By Elizabeth Prata
A post on Instagram by the ever-solid Doreen Virtue (it’s here) about channeling reminded me that in 2011 I had written a series of essays examining what channeling is (AKA ‘automatic writing’), and had examined three highly popular books that these allegedly Christian authors had published. I revived and updated those essays, I also shortened them splitting them up to examine each author in turn.
Neale Donald Walsch wrote “Conversations with God” (1995), William P. Young wrote “The Shack” (2007), and Beth Moore wrote “When Godly People Do Ungodly Things” (2002). All three were Christian bestsellers. All three are unholy and blasphemous.
Automatic writing is when a writer clears his mind, gives his will over to another entity from the supernatural realms, and allows his hand to be used as a transcriber, thereby allowing the entity to produce the work, and not the human writer through his own mind or consciousness. Not even the scriptures were generated in this manner. The Bible’s authors received inspiration but were mentally and emotionally present. The Holy Spirit inspired their own minds and personalities to write. The authors didn’t zone out and become robots as another entity produced the works.
The point of the 2011 essays was not so much to examine the content of what these writers wrote about. Though discernment lacks in many a Christian heart these days, the ungodly moments in those books eventually become apparent to the readers who call upon the Spirit for light and illumination.
Turning to the point of this essay, I noticed similarities in the emotional lives of today’s ‘Christian’ automatic writers used by spirit or a ‘force’ from the other side. Hopefully I will provide an understanding of how satan works in the emotionally vulnerable.
One thing these automatic writers who channel these supernatural entities people all have in common is they all had a Christian-ish background. The second thing they all had in common was sexual abuse, parents who were distant either physically or emotionally, and/or trauma of severe kinds that usually resulted in a deep depression through to adulthood. It was in the depths of their depressions at the bottom of their turmoil that they began to experience the “call” from the other side. Here are their stories. Today, we look at Neale Donald Walsch.
Neale Donald Walsch was brought up as a Roman Catholic, he was an altar boy, actually. Born Again Christians know that Roman Catholicism is not Christianity. It is a false religion. However, in a conference on ‘God and Love’ at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center, Colorado in what looks to be about twenty years ago, Walsch described his growing disillusionment with the rigidity and minutiae of Catholic traditions as a youth and mocked it cynically in a ‘humorous’ speech at the conference.
His family encouraged his quest for spiritual truth and eventually he wound up informally studying comparative theology for many years. In that quest, Walsch sadly did not turn to the Bible but to himself.
He was at an incredible low point in his life. A fire had destroyed everything he owned, his marriage had broken up, he was in a car crash and suffered a broken neck, then became unemployed and homeless. Living in a tent, Walsch picked up cans in order to eat.
He had no faith to cling to, and no way to resolve his anger. In 1995 Neale Donald Walsch realized his life was a mess. He said, “I woke up one night just angry, really frustrated, and wrote down what was on my mind” in an angry letter to God. God ‘answered’.
As described here, Walsch has said, “After writing down all of his questions, he heard a voice over his right shoulder say: “Do you really want an answer to all these questions or are you just venting?” When Walsch turned around, he saw no one there, yet Walsch felt answers to his questions filling his mind and decided to write them down. The ensuing automatic writing became the Conversations with God books.
Walsch’s own words, “To my surprise, as I scribbled out the last of my bitter, unanswerable questions and prepared to toss my pen aside, my hand remained poised over the paper, as if held there by some invisible force. Abruptly, the pen began moving on its own. I had no idea what I was about to write….Out came….Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting? … Before I knew it, I had begun a conversation.” (New York Times article).
Walsch’s spiritual stance is that we are all one with God and that helping people is the satisfaction to life.
No. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy HIM forever.
What resulted from Walsch is a cottage industry of false religion permeating the world. Wikipedia states that “Conversations with God, was published in 1995 and became an international bestseller. It remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 135 weeks. Six of his other books have made the Times list in the years since. He has published 28 books and his works have been translated into 37 languages.” His books are not a small problem.
“In the spring of 1992 an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life. God began talking with you. Through me.” ~Neale Donald Walsch No, God doesn’t talk to me thru Walsch. God talks to me thru His Son! (Hebrews 1:1-2)
God is not speaking today. True, in the past He has spoken directly to several people in the Bible (not as many as you’d think) and in various ways, too. But He has spoken in His word, which is complete and sufficient for all training. (Hebrews 1:1-2; 2 Timothy 3:16).
Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God contributed to the New Age religion and its growth. The counterculture hippie movement of the 1960s had by the 1970s morphed into the New Age movement containing elements of the early twentieth century Victorian Theosophy spiritism, 1050s UFO mania, and Helen Schucman’s 1975 A Course in Miracles. Shirley MacLaine’s 1983 book Out on a Limb added much fuel to the fire of fervency for a holistic spiritualism devoid of God. I remember that book, it caused a huge stir.
What has been, it is what will be, And what has been done, it is what will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Satan from before the beginning of human history through to now and beyond, will try to poison God’s Gospel. In some people, man’s inherent pride will click with this notion that God selected them specially to speak directly to them and they will be used in this way to pervert the Gospel. Some who seek a man-made religion will pick up these wrong theories and philosophies and connect through these unfortunate authors and their books. Millions.
When I was on the path toward the cross but not there yet, I was curious about religion. But my pagan mind didn’t know which religion to choose. I did not know at the time the God chooses us, we do not choose God. I bought the trilogy Conversations with God and I read book 1. The book did not make sense to me. It meandered, it was internally contradictory, and it was boring. I didn’t even bother to read Walsch’s book 2 and 3, they stayed on my shelf, unread, until I was born again and I then threw them all out. I thank God for preserving me until the time He appointed the moment of justification.
Sisters, when an author says that God spoke the book to him or her, run. The only book God spoke in is the Bible, and the only authors who had a conversation with God are the 66 authors who were inspired by the Spirit, not possessed by a spirit.
Further Resources
GotQ: What does the Bible say about Channeling?
Doreen Virtue: The Truth about Channeled Books (5-min video)
the-end-time.org 