Cults 101

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So I'm going to use some material that some of you may have heard in the past, and this is material that I taught in the
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IBS class for cults. So I'd like to get into a little bit of a study on cults, what cults are, why they exist, the reasons around them, why it's good we should even study cults, some of the more modern -day cults or even some of the older cults we'll talk about.
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I want to make sure too, I mean I know this is always that hard part, we're not here to bash any specific cult, we're not here, you know, we're here only by the grace of God and we only understand what we do from the scriptures by the grace of God and we understand man inherently, due to his sinful nature, will worship something, whether that is himself or in other groups until God actually reveals himself to them.
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So just to raise a hand here, who has received the knock on the door, open it up, we'd like to tell you about Jesus or we'd like to tell you about, yeah, hands, yeah, we've seen them too many a times, up and down the road.
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What are the two main that we think of today that kind of do this door -to -door evangelism? When we talk about cults, what are the two sides?
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Jehovah's Witness is one of the keys, yeah, and the Mormons are another key, yeah.
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Any others that people have had? I'm sorry, any others, no? Seventh -day
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Adventist, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of interesting to see that a lot of these cults, as we'll get into the definition of what they are and so forth, a lot of them are doing a much better job at witnessing and evangelizing than the churches today, going door -to -door and bringing people in, and they're growing in large, large numbers.
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So what are some of the reasons why we would want to study cults? This is going to be very interactive today, guys, so let's be prepared for a little bit of interactive.
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I've got a lot of material here, but what are some of the reasons we would want to study other religions? Why wouldn't we want to just stick to what we have here, the
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Bible? Okay, okay, very good.
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Any other reasons why we'd want to study cults? Yeah, yeah.
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And we'll learn it, depending on how far we go in the study, a lot of times they are told to ignore everything that you tell them.
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So I'm not saying don't do that, let's share the gospel, that is what our command is in Scripture. But at the same time, they are required to essentially ignore whatever you tell them.
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So other reasons we would want to study cults? Yeah, well, one, too, and it comes down to the very first thing is it's a form of discernment, right?
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We want to, we need to understand the Scripture, of course, as Christians, and be able to defend the
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Scripture, but we also want to know what the beliefs of the other cults are, right? We want to know what their beliefs are, so we can go back and show them in the pages of Scripture, the truth that God has revealed in the pages, right?
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We want to show them where their doctrine is in error to what the
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Holy Scripture talks about. So to better understand even the truths of Christianity, sometimes we'll study cults in a way of saying, wow,
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I didn't understand that, and let me go back and see how Scripture is. So it could be a way of discerning more and getting into better understanding the truths of Christianity as we dig deeper into the
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Bible, and really beginning to know the difference between what is real and what is counterfeit, right?
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We can quickly start to see some of these items, and as we get into it, we'll see some other areas where there's some very similarities amongst the cults that differ very greatly from what we have today in our doctrine of Christianity.
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It helps us to better understand other religious views, and I'll go into a little bit of difference between what is a cult and what is religion, and it also helps us to understand why cults exist in the first place.
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And I think, again, as I talked about earlier, we all have that inherent desire to worship something, and if it isn't the true
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God, we will find other things to worship and or will become idols. Another great reason is witnessing.
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If you know your own doctrine and you know what the cults believe, when they come knocking at your door, you'll be able to witness better and show them the way of salvation and how they are different from Christianity.
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We can better communicate our differences, and it will help to show how they're also – we'll better understand how these groups are leading other people astray.
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But one of the key areas I need to talk about first, before we get into cults themselves, is who can define for me what truth is?
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Who wants to take a shot? Yeah? Okay. Truth is what is, if even no one believes it.
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Correct? I just wanted to state that so it could be heard. Okay. Any other definitions of truth?
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Truth? I like that. Any others? Yeah, way in the back.
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That word is truth. Yeah. Okay. So, we have the word of God, right? Truth?
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Okay. So, the question comes down to always in our world – well, let me give a couple examples here.
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Whoops, I'm sorry. Some of the materials, too, I did want to say, have come out of this book. It's a little bit older book, but it's
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What the Cults Believe, and it's from Moody Press. If you're interested in some of this, he does a very good, concise means of what the various cults are, each one of them individually.
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This is Worldwide Church of God, kind of breaks down their theology. But they're very, very simple, probably four, five, six pages at the most for a lot of them.
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And it's a very good book if you're interested in understanding the cults. This one was updated and expanded,
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I want to say, like five years ago, I believe. So truth, as we'll see – so let me give you a couple definitions here by regular dictionaries in our society today.
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The American Heritage Dictionary defines truth as conformity to fact or actuality.
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Secondly, it's a statement proven to be or accepted as true.
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Three is sincerity or integrity. Four is fidelity to an original or a standard.
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Another definition is a varied or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like, such as a mathematical truth or a proof, as some would say.
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The state or character of being true, as every dictionary loves to throw something like that in there. And then the actuality or actual existence is another definition of truth.
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Now, we talked briefly that we see truth in the Bible. I've got 27 various verses where we see truth leveraged in the
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Scriptures. We see God is a God of truth in Deuteronomy. We see Christ is truth in John 14.
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We see Christ was full of truth in John 114. We see Christ spoke of truth in John 8, 45.
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The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit guides in all truth. The Word of God is said to be truth.
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The saints should worship God in truth. The saints should serve God in truth. The saints should rejoice in truth.
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And it goes on and on and on. So there's no doubt that there's something called truth. Would everyone agree?
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We believe that there is truth. I've got a couple of heads. I've got a couple of people sleeping. Truth, right?
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And again, we'll get to the good stuff. But we have to have the foundation that we're laying here. And truth is one of the big key areas.
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Because what you'll see with the cults is the cults are always going to take and leverage. And they're going to leverage truth with a little bit of change.
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Okay? So what they're saying may sound true at first. But you'll see that there's a little bit of a bend or a crook to it.
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And so we want to understand how we define truth first. And then from that, we'll be able to see better how the cults deal with truth -y types of things.
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Or truth -like types of things. So let me throw another question out there to the group.
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And that is, is there such a thing as absolute truth? In a post -modern society that we live in today, my truth is different from your truth, which is different from your truth, which is different from yours.
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Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Yes. Everyone agrees that there is an absolute truth?
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I would hope. I would hope, yes. Okay. And what is this absolute truth that we have? Yeah, we have the
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Word of God. And God actually says, it is truth. He is the absolute truth. Truth comes from the
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Holy Scriptures. So we understand that there is truth.
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We understand that there is absolute truth. Is there this thing that is relative truth?
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Is there such a thing as relative truth? That's a little more difficult question.
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I don't see many hands raised on this one. Is there such a thing as relative truth? Yeah. I mean, last week, coffee was the best thing in the world.
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The next week, coffee is the worst thing in the world. Then one week, chocolate is the best thing in the world. Then chocolate is not the best thing in the world.
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Statistics will show many different things. Statistics will prove whatever you want statistics to prove. So there is some form of relative truth.
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I don't want to say that there isn't such a thing as relative truth. But that's not really the direction we're going. And it's very different from, again, my truth and your truth and so forth.
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This postmodern idea or understanding. And one gentleman I remember listening to, he said, if you want to prove out this whole my truth is different from your truth and my reality is different from your reality, try going in and taking a candy bar and paying what used to be 10 cents in my day for the candy bar and walking out of the store when it's $1 .50
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and you'll see whose truth comes out, right? The police will show you the truth one way or another.
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You'll end up paying for it probably in other ways. So there is relative truth.
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Also, it depends on how people were raised, culture, areas of your own knowledge and understanding.
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And that's just not saying that the truth doesn't exist. John, I think your definition is great because whether someone believes it or not, it is there.
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But some people might not fully understand truth or various portions of truth and even scripture as they read through it.
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And it gets revealed as they continue and study. So there is a form of relative truth.
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But a lot of people will try to play that against that there is no such thing as absolute truth.
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So what happens when truth actually becomes a lie?
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And one of the examples I'll give here is, and briefly
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I kind of alluded to it, is if I were to take, and some of you have probably seen or heard this description, but if I were to take this glass of water and say it is truth, and I put one drop of cyanide in this glass of water or this bottle of water and gave it to you to drink it, would you want to drink it?
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I mean, it's 99 .9 % truth, right? With cyanide.
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So you would understand that a little bit of falsity, of something that is untrue, can taint truth or can taint what appears to be true very easily.
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So we have to be careful when we're looking at things that truth can be bent or tuned or tweaked or turned.
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As we talked about, it can be manipulated in a way that it sounds close to being true, but it isn't true.
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So that's when you start getting knockoffs, you start getting counterfeits. You have the real thing,
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Scripture as we know it today, right? You have the Bible, and you'll find with the cults, it's the
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Bible plus, right? You're going to add something to this because it isn't enough.
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So you need to have something extra, whether it's additional revelation or other books or man's words or some other thing that comes along with it.
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You're going to have the Bible plus. And as we look at it too, you're going to start to see, this is, again, not a unique thing throughout the cults, but not only do you have the
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Bible plus, you have salvation plus. You have everything else pretty much plus.
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It is all of grace plus. It is all of God plus.
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And as we look through some of these, you'll see that very adamantly that the cults are ones that add to this truth.
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They'll take what is known as truth and then they add to it, sometimes subtly, sometimes not very subtly.
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And an example of this, again, most of you have probably heard this type of an example. Who's heard how the
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Secret Service finds counterfeit money? What's the best way for the Secret Service to find counterfeit money?
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You know how they're trained? You guys have probably heard this. They what? They study the real thing, right?
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So if I have, I don't even think I have a dollar bill in my pocket. If I've got a quarter, if I could study the real thing, pretend this was a dollar in your reality, no, they study the real thing, right?
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So I'm not saying that when we study cults that we don't want to study the Word of God or so forth.
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We need to know the Word of God over and above, and then this is extra.
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This is additional work on top of that. So studying the Word is important to then be able to find these counterfeits, these knockoffs.
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Being solid in your own doctrine will allow you to understand where a lot of these various cults and or other religions fall short.
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Who knows, again, this is still a little bit of introductory work, what are the top three philosophical questions man asks?
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Anyone know? Where did I come from I heard over here? Okay. Why am
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I here? Right, where did I come from? Why am I here? What else? Who am
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I? Yeah? What happens when I die is a big one, right?
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Very big one. Any others? Big philosophical questions? Who is
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God, right? And some people resolve that to it is me. It is my work, it is my idol, whatever it might be, right?
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Who is God is one of those main questions. Some of the top ones that are given as I was doing some study here and that is who is
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God and what is his nature? So who is he and what is he all about? Who is this
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God, right? And then secondly, why am I here and what am
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I doing here? So what is my purpose in life as we talked about? And then it's interesting because one of the other top that I kind of thought, wow, that's interesting.
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I wouldn't have thought of that but in some ways I see this because of how the cults are working too and that is how can
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I be reconciled to my creator? I think we all understand inherently in our hearts, right, that we are sinful and we need reconciliation and here one of the top questions is how may
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I be reconciled with my creator? And Christians need to be able to answer these questions.
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So as we witness, as we evangelize, as we talk to those people that are coming and knocking on our door and wanting to tell us about Jesus, we need to have an understanding that this is really what they're trying to oftentimes tell us and we need to have a biblical understanding and be able to speak from the scriptures and have an outline of answering these questions.
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You know, four W's are a great example. I know Mike has talked about the four W's, right? Who is God? Who is man?
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Who is Christ? And then what is my response? Very critical areas and they answer all of these various questions around a creator.
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So let's get to the meat of the questions here. What is a cult? Who wants to define for me a cult?
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Okay. Okay. Good. Others? A group that denies or corrupts the deity of Christ.
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Okay. Just wanted to again repeat that for the sound. Any others? No one else?
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Going on? Yeah. Yeah, it can be actually a person that they're following, right?
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It can be a personality cult as it's called. That is someone where they're following a person and their teachings and so forth.
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Let me give you just a... I think I have it here in my notes. Sorry, I just had it here too.
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I was going to give you a quick definition as to how the world... Let's see if I have it on this next page.
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Sorry about this, guys. It was a great quote even. Man, I don't want to miss it because it was that good.
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I mean, in reality, it wasn't, but it essentially talked about... I see it in my mind even and I had it in my...
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Oh, do I have it here? Let me come back to the very beginning. Again, bear with me.
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Prep time was not my strength today. It would have been right here.
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If I can't get to it here in 30 seconds... Okay. So let me ask you this question while I continue to look a little bit.
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Let's see if... Can we define what a cult is apart from Christianity? Okay.
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So do we have to understand Christianity to define something as a cult? Does the world define us as a cult?
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I mean, as bad as that sounds, right? I mean, yeah.
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So it really is a grouping of people that follow a belief or a truth as we talked earlier about.
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They follow a truth. They have a doctrine. Usually, they have a stance and they believe what they believe.
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These are people... And again, sometimes we'll look at things and we say, how did David Koresh and how did some of these other...
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Jonestown and these other areas, how did they get to that state? But these people believe what they truly believe.
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What they believe is what they think is true. So it's important that the definition of Christianity...
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Do I have it? Nope. So let me rephrase this then.
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So heritage dictionary, American heritage dictionary, says this of the word Christianity. So let's define first Christianity really quick.
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And again, as dictionaries go, they do a terrible job. The Christian religion founded on the life and teachings of Jesus.
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Not bad. Christians as a group or Christendom, the state or fact of being a
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Christian. A Bible dictionary states it as this.
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The Christian religion is based on Jesus Christ, the only Savior, a mediator between God, the Father, and a sinful humankind.
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Merriam -Webster's defines it as this. It's the religion derived from Jesus Christ based on the Bible, a sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern Roman, Catholic, and Protestant bodies.
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Kind of interesting. So we would be considered a cult by the true definition of it.
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But what makes Christianity unique compared to other cults, other groups of people that hold beliefs or other denominations and other religious groups?
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What makes us unique? Exclusivity of Christ.
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And we are seeing more and more of that, right? The moral relativeness that goes through post -modernists and everything else that is saying
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Christianity is bad because we are excluding. Everyone else is tolerating and loving and everything else.
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So they're more accepted. Yes, Charlie? Correct.
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Yes. And we'll see as we get into some of the definitions in more depth.
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There are different terms for cults. There are different levels of cults. And we talked a little bit about personality cults. There are cults that are specific in the way they handle things.
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There are psychological cults. There are brainwashing types of cults. There are various sets of cults.
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And I think where it gets a little bit blurry, and this is where things today, even in the news, comes about as to Mormons, are they a cult or not a cult?
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Most Mormons, again, their doctrine based on Christianity would make them a cult. Not based on their followers or who they're following, but they are so apart from, so diverse from.
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They also are saying, right, all of these cults are saying, we are the only way. So Mormons will say, you must be in the
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Church of Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, you must be. So that is another definition of cults where it is a forcing of, it is the exclusivity, but with some of the truths of Christianity that Mormons will weave into things.
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Yeah. It's different definitions.
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Correct. Or for those who don't have discernment, right, so they hear the word, yes, you are saved by grace in the
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Mormon Church. Well, grace has a whole separate definition in the Mormon Church than grace does in Christendom, right?
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And that's where you have to start now. I mean, it gets ridiculous when you sit down with some of these people and they say define what that means because it's, when they start defining it, it isn't what it is.
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Who is Jesus, right? Well, you know, this is how we understand it. Well, who do you say Jesus is?
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Definition is going to be completely different, right? I wish
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I had my quote because it was, again, super. It wasn't my quote. It was from someone else, but let's see.
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So let me ask you, what about denomination?
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So Charlie touched a little bit upon it. So we've got a bunch of denominations and people say, oh, wait a minute, you know, you have
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Christianity and you've got thousands of denominations out there. How do those fit into this whole belief system and so forth?
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Who can tell me kind of what a denomination is in comparison to a cult? Where's the differentiation there?
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Yeah, normally it's adherence to the cores, right? We'll keep them still within Christendom, but the secondaries and the truciary areas, they may go off a little bit different.
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So it's not around salvation, but it does deal with other areas. And who can name a couple different denominations for us?
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What do we have in Christendom from a denomination perspective? Baptists? Presbyterians?
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Congregational Methodists? Lutherans? And who? Episcopalians, I heard?
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Yeah? Yeah? Okay. Yeah, so there are different denominations. Now, again, some of these can be way to the left.
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Some of these can be more to the right, more Bible -centered and so forth. But oftentimes the denomination is defined as one that still holds to the truths or the primary truths of Christendom and they may have some differences amongst the other truciary types of areas, baptism if it's sprinkling or immersion and so forth.
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So let me throw this out. I'll throw the hand grenade over the wall here. So are cults part of the occult?
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Are cults part of the occult? What is the occult? It's what?
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New Age? Worship of Satan and demons?
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Correct. Yeah. So would a cult be part of the occult?
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Bruce? Yeah, and they aren't inherently worshipping
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Satan, right? They're not pulling out the book of Satan and worshipping Satan in their meetings and so forth.
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But it directly ties, if it's not of God, it is of the devil, right? So there is some tie -in here and it's more of a definition of terms than anything else.
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One of the terms here says the word occult comes from the Latin word occultus, to be clandestine, to be hidden, to be secret, to referring to knowledge of the hidden.
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So some of these cults do have hidden knowledge. Some of these kind of hide the various areas of doctrine or theology and so forth.
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Let's see if I have... You know, most people would think of, when you think of the occult, you think of things such as Satanism, Wicca, ESP, astrology, numerology, spiritism, much of the
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New Age movement, right? Just to name a few of the areas. And it's really more a...
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By the definition as we think of it today, it's more of the direct worship of Satan, again. They aren't, but they are worshipping, not the one true
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God. Let's see. Occultus, I'm just trying to think of some of the words, some of the definitions of what a cult is.
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Oh, is this where my quote is? Huh. Again, preparation wasn't my thing today.
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Well, let me give you a definition of what a cult is, just to start, how we do in time.
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So it's interesting because cults... Well, let me ask you this. So the word actually comes from the root
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Latin word cultus, and it really hasn't come out until the 18th century, the late 1900s or the 18th century, that cults really kind of flourished.
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Apart from that, there weren't many cults per se. There were heretics, there were other teachings, there were areas that were out there, but cults didn't really explode until pretty much the 18th century, based on research.
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And why do we think that would be the case? Why would it be the case that they really didn't flourish until recently, in relative terms?
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So why, though, what was the change in philosophy? And I agree with where you're at. What happened after that?
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What was kind of the next phase? Closer to what
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I'm looking for, I think, Charlie, yes? And during that, yes?
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Yes, correct.
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We all know how wonderful our hearts are and how godly they are.
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Yes? Communication was a big part of it, right? Communication did start to grow and flourish.
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We have the enlightenment, as Charlie said. We have modernism started. We have postmodernism now moving in and now starting to be...
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I don't know what's after postmodernism. Anyone know what's after postmodernism? Post -postmodernism? Is that two negatives equal a positive?
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I don't know. Yeah, so there was a flourishing of different things all happening here, and it grew very quickly, a lot of these cults, because they were able to now kind of faction themselves off and start reading the scriptures and starting to misinterpret the scriptures.
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Now, I was going to cover the last section of my Hermeneutics class, which would have fit well in here, and I'll cover it another day, around fallacies.
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And a lot of, from a fallacy perspective, is the study of God's Word and reading into the text and some of the areas where you can go wrong, and that's what happens when you just give someone the scriptures without the
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Holy Spirit's enlightenment to go and start their own religion, in essence, which is what a lot of these cults ended up doing.
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Let me give you a Bible dictionary real quick of what a cult is and see if it helps to clear it up a little bit as we dig deeper here.
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So a cult is this. It is deviant and heretical pseudo -religious group.
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Cults may originate either within the host Christian society, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christian science, or be imported from other hostile cultures, such as Hare Krishna, Unification Church, Baha 'ism, and Scientology.
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Pseudo -Christian cults have extra -scriptural sources of authority. They deny justification by grace.
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They oftentimes will brainwash their members, devalue Christ, and maintain punitive disciplinary practices for members who question their scriptural legitimacy.
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They have specific and or secret religious rights. They are considered to be a sect of people or beliefs.
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And that's probably the best definition. That's from one of the Bible dictionaries on what a cult is.
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I think it hits a lot of the main parts. Are we doing time here?
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Let me actually pull something up here just because we'll get into some more next time. Let me read you part of a document here.
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If I can pull it up. I had this earlier. Of course, that's not it. Bear with me one more second.
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So this was a great article that came out a couple of years back. I held onto it.
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For those who have the Mormons come knocking on their door, these are the 33 things a
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Mormon will not tell you when they come knocking on your door. And again, I'm not here to bash Mormons. This is more just to fill the remaining part of our time, give you some understanding of what
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Mormon belief is, and as we dig deeper down into various cults and other systems, you'll see that...
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I'll let you measure how these line up with Christendom. Mormons will not tell you that they believe that your church is wrong, your
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Christian creeds are an abomination to God, and your pastor or priest is a hireling of Satan.
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So when you see Mike today, just shake his hand. Based on what the Mormons tell you, you are a hireling of Satan.
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Mormons won't tell you that there is salvation only in their church and all other churches are wrong.
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Mormons won't tell you that those who have been through the temples are wearing secret undergarments to protect them from the evil spirits.
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This evil includes non -Mormons like yourself. Mormons will not tell you about their secret temple rites at all.
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If they did, you would spot them as non -Christian immediately. Mormons will not tell you that they think familiar spirits are good and that their
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Book of Mormon has a familiar spirit about it, written in Leviticus 19 .31, saying that familiar spirits defile one and are to be avoided at all costs.
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Mormons will not tell you that the woman receives salvation only through their Mormon husbands and must remain pregnant for all eternity.
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Sorry, ladies. Mormons will not tell you that they intend to be gods themselves one day, lowercase g, and are helping to earn their exaltation to godhood by talking with you.
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Mormons won't tell you that they are intended to have many wives in heaven, carrying out multiple relationships throughout eternity until they have enough children to populate their own earths and they can be a heavenly father of their own planet.
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Mormons will not tell you that there was once a spirit child of their heavenly father and one of their numerous wives before they were born on earth.
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Mormons will not tell you that the Virgin Mary really wasn't a virgin at all, but she had relations with her heavenly father to produce the
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Mormon version of Jesus Christ. Mormons will not tell you that they believe
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Jesus had at least three wives and children while he was on earth.
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Mormons will not tell you that the heavenly father they ask you to pray to them with is really an exalted man that lives on his own planet near a star base,
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Kolob, and is not the heavenly father of the Bible at all.
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Mormons will not tell you that Jesus is really Lucifer's brother in the spirit world and that it is only due to the heavenly council vote that Jesus became our
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Redeemer instead of Satan himself. So I'm not going to read all of these.
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I'm on 14 of 33. So you'll see just quickly from some of these,
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I'm hoping that you'll understand these are very different night and day from what Christianity teaches, night and day from what the
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Bible teaches. And this is what the cults are out there today and they're actually doing a great job of evangelism both locally and they're very involved in evangelism overseas and in third world countries.
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And you will see that they are some of the largest growing communities of people, both Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness, in these other countries.
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And it's very sad to see that because these people are preaching this type of information, this type of knowledge to these people and they're going to hell.
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And it should be a concern of ours to, one, be able to proclaim God's love and His word and His truth that is revealed in the pages of Scripture and be able to give this to the
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Mormon who is knocking on our door. We need to defend the faith. And one of the reasons to understand and study what the cults believe is, as I said earlier, to be able to defend, not defend the
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Bible per se, I don't want to say that, but it's to defend what the Bible says and how it is true over and above what they've been taught.
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And we'll see, if I go through and continue through this study, what you will see is, again, these people, most of them are just lost.
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They're where you and I were prior to salvation. We were seeking something to worship.
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We were seeking someone to worship. We were seeking the same questions most of these have. Who am
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I? Who is God? How do I reconcile myself with my Creator? What's going to happen when I die? And these cults have the answers.
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They don't have the true answers, but they have the answers that a lot of these people want to hear.
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I would love to hear that I will be a God of my own world someday. That's great. But when you know the
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Scriptures and you know that instead we will worship in truth for eternity our
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Creator, how much better is that? How much better is that compared to what is being offered?
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The cults, you'll also find as we continue through some of the study, are very man -centered, give man that warm, fuzzy feeling of how great you are.
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Instead of one of Pastor Mike's sermons that just takes you down at the knees. But you understand it's God's truth, and it's what we need to know and what we need to hear.
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Any questions on at least the material? I know we jumped around a little bit. Next time I'll be a little more prepped.
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But any questions on cults? Any things that either maybe you just wondered, or if I can answer it,
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I'm happy to answer it. It's a study that I've enjoyed in the past. I enjoy studying the different religions, different cults.
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Anything? Pradeep? Oh, here comes a hard question,
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I know, right there. Man. Yeah. Yes.
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Yeah, the whistles and bells and things should be going off in your head, going, wait a minute, time out, right?
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And we need to be able to defend it and go back to the Scripture and show where God was not, right? He was not a created being.
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He is God the Father who forever existed. And those are important areas that we need to defend.
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Any other quick questions? Let me ask another, just pose another question to you guys because I didn't get to that in this section.
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And that is, what's the difference between a cult, another world religion, because you talked about Hinduism.
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What are the differences between those? So how do we define, we talked a little bit about, you know, sects within and denominations within, but we've got the core or key world religions,
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Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Judaism.
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How are those defined? How are those different? Why aren't those cults? In the terminology that we're saying from a
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Christendom perspective, why are those not cults? Why are those religions over cults? So again, there's a religion, they're separated out.
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Cults are going to be very separated out too, right, because they're going to have you do something in all instances of a cult, very similar, very man -centered that way.
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But Charlie? Yes. Correct.
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Yeah, and Charlie, you hit it right on the head there. A Hindu is not trying to say they're Christian, and a
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Buddhist is not trying to say they're a Buddhist or a Jew. These are very, very separate theologies, very different doctrines, where a cult, based on a
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Christian perspective, a cult is one that attaches itself or attempts to attach itself to Christianity and say we are a
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Christian group just like you guys, and yet they are errant in their theology.
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Yes. Correct. Yeah, I mean, the cults are out there.
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A lot of them will say we have the Bible as our book and four others. We have the
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Bible, right, so at least we have the Bible, so we're close, but a Hindu is not going to have the Bible.
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They have their own scripture, their own doctrine, their own beliefs. They don't even try to pretend to be such, where a cult in what we'll talk about is more defined by they are ones that say they are
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Christian, and we'll find out really quickly that they aren't Christian just based on doctrine. Yeah, Charlie.
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I think initially it would have been a cult, and it has now developed, but they still try to push the we are
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Christian, right? I mean, it's that definition of we still have the scriptures, although we have the five pillars we have to still abide by, but we have the scriptures, and they still, you know, there are some tweaks and tunes, but, you know,
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Jesus, some of these, but I think it's so refined that it's now defined as a world religion that is outside of Christianity as a whole, and I think they would prefer that too to say we're not part of Christianity, but it was a break off from that, so early on it would have been.
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Yeah, Scott. Yes. Yeah, and I agree.
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Oh, look, I have it right here. So, here it is, because you were just talking about that, so here we go. It better be good, right?
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So this is how someone defined a cult, right?
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This is just, I'm not even going to give the reference because it isn't worth the reference, but if one person believes a delusion, it's called psychosis, okay?
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If a thousand people share the same delusion, it's called a cult. If a hundred thousand people share the same delusion, it's called a religion.
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Is that good? Yeah? Well, I thought it was pretty good. Sorry. Sorry to disappoint.
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Let's pray. No, it just shows that sometimes size, people think size and so forth, same thing, but, you know, cults can be very small, very minute.
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I did have a quote early on when I did this class for IBS. There was a family, a very small family,
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I believe it was 30 people in this cult. The follower, or the person that was being followed, the leader of the cult, told everyone to jump off of a building, an 11 -story building.
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This was back, I want to say, in 72, so ancient days for most of you. But, you know, the question was, well, how can people do that?
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And they were actually tossing their children over an 11 -story building, and then they jumped themselves, and the leader committed suicide and so forth.
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So it's very similar to some of these other cults, you know, suicide tendencies and other areas. But, you know, we kind of try to fathom by the grace of God alone, you know, do we stand here?
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Or can we even agree or believe what the Scriptures say? It's by the Holy Spirit and it being revealed to us.
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So, you know, as we go through this, again, I'm not trying to bash specific people groups.
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I'm not trying to bash anything else. I'm not trying to be this postmodern, you know, let's believe anything we want to believe. But at the same time, we need to understand where these people are coming from.
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And it honestly is a sad state. And, you know, the majority of these people who are in these cults are going to hell if they do not, if God does not reveal
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Himself to them. So any questions? Leave it on a downer note after the good quote,
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I'm sorry. No other questions? All right, let's go ahead and I'll pray. Lord, we want to thank you and praise you.
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Again, we give you the glory. We give you the praise for allowing us to even be here and to just know your word.
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Lord, we thank you for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that you've even given us the Scriptures that we can study and know you better.
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Understanding, Lord, that apart from that, we would follow our sinful and our wicked hearts. And, Lord, we would be just as involved in probably some of these worship as we see in the
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Old Testament, even in the New Testament where people have gone astray. Lord, we pray that you would just give us a spirit of love for these people, that we would desire to evangelize to these people and show them the true way of what you have in store for your children.
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Lord, we just love you and thank you for this opportunity now that we can look into these other areas. And we ask that you would just bless this time in your holy and precious name.