PEOPLE OFTEN WRITE TO ME from various parts of the world asking if I can provide them with information about a decent church in their area. After researching the possibilities, only very rarely am I able to say, “Try this. I think it will fulfil your needs”. When I have been able to point people in the right direction, I have actually had people tell me how they burst into tears on entering the doors of a rare “Word of God” church. The devout simplicity (no gimmicks). The profound preaching of the Word (no tendentious eisegesis). The strength and spirituality of the songs (no soppy choruses). The genuine warmth of the people (no cultish ‘love-bombing’). The clear sense of worship in all hearts (no so-called ‘worship-leaders’ necessary). All this is so rare that those seeking the deep word of God and true New Testament fellowship are awestruck when they encounter it. False “Christians” find it ‘boring’ and “lacking the Spirit”. Genuine disciples of Christ find it inspiring and spiritually wholesome. How can you explain that? (If you know, you know).

So many churches today are not “Word of God” churches such as they were in the early church, when gatherings of disciples of Christ made the reading and exposition of Scripture the centrepieces of those gatherings. Ralph Martin states that in the early church the reading and exposition of the Scriptures is “an inheritance we have received, through the early church, from the worship of Judaism, and which makes the model Christian service a Word-of-God service” (R.P. Martin, Worship in the Early Church, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1964, p.131)

The truths of the Bible, both read and deeply expounded upon, were at the heart of worship in the early church. In how many churches do we see that today? As the apostle Paul said to the pastor, Timothy, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation [i.e., preaching], and to teaching [i.e., biblical and pastoral instruction]” (1 Timothy 4:13). He did not say, “Devote yourself to choosing a worship leader, creating an orchestra and rock band, a light show on a big stage like a show in Las Vegas”. It is all now either schmaltzy entertainment, narcissistic showmanship and consciousness-altering repetitive singsongs posing as ‘worship’; or psychosomatic ‘healings’ worked through suggestion; or high church ritualistic sacerdotalism; or hypnotic tricks peddled by scam artists (e.g. “slain in the spirit”, pagan ‘gibberish tongues’, and ‘holy laughter’); or populist teachings about how ‘real Christians get rich and healthy’; or a ‘woke’, politically correct ‘social gospel’, or teaching that believers are going to be secretly “raptured” off the earth before the ‘great tribulation’; or some wishy-washy sit-on-the-fence-about-everything community session punctuated by what amounts to a children’s address posing as a proper sermon.

Why and how has this state of affairs come about so that it is all considered normal? This is what I want to pursue in this brief study.

Although I have always taken a great interest in this phenomenon and written about it muchly, what has sparked me to write this particular little piece is the very recent sight of two separate posts on social media. One said, “Most arrogant wives are always very humble in church, but uncontrollable at home”. This is very true. Churches provide the perfect environment for people to develop and project an entirely false self with very little chance of that being detected due to the poor level of discernment and high level of gullibility of most professing “Christians”. In fact, church is the ultimate paradise for religious virtue-signallers who can pass themselves off as being pious and (pseudo)-spiritual. The other post I just saw said this:

“I’ve walked away from church not because of beliefs but from the people that don’t understand how these type of disordered people are. Single dads typically are assumed to be the evil bastards so there isn’t much room for acceptance. Along with the fact that churches tend to attract people who are hurting and need healing themselves”.

This is an astute observation. Unfortunately, these days, many disordered, disturbed and emotionally immature people are attracted to being part of a church, and churches are full of them. If they are spiritually regenerated people then all that disorderliness and disturbance will be sorted out one way or another, sooner or later. For if they are regenerated then the Holy Spirit will get alongside them in His inimitable paracletal manner and deal with them. If they are not yet regenerated but they are genuinely seeking healing for the soul then they will find it through becoming a new creation in Christ, if they are serious. But if a church becomes swamped with many disordered, disturbed and emotionally immature people who are not regenerate (but who imagine they are) then that tips the balance so that the gathering becomes devoted to preserving the status quo, meaning that there is almost a silent conspiracy to do so, at the expense of reality. I remember at one of the churches I pastored, I discovered that there was a cabal of mostly screwed-up nasty people who controlled the place (a quite common situation apparently) and who had abusive marital relationships in their homes. I decided to consult previous pastors of the church and they all replied confirming my suspicions. Some of the words of their responses said this:

“What you have described in your e-mail is like pages out of my diary… All the previous pastors have horror stories to tell… I have never been treated with such accusations, cruelty, and evil dissension as at this church… The more you say, the more they will use and twist your words against you. The more you defend yourself, the more vigorous their attack will be. Just like the Sadducees, they will use the methods of a lawyer to ensnare you and discredit you as completely as possible. Their motive is self-vindication of sin and an unrivalled control of God’s church”.

One of these pastors had actually been driven to a nervous breakdown. How could it possibly be that such relentlessly evil people gain control of a large church like that? When this evil group saw that many in the congregation were responding to my preaching in a positive manner, they accused me of trying to build my own powerbase! This is because such folks — instead of rejoicing that there was a positive response to the teaching — can only see such things from a competitive standpoint. In their twisted thinking they could only see such teaching as a threat to their powerbase. This is what happens when spiritually unregenerated people manage to get into positions of power and manipulation, which is all that they seek.

That so many disordered, disturbed and emotionally immature people are attracted to churches would not be a problem if they came to Christ. But most don’t, and they then make out that they are Christ’s disciples (insanely believing themselves to be so), and then only manipulative chaos can ensue — most of which takes place out of sight of the rest of the congregation who become fodder for the powermongers.

We are living in a time in which one fanatic can enter a church and undo decades of good work in a matter of months; which is what happened to a pastor friend of mine when a guy obsessed with the wholly false notion that the King James Version is the only manifestation of the true Word of God split the church and took the greater part of it away with him. Many churches have now become environments where a domestically abused woman can be told by the elders to “submit” to her husband “because it is biblical” (I have heard of this many times), or a man with a wife who is obviously destructively personality-disordered is told to “man-up and be the leader of the household” (likewise many times with this too). In my experience, a great many people in churches are personality-disordered but most of the time it is disguised behind hideously false smiles, rampant pietism, Bible jargon, Christian clichés and ‘butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth’ smarminess — until someone challenges them in some innocuous manner. Consequently, there is no real place in a great many churches (probably most) for someone who ‘tells it like it is’; someone who sees right through any gaslighting bullshit; someone who understands human psychology, the power of suggestion and brainwashing techniques; someone who is not at all ignorant of Satan’s devices; someone who knows the difference between real authority and false authority; and someone who has a genuine love of truth and authenticity. Yet, this is precisely the kind of person who is very much needed in the halls of God’s people. Yet such a person will not last long in most of those halls today, whether as a pastor or member of a congregation. If you have those characteristics, you will very quickly become a pariah in most of today’s churches and (ironically) you will be labelled as a troublemaker.

I have no hesitation in calling many of the churches of today “modern synagogues of Satan”. Although the phrase “synagogues of Satan” was used by the Lord to describe caucuses of false Jews in the churches in chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, the same Greek word translated as “synagogue” is also used to describe a gathering of disciples of Christ (James 2:2). Therefore the mass of churches of which I speak — in which authenticity and a love of truth have been superseded by virtue-signalling and/or the exercise of false authority — are nothing less than ‘synagogues of Satan’ and manifestations of the spirit of the Antichrist. For as the Antichrist is a counterfeit of the true Christ, so such synagogues of Satan are a counterfeit of the true church. The church of God is the body of Christ. These false churches are the spawn of the spirit of the Antichrist. Bear in mind that the actual Antichrist, when he is revealed, will not appear outwardly as an abject monster but as a shiny, smooth-talking sorcerer with extraordinary powers, exercising pseudo-wonders, and will even present himself as being divine (2 Thessalonians 2:4 & 9). Therefore, the churches which operate in the spirit of the Antichrist will fool the unaware and unawake with their pseudo-piety and lying wonders, just as they do even now.

The situation which Jesus described in his parable of the wheat and the zizania (tares) in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 pertains precisely to this situation. He was predicting the dual nature of the visible church as containing both the real deal (the body of Christ) and a whole bunch of impostors which appear outwardly to be Christians. Now if the impostors can be kept in place or even booted out by astute leaders, then that would be a start. But if the impostors gain the supremacy they seek, then that church will die, even if it seems to live. I am not saying that all the impostors are aware of being impostors. Most of them do not have a clue who they really are and are just acting out their screwed-up unregenerate natures in a pietistic disguise, though others definitely do know what they are doing and are deliberately attempting to undermine the true Church.

How can we counteract this awful decline of the visible church, do I hear you ask? You cannot. Remember that zizania resembles wheat until the time comes for the harvest (Matthew 13:39-40). The false church (the zizania/tares) will continue to grow alongside the wheat and will not be ‘weeded out’ until the time of the end. All we have to do is continue the true churching in as powerful a way as possible.

The majority of churches on this earth have now been infected by one or more of the bandwagons which I mentioned in the third paragraph of this piece. This is why it is so important to have wise elders and pastor-teachers in any gathering of God’s people, which is why He has deliberately placed such ones in the churches (Ephesians 4:11-14) teaching God’s word. Yet so many would rather have what I call a “Fish n’ Chips” style meeting, where the group fishes around blindly for Scripture meanings and everyone just chips in (usually with dubious ideas they’ve gathered from wacky teachers on the internet — the very opposite of what such a church “Word of God” gathering should consist of). This is absolutely fatal to the spiritual life of a gathering of God’s people as usually the most assertive and ill-informed will gain leadership rather than those who are approved by God. But finding a gathering which is a genuine “Word of God” church with a genuinely devout and humble leadership is like trying to find a needle in a haystack! [To know more about “Word of God” churches and what gatherings of disciples looked like in the early church and what they should look like for real today, please read my little book, “O Lord, Open Our Lips”, which you can download for free here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2023/11/07/o-lord-open-our-lips-church-hymnody-and-worship-in-history-and-today-including-an-expose-of-the-hidden-agenda-behind-the-new-style-of-worship/ . You will there read that there has been a clear satanic agenda to try and undermine spiritual life in the Ekklesia though tendentious worship and song].

Therefore, all one can do is ensure that one attempts to join with a “Word of God” gathering. But if you cannot, do not let anyone falsely quote Hebrews 10:25 at you to force you to attend any old church. That verse, more than almost any other, has been taken terribly out of context, as you can read in my exposition of Hebrews 10:19-39 here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2023/02/04/do-not-shrink-back-an-exposition-of-hebrews-chapter-10-verses-19-39/ .

We live in very strange times and it can be far more soul destroying to be part of a ‘bandwagon’ church than to be in no church at all. I know of many who will never go near a church again because of what they have experienced inside all these wayward gatherings. I’ve been counselling such folk for years. The phenomenon of the nasty professing “Christian” or the loonytune church is a conundrum which can throw you altogether until you discover that this is the nature of the visible church today, which is stuffed full of impostors and many who are without genuine spiritual credentials.

We are in the throes of a great apostasy (Greek: ἀποστασία, apostasia) to which Paul alluded (2 Thessalonians 2:3), in which the visible church, as a part of the world, is a major participant. This apostasy is happening in all areas of life. What exactly does apostasy mean? The word ‘apostasy’ is of serious significance in the moral and spiritual life of humanity. It means an abandonment of faithful allegiance to something, or the renunciation of moral principles, or a complete betrayal of religious or spiritual affiliation. Alternative expressions would be ‘falling away’ or ‘utter rebellion’. To apostatize represents a disintegration of moral and spiritual principles into godless betrayal, dissolution, debauchery, degeneracy or licentiousness. Although operating in the world to a greater or lesser degree throughout this entire age, the magnification of this apostasy is a sign which gathers steam in intensity as the end of the age draws near, coming to a frantic climax of rebellion and lawlessness. By “lawlessness”, I am not so much referring to going against human laws (although that can certainly be part of it), but rabidly opposing Divine law and the universal moral law (natural law) which is inscribed within the heart of every human being by creation and which is known universally, even though it is suppressed by hardened and debauched hearts. Those who revel in their rebellion against the Divine can only alienate themselves from the fulness of life and thereby increasingly gravitate into a downward spiral of darkness. This process of human degeneration away from the knowledge of God can be clearly seen in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 1, verses 18-32. Indeed, an all-pervasive, unprecedented moral darkness of hideous depth across the entire face of this earth is precisely what will characterize the absolute end of this age, just prior to the revealing of the Antichrist and also during his brief and doomed reign.

We are now involved in what must surely be the final build-up to that all-pervasive, unprecedented moral darkness, which has gradually been developing throughout the age. The visible church has never stopped being a target for that apostasy, which of course is satanic in origin. For the apostasy is simply the visible confirmation of the precursory “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:7) and the preparatory “spirit of the Antichrist” (1 John 4:3).

So when you look around bewildered at the decline of the visible church and you are nonplussed at how so many think those foolish bandwagons are so wonderful, and how surprisingly nasty many professing “Christians” can be, just keep in mind that this age is unequivocally what Paul called an “evil age” (Galatians 1:4) which is not leading to some fantasy “global revival” or mythical “golden age on earth” but is instead heading towards the climax of that evil in chaos, materialist madness, pseudo-spirituality, transhumanist pretensions, moral depravity and despotism, leading to the parousia (coming) of the Antichrist as the harbinger for the parousia (coming) of the Christ. It has always fascinated me that the same Greek word, παρουσία, parousia, is used to describe both the revealing of the Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:9) and the second coming of the Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:8) which will destroy that counterfeit entity. They are both profoundly spiritual events — the one a gross manifestation of darkness and the other a glorious exhibition of Light.

The visible church is certainly in decline and modern “Christian” synagogues of Satan abound; but the body of Christ can never be diluted or compromised and it just grows quietly in stature according to the will of God. So let us not be thrown by all this. I know when I first came to Christ nearly forty years ago I expected the church to be the suburbs of heaven. The corruption of the visible church which I uncovered in my in-depth researches for my book “The Serpent and the Cross” (1994) over the ensuing years completely blindsided me… until I realised that the visible church (the “church” which the world sees) is not synonymous with the actual body of Christ and that there will be no coming global revival as so many falsely teach.

We must therefore hold fast to what we have, so that no one will take your crown (cf. Revelation 3:11). Life as a disciple of Christ was never supposed to be a pathway of ease but, rather, a growth-inducing journey of challenge and lessons. Churches become madhouses (either openly or disguisedly) when they reflect the world instead of the Word. So be like an old oak tree in a gale. Stand firm, despite the madness, and you will be blessed in many unexpected ways. Really. I can guarantee that.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]