The Silent Church

 

Many Christian believers
smirked when Shirley MacLaine stood on the beach in her
made-for-TV movie, Out on a Limb exclaiming, “I am God!”
Today, Marianne Williamson exclaims that we are all
“God” and is introduced by Tom Brokaw on a primetime NBC
special report about September 11 as one of our
“religious leaders.”1

Gary Zukav, a man who personally
endorsed the Barbara Marx Hubbard book that describes
the “selection process,” tells us in his post-September
11 television appearances how we can all spiritually
grow and bring peace to the world. And Wayne Dyer, in a
post-September 11 PBS fundraising event, stands in an
historic New England church and tells his national
audience that the world would be a much more peaceful
place if everyone adopted the “brilliant” teachings of
A
Course in Miracles.

Traditional Christian believers frequently mention the
analogy of the frog that is so slowly and gradually
boiled in a kettle of water that it dies before ever
realizing what is going on. Yet many believers fail to
realize that the very same thing is happening to them as
they tell that story. How else do you explain the rapid
rise of the “new gospel” movement with hardly a word of
concern within the Church about what’s been happening?
As “new gospel” advocates continue to publish
bestselling books and flock to the airwaves in
ever-increasing numbers to advance their cause, there is
a strange silence in Christendom. Does the Church have
any idea what is going on?

So often we have heard the impassioned refrain, “We can
never let
what happened in Germany ever happen again.”
And with all of the Holocaust memorials, survivor
testimonies, and multitudinous books on the subject, we
have done a pretty good job of convincing ourselves that
we will never make the same mistakes the German people
did in allowing someone like Hitler to rise in their
midst. We think that Americans would never stand by and
allow something like that to happen here in our country.
Our democratic processes and old-fashioned common sense
would never allow it.

In the introduction to a 1999 publication (Sixth
Pressing) of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Konrad Heiden
describes how everything that Hitler was about to do was
telegraphed in his early writings:

“For years Mein Kampf
stood as proof of the blindness and complacency of the
world. For in its pages Hitler announced – long before
he came to power – a program of blood and terror in a
self-revelation of such overwhelming frankness that few
among its readers had the courage to believe it. Once
again it was demonstrated that there was no more
effective method of concealment than the broadest
publicity.”2

Somehow, Christians
don’t seem to grasp Jesus’ warnings about the tremendous
deception that characterizes the time of the end.
Perhaps deceived into thinking that we can’t be
deceived, we don’t take seriously enough His warnings
that a Hitler-like antichrist figure will one day rise
to rule the world – and that many people calling
themselves “Christians” will support this spiritual
counterfeit who will actually come in the name of
Christ. Our adversary wants us to believe that these
warnings are for another people at another time. Yet
through Scripture, and in our heart of hearts, the
Spirit of God tells us that they are not. As we study
the Bible, and as we watch and pray and observe the
events all around us, we come to understand that these
future times described by Jesus are now suddenly and
undeniably upon us.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul warns of
their vulnerability and susceptibility to false teaching
in the name of Jesus. He suggests that if someone
approached them with “another gospel,” “another Jesus”
and “another spirit” they might very well go along with
it (2 Corinthians 11:3-4). Earlier in that same letter
Paul had indirectly encouraged the Corinthians
not to be
ignorant of their adversary’s schemes and devices, lest
they be taken advantage of (2 Corinthians 2:11).

Paul
told the Ephesians that it is a shame that we even have
to talk about the things of darkness, but when we expose
them they are brought into the light (Ephesians
5:12-13). He also told them that he had not ceased to
warn them night and day for three years that men who
were “grievous wolves” would “arise” in the Church
“speaking perverse things” as they attempted to lead men
away from their faith and into the enemy’s camp (Acts
20:29-31). Let us beware of these same warnings today.

It is extremely disturbing to see the website of a
Colorado-based Christian leader listed as a recommended
resource in the back of a 1998
Barbara Marx Hubbard book
entitled
Conscious Evolution.3 It is equally alarming to
find out that this individual is also a member of the
same World Future Society that lists Barbara Marx
Hubbard as one of its co-founding and current board
members.4 And that this respected Christian leader
serves as the secretary of a World Future Society
subcommittee that once gave Hubbard a special award for
her outstanding contributions to the field of religion.5
But perhaps what is most unbelievable is that the
Colorado Springs Christian leadership lets him get away
with it. Apparently, being “unequally yoked” with a
woman who (at the direction of her “Christ”) has
“re-written” the
Book of Revelation and authored the
“selection process” is not a major concern for church
leaders – leaders who are actually starting to sound a
lot like Hubbard themselves.

And it is, indeed, very disturbing to see many Christian
leaders today using many of the same words and
expressions commonly used by their “new gospel”
counterparts. “New revelation” describing how a great
“move of God” is going to take believers “pregnant with
destiny” to “a new spiritual level” and into a “new
dimension” sounds a lot more like the “new gospel” than
the traditional Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Are Christian leaders leading the church ever closer to
the cross, or ever closer to the “Planetary Pentecost”?
Why is there almost no call for spiritual discernment
within the Church (except to warn believers not to be
deceived into doubting their appointed Christian
leaders)? Why is spiritual experience taking precedence
over spiritual discernment? Why are there so few
warnings about a counterfeit “new gospel” movement that
maligns the person of Jesus Christ and threatens the
lives of His followers? Why is “new revelation” in many
ministries starting to supersede God’s written Word? Why
are Christians only being prepared for blessings and not
for persecution? What in the world is going on?

Expecting only revival and the return of the true
Christ, will the Church be deceived by the one who will
come in the name of Christ and pretend to be Him? Caught
unawares, will the Church mistake the counterfeit
Christ’s “Planetary Pentecost” for the great “move of
God” they had been told to expect? Are we getting set up
for the great delusion described in the Bible? Is there
any good reason not at least to consider that
possibility?

The prophet Daniel makes mention of the God of “forces”
in conjunction with antichrist (Daniel 11:38). The “God”
of the “new gospel” asks
Neale Donald Walsch, “What if I
am not a ‘man’ at all, but rather, a Force?”6

The
“Christ” of
A Course in Miracles states that there is an
“irresistible Force” within each person.7 Marianne
Williamson explains that this “universal force” can be
“activated” within each person and has “the power to
make all things right.”8

The “new gospel Christ” tells
Barbara Marx Hubbard that on the day of “Planetary
Pentecost” a “planetary smile” will flash across the
face of all mankind; that an “uncontrollable joy” that
he describes as the “joy of the force” will “ripple”
through the one body of humanity.9 Benjamin Creme
describes the event “as a pentecostal experience for
all.”10 The “Christ” of
A Course in Miracles tells how
the world ends in “peace” and “laughter.”11

Has anyone wondered whether this same “Force” may be
counterfeiting the Holy Spirit in churches and may be
producing “revivals” and “moves of God” that are not
really “revivals” or “moves of God” at all? Is the “God
of forces” in the process of preparing the Church for
the “Planetary Pentecost”? Should we not be doing a more
thorough job of testing the spirits? Have we put our
faith and trust in Christian “leaders” rather than in
God? Have we all talked ourselves out of the end times?
Have we all agreed that persecution is not something we
need to be concerned about? Have we prayed to God that
we would not be deluded or deceived?

Ten years ago in my book,

The Light That Was Dark, I wrote
the following: “Clearly many who said they were of ‘the
faith’ would soon become a part of the deception too, if
they weren’t already.”

Were we already witnessing the great “falling away”
predicted in the Bible? Was the “mystery of iniquity”
talked about in the Scriptures already doing its
deceptive work with “all power and signs and lying
wonders”…? Would people calling themselves Christians
abandon their faith in the Bible and the Bible’s Christ?
Would they join an ecumenical movement that in the name
of love and God and unity would sacrifice the truth of
the Bible and perhaps one day merge with the new age
itself?

Jesus warned that such a faith would lead not to life
but to ultimate destruction: “Enter ye in at the strait
gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the
way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it” (Matthew 7:13-14).12

Could it be that the reason the Church is so unaware of
the “new gospel” movement is because it is being led by
that same spirit and heading down that same broad way?
Is it happening now, right in front of our very own
eyes?

---

This is from Reinventing Jesus Christ
by Warren Smith,
chapter 10.

Click here to read the entire online edition.

Notes:
1. NBC News Special Report: America on Alert, Tom Brokaw
hosting Marianne Williamson as guest, September 16, 2001
broadcast transcript (Livingston, New Jersey: Burrelle’s
Information Services).
2. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (Sixth Pressing),
translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co.: Mariner Books, 1999), p.xv.
3. Jay Gary website, referenced by Barbara Marx Hubbard
in Conscious Evolution, p. 263.
4. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution, p. 279.
5. Barbara Marx Hubbard and Jay Gary (http://web.archive.org/web/20020818151002/www.wnrf.org/programs/awards.htm
and


http://web.archive.org/web/20020818150112/www.wnrf.org/networks/christian.htm).
6. Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: Book 3,
p. 325.
7. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume, (Text) p. 479.
8. Marianne Williamson, Healing the Soul of America, p.
13.
9. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation, p. 243.
10. Benjamin Creme, Maitreya’s Mission: Volume Two (Los
Angeles: Share International Foundation, 1993), p. 239.
11. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume, (Manual for
Teachers) p. 37.
12. Warren Smith, The Light That Was Dark, p. 150.
13. Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the
Hierarchy, p. 417.
14. Marianne Williamson, Healing the Soul of America, p.
205.
15. Benjamin Creme, Maitreya’s Mission: Volume Two, p.
239.
16. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation, p. 324

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