How to Determine Which Church is the true Church

It is not such a hard thing with our understanding of the bible for the Lords' Witnesses to prove from the bible that we are the one true Christian religion today. In fact this book/website catalogues all of the 4 true Christian religions from Jesus' death until Armageddon - see [34]. The hard thing for us to do is to give you, the reader, through the pages of this book/website, enough courage to admit that there might actually only be one true religion at this time, and that if you are currently in a religion, then it might actually be a false religion. 

This courage can really only come from love. Love for God, love for Jesus, or love for the truth. It is like the apostle John said, the one whom Jesus loved specially:

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love throws fear outside, because fear exercises a restraint. Indeed, he that is under fear has not been made perfect in love (1 John 4).

So do you love your religion more than you love God? The Pharisees who killed Jesus did. That was why they killed him. But Jesus said:

37 He that has greater affection for father or mother than for me is not worthy of me; and he that has greater affection for son or daughter than for me is not worthy of me (Matthew 10).

He said this not because he wanted to split up families but because he wanted people to understand that in the case where a family is already divided over God or over following Jesus, that family members would have a choice to make. But he furnished a pretty comprehensive guarantee to us in this regard saying:

29 Jesus said: Truly I say to you men, No one has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news.
30 Who will not get a hundredfold now in this period of time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields, with persecutions, and in the coming system of things everlasting life (Mark 10).

But this division of the physical family also applies in the case of the spiritual family, the congregation of your religion. So do you love Jesus more than you love your church? If you do not then you are not a Christian, you are a churchian. And most church goers fall into this latter category, because this is what most priests want them to do. It is a case of the blind following the blind. These 'Christians' are therefore 'Blindians'. Spirituality is an individual thing, it is not a herd phenomenon. One must decide for oneself with one's God given power of reason whether it was God indeed who gave us this power. And if God did create our intelligence, then we should show our gratitude to him, by using it to search for him, until we have for a fact discovered him.

7 Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking, and you will find; keep on knocking, and it will be opened to you (Matthew 7).

Because he is not so far away:

26 And he made out of one [man] every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of [men],  
27
for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us (Acts 17).

He is hiding behind a thin wall of reasoning. So here is the simple way to determine which one is the true religion. Perhaps you will see just how thin this wall of reasoning is. This is a determination that cannot be made by your priest, it cannot be made by your best friend, it cannot by made by your relatives, it cannot be made by a BBC documentary, or by the government or by the Sun newspaper. It cannot even be made by the Sunday Times Newspaper, and you will not find much help in the Catholic Encyclopedia. It cannot be made by the most religious person you know, or by the most intelligent person you know or by the most enlightened person you know. It can only be made by you.

Either we have decoded the bible or we haven't. If we haven't then we are not the true religion. If we have then we are the true religion, because the scripture says:

33 So with many illustrations of that sort he would speak the word to them ['a great crowd' Mark 4:1], as far as they were able to listen. 
34 Indeed, without an illustration he would not speak to them, but privately to his disciples he would explain all things (Mark 4).

So if we have decoded the bible, then Jesus has privately explained all things to us, so we are his true disciples. As regards the other religions, since they do not know the symbolic code, they are still seeing everything in illustrations, so they are just a part of the 'crowd'. They are therefore not his true disciples. Of course one cannot correctly decode the bible unless God authorises it. We are not in competition with God here. If we have done this thing, then it is God, through Jesus, who has opened his book up to us exclusively at this time.   

Fossilized Doctrine from Church Fathers

This is how most Christian churches have formulated their doctrines and creeds...Church fathers/founders lay down the doctrine of the church on day one, and it does not change substantially from that point. The Catholics fossilized their doctrine at the council of Nicea, which did at the least consider doctrinal matters, but which came to the wrong conclusions. The Protestants set their church doctrine in stone with the apostolic creed, formulated several centuries ago. The younger more fundamental and more evangelical Christian churches formulated and then fossilized their doctrines in the 19th and the 20th centuries. But there is no church as far as we are aware that changes its church doctrine on an annual or on a monthly or even a daily basis in fundamental respects other than the Lords' Witnesses. The Lords' Witnesses really do keep on seeking and keep on knocking and keep on asking. And so every Lords' Witness is effectively a founder member of the church, we are all founding fathers. The great American contribution to Christianity in the last century was the recognition that every member of the church should evangelise. The great contribution of the Lords' Witnesses to Christianity in this century is that every member of the church should research the bible and look for new meanings, and if successful become a church father. For new interpretations are how the holy spirit directs the true church. The American churches knocked down the clergy laity distinction as regards evangelism. But the Lords' Witnesses knocked it down as regards bible research and as regards fundamental church doctrine as well.

There are many other more technical ways of seeing that The LWs are the true religion right now, we list them below.

A true religion must satisfy the following criteria

[1]  Every baptised member of the church must be a son of Isaac, by which we mean a party to the ICC flowing from the ACP - see [9]. This was the covenant that John the baptist was baptising into. Before Jesus, the genetic sons of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob were God's people, and after Jesus, the sons by faith, and in fact through the First Abrahamic Covenant, are God's unofficial true people. The sons of water through the Isaaic Church Covenant are God's official true people, those in the true religion. In fact although the physical Sons of Israel had an exclusive on God through the LCC, only those who were in the 1AC were Abraham's seed by covenant, Abraham's true seed, with the faith of Abraham rather than his genes, like Paul said:

7 Neither because they are Abraham's seed are they all children, but: What will be called 'your seed' will be through Isaac. 
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That is, the children in the flesh are not really the children of God, but the children by the promise are counted as the seed (Romans 9).

This statement was true in the days of Moses as well as in the first century and today for that matter. For the children of the promise, the first promise, the 1AC, have the blessing of Abraham, which is a resurrection into the Kingdom of God. But the children of the promise to the seed, to Isaac, have both faith and the true religion. Entrance to the ICC is through baptism, which in the days of Moses was at the first Passover aged 11, a washing in the blood of Moses, symbolised by the blood of the Passover lamb, one per household. They all entered the ICC aged 11 years old in this way, but only those who kept the law, or at least kept the sacrifices when they broke the law, remained in the ICC. The law was not a salvation covenant. It was merely the law of the church of Judaism.

Today water baptism is the entrance to the ICC - see intro32.

[2]  Every member of the congregation should be able to trace a path back through the one who baptised him, to the founder of their religion who was baptised from heaven. This is quite obvious, for all cleanliness on earth originates from above. And if one of the members of the chain of baptism was not baptised himself, then he is not in a position to baptise the next member along! In this sense the Christian is rather like the Jew, with a genealogy not of fleshly fathers, but of spiritual fathers, of baptisers. So in particular you need to know who in your religion was the 'Elijah' figure, the 'John the baptist' figure, the one who was baptised from heaven. In the case of the early first century Christians it was John the baptist. In the case of the second true Christian religion it was Paul (who was not baptised by Ananias). In the case of the Jehovah's Witnesses it was Charles Russell. In the case of the Lord's Witnesses it is Gordon Ritchie.

[3]  Entrance to the new covenant has ended - see [11]. If your church is still baptising people into the new covenant, or accepting new communion partakers then it is a false church. This rules out every Christian church except the Jehovah's witnesses and the Lords' Witnesses as far as we are aware.

[4]   If your church is full of sinners and the leaders behave very badly this does not rule it out at all!! All religions suffer from this, true and false. If your church is incredibly pious, or incredibly charitable or amazingly evangelical then this does not rule it in because like Paul said:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a sounding [piece of] brass or a clashing cymbal.
2 And if I have the gift of prophesying and am acquainted with all the sacred secrets and all knowledge, and if I have all the faith so as to transplant mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my belongings to feed others, and if I hand over my body, that I may boast, but do not have love, I am not profited at all (1 Corinthians 13).

[5]  The definition of the first century Christian was that he followed Jesus around literally. And then after Jesus died, the Christian followed those who had followed Jesus around, the apostles. Again, as in the case of the parallel with the Jews as regards baptism, things have not changed. The reason that the Jehovah's Witnesses were the true religion, actually appointed/installed on 1915Nisan20/Sivan9 to rule over the saints, was that when Jesus came to be present a second time on 1890Sivan12  - see [33], the Watchtower recognised it. They actually thought that the second presence started in 1874, and that Jesus would become king over the whole earth in 1914Tishri. In fact could not become king over Isaac's seed on earth, Isaac's sons, the sons of the ICC, until 2020Tishri15, due to the 98 year Maccabean and 4 year Jewish Ministry and 4 year Gentile Ministry and 4 year non adamic lease gapped Gentile Times - see U120. But crudely speaking the Watchtower recognised Jesus' second appearance and followed him, just like the first century Christians did. In fact any true Christian church is set up as a result of a coming of the Christ. So if Jesus has indeed come again for the second time in this his second presence, then the second true Christian religion of this presence is now set up - and here we are.

[6]  It has always been the case that the true religion (when it has existed) has had the best bible interpretation. This is quite an easy test to apply today. The reader is therefore invited to measure our understanding of the holy book against that of his own church.

[7]  We believe and can prove from scripture that a second new covenant has been made, the covenant of Jacob's 4th (procreative) wife Rachel, the new earthly covenant for half a kingdom etc. The old new covenant sends everybody to heaven, but the scriptures plainly state that there are two parts to the Kingdom of God, for God is making a new heavens and a new earth. Therefore there must be a second new covenant for those of us who are going to remain on the earth or be resurrected back here. This covenant either exists or it doesn't. If it does not exist then the Lords' Witnesses are a false religion, if it does then we are the true religion. God does not just stick people in the Kingdom of God without a proper legal framework:

4 The Rock, perfect is his activity,
For all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice;
Righteous and upright is he (Deuteronomy 32:4).

Please therefore read this book/website and decide.

In short, the decision process that the reader went through to decide to become a Christian rather than a Muslim a Hindu a Jew by religion or a Buddhist needs to be gone through a second time in order to decide whether to become a Catholic a Baptist a Pentecostal a Mormon a Christian Scientist an Evangelical a Charismatic a Jehovah's Witness a Quaker a Methodist a National Christian (Church of England, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox etc) or a Lord Witness etc. in order that the command of Jesus to keep on seeking is obeyed.

There are thousands of religions which claim to forgive your sins but cannot
There are thousands of religions which claim to understand the bible but do not
There are thousands of religions which claim to be authorised by God but are not

The existence of these thousands of false religions does not mean that there is no true religion. Quite the reverse, it is strong evidence that there is a true religion. For who makes a forgery when there isn't an original? In fact the more forgeries there are, the more valuable the original is.