, but went to a man and a ministry in Germany which I will write about a bit later. Why do you have to sign something? I have never heard anything like that. What was there to hide? Lots of it sounded very biblical and yet I had the feeling that something wasn’t right. Then the bombshell hit! One evening they were saying: “God can talk to us, if we keep the mind asleep…we must turn off our mind … empty it!” This elder/leader said that he does that by staring into a corner for several minutes. Did you get that? When I said that was tending towards New Age practices, Buddhism, etc., they said: “New Age has stolen a lot from us, we need to get it back.” What a blatant lie! One sister said: “When I pray to Jesus, then I trust that it’s also the Holy Spirit who talks to me!” How naive… Many Christians have fallen away and many will still fall because of this type of thinking. The moment you turn off your mind, go to sleep, empty out… you have left the biblical way and are going astray, you are opening your mind to demons and they will give you everything your heart desires: images, impressions, colors, words etc.
This teacher repeatedly stated: “Nowadays, we don’t have prophets anymore, so we must all learn how to speak prophetically.” That’s a big lie. God always has His prophets! But the church of Jesus Christ has silenced God’s prophets and opened the doors wide to the false prophets. Again and again at the course, they always emphasized that images are important, as well as symbolism and many other things. We then sat together in groups of two to three people. After a certain time, we were supposed to receive images for the others. I don’t want to talk about all of the stuff that happened there. What’s important for me is to focus on this shutting down of the mind. Brothers or sisters who didn’t have any images and felt that they were less spiritual were told from the others that was OK. What hypocrisy! Why do I have to have images for you? Why do I have to tell you if you need to turn left or right? Did you or didn’t you convert to Jesus or did you convert to me? Doesn’t God primarily speak through His Word? If the Lord shows me something about you, then I can tell you that. But if we just come together out of curiosity and because the Word isn’t enough for us anymore, and feelings images and impressions become more important, if we empty our mind, then we abandon the foundation of truth. We then return to the mystics of the Catholic church and finally also to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, etc.
You don’t need a mentor or coach or counselor or pope to guide you; you need Jesus. The Holy Spirit never points to himself, but always to the Father through Jesus. Since we have started to be “Holy Spirit-oriented”, we have opened ourselves up to many heresies and false practices.
Who rules the churches nowadays? The psychologists. It’s just like in the world. Before, you used to call the pastor, now it’s the psychologist. How could they take the philosophy of blasphemists and mockers and spiritists like Jung and Freud and bring them into the church? There is hardly any biblical counseling anymore. Everything is mixed with psychology and contemplation, “inner healing”, “Healing the wounds of the past”, “Sozo Training” from Bethel, “California by Bill Johnson”, etc. This is nothing other than a mixture of psychology and contemplation. How can people just shut their eyes and immediately see into your past? Often with contemplation, I have heard brethren say: he/she told me something that no-one else knew. So what? A fortuneteller could have told you that, too. Doesn’t God speak? Can’t God heal? Can’t God perform miracles? Of course He can, but what we are experiencing now and have been for the last 20 years in the churches, where prophetic groups give prophetic words to hundreds of people, has to do with contemplation most of the time. They empty your mind and demons give them images.
A well-known Christian leader in Switzerland, whom most of us know, had stated in an interview already several years ago that he practices breathing prayer. At that time I didn’t know what I know today. They use other terms such as “listening prayer” and “hearing God’s voice”, “silence”, spiritual formation, etc.They sells books by contemplatives like John Ortberg, Henri Nouwen, Hannah Hurnard, Ian Morgan Cron, Richard Clinton, Franz Mohr, Peter Hoover, Janet Keller Richards, Brennan Manning, John Eldredge, etc. By the way, the well-known singer Amy Grant practices contemplation, yoga or Zen Buddhism. No wonder Rick Joyner sees visions and pictures and goes to heaven the minute he closes his eyes, etc. There’s the testimony of a nine-year-old boy from the Bethel Church on Bill Johnson’s homepage www.ibethel.tv. The boy was in Sunday school, and the leader instructed the children: “Sit comfortably on the chair, close your eyes and we’ll pray that we can go into heaven.” They went to some sort of heaven. The boy went home and told his mother: “Close your eyes and we’ll go to heaven.” And they actually went to a heaven. When Bible students were at their house, the boy told them the same thing and they went there, too! Now the boy tells how he goes to heaven every day and plays with Jesus. Bob Jones told him: “You’re a friend of Jesus now!” Bob Jones goes to heaven every day himself and he also teaches others how to do that, especially children. So there’s kiddie contemplation now. Notice something? If you don’t, then you are already deceived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT9I-rXoe3U Bob Jones, Patricia King, Todd Bentley
A few months ago I sat in the train, reading my Bible. The gentleman sitting next to me said that he was also a Christian and we got into a conversation. When I asked him if he was informed about deception in the church, particularly contemplation, he said that he practiced it himself. When I said that was yoga, he replied: “Contemplation isn’t yoga, it’s Zen Buddhism!” He is friends with Jesuit monks and if you research contemplation, you will always find some link to monks and monasteries. Thomas Keating, a monk and teacher of Richard Foster, Dallas Willard and other contemplatives in the churches, says: “The Holy Spirit lives in all people…” There is hardly a prayer house in Switzerland but also in America, Europe, etc. which doesn’t practice or teach contemplation. These religious exercises are often based on the teachings of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.
Lawrence or Larry Crabb is one of the sources. He is a psychologist, contemplative and a friend of the Emergers. Emergers are often contemplatives also. They have learned this practice and are spreading it throughout the entire body of Christ with the help of Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Robert Schuler and countless other false apostles and prophets. It is so widespread that I don’t really know if we can ever remove it again. I have written to two leaders of the Pentecostal movement. One of them didn’t respond at all and the other one got angry because I had recommended the book by Rudolf Ebertshäuser, who is anti-Pentecostal. If the Pentecostals had bothered at all to deal with the topic of deception and written a book about it, then I would have recommended one of their books, but they don’t have anything. At any rate, the reaction shows that the church leaders are either practicing contemplation themselves or at least are friends of the contemplatives and welcome them with open arms.
2 Peter 19: We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
Don’t be deceived, and if you have already been deceived, then turn away!
Catherine, a handmaiden of Jesus Christ
P.S. I recommend you www.lighthousetrails.com and their book “A time of departing”