In his new online updated book Reinventing Jesus Christ: The New Gospel, ex-New Ager Warren Smith discusses the growing deception in the evangelical world regarding New Spirituality. New Spirituality is nothing more than a re-make of old-time occult Theosophy, and certain neoevangelical leaders seem to find common ground with its tenets.
In the Chapter 8 Update “The Armageddon Alternative” Smith discusses the new “ambassadors” of “peace.” The original chapter is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the real PEACE PLAN lurking beneath the “peace” rhetoric. This updated material brings in a few names of key evangelical leaders who have also proposed revising eschatologies.
What follows is a brief excerpt from the Chapter 8 Update:
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Deceived Christian Leaders
Yet, despite all of this, Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren – just like Barbara Marx Hubbard and her New Age colleagues – is now suggesting that there is “an alternative” to Armageddon. McLaren, and a host of other “emerging” church leaders, are on the cutting edge of introducing New Age concepts into the church. In an on-line article entitled “Emergent Delusion” about Brian McLaren and his popular book A Generous Orthodoxy, Pastor Bob DeWaay explains this emergent movement’s teachings:
Brian McLaren recently appeared in Time Magazine’s list of the twenty five most influential evangelicals…. His selection to the list is based on his role as a key leader in the “emergent” (sometimes called “emerging”) church – a movement popular with young people…. In A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren tells the story of how he has created a unique version of Christianity by gleaning parts he likes from many sources. The result is what he calls “emergent” Christianity.
The teachings found in A Generous Orthodoxy may sound very unusual…. The kingdom as envisioned by McLaren involves holistic, planetary “salvation” without any apocalyptic intervention of God…. Personal salvation from hell is disparaged as a wrongly motivated “consumer product” that distracts from the more important issue of saving the “whole world”… . (8)
In his latest controversial book The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything, Brian McLaren describes the book of Revelation as a book of possibilities. He states that its “prophetic” passages are conditional and that the awful future described in Revelation can be changed. Sounding more like a New Age leader than a Christian pastor, he proposes a peaceful “alternative” to Armageddon. (9)
Ironically, to make his point, McLaren quotes an evangelical leader by the name of Jay Gary. (10) Gary was once the secretary of a World Future Society subcommittee that gave Barbara Marx Hubbard a special award for her outstanding contributions to the field of religion. Hubbard was a co-founding board member of the World Future Society and she still sits on their board of directors. Jay Gary, who remains a member of the World Future Society, was listed along with Hubbard as two of the speakers for the 2006 World Future Society Conference. The World Future Society is an organization of esoteric and New Age futurists from around the world, founded in 1966 for the purpose of creating a new international governance structure. Its global leaders like Barbara Marx Hubbard, John Naisbitt, Harlan Cleveland, and Jay Gary believe they can envision new future scenarios for Earth, and work to create an “alternative to Armageddon.”
It is therefore quite interesting that Jay Gary, the man Brian McLaren was citing as the author of an authoritative article on alternative futures, was now coming forth in the evangelical community again. Gary had previously been exposed over ten years ago by a number of Christian writers as someone who was obviously and openly aligned with top-level New Age leaders, including Robert Muller – former Assistant Secretary-General to the United Nations and well-known New Age author. In 1995 I wrote an extensive article about Jay Gary and his New Age associations entitled “Sign of the Times: Evangelicals and New Agers Together” which was published in several Christian publications. (11)
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Warren Smith continues on in this Chapter 8 Update, noticing disconcerting parallels between Brian McLaren’s and Neale Donald Walsch’s phraseology about the future.
The World Future Society, mentioned above in connection with neoevangelical leader Jay Gary, has been cited in previous Herescope posts regarding Willis Harman, who met with evangelical leaders in the late 1970s to help them develop new future scenarios. (For more information, use the blog search feature at the upper left corner.) Knowing this, it is no wonder that modern neoevangelicals such as Jay Gary and Brian McLaren are suggesting variant eschatological worldviews.
In this context of “ambassadors” for “peace” it is important to recognize what the World Future Society is really all about. Dr. Dennis Cuddy, a noted authority on the World Future Society, recently described the World Future Society:
The World Future Society (WFS) is an organization of futurists from around the world. It has held a number of General Assemblies as well as specialized conferences since its founding in 1966. On its board of directors have been New Ager Barbara Marx Hubbard, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, author John Naisbitt, government official Harlan Cleveland, and globalist Maurice Strong. The WFS has supported such people as management guru Peter Drucker and, in turn, has been supported by individuals such as psychologist B. F. Skinner, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and corporations such as General Electric, Control Data, General Motors, IBM, Xerox and Weyerhaeuser.
When WFS president Edward Cornish was asked about implantable radio locators (microchips), he said he believed initially they would be voluntary. However, he then acknowledged that “things that are voluntary today have a way of becoming compulsory tomorrow.”
Al Gore has been among the hosts at WFS General Assemblies where such topics as “Media Communication As An Agent For Change” have been discussed. And WFS conferences have included “Worldview ’84” where attendees discussed transforming nation-states into a New World Order through “management by crisis,” when in a “moment of critical instability” the nation-state would collapse and networking groups would form a replacement society.
In a 1994 conference, participants discussed “Creating the 21st Century: Institutions and Social Change.” And on March 3, 1998, President Bill Clinton wrote a letter of “greetings to everyone” attending the WFS annual conference, in which he said: “Today is a time of extraordinary opportunity for the peoples of the world as old barriers fall and a new and truly global community emerges.” At the WFS annual conference for 2000, its Council member J. Orstrom Moller went even further when he declared: “The problems to be dealt with at the international level require a brand new design…(which) must be some kind of world governance enabling the international community to tackle these challenges without being restricted by old-fashioned concepts such as nationalism and national sovereignty.…In this process the international community must face awkward questions such as…in which cases are international action warranted even if the nation-state does not want it.”
The Truth:
“Thus saith the LORD of Hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the Prophets who prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. They say still unto them who despise Me, The LORD has said, You shall have peace; and they say unto every one who walks after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.” (Jeremiah 23:16-17)