CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1   Background of the Study
The church of Christ in this era has mainly been instituted on the sermons of a prosperity gospel, that has caused her apostate condition. Todayʼs Christianshave unfortunately not well appreciated that the current apostasy in the church, undeniably amounts to a house that has literally renounced her loyalty unto the Lord. Jehovah the God of covenant firmly honours His pledges to the extent that mankind can literally live off every word that proceeds out of His mouth. In the clamour to sustain her earthly livelihood, the church of Christ committed the greatest blunder ever, by forgetting that the most important foundation upon which her provision was well promised, is righteousness. Then there came the deception, as if in an answer to her prayer, one in the guise of the prosperity gospel from heaven, which she readily accepted without any careful afterthought. Pointing to this reason, over the greater part of her life, the church has virtually engaged in the sermons of a false form of christianity that fronts the spiritually reckless living in compromise with sin. Strewed in the churchʼs impaired vision of prosperity are all the excesses of earthly wealth and pleasures to the extent that holiness has been sidelined. This has essentially rendered the church spiritually too faint and feeble to even enter the bloodstained path that Jesus charted out for her, on the Cross at Calvary. Though the church well recognized the bloodstained highway of holiness from the beginning, contrarily her act is as though she were not provoked into a bitter controversy with the broader highways of this sinful world. Following His passionate suffering on the Cross, the Lord Jesus unmistakably aggravated the church into an eternal controversy with this evil dark world. It is His undaunted stature on the Cross and the suffering of such a condition of things to exist, that raised to the church a red flag on the parleying with sin, that she may not give the enemy an advantage over her life. By conceding to the disguised demands of this sinful world, nothing good has come out of the churchʼs worship, neither has God been glorified by her praise. In the absence of holiness, the evidence of christian walk is today worthless to break the stronghold of rebellion in the church and summon Godʼs might, because human capacity, strength and power have indeed predictably weakened in the face of such a humongous mountain of earthly darkness to surmount. Unfortunately for todayʼs apostate pastors, while this scenario perfectly rolls out, faith, which is the pillar of christian walk in the church now reposes in God. This kind of weakening of faith is what has opened a huge door to deception and rampart falsehood into todayʼs house of the LORD. Only a righteously obedient walk in the highway of holiness can unravel for the church the true defining intent of holiness when the LORD said,“Above all things, I desire that you prosper” (Isaiah 35:8-9).