The ONLY True Church – Exposing False Doctrines

The ONLY "True Church"

ISN’T FAITH AND a personal relationship with the Creator what matters most and not a formal organization or religion?

This question, oftenly asked today, reveals a popular widespread assumption that religion is only a matter of the heart. Many believe that God is interested only in sincerity and not in doctrine and practice. And, in a modern multicultural society, anyone who would say otherwise is taken to be narrow-minded and unenlightened.

What is surprising is not the fact that such unsubstantiated views are so popular today, but that such views are held by people who claim to believe that God’s words are written in the Bible.

According to the Bible, how does the Lord God put people right with Himself? Is what the Church of Christ believes―that God recognizes only one group or organization as His people―a biblical teaching? The Bible records God’s policy since the ancient past:

“There is no other nation on earth like Israel, whom you rescued from slavery to make them your own people. The great and wonderful things you did for them have spread your fame throughout the world. You drove out other nations and their gods as your people advanced, the people whom you set free from Egypt to be your own. You have made Israel your own people forever, and you, LORD, have become their God.”

(Reference: II Sam. 7:23-24 Today’s English Version, Emphasis Mine)

The Lord God’s policy to gather in one organization all people whom He recognizes as His is not a new teaching. In the ancient past, God chose Israel to be His own people. There was no other nation of God then besides Israel:

“And he returned to the man of God, he and all his aides, and came and stood before him; and he said, ‘Indeed, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel’.”

(Reference: II Kings 5:15 New King James Version, Emphasis Mine)

In ancient times, the nation of Israel stood unique. It was the only nation that God recognized as His. Anyone at that time who would want to belong to God’s people had to be either an Israelite or numbered among the Israelites.

Today, many people evaluate religious groups based on the organization’s population. They assume that a religion with a large number of members cannot be false while a relatively smaller religion with few members cannot in any way be the only true one. But God’s choice of the Israelites to be His first people or nation was not based on their number but on the promises He had given to their ancestors:

“Do this because you belong to the LORD your God. From all the peoples on earth he chose you to be his own special people. ‘The LORD did not love you and choose you because you outnumbered other peoples; you were the smallest nation on earth. But the LORD loved you and wanted to keep the promise that he made to your ancestors. That is why he saved you by his great might and set you free from slavery to the king of Egypt.”

(Reference: Dt. 7:6-8 TEV, Emphasis Mine)

God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He would bless them with many descendants (Exo. 32:13). Those same descendants became the only people whom God recognized as His own during their time. For this reason, God considered Israel His only nation in the ancient past. However, the Israelites apostatized and turned away from God and His laws. As a result, God chose a different people to replace them.

THE CHRISTIAN ERA

Many believe that God’s policy during ancient Israel no longer applies to the Christian era. They claim that God’s salvation is for all people who would simply believe in His Son Jesus and manifest their belief by doing good, regardless of religious affiliation. This belief is not true.

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not veer from God’s earlier design of choosing only one group of people or one organization to be His own. Just as in the time of ancient Israel, God chose one group of people to be His own, the―Israelites; in the Christian era, the same applies; the Savior established only―one Church:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”

(Reference: Matt. 16:18 RSV, Emphasis Mine)

The Lord said, “I will build My church,” not Churche(s). By what He said, it is clear that He established only one Church, and that one Church He called His own. Hence, the apostles called that one Church belonging to Christ the Church of Christ (Rom. 16:16; Acts 20:28, Lamsa Translation; Gal. 1:22, Christian Community Bible; I Thess. 2:14, Ibid.). Anyone belonging to this Church belongs to Christ and also to God.

The additional great blessing of being a part of this Church Christ built upon Himself and redeemed by His blood would be victory over death. In other words, the members of this Church will receive Christ’s saving grace on the day of Judgment (Rom. 5:8-9).

The apostles who administered His Church after His ascension to heaven preserved the teaching that the right to be God’s chosen people was not given to many different organizations or churches but to only one Church:

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; … One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”

(Reference: Eph. 4:4-5 NKJV, Emphasis Mine)

The apostles proclaimed the oneness, the perfect unity of the true believers. They were all called in one calling. They had only one baptism. And they had received only one faith and not many different and opposing sets of beliefs. Definitive proof that they were found in one organization is the fact that they all belonged to “one body” because one body means only one Church:

“And He [Christ] is the head of the body, the church.”

(Reference: Col. 1:18 NKJV, Emphasis Mine)

The one body is that Church that has Christ as its head. Therefore, all people who become a part of the one Church of Christ will receive Christ’s promise: they will all overcome death and be saved. Christ, as the Head, is responsible for the sins of His body or Church; thus, when one becomes a member of the one body or church, one becomes one in Christ and therefore saved through Him as the Head and redeemed by His blood because it is the “one body” or the Church Of Christ that was redeemed by the precious blood of Christ (Acts 20:28 Lamsa).

On the other hand, anyone who refuses to join the Church of Christ will not be saved from God’s wrath on the day of Judgment:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you’.”

(Reference: I Cor. 5:12-13, NIV, Emphasis Mine)

In the Christian era, anyone outside the true Church will pay the full price for his sins, which is the punishment in the lake of fire (Rom. 6:23; Rev. 20:14). Therefore, through the Lord Christ Jesus and the one Church that He established, God keeps His policy of choosing only one organization to be His people.

GOD'S PEOPLE TODAY

The world has changed considerably since the first century. With the rapid growth of information and communication technologies and bitter lessons learned through global wars, there has been an ever-widening call for people to remember that all humankind lives in a “global village” and to downplay intolerance and discrimination.

While these trends are inherently good and right, it would be illogical to conclude from there that God would be practicing discrimination by choosing only one particular religion or Church. With the popularity of pluralism, the great variety of religions that exist today, and the pervading air of “moral relativism,” has God’s policy of choosing only one organization changed? Is that policy discriminatory? And is there now more than one group of people whom God and Christ recognize? God’s will for our time is written in a prophecy appointed long ago by God to take place in these last days:

“Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; ‘I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.”

(Reference: Isa. 43:5-6 NKJV, Emphasis Mine)

In the same way that God made a promise and chose the ancestors of the ancient Israelites, He also made a promise and chose a people in these last days as recorded in this prophecy of Isaiah. His promise is not discriminatory because, by defining who His people are, He is giving all an opportunity to join this group.

According to the prophecy in these last days of the Christian era, God’s people would come from the East and would eventually be gathered in the West. The place of origin of this specific group of God’s people would be the Far East, “From the far east I will bring your offspring…”(Is. 43:5, Moffatt Translation). As discussed in previous articles concerning the Church of Christ in these last days, the fulfillment of this is the Church of Christ that emerged in the country situated almost at the geographical center of the Far East (Asia and the Philippines, p.169), “in the Islands of the sea” who recognize the God of Israel (Isa. 24:15 NIV)―the Philippines is composed of 7,641 islands. The Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church Of Christ) emerged and registered―in July of 1914, the exact same day with the outbreak of World War I, by biblical prophecy which marks the beginning of the time element “end(s) of the earth” (Isa. 43:6), the time when the end is near―“at the doors” (Mat. 24:36) which is when this Great War will be seen “rumored” throughout the world (Mat 24:6), marking the First World War, which “are the beginning of sorrows” (Mat 24:8).

Because the Church of Christ (Iglesia Ni Cristo in Filipino) started in the Philippines, does it mean that it is a Filipino Church and that God is biased toward Filipinos? No, it does not. This Church is no more a Filipino religion than the first-century Church of Christ was a Jewish one. In the beginning, the early Church of the New Testament, from its leaders to all the members, was composed solely of people of the Jewish race; but non-Jews, or Gentiles, eventually joined. The racial composition of the initial members in no way belies the fact that it was of God.

In the same way, the membership of the Church of Christ that emerged in the Philippines was initially composed of Filipinos, but with the Church’s great strides in global evangelism, its membership is now composed of many races of the world. In the biblical sense, it is not being narrow-minded to hold the belief that there is only one group that belongs to God. What is narrow-minded is to doubt God’s choice simply because of the place of origin of the one chosen. People in Christ’s time made the same mistake with Him (Mk. 6:2-3; Jn. 1:45-46).

TAKEN OUT OF THE 'NORTH' AND 'SOUTH'

According to the prophecy, before becoming sons and daughters of God, anyone who would become a member of this one Church would first have to be taken out of the “north” and the “south.” The “north” and “south” (Isa. 43:6) in this prophecy are symbolic of the two large religions, Protestantism and Catholicism, which had captured the true children of God:

“… In the north the Protestants were in control ― Lutheran churches in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the northern and central states of Germany; Calvinist or Reformed churches in Scotland, the Netherlands, Hesse, the Palatinate, and a few of the western German states. In the south the Catholics were in control ― Spain, Italy, Austria, Bavaria, and elsewhere in southern Germany.”

(Reference: The Reformation by Owen Chadwick, Pub: 1964, p. 366, Emphasis Mine)

While the devotion of many of the members of the Protestant churches and the Catholic Church to serve Christ may be undeniable, their “faiths” or doctrines show that their devotion is not based on true knowledge. Their members are held captive by false beliefs.

Protestants contradict the Scripture by teaching that faith alone is enough for salvation and that the Church is not necessary, both of which go directly against what is written in the Bible, which teaches that faith without works is dead and that Christ will save His body, the Church (Js. 2:14, 17, 22, 24; Acts 2:47; Eph. 5:23, 25, 28-29, 31-33). On the other hand, Catholics worship graven idols and images, a practice that God has always strictly forbidden (Exo. 20:3- 5; Acts 17:29; Rom. 1:23, 25).

The ancient Israelites were rejected by God when they turned away from His teachings and commandments. In the same way, no religious organization that possesses beliefs contrary to the truth of the Bible can be of God (II Tim. 3:15-17).

Since the ways established by Catholicism and Protestantism are at odds with God’s teachings, their members cannot be considered God’s chosen people, no matter how sincere their devotion and service to Him may be:

I can assure you that they are deeply devoted to God; but their devotion is not based on true knowledge. They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God’s way of putting people right.”

(Reference: Rom. 10:2-3 TEV, Emphasis Mine)

Devotion and sincerity are necessary in drawing near to God, but they are not sufficient by themselves alone. God wants people to submit to His holy way, which includes His policy of gathering all His people in the one group that alone possesses true biblical doctrine―in these last days, the one true Church of Christ.

IN CONCLUSION

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WE KINDLY EXTEND our visitors an invitation to explore the pristine, unadulterated teachings of Christ and His apostles as they were taught in the first-century Church Of Christ. These teachings presented here is the path that leads to eternal life for all on that appointed day of Judgment:

The Truth About Salvation

CHRISTIANITY IS A RELIGION with over 2.4 billion followers worldwide. It is composed of diverse faiths with thousands of denominations, such as Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Adventist—the list goes on. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that there are over 45,000 denominations globally, with more than 200 in the United States alone. Each denomination has its own unique set of beliefs and doctrines, especially when it comes to how one can achieve salvation. Do any of these religions truly teach the proper way of salvation?

Reach Out

If you wish to acquire a deeper understanding of our Church Doctrines and have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We would be delighted to direct you to one of our local resident ministers in your vicinity. Kindly include any queries you may have so that we may forward your inquiry in advance. Thank you.

“Do not let unwholesome [foul, profane, worthless, vulgar] words ever come out of your mouth, but only such speech as is good for building up others, according to the need and the occasion, so that it will be a blessing to those who hear [you speak].”
(Eph. 4:29, Amplified Bible)

“Love endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and thoughtful, and is not jealous or envious; love does not brag and is not proud or arrogant. It is not rude; it is not self-seeking, it is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]; it does not take into account a wrong endured.”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-5, Amplified Bible)