Literature

Some people believe that the world is experiencing a religious revival. But is it really? Church attendance has been falling for years. Many people call themselves Christian even though they rarely if ever attend a church service.

What actually makes a person Christian?

Are you a Christian? Are you a churchgoer? Should you be? Does God care which church you join, or whether you join any at all? Does He lead all of them? Does He lead any of them? Are some churches false churches?

Thankfully, the Bible answers all these questions.

Jesus Christ, whom all Christians claim to follow, promised, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Not only did Jesus found a church, He said it would never die. That means the church He founded still exists today.

In addition, God instructs His true servants not to forsake the assembling of themselves together (Hebrews 10:25). He wants us meeting together in fellowship with other believers. He wants us “going to church”—for many reasons.

Consider further: The Bible says clearly and repeatedly that true Christians must “speak the same thing” and have “no divisions among you,” and that they must be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” God does not intend for His followers to be dispersed among various groups with conflicting beliefs. He requires them to be united—just as unified as God and Jesus Christ are! Read Jesus’s prayer in John 17. That is a very different picture from a “Christianity” splintered into tens of thousands of different denominations.