God’s true salvation of the real Gospel, announced through God's Word in its original languages, is not the same salvation of the same gospel and same god proclaimed by most churches, because most churches preach doctrines of theistic humanism, particularly various forms of Platonism. Churches have seldom preached the whole and real Gospel after the last of the apostles died, before the end of the first century. Of course, parts and pieces of the true Gospel have come out at various times in history, especially during the Protestant Reformation. And some real Gospel truth began to be practised during the 18th century revival, which is sometimes called the “Great Awakening.” So some aspects of the true Gospel of Christ have been preached and practised in recent history, but seldom the whole Gospel. For churches have always loved to mix in some false humanistic teachings with any of the true parts they accepted. Still, God has always preserved His whole Word, the Bible in its original languages. So we possess the true, full Gospel. And Jesus has always been faithful to teach His elect at least some God-like love of that Gospel, even when they have been members of false churches. So we thank Jesus for always making His life-giving truth of the Gospel always available to the hearts of His elect. At the same time, we do not praise men, who are consistently unfaithful.
We must never forget that the early church “fathers” and apologists, even before the beginning of the second century, began to replace the purely theistic New Covenant teachings of the church with a form of Platonic theistic humanism.29 Then the church adopted many modified pagan cult practices too, in order to turn the people's attention towards man and towards physical deeds of men, as men preached a false salvation. For these humanists did not want the people to go to Jesus. For they were Romans who would even die to preserve their high status as “saviours” and “great” men. And it would be impossible for them to receive this kind of pagan Roman status if Jesus was worshipped instead of these men, and if all men were perceived as equally needy sinners. Then, after the early church corrupted all aspects of the Gospel, the Medieval church went on to further develop the Platonism espoused by that early church. And, through this false church's persecution and violent suppression of other views, it became the only “visible” church by the 13th century. Nevertheless, God was always working His salvation in His elect throughout history, and building His true church.
We should never be confused about this fact, that the early and Medieval churches were not true churches, since all their foundational beliefs were actually pagan, humanistic beliefs opposed to the teaching of the Bible. Their god was the impassive, impersonal, pagan god of Plato and Aristotle.
Their god definitely was not the real God or the real Jesus. Their whole perception of the nature of God, the nature of man, the universe, and salvation came from teachings by pagan humanists. Yes, they threw in a few Christian terms to make their doctrines sound as though they were Christian. But all their teachings fundamentally opposed the very essence of all that was taught in God's Word. And this theistic humanism remains the religion of the whole Roman Catholic church today. Furthermore, most Protestant churches are simply daughters of that pagan Roman church, since they never shook off many of the pagan, Roman, humanistic influences opposing God and God's words at every turn.
With a basic understanding of exactly what God intended His words to mean, it instantly becomes clear that most churches have been preaching a false salvation. And it is a humanistic salvation, worked entirely by man, not by God. Some are deluded into thinking salvation can be earned by man's good deeds. Other believe it is through man's strict asceticism. Some believe one can save oneself by submitting to certain magic sacraments performed by the hands of men, or by repeating certain magic prayers with a mouth of flesh, or by other magic deeds of men who can supposedly manipulate decisions and actions of God. Most churches want their people to believe in salvation by man and man's magic. For they want their people to submit to the “great” men who are heads of their churches, and to support their man-made, man-centred, church kingdoms. The priests and pastors of churches since the second century have mostly emulated the ancient pagan priests. They maintain a higher status than the common people in their Greco-Roman hierarchical structures and institutions by claiming to have mystical powers which can manipulate or appease their pagan-like gods. So, if anyone starts to preach the real salvation of the real Gospel, a salvation worked by God alone in us, most worldly church kingdoms, and their worldly church rulers, will begin to slander and attack one.
But, clearly, we must look beyond the exterior religious decorations of most churches, beyond their grand buildings and entitled lords with their vain titles and accolades of men, beyond their empty humanistic teachings, practices and demeanour, which they made to look outwardly attractive and “Christian.” Nice buildings, nice words, nice programs and nice smiles on nice “pastors” are not enough to sustain our spirits in this dark, violent, unjust world order. And, behind all those nice and “churchy” things, we find an apathetic, loveless, uncaring, unjust, hostile, irrational chaos warring against the real God and the real Jesus, causing harm, injustice and destruction in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Also, we must remember that a church's teachings actually define the nature and character of its god or gods, as well as how a church must worship (esteem and serve) each god. So churches with modified Platonic doctrines actually define their god to be a modified version of a pagan god—usually some hybrid form of Plato’s impassive, impersonal god. Then their doctrines cause their people to esteem and serve that god through the mind and body of flesh alone, even in some very ungodly, loveless ways. And, above all, man is seen to be some kind of shiny, clean, noble, great god. But biblical Christianity portrays literally all human beings as dull, dirty, ignoble, lowly sinners who need the real God to live within their wretched lives all day, every day. For the real God must constantly and personally deal with their petty sins and, very often, with their outright evil thoughts and impulses within them. This true, real salvation is a messy, humbling work of God.
Consider how there are countless different and self-contradictory teachings in the countless different denominations and churches, teachings that change with the fads of the day. Each preacher will teach some principles that contradict other principles that he himself teaches, and will always teach many principles that contradict those taught by other preachers. So the doctrines taught in churches are an unholy, contradicting, irrational, useless, godless mess. And each set of principles each individual teaches portrays a different god that each preacher worships. Each individual and church worships a different god or a different array of gods. Yet, at the same time, individuals worship themselves and other human beings far more than they worship their invented god or gods, since the wills of all the gods they create through their false teachings are always said to be subject to the wills of mere men.
Does anyone even realize that it is utterly impossible for the one, omniscient, immutable, true Creator God to make any mistakes or to contradict Himself in any principles He teaches? And it is utterly impossible for Him to change His immutable character in a way that changes His teachings. So absolutely nothing that God ever truly revealed in His Word ever contradicts anything else He revealed in His Word, and nothing in His Word can ever change. So how can those self-contradicting preachers, who also contradict other preachers and change their doctrines to become more politically correct each month, claim that they learned their doctrines from God and His Word? How can they claim to teach “in God's name”? Why do they try to make the people believe that they teach what God Himself authoritatively taught in His Word? Clearly and obviously it definitely is not God who is teaching these ever-shifting contradictions to and through these preachers. These preachers cannot be sent by God, since they are not teaching God's one, immutable, harmonious, consistent truth.
They cannot be teaching God's Word according to God's own immutable, consistent interpretation granted directly to their spirits by God's Spirit. Nor are they true elders raised up by God, who seek the real truth but sometimes fall into error, even like the apostle Peter did. For they resist the real truth and want nothing to do with it. For they love their humanistic systems and the Roman-like esteem they derive from them. So how can they be God's servants? And how can anyone follow any of them? They are fit only to be abandoned—as deluded fools deluding others, causing destruction.
Yes, it is absolutely true that most churches do not belong to Jesus, our God. Most are not part of God's kingdom. Rather, most churches are simply institutions belonging to Satan's world order. Like other institutions of the world order, there are some elect individuals in those false churches. But the churches themselves are not created by Jesus, and war against the spiritual truths of God's kingdom. Most of this mess is grounded upon faith in the religion of Greco-Roman humanism. These false churches, along with most institutions of the world, are part of the Roman Empire. These churches are just second-class fragments of the fourth kingdom that Daniel spoke about and, together with the world order, war against God. So, like the world order, these churches can only be united in a way that resembles the pressing together of chunks of iron and lumps of clay into a conglomerate, where the parts of clay and iron can never adequately adhere to one another (see Dan. 2:40-43). Since these churches and denominations worship many different gods, they cannot truly unite under any one god, with one mind and one purpose. And they certainly never want to unite under the one real God.
Since each church's false god or false gods can never be truly compatible with any of the other gods of other churches, and because their principal gods are all human beings who strive against each other with selfish ambition, these many different churches can only develop an extremely superficial and artificial unity, one that easily breaks. And, to unite in this political way, they must force all real truth to be silenced, lest it causes divisions—because justice and truth always angers liars while it draws the honest towards it, and seldom allows for any compromise. So these churches, just like Satan's world order, must use some kind of political, social or physical force to maintain their kind of tenuous unity and fragile peace. Thus, they “agree to not disagree” with each other, and never allow any truly honest debate. Then they suppress all real truth, until absolutely nothing true can be mentioned by anyone. They slander, ostracize or expel any who dare to speak the truth in love, lest factions occur. For they must maintain their false unity and false peace by allowing each faction to worship its own false gods in its own way. But, even so, each church remains a rival and is still fundamentally an enemy of the others, since each strives against the others to gather in more dupes who will pay tithes to support their church leaders and institutions. So a mere peace treaty between two warring churches can never make those churches into one united church, with one mind and one purpose. Also, the more those churches compromise, and the more they refuse to allow any truth to uphold any scruples, the more they promote deceivers, even psychopaths, as leaders of their people, men who can do their dishonest and ruthless works without any true inner conscience to interfere.
As I said, some churches are like iron. Rigid and strong churches preach countless oppressive laws and rules, all man-made. This makes church members very strong in matters of the flesh, but very weak in the spirit. They march together like a disciplined army, to engage in warfare and to perform tasks. But there is no love there. Meanwhile, the soft, malleable “clay” churches focus on what they deem to be “spiritual.” But, by this, they mean all must try to be friendly and positive. They appeal to emotional desires of the flesh in loveless, worldly ways. These are more “hip” and current in their beliefs, so they proclaim very few laws. Yet, at the same time, everyone in those churches must adhere to a million social expectations which change daily, according to the whims of certain personality cult leaders. So these churches are actually just as ruthless and hypocritical, possessing many ways to make social outcasts. And real truth is never welcome. Still, we must admit that they are indeed cleverly disguised as charitable and friendly. Nonetheless, as they grow old and dry out, they become brittle and break very easily, like dried and unbaked clay. New aggressive personalities rise up against the old ones, striving for esteemed positions and greater head counts, so they can gain status, income and the power of influence for themselves. Therefore, factions occur, and the older churches crumble. Also, since they live by emotions of the flesh, their flesh is strong for sin. So their pastors are often caught up in some kind of carnal scandal that destroys their church, through lust or greed. We must be aware of all these kinds of false churches, who trap souls in delusions, who are very harmful in many ways and on many levels. We need Jesus, not delusions of worldly institutions.
Of course, the real God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is faithful and teaches the spirits of all His Father's children for their salvation, even those who are caught up in false churches or the secular world. So there are always some in these false churches and in the world who begin to learn to love in a pure, just, God-like way. And these elect are not nearly as harmful as others in the world or in the world’s churches. However, if any true elect children of God do attend those false churches, their spirits will be damaged, often in ways that are almost irreparable during their lives on earth, often in ways much worse than the secular world will damage their spirits. For the corruption of God's real truth in false churches will prevent these elect ones from reaching their full potential or finding abundant life. The false teachings disable them from serving in God's “priesthood,” as “visible” members of His true and “invisible” church. Yes, all these inner injuries suffered by the elect will be completely healed and repaired on the final judgement day. But, meanwhile, the elect caught in false churches will be led into vanity and lose much in life. They will build a worldly life with wood, hay and straw, on a foundation of sand, then lose that whole life to fire on the last day. For God has ordained only one foundation for the salvation of all His children, for all spirits born of Him in His likeness. And that foundation is the real Christ (I Cor. 3:11-15). So we must build with faith in Jesus alone, with His gifts of spiritual gold, silver and precious stones, His real truth directly from Him, for abundant life.
We cannot beneficially unite with most churches, since most are clearly false churches. We cannot mix our pure, living waters of Christ’s Holy Spirit with their poison waters and drink it, thinking we have more water now and, therefore, we will be healthier as we drink more. Also, we can only call some of their members our brothers and sisters, usually the lesser ones. For most “leaders” of false churches are those who know how to compromise truth in the most cunning ways, and are the most committed children of Satan, though they wear nice smiles. They are those most able and most prone to esteeming and serving the false gods of those false churches. So those “leaders” are seldom the elect and seldom have any inner conscience worked by Jesus. Actually, the elect trapped in false churches are usually the most marginalized members, hiding in peripheral areas of the church. Since our brothers and sisters only include the elect whom Jesus is truly saving through His teaching and training of their spirits, to love in a just and pure way, the elect are almost always the least valued in false churches. The leadership and leading members of most churches are the most easily deceived ones who do not actually want God's real salvation, because they do not want the real truth and do not want the real Jesus to be the only authoritative Teacher, Head and Lord of all their people. Most church leaders strive to replace Jesus, to make themselves and other human teachers into the human heads and human lords of all the people. Thus, they fight to keep the church under their rule. Most of those human heads and lords will not relinquish their authority and income easily, since most do not truly love the people, nor are they humble in spirit. They war against Jesus and we do not want them.
To remain the human teachers, heads and lords of these churches, men have preached or created many false doctrines which they have added to the teachings of the Bible. They interpolate much unintended meaning into God's words, in ways that enable them to maintain their status and leading positions in their churches. And, for the same reason, they also nullify or suppress many of the most significant and important truths found in His Word, much of what God intended His words to mean. So any attempt to unite with them would necessitate a great compromise that would nullify most of Christ's works for our salvation and require a total rebellion against Jesus' Headship and His truth. The only way we, the elect in Christ, can have any dealings with those false churches is through a spiritual warfare against them, while also providing refuge to the fleeing elect defecting from them, since many elect are victims of many church sins and are in need of rescue from church oppression.