To stay put or not to stay put: That is the question

A question often heard amongst Christians is “Where shall we go? We have nowhere to go. Our church has taken a wrong turn into contemplative spirituality. Sound biblical doctrines and teachings have been replaced by centering or contemplative prayer, labyrinth walks, deep silent meditation, and retraits. Shall we stay or shall we leave our church?” There are many disillusioned Christians who find themselves in similar situations in their churches throughout the world. As a result of their keen awareness of the paradigm shift that is taking place from a biblical to a contemplative style of worship, they feel ill at ease and have taken the liberty to speak out and warn their pastors. Sadly their legitimate concerns are most likely ignored or they are brusquely asked to leave the church by their authoritarian pastors. Could it be that these ”pastors” (hirelings) are acting out the warning in in Mathew 24:48-51?

48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
49 And shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;
50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,
51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Evidently the evil servants are those who have discarded the doctrine of Christ’s future parousia (Second Advent). Passages in Scripture such as John 14: “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” are allegedly jeopardizing their own agenda of bringing in the Kingdom of God on earth and must therefore be rejected or repainted (re-imagined). Similarly, the apocalyptic New Testament book of Revelation has either been shelved as a non-literal, symbolic narrative of the ongoing battle between good and evil or is perceived as a kind of novel that depicts scenes that have already been fulfilled in its entirety in 70 AD. Preterism, a reformed doctrine, which espouses the latter interpretation of Revelation has done more harm to God’s cause on earth than any other doctrine. I have always maintained that a wrong interpretation of eschatology usually leads to an eschewed doctrine of salvation. You only need to read Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” and in particular his doctrine on predestination to see what I mean. I’m no prophet but I foresee that the doctrine of Preterism is going to bridge the gap between Calvinism and the Emerging Church. It is already happening (see Brian McLaren’s take on Preterism below).

It is a well-known fact that the Emergent Church is not particularly interested in the end-time prophecies of the Bible, especially those that are associated with Jesus Christ’s Second advent and his promises to establish God’s Kingdom on earth. In stead they believe that they have the expertise and will to inaugurate God’s Kingdom on earth and to introduce an euphoric era of peace, prosperity and goodwill amongst all men and their religions. Here’s what Brain McLaren, one of the foremost leaders of the Emerging Church movement said in an interview.

I think that many of us from Evangelical backgrounds grew up with a sense of hopelessness about human history. We were taught to expect the return of Christ very soon, which entailed the destruction of the earth as we know it, with some new beginning on the other side, a new beginning characterized by radical discontinuity with this history. To care about earth’s long-range future, then, became an act of unfaithfulness to God and the Bible. To invest in the earth’s long-term survival seemed like a “humanist” thing to do. Thankfully, some Christians found ways to counteract this attitude of abandonment toward the earth and its history even within the “left behind” interpretive framework, but others of us still weren’t satisfied.

By getting a fresh look at what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God – not an escape from this world, but the inbreaking of God’s will into this world, not the abandonment of earth, but a radical, self-sacrificing commitment to it – we find ourselves being able to gratify desires – Spirit-inspired desires, I believe – to care about God’s creation and its future.

Along with a fresh look at the kingdom, a number of people (from a variety of camps, many of which wouldn’t agree with each other on many points) are realizing that many of the so-called apocalyptic passages in the gospels and the New Testament as a whole seem to find fulfilment in three related realities: a) the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 67-70, which included the end of the Temple and priestly sacrificial systems, and the continuity of a multi-cultural, Spirit-filled, globally-concerned community of faith. Andrew Perriman finds fascinating connections to the phrase “Son of Man” from Daniel. Taken together, these insights suggest that the New Testament writers looked forward to something that we can look back on … which, I think, motivates us to get on with the work of mission in a full and integrated sense, so that evangelism and social justice and ecology and the creation of good art and serving the poor and forgotten are deeply integrated facets of our mission. This, for me, adds sacredness and purpose to all of life, and further breaks down the old sacred-secular dualism.

All of this helps us reconnect to a more healthy and robust theology of creation too. Since it doesn’t anticipate God discarding creation like a candy-wrapper, it gives us permission to love and cherish God’s world – all facets of it – forests, economies, wild animals, weather, history, art, language, architecture, and soil. Read the entire interview here). (Emphasis added).

You may ask: “Why is it so important to have a correct and biblical view of eschatology (end-time theology)? Couldn’t we  all just agree on making this planet a better place by focusing our energies on loving and respecting one another, irrespective of what religion or creed you adhere to?” If it had been that simple, the earth would probably already have been enveloped in a vapour of Edenic proportions.

I have already briefly mentioned the Emergent Church’s resolve to re-paint, re-imagine, re-think, re-hash, re-furbish biblical truths. Many, if not most, of the Emergent Church leaders, have repeatedly pledged to do just that.  As you may know, Brian McLaren has written a book called “Everything Must Change” which says it all. One of the major changes they believe we need to make is to transform our way of thinking with regard to the eternal destiny of mankind (heaven or hell) and rather focus on the here and now. (the so-called shalom of God as Ron Martoia calls it). Acclaimed author and Emergent church leader Brian McLaren states, “More and more Christian leaders are beginning to realize that for the millions of young adults who have recently dropped out of church, Christianity is a failed religion. Why? Because it has specialized in dealing with ’spiritual needs’ to the exclusion of physical and social needs. It has focused on ‘me’ and ‘my eternal destiny,’ but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, poverty, and dysfunction.”

McLaren’s indictment that Christianity is a failure is actually an accusation directed at God Himself. Jesus Christ promised that He will build his church and not even hell itself will be able to quash its growth, but McLaren accuses the Lord of Lords and King of Kings of being a failure. Ironically, it is Brian McLaren’s and the Emergent Church’s brand of Christianity that will ultimately fail because it presents mankind with a temporary solution to its problems. It is an undeniable fact that several movements clothed in Christian garb have indeed failed many thousands of their followers of whom some, having been taught that they would prosper tenfold and a hundred-fold if they planted a seed in the Word of Faith ministries or be healed if they had faith in their faith, have eventually lost everything and even their lives after a long and painful sick bed. It may be true that many young adults have been disillusioned by many of these spiritual sorcerers, who marry and divorce their spouses at the drop of a pin. Sadly, however, many of these disillusioned young adults are being sucked into an even greater form of apostasy, believing that they have found a spiritual home in churches that promote mysticism in the form of centering prayer, labyrinth walks, silent meditation, lectio divina, stations of the cross, and much much more.

What kind of physical well-being and social stability and justice can Brian McLaren offer Christians who are martyred, tortured and murdered (by decapitation) in Islamic countries just because they love and follow Jesus Christ? Perhaps he can outdo Jesus Christ and alleviate the systemic injustice, poverty and dysfunction the persecuted Chinese Christians are experiencing in their own country because it is illegal to worship Jesus Christ? Their possessions are summarily confiscated and many are thrown in jail. Some have already lost everything: their homes, theirs wives, their children and even their own lives. Are the new Saviours of the world, the Brian McLarens and the Stephan Jouberts, going to teach them how to compromise their faith and follow their pristine examples? Is McLaren going to convince them to participate in Islam’s Ramadan festivities as he had done recently in “honour of God” or is he, like Stephan Joubert, going to convince them that their is truth in other religions such as Buddhism and therefore they do not need to remain so rigidly faithful to Jesus Christ and his doctrines? Are they going to persuade them that their own brand of abominable Christianity is the doorway to blissful happiness and success? I doubt it because the persecuted church (in these countries) does not regard physical well-being and systemic justice, alleviation of poverty and the eradication of dysfunctions as being successful. They know and have already experienced that allegiance to Jesus Christ and their faith in Him, even unto death, is not only successful but a triumphant victory over Satan and all his host. (Revelation 12:11). What would you say, Messieurs McLaren and Joubert, is the following witness a failure of biblical Christianity?

McLaren asks, “Shouldn’t a message purporting to be the best news in the world be doing better than this?” What he sets forth in this provocative, unsettling work is a “form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, balanced, that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God’s grace at work both in this life and the life to come, both to individuals and to societies and the planet as a whole.” I would like to suggest to Mr. McLaren that he and his emergent buddies (including Ron Martoia,  Stephan Joubert, Willem Nicol, Johan Geyser and Trevor Hudson) pack their bags and immediately set off for countries like Saudi Arabia and during the festival of Ramadan proclaim on the steps of their parliament that Jesus Christ is Great and the Almighty God and not Allah. At least his severed head would probably be his best legacy or gift to the world that in his last hours he proclaimed that biblical Christianity is the only religion that provides hope and salvation for a corrupt world, including the murderers who may have assisted him in getting to heaven so much the quicker. Indeed, those three pastors who were beheaded so utterly cruelly are now in heaven, gazing upon the beautiful, serene and holy face of Jesus Christ. May God grant you (the gentlemen mentioned above) the grace to cease your compromise with other religions and to proclaim Jesus Christ openly and fearlessly in whatever dangers you may encounter. That my friends is real success — never to compromise your faith and to remain loyal to Jesus Christ and all his doctrines in the face of death itself.

What shall we do. . . leave our churches?

I have often heard Christians defend their decision to stay in their churches because Jesus and Paul as well as the other disciples remained in the Synagogue despite the persecution they suffered at the hands of the church hierarchy. This may be true but there is also a very stern warning, pertaining to the end-times, that God’s children should separate themselves from the one-world end-time church.

Revelation 18: 4-8 I then heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out from her, my people, so that you may not share in her sins, neither participate in her plagues. For her iniquities (her crimes and transgressions) are piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her wickedness and [her] crimes [and calls them up for settlement]. Repay to her what she herself has paid [to others] and double [her doom] in accordance with what she has done. Mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed [for others]. To the degree that she glorified herself and revelled in her wantonness [living deliciously and luxuriously], to that measure impose on her torment and anguish and tears and mourning. Since in her heart she boasts, I am not a widow; as a queen [on a throne] I sit, and I shall never see suffering or experience sorrow—So shall her plagues (afflictions, calamities) come thick upon her in a single day, pestilence and anguish and sorrow and famine; and she shall be utterly consumed (burned up with fire), for mighty is the Lord God Who judges her.

When God says “come out from her” He actually means “come out from her” and when He sounds the alarm to warn those who refuse to come out from her that they too will suffer the consequences of his righteous judgements, He actually means it. What are these sins of which the apostle John warns us? They may be summed up as follows:

1. Apostasy – the deadly sin of falling away from the faith that was once delivered to us by the apostles.
2. Compromise – the deadly sin of surrendering some of your Christian principles to accommodate the principles of other faiths. The most common form of compromise is to claim that there are truths in other religions equal to those in Christianity.
3. Deep ecumenism -  the deadly sin of taking hands with other faiths in a joint effort to combat AIDS, poverty, illiteracy, and the likes.
4. Denying that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour – all the above sins culminate in this one, the ultimate sin of them all.

Christians who take the above sins seriously may not and dare not remain in their churches who tolerate these things.

Part 5 – A Biblical appraisal of the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church at Fairlands, Johannesburg (4-5 September 2009)

Silence: The First Language of God – by Ron Martoia

Before I invite you to wade into deeper waters with Ron Martoia I thought it might be helpful to quote to you a few potently dangerous things Alice Bailey said in her demonically inspired book “The Externalization of the Hierarchy” (which is simply the New Age equivalent of “The manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth”) to demonstrate how the post-modern Emergent Church is acting out her directives and, of course, that of the demon who inspired her to write her books. Bear in mind that she was inspired by an entity called Djwhal Khul (1 Timothy 4:1).

The Religious Problem

When we come to consider religion in the new world order, we are faced with a far more complicated problem and yet, at the same time, with a far easier one. The reason for this is that the subject of religion is one which is studied and somewhat understood by the majority of men. On theological interpretations there are wide differences; on a widespread recognition of a universal divine Intelligence or of God (by whatever name the all-embracing Life may be called) there is a general similarity of reaction. Forms of religion are so different, and the theological adherents are so fierce in their loyalties and partisanships, that the emergence of a world religion is necessarily of profound difficulty. But that emergence is very close at hand and the differences are relatively superficial. The new world religion is nearer than many think, and this is due to two things: first, the theological quarrels are mainly over non-essentials, and secondly, the younger generation is basically spiritual but quite uninterested in theology.

The intelligent youth of all countries are rapidly repudiating orthodox theology, state ecclesiasticism and the control of the church. They are neither interested in man-made interpretations of truth nor in past quarrels between the major world religions. At the same time, they are profoundly interested in the spiritual values and are earnestly seeking verification of their deep seated unvoiced recognitions. They look to no bible or system of so-called inspired spiritual knowledge and revelation, but their eyes are on the undefined larger wholes in which they seek to merge and lose themselves, such as the state, an ideology, or humanity itself. In this expression of the spirit of self-abnegation may be seen the appearance of the deepest truth of all religion and the justification of the Christian message. Christ, in His high place, cares not whether men accept the theological interpretations of scholars and churchmen, but He does care whether the keynote of His life of sacrifice and service is reproduced among men (to be poured out like water from a pitcher in service to mankind); it is immaterial to Him whether the emphasis laid upon the detail and the veracity of the Gospel story is recognized and accepted, for He is more interested that the search for truth and for subjective spiritual experience should persist; He knows that within each human heart is found that which responds instinctively to God, and that the hope of ultimate glory lies hid in the Christ-consciousness.

Therefore, in the new world order, spirituality will supersede theology; living experience will take the place of theological acceptances. The spiritual realities will emerge with increasing clarity and the form aspect will recede into the background; dynamic, expressive truth will be the keynote of the new world religion. The living Christ will assume His rightful place in human consciousness and see the fruition of His plans, sacrifice and service, but the hold of the ecclesiastical orders will weaken and disappear. Only those will remain as guides and leaders of the human spirit who speak from living experience, and who know no creedal barriers; they will recognize the onward march of revelation and the new emerging truths. These truths will be founded on the ancient realities but will be adapted to modern need and will manifest progressively the revelation of the divine nature and quality. God is now known as Intelligence [The Sage from heaven; Wisdom] and Love. (Emphasis and “to be poured out like water from a pitcher in service to mankind,“ “The Sage from heaven” and “wisdom” parenthesis added)

Compare this to what Ron Martoia said on a conference held at Conover, N.C. on January 29, 2007.

Despite decades of tweaking evangelistic methods, there is little evidence that many Christians are experiencing true life change, Ron Martoia told church leaders Jan. 29.

. . . that failure is because Christians in the Western world have been prone to think of salvation as a "point-of-sale" transaction that focuses on getting to heaven instead of appreciating that Jesus came to fulfil the Old Testament promise of shalom, a concept that suggests wholeness, wellness, and peace.

Preaching about forgiveness from sin becomes increasingly ineffective in a postmodern world where a sense of guilt and obligation is less often operative. In contemporary American culture, one can no longer assume that people identify themselves as sinners in need of grace.

"People may not think of themselves as sinners going to hell, but they seek wholeness and recognize they’re not there," he said.

Martoia’s observation that “one can no longer assume that people identify themselves as sinners in need of grace” is an understatement. Since the very beginning mankind has increasingly denied its need for God’s salvation and His undeserved grace because fallen man believes he can gain salvation through sacrificial living and selfless service (good works). In essence this is the way of Cain of which we read in the first chapter of the book of Jude. Despite God’s curse on the soil of the earth (Genesis 3:17), Cain chose to please God in the sweat of his brow (a consequential metaphor of the cursed ground and his good woks) by offering the fruit of his toil and hard work — the fruit of the cursed ground. This has remained the pattern throughout the history of mankind which is characterized by a staunch and dogged denial and rejection of God’s way of redemption through the forgiveness of sins which is obtained through the shedding of an innocent victim’s blood. No wonder the Lord Jesus said that “men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil,” their evil deeds not necessarily being all the bad things that they do but their own good works in sacrificial living and selfless service to obtain for themselves entrance into the Kingdom of God (salvation). Let’s face it, man’s best works are but filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).

John 3:18-22 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

Ron Martoia explained the process of “getting there” (to obtain wholeness) in his presentation which he called “Silence is the first language of God.” He started off by connecting to Trevor Hudson’s presentation of the lamp and the pitcher of water, wanting to talk to his audience how the lamp (i.e. the light of the world) can help us with the water (sacrificial service to mankind by the libation or pouring out of yourself). He began by saying”

I want to talk to you about Juan de Yepes Alvarez who was born in 1542, who became known as San Juan de la Cruz and we know him as Saint John of the Cross, and he was the one that said “silence is the first language of God.”  . . . Why is silence important and what kind of silence actually are we talking about?  . . . We are invited in a couple of different places in Scripture to really think about what does it mean for us to come to quiet and what kind of silence are we actually talking about? I want us to talk this morning about Psalm 46: 10 silence. In all of my conversations with pastors, spiritual formation people within the church; when I ask them . . .  how do you guys do Psalm 46:10 silence, “Be still and know that I am God?” One of the things that’s really interesting is I find people not talking so much about being still and knowing that He’s God but sitting still and knowing He’s God. They sort of get there’s an exterior silence that’s necessary but not so much how do we come to this interior silence peace. . . .

The Hebrew word “raphah” means “to sink down into as hay into a flame,” to get enveloped, to come down into this silence space where life on the exterior world becomes no conversation in our  . . . and where even my interior dialogue shhhhh, sinks and disappears.  . . . many of us are very familiar with exterior silence  . . . we talk about we are going on retraits, we are going to shut out ipods, no cell phones, maybe even no text and we’re just going to free associate; . . . we’re going to let the external world, and we’re just going to begin to reflect inside of our heads. And that’s ok, that’s a kind of silence. But I’m not convinced that exterior silence without interior silence can create the sort of dramatic transformation that will allow us to pour water out, to pour our lives out. . . . I think the goal of being the light that lights the world is that eventually you and I will come to a place that we really can do that kenosis thing, you know, pour ourselves out, the selfless outpouring. So how do we actually do that? It seems to me that Psalm 46:10 alludes to a different kind of silence. I don’t think its talking about sitting still and knowing that He’s God. . . . I think Psalm 46:10 is inviting you and I into a very different kind of silence, a silence on our inner space that allows us to stop the dialogue inside of our heads. I want you to think about this for a moment. Most of us live our lives in a constructive reality that is going on inside our heads in what we call our ego; the ego is the thing that makes sense of Ron-ness. Ron’s Ron-ness is all about the story Ron tells himself in his head.  . . . more often or not it is a a very inaccurate reflection of reality, its very constructive. And I wonder if God isn’t inviting you and I to allow that constructive reality of who I think I am to just drop. . . .

We live on auto-pilot in our lives. . . . constructing our reality in our heads. And I think the thing that Paul is inviting you and I into is he says ”I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way that I no longer live” and the last word in the Greek language is the word “ego.” The “I” in Greek is “ego,” it’s the construction of who I am and Paul says “I wanna let that thing go,” because what I realize is the more I tell the story in my head the more I construct a false sense of self. The real me is not in my head but its constructed through this egoic storytelling I tell myself about who I am and the world I’m interacting with. And most of the times its not all that healthy. Its either much more inflated that it needs to be or its more depressed that it needs to be. So Its not really an actual depiction of who I am. And I think what God invites us into . . . is that our reality, who we really, really are is rooted in the very core of how God has made us and that is the IMAGO DEI, the Image of God.

Ron Martoia went on to say that God wants us to allow the ongoing storytelling in our heads (a constructed false self or ego) to drop out and to allow the Imago Dei, my life is hid with Christ in God, I no longer live but Christ lives within me, to allow that thing to live. “Because when that lives I’m not so worried about what people think. I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers and you’ll think good of me. I’m not sleuthing around (checking things out in dictionaries, commentaries and even the Bible) trying to make sure I’m well-positioned. The ego does that, the Imago Dei, doesn’t care.” (Parenthesis mine)

Very impressive and very well articulated but there’s one thing missing in Ron Martoia’s selfless and detoxified egoic presentation thus far and that is the cross of Jesus Christ. What I find so fascinating about the emergent fraternity is that they love to quote Paul when it suits them just fine but when it does not fit into their agendas they conveniently “move far beyond trite (commonplace, stale, hackneyed, corny) bible verse quoting and engage with the deepest reflection on what it means to self-lead our own deep change and then understand how to help others do the same.” (Parenthesis mine). What that means in layman’s lingo is that we should stop reading and quoting corny Bible verses and engage in deep silent meditation (centering prayer) to orchestrate our own deep change (a false salvation) and to help others to fall into the same ditch. Paul emphatically ALSO said:

1 Corinthians 2:2 For I resolved to know nothing (to be acquainted with nothing, to make a display of the knowledge of nothing, and to be conscious of nothing) among you except Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and Him crucified.

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us [who are saved and know that they are] who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God. (Parenthesis mine)

Why, for the sake of a sound and alert mind, does Ron Martoia need his life to be hid with Christ in God and no longer live because Christ lives within him when he is able to self-lead (the essence of “selfism” or the ego is to do it my way instead of God’s way by a process of “self-leading” yourself and others) his own change and help others to do the same? I would have thought that Christ, the Hope and Glory within every believer, is sufficient to increasingly manifest the change that He alone has already accomplished in their lives. In fact Paul said that believers have already been crucified with Jesus Christ (they are already brand new creations in Christ – 2 Corinthians 5:17) and therefore they should reckon (use their God-given intellects and minds) that they are indeed dead to sin and their own egos (Romans 6:11). Not so! saith Ron Martoia. You are not supposed to reckon anything. You should synthesize your exterior and interior silence to the extent that even your interior silence shhhh’s (shuts) down and disappears.

The neurophysiologist, John Eccles, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 describes the brain as  “A machine that a ghost can operate.” Now this, to me, explains Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:1 perfectly: “BUT THE [Holy] Spirit distinctly and expressly declares that in latter times some will turn away from the faith, giving attention to deluding and seducing spirits and doctrines that demons teach.” How do the deluding and seducing spirits transmit their doctrines into the minds of the emergent fraternity? Well, that’s easy! The first thing the seducing spirits do is to inspire you to “move far beyond trite bible verse quoting.” That’s just soooo (yawn) boring and typical of the fundamentalists. No! rather get them interested in yoga, meditation and cenetring prayer and teach them how to shut down completely their thoughts (interior dialogue) — shhhhh it down until it sinks like hay into fire and disappears. And voila! “That’s exactly where we want them,” saith the seducing demons. “Now we can silently drop our ‘truths’ into their empty and blank minds.” Benjamin Creme, the so-called John the Baptist of the Maitreya Buddha, has repeatedly said”

The Day of Declaration will be the outstanding event of this century. On that day the radio and television networks of the world will be linked together. We shall see this extraordinary face on our television screens but he shall not speak. His words will drop silently into our minds in our own language. (Emphasis added). (Watch youTube video here).

“Admittedly, Ron Martoia mentions the phenomenon of being crucified with Christ but have you noticed that he deliberately changed Paul’s words when he said “he says ‘I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way that I no longer live.’” Allow me to explain. We should constantly bear in mind the the Emergent Church is on an endless journey or a pilgrimage in search of the truth. Ron Martoia underscored this once again when he said “I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers . . .” ”I am crucified with Christ” denotes finality, arrival, conclusiveness, surety, security, warranty, and a sense of having found the answers already. “I want to be crucified with Christ” on the other hand, denotes the very opposite. It is something not yet accomplished and is therefore something you must aspire for, and the way to seek it is through mystical practices such as centering prayer because it is the way to let “that thing go” (the ego). Having the answers is like a festering wound in the eyes of the emerging church because it is supposedly part and parcel of the egoic false self. It supposedly undermines the Imago Dei. Paul never said or even implied that he wants to be crucified with Christ. He said: “I am (present continuous tense) crucified with Christ.” Neither did he say he no longer lived. He said: “ . . . nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

What does Ron Martoia mean when he puts these words “I want to be crucified with Christ in such a way” into Paul of Tarsus’ mouth? Well, him having spoken so eloquently on the magical silence or silent space one enters into, it is obvious that the phrase “in such a way” does not refer to the power of Christ Jesus’ cross but to the practice of centering prayer, meditation, and even yoga.

Over the years my workout has morphed. I used to be an avid runner. But my joints just don’t like pavement pounding like they used to. Seven years ago I started down the yoga trail. Ashtanga Yoga is the power yoga, get a hard sweaty workout type of yoga. Some of you hear the word yoga and all sorts of red flags go up. Get a grip and do some reading. Yoga practice does not require you to be Buddhist, so relax. My nearly daily practice has improved so much. Yoga’s interface with a centering practice is actually a very interesting interplay. (VelocityCulture) (Ashtanga Yoga).

Now, now Ron, you just said “I’m not so worried about posturing myself and positioning myself and making sure you think I’ve got it figured out and I got all the answers and you’ll think good of me. I’m not sleuthing around (checking things out in dictionaries, commentaries and even the Bible) trying to make sure I’m well-positioned. The ego does that, the Imago Dei, doesn’t care.” And yet you claim to know better than God who said:

2 Corinthians 6:14-16 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? [What communion has the light of the lamp and the water pitcher with darkness?) And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God. (Parenthesis mine)

But then again, why would you be concerned about what God thinks when you pooh pooh trite quoting of Bible verses? Ashtanga Yoga might not require you to become a Buddhist but it does teach you how to flood your mind towards the Self.

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga Yoga's Founder, said here:

"If we practice the science of yoga, which is useful to the entire human community and which yields happiness both here and hereafter - if we practice it without fail, we will then attain physical, mental, and spiritual happiness, and our minds will flood towards the Self."

You want to let go of the constructed self (egoic self) so that the pristine Imago Dei may be fashioned in you and yet you do Ashtanga Yoga that encourages you to let your mind flood towards the Self. What is it to be, Ron? The Imago Dei or the flooding towards your egoic Self? You cannot have your bread buttered on both sides.

Someone once said, “The absence of context breeds pretext” which simply means that ignorance of the entire context of a documented story (fiction or truth) presents you with an opportunity to put forward or to conceal a true purpose or object. This is precisely what Ron Martoia intended doing when he said that Psalm 46:10 “is inviting you and I into a very different kind of silence, a silence on our inner space that allows us to stop the dialogue inside of our heads.” His real but concealed intention becomes clear when you take the whole context of Psalm 46 into account. Exterior circumstances such as poor health and financial deficits, often trigger off feelings of anxiety, fear, hopelessness, despondency, depression and even unbelief in the minds and hearts of believers. How are believers supposed to deal with these problems?

Let’s first look at the context. The context of the entire Psalm may be summed up in the words “complete trust and rest in the Lord.” To do this the believer must let go, be relaxed and not put forth any fretful, nervous or restless exertion or efforts but to leave matters with God. We find the same principle in Exodus 14:13 where Moses encourages his people not to be fearful but to “Stand still, and see the salvation of God.” Barnes writes:

In this place the word seems to be used as meaning that there was to be no anxiety; that there was to be a calm, confiding, trustful state of mind in view of the displays of the divine presence and power. The mind was to be calm, in view of the fact that God had interposed, and had shown that he was able to defend his people when surrounded by dangers. If this [was] the divine interposition when Jerusalem was threatened by the armies of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, the force and beauty of the expression will be most clearly seen. (Emphasis added)

“And know that I am God” is the core message of Psalm 46 and not to invite you and I into a different kind of silence. There are many evidences in Scripture of all the mighty works that God has done to save, protect and care for his children. These awesome and mighty works are the things we need to take as a reminder that He and He alone is God and that He alone can do these mighty works. Korah who wrote the Psalm knew how to trust and rest in the Lord of which the first verses are sufficient proof.

Psalm 46: 1-3; 7 and 10 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change And though the mountains slip into the heart of the  sea; Though its waters roar and foam, Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. . . .

The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Cease striving and know that I am God; (New American Standard Bible, 1995)

And now, the pretext which unfolds when we continue to listen to Ron Martoia. He then asked how do we do the Psalm 46:10 sort of interior silence and link it to the pouring out of water from the pitcher. To be the light of the world and experience interior transformation one needs to live a contemplative life but if that kind of interior silence does not fund a transformed life then its just nice window dressing, he said. To explain why the interior silence is so important he took his audience on a short reflective journey right back to beginning of all things. From what Martoia said, it is evident that he does not hold to a biblical interpretation of the Fall but to the Eastern Orthodox rendition thereof. The latter does not see the Imago Dei (Image of God in us) having been defaced by the infractions of God’s Law but by our primary infection which is pre-eminently the inherited gene to judge between good and not good (evil). In the medical world “primary infection” is defined as “The original outbreak of an illness against which the body has had no opportunity to build antibodies; the originating infection.” God alone has the prerogative to judge between good and not good. Here’s what Ron Martoia says on his blog velocityculture which he also reiterated at the congress:

Acknowledging everyone is imago dei is a return to some observations about the garden.

The narrative pattern and rhythm of Gen 1-2 was God naming things, separating, and pronouncing them good. There is one “not good” thing and that is that Adam is alone. So God makes for Adam a mate. Interesting in the narrative is God’s invitation to Adam to name and separate the animals. The intimation seems to be that Adam is being invited into the very activities that had in the previous narrative been the domain of God alone.

One thing however Adam IS NOT invited to do and that is to pronounce things “good” or, for that matter, “not good.” In fact God is so concerned that Adam and Eve NOT make such pronouncements that he tells them to do whatever they want in the garden, to eat at any restaurant and order off any menu, except one . . . . the tree of knowledge of good and not good (evil).

In other words God has reserved the pronouncement of good and not good, of judging between, of drawing boundary lines of in and out, the domain of God alone.  It is not something humanity has been invited to share.

You know the story. Adam and Eve eat of the tree of good and not good and instantly become judgmental.

From the garden forward in the narrative the story of humanity is the problems inherent in the drive to judge, exclude, divide, draw lines etc… The very next narrative is the Cain and Abel story debating whose sacrifice is good and whose is not good.  Death ensues when they can’t agree.

A few quick observations.

The Fall was not perpetrated by an infraction of God’s Law but by the infection of a “judge men-ailment-tality (judge mentality)? Really? This was precisely the “not-guilty” protective mechanism Adam and Eve put up when God confronted them with their disobedience. “Not Guilty Lord! ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me  . . . gave me from the tree, and I ate.’” “Not guilty Lord! ‘the serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” Any infraction of God’s Law is an inner motivated or innermost determined rebellion or disobedience. Jesus said: “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. . . . those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.“ (Matthew 15:9, 17-20). It is not the out-to-in that defiles man but the in-to-out. An infection is an outer infused or induced influence which kind of leaves you guiltless because it invades your life uninvited; it penetrates your being from without making you an innocent bystander and giving you the leeway to declare: “Not I Lord, but the thing over there and over there and over there (not in here) is the real culprit.” Indeed, God’s primary goal was to usurp the role of judging and disallowed Adam and Eve to know good from evil before He had thoroughly tested their love for Him. True love never forces itself upon anyone and therefore God placed Adam and Eve under a time of probation. Jesus once said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (Johan 14:15, 23).” God’s commandment was simple and easy,“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” and yet Adam and Eve dismally failed the test. The result was death (eternal death) and not just an infection with an ill judgement gene or mentality. If God had made judgement an off-limits zone for mankind, He would never have wanted believers to have the mind of Christ which unequivocally has the ability to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, in and out, holy and unholy, defiled and undefiled etc.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated. But the spiritual man tries [judges] all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him]. For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart. (Emphasis added)

The emergent fraternity would like you to think that they are great conversationalists but they don’t seem to know what it means to have a conversation with someone. According to Martoia Cain and Abel entered into a heated conversation or debate about whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. The only conversation that took place subsequent to God having rejected Cain’s offering of the fruit of his toil and the cursed ground, was between Himself and Cain when God tried to prevent him from murdering his brother:

Genesis 3:6, 7 And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why do you look sad and depressed and dejected? If you do well [obey Me], will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well [disobey Me], sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you, but you must master it [by being obedient to Me]. (Parenthesis mine)

As we all know, Cain did not act obediently on the divine counsel. Had he done so he would not have talked to his brother (verse eight) and clandestinely lure him into the field to kill him. There was no conversation between Cain and Abel as to whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. Cain had already decided that his was the acceptably good one and summarily killed his brother Abel. If we have to pin the judgement gene on someone, we will have to accuse Cain, and not Abel, of being judgmental. Like the sheep who was led to the slaughter, Abel did not utter a single word against his brother. There was no need for Cain and Abel to enter into a conversation or debate about whose sacrifice was good and whose was not good. They both knew perfectly well what kind of sacrifice God accepted and what kind He rejected. I have already pointed out to you earlier that a bloodless, self-produced, works orientated sacrifice is the way of Cain and all religions, except the Christian faith, are based on a works orientated salvation. Cain, like his brother, knew perfectly well that God only accepted a blood-sacrifice as a propitiation for one’s sins; his mom and dad taught them this lesson after God had slain an animal to make for them coats of skin instead of allowing them to wear their self-made (“self-lead”) aprons of leaves to cover their nudity.

Ron Martoia is doing some illegal biblical inlay work and he knows it. And why? Because he desperately wants to do away with doctrinal correctness in much the same way as Stephan Joubert who said: “When you follow Jesus as the Sage, not as the religious professional, as the guy with all the rules for right and wrong, but as the Sage from heaven . . . “ Listen again to Ron Martoia from his blog velocityculture.

This propensity to judge is precisely what puts us at odds with the world around us, and usually under the pretense of false holiness or DC (doctrinal correctness) Until we can return to the place where we see our commonality of being imago dei as far greater than our differences, we will always be barrier creating people.

Jesus prayed we would be one.  And since the doctrinal constructs we are so often hell bent on maintaining weren’t in Jesus mind, then it wasn’t doctrinal ones he was praying for. I wonder if the oneness he was seeking had to do with the affirmations we could all make about are sameness.

You may be able to fool some people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. The Jesus Ron Martoia is speaking of cannot be the Jesus of the Bible who inspired the apostle of love to write one of the most potent passages in Scripture:

2 John 9 Anyone who runs on ahead [of God] and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ [who is not content with what He taught] does not have God; but he who continues to live in the doctrine (teaching) of Christ [does have God], he has both the Father and the Son.

The interior silence which is a very specific practice will actually fund dealing with our infection of a judgmental mentality, Ron Martoia said. Paul advised us to walk in the spirit and not to fulfil the desires of the flesh — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control — but how do you do that,?  he asked. How do we deal with this in practice? How do we get to the place where love is more automatic than judgment, where patience is more automatic than impatience, where love and patience is my default in stead of judgment and impatience? The reason God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and not good, according to Ron Martoia, was because they did not have the capacity to ultimately know good from not good. As an example, he referred to circumstances in your life that may seem to be not good at that particular time but later you realize that it was for your own good and you thank God for it. I doubt whether this was the kind of good and not good (evil) God was referring to? He did not speak of good and bad (pleasant and unpleasant) circumstances but the very essence of good and evil. When God created Adam and Eve, evil in the person of Satan and his angels were already in in existence but God in his awesome wisdom did not disclose it to Adam and Eve. Disobedience to God is the very essence of evil and therefore He chose to test them by giving them a simple and easy command in stead of warning them against Satan and his wiles.

To say, as Ron Martoia, that we simply do not have the capacity to judge between good and not good and that God forbad them to eat of the tree of good and not good because it pleased Him to withhold the capacity to know good from evil from them (to make sound moral choices), is not good at all. In fact, he’s contradicting Jesus Christ who once said, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13). To be in a position to give your children good gifts you must of a necessity be able to discern between good gifts and not good (bad) gifts. Woe to our children if we as fathers were unable to distinguish between good gifts and evil gifts, although some of our parents wilfully and deliberately expose their children to evil spirits by sending them on retraits where the emergent facilitators teach them to live contemplatively through silence, labyrinths, contemplative or centering prayer and meditation. Through practices such as deep silence they are teaching their children to open their minds to demonic influences. Even Dr. Willem Nicol who teaches meditation admits this. If God did not want us to have the capacity to judge between good and evil, He would never have commanded us to test the spirits and to discern whether they proceed from God or not (1 John 4:1). That which proceeds from God must be good because “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). That which does not proceed from God, must be evil and we ought to be able to judge (discern) between the two, good or evil.

The Bible Commentator, Barnes, wrote”

Man has now come to the second step in morals—the practice. Thereby he has come to the knowledge of good and evil, not merely as an ideal, but as an actual thing. But he has attained this end, not by standing in, but by falling from, his integrity. If he had stood the test of this temptation, as he might have done, he would have come by the knowledge of good and evil equally well, but with a far different result. As he bore the image of God in his higher nature, he would have resembled him, not only in knowledge, thus honorably acquired by resisting temptation, but also in moral good, thus realized in his own act and will. As it is, he has gained some knowledge in an unlawful and disastrous way; but he has also taken in that moral evil, which is the image, not of God, but of the tempter, to whom he has yielded.

A divinely acquired knowledge between good and evil was what God had in mind for Adam and Eve but first He had to test their love and obedience toward Him by giving them a simple command. In stead they acquired an occult inspired knowledge of good and evil when they disobeyed God. As Barnes said, the Imago Dei in Adam and Eve would ultimately have resembled God not only in knowledge but also in moral perfection, knowing good from evil God’s way and not Satan’s occult (hidden knowledge) way, if they had stood the test of their temptation. The saddest thing about the Emergent Church is that they are acquiring occult knowledge through mystic practices such as silence, meditation, labyrinths, lectio divina, contemplative and centering prayer, believing that they are obtaining new divinely inspired knowledge.

Now listen carefully to what Ron Martoia said about the “judger gene,” the knowledge which he acquired through . . . . . . yes, your guess is as good as mine . . . . through deep silent meditation or contemplation. This is what he had to say.

So God says to Adam and Eve: “I don’t want you to think you have the capacity for the good [and] not good thing, so don’t eat that tree.” Right?  Adam and Eve eats of the tree and you know what happened. What’s the very first thing they did? They note in looking at each other that there are differences that presumably existed before they ate of the tree of good and not good, but they instantly judged, that’s the operative word, they instantly judge that their difference is not good. . . . Here is our infection. From that time onward in the biblical narrative, this might be a slightly new theological reading for you of Genesis, but from that point in time, what has happened is that the judger gene, we have this genetic disposition now, to judge. The very next narrative of Genesis 4 is Cain and Abel fighting about what? Who’s sacrifice is better, mine or yours? Mine not yours! I’m better you’re not! I’m in, you’re not! And what is happening? The judger gene becomes raging in them, to the degree that violence [ensues], and this is what always happens when judgment [becomes the problem], violence of some level [follows] and death results – there’s murder. The quintessential judger gene on steroids, it is in full swing in Genesis 4 and you take a look at the rest of the biblical narrative all the way into the New Testament where we have the main characters Jesus is in conversation with, what’s their earmark? JUDGEMENT! — good, not good; Its their main deal . . .

The ability to note the anatomical differences between the male and female bodies, which is hardly sinful or judgmental, is not a moral issue but a physical one; it is the looking (desire, wantonness, covetousness, lust) that constitutes the moral defect. I’m not suggesting that Adam’s desire for his wife was wrong. What I do say, is that the awareness of their nudity (“their eyes were opened”) was the immediate result, not of their ability to differentiate between their physical form and body parts, but of Eve’s desire (wantonness, lust, covetousness) to take of the forbidden tree that was pleasant to the eyes. This is, not the infection of the whole of mankind, but the very essence of mankind’s sinful nature. The entire psyche of “Self” is coached in wantonness, lust, desire, and covetousness. Throughout the rest of man’s history his desire and lust to take for himself whatever he wants have been the bedrock of his sins such as wars, murders, thefts etc. James, the brother of Jesus, knew what he was talking about when he said: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (James 4:1). Lusting  after women and vice versa is the direct result of man’s egoic wantonness. It even led to murder when a man after God’s own heart, King David, looked upon the naked body of a woman, desired her for himself, lusted after her and wilfully and unlawfully took her for himself. No wonder Job said: “I have made a covenant with my eyes; How then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). Being aware of he anatomical differences between a man and a woman has nothing to do with it; James summed up the real problem when he said: “ . . . each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1:13-14). Where did this lust come from? Where did it have its origin? Well of course, it all started when Eve looked at the forbidden tree, saw that it was pleasant and lusted to take of it for herself and also give some to her husband. No wonder Jesus said that the act of adultery is not always in the doing but in the looking, the desiring, the lusting in your heart and mind after a woman or a man. The egoic self is not a constructed phenomenon but we’ve all inherited it from Adam and Eve. There is only one effective antidote for it and that is to deny your[SELF) (your Garden inherited lusts, desires, wantonness,  covetousness), take up your cross [die to your(SELF)] and follow Him. You are not going to die to your{SELF) by doing some mystical practices such as surrender meditation, centering prayer or contemplative prayer. If you try to do it that way you are wilfully contravening Jesus’ command in Matthew 16:24. All forms of mediation, including Yoga, do not enable you to let go of your so-called constructed egoic self; it rather nourishes it to become even bigger ego’s, as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga Yoga’s Founder, himself said “ . . . if we practice it without fail, we will then attain physical, mental, and spiritual happiness, and our minds will flood towards the Self." 

Ron Martoia continued to say:

If you and I cannot experience spiritual formation due to our spirituality practice that begins to shift the judger gene, spiritual formation is impossible, because I will always try to measure myself against you. And every single time I slip into measuring myself against you I in fact create a barrier between you and me, automatically . . . The command is love my neighbour as I love myself. I can’t do that! I’m to busy judging you. The judger gene, in full swing.

If your kid is on drugs and you forcefully place him in a rehab institution, are you judging him? No, of course not, you’re judging the habit that’s killing him and not him. In fact you are proving your love for him by judging his dangerous filthy habits. To get to the nitty-gritty of Ron Martoia’s so-called judger gene we need to remind ourselves of what really happened when Cain and Abel brought two different kinds of sacrifices because, you see, Cain’s murder of his brother was not just about measuring himself against Abel and vice versa; it was not just about posturing themselves and positioning themselves and making sure they thought each of them had it figured all out and that they had all the answers . . .” It involves the essence of a divinely inspired religion which is expressed in absolute obedience to God in the way we are permitted to approach Him, the One and only infinitely holy God.  When God commanded Moses to build an altar he said: “And if you will make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you lift up a tool upon it you have polluted it (Exodus 20:25).” Any effort on man’s part to please and appease God with his own cleverly devised (beautifully hewn) altars (good works) is polluted. It cannot please God in the very least. Cain’s offering, having been the produce of his own toil and sweat from the ground which God had cursed, was polluted. Abel’s offering, on the other hand, was not a bloodless one like that of Cain, but the sacrifice of an innocent victim’s life (which is in the blood – see Leviticus 17:11). Did you notice the essence of God’s only acceptable offering? (Hebrews 9:22) “It is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul” and not man’s own silly devised efforts to accrue spiritual formation by means of a contemplative lifestyle or the practice of silence. I shudder to think that Ron Martoia has shunned God’s only acceptable sacrifice for the atonement of our sins, i.e. the bloody cross of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:18). May God open his eyes to his folly and grant him the grace to repent of his evil ways. He is on a path that looks right but the end thereof leads to destruction (Proverbs 14:12). By the by, his verse totally destroys Stephan Joubert’s notion that Jesus Christ never linked onto the priestly or holy story of who is in and who is out but onto the wisdom story in Proverbs. The road that leads to destruction is the “out” road. Guess what’s the “in” road? (Matthew 7:13, 14)

Before I continue, I want to focus your attention on Ron Martoia’s words: “The judger gene becomes raging in them, to the degree that violence [ensues], and this is what always happens when judgment [becomes the problem], violence of some level [follows] and death results – there’s murder.” Nowhere in the Genesis narrative are we told that Cain and Abel engaged in an argument about whose sacrifice was the best and who was in and who was out. In fact, we are told that God himself decided whose sacrifice was acceptable to Him and whose was not, who was in and who was out (Genesis 4:4 and 5). If, according to Martoia, God alone has the capacity to judge between good and not good and withheld the ability to judge between good and not good from mankind, why does‘nt he accept God’s judgement of Cain and Abel’s sacrifices, which He judged as being not good and good respectively? Surely, if we cannot trust our own judgment between good and evil we should at least trust God’s judgement between good and not good and the only way to do it is to know his Word. We are admonished to prove all things and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21).  How are we going to hold fast to the things that are good if we are not able to judge between what is good and what’s not? How do we do it? There’s only one answer – through His infallible and immutable Word. (2 Timothy 2:15).

Finally, Ron Martoia comes to the point where he presents his audience with a solution to the problem of the judger gene. Well of course one could have anticipated that he would say that “Inner Intentional Silence,” a term he probably inherited from Cynthia Bourgeault whose book "Centering prayer and Inner Awakening” he promotes as one of the best on the subject, is the key. He distinguishes between two kinds of spiritualities — kataphatic of which we have quite a lot and apophatic. Kataphatic spirituality relies on images, text, ideas, creation to come to know God. Lectio Divina is a kataphatic spiritual practice. All of this is very mental and imaginative, according to Ron Martoia. Apophatic spirituality uses no thought, no text, no image, no idea, to connect to God, to come to know God, to connect to God through the spirit. He expands his definition of the two kinds of spiritualities into three types of meditational prayer.

1. Concentrative methods of prayer which is the most known an practiced. This entails concentrating on an exterior object such as a verse, a word, a candle, a cross etc.

2. Awareness methods of meditation. This is also known as insight meditation where you align yourself with your inner observer and simply watch the thoughts and the emotions that arise.

3. Surrender methods of meditation. This kind of meditation is even simpler than the others. As thoughts arise they aren’t observed or labelled, they are simply released and you let them go.

The surrender methods of meditation are completely different from all the others because they are “prayers” (a misnomer) where you do not say anything to God and neither is the objective to hear anything from God, Martoia continued to say. So what’s the point? The point is, according to Martoia, to sit before God and as thoughts arise in you to let them go. You do not analyze them and you do not think about them. Daydreaming is usually our biggest detractor in prayer and we don’t have the ability to turn off the daydreaming and to shut down the imagination. The Desert Fathers believed that imagination was the playground of the devil while many Christians believe that complete thoughtlessness (a complete passive mind) opens you up to demonic influences. It demonstrates how the pendulum swings from one opinion to the next throughout the Christian tradition. The issue is, said Martoia, that we do need kataphatic spirituality but what we do not have as part of our repertoire is an apophatic practice. This means that you should sit still before God for about twenty minutes every day and when thoughts arise to let them go. “So what’s the point?” Martoia asked again. “The whole point of this centering practice is that the practice of surrender, letting go of those thoughts when they arise, that that practice of surrender would become a pattern of surrender and the core gesture of my soul.” The purpose of practice is to accomplish through training what we previously could not do through trying, as Dallas Willard coined it. Thus the muscle of letting go is trained very slowly but distinctly so that when you experience the judger gene wanting to come to the fore you can let it go. And suddenly the infection with which you are so deeply infected is rooted out. As Thomas Keating said, you’re not supposed to hear anything but to be still in the presence of God so that in the gap between thoughts, in the moment of complete silence, God can do deep, deep down in your ego what you cannot even understand. Thomas Keating calls it “divine therapy.” When your false self, ego or shadow is deconstructed by the practice of centering prayer and deep silence you realize that judgment, envy, lust, impatience, your default settings slowly disappear. You’re exercising the muscle of letting go and the infection of the garden begins to be dealt with in a very specific and concrete way.

If Adam and Eve and subsequently all their offspring (Cain and Abel and all the inhabitants throughout the antediluvian world) were infected by the judger gene and the surrender method of meditation (exercising the muscle of letting go every thought that feeds the false and self-constructed egoic self) was the only way to deal with their primary infection in a very specific and concrete way, why didn’t God at least make an attempt to tell them what the solution would be for their disastrous dilemma? Surely, such a terrible infection that poisoned the whole of the human race warrants the know-how of an effective antidote, especially when the God Ron Martoia speaks of is a God of love who wishes his imago dei to reside in every single human being. Why didn’t He rather allow Adam and Eve to remain in the garden of Eden and through deep exterior an interior silence (apophatic surrender meditation), which usually takes more than five years to master, (1) teach them to “let go” of the egoic false self’s judger gene infection? Adam could easily have surpassed the magical five year period of a novice; he reached the hoary, antediluvian old age of 930 years which was probably enough time to master the apophatic surrender method of meditation. If the apophatic surrender method of meditation was able to disinfect Noah and his family of their primary infection with the judger gene, why didn’t God intervene when he brought a sacrifice on an altar of every clean beast that was with him in the ark immediately after the great Flood and say to him? — Noah, I cannot stand the sweet savour of your offering. Come here and let me teach you how to get rid of your judger gene. (Genesis 8:20, 21). Why didn’t He, when He wanted to test Abraham’s love for Him and ultimately remind him that the substitutionary death of His only Son would finally settle the problem of sin, remind him of the apophatic surrender method of meditation in stead of commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac to Him?

God always works within the parameters of Christ’s cross; He never circumvents or bypasses the cross when He deals with man in the act of salvation and sanctification. Christ’s cross is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). Full stop! Any other way, practice, method, mode, system, technique or whatever man has devised to accomplish what God alone has already accomplished through the cross of his Son, is equal to the way of Cain. God cannot accept it and has no other option but to reject it because, like Cain’s offering, it is polluted. The notion that Adam and Eve’s Fall was not an inward (interior) act of rebellion and disobedience toward God (in short, sin) but an outward  (exterior) infection of the Imago Dei, is not only highly deceptive but an outright rejection of the cross and everything it represents — blood, faith, propitiation, forgiveness, salvation, sanctification. Having conveniently dispelled of all these necessary things, the only thing left for you to do is to sit before God, go into a deep, deep trance of nothingness and let go every thought that enters your mind so that God can get a chance to do deep deep in your ego what you cannot even understand. This implies that God depends on the right conditions you have created for Him before He can do his profound work in you. Indeed, you become the initiator in a long process (five years and even more) for God to restore his Imago Dei in you.

Salvation, in biblical terms, at its very core is God having made his abode in a repentant sinner’s quickened spirit and who has been washed and cleansed in the blood of Christ (Revelation 3:20). The emergent fraternity have discarded the biblical way of salvation and introduced a contemplative kind of redemption. The following quote is an excerpt from "Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening" by Cynthia Bourgeault.

Thomas Merton said: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Notice how deftly Merton navigates the tricky theological waters here. His words are bold, in that he claims — to my knowledge more clearly than any other Christian mystical writer – that at the center of our being is an innermost point of truth which shares not only the likeness, but perhaps even the substance of God’s own being. And yet, following the bent of Christian tradition, he makes it absolutely clear that access to this center is not at our command; it is entered only through the gateway of our complete poverty and nothingness.

The divine indwelling is the cornerstone of contemplative prayer. Thomas Keating refers to it as "our personal big bang," for it reveals the Source of our own being — the explosion of divine love into form which first gave rise to our personal life. It also reveals the direction in which our hearts must travel for a constantly renewed intimacy with this Source. As we enter contemplative prayer, we draw near the wellspring from which our being flows. (Emphasis added)

There is no cross, no blood, no conviction of sin, no faith, no forgiveness of sin, in this so-called divine indwelling which is supposed to be in everybody. Ron Martoia mentioned that Paul taught us what we should do to walk in the spirit so as not to fulfil the desires of the flesh but that he did not give us any instructions on how to do it. Well, of course, the solution for our deep egoic problems will slip through your fingers when you substitute a mystical contemplative technique for the cross of Jesus Christ. I suggest that he begins to alert his mind to discover the one and only antidote for our sinful nature (Adamic nature) which we find in Jesus words:

Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Paul expressed this truth as follows:

Romans 6: 10-19 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

In Romans 12: 1 Pauls says: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” The word for reasonable is “logikos” which means to “pertain to your reason and logic.” Ron Martoia says, no, we must empty our minds by means of the surrender kind of contemplative prayer where we allow no thought, no idea, no image, no text to enter our minds (apophatic spirituality). You don’t need that Ron. All you need is the cross, a willingness to deny yourself and take up your own cross (die to your yourself) daily, follow Jesus and to foster an alert mind.  But first, you need to repent of your ways. I’m talking about a biblical metanoic experience.

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(1) Ron Martoia said that he has been doing surrender mediation for about five years which makes him a mere novice. It takes much longer to master the art of letting go your thoughts in this kind of apophatic meditation. Is that the reason why we need to believe in evolution that developed over a period of billions of years? Surely that would have been sufficient for billions of people to master the apophatic or surrender method of meditation.

Who is Stephan Joubert’s Sage from Heaven?

I have already commented rather extensively on Stephan’s Joubert’s paper entitled “Being a Radical Pilgrim and Prophet” which he delivered at the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg from 4 to 5 September 2009. He spoke on how to follow the Sage from heaven who is the Sophia (Wisdom) of God. As a rebuttal to his appellative of Jesus Christ as the Sage from heaven, I pointed out that God the Father never referred to Jesus as a sage but always as His Son in whom He is well-pleased. When Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am? Peter did not say “You are the Sage from heaven” but “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

It is imperative to note that the titles “the Christ” and “the Son of the Living God” are two closely knit and inseparable descriptions of Jesus Christ and can only be attributed to Him and no one else. Christians are called sons and daughters of the most high God but never “the Christ.” Yes! they are the body of Christ but never “the Christ.” His Name is Jesus Christ; “Jesus” which means that He saves repentant sinners from their sins and “the Christ” (“the Anointed One”) which means that He was anointed by the Holy Spirit to accomplish his great redemptive work on the cross. There is a growing and deliberate tendency amongst the clergy of the Emergent Church to steer away from the unique title of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In stead, they use titles that can easily be attributed, not only to Him, but to any other so-called wise person or sage. In this way they are very subtly and shrewdly stripping Jesus Christ of his uniqueness and bringing Him on par with the sages and wise persons of other religions. To illustrate I would like to present you with an alarming video I found on the internet called Who is Maitreya?

 

I’m sure you didn’t miss the words:

In esoteric tradition the Christ is not the name of an individual but an Office in the Hierarchy.

It not only denies the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God but also declares that any person in the Hierarchy (Ascended Masters) may be overshadowed by the Christ-Office to accomplish certain goals on the earth. The present holder of this Office, in accordance with the esoteric wisdom of the Ascended Masters (Satan’s fallen angels), is Maitreya Buddha who allegedly overshadowed Jesus of Nazareth, his disciple. Maitreya is allegedly the embodiment of the Christ principle, the energy of Love, the Lord of Love in the same way his brother the Buddha was the Lord of Wisdom.

Could it be that Stephan Joubert, when referring to Jesus Christ as the Sage from heaven, was actually referring to the Buddha? As you have seen, the above video also claims that the various religions are awaiting the return of their own sages of wisdom or World Teachers; the Christians await Christ, the Hindus await Krishna; the Muslims await the Imam Mahdi, the Jews await their Messiah and the Buddhists are awaiting the Maitreya Buddha. These are all different names for one and the same individual, the World Teacher (a man of great Wisdom). Let me say it bluntly: it obviously means that many clergy, when they speak of the Christ, they are actually simultaneously speaking of Krishna, the Imam Mahdi, the Messiah and the Maitreya Buddha because they all represent one individual. Have you noticed that Stephan Joubert refers to Jesus Christ as the Sage from heaven and not as the One sent from and by God? Stephan’s Joubert’s heaven is the New Age heaven which believes that heaven is already on earth because everything is already supposedly holy. Do you remember the following quote from Stephan Joubert’s sermon in the valley of the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg?

Another thing that you need to know: Life is holy, life is holy. When you follow Jesus as the Sage, not as the religious professional, as the guy with all the rules for right and wrong, but as the Sage from heaven, Jesus will tell you. You will learn from Him: Life is holy. Every single person that you will cross paths with will be holy. Every place you are will be holy. So this is the journey. The pilgrimage is not to go to holy places. Every morning you wake up, if, you’re on a pilgrimage. When you have coffee at Mug and Bean. Do that more [often]. That’s on a pilgrimage.

Now compare this to the following quote form “The New Age Journal” written by an ordained interfaith minister, John C. Robinson.

I experience Heaven on Earth every day: an incredibly beautiful, peaceful and holy place all around me where problems dissolve into joy, people appear resplendent, and the everyday world is transfigured into a timeless and enchanted wonderland. I know I’m not crazy because I’m a clinical psychologist. And, as an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in ministry, I know what the mystics from every tradition have been us for centuries: Heaven on Earth is already here when we’re awake enough to see it! It is real and you can find it, too, but you have to learn how to see again.

How do you learn how to see again? Well, you will need to go on the pilgrimage or journey of the Emergent Church. As Maitreya himself has said it so Satanically succinctly.

My task will be to take you on a journey into Truth, into the Blessed Country of Love, and there to show you to yourselves as God.

A short course in how to protect the integrity and honour of false apostles and teachers

I have said it on many previous occasions and would like to reiterate it here again: The Emergent Church leaders are more concerned about their own integrity and honour than that of Jesus Christ and his immutable Word. Here’s how Stephan Joubert pleaded for the protection of the integrity and honour of his Emergent brothers and sisters.

Always protect the integrity of other people. It’s your calling as a Christian to first believe the very best of other people, like 1 Corinthians 13 teaches. Listen again, the Lord expects you to honor, serve and respect fellow-believers and other people. Don’t summarily believe perceptions. What does faith help if you play along with the rest of the world’s game of gossip, suspicion spreading and breaking down? Don’t live with a critical heart in 2010 — it’ll make you spiritually sick. Rather practice yourself as a thinking, careful believer that lives with God’s wisdom.

Nowhere in the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation are we commanded to protect the integrity of anyone who strays and apostatizes from the faith as we find it in the Word of God. In fact, we are advised not to have any fellowship whatsoever with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather to reprove them ( Ephesians 5:11). Whoa! just wait a minute, you may want to caution me. Who are you to associate people with integrity with darkness? Oh! sorry, you’re right; they are not to be associated with darkness but light. Who am I to associate them with darkness when Paul connected them to light.

2 Corinthians 11:12-14 But what I do, I will continue to do, [for I am determined to maintain this independence] in order to cut off the claim of those who would like [to find an occasion and incentive] to claim that in their boasted [mission] they work on the same terms that we do. or such men are false apostles [spurious, counterfeits], deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles (special messengers) of Christ (the Messiah). And it is no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light;

Ah! they are not light but are pretending to be light-bearers of the truth; they want you to believe that they are your fellow-believers, that they are fellow-followers of Jesus Christ, that they truly lovethe Lord (like Brian McLaren who loves Him so much that he participated in the festival of Ramadan), that they are proclaiming the truth and nothing but the truth (despite the Mosaic Church’s deliberate overhead screen flashings of a Buddha statue in their so-called Teatro). Allow me to remind you, Stephan, that the person who wrote the magnanimous Hymn of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is the very same person who wrote the following:

Galatians 1:8-9 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to and different from that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment)! As we said before, so I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel different from or contrary to that which you received [from us], let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment)!

“Let him be accursed” is a very compassionate way of expressing ones love for people with integrity. Not so? Well! Paul was merely obeying his Master’s prerequisite for showing his love for Him and that requirement is to feed and protect God’s sheep and lambs against wolves in sheep’s clothing. That’s true love. Read again John 21 from verse 15 to learn what true wisdom and love is.

No! a thousand times no. A discerning mind will never make you sick. Indeed, it is the one true sign of a spiritually mature man. Listen again to what Paul said, the great missionary who wrote 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 2:15 But the spiritual man tries all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him].

Stop whinging and whining over your own integrity and honour and begin to make the integrity and honour of Jesus Christ and his Word your priority number ONE. Begin to contend for the faith that was once delivered to us by the true apostles of Jesus Christ and stop preaching another Gospel, another Jesus and another Spirit.

ADDENDUM

Stephan Joubert says:

Don’t live with a critical heart in 2010 — it’ll make you spiritually sick. Rather practice yourself as a thinking, careful believer that lives with God’s wisdom.

He does not only contradict himself but his fellow-pilgrims on their journey away from God as well. You may recall that I commented on Johan Geyser’s presentation “A Holy Longing” at the Mosaic Congress (4 to 5 September 2009, Fairlands, Johannesburg) where he said that we should stop thinking.  An yet, Stephan Joubert says that we should practice ourselves as thinking, careful belivers. Indeed, I agree but must sadly say that he is not practicing what he is preaching. Who should we believe and follow as our example – Stephan Joubert or Johan Geyser? As I said earlier, a thinking Christian is a discerning Chritian, one who takes passages in Scripture such as 1 John 4:1 very sereiously. A  thinking and careful Christian always tests what others say, preach and practice in the light of God’s Word, no matter how close they are  to you as family or friends. Jesus said if you love them more than what you love him you cannot be his disciple. Nonetheless, the Emergent fraternity tolerate one another despite the most horrific anti-biblical things some of them say and do in public. Perhaps Stephan Joubert should begin to preach on how to radically love God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in stead of how to be a radical prophet and pilgrim. A radical lover of God is one who is prepared to sever his association with persons who do no preach the unadulterated Word of God. The apostle of love warned us to not even greet them (bid your “shalom” upon them – 2 John 1:10).

“Life generously” (a.k.a. Stephan Joubert)

It just amazes me over and over again how nimbly the emergent fraternity can wring out like a sponge the essentials of certain biblical passages and conveniently highlight the lesser important essentials to fit their tailor-made agendas. Stephan Joubert proved this once again in his article “Life generously” written on 7 January on the e-church website. Before we venture into Joubert’s pearl of wisdom, we need to take a closer look at the essentials in Acts 20:17-38.

FIRST ESSENTIAL

Verse 17 to 21 From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he said to them, “You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is abundantly clear that Paul’s first priority in life was to proclaim God’s Gospel of Salvation to both the Jews and Gentiles which includes repentance to Him (a return to Him) and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. He preached and taught it from house to house, regardless of the many plots the Jews and the Gentiles made to kill him. Paul remained faithful to the unadulterated teaching and preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. Please note carefully that Paul’s application of the word “repentance” is used in close conjunction with the words “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Whereas the Emergent fraternity defines “metanoia” as a “moving beyond your reason” (Marcus Borg) or “repentance, awakening, getting beyond our current mind or condition” (Ron Martoia), (mainly with regard to your worldview and never with regard to your sinful and lost status before God). On page 8 of the brochure that was handed out at the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg from 4 to 5 September 2009, Stephan Joubert quoted Thomas Moore from his book “Writing in the sand. Jesus and the Soul in the Gospels” (Hay House 2009)

Metanioa is the process by which you enter the kingdom. Jesus asks for a deep shift in worldview . . . One of the most difficult things to do is to change the way you imagine your place in life. Nothing is more challenging. On the other hand, once this takes place, nothing could be more vitalizing. Truly, it’s as if you are born a second time. Your eyes open to a different world . . . Metanoia comes at great cost. You are to give up an understanding of life that has been in place for a long time.

What is the process and the great cost at which the metanoia comes? In the emergent lingo it means but one thing — a sacrificial, poured out life, and service to the poor, the destitute and the downtrodden, and to engage the complexities and chaos of life. A biblical metanoia, in contrast to that of the Emergent Church’s rendering thereof, is not one of the most difficult things to do and neither does it involve the way you imagine your place in life. The biblical metanoia is about knowing and understanding your place (position) in the sight of an awesomely holy God — the position of a lost sinner who desperately needs to be saved by the grace of God through his Son Jesus Christ. It is not a deep shift in your worldview that constitutes a genuine metanoia but a profound shift in your view of your self in the light of God’s Word. Should you believe that you can enter the kingdom of God through a process of living a sacrificial poured out life and service to the community with the intention of making a better place of our world or to change it, you are misleading yourself. In fact, your metanoia experience deceives you into believing that your altruistic service to mankind has redemptive healing qualities which in turn puffs up and makes you believe you are the cat’s whiskers. Your selfless community work and “life generously” rallying cry may have a wholesome impact on peoples’ lives but it cannot reconcile them to God, especially when the Gospel of salvation of Jesus Christ is set aside for the sake of a poured out sacrificial lifestyle. As I indicated earlier in some of my previous comments, Mother Theresa lived an excellent poured out sacrificial lifestyle of service in Calcutta, India but it never benefitted the poor wretched people she took care of because she never preached and taught them the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul, in complete agreement with the Greek Language, defines “metanoia” in superb harmony with God’s intended meaning of the word. In the Greek the words repentance (“metanoia”) and faith (“pistis”) are joined together by one article which stresses two but inseparable aspects of trust in Jesus Christ. The moment a person places his trust in Christ he simultaneously turns away from (repents of) his former unbelief. One cannot speak of a true biblical “metanoia” without a genuine turning away from unbelief to faith in Jesus Christ and his finished sacrificial work on the cross of Calvary. Anything short of this is not true salvation. In fact it is faith (“pistis”) in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross that constitutes a genuine “metanoia”

SECOND ESSENTIAL

Verses 24-25 But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to  testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face.

The course and ministry Paul endeavoured to finish faithfully was not a Mother Theresa-tistic or a Stephan Joubert-tistic kind of living to care for the poor and the destitute but to testify solemnly of the Gospel of grace of God. These two verses renounce entirely the Emergent Church’s “life generously” sacrificial kind of living and service to the community, the kind that is based on Mother Theresa’s philanthropic living amongst the Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta without her ever having proclaimed the Gospel of Christ to them so that they might be saved. Paul poured his life out and did not account it as dear to himself, to what end?  . . . to alleviate the extreme poverty of the poor; to care for the destitute and the downtrodden; to muster an army of generous givers? If this had been the purpose of Paul’s ministry he would not have been any better than Maitreya who promises to bring peace on earth by teaching mankind how to share their resources with their poor brothers and sisters. In a full-page advert which appeared in the Rand Daily Mail on Saturday, 24 April 1982, and many newspapers throughout the world the so-called Maitreya said the following amongst other things:

My task will be to show you how to live together peacefully as brothers. This is simpler than you imagine, My friends, for it requires only the acceptance of sharing.

How can you be content with the modes within which you now live: when millions starve and die in squalor; when the rich parade their wealth before the poor; when each man is his neighbor’s enemy; when no man trusts his brother?

Allow me to show you the way forward into a simpler life where no man lacks; where no two are alike; where the Joy of Brotherhood manifests through all men.

Take your brother’s needs as the measure of your action and solve the problems of the world.

Have you noticed the key words “to lift our consciousness” and “to make us aware of the significance of the time we live in?” These are words and phrases that pop up ever so frequently in the vocabulary of the emergent fraternity. “To “lift our consciousness” is just another way of saying “to move beyond our present state of mind” or “to move beyond reason” and “to make us aware of the significance of the time we live in” is another way of articulating the emergents’ metanoia experience of changing your worldview. When you begin to come into sync with the quantum changes in mankind’s worldview you will experience a metanoia which, according to the emergent fraternity “is like a second birth.

Paul’s essentials were to preach the coming Kingdom of God on earth when his Son, Jesus Christ, returns to set up his millennium reign of peace on earth and not a counterfeit kingdom which, according to Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Maitreya, will be ushered in right here and now through sacrificial living of service to mankind and to share your resources. In the words of Stephan Joubert this is to “Life (sic) genereously.” Here are his words:

Especially precious is the apostle’s words that he worked hard to always have something to give to the poor! . . .

In these deep words of Paul we encounter the complete heart of the gospel in a nutshell, namely that we must always life generously.

Nice words, but what about sharing, preaching and teaching the only Gospel of salvation? To work hard so that you always may have something to give to the poor and “life generously” is the complete heart of the Gospel in a nutshell??? Really??? Paul would hardly ever have been persecuted by his own brethren, the Jews, and they would scarcely have plotted to kill him if he had presented to them Stephan Joubert’s brand of the “heart of the Gospel in a nutshell.” Wow! Paul, how could you have been so stupid? If only you had preached Joubert’s brand of the “heart of the Gospel in a nutshell” you could have escaped all the dreadful persecutions, hardships and hatred you encountered owing to the offense of the cross. Is this te wisdom Joubert receives from his Sage from heaven?

THIRD ESSENTIAL

Before I quote to you the originally written words of Paul in verses 26 to 31 I would first like to transcribe it in the way the Emergent Church wants you to understand it:

Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from living generously and sacrificially among you, sharing my income and resources with the poor in Jerusalem, Galatia, Corinth, Ephesus, etc. Be on guard for yourself and the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to share their resources with the poor who have learnt to walk in the rhythms of the Sage from heaven. I know that after my departure compassionate shepherds will come in among you, not neglecting the flock; and from your own selves men will arise, speaking encouraging things, to draw them with you in following the Sage from heaven. Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to rejoice over you with much tears of happiness.

Now for the original.

Verse 26 to 31 “Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. “For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. “Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.

Paul alludes to Ezekiel 33:1-6 where God appointed the prophet to be a watchman and to warn his people of impending dangers. He would be innocent of their blood if he had warned them and they refused to listen to him. If he failed to warn them and they perished because of his disobedience God would require their blood (souls, Leviticus 17:11) of the watchman’s hands. God is not going to require peoples’ blood from you because you neglected the poor, but because you refused to preach the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ to them. Paul preached the whole counsel or purpose of God to everyone he met on his missionary journeys. Every single individual, every congregation and church he visited knew what the whole counsel of God was. None of them will ever be able to point a finger at Paul and accuse him of negligence and failure to tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This passage in Acts 20 is the core section of Paul’s message and yet Stephan Joubert ignores it completely and places the emphasis on verse 35: “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “It is more blessed to give than to receive” are not found in the four Gospels. They present an oral tradition passed on to the early church. Nonetheless, it remains one of the most important and precious unrecorded sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is better to give than to receive. God gave his Son to a lost world and He died on a cross while we were yet undeserving sinners. The question is: who were the poor and the weak for whom Paul and the churches he visited on his missionary journeys provided? Did they provide for every single poor person they encountered? Although not stated here, the reason for Paul’s visit to Jerusalem was evidently to take the offering from churches to the poor saints in Jerusalem (24:17). In verse 34 Paul stated that he worked hard to provide for himself and also for those believers who were with him. From this it is evident that Paul first and foremost provided for the poor, infirm and weak believers (not unbelievers). His first responsibility was to believers and then unbelievers (Galatians 6:10), but he never believed that he could change the world or bring about justice through his altruistic work and he never believed that he could usher in the Kingdom of God by living sacrificially in selfless service to mankind. Paul never preached a social Gospel in an effort to make the world a better place. In fact he emphatically declared the following:

1 Thessalonians 5:3 When people are saying, All is well and secure, and, There is peace and safety, then in a moment unforeseen destruction (ruin and death) will come upon them as suddenly as labor pains come upon a woman with child; and they shall by no means escape, for there will be no escape.

Indeed, his words echo those of Daniel in Daniel 8:25

Daniel 8: 25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.

Many clergy, especially those in the Emergent Church, governments, NGO’s and the like have made the eradication of global poverty their main goal in life for they believe if and when they have accomplished their goal, justice, peace and unity amongst all nations and religions will reign and the Kingdom of God will come on earth. You only need to Google “New Age,” “Maitreya,” “New World Order,” “sharing,” New Economy,” and listen to the speeches of world leaders to realize how fundamentally it has changed the Gospel of salvation to a social Gospel where sound doctrine is of very little value. Contrary to the general belief that poverty is to be eradicated the Bible often exemplifies poverty and spells out the causes of poverty. Consider the following passages in Scripture:

Proverbs 21:17 He who loves pleasure will become a poor man; He who loves wine and oil will not become rich.

Proverbs 28: 22 He who has an evil and covetous eye hastens to be rich and knows not that want will come upon him.

Proverbs 23:21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

Proverbs 10: 4 He becomes poor who works with a slack and idle hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Proverbs 20:13 Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes and you will be satisfied with bread.

Proverbs 28:19 He who cultivates his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless people and pursuits will have poverty enough.

Proverbs 19:22 That which is desired in a man is loyalty and kindness [and his glory and delight are his giving], but a poor man is better than a liar.(There are many false teachers and apostles in our midst today who are telling God’s flock a bunch of lies]

Proverbs 28:6 Better is the poor man who walks in his integrity than he who willfully goes in double and wrong ways, though he is rich. (Double and wrong ways allude to wrong doctrines, i.e. lies).

Proverbs 19:1 BETTER IS a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is perverse in his speech and is a [self-confident] fool. [Perverse speech once again alludes to lies and false doctrines]

I sincerely hope Stephan Joubert is aware of the fact that every single verse above comes from the wisdom book of Proverbs which he views as the example of everyday living and teaches you how to follow the Sage from heaven.

Matthew 6:31-33 Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all. But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.

Psalm 37:25 I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the [uncompromisingly] righteous forsaken or their seed begging bread.

In spite of Paul’s clear example of preaching and teaching the Gospel of salvation so that lost souls may be saved and that he may be free of their blood, Stephan Joubert ends his clarion of deep ecumenical and mystical spirituality as follows:

. . . . we also work hard to be able to care for those who are suffering. Our biggest investments in God’s kingdom is to reach out every time we encounter someone that’s less privileged than ourselves. So, how about a fresh re-appreciation of Acts 20:35 here in the new year? (Emphasis added)

And so also is it Maitreya’s biggest investment!

How about a fresh re-appreciation and application of Acts 20:17-31?

Part 4b – A biblical appraisal of the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg (4-5 Sept. 2009)

Session 3: Being a radical pilgrim and prophet – Stephan Joubert

To summarize what Stephan Joubert has said so far the following points which are probably the main elements of his presentation, may be highlighted:

1. The mystical or  contemplative approach to the making or grooming of Christ-followers is to teach people from every religious persuasion how to follow the Sage from heaven by convincing them that this Sage never linked onto the purity or priestly story (no one is excluded by being labelled “saved or unsaved,” “in or out,” “clean or unclean,” “us and them,” “holy and unholy”) but onto the wisdom story (particularly in the book of Proverbs which deals with the practical day to day living realities).

The demarcation or dividing line between holy and unholy, clean and unclean, and saved and unsaved must be eradicated at all cost because it implies judgment, division, separateness and unconnectedness. In Matthew Fox’s book called “A New Reformation!” he writes that we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, . . . and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom (Emphasis added).

2. By detaching Jesus from the priestly or purity story (the “who is in and who is out,” “who is pure and who is impure,” “who is clean and who is unclean,” “us and them.,” and “who is saved and who is not” story) his mission as the Saviour of the world (reconciling impure, defiled and lost sinners to his infinitely holy Father through the cleansing power of his shed blood) is grossly compromised while his mission as the Sage (or Sophia) from heaven and wisdom teacher is enhanced. In this context, the assurance of salvation is no longer the ultimate goal but a pilgrimage in which his followers are taught how to enter into and live in the rhythms of God. Even the examples Stephan Joubert used, i.e. Zacchaeus in a tree and the repentant criminal who was crucified alongside Jesus, was not to call attention to Jesus Christ’s salvivic work but how He personally learnt to come into the rhythms of his Father.

The same thing happens in Jericho in Luke 19 when He finds Zacchaeus up in the tree. He stops and He says like old Satchmo would say: “I’ve got all the time in the world.” He just stops. Got all the time in the world. I think the same thing happens in Luke 23. When Jesus carries the weight of all our problems on the cross and He is ready to die and God is at the point of switching off the sun. And Jesus, and this guy next to him says to him: “Lord, have mercy on me. Think, think, would you just give me a thought when You enter the kingdom of God?” And Jesus stops everything and He says: “I’ve got all the time in the world for you.” Its as if My death can wait a little. So Jesus came into this rhythm and the disciples learned the rhythms . . .

Jesus never said to the repentant rogue who was crucified alongside Him, “I’ve got all the time in the world for you.” That’s an infamous lie. He said “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” That’s pure and simple salvation, something Jesus was supposedly not linked onto. If Jesus had all the time in the world for him, even to the extent that He was willing to postpone his death, the repentant criminal would probably not have been in Paradise with Jesus that very day. None of them would have been in Paradise that very day if Jesus had all the time in the world for the repentant criminal. Jesus did NOT have all the time in the world because He had to die at the precise moment when Israel, according to Exodus 12:6 killed the Passover lamb between 3:00 and 6:00 PM on the fourteenth of Nissan that year. Read this excellent article written by the TBC crew in December 1992 here.

Stephan Joubert makes it sound as though Jesus came into this world to learn how to walk and live in the rhythms of his Father and to teach his disciples how to do it as well. Yes, he briefly mentions his death on the cross but only as a passing thought to substantiate his “rhythm-theory.” What are the rhythms of God supposed to be? Apart from the fact that the words “rhythm” and “rhythms” never once appear in the Word of God, Stephan Joubert uses it to express the Emergent Church’s emphasis on service rather than salvation. I have already briefly mentioned the occultists and theosophists Madame Blavatsky’s and Alice Bailey’s claim that service to mankind and sacrificial living are the means by which anyone can become a follower of Christ and enter into the Kingdom of God.

3. The wisdom story (which is a life-long pilgrimage) is in essence a mind-changing (metanoia – a movement beyond reason) pilgrimage, first of all to realize that nothing is unholy (everything is holy), thus making the act of judging obsolete.

4. The premise that everything is holy (aka Trevor Hudson’s contemplatively transfigured Transfiguration that Jesus is in everything and everything is in Jesus) is arguably the most potent unifying building block in the entire history of mankind. Ignore Johan Geyser’s advice to “stop thinking” for a while and just think for one moment what the consequences are of the belief that everything is holy. Yes! yes! you’ve hit the nail on its head. It means that no-one is excluded from the Kingdom of God.

5. Ultimately the Sage from heaven taught and practiced an all inclusive and holy Oneness Wisdom. Consequently, embarrassing verses such as the following are conveniently torn out of the Bible or they are pinned on the lapels of the fundamentalists who refuse to engage the complexities of life.

2 Corinthians 6:14-17 

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate [be holy],” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty. (Emphasis added).

One of the first requirements for anyone to be called a son or a daughter of God (a follower of Christ) is to be separated from unhallowed or unclean things which include, particularly, false teachings and doctrines. You cannot be yoked to Jesus (be His follower) and simultaneously be unequally yoked to unbelievers and their belief systems. Barnes in his commentary writes:

They were to have no part with them in their heathenism, unbelief, and idolatry, and infidelity; they were not to be united with them in any way or sense where it would necessarily be understood that they were partakers with them in those things.

The emergents have no qualms whatsoever when their brothers and sisters mix and mingle with unbelievers and even participate in their idolatrous practices. Brian McLaren, one of the leading figureheads in the Emerging Church unashamedly participated in the Islamic Ramadan Festival “as a God-honouring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighbourliness.” I have since not read any of his emergent co-followers of “Christ” censure him on their blogs and websites. In fact many of them still promote his books and literature.

How to change your view from the priestly (holy and unholy) or cultic story to the story of following Jesus in the rhythms of wisdom and to become disciples in the presence of the sage

Stephan Joubert proclaims that the following things would happen when you change your story.

A. We would get a new awareness and a new knowledge.

The very first thing that is so important “to enter into metanoia, according to Joubert, is a new awareness of Jesus and of what He stands for in order to become a full-time pilgrim and a prophet to others, to the religious people in particular.”

It is obvious that Stephan Joubert is not particularly happy about God’s revelation of Himself in his eternally immutable and infallible Word and therefore we need to get a new awareness and knowledge of Him. Should we be surprised? I really don’t think so, bearing in mind that the emerging cadre of coffee drinkers and conversationalists who are on an endless pilgrimage in search of wisdom and the truth, do not regard the Bible as an accurate, absolute authoritative, authoritarian closed canon but merely as an open-ended book to be experienced. Sound biblical doctrine no longer determines sound and wholesome living but each individual’s personal experience in his or her attempt to emulate Jesus by tending to the needs of the innocent, the helpless and the poor. Their disdain of biblical doctrine in Matthew 6:1-3 in favour of their humanitarian work shows on their websites where they publically splash their good works. But then again, you may probably ignore the warning in Matthew 6:1-3 when the Bible is no longer a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path (Psalm 119:105). Indeed, the emergent pilgrimage is a path of darkness and uncertainty because they have shunned the only source that can teach them how to follow the True Way.

The new awareness and new knowledge Stephan Joubert and his emergent buddies have opted for is not new and neither is it an uncharted path. It is merely a revival of the old wisdom of the Gnostics who believed that Jesus of Nazareth is an embodiment of a supreme being who was incarnated to bring gnosis (wisdom and knowledge) to the earth. [1]

Stephan Joubert continues to say that you need four things to become a pilgrim and a prophet, i.e. a new NOUS (MIND), KARDIA (HEART), PSUCHE (INNER BEING OR SOUL) and a new SOMA (BODY). I fully agree that anyone who has not of yet received a new mind, heart and soul desperately needs to receive all those things, but they aren’t needed to become a pilgrim and a prophet. They are all needed, with the exception of a new body which will only be given to the redeemed at their resurrection, in order to be saved from the righteous judgments of God.  Paul’s description of the new creature (creation) in 2 Corinthians 5:17 applies here when he says “Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!” He further explains the consequences of being IN Christ in Romans 8:1: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. “ It is being IN Christ and not the experience of following the Sage from heaven that makes you a new creation with a new mind, heart and soul because it is being IN Christ which is the only way to escape God’s righteous judgments.

The only divine requirement to receive a whole new life and to become an entirely new creation with a new mind, heart and soul is to be IN Christ which in turn is the only way of entering into the new way of living because Jesus is the ONLY DOOR or STRAIT GATE that leads repentant sinners onto the ONLY WAY to heaven which is very narrow (Matthew 7:13-24). Stephan Joubert never once makes it clear that repentance and faith toward Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross is the only way to be grafted into Him so as to receive a new mind, heart and soul. As a matter of fact, he derogatively refers to the new birth as a mere “transaction” you make with God. Here’s what he said:

Paul says in Philippians 2 we need a nous, the mind of Christ. We need the new heart, the kardia. We need a new heart. We need a new psuche. A new inner person, a new soul, if you want. And we need a new soma, the Greek word for body, a new body.

This is wholeness. This is a new awareness that following Jesus and becoming a disciple of the Sage from heaven, the Son of God who is the Sage who tells us to come into this new way of living. It will mean that I will have to become a new person with a new head, with a new heart and a new body. Otherwise I won’t be able to follow Him. I mean, it is just going to, I am just going to fall back on religion 101 that most people do. I am just going to make the transaction with God. I am going to give my life to Jesus and go on with my own life. This is the story of religion.

But when you start thinking of Proverbs and you say there is only one life and it is this life and God is active in this life and that is about becoming wise by giving your life to the new Rabbi, to the new wisdom Teacher from heaven, to Jesus and by letting Him touch your eyes, so that the darkness in you can go away, which is wisdom language, and you can see through His eyes and hear what He hears and sense what He is sensing and feel what He is feeling and experience what He is experiencing, everything changes.

It is not a cerebral thing. You move from cerebral to celebration, if you want to move, but religion moves from north to south, from your mind to your heart, but it moves south from your heart to your hands, your feet, your whole body. Your whole body becomes a living metaphor. (Emphasis added).

I want to talk to you a little about the mind of Christ which Stephan Joubert seems to endorse as one of the cardinal principles in a Christian’s life, and of course it should be just that. While I’m doing this you will need to read it in conjunction with Joubert’s eisegesis in regard to childlikeness later on. As you may have noticed he refers to Philippians 2:5 “Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:]” Here the Greek word “Phroneo” is used and not the word “nous” as Joubert tried to make you believe. The word phroneo has the meaning of being like-minded, to be of the same opinion or to be harmonious in mind and action in regard to what you think of yourself; to be modest and not to let your opinion of yourself exceed the bounds of modesty. Hence, it involves an attitude that determines your actions toward others which may be in humility or the opposite, in haughtiness. The “phroneo” of Jesus in this sense was that He did not come to be served but to serve (Matthew 20:28).

The phrase “the mind of Christ” appears once in the New Testament, i.e. in 1 Corinthians 2:16, where the word “nous” is used. Whereas the word phroneo denotes more of an attitude, the word nous refers to the faculty of the  mind itself: the mind, comprising alike the faculties of perceiving and understanding and those of feeling, judging, determining; the intellectual faculty, the understanding; reason in the narrower sense as the capacity for spiritual truth, the higher powers of the soul, the faculty of perceiving divine things, of recognising goodness and of hating evil. In fact, in complete contrast to Stephan Joubert’s notion that “it is not a cerebral thing,” it has everything to do with rationality and analytical thinking (which just blows away Johan Geyser’s silly notion that we should stop thinking). You may recall that Stephan Joubert at one stage in his his presentation vociferously spoke out against a Pharisaic attitude of always judging people as opposed to a follower of the Sage from heaven (Jesus Christ) who ceases to judge others because he becomes aware that everything is holy (nothing and no one is excluded). Ironically, the mind of Christ to which Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 2:16 involves a mind that judges all things, i.e. discerns very acutely between things that are from God and those things that do not come from Him, between holy and unholy and especially between sound biblical and erroneous doctrines. Let’s take a look at the verse in its proper context.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16

But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated. But the spiritual man tries [judges] all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him]. For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart. (Emphasis added).

It is not the spiritually mature man but the infantile minded man that is forever being tossed to and fro by every wind of false doctrine (Ephesians 4:14). Stephan Joubert’s rendition of the meaning of nous is completely wrong and misleading and so also is his definition of childlikeness, as I will prove to you a little later in this comment. But first let’s look at another very strange and unbiblical thing Stephan Joubert said.

This is wholeness. This is the new awareness that following Jesus and becoming a disciple of the Sage from heaven, the Son of God who is the Sage, who tells us to come into this new way of living will mean that I will have to become a new person with a new head, with a new heart and a new body. Otherwise I won’t be able to follow Him.

I have already mentioned that a repentant sinner becomes a completely new creation (with a new mind, heart and soul) when he or she is grafted IN Christ Jesus at their new birth (2 Corinthians 5:17). The reception of a new mind, heart and soul through repentance and faith toward Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross guarantees your destination in heaven and not the way you follow Him. Your “phroneo” (frame of mind or attitude) to the cross of Jesus Christ determines how you follow Him. How do we follow Him? Let’s look at a few things He himself said that are necessary to be his disciple or follower.

Luke 14:26-27 If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his [own] father and mother in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God] and [likewise] his wife and children and brothers and sisters—[yes] and even his own life also—he cannot be My disciple.

Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to be My disciple, let him deny himself [disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself and his own interests] and take up his cross and follow Me cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also]. (Emphasis added).

Many interpret the taking up of the cross to be the hardships, tribulations. maladies, infirmities and persecutions Christians often encounter. The cross was an instrument of execution and death and it is in this sense that Jesus used it in Matthew 16. Every vestige of the old life which surfaces in the self such as self-will, self-sufficiency, self-independence, self-aggrandisement,  self-worth, self-love etc. must be crucified (handed over to the cross for mortification so that the life of Christ may manifest itself in the saint’s life. If we refrain from doing this, we cannot be his disciples.

Stephan Joubert continued to say:

And the disciples saw this. Jesus was not about: “Oh, guys. I feel sorry for you. I’ll pray for you.” His body intertwined or sensed and experienced. So when He saw the crowd without food, Mark chapter 14, He stopped and He felt pain. His body cringed. He felt pain. When He saw His good friend Lazarus die, He cried. He felt intense pain. When that little group of disciples came back in Luke 10 and they were overjoyed with the crowds turning to God, Jesus’ heart jumped up for joy. His body felt the internal movings of the Spirit. This is what it is all about.

Stephan Joubert seems to know more and is more concerned about Jesus’ bodily and corporeal experiences when He saw people going hungry than his deep inner spiritual experiences when He saw the crowds going about their lives without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). Most people if not all cringe with pain and sorrow when they have lost a dearly beloved family member or friend but there are very little who feel pain when they see so many people on their way to hell. Isn’t it obvious that Jesus who became a human being in all aspects except sin should feel pain, compassion and sorrow when He saw people going hungry? Surely that is a fact so glaringly obvious that you hardly need to mention it, but Stephan makes a big issue of it. And yet Jesus also once turned around to the multitudes who followed Him because He had given them something to eat and said with much compassion and endearment: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his [own] father and mother in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God] and [likewise] his wife and children and brothers and sisters—[yes] and even his own life also—he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not persevere and carry his own cross and come after (follow) Me cannot be My disciple.” Could it be hat Jesus was more concerned about people having to be his true disciples than having a belly bulging with bread and fish?

Could it be that He did not cry for his deceased friend, Lazarus, but over the unbelief of the Jews who attended his funeral? Why would He cry for Lazarus when He knew beforehand that He was going to raise him from the dead? Is the resurrection something to cry over? Why would he deliberately delay his journey to Bethany after He had heard of Lazarus’ illness and then wait another two days before setting out? Wouldn’t it have been more feasible to have gone there immediately and just heal Lazarus as He had done so often? Martha, the activist (aka Johan Geyser’s personality profile of her) realized this when she said: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” In fact, Jesus was glad when Lazarus died. Listen to his own words in John 11:15 “And for your sake I am glad that I was not there; it will help you to believe (to trust and rely on Me). However, let us go to him.” Wow! what a mind-blowing wisdom story! Jesus lets one of his best friends remain unattended in his illness and lets him die to help his disciples believe in Him. It was not his body that cringed with pain when his friend Lazarus died (what a load of nonsense), but his heart that overflowed with joy because He knew He was going to strengthen his disciples faith in Him. His heart similarly overflowed with joy when the seventy disciples returned from their evangelistic outreach and told Him that even the demons were subject to his wonderful Name. Stephan Joubert piously refers to this episode in Luke 10 which blows away like chaff in the wind his abhorrent notion that Jesus never linked onto the purity story, including the story of who is saved and who is not. Contrary to Joubert’s belief, Luke 10 proves without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus’ whole spirit, soul and body intertwined, sensed and experience with joy the salvation of lost souls when He said: “Behold! I have given you authority and power to trample upon serpents and scorpions, and [physical and mental strength and ability] over all the power that the enemy [possesses]; and nothing shall in any way harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are enrolled in heaven. (Emphasis added).

B. We would get a new childlikeness

Its just amazing how Stephan Joubert contradicts the Bible again and again without any compunction whatsoever. The following is just another one of his childlike, incoherent explanations which underscores Johan Geyser’s cute little naiveté pronouncement that we ought to stop thinking.

As far as I know, and I know there will be many exceptions, but on a high level of abstraction, most world religions will always tell you wisdom is only to be found amongst the elderly. Sages are always older people, except in Christianity or at least in the way of Jesus. Wisdom is to be found where? With the little ones, with the children, with the lambs, with the small ones. Humph. And we’re so . . . I mean we hear this time and time again, but if you don’t get metanoia. You just say: “Yes, yes, I know this.” But you go on with your big stuff. And with your power games and with your religion, just fitting [attaching] this on. But it is not fitting [attaching] this onto a cultic view of the world of a clean – unclean, holy – unholy, in – out, us – them, binary sort of, like an approach. It’s like an open approach where it is not your responsibility to judge, to know, to understand, to have answers, to know the propositions, to be professors, to be clergy, to be spiritual leaders, to be executive senior pastors, to be  . . .  to have all these titles. It is to have a childlikeness in you, to grow smaller to become children. Jesus never said we should believe like children. He said we should become children.

No! Wisdom is not to be found in the mouths of little siblings or children. In fact, Paul said:

1 Corinthians 13: 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

Paul says when he was a little toddler his understanding was feeble and imperfect and that he had a very narrow view of things because he knew so very little as a kid. He fixed his mind on things that were of little value. As a child he acquired knowledge which vanished or sunk in the superior intelligence of riper years. He was affected as a child. He was thrown into a transport of joy or grief on the slightest occasions, which manly reason taught him to despise. He thought, argued, reasoned in a weak and inconclusive manner. His thoughts, and plans, and argumentations were puerile, which in his later mature years he saw to be short-sighted and erroneous. Ah! but then enters Stephan Joubert who favours a mind that remains in an infantile, undeveloped state because therein, according to his thinking, lies real wisdom. You must get the knew metanoia which will teach you how to surf your brainwaves beyond reason, far beyond the realm of cerebral, infantile nothingness straight into the presence and the rhythms of the Sage from heaven.

If wisdom was to be found in the mouths of siblings, Paul would not have warned in Ephesians 4:14 that Christians should henceforth no more be children who are easily tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Does this contradict what Jesus taught in Matthew 18:2, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”? Certainly not. Stephan Joubert conveniently omits Jesus’ words “unless you are converted” when he asserts that Jesus never said we should believe like children. It proves Stephan Jounert’s ignorance of the absolute necessity to be saved (converted) in order to enter into the Kingdom of God. A true biblical metanoia conversion has everything to do with believing (trusting) like a child because that alone leads to becoming like a child. What does it mean to become like children? Paul gives us the answer in 1 Corinthians 14: 20

Brethren, do not be children [immature] in your thinking; continue to be babes in [matters of] evil, but in your minds be mature [men].

The English and Afrikaans translations do no justice to the true meaning of this Bible passage because they use the same word throughout, namely “children” and “kinders” while the Greek uses two different words for children – “paidion” (a more advanced or mature child) and “nepiazo” (a baby in arms). The passage should read as follows “Brethren, do not be children (“paidion”) in your thinking; continue to be babes (“nepiazo”) in [matters of]  evil, but in your minds be mature [men]. A baby never sins and is completely free from ambition, pride, malice and haughtiness. Our moral disposition should be like that of  babes in arms but we should be spiritually mature in our minds. God’s will for the body of Christ is to grow to the fullness of Jesus Christ’s maturity.

His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church). [That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the full and accurate knowledge of the Son of God; that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood — completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection — the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him. (Ephesians 4:12,13)

Our esteemed modern-day followers of Christ say: “It’s like an open approach where it is not your responsibility to judge, to know, to understand, to have answers, . . .” Paul says we must “attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the full and accurate knowledge of the Son of God; that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood. Who is the liar here? Stephan Joubert or Paul of Tarsus who received the Gospel directly from Jesus Christ?

Those of you who are interested may read an article on spiritual maturity I wrote some years ago here.

One of the main traits of immaturity is, as I like to call it, erratic mind gymnastics where you chop and change your mind according to the ebb and flow of your feelings. Earlier in his presentation Stephan Joubert said that “our spirituality is about getting the things done and to put down the stuff, and to raise the numbers and to get more people to attend our holy, anointed etc., Bible studies, talks, seminars, books, you name them. But Jesus was not into that. He had the rhythms of God in his life.” Surely, if you want to come into the rhythms of God and emulate Jesus in those things which He did not get into, then you too must stop getting into the things He never got into. And yet Stephan Joubert regularly told his audience about all the quotes, studies and books (especially those by Ron Martoia), precisely those things Jesus never got into, that impacted his life.

The other day I read an interesting quote. A guy said most children enter school as question marks and they leave school with all the answers. I’ve told this before, but the other day I read a study that stated that the average child under the age of ten asks 125 questions a day. The average adult asks 6 questions a day. So the difference between the average adult and the average child is 119 questions a day. If you read the aphorisms of Jesus, you will only find 15 imperatives. You will find Jesus asking at least 67 good questions to people. He would always answer questions with questions. This is what childlikeness means. (Emphasis added).

Allow me to ask Stephan Joubert a few questions considering that it is childlike to ask questions: Don’t you think it is rather naive to compare the questions Jesus asked with that of a child and then come to the conclusion that this is what childlikeness means — to ask questions? Don’t you know that children ask questions because they are very inquisitive and are forever seeking the right answers? Jesus never asked rhetorical questions because He was childlike and consequently always answered questions with questions and neither did He ask questions because He, like a child, did not know the answers and was seeking for all the right answers. He asked rhetorical questions to provoke his audiences to correct cerebral thinking, contrary to Johan Gesyer’s silly notion that we should stop thinking. In many instances He asked questions to expose his enemies’ wrongful attacks on his personage. Consider the following questions that were asked during his conversation with the Scribes.

Luke 20:1-8 ONE DAY as Jesus was instructing the people in the temple [porches] and preaching the good news (the Gospel), the chief priests and the scribes came up with the elders (members of the Sanhedrin) And said to Him, Tell us by what [sort of] authority You are doing these things? Or who is it who gave You this authority? He replied to them, I will also ask you a question. Now answer Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven, or from men? And they argued and discussed [it] and reasoned together with themselves, saying, If we reply, From heaven, He will say, Why then did you not believe him? But if we answer, From men, all the people will stone us to death, for they are long since firmly convinced that John was a prophet. So they replied that they did not know from where it came. Then Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

Wow! Fancy that! The highly educated chief priests and scribes began to reason together when Jesus asked them a simple question. I can only imagine what Johan Geyser and Stephan Joubert would have said if they’d been there that day: “No! Its wrong to reason together. Stop thinking! It is too cerebral and un-childlike. Ask him another question and if need be another one and another one and another one until you’ve asked him 125 questions because THAT is the sign of true childlikeness. If that doesn’t work sit down (just sit) and be quiet because silence is the first language of God. He will then answer your questions in silence.” Fickleness, inconsistency, vacillation and changeability are unquestionably signs of severe childishness. Jesus points this out in Luke 7 when He says:

Luke 7:31-25 “To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? “They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’ “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ “Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

This is precisely what the key speakers a the Mosaic Congress were guilty of — fickleness, contradictions and changeability. Johan Gesyer told his audience to “stop thinking;” Trevor Hudson asked his audience what they thought represented the spiritual journey at best. He is therefore pro-thinker, while Stephan Joubert encouraged his audience to use their imagination which of course indubitably involves the process of thinking. No! says Ron Martoia, the Desert Fathers believed that imagination was the playground of the devil. Whose game are we supposed to play? Hudson’s and Joubert’s wedding game that celebrates the art of thinking or Geyser’s stop-thinking-stop-understanding-just-sit-and-just-be-dirge or the Desert Fathers’ playground of the devil?

Apparently the assurance of knowing and understanding things and the divine gift of presenting people with the right answers is akin to swearing in the emergents’ vocabulary. Stephan Joubert related one of his and his family’s dark nights of the soul experiences when they visited New Zealand and lost virtually all their possessions. During that time they experienced the presence, closeness and the love of God like never before but as soon as they returned to South Africa and was caught up in the usual run of the mill lifestyle again, he lost his joy.

I remember a few years ago when my family and I, we went to New Zealand. And it was a very difficult time of our life. And it was like the dark night of the soul experience. And we lost nearly all our earthly possessions and it was very expensive when we came back. But one thing that we realized when. It was a time of our lives when my family and I experienced the closeness and the love of God in ways that we have never dreamt of. And we were very aware of God’s presence and we came back and I started preaching again, back on the circuit. . . . One day I realized the joy is gone. I have the answers again. People  . . . will phone me [and] . . . say: “Tell us the answer.” And I would gladly do it.

. . . I said [to a Church congregation]: “Perhaps we’ve lost the mystery of God, the being amazed, the joy of walking with the Rabbi Jesus. Walking so close to Him, as Shane Claiborne says, that the dust of the Rabbi falls on my feet, that I feel the dust and that I see His heart when His heart bleeds for the poor and when He rejoices when God’s Spirit is moving somewhere and just experiencing the joy of the moment, being aware to what God is doing in the real life. When I break a piece of bread, when I pray for someone, when I just sit with somebody and seeing God in ordinary life.”

Walking so close to the Rabbi that his dust falls on your feet relates to caring for the poor and destitute like Mother Theresa and not to preach the unadulterated Gospel of salvation (Jesus was not into that, according to Stephan Joubert) because if you do you superciliously propose to have all the answers, and of course those who have all the answers are the fundamentalists who refuse to engage with the complexities of life, as Stephan Joubert said so succinctly. But before we get into that I must remind my readers that knowing and understanding all the right answers is not a fundamentalist phenomenon but a purely biblical requirement. First of all, did Jesus Christ, whom Stephan Joubert claims to follow as the Sage from heaven and whose dust falls on his feet, not say: “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (John 16:13). Did He not also say: “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. ”These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 15:9-11). To love God is to keep his commandments and these commandments are the very same his disciples are commanded to teach others when they make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19-20). As with true love so too is joy interlocked with the keeping of his commandments. King David learnt this well when he transgressed God’s law with Bathsheba and had to plead with God to restore the joy of his salvation which he had lost when he committed adultery and murder (Psalm 51:12). And yet Stephan Joubert in his childlike wisdom who carries the dust of the Rabbi on his feet says the very opposite:

Most fundamentalists, they are naïve, because they refuse to engage with the complexities of life. You need to engage with complexity, with chaos, otherwise you are just running away. . . . Because we don’t engage with complexity and with the real South Africa that we are in right now. But if you come to terms with that, that you don’t have all the answers and that I am not called to explain God, only to love Him, only to follow him. And I am a full time pilgrim. Well, then I am in the rhythm. And then it is the second naiveté, where I swam through the river of complexity, and I am on the other side and I know how complex life is and I know how difficult it is to answer. And I know I don’t know. I don’t need to give the answers. Just follow Jesus, the Rabbi. You find his footprints, His fingerprints everywhere. And I need a new imagination. It’s wonderful. In all the books that I have read over the past few weeks and months to prepare for this, I noticed in some of the new books, some are quoted in that particular handout: imagination. We have given up on imagination.

God says: You will experience his joy when you know the answers to the complexities of life from his commandments and ordinances, and also when you teach others to observe all that He commanded us (Matthew 28:20). Jesus once said: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

Stephan Joubert says: No!  that’s a lie. When you come to terms with the complexities and chaos of life; when you have swum through these complexities and arrive on the other side and thence really begin to know how complex life is and how difficult it is to answer, and you know that you do not know, then you start to realize that you don’t need to give answers. Just follow Jesus the Rabbi. His footprints and fingerprints are everywhere.”

Imagine Peter and the other disciples having said on the Day of Pentecost when they were asked “Brethren, what shall we do?”

Sorry chaps, we don’t have the answers. In fact, we don’t even need to give you the answer to your question. Just follow Jesus, the Rabbi and it won’t be long before you feel his dust on your feet. Follow the Sage from heaven in the rhythms of God and you will automatically become disciples in the presence of the Sage.

Do you think 3000 lost souls would have been saved that day or would they miraculously have been transformed into non-fundamentalist complexity and chaos engagers who felt the dust off the Rabbi on their feet?

The emergents just love to talk about the complexities and chaos of life and how they, unlike the fundamentalists who refuse to engage these complexities, valiantly and gallantly swim right through those complexities but they never seem to know what proliferates these complexities or rather they know but refuse to admit it. Let us now consult our only reliable source to find out what causes the complexities of life.

Isaiah 57:20-21 But the wicked are like the tossing sea, For it cannot be quiet, And its waters toss up refuse and mud. There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

The chaotic complexities of life are the result of a life void of any peace; it is a life full of shipwrecks because most peoples’ lives are like a turbulent tossing sea. The peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7) which God alone can grant through faith and repentance toward Jesus Christ eludes them because they refuse to accept God’s wisdom and power, which is the cross of Christ, to calm their stormy seas. Even those who live in affluent luxuries are restless, unhappy, miserable, sorrowful and often feel dejected. Why? Because God said the wicked (those who turn their backs on Him) will have no peace.

Stephan Joubert says we are not called to explain God but only to love Him. No! that‘s sheer nonsense. In fact, we are called to know God and his Son (their unique attributes) because it is the knowledge of Him and his Son that constitutes true salvation.

John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

No one needs to explain God because He has already revealed Himself to us in His Word and through his only Son whom He has sent as a propitiation for our sins. The shed blood of his innocent and blameless Son on the cross has revealed to us HIS awesome holiness, his magnanimous love and his fearful righteous judgements. Add to these his attributes of longsuffering, his eagerness to forgive repentant sinners,  his caring heart, unfailing faithfulness and goodness, then you already have several characteristics on your fingertips to explain the magnanimity of God. But, as soon as you ignore or shun these attributes like Stephan Joubert who proclaims outright that Jesus Christ never linked onto the purity or holy story (who is saved and who is not, who is clean and who is unclean, who is in and who is out) then you obviously will have no words to explain the attributes of God. How can you explain God when you reject God’s revelation of Himself in his Word? The only thing you can do then is to feign humility and say: “We are not called to explain God but only to love Him and follow Him.” Nice words. Nice word, indeed, but they mean nothing.

Only a true biblically grounded love for God that is embedded in his command to obey his commandments enables his children to overcome the severe chaotic complexities of life.

Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

C. We need a new imagination

Mankind’s imagination certainly does not have a very good track record in the Bible. The word “imagination” appears about fourteen times in the Old and the New Testaments and in all instances it is used in combination with evil and an evil heart, the reason being that man’s imagination has always been evil from the very beginning and his heart has always been deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

And then again Stephan Joubert makes his brilliant curtain raising entrance by saying the very opposite of what God teaches in his Word.

Do you believe this and this and this? Then you are in. If you don’t believe this and this – nobody cares about your life. So we steal people’s imagination in church of all places. But the second childlike naiveté will bring you back to adore God, to where you love God. Have you noticed how seldom we preach about loving God? Yes, we say we must follow Him. We must obey Him. We must do as He asks, but to love God . . .  It is very close . . . fall in love with a God that Jesus preached and follow[ed]. . . . And you need an imagination. You’ve got this wonderful mind. Use it. . . .

But one of the sad things is that we don’t use our minds . . . . this wonderful brain that God put in here. The other day I read this wonderful study done at UCLA, University of California in Los Angeles, where they said that the moment you have a so-called “Aha” experience, your brainwaves change. They can monitor this nowadays. But you have about 72 hours to implement that. But you can only implement that if you follow Jesus. If you are caught up in a ritualistic sort of religion, the only thing you do is you go to a place. You find out whether it is right or wrong, in or out. Did the pastor preach what I wanted to hear or not? Then he is not okay. So I judge that. I sit on the pavilion. [as a spectator, not participant]. I make my little judgement and I go out or in. And I do this the whole time the more I go to all these programs. But I never give my mind the time to be changed by God. No wonder Paul says in Ephesians 4 we need new minds, new imagination. God works in imagination. . . . (Emphasis added).

You need an imaginary world. Don’t you think that if you start reading the book of Revelation, not as the book of little prophecies that you can pick out with a little tweezers, but as the story that will open up your imagination, what will happen? We need imagination if we want to understand. Use it well. God gave it to you. (Emphasis added).

God works in imagination? Really! Obviously Stephan Joubert does not mean we should use our minds to think, discern, evaluate, ascertain and understand in order to distinguish between right and wrong, in and out, clean and unclean, holy and unholy, who is saved and who is not (to have the Aha-experience about these things ”) but to imagine a world without war, without poverty, without sickness, without division etc. etc. etc. — the Kingdom of God here and now that excludes no one no matter who they are and to what religion they belong. Aha! at last PEACE!!! It reminds one of the Beatles song “Imagine”

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

If you use your imagination just a teeny weenie bit you will see that God worked in the “Imagination” of the Beatles, provided of course you use your imagination the way Stephan Joubert advises you to do. In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Rt. Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation.  . . . “For many people the language of the Bible has become inaccessible and yet pop song writers can make a connection with people because their language is fresh,” he said. “They are able to open our imagination to a way of thinking about God that we’ve become deaf to in church language. . . . “The Bible tells a great story, but it is not as accessible as it used to be for a generation that hasn’t been brought up with it.” Read more here.

One of the sternest and most fearful warnings in the Bible is the one in the Book of Revelation which says:

Revelation 22:19 And if anyone cancels or takes away from the statements of the book of this prophecy [these predictions relating to Christ's kingdom and its speedy triumph, together with the consolations and admonitions or warnings pertaining to them], God will cancel and take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the city of holiness (purity and hallowedness), which are described and promised in this book. (Emphasis added. Please note that Jesus Christ never linked onto the holy and purity story. Nah!! He is merely going to judge those who do not link onto the prophecies in this Book and take away their share in the city of purity and holiness).

Have you noticed how utterly disrespectfully Stephan Joubert speaks of the little prophecies in the Book of Revelation which the fundamentalists pick out at random with their little tweezers? Once again Stephan Joubert finds himself in the same bed as Brian McLaren who writes disparagingly of biblical prophecy, using extremely incendiary language and distortions: “The Jesus of one reading of the Apocalypse brings us to a grim resignation: the world will get worse and worse, and finally this jihadist Jesus will return to use force, domination, violence, and even torture — the ultimate imperial tools — to vanquish evil and bring peace.” (Read here and here). In fact these prophecies are so little (insignificant) that Jesus Christ deemed it necessary to appear in person to John on the isle of Patmos and command him to write the things which he has seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter (1:19). As a matter of fact, these prophecies are so little (insignificant) that they are called the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave Him ( 1:1). Indeed, these prophecies are so little (insignificant) that Jesus Christ conveyed a blessing on everyone who reads, hears and keeps the things that are written therein (1:3). Stephan Joubert’s plea that you read the Book of Revelation, not to familiarize yourself with the things which shall come but to open up your imagination, is just another way of encouraging you to add to and to take away from the prophecies written of therein. If you listen very carefully you will hear the hiss of the serpent who lied to Eve in the Garden of Eden.

D. We need to get a small view of ourselves

It is extremely difficult to trust someone who says one thing and does the very opposite of what he teaches. No wonder Jesus once said: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat [of authority]. So observe and practice all they tell you; but do not do what they do, for they preach, but do not practice” (Matthew 23:2-3). It is impossible to have a small view of yourself when you belittle God’s Word and in particular his prophecies in the Book of Revelation. “For all these things My hand has made, and so all these things have come into being [by and for Me], says the Lord. But this is the man to whom I will look and have regard: he who is humble and of a broken or wounded spirit, and who trembles at My word and reveres My commands (Isaiah 66:2b). Humility (a low or small estimate of yourself) and a contrite spirit precedes a true respect for God and his Word. No respect for God and his Word equals no humility. It amounts to haughtiness.

Please bear in mind what Stephan said about the Book of Revelation when you read his following remarks.

The third thing that I would say: we need a small view and I linked onto Saint Benedict’s, some of the stuff he wrote in the 6^th century and I tried to put it into my own words. You need a small view. You need to descend on the ladder of humility. Most people would like to do it the other way around. Going up the ladder of humility, some people would say. But when I read St Benedict on this, it was fascinating and I tried to put it into my own words.

1. Respect for God

First thing that you need, he says, you start there, is to have respect for God: to love God, to see His hands and feet, to hear His voice, to experience His presence everywhere you go.

2. Surrendering to others’ opinions

Secondly he says, in order to descend on the ladder, you need to surrender, at times, to the opinions of others. It is not your will only. You know when humility starts, he says, when you learn to submit. And I don’t like this submissive thing in certain theologies, because it is like many church leaders use this just to get their own … to push through their own opinions and stuff like this. This is something else. True humility is to look up at every person and say: “He’s got a point. She’s got a point and I am going to listen. I am going to respect them. I am going to treat them with the uttermost respect. It will make a huge difference when people start to get this.

Jesus said:

Matthew 11:28-30 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.] Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls. For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good—not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

When Jesus said “I am meek and humble ( lowly in heart),” He did not mean that it is/was merely one of his attributes but that He IS the essence of meekness and humility in the very same way that He IS the essence love. He IS the fountain of love, meekness and humility and as such He alone has the mandate, if you will, to teach others how to be meek and lowly in heart. No other human being can teach another human being how to be humble and lowly in heart. Why not? Simply because true humility and lowliness of heart emanates from a heart that is perfectly pure and holy. His heart and his alone is free of any deceit while man’s heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9).

The second reason why He alone can teach you humility is because his yoke and HIS alone is easy and his burden is light. No other man can claim a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light because every single man’s and women’s yoke is a yoke of sin. And yet Stephan Joubert declares that he linked onto Saint Benedict and his wisdom-orientated definition of humility and meekness. Instead of following Jesus who said that He alone can teach humility, he linked onto St Benedict who taught Joubert that the descent down the ladder of humility involved respect for God and a willingness to surrender to others’ opinions. To make certain whether a respect for God and a willingness to surrender to others’ opinions are compatible we need to ask ourselves whether Jesus, the epitome and essence of humility and lowliness of heart, ever surrendered to others’ opinions in regard to the Christian faith. The short answer is, NEVER! Jesus never surrendered or submitted to others’ opinions. If He had He would have compromised and jeopardized the message his Father sent Him to proclaim. St. Benedict’s link between two opposing incompatibilities proves how deceitful man’s heart really is which makes of him a dreadful teacher and example of meekness and humility. Forget it, no one, not even Saint Benedict, can teach you meekness and humility because they are forever linking things that are completely incompatible.

E. We need to know that life is holy

In this portion of his presentation Stephan Joubert said some strange things that substantiate Paul’s indictment in 1 Timothy 4:1

BUT THE [Holy] Spirit distinctly and expressly declares that in latter times some will turn away from the faith, giving attention to deluding and seducing spirits and doctrines that demons teach,

Now let’s listen again to Stephan Joubert:

Another thing that you need to know: Life is holy, life is holy. When you follow Jesus as the Sage, not as the religious professional, as the guy with all the rules for right and wrong, but as the Sage from heaven, Jesus will tell you. You will learn from Him: Life is holy. Every single person that you will cross paths with will be holy. Every place you are will be holy. So this is the journey. The pilgrimage is not to go to holy places. Every morning you wake up, if, you’re on a pilgrimage. When you have coffee at Mug and Bean. Do that more [often]. That’s on a pilgrimage.

I don’t know how this works, because wisdom literature never tells you how it works. The other pictures tell you how it works. So if you want all the answers, go to the priestly story. The priest will tell you right or wrong. Go to your pastor, if he or she is still caught up in the priestly story. They know. They know what is sin and what not. . . . as a young pastor, when I was a pastor for three months. One evening I told my wife: “I am going to resign.” I thought I would teach the people about God and about helping them cope with their lives and helping me cope with my life in the presence of God. And all they ask me: “Is this sin? Is that sin? Is this right? Is that wrong? Am I in? Am I out?” And one day, in pure desperation, when this guy came to me and said: “Is this sin?” I said: “How should I know? You’re the expert.” So… I mean…

But the moment that you — and I am not saying that there is no right or wrong. If you heard this, you heard me incorrectly — I am saying if you follow Jesus and stay close on His heels and let His dust fall on your feet; you will know what’s right and wrong. Of course you will. It is a relationship. . .  In the religion thing, in the cultic thing, it’s about right and wrong. In the following Jesus it is about agape and love. And you can obey without loving, but you can never love without obeying.

Stephan Joubert’s notion that everything is holy is not a very good advertisement for places like Mug & Bean. Had the general public known that Mug & Bean is holy, according to Joubert, they would not in the very least support Mug & Bean. How do I know? Well! Jesus who is awesomely holy once said that the world hates Him which of course means that if Mug & Bean exemplifies his holiness they too are candidates for the world’s hatred (John 15:18). Do you get my drift?

Eureka! Stephan Joubert admits there is right and wrong. How does he know it? By merely following the Sage from heaven . . . by merely fostering a close relationship with Him? The entire nation of Israel followed God into the wilderness but never knew the difference between right and wrong until HE spelled it out for them on two stone tablets with his own hand. Centuries later a man who really followed Jesus Christ, said:

Romans 7:12-13 The Law therefore is holy, and [each] commandment is holy and just and good. Did that which is good then prove fatal [bringing death] to me? Certainly not! It was sin, working death in me by using this good thing [as a weapon], in order that through the commandment sin might be shown up clearly to be sin, that the extreme malignity and immeasurable sinfulness of sin might plainly appear. (Emphasis added)

Paul admitted that it was the Law and not merely his following Jesus Christ in a close relationship with Him that taught him the difference between right and wrong; it was the holy LAW of God. The million dollar question is: How does Stephan Joubert discern between right and wrong? How does he know it is wrong to kill others? How does he know it is wrong to steal others’ stuff? How does he know it is wrong to lust after and sleep with another man’s wife? Did he go to a pastor who is still caught up in the priestly story? Hardly! Ah! but of course, he knows these things because there was a time when the most holy God led a man called Moses (whom He separated or hallowed in service to Himself) up a holy mountain to give to him ten holy commandments that hallowedly distinguishes between right and wrong. Furthermore, Stephan Joubert knows this because he learnt it, not from the wisdom story in Proverbs, but from the redemption story in Exodus and Leviticus. So, by all accounts, not even Stephan Joubert can get away from or ignore the story of salvation and the priestly or holy story. You can probably try to run from the most holy God but it is impossible to hide from Him in your “everything is holy” shrines.

Contradictions! Contradictions! Contradictions! Elementary my dear Watson . . . Stephan Joubert’s wisdom story is fraught with contradictions. Let us pick them all out with a little tweezers.

1. We must follow Jesus, not as the guy with all the rules for right and wrong, but as the Sage from heaven.
2. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there is no right or wrong. I am saying that if you follow Jesus and stay close on his heels you will intuitively know what’s right and wrong.
3. The religion thing, the cultic, is about right and wrong.
4. The following Jesus thing is about agapao and love.

Who is this Jesus Stephan Joubert and the Emergent Church is shoving down the throats of their congregants and every person who attends their congresses, conferences, seminars, Bible studies, sermons etc. etc. etc? It cannot be the Jesus of the Bible who is the fulfilment of all God’s rules (His Law) and who proclaimed that He had come to our world to testify against its evil ways (sorry Stephan, I should have said, its hallowedness) (John 7:7). Who is this guy who does not have all the rules for right and wrong but who needs to be followed in any case so that you may know what is right and wrong? Huh? Huh? This guy obviously never tells you what is right and wrong because the wisdom literature never tells you how it works; he exhumes so much love and compassion that you will intuitively be aware and know what is right and wrong. If so, why did God inspire men to write sixty six books to tell fallen man where they had gone wrong, how they had rebelled against Him and what the consequences are of their evil ways? Nah! don’t read your Bible, just follow this Jesus guy, the Sage from heaven; let his dust fall on your feet and you will instinctively, intuitively and religiously know what is right and wrong (not the cultic kind of religion, but the dusty kind of religion). If this Jesus guy does not have all the rules for right and wrong, then he cannot possibly be the Jesus of the Bible who commanded his disciples (his followers) to teach the disciples they make from all the nations to observe (obey) everything He taught them (Matthew 28:20). If you want to know what he commanded his disciples to observe read the “but I say unto you’s” in his Sermon on the Mount which is saturated with what is right and wrong.

Stephan Joubert religiously and unfailingly declares that everything and everyone is holy —  every single person you meet is holy and every place you visit is holy. Unless he, together with his emergent buddies, have repainted the word “holy” (aka Rob Bell’s velvity-elvis philosophy), the general meaning thereof in Scripture is used with reference to persons or things that have been separated or set apart for God and his service. If this is true, which I believe it is, then the following persons and places are/were holy (separated unto God and his service according to Stephan Joubert): The mass murderer Hitler, his crazy Nazis and the Gestapo, Joseph Stalin and his killing fields, the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murderers, paedophiles (with the exception of the priestly kind in Roman Catholicism who are definitely separated unto God and his service), prostitutes, brothels, pornography, all the various places of worship of whatever religion, atheism, evolution, Satanism, etc. etc. etc. There is only one thing left to say: “What a wholly holy catastrophe! Would the emergent fraternity allow their darling little angels and kids to have any part in the things I just mentioned? Well, they might just do so because everything is just sooooooo holy.

But wait a second. There is something that is not holy. Yes! the damnable fundamentalist Christians who are forever judging others and who refuse to engage the complexities of life. They are completely unholy. Away with them because they are contaminating everything that is holy with their judgmental attitude. Stephan Joubert ends his wisdom story which he learnt by following the Sage from heaven as follows:

Theo told me the joke the other night when we were in In Via, like, you know the joke in Stellenbosch? How do you know that somebody studied at the University of Stellenbosch? You know the one? They told you. So, they will tell you. So, one of the students said: “How do you know that somebody is a Christian?” They will judge you. And it was painful to me to hear this joke. They will judge you. Therefore religious people . . . Who killed Jesus? Religious people. Not the bad people. Not the bad guys that He hang out with. Religious people.

And I really thought there were no bad guys because everyone is holy. Huh? Huh? ((aka the Trevor Hudson way of telling a story).

Please don’t remind the emergent fraternity of the following biblical principles because they will immediately label you a judgmental fundamentalist:

• The duty of every follower of Jesus to earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 1:3).
• The duty of every follower of Jesus Christ to teach newly-born Christians to observe and obey his commandments (to distinguish between right and wrong, holy and unholy, clean and unclean, in and out) (Matthew 28:20)
• The duty of every follower of Jesus Christ to warn foolhardy and unrepentant sinners and also those who have fallen away from the faith of God’s impending judgement if they do not repent and turn from their evil ways (Ezekiel 33:8)
• The duty of every follower of Christ to study the Word of God so that they may be adroit teachers of His Word (2 Timothy 2:15).

Who killed Jesus? Of course yes: the judgmental religious fundamentalists. It is more difficult to convert them than non-Christians, as Stephan Joubert echoed Len Sweet’s wisdom:

Len Sweet says it is more difficult to convert Christians than non-Christians. It is more difficult to get people who already have the virus, the religious virus to get rid of it or the clergy mentality virus, to detox. Well, I tell myself I am in detox now. I am a recovering academic. And then I end by saying we need to understand God is everywhere.

Covert them to what?  . . . to the detoxified religion of people like Leonard Sweet, Rob Bell, Rick Warren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Stephan Joubert, Ron Martoia, Theo Geyser, Trevor Hudson, Matthew Fox, Ken Wilbur, M. Scott Peck, Willis Harman, Morton Kelsey, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating et al who distort and misrepresent the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The following excerpt from Roger Oakland’s book Faith Undone will give you a very good idea of what Stephan Joubert means by being detoxified from the religious virus:

In the “Acknowledgments” section of Sweet’s book, he details that his journey of faith [pilgrimage] was influenced by a myriad of indi­viduals he calls “New Light leaders.” He writes:

I have followed these “New Light leaders,” as I am calling them, from varying distances. But it is largely because of their writings and lives that I have been compelled to join Abraham on the journey. They are my personal role models (in an earlier day one could get away with “heroes”) of the true nature of the postmodern apologetic. More than anyone else, they have been my teachers on how to translate, without compromising content, the gospel into the indigenous context of the postmodern vernacular.[2]

When Sweet says these “New Light” leaders have taught him how to translate “the gospel” without compromise, this certainly would sound like the right thing; however, it soon becomes ap­parent that many of Sweet’s “New Light”[3] mentors who led him “into new light” have done Sweet a terrible disservice. His translation of the Christian faith has completely dismantled true biblical faith, as I will show you.

In the “Preface” of Quantum Spirituality, Sweet writes:

The emergence of this New Light apologetic is a harbinger [forerunner] and hope that … the church may now be on the edge of another awakening….

The New Light movement is characterized by bizarre, sometimes anxious alliances of a ragbag assortment of preachers, theologians, pastors, professors, artists, scientists, business leaders and scholars. What ties their creative piracy together is a radical faith commitment that is willing to dance to a new rhythm.[4]

To understand what Sweet means by dancing to a “new rhythm,” it is necessary to look at this “ragbag assortment” of “New Light” leaders he refers to. By his own admission, they have molded and persuaded him in spiritual matters. Thus, if we want to understand what Leonard Sweet believes, it is fair to say we need only look to what his teachers believe as he has given them such a dominant role in his life, saying, “more than anyone else, they have been my teachers.”[5]

You may be surprised to learn that Sweet’s three pages of ac­knowledgments of “New Light” teachers is a who’s who of the New Age movement. While some names are lesser known, others are quite prolific, such as M. Scott Peck, Matthew Fox, Willis Harman, and Morton Kelsey.[6] Ken Wilber is also named.[7] It is hard to un­derstand how proponents of New Age spirituality can help Sweet “translate, without compromising content, the gospel” message.

The Cosmic Christ Emerges

Sweet’s acknowledgment of Matthew Fox is very telling of Sweet’s spiritual proclivities. Fox, an Episcopal priest and long-time promoter of New Age spirituality, is the author of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, in which Fox states:

I foresee a renaissance, “a rebirth based on a spiritual initiative” … This new birth will cut through all cultures and all religions and indeed will draw forth the wisdom common to all vital mystical traditions in a global religious awakening I call “deep ecumenism.[8]

The theme of Fox’s book is that the “Cosmic Christ” (as opposed to the historical person of Jesus Christ) resides in all humans. He teaches that Jesus was not the Christ but had this christ-consciousness, and he was just one of many who did. Gandhi, Moses, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Buddha had it as well, Fox notes.[9]

Equally revealing is Sweet’s favorable mention of Ken Wilber and M. Scott Peck, both of whom share Fox’s views on spiritual matters.

Who are you following? — Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God or a false Cosmic Christ (the so-called Sage of heaven) who never linked onto the priestly story of holiness but simultaneously tells you that everything is holy?

2 Corinthians 6: 17 So, come out from among [unbelievers], and separate (sever) yourselves from them, says the Lord, and touch not [any] unclean thing; then I will receive you kindly and treat you with favor.

Revelation 18:4 Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

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[1] An Introduction to Gnosticism and The Nag Hammadi Library“. The Gnostic Society Library. Retrieved 2009-12-02.

[2] Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic (Dayton, OH: Whaleprints, First Edition, 1991), p. viii

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid, p. 7

[5] Ibid, p. viii

[6] Ibid, p. viii-ix

[7] Ibid, p. ix

[8] Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1988), p. 5.

[9] Ibid, p. 234-235

Oogklap-geleerdes

Gespesialiseerde geleerdheid is in sekere opsigte ‘n baie goeie ding maar in ander is dit ‘n opperste onding. ‘n Persoon mag bevoorbeeld ‘n gespesialiseerde kenner wees van die ou Klassieke tale soos Hebreeus, Aramees, Grieks en Latyn, maar sodra dit kom by eenvoudiger dinge soos die geskiedenis dan slaan hulle geheue behoorlik toe of hulle sit eenvoudig net oogklappe op. ‘n Baie goeie voorbeeld hiervan is die onlangse storie wat Hennie Stander op sy blog geskryf het oor ‘n Rooms Katolieke priester, Louis Blondel, wat in Diepsloot net buite Johannesburg doodgeskiet is.

Hennie Stander spreek sy misnoeë uit oor die wyse waarop wêreldlinge voortdurend die vinger wys na priesters wat koorknapies molesteer, so asof alle priesters aandadig is daaraan, terwyl hulle die groot opofferings wat die Roomse priesters maak doelbewus ignoreer. Wat Stander uit die oog verloor is dat die Vatikaan doelbewus pedofiele priesters beskerm het toe hulle aanvanklik deur die ouers van gemolesteerde kinders uitgewys en aangekla is om in die hof te verskyn. Dit was eers veel later dat Pous Johannes Paulus II in die openbaar om verskoning gevra het en die Roomse Kerk biljoene dollars aan die gemoleesteerdes uitbetaal het. Hierdie dinge het dekades lank in die Roomse Kerk hoogty gevier sonder dat daar ‘n vinger verroer is om die skuldiges te skors of te ekskomunikeer. Lees gerus maar hier en hier. Om alle priesters onder dieselfde kam te skeer wanneer net sommiges van hulle kindermolesteers is, is sekerlik nie reg nie, maar sodra die kerk waaraan hulle behoort (die Roomse Kerk met sy hoofkwartier in die Vatikaan) hulle beskerm, dan’s daar groot fout.

Die geweldskultuur in Suid-Afrika is natuurlik nog steeds geheel en al onaanvaarbaar en dit is uiters tragies om byna daagliks te verneem hoedat mense op sataniese wyse vermoor word. Ek sê doelbewus “satanies” omdat die Here Jesus self op ‘n kol die duiwel ‘n mensemoordenaar genoem het (Johannes 8:44). Dit is dus vanselfsprekend dat die moordenaars wat die snellers trek sy agente of lakeie is wat sy vuil werk vir hom doen, of hulle dit nou wil weet of te nie. Die moord op ‘n Rooms Katolieke priester is dus geen nuwerwetse ding in Suid-Afrika nie. Volgens die polisieverslag (1 April 2008 – 31 Maart 2009) was daar 2,098,229 gevalle van ersntige misdaadoortredings in ons land. Hier kom ‘n ding wanneer die 2010 sokker wêreldbekertoernooi uiteindelik in die GP (“Gangster’s Paradise”) gaan begin.

Maar kom ons keer terug na ons “oogklap-geleerdes” wat die geskiedenis ignoreer. Hennie Stander skryf:

Een ding moet ons weet, en dit is dat die wêreld al hoe meer vyandig teenoor die kerk gaan wees. Christene sal al hoe meer in onguns verval. Maar dit mag ons nooit daarvan weerhou om goed te doen nie.

Hennie moes darem seker eers so ‘n bietjie teruggaan in die geskiedenis voordat hy so ‘n lukrake opmerking oor “die kerk” durf maak. Van watter kerk praat hy as hy sê “die kerk” — die Roomse Katolieke Kerk, die (i)NG(ee) Kerk, die Dopper Kerk, die Hervormde Kerk, die Ontluikende Kerk (wat maar net ‘n alhoe langer-wordende tentakel is van die Roomse Kerk), die Charismatiese Kerk, die Sewendedaagse Adventiste Kerk of praat hy dalk van alle ware gelowiges dwarsdeur die eeue heen wat as die ware “ekklesia” deur God bestempel word? Indien hy na laasgenoemde verwys, dan wil ek hom aanraai om weer ‘n slag die geskiedenis na te gaan. Dan eers sal hy leer dat dit die laasgenoemde kerk is wat die slagoffer van die ergste misdaad in ganse menseheugenis was. Raai wie het hierdie geweld teen die ware kerk (alle gelowiges) georkestreer en aangeblaas? Nee Hennie, dit was nie Islam nie en nog minder die ateïste; dit was . . . ja, jy’t reg geraai . . . dit was die einste Roomse Katolieke Kerk, dié Kerk wat dogtertjies en seuntjies en selfs babatjies minag deurdat hulle hul molesteerders beskerm en doodluiters in hulle ampte herstel nadat hulle skuldig bevind is. ‘n Anonieme Katoliek het geskryf:

It would be better to be an atheist than believe in the God of the Inquisition. [1]

Die geskiedskrywer Will Durant het die wandade van die Roomse Katolieke Kerk as volg beskrywe.

Compared with the persecution of heresy in Europa from 1227 tp 1492, the persecution of Christians by Romans in the first three centuries after Christ was a mild and humane procedure.

Making every allowance  required by an historian and permitted to a Christian, we must rank the Inquisition, along with the wars and persecutions of our time, as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast. [2]

Durant vertel dat Leo X in 1521 die pouslike bul Honestis uitgevaardig het wat die ekskommunikering van enige siviele amptenaar en die opsegging van sy religieuse voorregte in enige gemeenskap vereis het wat sou weier om die vonnisse van die inkwisiteurs uit te voer. So het Pous Clement V Koning Edward II gedreig:

We hear that you forbid torture as contrary to the laws of your land. But no state law can override [the Church’s] canon law, our law. Therefore I command you at once to submit those men to torture. [3]

Pous Martin V (1417-1431) het die Koning van Poland in 1429 opdrag gegee om die Hussiete (simpatiseerders met die doodgemartelde Johannes Hus) uit te wis.

Know that the interests of the Holy See, and those of your crown, make it a duty to exterminate the Hussites. Remember that these impious persons dare proclaim priniciples of equality; they maintain that all Christians are brethren, and that God has not given to priviliged men the right of ruling the nations; they hold that Christ came on earth to abolish slavery; they call the people to liberty, that is to the annihilation of kings and priests.

While there is still time, then, turn your forces against Bohemia; burn, massacre, make deserts everywhere, for nothing could be more agreeable to God, or more useful to the cause of kings, than the extermination of the Hussites. [4]

John Fox herinner ons in sy Book of Martyrs dat ‘n kerk wat voorgee dat dit onfeilbaar is altyd gereed sal wees om die ongehoorsames te vernietig [5]

Peter de Rosa wys daarop dat Pous Johannes Paulus II —

knows the church was responsible for persecuting Jews, for the Inquisition, for slaughtering heretics by the thousand, for introducing torture into Europe as part of the judicial process. But he has to be careful. The doctrines responsible for those terrible things still underpin his position. [6]

Dave Hunt skryf in sy boek A Woman Rides the Beast (p.249)

Disobedience to the pope became the epitome of heresy. Those guilty of it immediately lost any normal human rights and were summarily put to death. Consider Urban VIII’s 1627 Bull In Coena Domini. Gregory XI had first brought it out in 1372, and Gregory XII reconfirmed it in 1411, as did Pius V in 1568 (who said it was to remain an eternal law in Christendom). Each pope added new touches until it was well-nigh impossible for an admitted non-Catholic to exist in Europe, much as it will be worldwide under Antichrist for any who do not submit totally to him. The bull “excommunicates and curses all heretics and schismatics as well as all who favor or defend them, [including] all princes and magistrates. . . . ” [7]

This bull is still in force today. Nor could it be otherwise, with the ex cathedra pronouncements of four infallible popes behind it. The absolutism remains even though Rome is not presently able to enforce it so blatantly. The Code of Canon Law, Canon 333, par 3, declares: “There is neither appeal nor recourse against a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff.” Vatican II, of course, says the same. The woman rides the beast, holding the reins! Incredible, but it happened. Heresy in the Church’s eyes was treated as treason against the crown. The Church sought out the heretics, found them guilty, and handed them to the civil authorities for execution. As its secular arm, the state did the Church’s bidding in the execution of heretics, the confiscation of their property, and the enforcement of the Church’s decrees against them and their heirs.

Die ware kerk is dwarsdeur die eeue heen hewig vervolg, nie omdat hulle goed gedoen het nie maar omdat hulle Jesus Christus as die enigste Weg, waarheid en lewe aanbid het. Die teksgedeelte wat Hennie Stander aanhaal uit Matteus 5:11-12 sê juis ““Geseënd is julle wanneer die mense julle ter wille van My beledig en vervolg en valslik al wat sleg is van julle sê” en NIE ter wille van die goeie werke wat Christene doen nie. Die Roomse Katolieke Kerk lê juis klem op goeie werke en martelaarskap ter wille van hulle goeie werke want hulle glo dat dit hulle tyd in die vagevuur verminder en gouer in die hemel bring. En as hulle geen persoonlike martelaarskap ervaar nie, kasty hulle hulself met swepe soos die voormalike Pous, Johannes Paulus II ook self dikwels gedoen het.

During the 10th-century, whipping was an act that was said to attack the body, the home of the devil, and thus drive out Lucifer (to the delight of heaven and the angels).  As part of the daily ritual of monks and nuns, whipping was considered akin to prayer, another way of communicating with, and becoming closer to God. During the 13th-century, self-flagellation was praised as a spiritual sacrifice, a penance, and a mortification for the flesh that was a theatre for God. The act was often done naked, and overcoming the shame of nudity was perceived as a way to return to the sinless state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Whipping was done both in private and in public by numerous monastic orders with psalms often being recited during the act.  Special prayers and speeches were also read prior to whipping ceremonies that acted as a ritual remembrance of the Crucifixion. By re-creating the suffering of Christ, the flagellants believed that Mary would intercede on their behalf and beseech God to pardon their sins and deliver them from purgatory.  Self-flagellation was, in a sense, the best way to fast track one’s admittance to heaven. (Lees hier.) (Klem bygevoeg).

Guido Bourgeois wat gesien het hoedat Louis Blondel doodgeskiet word, sou gesê het dat hy Suid-Afrika nie sal verlaat nie omdat Jesus ook goed gedoen het en nogtans vermoor is. Is Jesus gekruisig omdat Hy goed gedoen het of is Hy gekruisig omdat Hy gesê het Hy is God?

Matteus 26: 62-66 Daarop staan die hoëpriester op en sê vir Hom: Antwoord U niks nie? Wat getuig hierdie manne teen U? Maar Jesus het stilgebly. En die hoëpriester antwoord en sê vir Hom: Ek besweer U by die lewende God dat U vir ons sê of U die Christus, die Seun van God, is? Jesus antwoord hom: U het dit gesê. Maar Ek sê vir u almal: Van nou af sal u die Seun van die mens sien sit aan die regterhand van die krag van God en kom op die wolke van die hemel. Toe verskeur die hoëpriester sy klere en sê: Hy het godslasterlik gespreek, wat het ons nog getuies nodig? Kyk, nou het julle sy godslastering gehoor! Wat dink julle? En hulle antwoord en sê: Hy is die dood skuldig.

In lande waar die vervolging van Christene op sy hewigste is, word daar nie vir die Christene gesê om hulle goeie werke te staak nie maar om hulle rug te keer op Jesus Christus en sy Naam te verloën anders word hulle doodgemaak.

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[1] Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (Crown Publishers 1988), p. 180

[2] Will Durnat, The Story of Civilization, (Simon and Schuster, 1950), vol. IV, p. 784

[3] Ibid, Vol. IV, p. 680

[4] Cormenin, op. cit., pp 116-17, as cited in R.W. Thompson, Tghe Papacy and the Civil Power (New York, 1876), p. 553

[5] Rev. John Foxe, M.A. Book of Martyrs; or, a Gistory of the Lives, Sufferings and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive as well as Protestant Martyrs: from the Commencement of Christianity, to the Latest Periods of Pagan and Popish Persecution (Edwin Hunt, 1833), from the introduction to the 1833 ed., p. iv based upon the 1824 ed. (improved by important alterations and additions by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich).

[6] De Rosa, op. cit., p. 20

[7] St. Thomas Aqiunas, Summa Theologica (Louis Guerin, Barri-Ducis, 1857), vo0l. 4, p. 90

Part 4a – A Biblical appraisal of the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg (4-5 Sept. 2009)

Session 3: Being a radical pilgrim and prophet – Stephan Joubert

A human-engineered Kingdom on earth

Although the speakers did not always articulate the Kingdom of God in so many words, a human-centered and a human-engineered inauguration of theKingdom of God was the main recurring feature of their presentations. As such they merely maintained and upheld the central message, not of Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, but of a false Christ whose aim it is to establish his own kingdom on earth, a kingdom that includes all religions, and the common denominator to accomplish it is a contemplative lifestyle dominated by MEDITATION. Am I being arduous in making such a claim? I don’t think so because the Jesus of the Bible never commanded his disciples to usher in or to establish his Kingdom on earth. First of all, He would never have taught them to pray “Let thy Kingdom come,” signifying that prayer is the only thing his disciples are commanded to do in imploring Him to establish his Kingdom on earth. He alone can “let his Kingdom come.” Secondly, when they asked Him “Lord, is this the time when You will establish the kingdom and restore it to Israel?” He would never have said to them: “It is not for you to become acquainted with and know what time brings . . . which the Father has appointed . . . by His own choice and authority and personal power.” if He wanted them to usher in the Kingdom (Acts 1:6-7). God Himself has decreed that He will establish his Kingdom on earth at a time of his own choice, by his own authority and through his own personal power. In point of fact, God being a God of great longsuffering deliberately postponed the inauguration of his Kingdom on earth when the Jewish people rejected their King so that the Gospel could be proclaimed to the entire Gentile world (Romans 11:11-12). This is precisely why Peter wrote “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). We are now living in the interim period where his disciples are supposed to proclaim the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ so that God’s Kingdom principles may first be established in the hearts of repentant sinners, and so that they may ultimately inherit the Kingdom on earth and in heaven (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1). By trying to inaugurate the Kingdom of God on earth on their own and in their own way, the Emergent Church is downright disobedient to his command to go into all the  world and make disciples of all the nations. On the contrary, they are not spreading the unadulterated Gospel so that lost sinners may find salvation in and through Jesus Christ, but another Gospel and another Jesus who is compatible with all religions. Brian Mclaren says here.

Dallas Willard also addresses this issue in “The Divine Conspiracy.” Atonement-centered understandings of the gospel, he says, create vampire Christians who want Jesus for his blood and little else. He calls us to move beyond a “gospel of sin management” – to the gospel of the kingdom of God. So, rather than focusing on an alternative theory of atonement, I’d suggest we ponder the meaning and mission of the kingdom of God.

Anyone who does not abide by God’s prerequisites with regard to his Kingdom are deliberately or unknowingly playing into the hands of Satan who is working overtime to establish his kingdom on earth with his ultimate false Christ (Antichrist) at the helm. One of the main tenets of the teaching of the emergent fraternity on the Kingdom of God is that we ought to focus on the here and now and not so much on eternity in heaven. The following is an excerpt from a YouTube clip where Brian McLaren said the following.

A lot of arguments happen about religious and non-religious people about the question of who is going to hell and who is going to heaven.  A lot of times Christians get into this argument by saying, “We have the only way to heaven.”  People often ask me what do I think is the way to heaven. I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus coming and the primary message was a message about how to get to heaven. Now, I think this is an important question. Obviously, mortality rates are still pretty high, so what happens to us after we die is still very, very important to all of us. And I think that the answer the Christian faith gives to the question how does a person get to heaven, is that a person gets to heaven not by being good enough, not by being smart enough, rich enough, not by your opinions or anything like that . . . that our only way to be accepted by God is by God’s love, by God’s grace and that’s something that we can’t earn or achieve; we just receive it and believe. But I actually don’t think that Jesus’ primary message is focused on how to get to heaven (Emphasis added)

These sentiments are typical of the Emergent Church’s efforts to establish the Kingdom on earth without remaining true to God’s first prerequisite to enter into his Kingdom, which is repentance through faith in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross of Calvary. Why would Jesus be prepared to die in agony and cry out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani” (My God, my God, why have your forsaken me) if his primary message was not focused on how to get lost sinners into heaven? Who is the liar here? — Jesus Christ who said “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost” or Brian McLaren who said “But I actually don’t think that Jesus’ primary message is focused on how to get to heaven.” I can assure those who follow Brian McLaren’s lies will certainly not see the Kingdom of God, unless they repent and believe Jesus’ real message.

In April of 2005, Rick Warren, speaking to 25,000 in attendance at Anaheim Stadium, encouraged his Purpose Driven supporters to partner with him to usher in the Kingdom of God on planet earth, right now. Quoting from his speech:

I stand before you confidently right now and say to you that God is going to use you to change the world. Some will say, “That’s impossible,” but I heard that line 25 years ago, and God took seven people and started Saddleback Church. Now we have a new vision and a whole lot more people to start with. The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody said, “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him.” I’m looking at a stadium full of people who are telling God they will do whatever it takes to establish God’s Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven(Emphasis added).

This false “Kingdom of God” is perhaps best described by Alice Bailey who admitted that she was telepathically inspired to write her books by a demonic entity called a “Master of Wisdom, initially referred to only as “the Tibetan,” or by the initials “D.K.,” later identified as “Djwhal Khul.” She made the following comments on the Kingdom of God.

“Your spiritual goal is the establishing of the Kingdom of God. One of the first steps towards this is to prepare men’s minds to accept the fact that the reappearance of the CHRIST is imminent. You must tell them everywhere that the Masters and Their groups of disciples are actively working to bring order out of chaos. You must tell them that there IS a Plan, and that nothing can possibly arrest the working out of that Plan. You must tell them that the Hierarchy stands, and that it has stood for thousands of years, and is the expression of theaccumulated wisdom of the ages. You must tell them above all else that God is love, that the Hierarchy is love, and that Christ is coming because He loves humanity.The Hierarchy waits. It has done all that is possible from the angle of the present opportunity. The Christ stands in patient silence, attentive to the effort that will make His work materialise on Earth and enable Him to consummate the effort He made 2000 years ago in Palestine. The Buddha hovers over the planet, ready to play His part if mankind offers the opportunity to Him. Everything now depends upon the right action of the men of goodwill. (“The Reappearance of the Christ.” p.38)

The Tibetan [Djwhal Khul) has asked me to make clear that when he is speaking of the Christ he is referring to His official name as Head of the Hierarchy. The Christ works for all men irrespective of their faith; He does not belong to the Christian world any more than to the Buddhist the Mohammedan or any other faith. There is no need for any man to join the Christian Church in order to be affiliated with Christ. The requirements are to love your fellowmen lead a disciplined life, recognise the divinity in all faiths and all beings and rule your daily life with Love. (“The Externalisation of the Hierarchy” Ext. p.558)

It is alarming to see how many emergent clergy are acting out and promoting Helena P. Blavatsky's Alice Bailey’s teachings and no wonder because they both said that the “Christian Church” will play a major part in the final ushering in of the New World Order or New Dawn (the Aquarian Age). Indeed, not Christians of the old mould who believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God and that Jesus is the only Way to heaven, are going to act out this role but so-called Christ-followers who are supposedly found in all religions. Listen carefully to Helena P  Blavatsky’s and Alice Bailey’s exposés on the Kingdom of God.

“Christ's major task was the establishing of God's kingdom upon earth. He showed us the way in which humanity could enter that kingdom … the way is found in service to our fellow men …"(Helena P. Blavatsky, “The New Cycle,” La Revue Theosophique Magazine, March 21, 1889)

“It is through supreme service and sacrifice that we become followers of Christ and earn the right to enter into His kingdom, because we do not enter alone.” (Alice Bailey, From Bethlehem to Calvary–Our Immediate Goal, Chapter Five - The Fourth Initiation,

“The need is for vision, wisdom and that wide tolerance which will see divinity on every hand and recognize the Christ in every human being.” (Alice Bailey, From Bethlehem to Calvary, Chapter Seven - Our Immediate Goal.

“The true Church is the kingdom of God on earth … composed of all, regardless of race or creed, who live by the light within, who have discovered the fact of the mystical Christ in their hearts.” (Alice Bailey, From Bethlehem to Calvary, Chapter Seven - Our Immediate Goal.

“ . . . Christian people are to recognize their place within a worldwide divine revelation and see Christ as representing all the faiths and taking His rightful place as World Teacher. He is the World Teacher and not a Christian teacher.… They may not call Him Christ, but they have their own name for Him and follow Him as truly and faithfully as their Western brethren.” (Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul, The Reappearance of the Christ, Chapter IV - The Work of the Christ Today and in the Future. (Read here)

The making of Christ-followers for the Kingdom

How do you make a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, or a person of any other religious persuasion a Christ-follower without them having to abandon their own religions? Aside from the daunting task to muster them into a close unit of altruists on behalf of their fellowmen, the most common way amongst the Emergent Church fraternity is to repaint Jesus Christ’s character. They do it by stripping Him ever so subtly of his deity and his redemptive work on the cross, and attributing to Him titles and names that are just as easily assignable to other ”holy” men in other religions. This is precisely what Stephan Joubert aimed to do at the Mosaic Congress.

When Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” and “ . . . who do you say that I am?” God the Father, let me repeat that, God the Father inspired Peter to answer the Lord: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Had Peter said anything else, such as “You are a sage, the Sophia, of the living God,” he would probably have said it without having been inspired by God the Father. God inspired Peter to say what he had said because that description and that description of Jesus only was the eternally perfect one because it encompasses every single attribute of God’s character. The author of the letter to the Hebrews expounds on Peter’s description of Jesus when he says:

Hebrews 1:3 He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high.

Have you noticed the similarities between Peter’s description of Jesus and Hebrew’s magnanimous song of praise to Jesus Christ, “He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature?” This nature does not only include God’s awesome wisdom (omniscience) but also his awesome holiness, purity or perfect spotlessness. Now listen carefully how Stephan Joubert demoted Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God to a mere sage (wisdom teacher or the rightful World Teacher as Alice Bailey calls him).

I would like to start off with the stories that you would read in Israel. If you were part of the tradition of Israel, there would be four major stories that Israelites would listen to. They grew up with four basic stories. The first one would be the story of creation. You will read this in the well-known books by Ron Martoia or all the other big New Testament and Old Testament scholars, Marcus Borg and people like that. They knew that, when an Israelite grew up, the first story that they knew was the creation story.

The second story that any Israelite would know, would be the Exodus . . . . The third story would be the priestly story. And perhaps there would be a fourth one – the story that we would spend some time with today and on, namely the wisdom tradition.

Now it is important to understand this  . . . because stories work like this: the stories that you internalize, especially when they become life metaphors will be the stories that guide your life. And though you might know certain stories, it does not necessarily mean that it influences your life or that you live your life according to certain stories. The Israelite definitely [did] not live according to the creation story.

Let us pause here for a moment to scrutinize what Stephan Joubert says in the light of God’s Word. If the Israelite did not live according to the creation story or at least kept the core teaching of Genesis alive in their minds, their entire concept of the Fall and the subsequent consequences for the whole of mankind would have been compromised. As a matter of fact, they would never have been able to link onto or understand the Exodus story which, in turn, is the perfect precursor of the priestly story because both emphasize the absolute necessity of the blood of an innocent victim in the acts of redemption (the Exodus story) and sanctification (the priestly story). For that particular reason Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus are inseparably linked if you focus your mind on the core teaching of all three the stories which is summarized in Hebrews 9:22: “And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Leviticus 17:11) (Emphasis added) The overrising link between Genesis (FALL), Exodus  [REDEMPTIION} and Leviticus (SANCTIFICATION, PURITY, HOLINESS] is the shedding of the blood of an innocent victim as the following verses clrearly show.

Genesis 3: 7 and 21 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. . . . The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. [An innocent victim’s blood had to flow so that its skin could be used to cover their nakedness, a biblical metaphor for sin and lostness].

Exodus 10: 5 – 7 and 13 Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. . . . The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 16: 11, 14 and 16 Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering which is for himself and make atonement for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering which is for himself. . . . Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; also in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.  . . . He shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities.

Stephan Joubert continued to say:

Yes, they [the Israelites] did use the story of the Exodus. They had their feasts, their three annual feasts that were organized around these stories. They would use some of the implications of those stories, but the story that won in the end, in Israel, was the priestly story. If you were born and raised an Israelite, you knew about holy – unholy, clean – unclean, pure – impure, in – out, us – them. This is the priestly story. It is all about purity. It is all about who is in and who is out. . . .

And now suddenly Jesus comes and you have the four dominant stories of Israel. You have the creation story. You have the exodus. You have the priestly story and the wisdom story. And interestingly enough, Jesus is not a reformer. He is not a reformer trying to reform some of the stories. Jesus does not link onto, particularly, the purity story, never at all. Jesus, if I might, may put it like this, Jesus links onto the, to wisdom. And if you understand this, it will change the entire understanding of Jesus. Jesus takes the fourth story of Israel, the story that did not win, the story that belong to the upper classes: the story of wisdom. (Emphasis added)

Jesus optted for the story of the UPPERCLASSES? Really! And I have always thought that He came to preach the Gospel of salvation to the poor, the downtrodden and the underdogs.

Joubert’s examples of purification by means of certain rituals such as the washing of hands and the observance of the Sabbath to substantiate his supposition that Jesus never linked on to the purity story is very weak to say the least. In fact, he and Ithamar Grünewald, whom he quoted, make the very same mistake a large contingent of Israel had made when they believed that the strict observance of rituals incurred an inner purification. Ithamar Grünewald wrote:

“Rituals are believed to have the power to change things: a specific life condition, one’s status, and, to some extent, the very reality of things (for instance creating in, a religious context, a sacred time and place). This is the transformative power of rituals. Only in doing them, one can achieve what they are supposed to achieve.” (Rituals and Ritual theory in Ancient Israel. 2003)

It was precisely this erroneous belief that prompted Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees with these words:

Mark 7:15 Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.

Of course Jesus never linked onto this kind of nonsense, but Stephan Joubert would like you to think that his examples of the two abovementioned purification rites are typical of the rituals in Leviticus, thus making the priestly story which, according to Joubert, in the end was the story that won the day in Israel, completely incompatible with Jesus’ story of wisdom. Here’s how he put it:

If you were born and raised an Israelite, you knew about holy – unholy, clean – unclean, pure – impure, in – out, us – them. This is the priestly story. It is all about purity. It is all about who is in and who is out.

The major way of teaching that Jesus opts for, and these are typical aphorisms that He would use, is not purity – impurity, who is in – who is out, who is saved, who is not. The major form of teaching that Jesus would use would be wisdom. (Emphasis added)

Have you noticed Joubert’s subtle demotion of Jesus Christ from the Son of the living God to a sage who supposedly never linked onto the purity story in Leviticus but opted for the wisdom story in which no one is excluded because He supposedly never bothered about “who is saved [and] who is not?” What utter, utter nonsense! Proverbs, the epitome of God’s wisdom to which Stephan Joubert often referred, explicitly declares that “he who is wise wins souls” (Proverbs 11:30). What Stephan Joubert purports to be wise is not wisdom at all but sheer foolishness. His entire eisegesis with regard to Jesus Christ’s attitude to the lost and the saved, is an outright denial of the prime purpose of his incarnation which is to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). It is the fool who cares not “who is saved and who is not.” It is the wise who dearly cares about the winning of souls so that those who are lost may be saved. There is only one conclusion to be made and that is that the emergent fraternity are not seekers after or followers after wisdom but fools who do not care who is lost and who is saved, and the most disturbing thing about this is that they are making a Christ after their own image — a false Christ who shuns purity and does not care who is saved and who is not. South Africa! What else do these false apostles and prophets need to teach you before you realize they are leading you along primrose paths into the darkest recesses of the abyss?

Voila! Jesus the Sage of God is no longer the Saviour of the World who cares about who is saved and who is not, but a wisdom teacher or The World Teacher who teaches you how to be a Christ-follower, irrespective of the religion you adhere to. And now you can better understand why Stephan Joubert could say such an unbiblical thing as the following.

It [the Emergent Church] involves people who have a passion to say [that] the world and its culture in our generation need to be won back to Christ. And therefore I am not going to criticise their culture but I’m going to engage it. Therefore, I’m not going to take on their spirituality and postulate my truths. I’m going to listen to what they have to say because I can prove [to them] the truth ad infinitum as I did in the 1960’s, and I can debate with a Buddhist or a Hindu and sit there with them and say ‘here is my truth, here are my stuff.’ But now as an Emerging Church guy I will say [to them], let us listen . . . I’m not going to try and change you but you also have the right to hear how I feel and I’m not going to make any excuses for who I am. I’m not going to force my religion down your throat.

Have you noticed that the Emergent Church and Stephan Joubert plead for the world’s cultures to be won back to Christ and not individual lost sinners, and that the way and means to do it is not to preach the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ but to engage those cultures? The word “engage” has several meanings but in this instance it means to “absorb” or “to connect to” or to “uphold.” You read of instances where Jesus sat with sinners, causing Him to be called a glutton and a winebibber, but he never engaged their culture (way of life and belief systems). He remained aloof of their sinful cultures while He preached the Word of His Father to them.

Luke 7:34 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

If Jesus is God, and indeed He is since “He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] nature” and like his Father commands his disciples (true followers) to be holy as He is holy, then He must of necessity link on to the purity story in Leviticus one hundred percent. Indeed, this is true wisdom because it vindicated Jesus’ awesome holiness, purity and separateness and his demand for holiness despite the fact that He mingled with sinners and was called a glutton and a winebibber.

To answer the question, how do you make a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, or a person of any other religious persuasion a Christ-follower without them having to abandon their own religions? Well, you introduce them to Stephan Joubert’s “Jesus [who] does not link onto, particularly, the purity story, never at all [but] a Jesus [who] links onto the, to wisdom. And  . . . this, . . . will change [your] entire understanding of Jesus.” It changed Stephan Joubert’s understanding of Jesus. Let’s take a look now at how his “metanoia” experience of moving beyond his reason (aka Marcus Borg) influenced and changed his understanding of Jesus.

Playing foolish and deadly games

Stephan Joubert continued to say:

The other day at a Bible school I did at a church in Pretoria, I asked the people to play a little game with me. And the game was about, let’s for a moment, say to ourselves, we only have the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. What would our spirituality look like? And it was like a shocking game for us all, because you wont find in the book of Proverbs anything about the cult, cultus. There is no temple. There is no religious personnel. There is no holy times or holy foods or holy stuff. There is only one life and it is the real life. There is only this life where I live and God is immediately in this life or not. And it is the wise person, and not the fool, will be able to see where God is and where God is going. It is a way of life. It is not in propositions. Secondly, you don’t find the will of God like many people who lived their lives in other stories. In the book of Proverbs you won’t find anything about prophecies, dreams, revelations, getting like some people say in church, getting scripture. You know this thing? “I just got Scripture.” Another lady, I have told this story, another lady the other day said to me: “You know, I stand on Scripture.” I said: “Ma’am, that is great. Get off and read it. It is better.”

Have you noticed Stephan Joubert’s scholarly approach and chivalry when he speaks to women? “I stand on the Bible” is a figure of speech many people use to say that they conform their lives to the dictates and doctrines of the Bible. They simply mean that that they organize their lives according to God’s Word. Ironically, Stephan Joubert who made a big issue of Proverbs being a book about the real life and not a “cultus” (sic) life of temple worship, religious personnel, holy times or holy foods or holy stuff, pokes fun at someone who takes the Bible very seriously and “stands on it” as a book that teaches you how to live a holy life (a life separated unto the Lord). In stead of encouraging her to continue abiding (“standing”) on His Word he facetiously tells her to get off and rather read it. If only he had read the wisdom story in Proverbs, especially the part that says a winner of souls is wise (30:11), he would never have made such a blasphemous remark that Jesus was/is not concerned about who is saved and who is not . . . purity and  impurity (holy and unholy) . . . who is in and who is not. Being “in” or “out” is the most important message of the Bible, including that of the book of Proverbs. In fact, it determines your destination. This is what God’s Word says about being “in” or “out.”

Romans 8:1 THEREFORE, [there is] now no condemnation (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.

To walk and live after the dictates of the Holy Spirit cannot but mean anything else than to walk and live in holiness and purity as opposed to walking and living in the flesh (unholiness and impurity). And yet Stephan Joubert audaciously severs the wisdom story from the purity story because, in his view, nothing is said about holiness in Proverbs. That’s just plain nonsense.

Proverbs 30:2-5 Surely I am too brutish and stupid to be called a man, and I have not the understanding of a man [for all my secular learning is as nothing.] I have not learned skilful and godly Wisdom, that I should have the knowledge or burden of the Holy One. Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know? Every word of God is tried and purified; He is a shield to those who trust and take refuge in Him. (Emphasis added)

What is His NAME? His Name THE HOLY ONE who commands us to be like Him (1 Peter 1:16).

Knowing God, the holy One, and His Son, who is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] infinitely holy nature, is the basis for true wisdom. Being ignorant of God’s infinitely holy nature and his demand for holiness and purity is tantamount to being brutish and dull-minded or like an animal (Psalm 73:22; Proverbs 12:1). The word for “ignorant” in Hebrew is “ba’ar” which means to be brutish. The Afrikaans word“baar” (“uncivilized”) is probably derived from this Hebrew word. So, what’s the moral of the “wisdom” story? If you want to be brutish and stupid, then by all means follow Stephan Joubert’s dull-minded eisegesis that “The major way of teaching that Jesus opts for, and these are typical aphorisms that He would use, is not purity – impurity, who is in – who is out, who is saved, who is not. The major form of teaching that Jesus would use would be wisdom.” (Emphasis added). Furthermore, verse 4 of Proverbs 30 emphasizes man’s inability to know by himself the nature of God and verse 5 and 6 show how God may be known: through His entire Word, which is flawless (Psalm 12:6) and not only through a single book like Proverbs.

A way of life

Stephan Joubert set forth the way of life (the wisdom story) as follows:

In the book of Proverbs you would never decipher God’s will through that [by standing on Scripture]. It is a way of life. It is a way of thinking, deciphering, surrounding yourself with wise people, observing, experiencing, sensing, living in reality. You don’t sit and read a book and then you know how it works. You don’t follow a program at a church or at a synagogue and then you understand how God works. You live a real life. (Emphasis added)

Have you noticed Joubert’s disrespect for the Word of God ((a book)?

Most religions boast that their particular path is a way of life and, yes, it may indeed be a way of life but where does it lead to? (Proverbs 14:12). The Christian way of life or the follower of Christ’s way of life is not something you embark on through “a way of thinking, deciphering, surrounding yourself with wise people, observing, experiencing, sensing and living in reality.” These are all extra biblical or externally induced ways that tend to be more subjective than objective. Agur, whose words of wisdom are encapsulated in chapter 30, says that his secular learning meant nothing. They are like chaff in the wind. To embark on the Christian way of life requires knowledge, not a knowledge acquired by those things Joubert mentions but through the Word of God. It is a knowledge of how to enter through the ONLY DOOR that leads to the ONLY WAY by means of the ONLY TRUTH (JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD). And this is precisely why Jesus said: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent (John 17:3).

The emergent “metanoia”

One of the most enigmatic enigmas about the emerging church’s “metanoic” movement beyond reason (aka Marcus Borg who denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ), is their contradictory statements. Allow me to explain by quoting to you two statements by Stephan Joubert and see whether you can pick up the contradiction before you continue to read the rest of my comment.

The major way of teaching that Jesus opts for, and these are typical aphorisms that He would use, is not purity – impurity, who is in – who is out, who is saved – who is not. The major form of teaching that Jesus would use would be wisdom.

Metanoia is literally what the Greek word says: to get a new mind. Get a new mind. Not just a new mind, go up and the beyond, over and beyond the present mind. That is not just to start following Jesus as if He were a reformer of sorts, which He is not. It is to sacrifice everything.

But is not in the first instance of giving your heart to Jesus, making this transaction with Jesus, as Ron would tell us in his book “Static.” But it is entering into a new way of life, of looking at everything entirely differently. Therefore metanoia is not something that only makes you from a non-Christian to a Christian.

His latter statement “metanoia is not something that only makes you from a non-Christian to a Christian” verbalizes the doctrine of salvation and yet he unashamedly declares that Jesus’ major way of teaching was not about who is saved and who is not. Consequently, metanoia is not about who is saved and who is not but is nonetheless something that makes you from a non-Christian to a Christian.

Please bear in mind that one of the most potent things Jesus ever said, was the following:

John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

If Jesus Christ’s wisdom teaching was not about purity- impurity, who is in – who is out, who is saved and who is not, then it must have been his Father in heaven who commanded Him to teach that way. That’s not only preposterous but borders dangerously close on blasphemy because the cross of Jesus Christ (the only means God ordained for the salvation of the world) is the power and wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25 For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God. For it is written, I will baffle and render useless and destroy the learning of the learned and the philosophy of the philosophers and the cleverness of the clever and the discernment of the discerning; I will frustrate and nullify [them] and bring [them] to nothing. Where is the wise man (the philosopher)? Where is the scribe (the scholar)? Where is the investigator (the logician, the debater) of this present time and age? Has not God shown up the nonsense and the folly of this world’s wisdom? For when the world with all its earthly wisdom failed to perceive and recognize and know God by means of its own philosophy, God in His wisdom was pleased through the foolishness of preaching [salvation, procured by Christ and to be had through Him], to save those who believed (who clung to and trusted in and relied on Him). For while Jews [demandingly] ask for signs and miracles and Greeks pursue philosophy and wisdom, We preach Christ (the Messiah) crucified, [preaching which] to the Jews is a scandal and an offensive stumbling block [that springs a snare or trap], and to the Gentiles it is absurd and utterly un-philosophical nonsense. But to those who are called, whether Jew or Greek (Gentile), Christ [is] the Power of God and the Wisdom of God. [This is] because the foolish thing [that has its source in] God is wiser than men, and the weak thing [that springs] from God is stronger than men.

The emergent “metanoia” is indeed “to go up and beyond, over and beyond the present mind” (or is it rather the “presence” of mind) because it is, as we’ve seen from Proverbs 30:2 to 5 and Psalm 73:22, brutish, dull-minded and animal-like to downplay the primary purpose for Jesus’ incarnation which is to seek and to save the lost and subsequently to impart his holiness, through the work of Holy Spirit, to those who are being saved from the defilement of the world and especially the false and erroneous doctrines of movements such as the Emerging Church.

Stephan Joubert went on to say:

Metanoia is the process by which you enter the kingdom. Jesus asks for a deep shift in worldview… One of the most difficult things to do is to change the way you imagine your place in life. Nothing is more challenging. On the other had, once this takes place, nothing could be more vitalizing. Truly, it’s as if you are born a second time. Your eyes open to a different world. Metanoia comes at a great cost. You are to give up an understanding of life that has been in place for a long time.

Metanoia (repentance) is a PROCESS by which you enter the kingdom? Jesus asks for a deep shift in WORLDVIEW? Really? It was hardly a process when the publican cried out “Be merciful to me a sinner” and God immediately declared him justified. He was translated into God’s Kingdom the moment he was justified. Neither did the publican have to undergo a deep shift in worldview before he entered the Kingdom of God. The only deep shift he experienced was from being lost to being saved when he realized that he was a lost sinner and needed to be pardoned by the mercy of God. It was hardly a process when Paul received his sight in the house of Ananias and at whose behest he ceased to delay and immediately called upon the Name of the Lord for his salvation  (Acts 22:16). At that very moment he was translated into the Kingdom of God. There was absolutely no process or a deep shift of worldview involved in the salvation of either of these two persons. How do I know this? Well, Paul himself wrote:

Colossians 1:13 [The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

Paul is addressing believers, not unbelievers, and he says that they have already (past tense) been delivered into the Kingdom of God. Do you remember Stephan, the true gentleman that he is, telling the woman to get off the Bible on which she “stands” and to rather read it? Perhaps Stephan Joubert should begin to practice what he preaches and really earnestly start to read the Bible himself so that he may learn what a genuine biblical metanoia is.

Why is a deep shift in your worldview needed and not a deep shift in your view of God?

The deep shift in worldview obviously involves a paradigm shift from a judgmental to a non-judgmental mindset and in order to achieve this you need to see Jesus in everything and everything in Jesus (which is nothing else than a panentheistic Jesus). The separateness and exclusivity of the in – out, pure – impure, clean – unclen, us – them and saved – unsaved frame of mind which was typical in the old priestly or purity story (according to Stephan Joubert), must make place for a “we-are-all-one” frame of mind. This is how Stephan Joubert said it:

So Jesus came into this rhythm and the disciples learned the rhythms and perhaps we are too fast, because we are so success driven. Our spirituality is about getting the things done and to put down the stuff and to raise the numbers and to get more people to attend our holy, etc., Bible studies, talks, seminars, books, you name them. But Jesus was not into that. He had the rhythms of God in his life.

And you only learn this when you are wise, when you walk with somebody.  . . . it is like the whole life becomes a pilgrimage. You don’t have a pilgrimage when Easter is on the calendar. It is like the whole life is a pilgrimage where everyday becomes holy. Where every person that you meet becomes holy. Where every moment is holy. When time as such, when food as such, where people as such, where space as such becomes holy. And it changes your perspective, because the moment that I realize there is no unclean food, there is no unclean space, there is no unclean people per se and I treat them like that, things change.

But when you are a Pharisee and you know that that person is clean or unclean and I am clean. That space is unclean and I am clean. I mean you go around always judging people.

What does Stephan Joubert mean by “judging people?” Perhaps we can answer it best by quoting Paul.

Galatians 1:8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to and different from that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment)!

The question Stephan Joubert and his buddies who appeared as key speakers at the Mosaic Congress need to answer, is whether they are candidates for Paul’s anathema and whether his anathema is tantamount to “judging people.”

Stephan Joubert may not be aware of it but his Jesus is definitely not the Jesus of the Bible who said:

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch no unclean thing; And I will receive you, And will be to you a Father, And ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

Paul! how dare you contradict Stephan Joubert, one of our most enlightened and distinguished modern-day followers of Christ? You are nothing but a hypocritical Pharisee who is forever judging people while you sanctimoniously declare “even as God said” making us believe that God said it.

And yet, it is Paul’s view of holiness and purity that is vindicated and not that of Stephan Joubert or any other Emergent Church follower of Christ because personal purity makes it possible to serve God and to be received by Him. In fact to enjoy God’s presence and his guidance requires personal holiness and not the demonic defilement of meditative techniques such as silence and contemplative prayer. “Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah? And who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; Who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood, And hath not sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3). Deceit, falsehood and false teachings cannot possibly be holy because they do not come from God but the deceiver who has been a liar from the beginning. It not only defiles the false teachers who proclaim false doctrines but also those who believe and follow the false teachers (Jude 1:7). The “everything is holy” and “Jesus is in everything and everything is in Jesus” garbage are false doctrines because they do not emanate from God but his enemy, the devil, and as such they defile everybody who believes such garbage.

No! the new breed of Christ-followers have no affiliation with the in – out, pure – impure, us – them, clean – unclean, and saved – unsaved frame of mind which was typical in the old priestly or purity story. What they want is wisdom, the wisdom of the Sage or Sophia of God who never linked onto the Pharisaic purity story but the wisdom story.

“The divine wisdom of oneness” is a phrase that pops up ever so frequently on the internet and especially on New Age websites. The following quote comes from a website called “The Reluctant Messenger” and tells how a person by the name of Chester who was brought up to believe there is no God and who set out to prove that there is no need for a Creator God, eventually ended up sitting at the feet of a Master of wisdom.

The Master started teaching Chester, “There is but one God. All things belong to God and are one with God. It is our destiny to learn to connect and discover our Union with God. Satan wants to influence you to consider anything and everything more important than knowing and achieving this Wisdom. Oneness and Unity are different shades of the same truth. Discover and believe in your Oneness with God, and his creation, and you embrace wisdom.”

In accordance with this worldview there is no longer any separation between the most holy God and his creatures who are defiled by sin and unrighteousness, and therefore there is no need for salvation, no need to break down the wall of separation because we are all one regardless of the religion you belong to. What kind of wisdom is Stephan Joubert speaking of — the eternal wisdom of Jesus Christ? Hardly, because Jesus Christ wisdom is inexorably linked to his cross which is God’s ultimate and only altar of salvation. The wisdom Stephan Joubert and his emergent friends link onto is the Ageless/Ancient Wisdom which the Luceferian occultist and Theosophist, Helena Blavatsky, brought from the East to the West. The following is an excerpt from the booklet, Are You “Being Led Away with the Error of the Wicked” to the New Age Ark of Oneness? by Tamara Hartzell (February 2008).

These beliefs [of the Emerging One Church and One Universal Faith] , which are increasingly appearing in the teachings and writings of professing Christian leaders, were penned by Helena P. Blavatsky, Alice A. Bailey, and Neale Donald Walsch. Blavatsky has been referred to as the grandmother of the New Age movement, which is founded in the “Ageless Wisdom,” or “Ancient Wisdom,” of the East. This occultist and channeler of two spirit “Masters” founded the Theosophical magazine Lucifer, co-founded the Theosophical Society, and began the spread of the Ageless Wisdom to the West in the late 1800s. Bailey has been referred to as the mother of the New Age movement. This occultist and channeler of one spirit “Master” co-founded the Arcane School and Lucis Trust (“Lucis” was originally “Lucifer”), and continued Blavatsky’s work of spreading the Ageless Wisdom during the first half of the 1900s. Walsch founded the School of the New Spirituality in 2002 and Humanity’s Team in 2003, both of which are dedicated to shifting humanity’s faith and behaviour to reflect the New Spirituality (Ageless Wisdom) belief that “we are all one.” This channeler of the spirit that calls itself “God” has become a leader and author of the New Age New Spirituality, thanks to his Conversations with God book series. He is furthering the spread of thisAgeless Wisdom – Oneness – for our time (Emphasis added).

These three people were all contacted directly by seducing spirits from Lucifer’s realm (who is the “god” of this world and Angel of “light”) for the purpose of bringing teachings from his spirit world—in other words, doctrines of devils—into our world. Yet their Ageless/Ancient Wisdom and its doctrines of Oneness are being welcomed into today’s bewitched Christianity as “authentic faith”! The Holy Spirit warned this would happen, but people are increasingly indifferent and oblivious to what God’s Word actually says. The extremely dangerous new source of faith for today’s apathetic “Christianity” appears to be, “So then authentic faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the doctrines of Lucifer.”

With the subtlety of the serpent and his forked-tongue, leaders in today’s Christianity are leading their followers away from the faith and armour of the true God by teaching—

• that we don’t need to know God’s Word, we just need to know God through experience, and loving and serving others;m [Thomas: Do you remember Joubert saying "You don't sit and read a book and then you know how it works?"]
• that we need to live the Christian life instead of thinking about it, so we need to study the Bible less because Bible study takes us away from experience, relationships, and service; [Thomas: Do you remember Joubert saying "Its a way of life?"]
• that it is better for us to be “experiencers” rather than believers;
• that we don’t need to study or know the Bible (God’s Word of truth), but we can learn “a lot of truth” from different religions since every religion has its own “portion of the truth;” [Thomas: Do you remember Joubert saying that you can find truth in other religions?]
• that God and Christ are in every human being; [Thomas: Do you remember Trevor Hudsont saying that Jesus is in everything and everything is in Jesus?]
• that we need positive interfaith dialogue to build connections between our different “experiences” of God and Christ; [Thomas: Do you remember Joubert saying that he won't shove his faith down the throats of other people of oher faiths but that he would engage their culture?]
• that Christians have misplaced their faith in the religion of Christianity rather than in the Person of Christ, hence making followers of Christ doesn’t  necessarily mean making followers of “the Christian religion;”
• that we can follow Christ in any religious framework of our choosing, because Christ is not bound to the “religious dogmas” of Christianity;
• that we are guilty of “idolatry” of the Scriptures when we hold to God’s Word as authoritative doctrine, because God cannot be “confined” within a book;
• that we need to bring an end to Christian “dogma” (doctrine) and return to “the mystery of God” and “authentic faith;”
• that we must “cast aside” our “tribal” beliefs and doctrines, because we must focus on what unites rather than what divides;
• that Jesus’ crucifixion is “metaphor,” and we can’t reduce His atonement to only one “theory;”
• that it isn’t only Christians who are saved, because people can encounter and experience God and even be followers of Christ without knowing about Jesus;
• that we need to free Christ from the “box” of Christianity, because He belongs to the world;
• that everyone is free to find their “own way” and define or interpret scriptures, doctrine, theology, faith, and God as they wish;
• that the Church is a spiritual community of people who are all on a spiritual journey to God, and this spiritual journey takes place in both Christian and non-Christian forms;
• that we need to enlarge our community to include those in other religions whose “conceptions of God” are different from the Christian faith;
• that we need to journey back to “when we were all one” before any religion existed;
• that bringing the different religions together into one interfaith community is for the good of the world, since we all worship “one God;”
• that this interfaith community is the true “kingdom of God,” because that which belongs to the kingdom of God can’t be “hijacked by Christianity;” and so on, and so forth.

This is the paradigm shift in one’s worldview that Stephan Joubert and his emergent buddies have opted for. Are you going to follow them in their madness? Are you going to allow your reason to be moved beyond its present sanity to insanity, induced and orchestrated by demonic entities through meditation, contemplative prayer, silence etc.?

The rhythms of God

Stephan Joubert said some amazing things in his presentation, one of which was the following silly little gem.

Part of the wisdom training was just to observe what Jesus was doing. I mean, to see the rhythms of the life of Jesus when He was on earth. He spent most of his time away from people. That’s fascinating. Jesus spent most of His time away from people. For the first thirty odd years, He was tucked away in a little one-horse town in Galilee that nobody knew of. People lived in caves in Nazareth. I mean, and there is a story in the early church of the angels, at one stage, in heaven. One of the church fathers [dessert fathers?] wrote of this, of the angels becoming so upset, because they knew Jesus came to earth to give up his life. And they were asking amongst one another “When is Jesus going to start his journey. He is sitting in Nazareth and He is making all kinds of wooden things  . . .  So when is He going to start?” And Jesus would always tell them “There’s time. There’s time.” .

So Jesus spent 30 years just getting into the rhythms, into God’s speed, if I may put it like this, because this is what wisdom is all about: To tone down your speed to God’s speed.

The first thing that springs to mind when listening to this kind of nonsense is: Where did Stephan Joubert get this from? — the Bible? I really don’t think so. If there is one thing that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Jesus wholeheartedly linked onto the priestly story (contrary to Stephan’s claim that He never did), it is the fact that He began his public ministry not until He reached the age of thirty. According to Numbers 4:3 and 47 thirty years was the age when a priest entered his office in the temple. Jesus Christ, being the ultimate fulfilment of the Law (Matthew 5:17), also fulfilled this particular law. Not only that, God the Father foreordained Him to be our High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek even before the foundation of the earth (1 Peter 1:18-20).

In the Old Testament’s priestly order, the High Priest was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and the temple once a year, and that not without the blood of an innocent animal victim, to make atonement for the entire nation of Israel. However, there was no permanence in this ritual; it had to be re-enacted every single year. Hebrews, often called the Leviticus of the New Testament, teaches that Jesus, our High Priest, entered the Holy of Holies once for all time with his own blood to make atonement. Does that mean everyone is saved? No! only those who by faith appropriate Jesus’ blood sacrifice on the cross for their redemption are saved (Hebrews 10:19-22). Stephan Joubert just loves to use the term “people of the Way” in stead of believers, but what he conveniently forgets is that Hebrews 10:19-22 IS this Way. There is no other way and yet he audaciously ignores Jesus’ role as High Priest by saying that Jesus never linked onto the priestly or purity story but the wisdom story.

Sadly Stephan Joubert chooses to mention Jesus’ crucifixion as an example that He had learned to walk and live in the rhythms of God in stead of emphasizing the fact that He learned obedience by the things He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). This is what he said:

So Jesus had the rhythm. It took Him 30 years as the Son of God to get into the rhythm of following His father. Of hearing His father in this new earthly body of His. And He was slow enough to be in tune with God. And then He also found this rhythm with himself. There is always the rhythm towards God, the rhythm to the inside, towards yourself and the rhythm towards people and life. And Jesus was so in tune with himself as the Son of God that therefore He was humble enough, because He knew who He were (sic).

When Jesus carries the weight of all our problems on the cross and He is ready to die and God is at the point of switching off the sun. And Jesus, and this guy next to him says to him: “Lord, have mercy on me. Think, think, would you just give me a thought when You enter the kingdom of God?” And Jesus stops everything and He said: “I’ve got all the time in the world for you.” Is as if My death can wait a little.

It took Jesus 30 years to hear his Father in his new earthly body? Really! Stephan, Stephan, Stephan, have you never read the part in Scripture where Jesus said to his earthly father and mother: “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). And to remind you, Jesus was then only about twelve years old (eighteen years before He entered his public ministry) when Joseph and Mary found him in the temple busy answering the religious hierarchy’s questions. Indeed, they were amazed at his understanding and answers.

Have you noticed Stephan’s deliberate use of the word “problems” in the sentence “When Jesus carries the weight of our problems on the cross?” Oh, these guys in the Emergent Church who are so reluctant to use the words “sin” or “sins,” “unrighteousness” and “rebellion.” There is absolutely no evidence in Scripture that Jesus bore our problems on the cross. Sin is a moral issue, problems are not. Jesus never bore our financial, marital, health or any other kind of problems on the cross. He bore our sins. Sin alone contaminates and defiles the soul to the extent that it kills you spiritually and separates you from God. Problems can never do that. Jesus died on the cross to remove the enmity caused by sin and not problems beween God and us and to reconcile us to Him for all eterntity. The words “sin,” “sins,” and “sinned” appear 759 times in the KJV. Guess how many times the words “problem” and “problems” appear there – not once, zero, zilch, nada.

Please bear in mind that Joubert said in the beginning of his presentation that Jesus never linked on to the priestly story which encapsulates the concept of “purity and impurity”, “who is in and who is out,” “us and them” and “who is saved and who is not.” And yet he dares to refer to Jesus crucifixion as an example of God’s so-called rhythms. Is he so blind that he cannot see that Jesus’ crucifixion openly and glaringly speaks of who is in and who is out, us and them, purity and impurity and who is saved and who is not? Did not the one criminal persist in his unbelief, sin and rebellion and voluntarily exclude him from God’s Kingdom (shut himself OUT of the Kingdom of God)? Did he not voluntarily choose to remain in his impurity (sins) and shut himself OUT of the Kingdom of God? How could he ever have spoken of US in regard to Jesus and the other repentant criminal when he voluntarily shut himself OUT of the Kingdom of God and chose to remain part of the THEM (unrepentant unbelievers)? Indeed, how could he ever have been saved when he voluntarily rejected Jesus as the only Person who could redeem him from his own voluntary choice to remain OUTSIDE of the Kingdom of God? Or shall we, like Stephan Joubert sing his discordant song:

And you only learn this when you are wise, when you walk with somebody.  . . . it is like the whole life becomes a pilgrimage. You don’t have a pilgrimage when Easter is on the calendar. It is like the whole life is a pilgrimage where everyday becomes holy. Where every person that you meet becomes holy. Where every moment is holy. When time as such, when food as such, where people as such, where space as such becomes holy. And it changes your perspective, because the moment that I realize there is no unclean food, there is no unclean space, there is no unclean people per se and I treat them like that, things change.

But when you are a Pharisee and you know that that person is clean or unclean and I am clean. That space is unclean and I am clean. I mean you go around always judging people.

According to Stephan’s discordant song, the criminal on the cross who rejected Jesus was also holy, pure and someone with problems.

When the salvation or redemption of a lost soul is at stake, Jesus never says “There’s time. There’s time. Just come into the rhythms of God.” NO! He says:

Hebrews 3: 7 & 2 Corinthians 6:2

To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Behold, now is truly the time for a gracious welcome and acceptance [of you from God];

behold, now is the day of salvation!

Part 3 – A biblical appraisal of the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg (4-5 Sept. 2009)

Session 2: Transfiguration: Up and down the mountain – Trevor Hudson

On the second page of their very smart and glossy programme booklet that was handed out to the congressional participants and public during the Mosaic Congress, there is a quote by Thomas Keating which reads as follows:

A new formulation of the spiritual journey for Christians is urgently needed today that will be faithful to the Scriptures and tradition but is expressed in contemporary language and understanding (Emphasis added).

Johan Geyser takes the relay stick from Keating’s hand and continues to run with the idea of a new formulation of the spiritual journey for Christians when he says:

Dear delegate

Our spirituality needs to be approached in a different way – a holistic manner – that encapsulates theology, psychology, neurology and the other disciplines that shape the world as we know it.

It needs to be based on the example of Jesus, be faithful to the Bible, and the traditions and heritage of the Church, that age-old entity embodying God’s plan. . . .

This Congress hopes to create a platform to engage in conversations to grow towards an integrated, holistic spirituality, where we as community can have an impact in a changing world (Emphasis added).

And then enters Trevor Hudson with a very feisty and invigorating exegesis (or is it eisegesis) of Jesus Christ’s transfiguration on the mountain (Matthew 17: 1-16). At first I was very hopeful and waiting in great anticipation for a sermon that in the beginning seemed to be more biblical and less contemplatively mystical. To my dismay, however, Trevor’s presentation, like that of Johan Geyser, wandered off into to the mysterious and dark corridors of contemplative thoughtlessness (aka Geyser’s advice to stop thinking). Toward the conclusion of his paper he elatedly and nearly breathlessly declares that Peter, James and John saw “everything in Jesus and Jesus in everything.” They saw a “Christ-shaped world.” on the Mount of Transfiguration. Here are his contemplatively gilded words when he described this spiritual journey:

As we go on this journey with Jesus into these experiences, we dis . . . — we use a big word here and just try and unpack it a bit — we discover the sarcamentality of this universe — that this universe, this universe is like a sacrament; its like this whole universe is God’s holy land, because when they get up – you remember this – when they get up, what do they see? Do you remember? Go back to the story. You read the story! What do they see when they get up? They see Jesus only. They see everything in Jesus and Jesus in everything, huh?  . . . They see a Christ-shaped world (Emphasis added).

“Sacramentality” is indeed a big word and I doubt whether the three disciples, Peter James and John, understood it in the manner Trevor Hudson describes it. Let’s just briefly rewind our conversation to Johan Geyser’s presentation “Holy Longing” when he said the following.

. . . she (Mary) had an insight that none of the other disciples had about the death, the meaning of the death of Jesus. Nobody could see it. The only person  . . . was a woman and it was Mary that did the sitting. The sitting prepared and helped her to listen to Jesus at a deep inner level and to hear things that other people couldn’t hear. And it inspired her to action, to love, to love. . . . (Emphasis added)

Because Mary had supposedly sat at Jesus’ feet in a contemplative mindset she moved beyond her reason and perceived and understood things about His death that no one else, not even the disciples, were able to fathom. And yet, her miraculously acquired knowledge by just sitting with Jesus and being induced with this higher knowledge was superseded by the disciples miraculously induced knowledge when they saw Jesus in everything and everything in Jesus on the mount of transfiguration and a Christ-shaped world. The meaning of his death was to them a complete mystery but his superhuman prowess to be in everything while He was still enshrouded in a physical body is something they understood perfectly well when they moved beyond their reason . . . huh? Indeed, a superhuman shift beyond one’s reason is an absolute necessity if you want to see someone who’s confined to a physical body in everything. Huh? If Jesus was able to permeate everything and if it were possible for everything to permeate Him while He was still living in a physical body on earth, it would have been unnecessary for Him to comfort his disciples with these words:

John 16:5-8 But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.

While He was still living in his pre-resurrected physical body Jesus could never indwell his believers. His presence nigh his disciples when He walked the earth was something very precious but there was something much better and more desirable than Him being NEAR his followers and that is to dwell IN them. This is precisely why He said “It is more expedient for you (his disciples and all the believers throughout the ages) that I go away.” If he’d not ascended to his Father in heaven, the Holy Spirit could not have been poured out on the Day of Pentecost and consequently indwell all Christ’s followers (believers). The notion that Christ is in everything and everything is in Christ implies that the Holy Spirit is in everything and therefore everything must be holy. Psychology is holy, Neurology is holy, meditation is holy, yoga is holy, all religions are holy; nothing is unhallowed, everything is holy. In Fact, the entire universe is sacramentally holy. Huh? I just wonder why God said: “ . . . touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17). He must have been delirious when He said this. How can you touch an unholy or unclean thing when everything is holy?

I must admit it really takes some doing to see what the disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration. These kinds of strange contemplative eisegeses come to the fore, as I said in my comment on Johan Geyser’s presentation, when you add new meaning to passages in Scripture by placing emphasis on certain words and phrases over and above those that warrant greater importance. The most important lesson of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain was not what the disciples saw but what they heard. In fact what they saw led them to a wrong conclusion. As a Jew Peter instinctively knew that the transfiguration pointed to the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom on earth. He saw in this event the fulfilment of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles which looked back in hindsight to the wanderings in the wilderness for 40 years and forward to Israel’s regathering in their own land just prior to the establishment of Christ’s 1000 year Kingdom on earth. What Peter thought he saw was happening before his eyes was the actual inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom. His timing, of course, was wrong and God had to intervene. They heard his voice in a cloud that said Jesus is His beloved Son with Whom He is well-pleased AND THAT THEY SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM (OBEY HIM). Why should we listen to Him and obey Him? Well! because He is the Person Whom God anointed to fulfil all our needs. We need no-one and nothing else because He is all-sufficient for all our needs and yet Johan Geyser and his contemplatives have the audacity to say: “Our spirituality needs to be approached in a different way – a holistic manner – that encapsulates theology, psychology, neurology and the other disciplines that shape the world as we know it.” Imagine God the Father having so say: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am semi-pleased and to assist Him in His redemptive and sanctifying work I have sanctioned psychology, neurology and the other disciplines that will shape the world in the end-times. Listen to the psychologists and neurologists. Huh? . . .  huh?” In one of my many debates on the internet about the proposed fidelity of psychology in Christianity, I wrote the following:

Let’s examine a few things what a few psychologists have said of their own profession.

• “The Shaman . . . can be viewed as an early psychotherapist. (Herbert Bensen, M.D. Harvard professor)
• In 1986, at the AHP’s (Association for Humanistic Psychology) 24th annual meeting held at San Diego State university, several shamans (witch doctors) were the key speakers. Their objective was to teach participants how to develop or invoke shamanic altered states of consciousness conducive to contact with spirit beings.
• The basic model of man that led to the development of [Eastern] meditational techniques is the same model that led to humanistic psychotherapies (Lawrence LeShan, past president of the “Association for Humanistic Psychology {AHP}.
• The core of the problem, which psychological and psychiatric research has not resolved yet, and is unlikely to resolve, consists in a correct distinction between pathological behaviour of a psychic nature and demonic invasion (Eugenio Fizzoti, Professor The Psychology of Religion, School of Education, Pontifical Salesian University, Rome)
• When we think of religion, we usually think of a large institution . . . prescribed doctrines . . . a power of structure . . . dogmas . . . When I say “spiritual,” however, I’m trying to get back to the original experience that led to the development of religion in the first place . . . [through] altered states of consciousness . . . The exciting thing about transpersonal psychologies [is] . . . you don’t have to believe . . . some religious tract written hundreds or thousands of years ago [such as the Bible]. Techniques can be developed, whether they be meditation techniques or psychotherapeutic techniques or whatever that lead people back to the experiential basis that gave rise to religion in the first place. (Charles Tart, University of California Professor of Psychology)
• Although few psychologists accept all of Freud’s theorizing, his views on the presence of unconscious thoughts, wishes and feelings are now nearly universally accepted. (Bruce Narramore, leading Christian Psychologist).
• Under the influence of humanistic psychologists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, many of us Christians have begun to see our need for self-love and self-esteem. This is a good and necessary focus. (Bruce Narramore).
• Erich Fromm, an atheist, popularized the idea of self-love. He got it from Nietzsche. One of Fromm’s books was Ye Shall be as Gods. He took the lie of the serpent for its title. In his book, Man for Himself, he justified the idea that we all hate ourselves and we need to learn to love ourselves by saying Jesus taught it when He said, “love your neighbour as you love yourself” (Mt 12:39).
• It is indeed shocking that many, if not most forms of psychotherapy currently offered to consumers are not supported by credible scientific evidence. (R. Christopher Barden, psychologist, lawyer and president of the National Association for Consumer protection in mental Health Practices)
• Psychiatry has been willing to sanctify its values with the holy water of medicine and offer them up as the true faith of “Mental health.” It is a false Messiah. (E. Fuller Torrey, Internationally respected psychiatrist) (Emphasis added).

Why would any Christian want to follow a false Messiah? Beats me!

Nothing can be more obvious to see Jesus only after Moses and Elijah who had stood with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration disappeared  again suddenly. Their sudden disappearance happened when the three disciples lay face down in dire fear of God’s voice in a cloud and when they stood up from the ground they saw Jesus only. Its as simple as that. There is no need to attach a new mind-blowing (a movement beyond reason) and an esoteric meaning to the words “Jesus only.” Matthew could just as well have written “And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only because Moses and Elijah who appeared with Him had already departed” The million dollar question is: Why do the contemplatives do this? Why do they extract from biblical passages certain words and phrases and embroil an entire new eisegesis around it? The simple answer to this is: Because they want to promote their contemplative agenda at all cost.

What is the contemplatives’ agenda?  What do they aim to achieve? Well, in a nutshell, they aim not only to repaint, rehash, refurbish and  re-think the Bible; they also want to spread the Kingdom of God on earth that is allegedly already on earth. Hence their relentless efforts to persuade the Christian Church that everything is holy (according to Rob Bell), that the entire universe is like a sacrament and already God’s holy land, that Christ is in all and all is in Christ, and that we are living in a Christ-shaped world. The irony is that the so-called “Christ-shaped world” hates HIS guts and all HIS true followers or disciples (John 15:18). Surely, Jesus must have had a very quaint sense of humour when He said that His “Christ-shaped world” is steeped in the evil one (Satan) (1 John 5:19). If everything is already holy and Jesus Christ is in everything and everything is in Him, why do we need a biblical metanoia (a change of mind for the better in abhorrence of your past sins and rebellion against God)? Oh! but we do need a metanoia but let’s change its meaning and purpose by adopting Marcus Borg’s definition thereof who said that “metanoia means to move beyond your reason” while we all follow his example and happily reject Jesus Christ as the only Saviour. An unreasoning beast has more wisdom than that, especially when you take into account Balaam’s donkey that did everything in its power to stop the prophet from continuing on his maddening and cerebrally devoid spiritual journey.

If the Kingdom of God is already here; if everything is holy and the world is already Christ-shaped, surely we have no need to preach a Gospel of faith and repentance toward Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross. Surely, there is no need for that when everyone is already in Jesus Christ and He is in everyone? Surely, Paul would then have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to write:

And be [not] conformed to this already Christ-shaped world: but be ye transformed by the moving of your mind beyond reason, that ye may rethink and rehash what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2) Huh?

In his book Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic on pages 65 and 66 Leonard Sweet writes:

“This is my body” is not an anthropocentric metaphor. Theologian/feminist critic Sallie McFague has argued persuasively for seeing Earth, in a very real sense, as much as a part of the body of Christ as humans.

We are all earthlings. Indeed, in the biblical view of creation human earthlings do not stand at the apex of God’s handiwork…nature has an identity and purpose apart from human benefit. But we constitute together a cosmic body of Christ.

The only thing left to do in our already Christ-shaped world, is to pour our lives out on behalf of others — the poor, the destitute, the outcasts etc. Let’s follow Mother Theresa’s exemplary example who poured her life out for the poor and the destitute in Calcutta, India but sent them into a Christless eternity because she never preached the unadulterated Gospel of Christ to them. She believed her task was to “help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.” Brian McLaren reiterated the very same sentiments when he said:

I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts . . . rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (A Generous Orthodoxy, 260, 262, 264).

He could just as well have said: “It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts . . . despite their rejection and hatred of His substitutionary sacrificial death on the cross.”

The Hollywoodian nonsense “Heaven can wait” applies while the emergent contemplatives venture “to help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus.” It is consequently no strange thing to see the emergent contemplatives embracing Eastern mystical practices, especially those steeped in Buddhism. The spiritual journey, therefore, is the journey of the Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and everyone else being miraculously infused with THE WAY OF JESUS. His example and not his doctrines (commandments) need to be induced into all religions. The light of Jesus needs to miraculously transfigure (transform) individuals of whatever religious persuasion so that we all may work in tandem (unity) to make this world a better place. And guess what the common denominator is in achieving this miraculously infused or induced spiritual way? — yep, you said it, MEDITATION. It doesn’t matter what brand of meditation you use, be it Yoga, contemplative or centering prayer, Christian meditation or any other kind, they all serve the same purpose — to receive enlightenment, a new gnosis which is miraculously induced (initiated) so that we may achieve our goals on this planet. Benjamin Creme, the self-appointed John the Baptist of the Maitreya (false Christ) has this to say about his own brand of meditation called “Transmission Meditation.” If you look closely you will see some correlation between Johan Geyser’s use of the word “induced” and Creme’s use of the word “transmission.”

Transmission – A Meditation for the New Age, Creme explains that the time is past to focus on one’s own spiritual progress without engaging in some form of service. Transmission Meditation, he says, is the simplest way to do both – at the same time.

Ah! that’s an enlightening statement, especially when you take into account Teresa of Avila’s eisegesis to combine Martha’s active life and Mary’s contemplative life (Luke 10:38-42) with the purpose of producing an industrious and fruitful contemplative follower of Jesus who not only sits in silence when meditating contemplatively but also goes into the world to pour his/her life out on behalf of others. They seem to have discovered that a full-blown contemplative life where you just sit and meditate in silence in a kind of Monastic ascetic lifestyle (the highest kind of life, according the The Cloud of Unknowing and Johan Geyser) is of very little value to others. Benjamin Creme noticed this when he said “the time is past to focus on one’s own spiritual progress (or journey) without engaging in some form of service.” He continues to say:

Transmission Meditation is a group service activity which ’steps down’ the great spiritual energies that continually stream into our planet, focused by the Masters of Wisdom – our ‘Elder Brothers’. This process, which makes the energies more useful to humanity, is like that of electrical transformers that step down the power between generators and household outlets. These transformed spiritual energies, Creme explains, are gradually uplifting all life forms and changing our world for the better.

“What is unique about this work,” says Creme, “is its simplicity. It is a perfect vehicle for the aspirations of very busy people. It is safe, highly scientific, non-denominational, free of any charge, and unbelievably potent. It is a service in which we can involve ourselves for the rest of our lives and know that we are helping in the great transformation to a more just and compassionate world. At the same time I know of no other form of service which makes for such far reaching and fast spiritual growth.” (Emphasis added)

The best way to make spiritual growth and to pour your life out in service on behalf of others, according to Creme, is to participate in meditation that taps into the Masters of Wisdom’s spiritual energies and to have it transmitted (induced) onto your being through meditation

Whereas Johan Geyser explained the marrying of the contemplative and active lifestyles in terms of Martha (the activist) and Mary (the contemplative) in Luke 10:38-42, Trevor Hudson did so in terms of the transfiguration of Jesus on the Mountain (Matthew 17:1-8 and 14) which he entitles “UP AND DOWN THE MOUNTAIN.” He kicked off with a little interaction between him and the audience using a lit lamp and a jug and a glass of water.  He began by saying:

I wonder if we could just continue the conversation a bit. We’ve been using the language of the spiritual journey and I wonder what you think represents best this spiritual journey. Do you think that the spiritual journey is best represented by the light of Christ transforming us? Or do you think the spiritual journey is best represented by pouring a cup of water for someone who is thirsty? I wonder if we could just think about this carefully. Now, there’s no right answer. I just want you to relax but I want, I’m wondering, I’m wondering what you’re thinking. I’m wondering whether you think the spiritual journey is about this kind of inward transformation, the light of Christ filling our lives; we become the light of the world.  [or] is the spiritual journey essentially about the pouring out of our life on behalf of others? . .  I’m wandering how many of you really are drawn to this sense of interior transformation, becoming the light of the world? . . . How many of you feel that the spiritual journey is really about giving yourself, pouring your life out? . . .

We get a preliminary glimpse of Trevor Hudson’s contemplative mindset when he brings to our memory the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. Very few people in the West seem to know that when the Western powers under the auspices of the Unites States of America decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, it was the very day when the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration. Trevor Hudson relayed this horrible event as follows.

I want to draw your attention to something which historians when they tell the story of Hiroshima, often forget to tell us, that that bomb was dropped on Hiroshima when the Eastern Church celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration and those of you who have been exposed to some of the treasures of our brother and sister Christ-followers from the East will know that the Feast of the Transfiguration is as important as the Festival of Christmas, the Festival of Easter, the Festival of Pentecost; that in the Eastern heart the Transfiguration is crucial. And I’ve often thought about this tragic insensitivity in the hearts and minds of those who made that decision. . . . My homespun theory — I’ve got no empirical research for this — my homespun theory is that somehow those in the West who made this decision were simply unaware of the importance of the transfiguration; they were simply unaware. Its almost as if those of us in the West somehow, and we’ve been influenced I think by Western thinking, those of us who live in South Africa, somehow the events of the transfiguration flies below the radar. Huh? Can anyone of you really remember a strong sermon on the transfiguration? Huh? . . .  huh? We don’t know what to do with it. Its one of those events that kind of blows our category of thought. You know the West kind of emphasizes analysis, definition, rationality. [In] the East, by contrast, there is an emphasis on experience, on intuition, on maybe what sometimes gets called the mystical, and I think that’s why we sometimes lose the transfiguration in our thinking (Emphasis added).

Was Trevor Hudson suggesting that you need to enter into a mystical experience before you can understand the true meaning of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ on the mountain, something similar to what Mary experienced when she sat at the feet of Jesus? It’s easy to find a connection between two apparent opposites when you put your mind to it and Trevor Hudson very skilfully found that connection when he married contemplative spirituality with the event of the transfiguration. However, contrary to Johan Geyser’s plea that we should stop thinking, he made a heartfelt appeal to his audience to descend with their minds into their hearts and to intuitively enter into the event of the transfiguration, not only as a past event but also as a present reality — “the Bible happened, the Bible happens . . .  and then maybe we will see what the spiritual journey in the company of Jesus looks like” he explained.

Before I elaborate a bit more on Hudson’s contemplatively transfigured Transfiguration, it is imperative that we briefly look at his homespun theory again. Indeed, it is a homespun theory without any empirical backup because his conjecture: “that somehow those in the West who made this decision were simply unaware of the importance of the transfiguration.” is simply not true. Was the Roman Catholic Church in the West simply unaware of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . .  or at least equally unaware as she was about Adolf Hitler’s plan to exterminate six million Jews? Vatican I’s statement that “While the state has some rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the the superior authority [of] the Church (The Catholic World , July 1870, Vol. xi, p. 439) is ample proof that governments rarely take decisions without the knowledge and the stamp of approval of the Roman Catholic Church. Dave Hunt in his book “A Woman Rides the Beast” on page 57 and 59 writes:

The antipathy of Roman Catholicism to basic human freedoms later created unholy alliances with the totalitarian governments of Hitler and Mussolini, who were praised by the pope and other Church leaders as men chosen by God. Catholics were forbidden to oppose Mussolini and were urged to support him.  . . .

Pope Pius XI told Vice-Chancellor Fritz von Papen, himself a leading Catholic, “how pleased he was that the German Government now had at its head a man uncompromisingly opposed to Communism.” (Franz von Papen, Memoirs, trans. Brian Connell, London 1952, p. 279). . . .

Most German Catholics were in a state of euphoria after the 1933 concordat between Hitler and the Vatican was signed. Catholic young men were ordered “to raise their right arm in salute, and to display the swastika flag . . .”

Any apparent difficulties to link the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of which the Catholic Cathedral was inadvertently “ground zero” for “fat man,”  soon vanish when we take into account that Harry S. Truman, a confirmed 33rd degree Mason, appointed many Roman Catholics to key positions in his government.

President Harry S. Truman was a minor ordinary Klansman from 1920 – 1922. His two year membership was not notable and somewhat lacking. He eventually had a major falling out with the KKK over his desire to appoint Roman Catholics to key political positions; something which all of the KKK opposed at the time. Some Klans now not only accept Roman Catholics but actively recruit them. The true Ku Klux Klan is however traditionally and rightfully opposed to Roman Catholicism and Papists influence over America. President Harry S. Truman was currying favor with Roman Catholic voters and was more interested in his political career than the Klan for the good of America. He severed all ties with the KKK and openly repudiated them. They didn’t call the arrogant upstart “give them Hell Harry”, for nothing. His family has tired to deny his KKK membership ever since, but has failed miserably since it is a well established fact of documented history (Read here).

Despite these historical facts Trevor Hudson forcefully blames the dropping of the bomb on the Western world’s lack of awareness of the mystical significance of the Transfiguration. Is it perhaps because he needed to colour in the Transfiguration with a distinct contemplative palette. Others in the Roman Catholic fold have already tried to repaint the Transfiguration using a contemplative palette. Read here. It is interesting to note that the author of this article uses the very same words Johan Geyser used to describe the necessity to let go of the false self.

Listening asks of us intention, attention, and letting go of the things that deafen us. Anything that destroys or limits presence is a form of deafness. The following are just a few examples:

• Holding on to the past – guilt, sins, regrets, disappointments, sorrow, and losses;
• Perfectionism, self-doubt, and self-hatred;
• Fear, anxiety, and the resulting need to control;
• Competition, comparison, expectation and judgments;
• Anger, resentment, and condemnation. (Emphasis added).

What does Trevor Hudson mean by “becoming the light of the world?”

Just a quick reminder what Trevor said.

I’m wandering how many of you really are drawn to this sense of interior transformation, becoming the light of the world? . . . How many of you feel that the spiritual journey is really about giving yourself, pouring your life out? . . .

The Bible never teaches that you “become” or “are becoming the light of the world.” The word “becoming” implies a gradual development into being the light which in turn implies that you must do something in order to become that light. Jesus said that His disciples ARE the light of the world (Matthew 5:114). They ARE the light the moment they receive Him (Who IS the essence of this light) as their personal Saviour. In the Barnes commentary the following explanation of the light is given:

The light of the world often denotes the sun, John 11:9. The sun renders objects visible, shows their form, their nature, their beauties, and deformities. The term light is often applied to religious teachers. See John 1:4 8:12 Isaiah 49:6. It is pre-eminently applied to Jesus in these places; because he is, in the moral world, what the sun is in the natural world. The apostles, and Christian ministers, and all Christians, are lights of the world, because they, by their instructions and examples, show what God requires, what is the condition of man, what is the way of duty, peace, and happiness—the way that leads to heaven (Emphasis added).

The main priority of Jesus being the Light of the world is to reprove mankind of its evil ways and to draw them to Himself so that they may see their evil deeds for what they really are.

John 3:18-21 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Christians are beacons of light that illuminate the way to heaven by their preaching of the unadulterated Word of God and their sanctified lives. Like John the Baptist they ought to point to Jesus Christ and declare “There is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” John the Baptist never performed any miracles and neither did he pour himself out on behalf of others to alleviate their suffering, poverty and misery. And yet Jesus hailed him the greatest prophet born of women because he never compromised the Word of God for the sake of a unifying spiritual journey. Also when Paul said that he was being poured out he was merely referring to his life that was nearing its end and not to a life of service to the poor and the destitute (2 Timothy 4:6). In the other instance where he mentions him being offered as a libation sacrifice, he did so on behalf of the faith of his brothers and sisters and not to ease their poverty and dire circumstances (Philippians 2:17). I’m not in the very least suggesting that they had no compassion for the poor and their suffering.

Throughout the Congress the speakers eulogized the need for experience, mysticism, intuition, thoughtlessness, silence, passive sitting, awareness while they downplayed rationalism, thinking, studying, understanding, i.e. everything that relates to man’s cognitive capacities. It predictably leads to the assumption that the transformation (transfiguration) of an individual is not accomplished through the cognitive learning, understanding or knowledge of certain doctrines. Biblical exposés such as “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” are no longer tolerable in our post-modern enlightened society. Instead, the  “truth” is passively received by means of a mystical induction or infusion when the mind moves beyond reason through deep contemplative and silent meditation. You will recall that Johan Geyser said it is not acquired but induced by just sitting and being in a state of complete silence. Well of course, the expediency in this is that it eliminates disagreement, factions or divisions, conflicts and war because no one needs to defend the doctrines of a particular faith; we are all induced with a like-mindedness that has its origin in the same source — a generic god who is equally at home in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism etc. etc. etc. You may also recall that in my previous comment I said “It is said that a guru is capable of transmitting his own state of being (love, compassion, empathy, intuition and aliveness) to the receptive pilgrims who sit with him at his feet.” In Buddhism this is called  TO BECOME ENLIGTENED.

You may ask: What has this all got to do with Trevor Hudson’s presentation? Well let’s again listen to him describing the spiritual journey.

When those guys are on the mountain they get a glimpse of who they can become, huh? They get a small glimpse of transformation, of change. Jesus is transfigured. Can I say this carefully. Jesus is not transfigured for his sake; I use to think transfiguration meant it was like proof of Jesus’ divinity. If that is true then Moses was divine because Moses also shone, huh? If you want evidence for the divinity of Christ, we go to the cross, we go to the resurrection. Jesus is transfigured for the sake of the disciples. Now they are able to see what a transfigured, transformed human  being looks like. Now they’re able to see what a human being, open to God, really looks like; now they’re able to see what happens when the light begins to shine. They can see it; they get a glimpse of who they can become, huh?

Was Jesus’ transfiguration really for the sake of his disciples — to get a glimpse of what they can become? The disciples had a tremendous experience on the Mountain of Transfiguration. There is no doubt about that and it is quite evident that Trevor Hudson wanted to call our attention to his reasoning that it was their experience that triggered their own transformation or transfiguration. Although it is often told that first-hand experience is the best tutor, it is often clouded in subjectivity. Peter greatly valued his own experience on the mountain but makes it abundantly clear that God’s Word is far more trustworthy and more necessary (2 Peter 1:19). It therefore stands to reason that we need to look to God’s Word and the correct understanding thereof in order to undergo a correct transformation. What does the more trustworthy and more necessary Word of God say in regard to the purpose of the Transfiguration on the mountain?

One thing that was uppermost in the Jewish mind during Jesus’ sojourn on earth was the Kingdom. The disciples knew that the Kingdom was yet future, that Christ himself would restore it and that He would restore it to Israel and not the church. When they asked Him: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” He did not deny that the Kingdom was promised to Israel in particular (Acts 1:6). When He told them just prior to his transfiguration on the Mountain that some of them would see the Son of man coming in his Kingdom (Matthew 16:28), He was of course referring to this special event. Consequently, the Transfiguration could not have been an occasion to give the disciples a glimpse of what they could become, but a glimpse of Christ Jesus’ coming Kingdom on earth. It was not the Kingdom itself but a preview of which they were the eye witnesses. Furthermore, they were given a glimpse of the fact that the Kingdom cannot be established on earth without the personal and radiant presence of Jesus Christ. At the Last Supper He said that He would not eat of the Passover “until it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God” and that He would not drink “of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God shall come” which confirms that He must be personally present in his radiant resplendence before his Kingdom can be ushered in on earth. This is what the three disciples saw and it kind of blows away the Emergent Church’s pathetic socialized methods to usher in the Kingdom of God here and now.

From Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic (p.53) we have Leonard Sweet who tells us:

A surprisingly central feature of all the world’s religions is the language of light in communicating the divine and symbolizing the union of the human with the divine: Muhammed’s light-filled cave, Moses’ burning bush, Paul’s blinding light, Fox’s “inner light,” Krishna’s Lord of Light, Böhme’s light-filled cobbler shop, Plotinus’ fire experiences, Bodhisattvas with the flow of Kundalini’s fire erupting from their fontanelles, and so on.

What is a genuine biblical spiritual journey?

How is the way (a term the contemplatives love to use) or the true path determined in the spiritual journey? Well, first of all, Jesus’ claim that He IS the Way (the only way to His Father) must be taken very seriously because if you don’t you’ve already taken a wrong turn onto another way or path that leads you along a spiritual journey that is completely at variance with God’s Way. In fact, it doesn’t lead to life but eternal death (Proverbs 14:12). Sadly, many emergent contemplatives have already opted for the wrong turn and the wrong way and yet still believe they are following Jesus Christ. Listen to what Rob Bell says:

In Yoga one of the central tenets of Yoga is your breath needs to remain the same regardless of the pose. So whether you’re making the letter Q with your whatever . . . [laughter] . . . In Yoga one of the things you learn right away is not how difficult the pose is . . . . Its not how flexible you are; its not about whether you can do the poses; its not about how you can bend yourself; its can you keep your breath [breathes in and out] consistent [breathes in and out] through whatever you’re doing? And the Yoga masters say this is how it is when you follow Jesus and surrender to God [breathes in and out]. Its your breath being consistent, its your connection with God, regardless of the pose that you find yourself in. That is integrating the Divine into the daily. (Listen here).

Allow me to remind you, and it is on record, that Stephan Joubert with whom Trevor Hudson appeared on the same platform at the Mosaic Congress, once said that when Rob Bell opens his mouth it is the pure Gospel truth. The central tenet of contemplative spirituality (meditation, centering prayer, contemplative prayer, silence, sitting, Yoga) is to integrate (incarnate) the Divine into the daily, to follow Jesus and to surrender to God, and that’s called the Gospel truth? How is it possible that men and women who call themselves evangelical Christians can listen to such nonsense, that are clearly doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1), and hail them as the pure Gospel truth? The Bible supplies the answer:

2 Thessalonians 2:9-11 The coming [of the lawless one, the antichrist] is through the activity and working of Satan and will be attended by great power and with all sorts of [pretended] miracles and signs and delusive marvels—[all of them] lying wonders—And by unlimited seduction to evil and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing (going to perdition) because they did not welcome the Truth but refused to love it that they might be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a misleading influence, a working of error and a strong delusion to make them believe what is false, (Emphasis added).

The moment you shun God’s way of approaching Him in his holy of holies in heaven through the blood of His Son (Hebrews 10:19-23) and devise all kinds of other ways to enter into his presence (such as contemplative or centering prayer, silence, just sitting and even Yoga) you immediately become a candidate for demonic deception and God’s righteous judgements. The most devastating thing about deception is that every person who follows after false apostles shall receive the very same punishment as they. (Revelation 2:20-23).

I’m sure the contemplatives will agree that our spiritual journey is inexorably linked to a particular mission and to really know what that mission is, we once again need to cast our eyes on the True Way (the Only Way), Jesus Christ. A person with a particular mission is one who has been sent by someone else to accomplish his (the sender’s and not the ambassador’s own) goals. When we understand this by putting on our thinking caps and not by sinking deep down into a muddle of thoughtlessness, it is not so difficult to understand why Jesus said: “For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak” and also “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” Ah, now we’ve reached the crux of the meaning of mission and spiritual journey. Both are determined and sustained by God’s spoken word, Jesus’ spoken Word that is in complete harmony with his Father’s spoken Word and the spoken Word of Jesus’ followers which in turn is in complete harmony with Jesus’ spoken Word. Once again, if we put on our thinking caps without having to sink down still deeper into the labyrinths of contemplative thoughtlessness, we will understand why Jesus said: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Jesus’ spiritual journey, if you like, was not to make the world a better place; his mission was to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10) and to bring a sword of division (Luke 12:51). And yet, the emergent contemplatives have opted for a social Gospel which emphasizes service instead of the salvation of lost souls.

Addendum

Like most of the festivals celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant churches the Feast of the Transfiguration had its origin in paganism. When the horrific persecution of Christians was terminated by Emperor Constantine the church entered upon an apostasy which led to the Roman Catholic Church and has lasted until the present time. [1] “Will Durant, a purely secular historian with no religious axe to grind, comments upon the marriage of Christianity and paganism that came through Constantine’s pretended ‘conversion’ and assumption of church leadership.” [2]

Paganism survived . . . in the form of ancient rites and customs condoned, or accepted and transformed, by an often indulgent Church. An intimate and trustful worship of saints replaced the cult of pagan gods . . .Statues of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus; the Roman Lupercalia and the feast of purification of Isis became the Feast of Nativity; the Saturnalia were replaced by Christmas celebration . . . an ancient festival of the dead by All Souls Day, rededicated to Christian heroes; incense, lights, flowers, processions, vestments, hymns which had pleased the people in older cults were domesticated and cleansed in the ritual of the Church . . . soon people and the priests would use the sign of the cross as a magic incantation to expel or drive away demons . . . [Paganism] passed like maternal blood into the new religion, and captive Rome captured her conqueror.  . . . the world converted Christianity . . . [3]

The Catholic Encyclopaedia describes the origin of the Feast of Transfiguration as follows:

The Armenian bishop Gregory Arsharuni (about 690) ascribes the origin of this feast to St. Gregory the Illuminator (d. 337?), who, he says, substituted it for a pagan feast of Aphrodite called Vartavarh (roseflame), retaining the old appellation of the feast, because Christ opened His glory like a rose on Mount Thabor. It is not found however in the two ancient Armenian calendars printed by Conybeare (Armenian Ritual, 527 sq.). It probably originated, in the fourth or fifth century, in place of some pagan nature-feast, somewhere in the highlands of Asia.

It can only be a false Christ who would want to be associated with a pagan festival because the Christ of the Bible said:

2 Corinthians 6:14-16 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

[1] Dave Hunt: A Woman Rides the Beast, p. 203

[2] Ibid

[3] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, , Vol. IV, p. 75; Vol. III, p. 657 as quoted in  A Woman Rides the Beast, p. 203 and 204 Dave Hunt.

Part 2 – A biblical appraisal of the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaic Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg (4 – 5 Sept. 2009)

Session 1: Holy Longing – Dr. Johan Geyser

Dr. Johan Geyser has a doctorate in theology and educational psychology and is also a part time lecturer at the University of Johannesburg.

In the business world  and particularly in the estate agency business, referrals are one of the best ways to create a constant stream of new customers. It is one of the  quickest ways to advertise your expertise as a competent and successful seller of property. Referrals are not only applicable to the business world. In the ordinary and everyday life it has the tendency to either enhance your status as a citizen or to denigrate it, depending on the people with whom you like to associate. I suppose this is why people would rather refer to distinguished persons in society. The well-known saying “He that touches pitch will be defiled” explains this principle rather well. Referrals also have a lot to do with association. If you associate with all the right kind of people you may accomplish your goals much easier and quicker than usual because your association with the much esteemed and distinguished in society opens doors. Unlike the secular world where the latter principle applies, Paul exhorts God’s children to “condescend to men of low estate” (Romans 12:16) because God dwells in the high and holy place but also with those who are of a contrite and humble spirit (Isaiah 57:15). Who are the humble and the contrite in spirit? — those who tremble at the Word of God and abide by it in holy reverence of his righteous judgments (Isaiah 66:2). The question we need to ask then is: Did any of the speakers at the Mosaic Congress abide by His Word? Read the following critique and judge for yourself.

Post modern church clergy have perfected the “art” of referrals or references for they are forever referring to the maxims and sayings of scholars who unashamedly contradict God’s Word. Like Brian McLaren, Johan Geyser clearly has a high regard for Marcus Borg whom he quoted as saying  that the word “metanoia” means “to move beyond reason.” Should we be surprised that Marcus Borg explains the word “metanoia” in terms of the Eastern mystical concept of the mind rather than the biblical rendition thereof? No! of course not because Marcus Borg has rejected the doctrine of atonement and of the cross of Jesus Christ and therefore rejected the doctrine of repentance (“metanoia”) and the need for salvation. According to him, he together with all of mankind are already living in God (See the quote below). On page viii of his book The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion To A More Authenthic Contemporary Faith (there’s that magical word “beyond” again) he introduces himself as “a Christian of a non-literalistic and non-exclusivistic kind” which in simple layman’s terms means that he rejects any literal form of interpretation of the Bible and does not believe that Jesus Christ is the only Person through whom salvation may be  obtained. Indeed, their liberal and loose relationship with the Word of God forms the bedrock of their contemplative, mystical approach to the Bible. By the by, Marcus Borg is the guy who once said that Jesus Christ’s body was probably eaten up by dogs after his crucifixion. Although they sidetrack or even out rightly reject the core doctrines of Scripture they dare not give the impression that they disregard the Word of God entirely. They must at all cost give the impression that their spirituality is biblically grounded. In his opening words Johan Geyser, in explaining what the spiritual journey of the Mosaic Church encompasses, he said the following:

Of course its biblically based. I think all Christians’ spiritualities should be a biblical spirituality. But, its routed in the tradition. Now in the Afrikaans world we all embrace tradition but as Pentecostals we go back a hundred years and as Reformed we go back much further, we go back five hundred years . . . .And then we’ve got to take into cognizance the developments in theology, in biblical studies, in psychology, sociology, neurology. We try to integrate the three  movements of the spiritual life; between it we try to do it holistically.

Geyser’s acknowledgment and acceptance of Marcus Borg’s interpretation of the word “Metanoia (“to move beyond reason”) is a classic example of the Contemplatives’ prudish “biblical” spirituality. What they say and do are two fundamentally different things. On the one hand they say that all Christians should base their spirituality on the Bible but ironically agree with scholars like Marcus Borg who says that we should move beyond the literal meaning of biblical doctrines and embrace the more esoteric and mystical explanations thereof (such as his own). Johan Geyser explained Marcus Borg’s perception of the meaning of “metanoia” (“to move beyond reason”) with a bowl of fish he brought with him and displayed on a little table in front of his audience.

It was very interesting for me to discover that Marcus Borg, the new Testamentikus (sic) of our time said that the word metanoia means to move beyond   reason, move beyond  your reason. To explain that, the fishes might be a good way. (Pointing to the fishes he continued). I was just told, this is “I” and this is “djy” (a slang form of the Afrikaans word “jy’ meaning “you”). Its a mother and the little one.

One day the little one went to the mother and said “Mother, I hear all things about water. Everyone is talking about water. Tell me, what is water? Where is water?” And the mum said: “Its all around you; its in you; its difficult to explain. Look! This is water. He says: “But I don’t see it. I don’t understand it.” She says “Well there are three ways that I can think of now. One is to jump out of this bowl  . . . immediately you’ll discover what’s water. But there’s a problem, you know. it will also be the end. . . . But there’s another way. I can take some photos of you and then we can look at it together. I’ll show you; look, there’s  a movement, that’s water. that’s water going through there. We can reflect on it; I can open some textbooks for you. I can explain to you, its H2O and we, you know, can do some calculations. There’s a lot of ways that I can try to explain it to you so that you can understand what water is. Or djy, you can just hang-in there; just sit, just sit and let it flow through you. Don’t try to understand so much. Just become aware of the water that you’re living in.

This metaphor — in you, we live and move and have or whole being: Acts 17:28. He’s in us; he’s all around us. Its the air we breath, its the Spirit, its Ruah. He’s our life. He’s everything. It can be so difficult, you can miss everything. And we can be so busy with the photos all the time. You know, our thoughts about God, our feelings about God, our feelings for God, is not God. Its only about God. And we can be so caught up in just taking photos. So there comes a time when you should stop meditating, stop studying, stop thinking so that you can enter into the reality of God. Just become still, move beyond things of thinking (Emphasis added).

I can understand why the Mosaic church members feel comfortable with this kind of nonsense, for the Bible clearly says “Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves] (Romans 1:22, Amplified Bible). I can assure you that the Minister of Education, Blade Nzimande, would immediately fire Dr. Johan Geyser if he’d been a teacher in one of our schools and he stood in front of a class saying: “Now class, I want you to stop studying and stop thinking. Just sit and be aware of all the facts you need to know in your various subjects and let it flow through you.” The kids may burst out in ecstatic joy but, as I said earlier, Minister Blade Nzimande would immediately fire him. As a rebuttal to my statement, Dr. Geyser may argue that I am mixing spirituality with ordinary mundane things such as schooling and that children need to study and learn to think constructively to be eligible for a good job one day. May I then remind him him that he and his emergent buddies (like Rob Bell) have repeatedly stated that everything is spiritual and holy. If the spirituality in church is equal to the spirituality in secular life then the spiritual things in church such as the need to stop thinking and studying in order to enter into the reality of God may be equally applied to mundane things such as education in our schools in order to enter into the realities of everyday life. Marcus Borg wrote: “The sacred is not “somewhere else” spatially distant from us. Rather, we live within God . . . God has always been in relationship to us, journeying with us, and yearning to be known by us. Yet we commonly do not know this or experience this. . . . We commonly do not perceive the world of Spirit.” Well, let’s heed Johan Geyser’s good advice that all Christians’ spirituality should be a biblical spirituality and study God’s Word to see whether Marcus Borg’s and his own presupposition that we all live in God and that the air we breath is the Spirit (Ruah), is true. What does the Bible say?

Romans 8:9b But if anyone does not possess the [Holy] Spirit of Christ, he is none of His [he does not belong to Christ, is not truly a child of God].

If, according to Marcus Borg and Johan Geyser God is in everything and everything is in God (like the water in the the little fish bowl), then Paul lied when he plainly said that the Spirit of God is not in all people. In any event, Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit Who is definitely holy, wrote “Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skilfully teaching] the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15).

Johan Geyser’s spirituality, as well as of all the other speakers who spoke their abominable “truths” in “non-silence,”  is not based on the Bible but on the ECUMENICAL-PANENTHEISTIC-NEW AGE-INTERFAITH-CHRIST whom everyone can receive by merely breathing in the air (Ruah). It is not only a damnable rejection of the true meaning of the word “metanoia” but a denial of the ineffaceable substitutionary death of Christ as the only means of receiving the Spirit of Truth and of Life (the Holy Spirit). If anyone can breath in the Spirit (Ruah) because God is supposedly “everything,” then Jesus’ crucifixion was a waste of time. And yet Geyser audaciously substantiates his claims with the well-known passage from Acts 17:28: “For in Him we live and move and have our being; as even some of your [own] poets have said, For we are also His offspring.” The expression ”in him” most certainly does not mean that everyone is in Him but simply that everyone lives by Him. Him being the Fountain of all life, we do not only owe our existence to Him but He also sustains all things, animate and inanimate. “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all  things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” (Hebrews 1:3).

The Emergent fraternity have an uncanny way of giving new meaning to passages in Scripture by placing emphasis on certain words over those that warrant greater importance. As you may recall, Johan Geyser said that one needs to just sit and allow the presence of God to flow through you. To explain his premise he quoted from Luke 10:38-42

I thought I’d focus on the contemplative dimension of the Gospel, and try to explain what that means, not by just giving a definition, I thought I’d use one of the key texts in the contemplative tradition in explaining what it looks like to be a contemplative, to live the contemplative life and to develop a contemplative mind. (Emphasis added)

He then continues to say that his exegesis of the above passage in Scripture is based on the writings of Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and the “Cloud of Unknowing.” because “the understanding of this [contemplative] life comes from them.” Perhaps Johan Geyser should rather have just sat down first to contemplate (with a robust and active mind and not a mind clouded by the unknowing) the different meanings of “exegesis” and “eisegesis.” In the latter method of interpreting Scripture you superimpose your own premises or those of others on the biblical text so as to strengthen and validate your own agenda, which in this particular case is the contemplative life. This was precisely what Johan Geyser did; he used the eisegesis method of interpreting Scripture and not the exegesis method as he said. In layman’s terms it simply means that they are dreadfully compromising the Gospel of Jesus Christ to enhance and further their own false Gospel which is no Gospel at all.

In good faith with his own contemplative lifestyle, Johan Geyser then expounds in more detail what the contemplative life means. According to The Cloud of Unknowing, Martha and Mary typify two kinds of life — the active life and “the contemplative life where you let go of the normal ordinary way of living and you give most of your energy, your thoughts, your time just into being with God, in prayer” which, “according to the Cloud of Unknowing is the highest type of life you can live” and, according to Geyser, sparked off the development of early monastic life. Allow me to remind you, as a parenthesis, what happened throughout the monastic life since its early inception when monks and nuns renounced the normal and ordinary life for a life “wholly devoted to God” in contemplative prayer and solitude. Most of them were not able to bear the heavy load of celibacy and succumbed to their sexual desires, the result being that many nuns bore babies who were summarily aborted or killed after their birth. It is still happening today. (Read here and here).

The imposition of celibacy upon its priests was contrary to Holy Scripture and to nature. Indeed, it is a mark of the prophesied apostasy from God’s truth that was to come at the end of the present age. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth, 1 Timothy 4:1-3.

Theresa of Avila ostensibly disagreed with the author of The Cloud of Unknowing that the contemplative life was the highest type of living and suggested that there was something much better to be accrued. This is how Johan Geyser explained Theresa of Avila’s rendition of the contemplative life.

She (Theresa of Avila) says, (now look at that Scripture): The Lord is not dissatisfied with Martha’s life, with what she is doing. But He’s upset by the way she is doing what she is doing. He doesn’t tell her: Martha what you are doing, is wrong. . . . you are anxious and you are upset . . . and He looks at Mary and He doesn’t tell Mary: Mary I’m totally satisfied with you. Mary, you’ve chosen the most important thing, but  . . . you’ve chosen the better part, there’s still a best thing to do. You’ve still got something else and Theresa’s idea was if you could live the active life contemplatively [it] would be the highest form of life that you can live.

Now, what does it mean? Let’s start with  Martha; we look at Mary then. Martha, salt of the earth, working, thinking, serving others all the time, but she is worried and upset and I looked at a Greek dictionary for those two words; she is torn apart and tossed around, torn apart on the inside. There is not a unity in her heart. She hasn’t got, in the old terms, a purity of heart, cause there’s a lot of things in her heart. There’s a lot of chaff, other stuff in her heart and, here’s the thing, she is totally unaware of her inner world. She is converted on the level of her psychological consciousness but not on the unconscious level of her motivation. She’s not aware that why am I doing what I am dong? And that is of a great essence for us. She thinks of, is it going to be on time, why aren’t they helping me, my plans aren’t working out. There’s a big need for control; there’s a big need for acceptance of what they are going to think of me. And she’s upset about it. And if you read the Scriptures and of course the early Christians took the teachings of Jesus about worry very seriously. You know, Jesus said, Don’t worry. If He says it, He means it. And He says, one of the big hindrances on your spiritual journey is worry. The cares of the world, Matthew 13. If you’re busy with just making money and the cares of the world, the Word that is sown in you will not grow. You cannot continue. You gotta get rid of it. That was one of the big motivations for joining the monastic life cause then you can get rid of it hat way.

A pelgrim (sic) came to a church father and asked him: What must I do to progress, and he said, well let’s start at the beginning my son. Are you a follower of Christ or do you still worry? [laughter in the audience) . . . Thomas Keating describes it [worry] as a construction of the false self. It is because of our basic needs, instinctive needs, that we are born with for security, for acceptance, for control that we construct a life for ourselves by fulfilling those needs in a certain way. That is the life that Jesus says I want you to give your life away, give that life away. That’s the self that you’ve got to crucify. Paul said I crucified myself and now I live with Christ, Galatians 2:20. So its about letting go of the false self. Its moving into your self, into the world that is in the inside and getting the purity of heart so that it is only God that is left.

She’s got mixed motivations she doesn’t know of; its for the Lord but its also to fulfil my basic needs of acceptance of security: that’s my motivation in life – even doing something great for the Lord. Can you see the manifestation of the false self? — worry, comparisons, how am I doing, that’s not fair, look at what he’s got in life, look at what I do. And then of course God gets a bit confusing. I do so much. Where are you God? Why don’t you help me? I don’t understand you God. You’re not helping me. It doesn’t work for me this thing. Control, loss of control, attachment to the outcome. You see the functioning of the false self in our life?

And now, the very interesting thing: where is it revealed? In ordinary life in the kitchen — in community, that’s where it is revealed. . . . Now here’s a big thing,  Jesus says, Martha, look at Mary. Do what Mary do (sic). The suggestion? That’s the way you will get rid of your worry. That’s the way that you work with your inside. That’s the way to go on this inner journey that you need. Sit with Me. Just sit with Me, like she does. The Dalai Lama said, the three pillars of Buddhism, practice of Buddhism is (sic), the teaching, the community and the sitting. I wonder what you would say, what’s the main non-negotiable practices and pillars of your faith and your walk with God?

I know of a certainty that Scripture does not count worry and depression as a hindrance in your following of Jesus. In fact, there are only two or three things Scripture mentions that can hinder Christians in their following of Jesus.

Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

Yes, of course worrying can stifle and smother the inner working of God’s Word in your life and it may hinder your spiritual growth. Instead of pondering and meditating on His Word (with your active mind and understanding fully in tact) and thoroughly thinking through the profound depths of God’s Truth in his Word, you spend all of your energy and time on worrying. But then it is not an exhortation to start following Jesus again because you had supposedly stopped doing so that comes into play, but the wonderful assurance that He will never leave you and never forsake you and therefore you should be content with what you have and never worry (Hebrews 13:5).  Worrying or depression is not counteracted or eliminated by a method or a technique of moving into your self and obtaining a pure heart, but simply by trusting Jesus Christ and his infallible promises. If He promised that He would never leave or forsake you, then He will indeed never leave or forsake you. As soon as you start relying on certain practices, methods or techniques to counteract your worries and your depression, you have already lost the battle because there is nothing good or profitable in your fleshly efforts to overcome your worries.  The church father’s question: Are you a follower of Christ or do you still worry?” is therefore a nonsequitur. The church father should rather have asked the pilgrim: Are you a follower of Christ or do you still listen and adhere to the lies and deceit of people like Marcus Borg who shuns the doctrine of atonement and the cross of Jesus Christ and Thomas Keating who promotes the concept of God permeating the air as prana? You see my son, only those who know the voice of their Great Shepherd will follow Him in the way He wants them to follow Him and only then will they stop listening to the lies and deceit of other false pastors and shepherds.

Dr. Johan Geyser’s eisegesis of Luke 10:38-42 is fraught with unbiblical and anti-biblical statements. I aim to discuss them under the following headings.

Construction of the false-self.

Nowhere in the entire Word of God do we read that the self, let alone a false-self, is under construction. The need for construction implies that the thing to be constructed must of necessity be non-existent before it can be constructed. You cannot construct something that already exists; the least you can do then is to reconstruct the already existent thing. If the concept of a false-self is nowhere to be found in God’s Word, where does it come from? Well, Dr. Johan Geyser gave us a very good clue when he referred to the Dalai Lama and the three pillars of Buddhism, i.e. the “teaching, the community and the sitting.” Perhaps you have already noticed how subtle and craftily Johan Geyser linked Buddhism’s three pillars of “teaching, the community and the sitting” with Martha’s active community life and Mary’s choice of sitting and listening to Jesus. If you look closely you will clearly recognize the transition in importance from the teaching (cognitive understanding and studying of a given text) to the community (the active life personified by Martha) and the sitting (the contemplative life personified by Mary where the “false-self” is relinquished in order to obtain the best life, as Geyser mentioned).

Now, let’s return to the Buddhist concept of the self. The “self” in Buddhism is actually believed to be a non-existent entity and anything related to “self” (worry, acceptance, comparisons) are but a self-constructed “false-self.” Both Carl Jung and Carl Rogers assert that the “self” is not who we really are but is something we build up in ourselves. In fact, Carl Rogers calls our perceived sense of our “self” a “false self concept.” To overcome this “false-self” the pilgrim is encouraged to sit with his guru. The Gautama Buddha taught his followers that we all live in a dream world in which we had forgotten who we really are. Our experiences (karma) have severed us from our true being, causing us to develop a false view of “self” or “ego.” However these  experiences should not be ignored but faced head-on. The pilgrim must therefore acknowledge where he is at the moment and work it out with his guru at whose feet he chooses to sit. For some the genuineness of their present state of affairs, as created by their experiences, may lead to much tears as the hurt of being denied their true being starts to surface; others may become angry. This is, according to The Cloud of the Unknowing the “dark night of the soul” to which Johan Geyser referred. Only when “the dark night of the soul” has been thoroughly worked through will the pilgrim find what resides in all of us — love (compassion), empathy, intuition and aliveness. It is said that a guru is capable of transmitting his own state of being (love, compassion, empathy, intuition and aliveness) to the receptive pilgrims who sit with him at his feet. Mary did not sit at Jesus’ feet to be miraculously infused (or induced) with His love, compassion, empathy, intuition and aliveness or to practice a contemplative life. She sat at his feet to listen to his words which is spirit and truth. Have Johan Geyser, Stephan Joubert and the Mosaic Church in particular embraced and are they promulgating a Christianized Buddhism?

According to the Bible the self (ego) is not a constructed “false-self” but a veritable, already “constructed” self which we’ve all inherited from the first Adam. Its already there in every human being at his or her birth. In Psalm 51 and verse 6 David acknowledges that we’ve all been born in sin. Note that he does not say we are all born in “sins” but in “sin.” “Sins” are the the result or product, if you will, of “sin” (the sin nature we inherited from the first Adam). When a baby is born, it cannot commit any sins per se but it already has the capacity or potential to commit sins because it is born with a sin nature. When the baby grows up and develops its own reasoning powers to act and react on outside worldly impulses through his or her five carnal senses, it begins to implement his or her own inherited sinful nature which is manifested in self-worth, self-esteem, self-gratification, selfishness, self-aggrandisement and everything else that pertains to the self. Indeed selfism is the very core and originator of our rebellion against God. It lives and acts under the vain idea that we do not need God to be our Redeemer. It boasts its own way of salvation in whatever form or shape it may deem fit. It is therefore no surprise that there are so many different religions from which to pick and choose. Unfortunately the majority of human kind choose religions that oppose and reject God’s only Way of salvation — His Son Jesus Christ, the only Person Who was able to effectively deal with our sinful and selfish nature (the factory, as it were, of all our multitude of sins in thoughts and actions). Why? Because only an innocent, sinless, completely unselfish Person who had submitted Him unconditionally to the perfect will of God the Father was able to deal with our sinful “self”.” And this is precisely why Paul could declare that the cross of Jesus Christ is the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18. 24). “IT IS FINISHED (TETELESTAI- the account written against our sins and our sinful nature was paid in full)” There is no need whatsoever for any method, way or technique to rid ourselves of an allegedly self-constructed “false-self” — let alone a contemplative lifestyle that is steeped in Roman Catholic tradition.

Getting rid of the false-self

The “false-self” is supposedly the life we need to give away. Johan Geyser explained it as follows: “Thomas Keating describes it [worry] as a construction of the false self. It is because of our basic needs, instinctive needs, that we are born with for security, for acceptance, for control that we construct a life for ourselves by fulfilling those needs in a certain way. That is the life that Jesus says I want you to give your life away, give that life away. That’s the self that you’ve got to crucify. Paul said I crucified myself and now I live with Christ, Galatians 2:20. So its about letting go of the false self. Its moving into your self, into the world that is in the inside and getting the purity of heart so that it is only God that is left.

First of all I would like to remind you that Jesus and Paul never said the following:

• Jesus never said that we should give away or even crucify the life of the so-called false-self — a life represented by worry, security, acceptance, control or even our basic needs. How do you crucify your basic and daily necessary needs such as food, shelter and clothing? The prerequisite for the enjoyment of our basic needs is not the crucifixion of a so-called false-self, but the command to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and He will look after the rest (Matthew 6:33).
• Paul never said: “I crucified myself and now I live with Christ.” You cannot crucify yourself. Its impossible! He said: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” There’s a vast difference. The crucifixion of the self is an already accomplished reality and therefore the child of God can say with certainty “I am crucified with Christ.” When Jesus hung on the cross, He did not only take upon Himself your sins but you, the sinner, as well; when He died, you died with Him; when He was buried, you were buried with Him; when He was raised from the dead, you were raised with Him unto a new life; when He was seated at the right hand of God, you were seated with Him in heavenly places. Nevertheless, the process of denying yourself and taking up your cross (living in the reality of your already crucified self) must be maintained daily by reckoning (or reasoning) that you are indeed dead to sin and alive unto God (Romans 6:11). Here it becomes evident that Johan Geyser’s plea that you should stop thinking in order to enter into the contemplative life is entirely incompatible with Paul’s exhortation to use your God-given faculty of reasoning in order to live a new life in Christ Jesus. The word logizomai {log-id’-zom-ahee} deals with the reality of facts and not suppositions. In other word, if you should stop thinking (reasoning, reckoning, calculating) that you are already crucified with Christ, you are deceiving yourself. And indeed, the concept that we are constructing a false-self is highly deceptive because it is simply anti-Bible and unbiblical. There is no such thing as the construction of a false-self.

The most important thing — To go beyond your reason?

In their search for the best possible spirituality (highest type of life) on their relentless spiritual journey the emergent fraternity are very cautious not to belittle institutionalized church history although they may often put it down by laughing at the cerebral, cognitive and studious or intellectual features of the church with which we have grown accustomed to in South Africa. Johan Geyser explained it this way:

Now  how do we do it, today? How do we sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to his words?; how does that process work to transform us and to work with this inner world and the false self and all of that? Well, I was brought up in the Reformed tradition . . . It was called the quiet time, but its just metaphorically quiet. Its a very busy time. Some of us need music in the background and then you take your Bible and commentaries with you cause you’ve got to understand the Word. There’s some rules that you’ve got to learn – exegesis!!; only five hundred years old but if you don’t obey those rules you will miss God. You will not . . . No!  I don’t want to make jokes now.

That was the bedrock of the way that I grew up and it looks to me as if the main personality function through which and in which you do the sitting, is the cognitive of your inward capacity.  You’ve got to understand; you’ve got to think, and once you do that you can now [ask], ok, how do I apply this in my life and how do I do the will of God? That’s the main dynamic of the sitting. [In the contemplative realm] its moving beyond your thinking  and your feeling. Its moving beyond that. Gregory in the 6th century said its about resting; resting of thinking, resting of everything; its letting go of all your efforts. It just about being in God. That’s what’s its all about. its also called the prayer of quiet. You become still. John of the cross said God spoke a word in silence, only one word in the beginning, in silence. Its hearing that word — sensing it in your inside. To me it was like a conversion that happened in my life. It was very interesting for me to discover that Marcus Borg, the new Testamentikus (sic) of our time said that the word metanoia means to move beyond reason, move beyond  your reason.

I have already pointed out that Marcus Borg has rejected the doctrine of atonement and the cross of Jesus Christ and believes that Jesus’ body was probably eaten up by dogs after his crucifixion. Of contemplative prayer, Borg says:”

“I learned about the use of mantras as a means of giving the mind something to focus and refocus on as it sinks into the silence” (p. 125).

So Marcus Borg, like Johan Geyser, also believes in a quiet time with Jesus and just sitting with Him in an euphoric state of no mind and no thinking. There is no need for a true “metanoia” (repentance accompanied by a true abhorrence of one’s past sins and rebellion against God) in this abominable nothingness, unreasonable or non-reasonable, sitting with God and just being in Him. Anyone can do it, even those who reject the cross of Jesus Christ. And this life is supposed to be the highest life you can live, a life that Martha forfeited through her active life and Mary just about reached because she was living in the “better life” but needed to enter into the “best life” of moving beyond her reason?

As I mentioned earlier, Johan Geyser likened Martha’s active life, with which Jesus was not dissatisfied and did not categorize as being wrong, with Paul’s exegesis of the life that needs to be crucified in Romans 7. That’s just plain nonsense, because Paul emphatically declared that the carnal life which needs to be crucified, is not good or wholesome at all. In fact God is so intensely dissatisfied with the “self”-life that He allowed his only begotten Son to be crucified so that we may be rid of it. Listen again to Paul’s words in Romans 7: 18

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. [I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out.]

Martha’s active life cannot in any way be likened to Paul’s description of the “self” because her’s was not wrong but acceptable to the Lord although he was unhappy with the way she was doing it (as Johan Geyser explained), while Paul referred to a carnal life that was no good in every sense of the word. It is this life, the life centred around myself and yourself that is constantly priding itself in its own strength and expertise to please God, that needs to be handed over to the cross to be crucified. It clings like the stench of a cadaver to us and only the well-pleasing sweet savour of Christ’s death on the cross, our ultimate burnt offering, can rid us of the stench of the dead body of carnality (Romans 7:24). Jesus said: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63). His spoken word gives life, and NOT silence, quietness or solitude (contemplation).

Toward the end of his presentation Johan again referred to St. John of the Cross (whose spoken words seem to be of greater importance to him than the spoken words of Jesus Christ) who said that the Dark Night of the Soul (a time of loneliness and desolation in your spiritual life) is God’s way of calling you into a deeper level, a new place, a new relationship with Him through contemplation and that you should never give up to enter into that place or position. During my daily studies of the Bible throughout the years I have never come across a biblical figure who had experienced the so-called “dark night of the soul” because of a midlife crisis or menopause. And even though some of them did experience a dreadful midlife crisis or a family crisis, like King David, none of it could separate them from God that necessitated contemplation. In fact, there is only one thing that separated them from God and that was their sins (Isaiah 59: 1-2). The unbearable “dark night of the soul” King David experienced was not brought about by a crisis in his family or by a midlife crisis but when he committed adultery with a married woman and had her husband, Uriah, murdered because he was an honourable soldier at war who refused to sleep with his wife during active service and thus robbed Kind David of the opportunity to say that the unborn baby was his child. King David refused to acknowledge his sin for a full year and only when he entered into the holy of holies in heaven by prayer (not silence or just sitting), and confessed his sins to the Lord did he find rest and forgiveness for his sins. Silence and sitting still which to the contemplative brotherhood is a blessing, was a to David a real curse. Listen to his lament in Psalm 32.

Psalm 32:1-5 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

Johan Geyser continued with much excitement over Theresa of Avila’s assertion that there are many ways to water the garden of your soul. The one is to put a lot of effort in; hard work, discursive meditation (by reasoning in stead of intuition), one thought leading to another, and the reward will be consolation. But there’s another way: The rain will come, no effort, no effort; you sit, you sit and you just be, you just be — nothing to nothing. Its a gift of consolation. It is induced; it is not acquired. God gives it to you by his grace; gift of stillness, of prayer of quiet. He continued by saying:

Of course, the effect of this sitting is a transformation. Its not just to make you better. Look at what happened to Mary after her sitting. We get it in John 12, after the resurrection of Lazarus they’ve got a meeting; Martha the activist, its Simon the leper, it is Judas the thief, it is Lazarus . . . the ex-corpse; your typical Sunday morning congregation, you know. And she comes in and breaks the flask with the very expensive perfume and she anoints Jesus, and of course there’s this one argument that ends all arguments — the poor, you could have given it to the poor. And Jesus says, No! You do not understand what she did. She was preparing me for my burial. Two things: she had an insight that none of the other disciples had about the death, the meaning of the death of Jesus. Nobody could see it. The only person  . . . was a woman and it was Mary that did the sitting. The sitting prepared and helped her to listen to Jesus at a deep inner level and to hear things that other people couldn’t hear. And it inspired her to action, to love, to love. . . . Jesus said: because of what Mary did I am more prepared for my death. Because of what Mary did; the way that she loved and that she expressed her extravagant love for me I am more ready to die now. We can help to prepare each other for our death because if you love you are ready . . . Nobody would have been bothered if she did it after Jesus’ death, no problem, but to do it while He’s alive? She had this new capacity to love and she had this new insight. You see, she had a different presence. . .  It is not necessary doing this extravagant, extraordinary things. Its the ordinary but extraordinary ordinary. Out of being flows a new way of doing. The old tradition says, it has to do with unity with God and some people will say, no no, unity sounds like one with God against everything else in the world. Perhaps its more of unitive seeing; to see God everywhere in everything — to see God in everything.

I wonder whether Jesus would have been lesser prepared for his death if He had not been anointed by Mary with her expensive nard perfume? I have it on very good authority that Jesus’ obedient submission to the will of His Father fully prepared Him for his death. We see this in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prayed so fervently that He perspiration turned into drops of blood falling on the ground.

Luke 22: 41-44 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

I agree that we should prepare each other for our death but it is fatally wrong to teach people to follow the journey of a contemplative lifestyle by supposedly just sitting and being in the presence of God and to see God in everything. Marcus Borg, to whom Johan Geyser reverently referred so often, believes this pagan nonsense of panentheism (God is in all and all is in God), while he vociferously denies the atonement of Jesus Christ and His cross. (1 Corinthians 1:18). There are only two alternative ways of dying. The one is to die IN Christ Jesus and the other OUTSIDE of Him. Jesus Himself explained it this way:

John 8:21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.
John 8:24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

Indeed, the only way to prepare others and ourselves for our inevitable death is to be anointed with the Holy Spirit (the life-giving oil of gladness and joy and of righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ). It simply means that you should receive the quickening power (from eternal death to eternal life) of the indwelling Spirit of God and there is only a single way to receive Him — by means of a true biblical metanoia through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Indeed, to have your mind transformed from one of enmity and hatred for God and His Word to one of of eternal love, respect and obedience toward God and His eternal Word.

Sadly the contemplatives are not sitting at the feet of Jesus to receive His spoken words by faith but at the feet of people like St. John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, Marcus Borg, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating and others who are silently leading them away from Jesus Christ and a true biblical metanoia.

Wake up South Africa. You are being led astray into a kind of crush for cattle

that leads to destruction and death.

Proverbs 14:12

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.