Apostasy or apostate religion is most or best characterized by the description in Romans 1 that men ‘worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.’ The wrong way is varied degrees of this all the way to the worst. The best churches are always fighting to keep worshiping God and not the creature. The nature of the flesh and human fallenness is toward men having their way. Often today churches are barely doing what God wants and very much doing what they want, while giving themselves credit for barely doing what they want and very much doing what God wants. In other words, they are deceiving themselves, or lying to themselves. We don’t change anything to the good when we lie to ourselves. God always knows. No one is fooling Him. That’s a good thing. We’ve got to keep fighting for true worship, where we really are interested in God getting what He wants. The so-called churches know what men want and they give them some or a lot of it to get them and/or keep them. As 2 Peter speaks about this, ‘they make merchandise of people.’ And these can be those who talk like they’ve got sincere motives. They are using people to get what they want and calling it church. It isn’t about the glory of God or the conversion of men. This will all end when this life ends and ultimately when time ends. Let’s take this seriously.