Detecting Emergent Churches Part 1
Detecting Emergent Churches
Detecting if your church is an Emergent Church
By David Cox
Continue reading Detecting Emergent Churches pt1
Category Archives: Groups & Movements
Emergent Church Marks pt 2
Emergent Church Marks pt2
Emergent Church Marks
By Pastor David Cox
So what are the characteristics of an Emergent Church? In this day and time, some may try to hide themselves, but with a little knowledge and work, you can clearly identify them.
Here I am going to use Matthew Slick’s list and comment on them.
Emergent Church Errors part1
The Errors of the Emergent Church (Emergent Church Errors) Part 1
Emergent Church Errors
By David Cox
What is the Emergent Church?
The basic idea here is that the church should morph itself (emerge) as it moves through cultures and times. It declares as a fact that times have changed, and we are in a time in which the church that could have been fine for people in the early 1900s, just is out of sync with people of our day. That moment of modernism is gone. This transition into “post-modernism” is a change from the old and failing methods of old (i.e. that of cold, hard facts) have given away to the new (warm, fuzzy, subjectivity).
An “emergent seed” is one that is just breaking the ground. They want to identify themselves as the birth of real Christianity. This birth concept is important to get. They, the Emergent Church, is what real Christianity is (to them). Real Christianity hasn’t yet begun in the time period 1 A.D. through 2000 A.D. What the Apostles and all the church family from then to now have experienced was all wrong. Only now is the real church of God appearing, and it is appearing “in them”. They trash the real Bible, the real church, and the real salvation, fabricating something else, and making that their “real” thing.
It emphasizes experience over reason, subjectivity over objectivity, images and presentations over words, doctrines, and commands. This shift in ideas are determined (by this Emergent Church Movement) to necessary to engage the current culture.
28:41 mins.
I found this interview from Lamb and the Lion ministries being a tremendously helpful way to understand the Emergent Church. This movement is a saturating piece of Satan’s plan in the overthrow of all religions so that he can form into a one world religion.
Discerning if you are in an Emergent Church
How to find out if you are in an Emerging Church
By Pastor David Cox
When we understand what an emergent church (see my previous posts), we must understand that these are wolves in sheeps clothing, that have slowly and astutely inserted themselves within the body of Christ to work the work of Satan. But they will never identify themselves. You will see them as nice, reasonable, friendly, courteous people that are the most likeable people in the world. Maybe, after things have gone done the trail a real long ways, somebody strange and new will stand up and start saying some things that just knock you down. They will say things something like against the Bible, that it really isn’t our guide for our lives. Jesus isn’t really God. Everybody is already saved, and there is no need nor reason to try and witness or present the gospel to the unsaved because everybody will eventually go to heaven anyway.
In my previous posts, I have shown that the Emergent Church is basically a doctrine of demons, coming straight from the pit of hell, and its objective is to destroy traditional church as God has taught us in Scripture. In the first post, I added a video of an interview that explains much about how and why this movement is demonic and antichristian.
Any one or more of these things will be said, and you will be bolled over, but as you look around and expect a mass riot from your friends and neighbors in that church, nobody even takes notice. You are in an emergent church, and never knew it.
Continue reading Discerning if you are in an Emergent Church
Problems with Calvary Chapel Movement
Problems with Calvary Chapel Movement
Problems with Calvary Chapel Movement
By David Cox
The Calvary Chapel movement was built around Chuck Smith, now deceased. The CC movement was built around this pastor, and there are over 1500 churches related to Smith’s church. The movement is very strong in believing in the inspiration of Scripture.
Non-Cessationist position
The principal thing that I see wrong from the beginning is that they do not believe in the cessation of spiritual gifts. So essentially they are still within the Pentecostal mindset. Chuck Smith came out of the Pentecostal movement by the way.
Detecting Emergent Churches Methodology pt2
Detecting Emergent Churches Methodology Part 2
Detecting Emergent Churches Methodology
Detecting if your church is an Emergent Church
By David Cox
This is our continuing examination of the Emergent Church movement, looking at what are the signs of the Emergent Church, so that we can detect if our church is going emergent.
What is their methodology?
The Emergent Church says that we need to change all that, and everything else about “doing church” as they call it, and make a new form rather than that which God has given us. Inherent in this, they condemn the old ways that God has given us as unacceptable for today, and that we need to redo them. Again they show authority from themselves while rejecting the authority of God. Their declaration that “church as we have been traditionly doing it doesn’t work”. Why does it work? It doesn’t work for them because they have been doing the traditional way without faith, and without real love and obedience to God, so it won’t work under those conditions. Continue reading Detecting Emergent Churches Methodology pt2
Emergent Church Refutation
Emergent Church Refutation
Emergent Church Refutation
By David Cox
The problem is that the Emergent Church is just wrong. If you are going to believe the Bible at all, if you are going to accept Jesus as your Savior, then you are going to have to accept that information on some basis. That basis is on the authority of the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Bible. If the Bible is true, then it has the divine authority of God, and anything against or contradicts the Bible is false and to be rejected.
This is a matter that the Emergent Church lays the foundation of man’s pleasure over and above God’s authoritative Word (which securely expresses God’s will). This is the most clear way to see this issue, and if so, then we must side with God against man’s ideas no matter how we “feel” about them. If we distrust the Bible, then nothing we know about God is true. Yet there is no reason to distrust the Bible because everything it has and does tell us is right on.
Messianic Jews
A Messianic Jew is a more modern thing, where Jews give in to Jesus as the Messiah, first saying they accept that, but eventually showing that they deny this very thing. They work with and within Christian groups, often selling great evangelism programs for winning Jews to Christ, but in actuality, they are convincing and dominating these Christians to come in under the Old Testament law.
Hebrew Roots Movement
Under this concept and keyword, these Jews are implying that because all New Testament Jewish characters actually “had their roots” in OT Judaism, therefore we should convert and follow this OT Judaism. The fact that Jesus broke with the OT Jewish Pharisees seems to completely pass over their heads.
Here it is very important to understand how the Old Testament Jews perverted the truth of God given to them. While there is no confusion as to what the 10 Commandments and other commandments God gave to the children of Israel, they began exalting their teachers and interpreters of the law, and eventually gave them a quasi-legal, quasi-inspired status. Once that was accomplished, they used these commentaries (called Targums) by the Rabbis and Pharisees to change the obvious understanding of Scripture. So the handed-down traditions of these people become a final say in the interpretation of Scripture, and sometimes the conclusion did not agree with the obvious meaning of that Scripture it sought to interpret.
This same mindset is what the Catholic church fell into, and it is the same as what these modern Messianic Jews use. In the end, is the final determination of what God has said what these people say it is? or is it to be taken from each individual as they read in faith and understand the obvious meaning of Scripture? They would insert themselves as the only faithful interpreters of Scripture and push you and me out of the picture.
In the process of their work, they want to throw doubt and shadow on the canon of Scripture, because if they had their way, we would only use the Old Testament Scriptures. If the New Testament is also inspired, and it interprets and puts the OT in the proper perspective for us today as Christians, why do they belittle it so much? Why do they always prefer going back to the Old Testament rather than seeking orientation and information in the New?
About the New Testament
The Hebrew Roots Movement and the Sacred Name Movements both lay the foundation that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew and that later it was translated into Greek by Hellenistic Jews and in the process corrupted the text. They thus have a “divine duty” to “restore the text”. But note that while they do a tremendous job of changing the New Testament text in so many places, they never really come to grips with the essential teachings of the New Testament Scripture. The centrality of Jesus as the Christ-Messiah, and the doing away with the Old Testament system instituting a new system, the Church is never captured by them.
But in throwing doubt on the canon of Scripture, they are despising the New Testament. These movements are like other modern cults (Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses) in “needing” to create their own version of Scripture to change places where they do not agree with the text as it is.
Some common sense points
First of all, is there any such thing as an obeying NT Jew? No. Why do I say that? Because the one condition for a Jew today to comply with the Old Testament laws and requirements is that there has to be a temple in Jerusalem. Note that the Jews of the Old Testament made temples in other places (exile) but mainstream Judaism never accepted those as legitimate. So since there is no legitimate temple, there is no place for a Jew to perform his legitimate animal sacrifices as required by the Old Testament of all males and generally for the Israeli nation. This is the fundamental activity for all Jews if they are to obey the Old Testament. The pride of Jews (unsaved Jews) is that they keep the law. So it is impossible for them to keep the law without the temple.
Does keeping the Old Testament law save a person? Absolutely not. Paul attack on this point is very clear in Romans, and other places in the Bible also repeat the same thing. Nobody is saved by keeping the law.
Is a Jew saved by some other way than what Gentiles (and everybody) are saved? No. The bottom line is that a Jew has to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior. He must admit that Jesus is the Saviour, or he is not saved. The “workaround” that so many people in error try in this is that to first ignore Jesus, and then return to the unknown Old Testament “promised Messiah”. He has come, he has died, and he has risen. If you do not accept Jesus you are not saved.
Should NT Christians or Christians who are pro-Israel follow the Old Testament law? This is a tricky question, and we should first of all recognize that the Old Testament has commandments which are the nation of Israel specific, and other more general statements of morality that are timeless. Modern people should not feel obliged by nation-specific laws. We do not celebrate Lord-Jehovah’s day on Saturday. The New Testament Christians gathered on Sunday in honor of the resurrection of the Messiah. If you choose to worship on Saturday instead of Sunday, then that means that in some form you despise Jesus as the fulfillment of the Messiah.
Complete Jewish Bible
Please see my comments on my post at Complete Jewish Bible CBJ.
Detecting Emergent Churches Eschatology Part 4
Detecting Emergent Churches Eschatology Part 4
Detecting Emergent Churches Eschatology
Detecting if your church is an Emergent Church
By David Cox
Continue reading Detecting Emergent Churches Eschatology Part 4
Detecting Emergent Churches Soteriology Part 3
Detecting Emergent Churches Soteriology Part 3
Detecting Emergent Churches Soteriology
Detecting if your church is an Emergent Church
By David Cox
This is our continuing examination of the Emergent Church movement, looking at what are the signs of the Emergent Church, so that we can detect if our church is going emergent.
Continue reading Detecting Emergent Churches Soteriology Part 3