There are those who are dropping the name “church of Christ” and changing their name to “Community Church” or to other names. They say they are removing Christ from their name in efforts to remove “a barrier”, so they can attract more people. They seem to be ashamed of our Lord. Jesus says in Mark 8:38, “For whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father.” Many have also turned to entertainment to attract more people. In order to keep the people they attract, they don’t want to ever teach or preach anything from the Bible that might offend anyone.
A number of congregations are having fellowship with denominations through pulpit exchanges, joint worship services, and the ministerial alliance. We are warned in 2 John 10-11, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” We must never give a person encouragement in their false doctrine; if we do we also become guilty and could lose our own souls. The apostasy we are now facing in the Lord’s church will rival and possibly surpass the apostasy that ravaged the Lord’s church in the later part of the 1800’s. When that particular apostasy was complete in about 1906, less than 180,000 members remained faithful, but more than one million went into the apostate Christian Church. Most of the problems, that are causing the apostasy now, were the same problems for the apostasy then. The same techniques which Satan was successful with then, he is using again. Satan just will not leave the Lord’s church alone.
The reason we are facing this apostasy is the rejection of Bible authority and our lack of Bible knowledge. God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.” Brethren are not studying their Bibles the way we did in the past. We are becoming Biblically illiterate. Because of our lack of Bible knowledge, digression from the truth is continuing at an alarming rate in which many “untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16). Since we have failed to learn a lesson from history, we are seeing the same problems arise again today. The attitude today is “I want it and I am going to have it”.
We read in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12, “because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion; that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth.” To protect ourselves against Satan we must have a strong faith. How do we obtain that faith? Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The more we study the word of God the stronger our faith will be. We can protect ourselves from the present apostasy if we will only study, believe, and obey the truth of God’s word without any addition or subtraction, and be faithful to it all the days of our life. We must speak out and warn others of our present apostasy so less damage will be done and fewer souls will be lost.