People deceive themselves in amazing ways. Self-deception is amazing because it is entirely self-assured. It’s a form of abstract faith. One would have to be captive to some “tribal” authority (church body, political party, union, PAC, etc.) to miss the ideological threads running through our American institutions.  The great multitude of our dis-educated populace seem to be blind to the spiritual and philosophical forces behind our politics and economics.

Emergence is deeply rooted in the same anti-Christ mentality that Marxism and Theosophy share. It’s the same mentality that produced death and destruction on a massive scale in the last century. That mentality in a word is Utopianism.

2. Language is limited

I said that I agree with this point in my first post on this subject. I must now eat crow, because I don’t agree with this point at all. This second excuse is also a matter of pragmatism.

God seems to think language is sufficient enough. The Bible comes to us through words. The LORD used language as the primary means to communicate His will and purpose to men for the last 6,000 years. Take a simple phrase like “the LORD spoke”. That phrase appears 143 times in the Old Testament. Revelation came to men as “the word of the LORD” 242 times in the OT and that phrase can be found 13 times in the New Testament. Paul tells that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Rom 10:17).

Satan tempted Jesus after the LORD fasted in the wilderness, telling him to turn a stone into bread. Jesus answered him saying, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Mat 4:4).

Conversation, which Emergents seem to worship, is dependant on language! So, if we concede to this point about language being “limited”, then what is to be accomplished by conversation?

I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but the Gospel is being attacked in bold ways and with big money. Joel Osteen attacks it on TV screens across America every week from a crossless pulpit. Doyle Davidson, a drunken lecher, attacks it from his pulpit nightly. Osteen has a huge following. Davidson has a small cult. Osteen and Davidson have similar ministries.

Osteen leads people away from the cross by avoiding all discussion of sin. He focuses on prosperity, wealth, and opportunity. His weapons are pleasing words, a nice smile, and lots of cash. Osteen has people close to him that prop him up and make apologies for his crossless brand of Churchianity.

Davidson leads people away from the cross by bringing every issue down to a matter of demon possession. He focuses on his own lusts, disappointments, and his own self-righteousness. His weapons are bottle of whiskey, endless prayers of repetition, and his own Jezebel-doctrine. Davidson has people to prop him up too, and they make apologies for his sickening presence and preaching.

One brand of churchianity is no better than the other.

Back to Oprah. At about 4:40 minutes into the video, she talks about a “search for something more than doctrine started to stir within” her. She relates this to a time in her late twenties. She was sitting in church and the pastor said, “And the LORD thy God is a jealous god”. Her response was, “God is jealous of me?” She says that she rejected that teaching because her inner spirit didn’t agree with it.

That makes sense, right? What does Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15,and Joshua 24:19 have to do with the truth about God? No, Oprah says that God is love and God is in all things.

Back to the video again. She turns to Eckhart Tolle (about 4:50 minutes) for a critique of Christian faith…”Man made god in his own image. The eternal, infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my-god our our-god“. They go on to talk about Christ-consciousness, making false Christs out of everyone who will embrace their doctrine. The say that Christ is all about a feeling and not about a belief. How does Oprah’s New Age teaching parallel the teaching of Emergent leaders?

PS: Please note that Tolle is a pseudo Red Letter christian.

HT: Slice of Laodicea

UPDATE 04/09/2008: The video referred to above promotes a book and an author that I don’t wish to promote. That author is apparently a shameless plagiarist, and she does more harm than good to the name of Christendom with her unsavory methods. Nevertheless, the video does a great job of presenting the spiritual poison that Oprah is peddling.

Given that today is Easter 2008, I thought I should add as much as I can to the LT article. The list of names cited by LT is  not comprehensive, by any means.

Other names come to my mind when I think of men who deny the atonement. Jeffrey John comes to mind, for instance. He compares penal substitutionary atonement to "divine child abuse". Marcus Borg comes to mind. Borg, a Jesus Seminar fellow, doesn’t think that most of the Bible is literally true. John Shelby Spong comes to mind. Spong, another Jesus Seminar fellow, believes that modernism and postmodernism calls for Christians to embrace universalism and existentialism.

So, I have but a few names to add. I could add many more. Just follow the links, dear reader. Who is at the root of the latest "progressive Christian" movements? Who are their influences? How does secular philosophy enter into it? What are they really saying about the Holy Bible?

He that hath an ear, let him hear!

This is a mass-market blending of Christianity and New Age heresy. Who is influencing whom?