Posts Tagged ‘global peace’

by Berit Kjos
Kjos Ministries

On September 17, 1995, I signed in at Mikhail Gorbachev’s well guarded State of the World Conference as an official [amateur] reporter. I wanted a first-hand glimpse of the global plans for the 21st Century. Those earlier signs helped build the foundation for today’s rapid change.

This was clearly a global event. The former head of the Soviet Union had gathered “nearly 500 senior states-people, political leaders, spiritual leaders, scientists, intellectuals, business executives, artists and youth from 50 nations to begin a process of deliberation on the central question of what priorities, values and actions should guide humanity as it moves into the next phase of development.” As Gorbachev announced,

“From the outset I would like to suggest that we consider the establishment of a global Brain Trust [forget representative government] to focus on the present and future of our civilization … this idea of a Brain Trust can only succeed if endorsed and actively pursued by people who are widely respected as world leaders and global citizens.”

The elite speakers and partners in this venture included the elder president George Bush, Carnegie Chairman David Hamburg, Ted Turner, Maurice Strong, the New Age chief of the UN’s 1992 environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, founder of the Trilateral Commission (with David Rockefeller), who became a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama thirteen years later.

An elegant Baha’i singer in a flowing white gown set the spiritual tone with a prayer to her universal god: “O faithful One… O helping one… Source of all being…” The music was her own, she said — given by the unknowable, compassionate god of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other spiritual avatars throughout time.

Her prayer-song fit the conference theme. As Mikhail Gorbachev observed during a dialogue on a new form of democracy,

“…there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism…. We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability…”

That synthesis abolishes all Biblical absolutes. Again and again, the Communist leader and his hand-picked “council of the wise” or “global brain trust” told the assembly of more than 1000 guests and participants that a new set of inclusive universal values must replace the Judeo-Christian world view. Familiar terms must be redefined to fit the new global perspective, while the old beliefs and political systems must be abandoned.

Like many other speakers, New Age author Dr. Deepak Chopra repeated the call for synthesis in his evening plenary speech. He challenged his friendly listeners with this question:

“Can you step out of the river of your own conditioning…? For only then is there an opportunity to create… a new world. We cannot do it the way we have done it in the past. It is time to change the whole paradigm through which we view physical reality.”

Apparently, these esteemed visionaries had already made that paradigm shift. The conference left little doubt that the chosen speakers and enthusiastic audience viewed reality from a decidedly evolutionary/universalist perspective — the kind that popular author Dan Brown promoted through his latest book on the philosophy behind Freemasonry and the mystical Noetic Sciences. Click here  to continue reading and for links and citations.

LTRP Note: Please read the following out-of-house article in conjunction with our October 19th posting, Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?. 

By AFP

Geneva – The World Council of Churches on Thursday called on churches around the world to ring their bells 350 times during the Copenhagen climate change summit on December 13 as a call to action on global warming.

The leading council of Christian and Orthodox churches also invited places of worship for other faiths to join a symbolic “chain of chimes and prayers” stretching around the world from the international date line in the South Pacific.

“On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the WCC invites churches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs or whatever their tradition offers to call people to prayer and action in the face of climate change,” the council said in a statement.

“By sounding their bells or other instruments 350 times, participating churches will symbolise the 350 parts per million that mark the safe upper limit for CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere according to many scientists,” it added.  Click here to read more.

by Chris Pinto with Adullam Films

“Essence of lies, and quintessence of blasphemy, as the religion of Rome is, it nevertheless fascinates a certain order of Protestants, of whom we fear it may be truly said that they have received a strong delusion to believe a lie, that they may be damned.”–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Sword and the Trowel,” Jan. 1873

The above quote from Charles Spurgeon (the “Prince of Preachers”) is very pertinent to the time in which we live. Many believers are familiar with Spurgeon but are unaware that one of his mottos was “No peace with Rome.”

For the past two years, Adullam Films has been developing a new documentary titled, “A Lamp in the Dark: The Untold History of the Bible.” Thank the Lord, the first edited draft of the work is complete and should be ready for duplication by next week, once the final touches have been made. Our new film records events from the first century onward, showing the history of the Church, and the long war both for and against the Word of God. We document the trials of the saints, along with Rome’s ancient hatred of the Bible and her repeated attempts to “keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures.”

When the Bible began to be translated into the languages of the common man, it resulted in the Protestant Reformation. What few modern day Christians are aware of, however, is that Rome launched a Counter Reformation in 1540 with the establishment of the Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuit Order). Their purpose was to destroy the work of the Reformers and bring the world back into the Dark Ages. It is our belief that the Counter Reformation continues to this day, and is the real secret behind the Ecumenical Movement, the World Council of Churches, the European Union, and the Emerging Church.

Several years ago, I met with Roger Oakland while we were still based in California. Roger had been teaching on the Emerging Church and its connections to Rome. When I first saw him, I asked: “Do you think this is the continuation of the Counter Reformation?” His immediate answer was, “Yes …”

… which brings us to Rick Warren and Tony Blair.

AMERICA’S PASTOR & THE PATH TO APOSTASY

Rick Warren recently joined with Tony Blair’s Interfaith Advisory Board, which includes leaders from six different faiths. The man called “America’s Pastor” will sit alongside leaders from Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu “faiths,” along with his Roman Catholic counterpart, Tony Blair. To read Warren’s own statement about it, click here.

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is all part of Blair’s new course in life, since leaving his office as prime minister of England. In 2008, he began teaching “Faith and Globalization” at Yale University. But how and why did he end up at Yale teaching on this particular subject? To find the most likely answer, let’s backtrack a few years.

BLAIR AT THE VATICAN

In June of 2006, Tony Blair went to the Vatican to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. It is worth considering that Blair also met with the Pope on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, an event the U.K. played no small part in. With this, consider that his partner, George W. “Bush … filled the White House with Catholic speech-writers and consultants” and “Before he became president, Karl Rove … invited Catholic intellectuals to Texas to lecture the candidate on the church’s teachings.” (UK Telegraph, “George W. Bush Meets Pope Amid Claims he might Convert to Roman Catholicism”–June 2008)

Now back to Blair at the Vatican: Of their meeting in 2006, the BBC reported:

“Mr. Blair spoke privately in the pontiff’s study for about 35 minutes. Outlining the nature of the discussions held, a Downing Street spokesman said: ‘The prime minister and the Pope talked about the challenges of globalization and the importance of dialogue between the faiths …’” (BBC News/UK, “Blair Audience with Pope Benedict,” Sat. 3 June, 2006)

The following year, Blair bid farewell to the office of Prime Minister and shortly thereafter, converted to Roman Catholicism. Now he is teaching “faith and globalization” at Yale? Is it possible that he’s there under the direction of the Pope? If that is the case, then what does this say about Rick Warren? Is he also working under the yoke of Rome? And could this be why he has been promoting the Emerging Church, which is a movement leading professing believers back to Roman Catholic rituals and philosophies?

We have for some time believed that the current Emerging Church movement is a parallel of the Oxford Movement that took place in England during the 19th century. The Oxford Movement was an attempt to Romanize the Church of England. One of the leading lights of the movement was John Henry Newman, an Anglican minister who converted to Roman Catholicism, and took hundreds of Anglican Protestants with him. Newman became a Catholic priest and was later promoted to cardinal. He was a key figure working to bring England back to Rome. When Tony Blair met with the Pope in 2007 (right before he left office), the National Catholic Reporter noted that:

“Blair gave the pope an interesting gift–three photographs of England’s most famous convert to Catholicism, Cardinal John Henry Newman. One was autographed by the 19th-century cardinal.” (National Catholic Reporter, “Tony Blair in Vatican Confab,” July 6, 2007).

To read Blair’s own words (from “The Office of Tony Blair”) in launching the faith and development seminar series, click here.

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape …. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3, 6) (Source: Adullah Films

Related Information:

Tony Blair Converts to Catholicism

Tony Blair’s Interfaith Foundation–Kjos Ministries

Rick Warren joins Tony Blair’s interfaith movement

Emergent Manifesto of Hope is the new release from Emersion, a publishing partnership between Baker Books and Emergent Village. The book, edited and compiled by emergent leaders Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, is a collection of essays by various emerging church leaders. Pagitt says the book “provides a rare glimpse inside the emerging church.” This “rare glimpse” actually lays out the agenda of the movement, and in essence Emergent Manifesto is the emerging church’s coming out of the closet tribute.

The back cover of Emergent Manifesto describes it as a “front-row” look at this “influential international movement” and promises readers that they will come away with “a deeper understanding of the hopeful imagination that drives the emerging church.” Readers are also told that they will “appreciate the beauty of a conversation that is continually being formed.” However, the book fails to deliver any “beauty.”

A more accurate title for this book would be Emergent Manifesto of False Hope, and a subtitle (albeit a lengthy one) that would describe it perfectly would go something like this:

The Kingdom of God is already here on earth, includes all people, all faiths, and in fact is in all people and all of creation and can be felt or realized through mysticism which connects everything together as ONE.

This new collective spirituality leads people into a socialistic community where rituals, practices, and social justice become a means of salvation, but not the salvation you think of in a personal sense of being born-again through Jesus Christ. This is a collective salvation 1 that includes whole cultures and communities who follow the way of someone referred to as Jesus.

Tony Jones lays the ground work for the book by referring to the “highest good” (for humanity) and explains that when Emergent began (in 1998) the group was “engaging in some sort of ‘socially established cooperative human activity’”(p. 14). “Cooperative” is a theme that runs through the book. Doug Pagitt says Emergent is a “call to friendship … with the world” and this “friendship” is a “dangerous leap” in which many ways have been created to connect (p. 19). Throughout the book, these ways to connect become quite obvious. While often called other terms in the book, the concepts behind them are interspirituality (all religions coming together), panentheism (God is all creation), universalism (all are saved), and mysticism (the means by which this connecting takes place).

In this “sense of interconnection,” the book states:

[R]enewed popularity of the “kingdom” language is related to the emerging global narrative of the deep ecology movement – a consciousness and awareness that everything matters and is somehow interdependent (p. 27).

New Age sympathizer, Leonard Sweet (in his book Quantum Spirituality) calls this the Theory of Everything. This theory not only says that all creation is connected but that it is all inhabited with Divinity (God).

The Manifesto describes “themes” of “integrative theology” as: Interest in monastic practices, contemplative and bodily spiritual formation disciplines, celebrating earth, humanity, cultures, and the sensuous (p. 28). In a chapter titled “Meeting Jesus at Bars” the Manifesto favorably includes visiting monasteries, practicing yoga, engaging in silent retreats, and chanting with monks (p. 38). One writer in the book has this to say:

“I am a Christian today because of a Hindu meditation master. She taught me some things that Christians had not. She taught me to meditate, to sit in silence and openness in the presence of God…. I believe that all people are children of God.” (p.45)

While the book does list praying and reading Scripture as one of the practices to engage in, it offers a disclaimer that this is not what is most spiritually nourishing but rather “our relationship with others give us the most insight into who God is and where God is leading us” (p. 38). And this is really the essence of the book. Harmless, some may say. No, anything but. The Emergent Manifesto belittles personal, one on one relationship with the Lord and insists that it is a collective salvation that really matters. The goal of this cooperative movement is to participate in “the healing of our world” and to “collaborate with our Maker in the fulfillment of God’s reign on Earth” (p. 30).

The Manifesto makes clear that followers of this new, collective religion should not be concerned about saving “people from the jaws of hell,” but should rather be “motivated … to be in relationship with people who in many ways are different” (p. 35). The focus should not be on conversion as much as “cultivation of relationships.” The lofty language used in the Manifesto, reminiscent of legal or medical language, makes the writers seem highly intellectual but the reading difficult to comprehend. However, while the language in the book is often obscure and metaphorical, the ideologies are evident. To describe interspirituality, the book says:

“If the Emergent conversation is to have a ‘next chapter,’ it will need to learn from other sketches outside of Western Christendom” (p. 68). Translation: incorporate the belief systems of other religions.

Or this one:

[T]he environment that Emergent seeks to create – a studio for sketching, a place of freedom and divergence … [Emergent Village] is more committed to equipping any and all for the process of emergence (p. 70).

Manifesto talks significantly about those who refuse to change and bend with this “process of emergence.” Pagitt states:

While immovability may be a fine role for religion, it may not serve the story of God’s action in the world very well … I don’t think it is possible to tell the story of faith from the posture of sameness and stability …. Ours is a story of the expanding life of God generating new creation … of collective faith. (pp. 75-76)

When Pagitt speaks of “expanding life of God” and “new creation,” he means that we cannot contain truth or reality within the confines of the written Word of God but that truth is always changing and being created.

Universalism is a pronounced theme in the book as well. Manifesto calls salvation “a collective experience.” A Manifesto poem illustrates this:

Not only soul, whole body!
Not only whole body, all of the faithful community!
Not only all of the faithful community, all of humanity!
Not only all of humanity, all of God’s creation!(pp. 82-83)

And panentheism (God is in all) is exhibited through statements like the following, which talks about the “holiness of humanity”:

“[W]e are agents for change in the world (salvation, redemption, and reconciliation … it is a celebration of the holiness of humanity in which the fullness of God was pleased to dwell … it is our holy fleshiness” (p. 88).

What do the emerging church leaders hope to accomplish? Well, they tell us. They want you … they want the church to join up with them. Listen to this explanation:

“The existing church/emerging church matrix can dissolve into missional collaboration and generative friendship” (p. 107).

And hearing that, we must ask, Is that what Josh McDowell is doing by endorsing Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church,2 and is that what David Jeremiah is doing by consistently promoting Erwin McManus?3 Are Christian leaders helping to bring about this dream of the emerging church by dissolving into it? Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to be yes. But how can we as believers follow them into this dark abyss?

In regard to biblical descriptions of last days apostasy, how does the Manifesto relate? It doesn’t. In speaking of the days that the Book of Revelation describes, the Manifesto states:

[F]olks who hang around the emerging church tend to see goodness and light in God’s future, not darkness and gnashing of teeth … [some] take the view that we’re in a downward spiral, and when things “down here” become bad enough, Jesus will return in glory…. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate” (p. 130).

There is another underlying theme that is permeating the pages of this book and many of the other emerging church books in print, including Dan Kimball’s. There is a continual hammering away and chiseling down of the image of Christians (the kind who take the Bible literally and stand by its authority). This effort to villainize Christians is reminiscent of Germany in the 30s when artists would draw distorted pictures of Jews with certain facial features making them look weird, and when rumors and stories would run amuck even suggesting that Jews would rape your daughters, so don’t trust them. This all out effort to get society to hate and mistrust the Jews worked. It was a campaign, not based on fact, but based on a demonic kingdom that hates anything that has to do with Jesus Christ. In the Manifesto, Brian McLaren boils down the world’s evils to the fault of Western Christians and suggests that these resisting Christians might even become militant against people one day. (Hitler was able to persuade people that the Jews were a threat so they better take them out before the Jews got them.) McLaren states:

What are we in the so-called emerging churches seeking to emerge from? I asked myself. We are seeking to emerge from modern Western Christianity, from colonial Christianity, from Christianity as a “white man’s religion … into a faith of collaborative mission … It is immediately clear that this kind of emergence must lead to a convergence — in the West, across denominations and across current polarizations, a convergence of postconservatives and postliberals into what Hans Frei and Stanley Grenz termed a new “generous orthodoxy.” (p. 150)

[M]any will react and oppose this emergence, seeking to maintain the hegemony of the West … perhaps even seeking a revival of crusading Christendom. (151)

In Ray Yungen’s upcoming book, For Many Shall Come in My Name, he discusses this very thing and shows how New Age leaders have been framing a social mindset that will eventually become hostile to Bible believing Christians. Yungen explains how it will all be justified as doing humanity a favor by getting rid of them, and when he quotes the words of New Ager Neale Donald Walsch as saying that God believes Hitler did the Jews a favor by killing them, it sends chills up the spine. And whether they realize what they are doing or not, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren and other emergent leaders are framing a similar mindset for people to climb into.

While it is sad to think about persecution that may be coming upon believers, it is even more tragic to realize how many unsaved people will never hear the gospel because so many Christian leaders have given the emerging church a thumbs up. The publishers and editors at Baker Books should be ashamed of themselves for exalting such anti-Christ teachings or at the very least stop calling themselves a Christian publisher.

For those who are still skeptical about the Emergent Manifesto’s message, pick up a copy sometime of Alice Bailey’s The Externalization of the Hierarchy, or Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. And when you read those words by those “change agents” see if you notice that the message is the same, just dressed in a different outfit called Emergent.

Emergent Manifesto does indeed “provide a rare glimpse,” but not one of hope. Rather it is a look into the near future of a world that is racing toward spiritual destruction through severe deception as the Bible predicts when it says that Satan will deceive the whole world in the days prior to Christ’s return (Revelation 12:9).