Abusing Memory- The Inner Healing of Agnes Sanford

[Sing4Him]

Here is one individual at the ROOT of Contemplative Prayer Movement:

Agnes Sanford: Mother of Inner Healing- Dr Jane Gumprecht

Controvery surrounds around the memory of Agnes Sanford's life and work in the years since her death in 1983.Was she a malaligned saint? Was her theology Biblical? Did she revitalize dead orthdoxy? Were her teachings disguised New Thought?

These questions deserve an answer in light of the increasing acceptance of Inner Healing by Christians in evangelical churches.......

Gumprecht traces Agnes Sanford’s life and her development of unbiblical theological notions gleaned from a syncretism of occult spirituality, the Freudian unconscious, the Jungian collective unconscious, and depth psychology. She shows how Sanford distorted Christianity to make it fit her ideas and turned Jesus into a "Time Traveler" who supposedly guides people back in time to meet their so-called inner child, to remember the pain of their past, and to have Jesus heal the pain. She also shows how Sanford "affirmed the Freudian doctrine . . . that the unconscious is a powerful dark force which rules our conscious lives" and used teachings about the inner child from mystical traditions and Jung’s Child Archetype.

Ever since the fall, God's people have been tempted to mix with foreign gods. Many have given in. Evangelicalism's dance with modern psychology is no exception. For the past century, evangelicals have embraced a host of secular therapies.


Jungian Psychology into the Church--

'buddhist practice, eastern mysticism..

more:

http://www.amazon.com/Abusing-Memory-Jane-Grumprecht/dp/1885767277

[Sing4Him]

Sanford, founder of "inner healing," is the charismatics' Mary Baker Eddy. Critics complained that Seduction misquoted Sanford. They had the 1972 edition of The Healing Light. We quoted from the 1947 edition, because the new publisher in 1972 made numerous cosmetic changes to give the book a wider appeal. Yet Agnes herself had not changed. She was also one of the early popularizers of the Manifest Sons heresy. She taught that the Great Tribulation is in the past; we are now in the Millennium and Christians must, through Science of Mind techniques, take dominion over this earth, even removing the effects of the Fall—without the return of Christ. (See Creation Waits, Logos, 1978, etc.)

In The Healing Light, she presents a false "God" who is the "life-force" in everyone and in everything. It is a form of "energy" like electricity: "the original force that we call God (p 30)....we are part of God (p 34)....He's in nature, and He is nature (p 35)....I was conscious of oneness with God, and therefore with the snake which God had made" (p 69). Her pantheism is clear.

From Emmet Fox, who calls himself "one of [Unity founder] Charles Fillmore's spiritual children," Agnes picked up many of her ideas, such as "God's love was blacked out from man by negative thought-vibrations...[Jesus] lowered his thought vibrations to the thought vibrations of humanity" to accomplish "the at-one-ment"—a Unity term that Fillmore called the "reconciliation of man's mind with divine Mind through the superconsciousness of Christ Mind." Sanford commends the "prayers of Unity and other modern schools of prayer" (p 143) which "project the power of God" for healing.

On pages 21-22 she gives four steps for tapping into this "God-force," the second being "...to turn it on...we can simply say, "'Whoever you are—whatever you are—come into me now!'" To support her Science of Mind, she quotes a scientist: "a vibration of very, very high intensity and an extremely fine wavelength, with tremendous healing power, caused by spiritual forces operating through the mind of man, is the next thing science expects to discover" (p 32). She goes on: "The love-vibrations and the faith vibrations of God and His saints [she includes dead "saints"—"there is no death" (p 143)] enter through our thoughts of life and love. In the same way, the destructive thought-vibrations of mankind, and of 'Satan' [whoever or whatever 'Satan' may be; her metaphysical system requires no personal devil] enter through our thoughts of illness, hate and death" (p 43-44).

She taught that everything is a matter of thought-vibrations. We can be made ill by negative vibrations, can heal ourselves and others through positive vibrations and can even forgive the sins of others and turn them into Christians in this way. She writes, "...project into the burglar's mind the love of God, by seeing him as a child of God and asking God to bless him [p 60]. A new age is being born...when love-power, [projected] at the command of ministers and surveyors and children and everyone, is sufficient to change hearts....This is the beginning of a new order...the dawning of a new day!...As our prayers, our mental training and our acts of forgiveness fuse into a high consciousness of God's indwelling, we become more and more aware of an inner source of power that can be tapped at will" (p 75). Mary Baker Eddy was no worse!

Incredibly, Agnes Sanford is defended by church leaders. Her books sell well in Christian bookstores and at churches such as John Wimber's Vineyard fellowships. "Inner healers" John and Paula Sandford, who were associated with Agnes for years, angrily denounce me for misunderstanding and misquoting her. Yet the Sandfords admit that Agnes was involved in Unity, spiritualism, occultism. John even declared that she had been unsaved and demon possessed at the time she wrote The Healing Light and founded the Schools of Pastoral Care (where he taught with her), and that he led her to Christ and cast the demon out in 1964. Yet he credits this woman, while unsaved and demon-possessed, with healing him of a back injury and leading the church into "the healing of memories."

One of the early books "refuting" Seduction was The Church Divided (1986), edited by Jungian psychologist and pastor Robert Wise. He tells of learning "healing of the memories" from Rosalind Rinker, who learned it from Agnes Sanford, whom Wise praises and defends. The "Jesus" he visualized suddenly began to act on its own. Says Wise, "I no longer was creating the scene." He had made contact with a spirit being, but not with the Jesus of the Bible. Among contributors to The Church Divided were Cho, Dennis Bennett, Mark Virkler (whose book Dialogue With God seduces Christians into contact with demons masquerading as "God" and "Christ"), and William de Arteaga. The latter considers Sanford's The Healing Light to be "among the first rank of Christian literature, along with Pilgrim's Progress and Saint Teresa's Life." In Past Life Visions (1983) de Arteaga defends Sanford's visualization and her belief in a pre-earth human existence. He suggests that Christianity accommodate Hinduism's "karma/reincarnation," which he seems to accept as a result of having induced "past-life regressions" in counselees. Such are those who stand together against Seduction ! Sadly, Jimmy Swaggart seems to have joined their ranks. --Dave Hunt
http://www.thebereancall.org/node/5919