Rise and Fall of an Evangelical Empire

I don't recall which clue first warned me about the problems with this church. Books by Jesus Seminar heavyweights Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan rested near the front of the ornate sanctuary, ready to explain for visitors why Jesus' resurrection was a myth. Rainbow flags signaled this is an "open and affirming" congregation for practicing homosexuals. Perhaps it is no coincidence the church baptized only two children in the last year. Sunday attendance has never topped 100 so far in 2011, though the facility could seat far more.

Even after observing all these worrisome clues, however, I was still taken aback by what I saw on the church's basement bookshelf. Not one but two copies of the New World Translation of the Bible lurked to lure in unsuspecting readers. Do the church leaders not know the Jehovah's Witnesses twist God's Word to recruit for their cult? Or do these leaders just not care? Seeing these blasphemous Bibles in a church took me back to a painful time when I learned that a United Methodist seminary had kicked out a young Anglican congregation meeting in their space and welcomed the Mormons in their place. Apparently it's not enough for liberal Protestants to reject orthodoxy. Some must also welcome heterodoxy.    Keep Reading...

Open Letter to James MacDonald

Dear Pastor MacDonald,

First, allow me to greet you in the name of our common Master, the Lord Jesus.

I am writing to you as a fellow pastor - the pastor of a smaller church.  While I hope that you do not consider me a lesser brother because of the smallness of my church, what I ought rather to say is that I do not consider you an unworthy brother because of the largeness of yours.  I am not one of the small-church critics who holds the opinion that large churches are universally evil.  Rather, I believe that if it is God’s will a church like yours can do much good for the cause of the gospel.

Some mega-church pastors care little for the gospel.  That sort of man would probably stop reading my letter as soon as he read that my church is small.  In such a man’s eyes the great gospel can only be served by great men with great vision and wisdom and great results - meaning great turn-out each Sunday.   Keep Reading...

Rob Bell: a Brother to Embrace, or a Wolf to Avoid?

If Christopher Hitchens or Deepak Chopra penned a book that scoffed at the biblical teaching on hell, we would not be surprised. So why would anyone be shocked or confused when Rob Bell writes Love Wins? Has Bell shown any more commitment to gospel truth, or any more devotion to the principle of biblical authority than Hitchens or Chopra? 

Is Rob Bell truly a Christian, or is he one of those dangerous deceivers Scripture warns us about repeatedly (; ; ; ; etc.)?

It's a fair—and necessary—question. Christ’s famous warning about wolves in sheep’s clothing is given to us as an imperative: “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (). Our Lord clearly expects His true disciples to be able to spot spiritual imposters and wolves in sheep’s clothing—especially those who are purveyors of deadly false doctrines. Keep Reading>>>

Doing Away with Hell? Part One

This process of change is often invisible to those experiencing it, and denied by those promoting it. As David F. Wells comments, “The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now dammed by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself.” He continued: “To be sure, this orthodoxy never was infallible, nor was it without its blemishes and foibles, but I am far from persuaded that the emancipation from its theological core that much of evangelicalism is effecting has resulted in greater biblical fidelity. In fact, the result is just the opposite. We now have less biblical fidelity, less interest in truth, less seriousness, less depth, and less capacity to speak the Word of God to our own generation in a way that offers an alternative to what it already thinks.”

The pressing question of our concern is this: Whatever happened to hell? What has happened so that we now find even some who claim to be evangelicals promoting and teaching concepts such as universalism, inclusivism, postmortem evangelism, conditional immortality, and annihilationism–when those known as evangelicals in former times were known for opposing those very proposals? Many evangelicals seek to find any way out of the biblical doctrine–marked by so much awkwardness and embarrassment. Read it all HERE

“Closet Universalists”

One of the things that the Rob Bell saga is doing is shining the light on the encroachment of universalism in the sphere of biblical orthodoxy.  I have no idea whether Rob Bell is a universalist or not, but my guess is if he is, then universalism will de facto become a cool and acceptable tenet by virtue of Bell’s dominant influence among those in his wide domain.  I even saw where Matthew Paul Turner (Jesus Needs New PR) on Twitter making the claim that “Jesus universalism has deep roots in Christian history” and has “been around since the beginning.”  Additionally, Scot McKnight argued, “My own estimation is that somewhere near 75% of my students, many if not most of them nurtured in the church, are more or less universalist.” Keep Reading>>>