In this political ad, Brian McLaren says you can learn a lot about a man by how he treats his family. As a so-called pastor, McLaren should also know that you can learn a lot about a man by how he treats babies in the womb. Obama, who virulently defends the right to kill babies in the womb, and who twice voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act when babies were being allowed to die on dirty laundry carts after failed abortion attempts, has blood on his hands. That doesn’t stop Brian McLaren and KirbyJon Caldwell from telling us that Obama is a man of character. The fruit of Brian McLaren’s postmodern theology is truly evident here. 50 million dead children can be overlooked as meaningless in the interest of promoting change. Everything must change, says McLaren. Everything but the relentless slaughter of America’s most precious and vulnerable citizens. And God sees it.

Lighthouse Trails is reporting that Alistair Begg has withdrawn as keynote speaker for the December ReImagine Conference with Leonard Sweet. Sweet has been at the cutting edge of integrating New Age spirituality with Christian teaching as seen in his online book, Quantum Spirituality, where he praises Matthew Fox (Coming of the Cosmic Christ) and Willis Harmon (New Age occultist) for their inspiration. We can only hope that Begg will go once step further and warn about some of these endemic false teachings.

The Emergent Village blog features a post from Messiah College professor, Jenell Williams Paris, who claims that Eckhart Tolle’s teachings helped her through grief. She asks whether Eckhart can make us better Christians. Apparently, as long as someone doesn’t claim to be a Christian, we don’t have to critique their beliefs and their teachings can be viewed as potential guides through life.

 I once sat in a classroom for a course called Life’s Search for Meaning. It was a required class or I wouldn’t have taken it. One of the texts used was On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. In the class was a woman who was losing her husband to Lou Gherig’s disease. The book was absent any Gospel hope whatsoever and was based in a complete humanistic framework. During the class discussions she talked about how much the course was helping her get through her husband’s illness. The point is, she wasn’t really being helped spiritually. She was being taught things that were not true about death and the hereafter, and to look within oneself for help to get through difficulties. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was not a safe guide for grief and loss, but was presented as such. I find it dangerous that Jenell Williams Paris is introducing a lot of people to the writings of Eckhart Tolle and endorsing them as helpful. There is no discernment today among emergents who have discarded the plumb line for truth, the Word of God. It can only get worse from here as the blind continue to lead the blind down a very twisted and dark path that is absent the light of God’s Word.

Dr. Walt Scalen is an assistant professor of government at Steven F. Austin State University in Texas. He is also a Slice reader and sent in this excellent article. We hear emergent and seeker pastors alike talk much about contextualism. But where is this emphasis leading the church?

Contextualism Gone Wild

By Walt Scalen read all »

Let Us Reason Ministries has posted an article about Willow Creek Community Church’s promotion of and affiliation with emerging church leaders. Their staging this spring of Brian McLaren, someone who denies cardinal Christian doctrine, was evidence enough of that. Bill Hybels helped created the doctrinal vacuum into which the emerging leaders have stepped. Now Hybels is a cheerleader for the very thing he helped create.

The Christian Post reports on a joint statement released by Christian and Muslim leaders gathered together for a 4-day meeting at Yale University. Big evangelical names like Leith Anderson (president of NAE among them) participated and have been promoting this venture. Meals were shared. But what about the Gospel? Did Leith Anderson bother to clarify that the false god of Islam and the God of the Bible are not the same thing? Does it even matter to these “evangelicals”?

This news story about Brian McLaren arrived last week.

*Update: Brian McLaren has posted on the AP story at his own blog. He says he was not an emissary for Barack Obama to evangelicals. He only spoke at one of Obama’s conferences and is a member of the Obama-supporting Matthew 25 Network. And his point is exactly what? He says he hopes abortion rights champion Obama will win in the election. He’s encouraging evangelicals to vote the same way. This statement by McLaren is the same as Rick Warren expressing outrage over a news story that claimed he was meeting with the members of the gay SoulForce group on Father’s Day. Warren loudly denounced such false reporting, but failed to mention that while he wouldn’t be at the meeting, his church officials would be. Methinks that McLaren doth protest too much.*

Here’s a telling quote from an Associated Press story yesterday about evangelicals and the election.

Mr. Social Justice himself, the one who has railed against evangelicals for failing to “live like Jesus” and care for the poor, the disenfranchised, the outcasts of society, the same McLaren who has lashed evangelicals for their attachment to the Republican party and their politicizing of Christianity, is openly shilling for the most radical-left Democratic candidate in history. Obama, who openly opposed legislation that would have saved little babies who survived an abortion in the state of Illinois (The Born Alive Infant Protection Act), was even called an abortion rights radical by the Washington Post. Emerging church author and leader, Brian McLaren, is now openly working as an emissary of the Obama campaign to attract Christians to this pro-death candidate. The reek of hypocrisy is overwhelming here, Mr. McLaren. The blood of 50 million aborted children saturates our soil here in America. That’s more than Hitler and Stalin managed to kill combined. You can sob into your hanky about global warming and polar ice caps and carbon emissions. I’m with the babies, and I will vote for no person who defends their slaughter.

I am not a Republican. I am a Christian, and no Republican or Democrat who wars against God’s moral law and defends gay marriage, child killing or using human embryos for experimentation will get my vote. You can take that to the bank. McLaren has no moral compass because he rejects God’s Word as his only standard. You will notice a distinct correlation between those who reject God’s Word and their support for pro-death, pro-gay marriage candidates, and every other cause that is a revolt against heaven. That’s why the emerging church leaders and followers are up to their armpits in Obama campaign materials. When God’s Word gets thrown out, it affects every aspect of our lives and ethics. Ideas have practical consequences for men and nations.

Here’s a related article from today’s ABC News political blog. Michelle Obama reaffirmed her husband’s support for gay rights and his opposition to the Defense of Marriage act last night at the Gay/Lesbian Leadership Council in New York City. Imagine: Obama can oppose something called the “Defense of Marriage Act” and still have the support of “evangelical” leaders like Brian McLaren, T.D. Jakes and KirbyJon Caldwell. Then again, when we have “Hell’s Bells” as prelude music in church today as I recently reported, are we surprised? Hell seems to be the inspiration for a lot going on in church these days.

What is the Leadership Network and what does it have to do with the emerging church? This article from the Lighthouse Trails blog by Roger Oakland answers this question. Oakland also presents some of the key promoters of the “emerging spirituality” and the new mysticism within evangelicalism. This article helps readers understand the roots of this entire spiritual movement.

Christian Worldview Network has a great column up by Christian Missionary Alliance pastor, Dr. David Berman, on the emerging church. He writes:

Moody Press sent me a copy of a new book written by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck titled, Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be). The Christian Post has an article today about the book and its interesting message.

Berit Kjos has just written a needed piece on the Evangelical Manifesto and the underlying agenda, covering territory that other writers have not. This new evangelicalism bears no resemblance to the Bible-believers of old who would not compromise the Scriptures to accommodate a changing culture.

While reading this Herescope account of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change event in Goshen, Indiana, I had flashbacks to a cold, late autumn evening in Chicago at the Congress Plaza Hotel in 1993. The Chicago Declaration II conference was taking place, and I decided to drive down to see what they had to say. Everything this pastor describes at the Everything Must Change conference with McLaren was there at the Congress Hotel that night: the radical environmentalists, the political leftists, the feminists, the mystics and New Spirituality proponents. The only difference was that the left-wing “evangelicals” at the CDII event in 1993 didn’t hold a mainstream view within evangelicalism. Even Willow Creek back then wouldn’t have allowed Roberta Hestenes to get up and rail against glass ceilings for women in ministry. The pastor’s description of the bizarre prayer intoned at McLaren’s event reminds me of the book I picked up at a CDII book table entitled, The Magic of Ritual, where the apostate professor/author of the book suggested that adding elements of voodoo ritual to Christian communion services would be a good thing. This stuff was there in ‘93 and ‘83′ and beyond, but now, it’s mainstream on Christian college campuses and in evangelical churches. Progress has been made since that cold night in Chicago.

Today the news was announced that Rick Warren is on the Advisory Council for Tony Blair’s new Faith Foundation which promises to bring the Abrahamic faiths together to fight social ills. Tony Blair’s group is designed to fulfill the United Nations’ Millennium Goals.

You can read more about it here in this additional article. This article from the Associated Press tonight quotes Tony Blair as he explains his definition of “religious extremism” which he hopes to combat with his new group.

Mr. Blair would clearly have had a hard time with Jesus and his exclusive message of salvation through His merits alone. Those believers who believe Christ’s claims in Scripture that He alone is the way, the truth and the life, and who will not engage in pluralistic, interfaith dialogue with other world religions are going to increasingly be labeled “extremists”. Rick Warren has signed on to Mr. Blair’s unbiblical United Nations-based agenda, and through his newly formed P.E.A.C.E. Coaliton, he is leading evangelicals around the world to sign on as well. Where will you stand?

Creation Spirituality, introduced widely by New Age teacher, Matthew Fox, is entering evangelicalism in a big way via men like Brian McLaren and Leonard Sweet. Those who are unfamiliar with Creation Spirituality need only do a search on the term to learn more about its origins. Herescope has an important post today that explains what these teachings are. Leonard Sweet says it’s time for the church to begin to tell stories again. No, Leonard. It’s time to return to the old, old story, delivered once for all to us in God’s Word.

This article by John Hendryx and Nathan Pitchford is helpful in understanding the certainty debate currently going on. This is the debate at Cedarville University that has caused so much turmoil. The debate began when the influence of postmodern, emerging church authors and leaders began to be felt on campus. It’s the sheer certainty against certainty expressed by these postmoderns that renders their ideas absurd. If we can’t be certain about anything, how can we be certain that certainty is wrong? It’s also interesting that those emerging church authors who rail against believing in the Bible as the authoritative Word of God would be indignant if someone treated their own texts with the same dismissive attitude towards the authors’ intent and meaning. “Everything must change,” says Brian McLaren in his recent book. But did he really say that? Maybe what he really meant was, “everything must NOT change.” We can’t be certain about what he really meant. It’s all contextual. The truth? Millions of of these emerging church books are sold every year with the explicit intent of changing everything, including cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. The authors are certain that they are correct and everyone else is wrong, and they have a specific, certain program they want us to follow. So much for the certainty debate.

When the end of the world comes, I can tell you where the neo-evangelical masses will be. They will be attending conferences. Yes, folks, there is yet another conference about to begin as another collection of self-anointed “leaders” will tell other church leaders how to stay culturally hip and change and change again to keep up with our, uh, changing times in order to produce “change” in people. We’ve had a Catalyst conference, A Deep Shift Conference, an Envision Conference, a Rethink Conference, and this time, they are calling it “Dream It 08″. Here are the details from the press release.

Capital Christian Center presents the Dream It ‘08 Conference, June 23-25, 2008.

Hosted by Rick Cole, special guests will include:

With musical guests:

All guests will appear live. This is not a simulcast.
Dream It is designed to stimulate, to strengthen, and to stir.
Discover effective tools to stimulate your purpose and potential to be a thriving leader.

Who cares where people are being led, right? As long as you are a “thriving leader”, it’s all good. Their official slogan for the conference is, “The Culture is Changing: Are You?”

So these leadership gurus busy themselves in this 8th year of the new millennium, frantically running from one conference to the next, telling pastors they need to keep changing every time the culture does. The speed with which society leaps from one fad to the next is in direct proportion to the chronic and worsening restlessness of a world that has rejected the one true God. Instead of holding up the one thing that never changes, the Word of God in its timeless clarity, these foolish men chase the wind, desperately trying to stay hip and cool, trying every carnal means at their disposal to stay clued in on the latest Big Thing, while all the time, what the world really needs is set aside. What a wicked waste of time, money and talent in this futile quest for acceptance by the world. In the polytheistic world in which the Apostles ministered, imagine what would have happened had they spent their time studying and conferencing about the pagan world around them to get clues about how to best present a “relevant” Gospel. No. They preached Christ crucified in the power of the Holy Ghost, and the world was turned upside down.

Watch the video and read about the conference here.

A reader sent me this YouTube clip of an interview with emergent Tony Jones. The first thing the enemy attacked in the Garden of Eden was the Word of God. He’s still at it today. Emergents undermine the Word first so they can take followers where they want to go. Paul was a Platonist?

Berit Kjos has an excellent article on the compromise of the neo-evangelicals which has given us every manner of heretical teaching and and even the denial of cardinal doctrines in the church today. She includes this quote from William Ashbrook, father of the man quoted in the post below, and author of the original book, The New Neutralism.

“New Evangelicalism, beyond any question, is seeking middle ground with respect to the theological controversies…In the realms of things moral and spiritual one must be either right or wrong…the showdown at the close of the age will come in realms of black and white, not in the fog of a confused grey. In the great fight of faith there is no middle ground on which the neutralist can complacently stand for long…There can be no middle ground for Bible believing Christians….These are testing times when the dividing line between truth and error becomes ever more distinct…”

–William E. Ashbrook, The New Neutralism, p. 2

Rob Bell heartily recommended Ken Wilber’s book, A Theory of Everything to his Velvet Elvis readers. (Page 192, Endnote 143). He liked it so much that he advised his readers to “set aside three months” to read it. But wait! Ken Wilber is teaching rank, occult, New Age consciousness. I give to you the following to show you who Rob Bell was recommending that readers take three months to study.

Here we have Ken Wilber demonstrating the various states of meditative consciousness. He gives a YouTube demonstration on how he can shut his brain waves down to zero in four seconds. The accompanying text under “more info” on YouTube includes this line:

“More seriously, as Ken often says, “If you want to know God, you’ve got to get your brain out of the way first. It’s just one big stupid filter….”

Here Ken Wilber describes the embracing of our “I-Am-ness”. This is the blasphemous New Age teaching that we are all God. You can further see him discuss this as he sits teaching occult concepts to his followers here on his integralnaked.org website. He starts out praising Genpo Roshi, a Zen meditation master of 35 years. He says the name quickly as he is speaking. If it seems like he is speaking gibberish, he actually is. This is what happens when people claim to be wise, but refuse the true wisdom of God found in His Word. Professing themselves wise, they become fools. (Romans 1:21-23)

This is who Rob Bell so heartily endorsed and promoted to his young readers. When you hear Rob Bell speak of the glories of meditation, be aware of his influences. They are very dark indeed.