Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:1-4, KJV)

Purpose Driven Zeal But Not According To Knowledge

If you have read Part One then you would already know that apparently Rick Warren does not share the above burden and desire that God the Holy Spirit expressed through His inspired Apostle Paul for His beloved Israel. Recently Warren spoke at “Sinai Temple’s Friday Night Live Shabbat services” and as I write I am using the eyewitness testimony of Rob Eshman, who happens to be Editor-in-Chief for The Jewish Journal. He tells us that Warren, the inventor of the new evangelical Purpose Driven “Christianity,” is successful because of “his passion for God and Jesus.” But then Eshman reveals Warren’s passion for Christ must have waned a bit because he then informs us:

Warren managed to speak for the entire evening without once mentioning Jesus – a testament to his savvy message-tailoring. But make no mistake, the driving purpose of an evangelical church is to evangelize, and it is Warren’s devotion to spreading the words of the Christian Bible that drive his ministry.

We have a few problems here, which I will be coming back to. First however, just let me point out that if Warren truly does have “devotion to spreading the words of the Christian Bible,” leaving aside that Eshman, who is not a Christian has a misunderstanding here concerning God’s Word in Holy Scripture, then he should know that Jesus Himself said: “These are the Scriptures that testify about Me” (John 5:39). Yet arguably the most famous Christian pastor in the world is praised here by Eshman in that Warren “managed to speak for the entire evening without once mentioning Jesus,” the Name above all names, and the only Name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12, KJV).

So we should be able to see now that when Eshman, who is Jewish, makes the play on words concerning “the driving purpose” of a man like Rick Warren “is to evangelize,” he really doesn’t understand that it is literally impossible to evangelize without mentioning Christ Jesus of Nazareth and His vicarious penal substitutionary atonement on the Cross. Let us not go chasing postmodern rabbits down their holes here, no one has a problem with Rick Warren going into Sinai Temple, the problem is what this alleged minister of the Gospel of…well, Jesus Christ did not say. I was telling somone just the other day, I would gladly go preach in a Jewish synagogue, the Mormon Tabernacle or even the Vatican itself! Ah, I wouldn’t be there long until they shut off my microphone and showed me the door, but the truth is that the results of preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified (see–1 Corinthians 2:2) are solely up to God the Holy Spirit.

Christ Jesus Is Our Only Savior

It seems good in the Lord at this point to go through a few of the things that Rob Eshman brings out in his commentary about Rick Warren’s appearance at Sinai Temple. The value here is that with Eshman we are getting the perspective of someone who is not a believer in Christ who tells us how Warren’s message came across to him. So rather than this being the opinion of an alleged critic, instead we can see just how this unbeliever perceived the new religion of Purpose Driven new evangelicalism. A quick aside, let us not wrestle with the serpent here about Jewish people believing in Yahweh. Our opening text in Romans 10, which is actually written by God Himself, clearly tells us what our Lord’s view of His precious Israel is – “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.” Obviously, if they need to be saved then they are not currently saved, which makes Warren’s neglecting to mention the only Savior there is to these dear Jewish people all the more egregious.

As Eshman tells us about how “Warren managed to speak for the entire evening without once mentioning Jesus,” which in his opinion is “a testament to his savvy message-tailoring” he points out that feels this is:

Good for him and his flock – and not so bad for us either. His teachings apply to 95 percent of all people, regardless of religious belief. As he put it to a group of rabbis at a conference last year – using a metaphor that might be described as a Paulian slip: “Eat the fish and throw away the bones.”

Warren told Wolfson his interest is in helping all houses of worship, not in converting Jews. He said there are more than enough Christian souls to deal with for starters.

We can excuse Eshman for being in the dark as to why “savvy message-tailoring” that leaves out preaching the Cross of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins is absolutely not “good for [Warren] and his flock,” but for a Jew (or any unbeliever) like Eshman, not only is this “bad for” them it is a real travesty. Whatever Warren’s motives are for employing what has been referred to by these new evangelicals as “stealth evangelism,” the true minister of our Lord has no real idea whether those he is speaking to will be allowed by God to take another breath or not. As such it is our job to proclaim the Gospel whenever the Lord presents us with the opportunity to do so. We know that there is no such thing as coincidence and if Rick Warren ends up with an invitation to speak to this Jewish audience then he was bound by the Lord he claims to serve to stand before these people teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ (Acts 5:42).

Now because of this absolute, narrow and non-inclusive message, quite likely Rick Warren would find himself in the midst of the kind of controversy Stephen found himself in as the Scripture tells us:

When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him (Acts 7:54-58).

And yet Eshman tells us that while Warren “told the Sinai crowd” that, “ ‘It’s the individual cells that make the body,’ ” he didn’t mention that until one is saved by God’s grace alone; through faith alone; in Christ alone, one is not in “the Body.” Eshman also mentions that Warren told the “program’s leader, Rabbi Ron Wolfson,” of his “interest,” which “is in helping all houses of worship, not in converting Jews.” Further Eshman reports that Rick Warren “said there are more than enough Christian souls to deal with for starters.” This is a little bit shocking to find out even in this time of rapidly accelerating apostasy because this is about as far from the true Christian witness as one can get and still be considered Christian. Is Warren serious? A.W. Tozer was correct when he associated this vital function of pastor-teacher in the Body of Christ in a sense to the prophets of old, and since when was our role to assist unbelievers in “all houses of worship” rather than preach Christ for the forgiveness of sins that God might convert them and save them? It isn’t, never was, and never will be.

Inventing Purpose Driven Religion

But this is the ignoble example set by one of the highest profile “preachers” in the world today. Warren doesn’t wish to work with His Lord “in converting Jews,” or whomever else God may be calling, but instead this purveyor of Purpose Driven new evangelical inclusivism would rather help pagans “worship” their demons. Before you rush out for the tar and feathers I am using this term just as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 10:20 – “what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons” (ESV). In this day of license masquerading as a backward tolerance Sir Norman Anderson’s comment is helpful here in understanding this issue from a Biblical standpoint:

it is clear from the Bible that when man rejects God’s self-revelation, he inevitably seeks his own answer to life’s problems, invents his own religion, and sets up his own “idols”—whether material or ideological (cf. Rom 1:18-23). It is equally clear, moreover, that Satan can and does use every substitute—whether morally good or bad in itself—to keep people from seeing the truth in Christ (The Christian’s View of Other Religions, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, CD Rom).

In Part Three I’ll begin to take you through Rob Eshman’s article and go a bit deeper into some vital information he reveals and corroborates concerning Warren’s curious association with his mentor “management guru Peter Drucker.” Eshman will tell us that Warren “spoke with him constantly” something those of us researching Rick Warren’s pragmatic purposes for furthering his new evangelical social gospel already knew. But for now I focus your attention on Eshman’s conclusion that Warren’s “teachings apply to 95 percent of all people, regardless of religious belief.” This is another result of prolonged practice of contemplative spirituality, which Warren clearly advocates, and it also brings to mind what the Apostle John tells us about the false teachings of first century Gnostic mystics that he had to deal with – They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. (1 John 4:5).

And when one considers Rick Warren recently placed number 60 in the top one hundred celebrities at Forbes.com, as well as what Ingrid Schlueter posted on Slice of Laodicea concerning Warren featuring “a Jewish ‘musical innovator’ at Saddleback at his Sunday morning services on June 25,” one would be hard-pressed not to see the uncanny resemblance to those the inspired Apostle John warned us about above. Nor is it any wonder why Eshman would also tell us that he feels that the “success of Warren’s second book, The Purpose-Driven Life (Zondervan, 2002), demonstrates his ability to turn a particular gospel into a universal one.” However, Jesus speaks of the more likely response for those of us who truly surrender our “ability” He gifted us with and faithfully preach His glorious Gospel:

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master’ ‘ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”

“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘THEY HATED ME WITHOUT A CAUSE.’ ”(John 15:18-25, NASB)

So now can you see who is actually driving Rick Warren’s “purpose”…