This is an examination of the beliefs of Leonard Sweet, Wayne Dyer and Ken Blanchard – three professing (even evangelical) Christians who adhere to unbiblical beliefs.
There was a day when Christian pastors and leaders were generally viewed as being reputable in foundational truth and their understanding and exposition of the Word of God. They were believed to be true Christians.
It wasn’t until some time afterwards that they began making unbiblical statements, committing unbiblical practices and eventually made themselves known (much to our dismay) as wolves preying upon the flock; among these some have been revealed even as apostates and heretics who for all observation have left behind biblical Christianity.
Today however things are a bit different; today we have those who while claiming to be Christian, have redefined (re-imagined*, re-invented**) Christianity.
Such is the case with the New Evangelicalism Movement as aptly expounded upon by Paul Smith (brother of Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel ministries) who has observed the commencement of straying by Calvary Chapel among many of its primary fellowships, from the Word of God – and other churches as well.
*Reimagining Christianity
**Reinventing Christianity
For more about this, check out the TTUF article by Anne Kisly, a book report on this work by Paul Smith: The New Evangelicalism: The New World Order
An excerpt from the above article:
“Living in the twenty-first century in America, we have watched a major paradigm shift affecting the mindset of many evangelical pastors. This shift includes the ‘New Evangelical’ push for the church to become postmodern in order to ‘reach’ a secular America, a reach of compromise and denial of biblical truths. “The birth of the Emergent Church began with key players such as Peter Drucker, Rick Warren, Bob Buford and C. Peter Wagner [and too many others I might add], with a vision for an ‘optimum community’ . . . a ‘focusing on unity and a worldwide oneness reflected in the growing union between Eastern and Western cultures and thinking’.”
Find more of this in the following articles:
Emergent Is Regurgitant – Part One
WELLHAUSEIAN WOLVES – A quote within the Emergent Is Regurgitant article is as follows:
"Religious liberals spawned by Wellhausen and others accepted biological evolution as a fact (we know that other liberals such as Westcott and Hort likewise found the theory ‘unanswerable’). They carried evolution to a next rational step: Man’s ideas have evolved upward from the primitive to the complex. And so, the religious liberal says that our ideas of God have evolved and are continuing to evolve.
"Religious change is the evolution of ideas, part of the natural order and survival of the fittest. We used to think of God as a judgmental ruler of the universe, but now know Him as a God of love. Hence, there is no sin of violation of God’s law. To the liberal theologian, sin is only lack of maturity, lack of proper evolution. The answer to sin is not the redemption of Jesus Christ, but education, man directing and controlling his own evolution, As mankind is enlightened, we will do away with war, hatred, famine and greed (see J.G. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism)."
From this root source of modern religion, we have these other so-called Christian leaders – who I believe are not a part of the body of Christ for all of their bad fruit, are not legitimate members of the LORD’s flock, and not even masquerading as sheep, but are in fact wolves dressed up in wolf’s clothing!
PARTING FROM THE WORD OF GOD IS ‘SWEET SORROW’ –
The first one we will look at is Leonard Sweet: From a short article by Roger Oakland (Emerging Spirituality – Bridging the Gap Between Good and Evil):
“When those in the emerging church try to persuade people that we need to bridge the gap between Christians (or Christ-followers as they put it) and non-Christians, they aren’t really talking about reaching out to the unsaved in order to share the Gospel with them. They are talking about coming to a consensus, a common ground. Leonard Sweet explains: ‘The key to navigating postmodernity’s choppy, crazy waters is not to seek some balance or “safe middle ground” but to ride the waves and bridge the opposites, especially where they converge in reconciliation and illumination’ Soul Tsunami, pg. 163.
Roger Oakland responds: “It takes a little thinking to figure out what Sweet is saying by this statement, but when he talks about bridging the opposites, he’s referring to a chasm that exists between good and evil. This tension between the two is called dualism, and at the heart of occultism is the effort to eradicate it. If that gap could truly be closed, then Satan and God would be equal. The Bible clearly states this will never happen, but it also says that it is Satan’s desire” (Isaiah 14:12-15).
Rather convenient for the wolf to bridge the gap by consensus and ‘common ground’ and affirm that there really is no difference between the wolves and the sheep. The only genuine reconciliation a wolf would want with a sheep would involve the sheep ending up on the menu!
ILL FAVORED ILLUMINATION –
As for ‘illumination’ – this is not, nor has it ever been the doctrine or practice of the church: to seek illumination (via esoteric knowledge and, or meditative practice) in order to obtain salvation or any other spiritual goal. This is Gnosticism, plain and simple and has nothing to do with the Gospel, the Word of God and true spirituality in accordance with the LORD’s kingdom!
Yet we see Gnosticism blooming anew in all of its New Age splendor in various neo-Gnostic societies, and its devilish dogma is permeating our society in ways both subtle and non-subtle.
For more about this, see The RED PILL Consortium's own article on GNOSTICS KNOW THE EYE.
These two videos that will help to get a grasp on Gnostic and Illuminati beliefs, watch these: the first one, from GOOD FIGHT ministries: Gnosticism Exposed (10 min 32 sec)
Rise of Gnosticism (part 1 of 8; 15 mins 01 sec)*
* Gnostic ambitions of bringing ‘heaven to earth’ as it were, is also the mission of the Emergent Church Movement (“bringing the kingdom of God to earth”); this is hardly a coincidence (see the other 7 parts of this presentation as found on youtube).
(Note: The Red Pill is a reference to the film, The Matrix which is a vehicle to promote Gnosticism, however my blog The RED PILL Consortium does not endorse, nor promote Gnosticism, but contrariwise stands opposed to it and all false religious teachings. I use the term ‘Red Pill’ for my own analogy of receiving the Truth of God’s Word so that one might awaken from the sleep of deception and see the world as it really is: the domain of the evil one, Satan and his program of lies and deception that will lead mankind into Luciferian worship).
EMERGENCE VIA MERGING –
Efforts have been made to amass an amalgam of beliefs as found in the East (primarily Hinduism) and dress it up as the New Age (Old Lie: “ye shall be as gods”) Movement and now we are finding this blasphemous bridge yoking up Christianity and New Age into a ‘New Spirituality Christianity’ – which is something that Brian McLaren himself has stated that we need: “Not a new Spirit but a New Spirituality”.
See also: How Eastern Religion Invaded the West.
Sweet’s attempt in this post-modern society to “navigate these choppy, crazy waters and bridge opposites” would entail the church, which is to walk in the light (1 John 1:7) to join with its opposite and do what?
Have fellowship with Hindus, New Agers, mystics and those that are, according to the Scriptures, in spiritual darkness??
EPHESIANS 5:8-11
8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
GOD’s DREAM or DECEPTIVE SCHEME?
Another point regarding Leonard Sweet and so many of his Emergent colleagues and even New Age/Spirituality adherents is this slogan that they use: “God’s Dream”. Here is an article by Warren Smith, God’s Dream or Deceptive Scheme?
Emergent Leaders, New Age gurus, and others are using this phrase with greater frequency (I personally have heard this phrase used by many of today’s contemporary Christian musicians in their lyrics and in their address to audiences). What is a dream if not some sort of vision? They might be meaningless (too much of the proverbial pizza) but this is not the case with the sort of vision that is being discussed by these people, this “dream of God”.
When it comes to visions supposedly from God, Scripture is quite clear – we are not to accept any vision that comes along, or the spirit by which it is conveyed without testing it by the rule of Scriptural truth!
1 JOHN 4:1-3
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Too many of these false teachers want to denigrate the LORD Jesus, to lower Him down to the level of a “Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi (so said Brian McLaren)”; yet the office of the Christ belongs to God the Son and by no means can He be compared to mere sinful mortals!
They will make the attributes of Christ as not the sole personification of the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth (according to the likes of Marianne Williamson and other New Age leaders) but the inheritance of everyone who accepts the belief that “all is God” including ourselves (this is pantheism and panentheism).
“In his 2006 book The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything, alternative emerging church figure Brian McLaren proposes that Christians adopt new metaphors that the church can use to introduce the world to Jesus–a new user-friendly language to more effectively communicate with the prevailing culture of a “postmodern” world.
The first new metaphor that McLaren suggests is the old Robert Schuller metaphor, “God’s Dream.” McLaren tries to link this Schuller concept to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech rather than attributing it to Schuller.
McLaren explains: ‘For all these reasons, “the dream of God” strikes me as a beautiful way to translate the message of the kingdom of God for hearers today. It is, of course, the language evoked by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. His dream was God’s dream, and that accounted for its amazing power’.1
Here we will end our examination of Leonard Sweet - 'wolf number one'. We will pick up where we left off and complete this examination in part two, and then proceed in our examinations of Ken Blanchard and Wayne Dyer. Until then, walk in truth and light as found in the LORD Jesus Christ so that you will not be deceived by the perditious pied piper, the father of lies, Satan himself.
