Missions outreaches, and individuals closely connected with them, have
strange associations and new doctrines
for the coming millennium.
”I dream That the third millennium Will be declared and made Humanity’s First Millennium of Peace."
Two complementary movements within the church are preparing God’s people for deception at an unprecedented scale: today’s neglect of Biblical truth as an authoritative standard and the seductive call to global spirituality in a new millennium of peace and unity. Both are shaping a church that will welcome an all-inclusive global spirituality and a counterfeit world spiritual kingdom that promises security and oneness to all - except those who resist. First, today’s atmosphere of unquestioning tolerance has undermined the authority of Scriptures as a standard for testing personal beliefs as well as public teaching by Christian leaders. Afraid to be judged legalistic or exclusive, pastors and authors shun unpopular Biblical standards. Some have redefined sin, replacing traditional sins like homosexuality and adultery with a politically correct emphasis on intolerance, injustice and insufficient love for self. Fueled by popular books such as Girzone’s Jushua and Jushua’s Friends as well as new interpretations of Scriptures, this movement twists God’s Word to fit contemporary values. Using inclusive labels like spirituality rather than Christianity,it broadens the boundaries of God’s family far beyond the influence of the cross. Distracted from memorizing and meditating on God’s Word, people neither have nor use Scriptures as their standard for truth and reality. God’s warning in 2 Timothy 4:3-5 fits our times:
Second, the seductive call to global spirituality in a new millennium of peace and unity has found a ready audience in today’s Biblically illiterate culture. New groups and coalitions are sprouting across America, beckoning Christians to forget about end time warnings about a great apostasy - and prepare for a bright new future in a coming millennium of global bliss. If this was an obscure movement led by cultic, New Age teachers, it could be readily dismissed. But its organizers and promoters are respected Christian pastors and authors, men who command a following and whom few dare question.
This article will take a look at several examples of this movement to prepare to celebrate the year 2000, among them, The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the Open Church Ministries, and the March for Jesus.
Christians and New Agers
Plan Joint Celebrations for AD 2000.
In his AD 2000 Bimillenial Research Report (March-April 1992), Jay Cary, a leader in the Christian world evangelization movement and Executive Director of the BimillEnnial Global Interaction Network (BEGIN) and Celebration 2000, announced the “Key People” involved in planning the millenial celebrations: himself, Paul Guest, and Robert Muller, chancellor of United Nations’ University of Peace in Costa Rica who attributes his global education philosophy to the occult teachings of spirit guide Djwhal Khul.
Why should this strange partnership alarm Christians everywhere?
Who else is involved?
An advertisement in ‘Christianity Today’ introduced Campus Crusade’s
New Life 2000 conference and the Campus Crusade International Committee
of Reference.
Inside a large circle, it listed the diverse committee members - respected
leaders such as
Billy Graham,
Leighton Ford,
James Boice,
Richard Halverson,
C. Peter Wagner,
R.C. Sproul and
Os Guiness...
as well as more questionable names such as...
Robert Schuller,
Norman Vincent Peale and
Jack Van Impe.
Jay Gary and his wife Olgy live in Colorado Springs. Together they authored "The Countdown Has Begun" - a book which documents his Biblical beliefs and working relationships with many respected Christian leaders and organizations involved with world evangelization. He seems to be a passionate and tireless soldier for Christ compelled by one essential God-given purpose: to bring the gospel to every corner of the world by AD 2000. His credentials as a sincere servant of God seem beyond reproach.
Why then would he join forces with Robert Muller, the former under-secretary of the United Nations, whose spiritual tutors include former Buddhist U.N. leader U Thant, former occult Masonic leader Foster Bailey, and Alice Bailey, his wife who channeled the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul?
The World Goodwill Newsletter published by Lucis (formerly Lucifer) Press, which was founded by Foster and Alice Bailey, offers a clue. It describes BEGIN, the global networking organization founded and directed by Jay Gary, and endorses the relationship between Gary and Muller.
The Bi-MillEnnial Global Interaction Network (BEGIN) is a group of concerned world citizens who circulate information and ideas on celebrating the year 2000 as a planetary jubilee with an agenda of hope. The question which BEGIN seeks to address is: “How can the thousands of bi-millennial celebrations of life and civilizations truly leave a legacy for the entire human family that will endure the test of time?”
In a letter to World Goodwill, BEGIN Executive Director Jay E. Gary writes:
United Nations Proclamation.
In his latest book, The Birth of a Global Civilization, former Assistant
Secretary-General, Robert Muller, proposes the United Nations proclaim
the year 2000 as an International Year of Thanksgiving, preceded by
“unprecedented thinking, action, and determination to solve our remaining
problems in order to enter the third millennium with a clean slate.” He
calls upon the UN to establish a Preparatory Committee which would stimulate
and coordinate celebration 2000 preparations among the professions, institutions,
media, business, citizen organizations, religion and the arts.
World Parliament to look for 21st Century Agenda. ...
With the help of Dr. Gerald Barney, director of the Institute for the
21st Century, these conferences [held in preparation for the Chicago centenary
of Parliament of World Religions] will address the role of spirituality
in meeting challenges which confront the planet.
ABC’s for the 21st Century.
Sherry Schiller, head of Countdown 2001, an education consulting group,
feels that most education commissions, reports, and goals which target
2000, have sought only to reform education, whereas the challenge approaching
the 21st Century is to transform it.
Jay Gary’s Bimillennial Research Report closes with a booklist and order form. The recommended books include Muller’s" The Birth of a Global Civilization", Isaac Asimov’s "The March of the Millennia", and "Global Responsibility" by Hans Kung, the German theologian reponsible for drafting a global ethics statement at the recent Parliament of World Religions.
Apparently Jay Gary’s goals match those of Robert Muller. No doubt, his endorsement of Muller and his global philosophy has opened some high-level Christian doors to the New Age global agenda. World evangelization is not new phenomenon to Muller, who has been persuading world leaders for decades to follow his spiritual path. Accoarding to Lucis Press’ World Goodwill Newsletter....
In 1978 Robert Muller and Margaret Mead challenged the people of the world to prepare for the year 2000 by a
When Robert Muller talks about a “Spiritual Renaissance,” he doesn’t mean a Christian revival. He is referring to a unified global religion that will join all people and nations under the benevolent reign of spiritually “wise” UN leaders. He envisions a world of spiritual beings evolving through reincarnation and fulfilling the law of karma - doctrines he learned from Buddhist monk U Thant, former head of the United Nations. Along with Al Gore and other leaders who call themselves Christians, he bases his view of the future on Teillard de Chardin’s teaching about man’s spiritual evolution toward an Omega point of perfect unity. Unlike Jay Gary, Muller has everything to gain and nothing to lose by his alliance with Christian evangelists. His occult beliefs can easily assimilate other gods and conform them to his occult worldview. Christianity cannot make similar compromises without rejecting the uniqueness of Christ, severing its relationship with God, and losing its true identity.
We had better heed God’s warning in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18: KJV...
The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
Lausanne was launched by Billy Graham in 1974. At the first Lausanne
Congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, Dr. Graham challenged the Church to
complete the task of world evangelization by the end of the century. Lausanne
II, held in Manila during ten days in July, 1989, reinforced this vital
message to its more than 400 participants. Jay Gary has served the Lausanne
Committee since the mid-eighties. His 1989 book, Countdown 2000 indicates
that:
The Lausanne movement was to serve a vital function of awakening the
Church to the urgency of ...(`Evangelism of the Lost'). We believed the
intentions of Billy Graham and other faithful visionaries and organizers
were to serve God and to share the gospel everywhere. Yet, some strange
concepts and ideas have crept into “The New Lausanne.”
Ponder the following disturbing statements from Lausanne’s magazine,
World Evangelization (September, 1993): ...
Unfortunately....contemporary Evangelicals...have been influenced by a dispensational theology that has given them a Gospel without a Kingdom. [Notice this same argument in the section below on the Open Church], and by a Western world view that has deprived them of a holistic understanding of human beings and the world. [Samuel Escobar, Professor at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, talking about “The New Theological Agenda” and a message by Norberto Saracco, a pentecostal pastor from Argentina].
First we have the example of Robert de Nobili (1577-1656)...who
went to India as a Jesuit missionary ...
he passed for a guru, and Indian saintly figure, and even for
a sannyasi, a wild, holy man, adopting
Hindu customs and religious terminology to define his own personal
piety. Matteo Ricci...adopted the opposite path to de Nobili by assimilating
into upper-class Chinese society during the Ming dynasty...
and eventually undergoing a profound cultural transformation
as a Confucian scholar. It is also apparent...that Christian missions expanded
and deepened pluralism - in language, social encounter
and ethnic participation in the Christian movement.
[Dr. Lamin Sanneh, Professor of Missions and World Christianity and
Professor of History at Yale College.]
* God is now moving.
* He has been preparing over the last several decades a new kind of
Church.
* In the next ten-fifteen years, there’s going to be some explosive
growth.
...The whole country is rushing into the
Kingdom of God.
* The whole infrastructure of church bodies has to be changed and prepared
to accommodate great numbers of new converts. * We’ve spent the last two
thousand years complicating Christianity....
* The Church has got to restructure itself seriously.
* We have not seen nor preached the Kingdom of God.
* We haven’t really seen the Church yet.
* We will see in the 21st century a recreation of a dynamic of the
Church that we saw in the 1st century.
* It will be like a dam breaking.
* Gatherings of tens of thousands of believers in stadiums.
* The most glorious days the Church has ever known are still ahead
of us.
The following statement sounds like the New Age hologram hypotheses:
* Every cell in our body carries two codes: the code of the cell and
the code of the organizm - the whole.Theoretically,you can make a whole
from one tiny part, because the code is there. I believe it’s true in God’s
work. I believe every healthy Christian individual has both his personal
code - or plan or calling - but he also instinctively knows he’s part of
a larger thing, and the code of the whole is in him, so that if you only
had one Christian and a Bible preaching, you would have a New Testament
church as he was added to.
* Since mid 70s there has been an amazing awakening in pockets here
and there and amoving together of converging lives, as you mentioned, and
so there is a Gideons Army, a remnant waking up, that is going to, in 30
or 40 years from now, when these home school kids, when all of this big
stuff, the big prayer movements, the prophetic movement, the political
activist movement, the unity movement, the whole bit, when all of this
congeals in the next 10-15 years, there’s going to be some explosive growth
- not only in evangelism and personal holiness - but whole countries are
going to change and just come rushing into the Kingdom of God.
* In the Church of the future, God will touch us and turn us into the
lions we are supposed to be, and give us the freedom to serve Him in far
wider realms the unexplored and forbidden lands of high spiritual adventure.
* ...there’s a need for change - and the megachurch announces the need
for two kinds of change: One is a change in our thinking - our constructs
of what Gold is trying to do and how we will go about doing it. And that
leads to a change in morphosis or form.
* I see this as an identity change issue. And people who are coming
to our churches tend to see themselves as spectators...vs. being ministers
themselves. And that will take an entirely new vantage point from which
to see ourselves.
* We should discover that every locale on earth, and every culture,
and every matrix, there should be an indigenous organic way that the church
expresses itself. Closing statement by David Bradshaw or Jim Rutz:
* Do all the high goals in the future church sound unrealistic to you?
Under the status quo they would be. But remember, we’re talking about a
revamped worship service that could transform your people like a cold shower.
You won’t have many spiritual blobs that show up once a week, then vanish.
You’ll have people of action, concerned participants. Powerful loving disciples
who are taking their places as leaders in the battle force under the Commander
of the armies of heaven. Let’s stop playing church. The time has come to
end our 1700 year experiment in spectator Christianity. Like a doting parent,
God our Father is glad to take whatever He can get in the way of worship,
but ... He would be a whole lot happier for once - just once in His life
- seeing Christians were allowed to stand to his feet say, “I love you
Lord, you mean everything to me.”
The Open Church Ministries is one of the many ministries located in Colorado Springs that are now teaching these new beliefs about the supposed necessity of radically transforming the Church for the 21st century. The book, "The Open Church", by James T. Rutz, further expounds on these new doctrinal understandings of the kingdom, the structure of the church, and an anticipated coming revival.
The Jesus March.
This is another fast-spreading catchy movement which started in England.
It’s leaders,
We don’t know what happens when we declare the victory of Jesus
into the cosmos - what we do know is something happens. (p. 140).
[Roger Forster]
...we began to notice that a change took place in the heavens
- the awareness was subjective, but others also noticed it. (p.19) [Roger
Forster (1974)]
...the aim was to mobilize Christians to proclaim the name of
Jesus and to pronounce the defeat of the spiritual forces entrenched in
the capital. (p.28) [Gerald Coates (9187)]
Tricia Tillen also presented the following information in "Mainstream":
When Jesus Christ becomes incarnate in the midst of every small
group of people of 400 to 1000, then
the last practical and measurable goal has been reached towards
making a disciple of that nation...
[Wherever they go, they will plant] a group of people who are
incarnating Christ in their local neighborhood.[Emphasis added].
Paul Crouch’s Super-Church:
In his October, 1993 newsletter, Paul Crouch condemns those who
examine current teachings in the light
of Scriptures as wolves among the flock, false prophets, false
teachers and antichrists. He quotes 2 Peter 2:3 (“their damnation slumbers
not”). But the future for the kingdom-builders is different. No plagues
will touch them and “when this blood-washed throng finally realizes who
we are and arises as that mighty
army that no man can number, His kingdom will finally come...”
[Emphasis added]
Faith teacher Ulf Ekman:
“The church of the nineties will not be a weak church, it will
be a strong church ... there will be love in it -
a love of purity and right...that will eliminate rebellion. It
will be a forceful church, a kingly church, an influential and attacking
church - even a military church - single-minded in purpose, zealous and
absolutely fanatical. [Emphasis added] (from address at Faith
’90 titled “A Faith that Takes a Nation).
John Hinkle.
Pastor of Christ Church in Los Angeles claimed that God spoke
audibly to him and told him that the cleansing of the earth will take place
in June 1994.(It didn’t happen).
Target Earth.
It would be easy to dismiss these examples as notable exceptions.
However, look at Derek Prince’s outline
of last days events from a book on world evangelization prepared
for Lausanne II titled Target Earth. The Necessity of Diversity in a Holistic
Perspective on World Missions. The Author/editor, Frank Caleb Janssen,
lives in Colorado Springs and is a friend of the Garys. He is also one
of the contributors to the Open Church audio cassette. Note the strange
theology that is intermixed with global missions strategy.
1. A Latter Rain Revival leading to a vast end-times harves in
which countless missions will be saved. (16)
2. Parallel with this, a severe judgement from God on all who
resist the “revival”.
(Including us? A “cleansing”?)
3. As a result of these events, the kingdom will be brought forth
on earth, then consummated by the personal return of Jesus.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Many, many more examples could be provided, raising serious questions about the unorthodox beliefs on the coming millennium held by some of our esteemed Christian leaders who are connected to global evangelization.
Endnotes:
1. Mike Taylor, “Bringing in Whose Kingdom?” Features, July, 1993. 12.
2. See article on The Message by Eugene Peterson.
3. Paul Guest of the World Association for Celebrating the Year 2000,
London, U.K.
4. Jay and Olgy Gary, The Countdown Has Begun (Rockville, VA:AD 2000
Global Service Office, 1989);
5. For more complete background information on Jay Gary see Christian
Conscience articles 5/95; 4/96 & 6/96.
5. World Goodwill Newsletter, Lucis Press, 1993. No. 3. p. 7.
6. Ibid. }
7. Eugene Peterson,”Spirit Quest”, Christianity Today No. 8, 1993,
27.
8. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance:Ecology and the Human Spirit. (Boston:Houghton
Mifflin, 1992).
9. Robert Muller, New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 159-165.
10. Gary, 8.
11. Gerald Coates, Robert Forster, Lyn Green and Graham Kendrick, March
for Jesus (Eastbourne, England, Kingsway Publications, 1992) 66.
12. Mainstream, Winter 1993. Box 23, Belper, Derbys. DE56 1QR, UK.
13. For more information about critical mass and the influential myth
about the hundredth monkey read chapter five in Your Child and the New
Age.
14. Jim Montgomery, Dawn 2000,page 13, 50. Quoted in Mainstream, Winter
1993.
15. Frank Caleb Janssen, Target Earth (Pasadena, Global Mapping International,
1989), 168.
16. For an explanation of Latter Rain beliefs, read Strange Fire by
Travers and Jewel van der Merwe. Send $10 to Discernment Ministries, PO
Box 129, Lapeer, M1 48446.
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