Faith: Knowing that the Holy Bible is God’s inspired Word and is true. Counterfeit: Representing something false as true. Christian faith is to counterfeit faith as gold is to fool’s gold. Both look and feel the same. Though to the God-seeker both look and feel the same, one is the real thing while the other is a fake. Many a well-intentioned suitor has purchased zirconium believing that he is getting a great deal for such a large, beautiful diamond. In his zeal the purchaser ignores the tried and true idiom: If it is too good to be true, it probably isn’t.” In the case of the happy suitor, having fallen for the fake is merely embarrassing; in the case of the God-seeker, it is eternally deadly.

True Christian faith is based on the Word of God (Rom. 10:17): “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Church faith is based on a perverted version of the Word of God (Gal. 1:6-9). True Christian faith presents and exalts the true God, true Christ, true church, true conversion leading to the true kingdom. Church faith presents and exalts counterfeit versions of those entities.

In the Introduction to this website I list a number of heathen beliefs and practices that the Institutional Church “knows” are the teachings and expectations of God. Most of the postings I have submitted have addressed in detail the difference between God’s word and the church’s Word, using the Holy Scriptures as the final authority. I will end this series of postings with a plea. Forget what you have learned in church. I too learned it, but upon serious, intensive investigation, found what I had been taught as “the word of the Lord” to be almost entirely false. Come away with the Lord and learn from Him through the agency of His Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ being your foundation and the Bible being the material with which you build your spiritual house. For, as the Lord tells us, the storm will come, and only the house with the proper foundation and materials will stand (Mk. 7:25-27). God tells us in Matthew 7:13,14 that only a few will build on Christ and construct with the Word.

By way of His Holy Spirit, the Lord warned the apostles about the counterfeit gospels that Satan’s false prophets would foist upon the Biblically ignorant who, instead of studying the Word, allowed religious charlatans to study it and tell them what it says. Not surprisingly, what God “said” was what they wanted the God-seeker to believe. This universal practice has led to the formation of a two-headed serpent known as Christianity (Catholicism/Protestantism) and hundreds of mini-serpents known as (church) denominations. Together they comprise what both the churched and the unchurched call “Christianity.”

Those exhibiting true Christian faith have either never entered these dens of vipers or, having been involved in them, decided to obey God’s command to “come out from among them” ( ), thereby accepting Him as their God. Whichever one of these descriptions fits you, I implore you to search the Word for God’s Truth, believe and obey it. Only those who do so have any chance to inherit eternal life. L.J.