For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4, ESV)

A Master Story-Teller With His Sleepy Bed-Time Stories To Hit The Road Once Again

The Traverse City Record files a report informing us that Rob Bell of the Emerging rebellion against Sola Scriptura is one of hot tickets for Interlochen who:

will connect suffering and creativity when he visits Interlochen on the initial jaunt of his “Drops Like Stars” tour… this time he scheduled three Michigan events before resuming the tour in August with dates around the world. Bell will speak at Interlochen Center for the Arts’ Corson Auditorium at 8 p.m. April 3… He described the tour stop as interactive and “a little bit guerrilla theater”…

Bell plans to release a book later this year also titled “Drops Like Stars” to coincide with the tour… “I am trying to reclaim the fresh word and put it back in its rightful context. That’s probably at the core of all this,” Bell said. That contemporary approach has won Bell fans and fame. (Online source)

But it is precisely this supposed “trying to reclaim the fresh word” that should immediately arrest one’s attention as it concerns the popping up a postliberal cult of inclusive Emergence Christianity. AM has been doing what we can to alert the Body of Christ that Rob Bell And Emergence Christianity Reject Cardinal Doctrine Of Sola Scriptura. All the more dangerous when we note that after Zondervan National Pastors Conference 2009, featuring Bell as a plenary speaker, he has now been propelled right into the very mainstream of apostatizing evangelicalism.

And with this, sadly, the door has now been opened for deceivers like Peter Rollins to ride in upon Rob’s credibility as well as evidenced in Emergence Pastor Rob Bell To Have Friend Peter Rollins In Conference. It is true that those like Bell who are practicing the neo-Gnosticism of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism don’t use the term neo-orthodoxy; but, at best, this is their actual approach to the Bible, which in and of itself is a flat-out repudiation of Sola Scriptura. 

Earlier in the article The Emerging Church Sowing Its Neo-Orthodox Confusion On Scripture AM showed you what Kevin DeYoung, co-author of the fine book Why We’re Not Emergent, had to say regarding the highly subjective approach to Scripture that those of this Emergence Christianity e.g. like Bell and Rollins (at best) employ. Speaking of theologian Karl Barth, who pioneered this very wrong view of the Bible, De Young correctly points out that:

Seventy years ago Karl Barth argued, “The Bible is God’s Word to the extent that He speaks through it.” At the time, Barth was calling liberalism back to the Word, which was a good thing, but he pioneered a new approach in establishing biblical authority, which was not as good.

The Bible, according to Barth, was not itself the Word of God, but as God spoke in and through the Bible, it became for us the Word of God. The Bible is only “derivatively and indirectly” God’s Word, he wrote. The authority of the Word, therefore, resides not in the Scriptures that contain the very words of God, but in Him who speaks through the words of the text (78, 79).

As I have written previously, the spiritually fatal problem with this view is that what God is saying in Bible would now depend upon what the reader feels the Lord may, or may not, be saying. In other words, Barth is saying that the Words of Scripture contain messages from God, whereas the proper view of Holy Scripture is that the Bible itself is the message. And this is a huge difference because Barth’s wrong view ends up in a very highly subjective and existential understanding of Holy Scripture, which does not take into account the corrupted reasoning of human beings resulting from the Fall.

So what you now end up with is the very same kind of ridiculous relativism that you would see, for example, on any panel of any secular talk show. So do yourself a favor; run, run, runaway from anyone —even if they are as cool as Rob  ‘n’ Pete—who lies to you by telling you that they are giving you some kind of “fresh word” from God:

This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ I appointed watchmen over you and said, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But you said, ‘We will not listen.’ ” (Jeremiah 6:16-17)

‘Cuz guess what; you never really have to go very far in a search to find someone who’ll tell you exactly what you already wanted to hear…

See also:

HEAVEN AND HELL COME TO EARTH FOR ROB BELL

PETER ROLLINS AND PHYLLIS TICKLE DISCUSS EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY

PETER ROLLINS AND EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY OPENING EVANGELICAL DOOR TO PRACTICING HOMOSEXUAL “CHRISTIANS”

DANGEROUS THEOLOGY OF ROB BELL IN HIS “VELVET ELVIS”

IS ROB BELL EVANGELICAL?

ROB BELL IN A NUTSHELL: THE BIBLE

ROB BELL RESOURCES FROM APPRISING MINISTRIES