“When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming,’ and so it turns out. And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, ‘It will be a hot day,’ and it turns out that way. You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time? And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right?” (Luke 12:54-57, NASB)

The Bible Of The Apostasy

The Christian faith as presented today to allegedly postmodern America by postvangelicalism and Emerging Church leaders like  simply does not square with the what the texts of the Bible say when taken at face value. This shouldn’t surprise us when we see Rick Warren using The Message translation and with the neo-orthodox view (at best) view of Scripture of Emerging Church leaders like Rob Bell. But this new reformation of Christianity Lite fathered by Robert Schuller would never have cost any of the Apostles their lives.

Rather, the first century Greeks and Romans would have flocked to a faith where you can do whatever your own religious system called for and then at the same time just incorporate whatever parts of the things Jesus of Nazareth taught that you happened to like. Can you now begin to see the Emergent Church for what it really is? Can you see the Word Faith Church for what it really is? And now can you see current evangelicalism for what it has become?

You see once it was only liberal theologians who would attempt to pit “Paul’s” theology against that of Christ Jesus of Nazareth as if what they taught under the direct inspiration of God the Holy Spirit was in opposition. But by the late 1960’s evangelical leaders like Billy Graham actually held the door to our Lord’s Church open for heretics like his good friend Robert Schuller and in reality helped usher him in to teach this rubbish to the evangelical community at large.

The fact is that Robert Schuller’s book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (SE) might as well be the “bible” of this current apostasy because firmly rooted in its Gnostic philosophies of the metaphysical Mind Science cults are the self-promoting blasphemies of the vile Word Faith Movement (WF) as spewed forth by brazen heretics and false prophets like Benny Hinn and Rod Parsley.

This poisoned spiritual water of WF is also the very same polluted well that the “kindle, gentler” self-centered musings of Joel Osteen spring forth. One of the most popular of the plethora of man-pleasers in the cult of WF the smiling Osteen quietly teaches the exact same aberrations and outright heresy once put forth by the late Kenneth Hagin, which comprise the very same spiritual cyanide that is currently espoused by WF cult leader Kenneth Copeland.

Schuller’s influence can also be seen in how through such broad acceptance by evangelicals it has even laid seeds of corruption in the more orthodox teachings of men like Charles Stanley as well. And it is this same apparent desire to please men that has twisted people like Rick Warren into religious associations like the one he had with the “Father of Modern Management,” the late Peter Drucker.

Bill Bright: The Prophet Of The Wonderful Plan

Now listen to Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who tells Christianity Today that when his fellow charismatic and Pentecostals lament a supposed lack of prophets in the modern world he then refers them to Bill Bright – “ ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.’ Think about that. That was a major prophetic statement into his generation (November 2005, 44).”

Oh Brother Haggard, was it ever. In fact Schuller opens his broadcasts with the nauseatingly saccharine, “God loves you, and I do too.” And it was this very same umbilical cord that would later carry Satan’s spiritual venom from Schuller into Rick Warren to mainstream American Christianity when Warren found his plan of purpose driving him to became the most prominent leader within the Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD) of postevangelicalism.

We will also note that Bill Bright’s own wonderful plan would be to become one of the driving forces behind the apostate document Evangelicals And Catholics Together, a fiasco from which the evangelical camp will never recover. So yes indeed, one could say that Bill Bright did happen to be a prophet alright because without question he would end up forecasting the Purpose Driven pillar of the ECoD.

I Will Make Myself

Men and women please wake up, the very title of Schuller’s book Self-Esteem really does give its serpentine source away: “I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14)…”ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5, KJV). Can you see it? Have you ever heard the American motto: The Self-made Man? Or how about the old satanic classic: “God helps those who help themselves.”

This kind of thing plays very well to our independent American culture doesn’t it? So open your eyes, what does this then tell you about who is really driving this pagan postmodern nation? And even now the Devil has gotten the evangelical camp to buy his oldest lie; the very lie that he fell for in his own delusion: “I will be the master of my own fate, I am the captain of my own soul; I will make myself; I am…my own…god.”

Among the doctrines of demons that Schuller would teach in SE, which would tragically go on to poison, paralyze and finally mortally wound what has now become evangelicalism, we find the source of the current infatuation with secular psychology – “Are we aware that theology has failed to accommodate and apply proven insights in human behavior as revealed by twentieth-century psychologists?” ( 27)

But you see here’s where the evangelical “love train” originally jumped track because we were already warned:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ (Colossians 2:8).

And just as in the history recorded within the texts of the Bible God called for people to make choices to either follow what He says or what the world says, so the Lord called His Church in America to do the same. Our history will show that evangelicalism would instead choose to follow people like Robert Schuller and those twentieth century psychologists down a pragmatic sinner sensitive road into the ECoD of “one size fits all” Christianity Lite.

However, as usual the Master cuts straight across this man-pleasing teaching when He says – “Enter through the narrow gate.” Then Jesus refers to the broad way, which also happens to pass right back through the Church of Rome with her apostate Roman Catholicism on its way into Hell, as the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it (see–Matthew 7:13-14).

The Return Of Liberalism And Pitting Christ Against Paul

In his book SE Robert Schuller makes the ludicrous comment: “Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be ‘God-centered,’ not man-centered.’ ” In his excellent piece A New Reformation? The Faulty Gospel of Robert Schuller Joseph P. Gudel comments on the following foolish statement from Schuller:

One might legitimately ask why Dr. Schuller believes classical theology errs so gravely. His answer: Luther and Calvin were listening to the wrong person! He asks the following rhetorical question: “Luther and Calvin, we know, looked to the Book of Romans in the Bible for their primary inspiration. Were they, unknowingly, possessed more by the spirit of St. Paul than by the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Are we not on safer grounds if we look to our Lord’s words to launch our reformation?” [18] The implication is that what Jesus said in the gospels overrides everything else in the Bible.

For Schuller then, some parts of the Bible (i.e., what Jesus said as recorded in the gospels) have more authority than other areas of the Bible. In other parts of SELF- ESTEEM: THE NEW REFORMATION, Dr. Schuller is more explicit. “But can anything be above the Scriptures? Yes, the Eternal Word transcends the written Word. Christ is the Word made flesh. Christ is the Lord over the Scriptures; the Scriptures are not Lord over Christ… The Bible must not compete with the Lord for the seat of glory. We are ‘saved by the blood,’ not ‘by the Book.’ We believe in the holy Trinity, not a holy Quadrangle. Christ must be, at all times, Lord over the Scriptures.”

In his own thorough analysis of Schuller’s “cult of self-esteem” Dr. Walter Martin provides the following from SE regarding “Dr. Schuller and Scripture”:

Labels such as evangelical, fundamental, charismatic, liberal contribute to polarization and produce a climate of implied or outspoken distrust. Where the Protestant reformation was a reactionary movement, the twentieth century reformation must be a reconciling movement. Luther and Calvin we know looked to the book of Romans in the Bible for their primary inspiration.

Were they unknowingly possessed by the spirit of St. Paul than by the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Are we not on safer grounds if we look to our Lord’s Words to launch our reformation? We believe in a holy Trinity, not a holy Quadrangle; Father, Son, Holy Spirit and the Bible.

Dr. Martin then continues with the following very insightful comments actually revealing a primary and very rotten root from which sprang the current highly subjective and existential rejection of  sola Scripura ala neo-orthodoxy in this postevangelicalism masquerading as the historic orthodox Christian faith:

Nineteenth century liberalism put Paul and Christ at odds with each other. “Go back to Jesus, forget Paul.” Dr. Schuller tells us the Reformers built on the Book of Romans and the spirit of Paul, but we’re going to build the new reformation of self-esteem on Jesus and the Lord’s Prayer.

We are right back to nineteenth century liberal theology. We are right back to attacking the unity of the Scriptures for Dr. Schuller does not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. And therefore we are faced with the destruction of the authority of the Scripture, and [instead] with a reliance upon subjectivism or human interpretation to tell us [what God has said]. He juxtaposes Christ against the Scriptures so that Christ is above Scripture. Listen, should there be any doubt in your mind:

But can anything be above the Scriptures? Yes, the Eternal Word transcends the written Word. Christ is the Word made flesh. Christ is the Lord over the Scriptures…

And finally Dr. Martin is quite correct when he says:

Might I point out that Christ was never over the Scriptures in His life. In fact Christ said the Scriptures had to be fulfilled by Him or He wasn’t the Messiah. He said the Scriptures cannot be broken. He said sanctify them through Thy Truth Father; Thy Word is Truth.

He was subject to the Scriptures, never above it. What are you left with when you turn away from that? You are left with your interpretation of the Scripture, and that interpretation is faulty and dangerous. (Robert Schuller and the Cult of Self-Esteem, CD Rom, available from Walter Martin Religious Infonet)

And here we see another of the Trojan Horses in which Satan’s forces have penetrated the walls of our Lord’s Church for him to ask man yet again: “Yea, hath God said?”