We continue now with our expose on Leonard Sweet and his Emergent Church co-horts that while espousing to be Christians or 'Christ followers' (a preferred Emergent term) they are quite apparently 'wolves in wolf's clothing'.
On the subject of 'God's dream', an idea widely promoted by Emergents, New Agers and many others, we will continue with Brian McClaren (More on Brian McClaren on The RED PILL Consortium is available by typing his name in the search engine):
“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
We understand that this idea of fulfilling “God’s dream” is not something that a handful of people whose Christianity is dubious at best, and a farce at worst is promoting; this is something that is being promoted globally, by people with such power to influence the many people living on this globe, like Robert Muller, Assistant General Secretary of the United Nations. From The TRUTH Under FIRE’s article on Muller in the TTUF profile, FORTH COMES THE GLOBAL EDUCRATS:
“Far from being merely a political entity, the UN of which Muller had a predominant hand in forming and developing, is very much a spiritual/religious entity that reflects the values of its former Assistant Secretary General; his dream lives on in the minds and hearts of UN members, its workers and followers of Muller himself:”
“His dream seems to parallel, if not be inspired by “God’s Dream” an idea that is heavily promoted by New Agers and Emergent Leaders alike, that is, “to bring heaven to earth”; an idea which intimates that we are not to wait around for God to establish His kingdom (Dan. 2:34, 45), but must be active participants in its erection. Since Muller is by his own admission a “deeply spiritual man” one must ask where he obtained his spirituality from. This we shall look into!
My DREAM 2000 by Robert Muller
I dream That on 1 January 2000
The whole world will stand still In prayer, awe and gratitude
For our beautiful, heavenly Earth And for the miracle of human life.
I dream That young and old, rich and poor, Black and white,
Peoples from North and South, From East and West,
From all beliefs and cultures
Will join their hands, minds and hearts
In an unprecedented, universal Bimillennium Celebration of Life.
I dream That the year 2000 Will be declared World Year of Thanksgiving By the United Nations.
I dream That during the year 2000 Innumerable celebrations
and events Will take place all over the globe
To gauge the long road covered by humanity
To study our mistakes And to plan the feats
Still to be accomplished
For the full flowering of the human race
In peace, justice and happiness.
I dream That the few remaining years
To the Bimillennium Will be devoted by
all humans, nations and institutions
To unparalleled thinking, action, Inspiration, elevation,
Determination and love To solve our remaining problems
And to achieve A peaceful, united human family on Earth.
I dream That the third millennium
Will be declared And made Humanity's First Millennium of Peace.
In his “Spirituality in World Affairs” Robert Muller lists ten objectives that would promote global spirituality among the nations, with the UN as well as the URO, leading the way. These ten objectives have either been fulfilled or nearly so, since Muller wrote this article thirteen years ago.
“Among the scores of people who are talking about and promoting this false vision of “God’s Dream” are: Sri Chimnoy, Desmond Tutu, Sung Myung Moon, Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Oprah Winfrey are among the New Age crowd – and those who are professing Christians?
Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Erwin McManus, Bruce Wilkinson, Shane Claiborne, and of course, Leonard Sweet who said:
“The time to save God’s Dream is now. The people to save God’s Dream are you.” Leonard Sweet shares this vision of ‘God’s Dream’ with these others, with whom he endeavors to find this bridge of common ground; yet Wayne Dyer has explained clearly what he believes this dream is all about . . . As described in Deceived on Purpose, (Warren Smith’s excellent expose on this and other Emergent/New Age falsehoods) Marianne Williamson’s New Age colleague Wayne Dyer has made it clear that the “One Dream” that can change everything is “God’s Dream”:
"Who is the ultimate dreamer? Call it as you will: God, higher consciousness, Krishna, Spirit, whatever pleases you. . . . One dream, one dreamer, billions of embodied characters acting out that one dream . . . Your true essence is that you are part and parcel of the one big dream.4 This is the quintessential message that is available from all the spiritual masters . . . You, the dreamer . . . God, the dreamer.5
"I assure you that when you truly know that there is only one dream and that you are connected to everyone in that dream, you begin to think and act as if you are connected to it all, rather than attached to your separateness.6"
“. . . billions of embodied characters acting out that one dream . . . “??
WE ARE THE WORLD-CHURCH, WE ARE THE CHILDREN –
The obvious implication is that, according to Dyer (and no doubt his colleagues) this vision born in the heart of God is being realized on planet Earth by presumably all of her human inhabitants. That collectively, the people of the Earth form a kind of ‘church’ through which ‘God’ operates to fulfill His dream.
This idea is notoriously promoted by such as Barbara Marx Hubbard and others of the New Age perspective. See False Teachings, False Peace and False Christ – Part One of Three.
More on “God’s Dream” can be found on the TTUF Profile of Rick Warren (parts 1 and 2).
Leonard Sweet routinely employs such phrases as “enlightenment, Christ Consciousness, New Light*, transformation, spiritual energies” which are stock slogans rife with New Age spirituality, and he compares the Spirit and glory of the God of the Bible with “kundalini fire” and Matthew Foxe’s “inner Light”.
*“New Light Leaders” as he calls them, and for their revelations he is grateful for, and follows are: Matthew Fox, Richard Mouw, Rowan Williams." Others that Leonard Sweet thanks include: Morton Kelsey, M. Scott Peck, Walter Bruggemann, Ken Wilber, Thomas Berry and many other New Agers.
SWEET LIES –
More from Warren Smith on Leonard Sweet.
Finally we have the following article by Sandy Simpson of Deception in the Church ministries:
“Warren Smith, in his cutting-edge book A Wonderful” Deception (an expose on Rick Warren, Leonard Sweet, and the “new” emerging Christianity), wrote two strong documented chapters specifically on the New Age views of Leonard Sweet:
“Perhaps one of the most troubling things Smith reveals about Sweet is Sweet’s statement about “the father of the New Age movement,” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Sweet calls the late panentheist Chardin “20th CENTURY CHRISTIANITY’S MAJOR VOICE” [emphasis mine].
“But Chardin does not represent biblical Christianity–on the contrary, he falls in a spiritual camp that embraces the “cosmic Christ,” which is the “I AM God” in every creature. Even though this Christ-consciousness-in-all-people belief rejects the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, Sweet has openly aligned himself with Chardin. In Sweet’s book, Aqua Church, he favorably quotes Chardin arrogantly saying:
“Christ is in the Church in the same way as the sun is before our eyes. We see the same sun as our fathers saw, and yet we understand it in a much more magnificent way.” Sweet’s alignment with Chardin’s New Age views is nothing short of heresy.”
Quotes from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the supposed “Voice of 20th Century Christianity” – you be the judge as to whether this man was a properly representative 'voice' for Christianity.
Chardin was instrumental in the forming of philosophical thought on the issue of evolution where transhumanism as a concept is concerned (Note particularly point #11) – hardly the sort of stuff for “the Voice of 20th century Christianity” to extol!
For more on Leonard Sweet have a look at this Emergent Friendly Interview:
From out of the starting gate, Sweet is asked what the ‘emergent church’ is:
LEN SWEET: It probably would mean something different to everyone you would ask, but from my perspective, the “emergent church” is an ongoing conversation about how new times call for new churches, and that the mortar- happy church of the last half of the 20th century is ill-poised to face the promises and perils of the future.
In fact, attempting to define the “emergent church” betrays the essence of the movement because the emergent consciousness questions the notion that there is such a thing. Rather, there are only individual emerging churches that are missional* in orientation that grow out of the indigenous soils in which they are planted.
In other words, no two emerging churches are alike.
And what does “missional” mean? Bob Deeway, who has certainly done his homework on the Emergent Church Movement provides for us the answer.
“Emergent’s word “missional” does not convey this meaning. “Missional” sounds like “missionary” except that the “mission” is undefined. Emergent leaders disagree among themselves concerning the definition of their “mission,” but the mission they tend to embrace is to improve society now. They borrow much from Catholic liberation theologians and liberalism itself—that Christianity’s mission is to make the world a tangible paradise immediately. Outside of bettering society, the missional concept has no content; it specifically denies a mission of proclaiming an escape from God’s coming wrath.
"For Emergent, 'The journey is the reward,' and the journey will certainly end well for all—without exception. According to Emergent thinking, being missional means following the journey wherever it leads as long as it corrects society’s evils. In their view, missional is more like the opposite of apathy; it is zeal to right the wrongs of society. Because the eschatological end of the journey is assured for everyone, the path the journey takes doesn’t matter much. One mission to fight social evil is as good as another; what matters most is that we are missional together.”
Sweet like most other Emergents believe the church is not prepared to reach this generation for Christ, and yet – as has been stated repeatedly by this author, God in His perfect foreknowledge included everything necessary for EVERY GENERATION to understand, believe and receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ, having provided Himself as the perfect, propitiatory sacrifice, the Holy Scriptures themselves and the Holy Spirit to empower the church to live out the truth of the Word.
The 21st century didn’t catch God off guard!! All of this talk about changing Ecclesiastical tactics in order to reach the world has done, and will do nothing but reach the church with worldly wisdom, worldly vision, and worldly consequences before our own Heavenly Father!
In that interview with Sweet, you will notice some points he makes which are rather poignant but that in the mix of these, there are the usual Emergent sign posts that can be readily identified – just a couple of examples before we move on to our ‘second wolf’:
Sweet is asked to define some terms that are prevalent in Emergent Societies of various shades, one of which is “incarnational” –
LEN SWEET: “Incarnational: That means that Christianity does not go through time like water in a straw. It passes through cultural prisms and historical periods, which means that Christianity is organic. And like with any living thing, in order for things to stay the same, they have to change. There are some who think that Christianity is meant to stand in and for itself as a bounded discourse, impervious to cultural influences. That’s one reason it took the Vatican 300 years to come around to heliocentrism: the idea that the sun, not the earth, was at the center.”
There is a vast difference between what factual science is for and the objective of the truth of God’s Word; the Scriptures are for understanding God, not the universe and its laws (though there are texts that reveal facts of our physical universe), they are for our understanding on how to conduct ourselves (we who are Christians) in the kingdom of God, not to gain comprehension of planetary relations in our solar system – and neither of these has to do with culture specifically (though both Christianity and science will have an effect on it).
Also, Christianity has no problem adapting itself to any culture, so long as that none of the biblical truths are altered in order to accommodate any aspects of culture that would contradict it. Then on the definition of missional:
LEN SWEET: “Does the church face inward or outward? A missional church faces outward toward the world, not like a porcupine stands against its enemies, but like water fills every container without losing its content. In fact, many in the emerging church reject the dichotomy between the church and the world. For too long, churches have faced inward, offering religion as a benefits package — something that “meets my needs” or offers good outcomes. “I tell churches to look at their mission statement. Many of them are no more than self-statements, not mission statements. This is how you can tell. Is your mission statement based on how to get people to go into the world, or how to get more people to come to church? The missional mantra that people are saying today is this: The church is measured, not by its seating capacity, but by its sending capacity.”
I can agree with Sweet that the church for much of the recent past has become too introspective and involved with itself, like a fortress standing against and impervious to people of the world in a siege (‘them against us’) mentality, when we are supposed to be ambassadors to the world (2 Cor. 5:20), heralding the Gospel to lost souls, while at the same time, keeping ourselves unspotted from the world (James 1:27); the church needs to regain its passion for reaching the lost while maintaining its sanctity by the power of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus spent time with sinners (much to the disapproval of the religious establishment of the Pharisees; see Matt.9:10-13) and yet was without sin (1 Peter 1:18-20; 2 Cor. 5:21).
While the idea of getting churched people out into the street, and having been sent out, making contact with un-churched or non-churched people is somewhat commendable (but in actuality it's not about churched and unchurched, but saved and unsaved people) – once sent, what is the message they are delivering?
The Gospel is in the charge of the body of Christ and NO other message will do! What would it matter if the Emergent Church could hand the world on a silver platter (with education, health care, job opportunities, and everything else on the Rick Warren P.E.A.C.E. plan list) to un-churched people and they lose their own souls?
MATTHEW 16:25-27
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Lastly, on the issue that “. . . many in the emerging church reject the dichotomy between the church and the world.”
The Scripture clearly states that there is a dichotomy; a God-ordained distinction between the world and the church, and what separates the two is Christ Himself (Matthew 10:32-40) – for He is the Head and Lord and Savior of the church, His body. He is not so with the world at large, because they are of the spirit of darkness and not of light.
1 CORINTHIANS 2:12
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
2 CORINTHIANS 6:14
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
EPHESIANS 5:8
For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
1 THESSALONIANS 5:5
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
1 PETER 2:9
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;
Based on all of the reasons of what has been revealed here (and far more besides for those who do the research!) we are well able to classify Leonard Sweet as a bona fide wolf in wolf’s clothing.
We need to be sure to warn any God-fearing Christian about such false doctrines and unbiblical teachings as those taught by Leonard Sweet, and not be deceived by his prolific writings as published in so many books.
The following is a list of books written by or with contributions from Leonard Sweet.
This concludes the second part of this article; in the third article we will have a look at our next subject: Wayne Dyer. Until then, keep your eyes on the skies and don’t believe the lies, the LORD JESUS RETURNS SOON, FROM ON HIGH!
