November 27, 2023 with Jerry Johnson on “Marks of a Cult”

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Iron Sharpens Iron and the Need for Clear Definitions

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Questions. And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon. Cumberland County,.

Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 27th day of November 2023, and I hope that each and every one of you listening had a wonderful, refreshing, relaxing, and Christ-honoring Thanksgiving gathered with family, friends, and loved ones and filled with opportunities to share the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ in addition to feasting on delicious food, and I hope that that was the case for you as it was for me.

And I am so thrilled, as I always am, to have an old friend of mine return to this program for an interview. His name is Jerry Johnson. He is a renowned documentarian and a reformed Christian apologist.

He's probably most well known for the documentary he produced titled Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism, but today we're going to be speaking about another one of his documentaries, or the theme of that documentary, and that is Marks of a Cult, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jerry Johnson.

What a Cult Is and Why Definitions Matter

Thank you, Chris, and let's get to the subject right away. First of all, I know that the actual root of the word cult, cultus, is not innately a bad thing. I believe it means devotion or something to that effect.

Perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong, but if you could define what a cult is in regard to the way Bible-believing evangelicals use that term, and you could also answer the question, why are proper definitions.

Important? All right, well, one thing, proper definitions are important because we've got to know who we're talking about. I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard it, brother, I've heard it numerous times, people say, I have no creed, no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, and I always ask them to give me a definition of what the Bible is or who Christ is, and the minute they do that, they're expanding on their creed.

And so, proper definitions, that's one of the reasons I love the Reformation creeds and the statements of the early church because they let you know where they're coming from, and that is very important.

Let me say it this way. I had a church one time, and their secretary had stolen $30 ,000 from the church, and I can remember one of the deacons said, well, we thought she was a Christian. She had a Christian calendar.

That is not enough. You've got to find out what they believe and why. I would say you've got to go beyond the Christian calendar mentality, and you've got to get down to the nitty gritty. Who is their Christ?

What is their Bible? And that is what you really need to get to. Now, as far as the word cult goes, you're right, cultus simply means adoration or worship. When we talk about a group being a cult in the Christian community, we're talking about it being a theological cult, and that is very important to distinguish.

We designate groups cult, like Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or the Restoration Movement or anything like that because they are claiming the title Christian, but they're deviating from the major cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, and that's one of the things that we are called to stand against.

If they are deviating from those cardinal doctrines, we need to call them out, and if you believe those cardinal doctrines, then you are really in jeopardy of believing false doctrine. So that is why we use the term theological cult, and that's what we mean by it.

It's kind of.

The Difference Between a False Religion and a Theological Cult

Humorous. I recall years ago when I invited to speak at the church where I was a member, the church where I was saved on Long Island. I invited my friend Ken Samples to speak, and he had written a book—I think it was written in the 90s—titled The Cult of the Virgin, and it was about the apparitions of Mary, and he was denouncing them as not being from God, nor from Mary.

And every single—without exception—every single Roman Catholic that heard about the title of his book, every single Roman Catholic that I had interaction with, said, how dare you, or how dare he, Ken Samples, give such a horrible, divisive title to his book, such a nasty, unloving, mean-spirited title that immediately evokes divisiveness amongst Catholics and Protestants.

I said, well, for your information, the term cult of the Virgin is a term that the Vatican uses and has used for centuries in regard to devotion to Mary. So that's their term. But perhaps it would be best, since I brought up the Roman Catholic Church, to distinguish between a cult and a world religion that happens to be a false.

Religion. Yes. Now, that is a very important distinction, because people will ask me, are like Hinduism or Buddhism or Sufism a cult? And I would say no, because those groups don't claim to be Christian.

When somebody claims to be Christian and deviates from that, then we give them the term theological cult. Now, people ask me about the Roman Catholic Church, and just to correct you, brother, I wrote Amazing Grace and The March of a Cult.

You can find both of them online for free. They're on YouTube. So, in other words, I shouldn't use the word produced? No. I did produce them, and I did write them. Okay. I was a senior writer. I often explain that I write like a technical manual.

Eric Holmberg is the one that really polished it up and made it sound good. So, we were kind of the left brain, right brain. Together, we made one brain. But yeah, I wrote, like I said, more of the theology, if you will.

Eric put it more into a format that.

People could understand it. Now, so you were just giving some of the differences between a world religion and a cult. Yes. This is one area that you and I disagree on. I believe that the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church can be rightly identified as cults, whereas you disagree, according to a conversation I may have with you, that because of the antiquity involved in those religions, that the term cult would be improper.

And I had told you that I believe that's the only reason why I think learned Christians don't use the term cult towards them is the very fact that you mentioned, that they're old religions. They have much antiquity to them.

Because if they were a church that sprung up down the street from you today, and I were to say to you, hey Jerry, there's this church down the road that just opened up, and they have this guy in Italy that they believe is their infallible head, and they pray to dead people, they venerate paintings and statues of these dead people, and they believe that works are necessary to be added to faith in order to merit salvation, and they believe in this place called purgatory where even those that are eventually going to heaven will be suffering and agonizing to completely pay for their sins because Christ's death on Calvary did not perfectly pay for those sins, and I could go on and on and on, and you would definitely say to me, man, that's a cult.

Obviously we got to warn people about this, but because it's old, you disagree with using that term, right? Not because.

They're old. I would actually call them what I believe is much worse. I believe they're an apostate church. So I would think the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox are apostate. Yeah, more than likely.

I mean, I've read a lot from Gregory the Great, and I will quote him. I'm probably gonna slaughter his quote, but he said at one point, any man that claims to be the vicar of Christ is Antichrist, and that was Gregory the Great.

Right. Now, a bishop over other bishops or something, I think he also said. Yeah, and you know, like I said, I believe apostate is a much harder term than cult. I would say the Church of Rome has all the marks of a cult, but I believe calling them apostate, because they are apostate, I believe that makes it more severe.

Yes, because they don't have the truth at all. They engage. I think the mass is very idolatrous, you know, and I just believe, let me say it this way, this may not satisfy some of your listeners, but I had a friend, David Reed.

I don't know if he's still around. He was a former Jehovah's Witness, and he became a Christian while reading the New World Translation. He said so much in the New World Translation contradicted what the Watchtower taught, and you know, the thing is, if you follow Roman theology, it's an apostate.

It's apostate, and if you follow Roman theology, you are not a Christian. No way, shape, or form, but if you read the New World Translation and you go through it, even though they've changed it at points, I mean, I wouldn't hand out the New World Translation to people and say, hey, read this.

You're going to become a Christian. No, you're not, but it has enough of the gospel in there that if God so wills, he can really open up somebody's eyes, and you can see the contradictions between Watchtower theology and historic Christianity.

So that is one of the examples I would use, but I really believe that apostate is more severe.

Than cult, and they might be equal. I don't know. Now, since you mentioned Eric Holmberg, who is the narrator of this documentary, I think we have to bring up again, just like we did with the documentary Amazing Grace, which he also narrated, that he has apostatized to the Roman Catholic Church, more specifically the Eastern Rite Catholic Church, and I do have to apologize for making an error the last time we discussed Eric when we were actually discussing Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism.

I wrongly said that he apostatized into Eastern Orthodoxy, but he is actually now an Eastern Rite Catholic, which is a group under the authority of the Roman Catholic Magisterium, but they have been granted the liberty to practice their liturgy in an Eastern Rite, in an Eastern fashion that has a uniqueness to it.

But I think it is sad that this has happened with Eric, and the thing that I couldn't shake out of my head throughout the entire documentary of The Marks of the Cult, how many things he was saying, and how many things he was affirming in the documentary that he now denies.

Apostasy, Mary, and the Trinity

Yeah, and it is sad, brother. I mean, Eric, I've known him for over 20 years, and I mean, when my son was born and he had medical issues, Eric was right there praying for him, and you know, Eric was a good friend for many years, but like I said before, I've known Eric for 20 years, and he's always been blown around by every wind of doctrine, it seems like,.

That comes along. Now, one thing that came up in the documentary itself, from the lips of Eric, he was challenging the idea that it is unfair and unkind to label a group a cult when they do not hold to historic and biblical Christian theology, and he was gently, I'm not saying he was mean-spirited or harsh, but he was rebuking me for identifying him as an apostate, and I told him, how could I do anything else as a faithful Christian?

How could I be obedient to God by being silent when somebody who is well-known abandons the gospel and embraces idolatry? And just, not to beat a dead horse with this, uh, identifying Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy as a cult, but it would seem that the only thing that, uh, the only mark that the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church do not possess, which most other cults possess, is that they do not deny the Trinity, obviously,.

But they do. Although, I would argue that they've included Mary in it, and by negation, they have denied the doctrine of the Trinity that way. They do affirm it, but they made Mary.

Co-redeemer and, what do they call her, co-mediatrix? Yeah, the co-redemptrix, I don't believe that has become official dogma yet, but they behave that way anyway, and obviously, you did not mean that they've added Mary to the Trinity, or that it would be a quadrinity, or that the Muslim religion, the Quran, actually falsely says that Christians believe.

That Mary is a part of the Godhead. Yeah, I'm not saying that they add Mary to the Godhood, but I am saying they do it by way of ascribing offices to her that the Bible does not ascribe, and by negation, they're making her out to be more important than Christ himself.

Yes. Now, they may object to that, but you get it if you listen to them real closely. You'll hear them say things like, she's co-mediatrix, she's co-redeemer. If Mary had not carried Christ, then we wouldn't be saved, you know?

And I mean, the thing is, God could have raised up children of Abraham from stones. He could have had Christ born a different way. He didn't need Mary, but they make it sound like he needed Mary.

But going back to the question, is it unfair or unkind to label a group a cult when they do not hold to the historic and biblical Christian theology? Why don't you respond to that question?

Yeah, I would actually say, and I think Dr. Fowler-White said it on the video, I actually think it's cruel of them to call themselves Christian and not affirm the historic doctrines. Now, I'm not talking about baptism.

I'm not talking even about the Lord's Supper, because I know there's distinctions. Baptists think it's a memorial. Presbyterians believe in the real presence. Lutherans believe Christ is in, under, and above the sacraments.

I know there's all sorts of views, but I would say if somebody denies something that is a major tenet of the Christian faith, that's unkind of them to do that. I believe labeling somebody a theological cult is very important, and it's something we're commanded to do in Scripture.

In fact, I've got pulled up Jude, what is it, Jude 1. There's only one in Jude, but Jude 3, and I'll read it for you. Beloved, I found it necessary to exhort you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered unto the saints.

Although there are numerous passages that command us to contend for the faith, that one is a really strong one. You can also look at Matthew 7, Acts 20, Galatians 1, 2 Corinthians 11, 1 Timothy 4, and on and on it goes.

And we're told that, you know, Paul even says in Acts 20, I think it is, that ravenous wolves will rise up among you. There'll be wolves in sheep's clothing, and we're supposed to point them out in their doctrine, and we're commanded to do that.

So yeah, that is something, it's funny that even, I'm not going to quote the Greek here, because I'll probably slaughter it, but the word, let me see, contend, that is actually means to struggle or to thrive.

And that is very important when we struggle, when we strive, we're to contend earnestly. I think it's also interpreted.

Agonized, isn't it? Yes. Right. And why is it that the Reformation, the 16th century Protestant Reformation, put such a heavy emphasis on sola scriptura, and perhaps you could define that, because there is very frequently put up as a straw man by Roman Catholics a false version of sola scriptura that Protestants never historically believed, such as, all we need is our Bible, and we could go off in the woods alone, and that would be sufficient to bring us to a correct and full understanding of the truth.

And the other one would be, the other slander against sola scriptura is that Roman Catholics and others who deny that teaching say that we are saying all truth is in the Bible. So obviously the Bible is not large enough to contain all truth.

But anyway, if you could pick up where I left off there.

The Sufficiency and Final Authority of Scripture

Well, that's a loaded question that could probably do its own show. Because I believe ultimately that the Bible alone contains the truth, and we can only know the truth through the Bible. Now that doesn't mean we can't get a probability, but we can never say for sure something is true.

But if God says it's true, then it's true. Now I would agree, truth cannot be discovered, it can only be revealed, is what I would say. And I believe the Westminster Confession and the Baptist Confession of 1689 both tell us that.

So I would say, how do we know that two plus two equals four? Because I believe that God put mathematics in the Bible. I also believe he put the laws of logic in the Bible. I believe that when Noah took animals, species, two of a kind, I believe it was two and not three, because I believe in the law of non-contradiction.

I believe it's in the Bible from the beginning to the last day men, God revealed that to us. So I would say, yes, all we can do is really know for sure what God has said in his word. That is our final authority.

And that is what the Reformation was saying against the Church of Rome. Now we may listen to a preacher, the preacher may be right, but if he's a good preacher, he will say, look in your Bibles and read along with me.

And this is what that means. The Roman Church, the Supreme Pontiff Maximus can speak ex cathedra. And I can't remember the last time the Pope supposedly spoke ex cathedra, but I think it was on the assumption of Mary.

Yes, I believe it was. Yeah. So they said if Mary never sinned, which I believe Mary did sin, she said so in her Magnifica that Christ was her Savior. So she said, my soul glorifies in the coming of my Lord and Savior.

It was her Savior. So she needed a Savior. She recognized that all human beings sin, except for Christ.

He's the only one that never sinned. And Scripture is the only thing we have that is God breathed and the only thing that we have that is infallible. Therefore, it must be the Christians only authority while on this earth.

Am I right? Yeah, I would say so.

I studied when I majored in philosophy, one of the views I studied was a view put forth by Karl Popper called a falsification and false. I'm not going to go into a big giant dialogue, but I would say because of that, we can know the probability of the truth and the probability may be high, but that doesn't make it certain.

What makes something certain is that God said it. God said, you know, the king was or I'm sorry, Absalom's father was the king of Israel. We know that to be true because God said it in this word.

And I misspoke a little bit there. I said that the Bible is our only authority. At least, I think I said that. What I meant by that is it's our only ultimate authority. It's the authority above all other authorities.

We have elders in our churches that have authority over us to some degree. Husbands have an authority over their wives. Parents have authority over their children. Elected officials have some authority over the citizens over which they govern and so on.

But the only infallible authority that we have are the scriptures, and they are the authority over all authorities. And we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question about the marks of a cult, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if you have a personal and private question.

Let's say you are in a church or in a religion that you are beginning to worry is a cult, and you don't want to identify yourself at this point because you're 100 sure. You don't want to slander those with whom you are members of this organization.

Or it could be a whole host of other reasons that would compel you to remain anonymous. We will gladly obey your request to remain anonymous, and we will not identify you. But please, if it's just a general question on history, on the Bible, in regard to what is and what is not a cult, and what is and what is not true Christianity, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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We're now back with Jerry Johnson to discuss the marks of a cult. And in addition to believing that sola scriptura is a pillar of the faith, we've already mentioned that it is the only thing we have that is inerrant and God-breathed.

Why the Canon Must Be Closed

Why do you believe that the canon of Scripture must remain closed? And to my knowledge, all who profess to be Christian believe that the canon is closed, but some do not behave as though they believe that.

The Church of Rome believes that the canon is closed, but they can still have new dogma that is pronounced ex cathedra from their pope, and they don't believe that is in addition to the canon, even though it functions that way.

And Charismatics and Pentecostals, they don't believe that they're adding to the canon when they receive divine revelation, but that is a contradiction in terms. So why do you believe that the canon of the Scripture must be closed for a person and an organization to be truly faithful Christians properly identified as such?

All right, let me say this, and I'm not picking.

On any Pentecostals out there just to let you know I was saved in a Pentecostal church. And what happened was I was reading something one time, and the guy said, you don't see anybody getting, what do they call it, revelation knowledge, that they're saying it's the Word of God, but they're not writing it down, canonizing it, and sticking it in the backs of their Bibles.

So evidently, they really don't. And I thought, you know, that's good, because I always believed the Bible was the Word of God. And you've gotten numerous times where it says, Moses said, you don't add to it or subtract from it.

And in Revelation, of course, anybody that adds to the book or subtracts from the book. So I believe the canon is closed, because if you don't, you don't have a canon, and you don't have authority. And it has to be final.

And I believe it is final. I believe ultimately, like you said, the Bible is our final authority. In fact, let me sit here. I've got a quote from the Baptist Confession of 1699. I won't rehearse the whole thing, but this is chapter one, article one.

And it says, the Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. And I believe that. I believe the canon has to be closed, because if it's not, somebody can come along and add to it.

And it would no longer be a canon. Now, let me, this is very important in theological cultic understanding. The reason they have to add to the Bible, and I'm going to quote you here, what we put in the video, a group can be classified as a cult, when they add to the 66 books of the Bible by words, or they claim to have the interpretive key.

And I, one thing I said, in the script, if somebody comes to you, and they want to add to the Bible like the Mormons do, with the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, Doctrines and Covenants, or the Jehovah's Witnesses and the New World Translation, or Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture, you need to run, because what they're doing is, they're undermining the authority of the Word of God.

Let me tell you this little story. Years ago, I was at the ICLC. Now, I don't remember what that stood for, but a friend of mine called it the Independent Charismatic Leadership Conference. That was not the actual name, but there was a guy there, his name was Tim, that's all I remember.

And Tim, I would have to take my hat off to him in this sense. He believed he was taking a shower one day, and God spoke to him. And he says he went into a trance for like four hours. When he got out of the shower, the water was cold, but according to him, he never felt it.

And he was explaining this to me. And he was telling me things that God said to him, that completely contradicted what God had already revealed in his Word. And I would point that out to him. And Tim would say, that's the old revelation.

You need the new revelation. He kept saying that. Well, that's Paul. Well, that's Paul. Well, that's Peter. Well, that's, you know, Jeremiah, whoever. And finally, I realized it didn't take me long that we had no common ground on which to have a discussion.

Because if I brought something up that the Bible already said, he would simply override it by saying, well, that's Paul. Well, that's Peter. Well, that's Jeremiah. And I realized that and I said, we have no ground which to have a discussion.

He was sitting there passing out what he believed was the revelation. He was doing it for free. So he wasn't trying to make money off of it unless he was trying to gain followers. That I don't know. But the mere fact that we didn't have common ground on which to have a discussion.

I can have a discussion with a Baptist. I can have a discussion with a Lutheran. I can have a discussion with a Presbyterian, as long as we have the same authority. And we really do. But the minute they want to add to the Word of God, we no longer have that authority.

And I think it was Curtis Crenshaw, if I can remember, Dr. Crenshaw said, if it adds to the Bible, it's not authoritative. If it's the same as Scripture, it's not needed. And if it subtracts from Scripture, you need to run something like that.

And I thought, man, that's good advice.

In fact, I do have to bring them up again. But the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, although I did say earlier correctly that they believe that the canon is closed, they have a different canon than Bible-believing Protestants do.

They have a canon that includes 72 books because they accept as God breathes Scripture the Apocrypha, which is also known by them and the Eastern Orthodox as deuterocanonical books. And these books were not even dogmatized as being essential to the canon until the Council of Trent.

In fact, Jerome, who included them in the late 4th century into the Latin Vulgate, he did that under protest. He did not want to include them because he knew the Jews never, in the Old Covenant, included them as a part of their Hebrew canon.

They still don't. So that is a big flashing red light there when it comes to Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church, when it comes to the.

Canon. Yeah. And just to point out, they say they have 72 books and I will take that, but they also add chapters to different books of the Old Testament. So I know in Daniel, they have like three more chapters that are not considered canon.

They never were. So there are a bunch of them.

And you already mentioned that the Mormons have Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price in addition to the Bible. The only one of the three that has a caveat when they explain their teachings about the Bible, when it's interpreted correctly, they don't say that about the Pearl of Great Price or the Doctrine and.

Covenants. That is their eighth statement of faith, and they have that on there. The Book of Mormon, it says the Bible is the Word of God as long as it is translated properly. And you can never get a Mormon to say, hey, where's the Bible mistranslated?