This is part-one. You can read part-two here.
Quagmire is defined as a soft boggy area of land that gives way under foot, or an awkward, complex, or hazardous situation. Finding the church who preaches what Jesus taught is like walking on hazardous boggy soil.
I’m sure you have noticed the signs as you drive down country roads and city streets:
‘The First or Second Church of this and that’
‘Run For Your Life International Chapel’
‘Occupy Till I come Deliverance Ministry’
Trying to tell what a Pastor preaches by the sign outside his church is like trying to tell what is inside a book by its cover. Sometimes they just don’t give you a clue!
Then many churches do not try to have a webpage to give their Statement of Beliefs, or if they do, they make it very general, so you really don’t know what they believe about the very core teachings of the Gospel, until you visit and ‘hear the spirit behind the preacher’ for yourself.
Some do not understand that what the preacher says is not always coming from the Holy Spirit but from his own exalted sense of self.
This is why John taught us to ‘test’ the spirits to see if they indeed are lifting up Jesus Christ as God’s Son, as God manifested in the Flesh, as the only way to eternal life. A quagmire indeed!
So how do you know which church is preaching what Jesus taught?
First of all we need to understand how all of these denominations, cults, and splinter groups came into existence. So this will be a two-part series. This first will give some background to denominations and the second more detail on what denominations come closer to teaching what Jesus and the Apostles taught.
It has been almost 2000 years since Jesus told Peter that He would build His church upon the revelation that He was God manifest in the flesh as the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel.
The Apostles taught that which Jesus taught them to others. Then came the students or contemporaries of the Apostles known as the Apostolic Fathers or Early Church Fathers. Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias and Clement among others were among the Apostolic Fathers.
These again taught what the Apostles had learned from being with Jesus. The Early Christian Church saw intense persecution from the Roman Empire until Constantine ruled Christianity a legal faith.
The Catholic Church formed initially with the meaning of their name as Universal to cover all true Christians. Then within a few centuries, the Universal part divided into the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
Martin Luther came along and ‘protested’ the corruptness of the church teachings, establishing the Lutheran Church.
By the attached timeline you can see how each denomination split off from the original Catholic, Orthodox and then Lutheran groups.
There are over 41,000 Christian denominations in the world today.
- 1/3rd of the world claims to be Christian, with one billion of them Catholics, 260 million Orthodox, and 800 million Protestants.
- Around 300 million are Evangelicals, with the 600 million as Pentecostals or Charismatics.
- Between 75 and 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christian.
- 7% identify themselves as Atheist or Agnostic, with another 16% saying that religion is not important to them.
- 45% of Americans say they do not attend church. Some of these have been hurt by the church.
- Islam claims 1.6 billion believers.
- Eastern Religions claim between 1 and 2 billion followers.
- Mormons claim 12 million-Jesus worked His way up to godhood and they forbid prayer to Him.
- Jehovah Witnesses claim 6.5 million-Jehovah God is greater than Jesus. They use their own translation to prove their teachings, changing the original Words of God.
- Christian Science claim around 2000 churches worldwide-there is no sickness outside the mind.
- New Age claims a heterogeneous movement of individuals. Even some churches graft some new age beliefs onto their regular religious affiliation. Recent surveys of US adults indicate that many Americans hold at least some new age beliefs:
- 8% believe in astrology as a method of foretelling the future
- 7% believe that crystals are a source of healing or energizing power
- 9% believe that Tarot Cards are a reliable base for life decisions
- about 1 in 4 believe in a non-traditional concept of the nature of God which are often associated with New Age thinking:
- 11% believe that God is “a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach”
- 8% define God as “the total realization of personal, human potential”
- 3% believe that each person is God.
The cult-type groups usually deny the full divinity of Christ, making Him lesser than Almighty God manifested in the Son of God.
Some groups believe that their beliefs are the only way to salvation, and everyone else will be lost.
Generally New Age followers believe that Jesus Christ is not the only Christ, nor is He God. God is an impersonal, cosmic-energy force with all things including man are called the Universal Mind. Man only needs to awaken his divinity hidden within his mind.
Then we have the Mega-Churches built around popular personalities, who center their teachings on all things positive with personal growth and prosperity, watering down the message with New Age teachings mixed in with the Gospel.
If you are looking for a Social Club, you can pick most any of these and find a like-group of friends for fellowship and encouragement.
But if you are looking for correct Bible teachings, and a speaker who spends enough time in prayer to be able to speak with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, then you will need to seek until you find what registers with your gut and what you know to be true and in agreement with the Word of God.
Paul warned us about those who preach another Jesus, “For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough” II Corinthians 11:4
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Galations 1:8-9
To be continued…..