The Purpose Is Driving God Away (Part 2)

By Ken Silva

Apprising Ministries

Let’s consider that the Bible unquestionably tells us God is love (e.g. 1 John 4:8). And because it also tells us that – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, [1] then it logically follows that teaching, rebuking, correcting and training must also be a part of Christ’s command to love one another covered in Part One.

Now we examine the issue further by following another command the Master gave to His Church – “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” [2] I’ve also covered this elsewhere, but notice that Jesus also lets us know love’s proper priority as He says – “this is the first commandment; as in the most important. Therefore to love as Jesus loved begins with a love for God above anything or anyone else.

A Profitable Morning Devotion

This brings us back to my meditation on love in the Bible during my morning devotion. As I read Tozer on Christian Leadership I believe the Lord helped me to come to see something so very important concerning this whole issue of the human potential movement that has actually formed the base for the ECoD. For you see all this dutiful daughter has done is to simply follow the man-pleasing footsteps her self-righteous mother the long apostate Church of Rome in a tragic violation of this Scripture:

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. [3]

Remember that as A.W. Tozer is writing evangelicalism, which has ultimately proven to be humanism coated with Christian theology, was still young. The positive centered on self message of Norman Vincent Peale was heavily influencing a relative unknown “minister” by the name of Robert Schuller as well as his friend Billy Graham, who at this time was still rising to his status as religious icon. It all seemed so simple then, so innocent, but the sharp spiritual eyes of the Lord’s watchmen saw through it. Tozer would write:

We in the churches seem unable to rise above the fiscal philosophy which rules the business world; so we introduce into our church finances the psychology of the great secular institutions so familiar to us all and judge a church by its financial report much as we judge a bank or a department store...

The point I am trying to make here is that while money has a proper place in the total life of the church militant, the tendency is to attach to it an importance that is far greater than is biblically sound or morally right. The average church has so established itself organizationally and financially that God is simply not necessary to it. So entrenched is its authority and so stable are the religious habits of its members that God could withdraw Himself completely from it and it could run on for years on its own momentum.

The Spirit Has Withdrawn

Can you see it now? This was to become the evangelicalism of good old positive American business savvy and know-how “that God could withdraw Himself completely from it and it could run on for years on its own momentum.” All the time there we were looking ahead for the “falling away” and it had likely already begun. So no wonder this apostasy seems to be spreading so far and so fast. Could it actually be that it has already been happening and the Purpose Driven juggernaut with its “fiscal philosophy which rules the business world” is just the logical outgrowth of this human potential movement so many Christian leaders have chosen instead of the Christ they say they serve? Maybe all that is really happening is that God is opening our eyes to what had already begun.

No wonder the purpose is driving God away so fast, the Holy Spirit has likely been grieving for years and with the most grievous mistake made by so many Christians in so easily accepting Rick Warren as their new high priest may have been enough for God to abandon evangelicalism to itself. O sure Warren is going to North Korea, allegedly to speak to “millions.” The question is: Speak to them about what? Men and women, if this man can’t even preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ within the freedoms afforded in this country, do you seriously think Rick Warren is going to do so in that nation held captive by atheistic communism and their “god” Kim Jong II?

From the mouth of one of evangelicalism’s best loved prophets, Billy Graham, whose mantle Warren has received, I read him say:

Much of the world is callous and indifferent toward mankind’s poverty and distress. This is due largely to the fact that for many people there has never been a rebirth. The love of God has never been shed abroad in their hearts. [4]

When we finish this up in Part 3, I’ll show you how a misapplied love of man even emerges from Billy Graham to help you see the influences of Peale and Schuller upon this rapidly tarnishing religious icon. And this is where we discover yet another of the roots from which the Warrens and the Osteens are now springing forth as man-pleasing weeds in God’s wheat field.

By Ken Silva Click here for bio and archived articles