Tangible Mysticism 3/3

Many people claim that techniques such as contemplative prayer, Christian yoga, or other practices enable them to experience the presence of God. I believe that these practices express humankind’s seductive desires wrestled with since before the flood – desires to directly commune with the spiritual. Since Moses, God has defined the means and methods that His people are to use to approach Him. Since Moses, God has established a mediator. In God’s system documented by Moses, men are to approach God only through the Levitical system of sacrifices. Moses’ writings revealed God’s will. God also raised up prophets that spoke to His people and called them back to obey the will of God as revealed by Moses.

Through Moses, God also outlawed any other means to approach Him or the spirit-world. Broadly speaking, God in Deut 18 forbad “divination,” which is any means men create to directly access the spiritual or discover something that is not known through “natural” means. The list of practices and techniques in Deuteronomy is not exhaustive. In his lust for the spiritual, humankind has invented almost unlimited techniques to “discover” the unknown. But all of these techniques are universally condemned when God states, “When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations.” Pagans do use techniques to access the spiritual, but God’s people are forbidden to use them to seek their God as we see in Deut 20.

“But you shall utterly destroy them…so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.”

Techniques are not neutral, and all pleasurable spiritual experiences are not the God of Moses. Spirits accessed through forbidden techniques are detestable to God.

With the advent of Jesus, the Great Prophet that Moses predicted, God became man and gave us the penultimate revelation of God. This man said, “I and the Father are one,” and, “who has seen Me has seen the Father.” He claimed His words were the words of the Father. This Man became the final and ultimate mediator between God and man. He offered His own blood to atone for the sins of all mankind. His unending priesthood made obsolete the Levitical priesthood just as His temple and sacrifice made obsolete the temple and sacrifice of the Levites.

Jesus, the ultimate mediator spoken of by Moses revealed new means to approach God. His means are as exclusive as those of Moses. Divination forbidden by Moses remains forbidden under the mediation of Jesus.

Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

“Christian divination” attempts to circumvent God’s commands and confesses an experience with a spiritual Jesus instead of the objective relationship with the physical one who is currently seated bodily in heaven.

This pursuit of a spiritual Jesus or a spiritual experience with God is at the heart of Christian mysticism. This pursuit is the new “divination” which refuses to approach God through the tangible and objective Man who died and was raised in cold sober history, but chooses instead to pursue experiences with a spiritual Jesus now. Mystics are trying to “bridge the gap” that God imposed when He eliminated the direct interaction of the Patriarchs to “walk with God” as Enoch did and imposed Moses as the mediator. There are even some who seek to become the “bride of Christ” through these experiences and techniques. Ultimately, they are trying to return to the time of Noah and marry spirits, seduced by the same lust for the spiritual that corrupted all but Noah and his family in that world. Jesus spoke about this time in Matthew 24:

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.

Conclusion

Scriptures record there was a time when mysticism was tangible and men dealt with spirits through their physical bodies and 5 senses. This ability only resulted in the unimaginable evil that is recorded in Genesis 6. God addressed this evil by reducing man’s lifespan to 120 years and eliminating this direct intercourse between man and the spirit-world. Beginning with Noah’s sons, life expectancy diminished until Moses, who lived 120 years and was the last man recorded with an unbroken lineage of ancestors who all lived longer than him. Moses is the last man to commune with God the spirit face to face – it doesn’t happen any more.

God made Moses the mediator between Him and His people. Moses revealed God to His people, wrote down God’s covenant, and described God’s will in the Law and the promises – once for all. Moses indicated that God would continue to speak to His people through mediators He sent, the prophets, and Moses gave strict criteria to judge a true prophet from a false one. Moses also pointed to the Great Prophet whom all God’s people were commanded to listen to. In Jesus, God the spirit became man and crossed the chasm imposed between man and spirit. Jesus was fully God and fully man. In His words, death, and resurrection Jesus became the ultimate mediator, superseding Moses and offering a more perfect sacrifice and the promise of eternal life. This eternal life is because the sacrificial blood Jesus offered on behalf of sinful men; all who repent and believe in the work the man Jesus accomplished in His death receive forgiveness for their sins and escape the wrath of God that will be poured out upon all sinners.

The desire to tangibly experience the “spiritual” is just as seductive now as it was in the time of Noah. The sin of spiritual adultery was tangible in the time of Noah. Now, after the gulf was imposed between man and spirit limiting tangibility, spiritual adultery happens through mysticism. Pursuing “spiritual experiences” through mysticism is the modern equivalent to the fornication that resulted in world-wide death in the flood. God has established a mediator and means to approach Him. There is no mystical way to approach God but only through a man who spoke, died and was resurrected in cold sober history. He now is bodily in heaven waiting to return and until He does we will not see or tangibly experience Him. Those who saw and touched Him said,

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

Unlike Peter who saw and touched Jesus, we experience love, joy and peace as we believe the testimony of the Holy Spirit concerning the message of Jesus and His work as a man and the certain promise of eternal life.  This joy is the result of understanding and believing the objective message proven true by the resurrection – not a feeling based on a spirits or mystical experiences. 

By K. Jentoft Click here for bio and archived articles