Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. (Leviticus 20:5, KJV)

Passing Your Kids Through The Emerging Fire

Here’s another example of how the American Christian Church is sacrificing your young to Molech. Currently my dear friend and brother in arms Jim Luppachino at Watcher’s Lamp is doing his best to draw attention to some of the many grievous wolves devouring your children in youth ministry.

The “coversion” story to follow comes from YSMarko which is the blog of Mark Oestreicher. For those who don’t know who Oesteicher is he tells us himself:

I work at Youth Specialties, a wonderful group of people committed to encouraging and resourcing youth workers. I’ve been married to Jeannie for 20 years, and have two great kids: Liesl (13) and Max (9) [Online source].

Youth Specialties is an organization which “has worked alongside Christian youth workers of just about every denomination and youth-serving organization” after being founded by the late Mike Yaconelli thirty years ago. Some will also know “Mikey” from his book Messy Spirituality.

As far as Oestreicher himself at the Youth Specialties website we read:

Mark Oestreicher is the president of Youth Specialties. If you know what that means, let him know… These days, YS is in the midst of lots of wonderful and hard and exciting and hopeful change;… Marko is on the CORE team, and writes books—mostly for middle school ministry (after about 25 years of middle school ministry, he still thinks they’re the coolest people on earth). Marko is a 6th-grade boys small-group leader at his church (Online source)

With this background you can see that Marko is one who is in a position of teaching kids and that he should know what he is doing. And yet look at the deplorable witness in the case of his own son in this aforementioned post “everything…is…blurry…” O he’ll get no argument from me, what follows is very blurry. This was actually posted two years ago as “max dances into salvation.”

Marko begins by telling us that “this conversation took place saturday, in the hallway of the sacramento convention center, between max (my 7 year-old son) and jeannie (my wife).” He then gives us the following description of Max’s dance “into salvation,” which he notes brought him “instant tears!” Note carefully though what the boy’s answer is to the question about what it means to be a Christian:

max: mom? i think i want to be a christian.

jeannie: really? what do you think that means?

max: [i don’t remember his exact quote here, but something like…] i dunno, like, opening your hands to god or something? (Online source)

Guessing We Are All Christians If We Want To Be

Now you’ll see here that we haven’t heard about what Jesus did on the Cross, we haven’t heard about repentance from sin and we haven’t heard about surrendering his life completely to Jesus. Instead Max was told, as will be your kids:

jeannie: well, yeah, kind of. it means that you want to live your life in the way that god wants; it means that you want to be like jesus as much as you can.

max: yeah, that. i want to be that.

jeannie: then i guess you are.

max: huh?

I’m with you Max. That’s my reaction as well – Huh!? All one needs to do to dance into salvation is to “want to be like jesus as much as you can”!? Max’s mom continues:

jeannie: some people think it’s important to actually say some kind of prayer to god, but what’s really important is that you know that you want to follow jesus.

max: [starts dancing down the hall and singing, in a silly voice] i’m a christian, i’m a christian…

jeannie: would you like to say something to god about what you’re thinking?

max: [stops] yeah. [looking angelic] god? [back to silly dancing] i’m a christian, i’m a christian

*wiping a tear from my eye* So moving, isn’t it. But no, we are not reading of a Christian; tragically we are reading about one who has been lied to. As Mike Gendron of Proclaiming the Gospel Ministry has correctly said, “A Christian is defined by what he believes and not by who he loves.”

The Bible is crystal clear that despite Max’s apparently sincere intentions, neither he nor anyone else–whether he is Rob Bell or Brian McLaren or Erwin McManus or even the Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren himself–can ever even hope to follow the Jesus of the Bible in their flesh. It is impossible:

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’” (John 3:5-7)

The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. (Romans 8:6-9)

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (1 Corinthians 15:50)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)