Volume 20 Number 4

Volume 20 Number 4 July/August 2009

Emerging Towards Convergence

By Sarah H. Leslie

"After emergence comes emersion."

—Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (Harper, 1965), p. 309.

The Emergent/Emerging Church movement is heading towards a crash collision with the New Age movement. In fact, it may already be happening before our very eyes. The Discernment Research Group has reached the inescapable conclusion that this is intentional and it has been planned for over a generation.

In brief, there has been a crossover of personnel, organizations, doctrines, methods, and agendas going back at least 40-50 years. Constance Cumbey, who first exposed the New Age movement and its Theosophical roots in her groundbreaking book The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, has been writing a series of reports on the earliest examples of this crossover for her blog (http://cumbey.blogspot.com/) and her NewsWithViews.com column. Through our own research we have discovered that there was an earlier Emerging Church movement, which was initiated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which bears remarkable resemblance, crossover and correlation to its newer counterpart. This early history is currently being recounted in an ongoing series of posts on the Herescope blog.¹

We know that the current Emergent Church is a marketing phenomenon, set up as an official movement by Bob Buford’s Leadership Network, a historical fact which we documented in a series of Herescope posts in 2005 and 2006.² From its very inception in the 1980s Leadership Network imported a number of leading New Age business “gurus” as “experts” – holding nebulous (if any!) Christian credentials. They trained an entire generation of evangelical “leaders” on the latest tactics of psycho-social change theory, substituting it for genuine Holy Spirit revival. These business “gurus,” some of whom had open New Age beliefs, included such notables as Margaret Wheatley, Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, and Ken Blanchard. Many spoke at a 2000 Leadership Network conference “Exploring Off the Map” which launched the Emergent Church movement.³

From our research we also know that the Emergent Church was set up to be a vanguard, a forerunner, to propel the postmodern evangelical church towards a paradigm shift in theology, structure, methodology, and purpose. As such, it has been rushing headlong towards an open convergence with the New Age movement. Emergent leader Phyllis Tickle has termed this “The Great Emergence,” which is the title of her 2008 book announcing the “birthing” of a “brand-new expression of… faith and praxis” (p. 17) which will ultimately “rewrite Christian theology” (p. 162).

Important details about both the history and theology of the modern Emergent movement can be found in Pastor Bob DeWaay’s recently published book The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity (2009). This book summarizes the basic doctrines and practices of the movement, and gives an account of a few key leaders.

Emergent Eschatology

Pastor DeWaay recognizes the defining issue for the Emergent movement as eschatology:

While Emergent Church leaders differ on nearly every Christian doctrine, one belief they hold in common—the one that unifies their movement—is their eschatology. Emergent theologians and church leaders reject God’s final judgment in favor of His saving of all humanity and creation into a tangible paradise in which all will participate. (p. 13)

This view of eschatology is also a key doctrine of Dominionism, and is therefore linked to the concept of “building the kingdom of God on earth.” This eschatological worldview proclaims that there isn’t going to be a Judgment Day, and teaches that man can facilitate the return to pre-Fall paradise conditions on Earth. This view of the future subliminates the Cross, ignores scriptural prophecies about the endtimes, and positions man into godlike status as a “co-creator.” Obviously, in such an eschatological scenario there is no Heaven nor Hell.

The Emergent paradigm shift is already happening. This eschatological worldview is now becoming widespread and is subtly being incorporated into most major “mainstream” evangelical ministries, missions, and organizations. A few examples we have noted on the Herescope blog include N.T. Wright,⁴ the Lausanne movement,⁵ Ralph Winter,⁶ Transform World,⁷ Dutch Sheets and Bill Hamon,⁸ and many Latter Rain leaders.⁹ Exemplifying this shift, a recent article in a publication called ConvergePoint, put out by the Baptist General Conference, describes this group’s transformation initiative in these terms, “My personal joy was compounded culturally by the fact that the word converge happens to appear in the Portuguese Bible in Ephesians 1:10: ‘…to make all things converge together in Christ, things in heaven and earth.’”¹⁰

This eschatological worldview has serious ramifications for all of Christian theology. DeWaay explains:

“…[T]he possibility of future judgment and punishment of those who do not believe in Christ’s death on the cross and His shedding of blood to avert God’s wrath against sin is either denied or not discussed in Emergent/postmodern theology. (p. 149)

Theology of Hope?

Pastor DeWaay identifies Jürgen Moltmann’s book, Theology of Hope, first published in 1964, as a seminal document forming a foundation for the Emergent Church movement’s revisionist, evolutionary eschatology. Moltmann was influenced by Marxism and the philosophies of Georg W.F. Hegel. Moltmann’s eschatological “hope” is “headed toward the kingdom of God on earth with universal participation” (p. 23). DeWaay explains that “Emergent/postmodern theology is based on the Hegelian idea that contradictions synthesize into better future realities…. Moltmann took Hegel’s ideas and created a Christian alternative to Marxism (which is also based on Hegel’s philosophy) that he called a ‘theology of hope’” (p. 30). Emergent church leaders who hearken back to Moltmann include Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Stanley Grenz and many others.

DeWaay makes the case that, according to the “theology of hope” promulgated by Moltmann and his Emergent disciples, “the truth will only be known with certainty in the future” (p. 39) Therefore, this uncertainty results in the corollary heresies that “God is re-creating the world now with our help” and “the world has a universally bright future with no pending, cataclysmic judgment” (p. 40).

Evolutionary Eschatology

The root theology undergirding all Emergent eschatology is evolution. A generation ago, certain Christian leaders took the ideas of Moltmann and began to fill in the outlines for his “theology of hope.” They also got their ideas from a group of so-called “secular” futurists, who happened to hold a Teilhardian evolutionary worldview.¹¹ Today we might classify these futurists as New Agers.

Modern Emergents hold a remarkably similar worldview to these early futurists. Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence, writes approvingly of Darwin’s evolution theory, saying that it was “the tipping point that sent us careening off into new cultural, social, political, and theological territory” (p. 64).

While researching the early Emerging Church movement we came across a seminary theologian, Kenneth Cauthen, who wrote a book in 1971 entitled Christian Biopolitics: A Credo & Strategy for the Future (Abdingdon Press). It was the premise of Cauthen’s book that Jürgen Moltmann didn’t go far enough; that his “theology of hope” was incomplete because it was focused “too exclusively in the context of society and history and has neglected the natural and cosmic setting of the human enterprise” (p. 102). Cauthen proposed a “Christian biopolitics” – an “ecological principle” that would connect nature and society so that Moltmann’s “theology of hope” could become “cosmic.” He called for the “recognition of the centrality of an evolutionary perspective” (p. 109). We don’t know the full extent of Cauthen’s influence upon postmodern evangelicals, but the theological changes he anticipated bear remarkable resemblance to Emergent thought and practice today.

As a member of the World Future Society, a group formed in 1966 with strong ties to the New Age Theosophists, Cauthen articulated an “ecological model for politics and theology” (p. 106) that would facilitate a “transition” leading to global “transformation.” He proposed that “we take the New Testament conception of the consummated Kingdom of God as a symbol of the transcendent goal of history” (p. 131), a theology which would eliminate a future of either Heaven and Hell. And he suggested that “man is indeed becoming like a god…that science and technology are putting power into the hands of human beings that have traditionally been reserved for the gods” (p. 140). He summarized his views as follows:

The message of the church during this period of world transition should be framed in utopian-eschatological terms, stressing the power and purpose of the Divine Spirit to bring all men into the ecstatic joy of a New Age, while the ministry of the church is basically to create a community of persons who can cause, celebrate, and cope with the changes that are required to bring humanity into the promise of the planetary society.” (p. 124)

Cauthen was not happy with Moltmann’s social gospel “theology of hope.” He said that was too connected to the here and now in building the kingdom of God on earth. Cauthen proposed that Moltmann’s ideas needed a “cosmic” and “utopian” aspect that would give people a “magnificent vision of an ideal future” with a “new consciousness” that would prove to “be more sensuous, ecstatic, erotic, earthy, bodily oriented, festive, playful, feminine, idealistic, utopian, mystical, sacramental, hedonistic—in sum, a quest for joy in the wholeness of body and spirit” (p. 150). Amazingly, this is a pretty accurate picture of the modern Emergent Church’s quest for a better future.

“God’s Dream”

Cauthen focused on a utopian “New Age” as the ideal future. He proposed that “utopian thinking” be based on a common “eschatological vision” – an “image of the future” (p. 60), citing Frederick L. Polak’s two-volume work The Image of the Future.¹² Cauthen suggested that “to dream new dreams, to create new utopias of the mind, and to project new images of the future appropriate to the emerging conditions of the year 2000 may indeed be—as Polak claims—our one best hope” (p. 67). To “dream dreams” became Cathen’s rallying cry throughout the book, and he even hearkened back to Martin Luther King’s famous speech. He linked such dreams to the “birth of a new vision, a new consciousness” (p. 149) in the Teilhardian sense of a collective dawning (“emerging”) cosmic consciousness of mankind.

Fast-forward to 2009. Dreams, images, icons, symbols, meditations, chantings, labyrinths – anything but God’s Word – have become fully operational in the modern Emergent movement. All serve as a means to an end. Mysticism and experientiality do not simply supplement Scripture, they replace it. “This mystical theology is a denial of the fallen nature of man,” notes Bob DeWaay, and mysticism “suggests that all humans can find God” by engaging in these extra-biblical activities (p. 125).

The modern Emergent movement has adopted the idea of a common “dream” for the future. Many leaders use the motif of “God’s Dream” for describing this future utopian kingdom of God on earth that they are trying to co-create. This is another point of convergence with the New Age movement, which has used the term “God’s Dream” in the same way. Evangelicals and New Agers using this theme include Lou Engle, Robert Schuller,¹³ Desmond Tutu, Sri Chimnoy, Sun Myung Moon, Shane Claiborne, Delirious?, Leonard Sweet, and many others.¹⁴ [DeWaay offers his readers an excellent theological refutation of this extra-biblical concept of “God’s Dream.”]

Experientialism is the foundational principle behind all of this dreaming and visioning. The purpose of an experience-focused faith is to change values and attitudes, and open up the believer to an acceptance of new “truths.” This was well articulated in 1971 by Cauthen. His own brand of the “theology of hope” was rooted in “clarifying images which illuminate experience as it is critically interpreted by reason” (p. 113). What he meant is that “feeling and intuition” (p. 150) should take precedence over rational thinking, reason and biblical Truth. He wrote that “the Bible is not to be regarded as an arbitrary dictator of dogma, nor as an infallible source of truth” but, rather, that the “final test… of religious truth is the intuition of the individual person” (p. 114). He recommended that “there is a particular need at the present to focus attention on utopian dreaming as a way of shaking us loose from obsolete ways of thinking and opening us up to those ideas, attitudes, and values that are appropriate for the future” (p. 122). He suggested that people who hold to these powerful visions of a utopian future “are the probable agents of redemptive social change” (p. 132). He called for a “theology of the Spirit” which would “emphasize freedom, the creation of the new, and the fulfillment of the creative process” (p. 138). Such a “theology of freedom… looks with radical openness to the future for new truths and values…” (p. 138). Cauthen’s experience-based theologies bear remarkable resemblance to the postmodern Emergent Church of our era.

Deconstruction

Pastor DeWaay does an excellent job of scouring the Emergent chronicles for evidences of “deconstruction.” “Deconstruction” is a philosophy that de-emphasizes the Word of God, and claims that no one can really know the Truth. It fits hand-in-glove with mysticism.

An excellent analysis of “deconstruction” was written by Samuel Blumenfeld in 1995, as part of his scholarly refutation of the “whole language” style of teaching reading that resulted in illiteracy. Blumenfeld explained how “deconstruction” obliterates the fact that words have meaning, de-emphasizes written language by claiming that there is no “truth” in it, and declares “the impossibility of determining absolute meaning”¹⁵ in a text. He wrote:

But not only do the whole-language deconstructionists reject the concept of the absolute word—the logos—but they reject the very system of logical thinking that made Western civilization possible. They not only reject the Bible, they reject Aristotle’s A is A. Their new formula is A can be anything you want it to be, which can only be the basis of a pre-literate or non-literate culture in which subjectivism, emotion and superstition prevail as the means of knowing.

That, of course, is simply a form of insanity—the inability not only to deal with objective reality but to recognize and admit that it exists. A mind so inclined is a mind that will lead its owner to destruction.¹⁶

The Emergent Church is at the vanguard of this type of deconstructionism. It discounts the Word of God, mocks exegetical preaching and teaching, and emphasizes dialogue (“conversation”), mysticism, symbology, community (“relationships”), and various “spiritual disciplines.” A recent, related fad in the evangelical mission world is “orality,” which is telling stories about the Bible instead of teaching Scripture itself. This cheats the listener out of the precious ability to hear or read God’s Word.

The foundation of this new heresy is said to originate from Walter J. Ong, who wrote a book entitled Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1982)…. The premise behind this book is that humans need to return to their earlier (evolutionary) primitive heritage of myth, fable, story, image, symbols, icons, etc. The written word is degraded. The spoken word and image are said to be more closely connected to the human "consciousness." This author means "consciousness" in the sense of Carl Jung's pagan pseudo-science of "collective unconscious." Story, myth and image are therefore seen as closer to pagan spirituality. The author notes the "magic power" inherent in the written word and states that "Literacy can be restricted to special groups such as the clergy."¹⁷

Indeed, Carl Jung and his concept of a “collective unconscious” is often invoked by Emergent leaders as justification for their use of mythologies and imagination. But, they are also seeking a “new revelation.” The Great Emergence credits Jung’s popular disciple, Joseph Campbell, for his “disestablishment of what is called ‘the Christian doctrine of particularity’ and ‘Christian exclusivity.’” Author Phyllis Tickle explains, “That doctrine and principle, in duet, hold that Jesus and Jesus only is God-among-us and that there is no salvation for humankind anywhere anytime independent of belief in Jesus” (p. 67).

This open-ended, Christ-denigrating view of redemption is not new. Cauthen had already suggested in 1971 that there “may be other ‘sons of God’ in and through whom supplementary or corrective revelations may come” (p. 134-135). This is a classic New Age teaching – that Jesus is just one of many cosmic “christs.” In the Emergent eschaton there is an open pantheon – room for any new revelation, and even a new “Jesus.”¹⁸ Deconstruction ensures that there is a deliberate dumbing down of the people in the pews so that no one can know the Way, the Truth and the Life.

DeWaay places the Emergent focus on mysticism into the theological context of “undefining grace.” In this new worldview, personal revelation or spiritual experience become predominant since one can no longer determine the content or meaning of what they are reading in God’s Word. Taking this to its logical conclusion, the Emergents teach that “all paths lead to God in a saving way” (p. 133). DeWaay expresses the grave concern that the “result is that they lack the fear of being deceived by spirits” –

When they use breathing techniques or other means of altering their states of consciousness, whereby one is open to the world of spirits, their naïve assumption is that if the resulting experience makes one feel closer to God, the worshipper must therefore be closer to God. (p. 133)

He warns that the “Emergent Church has no defense against these spirits because they have no authoritative Bible to guide them to true beliefs and practices where they would meet God on His terms” (p. 134).

The Spiritualization of Science

The futurists of the 1960s and 1970s were characterized by their zeal to create “alternative future scenarios.” They had their own eschatology – mankind could rewrite its destiny. Science and technology could save man from his own certain destruction. And they believed that the formation of a global system of governance, using state-of-the-art technological, psychological and sociological methods of human control, could create a better planetary society.¹⁹ They began to work hard at shifting the paradigm; shifting the focus from reason to relationships, from rational thinking to mysticism, from science to metaphysics.

The New Age movement was connected to these early futurists. Marilyn Ferguson described this fact in her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy (J.P. Tarcher). She suggested that altered states of consciousness would provide the vehicle with which to re-mold beliefs and shape new values. There were mystical ways to facilitate the collective “emergence” of “a new mind” (p. 45), she wrote. Mysticism would enable people to be more easily anesthetized to accept change, i.e., “transformation.” But mysticism needed to become “science.” Willis Harman,²⁰ a leading futurist who was working in this arena, described it this way:

This emerging trans-modern worldview, involves a shift in the locus of authority from external to ‘inner knowing.’ It has basically turned away from the older scientific view that ultimate reality is “fundamental particles,” and trusts perceptions of the wholeness and spiritual aspect of organisms, ecosystems, Gaia and Cosmos. This implies a spiritual reality, and ultimate trust in the authority of the whole. It amounts to a reconciliation of scientific inquiry with the “perennial wisdom” at the core of the world’s spiritual traditions. It continues to involve a confidence in scientific inquiry, but an inquiry whose metaphysical base has shifted from the reductionist, objectivist, positivist base of the 19^th- and 20^th-century science to a more holistic and transcendental metaphysical foundation. ²¹

The early futurists began reinventing science so that it would become a sort of spiritual alchemy. They experimented with the human brain and psychedelic drugs in their drive to alter human consciousness in hopes that it would further the evolution of the species. Willis Harman was even “involved in researching the cognitive and societal effects of LSD consumption.”²² This may explain a strange comment by modern Emergent Phyllis Tickle: “There is a clear tragectory from Timothy Leary straight to the Great Emergence and our current disorientation about what exactly consciousness is and we are” (p. 98)

Pastor DeWaay delves into the pseudo-scientific philosophical foundation of the Emergent movement in Chapter 9 of his book, where he discusses Ken Wilbur and his “integral movement.” It is beyond the purview of this brief report to examine the Emergent revival of metaphysics in detail, but it is a fact that many New Age leaders have been attempting to create a “quantum spirituality”²³ for some time. And, there has been significant crossover into the evangelical realm for decades, especially via the activities of John Marks Templeton.²⁴ This drive for a new science is inextricably connected with the concept of evolution and eschatology. De Waay succinctly describes this heresy:

Evolution is Spirit manifesting itself in emerging levels of complexity and awareness. The reason evolution makes sense in this scheme is that either God is in the creation (panentheism) or that creation is a manifestation of God (pantheism).

New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard was an early futurist who articulated a similar view of quantum evolution in her 1993 book The Revelation. This book is her own rendition of a “new order of the future” (p. 63) in which “science and technology are a vital part of the [Teilhardian] noösphere” and the “planet itself is evolving toward a quantum leap” towards “conscious evolution.”²⁵ Supplanting the Bible’s book of Revelation, she spoke of a coming “Quantum Instant” of “Quantum Transformation,” which will be “an evolutionary selection process based on your qualifications for co-creative power,” and which would create “A New Heaven and a New Earth.”²⁶ There would be no Armageddon, just a “Planetary Pentecost”—a “great Instant of Cooperation.” She claimed that the “prophecy of John [in Revelation] can be avoided altogether.”²⁷ This would be the “gentle Second Coming of Christ through rapid evolution.”²⁸ This is not unlike Emergent leader Brian McLaren’s eschewal of what he terms the “jihadist Jesus” of the “Second Coming.”²⁹ Furthermore, in Hubbard’s utopian future there would be an integration of science and technology with this metaphysical evolution. She claimed that there are “evolutionary capabilities of the human race – space exploration, genetics, longevity research, psychic powers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, atomic power… co-operating with God to build a New Earth, and New Heavens.”³⁰ In brief, Hubbard’s utopian future bears a striking similarity to the eschatology of the Emerging Church of today, a fact which raises serious questions.

Conclusion

This brief article just barely skims the surface of many substantial research topics pertaining to the Emergent movement’s history and theology. In the months to come the Discernment Research Group will be writing on these topics. Pastor Larry DeBruyn is currently publishing a scholarly theological refutation of the “quantum spirituality” concept which will be distributed via Discernment Ministries.

To understand more of the history and theology of the Emerging Church movement, Pastor Bob DeWaay’s book is a useful resource. We are particularly pleased with its references to Dr. Francis Schaeffer—the book analyzes the Emergent movement within the context of the postmodern existential “escape from reason.” DeWaay has taken care to defend the Gospel against these heresies at every juncture. The book is scholarly, well-organized and easy to read.

Endnotes:

1. See these Herescope posts:

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2009/05/emerging-church-circa-1970.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2009/05/early-experiential-emergents.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2009/06/retro-emergent.html &

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-thing.html

2. It is because of the documentation you will find in these posts that we can freely interchange the term Emergent and Emerging when discussing this movement: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005/11/marketing-emergent.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-leadership-network-created.html &

http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/01/leadership-network-spawns-emergent.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/01/leadership-network-and-terra-nova.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-leadership-network-established.html

3. See http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005/10/christian-leaders-go-on-expedition.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/05/earth-old-story-new-story.html & http://www.leadnet.org/epubarchive.asp?id=30&db=archive_explorer & http://www.leadnet.org/epubarchive.asp?id=33&db=archive_explorer & http://www.leadnet.org/epubarchive.asp?id=84&db=archive_explorer

& https://www.leadnet.org/libarchive.asp?id=110&db=archive_champsupdate

4. “Heaven Is Not Our Home: The bodily resurrection is the good news of the gospel—and thus our social and political mandate,” N. T. Wright, Christianity Today, 3/24/08, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/13.36.html See also: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/02/creating-heaven-on-earth.html which discusses this article.

5. Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 30: “Globalization and the Gospel: Rethinking Mission in the Contemporary World, 2004, http://www.lausanne.org/documents/2004forum/LOP30_IG1.pdf, states: “Gospel, or euvangelion, is understood in its fullest sense as the “good news” that Jesus Christ, the King of Heaven, has come, not only to save individuals from hell, but to restore his kingdom • which is nothing short of the entire world and all of creation. As we shall see, “globalization” leads us to consider anew the words of the Lord’s Prayer: “Father, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” The mission of the church, accordingly, is to be a living sign to the world that its King has indeed come to restore his kingdom. In the words of the New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, we are to be for the world what Jesus was for Israel — and, we are able to carry out our mission because of what Jesus did for Israel and the world. Understood this way, we are to be the King’s heralds announcing throughout the cities and outposts of the kingdom the “good news” that he has come, he has defeated the rebellious powers of sin and death, and through the power of his Spirit, and he is working through the church to put his world to rights.”

6. See the articles with documentation at http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/secret-mission.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/04/tinker-with-theology-tinker-with-man.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/02/creating-heaven-on-earth.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/cultural-mandate.html

7. See the article posted at http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/redeeming-cultures.html where the Transform World Covenant states: "Scope of the Gospel: As Creator, God is Lord of all, and, therefore, his redemptive concern is comprehensive—seeking to heal and restore 'all things' by means of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross (Gen. 1:31a; Rom. 8:18-23; Col. 1:19-20). The church’s calling is to witness to the kingdom of God in its fullness (Matt. 4:23; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:18-21). To be faithful to the gospel the ministry of the body of Christ must be holistic—encompassing the whole person—spiritual, physical, and social, and all human relationships—with God, with others, and with the environment (Gen. 1:26-28). Anything less than concern for all spheres of life is to misrepresent the all-encompassing Lordship of Jesus Christ over the world."

8. See the article posted at http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/cultural-mandate.html and note that C. Peter Wagner ties this to Dominionism. Also see http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/proposing-new-theology.html and the accompanying quotations that connect this eschatological worldview with the Manifest Sons of God cult.

9. See this article and note the Hermeticism evident in the “as above, so below” feature of this eschatology of building heaven on earth: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2007/07/as-in-heaven-so-on-earth.html

10. “What does ‘Converge’ mean?” Jerry Sheveland, ConvergePoint, Vol. 1, No. 3, April-May 2009, p. 12.

11. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit philosopher/priest, proposed that just as man had evolved from monkeys, there would be a new species of man that would EMERGE, which he called homo noeticus. His evolutionary beliefs form the foundation of the New Age movement. As nearly as we can tell, he was the first to use forms of the word “emerge” to describe the spiritual formation of this new species. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teilhard) accurately summarizes his beliefs as follows: “In his posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard writes of the unfolding of the material cosmos, from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is ‘pulling’ all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal driven way. To Teilhard, evolution unfolded from cell to organism to planet to solar system and whole-universe (see Gaia theory). Such theories are generally termed teleological views of evolution. Teilhard attempts to make sense of the universe by its evolutionary process. He interprets mankind as the axis of evolution into higher consciousness, and postulates that a supreme consciousness, God, must be drawing the universe towards him.”

12. See the brief description here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Polak

13. See this Herescope post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/07/gods-dream.html

14. See this Herescope post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/08/gods-dream-peace.html Ex-New Ager Warren Smith first observed this “God’s Dream” phenomena and wrote a chapter about it in his book Deceived on Purpose.

15. Samuel Blumenfeld, “Whole Language: Deconstruction in the Primary School,” excerpted from The Whole Language/OBE Fraud (The Paradigm Company, 1995) pp. 149-166. Posted with permission of the author at http://www.discernment-ministries.org/content/whole-language-deconstruction-primary-school-0 The whole language method of teaching reading is not based on phonics, sounding out letters. Rather, it is based on images, symbols and pictures. It results in rampant illiteracy.

16. Ibid.

17. Orality is connected to deconstructionism. See http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/03/newest-heresy-of-nar-orality.html

18. See this herescope post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/02/reframing-jesus.html and note that Emergent leader Brian McLaren has openly associated with the World Future Society http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/03/brian-mclaren-to-speak-at-world-future.html

19. See Ervin Laszlo’s A Strategy for the Future: The Systems Approach to World Order (George Braziller, 1974). Also see this post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2005/10/peter-drucker-early-futurist.html

20. Willis Harman was invited to speak as a presenter at the second Evangelical Consultation on the Future in the late 1970s. A series of Herescope posts in September and October 2005 covered this topic in detail. His esoteric viewpoints were not refuted.

21. This quote appears in a Herescope post published May 20, 2009 http://herescope.blogspot.com/2009/05/spiritualization-of-science.html summarizing a paper published by Dr. Martin Erdmann entitled “The Spiritualization of Science, Technology, and Education in a One-World Society,” published in the European Journal of Nanomedicine (2009 Vol. 2:31-38) http://www.clinam.org/journal/index.php/NanoJournal/article/view/.7/33

22. Abstract, ibid.

23. Emergent leader Leonard Sweet authored an intellectually incomprehensible book called Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic (SpiritVenture, 1991), which exemplifies the Emergent heretical beliefs being talked about in this article. Note that Bob DeWaay warns that “I find that Emergent Church leaders do their best not to be understood, suggesting that being clever, coy, contradictory, or even provocative is a better way to help people emerge from old categories of thought into new, synthetic ones” (p. 10).

24. The enormous weight of facts backing this statement will be the topic of future Herescope posts, Lord willing. Keep us in your prayers as we write.

25. Barbara Marx Hubbard, The Revelation: Our Crisis is a Birth (Foundation for Conscious Evolution, 1993), p. 30, 31, 43. Warren Smith, in his book Reinventing Jesus Christ (Conscience Press, 2002), first exposed this woman’s crossover New Age/New Spirituality agenda, her frightening “selection process,” and her futuristic “Armageddon Alternative.”

26. Ibid, p. 101, 103, 111.

27. Ibid, p. 147, 162.

28. Ibid, p. 165.

29. See these two Herescope posts: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/03/brian-mclaren-to-speak-at-world-future.html & http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/11/coming-kingdom.html. McLaren wrote in his book Everything Must Change (p. 146) that: "The Jesus of one reading of the Apocalypse brings us to a grim resignation: the world will get worse and worse, and finally this jihadist Jesus will return to use force, domination, violence, and even torture - the ultimate imperial tools - to vanquish evil and bring peace."

30. Ibid, p. 171.

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