Glenn Beck Mormon/New Ager (Part 1)

Glenn Beck, a popular television talk show personality for the Fox station has been received by evangelicals in America and is a prime example of Christians allowing such infiltration. Evangelical leaders have endorsed and teamed with Beck who is a Mormon with prominent New Age tendencies. Christianity Today posted an article entitled “And Glenn Beck Shall Lead Them” stating “Dobson, Land, Falwell Jr., and other evangelicals follow Glenn Beck’s call for national renewal.”¹⁾Tobin Grant, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/septemberweb-only/45-51.0.html, posted 9/03/2010, accessed 2/9/11 The next generation of Christian leaders are being trained to follow him after “he was invited to speak at Liberty University‘s Commencement in 2010 (the largest evangelical college in the U. S.)… His speech was infused with religious terms that would appear to bring people together – except for the fact that these terms have very different meanings for Mormons and evangelicals. [Yet] Beck’s last words were greeted with a standing ovation from the faculty, the graduates, and their families and friends…”²⁾T. A. McMahon, “Beck’s Bogus Beliefs,” The Berean Call, March 2011, p. 3 “The decision by Liberty University to invite Fox’s Glenn Beck as commencement speaker is making waves. It should. It is both revealing and prophetic that American evangelical Christians would have to look to a member of the Mormon church for moral and spiritual leadership.”³⁾http://www.crosstalkblog.com/2010/04/glenn-beck-to-be-liberty-us-commencement-speaker/ accessed 2/9/11
In Glenn Beck’s book coauthored by Keith Ablow, his New Age faith is admitted blatantly, stating, “My father’s granola-hippy-New Age spirituality (which I actually really agree with)…”⁴⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 24 Many evangelicals have aligned themselves with Beck but few have attempted to expose him. Branon Howse predicted Beck would show his true colors before the book was published and proved his assessment correct. “Beck’s new book is nothing less than the promotion of universalism, postmodernism, and pagan spirituality, also known as the New Age movement.”⁵⁾Branon Howse, http://www.worldviewweekend.com/mobile/view-article.php?articleid=6809, accessed 2/9/11, also see Brannon Howse, “Glenn Beck‘s New Book Reveals He Embraces New Age Theology, Is A Knowledgeable Mormon, and a Universalist,” Worldview Weekend Digest, Vol. 10, Winter/Spring 2011, p. 28
The Promotion of New Age spirituality is also blatantly said to be the purpose of the book, as Keith Ablow claims the book is for the reader to learn the key of “unlocking human potential.”⁶⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 14 This “human potential” he wants us to learn how to unlock is later defined by Ablow as: “It is, ultimately, a force that was inside your soul from before your birth and is inside your soul this very moment⁷⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 113 So this “force” of “human potential” demands a belief in the preexistence of the soul as Mormon‘s believe.
Keith Ablow quotes widely from New Age sources. Attempting to justify such occultic endorsement, he wrote:

In the pages that follow, Glenn and I quote leaders and thinkers of virtually every faith and movement, from ancient times to modern times. Some of these people we’d likely vehemently disagree with on political or religious issues – but healing is not about politics, it’s about understanding our place, our path, and our potential.
Our goal has been to search out the timeless, ultimate wonders of truth that can change lives. In looking for them, we searched where lines of truth emanating from many different directions intersect. We tried to show no favoritism and no fear of its source, for it is at those intersections where the ultimate light may be found.⁸⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 16

One article assessed correctly when stating, “Regardless of Beck’s and Ablow’s caveat, we can be sure that they do endorse and agree with the portions of those sources that they cite.”⁹⁾Albert James Dagger, “Glenn Beck’s True Philosophy Revealed New-Age Mormonism: A Review on The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life,” Media Spotlight, Vol. 34 – No. 1, Spring 2011
The article by Branon Howse exposing Beck’s spiritual deception revealed

In his new book Beck and Dr. Ablow promote psychologist Sigmund Freud,¹⁰⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 111, 259 Carl Jung,¹¹⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 40, 264-265 New Age authors Robert Pirsig¹²⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 72, 236-238 and James Redfied,¹³⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 59 Buddha,¹⁴⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 164, 177-178 Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche,¹⁵⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p.124 Gandhi,¹⁶⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 286 The Bible and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Sadly, Glenn is confused and all Christians should pray that he will come to salvation in the Jesus of the Bible through faith and repentance.¹⁷⁾Branon Howse, http://www.worldviewweekend.com/mobile/view-article.php?articleid=6809, accessed 2/9/11, also see Brannon Howse, “Glenn Beck‘s New Book Reveals He Embraces New Age Theology, Is A Knowledgeable Mormon, and a Universalist,” Worldview Weekend Digest, Vol. 10, Winter/Spring 2011, p. 29

Besides the sources mentioned by Howse, also quoted are Hindu scriptures¹⁸⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 165 and Ernest Holmes,¹⁹⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p. 176 “the founder of a Spiritual movement known as Religious Science, a part of the New Thought movement, whose spiritual philosophy is known as ‘The Science of Mind.’ He was the author of The Science of Mind and numerous other metaphysical books…”²⁰⁾http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Holmes, accessed 2/9/11 It is also worthy to note that as Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was quoted twice in their book, it was also quoted from twice by New Age leader Marilyn Ferguson in her bestselling book, The Aquarian Conspiracy.²¹⁾Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1980, citing Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, pp. 106-107, 356 [Not that the same number or matters but that it is obviously held high in New Age circles]
Granted that most of the sources were cited by Keith Ablow, Glenn Beck acknowledged his influence as well.

I wanted to understand what made great people great, and what made evil people evil. I purchased stacks of volumes by everyone from Billy Graham, to Adolf Hitler, to Carl Sagan, to Friedrich Nietzsche, to Aristotle, to Pope John Paul II. I read Jesus of Nazareth by Jefferson. I read A Course in Miracles. I read The Gnostic Gospels. I read the Bible…
When it came to faith, I tried it all….
The third chapter of Exodus helped me start to understand how crucial it was that my focus be on finding God not just in the seas of the cosmos, but in myself…. . [citing Exodus 3:11-14] … If God is everything and everywhere and inside everyone, then I figured He had to be inside me, too, and He Who Is Becoming What He Is was just not going to let me rest until I took the journey to find my pure personal truth and full potential.²²⁾Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, M.D., The Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011, p.56-58

God is not “becoming” anything for He cannot change (Malachi 3:6). As we can see, there are many problems within this short excerpt of Glenn’s spiritual aspect. It is good that he read the Bible, but if the list of books he presented is in chronological order than we understand why he cannot understand it. Thomas Jefferson’s book Jesus of Nazareth which has also been called The Jefferson Bible is a deist’s interpretation of the four gospels revealing what he thought the Bible should read. In correspondence, Jefferson wrote his goal in this book. “In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves…. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.”²³⁾Thomas Jefferson, Excerpts from the Correspondence of Jefferson, http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/jefferson_m_03.html, accessed 2/9/11 In essence, Jefferson took a knife to the Bible like the Gnostic Marcion, to produce a religion he favored.

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If you liked this article, you may also be interested in Crept In Unawares: Mysticism by Heath Henning is available for purchase here.