Church Apostasy Another Gospel — E.A. Johnston

The Last Days and the Church’s Final Apostasy

I believe, friends, we are living in the last days, as seen in our Bibles, and I can back that statement up. All one has to do is to pick up a newspaper and read about how all hell is breaking loose on society, and the very moral fabric of our once great republic is spinning out of control.

Enemy nations are gaining the ability to have nuclear capability to wipe out one-third of the earth's population, and as I look around me and see all these dreadful end-time signs, the main thing I'm keeping my eyes on is the church, the church of our day, in her final apostasy, when the church refuses to preach the gospel of the Son of God, and instead preaches another gospel, which the Apostle Paul warned against, then I know with certainty that we are singing prophecy fulfilled all around us.

Unfortunately, the majority that make up our churches today are blind to what has taken place because they are either sound asleep or spiritually dead in sin. Nothing can awake them, nothing can alarm them, nothing can shake them to their duty of repentance and the great danger that they face.

God’s Mercy and the Call to Repentance

These are desperate days in a church age that is in spiritual declension and in disobedience to the God of the Bible. Why Almighty God doesn't bring the curtain down on this whole sad mess right now is a great amazement to me, but He is a God of mercy and He's long-suffering, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

Luke 24 and Christ’s Commission to Preach Repentance

The title of my message today, friends, is Church Apostasy, Another Gospel, and my text can be found in Luke's Gospel in chapter 24. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verses 45 through 49, and let me read us this striking passage of Scripture to us at this time.

Here now is the Word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord be pleased to attend the reading of His Holy Word. Then He opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

And ye are witnesses of these things, and behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. I will stop there, friends.

The Church’s Neglect of Repentance

Before Leonard Ravenhill died, he made a comment. He said that he was ashamed to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ today. I wonder what the old boy would say if he came back today and took a look at the Church of today, the Church in her final days of apostasy, where she refuses to preach what Christ commanded her to preach here in our text, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached.

Those are the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ as He gave His Church her marching orders until He returns at the final time. I have visited countless churches and countless cities in various denominations, and I'm hard pressed to hear one sermon on what Christ said to preach.

Why does the Church refuse to preach the doctrine of repentance? Why has another gospel replaced the one found in my Bible? Why do you hear teaching in most churches today, rather than preaching? Teaching informs.

Preaching transforms. But all we have is mainly teaching and very weak preaching. Why, I visited a Southern Baptist church recently, and the pastor didn't pray. He never opened his Bible or preached from it.

He just gave you his opinion on love and marriage as he saw it and pulled a Bible verse out of context to support what he was saying. I get up and laugh because it is the sad picture of the apostate church in our day run mainly by religious machine and unsaved men standing behind a pulpit that a holy God never called them to occupy.

False Shepherds and the Gospel of Repentance

The blind lead the blind in most of our churches today, but few seem to notice and fewer seem to care. Pastors will feed you an only-believed gospel that is contrary to the one in our text. John the Baptist preached repentance.

Jesus Christ preached repentance. His disciples preached repentance. The Apostle Paul preached repentance. And the early church preached repentance. But you won't hear it much today. I ask the question, why is the church in direct disobedience to the commands of Christ in preaching his gospel?

Why? Why is it so hard to find a Bible-believing church with a God-called pastor who preaches what Jesus commanded his followers to preach? Why? The only answer to that disturbing question, friends, can be that these are indeed the last days when the church is in her final apostasy before the Lord's return.

The world stage is ready for Antichrist to appear in the religious machines that control our denominations today. We'll welcome the Antichrist with open arms. If the church won't turn from her wicked ways and preach the truth found in her Bibles, then the only thing left is for Christ to come in judgment.

Paul’s Charge to Preach the Word

The Apostle Paul charged his disciple Timothy, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word. Be instant, in season, out of season.

Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned on to fables.".

Friends, I think you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to realize that these are indeed those times. But the sad fact that troubles me more than any other is our young people today who are predominantly atheists, our young kids who grew up in the church and were baptized and grew up in Sunday school are now grown up and they don't want nothing to do with the church today.

The Lost Generation and Coming Judgment

In their eyes it's all a sham, there's no reality of God there, just phony men with phony messages with bad jokes that bore them to tears. What is going to happen to this lost generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings as this church age dwindles down to judgment like a bent candle in the wind?

What will happen is that a new generation will populate an already crowded hell because no one told them they had to exercise repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the blood-stained hands of false shepherds all over this country will indict them as they stand before the judgment, before the one who has eyes of fire.

May God have mercy on us all. Let us pray.