Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20:28-30)

Brian McLaren And The Emergent Church Distorting The Truth

This growing apostasy has now brought us to a point in alleged postmodern America where the evangelical church is facing the exact same issue as that encountered by Charles Haddon Spurgeon with the encroaching liberals in the Baptist Union of his day. Today we can see what I’ve called The New Downgrade No-Controversy developing when someone like spiritual guru Brian McLaren, a recognized leader in the decidedly anti-Reformation Emergent Church, has been able to fool weak-willed leaders within the Church of our Lord through his a-logical double-speak into accepting him as an evangelical when he in fact denies the Gospel that’s supposedly preached by evangelicals.

What I have been attempting to do here at Apprising Ministries is to shine additional light onto the deception of the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church now operating within the evangelical camp of our Lord’s Church. Yes, these are strong words, but it’s about time someone came out and called this movement exactly what it is – disaskalia daimonion – the doctrines of demons. Shame on our so-called leaders–with much more of a forum than I–for sharing platforms with a man like Brian McLaren, who denies virtually everything associated with the very Gospel of Jesus Christ that he is supposed to proclaim clearly to others. And yet there he is scheduled to be a speaker during the General Session of the Zondervan National Pastor’s Conference 2007.

O sure, in a recent article in The Washington Post Dr. D.A. Carson, apparently quite conditioned by today’s twisted tolerance, politely stated about Brian McLaren and the Emergent Cult:

“If you have some person or movement coming along calling into question the non-negotiables of Christianity, then those who espouse Christianity find such a challenge dangerous,” said Donald A. Carson, professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, who has criticized McLaren’s theology.

Though a “creative, sparkly writer,” added Carson, McLaren has “got so many things wrong in his analysis that his work is not going to last that long.”

When Is A Danger Not A Threat?

Let’s think about this for a minute. D.A. Carson, who is a well respected evangelical scholar and author of the book The Emerging Church tells us that Brian McLaren and the Emergent Church have come along questioning “the non-negotiables of Christianity.” Two in particular being the inerrancy and authority of Holy Scripture and the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Moreover Dr. Carson says that those of us “who espouse Christianity find such a challenge dangerous.” Based on the widespread acceptance of both Brian McLaren and the Emergent Church itself I’m left to wonder: Who are these people “find such a challenge dangerous” and why is this “challenge” not treated as a threat?

As I pointed out in Enemies of the Cross it’s obviously not the Zondervan publishing company, InterVarsity Press or Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for example who are financial contributors to Emergent Village, which Guru Brian McLaren is closely associated with. In addition, despite repeated warnings by discernment ministries not to, Zondervan gave emerging Hollow Men like McLaren’s friend Tony Jones, as well as Dan Kimball and Doug Pagitt–both there at the foundation of the emerging church movement by Leadership Network–further credibility by giving them a huge forum last year at NPC 2006.

And then as I just pointed out–again–Zondervan is giving McLaren a great platform to further sow his Emergent confusion of the new liberalism to your pastors at NPC 2007. A Canadian reader of AM has just written to make me aware that Brian McLaren has been invited to be the featured speaker at the 2006 Conference on Evangelism sponsored by the Atlantic Baptist Mission (ABM) of New Brunswick. So now McLaren undercover of evangelicalism, which has yet to call him to account for what Steve Camp has also called “heretical and aberrant beliefs,” is being given the chance to infect the ABM, “Atlantic Canada’s largest mission and ministry organization,” with the spiritually corrupt virus of his Emergent pseudo-Christianity.

I praise God that even though this reader is but a layman he still has the spiritual intestinal fortitude to try and make the leaders of ABM aware of McLaren’s heresies. How sad though that evangelical leaders haven’t the spiritual backbone to do more than mouth a quiet whimper that possibly Brian McLaren and the Emergent cult of the new liberalism are spreading a false gospel of social activism mixed with the Gnosticism of Contemplative Spirituality actually culled from the apostate Church of Rome. Anyone who has seriously studied the Emergent Church knows that Contemplative/Centering Prayer is a core doctrine of this highly schismatic and Reformation-hating organization. If you make the time to look into this issue of Contemplative Spirituality you will quickly understand why Emergent leaders are rediscovering Christianity “as an eastern religion” as Rob Bell put it.

Contemptlative Spiritality Has Its Roots In Roman Catholicism

In the Christianity Today article The Emergent Mystique McLaren himself tells us that his friends Dallas Willard and Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster are “key mentors” the Emergent Church. Willard and Foster are major proponents of “Spiritual Formation,” which is for all intents and purposes another name for Contemplative Spirituality. Men and women, these so-called “spiritual disciplines,” taught by Guru Brian McLaren, actually originated in pagan practices of eastern religions but later germinated within the unbiblical monastic systems of the Roman Catholic Church. This should open your eyes as to why the new evangelicalism sees the Reformation as over. It is vital for you to understand that the practice of this eastern meditation, no matter that it is couched in Christian terminology, as a way to “worship” God is just as forbidden by Him as any other pagan practices in the Old Testament.

Yet this so-called “Christian” meditation is now being spread into evangelicalism itself by the Devil’s Ecumenical Church of Deceit. And the major carrier of this of this spiritual poison which is virtually paralyzing evangelical outreach to Roman Catholics, as well as to Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists is Brian McLaren and the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church. Next time I’ll take a closer look at so-called “evangelical” Brian McLaren’s denial of the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement, the heart of the very Gospel that is supposed to be preached by evangelicals. Also you really need to know that the Christian faith is no mere intellectual exercise which you personally can “keep under control” while picking and choosing what you like from the Bible and other so-called “faith traditions.” No, what happens in the lives of those who practice these types of spiritual disciplines long enough is that God Himself sends them into spiritual delusion (see–2 Thessalonians 2:11).

If you have become involved in Contemplative Spirituality, which is nothing more than transcendental mediation for the Christian, today I strongly admonish you to turn away from it because it will only lead you into an corrupt view of our true depraved nature and into a false sense of the love of man:

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves” (2 Timothy 3:1-2, KJV).