The email below is presented by Apprising Ministries to make you more aware of what’s going on in evangelical schools and is published with the permission of its author. What follows is an eyewitness account and personal testimony as to what they have seen thus far in their Christian education:

A Chapel with Leonard Sweet Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reformation

It was almost a year ago when one of the Bible and Ministry professors began to hype the appearance of Leonard Sweet on our campus everyone was excited, after all this was a somewhat big name coming to our university. Still there was a small group of us students who were a little less than comfortable about this man and his teachings. That Tuesday our fears would be confirmed

Chapel began and after some emergent “worship” involving songs that seemed to be what hymns would be like if they were written by Lionel Richie, Leonard Sweet took the stage. He instructed that all the lights be turned off and that a spotlight be placed on him, the only lights in the large chapel were the spotlight on Mr. Sweet and an odd ambient shapeless form projecting on the screen above him.

Leonard read Revelation 3:16 from the Message “translation” of the Bible. That was all the scripture that he said he needed to “prove his point” and then began to talk about God’s vomiting of the lukewarm in judgment, here it how he described those individuals. He began to talk about a New Age coming (no kidding he did not try to hide his language) and how one day there’ll be no need for the scriptures or any type of church because everything is united in spirit. “The same energy, the same ‘god’, who works in you exists in nature, exists in all creation in everything” he continued with the idea that everything has a spiritual content and that it all inherently good, then he really seemed to show a pantheistic streak. Leonard Sweet elaborated on his spirit in everything point “in many ways god is the earth and so are the pews you sit in and your pets and everything that has life, they are not ‘god’ but they are”.

“You see everyone God desires to be worshipped and we must worship Him, not with hymns but with ourselves and we must worship God is everything because He is literally in everything; think of God as the great Light and follow the light come toward the light now and worship”. Now that I reflect on the situation I realize that he was the only person literally in the light in the chapel. “You need to come forward and worship and be free and at one with the Light and Spirit, if you don’t then consider yourself lukewarm and get ready to be vomited on the last day”.

I watched a professor of Youth Ministry bow and the feet of Leonard Sweet, the professor raised his head, his eyes now streaming with tears he placed his forehead on Leonard’s shoes. As many students went forward, I walked out of the back door.

These emergent are dangerous for those that say the McLaren and Bell and Manning and Sweet are harmless, that is not the case. I have read all of their books, they were required reading in missions and evangelism classes. There is so much heresy floating around and so many following after it. In my “world missions” class we spent 2/3 of the semester watching Bell’s Nooma material. If anyone dared to object to Bell’s “theology” (which was but a few of us) we were punished (grade-wise) or considered unloving or even called by the professor anti-Christian.

In theology classes we are not allowed to quote New Testament passages to clarify Old Testament passages instead we need to interpret it our own way because “modernity is dead; we live in a postmodern world now” and we must write our Theology essays from the perspective of McLaren in order to please the professors. Bultmann and Barth are required reading in addition to McLaren. I know that my university is not alone in doing this to their students, it is happening at Christian educational institutions all across United States and soon the young missionaries will be going out into the world and the emergent message will be spreading.

I am so fortunate that apprising.org is around especially during the Rob Bell Nooma “missions” class. Apprising made me feel sane after an hour and a half of Bell.

See also:

EMERGENT CHURCH: QUANTUM SHIFT TO PANENTHEISM

EMERGENT CHURCH: BRIAN MCLAREN AND PANENTHEISM

IS ROB BELL EVANGELICAL?

RAGAMUFFIN SPIRITUALITY WITH BRENNAN MANNING