In the Book of Acts we find a young Jewish man named Stephen on trial for publically speaking and obeying what the God his accusers claimed to believe had written on the scrolls found in their Temple. Having been accused of blasphemy, Stephen was reminding his uber-religious accusers of what God had told them. Like the Pharisees and their followers who rejected Stephen’s words, modern Pharisees (false prophets) and their followers (parishioners) refuse to hear God’s Truth and reject anyone who speaks or writes it. Like their modern counterparts, Stephen’s accusers had faith in their foundational truths. However, their foundational truths were not the Words of the unchangeable Rock of Salvation. Their faith was based on the malleable sand of false religion. Stephen’s accusers/executioners had built their spiritual “house” upon sand provided by the ultimate sandman–Satan (Mat. 7). As God’s saints know, the devil is still in the sand business.

Like everything else pertaining to the spirit world, faith can be counterfeited, making it, as James tells us, dead faith. The globally-acclaimed faith exhibited by Catholicism/Protestantism is counterfeit because it is built on counterfeited concepts, most of which are of Babylonian origin. Faith is the beginning step in man’s salvation. Faith is based on God’s Word. Being both ignorant of God’s Word unwilling to alleviate her ignorance (2 Tim. 2:15), so-called Christianity has found herself without a spiritual leg (faith) on which to stand. Faith being the basis of her supposed salvation, and needing to appear religious to herself and her partners in spiritual crime, “the church” has been forced to create a foundation upon which to build her faith. This foundation is called “church doctrine” which is nothing more than an ear-scratching version of what God should have said. Claiming to have superior insight relative to right and wrong, the church edits, twists, adds to, takes from, etc. His statements to make them fit her gospel, which the Apostle Paul describes as “perverted” (Gal. 1:6). This results in the creating of “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4). THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH BASES ITS SALVATION ON A PERVERTED GOSPEL PROCLAIMED BY A FALSE CHRIST.  Perversion cannot produce purity. The church’s impure faith cannot produce pure religion (Jam. 1:27), which in turn produces pure salvation. THE PERVERTED CHURCH’S PERVERTED FAITH PRODUCES PERVERTED SALVATION. Claiming that she has the keys to eternal life which God has commissioned her to share with mankind, the Institutional Church is both living Satan’s lie and spreading that lie (2 Thes. 2:11). Ironically, some within her know they are wrong but lack the spiritual spine to speak and live it. Satan’s power over them is total.

Question: When and where did false faith enter the church? When–in the beginning. Where–the Garden of Eden. Let us return to that time and place in order to study perfect examples of both true and false faith. In Eden we find true faith, counterfeit faith, God, His first church, His Word, human beings, human desire, sin, righteousness, Satan and his word all involved in mankind’s first encounter with the concept of choice. It is in Eden that we learn that one’s standing with God depends upon two factors: 1) the source of his faith and 2), his reaction (work) to his faith. Having the wrong source of faith and exhibiting the wrong reaction to one’s faith are disqualifiers when it comes to salvation. Adam and Eve serve as our primary examples of this fact. Let us learn the lesson they teach us. L.J.