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

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Jim Thorpe, 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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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

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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.

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. And I was like, brother, 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 humorous. I recall years ago when

I invited to speak at the church where I was a member of 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. Yes. 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 had 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've 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. They definitely are.

Yeah, more than likely. I mean, I've read a lot from Gregory the

Great, and I will quote him. I'm probably going to 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. Bishop over other bishops or something,

I think he also said. 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 Right 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 Right 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 Right, 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.

Yeah, 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, identifying

Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy as a cult. But it would seem that 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. 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 Koran, 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.

Now, they may object to that, but 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. So 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 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.

And 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.

They'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 strive.

And that is very important when we struggle, when we strive, we're to contend earnestly for the faith.

So 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 that the book, the Bible is not large enough to contain all truth.

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

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 e -mail 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 not 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 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 1, Article 1. 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, 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 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 -breathed

Scripture the Apocrypha, which is also known by them and the Eastern Orthodox as Deutero -canonical 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. 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? They will never do that.

And it should be concerning to Mormons that they don't even use the

Joseph Smith translation. He was their key prophet, and yet the

Bible that he allegedly translated is not even what they use. They use the King James Bible.

Yeah. So it's kind of odd, to say the least. Yeah. And the

Book of Mormon doesn't even teach Mormon theology. Right. That's right.

Brigham Young is the one after the death of Joseph Smith that introduced most of the peculiar Mormon teachings.

Yeah. Yeah. I would even say I heard one time from a former

Mormon that had read the Book of Mormon and read the Bible. He was saying about one out of every three verses of the

Book of Mormon is lifted from the King James Bible and put into the Book of Mormon.

So, yeah, it contradicts Mormon theology. But let me do this.

One of the most prolific groups is the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yeah. And those are the ones that people come in contact with a lot. Yeah. But I'm going to quote from the 1967

Watchtower magazine. It was October 1, 1967, and they put,

Thus, the Bible is an organizational book belonging to Christians as an organization, not to individuals, regardless of how sincere they may believe that they can interpret the

Bible. For this reason, the Bible cannot be properly understood without Jehovah's visible organization.

And I liked on the video, Clete Hopps, he said it at one point, but he said,

If you dropped a Bible on an island and had no contact with people, you wouldn't come back in 10 years and find anybody that is a

Jehovah's Witness. They wouldn't hold to that. They would hold to the historic doctrines and creeds of the early church.

And I think that speaks volumes. You cannot be a Jehovah's Witness and believe the

Bible as it was written. You can't. And that is why the Watchtower had to have their own

Bible. Yes. And they believe that their organization is essential to understand the

Bible. Roman Catholics have accused Jehovah's Witnesses of believing in Sola Scriptura.

No, they do not believe in Sola Scriptura. They have a view of authority that more closely resembles

Rome than the product is sold to. Yeah. Go ahead.

Go back to the Mormons real quick. We talked about their three added revelations, the

Book of Mormon, the doctrines of covenants, and the Pearl of Greatness. Oh, yeah. I forgot the Book of Mormon for crying out loud.

They do have one other authority. They have a living prophet that could override previous dogma.

Right. So they actually have four. Now, I could go. I'm a

Presbyterian because I believe once we get to heaven, everybody will be Presbyterian.

But I can go to my church and I could go up to the elders and take

John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. And I could throw them in a garbage can and I could say,

I'm never going to read this stuff again. And you know what the elders would say to me? Jerry has lost his mind.

They really wouldn't care if I'd never read another thing from John Calvin.

He did not speak. He was not infallible in his speech.

Let me say that. I love John Calvin, but I believe Calvin was wrong in some places.

I love Martin Luther. I believe Luther was wrong in certain places. I love

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. And contrary to what Phil Johnson probably believes,

I believe Spurgeon was wrong in numerous areas. But I still love him.

By the way, Phil, if you're listening, I'm sure Jerry was joking. Phil does not believe that Charles Haddon Spurgeon was infallible.

I know he doesn't. But the thing is,

I don't believe any church leader. I think it was John Calvin one time that said, anybody who claims to know more than 60 % of the

Scripture is deluded. By the way, we have to go to our midway break and we'll pick up where we left off.

If you have a question for Jerry Johnson, send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And please be patient with us.

This is the longer break in the middle of the show that we are required to have because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jerry Johnson. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

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And Jerry, we were talking before the midway break about why the canon of Scripture must remain closed.

Why don't you explain the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture? Brother, if you don't mind, we're halfway through the program and we've only done one

Mark. And what I wanted to do was go on to the other

Marks, if you don't mind. Oh, that's fine. I was actually planning on having you back for a part two of this, but we could go on to another

Mark. That's fine. Oh, you know, we could do another show. But one thing

I want people to understand, and I don't mean this flippantly. I don't care if you want to worship a doorknob, but you worship a doorknob and say that Christians should worship doorknobs.

And that is the thing that makes something a theological cult.

Now, what they will do, and I want to kind of summarize the first Mark with the last words on that section of video.

And this is what I wrote. As a result of undermining the Bible's claim as the only revealed truth from God, these groups have equated and in most cases elevated themselves in their extra biblical teachings as a primary authority to their followers.

Now they turn their focus on to the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving faith.

And I do believe that the deity of Christ is an essential aspect of saving faith.

I do believe that. I don't believe that you have to understand everything that it means, but I do believe what is commonly called as lordship salvation.

You have to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ alone saves. But many of the cults, they will turn once they've undermined the authority of the

Bible, they turn to either they say that Christ is created or that he was a mere man or that he is a lesser

God. And this really takes the form in two basic categories, if you will.

Subordinationism or adoptionism. And subordinationism is that they believe he was created somehow.

Some will say he was only a man. But because of his obedience to whatever their teachings were, he became

God. God awarded him some deity. And that is what is meant by deity is the state of being

God. Others will say that he is a lesser God. It's what they call.

I'm sorry. I said it backwards. Adoptionism is where they believe he adopted some deity.

Subordinationism is where they believe he's a lesser God. And both of those views were rejected by the early church as being heretical.

And some believe he was created. And so here is the second mark of a cult.

I'm going to read it for you here. Any group can be classified as a theological cult that subtracts from the deity and or persons of any member of the

Godhead. Most cults will focus their attack on the deity of the

Lord Jesus Christ, reducing him to what I said earlier, either created, a mere man, or a lesser

God. And a lot of them do that. Especially the Jehovah's Witnesses and the

Mormons and the Christian scientists. They will reduce him down and they will make him to be something else.

I think I should probably, for the sake of fairness, give a little caveat here.

There are Christians who believe in the co -equalness and co -eternal aspect of all three persons of the

Trinity that they rightly believe, with all Christians, are deity.

They're equally deity. And yet there are some that embrace a teaching called the functional subordination of the

Son. The eternal, functional subordination of the Son that they believe it is only in regard to the role of Christ being subordinate to the

Father, but not in his essence that they are equal in deity. There is nothing less about Christ and the

Father. I thought I'd throw that out there because there is a debate raging amongst even

Reformed Christians. And I think some people who hold that view are being unfairly labeled as having a heretical understanding of the

Trinity and trying to make the claim that they do believe that Christ is a lesser

God or something when they don't. I just thought I'd throw that out there. All right. I mean, that's fair.

That's fair. But I would say you can look at a lot of these quotes.

I'm going to quote to you here from the Ada Understanding the Bible, page 918, by the

Jehovah's Witnesses. And they say, quote, And they will go on to say that God created

Christ, who they believe was Michael the archangel, and he created all other things.

In fact, if you look at their New World Translation in Colossians chapter 1 where it mentions that, they will insert the word other, and it's not in the text.

Okay. Should I go to one listener question before you go on with some of the other points you wanted to highlight?

Yes, sir. Okay. We have Clarence in Terryville, Long Island, New York.

And Clarence asks, They may have other very cultic practices like shunning lost relatives of members and other things like that.

That is a very good question. And honestly, I don't know if I can answer that yet.

I would have to sit down and think about it. So my answer would be,

I don't know. I would say if you're dealing with somebody that's tyrannical, then

I wouldn't go there. Right. I mean, even the listener used the term cultic.

At least they could probably rightly use that as an adjective. They're cultic. They're dangerously close to being accurately defined as a cult.

Yes, I would agree. There was an acronym put out by a let me see if I could find it.

I know it was on here. I saw it a while ago. It was put out by a secular group.

They were not Christian at all. But they came up with the acronym BITE. B -I -T -E.

And they said, and I don't agree with them on this. But they said, let me see if I can find it.

Any group that exercise behavior control, information control.

And I would say that's a key one right there. Information control. Because I've read a lot of books that would be considered non -Christian.

So any group that comes along and says, oh, don't read this. You know, don't listen to him.

I would take them with a grain of salt. They also have thought control.

And the final one is emotion control. And that spells the BITE. I do believe that is probably a pretty good indicator.

But it's not defining theology. And that's what we're more concerned with here.

And that's what the video really concerns itself with. Let's see.

We have Linda in Brampton, Canada. And Linda says, is it possible to be a member of a cult and yet truly be a child of God?

Because you do not believe in the doctrine of salvation that the cult falsely teaches.

Nor the doctrine of God that the cult falsely teaches. Either through ignorance or through protest.

I somewhat answered this on the video. Let me try to do it again.

So suppose somebody is a Seventh -day Adventist. And I believe

I've met Seventh -day Adventists that are Christians. Yes, I do too. All right.

But if they, first off, if they are a Christian and they're going there.

The question I would ask them is, why are you going there? If you don't believe what they believe.

You know, you ought to go somewhere else where you believe like they believe. Now, it could be possible that they don't even know that the

Seventh -day Adventist Church teaches things like the investigative judgment, which is their most heretical teaching. Right.

And the thing is, I've met people, like I said, that I believe were in the

Seventh -day Adventist Church that really talked about the gospel all the time.

They didn't talk about the writings of L. N. G. White. But, you know,

I don't believe L. N. G. White was a prophetess. I don't believe it at all. The minute they say, well, you're not a

Christian because you don't believe that, that person has gotten themselves involved in a theological cult.

And there are many churches that believe that. There are Seventh -day Adventists. Others do not.

Yes, like for instance, Desmond Ford, who I've had on this program, he's now in glory with Christ.

He believed in the biblical gospel and was excommunicated by the Seventh -day Adventist religion for his vehement opposition to the investigative judgment, which is basically a denial of sola fide.

And he, although he said that he appreciated the writings of L. N.

G. White, did not uphold her as a prophetess and did not believe her writings were anywhere near on par with the

Bible. And he believed it was heresy to do either of those things. See, you've got to be careful when you're saying stuff like that.

Not you. But a few years ago, I met some apologist from the

Watchman Knee. What is it called? I don't remember the name of the group, but I know

I've heard of Watchman Knee. Senior moment now. But after Watchman Knee died, there was a guy named

Witness Lee. Right. And were they called the local church? I think they were.

Yes, I think that's right. And I asked the guy, I said, could

Witness Lee have ever been wrong? And he said, yes. And I said, was

Witness Lee ever wrong? And he thought real hard and he said, no.

I said, you've got a hypothetical infallibility of Witness Lee.

Right. And like I said earlier, I love

John Calvin. I love Charles Hans Spurgeon. I love Martin Luther. But I don't think they were right in everything.

And I don't think when they spoke or wrote, they spoke or wrote for God exclusively. You know, it wasn't

God's word. The only thing that I have authority in my life is the word of God.

If you come to me and you say, hey brother, I think you're doing it wrong. And you show me in the

Bible where I'm doing it wrong, then I'm going to believe you. Right.

And what would be another mark of the cults that our listeners should be very aware of in the event that they start to dabble in attending the services of a group and then they may hear from the pulpit or elsewhere that this mark is something they adopt.

I'm sorry, brother. I'm looking at something right now. I'm looking for the third mark.

I'm going through the script, actually. Well, while you're doing that,

I'll repeat our email address. It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter.

Did you find what you were looking for? Yes, I did. But brother, I wanted to ask you, is it about time for another break?

No, that's going to be in about 13 minutes.

All right. All right. Let's go on with the subtraction of the deity or any member of the

Godhead. So that is something and I will let you know this program add, subtract, multiply and divide.

These are the basic marks of a cult. Now, they may have other ones, but these are the four main ones.

And what I wanted to do was give people a little systematic theology, if you will.

Because I think each mark is logical in their order. They have to undermine scripture.

One of the things, if you remember from the Amazing Grace documentary, I talk about Conrad Borstius.

And how he undermined scripture. And that ultimately led to his questioning of the deity of Christ.

The Anabaptist you're referring to. Yeah. He questioned that. Two of his followers, if I can remember their names,

Simon Episcopius. And I can't remember the other guy right now. I'm sorry.

They kind of ran with it. And the thing is, if you undermine the authority of God's word, the

Bible, the 66 books of the Bible. And I had read a 19th century

Unitarian years ago. And he made the comment.

He said, if you want to deny the deity of Christ, the first thing you need to do is throw out the authority of the

Bible. And I thought, well, at least he's being honest. Wow. So once you do that, and then you can go and you could subtract from any member of the

Godhead, either their deity or their personhood. And when we say personhood, we are talking about the fact that they are co -eternal.

The Holy Spirit was always the Holy Spirit, even in eternity. The Son was always the

Son, even in eternity. The Father was always the Father, even in eternity.

I think it was B .B. Warfield that once said, oh, man, I'm going to slaughter his quote.

There is one God. God exists in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and are eternal.

And God exists in distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the

Holy Spirit. When you have said that, then you have enunciated the doctrine of the

Trinity in its completeness. And I really believe that.

And unfortunately, what a lot of cults will do is they're either going to subtract from the deity.

And you might remember the Worldwide Church of God. Yes. They did not believe the Holy Spirit was a person.

They believed he was an impersonal force. Right. And you can look at the

Jesus only. They do not believe in the persons of the Father and the Holy Spirit, hence the name

Jesus only. They only believe in Jesus. And Jesus sometimes manifested as a

Father, sometimes as a Son, and sometimes as a Holy Spirit. Some of them will be a little bit more refined, if you will, and will say the

Father was in the Old Testament. The Son was in the Gospel. And the Holy Spirit was in the

Epistles. But they deny that they are co -eternal and co -equal.

They don't believe Jesus existed until the Immaculate Conception in Mary's womb.

Right. Right. And well, they believe that the

Father exists, not the Son. Right. Yeah. Right. And, you know, for that reason alone, actually, when we get to the next mark, if we've got time,

I will quote for them what they believe about justification.

But I will give you a real fast definition of it.

They believe in work salvation. And any group that believes in work salvation, that is the third mark of a call.

Because justification is by grace through faith and nothing else.

Right. That's why it's important to use the term alone, the word alone.

Yes. Because there are very well -known ministries, parachurch organizations, that in an effort to be more ecumenical with those outside of the historic

Reformation, they would say that, oh, in their statement of faith on their website, we believe in salvation by grace through faith.

But they didn't say alone. They removed alone from the statement and so on.

I know that document, evangelicals and Catholics together, they said that in there.

And yeah, that has always been the dispute with Rome. Was it by grace through faith alone?

Right. And I believe it was. Well, we're going to go to our final break right now.

And if you have a question for Jerry Johnson, please submit it immediately to Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

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And let me take one more question, at least for now, and then we'll move on to your most primary points that you want to make.

We have Velma in Tuckahoe, New York. And Velma writes, Is it possible for someone, not because of a knowledgeable denial of the

Trinity, but through perhaps naivete, clumsiness, and being a new

Christian perhaps, they unbiblically define the

Trinity in the way a modalist would, or some other erroneous way?

And wouldn't that be different from a teacher who makes it one of his goals in life to destroy the doctrine of the

Trinity, which he believes is evil and heretical? I am very gracious on something like that.

I would say, yes, probably. What I would say is,

I would think they're going to come to the truth at some point. Right. So, I do believe the doctrine of the

Trinity, focusing on the deity of Christ, is an aspect of saving faith.

But if you remember what I said earlier, I'm not sure, if you would ask me two days after I become a

Christian to define the Trinity, I probably couldn't. I was at a

Church of God one time, years ago, and we were preaching, or I was preaching, and I said to the pastor, a great brother,

I said, hey, let's do a little experiment. Let's pass out pieces of paper and ask people to explain what they mean by the

Trinity. And 85 % of what we got back was heresy.

He was beside himself. He couldn't believe that. And I believe that would happen in Baptist churches or Presbyterian churches.

People wouldn't know how to define it. Now, it was one of my areas of study when

I was in seminary. So, but when I was in seminary and I learned a lot of these things,

I read Augustine on the Trinity, and there were many misconceptions

I had that I have since changed my views on. And so I would say, yes, it is possible, but I believe that God, because I'm a

Calvinist, I believe eventually God will lead them to the truth. Okay, well, why don't you continue on with the primary things that you believe are marks of a cult that are listed.

All right, you know what, brother, I see we have left less than 12 minutes. So what

I wanted to do was probably stick with subtract from the deity or the personhood of any member of the

Godhead, and that usually focuses on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me say this.

When Mitt Romney was running for president, there was a major newscaster and Mitt Romney had given his view of the doctrine of the

Trinity, and he said, well, I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And that's true, he does.

But he's redefined them all. He believes the Father was actually created.

The Son was the spirit brother of Lucifer. And depending on who you talk to,

Orson Pratt actually believed that the Holy Spirit was a white man.

He was six foot four, had blonde hair and blue eyes. And that is very blasphemous.

But that is something you need to realize. In fact, I have it quoted. Let me see the last line.

No, it is not the last line. The Mormons use very often the same terminology, but they have a different dictionary.

They have a different meaning, and that is something you've really got to be on guard for, because a lot of cults will use

Christian terminology, but they mean something totally different by it.

You had mentioned earlier, and I will give an example. All cults that I know of will say that salvation is by faith.

The Roman Church says that. But they also will add something to that.

It's by faith it works, and we'll get into that later. But just so you know,

I'm going to try to find a short quote here. And while you're doing that,

I'll repeat our email address. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com if you have a question. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Did you find it? Yeah, I found it. I've got a quote here from Robert Sun Yung Moon, and the

Moonies really had some strange doctrines. But Moon wrote in his book

Divine Principles, page 211, he wrote, being one body with God may be called a second

God or image of God, but it can by no means be God himself. He's just an image, kind of like my driver's license is an image of me, but it's not me.

It's an image of me, and that's what he believed about Christ. So when somebody does that or says that, they actually are invoking the second mark of a cult, which is, you know, they will subtract from any member of the

Godhead or the personhood of that person. And I included person in there.

This functional symbols of mathematics was actually created by a guy with a ministry

I used to be with called Watchmen Fellowship, and John had come up with this, and I thought it was good, and I always thought he called it cult patterns, patterns in the cults.

And why don't you go over each of those symbols before we go off the air to summarize basically the marks?

All right, let me do it real quick, and I will come back and do the remaining two marks.

But the first mark was add to the 66 books of the Bible, either by words or they say they have the interpretive key.

The second mark of the cult, we said that. The third mark of the cult, I'm going to read it here, is multiply.

Any group that multiplies works to justification by grace through faith alone can be classified as a cult.

It is common for cults to use phrases like justification. However, they have redefined the terms.

I'm going to read to you real quick, Dr. Walter Martin. In his book,

Kingdom of the Cults, which I would encourage people to get a copy of, he said on page 20, the average

Christian cult owes its very existence to the fact that its utilized terminology of Christianity has borrowed liberally from the

Bible, almost always out of context, and sprinkled its format with evangelical cliches and terms wherever possible.

When you encounter somebody, and they may not be aware, but when you encounter a cult, remember that you are dealing with a person who is familiar with Christian terminology, but who has carefully redefined the terms to fit their system.

And the fourth mark of a cult is divide. And that is any group that divides the loyalty of its followers between the organization and God.

In order to follow God, you have to be a member of their organization.

Now, I would say, as a Presbyterian, you do not have to be a Presbyterian in order to be justified.

You do not have to be a Presbyterian in order to be a Christian. You do have to be a

Presbyterian to be a sanctified Christian. But you don't have to be a

Presbyterian. You can be a Baptist, you can be a Nazarene, you can be a host of anything else,

Episcopalian, whatever, Pentecostal. I do believe that I have met numerous

Pentecostals that are my brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact, like I said earlier,

I was saved at a Pentecostal church because they preached Christ and Him crucified.

So, I would say that also. Well, we do have another question that actually relates to something that you just said.

We have Cody in Waltham, Massachusetts, who said, what is your opinion of that segment within professing

Reformed theology and Calvinism who believes that you must believe in the five points to be saved and all

Arminians and others who denounce the tulip are damned? And I would add to that question, would that be a cult?

I don't think it's a cult, but I do think it's goofy. There you go.

Because I've met those people before. I call them the obnoxious Calvinists.

So, they're more obnoxious than anything. They're trying to convert people to Calvinism.

You need to convert people to Christ and Christ alone. Now, God doesn't call us to be theologians when

He saves us. He doesn't. He doesn't even call us to be theologians after we're saved.

So, I would say that position is wrong. I know a lot of people that hold to that, and I think they're wrong.

Obviously. Yeah, it could probably elevate to that possibility of being a theological cult, because if they're trying to convert people to Calvinism, I would say that's all wrong.

And I would actually believe that's one of the marks of hyper -Calvinism. See, they believe that election saves you.

Christ saves you. Not election. And I'm assuming you would believe that when you said that Christ does not call us to be theologians after we're saved, what you mean by that is to be

Achimedicians or... Yes. Because obviously we're all to desire to understand theology more and more, because all that means is that we want to know as much about God as possible.

Yeah. I would agree. You could learn more about God and not understand the terminology.

How many Christians really understand super -lapsarianism? Right. I don't know many.

Or most probably haven't even heard of the term. Yeah. Outside of Reformed circles, anyway.

Yeah. Well, I'd like you to basically summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

I would say what they need to really focus on is the Bible, the 66 books of the

Protestant Bible is the word of God. We cannot know anything for sure apart from that word.

We can have a high probability, but we can't know it for certain unless God said it.

And the second thing is God is a trinity, co -eternal, co -equal, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And that is what we need to really believe, and we need to focus on that.

And I'm sure you would also agree that one thing that the cults and all the world religions outside of Christianity agree upon is that even if they would never phrase it this way, they do not give 100 % of the praise, honor, and glory to Christ for their salvation or whatever eternal blessing and reward that particular group offers.

They do not believe that they owe 100 % to God because man is involved in some intrinsic way that has in some sense merited that blessing.

Yes, I would agree. Now, do let me say this real quick.

How much time we got left? You have 30 seconds. All right. When I was saved as an

Arminian, if somebody were to come up to me and said, you don't believe

Christ did it all, blah, blah, blah, you believe that you did some,

I would have argued with them tooth and nail because I did believe Christ did it all.

They're not consistent. Yeah, I didn't understand that. Right, the

Arminian and the non -Reformed folk are just not logically consistent. Well, Jerry, it has been such a joy as it always is to have you on the show.

I can't wait to have you back on either to discuss part two of this or another topic that you'd like to address.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater