5 Marks of the Apostate Church — E.A. Johnston

In 1910, the famous World Missionary Convention convened in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the ministers attending that convention came to the conclusion that the state of the Church, and I quote, was such as to prove itself utterly unfit for the work of God put before it.

That statement was made over 100 years ago, friends, but I submit to you that the Church in our day is more unfit than the Church of that day. The Church of our day is entirely unfit for the work of God before it.

The Church's Apostasy and Jude's Warning

My has the gold dimmed. I want to list for us today just how unfit the Church is and why she has become, for all intents and purposes, an apostate church. I will list five reasons and then elaborate on each head.

The title of my message today, friends, is Five Marks of the Apostate Church, and my text can be found in the Epistle of Jude. We will be in verses 1 through 4, and then I'll read us verses 12 through 13.

Let me read us our text, and then I will list the five marks for us. Here now is the Word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His holy Word. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, the brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called, mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied, beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

For there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me pause there, friends, for I want to also read us verses 11 through 13. Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Cor.

These are spots in your feasts of charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear, clouds they are without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

That's a powerful passage of Scripture, friends, and what an indictment it is to us today. How few are truly contending for the faith found in my Bible. How few today, like Jude, consider themselves servants of Jesus Christ rather than having Jesus be their servant.

How many there are today standing behind the pulpits in this land who were clouds without water, having little to no substance in what they say. Let me at this time list the five marks of the apostate church versus what the biblical church should be.

The Five Marks of the Apostate Church

Number one, the church is apostate when she performs as a showboat rather than a lifeboat. Number two, the church is apostate when she is a house of entertainment rather than a house of prayer. Number three, the church is apostate when she dilutes the gospel message to make it more palatable to sinful man and broadens the way of salvation to make it more inclusive.

Number four, the church is apostate when pastors are irreverent and use crude humor to elicit a laugh from their hearers rather than have a solemnity before God as ambassadors for Christ and preach searching sermons which convict of sin.

And number five, the church is apostate when members are admitted based on a mere decision for Christ rather than displaying credible evidence of their salvation through regeneration. I submit to you, friends, these are the main reasons why the church has no power or influence today.

I submit to you these are the very reasons why the church is a laughingstock in society today. I submit to you that these are the very marks of apostasy which we call Christianity and your day and mine.

Listen, friends, the church is in a crisis and she is sound asleep on her pillows of conformity and a compromised gospel and she sleeps the sleep of death. It's death, death everywhere. Many churches are more like mortuaries than churches of the living God.

There is a form of religion but no power thereof. What passes for Sunday morning church in the majority of our churches in this land today is utter nonsense in a reverence toward a holy God. If a Jonathan Edwards were to come back to life and visit the churches in our land today, he would be shocked at their half-heartedness and coldness and frivolity and laughter.

Let me take each one of these five marks and elaborate upon them as we proceed. Let us first examine this first aspect of the apostate church and that is her performing as a showboat rather than a lifeboat.

The Showboat Church Versus the Lifeboat Church

A showboat draws attention to itself. It is big and showy, flashy and brass. It is proud of her achievements and proud of her various entertainments. As she floats down the river, she makes a big noise and disturbs the night with her raucous entertainment.

A showboat is all about how she looks on the outside, paying little attention to what is on the inside. The church today is a showboat. Just drive down the street in any major city in this country and look at all the large church buildings with their expanded campuses.

It is as if they are reaching competition with one another to see who can get the biggest, the fastest, which church can provide the largest list of amenities to draw in new members. It is like a large smorgasbord where you can pick what you want to.

I was at a showboat church recently and the pastor went on and on about all the church had to offer in the way of entertainment and athletics and creature comforts. He even put it up on a big screen so you could see what his church had to offer you.

A showboat church exists to put on a show. How many churches in your community, friend, are doing that right now? But the church was never meant to be a showboat, but a lifeboat that rescues the perishing.

That's what a church should be, friends. A place where the lost can be pointed to Christ savingly. A place where the primary objective is to go out and rescue the lost and show them the only remedy for sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

The House of Entertainment Instead of Prayer

A lifeboat, not a showboat. But we have it all mixed up today. The apostate church is self-focused, self-absorbed, and self-reliant while the lost perish all around her. Number two, the church is apostate when she is a house of entertainment rather than a house of prayer.

Jesus cleansed the temple in his day because it had become unprofitable spiritually for its focus was on material profits and the pride of man. In Matthew 21 and verses 12 and 13 we read,. And Jesus went to the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Listen, friends, if Jesus returned today to the churches in this land, he would bring a cord in his hand and whip every one of us for making his house a house of entertainment rather than a house of prayer.

The church in America killed off the weekly prayer meeting decades ago. When she did that, she lost the only power engine she had. That's why so many churches are out of gas today. But instead of our churches being houses of prayer, we've turned them into houses of laughter through entertainment.

How many times have I gotten up and walked out of a church because I could not stomach the nonsense that was going on in the pulpit? I'll never forget going to hear a big preacher who was nationally known and he came to one of our local churches and I sat in the congregation and listened to him tell one funny story after another.

He read off one stale joke after another. Then he made the following comment. He said, My church out in California would rather laugh than cry. And that summed up this man's shallow ministry. He had a big popular ministry, but it was like our passage in Jude.

Diluting the Gospel and Broadening Salvation

Clouds without water, trees without fruit. Number three, the church is apostate when she dilutes the gospel message to make it more palatable to sinful man and broadens the way of salvation to make it more inclusive.

Jesus turned away the rich young ruler because he was unwilling to forsake all and follow Christ in a life of cross bearing. But today, your typical church would not only admit the rich young ruler, they would gladly make him the chairman of the deacons.

The gospel today that is presented from the majority of our pulpits is a perverted gospel, a diluted gospel that lacks power. It's so diluted of its power, it couldn't save a flea. We've removed all the teeth out of the gospel to make it more unoffensive to sinful man.

We don't mention sin. We don't mention the punishment for sin, which is hell. And because we fail to mention sin and hell, there is no need for man's duty of repentance. That's why we have a only believed gospel today that has damned its millions over the last 60 years.

And most preachers have gotten out their mop buckets and have cleaned up all the blood and gore around Calvary to make it more presentable to sinful man. Oh, why it's so pristine there at the foot of the cross.

You can sit and have your lunch there. And we have broadened the way of salvation today, friends. We make it easy to walk an aisle and repeat a prayer and make a decision to join the church and accept Jesus.

But Jesus never brought in the way to heaven. Rather, he declared it was a narrow way and you had to strive to get in. I have sat listening to some big preachers through the years who had enormous congregations and they made it pretty easy for someone to walk an aisle to come to Jesus.

Most of them walk that aisle talking with their friend or smiling or chewing on their gum. And they took Jesus like they would a stick of chewing gum and chewed on the religion for a while until the taste went out of it.

Irreverent Pastors and Crude Humor

Number four, the churches apostate when pastors are irreverent and use crude humor to elicit a laugh from their hearers rather than have a solemnity before God as ambassadors for Christ to preach certain sermons that convict a sin.

I was in a large Baptist church and the young visiting pastor opened his sermon by stating he had accidentally exposed himself while changing clothes in front of his youth group. That's what the man said.

His congregation laughed nervously in response. I heard another pastor tell a story about how he was in the toilet right before he came to church and he used crude bathroom humor to make his congregation laugh.

I'm not making this up, friends. This goes on all the time in what we call Sunday morning church in this country. The irreverence by ministers is shocking and it's nothing more than a mark of apostasy and arte.

Membership, Regeneration, and Evidence of Salvation

And lastly, number five, the churches apostate when members are admitted based on a mere decision for Christ rather than displaying credible evidence of their salvation through regeneration. Listen, friends, there was a time in this country about 150 years ago where you could not be admitted to membership in a church unless you were interviewed by a committee who asked you certain questions to see if you could prove credible evidence of regeneration.

This used to be common in our churches over a century ago. Now we just let anybody into a church and baptize them as long as they do what we tell them to do, walk an aisle, repeat a prayer, and agree with John 3 16 or some other Bible verse and accept our Jesus.

But it didn't used to be that way. I fear there are too many today who make up our church membership who are yet unconverted individuals because all they did was decide to be a Christian or agree with a text.

But they've never been awakened to their lost condition, never been convicted of sin, and never have known a work of grace on the heart through the supernatural act of God and regeneration. Their lives have never been changed.

When George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was preaching on Boston Common in the open air in 1740 to 20 ,000 people during the Great Awakening, a Boston minister approached him and asked, Mr. Whitefield, how many converts have you had since you've been among us?

A Call to Repentance and Revival

To which the great Whitefield replied, I don't know, sir, but I shall return to these parts in a year or two and look for the evidence of their salvation. Well, friends, I hope these five marks of the apostate church have helped us today to better understand how to pray for revival and to ask God to send the grace of repentance to the church in our day.

We desperately need a return to vital New Testament Christianity so the loss can be drawn to us and not revolted by us. Our churches need a God consciousness once again, and we need to toss out all our idols of worldly worship, which we've set up in our churches and bow down to.

We need a touch from on high of God's spirit to quicken us to see our own tragic condition and to be enabled to pray aright, to humble ourselves, and to turn from our wicked ways. God have mercy on us all.