Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:7-8, ESV)

Pagan Religious Practices And Apostate Roman Catholicism

Prompted a while back by Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) being quoted–and thanks to my good friend Cecil Andrews of Take Heed Ministries I found out it wasn’t the first time–again by Radio Bible Class (RBC), I ended up writing an article called Who Is Henri Nouwen? For those who don’t know Nouwen is yet another of these Roman Catholic priest/monks heavily involved in the alleged “spiritual disciplines” of what is now known as Contemplative Spirituality. Check the footnotes of recent evangelical books on “prayer” and spirituality and you will almost always see his name.

And that an ostensibly “middle-of-the-road” ministry such as RBC would be appealing to the apostate Roman Catholic priest Nouwen as a source of true spirituality is a very strong indication of just how far into the mainstream of the evangelical camp the Gnostic mysticism of this Contemplative Spirituality has now slithered. In his book Sabbatical Journey Nouwen shows us that the result of his practice of this so-called “Christian” mysticism eventually led him to universalism as he said:

Today I personally believe that Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her way to God (51, emphasis mine).

Another thing you may not have known is that this mystical approach to spirituality, condemned by God, actually originated with pagan practices taken from religions in the east. Over time these were then developed within the apostate Church of Rome, particularly the practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer. This is really not “prayer” at all but transcendental meditation in Christian terms complete with repetitive mantra. So-called “Christian” mystics like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross have now been introduced into the evangelical community through relentless promotion by supposed Spiritual Directors within the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church.

The truth is that the longer one practices this “new spirituality” the further away from Biblical theology they get. Let’s take for example Richard Foster, who along with his partner Dallas Willard is considered a “key mentor” within this Emergent Church. The much heralded Foster, author of the widely read book Celebration of Discipline, is considered by many to be a “living spiritual teacher.” Foster also happens to be a Quaker whose teaching on Christian “spirituality” is so weak, compromised and ecumenical that he can be listed at the website of the Living Spiritual Teachers Project on the very same page with unregenerate pagans like the Dali Lama and Ram Dass. This in itself should send up a warning flag of the deepest scarlet.

Despite this however, Foster’s stature continues to grow within evangelicalism as evidenced by Chuck Swindoll quoting this teacher of counterfeit spirituality numerous times–along with Dallas Willard–in his own book So, You Want To Be Like Christ? I have pointed out repeatedly that the Reformation-hating Emergent Church, which is itself part of the larger new evangelicalism, is a major pillar in the Devil’s recent Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD). And in addition I have also brought out that this Emergent Church movement actually began as a rebellion against the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.

The Karl Barth Connection

It is at this point that Emergents begin howling their foul-mouthed protests of pride about there being too much diversity within this highly schismatic movement to try and generalize it. That is pure nonsense because, though it has since diversified, the absolute fact remains that what has become the Emergent Church had a beginning through Leadership Network. And most of the leaders who were there from that beginning were, and are, neo-orthodox (at best) in their view of Holy Scripture. The truth is that they are undeniably influenced by the wrong approach to Holy Scripture taught by Karl Barth and are actually quite hostile to proper Biblical Reformed theology, and sola Scriptura in particular.

Dr. Walter Martin (1928-1989), in his day a leading authority in the field of Comparative Religion, astutely summed up Barth’s faulty teaching this way: The Bible is a divine mailbox where we receive communiqués from Heaven. However, Martin is absolutely correct when he says: “The problem is, the Bible isn’t just a mailbox, the Bible is the message from Heaven!” Men and women it is critical for you to understand that once you open the door to Barth’s highly existential approach to Scripture, then your degenerate human reasoning becomes the criterion by which you must then decide what you “feel” God is saying.

And I do know exactly what I am talking about because earlier in my walk with Jesus I was once a Sunday School Superintendent in a church where this neo-orthodox view of the Bible was taught. I can tell you from first hand experience that discussions regarding Biblical interpretation ended up being absolutely fruitless because time and time again the conversation would end up: Well, that’s just the way Joshua experienced God; or don’t you understand that this is just the way that God worked through Peter; or this is only how Paul happened to see that particular issue. So there was never any real way to come to an actual consensus as to what a passage meant.

Does this begin to make sense to you now when you hear these Emergent cult leaders like Guru Brian McLaren and Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt and Dan Kimball and Rob Bell as they continuously waffle on critical issues? What is important to understand here is that this experience-oriented neo-orthodox view of the Bible is what the emerging “conversation” was all about in the first place. And now you should see that this is exactly why these emerging Hollow Men are never going to come right out with any firm views on issues facing the church today like abortion and homosexuality.

What has happened is that these men are now caught up themselves in the false philosophy of postmodernism (i.e. relativism) that they so often refer to. So it’s really no wonder that these poor “fools” (look it up in Scripture) can’t make any kind of a real stand with any type of “certitude.” Instead of “this is what God said,” it becomes a hopeless merry-go-round of what they think God has said, and not what the text says God has said. Say what you want concerning Dr. Martin but his lecture on The Cult Of Liberal Theology fits the new Emergent cult of liberalism perfectly. And you should be able to see from verse 8 of our text above that when it comes to His Bible our unchanging God wants His people to – be careful to do everything written in it.

The New Reformation Of Man-Centered Theology

But today I ask: What is it finally going to take for these spiritually obtuse evangelical leaders to see through this ridiculous Christian agnosticism? I tell you the truth this Emergent confusion on the Bible is simply a reimagined “Yea, hath God said?” But unfortunately because evangelicalism never renounced its humanism it was easy pickings for the enemy of men’s souls to plant his anthropocentric pelagianism within it. And now the new evangelicalism has brought about that new reformation which Robert Schuller had prophesied in his “classic” book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation.

While some may say there are no prophets today there can be little doubt that through Schuller’s philosophy of man-pleasing centered on the self theology, which is now so foundational to the ECoD, deceiving spirits have brazenly entered the sanctuary of our Lord’s Church with their things taught by demons. And things have currently become so pitiful within the Body of Christ that men like Guru Brian McLaren and other leaders within the new liberal cult of the Emergent Church are openly obscuring the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible with the blessing of leaders within evangelicalism.