Cults No.6 Spiritism

And we particularly ask for the Lord's enabling as we look into the Word of God, and as we consider one man's conversion to this movement, and as later on we make certain deductions and observations from our study. Spiritism is a very ancient cult. It's almost as old as man himself.

It was, and I think we must remind ourselves of this at the outset, forbidden to the Israelites, to the children of Israel, when they returned to the promised land. Now the land of Palestine was inhabited whilst the Hebrew community was away by pagan tribes, primitive people who practiced the black arts, magic, witchcraft, and what have you. The Lord God was very concerned for the spiritual well-being of the Hebrews, and so he directs Moses to pass on his warning that when the Israelites return to the promised land, Deuteronomy 18 verse 9, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Let's just read one other reference from this Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Leviticus chapter 19 and verse 31, again helps to set the background, regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God, and the sixth verse of the following chapter, and the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among the people.

Well, there we are, one or two references. I could have multiplied that by probably 24 from the opening books of the Bible, which warn against spiritism. Now, there are certain branches within the Spiritist movement, and it would be impossible for me this evening to bring all these to your attention.

There is a distinction that some people would argue for between spiritualism and spiritism. We hear, for instance, of spiritual churches, and by that is meant churches who have a Christian orientation, or so they claim, but they're spiritualistic inasmuch as they practice consulting and communicating with the dead in their services, and they have tasked out the gospel as is understood in evangelical Christendom, and they've made their own peculiar refinement, saying that the good news is that there is no death, and therefore people can communicate with departed loved ones. Now, within orthodox evangelical Reformed Christianity, we believe in the communion of the saints, but not in communication with the saints.

In other words, I believe that my dear Father is with the Lord in heaven since His death a little while ago. I cannot communicate with Him, although on the natural level, and particularly after His immediate bereavement, there was that desire, but I do know that there is a sort of intermediary between Him and myself, the Lord Jesus. He has His hands outstretched both ways, towards this world, to the redeemed community, and He embraces the redeemed community in heaven itself, the assembly of the firstborn, and we believe that one day, that contact which we enjoyed here on earth, we shall recover again and enjoy to its full in God's eternity.

But we do not admit to the right of communication, verbal communication, with departed loved ones. Now, basic to any Spiritist group is that common belief. There's so much that could be said about this movement.

One could trace it from antiquity, from its emergence in ancient history. One could perhaps look at the Greeks and the practices that they developed. One could look into other old races and speak about black magic as it evolved down the human story.

Or one could come to more modern times and trace the more recent history of Spiritism from its origin in the United States of America, last century, and see how it has sprung across the Atlantic and made an impact in the UK and in Europe. So many areas that are open for me to commence at in order to display this subject before you. But I think if I started way back in history or in the earlier part of the 19th century, I would be painting on too broad a canvas and it would be impossible to get through any picture that you could look at and see sense in, in the short space of time available.

So I'm doing something that is not usually attempted in most of the books that you read, written by good godly evangelical men and Spiritism. What I propose to do this evening is to cite a case study of one of the most influential converts to Spiritism, show you how he was ensnared in the movement, and then make some observations and some final conclusions that I think will be general enough for us to go away feeling that we have learned something, not only specifically about one man, but in a comprehensive fashion about this movement. So I want to talk to you this evening, at least for the first half an hour or so, on the life of Bishop James Pike.

Pike was an Episcopalian. That means to say that he was an ordained minister in the parallel church in the United States of America to the Anglican church in this country. He was a brilliant man, a lawyer turned clergyman, and he brought to the church his particular skills of a trained mind and an outstanding intellect.

He became notorious as a liberal. By that I mean that he rejected a great deal of doctrine which evangelical Christians take as being basic to the faith. He questioned the inerrancy of Scripture, the doctrine of the virgin birth, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the atonement of Jesus.

Indeed when you'd finished cutting away what Bishop Pike didn't agree with, one wondered how in the essence of what was left there was sufficient to warrant him taking the title of Christian. But he did this, a sceptical man. He was impressed by a radical German theologian whose name was Paul Tillich, who when I was a student at college 14 years or so ago, was a very, very influential theologian.

And what he had to say had to be studied by anyone who was preparing for a university degree. A liberal man whose views dovetailed with those of James Pike himself. He was also influenced and became an admirer of John Robinson, who used to be the Bishop of Woolwich and wrote the book that commanded colossal attention and a great circulation in the 1960s, Honest to God.

So here is this man Pike, an Anglican, or rather an Episcopal clergyman in the United States of America, denying most of the historic doctrines of the faith as we understand them. And he came along to this country, that is he came to England to continue research in an academic capacity. He had a job at Cambridge University.

Also with him for a while was his son, who bore his same Christian name of James, or Jim. Jim hadn't got on too well with his father. He had indulged himself in drugs and he'd become a bit of an addict.

We would refer to him as a dropout. He grew a little closer to his father during the last six months of his life, but unfortunately and tragically for Bishop Pike, his son took his own life. He did this in America and Pike flew back to the States to attend his funeral.

This was on the February the 4th, 1966. His remains, that is Pike's son's remains, were sprinkled from in the Pacific Ocean, just beyond a place known as the Golden Gate Bridge. That is significant, as you will see in a moment or so when we come to evaluate some of the things that happened.

The Bishop returned to Cambridge and with him was his chaplain, David Barr, and also his secretary, Maren Burgund. Now when they got back to Cambridge, they all lived together in the same flat. Some remarkable things started to happen.

For instance, young Jim, now dead, used to collect postcards on the various holidays that he took. He had, unfortunately, a tendency not to post the cards that he'd written to his father, and this became something of a standing joke. But these cards were scattered around the flat, and from time to time after his death, in the flat these cards were found at a most unusual angle of 140 degrees, in places that neither his father, nor the chaplain, nor the secretary had ever put them.

There were other strange things that happened. Young Jim didn't like his father's secretary's hairstyle, and had often suggested that she should have some of her locks trimmed. One day, quite unknown to her, as she got up and came into the kitchen for breakfast, some of those locks were missing.

They had been seared off overnight, and the two men passed comment on this. The same thing happened on two further occasions, until all the offending long hair had been removed. And then, to add even more to incredibility, Pike remembered coming home to find that the central heating system had been turned up.

Now, in the States, they heat their homes generally to a greater degree than we do in England, and the father, Bishop Pike, had got used to the British habit. The son never had, and there'd been a cause of contention before, when he'd lived in Cambridge, that the flat wasn't heated enough. Well, they came home and they found that the temperature was at the level that the departed son liked it to be at.

So, all these experiences, and there were many more, started to occur in this flat, and were witnessed by Bishop Pike, and Barr, and Maran. They had a little conference together. They had all been sceptics, particularly as far as the afterlife was concerned.

None of them acknowledged it. But they came to the conclusion, they were driven to it, that something was happening from the world beyond, which seemed to suggest that Pike's son was trying to communicate with them, and their ideas that there was no afterlife were shaken completely. Pike remembered that there was, in London, in the Anglican Church, a Society for Psychical Research.

Indeed, he knew of a particular man who was provost, or vice provost, of Southwark Cathedral, who had previously suggested that Pike should bring his brilliant mind to sifting the evidence of that centre, as to whether there was really life beyond the grave. Pike consulted this man, whose name is Higgins, as to what he should do. He explained the phenomena that had been witnessed at Cambridge, and his colleague proffered the advice that he, perhaps with his secretary and himself, should seek out the help of Mrs Edna Twigg, who happens to be one of the most influential and successful mediums that there are in the United Kingdom.

Well, Pike, whose interest by now is very, very high, agrees that he will seek out the help of this particular lady, and one day he goes to London, to Acton, where she lives, and that evening before there had been more strange phenomena experienced in his flat, to sort of encourage him in his enthusiasm, and Mrs Twigg went into a seance. She didn't fall actually into a trance, but her face and her body started to change a little bit, showing signs of distress, and she said to Pike, and to Higgins, and to Maran, he's coming through. I believe that Jim wants to speak to you, and then she slipped from the third person making comment into the first person speaking for Jim, and he starts to address his father.

I failed the test. I can't face you. I can't face life anymore.

I'm confused. It happened very suddenly. I had to do this.

I'm not in purgatory, but it's something like hell here, yet nobody blames me, and so he went on, and in course of the seance, reference was made to a golden gate. Mrs Twigg didn't understand what this could possibly be about. Jim had been pleased that something had happened at the golden gate.

Well, Pike knew immediately what the reference was to. He had determined that his son's ashes should be scattered there out from San Francisco into the Pacific Ocean. The medium then did something that was even more incredible.

Instead of just speaking for Pike's son, she started to speak as though she was taken over by Paul Tillich, the radical German theologian, in fact, so concerned was Tillich and Jim to speak that Mrs Twigg had to remonstrate with the spirits on the basis that she could only speak for one of them, if you please, at a time. Now, at this particular stage in Bishop Pike's life, he was facing charges of heresy in the USA. Indeed, he'd written a book entitled, If This Be Heresy, and he was later to answer to his church as to whether or not his views were so heretical he should not be an ordained minister.

It's interesting that in this opening seance, both Jim and Tillich tell Pike to continue his crusade against orthodox Christian teaching. Some hours before Pike was to leave for the United States to answer these charges of heresy, he consulted with Mrs Twigg again. She was successful in speaking to Jim, or rather, Jim was successful in speaking through Mrs Twigg.

The reason for his father's concern was he wanted in America to be able to continue the conversations. And incredibly, in this seance, reference was made by the medium to a group that she referred to as Spiritual Frontier. It meant absolutely nothing to Edna Twigg, neither a name that she mentioned, Father Rocha.

But the intimation was that come the August of that year, the year of Jim's death, he would be speaking to his father in the United States of America, and somehow or other, this organization and this person would come into it. Now, Pike left for the States, and he was invited to preach a series of sermons, I believe, in Holy Week at an Anglican church, an Episcopal church in New York City. At the end of one of his sermons, a man came up to him whose identity he didn't know.

He was to discover it later on. And he said that as he listened to Pike preach and as he watched him, he could see a man called Jim also in the pulpit with him. And at the side of him was a man, an old man, whose name was Elias.

Who Jim was? Well, by now you'll have guessed, his son. Elias happened to be the grandfather of Jim. Facts that could not possibly have been known to this man who spoke to Pike after that significant service in New York.

Pike asked the man who had introduced him to this unknown friend where he worked, with what organization he was associated with in America. And would you believe it, he mentioned that his ministry was being conducted under a group known as the Spiritual Frontier Trust, I think they call it. And that this was headed up by a man called Father Rocha.

How amazing. Both predictions by the medium were dead right. Pike, of course, was excited even more about this.

He got in mind that Jim was going to speak to him. Through Spiritual Frontier Trust, he was introduced to another man, a clergyman called George Daisley and he contacted Jim. He told Pike that Jim indeed was going to contact Pike himself personally through another seance.

Maren, Jim Pike, the Bishop's secretary, was to be present as she had been on the first instance and so the scene was set, now in America, for father and son to communicate once more. It happened quite successfully. And in this seance, if you please, Jim speaking through Daisley congratulated Maren for her hairdo, which he said was a great improvement.

Also at this seance occurred the voice of another departed medium who had been in his day on earth a spiritual healer and he addressed Maren and said that it was his wish for her to discover the gift of spiritual healing herself. Now Daisley had three or four seances over a period of time with Pike present. The only reason why I prolong telling you this is that between the fourth and fifth seance, Maren died, not by natural causes but by taking her own life.

She never became a spiritual healer. Pike by this time had started an organisation in America to help back up his ministry and his inquiry into psychical research. Maren was the first secretary but on her death he appointed another woman by the name of Diana, Diana Kennedy, who later on he was to marry.

Now the final thing which I think is of significance to us this evening before the death of Bishop Pike and before we evaluate all this occurred in Canada. There is a journalist who works for I think the paper is called the Toronto Star in Canada who also is a producer of religious programmes. He was interested in life beyond the grave and in spiritism.

He had written a book and he really wanted to launch this book. So also incidentally had Pike, he'd been writing all the time. And so Spraggett came to Pike and suggested they did a programme and also they should invite to take part in this television broadcast the Reverend Arthur Ford who is the most influential medium in the United States of America.

He incidentally was the unknown man who had listened to Pike preach in New York and had said that he could see behind Pike, Jim and Elias. So the scenery is set up and Spraggett conducts this television interview with Ford and with Pike. He refers to Pike's newest book on spiritism and the seventh chapter in that book which happened to deal with experiences from the world beyond.

And he put a question to Pike, have you yourself personally had any communication that you would like to affirm with the world beyond? Now up to this time in America Pike had been known for his radical views but he was not yet known as someone who was dabbling with spiritism and indeed who had been converted to a spiritist approach. Pike agreed that he had had contact and at that moment and it was incredible to Pike who didn't believe that this could happen, not with the intense blaze of the lights of a television studio, Ford went into a trance. And millions of people in Canada saw this.

Jim, Pike's son, came through and spoke to his father. Certain details were given to Pike which could not have been known by Ford, he could not have researched it and no one is suggesting that Ford is a charlatan at all. He is a respected medium, respected in the sense that he is successful.

Well you can imagine the effect that this had for the spiritist cause in Canada and the United States of America. Never before has a spiritist movement had such a public platform. Later on in private, Pike was to consult with Ford again, his secretary Diana Kennedy being present.

She had a tape recorder and there was a conversation recorded between Pike and his son. It's pathetic and tragic really. I have read a transcript of some of these seances of what took place.

Pike is told by his son that he had to die and it was best for him to die. He was only a trouble to his father and Pike was saying, well you know Jim, even if you'd stayed around I'd have done the best I could to help you. And the son said, well dad I didn't even know.

And Pike was always impressed because Jim spoke to him as dad affectionately and intimately during these seances. I didn't even know until the last six months that you even cared about me. Maran also, the first secretary, was contacted and she spoke to Diana wishing to use a scriptural expression, wishing that the spirit of Elijah would fall upon Elisha and that she, Diana, would be a good successor to her, Maran, as the secretary of Pike.

Jim also, while speaking through Ford, said to Pike that the day would come when he would be able to dispense with such a crutch as Ford and he would be able to realise his own potential as someone who is psychic, someone who is a medium. Well, there were more contacts. They became less and less frequent.

Pike in his writings deduced the reason for this is that now his son is settled in the afterlife. At first he was disorientated. He'd gone there as a suicide case and this apparently is a very bad platform on which to be launched into the afterlife as a spiritist, understand it.

But he'd found for himself a job, a niche. He helped to orientate the suicide cases who'd come from this world into the next. So, as I say, the occurrences of the seances became less and less frequent.

Now, on September the 7th, 1969, Pike the bishop died. This wasn't suicide, but neither was it death through natural causes, that is through the deterioration of the body. Pike and Diana, who by now he has married, went to Palestine to continue their work in psychical research.

And Pike went out one day to the wilderness towards the Dead Sea and to the desert that fringes it. And tragically, he got lost. A large-scale search was commenced, but to no avail.

Actually, I said he died on September the 7th. That may not quite be correct. He was found on September the 7th, 1969, by some Bedouin and by the police.

His wife Diana remained in a hotel in Jerusalem waiting for news. At the time of his discovery, she testifies to a remarkable vision. From between two rocks, she witnessed, if you please, just before the canyon, the ascension of Pike, who left this world in a sort of filmy substance and was received into the next world, lovingly embraced by his son.

And who should look on as a spectator and also be a welcomer than none other than Paul Tillich, the German theologian. Later on, Pike was once again to speak in the world, but this time himself through a medium. Four months later, through the mediumship of a lady called Ethel Myers, Pike's voice was heard coming through.

And again, I have read something of this transcript, and you hear him saying, I've overcome, I've overcome, I've overcome. Now, as a result of these extraordinary events, which started in 1965, back in the flat in Cambridge, lots of people have had to do an about-turn in their thinking concerning the afterlife and the phenomena of Spiritism. Well, what are we as evangelical Christians to make of all this? I think I'm right in saying that it was in 1970, or thereabouts, that the musical Hair was first staged in London.

It was a notorious occasion, for again, if memory serves me correct, it was the first occasion that frontal nudity had ever been allowed on the London stage. I don't know the plot of Hair, though I was at one time given the script of some of the songs that were sung, but I believe I'm right in saying that there was an orgy depicted on the stage. But that, by the way, the point of referring to that musical is simply this, that one of the songs that it made popular bled out through the radio receiver when the BBC put it over.

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Now, Aquarius is one of the marks, one of the signs of the zodiac, and the claim of the song was that humanity was moving into the age when the occult and black magic and interest in this sort of thing would revive and know renewal around the world. It's interesting to go into a news agent such as W. H. Smith and see the plethora of magazines, newspapers, books and encyclopedias that there are on this subject.

If you'd looked for them 15 years ago, you'd have seen some evidence, but not very much. But today, there's lots. America has thousands of daily newspapers, and I'm told that only 500 of them, a relatively small number, do not contain a horoscope day by day.

Many of the magazines in this country do. Those qualified to speak who have done research into the subject testify to the interest in witchcraft and the increase of witches' covens here in Sussex, the revival of black magic and white magic. Now, it is my opinion that this revival in Spiritism can be traced back not in its entirety, but in some degree to the conversion of Bishop Pike.

Meryl Ungar, who does a far better evaluation than I have attempted this evening of Pike and to whom I'm indebted for much of my material, speaks of the Spiritist extravaganza that occurred in the flat in Cambridge. He argues that in the realm of the Spiritist world, in the realm of demons, there was a plot that was hatched against Pike himself. They wanted to launch a new era of interest in the occult as part of their diabolical strategy for these days.

They required a man of intelligence, a man with an incisive mind, a man who was not prone to believe every Tom, Dick and Harry's report of black magic and spiritual phenomena. So, they selected Pike and they worked upon him and bit by bit he got embroiled and to change the metaphor, he found himself in a whirlpool and could do none other than be sucked down its vortex. Now before we come to evaluate Pike a little more specifically, let me add another general observation.

The Bible clearly teaches, but time runs out on me this evening to direct you to the verses, that before the great day of the return of Jesus, there will be an intensification of the forces of darkness. The Bible writers are not joking when they refer to a spiritual warfare and the devil, the prince of the power of this world, stalking the world seeking who he might delude. I argue that the reason for the cult's progress and success in these days, like some of the groups we've been mentioning, children of God, the Moonies, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the reason for their success can be attributed to this.

But the devil has many ways of scattering delusion and spiritism in all its insidious and various forms is one of the strongest weapons in the arsenal of the devil.