In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it. (2 Timothy 3:12-14)

An Emergent Barbarian Begets A New Tribe Of Idolaters

Only the Lord Himself knows how long and hard I have resisted creating this category at Apprising Ministries for articles specifically having to do with Erwin Raphael McManus. But as I said earlier on Christian Worldview Net, a Technorati search for Erwin McManus turned up this little gem. It speaks for itself, folks:

On Wednesday night during the Spring 2007 American House of Bishops of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, our bishops gathered together to consecrate the Holy Chrism (holy oil for baptisms and ordinations) and to bless another chrism of oil for healing, both of which will be distributed throughout all the dioceses in the United States. (Online source)

This article of idolatry called House of Bishops 2007, Blessing of the Chrism goes on to say:

In the words of Erwin Raphael McManus, author of The Barbarian Way, we must become a church of barbarians, a church that unleashes unrestrained faith in a world that has lost hope and is bent on self-hatred. McManus goes on to say that “barbarians love to live and live to love…barbarians see the invisible and hear the inaudible because their souls are alive to God.”

Yes, Erwin McManus says a lot of things which is what got him passed over for Leadership Network’s Terranova project that later morphes into Emergent. Take for example this telling tale from an interview with RELEVANT Magazine:

RM: You’ve said in the past that “Scripture is God through the improvisation of people’s lives.”

EM: Well, I build my life not on the Word of God, but the voice of God. The Scriptures are to me the instrument that God has placed in history for me to learn the voice of God. I treasure the Scriptures. (Online source)

Building A Life On The Sand Of Subjective Experience

This same thing has been said by others who would rely on subjective experience and deny the absolute and final authority of the inerrant Word of God like Harry Emerson Fosdick and Karl Barth and Brian McLaren and Rob Bell. These men all believe in the inherent goodness of mankind just as Erwin McManus speaks of in his latest book Soul Cravings when he says in the section On Becoming Human:

I’VE COME TO LOVE THAT WORD–HUMAN. I MEAN, HUMAN-ity can be a pretty bleak place to live, but when you begin to see what we’re really capable of, our potential for good, it can be breathtaking. (Entry 14 On Becoming Human, caps and italics his, bold mine)

But unfortunately for Erwin that “voice” he is listening to instead of the Scriptures cannot possibly be God’s because God the Holy Spirit already said through His inspired Apostle Paul there’s nothing good within unregenerate mankind:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh [i.e. humanity]; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (Romans 7:18-20, NASB)

And how tragic that at the end of that “Blessing of the Chrism” article referenced above we read, “For the Charismatic Episcopal Church, ‘Our spiritual legacy is that we belong to the barbarian tribe’”, because the Lord Christ Jesus has clearly warned us already –“For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:37)