[The context of this brief extract is a section (in a wide-ranging chapter about the use of the “mind-sciences” in the Church) on the use of so-called “faith-Imagination” on the part of a ‘Christian’ ‘inner healing’ therapist to induce a person to repeatedly interact with an imaginary visualised “Jesus” in order to heal some traumatic memory. The extract is from the upcoming second edition of my 1994 book, “The Serpent & the Cross”. This extract is 2,438 words and has a 15-minute read-time].

WHAT, THEREFORE SHOULD BE THE RESPONSE of the Christian to the use of visualisations involving the conjured-up alleged image of Jesus Christ? Of primary concern should be the fact that this type of activity is specifically forbidden and warned against within the pages of the Bible (Exodus 20:4-5). This commandment is not just about making external idols but it takes in the attribution of Divine power to an image, which is what is happening when someone conjures up an image of Jesus in the imagination. It is all down to the intent. It is a solemn fact that every figurative representation of God contradicts His being; and although I do not at all wish to obscure the fact that Jesus (as God manifested in the flesh) was a real human being, the conjuring up of a visualised (therefore phony) image of Christ for the purposes of psychological manipulation is surely a gross form of idolatry. The last thing that the Christian should be doing is relying on such images in the imagination for guidance in life or, absolutely the worst of all, to increase faith. Let us open this up.

When Richard Foster makes the statement that “imagination opens the door to faith” when encouraging people to “encounter the living Christ” while claiming that “Jesus Christ will actually come to you” in person as a visualised being within (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Hodder & Stoughton, 1980, p.36), this is in direct opposition to the authoritative statement in the Bible that the Christian walks “by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). The use of the imagination to generate an image of Christ is therefore a sign of a lack of faith, and an attempt to walk by sight! In fact, the entire context of this verse of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:7 is most instructive concerning visualisations involving the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle tells us that “while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6). Two verses later, he says that we would rather be freed from this limitation of earthly life in order to be in the presence of Jesus. In other words, he is saying that being alive (“in the body”) involves not having the visible Christ with us: We would have to be freed from the body before we could be in His presence. That must surely make a nonsense of the claim of the Inner Healers that their visualised “christs” are the real Christ! Paul goes on to say that the way we overcome this problem of not currently having the Lord with us in the flesh is to remember that God has given us the indwelling Holy Spirit as a “downpayment” on, or “guarantee” of, our future heavenly inheritance (2 Corinthians 5:5). In other words, Jesus is present with us through the invisible, indwelling Holy Spirit. Paul then crowns it all with the grand affirmation that “we walk by faith, not by sight”. “Faith” and “sight” are mutually exclusive. This includes any alleged ‘sightings’ of Jesus.

It is completely untrue to say that imagination “opens the door to faith”, as Richard Foster claims. In the Christian life, it is faith that opens the door to assurance. The Holy Spirit’s own definition of “faith” is that it is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). “Things not seen”. Contrary to Richard Foster’s claims, faith does not need the human imagination to open the door for it. Faith is self-sufficient — a miraculous provision of God. It is only in those Christian circles which have a defective doctrine of sanctification and assurance, or in which it is likely that many have undergone a dubious conversion experience, that one will find people who need to rely on the use of their imagination to increase their faith. In fact, it is my sincere belief that these visualised images of Christ can provide a clear opportunity for demonic deception.

Jesus is not present in bodily manifestation — either on the earth or in people’s minds — throughout the entire Gospel Age, as I will explain below. It is also true that He has not left us as orphans (John 14:18; Matthew 28:20b). But from the time of His Ascension until His second coming, the presence of Christ is manifested through His Holy Spirit, who is an indwelling gift to all those who believe in Him. If the bodily form of the Lord Jesus Christ was to be so accessible to anyone who wants to imagine it or conjure it up, regardless of his or her standing before God, then the unmistakable significance and reality of His future return would be lost. Are you understanding the significance of this? This is precisely why Jesus made it clear that the next possible sighting of Him, after His Ascension, would be unique and inimitable:

“Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’, do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’, do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:26-27).

The “christs” which are visualised in the “inner rooms” of the visualisers’ minds are just as much of an abomination before the Lord as those dredged up within secret societies and mystery cults through special gnosis. Again, when John the Apostle refers to Jesus’ second coming, he makes it absolutely clear that our Lord’s bodily form will be seen only when He returns, and not before:

“And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming… Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 2:28 & 3:2).

Do you see the tremendous significance of what the Apostle is saying here? If it was possible for us to see the real Jesus now, and tap-into Him at any time we like, then this statement of John that “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be” would be wrong. For he says that the only way we will be able to determine what we shall be like in eternity is to receive a visible manifestation of Jesus. But, as John says, it is only when Jesus is revealed at the Second Comingthat “we shall see Him as He is” and thereby have a revelation of what we shall be like. [In fact, when John did see a vision of the risen Christ in glory by special revelation for an Apostle, it was anything but a psychologically soothing experience, Revelation 1:17!]. In the meantime, it is just as Paul said: “While we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord”. The visible, bodily form of the authentic Jesus Christ is not available “on tap” to all those who want to receive a psychological “inner healing” on the cheap. Far from being available to be flashed onto the mind-canvasses of all the recipients of “Inner Healing”, as has been said above, Jesus Christ is the One “whom Heaven must take in until the time comes for the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21). He is figuratively represented in Scripture as “sitting at the right hand of God” throughout the Gospel Age (Colossians 3:1), and will not be bodily revealed until lawlessness has reached its fullness at the end of the age, when His enemies will be made His footstool (Psalm 110:1; Matthew 22:41-46).

In the same way that the sign of a true Christian is that he walks by faith and not by sight, so the mark of the spiritually-destitute heathen is that he walks by sight rather than by faith. This is why the unbeliever inevitably “change[s] the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man”. He walks by sight rather than by faith. He cannot help but exchange the truth of God for the Lie — worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:16-25).

The faith of the Children of Israel, in the main, was so hopelessly lacking that as soon as their divinely-inspired leader went up the mountain and disappeared out of view, they built themselves a golden calf (Exodus 32:1-8). They walked by sight rather than by faith. But where true faith in the power of the invisible God is strong and real, there will be no dependence on mere man-made images for our succour. The use of so-called “Faith-Imagination” to conjure up an inner visualisation of Jesus is really a latter-day version of the above-mentioned golden calf. “Inner Healing” is actually a New Age stand-in for true biblical counselling, and has been designed by Satan as a counterfeit of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.

As we have already discussed at length in Chapter 7, the “personal growth therapy” recommended in the Bible for the believer is Mortification— the eradication, in the power of the Holy Spirit, of sinful behaviour patterns (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 4:22). When Paul tells the Ephesians to shake off any residual anger they may feel before the day has ended, so that they will not provide a foothold for the devil in their lives (Ephesians 4:26-27), he is assuming an ability to do so without the aid of any psychotherapeutic techniques. When Paul tells the Philippian church, “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11), was it “Healing of the Memories” which had effected that Divine contentment? Had he put “Faith-Imagination” to work for him in order to attain this mindset? Of course not! Instead, he goes on to reveal the great fact which applies to every child of God: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). It is to the Living Christ that Paul is referring here — the One who indwells His people through His Holy Spirit — not a counterfeit “christ” which has been conjured up in the imagination through the Jungian “Inner Healing” psychological techniques taught within so many churches today.

People in biblical times — with their open exposure to death, demon possession, human sacrifice, disease, starvation, bloody hostile raids, and other elemental hardships — must have had far more genuinely traumatic childhoods than we do today. Yet we never find so much as a hint of a “Healing of the Memories” therapy in the Bible, or the need to visualise Jesus as some kind of inner psychotherapist. Christian counsellors should be encouraging them to accept the promises of the Holy Spirit and to focus themselves on the Lord Jesus Christ, who endured far more hostility from sinners than any one of us will ever know (Hebrews 12:3-4). In following this simple pathway, we will discover the wealth of power He gives His people to change through the use of spiritual rather than psychological means.

I maintain that where the Word of God is ministered in power, where there is a real belief in the transforming energy of the Spirit, where the truths of the Bible are not just paper-based propositions, where there is a congregational thirst for spiritual (and thereby psychological) growth, then the believer will have all the resources available to cut through any residual problems of the flesh or sinful behaviour patterns, without the need for visualisation therapy as an aid to healing specific individual memories from the past. As the Apostle Peter assures us: “[the Lord’s] divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). We pour scorn on this “divine power” when we use cheap-jack techniques of human devising.

Let us also remember our exposé, in Chapter 7, of the fact that “somnambulistic trance is the rule rather than the exception in people’s everyday ‘waking activity’”, and that “most of the techniques in different types of psychotherapy are nothing more than hypnotic phenomena” (Richard Bandler and John Grinder, Frogs into Princes: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Real People Press, 1979, p.100). You will recall that these words came from a trainer of psychotherapists during one of his training sessions. What is being carried out by these ‘Christian’ therapists and ‘faith-imagination’ visualisers is a form of powerful hypnotic suggestion which has been “sanitised” by the presence of an alleged vision of Jesus Christ. ‘Inner Healing’ and ‘Healing of the Memories’ are a mixture of hypnotherapy and unadulterated idolatry practised on gullible people who are seeking a quick and easy answer to their struggles with sin by any means available. Its origin is not in the Word of God, but in the psychological theories of men who were inspired by the occult tradition. This is frankly admitted in an article on “Pentecostal and Charismatic Spirituality” in the authoritative “Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements”, which states:

“One sector of the Charismatic movement, a sector that could be called ‘The Jungian School’ (Agnes Sanford popularised the approach) takes dreams very seriously and finds in the intricate psychological writings of Carl Jung a theoretical basis (Kelsey, 1964, 1968). Inner Healing was an understandable development that emerged out of that school” (Stanley M. Burgess & Gary B. McGee, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Zondervan, 1988, p.808).

They have their origins in the philosophy of the occultist and Gnostic, Carl Jung. Whether one walks by sight or by faith is determined by whether or not one has received the Spirit who is from God (1 Corinthians 2:6-16), for faith itself is a gift from the Lord (Ephesians 2:8). Those who indulge in the ‘new idolatry’ of a visualised Christ are actually behaving as if they were His enemies. Although they may achieve some measure of renewed psychological healing in some itsy-bitsy manner, this will by no means compensate for the anguish of being left outside the gates of the New Jerusalem when all things are revealed and all will be judged at the end of this evil age (Matthew 13:41-42; Revelation 22:15). “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

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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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