“I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found none” (Ezekiel 22:30, NAS).

We face a defining moment in the Body of Christ today with the growing cult of the Emergent Church looming on the horizon. The Zondervan National Pastor’s Conference 2006 which has a featured Emerging Church track will metastasize this menace to the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints like a spiritual cancer into the Body of Christ. And meanwhile Christ is trying to tell us – “I search for a man among them who will raise up My standard and stand for the purity of my Gospel.” I pray our Lord will not have to continue on and say, but I found none.

The Lord is my witness that I have tried many times to pass this off for others to sound the warning having sent information to every influential Christian I had access to. But what if while we’ve been busy preaching to the choir; while we’ve been busy blogging about Oprah’s concept of truth and whether it is appropriate to hire gay actors, the enemy is poised to unload something into the Church that is a whole lot more serious than our leaders are apparently aware of? The more important issue is: Where will we find men in the Church today like Paul and Barnabas? As we see from the text above Christ would even settle for one or the other; just one man with the guts to stem the tide of The New Downgrade No-Controversy of this encroaching new liberalism coming in through the Emergent Church.

Expose The Works Of Darkness

The truth is that while we are not to provoke conflict, neither are we to just sit back like scared lambs as the world system invades the Church of Jesus Christ. We are the children of light (Ephesians 5:8) and soldiers of the King of kings! Remember, we are in a real spiritual war against Satan, the leader of the dark forces of his doomed kingdom in this world-system. The Bible tells us to – have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them (Ephesians 5:11). Not actually invite them in to God’s House to inject their spiritual poison into the very bloodline of the Body of Christ.

This penetration of men who deny the inerrancy and final authority of the Bible, and who also deny the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross simply cannot be tolerated any longer. God the Holy Spirit has already warned us – But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves (2 Peter 2:1). And rather than seeing the fulfillment of the last clause of that verse of Scripture, a fearful Christian Church is actually asking men like Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt to come and teach our pastors!

And yet when Paul and Barnabas heard of such men who altered the Gospel of Jesus Christ they did not lack the faith to do something about it:

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. (Acts 15:1-2)

The Time For Sharp Debate Has Arrived

In these two verses of the Bible–preserved by God for our edification–we see that the Christian Church does have a Biblical mandate from God to vigorously oppose false teaching where we see it, and even if the people who are teaching corrupt doctrine claim to be Christian. Man and women surely men such as Tony Campolo–who will be at NPC 2006–and Brian McLaren–who is present through the Emergent-US contingent–both of whom blatantly deny the authority of God’s Word and are teaching neopagan mysticism in Christ’s deserve to be publicly expelled from our ranks.

You’ll notice here that when Paul and Barnabas found out about the Judaizers (or legalists)–who were corrupting the Gospel of Jesus Christ–they were brought into sharp dispute and debate with them. The King James Version says –Therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them. As soon as these brave men heard about false teaching being spread in the Church and thereby usurping the authority of the Gospel they did something about it, they immediately began to dispute and debate those teachers. O how the Church of Jesus Christ needs a Paul or a Barnabas to arise at this late hour.

Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:6)