Ten Marks Apostate Church — E.A. Johnston

The Danger of Apostate Churches

I want to say that there are some good churches throughout this land that are God-honoring and gospel-promoting, with some godly pastors in the pulpit, but that's a minority. We live in a day, friends, where if you step into the wrong church, you can pass through a doorway to hell.

Spiritual Declension in Contemporary Churches

I have been around a long time. I have visited hundreds of churches that are nothing more than doorways to hell and damning stations, and I've listened to hundreds of pastors through the years who don't have the faintest clue what the real gospel is, and I have never witnessed such a day of evil and spiritual declension in our churches that exists at this hour.

Mistaking Church Growth for God's Blessing

We have mistaken church growth for God's blessing and favor. If we see a big church with beautiful buildings, crammed with thousands of people, and even if they have big-name speakers there all the time, then we say God must be behind their success when the reality is that that rich church can afford the high honorariums for those speakers, and God is a million miles away from that Laodicean church.

The Danger of False Gospels and False Shepherds

I'm going to make a statement, and I believe I can back it up, friends. The majority of the churches in this country, as they stand in their present apostasy, are nothing more than a doorway to hell, and if you are a member in one of these churches, then you risk being deceived and spiritually harmed with the false gospel and false shepherd in the pulpit.

Professionalism Without True Salvation

The worst thing you can do to your family is to join one of these hell-sanding churches. They're usually run by an unsaved religionist who has worked his way up the ladder of his denomination, and he has a reputation for growing a church, and if you can grow a church that means you're a great evangelist, right?

Wrong. That just usually means you have broadened the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did. Most big churches have pastor search committees whose job is to go out and hire a professional who looks good and who talks good and who can scratch their itch.

A church will throw a lot of money at a man like that, especially if he writes a book that becomes a bestseller, or it can be a small church full of heresy with a lost man in the pulpit. People are going to hell in droves while they sit in churches across this land.

The Gospel Stripped of Its Saving Power

Churches have gone soft on sin, have soft-soaked the gospel, and removed all the teeth from it so it doesn't have power to save a flea, much less a hardened sinner who loves his sins. Listen to me, friends.

The majority of pastors standing in pulpits in this country do not know how to point a lost sinner to Christ, and the majority of our churches are nothing more than houses of entertainment. The title of my message today, friends, is The Church Doorway to Hell, and my text can be found in 2 Corinthians chapter 13.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verse 5. Let me read you the apostles' admonition to all of us at this time. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Prove your own selves.

Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? I'd rather examine myself before God now, and be honest with him as to my salvation, rather than face him at the judgment as a man outside of Christ and damned to a devil's hell.

Ten Marks of an Apostate Church

Listen, friends, for in this message I will list ten marks of an apostate church. See if your church is listed here. 1. The pastor is an unsaved man who talks a good talk, and he is a personable fellow, but he is a man who hasn't a clue as to what the real gospel is or what true salvation is.

He may have letters after his name from seminary, but his name is not found written in the book of life. He makes false converts because he is a stranger to vital Christianity. 2. The atmosphere of the church is mainly social.

A Social Atmosphere Replacing Spiritual Life

People are there to see friends or to make business contacts. Their main reason for church attendance is for social reasons. 3. The church is built on providing entertainment and making its members happy through creature comforts.

There will be a lot of activity to keep its members occupied, but although there is much busyness in the name of God, there is very little of God in the work. All of the work of the church is carried out by money and manpower, rather than by prayer and Holy Ghost power.

Worldly Music and Paid Entertainment

4. The music is not God honoring, but of the devil. Why do so many worship leaders today have spiked hair and goatees, and why do they dress like Las Vegas entertainers? Why do they resemble Diablos? Why do we even need these paid entertainers in our churches to corrupt our young people?

A Watered-Down Gospel

5. The message from the pulpit is watered down, so not as to offend anyone. You will seldom hear a sermon on sin and its consequences, or God's wrath and that God must punish sin, or the cross and blood redemption, or the lordship of Jesus Christ and all the rights and claims that the gospel has on a person, or a future judgment that awaits all mankind, and an everlasting hell for the wicked dead.

You'll never hear sermons on the doctrines of man's duty of repentance and man's utter necessity of regeneration. Jesus warned, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, and that goes for every pastor and seminary professor that does not believe repentance is necessary for salvation.

The gospel of believe only that omits repentance is a false gospel that has the smoke of hell all over it, and the church that does not preach the necessity of a work of grace upon the heart by the spirit of God through the supernatural act of regeneration is a hell house that will collapse and burn up its members.

Jesus said, Marvel not that I said ye must be born again. Listen friends, about 157 years ago when this nation was in the grip of revival and thousands were being saved from coast to coast, if you wanted to join a church then you'd have to have credible evidence of regeneration or the church would not accept your membership.

Discipleship Without the Cross

We live in such a day of sad spiritual declension in our denominations that we even elect unconverted men to lead us, the blind lead the blind, very few are truly regenerate individuals. 6. There will be no messages on the cross in the life of a believer or following a crucified savior in a life of discipleship of self-denial.

Jesus said, if you wanted to follow him then this was the narrow way, the cross. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

Worldliness in Pastor and Congregation

7. There will be an atmosphere of worldliness both in the pastor and in the congregation. They will talk like the world, dress like the world, and act like the world, and desire to possess much of it.

Greed and Covetousness Among Church Members

Rather, a true believer will love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 8. There will be a spirit of greed and worldliness among the members.

The gospel will not be advanced as it should because of the selfishness and covetousness of church members. They are more concerned over their investment portfolio than the lost souls perishing around them.

The Neglect of Holy Living

Money is their God, and they serve that God, and greed is their motivation. Some of the greediest men I've ever known have been deacons in the Baptist church. 9. You'll seldom hear a message on holy living and separation from the world.

Holiness and the Necessity of Sanctification

It won't be promoted in the pulpit or lived out in the pew. The pastor and people are the antithesis of Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, which states,. 10. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

The need for holiness will be a taboo subject with that dead church. Many young pastors today are enslaved to antinomian behavior. They feel they can sin all they want to and still go to heaven. But my Bible declares, without holiness, no one will see the Lord, and that pertains to big famous preachers, too.

Prayerlessness and the Loss of the Weekly Prayer Meeting

10. It will be a prayerless church. There's no organized weekly prayer meeting where you will find a room with broken-hearted Christians crying out to God over the sins of the land and the lost in their community.

Rather, there will be short little prayers at the start and end of the service written for the ears of men. A prayerless church is no church. A prayerless Christian is no Christian. Jesus said, My house shall be called a house of prayer, not a den of entertainment.

A Call to Leave Apostate Churches

The church in this country went to hell years ago when it killed off the weekly prayer meeting and replaced it with cell groups and yoga classes. Listen to me, friends, and listen to me closely. If you are part of one of these churches run for the hills, you'd be better off gathering with some believers and starting a house church and opening up your Bible and worshiping God there in a spirit of prayer rather than supporting a house of hell that will send you to hell and damn your family in the process.

I believe that if 90 of the churches in this country shut their doors for good, that it would be good for this country. It would give the real Christians an opportunity to reach the lost with the real gospel of the Son of God.

Heaven help us all. Let us pray.