When the Church Becomes a CULT!

I'm not talking here about official church beliefs, but about the actual practice that is operated within her life.  Having what Lloyd-Jones described as "a paper confession," in which all the right words are used and ideas formulated, but which mean absolutely nothing in any case, does not define the church.

Nor am I talking here about professions of faith, because these are equally useless and deceiving.  What I am talking about, however, is what church members really believe their faith is all about.  What place does the Person and Work of Christ have in their lives? Where does His death and passion come into their thinking, worship and service? When they pray, do they pray in Jesus' name?  I've been in meetings where a church elder brings his prayer out of his wallet and says a few nice words, some of the even hinting at being religious, and ends his prayer without any reference to Christ at all.  So Christ has no place in that man's religious life.  Is he a cult member, even though holding the position of a church elder?  And because his church accepts his position, how different is his church from being a cult? 

What place does the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ have in the lives of professing Christians?  Is it, along with His atoning death, an absolute necessity to being a Christian?  It is not for the cults!  If Jesus Christ is not the Saviour of your soul, then you belong to a cult that masquerades as a Christian church!

When these conditions apply within churches, and no one works to change the situation, the church to that extent has become a cult.

Where do you stand with regard to these matters?  Where does your church stand?  Does it accept as members those who say or accept a set form of religious words, without any inquiry being made as to whether the candidate(s) have been born again, have repented of their sin and trusted Christ alone as their Saviour?

If these crucial truths are not pointed out in the clearest possible way, then that church has in effect become a cult.  And cults always resist and oppose the Gospel.