THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IS TO PREACH THE GOSPEL

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on May 3, 2014 in AM Missives, Current Issues, Features

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Even as spiritual darkness falls, anyone with even a modicum of spiritual discernment should be able to see that there’s very rough spiritual seas which lay dead ahead. Know this, the plethora of people-pleasing prophets who’re telling you otherwise are lying to you; whether they even know it or not.

One of the issues I cover here at Apprising Ministries is the infiltration of the false philosophy of postmodernism into the mainstream of the visible church. And we saw this most clearly initially with the Emerging Church aka the Emergent Church that was launched by Leadership Network (LN).

The sad fact is that the spiritual cesspool Fuller Theological Seminary has played a large roll in the rot advanced by the man-centered Church Growth Movement vomited out of it. The CGM, along with its LN arm, have contributed mightily to the current dismal state of evangelicalism.

Like I explained recently in Why Our Plans Fail we’ve been told by these false teachers that Christendom needed to engage culture and contextualize God’s Gospel in order to “help” Him get His message across to them. In the end, it turns out to be a pitiful plan based upon human wisdom.

Tragically, even though such as these have found our culture willing to work with them to make the world a better place, what we’re actually being sold now from evangelical megachurches is really a reimagined version of the old social gospel. ((This will give you a good working knowledge of the social gospel: http://bit.ly/1i6jHjz, accessed 5/3/14.)) Here Dr. Gary Gilley’s insight is helpful:

Neo [new]-evangelicals believed that the church had the mandate not only to win and disciple the lost but to engage the culture and make the world a better place to live by changing social structures that cause grief and suffering. Many see 1957 as the official rupture between fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals, for it was that year that the two groups divided over Billy Graham accepting an invitation to conduct a crusade in New York City sponsored by a consortium of conservative and liberal churches…

But historically, conservative Christianity has always seen social improvement as taking a backseat to the church’s true calling of proclaiming the gospel and making disciples. It has never seen the social agenda as an end in itself – until now. The social gospel became the hallmark of the liberal church,…because the liberals had emptied their message and ministry of biblical truth and were left with no other “good news” than solving physical problems. Sadly, evangelicals today are increasingly adopting the missional, social gospel of liberalism. (source)

Gilley is right, “the church’s true calling [is] proclaiming the gospel and making disciples.” In fact, the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is found right in His commission to His disciples:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:12)

The inerrant and infallible Word of God in the Bible teaches us that Christ said the Father sent Him “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). So, the Church is to be about the Great Commission our Lord gave us:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

As we do thus, and thereby make converts through the power of God the Holy Spirit, there is a secondary aspect in which the world may become a somewhat better place as these new Christians find their lives changed by the Lord. No one credible argues Christians have no responsibility to our fellow man.

However, the self-centeredness of postmodernism has today infiltrated way too much of the professing Christian community through its foolish embrace of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) and charismania; those who persist in these types of occultism are led into falling in love with mankind (cf. 2 Timothy 3:2).

For example, yesterday I told you about Catalyst Contemplative Lab led by CSM Guru Phileena Heuertz. Therein we have the lunacy in the Lord’s Name of supposed Protestants learning CSM from an apostate mystic whose own devotion to it led her away from an orthodox profession into the long ago condemned Roman Catholic Church.

A Heuertz’ hero is the mystic Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968). ((http://leoadambiga.wordpress.com/category/christopher-and-phileena-heuertz/, accessed 5/3/14.)) Merton’s main claim to fame was his lifelong dedication to Contemplative/Centering Prayer (CCP), which is a form of transcendental meditation in an altered state of consciousness that’s been lightly sprayed with Christian terminology. ((I show you how CCP came into the Christian community in Origin of Contemplative/Centering Prayer and give you a very in-depth look at exactly what CCP is in Meditating on Contemplative/Centering Prayer.))

As I showed you previously in Thomas Merton and the Buddhas his practice of the CCP of CSM would make him more like the Buddha than the Christ. Yet, CCP is what guru Heuertz taught at Catalyst Dallas. It’s also important here to remind you that she’s a “founding partner of Gravity, a Center for Contemplative Activism. ((http://catalystconference.com/dallas/speakers-labs/phileena-heuertz/, accessed 5/3/14.))

My point being, while activism can be admirable, I don’t need to begin practicing unbiblical transcendental meditation and to turn my back on the Christian Gospel as I engage in it. This is a vivid example of what I’ve just pointed out re. CSM and charismania turning people inward to self instead of outward toward the Cross.

How tragic it is that along the way the “gospel” message such as these like guru Phileena Heuertz now offer to this lost world has moved far away from proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Name; salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone on the Cross.

Instead it’s become another gospel, which is no gospel at all (cf. Galatians 1:6-9), of some supposed dream God has for everyone who professes to believe in Jesus to work together to “change the world.” The problem is, this “dream” is a delusion arising from their own flesh because they reject the truth (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12).

Now you have the proper view of this section of the battlefield in this Truth War as I direct you to the following video series below The Church as a Vehicle to Transform the World, which was produced by Dr. Martin Erdmann, director of the Verax Institute, and features the teaching of pastor Dean Good:

(1) The Biblical Mission of the Church