The Emerging Church continues to “emerge.”  Robert Schuller must be beside himself with delight!

Many may believe Robert Schuller is not a threat in Christianity because he’s so preposterously apostate.  I’ll never know where that line of thought comes from.  Robert Schuller not only has a vast television outreach, but his monstrosity of a church called the “Crystal Cathedral” is packed to the seams with eager followers who come to hear Schuller and his guest speakers every week.  What should trouble us is that even though Robert Schuller is so blatantly heretical, many many Christians still follow him.

The Rethink Conference, at which Schuller will be a speaker, is scheduled for February 5 – 7, 2009.  The speakers scheduled to speak for that event are: 

• Ravi Zacharias
• George Barna
• Dan Kimball
• Bill Dallas
• Henry Cloud
• Dr. John Townsend
• Nancy Ortberg
• Miles McPherson
• Bob Dees
• Kirbyjon Caldwell

Most of the above list doesn’t surprise me, but one speaker who continues to baffle me is Ravi Zacharias.  I have watched Zacharias in lectures and debates at universities and tuned in to hear him preach biblical truth for years, but over the past few years he has been showing a trend of compromise which is extremely troubling.  When he compromised at the National Day of Prayer in Washington, D.C., by agreeing not to pray in the name of Jesus, people defended him and said he had to obey the rules laid down before him by the prayer breakfast organization team.  This latest move of compromise cannot be defended.

Could we ever imagine the Apostle Paul, or the Apostle Peter joining themselves with such a heretic in a joint effort to “evangelize?”  Nay!  They would not! 

Robert Schuller has subverted the way of truth for many years.  Teaching a “positive message” to his congregation, the message of sin was eradicated and the doctrine of self-love and positive thinking prevailed.  With no teaching of sin or the fallen state of man, there is no need to preach the sacrafice of God’s only begotten Son, or the need for a Savior.  With the parade of New Age teachers who have graced his stage for years, his congregation has been exposed to a diet of teaching which teaches that there is a god inside of them, and the God of the Bible is denied.  The full significance of what Jesus did on that cross is maligned.  His congregants aren’t told they are sinful and fallen people who are desparately needing salvation, they see themselves as “someone special.”  Joel Osteen wasn’t the first to preach this message, Schuller perfected it long before Osteen came along.

Robert Schuller wanted to start a church where even the lost could come and be comfortable.  If our pastors can preach to sinners and they be comfortable with it, then God is not the central focus of that message.  Do we want to comfort sinners or bring them to the knowledge of their fallen state so that they can turn to the Savior and be saved?

Here is the premise of the “Rethink” conference:

Sometimes it just takes one Aha! moment to change you forever.

We’ve all experienced it: one of those moments when something said by another person triggers an immediate “Aha!” in your mind. You feel like a safe-cracker working a complex lock when suddenly the last tumbler falls into place and the door opens for you.

Sometimes you’re not even aware that there was something nagging at your mind – something puzzling or unsettled or unresolved – but then a thought from another mind brings everything into focus, and all of a sudden, you get it. And when you get it, you’re empowered to change something about the way you live, the way you lead, the way you work, the way you minister.

That’s what Rethink is all about: Getting into the minds of influential thinkers and innovators, and taking away the Aha! moments that empower us to create new possibilities for our lives.  Source.

Is that why Jesus died?  So we can feel empowered to create new possibilities for our lives?  Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.”

This is from LetUsReason.org:

Robert Schuller, in his book Self-Esteem: the New Reformation, writes, “I contend that his unfulfilled need for self-esteem underlies every act …over and over again that the core of man’s sin is not his depravity but a “lack of self-dignity”, Self-esteem is … the single greatest need facing the human race today.” (p. 15) He calls this esteem “divine self-esteem” (p. 95). “If the gospel of Jesus Christ can be proclaimed as a theology of self-esteem, imagine the health this could generate in society!” (Self-Esteem, the New Reformation Word Books, 1982 p. 47)

His new reformation is not repentance or a renewed sense of dependence on God and his word. No humbling our self before Almighty God. In fact it is the very opposite a boosting of ourselves to a “divine self-esteem.” The Bible tells us that our righteousness is like filthy tags before God (Isaiah 64:6), that we’ve all sinned and fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23), and that there are none who are righteous (Romans 3:10). All this and more is denied by the philosophical musing of a man who claims to represent Christ, His gospel, and the church. 

In fact he states “I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ that and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.” (Time, March 18, 1985)  Source.

Perhaps Ravi Zacharias doesn’t see that appearing with such a heretic as Robert Schuller lends credibility to his ministry.  Those who are weak in the faith could see this and believe Schuller is a man of God because they don’t know any better, nor are they strong enough in the word to distinguish the truth from the lies.  I can’t imagine any of the Apostles linking with heretics in order to spread the gospel.  The apostles were not worried about being “relevant” to their times, they knew they would be a peculiar people.  They knew the world would take offense at the preaching of the cross, and were prepared to preach it at the expense of their lives, calling upon us to test the spirits, and not to accept any doctrine other than the one that was handed down through their teachings.

In these dark days, I urge all who read this to bury themselves deep in God’s Word and grow in truth.  Without it, we are targets for a merciless enemy.  When times get so confusing that those who are supposed to be God’s ministers let you down, God’s Word will never lead you astray.