Posted on 02/20/2015 4:41:37 AM PST by LeoMcNeil
Rob Bell is a progressive former mega-church pastor. He is also a heretic who, since giving up the mega-church pastoring gig, has been hanging out with the likes of Oprah Winfrey. Bell was part of the emergent church, which engaged in “conversations” and rejected historic Christianity. While the emergents like to pretend they’re new, hip and cool, the reality is they’re no different than the other progressive churches out there which have rejected historic Christianity. The difference between the emergent church and the pentecostal or baptist churches is only how they demonstrate their rejection of historic Christianity. Rather than rolling on the floor, the emergent church sips a Starbucks and has a “conversation” that looks remarkably like a sermon. Their conversation is distinctly post-modern, absolute truth is rejected.
Rob Bell was one of the leaders of the emergent church. Perhaps he still is. He gave up his church in supposedly conservative Grand Rapids, Michigan to hang out with Oprah and Hollywood Starlets out in Los Angeles. His most recent book argued there is no Hell and no one actually goes to Hell. These days he’s busy pushing homosexual marriage. He has argued that the church is moments away from embracing such a bastardization of marriage. Worse, he argues that the church shouldn’t rely on “2,000 year old letters” to form an opposition to homosexual conduct. If Christians cannot and should not rely on God’s word as contained in scripture, what exactly are we supposed to rely upon?
Bell of course argues we should rely upon personal experiences, in particular we should rely on the people placed before us. This is typical progressive nonsense, dripping in post-modernism. Bell’s argument really comes down to not believing in any truth whatsoever so we might as well be nice to the sexual perverts that may be in our lives. Of course being nice to such people is a truth, so that might get a little sticky at some point. Basically, if the wider culture embraces something Bell believes the church should follow. We shouldn’t look to scripture because that’s old. We must embrace the new and modern, even if it contains no truth. We want the church to be relevant after all.
The problem of course is that if we reject Paul’s 2,000 year old letters (to say nothing of the legal proclamations of Moses which are several thousand years older) why not reject the entire gospel of Jesus Christ? The gospels are just as old as Paul’s letters and they contain more foolishness to the world than Paul’s condemnation of homosexual acts. The gospels after all claim a virgin birth, a resurrection from the dead and an ascension into Heaven. They make the preposterous argument that some man named Jesus died for the sins of an elect. Not only that, this Jesus claims he’s God. What a silly, small minded, old fashioned thing to believe. Yet Bell doesn’t outright reject the gospel, the niceties of hippy Jesus give modern man the warm fuzzies.
Bell’s and the progressive and emergent church’s apostasy is clear. They reject scripture unless it suits their purposes, whatever they may be. There are plenty of Christian denominations which have been completely overtaken by progressive “higher criticism” and rejected everything relating to Christ’s birth and resurrection. Bell is well on his way to this, rejecting anything supernatural while keeping the stories about Christ being nice to wicked people. In doing so, they miss the entire point of those stories. But that doesn’t matter to the post-modern emergent church or to Rob Bell. These people really don’t believe in anything. They reject the Bible and they lie to people by offering a little bit of the Bible in the form of Christ’s niceties while rejecting everything else. That’s how Bell can embrace homosexual marriage despite God’s specific creation of marriage in the Garden of Eden between one man and one woman and multiple examples of homosexual conduct declared sin in scripture. In the end, Bell and any church or person who adopts such a position will do nothing but lead himself and others to Hell.
Of course you won't!
Your religion can't stand up to inspection.
There are MANY reading this thread, wondering WHY you can't stand behind your chosen religion's writings.
Then 20 posts or so should be EASY for an avid Mormon like yourself.
Are you damned by Brigham's words or not?
But just remember, the MORMON's founder; Joseph Smith; tried to join a Methodist church.
Joseph and Hiel Lewis were cousins of Emma Hale Smith; they would have been aged 21 and 11 respectively in 1828:
...while he, Smith, was in Harmony, Pa., translating his book....that he joined the M[ethodist] [Episocpal] church. He presented himself in a very serious and humble manner, and the minister, not suspecting evil, put his name on the class book, the absence of some of the official members, among whom was the undersigned, Joseph Lewis, who, when he learned what was done, took with him Joshua McKune, and had a talk with Smith. They told him plainly that such a character as he was a disgrace to the church, that he could not be a member of the church unless he broke off his sins by repentance, made public confession, renounced his fraudulent and hypocritical practices, and gave some evidence that he intended to reform and conduct himself somewhat nearer like a christian than he had done. They gave him his choice, to go before the class, and publicly ask to have his name stricken from the class book, or stand a disciplinary investigation. He chose the former, and immediately withdrew his name. So his name as a member of the class was on the book only three days.--It was the general opinion that his only object in joining the church was to bolster up his reputation and gain the sympathy and help of christians; that is, putting on the cloak of religion to serve the devil in.
I case you've forgotten...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.