May 11, 2026 Show with Andrew Soncrat AND Jeremiah Roberts on “Introducing the ‘CULTISH’ Podcast”

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

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 11th day of May 2026.

I am so thrilled to have back—actually, not back, to have on the program for the very first time two brothers in Christ who co -host a program that many of you may have seen called

Cultish, a very important podcast that educates its viewers on the cults, all kinds of cults of various sizes, shapes, and forms.

And we are hoping to be joined by one of these men, Jeremiah Roberts, at some point during the live broadcast.

But we already have with us right now Andrew Sohnkrat, and he is a pastor elder of Apologia Church in Utah as of April of 2024.

He was a church planter and deacon since it was founded in October of 2021, and prior to Utah, he had been serving in the diaconate for several years and training under the elders at Apologia Church in Arizona.

Andrew is also co -host of a podcast that we just mentioned called Cultish that dissects cults and fringe movements of many types and the biblical worldview.

From the biblical worldview, his heart is to reach the lost and help those coming out of false assemblies.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Andrew Sohnkrat.

Hey, thank you, Chris, for having me on. It's an honor. I've listened to Iron Sharpens Iron for many years, and I didn't think

I'd ever be on this side of the microphone talking to you, so this is wonderful.

And did you mention everyone listening on Earth very specifically because of all of the UFO, UAP information coming out from the government?

No, just because we do have listeners that we are aware of in at least 28 foreign countries, in addition to the 50 states of this great union called

America. And so that's why I say that. And but you never know, maybe we'll have an extraterrestrial one day send in a question to us.

But by the way, did I butcher the pronunciation of your last name? So it's

Sohnkrant, just like it looks, it's always been a last name that people look at and they're like, how in the world do

I say that? But I know a dear brother of mine, Aaron Shafvalov in Utah, his last name is a thousand times more difficult.

I still can't spell it after like four or five years. So, yeah, Sohnkrant, Sohnkrant. Sohnkrant.

And I said Sohnkrant, I believe. So that was almost great. Well, before we get into the theme, the major theme of cultish today, we have a tradition here whenever we have a first time guest, that guest will give a summary of their salvation testimony, which will include the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. So we'd love to hear a summary of your story.

Absolutely, brother, it'd be my honor. So I grew up in a Christian household. I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I have an older brother. Some of those providential things in my life, my father, he actually passed away when

I was three years old from brain cancer. And, you know, growing up at Calvary Chapel, I was there every

Sunday. I was raised going to church. I believe that a really young age, I think as far back as I can recollect, is maybe like five years old, is talking to people even in my preschool and kindergarten about the flood,

Noah, God killing men because men deserved punishment, and understanding that Jesus paid the price for my sins at a very young age.

And so one big impotence in that is the fact that I believe my father believed, right?

And so I thought one day I'd be with him even again in heaven. So at a very young age, I think

I had a recollection of somewhat of what the gospel was. Anyways, my mom ended up getting remarried shortly after my father passed away, and we ended up moving from Las Vegas, Nevada when

I was eight and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I lived there from the ages of eight and thirteen. During that time, things got a little dicey in our lives.

I was still going to Calvary Chapel Christian school, still learning about the things of God. I would consider myself a

Christian. And something happened when I was around 11 to 12 years old.

My stepfather actually ended up cheating on my mother, and I was the one who actually caught him doing it.

And our whole life kind of changed after that because my mom, they tried to make it work and get counseling with the pastor.

But things just kept happening. Eventually, we left Albuquerque when I was 12, about 13 years old, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona.

That's how we got there. And by the time I was 13, I stopped going to a private Christian school and ended up going into a charter school.

It was called Arizona Conservatory for the Arts and Academics. And now it was a brand new school at that time, but it ended up being like one of those schools where everyone who gets kicked out of public school goes to.

And I was angry with God at this time. And I consciously made the decision, and this is so horrible, to hurt

God. I felt like I was hurted or I had been hurt from God. I know hurted is not a word. Sorry about that.

And I wanted to hurt God. It's absolutely horrible. And I turned to drugs.

I did psychedelics. I remember, I think the first time I smoked methamphetamine, I was about 14 years old, and I lived a life of sin.

I was a horrible sinner. And what's interesting during this time, as I'm going to just like a regular charter school, is when

I got really introduced to people who believed things that were way different than what I believed, whatever

I was raised in. I talked to New Age people that were my friends. I talked to Mormons. I talked to all kinds of different people.

I was now being exposed to the evolutionary worldview, which I was vehemently against, even as I was doing horrible things.

And I was that individual going up throughout my high school years where I was partying all weekend.

We never had school on Friday, so we'd party Thursday night, party Saturday night. And I would be talking to people about Jesus while I was high on drugs or I was drinking.

And it's ridiculous when I look back at it, because obviously I was not living the life that I claimed to have.

Right. And by the time I was 19, 20 years old, I really wanted to take my life more serious.

I got kind of bored with the drugs and the alcohol and the party life. I used to be in a punk rock band.

We traveled all over Arizona, played shows for years, and I was like, you know what? I really want to get back in focused into Christianity, Christian apologetics.

So I started going to a place called Glendale Community College. From there, I transferred to Grand Canyon University. In order to get a

Christian studies degree. It's so interesting, guys, because I still was not living the life a Christian would live.

God is so patient. God is so loving. God is so kind. I deserved death as a teenager.

I truly did. I wasn't going to church. I wasn't being discipled at this time.

But anyways, since God is loving and patient and kind, just to summarize things around the year 2014, my wife and I got married.

And shortly after that, it was around 2017, we found Apologia Church because I was working my desk job.

I was an underwriter at the time. I ended up graduating with a psychology and Christian studies degree from Grand Canyon University. And I was just doing an underwriting job.

And I was like, hey, Mormon apologetics or Mormon talking to Christian on YouTube. And I found Pastor Jeff Durbin's videos and I was like, hey,

I've been to that temple. I know where that's at. And so I started watching those videos and I was like, wow, this is great.

And I found out they had a church. And then there was abortion, no ministry, stuff like that. And at this time,

I was vehemently against Calvinism, against reformed theology. And I ended up watching

Pastor Jeff's Tulip series. I recommend that to anybody who's on YouTube. Just watch that Tulip series.

It's phenomenal. And right at the T, right on total depravity, I remember being like, wow, everything

I thought I knew was wrong. I don't know when God saved my soul. I couldn't tell you if it was when

I was five years old and I could give the gospel articulately to people or when I was, let's say, 27.

It's almost like a born again, again experience when I started understanding reformed theology, if that makes sense.

But in that moment, my wife and I decided to stop going to CCV, which was Christ Church of the Valley, which was like a massive megachurch in Arizona.

There's like over 27 ,000 members. And we decided we wanted to go to Apologia Church in Arizona and get really heavily involved with abortion apologetics, just going out to go to the abortion mills and preaching the gospel and seeing

God save babies. And then from there, I went into the Mormon evangelism as well, had been studying the cults already, reading

Dr. Walter Martin's book, The Kingdom of the Cults, and also reading The Four Major Sects by Anthony Heckman.

I don't know if you've ever heard of him. But my life in general, I always had a love for people who did not know

God, and I wanted them to know Christ. And I wanted them to see and experience the power of Christ's blood for salvation, by the power of the gospel.

So by the time I was at Apologia, I'd already been studying these things. And then that's how

Cultish fell into my lap as well, because Jerry was already in talks with Pastor Jeff.

But that's my testimony in a nutshell, Chris. I don't know when God saved my soul. I couldn't pinpoint it.

All I know is I deserved death as a teenager, knew what the gospel was, could explain the gospel. And then when

I was later in my life, I said, What the heck have I been doing this whole time? Shaking my fist at God and blaming—I'm like the opposite of Job.

If it makes any sense, I was the opposite of Job. And now, man,

I just look back and I go, God, you are so good. You are so patient and kind. Who am I? I'm but a wretch and a worm, man.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, you said you were raised in the Calvary Chapel? Yeah, I was raised at Calvary Chapel.

And did your folks ever come to the Reformed faith? My mother is now, actually, which is pretty awesome.

She goes to our church in Apologia in Utah, so that's pretty cool. Oh, praise God for that.

Yes, because I know that Calvary Chapel, as much as I love those brothers and have friends in there, they have a tendency, as you know, to be vehemently anti -Calvinist.

That was me, man. That was me, you know. Well, praise God for that. Well, I love the cultish podcast that you have.

And can you tell us about some of the most amazing stories you've heard about cults, cults, perhaps, that either our listeners might not be familiar with or that you have information about them that they're not familiar with?

In other words, it might be a cult that they have heard of, but they're going to be surprised to hear some interesting facts about them that they were ignorant of.

Yeah, absolutely. Maybe one cult that everyone's heard about but doesn't necessarily really understand, unless you've listened to cultish before, is

Jim Jones in the People's Temple. Yes, I actually, believe it or not, I actually interviewed on my old show when we were broadcasting out of WNYG, 1440

AM in Babylon, Long Island. I interviewed one of the few folks that escaped

Jonestown, a woman who wrote about it, a very sweet woman, fascinating story.

I don't think that she became an evangelical Christian after leaving there.

She had some kind of faith journey that she was on, and I know that she had a high view of Jesus Christ, but I wasn't quite sure if she was saved, but I did interview somebody that escaped that cult.

Wow, that's interesting. I need to go back and find that, see if I can go to the archives and listen to that,

Chris, that'd be really interesting. So with the People's Temple in Jonestown, you always hear it from secular media that they're a

Christian cult. And I actually think that this is wrong. It's wrong to say it. When you actually study or listen to the audio lectures or the preaching that Jim Jones did, you can go find the archive at the

San Francisco Institute online. They have all of it, all of the FBI transcripts, all of his audio recordings that were ever recorded.

I've listened to hundreds of hours of his preaching. And what you'll find is that Jim Jones essentially believed in practice,

I would say, what most people in my generation believe in practice. The same people who wag their fist at Jim Jones actually believe the same things that he believed.

He was a proponent of new thought, also mixed in with new age. He called

God sky daddy. You hear that all the time from a lot of people coming in my generation. I'm 36 years old or 37 years old now.

And he taught the same things. He talked about reincarnation. He talked about a Christ consciousness. He said that sin was just a construct, all of this type of stuff.

And I find it interesting that it's painted by secular media that he was a

Christian cult when really he actually just taught a lot of the same things that actually the world believes. I find that really, really compelling and really interesting.

I don't know. What did, what did the lady that you interviewed, do you remember if she talked to any about his theology or what she believed about people?

Uh, it's been so long, but I'm almost certain, uh, that she went over some of the facts about Jones that, uh, many people assume wrongly that he was some kind of a right -wing charismatic cult leader, but he was actually a leftist.

Uh, he came out of the disciples of Christ denomination, which is the left wing branch of the restoration movement.

On the right wing, you have the church of Christ, which many people are familiar with, but the disciples of Christ really morphed into a mainline liberal denomination, and, uh, he was, was the darling of leftist politicians, uh, in California and, uh, and ironically, um, they had him pray, the leftist politicians had him pray,

I believe on the Golden Gate Bridge, uh, during a ceremony commemorating, um, a, an organization meant to be an outreach to prevent suicide, very bizarre.

And the likelihood of something like that is amazing to occur, but I just remember her bringing up some of those details, uh, his sexual deviancy and things like that, um, his, uh, seducing both men and women sexually, and, uh, just, just a, uh, really satanic individual.

Yeah. It's, it's good that you mentioned that he was actually in bed with a leftist because what he said in his main impetus for being in the church and of the church, quote unquote, was in order to infiltrate the church to spread communism.

So he believed in something called divine economic socialism, and he believed that people could manifest this form of government through the earth by listening to him.

He was essentially that form of prophet, uh, because communism would solve all of the world's issues.

So you can even listen to, uh, many of the talks that were given in Guyana. Uh, they actually had a

Russian come down and give a talk, but sadly enough, just how you asked me for my testimony,

Chris earlier, uh, Jim Jones would keep people up all night and he would even ask the children and make them give their testimony of divine economic socialism and how they are ready to give their life in order for it to infiltrate the world.

And that's a branch of new thought theology, which is you can manifest things into power and many cults like to do that, like Scientology, for example.

Once you become an operating thetan, which is, uh, you spend already $200 ,000 to $250 ,000 doing auditing sessions for the church of Scientology.

When you become an operating thetan, you can manipulate matter, energy, space, and time. That's what they call it,

MEST. Uh, so many cults love to give these types of promises, right?

To, to manipulate and get around what God's decree would be. It would be a promise for individuals, what to become like God, to be gods of their, their own universes.

And that's exactly what Jim Jones taught. And what's funny enough is the people of my generation believe the very same thing.

Very sad. Yeah. I also was, uh, blessed to have two former

Scientologists on the show. Um, one of which, uh,

Jeff Durbin had, uh, interviewed years ago, Andrea Schwartz. Yeah, she was on cultish.

Yes. Yes. That's right. She was on cultish as well. And, uh, before that in 2008, when my show was in its infancy,

I had a woman named Karen Presley on, who was a, uh,

Scientologist along with her husband. And they were in the specific department of Scientology that, uh, their task was to reach out to musicians and celebrities, uh, to lure them in to the cult.

And her husband wrote a very famous song that most people, well, maybe you're too young to know it.

Um, but it was a song that I can't remember the title of it right now.

Uh, but, uh, it was On the Wings of Love. That's that was it,

On the Wings of Love, a very well -known wedding song. Uh, I will look up who sang that and made it a hit momentarily.

But, um, you, uh, have, have you had any, well, first of all,

I was very joyfully, um, praising

God for what you just recently told me. In fact, I think he told me today that my friend,

Jason Contino, the former Jehovah's Witness, who is now a pastor, pastor of Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island, a

Reformed Baptist church. He was a Jehovah's Witness. And, uh, you told me that there were

Jehovah's Witnesses that watched his interview and were favorably responding. Yeah, absolutely.

I was so, man, I was so encouraged. He started sending me text messages and screenshots of individuals.

He, of course, no names and stuff like that, who were currently in the Jehovah's Witnesses organization that listened to the episodes.

And they're like, Hey, I need help. I need help to how about, how do I think about these things and kind of like, how, how do

I get out even essentially, you know, how does this work? And that's amazing to me to really think that, uh,

God is able to use. I love to tell people this, like two idiots, like Jeremiah Roberts and myself.

Jerry's a kind of an undercover genius though, but we'll say mainly an idiot like myself in order to get, to get the gospel out there and that people who were actually stuck in the cult are listening to it, like,

I would think that it would just be mainly like a Christian audience that listens to cultish, you know, but some people, they stumble upon it and I think it was four or five different messages and I'm sure he's gotten more than that, but that's just from what he sent me from people who have reached out to him.

So I praise God. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Uh, how the Lord used your life in order to help these individuals right now.

You know, that's what God does. That's Romans eight. God works all things together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes.

And that's the purpose of cultish. That's the purpose of our ministry. We want to see people come out of the cults and into Christ.

Uh, just like Walter Martin said it, you weren't a cult. I love you. I want you out of it and with Christ, you know, like that's the reality.

Did you ever interview Dr. Walter Martin? No, he, um, I did interview his daughter, uh,

Cindy Martin Morgan on a couple of vacations who has been involved in, uh, rescuing the unborn, um, for many years.

Uh, but, uh, I'm trying to think if Walter Martin, I can't remember when he went home to be with the

Lord, but, uh, I think that may have happened before,

I'm almost certain now it happened before I was hosting Iron Sherp and Zion radio, which began in 2005.

I'll have to look up when Martin, Walter Martin went home to be with the Lord, but, uh, he was definitely my first introduction to apologetics on the

John Ankerberg show. And I just was utterly fascinated by that program, especially when

Walter Martin was on and even, um, uh, Calvin Beisner, uh, debating different members of cults and so on.

And, uh, that really lit the fuse in my mind to begin exploring that whole subject more deeply.

And, uh, you said the John Ankerberg show, uh, sorry. I found that on YouTube as well.

It was around 2017 and I binge so much of the John Ankerberg show. I am so thankful.

I think we need another Christian platform like that where, uh, they're doing the same thing. Jerry kind of had an idea for cultish.

Maybe we'll do it in the future called lion's den, where maybe he would be kind of like the host that is moderating those types of conversations.

But that show was phenomenal. Super ahead of its time. We need another show like that.

It was great. I love that show. Anyone who's listening after this, you need to, you need to stop what you're doing, you need to go to YouTube, you need to type in the

John Ankerberg show and you will not be disappointed. It is absolutely phenomenal. When Walter Martin is talking with the

Oneness Pentecostals, it's huge. When Walter Martin's talking to the Seventh Day Adventists on the

John Ankerberg show, that was huge. Massive reforms came from that within the Seventh Day Adventist community.

Like it was so ahead of its time. I love that you mentioned the John Ankerberg show. It's such a good show. Amen. And are there organizations, churches that even during the years you've been doing cultish, that at first you were surprised that they should be placed in a category of a cult where you might have thought,

I don't agree with them on a lot of stuff, but they seem like a great, well -meaning bunch of folks who love the

Lord and so on. And then you've realized, wait a minute, I didn't realize they believe that and so on and so on.

Yeah. You know, we've been mainly focused on like straight up down the line cults.

I think some of the ones that have surprised me when you dig deeper into it would be certain parts of the

Church of Christ that are down South. A lot of them that believe in essentially like a workspace salvation or a form of Pelagianism in type of the control they have on individuals is very cultish and cult -like, but also the

Seventh -day Adventists actually just going through the John Ankerberg and then doing our studies and having our series and episodes on that.

That was, that threw me for a loop as well. I'd say that those two were probably one of the more interesting ones in terms of how, you know,

I had thought about them previously and how I now think about them but what's really interesting about the

Seventh -day Adventists as well is they'll have people that are within their organization and I know one specifically that doesn't really believe certain aspects of what the

Seventh -day Adventists teach that are really different than mainline Protestant Christianity, but at the same time, in general, there's a few distinct beliefs about the

Seventh -day Adventist Church that I'd say are pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. Ellen G. White, for example, coming from the

Millerites and the end time prophecies that never occurred, for me, I believe what

Deuteronomy 18 says, if someone calls themselves a prophet, they speak in the name of Yahweh, but they speak presumptuously and the thing does not come to pass, they are a false prophet.

Don't listen to them. So I throw, with the objective standard of the word of God outside of my personal experience,

I would throw Ellen G. White and her prophecies out, even William Miller, who he himself didn't even see himself as a prophet, but people later took some of those prophecies and ran with them.

I mean, the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves, they come from the Millerite prophecy in the 1800s.

Yes, the worst of their teachings that I'm aware of anyway is the investigative judgment, because that's where they really—what's the word

I'm looking for—conflict with the doctrine of justification by faith alone in that, more than anything else they believed.

Yeah, I would agree with that. The investigative judgment is something that is extremely interesting, and it has to do even with their eschatology.

There's a reason why that there's an investigative judgment happening now prior to the return of Christ, which, you know, mixing in justification with your sanctification and certain rules or aspects that need to be followed, given by man, there's a reason why anyone who's reading their

Bible that ought to make the hairs of their arms stand on edge, right? Like we're given a very specific outline in the

New Testament. Paul tells us 2 Corinthians 11, verse four, if someone comes and preaches to you another Jesus, another gospel, another spirit, right?

So we have the impetus from the apostle Paul to tell us that there's going to be people who bring different ones. So we have the ability to actually test it and see what is true according to God's word.

And if you get a different gospel than the one that's been presented to you through the blood of Jesus Christ, then you ought to reject it, and rightfully so, like Galatians three and Galatians four.

If you're not justified by faith like Abraham, we're not talking about the same covenant here, you know?

And that's one of the reasons why cultists exist really is we want people to know who

Jesus is, what the gospel is, and that they can have full assurance of their salvation through the righteousness of Christ in Christ alone.

That's it. Because any cult or any leader who's trying to mix or add things to the gospel is exactly what

Paul warns about in the Colossians chapter two. It's the exact same thing. They're going to place on you their own standards, their own doctrines of men.

They're going to persuade you with plausible arguments, and they're going to take you away from Christ. And they're going to say that there's something you can offer

God that Christ didn't offer. And if you can see that, you won't fall prey to the cults.

Amen. By the way, I was able to look up the woman who I interviewed who escaped

Jonestown, Leslie Wagner Wilson. And a fascinating story, how she escaped with one of her children, very tiny children, and her husband remained there with the cult because he was loyal to it.

And her book was titled Slave of Faith. And I'm going to have to see if I can have my webmaster,

Eric Nielsen, retrieve the audio from that, because that was all the way back in 2012.

And the new website that we have doesn't go back that far. That's when

I was broadcasting out of WNYG. But we have to go to me.

I'm sorry. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is

Andrew Sancrat, and he is one of the co -hosts of Cultish, a podcast that educates its audience on the dangers of the cults and what those cults actually believe.

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. By the way,

Andrew, one of my favorite interviews was with a former

Seventh -day Adventist. We were talking about the Seventh -day Adventist earlier. Desmond Ford, who was one of their leading theologians in the

Seventh -day Adventist church at one time, he actually appeared on the

John Ankerberg show as well with Walter Martin. And he finally was excommunicated by the

Seventh -day Adventist church because he openly and aggressively opposed the doctrine of investigative judgment.

And I interviewed him before he went home to be with the Lord. If anybody wants to look up the interview

I did with him on December 26, 2017, just type in Desmond Ford, D -E -S -M -O -N -D,

Ford, and you will see my interview on the investigative judgment and the everlasting gospel.

And I also interviewed him a year later, April 25, 2018.

I had Desmond Ford on with Ken Samples, who used to be one of Hank Hanegraaff's co -hosts on the

Bible Answer Man, speaking of Walter Martin. And they did a program on David Koresh, the

Branch Davidians, and the Waco, Texas disaster. Twenty -five years after the siege,

Desmond was a part of that program because the Branch Davidians were a breakaway cult from the

Seventh -day Adventists, as you may remember. And going back to cultish, have you gotten any hate mail?

Oh, yeah. Actually, for a time—or actually, we probably still get them. Many of our mail that's hate comes in the form of Apple reviews or podcast reviews, let's say on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, where it's like a one -star review.

You're just a cult talking about other cults. Things of that nature would be the height of our hate mail.

In terms of cult organizations reaching out to us, actually, we haven't had any, not to my knowledge.

I know there's a subsect of LDS individuals who specifically hate what I do with Apologia Utah and have found cultish through Apologia Utah, and they'll just not like us and comment on our stuff just because of what we do out here.

Other than that, mainly our bad reviews that we have, which are like our fuel to keep going, is essentially many atheists just upset that they wanted to listen to a cult podcast with no objective standard of morality.

So that's mainly what our hate mail comes in the form of. Yeah. And do you have any more stories about the opposite?

We have already heard about Jehovah's Witnesses responding to your recent interview with my friend

Jason Contino, the former Jehovah's Witness. Anything similar like that ever happen? Oh, man.

Yeah. Over the years, we've had many people sending us emails talking about how they heard something on cultish or their family member did, someone who was once New Age is now out of the

New Age, things of that nature that we actually have had on the podcast. A lot of times that it happens is that these same people will then be on the podcast a little bit later just so we can hear how they came to Christ.

But in terms of specific people and names, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there has been a lot.

And all glory to God for that. God gets all of the glory. So praise God. Yeah, it's been a wild ride.

I'm not going to lie. It's been a wild ride. It's interesting. I just received an email actually not too long ago from a man who was coming out of Mormonism and found our content.

And so I started emailing with him back and forth. And it always comes down to the fact that when someone's coming out of the cult, one thing we have to recognize and realize is that when

Jesus says that, come to me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

He meant it. But he also meant this. No one who does not hate father, mother, brother, sister. Right? They won't come to him.

And they're not worthy. And the reality is, is people, when they're coming out of the cults, they have to come face to face with that very verse because they're leaving everything.

They are leaving literally everything behind. Sometimes their jobs. It puts their marriage in jeopardy, their relationship with their children.

And they have to make the decision. Is it worth it now to follow Christ? And the ones whom

Christ has saved, they'll always come. They'll always come. His sheep will always hear his voice and he'll never lose one of them.

And one thing I like to encourage people when they're coming out of the cults, you were once deceived by a false prophet.

Don't become a false prophet yourself. Meaning this, you do not know what's going to happen in the future.

Okay? You may be coming out of the cult right now. Sometimes maybe your family will be angry with you. Maybe your wife will be angry with you.

But do not make decisions about your life by determining what you think is going to happen in the future.

I'm not going to leave the cult because my wife will leave me. That's a prophecy. Don't do the same thing to yourself that you were deceived by.

We need to allow God to work in our lives. And one way to do that would be trusting

God in his word. If you know Christ, you are to follow him and trust in him. And many times, you know, what people think is going to happen to them is not necessarily always what happens to them.

So. Okay, we have Ted in Moundsville, Alabama.

I was intrigued when hearing your guest's background, given somewhat recent accusations of cult -like behavior that have been lodged against an

Arizona church that he knows well, i .e. Apologia Church. Has your guest encountered any such allegations against Apologia?

If so, how did he respond? If not, how would he respond?

I'm particularly curious if he has established definitions of what behavior qualifies—of what behavior qualifies as cult -like and how much of that behavior is required in order for a religion organization to be declared a cult.

I have never heard of these accusations that he's speaking of. Do you know what he's talking about?

I mean, there's accusations against people all the time. I'm not privy to what's going on in Arizona because I'm not a pastor in Arizona.

We're kind of our own separate church. We were sent by them in 2021, so I've not really been there for a longer time.

I've been in Utah longer than I was a member at Apologia in Arizona, so I can't really speak what's going on there.

But I do know that all of the pastors over there love Jesus and are committed to the gospel and they're doing work throughout the world.

So I love them and I'm greatly respectful for them. I can't really speak on that issue. In terms of an objective standard or definition,

I mean, if we're speaking of a different Jesus, a different gospel, and a different spirit, what I would say is if a different Jesus, a different gospel, and a different spirit is being proclaimed, there's going to be doctrine that comes from it.

That's bad doctrine. So if there's a different gospel that's proclaimed, a cult will typically say, well, now you need to do

X, Y, and Z, which is coming from the mouth of the prophet or the leader of the organization, which are doctrines of men, which then become cult -like because you need to follow something specifically that they're giving you in order to find salvation.

For example, there's the religion of light and peace that's in the mainstream news right now because Abdullah Hisham is being—let's say he just got arrested, actually, and there's charges against him, allegations at least, of human trafficking.

I believe there's even sex crimes, things of that nature. Now, this person, according to their standard as them being a prophet, the morals of the world do not apply to them.

It's in the book called The Goal of the Wise. It's one of their documents in that essentially, sexually, he's allowed to do things that other people aren't allowed to do, right?

And you need to follow him in order to reach a high level of salvation in the afterlife. Now, that's what we find is a different gospel.

Now, in that cult, what happens then? He enforces his power on other people, and they need to give themselves up in order to please him in order to get to another level of heaven.

So, there is a standard as well, Stéphanson's BITE model, which is behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotion control.

And you can measure a group in that sense to figure out exactly what's going on.

We interviewed Michael Foster a long time ago on our show. The episode's called Tactics of a

Manipulator. We actually have the blog on our website. And I think that's a really good resource for people to go to in order to see, well, what's going on within my organization?

Am I being manipulated? Because to give—was it

Anthony? Was he the one that sent that email? To give him some credit, there are even— Ted in Moundsville, Alabama.

Oh, I'm sorry, Ted. But Ted, to give him some credit, there are even organizations that are preaching

Christ and the gospel, but they're manipulating, and they have a level of control over people that is not healthy.

And I think that blog that Michael Foster goes over in that episode we did can give you a good standard on how to see if you're being manipulated and things of that nature within the organization that you might be in.

So, hopefully that can answer your questions a little bit more, Ted. Okay, we have Isaac in Spanish Fork, Utah.

I don't know how close that is to you. Yeah, like 35 minutes south of me.

Okay. And Isaac asks, I don't know if you know what percentage of people who leave a cult either come to Christ or become atheists?

Man, that's a really good question. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, but Jerry and I talk about this all the time. Many people, when they come out of the cults, they go from the frying pan into the fire.

That's the reality. Just being in Utah and being a pastor out here doing evangelism, you find that the majority of Mormons who are leaving the

LDS organization, where are they going? Are they going to Christianity? No, they're going to atheism, agnosticism,

New Age spirituality. That's the reality. I mean, Utah, just to give you an example of the people who are coming out of the cult, let's go to the most cult state there is pretty much in our nation,

Utah. There are less than 2 % evangelicals living in the state of Utah, less than 2%.

This is the most unchurched state in the nation. And I find it funny, the closer you get to downtown by the temple, which would be like the holiest area for the

LDS individuals, is the worst the city gets. It's the eighth gayest city in the nation. They hate you out there.

We've had eggs thrown at us. Actually, we were doing abortion mill ministry, a church -wide one. We had a few different churches there.

We're outside the Planned Parenthood. And some guy, we have our kids playing in the rocks in this area, and this guy turned his car, he was so angry, hit the curb, popped his wheel by our children, by our children who are sitting there.

It's pretty wild out here. But if Utah could be a demographic for the world, I'd say the majority of people, unfortunately, are leaving the cults, and they're going into another cult, which is the cult of secular humanism.

And one thing we want to do, and why we exist as an organization, at least a cult -ish as a ministry, is to have people get out of the cults and get into Christ.

It's as simple as that. I want to see the opposite happen. I want to see people who are hurt by a false prophet understand that the

God that they were hurt by was never God to begin with. Pastor Jeff Durbin talked about that in an episode with the

Jehovah's Witnesses that we did a long time ago, that that God was never God to begin with, and we want them to know the true

God. Tom Horner And going back just as far as a blueprint for how to determine a cult that sprang from Ted's question in Moundsville, Alabama, there are some people that may jump to the church as a cult just because they don't like what the church is teaching.

I can even remember years ago, when I was a new

Christian, my pastor was originally invited to be a guest on a talk show that was similar to the

Phil Donahue show coming out of New Jersey. I can't remember the name of it right now, because he was supposed to be responding to a group called

Fundamentalists Anonymous. After my pastor got there, the producers of the show thought he was too rational and gracious and humble for entertainment value.

So he got replaced with somebody else that was more on the fringe of evangelicalism to get the audience all excited.

But they still came to him at the microphone while he was sitting in a seat in the audience, and they asked him a couple of questions.

But this group, Fundamentalists Anonymous, was labeling every conservative

Christian group as a cult. One of the guests who was a part of this group, through tears, was telling about the horrible cult she was raised in, which was just a

Baptist church, because they did horrible things like her parents caught her making out with her boyfriend in the driveway in a car, and they demanded that she get out of the car and basically yelled at the boyfriend, and he drove away.

Their minds was cultic. I mean, ridiculous. Trying to preserve the safety of your daughter is considered a cultic thing by some people.

But obviously, that's insane. That's a slander in that specific scenario.

But what would be some of the genuine red lights for cultic behavior and even full -blown being in a cult?

Because I'm assuming that there are differences between cultish, to borrow the phrase from your podcast, and being a full -blown cult.

You can have a church with a pastor who is authoritarian and makes unreasonable demands on the congregation, but their theology is biblical.

And on the other hand, you could have a church that actually has false doctrine, damning doctrine, when it's masquerading as Christian.

If you could give us some of the breakdown of both of those. Yeah. So in terms of a church that is preaching the gospel, is preaching the authority of God's Word, but in practice, the pastor is not being held accountable to the

Word of God, that would be one big sign of a red flag. If the individual or leader, if there's one pastor,

I'd say if it's a monolithic church, there's one pastor, probably wouldn't be going necessarily to that church.

There should be a plurality of elders. I think that's the biblical principle that we find in Scripture.

Alexander Schroch, Biblical Eldership, is a book that I think details that really well. Yes, I've given that book away at my pastor's luncheon to the pastors.

Alexander was gracious enough on probably four different occasions, at least, to donate hundreds of copies of both his book on eldership and the deaconate to the men who have assembled at my pastor's lunches.

Oh, praise God. Yeah, we actually go through both of those books at Apology Utah with respect to when someone, we see the internal call from God on the deaconate and they're serving, we go through that book.

And then we also, when we're going and training pastors, which we haven't had the opportunity to have a third pastor yet at Apology Utah, but that's the book that we go through,

Biblical Eldership. However, so in terms of like a cultish Christian church, one that is operating on such fringe levels,

I'd say that there are churches out there that preach the true Jesus, the true gospel, but their structure doesn't match the

New Testament structure of a church. And then you can find that power is not being balanced correctly because the word of God is not being geared to you, not necessarily perfectly, but it's not being held to you the way it should be.

So the pastor is always to be under the word of God and under the correction of the word of God. And typically, tactics of manipulators will hold themselves above the word of God.

And, you know, I praise God that Jesus Christ is the great and good shepherd and that anyone who is out of line, he will eventually have cosmic justice on for sure.

There ought to be a fear in any pastor's life that one day they're going to have to stand before the King of Glory and they're going to have to give an account for being a pastor and a leader.

James says, you know, you should not all be considered teachers, right? There's a stricter judgment and some people don't care.

And that's really sad. So in terms of delineating them between a full -blown cult,

I would say the biggest difference really is which Jesus is being proclaimed and what is the gospel that's being proclaimed.

And typically, you know, with cults, what they'll do is you'll get in there and they'll just love bomb you.

They'll get you separated. And what they'll do is they'll do studies for long periods of time, but it'll be kind of like a frog in boiling water.

Your life is going to be surrounded by these people. And by the time you find out some of their more interesting beliefs, the water is already boiling and it's sometimes too hard for you to jump out, if that makes sense.

Like the World Mission Society Church of God, a Korean cult, they operate in such a way. They believe, you know, in Christ on Song Hong has the return of Christ and that there's

God the mother on earth today. But again, you don't start learning some of these things until you've been through hours, hours of Bible studies with them, you know, and all of a sudden the guy's getting baptized and they're getting baptized in the name of Christ on Song Hong.

And they're like, wait, what the heck did I just get myself into? You know, it's they operate in such a way to where people long for community, people long for love and they're going to capitalize on those things.

And if you do not know who Jesus is or what the gospel is, you will fall prey to it.

It's just, it's inevitable. I mean, Paul tells us in Colossians chapter two, just to echo it again, he says, let there be thankfulness in your hearts, right?

For remembering what you were taught, meaning that the basic fundamental principles of the gospel and all hidden wisdom and knowledge being in Christ.

If you are not thankful, basically for your salvation, you will be led astray by plausible arguments, the elementary spirits of the world and empty philosophy.

Like that's just the reality. The core position of the Christian is our foundation in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross.

And that's it, man. And as far as the theological pillars of Christianity, which determine whether a church or organization can rightly call itself

Christian. To give you an example, we said that the

Seventh -day Adventist church, there are actually disagreements amongst Christians and even

Christian apologists about whether they should be categorized as a cult. There was a time in their infancy when they were non -Trinitarian, and then they eventually adopted the

Trinity as their understanding of God. Although I just learned recently that they believe that God the

Father has a body, but it's invisible. I didn't even know that until recently.

But what are the pillars that cannot be violated?

I know that the Godhead has to be accurate, but even churches that have a biblical description of the

Godhead can have a false teaching of the church.

They can have a false teaching of the authority of that church. They can have a false teaching of the gospel.

They can believe in the Trinity, and they can believe in the deity of Christ, but they have a false gospel.

They believe that works must cooperate with faith in order to merit justification and so on.

So, give us some of the basic areas of the

Christian theology that cannot be violated in order for it to be considered a true church.

Yeah, absolutely. Jesus Christ said He established His church, and the gates of hell will never prevail against it. Ephesians chapter 3 says the manifold power of God will be made known through the church.

The church is an institution of a people who proclaim faith in Christ, right? We have the invisible church in that sense, universally at large, where it's not one specific denomination.

We have God's people, right? Then we have the church as local institutions bearing on denomination.

In terms of what makes a church biblical or actually the church of Jesus Christ, I would say is, do you believe that God's word is truth?

Do you believe in the scripture that we have? Is the Bible the sole infallible rule of faith and practice?

That's massive. That's huge. Do you believe that God is priune in nature?

And the reason why that is important is because in Deuteronomy 13, if you are being led by someone who claims to be a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, but they lead you after another god, a god which you have not known, don't believe them.

And I believe that God has revealed Himself priune in nature. And we ought to, as Christians, be unapologetic to what

God has revealed to us in His word through Jesus Christ and the incarnation and the scriptures we have in the

New Testament, going back into the old, looking at it, we can say that our God is a triune God.

And in flat out denial of that is actually a denial of the revelation that Jesus Christ gave in the

New Testament. So, number one, we have the infallibility and errancy of scripture. Number two, we have the nature of God.

Number three, Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. I think the hypostatic union, I mean, the councils that happened in the early church, these arguments that occurred, they occurred for a reason, right?

What do the scriptures say about the God who came? Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. If you mess with any of those aspects, you're fundamentally going to get a different gospel.

It bleeds into what the gospel is. Is the gospel the fact that Jesus Christ is the second

Adam? Is it Philippians 2, that though He was eternally in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be held on to?

Was He not fully obedient to the works of the law? Did He not rise from the dead in body?

1 Corinthians 15. So, the gospel in and of itself, Jesus Christ being fully

God, the wages of sin is death. He took the death for us. His death was a propitiation for our sins, put forward, that fully satisfied the wrath of God on His people's behalf, that you're transferred from death into life solely through the work of Jesus Christ.

He rose from the dead and He's coming back again. So, if you deny that Jesus Christ performed what was necessary to pay the

Father what is owed for our sins, bad. Red flag. If you deny that Jesus Christ is coming back again, red flag.

I would also say preterism falls into the lines of a cult, right? Hyper -preterism. Yeah, thank you.

Hyper -preterism. Full -preterism. I'm a partial preterist. So am I. You know what

I meant. Thank you for that. Jesus Christ is not going to return again. So, those,

I think, would be the core foundational principles, really. I could be wrong.

I'm not the ultimate standard here, but at least what I get out of from what I've studied, all cults will deny one of these aspects, right?

They'll say Jesus Christ's church failed. There was an apostasy. It needed a restoration.

God's word was not preserved. Therefore, this is what we say about Jesus, and this is what we say about the gospel, because there was something that got wrong, whether it be with God's word or with his church.

So, hopefully that helped answer a little bit. Yes, and the fact that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone is,

I'm assuming, a primary thing, because inevitably cults believe in and works righteousness of some form.

Well, let's see if we can go to our midway break.

We've seemingly got our commercials restored. Let's see what happens, and we hope that they work.

It looks like they are. My advertisers will be happy about this anyway. And send us an email if you want to ask a question to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back after these messages. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

New York debates. I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the holy scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Welcome back. Before I return to my fascinating conversation with Andrew Sunkrat, who is one of the two co -hosts of Cultish, a podcast that everybody listening to this program should definitely start viewing.

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We have a listener in Laurel, Mississippi, Wayne. Wayne wants to know, why is it that the vast majority of evangelical apologists who warn about the cults never identify the

Roman Catholic Church as a cult? I think that's a very good question. My friends who are apologists don't like to use that label for Roman Catholicism, even though they believe it's a false church.

I always wondered why people don't identify it as a cult.

Let me put it this way, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, you could disagree with me if you want,

Andrew, but if the Roman Catholic Church never existed in history, and somebody approached me and said, hey, did you hear about that new church down the road?

They got this leader that they say is infallible, and they teach that your works cooperate with faith for you to go to heaven, and if you aren't good enough to go to heaven, but you are still on your way there,

God sends you to this place of temporary torment that purges you of your remaining sin, and then you get to go to heaven, and they pray to statues in this place.

They pray to Mary and the saints, and their priests that they have believe they're changing bread and wine to the actual body and blood of Christ, and these priests, by the way, they can't get married, and so what do you think?

You think this is a cult? I mean, I'd say definitely, but for some reason, since you could trace the history of Roman Catholicism for centuries back, not back to Christ as they claim, but not even to the patristic era, could you rightfully label the church fathers as Roman Catholic?

Because they didn't believe in all of that stuff that I just mentioned back then.

So why is that? And maybe you don't call

Roman Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church a cult either, or Eastern Orthodox or whatever, but explain if you could.

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful question. In terms of Roman Catholicism and even Eastern Orthodoxy, we haven't even done episodes actually on them.

People have requested more that we do episodes on Reformed theology as a cult, believe it or not, because a lot of our listeners aren't

Reformed, and we just go, come on, stop talking about Reformed theology and Calvinism as a cult. Are they doing that tongue -in -cheek, or what are they, joking?

I think they're joking, but sometimes they know what we believe, and they're actually serious, and they're kind of upset.

So maybe we could rate those on the bad reviews and the hate mail we get. But in terms of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, I wish

I was more of like an authoritative person to speak on that matter. So I guess it kind of depends on the person's definition when they're labeling something a cult.

For me, I like the definition that Walter Martin gives. If it's an organization or a person who's bringing about a different Jesus and a different gospel, and I think it could rightfully qualify, at least from the argument that you're making,

Chris, that you could categorize Roman Catholicism as being a cult, rightfully so, in terms of the merits of salvation that are needed or required in order to be with to be in God's presence, which is not fully the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but your own work.

I think you could rightfully say that. I wish I knew more about Roman Catholicism to answer this question more in depth.

You're definitely way more knowledgeable about Roman Catholicism than I am. But my definition on a cult, specifically if I go after Walter Martin, I am more broad in what

I call a cult. So I would call Islam a cult. I would call Hinduism a cult. I would call any false religion that has a different Jesus and a different gospel, not the truth.

It would be essentially a cult or a false form of knowledge. So I know people who would differ from me.

Their definitions, probably for a cult, must meet some form of the bite model from Steve Hassan, and maybe

Roman Catholicism in their brain doesn't meet that. I know there's also a lot of people, perhaps even in Roman Catholicism, that don't even believe everything that they're hearing coming from the priest or something that's reading their

Bible. Again, I didn't grow up in that world. You're on the East Coast. I actually did. I was raised

Catholic, and I was even an altar boy. Wow. So I think like on the

West Coast, maybe unless you're Roman Catholic or something, I think over here on the West Side of the United States, there's a lot less

Roman Catholicism, unless you're getting like Central America and South America. Or unless you're Mexican American there, even in Utah and Arizona.

Right. Yeah. And so, you know, I just don't necessarily have the upbringing to give the best answer for that on how they work and how they operate, because I haven't studied it enough.

But I am very, very concerned for anybody who does not believe that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is the righteousness alone that you would wear for your presence upon the

Father, right? It's a flat -out denial of what we're told in Zechariah when Joshua is standing before God and the angel of the

Lord responds to the accuser and says, No, take his dirty garment off and give him mine.

Right? And it's a prophecy on even when he says, And I will remove the iniquity of the land in one single day.

That's the gospel. And if there's something else that's added to it, yeesh, to me, that's bad news.

I would give the gospel to a Roman Catholic, if that makes sense. If I met a Roman Catholic on the street and we were having a conversation,

I would be giving them the gospel. Oh, yeah. They definitely have a false gospel. Not that every single

Catholic has a false gospel. The odds are that most of them do. That's why they're still

Catholic. There are people that either through their ignorance of what their own church believes, believe in a true gospel and remain

Catholic, or they remain Catholic for, I think, very poor reasons.

But they remain Catholic because they don't want their spouse to leave them. They remain

Catholic because they don't want their family to disown them. I've heard some people that I've met say they think they're going to be a 21st century

Martin Luther and bring reform into the Catholic church. But if you're a true believer, you must not participate in the idolatrous and blasphemous rites that they do.

You can't just privately have in your head a biblical gospel and receive their mass, which is a deeply heretical ceremony.

It's not just the Lord's Supper. It's deeply heretical. It's an unbloody sacrifice and so on.

I've spoken with some of my apologist friends who have said they prefer not to use that term because it will just create more heat than light.

That's what they'll usually say. But I do believe that it warrants a label of cult, because if it was any other group, like I was explaining, that didn't have a centuries -long history behind it, they would just say, oh, that's a cult.

That's a crazy cult. Yeah, that's true. I mean, even in the

Book of Acts, it's interesting that there was people calling the followers of the way a cult, and you find,

I believe it's Paul who corrects them. He says, now, I know that there are some who say that we are a sect, but he then says, but no, we are followers of the truth.

This is true. So I think it goes to follow rightfully that if someone is a follower of Christ or they say they are, and they believe something different than what

God's Word reveals, it is not truth and therefore could qualify as a cult. Because there's even apologists who disagree with what

I would say, calling Islam a cult. They'd say, no, it's a world religion. Like, I think it's a cult. You know what

I mean? So people operate in different definitions and in different ways. So I wish I was more knowledgeable for your listeners there on Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but I know there's people way more equipped.

I know Pastor James White's going to be doing some debates with Eastern Orthodoxy pretty soon, and I'm really excited to watch some of those.

Yes. In fact, I was supposed to be moderating what was not going to be a debate, unfortunately, more of a dialogue this

Saturday between my friend Samuel Farag, a former

Coptic Orthodox who got saved and is a Reformed Baptist pastor.

He's debating the same Eastern Orthodox apologist that James is going to be debating,

Craig Trulia. I was supposed to moderate that this Saturday, and Amtrak is completely sold out of the trains that are going to Syracuse or Rochester, which is near where the debate will be held.

So they're getting a replacement, but they are going to have me moderate a full -blown debate between the two of them at a future date that they're not certain of yet.

That's good. That's going to be great. I know it's needed for sure. There's even people I've talked to on the phone out here who are relatives of people who come out of Mormonism, and they typically will—not typically, but sometimes they'll actually fall more in line with some

Eastern Orthodox beliefs and even Roman Catholic beliefs than they would with Protestant Christianity because there's this external authority to the

Scriptures that validates the Scriptures for them. So it's easy for a Mormon to come out of Mormonism that has this prophetic priesthood and fall into something else who, for them,

I guess it feels more secure that there's an organization interpreting the Scriptures for them, which is an interesting thing to think about.

Tom, let's see here. We have

Tino in the Bronx, New York. Tino says,

Recently, Chris Ornzen had a guest on named Leanne Ferguson, who is a former member of the

Church of Christ, and she identified it as a cult. Would you agree with her?

That's interesting. Just to let you know, I believe that many congregations in the

Church of Christ could be classified properly as cults, but since they are a group that, just like Baptists, each congregation is independent and autonomous.

They don't have a hierarchy of leadership. They don't have a headquarters.

They don't have an official document, of course, outside of the

Bible, that they all must adhere to that would contain aberrant and heretical and cultic beliefs.

So I think that they're harder to pinpoint. I think that you have to take them church by church and person by person, whether you reach that conclusion that they are a cult.

I think we have to be careful about broad -brushing them because I've met people, even interviewed a couple of people in the

Church of Christ that have the same understanding of baptism that I do as a Baptist and have the same gospel and so on.

But what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so we interviewed

Trey and Jeremiah Nordier, the apologetic dog. Yes, I've had him on the show many times.

Yeah, and we've done episodes on the Church of Christ. And again, yeah, like you said, there's different forms of it, but many of them preach specific things that we would consider being cultish in terms of, you know, not necessarily baptismal regeneration, but saying baptism is essential for salvation.

Some of them even believe insomuch so that you would be even speaking in tongues and it would have to be evidenced.

I know that's more of a Pentecostal situation, but even people within the Church of Christ hold to some of these positions.

And there's people getting baptized all the time because of the sins that they commit after, you know. And I think with regards to some of the origins and even,

I believe, the founder, one of the original founders, his name is escaping me right now. Andrew, I'm sorry,

Alexander and Thomas Campbell. Thomas was the father and Alexander was more in the forefront of starting the movement.

Yes, they're even working on their own Bible, I believe, for a bit. And even one of the

Campbells, one of his followers, interestingly enough, actually converted to Mormonism.

And so there's a lot of similarities even with baptism coming from the Church of Christ. But again, like you said, it just depends on the congregation and person who's there.

We have found that many people who have come out of it, though, they have more of the tendency to be legalistic than other groups.

So yeah, I mean, especially if you're working with it, being in the South, I'm sure you're seeing it all over the place. There's not really many

Church of Christ's out here in the West. But absolutely, if there's something essential for salvation other than the blood of Jesus Christ that was spilled on the cross, and they're telling you you must do it, you're probably in a cult.

That's just the reality. You're probably in a cult. And that's our warning. That's our warning from Scripture.

Oh, by the way, folks, I found out who was the recording artist that hit the top of the charts with that song written by a

Church of Scientology member whose wife I interviewed on the show after she got saved on one of my early broadcasts.

Jeffrey Osborne is the recording artist who recorded

On the Wings of Love, which has probably been played at thousands of wedding receptions over the decades.

Let's see here. You're right, Chris. I've never heard it, unless I've heard it and I just never knew the name.

You know what I mean? On the wings of love. I won't torture you with my singing voice.

Let's see here. We have Bernard in Stanford, Connecticut.

Bernard says, How difficult is it for people whose minds and spirits have been crushed after being members of a cult to be restored and brought to a biblically faithful and healthy church?

Is this something that may take years, depending upon how brutally this person was deceived and treated?

Yeah, absolutely. It just depends on the person's situation, what they're coming out of, and how stable, essentially, that they are, even mentally.

There are some situations that are absolutely horrible that people come out of. We're talking about sex cults like NXIVM, and it utterly destroys them.

That was a college campus cult or something? No, it was Keith Renier. He created a system for people to become leaders, essentially, kind of in their own workplace.

But what it was, was people would go to these workshops, and eventually what it turned into is his own sex cult, really.

It was kind of like a pyramid scheme with him getting people higher and getting other women underneath it. There's a huge documentary out on it.

I think we even did some episodes on NXIVM. But no, it wasn't like a college cult or anything like that.

It was just more for people, business professionals trying to be taken more seriously. It would be really weird because they get them into the initial workshop, and they kind of get them to repent of their sins in a weird way.

You'll find any cult, really, since we're created in the image of God, we're created to worship God. And since we're created to worship

God, we know there's a fundamental error with our existence. There's sin, and there's a detached relationship from God.

What cults will do is they will feed on this innate brokenness within ourselves, and they'll teach you to worship in a wrong way.

They'll teach you to repent in a wrong way. All of these things. It's crazy to watch.

I recommend the documentary. I believe it's on HBO Max about NXIVM. But in a nutshell, yeah.

What was the question again real quick, Chris? I'm sorry. I told you guys I'm not the smartest person. And I'm 64 years old and developing,

I think, dementia at an early age. I can't remember what the question was.

I've already exited out of the question on my email list, so I don't know.

Oh, I remember now. I'm so sorry. So, say someone coming out of NXIVM is coming to Christ.

Yeah, there's things that they're going to have to work through. Oh yeah, the rehabilitation. That's what it was. Right. If they were being used by Keith Rainier to be sex slaves, imagine the level of working through what happened to you.

There's pastors that can help with that, but again, they're going to have to submit to the authority of an elder to speak truth in their life, and submitting to an authority after an authority has abused you is not good.

That's hard for them to do. It's good to submit to an elder, but again, there's trust issues there, right?

So, it's something that you have to handle on a case -by -case basis, and someone who has the Spirit of God within them,

I ultimately believe that they are going to be used by the Holy Spirit through His Word in order to have that growth and sanctification.

So, the Christian must have the mindset that the Holy Spirit is going to work through them. You can't be the Holy Spirit or God.

So, you have to be patient with these individuals and not try to be the convictor or any of that.

You have to let God work through them in patience. But we also have people that can help clinically.

God has given us that ability. I would recommend any type of Christian psychiatrist. You can help someone in that situation as well.

I believe that if someone has the Holy Spirit, essentially, they're going to work through these things.

And I believe, personally, that Reformed theology has the ultimate answer to the pains that people face.

It's that God works all things together for good. I said this earlier, but it's like what Joseph went through, right?

I believe it's Genesis 50, when he's told what man intends for evil, God uses for good to bring about his purposes. And what does that tell you?

It says that ultimately, when bad things happen to you, when you know God, He decreed it for a reason and for a purpose.

It wasn't purposeless or meaningless, and He intended it for good. And you ought to be able to trust in God in that in order to make sense of the suffering that you go through in your life.

And when you don't submit to God in that way, you're not going to make sense of it. For me growing up within my

Arminian worldview that I was growing up in—I'm not trying to throw shade to any Arminian listeners if they're here.

You're my brother and sister in Christ. But ultimately, that form of God's sovereignty did not allow me to adequately understand the things

I went through in my life. It didn't. Instead, I was mad with God for not changing things because people had the will to will themselves.

And ultimately, when I came to Reform Theology, I had to come face to face with the

Creator God of the universe and say, ultimately, God, the things you have decreed that have happened to me in my life that I say

I shouldn't have gone through, you decreed them for what? For my good and for your glory.

And I'm going to believe that. And once I was able to see that through God's sovereignty, essentially,

I was able to let go of so much stuff. But you know, we have to work with people and allow the

Holy Spirit to work in their lives. So that's just me for my example.

But again, 2 Corinthians chapter 1 is one I like to talk to a lot of Christians about. Say someone's coming to your church that's come from a cult, okay?

You ought to be able to comfort them with the same comfort that the Father comforted Christ. Because it talks about how

God, the Father, comforts us the same way he comforts Christ. But also then it says that we ought to be able to comfort others.

And we should hold on to that. You might not have all the right words to say. You might not know what they went through because you didn't go through it perfectly.

But you do have the ability in Christ to be that person who can comfort them and listen to them and understand them and just be that person.

I'm sorry if I'm getting on a soapbox here, but say someone from the New Age is coming out of the New Age and they're coming into the church, and this person's talking about how they experienced some form of revelation during transcendental meditation.

Coming from a strict Christian worldview your whole life, you might hear something like that and be like, that's just mumbo -jumbo.

What we understand as Christians is that our experiences don't determine truth. That's true.

But it doesn't mean that people don't experience things. It doesn't mean that this person wasn't doing transcendental meditation and didn't get contact with a demon or a spirit.

They probably did. Maybe they did receive information. Your job isn't to deny their experience, but what it is is to point them to Christ so they can filter the experience and everything that they went through through the lens of Scripture, be the comfort, and give them the gospel and give them the truth and show them the love of Christ.

So I think the more people are coming out of paganism, atheism, and coming into the church, we ought to have the heart as Christians to understand that there is an unseen realm among us, and things do happen there, and by God's grace, you were protected from it your whole life.

You didn't experience it, but sometimes people do. And you're there to just be an ear and point them back to Christ and show them the love of God.

We have to go to our final break, and if you have a question, submit it immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state and country of residence.

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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today and mention Ironsharpensironradio .com. And we are now back with Andrew Sunkrat of one of the two hosts of Cultish, which is a podcast that everyone needs to become familiar with, especially if you want to adequately reach out to your friends, family, loved ones, and neighbors who are trapped in cults.

And we have Zeke in Paradise Valley, Arizona, and Zeke says,

I know that the vast majority of cults have a base of theology that very closely resembles

Arminianism and even Romanism, but are there any cults of which you are aware that do have some kind of a

Calvinistic soteriology? It's an interesting question. That is an interesting question.

I'm trying to go back in the mind here, thinking about any cults with Calvinistic soteriology.

I know of folks that reared their ugly head probably, and I'm not saying this is when they began, but somewhere around a decade ago,

I used to get attacked in social media by some of these guys. And I know that they still exist, but I don't think that they're as loud, at least in my circles of involvement in social media,

I don't think they're as loud as they used to be. But they claim that if you are not a believer in the five points of sovereign grace, you are damned.

It's like a a knowledge perfectionism of some kind, which

I think would be dangerous. And we have just been joined by Jeremiah Roberts, just as we're about to go off the air.

Hey, what's up, Chris? Got a little late here today, just glad I could be here today. Andrew, thank you for holding the boat.

And Jeremiah Roberts is the founding co -host of The Cultish Podcast, and he is married to Katie Roberts, and together they have one boy,

Elijah Roberts, and now have a baby girl on the way. And Jeremiah is committed to seeing the kingdom of Christ grow through the exposing of the cults by the power of the gospel.

And Jeremiah, I don't know if you heard the whole question from a listener named Zeke in Paradise Valley, Arizona, but he was wondering if there were any cults that you're aware of that have a

Calvinistic base. So generally speaking,

I have not seen that a whole lot. You know, they kind of take a,

I've seen people request for us to say, hey, can you talk about the cult of Calvinism?

I've seen a lot of churches where they are adhered to the doctrines of race, but they have a lot of fundamentalist, legalistic tendencies.

A lot of there are Calvinistic churches that they hold to that doctrine. This is not the case, because I went to a church that was a very large church.

Here in Gilbert, there's a large church that for all intents and purposes, they were a megachurch, right?

But they were Calvinistic. They didn't wear it on their shoulders. I mean, the pastor,

Thomas Schrader, he wore a Hawaiian shirt. That was his style. He'd wear a Hawaiian shirt on Sundays.

It's just what he did. But, you know, they would joke in the every year and a half, they did a series called

God's Plan for Salvation. He went through the five points of Calvinism, and he jokingly would say that I just do this series to kind of when we start running out of parking space, just let people know where we stand.

There's not a specific definitive cult that I've seen, but I've seen a lot of groups that are

Calvinistic where they tend to get fundamentalistic in certain ways.

So there might be a place that would adhere to the doctrines of grace, but they will have just rigidness on how you should dress, like you have to wear a three -piece suit to church.

If you wear anything different, you're looked down upon and shunned. I've seen places where they get kind of legalistic on just different things that should be secondary issues, like head coverings, for example.

There's plenty of people who are very black and white about it, and I respect that. That's their conviction.

But I think there's times where they start to see anybody who does not adhere to that as there's issues with them.

And there's also different other times where they'll start to be kind of very rigid on their view of covenant theology, and they start to be have -and -have -nots.

And again, so what I'm talking about, this would be within the context of Christendom, right?

This would be no different than a church that is continuationist, charismatic -leaning, and has issues as far as maybe the way they're doing things that are messy, but it's within the body of Christ.

You're talking with a believer, so there's a huge distinction with talking with someone like that versus Jehovah's Witnesses, which we've recently covered.

We're going to be focusing on more cultish. So there's just really a lot of fundamentalistic issues where you start to take something like a secondary issue or something that is a way versus the way.

It could be anything like—there are times where you take something like, oh, you need to homeschool your kids, right?

But then you start to—if you start to dictate, like, you have to educate your children this way, then you start to violate the spheres of the governments that God's appointed, specifically family government, because ultimately, how the children are educated comes down to the head of the household.

I mean, the church can definitely speak on the issue, but they can't lay down the hammer, per se, because that would be out of their jurisdiction.

So nothing specifically when it comes to a Calvinistic -oriented church, but definitely a lot of fundamentalism.

Actually, the only time I've ever seen that articulated was with Westboro Baptist.

Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah, yeah. There's a famous interview, and I listened to those years ago, with Megan Phelps from Westboro Baptist, and she's on Joe Rogan.

And on it, she started talking about her interpretation of Romans 9, how she just said that ultimately is evil.

And she goes to—no matter what you do, you're just predestined to die. So she associated that with Westboro Baptist.

Now, I've never listened to Westboro Baptist. They claim to adhere to the 1689 Latin Baptist Confession, unfortunately.

Yes. And they also claim that Arminians are damned, and God not only hates fags, as they're famous for saying, but God hates the military,

God hates Arminians. So would you think that they should be rightfully identified as a cult,

Westboro Baptist Church, for instance? Westboro Baptist, yeah, because when you start to kind of pick away at them, they'll start to really say that no one else is really a truly saved except for them.

And a lot of times what they'll do—and then the Church of Wells would be similar, that we covered years ago, where they're going to—

Right. They're going to try— From Texas, right? Yeah. Yeah, from Wells, Texas.

They'll try and play a little Slippin' Jimmy and pull a fast one, where they will say that, oh, we're not saying we're the only true church.

We're just saying that we've never found a church outside of our church. So it's like you're trying to have, you know, you can't have your cake and eat it too, sort of thing.

By the way, could you, before we run out of time, let our listeners know a summary of your salvation testimony, since you're a first -time guest and we always have our first suggestions.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, so real quickly, so I grew up in a Christian household, you know, for as long as I could remember.

I have memories of going to church, and I remember as a little kid picking up this children's book called

Great Stories of the Bible, or something like that, and how they lived. And so it had just a bunch of chronological stories of the

Gospels and Adam and Eve and stuff. I remember just looking as a kid, looking at those pictures of Adam and Eve walking shamefully out of the garden, just being like, oh my goodness, this is like, this looks pretty serious, you know.

And so I just remember, you know, I have vivid memories just going to church is something that we always did. And, you know,

I just, I remember like as a young kid, I had an understanding of what the gospel was. So ultimately, when

I was truly, truly saved is, ultimately, I'll find out when I get to heaven. I think

I know when I, I'm pretty sure I know when it was. Just because like, I, thinking back, I remember seeing a plaque up on the wall in my parents' room when

I was a child that had John 3 .16 on it. And I was like, looking on it, I didn't understand what begotten was, but I just remember looking at that, being enamored by that.

And just being like, looking, just staring at it for the longest time, like multiple times, like, what is this?

And, but when it comes down to it, I believe where I got was truly, where I know for sure I was truly converted, where God changed my heart.

I was 16, 17 years old on a mission trip to Mexico. And I got caught in a, me and half of our youth group were in Mazatlán, Mexico.

We got caught in a riptide. Half of our youth group got swept out to sea. Thankfully, there were a couple of people who got swept out who were lifeguards, who gave instructions about how not to swim against the riptide, but to swim sideways.

I was not one of those people. So me and about seven or eight others who did not get the instructions from those who were lifeguards were stuck out at about two miles out from the ocean.

And I was very, very scared. And thankfully, there happened to be two locals who were surfing who rescued us.

And we had to be taken in by boat because we'd gotten that far out. That evening, the guy who was the speaking is one of the pastors.

I think he was just sort of telling his account of the story. He was swept out to sea as well, too.

And he got very emotional. Somebody was like a very tough, gritty guy. He was a former

Marine. And he got very emotional, saying, you know, my whole life flashed before my eyes. But I knew that if I had died,

I would have been with my savior. And he quoted a verse from Psalms where it says, You've appointed my days that I shall walk in them.

So it was at that moment, I think that hit me like a ton of bricks. I was trying to understand, like, where do you have this confidence from?

Because as soon as I got back from the ocean, I was kind of cracking jokes about it, saying, oh, we almost died is pretty cool.

But I'm 16 years old, you know, it's just like you're so you're just how you are at that age.

And it wasn't until that moment I realized the seriousness and the gravitas that evening about what happened and what took place.

And so I remember I really struggled to kind of like grasp what he was doing, and I just had to get away.

And so I just walked out on the balcony of this of this hotel where we're staying at.

And there's all this lightning off in the distance. You know, this is nothing like it's just what it was. This is not like sensational thing.

There's a lot of lightning. Like it was almost like that place where I would have been like I could see it was perfectly dark, except it was all this lightning.

So I could actually see where I was, how far out I was. And so I just was trying to understand, like, what was he talking about?

You know, like what was that assurance coming from? Like, why don't I feel that way? And so for me, like it wasn't that I even said, you know, a sinner's prayer or there was this giant, you know,

Apostle Paul moments, you know, there's no like chariots and stuff breaking out in the clouds or nothing.

It just was this realization of like Romans 10, 9 and 10 that like I had an understanding, but I don't have a recollection.

I never truly, truly believing it in my heart. And so I think, honestly, my conversion point was just saying like, oh, like that was it.

And I remember just having like peace and I went to bed and I slept like a rock. So, yeah, that was,

I think that was truly the moment where, you know, I truly understood where God truly converted me and changed my heart.

Well, I would love to have you back when you could spend both hours with us. I know,

I know. Brother, I want to make it just to let our listeners know that one of our guests here arrived late because of the fact he's got a lot of duties at work that prevented him from being with us for the full two hours, but hopefully the next time he'll be able to join us for the entire show.

And so, Jeremiah, I really enjoyed what you had to say in the brief time you were with us.

And of course, Andrew Sonkrat, I want to thank you for being the guest for the majority of the show.

I want to make sure our listeners have the website for ApologiaUtah.

It's ApologiaUtah .com, ApologiaUtah .com.

And I'm assuming for cultish, they would just go to YouTube and type in cultish in the search engine, right?

Yeah, go to thecultishshow .com. That's our website. But yeah, YouTube, you could also just type in The Cultish Show.

And then for podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, just type in cultish, it will pop up. Great. Well, thank you so much for being a part of the program today, both of you.

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

Savior than you are a sinner. And folks, mark down on your calendars for my interview this

Thursday with Jonathan Blair, the lead actor portraying

George Whitefield in the new movie, A Great Awakening. He's on this Thursday. I hope you can join us.