Facing The Music: When The Church Has To Discern Itself

The Lausanne Movement is a massive global effort of evangelicals who are dead serious about world evangelization with the Gospel of Jesus Christ who have been working together to reach the world for almost fifty years. It is a massive and global effort involving hundreds of Christian ministries seeking to motivate and spark renewed efforts in obeying Christ's commands to ensure that the "Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world

They are preparing to have only their third congress in that time in Capetown, South Africa in 2010. Lausanne describes itself in the following:

Throughout its history, the Lausanne Movement has intentionally avoided building a large bureaucratic organization. Instead it strives to be a dynamic, catalytic force that propels a movement of like-minded missional Christians who pray, plan and work together on global evangelization.

Since 1974, dozens of Lausanne-related global, regional, and topical conferences have been convened all over the world. Global gatherings include the Consultation on World Evangelization (Pattaya 1980), Conference of Young Leaders (Singapore 1987), Lausanne II (Manila 1989), The Forum for World Evangelisation (Pattaya 2004) and The Younger Leaders Gathering (Malaysia 2006). Lausanne has also inspired a constellation of regional networks and topical conferences such as the Asia Lausanne Committee on Evangelism (ALCOE), Chinese Coordination Center for World Evangelisation (CCCOWE), three Nigerian congresses on world evangelization, and eight international consultations on Jewish evangelism.

The Lausanne Theology Working Group (LTWG) is right now working to prepare for the 2010 congress. Who is the LTWG? They are a steering committee of Christian leaders and theologians who work together before their meetings to hammer out the doctrinal issues that the congresses are meant to consider.

The Lausanne Theology Working Group (TWG) serves the whole Lausanne Movement by ensuring that its passion for mission strategy and activism is grounded in careful theological reflection, and by challenging evangelical theology to have biblical effectiveness for holistic mission in the spirit of the Lausanne Covenant. The TWG has a core steering committee drawn from around the world and convenes small annual international consultations and several regional ones. Currently the TWG is working with the leadership of Lausanne in preparation for Lausanne III, in Cape Town 2010, by engaging in careful theological examination of each phrase in the Lausanne motto, “The Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.”

What is powerfully significant is that Lausanne's TWG found it important enough to have to grapple with the doctrines loved by so many in the Charismatic and Pentecostal worlds, the "prosperity gospel" and release a statement on it to help provide a framework for Lausanne 2010 to discuss it upon.

The importance they assign to it, however, isn't very encouraging to the passengers of the Full Gospel ship. The LTWG's statement can be found here in full. We lament at having to post this below.

We further recognize that there are some dimensions of prosperity teaching that have roots in the Bible, and we affirm such elements of truth below. We do not wish to be exclusively negative, and we recognize the appalling social realities within which this teaching flourishes and the measure of hope it holds out to desperate people. However, while acknowledging such positive features, it is our overall view that the teachings of those who most vigorously promote the 'prosperity gospel' are false and gravely distorting of the Bible, that their practice is often unethical and unChristlike, and that the impact on many churches is pastorally damaging, spiritually unhealthy, and not only offers no lasting hope, but may even deflect people from the message and means of eternal salvation. In such dimensions, it can be soberly described as a false gospel.

We call for further reflection on these matters within the Christian Church, and request the Lausanne movement to be willing to make a very clear statement rejecting the excesses of prosperity teaching as incompatible with evangelical biblical Christianity.

Read it and weep. Thanks to the American church, the Gospel of Christ is being daily perverted and twisted and then neatly packaged as the latest thing from heaven to vast populaces of Christians dwelling everywhere in both Africa and the world. A Christian missionary painfully recounts here how the prosperity gospel cancer is defiling the Body of Christ in Zambia

I highly doubt that men like Rod Parsley, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland or Paul Crouch will give the LTWG the time of day though.

What Would Tommy Do? The Advance of Adventism At The Expense Of Truth

As I've often said here, when the End Time Apostasy comes knocking at your door, truth is usually the first thing brushed aside by the eager gush of friendly, sincere crowds who want to come calling and "share." It's the first casualty in a cheerfully grim war of spiritual attrition in which heretics are no longer identified - they're welcomed as guests at the the table.

Last month, a Seventh Day Adventist publishing house announced the launch of a brand new study Bible using the New King James Version text. The SDA Church, in case you are unaware of it, was born out of the proselytizing efforts of its founder, the alleged "prophetess" Ellen G. White, whose legalism and exclusivism is legendary around the world. Rejecting both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and assuming themselves to be the only true "remnant" of God's people on the earth (because of their adherence to a Saturday Sabbath and White's free reinterpretation of Jewish dietary laws as binding upon Christians today), the SDA Church's legalistic approach to the Christian faith well known, yet almost universally overlooked by the non discerning church today. The latitude given to White's skewed interpretation of Christianity borders is both illegitimate and unbiblical, and the unbelievable deference given to her teachings has led many of them to hail her as the "Spirit of Prophecy." For generations, hordes of SDA evangelists have endlessly conducted"Bible prophecy" seminars in efforts to raid members from established Christian churches, as well as penetrate the world with the gospel according to Ellen G. White. The strident and almost cultic exclusivism driving the SDA vision has left many a victim in its wake and far too many people who've honestly questioned and striven against its challenges to ignore the Biblical and logical answers to Adventist errors.

So it was no surprise again, with what Jesus has said about these dark times in Matthew 24, that we'd eventually find a major Christian publishing house, no less then the venerable Thomas Nelson Publishing house, creating a study Bible for Seventh Day Adventists. In doing so, they created a brand new marketing tool that will enable them to penetrate more homes then ever with the legalistic deception of White's questionable doctrine and false prophecy. Creatively restated and recrafted for a new generation of Christians conditioned by a backslidden and media-dependent church to read Bible study notes to glean truth and not rely upon God's Word as taught by God's Spirit (John 14:26), it will fly:

Yes, the new Remnant Study Bible (NKJV) has all the study aids serious Bible students have come to expect from their study Bibles — but it goes way beyond that. Way beyond.

For the first time ever, the masterful commentary of E. G. White is now included alongside the Bible text! You’ll also find a complete array of other unique Bible study aids, such as a complete set of Chain Reference Bible Studies and detailed sections on prophetic symbols, the prophecies of Daniel, and the awe-inspiring sanctuary services.

Remnant Publications, the publishing house behind this project, makes abundantly clear where they are coming from, in that they are unashamedly advocating SDA doctrine. Thomas Nelson, says this about their allegedly Christian focus, sounding more like a greeting card company run by Joel Osteen or Kahlil Gibran :

At Thomas Nelson, we believe that we exist to inspire the world. We believe that the world desperately needs inspiration—the right kind of inspiration—and that we are a conduit for change.

To make this personal and memorable, we have reduced this to a slogan: “We inspire the world.” Here’s how we understand each phrase of this statement.

“We”

The pronoun “we” emphasizes our commitment to teamwork. We cannot accomplish God’s purpose for our company on our own. It takes more than a handful of star performers. It takes all of us, collectively working together, each employing our unique gifts, to fulfill our calling.

“Inspire”

According to the dictionary, “inspire” means

1. To affect or guide; 2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion; 3. To be the cause or source of; bring about.

All of these meanings are relevant to our purpose as a company:

• First, we want our products—books, videos, and conferences—to affect people. We are not in the business of merely entertaining our audiences or “tickling their ears.” Instead, we want our products to have a positive impact on consumers. In addition, we live in a day when people are desperate for direction and advice. As a result, we want our products to provide practical guidance.
  
  
• Second, we want our products to have a positive emotional impact. Emotions are not something to disparage or disregard. They can be the very thing that provide the impetus for action. Inspired emotions can lead to noble actions. We want to intentionally stimulate (though not manipulate) those kinds of emotions through the products we produce.
  
  
• Third, we want our products to be a source of real change, both in individuals and in our larger culture. Looking back over our lives, most of us recognize that real change frequently came about as a result of the books we read, the conferences we attended, or both. These types of products provide an opportunity to affect deep and lasting change.
  

It is interesting to note that the word inspire originally came from the Greek work theopneustos. It literally means “God-breathed” (Theos, God, and pneo, to breathe). This is particularly fitting for our company, since we acknowledge that God is the ultimate Source of inspiration. We want our products to be a means by which God breathes new life into His world.

With that reverent coda, the publishers at Thomas Nelson no doubt want to impress upon us that their core mission - the creation of Christian literature that God uses to "breathe new life" into the world - is one which Christians should trust.

The problem is that Thomas Nelson betrays an obscene naivete, gross negligence, or immoral indifference when agreeing to this project - or is guilty of all three.

SDA doctrine is a distortion of Christian doctrine and has created untold amounts of unbiblical legalism that have plagued the SDA Church and all who have come under its orbit. It's fascinating to note that Mr. Nelson, who founded the company in London in 1798, was of sturdy Scottish Covenanter stock and that the Covenanters' had rejected the King of England as the head of the Christian Church there and steadfastly asserted that Jesus Christ alone stood in that authority. The Covenanters endured these "Killing Times" as a result, enduring persecution, civil strife and civil war that dragged on as a result of their unbending rejection of human authority over their faith. What would Tommy do if he was alive today to see the company he started to now being used to champion another agenda to exalt a purely human authority over the Christian faith? And what might that old Scottish Christian might think in a day in which that same kind of human authority, having no temporal power of state to back it, can easily litigate to shut the voices of dissent off?

What would Tommy do?

Did Christianity Cause The Crash?

Don't laugh.

It probably didn't help as much as it should have.
In a allegedly "Christian" land whose financial foundations were supposedly engineered by a historically rigid and pious Protestant work ethic, the religion supposedly serving the Faith of our Fathers seems to show an awful lot of wear in these recessional days. Especially when the Prosperity Gospel is what's being preached from the pulpits of today.

Yes, you heard me and yes, you can give it some thought yourself by checking out this painfully honest and all too illuminating essay here. Frankly, I'm not just outraged, disturbed and angry. I'm just not surprised. Faking it til you make it has reached a whole new level of cultural delusion among the "children of light," which is why the "children of this world" still possess a level of wealth that is supposed to be possessed by confession of those same well-lit King's Kids.

What Would Jesus Buy? Just In Time For The Holidays!

Well, it's Christmas time again. And while I hate to spit in anyone's figgy pudding, it must be firmly noted this Advent season that American is not a Christian nation and it increasingly becoming more profane and pagan by the day. On Black Friday and every Shopping Day since, millions of Americans are thinking more about Stuff then the Savior the Christmas season is to herald. I assure you, the only opening prayers at the gates of the Big Boxes uttered were that people got in and didn't get trampled to death by the hordes of materialistic people behind them.

If even a fraction of the estimated 60 to 70 billion dollars of discretionary income people pump into the chimera's maw of Christmas shopping was diverted to clothe the homeless, improve a widow's shattered house, or feed hungry people, it might truly be more of a holiday season.

Instead, we lose ourselves in the minutiae of glittery cultural trapping and forget that for much of the rest of the world, where Christians live daily under threat of death or imprisonment in slave labor, Christmas is just a way to line their pockets from the wealth of the distracted West. The packaging becomes the Reason for the Season. Christ is the kid in the manger hidden behind the gaily wrapped Play Station, power tool or Mudd boots.

Merry Christmas.

Seriously Overdue Update Department

I can't believe it's been that long since I've last blogged. Well, New Year's resolution # 5 .. blog more (resolutions 1-4 are private and will remain so).

One of my other ones is .. Reach out more .. Be even more available. You can email me direct at rafael (at) spiritwatch.org.

I've already been at it the past few months, which is why I haven't been blogging.

It's been an interesting year, between helping spiritually abused people, writing and updating the Spiritwatch article list - primarily in our Strange Fires section - and engaging in counseling sessions as well. It's been also an intriguing year keeping abreast of the rumblings in Remnant Fellowship and fielding media inquiries about them as well as withstanding yet another attempt by Gwen Shamblin and her sycophantic lieutenant Tedd Anger to litigate me into silence over their authoritarian ways (to no effect, we will continue to exercise our First Amendment rights). I haven't yet found Shamblin's lawyer trashing me on blogs yet, so maybe's he's busy buying printer toner or something.

We also were invited to help plan and execute a discernment conference for Spanish speaking Churches of God in South Carolina in Anderson. We laid a foundation for discernment using teaching on sound doctrine, critical thinking and a review of what spiritual deception is which we will build upon in our next trip there (hopefully sometime early next year) on cultism itself. We understand that aside from the LDS and JW heresies, the apostolic Oneness movement as well as assaults by the cultic La Luz Del Mundo movement have been a great problem for Spanish speaking Christians in the area. We want to be ready to address those.

I preached on cultism at our local church, the South Cleveland Church of God as well and hopefully will be preaching a lot more there and in other venues in the future. I wanted to post here on that but was so busy preparing for that and never got a chance. Hopefully, we will be returning soon there.

This next Sunday, December 20, I will be preaching a Christmas message at the Third Street Church of God in Fort Wayne, Indiana . If you're in the area, it would be a pleasure to see you there. Pastor Truman Smith and his wife are dear friends of ours, a mentor in the faith and someone whose ministry has been a great blessing to Fort Wayne for many years.

The Lord willing, we intend to be more visible and more involved here on the blog this next year and everywhere else we can. It's the last days. We need to keep pointing and working for the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) while we still can ..

agape

rafael

The Never Ending Story: Another Perspective On The Jonestown Tragedy

There isn't much about the absolutely horrific tragedy at Jonestown that hasn't already been said. The deaths of over 900 people in an orgy of religiously stoked suicide and murder in the jungles of Guyana initiated at the demonically warped whim of a cult leader named Jim Jones on November 17, 1978 have long ago become a cautionary epic in our cultural mindset about how twisted human nature can be.

Allusions and references to the utterly mind shattering atrocity of the deeds of that dark day are now just another part of the lore and language we use to describe the indescribable power of spiritual deception. But no matter how familiar the horrors of death by cultism may ever seem to be, one thing that never ceases to profoundly arrest me .. or any other human being with a heart and soul .. is the power of the account of a personal testimony about it. It pulls away the blunted edge of the social cancer it describes and reveals how razor sharp it's foul appendages actually can be. The sting of the scorpion becomes once again a strike into naked, unshielded human flesh and spirit that cannot be defended against.

Such is this long forgotten account of one family's descent into the hell that Jim Jones' deviancy prepared for them. You will not easily be able to read this - but you will learn again how the Pied Pipers of our time dance to their tune.

News Flash" Most American Christians Are In Serious Confusion, Details At 11:00

One of the more telling releases coming out of the Barna Group's research findings we've seen in a while is hardly surprising to the few discerning American Christians who still make it to their pews in their churches today. The announcement, depending on who you'd speak with, can be chilling to the core or no big deal or anything in between. After all, one man's lie is another one's truth, right? It's just another sign of how adrift the Body of Christ has become in a day and age in which truth has a shelf life and can be distorted at will to fit into one's biases without any regard to whether it is consistent with a stable connectiont to spiritual reality.

The Barna article title pulls no punches:

Most American Christians Do Not Believe that Satan or the Holy Spirit Exist

Click here to read the article.

Pray a bit harder for the increasingly backslidden church of today as it continues to slouch onward to Gomorrah and drift farther into the outer limits of apostasy.

And remember, there's a reason Jesus asked the question

"Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"

Mea Culpa Or Freudian Slip? We Report You Decide

As seen in the newspaper of Brigham Young University, the Daily Universe, the day after the end of the annual General Conference held by the Church. As many of the 18,000 copies as could be found by the aghast BYU paper staff were pulled and pulped. Here's an LDS perspective on the affair ..

One wonders what happened to the BYU student, a young LDS lady, who allowed their spellchecker to do better discernment then her editorial staff did.

Gospel Tomahawks Not Needed

Whew.

The Ligionier Ministries folks published a while back an exquisitely hard hitting yet painfully surgical dissection of that sadly mistaken mindset of the Christian who wants to cult bust at the expense of ministry to a cult member. It details the thoughts of a Christian minister who agonizedly came to recognize how well versed he was in the school of defending the faith in the manner of an assassin .. not an ambassador.

Ouch.

Click here for an article done so well, you won't know you need to feel for broken bones after reading it.

Discussions On Cults and Cult Mind Control in America

From the movie we've previously discussed here, "Join Us", here is a clip of one of the deleted scenes that the filmmaker, Ondi Timoner, did not use in the DVD release of the film. It's a shame because it features some illuminating glimpses into the cult problem as well as cult mind control itself offered by those who deal with the problem every day.

Watch this excellent clip below:

Answering Some More Questions From Lee University's EVA 363 For 2009 3 of 3

Mind Control (part 2 of 3 is here)

What are some methods used for mind control?

I have indicated in my paper on cult evangelism that many in the countercult community, including myself, have adopted Dr. Robert J. Lifton's model of thought reform that is identical to cultic mind control. I have found these observations to be the foundation in understanding the human equation of cultism no matter what shape it assumes. No matter what the theology or practice, it seems that any questionable group (religious or non religious) that seemed "cultic" always seems to follow these directions. In his seminal work drawn from the study of Korean War POW's, Lifton developed 8 criterion that describe what kinds of manipulative influences are marshalled by coercive social dynamics to compel changes of thought and therefore, behavior.

I've briefly described these 8 components of cultic mind control in this article on our website and how they are more readily recognized in cultic settings in another article here. If you really want to dig more into how this is understood - and debated - across a wide variety of academic, pastoral, research and psychological circles, check out this excellent Wiki article here. For the record, I contend that the Liftonian paradigm on thought reform is a compelling and inclusive perspective that provides a clarity of perspective and context other. The methodology is explained in them a little more generically and we'll get into a little of that here in our next questions:

Within the cult realm, does love reign? In other words, do the cult members feel like they are loved unconditionally by their leader and their community or is it more of a fear reigned environment?

Love is a powerful influence that is universally responded to no matter where you go. When it is seemingly found in cultic movements, it can be almost overwhelming in its manifestation and is used to great effect by cults to verify their legitimacy and truth. Sadly and tragically, however, the quality of "love" found in cultic movements is not unconditional but actually quite conditional in nature. This makes all the difference in the worst possible way.

There is a serious and profound difference between the type of conditional love that cults exhibit and the unconditional love which ideally should be manifest by healthy spirituality. It has been well said that the difference between conditional and unconditional love comes down to how it is expressed and experienced - conditional love says "I love you because ..." while unconditional love says "I love you. Period." Note well the contrast! Conditional love is bestowed when a requirement is met, when a task is completed, when a favor is earned, while unconditional love just simply bestows itself upon its object with no strings attached.

Remember that the spirituality/philosophy behind a cultic movement is based upon the fulfillment of legalistic religious busywork or disciplines - upon works and not faith in the grace bestowed by God. As expected, you will find an enormous emphasis on performance and perfectionism within cults that is then rigorously observed and publicly evaluated by cult leadership, with salvation and blessing on the line. Such a posture always engenders fear, apprehension and even paranoia in the lives of cult members. Fear of being found falling short, fear of not being fully in compliance with the moral codes of their group, fear of the world, fear of demons, fear of hell, and fear of the wrath of an angry God underlie the seemingly cheery environments of such groups.

In such a Cultworld, then, unconditional love never has a chance primarily because the human mimickry of conditional love completely dominates the heart and soul of the cult. It instead substitutes this horrible, twisted approximation of love which can be readily and promptly withheld without any conscience whatsoever by cults to induce their members to change their behavior. What a terrible, tragic state of affairs that cult members are told to settle for as the highest and newest of "revelations" around!

How exactly does mind control take place? Cults seem so conditioned to a works based gospel and are not often receptive to a traditional Gospel because of the spiritual and mental bondage they are in .. what is the best way to begin to try and attack and break that spiritual bondage?

Great questions and observations! Let's tackle what mind control is and how it works first of all.

Cult mind control is a manipulative and transforming process that occurs during the recruitment of some one into a cult. It is the control of behavior by the control of thought, a subtle strategy of social control used by cults to impose conformity of belief, thought and practice within their group in an incremental, gradually induced manner. It is an immersive experience which can and often does extend to the complete reordering of the person's view of himself, his past, even his identity, personal memories and priorities in life. When this takes place, profound personality and lifestyle changes can and do occur, all at the behest of the cult's leadership as necesssary for their personal growth and development. It is ethically an involuntary coercion that is imposed upon the cult member and is indeed a hideous mental and spiritual bondage that is disturbing and troubling to behold.

Cult mind control follows, as we have said, a gradual yet undeniably similar pattern, no matter the group's belief system or philosophy. Appeals to felt needs such as the desire for meaning, purpose and community are combined with what has come to be called "love bombing," the smothering of prospects with insincere attention to foster strong social ties to the group's direction and vision. What I've called "isolation through indoctrination" is the gradually intensified social activity, service and study aimed at isolating new members from their past belief system and identity and to create dependence upon the group. This includes the group's free usage of misinformation, implanted cult phobias that compel blind obedience to cult authority, their Scripture twisting and outright falsehoods.

With critical and independent thinking seen as sinful manifestations of demonic and carnal natures that must be shunned, the individual's faculties of free thought are effectively suspended and cultic mind control is inevitable. The cult's authoritarian leadership then makes their enchanted members completely subservient to the cult's demands and readily recast them to there respective places in cult hierarchy they are expected to assume.

So, you are absolutely correct when you state that cultists are "conditioned to a works based gospel," which is an objective statement of truth about their distorted understanding of the Christian Gospel of Jesus Christ. Whatever a cultic movement exalts as the ultimate truth concerning salvation or enlightenment, they will cite the performance of religious works as something the cultist must be constantly engaged in to prove their faith. The cultist must be involved in some kind of spiritual exercise or discipline in which she proves herself deserving of the graces of God that only her cult can bestow upon them. It's a never ending system of self-sanctifying, self-purifying doing that the cult member must commit to which. Faith in Christ alone for salvation is scorned as an easy-believism by cultists who are absorbed in their cult's treadmill of spiritual and social busywork through which they hope to make themselves worthy of God's love, grace and blessing. The freely given grace of God that saves by faith in Christ alone that is not of works, as Ephesians 2:8-9 definitively speaks of, is completely alien to the cultist.

Cult mind control, I believe, is a large part of the "blinding of the mind" referred to in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that is inspired by the "god of this world" that hides the truth of the Gospel of Christ from the cultist. It is one of the main reasons that Christian attempts to evangelize cults often don't have the impact we think they should. I would contend that Paul's usage of the term "god of this world" is a reference not to simply to demonic but warped human influence itself that exists only to control and dominate - note that in 2 Corinthians 4:2 he notes that true ministers are those who have "renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully." Paul was again emphasizing that demonic deception and human manipulation are social dynamics of long standing influence in our fallen world's religious circles and that Biblical truth is largely lost upon those who are prey to it.

As a Christian minister with years of observation of cultic wiles, I am willing to say that while the apostles may never have used the words "mind control" in their epistles to the churches of the New Testament, they certainly very clearly saw how spiritual manipulation that led to spiritual and mental bondage manifested itself (Romans 16:18, 1 Timothy 4:1-2, 2 Peter 2:1-3, Jude 14-16) within the context of spiritual fellowship sought by false teachers and false prophets of the unwary and undiscerning Christian. They sought to combat these false influences and restore those swayed by them, while describing in no uncertain terms how they viewed their aberrant behavior and practice.

Unlike too many Christian churches, cults strongly advance direct connection between their pseudo-orthodoxy (their false teaching claiming to be "the truth") to their approved pseudo-orthopraxy (their false practices, which directly impact their lifestyle). In other words, they demand that their new recruit's actions should line up with what they've been taught and don't hesitate to make them rigorous tests of fellowship and even salvation. With such a complete authority of the group established over them, cult members are then relentlessly conditioned by their leadership to unquestioningly believe by faith the spiritual precepts and worldview their group advances as the ultimate truth: this is readily accomplished after the cult recruit makes their own personal commitment to resigning their spiritual direction, personal autonomy and critical thinking faculties to the group.

This is what the spiritual and mental bondage of cultic mind control looks like.

If you'd like to see some more visual examples, take a break and check out our short YouTube video here (aimed at cult members) and a longer one here (aimed at the general public) for some memorable illustration.

Cult mind control diametrically opposes Christian evangelistic witness to cult members. Scriptural mandates call upon Christians to "know how ye ought to answer every man," and beckon us to urge people to "come now, and let us reason together" (1 Peter 3:15 and Isaiah 1:18). Those whose ability to reason with you has been rechannelled toward contention for their own faith will easily pose perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for the Christian witness in the last days - especially if they turn out to be your grandmother, a friend from school, a business associate who wants to love you into his cult's kingdom, etc.

But fear thou not! We assure you that Bible not only tells to share the Gospel with all men - including cultists - but assures us of the victory! We've seen it happen. We see it happening. We know it will continue to happen!

Apostolic Christianity, empowered by the Holy Spirit and brimming with the Word of God and an understanding of the times has never failed to take on the onslaught of worldly wisdom against the Gospel and the Christ and defeat it by a walk of faith shown by works. None other than our Lord Jesus Himself ordains it - hear his charge to the Apostle Paul, the same one that a redeemed believer called to be a witness to the cults assuredly walks in

But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Delivered from the world, the sanctified believer is to stand and walk out a life of service to God in Christ to declare His Gospel in such a way that it opens eyes and turns the blind to the light, even from very jaws of Satanic darkness itself.

We are, as DeGarmo and Key so well belted out years ago "destined to win"!

So what is the best way to begin to try and attack and break that spiritual bondage?

To counter cult mind control does indeed require a plan. Here are the basic steps:

First of all, remember that the degree of cult mind control bondage varies from person to person. This is a critical point to bear in mind, vitally important to understand. Cults, while having darkly powerful spirituality and manipulative socializing energizing them (2 Corinthians 11:4) are not all powerful spheres of influence whose demands are irresistible. The thought-stopping persuasions that hold captive an individual cult member's mind can take as many different forms as there are individual minds controlled by them - and no two are alike. What forms of cultic propaganda that can lock down cult member Smith's mind may merely trigger for fellow cult member Jones an outright questioning or even doubting of the cult's authority.

The false authority of the cult has to be challenged and shown to be fallible, contradictory and questionable in the heart and mind of the cultist and this can indeed be done, no matter how intense the mind control. For the human mind never fully completely shuts down: like an anti-virus program running in the background of a computer, the cultist's controlled faculty of reason is processing information quietly, often unconsciously. Part of that includes the challenges that they've encountered which their cultic conditioning cannot shake. In the same way dreaming often is a manifestation of personal trouble and need, the cultist's mind often entertains questions and doubts about their movement that they dare not ever allow their consciousness to become preoccupied with. They often can successfully cover this cognitive dissonance with a straight face and a deceptively placid exterior. It is this judging of a cult's book by it's cover that can seem so discouraging and even frightening - but it is a stone face with all the durability of paper in a windy rain, a personal facade that the Spirit of God will blow completely through.

For example, all Jehovah's Witnesses are kept in a more or less constant fear of an impending Armageddon (this phobia indoctrination is part of all cults' retention efforts to maintain control over their membership) but there really is no way that the Watchtower can force a completely uniform depth of conviction on their members.Therefore, many Witnesses don't fully believe or accept their organization's teachings on the end times for the simple reason that they're aware of past Watchtower false prophecies and doctrinal flip flops that explode their cult's myth of infallibly inspired authority. They grin and bear the apparent contradiction, even at their own personal cost, without any sign of the true inner challenge on the cult's authoritarian control over their mind that it actually makes.

There are many other points of differences that Witnesses can have with the Society that they don't consciously entertain due to the mind control indoctrination they've placed them under - they quickly rationalize it away. But there are many inopportune and troubling thoughts that are indeed present in their hearts and minds which, after intercessory prayer, are the greatest way one can level the playing field in any evangelistic encounter with them.

All of this is true for any and every cult that we are aware of. Natural human doubt can be used by a supernatural God's power to break the bondage of cult mind control - through the visitation of the Spirit of God into the situation.

It is this stubborn tendency for the cultist's mind to mull over unspeakable "random thoughts" is a faculty of human reason that I am convinced the Spirit of God powerfully uses to open the heart. No cultist's pre-cult past, identity, memories and ability to critically think is ever burnt out of existence completely. It will be, sadly, greater in depth with some (1 Timothy 4:2) but not all. This is truly where the grace of God is most powerfully at work in the lives of cultists, in the places we don't easily see .. but He is truly there, doing only what He can do (Romans 12:2)! The faculty of a cult member's human reason can be lulled into a fitful sleep but it is the erosion of the grip of cultic authority over it by it's own never ending introspection that His Spirit will and does use, and you can help facilitate this in a manner that apostolic example establishes (2 Timothy 2:23-26).

To this end, secondly, be familiar with how cultic systems of indoctrination and social control function. You will want a working knowledge of how cults keep people in their thrall based upon sound observation and established fact. Knowing the way in which cults orchestrate their interaction and influence is extremely important in learning about a cult's worldview as well as in anticipating counteractive dialogue with them aimed at evangelism. If you wish to effectively build the bridges to the heart and mind of a cultist, you must familiarize yourself with the culture he's come from - especially with those aspects of it that dominate their thought, choices and behavior.

Ex-member testimonials, books and personal observation are going to be the best first hand sources of information on this slippery reality. Websites, monographs, tracts and books that have this information abound and there simply is no shortage of information in these last days. You can find a good list of these here off our website. A casual Google search will also bring these up with one mouse click. These resources can also provide additional perspective that shows how and where cults will focus their efforts of recruitment, what populaces and audiences they target and how they go about doing so. Studying a cult's own glowing reports of its own progress (from the LDS Church's official newspapers to the Watchtower's own publications) also will help you glean further insight into how they function also.

As you study and research both cult and ex-cult materials, you will note that there are certain themes, terminology and expressions that they all share. which will help you become sensitized to the group-specific vocabulary they use to describe how they interact. This vocabulary is part of the language of mind control: it is a specific collection of unique lingo, buzz words and terms that convey dual meanings and is one of the 8 criterion Lifton described as "loaded language". Such words are used by a specific cult's membership among non-members and means one thing and yet is understood in an entirely different way within the group. These terminology differences can be theological and doctrinal or descriptive shorthand meant to define a situation, or alter and even stop critical thought altogether. Knowing what these terms are can also help you avoid any stumbling over the trigger words for their mind control dynamic which the cult's loaded language uses to short circuit dialogue, thus becoming very big obstacles to communication and understanding.

Knowledge of this has enormous implication for the Christian determined to bring a contextualized and intentional Christian witness for the Gospel. Familiarity with the language of a people group in world missions is a given: therefore, familiarity with the group-specific language of a cult group you want to see the Gospel proclaimed to is no less important.

Note: It can be and is routinely argued (by cults and their apologists) that ex-members are in the position to misrepresent and distort any objectivity one can have about understanding a cult. This can be true and there are many angry and hurt people with axes to grind and personal agendas afoot who can certainly mislead and misinform. Such people, however, can be identified by the tone and focus of their testimony and the fact that they exist doesn't invalidate the inestimable worth of the sharing that ex-members who function from a far more stable position can bring.

Ultimately, it's time spent with cult members - as well as with ex-members - which will help you become sensitized to the uniquely personal idiosyncracies of each group. There's nothing quite like hearing a Jehovah's Witness speak of "not running ahead of Mother" (not thinking or acting independently of the Watchtower's authority) and the Mormon advise you that you should first digest "milk before meat" (listen to their version of LDS "truth" that doesn't involve anything controversial, like asking them if they expect to be gods throughout eternity) to bring this point home. Be observers, listen and keep an objective and open mind on anything a cult member may tell you as you take mental/literal notes. You will not only get a grip on their doctrinal distinctives but how they respond when you raise the issue and what to expect if you bring up a Gospel presentation. This is undeniably a vital insight that is worth the pursuit.

For we must never forget to look on the fields. Certainly, we believe and must act upon the conviction that the Gospel of Christ must be preached and shared with cult members, too. But when witnessing to them, we simply have to bear in mind that in order for our sharing to be effective and for our witness to Christ's grace bear fruit that impacts and transforms, we have to understand who we labor among, to do as Christ commanded in John 4:35 and truly "look on the fields." In other words, we must come to truly understand the people we are trying to reach, not just personally but coming to know what they value, how they think, what they fear, how they hurt, what they hate, and what they love. We should stand ready to share how the Gospel speaks to those needs and not allow our evangelical shortsightedness (as well as pride) lull us into the belief that a memorized witnessing technique mastering a set of Bible verses and polished presentation alone will do the job. Life just isn't that cut and dried.

Believe you me, you'd better have this settled in your heart and mind long before a Mormon uncle or neighbor begins to grill you over how central their "burning of the bosom" is to their belief Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and how this settled the issue for them of the truth of the "restored Gospel" that the LDS Church now eagerly wants everyone to turn to.

Thirdly, plan lines of discussion that directly address the authority issue.

Cultists target spiritual seekers lost in the post-Christian wilderness and move on them wherever the opportunity arises in a predictible pattern. It is significant to note that first comes a seduction by false cult authority that occurs when the cult offers love, significance, meaning, purpose, mission, and the "answers" to life's questions as mediated only through their teaching, their leaders, their exclusive revelation (Book Of Mormon, Divine Principle, Weigh Down Workshop, the Urantia book, etc.). Once a recruit's attention is achieved, cults use an application of well qualified subjectivism (feelings) and objectivism (reason). The cultic authority compels prospects to entertain their truth claims (reason) and then to go to extraordinary lengths to validate them with positive experiences they stage (called "love bombing" by some, involving yet another Liftonian thought reform principle called "mystical manipulation") which then short-circuit more sober judgment and create emotional and social dependence upon the group for more of what is an intoxicating and pleasurable experience.

When this happens, the cult authority exalts their worldview, moving from the known to the unknown and urging recruits onward in their "search for truth." They relentlessly advance a total reformation, redefinition or wholesale abandonment of whatever pre-existing belief system they had to conform it to the cult's worldview. To accomplish this, pseudointellectualism is then applied by the cult's authority figures to reinforce their claims with hyper-rationale and slick argumentation: their false authority system anticipates and "answers" all questions to conclusively prove it's superiority over any other claim to authority. Such "new light" then is enjoined as the only truly righteous way to live and act. The seeming benign, yet ultimately bitter fruit of this high stakes ploy by cultic authority always results in the shutdown of independent thinking by the controlling dynamics just discussed, which results in full blown cultic mind control as well as unethical manipulation and coercion.

There is no one "Gordian Knot" to tackle that will deliver a cult member instantly from this kind of culturally impinged cult mind control. If there was, believe you me, we'd be using it. But certainly, the cult authority issue is a big one to grapple with when witnessing to cultists, and their mind control dynamics are the thorniest challenge to deal with.

Actual dialogue direction that addresses the mind control issue in a cultist should have two underlying goals:

1) it will encourage a cult member to engage in independent thought and re-assessment of a truth claim that foundational to the cult's authority, thus evoking legitimate doubt and a desire for further investigation. The discusson should be phrased in a way that lets the cult member "connect the dots" and draw their own inferences that will stimulate additional personal examination.

Example: When sharing with a cult member, ask questions and discuss how a completely different cult operates and engages in mind control. Make a time of sharing and questions like "did you hear about this? What do you think about it?" When talking with a Family member, tell them how the Sun Myung Moon started the Unification Church, how he depends on revelation from the spirit world for his inspiration, and how his organization uses front groups, retreats and days of indoctrination to break down the freedom of thought recruits with his dogma, leaving them no time to think and demanding instant and complete belief with their system. Go on and on as briefly as you can (hint: you can see why study of cult specifics is so important). What you've done is effectively and subversively penetrated the cult member's mind control defenses by side stepping them. You never mentioned their cult, you shared a fascinating story about something they've likely not quite heard of, and they will eventually start recognizing that their group's claims and operation aren't unique, because they've gone through the same general kind of process when they were recruited by their cult.

2) it will evoke within the member memories of what their pre-cult life and identity was like outside the cult that are positive, thus reconnecting them with the concept that truth and reality can and do exist outside the group. This serves to further undermine the radical redefinition of personality, identity and even memory that the cult authority forced upon them at the time of their recruitment, giving them an opportunity to unshackle their frozen faculty of independent thinking.

Example: During sharing with a cult member, it turns out that the person was at one time a very active church member who had been deeply involved in congregational life and community service and who at one seemed quite fulfilled in what they did. While this past life is usually going to be characterized by the cultist as an empty time of ignorance and darkness, gentle questioning can help encourage some momentary reflection on those positive aspects of their life that they lived. Try to help them remember when their pre-cult spirituality and self-determination made an uplifting difference in their lives and that of others. By seeking their personal expansion upon this past, the details and memories of how it affected them can profoundly stir them on several personal levels simultaneously, stimulating a keen awareness that their group's claims of being the only meaningful source for fulfillment are hardly unique, despite what they've been led to believe.

Remember 2 Timothy 2:23-26? It bears repeating here:

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth

When witnessing to cultists who are caught up under cult mind control, Christians are to avoid being caught up in grappling with the questions that can come from anywhere but clearly go nowhere, that stir up trouble and not thought. In a humble spirit that offers light without being seen as preachy, Christians will view themselves as servants offering up strong medicine with all of the winsome appeal we can muster as God gives us the ability.

Fourth, be convinced this is a doable task and a winnable war. To remove these kinds of cultic coercive blinders which the "god of this world" has placed over the hearts and minds of those under cultic mind control, you have to incorporate this inner hope into a personal commitment to reach out and share the Gospel with cult members. Witnessing to cult members requires deliberate research, serious prayer and earnest effort. It's hard. It's spiritual warfare. It's taking on Satan's territory in the name of the One Who has defeated Him.

But you've seen testimonies of ex-cultists whose very presence plainly declares that they are trophies of God's grace - and that some witnessing, praying Christians were part of His plan to call them into the light. You are certainly going to be a part of that all .. walk worthily and above all in faith!

Perhaps you're beginning to see that evangelizing cultists is going to take more than running the Four Spiritual Laws by them and expecting them to fall down before you to repent. There are times that this CAN happen, but it's largely going to be the exceedingly rare exception rather than the rule, so hope for the best and plan for the worst as you make ready to witness to a cultist.

Does the person have to be in a weak state of mind in order to be part of mind control? What are some of the best pieces of literature you have come across specifically for counteracting cultic conversation and mind control techniques?

It is an understandable but erroneous assumption to believe that one's "weak-mindedness" makes them more susceptible to mind control. I will quote from my article on myths about cults that address this:

Myth #1 – People in cults are mindless fanatics.

Untrue. Virtually every member of every cultic group existing on in our world today began their entry into the group as generally balanced, thinking people who have great potential, skills and giftings they want to offer to a cause "larger than themselves." Cult members are both CEO's and dishwashers, white-collar and blue-collar, scientists as well as grade-school dropouts. While it is undeniably true that some of them have plunged into extremist forms of behavior, and that all labor under some form of cultic mind control that compels them onward into an apparently zealous activism or passion, all of them retain the capacity for critical thought (their ability to responsibly function in society proves this), but have been taught to suspend their faculties of independent and objective thought when focusing on their involvement with the group.

Myth #7 – Members of cults stay in them because they're weak and unable to cope with life.

The membership of cultic groups maintain their attachments to their groups for a variety of reason, but certainly NOT because they are too fragile and incapable of dealing with life outside it. Remember, these are people who are integrated into society who deal with life on the same level non-members do, albeit with their cultic worldview guiding and shaping their responses to it. It actually takes enormous amounts of personal courage and self-determination to remain committed to a group that often puts them at odds and even opposition to their own non-cult family members and friends. They stay because they are persuaded and conditioned to believe that there are no other meaningful alternative places to go outside the cultic fold. Most cult members have family, friends, business associates and other personal attachments with the group that they won't break from easily. But they also remain due to the systematically implanted misinformation, controlled behavior and blind trust in their group they've been taught to express – but not because they are weak and spineless.

One of the most helpful articles we've ever read on dialoguing with a cult member can be read by going here. Written by an ex-Jehovah's Witness, the article provides a list of outstanding questions you can use to share with cultists of all stripes, when properly rephrased for their situation, that will help them become aware of the kind of mental and spiritual bondages that their cults have put them in.

We've recommended those books authored by Robert J. Lifton, Steve Martin and Steven Hassan as great sources for understanding and dealing with cultic mind control and encourage you to obtain and study them.

After a conversion what is the most common thing that makes them return to the cult and how should we better disciple them?

There are many factors involved when a new convert to a cult feels compelled to return - please ensure you study this link's section entitled difficulties of former sect members.

If there is one thing that I have personally heard and witnessed over the years that seems to especially stands out most starkly, it would be the abject failure of the church to stand with and walk alongside the new convert in actual follow up. People rededicating their lives to Christ after having been in a cult usually return because the Church that He ordained should be His living extension fails to reach out, bear up their unique burden with them and teach them how to walk out the Christian life.

A cult member who has come to Christ also has engaged in an extraordinary act of personal self-evaluation with profound consequences for how they now are trying to live. The ex-cult member's time of transition from the Cultworld to the Kingdom of God is fraught with new perils, confusions, and fears that the Church has to simply address. For those leaving such immersive, totalist environments like cults, these kinds of struggles always come for Christian conversion doesn't wipe away consequences of cult involvement. After months or even years of being conformed to a cult's personality mold, getting clear of the cult's indoctrination and social mores won't happen overnight.

Sadly, churches love the "Kodak moment" and the thrill of seeing cultists embrace Christ and be baptized in their nice clean baptismals, but utterly fail to realize just how much critically acute the level of pastoral care and admonition they will need to stabilize spiritually. In short, they love the birth of the baby, but dont' seem to understand that such infants in the faith need to be clothed, fed, protected from rolling off their beds, and to have their diapers changed. It's when things get dirty and real effort is needed that Christian servants that sweat the nurturing load suddenly are found to be in short supply.

Equally tragic is the fact that this is a common failure of the church for all converts.

Implicit in the task of Christian discipleship is the plain fact that ongoing, interactive and personal fellowship and sharing underlies all truly transformative Christian formation. Christians simply have to rise up and be what the Bible says they should be - those who are called to not just preach but teach the Gospel to all nations, meaning that one stops and takes time to ensure that those who are taught understand and are enabled to practice it. That is what Christian discipleship requires and it gets walked out in real life when Christians start taking the time to listen to the needs, to pray with the strugglilng, to hear out the questions, to speak into the fears, to walk the fearful hours right along side the lives of new converts.

Ex-cultists who come to Christ will have many unique challenges themselves that should be directly tackled by those who care for them in the church. The outstanding book "Out Of The Cults Into The Church" is one of the few books available written from an explicit Christian perspective that addresses these issues. Another one entitled "Recovery From Churches That Abuse" can be viewed online here.

********

I hope that these three blog entries have been of help to you and may God use you mightily to pierce the darkness of the Cultworld where ever you go. Rest assured that He is desiring to use you in a great way to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Godspeed to you when the cultists whom God will now send your way come asking the questions that you now can answer so as to give to them the best hearing of the Gospel they've ever had.

Remember Four Final Things As You Witness As You Are Going ...

Thing 1 - Remember who you're going to represent - the Almighty Lord of All, Jesus Christ. Dress, act, speak and minister accordingly. You have authority and power - and you are to walk with the humility of a servant.

Thing 2 - Use your testimony - testify what Jesus means to YOU; how He has blessed you, how He speaks to you and walks with you and helps you day by day. No argument stands before a man with an experience

Thing 3 - Keep the faith - Smile, love, stay calm, rejoice when everything goes wrong (and sometimes it does). HE is in charge. This is His work. Look to Him and don't look at the situation. He makes the rough way smooth.

Thing 4 - Never allow discouragement to crush you or success to puff you up - God is in His heaven, and He knows our hearts and keeps the books.

Slouching Toward Gommorrah: Not Religious OR Spiritual, One Nation Under Gods

Jesus said things would be spiritually dark when He started intimating when He would return.

He said nothing about a great end time revival, not some Christian utopia in which the Church was dominating everything. He said something quite different.

Read Matthew 24 and understand the times.

Then, click on this link to an eye opening USA Today article and decide if your theology needs a little adjustment.

It's just another sign of the end time apostasy. Have a nice day.

When Cults Go Looking To Shove In All The Wrong Places: The Watchtower & The Closing Of The Russian Nation

We quoted this in full from the links, sent to us by good brother Paul .. the website links aren't working well at all, but Paul was able to get us the full text of the link immediately below.

13 March 2009 RUSSIA: NATIONWIDE STRIKE AT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1267

By Geraldine Fagan, Moscow Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

In the space of just three weeks, Jehovah's Witness communities across
Russia have undergone 500 state check-ups. "That's a conservative estimate
- we're definitely talking the whole country," Yaroslav Sivulsky remarked
to Forum 18 News Service from the Jehovah's Witnesses' St Petersburg
headquarters on 10 March. "Our telephones here are red hot from people
calling to report incidents and ask why it's happening."

The nationwide sweep, ordered by First Assistant General Public
Prosecutor Aleksandr Bastrykin, is linked to an investigation into the
Jehovah'sWitnesses' St Petersburg headquarters, the Moscow Regional
Public Prosecutor's Office explains in its order for check-ups sent to
district subdivisions on 13 February.

Having failed to find grounds for prosecution since the St Petersburg
investigation began in 2004, the authorities are now "trawling" for
information to shut down the Jehovah's Witnesses' Russian headquarters
and over 400 dependent organisations, Sivulsky believes:
"Nothing else makes sense."

Jehovah's Witnesses' "missionary activity, social isolation, refusal to
perform military service, accept blood transfusions and other religiously
motivated restrictions required of members of this organisation
provoke a negative attitude towards its activity from the population
and traditional Russian confessions," the Moscow Regional Public
Prosecutor's Office order notes.

Forum 18 has also viewed similar recent instructions for urgent
check-ups on Jehovah's Witnesses issued by Sakhalin Regional,
Udmurtia's Sarapul Municipal and Khabarovsk's Industrial District
Public Prosecutor's Offices.

On 12 March Forum 18 asked the General Public Prosecutor's Office
by fax when and why Bastrykin's order was issued, as well as for a
copy of the document. A Press Department spokesperson promised a
reply on 13 March after 3pm Moscow time. However, no response
was received by the end of the working day. As of 13 March, the
website of the General Public Prosecutor's Office made no mention
of the order either.

"They are checking anything and everything that can be checked,"
Sivulsky told Forum 18. Moscow and Sakhalin Regional Public
Prosecutor's Offices recommend co-ordinated check-ups involving
the police, FSB security police and Justice Ministry departments
in their orders.

Education departments appear to be following a particular line of
investigation. A 9 February Mostovskoi (Krasnodar Region) District
Education Department letter to local head teachers requests
information by 5 March on "interference by religious - including
Jehovah's Witness - organisations in the teaching process at educational
institutions, enticement of minors into the activity of religious
organisations without the knowledge of parents or guardians, cases of
refusing blood transfusions or other treatment to minors, other
violations of pupils' rights by members of and participants in religious
organisations."

A 17 February letter from Kholmsk (Sakhalin Region) Municipal
Education Department asks head teachers to respond to three questions
by the following day: Does the Kholmsk Jehovah's Witness organisation
conduct activity in educational institutions? Do any teachers belong to
this organisation? What work is being done in institutions to prevent
employees from being drawn into this organisation?

An 18 February telegram from Stavropol Municipal Education
Department asks head teachers for information by the following day
on cases of "social isolation of followers of Jehovah's Witness teachings
and refusal to study in connection with any bans or restrictions by
this religious organisation." Also in Stavropol Region, a 17-year-old
Jehovah's Witness pupil in the town of Izobilny reports on 24
February that his teacher was asked to compile a report about him
for the local Education Department, including whether he has
suicidal tendencies.

None of the check-up orders refer to extremism, Sivulsky of the
Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18. Parallel attempts to prosecute
individual Jehovah's Witness communities for distribution of
allegedly extremist literature continue apace, however. Religious
literature from other confessions has also been accused of extremism.
Translations of the works of Turkish Islamic theologian Said Nursi
have been banned in Russia following such claims by the authorities.

(see F18News 29 May 2008
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1136>)

On 25 February North Ossetia Public Prosecutor's Office filed suit
with the local Supreme Court for the liquidation of the republic's
four Jehovah's Witness organisations in Alagir, Beslan, Mozdok
and Vladikavkaz. As well as distribution of allegedly extremist
religious literature, the suit cites a number of grounds for the
organisations' closure, including Jehovah's Witnesses' allegedly
anti-constitutional refusal of blood transfusions and religious activity
outside the geographical location where they are registered. It also
notes that four Vladikavkaz Jehovah's Witnesses have refused to
perform alternative military service - in one case resulting in a
Soviet District Court sentence of 180 hours' forced labour - and that
the husband of a member of the Beslan organisation has filed for
divorce because she is a Jehovah's Witness.

A hearing at North Ossetia Supreme Court was slated for 12
March, but the Jehovah's Witnesses requested an alternative date
because their lawyers were already due to appear in a similar
extremism case in Salsk (Rostov-on-Don Region) on that day.

After participating in the 12 March Salsk hearing, New York-based
Jehovah's Witness lawyer James Andrik told Forum 18 that the
court is so far relying solely on the expert literary analysis of Jehovah's Witness
literature by Rostov Centre for Court Studies as evidence.

(see F18News 14 July 2008
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1159>)

In a statement to Salsk Municipal Court, Andrik pointed out that in
the Soviet Union "thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned
or subject to other hardships and restrictions of their rights as a
result of their religious activity, literature, and beliefs." While
exonerated as victims of "unfounded repression" in 1996, however,
Russian government representatives are now "poised to repeat the
victimization of Jehovah's Witnesses," he maintains.

Thousands of kilometres apart, municipal courts in Salsk and
Gorno-Altaisk (Altai Republic) both began determining whether
Jehovah's Witness literature is extremist on 19 January

(see F18News 16 January 2009
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1241>).

The Gorno-Altaisk court has commissioned an expert literary
analysis by linguists at Kemerovo State University. Court expert
analyses of Jehovah's Witness literature in similar cases in
Rostov-on-Don and Yekaterinburg are still ongoing, Sivulsky told
Forum 18

(see F18News 14 July 2008
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1159>).

Under the 2002 Extremism Law, even a low-level court may
rule literature extremist. It is then automatically added to the
Federal List of Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
The List's 325 titles as of 13 March typically suggest extreme
nationalist or anti-Semitic content. Most theological entries
- the inclusion of which is also disputed - are Islamic

(see most recently F18News 16 January 2009
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1241>).

While it succeeded in banning the Jehovah's Witnesses' Moscow
local religious organisation on other grounds in 2004, the Russian
capital's Golovinsky District Court failed to find it guilty of extremism

(see F18News 25 May 2004
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=327>).

Officials in dozens of cities across Russia moved to block Jehovah's
Witnesses' regional congresses last summer

(see F18News 22 July 2008
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1161>).

For a personal commentary by Irina Budkina, editor of the
<http://www.samstar.ru> Old Believer website, about continuing
denial of equality to Russia's religious minorities, see
F18News 26 May 2005
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=570>.

For more background, see Forum 18's Russia religious
freedom survey at
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1196>.

Reports on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in
Russia can be found at
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?query=&religion=all&country=10>.

A printer-friendly map of Russia is available at
<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=europe&Rootmap=russi>.

© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved. ISSN 1504-2855

You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit
is given to F18News http://www.forum18.org/

Answering Some More Questions From Lee University's EVA 363 For 2009 2 of 3

Approaches (Part 1 can be read here)

How do cults recruit and how can we go about to prevent it?

Cults successfully recruit new members by appealing to their felt needs with a compelling presentation of truth claims that go unchallenged by objective examination. In short, the recruited, in seeking an "itch for their scratch", are people struggling with various issues and questions which the cult seems to provide all the answers for. Their astonishingly effective means of personal recruitment is based upon meeting those needs, thereby gaining significant means of leverage and control over them. And their recruitment is usually as successful as their group's ability to foster that instant sense of rapport and community with those they seek to convert.

This kind of cultic recruitment has been a major source for their success and even resurgence. The picture illustrates the fruit of their labor: you see here a Spiritwatch Ministry worker in 2001 seeking to provide a hapless Christian an informational flyer about the cultic Unification Church rally she was going to, thinking she was going to a Christian meeting. The UC is a cultic movement run by the antichrist called "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon and the Korean woman was a Unificationist (Moonie) who actually physically tried to snatch the flyers out of the hands of the largely minority believers being bused in for the meetings. They were being brought there by their unscrupulous and/or undiscerning Christian pastors who represented the Unification front group that organized these rallies as an interfaith agency's moral crusade. Draping itself with concern for the spiritual and moral decline of America, the Moon organization has long sought to establish a "common cause" with evangelical Christian minorities (which you can read about more here) and hundreds of minority pastors and church leaders across America have been duped, seduced or financially persuaded into becoming allies with their antichristian agenda. This was just one example in a string of spiritual duplicity that shows how cults will use any means they can to deceive their recruits.

Using discerned common spiritual and social values that the prospect and they seem to have in common, the cult member is then able to establish deeper connection with a recruit. From that point on, cult recruiters will also interact with them on purely interpersonal issues that most powerfully influence the seeker. Their payoff to the prospect - facilitated by the recruiter's personal contact - is a carefully controlled outpouring of positive regard bestowed by the collective group on them as they first attend their meetings and discussion groups that are aimed to impress upon them how valued and cared for they are: this is done in three ways (these were taken from our article on how cults recruit)

Immediate Importance - the prospect is affirmed to the extent that they are made to feel essential and important to the success of cause they are confronted with - since it is how those needs and their fulfillment will be met .

Instant Intimacy - the prospect is provided with a high degree of almost instantaneous caring and sharing with other group members who unhesitatingly make themselves available for the development of deep, close relationships ..

Interactive Introduction - the prospect is brought into (and caught up with) a community of people who have a vibrant social life totally centered around their collective involvement with the revelation or philosophy that the group holds is the "truth" that will save the world ..

Such recruitment, expressed in love, sweetened with acceptance and starry eyed recruiters avowing the divine/ultimate nature of their message and group, is probably one of the most powerful and compelling forces of charisma that cultic human nature can muster. It wins converts when those within the recruit's circle of friends and family, for any of a number of reasons, fail to respond with alternative perspectives that counter the cult's claim and love-bombing culture.

In some extremely rare cases, demonic compulsion may actually be involved, but most of the time, it's a purely human transaction between a person motivated by longing for positive change in their lives and a cult recruiter ready to lure them into transformative relationships they believe this change will come with.

So how do you counter such a thing?

Remember the words of Messala, from the old classic movie Ben Hur ..

"you ask how to fight an idea. Well, I'll tell you how... with another idea!"

Preventing cults from successfully recruiting unwary people can take two forms, one being proactive, one being reactive. The first involves a comprehensive strategy engaging cult awareness and educational initiatives advocated, funded and publicized by concerned Christian believers or non-religious individuals as part of ongoing service to their local communities. Using the media, advertising, public meetings and church educational systems, generic discussions of cultism can be held that can alert people to the dangers of cult recruitment, their vulnerability to it and provide resources for self-education and assistance, as well as channels for assistance to those who've been already affected by it. Such initiatives, unfortunately, have little to no priority whatsoever in most communities, a sad and tragic thing when you consider that other public service activities concerning the awareness of child abduction, domestic violence, debt reduction and identity theft issues seem far more attractive to the average member of the species of Joe. Q. Public.

The second arises when the friends and family of a prospective convert to some cultic ideology seek some kind of intervention to head off their involvement. It is the latter course, unfortunately, that becomes the encounter of choice for most people when cults shatter their world after the fact and is always the far more difficult direction to take. Entering into positive and fruitful discussion with people already being persuaded by a cult to make life-changing decisions and lifestyle choices that they've come to believe are necessary for personal transformation is perhaps one of the most difficult things you will ever seek to do. Cult awareness initiatives could have prevented it, but - as I've observed - they are virtually non-existent in society today.

Countering cult recruitment involves fighting the ideas of the cult being spun before a inquisitive seeker with another ones without actually fighting the idealist of the cult - even though, inevitably, one must realize that this is indeed a struggle for hearts and minds and conversation will get intense. The ideas and concepts being used to entice and seduce the recruit have to be respectfully identified, understood and directly challenged in the same way the cult introduced them. You will be engaging the heart and mind of the recruited with a line of equally cheery, confident and yet Holy Spirit-timed seasons of questioning and inquiry that accomplish this.

When doing personal work in this area with a recruit of a cult, there are several issues that have be simultaneously tackled by the countercult worker that have to be kept in mind. First, the whole attempt to counter cult recruitment must be viewed as process and not just an event. They must be willing and able to devote at least the same amount of personal time and effort in dialogue and relationship with the recruit that the cult has put in to entice them. Secondly, the positive regard, interest and concern shown in their prospect must be drawn from genuine concern - not out of some rush to crusade or "cult bust."

Learning how to ask open ended questions that objectively explore the truth claims made by the recruiter is the next vital step. The recruit's suspension of critical thought may have already started, which is only a few steps away from cult mind control and can easily result in their ability to divert concerns and appear "o.k." to those wanting to understand the draw of the cult upon them. These truth claims can range from common ones focusing on moral, philosophical and spiritual absolutes to more personally meaningful ones that engage an individual's unique questioning of his life and the world around him. Collection of documented information about the cult's deceptive representations about itself and the world around it, their bogus scientific claims, and "insider doctrines" the group hides from the public that reveal its true agenda are vital to providing objective truth about the cult's claims.

Another important dynamic to counter is the very appeal itself that cult recruiters use to draw prospects into investigation of their group. The recruit's attempt to find answers to their questions and to seek truth should and must be affirmed but it is the conclusions they are making that should be gently called into question with the documented research about their claims by concerned family, friends and countercult workers. They should be encouraged to remain open to self-study and examination of your evidences before committing to the kinds of radical lifestyle reordering the cult will ultimately demand of them.

This is at the core of countering a cult's "loving on" a new recruit, delivered in equally caring concern. The cult's appeal should be respectfully re-explored with alternate perspectives when they begin to entertain unbiblical, illogical and/or aberrant directions that will lead to religious abuse, coercion and unethical psychological manipulation. Since the cult recruiter uses gentle encouragement or even bold challenge to persuade them, countercult workers must not be any less forthright in bringing this to the attention of the prospect they seek to ensnare.

This is because timing is of the highest importance and often the one critical factor that too many family and friends of those being drawn into a cult fail to recognize. Generally, the longer a recruit has been interacting with the cult, especially when going to cult social gatherings are involved, the more and more deeper the social, spiritual and emotional ties are going to be rooted - and the more powerful the deceptive reasoning of "good words and fair speeches" that cult recruiters engage in to "deceive the hearts of the simple." (Romans 16:18). Assuming a loved one's interactions with a cult recruiter over time is a "phase they're going through" is a dangerous mistake. They should be calmly and carefully asked about their new friends and what they've been learning and their literature should be read and studied - and discerned.

It is best, of course, that all of this be done away from the influences of the cult recruiter who will do all they can to , but sometimes this isn't possible, and the new recruit with starry eyed enthusiasm, will bring you into a place where you're going to have to engage in dialogue the cult recruiter themselves. That then becomes an actual witnessing session that involves many of the same practices we've just discussed but takes a different direction, which we'll discuss shortly. Needless to say, the recruit will be listening very intently as you share with their new found friend and that this level of conversation will indeed be life changing.

How does one come across finding a cult? I don't know any cultists, where can I find them? What do you consider the best place or types of places to meet people in cults and what are the best places to try to build relationships and evangelize them?

It's not hard to find cults or cultists: they can be quite easily found. They are friends of friends, neighbors of your uncle, members of the company softball team, or your own grandchild. At times you may need to go to where they are, but don't be surprised if God's economy leads them into divine intersection with your own lives. Be ready for this - if you're serious about witnessing to cult members, be prepared for "coincidences" orchestrated by the Spirit. It will happen!

But don't be afraid to go to where cultists live their lives and try to practice their faith, either. Jesus said we are to go into "all the world," and that world is where the cultists go also. They deserve Spirit-led and discerning admonition that will reach their minds as well as their souls - and the best way to share this to best impact is through the building of intentionally sought and nutured relationships. They deserve our reaching out to them as we encounter them.

The settings where these relationships can be started with cult members are many and are where Christians should be nurturing them. That means meeting them on street corners when they distribute their magazines and tracts. That means going to their open houses and weekly study groups they advertise for those interested in hearing their perspectives. That means devoting time to spend it in their company. It means calling that toll free number and asking for a visit from a representative to visit your home. And it especially means taking the time out to have a lunch visit with a friend or co-worker who has something "special" to share with you in a far more informal and personal way, or lingering in an aisle in a bookstore or on a doorstep in engaging discussion.

These latter examples are usually the best opportunities in which building a personal relationship with a cultist can be best done. Relationships you build with a cultist will become the load bearing bridge over which the dialogue that explores their faith is best supported. In this vein, I'd say the "best" place you can hope to find yourself in relationship building with a cultist is if you can successfully get yourself alone them, especially if it can be done on a regular basis. Apart from their cult peers, it gives him/her the opportunity to be more authentic, less guarded, and more open to hearing you out. It also affords you time to directly address the cultic mind control they're likely laboring under with lines of inquiry that you can make more personal.

It is important to listen to them in order to gain and establish a relationship. At what point to we gain or regain conversation in order that there is a control of conversation while still maintaining a healthy respect for their belief but yet still trying to win them for Christ?

Anyone, including cult members, deserves to be shown respect in any conversation held with them. Truly meaningful communication of truth depends upon it. Conversation should be a two way street in which two people freely exchange ideas through questioning, answering, listening and challenging in a spirit of inquiry.

However, while cultists are people always ready for a good discussion, they don't let on that their chat is driven by the cult's missionary desire to make converts. Never forget this! As friendly, transparent and sincere as they may seem, the goal is always the same - they will see you as a sheep in need of their shepherd. This is a chilling effect on their ability to actually dialogue with you - it's also been seriously compromised as a result of the mind controlling indoctrination that they have been conditioned with which all but shuts down their ability to critically think through an issue you may raise. Questions raised and subjects tackled are quickly determined to be "safe" or "off-limits" to the cult member on the basis of what they've been taught. This is because the group usually has trained them to speak with outsiders as if they were all potential converts, as those in need of enlightenment, and therefore, who are wallowing in spiritual deficiency and ignorance. Their arguments and passion are going to be reserved for self-expression that serves the cult's agenda of winning them to their belief system.

This is the kind of personal connection, challenge and rapport that they want to establish with you so as to lead you into an amenable frame of mind that will more easily entertain their movement's propaganda. The scripted presentations, invitations and testimonial that laud the cult are meant to evoke in you a desire to explore the ways of such an upright group. They are seamlessly woven into the conversation and become an undeniably alluring song which cultism sings so sweetly and seductively as it calls to you to join their ranks and come to the light. If you allow the conversation's time to be dominated by their singing of the cult's praises, the kind of communication you are trying to foster simply will not occur - indeed, you'll end up find the going get frustrating and even confusing. You will walk away wondering what happened and the cultist more convinced then ever that they've found the truth.

Bearing in mind, then, that you will be approached with a sales pitch hidden in "sharing," you must purpose in both heart and mind that you have to keep some measure of control over the conversation within the common bonds of civility. To encourage openness to the cult member, as well as signal respect for his belief system, hearing them out is certainly necessary as well as polite but when seeking to continue fruitful discussion with a cult member, establishing boundaries for the flow of the discussion is of critical importance. If not carefully watched for, the cult member will go on to seek control over your time of interaction with an indoctrinating presence. Inevitably, then, after a season of listening to the cultist, you must seek to guide the conversations you have with cult members and keep the focus on the topics that you determine are going to be most helpful in addressing the truth claims and testimonial they will offer to you.

Remember that if you're going to be of any real help to the cult member, you are going to have studied up on what they believe and be familiar with why they believe it is true. Before you can share the Gospel of Christ with a cultist, you must be familiar with the false gospel of the cult he's trying to represent to you and then learn why the individual embraces its' truth claims. You should have some working knowledge about crucial terminology differences they have when using religious and non-religious language that can foster misunderstanding and even deception.
It is only during and after a careful hearing out of what a cultist shares that you'll start seeing where your discussion should proceed if you're determined to bring Christian witness in your personal response, witness to the Gospel of Christ as well as witness that helps lead them back from the blinding of the mind that the cult has inflicted them with so they might be free once more to make their own choices for truth and not merely become mechanized robots reciting a cultic creed (2 Corinthians 4:4).

So the usage of focusing questions that help turn the conversation back to the direction you feel it should go should be used. Just one good question added to your conversational flow can have this effect and get the cultist out of his pre-programmed response track and out of his comfort zone toward critical thought without his actually knowing it. Focusing questions asked in sincere intent should zero in on an issue the cult member is aware of but which encourages their interaction on a line of inquiry that draws them toward a real grappling with truth. The question can take any form attempting to address the cult mind control they labor under, their own misunderstanding of a historical event the cult makes much over, a reexamination of sound doctrine they've been taught is Satanically inspired, etc.

Discussing these and other issues can make an already long answer into a book. We'll suggest some resources shortly to read, and invite you to discuss these with us locally here in Cleveland. We're always available!

How do you get someone in a cult to be receptive to you, because most are secretive and closed off to their group or cult?

Show honest concern, curiosity, and openness to hearing them out. It's that simple. Everyone wants to feel that they are being heard, being heeded, being paid attention to. Inviting a hearing of the cult's beliefs and personal story is a dinner bell for them for which their reserve will fall. The important thing to keep in mind is that as you show this genuine concern that you don't become a sponge that uncritically accepts whatever you're told at face value. Be a very active listener who employs listening skills informed by information about cultism and the cult in general to hear them out as way of giving them their civil due and hearing them out - while simultaneously analyzing their dogma and protecting yourself with an objective inner viewpoint which should intentionally informs your understanding.

While the social isolation through indoctrination that we've mentioned which cults impose on their recruits as they consolidate their manipulative control over their members is a real problem, your willingness to seek to hear them out does wonders to bring those barriers down. The propaganda of the cult that had led them into insulating themselves from external perspectives and influences at the expense of their critical thought can be short circuited by the most simple of human responses - your honest body language that conveys to them that you are indeed listening and seeking to understand them where they are.

If you can successfully cultivate this kind of mindset and manner each time you want to share with a cultists, you are in an excellent position to bring to bear sensitive, relevant and yet uncompromising sharing of the Gospel with them.

In building a relationship with a cult member, how many times should you meet with them and how much time is safe in order that we maintain the relationship without risking our own faith? In discussing our faith to them and trying to breakdown the errors in their doctrine and theology, what is an appropriate way of correcting their doctrine in such a way that shows a spirit of humility and yet still one of Christ's authority? How do you keep yourself from getting into long debates? When do you know it's time to end the conversation?

Building any kind of relationship always takes time and effort. Connecting a member of the Cultworld with that of your own will require this kind of work. Whatever comes up, however, rest assured that every encounter can be a divine appointment in which you can deliver truth in the fashion we've just outlined. Each meeting can be a golden opportunity to plant not only the seeds of the Word of God but thistles of irrefutable doubt in their cult's worldview, belief system and relationships that will challenge the mind control and indoctrination they labor under. Such doors are those that I am convinced God desires the church to walk through, if they will but be willing to go. He can and will open them before us.

So therefore, if God grants you the opportunity to maintain ongoing contact with a cultist, try to meet with the cult member as often as you possibly can. If you can do so, we'd recommend keeping the dialogue limited to an hour or so on a regular weekly or biweekly basis and focused upon a specific topic or subject. These are efforts worthy of pursuit and should be understood as if they were long distance runs rather than sprints. Pacing the flow of discussion by limiting it's scope to specific and agreed upon issues at hand is going to be of crucial importance for yourself and your cult member friend.

You should be aware that how and what you will address in your dialogues will be determined by the kind of relationship you have. Is the cult member a friend, co-worker or even family member with whom there's a high probability that you'll be able to see them more or less on a regular basis? Is the cult member a Jehovah's Witness at a bus stop or an LDS missionary knocking on your door that you may not see again? Most of the time it's more likely that you will find that the kind of encounters with cultists you'll have will indeed be transitory, one-time visitations in which you're going to have only one opportunity to share with a cultist. But that's not always the case. Sometimes the cult member is a loved one who wandered away from the church into the open arms of a cult. You're going to usually be a lot more direct with a one time meeting then one in which your aunt is being recruited by a cult. If you're going to outright engage in evangelistic discussion, then a direct focus on the doctrines of salvation that the cult has indoctrinated them is going to be the best approach, aware that the cult mind control issue should be directly tackled. If you're going to be seeing them regularly, you can and should be more careful in choosing the direction of the sharing.

This is a vital point because those meetings should involve interaction that proceeds only at a pace you are comfortable with in which you are keenly aware of your own interpersonal limits as well as how you intend to tackle the discussion. Never forget the old Greek dictum "Know thyself" - that is to say, be fully aware of your personal boundaries in handling the levels of challenge that your dialogue will present to you. The question above very wisely and intuitively recognizes that witnessing to a cultist - as in any evangelistic encounter - can be a spiritually dangerous enterprise. Keep in mind that the cult member is quietly taking your measure also and is going to be doing what they can to convince and convert you over to their cause. Every moment of presence in a cultist's life is a moment in which deception and confusion is a real hazard that shouldn't be easily dismissed. The hazard can and should be countered by the working knowledge about the cult and its teachings as well as an understanding of the social dynamics behind the cult's appeal that gives you the objective point of view necessary to keep their claims in a balancd perspective.

There can be moments, however, in which the cultist's objections and questions linger when you cannot answer them. Don't worry. It's not at all wrong to admit that you don't have an answer to a question and to advise them you're going to be thinking about it and would like to get back with them on it. Walk away if you need to but don't fail to get some help in tackling the question with other mature believers and countercult ministries and workers. There always is an answer to a cultist's objections - and no matter how personal it may strike you or affecting, it is a challenge that can and must be directly addressed.

In this regard, then, proceed no faster in your sharing on concepts under discussion that you can safely follow. It is infinitely better to tackle one issue only in an encounter then jump from subject to subject willy-nilly with no sense of focus. This is why conversational control is so important. stay on the subject and only detour from it when it is absolutely necessary to do so (such as defining terms or explaining concepts vital to the subject at hand). Keep the initiative and direction of the discussion or you may find yourself being bombarded with a torrent of tangents that will waste your time addressing.

Long debates over truth claims are indeed the very things you want to avoid at all costs. Debates break out when both the countercult worker and the cultist are unwilling or unable to yield a point of contention that will rapidly escalate into a defensive battle where claims, Bible verses, counterclaims, tempers fly hot and fast - so fast that communication breaks down and things get unnecessarily personal and polarizing. Listen to the dry observation of the church father Tertullian about such a debate he encountered in his second century African community:

It happened very recently a dispute was held between a Christian and a Jewish proselyte. Alternately with contentious cable they each spun out the day until evening. By the opposing din, moreover, of some partisans of the individuals, truth began to be overcast by a sort of cloud.

Although this incident took place almost two millenia ago, as you can see, some things never change. Tertullian shrewdly observed that long drawn out argumentation in a group of Christians and false teachers of two opinions can easily lead to the obscuring of the most important point of all – the truth itself! When this happens, the situation has gotten out of hand and has to be reigned in.

Disagreement is inevitable in the dialogue you'll have with a cultist, but avoidance of full blown debate is a top priority. Avoid debates by refusing to argue a point that the cult member seems to want to keep dealing with, even after you've offered your opinions on it. They're trying to pull you off topic to a subject they want to keep pressing home with. Agree to disagree and politely move the conversation along. Offer to study the issue at a later date and keep the conversation guided in the direction you want it in.

At this point, you simply must let the fruit of the Spirit be seen in you (Gal. 5:22-23)! Cultists will indeed argue as forcefully for their religion with their manifold arguments and be quite trying as they disagree with you in an effort to refute your speech. Be calm and cheerful, and don't blow your top at stubbornness! They may reject your message, but they cannot escape the witness of a peaceful, longsuffering Christian. It should be remembered that D.L. Moody, the 19th century American evangelist, once said that of 100 people, one would read the Bible, and the other 99 would "read the Christian." What an indictment of the power of the moderate, Spirit-led temperament of the Christian countercult worker when dealing with what is certainly one of the most potentially toxic and defiling challenges to one's faith that you can face.

You should end the conversation with a cultist if:

1) the cult member shows that they've come to the point where they cannot entertain your conversation with anything else except baiting accusation aimed at inflammatory exchanges (Acts 6:9-13) ; in otherwords, they've just decided to dump on you to watch your reaction ..

2) by God's grace you've made a couple of good, sound observations that have led a cult member to recognize a truth claim they've never considered before so as to give them time to think about it(Acts 17:32) ; and

3) if you begin to feel overwhelmed by the questions the cult presents and feel that you can't keep track of the conversation.

How can you talk to a cultist about the Gospel when they are not a bit receptive to it and even against it? If they are not receptive at all and want nothing to do with you, do you give up?

Keep the counsel of our Lord comes to mind when encountering a cult member - or anyone else - who is intent on simply acting out their spiritually proud mockery of Christian truth. He commanded in Matthew 7:6 to his disciples that they were to "give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." The offering of spiritual truth to those who would mock it is a pointless and fruitless exercise that only heaps further divine condemnation upon the mocker as they insult and blaspheme it (Romans 1:18-22).

The apostle Paul's mandate in Titus 3:10 is that "a man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself." This suggests that the Christian countercult worker, in what may be a final exercise of God's grace being extended to them, should endeavor to supply to even the mocking cult member at least two exhortations to hear out the truth you've come to discuss with them. Beyond this, Paul says, we are to "reject" the person firmly. The Greek verb paraiteomai is an imperative one that can be translated as decline, shun, avoid, refuse, reject. It can't be any plainer then this ..

At this point, the Bible seems clear: we're called to be witnesses of the Gospel of Christ and not providers of holy doormats for false teachers like cultists to tread upon. We should take our apostolic authority as Christians and politely withdraw from further discussion with them, consigning them to God's judgment and rebuking them for their rejection of the truth. I've had LDS missionaries go so far as to take their Buster Browns off and shake the dust off of them in response when a conversation ended in this way, in their own arrogant mimickry of the apostolic anathemas seen in Mark 6:11 and Acts 13:51. Sadly, they bring the witness of judgment only upon their own heads since they have utterly failed to realize that you were the servant of God sent into their own lives by divine visitation (Job 10:12, Luke 19;22 and 1 Peter 2:12).

You have fulfilled your ministry by making the prayerful attempt to admonish them - if they reject you, they effectively reject the One who indeed sent you (Matthew 10:40). It is a sad and sobering thing to behold, but that's part of what it is to be a witness for Jesus Christ. We are simply obeying His commands by the power and leading of the Spirit of God and act accordingly to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8). The rest is between the cult member and God. Pray that God have mercy upon them and yet work to enlighten them and commend them to His convicting ministry (John 16:7-11).

How do you follow up on an encounter with a cult when they don't have a number, address, etc. and when would you ever see them again?

As I've shared, there will be occasions in which you're going to encounter an itinerant and traveling cult missionary who only wants to "hit and run," but with whom you've established contact. Be in the habit of carrying a personal calling card with your name, address, phone number and e-mail address before you leave. Calling cards still are a great way to provide a tangible source of contact with someone even in this day and age of digitized, cellular and Web based social networking. Encourage them to stay in touch with you. We have created and used small card printing runs using our computer and word processing programs, but we'd recommend using for more professional results the inexpensive and yet amazingly well done work you can find at Vistaprint.com.

How do you go about studying the different cults and witchcraft without being drawn to it yourself?

Since we need to have sufficient homework done before we try to evangelize to a cult what are some reading materials that you would consider essential to our success in evangelizing to cults? Are there books out there that give a Christian perspective on Jehovah's Witness and Mormon perspectives? I found that when placed in the middle of Salt Lake City surrounded by Mormon material I ended up feeling drowned in it and had an overwhelming confusion .. are there any books that highlight the Christian truths while walking through their beliefs?

Studying cults and the occult is an enterprise that involves dedicated search and acquisition of the individual culture behind the cult. To get an objective and balanced understanding of the unique claims and worldview they advocate, you have to become a student of the cult's publications and media that presents their doctrine and practice in a more or less systematic fashion. It's not just comparative theological research you're looking for alone: you are also learning the vocabulary, social concerns, passions and interests that the cult intends its' members to fellowship with. This is of enormous importance in developing a working knowledge of a cult's inner private life and how it relates it to their outer public image. These books, CD's, videos, websites, magazines, tracts, etc. will be the kinds of resources that the cult itself uses to indoctrinate members and are usually not readily available, although with effort, time and money, they can be obtained readily enough.

The building of a personal library of these publications should be a top priority for the study process of each cult. Much information on various groups can be downloaded off the internet that they have prepared themselves, including DVD's and CD's full of scans of such publications. However, finding this literature often requires specialized searches as diverse as online collectors to garage sales, from used book bins to library book sales. My wife Joy actually found the entire 26 volume set of the Mormon Church's Journal Of Discourses (an absolutely mind boggling find) in a couple of dusty boxes at a backwoods flea market. I found the first two volumes of the Children of God's Mo Letters (another equally amazing discovery that the books were never to be circulated outside the cult) at a used book store in an airport the last time I flew almost 8 years ago. It's amazing what you can find.

Another vital angle of study is to become a student of the literature and testimonials offered by ex-members of cult groups. Ex-members can be your guides, translators, and mentors when coming to grips with an understanding of how the cult they were involved with actually functions and what to expect when you deal with them. Every cult has a host of people who disassociated themselves or were disfellowshipped from the group for a variety of reasons and who have much objective insight in the group's teaching and practice that simply cannot be ignored. In our work with cults over the years, we've come to realize that - contrary to the warped views of some self-styled academics and Christian figures who castigate countercult work as biased and judgmental - the views of ex-members are quite compassionate, balanced and factually-based.

While there are also ex-cult members whose writings, persona and approach to their cult are seriously imbalanced and indicate anger and integrity issues they struggle with in their post-cult life, there are far more who have been instrumental in helping provide for countercult workers balanced presentations of information and insight that would not have been achievable any other way. You can find on our website the testimonies of many former members of Remnant Fellowship, for example, and a good friend of ours named Eric Kettunen left the LDS Church in the mid 1990's with his family and was among the first ex-Mormons to publish their testimonies through his website Recovery From Mormonism, which was devoted exclusively to providing the testimonies of other ex-LDS members. It routinely gets hundreds of thousands of visits each day. The testimonials of other people in other groups can be found in our Great Links page.

Become a student of the process of cult mind control itself. Cult mind control effectively shuts down how a cult member thinks and responds to your questioning to the point of altering personal identity so knowing how to tackle and deal with it simply demands that you also have a working knowledge of the thought reforming social dynamic that it actually is. The best books that detail how it works, how it can be recognized in cultic communal settings and how to tackle it are Steve Hassan's seminal "Combatting Cult Mind Control" and "Releasing The Bonds", Ronald Enroth's "Churches That Abuse" and Paul Martin's "Cult Proofing Your Kids". All of these books are available in either new or used forms on Amazon.com - the links above will help you get access to other sources for them. A Google video featuring a discussion by Hassan about how to deal with cultic mind control can be seen here. After studying it, a great way to see how cult mind control is applied

And become a student of the new generation of countercult books and resources that are now widely available. Such books, outside of a few books like the late and great Dr. Walter Martin's "Kingdom Of The Cults" simply didn't exist when I started to get involved in countercult work in the mid 1980's. Still, to quote the old newspaper editor, yes, Virginia, there ARE such books that compare cult doctrine and practice with Christian ones! They will need to share shelf space with your cult publications in your study and are absolutely essential ones to also help you navigate through the tangled reasoning and cunning misinformation that cult publications are laden with. We particularly recommend Ron Rhodes' excellent "Reasoning From The Scriptures" series written to refute LDS and Jehovah's Witness doctrine, as well as Bill McKeever's "Mormonism 101" and ex-Witness David Reed's outstanding series of books on the Watchtower and his seminal book on the mind controlling language of the cult. In our article on evangelizing cults, which you can download here as a PDF file, you will find a complete list of these and the other kinds of books you are asking about here.

And in the Great Links page on our website, you'll also find a mighty host of websites that provide countercult resources for research and study that simply cannot be ignored either. We particularily recommend the FactNet site and that of the International Cultic Studies Association
The Internet has revolutionized the way human beings communicate with one another and for that, we can truly thank God that we can now use this Net based blog to share all of this with you. You can even download to your MP3 players whole MP3 recordings of countercult teachings with just a few mouse clicks .. what a day we live in!

Finally, let's look at the excellent questions raised here on the seductiveness of cult dogma which should be squarely dealt with.

There is no denying that studying cult doctrine is not only difficult but can spiritually perilous. False, imbalanced and deceptive doctrine and practice has a lure all of its own because it is always mingled with elements of truth that fit into our own worldview and commend it to us. The presence of that which we can accept as true in false teaching makes it seem not only plausible and even Biblical. From a Christian perspective, people who are spiritually hungry but Biblically illiterate are prone to accepting a slickly polished and confidently delivered exposition of false doctrinal and practical teaching if 1) Scripture is cited heavily, 2) it seems to "hit us where we are" and 3) if it is presented in a way that leaves little to no room to test or question it. Reading false teaching and false doctrine will definitely become a challenge for those who study it if these any or all of these three trap doors unlatch beneath us as we examine it.

So the question can ultimately come down to how firm your grip is upon your own unresolved personal issues, for they can become the spiritual chink in your inner armor. Thinking that your grasp on sound and balanced doctrine is a sufficient hedge against cultic deception is a serious mistake. Underestimate this issue at your spiritual peril!

If you are grappling with unsettled problems and dissatisfactions with the church, deficiencies in your personal relationships, unfulfilled desires and frustrated idealism (and really, who doesn't?), then you must come to grips with the plain truth: you may unwittingly find yourself starting to second guess long established boundaries of discernment when you see how happy, centered and fulfilled a cultist seems to be in his cultic community. This is a subtlety of human nature we often don't like to admit ourselves, but it is perfectly natural to wonder how much greener the grass might be on the other side of the proverbial fence. Given the fact that cults can appear to be more "together" then the church itself, any personal knowledge of their manipulative and heretical nature of cultism can slowly cease to matter to you.

If this happens, you are entering exceedingly dangerous territory because you're cutting free the faculties of critical thought - only the convicting powerand grace of the Spirit of God can keep you at this point. When a deeply felt personal need becomes the self-motivation that entices you to re-examine the perspective again, your objectivity can easily become a casualty. This is the main reason why intelligent, sharp Christian people who "knew better" and should have been "smarter than that" now fill cult groups around the world - and why some countercult workers themselves can sometimes be recruited into the very Cultworld they had explored.

There's a reason why seasoned Christian countercult workers see their labor as the front lines of the real kinds of spiritual warfare that are waged today and you are perhaps now seeing that.

That is where, however, you have the edge on the seductiveness of false teaching. The Bible makes clear that spiritual warfare is not something to be done by the religious Lone Ranger but in the context of a shared struggle alongside fellowsoldiers in Christ - remember that Paul wrote to the Ephesian church as a group in his classic exhortation of Ephesians 6:10 and verse 18 to fight spiritual battles with the full armor of God. Keeping in mind our discussion on knowing your limits, you've already been tipped that there's an underlying imbalance to the approach of studying cults that has to be carefully watched for. The Body of Christ is still "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" for a reason, as Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:15 - we must hold fast to this apostolic truth.

Stay in touch with mature believers as you study, consider your limits and remember one simple principle: never stop asking questions of what ever cultic claim confronts you and seek the safety that counsel with fellow believers will bring (Proverbs 11:14). The media resources we've discussed will provide that for you as well, but there is nothing quite as stabilizing as frank discussion with countercult workers and mature believers. Seek their input as needed. Don't let the "canker" of false teaching become a toxin that poisons your walk with God - put it in its' place with sound study and discernment (2 Timothy 2:15-17).

As always, we stand ready to help in this regard. Stay in touch with us!

How is evangelism different between satanic cults and Christian cults?

I think you are asking for a discussion on the difference in evangelizing adherents to occultic movements and cults that assume a Christian and Bible-based identity (what some countercult researchers and organizations can call "Bible cults"). But this is a question I didn't understand.

If you're out there reading this and would like to clarify it, please feel free to email us at rafael at spiritwatch.org and do so!

What is the greatest testimony you have personally heard of when a cultist came to know Christ?

It's hard to know how you would call one redeemed ex-cultist's testimony greater than another, even though there are those that are sodden with ghastly and horrific subtexts that simply have to be heard to be believed. The amount of de-humanizing degradation and objectification that cults inflict their followers with is truly, profoundly stunning .. that any cultist somehow cherishes and nurtures a heart flame of faith to commit it once again to the unknown God they've been searching for in a cultic wilderness is perhaps the most touching, troubling and soul-shattering gesture of the human spirit you can ever see.

So much is made today about "deliverance" today in certain Christian circles that I wonder if the plain sense of the word as used in Scripture is being lost by the church. Personally, I believe that true Biblical deliverance is a glorious rescue that anyone - including any cultist - can cry out to God's mercy and receive. The cultist who turns to Christ truly is one Paul alludes to who is among the great multitude of believers who eternally should be "giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:12) Thanks be to God for His mercy that calls out from all the darkest places of human wickedness a people unto Himself ... may God make of you apostles to the Cultworld where such victories yet await the battles to win them as He would have them waged!

Here's a few testimonies you can read that certainly fill the bill: that of Dennis and Rauni Higley, Paul Blizard, Carolyn Poole, and Karen Pressley.

Have you personally had a relationship with a cult member and actually led them out of their cult to Christianity? if so, could please share that experience?

I have my time with a gathering of ex-cultists who turned to Christ to thank for changing my life - it was my vicarious relationship with them that forever altered the course of my ministry.

It was at the Blue Mountain Christian Retreat, October 1993 when, after 2 days of worshipping with and talking to and hearing the testimonies of ex-Jehovah's Witnesses who turned to Christ, I knew God had led me into a world of desperate human need that the church doesn't even know really exists but which needs the Gospel as badly as any other mission field .. that being the sea of humanity deceived, traumatized and in bondage to false religion ..

I remember leaving the service that night, preached by an ex-Witness elder who'd come to Christ and became a Pentecostal minister, my head filled with the memories of the tears, the sorrows, the laughter, the hope and the despair of that group of two hundred people from all over the United States who gather there yearly. My heart and mind were completely blown away from what really, truly was that uncommonly amazing grace they'd found in the arms of the Savior and what to a man and woman they testified to.

It was a completely black, still autumn night with a cold starfield burning down above that hilltop resort. I listened to the wind sighing through the trees, felt the cold bite through my light jacket and realized I could not look at the world the same any longer. I know now that I was changing the direction of my ministry completely. I might never church plant nor pastor. But I barely knew then somehow that I'd turned a corner .. and today, I am now beginning to really get a grasp on that ..

I can't walk away from this. I remember the Macedonian Call ..

I can't stop taking the phone calls and talking to anxious people who've lost their loved ones to some cultic mind trap.

I can't stop from rising up to oppose the blasphemy and lies that cults generate to confuse and destroy.

I can't walk away from those who have called to us to help, fine choice brothers and sisters around the world who labor where no one else cares to go, especially when most of the church ignores the mission field that not only knocks at their door but slips in and then out of their church's revolving door.

With preachers and ministries and well worn paths in church work extending everywhere else and with the memories of this and other instances in helping those ripped off by false religion and left for dead, I cannot walk away from this countercult work which few, if anyone else, really labors in to pursue pastoral work.

Our work continued fervently since that cold night on that Pennsylvanian mountain.

Since then, we have had many relationships with cult members as well as ex-members. We've actually had connections with Remnant Fellowship members who were still in the group but who requested dialogue with us. We also actually helped a family narrowly escape the mind controlling snare of Remnant Fellowship several years ago. They were related to some friends of ours here in Cleveland and we spent almost four to five hours working with them to reconsider their decision to affiliate with Remnant after leaving one of Remnant's summer camps in Franklin, Tennessee only 2 hours drive of here. That truly was a memorable evening.

Perhaps the video below will show one of the most personally fulfilling and satisfying kinds of ministry we've ever had in this regard in terms of helping some one out of a cult .. enjoy it!

3 of 3 on the way!

The Frog Swimming In The Kettle: The Paganization Of Zondervan And Intervarsity Press

From Peter Jones' newsletter: while I don't agree with everything Mr. Jones has written, there's an awful lot of what his commentary on the paganizing of Christianity in the last days that cannot be dismissed: to wit .. his latest e-mail

My colleague, Mike Horton, has just published a book, Christless Christianity. I write, so to speak, from the belly of this beast, attending the National Pastors' Conference, sponsored by Zondervan and Intervarsity Press, which is taking place in San Diego, February 9-14, 2009. It is amazing to see how these once faithful publishers of evangelical orthodoxy are now consistently and deliberately launching a massive but subtle attack against the "Fundamentals" for which Evangelicalism stood courageously against liberalism in the past.

While I am struck by the sincerity of the brilliant public speakers (named below), who still have evangelical piety and passion, their openly-stated theology is turning large swathes of the evangelical church into various new forms of old-fashioned though very cool liberalism.

1. UNDERMINING OF SCRIPTURE: Brian McLaren is still widely featured here. He believes that the age of sola scriptura is over. Rob Bell, a plenary speakers, believes the Bible is a "human product...not the product of divine fiat" Little wonder Mr. Bell's former colleague at Mars Hill of Grandville, MI, Ron Golden, now Senior Vice President of World Relief, a ministry of the National Association of Evangelicals, in a seminar I attended, openly boasted, "Karl Barth is my theological mentor." Barth undermined the classical orthodox doctrine of Scripture. Is it surprising that in all the plenaries except one, there was no biblical exposition?

2. THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST: Christ's atoning death was passed over in silence. A few examples:

--In the middle of a "worship service," Andy Crouch of IVP interviewed A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire magazine, about his book, The Year of Living Biblically. Jacobs, a non-practicing Jew, lived for one year according to OT laws, letting his beard grow, wearing Kosher clothes and practicing Sabbath and the Ten Commandments. Crouch did not remind him that the New Testament was part of the Bible, nor that Jesus saw himself as the very center and goal of the Old Testament (Luke 24:27). Jacobs concluded, to applause, that he had become a "reverential agnostic."

--Christ is absent but "Jesus" is here, as the architect of a socio-economic revolution that he began while on earth that we must finish, with the help of all religionists and globalist socialists of good fait h. Shane Claibourne (30), who looked like a youthful throw-back from the Sixties, with tee shirt, very baggy slacks and very long hair constantly exhorted people to get serious about non-materialistic living. His model was Mother Theresa with whom he worked in India, but never once did he make any attempt to include the Gospel of saving grace as the motivation for Christian service. McLaren summed it up: "Jesus teaches a way of life rather than a set of beliefs."

Every video clip from World Vision and other ministries was exclusively about digging wells in Africa. Not a word was uttered about preaching the Gospel to Africans bound in pagan practices or Moslem darkness. We are losing our nerve and closing our mouths! Sooner or later, we will endorse all "valid" spiritualities, as do McLaren and Bell.

A GLOBALIST FUTURE

The other half of the very center of the Gospel-Jesus's physical resurrection-was also absent. A miraculous divine transformation of the physical universe really does not fit this new liberal social gospel of the kingdom, which comes incrementally through our works of social justice. Certainly, eschatology is not a "Left Behind" board game figuring out where we are," but when asked about the Early Church's expectation of the imminent final coming of Christ, McLaren rejected Christ's final coming out of hand, Ron Golden said it was an image of being open to the kingdom coming now, and New Testament scholar Scott McKnight spoke of New Testament eschatology as "metaphorical rhetoric."

This is pure liberalism gone wild, at an evangelical pastors' conference!

DE-PERSONALIZATION OF GOD

With all the emphasis on the earthly Jesus, on our human efforts to bring in the kingdom, and on "Human Flourishing," God as personal savior is vague, even absent. God was referred to in a large plenary session as "God revealing ‘godself,'" thus successfully avoiding any gender-specific language for God but successfully depersonalizing Him. The absence is filled by seeking God's "presence" through mysticism and so-called "spiritual disciplines," so widespread in impersonal pagan spirituality.

Both the bold-faced audacity but more, the naiveté of this project is quite stunning. There is no mention anywhere of the vastly superior pagan project, already well-developed, to construct a this-worldly socio-economic utopia, very similar to neo-evangelical's this-worldly "kingdom of God."

Will this "shovel-ready eschatology" of human justice be digging the church's own grave? Will the two meet one day, and then, as Jesus asked (Luke 18:8), "Will the Son of Man, when he comes, find faith on the earth?"


Christos Kurios: Christ is Lord

Peter Jones

Answering Some More Questions From Lee University's EVA 363 For 2009 1 of 3

To the EVA 363 class of Lee University:

Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to share with you in your class last Tuesday. I think we spent most of the time on the issues of cultic culture and recruitment and barely brushed your excellent and thoughtful questions you submitted. I am afraid that my zeal for ensuring you understand those issues took our time there.  I hope that the videos and discussion are helping you appreciate the fact that the Cultworld is indeed a culture of cultures and a world of worlds that are what Christians seeking to fulfill Christ's Great Commission must grapple with.

It is understanding this world that will make a great difference in how you approach it with Christian witness. For cult evangelism, as in any truly Biblical evangelistic strategy, involves more than just proclamation of the Gospel - it will require the building of relational bridges that will involve the pastoral, the prophetic, the apostolic and the teacher. In any given evangelistic moment in which you bear witness to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus, Christian truth itself will be challenged across the many settings of encounter you will come across as you go "into all the world."  These challenges will come when people ask hard questions out of personal pain, cynical skepticism or out of their own philosophical and spiritual convictions, as well as out of the wiles of cultic recruitment techniques.

So you must be ready to become a student as well as servant of those who you hope to reach for Christ, to have prepared yourself to hear out their questions and have, as Peter said to "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (KJV) In 1 Cor 9:22-25, Paul alludes to this as well when he compared becoming "all things to all men" in his personal evangelism to that of preparing for a footrace: "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever." (NIV)


I believe that your questions reflect a serious intent on your part to be engagers of the culture of the Cultworld, and it's my prayer that these answers will be of help to you .. Let me address these for you here and I will arrange to have a copy of this sent to Dr. Effler as well.

Your questions broke down into roughly three categories: you wanted to discuss

1. Research - specific information on the cult problem that quantifiable study has provided
2. Approaches - how to dialogue and deal with the unique problems cult evangelism presents
3. Mind Control - what it is and what it involves

You also asked some other miscellaneous questions and asked for testimony.  I will try to be as brief as I can .. Your questions are in italicized bold font here and listed under the 3 categories:

Research

What percent of Americans operate in cults?

How many different cults exist in America?

These are excellent but exceedingly difficult questions to answer due to several variables.

First, one needs to define which of the innumerable social gatherings around us in our world should be identified as cultic. The old saying that "one man's religion is another's cult" is a rather cynical proverb that completely ignores the fact that cultism can and does involve movements that aren't typically viewed as cultic, from business associations to therapy groups to codependent relationships. These are cultic settings virtually invisible to independent observation, off of most people's social radar screens, but are no less spiritually toxic or dangerous.

Secondly, objective information is quite sketchy when it comes to numbering those groups that are popularly viewed as cultic movements. As we've said, cultism is a slippery social abberrance that defies easy definition. Estimates of how many questionable groups that are popularly called "cults" exist have ranged from 2000 to 5000, and are often unreliable due to the short life cycle of most of them. Many divide into splinter groups, become inactive, or regroup and become more or less aberrant.

Thirdly, outside of knowing the current population of the United States (about 305 million) and membership statistics that cultic groups themselves post, we are are limited to making estimates based upon guesswork and older data whose veracity can't be fully proven since their sources have long ago become outdated and inaccurate. For example, the LDS Church claims 8 million members in America (with a world wide total of 13 million) and the Watchtower Society (Jehovah's Witnesses) states they have 1 million  with a global membership of 17 million. Taken at face value, we know that there are at least 9 million members between both of these groups in the U.S. alone. Other cultic groups like the Unification Church(Moonies), the Family (Children of God) and Remnant Fellowship are far more guarded in circulating statistical information about themselves - or are more likely given to issuing misleading or inflated figures.

Fourth, numbers don't tell the full story behind the fluid state of cult membership which can be very difficult to track. Cults typically gain as many members as they lose: the abusive nature of discipline within cults as well is largely responsible for this. The Watchtower Society at one time stated that they annually disfellowship 40,000 members from "Jehovah's organization."  In 1994, the International Churches of Christ, whose membership was about 60,000 worldwide then, was reported to have lost 20,000 members that year alone for a variety of reasons - and from 2003-2007, the LDS Church's membership rolls lost on average about 55,000 each year. This kind of turnover in larger and more established cult groups is readily seen in smaller groups as well. In fact, the rise of innumerable and largely anonymous social gatherings that may number no more than a few dozen individuals at most is where cultism in the 21st century is going. With spiritual anarchy becoming more and more prevalent in the last days (2 Peter 2:10), small groups meeting in living rooms, conference centers and hotel banquet halls are where perhaps the greatest challenges to the Church will emerge.

And another important thing to keep in mind: cult members always impact scores of others around them who may never darken the door of the group (friends, family members, acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers, class members, etc.).   That extended circle of influence easily can involve hundreds of thousands and even millions more.

With all of this in mind, I think the estimates we hear from a variety of authoritative sources about the extent of cult membership are very likely understating the problem. If we limit the working definition of what constitutes a cultic group as one that is authoritarian in leadership, heretical in doctrine and abusive in practice - the one most familiar to evangelical and secular perspectives - then all of the groups above certainly qualify as bona fide and abusive cults. Both the late Dr. Walter Martin and Dr. Margaret Singer, two world class authorities on cults for their generation, used the same criterion for their definitions of cultic movements and they stated that 20 million people were directly involved in cults back in the 1960's and 1980's. However, they didn't explain how they arrived at this figure, nor differentiate between the various sectarian divisions that constitute it - which have been estimated in the several of thousands by other researchers, estimates that may be quite conservative.

One thing is certain -  the cult problem is real and cultic movements are indeed all around us, as American as Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet. Their spiritually and socially aberrant influences are undeniable realities in Western society today. And they are one of the greatest challenges to the Christian faith today and provide untold amounts of society destabilization that are threats to the social order. They may be Constitutionally protected in the United States, where religious tolerance and diversity has been at its best in Western civilization, but patience for them has grown quite thin in Europe and other parts of the world.

How many churches actually have a countercult ministry?

Not many and far too few.  I personally do not know of any locally, although I'm not at all willing to say they don't exist. Spiritual discernment may be at all time low in the church, but there are still masses of Christians who still value it enough to pursue it through intentional response aimed at countering cultic influence. These are individuals who can be found among many Christian churches who create small ad hoc groups and ministries seeking to respond to the perceived challenges that the activities of cults or the occult have supplied - often at widely varying levels of knowledge and experience but with undeniable zeal and piety.

Some church-based ministries (click here and here to locate a couple of them) do exist across the nation, but few evangelical and mainline church leadership circles seem aware that a problem with cults even exist, let alone seek to take a proactive approach to their societal devastation within their own immediate reach. Some like the Southern Baptist Convention have established denominational offices seeking to equip their movement, as has the Church of God (Cleveland). Spiritwatch Ministries was launched as a Christian outreach of the Westmore Church of God in 1993 and was originally entitled the Tennessee Valley Bible Students Association, continuing the outreach even after its'  formal connection with Westmore ceased in 2002.

More to follow:

Truth Decay And The LDS Church: A BYU Professor Reaffirms The Shelf Life Of Integrity For His Students

"We never provide meat when milk will do .. " In other words, says the good Dr. Robert Millet of Brigham Young University to the cream of the LDS Church's young minds, the truth isn't owed to anyone who doesn't ask the "right kind of questions."

You can't make this stuff up.



Here you can watch the entire clip here as a Windows stream. The entire exercise of arrogant refusal to engage in actual dialogue over the truth claims of Mormonism's secret history is symptomatic of the LDS Church's long standing commitment to deceit and double talk about its less than stellar past.

Millet's pathetic dodge here is just one of the more recent examples of academic spin doctoring that BYU routinely engages in to reinforce the Mormon mythos about it's history that it's cultic culture religiously reinforces at every possible opportunity: listen to what LDS apostle Boyd Packer once dictated to an LDS educator's symposium back in 1981:

You seminary teachers and some of you institute and BYU men will be teaching the history of the Church this school year. This is an unparalleled opportunity in the lives of your students to increase their faith and testimony of the divinity of this work. Your objective should be that they will see the hand of the Lord in every hour and every moment of the Church from its beginning till now. ...

Church history can be so interesting and so inspiring as to be a very powerful tool indeed for building faith. If not properly written or properly taught, it may be a faith destroyer. ... There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. ... Some things that are true are not very useful. ...

That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith -- particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith -- places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities. ...

In the Church we are not neutral. We are one-sided. There is a war going on and we are engaged in it.

("The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect" delivered at the Fifth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators' Symposium, August 22, 1981, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.)

At least someone got something right. There is indeed a war going on. It's too bad that only the belligerent knows it and their prey doesn't have a clue.

A Little Bit More Conviction Redux: Some Old Research On Cults and Christian Mission

A Church of God (Cleveland) pastor once asked me several years ago if he could tell me how our movement's missions effort compared to that of the Southern Baptist Convention's missionary work as well as that of the two most well known missionary-driven cults, namely the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Latter Day Saints.

I think this was about five or six years ago, and I don't think things have changed much since then. Using each of the official statistics of each group, I came up with the following findings, which make for some troubling reading .. and are oddly, not too surprising in light of the day and age we live in.

• The Church of God (Cleveland) fielded 185 missionaries - read more about them here
  
• The Southern Baptists sent forth 4834 of them in their own laudable mission effort
• The LDS Church fielded a force of young Mormons numbering 65,000
• The Jehovah's Witnesses engaged full-time "Pioneers" numbering 698,781

At a time in which churches have all but abandoned personal door to door Christian outreach, we find that cultic movements have no such qualms and are clearly reaping their own harvests.

What does this say about the Church's priorities? About a few words Jesus had with his disciples about preaching the Gospel in the whole world?

California Screamin: The LDS Church Once Again Under Scrutiny

Since the furor over the November, 2008 passage of Proposition 8 in California has ignited a full scale cultural conflagration between the left and the right over the issue of gay marriages, it has been noised abroad that the LDS Church was one of the co-belligerants with Roman Catholic and Protestant organizations that banded together to advocate votes against it. Like never before, the LDS Church has been dragged out front and center before the public in piercing scrutiny since the wrath of gay activism in the state has been incurred.

Thanks to this recent post by our good friend and mentor Paul Carden of the Centers For Apologetics Research, we can quickly share some links for, as he puts it, "outstanding commentary on what's happening in the world of Mormonis." He wrote in a recent email that "you can't afford to miss "Mormon Coffee":

Recent posts:

Is Mormonism Christian? Two Views
The October 2008 edition of First Things contains a lengthy article titled, “Is Mormonism Christian?” The article is in two parts. The first was written by LDS Seventy Bruce D. Porter and takes one position; Christian professor and author Gerald R. McDermott wrote the second part, concluding with a different opinion.

http://blog.mrm.org/2008/09/is-mormonism-christian-two-views/

Joseph Smith and the Magical Autumnal Equinox

http://blog.mrm.org/2008/09/joseph-smith-and-the-magical-autumnal-equinox/

The Fruit of “Fanatical Earnestness”: The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses

http://blog.mrm.org/2008/09/the-fruit-of-fanatical-earnestness-th e-testimony-of-the-eight-witnesses/

Feeling Lucky? The Probability of Exaltation

http://blog.mrm.org/2008/09/feeling-lucky-the-probability-of-exaltation/

... thanks Paul. You might want to read more about the Proposition 8 furor in California and its resultant social and political fallout. Check this link and this one out ..

My Most Recent Debate: Text Online

Sometimes heresy gets real personal.

Click here to read the text of an online debate I had with an antitrinitarian heretic on a bulletin board I frequent. He claims to be the son of a minister within my movement, the Church of God (Cleveland) which is decidedly Trinitarian and views the Trinity as an unbiblical tradition of men.

Since I don't take too kindly to supposed Church of God members going behind our back to spread the kind of heretical bosh that we're fighting head on, I challenged him to defend his views in an online debate chat room. After his own hemming and hawwing, he finally did.

Enjoy the read. I let you decide who had the better case.

The Deranging Of The Guard: How Cults Find The Times They Are A Changing

Things increasingly are not what they seem any more when it comes to the countercult world.

It is sobering when you realize that a co-belligerant in the war between the truth of Scripturally based Christian faith and life and the error of unscripturally founded antichristian spirituality that you thought stood with you turns out to have their own agenda. They have become the new guard for the new advance of cultic flanking that still targets the Christian church, having chosen to selectively abandon discernment and countercult work.

In case you're not aware of what this word means, in our admittedly humble yet firm calling to ministry, Spiritwatch Ministries is fully engaged in what is known as countercult ministry.

Allow me to define it a bit more from our perspective (this is taken from our FAQ page on the site)

The Scriptures have made it crystal clear that the prophecies about the end of all things and Christ's Second Coming would be foreshadowed by a tidal wave onslaught of deception. The explosive proliferation of unorthodox and aberrant religious activity in the past thirty years is , we feel, the fulfillment of this stark and sobering prophetic warning by Christ. Therein lies the critical need for a never ending vigilance against the onslaught of heresy and a never ending readiness to provide a reasoned response to its seductive advances - through upholding Christian orthodoxy and engaging in countercult work.

Countercult ministry is a militant response to this challenge of Satan. Dr. Gordon Lewis' remarks on this are sobering and to the point as he sought to highlight the high stakes involved:

" .. we are led to specialize in delivering people from counterfeit religions. .. we seek to expose (1) deceptive teachings, (2) immoral ways of life, and (3) oppressive ministerial, missiological tactics, like heavy-handed shepherding of every detail of life in religions, cults and the occult. But these are two-edged swords that have a way of cutting against aberrant Christians as well as cultists. Our battle is not only against the religious oppressors of this dark world, but also against 'the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms' (Eph. 6:12) .. Among the evils we deplore in the cults are abuses of human rights, destructive violence, institutionalized violence, and the undermining of the family and the inhuman exploitation of people in the cults. We must deplore those evils even more if they occur among missionaries to the cults or aberrant Christian groups."

That's why we do what we do. The kind of ministry we offer to our fallen world is sorely needed everywhere, especially when churches and pastors seem so clueless about the issues at hand. We counselled a woman recently whose husband's involvement in a cult compelled her to seek a counselling session with their pastor. He'd already stopped going to church, reckoning their parish to be a lair of demonic darkness. After two hours, the pastor concluded that nothing he'd said penetrated her husband's confident veneer and that he would march out flush with pride over his martyr's stance, which is just what his cult leader had already programmed him to adopt as the godly perspective on the matter.

And the band plays on, even as certain researchers sniff over footnotes and imagined slights against "true understanding." Such situations highlight how ill prepared Christian churches largely are to handle the spiritual, let alone social challenges of cultism. We offer a source of objective and purposeful truth as well as counsel to assist the victims of cultic totalitarianism, along with a Biblical Christian and pastoral perspective to them. We research and do what we can to spread the world about the unique and aberrant spirit of each cult group's deceptive operation and we've been able to help many over the years.

However, as the endtime apostacy lurches on, the undercutting of countercult work goes on like a steady water boarding on the body politic of the Christian Church that actually seeks it out. Increasingly, it seems that the hour of compromise has arrived and is even now at the doors of the Christian countercult community.

Things, Jesus said, that would happen .. From the Religious Researcher blog .. a worthy blog worth visiting

According to an article posted online two days ago at Christianity Today, “Two notable critics have changed their minds on the controversial ‘local churches’ movement that follow the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.” The two critics are Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI), and Gretchen Passantino Coburn, director of Answers in Action (AIA). The article refers to a booklet to which Hanegraaff and Passantino Coburn contributed and that the Defense and Confirmation Project, a pro-Local Churches group, published in November 2007. Entitled The Local Churches: “Genuine Believers and Fellow Members of the Body of Christ”, the booklet includes “Testimonies” (as the title page quite correctly calls them) from Hanegraaff, Passantino Coburn, and Fuller Theological Seminary. Fuller’s contribution is a statement representing the assessment of Richard Mouw, the school’s president, and two other Fuller professors.

I have been quite reluctant to enter the fray of this debate, which has actually been going on for several years, but have decided now to say something.

This blog entry, written by Robert Bowman, the director of the Institute for Religious Research can read in full here. It raises once again this very issue, one which the Christian countercult community ignores at it's ultimate peril.

The history in recent years of lone ranger countercult researchers is depressing. We've beheld entirely too many instances coming up in which personal zeal and conviction have spilled over into divisive and polarizing contentions waged more for market share of self-accreditation then Christian apologia. For too long, academics and iconoclasts have assailed the countercult enterprise as one fraught with sloppy research, bad presuppositions and just outright meanspirited and sectarian myopia more concerned with "border maintenance" then with "missional" outreach to cults. Click here to read one cult's apologist's dismissive comments on their abortive efforts to bridge the wide divide between them and orthodox Christianity. And read how a seminary professor, in the height of a presumption difficult to understate, decided to apologize to the LDS Church on behalf of the Evangelical church for what he said were Evangelical misrepresentations of Mormon errors - a man who superintends the development of Evangelical ministers and church leaders.

Now we're finding this perplexingly unwarranted position becoming more and more the norm by the countercult community. And now, with Rob Bowman's post, in response to that Christianity Today article, a few things come to mind here that I think need to be said as a director of Spiritwatch Ministries.

Hank Hanegraaf is an intelligent Christian man who feels called to speak to issues concerning apologetical and theological controversy. He's been doing this at CRI since the death of Dr. Walter Martin. However, he is as equally polarizing a figure in countercult and apologetic circles as he is in the public eye. I know many fellow EMNR members, for example, who have had major problems with his ministry for many years. Many other apologetical and countercult researchers and writers who at one time were all on staff at CRI have long ago bolted and started their own ministries elsewhere (from Robert Bowman to Paul Carden) due to Hank's rather autocratic manner and for many other questionable things too numerous to get into here. That should say something.

Why he decided to leave California for North Carolina isn't clear to me, but there were an awful lot of controversies he left in the dust there. He now lives pretty comfortably in North Carolina - at least as cushily as he did in Southern California.

Personally, I have nothing against him. But Hank is one of the most abrasive people I've ever heard when it comes to speaking apologetically and defending the Gospel. It sticks out like a sore thumb when he gets on the radio and when he makes his teaching tapes. His brilliance is probably equalled by his apparent disregard for civility. There's a lot of what he says in his Christianity In Crisis and Counterfeit Revival books that is true but that's because he rides shotgun on the research labors of CRI staffers who do most of the collection and analysis of the materials he reviews to make his case. He may be true many times, but even then, HOW he says it makes him sound divisive, arrogant and puffed up with superiority.

Listen to the audiobook version of Christianity In Crisis as he reads his material and you can see how absolutely vicious he sounds. I think he has real and personal issues that lie behind the spleen venting he uses this on air and on the soundstage. I suspected this years ago and was taken to task by a countercult leader for sounding so subjective about telling him that I felt something wasn't quite right with Hank's approach. However, there's just a bit of the Bible about the fruit of the Spirit that Hanegraaf needs to review which my associate might agree with at this point.

For this and other reasons (like his lavish lifestyle, treatment of other Christian researchers at one time under his direction, and questionable fund raising -- as well as his siding with the cultic Local Church at a time when this antichristian cult was suing a Christian publisher and the Christian apologist whose book they hated), we long ago decided that we will not endorse Hank's work or CRI. You will not find a link to CRI on the Spiritwatch website.

And now, since Gretchen Passentino Coburn is persisting in lining up behind Hanegraaf's profoundly inexplicable and flawed defense of the Local Church, our lamentable response is to have to remove her Answers In Action website link off our site as well. We deeply regret having to come to this conclusion.

What all of these religious muddlers fail to realize is how much of a part of the Trojan Horse of error they've become part and parcel of. They've become by default accomplices to the cultism and end time deception that is being wheeled into the last remaining strongholds of discernment that remain in the church today. They have become the block for the end run of apostacy in our latter times. In their concerted efforts to advance objectivity, they have become the friend of error on the grounds of a quixotic position in which to win those in error, they advance compromises of Biblical truth.

It's a sad day, I fear, but one which guarantees the need for even greater effort to sound the alarm.

That's life in the End Times for you.

Too Late At Night Department: Enjoy A Cheezy Christian Video From The 1980's With A Great Message

After finishing a long and grueling reedit of some pages on the website, after 10 numbing hours of work helping Mr. Whirlpool support our ministry, I wanted to try to start getting a post up about a lot of the troubling things of the End that daily confront us which we all pretty much ignore as we slouch to Gommorrah. However, in lieu of sobering commentary about our apostate age which my tapped out intellect refuses to assemble, thought I just would let a video do some talking.

Yeah, it's the Seventy Sevens. With a pretty silly Christian video from the mid 1980's. This was featured on our YouTube channel and I'm grasping at straws as my brain misfires here. But I gotta get something out there .. and I hope this gives someone visiting the blog who sees "the light" pouring in from blacklit holes of spiritual corruption a chuckle .. or a cuff of the ears.

"Join Us": Quite Possibly Another Best Video On Cultism Of All Time

December was a tough time for me. Some personal struggles contributed to an inability to do any further blogging since November. But, by the sheerest grace of God in Christ by the Spirit, I hope to blog more regularly this new year. I hope that aside from reporting on the end time apostacy that continues to march across the land, that more of the grace that much more abounds where sin runs rampant will shine through here.

Starting with my shamelessly whole hearted endorsement of what I think is quite possibly "another" best video on cultism of all time.

I've heard about this movie for a year or so, but finally stumbled across a promotional clip for it on the Vision TV network, a Canadian cable system, as they were remembering the 30 year anniversary of the Jonestown horror, something that for all too many is ancient history about "those people" on the fringe, wackos they'd NEVER get involved with.

Once I viewed this harrowing and haunting clip, I was absolutely owned. When I saw Liz Shaw of Wellspring involved and saw what had to be the long, winding almost endless back country roads leading to Wellspring (we know because Joy and I have been there), I knew immediately this was going to be a powerful work. That word doesn't come close to describing how profoundly, utterly absorbing this film became for us.

The DVD cover for the film, which you can buy, says

"There are thousands of cults in America. This is the story of one of them."

The story is actually far from over ..

For more information on the film and the people whose haunted lives are so vividly captured in it, visit the official website for "Join Us" and catch even more clips of the movie.

We are hoping to secure permission for a showing of "Join Us" in Cleveland within the next couple of months. Stay tuned!

God Still Runs The Show: Post Election Ennui & Truth Telling

From what I've read, seen and heard over the past two years on both sides of the political snakepit, one would have assumed that either the Antichrist or his False Prophet were coming to power. This was a pretty feral time of political warfare.

The heated discussions in the mall and in the workplace, the emails my Christian friends flooded my inbox with, as well as the posts here on this forum - if they were to be believed - asserted an arrival of the Dark Ages one way or the other and demanded we get out and vote it all away.

Well as the clean up in Grant Park in Chicago continued, I woke up this morning and was able to get out of bed myself. My beautiful wife was snuggled next to me.

I discovered that the electricity is still on.

The sun is right now beginning to rise over the Chilhowee mountains with the promise of a beautiful fall day in East Tennessee.

Last night the moon didn't turn blood red and fall into the sea.

And now we see when American democracy works once again and our nation chose who it wanted as its next president. The millions of man hours and billions of dollars spent by an American electorate displayed our country at its best and at its worst.

Certain elements of the Christian Church were hysterical in defending one side or the other, ordaining fasting and prayer to head off the Great Apostacy or introduce a blue colored Change Train to take us into a new human Millenium.

Through it all, indeed, above it all, an old song rings in my head ..

Our God reigns .. Our God reigns ..

In the end, American political tradition has determined who will become the lead ringmaster of the political circus in Washington. A whole new administration filled with its agendas, paybacks, idealism and naked grabs for power will rotate into the Big Top. He will become an anointed cherub or a tool of Satan to one side or the other. It would not have mattered whether it was Democrat or Republican. The end remained the same since human hearts and America's march into the end times continues ..

While the triumph of one party goes on and another bows out in defeat and the people of America shout, blog, curse and scream over the perceived direction we're supposedly going to go, once more, I see, we're doing it entirely with the belief that one side or the other is going to run the show. Churches filled with Christians who thought Change would come with a new face on the throne in the White House are among them.

Let the Word of God stand and remind us of a couple things ..

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. They are brought down and fallen: but we are risen, and stand upright. For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him. I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn: Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck. For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another

Newsflash: God wasn't surprised last night. One wonders, the way some spoke, that He was nervously sweating out watching the polls close, squirming on the edge of the Throne. Things are going as they were going to go. Regardless who you voted for, what your convictions, or whatever any of the legions of political pundits, late night talking heads, and oracle spouting prophets may fulminate, let's not forget what the living Word of God says here.

Let's rejoice and praise God for what He's been doing, is doing and will CONTINUE to do, quite without our help .. and that's rule and reign from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love. Our God is STILL an awesome God. Things are moving along to the final consummation of the ages .. to the Day of the Lord just ahead ..

No matter what Bill Maher or Newt Gingrich says.

Political Pietism: An article ahead of its' time ..

I normally don't tackle politics here but there's a point to this brief commentary:

With the headlong collision of presidential elections on the way, one wonders if America might be best served by considering the third party candidates who will be on ballots nationally but who will be largely invisible and off the radar of American voters this year as in most all other Presidential election years. That's because the American electorate are all largely lemmings and they aren't going to act a whole lot more differently this year then in 2000 when third party candidates had their best shot at becoming a real voice in American political change.


There aren't deep enough wells of political consciousness (spelled critical thinking) among Americans to vote anything but Democrat or Republican. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns demonstrate a ruthless energy in spinning the facts about one another and their own policies even as we speak through the mass media. Both demonstrate an inordinate ability in evading any real answers to the challenges an American President will need to deal with in the next four years. So therefore, we're stuck with them. There's no sufficient depth of mass outrage and real taste for change to look beyond both parties. No one wants to gamble on the unknown and the third parties have utterly failed to attract attention to their platforms since most Americans are too disinterested enough to engage in real reflection, let alone political passion, that might fire a new third part alternative.

And any third party, regardless who they are, are going to have insurmountable odds in cracking the liberal bias of the mass media and gain sufficient respect to garnish the kind of attention they'll lavish on things Republican or Democratic. So it's a wrap as far as I see it. Unless the third parties consistently master and then sustain an eye catching campaign that engages those voters who look beyond the obvious and encourages them to critical political thought, it ain't going to happen and I'm not going to waste an ounce more of my own taps of idealism on a battle that won't be won.

But that surely won't ever stop the continued Red vs Blue state antagonism from rearing it's head anyway. The inevitable obliteration between the circles of secular civic duty and spiritual Christian influence in American politics gets particularly noticeable every four years when the more outspoken and activistic circles of evangelicalism get involved. This hasn't been lost on Christian observers as well as less reverent ones like Bill Maher and the producers of "Jesus Camp" who see this ugly diffusion. They raise a stink over religion being visible in the secular seats of American political discourse ... and an equally loud rhubarb has been sounded by Christians who refuse to allow encroaching and antichristian secularism to dominate the debate.

In so doing, however, Christians can certainly seem as dense as their secular counterparts.

One such Christian observer, pastor Joseph McAuliffe of a Tampa, Florida congregation penned the following essay in the June 1993 issue of Charisma, barely four months after Bill Clinton first became president of the United States in November, 1992: it bears out what we've observed:

POLITICAL PIETISM by Pastor Joseph R. McAuliffe, Tampa, FL (Charisma, June 1993)

Considering his political leanings, it's not surprising that President Clinton would be endorsed by homosexuals, radical feminists, ultraliberals and MTV rockers. What does surprise me is the widespread support Clinton is enjoying from the Christian community, particularly the charismatic group some refer to as "the prophetic movement."

A recent copy of The Morning Star Prophetic Bulletin featured an article titled, "The Clinton Administration: Its Meaning and Our Future," which was discussed in the Editorial column of the March Charisma. The Morning Star article is based on a dream that well-known prophet Paul Cain received prior to the election - a dream that predicted Clinton's win.

Cain's interpretations of why God wanted Clinton to win is, in my opinion, dubious, if not altogether amiss. Paul Cain's revelation contains several salient admonitions such as the importance of humility and prayer. But overall, I believe it is misguided political pietism.

Cain claims that he "saw the Lord putting His Spirit upon Bill Clinton and changing him into another man just as he did King Saul." Cain says God is going to give Clinton "the power of the Holy Spirit to lead this country. What some people in the church regarded as a defeat is actually a blessing from the Lord. "If the church will pray for this, it will come to pass" (emphasis mine).

That last phrase is most telling. If Clinton turns out to be in the future what he's been in the past - a tax-and-spend statist of questionable morals who espouses abortion and homosexual rights - then it's the church's fault for not praying. That seems lame to me. I know God works through prayer, but doesn't the Bible teach that He distributes His Spirit principally in terms of His initiative and calling?

Sounding like the chairman of the Democratic party, Cain says the Lord showed him that Clinton's "waffling on the issues" was "really a genuine openness...to do what is right and fair." The Lord said that Clinton "was a listener" and that listening "is a demonstration of humility."

Since the inauguration and Paul Cain's prophetic dream, we have witnessed the "humble listener" appoint a cabinet comprised of all pro-abortion leftist Democrats with no track record of upholding biblical values. Listening is an important social skill, but God admonishes us to "take care what you listen to" (Mark 4:24, NASB).

The Morning Star article makes a statement typical of' the latent anti-doctrinal disposition of the prophetic movement: "In many ways it is better to have wrong doctrines with humility than to have right doctrines with pride."

That's the kind of aphorism you might find in a Kahlil Gibran greeting card. Innumerable blunders have been inflicted upon humanity by humble bumbles. The unorthodox Gandhi, Sun Myung Moon, Mary Baker Eddy and Albert Schweitzer were all theologically misguided despite their reputed humble bearings. Sometimes it's better to have right doctrines with a little arrogance like Athanasius, Martin Luther, John Calvin and even the apostle Paul, who once declared that the apostolic pillars "added nothing" to him (see Gal. 2:6).

Cain correctly predicts that, like Solomon, Clinton's first test would be "the issue of life" - but he contends that if the church would repent and pray, the outcome would be different.

Well, on January 22, (1993) with more than 100,000 God-fearing citizens gathered in Washington, D.C., to pray for the unborn and millions more praying in their home churches, Clinton swiftly issued five executive orders making it easier to obtain an abortion. In April, he proposed revoking the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits funding abortions with tax dollars. The following week he recommended the federal health insurance policies include funding abortions.

Are we supposed to believe this happened because Christians didn't repent or pray enough?

In Cain's dream, God reportedly blames the church for the moral degeneration in America. So corrupt politicians, porn-peddlers, leftist educators and criminals are all absolved from blame for the moral woes of our nation. Certainly the Church needs reformation, but should it be the scapegoat for America's sins?

Cain's dream ends with a call for the church to be humble and pray accompanied by the promise that, if we do, the Lord will "give us great cause for rejoicing." That would be swell. I pray that Bill Clinton does experience a Nebuchadnezzar-type conversion, but it's more likely that he and Hillary will be a repeat of Ahab and Jezebel.

I believe God gave us Bill Clinton not to bless this country, but to judge us for our rebellion. Perhaps the damage that Clinton will inflict upon America will humble this nation and turn us to God. But I fear the effect of Cain's prophecy will be to turn Christians away from the public square and back to the monastery.


Joseph R. McAuliffe pastors Tampa Covenant Church in Tampa, Florida.

The Deconstruction Of An Atheist: Following Evidence Can Be Enlightening

Reasons To Believe is one of the wonderful group of Christians in the Body of Christ who are devoted to the noble task of defending the faith from a more classical apologetics stance that grapples head on with the challenges posed by skeptical question and secular attack. These are the kinds of issues raised by agnostics, atheists and those raised in the postchristian era we live in that is becoming as pagan and devoid of the Judeo-Christian frame or theistic reference to reality that we've taken for granted. This is the kind of worldview that our secular age on this side of the Enlightenment has come to increasingly prefer, one in which Christianity is just one of many choices in the metaphysical marketplaces that's been tasted and found wanting.

So when one of atheism's most erudite spokesmen, British philosopher and author Anthony Flew announced that he was abandoning atheism for a theistic worldview that posited the existence of a Creator a few years ago, there was no little fanfare in those corners of the world where secular atheism has reigned as its own religion of reason.

You can read how Mr. Flew arrived at his conclusion by clicking HERE.

The Second Coming of Christ, Episode DCCVII

And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there;

believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things

Mark 13:21-23

Is this dramatic picture a depiction of great religious fervor and piety? An inspiring glimpse into a reenactment of the earthly ministry of Christ somewhere in some religious theme park in Florida? Is it a photo snapped at some church pageant playing in Peoria? Could it be part of some Christian passion play in which a long haired actor portrays Jesus Christ before a modern audience before he takes the robes and sandals off and goes home to eat pizza and help his kids do their homework?

Nope. The reality is considerably different, yet hardly unique.

It's a picture taken of a Russian man calling himself Vissarion, a former KGB agent and traffic cop who, since 1989, openly claims to be Jesus Christ Himself, denying that he is God incarnate and preaching to his spellbound flocks a gospel tinged with New Age universalism as well as a stringent call for retreat from a fallen world not of their sect, the "Church Of The Last Testament". His followers embrace a discipline of simple, communal life among other believers where the "Word of Vissarion," several volumes of his personal teaching, become their focus for spiritual life. And thousands have flocked to his Siberian stronghold mostly from Russia but from Europe and Asia as well to assume his discipline and worship him daily. According to many reports, between 4 to 5,000 followers live in 40 small villages within a few hours drive of his mountain home where he lives in simplicity, preaches, receives visitors and paints. He's started to travel around the world in preaching tours to spread his Word and his sect grows daily.

It is at once obvious that Vissarion's great draw lies in his public persona as a robed, long haired and bearded sage whose beatific smile, calm personal magnetism and inspirational oratory play to the Christ ideal firmly entrenched in popular Russian society for centuries thanks to the Russian Orthodox Church and more recently, Western and home grown Evangelical influences. For many of the millions who have been sensitized to these concepts of a Savior named Jesus who came to deliver the suffering from their sins and the madness of the world, this vision is compellingly embodied in Vissarion's self-representation and preaching that exhorts love for all, virtuous life of restraint and renunciation of the outer world. With their spiritual sensitivities aroused, they readily become the itinerant support systems for preachers and prophets of all philosophical and spiritual stripes.

But what seems to become the inevitable hook for Vissarion's followers that goes way beyond his Bible costume persona is his teaching that prophecies a soon coming transformation of mankind that resonates with the spiritual ideals many of them held that were nurtured by global mysticism and New Age evolutionary theory that has arisen in these postchristian times. He teaches that salvation for mankind can only begin with "the emergence of a single field of conscience in the whole human society on earth. This is an important condition for full-scale development. The task now is to immediately articulate a new doctrine for all people." (This quote is taken from the first link in this paragraph to an interview held with Vissarion)

This is precisely the kind of nebulous metaphysical singsong that has echoed throughout pop spirituality since the advent of an occult revival in the West. It plays in the Peorias of personal longing for a world free of war, hatred, pain, fear and want .. and it has become a smash hit for many a weary man and woman with spiritual sensitivities seeking a Savior, however they defined "him" .. which Vissarion readily does for them. After redefining His "first incarnation" without any reference to an atoning death for the world, Vissarion says he's now returned to begin the next phase of divine revelation, one that involves the creation of a "a micro-community .. that will be able to become the foundation of a bigger society, a new civilization of the future." In short, Vissarion preaches the development of a Utopian society similar to the Oneida, Shaker, Bruderhof and Moravian Herrnhut communities that will spiritually transform the darkened world around them by spiritual osmosis.

And those same thousands think this is just swell, flocking to his spiritual communities in Siberia to live off the land in shacks, giving all of their earthly wealth and possessions up to Vissarion's ever receptive hand, and praising him as the second incarnation of Christ, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that the Christ of the Bible is a unique incarnation of God as the Son, not another fleshly creation he set up shop within. Reports of extremism in the movement have surfaced that suggest that the usage of all too well known tools of social control in new religious movements could be employed and yet cannot be substantiated. Only investigation and monitoring of the movement, as well as interviews with members who do leave, could provide any clues and frankly, it would not be a surprise if it was going on. Human nature is the same everywhere.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, posits that the kind of unfeigned fervor expressed by Vissarion's flocks was to be expected. In the midst of a materialistic and hardscrabble post-Soviet society impoverished of spiritual and moral foundations, people seeking meaning and hope for otherwise empty lives will gravitate towards those who exhibit the irresistable "works of the spirit." For those sickened by the hypocrisy, cruelty and dehumanizing conditions of modern society, the convicting argument for their truth claims seen in their chaste, sober and simple lives become what she calls "a sturdy guideline" that they swallow wholeheartedly. The old saying that a man with an experience will confound the man with an argument everytime holds true here. And Biblical illiteracy doesn't help either. With no other objective source of truth, the dynamic power of personal charisma will seize the masses every time.

Oh, and it helps when all time in the Vissarion communities is measured from Vissarion's birthday to keep your sense of reality where he thinks it should be - meaning that it is actually the year 48, since he turned 47 in January.

Click here to watch and read an ABC report on Vissarion .. most fascinating .. and sobering.

Such overweaning megalomania doesn't bode well for the Church of the Last Testament. I fear that, hidden behind the rustic simplicity of naked, child like faith that propels the talents and destinies of thousands into community building, the potential for the creation of a spiritual hothouse answerable to no one is off the charts. The most scrupulous and observable morality and chastity has a tendency of becoming the most inpenetrable and inscrutable cloak to unspeakable evil before the eyes of those who don't want to see it (see "Germany, Nazi" in your history books). Prayer that the power of God's Word and Spirit will somehow find its way into the obsessive attentions of Vissarion's followers to turn them back to Him is certainly needed by all who care about these misguided people.

But remember, as Jesus Himself said .. false Christs will arise in the last days. He said they would arise and deceive many. And remember also that I said that Vissarion is hardly a unique character. There's no shortage of messiahs, prophets and cranks today who have created their own cults of personality or full blown religions that have targetted the Christian church and the idealist for their own ends. Sun Myung Moon, the octogenerian founder of the Unification Church cult is one such character who is known as the "Lord Of The Second Advent" but there's always been room for one too many of these frauds: click here to see a photo gallery of recent pretenders to the crown of the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The unimaginably vast multiplication of these spiritual deceivers is a frightening fulfillment that what the real Jesus Christ prophecied in Mark 13 would happen IS happening. Those who gaze upon these developments and don't feel even one touch of icy conviction that we now live in some of the most perilous spiritual times in history are either spiritually naive, wilfully ignorant or someone who needs to repent and do their first works of submission to Christ all over again.

Remember, Jesus said it would be like this ..

Rob Bowman's Done It Again: Read His Study On The Doctrine Of The Trinity

Twenty years ago, Christian researcher Robert Bowman put together one of the finest study outlines I think I've ever seen that helps illuminate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity from a purely Biblical stand point. It is - quite probably - one of the finest Christian resources to trace the revelation of God in Three Persons you'll ever find. Robert's now updated and streamlined it and you are just a mouseclick away from one of the most valuable study resources I think you can find today outside the Bible itself.

Between all of his travel, ministry, research and labor in apologetics, one wonders when this man sleeps! Our congratulations to Rob's promotion to executive directorship of the Institute for Religious Research, one of the finest Christian countercult ministries on the planet. We expect IRR's already vast accomplishments in Christian apologetics to excel even further, bringing greater light upon the Christian faith when contrasted against the heretical and divisive work of the cults!

To read Rob's magnum opus, a newly revised version, click HERE and bring an open Bible, an open mind and the Holy Spirit into your study!

Down But Never Out: The Latest From The Church of $cientology

The Church of Scientology is one of the most ruthless and vicious cults on the planet even as it calls itself a church, enjoys charitable tax-exempt status from the IRS and fields "clergy" who extol the virtues of its dogma. It has more than abundantly proven over and over that far from being the benevolent brotherhood of the only truly sane people on the planet that it's authoritarian control over the lives of its followers is without question perhaps one of the most onerous examples of human authoritarianism concealed under a mask of self-assured virtue.

Based upon the Co$'s late founder L. Ron Hubbard's worldview that mental purification and embracing the rule of Scientology's "applied religious philosophy" would better mankind, the organization has morphed into many forms over the years since its incorporation and has tried hard to come off as an exciting international movement aimed at bettering the human condition and bringing spiritual and social wholeness to a world awash in tragedy and oppresssion. No slouches in using mass media from its start in the early 1950's, the Co$ has poured millions upon millions of dollars in promoting itself, Hubbard's "Dianetics" book that set forth his belief system and a self-improvement cottage industry it fostered. Hubbard's persona was exalted by his followers in all the typical ways one might expect adulation of a saintly sage or anointed adept who had come to save the world from itself.

Yet the truth behind Hubbard's operations couldn't stay under wraps forever. Many have been the testimonials of former members who have seen the dark side of the Church (click to read a disjointed yet factual online text of ex-member Bent Corydon's book "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman?" - be warned, it has an 800 KB download size). The organization Hubbard created throughout the years attracted scores of people whose idealistic longings for personal fulfillment and the betterment of mankind became fuel that fired the boilers of his megalomanical ship that set a course for domination and coopting of Western culture in the most Machiavellian way possible. Hubbard's misanthropic spirit of feral confrontation with critics and those he marked as enemies aimed at completely destroying them eventually began to become public record, as well as the bizarre concepts of his religion which were more like flights of surreal science fiction that were viewed as cutting edge truth he was restoring to a world lost in darkness. The Church's well known habit of assigning astronomically expensive price tags to the self-improvement "auditing" one had to go through to become "clear" from their personal demons is also on record, which is why $cientology can be described with a dollar sign up in its' own name. Hubbard's open rumination that the best way to make money was to start a religion is also on public record, as well as the Church's targetting of the wealthy as well as the celebrities of the land. Keeping thousands of not so well known or prosperous Scientologists in virtual slavery as toiling laborers throughout the organization under the thumbs of tight hierarchies of manipulative leader helped to keep costs down as well and keep the bottom line well stocked.

Slowly but surely, resistence to $cientology's and critics began to arise, unite and speak out to expose the almost innumerable deceptions Hubbard committed as he developed his Church "vision." This occurred even as the IRS and the FBI, who initially were involved in investigating some of the criminal activities that the Church engaged in throughout the 1970's and 1980's, lost their resolve and withdrew from the arenas. These individuals ranged from Hubbard's own son to former high level members who'd seen enough of the brutality and hypocrisy that reigned in $cientology circles. Several prominent lawsuits and dramatic incidences took place that began to show the public that there was more to $cientology than just the public delight that John Travolta, Isaac Hayes and Kirstie Alley took when talking about L.Ron - "the Commodore" - who'd become the captain of their destinies.

For years, Hubbard's "church organization" spawned various auxiliaries who operated as Hubbard's private army of spies and storm troopers, seeking to lash back, discredit and intimidate any one seeking to speak out against their doings. The ferocity of this goon squad has become one of $cientology's greatest weapons into silencing opposition, using harassing phone calls to litigation to surveillance to worry their prey to defeat and capitulation to them. The destruction of the Cult Awareness Network, at one time one of the finest countercult organizations in the world, and its absorption into the $cientology collective as another agency staffed by Church operatives is but one of these stories.

But the tragedy of the Lisa McPherson case, in which a young and mentally unstable Scientologist died in a $cientology facility under the "care" of other Scientologists, brought even more attention to the Church in the mid 1990's than ever before - along with various European government's clear identification of $cientology as a menace to society, even as it enjoyed a renewed season of growth in the U.S. With the advent of the Internet made it possible for activists to unite, pool their efforts and launch concerted, coordinated responses to the many attempts Scientology, as well as begin to make it's rigid, abusive agenda and history known.

Today, Scientology still goes about seeking audiences from those it believes it has a mandate to deliver from ignorance through Hubbard's spiritual "tech." Looking to the charisma of Hollywood luminaries like Tom Cruise, a $cientology convert, to keep their movement in the public eye in the best possible light, their campaign soldiers on. But it no longer can rely upon its Office of Special Affairs agency to be its attack dogs whose snarls of harassment can cause critics to become meek and silent. A critical mass of resistence ranging from well documented websites and exposes such as Operation Clambake to the grassroots counterculting of the shadowy movement of anti-Scientology activists who call themselves Anonymous has become the bane of $cientology and its' worse nightmare come alive, hosting protests across the world at Scientology centers: click here to watch an Anonymous chapter in action in Australia and watch the video below to view Anonymous' video release that announced its formation and objectives:

$cientology, for it's part, continues to recycle and repackage itself as a source of enlightenment even as world wide dissent against it mounts. It's newest attempt as of late is a new series of PSA's (public service ads) being aired to promote a Hubbard book called "The Way To Happiness," a tome that expounds 21 dictums on the virtues of restraint supposedly written by Hubbard in the 1950's. Representing themselves as prophets crying out in the vast wilderness of a Western moral vacuum, they use edgy humor, probing questions and well crafted filming in their campaigns and general promotion of the book (click here to watch one of their 21 - count em' - 21 separate spots the Church created to do so).

In today's modern Babylon where situational morality and generally postmodern liberalism have undermined moral standards, such ads and preaching will find a choir to bewitch, and $cientology leaders know that they have to augment their aging Hubbard's Dianetics "tech" product line to draw more disciples from a new generation. Watching the video above on CNBC reminds us how far along the end time apostacy has gone and how crucial the need for discernment in the Christian Church really is against wolves in sheep's clothing.

But of course that hasn't stopped some members of the Body of Christ from nibbling on the hook of Scientology anyway. You can't make this up - click HERE to watch a CNN report on how a Pentecostal church has embraced Scientology teaching as cutting edge truth needed to bring new light on their spiritual walk.

Jesus said it would be like this. I guess the pastor at the church we just mentioned didn't read that in his translation of the Bible.

Cult Evangelism: A Question From Evangelism 363

When I was asked by Dr. Bill Effler to help teach a couple sessions on evangelizing those in cult groups in his evangelism class at Lee University, my alma mama, back in 2005, I was sent a few questions to respond to from his students. This was a great one that was direct and to the point in regards to reaching those in cults with the Gospel of Christ:

How do we actually effectively evangelize people who are in cults?

I wrote in response:

Evangelism always is and always will be the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. The critical point in any evangelistic sharing is whether or not the person you witness to fully understands what you have said – they grasp the truth claims of the Gospel and their personal implications and you’ve used language they understand coming out of a heart and soul passionately concerned for them.

You would share the Gospel of Christ to a cultist with a strong emphasis on the love of God for them, the authority of God’s Word and that faith in Jesus alone is what brings them to God – not any cultic program of busywork and admonish them to reconsider their claims in light of Ephesians 2:8-9, John 3:16-20 and 1 John 1:9.

In any cult evangelism, there are two important points in effective witness of the Gospel of Christ to cults that must be very intentionally focused upon – dealing with the cultist’s personal understanding of their cult’s path to personal salvation as they understand it and dealing with the terminology differences they hold as well that confuse the dialogue.

Knowing what Cultist X believes about their Leader’s orthodoxy about ultimate salvation is crucial to reaching them where they are and being ready to define terms (like “righteousness,” “grace,” “faith,” etc.) to clearly represent the truth of the Gospel when it is confused with cultic redefinitions of that truth is equally important. If evangelism is, at its ultimate core, the sharing of the Gospel, these two crucial issues must be engaged in any sharing with a cult member.

We have contended that cultic mind control is the great cognitive choke hold that hinders a cult members ability to understand and even personally relate to what you say, and that dealing with those aspects of cultic mind control that effectively suspend (in various degrees) their ability to critically think is just as vital to helping them grasp the truth you share. Reliance on the Spirit of God’s piercing of the veil of cultic blindness that this mind control brings is also just as essential.

I wrote two papers describing the problem and our own approaches to it for the class and adapted them for distribution. I greatly expanded upon these brief responses - and included further discussion on what the differences are between evangelizing and restoring. As Dr. Paul Martin so well said years ago, the great need for many of those affiliated with cults today is not so much outright evangelism at first but a need for an intentional shepherding - to supply guidance of deceived, broken people back to the folds of truth, security and objective thought where they can decompress, mourn, grieve, rage and recover from the cult experience they've been hypnotized with.

Too many Christians fail to realize that the need for a person bound by deceptive wiles in the context of authoritarian spirituality to regain freedom of thought is vital for them to make intelligent, personal and authentic choices about what they will believe. This extends to whether the Gospel of Christ, when shared respectfully with them, is something they'll accept. All too often, quite out of the best of intentions, Christian evangelism for the cult member trying to break away from their abusive group can sometimes seem like just another hard sell tool of spiritual oppression they're trying to be freed from - hence the need to be aware of where the person is at in their spiritual journey.

We respect God's work in the lives of those we try to help, their need to heal and integrate back into real life and await their questions about what we believe while also praying fervently that they will turn to the healing and transforming encounter with the real Jesus that they thought they'd been walking in. Our evangelistic ministry objectives are based upon that and we're not changing any time soon

You can find these papers on the Evangelical Ministries To New Religions website here and here as .PDF files you can save and download. I've just been too lazy to upload them to the Spiritwatch site and may adapt them for online articles with hyperlinks and more of our award winning cool pictures. Any questions, feel free to email.

Children And Cults: Some Things Should Never Mix But It Goes On Anyway

Childhood is a time which we are shaped in what we are to become as not only a human being but as a free individual. It's a well known fact that one's essential approach to life is shaped indelibly by the seminal influences of their childhood. You are what you went through as a little boy or a little girl in a big, wide world you took as it came to you, learning things by raw experience mediated by parents, other kids and the culture you lived in.

The writer Robert Fulghum was right when he stated years ago that by the time we've passed through our kindergarten years that the most formative experiences we've encountered are those that took place as young children .. very young ones. Only those in denial or completely out of touch with their childhood due to trauma, abuse or other reasons could possibly disagree. I can't precisely remember the verbiage, but I remember reading as a child a set of proverbs, formed in couplet form that explained it pretty clearly, stating things like:

If a Child grows up with Criticism,She will learn to Criticize.
If a Child grows up with Hate,He will Learn to Fight.
If a Child grows up with Shame,She will Learn to feel Shame.
If a Child grows up with Praising,He will Learn to Appreciate.
If a Child grows up with Encouragement,She will Learn to be Confident. .. etc.

And of course, the foundation for all of this will be the kind of cultural environment you've been raised in. No matter how well meaning the parental or mentoring relationship of a child, the culture of the social setting they live in largely defines reality for them, assigning biases, fears, observations and values that color all of the positive regard they may receive. Obviously, the more darker side of this culture stains their own consciences and value systems in the hues of the social milieux that they are meant to assume. It's all done instantly, effortlessly, definitively. Children are socialized into becoming who they are by whom they are touched by - be it the most solicitous of parents or slimiest of foster parents.

However, in the toxic world of cultism, where sectarian fellowships and authoritarian worldviews effectively seal their members away from the larger world they live in by invisible bonds of relational influence, the impact of abusive cultic influence on children is far more insidious than can be easily described and yet it is also Constitutionally protected. The slippery slope downward into religious abuse is a descent from the high grounds of freedom of religion that tragically haunts the lives of the members of cultic groups and abusive religions. It must be remembered that religious abuse is an equal opportunity human blight - it occurs in all religions, all faiths. The evangelical Christian church is sadly just as subject to harboring this as the local ashram and Hindu temple or the Jewish synagogue. That is because human beings are pretty much the same and all of us suffer under the same twisted side of human nature that lends itself to dysfunctional human relationships. And all of this is governed by the Western ideal of individualism which asserts the right of an individual to follow their own dictates and be governed by their own conscience, as long as none of the "laws of the land" aren't broken.

So the sexual, physical, social and emotional exploitation of children will automatically follow religous abuses, with predatory and/or manipulative adults working within their cultural frameworks to gain access to and dominate, control and abuse children. Whatever cultural mores the group follows may actually empower and embolden the abuser to pursue one kind of abuse while enabling them to opportunistically engage in another. These twisted people (male and female) may be the hidden minority in any group, but in cults and abusive mainline faiths, the same sick group dynamics that enable and conceal these horrid things are firmly entrenched in their culture where the abuser moves freely, taking cues from the authority claims adults can make within that culture to prey upon children and teens.

For example, a mentoring male adult figure will sexually abuse a pliable teenage girl in his given religious setting on the basis of his given right to assert a divine authority over her to monitor and correct any errant behavior. He might approach her as the Religious Authority or the Counselor or the Good Family Friend or any other cloak he can assume, get her someplace quiet and then force her to yield in any number of ways. He then is able to silence her effectively because he shames and guilts her into silence with dire spiritual censure and citing the consequences of truth coming out (no one will believer her, it was all her fault, her parents will disown her, she'll prove she's a "bad girl", she tempted him, she'll burn in hell, etc.).

Or he can use the infinitely more damaging approach by trying to maintain the image that this was part of a divine plan, that someday she'll "understand," that this was something God wanted her to experience as part of a special "time" in her life, playing upon her immature emotional and sexual drives, fears, longings and lusts to firmly embed her in a deceptive snare of the soul. With her own personal sanctity now utterly violated and redefined against the broader moral standards of the group twisted to fit the abuser's fable he creates to silence her, she's now a toy in the hand of the abuser who will likely continue to use the unique group mores about this in a viciously exploitative way to manipulate her .. and others.

And sexual abuse is just the most visible form of abuse .. there is of course physical punishment as well. The adult figure could also easily engage in emotional and psychological badgering as well as battering which leave no physical scars but which profoundly traumatize at many different levels the self-image, self-esteem and worldview of the child in the cult, giving them a skewed view of themselves, reality, other people and their place in the world - which is, of course, to serve and exalt the "pure doctrine" of their group at the expense of their own minds, hearts and consciences.

It is THIS influence that probably is the far more dangerous and insidiously abusive influence of cults on children and is what leaves millions of them as broken people who plod along under the malign influence of their group's exploitative attentions all of their lives. The cost this leaves them - from depression to suicide to broken marriages to the perpetuation of the cycles of abuse - is a social blight no religious leader of ANY faith could possibly view as indicative of their highest spiritual ideals.

And yet, it happens.

Jehovah's Witness children still get sexually abused and their cries smothered to protect the Watchtower (click here to watch by Real Video my talk I did on this a few years ago). Remnant Fellowship teens mature with the shadow of belief that eating outside "God's boundaries" will send them to hell which is setting a lot of them up for serious psychological problems later. Mormon youngsters clam up and self-destruct internally as they struggle with their hormones and the tension set up by their religion's perfectionism bidding them to be "worthy Mormons" who will some day become gods.

It's all done as part of what the adults think is ultimate spiritual truth that governs how we are to live. That's probably the worst spiritual dead end of all .. to see a nice bright morality imparted to a generation of children who find it tied directly into a performance based religion that relegates their individuality into menial personal busywork to keep the image of the Revelation or the Doctrine or the Philosophy squeaky clean, no matter what it costs them.

Don't forget that these are the dominant form of ruthlessly controlling group dynamics in a cult that scars and injures more people than you can ever possibly imagine.

They are lost behind the ad print, the snappy videos, the happy faces of youngsters .. it is the most horrific reality imaginable, to endure terrors inflicted upon the powerless by those they trust most of all.

The recent Texan FLDS case sheds light upon this potent dilemma. This was the case earlier this year in which hundreds of children, raised in what Texas law enforcement and human services officials believed were coercive social conditions that involved sexual and physical abuse of many of them, were forcibly removed from the "Yearning For Zion" ranch to investigate their well being. It once again exposed the grotesquely shadowed and secretive world in certain corners of Mormon fundamentalism.

Having taken the position that patriarchal dominance of several women in polygamous relationships was a religious norm for their lives extended this warped principle (which they have a Constitutional right to believe) to such a degree that underage girls who were far from adults were taken routinely as brides for men with several other wives who were easily the age of their grandparents. An interstate network of these groups exists all across the West to facilitate this literally human trafficking. Reports of underage boys being expelled or driven off from Mormon polygamous communities as well as others to keep the available pool of nubile virgins ripe for the picking also have been common.

And all of this is going on, right now, in America while law enforcement and human services officials wonder how to approach the nightmare to address it since these coerced and criminal couplings of 15 year old girls to men three times their age are inextricably wedded (pardon the pun) to their Constitutional right to practice their religion. The ACLU stands up and cries "foul" and these girls' mothers, who were those 15 year old girls in the past, give press interviews and delicately protest the exposure of their religiously exploitative lives in chillingly Stepford Wife fashion.

This horror is simply just one of the most obvious icebergs of cultic impact in our world, with their far more dangerous bulk hidden in plain sight beneath the seas of humanity, smashing them aside as they drift in the uncharted regions of human society. There are social institutions and settings that are beyond belief in which this kind of cultism routinely, mundanely, shamelessly trods all over the hearts and minds of its young. They going along for the ride - no matter what it costs them.

It's our world and you're welcome to it - whether you want it or not.

Read some more here about how children in cults suffer in silence while the church fiddles about and does little to nothing to reach their parents and help end the nightmares.

More Signs Of The Apostasy Department: When Cults Freely Use The Media To Enslave Souls

Expecting the Fox News Channel to exercise a little bit of discernment would be like asking a teenage boy to respect your daughter if she looked and dressed like Angelina Jolie when they go to the drive in showing an "American Pie" Triple Feature.

You know he'll both swear up and down he will but you're going to be just a wee bit skeptical for some reason.

So when we received another email advising us that cult leader Gwen Shamblin was again going to be on Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet to contribute what the show's website characterizes as "engaging segments about topics relating to viewers’ lives," we didn't think it was going to be a show in which hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy were going to "lend their dynamic personalities" to a probing exploration of Gwen Shamblin's grotesque and authoritarian theology that has destroyed lives all across America. The Angelina Factor kicked in.

The website said that Mike and Juliet instead would lead "discussions about hot topics in pop culture; family-focused subjects such as women’s health, fashion, parenting and relationships; and general entertainment." And I am sure that the discussion wasn't more different then the last TWO .. not one but TWO .. visits to Fox News to spread Gwen's gospel of dietary purification which would inevitably lead astonied converts to "the truth."

Fox needs to revise their website to include the caveat

".. and general entertainment, including being a media whore for the gratification of cult leaders' lusts to spiritually rape and pillage the lives of potentially millions of people."

That would be a bit more accurate .. and what would be an advance of truth in media.

I just had to drop Mikey and Jules a note on their website which you can do here also if you like:

How does it feel to be a tool of a cult leader who thinks your city was a target of God's judgment on 9/11 and uses your show for her recruitment drive?

What's it like knowing you've been punked by Gwen Shamblin as she tries to turn the world's overweight women into clones of herself who lick salt off potato chips like her and in the process divide families, destroy marriages and put them in psychological, spiritual and emotionally coercive and scarring settings?

It's called Google. Do you know about this strange but unusual perspective on things? Have your interns or production assistants heard about it?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2008-19,GGLG:en&q=Gwen+Shamblin+cult

How does that sit with you, Mike? Do you sleep good at night Juliet? It's always easier after the first time to lose that troubling little flicker of guilt at the edge of your conscience, isn't it?

http://www.spiritwatch.org/RFblingmedia.htm

Do you watch Geraldo, by the way? You guys might mosey down the cubes there and do lunch with the producers there and ask about Gwen Shamblin. Just don't be gnoshing on a Nathan's when you do. I guarantee you'll not feel well afterwards.

Obama Or McCain - The Only Change Coming Is Of The Short Variety

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

Proverbs 14:34.

This nation is heading for judgment no matter WHO runs it after the next election.

As a collective nation, we've tolerated sin and abomination among us in every sphere of human enterprise -- from Capital Hill to church to the family. We've winked at it, ignored it, and our sense of moral outrage collectively and effectively been anesthetized by the countless little compromises we've yielded throughout the years. The scandalous a few years ago is perfectly passe now .. and all of the debatable history of whether America was or is a "Christian nation" means, to paraphrase Henry Ford, bunk.

There is, IMHO, no prophetic pastiche of divine revelation to prove Obama is the Antichrist or McCain to be the next Revival leader. They are just two ambitious men who delusionally think they'll get "America back on track." The problem is that their individual shticks are no answers to the rot we wallow in and there's not a thing they are going to do that will turn us back. They're going to try to be the ringmaster in the next American circus in Washington - which will address NOTHING that will change the moral climate of this nation.

America is already poised for a spanking of epic proportions. If unpopular wars abroad, diseases claiming those all around us, weather disasters, financial meltdowns and the moral blasphemies of the generally antichristian secular atmospher among us haven't been enough to get our attention, believe you me, God has no shortage of ways to do so. More are on the way. It has been said that if 9/11 was a wakeup call to America, then it's rolled over and gone back to sleep.

And the Christian church is hardly much better. Keith Green's haunting yet prophetic song is still right .. we're asleep in the light, so dead when "we've been well fed।"

It's time to get ready to meet God. It's time we realize that taking up the evangelical hobbyhorse that leads us every 4 years and thinking our votes will urge Revival in is a piously fraudulent diversion. It's time we let our prayers be what they should be and not reckon they're a part of a salvo of first strikes on a Strongman. It's time we take heed to ourselves, lest we fall. It's time that we preach the Gospel and when necessary, as has been also well said, use words.

When Jesus comes, He won't be concerned about political activism - He will judge the nations.

Where do WE stand in the midst of that?

The Post-Lakeland "Outpouring" Hand Wringing, Part 357

I don't know about any of you, but I for one am tired of hearing Charisma Magazine J Lee Grady's grandiloquent proclamations about excess in the Charismatic and Pentecostal circuses that we call "church" and "revival" and then his inevitable calls for concern over how it will play in Peoria and in the Wall Street Journal, how it will turn our "movement" into chaos, how we need to pray for God's grace to cover it all and turn it around.

This dramatic kind of editorializing just isn't very convincing any more coming from him. He acts like its Breaking News that "we are gullible" on the basis of what an unnamed Charismatic leader says about Charismatics believing the shtick of the Antichrist if he shows up.

J. Lee Grady is concerned about the recent debacle that occurred in central Florida when the so-called "Lakeland Outpouring", a nightly series of Charismatic revival services that took place in various venues there, suddenly took a tragic dive into ill repute. The lead "revivalist" Todd Bentley's sincere yet frenzied and at times violent ministry involved imbalanced and even bizarre doctrines and practices, coming forth in the midst of high powered praise and worship music ministry nightly.

At the core of it was Bentley's claims of having gifts of healing as well as prophetic authority to "impart" spiritual callings and exhortations that would give divine direction, restoration and renewal to those seeking God's grace. Hundreds of thousands from all over the world flocked to the meetings for a jolting encounter with a God, many hoping Bentley's transferable "anointing" could fill them like human NiCads with spiritual power that could be tapped all over the world to bring "revival" all over the world.

That was the End Time Plan of God, it was shouted from the Florida rooftops, but it all came to a rather abrupt stop when it became known that Bentley had engaged in an incident of "non sexual" marital infidelity with a female member of his ministry staff and that his wife Shonnah, having apparently weathered a similar incident in the past, had come to end of her patience with her husband and left Florida to return back to Canada with their three young children. Apparently, a separation had begun and Bentley knew that the story was about to break .. so there suddenly came a call from God to "turn the revival back" to the Ignited Church in Lakeland, under Stephen Strader's pastoral leadership, from where it started.

And then suddenly, the news broke .. shock turned to bewilderment. Bentley disappeared into the private circles of friends and the meetings he planned to hold around North America and England began to get cancelled. From venues filled with thousands, the "outpouring" now barely pulls seventy or so people a night. And the inevitable confusion, pain, sorrow, anger and disillusion has now cast yet another shadow across the hearts and minds of the "full gospel" segments of the Body of Christ .. and J. Lee Grady's unidentified pastor friend suddenly and tartly observes how gullible Charismatics and Pentecostals might seem to be.

Hello? What? The Spirit-filled Christian is gullible? Whoo, that's a really deep insight. Thanks for the hot tip, J. Lee. Many of the cultists we meet and speak with were former tongue talking church members. Gullible you say? What else don't we know about the Charismatic and Pentecostal galactic cluster?

That we need to be praying for the implosion of this "revival" and what it's done adversely in the spiritual and personal lives of far too many people is definite. That God's grace moved, as He always does, to touch people seeking Him for healing and deliverance quite APART from the lunacy that traipsed across the stages there is undeniable. That the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement just got another black eye because of the confusion, inconsistency, false doctrine and general carnality of this "move of the Spirit" is beyond question.

But for Grady to infer that Christianity itself hangs in the balance because a stout little Canadian Charismatic firecracker revivalist who had the ear of the church as he lost his priorities and is reaping what he's sown, that's just completely out of touch with the reality. To hear him wring his hands over and over about how we "might" have missed something here is eminently laughable. He hangs out with the Christian charismatic celebrity strata too much and believes their self-proclaimed adprint too easily .. plenty of room in Charisma itself was made the past few months for those Gullible Christians to freely imbibe the poison-laced kool aid this revival has been dispensing.

Bentley's delusional belief that revival will come "when all the streams" come together was nothing less than a vaguely magickal, almost pagan belief .. like the assembling of Power Rangers to join together in some spiritual critical mass to sweep the planet clear of sin, sickness and need. This got more play in Charisma and on GodTV then ever before .. and now, J. Lee is concerned?

As mi abuelo would mutter .. "iAy chihuahua!"

It's only become what it's become because J Lee and Charisma seem to defer to media guides, the buzz on the street and the religiosity of the church when they start to report on the Next New Thing - not the Bible (gee, remember that?) They are as bent towards making too much room for the marvelous and the miraculous then it should be in the church. Grady sounds like he sees what's going down but then just refuses to believe that it could become as spiritually toxic as it can get. The rest of Charisma's editorial staff are credulous people who simply refuse to learn from the history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic worlds, nor from the fact that sign-chasing Evangelical culture that likes armchair religion was a Biblically foretold reality Christ and the apostles warned us about again and again.

Every point Grady made in his massive missive has been echoed in Christian circles during the past hot summer months .. as well as in many other quarters in the Body of Christ. None of this was news to us, except perhaps the final failure of Todd to keep his house in order. There's no way that Ignited Church and Pastor Steven Strader could not have known about that fundamental imbalance in this situation. I only saw Shonnah Bentley on stage perhaps one time and she did not appear to be terribly interested in what was going on. There was a pall over her that I noted and said nothing about. Now it seems there was a reason - click here to read a post I did on how Bentley's sorry state has been turned into an apologetic for the spiritual wackiness that his apostolic and prophetic tribe engage in with little concern with Biblical fidelity but an utter passion to cover for each other.

It's hard to believe Strader and company, whose history has never been one of great discernment to begin with, couldn't have known of what was going on. That's a crock. Grady makes a big deal about "where were the Godly leaders" who preached out against error. THEY WERE OUT THERE! They WERE speaking out! J Lee just wasn't listening closely enough. How out of touch can he be?

And I'm not talking about the Reformed and Baptist critics who drive home their cessationist blather on the World Wide Web. The Godly leaders included a whole host of anonymous Charismatic and Pentecostal pastors and ministers who only wanted truth upheld and God's glory in it all, but sadly, many more thousands of their tribe who weren't discerning fanned the flames and hyped the lie. They were on many an online bulletin boards. They blogged. They had news spots. They were in the media. They were challenged by atheists on YouTube and hard questions at the workplace. They had innumerable debates in Bible studies, over cups of coffee at a small group study, in Christian book stores, in the church mother's living room .. etc. Godly leadership DID speak up and immature and/or rebellious members refused to hear!

Why is this news to him? WHY? It's because Grady is out of touch with the discerning church and acts as if his "discovery" of the inconsistencies of these imbalanced ministries were the uncovering of breaking news.

And the Lakeland crowds came out of as much as a desire to be touched by God as they were bored, sign-chasing lemmings who ignored any calls for discernment and actually despised those who raised questions as jealous spiritual losers, hypocrites and Pharisees. They plugged their ears up, spoke loudly in tongues and set their cars on cruise control down I-75. Some of them received from God because He is merciful and gracious to His children. Most, I suspect, did not come away with what they are looking for. Thousands in wheelchairs came and went without being healed. Thousands with terrible personal problems, besetting sins, inner woundings came and had a long hard cry and "the warm thrill" of emotional catharsis with a Bam sticker affixed to it .. and left the way the came.

What really is amazing is how quickly Grady now dismisses the "revival" as past news, as an unpleasantly checkered history you don't want to think about. Thanks to Grady, that's probably pretty much is the death kiss for it now. Only the die hards and those who haven't heard that Todd is elsewhere creating his new cottage revival industry and not in Lakeland are going to be coming. See, Bentley's movement is still moving, though with nowhere near the energy it once had. Grady seems to fail to realize that Bentley's ministry interns still preach and teach and worship back where it all "started," at Ignited Church.

That's makes me want to say "Wait a second? Wasn't this Lakeland thing going to be a new Azusa that would decisively impact the ages to come? Aren't special guests from all over the world going to come? Won't Rodney Howell Browne show up eventually? It's over?" Man, how inconsequential the Move of the Spirit now seems to be .. when we thought it wasn't about Todd .. but that it was all about GOD.

Let's see how much money GodTV spends streaming the services of young Apostle Humptyscrunch from Sheboygan, Wisconsin and see if the Psalmista Heather will be there to prop up the obligatory sacrifice of praise hour with more James Bond Girl moves before he gets under the lights to scream in a mike about the book of Joel and intimacy with God like intimacy with his second wife.

The real drama is ongoing right now and completely off Grady's radar screen. The real dramatics are taking place daily as Christian pastors and church leaders who didn't run away with the madness of Lakeland and who strove to maintain and uphold balance now have to deal with the personal carnage many Christians have been impacted by by this mess. The real challenges come when they have to help those gullible Christians deal with the personal impact of a cancer that remained or a heartache over a sexual abuse they suffered as a child that they still feel which didn't go away after a BAM Session. Or when a Lakeland bewitched board member of their church demands that they start having Friday Night Lights with a Bentleyite and open the community up to the River that THEY will make sure flows there.

I wonder where Grady's concern is about THAT issue and just how much substantial coverage that this will be given .. We already know GodTV isn't going to be airing any special webcast for that painful little reality.

If J Lee really cares about the gullibility of the children of light, he needs to start getting authors and speakers and conventions going about Biblical doctrine and discernment, as well as workshops done to help the victims of "revival" get the help they DESPERATELY need. I will watch Charisma to see if they can help undo the damage they've helped to do but I won't hold my breath.

And the band played on ..

Why Spiritwatch Ministries does what it does ..

It's been a while since I last posted here and for that I'm sorry. Life and ministry beyond web based efforts never stops.

But the endtime apostacy hasn't gotten any better, of course .. and as I restart and hopefully redouble our blog input here, let me just share with you a video that illustrates pretty well why our ministry does what it does ..

There still is a difference between the holy and unholy, the profane and the pure.

The challenge today still remains as it always has - how to tell that difference.

At one time, making such determinations seemed easier, but in the unimaginably vast diversity of modern society, it's far easier to become deceived by any one with a good story and a few testimonials to what seems to be life-changing truth. The endless parade of fringe groups, movements and leaders of a variety of societal ideologies advancing compelling and yet deceptively unorthodox ideas never stops. In a free world, that's to be expected and if anything, it is escalating ..

As has been said so well before, anyone who wants to believe the moon is made of green cheese is welcome to it. But those who unethically, abusively and intentionally deceive others into thinking the moon is made of green cheese should be called out on the carpet and their deeds exposed.

We've seen and continue to hear from too many people whose lives are testimonies to the tender mercies they've encountered at the heavy hands of corrupt spiritual leaders dictating an authoritarian doctrine in the name of God which they've used to control and destroy human life all around the world. And again, that's what at the heart of what we call the endtime apostacy, and I intend to have a post out on that to better explain what we mean when we use this term.

Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 said that there would be false Christs who would arise before His own coming:

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/FaithMatters/story?id=5225539&page=1

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/16/miami.preacher/

http://www.thepost.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3259771

These are just a few of the more obvious blasphemies .. and we'll tackle a few more of these in our next post.

The Fivefold Ministry And Spiritual Abuse - Resources Coming!

We have been inundated through the years with a LOT of requests for help, counsel and teaching on the subject of spiritual abuse as inflicted by those of the "five fold ministry" and have unfortunately have found ourselves really unable to find the time to deliver on it.

That is about to change.

We are working feverishly to provide - at long last, after 10 years of starting and stopping - a webbed version of teaching we've done on how the horrible spectre of spiritual or religious abuse has become a materialized monstrosity that quietly lurks in the shadows of many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. We hope to have the first 3 of 4 articles on it completed in the next week or so, finally uploaded and updated from the present ones still on the site.

In 1998, I did a talk on this at the EMNR Chicago Conference on Biblical Discernment about the same time I started our ministry website. The learning curve and time we spent preparing, designing and uploading a variety of articles and PDF tracts was enormous, as well as research into the now moribund Prophecy Club - not to mention a lot of assistance offered to victims of fivefold ministry-inflicted abuses. And then the rise of the Remnant Fellowship cult pretty much kept us digging deep into the rabbit hole that Gwen Shamblin dug for the church to fall into from 2002 onward (during the post 9/11/2001 days I don't mind telling you that we were stunned for several weeks afterward, which is far better than what many 9/11 victims experienced.

So now, we're finally making the time to get this done. We hope to stream an excerpt of a DVD we're now doing of my teaching there in the next week or so also.

"Expelled: The Movie" - Be A Part Of A Campaign For Truth

Darwinian evolution has far too long held cultural sway and has contributed to the deevolution of Western civilization. You may say your ancestor wasn't a monkey. Or a "missing link." Or the result of random atoms smashing into each other acted upon by cosmic radiation. The arrogance of the secular elite's control over hearts and minds doesn't care. They'll teach it anyway and demand your silence at the cost of being labelled intolerant fundy theocrats .. or an anti-intellectual zealot.

And they control the video editing suites, the budgets, the programming, the air time, the staffing and the curricula behind two of the most influential institutions of our day - the academia and mass media. Don't want your kids or others to hear about the thorougly credible science that non Darwinian scientists have amassed about the possibility that God might have been behind creation? Too bad. They sit on school boards and reign from production offices. You haven't got a chance ..

Or do you ...?

The film "Expelled" helps shed light on this flatulent underbelly of godless secular humanism with the owl visaged Ben Stein leading us through a narrative of expose as well as hope. It will be released on April 18 nationwide. It isn't surprising that the media are allegedly refusing to offer much air time for advertising on this.

Check out the trailer at

Be that as it may, the filmmakers are hoping that the concerned public who are following the evidence of science that exposes the fallacies of Darwinian evolution will mobilize by grassroots and word of mouth a publicity campaign to get folks out to watch the movie. A worthy cause, I think. Here's my own small contribution. Spread the news. Post on a blog. Tell your youth group. Tell your Sunday School class. Send some emails. Tell your Baptist brother's pastoral staff. Stand for truth - and academic freedom.

Go the website for more information. If The Blasphemy Network could mobilize thousands of tongue talking Christians to hype Matt Crouch's screwy "Omega Code" that advanced some really BAD end times fantasy with lame acting, it's about time they go to the movies again to learn about a reality far more down home and dangerous then any "bible code."

agape

rafael

A Recommitment ..

8:05 a.m. .. Mount St. Mary's Cemetary in Kansas City, MO .. 3.9.08

I drove by once again after having spent an hour or so there trying to help make it possible to fulfill my mom's final wishes concerning this place speaking to various people who oversee it. She wants to be buried there, in this old cemetary in the middle of Kansas City, next to her beloved abuelo, my great grandfather Mattias Adriano. He was the only father figure she ever really knew in her childhood and she lost him when she was 12 years old. There's so much sad history and painful narrative I could fill this with, but I fully understand why she wants to do this. So, as Joy, myself and fellow countercult minister Lora Burton were leaving town after the EMNR convention we'd been at that weekend, I simply could not drive past it without a final look at the place my mom wants to be left behind at as she awaits a better resurrection.

Death lost it's grip and my fear of it years ago when I embraced Christ as my Savior. In fact, I often find myself longing to be absent from the Body to be with Him. But the earthy finality of a literal burial place is ground zero for the reality that I'm not there yet and that there is work to be done to help people realize that such a place can be a beginning for them .. or the entrance into the most horrible of dead ends. As we drove around this old Catholic cemetary, in the silence, the cold and the ever lightening dawn of the new day, musing over the eternal tensions of my assurance of eternal life with that of the harsh reality that millions die daily and face eternal death, the grave stones seemed to become witnesses to me of a dire need I simply have to address ..

I need to see, as my mom so passionately cries about in her prayers, "souls saved." I need to be about the Father's business in defending and proclaiming the Faith that saves souls. From here on out, I'm going to be a lot more vocal here on this blog then ever before as I try to document what it means to seek and save that which is lost. And cultists are very lost people .. Mormons are lost. Jehovah's Witnesses are lost. Moonies are lost. The disciples of self-proclaimed religious avatars, mystics, and prophets are lost. And it is the power of the Gospel that will save them.

Pray for us. We want to be on target, on mission .. speaking the truth in love and taking heed that no man deceive any one into missing out on the Way, the Truth and the Life.

agape

rafael

Quite Possibly The Best Video On Cults Ever Made

Tired of trying to be a prophet, avatar or visionary but can't get anyone to blindly follow you? Have you always wanted to know how to manipulate people in the name of any deity, religion or philosophy you want to hide behind with your own agenda of naked abuse of power? Look no further! Independent film maker Corey Burtt's outstanding bit of cautionary cinema will open your eyes and help you see where you've been missing the boat! Soon, you too can organize mass movements based on deception where manipulation, spiritual abuse and damnable heresy that will destroy lives and doom souls .. just like Gwen Shamblin, Sun Myung Moon, Joseph Smith, Judge Rutherford and sooooo many others!

Themsis' fightin' words

Well, it didn't take long for the brickbats to follow our articles on Joel Osteen's unbiblical gospel.

I was rather surprised when Joy forwarded to me this vapid letter of rebuke from one Bob Ross, a fellow I'd never heard of before. A couple net searches turns up that this Mr. Ross runs Pilgrim Publications, a publishing firm that publishes the sermons and writings of the legendary Charles Spurgeon's, the so-called "prince of preachers." Had he stayed there, he'd probably sleep better at nights. It also seems that he has become a shrill critic of those who hold to doctrines he believes should be piddled upon in the name of the purity of whatever concept of Christian faith he holds to be true and dear, Calvinism and "pedobaptism" being the particular targets of his online screeds in which he addresses himself as "Brother Bob".

What's even weirder is that this gentleman has become one of the more incendiary apologistas for - you guessed it - none other then the irrepressible Joel Osteen himself. Incredible, but true. I wondered to myself .. could this be another sign of the endtime apostasy? I sat and mulled on this a second, wondering how a Spurgeon fanatic and self-anointed swatter of what he calls "Calvinistic theological errors/flies" - depending on where you read on his blog - could become so completely mush-minded as to accept Osteen's Christless preaching as Biblical. Still, stranger things have happened when seemingly grounded Christian figures go off the deep end and wander their star into quagmires of their own creation, leading too many there with them

(cue video of John Shelby Spong, Hobart Freeman, Gwen Shamblin, Carlton Pearson, Jay Bakker, ad nauseum)

Between smearing the Tulip confession and deciding which of the works of the good reverend Spurgeon to again reprint, Mr. Ross apparently feels that His Best Life Now involves being a gadfly across the Internet, savaging those who criticize Osteen. Apparently, I'm just another one of those who've enjoyed the company of a Pilgrim passing through. So when he decided to address my fellow apologist homeys Jeff Downs and Lance King in an apologetics forum I do not
subscribe to (but at one time did several years ago) I decided that I'd need to respond to it here on this blog. I trust Mr. Ross won't mind me doing this for the sake of clarity and in the spirit of rejoinder he obviously likes to "engage" with. And I'm endeavoring in this since no one is here to stop me, and this is my blog, and I am what it says I am and I will never, never, never be the
same again ..

oops .. excuse me, I've been watching too much of Joel lately.

Anyway, I'm sure Brother Bob you won't mind me sharing my own thoughts here ..

Dear Rafel, Lance, and Jeff Downs:

I always "consider the source" when I read the type of critical materials you
present against Joel Osteen, as sent to me via email.

It never fails to amaze me at how many ways people continue to misspell my name. Never. At least Mr. Ross was positive enough to start his excoriation with the kinder and gentler
approbation of "Dear ..." That's better then how I've started .. anyway, on to Bob's consideration:

Your religious affiliation (Church of God, Cleveland) and organizational
affilliations and recommendations do not gain my respect for you as
competent critics.

Hmmm. Now that's a new angle, there Bob! I've been called a lot of thing in the past. Arminian moron, anti-this, holy roller cultist, the usual blackening of character. My Pentecostal perspective on Christian life has figured prominently in them. One guy once said I sounded too balanced to be Pentecostal. Themsis fightin' words, the good ol' boys on the Maytag assembly line I used to work on here a few years ago might say. So hearing my movement, the Church of God (Cleveland) missing muster with Mister Mustard - er, Ross isn't too far off the mark from other digs in the past (sorry, the alliterative temptation was too good to pass up). It was an easy cheap shot though - you diss the Church of God and never say one reason why.

What happened, did a Church of God preacher lay heavy hands on you at an old fashioned altar in the past? Did you get an atomic wedgie at a Church of God youth camp in your tender past? I mean, come on, what is it about my movement you don't like?

This strange criticism begs the question - what is it in Mr. Ross's estimation makes one a "competent critic"? .. According toMr. Ross wrote of himself that

“I was baptized in the Methodist Church at any early myself, but I later heard the simple Gospel such as preached by Joel Osteen, and the Lord granted me repentance and faith in Christ. That simple Gosple works, and I am still rejoicing in it after nearly 53 years of professing it. NOTE TO JOEL CRITICS:
There’s no need sending me trash talk about Joel. I listen to him every Sunday,
and until I hear something worthy of my changing my attitude about him, you can save your breath. I AM PRO-JOEL.”

So, Bob, let's review a working hypothesis here .. I think it's fair to assume that you say that

1) Being involved in a "working simple Gosple" found only after departing your church
roots

and

2) Only hearing something you arbitrarily decide is "worthy" will lead you to open your mind about Joel Osteen

are the criterion you establish for your status as a "competent critic." This is a rather curious choice of discernment there. It works well for all kinds of people who find the truth to be too troublesome to bother with and who dig this hill to die upon for the "Truth" they want to live by.

Do you watch a lot of movies, Bob? I really don't, but your petulant little outburst here reminded me of a hilarious scene in "Fever Pitch." It's when the Red Sox fanatic Ben, dining with his new girlfriend Lindsay, warbles like a six year old and claps his hands over his ears when trying to avoid hearing someone in the next table over discussing the ongoing Red Sox game he wasn't watching at that moment. It's a scream of a scene.

Only this isn't funny. You show how seemingly bereft of discernment you are. Cultists of all stripes do the exact same thing you apparently commend yourself with: express utter surrender to the preaching of a man who stands for nothing except establishing God as an indulgent Daddy ready to pimp your ride through life AND shutting your brain off from any objective thought about it unless it's "worthy." Feh.

You are spot on, Bob, about one thing: Joel Osteen's gospel IS simple ..

It is so simple that if you breathe on it, it will crumble into a billion bits, just the point that our articles make. Osteen's brand of "far and away favor" will never prepare people for real life in a real world. If that is the kind of religion you want to cling to, go right ahead. Just don't dignify it with the term Christianity. You mock Christ anytime you foolishly assert that Joel Osteen stands for Him.

Jeff Downs, for example, who sent me your link,is a pedobaptist, committed to a theology which alleges that little babies born to believers get "born
again" in their infancy, and that adults get "born again before faith." The
fact that he likes your material does not commend it to me.

Whatever difference, Mr. Ross, you may have with Jeff's theology, here's something to think about: at least Jeff HAS a theology and a position to stand upon that can be cogently argued, discussed, disagreed or agreed with. Jeff stands for a whole lot more than "pedobaptism" and is one of the most solidly and doctrinally anchored young Christian men I've ever known. Ditto for Lance King whose passion for theology is beyond question. Those are foundations they enjoy that the sandy shoals of Lakewood's "podium" never have had - and which you apparently flounder upon.

I seem to remember a verse in the old book about building upon sand ..

For another example, you are affiliated with EMNR, and based on my knowledge of that group over the years, this tends to discredit you rather than commend you.

Glad to hear you're such an astute observer of EMNR. Oh wait, I don't recall seeing you at any EMNR conventions lately. I don't recall hearing of your courageous attempts to swat the flies there. Come to the next one in Kansas City in a couple months. Be man enough to come face those who you feel "discredit" me, Jeff or Lance and see what manner of Christian servants they are. Your swatter won't reach that far, I assure you.

Also, some of the authors and books you recommend tend to discredit your
competency with me.

Ah yes, more of the critierion of "competency" ..

Walter Martin, for example, who help popularize so-called "apologetics," will "eduip" no one on the Eternal Sonship of Christ, which he rejected. In a TV debate with two prominent Oneness ministers (Urshan and Sabin), Martin denied Eternal Sonship, as he does in his book on cults.

Themsis' fightin' words, brother Bob. You need to document this high sounding charge, which sounds terribly THEOLOGICAL to me. How dare you resort to anything but the "simple" Gospel!

No, seriously .. I'd really like to see you produce your evidence of such a scurrilious charge. I don't think you have a leg to stand upon, but I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The TV debate you refer to is in my collection of videotapes. Document, please, at what point in this discussion that Dr. Martin "denied Eternal Sonship." I'll pull it out and watch it to find it.

When confronted by me, the current CRI headed by Hank Hanegraaff, said in a letter to me that the current CRI differS with Martin, and rejects his position. Joel Osteen is sounder on the Person of Christ than was Walter Martin whom you recommend!

As to what the current CRI stands for is less a concern for me since I do not support CRI nor Hank Hanegraaf's ministry whatsoever due to issues I don't have time to get into. I'm just glad you're there to confront everyone to help bring the light of truth on things. So therefore, if there's a letter you can send or post to the internet that shows that Mr. Hanegraaf rejects Dr. Martin's position because of an allegation that he denies the eternal Sonship of Jesus, let me lapse into good old fashioined polemic: I dares ya .. I double DOG dares ya .. to do so. Go for it. I would LOVE to see it.

As to what Joel Osteen thinks about the Eternal Sonship of Christ is largely a subject of speculation. Remember, Bob, this is your pastor speaking:

"I mean, there’s a lot better people qualified to say, 'Here’s a book that going to explain the scriptures to you.' I don’t think that’s my gifting," Osteen says.

Bobby, son, I seem to recall a verse or two to back up what I say about pastors being competent teachers who reprove, rebuke and correct with longsuffering and doctrine in the old Book. That hasn't apparently occurred to your pastor -apparently.

I suggest you put your proofs down for your next Spurgeon anthology and search those verses out. By the way, how do you make one of those funny pointy hats that press workers used to wear in those old movies where the newspaper presses were being stopped? Maybe you can make one and wear it while you read the Bible. Remember that scene in "Signs" when the kids were trying to keep the aliens from reading their minds? In some way, I think that might help you out here.

But more -- much more -- than these obvious elements which reflect upon your attributes to be competent as critics of Joel Osteen (or anyone else), I find your material utterly extraneous, nit-picking, ridiculous, and phantasmagorical.

Gee, Bob, that really cuts deep. It never dawned on me as to how incompetent I could be. I never knew my elements were so obvious and my deficit of attributes so plain. How I wish I'd seen one of your ads when I was a young Christian many yarrons ago that could have directed me to the Bob Ross Institute For Competent Criticism, how much more farther along I might be in life!

Be that as it may, I think by the grace of God and the light of the Scriptures and the Spirit of Christ, I've come along pretty well. Since you haven't the fortitude nor intellectual honesty to document what it is about the articles that you find so warped, there's no way to gauge how delusional or truthful you might be here. Again, unlike you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But not for real long, though. Once more, you remind me of Jimmy Fallon freaking everyone out at dinner. That is really some of the strangest flights of rhetorical fancy that I've ever heard about my writing!

I will not elaborate, as there's simply too much palabber to mention, but I will cite one major instance which clearly demonstrates your utter incompetence as critics of Joel: "The situation is as it is: Joel Osteen's teaching has little to nothing to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ. Osteen's total lack of understanding of the exclusivity of Christ . . . " etc. My advice to you is that you prayerfully consider getting into a more positive work in contrast to your current incompetent "ministry" of selling merchandise on the pretext of "equipping" naive Christians.

Your work is example of why I have so little use for the appalling entrepreneurs (apologists) who more appropriately could be called "Appallingists."

Boy that one really hurt, didn't it Bob?

I bet you and others of the Joel Osteen Experience had a lot of egg to lick off his face when Joel hit Fox News with his inane patter on the LDS Church on the eve of the remembrance of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. Sorry to rain on your parade, but when your pastor goes on national television to commend Mormonism as the equivalency of Christianity, your whining about my incompetence simply becomes nothing but hot air.

If there was any doubt that Joel Osteen is absent of any sound understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ, and that He alone is the way to God the Father, then Joel thunderously silenced it with his plaintive Texas lilt affirming for millions just the opposite.

Your folly will follow you, Bobby. Be careful now ..

Perhaps you might consider a new vocation yourself: why don't you join the Committee Of Interfaith Dialogue that meets at the Starbucks outside the Lakewood Church to help unify the Jehovah's Witnesses and Moonies with your outreach to penetrate Houston. Why don't you get them involved in helping everyone find the champion within themselves? While you are at it, have Yisrael Hawkins channel Marshal Appelwhite while Kenneth Copeland does a holding pattern at 35,000 feet above Waco so as to bring peace to the midlands?

I think I've said all I care to say to you about it Bobby. I'll be waiting to hear from you on your baseless charges. FYI .. you might want find more peace of mind and freedom from those mean and nasty appallingists by unsubbing from the APPALLINGETICS email list you sent this silly letter of yours out own.

Oh hey, don't get me wrong, I think Spurgeon is certainly one of the finest Christian
expositors to have ever lived, but that canonizing title "prince of preachers" sounds like something coming out of a marketing focus group at Destiny Image then from the starry eyed 19th century fans of his.

I surely hope, Bob, that you're above that kind of hero worship.

But thanks for making me the target of your venom. I'm part of the club now. First, the Internet Monk, then James White. And now me! I am sure Lance, Jeff and I all have the same big lumps in our throats knowing we've been targetted along with some really cool Christian expositors. I can die now, knowing my life was not a total waste.

Ciao, Roberto!

The Joel Osteen articles .. FINALLY online!

I have been busier then a cat with two tails at a rocking chair convention with a whole lot of projects. Helping families battle back to save their children from the clutches of the tea party cult of Remnant Fellowship is one such front. There's a lot we can't say much about what we do there and in other areas, but we are still committed to watching God humble that cult and get it to where He wants it to be.

Veangeance is the Lord's, says the Word of God, and if He wants it, I don't mind offering His Spirit all the help He can get here. Nor do a LOT of people across the nation who help out.

Thank you, folks. You all know who you are. By God's grace, we shall overcome and the Zion Curtain will fall someday. The false prophet Gwen Shamblin would do well to learn that she can rise with the Son of God, Jesus as God Incarnate .. or fall with the night that the shadow of God's judgment will send upon her for her heresies, destruction of families and control of lives.

Anyway, I digress. Preaching and teaching engagements (HINT HINT PASTORS!) are another pursuit and working with the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions coalition as a publication committee member is yet another. Need I say that our website continues to get a ton of email requesting we finish the article series we started on mind control, religious abuse, Wicca and the never ending three ring circus of Pentecostal and Charismatic extremism? It just goes on and on, and it's a calling we all pursue as diligently as possible - Steve and Kathy Hogel in Memphis and Lance and Heather King in Knoxville - according to the gifts and opportunities God gives us.

It never fails to amaze me at how many people read our article on Jimmy Swaggart's need to repent. The article is routinely, every month, the most viewed article after our tribute page to my favorite baseball team of all time - the Chicago Cubs. But the firestorm of emails we get from these and other ministry ventures keep us on our toes - and our attempts to help those burned by bad religion and false teachers don't allow us to sit around nights at home either. We stay as engaged as we feel led to be.

But as you know, no self-respecting End Time Apostacy would be complete without a couple of trademark poster children for falsehood, heresy, unreality or manipulation coming to the forefront. Joel Osteen, the megachurch "pastor" of the Lakewood Church seems to fit that bill well all by himself, actually. His star has increasingly splashed all across civilization everywhere like a fusillade of lightning bolts forged from Jell-O. Osteen's influence is beyond belief and his delivery of humanistic motivational oratory is being accepted as cutting edge preaching as arresting and transformational as that of George Whitfield or Martin Luther King.

So, with all of that going on in Spiritwatch Ministries, there was no better way for our ministry to have been tasked to analyze Joel Osteen's questionable doctrine and example unless we were asked to create a talk on Osteen's first best seller "Your Best Life Now" and do it within 90 days for the 2006 EMNR conference in Birmingham. Remember the old saying about how the best way to get something done is to give it to an overworked and busy person? LOL. Thanks, Bob Waldrop .. if hadn't been for you, we'd have never given an Osteen discerning a second thought because his toweringly shallow preaching speaks for itself. But we've come to see millions of people think otherwise ..

So by the grace of God, Lance and I managed to pull it off and deliver it to a good crowd of folks. Here's a link to listen to it in Real Audio if you want to hear it. A long standing project to adapt the talk Lance and I did there seemed relegated to a long delay and we never quite got it together until we finally realized that Osteen's influence has been exponentially spreading all over the world. This year seemed particularly marked, so we plunged ahead to adapt our talk into website articles.

Sola Deo Gloria, we have finally completed these. They are in 4 parts .. and in case you think there's no need to get at what's behind the smile of Joel Osteen watch this clip below .. and tell me if this is What Would Jesus Do ..

I seem to remember a verse somewhere in the Bible about this kind of unimaginable waffling that Joel Osteen seems to be engaged in here: this is What Would Jesus Say about it, we think ..

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words,
of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.

To read the Osteen articles, click here. We hope they be the balanced resource Lance and I have striven to make them.

When God's Voice Is Common And The Still Small Voice Is Mundane

We've been doing some long overdue review of our research library we've built about the Word of Faith movement and have watched a lot of some of the most looney stuff you can ever imagine. As a Pentecostal, it turns my stomach .. as a Christian, it breaks my heart .. to see and hear other professing Christian "anointed" teaching so much error, bad doctrine and living such carnal lives filled with any kind of spirit but the Holy One. Over and over, we'd listen to people like Jesse DuPlantis, Kenneth Copeland and a host of others blab out in the middle of their typically manic-driven deliveries that they'd had a conversation with God at least as familiar as a conversation you might have with the mailman at Denny's. DuPlantis, in one sermon in our video library, was told by God that He had his own favorite verse in the Bible the same way everyone else does. And the crowd in the TBN soundstage lapped it up like it was manna from on High. Eck. Gag me with angel dust.

The notion that God speaks to us isn't a problem. Unlike the scoffing and/or skepticism of those who don't believe in a vocal Divinity who does speak to us, Christians can and should seek to hear God speaking to them as they seek direction, guidance and encouragement. It's where the conversations lead and how they're supposedly held that becomes the BIG problem. Here's a great article I also dug out while researching on the net that highlights the issue of a voice from heaven that becomes as ordinary as the voice of your BP clerk .. Below is a sample:

When God's Voice Is Common

“God told me ...”

The Bible says God speaks in a “still, small voice,” but that voice no longer seems to be still or small if you listen to contemporary pastors. The phrase “God told me” is becoming one of their favorite expressions. So many seem to be on speaking terms with God.

Turn on the TV or the radio, and one will inevitably encounter a preacher flashing what one pastor calls the “God trump card.” It signals that the holder is the recipient of a steady stream of revelations from God on matters big and small.

It's invoked so often that few question it, but two recent examples stand out.

In May, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., told an audience that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and told him that the next governor of that state would be a Republican.

In March, spiritual guru Neale Donald Walsch published “Home With God” and announced that it would be the final chapter in his best-selling “Conversations With God” trilogy, in which he claims to talk to the Almighty.

Last November, J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, wrote a column complaining about pastors taking their revelations too far. He cited one charismatic pastor who told his congregation that a new revelation from the Bible allowed him to have more than one wife. Another said his “anointing” allowed him to have more than one sexual partner.

Ruth Tucker, author of “God Talk,” says pastors - and ordinary people - often confuse God's voice with their own.

“The voice of God often corresponds with something they very much want to hear,” Tucker says. “Biblically, God speaks, but God breaks through in a monumental way that's far beyond giving comfort or advice to any person's plan or agenda.”

Claims of personal encounters with God are nothing new. Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions are filled with inspiring stories about God communicating with people. People of faith often talk about hearing God's voice in a dramatic situation or being led by an inner voice or a divine sign.

But what happens when revelation becomes routine? What happens when some preachers talk about God as if they have his cellphone number?

Click the link above to read the entire absorbing article. There's much to be said here about it, but I will confine myself to a few ruminations here ..

I believe in a God who speaks and wants to be heard. I am certainly NOT posting this to squelch trust and faith in a Father whose voice wants to be heard. However, I think there is MUCH to be said about our Christian culture (especially the Evangelical/Pentecostal ones) when it comes to thinking about - as has been well described - a glib, vociferous God always penetrating the sonic landscape of our overstimulated, plugged in lives with a divine voice pouring into our consciousness every moment of the day.

Cults and false religions surely have a field day with this, citing routine earthshaking encounters with God that they claim end up in their anointing by Him to become His exclusive mouthpiece by being equipped with a special divine empowerment that enables them to hear God exclusively. False prophets and teachers from time immemorial routinely claim to hear from God regularly to authorize their own peculiar polity or practice, from Baalam to the Watchtower's Governing Body to Gwen Shamblin.

I came from a Roman Catholic religious culture in which silence and contemplation of the mystery of God's presence was a thing worthy of aspiration but was so couched in Roman tradition that it was seen as the province only of mystics and those in religious orders. I have never lost that contemplative side which my early upbringing gave me, but have joyously received a revelation of a God who does speak to His children when I became a believer. But along the way, I've seen God's voice cited so often and so frequently in Christian circles that it is very difficult to not become confused, let alone cynical, about all of those claiming to hear Him speak to him in all things. Look at the dueling tongues of opposing "messages from the Spirit" in which "thus saith the Lord" is cited by warring factions over some matter in our churches.

Over the 26 years since that happened, I have come to see how we can barely abide a concept of a God who sometimes IS silent and who sometimes doesn't ALWAYS speak when we long and demand that He should. It's sad to see how Pentecostals fidget when we think we're not "hearing" from God regularly and think we are at some horrible deficit if we don't. Back in the 1990's, when Charisma Magazine had a TV show, I remember their interviewers always asking as a central point of their featured interview of some Pentecostal or Charismatic luminary one big question: "What do you hear God saying to the church?" .. as if to suggest there was a divine message bearing His will and prerogative each week for us to follow from the person involved.

Silence is not golden for Pentecostals. It is a source of irritation, fear and panic. That is what gets me about my beloved tongue talking brethren, of whom I am a part. Preachers and music ministers and prayer warriors have to fill every living moment in Christian meetings with our ubiquitous and cliched utterances.

"Say amen somebody"

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .."

"Are you with me?"

"Oh, come on, now let's hear you really sing like you believe that!"

"I know I'm preaching better than some of you are letting on."

"Can I get a witness?"

"It's getting quiet in here."

I think personally that this is more an expression of insecurity by these folks more than the exhortations to attention we like to think it is, because they've GOT to hear if we are "with them." It's a DEAD service if worship doesn't have sacrifices of praise and choirs/orchestras who didn't lift the roof off the church building. We seem to always end up filling that silence with our own noise, spake into those awkward moments of fearful concern that we don't HEAR Him and are somehow losing out with Him if His Voice is not "heard" as a direct quote we then "speak into" our lives.

And then we cover it with the full gospel language that sanctifies what we say, in our belief it was God who indeed speak, but end up saying "God told me."

I am reminded of Michael Card's elegantly blunt song "The Final Word" here:

You and me we use so very many clumsy words

The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard

When the Father's wisdom wanted to communicate His Love

He spoke it in one final perfect Word ...

Surely I believe God speaks today. I have no problem with anyone else citing what you've heard of God at all. IF you've heard from God, you must bear witness to it. I've done this myself in the pulpit or in the prayer line. When I pray with people at the altar call that may be given in a church as a visiting minister or an elder in my home church, God will sometimes give me a word of exhortation, wisdom or knowledge to the person I am ministering to that I trust ministers grace, comfort, admonition and encouragement to them. But anything spake in the name of God will never contradict the written Word of God, and isn't to be some new source of divine revelation that supersedes the Bible. That's one of the greatest digs of cessationists against those who hold that there's a God in Heaven who speaks to His people yet today. Christians who understand the balance don't make that mistake - it's the immature, spiritually warped and the ignorant who do. New Testament examples abound where the early church recognized and welcomed such intimate and immediate communion with God as being exhortational, edifying and encouraging in nature and not the source of doctrine. So I will prophecy as God grants .. not this kid in Himself

And I think that there's a lot to be said about the God who is THERE, the Lamb upon the Throne, who sometimes is just THERE to be worshipped and praised and adored .. despite His silence. The trials I am facing right now and in my past life - and I expect in the future - will be teaching that anew. I'd hope Christians out there would know the difference between such a Lord and the tragically unnecessary FEAR that drives us to put words in His mouth He never spake

agape

rafael

Overcoming By The Word Of Testimony

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

Revelation 12:11

Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

Clarence Odbody, "It's A Wonderful Life"

We live in a day and age in which Jesus our Lord told us that the love of many will wax cold, evil men will wax worse and worse, and the consciences of many will be seared and therefore utterly amoral. False prophets are arising everywhere and deceiving many. And of course the personal cost suffered by those who've been deceived, as well as so many others, is never going to be at the top of the media rolodex or in their PalmPilot memos. If glittering fashion plates and wise mentoring types present their spiritual poison served up in the form of a Cutting Edge or a Next New Thing or a Breakthrough Quantum leap, so much the better. They lap it up like cats around milk. The media inures itself to responsibility or consideration of the shattering of souls their careless blather leads many into but not through for the sake of their ratings and revenue. And the advance of this kind of hardening of hearts is going to be found everywhere.

That's why revelation of the nefarious doings of cult leaders, false teachers and heretics everywhere has to be done. Some one has to confront the evil for the sake of the good, for the glory of God, for the freedom of those captive by it.

Which is why we've pointed out - among other things - how Gwen Shamblin, leader of the Remnant Fellowship cult, continues to razzle dazzle the media with her "weight loss" draped in the silken cloak of personal fulfillment to disguise it's ugly iron fist that she uses to control others. Earlier this year, she managed to wangle her way onto the Tyra Banks Show to attempt creating an infomercial through the show to advertise her gospel of weightloss. If you got time, you can see how fiercely RF operatives hijacked a comments forum on Banks' website about the show here to see how seriously they take their media "outreach." Blech.

No one can exactly point to Tyra Banks as an objective commentator of our times. Her ditzy presence is only going to reflect the values of what matters to most of the sensationalizing media out there. She's a fashion model whose show gravitates around her take on the topics that matter most to her target audience: sexual controversy, body image, and of course whether her breasts are real or not. That lowest common denominator is what she shares with NBC, Fox News, and the other media meisters out there - the allure of weight loss mingled with
spirituality that disses the norm which, if presented properly, props up ratings. They don't care about victims when the sponsors want a return on their dollars. Their pretense at "professionalism" is nothing less than a very real whoring with a Gwenzebel who stands in the bullseye of God's judgment that itself will bring His judgment on their own heads.

That is why I have said what I have said on my article on the "fellowship of the bling" on the website. Some have asked me if Banks or the other media figures she schmoozes with are a paid agent of Gwen? It's possible. Any kind of unholy position in the conjugal chambers where culture and media do their lovemaking is not above speculation. Just look at "Dancing With The Stars" or the lunacy of reality TV featuring Paris Hilton cleaning cattle stalls. Or the recently deceased Tammy Faye Bakker doing a "The Surreal Life" by living with several D-list celebs in a home in - where else - Los Angeles. 20 years ago, I would never have thought the late Jerry Falwell would have gone anywhere near the abominable mess that the Jim and Tammy and Jessica and David show at PTL created. But there they were. And then, the good Reverend was found sharing embraces with another genuine antichrist, the so-called "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon, who just happens to believe he's the Messiah. What is surprising is that so many of the vicious detractors of the Evangelical right so totally failed to raise this peculiar bit of "network building." So nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God ..

Seriously, I don't think Gwen earned money from her shtick on the Tyra Show. Personally, I think that Tyra's own shallow curiosity is what impelled her to bring that looney tune cult leader and her coterie onstage to show the world how to eat french fries and gape at before and after pictures. I think that the ubiquitous and endlessly reiterated "before/after" testimonies and pictures are what Tyra, whose battle with the bulge has gotten her a lot of unwanted attention which she's publicly smarted over, got ensnared by.

In the midst of it all, the stories about the abuses Shamblin and her ilk have wrought on so many lives were obviously unheard from. And sadly there will always be the terrifyingly shallow and/or undiscerning people who will uncritically accept whatever they are told and just believe what is told to them. They are the ones for whom the media whoredom with Gwen will spell their spiritual ruination. Steve, one of our ministry associates, sent Joy and I a videotape of the show. It was indeed pretty nauseating. Joy and I could barely stomach watching it. I think it is potentially one of the worst and most egregious examples of media irresponsibility yet. Watching Gwen lead adult men and women in a one hour dog and pony show jumping them through the hoops she created was absolutely infuriating. They all followed the same game plan they've been doing for years when dealing with those outside their group who they want to bewitch with their siren song and got to do it on perhaps the one place they could have done the most damage - targetting Tyra's national audience of twentysomething young women who are fresh meat for the image and fashion-driven culture of the day that Shamblin so totally exploits for her cult recruitment.

The broadcast shows that RF has learned how to lure its audience with a far more nuanced approach. The preachiness is still there, but as presented, it's more self-centered then ever, focusing on what the "pure" achieved with their familiarly manic energy. Gwen's prophetic mantle now appears to be woven with finer fabric and bigger hair than ever before. She's never been big on sackcloth and ashes anyway. Her fundamentally warped and domineering spirit of manipulation still shines through, but she shamelessly dazzles on as the humble, unassuming "Ms. Gwen" on the broadcast. Everyone in her orbit who "testified" knew the talking points to hit on, and of course, Jesus was given his five seconds of visibility on the show.

The big push on the free WDW webcast held a few days later - prominently advertised on the WDW website which was visited by a new crop of potential recruits - was for members to press on through WD classes to the WD Advanced courses where, the "pure" on the broadcast proclaimed, they had their "Aha" moment. That is the demonic snare that they want to spread.

The preaching and high pressure gloom and doom message of the WDA perspective is pretty burnt in my mind, and it's that kind of Zion absolutism that they want people to get ensnared by. And they now are doing it more sweetly then ever.

But I think, finally, in the end of it all, Tyra's public refusal to endorse the WDW and RF at the
end of the show may have really been a very good thing, and her use of the "C" word (CULT) just as casually as she did lifted enough red flags to warn a lot of people. The Spiritwatch website really showed a HUGE spike on the day of the broadcast, so I can hope that this little
question may have snapped a lot more than we realize to see what RF really is. And we are certain that it is what we presented on the website about Remnant that got a LOT of that attention.

As the old book says, the true saints of God will overcome even Satan himself "by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." We've all enjoyed the first deliverance, we're still telling the story of the second part, and by the end of our days on this sorrowful old world, we'll have shown ourselves true to the principles of the Kingdom of God. Our lives are to be lived for the service of God's Kingdom - there's a
whole world of wonderful ministry, sharing, labor and outreach to others we can yet offer while we still have time. That's why we and so many others who have helped Spiritwatch Ministries do what we do.

The testimony of those who've suffered the tender mercies of Remnant authoritarianism is telling the real story. And it's online 24/7 .. year round .. and it is being watched and listened to. I believe that in the end, when the books of life at the Bema Seat of Christ are opened that we will at long last see the accounting of just how many people potentially were turned ASIDE from RF because of their identifying with and being touched by what we've featured here. That's why Gwen and her cult hate this website so bad, that's why they keep trying to shut it down again and again. She can't shut that off.

Won't it be exciting for you to meet at the dawn of the Eternal Future for God's people, at that dinner table supper with the Lamb, someone across the table will tell you how your testimony about how Christ touched your life helped them overcome not just the trap doors of RF but other things you could scarcely imagine? We always get emails and calls from people who say how our ministry has sent into their lives a thought or a word that spoke to them and blessed them with light that helped snap the spell of a Shamblin or the web spun by another false teacher.

We are humbled to have had a small part in this since all of our lives always touch others in ways we can never fully appreciate, and the Internet is a powerful way of doing that. We may never meet them all here, but in that Day of Days, I believe we will.

agape

rafael

What's The Difference Any More?

An old and long deceased Church of God preacher quoted this verse one day in a sermon I listened to .. and while the content of his sermon didn't stick with me, the verse to this day cuts into me when I hear it and think of the darkness of the present day. Cuts deep.

If living life by Biblically mandated moral absolutes isn't your bag, I can see why this post - or this blog - might not mean anything to you, except a worldly-wise snicker over how uptight I seem. Your amusement doesn't faze me .. you'll give account to the God you thought was a myth in the end, despite your rejection of what you've been told to the contrary in attempts to get you to, ahem, "see the light."

It's what it means to those claiming to live by the Bible that rattles my cage.

He read the classic indictment of the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 22:26

" .. they have put no difference between the holy and the profane .. "

The very difference between right and wrong is being relentlessly confused and obscured in the last days! In fact the distinctions aren't far from being irrelevant to far too many. Oh, Law and Order will prevail to some extent. There is still enough of the social contract of Western civilization keeping things moving. But for those who mutter coyly "Oh, man, now that was just so wrong .. that ain't right, I'm tellin' ye .." as if to protest over how "wrong" some slight or gaffe was, the question should be asked .. "so? What's the problem? Don't saddle me with your truth when I got mine!"

Here's a bit of Biblical absolutism you might not stomach, but we're not responsible for your spiritual digestive tract. James 3:15 states that confusion is one of many evil works while Jesus in John 8:44 made it abundantly clear that all deception we see manifest among us ultimately is of Satanic inspiration. The world and the flesh are still subject to the devil to some degree (we can argue to what that degree might be with great implications riding on what we think), but it was Satan who loosed the vanity of deception into this world in Eden, so it's entirely defensible to assert that Satan is behind the trail of human error to no little degree. If this gives you heartburn, guess what .. there's no Mylanta this side of the Judgment that will cool it, except the covering blood of Jesus Christ who died and now lives again to free you from the sin you've plunged into.

Even it can be equally argued that it is the fallen nature of imperfect and egocentric humanity behind our moral shortcomings that impact our world, the truth still remains. The difference between the true and the false, the good and the evil, the way to life and the slouch to death still is being actively stirrred up. The Real Midnight Cry should bear witness to that recent Barna Research Group report from a few years ago that said:

Only 22 percent of adults believed in moral absolutes

64 percent think truth is always relative to the person & situation.

Of “born again” adults, only 32 percent believed in moral absolutes.

Oh wait, it gets worse ..

83 percent of all teens thought moral truth depended on the circumstances, with just 6 percent believing in absolute truth.

Only 9 percent of “born again” teens accept ideas of absolute truth (compared with 4 percent of other teens.)

At one time it was scandalous to even suggest that divorce might be an option for professing Christians. Those who flapped long tongues of gossip were rightly identified as such and avoided. The doctrine of the Trinity was a non-negotiable definition of how God revealed Himself. Sexual sin was, well .. sexual SIN. Being civil and longsuffering to others in the street and on the job - as well as at home and behind closed doors was an ideal to actually aspire to. We see clear evidence that the church isn't any different then the world it's supposed to NOT be a part of.

And we're supposed to be looking for yet another "new thing" by God to save our hides?

What does this survey say about our belief that some great worldwide revival is going on right now? If Barna’s research is correct, then there seems to be more evidence for a falling away of absolutely catastrophic proportions sweeping the Christian Church, a descent into moral catastrophe. The truth is that it is happening. Now.

And the Church doesn’t really see it because we are living in such a way where we can’t or won’t see it. No wonder the cults smell the opportunity they do and make their claims here and there about how "Babylonian" and apostate it is. And no wonder that people disillusioned with a "pillar of truth" called the "church" that is little more than debris adrift in a tossing sea of wind-driven amorality reach out in desperation for what seems "true." We cannot blame those seeking moral compasses in such times - but we cannot stay silent and leave those clinging to their new revelations as "the true Church" in the deeper ignorance they labor under.

Moral of the Story: What are you doing to turn the tide? How real are you and how authentic do you live when professing Biblical standards for your lifestyle?

That's where the rubber meets the road.

agape

As The Stomach Turns: The Charismatic Circus Continues To Travel

The Pentecostal and Charismatic worlds have learned nothing from the "mistakes" of the past.

After having been in ministry since 1983 as a Pentecostal minister, I can testify that this is as plain as an elephant in a phone booth. And this leviathan beast comprised of catastrophic and titanic blindness to the immorality, compromise and flat out sinful ways in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles wallows all over us yet. Isn't it obvious?

Let's use the overworked canard of those credulous Christians of today who want to dismiss the rough edges of the reality they live in denial of: "Just look at the fruit!"

Yes, let's look at the fruit of ..

.. the PTL abomination and the "Holy Wars" of the 1980's. (" .. isn't that special ..")

Too easy a target? Let's look a bit more at:

.. the secular TV exposes of Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton and Kenneth Copeland's "irregularities" regarding how they handle the resources God gave them

.. the predatory sexual and spiritual excesses pioneered by "Archbishop" Earl Paulk's filthy example and enthusiastically being replicated all around the world

.. the never ending support of Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda's cultic church movement Creciendo en Gracia throughout Latin America ..

.. the revolving door of spiritualized Ponzi schemes that both denominational and NON denominational church leaders have been caught in, where millions of dollars of money given to them as stewards is lost to crooks who know how to manipulate them through gullibility or good old fashioned avarice ..

.. the lone ranger Christianity of Juanita Bynum, Randy and Paula White and soooo many others who reckon themselves above admonition or accountability for the sanctity of their "marriages" and their "ministries: and who live in a way that neatly hides the horrible double lives they live .. (dare we mention the names of Ted Haggard, Paul Cain, Jimmy Swaggart, Stan Johnson and others .. nahh, we don't want to sound "judgmental" or as if we're "touching the anointed, now, do we?")

.. and the band played on ..

That's just a few examples off the top of my balding old pate that show that the "full gospel" church, so self-anointed with spiritual power, wisdom and "revelation knowledge" is pathetically bereft of true discernment of the more weightier things like truth, integrity, accountability and humility. It's a horror beyond comprehension! And who cares? Who really gives a rip? Where is the outrage in our churches? These grotesque things have been seen so often for the past three decades that I believe the Pentecostal/Charismatic worlds are now so completely desensitized to it that we no longer care. We tolerate it because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, seem politically incorrect or "intolerant." The massive yawn over the general malaise of the church of the last days is truly our collective slouching to Gommorah.

This ex-Catholic and now Church of God (Cleveland) preacher has been tempted several times to believe that we do live in a "church age" the dispensationalists like to label "Laodicean." I simply don't buy dispensationalism at all, but it's easy to see why so many fundamental brothers would feel that way. It's easy to see why so many people abandon the church for the siren song of the cults that our ministry does its best to counter .. because of the rank sin they see in US while we piously shout, dance, jump pews and preach "empowering" messages while avoiding things like holiness, purity and death to self.

And it's Pentecostals and Charismatics who lead the way .. we, the tongue talking "elite" whose members increasingly conduct themselves more shamefully these days then ever before. The "seed" for the "harvest" keeps rolling in. Why, we want our Best Lives Now, don't we?

The cash flow won't miss a beat after the Tearful Apology or the Official Statement. Money makes the world go around .. and enables these "ministries" to not only keep floating and reinventing themselves, but enable their "ministers" to live like kings and soothingly persuade us that this is our destiny too, if we would only "sow" into their "work."

We forget completely that Jesus said it would be like this. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone. It's a testimony to how spiritually shortsighted we've become when we find ourselves "shocked" by our sins when our Lord warned us so clearly that end time deception is THE sign of the end times, not some narrow eschatological / ecclesiastical agenda

.. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. .. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Matthew 24:3-4, 11-14

I'm going to keep preaching. I'm going to go out fighting against this, speaking the truth in love and with enough hard sayings that I hope shake the sleeping. I'm ready to fill any pulpit anywhere, go to any street corner anywhere, go to any door of any home anywhere and preach, publish and defend the Faith we've been so wonderfully given at such great cost.

But come quickly Lord Jesus, I'm tired of seeing this. So tired. Really.

agape

Truth Matters: 7 Pastoral Pieces Of Advice On False Teachers

Some very dear friends of ours who are also strong supporters of the ministry here graciously provided to my wife and I free tickets to a popular annual Bible conference sponsored by Precept Ministries International, a Bible teaching ministry founded by the legendary Kay Arthur. Kay and her faithful staff have devoted themselves quietly and passionately to teaching how to inductively study the Bible and glean truth from it in a balanced and reasonable way that helps ground Christians in solid Biblical understanding. I have lived in Tennessee for over 20 years and have encountered hundreds of people who have been deeply enriched by her work - even though I myself have never read her work nor done any of her studies, although I've glanced through several of them. Theirs is a blessed and wonderful ministry doing perhaps more good than any of us will ever realize this side of heaven.


I have long incorporated inductive study into my own devotional life, and while it may not be follow the same pattern as a Precept study, the results, I believe have been the same. My rooting and grounding in the Word of God has been the only thing that has kept me focused all the while beholding the seductions and deceptions of so many across the years, from Alice Bailey's metaphysical Maitreyan babble to Paula White's godtalk about Christians being "elohim" .. to God alone be the Glory, for in Him alone is Truth.


Among the many wonderful teachings that various Christian ministers and speakers shared there was a choice talk called "Truth Matters" by a fine Christian pastor I'd never heard of before by the name of Crawford Loritts. It was a sobering pastoral warning on how false teaching wielded by false teachers has become a powerful force that has laid waste the faith of so many believers who were caught unaware by it. Based out of Romans 16:17-20, it was a great talk that, suddently, became absolutely absorbing when the good Pastor Loritts smiled and advised us that he had something further to say to us" "This isn't in the powerpoint .. here's seven pieces of advise about false teaching .."


For the next 20 minutes, Pastor Loritts shared from a deep well of experienced contention with deceptive teachers and teachings that deserves to be remembered. He recalled how a cultic group penetrated a fellowship gathering of black ministers in Chicago in 1981 and had to be squarely dealt with. He revealed a rich mine of dearly bought pastoral warning every Christian believer needs to memorize, incorporate and pass on. And for me, what was so striking is Loritts' depth of insight on how deceptive teaching uses the dimension of interpersonal relationships to magnify itself .. a growth medium upon which the social diseases of cultic mind control and religious abuse thrive. Had more Christians who have become cult members been made aware of these, the predations of the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Moonies, Remnant Fellowship "saints" and a host of other "Bible cults" would have far fewer successes.


But enough of my rambling. Let the good Pastor Loritts share : these were gleaned from notes I took of his talk on August 17:


1) Be careful of people you don't know who want to go immediately into intimate communication with you.


2) Be careful of those who want you to disclose more about yourself than they are willing to disclose about themselves.


3) Be careful of those who use experiences, special insights and new kinds of information to control you.


4) Be careful of those who promote a teaching or an emphasis not widely accepted by the church or mature believers.


5) Be careful of those who seem to isolate you from family and friends through their contacts with you and their new circles of associates.


6) Don't give control of your mind and thought to anyone but the Lord - "loyalty" should never be considered to be blind obedience.


7) Never stop seeking true, honest fellowship with healthy and mature Christians who don't practice any of the above.

Say amen, somebody. You can get a CD copy of this talk by contacting Precept at the link above. That's better preaching in 1 hour then you'd hear in several on TBN or in a BYU Chapel.

Another Sign Of The End Time Apostasy: Very Bad Theology On Church Signs

"Discouragement is faith in the devil!"


This kind of jolting and confrontational rhetoric, based upon a certain and all too familiar black and white worldview found in Evangelical circles as well as in the Word of Faith Movement, was seen posted on a church sign erected outside a large church as Joy and I returned from Chattanooga. We won't say where the church is to spare them from any further embarassment, but it's a well known one in the area here.


It's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from a bellicose, fire tongued preachin' clone of Gregory Dickow, Joyce Meyers or Kenneth Copeland whose endless verbosity about faith includes harangues like this one seen on the sign. I've heard Faith teachers fill their homespun homilies with provocative statements like these meant to jar their starry eyed disciples on to newer depths of commitment to the concepts of "faith" they push ("You'll be hung by your tongue!" "Have faith in your faith!" etc.). I've seen this kind of stuff planted firmly in the "outreach" of Faith church's signs posted for all the world to see and be "inspired" by.


The core thought that this church thought important enough to shout out to the whole community around it seems to be that if someone is discouraged, as if that wasn't bad enough, they've committed a horrifying abomination. If someone is struggling in faith or is depressed by their situation, despairing of whatever issue faces them, the sign screams that they actually are abandoning God and exercising faith in the person, power and principles of Old Scratch himself, the devil. The implications of this are absolutely beyond belief, an unconscionably direct assault on the hearts and minds of those who drive by this church every day. If being discouraged means I've become allied with the minions of Satan by a so-called "faith" in him, then the entire world at some point apostasizes simply by surrendering to human nature. Everyone goes through this as the common lot of mankind, including Biblical figures like David and Job, the apostles' of Jesus' day and so many others. This has never apparently mattered to Faith teachers who unblushingly go on to criticize, insult and deride those who offer any kind of objection to those fantasies they pass off as cutting edge expositions of spiritual reality.

The absurdity of this position is beyond question - it says that to fall to one's human weakness is Satanic. Who will visit a church or accept its' ministry with that kind of thinking brazenly posted outside its doors?


But it gets even better .. well, actually WORSE. What makes this fascinating is that the church WASN'T Pentecostal or Charismatic, but is a large Baptist church, part of an Evangelical movement that claims a fidelity to Scripture and Biblical truth above question. This church's "outreach" sign has a theology that says that to be human and feel disappointment, discouragement and despair is not only unspiritual but is a sign of allegience to Satan himself, thus adding the lowest kind of insult to injury. I guess this church thought this was meant to inspire and edify. Personally, I think it to be arrogantly insensitive and spiritually immature AT BEST .. and it speaks volumes about just how shortsightedly stupid Christian "faith" can seem when trying to make a statement in the marketplaces of the world.


I'm a minister. I believe in the Body of Christ. There's a lot of wonderful and truly inspirational things going on in world missions, discipleship and church growth as well as evangelistic outreach that show that for all of our warts, the Church is indeed still moving forward with the business of the Kingdom of God on the royal road to Heaven. But this nauseatingly sign, however, is a great illustration of how many speed bumps and potholes are on the way .. and how incredibly bad the Church still is at sounding out clear messages to a world that looks to it, sees this kind of junk, and looks the other way. I am sure that is precisely what this church, unintentionally, is doing even as we speak.


agape

Prosperty Gospel Examined Redux

The Word of Faith movement, for those who have never heard of it before, is simply a body of teaching concocted up and preserved by a small but extremely influential Pentecostal and Charismatic teachers that assures us it is God's will that all Christians are to be divinely wealthy and healthy as well as victorious in every situation that challenges them. It is almost impossible to understate or exaggerate how profoundly influential these doctrines are and just how deeply it has impacted the Christian Church. Millions around the world hold that its pathetically questionable truth claims are Gospel revelation. We obviously disagree since so much of it is not only unbiblical but heretical and is precisely "another gospel" that preaches a "another Jesus" through the power of "another spirit" as Paul the apostle warned in 2 Corinthians 11:4.

Part 2 of our now 5 part series of articles on the Faith movement is now online. Like the first article, it is fully hyperlinked to offsite references as well as full of Real Audio and Video media clips that provide further information. Our first post was a summary of the claims of the Faith movement and our second one examines them more in depth for clarity. We have been waiting a long time to get these out and believe they will help many.

agape

rafael

The Prosperity Gospel examined online

Finally, after much delay due to our involvement in researching and discerning the cultic teaching of Remnant Fellowship, we are finally moving along with other research articles on other extremist doctrines and practices. Our articles on the Word of Faith Movement are starting to be posted online. The first installment of it may be found online at our Strange Fires segment here.

We will be keeping you up to date when part 2 comes online, which we anticipate will be in the next week.



agape

rafael

A Short Guide to Comparative Religions

From off the net from many yarrons ago. These are roughly 30 different ways to get a philosophical handle on the idea that religious crap happens too.

Taoism Crap happens.
Confucianism Confucious say, "Crap Happens".
Calvinism This crap is pre-ordained.
Buddhism If crap happens, it really isn't crap.
Jehovah's Witness Crap happens because you don't work hard enough.
Seventh Day Adventist No crap on Saturdays.
Zen What is the sound of crap happening?
Hedonism There's nothing like a good crap happening.
Hinduism This crap happened before.
Mormonism This crap will help me grow.
Islam If crap happens, it is the will of Allah.
Moonies Only happy crap really happens.
Stoicism This crap is good for me.
Protestantism We don't take no crap from the Pope.
Catholicism Crap happens because you are BAD.
Hare Krishna Crap happens Rama Rama.
Judaism Why does this crap always happen to US?
Zoroastrianism Crap happens half the time.
Christian Science Crap is all in your mind.
Quaker We will continue calmly in spite of this crap.
Environmentalism Recycle this crap.
Existentialism What is crap anyway?
Baha'i Crap happens, but let's not fight about it.
Unitarianism We're all partly responsible for everyone's crap.
Unity We're all in this crap together.
Native American Crapping is part of living. Get used to it.
Scientology We'll get rid of your crap for just $7,899.
Est If you haven't "got it," you haven't got crap.
Rastafarianism Let's smoke this crap.
Remnant Fellowship/Weigh Down Workshop Don't eat one bite of crap past full or you'll go to hell

Just to let you know we do have a sense of humor and hope we offend all equally .. in love of course ..

Humanistic Logic At It's Worst: Or "Honey, It's George Bush's Fault I Had To Have An Abortion"

Don't get me wrong. Humanism is a philosophical postion that in essence enshrines the self-determination of the human being as its' foundational belief. Like it or not, there are affinities between classical humanism and Christian values that, if not too stretched, show distinct harmonies of intent and agreement. We'll discuss that at a later time.

Unfortunately the breed of "Christian humanism" that typified the Enlightenment's Protestant spirituality doesn't begin to hold a candle to the moral shambles of today's humanistic influence. Reapproachment of the two seems a lost cause when
most of the humanistic intent of the day, as surfacing in culture, sanctifies the "rights" of the human to assert their own position almost to the exclusion of other equally valid concerns related to ethical and moral questions raised by their "self determination." Exit Terry Schiavo, stage left. Exit Baby Doe, stage right. Enter the so called "Young Men Christian Association" field trip to an abortion clinic in New Hampshire. Enter the Bratz dolls that remind little girls that to be pretty, you must be a sexually precocious little flirt. I need go no further.

I stumbled across today what is quite possibly one of the most pathetic and warped signs of the times I've seen yet about how this self-centered philosophy, upon which secular humanism is based, has successfully persuaded a harried mother of two children to jettison all conscience and end the life of her unborn child. Oh but wait, it gets better.. It was all because of George Bush.

Unbelievable, but true. You can't make this stuff up.

Click here to read and weep.

No Apple For The Teacher Of LDS Kids Today

One of the more interesting emails we got recently was written by a teacher in a part of the country where LDS families make up a large percentile of her class. She outlines a situation that came up in her class when the pursuit of education was too dangerous for the LDS to tolerate: the following is the essential text of their email and my reply. Since their email address bounced, this is my way of trying to hopefully deliver it to them. It is a cautionary tale ..

They wrote:

I just wanted to comment that I thought your piece on Mormonism was very interesting. I am a middle school social studies teacher who just recently taught the Utah history portion of Manifest Destiny. (Ed. note - I can only assume she means this article we wrote summarizing the LDS Church's dedication to sanitizing its' history) I only have a few Mormon students but their parents were furious for me mentioning polygamy and for me giving an assignment that required students to bring in research on Utah history, One parent vehemently denied that Joseph Smith was ever a polygamist and another denied that Brigham Young was a polygamist. These parents called the principal and later the district office, trying to get me fired. It was unbelievable. Fortunately after much investigation the principal's final report said that I didn't do anything wrong. But I was stunned at how these Mormon parents reacted to my history lesson, and more stunned at how ignorant they are of their own religon.

I am not surprised at the reaction of these parents. They are products of the Mormon culture, which handles inconvenient truth claims about their religion with either denial, deception and demonizing. This paradigm is generally how Mormons will escalate their responses to outsiders who challenge their piously elitist worldview with objective fact based on science, history or orthodox theology and no two Mormons will act the same way. After years of talking with them about their religion, I know this to be true.

Some take the gentle, weepy-eyed and wounded approach ("Oh, how can anyone say anything like that about MY church, it's just not true") to a harder line ("Now that is a lie, let me tell you how it really happened, and stop listening to the Anti side of things'" - "antis" being anyone who has solid documentation about their claims) to the one in which personal attacks, slander and threats of legal action and even physical violence are fair game ("You intolerant blankety blank atheistic reprobate, we're going to sue you!"). Undoubtedly you got someone in the demonizing end of the spectrum whose personality and zeal embraced that degree of reactionary hysteria.

These people, being the upcoming and latest generation of LDS parents seeking to carry the Mormon torch, react the way they are because they were told that such "lies" are old myths circulated by "the Antis" who are on a campaign to smear the LDS Church for ulterior motives. These young parents were told by their spiritual leaders and elders, whom they sometimes call "The Brethren", that Smith and Young were straight arrow spiritual heroes and these terrible things spoken of them and about their pioneer history are all lies.

The LDS Church, as you know, has been engaged in spin doctoring of its historical and sociological reality for generations and they have it down to a fine art, so much so that you can now hear talk of Evangelicals embracing Mitt Romney as a legitimate Presidential contender on that basis. If bishop Humptyscrunch said it never happened, well, we can trust him. If apostle Dingleboulder said so, then that's the way it is./*He'd never lie to us, they would walk away believing.*/ So what you did, without any intent I am sure, by exposing your students to documentable historical fact and requesting that they look for it, was to in essence undermine that careful facade of deceptive propagandizing that these parents have built in their own heads and which they are replicating in their children's minds.

By doing your job, you directly challenged the LDS's most powerful grip on the hearts and minds of its followers - that being the free usage of deception. Objectivity is a dangerous thing to the power and authority of a cult seeking to recruit and retain members with beautiful stories and experiential faith.

They continued:

What boggles my mind the most though, is how does a religion that has such shameful history and doctrines continue to grow so fast? I know the Mormon church has a very hard working public relations department and they very actively convert people, but ever since the invention of the internet, everything about the Mormon church has been exposed. And it's not just the history and the doctrines.

I offered further response:

It grows because of three basic trends in society today: 1) the postmodern trend in Western society to simply and uncritically accept what we are told by what looks positive, plausible and practical, 2) the unquestionably high external moral and spiritual absolutes by the religion in light of an increasingly amoral and secularizing world filled with cynicism, skepticism and relativism and 3) the unwillingness of those who can uphold legitimate objections to misguided and questionable faith claims to avoid being seen as "intolerant."

Humans however have a troublesome tendency to keep thinking about questions they get answers for (not a bad thing, I think) and will go looking for them if no one will provide them. That's why the Internet is such a dangerous weapon to groups like the Mormons who cannot abide questions that rock their foundations for which they have no answers that can possibly be spun to their advantage and thus reinforce their pretense of spiritual authority. Many Mormons still think about the loose ends of their religion, as do others, and will go looking for answers.

At the same time, plenty of people who feel they want a restoration or two of faith in their life see the pretty pictures of a Mormon world order, get to see the fresh faced zeal of young LDS missionaries, and wonder at what its like to know that God really loves them and answers their prayers .. and voila, within days, uncritically, unquestioningly, they become baptized Mormons - after a lifetime of being Catholic or Protestant or irreligious. The LDS missions effort, like all cultic proselytizers, targets the existing Christian church for its existence and could not grow with out it. Hence, this is one reason why I, a Christian minister, now pursue the path I do.

Our own encounters and outreach to the Remnant Fellowship cult are also proof of how the Internet is being used to find information. Our website is probably the only resource in the world with the most extensive amount of information on this group and so much more needs to be told about it, since it is undeniably a dangerous cult that deceptively recruits on the grounds that is a "faith based" weight loss program that only wants to help people. It is snaring new attention for its seductions by sending out onto the soundstages of national media venues (like the "Today Show," "Tyra Banks Show" and "Fox & Friends" just in the last year) many beautiful skinny people fashionably dressed and who have these marvelous testimonies to personal renewal. It used email and webcasting in conjunction with frequent visits to the cult's HQ in ultrahip Franklin, TN to ensnare, indoctrinate and then control members - so much so that hundreds of them have moved to Nashville.

What isn't as well known, however, is how many marriages have been destroyed, children starved and families divided painfully because of this cult, which teaches that purity and righteousness are directly tied to an arbitrary standard of personal weight loss and how well one jumps through the hoops of their moral standards and the cult leader's personal mores. We have done all we can and know for a fact that our documentation of their egregious and abusive manipulations has been a serious detriment to their recruitment and recently just saw them lose an attempted lawsuit to litigate us out of existence with claims of damages of 3.3 million dollars.

But the continued growth of this movement highlights my point - if people don't ask questions and just accept what they are told and never seek alternative perspectives of what they're being told to believe, they are prime candidates for any smooth talking proponent of some new and cutting edge restoration of divine truth or higher wisdom.

They conclude:

There are so many things that the Mormon church is trying to cover up, including the Mason like cultish ceremonies that occur in their temples (i.e. secret handshakes that are required to get into heaven?!). Do you thing there will ever be a time that the Mormon church is completely accepted for being a fraud?

No, unfortunately. I do not see a trend in society leading me to believe that the side of human nature I have just discussed is going to change. That includes Mormonism. Many Mormons know that their church's foundational beliefs about man becoming gods, about the Book of Mormon being a "divine record", and about the historical reality of LDS social presence are based upon out and out lies and fabrications and don't care. They've got good jobs, are raising good kids, have had a wonderful life of meaningful personal vocation in the church, have relatives who trekked in the Mormon migrations to Utah .. they're not going to rock the boat. I do see that Christ prophesied that false prophets would arise in a period of time He called the "end times" and deceive many.

This is purely a spiritual truth claim, I know, but I personally feel that the emergence of groups like Mormonism are stark, sobering fulfillment of this. True, man has been shot through with sectarianism of every stripe for all of its history, but these new groups follow a program of deception that I think is unmatched in history and that their prevalence and almost innumerable presence are proof of this also.

September 11 and the LDS Church

6 years ago, in 2001, the LDS Church community did what it could to rally our nation in its own unique way after the horror of September 11. We are grateful for that. In that day, we all united as Americans outraged against the cowardly and monstrous acts set forth by Islamic extremists and pledged to stand against their terrorism.

With the Mormons, all Americans - be they atheists, Democrats, Muslims, black, Evangelicals, Mexicans, poor, Catholics, middle class, Hindus, Libertarians, pacifists, etc - for one shining moment, were as one in shock, horror, mourning and outrage.

150 years ago, on September 11, 1857, that was not the case.

The United States was at great odds with the Mormon community that had just traveled to the then unsettled Utah territories. There was no such unity and antagonism between the U.S. government and the leaders of the LDS Church is an established historical fact. And it was the clash of Mormon religious elitism that socially defied American morality that was at the core of the issue. Following the self-proclaimed prophetic authority of Brigham Young, Mormon society - often referred to as "Zion" - was clearly a counterculture that eschewed the "Gentile" world outside it.

But September 11 will forever be a red letter day for the Mormon Church.

A new movie entitled "September Dawn", which will premiere on May 4, will explain why September 11, 1857 is a day Mormonism would love to bury and forget. This movie will not allow that to happen.

Click here to watch the trailer.

This is an important reminder that if we forget our past we are condemned to repeat it. Today, men and women may no longer be skewered or shot to atone for their sins in the LDS Church (sins that often include simply acting upon conscience) .. but they are drawn and quartered alive in a living death more horrible than a mass murder or gang rape. My good friend Eric Kettunen's website details this accordingly through the many testimonials of Mormons who can testify to this.