SAVING THE COUNTRY AT WHAT COST?
WILL A COMMITMENT TO THE GOSPEL
BE REPLACED WITH A
"NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS"?
SEE: http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2015/newsletter20150422.htm; two articles republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
This article is not a statement that Christians should not be involved in or concerned about the political state of their countries. Rather, the intention of this article is to exhort believers to use discernment in understanding the times in which we live. It is to show how a present ecumenical, dominionist movement (that is heading toward a one-world religion to “establish the kingdom of God on earth”) is operating and deceiving many Christians. As Christians, we are to be witnesses for Jesus Christ and His Gospel message of salvation. But today, many Christians may be on the brink of buying into a plan that will ultimately create a global religion and global government.
The apostle Paul was very clear that we are not to entangle ourselves with those who say they are of the faith but preach “another gospel” (Romans 16:17, Titus 3:10, 2 Corinthians 11: 13-15).
The definition below of dominionism is helpful in understanding the goals of the dominionist movement:
The Gospel of Salvation [according to dominionism] is achieved by setting up the “Kingdom of God” as a literal and physical kingdom to be “advanced” on Earth in the present age. Some dominionists liken the New Testament Kingdom to the Old Testament Israel in ways that justify taking up the sword, or other methods of punitive judgment, to war against enemies of their kingdom. Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom. They assign to the Church duties and rights that belong Scripturally only to Jesus Christ.1Dominionism shares some of the same ideologies as the emerging church, the primary similarity being the belief that a utopian “kingdom of God” will be set up on earth prior to the return of Jesus Christ, and in fact there won’t actually be a bodily physical return of Christ; but rather His presence will become more manifest within us the more the kingdom of God on earth is created. This is totally contrary to Scripture that tells us that Jesus Christ will return physically (where every eye shall see Him), and it will be to a world that has become completely chaotic and reprobate, not utopian and godly.
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. (Revelation 1:7)An article titled “7 Mountains – Set to Go Viral” by Discernment Ministries examines the goals of this dominionist agenda, expressing “concern that this radical mandate for dominionism, and the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) which birthed it, are becoming part of the political Right and evangelical mainstream.” The article states that the “7 mountains mandate is already becoming a unifying rally point among evangelicals from many diverse theological camps and from some very unexpected quarters.”
The Dominionist/Reclaiming our Culture mind-set is a dangerous path that leads, not to biblical truth, but rather to an ecumenical, Road to Rome, “Army for God” that will attempt to force culture to be “Christian” (something Jesus Christ or the disciples never mandated) and will end up leading all down that Road to Rome and eventually into a one-world religion and one-world government.
The Discernment Ministries article assesses:
Not only does the Kingdom of God have a different King to the kingdoms of the world, but it has different citizens, has a different future and it operates by different principles. One of the principles that makes God’s Kingdom radically different to that of the world is the lust for power as opposed to the willingness to serve.
“Jesus said: ‘Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.’” (Matthew 20:25-28).2This is not to say that Christians should not try to be a light and the “salt” in a fallen culture (Matthew 5:13). But there is a difference between what Scripture instructs us to do and what the 7 Mountains movers teach; they believe they are “building an actual PHYSICAL kingdom here on earth — structurally through man’s mechanisms. This is the 7 mountains that they want to take over. They believe they can take them over by political, scientific, and psycho-social means.” And like the New Agers, they also want to build the spiritual kingdom within, “which they believe they can perfect themselves here on earth via mysticism” thus “they will begin to ‘manifest’ Christ — become the sons of God.”3
A Civil War?
In a radio transcript titled “Blues and Grays,” Roger Oakland of Understand the Times states:
Christianity is about to be purified through a civil war, they say. Is this behavior indicative of a revival as some claim? Or is this exactly what occurred in the past when “enlightened Christians” became the “manifested sons of God”?In Kevin Reeves book, The Other Side of the River, Reeves discusses Rick Joyner. Reeves, a former elder of a Latter Rain/dominionist church, states:
[In] an article written by Rick Joyner called the Coming Civil War in the Church. . . . Joyner states he believes a civil war will soon be breaking out within the church. He states: “There is a huge portion of the church which is being held bondage to the same religious spirit that manifested itself to the Pharisees, and it will attack any new movement that arises in the church. The more anointed the new movement is, the more these traditionalists will be threatened by it, and the more vehemently they will attack it.”
Joyner’s solution for removing the people who oppose this “anointed new move” sounds rather militant. Listen to what he says:
“The longer we continue to compromise with such institutions which use manipulation or control for the sake of unity or for any reason the more it will ultimately cost us to remove the cancer from our midst.”
Joyner then went on to describe how the conflict in the church will develop:
“The coming spiritual civil war will be between the Blue’s and the Gray’s. In dreams and visions blue often represents heavenly-mindedness, and gray speaks of those who live by the power of their own minds – which is equivalent to the brain’s gray matter. This will be a conflict between those who may be genuine Christians, but who live mostly according to their natural minds and human wisdom, and those who follow the Holy Spirit.” 4
Joyner’s blatant Latter Rain beliefs were assimilated into our congregation on the wings of the mythical end-times revival which would supposedly sweep millions into the kingdom. A super-spiritual elite group of prophets and apostles will be raised up, Joyner states, and will transform the world of these last days, doing greater miracles than even the apostles who walked with our Lord. Whole nations will tremble at the mention of their names.In Final Quest, Joyner says he hears from a dead saint (one of the foolish virgins mentioned in Scripture), who has told him the things that are to come. According to researcher Sarah Leslie, “Rick Joyner was one of the ‘Kansas City Prophets’ who now wields considerable influence through his ‘prophecies’ about a coming militant church.”6 Joyner states:
Interesting. Sounds a lot easier to deal with than Jesus’ prophecy that “[Y]e shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake” (Matthew 24:9).5
We are coming to the times when passive Christianity and passive Christians will cease to exist. There is a maturity, a discipline, and a divine militancy coming upon the people of God. Those who have succumbed to humanistic and idealistic theologies may have a hard time with this, but we must understand that God is a military God. The title that He uses ten times more than any other in Scripture is “the Lord of hosts,” or “Lord of armies.” There is a martial aspect to His character that we must understand and embrace for the times and the job to which we are now coming.7We know that the Lord will return with a cloud of witnesses to bring down judgment on the earth, but we don’t believe Rick Joyner or the self-proclaimed apostles and prophets will be leading the way.
Will the Christian Church Sell Out?
During the years just prior to the 2008 presidential election, an all out effort was made by leaders in the emerging church to help get elected a liberal, far left president. Many of these leaders, such as Rick Warren, said things that made many conservative Christians feel guilty for voting on moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality. Books by emerging “progressive” authors suggested that Christians shouldn’t even become involved in politics (e.g. Shane Claiborne’s book, Jesus for President) (see our booklet on this issue). And while the older conservatives were being manipulated not to vote, young Christians were being persuaded to vote differently than their “old fashioned parents,” to vote for social justice regardless of biblical standards or lack of them. And, well, no need to say what these emerging efforts did to America.
No single political party can save the world. The Bible says that the closer we draw to the second coming of Christ, the worse the state of the world will be in. Rather than “evolving” into perfection, mankind is disintegrating.8 It’s because of man’s sin and a world that has for the most part rejected the Savior of the world. Revelation 12:9 states that the day will come when Satan will “deceiveth the whole world.” Yet just as Jesus gave the coin to pay the tax to Caesar, so too we as Christians can be responsibly active in our world. But foremost, let us remember that the Bible says we cannot serve both God and man at the same time (Matthew 6:24).The true calling of born-again believers is to preach the Gospel, make disciples, and contend for the faith. And we must never compromise by embracing dominionist agendas and interspiritual Peace Plans and joining forces with those whose goals and ambitions are contrary to the Christian commission given to us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We must ask ourselves, is a militant dominionist agenda what we really want to embrace and support? Is it what we want to serve?
In a powerful radio interview a few years ago, former radio host Ingrid Schlueter addressed this dominionist agenda. She stated:
We have a group of leaders who are horrified with the moral collapse in this country. I am horrified with the cultural collapse in this country. We have a problem in identifying and discerning why our culture is collapsing. What we are seeing around us is not fruit of Christians not caring. It’s fruit of Christians abandoning the gospel. And if we’re not going to define the gospel along biblical terms, and we’re going to allow false teachers in among us, and we’re going to link arms with said false teachers, and we’re going to work with them who are preaching another gospel, who are teaching lies, if we’re going to link arms with them to save the culture, we are not only engaged in a futile effort, but God is going to, in turn, judge that conduct. Because judgment, Scripture tells us, begins at the house of God.9A Herescope article on this issue states:
The sad fact is that great opportunities to present the message of the gospel of salvation are being lost. Precious time is being wasted . . . Those who truly need to hear a message of repentance, salvation and hope aren’t being witnessed to. Discipleship isn’t happening. . . . It is a false gospel that preaches that the culture/nation can be changed rather than focusing on the lost who will perish in hell if they do not repent. . . . And when the lost are truly saved and born again, their lives will change and this is when the miracles begin to happen and when the culture around them begins to be positively impacted by the salt and light of their changed lives.10Lighthouse Trails is dedicated to warning the sheep about last-days spiritual deception. While it is difficult to have to sound this warning at a time when many are concerned about the state of their countries and the world at large, Jesus made it very clear about how we are to view the world, behave in the world, and reach out to the unsaved. He never told his disciples to form associations with those promoting spiritual deception in order to establish a kingdom on earth. On the contrary, Jesus said:
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. (John 15:18-19)
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2 Corinthians 6:17)
My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. (John 18:36)Notes:
- “Dominionism and the Rise of Christian Imperialism” by Sarah Leslie:http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/sarah-leslie/dominionism.htm
- “Seven Mountains Set to Go Viral by Discernment Ministries”:http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/06/seven-mountains.html
- Sarah Leslie, Discernment Ministries in an e-mail conversation on 8/15/2011 with Lighthouse Trails.
- “Blues and Grays” by Roger Oakland:http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/radio%201299%20BLUES%20AND%20GRAYS.doc
- Kevin Reeves, The Other Side of the River, (Eureka, MT: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2007), p. 99.
- http://www.discernment-ministries.org/ChristianImperialism.htm
- “TAKING THE LAND—“We Are Establishing Our Eternal Place And Position Here On Earth” by Rick Joyner, 11/29/05, http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=3617
- Please watch Roger Oakland’s powerful DVD lecture series on evolution vs creation. It shows the connection between evolution and the current spiritual deception in the world today: Searching for the Truth on Origins.
- VCY America interview between Ingrid Schlueter and Sarah Leslie:http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=4590
- “May Day Prayers: What Repentance?” by Herescope:http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/010/discernment/5-may-day.htm
CrossTalk on WorldNetDaily Article – Challenge to Dominionist Leaders – The Gospel Should Come First!
Jesus Camp Film Reveals the Mystical and the Militant, Not Biblical Christianity
The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
The Coalescing Of The Christian Right With Apostolic Dominionism
Will the Evangelical Church Help Usher in the “Age of Enlightenment
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By David Dombrowski
Editor at Lighthouse Trails
The church of today is very much astir. Everywhere we turn, embellishments are being added to Christianity as if to improve it. The old ways do not seem to satisfy anymore. A great influx of new teachings and practices have exchanged the God of old as depicted in the pages of the Bible with a deity much more palatable to the post-modern mind. Brennan Manning illustrates this when he stated in one of his books, “ . . . the god who exacts the last drop of blood from His Son, so that His just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.”1 This “progressive” contemplative/emerging church has gone so far as to place in pulpits men who blaspheme God and who deny the atonement. But let us step back for a moment to see how emerging thought has developed. Such a statement did not come out of the blue, but as Ray Yungen suggests, a “creeping” effect made it all possible.2
Over the years, Christian leaders and pastors have stopped defending the faith and have exchanged the Word of God for things that outwardly appear very spiritual and promise a “quantum leap” into a “new spirituality.” Though there have always been those who deny Christ’s substitutionary death on the Cross, most of this kind of thought and teaching has been kept out of the evangelical/Protestant church. But as the walls of biblical truth were gradually torn down, it is no longer unusual to hear this kind of teaching in Christian colleges and seminaries. Much of what we see today began with men who pioneered the way to apostasy, then as a domino effect these ideas caught on and accelerated to the unbiblical thoughts and teachings we are witnessing in so many Christian circles today.
An example of this creeping effect can be seen in the Brennan Manning quote above from his 2003 book because it is nearly a word for word rendering of several lines from New Age sympathizer and mystic William Shannon’s 1995 book Silence on Fire.3 This book is the biography of Thomas Merton who possibly had more to do than anyone else in giving mysticism (namely contemplative prayer) that initial push whereby it has now avalanched into the mainline evangelical/Protestant churches. But it all began as a creeping or rippling effect with the initial momentum almost imperceptibly slow.
Over the last couple of decades, countless pastors and religious leaders across North America have pulled out for their evening reading books written by mystics like Henri Nouwen hoping to glean something to carry them to the next level of spirituality. Unfortunately, that quantum leap ends in the web of apostasy. As you may know by now, Henri Nouwen (also a great admirer of Thomas Merton) wrote in a provocative intellectual style that has intrigued many pastors, but what happened when these pastors stumbled upon these words:
Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.4Nouwen said these words toward the end of his life after spending years involved with mysticism. And yet, pastors, leaders, and professors are enamored with Nouwen. And on goes that seemingly subtle creeping in of deception slowly but surely.
Pastors of North America, it’s not too late, but the North American church is in on borrowed time. We have become weak and spoiled, and it is time to change course, return to a no-compromise faith, the kind many of us had when we first became Christians. To straddle the fence, as has been the case for way too long, has cost the church dearly and could mean a steady erosion of biblical faith and a fall into the mire of full-blown apostasy.
While the mystics and emergents attempt to strip Jesus of who He is and what He came for, we should never forget that in Him we have a priceless treasure. Isaiah said of Him, “his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Most importantly, Jesus came to redeem us from our sins:
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. (Ephesians 1:7)When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven, he used a number of illustrations, one of which should have special significance in our churches today:
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. (Matthew 13:44)While the emerging, purpose-driven, contemplative “progressives” of today are casting biblical doctrine on the dung heap more than ever, we should be holding on to it as something truly sacred, for it is biblical doctrine that defines our faith and gives to us living water. Hebrews 4:12 tells us:
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.No wonder the devil wants to undermine and get rid of the Word of God, and he is attempting to do it through many who call themselves Christians.
Contending for the faith may cost us everything we have, but it is worth it, a jewel far about price. This life will soon be over, but eternity will last a very long time. Shouldn’t we be putting our treasures in heaven no matter what it may cost us now?
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Matthew 13:45-46)Notes:
1. Brennan Manning, Above All, pp. 58-59 as quoted from Roger Oakland in Faith Undone, p. 195. (2003)
2. Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing, p. 94. (2nd ed. 2006)
3. William Shannon, Silence on Fire, pp. 109-110. (1195)
4. Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey, p. 51. ( 1998 Hardcover Edition)
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