What is a Cult?

So this evening we're going to be looking at the subject, or the question, what is a cult?

So let's turn to 1 John chapter 4. We'll begin there. I think some people, when they hear the word cult, they think of the most extreme situations, like Satan worship, or maybe cult leaders like Jim Jones, or David Koresh of the

Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. That was probably my first exposure to the more extreme cults when

I was in high school. That was on the news, David Koresh in Waco, Texas.

Then it was the early 2000s. Who remembers the Hale -Bopp comet? Around 2001, 2002, there was that cult that formed called

Heaven's Gate. And all the members died in a mass suicide, just like with Jim Jones.

So these are the types of things that people think of when they hear the word cult, and there'll be a cult leader that cannot be questioned.

They get everyone isolated from their family, and in the end everyone dies. But while that does happen, those are pretty extreme, pretty rare cases.

Most of the time with your average cult, if I can put it that way, what we're talking about, like with the

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, that's really a different category. It's not the same type of cult.

The Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh -day Adventists, Christian Science, those cults that we talked about in the past, that's a situation where there is a false teacher or a false prophet who gains a following.

And that's where 1 John 4 comes in. So let's begin in verse 1. The Apostle John says,

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.

And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.

And this is the Spirit of Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world.

And of course, cults, cult leaders got smart and they will say, Oh, well, we believe

Jesus came in the flesh so they can kind of avoid this passage. But when you look at what they're really teaching, you know, sometimes they say that, but then they say the opposite and they redefine terms.

So you always have to watch out for what people are saying here and what they're doing over here.

But as for as for this passage, on the one hand, you see the Antichrist mentioned.

Capital A, is that reflected in your Bibles? So there's the Antichrist, capital

A. And now flip back to 1 John 2, 1 John chapter 2.

So there is the Antichrist with a capital A, who I would say the

Antichrist in the end times. He will have the biggest cult of all time. People all over the world will worship him.

But then there are also many Antichrist, plural with a lowercase a.

Look at 1 John 2, 18. John says, little children, it is the last hour.

And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, capital A. Even now, many

Antichrist, plural, lowercase a, have come. By which we know that it is the last time.

So these Antichrist basically are false teachers. So the phrase last hour, that's just a reference to the latter days.

And we are living in the last days. So the time period from Christ's first advent up until his second advent.

The past 2 ,000 years we have been living in the last days. And as you go on, you know, we're in the latter times more and more as we go on.

So the New Testament teaches that the age we live in, the latter days. This will be a time period marked by religious apostasy.

And it's going to get worse and worse and worse as time goes on. I think that's what we see.

It is getting worse and worse. So the term

Antichrist or Antichrist plural, it's referring to what? Who are they?

Yeah, they are false teachers who either claim to be Christ himself.

Because the term Antichrist doesn't mean just someone who's against Christ. Although they are.

Antichrist means one who comes in the place of Christ, like an imposter. So false teachers might actually claim to be

Jesus Christ. Or they just lead people away from Jesus or oppose

Jesus. A few examples of this. Charles Manson. I think everyone knows who

Charles Manson is. He was a cult leader. And he claimed to be Jesus Christ.

I don't know that anyone believed him. But people did get sucked into that cult. Jim Jones claimed to be

Christ reincarnated. David Koresh claimed to be the Lamb of God.

Ann Lee, who founded the Shakers. You've heard of the Quakers. Well, that's one group.

But the Shakers, Ann Lee, their founder, she claimed to be the female incarnation of Jesus Christ.

So there's all sorts of different cults, cult leaders, making these really outrageous claims about themselves.

So any false teacher who gains a following where people are loyal to that man or woman more than the teachings of the

Bible, whether it's Joseph Smith of the Mormons, Ellen G. White of the Seventh -day Adventist, Mary Baker Eddy of the

Christian scientists. If they're more loyal to what that person says, rather than the scripture, they're not really following the scripture.

They're following what that person says about the scripture. Any group like that can be considered a cult.

They don't have to be openly worshiping Satan or committing mass suicide to be considered a cult. OK, so there's extreme examples.

And then there are other examples where someone could be in a cult and they seem just like a regular person. Like they seem like a nice person.

There's nothing weird going on on the surface. That's obvious. So just when you hear that word cult, understand that it brings all sorts of things to mind, but it can mean different things.

Any questions on that? Just so we have that settled, that cult can refer to different things.

Joyce, did you have? Well, I just had a question about the verse we just read, verse 18.

Why is the Antichrist capitalized? Is that the emphasis? Yeah, so Antichrist singular, with a capital

A, we believe refers to that final figure of the end times.

The Antichrist, the man who will try to take over the world. Lowercase a, plural, can refer to just any false teacher.

OK, thank you. Just as a note, in the King James, not the New King James, there is no capital

A and there is no B Antichrist. It's just the spirit of the Antichrist. Yeah, and obviously, well maybe it's not obvious, but in the original

Greek language, you know, there are no capitals in lowercase. So that is added by the translators, but it reflects what most evangelicals believe.

OK, good point. So Heaven's Gate, like the ones that I mentioned,

Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh, these were situations, cult situations, where people died.

So it doesn't have to be that extreme. But this is the way people often think.

So let's get a definition for the term. My other video that I did on the Seventh -day Adventist that Marcus brought up,

I got bombarded with comments from Seventh -day Adventists saying, we are not a cult, or how do you even define what a cult is?

And I think I did define what a cult is in some of those videos. But hey, let's give another definition.

Huh, Mark? Let's give another one. OK, so a cult, here's one non -Christian source.

They defined the cult this way. A relatively small group of people having beliefs or practices, especially relating to religion, that are regarded by others as strange or sinister, or as imposing excessive control over members.

So that's one definition. I think that's a decent definition, but that's from a non -Christian source.

I think this is a better definition that I got from the website gotquestions .org.

They say that the word cult is defined as an unorthodox sect whose members distort the original doctrines of the religion.

In a Christian context, the definition of a cult is specifically a religious group that denies one or more of the fundamental truths of the

Christian faith. So there's one truth in particular that usually marks a

Christian -type cult. What is it? Denying the

Trinity, denying the deity of Christ. That's the most common mark of a

Christian -type cult. So that's the Mormons, that's Jehovah's Witnesses. Seventh -day

Adventists are a little different. Some of them deny the Trinity. Most these days don't. So that can kind of go either way.

But the Christian science, they deny the Trinity as well. So that's the most common mark. Or they have a different gospel, salvation by works.

You know, you need to keep the Sabbath in order to be saved, that type of thing. Okay, so that leads into the next thing of why

I'm doing this study. Because we already talked about the cults a little bit. But I think this is a pressing issue because the cults are getting mainstream acceptance these days.

It's not like 40 years ago where most evangelicals agreed, hey, these groups are not teaching the truth.

Today, the average evangelical doesn't see what the big fuss is about. Yeah, they're fine, they say they believe in Jesus, that's good enough.

I remember when Joel Osteen was asked in 2012 about Mitt Romney running for president, because he's a

Mormon, and Joel Osteen said, well, I'm a little broader than your average

Christian, he said. Mitt Romney says he believes in Jesus, well, that's good enough.

Well, okay, but even Muslims will say they believe in Jesus. It doesn't mean what you mean by it.

But that's just the shift in attitude of why I think churches need to be teaching on the subject more than ever.

Because if the leaders are saying that, then that means people in the pew are definitely believing it.

Anyways, the reason why I wanted to do this study is because people's attitudes towards the cults are changing.

So they're starting to view Mormons and Seventh -day Adventists as just another

Christian denomination. And I think that's totally wrong, I think it's very dangerous.

But why are, we have to ask, why are some of these groups gaining mainstream acceptance?

I'm not placing all the blame on these individuals, but I think this is part of the reason.

So I mentioned back when we studied the Mormons that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association dropped

Mormonism from their list of cults back at around 2012. Do you remember why? Because Mitt Romney was running for president, so if a

Mormon is running for president, people think, well, Mormonism must be mainstream now, because we might have a

Mormon president. So they dropped Mormons from their cult list. And that has an effect on people.

Robbie Zacharias went to the Mormon temple, and he offered

God's blessing to the Mormon elders and apostles. So that helped to change people's attitude.

Now, I think Robbie Zacharias should have been admonished heavily for that, but he did it.

Got a little criticism. And then I mentioned the TV show The Chosen, which if you like it and you watch it, we're not a cult, so I'm not telling you what to watch on TV.

Again, that doesn't really make you a cult. But the point is the creator and founder, he views

Mormons as brothers and sisters in Christ. So you just have the point is you have these high -profile evangelical leaders who don't see what the problem is.

So that has a trickle -down effect to people in local churches. And besides, one of the definitions of a cult is that they're a small group, right?

Well, the Mormons are pretty big. So the bigger you get, it's easy to kind of shed that cult label.

You know, if some guy in town had 20 people at his house and they believed the things the

Mormons, we would call that a cult because they're small, right? That's sort of the nature of it, unfortunately.

Because once they get big, they turn into a world religion. And then in people's eyes, they have credibility.

Is that what the Bible teaches, though? That hey, as long as you have the numbers, you're good. No, what is it really about?

It's what they teach, primarily what they teach about the person and work of Christ.

If you don't hear me say anything else tonight, hear me say that. It's all about what they believe and teach about the person and work of Christ, what they believe about the gospel.

So that's why I'm doing this study. And along with that video I did on YouTube that the

Seventh -day Adventists had been contacting me and saying that they're not a cult and asking how do

I define a cult. So I'm kind of giving that answer. So bottom line is whether you look at Mormons, Seventh -day

Adventists, when you look at their teachings compared to historic Protestant evangelical

Christianity, they are departing from some established teaching and they are teaching what

I would call strange doctrine. Incidentally, the Branch Davidian, who remembers that?

David Koresh, Waco, Texas. They were actually a spin -off from the Seventh -day Adventist church.

A lot of people don't know that. But everyone recognizes David Koresh as a cult leader.

Only half of evangelicals would view Seventh -day Adventists, the average Seventh -day

Adventist as a cult leader. So you're getting a variety of different viewpoints these days.

So my greatest concern is that this just proves that the average person doesn't really care about doctrine.

They believe Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer. Oh, what's the big deal? I mean, that's kind of people's attitude.

Now, it should be a big deal. But you know how that goes. All right. Which one is that?

That's the Mormons. I mean, that is a far out belief. So the

Mormons believe that God, who in Hebrew it's El or Elohim, they believe that God was once a human being living on a distant planet near the star

Kolob. And he was a polygamist. And with his many wives, they had spirit babies.

And among those spirit children were Jesus and Lucifer. And then the spirit children came and inhabited human bodies.

Like I said, it's far out, like literally far out. That's why they practiced polygamy.

Because the goal for every Mormon man was to be the god of his own planet someday. And to populate the planet, you needed to have many children.

Therefore, you need many wives. Of course, they wanted statehood. Utah wanted statehood.

And the federal government made a deal with them. Okay, if you stop practicing polygamy, then we will make

Utah a state. Of course, many of them still practiced it, just in secret.

So there's a lot of things going on like that, that the average evangelical doesn't even know about. Matter of fact,

I say that. Somebody listening or watching later, hopefully you know that I'm not making this stuff up.

But somebody's hearing this and like, come on, they don't really believe that. Well, yeah, they do, actually. So it just tells you that the average person doesn't really care about doctrine these days.

So whether a cult has five people in it or 15 million, numbers don't matter.

It's about what they believe and teach. Mark, you have a question? Where did they come up with this? Well, you know where they came up with it.

Who taught it? The cult leader. Joseph Smith. Yeah, Joseph Smith. Where he got it,

I mean, I guess... He had a vision in New York. Right, yeah. He says he received visions and revelations, and he found these golden plates out in the woods.

Yeah, well, this is another problem with cult leaders. They can get a direct word from God at any time, and they don't need the

Bible. Because if they teach something, if that's not in the Bible, it doesn't matter. God told me so. This is why

I really have an issue with some of the televangelists who are constantly... Not even just televangelists.

You're rank and file Christians. God told me this. God told me that. God told me this. God told me that. Did God really tell you?

Because once you accept that, you kind of open the door for just about anything. And I know the average person who says,

God told me this, they probably don't really mean that, but some people do. All right, so what makes a cult a cult?

Generally speaking, we're looking at their beliefs. So we're talking about a theological cult, okay?

Not necessarily Satan worshipers in a dark room with candles and salt circle on the floor and a go -ahead or something like that.

That's like an extreme case, okay? First John four, again, you're still there, right? Verse three,

John identifies the antichrist false teachers. They deny that Jesus had come in the flesh.

So verse three, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, they're not of God, right?

You see that? And this is the spirit of antichrist. So it's about what they believe and teach about Jesus.

So if you take notes, write this down, we're talking about theological cults. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh -day

Adventists, they might seem like nice people. We're not saying they're in some weird thing.

It's a theological cult. We're talking about what they believe, okay? It's no reflection on them as human beings.

Those who have an unorthodox view of the person and work of Christ are, bottom line, cultic.

But in a broader sense, the term cult, how many different types of cults are there?

Has anyone ever done a study on this or read an article? Just take a guess, how many types of cults, general categories?

Well, I found four. There's probably more than four. One type of cult is a political cult.

You've heard of the cult of personality, right? I think Joseph Stalin, there's something about him with the cult of personality.

Kim Jong -il, so people in North Korea were given this story about how their supreme leader was born on the side of a mountain under a rainbow, virgin birth or something.

There's something far out like that. So political leaders often have a cult of personality.

Like the Roman emperors were worshipped as gods, right? Most people are familiar with that.

Then there are sex cults, which we're not getting into tonight. There are doomsday cults, which most people are familiar with the doomsday cults.

And then there are religious cults. And obviously, religious cults and doomsday cults, there's a lot of overlap.

This is another thing cults do. Number one, they deny the deity of Christ, deny the Trinity. Number two, they have a heavy emphasis on the end of the world, which

I believe in teaching Bible prophecy, but I would say they overemphasize the end of the world.

And this is one thing Jehovah's Witnesses will do when they come knocking on your door, they'll talk about the end of the world and Armageddon.

And of course, that piques some evangelicals' interests. And we do believe in an end of the world, but there's the doomsday cults.

Now, what do you think the Branch Davidians were? Out of those four categories, what were the

Branch Davidians? Yeah, they were religious and doomsday.

The Heaven's Gate was, well, I guess they said they were religious, but I think of them as doomsday.

You walk through any city, sometimes you'll see someone with a sign, some end of the world crazy person with a sign, spouting all sorts of things.

And again, I don't wanna make it sound like Christians who preach about Bible prophecy are doing the wrong thing, but they, again, they overemphasize the end of the world.

Another thing, they might set dates, right? If you hear a preacher setting a date for the end of the world, I mean,

I would just, I would leave that church and go somewhere else personally. So there's different types of cults.

Now, this statement that John makes in 1 John 4, 3 about the one who denies that Christ has come in the flesh, can anyone think of a group that denies that Jesus came in the flesh?

Or that Christ came in the flesh? Yeah. Okay, because you wonder, like who is

John? John must have someone in mind if he's saying this. If the writers of the

New Testament are saying something and warning about something, there must be somebody going around repeating it, right?

So it's believed that John is referring to the Gnostics. Who has heard of the Gnostics?

So the word Gnosis means knowledge. So the Gnostics believed that there is this secret hidden knowledge and only they had it.

Only people that were initiated had this secret knowledge and that's how you reached a higher level and experienced true salvation.

You needed this secret knowledge. Here's another mark of a cult. They are not up front with what they believe, right?

They try to hide their true beliefs and we've talked about this before, how Mormons don't tell you about the

Kolob thing when they knock on your door because that would freak people out, right?

So cults, let me just go down the list here and you can write it down if you haven't already.

Number one, they have a wrong view of Christ, his person and work. Number two, they hide their true beliefs.

I think I mentioned another one in there, but number three, there will be a cult leader, right?

This is what people think of if there's a cult, well, there must be what? A cult leader.

So they look to a specific man or a specific woman and it's not so much what scripture says, it's about what they say or what they say about scripture.

So this is where you get into the Charles Taze Russells of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the

Ellen G. White's of the Seventh -day Adventists. Both Joseph Smith and Ellen White, their followers, and I've talked to some of these people, their followers claim that their writings were what?

What's the word? Begins with an I, inspired. So Ellen G. White, they will say her writings were inspired.

Well, what does that mean? You know? Yeah, her writings are on par with scripture.

Now, a lot of them will say, no, no, the scripture is above her, but in practice, she's at least on the same level.

If not, I would argue higher in many cases. Joseph Smith produced these works of fiction, the

Book of Mormon. I mean, in some places, he plagiarized the King James version of the Bible, but he comes up with this writing and oh, it's inspired by God.

So they say their writings, the cult leaders preaching or his writings are inspired.

So here's another mark of a cult. They have a different gospel. I guess this is sort of implied with the first one about the person and work of Christ, but a cult will have a different gospel.

Bottom line, it's Jesus plus, right? A cult is Jesus plus, the scripture plus what the cult leader says.

What do we believe? What's our, it's not a motto, what is it? Yeah, our profession, faith alone, right?

Christ alone, the scripture alone. So historic Protestant, evangelical, or what we might call biblical

Christianity. It's grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, the scripture alone to the glory of God alone.

So that's where we are. If a church were to deny one of those, it doesn't necessarily make them a cult.

It might make them an apostate religion. I'll talk about the difference of that in a moment, but that is what we believe, the truth of the

Bible. That's what it teaches. The fifth mark of a cult. And this is what, this is where everybody starts to recognize.

This is where everybody agrees. Okay, yeah, they're a cult. When they start doing what?

The leader or the group starts exercising the excessive control over people's personal lives.

And on top of that, they start to isolate. And I would just add this in because this makes it even more clear when they begin to try to isolate people from their family, isolate people from their friends.

Going back to this Jesus plus thing, how cults have a different gospel scriptures, not the authority.

One man who stands above everybody else and you must follow his interpretation of everything.

That kind of leads to a controversial question. Can anyone guess what it is? Yeah, that, you know, is the

Catholic church a cult? And I'm not trying to be provocative here. This is, and I've heard some evangelicals saying, yeah,

I think they are. And some would say, no, no, no, they're not. But this is what the Seventh -day Adventists were asking me.

You know, they're emailing, leaving comments. And they say, what about the Catholic church? You're talking about the cults. What about the

Catholic church? So let's just address this question. Some of you have already made up your minds.

I realize that. And I'm going to give both sides. But what about this question that the Catholic church is a cult?

Why would somebody say that? Well, I think it revolves around the Pope, right?

When you look at who he is and what he claims about himself or what they claim about him, it does become at least worthy of discussion when you look at that.

Here's the thing. Catholicism, they don't really have the classic marks of a cult, or at least not at this point in history.

Number one, they don't really hide their beliefs. Okay, so I'm going to try to be fair. The Catholic church doesn't hide their beliefs.

They're certainly not small. They're the largest religion on earth. I mean, that shouldn't matter, but we'll say that.

Catholics do not isolate themselves. Matter of fact, one criticism against Catholics is they're too worldly, if anything.

So they do not isolate. Back in time past, maybe they did, but they don't isolate. And the church, at least no longer, the church typically doesn't try to control their personal behavior too much, although they probably have overstepped their bounds.

And again, that's kind of a murky debate sometimes of how far is too far. So in that sense, you might say, well, no,

I don't think they're a cult. But they do have this person called the Pope. We'll talk about him. They do have a different gospel though, right?

All Protestants, this is the whole issue of the Reformation, that we recognize that the

Catholic church has a different gospel. We believe in what? Grace alone, faith alone, and the issue of the

Reformation is they believe in salvation by faith plus works. And they don't believe that the scripture alone is the authority.

The Pope is an authority, and the church magisterium is an authority. So they deny some of those teachings.

But they do, and they do have some bizarre teachings. What are some of the more bizarre teachings of the

Catholic church? Well, they pray to dead people, number one. Not just the saints, and they pray to angels, some of them.

And not all Catholics do this, I realize, but many Catholics are encouraged to pray to deceased

Popes. And there's shrines where you can go to the Vatican right now and kneel before the grave and pray to that dead

Pope. Also, their doctrine of transubstantiation is very bizarre, where they say that they literally eat the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

So it's true, most Protestants do not typically classify the Catholic church as a cult.

And I understand that. But the Pope thing, I mean, I'll tell you what, this is a good question.

I tend to consider the Catholic church an apostate religion, because they do have a lot of truth, they believe in the

Trinity, they have a proper view of the deity of Christ. But this belief about the

Pope, how he's infallible, right, that's one thing they believe. The Pope can decree something, and it's really on par with the authority of Scripture.

And let me just kind of make this argument, because I think this is the most persuasive argument, just how people treat the

Pope. When he gets on a plane and flies to a country and he gets off the plane, have you ever seen how people treat him?

Now, this Pope tries not to do this, they're trying to move away from this because it looks terrible.

They want to appear more humble. But this was pretty common. You know, like a celebrity will go somewhere and the fans are screaming and cheering and they want autographs.

Well, when the Pope goes somewhere, it's a religious experience. People will literally fall at his feet and they'll bow to him and they will kiss his feet and they will call him basically titles of deity, right,

Holy Father. That is a term used in Scripture. Jesus talked about the

Holy Father and who is he talking about? God the Father. So the Pope comes into a place, people bow to him, kiss his feet, call him titles of deity.

That's how he is treated. So let me put that in perspective and try not to laugh, okay?

But what if I decided I'm going to take a trip to Northampton? And as I'm traveling to Northampton, before I cross the town line, there's a group of people waiting for me, faithful parishioners.

And as soon as I cross the town line, they start bowing to me and they're kissing my feet and I'm like, bless you, my child.

And they're calling me Holy Father and bowing to me. Everybody would look at that and say, this is a cult.

This guy is a cult leader. And you know what? They'd be right if that type of thing were happening. Yet the Pope does it and it's all of a sudden okay.

Well, I don't think it's okay. Only, here's the thing, only Jesus, right? It all comes back to Jesus.

A cult is a cult because of what they believe and teach about the person of Christ. If a person is treated like they are

Jesus Christ, I mean, is that a cult? People literally treat him that way.

People just want to touch the hem of the Pope's garment. Only Jesus deserves that type of treatment.

Jesus is the only man that we should ever bow to. So when you meet

Jesus in heaven, you're gonna bow to him. You shouldn't be bowing to anyone else. You remember in the book of Revelation, the

Apostle John, he made that mistake, right? Where he encounters the angel and John bows in front of the angel and the angel says, no, get up.

He says, worship God. So you can't even treat angels like that, never mind a man living in Rome.

So Christ alone is worthy of all honor, worship, and praise. So just to recap, what are the marks of a cult?

Number one, they have a false view concerning the person and work of Christ. Mormons believe in a different Jesus, right?

He's the spirit child from the guy from Kolob, right? Different Jesus, not the Jesus of Scripture. Number two, they often hide their beliefs.

They don't tell you that when they're knocking on your door. Number three, there will be a cult leader, Joseph Smith, who really cannot be questioned.

Because if you question him, guess what? You're out. There's no discussion. You're gone.

And sometimes you're cut off from salvation because you spoke against a man.

And that did happen within the Catholic Church. 50 years ago, 100 years ago, maybe not even that far back.

If you spoke against the priest, you were not saved. That's why there was all that child abuse going on and nobody dared say anything.

People like everybody knew this stuff was happening. They didn't say anything because they were told if you speak against the priest, it's like speaking against Christ and you lose your salvation or you don't have salvation.

So there's the cult leader who has too much authority. And then they have a different gospel.

And then number five, pay attention to this one. When the cult leader or the group starts to impose excessive control over people's behavior, especially when they try to isolate people from their friends and family,

Christians don't do this. Now, if your friends are going out and getting drunk and fornicating, and yeah, you shouldn't be hanging around with them, but this isn't,

I mean, this is a different thing. There's a standard of behavior, but a cult just takes it five steps too far.

We don't want to isolate from family. We want to see our family, what converted, right?

We're trying to get our family saved. So we are to live in the world.

We are just not to be of the world, but the cult will try to take people out of the world. And the more extreme cases go live on a compound somewhere and just not even talk to anyone.

So in conclusion, what's the takeaway? Number one, the obvious thing, pray for people who are in cults.

Pray for people who are starting to be persuaded that cults aren't so bad after all. Maybe they're not even cults.

Be on guard for the warning signs. We've mentioned several warning signs because there have been churches that have started to drift in that direction.

I mean, that type of thing happens. And if we see somebody, and I don't want to get into this in the study, but if you see somebody like locally, and they're in this group, it's like the things they're teaching, like this potentially could be a cult, or it is, and it could grow.

You want to try to reach those people and pull them out before they get in too deep.

But we have to know the marks of a cult. So I'll close with this.

People's desire. Why do people join cults? To begin with, people want to be loved and accepted.

I think that's what it is. People want to belong to something. They want to belong to something bigger than themselves.

So if we do not reach people with the love of Christ, the cult might offer them acceptance.

So let's do what 1 John 4 tells us to do. Let's keep testing the spirits and try to reach people with the true gospel and with the true