But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26)

Almost Saved, But Not Quite…

Pastor Doug Pagitt, a leading voice in the evangelical Emergence rebellion against Sola Scriptura along with his friends such as Phyllis Tickle and the Elvis of Emergence Rob Bell, shares an email he received the other day from a reader. In his post Looking for a little help on how to respond Pagitt enlightens us:

So, every once in a while I get an email that for some reason gets to me. I probably shouldn’t say this it may only bring more on. I am thinking it has something to do with the particular timing of the email more than the content.

Now, most of the time I just let them slide by and delete them, but there are times where I feel like I am in that Happy Days episode where Fonzie is trying not to be violent and Richie is helping him, until he finally says “get em Fonz”. I feel like I am at one of those “get em” moments on this one.

So, I am choosing to post this here and seek a little advise for what to do… (Online source)

Personally, I find it rather revealing that as pastor of Emerging Church theologian Tony Jones, as well as Solomon’s Porch, Pagitt would even want/need to ask the blogosphere for assistance in the first place as to how handle what the woman who authored the email had to say.

You know, sadly, the more I observe those following this developing quasi-Christian religion of Emergence Christianity the more the following devotion from Charles Spurgeon actually seems quite applicable:

Remember Lot’s wife, and recollect that she went some way toward being saved. Mistress Lot so far believed the message that came to her about the destruction of the city that she was aroused. She rose early as her husband did, and prepared to leave the house. She ran down the streets, she passed the city gate, she reached the open plain along with her husband.

This woman was actually out of Sodom, and she was almost in Zoar, the refuge city, and yet she perished. Almost saved, but not quite. Let me repeat those words, for they describe some of you who are present at this hour, and they may be your epitaph if you do not mind what you are about: “Almost saved, but not quite.” Escaped from the vilest form of sin, but not truly in Christ; the mind not weaned from its idols, iniquity not given up in the soul, though perhaps given up in outward deed.

To have lived with God’s people, to have been numbered with them, to have been joined to them by ties of blood, and then after all to perish, will be horrible indeed! To have heard the Gospel, to have felt the Gospel too, in a measure, to have amended one’s life because of it, to have escaped the vilest corruption of the world, and yet still not have been weaned from the world, not to have been divorced from sin, and so to perish—the thought is intolerable. That same brine and brimstone that fell upon the inhabitants of the four cities overtook Lot’s wife. She was on the margin of the shower, and as it fell she was salted with fire; she was turned into a pillar of salt where she stood. Dreadful doom! (At the Master’s Feet, March 2)