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Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael, thanks for tuning in. Coming up today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their in-depth study of the Book of Acts, and “Paul Continues His Ministry to the Gentiles.” In Religion in the News: “A More Up-Beat Islam.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “Is the Church Ready for the Return of Christ?” We hope you can stay tuned. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge. We’ll let you know how to order later in the program. Now, this week’s Cover Article. Tom and Dave continue their new series of programs addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.” This week we focus on the question, “Is the Bible Too Domesticated?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.
Tom:
Thanks, Gary . You’re 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. Our topic for this first segment of our program is the Emerging Church Movement, a phenomenon that has greatly impacted the evangelical church and particularly its young adults. One of our chief concerns about this pseudo-evangelical movement is its treatment of the Scriptures which it aggressively undermines regarding its inerrancy, its complete sufficiency and its authority. Now, last week we gave a number of quotes from Emerging Church leaders objecting to the Bible being used as an instructional manual. The idea being that such a view is too confining and restrictive to one’s interpretation of the Scriptures. Emerging Church leader Rob Bell writes: “We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account it is of people experiencing the living God. Now Dave, what in the Bible would give us the impression that it is wild, uncensored, passionate account of people experiencing the living God? Where would they get such an idea?
Dave:
Tom, I’m just at a loss to figure that one out. I wouldn’t find it in the Psalms.
Tom:
You certainly wouldn’t find it in Proverbs. Proverbs, we’ve been going over them, Proverbs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, it’s all about instruction, instruction, instruction, wisdom, understanding.
Dave:
I wouldn’t find it in the gospels; I wouldn’t find it in the epistles. I guess you could say it was a wild, uncensored encounter with God when Moses went up to the mount!
Tom:
And he left with some instructions, didn’t he?
Dave:
Right, exactly, and Moses talked with God face to face, as a man speaks with his friend, but he was unique in that. I don’t believe that I would recall where—did Jeremiah have wild, uncensored experiences with God? Is that what the Book of Jeremiah is about? The book of Jeremiah is prophecy. It’s mainly about Israel , about God’s coming judgment on Israel , instructions what they are to do, as far as give yourself up. If you go out to the Chaldeans and surrender you’ll be okay, they’ll treat you right. But no, they are going to fight it out to the end, and then their leaders are going to try to sneak out a back door and get away and leave everybody else to be slaughtered, but they didn’t get very far.
Tom:
Dave, what about the Book of Judges? The people got wild and uncensored for a while, and then God dealt with them. The whole cyclical of sin and repentance and turning back to God and then rebelling against God, I mean, none of this makes sense on the basis of the view that these Emerging Church leaders are promoting. Not everyone, but certainly most of them, and the leaders in particular.
Dave:
Well Tom, the fact is they want to be wild and uncensored. They don’t want any rules. O, this can’t be an instruction, book of instructions. Proverbs: My son hear thou the instructions of a father. Paul and we’ve quoted it probably dozens of times: 2 Timothy 3, beginning at verse—well, 15, and then go on. “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” All scripture is given by inspiration of God, it’s to be used for, profitable for doctrine. Well, that’s kind of instruction, isn’t it? Doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness, that the man of God, woman or child may be perfect, that means mature, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. How are we going to please God and do what He wants us to do if we don’t have some instructions about this? But they don’t want that. They don’t want to go to the Bible; they want to go back to the so-called church fathers or the desert fathers, or the mystics of the Catholic Church.
Tom:
Yeah, but Dave, they’re not going to just dump the Bible out of hand, and that’s part of the problem. They hang in there with it, but in the process they are undermining it. For example, it isn’t just Rob Bell, and we could quote others, but many of them who are into mysticism, experientialism, signs and wonders, to them they regard the Bible more as poetry, as a stimulus for our feelings and emotions. Now I remember you did a Q&A on a Bible of those who contributed to a Bible right in line with what we are talking about. It was called The Renovaré This is Richard Foster’s organization, and those who are part of that, or contribute to that, also contributed to this Bible, Eugene Peterson would be one, Dallas Willard another, but they said, if I remember correctly, and you did the Q&A, that the Bible should be taken more as poetry.
Dave:
Well Tom, I don’t think they said the whole Bible, but they said that the prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, that’s a big part of the Bible. “O, they should not be looked upon as prophets—they were not foretelling the future, but it’s like poetry:” and so forth. Now, what did they do with this poetry? Isaiah 53, it’s a powerful passage: He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; all we like sheep have gone astray, and so forth. “Well, that’s not really about Jesus.” And Isaiah 9: 6 and 7: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; the government will be upon his shoulders, talking about the Messiah obviously. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace, of his kingdom of peace there shall be no end. “Well, that’s just poetry, you can’t—this is not predicting, and this is not talking about the Messiah coming here.” Let’s go back to Revelation Chapter 19. We have a wedding in heaven; this is the bride, the church being married to Christ. “No, no, no, that’s not what that’s about, that’s not really a literal wedding that will take place in heaven, that’s about the celebrations that we can all have on this earth.” They’ve trashed the Bible; they’ve trashed Israel , especially. Ezekiel:37:11Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts., this is the valley of dry bones, and God specifically says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel .” And what is this Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible say: “O, that’s about the birth of the church.” They change everything, but Tom, one of the worst things is, the first 11 chapters, talk about poetry, the first 11 chapters of Genesis— “No, that wasn’t inspired of God, this is a compilation of ancient pagan myths, and it was kind of put together in a way so you could take it as being monotheistic instead of multiple gods, it’s just talking about one God.” Tom, I get—no, no, I’m not going to say I get angry, I wouldn’t say that! Tom, they have trashed the Bible, they have thrown out the Bible, it doesn’t mean anything, and they have changed it!
Tom:
Dave, this is the lie, this is the lie of Satan, and this is his grand scheme. I would just instruct—I hate to use that word—but no, I would encourage our audience to go to Genesis Chapter 3, and read Verse 1. The first words out of the serpent’s mouth, this is Satan speaking, is, Yeah, hath God said— The whole idea is to undermine what God had said, and that’s been his grand scheme and it’s been effective down through the centuries.
Dave:
You couldn’t undermine it any better than the Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible.
Tom:
Well, wait a minute, Dave, you’ve been talking about The Message, how about that? Eugene Peterson, doing the same thing.
Dave:
And he is the New Testament editor for the Renovaré Bible.
Tom:
Right. Now Dave, there’s an apologetic here, I want to expand on this. There’s an apologetic, and you know it well, we’ve heard it over and over again, and it says that we in the West, Christians—all right, we’re being locked into what’s been called a “modern, linear, rationalistic way of thinking in the West.” So what has that done? Well, that’s kept us from being this wild, uncensored, understanding the Bible the way it is. And in particular, I want to go back to the Charismatic movement. Let’s go to John Wimber, signs and wonders. You remember what they said to reinforce their view of signs and wonders. They said, “Well, the problem with us in the West is that we are too rationalistic, we’re too sort of modernistic in terms of our thinking.” “What we need to do is loosen up a bit, we’re not understanding the Bible in the way that those in the East.” Now, you know where this is going. In other words—
Dave:
Tom, isn’t there a verse in the Bible that says, “Look to those in the East,” They really understand this book—?
Tom:
But you can see what’s going on here. What it says is, we’re not into signs and wonders because we’re too rational, we use reason and so on, we’ve been locked down, and we’ve been confined. So my point here, Dave, is there’s an apologetic that both fits the Emerging Church, both fits this view that Rob Bell and many others take, that we need to loosen up a bit, we need to get into mysticism, we need to get into mystery. See, we’ve lost mystery, we’ve lost the sense that God can perform miracles, signs and wonders. Well, that’s not the case at all but it is the case to impose, or to promote this view of subjectivism, of experientialism. It’s unbelievable!
Dave:
Tom, it was from Mount Sinai , God didn’t give his people ten suggestions, and he gave them Ten Commandments. This is specific commandments, not something that you are going to try to experience. “O, well, you’re not to make a graven image.” Yeah, but this is what they do now, they’re into graven images, they’re into icons, and so forth. Well, thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal and bear false witness. “Well, now how would we experience that?” Now, let’s see, it couldn’t really mean what it says.” And to Isaiah, God says in Chapter 1, come now, let us reason together. And Peter says, 1Peter 3:15—these are verses that we’ve gone over a number of times—that we should always be ready to answer everyone who asks a reason of the hope that is in us. Paul, we don’t have time to turn to it, but Tom, if we got into Acts 17, for example, or even earlier in Acts. Acts 17:17 I think, says that Paul disputed in the synagogue with those that would meet with him daily. You get to chapter 18 and 19, it says that Paul reasoned with the Jews, he went into the synagogue and he reasoned with the Jews out of the Scriptures! You get that in chapter 17, verse 1, and God wants to reason with us. It’s not a feeling. How are you going to define a feeling? Salvation is not a feeling. You may have feelings that will follow, but salvation is, I come to God by faith through Jesus Christ, and I believe that he is my redeemer. So it's an objective message, the gospel. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes it, Romans:1:16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.. Well, what is this gospel? 1Corinthians 15—if anybody is listening out there, whatever you are into—the Emerging Church or whatever, listen to this! 1Corinthians 15, what is this gospel? Paul says this is the gospel that I preached unto you. And he tells Timothy, 2 Timothy 4, preach the Word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. The time will come they won’t endure sound doctrine. And that’s what these Emerging Churches are all about. But let me just finish with the gospel. What does he say? This is the gospel that I preached to you, that you believed and wherein you stand. This is the basis of your salvation. It was an objective message that they intellectually understood and believed in their hearts. So, Tom, I could go all through the Bible and I will never ever find what these people are talking about. They are turning the church away from the Word, and it is wicked, it is evil. It’s as bad as Satan—you just quoted Satan in the garden, oh has God said well, now you can’t really understand that, see if we can’t experience it a bit.
Tom:
Dave, again, I’ll quote you from one of the Emerging Church leaders from An Emerging Manifesto of Hope , which they have a number of Emerging Church leaders who have written article in that. But anyway he says: Jesus and his gospel had been domesticated in the West. The idea being that just as the person would tame something wild to keep it under control. And once you have been tamed, according to him, you lose the possibility of having intuitive insights and you’re less comfortable with transcended mysticism and supernatural signs and wonders. He adds, Dave, that the consequence of this is “an anemic faith stripped of its wildness.” Now, you quoted some verses there, I’ve got some other verses or one in particular. This is Proverbs 5, verses 12 to 14, and then verses 22 and 23, and this really tells us the devastating consequences of rejecting sound doctrine and instruction in favor of this so-called wildness, whatever that means. This is verse 12: “How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil (that is, in total ruin) in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” Verse 22: “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.” That’s where they are leading us, Dave.
Dave:
Well, Tom, what about the people who are reading these books, who are listening to these sermons? Doesn’t it make some impression upon them that this is contradicting everything that I thought I was learning from the Bible? How can you fall for this? I do not understand that! Now, what happens is, they change and give you a new interpretation. Let me give you an example or two from The Message which is written by Eugene Peterson, who is the editor of the New Testament in the Renovaré Bible. Well John 3:17 —what does it say? “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Eugene Peterson’s The Message says: “He came to help us make the world right.” What? Sounds like political and social action. That is not even close to Christ’s coming to save the sinners! He didn’t come to help us make the world right. Or if you went to—well, let’s go to 1Peter 5:10 . Well, it says, The God of all grace who has called us unto his eternal glory, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you, and so forth. He has called us unto his eternal glory! I mean, that’s fantastic, this is what we are looking forward to, to be in heaven with Jesus, transformed. What does this Bible, so-called; it’s not a Bible, Eugene Peterson’s The Message say? “He’ll have you put back together and standing on your feet.” What? This is humanism, this is on this earth, and by the way, Tom, this is one of the reasons why it’s one of the favorite translations, I guess, of Rick Warren. Because you know his P.E.A.C.E. movement—I sympathize with his sympathy for the affliction and the homeless, and so forth, but that’s what he is trying to do. This is the social gospel, and he loves The Message because it backs this up, it takes it from heaven to this earth!
Tom:
And Dave, as we’ve seen, and we’re going to zero in on this aspect of the Emerging Church , maybe in the next couple of weeks, but it is earthbound. It’s called community, its service, and I think in Rick’s words, if I remember correctly, but the idea here is that we’ve had the gospel and the Reformation gave us the gospel sola scriptura , but now we are beyond the Reformation, we’re going to implement this, we’re going to transform the earth. And we’ve seen this throughout many aspects of the professing Christianity, and the charismatic movement. You had, manifest sons of God, you’ve had dominionism, among the Calvinist’s you’ve had Reconstructionism, Theonomy that we’re going to transform the earth, and so on.
Dave:
And Rick Warren endorses this movement, does he not?
Tom:
Well, Dave, it seems to be everywhere today. In other words, the whole idea is you don’t have to call it social activism, we’re just going to put the gospel to work, and by that we are going to demonstrate who we are and what we are about. And then they would accuse those who take the position that we do of, well, just pull back, don’t do anything, you know, wait for the Rapture. It’s such a distortion in the sense that Jesus said to occupy. Let’s take Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10: We’ve been created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Go to Titus: There are good works for us to do. But this is a by product of our life in Christ, it’s not the focus to save the earth. It’s not going to happen.
Dave:
What is the focus? Here’s the focus, and this is what we’re trying to do…go into all the world and preach the gospel, make disciples all nations. That is not what they’re talking about and they are changing it
