Answering the Critics Q&A - Kingdom of the Cults

Hello, thanks for watching, I want to respond to several questions and comments left on my video titled Kingdom of the Cults, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormon, Seventh-day Adventism, and Christian Science.

So I'm recording this video September 22nd, 2023, and as of this moment, my video has over 388 ,000 views with well over 6 ,000 comments. A lot of the comments are positive. Somebody wrote, fantastic video, thank you.

Another person wrote, this was very helpful and informative. And someone else, hi pastor, thank you for explaining this to us, love from Pakistan. So it's very good to hear that people really from all over the world found this video helpful.

But there was some critique and some had some sincere questions, so we're going to look at that. Again, most of the criticism, and I've talked about this before on another video or two, but most of the criticism comes from the Seventh-day Adventists.

The main critique is, hey, we're not a cult, which obviously if someone is in a cult, they're not going to view it that way, right? But number two, if they watched my whole video, and I did another whole 45-minute study on the Seventh-day Adventist church, if they watched that, then they would have seen that, yeah, I explained there are some Seventh-day Adventists who are cultic, but the church has changed a lot, so I'm open to the idea that some are not.

There were some people who are Seventh-day Adventists, and they told me that because I go to church on Sunday, I'm damned. Sunday worship, they said, is the mark of the beast. They said, we, the Seventh-day Adventists, we are the only true church.

We are the remnant church, and Ellen G. White is our prophet, and of course, people are getting their interpretation of scripture through her. So if that's your attitude, hey, we're the only true Christians, and you are damned because you go to church on Sunday, that's cultic, okay?

But not all Seventh-day Adventists are like that. So there are some who are, from what I hear, they are very similar to your average Protestant evangelical church today. So it really depends. One thing the Seventh-day Adventists said, they said, how dare you call us a cult just because we worship on Saturday?

I never said anything like that. So there's a lot of, you have to be careful in the comments section. Some people, I don't even know where they're coming from. I don't even know where they got some of these ideas, but it's not about what day you worship.

Really, it comes down to the true gospel. Is it salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ, or is it a type of works-based salvation? So the investigative judgment doctrine of 1844 with the Seventh-day Adventists, that sure sounds like works salvation to me, but like I said, not all Seventh-day Adventists are the same.

Another critique from them, they told me, Pastor Mike, you're wrong. You said that Ellen White was the founder of the church. She was not. But again, if you listen to my complete study, I explained that.

She was a founder along with her husband, James White, and there were a few other people that were instrumental in founding the church. So she was one of, what, four founders, but she's the one who rose to prominence.

She is kind of the face of the movement. So I feel like they're sort of splitting hairs with that one. Another person said, hey, the title of your video, Kingdom of the Cults, you got that from Walter Martin and his book, Kingdom of the Cults.

Well, that's true. That is where Walter Martin used the term first, but they said, well, Walter Martin didn't think SDAs are cultic. Well, number one, Walter Martin isn't the final authority. Number two, it's been a long time since I've read this book, but from what I remember, Walter Martin had some very, very serious concerns about Seventh-day Adventist doctrine.

And then number three, there are men just as well-respected, if not more respected than Walter Martin, who do view the Seventh-day Adventist church as a cult, John MacArthur and Master's Seminary as my prime example.

And I have a whole video where Doug Batchelor is responding to the Master's Seminary, and I give my two cents on all of that. So that's the main criticism from the Seventh-day Adventist church. And here's the next thing.

And some of them, Seventh-day Adventists were commenting on this. Some people just asked, who probably were not part of that movement, but they say, okay, you have four cults, the four major cults exposed or whatever.

What about the Catholic church? How come you didn't talk about the Catholic church? Well, I have a whole video dedicated to talking about the Catholic church and where I disagree with them. Matter of fact, there's more material on my channel speaking about the Catholic church, far more than these individual cults.

But I didn't put the Catholic church on the cults video because, number one, I had a whole separate video for them. But the second thing is, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, the Catholic church historically has not been considered a cult.

You can make a real argument how the Pope is treated, how people bow to him, they pray to deceased Popes, they call the Pope titles of deity like Holy Father. You can definitely make an argument that there is cultic behavior, especially surrounding the Pope of Rome.

But I don't get to make the rules here. Some people say, well, who are you to call these groups a cult? Yeah, nobody. I didn't come up with this. This is standard historic Protestant evangelical doctrine.

I didn't come up with any of this. So the point is, the Catholic church historically has been considered an apostate form of Christianity. So that's why I didn't mention them. The next question, what about Scientology?

Why aren't they listed in the group of cults? Well, again, it's the four major cults that claim to be the authentic version of Christianity. That was the title of my video. So what are there? Hundreds of thousands of cults out there?

I can only cover so many. But really, Scientology doesn't even claim to be Christian. Tom Cruise is a member of the Church of Scientology, right, or at least he was. Is Tom Cruise going around claiming to be the authentic form of Christianity?

See, they're not even claiming that. I think they have a cross in their symbol, but they're not claiming to be Christian. It's like the Manson family. Well, that's a different type of cult. Charles Manson, I think he claimed to be Jesus Christ.

Did anyone take him seriously? No. Does anyone think the Manson family, that they were claiming to be the authentic form of Christianity? No. So people don't really view it that way. So that's why I didn't include them because they're not really making the claim to be the true Christians on earth.

The Mormons did make that claim. The Jehovah's Witnesses continue to make that claim. And again, some Seventh-day Adventists do, some don't. And then Christian science, I mean, that's just so far out there.

Their beliefs doesn't even resemble Christianity at all. So I have to say this. People say, well, what do you believe? You're speaking against these groups. What do you believe? Well, my belief system is historic evangelical Protestantism.

I mean, we're a non-denominational church. I really am a big believer in being independent and non-denominational, but I'm sort of old school evangelical because the word evangelical today, it's just, it's lost its meaning.

Everyone's called an evangelical today. Joel Osteen, I remember seeing an article, Joel Osteen, the new face of evangelical Christianity or something like that, which tells you how old the article was because they say he's the new face of it.

Well, if Joel Osteen is an evangelical, I'm not like Joel Osteen. But these terms, right, what do they even mean anymore? But I'm old school evangelical. And I say that because somewhere, you've heard me talk about this if you follow the channel, somewhere in the 1960s, 1970s, everything changed.

Before that, and there were several things that happened all at once. The second Vatican council with the Catholic church. Before that, Catholics viewed Protestants as of the devil of the Catholic church.

In the second Vatican council, they tried to reform their image, rehabilitate their image. So now Protestants are separated brethren. So there was a lot of change in the Catholic church in the 1960s. Then the ministry of Billy Graham, he started working with the Catholic church.

So a lot of Protestants and Baptists, they followed Billy Graham's lead. So Billy was working with Rome. He was working with liberal Protestants. You had the charismatic movement starting up that tries to bring all these different Christian groups together.

So 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. Now we have what? The chosen, where Dallas Jenkins and the chosen, they're saying, hey, LGBTQ, happy pride month. We're Christians and we're wishing people happy pride month. We're Christians and we're affirming Mormons as true brothers and sisters in Christ.

What passes for evangelicalism today? My point is what passes for that today is not what evangelicals believed way back then before all of this. So I'm, I'm old school evangelical, but that's what I believe.

I believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. I do not agree with all this, not only ecumenicalism, but really it's interfaith where different religions are coming together.

One woman left a comment. She said, well, I was taught that you should never criticize another religion. Well, I understand that's what you were taught. That's the way you think it should be. But in the Bible, did Elijah criticize the prophets of Baal?

Yeah. Did Jesus criticize the Pharisees? Yeah. Did Paul speak against the Judaizers? You see, it's nothing personal where you're just attacking someone personally, but if somebody is trapped in bondage in a false religion, yeah, I'm all about telling them the truth, doing it in love, but telling them the truth because we want people to be saved.

The gospel of Mormonism is not the true gospel. They have a different God. Okay. Their God was once a sinful human being living on another planet near the star Kolob. The Christ of Mormonism, he's the spirit brother of Lucifer.

This is a different God. It's a different Christ. It's a different gospel. Same with the Jehovah's Witnesses. You know, the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses, they said all Christian churches are an abomination.

So this is what gets me, you know, it's the cults that attacked Protestants. It's the cults that attacked evangelicals. They're the ones who said, we're the only people who are saved. You're all an abomination.

And then when I do a video saying that, yeah, Mormonism is a cult, Jehovah's Witnesses is a cult while you're just attacking them. Well, if you know the history, they're the ones who attacked Protestants and evangelicals, but you know, uh, most people are not aware of this.

So they just come on and leave a comment. And, uh, you know, some people say, pastor, you don't know what you're talking about. I mean, some people on the comment section, you know, they, they're misinformed.

We'll just say that. Okay. A few other comments. Yeah. Somebody said, we're all children of God. So as long as you profess Christ, we're all children of God. There was actually a woman, a female pastor who wrote an article to our local newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

And she said, well, she wrote, Jesus said that every person is a child of God. And it's like chapter and verse. Jesus never said that. So people will get on here. Every person is a child of God or all these different religions were all God's children.

Well, again, chapter and verse, the Bible says, do you need to receive Christ? And implied in that is you need to receive the true Christ, the true Christ of scripture. Okay. So that's about all I'm going to cover for today.

I hope this video was helpful. If you have any further questions or comments, you can leave those in the comment section. If you're respectful, I'll probably respond. And if we get a lot more questions, we'll probably do another part, you know, part two, part three of this video, but thanks for watching.

And until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.