The Emergent Church

Extract from ‘Faith Undone’ by Roger Oakland (Available from Amazon.com)

The Bible says that Jesus Christ will establish His kingdom when he returns to the earth. Until then, we will never establish a utopia here on earth, but on the contrary, we will continue to have wars and rumors of wars. The conflict between good and evil will remain until Jesus returns, as we find in John's description of the human heart in the last days:

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. (Revelation 22:11)

From the context of John's prophetic statement, it is clear that this is how conditions will be until Jesus returns. But today a theology called Kingdom Now or Dominionismis permeating Christian thinking, and the emerging church movement is taking this theology in full speed into the next generation. With the idea that the church can establish the kingdom of God before Christ returns and essentially turn our world into a Christian world, this belief system has literally changed the way countless Christians view the world and go about their Christian living. What most of these Christians don't realise is that this kingdom-of-God-on-earth mindset is an all effort by Satan to distort the message of Jesus Christ.

Emergent Views on the Future of Planet Earth

By examining the eschatology (study of the last days) beliefs of emerging church proponents, we can better understand their beliefs of the kingdom of God. In Brian McLaren's book, A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren lays the foundation for his view of the future, one that many other emergent leaders support. Under the subheading "The eschatology of abondonment is being succeeded by an engaging gospel of the kingdom," he writes:

Evangelical-dispensational "left-behind" eschatology (the doctrine of the last things or end times that expects the world to be destroyed in just over seven years or one thousand and seven years, depending on the fine print) makes perfect sense in the modern world.

Condemning the warning and message in the Book of Revelation and the teaching of the return of Jesus Christ, McLaren adds:

Christians in the power centers of modernity (England in the 1800s, the United states in the 1900s) saw nothing ahead in the secular story of industrial modernity.....nothing but spiritual decline and global destruction. Their only hope? A skyhook Second Coming, wrapping up the whole of creation like an empty candy wrapper and throwing it in the cosmic dumpster so God can finally bring our souls to heaven.... There is virtually no continuity between this creation and the new heavenly creation in this model; this creation is erased like a mistake, discarded like a non-recyclable milk carton. Why care for creation? Why get sentimental about a container that's served its purpose and is about to be discarded into the cosmic trash compactor of nothingnesss?

McLaren does not read the Scripture from an apocalyptic mindset, and in fact, implies that such ideas are relatively new, not originating in the Bible at all. He claims that those who believe in a last-days scenario have seriously miscalculated:

This pop-Evangelical eschatology made an understandable but serious mistake: it wrongly assumed that modernity was all there was or ever would be, while it rightly assessed how hopeless the future would be if modernity-without -end was indeed upon us. Just as early Christians could not imagine the gospel outlasting the Roman Empire..... nineteenth and twentieth century Evangelicals couldn't imagine the gospel outlasting modernity, the empire of Scientism, consumerism and individualism.

McLaren attempts to convince readers that eschatology views of Christ's return, the apocalypse, tribulation, ect. are up for grabs in the ever-changing world we live in. And of course, if these theologies are not found in the Bible, then McLaren is right. However, the modern world is not the author-God is, and the Bible backs these theologies up!

McLaren reworks many Scriptures in order to support his belief that the kingdom of God will be established here on earth sometime in the future by human effort. He writes:

For pop-Evangelical eschatology to proliferate, it had to ignore or, better reinterpret much written by the Old Testament prophets. Prophetic visions of reconciliation and shalom within history (metaphorically conveyed via lions and lambs, children and serpents, swords and plowshares, spears and pruning hooks) had to be pushed beyond history, either into a spiritual heaven or a millennial middle ground - a post-historic time zone between history and eternity, so to speak. They also had to marginalize Jesus with all his talk of the kingdom of God coming on earth, being among us now, and being accessible today.

McLaren misses the whole point of Jesus' talk about the kingdom of God. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world " (John 18:36), and "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). He was referring to the Holy Spirit living inside those who receive Him by faith. McLaren is referring to a communal kingdom established on the earth (prior to Christ's return when He said He would establish this physical kingdom) that focuses on social justice as opposed to individual personal relationships with Jesus Christ. McLaren is not the only one who sees the kingdom of God this way - the same concept is the foundation of Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church growth model.