THE SEDUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT IN THE LAST DAYS by Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon Harvest House Publishers Eugene House Publishers 97402 1985 Reviewed by John H. Sietsema
Is the Gospel what it does to a person or rather is it what it does for a person? Is this a subtle distinction without a difference? Hardly! The first is Biblical Gospel whereby, through the work of the Holy Spirit a sinner is regenerated, convened, sanctified and renewed, and he says, “Thy will be done in my life.”
The latter (what the Gospel does for a person) is that which panders to the sinner’s own will and desires for wealth, peace of mind, and self-esteem. This is what is propagated by Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peal from their pulpits in their messages of “positive thinking” and “possibility thinking.”
The Seduction of Christianity states that one sign of the end times and a sign belonging only to the end times is the rise of false prophets and messiahs who in their very work will help to usher in the reign of the Anti-Christ. The authors reveal very clearly that we are in that day.
Why? Sorcery and “shamanism” have insinuated their presence into American businesses, professions, and even into the church through practices disguising themselves under innocent sounding labels, such as positive and possibility thinking, New Thought, hypnosis, faith–healing, and “visualization.”
However, what is sorcery (a practice severely condemned by God’s Word) by definition? Sorcery is that attempt to manipulate reality (internal, external, past, present, or future) by various mind-over–matter techniques. In the secular world such is called “mind–power” and in the Christian church it is mistaken for “faith.”
In shamanism a person enters an altered state of consciousness-at–will to contact and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire knowledge, power, and to help other persons. In earlier times shaman ism was practiced by an Indian witchdoctor or sorcerer. Today it is warmly embraced by psychotherapy and psychiatrists, and, sadly enough, by ministers in the folds of the Christian faith.
Sorcery and shamanism have their origins in the Eastern mystic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, which hold to a pantheistic view of creation. In this pantheism , matter is but an illusion and mind is the ultimate reality. Each person ‘s mind is a pan of this universal mind which controls matter.
However, a person can through a proper exercise of yoga, transcendental meditations, “visualizations,” etc. learn to control and manipulate matter, for at such times the human mind is in proper union with the universal mind, otherwise called the Oversoul.
The seedbed of this thinking in our own country was sown by the Transcendentalists, Ralph W. Emerson and Ellery Channing, of the previous century. Emerson’s essay “The Oversoul” clearly advocated this pantheistic concept of the world, with Thought as the ultimate power and matters imply the pliable material for thought.
This “New Thought” of the Transcendentalists gave birth to Christian Science of Mary Baker Eddy, Religious Science, and Unity. The authors reveal how presently the church is being swept by a revival of New Thought, though now called Positive Thinking or Possibility Thinking, positive Confession, Positive Mental Attitudes and Inner Healing. They state that New Thought which is present in the church is similar to New Age in the secular world.
In the book the authors explain how recognized leaders in great numbers of the Fundamentalist branch of the church have fully embraced this New Thought by reducing prayer to a technique by which one achieves the desire of the will. This technique, called “visualization,” is really a method of shamanism through which matter is the servant of the mind. Understandably then, prayer is no longer communion of a suppliant believer with a transcendent God which will be accepted in faith and trust. Rather prayer is a method by which one attunes himself with the laws of nature to achieve his ends. God, thus, is not transcendent and above His creation and its laws; rather He is encompassed and compelled to fulfill the demands of the creature, as in the.pantheism of the Hindus.
The Seduction of Christianity discloses how orthodox churches are adopting and employing psychological techniques of counseling of the Jung and Freudian schools that are fully paganistic in their outlook, even though Freud’s and Jung’s concepts are discredited in the secular world.
Among these techniques being employed are: (1) imagination—the calling forth to one’s mind great thinkers of the past, (2) visualization of Christ, something strictly forbidden in the Second Commandment, (3) Primal Scream and “rebirthing”—conjuring, supposedly, the trauma and memories of one’s birth and infancy. The insidious dangers of the Primal Scream and “rebirthing” is the thought that each person is the prisoner of his past and subconscious, and that one’s present behavior is fully explained in the light of his subconscious past. This is Freudian determinism with a vengeance . Aligning one’s thinking to such concepts, in effect, denies one’s free will and personal responsibility. It shuts out God’s grace to convert and change a person through the operative presence of the Holy Spirit.
Apostle Paul in Ephesians warns the believer that his ultimate struggle is not against flesh and blood but rather against evil spirits and principal ities of the air, that is, the Devil and his myriads of demons. Satan and his hosts are worming their way into the lives of duped human beings by means of sorcery and shamanistic rites wh ich have entered the fold of the church under the cloak of positive and possibility thinking, visualization, rebinhing, hypnosis, and psychic trances.
How true the hymn is: “Christian dost thou see them on the holy ground. How the powers of darkness compass thee around . . . How they work within, striving, tempting, goading into sin.”
This is a must book for the Christian who seeks to be alert and abreast of his own times.
