If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-5, ESV)

Different Doctrine Has Come Emerging

In a recent article in The Washington Post Emergent-US National Coordinator Tony Jones proudly informs us that in the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church:

We are questioning a lot of presuppositions of conventional Christians: What should a church look like? How do we really understand Scripture in a modern context?” And then he informs us, “To conservatives, we seem like relativists, and to liberals, we seem like Jesus freaks.

Well let me see if I can help you with your questions there Tony. A Biblically sound local church should look just like it always has, groups of believers called out of this world system by God the Father, who are then born again by God the Holy Spirit through faith in the vicarious penal substututionary of God the Son Jesus Christ upon the Cross. They meet together on the first day of the week to worship the Lord, to be taught the Word of God from the senior teaching elder known as the pastor, and to have fellowship one with one another.

And in regard to some alleged “modern context,” this would be completely irrelevant in the understanding of Holy Scripture. For you see Tony the Scriptures mean today just what they have always meant. The Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of our Creator and contains everything He felt we need to know about how to come into a saving relationship with Him, and then live a sanctified life for His glory. And I might add Tony to those of us who believe the Doctrines of Grace in Holy Scripture those of you who practice Contemplative/Centering Prayer not only seem like relativists but as heretical Gnostics as well.

No Set Belief System Is A Belief System

The Washington Post article then points out that:

The [Emergent] movement has no membership rolls, set beliefs or creed; liturgical diversity is encouraged. There is no way to know how many congregations are putting “emerging church” ideas into practice, Jones said. But “thousands of churches and pastors are . . . listening in, coming to hear Brian [McLaren] and reading my weekly e-mails.”

That last sentence has a couple of things that really should arrest our attention. The emerging Hollow Men truly are growing in influence in evangelical circles and Brian McLaren is emerging as an even more prominent spokesman for this highly schismatic anti-Reformation movement. McLaren is even going to be a speaker at the General Session for the Zondervan’s National Pastor’s Conference 2007 where he has even been invited to come share his heretical and aberrant doctrines to your pastors and youth ministers. I have already documented that Zondervan is a financial supporter of Emergent in Enemies of the Cross,

Now for those who may wonder, let me share the reason that I refer to the leaders of the Emergent Church who are championing this rebellion of new liberalism against the authority of the Bible such as Tony Jones and Guru Brian McLaren and cultural icon Rob Bell as Hollow Men. In his lecture The Cult of Liberalism, which I highly recommend Dr. Walter Martin informs us of the result of the methodology of the original liberals:

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.

And this is exactly what these Emergent deceivers are doing when they say they have no “set beliefs” and that “liturgical diversity is encouraged.” They are busy emptying Christian terms of their original meanings and reimagining new ones. You need to see that what is happening in the Emergent Church, as the new cult of liberalism, is they are “questioning a lot of presuppositions” (i.e. cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith) in order to carry out Satan’s plan to open the door to an inclusivism that he’s aimed at destroying the Lord’s Reformation. This is what I am bringing out on my articles Emergent Church: The Spirit Is Inclusive and The New Evangelicalism: Anything Goes.

What is happening right now is that through the Contemplative Spirituality that originated in the apostate Church of Rome the Devil is now drawing his tri-columns of compromise–the Purpose Driven Church, the Emergent Church, and the Word Faith Church–together into his Ecumenical Church of Deceit. The delusion of a false sense of God’s love and presence which eventually comes to all who practice so-called “Christian” meditation (read: transcendental meditation in Christian terminology) long enough does away with doctrine and is preparing the way for Satan’s coming Global Family.

However, in the actual historic orthodox Christian faith there is absolutely no allowance to question things that God has said clearly in the Bible. For this is what the Lord says – “do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?” (Isaiah 45:11) Now whether or not pouty postmoderns like this or not, Rob Bell is clearly wrong when he says Jesus “is giving his (sic) followers the authority to make new interpretations of the Bible” (Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith, 050).

By the way Rob and Tony, you should also know that 2 Timothy 3:16 clearly says – “All Scripture is God-breathed,” not just the parts that communities of people rebelling against their Creator happen to like. And Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse is exactly right when he said: “The Bible is every bit as much a creative act of God as the Virgin Birth itself.”