Gale Warning: Dangerous Movements Threatening Today's Church

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Well tonight, we want to do something a little unusual as I mentioned we want to step back from our study that we've been doing now for almost two years in the great doctrines of the Bible and do something that I almost never do. In fact, in two years I've never done before and it's not going to be a frequent thing I can tell you that, but I do think it's important, and I'll explain why. We want to look at the dangerous movements that are threatening today's church.

Warning the people of God is part of the Shepherd's duty. We are given the responsibility to protect the flock. While I believe that with all of my heart, you need to know that even as I consider tonight, I recognize that there are some inherent dangers in doing so. Let me just remind you of them so hopefully by sort of bringing them to the forefront of our minds we can avoid them. There's always a danger when we do this of fostering spiritual pride. We're better than they are. We've got it altogether. We have everything wired. There's another danger, and that is creating a combative spirit. There are some people who love combat who love antagonism, and they therefore thrive on the very kind of thing that I'm going to take you through tonight. We need to be combating error without developing a combative spirit.

There's another danger and that's becoming unnecessarily divisive. Some people recognizing error and distancing themselves from error aren't satisfied with that and began to distance themselves from everybody who doesn't perfectly agree with them. I've known that kind of spirit firsthand in the past, seen it firsthand. Another danger, and this one I think is crucial, is if we're not careful, concentrating on the other errors in Christianity, concentrating on the issues and the movements, if that's where we spend our time, if that's where we exhaust our energy, it can distract us from the truth of God. One of my mentors I've never met. I'll meet him only in heaven, but I look forward to that and it’s Lloyd-Jones. In his book Preachers and Preaching, which I reread recently, he makes the point that there are preachers and ministries who build their ministry on polemics that is on attacking men and movements. Lloyd-Jones says polemic preaching will build a crowd. It'll even raise money, but it'll never build a church. A church, Lloyd-Jones says, is only built by steady constant proclamation of the truth of God, and that as you know is what I'm committed to do and what I will do by God's grace. But if we're not careful and we start beginning to do this as a practice, then we can quickly be distracted from the truth. But in spite of those dangers, and they are dangers we desperately need to avoid there is biblical justification. There are biblical examples, and there are even biblical requirements to expose error.

Let me give you just a few things to consider first of all, there are certainly biblical warnings about the constant danger of doctrinal error. Turn to Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter 20; you see this concern from the mouth of the Apostle Paul from the pen of Luke. Acts chapter 20 verse 30, Paul here is talking to the Ephesians elders. Now remember Paul served as pastor if you will, he ministered among the Ephesians for a period of about 18 months. Now he has a chance one last time to see their elders, and he's giving them instructions, and he says in verse 30, “from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” In other words, there's a danger from outside the church, but there's a danger from within the church as well. People and can I say movements that draw people away from the truth. Verse 31, “Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.” He says this was part of my ministry when I was among you. To teach you the truth and to contrast that with error and these other passages all drive home the same warnings about doctrinal error.

There are also biblical admonitions concerning serious errors in practice in some of the churches; not only doctrine but practice. For example, in First Corinthians 5 we picked on Corinth because it's a wonderful church to pick on in terms of the problems that were there, they were tolerating incest, you go to chapter 6, they were tolerating lawsuits among fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, you go to chapter 11, and they were tolerating serious abuses at the Lord's Table and the love feasts preceded them. And Paul in each of these cases addressed these issues in the church, even though they were brothers in Christ; he saw it as imperative to address the issue.

There is also a biblical identification of movements containing error in scripture. In Galatians, the entire Book of Galatians really you have a warning about the Judaizers, those people who would mix human effort with the grace of God for salvation. And Paul devotes an entire book to debunking their error, and it wasn't just one place, remember the Galatian epistle was written to the churches in Galatia scattered all over the Galatian area. Same thing when you come to the Apostle John's writing in Revelation to the letters to the Seven Churches, he speaks of groups like the Nicolaitans, whose doctrine has infiltrated the church and created serious issues and problems.

The Bible also identifies individuals who promote error, and this one is perhaps the most difficult of all turn there with me to Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 16. Paul has just reminded Timothy that he himself is to be a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth, verse 16, “But avoid worldly and empty chatter for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.” Now watch what Paul does. “Among them” that is among these who are promoting this “are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some.” In a letter recorded for all time, you and I still read about two men in the first century church who went astray from the truth because Paul felt it imperative to warn the church about these men who could carry them away from the faith that was in Jesus Christ.

So there is danger in doing this, but there is also biblical justification. It's important so as a pastor, I feel I need to follow that example. Today I believe that there are several troubling movements and individuals that are influencing the church. My goal tonight, let me just make it clear to begin with, my goal is not to explain each of these movements thoroughly and provide you with a comprehensive defense. Sheila burst that bubble this afternoon when I told her I was having trouble condensing it all she says, “Well, you're not going to try to cover everything in detail are you?” Well, I was. But that's unrealistic. So rather my objective tonight is to inoculate you. You remember some of you can remember back when you entering school and you line up, I remember these long lines to the lunch room, usually or sometimes to the nurse's office. You'd stand there and have fun with your friends until you got to the front of the line when they would give you an inoculation. And sometimes those inoculations were to expose you to a small part of the disease so that if you were ever exposed to the real thing, you wouldn't get it. That's really my goal tonight not to give you some thoroughgoing explanation or defense, but just to inoculate you just to give you enough, so that if you hear these things if you read these things, you're not going to be affected by them.

So let's begin. And let me just tell you too that I'm going to give you more information about a couple of them because I think they're ones that more people will be affected by, potentially tempted by, will be exposed to and then toward the end I'm just going to give you sort of a run through 2 or 3 just enough to let you know about them, but they're not things that are most of us are going to be tempted by, but I just want you to be aware of them. All right, so let's begin with what I think is the most dangerous trend in today's church and it's one you may have read about. You may have heard about, it's called the emerging church. In fact, they were just a series of articles over the last several weeks in the Dallas Morning News about this trend in the church. That's what it's called the emerging or the emergent church.

Now what exactly is this? Well, here's a definition in three parts. Those who are part of this movement would say, although they don't want to call it a movement yet, they don't call it a movement until it's in full swing. But it really is. It's a movement. They would say that the church that is emerging from the rubble of modernism and massive megachurches and seeker sensitive churches that is, the emerging church. It's emerging to reflect and minister to the new postmodern culture. They claim that it's a return to primitive first century kind of Christianity. That's the emerging church.

Now let me give you just a brief history. In the early 1990’s, there was an annual meeting in Texas of the pastors of megachurches, an organization called the Leadership Network. As these pastors of megachurches, seeker sensitive churches for the most part began to meet, they realized there were no young people there. There was no one there between 18 and 35. And so they began to ask why is that? What's happening with those people in the church? And so they decided to pull together some generation Xers as they're often called, and find out how they were doing church. What changes were happening in their worship. And they discovered that these young people were heading a totally different direction than the churches they'd grown up in. In fact, these generation Xers said that things were changing in the church. They said that change is philosophical, it's a cultural shift. One of the writers says the term they were using was a shift from modern to postmodern culture, and I'll explain what that is in just a moment.

The chief spokesman came and met with this group. He had already done some writing and he was invited to come and meet with these young people who had embraced this new form of church. This new way of doing church from what they grew up in. His name is Bryan McLaren. Brian McLaren is from an evangelical background what he calls fundamentalism. He has no formal theological training. He's a former college English professor, and he became after a number of years of that, the pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Burtonsville, Maryland. He had a spiritual crisis in 94-96, somewhere in that period of time he was pastor of this church, and he started having a lot of questions himself and other people started coming to him with questions. Here's what he writes, “I thought the tide of questions is rising faster than I can keep up with. By about 96-97 I started being able to in some ways disentangle my faith from certain systems of thought, and I found out that my faith actually would thrive better without being stuck in those systems of thought.” So here he chooses to remove himself really from a grid a systematic theology, a grid of theology because he can't work it out himself. He now describes himself listen to this, “as an evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Catholic,” among other things.

Now, if you have problem reconciling, those things don't feel bad, they can't be. McLaren has stepped away from his pastoral role to promote this emerging church worldwide. He's still involved, but now he's promoting conferences of various kinds. There’re national conferences for the emerging church, with several thousand attending several lengthy and ongoing blogs on the Internet, and I just received my latest Christian book distributor’s catalog, a great catalog of books that I often order from, and it had one or two pages, this time devoted to emerging church literature. This is beginning to sweep the church like wildfire. Now, when you look at the emerging church, you have to understand the key issue. The key issue is epistemology; now don’t be scared off by that word. It comes from a Greek word, two Greek words, actually one, which means the study of and the other which means knowledge. It's the study of knowledge, the study of how we know what we know and their view of epistemology is postmodern.

Postmodern epistemology rejects what they call metanarratives; again don't be scared by that term. Simply a metanarrative is simply a unifying theory of universal meaning. In other words, you and I have what postmodernists would call a metanarrative because we believe there is a God who gives meaning to life and to everything in this universe. They would say that is a metanarrative and it needs to be rejected. There are no unifying theories of meaning.

But when you come to the emerging church this is their view of knowledge. Listen to D A Carson who's written a good critique of the emerging church. He says, “Most emerging church leaders and thinkers hold that the fundamental issue in the move from modernism to postmodernism is epistemology.” By the way they feel that move has happened in the last part of the 1900’s from modernism to postmodernism. “Modernism is often pictured by these folks as pursuing truth, absolutism, linear thinking, rationalism, certainty, the cerebral as opposed to the effective. They say this breeds arrogance, inflexibility, a lust to be right, the desire to control. Postmodernism by contrast, recognizing how much of what we know is shaped by the culture in which we live, is controlled by emotions and aesthetics and heritage, and in fact can only be intelligently held as part of a common tradition without overbearing claims to be true or right.” Let me simplify all that for you, you know what D A Carson is saying? He's saying they say modernism embraces the belief in absolutes and confidence that there is an overarching control of the universe, that there is rational thinking, that there is certainty, I can be certain about some things, but they as postmodernists, say you can't be you can't be certain. D A Carson goes on, “For almost everyone within the movement this works out in an emphasis on feelings and affections over against linear thought and rationalities, on experience over against truth, on inclusion over against exclusion, on participation over individualism. McLaren says with an emerging church you have a new kind of Christian and a new kind of church.”

Now let's look practically what difference does this make in their worship; the practical methodology. One of their writers, Dr. Leonard Sweet uses the acronym epic, E P I C. The E stands for experiential. Not observe, you don't go to church they say to observe something to sit in a pew and watch to be a part of a service where you're a spectator, you go to experience God. They also say the P, EPIC P is for participatory. Participatory, they borrow elements from different religious traditions, particularly Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. For example, in the emerging church you'll find kneeling nothing wrong with that. You'll also find a more Catholic form of receiving communion. You'll find candles you'll find things like labyrinths, mazes that you walk and you meditate on the gym floor is laid out a maze, and you walk to a new station and meditate about something. They would say they don't have worship services. They have a worship gathering they're not sermons but discussions.

The I in EPIC stands for image based. Lots of video, movie clips, listen to McLaren again the spokesperson of the movement. He says, “We've been very word and concept based in the Protestant tradition for a long time, so that the centerpiece of the service is a long sermon” (do I hear an amen?) He says, “But to be image based means that there's a huge increase in the valuing of the arts.” I'm not against the arts, but listen to how he explains this, so there might be a painting that is part of actually the message. “Let's look at this painting and exegete the painting in a certain way or appreciate the painting or the sculpture, or interior design that sort of thing, great appreciation for the arts and things that relate to images and inspire imagination.” Image based.

And finally the C in EPIC stands for communal. They put less emphasis on the individual and more about the corporate body of Christ, and by the way I think that's a good emphasis. I think in American Christianity we've become so individualistic about our faith that we've become individual consumers. You are part of a body. That's the way the scripture describes you, and so the desire that they have here is a good one. The implementing of it, I'm not sure is. There are some emerging churches that meet in the round. They encourage this communal relationship. They use couches instead of pews, often storefronts instead of individual buildings. That's their methodology.

But what are the real dangers? Why am I so concerned about it? Why would I say that the emerging church is the most dangerous trend in American Christianity? Well, there are several reasons, first of all having to do with the Bible. They would say that truth because of their postmodern epistemology, they would say that truth is not absolute. Boy, this is part of our culture. This past week, I read a survey by George Barna. He asked this question is there such a thing as unchanging moral truth? How would you answer that question is there such a thing as unchanging moral truth? 22 percent of the American surveyed thought there was absolute truth. 64 percent opted for relativism. When they asked teenagers the question, 83 percent voted for relativism and only 6 percent for absolute truth.

What about those who claim to be born again? Now understand that's a broad category and not everyone who claims that is in fact, but what about those who claim it. 32 percent of the adults embraced moral absolutes and only 9 percent of the teenagers who claim to be born again embrace the concept of absolute truth that doesn't change with the circumstances. This is the culture in which we live, and they are adapting the church to the culture.

No interpretation is ever certain. McLaren was asked in an interview are there truths related to the faith that we can know that we can be certain about? Here's his answer. “Well first of all, when we talk about the word faith and the word certainty, we've got a whole lot of problems there.” He says, “What do you mean by certainty? If I could substitute the word confidence, I'd say yes, I think there are things we can be confident about, but certainty can be dangerous.” He says, “I have a passion to say we might be wrong, and we are always going to stay humble enough to admit that.” That sounds wonderful-humility is as we learned this morning a great thing. But not when it comes to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.

They also say, in the emerging church that the Bible is not propositional truth, it's simply a story. Again, listen to McLaren, “None of us want to throw out the Bible.” Well, that's a good thing. “But what we do want to do is become more savvy and more aware of our interpretive grids that we bring to the Bible. One good way to think about the Bible for me is to think of it as the scrapbook or the memorabilia, the essential documents that tell us the story of people who believed in one true living just holy loving merciful God.” He says, “The Bible sets a trajectory. It helps me aim for a continuing trajectory so that we can live in our day in ways that are pleasing to God and are good for God's dreams for the world.” This is outside the bounds of historic Christianity.

What about Missions? In the emerging church, there's no need to evangelize. Al Mohler has written a wonderful critique of the emerging church on the internet, I'll give you some of that information in a minute. He writes, “McLaren claims to affirm that Christians should give witness to their faith in Jesus Christ, but before you assume this means an affirmation of Christian missions, consider this statement,” this is McLaren again, “I must add, though that I don't believe making disciples must equal making adherence to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhists, Hindu, or Jewish contexts. This will be hard, you say, and I agree, but frankly it's not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many Christian religious contexts, either,” In other words, yeah become a Christian, but stay a Buddhist, stay a Hindu.

What about ethics? Under the emerging church's postmodern thought, sin becomes subjective. For example, McLaren was listed as one of 25 influential evangelicals in the February 7th edition of Time magazine. In the profile in Time magazine, Time referred to a conference last spring in which McLaren was addressed with a question related to gay marriage. This was his answer. “You know what, the thing that breaks my heart is that there's no way I can answer that without hurting someone on either side.” When he was asked directly in an article I read about his view on homosexuality, this is how he responded, “The issues are not as simple as many people make them sound. Then add to that the biblical dimension of it in the way of interpreting the Bible that yields these very easy black and white answers-throw people into this plastic bin or in that plastic bin; and now we've got them all sorted out. That's absurd. The Bible is so much more complex than that if people want to start picking out a version of the Bible here and picking out a verse there, we're going to have stoning’s going on in the street.” As Al Mohler says in his article on the internet, he says, “That kind of an answer is a non-answer, but it is an answer in and of itself.”

There's another danger, and I think this is the most dangerous of all, and that is that there is no body of necessary doctrine to be believed. There is no collection of necessary doctrine that you must believe, and in fact, the group has already begun to question some essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith. McLaren in a recent book entitled The Last Word and the Word After That asked his readers to reassess the historical interpretation of Hell. He says “For some people, the traditional view of Hell makes God look like a torturer. We have to de-emphasize this image of God as a torturer, but we have to raise our understanding that God cares about justice, and when He means justice, He means justice in this world like justice so that people in the Third World are not mistreated.” And that's certainly a good thing, but that has nothing to do with the issue.

He does the same thing with the doctrine of the atonement. He completely rejects the concept of penal substitutionary atonement that is, atonement that has to do with paying a legal debt on behalf of sinners. Dying as a substitute, he rejects that concept. He's also open to the broadest ecumenism, and the movement is, and when I say McLaren remember he's the spokesperson. He is the guru of the group. “After all, how could I be so proud as to say that I or the Reformers understood the Bible any better than Roman Catholics do or the Muslims for that matter.” And so there is this broad ecumenism that grows out of the emerging church, and they purposefully are embracing all of these groups together. Now, if you want to read more of and I've just touched on this issue, if you want to read more about this, let me give you a couple of resources. A couple of brief articles, there is an interview with Brian McLaren on pbs.org. The Religion and Ethics News Weekly that I think you'll find very interesting. Also Al Mohler's weblog at crosswalk.com, there are several insightful articles there on the emerging church just do a search for the emerging church. If you want to read a little more about it, there is a great book by D A Carson called Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church. But let me promise you, you will hear more about this movement. It is the newest fad if you will, to invade the church, but this fad is dangerous. My own view of this movement as I've read about it looked at it. It is the new liberalism. It is the new rejection of the basic foundational truths of Christianity.

Now let's move on to the second of these dangers, the seeker sensitive movement. It seems that new trends are constantly coming down the pike, but one of them seems to be staying and that is the church growth movement. The basic concept has been around for more than a 100 years really, since Finney, it began in earnest in our times beginning in the 50’s and 60’s started in the states with bus ministries. Said if you want to grow your church bus in the kids and the parents will soon follow. In the 70’s, some of you'll remember the church musicals came along that were designed to attract young people again, the philosophy was if you attract young people in their formative years, you'll keep them in the church as they mature, and you may attract their families as well. In the 1980’s, Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the suburbs of Chicago, started a new form of church growth that he referred to as the seeker's sensitive service. This trend is still very much alive and larger than it's ever been. The basic idea behind this movement is that there are millions of non-Christians out there who are seeking the truth and the services of the church should be designed to attract them, and once you attract them, you can begin to influence them with the gospel. And after all, who could be against the church growing? We're all for the growth of the church, both in maturity and in numbers for genuine conversions. I mean after all, Jesus said He would build His church. But the question is how should that be accomplished? The most recent voice in American Christianity for this church growth movement is Rick Warren. His book, The Purpose Driven Church, has sold over a million copies in 20 different languages. It was selected as one of the 100 top Christian books that changed the 20th century. Rick Warren is pastor of Saddleback Community Church. I've been there. In fact, I took a field trip with the pastors of Grace Church down for service. It's called the fastest growing Baptist Church in the history of America, Situated on a 74 acre campus, has about 15,000 who attend on a typical weekend. They began in 1980 and over the next 15 years they would meet in 79 different locations and grow to 10,000.

Now to understand Rick Warren's philosophy, you have to understand one particular grid that he encourages everyone to embrace. He sees the ministry of the Church in 5 concentric circles if you can picture 5 circles a kind of narrowing target. On the outside circle is the community. These are unchurched occasional attenders if they attend at least 4 times in a year then you're considered part of the community. The crowd, that’s at any event. The 2nd circle is the crowd. This is everyone who shows up shows up on Sundays for services. These are your regular attenders; he says both believers and unbelievers. The next circle is the congregation, these are the official members. At Saddleback, he says only those who have received Christ been baptized, taken through a membership class, and signed a membership covenant card are considered part of the congregation. The next circle is the committed. He said these are the godly and growing people who are serious about their faith, who, for one reason or another are not actively serving in the ministry of the Church. And then finally you have the core that's the center, the core. These are the dedicated minority of workers and leaders those who are committed to ministering to others.

Now, here's the key, he says each church has those groups, and here's how I would suggest he says, that you minister to them. First of all, the community, those people who part of the community that may show up for some big event, but not necessarily for a Sunday service. He says we have an annual series of community wide events; include a harvest party, community wide Christmas Eve services, community wide Easter services, a western day near the Fourth of July, as well as some other seasonal emphases, concerts and productions. Some of our bridge events are overtly evangelistic, while others we consider pre-evangelism. That is, they simply make the unchurched in our community aware of our church. That's how they minister to the community. What about the crowd? This is where they minister the seeker services; he says the main program for the crowd is our weekend seeker services. For the congregation, he says the main program for the congregation, those who are actually members, is our small group network. For the committed, the main programs for the committed bible studies and seminars, workshops as part of a life development institute it's called there and our midweek worship service. And then finally for the core, there is a monthly two hour rally on the first Sunday evening of each month to encourage these lay ministers.

Now here's the key issue that you have to understand. The key component in seeker sensitive churches is that all weekend services are geared for unbelievers. That's the key issue, and we'll get back to that in a moment. You know it's fair that as we look at weaknesses, we also look at strengths. When you look at Rick Warren, it's important to remember that he’s a brother in Christ, and there are aspects of his ministry that are worthy of emulation. He seems to have a genuine concern for evangelism. He ministers thoughtfully, on purpose. He has a plan. There's no question in my mind that people have come to faith in Christ through his ministry. He's seeking to influence other pastors with what he believes to be the right approach to ministry, and there are a number of very practical helps in his book. Who wouldn't want to make your first time guests feel comfortable? So these are good things and we shouldn't just ignore them.

But in spite of those strengths, there are some serious causes for concern, you have to read what he writes with discernment, particularly the purpose driven church is what I'm talking about. He's a compelling writer, and at least in terms of numbers of people attending his church, his ministry has been successful. 15,000 who attend each weekend. He says that in the last 7 years he's baptized 9200 people, so why wouldn't we want to emulate him. The key issue is that size does not mean true spiritual success in the eyes of God.

What are the issues? Well I've just abbreviated them. Let me just give you the big picture. First of all, he has a confused ecclesiology that is a doctrine of the church. Scripture commands that believers gather on the first day of the week for corporate worship. That's what we do, but for Warren, the true church meets during the week and Sunday is reserved for the crowd, a large mix of unbelievers. Now on what scripture does he base this great change from historical Christian practice? Turn to First Corinthians chapter 14. This is the scriptural basis for having your services on Sunday geared to unbelievers. First Corinthians 14 verse 23, “Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?” Now, do you see seeker sensitive services in that verse? Rick does, listen to what he writes, “The point Paul is making is that we must be willing to adjust our worship practices when unbelievers are present. God tells us to be sensitive to the hang ups of unbelievers in our services, being seeker sensitive in our worship is a biblical command.” But look more carefully at verse 23. Warren makes a huge logical leap with his interpretation of this verse, a verse that is absolutely foundational to his entire approach and the entire approach of every seeker sensitive church in this area, everyone you know.

Notice what this verse does say, number one; it says that it is the church that assembles. Number two; it says that it is possible that unbelievers may attend. Number three; it says don't include speaking in tongues in public worship because the unbeliever can't understand. That's what the verse says. Now notice what this verse does not say. It doesn't say that you should gear your entire service around unbelievers. It does get really amazing. He writes, “Keep your pastoral prayers short in your seeker services, the unchurched can't handle long prayers, their minds wander, or they fall asleep.” A bigger issue, though I think is his flawed theology, we've been studying a doctrine of man. Warren believes that if we can get an unbeliever into the church and lower his defenses, he will respond. You see, he assumes that man has it completely within his power to respond to the gospel.

We looked at this just last week, didn't we? The truth is the gospel is by its very nature offensive to unbelievers. Paul makes that point First Corinthians 1 to both Jews and Greeks, and in fact he doesn't even have the ability to understand it. But there's also a flaw of theology of salvation. There is no clear gospel message contained in the purpose driven church, but listen to what it does say about salvation. He says, “More people are won to Christ by feeling God's presence, than by all our apologetic arguments combined. Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God's presence that melts the heart and explodes mental barriers.” I wish we had time to turn to Acts 17 and see the evangelistic method of the apostle Paul. If you’ve read that passage verses 2 and 3 of Acts 17, you would notice that reasoning, explaining and giving evidence was the basic approach to evangelism that Paul followed. It wasn't about feeling, but this comment is even more troubling. He says, “It is my deep conviction that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart. The most likely place to start is with the person's felt needs.” We saw last week that's absolutely impossible. It misunderstands how God accomplishes the work of salvation and it influences His methodology.

Let me just read you one brief quote. I told you about all of those conversions. Here's how those were counted. He says, “One of the effective invitation approaches I've used is take a spiritual survey at the end of a service after presenting the plan of salvation and leading in a prayer of commitment, I'd set it up like this: you know there's nothing I'd rather do than have a personal conversation with each of you about your spiritual journey. I wish I could invite each of you out for some pie and coffee and have you tell me what's going on in your life. Unfortunately, the size of our church that just isn't possible. So I ask you to do a favor from me and participate in the personal survey. I'd like you to take a welcome card. The one you filled out earlier in the service and on the back of it, write either the letter A, B, C, or D based on what I'm about to explain. If you've already committed your life to Christ prior to the service write down the letter A. If today you are believing in Christ for the first time, write down the letter B. If you say Rick, I haven't made that decision yet but I'm considering it, and I want you to know that I'm considering it write down the letter C. If you feel you don't ever intend to commit your life to Christ I appreciate your honesty by writing down the letter D on your card.” He said, “The results are truly amazing. One Sunday, we had nearly 400 B’s or professions of faith in Christ.” This is the approach. Because it's within man's power, he believes to get other men to commit to Christ.

Well let me move on quickly to a couple of other issues, just very briefly. I'll just comment on them. The new inclusivism. Inclusivism, by that I mean there is a growing amount of energy and push and evangelicalism to say that people who have never embraced Jesus Christ and in fact may have never even heard of him can still be believers. It's not a new thing. It started unfortunately with a man that we all respect for his clear presentation of the gospel in his messages at various crusades. Billy Graham, in a McCall's magazine interview in 1978 denied that pagans are lost apart from the gospel. Shortly thereafter, he corrected that with a statement that Jesus Christ was the only way published in C T in 1978, but Ian Murray in his book Evangelicalism Divided, which if you haven't read, I'd strongly encourage you to read. He records a 1997 televised discussion between Dr. Graham and Dr. Robert Schuller. Here's what Graham says, “I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. God is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world. They are members of the body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think they are saved and they're going to be with us in heaven.”

Schuller asked, “What I hear you saying is that it's possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life, even if they have been born in darkness and have never had exposure to the Bible is that a correct interpretation of what you were saying?” Graham replied, “Yes, it is.” Schuller replied, “I'm so thrilled to hear you say this.” There's a wideness in God's mercy, and Graham added, “There is, there definitely is.” Unfortunately, Billy Graham isn't the only one to buy into this new inclusivism. Joel Osteen, you may have seen on, and I use his name only because it's a recent example that I read about. He was on Larry King Live and King asked this question. He said, “What if you're Jewish or Muslim and you don't accept Christ at all?” Osteen replied, “You know, I'm very careful about saying who would and wouldn't go to heaven. I don't know.” King said, “If you believe you have to believe in Christ, they're wrong aren't they?” Osteen, “Well, I don't know if I believe they're wrong. I believe here's what the Bible teaches and from the Christian faith this is what I believe, but I just think that only God will judge a person's heart. I spent a lot of time in India with my father. I don't know all about their religion, but I know they love God and I don't know I've seen their sincerity, so I don't know, I know for me and what the Bible teaches I want to have a relationship with Jesus.” Because of the firestorm that erupted as a result of that, he wrote, and I need to mention, he wrote an apology letter to some of his constituents, apologizing for not stipulating that Jesus Christ was the only way, so I'm not sure exactly where he stands on the issue.

Unfortunately, a local pastor has embraced the same thing. Tony Evans, who, is a man whose ministry I've enjoyed, we had him out at Grace when I was there. He's written a book called Totally Saved, and in that book he does two very disappointing and sad things. One of those things is to deny original sin. This is from an interview he did, as he publicized that book, an interview with Glenn Plummer. Tony says, “I believe that Jesus Christ, in His death covered original sin, but the thing that the death of Christ did was cover and overrule original sin. No man is condemned because they are born in Adam.” Well, obviously, we've just been through that. I think the scripture very clearly speaks against that. But that's not the biggest concern. He goes on to say that, “Those who are in darkness around the world, never having heard of Christ, can be saved without ever hearing of Christ.” He says, “A person wants to know the true God who desires to know the true God that gives God three options.

Number 1; God can send him a missionary, the traditional way. Number 2; God can give them a direct revelation of Himself like He did Paul on the Damascus Road. Or 3^rd;” Evans’ says, “God can transdispensationalize them, that is relate to him out of another dispensation because dispensations are based on information given so that all throughout the bible, all people had to do was believe what God revealed, and they were saved. If a person believed somebody up there created this somebody created me. I don't know who He is, but I want to know Him. If that person would have a heart attack at that moment, God could not condemn him and be just.” The interviewer says, “Now wait a minute, because Tony you graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary. I can only imagine that there are people there that could probably call this heresy.” Evans replied, “Probably, but I don't care.” The interviewer says, “But what this says is that Hindus, who are doing the best they can with the information they have. I'm talking about Hindus, who have never heard of Jesus, never heard of the Savior, never heard of salvation in Christ, the only begotten Son of God, then there's salvation for them is what you're saying.” Evans replies, “If they're not suppressing the truth, that's the divider.” The interviewer says, “What does that mean?” “It means that there is a revelation of God,” and then it cuts off. Sadly, these are some of the more prominent voices, but there are many in even evangelicalism that are teaching this new inclusivism that you do not have to even know or have heard the name of Christ in order to be a Christian. Obviously, this runs contrary to what the scriptures teach.

The final thing I want to mention tonight and I'll let you go is the new perspective on Paul. You’ve probably read or heard about this. Essentially, it is a movement that is redefining biblical justification. The Bible says, and we've gone through this when we went through Philippians chapter 3, if you weren't here get the tapes on Philippians 3:1-10, I believe it was, on Just By Faith Alone. The Bible says that justification is the legal declaration by God of the believing repentant sinner to be just in His sight and to accept him on that behalf. The new prospective definition says it's not about a legal decision to bring you into a right relationship with God. It's God's recognition of a person as having covenant membership. Absolutely turns justification on its head. The major proponents of this are men by the names of E P Sanders, James Dunn, and N T Wright. N T Wright is the one that has the greatest inroads into evangelicalism because he's written some good books other than this thrust and the new perspective on Paul.

I'm not going to take time to go through it with you more than to say this, because many of you will not in the short term be exposed to this. Right now it's simply in academic circles, but I would encourage you if you have any interest whatsoever to go on the internet and find what I think is the finest article on the new perspective on Paul, it's written by a man by the name of Ligand Duncan. He's a pastor in Jackson, Mississippi, and the article is called The Attractions of the New Perspectives on Paul, and he details all that's going on if you'd like to read on this, if you've heard about it, somebody in your family or in your extended set of friends has been influenced by this, this article will be of great help. But I decided not to take more time than that in the service tonight, because for many of you it will be years down the road before this flows its way from academic circles. These other dangers are much more immediate; the Emerging Church and Seeker Sensitive movement, you face as I do all the time.

Let me remind you where we began. This isn't what our faith is about. My job and goal tonight was to present you enough information. My prayer has been to guard you against these things to inoculate you against these things. So when you hear about them, the danger flags will go up. If you want to read more about any of these, you can certainly see me I can encourage you in that direction, but I wanted to just give you an overview of these trends that are sweeping the church. And it's a challenging day in which we live, but let me end by bringing you back to our Lord's promise. I mentioned it when we were dealing with the seeker sensitive movement, and that is, Jesus promised that He would build His church and no false doctrine, no misled motive, no flawed methodology is going to undermine the work of Christ to build His church. What we have to do as a church is to do our best by God's grace, first of all to continue individually to pursue personal holiness and the knowledge of God and His word, and corporately we have to minister to each other, guard against error, and love each other for the sake of Christ. It's not our mission, never will be my mission to police the church. I mentioned these things tonight for your edification, and that's my great prayer. Let's pray together.

Father, You know the motives of my heart tonight and I pray that those have been clear to all those who are gathered here. Lord help us to love Your truth and because we love Your truth, Lord help us to hate error. Lord I pray that You would give us love and compassion for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are captured in these movements, these dangerous trends. But, Father don't let us give any ground when it comes to the truth. You have given us a grave responsibility Father, You have passed down through the generations of the church, the treasure of sound doctrine to us. And as all of us sit here in this room, tonight, You've given us the obligation to guard the treasure, to proclaim and teach the treasure to our children, to all of those to whom we have opportunity to influence, and to pass the treasure on to the next generation. Father, I pray that by Your grace we would be able to accomplish that. For the Glory of Christ, Amen.