[Below is a very brief extract from the upcoming 2nd Edition and rewrite of my 800-page 1994 book “The Serpent and the Cross”. This is taken from the 68-page Chapter 7 in which I expose the Gnostic occult origins and true history of the ‘mind-sciences’ in psychology and test the claims of psychotherapy against the teachings of Scripture. The little extract below is from the third of seven caveats against the Christian indulging in secular psychotherapy]

A THIRD CAVEAT against the Christian indulging in secular psychotherapy is that it undermines the authority of Scripture. All the teaching and information necessary for the personal growth of the believer is contained in the Word of God, the Bible. One of the great characteristics of Scripture is its ability to make the man or woman of God “complete, fully equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17). We ignore this claim at our peril. Why settle for wholly inferior man-made alternatives when the very best has already been provided by God? It is the greatest manual of psychology and counselling that a person could have. When Paul writes to the Hebrews that: “the word of God is living and powerfully energized, and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even as far as the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrows, and is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12), we must apply that dynamic revelation to the power of our pastoral ministry and not confine it merely to an evangelistic exhortation.

As congregational counselling through powerful biblical preaching from the pulpit has all but disappeared from the vast majority of professing ‘Christian’ churches, so there has been a parallel rise in the pursuit of counterfeit substitutes, such as high-intensity, long-drawn-out musical and singing practices masquerading as “worship” and the use of various forms of ‘Christianised’ psychotherapy masquerading as ‘inner healing’. All this trendy nonsense is in stark contrast to the practices of the early church, in which the reading and exposition of the Scriptures as the absolute centre-stage of congregational gatherings is, as the late New Testament scholar Ralph P. Martin rightly asserts,

“an inheritance we have received, through the early church, from the worship of Judaism, and which makes the model Christian service a Word-of-God service”. [R.P. Martin, Worship in the Early Church, (Marshall, Morgan & Scott), 1964, p.69].

This is immensely significant for our study here. From the outset, a church gathering was a “Word-of-God service”. Emblazon that in your hearts and minds! The truths of the Bible were at the heart of worship. As Paul said to the pastor, Timothy, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation [i.e., preaching], and to teaching [i.e., biblical and pastoral instruction]” (1 Timothy 4:13). Why would that be? Why should those things be at the heart of congregational health? Because the exposition of the Word of God is therapeutic for the mind, heart and soul, acting on them in ways which we cannot even begin to comprehend, much like the sun’s invisible physical and hormonal effects on the mind and body when it touches our skin and is discerned by our eyes. It is from this practice that so much of the church’s true ‘therapy’ should arise.

The sad reality is that most people calling themselves “Christians” have never had any experience of genuine Spirit-filled preaching and teaching which, in many congregations, would at one time provide much of the only kind of ‘therapy’ which anyone needed if they are living ‘in the Spirit’ themselves, mortifying their sin (as developed earlier) and overseeing the lovely development of their ‘new self’. This does not mean that no personal counselling is ever necessary. But any counselling given should always be within the overall context of the reaches of the Word of God and a biblical understanding of human development both before and after a metanoic spiritual transformation.

Let it be emphasised here that the combination of consciously singing masculine psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with powerful ‘anointed’ preaching does a major work in the heart, mind and soul of those present in the congregation (cf. Colossians 3:16, where we see that there is indeed a teaching function in congregational singing). These days, the only ‘therapy’ people receive in the majority of churches comes either from ‘Christianised’ secular therapies (such as Jungian transpersonal psychology) or from an altered state of consciousness (with a huge dose of endorphins and oxytocin) being manipulated by so-called “worship leaders” through the repetitive singing of banal, effeminate choruses with eyes closed and arms waving hypnotically in the air, in the absence of any powerful preaching and teaching. The folly in this is the profound error that being ‘blissed-out’ is the equivalent of being ‘in the Spirit’. These practices are the overspill of the New Gnosticism into the churches of today; and they involve a total failure to appreciate the sheer transformative power of genuine hymnody and God’s Word in the lives of the hearers.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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