“I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:9-11)

You Can’t Handle An Abundant Life Unless You’ve Been Born Again From Above

So, you want an abundant life; then first of all you must come to understand the truth that mankind does not deserve anything from God but death for our rebellion against Him:

among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3)

And no, that doesn’t sound pleasant; but spending an eternity in conscious torment in a literal place Jesus Himself referred to as hell sounds just a bit less pleasant, doesn’t it?

One must come to God on the narrow road of following Christ; complete surrender, no questions asked, or go your own broad way with the esteem of self: “I want what I want and I want it now,” which ends in hell.

Those are your choices. And I tell you in the Lord that anyone who promises you otherwise such as Rob Bell, former rock star pastor of the Emerging Church, and his Love Wins mythology is lying to you.

Now for the Great News for all who will but believe:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
(Romans 5:6-11)

This online apologetics and discernment ministry (OADM) Apprising Ministries has been documenting for you for seven years now how doctrinal lines continue to be erased with great rapidity in what’s literally becoming The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD).

I’ve already warned you that evangelicalism is only just beginning to pay a heavy price for its foolish embrace of the sinfully ecumenial Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church—which has now grown into a full-blown neo-liberal cult operating within its walls.

The evangelical community was already infected with the spiritual cancer of the semi-pelagian (at best) Church Growth Movement (CGM), which was released by its host Fuller Theological Seminary, and quickly metastasized throughout the church visible.

And part of the price being paid is how deeply the CGM arm of the Emerging Church has carried its new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology—aka “big tent” universalist Emergence Christianity—into the bloodline of the Seeker Driven mainstream of the visible church.

Under the guise of the postmodern Humpty Dumpty language of being “missional” in came the new man-centered missional mantra, which has become the new gospel, and is summed up as follows:

God loves you so much that He created you for a great purpose. He offers you hope and a wonderful plan for your life. So you need to discover the dream that God has placed in your heart and unlock your destiny.

He wants you to follow the lifestyle of Jesus and learn His ways enabling you to be a co-creator with God because we’re the King’s kids. Then together we will help Him make the world a better place, just as God dreams for it to be.

But you then say: “God wants me to have life and that more abundantly.” Let me ask you honestly, just who is it that’s saying He doesn’t? However, God’s idea of an “abundant” life e.g. for Jim Elliot and Nate Saint was for them to be murdered by the very people they were trying to reach for Christ.

For you see, this is what would end up being their driving purpose; this was how these “followers of Jesus” were missional as they declared the best life now that God could give them. So, do you still want to be a “Christ-follower?” Or to put it more accurately, a Christian?

Then let’s consider the abundant life of the great Apostle Paul’s from his own testimony:

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Corinthians 11:23-28)

Now let’s look at the greatest abundant life ever lived, Jesus Christ of Nazareth; Who is only God Himself in human flesh. The Father’s idea for His “abundant” life was for all of the disciples of His only begotten Son to abandon Him; for Christ Jesus to be brutally crucified and punished for our sins.

So away with all this Seeker Driven/quasi-Word Faith rubbish; this centered on self and man-pleasing infomercial gospel of pseudo-Christianity! Don’t listen to all this irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20).

The Spirit prompts me today and so I come before you with a Word from God; and this is what I hear the Lord saying — “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you” (Psalm 50:21).

O, but in all their great human wisdom men e.g. like Rick Warren and his Purpose Drivenism seem to think that mankind is just too sophisticated for the “old-fashioned” and horribly “out-dated” preaching of Christ on the Cross and then letting God the Holy Spirit do His work so that it is God alone Who receives the glory?

Friend, let me ask you: Do you want to come to the Master’s table through some supposedly better life that you believe you have lived/could live; and/or for what you think is upon that table? Or, rather, are you coming to Jesus even if there doesn’t happen to be anything nice for you on His table in this life?

For you see, the absolute truth is that your abundant life will only begin when you as His slave—who is deserving of nothing—have the Master Himself as your only desire. This is something that’s well worth meditating upon.

Further reading

• DEBUNKING GREATER BY STEVEN FURTICK—BURN THE PLOWS
• PERRY NOBLE, JACK GRAHAM, AND QUASI-WORD FAITH PREACHERS
• SATANIC WORD FAITH HERESY AND ITS STARS LIKE JOYCE MEYER CALLED OUT