By Mary Fairchild
Updated 7/10/22. See the latest Willow Creek Report: Summer Notes: Dave Dummitt Picks Up Bill Hybels’ Mantle at Willow Creek Community Church to Promote Peter Drucker’s “Next Society”
There is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought – especially the so-called “prosperity” psychology, “willpower-building” metaphysics, and systems of “high-pressure” salesmanship – black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same. Manly P. Hall
The beauty, power, and potential of the local church is head-popping to me. Bill Hybels
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- Tony Robbins
- Norman Vincent Peale
- Robert Schuller
- Bill Hybels
- Rick Warren
- Manyly P. Hall
- Edgar Cayce
- John Templeton
The Human Potential movement is a branch of the “New Age” movement that is especially packaged to be acceptable to corporations, government, small businesses, and the educational establishment in the form of motivational seminars. Although it uses terminology to sound psychological and scientific, it’s principles are based on eastern mysticism and the occult.
The bottom line is that people have within them a force that is so powerful, there is nothing that can keep them from doing, being, sharing, creating and giving whatever they envision in life. Tony Robbins
Anthony Robbins is a self-help writer and motivational speaker who has written several books including Awaken the Giant Within, Notes from a Friend and Giant Steps. Awaken The Giant Within is subtitled ‘How to take immediate control of your mental, emotional, physical and financial destiny!’ The core of his philosophy is defying the culture that surrounds us by refusing to be just another mole, burrowing away at our job so we can keep in step. In his world, everyone should be amazing.
Norman Vincent Peale wanted to help people maintain their enthusiasm under difficult circumstances with The Positive Principle Today which is another expansion of The Power of Positive Thinking. The famous self-help author helped millions of people become more positive and get through tough times.
Peale is the publisher of Guideposts magazine and writer of many books. He believes that everyone is going to heaven if they believe in a god, and have some redeeming value, which is just about everyone. This is evidenced by several situations documented in Peale’s life. Some of Norman Vincent Peale’s suggestions for maintaining optimism include:
- Peale advises people to change by reinventing themselves, altering their attitudes and ignoring past limits. They would do this basically through self-hypnosis and prayer.
- Writing down desires and goals on paper several times and leaving them in different locations to refer to is one way to embed positive results in the mind.
- He tells people to use visualization in The Positive Principle Today, with the theory that the positive pictures will eventually happen. It’s important to believe that change is possible while envisioning the desired outcome.
In The Positive Principle Today, he suggests negative thinkers check words they say vigilantly, replacing them with positive words. Repeat these positive words frequently, and the mind eventually accepts them as reality.
When one examines many of the self-help, New Age, Occult books, references and quotes from Norman Vincent Peale frequently occur. For instance, in The Magic Power of Your Mind by Natter Germain, Peale is referenced four times in harmony with the books stated purpose: “[It] shows how you can harness ESP, hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance and auto-suggestion to achieve health, wealth and happiness beyond your dreams.”
In Steve Richard’s book Levitation, he suggests using the technique of “suggestions articulation” found in Power of Positive Thinking to induce meditation which can be used to transcend gravity. (p. 63).
Dr. Peale himself credits his theology of positive thinking to Ernest Holmes, founder of New Age/Occultic Church of Religious Science (Ernest Holmes, The First Religious Scientist, James Reid, p. 14). In fact, Peale borrowed the phrase “positive thinking” from Charles Fillmore, founder of the New Age Unity School of Christianity(Positive Imaging, p. 77). Charles Braden documents Peale’s evolvement into his New Age synthesis in his book Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought.
Peale is listed in the bibliography of Helping Yourself with Self-Hypnosis by Caprio and Berger, along with various other New Age and Occultic authors. Peale also wrote the introduction and endorsement of The Stress Strategists by “national psychic and professional numerologist” Kathy Bury. Ms. Bury stated on the telephone that she did Dr. Peale’s numerology chart (similar conceptually to astrology) at his request.
Charles S. Braden’s definitive work on New Thought identifies Norman Vincent Peale as the one man “through whose ministry essentially New Thought ideas and techniques have been made known most widely in America (Charles S. Braden, Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought (SMU Press, 1966; p. 186). ”Braden, in his research wrote, “I once wrote him (Peale) saying that I had read his books and articles and in doing so had had the feeling that I was reading New Thought. Had he indeed heard their leaders, read their books, and consciously or unconsciously been influenced by them?” (p. 388).
Peale’s answer came by way of a personal call to Braden. Peale stated that “he had read them all and had found invaluable elements in them,” (Ibid). Peale referred Braden to The Tough-Minded Optimist for his background. In chapter two of that book, Peale expressed dissatisfaction with both his liberal seminary education and with fundamentalism. He began to read “spiritual literature” from Unity, Religious Science, Science of Mind, Christian Science, and from various other “metaphysical teachers” (Spirits in Rebellion, p. 389).
Peale made a most significant admission when he related that he almost resigned from his pastorate when his teachings came under heavy criticism from fellow clergymen. He indicated that his father, also a Methodist minister, persuaded him to continue by saying, “You have evolved a new Christian emphasis out of a composite of Science of Mind, metaphysics, Christian Science, medical and psychological practice, Baptist Evangelism, Methodist witnessing, and solid Dutch Reformed Calvinism,” (Ibid, p.391).
Dr. Peale’s father was correct about the New Age identification, but apparently did not understand Reformed theology or orthodoxy very well. When one reads Norman Vincent Peale, it is obvious that he never tells anyone that they must come to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before they can become a child of God, born again and indwelt by His Spirit. Instead the assumption is that everyone is already a child of God and can access the Power through using certain principles and techniques. The first words we find in Power of Positive Thinking is “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities!” (p. 1).
Peale consistently operates with New Age doctrine and practices, emphasizing the creative power of thought and that consciousness is true reality and aligning your consciousness by meditation or affirmation, will automatically bring what you desire. He states, “A meditation in which you visualize a white mist filled with myriads of little points of energy. Scientists say this is life substance, the life force. Visualize this mist high above you, around you, at your feet then breathe in the white mist, and visualize it proceeding upward into your brain making it alive with new power. I have been practicing this type of meditation for several days. It induces a sense of vital energy, an awareness of God’s presence. Who is God? Some theological being? He is so much greater than theology. God is vitality. God is life. God is energy. As you breathe God in, as you visualize His energy, you will be reenergized!” (No More Stress or Tension, Plus: The Magazine of Positive Thinking, May, l986, pp. 22-23)
When asked in a recent letter about some of Dr. Peale’s endorsements of specific New Age writers, and the Mormon prophet, the response was written by Peale’s secretary, Mrs. Evelyn Yegella. She stated that she could find no reference nor endorsement to The Game of Life and The Jesus Letters. She also stated that “Perhaps he (Peale) is too generous with his praise” and that he “does not endorse the New Age Movement” (letter from the Foundation For Christian Living, October 31, 1988). Yet in a recent interview with Beth Ann Krier of the Los Angeles Times, Peale said, “I don’t know much about that New Age business. I have received critical letters that I belong to the New Age. I’ve got to look into it and see what it is. But anything that develops legitimate, positive thinking principles, I’m for it.”
Robert Schuller credited close friend Norman Vincent Peale “with fine tuning his own positive faith and laying the foundation for his own Possibility Thinking that was to come.”
This movement teaches that faith is a matter of what we say more than whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts. The term “positive confession” refers to the teaching that words have creative power. What you say, Word-Faith teachers claim, determines everything that happens to you. Your “confessions,” that is, the things you say — especially the favors you demand of God — must all be stated positively and without wavering. Then God is required to answer. Word-Faith believers view their positive confessions as an incantation by which they can conjure up anything they desire: “Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth. That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say” (1; pp. 281, 285).
Positive Confession leaders do not trust in God, it is a metaphysical force that they trust. Contrary to the Bible, they view God as insufficient and can only do what He does by using this universal faith-force in obedience to certain cosmic laws. They view man as a little god in God’s class who has the same powers as God and can use the same force of faith by obedience to the same laws that God also must obey. Word-Faith teachers owe their ancestry to groups like Christian Science, Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Science of Mind, and New Thought — not to classical Pentecostalism. The gospel proclaimed by the Word-Faith movement is not the gospel of the New Testament. Word-Faith doctrine is a mongrel system, a blend of mysticism, dualism, and Gnosticism that borrows generously from the teachings of the metaphysical cults. (1; p. 290).
Linked to the Positive Confession movement is the concept of Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). PMA has become the major link between sorcery and Christianity. It is the human potential movement that incorporates the age old Eastern mystique that all men can acquire godhood, that “we can achieve anything we conceive.” But the Bible says: “With God all things are possible.” PMA, however, declares: “With man all things are possible,” which means either that we do not need God or that we are God. Whereas the apostle Paul said, “I can do all things through Him [Christ] who strengthens me,” the New Age/PMA “Christ” is a state of consciousness rather than a historic Person. The Christian has a positive attitude not because he believes in the power of positive thinking, but because he is trusting in God.
The PMA that is promoted in today’s New Age, is based upon humanistic psychology’s first article of faith: “Human potential is infinite!” The real Christian is happy and positive in all circumstances because he believes that God, who alone is infinite, loves and cares for him. These two concepts — Christian and PMA — are mutually contradictory, in spite of the sincere people who believe they are the same thing expressed in different language. Those directly responsible for bringing PMA into the professing church are Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller.
Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone, the originators or the PMA concept, talk about “God” in their books, but their “God” is a metaphysical “Divine Power” that can be tapped into through mind-power techniques (from visualization to positive self-talk and other forms of self-hypnosis and self-image psychology). Hill and Stone don’t substitute PMA for faith, but promote that PMA and faith are one and the same, that believing in the power of the mind is somehow the same as believing in God; that the human mind is some kind of magic talisman that wields a metaphysical force with infinite potential because, somehow, it is part of what they call Infinite Intelligence. This is the “God” of the mind-science cults and of the New Age.
In 1974 in Robert Schuller’s book, “Your Church Has Real Possibilities,” Schuller claimed to be the father of the Church Growth Movement. He said his chief disciple was Bill Hybels who has a large church in the Chicago area. Hybels had been a speaker at Schuller’s Institute for Successful Church Leadership conferences held in January each year.
On “Vision Night”, 2005, at Bill Hybel’s Willow Creek Community Church Hybel’s shared that the dream of his adult life has been to be in a church where every single person knew that they were a priest and that they would be an unstoppable force in their community, city, state, country, and world.”
Rick Warren states, “Pastors are probably the most underrated groups of change agents today.” Warren founded Saddleback Community Church in southern California, he’s a member of Southern Baptist Convention, authored “Purpose Driven Church”—sold 1 million copies, he’s trained over 180,000 pastors and leaders in Church Growth principles, and he has a doctorate from Fuller Theological Seminary. The Purpose Driven Church is “growth without compromising “YOUR” message and mission. Warren states that Tom Paterson was one of the three strongest supports, along with Peter Drucker and Bob Buford, of his purpose-driven church strategy in the formative years of Saddleback Church.
Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) was a prolific American author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his work The Secret Teaching of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Cabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, which he published at the age of twenty five; the first line of which is, “Philosophy is the science of estimating values.” He has been widely recognized as a leading scholar in the fields of religion, mythology, mysticism, and the occult.
In 1934 Manly P. Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, California, dedicating it to an idealistic approach to the solution of human problems. The PRS claims to be non-sectarian and entirely free from educational, political, or ecclesiastical control, the Society’s programs stress the need for the integration of philosophy, religion, and science into one system of instruction. The PRS Library, a public facility devoted to source materials in obscure fields, has many rare and scarce items now impossible to obtain elsewhere.
Carl Jung, when writing Psychology and Alchemy, borrowed material from Hall’s private collection. In 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33º Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite), at a ceremony held at PRS on December 8th), despite never being initiated into the physical craft. In his over 70-year career, Hall delivered approximately 8,000 lectures in the United States and abroad, authored over 150 books and essays, and wrote countless magazine articles.
Jung (1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist, is one of the pioneers of depth psychology. He developed a form of psychology whose guiding goal is to foster individuation. Individuation means becoming who you uniquely are. Jungian psychotherapy aims at relating our conscious selves with our unconscious selves so that we can live a more complete life as the individuals that we are truly meant to be. Our symptoms, the painful and disturbing issues in our lives, are seen as gateways to this process of individuation. Jungian psychology is also known as analytical psychology which welcomes images, dreams, and fantasies as harbingers of growth, and honors the sacred in all its forms. (C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco)
Edgar Cayce , 1877-1945, American folk healer, b. Hopkinsville, Ky. A popularizer of the idea of reincarnation , he was active as a “psychic diagnostician” between 1901 and 1944, performing thousands of “life readings.” He wandered across the United States, spreading his ideas, before settling in Virginia Beach, Va. in 1925, where he established the Cayce Hospital (1928) and the Association for Research and Enlightenment (1931). His works have enjoyed a renewal among adherents of New Age spirituality.
Directed by a spirit guide, Cayce wrote, “Know self and ye know the occult.” (33443-1) “Each spirit, each manifestation of Life is One, and a manifestation either in this, that or the other sphere…or space of development towards the knowledge, …the conception of the One—Him—I Am Jehovah—Yah—All One!” (262-32) In conclusion, in the manifestation of all force, power, motion, vibration,…is in its essence of One Force. (Frejer, B. Ernest, “The Edgar Cayce Companion,” 1995, Barnes & Noble, Inc.) Cayce continues, “…changes are coming, this may be sure—an evolution, or revolution, in the ideas of religious thought. The basis of it for the world will eventually come out of Russia; not Communism, no!—but rather that which is the basis of same, as Christ taught—His kind of Communism.” Cayce describes occult forces as the application of unseen or unfelt laws to the physical or material life…(4185-2).
Every year, the New Ager John Templeton gives the Templeton Award for progress in religion. He says we need to find a scientific religion that’s not dependent upon ancient manuscripts like the Bible but. It needs to be up to date, scientific, and one that everyone can accept—even the extra terrestrials. He says he doesn’t care what your beliefs are out there, Buddhist, Muslim, Hinduism… we’ve got to get a religion God is everything. God is everywhere—you can feel him everywhere. There’s no such place as heaven and hell those are states of mind.
Billy Graham accepted it the award. Chuck Colson accepted it(saw it as an opportunity). Colson gave his acceptance speech at the 1993 World Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. The service where he gave his speech was opened with a Muslim chant and prayer and it was closed by a Buddhist chant and prayer—in the audience there where witch doctors and everybody else… In his speech you will not find the Gospel. It was his greatest opportunity to present the Gospel to these people who really need it and he does not do it. He talks about a spiritual awakening, deeper experiences, and vague terms that anyone could accept.
Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ) accepted it. He gave his acceptance speech at a Catholic Church in Rome. He began his speech, “Your eminence Cardinal Cassedy.” In his newsletter, the Brightside he wrote that he was so pleased that there were 4 cardinals in the audience. Cardinal Cassedy is the man behind Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT); the emissary of the pope who guided Colson and Newhause and so forth in putting this document together in which they all said—“We thank God for the discovery of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.” But the Bible says that if you haven’t believed the Gospel you’re not saved, you’re not born again—you are not brothers and sisters in Christ.
Reflecting back in history, one outstanding figure of 1938 that was in sharp contrast save for their opposition to Adolf Hitler, was Protestant Pastor Martin Niemoller who spent most of the year in a concentration camp. Niemoller gave courageous witness to his faith. Abortion was also made legal during this time. This was the spiritual impetus which brought a revival of human sacrifices being offered to ancient pagan deities – complete with Nazi rituals – to the forefront. The Holocaust was preceded by vast pageants which Hitler used to promote neo-Paganism.
Among the various sects of Protestants (most of which had adopted liberal theology and had apostatized in the late 1800s), a new “German Church” was instituted: ‘Dr. Reinholdt Krause, the Berlin district leader of the sect, proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament, ‘with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps’ and the revision of the New Testament with the teaching of Jesus corresponding entirely with the demands of National Socialism. Resolutions were drawn up demanding ‘One People, One Reich, One Faith,’ requiring all pastors to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and insisting that all churches institute the Aryan paragraph and exclude converted Jews.’”(Michael Sturmer. The German Century)
The United Nations Organization is dedicated to bringing about a one-world government for a new coalesced mankind. “Network” is a New Age code word that refers to the thousands of groups around the world that are all working toward the realization of this “interconnectedness” of all life through the establishment of a world government. Many of these networks expect the United Nations one day to function as the “central nervous system” in the new world order. This new planetary consciousness is shared by many leaders [such as] Robert Muller, Secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Council (UNESCOI; Peace, Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust[Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1983], pp. 62-63)
In its goal to bring about world government New Ageism is in practical agreement and cooperation with world-wide Communism. It is also in agreement with Communism and secular humanism in its efforts to eradicate the God of the Bible from the minds of everyone, especially children. This is why New Ageism has targeted the public schools for heavy infiltration successfully. There is also much New Ageism now in children’s books.
The New Age movement is the culmination of pantheist mysticism and cosmic evolutionism throughout history. It denies the biblical Christian faith and its sovereign, personal, transcendent God. Instead, it is monistic, seeing the world as all there is, and as equal to divinity (“God). It uses religious as well as non-religious language to “transform men’s consciousness” and put them “in touch with their Higher Selves.” It puts no difference between man and other creatures. It believes in the eternal existence of the world within a cyclical history, in reincarnation, and in guidance by “Spirits” or “forces.”
New Ageism promotes selfism because it considers man’s self as the seat of the “Higher Self” or the divinity of the world. It uses various bodily techniques and behaviors to alter man’s consciousness. It is supremely optimistic about man’s next evolutionary leap towards one united, divinized mankind under a one-world government. New Ageism has no concept of sin in the biblical sense. It sees “good” and “evil” as relative or as the light and dark side of one and the same divinity/force/world. New Ageism agrees with Communism/atheism about bringing about a one-world government, and in its radical enmity against the God of the Bible and His people.