A Sadly Ill and Intensely Deceived Church

 1) The pastor told me he doesn't believe there is any such thing as the gospel in reference to Romans 10.  Except for once or twice after a lot of badgering, he refused to tell biblical salvation doctrine to the people he was preaching to.

2) The pastor knew the gospel, because I asked her, and she took me to her office and laid out sound doctrine, though I don't know if she mentioned the necessity to call Jesus Master.  Her church served lunch once a week to the World at large, and she refused to tell them the gospel when I asked her, but she prayed The Lord's Prayer with everyone, though that prayer certainly does not pertain to the unsaved.

3) The church had a grant to get together with the neighborhood, and they had a lunch 3 times a year.  There was no preaching of the gospel, even though they finally got the World where they wanted them..  all was just eating with the World.  Upon careful questioning, I was told that the preacher talks about the gospel all the time, which I heard a little of myself, but he also kept saying that God works without us, even in that neighborhood before Europeans settled there, and he kept saying that God works without us.  I had a guide who had some authority in that congregation and who spoke to me about salvation doctrine (and we seemed to be saying the same things about it), and I asked him what the pastor meant about God working outside Christians in the lives of pagans, like the Native Americans who were here at the time before Europeans settled, and he couldn't answer me.  My impression is that the pastor was saying that the gospel doesn't really need to be preached for God to have some work on the hearts of humanity, but maybe he was saying something else.  At any rate, they didn't have a single banner or say the gospel to the World at that church at their once of three times a year lunch meeting.

4) The church thought that talk therapy and small explorations of Jesus without explicit need to believe the gospel of His love act of dying for our sins and Resurrection and the need to confess Master Jesus would bring people to a knowledge of Christ.

5) The pastor allowed a man to not only go to the church but to work a little for them who explicitly stated that he didn't believe the Resurrection, and that man wasn't warned but was allowed to think of himself as a Christian.

6) Lunch in the basement and 12-step programs, this church had signage everywhere without a single mention of the gospel.  They had one that said something like, "Love your neighbor as yourself: that's all there is to it", which is the religion of pagans and the World religion.  We must love God first and foremost, which includes believing and doing what He has told us in His Word in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 and Romans 10:9, 10, 13 and 14a that we must believe and do to be saved.

7) Agreed with my recitation of the gospel and then preached a sermon on it where he included "repent and be baptized" in order to be saved.

8) Agreed with my recitation of the gospel and then brought in baptism in order to be saved.  Futhermore, he got frustrated when I told him about the church with the man who was active in that congregation but said he didn't believe the gospel.  This pastor couldn't answer me about whether he would kick out such a one or even warn him that he's not saved because he does't believe what God's Word says to believe to be saved.  That pastor kept saying that they didn't kick people out, because it takes time to hear and understand, so I emphasized that the question is of a man who has gone to that church for 10 years and does know it, yet decides to not believe.  He still never answered me, but he changed the topic quickly to the fact that I didn't mention baptism from Matthew 28.

9) The pastor was on vacation for a month, but the fill in pastor said she went to that church her whole life - for 75 years - and when asked what I must do to be saved, she shrugged and said, "I don't know.  Be a good person?".

10) Taught tithing and said we were under a curse if we didn't give 10% in addition to offerings for specific purposes.  He gave us a handout with verses from the New Testament that said the people gave in joy because of their love for God, which passage speaks against forced tithing in Christ's Church in the way it was forced in Israel.  I wrote him a letter, and he refused to have much biblical reasoning about it, except his repeated reference to Malachi, where a curse was given over Israel for not tithing, but just said that his preaching is the bottom line and that I must agree with him or else leave.  He ordered me off the property.

11) Taught tithing while saying he didn't ever talk about it, but there, he said, is a big container for it at the back of the church (as though the container was as far as he would go in communicating about it, even though he said this while preaching a lesson about tithing).

12) Taught a form of the gospel, but they had a strange spirit.  The only thing I learned in their class on holiness in several weeks was that the Old Testament's statement about our works being like filthy rags was wrong and we shouldn't think of ourselves like that.

13) In speaking of the gospel, I was told that they didn't really preach that way, and if I didn't like it, then that was my problem.

Conclusion: There is rampant deception in Christ's Church about salvation doctrine, both in understanding it and in preaching it to the World, even when the World is having lunch at the church.  There's also fear mongering for the sake of money.  Fine preaching is not the catalyst that causes people to come to Christ, by God's Holy Spirit's witness along with the bare knowledge of who Christ is and what Christ has done is.  A little right preaching of Christ's Good News about sin, death, Hell, judgement, Christ's death for our sins, His Resurrection and our opportunity to call on His name for salvation is better than many sermons about getting over addictions or that otherwise leave out the gospel, though they build up the human soul in various ways.  Most of these churches seemed to have a basic understanding of the facts of the gospel, but they couldn't repeat it from the Bible, though it's the most basic doctrine there is, and though it is simple, straightforward and fast, being able to be recited in less than a minute.  I was given to understand that my approach was unloving, too harsh and would scare people away.  Of course, Christ said that He didn't come to bring peace, but He came with the Sword of the Spirit of God to divide among Church and World.  These congregations seem to think that friendship with the World is not enmity with God like the Bible says but rather is the means to cause them to want to be saved and then choose to ask what they must do.  If they were asked, many of these churches probably couldn't tell them, even if one from the World were so direct with them to straightforwardly about it, which is more direct than those congregations wanted to be with the dying World.  We cannot help the World, but we can cast a wide net to call out those people from the World whom God has predestined to be saved since before the foundation of the World.  Those called out ones will respond because of God's work and not due to our own works.  The churches have many works, which is good, but they seem to have - by righteous judgement applied to their own words and actions - lost their first love in practice, just like Christ in Revelation warned a certain congregation.