There are thousands of churches in the world today, all claiming to represent the true faith of God. Some of them claim that they and no other are the true church, and all who do not conform to them will be lost. It seems a discouraging and impossible task to identify which, if any, is the true church of God.
Months of study are required to evaluate adequately even one of these denominations. Even when that has been done, the issue remains whether the evaluation rests on a firm foundation. An experienced seeker knows very well that at one time his personal criteria make him favorable to one denomination and at another time favorable to another. So investigation alone cannot give a definitive answer.
The Bible seems to be an objective and fair criterion by which to judge how well the churches are doing. But in practice, we run against a real problem. First of all, the Bible is so extensive, that it requires more work than is possible to evaluate the various churches. Secondly, the criteria any one person or even committee might establish upon the basis of the Bible is clearly subjective. The Bible is susceptible to many interpretations, and everyone will have his own idea about what is important and what should be included. A thousand ”Biblical” criteria of evaluation can well be imagined.
The solution is simply to take those portions of the Bible that give the highest claims to being revealed by God as a comprehensive expression of what human beings are required to believe and do. That way, a brief but comprehensive criterion can be established without introducing subjective aspects. The Decalogue happens to be the only text that claims to have been spoken by God directly, without a prophet, angel, dream or vision, and publicly to an immense crowd of people from all nations. They are reported to have come from the greatest metropolis of human civilization at the time. They numbered at least over two million individuals representing the human race of the time. No other text of classical religious books in all the world makes the same claims to objective revelation. Whether we believe the story to be true or not, the text is unique in its claims, and therefore the best criterion that we have for evaluating the churches.
Another issue makes the use of the Decalogue as a tool of quick and certain evaluation is simply that most of Christianity recognizes the authority of the Decalogue. It is true that a few voices oppose it. But the vast majority of those who claim to be Christians belong to denominations that not only recognize the authority of the Decalogue, but even give the Decalogue a prominent place in their catechisms, their books published to teach their faiths. Such Decalogue-based catechisms exist for Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian communion to mention only a few, and to mention the denominations that make up the vast majority of the Christian population in their constituency.
It is both fair and objective to evaluate the churches and denominations on the basis of the Decalogue. The Decalogue will be adequate to show whether a denomination is fallen or not. There may of course be aspects of a denomination showing its fallen character that do not appear just by investigating the issues mentioned in the Decalogue. There may be unwarrented burdens that the denominations place on their members in the form of beliefs and practices that are not mentioned in the Decalogue. In other words, the Decalogue may not reveal the extent of how fallen the denominations are, but if it reveals them to be fallen, then they certainly are fallen.
From a practical point of view, however, just three commandments suffice: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me; Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and Thou shalt not kill. There does not appear to be a single church or denomination that upholds even all three of these, to say nothing of the ten.
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