Brennan Manning

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Our Daily Bread Crumbles??

ODB_2006_06_Large (1)Few who personally know me realize I have concerns over the devotional publication entitled Our Daily Bread. This little publication gives a daily text reading from the Scripture accompanied by a little story of some kind designed to give encouragement as the reader travels the rat race of life for the day.

However, when the daily bread of the infallible, inerrant AND holy Word of God is watered down with the drivel of the world, it will at best become nothing more than a daily crumb and at worst will prove to be poison that will slowly (almost imperceptibly) destroy the soul of the one who is reading. This is especially true if the one who is reading is not grounded in the Word of God.

Before I continue, I want to ensure the reader that I do not necessarily discredit daily devotional books or booklets. I do give fair warning though that they can easily become a quick fix to the morning or evening period when one should be spending time with the Saviour of their soul reading the Scriptures He has provided through His Holy Spirit.

Our Daily Bread has been on a long slippery road for quite some time and until doing some research on another topic matter, I did not realize how slippery the slope has become.

M. Scott Peck, Henri Nouwen, Larry Crabb, Brother Lawrence, Brennan Manning and others are (or were) either New Age proponents or hugely influential in what is known as contemplative mysticism. The latter is making huge inroads into evangelical churches, and I would go so far as to say it actually taking the church by storm! The connection that these individuals have is that they are all quoted favorably and extensively on a regular basis by Radio Bible Class and Our Daily Bread publication.

Henri Nouwen as an example was a Roman Catholic heretic who privately held to the sinful belief that he was also a homosexual and believed that men could be saved apart from Jesus Christ. Radio Bible Class has no problems endorsing this man as a fine example of a “Christian!”

Brennan Manning, who is also a Roman Catholic, has his salvation experience thus on his website, “In February 1956, while Brennan was meditating on the Stations of the Cross, a powerful experience of the personal love of Jesus Christ sealed the call of God on his life.”

I would encourage the reader to go to the Radio Bible Class website and in their search engine type any of the above names and see what articles and books show up. I have no doubt that you will be as surprised as I was to find a so-called evangelical publication and publishing house openly endorsing contemplative mysticism as well as Roman Catholic homosexual heretics!

Dr. M.R. De Haan would be appalled at what this organization has come to today. His goal to maintain and present biblical purity through the spoken and written Word has been put to the wayside. The meat of the Word has been laid aside for the sake of doctrinal inclusiveness and the crumbs of worldly philosophy have been injected into the morsels being provided daily to unsuspecting believers.

2 Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Hungering for the Meat of the Word,

The Desert Pastor

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Who said this?

See if you can guess who said this:

This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.

The God of the legalistic Christian, on the other hand is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail, as inevitably as they must, they usually expect punishment. So they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God.

Did you guess Brennan Manning, in all of his Emergent, Postmodern, ooey-gooey theologically syrupy wishy-washiness? Yep, Brennan Manning, High Priest in The Church of You Can Claim Christ Without Repenting From Sin. I remember trying to read “Ragamuffin Gospel.” What a wretched piece of writing.

But see, the above quote is how the Purpose-Driven/Emergent/Postmoderns view those of us who hold to the truth of Scripture. They call us “legalists” for daring to say that in order to be saved a person must repent of their sins. Manning and Bell and McLaren would rather spend their time telling people that “God loves them just the way they are, sins and all” without ever once warning them to repent. So they wind up loving these people right into Hell. They would rather worship a God of their own making than the one whose perfect righteousness requires Him to send unrepentant sinners to their eternal justice.