Russell Moore is Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and he does not approve of all those self-proclaimed Christians who are disgracing their faith by aligning themselves with the false and dangerous teachings of a Mormon like Glenn Beck:
A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.
The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.
If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.
…
To Jesus, Satan offered power and glory. To us, all he needs offer is celebrity and attention.
Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They offer another Lord Jesus than the One offered in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, and another way to approach him. An embrace of these tragic new vehicles for the old Gnostic heresy is unloving to our Mormon friends and secularist neighbors, and to the rest of the watching world. Any “revival” that is possible without the Lord Jesus Christ is a “revival” of a different kind of spirit than the Spirit of Christ (1 Jn. 4:1-3).
For the record, in citing 1 John 4:1-3, Moore is saying that Beck’s effort to unleash revival in America is operating under the spirit of the Antichrist:
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
I guess I should also point out that Moore’s piece was posted on the American Family Association’s OneNewNow website, so it seems as if the AFA is not particularly comfortable with Beck’s Mormonism either.
UPDATE: I see that Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has Tweeted his support for Moore’s article.
