People will be lovers of self. (2 Timothy 3:2)

Pleasing Themselves Rather Than God

Apprising Ministries has been warning about, and documenting, the sad slide of largely pretending to be Protestant evangelicalism into becoming what I’ve referred to as The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD); and much of the current sorry state of the church visible can be traced back through to the semi-pelagian (at best) man-centered Church Growth Movement of Fuller Theological Seminary.

While spiritual darkness continues to creep across apostatizing evangelicalism in The New Downgrade, a major part of my commission as pastor-teacher here becomes helping to apprise you of developing trends within the visible Christian community during this time parallel to Amos 8:11-12. As a leading online apologetics and discernment labor in the Lord, for the time I may have left, I’ll continue reminding you about the vital importance of the proper Christian spirituality of sola Scriptura.

Leaving this aside now the evangelical community is embarking on a spiritual game of Russian roulette embracing highly subjective Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), such as that taught by Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster along with his spiritual twin and Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard. Sadly this is yet another bad by-product of its welcoming in the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, of which that dubious duo were key mentors.

You may know that CSM is merely repackaged Roman Catholic mysticism and was a core doctrine of the EC from its hatching in hell; in addition it plays a critical role as the neo-Gnostic foundation of its new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology under their spiritual circus “big tent” Emergence Christianity. As spurious CSM now spreads as leaven throughout the entire lump of the church visible it’s become the cause of a growing syncretism; and without a doubt one of the biggest syncretists within evangelicalism is the religious chameleon Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren.

Warren is largely responsible for the popularity of another arm of the Church Growth Movement (CGM), the Purpose Driven/Seeker Driven pragmatic prostitution of the Christian faith, which runs parallel to the EC. If you wish to understand what’s happening right now to spiritually spineless evanjellyfish then you’d have to see that due to a growing dry and dead orthodoxy within mainstream evangelicalism, sparks from this spurious CSM have now fanned into flame among its younger sectors after years of EC teachings being used within its Young Adult and Youth Ministries.

Unfortunately, evangelical leaders remained silent when EC prophets and teachers began to be published by evangelical publishing houses circa 1997, which has now opened the door for neo-Gnostic mysticism right into the very heart of the Christian community. So, as a direct result of this, our time is going to be one of growing confusion as spiritual darkness falls upon apostatizing evangelicalism. Centered on the self CSM, without fail, always leads to a distorted view of the true nature of fallen mankind and of the absolute holiness of God; one eventually ends up with the mystic mush god with a man-shaped hole in his/her/its heart.

A classic example right now is the asinine Love Wins mythology of EC icon Rob Bell; as I showed you in Rob Bell Defending Love Wins Mythology, his years of devotion to CSM has completely destroyed his view of God and the Gospel. Pastor Kevin DeYoung points out in God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of “Love Wins”:

According to Bell, salvation is realizing you’re already saved. We are all forgiven. We are all loved, equally and fully by God who has made peace with everyone… Bell is saying God has already forgiven us whether we ask for it or not, whether we repent and believe or not, whether we are born again or not…

Bell categorically rejects any notion of penal substitution. It simply does not work in his system or with his view of God… (Online source)

DeYoung is dead on target: This is not the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name, salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work on the Cross of Christ alone. Yet, Rob Bell continues right on in good stead within the evangelical community despite his preaching a different gospel. Sad times indeed. Here now we witness pathetic Protholic evangelical leaders so scared of their own spiritual shadows, and too timid to defend the purity of God’s Gospel, to throw that apostate out of the Lord’s church where he belongs.

 A very public example should be made of Bell demonstrating to the world what happens when someone dares to alter the glorious Gospel of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ; he certainly shouldn’t be embraced.  Sure, Rob Bell is more than welcome to his mythology, but he can’t simply be allowed to represent before the world that it’s a valid form of the Christian faith. But then again, two years ago I tried to send an Urgent Message: Paging Paul And Barnabas. The pressing issue has become: Where will we find men in the Christian camp today like Paul and Barnabas?

Unfortunately at this late hour we’re awash with those so desperate for acceptance and unity they’re faithfully following Acts 15:1-2 in their new missional Bible translation Anything Goes Evangelicalism: How To Make The World Love You:

Some inovative church planters came from Judea and started teaching the Lord’s followers that they could not be saved, unless they were circumcised as Moses had taught. This caused lead apostle Paul and his missiologist bro Barnabas to include them in the next Explosive Growth conference so they share how they had contextualized the gospel.

So it was decided to send Paul and Barnabas and a few others to Jerusalem to have a missions conference with the apostles and the church leaders there to teach them how the missional church planters were engaging the Jewish culture and bringing the church back to her Jewishness.

Thou Shalt Love Thyself, Thy Fellow Man, And Him Shall You Worship

Now with this key background in place I point you to some more nauseatingly compromised man-love brought out yesterday by Southern Baptist James Robison in his post Supernatural Gatherings. Robison remarks:

Two weeks ago I experienced a great moment in my Christian journey. Seventy-two leaders joined together in supernatural spiritual unity. Many who attended had Ph.D.’s and Th.D.’s and were serious students of church, world and American history. (Online source)

Wow; sounds good so far. He continues:

They came to pray for the church, the nation and for the will of God to be accomplished in all of our lives and through the family of faith… There was a consensus made clear by the attendees that people of faith and certainly all who profess to know Christ must be inspired, informed and involved. (Online source, bold his)

I can’t say I’d essentially disagree with any of that; however, we’re about to veer off the Christian track as Robison goes on:

It is imperative that those chosen to lead have enough wisdom to understand the importance of sitting in the counsel of the godly, not the ungodly. There is an insidious attack on God, faith, family and freedom. It is absolutely essential for believers to be involved in making wise decisions concerning our leadership and those we send to Washington to represent “we the people.” (Online source)

There’s truth to that last sentence, of course; but more importantly, we need to make wise decisions concerning the leadership in the Christian church, which as you’ll see was clearly not done here. Robison tells us he was “blessed” to host “two national Leadership Summits in September 2010 and June 2011.” He doesn’t say specifically which ones but one of these conferences may have been the one discussed here in A Call to Pray & Act For Life, Marriage and Religious Freedom. This event was “co-led” by Jim Garlow (video below), who’s aligned with the New Apolostolic Reformation (NAR).

Fine Christian research group Herescope points out in Mainstreaming Dominionism that Garlow’s a known purveyor of the false teaching known as Dominionism. The other leader was the spiritual SBC strumpet Chuck Colson. Kyle Mantyla of the secular Right Wing Watch organization now fills us in a little further concerning this event featuring many who’re with the NAR, and even mainline liberal and Roman Catholic leaders:

When we first learned of the “Pray and ACT” effort which sought to link 7 Mountains Dominionism with election-oriented prayer and fasting, we were pretty surprised by the number of high profile Religious Right leaders who had signed on [2] to the effort, like Chuck Colson, Mike Huckabee, Harry Jackson, Richard Land, Maggie Gallagher and various others. (Online source)

You may recall I told you that because of this increasing syncretism within apostatizing evangelicalism Word Faith Heretics Like Creflo Dollar Draw Nearer To Evangelical Acceptance. Well, consider that with this Pray & Act well known mainstream evangelicals like the SBC’s Colson and Richard Land appeared to the public as standing shoulder-to-shoulder with notorious WF prosperity preachers like Dollar and the nefarious Kenneth Copeland; not at all a wise leadership decision to say the least. Other notables demonstrating dubious discernment would be:

Jim Daly, President & CEO, Focus on the Family
James Draper, LifeWay
Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty University
Professor Timothy George, Dean, Beeson Divinity School
Jack Hayford, Founder and Chancellor, The King’s College and Seminary
Ron Luce, Founder, Teen Mania & Battle Cry
Erwin Lutzer, The Moody Church
Johnnie Moore, Vice President and Campus Pastor, Liberty University
Don Wildmon, American Family Association
Tim Wildmon, American Family Association

Brian Kaylor of EthicsDaily.com, a division of the Baptist Center for Ethics, now tells us that the second conference to which Robison refers in his post under discussion was apparently a “closed-door meeting by a group of conservative Christians, called together by Southern Baptist evangelist James Robison, to plot its behind-the-scenes strategy to defeat President Obama.” Kaylor continues:

A group of about 80 pastors and other conservative Christian leaders from across the country met this week in a two-day closed-door meeting to discuss the need for spiritual and political change in the nation. The meeting was a follow-up session to one last September… (Online source)

Kaylor does mention another meeting Robison had apparently called, which wouldn’t have been the one I covered earlier. That said, the heart of the matter is these evangelical leaders publicly aligning themselves in a religious setting with apostates and known false teachers perverting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, it matters not which meeting/conference it is exactly because you’ll see the same names associated with each; which James Robison himself informs us in his Supernatural Gatherings via “a list of those who attended one or both Leadership Summits along with those who encouraged and assisted in bringing about the gatherings.”

As I close this out, for now, I’ll first point out that Robison writes:

In these two leadership gatherings, I witnessed the spiritual unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17. It was as though the entire group was overwhelmed by waves of liquid love. (Online source)

Here we have a perfect example of what I’ve just been saying concerning phony unity, syncretism, and deciding truth by subjective feelings. Really; God sent something like “waves of liquid love,” and we’re actually supposed to believe that Jesus wants us to have “spiritual unity” with e.g. the likes of blasphemer Kenneth Copleland—whom I told you in Kenneth Hagin And Kenneth Copeland: Do Regenerated Christians Really Teach Jesus Christ Is A “Born Again Man” teaches:

[Jesus allegedly speaking to Copeland] Don’t be disturbed when people accuse you of thinking you are God … They crucified Me for claiming I was God. I didn’t claim that I was God; I just claimed that I walked with Him and that He was in Me. Hallelujah! That’s what you’re doing… (“Take Time to Pray,” Believer’s Voice of Victory, February 1987, 9)

The Spirit of God spoke to me and He said, “Son, realize this. Now follow me in this and don’t let your tradition trip you up.” He said, “Think this way: a twice-born man whipped Satan in his own domain.” And I threw my Bible down, like that, and I said, “What?” He said, “A born-again man defeated Satan, the firstborn of many brethren defeated him.”

He said, “You are the very image and the very copy of that one.” I said, “Goodness, gracious sakes alive!” And I began to see what had gone on in there. And I said, “Well now you don’t mean, you couldn’t dare mean that I could have done that same thing?” He said, “Oh yeah. If you’d had the same knowledge of the Word of God that He did, you could’ve done the same thing, ‘cause you’re a reborn man too.” (Substitution and Identification, cassette #00-0202, 1989)

No, what Robison et al felt was really simply the love of themselves. Here now a few other notables who should also have had nothing to do with this worship of the self along with more preachers of WF heresy like Joyce Meyer and Rod Parsley:

Ruth Graham, Transparent Ministries, Waynesboro, VA
Craig Groeschel, LifeChurch.TV, Tulsa, OK
Wayne Grudem, author and professor, Phoenix Seminary, Phoenix, AZ
Paige Patterson, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, Washington, DC
Bob Roberts, Northwood Church, Keller, TX
Ravi Zacharias*, Ravi Zacharias International Ministry, Atlanta, GA
*[His] schedule…did not permit [his] attendance, but [he] helped initiate and emphasize the importance of these gatherings. (Online source, emphasis mine)

See also:

MAINSTREAM EVANGELICALISM EMBRACING CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM

JOHN PIPER, RICK WARREN & FOSTER-WILLARDISM

IN TOUCH MAGAZINE OF CHARLES STANLEY PROMOTING CONTEMPLATIVE NEW MONASTICISM

TIM KELLER RECOMMENDING ROMAN CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

MARK DRISCOLL AND NEO-REFORMED NEW CALVINIST CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY

PRISCILLA SHIRER AND CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER

CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING NETWORK PEDDLING CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY