Upholding the Truth

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth." -John 17:17. Welcome to "Upholding the Truth," a blog that has been designed to encourage and sanctify Christian brothers and sisters by making them not only use their minds, but their Bibles. Please feel free to respond to any post, but remember that our only authority comes from the Word of God. If you would like to contact us, email us at: upholdingthetruthblog@yahoo.com

Current Discussion Topic: "Biblical Evangelism"

Thursday, August 10, 2006

"WAY" of Jesus or Jesus as "THE WAY"

To: All true saints of Jesus Christ – This is frightening!
Via Vita evidently had a conference in California this past February 25, 2006
The title was “Ancient Spiritual Wisdom: Principles and Practices for Life”
On their home page they advertise this conference as being “about spiritual transformation, and about spiritual principles and practices as they were actually taught by Jesus and his early followers.”
The conference page purports that “Two thousand years ago, Christian spirituality was new to the world. This was a time before churches as we know them.” In other words, this conference is returning us to our ancient “spiritual” roots. (These roots, as articulated, are really mysticism and not truly Christian.) And notice at the bottom of the page the list of “spiritual” things that are important:
1) Most people are unfamiliar with “spirituality” as Jesus taught it.
2) These principles even predate Jesus.
3) One of these principles is the concept of your spirit created in the image of God.
4) This “image of God” called spirit effects your entire being.
5) Your fullest potential is of primary importance.
6) The spiritual realm can be accessed through techniques.

So does Jesus Christ coming and work make Him our Mediator or does He bring the “knowledge” of some mediation principle and technique? It certainly is not both. You can read about the seeds of these “ancient” principles in their first engagement with man in Genesis 3 when the serpent approached Eve with a question and some follow-up thoughts.

Now notice the conference speaker page: Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, Tony Jones, etc.

We must understand that many in our modern day “churches” in using the term LORD have impregnated it with a different meaning than Holy Scripture. LORD has come to mean “Lead Avatar of Spirituality and Purpose.” And so this is what "Lord" Jesus is now supposedly doing. But this is not our Lord as articulated in the Holy Scriptures. The God of the Bible has provided for us a Lord who is Savior from sin and Mediator before Him. This is the Jesus of the Bible.

And I do not believe this “emerging” of ancient spirituality is going away nor is it a flash in the pan. The “emerging” paradigm is really a “converging” paradigm toward embracing and coming under the catholic umbrella through mysticism. The “purpose-driven” model is a converging model as well. We just don’t fully see it quite yet. But there are clear indications if we would just open our eyes. And the reason this is "frightening" is because much of these "mystical" teachings and practices are even entering into our "evangelical" churches and not many national leaders are giving warning.

You could see this mysticism in the first edition of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline which I do a brief review of here.

"And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split." Matthew 27:51 ESV

Dave

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