YOUNG EVANGELICALS BEING LEAD ASTRAY

WRITER’S BLOC

THE RELEVANCE OF MILLENNIAL MARKETING

Exclusive: Jim Fletcher warns about young evangelicals being led astray

Few understand the myriad ways in which leftist ideology targets our youth in America. This begins with religious worldview. At the moment, almost all the narrative gatekeepers are left-wing in their philosophical orientation.

Witness Cameron Strang. The 35-ish publisher of Relevant magazine is reaching a vast audience through his print and digital publishing … empire.

(Interestingly, Strang is also introducing the sometimes-weird world of Charismatic thought into more mainstream channels. For example, while touting writers like Henri Nouwen and entertainers like Jim Gaffigan in the new issue of Relevant, Strang also runs ads for wacky Pentecostal/Charismatic televangelists.)

In the new issue of Relevant, Strang’s editorial team has run a story titled “8 Books to Read When You’re Struggling to Read the Bible: How some writers can push you toward God.”

So … the title is the first indication this isn’t going to go well, at least in terms of introducing Millennials to actual biblical thought.

For example, Addie Zierman promotes the work of Phyllis Tickle, Nouwen and Frederick Buechner. Tickle has been a key Emergent spirituality promoter, the late Nouwen was a universalist, and Buechner, a liberal scholar who studied under, among others, Paul Tillich (who also influenced … Hillary Clinton).

About Nouwen, Zierman writes:

I love everything that Henri Nouwen writes, but this little reader features little bite-sized bits of his letters and writings that are perfect for reading over a cup of coffee. His stuff on community, silence and vocation have been game-changers for me.

About Tickle’s “The Divine Hours,” Zierman is also enthusiastic:

I love liturgy, but as a lifelong evangelical, the regular Book of Common Prayer still feels difficult for me. But Phyllis Tickle offers a contemporary version in three parts (Springtime, Summertime, and Autumn and Wintertime) I love it. It’s mostly really big swaths of text from the Bible, but it’s easier for me to read the verses when I know where and what to read and am guided through it day by day.

Tickle has been a key pied piper for fellow writers Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones (who announced two years ago that he simply no longer believes in original sin).

This is what is being pumped into the bloodstream of young evangelicals in America. Of course, the left loves to distort labels for their own disingenuous purposes, and many call themselves “evangelical,” all the while knowing they are nothing like traditional evangelicals.

In her Relevant piece, Zierman shares a revealing insight she had when it came to actual Bible study: “If you were going to spend time with God, it involved ‘getting into the Word’ or, if you were extra serious, ‘digging into the Word.’ It involved reading through the Bible in a year or at least reading a little bit every day. And it involved coming away from that reading with some new flash of insight that you could apply in your daily life and wax ad nauseum about during student-led Bible study.”

This kind of marginalizing of straight Bible study is popular today among leftist elites, all of whom are working tirelessly to transform the American Evangelical Church into a left-wing spirituality entity. In my view, they are succeeding wildly. Promoting radical leftists’ writings, in a variety of formats and delivery systems, is helping win the day with Millennials.

Zierman further provides insight into her progressive thinking: “My husband, Andrew, loves reading the Bible. Loves it. His favorite studies are the kind where they go through some book of the Bible verse by verse and talk through the history, the cultural context and the theology of it. He likes to figure out the wiring of the thing – the ways this miracle that Jesus did over here connects to that prophecy there and that verse there. He opens the whole thing up like a surgeon, and he looks at the guts of it all working together, and he gets a rush. A high. He comes away from those times feeling full to the brim with God.”

And then this: “It’s taken me about a decade to admit it, but here it is: I’m not wired like that. I love the Bible, but the truth is that most of the time, I feel overwhelmed and unmoored when I’m dropped smack-dab in the middle of that big book.”

That’s why she needs contemplative writers and thinkers. Those who can, at the drop of a hat, virtually effortlessly, jettison the plain-sense meaning of Scripture and instead advocate for metaphor and myth in reading the Bible.

The result is that young people no longer believe in the historicity of Scripture. And that’s scary.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/the-relevance-of-millennial-marketing/#XdZCFWzs0YE4q1Mo.99

My comments: There is much Perversion of the TRUTH in the World and among those who claim to be "Christian." "WHO THEN CAN BE SAVED?" "Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is IMPOSSIBLE, But with God all things are Possible." (Matt. 19:25, 26) God Almighty will Save ALL who will be Saved--None shall be MISSING." (Jeremiah 23:4).