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).
