Sound The Trumpet : The Invasion of the Emerging Church

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“The Invasion of the Emerging Church”
by fbns@wayoflife.org. - David Cloud
December 1st, 2014

Brian McLaren did not invent emerging heresy. It is in the very air we breathe today. He is a product of it, and he in turn has become a purveyor. He grew up with the priceless heritage of being the son and grandson of Bible-believing Christians, but at some point he was converted to modern unbelief. His book A New Kind of Christian is doubtless biographical to some degree. An evangelical pastor is converted by a likable man named "Neo," who befriends him in a crisis of faith. At the beginning of the conversations, the pastor is afraid that Neo's ideas are corrupting him (p. 26), but he quenches the fear, continues to listen to the voice of the serpent, and becomes a convert to heresy. McLaren, the author of the book, considers this transformation a good thing, of course. This reminds me of the 1956 movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which the earth is invaded by aliens in the form of seed pods. Each pod is capable of transforming a human being into an alien by capturing his soul if the individual is sleeping nearby. The invasion is quiet and insidious. One by one, unsuspecting human beings are transformed into aliens with alien thinking and objectives who seek to transform everyone else. A doctor discovers what is happening and tries to warn people, even standing on a highway screaming to the motorists, "They're here already! You're next!" but he is ignored. Like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the emerging church is an alien Christianity. It spreads quietly and subtly, from individual to individual. It puts people at ease by downplaying its radicalness and by using the comfortable old biblical and theological terms, yet with new definitions. McLaren and his friends would tell you that they believe in Biblical inspiration, salvation, atonement, judgment, and the kingdom of God, but they re-define these terms in modernistic ways. They are "sincere and caring." They profess to love Jesus and the truth. The emerging heresy takes over the hearts and minds of those who are sleeping and are not alert to the danger, who have been lulled to sleep by the popular thinking that judging is carnal and "critics" are mean-spirited troublemakers and that preaching and teaching should be kept on a "positive note" and "not deal with personalities." It is especially effective in converting second generation Christians who often lack the spiritual dynamism and vigilance of the first generation. It spreads through the "seed pods" of literature, Internet blogs, MP3 sermons, Bible College classrooms, and friendships. It captures the hearts of pastors' sons, who then insidiously convert unsuspecting congregations. I remember being frightened by The Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I was a kid. After watching it, I awoke one night and saw a watermelon beside the refrigerator outside my bedroom door; fearing that it was a seed pod, I cried out to mom to come save me! The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was fiction, but the invasion of the emerging church is very real, and I am doing everything I can to warn and protect as many people as I can. This is a major motivation for the production of such things as the Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible and the One Year Discipleship Course and An Unshakeable Faith and the Advanced Bible Studies Series. We need parents and pastors and teachers and missionaries who will provide serious discipleship to the next generation to protect them from the invasion of apostasy.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13