I seem to recall verses about a great mass delusion leading everyone to false idols. I don't recall them being taught without explicitly being told that the deluded were outside our church.
The bible is a giant book written over thousands of years. Easy to find an argument for anything you want in there.
There's an apocryphal text (I want to say "secret book of john," but not totally sure) that predicted that the earthly church would be replaced by a counterfeit church. Almost all, and possibly all idk, apocryphal texts were written before the NT was put together. Good thing Jesus was never talking about the earthly Church! I walked away from one denomination (they'd throw a fit for being called a denomination) because of that specific self serving misinterpretation. There were other misinterpretations, but that was the last straw.
They **_are_** cults... the denominations, the churches. Atheists are right in calling then such.
