Why There is a Local Church - Part Five

The universal church is made up of only born-again believers adopted into the family of God. The local church, however, has a mixture of believers and make-believers. We learned this from two parables: the parable of the wheat and the tares, which taught that the enemy sows make-believers within the church that look and act like genuine believers but never produce fruit; and from the parable of the mustard seed, that showed that the church grows big enough to form a perch for the birds of the air that, according to the parable of the sower, snatch away the seed of the Word from the make-believers. It has been this way from the beginning. Make believers are within the Church basking in the blessings of church membership, but not understanding the truth and craving false teaching. It tickles their ears.

Look at Paul's charge to the young pastor Timothy in 2nd Timothy 4:1-4:

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned to fables.

Paul's mandate for every preacher called by God is to preach the Word. Why? Because the day would come when sound doctrine would not be tolerated. People won't want to hear the Bible. They will only want their ears tickled with feel good sermons and prosperity gospel sermons.

But do you see this? While God's true servants are preaching the Word, Satan's servants are preaching their fables. And the tares prefer the fables because it tickles their ears. And if the true believers don't check out the teaching - if they don't act like the noble Bereans who scoured the pages of Scripture to make sure the teaching they were hearing was correct - soon the fables will become the primary doctrines of the local church. When it disagrees with what they used to believe they will separate from the "unenlightened" believers who want to adhere to the old way and still believe the Bible, and they will start a new church or a new denomination.

Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes it is in the reverse order as a group of believers will leave an apostate denomination to return to Biblical principles. The Protestant Reformation was such an example as they left the Roman Catholic Church to return to the Bible as their sole authority. The Bible Church movement is another example as they came out of the liberal denominations to return to the fundamental doctrines of the faith. So the separation goes both ways.

Nowadays, some of the denominations don't even get the Gospel right. It's been that way since the beginning too, since Paul had to write the book of Galatians to counteract a false gospel. But that is the very heart of our faith, isn't it? As Romans 1:16 says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believers, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. If they get the Gospel wrong, there is no other way of salvation, no way into the universal church, no way into the family of God. And people stay lost and condemned.

And Satan wins. Satan always wins if he keeps people from getting saved and if he can screw up our doctrines. Satan always wins if he can divide us. So the diversity of denominations is an accomplishment of Satan, not of God. We almost have to wonder why some of them even call themselves churches if they deny the Scriptures and teach an incorrect Gospel. They aren't leading people to God, but away from Him. They aren't leading people to salvation and heaven, but misleading them right into hell.

In his book, Let the Church Be the Church, Ray Ortland asks, "Has your church really become part of the church, or did it just steal the label?" What he was asking was this: has your local church really become part of the universal church, or is a counterfeit? there are a lot of churches that aren't churches yet they masquerade as churches. John MacArthur claims,

"I am convinced that in the name of Christianity, there are many places that call themselves churches that are not churches, and they have men leading them who call themselves pastors who are not pastors, and they have congregations who call themselves Christians who are not Christian. They are not churches, and they are not pastors, and they are not Christians, and yet they proudly post the label, Christian."

So no, not all local churches are the same. there are good ones and there are bad ones. there are good denominations and there are bad denominations. It all depends on their adherence to the truth of the Scriptures. And you must be able to tell the difference.