Matthew 4:17-20

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

Heaven On Earth?

In his book Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith Emergent Church pastor Rob Bell gives a first hand account of the distortion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ currently going on within this highly schismatic group through its wrong understanding of the true Christian mission. The job of the real followers of Jesus is quite plainly spelled out in 2 Corinthians 5 – He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (vv.19b-20). It is only after someone has been reconciled to God through His grace alone by personal commitment to Christ by faith alone, that they will even be in the Kingdom of Heaven to begin with. This has always been the Gospel preached by the true historic orthodox Christian Church.

The Emergent Church however, is downplaying–if not completely obscuring–the essential work done by Christ in the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement on the Cross, which then leads to a huge misconception concerning the primary mission our Lord has given to His ambassadors to seek and save the lost (see–John 20:21). Bell then illustrates this eternally serious misunderstanding of the work of the true Church of our Lord currently propounded within the Emergent Church when he writes:

True spirituality then is not about escaping this world to some other place where we will live forever. A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth. The goal isn’t escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to. And God is remaking us into the kind of people who can do this kind of work.

The remaking of this world is why Jesus’ first messages began with “T’shuva, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The Hebrew word t’shuva means “to return”. Return to the people we were originally created to be. The people God is remaking us into (p.151, emphasis his).

Leaving aside for a moment Bell’s extremely careless exegesis regarding what this text actually says in the Greek version of canonical Scripture, which actually uses the word metanoeo (“repent”), something rather startling immediately emerges here. Those of us who have studied the eschatology of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (aka Jehovah’s Witnesses) will be alarmed by this teaching from an alleged Christian pastor that “true spirituality” is about living in a heaven here on earth, because this is disturbingly close to what is taught in that particular non-Christian cult. And while there is an aspect one day in which Heaven will be “here,” what Bell is actually doing by the statement: “True spirituality is not about escaping this world to some other place,” is playing to a stereotype created by theologians in the Emergent Church of a “traditional” Christian who is supposedly neglecting “the gospel of the kingdom” and simply waiting around for Jesus to rapture him home to Heaven. This is what Bell means when he says that the goal of the Christian isn’t “escaping,” but rather we are to make “this world the kind of place God can come to.”

Yes, in our text the Lord does tell us the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, but now there is this growing confusion being spread by the Emergent Church movement as to what this means. At this point we should keep in mind just who the actual author of confusion is. However the next verses quoted in our text shed much light on what Jesus Himself means when He says: “Follow Me.” This missive is not intended to be an exhaustive apologetic explaining that Christ is actually referring to Heaven “there” where God is because this would be obvious when our Lord says – “the Kingdom of Heaven.” For now though, let it suffice to say the Kingdom is near (NIV) because God the Son had brought it “here” to earth now when He had come to die for the sins of His people. The main reason I write is to focus attention on the serious threat that the the false Christian Emergent Church now poses to the Evangelical church itself, and particularly to our impressionable young. The gross misunderstanding of the Kingdom of God which is taught by Emergent leaders does not take into account that this Kingdom of Heaven is only still here on earth in the Church–the Body of Christ–that is made up of regenerated men and women who are the called out ones that assemble to worship God in Christ. But it is only after they are born again–this is to be in Christ–that they are then prepared to go out and be fishers of men here to lead others into the Kingdom of Heaven there.

The Social Gospel

If you want to know what the Emergent Church is truly about, and why they are leaving the Church, then you will need to know that what these emergents mean when they use the phrase “the gospel of the kingdom.” It’s important for you to understand that “the gospel” in their theological system has been “repainted”/redefined back into the old Social Gospel of what Dr. Walter Martin referred to as “the Cult of Liberal Theology.” This secular humanistic distortion of Christ’s true Gospel, which at its core assumes that mankind is basically good, was originally taught by Walter Rauschenbusch and is more about making the world a better place than it is preaching the need for a new birth and a new nature. This is the reason that Bell’s “Christian” message ignores the need for repentance because in his theology mankind just needs to rediscover the inherent goodness that God originally created him with. It is really a reemergence of an old heresy called pelagianism which Geoffrey Grogan tells us in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary was named after – “Pelagius, the teacher who saw the grace of God simply as an aid to the self-reformation of man.”

We’ll briefly come back to this completely false idea, but for now, if you look closely you can see the similarity to Arminianism and Romanism. First of all, let me set the record straight about this faulty premise put forth by the Emergent Church that evangelicalism (for many this is confused with “fundamentalism”) is not concerned with the physical needs of this world. The fact is that the historic orthodox Christian Church has always taught that there are two aspects to Christ’s Gospel. There is the preaching of the need for someone to personally receive Jesus Christ of Nazareth as Lord and Savior as the only means for any person of any race or religion to be forgiven their sins (see–Acts 4:10-12). When God Himself judges this to have been done the Bible says – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:20) It is only after this event takes place in a believer’s life that he is then fit for the work of the second phase of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is to go and make disciples of all nations,…teaching them to obey everything [Christ Jesus has] commanded (Matthew 28:19-20).

Then within this going forth and the making disciples of all nations we can see the secondary level of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the taking care of the physical needs of people wherever the Christian may be sent by the Lord. It is beyond the scope of this work to give a detailed account of the thousands and thousands of orphanages, hospitals, schools, and communities, etc. that have been produced by orthodox evangelical Christians throughout the years; but it remains that virtually nothing has been accomplished through skepticism and atheism, because these “religions” are but parasites that must take over existing organizations and then suck their life from them. While it is an incontrovertible fact that wherever Christianity has gone into the world the improvements in the lifestyles of the peoples is evident, while the various philosophies of mankind’s inherent selfishness have produced next to nothing for the betterment of this planet.

Even Walter Rauschenbusch, the man responsible for the Social Gospel I mentioned earlier, knew as much as Church historian Dr. Mark Noll informs us:

Rauschenbusch’s last major work, Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), appeared shortly before his death. It set out systematically a Christian theology to address the needs of modern society… The volume also warned of how dangerous mere social movements could be if they lost the backing of Christian theology. Throughout his work Rauschenbusch stressed the theme of the kingdom of God. He admitted that his conception of the kingdom represented an effort to Christianize Darwinistic evolution,… Rauschenbusch had no room in his theology for the substitutionary atonement, a literal hell, or a literal second coming. He also encouraged a nearly utopian sense of human potential (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, p.988).

Nature Of Humanity Is Evil

You’ll notice a couple of things here if you look carefully. In his work Rauschenbusch acknowledged the need for “Christian theology to address the needs of modern society,” but with “no room in his theology for the substitutionary atonement” he was advocating the liberal theology I referred to earlier. For those of us who have studied this insidious cult, this is evident from his “nearly utopian sense of human potential,” which brings us back to the Emergent Church and its regurgitation of Rauschenbusch’s stressing “of the kingdom of God.” However, with his denial of the essential doctrine of the substitutionary atonement–which leaves Rauschenbusch outside of the kingdom of God–he was clearly not advocating of the Kingdom of God that Jesus Christ is speaking of when he said – Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near (Matthew 4:17) that Bell alluded to earlier.

First of all, while in Velvet Elvis Bell does acknowledge that “the image of God is deeply scarred in each of us” (p.150), and that “Jesus can repair” (p.151) this problem, the distorted view of man that is inherent in this counterfeit Christian Emergent Church movement becomes clear when he writes “exactly as I am, I am totally accepted, forgiven, and there is nothing I could ever do to lose this acceptance” (ibid.) This is why in the initial selection I highlighted Bell changed the actual quote from Christ Jesus from “repent” to “return.” You see, the Emergent Church has in its view that because people are still basically good then men of all religions can work together for the advancement of God’s Kingdom here on earth, and if somewhere along the way you decide to become a “follower of Jesus” (as they deem themselves) then this is perhaps better. If you are familiar with Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy you’ll know that there are those who in the Emergent Church who feel we shouldn’t necessarily try to convert people to Christianity, but instead we should “seek to encourage the growth of good wheat in all religions including our own, leaving it for God to sort it all out as only God can do” (p.255).

The truth is that this might sound good to other people, but the Bible flatly refutes this faulty philosophy espoused by McLaren, Bell and many others within the Emergent Church that the Kingdom of God Jesus was referring to was on earth and His message conveyed the idea that we should all work together in “kingdom work” in order to make the world ready for God to come to it. This whole erroneous emergent theology is destroyed right here when we read in Holy Scripture – flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50). And then God the Holy Spirit tells the true born again believer in Christ through the Apostle Paul–His chosen vessel–that the Father – has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves (Colossians 1:13). So now you should be able to see that this fatally flawed view that mankind’s nature is basically good, as originally taught by liberal theology, and then later vomited into the Evangelical church by Robert Schuller, simply cannot be supported by Scripture. This is exactly why the top Emergent Church leaders have such a low view of the Bible as the Word of God.

In part 2 of his article Distorting The Gospel, Emergent “authority in Jesus studies” Scot McKnight tells us “that the gospel is designed to regenerate our hearts to love God and to love others.” However, the serious misunderstanding of the true nature of humanity prevents him from seeing that while the Emergent Church is trying to get us to believe that followers of Jesus are to “summon others to become friends with Jesus and to join us in the work God is doing in this world,” this is actually impossible until these people accept Christ as personal Lord and Savior and are “born again.” Prior to that the Bible unquestionably teaches that a person is already under the wrath of God and is anything but a “friend” of Jesus (see–John 3:36). What do you think caused Him to be hung on a tree in the first place, a slight disagreement with the religious establishment of His day over just how to be friends with God?

As we close this out, let’s look at what Jesus Himself said about the actual nature of mankind. We’ll use chapter 7 of Matthew’s eyewitness account of his walk with the LORD God Almighty in human form. While discussing the need to keep on asking and seeking and knocking for the Father to give us the “gift” of filling us with the power of the Holy Spirit, in verse 11 Jesus draws a drastic distinction between God and man when He says – “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts.” Can you see what God the Holy Spirit has now informed us about mankind’s true fallen nature? Yes, when Adam and Eve were originally created they were perfectly good, but that was prior to the fall and God’s cursing even the creation itself. And so this “goodness” has been horribly corrupted and irretrievably lost through generations upon generations of sin.

For further proof we need only continue on in Matthew to chapter 15 where the Master tells us – “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (v.19). And then Mark adds Peter’s recollection of this event when he tells us that our Lord also said – “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside” (Mark 7:21-23a). For those who have eyes to see, Christ Jesus–our Creator Himself–has clearly stated that in his basic fallen nature mankind is “evil,” and this forever shatters the false idea that people today are basically good so the problems in the world are only due to wrong thinking because people are simply products of their environment. While the Emergent Church is welcome to their anthropocentric theology, it is definitely not orthodox Christian theology, and it is clearly contrary to what God has just told you here.


See also:

EMERGENT CHURCH: REIMAGINING THE SOCIAL GOSPEL