Counterfeit Christianity

About a week ago I had traveled to the Orlando area for some internal corporate training at work. It was just one of those normal quick down and quick back trips that you kind of don't like to do because they are just so busy and so filled with airport time. I went down the night before class, spent the day in a classroom, and then hurried to the airport to get home again. Only this time it was a little different. When class was over, one of the guys in the class and myself got into the elevator to go to the street level and just before the door closes, this guy gets in the elevator. He asks if we were in training and we acknowledged that we were. I noticed what looked like quite a wad of money sticking out of his shirt pocket and I noticed that the money seemed to have an awful lot of zeros on it. Could that be a stack of million dollar bills? Nah, no way this guy would be that casual with that much money. But somehow, I could just not take my eyes off the stack in his shirt pocket. I think he noticed I was staring and he said, "Hey did they tell you that you get a present for putting up with class all day?" And with that he pulls out this stack of money and hands each of us a $1,000,000 bill. Now I am thinking there is no way this is real so I immediately start looking for the flaw in the money. I flip it over on the back and on the top it says, "This is the million dollar question: Are you going to go to Heaven?"

Wow, this is a very interesting way to introduce that kind of a question but it did get me to thinking though about how we, as humankind, seem to want to counterfeit everything we can get our hands on. We do it with money and this was a perfect example of "fake" money. But it got me to thinking about how often you read of the counterfeit of Christianity. How many times do you hear of a new church that is "non-denominational" Christian only to find that their statement of faith is not in line with Christianity. There are a lot of these around and they are easy to get caught up in. I used to work with a guy who was a member of the Mormon Church and he would always tell every one that Mormons were Christians. Are they? Well actually nothing could be further from the truth. A quick review of their core beliefs would tell you that this is not true. They do list faith in Jesus Christ as a core belief but if you look a little closer at their beliefs you will clearly see departure from the most basic of Christian beliefs. So just what are core Christian beliefs? How do we judge for ourselves if a Christian faith is genuine? One of the measurements that I use, is the Apostle's Creed. It has been around for a long time and represents a statement of our faith.

While it is not completely foolproof, the Apostles' Creed definately gives us a good starting point when trying to decide of a Christian faith is authentic or a counterfeit. Jesus said Himself that some would come in His name that would not be authentic. We must be vigilant to identify those false prophets so as not to fall victim of their deceit.