“Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Matthew 23:15. This passage speaks directly to the spirit of religious zeal divorced from the truth of the gospel. Christ condemns the pharisees not for their lack of energy, sincerity or effort, but for their corrupt message and system. Their labors multiplied deception rather than truth, producing converts bound more securely in delusion than they had been before. And this is not confined to the Pharisees of old.
Today’s institutionalized and contemporary “church” is much the same, cloaking itself in scattered and detached fragments of bible truth, offering a general confession that has no root in Christ. Zeal without truth, converts without Christ. The name of Christ or rather “Jesus” is employed only to lend credibility to their system which, though cloaked in ‘christian’ attire, is nothing more than man-centered idolatry. The end of this kind of religion is always the same, it loses sight of God and collapses into a baptized humanism, where everything is for the benefit of man. Its creed is human need, its gospel is human comfort, and its god is man enthroned beneath a bible veneer. Everything bends toward man. Christ is no longer proclaimed as “Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” Philippians 2:11, but diminished to a life coach, a problem-solver, or personal advisor – a divine therapist, a self-help guru, in essence nothing more than a resource at man’s disposal to secure his own happiness. “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.” Romans 1:25.
It is the “gospel” turned on its head, man becomes the center, and their caricature of Christ is pushed to the margins. Everything turns manward. The Scriptures may still be quoted, but they are stripped from their context and repurposed to build an idol of man’s own making. Such a system, however draped in the trappings of christianity, is nothing but idolatry draped in biblical language. When they “convert” you, you “become” twice the child of hell, before, you were a “lost” sinner, but now you are a deceived sinner. In that sense, its converts are not merely lost sinners in need of grace, but now deceived sinners imagining themselves safe because of a false gospel. MPJ