Wide is the gate - Volume 2 - Caryl Matrisciana

ROB BELL SAYS “THE CHURCH” IS ONLY MOMENTS AWAY FROM ACCEPTING “GAY MARRIAGE”

Reblogged from www.wayoflife.org

 (Friday Church News Notes, February 20, 2015, , fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143 FREE) - 

Rob Bell, former pastor of the emerging Mars Hill Bible Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan, said recently about “gay marriage” that “we think it’s inevitable and we are moments away from the church accepting it” (“Former Megachurch Pastor Rob Bell,” Christian Post, Feb. 17, 2015). Bell made the comment when he and his wife Kristen appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday television program to discuss their new book The ZimZum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage. 

Having rejected the Bible as the infallible Word of God, the Bells have lurched from one heresy to another. Their final authority is their own thinking and the pop culture of which they have deeply partaken in their zeal to be “relevant.” Bell said, “I think culture is already there and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense...”
We would say, first, that “the church” that Bell is talking about is a hodgepodge of professing Christians that is no church at all in a Scriptural sense.

As for being irrelevant, the churches that stand on the testimony of Scripture are the most relevant institutions on earth. They alone are standing on the rock of God’s eternal Word rather than the shifting sand of human thinking and feeling. They alone are giving a prophetic voice into the darkness of this present world.

Bell is right about one thing, though. He is right that many churches will accept “gay marriage” and that we are on the cusp of a great turning point in church history. Many “churches” have already accepted homosexual marriage, and others are caving on the issue daily.

The apostle John had a different message from Bell’s: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. ... And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 2:15-17; 5:19). 

More on Rob Bell and Yoga, Meditation:  http://lightnseed.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/about-mr-rob-bell-kriya-kundalini-yoga.html

The Emergent Church and the New Age Movement

Posted by: mlemay Posted on: October 14, 2011

Reposted from: Stand up for the truth

Image by Roshnii via Flickr

John MacArthur is a wonderful, godly man whose teachings have been instrumental in the lives of many Christians.  He has been a staunch defender of the gospel through attacks from false teachers and continues to urge Christians to hold on to the absolute truth of God’s Word.  I thoroughly enjoy his books and teachings and we use his research and writings frequently on Stand Up For the Truth.

But even great men like John MacArthur get it wrong some times.  MacArthur recently commented that the Emergent Church was dead.  He sees it as no longer a threat to traditional Christianity.  Well in this one instance, John MacArthur is failing to understand just what the Emergent Church is—and is not.

The Emergent Church is like water—conforming and molding to the container it is in.  And its container is this:  That for any man to claim he can know absolute truth is an abomination.  Its container is not doctrine or the Word of God—it is how we feel about things.  If we don’t like the judgmental side of God, just ignore it.  When Christianity is taught as a religion of exclusivity, well that is just too harsh for them.

The Emergent Church is all about humanism—putting the desires and dreams of men ahead of the Word and will of God.  And it has found a new container it fits within perfectly—the growing New Age Movement.  A movement where you can bend and shape the character and nature of God to what you would like it to be, instead of what God states His character and nature truly is.  A movement that cannot accept what Jesus taught about the path to salvation being narrow.  A movement that teaches that God is in everything and each of us have a divinity within us—and if we can just tap in to it and connect with one another, that we can accomplish anything–just like the Tower of Babel.

When you take a step back and connect the dots between Emergent Church leaders and the New Age Movement, you see the big picture.  Many Emergent leaders are followers and admirers of New Age mystic teachers like Emanuel Swedenborg, Eckhart Tolle, Matthew Fox and Leonard Sweet—men who taught that we are all divine and if we could just connect our divinity with others, we could become God.

With all due respect and admiration for John MacArthur, on this point he could not be more wrong.  The Emergent Church continues to emerge—and has now found its perfect home in New Age mysticism.  And sadly the movement is being promoted and supported—knowingly or unknowingly—in churches like Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.  And Rick Warren has a website for pastoral resources that thousands of pastors access on a regular basis.  As pastors see the growth and financial prosperity of churches like Saddleback, do you think for a moment that many are not tempted to adopt his ideas for church growth?

How long will it be until more churches do what Rick Warren is doing with his “Daniel Plan”—inviting Muslims and Hindus in to teach Christians how to have physical, emotional and spiritual health?  How long will it be until more churches stop preaching out of the bible, and turn to using cheap, inaccurate paraphrase commentaries like Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”?

A day is coming when every Pastor and Elder Board will have a huge decision to make:  Do they stand strong on the absolute truth of God’s Word?  Or give in to the world so they can see growth in numbers and finances?  It’s a big decision—with big, eternal consequences.


Related articles

• Nondenominational Meditation? (solasisters.blogspot.com)
• Is the Emergent Church movement dead (or dying)? (standupforthetruth.com)
• John MacArthur Says Emerging Church in “Disarray and Decline” – Evidence Shows Differently (lighthousetrailsresearch.com)
• Christians and energy healing (standupforthetruth.com)
• New Age Christianity – Are You Prepared? (standupforthetruth.com)
• Spotting counterfeit truth (standupforthetruth.com)
• Time For The Church To Wake Up! (standupforthetruth.com)
• Barbara Marx Hubbard and the New Age (standupforthetruth.com)
• Brian McLaren:12 Step groups may help us escape Bible (standupforthetruth.com)