8 And the knower of hearts, God, bore witness to them having given to them the Holy Spirit just as to us, 9 and He differentiated nothing between them, and us having cleansed their hearts by faith. Acts 15:8-9 (translated from the NA28 Greek text)
God is omniscient, which mean that He knows all things. What is puzzling to me at times is that so many who profess to be Christians either do not understand what this really means or, their hearts are so hard in their unbelief that the “god” of their “faith” is one of their own making, hence, they live and “do their religion” in ways that are “of the world” and in no way could be called Biblical Christianity….
Within that paradigm are all forms of man-focused religiosity that came into being, at least in the U.S. about the time of the Second Great Awakening. It was at that time that preaching the Gospel, coming together as a local body of believers to worship, pray together, and hear the Word of God opened and rightly divided was hijacked and made to be seen as something “old fashioned” or “boring.” Instead, so-called Christian leaders sought the tent revivals and continual crusade atmosphere that was much more conducive to large numbers of “conversions.” Forget the fact that very few of those “conversions” actually “stuck.”
From those roots of continual “revivalism” has come what we have now, which is a view of what is taught in the Book of Acts in the New Testament as the model of the local Church, as being outmoded and insufficient. Tied to this view is also the abhorrence for preaching the Law and Gospel as prescribed by Peter, Paul, John, and our Lord Jesus Christ, which God actually uses to save souls. The late Robert Schuller and all who subscribe to his model of “church” reject the Biblical model because they insist that calling people lost sinners in need of a Saviour would drive away most of their congregations. Probably, but the local church is meant for the sheep, not goats. Evangelism is done outside the local church as the sheep make disciples from every nation, teaching them to observe all that Christ taught. These disciples then become part of the local body of believers. This is how it works.