No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.
(1 Corinthians 10:20)

If You Love Someone You’ll Tell Them The Truth

Apprising Ministries has been warning you about the judgments coming upon the church visible now that mainstream evangelicalism has embraced the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church.

I’ve also told you that EC progressive/liberal theologians such as Dr. Philip Clayton of the Transforming Theology network and Tony Jones, heretical “theologian in residence” at the church of his equally heretical quasi-universalist pastor Doug Pagitt, are among EC notables who’ve been busy “doing theology.” This is their term for bantering ideas back and forth—that may or may not have anything to do with the Bible—as they continue cobbling together their new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology, which they often refer to as “big tent” Emergence Christianity.

In fact, the term big tent itself really concerns the universalism forming the rotten core of this pseudo-Christian neo-liberalism—a Liberalism 2.0—now being spread by an upgraded Emerging Church 2.0 throughout the very heart of apostitizing evangelicalism. At this point it’s important to remind you again that we are not just talking here about a universalism teaching men will be saved regardless of their religious convictions. Rather, what’s under discussion is a Christian Universalism (CU), which does generally see Jesus Christ as the only way that all men will eventually be saved.

There are various views but this CU is based upon a universal atonement of Christ on the Cross—an at-one-ment—similar to that of New Age Spirituality and the Metaphysical Mind Science cults; all of which sounds a lot like the Love Wins mythology of Rob Bell, the Elvis-like rock star pastor of the EC rebellion against the authority of the Bible. Sadly it’s led to discussions such as follows in this piece. One of these who enjoys this speculative anthropocentric (man-centered) theology of the EC 2.0 is Mike Morrell, who is currently so far out there off the Christian path that we can’t even get a radar fix on him.

You may recall I introduced you to Morrell in Mike Morrell On Matthew Fox, John Wimber, And The Emerging Church where I told you his Twitter bio explains that he’s:

Futurist @KedgeForward. Grad Fellow, Strategic Foresight MA @RegentU. Provocateur-In-Residence, David Group Int’l. Journalist. Nu-media publicist. Opti-mystic. (Online source)

Morrell is “Partner/Foresight Professional” for something called KedgeForward, whose KedgeForward blog I first cited in Richard Rohr And The Emerging Church As The Third Way; in addition, a piece which ran in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in September of 2004 called Tie That Binds ‘Emergent’ Church informs us:

Michael Morrell keeps the emergent church network informed with a Web site that promises ‘the best Jesus-infused sites you never knew about.’…[and] has become one of the movement’s linchpins, connecting thousands of previously disconnected people and emergent groups through the Internet…

As an editor for “the Ooze,” Morrell keeps in touch with the central people and ideas sparking the movement… (Online source)

The point being, Morrell is deeply involved with the leading voices within this neo-liberal Emergent cult, which has also been referred to as “the converstion”; however the truth is, it’s always only been their own monologue amongst the likeminded. And below Morrell tweets concerning a favorite EC topic right now:

(Online source)

There’s a real surprise, Morrell is in lock-step with McLaren; birds of a fetid feather. The link takes us over to McLaren’s blog and his post Q & R: Is OBL in HELL? Therein Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, one of the unholy Emergent Church trinity of apostates along with the aforementioned Jones and Pagitt, shares a few questions from one of his readers. They first ask McLaren “do you bellieve Osama bin Laden will go to hell?” Then there’s the follow up query, “If not, what do you think is his eternal destiny?”

Whoever Does Not Obey The Son Shall Not See Life, But The Wrath Of God Remains On Him

In typical postmodern postliberal methodology McLaren begins his a-response by asking a series of deconstructing questions in order to lead us into some mental off-roading into the postmodernWonderland of Humpty Dumpty language where they bend and shape words into whatever Play-Doh shapes they wish to:

Before replying, I think it’s worthwhile for us to ask ourselves why this question matters to us. Do we fear that God will be excessively merciful or excessively harsh? Or do we want to use an extreme case to bolster one of our own theories? Do we want to use this as a test question to expose others’ bad (from our perspective) ideas? Or do we simply want to hold up to the light of God this part of our experience – as witnesses (from a very limited vantage point) of OBL’s life, misdeeds, and death? (Online source)

You now know that Jell-O actually can indeed speak, no. Well, Brian McLaren, it looked to me to be a very straight forward question and Scripture clearly says that we who would presume to be teachers are to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that [we] may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine (Titus 1:9). Notice, contra McLaren and his dutiful disciple Rob Bell, this verse presupposes 1) that there is such a thing as sound doctrine, and 2) that we may know it in order to give instruction in it.

McLaren tells us he believes “OBL’s destiny is to face the living God,” Whom he tells us “ultimately and absolutely and beautifully just and loving.” We wouldn’t necessarily quibble with this in and of itself; Scripture tells us that God is loving and just. Guru McLaren then continues:

I believe God’s justice and love are perfectly integrated so as not to be, at heart, two separate things, but one beautiful, holy, awesome reality. I also believe that God sees and understands everything, from every angle, in ways that we do not and can not, which is why judgment from our limited perspective is so wrong. Whatever is wrong and evil in OBL will, I believe, be named, exposed, revealed, and dealt with appropriately, in the perfect light of God’s justice and love. (Online source)

Yes, this all sounds so pious and humble; God is without limit so this “is why judgment from our limited perspective is so wrong.” The problem is, it is the job of the Christian to faithfully proclaim what God has said in the Bible; to do so is not passing a false “judgment,” but rather it is to be an obedient ambassador for Christ as we implore [people] on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Next we see another example of where the spiritual train wreck that’s Brian McLaren completely derails:

Whatever remains of God’s good image inside OBL will be distinguished from the rest and dealt with appropriately, again in the perfect light of God’s justice and love. Whatever from his story can be healed will be healed. Whatever cannot will be dealt with in some other appropriate way. Somehow, grace will have the final word. Somehow (as they say), love will win – not at the expense of justice, but through and with and in justice. Beyond that, I have no desire to speculate … only to live my life in harmony with God’s justice and love. (Online source)

Again McLaren ends with another pious sounding statement about living “in harmony with God’s justice and love,” which plays very well to far too many in our time of timid tolerance. However, what Brian McLaren has just said prior to this is anything but in harmony with God’s Word, from which we draw our idea of the Lord’s justice and love in the first place. You see, there was no good in Osama bin Laden in the first place; just like there’s no good in you, the same as there is no good in me as well. For it is written:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh… Wretched man that I am! (Romans 7:18, 24)

Those were the words of the Apostle Paul whom the Lord used to write half of the New Testament. If you think that a practicing Muslim, i.e. an idolator, like bin Laden had any good in him when arguably the greatest of the Apostles did not, you are a dreamer. Jesus Himself said to Jewish religious leaders—men every bit as devout as Osama bin Laden may have been to his demon — “I said therefore to you that you will die in the sins of you; for not you believe that I Am [the eternal God], you will die in the sins of you” (John 8:24, literal Greek).

The Good News of Christ Jesus is repentance and forgiveness of sins in His Name; in other words, the regenerated believer will not die in his sins. But Osama bin Laden, by his practice of Islam, did not believe Jesus is God in human flesh i.e. very God of very God; so by definition then, 1) if he thought of Him at all, it was a different Jesus (see—2 Corinthians11:4), and 2) as such then, according to Jesus Christ—a pretty good Source for God’s Truth—bin Laden died in his sins. So if we love Muslims such as bin Laden we won’t let them deceive themselves into thinking they can know God without Christ.

No, instead of holding out some false hope like Brian McLaren and so many in the Emerging Church 2.0 do—which is no hope at all—rather we’ll be praying for their repentance and preaching the Gospel to them as the may allow opportunity. This is offered as an exhortation for you to stop listening to the McLaren’s and Bell’s with their nightmare that all men are already reconciled to God; people’s eternal destinies hang in their unbalanced scale. And contrary to their man-pleasing mythology (cf. 2 Timothy 4:3-4) there is no second shot:

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:24-28)

If you haven’t, may you repent and believe the Good News…before it’s too late…

See also:

BRIAN MCLAREN SPEAKS AS A UNIVERSALIST

ROB BELL DEFENDING LOVE WINS MYTHOLOGY

IS SHANE CLAIBORNE A CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM?