Archive for the ‘The Preaching of the Cross’ Category

On June 1st, Lighthouse Trails posted an article by M. Danielsen titled, “Sojourners Founder Jim Wallis’ Revolutionary Anti-Christian “Gospel” (and Will Christian Leaders Stand with Wallis?).” On June 19th, we posted a second article titled TRAVESTY at LIFEST – PARENTS: Don’t Send Your Kids – Radical-Emergent/Liberal Jim Wallis to Speak at Lifest (What is Luis Palau Doing There?).” This second article included a link to a radio interview by VCY America’s Ingrid Schlueter and Mare Danielsen on this same subject. Yesterday, June 30th, a Wisconsin radio station (Lifest is held in WI) pulled its sponsorship of Lifest because of Wallis’ appearance. All of these things led to a response by Jim Wallis on his Sojourner’s blog today. That article begins as such:

Calling People to Faith

by Jim Wallis 07-01-2010

Several months ago, I was invited to speak at Lifest, a Christian festival in Wisconsin with more than 100 musicians and 50 speakers that draws tens of thousands of mostly young people. That invitation has recently become controversial, as a number of false accusations have been made against me and our Sojourners ministry. One long article [Danielsen's article on Lighthouse Trails] actually put me in the company of Rick Warren, Bill & Lynne Hybels, and the National Association of Evangelical as heretical. Most recently, a local radio station in Wisconsin pulled their sponsorship of Lifest, saying “we believe the social justice message and agenda they promote is a seed of secular humanism, seeking an unholy alliance between the Church and Government.”  Nevertheless, Bob Lenz and the leadership of Lifest stood by their invitation for me to speak next week. I wrote this statement at Bob’s request in response to the controversy.

It has come to my attention that there is some controversy around the invitation I received to speak at Lifest. It seems there have been false rumors and misperceptions spreading about me and about Sojourners, the organization I lead. I wanted to help clarify who we are in an effort for us all to put the main focus back on the mission of Lifest, which is to call people to faith in Jesus Christ. (To read this entire article by Jim Wallis, click here.)

The questions many may be asking, what DOES Jim Wallis believe in and stand for, and should he be representing biblical Christianity and standing on platforms with evangelical speakers, addressing Christian youth whose parents believe their kids are attending a “Christian” event with Bible-believing speakers? In other words, do Wallis’ beliefs line up with the main message in the Bible, which is the Cross and atonement of Jesus Christ, the foundation of true Christianity.

In an article last week, we stated: “As more and more talk arises about a ‘spiritual revolution’ or awakening, believers should be asking, is this a revolution from God? Or is this coming global ‘revolution’ part of the great falling away of which the Bible speaks?” Many of today’s major Christian figures  (Rick Warren, Leonard Sweet, Erwin McManus, William Paul Young (The Shack), Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, and yes, Jim Wallis) are all talking about “revolution.” Former New Age follower, Warren B. Smith, identifies this emerging “revolution” as “indeed the same New Age ‘revolution’ attempting to transfix and transform the church today.” Smith adds: ” We should be very concerned when self-professing Evangelical leaders with New Age sympathies talk about starting a “spiritual revolution” (A “Wonderful Deception, p. 134). Sadly, all of the aforementioned names above hold to “New Age sympathies,” in particularly their embracing and resonating with contemplative mysticism (the basis of which is panentheistic – God is in all).

M. Danielsen’s article laid out clearly Wallis’ and Sojourners‘ socialistic, marxist ideologies. But what about Wallis’ views on the nature of spirituality itself, mainly contemplative mysticism, which is the antithesis of the atonement of Jesus Christ? And is Sojourners providing a dynamic platform for an anti-biblical “gospel”?

It doesn’t take too long in looking at Sojourners to find their contemplative-mystical persuasions. On their website, on a video clip,  two Sojourner editors discuss contemplative practices. The video is actually classified as a “how-to video on contemplative prayer” with Sojourner editors Rose Marie Berger and Jeannie Choi.

(Note: Wheaton College is mentioned in this video as the place the one Sojourners editor learned contemplative practices. See our research on Wheaton.)

For sake of time, we will show just one more piece of proof of Wallis’ stance on the contemplative/New spirituality movement.  This case in point, last summer on God Politics: a blog by Jim Wallis and friends, an article by Richard Rohr was posted. Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation and a Catholic priest,  is a panentheist who wrote the foreword to a 2007 book called How Big is Your God? by Jesuit priest (from India) Paul Coutinho. In Coutinho’s book, he describes an interspiritual community where people of all religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity) worship the same God. Incidentally, in the same year Rohr wrote the foreword for Coutinho’s book, Rohr and Wallis were the speaking teamat a conference in Ohio. Rohr, one of the most popular speakers in the Catholic church today and commands the respect of thousands of priests, states: 

The term “cosmic Christ” reminds us that everything and everyone belongs. . . . God’s hope for humanity is that one day we will all recognize that the divine dwelling place is all of creation. Christ comes again whenever we see that matter and spirit co-exist. (“The eternal christ in the cosmic story,” NCR, 12/11/09)

Make no mistake, there is ample evidence available to show that Wallis (and Sojourners) is a conduit for contemplative (ie., New Age/New Spirituality)  (which we believe is the driving force behind this emerging/emergent church and will be the propeller to bring about a global “awakening” (i.e., a global mass deception). Consider these two verses:

“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Revelation 12:9

“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.” II Corinthians 11:14-15

Wallis, Rick Warren, Brian McLaren, and other emerging-type leaders have tried to convince our society that the church has failed, and that is why the world is in such a mess today. They conveniently neglect to tell people that the reason the world is in such disarray is because of sin and man’s rejection of Jesus Christ. It is not because of the true body of Christian believers, which through the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit, long to help others and share the true “Gospel of Jesus Christ.”  These heretical teachers are attempting to convince Christians,  that they need to lay down their moralistic conservative views such as wanting to stop the murder of millions of babies and proclaim that marriage should only be a civil and legal union between a man and a woman. They go to great lengths to lay upon the conservative Christian guilt for the state of the world. They say we have been too narrow-minded, and as Rick Warren has stated, they say we need to look for a “new reformation,” one that includes Muslims, gays, and all belief systems. And look how so many have bought into it. The Shack, which proclaims the same “gospel” as Rick Warren and Jim Wallis proclaim, remains a New York  Times best seller, and that is mostly among proclaiming Christians. Yes, look how many have caved in to these lies. Nearly every denomination and Christian movement has been affected to some degree: Christian Missionary Alliance, the Mennonites, the Southern Baptists, some Calvary Chapel churches, the Nazarenes, the Wesleyans, even some Amish and Independent Baptist groups  … certainly too many to ignore.

Where will this all lead? Ray Yungen, who has been warning the church of this contemplative New Age  ”revolution” for nearly twenty years, says this:

Some day, and it could be soon, the Lord will allow the man of lawlessness [the antichrist] to emerge. In the mean time, the world is opening its arms to wholly embrace a spirituality that will exist under the umbrella of mysticism. The correlating theme will be—we are all One. When the man of lawlessness does rise to power with a one-world economy and political base, he will seduce many into searching for their own Christ consciousness rather than the Messiah, Jesus Christ. (A Time of Departing, pp. 127-128)

Among this group of men such as Wallis, who are attempting to redefine biblical Christianity, is Leonard Sweet who in his own writings exalts this idea of “christ consciousness” and tells his followers that he sees some of today’s most prolific New Age/New Spirituality leaders as his “new light heroes.”1 

In spite of this clear and obvious move away from biblical faith by so many of today’s prolific figures, when one looks over at the arena of Christian leaders, teachers, and pastors today, a deafening silence fills our ears. These men and women who say they represent Christianity, stand on the side lines holding the cloaks of those who fervently seek to persuade people away from traditional biblical truth.

In conclusion, Jim Wallis’ vision, although noble sounding in some respects, it has at its center, as its spiritual component a practice and belief system that could be legitimately called part of the mystery of iniquity (discussed in II Thessalonians 2). One of the major icons of this movement, Thomas Merton, told a Muslim mystic in essence that it didn’t matter whether one believed in the atonement and redemption of Jesus Christ or not (*see citation below). What did matter was that Muslims and Christians will hopefully someday share in divine light. This is where Sojourners vision will lead. Sojourners shares Merton’s hope for the future.

Lighthouse Trails is not against justice and mercy; Lighthouse Trails is not against feeding the poor and helping those who are downtrodden and destitute - Lighthouse Trails is against a mystical belief system that proclaims that the divine is in everything, including all of humanity regardless of faith in Christ or not.

This is beyond speculation. One of the pioneers of this “reconciliation”/mystical revolution, Henri Nouwen (frequently quoted by Sojourners), rejoicingly said:

The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being. (Nouwen, Here and Now, 1997, p. 22)

The apostle Paul wrote that we are reconciled with God through the death of His son. It goes without saying that Christians are supposed to have the fruit of the spirit, which is what this so-called “progressive Christianity” claims to portray, but the bedrock of Christianity which cannot be compromised, is this very thing, but contemplative/emerging spirituality is moving people away from reconciliation through the Cross rather than toward it.

At Lifest with tens of thousands of young people, while Wallis may inspire them to remember the poor and the hurting, he will no doubt also inspire them to follow this dangerous mystical paradigm shift.

*Thomas Merton citation: Quoted in chapter 3 of A Time of Departing; Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 109

Related Stories:

Film Warning: “With God on Our Side” – Championed by Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren & Steve Haas (World Vision)

The following are excerpts from last week’s interview between VCY America Ingrid Schlueter and Herescope author and researcher Sarah Leslie
(used with permission). Please refer to our article “CrossTalk on WorldNetDaily Article – Challenge to Dominionist Leaders – The Gospel Should Come First! where you can also listen to the full interview.”

INGRID: I want to say this. We have a group of leaders who are horrified with the moral collapse in this country. I am horrified with the cultural collapse in this country. We have a problem in identifying and discerning why our culture is collapsing. What we are seeing around us is not fruit of Christians not caring. It’s fruit of Christians abandoning the gospel. And if we’re not going to define the gospel along biblical terms, and we’re going to allow false teachers in among us, and we’re going to link arms with said false teachers, and we’re going to work with them who are preaching another gospel, who are teaching lies, if we’re going to link arms with them to save the culture, we are not only engaged in a futile effort, but God is going to, in turn, judge that conduct. Because judgment, Scripture tells us, begins at the house of God. (quote by Ingrid Schlueter in radio interview last week with Sarah Leslie (Discernment Ministries)) .

INGRID: Janet [Porter's] piece accuses Discernment Ministries of being cultural Nazis who could care less about the dying children, about gay marriage, about our country’s cultural collapse. And we were just pointing out before the break that Sarah Leslie of Discernment Ministries, the quote—slanderer—according to Janet Porter, has been very active in the pro-life movement, head of the Iowa Right to Life in the ‘80s. And knows firsthand the cost that it is to stand for human life. God redirected her ministry and she is a part of [Jewel Grewe's] Discernment Ministries which carries all kinds of articles at Herescope about some of these trends, the Emergent church, the mysticism that’s coming into the church. Oh, there’s so many things and they take the time to carefully footnote each and every piece. Sarah has a Master’s degree. She is a good scholar. She’s faithful to write things in a careful manner, so for her to be labeled a slander site [and a cultural Nazi] is somewhat jaw-dropping and heartbreaking to see.” Sarah, we were just—let’s go back to what you were saying earlier. You understand the culture wars firsthand.

SARAH LESLIE: I do. I was in them. I was a home school leader during the decade of the ‘90s. And actually our family’s testimony is posted on the internet. If you google my name, Sarah Leslie with the words home schooling under fire, you’ll probably come up with Berit Kjos’ website Crossroad.to and home schooling under fire is the story of our family’s persecution and how our home became ground zero for the home school activism in Iowa during an extremely dangerous and turbulent time. So, I think I cut my teeth on the Christian Right activism in this country. But I part company with Janet Porter and where she’s going. And that’s a very serious thing.

INGRID: It is indeed. And let’s revisit. I want to go back for those that missed the New Apostolic Reformation program. Dominionism was the concern. There are people who have a very different viewpoint, a very different spiritual agenda. However, they use the same terminology, the same language and familiar themes and cadences in their speech, but they believe something very wrong….

But first of all, the NAR, give us a thumbnail. Tell us about their teachings how God lost control of Planet Earth in the Garden of Eden and how we have to wrestle it back from the demons and all that.

SARAH: Well, the New Apostolic Reformation is a term that was coined by C. Peter Wagner back in the 1990s. And it has to do with an emerging group of men who see themselves as apostles and prophets with a capital A and a capital P like unto Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles who will rule the world. And they have a—They’ve been around for a long time. They’ve been writing doctrines for a long time. And I really mean it. They are actually concocting doctrines. But their teaching is basically that we, as the church, are to build the kingdom of God here on earth. And they have given this the name in recent years of seven mountains, or seven spheres, or seven gates. They’ve got a bunch of different names for it. But the most prevalent is seven mountains. And this seven mountain teaching teaches that we can take over these spheres of society like family, government, economics, media, that type of thing.

So this is not just going and voting. This is saying, how can we take this over? . . . [T]hey teach that Jesus did not defeat Satan at the cross and that we need to go back and restore what was lost. We, the church, and we need to finish Jesus’ job. And we have to go restore paradise on earth and build this kingdom, quote, unquote. This is being done through all sorts of things. Especially they are using very sophisticated cultural, psychological and sociological tools, marketing tools even. They believe they can use anything at their disposal to do this.

And this is the same group, as you and I said on the earlier show, these group that is headed up by C. Peter Wagner*[see end of article], these apostles, is the same group that brought us the Toronto laughing quote unquote revival. It’s the group that brought us Todd Bentley in Lakeland, Florida….

“The sad fact is that great opportunities to present the message of the gospel of salvation are being lost. Precious time is being wasted on these esoteric prayer shenanigans, while those who need to hear the message of the cross are dying in their sins. Those who truly need to hear a message of repentance, salvation and hope aren’t being witnessed to. Discipleship isn’t happening. Rather, all of these prayer antics and hullabaloos, decrees, declarations, marches and meditations and covenants and manifestos are clogging up the works, taking up precious time and resources of the church and fooling people into thinking they’re doing something spiritual. It is a false gospel that preaches that the culture nation can be changed rather than focusing on the lost who will perish in hell if they do not repent.

INGRID: So there’s this shift in the air. And in fact, I want to make this point. Janet made the fatal mistake of linking to Herescope when it is our prayer that what the enemy meant for evil, God intends for good. Because a lot of people are going to learn things that they get to Herescope about how all of this is tying in with the emerging church. The NAR is merging with many of the teachers in the Emergent church and their teachings. Which really makes a lot of sense because mysticism is a key part of the emerging church teachings and it is also key, of course, here with all of the esoteric experiences, manifestations, signs, wonders promoted by the NAR. So that’s why we are so tremendously concerned.

INGRID READING FROM HERESCOPE ARTICLE:  “The sad fact is that great opportunities to present the message of the gospel of salvation are being lost. Precious time is being wasted on these esoteric prayer shenanigans, while those who need to hear the message of the cross are dying in their sins. Those who truly need to hear a message of repentance, salvation and hope aren’t being witnessed to. Discipleship isn’t happening. Rather, all of these prayer antics and hullabaloos, decrees, declarations, marches and meditations and covenants and manifestos are clogging up the works, taking up precious time and resources of the church and fooling people into thinking they’re doing something spiritual. It is a false gospel that preaches that the culture nation can be changed rather than focusing on the lost who will perish in hell if they do not repent.

“The message of Jesus is salvation. And this message is for the individual believer. It is only by ministering the Word and the preaching the message of the gospel of salvation of Christ’s atoning death for our sins on the cross that we will reach those who are perishing. And when the lost are truly saved and born again, their lives will change and this is when the miracles begin to happen and when the culture around them begins to be positively impacted by the salt and light of their changed lives.”

INGRID: And the verse is 1 John 4:5 and 6.  And I encourage people to read that. That’s the core issue.  And I want to say this. I want to say this, folks. Janet [Porter] has chosen to use name calling. Calling us cultural Nazis. Calling Discernment Ministries slanderers. I had Sarah on today because I want to publically stand with her and those who work at the Herescope blog and Discernment Ministries and thank them for the importance they have placed, the crucial importance they have placed on gospel integrity–the purity of the gospel message, untainted with other people’s agendas and false doctrines that they have concocted at their apostles’ meeting or barking like dogs and laughing and all of this foolishness. Seeking the sensation. Seeking the sign. Trying to get something new, something special, some great anointing, when God has told us, Christ gave us His commission to share the gospel with every creature and the culture will change.

We here at CrossTalk believe in alerting people to the facts going on around us, the news that means something to us. But we are under no illusions – what is going to change this country ultimately is the gospel and that is what distinguishes CrossTalk from a lot of other issue programs. And we’ve clearly made enemies because of that.  But it is the gospel first. The gospel over America, yes. We are a country that, like every nation on earth, rises up to greatness and then falls down into the dustbin of history. We are no different. And if we think that somehow America is special, we are, if we turn our backs on God, the same things in the Scripture that God promises will happen to countries that turn their backs on God, will happen to us. And what’s most important that we uphold the truth of Scripture. Churches have abandoned that.

I see Christians, literally bumping into each other, going opposite directions, and anathematizing each other and declaring this and that. We need to—Let’s look to the Lord and His Word which does not change. Let’s look there and there alone.

Sarah, I did a lot of talking and I have a lot of passion about this in my heart today. But I wanted to give you a chance before we go to the phones, to say anything. I don’t know if you had some point you wanted to make. I would just like to give you a chance.

SARAH: Oh, thank you. I think you just made my point for me. That’s the burden of my heart. You know, it’s not—I wish it was easy. If you could just go up and people change. You know, but we can’t make people change unless we want to coerce them. It’s got to be—We’ve got to be born again. We have to have that change in our heart. We have to come to the conviction. And the Word of God, the Bible is what teaches us and instructs us. I mean, I worked in the Right to Life movement. I saw, as people got born again, our phones would ring in the Right to Life office because these women would suddenly go, “Oh, my goodness. I aborted my baby!” And they would be grief stricken and suddenly they would have a conscience. And suddenly they would be convicted and they would be in tears. That’s what the cross does, is it changes lives from hardened people to soft hearts. I came out of the hippie movement. I was involved in the New Age. I was involved in that whole drug culture. And how did I get born again? It was somebody preaching the Word of God to me and it changed my heart.

And I am afraid that those like Janet Porter, who are looking at the symptoms of the problem and saying, “Let’s stop the symptoms. Stop the abortion. Stop that.” They are missing the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is the church has abandoned the true preaching of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins found in Christ. We have turned our churches into circuses. If we want to see change in our country we’re going to have to begin with the preaching of the gospel. The change is only going to occur, as Herescope pointed out, when individual lives are changed and transformed by the living Christ. And no amount of coalescing with false teachers, no amount of coalescing with false teachers under the guise of changing, or with the premise of changing our culture is going to make a difference ultimately. It is vain. It is futile.  

 

INGRID: Nicholas Ridley [and] Hugh Latimer died in flames in England. Burned at the stake over the authority of Scripture. And we act like we can toss that doctrine aside, Scripture alone aside, and act like it no longer matters in our day and age because we’re going to save America. No, we’re not! If those martyrs died over issues like the authority of Scripture and the access to Scripture like the translator that was thrown into the river after being burned at the stake. The hatred, the satanic hatred poured out on that man. But we have our Bibles, our English Bibles today because of that man’s faithfulness. And how dare we, how dare we compromise on these issues and act like they don’t matter. And I will stand to Janet Porter frontally and I will stand there broken hearted that we have come to this in Christianity, that we have to oppose frontally these kind of people who say that sound doctrine no longer matters. Eternity hangs in the balance. We have no business minimizing these issues.

 * C. Peter Wagner was Rick Warren’s dissertation mentor in graduate school (see below – taken from Deception in the Church website)
Title: NEW CHURCHES FOR A NEW GENERATION: CHURCH PLANTING TO REACH BABY BOOMERS. A CASE STUDY: THE SADDLEBACK VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH (CALIFORNIA)
Author(s): WARREN, RICHARD DUANE
Degree: D.MIN.
Year: 1993
Pages: 00413
Institution: FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, DOCTOR OF MINISTRY PROGRAM; 0790
Advisor: Mentor: C. PETER WAGNER
Source: DAI, 54, no. 03A, (1993): 0967
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: RELIGION, CLERGY
EDUCATION, RELIGIOUS
THEOLOGY
Accession No: AAG9320131
Database: Dissertations

The contemplative prayer movement and the new emerging spirituality continue to wreak havoc on the body of Christ and on the preaching of the Gospel to the lost. For eight years, Lighthouse Trails has shown through one report after the next the teachings by many that outright or indirectly deny the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ (the basic essence of the salvation for the believer). And yet today many Christian leaders, professors, and pastors continue to promote atonement deniers or those who resonate with them. And we say again, it makes no sense to celebrate Easter while promoting those who deny the atonement.

A case in point. Calvary Chapel teacher, Gayle Erwin, has his endorsement of The Shack on the back cover of the book and on The Shack website. Yet,  Erwin continues addressing Calvary Chapel pastors (e.g. recently at the SW Calvary Chapel Pastors Conference with Greg Laurie and other Calvary Chapel pastors). But William Paul Young, author of The Shack has denied the biblical substitutionary atonement as we showed in John Lanagan’s 2009 article, The Shack Author Rejects Biblical Substitutionary Atonement. Lanagan states, after listening to a radio interview with Young: 

 [T]he author of this bestselling book does not believe Christ was punished on the Cross by the Father for our sins. This is a central doctrine of our faith–that Jesus willingly took our place of punishment and that through His sacrifice we can have eternal life. (click here to read the transcript of the interview with William Paul Young)

Another case in point. Alan Jones, the Reverend at Grace Cathedral in San Fransisco, wrote a book called Reimagining Christianity. The book is filled with theology that negates essentials of the Christian faith. In that book he states:

The Church’s fixation on the death of Jesus as the universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the vindictive God behind it.–Alan Jones1

Of the atonement, Jones also says: “Jesus’ sacrifice was to appease an angry God. Penal substitution was the name of this vile doctrine.”–Alan Jones, (Reimagining Christianity , p. 168) No one can argue that Brian McLaren’s name on the back cover is an endorsement by McLaren on Jones’ beliefs expressed in that book. In fact, McLaren, in his own words, calls the doctrine of hell and the Cross “false advertising” for God. But also on the back cover of Jones’ book is Walter Brueggemann, who says that Jones’ “vision of faith” and “ministry for the time to come” will be a “gift” for readers. For those who are not familiar with his name,  Walter Brueggemann is one of the main editors for Richard Foster’s Spiritual Formation Study Bible. Foster, a contemplative New Age sympathizer, is admired and even heralded by countless Christian leaders, teachers, ministries, and pastors around the globe. Two of those are Focus on the Family and Rick Warren. And yet, clearly Foster resonates with Brueggemann, or he wouldn’t have him contribute to a Bible of all things. To resonate with Brueggemann is to resonate with someone who accepts the denial of the atonement. This is not guilt by association – this is guilt by promotion!

And we could give so many other examples. The point is, Christian leaders and pastors are helping promote figures who reject the atonement or stand with those who do. And yet, this weekend, some of those same leaders and pastors will stand in front of their people to give recognition to Christ’s death on the Cross and His resurrection. This is double-minded, to say the least, and it makes no sense.

Do Christian leaders and pastors understand the nature of this “gospel” of no atonement? That “gospel” and its “Jesus” are not the biblical ones. In fact, they completely oppose the biblical Gospel and Jesus Christ. In 1992, Oprah Winfrey said that A Course in Miracles (the New Age manual channeled through Helen Schucman) is reputedly from Jesus Christ.   Oprah said that the philosophy of this Course in Miracles “Jesus” could change the world.  Sixteen years later, in 2008, Oprah had Marianne Williamson teach A Course in Miracles daily on her Oprah and Friends online radio network. But listen to what this Course in Miracles “Jesus” has to say about the atonement and the crucifixion:

Do not make the pathetic error of “clinging to the old rugged cross.” The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the Gospel I intended to offer you. (Text, p. 52)

The journey to the cross should be the last “useless journey.” …If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. (Text, p. 52)

The song of Easter is the glad refrain the Son of God was never crucified. (Text, p. 428) (quotes taken from Warren B. Smith’s free online book, Reinventing Jesus Christ)

This Course in Miracles “Jesus” is the same “Jesus” that can be found in The Shack and the same one promoted by Alan Jones, Walter Brueggemann, and Brian McLaren, and it is the same “Jesus” that is being wittingly or unwittingly promoted by too many Christian leaders.

For those who are skeptical, consider what the two icons of the contemplative prayer movement – Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen –  have to say about Christ’s atonement. When Merton was attempting to have “dialogue” with a Sufi master, the Sufi (an Islamic mystic) stated the following to Merton: “Islam inculcates individual responsibility for one’s actions and does not subscribe to the doctrine of atonement or the theory of salvation” ( Merton and Sufism, p.109) Merton answered back:

Personally, in matters where dogmatic beliefs differ, I think that controversy [the atonement and salvation] is of little value. . . . But much more important is the sharing of the experience of divine light, . . . It is here that the area of fruitful dialogue exists between Christianity and Islam. (Merton and Sufism, p. 110, as quoted in ATOD, pp. 59-60)

At the end of Nouwen’s life, in the last book he ever wrote (Sabbatical Journey), he said the following:

Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God. (p. 51)

The following article by Roger Oakland lays out this plan to thwart the atonement message.

“A Slaughterhouse Religion”
by Roger Oakland

In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. (Ephesians 1:7)

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (II Corinthians 5:21)

The heart and core of the Christian faith is based upon Jesus Christ’s shed blood at Calvary as the only acceptable substitutionary atonement for mankind’s sins. The Gospel message requires this foundation. The Bible says the wages of sin is death—thus every person alive should receive the penalty of spiritual death because none of us is without sin, since we are born with our sin nature intact. Satan hates the Gospel message. He understands what the Gospel means, and his agenda is to deceive mankind from understanding and believing so they can suffer eternally with him. While Scripture is very clear about the necessity of Christ’s death in order for us to be saved, some believe this would make God a blood-thirsty barbarian. Embedded within the structure of the emerging church is just such a belief.

Precivilized Barbarity
Many in the emerging church movement would vehemently object if someone told them that emerging church leaders don’t like the Cross. They would jump up and say, “Yes, they do. I’ve heard them talk about Jesus and His going to the Cross. They say they love the Cross.”

Some emerging church leaders do say they love the Cross, but an underlying theme is gaining momentum among them. It says Jesus’ going to the Cross was an example of sacrifice and servanthood that we should follow; but the idea that God would send His Son to a violent death for the sins of mankind—well, that is not who God is. A loving God would never do that! Such a violent act would make Christianity a “slaughterhouse religion.”1
Liberal theologian and pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), believed that the doctrine of the atonement, where “Jesus suffered as a substitute for us” because of our sins, is a “precivilized barbarity.”2

In his book, The Modern Use of the Bible, Fosdick says that Jesus’ going to the Cross should be seen as an example of a life of service and sacrifice and not compared with “old animal sacrifices” and “made ‘a pious fraud’ played by God upon the devil.”3 In Fosdick’s book Dear Mr. Brown, he states:

Too many theories of the atonement assume that by one single high priestly act of self-sacrifice Christ saved the world.4

Fosdick ends that statement with a pronounced—“No!” He insists, “These legalistic theories of the atonement are in my judgment a theological disgrace.”5

Fosdick considered the idea that God would actually send His Son to die on a Cross to take our place to be the basis for a violent and bloody religion. He rejected the biblical message of an atonement and substitutionary sacrifice.

Fosdick was the pastor of Riverside Church of New York City from 1925 to 1946. While he has been long gone, his ideologies have remained intact and have drifted right into the emerging church. In October 2006, Riverside Church held the 5th Fosdick Convocation in honor of their former pastor. Two of the emerging church’s most influential teachers were there as speakers in honor of Fosdick—Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo.6 As I will show you, McLaren resonates with Fosdick’s view of the Cross.

False Advertising for God
In an interview, Brian McLaren questioned the idea of God sending His Son to a violent death, calling it “false advertising for God”:

[O]ne of the huge problems is the traditional understanding of hell. Because if the cross is in line with Jesus’ teaching then—I won’t say, the only, and I certainly won’t say even the primary—but a primary meaning of the cross is that the kingdom of God doesn’t come like the kingdoms of this world, by inflicting violence and coercing people. But that the kingdom of God comes through suffering and willing, voluntary sacrifice. But in an ironic way, the doctrine of hell basically says, no, that’s not really true. That in the end, God gets His way through coercion and violence and intimidation and domination, just like every other kingdom does. The cross isn’t the center then. The cross is almost a distraction and false advertising for God. (emphasis added)7

What an extraordinary example of faith under attack and the consequences of thinking outside of the box. If McLaren is right, all those who have ever lived and believed in Christ’s atonement have been misled and wrong. McLaren has taken the freedom to reconstruct what faith means by distorting the Scriptures, or worse yet, saying the very opposite of what the inspired Word of God says. This is blasphemy! McLaren also states:

And I heard one well-known Christian leader, who—I won’t mention his name, just to protect his reputation. ‘Cause some people would use this against him. But I heard him say it like this: The traditional understanding says that God asks of us something that God is incapable of Himself. God asks us to forgive people. But God is incapable of forgiving. God can’t forgive unless He punishes somebody in place of the person He was going to forgive. God doesn’t say things to you—Forgive your wife, and then go kick the dog to vent your anger. God asks you to actually forgive. And there’s a certain sense that, a common understanding of the atonement presents a God who is incapable of forgiving. Unless He kicks somebody else.8 …

That God Does Not Exist
This idea of rejecting God’s judgment placed on Jesus Christ instead of us is not exclusive with Fosdick or McLaren. In fact, such rejection is integrated into the teachings of many others. In 1991, William Shannon (biographer of Catholic monk and mystic Thomas Merton) said:

This is a typical patriarchal notion of God. He is the God of Noah who sees people deep in sin, repents that He made them and resolves to destroy them. He is the God of the desert who sends snakes to bite His people because they murmured against Him. He is the God of David who practically decimates a people … He is the God who exacts the last drop of blood from His Son, so that His just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased. This God whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger … This God does not exist.12

So in other words, according to Fosdick, McLaren, and Shannon, Jesus should be seen as a model of sacrifice to follow in our own lives, but to view God the Father as a judge against sin is not a proper view of God. Those who reject the atonement realize the greatest threat to their heretical views is those who take the Scriptures literally and seriously. Fosdick explains:

Were you to talk to that fundamentalist preacher, he doubtless would insist that you must believe in the “substitutionary” theory of atonement—namely, that Jesus suffered as a substitute for us the punishment due us for our sins. But can you imagine a modern courtroom in a civilized country where an innocent man would be deliberately punished for another man’s crime? … [S]ubstitutionary atonement … came a long way down in history in many a penal system. But now it is a precivilized barbarity; no secular court would tolerate the idea for a moment; only in certain belated theologies is it retained as an explanation of our Lord’s death … Christ’s sacrificial life and death are too sacred to be so misrepresented.13

This is another perfect example of how the emerging church turns doctrine it doesn’t understand into a mockery against Scripture and God’s plan of salvation. God’s ways are not our ways and to expect them to line up with our own human reasoning is ludicrous:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Former Catholic priest Brennan Manning has been a major influence in emerging spirituality. In his 2003 book Above All (foreword by singer Michael W. Smith) he quotes William Shannon almost word for word, regarding the atonement:

[T]he god whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger … the god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.14

Dying for the Sins of the World
Marcus Borg is Distinguished Professor in Religion and Culture and Hundere Endowed Chair in Religious Studies at Oregon State University. He is a lecturer and the author of several books, some of which are Jesus and Buddha, The God We Never Knew, and Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But not Literally. While most would not consider him an emerging church leader, his thinking has greatly influenced the movement and its leaders. Brian McLaren says he has “high regard”15 for Borg; the two of them participated in a summer seminar series at an interspiritual center in Portland, Oregon, in 2006.16 Rob Bell references and praises him in Bell’s popular book Velvet Elvis.17 Walter Brueggemann, a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary and one of the contributors for Richard Foster’s Renovare Spiritual Formation Study Bible, considers Borg an essential part of the emerging spirituality. Brueggemann states:

Marcus Borg is a key force in the emerging “new paradigm” of Christian faith.18

Borg explains in his book The God We Never Knew that his views on God, the Bible, and Christianity were transformed while he was in seminary:

I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, not statements coming directly or somewhat directly from God.… I realized that whatever “divine revelation” and the “inspiration of the Bible” meant (if they meant anything), they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority.19

This attitude would certainly explain how Borg could say:

Jesus almost certainly was not born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world.20

If what Borg is saying is true, then we would have to throw out John 3:16 which says God so loved the world He gave His only Son, and we would have to dismiss the theme of a blood offering that is prevalent throughout all of Scripture. In the Old Testament, it is clear:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)

But Borg rejects this emphasis:

To think that the central meaning of Easter [resurrection] depends upon something spectacular happening to Jesus’ corpse misses the point of the Easter message and risks trivializing the story. To link Easter primarily to our hope for an afterlife, as if our post-death existence depends upon God having transformed the corpse of Jesus, is to reduce the story to a politically-domesticated yearning for our survival beyond death.21

What is behind this mindset? Listen to one New Ager describe what underlies this line of thought:

Jesus was an historical person, a human becoming Christ, the Christos, is an eternal transpersonal condition of being. Jesus did not say that this higher state of consciousness realized in him was his alone for all time. Nor did he call us to worship him. Rather, he called us to follow him, to follow in his steps, to learn from him, from his example.22

Fosdick would resonate with this. When he says, “Christ’s sacrificial life and death are too sacred to be so misrepresented,” he means that Christ is an example to be followed, not an innocent sacrifice for our guilt and thus worthy of praise and worship. Satan wants desperately to be worshiped and adored as God. He hates all that Jesus’ death stands for. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, purchased with His own blood the lives of those written in the Book of Life.

The Bible says, “without the shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22), and also, “He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Are we to reject these Scriptures and other ones as well that speak of the atonement because it doesn’t sound logical? Scripture tells us that the carnal mind is at enmity with God. We need to recognize that the Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is our final authority, and we must adhere to the truth of its teachings.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.… And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (I John 4:10, 14)

(from chapter 11 of Faith Undone by Roger Oakland – for entire chapter and endnotes, click here.)