After
listening to Oprah's interview with Rob Bell about their "new"
and "enlightened" gospel, I felt compelled to respond with
this warning: “the
Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith
and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons . Such
teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have
been seared as with a hot iron” (I
Tim. 4:1-2). This interview was a
deja vu of what
produced the 60's hippie-free-love movement. It is the
"pantheistic" gospel which was born in the Garden of Eden
with Satan's deceptive question: "did
God really say?"
with its death-knell-hook: "God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you
will be like God knowing good and evil"
(Gen.3:1,5). The problem we all have is trying to understand an
infinite God through our finite minds. There are many questions
about the Bible I still have a hard time understanding. My puny
mind can't embrace, comprehend and, much less, answer issues that are
not clearly or even remotely explained in Scripture. God is too
incomprehensibly omniscient and because He is the "Potter
and I am the clay",
I must rest my decisions on what I do know the Bible teaches and that
is a faith issue! Having said that, I sense that Rob and Oprah
are trying to explain God by humanizing God and ultimately deifying
man. God is Love but He is also Holy and Just! We cannot
fully understand Grace unless we wrestle with the issues of Justice
and Mercy, otherwise, Christ's death was a big mistake and Redemption
must be explained away. Maybe that is why Christ was not even
mentioned or remotely suggested in their entire conversation except
for a casual statement of a historic Jesus in the gospels.
The
Apostle Paul dealt with this same problem in the church at Galatia.
A new kind or a gospel was being introduced which Paul calls a
"heteros" gospel: "I
am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called
you by the grace of Christ and are turning to another gospel---
which is really no gospel at all"
(Gal.1:6-7) and then comes down pretty hard on those who apostatize,
with the warning: "if
anybody preaches to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let
him be eternally condemned" (v.9).
My
real concern is that many Christians are being mesmerized or subtly
sucked into a "new age" kind of theology that desires to
make the gospel more acceptable to everyone. But the
exclusiveness of Christianity demands that our only understanding
and explanation of the Gospel be drawn from Scripture only. That
is why Paul warned Timothy: "study
to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that is not ashamed
but rightly dividing the word of truth" (2
Timothy 2:15).
While
listening to Rob and Oprah, the Lord brought to my mind a Scripture
that applies to this interview or any other teaching that either
denies or waters down God's inerrant, irrefutable and infallible
Word of God: "there
will be terrible time in the last days. People will be lovers
of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without
love...lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God---having a form
of godliness but denying it power. Have nothing to do with them"
(2 Tim.3:1-5).
I
trust this will give you a little light into the "window of my
soul" which includes a deep longing and prayer that Robbie
returns to the God Who is absolutely Just, Merciful, and full of
Grace and whose Son, Jesus Christ, came to show us a Love which
passes ALL understanding.
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