Posted on 01/04/2008 12:46:32 PM PST by Gamecock
Megachurch leaders such as Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Robert Schuller have principles like the elastic in an old woman’s drawers: It will stretch to fit almost any shape! They have problems with principle. It seems their ambition has outrun their character.
In deciding right and wrong, character does not consider friends or foes, personality or position; family or faith; reputation or riches, but will apply absolute truth that comes from the Scripture.
The above three leaders of aberrational Christianity are very careful to never offend anyone with such “barbaric” teachings as personal sin, repentance, judgment, hell and the like; but they are not careful about their attacks upon Bible believing Christians, especially fundamentalists! Fundamentalists are people mushy evangelicals love to hate. Strange isn’t it! The above trio (and their long list of desperate wannabes) tells us to be tolerant of homosexuals, Muslims, even Liberals yet they refuse to be tolerant of Bible-believing Christians! That shows inconsistency and lack of character.
An Emergent Church leader, Brian McLaren and one of Time magazine’s 25 leading evangelicals has a character on page 9 of his A New Kind of Christianity declaring, "I don't dislike Fundamentalists, taken individually--they tend to be pretty nice folks. Get them together in a group though, and I get nervous. I start to twitch and break out in a rash." Brian is cut from the same cloth as the above reverends, and I think maybe the twitching is caused by a vitamin deficiency!
All right, let’s see whether the megachurch and emergent church people have any character. In an article from the USA Today Rick Warren claims that Mormonism is just another Christian denomination rather than a false religion. He said, "I'm not going to get into a debate over the non-essentials. I won't try to change other denominations.” Of course not, since he wants to cooperate with those groups however apostate they may be. As more religious groups listen to him, more of his bilge will be swallowed by them, thereby enriching his prestige, power, and popularity.
Rick and other compromisers use the perverted Message Bible to lend support for their unscriptural teachings. In I Cor. 6:9-11, Paul speaks about the “effeminate,” “fornicators,” “adulterers,” etc., who will not inherit the kingdom of God; however, the Message version changed the passage entirely to make it inoffensive. Rick and others knowingly use a corrupt text to construct their shaky foundation for a spurious gospel and a specious lifestyle. Not very principled.
Rick said that he doesn’t care what “your doctrine is,” but God seems to be concerned since He told us to search out the truth as did the people in Berea in Acts 17 who checked out their teachers to be sure they were preaching the truth. People who don’t care much about doctrine are usually people who are very weak on doctrine. The Apostle Paul reminds us in John 4:24 that we "must worship him in spirit and in truth" and Christ reminded us the truth would set us free. In addition, when the Word is corrupted, the walk soon gets that way as is revealed with Rick’s use of deception in defending himself, his cooperating with ungodly groups, his singing of Jimi Hendrix’s drug promoting song “Purple Haze,” to 30,000 people at his church, etc.
Warren said: "Rather than threaten sinners with fire and brimstone, we believe in attraction evangelism. We believe in loving people into the Kingdom." However, that is not a biblical concept and if you really love people, you will tell them the truth since truth is essential to knowing Christ. Rick doesn’t seem to know that it is not love but hate when you refuse to tell people the truth.
Warren refused to speak the truth to a Jewish group in Los Angeles where he managed to not mention the name of Christ once! Wonder what Stephen [Acts 7] would think of that?
If a person is not committed to truth, he can sink into a vile lifestyle and not be challenged, convinced, or convicted about it. Most people do not consider truth as absolute and love is the driving and motivating force. However, when you compromise with evil its “evilness” is softened. Soon, the evil will not seem so bad and soon one will begin to condone and defend what earlier he had condemned and denounced. In fact, he will be embarrassed at his former belief.
Bill Hybels of Willow Creek fame had a Muslim cleric speak in his huge Chicago area church (as did Robert Schuller) and sat silent while the Muslim told the crowd that Muslims believe in Jesus more than they did! Hybels, if he had been principled instead of a pussyfooter, would have stood and rebuked him in front of the crowd, “You are wrong. Muslims do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible. You do not believe He was and is God nor do you believe that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again for our justification. You were disingenuous, devious, and dishonest in your statement today, and I apologize to every Christian everywhere for inviting you to this meeting. And I ask a holy God to forgive me of this spectacular sin I have committed today.” No, Bill was silent supposing that maybe “silence is golden” when it is usually yellow.
Robert Schuller has been spewing what is now Warren’s unscriptural teaching for many years in his books, television shows, and ministers’ conferences attracting thousands of weak lemmings to it, fatally infecting them.
Schuller boasted how he started the megachurch movement in 1970: "There were no megachurches 32 years ago--we were the closest thing to it." Afraid not. Maybe Bob never knew about the huge Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis (pastored by a friend of mine) that had thousands in attendance back in the 40s. The building would seat 10,000 people plus 1500 more in the choir. It boasted the largest permanent choir in the world and the most popular national religious radio program of the time. It also had one of the first religious television shows.
No, Bobby was not the first nor the best. Of course, Cadle Tabernacle was a fundamentalist congregation so maybe it doesn’t count. Moreover, Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Temple Baptist in Detroit, First Baptist in Dallas, Landmark Baptist in Cincinnati and others averaged 2,000 or more in attendance each Sunday and all preceded Schuller’s glass house in California. Maybe Schuller is uninformed about modern church history or does not know the definition of megachurch! And evidently he never heard of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle (Baptist) in London that reached 6,000 people every Sunday morning and night in the 1860s.
The trio boasts about using marketing methods to provide people with what they want, not what they need and they have become apostles of P. T. Barnum and their services are often side shows featuring freaks from the entertainment, sports, and religious worlds.
The megachurch leaders don’t know that a pastor is a preacher not a psychologist, a teacher not a therapist, a shepherd not a salesman. Preachers like Warren, Hybels, Schuller, and Company are not leading sheep but are usually driving herds of goats.
(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 13 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years His most recent book is ISLAM: America's Trojan Horse! His websites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com.)
YBPDLNPL Ping
Add Joyce Meyer to the list.
And Paula White.
How could this fine gentleman leave Joel Osteen out of his short list?
I know Joyce Meyer is accused of a lot of things, but she and the other “Word of Faithers” differ greatly from Warren, Hybels, Schuler et al.
People such as Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar and others are very strict when teaching on things such as homosexuality, premarital sex, cohabitation without marriage, abortion, etc. They love the sinner, but constantly preach that God’s Word teaches that those actions are in fact sin, and that people are to repent from such behavior.
You should listen to the sound bites that Hannigraff had on her the other day, pure heresy.
Is Schuler that bad? He is generally too boring to watch, but I did not think he was a Warren-type.
bttt
I believe the doctrine is more or less thus: It is the sick who need the physician. Christ touched the untouchable, spoke to the unspeakable, loved the unlovable. He spent a lot of time with his disciples, but considerable more time alone and with the lost. In the world, but not of it.
That is where we need to be, perhaps we should discuss a better plan as to how to do it. Personal relationships are a great start, but how can we use the gifts of mass media, the internet and large bodies of believers to be Jesus to a lost and dying world. The Lord did not walk up to the sinners and tear into them, they knew their sins. Let us use this gift of Free Republic to find a better way.
Interesting article: it goes to show the triumph of the French Revolution culturally speaking. It was a dictum that there were “no enemies to the left”. That is the de facto approach I see 99.9% of the time culturally.
In religious terms it shows that the more ardent conservative Christians are just too beyond the pale for mainstream evengalicals. It’s too bad, really.
I know, I know it is just a small error. When we judge others, we condemn ourselves.
Seven
Not really important, just curious: What does “YBPDLNPL” stand for?
Some did, some didn't. He tore into the ones who didn't.
He tore into the ones who were hypocrites. They knew. That's what convicted them.
Ultimately, yes. Deep down they knew, but rationalization is an insidious thing.
I heard a CD by Sproul the other day where he makes the observation that churches that call themselves "seeker sensitive" plainly don't understand that no one "seeks" after God. Their very name denotes that they don't have an understanding of scripture.
Warren makes the same error here. You can't "attract" someone to the church unless you want to offer them something worldly. People are not attrached to repentence. They are called to repentence.
Yes, the self-righteous. The Pharisees. Jesus was even somewhat gentler with the faithless Saducees!
People in deception to a cult need A LOT of prayer and deliverance to break them out. Not a bible study lesson.
People in outright flesh-pleasing sin need the plain truth, compassion and a way out- not accusation.
Seems like an awful lot of people are at one extreme or the other.
How do you marry the two? If people don't know their sin, how do we convince them they need a way out?
Interesting Title.
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