“The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD;
he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.”
Proverbs 21:1
photo credit: ecstaticist via photopin cc |
photo credit: ecstaticist via photopin cc |
Attorney Susan Burke |
"We have three families, three families have kind of stepped forward and are willing to serve as representative plaintiffs. I've heard from and been in touch with many other victims as well. So we decided that this would be, because of the subject matter and how traumatic it is for people to come forward, we thought that the most protective device here would be a class action. And even just since we've filed, we've had a few more folks reach out to us as well. So, sadly, it's not just the three."Burke also made the following allegations:
· The Sovereign Grace pastors protected the perpetrators.
· They kept the incidents quiet and did not alert others in the church.
· They used intimidation to enforce the silence.
· It appears they were more concerned about the reputation and the finances of the church.
· They portrayed the civil authorities as untrustworthy.
· They portrayed the pastors as being trustworthy to handle the situation.
· They emphasized homeschooling and created fear and distrust of secular authorities.
· The pastors had little training for their position, either in seminary or otherwise.
· The parents were led to believe that they were the only ones that had had this happen, due to the culture of silence.
· Various blogs helped people to find one another and realize that they were not the only ones who experienced these events.
· These incidents fall well within the statute of limitations.
· More people are coming forward so the class action suit is the most logical way to help those coming forward.
· She emphasized the story of a 3 year old child who was made to meet with and "forgive" her abuser. The poor child was so afraid she hid under a chair.
· The son of a high level church official was involved in some form of predation.(Thank you to The Wartburg Watch for compiling the above list)
Additional Resources
"Mystics teach us our sense of separation is an illusion perpetuated by the fear-driven mind. However, a deep sense of oneness is within reach, if only we can move beyond habitual thinking and patterns."As I have written in the past, this is the New Age/New Spirituality concept of salvation: that all human beings are already connected to "Divinity." Divinity is the New Age concept of "God" and is known by different names: Divinity, Source, God, Essence, Vibration, etc. This God/Divinity is thought to be something, as I noted above, that all humans, regardless of spiritual background or beliefs, can "awaken" to or evolve to through meditation and positive self-talk.
"Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Cor 1:20)
"Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become 'fools' so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: 'He catches the wise in their craftiness'." (1 Cor 3:18-19)Fellow believers, the truth is that mysticism does not and cannot lead us into union with God. The carnal "wisdom" of a man-made utopia without the God of the Bible, the one true God who alone determines how it is that man is reconciled to God, is a lie that dies very hard. This is a modern day version of "'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace." (Jeremiah 6:14). Peace does not come from "awakening" to one's own divinity, because this is not truth. We don't need to awaken to the fact that we are already God....we need to awaken to the fact that we are eternally separated by our sins from God, and we desperately need a Savior. Only then can peace be achieved, true peace, the peace that comes by repenting and placing our faith in Christ's atoning death for the forgiveness of sins.
- Neale Donald Walsche (author of the Conversations With God books)
- Jean Houston - one of the founders of the Human Potential Movement, a New Age movement based on eastern mysticism and occultism
- Barbara Marx Hubbard (author of the book The Revelation, her New Age version of the last book of the Bible by the same name)
- Ken Wilber (a New Age mystic, and also the author of a book filled with New Age concepts that popular Emergent Church Movement author Rob Bell highly recommends to his own readers)
- Michael Beckwith (a New Thought teacher who has been on Oprah many times, and who teaches that your words and your thoughts create your reality, an idea contrary to biblical truth, and similar to Word of Faith teaching)
- Jack Canfield (author of the Chicken Soup For the Soul books)The reason this is an important event for Christians to be aware of is because most, if not all, of these New Age/New Spirituality/New Thought concepts are now coming into the church in "Christianized" forms: contemplative prayer, Lectio Divina, labyrinth, prayer circles, breath prayers, Word of Faith "name it and claim it," etc.
"We have three families, three families have kind of stepped forward and are willing to serve as representative plaintiffs. I've heard from and been in touch with many other victims as well. So we decided that this would be, because of the subject matter and how traumatic it is for people to come forward, we thought that the most protective device here would be a class action. And even just since we've filed, we've had a few more folks reach out to us as well. So, sadly, it's not just the three."More interviews by Janet Mefferd documenting the progress of the SGM class action lawsuit:
"A healthy woman of 28 suffered a stroke while doing a yoga position known as the wheel or upward bow, in which the practitioner lies on her back, then lifts her body into a semicircular arc, balancing on hands and feet. An intermediate stage often involves raising the trunk and resting the crown of the head on the floor. While balanced on her head, her neck bent far backward, the woman 'suddenly felt a severe throbbing headache.' She had difficulty getting up, and when helped into a standing position, was unable to walk without assistance. The woman was rushed to the hospital."
"(A) 25-year-old man was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago, complaining of blurred vision, difficulty swallowing and controlling the left side of his body. Steven H. Hanus, a medical student at the time, became interested in the case and worked with the chairman of the neurology department to determine the cause (he later published the results with several colleagues). The patient had been in excellent health, practicing yoga every morning for a year and a half. His routine included spinal twists in which he rotated his head far to the left and far to the right. Then he would do a shoulder stand with his neck 'maximally flexed against the bare floor,' just as Iyengar had instructed, remaining in the inversion for about five minutes. A series of bruises ran down the man’s lower neck, which, the team wrote in The Archives of Neurology, 'resulted from repeated contact with the hard floor surface on which he did yoga exercises.' These were a sign of neck trauma. Diagnostic tests revealed blockages of the left vertebral artery between the c2 and c3 vertebrae; the blood vessel there had suffered 'total or nearly complete occlusion' — in other words, no blood could get through to the brain."
"The first reports of yoga injuries appeared decades ago, published in some of the world’s most respected journals — among them, Neurology, The British Medical Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Association. The problems ranged from relatively mild injuries to permanent disabilities. In one case, a male college student, after more than a year of doing yoga, decided to intensify his practice. He would sit upright on his heels in a kneeling position known as vajrasana for hours a day, chanting for world peace. Soon he was experiencing difficulty walking, running and climbing stairs. Doctors traced the problem to an unresponsive nerve, a peripheral branch of the sciatic, which runs from the lower spine through the buttocks and down the legs. Sitting in vajrasana deprived the branch that runs below the knee of oxygen, deadening the nerve. Once the student gave up the pose, he improved rapidly. Clinicians recorded a number of similar cases and the condition even got its own name: 'yoga foot drop.'"The article can be read in its entirety here. (Please note that this article does not address the underlying religious roots of Yoga; it only addresses the potential harm it can cause to your body.)