A Follow-up on The Wycliffe Fiasco – It is Worse than I First Thought! Appealing to So-called ’Messianic Muslims’!?

Lighthouse Trails 2/8/12 Newsletter brings out more on this controversy that needs every Bible Believing Christian’s attention. Roger Oakland correctly brings in some history going back 12 years to show some of this thinking to soften the Bible on the “Son of God” with ties to the group YWAM for which I provide additional support from our Biblical Discernment Ministries YWAM page. The precedent was set a long time ago! Those attempting to soften the Bible on the “Son of God” should be addressed in the strongest of terms. — If we cannot trust the translators of scripture to hold to the most cardinal of our doctrines who can we trust!?

From Our Biblical Discernment Ministries page connecting YWAM this aberrant thinking  –
Youth With A Mission Ecumenical (Catholic/Charismatic) Evangelism

“YWAM is experimenting with a new, unscriptural missions strategy. Several international missions organizations, including YWAM, are testing a new approach to missionary work in areas where Christianity is unwelcome. A March 24, 2000, Charisma News Service report said some missionaries are now making converts but are allowing them to “hold on to many of their traditional religious beliefs and practices” so as to refrain from offending others within their culture. The Charisma article noted: “‘Messianic Muslims, who continue to read the Koran, visit the mosque and say their daily prayers but accept Christ as their Savior, are the products of the strategy which is being tried in several countries.” One particular church planter in Asia related how 50 members of a Muslim family accepted Christ as Savior and formed their own fellowship. He writes in YWAM’s staff newsletter, “They continued a life of following the Islamic requirements, including mosque attendance, fasting and Koranic reading, besides getting together as a fellowship of Muslims who acknowledge Christ as the source of God’s mercy for them.” According to the Charisma report, the church planter said these “Messianic Muslims” also “meet according to mosque traditions in a style that would horrify many Western Christians.” Yet he claimed that this method is Biblical. The Charisma report added that “YWAM is also adopting the approach in India, where a team is working with a Hindu holy man.”

This new approach in which the missionaries or church planters teach new converts that it is acceptable to continue to adhere to pagan beliefs and practices is completely contrary to Scripture. God’s Word declares that a believer becomes a “new creature” in Christ at the moment he is saved and commands the believer to therefore separate from the “unfruitful works of darkness” that once held him in bondage. Certainly many Jewish Christians in the first-century church at Jerusalem and elsewhere did need a better understanding of grace vs. law, but those Judaizers who espoused the idea that newly professing Christians needed to become more zealous in law-keeping were diametrically opposed to the apostolic instruction for the church.  They actually became the chief enemies of the apostle Paul as he sought to evangelize all men with the same Gospel of God’s grace apart from works and establish New Testament churches comprised of Jews and Gentiles alike (Rom. 4:16-25; Eph. 2:11-18; Gal. 3:10-14; 5: 1). Paul emphasized the fact that the law was “bondage” but that life in Christ is “grace and peace.” Those who come to Christ must reject, turn from and separate from other gods and unbiblical beliefs and practices, no matter how “culturally established” such practices and beliefs may be. Of course, the new believers were to refrain from causing undue offense, but a difference certainly existed between causing undue offense and actually continuing to live, act, worship and believe as the unsaved Jews or Gentiles. (Source: May-June 2000, Foundation.)

From yesterday, 2/8/12 here is an excerpt with links back to Lighthouse Trails: From the Lighthouse Newsletter – February 8, 2012

Roger Oakland addresses this “new” missiology in his book Faith Undone. In Oakland’s article (an excerpt of Faith Undone) “The New Look of Christian Missions,” he explains:

Emerging spirituality is changing the way missions is being conducted. The idea is that you can go for Jesus, but you don’t have to identify yourself as a Christian or part of the Christian church. This concept spills over into some missionary societies too, where they teach people from other religions they can keep their religion, just add Jesus to the equation. They don’t have to embrace the term Christian.

Oakland continues:

A May/June 2000 issue of Watchman’s Trumpet magazine explains what this new missiology really entails:

“Several international missions organizations, including Youth With a Mission (YWAM), are testing a new approach to missionary work in areas where Christianity is unwelcome. A March 24, 2000, Charisma News Service report said some missionaries are now making converts but are allowing them to “hold on to many of their traditional religious beliefs and practices” so as to refrain from offending others within their culture.”

The Charisma article in which Watchman’s Trumpet reports elaborates:

“’Messianic Muslims’ who continue to read the Koran, visit the mosque and say their daily prayers but accept Christ as their Savior, are the products of the strategy, which is being tried in several countries, according to Youth With a Mission (YWAM), one of the organizations involved.”

The Charisma story reports that a YWAM staff newsletter notes the new converts’ lifestyle changes (or lack thereof):

They [the new converts] continued a life of following the Islamic requirements, including mosque attendance, fasting and Koranic reading, besides getting together as a fellowship of Muslims who acknowledge Christ as the source of God’s mercy for them.

When one of the largest missionary societies (YWAM) becomes a proponent of the new missiology, telling converts they can remain in their own religious traditions, the disastrous results should be quite sobering for any discerning Christian. (Oakland, Faith Undone, ch. 10)

…

While advocates of the “new” missiology are taking the “fruit” of evangelism into their own hands by manipulating and distorting biblical truth to make it more palatable for the lost, trusting God alone to reap the harvest of true biblical evangelism is being put on a back burner. We pray that Wycliffe Bible Translators will truly re-evaluate the direction they are heading and reject the “new” missiology. We pray they will not succumb to pressures by other organizations that are telling them they must get on board this progressive missiology. We are instructed in Scripture to plant and to water and to trust the Lord to give the increase. If this new way of mission work had been practiced by the apostle Paul and the other disciples, they probably wouldn’t have been martyred, but they were willing to count the cost of discipleship. From the Lighthouse Newsletter – February 8, 2012

These Are Dangerous Times and This is a Dangerous Snare! – I stand in agreement with the Lighthouse Newsletter, well said!

Back to Truth with Snares Homepage