HT: Wretched

See also:

JOHN PIPER RECOMMENDS BOOK BY EMERGING CONTEMPLATIVE LAUREN WINNER

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

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It’s actually a Liberalism 2.0 that these rebels against the authority of God’s Word often refer to as “big tent” Emergence Christianity; in other words, this is the Love Wins mythology of former EC rock star pastor Rob Bell.

Now to be sure, we’re not the least bit surprised that Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster would recommend the warped work of apostate Dr. Tony Jones, heretical “theologian in residence” at the social gathering (not a church in the Biblical sense) of his equally heretical friend and “pastor,” universalist Doug Pagitt.

I mean, not when at least two state conventions in the Southern Baptist Convention quite specifically recommend both guru Foster and wannabe guru Jones as you’ll see clearly documented in Alabama Baptist Convention (SBC) Encourages You To Learn Lectio Divina From Apostate Tony Jones. Nah, really comes as no surprise at all.

After-all, Dr. Tony Jones is a professor at Fuller Theological Cesspool Seminary, as was Richard Foster once. Keep in mind that FTS is still considered one of the more influential mainstream evangelical seminaries:

(Online source)

Now notice below that “The Doctor of Ministry cohort in Christian Spirituality with Tony Jones” at FTS will also feature Phyllis Tickle, the Empress of Emergence Christianity, and will be co-taught with Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren:

(Online source)

As a matter of fact, Jones even informed us today via the below tweet:

(Online source)

Indeed, the gates of the evangelicalism have now even swung open wider allowing in the postmodern liberalism perpetrated by Brian McLaren and his friend Dr. Jones. As far as the Richard Foster endorsement, the other day Jones tweeted:

(Online source)

The link takes us over to his December 27 blog post My “Minor Classic” on Spiritual Disciplines (for 99¢!) where Jones tells us:

Of the books I’ve written, two seem to have the most staying power. One is Postmodern Youth Ministry,… The other is The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life…

It’s sold at Renovaré events… While it doesn’t sell like a Richard Foster or Dallas Willard book, it is persistent. (Online source)

Yes, as persistent as a spiritual fungus. Guru Brian McLaren, who knows a thing or two about spurious CSM himself, has high praise for both Richard Foster and Tony Jones concerning their knowledge of this neo-Gnosticism. While answering a question by one of his readers he offers the following:

In some of my readings, both of books authored by you and others, I have read about Christian mystics. Who are the predominant Christian mystic authors?

Answer: If you pick up Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” and his other work via Renovare, you’ll get a great exposure to the Christian mystical tradition. “The Spiritual Formation Workbook” is a great resource too. Tony Jones’ “The Sacred Way” is also a sturdy introduction to contemplative practices.
(Online source, emphasis mine)

It’s clear that EC guru Brian McLaren considers Richard Foster and Tony Jones as leading authorities on CSM; as does FTS, since they have professor Jones teaching a doctorate level course in Christian Spirituality. I’ve long been critical of Jones’ theology; but I’ve never said that he doesn’t know his apostasy well. I’ve always thought Jones is very knowledgable about the CSM of Foster-Willardism.

Without a doubt Richard Foster is the living Golden Buddha of this corrupt Counter Reformation spirituality, which flowered in Rome’s antibiblical monastic traditions. It then produced apostate Roman Catholicism and would later lead the Church of Rome to anathematize the very Gospel of Jesus Christ itself. Well, we also know that Foster believes Tony Jones to be an authority concerning CSM as well.

In closing this, for now, remember Jesus tells us to carefully examine the fruit (cf. Matthew 7:15-18), i.e. the teachings and life of, those who would dare to claim to teachers of God’s Word (cf. James 3:1). So, in the case of FTS professor Dr. Tony Jones, we need to keep in mind his own practice of CSM. It’s a critical factor in his doctrine as his views concerning Christian spirituality stem from this neo-Gnosticism.

First of all, CSM has deluded self-professed Progressive Christian Tony Jones to believe the quasi-universalism of Big Tent Christianity: A Postmodern Progressive Liberalism. Then I showed you three years ago in Tony Jones: Influential Theologian Of Emergence Christianity Out Of The Closet that the highly subjective experience of CSM, and not Scripture, has led Jones to:

believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state. (Online source, bold original)

The social gathering of Pagitt, where Jones guides their theology, has now even put that sinful mythology into practice as you’ll see in Doug Pagitt And His Solomon’s Porch Affirm Homosexual Sin. And now FTS professor Tony Jones is so far gone out into spiritual outer space that he’s making the case in favor of multiple sexual partners, which I showed you in Tony Jones Argues For Open Marriage And Polyamory.

A professor at an ostensibly evangelical seminary arguing against proper Christian sexual ethics; such is the sorry state of the spiritually spineless evanjellyfish community. If this is what CSM has produced in the life of Dr. Tony Jones, then why would we want to practice it? And if CSM guru Richard Foster’s discernment is this far off that he’d promote someone who’s not a Christian brother, why listen to him?

See also:

TONY JONES WORSHIPS A DEMON

TONY JONES, THE EMERGING CHURCH AND PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY

“CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE” BY RICHARD FOSTER IS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGICAL ERROR

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See also:

THE EMERGING CHURCH PUSHING FOR WOMEN PASTORS

DAN KIMBALL OF THE EMERGING CHURCH TO SPEAK FOR RICK WARREN

WHAT’S NEW AT THE BUILD-A-gOD SHOP

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You likely know that he’s resigned from Mars Hill Bible Church and hass turned it over to his good friend and fellow apostate Shane Hipps to pursue—among other things—producing secular television.

It was an emotional day yesterday at MHBC as Bell was on hand to deliver his final missive. You can download this emering epistle here.

The text of which follows below just as it was sent to me:

dear mars hill,

to all the brothers and sisters of this church

to those who have been here from the beginning

who remember the old building, who braved that one?

ten foot wide hallways, clogged shoulder to shoulder

with people leaving the hangar to pick up their children

who had spent the previous hour packed into oxygen

deprived classrooms,

to those who hiked through the snow and slush and

mud that first day to sit on the floor

who idled in long traffic jams to listen to sermons from

the book of Leviticus on blood and guts and fire

and then to those of you who showed up for the first time

last week

to those who have complained for ten years that there’s

no sign out front and heard me respond time and time again

‘yes, but you found it’

to those who were baptized in that nearby lake in those

early days-especially those of you who were baptized that

one sunday when we didn’t know that all of those

hundreds of fish had died earlier that week and washed

up on shore and so before you got baptized, you watched

in horror as your fellow church members wearing waders

collected the dead, rotting fish in black trash bags and cleared

out enough space for you to wade in and celebrate your new life-

and then to those of you who have been baptized in this room,

in an old former mall, standing here soaking wet, surrounded

by friends and family, cheered on by your tribe, not sure how

to put it in words but absolutely convinced that you in some

had tasted heaven on earth

to the young and to the old

to the hunters in your trucks who can’t grill it if you don’t kill it,

to the vegetarians in your prius’  wearing hemp underwear

to those on the right and those on the left

to the Dutch, and to the not much,

to Lions fans and to infidels,

to all of you wherever and however you find yourself-

whatever size, shape, color, perspective, history, and background

you bring to this gathering-

grace and peace to all of you on this day.

kristen and i were out to dinner with some friends in october

for a last meal before we moved. they have been

beloved friends of ours for ten years and at the end of the

meal one of them took out several folded pieces of paper as

she told us that she had written us a letter, which she then read. in

the letter she took us back through our ten years together,

remembering events and people and places and moments we shared, several of which i had forgotten about. many times she

would pause when she read about a particular experience we

had all shared together, and we would look around the table at each other as we found ourselves visiting that day long passed. when she was done, there was not a dry eye around the table. it was a sacred moment. a glimpse of the eternal in the now.

so as i’ve been thinking about my sermon here today, i found

myself returning again and again to the power of a good letter. someone may text you or ping you or email you or direct message you or contact you on facebook-but none of those particular mediums of communication can begin to compare to a letter in which the person has labored over every word, going back over it again and again and again, crafting the phrases and searching for just the right word and turn of phrase to capture exactly what you want to say. technology has given us a wide array of methods to communicate and because of this variety,

it’s important we remember that this is a distinction to be made

between diversity of form

and depth, significance, and soul.

so, i’ve written you a letter.

i’ll start with some thanks,

then a lesson you’ve taught me,

and then some warnings,

and then a confession.

first, then, some thanks.

there is a pattern to the creative process. you start with an idea, a

hunch, an image, a vision, a picture of the thing you want to create.

it may be a business or a painting or a mission or a cause or a

new way to empower people to help themselves or a basic need that is unmet or a song or a new way to landscape your backyard or a product or a project for school or a piece of furniture or a new color for the walls of your downstairs bathroom because you just can’t stand that awful shade of pale mustard that for some

unfathomable reason the previous owners thought looked good.

and so you set out to make it, create it, change it, fashion it, form

it, organize it and arrange it. and it takes something of you. you

have to sweat, exert and expend yourself. you have to gather or

purchase or harvest the materials. you make a plan, you design

it, engineer it, make sketches, have meetings, do research. you

study how others have done similar things.

and then you get at it. as you work away, what was once just an

idea, an abstraction in your mind begins to become a reality. whether it’s wood and nails or words or paint or a new flow of

resources in a new direction, at some point it begins to take

shape. what once existed only in your mind begins to exist in actual

time and space. you can see it, taste it, hold it, admire it. and because it cost something, because it only exists as a result of your

sweat and blood, you have a visceral attachment to it. it came out of you. and when it’s completed, you may be exhausted, spent,

and ready for a rest, but you are exhilarated.

it’s late sunday night and you’ve been painting all weekend

and you’re sitting there on the floor in the hallway outside that downstairs bathroom and you’re exhausted and it took way longer than you expected and you smell and you need a shower and you

have a bit of a buzz from all of those fumes, but you are the king and queen of your empire because those walls are no longer that putrid shade of pale mustard.

they’re magenta.

or cranberry.

or sea foam green.

you have taken part in the mystery at the heart of creation. we’re

here, somehow. our existence itself continues to be a profound

mystery. being itself raises more questions than it

answers. this mystery takes us deep in to the heart of the divine.

when we create, we are participating in that mystery in a

real and tangible way.

this truth about the creative process brings me to you because

you

were

once

an

idea.

this church, this place, this community, was once simply a

hunch. a dream. a vision. a picture in the mind of a new kind of church for the new world we find ourselves in. a church that was fearless in confronting the injustices and systems of oppression that lurk around every corner and at the very same time deeply committed to the personal, intimate experience of following Jesus, of experiencing the joy and peace that transcends space and time. a church that found the stale, old categories of liberal and conservative boring and irrelevant because we’d experienced resurrection, which includes and affirms anything and everything that brings liberating, new life wherever it’s found irrespective of whatever labels and categories it’s been given because of an abiding conviction that the

tomb is,

after all,

empty.

a church where the main thing was actually the main thing.

a church that understood that there is a simplicity on the other side

of complexity, aware of all of the various interpretations

and theological perspectives and complicated systems of thinking

and analyzing and yet with a clear, resolute sense that Jesus is doing something in the world, bringing water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, peace to the restless, presence to the lonely and we are invited to join his movement. that Jesus is ultimately not a

proposition you intellectually assent to but a person you say ‘yes’

to.

what matters then, is your ‘yes.’ with whatever you have, and whatever you don’t have. with whoever and however you are

or aren’t, wherever you’ve come from. what matters is our ‘yes.’

you,

my friends,

through you i have experienced the mysterious joy of creation.

i will never be able to fully, adequately explain what it has been

like to have imagined you, conceived of you-this church-and then have you exist. from those earliest discussions kristen and i would have in our early twenties, eating lunch at the taco bell on colorado boulevard in los angeles, imagining what what a church could be to this very moment, you have brought me the joy of creation.

thank you.

thank you.

thank you.

and then a second thanks.

in september when you learned that i would be leaving you,

for many of you it was like a bomb going off. you didn’t expect it,

you weren’t looking for it, you got an email on a thursday and

on the following sunday you heard it directly from me. i have, since

then, had the chance to personally interact with a large number of you and you have been across the board extraordinarily consistent in your responses, which have been two:

one: grief

and

two: support.

this is significant, and meaningful, for a number of reasons.

first, any change, even if it’s good, is always a form of loss, and loss must be grieved. that’s the only way it works. stuff it, deny it, repress or suppress it and it will come back to a haunt you, it will lurk

in the shadows and it will resurface later.

your grief then, is a sign of health. it demonstrates an awareness

of your interiors, your heart, and your desire to face and embrace

what’s actually going on inside of you.

and then secondly, you have been supportive. at times,

shockingly so, at least from my perspective. some of you only

had that thursday email and still, when you saw me, with no

details, you expressed your grief and then went on to make it

very clear that whatever we would be up to next, you were

cheering us on. this is significant for a number reasons, namely, your belief that God is big and that any movement to share this love

of God with more people is movement in a life giving direction

and that this same big, loving God is fully capable of taking care

of all of us, whether we are together or apart.

a story, to tell you why this means what it does to me.

several years ago there was a well known pastor who openly,

publicly had a number of issues that he was against, both morally

and spiritually and politically. he was loud and outspoken about

these particular issues. it turns out that one of the issues

he was most vocally opposed to was something that he himself

had struggled with and been engaged in for a number of years.

upon this being revealed publicly, his church released him from

his leadership position. shortly after this a friend of mine happened to meet him while visiting the same city and when they began conversing this pastor-in-exile expressed a great deal of stored

up venom for his former church that he had started, venting about how they had shot their wounded and they hadn’t extended him grace and love and all that. he was shocked that they had treated him like they had.

here’s what i find so startling: he was complaining about how they

dealt with him but he’s the one who shaped and taught and

molded them. he merely found himself on the receiving end

of how he had trained them to be. he created and crafted the

system to behave a particular way and then it behaved in that

exact way.

it’s easy to form a circle and pick up stones,

taking turns quoting bible verses the whole time,

ready to unleash those stones on the one who’s guilty-

it’s another thing to be the person standing in the middle

of that circle, desperate for one person, just one, to say

“is any of you without sin?”

those who have ears to hear,

let them hear.

so that’s the question you have as a leader, the question

you live with: “are they getting it?”

i have tried to teach you about a big God, who holds all things, including us, in an unconditional, loving embrace. i have tried

to teach and model for you an unswerving hope and trust

that change and risk and leaps of faith are normal and at times

absolutely necessary for our growth and the continued expansion

of our hearts. so when, in this change, this loss, this transition,

this departure, you have responded time and time again with largeness of spirit and bigness of heart, with confidence that

the God who got you this far is fully capable of taking you the

rest of the way, deeply attuned to your own emotions and responses and at the very same time convinced that everybody

will be just fine because what could possibly separate us from the love we’ve tasted and experienced, the love of Christ that holds and sustains us all?

oh my. it’s so moving to me.

thank you.

thank you.

thank you.

with those two words of thanks,

a lesson that you’ve taught me.

for many people, the simple dualisms of right and wrong and

good and bad are the sole prism, the lens, through which they

look for God in the world. so if things go well, then ‘God is good’

is how the thinking goes, and if things don’t go well, all kinds of questions arise about God and hope and faith and was it all just

a grand illusion in the first place?

the life we’ve found together, however, is far more

subtle, nuanced, and complex than those simple

dualisms, and i’ve seen you discover this deep well of

insight as it shapes you in profound ways.

i’ve seen you get cancer and struggle with infertility and

attend funerals of people you love and get let go from

your jobs and lose tens of thousands of dollars and get

sued and find out you kid is using drugs and at the

same time i’ve watched you find God in the mess. in the

tension. in the chaos. i’ve seen you find peace and joy

and calm and rest in situations in which everybody else is convinced that peace and joy, much like Elvis, have left the building.

there’s an ancient midrash about jacob who wrestles the

angel. they say that he walks with a limp afterwards, but at

least he’s experienced God.

i’ve watched many of you walk with a limp.

it’s a deeper wisdom you have attained,

a higher level of consciousness,

a more refined and ultimately more enduring way of seeing

that you have acquired.

it’s a spirituality that doesn’t need quick and easy answers,

it shuns the trite and cliché,

it understands Christ is here somewhere in this mess,

and no matter how dark or foreboding it gets,

we will at some point see him,

friday will give way to sunday

and while there are blood and tears and heartache and at

times we’re barely holding on by our fingernails

when we do stumble into the daylight, when we do

find a little respite, a sliver of shalom, when we eventually

do meet the resurrected Christ

it will be real and it will matter and it will be true and

it will satisfy.

i’ve seen you lament

and laugh,

cry

and

celebrate,

weep and wail

and then

whoop it up,

pull your hair out from pain and frustration

and then

die it bright colors because someone’s throwing a party.

you have taught me not to fear the full spectrum of human

experience but to celebrate it, to embrace it, to wallow in it

and soar with it. many Christians are eager to point out that

Jesus said he was the son of God and that’s the wedge issue,

the crux of the faith, the divisive point you have to take a stand

on. i believe he is. and in the same breath, i remind you that

he also referred to himself a shocking number of times as the

‘son of man.’ you know what ‘son of man’ means?

human.

now that’s shocking.

take a stand on that.

what he stressed, what he thought was a big deal, what he called himself time and time again, was son of man.

it is a big deal for a human to be divine, but if

you’re looking to provoke, and if you want to focus in on

astounding claims he made about himself,

how about the mind-bendingly revolutionary claim of the

divine being human?

weeping,

spitting in mud,

eating,

drinking so much he’s accused of being a drunk,

letting people clean his feet with oils,

inviting people to touch his wounded sides.

humanity, now that’s interesting.

Jesus invites us into the full spectrum of human experience,

from lament to exhilaration and everything in between.

from basking in the presence of God,

to cursing at the top of your lunges from the rooftops

because God is nowhere to be found,

shrieking till you’re hoarse ‘my God, my God, why have

you screwed me’

now that’s life.

that’s real.

that’s divine.

you’ve shown me how to find God in the full spectrum of human

experience.

so, there are some thanks,

and a lesson you’ve taught me.

now, some warnings.

first, there is a meta-movement in the scriptures, an arc

to the unfolding story of redemption. it is the movement

from word to flesh.

think of the ten commandments. one of them is ‘don’t

kill.’ it’s absolute base level requirements here: could

you just not murder each other? but then the story progresses,

it evolves, and so later Jesus says that greater love has

no one than to lay down their life for another.

and then he gives his life, out of love. so the earlier ‘could

you try not to kill each other?’ grows into ‘could you love

with such fidelity and devotion that you’d actually give your

life for another?’

the command, the words, to protect and preserve life

take on flesh and blood, to the point where it’s an entire

pervasive pattern of life, second nature, in which you seek

the well being of others ahead of your own.

word takes on flesh. this is the story of Jesus, the word,

the creative life force of the universe, taking on a body

and moving into the neighborhood. so when Jesus talks

about the kind of life God has for us, he talks about us

experiencing in flesh and blood a whole new way of life.

Serving, caring, discovering, thanking, resisting, forgiving,

loving, tasting, embracing, doing whatever we do for the

least of these. it’s an embodied faith, one that’s dirty

and bloody with sleeves rolled up and sweat on the

brow. it’s one where there’s plenty of wine at the party.

i write this to you because of how many of you have been

challenged about your participation in the life of this

church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe

over there at mars hill?

as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of

faith. Jesus came to give us life. a living, breathing, throbbing,

pulsating blow your hair back tingle your spine roll the

windows down and drive fast experience of God right

here, right now.

word taking on flesh and blood.

and so you’ve found yourself defending and explaining

and trying to find the words for your experience that is

fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than

words.

so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having

long discussions about who believes what, a bit like

dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk,

do this:

take out a cup

and some bread

and put it in the middle of the table,

and say a prayer and examine yourselves

and then make sure everybody’s rent is paid and there’s

food in their fridge and clothes on their backs

and then invite everybody to say

‘yes’ to the resurrected Christ with whatever ‘yes’ they

can muster in the moment and then you take that bread

and you dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and

trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here

right now and

then together taste that new life and liberation and

forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new

humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have

found bread showing the others beggars where they found it

remind yourselves that

this

is

what

you

believe.

remember, the movement is word to flesh.

beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it

back into words

flowing from this, then, a second warning.

there is a question that lingers in the air,

the question that people actually talk about it

the question, of course, is ‘what will happen to mars hill?’

now please don’t be deceived by this question,

thrown off by it’s ubiquity,

misled by the way that it is freely, commonly asked,

as if the answer is somehow out there somewhere

waiting to be discovered.

the way advertising works is you try and associate the

impersonal, inanimate product you are selling with something personal and embodied. sometimes famous people are paid large sums of money to endorse a product, in the hope that whatever this

person is known for, whatever they’ve accomplished or

achieved, will, in essence, rub off on the product. so that

you’ll think ‘michael jordan, the greatest basketball player

ever, is talking about this plain white t shirt that manages to

keep it’s shape around the neck after multiple wearings,

so this must be the greatest plain white t shirt ever.” that sort

of thing. the effort, then, is to associate the tangible product with an intangible value or concept embodied by a person.

several years ago apple began running those annoying/clever

ads in which the nerdy pc has a  stilted conversation with the cool guy mac. microsoft took a beating in those ads, so they began running a series of counter ads in which groovy hipster folks,

look at the camera and say ‘i’m a pc.’ once again, trying to associate an inanimate, impersonal product with acutal

flesh and blood, breathing, living people.

you my friends have the opposite problem. when people

ask ‘what about mars hill?’ or ‘what’s mars hill going to do?’

it’s as if mars hill is a disembodied reality with a life of its own.

here’s the twist: the church is not an inanimate, impersonal

product. there is no ‘mars hill’ in theory. there is no abstract, disembodied entity mars hill apart from the people in this room

who ARE mars hill.

so when people say what’s going to happen to mars hill?

they’re asking what’s going to happen to you. what are you

going to do. how are you going to respond?

you are the answer,

because you are the church.

mars hill is not a product,

it is a gathering of people.

you.

that’s why there’s a sign.

how does a person find mars hill?

well, you have to meet one.

remember when woody yelled at  buzz ‘you are a toy!!!?’

i’m woody, yelling at you, buzz: you are a church.

you are the answer to the question what will happen to

mars hill.

and so please,

i ask of you,

i plead with you,

to answer well.

prove them wrong.

bring your friends,

give money,

get more involved.

believe.

trust.

practice hope.

there is an essence to this place, a spirit. that’s how organizations and institutions and movements and causes are: they develop patterns and energies that manifest themselves in fairly consistent ways over time. and you know it the moment you walk through

the door. you size a place up, you catch what’s in the air, you

read the body language of a place. you’re here because of the essence and spirit of this place. people are welcome here, and they know it. Christ is alive here, healing people and liberating people and giving new life. there is mission here, cause, purpose beyond these walls. and you know it. i know it. it’s a reverent hum just below the surface of everything we do here. you can taste it, feel

it, smell it.

don’t mess with that.

protect that, preserve that.

you know what i’m talking about.

if you grumble and complain and become agitated and divisive

you will ruin the pure, sweet, humble, captivating essence that

is present in the midst of this community.

when in doubt, stop talking and start praying.

when in chaos, regroup.

stay calm, be cool, be nonreactive.

once again, mars hill is going to be in new territory, trying

things, experimenting, learning together where the new life

is.

it’s what we’ve been doing from the beginning.

if you want this church to be some other church,

then please leave this church and go to that church.

this church has it’s own unique path,

it’s own particular DNA

and you must be true to it,

or you will lose something vital to who you are,

and why God brought you together.

in the coming days the question for each you is

‘are you bringing hope and creativity and life here

or are you using your voice and power to cut it down?

are you destroying something beautiful?

do you believe that this church’s best days are ahead of you?

if your answer is anything other than yes,

you are already answering the question.

which leads me to a universal truth:

people whisper sweet nothings to their lover

but they yell ‘fire.’

reflect on this with me.

love, whispered.

danger, yelled.

fear, it turns out, is often louder than love.

sometimes fear is good, and yelling even better,

especially when there actually is a fire.

but other times fear is toxic, destructive,

the opposite of love.

remember that.

look for it.

and call it out, confront it when you come across it.

fear has no place in this place.

when you’ve leaned over and looked into the tomb,

when you’ve ran huffing and puffing to your friends,

insisting in between breaths, ‘he isn’t in there!”

fear is longer the game you’re playing.

you’ve been seized by hope.

and hope has it’s own rules.

and now for a confession.

i have tried my best to live at peace among you.

i have done everything i could to be best of my awareness

to keep my side of the street clean.

i have tried to be a voice of hope, help, healing, and truth

to you, year after year, sunday after sunday.

i have tried to apologize whenever i wronged you,

i have knocked on some of your doors,

asking for your forgiveness,

and you have been gracious,

and kind,

every time.

and so,

with all of these years here,

all these experiences,

all those sermons,

i confess to you today

that i feel like i’m just getting started.

like i’m a rookie, a freshman, a noob.

i feel younger than ever.

i feel like the world is big and wide and open and things are possible that if they were revealed right now, we’d turn

to each other to say ‘no way! that’s awesome!’

i believe that God has made this day,

that it’s good,

and you can have joy in it.

even if you’re limping.

can you make this confession with me today?

can you say ‘i feel like i’m just getting started?’

you can be old,

you can be over 40,

you can have a lot of life behind you,

and yet you’re being renewed,

you’re being reborn,

you’re wide eyes and filled with wonder,

you’ve tasted and you’ve seen in such a way

that you realize

you’re just getting started.

the past and the present and the future begin

to meld into one giant eternal now

and you understand in that moment

what Jesus was talking about when he said

he came to give us that kind of life.

i feel like i’m just getting started.

i feel like i’m just getting started.

i feel like i’m just getting started.

from quantum physics, we’ve learned that when two subatomic

particles are bonded, attached, together, and then they’re

separated they exhibit fascinating behavior. they demonstrate

that they are aware of and affected by that particle they were

once attached to. this is called quantum entanglement. we’ve

been together for a number of years, and now we’re parting

in some ways, but forever we’ll be entangled.

and i celebrate that.

and so i stand today in your midst,

happy, satisfied, anticipating magnificent tomorrows,

feeling like i’m just getting started,

and i say, until next time, with as much love as i can

possibly muster,

grace and peace be with you,

your brother rob.

See also:

ROB BELL HERETIC

ROB BELL AND POSTMODERN NEO-LIBERALISM

PHIL JOHNSON DESTROYS LOVE WINS MYTHOLOGY OF ROB BELL

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This has largely been done by looking back through the corridors of church history and dragging in anything that even remotely claimed to be Christian—heretical or not—and then questioning as to why said subject should not now be a legitimate form of the Christian faith.

While the issue of women being ordained elders and pastors has been debated within some of evangelicalism, up until now it’s remained more in the charismatic and Pentecostal fringes. The larger denominations had for the most part still maintained the proper Biblical position that women cannot be elders.

However, as one whose work in the Lord is to monitor Intel along the Internet Front and assess trends within the larger visible church, it’s my considered opinion this will be changing. You need to know that placing women in the pastorate is now going to be a real push by those influential within the Emerging Church.

Take for example the following tweet today from EC theologian Scot McKnight:

(Online source)

As we follow the link we come to McKnight’s Emerging Church comrade Dan Kimball‘s post praising Scot McKnight – new e-book “Junia Is Not Alone” about women and church leadership. In his typical EC maybe-I-do or maybe-I-don’t hold his views Kimball calls McKnight his “New Testament theological friend, guru.”

He then tells us what we already knew; McKnight takes a position in favor of women pastors:

No matter what your viewpoint is on this issue, this little e-book is worth a read. By the title, you can already know that Scot comes to an egalitarian conclusion. (Online source)

Kimball then shares his belief in the EC postmodern partyline:

I personally want to be looking at different perspectives of all types of issues to try and understand them. I don’t want to ever automatically suppose that my view I first learned in a church or in a denomination is always the one that has the most biblical backing to it.
(Online source)

Very people-friendly and pious, but that’s not the attitude of the Christian. As one involved in apologetics, counter-cult evangelism and Comparative Religion these past 24+ years I love discussing with people what they believe. Following love my neighbor as myself, of course I want to understand what they believe.

However, it doesn’t matter one iota what a church or denomination teaches or how sincerely they believe it; it matters what the text of the Bible says—period. I don’t have “to ever automatically suppose” anything. I only need to read what God’s Word says on a given subject; that’s where EC reps like McKnight and Kimball err.

To no one’s surprise, in attempting to make his case for women elders McKnight asserts a priori Junia was a female apostle:

In Junia is Not Alone, I will tell the story of Junia. Alongside her story, we will encounter others like her—women who had a wonderful voice, and then no voice, and who are experiencing a re-voicing. Now to the Story of Junia.

Junia Is Not Alone: How She Fits into the Bible

Junia, who had no idea she would someday be the subject of endless discussions, appears innocently enough in Romans 16:7 alongside her husband, Andronicus.[1]

Since this isn’t the main point of this piece I’ll simply point out that in his Junia Is Not Alone McKnight is, at best, being misleading in his treatment of Junia. The fact is, Christian apologist Matt Slick is correct when he points out:

The early church fathers are not in agreement about the gender of Junia. There even seems to be evidence that strongly suggests Junia was a male. Commentaries differ on the gender. Translations differ on how Romans 16:7 is to be rendered into English. (Online source)

Having studied this issue of women pastors for years I can tell you the arguments raised by the Emerging Church in favor of this unbiblical position are not new at all. However, to their core demographic in the younger sectors of the woefully uncathecized evangelical community they do appear to be.

The truth is, many of them have been used since the 1960′s when the secular feminist agenda slithered into apostate mainline and neo-orthodox colleges and denominations with their dead churches. Unfortunately, evangelicals are only now beginning to pay the price for years of allowing EC wolves to chew up their young.

___________________________________________________________________________
End notes:

[1] McKnight, Scot (2011-12-01). Junia Is Not Alone (Kindle Locations 54-61). Patheos Press. Kindle Edition.

See also:

THOUGHTS ON WOMEN PASTORS

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

MARTIN LUTHER SAYS NO…TO WOMEN PASTORS

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In covering the EC I’ve been showing you, as well as carefully documenting, the really awful impact these rebels against the final authority of the Word of God have had upon the church visible through their postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology—a Liberalism 2.0—often referred to as “big tent” Emergence Christianity.

One of those involved with the EC right from very early on would be Dan Kimball, author of the book The Emerging Church. You may recall that I wrote a piece concerning Kimball in February of 2010 called Pirate Christian Radio, which my friend Shawn Larowe kindly donated hours to transcribe for me and appeared in Dan Kimball On The Record.

You’ll notice some of the time in the interview Kimball chose to use to take some swipes at those of us in this line of ministry that he referred to as “watchdog discernment ministry.” Well, as evangelicalism continues it’s slide into apostasy Jesus has raised up online apologetics and discernment ministries like this one to use the Internet to warn of wolves attempting to prey upon His sheep and to supply food in proper Biblical doctrine.

Dan Kimball certainly isn’t doing so; and a large part of the problem with his so-called repentance in that Fighting for the Faith interview is that Kimball also told me over a year ago exactly what he tells Rosebrough. Has anyone seen any real indication of repentance by Dan Kimball? I know I sure haven’t; and the following tweet from him today actually indicates the opposite as far I see it:

(Online source)

The link takes us to the Speakers page for the upcoimg 2012 Яadicalis shindig put on annually by Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren. The below tweet from the official Яadicalis Twitter account confirms that Kimball is a featured speaker for this conference at Saddleback Church along with Warren himself:

(Online source)

From the Яadicalis website we see:

(Online source)

It really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we now see Dan Kimball working more closely together with Rick Warren; they are merely two sides of the same man-centered Church Growth Movement coin. What does come as a bit of a surprise is why such as these waited so long to more publicly reveal their identical purpose:

“Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” (Amos 3:3)

See also:

DAN KIMBALL ON THE RECORD

RICK WARREN TWEETS A MESSAGE TO KEN SILVA?

RICK WARREN AND TEACHINGS OF DEMONS

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It’s been a great run and I remain thankful to have had this time thus far despite the often harsh criticism. Sadly, the downgrade of the Christian community has now caused works like this to also take much friendly fire.

As spiritual darkness spreads postmodernism has made this a rather gelatinous generation scared of its own spiritual shadows and terrified to make theological stands. Instead its bought into a false dichotomy perpetrated by the neo-liberal cult operating within the Emerging Church.

Satan has used these minions of his to convince people that doctrine really doesn’t matter that much if you “love” Jesus. However, as Jesus clearly told us, salvation does involve what one believes:

“I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24)

Now during this time where deceitful spirits roam within the church visible spreading their teachings of demons God is using the Internet much like He did the printing press to spread His truth. And part of that truth is: Satan has been attacking areas of doctrine that will quickly cause much confusion.

One recent example is the cardinal doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which now must be defended as you’ll see in James MacDonald, T.D. Jakes & The Trinity. It’s important work for me to keep you apprised of these trends here at AM. However, you need to remember that its far from all I do in ministry each.

Following the Lord’s instruction in Matthew 6 I don’t talk of these other things very often; but here I will as a way to give thanks, and prayerfully, to offer encouragement to faithful supporters. Many evangelical churches and denominations are as apostate right now as when Martin Luther stood hammer in hand.

Virtually every day I receive letters from people heartbroken over how their local churches are compromising and how they are treated when they try to offer Biblical criticism to their pastors and leadership. Just the same as those of us in this ministry field, they’re immediately brushed off and branded haters.

So as a pastor-teacher a lot of my time at AM is spent answering questions, researching information for them, and offering pastoral counsel. It’s my undeserved privilege to serve the Lord’s people. That noted, still unlike e.g. a lawyer I don’t have the option of charging for the hours involved in these activities.

If people don’t choose to offer financial support for works like this, then we won’t be here. This is not a complaint, it’s merely stating a fact. Even so, I wouldn’t trade the satisfaction in the Lord to minister to people quite literally from all over the world. Like the hour I spent on the phone late last Saturday night.

How amazing that the pastor of a small church in rural New Hampshire would receive a call from someone on the other side of the world in Azerbaijan. This believer was concerned about a couple of issues and I was afforded the opportunity to preach the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name to them.

This is the kind of thing your faithful financial support is allowing me to do. Perhaps you’ve been blessed through the work here and maybe you might consider helping to support this labor in the Lord. A gift of any amount—whether one time or on a regular basis—goes a long way toward helping to keep AM available.

If you’d like to donate via PayPal you may click here; or you can make your checks/money orders payable to Connecticut River Baptist Church with Apprising Ministries in the memo and send them to:

Connecticut River Baptist Church
P.O. Box 340
Claremont, NH 03743

In closing this, for now, I’ll leave you with another testimony of how God is using this work. The following is presented with permission:

roughly two years ago you commented on my blog, Jesus in Shantytown. what you said to me hurt and made me cry for an entire day (i am the one who was writing a book about unity and had interviewed brian mclaren, rob bell, shane claiborne, etc.)

i had no idea that i had veered off course and was in very dangerous water. the Lord used you to veer me back to His Word. thank you for speaking the harsh truth to me. i am now a watchman on the wall, if you will, and can sniff out a heretic from a mile away.

thank you for what you do. thank you, thank you, a hundred times thank you. my life has truly been changed and i am no longer leaning on my own understanding or created image of God.

in Christ,
mandie oliver

See also:

AM SUPPORT APPRECIATED, HEADING TOWARD CRITICAL LOW

APPRISING MINISTRIES TOUCHING LIVES

T.D. JAKES AND SUPPORT FOR APPRISING MINISTRIES

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From Calvinistic Cartoons (click to enlarge)

See also:

ALTAR TO AN UNKNOWN LOVE: ROB BELL, C.S. LEWIS

NEW BOOK BY ROB BELL

PHIL JOHNSON DESTROYS LOVE WINS MYTHOLOGY OF ROB BELL

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A major factor contributing to this is the spread of Counter Reformation spirituality and Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) ala gurus Dallas Willard and his spiritual twin Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster.

You need to realize that it’s even slithered deeply into the mainstream of evangelicalism as you can see e.g. in Gospel Coalition Contributor Mike Cosper Defends Retreat With Roman Catholics. CSM is not a neutral practice; know this, my research shows that once someone begins dabbling in this they almost immediately begin to drift away from proper Biblical doctrine.

The following quote is from Richard Foster — Celebration Of Deception Evangelical Mysticism, an important Critcal Issues Commentary article by Christian apologist Bob DeWaay. It also highlights another aspect of the rancid fruit of CSM; a growing rebellion within evanjellyfish against Sola Scriptura. With this article DeWaay sends a clear Biblical warning concerning a core teaching of spurious CSM.

Foster’s musings are really rooted in classic mysticism and actually comprise a large part of the faulty foundation of the deformation of the faith originally espoused in the evangelical camp by the Emerging Church aka the Emergent Church. We’re now beginning to experience the price paid when leaders in mainstream churches turned their younger sectors over to wolves like Rob Bell with his Love Wins mythology.

And there’s no excuse; for example, two years ago I warned you that Rick Warren Now Openly Promoting Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism as he brought Protholic CSM guru Peter Scazzero in to the first Radicalis conference. Sadly however, as you can see in John Piper, Rick Warren & Foster-Willardism and Tim Keller And Contemplative Spirituality CSM has now infected the Reformed community.

Now there’s virtually no place left in the visible church where one can escape the ecumenical effects of the divination of CSM. Listen carefully; because I tell you in the Lord that Bob DeWaay is dead-on-target as he explains to you:

In February 2008, Christianity Today ran a glowing cover story about Evangelicalism’s recent embrace of medieval Roman Catholic mysticism entitled The Future lies in the Past… The article views Foster as one who continues to guide the movement… Foster’s “journey inward” is unbiblical and dangerous. I will show [in this article] that most of the spiritual disciplines that he calls “means of grace” are no means of grace at all—but a means of putting oneself under spiritual deception.

The Journey Inward

The Bible nowhere describes an inward journey to explore the realm of the spirit. God chose to reveal the truth about spiritual reality through His ordained, Spirit-inspired, biblical writers. What is spiritual and not revealed by God is of the occult and, therefore, forbidden. We have discussed this in many articles and have produced DVD seminars on the topic. But the concept of sola scriptura is totally lost on mystics such as Richard Foster. They, like the enthusiasts that Calvin and Luther warned against, believe they can gain valid and useful knowledge of spiritual things through direct, personal inspiration. Foster describes the idea of the disciplines that are the topic of his book: “The classical Disciplines of the spiritual life call us to move beyond surface living into the depths. They invite us to explore the inner caverns of the spiritual realm.”

So Foster has conceptually repudiated sola scriptura on page one to replace it with a journey inward to explore the realm of spirits. Something must have been seriously amiss in evangelicalism already in 1978 to render this book a bestseller! It ought to have been repudiated on the spot. In a footnote to that statement Foster writes, “In one form or another all of the devotional masters have affirmed the necessity of the Disciplines” (Foster: 1). The devotional “masters,” by the way, are mostly Roman Catholics who never were committed to the principle of sola scriptura.

It is not surprising that they looked for spirituality through experimentation. But as an “inner light” Quaker, Foster never was committed to sola scriptura either. Forgetting that the Bible forbids divination, Foster explains what he is after: [W]e must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In their writings, all of the masters of meditation strive to awaken us to the fact that the universe is much larger than we know, that there are vast unexplored inner regions that are just as real as the physical world we know so well. . . . They call us to the adventure, to be pioneers in this frontier of the Spirit. (Foster: 13)

Realizing that his readers would likely take this as an endorsement of Eastern religions, he makes a disclaimer that it is not Transcendental Meditation (TM) or something of that ilk: “Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it” (Foster: 15). But what Foster wishes us to fill our minds with are personal revelations from the spirit realm that we naively are to think are the voice of God. This sort of meditation is not meditating on what God has said, but uses a technique to explore the spirit world. In other words, it is divination. (Online source)

See also:

MARK DRISCOLL AND NEO-REFORMED NEW CALVINIST CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY

MYSTICISM: WHEN GOD SENDS AN EVIL SPIRIT

JUST SAY NO TO CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

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You likely know that he’s resigned from Mars Hill Bible Church and turned it over to his good friend and fellow apostate Shane Hipps to pursue—among other things—producing secular television.

Bell’s new delusion is to develop a new audience and lure even more people away from Jesus. Yesterday in The Religion World Jeff Kunerth tells us Rob Bell takes his act on the road.

Kunerth points out:

Best-selling author and controversial pastor Rob Bell, who ignited evangelical ire with a book that questioned the existence of Hell, is embarking on a seven-city tour of the U.S. and Canada in November. Bell has announced he is leaving his Mars Hill Church in December and moving to L.A. to pursue other creative endeavors including scripting a television show. (Online source)

“Evangelical ire?” I think not; a mild titter is more like it in the evangelical community. That fact is, the doctrine of hell is not well in the church visible. It’s actually been pretty much absent for years now anyway.

Kunerth continues:

Bell’s “Fit to Smash Ice” tour will include stops in Toronto, Ithaca, N.Y., Providence, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, Va., and Jersey City. Other dates, including stops in the South, may be added later, his publisher said.

“This is a very personal tour for me,” Bell explains. “It’s several hours of entirely new content I haven’t given before, exploring all the exhilarating ways we stumble and fumble and fail and bleed and limp along and just how good and sacred and thrilling it all is. I’m hoping to break some new ground on this tour, going places we haven’t gone before. (Online source)

Well, that’s not any new ground; it’s the same type of man-love we hear from all of these neo-Gnostic mystics corrupted by Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism. Get used to it; it figures to get worse as it spreads.

And finally, Kunerth informs us:

Bell says The Love Wins Companion: A Study Guide for Those Who Want to Go Deeper will be published in mid-November. The guidebook will offer insights and commentary by experts: theologians, Bible scholars, scientists, and pastors and a deep analysis of all relevant Bible passages on heaven, hell, and salvation.

It will include Bell’s reflection on the publication of Love Wins,…While on tour, Bell is also working on a new book about “quantum physics and the Eucharist.” (Online source)

You can see, Bell’s still up to his use of titilation; we’re supposed to wonder what quantum physics has to do with the Eucharist. First of all, speculations of scientists have nothing to with the Gospel.

However, in the transcription below of a segment from an interview conducted by process theology apostate Tripp Fuller, we can get a bit more of the picture concerning where Rob Bell has now drifted.

Again consistent with those deluded by mysticism Bell, who argued in favor of Christian Universalism in his Love Wins mythology, following is the beginning of his coming out of the closet re. panentheism.

Pan—all, en—in, Theos—God; mystics often express this as “the divine spark.” While teaching on John, chapter 1, Rob Bell’s fellow apostate Shane Hipps put it this way:

 This logos affects everybody including Osama bin Laden, as long as he’s got breath in him is a spark of the divine.

Mystics believe the logos is within all of creation because they think God created the universe within Himself. Rob Bell appears to believe that quantum physics confirms the mythology of panentheism:

I’m working on a book right now on quantum physics and theology. I think that some of what  scientists are saying about the unpredictability and the in determinant nature of the universe at the subatomic level is going to radically transform how we see the physical and the spiritual.

I think we’re going to see a major, major, major revolution in how we perceive the world around us and it’s going to have
massive implications for theology; that’s what I’m working on right now. I was—so that—that book is coming into—to light and I think some of the fundamental ways people have talked about things, the physical, the non—spiritual, the material, the immaterial, the sacred, the secular.

I think all that’s—about to undergo some massive changes, which are going to be awesome and beautiful and I think lots of people are going to experience God—because a bunch of obstacles are going to all the sudden not be obstacles. And that’s about—I just said some very, very vague sorts of things, but I think in the areas of science we’re going to see some extraordinary things—the ongoing creation of the universe. (Online source)

See also:

PHIL JOHNSON DESTROYS LOVE WINS MYTHOLOGY OF ROB BELL

ROB BELL HERETIC

ROB BELL AND POSTMODERN NEO-LIBERALISM

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