Elephant Room Participants, The Beatles, & False Teachers: When The Culture
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By Brannon Howsewww.situationroom.net
 
Emerging church proponent Jim Belcher wrote a book in 2009 titled Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. His book is a perfect example of the Hegelian Dialectic Process in action. Belcher calls for traditional evangelicals and the Emergent Church to come together in dialogue, find what is good about each other, and then blend their ideas.
The truth is that it is impossible to blend biblical truth with worldliness and heresy, yet that is exactly what you would be trying to accomplish if you followed Belcher's "Third Way." Belcher, of course, sees things differently:
Yet the two sides can't get along? They are hostile to each other, using their writings and conferences to denounce the other side. The vast majority of people are confused by the debate. Many have read emerging authors, agreeing with their assessment of the problem and aspects of what they are proposing. But they also have read traditional authors and are drawn to parts of their vision of the church as well. The majority want to learn from both sides…This book is written for those caught in between. They are unhappy with the present state of the evangelical church but are not sure where to turn for an answer. They like some of what the emerging and traditional camps offer, but they are not completely at ease with either. The public conflicts makes this anxiety worse, and these people don't know who to trust or believe. What if both are off target? Is there a third option, a via media? I believe there is a third way…I will demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of both groups, and move beyond them to a third way, the deep church.[1]
Apparently James McDonald embraces a version of Belcher's thinking as he brought together his "brothers" that included Word of Faith, false teacher T.D. Jakes. Steven Furtick of "Hey Haters" was also in attendance. Furtick seems far more committed to taking the Scripture out of context than even Joel Osteen who he admires and wants us to stop criticizing. Then there was Mark Driscoll who is just plain creepy with his graphic talk about sex and his proclamation that he has visions of people's past sexual encounters or abuse. The Elephant Room website also listed Jack Graham as a speaker. I wrote on Graham's church many months ago when they had neo-Marxist, Jim Wallis booked to speak.
My friend Justin Peters will speak on the dangers of the Word of Faith Movement at our upcoming Branson Worldview Weekend in April of 2012.  
Jim Belcher is not the only one calling for a synthesis of the traditional church with the culture. Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary has declared:
The church itself will need to go through a metamorphosis in order to find its new identity in the dialectic of gospel and culture. This new situation is requiring churches to approach their context as a missional encounter.[2]
Excuse me, but the Church does not need to find a "new identity." It needs to return to the prescription, the formula, and the biblical requirements of a New Testament Church. We do not need to merge the Church and culture. Christians are called to be in the world, but not of the world.
Many discerning Christians are not surprised that the theological heretics that make up the Word of Faith movement and the New Apostolic Reformation have embraced occultism and mysticism. However, it will come as a surprise to many Christians that many "evangelical" pastors and leaders are embracing the teaching and teachers of these movements including those committed to reformed theology. In fact, I believe that many well-known and lesser known reformed pastors that are embracing false teachers, or the proponents of mysticism, are going to, knowingly or unknowingly, assist in a counter reformation.
This Counter Reformation is even now being aided by a religious Trojan horse that is even within the ranks of the reformed theology movement that is embracing mysticism. This Counter Reformation is going to lead an apostate church right back into the arms of the Church of Rome that I believe has been quietly infiltrating both reformed and non-reformed theology churches and seminaries for hundreds of years in an attempt to introduce, among other things, mysticism, pragmatism, social justice, communitarianism, dominion theology and ecumenicalism.
Dr. John MacArthur, who is a senior pastor, author, and host of an international Bible teaching ministry, has addressed this issue when he said:
There is this growing sort of acquisition of reformed soteriology among these young guys. And it seems to me the mood is, that if you have a reformed soteriology, you get a pass on everything else… In other words, how in the world can you have a true, reformed view of the doctrines of grace that relate to salvation, and then think that having holes in your jeans and an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt and a can of beer in your hand somehow gave you access to the lost? And what the fear is, is that the power of the world's attraction is gonna suck these guys - and every generation after them - more and more into the culture and we're gonna see a reversal of the reformed revival.[3]
Soteriology is the study of "theology dealing with salvation especially as affected by Jesus Christ."[4]
John MacArthur expounds upon how he sees many within the reformed movement compromising Biblical truth and embracing the world and culture in order to attract a larger crowd.
So what's gonna happen is, the world has already pulled them that far. It's pulled them into worldly music, R movies, all that stuff, and eventually I think it will pull them right away from their theology. I think for the time- it, it's even macho. I think there's a sense in which reformed theology is kind of strong and manly, you know it's kind of airtight and they like that. My fear is that the further this thing goes in trying to accommodate the culture, the less it's going to be able to hang on to that core doctrine. That's what I fear. And even when you have some of the people who are the most well-known for reformed theology partner up in conferences with the people who are the most extreme pragmatists. I mean, this is happening. Who would have thought that, say, John Piper would have Rick Warren at a Desiring God conference? Those [teachers] seem like two completely polar opposities. So I don't know that the heart of this reformed theology, kind of existing freestanding like an island, can really survive the pull of the culture which is attracting these young guys, and which these young guys are using to attract people.[5]
I believe we have now reached the point where some of the most popular "evangelical" and reformed theology teachers are now a theological and doctrinal threat to the body of Christ.  I believe that many are either knowingly or unknowingly part of the religious Trojan horse that is redefining and transforming Christianity away from a Biblical ethos.
Later this year my book Religious Trojan Horse will be released that examines this topic and other related issues concerning apostasy, a growing false church, and a coming one-world religion that will be accomplished through "dialogue" and conferences just like Elephant Room. However, until the release of this book, let me take this opportunity to use the Elephant Room as an example of the dangers I discuss in the book, Religious Trojan Horse. Perhaps you know nothing about the Elephant Room conference that was held on January 25, 2012. For more information you can click this link and listen to a radio program in which I interviewed Chris Rosebrough. Chris paid his registration fee in order to attend James McDonald's Elephant Room but was met at the door and told to leave or he would be arrested.
If you know nothing about the Elephant Room and yet take a quick look at the website you will see the conference sessions are named after popular Beatles' songs. The conversation sessions included these Beatles' song titles:
Come Together, Help, With a Little Help From My Friends, Ticket to Ride, Can't Buy Me Love, Hard Day's Night, We Can Work it out.
Before you accuse me of being legalistic you need to understand a few things. 1. These are men that call themselves pastors and they need to conduct themselves accordingly. 2. The true church does not need to embrace a dialectic between church and culture. 3. The Beatles were perhaps the greatest force for introducing mysticism into not only the American culture but the culture of the entire western world. The Beatles helped to launch the counter-culture revolution that was really all about mysticism and achieving an altered state of consciousness through drugs and transcendental meditation. The Beatles were not just a band; they were proponents and preachers of a pagan and anti-Christian theology and doctrine. In November of 2006, our website WorldviewTimes.com, ran an article by my friend, Dr. David Noebel in which he reported the following:
 
Some of you, I suspect, also remember the Saturday Evening Post article (July 1964) on the Beatles which contained the following: "It's incredible, absolutely incredible," said Beatles' press officer Derek Taylor. "Here are these four boys from Liverpool. They're rude, they're profane, they're vulgar, and they've taken over the world. It's as if they founded a new religion. They're completely anti-Christ. I mean, I'm anti-Christ as well, but they're so anti-Christ that they shock me, which isn't an easy thing."
 
As I read frequent articles on how even "Christian" men have not grown up but are adolescent in their character, dress, and worldview, perhaps the reason is because their "shepherds" are still acting like children in their dress, character, worldview, pragmatism, handling of Scripture and spiritual enterprises.
 
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (I Corinthians 13:1)
 
If you think naming conference sessions after songs popularized by the Beatles is not a big deal then I challenge you to read the article below by Dr. David Noebel and to understand that it is a big deal and it is a symptom of a bigger problem that includes the synthesizing of the church and culture. The end result of this process will be a church that will progress from traditional, to transitional, to being completely transformed into a church that has a form of godliness but denies God and becomes the harlot church of the last days.  
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John Lennon's Gospel of Drugs and Sex
By David A. Noebel
 
 
          "Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll is all my brain and body needs"
                                                                        Ian Dury & The Blockheads
 
            Many in this audience remember the Beatles and their rock 'n' roll group saying they were "more popular than Jesus." Some of you, I suspect, also remember the Saturday Evening Post article (July 1964) on the Beatles which contained the following: "It's incredible, absolutely incredible," said Beatles' press officer Derek Taylor. "Here are these four boys from Liverpool. They're rude, they're profane, they're vulgar, and they've taken over the world. It's as if they founded a new religion. They're completely anti-Christ. I mean, I'm anti-Christ as well, but they're so anti-Christ that they shock me, which isn't an easy thing."
 
            Now forty years later, John Lennon and the Beatles are back in the headlines. ABC News and reporter Jonathan Karl featured on September 5, 2006 an exclusive interview with Yoko Ono entitled "Yoko Ono on John Lennon and the FBI" in which Yoko Ono hypes an upcoming film "The U.S. vs. John Lennon." According to ABC News "Yoko Ono cooperated with the filmmakers, opening her archives of rarely seen footage of the couple's fight for peace." One thing that brought us together, says Yoko Ono, "was the fact that both of us were rebels in so many ways." The film portrays Lennon's fight to stay in the United States after involving himself in pro-Communist activities and demonstrations (the FBI file on Lennon consisted of 300 pages of text). It will be interesting to see if the film mention's Lennon's pro-Communist song "Working Class Hero" which he dedicated to the Communist revolution.
 
The release of Steve Turner's interesting and authoritative work The Gospel according to the Beatles (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006) has also brought the Beatles back into the news. Turner, a poet and journalist for over thirty years, has written a number of books on popular music icons such as Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, and U2, including an earlier work titled, A Hard Days Write: the Stories behind Every Beatle Song (2005). He also wrote the poem "Creed" which Tim LaHaye and I reprinted in our work Mind Siege. Now, in his latest effort, Turner offers an in-depth look at the world of the Beatles, especially their lifestyle as preached and promoted in the lyrics of their songs and their music.
 
            Of particular interest to our readers is Turner's acknowledgment of your humble and obedient servant. In the first chapter he notes, "David Noebel [was] one of the earliest opponents of Beatles music. Noebel started Summit Ministries in 1962, and it was through his work with teenagers in this capacity that he became interested in the effects of rock 'n' roll." (223) Elsewhere he states "The most high-profile Christian critic of the Beatles was a thirty-year old youth pastor, David A. Noebel, the author of Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles (1965) and Rhythm, Riots and Revolution (1966)…His thesis was that rock 'n' roll sapped the moral fiber of the young, unwittingly achieving the goals of the revolutionary left." (23)
Turner could have mentioned my 1969 work, The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex, and Revolution as well as The Legacy of John Lennon: Charming or Harming a Generation? published in 1982.
 
Later, Turner quotes me directly on this point, "The Beatles in particular have a special significance to the disrupters of society for their promotion of drugs, avant-garde sex and atheism. The revolution, though sometimes veiled, is fundamentally against Christianity and Christianity's moral concepts. Karl Marx sought to dethrone God before he set out to destroy capitalism." (23)
 
            Turner's careful research more than verifies my early observations of the Beatles' harmful and negative influence upon millions of naïve young people and validates how these pied-pipers from Liverpool lead tens of thousands straight into the drug culture and sexual revolution. Indeed, Lennon's gospel was a gospel of freedom without God, moral boundaries or adult responsibility. His mantra of "give peace a chance" was merely a cloak to cover his drug-drenched lifestyle, promiscuity (free love) and Marxist/socialist revolution.
 
            Since I have been criticized over these many years for my observations regarding the Beatles I will merely summarize Turner's research on this most influential rock group. Readers can make up their own minds on whether "Beatlemania" was, and is, a positive or negative influence. The following material comes directly from Steve Turner, The Gospel according to the Beatles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), and his book is highly recommended for those interested in the subject of rock 'n' roll in general and the Beatles in particular. It may be purchased through Summit Ministries' webstore or call: (719) 685-9103.
 
1. "As John [Lennon] said in 1968, 'I've changed a lot of people's heads.' There can be no doubt that, particularly from 1966 onward, they were looked to for guidance, and their songs were analyzed in much the same way as theologians analyze the Bible or literary critics analyze Shakespeare." (1)
 
2. "By the time they [the Beatles] released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band…the Beatles were aware that their work was being received as more than light entertainment." (2)
 
3. "It would be wrong to assume that this gospel came only through the lyrics of the songs…It also came through the sound of the music, the spaces between the words, and their entire way of life." (2)
 
4. "Millions of young people smoked pot, dropped acid, investigated Eastern religions, and marched for peace in Vietnam as a result of things the Beatles did and said." (9)
 
5. "While touring Britain in October 1964 he [Paul] admitted to Playboy, 'None of us believe in God.' John clarified the group's position: 'We're not quite sure what we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic.'" (15)
 
6. "Occasionally… [John] thought, 'Oh, I must be Christ.' His boyhood friend Pete Shotton told of a meeting John called in May 1968 to tell Paul, George, and Ringo that he was Jesus Christ reincarnated." (17, 18)
 
7. "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity." (20)
 
8. "Rock 'n' roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them…I figure that rock 'n' roll is devastating to the mind. It is not from God. The lyrics don't talk about Jesus. The beat hypnotizes you." (Little Richard, Dallas Times Herald, October 29, 1978, 14A)
 
9. The Beatles traveled to Hamburg, Germany in August 1960. St. Pauli, the area where the Beatles played their concerts "was one of the most notoriously liberal districts in Europe…Every extreme form of human behavior was tolerated and, in most cases, celebrated." (70) "St. Pauli was an enclosed society where all bourgeois values and Christian principles were discarded, and it was made easy to yield to every previously unfulfilled desire…visiting the sleazy bars, befriending transvestites, and taking part in group sex, often with off-duty hookers." Turner, The Gospel according to the Beatles (71)
 
10. "To John in his stoned state this sound [music played backwards] sounded beautiful, and the next day he asked Martin to add a section of reversed vocals to the end of the song. The eerie, distorted sound was unlike anything that had been heard on a pop single before. 'That one was the gift of God,' he said in 1980…actually the god of marijuana." (105)
 
11. "It was the love that [John] felt when smoking. This was the first song [From Me to You] that he had composed with Paul under the influence, and they decorated the lyric sheet in bright colors to reflex the drug-hazed feeling of the moment." (107)
 
12. "December 16, 1969: Under her [Yoko Ono] influence he investigated Zen and the occult. At the time this picture was taken they were both addicted to heroin." (see picture section)
 
13. "Tomorrow Never Knows, the first track recorded for the [Revolver] album, was the most obviously connected to LSD. It consisted of John intoning words adapted from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience over a collection of randomly spliced tapes, most of them music played backward." (124)
 
14. The Lennon sermon would have portrayed Jesus as "a garlic eating, stinking, little yellow greasy fascist bastard catholic Spaniard." (Lennon, A Spaniard in the Works, Simon and Schuster, 1965, 14)
 
15. Lennon portrays his dad as: (a) "Ye stupid bastard," (b) "Ye shriveled little clown," (c) "Yer dirty little ponce," (d) "The slimy little jew," (e) "a buddy friend and pal." (A Spaniard in the Works, 83-85)
 
16. "Leary, who spent the summer of 1967 tripping to Beatles music, raved about them…In his essay 'Drop Out or Cop Out' he referred to them as 'holy men,' declaring: 'The rock 'n' roll bands are the philosopher-poets of the new religion. Their beat is the pulse of the future. The message from Liverpool is the Newest Testament, chanted by four Evangelists-saints John, Paul, George and Ringo." (Turner, The Gospel According to the Beatles, 127)
 
17. "By 1967 John had taken so much LSD-between 1965 and 1970 he claimed to have taken literally 'a thousand trips,'" (130)
 
18. "Now [John] was adamantly atheist. Religion in general was a drug (Working Class Hero), Krishna was pie in the sky (I Found Out), and God was a concept by which we measure our pain (God)." (182)
 
19. "Following his bold atheistic statements in God and Imagine in the early 1970s, John abandoned the spiritual in favor of the political." (185)
 
20. "Mark David Chapman….A long-standing Beatles fan…thought that John was just a phony…Here was a man who urged people to image having no possessions owning Holstein cows, farmland in the Catskills, a boat, a gabled shorefront home surrounded by trees on Long Island, and a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida." (191, 192)
 
21. "On December 8, 1980, Mark Chapman…lay in wait outside the Dakota building. When John and Yoko returned from a night out, he let them walk past him, took aim with his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, and fired four shots into John's body." (193)
 
22. While no Christian condones Chapman's taking the life of John Lennon the reality is: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
 
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[1] Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2009) from pages 13 and 15.

[2] Gibbs, quoted in Church growth scholar advocates radical change in new millennium, by Cameron Crabtree, November 23, 1998, Baptist Press, posted here: http://www.baptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=4888

[3] From a discussion with Christianity.com Editor Alex Crain and Grace To You's John MacArthur, discussing Dr. MacArthur's 2011 book Slave: The Hidden Truth about Your Identity in Christ. Source: video clip available at: http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=7474 

[4] Soteriology as defined by Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soteriology 

[5] Ibid;