Conversations with God / Neale Donald Walsch

Conversations with God is a hugely popular series of books written by New Age author Neale Donald Walsch. A movie version is due out in October, 2006. Walsch has written additional books as well, and has set up “The ReCreation Foundation, Inc.” also known as “The Conversations with God Foundation.” The foundation aims to “address the overwhelming response from people around the world who desire to do something tangible to spread the message of Conversations with God.” Walsch says the foundation was inspired by the message that “the purpose of life is to recreate ourselves anew in the highest version of the grandest vision we ever had about ourselves.”

A 2004 news article described the Conversations with God phenomenon:

Married and divorced four times, unable to stick to any career and recovering from a broken neck after a car accident, Walsch was in deep despair when he awoke in the middle of the night and put pen to paper: “What does it take to make life work?” he asked.

The question was directed to God.

God answered.

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Today, 12 years later, Walsch is the best-selling author of “Conversations with God,” a series of books translated into 27 languages and sold in more than 30 countries. Their popularity has spawned a Conversations with God Foundation that operates on a $1.3 million annual budget, employs 15 people and offers an array of books, audiotapes, videos, online courses, workshops and retreats.

The brashness of Walsch’s claim is that he’s talking to God, not about God. After scribbling his urgent question, Walsch says, he heard a warm and loving voice that gave him an answer to that and multiple other questions. He’s likened the process to “taking dictation.”

All of his books – typically found in bookstores’ Metaphysics or Spirituality section – follow the same question-and-answer, give-and-take format between Walsch and God. They touch on hundreds of different topics, from sin to sex to salvation.
– Source: Author brings Conversations with God to town, The Register-Guard, USA, Feb. 15, 2004

It is clear that the ‘god’ who speaks to Walsch is not the God of the Bible.

Walsch says God spoke to him in the middle of the night and that he began writing down notes on a yellow legal pad.

Walsch concludes that there is no good and evil, no right or wrong and that even Hitler went to heaven.
– Source: Ordinary man’s experiences with God have extraordinary effects, Star-Telegram, Feb. 19, 1999

Indeed, Walsch acknowledges that he is inspired by the same ‘god’ written about by other New Age authors:

Q. In reading the first “Conversations with God,” I recognized much from James Redfield, Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer and other authors. I could imagine some people saying you simply adapted their materials, then added your own.

A. They’re right. Marianne and James Redfield got it from God, too. It’s not unusual that we say the same thing. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some priest said, “Hell, that’s what I told him in a sermon as a boy.” God made it clear that he has been teaching me all along.
[…]

Q. Are we all gods? Or all part of God? Or are we all collectively God?

A. Yes, to all of the above.
– Source: Neale Donald Walsch’s ‘Conversations with God’ books continue to create a stir, Star-Telegram, Jan. 12, 2000

The official Conversations with God website used to sum up Walsh’s philosophy as follows:

The messages in the books can be reduced to four sentences:

1. We are all one.

2. There’s enough.

3. There’s nothing we have to do.

4. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

The living of these four sentences could change the world.
– Source: About Conversations With God, Conversations With God Foundation, accessed Jan. 28, 2004 [Page no longer online at the original site. Link leads to a page archived on Feb. 2, 2004]

However, those four sentences do not quite cover Walsch’s teachings, which include monism (all is one and one is all), pantheism, (all is God and God is all) experience over words (doctrines), et cetera. Walsh also consistently quotes the Bible out of context, which may be why he usually quotes but does not cite (a favorite approach of those who twist the scriptures)

In her review of the book ‘Conversations With God, Book 1,’ Marcia Montenegro of Christian Answers for the New Age concludes:

Walsch offers no evidence that the entity communicating with him is God. Are we to accept these doctrines simply because Walsch claims that it is God answering through his automatic writing? Before debating the ideas in this book with anyone who believes it, one should ask how can it be authenticated that this book is from God.

Would God really write such florid drivel as, “My Truth is in the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the crack of the thunder, the tap of the rain . . . My Truth . . . is as awesome as the night sky, and as simply, incontrovertibly, trustful as a baby’s gurgle.” [54] This sounds like a bad greeting card.

Walsch’s God says that his teachers have always come with the message that we are as holy as God. [55] Well, there have been teachers who have said this, notably the Eastern gurus and New Age teachers. One of the earliest foundational New Age bibles is Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, first published in 1971. This book teaches many of the same views held by Walsch’s God: man’s innate divinity, reincarnation, serving the self, all is one, all is God, Bible misquotations and misapplications, no final judgment, and the illusion of material reality.

Many of this book’s messages do line up consistently and completely with the messages of someone we know from Genesis chapter 3 — someone who questioned God’s Word, called God a liar, told Adam and Eve that they could be like God, and that they would not die. This someone was the serpent, also known as Satan. In fact, the attacks on Christ, on salvation by grace, on marriage and the family, on God’s Word, on the body, on absolute truth, on the reality of heaven, hell and the devil, and the promotion of sorcery and Gnostic philosophies are a perfect picture of what Satan would say and would want us to believe.

If truly dictated by a spiritual being, this book is a thinly veiled attempt by Satan to sound like God, misquoting Scripture and twisting everything around. Typical of Satan, the ideas are complicated, contradictory and open-ended, and the answers are often evasive. Preaching love and the “highest” choices and thoughts — this is an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) sweet-talking us into believing we are God and can do anything we want to do. However, Satan tips his hand too often; his hostility to Christ and his constant attacks on God’s Word give him away.

Conversations with God? Actually, this book is just the opposite.
– Source: Book Review: Conversations With Which God? Looking at Donald Walsch’s Conversations With God, Book 1, by Marcia Montenegro

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First published (or major update) on Saturday, October 7, 2006.
Last updated on September 04, 2007.

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