ASI 2012: It's Time... To Be About Our Father's Business

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ASI 2012 Seminar: It's Time

Howard Peth

Contemplative Prayer: A Clear and Present Danger

Dwayne Lemon

Stand Firm

James Hartley

Lighting the World!

Christian Berdahl

Distraction Dilemma - Exposing Distractions & Dangers in Music

The best laid plans of mice and men, so we're a couple minutes late to start and every minute is precious because my time is a little bit abbreviated at this particular meeting.

But my name is Howard Peth and they asked me to come because I wrote a book on contemplative prayer that came out just last December.

And you who are members of the ASI are going to get a free copy of that.

You'll see an envelope and inside is a cover letter by the president, Frank Fournier of ASI.

And you'll get a copy of my book called the dangers of contemplative prayer.

And you'll also get a copy of this month's ministry magazine, which is for pastors.

And there's 1 other thing I don't want you to forget and go off leaving without, it is a four-page handout, which has some other information that I'd like to put into your hands that's not in my book.

And there's 1 other thing that 1 of the exhibits downstairs has, it's right near the front when you enter any of those doors, and I think the exhibit is for a ministry called the Covenant.

But the Covenant is making a DVD of this particular issue.

And you can pick up a free sample since they didn't finish all of that work.

They give you a brief taste of what this will be like later when it comes out in the fall.

So if you can pick up those things, you'll go home loaded and informed, certainly about contemplative prayer.

I just ran downstairs to see if some technical person could know how to dim the lights a little bit.

We don't have to turn them out completely, but it's rather bright, almost like daylight with all these lights.

And if someone comes along and dims the lights, you'll know that we got results on our request.

But let's go ahead now without further ado.

I might say that I'm going to talk rather fast because usually when I give a presentation on this, it's in 3 parts, maybe a Friday night and then a Sabbath, have 2 more parts.

Altogether, they take just a little less than 4 hours, about an hour and some for each of those.

And today, I only have an hour and 15 minutes.

So if you'll excuse me, I'll try to talk fast enough because you folks are spending time and money to come here and I want to give you as much information as I can.

Today we want to turn the spotlight on contemplative prayer.

And I'd like to have a word of prayer with the Lord.

I'm glad, that looks pretty good, doesn't it?

I wanna ask the Lord to be with us as we go ahead.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your truth, your blessing, your church, and we pray that you will help us to learn our lessons well in this regard so that we in turn can teach others.

We love your truth and we pray that you'll be with us, present by your spirit.

Now, God warns in the last book of the Bible that the devil has come down to us in great wrath, why?

Because he knows he has but a short time.

And I believe that the devil is pulling out all the stops in these last days because he knows that he has but a short time.

Paul warns, he says, and this is a powerful verse that's very pertinent.

The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of who?

Contemplative prayer is really a clear and a present danger because if you'll remember, the devil's target has always been our mind.

He reached the mind of Eve in the Garden of Eden and now he's got a method perfected where he can reach the mind of just about everyone in the world in these last days.

So That's something really to think about.

But the church is becoming awakened to this threat and the first shot across the bow was by our new president just 2 years ago he was inaugurated at the general conference.

And in that long inaugural address, toward the end, he saved these words for the end, which I think is a good place to help us remember them.

He said, stay away from non-biblical spiritual disciplines of spiritual formation that are rooted in mysticism, such as contemplative prayer or centering prayer, and the emerging church movement in which they are promoted.

So he gave that warning, and my publisher asked me if I would write this book last year and I did.

It's called The Dangers of Contemplative Prayer.

It was published by Pacific Press and it was approved by our Biblical Research Institute.

And this very month of August 2012, that entire issue of this magazine for pastors called Ministry is devoted to this topic of spiritual formation.

There's a great editorial by the editor Derek Morris, who is even present in this audience today.

He was misled into this some years ago, 20 or some years ago before most people recognized the dangers, but he's come out of it now.

He's come out of it and he wrote a powerful editorial in this magazine.

And he's a good witness to help maybe other pastors who have been misled into this.

But also Mark Finley wrote A04 or 5 page incisive article on this, plus other ones.

Those are all on the issue that you will receive.

3ABN is a powerful outreach and on Thursday nights they have an interview program.

Tonight they're going to tape right here in Cincinnati a program 2 hours long dealing with this problem of contemplative prayer.

Presidents of the conference, the North American Division and so forth, of the ASI and so forth.

So you probably won't be allowed in there because they want everything quiet when they're taping.

I think they're gonna run it again on Sunday, for instance.

Now we wanna see what contemplative prayer is, because it's new to most people, and how it really works.

Well, you could define it maybe in a single word like spiritualism, which God's word condemns very strongly.

Another possible definition might be mysticism, which is also condemned.

Now, we know what spiritualism is, but some of us might not be clear on mysticism.

So the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines that as direct communion with the ultimate reality or with God and so forth.

It's direct knowledge of God in a subjective way.

You see, the mystic doesn't like to get his knowledge secondhand, like reading from a sacred text like the Bible, or listening to an inspired sermon from somebody else.

Instead, the Hindu guru, the Buddhist priest, the African witch doctor, Indian medicine man, spiritualistic medium, new age channeler, or professional psychic, all believe that they've been blessed with the gift of direct personal knowledge with the invisible supernatural world of all knowing spirits.

And right along with all those mystics of the occult, the innocent Christian folks who is misled to indulge in contemplative prayer also communicates directly with the mystical forbidden world of spirits who will reply, they honestly will reply to him or her personally.

What's not realized though is the voice of that they think is God's angel is 1 of Satan's fallen angels, a devil.

You see, if Satan can deceive, seduce, and convert a real Christian into becoming a mystic who is so addicted to contemplative prayer that he longs to listen directly to spirit voices becoming, knowingly or unknowingly, a spiritualist, then the devil really has got him.

But you might ask, and a lot of people wonder, I'll tell you that What you have to do to go into contemplative prayer, they tell you you have to empty your mind.

My mind is always going, even when I'm trying to fall asleep.

Well, the Hindus discovered the secret to this thousands of years ago with a device they called the mantra.

A mantra is a syllable or a word or a brief phrase that you repeat when an intruding thought comes along.

So if some stray thought enters or a worry or concern, you say your mantra, which is like a prayer word.

You could say Jesus, a stray thought, you knock it down with this mantra.

It's helpful to understand the correct definition.

It really comes from the Sanskrit language of Hinduism.

The first syllable man means to think and tra means to be liberated from.

So it literally means to escape from thought.

And here this Catholic monk explains it more.

He says Listen to the mantra as you say it, gently but repeatedly.

If thoughts or images come, these are distractions at the time of meditation.

And the way to ignore it is to say your mantra.

Return, they say, to, they encourage you, return to meditation each morning and evening for between 20 and 30 minutes.

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Series

ASI 2012 Seminar: It's Time

Contemplative Prayer: A Clear and Present Danger

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Correlation Between Centering Prayer and Hinduism

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Breakout Session 3

Modern Medium- Part 1

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God’s End-time Church Prophecy

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Sanctuary Under Siege

6. The Omega Apostasy

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Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

5. How NOT TO Lead a Disastrous Prayer Ministry

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The Last Deception

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It Happened Because of Prayer

Do Not Enter

49m

OYC 2012 Seminars

To Be Convenient: Other Worldviews

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The Omega of Apostasy, Part 1

45m

Lying on the Spirit

22m

The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

The Rise of Spiritualism and the Occult

1h 11m

Sound Doctrine