If you have a copy of the Bible, please open with me to Galatians chapter one. The theme of this conference is contending for the faith. Based upon the book of Jude, verse three, where Jude said he wanted to write another letter, but because of the importance of the gospel being threatened, he said, I have to write to you, defend the gospel and contend for it. There are many subjects that I'd love to preach on on Sunday nights at our church, I am preaching in nine week series on the love of Christ. But yet there are times that we have to stand up and contend earnestly for the faith. Which is being seriously threatened. Not just by unbelievers out there. But by those even within the churches that undermine the one and only true gospel. Rather than the gospel is at stake. Souls are at stake. But even more than that, the glory and honor of God is at stake. So something needs to be said. How important is it? Follow with me as I read Galatians 1, verses 6 and following. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that which you have received, Let him be accursed. Cursed means under the condemnation of God, and here God himself says anybody, even an angel that preaches a false gospel, is under the very curse of God himself. It wasn't just in Galatia, it was elsewhere. Second Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 4, warns against those that proclaim another Jesus. or another spirit, or as it says there, a different gospel. Jesus warned about false Christs that would come, Matthew 24, 24. Pseudo-Christs. 1 John 4, 1 says, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits. There are pseudo-spirits out there, but only one true Holy Spirit. Therefore, there's only one true gospel, but there are many pseudo gospels that the devil is promoting. And now, unfortunately, there are people that are believing them now here in Galatia. Paul had been there, he preached and many people had been saved, some from Jewish backgrounds, some from Gentile backgrounds. But then Paul went on his way and some false teachers came in and said, well, Paul's good, but not good enough. These were people that came in that were Jews that said, You Gentiles still have to become Jews. You have to be circumcised and you have to keep the law of Moses. Then and only then will you be accepted by God and saved and justified. Word got back to the Apostle Paul and he said no. Something's got to be said, something's got to be written. So he wrote this letter back to them and warned them. You see, these so-called Judaizers, they weren't denying the person of Christ or the work of Christ. They were denying the application of the gospel by undermining the one and only condition, which is justification by faith alone. They were adding to it. And therefore, Paul says, if you're adding to it, you are perverting it. You are promoting a false gospel. According to the Word of God, a false gospel is a pseudo gospel, and those that believe a false gospel are false Christians. Over in 2 Corinthians 11, 26, he calls them false brethren, pseudo Christians. Preachers of false gospels are therefore false prophets and false teachers. Second, Peter two, one warns there were also false prophets among the people that is in the old covenant, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. He's not talking about secondary issues. He's talking about heresies that strike at the very core of the one and only true gospel. Jesus warned about them. He said in Matthew seven, beware of false prophets. who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. Preachers of false gospels are wolves in sheep's clothing. Those that believe false gospels are goats in sheep's clothing. But a true Christian, he is a sheep in sheep's clothing. He's the real thing inside and out because he believes the true gospel. Friends, there's a battle going on between true Christianity and false Christianity. Oh, that it was never like that. Oh, that at the very beginning, the truth of the gospel would be protected and there'd be no false gospels. But for 2000 years, the devil has been manufacturing false gospels being delivered by false prophets. True Christianity is based on the Bible and believes the true gospel. Pseudo Christianity is not based upon the Bible. It believes and promotes many false gospels. All of them are wrong. Here he says it's not another of the same sort. It's a pseudo gospel that's masquerading as the gospel. Becoming a true Christian includes believing the true gospel. Yes, it includes that and more. A person has to commit himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is more than simply believing in your mind that the gospel is true. But I would remind you, it may be more than that, but it's not less than that. To become a true Christian, you have to believe the one and only true gospel. I guess you could summarize my message this morning in this sentence. A person simply is not a true Christian if he believes a false gospel. A true Christian believes the true gospel. Now, the word pseudo in English comes from the Greek word pseudo means false, not the real thing. Fake, fraudulent, counterfeit like counterfeit money. And the devil is cheating millions of lost centers out of their souls because he deceives them into thinking they're true Christians when they're not. They think that they are. They may be able to repeat the Apostles Creed, but they believe a false gospel. Therefore, they're not saved. And I hope you know, ladies and gentlemen, that not everyone that says he is a Christian is a real Christian. Most, the vast majority, are not. They are deceived. It's like the old saying, not everybody talking about heaven's going there. Question. I want you to think about this. Why then do so many non-Christians Say that they're Christians if they're not. And on the other hand, why is it that a true Christian doesn't go around claiming to be a non-Christian? Think about it goes both ways. And the answer is this. Non-Christians have been deceived into thinking they're Christians. Christians are not deceived. They don't believe a lie. They believe the truth. And therefore, they have true assurance that they are true Christians. Now, the Bible gives another name for pseudo Christians. Jesus called them hypocrites over and over and over again. Look it up in Matthew 23, seven times he called the Pharisees hypocrites and hypocrites meant they are not what they say they are. They are deceivers and deceived. Now, in my evangelism over 40 years or so, I've met many out and out unbelievers that say all church goers are religious hypocrites. And I say, you're almost right. Most church goers are religious hypocrites, but there's still a few true believers. That gets their attention. And I say, did you know that the Lord Jesus Christ hated religious hypocrisy more than you do? And I say, but thank God there are some true believers that believe the true gospel. Now, according to whatever poll you read, you'll find out approximately 9% of Americans claim to be Christians. But it's my subtle conviction and probably also Phil Johnson's probably no more than one or 2% are true Christians. The vast majority are pseudo Christians. Friends, we are a nation of religious hypocrites. No wonder people on the mission field struggle with this. And I've talked to missionaries, third world countries, Muslim countries, that they say, if American Christianity is the true thing, you can keep it. It's filled with hypocrisy. Why? Because America is a pornography capital of the world. It's the capital of all sorts of vice, homosexuality, immorality and crime. And they say, if that's your religion, you can keep it. That only shows that most Americans are not Christians because they don't live up to what they say they believe. Most churches are filled with religious hypocrites. Now in this message I will briefly survey the four major kinds of pseudo-Christianity. and then close with some brief practical lessons. I can only do it briefly, but if you want to know more, I have several series recorded out there where I go into great depth and series of messages. Now first, I want you to picture a large piece of paper with several concentric circles, circles within circles. And this is, as it were, a map of the religious landscape around the world. The outermost circle, I guess you could say, is the realm of philosophy. These are people that don't claim to have any religion. atheists, agnostics, and whatever. Then you come into a smaller circle, non-Christian religions. They claim to have religion, but they don't claim to be Christians. Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, and so on. Then you move into a smaller circle. This is a circle of pseudo-Christianity. They don't claim to be Moslems and so forth, and certainly not atheists. They claim to be Christians. But they're not true Christians because the innermost circle is the circle of true Christians. And within that circle, there's a variety of different churches represented, but they have the real thing. But they are surrounded by this larger circle of pseudo Christianity. False Christianities, as we will see, have four basic tendencies. Some tend to add to the gospel, like the Galatians did. Other ones subtract from the gospel, like those that deny the deity of Christ. Other ones substitute other doctrines for the true doctrines of the basic gospel. And the last one we'll look at, what they do is they take the basic gospel, but they water it down so that it's not a true gospel that will save anybody anymore. Now, there's a biblical pattern for this map, as it were, and what we'll look at today. And it's found in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. At that time, people weren't calling themselves Christians, but Jews, God's covenantal people and God giving them the prophets and the law, the Hebrew Bible, predicting the coming of the Messiah. And so the terms of becoming a true believer was you believe that Messiah would come and he'd be the way of salvation. And as Phil said, he would be the sin bearer. You would be put right with God by believing in him. The gospel was preached for hundreds of years before Jesus came. But by the time Jesus came, unfortunately, most of the Jews had distorted the truth that had been given to them. And you find five kinds of Jews in the time of Jesus for, as it were, false kinds of Judaism and one kind that were true. The four false ones were all rivals of each other, claiming to be the true one. But none of them were true. They had some truth in them, but they were not the truth that God had given through the prophets for hundreds of years. And when you look in the Gospels, you find that they sided with each other in rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ and the Jews that wanted to follow him. Now, we find this description in the Bible. Revelation 3 9 describes them. Those who say they are Jews, but are not. But do lie. He says they belong to the synagogue of Satan. Romans 2, 28 and 29 says, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but who is one inwardly. Romans 9, 6, they are not all Israel, who are of Israel. And this is what the Jews misunderstood. They said we are physically descended from Abraham. Therefore, we are true Jews. The prophets rebuked that, Jesus rebuked that, the apostles rebuked that. They said a true Jew is one that is one inwardly that believes the truth about the Messiah, that believes the true gospel. God gave many privileges to the Jews. Romans 9.4 says that God sent them prophets, gave them covenants. But over the centuries, by and large, they rejected God's truth. And so, by the time of the Lord Jesus, it had been grossly perverted. An American Jewish Christian became a missionary to Israel and wrote an excellent book entitled, Judaism is not Jewish. The author, Baruch Moraes, is saying, What happened was the truth of Judaism was distorted by the time of Jesus. So the time of Jesus was not true Judaism. And unfortunately, the pattern continued in history after that. Brethren, we need to pray for our Jewish friends that they will believe in the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ as their Messiah and ours. But there were some, I guess you could call them true Jews throughout the Old Testament that believed the truth. They were always in the minority. Moses, David, Hezekiah and other ones. And then you come to the time of the Lord Jesus, a minority of true Jews like Mary and Joseph, Zachariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist and others like that. They believed this truth about the Messiah. And then as Jesus began to preach, People began to follow him, and then after that, most of the earliest Christians were Jews that believed this is the Messiah we have been waiting for. But gradually, as you see in the book of Acts, gradually fewer and fewer Jews became Christians. But then more and more Gentiles became Christians until Gentiles became the majority and Jews became the minority. But yet, as you look over the last 2,000 years, you find that there have always been some Jews that did believe Jesus was the Messiah. You've heard of Alfred Edersheim. And since World War II, there's been a great growth of this. Messianic Jews, Jews for Jesus. Ray Comfort, Daryl Bach, and many others. Jews that come to believe Jesus is their Messiah. And we thank God for that. According to Romans 11, one day, A great number of Jews will come to believe that Jesus is their Messiah. I long to see that day. Now, that's the basic pattern in the life of Jesus. There was a minority of true Jews that believed it, but a majority of Jews did not believe the true gospel. But instead, they had these false Judaism's. And we see that pattern continue in Christian history as well. True Christianity and many false Christianities. But let me also say this. True Christianity and true Judaism are at one. True Christianity believes that same gospel about who Jesus is as being the Messiah, his person, his work and the conditions of salvation. Sadly, to date, some people, that's not good enough for them. Some so-called evangelicals are promoting what's called two covenant theology. You've heard of John Hagee, for example. He says, if you are a Gentile, you have to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Ah, but if you are a Jew, you don't have to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Keep the law of Moses and believe those old covenant covenant promises and God will accept you like that. I'm here to tell you that is wrong. That's preaching a false gospel to those Jews. Has he never read Romans and Galatians? There's no hope outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. But just as in Jesus' day there were these false forms of Judaism, there have been false forms of Christianity as well. There have been a variety of true Christians as well as a variety of pseudo-Christians. Now, amongst true Christians, they all believe the same true gospel, even though they may differ on secondary issues. They may be amillennial or premillennial and so forth. But you find true Christians kind of in clusters, in Baptists and independent Bible churches, conservative Presbyterians, and some of them even wandering around in pseudo-Christian churches. But we thank God that there are still millions of true Christians that believe the true gospel. Unfortunately, when you look over church history, you find that though there were many of them in the New Testament, just as true Judaism went into eclipse, true Christianity went in eclipse for most of the last 2000 years. It mainly went into the second century, but yet there were always some true Christians like the Waldensians, even in the Middle Ages. And then there was the Protestant Reformation, this great explosion of revival when people all around Europe and then gradually through the missionary movement spread around the world. They rediscovered true Christianity and churches began to grow and to spread. Well, who are the true Christians today? Well, some prefer the term evangelical because that means they believe the evangel. That's the Greek word for gospel. Other ones prefer the term fundamentalist because they say we believe and defend the fundamentals of the faith. Myself, I like the term fundamental evangelical combines the best of both of them. Now, my point is this to be a true Christian. One must believe the basics of the true gospel, the ABCs, the essentials. We're not talking about secondary issues, we're talking about. sine qua non doctrines, that's Latin for that without which not. In other words, if you subtract these doctrines or if you add to them, it's no longer the true gospel. That's what Paul means here in Galatians 1. These are not another true gospel. These are false gospels. Therefore, you have to zealously protect the one true gospel. Brethren, it is unbiblical and inconceivable that a person could be a true Christian if he denies any one point of the essential gospel. That runs contrary to everything in the Bible. True Christians believe the true gospel. False Christians believe false gospels. It's as simple as that. But thank God there are still millions and millions of true Christians around the world that say, I still believe the one true gospel. Now, let me very briefly survey those false kinds of Judaism, and you'll see a parallel with the false kinds of Christianity today. There's direct parallels. Number one, in Jesus' day, there was the largest group of them, the Pharisees. They dominated the synagogues and they generally promoted the tradition of the elders as an equal source of revelation together with the scriptures. But their error had to do with salvation. They kind of wondered who's going to be the Messiah, but it really came down to a false way of salvation. The Pharisees basically taught to be right with God. You have to be born a Jew or you have to become a Jew. You have to be circumcised and you have to obey the law of Moses. Then God will accept you. That's in a nutshell. Consequently, when Jesus came along preaching the true gospel, The Pharisees, by and large, rejected him. Interesting, in 135 A.D., they found another false prophet as the Messiah. His name was Bar Kokhba, and the Romans put him to death, and the Pharisees were left with pharisaic egg all over their faces. The one that they identified as the Messiah wasn't, and the one that was a true Messiah, they had rejected. That was tragic. Over the centuries, the Pharisees dominated Judaism. They wrote the Talmud and other things like that, the Tosefta, the Midrash, the Mishnah. But gradually, this was interesting, the Pharisees became the minority amongst Jews. And so the heirs of the Pharisees today are actually in the minority. These would be the Orthodox Jews today. This makes up perhaps 5 or 10 percent of American Jews. today. Now, my point is this just as there was this pseudo Judaism dominated by the Pharisees, there is a pseudo Christian counterpart of that today. Who would that be? Roman Catholicism. many direct parallels. Let me just mention two or three of them. Roman Catholicism today is by far the largest of the Christian groups. Did you know that Roman Catholicism around the world is not only larger than all Protestants together, it's greater than all Eastern Orthodoxes thrown in there, as well as all the cults. It is that big as overwhelmingly the largest denomination and also the oldest in America. There are more than 50 million Roman Catholics. That's approximately one in six Americans. But its error is very similar to the Pharisees. They add to the gospel. They will not simply say you are saved by faith alone, but by faith And the sacraments such as baptism and good works, how would you sum up the Roman Catholic system of salvation? Recently, I did a six week series on this on Sunday nights. Their system of salvation is basically this, the sacramental road. The first step is baptism, the mass and so forth. And through the sacraments, God gives you grace. And if you cultivate that grace by good works. Then you will be saved, of course, after going to purgatory, after you die. But that's basically the Roman Catholic gospel of salvation. Sacraments, faith, and good works. Obviously, that goes contrary to the Bible. The Bible says in Ephesians 2.8, by grace you are saved through faith, not of works, not in whole, not in part, lest anyone should boast. Secondly, the modern Roman Catholics repeat the error of the Pharisees, two sources of authority. Pharisees said scripture and tradition. So if you come from a Roman Catholic background, you know exactly that's what the Catholic Church teaches. Not scripture alone, but scripture and the popes, the councils, the decrees, the so-called unanimous consent of the church fathers and so on. The magisterium authority of the church, but not according to the Bible. According to the Bible, Scripture alone is our source of authority. Now, Catholicism gradually developed in the first few centuries, and it took the place of biblical Christianity. And then later, in the 11th century, it split with the Eastern Orthodoxy. My point is this. Just like the Pharisees proclaimed a false system of salvation, so does Roman Catholicism. And that's tragic. It produces a false gospel. So if a Roman Catholic believes the gospel of Roman Catholicism, he may be a good Catholic, but he is a false Christian because Roman Catholicism is overwhelmingly pseudo Christianity. It preaches a false gospel and you cannot be saved by believing a false gospel. Now, some of you may wonder, are there true Christians in the Catholic Church? Probably. Because they've come across the Bible, and they've read it, and they've been saved, and they're confused whether they should stay in or come out. According to the Word of God, the Bible says, come out and be separate, saith the Lord. They should leave, and many of them eventually do. Encourage your Catholic friends to read the Bible. Share the gospel with them. They need to believe the true gospel. Number two, in Jesus' day, there was another party smaller than the Pharisees, the Sadducees. This was the minority one, but they had a lot of authority. They were the ones that dominated, not in the synagogues, but in the temple. They ran the money changers. They were wealthy as well as corrupt. They weren't so much against the Roman Empire, they cut deals with them. Unlike the Pharisees, they had a very low view of the Hebrew Bible. Oh, they accepted the books of Moses, sort of, but they watered it down and they downplayed or rejected the prophets. And when you look at them, they had a secret admiration for Greek philosophy. In other words, the Sadducees were the rationalists of their day. They did not believe the true gospel. They were also anti-supernatural. They denied or downplayed miracles. Acts 23, 8 says the Sadducees say there is no resurrection and no angel or spirit, but the Pharisees confess both. And unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees did not believe in hell. So as a party, they eventually died out after 70 AD and yet they were still liberal Jews through the Middle Ages. What about today? This faction of Judaism is overwhelmingly the majority, mainly in two different denominations, the so-called Reform Jews and the so-called Conservative Jews. And they're anything but conservative. They're very, very liberal. But most Jews today that become Christians come from this group. And if you know a Jew that's become a Christian, he probably came from this background, not the Orthodox Jews. And so this is very sad. They, too, need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what would be the counterpart of that in churches that claim to be Christians today? Liberal Protestantism. Direct parallels with the Sadducees of old. And so for centuries there have been a wide variety of liberal Protestants. And I could give you a long list but I won't. They eventually took over evangelical denominations and they infiltrated and they called for tolerance. But when you look at liberalism it's a wide hodgepodge of all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable heresies. Promoting false gospels. Some are closer to the truth than others. But what they all have in common is that they do reject the one true gospel on one or more points. I think I know what I'm talking about. I was raised in such a church. Phil Johnson was as well. We heard this stuff over and over and over again where they say the Bible is filled with myths and you can't believe it all. But that's not what the Bible says. That's a clear rejection. You see, that's essential to all forms of liberalism. is that they deny the infallibility of Scripture. And in denying the Scripture, they are pulling the rug out of the very foundation of the Gospel. Last night, Phil showed that. 1 Corinthians 15, 3. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Liberalism denies that. And so in doing that, they're undercutting their own Gospel. They reject it. But the Bible says, Thy word is truth. And all true Christians believe in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Holy Bible, liberals do not. Modern day liberals, almost to a man and woman, will reject what the Bible teaches about hell. They will either promote annihilationism or universalism, something we will look at this afternoon. But all evangelical Christians believe that the Bible teaches eternal hell for lost sinners. You can see a wide difference between them and us. Almost all liberals deny the exclusivity of the one true gospel. They say there are many ways to heaven, not just different denominations, but any religion or no religion. But the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth and life. No one comes to the Father but by me. Can you see now? I could go on and on, showing that liberalism clearly rejects not just the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ, but every essential doctrine of the gospel one way or another. They tend to reject miracles, angels, the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ. Some liberals accept the Trinity and the deity of Christ, other ones do not. But their system leads to liberal ethics like abortion and accepting homosexuality and the ecumenical movement that accepts anybody that says he is a Christian. Liberal Protestantism rejects one or more essential tenets of the true gospel and it promotes many false gospels. If Roman Catholicism adds to the one true gospel, liberal Protestantism subtracts from it, and it becomes a variety of false gospels. Now, this is very important. Mark it if you're taking notes. Liberal Protestantism is not just another form of Christianity. It's not like, well, it's the difference between amillennialists and premillennialists. No. Early in the 20th century, a great reformed theologian named Jerry Gresham Machen wrote a book that I hope everybody here will read. It's entitled Christianity and Liberalism. And his point is there are two separate religions. Liberalism masquerades as Christianity, but they have a different view of the Bible, a different view of God, different view of Jesus, different view of salvation, a different view of ethics. How can you possibly say that's another form of Christianity? Liberal Protestants or not true Christians, liberal Protestantism is another form of pseudo Christianity. Number three, again, go back to the day of Jesus. There were those that would not align themselves with the Pharisees or the Sadducees. We find a number of small, miscellaneous Jewish cults like the Essenes. Those are the guys that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had various messianic cults, Acts 5 and Acts 21 mentions a few of these. There were the Zealous, these were the assassins and the terrorists of their day. There were the Herodians and various other ones. And then throughout Middle Ages, you find other groups like those that wrote the Kabbalah. And today, if you know about Judaism, you know that there are those that are not Orthodox Jews and they're not Reform or Conservative. They join little tiny offshoot Judaistic groups. Like the Hasidic groups, you know, the guys with the curls and the mystical dance and stuff like this. The Lubavitchers, the Karaites, these are kind of little offshoot groups way on the fringe of modern Judaism. What would be the counterpart of these Jewish cults that claim to be Christians? Well, that's an easy one to answer. The pseudo-Christian cults. The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons and others, even in the time of the New Testament, you had the Gnostics that claimed to be Christians. The Judaizers that Paul had to deal with here in Galatians. Now, some of them are closer to others, closer to the truth than others. Seventh-day Adventism is a lot closer to the gospel than the Mormons are. And other ones are so confused, they come and go, they change. Some cults are very tiny and they don't last very long. Early in my Christian life, I bumped into a really weird one called the Process Church of the Final Judgment. I bet nobody here has ever heard of that. And I remember doing theological debate with one of them early in my Christian life, and I said, what is it you guys believe? And they said, we believe in Jesus and we believe in Satan. We believe in both of them. We worship both of them. That's pretty weird, isn't it? But they eventually went the way of many other small cults. They eventually dissolved. Other cults split off of other cults, like the Worldwide Church of God, the so-called Armstrong cult. Now, usually what holds the cults together is that they're very exclusivistic. They say they're the only one true church and you have to join them to be saved. Not according to the Bible. Salvation is not dependent upon any church membership, even joining a true church that believes the true gospel membership has nothing to do with it. Membership is for those that have already been saved, not as a means of salvation. Now, the hallmark of these cults is that they revere their founder with special prophetic authority, Joseph Smith, Ellen G. White, Mary Baker Eddy, Sun Young Moon, and they have special books like Science and Health in the Book of Mormon. But. That disqualifies them right there, because again, it's scripture alone is our authority, not scripture in the Book of Mormon or these other ones. Scripture alone. Most of the cults deny the trinity. They deny the deity of Christ. Mormons redefine it. But the scripture is very clear. Jesus is God. John 20, 28. My Lord and my God. Also another hallmark of the pseudo-Christian cults, almost all of them reject El, and they usually promote annihilationism. And virtually all of them deny justification by faith alone. So, if Catholicism adds to the gospel, liberal Protestantism takes away from the gospel, the pseudo-Christian cults substitute their heresies for the truths of the gospel. Now, if I haven't been controversial enough so far, let's now look at number four, because for many years I thought there were only three varieties of pseudo-Christian groups, but there's a fourth. And this, in a way, is the most subtle of them all. It's not so easy to identify. As a word, it straddles the line between true Christianity and pseudo-Christianity. In Christ's day, there were a number of Jews that didn't affiliate themselves with any of these groups, Sadducees, Pharisees or the various cults. They just sort of had a general and vague notion of what it was to be a Jew. They said, well, I'm descended from Abraham. And yes, I guess I'm a Jew, but they may not have gone to the synagogue. And if you ask them what it is to be a Jew, they probably couldn't tell you very much except a few little cliches. What would be the counterpart of that? in Christianity today. Pseudo evangelicalism. Let's see what that means. These are ones that claim to be evangelical. They would utterly deny being Roman Catholic or liberal or the cults, and they do hold far more of the true gospel than those other three groups do. But they are generally mixed in with basically evangelical churches. But like many of the Jews in Jesus, they have a vague idea what the gospel is. You find out you're evangelism. I know I do this. Well, I'm not a Catholic. I'm certainly not liberal. I'm an evangelical. And they go to an evangelical church. But then you ask them, well, what do you believe? And I said, well, Jesus is the son of God. And he said, what does that mean? I don't know. How's a person become a Christian? And that's where their problem is, how to become a Christian. You see, what they do is they water down the gospel. I like what A. W. Tozer said about this. He was a great preacher some 50 years ago. He said most evangelical churches watered down the gospel so much that if it was poison, it wouldn't kill anybody. If it was medicine, it wouldn't cure anybody. And he's right. This sort of pseudo-evangelicalism waters it down. It's shallow. It's flabby. It's downright silly. And it bears only a vague resemblance to New Testament Christianity. And yet they will swear on a stack of King James Gideon Bibles that they are evangelical and not liberal Catholic or cults. I call it pseudo-evangelicalism, but there's another term whereby it goes. Easy-believism. Easy-believism downplays the holiness of God, downplays the sinfulness of man, and neither downplays or denies eternal hell. And what is their gospel? If you were to talk to them, they may get the person of Christ right. They may even get the work of Christ right. But it's at the point of contact, just like the point. Remember, in Galatians, they had the person and work of Christ down, but they added to the condition of salvation. That's the problem with easy believism at the point of contact with salvation. What do they say you have to do to be saved? Here are their answers. Invite Jesus into your heart. Open the door of your heart. Repeat a little prayer, go forward, sign a card. Isn't this promoted across the country in youth groups, VBS, and evangelistic campaigns? And it sounds good. Is it biblical? I defy anybody to show me where either Jesus or the apostles preached the gospel and said, now, here's how you become a Christian. Close your eyes and pretend you're opening the door of your heart and Jesus comes in. What did they say over and over and over again? The very thing Jesus said in his very first gospel message. Look it up. Mark 1 15. He said the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel over and over again in the four gospels, the book of Acts and even the epistles. Those are the two verbs repent and believe. But easy-believerism waters that down, and they usually ignore, redefine, or reject outright repentance. They'll say, well, yes, you find repentance in the gospel, Jesus preached it. But they'll say that was during the kingdom offer days, when Jesus offered a worldly kingdom to them. And then, of course, when they rejected it, that was no longer the term. Had they never read the book of Acts? Repentance is continued to preach into the very last chapter. Others will say, well, repentance is simply a change of mind, has nothing to do with mourning for sin or anything like that. They're wrong. Repentance is a change of mind, a change of heart, where you mourn for your sin and you turn from your sin. It's not just a change of mind, as some would promote. Well, there's a world of difference between invite Jesus into your heart and repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. A world of difference. And people think that they've been saved because they invited Jesus or repeat a little prayer, but they never repented. They never truly trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ. Other ones will say, well, repentance, yes, it's important. After you're saved, but they say it's not a condition, they'll say it follows. It's not a condition of salvation. Then what did the Lord Jesus Christ mean when he said in Luke chapter 13, twice, unless you repent, you will perish. The word perish is parallel over there in John 3, 16. Sounds like a condition to me. You have to believe you have to repent. Yes, repentance does follow. But those that say it has to follow salvation very quickly make it an optional extra and then even say many people never repent, but they're truly saved. According to the Bible, the terms of salvation is faith and repentance. The late John Murray said it's a repentant faith and a faithful repentance. The two are part of each other. What God put together, let no man put asunder. It's not faith without repentance any more than it's repentance without faith. Think about that. A person might say, I've repented and I've wept an ocean of tears of repentance. But as he believed, if he repents but doesn't believe he's not saved, same thing if he believes but doesn't repent. He doesn't have any one true unless he has both of them. Can I go further on this? Other ones will say, yes, you have to believe in Jesus. And they'll say, well, let's just set the question of repentance aside to the point. And they say, here's what we say. They say you have to receive Jesus. as Savior, but not as Lord. You know where I'm going with this. Of course, I want to hear some amens. They'll say, yes, you have to believe him as Savior, but not as Lord. And I want to tell you on the authority of God's word, that's a false gospel. Because the Bible says you receive Jesus as he is, and you cannot pick and choose and say, I'll take him as Savior, but not Lord, any more than you can say, well, I believe he's God, but not man, or he's man, but not God. Think about that. You take him for what he is. If you say he's God, but not man, automatically you're Gnostic. First John 4, verse 4 says anybody that says he's God, but not man, that's an antichrist. What about a person who says, I believe he's man, but not God? Well, then you are Jehovah's Witness and not a true Christian. You have to accept him as God and man, Savior and Lord in the same way with his work. You believe in the cross and the resurrection, not the cross without the resurrection. First Corinthians condemns that as a false gospel. You see how all this works together. So the sinner that, quote, invites Jesus in, but neither repents nor submits to Christ as his Lord is not a true Christian, but he's another kind of pseudo Christian. And it's all the more deceptive because it holds to so much truth, but just enough poison to make it a false gospel. And brethren, what makes it so dangerous is that this system manufactures millions of pseudo Christians around the world every year. It's about time someone pulled the mask off of it and showed it for what it is and say, reject those watered down accretions and add to it the true terms that the Bible says. Now, how do they explain their so-called converts that don't seem to match up to what the Bible says? Not long ago, I was watching a video where David Frost interviewed Billy Graham about 10 or 12 years ago, and he says, Billy, Every time you come on TV, you have some announcer say that the last crusade, three thousand people came forward and accepted Jesus. Do you really believe that all these really became true Christians like you? And Billy said, no, that surprised me. He said, oh, we've known for years that probably no more than four percent really get saved. That was honest of him to admit it, but many people won't even say that. So they come up with another system that's not biblical. They said, well, what about these vast majority? They said, well, they're not going on with the Lord. But once saved, always saved, they were saved. They invited Jesus in. He said, well, what about these others? They don't go to church. They don't read the Bible. They don't pray. In fact, there's no change at all in their life. In fact, their lives are flagrantly sinful. How do you explain them? They said, well, they're carnal Christians. But they're still saved. According to the Word of God, they're not carnal Christians. They're carnal pseudo-Christians. They were never saved to begin with. They don't have fruit of the Spirit. They have bad fruit. And according to Matthew 7, a tree is known by its fruit. And some of the promoters of that will say you can backslide, stay permanently backslidden, never fruit of the spirit. You can even become a homosexual, an unrepentant homosexual, an atheist and an unrepentant murderer. Not according to this book. If you are truly saved, Jesus not only justifies you, he changes your very nature and your lifestyle. This form of pseudo Christianity naturally does not have a love for holiness or the glory of God, because it's people by pseudo Christians who by nature hate holiness and hate God. Consequently, the churches that are multiplying these pseudo forms of pseudo evangelicals, they are filled with goats and sheep's clothing. And the preachers cater to that. We have an article in the lobby out there. Phil, have you ever read the one by Spurgeon? Feeding sheep or entertaining goats? Just don't chuckle too much. This is serious. A lot of preachers, and I'm ashamed to say it because I'm a preacher, a lot of preachers, they're goat entertainers and they're promoting entertainment, pretending that it's worship. But the people are pleased with that. This is the source of much of contemporary Christian music, drama, dancing. It's just outright silliness and sacrilege. God doesn't accept that worship. Many of these pseudo-Christians continue to be deceived. But eventually some of them throw off the cloak and say, There's nothing to this, so they go back to this, and they say, I don't want to be a hypocrite. And many of them end up vigorously opposing true Christianity. They'll say, I tried it, you can keep it. But they never got the true thing. They were, as it were, immunized against it. On the other hand, some of them, praise the Lord, do stumble across the true gospel and do truly believe and are then truly saved. Fortunately, many Christians today are waking up to this pseudo-evangelicalism. And thank God for valiant preachers like Paul Washer and John MacArthur that are sounding the alarm. And we, too, need to sound the alarm. Let me give a word to you preachers that are here today. Are you sounding the alarm? Are you preaching the undiluted, clear gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? But how about you church members? Does your preacher preach the one and only true gospel or just another form of pseudo Christianity? Let me make some concluding comments. Brethren, as I said at the beginning, the gospel is at stake. Souls are at stake. The glory and honor of God is at stake. This is the battleground for a lot of spiritual warfare. I'm not so much concerned about the Buddhists or the atheists. They're more likely to hear the true gospel than the pseudo-Christian. This is a battle line where there has to be spiritual warfare. Know the gospel. Defend it. Could you be able to explain it very clearly and contend earnestly for the gospel? Don't tamper with the true gospel. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Don't add to it, subtract from it, substitute it, or water it down. Let me give you a little illustration as I close. Now, I'm not a chemist, so I'm going to quote the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, page 696. Now, what is water? Water is H2O. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Tastes good when you're thirsty. It's necessary for life. But what if you changed the molecular structure of that very simple atom, H2O, and you said, well, let's make it H2O2. Then you come up with hydrogen peroxide, quote, a colorless, vicious liquid with strong oxidizing properties used in some disinfectants and bleaches. Would you want to drink that? But one thing that you said, well, I'll take the oxygen out and replace it with sulfur H2S. Then you get hydrogen sulfide, which is defined as, quote, a colorless, poisonous gas with the smell of bad eggs made by the action of acids on sulfides. Yum, yum. You want to drink that? But then what if you took oxygen and these others out and you kept the hydrogen and then you put in CN? You end up then with hydrogen cyanide. Defined as a highly poisonous gas or volatile liquid with an odor of bitter almonds made by the action of acids on cyanides. That was the chemical base of Zyklon B in Auschwitz. What am I getting at? If you tamper with any essential element of the gospel by adding to it, subtracting from it, you're going to come up with poison. It's going to poison the souls of men and women around the world. Martin Luther said, the true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God. Brethren, hold to the truth. Be warned against these false gospels and pseudo-Christianities. Be part of a church that believes the true gospel. Sheep should be with other sheep, not in wolf packs or in goat herds. And they should be following true preachers that believe the one and only true gospel. And make sure that you believe the true gospel. And that you are a true Christian, not a pseudo Christian. Let us pray. Father, give us the light to see your gospel. And the faith and courage to cling to it with all of our hearts. And the courage to preach it to others. Thank you for the pure gospel about our Lord Jesus Christ. In His holy name we pray, Amen.