Experiential Christianity...make it up as you go

by Lafe Tolliver

One of the defining methods of the emergent/emerging church is their acute ability to redefine words and relationships so as not to offend their targeted audience...the so called unchurched.

Without an exact time frame, the church that is not of the Lord in their orthodoxy or orthopraxy, have come to a consensus of belief that if they can redefine the mission of the church, they can reach the masses. But reach them for whom?

Does this emergent problem actually contend or believe that they have a better grasp of scriptures than the Holy Spirit of God? Do they actually believe in their heart of hearts that they are the sole possessors of truth by which they have the permission of liberty to change the boundaries of the gospel message.

And what change it is! To water down the gospel message and to throw doubt upon the non-negotiables of the faith is tantamount to outright heresy...unforgivable heresy.

Jesus who is God in the flesh is not going to alter his nature or character or divine attributes in order to placate sinful mankind. He is not going to visit these "pillars of the church" and negotiate with them because they have aught with submitting to what they believe is outdated images/beliefs about God.

When Jude indicated that we are to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints of God (Jude 3), that belief and principle was die cast in the Blood of the Lamb and backed by the Trinity.

No where do you find in the Gospels, the apostles bickering amongst themselves as to whether or not they will accept or reject the then written word of God as exemplified by the life and teachings of their Master Jesus the Christ.

Yet, what makes modern man think that he can, with polished arrogance, abrogate the fundamentals of Holy Writ to suit his own peccadilloes?

The answer lies in the fact that truth has been watered down by liberalism that it (truth) is now on a sliding scale of what works and what does not work in "your world".

If you wish to compromise the gospel as to sin or regeneration or holiness, then simply preach a different gospel to the unwary and by repeated utterances, they will accept what you say as true since they have not done their own discerning of the spirit of the speaker and what was uttered being conformed to the written Word of God. And, if you are challenged, you simply charge that the questioner is out of order or has an axe to grind or is not speaking in love.

With a flaccid gospel being presented by men and women who pose as teachers and prophets and who are accompanied by the power and manifestations of Satan (who can appear as an angel of light), their true father, these imposters led astray the weak and the lazy who refuse to be good Bereans (Acts 17:11).

Experiential Christianity is also expansive so that whatever wants it to be, it is. This allows the practitioner to engage in dubious acts and yet claim a salvific relationship with God because in their minds, they have been duped to believe that all is well with them and God.

Once truth as found in the source of truth...Jesus the Christ is allowed to be challenged on grounds that such truth was for another generation or it is not applicable in today's marketplace, error, albeit slight in nature or degree wins the day, and from then on, it is all a matter of time before that truth is seen as being optional or debatable.

The nature of unregenerate mankind is to sin and sin at will. It is the sin nature doing what it does best and that is to sin. So when the truth is presented to the sinner and that truth means he or she must repent and submit to the Lordship of Jesus the Christ, the squirming sinner either has two choices. He or she can repent and submit or they can deny the truth and substitute their own form of truth.

Experiential Christianity does not acknowledge absolutes in its worldview and much less the absolutes of the Word of God. For in the commands of God, the truth is revealed and obedience is demanded by a holy God and with no room for debate as to the righteousness of the debater.

Who is the debater of this age, or any age, that has been able to snick snarl God or been able to overturn his truths by their own invented Truths? None. Yet mankind continually tries to out best God and to take His throne away by intimating that there are other truths other than what God demands and these other competing truths should have equal standing with the Word of God.

The Antichrist's (or meaning in place of) favorite tactic is to not only question God but to place doubt in the mind of a person as to the sovereignty of God and with that doubt, truth becomes relative or experiential. The story of Genesis with Adam and Eve is the starting place of experiential Christianity. For they took their experience of trying to be equal with God as being valid and in place of God's command not to eat of the tree of good and evil.

Because if your personal unexamined experience convinces you that all is well, that is truth to you regardless of what judgment the Word of God states to that experience.

As we continue to see the church morph into acquiescing into error in order to bring in numbers and not disciples, we will begin to hear strange testimonies by these unregenerate persons of their experiences that led them to the "church" and why their experiences are not to be weighed and judged but accepted.

I believe that one of the developing challenges of the true church is to gently but firmly rebuke and repudiate these experiences as being of no value thus in effect their "experiential" born again experiences are null and void.

Whenever the false church tries to assert itself with its false message that one's experience is of value and is equal to a genuine born again experience or it tries to water down the standards of God, the satanic forces have won, for the moment, the battle of truth vs. experiential truth.