The Emergent Church

Today, The Bible & You

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The Nation’s Christian Newspaper

November 2025

and how little Christians know about it.

One part of the future reign of Antichrist is the Bride of Antichrist, the One World Church. One aspect of that group is called the Emergent Church, and it is about to submerge your church. The tragic thing about all of this is that most people in these churches do not even know it! Here are some warning signs:

Scripture is no longer the ultimate authority as the basis for the Christian faith.
The centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ is being replaced by humanistic methods promoting church growth and a social gospel.
More and more emphasis is being placed on building the kingdom of God now and less and less on the warnings of Scripture about the imminent return of Jesus Christ and a coming judgment in the future.
The teaching that Jesus Christ will rule and reign in a literal millennial period is considered unbiblical and heretical.
The teaching that the church has taken the place of Israel and Israel has no prophetic significance is often embraced.
The teaching that the book of Revelation does not refer to the future, but instead has already been fulfilled in the past or is allegorical.
An experiential mystical form of Christianity needs to be reinvented in order to provide meaning for this generation.
The pastor may implement an idea called “ancient-future” or “vintage Christianity,” claiming that in order to take the church forward, we need to go back in church history and find out what experiences were effective to get people to embrace Christianity.
While the authority of the Word of God is undermined, images and sensual experiences are promoted as the key to experiencing and knowing God.
These experiences include icons, candles, incense, liturgy, labyrinths, prayer stations, contemplative prayer, and experiencing the sacraments (for Protestants), particularly the sacrament of the Eucharist.
There seems to be a strong emphasis on ecumenism, indicating that a bridge is being established that leads in the direction of unity with the Roman Catholic Church. This will ultimately lead to the one world religion of Revelation.
Some “evangelical” Protestant leaders are saying that the Reformation went too far. They are reexamining the claims of the “church fathers,” saying that communion is more than a symbol and that Jesus actually becomes present in the wafer at communion.
Some suggest there are many ways to God.
Members of churches who question or resist the new changes that the pastor is implementing are reprimanded and usually asked to leave. If you are over age 50, your opinion will not even matter.

There still may be time to stop your church from “submerging” to “Emerging”, but only if you act decisively and in union with others in your church who feel the same. A delegation of one or two will never impress church leadership, who already think this “new way of doing church” is better than warm bagels and who have swallowed the Emergent deception. And make no mistake, it is deception.

When some of the following are lauded from the pulpit or Sunday School class, you need to take that as a clue: Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Dallas Willard, Erwin McManus, and many others, too numerous to name. You may think it harmless to have a pastor just give a quote from one of these men, but when you understand that they represent the above bullet points, it should be a huge red flag.

We all need to take heed of Matthew 7:15-20, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”

Printed with permission of Today, the Bible & You located at P.O. Box 1722, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74013, Phone Number (918) 279-1136 the name of the original article in the November 2025 issue of Today’s Front Page was “THE EMERGENT CHURCH and how little Christians know about it.” www.JohnBarela.com

Today, The Bible & You

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January 2020

The Emerging Church and its Ultimate Goal

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Our Lord Jesus, before He ascended to Heaven, spent a great deal of His time warning the disciples of the wolves who would enter into the sheepfold.

Emergent Advocate Mathematician, Eric Temple Bell

This is how emerging advocate mathematician Eric Temple Bell, defined the Emerging Church, “Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.” The Emerging Church movement has many assumptions to examine because it buys into popular cultural notions of right and wrong, truth and error. These popular cultural notions, however, have been shaped and molded by philosophical influences decades and centuries in advance. It is precisely these notions that become assumptions under which popular culture operates today. Yesterday’s philosophies are today’s politics and the Emerging Church movement is a political movement to be sure.

The Emerging Church as a Political Movement

Indeed, one of the difficulties in examining contemporary religious movements is the numerous philosophical influences involved. The Emerging Church movement exhibits traits of many of the following philosophies: communism, existentialism, postmodernism, relativism, subjectivism, pragmatism, humanism, and philosophies have their own underratedness that is difficult enough to discern. The task becomes proportionately more difficult enough to discern. Like mining for ore, we may be able to trace some nuggets in the stream of current activity to the originating vein of thought.

Communism PowerPoint Slide Secular Humanism is a Religion

Acts 20:26-32 “Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

Grievous Wolves of Acts 20 verse 29

Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now brethren, I command you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and the give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified”.

Paganism and Gnosticism

The Emerging Church is modern day Gnosticism. What is Gnosticism? The definition of the word Gnostic is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “to know.” It basically wants you to believe the lie — any lie, regardless of what religious setting you are in. Once you mix the truth with the lie, you become a gnostic, controlled by the prince of the power of the air.

Yahweh -- Jesus Names Lucifer the Devil image

Basically, the Gnostic believes in acquiring special, mystical knowledge as the means for salvation. According to Gnostic beliefs, there is a Great God that is good and perfect, but impersonal and unknowable. The creator of the universe was actually a lesser deity, a cheap knock-off of the “true God”—who wanted to create a flawless material universe but botched the job. This is what you find in every form of Gnosticism and esoteric groups. They teach their adherents that there are two gods, one good and one evil. They teach Yahweh / Jesus is the evil God and that Lucifer, the devil, is the good god. That they are both fighting for the souls of men.

A Utopian Society by 2050 Why Does God Allow Pain and Misery and Suffering PowerPoint Slide

They teach that instead of having a utopia, we ended up with a world infected with pain, misery, and intellectual and spiritual blindness; all matter is now corrupt and evil. However, when the lesser deity created man, he accidentally imbued humanity with a spark of the “true” God’s spirit, making man an inherently good soul trapped in the confines of an evil, material body.

Was Jesus Christ a Gnostic illustration

The Gnostic Jesus

Contrary to a message of salvation through Christ alone (Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”), the Gnostic Jesus brings a message of self-redemption. Man only needs to examine his inner “spark” to find the knowledge needed to free himself from his material body and reach God. This alleged purity of heart is the exact opposite of what is stated in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things an desperately wicked who can know it?”

Carl Gustav Jung

Today, Gnosticism has evolved and branched out from the exclusively spiritual into the secular and scientific. Psychologist C. G. Jung praised Gnosticism as superior to traditional Christianity as a way of thinking. Another form of Gnosticism denies the existence of God altogether, while embracing an eternal flawed universe. This atheistic form of Gnosticism doesn’t see the material world as totally evil, but as flawed and incomplete. Mankind becomes the “deity,” and has the right to improve the human body and the world through their own wisdom.

The Gnostic Scriptures -- The Nag Hummadi Library

Christianity and Gnosticism are mutually exclusive — it is easy for a Gnostic mindset to seep into our own thinking if we’re not careful (1st Peter 5:8). “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.” The Gnostic is pursuing goodness, but instead of seeking to be regenerated by Christ, they grab hold of a man-centered purpose for living. Gnostic thought makes man “wise in their own eyes” (Isaiah 5:21), something that is also pointed out in (Proverbs 3:7), “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.”

The Holy Word of God -- God cannot make an Error J.C. Ryrie -- What is the best safeguard. The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied

Gnostic thinking claims that deeper truth can be found apart from God. But Proverbs 1:7 says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Instead of searching our corrupt, flawed “inner selves for answers, we should instead test everything against the revealed Word of God. In the end, if it is God’s truth alone that can be trusted.

Isaiah 8:20, “To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this world. It is because there is no light in them.”

Did the Garden of Eden have a Talking Snake. The Snake talking to Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Battle between Good and Evil with Angels and Demons illustration

From the very beginning, the battle between good and evil has been a battle of the truth. The serpent, in the Garden of Eden, began his temptation by questioning the truthfulness of God’s previous instruction by questioning the truthfulness of God’s previous instruction. “Indeed hath God said, ‘Ye shall not eat from any tree of the garden? . . . Ye surely shall not die! For God knoweth that in the day you eat thereof your eyes will be opened, and ye will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1, 4, 5). And this has been his tactic ever since, casting doubt on the revelation of God.

The Emerging Church Pastor, Doug Pagitt

The Emergent Church is this same form of Paganism. One emergent pastor, Doug Pagitt is a Universalist, that everyone will go to heaven, no one will be damned. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim. That’s just classic Universal-ism.

Two Wolves Snarling -- The Emergent Church

What you have here is a form of false religion. A form of paganism that basically wants to be thought of as Christian because it gains a certain ground. But the underlying bottom line of this whole emerging movement is they don’t believe in any doctrine, they don’t believe in any theology.

The Emergent Church Pastor, Brian McLaren

Another emergent pastor, Brian McLaren says nobody has ever gotten it right, so let’s not make an issue out of anything. Let’s just be open to everything. Let’s not take a position on theology or for that matter, on morality or behavior because hey, there’s no judgment anyway so we’ve all going to end up in God in some ethereal, eternal relationship. And that’s just non-Christian. It is blatantly, flagrantly non-Christian. It’s as non-Christian as any false religion.

Rick Warrern -- The False Gospel of the Emergent Church Leaders Exposed Oasis Baptist Church -- What we Believe sign

God’s people have one function, to guard the truth, to proclaim the truth and to live the truth. That’s not the mission in a seeker / emergent church. God has this word for those who may be involved in Christ-centric, Bible-centric Church.

A Gospel Centered Church diagram

Revelation 18:4 -5, “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plaques. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”

Printed with permission of Today, The Bible & You located at P.O. Box 1722, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74013, Phone No. (918) 279-1136. The name of the original article in the January 2020 issue of Today’s Front Page was “The Emerging Church and its Ultimate Goal” www.JohnBarela.com