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 2010/6/6 20:52
AbideinHim
Member



Joined: 2006/11/26
Posts: 5185
Louisiana

 Re:

There is both truth and error in Christian mysticism, and to take an extreme view that it is all false and the work of demons would be to disagree with some of the words of Jesus, the apostle John, and Paul, because there was definetly a mystical element in all of these men. It is equally wrong to believe that everything that came out of Guyon's writings is 100% truth. Those that lack discernment are the ones that take either one of these extreme viewpoints.

I am posting a article by Andrew Murray who wrote the forward to William Law's book "Wholly For God". William Law by the way is a Christian mystic.

"That we be not, on the one hand, led unaware into error, nor, on the other, be prejudiced against truth by undue apprehension, it may be well for us to consider what this work “mystic ” means.

In mysticism, as in everything human, there is an admixture of good and evil. Mysticism, because it is at root a truth, its good has, notwithstanding a considerable amount of error, greatly outweighed its evil.

The mystic insists especially on the truth that the organ, by which God is to be known, is not the understanding but the heart; that only love can know God in truth. Reason can form its conceptions, and frame its image of what God must be; but the Hidden, the Incomprehensible One Himself, reason cannot touch. As He is in Himself so His working in man: His dwelling and His dwelling-place in the heart are a mystery too.

One of the great reasons that our religion is so powerless is that it is too much a thing of reason and sense.

We place our dependence on the intellectual apprehensions of truth, and the influence these exert in stirring the feelings, the desires, and the will. But they cannot reach to the life, to the reality of God both because they are in their nature unfitted for receiving God, and are darkened under the power of sin. Mysticism insists upon this –and presses unceasingly the cultivation of the spiritual faculty which retires within itself, and seeks in patient waiting for God by faith to open the deepest recesses of its being to His presence. Man’s intellectual faculties are by the fall in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites, and want a much greater self-denial.

When the call of God to repentance first rises in thy soul, thou are to be retired, silent, passive and humbly attentive to this new risen Light within thee, by wholly stopping, or disregarding the workings of thy own will, reason, and judgment. It is because all these are false counselors, the sworn servants, and bribed slaves of thy fallen nature. They are all born and bred in the kingdom of self. Therefore if a new kingdom is to be set up in thee, if the operation of God is to have its effect in thee, all these natural powers of self are to be silenced and suppressed, till they have learned obedience and subjection to the Spirit of God.

We can now understand why such high value is attached to the contemplative life, to stillness of soul, and to the practice of the presence of God. It is as the insufficiency of our own powers of thought is deeply felt, and their activity is restrained, that the deeper the hidden powers of our nature can take their place. Faith can exercise its highest function as a faith of the operation of God, who raised Christ from the dead. The door is opened for God to become our inward life as truly as self has been our very inmost life.

Another point in which the mystic seeks to enter into the hidden mystery of God, is the nature or redemption. There are two views we find in Scripture, each the complement of the other. In the one, the simpler, more outward and objective, Christ as our representative did a certain work for us, which He now in heaven applies, to us. In the other, the knowledge of Him as an outward person and of His outward work is considered as but the means to an end, a preparation leading up to the inward experience to His indwelling in us. “A Christ not in us is the same as a Christ not ours.”

Our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves, or from that which we are by nature. In the whole nature of things, nothing could be this salvation or Savior to us, but such Humility of God as is beyond all expression. This is the great trial of human life, whether a man will give himself up to the meekness, the patience, the sweetness, the simplicity, and the humility of the Lamb of God. This is the whole of the matter between God and the creature.

Death to self is a man’s only entrance into the Church of Life, and nothing but God can give death to self. Self is an inward life, and God is an Inward Spirit of Life; therefore, nothing kills that which must be killed in us, or quickens that which must come to life in us, but the inward work of God in the soul, and the inward work of the soul in God. This is that mystic religion, which, though it has nothing in it but that same spirit, that same truth, and the same life, which always was and always must be the religion of all God’s holy angels and saints in heaven, is by the wisdom of this world accounted to be madness.

It is just this element of mysticism that has formed its great attraction to those who truly thirst for God. Sin would be nothing if it were not sin in us, inspiring and ruling our inmost life. And Christ cannot be a complete Savior until His indwelling and inworking be as real and full as that of sin.

Just one more of the special teachings of mysticism. It is summed up in the expression that we must come away out of the manifold to the simple, out of multiplicity to unity, from the circumference to the center. The thought runs through its whole system, and is the key to the right apprehension of much of its teaching.

This truth holds in reference to God. Until a soul learns to see how entirely God is the center of all, how God is to be met and found and enjoyed in every thing, so that nothing in heaven or earth can for one moment separate from Him it never can have perfect rest. And rest in God is the first duty and the true bliss of the creature. You have Christians who devote themselves most diligently to the study of God’s word, who are delighted with every new truth they discover, or every new light in which an old truth is set before them, and who yet scarce ever meet the one Divine Word, who speaks in power within them. You have others who are consumed with zeal and labor, and yet know not what it is through all to have their rest in God. We need to be brought from the circumference to the living center. There we shall be rested and refreshed, and endued with the power of a Divine strength to do our work in the power of the eternal world.

This truth holds in reference to sin. Self is the whole evil of fallen nature. Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state. Self is not only the seat and habitation, but the very life of sin. The works of the devil are all wrought in self; it is his peculiar workhouse. Therefore Christ is not come as a Savior from sin, but so far as self is beaten down, and overcome in us.

It is as the soul in this light is led to turn from the hopeless multiplicity of its sins, by which it has been distracted, to the one source of all, that it will learn how hopeless its efforts are, and see its need of a death to self in the death of Christ as its only hope.

This truth holds especially also in regard to faith. It is as the soul is led to see that in God is the unity and center of the universe and of our life, and thus that sin is nothing but our having turned from this God to self, and that therefore our one need is the deliverance from self, that it will discover in Christ a new meaning, and will understand how in the very nature of things nothing can save us but the simplicity of faith. Christ becomes to us the man who lived the life of God for us in human nature, and who brings salvation from self by Himself being born into us, and giving us a life of God in which self is swallowed up as darkness is swallowed up in light. This life must be received; and to receive it nothing avails but a true desire and a simple faith.

Now, this way of attaining goodness (by rules and precepts), though thus imperfect, is yet absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, and must first have its time, work, and place in us. Yet it is only for a time, as the law was a schoolmaster to the gospel. All this effort is only to bring a man to such a total despair of all help, from human means, as to make him turn to God from whom alone life can come. Faith becomes the one thing needful. It is a belief that puts the soul into a right state, and that makes room for the operation of God upon it. Oh, blessed simplicity of the Christian life! May we all learn its blessed secret. Let God be all to us. Let Christ be all, as our way to God, as God working and dwelling in us. Let faith be all to us, the simple and unceasing turning of our souls to Christ Jesus."


_________________
Mike

 2010/6/6 22:09Profile









 Re:

"There is both truth and error in Christian mysticism, and to take an extreme view that it is all false and the work of demons would be to disagree with some of the words of Jesus, the apostle John, and Paul, because there was definetly a mystical element in all of these men. It is equally wrong to believe that everything that came out of Guyon's writings is 100% truth. Those that lack discernment are the ones that take either one of these extreme viewpoints."

"Now, this way of attaining goodness (by rules and precepts), though thus imperfect, is yet absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, and must first have its time, work, and place in us. Yet it is only for a time, as the law was a schoolmaster to the gospel. All this effort is only to bring a man to such a total despair of all help, from human means, as to make him turn to God from whom alone life can come. Faith becomes the one thing needful. It is a belief that puts the soul into a right state, and that makes room for the operation of God upon it. Oh, blessed simplicity of the Christian life! May we all learn its blessed secret. Let God be all to us. Let Christ be all, as our way to God, as God working and dwelling in us. Let faith be all to us, the simple and unceasing turning of our souls to Christ Jesus."


Great post Mike...........Frank


 2010/6/7 11:04









 Re: The wide trough of Mysticism

...AbideinHim: When reading this forward by Murray, I am taken by the intellectualism of it all., the maze of words all attempting to grasp the meaning of the cross, and our transforming by it; IE, growing in Christ.

Yet, the gospel is overshadowed by simplicity; even a gospel that will equally transform the illiterate migrant peasant, as the Prince in silk resting at Oxford, to holy maturity in Christ Jesus.

The answer is simple also. You cannot bear fruit unless you ABIDE IN HIM. Abiding , resting in the holy spirit of Promise, the Spirit of Jesus. God has made a way for even the child. First you must be born again from above.

Secondly, the term Christian Mysticism is somewhat misleading. Mysticism could be divided into several groupings here; Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindi, Babylonian....and a blend of them all ....and yet be called Christian, with "Christianese" terminology applied to vague applications concerning anything spiritual.

William Law would probably fall into the Protestant sect of Mysticism. His ideas could be compared to a "PILGRIMS PROGRESS" journey into the working of the Spirit of God to conform the soul..[THE WAY OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE]..William Law..] into "Light".

I believe that William Law was a Christian, yet, paradoxically, was a devotee to the theosophical works of Jacob Boehme, who believed:

.............. "that everything exists and is intelligible only through its opposite. Thus, he believed, evil is a necessary element in goodness, for without evil the will would become inert and progress would be impossible. Evil is a result of the striving of single elements of Deity to become the whole; conflict ensues as man and nature strive to achieve God. "

God himself, according to Boehme, contains conflicting elements and antithetical principles within His nature. (c.f. Sri Aurobindo - the Supermind (Godhead Truth-Consciousness) which contains and reconciles all opposites within Itself).

Law devoted many of his works to Boehme, who fundamentally believed that evil was a necessary part of God, to balance the Universe in all paradigms; physical and spiritual. Sound Biblical to you? Again, in the Andrew Murray article, he said;

"In mysticism, as in everything human, there is an a mixture of good and evil. Mysticism, because it is at root a truth, it's good has, notwithstanding a considerable amount of error, greatly outweighed its evil."...Andrew Murray


So, in Murray's mind, this philosophy has evil in it, but somehow the good , on the scales of virtuous pragmatism, outweighs the evil.

My question to Murray would then be...Tell me Andrew, How do we sort out the bad and evil, when we begin this line of thinking? It's Theosophy, a fundamentally Eastern concept sometimes called Dualism....again championed in the west by BOHME..[ no doubt a genius.. and highly influential across Europe.]]

Where do you find this great and deep wisdom in the Bible? It is not a truth at it's root, but a misguided philosophy that teaches that we can facilitate the abiding work of the Holy Spirit to mature us.

We, being of base flesh and blood, must undertake a method of prayer or meditation to allow us entry into the deeper plateaus of God. This is the Eastern part of mysticism. It is a lie.


So as I see it, there are "mystics" who also happen to be Christian: born again believers. There are many affected by what we loosely term as "THE EMERGENT CHURCH", in the same boat. They believe a gospel that leans toward extreme grace...[ "come as you are, leave as you are, do what you will, God loves you anyway"...]....to all religions lead to the same God. It is a deviation from the simplicity that is in Christ that affected their thinking in the first place.


Then there are those "Christian" mystics who were never born again, but found the Christ that was always there, and believe dwells in every man or woman, and continued to find him in the exact same fashion as there Babylonian counterpart have for millennia....Contemplative, Meditative focus.


It is not Christian at all, and neither or it's fruits, but through language have described it such. It is a counterfeit purely, while the Christian mystics have seemed to only nibbled on the apple.

Guyon believed that Christ always was in her, and through discipleship discovered these Non- biblical methods and the spirits attached to them to attain her elevated states of consciousness.

 2010/6/7 11:07
JB1968
Member



Joined: 2009/8/31
Posts: 416
Ohio USA

 Re:

How many people have sought Christ and struggled, struggled and struggled, when all that they have had to do was believe and recognize that He was there? He is as close as the mention of His Name.
Also, great post by Appolus and AbideinHim.


_________________
James

 2010/6/7 13:14Profile









 Re:

Quote:
In mysticism, as in everything human, there is an admixture of good and evil. Mysticism, because it is at root a truth, its good has, notwithstanding a considerable amount of error, greatly outweighed its evil.



Red flags, anyone?

If we were to swap out the word mysticism here and exchange it with;

The Emergent Church
The Modern Charismatic Movement
TBN
Joel Osteen's teachings
The Lakeland revival
The Purpose Driven Life
Etc.

How many would still be on board?

 2010/6/7 16:14









 Re:

Gal 1

6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;

7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!

9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

1 Corinthians 15

1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:


 2010/6/7 17:27
murrcolr
Member



Joined: 2007/4/25
Posts: 1839
Scotland, UK

 Re:

Quote:
In mysticism, as in everything human, there is an admixture of good and evil. Mysticism, because it is at root a truth, its good has, notwithstanding a considerable amount of error, greatly outweighed its evil



The Road to Mysticism.....

The journey to mystical experience, almost universally, involves three stages: purgation, illumination and union.

[b]Purgation[/]

Purgation is the cleansing stage which begins with self-examination and penitence and leads to a holy life. Sixteenth-century monk, St. John of the Cross, is best known for his description of this stage which he called the “dark night of the soul.” During the dark night the soul of an individual feels abandoned by God, spiritually dry and at the point of despair. John saw this as a way in which God purified the soul by suffering, for only when the soul has been purified is it in a position to experience a rapturous union with God. This purgation involved detachment from the things of the world including material and physical desires; and mortification, the building of new paths to replace the old ones now rejected.

[b]Illumination[/b]

At some point the purgation stage bleeds over into the illumination stage in which the mystic begins to experience inner voices and visions. The goal of illumination is to know genuine spiritual truth, but such truth cannot be found in conventional or even rational ways. The true mystic has come to the conclusion that the secret and “deep” things of God cannot be understood rationally. They can only be understood through the experience of illumination. One of the earliest Christian mystics, who is known today as Pseudo-Dionysius, taught that to achieve the ultimate prize of union with God, “The soul must lose the inhibitions of the senses and of reason. God is beyond the intellect, beyond goodness itself, and it is through unknowing, and the discarding of human concepts, that the soul returns to God and is united with the ‘ray of divine darkness.’”The means by which mystics achieved illumination was through fasting, long seasons of specialized prayers known as contemplative prayers and by following various spiritual disciplines of which the best known today were designed by the Catholic monk and founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola.

[b]Union[/b]

The ultimate goal of the mystic is unmediated union with God. This point, at which the soul attains oneness with God, “was the mystical ecstasy in which, for a brief indescribable moment, all barriers seemed to be swept away and new insight supernaturally imparted as one gave himself over fully to the Infinite One.” The ancient mystics would frame this experience in romantic, even sensual terms. John of the Cross “describes the union in terms of spiritual betrothal, where the soul, conceived of as feminine, is married to Christ as the bridegroom. In other places he may say… ‘The centre of the soul is God.’” Bernard of Clairvaux (12th-century), who managed to turn the Song of Solomon into an erotic love story between God and man, described this moment of union as the time when the believer is “kissed with the kisses of His mouth.”Similar depictions are common in mystical literature.

[b]But Is It Biblical?[/b]

No experience or methodology promoting spirituality can be dismissed or accepted out of hand, scripture is the final arbitrator. Set into the context of the New Testament, this aspect of the mystical experience becomes problematic. For it would entail that mystical experience becomes a source of revelation, a private avenue of insight into God and his workings.

[b]This is New Testament spirituality[/b]

Regeneration and the indwelling, enabling power of the Holy Spirit, all based on the propositional revelation of Scripture.

If God had wanted us to encounter Him through mystical practices such as contemplative prayer, why did He not say so? Why did He not give examples and instructions? How could the Holy Spirit inspire the writing of the Scriptures yet forget to include a chapter or two on mysticism, spiritual exercises and mediation of the Eastern variety? Are we to believe that all of this is a great oversight, a huge “oops” on God’s part to have left out such vital instructions on an indispensable experience that is absolutely essential to Christian spirituality?

Then, having realized what He had done, are we to believe God, centuries later, revealed this missing ingredient of Christian living to Roman Catholic monks, then it was rejected by the Reformers, only to have to reintroduce it all to the twentieth century. This is a bit hard to swallow, but apparently is being accepted by many today.

Quote:
If we were to swap out the word mysticism here and change it with;



So lets call Mysticism what it is the Occult.....

What is spiritual and not revealed by God is the occult and therefore forbidden.


_________________
Colin Murray

 2010/6/7 19:05Profile
JB1968
Member



Joined: 2009/8/31
Posts: 416
Ohio USA

 Re:

Much of the writing in her autobiography reminds me somewhat of David Brainerd's experiences. The soul struggle to find peace with God. Her writings are not the Bible but her experiences. Can a person come to the place that there is "Nothing between my soul and the Saviour"? What about Thomas A Kempis?
The point that strikes me is the spiritual ignorance she had and the step by step dealings of God to her soul to teach her Scripture.


_________________
James

 2010/6/8 7:34Profile









 Re:

The truth that is at the centre of mysticism, that of union with Christ has been adopted by many pagans and of course the spirit they unite with is not the Spirit of God but of the enemy of souls. The enemy will only counterfeit the truth. And even pagans when they have seen real Christianity through history have tried to copy the heart of it, when they have not been attracted to the dead dry religion of many church goers. However, they followed the false idea of dying to self which is Eastern and not scriptural. Denying self is scriptural, but that must follow crucifixion of the old nature which is the price that few will pay as it involves giving up the right to ourselves which is not the same thing as being in charge of the death of self.


Mme. Guyon came dangerously close to the errors of Quietism with its passivity for example, she had been staying with a relative with her daughter and on her return home found the household to be stricken with smallpox but nevertheless did not find a place of safety for herself and daughter and her daughter died. This was a matter of taking things too far in submission but it was the only sense in which she lacked discernemnt. Her heart however was totally committed to Christ which enabled her to endure great suffering and she has been the means for many to grow closer to Christ through accepting their circumstances and caused her to risk her life in her defiance of the church authority.

Wesley supported mysticism for a long time and William Law but then decided to reject it but I don`t think he really understood it and he may have been coloured by the French Prophets, a charismatic band who caused him problems in the revivals, his brother Charles complaining about them `gobbling like turkeys`. Wesley never did disagree with the idea that man is to holy in this life which is the heart of mysticism

I consider Guyons works worth reading if one keeps in mind this Quietist influence as along with everyone, no-one has it completely right even the apostle Paul spoke from his own mind where he did not have the authority of God.

Brenda

 2010/7/9 14:49





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