THE HI-JACKING OF EVANGELICALISM - PART V – THEOSOPHICAL SCHEMING AND EARLIER PRAYER BREAKFAST NETWORK STAGES
Author’s Notes: this was originally to be a four part series. Parts I and II dealt with modern “merging and blending” of Washington’s “Fellowship Foundation” and Paul N. Temple’s “Institute of Noetic Sciences.” Barbara Marx Hubbard said in her 1988 Seattle Unity Temple speech that “now all the resonating core groups with outwardly different purposes are merging and blending and coming together to do The One Work.” It was clear that she was working closely with both Paul Temple and the Fellowship Foundation, both groups of which he had and continues to successfully bridge.
The problems, however, are much older. They are clearly multi-generational. According to the Billy Graham Center archives, Paul Temple’s own involvement with Abraham Vereide dated back to 1944. Meetings of the group which included clear proponents of “We are gods” (Frank Laubach) date back earlier to 1943 and perhaps even earlier.
Developing this series, I now know subject is clearly too vast to be easily synopsized in only four relatively short articles that the NewswithViews publisher and I originally discussed. I was going to focus solely on the work of “the twelve” this article, but in the drafting process realized that to understand these twelve, one had to understand developments that preceded them. Starting with Madame Blavatsky’s pre-death pronouncement that they were to prepare the world to receive a new “Christ” clear preparation went forth in a deliberate manner. Only God knows the intensity, motivations and commitment of those intentionally or inadvertently helping to implement the Theosophical agenda, but an agenda there clearly was and clearly there were professed Christians helping even from the beginning who should have known better, particularly considering their claimed levels of theological sophistication.
EARLY THEOSOPHICAL PLANNINGMadame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and William L. Q. Judge organized their “Theosophical Society” in New York City in the Year of Our Lord 1875. The first of this trio was a Russian ex-patriate adventuress. The two gentlemen were American lawyers. Olcott was reportedly a Civil War hero who had played a leading role in the investigation of the Lincoln murders. The purpose of the society was supposedly to study comparative religions. The occult (hidden) purpose was much deeper. Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky revealed to her followers before her death what that purpose was: to prepare the world to receive a new expected “messiah” by the name of “Maitreya.” “Maitreya” was also the name the Buddhists gave to their expected reincarnation of Buddha.
Annie Besant, the ex-wife of an Anglican clergyman took Blavatsky’s charge very seriously. She led “The First Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society. It was held in Amsterdam from June 19th through 21st, 1904. I am fortunate to own an original edition of its published proceedings. “
FEDERATION OF EUROPEAN SECTIONS OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY: TRANSACTIONS FIRST ANNUAL CONGRESS: AMSTERDAM 1906." I have had the book which I purchased back in the 1980s for the even then outrageous price of $95.00. It was marked “rare.” It is an indispensable volume in my research library.
Some names at that conference are still easily recognizable today. Annie Besant, Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf / Steiner Schools / eurythymy / biodynamic farming); A. R. Orage (Social Credit / “The New Age”) were among the more prominent in attendance whose recognition has survived through modern history.
The two most significant articles from my perspective are the papers presented to that congress by a name less known to us, but obviously from its fruits, productive to the Theosophical Movement: I. HOOPER.
Hooper’s articles found respectively at pages 223 and 371 of that book are entitled:
· “The Reconstruction of Beliefs”
· “The Theosophical Society and the Faith to Come”
Hooper said beliefs fell into three stages: (1) universal acceptance; (2) total disbelief; and (3) reconstruction. The job of the Theosophical Society, concluded Hooper in the “Reconstruction” portion of those 1904 presentations was to “synthesize differing beliefs and to reconstruct same. The forms of the “reconstruction” would be dealt with in this chapter about “the Faith to Come.” These days the Theosophists and their fellow New Age travelers usually call that “the New World Religion.”
Hooper told his fellow Theosophists that they should downplay “obvious theosophical propaganda. (p. 373) Theosophists were to share in the following work to achieve their aims:
“International co-operation, political work, social movements of every kind,
religious and mystical cults, the strange reconstructive impulses of
long-sleeping national and racial life [to be gruesomely acted out in the 1930s
and 1940s by German and other eugenic disciples of Theosophical lore, as was
Hitler himself!]
Those going forth from theosophy to evangelize the world to that mindset were to carefully camouflage themselves in ways that would make George Bernard Shaw and his Pygmalion ([better known to us theatrically as MY FAIR LADY] seem as amateurs:
“We must learn to speak their language as one born thereto; easily, naturally seeing its beauty and its meaning. Not as one who translates laboriously from a tongue he loves better . . . but as one who knows that the [theosophical] truth can be uttered as perfectly and as sweetly as in the language which to him is the more familiar.
“In a word, we must not take with us the phrases of the Theosophical Society; we must not take its forms, but we must take its spirit and its life . . .”
In urging the switch and bait, Hooper intriguingly said:
“Sir Oliver Lodge has recently pleaded for a restatement or revision of
Christian doctrines; it is much needed. The work of destructive
criticism has paved the way; now the day has dawned of constructive
up-building.”
(p. 375)
How to do it? Hooper gave specifics:
“People in the Churches should be urged increasingly to learn that illumination
comes from within and that this life, which I call an independent inner life as
opposed to sacred rites and external teaching, should be led by all who can lead
it . . .” (p. 378)
The foregoing should be carefully contemplated particularly in view of the writings of two who particularly bridged the occult and Christian world: Jacob Boehme (sometimes spelled “Bohme” or “the Blessed Behman (William Law) and Jacob Boehme’s English translator and disciple: William Law.
Probably the most pernicious teaching spread by disciples of William Law who was also Aldous Huxley’s favorite philosopher was that if one failed to go inside for wisdom, he was in a sense blaspheming the work of the Holy Spirit. Reliance on the Bible and traditional church creeds that proclaimed the One God, the virgin birth, the rising again, etc. were to be shed in favor of “the birth of Christ within.” Those familiar with Theosophical and Alice Bailey literature well know that one of the most prominent of the several “initiations” used to reach “godhood” was “Christ being born in the Cave of the Heart.”
It was a prominent disciple of both William Law and Norman Grubb who has disseminated this heresy. His name would shock so many that I dare not repeat it here. The wheat and the tares were go grow together until the time of the harvest and repeating this name at this time and place is more than certain to harm the wheat!
These were some of the same the teachings that obviously were tares sown in the bosom of the Prayer Breakfast Network. I will elaborate in my next article, part VI of this series of “the twelve” who were part of the original Washington, D.C. network. They formed camps with the name “Farthest Out,” wrote books with open themes of “we are gods” (“millions of gods” at that!), and called their allegedly Christian facilities “ashrams.” They allied themselves with and borrowed the concepts of Frank Buchman who had openly expressed admiration for Himmler and Hitler.
The most authoritative text on the prayer breakfast network,
MODERN VIKING: the story of Abraham Vereide pioneer in Christian leadership, was written by an energetic and enthusiastic proponent of both William Law and Jacob Boehme: Norman Grubb.
[1] Norman Grubb would work this side of the Atlantic as well as influence huge segments of the Missionary Movement worldwide. His brother, Sir Kenneth Grubb would work the other side of the Atlantic, also being active in the modern missionary movement, as well as being chief of British intelligence during World War II, be a primary organizer of the World Council of Churches, and co-found the International Institute of Strategic Studies, today a primary think tank for Javier Solana and his Western European Union confederates.
Next in series: Names of “the twelve,” Marian (Mrs. Aymar) Johnson, Calvary House, Camps Farthest Out, Frank Buchman, Dr. Frank Laubach together with his role in the establishment of the Meditation Room for the United Nations, and the role of this group in the initial founding of the United Nations as well as European Union structures. What was the role of “The Keswick Experience”?[1] Grubb, Norman: Modern Viking: The Story of Abraham Vereide, Pioneer in Christian Leadership.” Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961, Third printing, 1965. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 61-16751