I'll assume that the purpose of religion today is to both help you achieve the following:

• A: Peace, blessings, success and prosperity in this mortal life - If a religion cannot achieve for you blessings in this life, then how can you trust it to bless you in the afterlife?
• B: Great reward and glory in the afterlife - Remember, mortal life is very short when compared to an eternity in the afterlife. Wouldn't you want to prepare to have the best afterlife possible?

Religion today can vary from a highly motivated people to giant 1000-plus year old traditional cultures with many, many variants in between. In our world today it can be split up into four easy categories:

The Ugly:

These groups or individuals that we will call ravenous wolves in sheep's clothing. They use whatever trickery to get you into their servitude where through their greed or lust for power they bring misery to their followers. There abusive practices can actually cause you to lose spirituality and hope in good principles. If you see a significant abundance of any these attributes I would advise you to get out fast:

• Promotes violence or hatred towards others.
• Leaders live a lavish lifestyle while not doing any real work.
• Teachings and practices are kept secretive from everyone else.
• Compulsion used to recruit members or enforce standards. Leaders are abusive.
• High dropout rate of followers
• Widespread poverty amongst poverties - why doesn't God bless them.
• Discourages gaining of intelligence - key attributes of freedom, wisdom and success.
• Widespread hypocrisy - one standard for leadership and another for the membership.

Good Churches:

Here the People are cutoff from God by being taught that there is no God or He is Silent today - there can no be no miracles or prophecy or new revelation. The claim a form of Godliness but deny the power thereof.

• Members lack the faith or conviction to participate in regular services or activities.
• Members attend on rare occassions such as traditional holidays.
• Widespread hypocrisy - disregard for teachings of leadership by the membership.
• Very low retention rate among membership - especially when youth abandon traditions and practices when they attain adulthood.
• Very low ratio of clergy (or ordained priests) to membership.
• Paid clergy
• Lack of attention to true principles of righteous living and spirituality.

Better Churches:

These have embraced many (but not all) good principles of Spirituality. Most are led by honest men who have made a serious effort to reform a Good Church into something better. Their membership will see an increased level of spiritual blessings and prosperity and they learn that through righteous living that they can avoid much of the misery caused by living destructive lifestyles advocated in churches rates as either Ugly or just Good.

Attributes that show why a Better Church might Not be Best:

• They bend principles of righteousness in order to gain greater popularity in the world.
• The leaders are engaged in priestcraft, living off of the tithes and offerings of the membership
• In order to avoid scarring off their membership certain principles of righteousness are downplayed or ignored.
• The members are not required to actively participate or to serve.
• They will have a lower or vague standards on general morality.
• There is much confusion within the church - especially when liberals are able to persuade conservatives to lower the standards on traditional principles and practices. Conflicting teachings will confuse the membership and many of them will lower than standards of morality.
• Children are confused and will not readily cleave the to religion of their parents - moderate drop out rate.

Many of these churches include those who are sincerely seeking for greater light and knowledge from God but know not how to find it (The Best Church) because they are confused, blinded and deceived by all of the noise and confusion in the world today. But there is a way.

God has made repeated promises in the scriptures that He will answer the prayers of the righteous to help them discern between truth and error.

The Best Church:

The Best Church represents the People of God who live together in the spirit of harmony, cooperation and prosperity.

• Members love their church and attend frequently and participate in auxilary programs.
• Members practice religious principles in home on a daily basis - such as prayer, kindness, personal scripture study, service and more. Parents spend more time with children and less time with worldly pursuits.
• Real spiritual growth requires sacrifice.
• All lay clergy - members serve voluntarily in positions of responsibility, charitable works or missionary works.
• The church has a mission to invite all of humanity to come to receive the fullness of God's spirituality - other churches would teach that there is no hope for those that died without knowing the truth.
• The Best Church has no need of compulsion to attract new converts. Instead it magnifies the principle of Free Agency by which individuals are blessed by being to choose for themselves between good and evil.
• The enemies of God will hate The Best Church because of its teachings bring enlightenment and spirituality and thus breaks the chains of darkness that they use to enslave or deceive their followers.
• The Best Church will strongly encourage a high standard of moral living because immorality drives away blessings and spirituality.
• The Best Church will build strong families that in turn create children that retain the religion of their parents and high success rate. Look for the church with the lowest drop out rate. Young adults are motivated to participate in righteous endeavors. They will be strongly motivated to resist the many destructive tempations of the world.
• The Best Church will have a clear and precise position against the major evils, vices and temptations of the world.
• The Best Church will be well organized and have a great infrastructure of sound principles and practices.
• The Best Church will be fully in tune with God and open to receive additional scripture (wisdom teachings), prophesy and revelation to overcome the vast, complicated challenges of our time. It will not be handicapped by having to rely solely on ancient prophets and scriptures that are difficult to interpret.
• The Best Church will encourage membership to let their good light shine and excel in all facets of human society. Their members are found frequently serving successfully in business, the arts, the sciences, civic organizations, and charitable projects in positions of intelligance and trust and skill.

In time I hope to link to a bunch of blog articles to prove or debunk each point. From there you are free to make your own choice. You will also be better prepared to debunk a lot of the false doctrine circulating the internet blogs today. Also feel free to debate any one of these points on your own blog. Maybe I'll link to your rebuttal from here (sometimes you're disagreement validates my point.)


Hopefully this list will encourage you to pursue this challenge. But I request that you read this with an open mind - and don't blame God for any mistakes that you find here. I swear that they are all mine own (especially the typos).

Who Do I Think I Am? My parents told me that my name is Bryce R. Hall. I'm the creator of two travel guide websites MainTour.com and California Resort Life. You could help me earn a honest living by visiting those sites.

Let me know if you post a rebuttal to any of these points via Email and I might come over to chip in my two cents.

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Best Church Examples
Examples of Best Church Teachings and Practices and Comparison to others. By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them.

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ZZZ. Check back soon - I have more to come!