Cult Questions & Answers

Well, what an encouraging night tonight as we've heard those testimonies of baptism. We didn't know how many baptisms we were gonna have.

So we thought tonight, instead of having a normal message, Steve and I would give an introduction to the cult series that we're having on Sunday nights.

And so over the next few months, we'll look at different cults with the hope that you know the truth and then it can easily see the lie for the hope that you'll be thankful for the salvation that you have.

Hopeful that you'll know what to do when it comes to evangelism. Steve, are you up next

Sunday night? Will that be the first one? That is true, yes. And so next Sunday night's gonna be what? I figured we'd start with something

I know well. Oh, that's it. Yeah, Mormonism. Uh -huh.

Well, I've said this in the past before. You know, Joe, he got baptized tonight. He said, so that was his, no, who is it?

Ingrid's third baptism? Joey said it was his third, right? Baptized the baby in the grave. Yeah, third.

So technically, it's their first real one. But nobody beats my wife.

How many times has she gotten baptized? Was it five? Five. Five. Has anybody here gotten baptized more than five times?

Well, I have, but. I know. Uh -huh. How many? A lot more.

Was it in the temple? Mormon temple, right? Baptism on behalf of dead people, 25?

More. It seems, yeah, it seems like it was closer to 50.

I don't know exactly how many. It was just like, you know, when you're at the point of drowning, they stop. That is amazing.

Well, I always thought you had first place for how many times to be unbiblically baptized. Maybe not.

No. So Steve's got some questions he's gonna ask me, and tonight's just gonna be a quick introduction.

We're gonna go for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then we'll sing a song, and we'll be dismissed.

Like I said this morning, people wanna know what the family Bible hour, because it has a lot to do with the Bible. Bring your whole family.

And you'll be here for an hour. Yeah, it's an hour. It's a family hour, family Bible hour. Oh, on a side note, before we start,

I saw many of you this morning talking to Natalie Hilt after she lost her husband, of course, a week ago.

Thank you, dear congregation, for reaching out to her. I called her this afternoon because today's message, of course, was on death, the preacher, and I said, how are you doing?

And I had told her what I was gonna preach on. I just wanted to be gentle with her, but it's the next set of verses.

And she said to me, it didn't bother me at all because I know where Scott is. He's in heaven because of the

Lord's work, and I praise God for that with a tear. And so thanks for reaching out to her.

That's really, really important. We know a lot of doctrine in this church, and that doctrine should lead us to serve one another with love and humility and come alongside.

So don't forget about her in the days and weeks to come, especially if you're a lady, maybe you can invite her over for lunch after church or something like that, or families could invite her over.

She won't be here the next two weeks, but thank you for reaching out to Natalie Hilt and continue to do so, please.

All right, so we have questions. Completely random. No, no. Can I use my notes?

Sure, because I drew the questions out of your notes. Okay, would you define what a cult is?

People throw that word around a lot. What does it mean? Okay, since it's family Bible hour, let me ask you guys,

I have my answer. Who could define a cult? Anyone? Go ahead and just raise your hand and I'll call on you.

Yeah, Mark. Okay, I was tracking along with you with the early part, and I thought you maybe were talking about Microsoft, but then you added a religious component to that, and I thought, okay, fine.

So it's within the religious sphere. Okay, anybody else? Good, so kind of the religious sphere, right?

Here's a way to get to heaven, to live your life, to receive rewards in heaven or on earth type of thing with probably a highly authoritative structure, right?

There's authority, either one person on top or many. When I was doing some research, many people would think the cults are things like this,

Heaven's Gate, right? With Jim Jones and the People's Temple, David Koresh and the

Branch Davidians, they'd think there's some kind of manipulative religious structure to everything.

But for us, Steve, I think we need to make sure we realize that when we say cult in a religious way, while it could be these authoritative kind of weirdos and extremists, we're going to use the definition, theological cult, meaning anybody that adds works to Christ's work.

So you could have a sociological cult and control and tell me all your sins so I can hold things against you and keep you up late at night and all kinds of rituals and have to do weird things, but a theological cult, the kind that Paul says you're damned if you believe is when you're adding works to Christ's work.

And really there's only two religions, right? When you come down to it, the religion that says you can get to heaven by a cooperation with God or getting there on your own.

That's one religion, human achievement, works, religious things, doing good, being good.

And the other religion is since we're not good and we're dead in sins and trespasses, God's the one that has to do the work.

And so it has to be a divine accomplishment. It takes a triune God to save. And so if you have a

Bible, if you want to just turn to Galatians chapter one for a moment, and let me just read these verses because if people in the next several weeks and months think, you know, you're being awfully hard on people.

Some of these cults, they're pro -choice. Some of these cults are against gay marriage and other sociological things.

Maybe, I meant pro -life, that's what I meant. Yes, they're pro -life.

They're on our team in that regard. I'm glad you're here when I need you. Where are you at other times?

I just faltering, but Paul has some words for them.

I read this morning how kind Paul was even to the church of Corinth. All kinds of issues at the church of Corinth.

And they struggled with sin. And Paul was, yes, he got after them in certain ways, but not this way.

When you start adding things to the work of Christ, the hammer rightly comes down.

We're not playing around. We're not on the same team. Your volume of your voice goes up.

Your finger comes out like Nathan. And look at what Paul says in verse six of chapter one.

I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort or pervert the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, apostles, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

And so these churches at Galatia were being influenced by people who most likely believed that God was triune, that Jesus was

God, that he was the eternal son, that he actually lived on earth. He did all the miracles on earth.

He raised people from the dead. He forgave people's sins. He's coming back soon. And they believed all that, but they also believed that the way you get the benefits of this

Jesus is by faith plus what? Works. And in this particular case, circumcision.

And Paul says, if you think you're gonna get to heaven by faith plus circumcision, or we've heard tonight about the

Boston Church of Christ, International Church of Christ, faith plus baptism, it does a number on and it takes against the work of Christ.

And so that's why we see there's two religions, human achievement, divine accomplishment. And so if I was going to define a cult,

I would give you certain things like strong central authority. Mormons have a president, right?

Jehovah's Witnesses, a president and a governing body. Christian science, there's a mother church.

If I were to think about cults, oftentimes they'll say their church is the only way you get to heaven, right?

We, by the way, at Bethlehem Bible Church are not saying the only way to heaven is through our church. We are saying the only way to heaven is the gospel that's found in the book of Romans and Galatians.

Through Jesus alone, there's no other way. But I found a few quotes. This one is for those that have been baptized for more than 25 times.

Doctrines of Salvation, Bruce McConkie, Salvation Mormon Doctrine. Quote, if it had not been for Joseph Smith and the restoration, there would be no salvation.

There is no salvation outside the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, end quote. And so that kind of attitude, we're the only one is very cult -like.

Jehovah's Witnesses, quote, one can live in God's paradise only by associating with Jehovah's Witnesses.

And religious science, quote, true salvation comes only through true enlightenment.

I think of other things that cults bring. Steve, would this be fair to say?

Many of them have a changing theology over time. Why do you think that is?

Well, I think part of it is to attract people. In fact, I turned when you were going to Galatians one,

I just thought about Jude verse three and the second part of it says, where Jude says, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

So what do all these cults do? They say, well, everything that you believe is fine, just like in Galatia, everything you believe is fine, but there's something you need to add to it, right?

You need to go to the temple. You need to be married in the temple. You need to go, you know, whatever it is, you need to fill in the blank.

Something needs to be done and you're the only person who can do it. So I think that's part of it, that they have to add something, otherwise you wouldn't follow them, right?

I mean, what would attract you to join the Watchtower, the International Church of Christ, the

Mormons? If they just said, well, we're just like everybody else. What about the

Mormon's view, for instance, and I don't want to steal your thunder for next Sunday night. What about blacks?

And now all of a sudden they can't be, they originally couldn't be priests, but now they're able to. It's that kind of thing.

I could have the date wrong, but, you know, there are two, the Mormons say that there are two levels of priesthood.

There's the Aaronic priesthood, named after Aaron, and it, thank you, it's basically for,

I would say, for kids, kids. I mean, I was a deacon in the

Aaronic priesthood of the Mormon church at the age of 12. I was a teacher, that was an office, at the age of 14, and at 16,

I was a priest, and that's as high as you can go in the Aaronic priesthood, and then the next step up is in the

Melchizedek priesthood, named after Melchizedek, and they would say things like, you know,

Melchizedek gave the keys to Peter, James, and John, who then gave the keys to Joseph Smith for this level of the priesthood, and here's my point.

Before 1978, blacks were not allowed to have the higher priesthood, the

Melchizedek priesthood, because it was said that they bore the mark of Cain, which is a really bad understanding of scripture, but because of that, they were prohibited from having these benefits of having the higher level of priesthood, and then the

IRS announced that they were looking at their tax -exempt status due to the fact that they were discriminating against blacks, and they held a meeting in Salt Lake City, and the prophet had a miraculous vision.

Yeah, raise your hands, oh. And then I was there on Sunday, you know, and we were all very excited when they suddenly announced that for the first time in church history, blacks were going to be allowed to have the

Melchizedek priesthood. Everybody was really happy, because, you know, it was not because of, they never said a word about the government.

It was just, you know, here's this new revelation. Here's this new prophecy. And so, you know, there you go.

Which leads me into the theme of our series. You are going to hear over and over and over on Sunday nights that we're gonna deal with the source of their authority, how they talk about the

Savior, and what they say about salvation. So those are the three S's that I want you to work through with every cult.

What's their source of authority? And most of the time, it's going to be the Bible plus, or maybe something above the

Bible, some other kind of writing. So what's their source of authority? Second S, who's the

Savior? Is he a Savior that's the eternal son, and he's begotten, not made?

He's not created. He's equal with the Father. He assumes human nature and comes and lives and dies and is raised, et cetera.

And then salvation, is it grace, alone trusting what God has done, divine accomplishment, not human achievement.

So it's gonna be source of authority. Every one of these we'll look at. Then it's going to be who Jesus is the

Savior. Can he actually save, or does he need your good works? And then also, what do they teach about salvation?

Because otherwise you're gonna get bogged down in so many different things, and they have so many levels and intricacies of things.

If you can figure out what they believe, who Jesus is, and salvation, you can talk to anybody you meet.

You can talk, I used to talk to Moonies at LAX, and I would go up to them and I'd say, how do you get to heaven?

And they wouldn't have any answer, and I'd tell them, well, I know how, and then I'd give them the answer. There were nuns and they were asking for money at LAX, and I'd have to fly out at 5 a .m.

for work, and I had to fly to Vegas every other week, and I would go there, and they were asking for money, and I'd say,

I'll give you money if you can tell me how to get to heaven. And they were like, it's like Kim at Lowe's.

She works in the paint department a couple days a week, and the fathers come in, and the priest, along with the nuns, with their habits, and she always says, what's your good news?

And they're like, what do you mean, what's my good news? And she says, now I'll tell you then the good news. So I love to ask people, how do you get to heaven?

They don't really know the right answer, but we do, not because we're better, not because we're smarter, not because we're wiser, but God has, in fact, revealed these truths to us.

Has he not? And we have that in our hands. So we're gonna look at source, savior, and salvation.

So whether it's Moonies, whether it's Heaven's Gate, you'll work through the issues.

And by the way, that works for anybody that you're talking to, even people who aren't in an organized religion, just have their own little eclectic systems.

I remember talking to somebody one time, she mentioned that she had a system that was part this religion and part that religion.

I just kind of went like this, and I said, well, that's interesting. I said, where did you learn that?

She goes, well, it just seems right to me, right? You know what we call that, Steve? I do. What? Sheilaism?

You are so right. I think that's Michael Horton. He was talking to a lady named Sheila, and she just put all her source of authority together, and she's got a religion called?

Sheilaism. That's who you're gonna be meeting in this world. You're probably gonna meet more Sheilaism people than Moonies.

Steve, I know you got the questions to ask me, but we'll ask you, and then we're gonna wrap up. Oh, okay. What do you think is so attractive to people that are in cults?

I mean, I've never been in one. You seem to have, you're like a professional cult person.

Yes, I am. Thank you. I've gone from cult to cult to cult. No, you know, what is attractive about it?

Well, I think for one thing, community is definitely attractive in it. You know,

I say this, and this isn't stealing any of my thunder. One of the more difficult aspects of getting people to leave the

Mormon church is this, that it's not just a church. It's not just a belief system.

It's your family. And I don't just mean the people you live with. I mean, it's 1 ,000 times worse than leaving

BBC, because you leave BBC and you go, well, I can go to another Christian church in Florida or wherever you're moving, right?

I can find one. But for the Mormons, I mean, they call each other brother and sister, and they mostly mean that.

You're there all throughout the week just for various fun things, maybe.

You know, the kids go there on Wednesday night, the teenagers, and have some instruction, but it's mostly game playing.

And you'll be there maybe Saturday night for some kind of potluck dinner. And, you know, there might be a

Sunday night, what they used to call fireside at somebody's house, and just go, like, even after three hours of church, we would go hang out with each other.

And it's just, what we did, Boy Scouts, everything is just like church, church, church, church, church, church, church.

And so it's not just where you go on Sunday, it's your entire life, so that's part of it. I think the other part is, we have this inherent desire in us, even when we know we're wrong, even when we know we're sinful, we have this desire to do what?

What you were talking about earlier, to do something to make it right with God, right? And the Mormon church, like maybe the

Roman Catholic church, gives you a long list of things to do, a lot of things to feel guilty about, and a lot of things to make up for it, your own sins, so I think that's part of it.

How about, they want answers, and if you go to a cult, they'll give you direct answers on what to do, how to live, how to be right with God.

Yes, yeah, and I would say this, I think this is typically true of most cults, not all of them, but most of them, is they have a way, and Mormonism excels at this, of making

God somehow comprehensible. And if you looked in the mirror long enough, you'd just go,

God looks exactly like me, only he's better, right? He doesn't have bags under his eyes, he doesn't have funky big ears, he just, he looks really good, right?

He does. He looks, he's got a square jaw, and he doesn't do anything wrong, okay?

I mean, dude is, you know, but he's just like you, except better, and someday, if you work hard enough, you can be like him.

And that's what they really, you know, so they start you on this treadmill, but I think a lot of cults do that kind of thing.

Here's a quote from Robert Pasatino, quote, a person does not usually join a cult because he has done an exhaustive analysis of world religions, and has decided that particular cult presents the best theology available.

Instead, a person usually joins a cult because he or she has problems that she is having trouble solving, and the cult promises to solve those problems, right?

I'm lonely, I've got an identity problem, I've got a financial problem, emotional problem, I don't have a family,

I need help, and I think that's true. And again, I would say, man, the Mormon church would jump on all that stuff.

You have financial problems, we have a system, we're ready to go, you know, and just everything, they can just suck you in in a second.

Reminds me of the Lord Jesus, and seeing the multitudes, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep.

Without a shepherd. Without a shepherd. And so when you see these folks out there in the world that are sheep without a shepherd, instead of being mad at them or angry or frightened,

I want you to see them like Jesus did, and that is opportunities to tell them the good news so they could be free from that.

Aren't you glad you're free from that? Wouldn't you want that in others? And I know that's why you're here tonight, for the baptisms and the introduction for the cults.

Pradeep, when are you gonna be talking about the new age and influences of the new age in evangelicalism?

Okay, that's coming up too. So International Church of Christ, we'll talk about Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses.

Are we gonna do Christian science? You know the old joke about Christian science, don't you? Yeah, it's not

Christian, it's not science. It's like grape nuts. It's not grapes, it's not nuts. Saturday morning is when we're talking about that.

Yeah. Well, we could, but we're gonna hit kind of the big ones first. Is Roman Catholicism a cult?

Let's end here. That's on my list of. I would say, what did you say the three things are?

Source. Source, yes, they have tradition and they have their church teaching, yeah, magisterium.

Savior, well, Mary, Mary kind of cuts in there. She's the fourth person of the

Trinity, is what I like to call her. Well, it's true that Islam, they think Mary is the third person of the

Trinity because they're around Catholics so much that many people who follow Muhammad would say it's

God the Father, God the Son, and Mary because that's just what they hear Catholics say. And then the third part is?

Salvation. Salvation, yeah. Somebody's paying attention. And so if, well, I had it, then you started speaking again.

So. You know what it's like doing radio with this guy? It's awesome. Salvation, since salvation is only available through the

Roman Catholic Church, according to Rome. I mean, it sounds pretty cultish, doesn't it? Right, so we wouldn't be talking cult like a sociological cult, but theological.

Theological. Adding in human works. Yes. I don't,

I mean. That's part 37. I guess we could, maybe you can talk me into it. But again, I'd go, what's their source?

What do they think about the Savior? And then what about salvation? So maybe we'll see how it goes.

See how you like the series in terms of, is it benefiting you? And do we think as elders, it's proper to do?

Okay. Okay, one more answer. Anything else? Nope. I'm a man under authority.

It's 6 .30. Okay. 6 .31. Well, I had planned to go a little longer, but you were so loquacious when you're, oh, he's turning back the clock.

So stay tuned in the bulletin or BBC announced for the Sunday nights. Next week, it'll be

Mormonism. And we really wanna keep that paradigm going. Source, Savior, salvation.

And we're gonna say, here's their source, but here's our source, because we're not just gonna every night tell you all the errors.

We wanna make sure you're grounded in the truth. That's really the issue. And if we had to boil everything down, it would be, who is

Jesus? Remember, Jesus said, who do you say that I am? Right?

And there was a lot of answers, but there's one true answer. And then he is the eternal son of God, who is our

Savior and Lord. And we trust in him. So I believe Stephanie had to go. And so there's no final hymn.

We are gonna pray and then we're dismissed. If you have an opportunity, why don't you go up and go tell one of the baptismal candidates, good job, way to go.

And especially go talk to the young lady who used a comment in her baptism that's never been used here before, but I'm happy to give her the prize.

And she said, simplicity. Yes. Wow. All right, let's pray.

Thank you, Father, for tonight. And I think about the baptisms. It's just good to be reminded that you're a saving

God. We have friends and relatives and loved ones who need to get saved. And we're reminded again tonight that you can use frail preaching, frail evangelism, sinful people who tell the truth to others and that your spirit then works.

We're thankful for that. The joy of our salvation. We're so thankful for that. And I also pray for Natalie tonight,

Natalie Hill, that you might give her rest and comfort. And we know that blessed is the one that trust in you and help her just rest in you tonight.