B-A-C said:

The Bible is pretty much black and white. It doesn't take any special power to discern some things.
Oh there are deeper things, spiritual things to be sure. But most of it is pretty obvious.

Don't kill.
Don't steal.
Don't sleep with your neighbors wife.
If you are a male, don't sleep with another male.
etc...

It doesn't take a lot of spin and spiritual discernment to know what these things mean.
It seems some Christians have a way of taking a plain everyday verse...
1 Cor 6:9-10; is a good example..

1 Cor 6:9; Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
1 Cor 6:10; nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

..many are explaining away all of the sin out of it. It was meant for Jews only, it was meant the unsaved only. It was meant as a metaphor. It was meant spiritually only. It was meant for the priests having affairs with male prostitutes. It wasn't really meant at all. It was just superfluous rhetoric. ... the list goes on..

Some of the Bible isn't all as mystical and spiritual as some people make it out to be.
The old Roman Catholic church wanted to keep the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, and transpose much of
what they said to Latin. This was to keep the "deep dark" secret of the Bible out of the hands of those
who "didn't understand" it or would misuse it. (The misuse part I semi-agree with).
But of course now we have multiple translations written in many languages all over the world. Anyone
can read the Bible. Much of it, anyone can understand.

If someone is taking a plain black and white verse and putting so much spin on it that is almost unrecognizable and completely disagrees with what you just read, it's a false teaching plain and
simple.

Many people get saved... just reading the Bible for themselves. These people don't need someone to explain everything to them. At least not the basics of salvation. It's usually when other come in and say things like "It isn't really what you think it is" or "that verse doesn't apply anymore" or "Let me tell you where that verse is wrong"... that's when people get confused, divisions occur, and souls stay in the dark.

Most of the time.. the Bible just says what it says. Plain and simple.

2 Cor 11:3; But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
2 Cor 11:4; For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you willingly accept whatever they say.

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B-A-C, I mostly agree with what you are saying here, and I believe you have made some very valid points, but I don't understand the relation to mysticism. Would you mind explaining why you titled your writing "Christian Mysticism"?

@B-A-C @Sue J Love
Mysticism seeks something more then is plainly available to them through the Holy Spirit and God's Word. I agree in part and disagree in another.
The Word of God is practical, and so to many doesn't require mystical practices to know the do & don'ts of. It's right in front of you!!! Yet, I do believe and here we might disagree in part Dear brother, that to understand it completely we need revelation through the Holy Spirit which is spiritual.

I will say that Sister Sue was like me in looking for the Mystical portion of what you were writing. For the Mysticism I was looking for to be mentioned is evident in many churches these days, as in the Emergent Church and many of the by products of Catholicism that has spread into Protestantism.

With the Love of Jesus you two! Know that you two are blessings to me. Just needed to let you know that.
YBIC
Nick
<><

I encountered mysticism maybe 5 years ago when someone I love was caught up in the teachings of John Eldredge. Eldredge is a counselor-teacher, primarily focused in ministry to Christian men. Yet, there are some very disturbing aspects of his teaching which are greatly troubling me, and which fit under this subject of “pursuing their own imaginations,” as well as with this scripture, Isaiah 65:1-5. He is a popular author-teacher among evangelical Christians. His teachings and writings are being taught in many churches here in America, particularly in men’s groups. Yet, I am just beginning to scratch the surface of this man’s heretical teachings concerning the characters, mind and heart of mankind and of God/Jesus Christ, and concerning God’s relationship to humankind and what our relationships to God/Jesus should look and act like.

Here are some quotations from John Eldredge’s book “Wild at Heart” (pages 3-6), and also from the book’s introduction:


Sounds good, right? On a surface read it sounds like he is merely encouraging men to be men and to enjoy God’s creation and to, perhaps, exercise their freedom in Christ and to not be brought underneath the bondage of legalism. But, is that really what he is saying? Look with me carefully at the not-so-subtle message being given to men (and women) here:

Men long to be untamed (wild, natural, unsettled, uncontrollable, unsubmissive - sinful), undomesticated (uncomfortable, disinterested, not devoted and/or uninvolved in the affairs of marriage, home and family), and to NOT be in Eden (symbolic of mankind’s pure and sinless relationship to God where he walked and talked with God in perfect fellowship). They want to leave Eden (purity, righteousness) and go back to their natural state of mind and heart (the heart given over to sin). In this wild and natural state of heart and mind is when men truly come alive. The core (central, foundational, essential and/or enduring part) of man’s heart (the emotional or moral center of his life; the center of love, affection, and his innermost character, feelings or inclinations) is undomesticated (unconcerned with home, marriage and family) and that is good. Men have an insatiable (incapable of being satisfied) longing to explore, i.e. to pursue, go on a quest for, search out, and/or to scout out what is outside the confines of home and family and is outside his intimate relationship with God.

Man’s deep need to know who he is, what he is made of and what he is destined for cannot be discovered at home where things are neat and orderly. It is fear that keeps man at home. He has to adventure outside the confines of marriage, home and family and Eden – his intimate and pure relationship with God - and take his own self-journey to get back his sinful unbelieving heart. He needs to give himself permission to be what men are… permission to live from his wild, untamed and undomesticated (and sinful) heart and to not live in Eden – in pure, unadulterated relationship with Almighty God; not from a list of “should” and “ought”, i.e. not in submission, surrender and obedience (in the Spirit of God) to Christ’s commandments for holy and godly living, because that just makes him tired and bored. He needs to venture outside of these confines of home and “Eden” to find his true self and to discover life, love and true happiness. It is outside these confines of home and “Eden” where man will find a life of freedom, passion and adventure, and it is there men will get their (wild, untamed, undomesticated, natural and out-of-Eden) hearts back. Wow!

It gets much worse the more one reads of his writings.

In John Eldredge's book, “Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive,” he leads us to believe that knowledge (facts) about God do not lead us to happiness. While that is true, he then says it is because facts get lodged in the mind; “they don’t speak at the level we need to hear… but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart” (pg. 24). Now, stories to him also mean movies, novels, and such, which he uses extensively to illustrate his philosophy he wants to convey, even if the movies are loaded with moral filth. He quoted Rolland Hein saying, “They are the kind of story that wakes you up, and suddenly you say, ‘Yes, yes, this is what my life has really been about! Here is where my meaning and my destiny lie!’” Eldredge adds, “And we need some waking up, you and I” (pg. 25). He then quotes Kilby: “Systemizing drains away color and life, but myth restores. Myth is necessary because of what man is… because man is fundamentally mythic. His real health depends upon his knowing and living his… mythic nature” (pg. 26). Wow!

He speaks of Jesus in this way, “An innocent man, the Son of God, bleeding for the sins of the world. Standing in for us, as Jack gives his life for Rose in Titanic,…” (pg. 61; a reference to a movie in which Jack has sex with Rose, to whom he is not married. Rose is actually engaged to another man, I believe.). He makes several such references in this book in which he compares what is spiritual to what is worldly and sinful, and brings God down to human level, as though they are somehow on an even playing field with sinful man, but this is even more sinister than that, for it compares a holy God and what Jesus did in dying on the cross for our sins with an ungodly man giving his life for a woman with whom he had had an illicit affair. Wow!

He said, “The cross is not the focal point of Christianity” (pg. 64), the resurrection should be or is, in his opinion. He went on to suggest that those who walked with Jesus didn’t make the cross central (pg. 64). He said, “As the record goes, what the apostles preached was the Resurrection” (pg. 64). Let me remind us all here that Paul, in the power of the Spirit of God, said, “For the message of THE CROSS is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Co. 1:18). Without the cross, there would be no resurrection. Without the cross, there would be no forgiveness of sins. Jesus said that if we want to live, we must first die. John Eldredge minimizes and almost dismisses the importance of the cross of Christ. So many want their resurrection without the cross, and that is what ails our society. We must be warned against these who masquerade themselves as “servants of righteousness,” so that we are not led away by their deceptions.

Eldredge quotes from many mystics in his books, and he buys into their teachings.

Christ4Ever said:

that to understand it completely we need revelation through the Holy Spirit which is spiritual.

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I also agree with this. There are some parts even after 40 years I do not understand.
All I am saying is some of it is pretty basic.

Sue J Love said:

So many want their resurrection without the cross, and that is what ails our society. We must be warned against these who masquerade themselves as “servants of righteousness,” so that we are not led away by their deceptions.

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Exactly!

1Co 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
1Co 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

There is no way anyone can just pick up the Bible read it, and know what it says, unless the Holy Spirit is guiding, and teaching them.