Evangelicals "The New Movement"

[DanB]

Help me out here. Christ obviously established a Church. This is based on truth as recorded in scripture. Believers understand that Jesus is the “Truth, Way & Life.” Now, in the past couple decades a new group of proclaiming Christians are hot on the trail for evangelizing the world. A new book “Megashift,” author Jim Rutz calls these believers, “core apostolics” or “the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God.” These Christians deny having any affiliation to the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant religions. Even though the members of this group read from the KJV of the Bible, they deny they have Protestant theology. Like a cicada, they sound as though they have been buried in the ground since the day of Christ’s resurection and now they have emerged from the ground to proclaim they have a historical claims to the first century Christians. How convenient! What’s the bug-a-boo all about?

 

[aloejamb]

Dan B,

This is exactly why I posted the thread about Zac Poonen. This group of people literally look to him as a modern apostle. According to my BIL , this group believes they have roots that go back to the time of Christ and that they were suppressed and had to go underground. Now they have reclaimed this Church. They are genuine in their love of Christ and I have to admit they are dedicated and disciplined. However, they focus on 90 percent on Fearing God and only 10 percent on His love and mercy. Their Church can be found here: www.thechurchatkent.org and www.forsakeall.com.
My BIL preaches that the Church is the whore of babylon and I don’t have to mention what they think of the Pope. So to have him come in my home and mention how “deceived we are” tends to get my dander up. I can accept that well intentioned christian believers can find salvation without the fullness of the faith (be it much more difficult and thru true ignorance) but I find it hard to believe that anyone who is bold enough to blaspheme Christ’s CHurch will get that opportunity. We pray for our misled brothers and sisters in Christ and ask that everyone else here will too. And please pray extra for my BIL who was raised catholic!
Blessings.

 

[JackmanUSC]

How does one wake up one morning and decide they figured out the real Christian faith and everybody else for the last two millenia have been wrong?

 

[Milliardo]

They’re Protestants. They don’t use the term, or they may not like the term, but their teachings are still grounded mostly on Luther and Calvin. They’re not “new”. There’s nothing “new” in what they teach. We’ve heard of them before. What they present is merely a new spin to Protestantism, but once analyzed and dissected, it turns out to be the same Protestant notions.

 

[Milliardo]

aloejamb:

According to my BIL , this group believes they have roots that go back to the time of Christ and that they were suppressed and had to go underground. Now they have reclaimed this Church.

Nothing new. Mormons, JWs, and the ocal INC (Inglesia ni Cristo, a Philippine cult) believe the same thing. Where they differ is who “reclaimed” the Church.

My BIL preaches that the Church is the whore of babylon and I don’t have to mention what they think of the Pope. So to have him come in my home and mention how “deceived we are” tends to get my dander up.

Again, the same tired argument.

As you can see, there’s nothing new to any of their claims. It’s just a brand new spin to the same arguments. We’ll also be praying for your BIL.

 

[Contarini]

Dan,

I grew up around people who had very similar attitudes. As Milliardo says, there’s nothing truly new about this. Radical Protestants (and medieval dissenters before them) have been making these claims for centuries. As a matter of fact, the groups you have in mind unquestionably do have Protestant theology–it’s just a mutated form that admittedly rejects much of what Luther and Calvin taught. In some cases these radical groups do return to some pre-Reformation understandings. For instance, one guy about 10-15 years ago wrote a book attacking eternal security and other semi-Calvinist evangelical doctrines, on the basis of his reading of the early Fathers (the pre-Constantinian ones, of course). Ironically, he wound up embracing some kind of Anglicanism (I don’t think he joined ECUSA), and one family I knew who embraced these ideas have now converted to Orthodoxy.

But most people who use this language are just radical free-church Protestants, and they’re kidding themselves when they claim otherwise.

Edwin