they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. (Psalm 106:35-36)

All Religions Do Not Lead To God

While pointing us to John Hendryx from the fine Reformation Theology and his comments concerning a “recent Time Magazine article on Christians and tolerance” a while back Ingrid Schlueter, host of the Crosstalk radio show, wrote at her Slice of Laodicea website:

The headline in Time is: Christians: No One Path to Salvation. Universalism, in the name of compassion, is being increasingly found in evangelical churches thanks to years of seeker, circus-church foolishness substituting for biblical teaching, as well as the tireless efforts of some in the emerging church movement. Some emergent leaders won’t even answer when pressed as to whether those who don’t know Christ will go to hell. “We’ll let God decide that,” they say. Well, God already did decide that and recorded his decision in his Word.

If all paths lead to God, then why not just turn out the lights at our churches, lock the doors and join the local Bahai’s or Sikhs down the street? What was the point of Jesus dying a brutal death on the cross if all paths ultimately lead to salvation? He could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble. Do we see now the ugly fruit of abandoning sound biblical preaching in our churches? We now have professing Christians accepting rank heresy because it feels better to say all paths lead to God. (Online source)

With this in mind, in pieces like God Is Father Of All Religion and Faith House Manhattan: Project Of Apostasy here at Apprising Ministries I have introduced you to Samir Selamnovic, one of the up-and-coming ear-ticklers of the Emerging Church aka Emergent Church, which morphed into Emergence Christianity (EC)—now a cult of a postliberalism firmly within mainstream evangelicalism. Yesterday Selmanovic tweeted:

I have warm fuzzy feeling of affirmation every author needs from one’s mentors. @Sojourners likes me! http://bit.ly/81fkvq (Online source)

Jim Wallis is President and CEO of Sojourners which also happens to be home to a band of hypocrites calling themselves Red Letter Christians (RLC) e.g. Tony Campolo and Tony Jones. The above link takes us to Voice of the Day: Samir Selmanovic where we read:

Our Scriptures have spoken to us, and our lives ought to speak back. That’s how we love our religions, challenge them, care for them, transform them, and help them deliver their promises to the world.– Samir Selmanovic from his book It’s Really All About God (Online source)

It’s not surprising then that among the myriad praise for th spiritual skubalon in Selmanovic’s new book It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian, published by Jossey Bass aligned with Leadership Network, we find RLCs Richard Rohr, contributing editor for Sojourners, and EC guru Brian McLaren, who on its board of directors. And because birds of a foul feather flock together we even find Living Spiritual Teacher and “Progessive Christian” scholar Marcus Borg pronouncing his blessing on this “remarkable book.”

McLaren, rarely at a loss for words tells us:

I’m speechless in trying to describe this book… All the religious pundits and broadcasters on radio and cable TV had better take notice, because this book threatens our conventional, comfortable categories and familiar black and white polarities. Selmanovic has the nerve to imagine our religions becoming not walls behind which we hide and over which we lob bombs of damnation, but bridges over which we travel to find God in the other. 

Um, hello Global Family; religions are now “bridges” we travel “to find God in the other” religions. In this Emergence de-formation of the historic orthodox Christian faith, gone is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ; though to be fair, Samir does say he’s not advocating all religions be blended into one. He dedicates the book “to four Gospels,” one of which is Brian McLaren, which “Gospels” he says “have been saving my life.” And Samir, who just preached at Jay Bakker’s church is really growing in stature now in the EC.

Who Would Have Ever Been Martyred For Preaching That All Religions Lead To God?

The reason being, Selmanovic is giving us a peek at where all of this is heading as he skillfully tells them exactly what they already wanted to hear (see—2 Timothy 4:3-4):

At different times in my life, I have belonged to Muslim, atheist, and Christian camps. In every one, I was rather certain. I believed that we–whichever “we” I was part of–were right. And for us to be right, I thought, others had to wrong. There were insiders and there were outsiders, and I found comfort in being on the inside. (5,6)

John 14:6 is simply tossed out the window in favor of highly subjective existential experience. Selmanovic tells us in his introduction that:

Phyllis Tickle, author of the The Divine Hours and The Great Emergence, observed in an email, “All faiths are alike in their wisdom, more or less. It’s in our mysteries where we differ.” (xvi)

But in the postmodernism of the EC we’ve entered the Wonderland of Humpty Dumpty language where words have no real meaning because Selmanovic goes on to:

confess that the mystery that upholds my life is informed by Christian texts, history, and community. The cradle of my religious faith is Protestantism of a rather evangelical sort. (xvii, xviii)

Of course anyone familiar with the field of Comparative Religion recognizes immediately that what Tickle says above is absolute gibberish and the extremely ecumenical Selmanovic isn’t protesting anything but what evangelicalism been traditionally. Case in point is when he tells us:

The thirteenth-century Sufi poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a great scholar of ancient Scriputres, theology, and law, confesses:

Those who don’t feel this Love, pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in sunset like supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep. This love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I’ve given up on my brain. I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you’re not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep.

Rumi doubts words, especially words about God, and trusts the living instead. Not because words are a lie, but because in comparison with life itself, words that seek to explain life are sleeping pills. Our experience of living cannot be contained in mere language. (6,7)

We also say goodbye to the teaching that they only Scripture truly inspired by God is contained in the Bible. And then Samir leaves the Christian building entirely as he is so foolish as to presume to tell God what He can do:

If God created all humanity but gave life-giving knowledge–usually referred to as ‘revelation’–to only some of humanity, could God in any meaningful sense be thought of as the One God and not only as a god? Wouldn’t such a god be historically or geographically local and therefore either disinterested, powerless, or in some other way incapable of giving lifesaving knowledge to all humanity?

To say that God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God. (9)

You’d best wake up soon that this Emerging/ent/ence de-formation of the Christian faith is rapidly meditating its way into one big Global Family of the Father/Motherhood of God/Goddess and Brotherhood of Man. It’s operating outside of the historic orthodox Christian faith, and it sure should never have been planted within evangelical Young Adult ministries and Youth Groups.

See also:

SAMIR SELMANOVIC RECOMMENDING AVATAR EVANGELISM

*UPDATE* EMERGING CHURCH PASTOR SAMIR SELMANOVIC DOESN’T NEED TO BE RIGHT

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC ADELE SAKLER AND SAMIR SELMANOVIC DISCUSS CHRISTIAN ATHEISM

SAMIR SELMANOVIC: GOD IS FATHER OF ALL RELIGION

FAITH HOUSE MANHATTAN: PROJECT OF APOSTASY BY SAMIR SELMANOVIC

SAMIR SELMANOVIC: IT’S REALLY ALL ABOUT SELF

SAMIR SELMANOVIC RECOMMENDS A “GREAT VIDEO”