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Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith (http://www.fightingforthefaith.com) analyzes the false doctrine taught by Rick Warren on Oprah's LifeClass.
Okay, so this is part two of our coverage of Rick Warren's losing poker hand on Oprah's Life Class. And what I want to do at the, before we get into, we're going to take a look at card number two today.
But before we do that, I actually want to play for you what the five cards are, then let Rick Warren explain it to you. Okay. And the reason I want to do that is, well, to ask the simple question. If this is a biblical teaching, okay, a true biblical teaching, how come pastors going all the way back to the first century church, okay, at the time of the apostles, and then into the writings of the ancient church fathers, you know, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Polycarp, you know, those guys, and, you know, Augustine and, yeah, and moving Cyprian of Alexandria, you know, you know, people like that.
How come they never taught about these five cards? Okay, that's kind of the bugging question that should be bugging you. Okay, if this is, if Rick Warren, if what he's really teaching is true Christianity, true doctrine, truly what the Bible teaches, then don't you think the pastor should have been teaching it all along?
Now, the reason I ask this is because, well, the setup for all of this is that these five poker cards are based on a sermon that Rick Warren preached at Saddleback and that Oprah either listened to or watched online or was in attendance.
We're not exactly sure on the details on that, but Oprah was struck by this particular sermon and Rick Warren was invited on Oprah's Life Class to teach it. So, let me have Rick Warren explain to you what the five cards are.
We'll throw a little Oprah in there just to keep you reminded of the fact that he's teaching this at Oprah's Life Class. But here's Rick Warren explaining card number one. Here we go.
Tonight's Life Class with Pastor Rick is all about winning the hand you're dealt in life. So we're going to play a little poker with Pastor Rick. You say five cards that can make up our identity. So what's first?
Well, the first card is your chemistry. I call it your chemistry. And your chemistry involves your DNA, your hormones, your biology, your health, your strength, your weakness. It's your body, because everything you're going to do in life, you're going to do through your body.
And if your body's in pain, you've got to deal with that first. Shakespeare said, it's hard to be a philosopher with a toothache.
Okay, so Rick Warren says that card number one, he calls it your chemistry. So here's the question I have again. If this is really a biblical teaching, why haven't Christian pastors been teaching about these five cards for millennia?
Here's him explaining now card number two.
The second card in the hand you're dealt, I call your connections. Now your connections are your relationships. And we all know when your relationships are bad, you feel bad. When your relationships are good, you feel good.
The disconnection from other people, the connection is a large determiner of your happiness. Now, we were wired to be connected to each other. In fact, the very first thing God says in the Garden of Eden is, it's not good for man to be alone.
In other words, we're made for relationships. We're made to be connected. Life stinks when you're disconnected.
Okay, so card number two, so you get chemistry and then connections. Here's card number three.
The third card, and none of these you can control. You didn't control your chemistry. You don't control your first connections. You can't control later in life. You can make healthy choices there. But the third is your circumstances, and you certainly don't control those.
The things that life throws at you, the things that are done to you.
Okay, so chemistry, connections, circumstances.
Here's card number four. Now the fourth card is I call your consciousness. Interesting. Your consciousness is the way you talk to yourself. Ooh, good. Your consciousness is the story you tell yourself.
Remember when I was talking earlier about autopilot? Yes. I can tell you're autopilot. Finish this sentence 10 times.
It's just like me to be. Okay, so chemistry, connections. I forget the third, and consciousness. Okay, there's all C words. Now here's the last card, and I'll let Oprah summarize all of the previous cards.
I missed one. She's getting old, creeping into creptude. I should have written this down. Anyway, but here's Oprah summarizing, and then Rick Warren giving us the last card. Here we go.
Chemistry, connections, circumstances, and consciousness. All hands you are dealt. Right. Okay. You say the fifth card makes or breaks your entire hand. What do you all think it is?
Very good. You got a smart group. Smart group. Choices. Choices are the wild card, and the wild card can change the suit and the number of any other card.
Only if you're playing crazy eights. Okay.
So I may have been dealt certain things in my chemistry, and certain things in my connections, and certain things in my circumstances, and things I didn't even control, and things that people said to me that were put into my mind, tapes and things like that.
But one of the greatest gifts God gave us besides Jesus himself is the gift of free choice.
Okay, so choices. Okay. So those are the five cards. So here's the question I have. Okay, this was based on a sermon. Keep coming back to the question, and you need to answer it. Okay. If this is really a biblical teaching, why haven't Christian pastors been preaching this same message for the last 2 ,000 years?
Well, the answer is simple. This isn't a biblical message, but this was what he preached at his church. He preached about these five cards, and notice he says, I call them. I call them. I call them. I call them.
I call them. What does the Bible call them? Well, the reality is this. The Bible doesn't teach this. So at its core, what we're dealing with here is, well, a typical Rick Warren maneuver. Rick Warren teaching what Rick Warren wants to teach, not what the Scriptures teach, not what the Bible says, not what God has revealed.
What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that Rick Warren thinks that his ideas are more important and have a higher priority in deciding what he should preach on any given Sunday than what is revealed in the Word of God.
In other words, Rick Warren's agenda is supreme. God's agenda laid out for him for what he should be teaching in God's Word, well, takes a distant backseat. And what I mean by distant backseat, you shouldn't think of it like a vehicle, like the normal kind of commuter car, okay, where, you know, Rick Warren's in the front seat and then there's a backseat.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to think of it more like a bus, okay? And what's happened is, is that Rick Warren's hijacked the church bus. He's now driving the bus and he's not relegated Jesus to a seat that's behind him.
He's relegated Jesus and God's Word and Christ's agenda to the very, very, very, very, very, very, very backseat of the bus. Now, Rick Warren can't throw him off the bus altogether, although I think Rick Warren would prefer to do that because Rick needs to keep Jesus around, at least be able to show, look, he's right here in the bus.
See, there he is, wave Jesus, so that he can create the impression that, you know, what he's, you know, that Jesus is on board, right? But you'll notice that Jesus doesn't get to decide what it is that Rick Warren teaches in church, because this started out as a sermon at Saddleback.
All of this was already done at Saddleback, okay? It just, this was the message that Oprah picked out from the sermons that Rick Warren is preaching and said, this is the one, this is the message that I think would suit Oprah's spiritual students and disciples in my life class.
Okay, now listen, okay? I guarantee you, okay, the pastor at the church that I'm a member of now, and I teach at this church, the pastor of the church that I'm a member of, there isn't a single sermon that Oprah will be able to listen to and say, oh, I've just got to share this with the people in my life class, okay?
I guarantee you that if Oprah were to go on my church's website and listen to the sermons or, you know, or whatever, just listen to the sermons, she'd start a sermon and go, ooh, no, not that one. Go to the next one, ooh, no, yeah, no, not that, no, no, no.
She'd go to the next, no, that would not, absolutely. Hang on, go to the next one, no, and she might even start weeping and gnashing her teeth, okay, because none of those sermons would fit with Oprah's spirituality, okay?
So here's the question I have for you. Would your pastor ever, the messages that he's teaching, would Oprah ever be able to click on those messages and go, oh, that, yeah, we got to have this on life class?
Well, if that is the case, then may I, you know, argue with you and basically say that if that's true, then your pastor's doing something terribly wrong, terribly, terribly wrong. If his message doesn't offend Oprah and her false religious ideas and her idolatrous notions, then your pastor's doing something wrong.
The fact that Oprah would listen to this sermon by Rick Warren and go, oh, I got to have this on life class, basically says, Rick Warren, his sermons don't offend Oprah, but resonate with her false religion.
That is a big red flag. It's a red flag with horns and buzzers and smoke detectors going off and things like that. That's not good. That's really, really, really bad. In fact, my hope for you is that you attend a church that if Oprah were to go onto your pastor's website, your church's website, and listen to the sermons, she would be so upset after sampling five or six of them and so offended that she would never want to hear from your pastor again, because that would mean your pastor's doing his job.
Preaching the only way of salvation through the crucified and risen virgin-born Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who hasn't come to have you declare wonderful things about yourself and ooze and gush and goo about how great you are, but instead confront you with your sins and call you to repentant faith and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
Your pastor isn't doing that Sunday after Sunday. If there's now sermons that Oprah would really love to have your pastor on her program to teach the life class for, that should be grounds for you saying, it's time to find a different church.
Now, here's Rick Warren teaching again about card number two. We won't interrupt him so that he can complete his thoughts. Here we go.
The second card in the hand you're dealt, I call your connections. Now, your connections are your relationships. And we all know when your relationships are bad, you feel bad. When your relationships are good, you feel good.
In other words, we're made for relationships. We're made to be connected. Life stinks when you're disconnected. Now, by the way, did you know God hates loneliness? No. He does. God hates loneliness. That's why he says it's not good to be alone.
But you're never alone, because there's...
It's one thing for God to say it's not good that man should be alone. It's a whole other thing to say God hates loneliness, okay? There isn't a single passage of scripture that says God hates loneliness.
There are some passages where it talks about what God hates, okay? Let me give you an example. Revelation chapter 2. Revelation chapter 2. We have a letter, an epistle, dictated from Jesus by the Apostle John.
So the idea is that Jesus asked the Apostle John to write a letter, okay? He appeared to him, and he wrote several letters to different churches, including the church at Ephesus, okay? Now, Jesus Christ is God in human flesh.
And in here, we find that Jesus hates something. Let's listen in. Revelation chapter 2, verse 1. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write, The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Now that's right, you heard that right. Jesus talking, writing an epistle, this is a bonafide letter to the church in Ephesus. They had tested these apostles that claimed to be apostles and found them to be false, and Christ commends them for that.
They had lost their first love, and so Christ calls them to repent. Christ calls them to repent, and then he gives them another attaboy. Here's the attaboy. Yet this, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans.
Who are the Nicolaitans? Well, from what we can gather from church history, the Nicolaitans were a sect claiming to be Christian who basically despised the law of God and turned the grace of God into licentiousness or a license to sin.
The word that we use to describe this type of theological error is called antinomianism. Those who basically say, I'm saved by grace, therefore I can sin like there's no tomorrow, and they turn the grace of God into a license to sin.
This is what Jesus says of them. He says to the church in Ephesus, this you have, and this is a good thing, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, and then Jesus says, which I also hate. In other words, you can literally say that Jesus does hate some things.
Now, for Rick Warren to say that God hates loneliness, in order to make that statement, you need a passage that says that. Without a passage that says that, you're engaging in speculation. You're not doing theology, you're doing Rick Warren's psychology.
In Rick Warren's head, he believes that God hates loneliness, but the verse that he quoted doesn't say that, nor is it a valid conclusion from the text. Christians don't do theology and doctrine this way.
Christians ought to do theology this way. When God's word speaks clearly, we give voice to that and can say this is true with certainty. Where God's word is silent, we say this, I don't know. I don't know.
Don't try to get behind the text or try to build a theology that is based upon extrapolations from passages. That's never a safe thing to do. You'll find that those extrapolations oftentimes create very shaky and unsolid ground that causes all kinds of problems and oftentimes can metastasize into full-blown cancerous heresy.
You don't want to do that. I can't think of a single passage of Scripture where it says, God hates loneliness. Maybe he does. I don't know. But see, the thing is that if he hasn't said that he hates it, how am I to say that he has?
See, this is the problem. Rick Warren isn't doing biblical doctrine. He's doing Warren ideas, and Warren ideas do not rise to the level of Christian theology and doctrine. They're just Warrenisms. And so you don't want to be a Warrenite.
You want to be a Christian. In order to be a Christian, you got to stick firm to the words of Christ and not to the ideas burbling up from within any so-called Christian leader. That's not solid ground.
In fact, that's quicksand.
But we continue. God hates loneliness. That's why he says it's not good to be alone.
But you're never alone because there's always the presence of God.
But life's all about learning how to love. Learning how to love each other, learning how to love God, learning how to love ourselves. We were put on this planet.
Okay, here we go again. A little bit of a rehash from yesterday's episode.
Listen again. But life's all about learning how to love.
Okay, love is the core commandment of the law. Love God, love neighbor. It's not the thing. This isn't good news. This is bad news, okay? And if we have to learn how to love, well, that means that we're not loving.
If we're not loving, then we're breaking the commandments. If we're breaking the commandments, we're liable to the wrath of God. In other words, loving God, loving neighbor is not the gospel. This is the law, the very thing that condemns you.
Learning how to love each other, learning how to love God, learning how to love ourselves. We were put on this planet to learn love. Learning how to love ourselves.
Hang on a second here. Deluded narcissists seems to be the emerging theme today. 2 Timothy 3, I just want to make sure I got this right. Understand this, in the last days there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self.
Listen again. Learning how to love God, learning how to love ourselves. Yeah, okay, got it. We were put on this planet to learn love. So the second mark of connections is extremely important. Second mark of connections, okay.
One day a guy's walking down the street and he asked Jesus, says, can you summarize the whole Bible? Jesus goes, yeah, I'll give you cliff notes on the Bible. Here it is, two things, love God and love your neighbors yourself.
Yeah. That's it. That's it. Love God, love your neighbors yourself.
So it's all. That, by the way, what he just said there is not true. We covered this in depth yesterday. Again, let's take a look at this Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22. It was not somebody coming to Jesus and saying, hey, can you give us cliff notes?
Can you summarize the whole Bible? That's not what the question was. Matthew chapter 22 verse 34. Here's what it says. But when the Pharisees heard that he, Jesus, had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? What's the great, he didn't say summarize the whole Bible. He said, what's the greatest commandment? Okay. What's the commandments? The law. Is this gospel or law?
Answer, it's straight up law. So Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and a second is like it.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Now let me give you another passage of scripture to kind of help with this idea. Oftentimes, I'm accused of basically forcing this law gospel distinction on the Bible.
But this is not like dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a concept that was foisted onto the scriptures. Law gospel is not like that. Law gospel is what the scriptures teach regarding how to understand these distinctions.
It makes the distinction and then drives these points home. I would point you to Galatians as the supreme example of that. So going to the book of Galatians, this is what the Judaizers were mixing law and gospel.
They were basically saying salvation is achieved in part by your keeping of the law. Namely, they were saying you can't really truly be a Christian unless you keep certain laws, particularly kosher laws and laws regarding circumcision.
So you dudes out there, if you're a Christian, you're not really saved unless you've had this little cosmetic surgery done on a particular member of your body. This is what they were saying. Now, Paul engaged in the book of Galatians is literally a compact, highly compressed terse in points, very in-your-face epistle that blows their theology out of the water using the proper distinction of law and gospel.
We'll start here at Galatians 2, verse 11. Here's what it says. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
But when they came, he drew back and he separated himself fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, If you, though you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified. Listen again. We know the person is not justified. Here's that Greek word again, dikaiao, means to be declared righteous.
We know that a person is not declared righteous by works of the law. Summary of the law according to Jesus in Matthew 22. Love God, love neighbor. You could literally rephrase this and say, We know that a person is not declared righteous by loving God and loving neighbor, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified. That means to be declared righteous by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Because by works of the law, no one, not one person, by loving God and loving neighbor, no one, not one person will be declared righteous or justified before God.
Not one person. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Well, certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Listen to what he says here in verse 21. I do not nullify the grace of God. He doesn't say, I do not nullify the law. He says, I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, well, then Christ died for no purpose.
And then he goes on and says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified. So let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
Well, the answer is by hearing with faith. Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit? Are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law?
Or by hearing with faith? The answer is by hearing with faith. Just as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him or counted to him as righteousness. So know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify or declare righteous the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, In you shall all the nations of the world be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Now, opening up my hymnal here. There's a hymn that I want to read to you. One of my arguments that we should not be getting rid of hymns is because they teach great theology. They worship God by rightly proclaiming what scripture teaches on particular doctrines.
In fact, if you follow me on my Letter of Mark blog, then you know that the other day I posted on the Letter of Mark blog a hymn that sings literally and teaches the doctrine of original sin. It's a fantastic little hymn.
But this hymn that I want to share with you here takes the doctrine of the right understanding of God's law and sets it to verse. Here it is. The name of the hymn is The Law of God is Good and Wise. It is a 19th century hymn accredited to Matthias Loy.
And here's what it says. Just listen to the good theology here. This gives you our right understanding of law and gospel. Here's what it says. It says, The Law of God is Good and Wise and sets His, that's God's will, before our eyes, shows us the way of righteousness and dooms to death when we transgress.
Its light of holiness imparts the knowledge of our sinful hearts that we may see our lost estate and turn from sin before too late. To those who help in Christ have found and would in works of love abound, it shows what deeds are His delight and should be done as good and right.
But those who scornfully disdain God's law shall then in sin remain. Its terror in their ear resounds and keeps their wickedness in bounds. The law is good, but since the fall, its holiness condemns us all.
It dooms us for our sin to die and has no power to justify. To Jesus for our refuge flee, who from the curse has set us free and humbly worship at His throne, saved by His grace through faith alone. Fantastic hymn, great lyrics, excellent theology, fantastic doctrine, worshiping God by singing what His word reveals.
And in six stanzas, six verses, this hymn lays out the proper distinction of law and gospel and touches on two of the three of the right uses of God's law. And so I'm absolutely convinced that these hymns, we must not chuck them.
We shouldn't be despising them because the so-called 7-Eleven contemporary praise songs, just they're like sieves. They have no ability to carry the water and deep theology of Scripture. Just they're absolute sieves.
Nothing can stand in them. It's ridiculous. So these things are very superior. But the point is that what this says here in verse is exactly what Scripture teaches. So again, I point this out here in card number two because Rick Warren, he's not preaching Christ and Him crucified.
He thinks and taught everybody there at Oprah's Life Class that the cliff notes of the Bible is really simple. You just need to learn how to love. Because Jesus was asked what the cliff notes of the Bible is and it's simple.
Just love God and love neighbor. Well, that's the summary of the law. And that's the thing that condemns us because none of us, me, you, any of us, none of us loves God and loves neighbor perfectly. And that's why we need a crucified and risen Savior.
Let me back up the audio just a little bit so you can hear this.
He's standing on the street and he asks Jesus, says, can you summarize the whole Bible? Jesus goes, yeah, I'll give you cliff notes on the Bible. Here it is, two things. Love God and love your neighbors yourself.
That's it. That's it. Love God. Love your neighbors. Yeah, that's it.
It's so simple. That's it. Just do it. Good luck. Because you will not be graded on a curve.
So it's all about love. And I tell people the greatest use of your life is love. The greatest expression of love is time. And the greatest time to love is now.
Okay, let me back that up. Listen to this litany and tell me, is this Christian theology? It's all about love.
And I tell people the greatest use of your life is love. The greatest expression of love is time. And the greatest time to love is now.
Okay. Okay, where does the Bible teach any of that? It doesn't. Rick Warren isn't teaching Christian doctrine. He's teaching Warren-ism. Not Christianity. Warren-ism. This is Warren's own theology. And that's the problem.
He's teaching what he naturally understands. The law that's written in his heart. But if he truly trusted and believed Christ and the gospel, that's what he'd be proclaiming at Oprah's life class. And that's not what he proclaimed.
He condemned them by preaching nothing but law. Alright, we're up on our second break. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so.
My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com or subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com forward slash pirate Christian or follow me on Twitter, my name there, at Pirate Christian. When we come back, a narcissistic masleration about chasing lions or something like that.
Yeah, don't want to miss it. Hang on. Living a life of purpose can't save you. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith.