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No Siritual Birthday
A friend posted this on Face Book this morning. It is a worthy and thought provoking read:
They Have no Spiritual Birthday.... \Cedric Fisher....
"They saunter into the building, line up at the tiki bar, and walk away with a cup of hot java and a pastry. The driving beat of high energy music blasts into the foyer each time the door to the main sanctuary opens. The crowd mills about chirping greetings to every familiar face. It could be an attempt by a church to put attendees at ease and make them feel welcome. However, the leadership may have unwittingly sponsored the wrong atmosphere to prepare people for an encounter with God and His truth. In most venues where this atmosphere is present, it implies the concept of a casual God who may be approached casually. The people are being prepared for an exciting meeting filled with positive vibes, great music, video imagery, and concluded with a short teaching or message. The teaching could be about contemplative prayer, centering, or some other occult or New Age practice. The result is a generation of professing Christians who believe that God conforms to their culture, desires, and will, not the other way around.
They are called “seekers”. Some of them will remain “seekers” for a long time, moving from church to church. Other ones may eventually settle into a local congregation. However, they may never accept the title “believer” or “Christian”. Some of them are focused on their smart phones and tablets throughout the meetings. They will learn precious little about true Christianity, being born again, and the Atonement purchased with the shed blood of Christ. Most of them have never actually heard the Gospel, much less anointed preaching. Thus, they do not really know who Christ Jesus really is or about the kingdom that He came to establish. They do not like conviction and will not come back if they experience it. Whether they know it or not, they are members of the Emergent Church and are being gradually led into irreversible deception. The vehicles of their arrival are the “seeker friendly” churches, the” launch” churches, or an old line church taken over by a young hireling fresh from a foray to the pools of Emergent deception. They are the modern Christians and they have no spiritual birthday.
Because of the Emergent Church, an entire generation of professing Christians is discovering a god they can live with minimal lifestyle changes, one who is not demanding, who never insists that they fully commit to him, and in fact is less like God than He is a servant. They believe that he frets over their every inconvenience, has dreams for them, and caters to their every whim. They have no spiritual birthday because they have not had a salvation experience. There was no time during a church meeting or otherwise when they realized that they were sinners in need of a Savior. Never have they recognized and experienced the Holy Spirit’s conviction by God’s word. No altar was stained with their tears. Ask them when they came to know Christ as their Savior and Lord, and they will reply, “You mean when I became a believer? Oh, it just kind of happened. I just kept getting closer and closer and then one day I realized I believed in Him.” The fact is they don’t really believe in Christ, but in an unbiblical concept of Him. It is a concept formulated by hirelings that agrees with other religions and even the occult. Their Jesus is not the Christ who was executed by Roman soldiers, whom God raised from the dead, and who is coming again for a pure and faithful church. They believe in the Emergent Church’s cosmic Christ.
The clear truth is that Christianity is under a vicious attack that few professing Christians know about and fewer even care to know. It is not just the increasing hostility from the secular realm, but from the religious sector. The seeds of the deception were already sown before Bill Hybels launched his “seeker-friendly” church growth approach. Although Hybels and his staff reportedly repented of their experiment, the damage has been done and there is no undoing it.
After Hybels, came Rob Bell. Rob Bell, is the “Gollum” that crept into Christianity with the mission to steal its soul, dismantle, and replace it with New Age ecumenicalism. Bell is listed as number 10 among the 50 Most Influential Christians in America. Bell wrote the book, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality. He went on a sold-out “Sex God" tour on several university campuses. One has to wonder if his book influenced Judah Smith, another highly popular pastor who preached that “Jesus is bringing sexy back.” Bell said, "“I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.” He believes in the death of Evangelical Christianity and, along with Brian McLaren, intends to insure that said death occurs.
Brian McLaren, who declared that the message of the cross is “false advertising for God” wrote,
“If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know that the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex. We aren't sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn.”
He also wrote the following, which about sums up the ecumenical intent of the Emergent Church.
“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord.”
Hybels, McLaren and Bell, along with other highly visible leaders such as Rick Warren, have been spreading deception and heresy to an entire generation of young people. They are training a league of hirelings to form a social Christianity that blends easily with satanic religions; a Christianity that embraces the occult, homosexuality, and vehemently severs any thread of divine continuum to the Early Church. Both men are incredibly ignorant of God and His ways, but they appear to know the way of religious darkness and of the world system. Everything they can tear from the Bible to blend with those two elements of bondage, they will so do.
The deception was clever. When I realized how it was designed and implemented, I was amazed. First, there have been many historical exoduses from established churches. The Reformation was the result of a corrupt church that had veered well off the path of truth and righteousness. God’s word is clear that there was to be a great and final apostasy in the last days. Satan realized that this would be an opportunity to lure millions of individuals into deception. He had his emissaries in perfect position. They pointed to the liturgical churches as examples of failed Christianity, and branded Evangelicalism as heresy. Throwing out “baby with bath water”, they made the case for a new Christianity. Incorporating portions from false religions and even the occult with bad translations of the Bible, they engineered another “gospel”. Thus, casual encounter with a casual god was born again. Bell, McLaren, and their fellows, declare that a new and fresh spiritual awakening, a new reformation, is going to replace what they view as old, decrepit, and heretical Christianity. However, every credible spiritual awakening that God has initiated was a bringing back to life that which was dead. That is the definition of revival. What Hybels, Bell and McLaren are attempting is not to bring passion and desire for truth and God back to life. What they wish to bring forth is the reemergence of satanic dominion. These men are, in my opinion, diabolically appointed to assist in bringing the final deception to critical mass, which will be the great and final apostasy. The false prophet who stands beside the Beast of Revelation will meet no resistance from individuals who have imbibed the poisonous mixture of these and other modern heretics.
I must therefore give praise and express my deepest gratitude to God that I am saved. I am overwhelmed with gratefulness that I came into the kingdom of God before this deception had fully formed. When I experienced the saving grace of God, it was an unforgettable, immediate, life-changing and lasting event. I was blessed to sit under the ministries of great men and women of God. The fire of the Holy Spirit fell into my soul and God changed an alcoholic, drug addict, completely and instantly into one of His children. There was no wandering into His presence, no casual encounter with a casual God. I, trembling, came into the presence of a holy God who is a consuming fire. I have a spiritual birthday, February 10, 1978.
Nearly all of those godly individuals that were my examples are gone now. It has fallen on me and other ones the duty to hold up the truth, to defend the Gospel, and to expose the hidden agendas of darkness. Until the day that I also depart into eternity, I do not intend to cease declaring the undiluted truth of God. I will tell you bluntly and without wavering that the “gospel” of the Emergent Church is the doctrines of demons. It is part of the second stage in the three-stage migration to reprobation. First, the great deception, then the great apostasy, and finally the great delusion. It is not too late to avoid the fatal snare of the great delusion. Every soul who is convicted by this message ought to pray, read the bible, and sincerely seek wisdom from God. Things are happening very fast. No one knows how much time is left before Christ comes and door is closed for good."
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