Is The Emerging Church Just Catholicism?

Tom: You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

If you are a new listener or viewer to Search the Scriptures Daily, we’re currently doing a series on the emerging church movement in this first segment of our program. It’s a relatively new trend within evangelical Christianity, and its growth is rather phenomenal. It’s directed primarily at young evangelicals between the ages of 18-30, many of whom were turned off by the seeker-friendly, seeker-sensitive, and purpose-driven church movement.

In reading a great deal of the writings of the emerging church leaders, there are many common beliefs and practices that we believe are not only unbiblical, but antibiblical, and the distinction between those two terms is that by “unbiblical” we mean an activity or practice in which there is no biblical basis, yet can be rather innocuous.

For example, many emerging churches like to title their fellowships with something that’s not traditional, or things that they believe would not intimidate the lost or the people they are trying to attract to their churches. So, for example, rather than First Baptist, or Church of the Nazarene, or Trinity Lutheran, or Calvary Chapel, names that sound too traditional or denominational would be avoided in favor of names like Mars Hill, Solomon’s Porch, The Rock, Icon, Jacob’s Ladder, or Mosaic.

And, Dave, we’re not as concerned about something like that as we are about a development that involves beliefs and practices that are antibiblical or contrary to what the Bible teaches.

Dave: But, Tom, can I interrupt a second?

Tom: Sure.

Dave: You say that one of them calls itself “Icon”? Or did I misunderstand?

Tom: No, Icon.

Dave: Really?

Tom: Right. Well, Icon, meaning image…

Dave: Right.

Tom: Well, that would be problematic. As I said, right…well, we’re going to get into that because we are going to talk about some of these practices.

Dave: If an iconoclast gets a hold of that title, he’s going to have a field day!

Tom: Right, but we’re going to explain that in a minute. In our view, the penchant of the emerging church movement for mysticism reflects a spiritually dangerous attraction to delusions of men and even doctrines of devils. And as you are going to see, the mysticism that we’ll be talking about is primarily from Roman Catholicism, and it’s supposedly based on what they would call the “Desert Fathers.” Those would be monks and priests who left a community with a regional population to get out into the desert to commune with God, to hear from God, and they developed many practices which, as I said, we are going to talk about.

Dave: Of course, right there, Tom, we have a problem. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” Now, how are you going to preach the gospel to yourself in a cave out in the desert? So they have broken that command. They are just being disobedient to the Lord.

This is not what he called us to do—to be isolationists and get out there and meditate. If they really meditated on the Lord’s Word, they would find out that they were in the wrong place.

Tom: That’s true, Dave. And our major concern (we talked about it in detail last week) is, again, these practices were drawn primarily from Roman Catholicism. And last week (you can get the program) we wanted to go right to the basic criticism we have with the Church of Rome—with Roman Catholicism—and it has to do with the gospel. They preach and teach another gospel. This is what Paul referred to in the Book of Galatians. He said, “Let them be anathema, let them be condemned,” because it was a false gospel that would not save anyone.

And, Dave, did we not only cover this last week, but your book, A Woman Rides the Beast, lays out the history of the Catholic Church, their beliefs, teachings, practices, etc. And I would recommend that book if you’re having a little trouble with the idea that we’re taking on—not taking on—addressing, evaluating what’s taught in Roman Catholicism (which I practiced for 30 years).

Dave: Tom, the book is not just about ancient practices, of course. It’s right up-to-date. This is what Catholicism is today. It has not changed, because, as you know (you can tell them better than I), it can’t change. Because every council quotes from previous councils. So their authority is not the Bible…

Tom: And they are infallible councils according to the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, they cannot make a mistake.

Dave: Tom, it’s important. I mean, we don’t want to go into the details. A Woman Rides the Beast will give you all the details you need. But listeners, if they are not familiar—and probably most of them are not—must understand that the authority of the Catholic Church is not the Bible. It’s the Bible plus tradition. And tradition comes from the Councils, so every Council quotes the previous Council as their authority, not the Bible. For example, Vatican II—now, we did have a change in Vatican II. It was a revision on indulgences. So they revised indulgences…

Tom: But they never got rid of them.

Dave: Oh no, no, there were 17 pages as I recall. In fact, I sent a copy of them to Chuck Colson because he said, “Oh, they’re not into indulgences anymore.” So I sent him…I said, “You are misleading your readers. Here are the 17 pages. There are 20 declarations. ‘Declaration on the Revision of the Indulgences’ is what it is called. Well, here are just a couple of them.”

You can’t say…Tom, you know when you were a Catholic, you got so many days off, or so many years off of purgatory for reading the Bible. That was a dangerous thing to do, I don’t know why they offered…

Tom: Good point. To explain, “indulgence” means time off in purgatory where you are supposed to be purged of your sins…

Dave: Right, by fire.

Tom: …by fire. In other words, Jesus did not pay the full penalty for your sins.

Dave: Right, right.

Tom: You need to go to purgatory and be purged by fires. Some would say, Aquinas and others would say that (and how would they know?) that those fires are actually hotter than the fires of hell. That’s their view.

Dave: Yeah, so they get that from 1 Corinthians 3, that “every man’s works will be tried by fire.” It doesn’t say that he’s going to be burned in the fire. You’re not purifying someone by burning them in a fire that’s hotter than hell. I mean, that just is ridiculous. Sorry to say, but it is. But his works are tried by fire.

Now, there again, we’ve got to think—works? What are we going to do, gather up his works and throw them in the fire and see…? No, works—that’s a spiritual, moral question. So it’s obviously the fire of God’s justice, His evaluation.

Tom: These are metaphors, right?

Dave: Right, so one of the revisions was, “We used to say [this is the Catholic church saying this now], we used to say that you could get so many days off, or so many years off, but really that’s not right. We can’t say that anymore. All we can deal with is you either get a partial indulgence or a plenary indulgence.”

Tom: Meaning “full.”

Dave: Right. “Well, we can’t tell you how much time it’s going to knock off.” So there was this revision. But other than that, they keep it the same. They quote previous Councils.

Now, Vatican II, we need to understand, it was only the second Council held at the Vatican. Vatican I was in the mid 1800s. It was held at the Vatican also. Now, you have the Council of Trent—wow! That is an important book. You ought to get that. Get The Council and Decrees of the Council of Trent. It contains more than 100 anathemas, damning to hell everyone who believes what the evangelicals believe—the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Or you have the Council of Constance held at the city of Constance. That’s where they burned John Huss at the stake, and you have a huge stone there marking that place to this day. Why was he burned at the stake? He was trying to call them back to morality. He was calling them back to the Bible in his day. This was a hundred years before the Reformation. In his day the Archdiocese of Constance was producing about 1500 illegitimate children, descended from the nuns and the priests. Huss said, “We’ve got to get back to following the Bible and follow it instead of following the pope.” Well, they burned him at the stake.

Anyway, the Councils were named according to the place where they were held, but they just carried on the same tradition. They quoted one another and that is…the only reason I am mentioning this, Tom, is the Catholic must understand. Many of them don’t. And the evangelical must understand this is the authority that we go by.

So you say, “But I know a Catholic priest, and he doesn’t believe this stuff, or they don’t believe in indulgences.” Really? You’ve got an anathema in Vatican II that says if you do not accept indulgences, you will go straight to hell, okay? So…“Well, yeah, but I don’t believe that.” Well, okay. Now if you don’t believe—if you do not believe their anathemas damning you to hell, why do you believe their promises of eternal life in heaven?

You’ve got to face the fact that this is not the Bible, but this is the authority. Never mind what some professor at Notre Dame says, what do the Councils, what does the code of Canon Law say? Okay? I just wanted them to understand that—not my Catholic neighbor, he doesn’t believe that, really. But he’s not the authority, and he better look out, because he probably has an anathema sending him to hell, too.

Tom: Dave, just to underscore what you are saying, Vatican II, we’re talking about this Council that came together in the 1960s, mid-1960s—there were some ideas in it that Catholics now could lean upon their conscience more than what the Church might say. Well, guess what? Benedict XVI, okay, he has straightened that out. There were some liberal interpretations of Vatican II. But who is Benedict XVI? He is Cardinal Ratzinger. He was the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which was formerly the Inquisition. So, he wants to keep the things that you’ve explained, the dogmas of the church, because they’re infallible dogmas. They can’t be refuted, they can’t be changed, they can’t be altered in any way, and that’s his program.

So, Dave, you mentioned Chuck Colson with regard to Vatican II. All a Catholic has to do—because I’ve heard Catholics say, “Oh, we don’t believe in indulgences.” They don’t…it’s amazing what they’ll tell me they don’t believe in. What’s your major? It’s called de fide. You have to believe them. It’s an obligation to believe the teachings of the Church under the penalty of a mortal sin. And if you die, supposedly, according to Roman Catholicism, if you die with a mortal sin on your soul not confessed, a serious sin, you go straight to hell.

Dave: And you can’t get out of there, like supposedly you can get out of purgatory.

Tom: No, but the teaching on indulgences, along with anathema if you don’t believe in it, is in the Catholic Catechism. So, we’re not drawing things out of some secret file somewhere. This is Catholic teaching—straight and upfront.

Now, Dave, here’s my concern: As I mentioned, many evangelical churches, particularly the emerging church movement, are drawing upon Roman Catholicism for their mystical practices and so on. Now they are turning to a false church, a false gospel, yet they are thinking that this is okay. “This is going to move me closer to God. This is going to help me to know God better, to understand God better.” I don’t get that.

Dave: Well, Tom, the mystical practices of the Catholic Church, what were they for? In order to get to Heaven, in order to somehow propitiate for your sins, in order to purify yourself (you know, the Desert Fathers and these monks off in their caves and so forth), now we’re going to go (evangelicals) to whom Christ promises “I give my sheep eternal life—they will never perish. He that believeth on the Son—this is—we’re quoting now, John the Baptist, John:3:36He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
See All...: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Now, they ought to be concerned about now believing on the Son, because the Son promises eternal life to whosoever will believe in Him. It does not come about by all these Catholic practices. But now people who call themselves evangelicals, they have regressed back to these mystical practices and they are, in fact, denying the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are denying the assurance we have in Him!

Tom: Dave, it really grieves me. As I said, having grown up in the Catholic Church for 30 years and then being set free from this—by what? Well, based on Jesus’ words. He said, “If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Well, I was set free by God’s Word.

Furthermore, you know these verses—John:17:17Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
See All..., Jesus said, “Sanctify them.” What does that mean? It means “separate them, set them apart.” I was set apart by God’s Word. That’s what delivered me out of the bondage. He said, praying to the Father for us, for the church, He said, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”

Now we have evangelicals attracted back—well, I don’t want to say attracted back, but attracted to beliefs and practices within a false church, a false gospel, and so on. It’s heartbreaking for me, Dave, and I am sure for many out there.

Dave: Yes. And, Tom, let’s take that verse you said: “…by thy truth…thy word is truth.” Now, what do we have in the emerging church? Well, you know it a lot better than I do. I haven’t really studied the emerging church to the extent that you have, but I know, for example, they were discussing homosexuality: is that right, or is that wrong? “Well, we don’t know. It could take another five years for us to decide this.” Or other doctrines from the Bible, even the gospel, some of them say, “We can’t be sure about the gospel. We’re going to have to discuss this longer.”

Now, Tom, we have lost the Word of God. We have lost the assurance of the Bible. We have lost the assurance of our salvation, and these people are groping out there, and they are trying to use mystical practices in order to get them back in touch with God. And it is not only heresy, but it is going to cause a lot of people to lose…well, you can’t lose your salvation, but a lot of them are not even going to be saved at all. They will be trusting in something other than the finished work of Christ.

Tom: Right. Dave, people say, “Well, you guys are just sitting there in Bend, Oregon, and you are just reading stuff and taking potshots at this group and that group and so on.” That’s not the case. Every opportunity we get to check this out further, to meet with people where we can—it’s not always possible, but we try to make the effort to go places and understand.

I know personally for me, Dave, I want to make sure I am hearing it right. They are communicating something in their books. Is this what—do they really mean this, and so on?

I’ll give you a personal example. I visited an evangelical church in Southern California because I heard that they had an emerging church service. It was on Palm Sunday and it was a fairly large church, and there were three services. I was at the last service. At the end of the service—well, first of all, when I walked into the “evangelical church,” there were icons. We are going to talk about icons later—so they had icons in the hallway.

And then in the service, it was a pretty typical evangelical service, but at the end the pastor turns to the congregation—there must have been 300-400 in the congregation at that service, and he blesses them. He says something to the effect of, “May the Lord watch over and protect you,” and then he makes the sign of the cross before the congregation. Evangelical! "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” About half of the congregation makes the sign of the cross. Now, as a former Catholic, I am shocked! I mean, I am in an evangelical church and they are making the sign of the cross!

Later, we got into—I stayed around for the emerging church service. They had an altar there, Dave, with icons and candles and images. And you would light candles—this is an evangelical church!

Now, let me read to you….

Dave: It used to be, Tom.

Tom: Well, it’s a sad, sad situation. But on the altar—it was a prayer altar—they had instructions, because most evangelicals don’t know what to do with a prayer altar, okay?

Dave: It was a prayer station.

Tom: Of course. Here’s what it said: “Draw in a slow deep breath. [You can comment on this as you like, Dave.] As you do, pray, ‘Holy Spirit, surround me, fill me, breathe life into me.’ 2) Empty your mind of all anxiety. 3) Empty your heart full of desire except for God. 4) Focus on one icon [an icon is an image of an individual whether it be Christ supposed, or Mary or some biblical character]….”

Dave: Explain that it’s painted, it’s a picture.

Tom: Yeah, it’s a painting in a Byzantine style. It’s very flat. It’s not three dimensional in terms of its style and design and so on. So, it says, “Focus on one icon and imagine what that person might say to you about God, yourself, and others.”

Dave: It’s a painting of a supposed saint from the past, okay?

Tom: Right. Dave, this is divination.

Dave: Of course it is.

Tom: And then it says, “Read the icons as if the person who painted it wanted to send a message to you. Notice the details. 6) The icon is there to remind you of God, to make you conscious of His presence all around you. 7) Pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and then [this is optional] cross yourself as you say these words.”

An evangelical church Dave! And, you know, supposedly very conservative.

Dave: Well, Tom, yeah. What is the problem with this? Well, they are thinking that they are getting closer to God. In fact, they even say that the icon is the doorway. It opens us into entrance into God’s presence. Now, that is not biblical. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” You never find anything…

Look, Tom, just simple logic: for anyone listening out there, if this is really beneficial, if this is really helpful, then I am going to have to say, “God, you were not fair with us. I’ve been reading this Bible all of my life, studying it, and going by it, and You left out of this Bible some things that were really important. Icons and prayer stations and candles and all of this Roman Catholic stuff—how come You left it out of the Bible if that is so important?”

Tom: Yeah. Dave, you know well it wasn’t left out of the Bible. These things are condemned in the Scriptures.

Dave: Absolutely.

Tom: Now, icons, we’ve been talking about Roman Catholicism, but icons are really a product of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. Now, to show you how unbiblical this is—really antibiblical—Dave, you’ve been into a Russian Orthodox…we call them churches, but over there in Russia they call them “temples.”

Dave: Right, I’ve been in many of them.

Tom: And it’s interesting that they call them temples, because the design is really like the temple. It’s based on that. And as you go in, the icons are on a wall. It’s called the “iconostasis,” and you see all these images on this wall. And in this wall, there are three doorways, and behind the doorways is like the Holy of Holies. This is where the priests do all their things, and then they come through these doorways to the people. Well, what does that remind you of? Or what does it relate to? Isn’t that the veil? What happened to the veil? Wasn’t that torn apart, asunder, you know, when Christ was on the cross?

Dave: Absolutely!

Tom: So, they are going back not only to rituals and techniques that supposedly had biblical origins, but Christ fulfilled the Law. The Cross ended all of that.

Dave: Tom, it is very important to understand. You go to the Old Testament, you go to Hebrews 9 where it is recapitulated—God said to Moses…see, they could say, “Well, look at all these…there were some rituals there, and priesthood, and so forth.” God said to Moses, “See to it that you make this according to the pattern that I showed you on the mount.” It’s not a license for all kinds of other rituals, and none of these rituals are involved. But Hebrews 9 tells us that these were a picture of heavenlies. It does not authorize anything else like that, and as you say, Christ fulfilled it all. We’re no longer looking at the picture, no longer looking at the type that represented something. Christ has taken us into the Holy of Holies, and we have access to the presence of God through Jesus Christ the Lord.

Tom: Right, the Living Word.