Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14 ESV)

Efficacious adj. producing the desired effect – from The Oxford New Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus Third Edition.

Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; nay, not a few even reckon it among the social virtues, as it were; and this they do because they have not made proof of it experimentally, and have never tasted of what efficacy it is. For it is not possible for any man to write well about it, or to understand well what is rightly written, who has not at some time tasted of its spirit, under the pressure of tribulation; while he who has tasted of it, even to a very small extent, can never write, speak, think, or hear about it sufficiently. For it is a living fountain, springing up into eternal life, as Christ calls it in John iv.¹

Saving or efficacious faith is not the same thing as the best faith man can muster through the exercise of the will. According to our Lord Jesus in John 4:13-14 (above), efficacious faith is that which is given to the believer by God and this same faith will become in the believer a spring of water welling up to eternal life. This is not belief that is the product of reason or intellectual assent. It is not a belief that the believer must generate and desperately hold onto lest it be diminished and be lost. In the excerpt from Martin Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X, Concerning Christian Liberty, we read that those who conceive of faith as something done by the believer count it as simply a social virtue and that is an easy thing. Luther says that those with this concept of faith believe as they do because they have not experienced efficacious faith and have never tasted the great strength there is in it. I contend that the purveyors of the Seeker-Sensitive, Emergent, and Missional forms of “Christianity” are of the same sort of faith Luther is contrasting in this letter with genuine believers who are so because they have drunk of the water given to them by the Lord that has become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. These of the New Type of Christianity have a faith consisting of works-righteousness. This is a man-made faith not the efficacious faith that is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:1-10).

¹Martin Luther, from Concerning Christian Liberty an open letter to Pope Leo X, September 6, 1520.

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It’s interesting to note that we learned of this video below when Oneness Pentecostal Tommy Tenny of “Godchasers” fame tweeted the following:

Wowser! @EdYoung in his robe with pillow hair! Takes a brave man to do a video blog like this. http://3.ly/vKcn

Also notice that at 1:25 in Southern Baptist pastor Ed Young, Jr. tells us he’ll be speaking at Hillsong, notorious for its Word Faith heresy, which he refers to as ”the great Hillsong church” that’s “one of the most exciting churches in the world.”

Another chance here to watch T.D Jakes, featured speaker at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this year, in action with a special guest you do not want to miss.

We can see from this tweet it’s obviously quite difficult in the counter-culture world of emerging church leaders like Doug Pagitt while they fearlessly battle the consumerist mentality of this evil capatalistic empire:

Breakfast with O’Farrells & Michael Toy, then golf, then conference.

John Chisham, CRN correspondent and pastor of River of Life Alliance Church in MN, tells us in this post:

What is Monvee you ask? It is the newest program in the seeker sensitive/purpose driven spirituality that is marketed as the E-Harmony for your spiritual practices…

You have to see this exhibit over at A Little Leaven to believe it. Warning: Watching the video artifact in this exhibit could cause brain damage due to an inability to breath.

Thanks to the new liberalism Christianity of the emerging church we have a new breed of Christians, and the heavily tattooed pastrix Nadia Bolz-Weber, is a prime example of their emergent fruit.

She tweets today:

A pastoral letter to House for All Sinners and Saints –> http://tinyurl.com/ydt27pm

The link takes us to a post where pastrix Bolz-Weber tells the flock she loves “that people are so interested in our funky little church” HFASS, but doing “church tourism” does have its drawbacks.

Seems there’s “a youth group from Iowa who is also planning as part of their service trip” to HFASS. Since they number 28 Bolz-Weber tells the church “if that many people came we’d have to take down the prayer labyrinth.”

And then pastrix Nadia says:

then I thought s**t.  Is radical hospitality about saying “please join us…that is if we aren’t inconvenienced and we don’t have to change anything from the way we like it”?  

So I want you to know that I have repented from my original impulse to protect and preserve HFASS so that all the people who really belong there won’t feel uncomfortable or inconvenienced. It’s not our tent.  It’s God’s tent. (emphasis hers)

Well, it may be a tent, but it isn’t God’s tent; because we know from the Bible that He did not call such as her to pastor churches belonging to Jesus Christ.

As you’ll see for yourself in the video here Jakes speaks those very words himself.

Time Magazine takes a look at the embrace of Roman Catholicism’s model of the Virgin Mary by Protestants…

“…In a shift whose ideological breadth is unusual in the fragmented Protestant world, a long-standing wall around Mary appears to be eroding. It is not that Protestants are converting to Catholicism’s dramatic exaltation: the singing of Salve Regina, the Rosary’s Marian Mysteries, the entreaty to her in the Hail Mary to “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Rather, a growing number of Christian thinkers who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox (another branch of faith to which Mary is central) have concluded that their various traditions have shortchanged her in the very arena in which Protestantism most prides itself: the careful and full reading of Scripture.”

See the rest at Watcher’s Lamp.

Despite the fact that Jakes denies Who God is, as you’ll see here, he’s still to be a featured speaker for Bill Hybels.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 ESV)

Several of us are taking a closer look at John Ortberg’s The Me I Want to Be book and his “church program” Monvee. In our discussions, there inevitably comes a point where we must stop and ask, “How could these people believe and teach this stuff if they know their Bibles at all?” This stuff is chocked full of Pelagianism and mysticism. Ken Silva made the following comment today and I want to pass it on to you for it, I think, succinctly points us to the right way to address this stuff while shining God’s brilliant light of truth into the murkiness.

What’s going on is for years now these people read and quote from their own books. Add in the deception of a false unity received in the practice of CSM and what we see is people trying to please people.

They think they’ve come up with a Christianity that the world will want to embrace. People like us who insist upon Scripture are embarrassing to them. Bottom line: They think one can intellectually choose to be a Christian if we make it sound good enough to the unchurched. – Ken Silva

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More here.

With the takeover of the visible church by the “Innovation Cult” pragmatism is the rule. This pragmatic approach to ministry is lead by some men who have become blinded to the truth of what God requires of all those who are called by His name. They are blind because they, being in spiritual darkness with hardened hearts, are bent on their man-centered, man-made methodologies; i.e. doctrines of men. The fruit of this is well represented by Rick Warren’s “deeds not creeds” slogan for all this really consists of is works righteousness.

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Using a post by emerging church leader as a backdrop you’ll see how these items intertwine in this piece.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. (1 John 5:18 ESV)

Works righteousness has taken over most of the visible church. In this article by my friend Christine Pack, we learn what the bondage of works righteousness has done in the visible church through things like Rick Warren’s “deeds not creeds” stance and the “innovation” Monvee. In this article by my friend Daniel Neades, we see the link between Monvee, pragmatism, and Pelagianism. We should be quite taken aback that these so-called “Christian leaders” would attempt to pragmatically discern the spiritual depth of a Christian then design the right spiritual “program” to increase their spiritual “productivity” as if Christians are products of some man-made, man-controlled, and man-defined process. In this article, we saw the methods God uses to perfect those who are His. When I see things like Monvee I wonder if these people ever read their Bibles or, if they do, if they take seriously what it says. Of course, a lot of the deception in this is a product of the lack of understanding of what true spiritual maturity is and what it looks like. Be assured my brethren, God understands these things and has been bringing His children to spiritual maturity for as long as there have been believers in this world.

God’s people, Christians, are called to be Holy.

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 At Mars Hill Bible Church Rob Bell, and his new co-teaching pastor Shane Hipps, are teaching a form of neo-Gnostic mysticism consistent with that of Eastern religions as you’ll see in this post.

A look in this post at some more rotten fruit of the postmodern neo-liberalism of the emerging church.

W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California, has written an interesting and provocative essay on the Tabletalk magazine, here.

Many American churches are in a mess. Theologically they are indifferent, confused, or dangerously wrong. Liturgically they are the captives of superficial fads. Morally they live lives indistinguishable from the world. They often have a lot of people, money, and activities. But are they really churches, or have they degenerated into peculiar clubs?

What has gone wrong? At the heart of the mess is a simple phenomenon: the churches seem to have lost a love for and confidence in the Word of God. They still carry Bibles and declare the authority of the Scriptures. They still have sermons based on Bible verses and still have Bible study classes. But not much of the Bible is actually read in their services. Their sermons and studies usually do not examine the Bible to see what it thinks is important for the people of God. Increasingly they treat the Bible as tidbits of poetic inspiration, of pop psychology, and of self-help advice. Congregations where the Bible is ignored or abused are in the gravest peril. Churches that depart from the Word will soon find that God has departed from them.

What solution does the Bible teach for this sad situation? The short but profound answer is given by Paul in Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We need the Word to dwell in us richly so that we will know the truths that God thinks are most important and so that we will know His purposes and priorities. We need to be concerned less about “felt-needs” and more about the real needs of lost sinners as taught in the Bible.

… more

[HT: Heidelblog]

God uses the attacks on His truth to train us to become better theologians, those who study God and His truth and ways. These attacks make us think and search the Scriptures and seek the help from the Holy Spirit and other theologians in order to answer these determined to either silence the proclamation of God’s Truth as the Truth or to lead others into the darkness that has blinded them. As we defend the truth, we draw closer to God and He trains us by giving us a deeper and more thorough understanding of His Truth. The doctrine of regeneration is continually under attack because of it makes very clear some truths about man that is offensive to many. These truths are that regeneration must come first in order for a person to be able to believe the Gospel. This is because everyone is born spiritually dead, totally unable to see and believe the truth (John 3:3). In order for anyone to believe and know the truth of God, to seek the Kingdom of God, they must be born again.

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Just look and see in this post what’s being taught from the pulpit of Mars Hill Bible Church now. This kind of garbage has no place within evangelical Christianity; and it sure doesn’t belong in your church in the Young Adult and Youth groups.

You’ll have to see this yourself to believe it. In this new Christianity not only has McLaren and the emerging church thrown out the entire Protestant Reformation, but now even the Mormons are Christians, and the Holy Spirit is no longer He, but is rather, she.

I will be 59 years old later this year. I have been a Christian for about 25 years, but I grew up in a “Christian” home going to church every Sunday until I grew up and went my own way. I know that Christians are commanded to be forgiving, kind, and gentle with others. However, we are also commanded to stand firm and withstand false teachers and their doctrines. When I began writing and blogging as an extension of my teaching ministry, I soon experienced a very rude awakening. When I wrote about things that were experiential and not tied to any specific doctrines no one seemed to care, but the closer I came to that dividing line that separates God’s Truth from everything else, the attacks of every sort seemed to descend on me from every direction. The more precise I came in laying out what is true from that which is not true, the angrier many of my so-called brethren became. It seems the way to ‘get along’ in the visible church is to accept the default form of Christianity and never, even if you have irrefutable Biblical truth to the contrary, teach against it. The one who does that is labeled as divisive as well as an enemy of Christian unity. But this stance is all one-sided. We are divisive for publishing God’s pure doctrines, but those who hold to man-made doctrines are allowed to say anything they want about us. It is as if they have free speech, but we do not.

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CRN places this up as an FYI. As you’ll see, there are many complex issues concerning the subject of homosexuality.

In his latest blog post emergent church leader Brian McLaren dances around God’s wrath and hell. But as impressive as his linguistic gymnastics can be, even more amazing, is how in this short piece McLaren manages twice to sneak in links to book at Amazon.

So much for being counter-culture.

Emerging church pastor retweets the following today concerning a man he personally brought into the Terra Nova Project, from which comes the emergent church:

RT @JesusNeedsNewPR: driscoll really wants u2know he has a… http://bit.ly/dDzb6T | hard to believe people listen to Driscoll – ugh.

The link takes you to where you can see the “Macho Man” Mark Driscoll video below that appears to have been placed online by Brody Harper.