A Film about Pagan Mysticism in the Church

 Here's another video on tghe dangers of mysticism and it's very good.  Hosted by occult-watcher Caryl Matrisciana.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYrP_VQ0SO8 

I'm going to have to stop calling Tozer's book of verse "mystical verse" because it's too bad he made so much of that word and it's become a huge headache.  \\

I guess I have to say again, though, that I understand why he felt it's necessary, because some of the people who wrote this poetry wree branded with that label while what they actually wrote is completely biblical.  Even the poetry of the Catholics among them is completely biblical.  Perhaps he chose the ones that are and others aren't so defensible, I don't know, but if the poem is biblical that's all that matters for its effect on the reader.    

And of course what Tozer was objecting to was the tendency in churches to accept a rathre low level of Christian experience as normative, when scripture itself calls us to a closer relationship with Jesus than that standard.    It's also observed by many these days, and it's true in my own experience, that Christian life hardly differs at all from the lives of unbelievers.  Outwardly anyway, and I'm one of whom that's unfortunately true.  I had the jarring experince recently of watching one of John MacArthur's videos and hearing his congregation erupt into hooting and whistling in praise of his dealings over the legal battle of their meeting during COVID restrictions.  It was jarring because it sounded like any crowd at a football game.  Why shouldn't it?   All I can say is I didn't expect it from a large group of Christians.  I can't even say why not, I can't even defend my impression.  It was just jarring.  It just didn't sound right.   And there's nothing unusual about it in my experience.  Silly joking around, acting like a fooball crowd, all par for the course these days.  

Anyway, I see a book like Tozer's as aiming for a more serious Christian life than would ever provoke such a fleshly outburst, and I think from what he wrote in his Pursuit of God, some of which I quoted quite a few posts back, he was saying pretty much that:  the Christian life is meant to be more than what it usually is in today's churches.  For him the term "mystical" was included in that "more."  But then he wrote the book before the great avalanche of Eastern religions and occultism that hit America in the sixties, so maybe that exonderates him.

But the film by Matrisciana is all about that avalanche.   That is her calling, to expose all that, and the pagan mysticism from early Catholicism is another part of that unfortunate influx into the churches so it became one of her subjects..

I love Tozer's book though.  It lifts me out of my flesh into a greater love of the Biblical God than I've felt n some time.    And it's all biblical, no artificial methods for emptying the mind or creating any special mental condition or that sort of thing, just thoughts about God that are clearly in line with scripture that in themselves take you out of your flesh to some extent and lift you into God's presence.    An appreciation of the beauty of Christ rapidly causes the beauties of the world to fade.  That's the only "method" I find there.