FALWELL CALLS FOR "MEGA-NETWORKING PARTNERSHIP"

FALWELL CALLS FOR "MEGA-NETWORKING PARTNERSHIP"

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January 5, 1996 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The cover story in Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal for December 1995 was titled "My 1996 Pastoral Vision."

"The business world talks ceaselessly about networking and partnering. So must we pastors. There are about 600,000 churches and pastors in America. There are multitudes more worldwide. As I see it, the only hope for fulfilling the Great Commission in our generation is to create a mega-networking partnership with the existing infrastructure of Bible-centered churches worldwide."

Of course, no Scriptures were cited for this "vision," and that is because there is no Scripture to support such a thing. Churches are not be yoked together in some sort of mega-networking partnership, particularly is this true when those churches include every sort of doctrinal error and last days compromise. Falwell's definition of "Bible-centered churches" would include New Evangelical churches. The last issue of his paper praised New Evangelicalism's chief promoter, Billy Graham. Falwell would also include Charismatic churches. This is the same man who tried to save the ungodly and radically Charismatic PTL. Falwell might even include some Roman Catholic churches in his "mega-networking partnership." Certainly he fellowships with Roman Catholic leaders on a regular basis and has them speak at his meetings. A case in point is the National Affairs Briefing which is scheduled for January 1996. A full-page ad for this meeting appears in the December issue of Falwell's paper. At least two Roman Catholics, Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly, are scheduled to join Falwell on the speaker's platform. By the way, radical charismatic, anti-Fundamentalist Paul Crouch is scheduled to speak at that meeting.

Pastor Falwell should mind his own business and take care of his own church instead of continually forming vast unscriptural coalitions and drawing members from churches throughout the land to help build his empire on Liberty Mountain. God might have called Jerry Falwell to be a pastor, but He has not called him to build mega networks. God does not call men to do things contrary to His Word.

Falwell's "vision" is precisely the kind of thing we read of in Christianity Today and in Charisma magazine and in other ecumenical publications. It is precisely the same "vision" which is promoted by the Ecumenical/Charismatic North American Congress on the Holy Spirit & World Evangelization. I have attended two of these massive congresses--New Orleans '87 and Indianapolis '90. I attended with press credentials to report for O Timothy. One-half of the tens of thousands of participants were Roman Catholic. Forty denominations were involved. Hundreds of well-known, popular speakers participated. A Roman Catholic Mass was conducted every morning. The final speaker at both meetings was Tom Forrest, a Roman Catholic priest based in Rome who heads up the Catholic Evangelization 2000 program. In New Orleans, Forrest brought the 40,000 people to their feet when he cried out, "We must reach the world, and we must reach the world the only way we can reach it; we must reach it TOGETHER!!!" The mixed multitude went wild at that priest's call for "mega networking." They stood and cheered and stomped their feet and raised their hands and spoke in tongues and laughed and praised the Lord.

Sadly, Jerry Falwell has ignored God's commands for separation from error, and he has imbibed of the same unscriptural spirit which motivates these ecumenical congresses.

"Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness" (2 Peter 3:17).