Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries offers a most enlightening article on Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren's counsel that Christians help Muslims celebrate Ramadan. David Barnhart will appear on one of Jan Markell's radio broadcasts in September. They will discuss various matters pertaining to Israel, including replacement theology. For those in the Minnesota area, Jan has a fantastic prophecy conference sheduled in October. Check out her web site.
Why Must Everything Change?Jan Markell www.olivetreeviews.org August 31, 2009
The false teachings among some prominent church leaders have no end nor does the race to unify all religions. My thanks to Mark Tooley of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, World Net Daily, and author Joel Richardson for some background here. Fasten your seat belt because now we have Christians observing Ramadan. This goes miles beyond Muslim-Christian dialogue, which is bad enough. This is actually giving respectability to those who killed 3,000 innocent Americans who are even more on our mind in this season of 9/11. Once again, I have to ask, where is the outrage? Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren is fasting during the Islamic Ramadan but is he fasting so that Muslims would come to salvation in Jesus Christ alone? And Tooley asks, "Would McLaren organize a similar fast on behalf of persecuted Christians and other victims of radical Islam? Or would that be too culturally confrontational for the post-modern evangelical who has shunned his conservative past and prefers creating common ground that creates alliances for the Left?" McLaren says on his blog: "Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting for spiritual renewal and purification. It commemorates the month during which Muslims believe Mohammed received the Quran through divine revelation, and it calls Muslims to self-control, sacrificial generosity, and solidarity with the poor, diligent reading of the Quran and intensified prayer."
He continues, "But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them."
Here we go honoring Islam again, just as they did in 2007 and 2008 with "A Common Word Between Us and You." Today's bunch of short-on-discernment leaders now observing Ramadan prove my point: Slippery slopes go only one way -- down -- and never turn around. And please tell me as an evangelical, what is it we will learn from Islam? McLaren states, "We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness. Each of us will have at least one Muslim friend who will serve as our partner in the fast. These friends welcome us in the same spirit of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness." None of that counts for eternity, Brian. It stretches credulity to watch the religious Left continue to forge unholy alliances with some who are sworn enemies of the gospel and who are burning down Christian villages around the world and cutting off the heads of other Christians. And they will continue to do the same until they hear and respond to the "good news" of Jesus Christ, which is not the purpose of the Christian Ramadan effort! Yet an underlying motive with all such efforts is to declare the God of Christianity and the god of Islam as the same. If you get nothing else, remember that when such words come out of the pulpit in your church and renounce it! Some are asking if we don't have a virtual endorsement of Islam by liberal Christianity today with a few evangelicals thrown in for good measure. Signers say, "Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century." If you hear one of them say this, challenge them with, "No, saving the lost while there is time is the central challenge and that won't happen by joining with Muslims during Ramadan." Author Joel Richardson, who has been on my radio program "Understanding the Times" on several occasions, asks the right question: "Is such an 'observance' actually tantamount to an endorsement of Islam?"
As this is written, a young former Muslim girl named Rifqa has fled her home in America, going to another state, fearing the Islamic practice of "honor killing." Her parents, she fears, want to kill her for becoming a Christian. Will Brian McLaren and those following him in this outrage confront Muslim leaders about this? Does McLaren share the "common good" of honor killings? Of course he doesn't, but by keeping quiet, he doesn't improve this deplorable situation. In McLaren's recent book, "Everything Must Change," he suggests that evangelicals must turn Left to be relevant and atone for past myopia. Many of us are grieved that churches have taken his advice, and the advice of other church leaders with skewed ideas or theology and have thus destroyed evangelicalism as we once knew it. But it's not just all about unity! McLaren believes that evangelical support for Israel is an obstacle to interfaith harmony. While largely unwilling to criticize radical Islam by name, he has condemned the "terrible, deadly, distorted, yet popular theologies associated with Christian Zionism that create bigotry and prejudice against Muslims." He urged Christian Zionists to bravely abandon their prejudice, just as white segregationists had to shed theirs 50 years ago.
Mark Tooley concludes appropriately by saying, "McLaren's interfaith ritual just further evinces the Left's chronic misunderstanding that all cultural and international conflict can be remedied through apologies, folk songs, Western guilt, and flamboyant sentimentality." That "old-time religion" we once loved is evaporating because guys like Brian McLaren and his Emergent buddies have convinced people that "everything must change." The one-world religion is literally on the horizon. Look over a fence and you will see it approaching.
View our memorial to 9/11 here. Other categories on my Web site that will be helpful in light of what I've written above include "Islam & the Arabs," "Spiritual Deception" and "Prophecy Watch."
RADIO: Note to our friends at KPDQ AM-FM -- Portland -- we will be coming to your town with our full two-hour program right after Labor Day weekend. We will air 7 to 9 AM PST on KPDQ-AM, with a rebroadcast, 5 to 7 PM Sunday. We will air the same program on KPDQ-FM Sunday from 12 Noon to 2 PM.
We headquarter out of AM980 KKMS, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Saturday, 9 to 11 AM CST with a rebroadcast Sunday 12 Noon to 2 PM. All programming is posted to our "Radio Archives" Sunday (a day earlier than before!). For podcasting, check this link. To see in what markets we air, go here.
Programming from August 29 is now posted.
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Awaiting His return,
Jan Markell
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