Life
is full of little surprises and believe it or not some of the most surprising ones have their origin on E-church’s website. How, for instance, do you reconcile the following two statements by Stephan Joubert?
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. . . .
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 belonged to the upper classes: the story of wisdom. (Emphasis added) [1)
AND . . .
Those people who pass did one more thing: They washed their dirty clothes white as snow in the scarlet blood of the Lamb. There you have the answer to the biggest exam question in the history of the universe. Go and learn it, and live it from your heart, and you will pass!.
Stephan Joubert’s claim that Jesus never linked onto the purity or holy story (in Leviticus)—of “who is in and who is out,” “who is saved and who is not” and of “holy – unholy, clean – unclean, pure – impure, in – out, us – them”—hardly expresses approval of his statement about the blood of Jesus Christ. If there is one thing that exemplifies the truth that Jesus, his Father and the Holy Spirit (please note carefully: the HOLY Spirit) inexorably link onto the purity story, it is the blood of Jesus Christ. In fact, the blood of Jesus Christ is the only (I repeat the only) substance that grants repentant sinners access to an awesomely holy God (Hebrews 10:19). And yet the Emergent fraternity strongly believe that you can enter into the presence of God through the practice of contemplative prayer. To reiterate: it hardly compliments Stephan Joubert’s statement about the blood of Jesus Christ.
The enigma we need to try and unravel is, why does Stephan Joubert make contradictory statements? How is it at all possible for him to make biblical statements that are completely at variance with statements he and some of his fellow emergent pilgrims have made in the past? It is on record, for instance, that Ron Martoia, one of Stephan Joubert’s most revered friends in the Emergent Church, has said, and I quote:
Despite decades of tweaking evangelistic methods, there is little evidence that many Christians are experiencing true life change . . .
. . . 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. (conference held at Conover, N.C. on January 29, 2007).
Ron’s statement is completely at odds with Stephan’s assertion that “Those people [in Revelation 7] who pass did one more thing: They washed their dirty clothes white as snow in the scarlet blood of the Lamb.” The expression “washed their clothes in the blood of the Lamb” is just another way of saying “they received forgiveness for their sins” or “they repented of their evil ways.” And yet Ron says the preaching of the forgiveness from sin is no longer viable in a post modern world. Ron obviously does not agree with Stephan that to pass God’s last exam you need to wash your dirty clothes in the blood of the Lamb. Nonetheless, the question we need to ask is, why does Stephan Joubert resort to turncoat tactics by making statements that do not fit in with many of his previous statements? The reason, in my opinion, is because when the flak starts to hit, you go into auto-pilot mode and effortlessly resort back to biblical truths so as to pacify your friends who may have begun to lift eyebrows over your chicaneries. Unless, of course, Joubert’s reference to the washing of one’s dirty clothes in the blood of Jesus does not link onto the biblical metanoia or repentance from sins but to do-goody deeds that supposedly grant you entrance into the Kingdom of God. His last statement seems to underpin the latter argument: “Go and learn it, and live it from your heart, and you will pass!”
I want us to hold a magnifying glass to Stephan’s latter statement. First of all, it not only misrepresents but demeans the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. It suggests that you need to do something so that you may pass God’s exam (his assessment of your performance during this life) at His Final Judgment Seat. The words “and you will pass” clearly suggests that no one can know with certainty that they have passed God’s exam this side of the grave but that you will only know when you appear before Him on that great day of wrath (Revelation 6:17). “You will pass” but only at the Judgement Seat of God, kinda thing. What does the Bible say?
11And this is that testimony (that evidence): God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
12He who possesses the Son has that life; he who does not possess the Son of God does not have that life.
13I write this to you who believe in (adhere to, trust in, and rely on) the name of the Son of God [in the peculiar services and blessings conferred by Him on men], so that you may know [with settled and absolute knowledge] that you [already] have life, yes, eternal life (1 John 5: 11-13).
THEREFORE, [there is] now no condemnation (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, . . . (Romans 8:1)
According to these passage there is absolutely no need for you to pass any exam because Jesus has already passed God’s exam for your life and in your behalf on the cross. He has paid dearly and fully the penalty for your and my constant failures of God’s exam in this life. The only prerequisite is to possess the Son. If you have the Son you already have eternal life. Moreover, the Bible passage to which Stephan Joubert refers in Revelation 6:17 cannot possibly point to believers who have already received and possess Jesus Christ as their Saviour. The verse emphatically states that “the day of THEIR wrath” has come which simply means that the day of their (the unbelievers and those who shun the blood of the cross by introducing and practicing other ways and means to enter into the presence of God other than through the blood of Christ) punishment and indignation has arrived. How then can Stephan Joubert link believers to this verse?
The wrath spoken of in Revelation 6 has nothing to do with god’s Final Judgment. It describes the horrific scenes of destruction, mayhem and death during the opening of the seven seals in the seven year Great Tribulation which Jesus describes in Matthew 24. This is also quite evident from verse 17 of the very next chapter 7: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation (persecution), and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The “massive crowd” as Stephan describes them, are therefore not believers who now learn and live from their heart how to pass God’s exam. The vast host who no one can count in this chapter are the Jews and Gentiles who are saved (have washed their dirty clothes in the blood of the Lamb) during the Great Tribulation under Antichrist. But then again, why would Stephan Joubert and his Emergent Church buddies bother about biblical eschatology when it is their aim to establish God’s Kingdom here and now which, by the way, is one of the main ways of learning and living out God’s final exam.
WHAT IS THE BOTTOM-LINE?
The blood in which the Great Tribulation martyrs are going to wash their dirty clothes is the very same blood Stephan Joubert and his Emergent buddies have put aside as the only means of entering into the awesomely holy of holies in heaven and the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-21). In stead they have opted for techniques such as centering prayer, contemplative prayer, Lectio Divina, stillness, and other forms of meditation to approach and enter into the presence of God. It is nothing else than a perpetuation of the way of Cain who brought a bloodless offering before God and who slew his brother Abel because he sacrificed the only acceptable offering to God – a slain lamb. Did Cain pass God’s exam with his bloodless offering? If he had, as some would like to think, then Stephan Joubert and his Emergent buddies have nothing to fear. They too will then pass God’s exam, not by means of the blood of Jesus Christ but by their practice of their blood dishonoring contemplative tools.
