Apprising Ministries on Centering Prayer and Father Thomas Keating

Isaiah 2:5-6

Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD. You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans.

Pastor-teacher Ken Silva at Apprising Ministries has conducted extensive research into Father Thomas Keating and Centering Prayer. Here's just a few samples:

ROMAN CATHOLICISM SPAWNED THE CURRENT APOSTASY IN EVANGELICALISM

And just look at what Merton’s friend and meditation mate Basil Pennington, along with associate apostate Thomas Keating—yet another of these Living Spiritual Teachers—wrote about the true goal of CP:

In the course of the years, sitting in silent prayer, beyond where words can interfere, men and women of many diverse traditions have come together. In that deeper place a oneness is experienced that gives assurance and heart to our feeble ecumenical efforts and interreligious dialogues. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has said that if one percent of the people would meditate we will have peace. Jesus spoke of the leaven that will leaven the whole. (Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer, 10,11, emphasis mine)

THOMAS KEATING GUIDELINES FOR CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

You should also be aware that this spurious CSM has already been poisoning evangelical seminaries e.g. through so-called Spiritual Formation as promulgated by Quaker mystic Richard Foster—another Living Spiritual Teacher—along with his spiritual twin Dallas Willard. Apprising Ministries has also recently been showing you that this CSM is already quite deep into mainstream evangelicalism.

For example in What Kind Of Prayer In Southern Baptist Convention Prayer Emphasis? you’ll see CSM—which flowered in the antibiblical monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism—has already begun penetrating the largest Protestant denomination in the US.

THOMAS KEATING ON CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

Keating says Contemplative/Centering Prayer itself “is a process.” This tells us that we are going to have to “practice” it over some period of time before we will realize its deeper effects. This is the reason for the references by Roshi Foster, Tony Jones and others in the Emerging Church to these spiritual “disciplines” of so-called Spiritual Formation, which must be practiced, and/or be mastered, as it were. And thus begins our decent back into first century Gnosticism where only the truly initiated—the enlightened—can possess the alleged “secret” knowledge (Greek: gnosis) concerning things spiritual. Among other places the Lord refutes this idea in 1 John 2:20 — But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. This forever does away with the patently false idea that there is a special class of “super” Christians who are the only ones privy to some secret spiritual knowledge.

KEEPING YOU APPRISED OF: CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

You may recall that in a Christianity Today article called The Emergent Mystique that Guru McLaren has cited Foster along with his spiritual twin Dallas Willard—“with their emphasis on spiritual disciplines”—as “key mentors”of the Emerging Church rebellion against Sola Scriputra. And then we have this further corroboration concerning John Cassian and the desert hermits by Benedictine monk, Dom Laurence Freeman, Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation whose “spiritual teacher was John Main“:

One day, about 1700 years ago, two young Christian monks living in the Egyptian desert visited an abba, an elder. They asked him what prayer really means. Abba Isaac then gave them one of the clearest and most powerful explanations of prayer in the whole Christian tradition. He said there are many forms of prayer but that all of them point to the same source and goal: the “Prayer of Fire”. He meant the living prayer of Jesus present in the human heart through the Holy Spirit.

So now you know. This is where the antibiblical practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer originated; it was not practiced or taught by Jesus Christ nor by His Apostles, and it truly has no place at all in the life of the Christian.

Hosea 4:11-13

11Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.
12My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.
13They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery.

Editor's note:

Take a look at just how far mysticism has infiltrated the Southern Baptist Convention. It is obvious that America's Bible belt is being unbuckled as it is enticed by a Roman-tic religious experience with false gods.

Listen to pastor Silva discuss the unbiblical roots of centering prayer and mysticism:

Iron Sharpens Iron with Ken Silva on Mysticism

CROSSTALK AMERICA: Ken Silva & Warnings About The Emergent Church

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See related article: N.Carolina Catholics and Protestants Centering on Father Keating's Mysticism