Ecumenicalism and Syncretism: Similarity Number Four Between the False Church of Nazi Germany and Today’s Growing False Global Church
By Brannon S. Howse
Ecumenicalism is the bringing together of the world’s religions as one, and pluralism is the belief that all religions are equal or basically the same. Thus, all religions can merge.
Syncretism allows that opposing religious beliefs can be synthesized, usually for the purpose of achieving some common goal. Evangelicalism in America and around the world is increasingly merging with pagan spirituality, just as it did in Nazi Germany when Protestant denominations with differing views on essential Christian doctrines agreed to unite. Many self-professing Christians in Germany willingly united under the Reich bishop, who was committed to pagan spirituality and hand-picked for the job by Adolf Hitler. Dr. Lutzer details how the “German Christians” worked to unite all Protestant churches in Germany:
[quote] They [the German Christians] were in favor of disbanding the authority of individual districts to unite all Protestants into a Reich Church, that is, one all encompassing, national church…. Hitler surprised Protestants by insisting that his personal friend Ludwig Muller be elected Reich bishop.... Thousands of people who for years had not darkened the door of a church voted and, to no one’s surprise, Hitler’s candidates won. All that was needed was for Ludwig Muller to be elected Reich bishop by the church representatives.
[Dietrich] Bonhoeffer was deeply distressed. The next month, August of 1933, he sent a letter to his grandmother, predicting that there was a powerful movement toward a big, popular national church whose nature could not be reconciled with Christianity. He said that “we must be prepared to enter upon entirely new paths which we shall have to tread. The conflict is really Germanism or Christianity and the sooner the conflict comes out in the open the better. Nothing could be more dangerous than its concealment.” [end quote]
Ludwig Muller, like Hitler, was committed to the worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin.
In America, as we will examine in a later chapter, there is a growing trend among conservative Protestant church, ministry, and organizational leaders to unite with theologically liberal and even heretical Protestant leaders for the common goal of “reclaiming America.” This syncretism, though, has given way to full-blown ecumenicalism as these leaders participate in spiritual enterprises with the members of the Church of Rome and LDS [Mormon] Church. They unite with the New Apostolic Reformation and Word of Faith Movements that openly embrace and proclaim pagan spirituality and occultism.
The biblical Gospel is distorted when the New Religious Right accepts the false Jesus and false gospel of the Mormons, Word of Faith, New Apostolic Reformation, Church of Rome, and New Agers to “win the culture war.” But this tactic will never win the culture war because these groups are not all committed to the same ultimate culture. Has the New Religious Right bothered to ask what the culture would look like under the Mormon Church and the “United Order” that would have the Mormon Church owning everything and distributing it on an as-needed basis? Has the New Religious Right bothered to ask their Church of Rome members what the end game goal of the Church of Rome is when they all finally “win” the culture war? Will the Church of Rome be in charge or the New Religious Right? Are the New Religious Right members and their leaders prepared to submit themselves to the authority of the “apostles” and “prophets” of the New Apostolic Reformation at the end of the war?
These are questions the New Religious Right has probably not bothered to ask because, quite frankly, I don’t think they have the discernment to think of such questions, must less have the biblical and philosophical acumen to answer them. However, this does not stop other groups from using the New Religious Right as “useful idiots” to help them take dominion through their ecumenical efforts.
Copyright 2015 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.
