For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Was The Bible Actually Written By Man?

By now the following quote from Rob Bell and his wife Kristen will be rather familiar to many of you who are concerned with the vital work of exposing heresy in your evangelical churches I do here at Apprising Ministries:

The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself – “discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” (Online source, emphasis added)

Let me address two things here. 1) The erroneous idea that Rob Bell isn’t Emergent. We note that the previous quote happens to come from a Christianity Today magazine article dated November 1, 2004 called “The Emergent Mystique” and Bell is the featured pastor. Like I’ve said many times, if I were Rob Bell I wouldn’t want to be tagged with the Emergent label either. But to paraphrase the old saying, if it looks like Emergent, and it does; and if it sounds like Emergent, and it does, then it’s Emergent.

And 2) what Bell just said above is a tacit denial of the evangelical Protestant doctrine of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. Yes, in Bell’s timid and tentative “style” he attempts to obscure this with the statement, “the Bible is still the center.” But then he undermines this as Bell goes on to point out that he’s “discovering the Bible as a human product,…rather than the product of divine fiat.” That is what he’s talking about as he says, “The Bible is still in the center for us,… but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” Right, this way we are free to go on and interpret the Bible “in community,” so that in true neo-orthodox fashion we can then call only the parts that “speak” to us divinely inspired.

Now with this spiritual cyanide in mind we consider the following quote from Marcus Borg, Fellow of the Christ-hating Jesus Seminar. This comes from his 1997 book The God We Never Knew:

The next step in my understanding of the Bible took place in seminary. There I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, not statements coming directly or somewhat directly from God (25).

The Guilt By Association Is Pretty Clear

Sound familiar? Yet this was written seven years before the Rob Bell made his comment in CT. Guilt by association? Um, yeah. We already know from Bell’s book Velvet Elvis that he is familiar with, and even recommends, the work of panentheist Marcus Borg e.g. footnote 1 – “Marcus Borg explains this idea extremely well in his book The Heart of Christianity” (180) And so let’s read a bit more from Marcus Borg, who is a “Progressive Christian“; O could we please just get a few more titles and descriptors:

As such [the Bible] contained their understandings and affirmations, not statements coming directly or somewhat directly from God. The creation stories in the book of Genesis were Israel’s stories of creation, not God’s stories of creation. I realized that whatever “divine revelation” and the “inspiration of the Bible meant (if they mean anything) they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority (ibid., emphasis added)

How does Dr. Borg know this? He doesn’t. Can Dr. Borg prove any of this filthy spiritual bile? No, he can’t. But now let’s just see where his “revelations” led him:

Seminary also introduced me to the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins. I learned from my professors and the readings they assigned that Jesus almost certainly >was not> born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world… I also found the claim that Jesus and Christianity were the only way of salvation to be troublesome. (ibid.)

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who thinks that Dr. Marcus Borg is a Christian seriously needs to have his spiritual head examined. He has just denied virtually everything that Christians believe! Yet this is how pathetically weak the American Christian Church is that we cannot even recognize a ravenous wolf that is barely even in sheep’s clothing. And so we have to ask: Can you really not see Rob Bell has placed himself on this exact same path? This is a spiritual deception and men cannot simply pick and choose the parts of the Bible they happen to like.

God the Holy Spirit is very clear when He warns us about those who do not love the Truth – because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11, NASB) Can you see that? These people do not receive the love of the Truth and so as they fall away into apostasy when God sends upon them a deluding influence it shows us they were never saved in the first place. Could this be actually be happening to Rob Bell?

Enter Yoga Masters And The Buddha Into The Repainted And Progessive “Christian” Spiritual Journey

Because if his slide down into the mystery of Gnosticism continues things like the following, which I transcribed from an mp3 recording of a sermon by Bell on breathing, are going to end up being taught to your youth. Within this mystic message our drifting Emergent leader Rob Bell informs us:

[In Yoga] it’s not how flexible you are, it’s not whether you can do the poses, it’s not how much you can bend yourself, it’s can you keep your breath [breathes in and out] consistent [breathes out] through whatever you are doing.

And the Yoga Masters say this is how it is when you follow Jesus and surrender to God. Is it’s your breath being consistent. It’s your connection with God regardless of the pose you find yourself in. That’s integrating the divine into the daily.

That’s right; you have just read the words of a supposed Christian pastor who has told you the way Hindu pantheists teach one how to follow the Yoga Master named Jesus. And then he tells us that our breath is our “connection to God,” which would then make all of mankind divine. This becomes evident when Bell says our breathing is “integrating” – joining together – “the divine into the daily.” Well you see, all religions have to have a place for our Lord somewhere and those who follow “Yoga Masters” will end up believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the ultimate Yoga Master.

However, in Hinduism we are not “surrendering” to and “connecting” with the one true and living God of the Bible. Rather the Hindu religion teaches pantheism, pan – all, and theism – god. Essentially you can say that as individual drops of water make up an ocean so each of one of us make up god. In other words, we’re all a part of the impersonal force that is called “god.” Now followers of Bell will immediately say, “O, c’mon Rob is talking about Yoga Masters who are Christians.” Let’s leave aside here that in the real world there is no such thing as “Christian” yoga, but Bell does not differentiate here. He simply says “Yoga Masters.”

Now let’s look at where allegedly once Christian Dr. Marcus Borg himself has drifted in his own “spiritual journey” once he “freed” himself of Biblical restraint. In the book Jesus And Buddha: The Parallel Sayings of which he is Editor Borg enlightens us:

I write as a Jesus scholar and a devoted non-exclusivist Christian. Buddhists might see matters differently and I know that some Christians would. But the cumulative product of my thinking and experience is the conclusion that Jesus and the Buddha are the two most remarkable religious figures whom have ever lived. Moreover, there are striking similarities between them. I have sometimes said if the Buddha and Jesus were to meet, neither would try to convert the other–not because they would regard such an effort as hopeless, but because they would recognize one another.
(Editor’s Preface, v., emphasis added)

Men and women, Marcus Borg has just equated the LORD God Almighty in human flesh with the Buddha, but one of His creatures. Now I ask you, why would ostensibly orthodox Christians like Rob Bell and Tony Jones wish to lend their credibility in evangelical circles to this type of despicable blasphemy? Men and women, I tell you in the Lord that the Body of Christ does not need this Emergent Church conversation gaining any more ears and becoming entrenched even deeper within our Christ’s Church.

And if we care about Bell, and just as importantly, if we care about the young minds whom he is infecting with his Emergent spiritual disease, then we will warn Rob and all who are listening to him. The Lord has impressed upon me that there are some of you out there who have known Rob Bell for years and deep in your heart you know. You know you have seen his slide from orthodoxy and from the way he once taught at Calvary Church. Then I urge you, now is the time to come forward and share your stories…before it’s too late…and Bell becomes just another Borg.