FIRST LESBIAN MENNONITE LEAD PASTRIX APPOINTED~NEW MEXICO “CHURCH” BECOMES FIRST IN MENNONITE CHURCH USA TO APPOINT OPENLY LESBIAN “LEAD PASTOR”

  LESBIAN “PASTRIX” PERVERTS BIBLE
APOSTATE, UNREPENTANT & PROUD?
CLAIMS: “ENOUGH WITH ‘WOMAN WISDOM'”, NEGATES SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE;
PREACHES ANABAPTIST, UNIVERSALIST, ECUMENICAL INCLUSIVE GOSPEL
  https://www.eewc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/EricaLea.jpg
 ERICA LEA’S BLOG:
NEW MEXICO “CHURCH” BECOMES FIRST IN MENNONITE CHURCH USA TO APPOINT OPENLY LESBIAN “LEAD PASTOR”
BY HEATHER CLARK
 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A “church” in New Mexico has become the first in the 
Mennonite Church USA to appoint an open lesbian as “lead pastor.”

Albuquerque Mennonite Church, which affirmed homosexual relationships
a decade ago, made the announcement on Monday that it had chosen Erica
Lea as its new leader.


It remarked that Lea has a “strong call to connect with and serve
people affected by current immigration policies and racial, social and
economic discrimination—as well as a call to provide a beacon and safe
haven for the LGBTQ community.”

“We look forward to finding more ways of articulating and sharing an
Anabaptist faith that can flourish in locally derived expressions of
Jesus’s call to discipleship, peacemaking and justice,” said search
committee member Andrew Clouse. “We think Erica is well-equipped to help
us do this.”

Lea has heretofore mainly led professing Baptist assemblies, but did
serve as an interim pastor for Houston Mennonite Church, Mennonite World
Review reports. She has been at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington,
D.C. for the past three years.
According to the site Sojourners, Lea plans to move to New Mexico to
take the role at Albuquerque Mennonite Church after she “marries” her
female partner in November.

“It’s like the Grand Canyon distance between becoming open and
affirming and actually calling an LGBTQ pastor who is out,” she told the
outlet. “A lot of churches struggle to make that movement. … I want
LGBTQ people and women to be celebrated and encouraged in pastoral and
ministry leadership roles.”

She also asserted to the Mennonite World Review that “it is quite
possible that the Spirit might be calling them (homosexuals and
transgenders) to these types of roles.”


Lea is a graduate of Truett Seminary at Baylor University in Texas,
and also has a background in eco-feminism, which “sees a relationship
between the serious environmental damage done to the earth and the
repression of women.”

While Lea is the first openly lesbian “lead pastor” to be appointed
by a Mennonite Church USA congregation, in 2014, the Mountain States
Conference approved the ministerial license
of Theda Good, a Colorado woman who identifies as a lesbian, to serve
as as pastor of nurture and fellowship at First Mennonite Church of
Denver.
As previously reported,
the development prompted a Mennonite Church in Ohio to leave the
denomination in part due to concerns over the lack of discipline against
those who engage in homosexual behavior.
“We felt that Mennonite Church USA and [our church] were going in
different directions concerning scriptural authority and holiness,” Ross
Miller, pastor of Hartville Mennonite Church in Lake, told reporters.
“We felt there needed to be church discipline, and there hasn’t
been,” he said, referencing disappointment that the Ohio Conference
failed to pass a resolution urging the denomination headquarters to
address the Mountain States’ actions, as well as a statement from an
executive board member that he felt was less than satisfactory.
According to 1 Timothy 3, leaders of the Church are to be men and are to be examples of holiness, including in their own homes.
“A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant,
sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given
to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a
brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his
children in subjection with all gravity,” it reads. “For if a man know
not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of
God?”

 ______________________________________________________
 LogoTrans
 http://jannaldredgeclanton.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Erica.jpg
Rev. Erica Lea received her bachelor of arts from Texas A&M
University with a major in psychology and a minor in women’s and gender
studies. She received her master of divinity from George W. Truett
Theological Seminary at Baylor University with a concentration in
spiritual formation.

She has continued her studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
and currently serves at the Pastoral Resident at Calvary Baptist Church
in Washington, D.C. Previously she served as the interim pastor at
Houston Mennonite Church in Houston, TX, and as a pastoral intern at
Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco, TX.

Erica is a member of the Capital Area Anabaptist Network, DC EcoWomen,
Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Association of Welcoming and
Affirming Baptists, The Alliance of Baptists, Gay Christian Network,
Renovaré Spiritual Formation Covenant Member, The Academy of Preachers,
Mennonite Women USA, and The Young Clergy Women Project.

“At First Blush,” sermon by Rev. Erica Lea at the Christian Feminism Today Gathering
 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 At the Sunday morning worship service of the Christian Feminism Today 
Gathering, Rev. Erica Lea preached a powerful, prophetic sermon titled 
“At First Blush.”
 It was great to get to know Erica at the Gathering and to hear her 
preach for the first time! I was impressed and inspired by her words of 
wisdom.
 Erica received her bachelor of arts degree from Texas A&M 
University with a major in psychology and a minor in women’s and gender 
studies and her master of divinity degree from George W. Truett 
Theological Seminary at Baylor University with a concentration in 
spiritual formation. She has continued her studies at Anabaptist 
Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She has served as pastoral resident at 
Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.D., interim pastor of Houston 
Mennonite Church in Houston, Texas, and as pastoral intern at Lake Shore
 Baptist Church in Waco.

Learn more about Erica through her blog.
 I’m delighted to share with you Erica’s sermon, delivered at the 2016 Christian Feminism Today Gathering worship service.

At First Blush
by Rev. Erica Lea
First, thank you. It really is an honor to have the opportunity to
share my voice today among so many important voices that we have heard
this weekend.
Allow me to start this morning with a confession. When I came here on
Thursday, I wasn’t exactly sure, yet, how I felt about you. I have
known you to be an encouraging and supportive collection of email
addresses and names online. I knew you were eager, particularly, to
welcome more young people. Even so, I honestly wondered if I would see
anyone who looked like me.
Then, I saw Reta, a familiar face from a previous Mennonite event. I
learned more about Deb and her heart for pastoral care. I felt one of
Marg’s famous bear hugs. I attended Alicia’s session about sensitivity
to gender and pronouns. I read Elisabeth’s imaginative poetry. I heard
Jann’s familiar yet new music. I stretched my limits and more with
Lisa’s gentle yogi encouragement. I tasted Becky’s gifts for
hospitality. I prayed with Leslie and her soulful, contemplative
spirituality. I have seen different parts of myself in all of you. I have seen the imago dei, that Divine Image, in all of you.
Our primary passage this morning comes from Wisdom of Solomon chapter 7.
Some scholars believe the intended audience of this book was Jewish
young people in Alexandria, Egypt, who were surrounded by messages that
were contrary to Jewish faith and customs. In context and in essence,
the Wisdom of Solomon was intended to be not only counter-cultural, but a
reminder to the audience of what they already knew deeply about
themselves.
When I conceptualize wisdom, this breath throughout Creation,
I visualize a chubby owl with glasses on, “hooooing” with a long trill
like the owl on Winnie the Pooh.
There are many artistic depictions of Wisdom, including some beautiful icons. Perhaps more than visually, I have experienced Wisdom in an auditory way.
When I think of home, I think of my cottage in the forest in central
Texas where I lived during seminary. Not long after I moved in, I
noticed, on occasion, an owl “hooooing” in a particular and
recognizable pattern. I named her Sophia. I only saw her a few times,
but I often heard her. I knew her voice.

In chapter 7:22–26, we see two lists. A friend once described me as
Type A-minus. I can be mellow, but when something needs organizing, I am
cheerfully on it with a chart and a color-coded system. I love it!
These lists are more than a convenient way for the author to throw in
some information. The first list, in particular, in verses 22b–24, is a
poetic device utilizing Jewish mysticism. If you count the
number of attributes of Woman Wisdom in this list, there are twenty-one.
Twenty-one is not just a good number in Black Jack. No, twenty-one is a
multiple of both seven and three. Both seven and three are mystical
symbolic numbers of completeness and perfection.

Another understanding of complete completeness is shalom.
Shalom is more than peace. I got my favorite belt buckle in Jerusalem.
You know you’re Texan when you go to Jerusalem and come home with a belt
buckle as your prized souvenir. This belt buckle made my Mennonite
heart beat wildly—a black and bronze rectangle with Peace, Shalom, and
Salaam written on it—each word flowing into each other word. Like people
flowing into one another.
In the Holy Land, official signs are written in all three
languages—Hebrew, Arabic, and English—reflecting the history and the
residents. If you are an Israeli Jew, you may be fine with only Hebrew.
If you are an Israeli or Palestinian Muslim, you may be fine with only
Arabic. If you are one of the approximately 200,000 American or British
immigrants since 1948, you may be fine with only English. To not include
all three of these languages on the signs, and on my belt buckle, would
certainly be a statement.
This list of twenty-one
attributes for Woman Wisdom—intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, clear,
steadfast, overseeing all, intelligent, and more—come together to give a
more robust and tangible description of Woman Wisdom so that we can
attempt to wrap our heads around Her.
If this list were
twenty or twenty-two, it would lose its poetic and mystical power. There
must be twenty-one attributes on the list for the full power and
weight.
As I consider all of the meaningful work and amazingly far
reach of EEWC-CFT, I see us at twenty. What are we missing so that we
can be our full selves, living into full potential, being completely
complete, a model of shalom? Who are we missing?
I know some
people are not here this year because they have died, may their memory
be a blessing. Others are not here because they are ill, may they
experience wholeness however possible. Who else are we missing? Later,
when we gather around the Table, consider who is not at the Table with
you. Where are we missing?
It is only after this full list
of twenty-one attributes that Woman Wisdom, the second list, appears,
in verses 25–26, showing all She is capable of:

25 For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure
emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains
entrance into her. 26 For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of goodness.
For those of you keeping score at home, that is: breath, emanation, reflection, mirror, and image.
She must be whole in order to fulfill her potential.
The journey toward shalom and wholeness, both on individual
and collective levels, can be difficult and long. We do not make this
journey alone. Verse 27 says she is one and can do all things. When we
are one, we can do all things together.

If earlier, when we considered the attributes of Woman Wisdom, those
verses echoed Proverbs 31 to you, then you are good company. I
understand Proverbs 31 to be an ode to the women, the community of
women, rather than one individual woman. Proverbs 31 is not a
checklist. It is a wake-up call that wisdom is daily and cannot be done
alone.
Proverbs 31 is, as Kathleen O’Connor writes, “an invitation to search
for wisdom as if for a precious stone, to live committed to the path of
wisdom with the utter loyalty and allegiance of the person setting out
in life with a beloved partner.” We are partners with Woman Wisdom and
we are partners with one another.
Though the journey to shalom and living fully into all we can be is
difficult and long, for some of us more than others, there is
sustenance.
Have you ever played the road trip game? You know, I’m going on a
road trip and I’m bringing ____ and ____. For example, I am Erica Lea
and I’m going on a road trip and I’m bringing eggs and lettuce. I may
go. If Marg were to play, she might say I am Marg Herder and I’m going
on a road trip and I’m bringing juice and ham. She may not go. But if
she said, my name is Marg Herder and I’m going on a road trip and I’m
bringing mustard and ham, she may go. If you don’t get it, ask whoever
you rode with or whoever you will share a van with to the airport. Ya’ll
will have a good time.
God is with us. Sophia is with
us. Woman Wisdom is with us. We are with each other. We can continue to
move forward together on this journey of shalom as we lean on God and
lean on one another.

Verse 29 says, “She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every
constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be
superior.”
Did ya’ll see the strawberry moon last week? Full moon and summer
solstice came together to show a pinkish moon. It was beautiful. If you
garden, as so many of you have shared that you do, you know the power of
sunlight and photosynthesis to feed plants. Light is energy. Light is
food for growth. Woman Wisdom is superior even to light. As the Inner
Light grows in you, your connection to that power will grow. The light,
this provision, is grace.
Finally, the text says that wisdom will prevail over evil. I
don’t know about you but it is often difficult for me to believe that
wisdom will prevail against internalized homophobia, transphobia,
xenophobia, and racism. It is often difficult to see wisdom prevailing
over injustice and social evils.

We will be most effective
bringing forward justice in our time when we are whole, when we are
whole together, and when we trust in the Light that Woman Wisdom brings
.
Kenneth Carter Jr. writes that “wisdom may be defined as a life well
lived, a life that matters . . . wisdom is a way of life that includes
justice, righteousness, humility, compassion, and fairness.”
Today is the one-year anniversary for the Supreme Court
ruling in support of marriage equality. Yay! However, in the past year,
there has been an uptick in hate crimes, including violence, especially
against trans women of color. There has been conservative panic in many
forms, especially so-called religious liberty bills. So many of us felt
like we were truly moving forward, but these anxiety-motivated and
anxiety-producing roadblocks stop us. We must continue to move forward.
Our voice for justice and equality will continue to be heard most
effectively as one unified voice.
It may appear that we are
sliding backward from the progress won by decades of work. All progress
meets resistance. We will continue to move forward. Together. Wisdom will prevail over evil.

Rev. Erica Lea & Rev. Leslie Harrison, worship leaders at the Christian Feminism Today Gathering

Rev. Erica Lea & Rev. Leslie Harrison, worship leaders at the Christian Feminism Today Gathering

It is tempting to be discouraged sometimes. It is tempting to look
around now and ask, “Where are the younger generations?” We are here. It
is tempting to say, “I don’t feel like I have Inner Light.” The Inner
Light has you. It is tempting to think, “I’m not enough.” Enough of an
expert or enough outspoken or enough young or enough old or enough . . .
whatever. We are enough with Woman Wisdom. We are enough. Together.
Remember, Wisdom is a spotless mirror and you and I seem only dimly
into a mirror. Let us continue to look into the mirror together. Amen.
Rev. Erica Lea’s sermon, “At First Blush,” originally published in Christian Feminism Today. Reposted with permission.
_____________________________________________________

 “THE RAINBOW CHRIST PRAYER”
AUTHORED BY “QUEER” PASTORS

BOOKLET HIGHLIGHT: A JESUIT POPE? UNDERSTANDING THE JESUIT AGENDA & THE EVANGELICAL/PROTESTANT CHURCH

BOOKLET HIGHLIGHT: A JESUIT POPE? UNDERSTANDING THE JESUIT AGENDA & 
THE EVANGELICAL/PROTESTANT CHURCH
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

An Understand the Times/Lighthouse Trails Special Report
The Jesuit Agenda(Booklet Form)

According to Bible prophecy, a one-world
religion that will offer the promise of peace throughout the world is
going to commence prior to Christ’s return. To most, this global body
will seem like a wonderful thing and very possibly will be a
pseudo-Christianity (coming in the name of “Christ”); however, contrary
to how the masses will view it, it will actually help establish and set
up the antichrist and his one- world government.

In order for this to happen, all religions must
come together in an ecumenical plan. Today, as part of this Satanic
scheme, the evangelical/Protestant church is being drawn seductively
into the Roman Catholic church, largely through what we call “The Jesuit
Agenda.” Incredibly, while the evidence is obvious to some, the
majority of proclaiming Christians are not at all aware it is happening.

So, what should we expect if we are in the time
when such a system unfolds? First, many who once were Protestant and
evangelical will become ecumenical and eventually assimilate with the
Roman Catholic church. Second, all religions will unite in solidarity of
purpose. Understanding the Jesuit Agenda is essential if we are to
understand how this worldwide deception will come about.

 Who are the Jesuits?

Since its foundation, the Catholic papacy has
been zealous and often brutal in its endeavor to establish the kingdom
of the Pope (of whom it is believed within the Catholic church is headed
by Jesus Christ). In fact, the Pope has been referred to as the “Vicar
of Christ.” This determination was witnessed during the Inquisition
where countless thousands, if not millions, died cruelly for resisting
Rome. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs describes many of these atrocities.

While many believers in Christ during the
Reformation period attempted to spread the truth that God’s Word was
truly God’s Word and could not be squandered and kept hostage by the
papacy and the Catholic Church, it was not long before the Counter
Reformation was founded to bring the “Separated Brethren” back to the
“Mother of All Churches.”

This Counter Reformation was largely headed by
Ignatius Loyola, the man who founded the Jesuit Order in the mid 1500s
and launched an all-out attack against those who dared stand against the
papacy and Rome. This excerpt from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs gives us an idea of the nature and determination of this Counter Reformation:

The emperor Ferdinand, whose hatred of the
Bohemian Protestants was without bounds, not thinking he had
sufficiently oppressed them, instituted a high court to prosecute the
reformers upon the plan of the Inquisition, with this difference, that
the court was to travel from place to place and always to be attended by
a body of troops. This court was conducted chiefly by Jesuits and from
their decision there was no appeal, by which it may be easily
conjectured that it was a dreadful tribunal indeed.

This bloody court, attended by a body of
troops, made the tour of Bohemia. They seldom examined or saw a
prisoner, for the soldiers were permitted to murder the Protestants as
they pleased and then to make a report of the matter to them afterward.1

You see, the Jesuits were commissioned by the Pope to do whatever it took to end the Protestant Reformation. The 1540 Constitution of the Jesuits states:

[L]et whoever desires to fight under the sacred banner of the Cross, and to serve only God
and the Roman pontiff, His vicar on earth, after a solemn vow of
perpetual chastity,- let him keep in mind that he is part of a society,
instituted for the purpose of perfecting souls in life and in Christian doctrine,
for the propagation of the faith . . . Let all members know, and let it
be not only at the beginning of their profession, but let them think
over it daily as long as they live, that the society as a whole, and
each of them, owes obedience to our most holy lord, the pope, and the other Roman pontiffs, his successors, and to fight with faithful obedience for God. (Emphasis added.)

While most Christians think that the Counter
Reformation is a thing of the past because we are not seeing
Inquisitions today, this movement continues until today and with renewed
effort through various avenues of the evangelical/Protestant church. In
a way, it is more insidious than the Inquisitions, because now it has
infiltrated Christianity and is being disguised as the “new”
Christianity. (Rick Warren promotes it as the “new” or second reformation.)
But disguised or not, it is the Jesuit Agenda, and it is bringing about
ecumenism and a one-world religion. And at the same time, it is
attempting to destroy the message that so many died for –  the message
that Jesus Christ is not found in a wafer and a cup of juice to be
re-crucified day after day but has died once and for all for the sins of
man and offers a salvation that is an entirely free gift, unearned to
those who believe on Him (Hebrews 7:27; 10:11-14).

 Who Was Ignatius Loyola?

After a serious injury in the military and
during a lengthy rehabilitation, Ignatius Loyola (b. 1491, d. 1556)
turned his focus from “military enthusiasm to ghostly fanaticism.”2
 Ignatius assumed the name and office of Knight of the Virgin Mary,
seeing himself as Mary’s favorite. Ignatius wanted to start a new order,
The Society of Jesus (or the Jesuits) and presented the idea to the
Pope. He told the Pope that the idea had been inspired by heavenly
revelations. At first, the Pope hesitated, but when Ignatius added a
fourth vow (in addition to the regular poverty, chastity, and
obedience), “absolute subservience to the pope,” promising to do
whatever the Pope wanted and go wherever he wanted, the Pope agreed and
sent the new order out to “invade the world.” While other monks of other
orders sought to separate themselves from the world, the Jesuits went
out into the world and obeyed whatever command the Pope gave. Often this
was to win the world with the sword. No violent act was withheld if the
order came from their top “general.”3

In time, the Jesuits entered the education
system, especially that of the Protestants. The Jesuit maxim was: “Give
us the education of the children of this day – and the next generation
will be ours.”4 The Reverend W. C. Brownlee, D.D. stated: “They
pretended to be converted and to enter into Protestant churches.” One
Jesuit even boasted that the Jesuits were successfully able to imitate
the Puritan preachers. They used trickery and deception to become “all
things to all men.” Within 48 years, there were eleven thousand Jesuits
around the world, quite a large number for back then. 5

By 1773, the order was abolished because of
their horrible reputation of bloodiness, deception, and immorality.
However, they were reinstated fully in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. Even by
this time, the influence and infiltration into the United States by the
Jesuits was significant.

In 1857, the Reverend W.C. Brownlee, D.D. compiled a book of a translated document called Secret Instructions of the Jesuits (found on the Boston College Libraries website, for one). While Catholic sources say that the Secret Instructions of the Jesuits
is an untrue document, there is enough evidence to indicate that it is
true indeed. Naturally, it is so indicting against the papacy and the
Jesuit Order that one can understand from a human point of view why
Catholic sources would say the document isn’t true. But the facts are
that the Jesuit Order was performing brutal cruel acts to bring the
world to “Christ” and the Mother Church and that they were infiltrating
every area of society to do so. This cannot be denied. Brownlee’s book
would be a worthwhile read for those who wish to understand more of the
history of the Jesuits. 

The Jesuit Oath

It is said that the ancient Jesuits took the
Jesuit Oath. This has been refuted by Catholic sources as a true oath
taken by Jesuits of the past; nevertheless, there is evidence enough
that the oath did exist to include excerpts of it in this report. We
have taken these excerpts from a book titled Political and Economic Handbook by Thomas Edward Watson published in 1916, and found in the Harvard College library:

I do declare from my heart, without mental
reservation, that the Pope is Christ’s Vicar General and . . .  He hath
power to depose Heretical Kings, Princes, States  . . .  that they may
safely be destroyed. Therefore, to the utmost of my power I will defend
this doctrine. . . . I do further declare the doctrine of the Church of
England, of the Calvanists [sic], the Huguenots, and other Protestants to be damnable and those to be damned who will not forsake the same.

I do further declare that I will help,
assist, and advise all or any of His Holiness agents in any place
wherever I shall be; and to do my utmost to extirpate [exterminate] the
heretical Protestant doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended power.
(p. 437)

In another version of the Jesuit Oath, the
Jesuit is asked to promise that he will make “relentless war” against
“all heretics, Protestants” and to “hang, burn, waste, boil, flay,
strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics” (found in U.S. House
Congressional Record, 1913, p. 3216).

The Jesuit Agenda Today

While we are not saying that Jesuits today are
murdering Protestants if they don’t convert to Catholicism, we are
saying that the determination and efforts to convert Protestants back to
the Mother Church still exist. Basically, while the methods may have
changed, the plan and objectives have not. The following quote from an
article titled “Essay on Popery” by Rev. Ingram Cobbin M.A. (taken from one edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) is insightful:

The Jesuits, though at times expelled or
pretendedly so from Rome, have been its awful emissaries to augment its
power.  The intrigues and deceptions of these men would fill volumes,
and the conveniency of their creed to deny or affirm anything, or assume
any profession as it may serve their purpose, is too well known to need
recapitulating here.  These men have at times assumed so much that
every papal state has alternately ejected them; and large numbers are
now in this country—doubtless many under false colours —waiting the most
favourable opportunities to corrupt the rising generation, and, as much
as possible, restore the dark days of former ages.  The Jesuits are
unchangeable.

The Jesuits were driven in the past to bring
back the lost brethren, and they are driven today with the same vision.
Today, that vision is part of the pope’s Eucharistic Evangelization,
drawing people to the Eucharistic Christ. The Eucharistic Evangelization
is discussed at length in Another Jesus: The Evangelization of the Eucharistic Christ and in several articles on the Understand the Times website.

Jesuit (Mystical) Spirituality and the Protestant/Evangelical Church

So if the methods of converting lost or
prodigal souls back to Rome have changed, what is the method to
accomplish these goals today? It is largely through what is called
Jesuit Spirituality. A 2002 book titled Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way
reveals how the Jesuit order has had and continues to have a “great
influence” in people around the world. It attributes this “vitality” to
“its spirituality” which has also “evoked fierce loyalty and fierce
opposition.”6

What is the spirituality of the Jesuits that
was so controversial? By their very roots, Jesuits are proponents of
mystical prayer practices. The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola,
created “spiritual exercises” that incorporated mysticism, including lectio divina. Today, millions of people worldwide practice the “Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola.”

One Jesuit priest who resonates with the mystical spiritual outlook is Anthony De Mello (d. 1987), author of Sadhana: A Way to God. De Mello is often quoted today by contemplative and emerging authors and embraced the mysticism of Hinduism. He stated:

To silence the mind is an extremely difficult
task. How hard it is to keep the mind from thinking, thinking,
thinking, forever thinking, forever producing thoughts in a never ending
stream. Our Hindu masters in India have a saying: one thorn is removed
by another. By this they mean that you will be wise to use one thought
to rid yourself of all the other thoughts that crowd into your mind. One
thought, one image, one phrase or sentence or word that your mind can
be made to fasten on. – Anthony de Mello, Sadhana: A Way to God (St. Louis, the Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1978), p. 28 (cited from A Time of Departing, by Ray Yungen, p. 75).

Ray Yungen explains that Sadhana “is very open in its acknowledgment of Eastern mysticism as an enrichment to Christian spirituality.”

It doesn’t take a long search to find De Mello
within the evangelical/Protestant camp. In fact, Richard Foster, one of
the pioneers of the evangelical spiritual formation (contemplative)
movement wrote the introduction to one of De Mello’s books, The Sacrament of the Present Moment. In A Glimpse of Jesus, popular contemplative author Brennan Manning quotes De Mello. Amazon shows that De Mello’s book, The Sacrament of the Present Moment is
cited in 82 books, some of which are written by some of
evangelicalism’s most popular authors: John Ortberg, Richard Foster, Jan
Johnson, Philip Yancey, and Calvin Miller – incidentally all these are
contemplative advocates.

Another example of Jesuit influence in the evangelical/Protestant church is the Be Still
DVD, where Richard Foster quotes 18th century Jesuit priest, Jean
Nicholas Grou as saying: “O Divine Master, teach me this mute language
which says so much.” This “mute language” Grou speaks of is the mystical
“silence” practiced by contemplatives and mystics throughout all
religions.

One of the key figures in the “new” progressive Christianity today is Leonard Sweet. Sweet has partnered on a number of occasions with Rick Warren and speaks at evangelical events frequently. In Sweet’s book, Quantum Spirituality, he states:

Mysticism, once cast to the sidelines of the
Christian tradition, is now situated in postmodernist culture near the
center. . . . In the words of one of the greatest theologians of the
twentieth century, Jesuit philosopher of religion/dogmatist Karl Rahner,
“The Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic, one who has experienced
something, or he will be nothing.” [Mysticism] is metaphysics arrived at
through mindbody experiences. (p. 76)

How fitting that Sweet would quote a Jesuit priest’s prediction about the “Christian” of the future.

Tony Campolo, another popular figure in the evangelical church, reveals something quite interesting in his book, Letters to a Young Evangelical. In the book, he explains the role mysticism had in him becoming a Christian. He explains:

I learned about this way of having a born-again experience from reading Catholic mystics, especially The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. (p. 30, see “Coming to Christ Through Mysticism,” Oakland )

For skeptics who may need further evidence that
Jesuit Spirituality has come into the evangelical/Protestant church,
consider this. In 2006, Baker Books, one of evangelicalism’s top book
publishers, released a book titled Sacred Listening: Discovering the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola written by James Wakefield. A publisher description of the book states:

Central to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits),
the Spiritual Exercises is a manual used to direct a month-long
spiritual retreat. Now adapting these time-honored Exercises
specifically for Protestant Christians, James L. Wakefield encourages
readers to integrate their secular goals with their religious beliefs
and helps them reflect on the life of Jesus as a model for their own
discipleship.7

Wakefield’s book, devoted to the Jesuits and
Ignatian Exercises, should be proof enough that the Jesuit Agenda has
entered the Christian church and that mysticism is the tool by which the
Jesuit Agenda is largely being brought into the lives of countless
evangelicals and Protestants. Is it any wonder Wakefield’s book found
praise within the Jesuit community? Armand M. Nigro, professor emeritus
at the Jesuit school, Gonzaga University, said:

As a Jesuit for 62 years, I have been formed
by the Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, our principal founder. I
rejoice, then, at the long-awaited publication of Sacred Listening. It will be for its readers, I hope, a classic manual for spiritual growth in genuine mystical prayer. (on back cover of book)

Incidentally, Eugene Peterson, author of The Message wrote an endorsement of Wakefield’s book on the front cover.

These are just a few of a great many examples
where the “Jesuit Spirituality” has come into the Protestant church;
thus this new modern (post-modern) mystical method to accomplish the
goals of the papacy is working.

If Protestants and evangelicals can be convinced to practice mysticism (i.e., contemplative), this conditions them
to begin embracing Rome and even all religions. It’s important to
understand that mysticism is the bridge that unites all the religions of
the world. In order to unite them, there would need to be a uniting,
common denominator, so to speak. That common uniting medium is
mysticism. Thomas Merton recognized this. In a conversation he was
having with a Sufi master, the topic of Christian atonement arose. The
Sufi master said this was an area they could never agree on, to which
Merton replied:

Personally, in matters where dogmatic beliefs
differ, I think that controversy [atonement] is of little value because
it takes us away from the spiritual realities into the realm
of words and ideas . . . in words there are apt to be infinite
complexities and subtleties which are beyond resolution. . . . But much
more important is the sharing of the experience of divine light, . . . It is here that the area of fruitful dialogue exists between Christianity and Islam.8 (Emphasis added.)

Tilden Edwards, co-founder of the Shalem Institute (where Ruth Haley Barton
was educated), would agree with Merton. He said, “This mystical stream
[contemplative prayer] is the Western bridge to Far Eastern
spirituality” (Spiritual Friend, p. 18). And in a New Age book titled, As Above, So Below,
the author states (quoting Aldous Huxley) that “the metaphysical
[mystical] that recognizes a divine reality” is the “highest common
factor” that “links the world’s religious traditions.” And even
evangelical-turned-emerging author Tony Campolo recognizes this
commonality in mysticism when he states: “Beyond these models of
reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common
ground between Christianity and Islam” (pp 149-150).

Incidentally, when we say all the religions of
the world uniting, we include the New Age movement (perhaps one of the
largest “religions” in the world today). New Agers believe that in order
to enter into an age of enlightenment (or Age of Aquarius), the world
needs to become “vibrationally sympathetic,” meaning that a sufficient
mass (critical mass) of people will need to engage in mystical prayer.9

The Counter Reformation Continues

Jesuit influence in the world today is
everywhere: in the business world, in education, in government, and yes,
in the evangelical/Protestant church.  According to Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way,
there are over one million people living in the United States alone who
have graduated from Jesuit high schools, colleges, and universities
(Introduction, p. 1).

While there have often been tensions between
the Pope and the Jesuit Order over various issues, the current Superior
General of the Jesuit Order, Adolfo Nicolas Pachon, reassured the Jesuit
commitment to Rome when he stated:

The Society of Jesus was born within the
Church, we live in the Church, we were approved by the Church and we
serve the Church. This is our vocation…[Unity with the pope] is the
symbol of our union with Christ. It also is the guarantee that our
mission will not be a ‘small mission,’ a project just of the Jesuits,
but that our mission is the mission of the Church.”10

Where Else in Evangelicalism is the Jesuit Evangelism Showing Up?

Earlier this year, Understand the Times released an article titled Jerry Boykin and the Calvary Chapel Connection.
It was a difficult article for many to read. People do not want to
think that Christian leaders and pastors they have trusted for years
would be so foolish as to associate with and promote someone who is part
of a group that wants to bring the “lost brethren” back to the Mother
Church. But the fact is that a high officer in the Vatican’s Jesuitical, “Knights of Malta” was a featured speaker at a Calvary Chapel sponsored Preach the Word prophecy conference.

Another example, and I believe an important
one, has to do with one of the most well-known and influential
evangelical organizations in America. Robert Siciro is a Protestant
turned Catholic Paulist priest, and he is one of the featured speakers
in the very popular Truth Project by Focus on the Family.
While the Paulist Order is not a Jesuit Order, it has basically the
same objective as the Jesuit order with regard to winning souls for the
Catholic church. According to one Catholic source , the Paulist order is “A community of priests for giving missions and doing other Apostolic works, especially for making converts to the Catholic faith.” Robert Siciro is  President of the Acton Institute,
an ecumenical think tank where, incidentally, there are scores of
articles  by or about those in the Catholic faith, including a number of
Jesuits. Now, through the Truth Project, thousands and thousands of
evangelical/Protestant Christians have been introduced, by way of proxy,
to the Eucharistic Evangelization.

The Fatima Plan

For those who are not convinced that we are
headed toward a one-world religion for “peace,”  take a trip some time
to Fatima, Portugal where annual pilgrimages bring people from the
religions of the world  to pray to “the queen of heaven,” also called
“our lady of Peace.”

Pope John Paul II was dedicated to Mary and
especially “Our Lady of Fatima.” He believed this entity saved him from
an assassin’s bullet on May 13, 1981, on the anniversary of the
so-called apparition’s appearance (to have first occurred in 1917).

People from all around the world have been
coming to Fatima to pray to “Our Lady.” At a gathering for “world peace”
in Fatima, Jesuit priest Jacques Dupuis  stated:

The religion of the future will be a general
converging of religions in a universal Christ that will satisfy all. The
other religious traditions in the world are part of God’s plan for
humanity and the Holy Spirit is operating and present in Buddhist, Hindu
and other sacred writings of Christian and non-Christian faiths as
well. The universality of God’s kingdom permits this, and this is
nothing more than a diversified form of sharing in the same mystery of
salvation.11

Fatima is just another avenue through which the Jesuit Agenda is being accomplished.

In Summary

Perhaps the best way to understand the Jesuit
Agenda that undermines biblical Christianity is to recognize the move
toward a so-called “social gospel” that unites the religions of the
world for the cause of peace. Like mysticism, this social gospel is a
vehicle through which all religions will be united. Who would have
believed this could have happened to the Protestant evangelical church?
But we have already been warned in Scripture that Satan’s ministers are
“transformed as the ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:15).

Rick Warren has been one of the many pied
pipers of this move to unite through “good works.” Called “America’s
pastor,” Warren has become the evangelical/Protestant spokesperson for a
one-world religion. His Purpose Driven model has become the battle cry
for let just all get along and do good. We can work together as one for one common purpose – peace in the world.

Willow Creek has helped to escalate this global
religious body through their Global Leadership Summits, where they are
“bringing people together from all nationalities to complete our shared
Kingdom assignment in the Church and beyond”12 (emphasis added). Warren and Hybel’s  global agenda is moving full force throughout the earth today.

Rick Warren and Bill Hybels – protégés of Peter
Drucker, by the way – have advanced the Jesuit Agenda by leaps and
bounds. Many of these “new” Christianity, new reformation leaders have
ignored the prophetic warnings of Jesus Christ’s soon return based on
the signs we see from Bible prophecy. Instead, they promote the
establishment of the kingdom of God with all the world’s religions.

The emerging church movement, which has been
widely propagated by Warren, Hybels, and a host of other Christian
figures, has been used by Satan to quickly bring about this worldwide
deception by introducing mystical experiences and the social gospel to
an entire generation of young people. Sensual experiences that tickle
the flesh of the postmodern generation are often the same ones that Rome
has used in the past to convince the faithful that they have
encountered the God of the Bible. History reveals that history is
repeating, and the same tools of delusion are being used over and over.

Those who shine the light on the Jesuit Agenda
are considered to be conspiratorial crackpots. The prophets of the past
when they exposed the Babylonian worship by the leaders of Israel were
also deemed to be crazy, as have been Bible-believing Christians since
Christianity began. One of those was John Huss  (1372-1415). John Foxe
describes what happened:

[Huss] compiled a treatise in which he
maintained that reading the books of Protestants could not be absolutely
forbidden. He wrote in defense of Wickliffe’s book on the Trinity; and
boldly declared against the vices of the pope, the cardinals, and clergy
of those corrupt times. He wrote also many other books, all of which
were penned with a strength of argument that greatly facilitated the
spreading of his doctrines. . . . 13

Eventually Huss was arrested, and when he was
brought before the council (of the papacy), he was mocked and called “A
ringleader of heretics,” to which he replied:

My Lord Jesus Christ, for my sake, did wear a
crown of thorns; why should not I then, for His sake, wear this light
crown, be it ever so shameful? Truly I will do it and willingly.14

At 43 years of age, John Huss was burned at the
stake, singing hymns during the brutal execution. Why was he called a
“ringleader of heretics”? For standing up for biblical truth against the
Pope and Rome.

Discerning Christians should be asking many
questions. But one question that stands out foremost is: why are so few
saying anything about the Jesuit Agenda? Do they see it but are afraid
to speak? Or do they see it and are part of it?

Speaking of questions, Jesus asked one: “[W]hen
the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).
Will He find it in the pastors and theological professors? Will He find
it in your own church? Or will He only find those who have remained
silent?

Just as God raised up others to carry the torch
of truth after Huss was eliminated from this earth, God will and is
raising up others today who are willing to risk all to stand for the
truth and speak against the lies.

To believers who are standing fast, look up, for “your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).

Let no man deceive you with vain words: for
because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were
sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children
of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and
righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And
have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
reprove them. . . .  See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools,
but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be
ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
(Ephesians 5:6-11, 15-17)

Notes:

  1. John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Eureka, MT: Lighthouse Trails Publishing edition), p. 169.
  2. Rev. W.C. Brownlee, D.D., Secret Instructions of the Jesuits, http://www.archive.org/details/secretinstructio00brow at Boston College  Libraries archives
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. https://lists.ateneo.edu/pipermail/blueboard/2004-May/003422.html
  7. From the Publisher’s description at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Listening-Discovering-Spiritual-Exercises/dp/080106614X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309703869&sr=8-1#_
  8. Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Editors, Merton and Sufism  (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999), p. 109, as cited in A Time of Departing, p. 60.)
  9. Ken Carey, The Starseed Transmissions (A Uni-Sun Book, 1985 4th printing), p. 33.
  10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Nicol%C3%A1s and see http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0801316.htm
  11. Jesuit theologian Father Jacques Dupuis, at the 2003 interfaith congress “The Future of God; http://www.understandthetimes.org/commentary/c19.shtml
  12. http://www.growingleadership.com/summit/speaker_brenda_salter_mcneil.asp
  13. John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Eureka, MT, Lighthouse Trails Publishing edition), pp.160-164.
  14. Ibid.

For more information:

Understand the Times, International

Lighthouse Trails Research Project

 

 

LETTER FROM DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY TO LIGHTHOUSE TRAILS RESEARCH READER REVEALS “REQUIRED” SPIRITUAL FORMATION COURSES

LETTER FROM DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY TO LIGHTHOUSE TRAILS RESEARCH READER REVEALS “REQUIRED” SPIRITUAL FORMATION COURSES
 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

A
Lighthouse Trails reader sent Lighthouse Trails a copy of a letter he
recently received from Dallas Theological Seminary. DTS has consistently
said the school does not promote the” bad” Spiritual Formation, but we
have reported on a number of occasions that the Spiritual Formation
taught and promoted at DTS IS contemplative spirituality (which is bad).
As we have maintained since the inception of Lighthouse Trails – there
is no “good” Spiritual Formation as it always leads to the mystics and
puts practitioners in harm’s way. DTS is no exception. Our reader (who
is a DTS alumni) told us he has been receiving update letters from DTS
for years, and this is the first time he has seen them actually mention
Spiritual Formation in an alumni letter. You can read an enlarged
version of the letter by clicking on the letter below.

dtsOne
thing to note about this letter is the following statement: “Most
students are required to be part of a spiritual formation small group of
six to eight students who meet weekly for two years.” This lines up
with the special report Lighthouse Trails released in 2013 titled “An Epidemic of Apostasy – How Christian Seminaries Must Incorporate “Spiritual Formation” to Become Accredited,”  which shows how many, if not most, Christian colleges, seminaries, and universities must
include Spiritual Formation into their students’ lives if the schools
want to receive accreditation from “distinguished” accrediting
organizations. Dallas Theological Seminary was mentioned in that report:

What do Abilene Christian University,
Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Bethel Seminary, Biola Seminary,
Briercrest College and Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary,
Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Moody
Theological Seminary & Graduate School, Multnomah Biblical Seminary,
Regent College, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and around
240 other seminaries and colleges throughout North America all have in
common? They are all accredited or in the process of being accredited
through the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).

Letter from Dallas Theological Seminary Promoting Spiritual FormationAs you can see here, https://www.ats.edu/member-schools/member-school-list#D,
DTS is included on ATS’s member school list. On the ATS website,the
term “spiritual formation” shows up over 540 times on its search engine (https://www.ats.edu/search/google/%22spiritual%20formation%22). The term “Christian formation” (another term for Spiritual Formation) shows up over 440 times.

If you would like to learn more about how accreditation organizations are requiring Spiritual Formation, please read our report. 

NEW BOOK COMING: RAY YUNGEN’S “SIMPLE ANSWERS-UNDERSTANDING THE CATHOLIC FAITH”; AN EVANGELICAL PRIMER

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NEW BOOK COMING: RAY YUNGEN’S “SIMPLE ANSWERS-UNDERSTANDING THE CATHOLIC FAITH”; AN EVANGELICAL PRIMER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 As many of you know, Lighthouse Trails beloved author and 
co-laborer in Christ, Ray Yungen, passed away on October 16th 2016 at 
the age of 64 due to complications from a cancer treatment. Ray had just
 finished the rough draft of his book Simple Answers—Understanding the Catholic Faith: 
An Evangelical Primer a few months before he went to be with the Lord. After Ray’s 
passing, we had hoped to finish up the editing of his book by the end of 2016 but 
were unable to complete the project. We are happy to announce that we 
have finally finished the editing and end notes of the book and went to 
press on September 18th. The official release date for the book will be 
October 16th 2017 to commemorate the day Ray passed from this world and 
into the arms of the Lord.  Below is a sneak preview of the book. You 
may pre-order a copy now
 or wait until the book is released in October. Either way, we hope you 
will get a copy of this book as we believe it is going to be an 
important book that has the potential to open the eyes of many 
evangelicals and other Protestants who are on the road to Rome and may 
not even realize it. We also believe this book is written in such a way,
 with Ray’s conversational and gracious manner, that many Catholics will
 be willing to read the book as well.
              

During the preparation of this book, while Ray was
still with us, he told the editors at Lighthouse Trails that he had
wanted to write this book for many years and that he felt it was one of
his most important works. Interestingly, he also told us he felt somehow
that it was to be his final written work.

From Simple Answers by Ray Yungen:

BACK COVER:

The evangelical church is at a crucial point in its
history. There are many voices crying out for a dramatic change in the
way evangelicals have traditionally viewed Catholicism; these voices are
taking the church in a radically different direction, one that fits in
with Bible prophecy.

In 1991, an ex-Catholic pointed out that many Catholics
had been leaving the Catholic Church over the previous forty years. The
reason for this: Catholics were receiving simple answers from
evangelicals regarding salvation.

Today, the need for simple answers has reemerged as we
are witnessing a reversal where evangelicals are looking to the Catholic
Church for guidance on Christian living and spirituality. Much of this
is because the precepts of the Gospel are either minimized or forgotten.

It is not just a fluke or an aberration that the
evangelical churches and the Catholic Church are coming into alignment
with each other. The Catholic Church is taking a softer view of the
evangelical church, and the evangelical church is starting to downplay
the traditional and significant differences that have kept it at bay
with the Roman Catholic Church.

Simple Answers is a presentation of the facts regarding
salvation according to the Gospel in contrast to the teachings of the
Catholic Church.

The Introduction:

In 1991, an article written by ex-Catholic Mark Christensen appeared in the Jesuit publication, America,
that would be seen as highly unusual for a Catholic magazine. The
article was about the consternation of Catholic bishops in the United
States on the massive flood of people over the prior forty years leaving
the Catholic Church and embracing the evangelical view. They attributed
this to the simple answers that the evangelicals had to offer regarding
salvation.1

The author was commenting on a meeting that took
place by Catholic bishops on how to halt the flow of Catholics into the
evangelical churches. What made this article so remarkable was the
candid way in which the writer explained why he had left the Catholic
Church. The reasons he expressed were basically the traditional
Protestant objections to the Roman Catholic faith—not so much in
specific doctrinal details but in a general sense. Paraphrasing what he
said, he spoke of growing up in a Catholic culture. Throughout his life,
being a Catholic was central to his personal identity, and the Church
was very much a part of his life. Even after leaving, he maintained a
personal resonance with friends and family members still in the Catholic
Church.

Despite his feelings toward certain individuals, he
explained that he didn’t want to slander the Catholic Church because he
had tremendous respect for some of the people in it. But, he said, “what
I hear coming from the mouths of ex-Catholics as their number-one
reason for leaving the Catholic Church is that they never heard the
Gospel. He explained it this way:

“Dearly loved family and friends, that is why I left
and why I think most leave the Catholic Church for Evangelicalism. . . .
We left because we met Jesus Christ, and He changed our lives. And He
changed our lives in a way we never knew in the Catholic Church. . . .
Millions of other former Catholics beside myself couldn’t hear this
Gospel within the Catholic Church.”2

At the end of the article, he urged the bishops to
examine the evidence regarding the charges he made and ask the question
why all these once devoted members had to “go elsewhere to find their
spiritual food.”

As I said, it was astounding to read this article in a
Catholic magazine. There was no Church response trying to refute him.
There was no defense. In essence, it was just a plain indictment as to
what the Catholic Church does teach regarding salvation. Perhaps because
the magazine is a Jesuit publication and the Jesuits are known for
being the intellectuals of the Catholic Church, the publishers thought
it was intellectually healthy to air opposition. Or maybe they were so
sure of themselves that the Catholic Church is the “one true church”
that nothing anyone says could dissuade them from this confidence.
Perhaps they thought the article could serve as some food for remedial
thought in bringing the flock back into the fold. But regardless, the
controversy that was brought out is that the evangelicals were luring
Catholics away with simple answers to salvation.

In this book, Simple Answers, I will attempt
to bring out the spiritual dynamics of these two different systems and
how they stack up with each other from a biblical point of view. Of
course, there are many books written by Catholic apologists that attempt
to show that the Catholic Church is rooted firmly in Scripture. I will
use some of these books in the controversy we are going to examine.

The evangelical church is at a crucial point in its
history, and many in that camp are at a present-day crossroad that is
drawing them to the practices (and ultimately membership) of the
Catholic Church. There are many voices crying out for a dramatic change
in the way evangelicals have traditionally viewed Catholicism; these
voices are taking the church in a radically different direction. But
when we discover the simple answers to the questions being asked about
salvation and the Christian walk,  it becomes clear that this paradigm
shift in the evangelical church is fitting in with Bible prophecy.

Endnotes:

1. Mark Christensen, “Coming to Grips with Losses—The Migration of Catholics into Conservative Protestantism” (America: The Jesuit Review, January 26, 1991), pp. 58-59.
2. Ibid.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

Table of Contents

Introduction
1/A New Openness
2/“The Work of Our Redemption”
3/Mortal Sin vs. Assurance of Salvation
4/Purgatory
5/Our Lady
6/The Papacy
7/Summing Up
8/Learning From Rome
9/Conclusion
Appendix 1: The New Evangelization from Rome or Finding the True Jesus Christ (Roger Oakland)
Appendix 2: My Journey Out of Catholicism (David Dombrowski)
Endnotes
Index

BOOK INFORMATION:
160 pages
ISBN: 978-1-942423-11-9
Retail Price: $12.95 | Quantity discounts available
ORDER YOUR COPY

ROB BELL’S NEW GOD: ONE OF HIS OWN MAKING~C.S. LEWIS HERESIES REVIVED BY BELL

 http://images.betterworldbooks.com/006/Love-Wins-Bell-Rob-9780062049643.jpghttp://static.oprah.com/2016/05/201605-ownshow-rob-bell-3-949x534.jpg
ROB BELL’S NEW GOD
BY DAVID CLOUD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 
Enlarged September 21, 2017 (first published July 7, 2011)
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org
Rob Bell’s book Love Wins
stirred up something of a hornet’s nest of controversy among
“evangelicals” when it was published in 2011, which we found puzzling.
The man had been denying eternal hell and teaching a universalistic
faith for a long time.

In
a 2005 interview with Beliefnet, Bell said “the church must stop
thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or
not, believer or nonbeliever.”

In his influential book Velvet Elvis,
which is popular with a great many Southern Baptists, he described a
wedding that he conducted for two pagan unbelievers who told him that
“they didn’t want any Jesus or God or Bible or religion to be talked
about” but thaey did want him to “make it really spiritual” (p. 76).
Bell agreed with this ridiculous request and said that his pagan friends
“are resonating with Jesus, whether they acknowledge it or not” (p.
92).
Love Wins
is just more of the same. Not only does he preach near-universalism, he
preaches a false god, a false christ, a false gospel, a false heaven, a
false hell, you name it. He is a master of taking Scripture out of
context and shoehorning his heresies into a text.

Though Bell
has denied that he believes in universalism, he certainly makes a case
for it in this book, though he might have left room for some folk to wind up for awhile in some type of hell.

Consider two of many quotes we could offer as evidence:

“This
insistence that God will be united and reconciled with all people is a
theme the writers and prophets return to again and again. … The God
that Jesus teaches us about doesn’t give up until everything that was
lost is found. This God simply doesn’t give up. Ever” (Love Wins, Kindle location 1259-1287).

“The
love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved
sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God. And
so, beginning with the early church, there is a long tradition of
Christians who believe that God will ultimately restore everything and
everybody” (Love Wins, location 1339-1365).

Bell even claims that Sodom and Gomorrah will be restored (location 1057-1071, 1071-1082).

Bell
has nothing but ridicule for the gospel that Jesus died for man’s sins
and that only those who repent and believe will be saved.

“What
happens when a fifteen-year-old atheist dies? Was there a three-year
window when he could have made a decision to change his eternal destiny?
Did he miss his chance? … What exactly would have had to happen in
that three-year window to change his future? … Some believe he would
have had to say a specific prayer. Christians don’t agree on exactly
what this prayer is, but for many the essential idea is that the only
way to et into heaven is to pray at some point in your life, asking God
to forgive you and telling God that you accept Jesus, you believe Jesus
died on the cross to pay the price for your sins, and you want to go to
heaven when you die. Some call this ‘accepting Christ,’ others all it
the ‘sinner’s prayer,’ and still others call it ‘getting saved,’ being
‘born again,’ or being ‘converted” (Love Wins, location 129-143).

While ridiculing the “repent and believe” gospel, Bell is perfectly happy with a works gospel:

“How
do you make sure you’ll be a part of the new thing God is going to do?
How do you best become the kind of person whom God could entrust with
significant responsibility in the age to come? The standard answer was:
live the commandments. God has shown you how to live. Live that way. The
more you become a person of peace and justice and worship and
generosity, the more actively you participate now in ordering and
working to bring about God’s kind of world, the more ready you will be
to assume an even greater role in the age to come” (Love Wins, location 538-565).

In true heretic fashion, Bell redefines Biblical terms.

He defines heaven as a present reality:

“In
Matthew 20 the mother of two of Jesus’s disciples says to Jesus, ‘Grant
that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and other at
your left in your kingdom.’ … She understood heaven to be about
partnering with God to make a new and better world, one with
increasingly complex and expansive expressions and dimensions of shalom,
creativity, beauty, and design” (Love Wins, location 630-643).

“Jesus invites us, in this life, in this broken, beautiful world, to experience the life of heaven now” (Love Wins, location 798-822).

He defines hell as a present reality:

“God
gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. … There
are individual hells, and communal, society-wide hells, and Jesus
teaches us to take both seriously” (Love Wins, location 920-932, 1008-1020).

“We
need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from
the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the
massive-society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live
in God’s world God’s way. And for that, the word ‘hell’ works quite
well” (Love Wins, location 1183-1189).

He says the statements in Bible about hell being a place of fire and torment are mere poetry:

“Some
agony needs agonizing language. Some destruction does make you think of
fire. Some betrayal actually feels like you’ve been burned. Some
injustices do cause things to heat up” (Love Wins, location 944-958).

Bell even claims that heaven and hell are “within each other, intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other” (Love Wins, location 2031-2045).

Bell claims that Jesus die not preach about hell in order to motivate people to be saved.

“Jesus did not use hell to try and compel ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die” (Love Wins, location 1045-1057).

Bell
defines the “everlasting punishment” of Matthew 25:46 as “‘a period of
pruning” or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of
correction” (Love Wins, location 1056-1170). He says, “Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever” (location 1170-1183). 
REJECTING THE GOD OF HIS GRANDPARENTS
Emergents
such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell are boldly and brashly rejecting the
God of their grandparents. They are not just rejecting some doctrines
their Christian grandparents believed; they are rejecting the God that
their grandparents worshiped.
Bell’s God is not the thrice holy Lawgiver who hates sin.
In Love Wins
there is a photo of a painting that hung on a wall in Bell’s
grandmother’s house. It depicts heaven as a shining city on the far side
of a dark, burning, fearsome chasm. Bridging the chasm is a cross upon
which people are walking toward safety. When Bell asked his sister if
she remembered the painting, she replied, “Of course, it gave us all the
creeps.”

As well it should if you haven’t been saved! The
painting depicts the truth of the gospel. There is a heaven and there is
a hell and only through regenerating faith in Christ’s cross can hell
be escaped.

Bell has plainly rejected the doctrine of heaven and hell that his grandparents held:

“Are
there other ways to think about heaven, other than as that perfect
floating shiny city hanging suspended there in the air above that
ominous red and black realm with all that smoke and steam and hissing
fire? I say yes, there are” (Love Wins, Kindle location 357-368).

But Bell has gone even further. He has rejected the God his grandparents worshipped.

Bell claims that the God who would allow multitudes to go to eternal hell is not great or mighty (Love Wins,
location 1189-1229). He calls the preaching of eternal hell “misguided
and toxic,” a “cheap view of God,” and “lethal” (location 47-60,
2154-2180). He implies that
this
God is not a true friend and protector; he says there is something
wrong with this God and calls Him “terrifying and traumatizing and
unbearable” (location 1273-1287, 2098-2113). He even says that if an
earthly father acted like the God who sends people to hell “we could
contact child protection services immediately” (location 2085-2098).

It is obvious that Bell wants nothing to do with the God worshiped by his grandparents.

Bell’s
god is more akin to New Age panentheism than the God of the Bible. He
describes God as “a force, an energy, a being calling out to us in many
languages, using a variety of methods and events” (Love Wins, location 1710-1724).

“There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it ‘Spirit,’ and Obi-Wan called it ‘the Force’” (Love Wins, location 1749-1762).

Bell
also worships a false christ. His Jesus is “supracultural … present
within all cultures … refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one
culture … He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father
through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him
… there is only one mountain, but many paths. … People come to Jesus
in all sorts of ways … Sometimes people use his name; other times
they don’t” (Love Wins, location 1827-1840, 1865-1878, 1918-1933).

It
is not surprising, then, that Bell recommends that his readers sit at
the feet of Ken Wilber, who believes in the divinity of man.

“For a mind-blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 192).

The god described in Love Wins is the very same god depicted in the novel The Shack by
William Young. The book is all about redefining God. It is about a man
whose becomes bitter at God after his daughter is murdered and has a
life-changing experience with God in the very shack where the murder
occurred; but the God he encounters is most definitely
not the God of the Bible.

Young
says the book is for those with “a longing that God is as kind and
loving as we wish he was” (interview with Sherman Hu, Dec. 4, 2007).
What he is referring to is the desire on the part of the natural man for
a God who loves “unconditionally” and does not require obedience, does
not require repentance, does not judge sin, and does not make men feel
guilty for what they do.

In that same interview, Young said that
a woman wrote to him and said that her 22-year-old daughter came to her
after reading the book and asked, “IS IT ALRIGHT IF I DIVORCE THE OLD
GOD AND MARRY THE NEW ONE?”

This is precisely what the emerging church generation is doing.

Young
admits that the God of “The Shack” is different from the traditional
God of Bible-believing Christianity. He says that the God who “watches
from a distance and judges sin” is “a Christianized version of Zeus.”
This reminds me of the modernist G. Bromley Oxnam, who called the God of
the Old Testament “a dirty bully” in his 1944 book “Preaching in a
Revolutionary Age.”

Young depicts the triune God as a young
Asian woman named “Sarayu” * (supposedly the Holy Spirit), an oriental
carpenter who loves to have a good time (supposedly Jesus), and an older
black woman named “Elousia” (supposedly God the Father). God the Father
is also depicted as a guy with a ponytail and a goatee. (* The name
“Sarayu” is from the Hindu scriptures and represents a mythical river in
India on the shores of which the Hindu god Rama was born.)

Young’s
god is the god of the emerging church. He is cool, loves rock &
roll, is non-judgmental, does not exercise wrath toward sin, does not
send unbelievers to an eternal fiery hell, does not require repentance
and the new birth, puts no obligations on people, doesn’t like
traditional Bible churches, does not accept the Bible as the infallible
Word of God, and does not mind if the early chapters of the Bible are
interpreted as “myth.” (See “The Shack’s Cool God” at the Way of Life
web site, www.wayoflife.org.)
FULLER SEMINARY PRESIDENT PRAISES ROB BELL’S BOOK

Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, told USA Today that “Rob Bell’s newly-released Love Wins is a fine book and that I basically agree with his theology” (“The Orthodoxy of Rob Bell,” Christian Post,
Mar. 20, 2011). This tells us just how terribly far Fuller Seminary has
fallen from its roots in Charles Fuller’s “only through the blood”
evangelistic ministry. Mouw agrees with Bell that it is wrong to say,
“Accept Jesus right now, because if ten minutes from now you die without
accepting this offer God will punish you forever in the fires of hell.”
Mouw comments, “What kind of God are we presenting to the person?” The
answer is the God of the Bible and the God that was preached by the
founders of Fuller Theological Seminary. It is Bell and Mouw who have
the new god. Mouw says that after a rabbi friend of his died, he “held
out the hope that when he saw Jesus he would acknowledge that it was Him
all along, and that Jesus would welcome him into the heavenly realm.”
I’ve never read anything like that in the Bible, but C.S. Lewis taught
this very thing. Mouw says that those who question Mother Teresa’s
salvation just because she believed a false gospel should be ashamed of
themselves. Mouw implies that Bell’s critics just want to keep people
out of heaven, which is patently ridiculous and slanderous. Mouw would
have us believe that he is more compassionate than Jesus, who stated
very bluntly, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke
13:3, 5). Both Bell and Mouw complain about their “critics,” but they
don’t draw back from lashing out pretty fiercely at the
“fundamentalists.” Bell calls hellfire preaching “lethal,” “toxic,”
“unloving,” “creepy,” a “cheap view of God.” No judgmental criticism
there! Nothing but compassionate, tolerant dialogue!
“CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL” HYPOCRISY

Some
of the “conservative” evangelicals are criticizing Rob Bell in a pretty
strong way. John Piper tweeted, “Good bye, Rob Bell.” Albert Mohler,
Jr. of Southern Baptist Seminary described Bell’s view as “Velvet Hell.”
I’m glad to see a bit of backbone among some evangelicals and a level
of doctrinal conviction that would drive them to actually name the name
of a false teacher, but it appears very hypocritical at the same time.
The view that atheists and pagan religionists might be saved without
submitting to Jesus Christ is not new. Billy Graham has been saying it
for decades, but I don’t recall any outcry from the evangelical world,
including from Graham’s own denomination, the Southern Baptist
Convention. In an interview with McCall’s
magazine, January 1978, entitled “I Can’t Play God Any More,” Graham
said: “I used to believe that pagans in far-off countries were lost—were
going to hell—if they did not have the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached
to them. I no longer believe that. … I believe that there are other ways
of recognizing the existence of God—through nature, for instance—and
plenty of other opportunities, therefore, of saying ‘yes’ to God.” In
1985, Graham affirmed his belief that those outside of Christ might be
saved. Los Angeles reporter David Colker asked Graham: “What about
people of other faiths who live good lives but don’t profess a belief in
Christ?” Graham replied, “I’m going to leave that to the Lord. He’ll
decide that” (
Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
July 22, 1985). In 1993, Graham repeated this doctrine in an interview
with David Frost. “And I think there is that hunger for God and people
are living as best they know how according to the light that they have.
Well, I think they’re in a separate category than people like Hitler and
people who have just defied God, and shaken their fists at God. … I
would say that God, being a God of mercy, we have to rest it right
there, and say that God is a God of mercy and love, and how it happens,
we don’t know” (
The Charlotte Observer,
Feb. 16, 1993). In an interview with Robert Schuller in May 1997,
Graham again said that he believes people in other religions can be
saved without consciously believing in Jesus Christ. “[God’s] calling
people out of the world for His name, whether WHETHER THEY COME FROM
THE MUSLIM WORLD, OR THE BUDDHIST WORLD, OR THE CHRISTIAN WORLD OR THE
NON-BELIEVING WORLD, THEY ARE MEMBERS OF THE BODY OF CHRIST BECAUSE
THEY’VE BEEN CALLED BY GOD. THEY MAY NOT EVEN KNOW THE NAME OF JESUS but
they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t
have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that
they are saved, and that they’re going to be with us in heaven”
(television interview of Billy Graham by Robert Schuller, broadcast in
southern California, Saturday, May 31, 1997). What is Rob Bell saying
today that Billy Graham hasn’t been saying for more than 30 years?
 
C.S. LEWIS’S INFLUENCE ON THE EVANGELICAL DOWNGRADE OF HELL

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) has been called a “Superstar” by Christianity Today.
A 1998 CT poll rated Lewis the most influential evangelical writer, and
In light of the wretched spiritual-doctrinal-moral condition of
“evangelicalism” today, that is a very telling statistic and certainly
no praise for C.S. Lewis.

One of the ways that Lewis has
influenced evangelicalism is in the fundamental issues of hell and the
exclusiveness of salvation through the name of Christ. Lewis said that
it would not be very wrong to pray to Apollo, because to do so would be
to “address Christ sub specie Apollonius” (C.S. Lewis to Chad Walsh, May 23, 1960, cited from George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, 1994, p. 378).

Lewis claimed that sincere followers of pagan religions can be saved without personal faith in Jesus Christ (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco edition, 2001, pp. 64, 208, 209). In the popular Chronicles of Narnia series, which has influenced countless children, Lewis taught that those who sincerely serve the devil (called Tash) are actually serving Christ (Aslan)
and will eventually be accepted by God. “But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am
no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the
service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’ …
Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s
sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it
is I who reward him’” (
The Last Battle, chapter 15, “Further Up and Further In”).

Lewis
also denied the finality of one’s destiny at death. He taught the
possibility of repentance beyond this life. This is the theme of The Great Divorce.
“Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?
‘It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that grey
town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is
Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not
Deep Heaven, ye understand’” (
The Great Divorce).

In
this book Lewis taught that questions such as the finality of men’s
destiny and purgatory and eternal destinies cannot be understood in this
present life and we should not fret about them.
“Ye
can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in
those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all
will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be
well. But it’s ill talking of such questions. ‘Because they are too
terrible, Sir?’ ‘No. Because all answers deceive” (
The Great Divorce, Kindle location 140-150).
In
light of these views, it is not surprising that Lewis has been cited as
a major influence by evangelicals who are soft on hell and
near-universalists.

Clark Pinnock said, “When I was a young
believer in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis helped me understand the relationship
between Christianity and other religions in an inclusivist way” (More Than One Way? Zondervan, 1996, p. 107).

Richard
Mouw says, “If I were given the assignment of writing a careful
theological essay on ‘The Eschatology of Rob Bell,’ I would begin by
laying out the basics of C.S. Lewis’s perspective on heaven and hell”
(“The Orthodoxy of Rob Bell,” Christian Post, March 20, 2011).

In the acknowledgements section of Love Wins,
Rob Bell writes, “… to my parents, Rob and Helen, for suggesting when
I was in high school that I read C.S. Lewis.” Beware of C.S. Lewis.
That he is loved with equal fervor by “conservative evangelicals,”
hell-denying emergents, Christian rockers, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and
even some atheists is a fact that speaks volumes to those who have ears
to hear.

There is really nothing that Rob Bell is teaching today that was not first taught by C.S. Lewis.

IN “AMERICA FIRST” SPEECH AT U.N., TRUMP DEFENDS SOVEREIGNTY

 https://www.redstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ap-trump-un-general-assembly.jpg
IN “AMERICA FIRST” SPEECH AT U.N., 
TRUMP DEFENDS SOVEREIGNTY 
BY ALEX NEWMAN
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

 In a speech
that attracted everything from praise and applause to horror and shock
from conservatives, President Donald Trump basically told the United
Nations General Assembly and its members that he was going to put
America First and that sovereign nation-states should also put the
interests of their own citizens first. Still, he suggested governments
should cooperate within the UN to make the world better, and to deal
with certain rogue regimes. Basically, Trump outlined what the
administration is calling an “America First” foreign policy toward the
UN and other nations guided by “Principled Realism.” It was a sharp
contrast from Obama’s final UNGA address demanding Americans “accept constraints” on U.S. sovereignty to bring about the UN’s vision for humanity.

After demanding UN “reform” and thanking the global body’s socialist secretary-general,
Trump also lambasted a number of the UN’s most barbarian member regimes
— those ruling North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, in particular.
He highlighted the unfair burden imposed on the United States by the UN —
most notably its massive share of the UN budget — and suggested that
other nations would have to do more. And throughout the speech, Trump
repeatedly emphasized the need for national sovereignty and
independence, using the words sovereign or sovereignty almost two dozen
times. In later remarks, though, Trump showered praise on the UN, sparking concerns among some of his supporters.  
Despite the stern tone of the historic speech, and repeated calls for
more patriotism from people all over the world, Trump gave credence to
some of the bogus narratives underpinning the UN and its globalist
agenda. And he also outlined a vision of a UN that has the power to rein
in governments — a potentially catastrophic mistake. Still, many of his
supporters were pleased with Trump’s calls to reform the UN, and with
his hard line on defending the nation-state against the globalist
establishment’s perpetual attacks on national sovereignty. Not everyone
was convinced, though, with some critics suggesting Trump had
surrendered key ground to the globalist agenda.    

At the center of Trump’s stated vision for the future of the UN, as
he put it in his speech, are strong, sovereign nation-states —
a vision that would seem to be at odds with the globalist utopia of
regional governments, such as the European Union and the African Union,
that are loyal to the UN
and “international” law. “If this
organization is to have any hope of successfully confronting the
challenges before us, it will depend, as President Truman said some 70
years ago, on the independent strength of its members,” Trump told
government leaders and dictators from all over the world assembled at UN
headquarters.

“If we are to embrace the opportunities of the future and overcome
the present dangers together, there can be no substitute for strong,
sovereign, and independent nations — nations that are rooted in their
histories and invested in their destinies; nations that seek allies to
befriend, not enemies to conquer; and most important of all, nations
that are home to patriots, to men and women who are willing to sacrifice
for their countries, their fellow citizens, and for all that is best in
the human spirit,” the president continued. “In remembering the great
victory that led to this body’s founding, we must never forget that
those heroes who fought against evil also fought for the nations that
they loved.”

Patriotism, Trump continued, is what led the Polish people to fight
and die for Poland. It is also what motivated the French to fight for a
free France, and the British to “stand strong” for Britain. Without
patriotism, Trump suggested, the world will be in trouble. “Today, if we
do not invest ourselves, our hearts, and our minds in our nations, if
we will not build strong families, safe communities, and healthy
societies for ourselves, no one can do it for us,” he said in remarks
that were widely described by the establishment media as “nationalist.”
Trump himself went from promoting Americanism and strongly condemning
globalism on the campaign trail, to claiming he was both a nationalist
and a globalist, confusing many of his supporters.

Trump went on to thank UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a lifelong socialist leader and a globalist extremist,
for supposedly “recognizing that the United Nations must reform if it
is to be an effective partner in confronting threats to sovereignty,
security, and prosperity.” “Too often the focus of this organization has
not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process,” Trump said,
noting that some states have tried to subvert the UN’s supposedly “noble
aims” by allegedly “hijacking” the systems that are supposed to advance
them. As an example, he pointed to “governments with egregious human rights records” sitting on the discredited UN “Human Rights Council,” which Trump ridiculed as “a massive source of embarrassment.”

In remarks made later at a luncheon,
Trump continued to praise Guterres and the UN, saying it was “a great
honor” to have the UN in New York. “For years I’ve been a critic, but
I’ve also been somebody that said that the United Nations has tremendous
potential,” Trump said. “But there is no better forum; there can be no
better forum. And certainly there can be no better location where
everybody comes together. So, I want to congratulate you…. The
potential of the United Nations is unlimited, and I really believe —
I’ve met your representatives, and I know you well. You are going to do
things that will be epic, and I certainly hope you will.”

Those remarks had Trump supporters scratching their heads — especially considering that, on the campaign trail, Trump correctly pointed out that the UN was not a friend of freedom or the United States.
Indeed, both his supporters and his most rabid globalist critics from
the swamp believed Trump would truly work to rein in the dictators club
once in office. And while he has sought major budget cuts, and expressed interest in eventually leaving the UN’s pseudo-treaty on “climate” known as the Paris Agreement, Trump has thus far lent some legitimacy to the UN itself and many of its broader objectives.

Still, he strongly emphasized the need for patriotism. “The true
question for the United Nations today, for people all over the world who
hope for better lives for themselves and their children, is a basic
one:  Are we still patriots?” Trump asked. “Do we love our nations
enough to protect their sovereignty and to take ownership of their
futures? Do we revere them enough to defend their interests, preserve
their cultures, and ensure a peaceful world for their citizens?”
Contrary to globalist ideology, which views nations as an archaic
remnant of another age, Trump also said that “the nation-state remains
the best vehicle for elevating the human condition.”

While there were few specifics on what sort of reform Trump wanted,
he outlined a vision of strong nation states cooperating within a UN
that supposedly exists to preserve peace. “Our hope is a world of proud,
independent nations that embrace their duties, seek friendship, respect
others, and make common cause in the greatest shared interest of all:  a
future of dignity and peace for the people of this wonderful Earth,” he
said, invoking God the Creator who made everyone. “This is the true
vision of the United Nations, the ancient wish of every people, and the
deepest yearning that lives inside every sacred soul.”

Among his few concrete complaints, Trump did raise concerns about the
price to U.S. taxpayers. “The United States is one out of 193 countries
in the United Nations, and yet we pay 22 percent of the entire budget
and more,” Trump explained. “In fact, we pay far more than anybody
realizes. The United States bears an unfair cost burden, but, to be
fair, if it could actually accomplish all of its stated goals,
especially the goal of peace, this investment would easily be well worth
it.” It is true that U.S. government pays an inordinate share of the
UN’s expenses — more than $10 billion last year, which is more than 185
other nations, combined. But the UN’s stated goals include global wealth redistribution, government control of production and consumption, international taxes, a world currency, the indoctrination of children worldwide to support the UN’s totalitarian “sustainable development” ideology, and much more.

There were other concerning statements in Trump’s speech. “This
institution was founded in the aftermath of two world wars to help shape
this better future,” Trump told presidents, dictators, and others
assembled in New York City for the annual UN General Assembly confab.
“It was based on the vision that diverse nations could cooperate to
protect their sovereignty, preserve their security, and promote their
prosperity.” Doubling down, Trump even said the UN was created “to
defend the sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.”

Unfortunately, that narrative has been somewhat successfully pushed
by the establishment for generations. But the true purpose of the UN was
far more sinister even from the start — and this is clear not just from
looking at the UN’s fruits. For one, it is worth recalling that one of
the key U.S. officials involved in its founding, Alger Hiss, who served
as the secretary-general at the UN’s founding, was later exposed and
convicted in court as a spy for the mass-murdering regime enslaving the
Soviet Union. Murderous Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin himself was a key
figure in the UN’s founding as well. And even officially non-communist
officials involved in establishing the UN have offered troubling
indications of its true purpose.

For instance, John Foster Dulles, a leading architect of the UN who
went on to become U.S. secretary of state, outlined the agenda in his
1950 book War or Peace. “The United Nations represents not a
final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive
stage,” explained Dulles, a founder of the globalist swamp known as the
Council on Foreign Relations. “Therefore its primary task is to create
the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed
organization.” Later in the book, Dulles dropped another bombshell: “I
have never seen any proposal made for collective security with teeth in
it, or for world government or for world federation, which could not be
carried out either by the United Nations or under the United Nations
Charter.”

Truly reforming the corrupt dictators club to conform with Trump’s
publicly articulated “America First” vision of sovereign nations is
impossible. Indeed, the UN was founded, as its own architects revealed,
to slowly erode that sovereignty on the road to a totalitarian global
system that leading globalists often refer to in public as the “New
World Order.” Rather than reforming it, the U.S. government should
withdraw from the UN and evict its spy-infested headquarters from
American soil. Legislation in Congress, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R. 193),
would do precisely that. But for America to truly regain its
sovereignty and neutralize the globalist threat posed by the UN,
Americans must get educated and active in the fight.

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