Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)

“Kingdom” is not so much a geographical area as it is a sovereign dominion. When Christian pray “Your kingdom come,” they are asking God to rule through Christ’s future enthronement, His coming reign over the earth.

The Greek for “come” indicates a sudden, instantaneous coming and here refers to the coming millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:4). Jesus is not speaking of some indirect effort by human good works to create a godly society on earth.

God’s coming kingdom will be a kingdom on earth but not a kingdom of this present world system. Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). No human kingdom fits with God’s, which is why even the best measures to improve society are mere holding actions that only retard sinful corruption until Christ returns to establish His perfect kingdom.

Jesus cane to “preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43), and there is no other gospel but the good news of His kingdom. Even during His final days on earth He was faithful to teach the apostles things concerning that kingdom (Acts 1:3).

Yes, the kingdom has a past element that encompasses the Old Testament patriarchs (Matthew 8:11). The kingdom was also present during Jesus’ earthly ministry because He, its king, was “in [people's] midst (Luke 17:11).

In a sense that is true today as believers are members of God’s invisible kingdom. But the particular focus of our prayers regarding the kingdom should be future, as we hope for the visible one to come.

It is obvious that Christ is not physically ruling on earth today, but one day He will. Therefore we should pray that God would hasten that time when His Son returns to establish His earthy kingdom, defeat sin, and ensure obedience to God’s will.

After a thousand years, this kingdom will merge into the eternal kingdom, and His earthly and heavenly rule will be the same (see Revelation 20-21). There are two major ways in which God’s kingdom comes, and they ought to inform our prayers as we ask Him to complete His purpose.

First, His kingdom comes by means of conversions. Thus we should pray for sinners to repent (Mark 1:14-15) and to embrace the gospel (Luke 9:61-62). Our prayers must be simply that the Spirit will add new citizens to God’s kingdom.

Second, the kingdom comes through believers’ commitment. If we pray as Jesus commands, we will constantly ask that our lives and those of other Christians might obediently honor and glorify God in heaven.

The kingdom that we hope and pray for is of infinite value. Jesus elsewhere teaches that it “is like a treasure hidden in the field” or like “one pearl of great value” (Matthew 13:44-46). When the kingdom fully comes at His return, God will have completely answered our prayers.

As the hymn says, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run. His kingdom spread from shore to shore, ’til moon shall wax and wane no more.”[1]

John MacArthur

___________________________________________________________________________
End notes:

[1] John MacArthur, Daily Readings From the Life of Christ [Chicago: Moody, 2008], May 21.

See also:

APPRISING MINISTRIES SHOWS ANOTHER SIDE

DON’T CONFORM TO THE WORLD OR TO FOSTER-WILLARDISM

DR. LAVERNE ADAMS ACCUSING KEN SILVA OF DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER?

By Dr. Orrel Steincamp, republished with permission

Have you ever heard of “panentheism”? It sounds a lot like pantheism but there are those two additional letters “en” inserted after “pan.” The word broken into its constitute parts is pan=all, en= in, and theos= God. Panentheism is the belief the universe is contained within God and that the universe is part of God. Unwittingly protestant and evangelical leaders are embracing panentheism, thinking it just an ancient form of prayer, and discipleship flying under the radar with the alias of “Spiritual Formation.” It appears that the pragmatics and superficiality of the seeker sensitive, market driven church has prompted a need for mystical medication. Larry Crabb, a popular evangelical Christian psychologist of the last decade and author of many books, has apparently graduated to the contemplative. He expresses clearly the bankruptcy of pragmatic seeker sensitive spirituality. For him the mindless mysticism of Contemplative Prayer has brought him reality he apparently never found in pragmatic seeker sensitive spirituality. Here is his description of his former prayer-life.

“[Biblical] praying to God is something like e-mailing a relative you’ve never met, who lives in a place s a picture of his house or land, and always writes a generic letter addressed to ‘my much loved relatives,’ like the ones we receive every Christmas. His emails never come only to you and are therefore never addressed only to you. He never calls, and you can’t call him. He has no phone.” (Crabb, The Pappa Prayer). It amazes me that silent nothingness of the contemplative solves his problem.

The antidote to Crabb’s unbelief appears to be an openness to mystical experiences repackaged centuries later from the so-called Desert Fathers and Mothers of 3rd and 4th centuries. These Christian monastics migrated and lived as hermits in the Egyptian wilderness. Here these Catholic monastic mystics interacted with eastern monastic’s and mystics. Living as hermits. these Desert Fathers developed “hesychasm” from the Greek word meaning “stillness” and “silence”) (wikipedia) Hesychasm was the practice of interior silence. It didn’t become a formal movement until the 14 th century. Now centuries later these Catholic mystics have been elevated to the status of celebrities tasked with saving us from the superficiality of pragmatic church growth spirituality. Unfortunately these Catholic mystics down through the centuries also engendered an alien non-Christian worldview which has gained the name of panentheism. These ancient Catholic mystics as well as Catholic mystics in later church history never used the term panentheism. But their experience and writings clearly exhibit what we now call panentheism.

Today panentheism is enjoying a phenomenal resurgence even though it never employs the term panentheism. This panentheistic worldview is well hidden by such terms as “Spiritual Formation” and “Spiritual Disciplines” etc. But though well hidden, panentheism is the undeclared foundational worldview of the so-called “Spiritual Formation” movement now becoming wide-spread in evangelical circles. Furthermore, panentheism is the worldview of the myriads of versions of the New Age. It is also the foundational worldview of eastern religions. These 4th century hermit/monastics such as John Cassian and Anthony the Great apparently reasoned that if the eastern monks with whom they had contact could find mystical union with their god why couldn’t the same techniques be successful to find mystical union with their Christian God. These monastic, fathers, however, fell into oblivion for centuries only to be resurrected by other Catholic mystics in later centuries (14th-15th centuries). Now in the later part of the 20th century these ancient Desert Fathers and Mothers and other Catholic mystics are being heralded as the harbinger of a new spirituality. Many trace this current revival of contemplative meditation to 1974 when Father William Menninger, a Trappist, monk found an ancient book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing in the library at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer Mass. This 14th century book of an unknown author offered a means by which contemplative mystical practices long used only by ancient Catholic monks, could be taught to lay people. As Menninger began teaching these contemplative practices, his Abbot Fr. Thomas Keating , and Fr. Basil Pennington began teaching and promoting these contemplative techniques to the laity both in the west and the east. Thus was born the use of centering prayer and a mantra (repeated word) as the means to enter a mystical union with God. Centering prayer and meditation using a mantra became a short-cut method for meditation for Catholics as well as New Age mediators.

These New Monks have not only brought these ancient techniques into popularity and prominence into Catholic circles, but now these promoters have spawned a pandemic revival within protestant, evangelical and New Age circles as well. Father Flanagan who was involved in both contemplative prayer and TM says: “contemplative prayer is TM in Christian dress.”

But the fame and distinction for introducing Contemplative Prayer into the evangelical world goes to Richard Foster. Foster’s book the Celebration of Discipline, was first printed in 1978 and launched Contemplative Prayer among evangelicals. The evangelical periodical Christianity Today acknowledged Foster’s book as one of the ten best books of the 20th century. Foster, a Quaker with affinity to mysticism, was able to insert Contemplative Prayer as hidden yeast into the loaf of evangelical spirituality. He and his now myriads of evangelical comrades suggest that bible study only feeds the head, but if one wants to feed the heart they must enter the silence of Contemplative Prayer. This revival of contemplative spirituality of course means a revival of the accompanying panentheistic worldview. But as already asserted, panentheism is a world view that Catholic contemplative spirituality does not own as its own. Panentheism today is a widespread worldview with many editions and versions beyond Catholic church history. Panentheism works well and provides a congenial mystical foundation for many varieties of mysticism for Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus and all the varieties of New Age spirituality. It is like panentheism is a long table and on this table is a smorgasbord of varieties of panentheistic spiritualites.

Some are Catholic, some New Age and others eastern mysticism. But all rest on the one worldview table of panentheism. The long historical tradition of Catholic monastic mystics, now resurrected from ages gone by, have become a spiritual movement not only in Catholic circles but also among a burgeoning protestant and evangelical market. In what appears to be a sweeping phenomena, evangelical leaders are embracing these ancient prayer and mystical practices as if they are new toys or new versions of an IPad. Still the underlying panentheistic world view remains hidden from view, papered over with more appealing terms such as Christian meditation or prayer disciplines and most often vaguely called “Spiritual Formation.” This underlying philosophical worldview clashes directly with a biblical view of creation and theism.

Classical biblical theism contrasted to philosophical panentheism

Biblical theism asserts that God alone is absolutely self-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, all powerful and all knowing. Although He does not need the world, God eternally and freely choose to create it from nothing and sustain it through time. “The bible teaches that God is distinct from his creation. He is not part of it, for he has made it (out of nothing, ex nihilo) and rules over it… Faulein Maria, in Sound of Music got it all wrong when she sang “nothing comes from nothing.” (ex nihilo, nihilo fit.) Very simply theism requires God as far “above” the creation and is independent of it. (Grudem p.1270) In distinction from theism, panentheism, a term coined by Karl Krause (1781-1832) means “the being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part exists in Him.” (John W.Cooper Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers p. 127).

Unfortunately, biblical and theological unfaithfulness among protestants and yes also among evangelicals has allowed this new spirituality, sufficiently veiled by the term Spiritual Formation, to make deep and unbelievable penetrations among evangelicals. If contemplative prayer is taught at Saddleback or Willow Creek (and it is) then it is apparently endorsed for all. Church growth needs churches to grow right? Evangelical leaders of all stripes take it on board always looking for a new gig or a new toy for their ministries. Panentheistic and contemplative practices have been given the evangelical version of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. The writings of Catholic monastic panentheists have been adopted and promoted by evangelical celebrities and so the door is opened for contemplative spirituality among evangelicals.

Richard Foster the evangelical godfather of the contemplative, exudes confidence when he states: “By now enough water has gone under the Spiritual Formation bridge that we can give some assessment of where we have come and what needs to be done. When I first began writing in the field in the late 70′s and early 80′s the term Spiritual Formation was hardly known, except for highly specialized reference in relation of the Catholic orders. Today, it is a rare person who has not heard the term. Seminary courses in Spiritual Formation proliferate like baby rabbits. Huge numbers are seeking to become certified as Spiritual Directors to answer the cry of multiple thousands for spiritual direction.” (online source, The Ooze).

Catholic/Contemplative/New Age leads to monistic universalism

A unifying element of Catholic/New Age mysticism is the panentheistic view that “everything” is one. In philosphy this is called “monism” derived from the Greek word “monos” meaning “one.” The pre- Socratic Greek philosophers asserted that reality was “One.” This is the teaching of monism which states that there is no distinction between god, men, animals or things… These are the “One.” This is ultimately and completely opposed to the Judeo-Christian revelation from God that all creation is distinct from the creator. The ancient Greeks and Hindus and Buddhists are all monists. Catholic New Age mysticism with its roots in the 3-4th century Desert Fathers is also monistic. They qualify this in saying they are not pantheists. But they are still monistic panentheists. The contemplative way of Foster, Willard and Scazzero to find union with the “One” is through wordless, silent meditation. This the contemplatives share with Eastern mysticism. Merton quotes Trich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist contemplative): Buddhists and Christians know… the Kingdom of God as a mustard seed planted in the soil of consciousness. The Buddhist sutras speak of the Buddha nature as the seed of enlightenment that is already in everyone’s consciousness.” (Merton Introduction to Contemplative Prayer, Doubleday, 1996, p. 5).

But the result of this is realizing the “unity of all that is.” Henri Nouwen tells us that this leads to the “unity of all things. Henri Nouwen whom Ravi Zacharis calls one of the greatest saints of the church died a universalist. When liberal theologian Paul Tillich was interviewed shortly before his death, he was asked, “Dr. Tillich, do you pray?” He responded, “No, I meditate.” Tillich called his god “the ground of all being.” Tillich’s view of God was monistic. It is interesting the author of “The Shack” identifies God as the “ground of all being” as well. Yet the shack’s author is a common speaker in our churches. Even Bill Johnson’s Bethel church in Redding CA. invited him to his church. The pastor of an huge AOG church passed out copies of “The Shack” to his whole congregation.

Dr. Robert Morey has offered the solution to all this apostasy; “With all the paganism around us today, now is not the time to water down the Gospel or deny the historic concept of God. The Church must arise and put her armor on… She must take up the shield of faith to quench all the fiery darts of doubt… to do this , the Christian Church needs truth – not error; courage not cowardice, doctrinal vigilance, not sentimentality; sacrifice – not sacrilege; faithfulness – not betrayal; and strength not weakness.” (Robert Morey, Battle of the Gods, 1989).

Distinguishing panentheism from pantheism

Historic pantheism simply means that all matter is God. All matter is impersonal and that is all there is. There is nothing beyond matter and the universe. But panentheism is a varient view to pantheism. The two are stikingly similar. Their differences are about as significant as the difference between an agnostic and an atheist. The pantheists and panentheists share the view that the universe and everything in the natural world and universe is pervaded by divinity. This is the view that the universe is contained within God and that the universe is a part of God.

For panentheists, God is located in all matter and the universe, but in some way God is greater than the universe. God is like the head and creation the body. Krause, the originator of the term panentheism stated “everything is in God and God is in everything, but God is more than everything… God in essence contains the entire universe within Himself, but is not exhausted by it. The medieval Sufi (Islamic mystic) Kabir once noted “all know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean also merges into the drop.” All matter becomes inspirited – it breaths divinity. Earth becomes alive and sacred and offers us holiness in everything both upon the earth and the universe.

How did I learn about “panentheism?

About 10 years ago I became embroiled in a controversy over the inner healing ministry of John and Paula Sandford. I was forced to read their book “The Transformation of the Inner Man.” I was shocked by their psychological regression therapies based directly and unashamedly on Freud and Jung. I began a wide ranging investigation of the Sandfords and their ministry. In the process I happened upon some transcriptions of tapes by the Sandfords. These tapes and other Sandford books revealed a thorough going panentheistic worldview.

In one of the tapes, Dan M, the interviewer, asks Sandford about a statement made in the Sandfords book Elijah Task in which the Sandfords state: “Every plant and bit of earth, all seas and winds each animal and thing has intelligence, will, and desire in it.” (Elijah Task, p. 144). John responds: “You need to understand that God has so created everything and that his Spirit is redolent in it…all things have intelligence.” Sandford continues: “And in criminology they have found they can bring 4 suspects before plants and the plants will tell them who the criminal is… But they can’t use it in court. Can you imagine, “I was convicted by a rhododendron.”(tape 57).In these tapes Sanford refers to”animalspirits”which he says are looked after by satan and others by angels. Sandford even allows for spirits of the departed to attach themselves to living persons, justifying this from the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras.

The Sandford’s book The Transformation of the Inner Man and related materials were used in a local church and as a regional minister with oversight I confronted this and received a rebuke and curse from the Sandfords for my efforts. Initially I called Sandford’s view pantheism. But I found out later it was not pure pantheism as stated above but a close variant called panentheism which is a difference that is only slightly different.

Finally I again encountered Contemplative Prayer ideas in a church nearby. It presented itself in a well disguised form and became the basis of an 8 week series of sermons and bible study groups. The source was Peter Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and an introduction video and a self published prayer guide called the “Daily Office.” I found out later that Scazzero, a graduate of Gordon- Conwell Seminary and his wife go on meditation retreats to a Trappist monastery each year. The Trappist monks and monasteries have become centers of contemplative prayer. “The Daily Office”, Scazzero’s workbook title, should have been a dead give away in that “Daily Office” is a well recognized Catholic term used by monks for daily devotion. But for me it was the end notes of The Daily Office that concerned me in that it was loaded with copious quotes from many current Catholic purveyors of Contemplative Spirituality including Merton, Nouwen, Keating and DeMello etc. These Catholic monks and mystics are the source of the current fad of Roman Catholic mystical teaching called Contemplative Prayer. These endnotes in The Daily Office were of no meaning to anyone in this bible study group but myself. It turns out that Scazzero has a full agenda for his ministry of introducing Contemplative Prayer to evangelicals. I found that Scazzero has led retreats sponsored by Focus on the Family and at Saddleback church. Scazzero is well schooled in the Desert Fathers etc.

The bait and cover for evangelicals is found in Scazzero’s book titled, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. The appeal is to believers drained emotionally and needing a place of quiet and stillness. Contemplative Prayer and stillness seems to be the answer for these emotionally challenged evangelicals. Historic Contemplative Prayer promises to help us slow down and enter quietness and find a new victory for our harried lives. In a congregation of 1200, as far as I know, no one realized what was going on. The pastor was able to loosely preach from the Scazzero’s book and retranslate Scazzero’s teaching back into familiar Christian evangelical terminology. I am not sure he was aware of what he was doing. For him it was an honest attempt to help people get off their treadmill existence an refocus spiritually . Who was to know that this study material was a clever introduction to an evangelical church of the historic practice of contemplative spirituality. Indeed in his book Scazzero does refer to “Centering Prayer” and entering into silenc (p. 45). But who knows what “centering prayer” and entering “The Silence” actually is. Who would know that Merton, Nouwen, Keating and DeMello and others listed in the endnotes were the new catholic monks and mystics who are panentheistic practitioners.

Thomas Merton..

Thomas Merton was the forerunner among the New Monks promoting the Contemplative Spirituality. He became a monk at age 26 just three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Merton advocated moving the practice of Contemplative Prayer from its use by cloistered monks to a broader use by the common man. During his years practicing mystical contemplative prayer, he became more and more drawn to Buddhist and Hindu mystics. Ultimately, he saw no real difference between Christianity and Buddhism. He once visited the Dalai Lama to “discover truth in dialogue.” (Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul, pp. 269-277). He actually was electrocuted while on a teaching trip among Buddhist monks. Shortly before his death he acknowledged that he was more Buddhist than Catholic. Merton was to the current Contemplative Spirituality what Henry Ford was to the automobile. Merton stated: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusions – a point of pure truth This little point is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everything.” (quote from Merton and Sufism, Rob Baker and Gray Henry… 1999, p.109). At an interfaith conference in Thailand Merton stated: “I believe that by openness to Buddhism and to Hinduism and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about these traditions. We stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our Christian tradition’ (William Shannon, The Silent Lamp, The Thomas Merton Story p. 276] By the way Scazzero quotes Merton 8 times in his devotional The Daily Office.

Henri Nouwen

Nouwen, also deceased, like Merton has been able to influence evangelicals with his deep homespun spirituality. He is widely read by evangelicals. Even someone in my family relishes his spirituality. One of his biographers revealed in 1994 that Nouwen ranked second only to Billy Graham in his influence. In his book ‘The Way of the Heart, Nouwen advised his readers: “the quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart… That way of prayer…opens us to God’s active presence.” Nouwen displays his panentheism by stating: “The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is the same as the one who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being.” ( from Here and Now, p. 22). Nouwen further states: ” Prayer is soul work because our souls are those sacred centers where all is one. In the heart of God we can come to the full realization of the unity of all that is.” (Nouwen, Bread for the Jouney, Harper, San fran, 1997). Nouwen’s phrase “all is one” is pure panentheistic monism.

Fathers Keating and Basil Pennington.

These two monks have honed the method of “centering prayer” to the point that mystical silence and union with God that took cloistered monks sometimes years to achieve can now through “centering prayer” and a repeated word (mantra) achieve it in days. Pennington and Keating have written a popular classic on centering prayer entitled Open Mind Open Heart. Keating boasts that by 1991 he had taught 31,000 people the art of “centering prayer” Keating attended the 6th annual conference on Christian and Buddhist meditation held in Boulder CO August 10, 1986 with Christian and Buddhist attendees making contributions which included Keating’s presentation on “centering prayer.”

Keating and Pennington’s major contribution to the contemplative movement is the technique of “centering prayer.” Brennan Manning, a former Catholic monk calls it wordless prayer involving breathing exercises and the chanting of a sacred word or phrase. The purpose as Keating asserts is to speed up the sensitizing of the unconscious. After reading a published description of “centering prayer”, a psychology professor said: “Your question is, is this hypnosis? Sure it is.” (from The Danger of Centering Prayer, by Rev. John Dreher, pastor of Our Lady of Czenstochova Church in Coventry, Rhode Island.)

The centering prayer process

Brennan Manning provides a step by step process for centering prayer. The first step is to stop thinking about God. (Signature of Jesus, p. 212). The second step is breathing exercises and choosing a sacred word or phrase and inwardly and often repeating it (218). Finally close with the Lord’s Prayer or a Psalm. The result of this practice is the practitioner becomes less interested in objective spiritual knowledge as found in the bible and more interested in mystical revelation. Richard Foster speaks of “letting go of all competing distractions, even good ones… this can be done by focusing on a name, word or phrase.” (Foster, Sanctuary of the Soul, Journey into meditative Prayer, p. 15). Deepak Chopra, a popular New Age Hindu who is a panentheist and believes all creation is God and divine, recommends the Catholic contemplative manual The Cloud of Unknowing and considers Christian centering prayer techniques to be the same as Hindu yoga. Chopra asserts: “There is no doubt that people resist the whole notion of God being an inner phenomena… Yet its importance is stated eloquently in the medieval document known as ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’  written anonymously in the 14th century… The writer (Cloud of Unknowing) informs us that ANY THOUGHT IN THE MIND SEPARATES US FROM GOD, because thought sheds light on it’s object…we are advised to go into a cloud forgetting anything other than the silence of the inner world… (How to Know God, 2000, pp. 94, 95, 98). In the same book Chopra says, “I believe that God has to be known by looking in the mirror” (p. 9). Thus Chopra is describing meditative methods whereby the individual can allegedly come into contact with his “higher self” or divinity.” , yet he advises using Catholic mysticism to get there. And the same manual , “The Cloud of Unknowing” is one of the most popular manuals among evangelical contemplatives.

Richard Foster and Dallas Willard

These two men plus many others as well are kept busy introducing contemplative prayer techniques to the evangelical world. They have combined in establishing a contemplative training institution and a study bible called Renovare. They promote all forms of Catholic Contemplative Prayer and encourage people to read the likes of Merton, Nouwen, Rich Rohr and the full range of historic Catholic mediators. This newsletter could never list all the intrusions of Contemplative Prayer into evanglical circles. But I encourage you to acquire the book “A Time of Departing” by Ray Yungen. If you want a scholarly treatment of panentheism you should read “Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers” by John W. Cooper. Cooper who is a consistent biblical scholar.

Panentheism is everywhere in the evangelical world. David Cloud (online source, Evangelicals turing to Cathlolic Spirituality) asserts the following evangelical celebrities as either direct participants of  Contemplative Prayer or endorsing it. I couldn’t believe the names on his list. I checked it out on the net and he is absolutely correct. We start off with Foster, but he is hardly a lone voice for Contemplative Prayer. Here are the others: “Dallas Willard, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Chuck Swindol, David Jeremiah, Beth Moore, Max Lucado, Ed Young, Gary Thomas, Phillip Yancey, Charles Stanley, Leighton Ford and Phillip Yancey. Yancey in his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference, favorably quotes Richard Rohr, proponent of the “Cosmic Christ”, the 14 century contemplative manual called The Cloud of Unknowing. and Teresa of Avila whose meditation included erotic mysticism. This erotic mysticism echoes Lou Engle and Mike Bickle and IHOP bridal mysticism. This, however, at least has it source in the Song of Solomon but encourages IHOPer young people to marry Jesus.

Check out the children’s books on Contemplative Prayer at Nav Press. Gary Gilley in an article, Dr. Gary Gilley on Spiritual Formation. (online source). lists the various evangelical publishers providing Contemplative materials ( namely Nelson, Zondervan, NavPress, IVF by a wide range of authors. Even Rick Warren, the ultimate pragmatic church growth proponent, feels obliged to get involved in breath prayers and promote Contemplative Prayer. Foster, Willard, Sweet, Scazzero and a host of others, fill their calendars speaking in evangelical conferences and churches. The horse has bolted. The dike has been breached. Many evangelical pastors have not a clue that panentheism is actually the worldview base of “Spiritual Formation. Panentheism has been sugar coated for evangelical appetites. Many of the rank and file will never actually pursue contemplative prayer practices for themselves. But others will take it up assuming it is a legitimate ancient/modern prayer method. But you will never hear the term panenthesism. Rather you will hear innocuous terms like Spiritual Formation, and spiritual disciplines. It will all be retranslated into evangelical terminology, but of necessity it carries panentheism in its saddlebags, an anti biblical worldview even though it is found only in the fine print. Each time someone recommends Merton, Nouwen, Foster, Dallas Willard Sue Monk Kidd, Leonard Sweet, Manning, Leighton Ford, Larry Crabb etc, etc., just remember that each of them also have knowingly or probably unknowingly left biblical creation behind. Panentheism is hostile to and opposed to biblical creation and the gospel of Jesus Christ no matter how spiritual it appears and how much they talk about Jesus.

Biblical prayer could not be more contrastive. We don’t need to learn techniques from ancient masters and hermit monks. There is no need to vacate our rationale minds and enter a mystical Silence and enter altered states using mantras from the east. We have direct access to the throne of grace won for us at Calvary. Here we present our needs in audible form. God biblically answers with the Word of Lord in scripture or He works all things according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Contemplative prayer could not be more antithetical to the revealed Word of God. Panentheism is a worldview that has no connection with the God of the Bible.

The original appears here.

Plumbline Ministries, 74425 Co. Rd. 21, Renville, MN 56284

See also:

EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY: QUANTUM SHIFT TO PANENTHEISM

EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY AND PANENTHEISM

BRIAN MCLAREN AND EVANGELICAL PANENTHEISM

See also:

BEWARE OF EMERGING SPIRITUALITY AND EMERGENCE THEORY

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON CHRIST

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS

By Apprising Ministries special correspondent Bob DeWaay

There are no extraordinary Christians; but being an ordinary Christian is an extraordinary thing. How I wish I would have understood that when I was a new Christian. But I didn’t. Soon after my conversion I began a quest to become the best possible Christian. In so doing I fell prey to teachings that promised me a Christian life superior to that of ordinary Christians. What I did not know was that I had embraced pietism. I didn’t become an extraordinary Christian and I did walk straight into error.

My journey into the “deeper life” oftentimes involved embracing contradictory teachings. For example, two of my favorite teachers in the early 1970’s were Watchman Nee and Kenneth Hagin. One taught a deeper Christian life through suffering [1]) and the other taught a higher order Christianity that could cause one to be free from bodily ailments and poverty.[2] The hook was that both claimed to have the secret to becoming an extraordinary Christian. I found out that they didn’t.

My dissatisfaction with the Christianity taught in Bible College[3] led me to join a Christian commune some months after graduation. That group’s founder taught that all ordinary churches and Bible Colleges were caught up in “religious Babylon.” He taught that the kingdom of God was to be found by quitting one’s job, selling one’s possessions, giving the money to the commune, and moving in together to be devoted to the “kingdom” twenty four hours a day. So in my search to become an extraordinary Christian I did what he said and joined.

By the time I had fully explored many versions of pietism seeking to escape the tainted Christianity found in ordinary churches, I had squandered the first ten years of my Christian life. I was converted in 1971 and by 1981 I had given up on becoming a superior Christian. I bought a house for my family and began a car repair business to pay the bills while I tried to figure out what to do with my calling to preach now that most everything I had been taught, practiced, and taught others had failed.

By God’s grace I went back to the Bible and determined to merely teach verse by verse from that point on. It took another five or six years to rid myself of the various errors I had embraced and then I taught Romans in 1986. Through that study I came to appreciate the doctrines of grace. That understanding opened my thinking and was the turning point for my ministry. I also came to realize that the wrong-thinking that attracted me to pietism was that I held to a theology based on human ability rather than grace alone. Once I grasped that, I never looked back.

If the “secret” to a higher order Christianity is based on something we discover and implement (the secret to the deeper life), then it makes sense that some Christians could achieve a higher status than others. But if salvation AND sanctification are God’s work through His grace, then we are all in the same boat, and there’s no higher order.

Pietism is difficult to define because it can be taught and practiced in an unlimited number of ways. Some versions appear to be innocuous while others are so radical that most people would see that something is wrong. I now know that no version of pietism is actually innocuous. If a teaching is called pietism but teaches no more than what God has always used to sanctify Christians, then it is not really pietism. Real pietism always harms those who embrace it.

The essence of pietism is this: It is a practice designed to lead to an experience that purports to give one an elite or special status compared to ordinary Christians. The Bible addresses this error in the book of Colossians.[4] The false teachers in Colossae claimed to have the secret to a superior Christian experience that would cause people to rise above the bad “fate” they feared. Paul went on to explain that they already had everything they needed through Christ and His work on the cross. Another way of stating this is: If after having fully trusted Christ’s finished work on the cross, you are told that you are still lacking something, you are being taught pietism.

Church history is littered with misguided pietistic movements. Many of them are linked with mysticism. I will give examples later in this article. Pietism can be practiced many ways including enforced solitude, asceticism of various forms, man made religious practices, legalism, submission to human authorities who claim special status, and many other practices and teachings. The fact that pietism has many forms can be seen by the litany Paul gives in Colossians:

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day — things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use) in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (Colossians 2:16-23)

Paul calls this approach “self-made religion” which is exactly what all forms of pietism are. They all suggest that having been converted by the Lord through the cross and practicing His ordained means of grace by faith are inadequate. They have discovered a better way that leads to a higher order experience. Paul says they have “the appearance of wisdom.”

His list includes ascetic practices. These appear to most poorly taught Christians to be what the Lord wants. They reason, “Of course God is happier with a person who sells all and moves into a convent where he takes an oath of poverty than He is with someone who goes to work forty hours a week and uses some of the money to buy things.” Is He? When I was a pietist, if someone told me he prayed two hours a day, then I had to pray three hours to make sure I wasn’t missing out on something. I reasoned, “Of course God is happier with a Christian who prays three hours than one who prays two.” Is He? When I was a pietist I would work on cranking up my desire for holiness because I reasoned that holiness is found through something in the person rather than through God’s grace. Based on sermons I’d heard I reasoned, “Christians are not experiencing a higher degree of holiness because they do not desire it enough.” Is that true? No, none of these pietistic statements are true.Such teachings lead to elitism and comparing ourselves to others. The Bible tells us not to do that. Paul stated that these practices “are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”

God is committed to the holiness of everyone He has redeemed. He makes them holy through His ordained means of grace. Paul warned both the Galatians and the Colossians against adding anything to the work of Christ: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Colossians 2:6); “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). This means that salvation is by grace through faith and sanctification is by grace through faith. There is no secret principle to be discovered that creates higher order Christians. Here is how it is explained in Hebrews: “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10, 14). Pietism is an attack on the scriptural truth that Christ has already done it all and that this is true for all Christians. I believe in progressive sanctification, but God is sanctifying all Christians by the same means.

Pietism in Church History

Since pietism existed in Colossae in Paul’s day it has always been in the church. But we want to analyze some expressions of it to see why it arises and how it works. Church historian Justo Gonzalez chronicles the beginnings of the monastic movement which was apparently a reaction to a perception that popularity and success had tainted Christianity after it was endorsed by Constantine.[5] The question they dealt with was how to overcome Satan (pietism often offers special protection from Satan) who was tempting people with success now that martyrdom was no longer available. Gonzalez writes, “Many found an answer in the monastic life: to flee from human society, to leave everything behind, to dominate the body and its passions, which gave way to temptation. Thus, at the very time when churches in large cities were flooded by thousands demanding baptism, there was a veritable exodus of other thousands who sought beatitude in solitude.”[6] This version produced the Desert Fathers as they have come to be known.

Some documents from the early church fathers describe the lives of “anchorite” monks who fled society to live in the desert. One was Anthony who gave away all his riches before entering his new life: “He then [after leaving his teacher] went to live in an abandoned cemetery, where he subsisted on bread, which some kind souls brought him every few days. According to Athanasius, at this time Anthony began having visions of demons that accosted him almost continuously.”[7] Ironically, fleeing the city to escape Satan’s temptations did nothing to actually deliver him from Satan.

The monastic movement led to the idea that one could become a higher order Christian and be more pleasing to God. The movement also introduced mystical practices that today are being brought back into the church under the guise that they came from a time when Christianity was pristine and not tainted by modernity.[8] What is really happening is a repeat of history. When Christians perceived that the success of churches in times of prosperity caused certain ills, they fled to solitude where they became mystics. This process is happening today again. But these pietistic movements did not lead to a more pristine Christianity in the past, nor do they do so today. They lead to elitism as Gonzalez points out: “On the other hand, this sort of life was not free of temptations. As years went by, many monks came to the conclusion that, since their life was holier that that of most bishops and other leaders of the church, it was they, and not those leaders, who should decide what was proper Christian teaching.”[9] Some today have determined that ordinary Christians[10] are so tainted by modernity that these elite ones refuse to be called “Christian” but rather prefer the term “Christ followers” because the elite deem themselves to be following Christ in a pristine way that is not true of the rest of us.

The monastic movement became more organized and still exists today. The Roman Catholic Church acclaimed their deeds done beyond what is required of ordinary Christians and developed a teaching called “works of supererogation,” a teaching rejected by the Reformers.

An example of the ‘works done beyond’ are the monastic vows taken by certain monastic orders: They are considered works of supererogation in Rome. Those who take the vows are deemed more pious than ordinary Christians.

Luther wrote a lengthy essay demonstrating that scripture rejects the validity of monastic vows.[11] His essay is also an interesting look into the issues that were debated at the time of the Reformation. One key issue for Luther was that the monastics went beyond the gospel and made commandments out of matters that God has not commanded and in so doing sought to achieve a superior standing before God. One such example was celibacy. Luther argued that vowing something that God had not commanded is sinful: “The very foundation of the monastic vows is godlessness, blasphemy, sacrilege, which has befallen them because they spurn Christ, their leader and light, and presume to follow other things they think better.”[12] They thought they could improve on the teachings of Christ and live a superior spirituality by swearing oaths to live pious lives beyond anything Christ required of His people. Luther condemned this as sinful. Luther wrote, “If you obey the gospel, you ought to regard celibacy as a matter of free choice: if you do not hold it as a matter of free choice, you are not obeying the gospel. . . . A vow of chastity, therefore, is diametrically opposed to the gospel.”[13] So in Luther’s day, he taught that Christians were in error and sin if they bound themselves by oath to a practice not required by Christ. Though they may think themselves more pious than ordinary Christians because of their special vows, Luther called them gross sinners…

Some of our Evangelical denominations have been pietist from their very inception. Charles Finney’s teaching in the mid 19^th century caused the problem. Finney’s teachings, as I have argued before, were heretical. He too taught Christian perfection. Wesley at least held to prevenient grace so as to avoid Pelagianism.[14] Finney was fully Pelagian in his approach to both salvation and sanctification.

[15] And his innovations permanently changed much of American Evangelicalism. After Finney other perfectionist movements arose. The Holiness movement, for example, came not long after Finney. Both the Holiness movement and the subsequent Pentecostal movement held to second blessing doctrines that by nature are pietist because they create an elite category of Christians who have had a special experience that ordinary Christians lack. The Keswick Holiness (also known as the “Higher life” movement) movement is an example of pietism and elitism as well. The Holiness movement in general is a pietistic movement that claims a special experience that creates higher order, (often supposedly perfected) Christians. They are in error. Ironically, the deeper life or higher order Christians do have something distinct about them—they have embraced error.

Today the largest new pietist movement is the Emergent Church. As I pointed out earlier, pietism often arises in response to the perception (sometimes warranted) that the church has become too worldly and it seems true once again today. Some now assume that since ordinary Christianity is compromised, they must discover an extraordinary way to become better Christians. One Emergent leader has even entitled one of his works, “A New Kind of Christian.”[16] But this movement really isn’t all that new. It draws on teachings and practices found in other pietist movements in church history. In fact, a recent Emergent book includes essays by those experimenting with communal living, something I tried in my pietist days![17]

Furthermore, the Purpose Driven movement is also a pietistic movement. Rick Warren claims there are world class Christians that are in a better category than ordinary Christians. He had his followers take a long oath at a baseball field to pledge themselves to serving his new reformation. I already mentioned the apostles and prophets movement that is pietistic. So ironically, three huge movements in American evangelicalism (Purpose Driven, Emergent, and C. Peter Wagner’s latter day apostles) are all based on pietism. The three movements seem radically diverse, but each one claims to be a new reformation and each offers a higher status than that of ordinary Christians. (source)

___________________________________________________________________________
End notes:

1.  Nee had an unusual anatomical sanctification scheme that requires distinguishing between body, soul and spirit with the spirit being the pristine source of sanctification and the body needing to be subdued as the soul learns to follow the regenerated human spirit.
2.  One thing Hagin and Nee had in common that probably attracted me to both of them was the idea of the primacy of the human spirit and the idea of gaining special knowledge by following ones spirit.
3.  Though the college had a pietistic 2nd blessing doctrine, my teachers were sound and pointed me in the right direction. I could have been saved from years of error had I listened more closely to some of them.
4.  See CIC Issue 69; March/April 2002 The Colossian Heresy Part 1 for a detailed, theological explanation of Colossians chapter 2. HTTP://CICMINISTRY.ORG/COMMENTARY/ISSUE69.HTM
5.  Justo L. Gonzalez The Story of Christianity Vol. 1 (New York: HarperCollins, 1984) 136, 137.
6.  Ibid. 137.
7.  Ibid. 140, 141.
8.  The Emergent Church movement is well known for doing this.
9.  Gonzalez vol. 1, 143.
10.  When I speak of “ordinary Christians” I mean those who are truly converted but claim no special or elite status. Nominal “Christians” who are actually unregenerate are not Christian at all in the Biblical sense.
11.  Martin Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows from 55-Volume American Edition Luther’s Works on CD-ROM (Fortress Press, Concordia Publishing: Minneapolis, 2001) Vol. 44, page 243.
12.  Ibid. 260.
13.  Ibid. 262.
14. Pelagius was an early heretic, condemned by church councils, who taught that all humans have the ability to obey God without a prior work of grace.
15.  See CIC Issue 56 Charles Finney’s Influence on American Evangelicalism – HTTP://CICMINISTRY.ORG/COMMENTARY/ISSUE53.HTM
16.  Written by Brian McLaren
17. An Emergent Manifesto of Hope Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones editors (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007)

See also:

“DEAD ORTHODOXY” AND PIETISTIC MISUSE OF 1 CORINTHIANS

RICHARD FOSTER—CELEBRATION OF DECEPTION

MATT CHANDLER AND VILLAGE CHURCH PROMOTING CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY

See also:

OPRAH WINFREY SPEAKING AS A “CHRISTIAN”

OPRAH WINFREY, JOEL OSTEEN & CHRISTIAN POST

WILL THE REAL JESUS PLEASE STAND UP?

See also:

BEWARE OF EMERGING SPIRITUALITY AND EMERGENCE THEORY

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON CHRIST

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS

[They] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:4)

But Don’t You Understand That You’re Really Only Worshipping Yourself?

Along the lines of the Apprising Ministries post The Emergence Of A New God, here we’ll hear a bit more about the mystic mush god with a man-shaped hole in its heart, now being preached by the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church (EC). The EC is far from dead.

Having developed a full blown neo-liberal cult operating within it, for the Emerging Church 2.0, he/she/it actually forms the centerpiece of its newer, more clearly delineated, postmodern Progressive Christian theology; a Liberalism 2.0 that these rebels against God’s Word often refer to as “big tent” Emergence Christianity.

I tell you that this is truly a fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3:2 — For people will be lovers of self; i.e. mankind is falling in love with, and worshipping, itself. This is why the spread of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) is so dangerous. People are unbuckling themselves from the security of God’s Word.

The result is a spiritual free fall out into the nothing of subjective experience, which is the root of the syncretism you’re witnessing throughout virtually the entire church visible now. It’s important to understand that for those in the EC 2.0, Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP)—meditation in an altered state of consciousness—is crucial.

I told you a year ago e.g. in Mental Off-Roading Radio With Doug Pagitt And Michael Dowd that CSM is perfectly suited to the philosophy of postmoderism that now dominates much of this caprious culture in which we find ourselves; you see, as with neo-orthodoxy ala Karl Barth postmodernism is “anti-logical” and “embraces Paradox.”[1]

All the while its deconstructionists have viciously been attacking rational thought with what’s commonly known as irrational philosophy. Simply put:

Irrational philosophies accordingly stress the will at the expense of reason, as exemplified in the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre or Karl Jaspers. (source)

Its influence upon our culture is why you’ll so often hear people say things like: “With all my heart I feel that’s a good thing”; in other words, truth is being decided by how someone feels as opposed to what is objectively known. For years now EC leaders have bombarded younger sectors of evangelicalism with this propaganda.

In fact Dr. John Bohannon points out that, in classic centered on the self postmodern existentialism, for someone like EC universalist Doug Pagitt:

the Bible is an active and living book that, in his own words, “invites us to step into the stories, not as observers, but as participants in the faith that is alive and well and still being created.”

The implication being, the Bible is not a fixed, immutable, infallible Word from above, but rather a piece of God’s ongoing story in humanity; a story that Pagitt, Solomon’s Porch, and other communities of faith, can participate in as they join in the ongoing creative activity of writing their own story for today, just as Paul did for his day.[2]

As you can see, not only is this a repudiation of sola Scriptura, but it’s also a recipe for spiritual disaster because people can then make the texts of Bible say whatever they want them to. For such as these the speculations of emergence theory within evolutionary science fit well with their bankrupt Process Theology, which is similar to Open Theism.

Space doesn’t allow full discussions of these important topics integral to the antichrist theology of the Emerging Church. CARM has the short helpful piece What is process theology? Then, as far as Open Theism is concerned, Dr. Gary Gilley gives you all you need to know in his well-researched 4 part series on OT.

You’ll find links to each part in Introduction To Open Theism. Suffice here to say that many leaders within this neo-liberal cult, e.g. Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren along with his fellow Red Letter Christian, Roman Catholic mystic Richard Rohr, are spreading a deadly virus in their emerging spirituality.

They’re combining elements of secular evolutionary emergence theory with their spurious CSM and are coming under the delusion that in our lifetime mankind is in the process of evolving upward into a higher state of consciousness. Now you are properly positioned upon the spiritual battlefield to receive what follows below.

In this video lecture from the Faith at Risk 5 conference[3] Christian apologist Bob DeWaay does a stellar job in helping you understand how these EC vipers are blending panentheism and pantheism into a New Spirituality and are then injecting this spiritual poison into the younger sectors of mainstream evangelicalism:

________________________________________________________________________________

End notes:

[1] Gordon Clark, In Defense of Theology [Milford: Mott Media, 1984], 58, 61.

[2] John Bohanon, Preaching & The Emerging Church: An Examination of Four Founding Leaders: Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, and Doug Pagitt [Seattle: CreateSpace, 2010], 88.

[3] Available at Lighthouse Trails Publishing right here and Twin City Fellowship right here.

See also:

AN OVERVIEW OF PROCESS THEOLOGY

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON CHRIST

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

The Self-Refuting Philosophy Of Postmodernism

I continue on here at Apprising Ministries tracking this The New Downgrade And Its Apostles Of Unbelief and the spread of the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult in the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church still on their foolish Wild Goose Chase. As I do,  you’ll come to see that its postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology, under their spiritual circus “big tent” Emergence Christianity, depends upon philosophy and not Biblical theology.

For example, in order to advance his ear-tickling Love Wins mythology passé EC icon Rob Bell had to begin years ago with deconstructing questions about Holy Scripture designed to tear down your belief system a la his friend universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt, one third of the unholy Emergent trinity along with Dr. Tony Jones, progressive/liberal “theologian in residence” at his Solomon’s Porch, and Living Spiritual Teacher and apostate EC guru Brian McLaren,

As you can see in Heretical Shane Hipps To Speak At Willow Creek this EC virus is no longer contained and is now breaking out within larger contemporary evangelicalism as well. Dr. Gene Veith, Culture Editor of World Magazine and former Associate Professor of English at Concordia University-Wisconsin, now tells us why the faulty philosophy postmodernism is a major cause of this syncretism and a perfect fit for our fickle times.

Veith points out that “postmodernism assumed [i.e. it's philosophy] that there is no objective truth, that moral values are relative, and that reality is socially constructed” by various “communities.” He then explains:

Whereas modernism sought to rid the world of religion, postmodernism spawns new ones. Unconstrained by objectivity, tradition, reason, or morality, these new faiths differ radically from Christianity. They draw on strains of the most ancient and primitive paganism. Even the deconstructionists speak in mystical terms…

The deconstructionists dissolve every positive statement, every rational argument, every truth claim—destroying form, they say, so as to open up what lies beyond the possibilities of representation… The inadequacies of language will be left behind,…

Postmodernism, in its rejection of objective truth, have clear affinities with Hinduism and Buddhism, which teach that the external world is only an illusion spun by the human mind.[1]

Because of this, in his excellent sermon A Beginner’s Guide to Postmodernism Phil Johnson—executive director of John MacArthur’s fine Grace to You ministry and who blogs at the popular Pyromaniacs site—would say:

I am convinced that postmodernism is inherently incompatible with biblical Christianity; and in fact, the most essential elements of postmodernism are hostile to the fundamental truth claims of Scripture. And for that reason, I would argue that a postmodern mindset involves some positively sinful ways of thinking.[2]

However, there is that nagging feeling that I just can’t seem to shake; possibly the Creator of the universe, Who was walking upon the planet He had made, might have had an inkling that the Hebrew Scriptures have a few quite unsettling things to say about trusting in ourselves and following our own hearts. For you see, that kind of spiritual suicide is absolutely inherent in the false philosophy of postmodernism.

O yes, I know that it’s not fashionable today to use “proof texts” in our postmodern culture, which sees itself as so advanced in our thinking. Indeed just *ahem* think, now many right now will readily agree that there is no such thing as an absolute truth. The reason, EC philoso-theologians like John Franke tell us, is because no one can ever really know anything for sure because supposedly truth is an “irreducible plurality.”[3]

Well, unfortunately even the sophisticated postmoderns will eventually have to admit that maybe this really isn’t thinking very clearly at all. You see, the statement—truth is not absolute—is actually a self-refuting statement. The reason being, for you to even know that no one could ever really know anything for sure, you would already have to know everything that was true in order to evaluate the truth of this particular statement.

But then again, since you could never know anything for sure, no one could even believe what has just been said; because if no one could ever know anything for sure, then we couldn’t really know if that statement itself was true. Does your brain hurt; in a way that’s good. It means that you’re still using it and not shutting it off as these unknowing know-it-alls do as they go mentally off-loading through their postmodern Wonderland of Humpty Dumpty language.

You know, I realize that I’m hopelessly old-fashioned; but I think it would just be a whole lot easier for people to read the text of the Bible and then let it speak for itself. Work with me here, let us just suppose for a minute that those of us who are orthodox Christians are a little brighter than a growing number of leaders within the emerging/evangelical movement apparently think we are; in love as they appear with wisdom of men.

What if we’ve read something in the Bible that they cannot refute no matter how many hours they sit over a mug of microbrew discussing ridiculous non-reasoning propositions such as I’ve just outlined above. What if Jesus knew just a little bit more about human nature than we do; what if He knows today in this ecumenical-seeker driven-emerging-word faith-postevangelical church that we have completely turned His mission and message backward?

Absolute Truth And The Mind Of Christ

Look it up for yourself and you will find that no where did our Lord ever preach, “God loves you just as you are.” It’s also true that Jesus taught God’s love was conditional—as in “repent, and surrender yourself to Me, because I Am your Creator and it was you who rebelled against Me.” You see, the whole illogical structure of those people-pleasing postmodern “Christ-followers” collapses when we look at the Bible like this: God is supernatural and by definition we just cannot assume that we will always have natural explanations for Who He is, etc.

It’s only by what the one true and living God has said in His revelation concerning Himself—given to mankind through the Holy Scripture in the Bible—that we may know what He wishes us to know about His nature and what He does. Now, once we understand that God is just a wee bit more powerful than we are we begin to see a little light, and then we can steer ourselves clear of philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

You need to know that what’s being missed amidst all of the navel-contemplating and “deep” maze-like philoso-theological musings, which so many caught in corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism seem to get prefer to get involved in—is this: 

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:6-16)

Unfortunately, one who refuses to listen to sound Biblical reason will still prefer to do their little spiritual “soft-shoe” while they chase their spiritual tails in front of huge mirrors heavily obscured by satanic smoke. However, the words that we just read give us the refutation of the enemy’s pet line of illogic. The likes of which has been espoused by almost every Emergent Church person I have been involved with regarding absolute truth and whether or not we can know what Christ actually taught about how He wants us to approach the Christian faith.

The argument is summed up as this: “Yes, perhaps there is such a thing as absolute truth, but as humans the problem is that we are not able to fully perceive this truth as it is continually unfolding.” The first couple of times you are hit with this it really can stop you in your tracks. That’s how Satan works. He takes a little bit if truth and then forcefully twists it until its mangled beyond recognition; but this unregenrate line of reasoning actually fails to take into account the supernatural aspect of the Christian faith.

For Christ is God Himself in human flesh, and He taught us that we must be born again; and that once this happens, then God the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Truth—comes to live within the Christian. And now consider that, uh-oh, God has revealed—to us this absolute Truth—to us through the Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Truth. So what we are seeing here is, despite how “nice” someone may be, in spite of how moral their religion might be, or even how serene, silent, and sincere their quest for communing with God might be — no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Looks like we’re getting into a realm here that is supernatural, and exclusive, because God also tells us that those who are not born again, who are not indwelt by God the Holy Spirit do — not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. However conversely, those of us who are in Christ can understand the things of God that are spiritually discerned because we have the mind of Christ.

Once we come to realize this, we can now understand that Christian faith is the only way to know God, which is what Jesus told us — “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And emerging false teachers e.g. like Samir Selmanovic[4] and Shane Hipps[5] speculatulating unbelievers can know God apart from Christ and are already indwell by God are mistaken; unless…of course, the Bible is wrong. Ah, but now we’re right back again to Genesis 3:1, are we not: Yea, hath God said?

Do you recognize the work of Satan when it’s presented to you? Good. So, why don’t more evangelical leaders?

_________________________________________________________________________
End Notes:

[1] Gene Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture [Wheaton: Crossway, 1994] , 193, 198, 199.

[2] http://tinyurl.com/36o6ky8, accessed 5/1/12.

[3] John Franke, Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009], 3.

[4] Samir Selmanovic, “The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness – Finding Our God in the Other,” in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones editors [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 196.

[5] See Shane Hipps Exposed.

See also:

THE EMERGING CHURCH SOWING ITS NEO-ORTHODOX CONFUSION ON SCRIPTURE

INDEED, DID GOD REALLY SAY?

DON’T BE FOOLED BY THOSE WHO ONLY SAY THEY LOVE SCRIPTURE

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.
(Jude 4, 8, 12)

The Evangelical Community Should Have Purged This Emerging Leaven Before It Spread

The Lord be praised that He has seen fit to open the door for Apprising Ministries to have become one of the leading voices against the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, a neo-liberal cult now operating within mainstream evangelicalism.

Its primary legacy is that through its core doctrine of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), masquerading as spurious Spiritual Formation ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster and his spiritual twin Dallas Willard, the Emergent Church leaders have been quite successful in taking the focus off proper Christian spirituality; and instead putting it upon mere subjective feelings.

While all of this was going on, circa the late 90′s, foolish evangelical leaders would make the tragic decision to begin using these warped and toxic teachings within their own Young Adult and Youth ministries. By doing so, it served to open them to a veritable who’s who of heresy, including the unholy EC trinity of apostates.

In this way this unpropitious trio, Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt, and his friend Dr. Tony Jones, the progressive “theologian in residence” at Solomon’s Porch—along with a whole host of Emergent apostates—were given virtually free reign over what are now a new generation of teachers.

You should know that they have joined forces in an upgraded Emerging Church 2.0 that now has in place its new postmodern form of circus “big tent” Progressive Christianity—a Liberalism 2.0—sometimes referred to as Emergence Christianity. Unfortunately, as a prime example of how blind mainstream evangelicalism is becoming I pointed you to Fantasyland: Farewell Emerging Church, 1989-2010.

Oblivious to the visible church being raped by people who are not even in the faith, many have simply written the EC off as dead. Not so; instead, what it’s done—as if as some kind of a huge mutant mushroom—is to produce poisonous spores spreading now throughout the professing Christian community having been carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Ephesians 4:14).

Many have even landed in the mainstream of the evangelical community; actually returning home because the Emerging Church was initially launched by Leadership Network from inside its own walls in the first place. With all of this in mind, Apprising Ministries again brings you the following words of warning circa 1985 by Dr. Walter Martin (1928-1989).

Regardless of whatever differences we have with some of his teachings, incontrovertibly Martin was a renowned defender of what he so often referred to as “the historic orthodox Christian faith.” He was also a former adherent to liberal theology and laid out the evil methodology of liberalism aka modern theology, which such as these used to take over the dead and dying mainline denominations:

There is a progression that takes place in liberal theology: It begins with a corrupt bibliology, a corrupt view of the nature and the inspiration of Scripture. They have a corrupt theology because once you are picking and choosing from the Bible what you want, your theology has to suffer from it, because your human reason is corrupt… every major theological seminary that has turned from orthodox Christianity began with disbelief of Biblical doctrine. There wasn’t a single exception.

This corrupt Bibliology then lead them to the next step. Their theology began to be touched by it, their view of the Cross, the Virgin Birth were both immediately questioned; then came the miracles of Christ… And finally they had emptied the Gospel of all its content; they were simply using the outward shell so that they go on collecting money from the people and the churches; because they knew that if the people in the pew knew that they were apostate, they’d throw them out. So the strategy was hang on to the trust funds; hang on to the money we’ve got; hang on the properties we control, and we will gradually educate the laymen into this new approach to theology.

And then finally we will take control of everything. The gradual process of feeding you theological poison until you become immunized enough so that you don’t know what’s happening to you. And when you wake up to what’s happening to you, it’s too late they’ve got everything. That is not a baseless charge, I stand prepared to prove that the Cult of Liberal Theology in the United States has deliberately and consistently followed this methodology to entrap, control and dominate the denominations and the churches of the United States and our educational institutions. (The Cult of Liberalism, available from Walter Martin Religious InfoNet)

Well, you’ll need to understand that this EC cult of the new liberalism learned well from their evil forebears and have followed the exact same track to infiltrate the largely spiritually obtuse evangelical camp. For years now they’ve been indoctrinating spiritually dense evangelical churches desperate to fill church buildings through their own publishing houses, church-related schools, seminaries, denominations, etc.

Now you have the necessary backdrop to see what’s going on—and what’s at stake—with this piece from American Baptist Press Conference seeks to nurture children, youth in ‘new kind of Christianity’. Bob Allen begins by revealing to us that the EC 2.0 is indeed using the same methodology described above:

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is among sponsors of a four-day meeting next May to discuss ways to train up children and youth in a “new kind of Christianity.”

Scheduled May 7-10, 2012, at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., the Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity conference will bring leaders, ministers, volunteers, parents and students together for dialogue about the spiritual formation of children and youth in the “emergent” or “missional” church. (Online source)

As far as that goal they need only continue what they’ve been doing for years in evangelical Youth Groups and Young Adult ministries to train the current crop of worship leaders and young pastors further infecting the mainstream of the church with the EC postmodern form of pseudo-Christianity. Allen tells us a familiar trio is behind this:

Nationally known presenters include progressive evangelical social activists like Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis alongside children’s and youth ministry experts such as Ivy Beckwith, Joyce Bellous, Amy Dolan and Michael Novelli. (Online source)

Notice that it’s so-called Red Letter Christians and good friends, McLaren, Tony Campolo, and Jim Wallis. Allen also points out:

McLaren, author of books including A New Kind of Christianity, said in a promotional video that in his travels he has heard a recurring theme that new forms of ministry, worship and community taking root and growing around the world are not being transmitted effectively to children and youth. (Online source)

In Brian McLaren Admits Ken Silva Was Right you’ll see that leading EC guru Brian McLaren has finally come out of the closet as an adherent of Progressive Christian theology, which is what he began laying out in his book A New Kind of Christianity. It’s certainly not the historic Christian faith; and no one—let alone impressionable children—should be following it, period.

You need to know that the term big tent itself, which I mentioned above,  really concerns the universalism forming the rotten core of this pseudo-Christian neo-liberalism not so slowly spreading throughout the very heart of apostitizing evangelicalism. At this point it’s important to remind you again that we are talking here about a form of Christian Universalism (CU).

Despite minor variations in various views, this CU is based upon a universal atonement of Christ on the Cross—an at-one-ment—similar to that of New Age Spirituality and the Metaphysical Mind Science cults. Notice how all of this sounds strikely like the Love Wins mythology of Rob Bell, the former Elvis-like rock star pastor of the Emerging Church rebellion against the authority of the Bible.

The fact remains, the evangelical community should have thrown Brian McLaren out of its fellowship years ago…

See also:

SETTING BRIAN MCLAREN STRAIGHT

BRIAN MCLAREN AND HIS NEW EMERGING PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS

One of the main contributing factors in the weakness of the church visible is the warped and toxic teachings of the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, which tragically, mainstream evangelicalism chose to embrace rather than purge from its ranks.

I’ve told you before that when evangelical churches made the ill-fated choice to use the mythology of dreamers like EC universalist Doug Pagitt and Dr. Tony Jones, his equally heretical progressive/liberal “theologian in residence,” they would cripple their own younger sectors.

The Emerging Church circa 1997 was launched by the Church Growth Movement cancer Leadership Network with the aforementioned Pagitt gathering the initial perpetrators of this counterfeit form of the Christian faith. You should also know that corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) was a core doctrine of the EC.

According to my source, who was there in the very beginning, “the two most influential voices” during that time “were Mark Driscoll and Chris Seay.” You probably know that the indecorous Mark Driscoll has since gone on to become a leader within the New charismatic/contemplative Calvinist movement.

Driscoll has also sent shock waves throughout his own Acts 29 Network by giving a pass to heretical Word Faith prosperity preacher T.D. Jakes and embracing him as a Christian brother in Elephant Room II. Chris Seay has remained under the radar as pastor of the emerging Ecclesia Church in Houston.

Ecclesia Church bills itself as Houston’s “Holistic Missional Christian Community called to serve Jesus, our Liberating King,” which gives you an idea they’re involved at some level with the EC’s circus “big tent” Progressive Christianity aka Emergence Christianity; i.e. the Love Wins mythology ala Rob Bell.

I’ve also been warning you that the spread of CSM throughout contemporary evangelicalism is leading to a cross pollination—syncretism—bringing together people in the mainstream of the visible church whom we probably would not have thought possible before, e.g. Steven Furtick, James MacDonald, And Joel Osteen.

With this in mind I point you to Her.meneutics, which is “the Christianity Today blog for women,” and their recent My Church’s Lenten Challenge: Get a Tattoo by Cameron Dezen Hammon. If you don’t know, Hammon is a worship pastrix at that aforementioned Ecclesia emerging church.

She begins by telling us about something said by Emergent author Lauren Winner, “There are some things one can only believe singing.” O-kay… Hammon continues:

As a worship leader, I found that the idea took root with me… The phrase came to me again last month when my friend, artist Scott Erickson, told me about his Lenten-theme project for the congregation we serve, Ecclesia Church in Houston.

He had designed a series of 10 tattoos representing the 14 traditional Stations of the Cross, and was asking volunteers to tattoo them to their bodies, as a way of observing the 40 days leading up to Good Friday. Ecclesia is not a typical church… (Online source)

No,  in a Protestant evangelical sense, it sure isn’t. However, it is pretty much your typical postmodern people-pleasing emerging church. By the way, another by-product of CSM is a return to superstitions ala apostate Roman Catholicism; not really surprising considering CSM was developed in Rome’s antibiblical monastic traditions.

Let’s take a look now at what Emergent pastrix Hammon tells us her senior pastor seems rather proud of:

Not only do we have an “artist-in-residence,” the aforementioned Scott Erickson, but about half the congregation is already tattooed, says pastor Chris Seay. This year, instead of the annual Lenten art show, the inked congregants would become the Stations of the Cross, and stand in the gallery spaces where paintings or photographs would normally appear. (Online source)

Then finally pastrix Hammonds informs us:

Ecclesia’s Erickson and Seay came up with the idea of tattooing the Stations of the Cross as a way of visualizing the suffering of Christ, and even entering into it (tattoos come with a little bit of pain), before celebrating the Easter Resurrection.

Tattoos are one way of marking the journey of Christ—“Jesus Accepts His Cross,” “Jesus Meets His Mother,” “Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb”—on our arms, legs, torsos, and backs as a way of believing in these events and their power. Just like Winner said of singing, there are some things one can only believe tattooed on skin. (Online source)

Really; if this is really so, then I can’t help but wonder why the Holy Spirit instead decided to use words in the Bible in the proclamation of God’s Word. Seriously, if you’re involved with dreamers like this, you need to turn away from them because they’re only leading you right back into religious superstition and slavery.

See also:

THE EMERGING CHURCH PUSHING FOR WOMEN PASTORS

RICHARD FOSTER’S RENOVARE PROMOTING EMERGING HERETIC TONY JONES

THE NEW CHRISTIANS WITH CHRISTIANITY WORTH BELIEVING—NO SOLA SCRIPTURA: YES, WOMEN PASTORS AND QUEER CHRISTIANS