3 BIG FAT LIES THAT IS BELIEVED AND PREACHED BY MAINSTREAM CHURCHES

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MY BACKGROUND

As someone who was raised Muslim and one day woke up to the hard truth and reality that Islam is nothing but a fraud, and that the truth is found in mere Christianity, soon I came to face big fat lies that were being preached and dogmatically defended in mainstream churches. In this article, I'm not going to examine or investigate Islam however. If you're interested in that subject, or if you want to hear me back up my claim about Islam, feel free to check the article I wrote on the subject more than a year ago, by clicking HERE. You can also read about my personal spiritual journey HERE.

LIE #1 - HELL AND ETERNAL CONSCIOUS TORMENT

If I had a penny every time I heard an unbeliever object to how unjust and evil is to punish someone for an infinite period of time for finite amount of crimes, I'd be a millionaire by now. In fact, I used to have the same objection and guess what? This is a valid objection, because it goes against our God-given conscience and senses, rightly so.

Not only that, the very idea of hell or what is referred to in the Bible as the second death, has to match what the Bible teaches about salvation. In other words, the idea of substitutionary atonement and the cross only makes sense if the second death is seen as something finite rather than infinite, otherwise how could Jesus possibly resurrect on the third day?

LIE #2 - ETERNAL SALVATION CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY FAITH ALONE

Protestants might want you believe that they believe in salvation by faith alone, unlike Catholics but they say actions speak louder than words. Many of them will either reject salvation by faith alone in a straight-up fashion while others believe and preach an inverted version of the gospel. What does that mean? This is actually quite a big subject and it's impossible for me to cover it all in just one article.

But to cut the long story short, Bible is clear that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works so that no one can boast. In other words, the Gospel is about breaking the ego of us humans and robbing us off of any capacity to boast and have a holier-than-thou attitude. Critics will often label what I'm preaching as easy-believism or cheap grace, all of which are inappropriate and pejorative. As Bob Wilkin explains below, God's grace is not cheap, but rather FREE!

LIE #3 - ETERNAL SALVATION IS NOT OUR CHOICE

This one drives me nuts even more than the other two and it's widely believed among "evangelicals" and Protestants. This is basically a reactionary movement against the second lie I explained above which is largely held by Catholics. This group recognizes very well that eternal salvation is a gift from God and not a result of our works. But they go well beyond what the Bible teaches and assert that even receiving this gift from God can provide a ground for us to boast and so God does not give this gift to everyone but only to a selection of people, chosen before they were even born. This of course provides a huge ground for boasting as you would imagine. It will make them feel "special" in God's eyes and it's very egotistical and arrogant when you think about it. Not to mention the fact that it makes God look like an absolute jerk from an objective point of view. Their major defense is of course by going to Romans 9:20 and asking you who are you to question God? To which I often answer that I'm not questioning God, but your understanding of God!

Having said that, it is important to keep in mind that you cannot win an argument by a fanatic if you appear to be questioning God. You need to make your point through other means, otherwise you're very unlikely to influence them yet they're very likely to influence others. Why? Simply put, because they're right that humans are not in a position to question or judge their Creator. I often say that IF our Creator was supposedly evil, would He be so stupid to give us the ability to recognize that? It doesn't make any sense. In other words, how can we trust what God has created, in order to come to a conclusion that God is not trustworthy? That's obviously an oxymoron. In order for us to doubt God's goodness, we would have to first trust Him! Because by definition, God is the Creator of our very senses and cognitive faculties that we are using to make arguments and judgements!