Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in My anger, ‘’They shall never enter my rest.’ ” And yet His work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.” (Hebrews 4:3-4)

Rob Bell’s Growing Mystical Mythology Of Man

Below follows a partial transcription of “Open,” which is the latest Nooma video by Rob Bell of the Emerging Church aka Emergent Church, now morphing into Emergence Christianity (EC), de-formation of the Christian faith. In his effort to please people, it sure seems to me that Bell has now so far over-emphasized the humanity of Christ that he has all but lost His Deity in the process.

Those familiar with liberal theology can also tell you it would teach virtually the same thing as Bell does below; right down to the idea that “Jesus took very seriously the creation poem Genesis that the Bible begins with.” In “Open” Rob Bells tells us:

Now to understand why Jesus prays like this, we have to understand that Jesus took very seriously the creation poem Genesis that the Bible begins with. And in this creation poem God creates, but God creates things that are capable of creating more, and so God creates trees but then gives trees the ability to create more. God creates animals and plants and fish but then empowers them to create more. And then God creates people, and gives them the ability to create more.

So everything in creation is essentially unfinished, God leaves the world unfinished, and invites people to take part in the ongoing creation of the world. Now, when you create, you always run the risk that what you’ve created, won’t turn out how you wanted it to, it may go a different direction, it may not be everything you intended it to be. It may veer off course, and it may break your heart.

And so, this creative energy, this divine creative energy that brought everything into existence it takes great risk in creating, but at the same time it works in a very specific way. It brings order out of chaos, so the Genesis creation poem says that it was wild and waste, chaos and void, and out of this God began the endless process of bringing design and order and beauty. So when Jesus prays, He’s tapping into this divine creative energy that made everything.

And so prayer, for Jesus, it was not this passive, acceptance of well, I guess this is just how its gonna be, and it wasn’t this active kind of rebellion against I’ll dictate the future for Jesus prayer was being open to the God who’s at work here and now, but to be open to the creative working of God in the world here and now you have to be honest , so when Jesus is saying things like is there any way for this cup to be taken so I don’t have to drink it He’s being brutally honest with God, God I don’t really want to go through this.

Like it says in the book of Psalms chapter 13 where the writer says God, how long will, will you forget me forever, how long will you hide your face from me? Jesus came from a long tradition of people who saw prayer as brutal honesty with God. Some people think that half of the psalms were laments, people grieving and outpouring their anguish in times of great suffering and torment, people shaking their fist at God, challenging God, doubting with God, wrestling with God, questioning God.

Apprising Ministries wants you to know how critical it is to note that there’s a whole lot more going on here than Jesus taking the creation poem “seriously.” You see, Christ Jesus of Nazareth is our Creator Himself in human flesh, and as such, the Master is the One about Whom this historical account of the creation is poetically—and literally—speaking of:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1-3)

For our purposes here in this particular piece we will zero in on the idea that mankind is essentially co-creators with God, which Bell ends up advancing when he says:

everything in creation is essentially unfinished, God leaves the world unfinished, and invites people to take part in the ongoing creation of the world.

But make no mistake; the Jesus of the Bible is God. You are not God, and you cannot participate in creation in the sense used of our Lord. And in our text above we have already seen from the Bible that — His — Christ’s i.e. God’s — work — in creation — was finished since the creation of the world so He doesn’t need you to.

Harnessing “Creative Energy” To Create

It’s also interesting that Bell’s mythical man-centered musings about this so-called “creative energy” above is also very close to that of Word Faith cult leader Kenneth Copeland:

Words create pictures, and pictures in your mind create words. And then the words come back out your mouth….And when that spiritual force comes out it is going to give substance to the image that’s on the inside of you. Aw, that’s that visualization stuff! Aw, that’s that New Age! No, New Age is trying to do this; and they’d get somewhat results out of it because this is spiritual law, brother. (Believer’s Voice of Victory (television program), TBN, 28 March 1991.) (Online source)

And speaking of New Age, I’m afraid it gets even worse for those following Rob Bell. In her piece Rob Bell Video: We Are Co-Creators With God over at Slice of Laodicea Ingrid Schlueter brings out a couple of other very important points:

Rob Bell begins his video with the same emotional storytelling that his other emerging peers like to use. While there are still tears on the face of his readers, he inserts something heretical and wraps it all up with some devotional idea that nobody would argue with.

We participate with God in the creation of the world? This is rank heresy that abounds in New Age teachings. The idea that we are co-creators with God is a key tenant of New Age belief. We are all co-creators with God, they say. God needs us to carry his creation forward. (Online source)

That the teachings of Rob Bell and others in the EC would eventually begin to mirror those of New Age teachers really shouldn’t come as any surprise considering the voluminous amount of false teachers they personally read, quote from, and then recommend to their Emergent disciples.

Take for example Marcus Borg, the heretical Christ-hating member of the spiritually bankrupt Jesus Seminar, whose book The Heart of Christianity Bell enthusiastically recommends in Velvet Elvis (VE) [endnotes 1; 57]. And then there’s Ken Wilbur, who is on record telling us he’s:

a longtime practicing Buddhist, and many of the key ideas in my approach are Buddhist or Buddhist inspired. First and foremost, Nagarjuna and Madhyamika philosophy: pure Emptiness and primordial purity is the “central philosophy” of my approach as well. (Online source)

And yet right in his book VE itself Rob Bell heartily recommends the unbelieving Wilber to teach us his pagan view concerning “divine” creativity:

For a mind-blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything. (192, endnote 143)

Well, no wonder Bell is revealing he knows so little idea about the creation of the universe. Because the sad truth is, if one reads enough of these kinds of fools with their vacuous mystic meandering speculations about how they wish God, or “pure Emptiness,” might be then you’re bound to see your own teachings becoming corrupted. And sadly, such is the case of Rob Bell.

As far as the creation, as we close this for now, we turn to Dr. Henry Morris, author of the classic devotional commentary The Genesis Record and the founder of the Institute for Creation Research. In his article The Finished Works of Creation Morris, known by many as “the father of the modern creation-science movement”, says of our opening Scripture text above:

Here is a strong New Testament confirmation of the Genesis record of a creation completed in the past-thus not continuing in the present as theistic evolutionists have to assume. Whatever processes God may have used during the six days of creation, they are no longer in operation for “the heavens and the earth were finished, . . . on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made. . . . And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (Genesis 2:1-3).

The record in Genesis could not be more clear and specific, but the fact that it is in Genesis tends to demean it in the minds of many scientists and theologians. So they prefer to believe in a continuing evolution and long ages in the past. But the writer of Hebrews once again confirms the fact of a completed creation: “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:10).

The writer is not trying to defend the completed creation as such, but merely assuming it as a commonly acknowledged truth. (Online source)

See also:

IS ROB BELL EVANGELICAL?

ROB BELL, NOOMA, AND THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGES

ROB BELL, PETER ROLLINS AND PHYLLIS TICKLE TOGETHER ADVANCING EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY

PETER ROLLINS AND PHYLLIS TICKLE ON THE EMERGENCE OF A BRAND NEW RELIGION

TONY JONES, PETER ROLLINS AND ROB BELL

THE NEW CHRISTIANS WITH CHRISTIANITY WORTH BELIEVING—NO SOLA SCRIPTURA: YES, WOMEN PASTORS AND QUEER CHRISTIANS

Rob Bell is “Open” to New Age Thought