Category Apostasy & False Teaching

From New Age Almanac, by J. Gordon Melton:

“The New Age Movement can best be dated from circa 1971. By that year, Eastern religion and transpersonal psychology (the key elements needed to create the distinctive New Age synthesis) had achieved a level of popularity, and metaphysical leaders could begin to articulate the New Age vision…Baba Ram Dass, a transformed refugee from the psychedelic age, emerged as the first national prophet…Despite its relatively recent appearance, the movement should not be viewed as a startlingly new phenomenon in Western culture...

Satan wants to suppress and extinguish the light of the Gospel of Christ.

His legions in the world war against the Truth and against those who bear it, through lies and twisting of facts and the meanings of words, through assault and oppression, and through censure; through distractions, diversions, temptations, enticements, relationships, comforts, and “goals”. The enemy roars both inside and out of the recognized church. We must take hold of our Captain. We must relinquish our hold on temporal distractions. We must refuse to become servants of worldly things – any worldly thing no matter now noble or how necessary, becomes a stumbling block and an impediment to the work of the Gospel as soon as it has equal time, equal effort, equal priority to Christ and His grace in our life.

The...

Signs and wonders, or miracles, are often accepted by professing Christians as evidence or even proof that a person, spiritual leader or teacher, or a phenomenon is from God. Sometimes even unbelievers and skeptics are persuaded through miraculous signs and wonders of the spirituality of some teacher or circumstance. But are all signs and wonders or apparent miracles necessarily from God or are they necessarily good? I don’t believe there is one true Christian who does not know that the Bible clearly teaches otherwise.

The preoccupation with miraculous phenomena has exploded since the charismatic movement began, and more particularly the Vineyard movement...

QUESTIONS TO ASK AN EMERGENT FOLLOWER OR OTHER LIBERAL PROFESSING CHRISTIAN:

On what authority do you know anything? Your natural senses? What some person tells you?

On what authority do you know anything about God?

Do you believe you are a Christian?

What is a Christian?

Do you believe it is possible to be a Christian without being saved?

Do you believe a person can ‘follow Jesus’ without being saved?

On what authority do you believe you are saved?

What is the gospel?

On what authority do you know what the gospel is?

If your natural senses are your authority, you have no basis for knowledge of anything beyond the natural: love, fear, outer-space, inner earth, super-natural, God, spirit, Heaven.

If it is the word of men, you are a fool. Men lie, steal, rape, kill, and cheat...

Or Can we “Sanctify” Acts or Ideas belonging to False Religious Systems to Make Them Suitable for Worship of the Lord God or a Part of Christian Life Practice? 

Throughout Scripture, God commands His people to be ‘holy’, separate from the world and sin. False teachings and false practices have plagued the church since the beginning, evidenced in the letters from Paul, Peter, John, and Jude, so it is not unique to today. The Holy Spirit ensured we would have no reason to question what response might be appropriate to the inclusion of pagan practices or philosophies in Christian life and worship. God admonished the Israelites frequently that they were to absolutely reject everything originating from pagan practice, incorporating none of it in their lives or the worship of Almighty God...

Do you have to get everything right to be a Christian? No, but there are some things you cannot get wrong and still be a Christian. For instance, you must believe in God in order to be a Christian. But you can’t believe in just any god. You must believe in the God Who has revealed Himself through His Word to men, through His prophets, through the Law, and through Jesus Christ. If you believe in a false god, you are not a Christian, no matter how sincere you are or how well you behave. [1]

Then there is the matter of Truth. You must believe that truth exists, and that it is knowable, because Jesus declared that the Father requires men to worship Him in spirit and in truth. If there is no truth, or it cannot be known, we are unable to obey God’s clear requirement for worship. [2]

A Chr...

Like the religious leaders of Christ’s day, religious leaders today have misled millions of people into thinking that they will be alright with God on judgement day because of their good deeds or some social action they have taken. But the Scripture is very clear that we are not justified before God by ‘works of righteousness’ nor by ‘works of the law’ but by faith that the blood of Jesus Christ shed to cover our sins has made atonement with God on our behalf. In order for God to apply that atonement, we must turn from sin to God in faith, believing that Christ died for us, and rose again to give everlasting life to men. 

Paul called those who preach another gospel ‘anathema’ – eternally condemned...

People have a passion for the concept of Jesus rather than for the person of Christ; for “reaching the lost for the Lord” as opposed to sharing the Gospel of Christ. People like being spiritual, but don’t care to be holy. 

The message of salvation from sin and death has been replaced with a message of salvation from a pointless life, and mundane existence. The new preachers want us to be saved from the hurts of sin in this life, and be drawn into the fullfilment of feeding the hungry, healing broken hearts, stopping wars, curing diseases. 

Jesus Christ did not come to redeem our human institutions. He came to redeem us from the power of sin and death, to reconcile us to God so we can have eternal life...

The logical extension of ‘do not judge’ as applied by many people would necessarily be a total lack of laws, otherwise known as anarchy. 

The job of government is to protect its people – the whole from enemies outside and individuals when necessary from each other. The well-being of the community is partially dependent upon the faithfulness of the government to perform its responsibilities. 

Each time a law is made, the related action is being judged. Making murder or theft a crime is to judge the murder or theft, and judge one who commits them as guilty of crime. 

Some will argue that some crimes hurt only the perpetrator or no one at all, calling them ‘victimless’ crimes. This is false; there are no ‘victimless crimes’...

When someone speaks, they assume that the words they speak have inherent meaning which will be inherently understood by all those who equally know the language spoken, so that the meaning they seek to convey is that which their hearer will reasonably receive. The intended meaning is assumed by the speaker based on this principle, as is his assumption that the listener will understand the same meaning.

The only verbal communication for which men seek to excuse this universal principle is the Bible. We cannot insist on a single meaning of a text, for any number of non-linguistic reasons according to those who deny doctrinal absolutes...