I would encourage many to read Mike’s post. His definition of The Counterfeit Church and personal witnessing testimony are good.
What is the Counterfeit Church? It is Satan’s attempt to minimize the glory due God by deceiving people to oppose the genuine gospel by creating “reasonable facsimiles” of it. These false copies are similar enough to deceive their adherents while deviating enough to fool them into remaining spiritually immature.
We must pray for God to put his hand on and raise up those who will preach and teach the doctrines of grace in the power of the Holy Spirit. That means many Christian leaders must repent by learning to walk by Faith rather than using selective rationalization. We must pray for God to call His chosen out to the Counterfeit Church.
We must pray for those false preachers and teachers to be effectively silenced as the true gospel is proclaimed everywhere in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must ask God to break the hearts of the chosen who are involved in the Counterfeit Church. We must pray for the fear of God to come upon us all as we repent of not being the maturing Christians we are all called to be.
Calvinism is the most hated and reviled form of Christianity in the Western Church. The main culprit in this hatred is rampant spiritual immaturity. This breeds ignorance of the truth. I heard a preacher say once the reason he did not preach the doctrines of grace was he did not want to run people off. He preached the Arminian version of the gospel, knowing it was wrong, so he could make it easy for people to believe. He hoped to disciple them later into the truth of the sovereignty of God. This seems despicable to me and revealed a preacher who did not trust the Holy Spirit to do His work of conviction of sin by striving and drawing God’s people to the truth so they are ready for effectual grace.
Rainbow Trout 