Category: Emergent Church
How God feels about cheatn’ hearts.
“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.” Exodus 34:14-17
Someone once defined jealousy as a feeling of displeasure that comes over us when we hear about the success of others. Because a tendency, whether conscious or subconscious, resides in all of us to project our faults to others, to ignore our flaws, but condemn the same in other persons (Matthew 7:1-5), any thought about God being jealous can be troubling. Click here to continue reading
McLaren’s Jihadist Jesus and the Second Coming
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Jesus, Matthew 24:29-30, KJV
In recent years, Christendom’s thinkers have offered a smorgasbord of ideas and theories about Jesus, thus begging the question—will the real Jesus please stand up? If one pays attention to the Jesus revisionists, we are left with the impression that nobody really understood Him, not even the Apostle Paul. To some, Jesus is a white Caucasian, and to others He’s a black African. Click here to continue reading
Scripture amidst the Shadows
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
The Apostle Paul to the Colossians (2:8, KJV)“Truth did not come into the world naked, but in symbols and images.”[1]
The Gospel of Philip (Gnostic)
Introduction
Increasingly, evangelical-emergent leaders are viewing the Bible as “metaphor”—to be constituted of less than literal language from which the reader subjectively derives spiritual meanings. To fully grasp the sense of God’s Word, the reader must do so through the lens of the metaphor.[2] This “new hermeneutic” asserts that ignoring the nuances of metaphor makes the Bible unintelligible. For example, Eugene H. Peterson (well-known composer of The Message) states in Eat This Book, that “if we do not appreciate the way a metaphor works we will never comprehend the meaning of the text.” Click here to continue reading
From Evangelical Revivalism to Emerging Ecumenicalism
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. Paul, Galatians 1:8-9, KJV
Introduction
In that an aggregate of scholars, leaders and authors of the emerging church movement have been and are continuing to redefine Protestant and evangelical teaching regarding salvation (i.e., the atonement, justification and reconciliation), it should come as no surprise that the very meaning of conversion is now being re-envisioned or re-imagined. As an article recently posted on the Christianity Today website says,
Click here to continue readingIt is not an overstatement to say that evangelicals are experiencing a “sea change”—a paradigm shift—in their understanding of conversion and redemption, a shift that includes the way in which they think about the salvation of God, the nature and mission of the church, and the character of religious experience.
A Critique of Rob Bell’s Pan-Spiritual Worldview.
“Some have wandered away from . . . a sincere faith and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.” (1 Timothy 1:5-7, NIV)
Among emergent church leaders there exists a growing trend to merge the secular with the sacred, the unspiritual with the spiritual. By emergent evangelicals, reality (Everything that Is) is increasingly becoming viewed to Be one gargantuan and monistic whole. For example, Rob Bell has stated that ”everyone is spiritual.” He says,
Click here to continue readingMaybe you’ve heard somebody say, “I’m just not into spiritual things.” Are you . . . are you a human being? Yea! Too late! The issue is not whether you’re a spiritual being, or you have a spirituality. The issue is whether your eyes are open and you’re aware of it. You cannot deny what is central to your make-up as a human being.
The Quantum Spirituality of Rob Bell: A review of “Love Wins”
Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (New York, NY: Harper One, 2011) xi + 198 pages, Acknowledgments and Further Reading. The back cover blurb first states and then incredulously asks: “God loves us. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. Unless you do not respond the right way. Then God will torture you forever. In hell.” Huh?
Recommended by a who’s who of emergent leaders, Rob Bell’s book Love Wins has, as it is calculated to do, stirred-up controversy. Recently, Time ran a front cover story on it.[1] Eugene H. Peterson lauds the book as being born out of a “thoroughly biblical imagination,” and a book “without a trace of soft sentimentality and without compromising an inch of evangelical conviction in its proclamation of the good news that is most truly for all.” Click here to continue reading
The author of Sex God endorses same-sex marriages [1]
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” James 4:4, KJV
As one who has followed Rob Bell’s career for almost a decade, from the time he was the youth pastor at the church I grew up in, Calvary Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then as the founding pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in suburban Grandville of the same city, I wondered when he, as he seemed so bent on being culturally relevant, would finally out what he really thought about same sex marriages.[2] Well, now he has, and not surprisingly, at least to me (I spotted him as a false teacher a decade ago, for false teachers always seem engaged to the culture more than to Christ), he recently endorsed same sex marriages in the friendly confines in of all places, the liberal Grace Cathedral in San Francisco during a forum held Sunday, March 17, 2013. Click here to continue reading
Spectacles, Stories and Diminishing Scripture
“And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play’.” (1 Corinthians 10:7, NKJV)
“Believers, Beware!” EXODUS THIRTY-TWO may soon be coming to a theater-church near you!
Remember when after exiting Egypt, as Moses received the Law from God on Mt. Sinai above, the nation of Israel partied and worshipped a false god in the camp below? Forgetting how Jehovah had redeemed them from captivity by working signs and wonders on their behalf, the people demanded of Aaron:
Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. (Exodus 32:1, NASB)
The idolaters, it seems, could not stand to wait (boring!!!) in faith for Moses to come down to them. They needed something contemporary, something visual, something sensual, something fresh. Click here to continue reading