The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:18-19)

Ancient Gnosticism And Futurist Dominion Theology Meet in McManus

In a leadership class at SBC-owned Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary San Francisco-area Mill Valley campus last January Erwin McManus, distinguished lecturer and futurist at Bethel Seminary as well as lead pastor and cultural at Mosaic, a church which has been SBC for 60 years, McManus told these students in classic Emergentese: “Spiritual leaders are essentially cultural architects who shape their culture.”

Uh-huh, right. So that’s what caused each Apostle but John to be brutally murdered for being Christ’s ambassadors. In an October 2006 interview for Infuse: Art, Entertainment & Faith–O whatever did the Church ever do before we realized that life is all about arts and entertainment–McManus is asked about his then forthcoming book Soul Cravings.

What many do not know is that Erwin McManus was considered to be one of the original ten youth leaders and youth ministers selected by Doug Pagitt for the Terranova Project of Leadership Network back in 1997 from which the Emerging Church would come. My source, who was one of those ten, told me he was de-selected, but McManus was not dropped because of theological reasons. In this Infuse interview McManus is asked, “can you tell us about your new book Soul Cravings? And why write about this subject at this point in your life?”

Our esteemed futurist, who now insists that he’s not Emergent, answers in a remarkably similar fashion to Guru Brian McLaren – who is Emergent – as well as Emerging Church cultural icon Rob Bell – when McManus says:

Sure... Soul Cravings isn’t a new idea. This is something I’ve been journeyin (sic) through for 30 years. I’ve been waiting for the day I could write it. Soul Cravings, to me, is very much a human story. It’s the story of finding God inside of yourself... I'm going, “No the real evidence isn’t in the objective world, but it's in the subjective world... There’s a universe inside of us more powerful and more clarifying than the universe outside of us. (Online source)

Men and women, this is not SBC theology. In fact, it’s not even in line with the historic orthodox Christian faith at all. Completely consistent with the Emergent Church this is neo-orthodox (at best) and it is definitely the existential relativism of so-called “postmodernism.” I’ll say it again for the spiritually hard of hearing:

If it looks Emergent, and it does; if it acts like Emergent, and it does; and if it sounds like Emergent, and it does...then it's as Emergent as Rob Bell.

You see Bell’s another one who is also currently doing damage control in whatever he can now to distance himself from the stigma of this Emergent cult of the new postliberal theology. However the mystical mumbo jumbo by McManus and Bell et al is right in line with the alleged divine human potential supposedly within all of mankind. And in fact, this actually harkens back to first century Gnosticism and the false teaching of a “divine spark” - aka “true self” in apostate Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, spiritism and the New Age movement - each of which says that within every human being God already resides in some manner.

As Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster will tell you the Quakers refer to it as the “Inner Light,” but when we take this heresy to its logical conclusion we find this. If all mankind already has God living in him then there would be no need to be born again because man would already have a divine nature within. And if mankind is already divine then he is already “like God.” And most importantly, if this were correct then Satan will have made his ultimate boast come true:

“I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14).