YWAM (Youth With a Mission), an evangelical missions organization (founded in 1960 by Loren Cunningham) that trains about 25,000 people every year for world-wide mission trips, has issued an announcement regarding its commitment to teaching contemplative prayer. On Saturday, a reader alerted Lighthouse Trails to a June 2018 YWAM promotional audio piece on the … [Read more…]
By Lighthouse Trails Editors Is your church involved in a Spiritual Formation program? If so, you might want to ask the question, what exactly is Spiritual Formation? It’s a fair question, and one that, if not asked, could end up surprising you when your church changes in ways you never imagined. A Christianity Today article … [Read more…]
As many readers may remember, in 2014 Word of Faith preacher Kenneth Copeland invited the Anglican priest Tony Palmer to speak to his congregation.* Palmer, who died in a motorcycle accident a few months later, was an “evangelist” for Pope Francis to convince leaders in the Protestant church that the reformation was over and … [Read more…]
In an article titled “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It,” Biola University professor J.P. Moreland says that evangelical Christians are too committed to the Bible. He states: “In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is … [Read more…]
NEW BOOKLET: How to Find a Good Church (And What To Do if You Can’t) by the editors at Lighthouse Trails is our newest Lighthouse Trails Booklet. The Booklet is 18 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are as much as 50% off retail. Our Booklets are designed to give … [Read more…]
By Warren B. Smith Countless references to meditating, being quiet, being still, relaxing, resting, letting go, and reciting Psalm 46:10 are found throughout God Calling and Jesus Calling. They are all suggested ways of entering into “the silence” to experience God’s presence. The New Age/New Spirituality likewise places great emphasis on these same ways of … [Read more…]
To Lighthouse Trails: After 1-2 years of practicing “chair yoga,” attempts at meditation (it didn’t work for me), and a Chinese practice called qi gong . . . I completely turned my back on ANY Christian ways I might have had! I quit Bible reading, study, most praying; my Christian life just disappeared. These two … [Read more…]
LTRP Note: With the majority of Christian colleges and seminaries now bringing in contemplative spirituality via Spiritual Formation programs, and with Christian leaders such as Rick Warren and Beth Moore endorsing the movement, and with countless pastors giving it a thumbs up to their congregations, isn’t it time professors, pastors, and leaders understand what the … [Read more…]
A Lighthouse Trails reader recently asked our editors to take a look at a page on the Focus on the Family website defending the practice of contemplative prayer. Those of you who have been readers of Lighthouse Trails for a while will know that Lighthouse Trails has challenged Focus on the Family on more than … [Read more…]
LTRP Note: The following article is written by a long-time Lighthouse Trails reader who is a lay preacher and evangelist from Canada. He encouraged us to post this specifically on behalf of the many dedicated commentators, authors, readers, and contenders of the faith who stand for truth and are devoted to warning others. By Dick … [Read more…]
Today, our office received a phone call from a woman who had signed up through her church (with her husband) to take a college course from a local Christian seminary. The course is being held at her church and is on Spiritual Formation. The woman said she was unfamiliar with what Spiritual Formation was when … [Read more…]
LTRP Note: The following is posted for informational and research purposes. By Julie Roys Christian Post In wake of allegations that not all its faculty affirm biblical inerrancy, the Moody Bible Institute took a bold step to define and strengthen its position on inerrancy, and to hold its faculty accountable. In an email sent to faculty … [Read more…]
Dear Lighthouse Trails: In your last e-mail newsletter, you showed us the covers of three upcoming books. And I’m concerned about one of them. It’s Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy, which exposes some serious problems with Calvinism. I am not a Calvinist. Not at all. I’ve seen some very serious problems with that over … [Read more…]
Below are four video preview clips (each about 10 minutes long) taken from Bob DeWaay and Warren B. Smith’s lecture series, Exposing the Quantum Lie: God is NOT in Everything. This profound, insightful, and biblical material is absolutely vital to understanding what is happening in the church today. You can get the entire 4 lectures … [Read more…]
Last week, a reader sent us an e-mail concerned about an article that AFA (American Family Association) just posted on the AFA Journal website. The article, titled “Study says meditation remains popular across diverse religions,” is actually an extract of a 2018 Pew Research Center article. (Pew is a liberal think tank.) The article posted … [Read more…]
This week we received the following information from a reader: Dear Lighthouse Trails: Gloria Gaither is the author of many influential songs including “There’s Something About That Name.” She writes glowing reviews of the two books listed below. One by Richard Rohr, a Roman Catholic priest and the other by Sue Monk Kidd who believes … [Read more…]
In 1992, Moody Publishers published Warren B. Smith’s autobiography, The Light That Was Dark. The book chronicled Warren’s years in the New Age movement and then he and his wife (Joy) becoming believers in Jesus Christ. While The Light That Was Dark was selling well amidst Warren being interviewed on over 250 radio and television … [Read more…]
To Lighthouse Trails and readers: As I stood at the bedside of my dad in a hospital, in shock at his unexpected passing, I looked up at the wall, and there on the whiteboard was written, “Last rites- 2:00 pm.” I had spent two and a half months visiting daily in the hospital while my … [Read more…]
Several years ago, Rick Warren said something that still haunts us—leaders of the new purpose-driven, emergent “Christianity” will have to wait until resisters either leave or die before the plan can be fully implemented.1 In other words, they are going to eventually accomplish what they are trying to do—revamp Christianity into a “new” spirituality that … [Read more…]
Note to Lighthouse Trails: As a pastor, I decided to go back to seminary for some extra courses that were offered at a Christian college in Maine as the price was right. I shortly noticed very real problems when one course was using a book authored by a Catholic apologist (unsaved), and this was the … [Read more…]
The Moody alumni website The Broken Twig is back online with “An Open Letter to the Board.” The Broken Twig had taken itself offline after the recent resignation of now-former Moody president Paul Nyquist. But after apparently realizing that Moody was still in denial about the problems going on there, The Broken Twig blog returned. … [Read more…]
By Ray Yungen Two authors from Great Britain portray a stunningly clear picture of New Age spirituality. They explain: [T]he keynote of it appears to be a movement for synthesis derived from an understanding of the underlying unity behind all things and the sense of oneness that this brings. This oneness of all life is … [Read more…]
A Note From Lighthouse Trails: Shortly after we sent out our January 15th Lighthouse Trails E-newsletter, we discovered that a link we provided to an article about Moody Bible Institute was no longer working. We learned that the website called The Broken Twig (which we believe was created by some Moody alumni) had been taken … [Read more…]
For many years, Lighthouse Trails has written about the slide that Biola University in Southern California has taken into contemplative spirituality. Our first indication that the school was heading that way was in February of 2006 when we learned that Biola was actively participating in a publication called Conversations Journal, a magazine whose primary purpose … [Read more…]
By Dwight L. Moody I do not see how any Christian, most of all a Christian minister, can go into these secret lodges with unbelievers. They say they can have more influence for good, but I say that they can have more influence for good by staying out of them and reproving their evil deeds. … [Read more…]
LTRP Note: Lighthouse Trails has been reporting on and challenging Moody Bible Institute for several years because they have been progressively promoting and turning to contemplative spirituality via Spiritual Formation programs. And yet, in our dealings with them, they have always denied doing this. As we have pointed out so many times, once a school … [Read more…]
See also Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of our 2017 Year in Review. The following is our 2017 coverage on Christian colleges and seminaries. For nearly 16 years, Lighthouse Trails has been tracking how contemplative spirituality and the emerging church (i.e., the “New” Spirituality) have been entering Christian schools. We estimate, based on … [Read more…]
Dear Lighthouse Trails: I wanted to write and share with you yet another example of church leadership embracing New Age methods. Recently, an acquaintance on Facebook posted a link to an Enneagram chart happily reporting her number and encouraging others to contact her if they want to know more about the Enneagram. What concerned me … [Read more…]
NEW BOOKLET: Circle Making and “Prayer Circles” Versus The Straight Line to Truth by Cedric Fisher and Nanci Des Gerlaise is our newest Lighthouse Trails Booklet. The Booklet is 14 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are as much as 50% off retail. Our Booklets are designed to give away … [Read more…]
This week, two items on the Internet were brought to our attention, both of which may seem to be unrelated to each other but in actuality have a connection that we find to be an eerie reminder of the days in which we live. The first item is a Tweet written earlier this week by … [Read more…]
