“The church” is a stumbling block to belief because of its calumny to God and His FAIR and JUST judgment.
First, they hold to the doctrine of ECT – Eternal Conscious Torment – even after Edward Fudge’s masterful analysis of the Biblical evidence in his book “A Fire That Consumes.” This error is made more egregious since those who hold it claim they are “Bible-only” “fundamentalist” “literalists” – when the Bible LITERALLY says it is the WORM and FLAME that “dieth not,” and the only humans who receive ECT also take the yet-to-be-revealed Mark of the Beast.
Second, they fail to rightly divide that Hell is not the Lake of Fire, and Hell – as an enemy of God – is thrown INTO the Lake of Fire. SOME in Hell will be resurrected and saved, while some professed believers will be banished to OUTER DARKNESS, which IS NOT the Lake of Fire.
Lastly, they fail to rightly divide between BELIEVERS and CHRISTIANS, and attempt to hold the WORLD to the standard of Christians – while THEY THEMSELVES falsely claim to have attained it.
The WORLD will be judged by the standard Jesus lays out in Mt 25:31-46, which is AS PROMISED THROUGHOUT THE BIBLE a judgment of works, as Micah 6:8, Ecc 12:13-14, Mt 16:27/Rev 22:12, Acts 10:35, and Rom 2:10, et al. make clear.
THE CHRISTIAN is judged solely on whether the Spirit has put them to death and given them new life.
The failure to rightly divide the court of the tabernacle, where the people meet the priests, from the holy place (and in the NT the holy and most holy place), where the priests come into the presence of God, has meant they have perverted the Gospel by condemning the just (though possibly pagan through ignorance) while conferring a paper righteousness on their fleshly selves: hence the Laodicean church warning of Rev 3:17-18 fits them.