The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him. (Proverbs 18:17)

“Hey, Jesus Is Just Like Me; He Likes The Things I Like.”

Here at Apprising Ministries and over at Slice of Laodicea we have been led by God to expose to the light the new breed of worldly pastors that have been vomited into the Lord’s Church by the emerging church movement and the new evangelicalism. And we will continue to do so. One of which is a wolf by the name of David Hayward “an artist trapped in a pastor’s body” who calls himself the “Naked Pastor.”

In the meantime in Mark Oestreicher of Youth Specialties: Looking for a New Church? I had drawn attention to the juvenile and sophomoric humor within a tasteless and inappropriate post by Marko Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties at his YSMARKO blog. Well, it turns out that he and his people didn’t like it very much. Apparently a nerve has been struck because lo and behold suddenly Oestreicher shows up whining about me in the comments section of Hayward’s blog:

interesting timing on this, david. having been blacklisted by slice in the past, and this week slammed by ken silva and another hate-blog, i posted this thought today:

there is a great blindness when one remakes jesus into someone who would only approve of oneself, want to spend time with oneself, or agree with oneself.

tonite, at our youth workers convention in guatemala city, with 2500 youth workers from all over central america, the closing message was from a beautiful passage: Ephesians 5:9 — for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth. seems appropriate. (Online source, emphasis mine)

Now he seems to have shown up in order to make people aware of his own post What I Am Thinking Today. And even well known Emergent theologian Scot McKnight has since also shown up in Oestreicher’s comments section over this. Below is his comment:

Marko,
Two Welsh scholars did some serious study of this and demonstrated that everyone — including non-Christians — makes Jesus into their own image. The evidence can’t be explained as Christians being more like Jesus than others. Instead, everyone makes Jesus in their own image.

Authors are Leslie J. Francis and Jeff Astley and the study was in Journ of Psych and Christianity, 16 (1997): 247-259. (Online source)

I will say that I do find it interesting how these new evangelical mystics are all now jumping to each other’s defense. One thing they all have in common is the practice of the contemplative spirituality, which even “the Mystic Monk” Thomas Merton taught began in the monastic traditions of the Church of Rome. But why are they jumpling to each other’s defense? In the end it is because they are the same in their love of self (philautoi, 2 Timothy 3:2). You need to understand that Hayward doesn’t call himself emerging and is actually more aligned with the Bill Kinnon and iMonk “post-evangelical” crowd. And yet the Emergent boys are now embracing him because he is considered “attacked” by so-called “hate blogs.” I’m sort of surprised CRN.(Mis)Info? hasn’t shown up yet to try and boost their blog rankings.

Isaiah 6:8-10; the Body of Christ is supposed to be preaching in such a way as to knock these pathetic posers and feckless fence-straddlers right off their fence. Marko, a respected voice in the Emergent rebellion—even recommended by the Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren himself—feels we’re making Jesus into Who we want Him to be. Oestreicher’s really saying that we who hold to the Biblical doctrines of grace are the ones making the Master into Someone Who only likes what we like. And here is where the actual attack from Satan is directed, at God’s absolute sovereignty, which they hate and then seek to attach the word “fundamentalist” to us as a term of derision.

But instead, the Truth is that it is the crassly carnal emerging church of the new evangelical religion who are the ones who have reimagined another Jesus (see—2 Corinthians 11:4). Here’s a further example of just how deep this man-love in the American Christian Church has penetrated the Body of Christ. In the current issue of Christianity Today I have just been singled out by David Aikman in his Global Prognosis piece “Attack Dogs of Christendom.” In his fantasy I am a “disturbingly visible” fundamentalist (which actually I am not) who has one of the “angriest websites” on the Internet. Since Christ gave it to me, then I say the Lord be praised.

Well, whoever told Aikman that we shouldn’t be angry about this Emergent rebellion against the Bible and the pseudo-Christianity of the apostate new evangelicalism, which I refer to as lunacy in the Lord’s name? Have these people ever considered that the anger coming through me as a pastor-teacher sent by the Lord just might not actually be my own? After all what is to me, this murky mystic mess these seducing spirits with their doctrines of demons have made in Christ’s Church? I didn’t create any people who hung Me on a cross. I’ll have more on this later but in his article Aikman says:

Leading the charge against alleged ecumenists is Apprising Ministries (AM), a Colorado-based group whose leader is Southern Baptist pastor Ken Silva (August 2007, 52)

Actually I’m in Claremont, NH; though I once was based out of Wyoming and enjoyed Fort Collins when I had the chance to visit occasionally. For now though, just let me say that one would be very hard-pressed to find within evangelicalism a more ecumenical bunch than the Emergent Church. And the fact remains that it is actually men like Rob Bell of the EC who have repainted Christ in their own corrupt image by recasting Jesus right back into the social reformer of liberal theology. Around a teaching by Dr. Walter Martin as he deconstructs liberal theology circa 1987 I show you this yet again in The Cult of Liberal Theology: Foremost Rotten Root of the Emerging Church.

For those true Christian soldiers who sing about marching to war but now wish to actually make their voice heard you have been given an opportunity to express yourselves here on the Internet. So stand up, stand up for Jesus ye soldiers of the Cross and take up your Sword! For the real Christ said – “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The bottom line here is that the EC is not arguing their emerging ecumenicism from Scripture, because they can’t. No, as one trained in apologetics I can tell you that they are actually appealing the very same argument used by the non-Christian cults such as the Jehovah’s Witness or Mormons, and in truth it’s also the very same one used by the false world religions as well:

But we must be a new move of the Holy Spirit because there are so many of us. Look at our devotion to Jesus and our unity. And just look at all of the good things we are doing in God’s name.

Today I tell you in the Lord that you’d best get your heads out of the spiritual sand folks and recognize that you have been born for such a time as this (see–Acts 17:26). And know this: These issues are not going to go away because the American Christian Church is in need of reform every bit as much as when Luther himself stood hammer in hand. Only this time it is the continuing embrace of the repulsive rituals of apostate Roman Catholicism by the evangelical church which must be boldly confronted. May the Lord open your eyes that you might see the dark red sky this morning and recognize the time of false unity in which you now live:

But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. (1 Corinthians 11:17-19, NASB)

This is no time for peace, but division…

See also:

TRUE UNITY IN THE BODY OF CHRIST

THE IDOL OF EVANGELICALISM

THE ECUMENICAL CHURCH OF DECEIT

NO-CONTROVERSY IN THE NEW DOWNGRADE