Someone emailed me an article about how this top guru in the hugely popular new “emergent church movement,” theologian Brian McLaren, calls hell and the Cross “false advertising for God.”

In total convoluted language, McLaren, named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine, says, “This is one of the huge problems with the traditional understanding of hell, because if the Cross is in line with Jesus' teaching, then I won't say the only and I certainly won't say . . . or even the primary or a primary meaning of the Cross . . . is that the Kingdom of God doesn't come like the kingdoms of this world by inflicting violence and coercing people. But that the kingdom of God comes through suffering and willing voluntary sacrifice, right? But in an ironic way, the doctrine of hell basically says no, that's not really true. At the end, God gets his way through coercion and violence and intimidation and uh, domination just like every other kingdom does. The Cross isn't the center then, the Cross is almost a distraction and false advertising for God.”

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A great summary for the “emergent” model can be found on the website www.crossroad.to, run by a Norwegian woman, Berit Kjos, who goes after false Christianity with a vengeance.

She writes, “Today's emerging church has redefined God's Word and is fast embracing the latest versions of the old Gnostic quest for secret knowledge (gnosis) and self-actualization, whether through mystical experience or collective imagination.

“Stamping out faith in Biblical absolutes is central to this transformation. A mind anchored in God's Word won't compromise, but when that anchor is removed, the current of change can carry that mind anywhere.

“Jesuit scholastic, Mark Mossa, in his endorsement of McLaren's latest book, The Secret Message of Jesus, challenges us to put aside our sterile certainties about Christ and reconsider the imaginative world of Jesus stories, signs and wonders.”

Indeed, in the doctrinal statement for the “emergent church” is an admitted hatred of clarity and precision; ambiguity is where it’s at.

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When the Apostle Paul warns about how in Rapture-ready times “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,” he’s saying there’s going to be a positive campaign for evil to deceive people.

As Jordan explains, “Not only are they going to be deceivers, they’re going to be deceived themselves. You see it in the world all about you today: People out teaching things you know are error and you say, ‘Well, how can they do that?!’ and investigate to find out that they are completely and totally engulfed in believing it themselves. They’re sincerely wrong but they’re genuinely sincere. It’s a positive campaign for evil.”

What the satanic plan of evil knows like nothing else is that the way to delude people away from accepting the truth of God’s Word is to keep them from reading what it actually says and giving it the normal, literal interpretation it’s meant to have.

Jordan says, “You know what penetrates the heart of people? It’s not going to be methods, tactics, fads. What God has designed to penetrate the hearts of people is His Word, and what people need preached to them and presented to them is His Word.

“Don’t get me wrong, I believe in being creative; on being on the front-end of figuring out how to communicate His Word, but what I want to communicate is His Word and the truth of His Word; the truth of the gospel with clarity and plainness of speech in a way people hear.

“The reason to be culturally relevant in the terms of the day is so you talk to people where they are and they hear what you’re saying. But when you want to penetrate their heart, it’s the Word of God that’s the two-edged sword that penetrates to the core of the soul.

“Go back and read Job 40 where you’re given this picture of the behemoth—the Antichrist. You see this spiritual foe, and it’s said about him, ‘He’s got scales of armor and nothing can penetrate him,’ and then God says, ‘But my Word can pierce right through.’ It’s the Word that does that.

“And when Christ comes back, it’s the sharp two-edged sword that comes out of His mouth. It’s the Word of God that fells (the Antichrist). The Word is powerful and it’s sharp, piercing, penetrating. It penetrates the heart. There’s nothing more effective than the Word of God.”

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A great story from history proving this point involves the ministry of English preacher George Whitefield, a contemporary of John Wesley.

As Jordan tells it, “You read about Whitefield and the great things he did but you very rarely see anything about the fact he was severely cross-eyed. When he was in Bristol, where his ministry was centered, there was a band of young men who opposed Whitefield, calling him ‘Reverend Squintum’ to mock him.

“They would follow him around hurling insults at him. They formed what they called the Hellfire Club. They would say, ‘We’re going to hell, burn in the fire and glad of it,’ and they would disrupt his meetings.

“One of the men did a comedy parody of Whitefield’s preaching where he’d cross his eyes and preach Whitefield’s message. His testimony is that right in the middle of preaching one of Whitefield’s messages, Romans 6:23 penetrated his heart and he got saved preaching his own message!

“Now, you understand that (kind of thing happening) but a lost guy never would figure that out. Here he is mocking God’s preacher, mocking God’s Word, preaching it to make fun of it, but that sharp two-edged sword had cut right down into his soul.

“That guy wound up seeing his companions in the Hellfire Club converted too, and they joined Whitefield in spreading the gospel! They started a church in Bristol, England that covered that whole territory with the gospel!”

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Jordan recalls receiving a letter from a prisoner several years ago requesting a

gospel tract that would tell him how to go to heaven. He had explained, “We have all kinds of preachers come in here with all kinds of messages. I can’t figure out exactly what I’m supposed to believe.”

Jordan wrote back saying his recommendation was for him to, ‘Take the first five chapters of Romans, read them about 40 times, and then after you’ve done that, write me and tell me what you found.”

Three months later, Jordan got another letter reporting, in essence, “I don’t need to read (Romans 1-5) anymore. I got saved my 28^th time through.”

“He said he saw it reading Romans 3,” Jordan says. “The greatest gospel tract ever written is the book of Romans. The first five chapters is the clearest presentation of the gospel you’ll ever see.”

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In another testimony to the power of Romans 3, Jordan tells of a man during World War II who lived on the island of Sicily (a 100 percent Roman Catholic area) where everyday supplies such as paper were scarce:

“He went down and bought a fish at the fish market, brought it home, and as he unwrapped it out of the newspaper, one of the pieces it was wrapped in was a page from the book of Romans. He’d never seen a Bible before and didn’t know what it was. He read the last half of Romans 3 and got saved. There’s not a better exposition of the gospel anywhere than in Romans 3:21 to the end of the chapter.”