A look at how the network of false teaching defends the false against the true teachings of God.

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And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." -- Mark 7: 5-8 (ESV)

In his farewell speech President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term "Military Industrial Complex." He did so to warn the country that the people who made money from the implementation of war should not be trusted. That war essentially should not be a business endeavor. That once you are driven by material motives, you lose your moral compass for why you choose to engage in war. That such matters should never be taken so lightly as to trivialize something so serious. So it also has gone for the past several decades with church. The church itself is the chosen instrument of God to represent Him to a lost and dying world. The moral imperative was plain. There is an eternal life to gain and a temporal world to shun. That people walking in their sins now have a Savior they can turn to for the remission of those sins and be reunited in glory with their heavenly Father who created them. Something funny happened along the way though. Someone realized that as media expanded, that church could also be a thriving business. That money could be generated not for the moral purposes of spreading the Gospel but for the goal of self sustenance.

Thus was born the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex. An intricate web of teachings that have incorporated the wisdom of the world to manage the things of God. Underlying this is the foundational teachings of rank heretics. People who claim the cause of Christ but cast aside His Word in order to achieve their ends. People like Bill Hybels designed churches not to feed the sheep but to cater to the unsaved. Polling those who did not go to church, the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex figured out how to market church to people who really did not want to go. For example, Hybels learned that people were made uncomfortable by the appearance of crosses inside churches. Why wouldn't they be? The cross represents the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins they do not really wish to give up. So Hybels built a church without crosses. Along came Rick Warren and his purpose driven church model, which essentially took the early seeker friendly theologies and placed them on steroids. No longer was the pastor to be considered a shepherd. Instead he was a CEO running a business. He was a "vision caster" who mapped out the future plans to grow the church. Not the kingdom mind you, but the individual church he was CEO for. Today we see adherents of these teachings like mega church pastor Andy Stanley actually preach that the word shepherd should not even be used anymore! As part of the whitewashing of Christianity, Warren eliminated terminology that might turn off potential churchgoers. So instead of referring to the lost as unsaved, they are now considered "unchurched." Think about the profound implications of that subtle change alone. When you strive to reach the unsaved you are infinitely concerned about their eternal state -- their salvation. When you change that to unchurched, you are concerned about their temporal state and whether they come back to your building.

One of the other changes Warren and Hybels implemented was a change to worship. No longer would solid biblical hymns be used. How boring! Instead, worship needed to be an "experience." The best musicians were recruited and the best voices paid to turn the worship of God into entertainment. Smoke machines and club lighting were introduced to elicit an emotional response from the flesh of the unsaved so you could convince them that they were having a spiritual experience. Sermons which focused on sin, the cross and the blood were now considered unfriendly for people seeking God. Of course that was only one of the many poor assumptions that were made at the start. The term seeker friendly implies that the unchurched were by default seeking God when they most likely were not. They were seeking the entertainment and the sense that they could have their sin and believe they were heaven bound at the same time. To further this illusion, sermons now were to be motivational in nature and relevant to their current temporal situations instead of dealing with their shared eternal problem. Services were cut down to a palatable hour and a half with sermons rarely exceeding a half hour.

The result was predictable. The world loved this new model. What sinful creature would not? Rocking music followed by a self help speech about how great I was? Every Bible story now mangled to secretly be about me? I defeated Goliath? I tore the walls of Jericho down? God wants me to be the head and not tail? More than a conqueror? That He has a wonderful, sugar coated and pain free plan for my life? And I get to go to heaven? Without having to actually change anything in my life other than a 10% surcharge? Sign me up! Thus the era of the mega church began. Stadiums erected to hold church in. Multi site churches across the land. Thousands upon thousands answering two minute altar calls after twenty minutes of preaching that never actually addressed their sin and need to repent. And the churches grew and grew and grew. Suddenly, church was big business. For example, Lakewood Church brings in 90 million dollars a year in offerings. Leadership conferences sprung up to elicit the very best carnal techniques from the fallen world to help grow the newly fallen church. The complex soon existed for the sake of protecting the racket. After all, that is all this is but a racket. The definition of racket is a fraudulent scheme and an easy, lucrative way of making a living. That is what the seeker friendly church has become and the complex protects it. The complex protects it by defending the practices and pushing back against any legitimate criticism. These defenses are usually well thought out and well written. They have the veneer of piety, in that Scripture is misused to defend and attack. And beloved let us not lose sight of why we criticize. This is not some intellectual exercise. It is not sowing discord or division, which the Bible teaches us happens through the introduction of false doctrine, not those who correct it. We critique because there are lives at stake. The eternal destination of the souls of men is on the line. You cannot strip sin, repentance, the cross and the blood out of the Gospel and still think your preaching can lead anyone to salvation. It may lead them back to your church but not into heaven. Jesus spoke exactly about this when He was pronouncing judgment upon the false teachers of His day:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. -- Matthew 23: 15 (ESV)

Today we see these churches do just the same. There is no questioning their zeal to spread their false gospel but in doing so they only consign the people they "church" to being twice the son of hell that they are. Why? Jesus taught us that if we have convinced ourselves that our darkness is actually light -- how deep is that darkness! If you think you are already right with God and your pastor swears you are, it is very difficult to come out from under that false teaching. This is why so many on the last day will stand before Him and say, "Lord Lord" only to hear -- "I never knew you." Think about that for a moment.

So we can expect the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex to continue to muddy the waters. To continue to defend the racket. There is too much money at stake. There is too much power at stake. In many ways the parallels to the Pharisees are obvious. They had the power and control in the days of Jesus. They were the most well off. They had a lucrative racket and they were not about to let some upstart carpenter from Galilee spoil it. As it was so it goes. I came across an article the other day that displays the disingenuous falseness of the complex and how it tries to defend itself:

http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/16464-3-symptoms-of-a-dying-church.html

In this article, Tony Foglio tries to make the argument that he has identified three signs of a church that is dying. By dying he means churches that refuse to compromise the Gospel by seeker friendly, purpose driven means. To try and prop up his false arguments, he uses the key verses today. Actually, he paraphrases them. He breaks them into three parts to make three separate points that God never intended when He inspired Mark to write them. Let us reason together:

The heart has become confused with emotions. -- Tony Foglio

"People honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." -- God Almighty

The enemy according to Foglio is tradition. It is singing your favorite hymn, the order of church service or a particular Bible translation. The summary however he has concluded from this verse fragment is ludicrous. God is not saying through the Prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus was quoting, that the Pharisees were confusing their heart with their emotions. What He is actually saying is that while they speak of God they are not speaking for Him. That their piety is fake. Interestingly enough, this criticism now belongs leveled at the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex who love to talk about Jesus while ignoring His Gospel. That is actually the point. Saying the name of Jesus is not some magical balm that makes all of your false doctrine true. Even note the specific items Foglio tries to come against. Favorite hymns are based upon the Bible. The order of church service is so ordered in the Bible. Bible translations are critical for proper doctrine. Many in the complex insist on using paraphrases instead of actual translations, such as the heretical Message Bible. The issue Foglio cannot see is that it is not confusing your heart with your emotions. It is confusing your heresy with Biblical truth. He even goes as far to suggest that we may need to seek repentance from our "sacred cow" traditions. This is a common scheme of the complex. To turn everyone who disagrees into stodgy old religious relics. The word religion is actually vilified by the complex even though it is a word God instituted in the Bible! We continue:

All new forms of worship are considered "vain."- Tony Foglio

"In vain they worship me."- God Almighty

We start to see now why Foglio divided up these verses to make his individual points. To properly handle the text of course, you cannot take these five words and pretend they have no connection to the context in which they are found. It is specifically because they honor in word alone while their hearts are far from God that their worship is then useless, or vain. In the case of the Pharisees, they would devour widows' homes and operate devoid of the mercy and justice of God and then piously worship God in the temple. Thus their worship was useless. God is not going to honor worship when it is a veneer.

"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. -- Amos 5: 21-24 (ESV)

In the seeker friendly world, worship has become entertainment. It is no longer done for God but rather to feed our flesh. Last year Victoria Osteen admitted that they do not worship at Lakewood for God but rather for themselves. Twenty years ago we sang about How Great Thou Art and today we sing about how much He loves us. That is not worship. It is not lifting up Jesus to sing to God how much He is our friend. More importantly, when your doctrine has eradicated Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, whatever you try to sing in worship will be useless before God. Completely in vain. Foglio tries to again turn this into old religious folks not tolerating anything new. It is a strawman argument however. There are plenty of contemporary worship songs that stay true to Scripture and that is the only point that should matter. Foglio concludes:

Traditions have become doctrine. -- Tony Foglio

"Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men " laying aside the commandment of God, they hold the tradition of men "" -- God Almighty

Tony Foglio is clever but transparent. The issue that bothers the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex is not that traditions have become our doctrine but rather that we have based our traditions upon doctrine. This is of course the complete opposite of what the Pharisees were doing and what the complex does. As if all of this were not bad enough, Foglio gets greedy:

"But that's the way we've always done it," they will say. Show me a stagnate church, and I'll show you a church steeped in its own traditions to the point that those traditions have become doctrines. -- Tony Foglio

This is a common false teaching from the complex but it based on such unbiblical foundations. A stagnate church for example is one that is not growing into a mega church but that is not in Scripture at all. At the end of Acts Chapter Two, we see very clearly that it is God who decides who gets added to the fellowship, not man. So his definition of stagnate flies in the face of what the Bible actually says. It is not that smaller churches have allowed doctrines to become traditions it is that they based their traditions upon doctrine. Now however that Foglio thinks he has laid down sufficient pious sounding points, he reveals the true agenda of the complex:

Let's stop condemning ministries and preachers that are reaching the masses through new technologies, unorthodox presentations and anything else God may be using to impact people with the gospel. -- Tony Foglio

As discussed at the beginning, the purpose of the complex is to protect the complex. If by new technologies he means smoke machines and disco balls during worship I think he has missed the point. If by unorthodox presentations he means dressing up like star wars characters to preach a sermon about a secular movie I think he has missed the point. If by condemning ministries and preachers he means exposing the false teachers for who they are as the Bible commands us to do, I think he has missed the point. If by the gospel, he means this seeker friendly, purpose driven, sugar coated, easy greasy, crossless, bloodless, self help, motivational tripe that cannot save anyone but might just "church them" -- I know he has missed the point.

The point is that Jesus Christ did not come to bring peace but a sword. That one must pick up their cross and deny themselves if they are to follow Him. That without the blood we remain guilty before God. The point is that without the cross we never discuss why He had do die. Without that we never talk about our own sinful state that has us separated from God and bound for hell. Beloved, without that talk there cannot be repentance. Sure you can be churched. You can attend every week, serve in ministries, and feel like you have a purpose beyond your wildest dreams. You will not however be saved. You will merely be playing church. A customer of the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex. You will have had God marketed to you, slickly packaged and sold to your specifications. You want to revel in your own sin; we have teachers who specialize in greasy grace. You want to excuse all of your wealth or greed? We have prosperity preachers to scratch your ears right where you itch. You want to feel as if you are God? We have word faith heretics and those who traffic in false signs and lying wonders. Don't you worry either about anyone coming in and ruining your party. You go right on dancing to Christian hip hop and rock concerts disguised as worship. You go right on believing that it was you who felled the giant with a pebble and parted the Red Sea with a stick. After all, we have people like Tony Foglio to defend you. To protect our customers. To preserve the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- April 10, 2016

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.