March 29, 2011

Some if not all may have heard of the recent controversy involving the emergent church teacher Rob Bell and his new book Love Wins which teaches the doctrine known as Christian Universalism—the belief that all men and eventually even the devil and his angels will be saved and restored out of the Lake of Fire.

This doctrine is formed out of a Passionist (humanist) projection of the “loving” nature and character of God based on appeasement of human offense and reason applied to scripture in an effort to dismiss or re-translate all that the vast Scripture cosmology otherwise says to contradict that projection.    

Christian Universalism is as great a danger to the aspiring kingdom discipleship priesthood of overcomers as is Law-keeping righteousness. The teaching has been dogging the steps of the Pentecostal Restoration from its rebirth in the Latter Rain Movement 60 years ago, though it originates in the first centuries of the church. I have already written somewhat about this doctrine before, though many of you may not have read it. I have also cited it in my Distinctive Teachings page.

While there is room for disagreement among prophetic kingdom teachers regarding many issues that still allows for preserving of unity with them, Christian Universalism is not an issue that allows for continued unity. This is because Christian Universalism has profound negative spiritual consequences for both its promoters and its hearers under the current state of spiritual warfare that exists between us and the enemy.

By eliminating the permanence of the consequences for failure to come to faith in Christ in this life, the hidden spiritual military objectives of the doctrine are:

1)    to neutralize the impermeable wall of enmity that exists between the church and the world, thereby diluting the church’s distinct identity from the world as a singular beacon of the Truth and a holy Bride unto Christ;

2)    to neutralize the church’s ability to function as an effective life line to call men out of the world to Christ as the one and only way to salvation now;

3)    to otherwise neutralize the church’s ability to maintain an effective mind of spiritual war against powers to which it believes it will eventually be reconciled (The Tokyo Rose effect); and
 

4)    to ultimately enable the church by faith to receive satan back into the kingdom as a lost brother now (the Bathsheba-Adonijah effect).  

In the end, the ultimate subject of attention and attraction in this doctrine is not Christ and His Destiny, but satan and his destiny (Wake up, Wake up…If that realization doesn’t set off alarm "bells" in your spirit, nothing will.)    

In short, by changing the immutable projections God has laid down regarding future eternity, the doctrine of Christian Universalism is able to change the battlefield of the “now” in which all the testings and provings regarding future eternity are made. It is an exceedingly clever tactic. The doctrine succeeds by preying upon the natural aversion to spiritual warfare and unpleasantness of separation from the world that all of us in the kingdom church experience.

Yet there is no excuse, and no excuse will be accepted in the last day for promoting this teaching. Anyone inside the kingdom of God who actively promotes this doctrine is guilty of spiritual treason and will suffer great loss at the judgment. I’m sorry to be that strong and blunt about it, but that’s the way it is. And for that reason it is imperative to separate from anyone actively advancing this doctrine. He is a false teacher.

Chris Anderson

3/11