MacArthur emerges againt the emergent church

The emerging church will emerge into the world church that rides the Beast in Revelation. Hear what John MacArthur has to say about the emergent church movement.

Author and pastor sounds warning about ’emergent church’ (OneNewsNow.com): “In his book The Truth War; Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception, Dr. John MacArthur sounds a warning about the growing influence of the emerging church movement. The battle for truth, he says, is raging not only in society, but throughout the church.
‘I think the emergent church, at its foundation, is unwilling to acknowledge propositional truth,’ MacArthur says. ‘And their spin is that the Bible is not that clear.
‘We know there is absolute, objective, propositional truth. The fallout of rejecting that is pretty clear,’ he continues. ‘The apostles in the New Testament said ‘We’re begotten again by the Word of Truth.’ If you don’t have the true gospel, you can’t be saved.’
He says the growing emergent church movement is in line with post-modernism. ‘Post-modernism simply is this idea that there is no absolute truth,’ MacArthur explains. ‘If that comes into the church, then that’s not the church. That’s not Christianity.'”


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6 thoughts on “MacArthur emerges againt the emergent church

  1. help an emerging brother out??? are you saying if we dont believe in the enlightenment version of objective scientific truth, then we will ride the beast?

    do you mean the Roman Catholic Church or what? i’m confused.

  2. I was talking about the emerging church not believing absolute biblical truths and therefore going off into apostasy.

    I wrote a couple of articles that should help you out about the woman who rides the Beast.

    The first article gives examples in the church today that will lead some in the church to take part in this prophecy.

    The second is from my Revelation commentary it explains who I think the prophecy is talking about.

    http://www.thepropheticyears.com/comments/The%20woman%20on%20the%20beast%20in%20end%20time%20prophecy%20has%20dominion%20theology.htm

    http://www.thepropheticyears.com/The%20book%20of%20Revelation/Revelation%20Chapter%2017.htm

  3. thanks don. i will take a look when i get a chance. is it any consolation that the emerging church missions people in my little world here abide by the Lausanne Covenant as well as their denominational statements of faith?

    Or is the LC too ecumenical for you, being associated with Englishmen like John Stott?

  4. Andrew, there are many different flavors among those who identify with the emergent or emerging church movement. Some stay on biblical ground and others do not.

    Those who seriously abide by the Lausanne Covenant have chosen to make biblical doctrine paramount. Therefore they are not going off into redefining biblical truths, embracing mysticism, claiming that other religions lead to God and other postmodern nonsense.

    It appears to me that your identification with the emerging church is not entirely the same as those that now identify with the principles of the leaders widely known as the “Emergent Church Movement”. Are we even talking about the same thing?

    The one true Church of Jesus Christ cannot be too ecumenical. The body is one.

    Bible believers have problems with the “Ecumenical Movement” because the movement is led by apostates who work for unification of religions on principles of secular humanism and vain philosophies of men.

    Is the Lausanne Covenant to ecumenical for me? No. However, I do not agree with every point in the covenant and I would not agree to sign the covenant. Some points in it seem very critical of the Church that the Holy Spirit has been working through.

    To say that the Church should apologize for not yet reaching the entire world for Christ is saying that true Christians have been failing in the great commission. Has the Holy Spirit been powerless all this time in His Church?

    Sure the institutional churches have failed but what they have not acknowledge in the covenant is that most in the institutional churches were never Christian to start with. So how could these largely apostate institutions effectively carry out the great commission?

    Should the wheat in the field apologize for the tares that choke them?

  5. good respectful answer, don. appreciate it.

    i am a missionary in the emerging culture and have been for at least a decade. the churches that arise from those efforts are called “emerging churches” and they are varied, as you say.

    and if the label fails us, then lets lose it. some of us prefer “missional” but there is much in emergent theory that corresponds and informs those who are familiar with emergent principles in biology and business.

    sorry if i misjudged you in my initial post. no offence intended.

    as for ecumenicalism -it would be a fair criticism to say the emerging/emergent church movement is ecumenical but for many of us who are striving for the kind of unity we will enjoy in eternity, the point of connection is not theological compromise but rather missional purpose – we gather around obedience to the command of Christ to preach the gospel to the world.

    so that we can finish the job.

    have a great weekend.

  6. The emerging church movement I am aware of has not been around a decade so I think we are talking about apples and oranges here.

    Perhaps some young leaders have picked up on your name. The movement John MacArthur and many others are critical of have gone off into strange unbiblical areas in their teachings and practice. I see that those who keep to your covenant would never do that.

    Movements often start with a very good and a godly motivation and then some come in and corrupt the name. Soon the whole movement becomes identified with the abusers. Maybe this has happen here.

    Because you also use the name of the Emergent Church movement perhaps it is up to people in your covenant to define how you differ from the popular leaders identifying with that name and perhaps decide to depart from using that name so that you will not be identified with their abuses.

    May God be with you in your missionary effort, Andrew.

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