Mystic Seduction: Awakening Christians to a Real and Present Danger

By Gregory Hammond

Many Christians today are swallowing a deadly poison disguised as spiritual enlightenment.

An insidious evil has invaded the Church, luring unsuspecting Christians into a seriously compromised form of Christianity. What makes it more dangerous, says author Greg Hammond, is that a number of highly respected Christian leaders have mainstreamed this deception into the lives of Christians who share our pews every week.

Under the guise of achieving a higher spirituality, seemingly innocent practices derived from pagan and Eastern mysticism are encouraging Christians to empty their minds of rational thought and open them to the world of spirit. But as Hammond makes chillingly clear, the spirits contacted may be neither higher nor benevolent. The stated purpose of these mystical practices is to achieve oneness with God by discovering “the god within you.” The deliberate effect, however, is to undermine belief in the transcendent God by lowering him into oneness with creation.

The ultimate goal behind this seductive takeover of Christian beliefs is to move Christian theology toward Eastern and Gnostic concepts, thus preparing it for the merger of all faiths into a single, worldwide religion.

In Mystic Seduction, Hammond sounds the alarm. He clearly unmasks the true nature of these destructive heresies and calls Christians everywhere to be vigilant in contending against them. This is a message you will want to pass on to others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory Hammond
• Release date: May 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310275203

Gregory Hammond

Greg Hammond was born and raised in Greencastle, Indiana, where he taught history at the secondary level in the public schools. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in social sciences. Along with his wife Shannon, he currently works as a college campus minister. In addition to his campus responsibilities, he is an ordained minister and currently pastors a nondenominational, independent church. He and his wife have three sons, Micah, Joshua and Joel.

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Mystic Seduction

Awakening Christians to a Real and Present Danger

By Greg Hammond

Copyright 2014 by Gregory D. Hammond

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Personal stories and anecdotes included in this volume are based on fact; however, in some cases details have been changed to protect identities.

This book is dedicated to all the saints of the past who stood firm in the one truth handed down once for all, even to the point of death. We are all the beneficiaries of their sacrifice and owe it to them to stand firm until the end.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Spiritual Tsunami

Chapter 1: When Worldviews Collide

Chapter 2: What is Mysticism?

Chapter 3: The Mount Olivet Discourse

Chapter 4: Mysticism in the Context of a Global Religion

Chapter 5: The Age of Aquarius–A New World Religion for a New World Order

Chapter 6: The Birth of the Mystical Church

Chapter 7: Christian Mysticism–Capturing Christianity

Chapter 8: Mystic Methods, Mantras, and Meditation

Chapter 9: Christian Mysticism Today–Pathway to the New Christians

Afterword

Personal Biography

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to so many people for their help and encouragement in making this writing possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife Shannon for her indispensable support and encouragement that kept me going, especially during the times it would have been easy to have given up. I also want to thank my parents, Jim and Ethel, for getting me on the right track spiritually years ago and for instilling in me the desire to stand firm for what is right. I also want to thank Dave Bellis and Tom Williams for their help and guidance during this project. I owe them much. I also want to thank my three sons, Micah, Joshua and Joel, for their excitement about this project and for the joy they bring me. Most importantly, I thank Jesus, for without Him I am nothing.

Introduction: Spiritual Tsunami

One evening not long after my graduation from a small Midwest college, I sat talking with a friend at his kitchen table. The discussion turned to spiritual things, and the question came up, What do we really need to be saved? In other words, what is essential to assure a person of a positive post-life experience? After putting our minds together, we came up with what we thought was the answer: All you really need is to have a belief. It didn’t matter so much what you believed; the important thing was that you believed in something.

To help you understand how we came to that conclusion, let me share my spiritual journey up to that moment. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t sensitive to spiritual things. As early as the age of five, I pondered fairly deep philosophical questions. Spooky things bothered me—things like death and what would come after. As I grew, these things continued to concern me, and I knew I needed to find answers. I sought them, but without a clear Christian perspective. As my family began to attend church on a more regular basis, some of the pieces to the puzzle began to emerge. But I didn’t know how they fit together. One thing I did know, however, was that in order to be saved, I was supposed to go forward in church, confess my trust in Jesus, and be baptized. The preacher made that clear at the end of every worship service I attended. When I was sixteen years old, I finally took that step, mostly in response to my fear of going to hell. Afterward I sensed a great relief. Mission accomplished. Problem solved. NOT!

Actually, my problem had just begun. You see, I needed someone to start teaching me about the decision I had made, to disciple me and help me grow and understand my relationship with my Creator. Unfortunately, no one came alongside to help me, so I went on my merry way, living life as I had before. It was not necessarily a bad life, but neither was it necessarily good.

It was in my college years that I received my education in truth that resulted in the conclusion my friend and I came to that evening in the kitchen. It was not the result of any one class or professor, or really the school itself. It had more to do with what our overall culture instilled into all of us who grew up in the late sixties and seventies—a massive barrage of cultural enlightenment during my formative years. College was merely the vessel through which I received much of this indoctrination.

My main point in sharing my story is to show you that I was once what I am now opposing. I called myself a Christian, but in reality I was a new-age spiritualist. You see, it’s not what we call ourselves that makes us what we are: it’s how we live our lives and what values we reflect. What I believed back then was that all paths lead to God. That is the logical conclusion to draw from the idea that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe it. I didn’t practice mysticism. I didn’t meditate using a mantra or anything of that nature. But my belief system, through philosophical reflection and day–to-day life experiences, had brought me to that very place.

The result was that for the next seven years I was in a spiritual black hole. I had been sucked into a belief system that offered no hope, no real evidence of truth, and no assurance of my eternal future. Here we reach what is at the core of my warning in this book: In spite of my skewed, non-biblical views, I considered myself to be a Christian! This error came about because I did not measure my experiences by an objective standard. Therefore, my belief was based totally on what sounded good and reasonable at the time. Unfortunately, this is where much of the church is today. Its members depend more on their own thinking, cultural influences, and self-help books than on God’s inerrant Word.

I wrote this book to sound an urgent warning to the church, one of impending danger. I believe the church, in general, is asleep at the wheel and headed into a danger that could be more deadly than anything it has ever faced.

I remember reading a newspaper story about a couple from Australia who were strolling on the beach (I believe they were in Malaysia) as the tsunami of 2005 approached the shore. Although this couple perished, their camera was recovered and the film was found to be intact. Apparently, as this couple had strolled along they had been taking pictures of the sea and beach. The photos showed that neither they nor most of the people on the beach seemed to know that they were in grave danger. They were not alarmed as the water quickly receded and the huge tidal wave (seen off in the distance in one of their photos) approached the shore.

I have been told that water recedes in this way immediately before the deadly wave hits. It is a telltale sign of disaster. But rather than heed the warning, the people in the photos were strolling the beach and picking up shells where water had been a few minutes before. Not only did they not notice the wave approaching, they did not even seem curious, let alone alarmed, at the odd phenomenon of rapidly receding water. In spite of the clear signs of impending danger, they remained utterly oblivious.

Today the church is in a similar situation. She is ignorant or has chosen to ignore the signs of coming disaster, opting instead, it seems, to follow the way of the world. She has become like those Jesus warned about concerning the last days:

And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. . . . It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:26, 30).

As the world system gathers its forces to come against the church, too many of her members continue to live life as if things were rocking along as normal, eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage to the world. They have fallen asleep spiritually, and as a result they will not be prepared to meet the rapidly approaching wave that is about to strike and destroy them.

This spiritual slumber, I believe, is due to two reasons. First, too many are like I once was. They want all of the blessings of being a Christian but none of the hard work of knowing the truth and living it out in their lives. Second, too many will opt for the flesh over the spirit and remain unprepared because playing the world’s game is so enticing. They are like the ten virgins of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25, which he used to describe the church in the end times. Five of those virgins stayed vigilant and faithful to his words and prepared. Therefore they were not caught off guard by the Bridegroom’s return. Five others were foolish, unprepared, and slumbering. When the Bridegroom returned, they missed out on the wedding feast.

Like these five foolish virgins, when Jesus returns many in the church will not be ready, because it is easier to take a spiritual nap and succumb to a deadly distortion of Christianity—one based in mystical practices, pantheism, and universalism, forming the core of what the Bible calls the apostate church, or the great falling away (See 2 Thessalonians 2:3).

Someone once called me an apologist. I do love apologetics (making a case for Christianity to non-believers), but my role in writing this book is that of a polemicist—one who defends the church from false teaching from within. Apologetics and polemics are, however, closely related because what the church believes to be true (polemics) affects how it relates to and what it communicates to non-believers (apologetics). If your polemics are wrong, your apologetics will be wrong. Satan knows this. This is why he is using every possible avenue to draw the church away from absolute truth and into the realm of partial truth or relativism. The potential damage of this deception to both believers and non-believers is staggering! And it has become a very real problem in the church, one that is growing at an alarming rate. Many are accepting as truth teachings that are based upon the traditions of men. If this trend is left unchecked, many will never see the spiritual tsunami coming.

The topic of this book is touchy and potentially heated, and it would be easy to let anger have the upper hand and shift into attack mode against those who propound the issues I am warning against. Many of these people are sincere about what they believe. I cannot, however, simply ignore them. The stakes are too high. Unless these threats to historical Christianity are identified and dealt with, they will wind up aiding in the church’s absorption into the rising global religion. Jesus would do no less. In His zealousness for the Word, He forcefully cleansed the temple. And since He is my role model, I also cannot do any differently. I will, however, avoid attacking any person while at the same time being frank about the serious errors they promote.

A colleague of mine once said to me I have a way of making simple things complex, while you have a way of making complex things simple. Although it was meant as a compliment, I hope I do not oversimplify those things which are critical for the church and believers to know. Therefore, I pray that in this book I have successfully walked the line between simplicity and depth. And may God get the glory.

Chapter 1: When Worldviews Collide

In the decade of the 1950s, Hollywood was intrigued with science and how its rapid growth would impact the future, in both positive and negative ways. This fascination led to a rash of movies about the perils of nuclear radiation, the possibility of invaders from outer space, and the hypothesis that the Earth would come to its end in some major cataclysm.

One movie that I particularly liked was entitled When Worlds Collide. It was an adaptation of a 1933 novel by the same name written by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. In that original story, two rogue planets had entered the solar system. Scientists determined that the larger of the two, Alpha, would pass so close to the Earth that it would take out the moon and cause major calamities worldwide, ranging from tidal waves to wild fluctuations in weather patterns. The two planets would then orbit the sun once, taking eight months. On the second pass, Alpha would smash into Earth, destroying the planet and everything on it. The scientists determined that the second planet, Beta, might be habitable and would most likely remain in orbit around the sun. They quickly built spaceships that could take a remnant of man and other lifeforms to the new planet, thus effectively preserving mankind. It was a modern variant of the story of Noah’s ark.

We in today’s church face an equally devastating collision—not of orbiting planets, but of opposing worldviews. It began in the Garden of Eden when an alien invader pitted a non-biblical worldview against God’s biblical one. These two worldviews cannot coexist eternally because their basic premises are diametrically opposed. One asserts that the God of the Bible created and sustains all that exists in the universe, and the other asserts that man and the universe themselves are self-sustaining and eternal. Put simply, one worldview says that God is God, and the other says that man and the material universe is God. This conflict between Creator and creation will increase in intensity as we near the time of Christ’s return. How will the struggle between these two perspectives look as it plays out in the world?

He is God, I am not!

As I think about these differing and contradictory belief systems, I am reminded of my high school class in mythology. It intrigued me to learn how human these gods were. The lives of Jupiter, Mercury, Odin, Thor, and others were riddled with lusts, jealousy, conflict, vengefulness, and other human weaknesses. And it is easy to understand why: Each of them was contrived from the mind of man and were therefore made in the image of man. This is in stark contrast to the biblical view that man was made in the image of his Creator. As a result of being made in God’s image, we are like him in many ways. But the reality of the situation is that we are not Him, and we can never become Him!

Satan’s deception in Eden asserted the opposite: that man could become his own god. This deceiver convinced man that the real deceiver was his Creator, who was hiding from man knowledge that would make him God’s equal. By following Satan’s advice, man could get out from under God’s oppressive thumb and run his own life.

In my studies of mythology, I was particularly fascinated by the ultimate fate of the Norse gods. Their destiny was to be determined in a final conflict between the good gods and heroes of Valhalla (the Hall of Heroes) as they fought a battle to the death against the evil Frost Giants, headed by their nefarious ruler Loki. The outcome of that battle was to determine the destiny of the Earth.

The conflict between the Norse gods is similar to our world’s clash between opposing worldviews. It is a battle between ultimate good and rebellious evil. This conflict pits these two worldviews against one another in a winner take all duel to the death. It is at the heart of the historical struggle between the Creator and the created. Ultimately, it affects the way we answer the basic questions of Who am I? and Why am I here? How we answer those two questions will determine how we address all other questions of life, such as morality, meaning, reality, and life after death.

One might ask, Isn’t it more accurate to say that there is a clash of many worldviews instead of just the two you are presenting? After all, there are many religions that contradict the beliefs of Christianity. The answer to the question is no, because all the other religions are based on the same worldview; they are merely packaged differently. Or, to put it another way, these religions look different on the outside, but at the core they are all the same. That sameness is the belief that everything is God and everyone is his own god. This is the worldview behind all other religions and spiritual systems, and it is presently seducing Christianity.

Some Definitions

Before we go on, I want to introduce two words that will help us understand the two opposing worldviews: theism and monism. Theism is the belief that there is a Supreme Being separate from creation, who is the Creator and sustainer of everything that exists. This concept is dualistic in nature in that it recognizes two separate entities: the Creator and the created. In theism, the Creator is outside of and is the originator of all that is or ever will be. We might summarize theism by saying that He is God and we are not. The three religions of the world that hold a theistic belief system are Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Monism (or more specifically, pagan monism), on the other hand, asserts that creation and the Creator are undifferentiated. In other words, there is no divergence between the creation and the Creator; they are one and the same. Thus the term monism, or oneness. God is not a separate entity from the material world, nor is he separate from humans. Those who endorse a monistic view of the reality say that when one looks at a chair or any other object in the material world, it is merely a matter of God looking at himself, and the perceived separation between self and the chair is an illusion. Everything that exists makes up what the monists call God, thus everything is one, or monistic.

Among those who hold to a monistic view of creation, the concept of individualism is not good, for it stands in the way of one’s salvation, which depends on the realization that all are one. Individuals who hold to the view that they are separate from God bar themselves from realizing who they really are and from achieving their full potential. Therefore, the illusion of individualism must be eliminated. Monists believe that man’s problem is that he does not realize his true identity. The remedy is to understand who he really is. Once he has realized his true identity, he can achieve oneness with God.

We can see that monists cannot have a transcendent or omnipotent God. For if all are One and all is God, how can God not know who he is? And if he does not know himself, can he really be God? Here we discover one of the great, dividing differences between theism and monism. Christians understand that God is a separate being, outside and above the material universe, who is omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing). It is both contradictory and absurd to think that such a God could fail to know who he is. Theism and monism cannot be synthesized into a rational belief.

Archrivals: Theism and Monism

Our family loved the Disney/Pixar movie The Incredibles. We have watched it several times. Although this movie offers great entertainment for the family, it also offers some great examples of the rivalry between theism and monism. In the movie the good guys, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible and other superheroes, have been vilified by the public and civil authorities because they are growing tired of the fallout (wrecked cars, buildings, etc.) that resulted from the supers dealing with the bad guys. They thought they would rather put up with the negatives of bad guys running rampant than have the positives that went along with living in a morally sound and safe society. Therefore, they forced the supers to assume new identities and live in hiding. I believe this is a great illustration of what the general public today is doing on a spiritual level. Those who promote the idea that all is God and man is God are turning the tables on the true heroes, those who hold true to God’s created order. They are attempting to hijack the truth with a pseudo version of it, and thus force into hiding the real truth and those who would promote it.

The movie also provided another superb illustration that exposes the real difference between theism and monism. The arch villain of the movie, Syndrome, is a super wannabee. He has manufactured his super abilities through the aid of science as opposed to coming by them naturally, like a true super. Out of jealousy, he is attempting to destroy all the true superheroes so that he will be the one and only super. When he grows old, he intends to sell all of his super secrets to the public so that everyone can be a super. Once everyone is a super, then all will be the same and no one will be a super.

Obviously Syndrome, a fake, sells himself to the public as the real thing. This is exactly what monism does. Though utterly false, it promotes itself to the public as the truth. It promotes a contrived pseudo religion as a replacement to God’s created order. Monists believe that everything is God and therefore everything has equal value. This is exactly like Syndrome’s plan. But the problem is that when everything has equal value, then everything ultimately has no value. It removes the value and sacredness of the life of man by making his life equal to any other life form and even to inanimate objects. In monism a man has no more value than a rock or an ant or a tree. Unfortunately, too many people (including many Christians) seem unwilling