Rob Bell, former pastor of the emerging Mars Hill Bible Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan, said recently about “gay marriage” that “we think it’s inevitable and we are moments away from the church accepting it” (“Former Megachurch Pastor Rob Bell,” Christian Post, Feb. 17, 2015). Bell made the comment when he and his wife Kristen appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday television program to discuss their new book The ZimZum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage. Having rejected the Bible as the infallible Word of God, the Bells have lurched from one heresy to another. Their final authority is their own thinking and the pop culture of which they have deeply partaken in their zeal to be “relevant.” Bell said, “I think culture is already there and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense...” We would say, first, that “the church” that Bell is talking about is a hodgepodge of professing Christians that is no church at all in a Scriptural sense. As for being irrelevant, the churches that stand on the testimony of Scripture are the most relevant institutions on earth. They alone are standing on the rock of God’s eternal Word rather than the shifting sand of human thinking and feeling. They alone are giving a prophetic voice into the darkness of this present world. Bell is right about one thing, though. He is right that many churches will accept “gay marriage” and that we are on the cusp of a great turning point in church history. Many “churches” have already accepted homosexual marriage, and others are caving on the issue daily. The apostle John had a different message from Bell’s: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. ... And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 2:15-17; 5:19). (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2015, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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