New Thought Mind Power - New Thought Metaphysics


In the beginning, in the Garden, Satan approached Eve with the same three‑step assault he has used ever since. He began by questioning God: "Yea, hath God said…?" He followed by denying God’s Word outright: "Ye shall not surely die." And then he drove in the hook: "Ye shall be as gods." That pattern has never changed. The vocabulary shifts, the costumes vary, but the substance of the attack remains exactly what it was in Eden, undermine the Word, contradict the Word, replace the Word.

We face the same assault today, only multiplied. Our age is flooded with twisted Scripture, counterfeit doctrines, and illegitimate ideas dressed up in biblical language. The believer walks through a minefield of errors that look pious, sound spiritual, and carry the scent of truth while being nothing but the old lie in a new wrapper. The danger is real, and the cost of carelessness is high.

Yet the child of God is not left to navigate this alone. The same Lord who warned us of deception also promised to direct our steps. If we truly seek His truth, if we bow before His Word rather than our own notions, He guides our path through the confusion. The serpent still whispers, but the Shepherd still speaks, and His sheep know His voice.

There is a movement that claims we must "pray with authority".  When I say that alarm bells began going off throughout my soul.  Authority?  I have none.  What does the Bible and Bible scholars say about this?

Like so many other words in our national vernacular, metaphysics, which once described the very real but non‑material structure of our world, has undergone an involuntary gender reassignment into something called New Thought metaphysics, or New Thought Mind Power.

Many other words in our vocabulary have been hijacked as well.  Gay once meant cheerful, lighthearted, carefree; now it almost exclusively refers to sexual orientation. "Rainbow" once belonged to Scripture, covenant, and childhood wonder; now it is a banner for an entire social movement. The word hasn’t changed in spelling, but its center of gravity has shifted. The same thing has happened to "metaphysics." For centuries it referred to the real but non‑material structure of the world, justice, mercy, truth, beauty, the soul, God.

Everyman's Metaphysics - Back To Basics

Metaphysics, in its real and ancient sense, is simply the study of what is real but not physical. It is the recognition that the world we inhabit is more than atoms and molecules, more than what can be weighed, measured, or placed under a microscope. Every ordinary man knows this without needing a philosopher to tell him. He knows that justice is real, though it has no mass. He knows that mercy is real, though it cannot be poured into a beaker. He knows that love is real, though it cannot be photographed. Truth, goodness, beauty, purpose, identity, moral law, the soul, and God Himself, these belong to the non‑material structure of reality. They are not illusions. They are not chemical by‑products. They are the very framework within which human life makes sense.

This is the metaphysics of Scripture and of lived experience. The Bible teaches it on every page. When it speaks of justice rolling down like waters, or of the soul thirsting for God, or of the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, it is speaking of realities that no laboratory can detect yet no sane man can deny. These things are unseen, but they are not unreal. They are the deeper layer of the world, the layer that gives meaning to everything else.

The Contrast

Materialism, by contrast, is the belief that only the physical world exists. To the materialist, everything must be reduced to atoms in motion. Love becomes a chemical reaction. Justice becomes a social preference. Morality becomes an evolutionary instinct. Consciousness becomes neurons firing. The soul disappears entirely. God is dismissed as a projection. Meaning and purpose evaporate. In the end, the materialist must deny the very things that make human life human, because none of them can be placed on a scale or detected by an instrument.

This is why materialism always collapses under its own weight. It cannot account for the realities every man knows in his bones. It cannot explain why we recoil at injustice, why we long for mercy, why we recognize beauty, why we feel the weight of moral obligation, or why we sense that our lives have purpose. These things are not made of matter, yet they shape our existence more profoundly than any physical object ever could.

So the real metaphysics, the metaphysics that Scripture teaches and that ordinary experience confirms, is simply the acknowledgment that the world is more than matter. It is the recognition that the deepest truths are unseen, that the most powerful realities are not physical, and that the visible world rests upon an invisible order established by God. When people speak as though only the material exists, they are denying the very fabric of their own humanity. And when others hijack the word "metaphysics" to describe mind‑power techniques or New Thought inventions, they are not expanding the concept but distorting it, turning a noble word into something unrecognizable.

This is the clean line between the two: metaphysics affirms the unseen realities that give life meaning; materialism denies them. One aligns with Scripture and sanity; the other reduces man to machinery.

New Though Metaphysics - Mind Power - Praying with Authority

New Thought metaphysics arose in the mid‑nineteenth century, not from Scripture or from the classical metaphysical tradition, but from the world of mesmerism, mental healing, and the American fascination with mind‑power. Its earliest architect was Phineas Quimby, a clockmaker‑turned‑hypnotist who believed that illness, suffering, and even external circumstances were produced by wrong thinking, and that the mind could reshape reality by correcting its beliefs. From Quimby’s ideas came a stream of movements, Christian Science under Mary Baker Eddy, the Unity School of Christianity, Religious Science under Ernest Holmes, and a host of smaller groups, all teaching that thought is causative, that words carry metaphysical force, and that God is not a sovereign personal Being but a universal Mind or Principle with which one must mentally align.

In this system, prayer is not supplication but technique. One does not ask; one declares. One does not submit; one affirms. Reality is not received from the hand of God; it is shaped by the mental posture of the individual. The human mind becomes the engine of change, and the spoken word becomes a tool for altering conditions. This is why New Thought language is filled with terms like "manifest," "attract," "declare," "decree," and "speak your reality." It is metaphysics only in name. In substance, it is a mind‑power religion that treats thought as the architect of the world.

From these roots, New Thought ideas eventually seeped into certain Christian circles. E.W. Kenyon, trained in New Thought environments, blended its concepts with Christian vocabulary. Kenneth Hagin later absorbed Kenyon’s teachings, and from there the Word‑of‑Faith and modern charismatic movements inherited the language of "positive confession," "speaking things into existence," and "praying with authority." The terminology sounds biblical to the untrained ear, but its structure is foreign to Scripture. It replaces the biblical posture of humble petition with the metaphysical posture of mental causation. It treats prayer as a force rather than a dependence, and it subtly shifts the center of gravity from God’s sovereignty to man’s mental alignment.

This is why New Thought metaphysics feels so different from the metaphysics every ordinary man already knows, the metaphysics of justice, mercy, love, truth, and the unseen moral order that Scripture assumes. Classical metaphysics recognizes that the deepest realities are non‑material but objective, grounded in the character of God. New Thought, by contrast, treats the mind itself as the creative principle and turns spiritual life into a technique for shaping outcomes. It is not an extension of biblical metaphysics but a departure from it, a redefinition of the unseen world in terms of mental power rather than divine sovereignty.

That is the beast in its true form: a nineteenth‑century mind‑power movement that borrowed Christian vocabulary while quietly replacing the entire structure of Christian metaphysics.


Praying With Authority

The phrase "pray with authority" sounds pious, but in the ears of Scripture it is a category mistake. It confuses Christ’s authority with our dependence, and it subtly shifts prayer from supplication to command. That shift is not merely sloppy; it is spiritually dangerous.

Let's walk through what the Bible actually teaches, and what the scholars understood.

1. The Bible never teaches believers to "pray with authority."

Not once. Not in any form.

The verbs used for prayer in the Bible are:

- ask 
- seek 
- knock 
- cry 
- call upon 
- supplicate 
- make request 
- beseech 

Every one of these is the language of dependence, not authority.

The Bible never uses verbs like:

- command 
- decree 
- declare 
- take authority 
- speak into existence 

Those belong to modern charismatic/pentacostal invention, not biblical Christianity.

2. The only One who prays with authority is Christ Himself.

When Christ prayed, He said:

"Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always."  John 11:41–42

He alone prays with inherent authority because He alone is the eternal Son.

We pray in His name, not in our own authority.

"Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you."  John 16:23

"In my name" is not a formula of power; it is an admission of borrowed access. It means:

- I have no standing of my own. 
- I come under the authority of Another. 
- I ask because Christ has opened the way.

That is the opposite of "praying with authority."

3. The Bible scholars understood prayer as humble petition, not authoritative speech.

Let’s look at the classic commentators—Gill, Henry, Poole—men who lived in the same theological air as the translators.

John Gill

Gill repeatedly emphasizes that prayer is:

- "a begging of grace" 
- "a humble request" 
- "an asking at the throne of grace" 

He explicitly rejects the idea that believers command God or speak with divine authority.

Matthew Henry

Henry describes prayer as:

- "the key of supplication" 
- "the language of dependence" 
- "the cry of a needy soul to a merciful God" 

He warns against "boldness that borders upon presumption."

Matthew Poole

Poole stresses that prayer is:

- "the posture of a beggar" 
- "the confession of our emptiness" 
- "the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty" 

None of these men ever suggest that believers pray as authorities. They pray to authority.

4. The Bible teaches that all authority belongs to Christ, not to us.

 "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth."   Matthew 28:18

Not to the apostles. 
Not to the church. 
Not to the believer. 
Not to the prayer warrior. 
Not to the modern "prophet." 

To Christ alone.

Our role is not to wield authority but to submit to it.

5. The Bible teaches boldness in access, not boldness in authority.

This is where people get confused.

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace."  Hebrews 4:16

"Boldly" here does not mean "with authority." 

It means:

- with confidence in Christ’s priesthood 
- with freedom of speech because of His blood 
- with assurance that we are welcomed 

It is the boldness of a child approaching a father—not a lieutenant issuing orders.

6. The Mind Power movement is simply the repeating the oldest lie in Scripture.

"Pray with authority" is simply a religiously sanitized version of:

 "Ye shall be as gods."  Genesis 3:5

It is the same impulse:

- to elevate man 
- to diminish God 
- to turn prayer into magic 
- to turn faith into force 
- to turn the believer into a little sovereign 

The Bible stands squarely against this.

7. What the Bible actually commands us to do in prayer

Here is the biblical posture:

- Humble yourselves (James 4:10) 
- Submit yourselves therefore to God (James 4:7) 
- Casting all your care upon him (1 Peter 5:7) 
- In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God (Philippians 4:6)

Requests. 
Supplications. 
Thanksgiving. 
Dependence. 
Submission. 

Never authority.

8. This truth, this instinct is exactly right.

I've said before, with meaning:

 "Authority? I have none."

That is the most biblically accurate, Bible-faithful, Christ-honoring posture a believer can take.

The moment a man thinks he has authority in prayer, he has already stepped outside the bounds of Scripture and into the realm of spiritual presumption.

The Bible teaches that:

- Christ has authority. 
- The Spirit intercedes. 
- The Father hears. 
- We ask. 
- We depend. 
- We trust. 
- We submit. 

That is prayer.


Preface to the Twin Colophons

These two colophons stand as companion markers, set side by side to distinguish the true from the counterfeit. The first traces the lineage of New Thought metaphysics, a nineteenth‑century invention that borrowed Christian vocabulary while quietly replacing the substance beneath it. The second affirms the older, deeper metaphysics of Scripture, the unseen order that has shaped the faith of God’s people from the beginning. They are placed together not for symmetry alone, but to make the contrast unmistakable: one system exalts the human mind, the other exalts the living God; one treats prayer as technique, the other as trust; one reshapes words to suit its purposes, the other receives the Word as it is. Taken together, these colophons mark the boundary between two very different worlds, the world as man imagines it, and the world as God has made it.

Colophon: New Thought Metaphysics

This account of New Thought metaphysics has been assembled from the historical record of its own founders, the mesmerists, mental‑healers, and mind‑power teachers of nineteenth‑century America, and from the later movements that adopted their vocabulary while clothing it in Christian language. Its doctrines, terms, and lineage have been traced through the writings of Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, and Ernest Holmes, and through the subsequent transmission of their ideas into the teachings of E.W. Kenyon, Kenneth Hagin, and the modern Word‑of‑Faith and charismatic streams. The purpose of this colophon is simple: to mark clearly where these ideas came from, to distinguish them from biblical metaphysics, and to prevent the quiet confusion that arises when foreign concepts are allowed to masquerade as Scripture.

The language of "manifesting," "declaring," "decreeing," "aligning," and "praying with authority" belongs to this New Thought tradition, not to the apostles, the prophets, the Reformers, or the common faith of the church through the ages. It is a vocabulary born of mind‑power philosophy, not of the fear of the Lord. The metaphysics of Scripture, the metaphysics of justice, mercy, truth, the soul, and the sovereignty of God, stands in deliberate contrast to the metaphysics of mental causation that New Thought promotes. This colophon therefore serves as a boundary marker, a reminder that the two systems share words but not meanings, and that the believer must discern between the voice of the Shepherd and the echo of a nineteenth‑century invention.

Colophon: Biblical Metaphysics

This account of biblical metaphysics rests not on speculation or mind‑power, but on the witness of Scripture and the lived experience of generations who understood that the deepest realities are unseen yet utterly real. It draws from the language of the prophets, the wisdom of the psalmists, the teaching of Christ, and the apostolic testimony that the visible world is grounded in an invisible order established by God Himself. Justice, mercy, truth, love, the soul, moral law, and the sovereignty of God are treated here not as abstractions but as the non‑material structure of reality, the framework within which human life has meaning.

The metaphysics described in these pages belongs to the long, unbroken line of biblical thought: God as Creator, man as creature; God as sovereign, man as dependent; God as the ground of all being, man as dust animated by His breath. It is the metaphysics assumed by Moses, proclaimed by Isaiah, embodied by Christ, and taught by the apostles. It is the metaphysics recognized by the Reformers, the Puritans, and every ordinary believer who has ever bowed the knee and known that the unseen is more real than the seen.

This colophon marks the boundary of that tradition. It distinguishes the biblical understanding of the unseen world from the counterfeit metaphysics that arose in later centuries, systems that elevate the mind, diminish God, and treat prayer as technique rather than trust. The metaphysics affirmed here is the metaphysics of Scripture: the world as God made it, the soul as God formed it, and truth as God revealed it. It stands as a reminder that the believer’s footing is secure not because he shapes reality with his thoughts, but because he stands upon the Word of the One who spoke the worlds into being.

A.K. Pritchard — 2026