[They] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:4)

But Don’t You Understand That You’re Really Only Worshipping Yourself?

Along the lines of the Apprising Ministries post The Emergence Of A New God, here we’ll hear a bit more about the mystic mush god with a man-shaped hole in its heart, now being preached by the sinfully ecumenical Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church (EC). The EC is far from dead.

Having developed a full blown neo-liberal cult operating within it, for the Emerging Church 2.0, he/she/it actually forms the centerpiece of its newer, more clearly delineated, postmodern Progressive Christian theology; a Liberalism 2.0 that these rebels against God’s Word often refer to as “big tent” Emergence Christianity.

I tell you that this is truly a fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3:2 — For people will be lovers of self; i.e. mankind is falling in love with, and worshipping, itself. This is why the spread of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) is so dangerous. People are unbuckling themselves from the security of God’s Word.

The result is a spiritual free fall out into the nothing of subjective experience, which is the root of the syncretism you’re witnessing throughout virtually the entire church visible now. It’s important to understand that for those in the EC 2.0, Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP)—meditation in an altered state of consciousness—is crucial.

I told you a year ago e.g. in Mental Off-Roading Radio With Doug Pagitt And Michael Dowd that CSM is perfectly suited to the philosophy of postmoderism that now dominates much of this caprious culture in which we find ourselves; you see, as with neo-orthodoxy ala Karl Barth postmodernism is “anti-logical” and “embraces Paradox.”[1]

All the while its deconstructionists have viciously been attacking rational thought with what’s commonly known as irrational philosophy. Simply put:

Irrational philosophies accordingly stress the will at the expense of reason, as exemplified in the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre or Karl Jaspers. (source)

Its influence upon our culture is why you’ll so often hear people say things like: “With all my heart I feel that’s a good thing”; in other words, truth is being decided by how someone feels as opposed to what is objectively known. For years now EC leaders have bombarded younger sectors of evangelicalism with this propaganda.

In fact Dr. John Bohannon points out that, in classic centered on the self postmodern existentialism, for someone like EC universalist Doug Pagitt:

the Bible is an active and living book that, in his own words, “invites us to step into the stories, not as observers, but as participants in the faith that is alive and well and still being created.”

The implication being, the Bible is not a fixed, immutable, infallible Word from above, but rather a piece of God’s ongoing story in humanity; a story that Pagitt, Solomon’s Porch, and other communities of faith, can participate in as they join in the ongoing creative activity of writing their own story for today, just as Paul did for his day.[2]

As you can see, not only is this a repudiation of sola Scriptura, but it’s also a recipe for spiritual disaster because people can then make the texts of Bible say whatever they want them to. For such as these the speculations of emergence theory within evolutionary science fit well with their bankrupt Process Theology, which is similar to Open Theism.

Space doesn’t allow full discussions of these important topics integral to the antichrist theology of the Emerging Church. CARM has the short helpful piece What is process theology? Then, as far as Open Theism is concerned, Dr. Gary Gilley gives you all you need to know in his well-researched 4 part series on OT.

You’ll find links to each part in Introduction To Open Theism. Suffice here to say that many leaders within this neo-liberal cult, e.g. Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren along with his fellow Red Letter Christian, Roman Catholic mystic Richard Rohr, are spreading a deadly virus in their emerging spirituality.

They’re combining elements of secular evolutionary emergence theory with their spurious CSM and are coming under the delusion that in our lifetime mankind is in the process of evolving upward into a higher state of consciousness. Now you are properly positioned upon the spiritual battlefield to receive what follows below.

In this video lecture from the Faith at Risk 5 conference[3] Christian apologist Bob DeWaay does a stellar job in helping you understand how these EC vipers are blending panentheism and pantheism into a New Spirituality and are then injecting this spiritual poison into the younger sectors of mainstream evangelicalism:

[mejsvideo src=”https://www.apprising.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Bob-DeWaay-Emergence-Theory-FAITH-AT-RISK-5.mp4″ width=640 height=360]

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End notes:

[1] Gordon Clark, In Defense of Theology [Milford: Mott Media, 1984], 58, 61.

[2] John Bohanon, Preaching & The Emerging Church: An Examination of Four Founding Leaders: Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, and Doug Pagitt [Seattle: CreateSpace, 2010], 88.

[3] Available at Lighthouse Trails Publishing right here and Twin City Fellowship right here.

See also:

AN OVERVIEW OF PROCESS THEOLOGY

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON CHRIST

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS