Tagged: Heresy

The end of the world didn’t happen… but something VITALLY IMPORTANT did…

We’ve all had some fun with this “end of the world” prediction… and rightly so.  As Mark Driscoll said in his talk “How Sharp the Edge?” … “Some things DESERVE to be mocked.”

However…

I have some vitally important questions about this situation banging around in my head.  There’s a lesson here - a lesson about pride & humility that we can’t afford to miss.  And no, my questions do not flow out of the fact that I was not raptured on Saturday…

  1. How was such a long-time believer in Christ, one who has been a student of the word for years, so mistaken and deceived?
  2. How were so many others deceived along with him?  Did nobody think to read the PLAIN teachings of scripture instead of trying to calculate some hidden code?
  3. How does pride get the upper hand like this… to cause a mere man to ignore a very clear statement from Jesus Himself (Matthew 24:36)?
  4. Where were those closest to Harold Camping as all this was going down?  Did nobody who was his friend or loved one see the contradiction with scripture?  Isn’t that part of what the church does for its members… keeping them on the “straight and narrow” theologically?  Did nobody care about this dear man’s reputation and the honor of Christ enough to try to dissuade him?  (If there was someone who tried, we’ve yet to hear of them)

And here’s the most uncomfortable question of them all…

  • Am I just as prone to this kind of deception and pride?  Maybe.  Probably.  Wouldn’t it be just as prideful (or at least heading in the same direction) for me to think that I’m not?

What does it take for us to truly battle pride?  How do we make sure we are fighting deception as we should?  The answer is evasive in our modern world, but not unclear.  I think Hebrews 3:13 tells us what we need to know…

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

We are to watch out for one another.  We are to exhort, admonish, confront, “call out” each other for our own spiritutal and eternal safety and more importantly for the honor and glory of Christ, our Savior.  Those are things our culture is extremely hesitant to do.  After all, I might be judging someone (gasp!) if I do that!

Christians, there’s a vitally important lesson here!  One I hope we will not ignore.  Harold Camping’s tragic mistake teaches us that no man, no matter who he is or how well respected, or how wonderfully sincere and convincing, is able to fight the battle of faith alone.  We NEED each other to keep us on track… in light of the word of God.

Father… make us THAT sort of church… for Your name’s sake!

God doesn’t really know the future… He’s just a good guesser!

Many may not be familiar with the term “Open Theism.”  It’s a fairly recent development (last 20 years) in theological circles, attempting to explain how God’s sovereignty and man’s “free” will work together.

It’s also HERESY.

What it comes down to in the end is that God doesn’t know the future, of His own choice.  Instead, He limits Himself to being a constant “responder” to the various choices that His “free” creatures make… even having to “guess” at times what is best to do.  Some authors supporting this theology even say God makes mistakes at times.

OI!

Anyway… here’s a great article about the subject, written by a guy who used to hold the view, but has since turned back to a more Biblical view of God and His sovereignty!  Enjoy!

GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE: A Personal Reflection on God’s Providence Over My Open Theism – by David Schrock (from the Gospel Coalition)

May 21st is the end of the world! (Or is that the day I’m going to the Symphony?)

You may have heard the hubbub already… Harold Camping, a Christian radio-broadcaster, is declaring that the Bible says the end of the world is going to happen on May 21st, 2011.  In his own words…

God has given so much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all.

Wow.  Really?

If you want to read a good article about this… and the many, many other times various “Christians” have made these kinds of predictions, you can find one at Al Mohler’s site HERE.

What do I think of the prediction?  Two simple things…

  1. What part of  “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only,” does Harold Camping NOT understand? (Matthew 24;36)
  2. I’m so worried about Harold’s prediction that I’ve purchased tickets to go to the symphony with my wife as part of our weekend anniversary celebration (22 years)… see….?

…from the “Blatantly False Christian Quotations” category…

Most Christians have heard this one.  Most Christians have said this one.  I think at one point I’ve actually said it too.  But I’ve come to see that the Bible NEVER affirms it to be true….

“God will never put you in a situation you can’t handle.”

And if you buy that one, I’ve got some wonderful swampland in Florida you should consider buying…

The more I read the scriptures, the more I realize that this quote is blatantly false.  In fact, it’s worse than that… it’s exactly opposite of what God typically does or what we see regularly demonstrated in the scriptures.  Think about even the most well-known accounts from the scriptures…

  • God’s command to Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery (who wound up handling that one?  Uh… God)
  • God’s command to Noah to build the ark (Who wound up bringing all the animals to the ark?  Uh… God again)
  • How about David’s fight with Goliath (David was confident he could kill Goliath because he was such a “dead-eye” shot with a sling… right? READ IT FOR YOURSELF)
  • Jesus’ command to us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).  Which of us is up for that one?

Though very well-meaning, isn’t this quote really saying more about OUR ability than it is God’s?  Since when has God been all about telling us how wonderful WE are?  how much WE can accomplish on our own?  what good hearts WE have?

It seems to be me the message of the gospel is that we can’t do anything on our own.  We’re helpless.  We’re in desperate need of the grace of God – yes, even AFTER we place our faith in Him.

So back to the quote in question…
Q; Well-meaning?  A: Perhaps.
Q: Accurate?  A: Not on your life.  In fact, it’s more akin to humanism than to Christian faith…

Time magazine considers Rob Bell (repost)

reposted from www.albertmohler.com

“A Massive Shift Coming in What it Means to Be a Christian?” — TIME Magazine Considers Rob Bell

Friday, April 15, 2011

The edition of TIME magazine timed for Easter Week features a cover story on the controversy over Rob Bell and his new book, Love Wins. Interestingly, the essay is written by none other than Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former editor of Newsweek –TIME’s historic competitor. Meacham, who studied theology as an undergraduate at the University of the South, helpfully places Rob Bell in the larger context of modern theology, even as he offers a basically sympathetic analysis.

Meacham explains:

The standard Christian view of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is summed up in the Gospel of John, which promises “eternal life” to “whosoever believeth in Him.” Traditionally, the key is the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in the words of the ancient creed, “for us and for our salvation came down from heaven … and was made man.” In the Evangelical ethos, one either accepts this and goes to heaven or refuses and goes to hell.

Bell, Meacham writes, “begs to differ” with this “standard Christian view.”  He then relates that Rob Bell “suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book’s subtitle puts it, ‘every person who ever lived’ could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be. Such a simple premise, but with Easter at hand, this slim, lively book has ignited a new holy war in Christian circles and beyond.”

Well, “holy war” is an exaggeration loved by the media, but Bell has obviously ignited a raging controversy within evangelical circles.

Meacham then traced something of the reaction to Bell’s argument:

When word of Love Wins reached the Internet, one conservative Evangelical pastor, John Piper, tweeted, “Farewell Rob Bell,” unilaterally attempting to evict Bell from the Evangelical community. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says Bell’s book is “theologically disastrous. Any of us should be concerned when a matter of theological importance is played with in a subversive way.” In North Carolina, a young pastor was fired by his church for endorsing the book.

All that is a matter of public record now, but what makes Meacham’s analysis really interesting is what comes next:

The traditionalist reaction is understandable, for Bell’s arguments about heaven and hell raise doubts about the core of the Evangelical worldview, changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation. “When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world,” says Mohler, “then you don’t need the church, and you don’t need Christ, and you don’t need the cross. This is the tragedy of nonjudgmental mainline liberalism, and it’s Rob Bell’s tragedy in this book too.”

This may mark the first time any major media outlet has underlined the substantial theological issues at stake. Meacham understands what Bell’s proposal amounts to — “changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation.”

To his credit, Meacham also understands that Bell’s argument fits comfortably within the context of Protestant Liberalism. “Early in the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick came to represent theological liberalism, arguing against the literal truth of the Bible and the existence of hell. It was time, progressives argued, for the faith to surrender its supernatural claims,” he explains.

Rob Bell, he suggests, “is more at home with this expansive liberal tradition than he is with the old-time believers of Inherit the Wind.”

Meacham is right about this, of course. Readers may differ with his analysis of other aspects of this controversy, and, in the end, Jon Meacham seems to admire Rob Bell, whom he describes as “an odd combination of Billy Graham and Conan O’Brien.” But he understands that the liberal tradition in theology is where Rob Bell now finds his home.

Finally, this may be the most telling portion of the article:

Is Bell’s Christianity — less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions — on an inexorable rise? “I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian,” Bell says. “Something new is in the air.”

Like Brian McLaren, who argues for “a new kind of Christianity,” Rob Bell now openly wonders “if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian.”

“Something new is in the air,” he says. Actually, arguments for universalism and the denial of Hell are anything but new. The real question is now whether the Church has sufficient biblical conviction to resist this doctrinal seduction. Otherwise, it may well be that Rob Bell’s “massive shift” is the shape of things to come.

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Just FYI – I don’t believe for a moment that a massive shift of any kind is coming in what it means to be a Christian.  The definition of what it means to be a Christian (one who has placed their full faith and trust in Christ) does not change though the culture constantly does.  Rob Bell has great influence with a certain demographic, no doubt – but even he will not and cannot make THAT large of a change!

Rob Bell, you don’t WANT “fair”… trust me

In a recent interview with Sally Quin of the “Washington Post” – Rob Bell, the Minnesota Mega-Pastor who is now infamous for his book, “Love Wins” said the following…

“If, billions and billions and billions of people, God is going to torture them in hell forever – people who never heard about Jesus are going to suffer in eternal agony because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they never heard of – then at that point we will have far bigger problems than a book from a pastor from Grand Rapids.”

As winsome and appealing as Rob is personally, and as reasonable as this type arguments sounds on a human level, Rob is failing to grasp a key scriptural teaching about the nature of man as it relates to the nature of God.  His human-perspective (instead of a scriptural perspective) appears to be what is causing him to veer off course…  Let me state the conclusion very clearly, and then we’ll unpack it..

NOBODY GOES TO HELL FOR NOT BELIEVING IN A JESUS THEY NEVER HEARD OF.  PEOPLE GO TO HELL BECAUSE THEY ARE SINNERS (Romans 1:18).

Rob Bell and many others make the mistake of  judging God by their human-sized perspective of what is “fair.”  They think that it is not “fair” that people who never heard of Jesus, and therefore did not have the opportunity to put their faith in him, wind up in hell.  But that’s a misunderstanding of how God sees the concept of  “fair” (and HIS is the perspective that matters).

If you want to talk about what “fair” is – here’s a quick synopsis for you… From God’s standpoint “fair” means that every single human being who has ever been born goes to hell, no questions asked.  Why?  Because we are sinners and He is holy. We have no right, no merit, no reason that can or should persuade such a holy, unfathomably righteous God to give us a place in His heaven.  That fact reveals to us just how fallen we really are (contrary to what the cult of self-esteem has been preaching to us for years), AND just how unfathomably pure God is.  Our condition compared to His makes the conclusion crystal clear…  God is not obligated to save any of us.  In fact, just the opposite is true were it not for His love that motivated His grace…

That leads us to another way to come at this is this:  It is by grace that anybody is saved… that means God (the Giver of the grace) gets to give His grace to whoever He wants (Romans 9:14-16).  That’s the very NATURE of what grace is…  You can’t demand grace.  Well, I guess you can but the one giving the grace has no obligation to concede to your demand.  If they did, it wouldn’t be grace anymore…

In the end Rob Bell, you don’t want “fair” – neither do I.  You want grace… Without it, we are all hell-bound.

Separated at birth?: Rob Bell & the Hollywood agent from “Bolt”

Why am I writing another post about the hubub going on surrounding Rob Bell (not that I’ve done many posts about it, but that there is no shortage of commentary on this)?  Because I’m a Pastor who has a flock of people I’m responsible to shepherd, guide to understanding the truth, and protect from false teaching (because false teaching WILL impact your life).  And many of them read my blog and not the blogs of others… So here goes…

Folks, be careful.  Be very careful.  Don’t let the slick, savvy, good communication skills of any person be what convince you of your beliefs.  That role belongs to God, as He reveals Himself in the scriptures.  Teachers can be great tools in His hand to accomplish that… and they can also be wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Though Rob Bell (and others) say that the scriptures are unclear on certain things, like the existence of hell, how a person goes to heaven, whether people really will be cast into hell, etc. – that simply isn’t true.  Jesus was very clear about hell.  The Apostle Paul was too.  The gospel message is also very clear.  No ambiguity, clearly and once for all delivered to the church.

Many of the questions that Rob Bell raises in his recent book and in his popular Nooma videos serve as examples of how language can be compromised, words emptied of their meaning, and a fog of relativism and ambiguity allowed to reign – and even celebrated.  It’s the spirit of our age… and it permeates much of what we have come to know as “the emergent church” of which Bell is proudly a part.  The whole approach to language and story and presentation represented by that movement reminds me of the Hollywood agent in the Disney film “Bolt.”  Actually, he and Rob Bell look a bit alike, cool glasses and all…  hmmmmm

Some of you may be wanting to know, “Rob Bell?  Who’s he?”  He’s a popular pastor of a church in Minnesota, author, and now the center of a ton of controversy over what it really means to be saved, how you get saved, and whether or not there is a heaven or hell.  The controversy comes from a book Rob Bell wrote and recently released, “Love Wins.“  In short, it’s a book that challenges the orthodox Christian ideas about heaven, hell, and who goes to each and why.  Bell has been accused of being all kinds of terrible (yes, terrible) things – heretic, destroyer of the gospel of Jesus, preacher of a “different” gospel, and many others.

Following the book release, there have been a handful of interviews with Rob Bell, two in particular that I’m going to highlight below.  First, Rob was interviewed about his book by journalist Lisa Miller.  The whole shindig was organized by Harper Collins, the parent publisher of Rob’s book.  Given that fact (which very few people have mentioned), you wouldn’t expect it to be a very hard-hitting, in-your-face, serious example of objective journalism…and it wasn’t.  Lisa Miller did ask a few straight-up questions, but overall, it was a promotional interview, not a journalistically critical one.  You can find it  HERE.  Warning about 3 things… it requires you to enter an email address, it’s over an hour long, and doesn’t actually begin the interview until around 12 minutes in.

My main comments about this interview are:

  • Rob Bell’s answers are very vague… evasive in fact.
  • Rob Bell’s answers are significantly sourced in anecdotes, illustrations and stories… not primarily in scripture, where our answers to these questions MUST come from.
  • When Rob Bell does use scripture, he does not use them in their context very often, or very well.
  • Rob Bell’s answers are based on TONS (not an exaggeration if we could put them on the scale) 0f presuppositions that don’t have much Biblical foundation (such as his comments about the “law of  love” at about 22 minutes, and his definition of love at 42 minutes).
  • Though I don’t know his heart motives, Bell certainly appears to be intentionally staged, purposely trying to be winsome.  What I mean is this: he’s more cute and witty than he is substantive.  His opening, obviously planned monologue, His repeated “baiting” of the audience, His witty banter with the interviewer… all these show that the interview was more about being a media promotion than a discussion of an eternally serious subject that deserves serious answers.  All this bothers me deeply (especially when I consider that he holds himself out to be a “Christian” Pastor).

After that interview is when things got VERY interesting… and when I breathed a sigh of relief.  That’s when this mystery guy (mystery to me) Martin Bashir stepped in to interview Rob Bell on MSNBC.  You can see that video below…

WOW!!!! My main comments about this interview are:

  • Martin Bashir asked the questions that really matter, questions that deal with this issue substantively.
  • Rob Bell continued to be very vague in his answers… trying to give clever, evasive answers.
  • Martin Bashir wouldn’t let him get away with it and continued to press him toward clarity.
  • Rob Bell continued to be very vague…
  • Martin Bashir STILL wouldn’t let him get away with it and continued to press him toward substance.
  • Rob Bell’s dodgy, flighty, ethereal-sounding verbiage was exposed for the foolishness it is.  He clearly wasn’t able to give adequate defense to the historically and theologically astute questions of Martin Bashir.  That’s because his theology and approach to the Bible have no answers for these important questions…
  • Though people have already accused Bashir of being hard, impolite, wrong in his approach, vindictive, agenda-driven, etc. – he was only being what a journalist or historian SHOULD be… precise, clear, and an accountability for those who make assertions of truth.

After I listened to this short but penetrating interview, I found this interview that was done on a Christian radio talk show, with Martin Bashir, after his interview that called Rob Bell on the carpet…

On an additional note… If you are interested… you can watch a panel discussion about this book and it’s theology that was hosted at Southern Seminary.  See it HERE.

Rob Bell – “Love Wins” and a gob of misleading rhetoric

Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins is finally out… and I’ve held off in saying anything about it until it did, just to be fair.  But now that it IS out, my worst suspicions have proven true.

Rob Bell appears to be a very real wolf in pastoral sheep’s clothing… (TRANSLATION: A mega-false teacher, even though he IS a mega-church Pastor).

Much is already being said… here’s one of the best reviews I’ve seen…

Theology FAIL: Gnostics – Know your heretics

This post was originally distributed on the Resurgence

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Gnosticism is not a specific heretical movement in church history, but rather a broad umbrella term categorizing a loose collection of false beliefs.

Questions concerning the origins of Gnosticism are still unsolved. Some think Gnosticism originated as a heresy that diverted from orthodox Christian teaching, while others see the movement as an independent, non-Christian movement stemming from paganism.

What does it mean?

Everett Ferguson breaks down the diverse teachings of Gnosticism into eight categories:

  • A preoccupation with the problem of evil
  • A sense of alienation from the world
  • A desire for special and intimate knowledge of the secrets of the universe
  • A psychological (body and soul) and ethical (good and evil) dualism
  • A cosmology wherein all beings are derivative from the first, originating principle
  • A hierarchical anthropology of different classes of human beings with fixed destinies
  • A radically realized eschatology that denied the resurrection of the dead
  • A variety of ethical implications ranging from libertinism and asceticism

The Gnostic teaching on salvation was not based on Christ. Instead, “The content of the Gnostic gospel was an attempt to rouse the soul from its sleep-walking condition and to make it aware of the high destiny to which it is called.”

“The body is meaningless”

Some New Testament books contain corrective teachings to the Gnosticism that challenged Christianity. For instance, the spiritual elite at Corinth seemed to pride themselves on a special spiritual knowledge or mystical experience. They also questioned the resurrection and believed the body to be meaningless (which had profound moral consequences—such as promiscuous sexual behavior).

At Colossae, believers observed special ascetic practices by keeping ceremonies from the Jewish calendar and worshiped intermediate angelic powers. These proclivities illustrate two of the main tenets of Gnostic thought.

Jesus is above all

The Apostle Paul challenged the Gnostic heresies with a robust Christology. His solution to the false views of the body, the resurrection, and morality was to point them to the supremacy of Christ in his incarnation, life, death, and victorious resurrection.

The Gnostic teaching on salvation was not based on Christ.

Gnosticism was composed of such a broad variety of beliefs and teachings that it was challenged by many of the early church fathers, such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, and others.

Gnosticism Today

The broad teachings of the Gnostic movement comprise a surprising similarity with much of the New Age Movement today. But the best reason to be acquainted with Gnosticism is the popularity of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code, in which much information from the Gnostic gospels is appealed to as factual truth. Some Christians, upon reading Brown’s book, find their faith shaken by the stories that oppose the teachings of Christianity. Those who find their faith weakened can look both to Scripture and church history for a refutation of the false teachings of Gnosticism.

Theology FAIL: Docetism – Know your heretics

Heretic: [n. her-i-tik; adj. her-i-tik, huh-ret-ik] –noun ~ a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church.

THIS ARTICLE IS REPOSTED FROM WWW.THERESURGENCE.ORG

To learn more about where we come from and where we’re going, come to the next Resurgence conference: Our Fathers & Our Future, Orlando, February 2011.

Docetism was a heresy about Jesus that gained in popularity in the third century among those committed to Greek philosophy. Docetism is a term for a set of beliefs that were found in a number of heresies, including Marcionism and Gnosticism.

FALSE: “Jesus Felt No Pain”

Unlike many early heresies that denied the divinity of Jesus, Docetism eliminates his humanity. Suggesting that Jesus only appeared to be human though he was in fact not, Docetism derives its name from the Greek word dokeo, which means “to seem or appear.”

Those holding to Docetism believed that there was one eternal father who was eternally transcendent and therefore unable to experience any sort of human emotion of suffering. The idea that Jesus became human flesh (John 1:14) and experienced life as a human was unthinkable and offensive to this philosophy.

The Gospel of Peter, an apocryphal book, illustrates a Docetic view. It says that during his crucifixion, Jesus “kept silence, as one feeling no pain,” which implied, as church historian J.N.D. Kelly notes, “that His bodily make-up was illusory.”

TRUE: Jesus Truly Suffered

The orthodox early church was strongly opposed to Docetism.

Irenaeus thought the teaching was so dangerous that he wrote a five-volume work (Against Heresies) against one of Docetism’s prominent teachers, Valentinus (c. 136–c. 165).

Ignatius said that it would have been foolish for him to have been imprisoned for proclaiming one who merely appeared to suffer for his sake:

    Turn a deaf ear therefore when any one speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David, the child of Mary, who was truly born, who ate and drank, who was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and truly died….But if, as some godless men, that is, unbelievers, say, he suffered in mere appearance (being themselves being mere appearances), why am I in bonds?

Polycarp makes the strongest possible charge against the Docetists by saying that “everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an anti-Christ,” echoing 1 John 4:2-3.

TRUE: Jesus Came in the Flesh

As theologian Stephen Nichols points out, much contemporary popular theology tends to “view Jesus as sort of floating six inches off the ground as he walked upon the earth.” Downplaying or rejecting the true humanity of Jesus is common today, but it does not fit with the biblical picture of Jesus given to us in the Gospels.

While on earth, Jesus experienced hunger (Matt. 4:2) and thirst (John 19:28), showed compassion (Matt. 9:36), was tired (John 4:6), felt sorrow to the point of weeping (John 11:35), and grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). Yet, in all of his humanness, Jesus never sinned (Heb. 4:15).

TRUE: Like Us in Every Way, Yet Without Sin

Avoiding Docetism is important because, as the author of Hebrews writes, Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).

It is because Jesus was tempted as we are that he is able to sympathize with us in our weakness. Put bluntly, the whole of the atonement rests on Docetism being false. On this point, T. F. Torrance writes: “Any docetic view of the humanity of Christ snaps the lifeline between God and man, and destroys the relevance of the divine acts in Jesus for men and women of flesh and blood.”

If Docetism is true and he was so heavenly that he only appeared human, then we no longer can place our confidence in Jesus Christ, who as truly God and truly man serves as the mediator between God and men.