Perhaps one of the most frightening groups to participate in last-days deception is the pseudo-Christian group “Finishing the Task (FTT).”
This group was launched in 2005 with the stated goal of reaching the “unengaged, unreached people groups (UUPG’s) in the world by 2025.”
We are led to believe that it is their intention to “Finish the task” of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that Christ commanded.
Unfortunately, they have no intention of completing the Great Commission.
This group now has a new leader, Rick Warren, and bringing the Gospel to a fallen world is the last thing on his mind.
Unfortunately, Rick Warren failed to preach the Gospel to his millions of followers for his entire career. Instead, he preached a different Gospel that he termed “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
If you seek out the doctrine of “The Purpose-Driven Life” in the pages of your Bible, you will find no trace of it. Jesus did not refer to it, Paul did not refer to it, Peter did not refer to it, etc.
All Scripture is God-breathed; the Purpose-Driven Life is not.
The reason you cannot find “The Purpose-Driven Life” in the Bible is because it is a different Gospel than the one Paul preached. This doctrine has a different message and a different Jesus that are completely alien to Scripture.
When Paul rendered his judgment on those who preach a different Gospel than the one Jesus revealed to him, it was pretty frightening.
“If anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than the one you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! (Galatians 1:9).
Rick certainly won the approval of men with his false gospel, but he did not win the approval of God. Therefore, he is not a servant of Christ and is not qualified to bring Christ’s message to a fallen world.
He works for the other guy.
It seems that Rick has four goals that he wants to reach by 2033. That is an interesting date since many believe it completes the two thousand years of church history.
His four goals are:
- Bible translations in the heart language of every individual (God only knows what that means).
- Every believer trained to share his or her faith (I guess they help the lost find their purpose).
- Every existing church to plant or sponsor a church so the churches are accessible to all believers (The Church of Sardis is about to grow by leaps and bounds).
- Prayer to accomplish these tasks (I doubt God will hear these prayers, but the other guy will be very receptive).
According to Dan Hitzhusen, a global church planting specialist who has worked with FTT since 2018, there are only about 200 UUPG’s left in the world. When he started with this group in 2018, there were about 1,700 left.
Jesus said when the gospel is preached in the whole world, then the end will come.
Thanks to Dan, looks like we are almost there (that’s sarcasm).
According to the Joshua Project, which works closely with FTT, there are 7,416 unreached people groups in the world.
It seems most of these numbers regarding unreached people are extremely unreliable.
The Joshua Project is a non-profit group of faith-based volunteers working for social justice in order to improve the lives of the most vulnerable. Through education, guidance, support, and existing social services, their goal is to be the heart and hands of Christ.
That goal is not the least bit pretentious.
I wonder if they intend to partner with Black Lives Matter (BLM). This delightful organization also works for social justice in an effort to improve the lives of the most vulnerable.
That is if you consider murder and property destruction improving the lives of the most vulnerable.
They could also partner with the social justice group Antifa. They protect abortion clinics from praying Catholics and participants in ‘drag queen story hour’ from being exposed to the Gospel.
Through the promotion of social justice, they intend to build self-reliance, dignity, and self-sufficiency in their brothers and sisters, thereby creating hope for generations to come.
Just like Antifa and BLM.
Unlike Antifa and BLM, however, they have a superior strategy to become the “heart and hands of Christ.”
They have neighborhood parishes and ecumenical groups working together on several ‘projects.’ These activities include summer backpack programs, thanksgiving baskets and Christmas gifts, and home visits to the elderly.
These are certainly acts of kindness, but I think the “heart and hands of Christ” narrative is a bit much.
According to Rick Warren, he spent the last two years reading everything he could on previous attempts to complete the Great Commission. That included all material from the time Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the castle door of Wittenberg to this very day.
I don’t think any of Luther’s 95 theses covered the Purpose-Driven Life. Must have been an oversight.
Be that as it may, Rick needs to figure out a way to mobilize the whole church. He surmised that if every Christian only talked to two other people, everybody could hear the gospel.
I am certain Rick will not ask any faithful evangelists to participate in this mobilization. A true man of God would tell everyone they meet that Rick Warren is a heretic.
What is most interesting is that, not long after taking over the FTT, Rick fired all the staff. There also seems to be a great lack of information regarding who their replacements are going to be.
We can rest assured that these new employees will be every bit as solid doctrinally as Rick himself.
If we understand Rick Warren and his theology, we should be able to piece together where he is taking the unwary.
When we look at goal #1, Bible translations in the ‘heart’ language of every individual, we see disturbing word play that is common when listening to Rick talk. I do not recall Tyndale or Wycliffe translating the Bible into the ‘heart’ language of every individual.
They translated the Bible into the real language of a people group so that it could be understood in context.
The ‘heart’ language of every people group could mean the use of the Message bible or even the gay bible. Both translations move Scripture from being “God-breathed” to being man-made.
Neither of these translations are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting or training in righteousness. Both leave us ill-equipped for any good work.
That means the first thing this group will jettison is sound doctrine.
We are hearing a lot about baptisms and conversions on a mass scale in various parts of the country.
The problem is that these events are lacking in sound doctrine, and there are no calls for separation from this wicked and perverse generation. We get a generic Jesus and an ambiguous prayer request with no real substance.
When we hear of these events, we are just supposed to accept the emotional euphoria without testing the spirits to see if they are of God. If you do not accept these events as legitimate, you are divisive (or worse, a Pharisee).
Jesus, on the other hand, informed us that many false teachers have gone out into the world, so we need to stay alert.
When dealing with these vague events, we must be wise as vipers but gentle as doves.
The quickest way to determine a false movement is to examine how God’s divine law is handled. The law is what necessitates the call for repentance and is crucial to the proclamation of the Gospel.
In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he writes:
“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted” (I Timothy 1:8-11).
Jesus commanded his pastors to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins in his name. It is doubtful that – if we listened to every sermon ever preached by Rick Warren – this mandate was ever followed.
And it certainly won’t be carried out by this group.
Regarding doctrine, we can expect a great deal of ‘Best life now’ theology, Purpose-Driven theology, and, worst of all, social justice theology. We will search in vain for any vestige of the Gospel of Jesus Christ within this group.
As for Goal #2, “Every believer trained to share his/her faith,” we now have a better idea of what that means. It means we will have a bunch of apostates running around sharing worldly nonsense.
These will be the ones ridiculing true Christians as hateful and (fill in the blank) phobic, especially if they dare to quote the above Scripture from the apostle Paul.
There will be a great falling away from the faith in the next few years. Those who have superficial faith will all be among those who will abandon the faith at the first sign of a cultural shift.
In order to remain in the faith, one must be taught sound doctrine. The Christian has no power against the devil and his schemes when he invokes the false gospels of this movement.
That makes Goal #3 even more terrifying. These people are going to plant little ‘social justice’ front groups – that they call churches – all over the country. Imagine all these churches mimicking the United Methodist Church that broke away in their support of the LGBT.
They will then utilize Goal #4 to pray for success in their endeavor.
These people are from the world, and the world will listen to them. God will not listen to them. They will have success, but their success will not be from God.
These people are not the church of Christ; they are nothing more than pagans who are lost.
In all likelihood, the leaders of this movement are beyond redemption. They have once been enlightened but have fallen away.
They cannot be restored to repentance.
They are all headed for an eternity filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It is the responsibility of the faithful to warn any who might follow them of their error. However, we will not win those who lead this group to Christ.
Our target should always be those who follow them in ignorance and try to prevent as many as possible from being duped by this nonsense.
The consequences for embracing a different gospel are eternal.