Here’s one for the books. Last Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at a window counter seat inside the Starbucks at 57^th and 7^th when a middle-aged married couple sat down next to me.

The husband got out a map of Manhattan and, after studying it a bit, consulted his wife about where they should head once they finished their drinks.

Curious to know where the couple was visiting from, I asked and they told me they had traveled from southern California to attend the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in Queens and were staying at a hotel in Murray Hill.

A subsequent conversation about New York City led to the husband asking me what I did in Manhattan. I informed him I was a former newspaper and trade magazine journalist now working from home writing a book about the Bible.

The wife asked what exactly I was writing and, in the process of explaining it all to her, I happened to mention mega-pastor Rick Warren and how he was a key figure leading the Christian church into full-blown New Age apostasy.

She wanted to know exactly what I meant by using the word “deceptive” in connection with Warren and so I gave her a long laundry list (Editor’s Note: Archived articles on Warren include those dated Sept. 1, 2006; Jan. 13, 2006; Oct. 26, 2005; Aug. 5, 2005; May 5, 2005; April 19, 2005).

Among examples I pointed out, his church is listed as Southern Baptist, yet he’s obviously a New Ager who unabashedly subscribes to all things Pentecostal (Warren even writes in his mega-bestseller book The Purpose-Driven Life that “healing miracles and ecstatic experiences can be forms of worship”). Warren trains ministers who are Catholic, Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists. He trains Rabbis, too.”

After a minute or two, the couple informed me they were long-term members (I think they said for 15 years) of Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and spoke to Warren frequently!!! The husband even said he would present Warren with my website address and tell him I was a New York City journalist negatively critiquing his book and teachings!!!

While the husband seemed pretty amiable hearing my no-holds-barred assessment of Warren, his wife became visibly upset and argued on Warren’s behalf, emphasizing how he’d brought thousands of southern Californians to Christ and had made a tremendous impact on that part of the state. She told me how he gave away all his earnings and was now a world leader in the fight to rid the globe of AIDS and poverty.

When we talked about Warren’s friendly dealings with Kim Jung Il’s regime in North Korea, she said Warren was doing just what Jesus Christ would do, using any means necessary to infiltrate the Communist country with the gospel.

She compared Warren’s particular method of reaching North Koreans—standing arm in arm with Kim Jung Il in order to win a “concert date” to preach out of the good Purpose-Driven book—to Christ’s healing of lepers!

The more the three of us conversed, the more upset I noticed his wife became. I even saw that she was folding the gospel tract (with my website address) I’d given her into a tiny cigarette-sized form. I even half-wondered if she would throw it in the trash as soon as I left.

What I found incredible was that she admitted never reading Warren’s mega-mega-bestseller, “The Purpose-Driven Life.” I thought, “Boy, if my pastor wrote a book that made into publication, I’d want to read it, and we’re talking about one of the biggest selling non-fiction books of all time—a ‘life manual’ that’s now been translated into 30-some different languages!!”

Another thing that struck me hard was when the husband asked if I was an atheist! I thought later, “He must have found it incomprehensible that another Christian would have anything but glowing praise for Pastor Rick.”

Funny enough, I didn’t even need to answer his question because his wife jumped in, snorting in what I would classify as a semi-repulsed tone, “No, she’s a fundamentalist.” It was as if she was calling me a Nazi sympathizer.

Of course, this is just the kind of animosity toward old-fashioned Bible-believing Christians that Warren instills in his people.

We’re talking about a guy who last year stated (in a speech to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life) that he predicts fundamentalism, of all varieties, will be “one of the big enemies of the 21^st Century.”

He explained that in a world that demands ‘lifelong learning’ in dialogue and compromise, Biblical fundamentalism “becomes a threat to unity.”

Warren informed in his speech that "the word 'Fundamentalist' comes from a document in the 1920s called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith and it is a very legalistic, narrow view of Christianity."

These five fundamentals Warren finds troubling are:

1.  The inerrancy and full authority of the Bible

2.  The virgin birth and full Deity of Jesus Christ

3.  The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

4. Christ's atoning, vicarious death for the sins of the world

5. The literal Second Coming of Jesus Christ

How could anyone possibly mistake this guy for a Bible-believer, period?! I think one of the quickest, easiest ways to spot a false teacher is to see him endorse and quote from the abominable 1993 New Testament paraphrase, The Message, written by Eugene Peterson, and that’s exactly what Warren does countless times in his books, website columns, sermons, etc.

In fact, The Message website (www.navpress.com) displays an endorsement from Warren, along with ones from other prominent “Christian” men such as Billy Graham, Chuck Swindoll, Bill Hybels, Dan Quayle, J.I. Packer, Max Lucado, Jack Hayford, Jerry Jenkins, John Maxwell, Richard Foster, Rod Parsley, Tony Campolo and Warren Wiersbe.

As author Dr. Terry Watkins of Dial-the-Truth Ministries succinctly sums up in an exhaustive expose article on The Message, posted to website www.av1611.org , “With today’s epidemic of Bible PER-versions spreading like a runaway virus, nothing should shock us. . . but buckle up! If you have any spiritual pulse, Eugene Peterson’s The Message will shock you. The Message promotes the mystical New Age message with a boldness never seen in a mainstream Bible.”

Of the cliché-ridden-New-Age-jargon-filled paraphrase, Watkins reports, as just one example of its flagrant corruptions, “The Mess NEVER directly honors Jesus Christ as Lord. The ‘Lord Jesus’ occurs 118 times in the King James Bible. The ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ occurs 84 times in the King James Bible. (The ‘Lord’ occurs a whopping 7,970 times in the King James—more than any other noun.)

“The phrase ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ or ‘Lord Jesus’ is not in The Mess! The outright denial of the ‘Lord’ Jesus has never occurred in ANY translation.

“Let us clarify something. . . the total amputation of the ‘Lord Jesus’ is no accident. It is not an issue of translation or Greek manuscripts. It is not a matter of updating archaic words or making it easier to understand. It was a deliberate and intentional doctrinal decision to remove the ‘Lord Jesus.’ ”

What The Message puts in its place is the Judas-inspired, New Age doctrine of the “Master Jesus,” as Watkins documents extensively.

“The root of the New Age Movement (NAM) teaches during various ‘ages,’ teachers or guides arise called ‘Masters,’ ” he writes. “Helena Blavatsky, the guru of the modern-day New Age Movement, wrote extensively of these enlightened ‘masters’. . . Second only to Blavatsky in the New Age hierarchy is Alice Bailey. . . In 1922, Bailey formed Lucifer Trust Publishing, which was later renamed to the subtle Lucis Trust Publishing. Bailey wrote extensively on the ‘Master Jesus.’ ”

Referring to Satan as “The One” is also a very common old title in New Age circles, so it figures that II Cor. 4:14 is translated to read in The Message, “And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive.”

As Watkins confirms, “The New Age Movement revolves around the ‘One.’ Gail Riplinger writes in (her 1993 book), New Age Bible Versions: ‘Virtually all exposes on the New Age Movement observe ‘the One’ is this movement’s object of worship.’ ”

It would be easy to go on to hundreds of other similar examples in the paraphrase, which even changes the words “lily of the valley,” used to describe Jesus Christ, to the Buddhists’ mystic “lotus blossom” in its translation of Song of Solomon 2:1-2!

The verse in The Message reads, “I’m just a wildflower picked from the plains of Sharon, a lotus blossom from the valley pools. A lotus blossoming in a swamp of weeds—that’s my dear friend among the girls in the village.”

Watkins writes, “The Mess writes the most blasphemous and openly New Age propaganda ever recorded in a mainstream Bible. . .In Micah 7:14, The Mess performs more New Age magick. It transforms ‘midst of Carmel’ into a blatant New Age phrase ‘centered in lotus land.’ ”

To show exactly where Warren lies in this satanic pit, just look at what he writes in The Purpose-Driven Life:

“At the end of your life on earth you will be evaluated and rewarded according to how well you handled what God entrusted to you. That means everything you do, even simple daily chores, has eternal implications. If you treat everything as a trust, God promises three rewards in eternity:

1^st God’s affirmation ‘Good job! Well done!’

2^nd Promotion—greater responsibility in eternity.

3^rd Honored with a celebration: ‘Come and share your Master’s happiness.’ ”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued. . . )