Looking back at the introduction to “Break Away from Mystical Excess,” we can see two major problems facing the Christian church today, each at an opposite extreme. One is the unconditional rejection of spiritual experiences, known as “dogmatism.” It rejects spiritual experiences and emphasizes the Bible itself alone. The other is “mystical excess,” which blindly pursues spiritual experiences. Both have been serious problems in Korea and throughout the world.

“While emphasizing the importance of the Bible, dogmatism ignores the experiences promised in the Bible and thereby reduces Christianity to a powerless religion.”

A distinctive feature of Berea is the amazement of finding that what the Bible promises and records can actually be experienced in one’s own life, though the Bible had once seemed disconnected from reality.

Second, “By placing too much importance on spiritual experiences, mystical excess goes beyond the Word and leads believers down the path of spiritual corruption.”

This is a very serious problem. Because people have experienced God, they can become even more convinced and move further into mystical excess. The recent church division can also be seen as a form of mystical excess. It was not based on the revealed Word, but on their own emotions and on the ethics, morality, and sense of justice they had acquired from the world.

Third, “In spiritual life, there may be special experiences that are not specifically recorded in the Bible, but such experiences should not be universalized. What should be universalized is only the Word recorded in the Bible and the experiences that follow from it.”

The problem is that many extraordinary things do happen. Those who experience them are tempted to universalize their experiences. And when the same kind of experience is shared by many people rather than by just one person, it becomes even easier to be deceived.

For example, there was a widespread claim that Jesus would return on October 28, 1992. Those involved said that they had actually received this revelation. Some said they had received an impression while praying, while others said they had seen visions. And it was not just one person. Many people in different places claimed to have experienced the same thing at the same time. That is certainly extraordinary. Even some well-known pastors made the same claim and said that they themselves had experienced it. How could anyone easily resist that? If you experienced it yourself, how could you easily overcome it? Most people would be taken in.

But there are demons and the devil in this world, and they are active. So such experiences can certainly occur. There can be any number of extraordinary phenomena. Once people experience such things, they may begin to regard them as truth and treat them as absolute. But they are only realities of the spiritual realm; they are not the truth.

The important way not to be deceived by such things is to remain with what is written in the Bible. No matter how gracious an experience may seem or how much joy it may bring, if it is not in the Bible, we should not follow it.

There are other extraordinary things as well. You may have heard stories of a statue of Mary shedding tears of blood. Such things do happen. How can we explain them? It is a statue made of stone, yet liquid comes from its eyes, and it is even red. How can that be explained? Because the phenomenon is so extraordinary, people accept it as truth. But although it is extraordinary, it is not the truth. Such things can happen.

There are countless things in this world that we do not understand. But why should we make such things objects of devotion? The way to overcome them is to remain with what is written and not go beyond what is written. Semuon practiced this exceptionally well. Although he had many experiences, he overcame the temptation to go beyond what was written. He restrained himself from saying everything he wanted to say.

Once, when I met Semuon privately, I told him, “If I were to name one distinctive feature of your preaching, I would say it is restraint.” He was pleased to hear that. Restraint—that was a defining feature of his preaching. I felt this way because I could sense that there were things he clearly knew but chose not to say. There were things he wanted to speak about at the time, yet he held them back and spoke about them only thirty years later. While working on books, I listened again to some old recordings. I heard him begin to say something and then stop, only to find him speaking about that very thing thirty years later. I was amazed. I thought, “That is remarkable.”

There is also the expression, “Strive, Labor, and Pray Fervently.” We held meetings under that theme. But this expression already appeared in the early Berea Academy lectures: “Strive, Labor, and Pray Fervently.” Translators did not always distinguish precisely among “strive,” “labor,” and “fervently.” They often treated them as if they meant the same thing. So when the speaker said, “We must strive, labor, and pray fervently,” a translator might simply render it as, “We must pray fervently!” The distinctions among the three expressions were lost because they were taken as essentially the same thing. Later, however, I saw that a meeting was actually held under the title “Strive, Labor, and Pray Fervently.” He had planned this beforehand and was using the three expressions with distinct meanings. Had I been a more experienced translator at the time, I would have tried to preserve those distinctions in translation. But at the time, there was no way for me to do so. This is why we should not dismiss such distinctions too easily.

Likewise, he must have had many things he wanted to say, yet he showed remarkable restraint. He would say only that much and stop there. This kind of restraint is extremely important for a leader.

People who lack restraint tend to pour out everything they have learned whenever they are given an opportunity to preach, even things they learned only a few days earlier. They simply hand it over in its raw form without knowing how to handle it properly. Before long, they have nothing more to preach. They do not know what to do because they have already given away everything they learned. Then they have nothing more to teach those people, so they go out to learn something else. They keep going around trying to learn more. The problem is that they do not know how to receive the Word properly. It is like someone helping them dig a well, but instead of learning how to dig a well for themselves, they simply take whatever comes out and pass it on immediately. As a result, no well is actually dug, and in the end, nothing can be sustained. Had they properly understood what it meant to have that well dug for them, they could have continued drawing something from it for ten years.

Semuon exercised that kind of restraint. In order not to drift into mystical excess, he did not speak about things that did not need to be spoken about. Therefore, even if we have had many extraordinary spiritual experiences, leaders in particular must be very careful about their words and actions and should not casually say, “God spoke to me.”

Also, whenever Semuon testified about something he had personally experienced, he would first make it clear by saying, “This is not the truth, but…” The same was true when he gave testimonies. He spoke about such things only when necessary, and even then he did not say much. Matters like these were handled carefully, perhaps later in a book.

When we act, we should not think only about ourselves. We must remember that many people will be blessed through us and that they will learn from what we do. If we do something one way, the next person will usually take it a step further. They always tend to go one step further. We need to keep that in mind and be especially careful. Paul did the same. Because he knew that others were watching and learning from him, even though he could say, “I may eat food offered to idols. My faith allows me to eat it,” he chose not to eat for the sake of another person’s conscience. Therefore, we must be very careful in what we say and do, and also in how we speak about our own experiences, always being able to say, “It is written in the Bible…”

Our faith is different from conviction. The distinction between conviction and faith is one of the most basic foundations of Berea, and it is something rarely heard elsewhere in the world. In many places, what is called “faith” is taught as believing that things will happen the way one thinks they will. The idea is, “If you keep thinking about it, it will happen.”

I once heard a pastor at a nearby church preach on what he called the “principle of vision,” and I later saw many others preach along the same lines. One example they use is the story of Jacob taking sheep from his father-in-law. They say that when the strong sheep came to drink, Jacob peeled the bark from poplar branches and placed them by the water, but when the weak sheep came, he removed them. The sheep would see the streaked pattern of the peeled branches while drinking and later give birth to streaked offspring. As a result, the streaked young kept coming from the strong sheep. Jacob had already made an agreement with his father-in-law that the streaked sheep would belong to him, so the strong sheep became Jacob’s while the weak ones remained his father-in-law’s.

The point they make from this example is, “Did not the sheep give birth to that kind of offspring because they kept looking at the branches?” It is almost like prenatal education for sheep. In other words, “You become what you see.” So people are taught, “Pray and imagine as though you can see it before your eyes, and it will come to pass. Keep thinking that things will go well for you, and imagine it specifically. Picture it before your eyes. If you can, even draw a picture of it.”

Of course, we can pray in such specific terms. But before long, Jesus drops out of the picture, and all that remains is the emphasis that “if you imagine it specifically, it will surely happen.” This is also seen in what is sometimes called the “diamond life,” promoted by pyramid-type companies such as Amway. They attract people by asking, “Would you not like to live a diamond life?” and show them things like a house with a swimming pool or an expensive car. Then they hand out pictures of those things and tell people to put them up where they can see them and keep saying, “I can do it!” They are told to read those words and look at those pictures several times a day. In this way, they are constantly pushed to reinforce the image. Much of this was borrowed from Christian ideas, but Jesus was removed and only positive thinking was left. And it does have an effect. It can have a tremendous effect. I am not saying that it has no effect. That is precisely why people are deceived by it—because it works.

For example, scientists are said to have taken water and spoken harshly to one sample, saying things like, “You are terrible! You are worthless!” while speaking positively to another, saying, “I love you. You are wonderful. You are a truly good presence that helps me.” They then examined the crystals formed by the water. According to reports of such experiments, the crystals from the water that had received positive words appeared clear and hexagonal, while the others appeared damaged and broken. From this came claims that drinking the latter kind of water could cause cancer, whereas drinking water that had received positive words could make a person healthier.

How extraordinary that sounds. It may even be true. But does that have anything to do with faith? No. It has nothing to do with faith at all. It is simply a physical phenomenon. I have no desire to deny that such a thing could happen. It may be possible. How could we possibly know everything that happens in this world? Such things may happen. But they have nothing to do with faith. Yet this is the kind of thing that is taught in churches. People are stirred up with statements such as, “Imagine it. If you believe, it will happen.” Before I believed in Jesus, I also thought that this was faith because I had heard people speak this way so often. But it has nothing to do with faith.

I say this because I had heard such things and had also read books about them. Before I believed in Jesus, when I was in college, I once had a basketball test in which I had to make shots into the basket. Naturally, if you actually practice, your skill improves. The more you practice, the more shots you should be able to make. But at the time, I had read a book that said you could train through imagination. So I thought that even without physically practicing on the court, I could improve my ability through mental practice. That is what I did. I practiced in my imagination. I would close my eyes and practice mentally. I could even do it while lying down. And when I actually took the test, I did very well—remarkably well. There was a clear difference between before and after. It was extraordinary. Once people experience something like this a few times, they may begin to think that it is faith. And when such things are practiced in church, they may think that they are part of faith. But they are not faith.

There are many other examples in which psychology is brought into the church. Once psychology is introduced, it can easily become confused with faith. A few days ago, I saw a pastor giving a lecture titled “Jung and Christian Psychology.” Jung was a well-known psychologist, and one book introducing his ideas is The Map of the Soul. The lecture connected those ideas with Christianity. Such things may certainly be helpful, but they have nothing to do with faith.

I majored in social welfare. Many of the students in the department were Christians. Some were pastors’ children, and some were even church ministers. Many people there studied social welfare because their father had encouraged me to learn something in that field. But nearly half of the people there kept connecting what they were learning with faith. I was studying as an unbeliever, while they thought that everything they were learning somehow had to do with faith.

After graduating from the Department of Social Work, I worked as a social worker for a year. Most of the staff there attended church, or at least went from time to time. The section chief was the son of a pastor. They were people who considered themselves serious about their faith and wanted, in their own way, to live according to God’s will. But when people work in social welfare, there is a professional code of ethics, and one of its principles is that they should not evangelize the people they serve. Yet the desire to evangelize naturally arises. When I help people in difficult circumstances, people with disabilities, or the elderly, I begin to feel deeply for them. I come to understand their problems and think about how they might be helped. Then I begin to think, “What this person truly needs is Jesus,” and I want to tell them about Him. But I am not supposed to do that. If I do, I can be warned. Just as a doctor may be told, “Your job is to provide treatment, so why are you evangelizing?” a social worker may be told, “Just do your job. Why are you evangelizing?” So if I wanted to evangelize, I had to do it quietly, perhaps by speaking with someone privately after work.

But as I watched the social workers there, I realized that many of them regarded the work itself as faith. They thought that simply working at a welfare center was something that pleased God. By that time, I had already come to believe in Jesus, so I kept a clear distinction in my mind: “This is my job, and what I must do for my soul is something separate.” But these people seemed to think, “God will look favorably on me because I work here,” and because they were helping others, they felt, “At least I am living according to God’s will.” Yet when evening came, they would gather and drink heavily. One department head had even dropped out of seminary and no longer attended church at all. Still, something remained in his heart. His whole family attended church, and he himself would occasionally go as well. There was still a trace of faith left in him. So where did he find comfort? He found it in the fact that he was working at a welfare center. He would think, “Those people go to church, but they do not live according to God’s will. I may not go to church, but at least I am living according to God’s will.”

All of these are forms of mystical excess. They have nothing to do with the Word. This is largely where Christianity in Korea stands today. Before I came to know Sungrak Church, I once visited another church while I was still an unbeliever. My first impression was that churches placed enormous emphasis on ethics, morality, ways of living in the world, and practical wisdom for getting ahead in life. As an unbeliever, this made Christians seem very irritating to me. After all, practical wisdom for life is about how to make your way successfully through the world, is it not? We unbelievers were trying to gain the same things they were trying to gain. What were we all after? The things of this world—money, opportunities, and the like. But Christians seemed to have a better means of getting them: they relied on their God. It felt as though they were taking away the share that should have come to us, and then they would always say they were thankful to God. We felt left out, as though God favored only them. That made Christians seem unpleasant and irritating to me, because they were competing with the people of the world for the same things.

When the church moves too far into the same pursuits as the world, the people of the world eventually become its rivals. It would be different if Christians thought, “What we do in this world is only a means; what we seek is eternal.” But churches in the world often do not think that way. Instead, they become absorbed in teaching their members how to live successfully in this world. As a result, conflict with the world can only grow.

The reason people keep losing their direction in this way is that once they leave the Bible and try to live their faith by conviction, more and more of what they do begins to overlap with the world. We must therefore distinguish the two clearly. “If I work hard enough, I can do it,” and “If I keep thinking about it, it will happen” belong to conviction, not faith. This does not mean that we should never do such things. We simply need to know clearly that they are for the flesh, because they concern the things of the flesh. The problem is that people do things by conviction while neglecting spiritual things, and then think, “I have done all that I need to do.” That is the problem. If conviction is useful, then use it. If you can make good use of conviction and improve through repeated visualization, that is fine. But none of that by itself amounts to doing anything spiritual. Nothing spiritual can ever be done apart from Jesus Christ.

Conviction and faith are not a subject that we will discuss just once and then leave behind. As we return to it whenever we have the opportunity, we will see how many different forms this distinction takes. May your faith clearly distinguish conviction from faith.