How many methods the devil uses and tailors to our weaknesses as a congregation? He will say, ‘I know that church, I have been watching it. I know where their weaknesses are and I will tailor the subtlety, the delusion, the problems I shall bring in, to their weaknesses.’ There are teachers, even in Bible based circles, who are in effect telling people that God is unfair. ‘Don’t you listen to the teaching about God from the Reformers and the Reformed tradition! Their God [this is just their interpretation] is an unreasonable God, who makes unreasonable demands. You can loosen up; you can have a high percentage of the world in your life and worldly pleasures. You can bring the world into the church; you can worship with worldly music. That Reformation God, that God of church history, that God of almost the last 500 years isn’t the true God, he is just a God that they have made up’, and so they teach against what they call ‘tradition’ quite openly. They have this great distinction between traditional churches and Holy Spirit churches. Of course it is a myth.
Today many of those things are watered down. Christ alone! Yes, but it isn’t really Christ alone because easy-believism has come in. All you have got to do is say, ‘I believe in you, Jesus.’ You haven’t got to deeply repent of your sin in some churches. You haven’t got to seek the Lord and renounce the world and truly turn your life over to him and his government. There is no deep work of the Spirit bringing conviction, no true conversion. Then, of course, separation is watered down. The world is brought into the church. You can be just like a worldling now, dress the same, speak the same, act the same, enjoy the same sinful entertainments and pursuits. Then, of course, the word of God, that is set aside. They say, ‘We believe the word, we believe the word, but God told me yesterday to do this and the day before that he told me to do something else and he gives me direct revelations and inspiration.’ Almost 90% of what they do is dictated by supposed, claimed revelations of modern times. So the simplicity that is in Christ has gone.