Interesting notion. I am trying to wrap my mind around the Ten Commandments as guidelines for discerning apostate churches. Since the Ten Commandments deal with individual behavior of men and women in their relationships to the Lord and to each other, are you applying those guidelines to churches as organizations or to their leaders, or both? And does that make Jews apostate or is it just applied to Christian churches? I guess I can envision an organization or person who follows the Ten Commandments as well as anyone can, still qualify as apostate because of teachings and maybe even behavior extraneous to the Ten Commandments. The Savior certainly spent a lot of time during His ministry teaching a higher standard than that sort of “Do not” behavior in the Ten Commandments. He taught that it wasn’t enough to just honor the Lord, or not hurt our fellowmen. I believe He upped the standard to love for God and even our enemies. But perhaps I am misunderstanding your point. I certainly don’t mean to do so.
Incidentally, I didn’t address the Christian/Non-Christian apostate matter because I believed the church she was considering was Christian, though some consider it a cult I guess. And I still believe that the combination of scripture and prayer is the best means to discern our course in life, including choice of religious organization.
I think Jews who ignore God’s techings and yet claim to practice Judaism are apostate same as anyone else.
Islam rails on and on about apostacy...probably other religions have the same concept.
Just because Jesus spoke about love does not mean he eschewed rules as brought forth in the Old Covenant. That is sure not how I was taught.
I gather your religious view is more about the love part which is quite common in today’s Christianity which in many denominations has dropped much of the behavior attention.
I’m not sure what loving our enemies has to do with apostacy.
If a church advocates any practices glaring in contradtiction to the Bible then they are apostate....I would think....by degrees maybe. Bingo? maybe an indulgence. Human sacrifice? a real problem.
Abortion. Homosexual Marriage. and so forth.
Golden Rule folks which I guess means you often think simply a belief in God and being nice is enough.
I think that is a problem with our culture and explains the rise of liberalism in some quarters and the decline of our social structures.
And the evidence of where that leaves us is pretty obvious.
btw before you mention it, the behavior of the church leader does not mean the church is apostate by default.