The Contagion of the Emergent Church and Rob Bell's book, Love Wins

In recent days, a man by the name of Rob Bell has been front and center in the Evangelical Christian blogosphere.  Rob Bell is the pastor of the 10,000 member Mars Hill Bible Church near Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The reason for his current popularity is his new book, Love Wins.  As of yesterday, his book was ranked number four on the best seller list on Amazon.com.  Just in case you’re wondering, the number one book is Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back. The little boy is four years old, and his trip to Heaven happened while he was under anesthesia.  Numbers 2 and 3 were diet books.

The main premise of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, is that God will eventually bring everyone, absolutely everyone who has ever lived or ever will live, even if He has to do it after they have died, to Heaven.  There is no Hell.  Here is a quote:

“A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.  It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus.  This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.”

I understand what the emergent church people are trying to do  Their intentions are commendable.  They want to make Christianity as palatable and as easily acceptable to unbelievers as possible.  But the doctrine of Hell tends to be rather unacceptable.  It turns people off.  So in order to remove a huge stumbling block for those who are presumably desperately seeking God, a doctrine that makes God look not a little less than all-loving, they simply deny its existence.  They preach the all-consuming love of an unbiblical god who never gets very upset about anything.  Not even sin.

Well, that is good news indeed for those who reject historical Christianity.  That is excellent news for those who hate the supposed (and the genuine) intolerance of Christians for their sin.  This is really, really good news for those who deny the exclusivity of the Gospel message.  Bell’s gospel, according to him, is better than the Biblical Gospel some of us have heard all our lives!

Since there is no Hell, and there is no judgment, and ultimately the love of God wins and everyone enjoys eternity in heavenly bliss, then we can believe anything or we can believe nothing.  We can do whatever is right in our own eyes.  God always gets what He wants in the end.  And what God wants more than anything else is for all of us humans to be happy.  So love wins.  Everybody wins.

What is most amazing about all of this is that Bell’s book is not considered to be a work of fiction.  Because it is presented as serious, biblical, Christian thinking, it will confuse many believers whose feet aren’t firmly planted in the Scriptures.  It may actually lead to the falling away of many from the faith.  It will also have the effect of preventing others from ever taking the real gospel message seriously.  Love Wins is an evangelical disaster.  It is a denial of the faith.  Rob Bell and other leaders within the emergent church movement are spoken of in 1 John 2 with these words:

[18] Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. [19] They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. [20] But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. [21] I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. (1 John 2:18-21 ESV) 

John calls them antichrists and liars who reject believers who hold to the truth.  Turn with me to Jude.

[1:1] Jude, a servant [lit. slave] of Jesus Christ and brother of James,

To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

[2] May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

[3] Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. [4] For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

[5] Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. [6] And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— [7] just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

[8] Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. [9] But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” [10] But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. [11] Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. [12] These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; [13] wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

[14] It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, [15] to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” [16] These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage. (Jude 1:1-16 ESV)

I thank the Lord for the book of Jude, because he warns us of the Rob Bells and the Brian McLarens.  Because of Jude, there is no excuse for the Christian who is sucked in by the smooth talk of these deceivers.  I also feel like Jude.  He wanted to write to his fellow believers about the wonders of the salvation they all enjoy.  I’d much prefer to talk about that today.  But Jude says he found it necessary to warn them of false teachers who had crept into the church unnoticed.  I feel the same way.

Beloved, we’ve taken notice.  And now, one of these teachers is a very prominent purveyor of a false gospel to a weekly audience of 10,000 in his own church, and millions of others through the internet and books that secular publishers are more than happy to sell.

Someone will complain because I mention the names of particular people, (Brian McLaren and Rob Bell) men who claim to share the same faith that I have.  First, let me say very clearly, we do not share the same faith.  Secondly, I call them by name because I am following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul who felt free to name names, and the Spirit of God included them in the Scriptures:

[15] Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. [16] But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, [17] and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, [18] who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. (2 Timothy 2:15-18 ESV)

A couple of years ago, Brian McLaren wrote a book entitled Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.  The title gives away the intent of the book.  Old Christianity, the way we’ve done things in the past, the doctrines we’ve believed in the past, the old, shallow, restrictive boxes in which we’ve lived our Christian lives, the Christianity that has been hijacked by fundamental conservatism and the Republican Party, all that has to change.  I saw his video.  He says this.

A lot of what has been called biblical Christianity in America DOES need to change.  But not in the way McLaren and Bell and others want to change it.  They want to transform it into something that is not biblical or Christian.

The emergent church movement appeals primarily to two types of people:

1. Nominal Christians who aren’t sure about their own understanding of the Scriptures beyond the simple Gospel message of “accept Jesus into your heart” (which really isn’t the Gospel message), and

2. The disenfranchised critics of Evangelicalism who have had some experience that went very badly for them.  And they use their own bad experience as the measure of all of Evangelicalism.

Both of these groups consist mostly of 20-somethings.  I don’t want to be insulting, but often times it is relatively easy to appeal to the idealistic mindset of young adults and to their damaged sensitivities.  Revolution against the status quo seems to always sell to the younger generation.

If a couple of smooth talkers can foster a revolution amongst a group of malcontents who are indignant towards the religious hypocrites who have hurt them in the past, then you don’t just have a couple of loose cannons writing heretical books any more.  In essence, you now have religious generals leading an unsuspecting army of deceived people down the broad road to their own destruction.  All of this in the name of a progressive Christianity that is truly sensitive and genuinely compassionate toward the needs of a suffering world.  This is not your grandmother’s Christianity.  Everything must change!

What makes these men even more dangerous than any other false teachers at any other time in the history of the world is their free access to the Internet.  They use it a lot.  They are marketing professionals.  Type their names into Google and you’ll find plenty of information.  Books, videos, blogs, tweets, RSS feeds, and other stuff I’m not even aware of yet.  And all of it done quite well.

McLaren’s latest book is entitled A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. That’s what all of this is about: the transformation of THE faith into some “new kind of Christianity”.  But Jude says, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  Hang on to the faith you’ve been taught!  These false teachers are constantly asking leading questions for the specific purpose of casting doubt upon THE faith, the biblical message of salvation that Christians have believed for twenty centuries.

SHOW VIDEO HERE

Transcript of Bell’s video:

In Rob Bell’s video promotion of his book, he tells the story of an art show held at his church in which there was one piece that had a quote from Ghandi in it.  Someone attached a note to the painting that said, “Reality check: He’s in Hell.”  As a response to that, Bell begins to ask his video audience a series of questions:

“Ghandi’s in Hell?  He is?  And someone knows this for sure?  And felt the need to let the rest of us know?  Will only a few select people make it to Heaven?  And will billions and billions of people burn forever in Hell?  And if that’s the case, how do you become one of the few?  Is it what you believe, or what you say, or what you do, or who you know, or something that happens in your heart?  Or you need to be initiated or baptized or take a class or converted or being born again?  How does one become one of these . . . few?”

And then there is the question behind the questions.  The real question is what is God like, because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message, the center of the gospel of Jesus is that God is going to send you to Hell unless you believe in Jesus.  And so what is subtly sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God.  But what kind of God is that that we would need to be rescued from this God?  How could that God ever be good?  How could that God ever be trusted?  And how could that … ever... be... good... news?

That’s why lots of people want nothing to do with the Christian faith.  They see it as an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies and they say, ‘Why would I ever want to be a part of that?’  You see, what we believe about Heaven and Hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like.  What we discover in the Bible is so surprising and unexpectedly beautiful that whatever we’ve been told or taught, the good news is actually better than that, better than we could ever imagine.  The good news is that love wins.”

“What we discover in the Bible is so surprising and unexpectedly beautiful that whatever we’ve been told or taught, the good news is actually better than that, better than we could ever imagine.“  What he is talking about that is better than what you or I have ever been told or taught is the heresy of Universalism.

The questions Bell asks at the beginning of this video are not at all unlike the question Satan himself asked of Eve in the garden, “Did God say . . .?”

[3:1] Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.  He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1 ESV)

The answer should have been, “No, God did not actually say that.  What He said was, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.‘“ (Genesis 2:16-17 ESV)  That is precisely what God said.”  But Eve didn’t quote God precisely.  She embellished what God had said which was her first mistake.

We might think that her first mistake was listening to a talking snake, and maybe that’s true.  But this is the danger of playing fast and loose with what God has said.  If we’re not sure what God has said, if we don’t have a sure and reliable word from God with which we are familiar, then the gates swing wide open for deep deception and serious sin.  If we do not know the word of God, we become vulnerable to those who ask leading questions for the specific purpose of causing us to doubt what God has actually said.

We cannot contend earnestly for the faith if we’re constantly in doubt about what that faith is, or we’re ignorant of what it teaches.  This is why in recent years, untaught, nominal Southern Baptists have proven to be very fertile ground for the lies of Mormonism.  That is why “former” Christians are former.  Either because they were never converted at all or because they were not taught. Not discipled.  Nor do they have any interest in searching the Scriptures for themselves.  They think they know what God says, they believe the things they’ve heard are indeed in the Bible somewhere, but they aren’t really sure.

So when the church minimizes doctrinal instruction and biblical education, it leaves people defenseless against the lies that fill the atmosphere in which we walk every day.  It causes people to listen to all these supposedly probing questions from persuasive talkers and they begin to say to themselves, “I wonder if God really did say that?”

Look once again at Jude 4.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Notice how Jude describes false teachers: They are first of all, creepy.  They creep into the church unnoticed.  Beware of the creeps.  This fact alone is reason enough for us to take a strong stand for biblical church membership.  The church is supposed to consist of Christians.  Real Christians.  People who understand and believe THE faith.  People who have this faith in Christ alone as their Lord and Savior and King.  But the goal of false teachers is to infiltrate the ranks cast doubt in the minds of genuine believers.  They don’t come in wearing their heresies on their sleeves.  They sneak in and masquerade as Christians.  Jude says here in this verse that they are already condemned when they arrive.  Very strong language, but this is what God has said.

Secondly, in addition to being creepy, these false teachers are ungodly.  So how do they become members of the church?  How is it that ungodly people can creep into a church unnoticed?  Because nobody questions them.  Nobody asks them, “Well, tell me about your conversion.  How did you become a Christian?”  And now more than ever, because so many churches have giant mortgages, people can become members of churches and get involved in the work of the church, and become elders and deacons and pastors of churches, with nearly no questions asked!  The money becomes more important than the truth, and the appearance of success becomes more important than godliness.

This also begs the question, “Where is the church discipline?”  How is it that an ungodly person can stay in a church long enough to cause such damage that he begins to turn people away from the faith?  False teachers are not godly people.  Look at their lives.  Watch the things they do.  See how they spend their time and money and energy.  The threat of false teachers begs for the practice of biblical church discipline.

Thirdly, they pervert or twist the grace of God.  Their favorite passage of Scripture is half of one verse in Romans 6: You are not under law but under grace. So they take the grace of God and make it mean we can live as we please.  They say we are now living in the age of grace, and therefore holiness is optional.  They destroy the grace of God which enables us to live godly lives, and make it into a license to sin as we please and still get into Heaven.  They in essence teach us that God gives His people permission to pursue whatever lusts and desires we may have without any significant consequence.

Fourthly, because they twist the grace of God into licentiousness, they absolutely despise the authority of Jesus Christ.  They deny that He is our only Master and Lord.  They are purveyors of what is called antinomianism [against the law].  Contrary to what Jesus clearly said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15 ESV), and “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love” (John 15:10 ESV), these false teachers will tell you that isn’t necessary.  They will say, “Jesus is the Savior, but you don’t need to make Him Lord of your life.  Jesus is too loving to ever impose Himself on your free will like that.  Forced obedience isn’t love.  Jesus wants you to obey Him because you love Him, not because He commands you to love Him.”

This is insidious.  It is a lie.  This kind of talk is inspired of Satan.  Because of all that the Lord Jesus willingly did for me out of love, I will gladly have Him to be my Master and Lord.  I will happily serve Him.  But the false teachers make it sound like Jesus being your Lord will cramp your style.  He might want you to be holy or something.  He might even require you to do something you don’t particularly want to do.  Like not get drunk, or not sleep with your secretary.  Then, to put the final insult to it, they deny the lordship of Jesus over His people by condemning it as “Lordship Salvation,” as if there was any other kind of salvation.

Beloved, if Jesus is not your only master and Lord as Jude says here, you do not belong to Him.  If you are Christ’s, He is your Master and Lord.  If you seriously believe that a sinful lifestyle is an acceptable way to live the Christian life, you are not in THE faith.  Jesus is neither Savior NOR Lord if He isn’t Savior AND Lord.  We’ve been bought with a price, that price being His own blood.  And now you’re going to say to Him, “No, I think I’ll exercise my free will and not do what you command”?

Look at verse 8.  How do we recognize these people who slip into our midst and begin leading people astray?  “. . . [T]hese people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones." Where do they get their false theology?  By relying on their dreams, on their imaginations (maybe while under anesthesia).  And what is the nature of their theological stance: rebellious against authority and blasphemous.  They hate authority.

They teach the things they have dreamed up as though it were authoritative.  This is exactly what Rob Bell and Brian McLaren and the emergent church have done.  They have invented something they call Christianity that is more comfortable and more palatable, and less hurtful and less negative than what the Bible actually teaches.  They have invented a faith that is all inclusive, that is inoffensive to the unconverted, and vilifies Christians who have doctrinal convictions from which they can actually give biblical answers to all their supposedly deep and probing unanswerable questions.

According to verse 10, they blaspheme all that they do not understand.  Verse 11 tells us they live for the sake of monetary gain.  They are shepherds who feed themselves instead of the sheep.  And in verse 13 we read this final indictment against them: for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. In other words, the Hell they deny is their final destination.  These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage. This is an absolutely perfect description of the emergent church movement.

Now one of you might be tempted to say to me, “Well, this really doesn’t have anything to do with us here.  We know better than to fall for any of that stuff.”  The people Jude was writing to fell for it.  The false teachers were already in their midst.  Thus his letter to them warning them of these men.

Just so you’re clear on what I’m talking about here, let me repeat what Rob Bell said in his book:

“A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.  It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus.  This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

Does the world desperately need to hear Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy?  Absolutely.  But not to the exclusion of Jesus’ message of the wrath to come:

[4] “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. [5] But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! (Luke 12:4&5 ESV)

Should men fear someone who has the authority to cast people into Hell?  It is a rhetorical question.  It answers itself.  And according to what we read elsewhere in the Scriptures, Jesus is speaking of Himself.  He is the One who has been given all authority in Heaven and on earth.  He is the One who determines everyone’s eternal destiny.  He is the one who comes and sits upon the throne of His glory and separates the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and casts the goats into outer darkness. 1  But do you know what Jesus says next?  In the very next verse, He says this to His friends:

[6] Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. [7] Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Luke 12:6&7 ESV).

I suppose that is just one of the many “absurdities and inconsistencies” that make people want to have nothing to do with Christianity.  Why would Jesus say these two things back to back that seem so contradictory?  “Fear Him who has the authority to cast body and soul into Hell”, AND “Fear not, God even knows the number of the hairs of your head.  He will not forget you.”

He says both things because they aren’t contradictory at all.  They are both true.  The real question behind the question is, Are you His friend?  Have you been reconciled to God through Christ?  Or are you in danger still because you have not humbled yourself, repented of your sins, cried out to God to have mercy upon you, and save you from His just condemnation?  God is a God to be feared.  But He is also a God to be loved.  Those of us who know Him love Him because He first loved us.

So what should be our response:

[17] But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. [18] They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” [19] It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. [20] But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, [21] keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. [22] And have mercy on those who doubt; [23] save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

[24] Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, [25] to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:17-25 ESV)

Amen.

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1.  “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."  (Matthew 25:41 ESV)