Hey friends, this is Michael Bohm with Youth Apologetics Training. Today we are going to finish this incredibly long series about the Emergent Church. I know I went a little long on this. It's important to me, it's very important to Christianity in general, that Christians be warned about this movement. They are sweeping the American Christian Church by storm. You go into just about any Christian church's bookstore. Most Christian churches have little bookstores inside of them. Well, okay, some of them don't. But you will find emergent pastors, emergent writings in their church, in their little bookstore. You'll find the youth pastors in just about every church in America is subscribing to some of these people, like Brian McClaren, Doug Padgett, Rob Bell, different guys like that. Guys, this has to be refuted. It has to be known. And so, interestingly enough, as I've been going through this series, I can tell that not as many people are downloading this series, because I don't even think they realize what the Emergent Church is. When I first started seeing podcasts popping up on Sermon Audio about the Emergent Church, I had no idea that it was actually talking about some kind of strange movement. I had no idea. I was just thinking, Well, I guess I'm not really sure what I was thinking. It just didn't come up on the radar. I had no idea. So, I skipped over those podcasts, too. But anyway, we've got to get this message out. This is the last one in the series. Thank God. I'm ready to move on to something else. So, anyway, with that, let's go ahead and jump right in. So, what about judgment and eschatology? All right. I'm only going to have a few quotes here, but for the most part, in general, the Emergent Church rejects the Second Coming of Jesus. Kind of interesting, huh? There's a lot of scriptures, and I'm not going to get really into this. In fact, I don't think I'm going to offer you any scriptures to prove my points. I think you guys have seen so many of these scriptures in the Bible. Jesus is coming again. I mean, what's the whole point of the Book of Revelation and all of these warnings in the Bible where there is a very clear statement, you know, Jesus is coming again on the clouds, okay, to make everything right. There is a judgment that's coming. But here's what Brian McLaren says about the Second Coming. And yeah, they pretty much all question, again, question everything, answer nothing. They pretty much all reject the Second Coming. He says, the phrase, the Second Coming of Christ, never actually appears in the Bible. Neither does the Trinity. Okay, whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves rethinking, the popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn't his real and decisive coming, wait, that's a straw man, it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing. Then we leap No one says that. No one says that Jesus' first coming was a warm-up for the real thing. No, we say Jesus' first coming was quite possibly the most important of his two comings. He came with the express purpose of taking the punishment that you, Brian McLaren, deserve. That's death, hell, and suffering. He took the punishment for your sins on Himself, on that cross, that so if you believe in Him, trust in Him, call on Him, and repent of your sins. He did that for all of us. If we just repent and we trust in Him. That is the most important thing Jesus could have done. That's not a warm-up for the real thing. What a strong man. Okay, so moving on. Then we leave the door open to envisioning a second coming. that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. I mean, he's really trying to make God look bad. Look, that's what God said he's going to do. All right? And Brian is really trying to paint God in a bad picture. And I would be afraid if I was Brian McClaren. I would be terrified. Yes, we're supposed to fear God. Yes. And he is coming soon. And when he does come, sinners beware. He's going to clean house. He's going to put this world under his feet. He's going to subdue the nations. And then we're going to live on a planet that is without sin, at least for a while. Okay? It's going to be awesome. This vision reflects, and come on, how wonderful will that be when God, when Jesus finally cleanses this planet of wicked sinful desires and All the junk! God's finally gonna judge sin. That's a good thing. That's a very good thing. This vision reflects a deconversion, a return to trust in the power of Pilate, not the unarmed truth that stood before Pilate, refusing to fight. Actually, Jesus was about as armed as you possibly could be. He had entire legions of angels at his disposal. He was meek. not weak. Jesus had the power to do anything he wanted to. He willingly chose to take the punishment we deserve on himself. I mean, I don't understand how he's missing this. You almost wonder if he's deliberately being deceptive here. So moving on, this eschatological, a wonderful big word that means basically the study of end times, This eschatological understanding of a violent second coming leads us to believe, as we've said before, that in the end, even God finds it impossible to fix the world apart from violence. And coercion? Come on! No one should be surprised when those shaped by this theology behave accordingly. Ah, what? It's not, okay, vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord? So, if you're reading the whole Bible, you're not going to act like that. So, anyway, if we remain charmed by this eschatology, we will be forced to see the non-violence of Jesus, of the Gospels, as a kind of strategic fake! A strategic fake-out, like the feigned retreat in a war, to be followed up by crushing blows of so-called redemptive violence in the end. You know, he is completely missing it. The gentle Jesus of the first coming—oh, here comes the zinger—the gentle Jesus of the first coming becomes a kind of trick Jesus, a fake-me-out Jesus, to be replaced by the true jihadist Jesus of a violent second coming. This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John's apocalypse, are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral. Holy smokes. Wow. Okay. Here's another one. Brian McLaren as well. In this slide, a God who mandates an inter An intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship. How can you ask your children to honor a deity so uncreative, overreactive, and utterly capricious regarding life?" Alright, that one's not so much apocalyptic, but just in general, why does God allow certain tragedies? Like, for example, Katrina, or what happened in Fukushima, or, well, on and on and on, this Hurricane Sandy, or, well, for that matter, Sandy Hook. Look, first of all, God is not responsible for the sins of mankind. So you can go ahead and scoot that to the side right now. We have been given free will, and in that free will, sometimes some of us abuse that free will and do stupid things. Now, as far as natural disasters go, McLaren completely, and many others, just ignore the sovereignty of God. I'm not sure what he's trying to suggest here. What, is he trying to suggest that God is not in control of the weather, and not in control over tectonic activity and various things that are happening, as far as the Earth goes? Is he not in control? Because then what kind of God do we have? He is in control. He does allow some of these things. See, when Adam and Eve said, we, they, willingly chose to reject God, to turn their back on Him, and in doing so, this planet, well, it fell. is a fallen planet now, and now the planet groans to be reunited and fixed. We have a broken, fallen planet to deal with, and there's all kinds of natural disasters that happen. God allows them to happen. They do happen. And God is sovereign. Why does God allow this? I don't know, but always a greater good comes from it. And we're going to do a series, you know, that was not a very reassuring explanation, I don't think. I am planning on doing a whole series on why God allows pain and suffering and these types of things to happen. It's very important. In fact, that's high on my list of things that need to be covered. And I might even bring a guest in for a portion of that series. just to get some other opinions, but yes, God is sovereign, and we need to recognize that He has purposes, and we don't always know what they are, and we need to recognize that. And so, here's a whole new subject. Let's move on here. Social justice, all right? In other words, let's put it in different words here. Let's say it how it is. Steal from somebody and give it to somebody else. Now, I'm not talking about Robin Hood here. Robin Hood stole from the rich who stole from them and gave the people's money right back to him. He was involved in extortion, this king, and he was taking the people's money and Robin Hood was taking it back. I'm not saying Robin Hood's actions were right, but they're different. Okay, social justice, this idea that we need to take from the people that worked their tail off to make these large portions of money, and then, in turn, give back to society by creating, well, not in all cases, but in many cases, cool products that we want to buy, and creating jobs, and creating commerce, and keeping our economy moving and flowing, I'm not saying that all of their actions are benevolent. No, usually not. In fact, many of these people are driven by greed. But let's be honest, who cares? Okay, whatever their motives are, they made that money. And as long as they didn't make it immorally or in an unethical manner, whose right is it to their money? It's their right. They made that money. They made it legally. They made it fairly, regardless of whether they did it from greed or not. And they are entitled to their money. They are entitled to their private property. And nobody should be going in there and stealing their private property, their money, their land, whatever. That's stealing. God says, doubt shalt not steal. In that commandment is the acknowledgement of private property. To say you can't steal, you should not steal, God hates when you steal, is to say that somebody owns something, it doesn't belong to you, and you just took it. Right? So, social justice, I would imagine, in God's eyes, is also an abomination, or at the very least, a great sin. So this is what Jim Wallace, again, not of, please convince me, this is the emergent church Jim Wallace, he says, I don't think that abortion is the moral equivalent issue to slavery. I think poverty is the new slavery. Poverty and global inequality are the fundamental moral issues of our time. That's my judgment. I hate when people play fast and loose with definitions. You start with a word that excites a strong reaction from somebody, like slavery. Disgusting, despicable, especially what happened here in the United States and the South. Okay? God forgive us. But they take a strong word like that and then all of a sudden they start scooting some whole new meaning into it. Poverty is the new slavery. Poverty. So people who are poor, irregardless of how they got there. Maybe they chose to be poor. Maybe they decided they want to travel around the United States and be a hobo. Lots of people do that. Okay. Maybe they lost a limb, whether through an accident or through defending our country as a warrior. Okay. And now they're unable to work and they're on the street corner with a sign. All right. That's not slavery. All right. It might be tragic, but that's not slavery. There are things that they can do, and they're not being commanded to do this and that. They're not enslaved. They're not being held somewhere. They're not being commanded to do certain jobs every day, and whipped, and verbally abused, and physically abused, and all the junk that goes on with slavery, when people think of slavery. None of that's happening, okay? And it's our responsibility, church, it's our responsibility to pick these people up. Now, if they're deadbeats, if they're the type that can work and choose not to because they'd rather be lazy, what do we do with those people? We ignore them. We tell them, hey, if you don't work, you don't eat. You know, figure it out. Figure it out. Fix your situation. But what about the people who can't work? We take them in. We help them. Okay, that's our job as the church, not the government. We don't do it at gunpoint. We do it with a willing and loving heart. We're not commanded to by the pastor. We're told by the pastor, hey friends, if we want to be good Christians, this is what we do. And then we, as we feel fit, lovingly reach out and help people. That's how it works. Okay, so anyway, that's Jim Wallace. He thinks that poverty is slavery. Watch out for people that start changing definitions, especially when they take words that excite extreme reactions and then start playing fast and loose with them. So here's Jermals again. He says, as more Christians become influenced by liberation theology, I will do a series on that someday. Finding themselves increasingly rejecting the values of institutions of capitalism. There's nothing wrong with capitalism. The problem is in greed. It is in men's hearts. Okay? And when you define it truthfully, greed is the issue here. You will find greed in every economic system. All of them. So if you remove greed from all of them and look at each suggestion or philosophy on how we should run our economies, and work them through by their merits, capitalism seems to be the one that stands the tallest. It's silliness. But, okay, there is a very, very strong socialist, communitarian movement that is breaking into our churches. If you want to learn more about that, I will be getting into that in the future. Not so much, because I want to be more concerned about apologetics, but I will get into that a little bit. Seek out people like Brandon House with Worldview Weekend, an amazing website. I have links to his website on mine. Also people like Chris Pinto. There's many people out there that talk about this, but I think Brandon House is probably the best. Anyway, let me get back here. Finding themselves increasingly rejecting the values of institutions of capitalism, they will also be drawn to the Marxist analysis and praxis praxis that is so central to the social justice movement. Dan Kimball, he says, our faith also includes kingdom living, part of which is the responsibility to fight locally and globally for social justice. No, it's not. On behalf of the poor and needy. No, we don't fight globally and locally for the poor and needy. No, we fight within our church doors. to bring them in and love them and bless them. And again, that's those who cannot help themselves. We don't help the people who are deadbeats, who just want to sit on their hind end and be a leech. No, you let them starve off until they realize, oh boy, I better go get a job. Okay? That's their responsibility. They're fully capable. Let them deal with it. And so he goes on, our example is Jesus, who spent his time among the leopards, the poor, and the needy. Jesus, who is basically the Father of the Church, spent time with the leopards, those who could not get jobs, the poor and the needy, those who desperately needed help and could not help themselves. Again, Paul says, if you don't work, you don't eat. Paul, the one who was inspired by the Holy Spirit. So, that's pretty much it, guys. That's where we need to stop. That's the Emergent Church in a nutshell. Question everything, answer nothing. And while you're at it, kind of bring in a bunch of side causes and side missions that have nothing to do with anything biblical. You saw a lot of straw men as we went along. You saw things like the Emergent Church accepts things like mysticism. It's very much elevated. Walking a labyrinth. Breath prayers. Contemplative spirituality. We saw that... Oh, by the way, I didn't mention this, but abortion. is something that is also, well, really not denounced by the emergent church, and is, in some strange and very subtle ways, endorsed. You know, let's go ahead and question, does the Bible really talk about, you know, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you? Scriptures like that. How about thou shalt not kill? How about if a man and a woman are fighting—I am still paraphrasing these—but if a man and a woman are fighting, and the woman gives birth prematurely, and there is no harm, then it's okay, okay, right? Take care of this. But if the child is damaged, it is eye for eye, tooth for tooth, bird for bird, stripe for stripe, okay, big deal. Death for, or life for life, big deal. All right, God sees this unborn child as a human being, all right, from the moment of conception. But it's very much watered down in the Emergent Church movement. And we've seen that as we've gone a little bit. I didn't talk too much about it, but you've seen that. We've seen that their view on homosexuality is very much unbiblical. It's questioned and pretty much allowed to stand. We've looked at the Emergent Church view of the Gospel and how watered down and pretty much non-existent that it is. Their view on hell. They don't even accept hell. They pretty much question the existence of hell, even though hell is clearly talked about in the Bible. It's conscious. It's eternal. Oh boy. Their mystical approach to the Bible, post-modernism, deconstructionism. We've covered all these things in this series. That, Christian yoga, meditation, denial of absolutes. Friends, we've covered all these things. And that's the Emergent Church. Again, it's like nailing Jell-O to a wall, because they don't take definitive stances on just about anything. They just question everything and provide no answers. That's the Emergent Church in a nutshell. With that, friends, I do have a P.O. Box now. If you would like to support youth apologetics training, it is P.O. Box. 2392 Loveland, Colorado. That's one word, Loveland, Colorado, 80539. I would very much appreciate it. Come on to the website, YouthApologeticsTraining.com, and there, guys, you can leave comments and questions. I do want to talk to you. You can also catch me on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. And with that, I love you guys, and I'll see you tomorrow.