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Exposing the Dangers of Contemplative
Prayer
If you've ever wondered about centering
prayer, the silence, yoga, Reiki, the Desert Fathers and spiritual formation
teachings, A Time of Departing is a book you must read!
The silence. This book is all about the silence. Whether that
silence is part of the religious practice of Buddhists, Hindus, Sufi Muslims,
New Agers or Contemplative Christians, Ray Yungen argues convincingly that it is
all one and the same. As the subtitle suggests, a universal spirituality is
changing the very face of Christianity. This universal spirituality is born from
the religions of the East and is slowly infiltrating the Christian church,
primarily through the New Age movement. Ray Yungen has studied this religious
movement extensively and writes this book in response. It is an alarm sounded by
one with a deep love for the church. This book is not just another attempt to
explain the New Age, but rather, an alert to the church of how and through whom
New Age thinking is currently creeping into our pulpits, Sunday school
classrooms, prayer groups, and Bible studies. The primary way the New Age has
joined with the evangelical churches is through mysticism and contemplative
prayer.
Contemplative prayer has been practiced by professed Christians since the early
days of the church. Once a practice known only to a few Catholic mystics, today
it is quickly gaining popularity in both Catholic and Protestant circles. Many
prominent Protestant leaders have endorsed the practice, either explicitly or by
declaring their respect for those who teach it. Because of its increasing
popularity, Christians need to educate themselves about the meaning and source
of this practice. Those who practice it, allowing their minds to enter the
silence of contemplation or meditation, open themselves to a practice that is
foreign to the Bible, and even more serious, is completely opposed to biblical
Christianity.
These words are from the author's conclusion. "Let us be mindful that deception
is subtle, and we must be alert. All of life and truth are resting on what God
has proclaimed in the Scriptures. Any teaching not supported by the Bible is not
of God. May you know in your heart and mind that you are not one of the
deceived, and may you, with all your heart, show your love for God by loving His
Living Word. And finally, may you press on towards the upward call of God and be
found ready - for there will indeed be a time of departing!" This book will
prepare you to avoid deception and will sharpen you, that you may not be one who
departs from the faith. Perhaps its greatest quality is that it is biblical,
continually turning to the Scriptures to allow God's Word to bear witness
against Contemplative practices.
Ray Yungen, author, speaker and research
analyst has studied religious movements for the last twenty years. He is also
the author of For Many Shall
Come In My Name. He is available for radio and television interviews and
for seminars, conferences and college assemblies. His exuberance for life and
his love for Jesus Christ and for people are evident in his writing.
What others are saying:
This book exposes how Christianity has
opened up to New Age mystical pantheistic thoughts. Christians need to beware.
This New Age thought has been creeping into churches of all denominations. A
foundational belief is one of pantheism, that everything is God; they believe
that every human being has God within, just waiting to be discovered.
Ray Yungen refutes pantheism with 2 Peter
1:3-4. He says that if we are Christians, we’re partakers of the divine
nature, not possessors of it. God will not share His divinity with people or
any creature. Creation can reflect God’s glory, but never posses it.
The New Age is referring to the Age of
Aquarius, a golden age in which man is going to realize that God is within every
person. Much of the teaching going on is to show people how to get in touch with
that “God within”. Methods include meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer,
chanting mantras, breathing prayers, and developing the silence in order
to contact what they think is the “God within.” The common goal has many terms:
to be enlightened, to shift consciousness, to be awakened, to be transformed, to
be self-realized, to reach cosmic consciousness, or to obtain super-
consciousness. Kundalini is a Hindu term for mystical power that underlies their
religion; kundalini is commonly referred to as serpent power.
New Age techniques are man’s effort to
reach God without following the God given path. Man is operating in the pride
and works of self-effort. This is the opposite of God’s way of grace, the cross
and dying to ourselves.
Many churches that are dry, having watered
down the truth, are vulnerable to the lure of ‘Christian Mysticism’. Methods and
procedures for reaching God are given to these hungry and needy Christian who
don’t know much about what the true Bible teaches.
Contemplative prayer is a technique of meditation used by New Agers to contact
the God within them. The method requires the person to get a blank mind through
chanting or breathing. It is said by instructors of this method that the enemy
of meditation is the mind. Some Christian leaders have been misled by the use of
Christian vocabulary in the use of New Age/occult techniques. Some have
expressed the belief that if they use Hindu techniques to reach the gods, but
used Christian terms, then the results will be reaching the Christian God, not
Hindu gods. However, these techniques are not mentioned in the Bible and are
techniques to reach demons!
Christians need this book to help them
navigate through the onslaught of new thinking in the New Age. We don’t want to
find ourselves being seduced by doctrines of demons.
– Carole West
Other books by this author:
For Many Shall Come In My Name
Similar items:
A Wonderful Deception
A Time of
Departing
Deceived on
Purpose
Faith Undone
For
Many Shall Come In My Name
Out of India
Reinventing
Jesus Christ: The New Gospel
The Dark Side of the
Purpose Driven Church
The Light That Was
Dark
Warren Smith speaks
at RLJC
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