There are many false gospels being presented of which can be discerned by Scripture as false. Below is a brief list of the main ones you might encounter which are quite prevalent in the modern religion claiming Christianity. These false gospels DO NOT SAVE, they hold NO POWER unto salvation. If you find yourself encapsulated in any of these, you are most likely on the road to destruction.

1. “You can lose your salvation” Any gospel being preached in the name of Christianity and Jesus Christ which teaches that a sinner once saved can lose their granted eternal life (an oxymoron) is a false gospel. A church which teaches this must be condemned by Gal 1:8-9. Led only by the devil, this false gospel states that Jesus will lose His inheritance, His granted sheep, making His work on the Cross a failure. Eternal means forever, not a temporary state. If you can lose your salvation, this means you are working for your salvation thus you are boasting, whereas Scripture says no one can boast. Any gospel which separates salvation/justification from eternal life is false!

2. “Salvation and eternal life are not the same thing” Many false teachers will try to teach a gospel of works and can be very cunning in this as they separate salvation from eternal life. Meaning they will say a sinner is justified from God by grace through faith, however that is just the start point. The sinner then must do enough works and be completely free of sin by rituals and a penance, of course by perverting God’s grace as the instrument, and in the end they possibly can enter heaven. That there is this long process of justification and then only by a final justification by works a sinner will be granted eternal life which contradicts the Gospel as shown in Scripture completely! REPEATED Any gospel which separates salvation/justification from eternal life is false!

3. “When you die, if saved you must wait to enter in the presence of God” Roman Catholicism will teach an after-death purgatory where the Catholic is purged of remaining sins and by punishment is made clean enough to enter heaven. Some world religions teach a soul sleep, where when you die, you basically await the last Day and then you will see God. Whereas Scripture is clear, if you are saved and granted eternal life, immediately upon physical death your soul will be in the presence of God. There is no separation of the saved sinner to the Savior Jesus Christ.

4. “Scripture has errors and contradictions or is not sufficient” Many false teachers will say the Bible is NOT inerrant. They do this because their doctrines are not testing out in Scripture, so Scripture must be the error or is lacking. The dependence then is on the false teacher who supposedly was given some supernatural enlightenment which will correct those errors and complete the truth God left out. Run from any church who believes God’s word is in error. You see, if a false teacher can convince you that the Bible contains errors and is lacking in sufficiency, you will doubt God at His word and then trust the false teacher instead who will lead you to hell.

5. “All Roads lead to Heaven” I call this the Oprah (Winfrey) or the “unknown” false gospel. It calls on a fallacy that man cannot really know what the judgment of God is, thus if you live a good life no matter what you believe, the road will lead to heaven, that all religions in effect lead to heaven. However, we do know by the plain truth in Scripture that there is just ONE ROAD, through Jesus Christ. John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 affirms this without any confusion. This false gospel plays on human insecurity, ignorance, and unbelief, and tries to omit the perfect work of Jesus Christ and His righteousness as the only means by which one will enter heaven. It may sound good to the wayward sinner on the outside that all roads lead to heaven, but is completely false.

6. “Who am I or you to judge salvation” This false gospel mirrors number 5 above. A guy on Twitter the other day spoke of this gospel as he said on the abortion debate, “how can you judge another, nobody really knows the truth”. This one uses an emotional appeal, and mainly perverts Matthew 7:1-2 where Jesus said “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” However, Jesus is NOT saying “you can’t judge another”, He is teaching to be careful in your judgment. To be absolutely sure in your judgment or you are projecting your own judgment. God has already judged the human race GUILTY of SIN, so calling out that judgment in truth is not going to be any problem for God. If Scripture is your ultimate authority in the judgment, any judgment in Scripture passes God’s test because it is His word, His documented promise.

7. “You need to do good works and be perfect in obedience to be justified by God” Any church preaching that one needs to do something outside of faith in Jesus Christ to be justified by God and by this granted eternal life is teaching a false gospel! This demonic gospel teaches sinners to be saved by the law instead of Jesus Christ. The lie here is to say a sinner can actually be perfect in God’s eyes by the law. But Scripture tells us that if we sinned, we broke ALL of God’s laws, every single one of them. The actual Gospel teaches a sinner enters heaven based on Christ’s righteousness, never by their own flawed sinful righteousness. Romans 5 teaches us that God justifies the ungodly sinner, never the “godly” or it would render the Cross vacant.

8. “You have an ultimate freedom to choose salvation” This false gospel puts the sovereignty over salvation into the hands of the sinner and their self righteousness. The sinner decides, not God, as to if they want to be saved or discard the standing offer. That Jesus Christ’s work on the Cross was just a potential offer, a good try, a billboard display, not really an atonement. Problem is, all of mankind by their sin has decided to reject God. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans 6, that we are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness (saved). Slaves are not free in nature. It is God who has chosen to either by His mercy grant freedom or to leave them as slaves to sin. God is ALWAYS sovereign over salvation. If you have been chosen by God by nothing you did, how could you boast? If you think you chose to be saved, you are boasting!

9. “God really does not know the future” This false gospel is the natural result of point 8 above. Because if man is ultimately free in nature and can choose salvation based on free-will, God cannot know the choice before the sinner makes the choice. So the consistent logic which is the heresy of demonic open theism would then mean God cannot know the future. However, Scripture clearly shows us that God is omniscient (all-knowing) and is not learning things, He knows the end from the beginning. Man’s attempt by Satan will always try to displace God or make salvation a cooperative effort, when it was always One man’s effort, Jesus Christ’s which saves a sinner.

10. “Salvation comes through only by religiosity, rituals, church attendance” I called this the “Churchianity” false gospel. Churchians believe by their religious involvement they will be saved in the end. They can live like the devil all week long, and by that one hour of church, all is well. Churchians are not Christians. Churchians believe by a little incense, repetitive prayers, singing a few hymns, and the external piousness while in a building complete with a steeple and bells, this would make them “God’s child” or a “Christian”. Having never been born-again, the Churchian’s testimony in Jesus Christ is spiritually void and empty. Churchianity REEKS of hypocrisy to the unbelieving world.

11. “There is no hell, all are ultimately saved” This has been the sounding call from Satan since the beginning. The ploy is to get the sinner to believe that sin does not defile God’s holiness, just as He deceived Eve in the Garden. The “God is love” extreme views will attempt to say “God cannot be a loving God by sending a sinner to eternal punishment”. But then God would be an unjust God, and unholy as well if He looked the other way, and then sent Jesus to the Cross for literally no reason whatsoever. It mirrors Oprah’s “all roads to heaven” false gospel.

12. “Those sins are not sins any longer” The relativism gospel is also a Satan favorite. It attempts to claim that since society has voted on a sin as being normal human behavior, well it can’t be a sin any longer. Proponents of abortion, homosexuality, etc. will play this relativism game. That while God was intolerant of sin, He now is tolerant of many disgusting sins and repentance is merely a suggestion. Roman Catholicism for example will subjectively call some sins lesser as “venial” and some serious sins as “mortal”, teaching the Catholic they can actually die in their lesser sins not completely atoned for and everything will be ok. As Matt 7:21-23 declares, many will call Jesus “Lord” and declare all these great things they did in His name, and He will say “I never knew you, be gone from me you workers of lawlessness”.