Cults No.1 Introduction

Right, let's come then to our series on the cults. And in the notes that have been issued, and you've no need to follow these through, they're just some outline which I'm not necessarily sticking to every week, therefore your benefit for reflection and revision in time to come. But in the notes I do quote from 1 John chapter 2 and verse 19, a scripture which it seems to me well describes some of the groups that we are going to look at over the course of the next few weeks.

They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest, that they were not all of us.

There has often been an attack upon the Word of God. Indeed, the history of man is parallel to the attacks that have been made on divine revelation. I remind you that right at the beginning of the story of humankind, the serpent slid alongside Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he dangled a question in front of her.

He said, Hath God said? And smuggled into that question was the implication that Eve had a right to pass judgment on the Word of God. And the devil then proceeded in his strategy, which always remains the same down the course of human history, by following the question with a negation, with a negative. God hath not said.

He contradicts the Almighty God of the universe. And as a result of that, the first piece of heresy, the first semblance of the way that the cults would take us, was presented right at the beginning, as I say, of the human story. And down the chapters of the Bible, down the various books in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, you will see how the devil endeavors to disrupt the redeemed community by creating heresy or by leading men and women out into the ranks of the earliest cults.

Way back in the monarchy, after the death of Solomon and the taking over of the kingdom, the divided kingdom of Israel by Rehoboam and Jeroboam, what in effect was a heresy was instituted by the northern king, Jeroboam. He did this because of political reasons. He wanted to turn the northern Jews away from the central focal point of the Promised Land, which had hitherto been Palestine, which had hitherto been Jerusalem.

And he set up idols which were to represent God, but nonetheless were in flat contradiction to the commandment which the Lord had given to his children through Moses. When Elijah was in harness, proclaiming his message of warning, you remember he confronted the importation of the Baal religion at the hands of the infamous Jezebel. And that confrontation came to a climax in more senses than one, came to its summit on Mount Carmel, when after the God of Elijah had demonstrated his power, the Tishbite slew the prophets of Baal.

And many perhaps have thought, well that was a very crude and cruel action on the part of God's prophet. But that observation is often made without recourse to the particular condition that was confronting Israel. Elijah well knew that the importation of a foreign religion into Israel would threaten the political life of the Hebrew community, for that was wrapped up with the pure worship of Yahweh.

So you have indications of heresy, the beginnings of the cults even in the Old Testament. And when you come through to the New Testament, what do you discover? Well, the Lord Jesus has very little in common with the Sadducees. They were the liberals of His day.

They were rationalists. And the Lord Jesus from time to time took them on, and He demonstrated the lack of biblical content to their professed beliefs. Later on, when the epistles were written by Paul and Peter and others of the disciples of Jesus, you recall that the reason behind the sending of those letters was to place a corrective against the teachings of heretics who were peddling erroneous doctrines around the churches in the Middle East.

So at the inception of Christianity, right at the beginning, heresy was rife, and the possibility of the cults dawning was becoming more and more obvious. Now, we know full well that what happened in the first two or three centuries in the history of the Christian church has been reproduced down the centuries that have followed. The church has always had to battle against heresy.

You will know that from time to time the Christian church wrote out creeds. A creed is a statement of belief. Why did the church leaders come together in councils and write up creeds? Well, because the established doctrines of the church were being attacked by those who would peddle erroneous doctrines, by heretics, by those who would lead Christians off to cults.

And so you had the great creedal statements of the church way back in the third century, the fifth century, on to the Reformation, and later a restatement of the belief of historic Christianity. And today there needs constantly to be a reaffirmation of what Christians believe, because what has happened down Bible times and in the early centuries of the Christian church is happening again in the twentieth century. Attacks are being made upon the Word of God.

Heresy is abroad, and the cults are teeming with many, many people who very often have been run to their ranks because of a poor knowledge of the Word of God. And if there's one thing that I want this particular series of studies to do, even if you forget all that I might tell you about individual cults and their doctrines, if there's one thing that I beg of God to do as a result of this series of studies, it is to make each one of us more determined to study the Word of God for ourselves. Study to show yourself, says the Apostle Paul, writing to a young Christian centuries ago.

Study to show yourself to be a man of the Scriptures. I paraphrase Paul's comments. Study so that you yourself shall have accumulated such knowledge of the Word of God that when heresy is peddled in your community you'll identify it and you'll be able to expose it and help other people who may be tangled up in some knot.

Now let's say something else by way of introduction to our studies. In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ warned, and the writers of the epistles maintain the warning, that in the last days of the dispensation there would come an intensification of evil forces. That means to say that one could anticipate the arisal of many of the cults that are with us in the 20th century.

Jesus tells the disciples that in the last days there will spring up false messiahs, people who claim to be working for him, people who claim to be a reincarnation of himself. And Jesus said, don't be deluded. In those days, don't believe the false messiahs, don't believe the false teachers.

And one of the ways in which the Christian community in the last days can guard against false teaching is by being fully instructed in the Word of God and therefore being able to identify error when it is promoted. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 3, the apostle Paul, continuing this theme, warns of a falling away. A people who once were or seem to be within the fold of the redeemed community will no longer be with us.

They will find themselves in some other religious organization, and I argue that we're seeing this happening today. And that's the reason, that's the explanation for this mushroom growth amongst the sects with so many millions of adherents. And some of the people who are in the sects could perhaps rightly pass criticism on the Christian church.

They say, well, you claim to be orthodox and biblical, and you reckon that we are heretic and erroneous, therefore, in our beliefs. But look at the church. Within the established church, you find clergymen getting up and saying one thing, and other clergymen getting up and saying another thing.

Within certain of our denominations, you find people who are denying the deity of Christ. The church is not speaking with an authoritative voice. And maybe that's one of the reasons why the ranks of the cults are swelling, because so often the individual cults speak with an authority that is not seen within the so-called church of Jesus Christ.

Another reason, I think, why people are drawn into the cults in the twentieth century is because within the established church, there doesn't seem to be that joy and that enthusiasm that there should be. Christians who fall out with one another, people who seem to have a perennial expression of sadness and gloom on their faces, this does not seem to dovetail with New Testament Christianity. There doesn't seem to be that fellowship, that koinonia, that the early church had.

And so people get disenchanted with established Christianity, so to speak, and look for a more intimate fellowship within the ranks of the cults. And I think that these two criticisms are valid ones, and we need to look into them and provide a corrective. Well then, what have we said so far? By way of summary, the church has always been under attack.

The redeemed community, now embracing the Old Testament people of God, have always been under assault from the devil. There has always been the tendency of those who knew the truth to be led off into error by heretics and by those who promote the various doctrines of the cults. And we are saying that in the twentieth century there's an intensification of all this, and there seems to be a new cult launched every year.

We're not just now in the 1970s dealing with the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons. They have been around for quite a long time. Some of these older cults are now dated by 100 years or 950 years.

But we are seeing, particularly in the 60s we saw it, and in the 70s the emergence of new cults, which may not have made their impact here in Worthing, this coastal resort which doesn't boast many colleges or places where students come together. But believe you me, these cults are making an impact in university and college campuses in the United Kingdom, in the Western world, and they're also beginning to make an impact in the East. I'm referring to such groups as the Unification Church, which has its origin in Korea.

I'm referring to such groups as the Children of God, which has its origin in the United States of America. And also in the West and in the East as well, there is a revival of interest in Spiritism and in Mysticism. Now, these things in particular are making an impact upon the student world, and I think it's necessary for us who want to be informed, intelligent Christian people, to look into not only the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, but possibly revise what we already know about these groups.

But it is good for us to be informed about what these new groups are saying and why it is that they are attracting so many thousands of young people into their ranks. Well, then, all that, as I say, by way of introduction. Let's come to what is a fundamental question to be put and answered this evening.

What is a cult? What is a cult? Well, I give you in your notes the concise Oxford Dictionary's definition. A cult is a devotion to a particular person or thing as paid by a professed body of adherents, a devotion to a particular person or some thing, some idea as paid by a professed body of adherents. So, you get the children of God, for instance, one of the new cults, and they profess an adherence to their founder, a man who actually goes under the name of Moses, and these children of God look to him as someone of authority who can give them direction and can add a corrective in every area of their lives.

They look upon his teaching as being inspired, and they place his teaching alongside the Word of God, and indeed, as I shall go on to show you, they filter the Bible through what he has to say. And you find this with other groups too. You find an older group like Christian Science doing exactly the same.

This lady, Mrs. Eddie Baker or Baker Eddie, I'm never quite sure which came first. Well, she writes her own books, The Science and Health, and the Bible is percolated through that book. And the Christian Scientist, he gives as much respect or seems to do to the lady founder of that group and to her writings as to the Bible.

And because of the respect that he gives to her as an adherent of the cult, he in effect does away with the authority of Scripture and says goodbye to biblical Christianity as it's been understood down the centuries. And again, all this I shall show you as this series develops. Well then, I've tried to define what a cult is, and I go on in the notes that I handed out to say that in no way do I use that term in a derogatory sense.

I have great respect, in one sense, for the members of the cults. At least they believe something. At least they've tried to come to grips with some of the great problems of life.

They're not going through the seas of life on some boat that hasn't stopped at some stage to ask just to where they are traveling what is life all about. We will give them credit for this. And as I say, I don't use that word cult in a derogatory sense at all.

But having admitted that, I tell you that when I look into their teachings and where more pointedly I meet with these people face to face, my heart breaks that the devil should have been able to put across such a delusion that hooks so many people, that ensnares so many people who are members of these cults. Well, another question which has to be put up and answered at least to some degree and to my satisfaction, if not to everybody's, is should we be spending Thursday nights studying these things? After all, these people believe what is contrary to the Word of God. Would it not be better for us to overlook what they are saying and apply ourselves just systematically to Scripture on the basis that if we know the genuine, we'll be able to recognize the counterfeit? Now, I feel that there's good, solid reason behind that argument.

And for quite a long time, I've deferred requests from several people in the tabernacle to take this series on that basis, that if you know the genuine well enough, well, you'll recognize the counterfeit, that which is not genuine when it comes along. But I've revised my views recently on two or three grounds. The first one I've already intimated.

In studying the life of our Savior, it seems to me that he knew full well the theology of the Sadducees, although he didn't admit to it. He recognized that they were wrong, he knew where they were wrong, and he exposed their inconsistencies. Or take the Apostle Paul.

Paul was not only a great theologian, he was a great philosopher. That means to say that he must have read Plato and Aristotle and all the other Greek philosophers, men of learning. And when he goes to Athens, when he's engaged in ministry in Greece, he uses his knowledge of their ideas and endeavors to apply the Christian corrective.

So, on that ground, I think that I've got some justification, at least for a brief study of the cults during these next few Thursdays. And also, there's another ground. It seemed to me when I was considering this problem as to whether we should engage in this pursuit of studying up the cults, it seemed to me that here would be presented a glorious opportunity, not only for me to be negative in showing you their error, but being positive biblically in showing you what is the truth.

So we can use this particular series in underlining in our own minds what we believe about the deity of Jesus Christ. Do you know, I reckon that if I were on a Sunday night to pass round separate pieces of paper to every man and woman in our congregation and ask them, even with a Bible in front of them, to find me texts that supported the notion of the deity of Jesus, or perhaps more difficult, to find texts which demonstrated the doctrine of the Trinity, we'd get quite a lot of blank pieces of paper handed to the stewards at the end of the service. The thing is that there is a crass ignorance on the part of many Christian people as to what they really believe.

And one of the reasons why on a Sunday night you sometimes hear me using strong language, invagling people to come into the Sunday morning teaching ministry and to come along to the Bible school is simply this, that when you place the average person who attends an orthodox church alongside the average member of a cult, the Bible knowledge of the latter, the cult adherent, is greater than the Bible knowledge of the so-called orthodox Christian. Now, you may feel that that's an extravagant claim, but that is my experience down twelve years in the Christian ministry. So, anything that gives us an excuse to look into the fundamentals of the faith again and to inquire into and ensure that we have lodged in our mind the kernel of Christian teaching from the Scriptures, proof texts that underline what we believe, anything that gives us excuse to do that cannot result in anything else but good and benefit for each of us.

So, really, these are my reasons, these are my grounds, and I feel I have the permission of the Spirit to bring these series to you for those reasons which I've suggested. Now, let's come to the cults themselves just in a general fashion this evening. We're not going to be looking at any one in particular.

There are several general things that you can say about any cult, and these I've listed, though I not necessarily take them in the list that has been handed out to you, and I'll certainly develop and extend upon the comments that have been made in the notes which have been printed. Certain things that the cults themselves have in common, certain peculiarities, yes they have, but there are things which each one of them has which is shared by the other, common denominators, and the first one that stands out is this, they are all basically anti-Christ. They are anti-Christ.

Jesus says, he who is not with me is against me. There's no neutral position. You're either with the Saviour or you're against the Saviour.

The Bible is perhaps even more strong in another place, a later place in the New Testament where it speaks of the world today, and it says, the whole world lieth with the evil one. That means to say that there are tens of millions of people whose minds have been hoodwinked by the devil, and amongst the cults, well, you find this, these anti-Christian teachings, a further illustration that the devil is deluding men and women. The devil will keep men away from God by many, many methods.

He'll endeavour to keep men and women away from the Lord by perversions, sexual perversions, chemical perversions, drug addiction, and religious perversions, and the cults are an illustration of the latter. Men and women are attracted into their ranks, and I say the magnetism is caused by the devil himself. Basically, every cult is anti-Christ.

And another point that needs to be said in our general introduction to this subject, they don't appear, at least the majority, don't appear to be anti-Christian, and this is the subtlety of the whole thing, you see. The devil is a master strategician in counterfeiting. Take the Moon Unification Church.

You may not have heard of this group. Its origins actually are in South Korea. They've got all the trappings of true Christianity.

You may have come across adherents of this particular church. Sometimes in Montague Street, you see them selling candles, or you may have seen them in the main thoroughfares in Brighton. Generally speaking, young people, not only do they sell candles to procure some finances for their sect, but also they sell literature, a unification magazine.

And if you read that through on first glance, it seems to be quite all right. It seems to be in harmony with what the Christian church has been saying for a long, long time. But if you delve into the teaching of the Moon Church, you will discover that far from being an orthodox branch of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is a diabolical counterfeit.

Take some of the churches that you've got in Worthing that are called Christian Science. Now, there is very little scientific about that particular group, and there is certainly nothing Christian. It's a misnomer.

They really have no right to use either of those two words. Philosophically and scientifically, the teachings of that group are inadmissible. And to suggest that what they are really propounding, specifically in relation to the body and the reality of pain, is absolutely anti-biblical.

They're neither Christian nor are they scientific. And yet they have all the trappings of a Christian church, and they use the very word church to describe themselves. Or take, if you want, a more modern branch, a more modern cult than Christian Science.

Take the Church of Scientology, which in the UK has its headquarters not so far from us in East Grimstead. Now, once again, there's very little that's scientific, if anything, about that group. I would say that some of its so-called psychological practices are very, very harmful.

But if you go along to the Church of Scientology, if you witness, as I have, a wedding being taken by a minister of the Church of Scientology, it's got all the trappings of orthodox Christianity. But it's a lie, it's a delusion, and there are lots of people who are in the grip of Scientology and keeping, incidentally, the founder of Scientology, a wealthy man sailing around on the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean in his very well-equipped yacht. They don't appear to be anti-Christian, but they are.

And when you dig deep, you see that they are. But the problem is the adherent doesn't see it because he's deluded. I wish I could introduce you to some of the young fellows that I met out in the East, and I'm not talking about Asians now.

I'm talking about Europeans who are in the grip of these sects, the Hare Krishna sect, the Children of God sect. They've got a glazed look in their eyes, and when you're talking to them rationally and logically, they can't follow you. They're not even tuned in on your wavelength.

They feel they're so right, and yet they're so anti-biblical. And what's more, these groups claim a five-star faith. It's high-octane religion that they're on.

Now, I've admitted that some criticisms can be leveled at the church, perhaps even the evangelical church. To date, it always astonishes me that sometimes there is so little exuberance amongst Christians in their worship. I don't see the reason for this.

I feel that the New Testament community were a very exuberant, a very lively, a very joyful group. So I will admit to some criticism that we fall short of the inheritance or entering into the inheritance that is ours as members of the body of the church of Jesus Christ. But you see, these sects, these members of the sects, they come along and they say, our religion, our beliefs, it's, well, it's 98-octane.

It's much better than your cheaper brand. And it seems to be the case. Take certain aspects of spiritism.

Does the evangelical church claim that the dead come back and speak? You ever heard a dead man speak in the tabernacle? Ever heard someone possessed by the spirit of someone who's dead who speaks to you? No. All we can do as far as the bereaved person is concerned, if their loved one was a Christian, is to console them from Scripture and to remind them of the hope that is theirs. But that seems to fall far short of actual communion with the loved one.

My own dear father hadn't been dead so long before the spiritists were at work on my mother saying that his voice had been heard in one of their meetings and so on. Fortunately, she had more sense than to believe it or to get drawn into it. What about this Christian science business then? There's no such thing as pain.

No, that's marvelous. It could take you to a girl who's 33 years of age in Worthington Knight who's got cancer of the spine and has almost hell on earth in front of her unless the Lord determines to heal her, for I gather that's one of the most painful things that anyone can go through. Not to be able to convince me there's no such thing as pain.

We can't do this, not in the tabernacle. We have to admit that great men of God have died in pain. Never knew my own father have a decent night's sleep in the last six years of his life.

Tell you no exaggeration, I'd have given my right hand for him to have been able to sleep at night. But the sects come along and they say, well, you know, if only you would accept what we say. There's no such thing as pain.

You see what I mean when I tell you that the sects claim to have a superior blessing to we evangelicals and we've got to examine what they have to say along this line. We've got to evaluate it, we've got to sift it. And I reckon that you'll come to the same conclusion as I've been driven to on so many, many occasions.

It's all a delusion, all a delusion. Another thing about the sects is not only that they claim to have a five-star religion, they're also sincere. The adherents.

I'm not so sure about some of the founders. Some of the founders, I think, were consciously evil people. But the adherents.

You don't go out to the east, as some of these young fellows and girls that I met have, and give up a fair standard of living in the West in order to be drawn into some community and to live at a very low standard and to have no material security and very little material provision made for you, unless you're sincere. Go down Oxford Street in London and very often you'll come across some westerner who looks almost Chinese from his hairstyle, or at least the way the Chinese used to look, you know, all bald and a pigtail. And he's got his eastern clothes on and he's got his necklace, his beads.

He's a member of the Hare Krishna group. And there he is in the middle of Oxford Street making a show of himself. He wouldn't do that if he wasn't sincere.

But you see, sincerity is not enough. You can be sincerely wrong, and that's the trouble with these groups. So you can bring all these common denominators together and say that whether you look at the Moon Church or the Children of God or the Hare Krishna group or Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons and on and on and on and on, the majority of them have these common denominators, and these need to be borne in mind when we're dealing with these people.

But let me develop this just a little further this evening and then I'll close down. What tests, having looked at their common characteristics, what theological tests should be applied to every member of a group? Should it be the case that we meet them personally or we're confronted with their literature? The first test, which almost always must be applied by the Bible-believing Christian, is what place does the member of the cult or what place does that cult in its entirety give to Scripture? Now this is one of the remarkable things about most of the cults, not all. Most of the cults accept the Bible in its entirety, most of the cults.

And if it's stopped there, then there'd be some hope. But you see, you can accept the Bible in its entirety and you can have a sieve, the sieve representing the teaching of your founder, brother Moses, for instance, of the children of God. So here is your sieve and here's the Bible and you pour the Bible, so to speak, through the sieve.

With the net result, you modify, you manipulate, you change the Bible as it's going through the sieve. You see, you can modify the Word of God or you can change the Word of God not only by subtracting from it but by adding to it. So witness your Jehovah's Witness.

He accepts Genesis right through to Revelation, but he accepts it in the same way in which he is told to interpret it by the headquarters of the JWs in Brooklyn, New York State, USA. No flexibility at all. I'm told that even the songs that are sung in Kingdom Hall on a Sunday are selected first of all over in New York, be that the case as it may.

Nonetheless, it is true that the teaching of the Kingdom Halls around the world are controlled in a rigid uniform pattern by the international headquarters of the JWs. The Bible is put through the sieve and people are not encouraged to read the Bible apart from the sieve. You get a Jehovah's Witness outside of the sieve and try and get him into certain areas of the Bible that he's not studied himself and he's all at sea.

Ask them what they believe not only about the Bible but what book they put alongside the Bible. Take the Mormons. Now these people, they give great deference, great respect to their founder, Joseph Smith.

Well, what is Joseph Smith really responsible for? What started the whole Mormon business going? Well, in the southern states of America one day he found another book, not an ordinary book, but there's better than the Bible. It must be better. I mean his book, the Book of Mormon, wasn't just written on ordinary parchment.

Oh no, nothing as cheap as that, gold plates, hieroglyphics, ancient Egyptian. Joseph Smith had a special pair of spectacles which he put on and he put them on, he could read the ancient Egyptian, translate it, abracadabra, you've got the Book of Mormon. But the Book of Mormon is really the sieve through which the Bible is poured and interpreted, you see, and you modify the Bible because of the Book of Mormon.

And so you can go on. You have to ask the cultist what place he gives to the Word of God. Ask about the origin of the cult and mainly, though not exclusively, the origin is traced back to the United States of America, and the founder of the cult tends to be venerated.

Take, again, the founder of Christian science, the place that is given to this woman in the thinking of most Christian scientists, or the place that is given to Joseph Smith, or as I say, brother Moses of the children of God. And ask the cultist when his particular ideas came about, when were they first found? And invariably they will be in the last two decades or the older cults, the last 100 or 150 years. So that means to say the cultist isn't really interested in church history.

Ask him what he thinks about the Reformation. Ask him what he thinks about the miracle of Luther and Calvin. Ask him what he thinks about the great awakening, the evangelical revival.

He doesn't know anything about it. Ask him what he thinks about Augustine. He knows nothing of the teachings of the church down the centuries.

He knows nothing about revival. He can't know anything about these things. He can't give any credence to them, because his cult is so relatively recent.

So he's got no court of appeal down the centuries as to how God has used great men and revival in bringing continence back to himself. He's not interested in these things at all. He can't be, because the revelation is new.

So one has to sweep away the history of the church and all its revival and reformation that it has not. Ask the cultist about the doctrine of the Trinity. And here they all flounder.

I don't know a cult that is sound on the doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. This doctrine, the three-in-one, the one-in-three, is not acceptable to the cultist.

Indeed, they have been known to modify biblical passages which seem to give support to that doctrine. You check the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Christadelphians if you like, and the version of scriptures that they have recourse to. Check them from the original Greek on some of the passages that would give evidence for the deity of the Lord Jesus, and you'll see that they manipulate those passages in a way that no Greek scholar would give permission to do.

Finally, your last test, and there can be more that you can adduce yourself, but your last test for the purposes of our study this evening. Ask them about Jesus. Ask them about His death on the cross, the value of that death on the cross.

Ask the Jehovah's Witness, and he will tell you that Jesus Christ's death on the cross only saved Adam. It's got no efficacy down the centuries. Ask them about assurance of salvation.

They haven't got assurance of salvation. You see, it's the genius, the diabolical genius of the cults to keep their adherents in suspense as to whether they'll be saved and not saved. Now, I'm not questioning the sincerity of the JW or the Mormon, but they've got no assurance of salvation when they're knocking on your door.

The JWs are working so that they may be involved in some sort of next stage which would lead on to immortality. That's the thing that's really keeping them knocking on your door. I'm not saying that they've got no graciousness and no concern for ordinary people like you and me, but I am saying that basically, fundamentally, what keeps on the doorstep is to preserve or secure, if possible, their own salvation, of which they have no assurance at this moment.

It's not a question of the love of Christ constraining me. So, start to talk to them about your own knowledge of sins forgiven, the Holy Spirit coming in, the overwhelming of the Spirit in your own life.