Topic: WorldNetDaily
Over the past several years, WorldNetDaily spent a lot of time denouncing the best-selling spiritual book "The Shack" and even published a book attacking it as "blasphemous" and filled with "counterfeit Christianity," not to mention "more than 15 heresies."
A film of the book has just been released, so WND's knives are drawn again.
A Feb. 12 WND article trots out James De Young, who wrote WND's anti-"Shack" book. He claims the book's idea of "universal reconciliation" is heretical and asserts the book is "beyond disturbing for its thoroughly anti-biblical portrayal of God." He also claims that "The Shack" author Paul YOung "takes on the mantle of a terrorist, anarchist and subverter of the home and marriage" when God as portrayed in the book says that marriage, the church and the government are man-made institutions, not God-ordained, ranting further that Young "is anti-church, anti-marriage and the home, and anti-American."
De Young returns again in a Feb. 15 article to rant some more about the book's "universalist" language, taking particular offense to the book's version of Jesus saying that he doesn’t desire to make anyone a Christian.
“So first, Paul Young doesn’t want to be known as a Christian,” De Young laments. “Second, Jesus warned of those who would profess to be his followers but are inwardly deceiving, ravenous wolves heading for spiritual destruction because they do not bear good fruit and do what he says, as cited in Matthew 7:13-27. Jesus and the Apostles teach what a follower of Jesus must believe about God, Jesus, judgment, and eternal destiny.”
De Young believes “The Shack” and its author do not follow these beliefs. Therefore, he says boldly, “The Shack” cannot be called a Christian book, nor can its author.
“If a person rejects all of these truths or redefines them in ways that contradict what Jesus and the Apostles say, as ‘The Shack’ teaches, then that person’s claim to be a follower of the Lord Jesus is false – so Jesus said in Matthew 7:23,” stated De Young.
The "Shack" attack goes seriously off the rails in a March 5 article, with "blogger and pastor Tim Challies attacking it for a "visual representation of God:
“To watch ‘The Shack’ is to watch human actors play the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” he said. “I take this to be a clear, serious violation of the second commandment: ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’ (Exodus 20:4-6).”
Challies believes human representations of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit distort and diminish the understanding of anyone who views them.
“To portray the Spirit is to vastly misrepresent the Spirit; to portray the Spirit is to blaspheme the Spirit,” he wrote. “The same is true, of course, of the Father.”
De Young echoes the idolatry attack byc laiming the film "reaching new depths of blasphemy" by visually depicting God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
In his March 7 WND column, Jerry Newcombe dismissed the film: "I felt the movie was too New Age for my tastes. If Oprah Winfrey were to make a 'Christian' movie, 'The Shack' would be it. I felt it took too many liberties with the Person of God. God commands us to not to make any graven images."
