Jeff Durbin: Dealing With The Cults

Prayer for Wisdom and a Burden for the Lost

This discussion, this talk, and myself, God, I confess, I am not worthy to be up here to even handle your word. But I pray, God, you use God in a broken vessel to glorify yourself. I pray that by the power of your spirit, God, in your word, challenge us, grow us, teach us, God.

Use us for your glory, God, and for your church. To raise up men and women and children who will serve you with their lives and lay their lives down for those lost and cults. I pray that God you bless and speak through me, God.

And Lord, it would not be my words, but yours. I pray that I would decrease, you would increase.

Lord Jesus.

Alright, so we're going to talk today about the cults.

And really important, I think, message to have. I wanted to do a biography on Whitfield, but somebody beat me to the punch. So I said, okay, I guess I'll do something on the cults.

So here we go.

I want to focus in on the most important things we need to do and talk about and be engaged in when we minister to people who are lost in the cults. Whether it's Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, whether it be Roman Catholicism, something like that.

An aberrant Christian doctrine sort of system. I'm going to focus in on what are the most important things we need to discuss, know, be ready to engage with. And I think, although I usually try to hesitate giving biographies or any kind of personal information as the main focus of the message.

But I think it would be important for you guys to hear a lot of the stuff that's happened in my life by way of engagement. So you can see sort of how we can handle this and approach people who are lost in these cults.

I got into ministering to the cults when I first heard the gospel. I immediately got engaged with ministering to and speaking with Mormon missionaries. Oddly enough, I was living right outside Washington, D .C. at the time.

And there's not a lot of Mormons in D .C., not in comparison to where I'm at right now. But God had me immediately thrust into talking to Mormons. Here's how it happened. I was reading my Bible. I wasn't raised in a Christian home, far from it.

Reading my Bible, after I first heard the gospel, I was in the theater arts class.

I was only about 17 years old.

And a guy sat down next to me. He said, what are you reading?

I said, it's the Bible.

And he said, oh, cool.

You're a Christian? I said, yeah, I'm a Christian. He goes, I'm a Christian, too. And I was like, oh, right.

High five.

And I was excited to finally meet a Christian.

I wasn't raised in even that kind of context.

So for me, hearing the gospel and actually meeting somebody who professed faith in Christ was kind of a unique thing. I wasn't raised in that kind of context.

So it was exciting for me.

And so we're talking.

And I was really excited to meet somebody who was a Christian. So he says to me, he says, so what level of heaven are you going to? And I had only been in the Word for a limited time, maybe a couple of months.

And so that immediately struck me as odd. And so I said, hopefully the highest level, where I want to go. Is that a good answer, right? Once it sounds arrogant, you can offer it. I'll take the highest, I guess.

And so it was weird. So he says, well, I'm from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And so right after school, high school that day, I run over to a Christian bookstore that I had basically become a fixture in by that point.

And the owner of the store's name was Tony.

I'll never forget.

And the name of the Christian bookstore was Heaven Christian Bookstore. And so I used to go in there and sit on the floor and just read books because I was a poor teenager. And so he just let me do it.

And so I came out.

I said, hey, Tony, do you have anything on the denomination of the Latter-day Saints?

And he was like, Jeff, that's not a denomination.

That's a cult. So he runs into the back.

And he grabs just a handful of different pieces of literature.

And he just throws stuff at me. And he says to me, just take it, Jeff. He says, you don't have to pay me for it. I want you just to know this stuff. And so what happened was I spent all night that night staying up.

And I watched the classic films, the Godmakers and all the stuff that was available at the time.

And I started reading things.

I was so blown away as a new believer, as someone who had just heard the gospel, as to how far off this was and yet how close we sounded in sitting there in that theater arts class. It really blew me away.

And so I didn't sleep that night at all.

I literally didn't sleep. I didn't go to bed that night. I just stayed up.

And I took notes.

And what happened was in the morning, I went to school early. I went to a copy place. And I ended up that morning with limited resources making photocopies of pages of scripture with other pages of Joseph Smith's stuff and the Book of Mormon.

And I had highlighted stuff.

And I had basically come to school with my docket, my case against Mormonism. And so I go to my friend named Wade.

And I was like, Wade, you're in a cult.

And I threw the book at him. And, of course, that is how you do not minister to the cults. But I thought, you know, this will do it. You'll see, right?

You're going to have to see.

Here's the text of scriptures that Joseph says.

You're going to have to see that, right?

It's right there.

It's obvious.

And so what happened was about six months of he and I in very close relationship with each other, meeting all the time, I ended up actually meeting with just a bunch of different Mormon missionaries. I went to the Mormon temple in Washington, D .C. with his family for Christmas.

I ended up engaged in this Mormon community in a way I did not anticipate. I went to dinner at his house constantly. He was at my house constantly. I met with his family.

Went to the temple with his family.

And I was the whole time preaching the gospel to him.

I remember once actually driving in the van, leaving the Mormon temple at Christmastime, and this is with his people from his church, and the man driving that took us was a black man.

Yeah.

And as a young, zealous Christian, I said, so how are you Mormon and black? If you know the history of Mormonism, that's actually a good question.

And so this was sort of my engagement. And so this is the kind that was in this conversation all the time,.

So I wasn't sort of placating to it. I was actually engaged in the culture. But I immediately had a love for these people that was absolutely unshakable. They were so loving, so beautiful, and so zealous, and such wonderful people.

I love them because I can't stand the fact that you're lost, and I want to reach you. So at the end of this whole course of relationship of waiting, we're in my room one day, in my room, my bed, and we're getting into the scripture together.

And finally he says to me, he says, Jeff, he starts crying, he says,.

I know what you're saying is true. I know it's true.

The church is wrong. Joseph's not a prophet. I know it's true.

And I'm thinking, praise God. Praise God.

And he says, I can't leave the church. I said, what do you mean you can't leave the church? You just said it's wrong. It's not true. You know what I'm saying is right. And he says, I can't leave the church.

If I leave the church, I lose everything. I lose my mom, my dad, my family, my friends. I lose everything. I can't leave the church. And so I remember that this verse, as a new believer, just welled up within me, right there, came straight from God.

I said, then what shall a prophet of man do?

He's the whole world. He loses his soul. And so that was the beginning of my commitment to reach these people.

To reach people who had ate Christianity, that knew our language.

They spoke our language. In the Christian ghetto, we have language. It's Christianese, right? And they speak Christianese. And they ate Christianity. They borrowed our terminology. But they pour entirely different meanings into those words.

And so I committed to reaching these people. And just quickly, what are we doing now as a ministry? Well, I got to move, when I was about 18 years old, to Arizona. And this is just an amazing move of God's providence.

You need to hear this story because you'll begin to see how amazing it is that God really did what he did in my life to his glory. I went to Arizona anticipating I was going to go to Arizona to be closer to Hollywood.

I was doing a lot of stuff with movies and TV and karate stuff. And so I thought, okay, I'm closer there. And I was actually going to go to Bible college. And perfect move. No idea that Arizona, where I was going, has the second largest population of Mormons in the world.

And so I get to Arizona, and I'm staying with a guy. He says, Jeff, welcome to Arizona. He says, I literally got there the night before, next morning, 8 a .m. Here's the keys to my car.

Go ahead and drive around and take a look around the town.

So I'm excited to get in his car. And I drive down the Arizona lanes, and I was, boom, first light.

Oh, there's a Mormon ward.

Wow, that's awesome.

I have a ministry out here.

Drive down the road again.

Boom, there's a Mormon ward there too.

And I'm thinking, this is the craziest thing ever.

So I'm driving everywhere I turn. There are Mormon churches everywhere.

Then there's a Mormon temple. There's Mormon missionaries driving by me.

I was like a kid in a candy store. I was like, this is the most amazing thing ever.

Ever.

And so I saw a sign for the Mormon Easter pageants. Please come visit the Mormon Easter pageant. Week-long events where they depict the life of Christ at the Mormon Easter pageants.

Mormon Temple in Mesa, Arizona.

Go there for the first time. No one's with me. Have a Bible, backpack, tracks, and I'm ready to go to reach the Mormons. No one's with me.

I get there.

And I meet James White, a friend, Dr. White, for the first time.

And I saw him surrounded by Mormon missionaries.

And I saw you can engage this community. And there were over 100 ,000 people that show up over a week to this event. And about eight Christians. 100 ,000 people, about eight Christians on the sidewalk.

Amazing.

So that was in 1996, 2014. Every year we go to the Mormon Easter pageant in Mesa. Over a week's period of time we have over 100 ,000 people that show up. It's like a sea of people. You can't even imagine how many people show up to this event.

Shoulder to shoulder you stand with them sometimes.

It's an amazing opportunity. We go, as a matter of fact, next month we're going to start our mission to the temple during their Christmas lights. Where, again, it's about tens of thousands of people that show up over this period of time just to come view the Christmas lights at the temple.

We can engage in conversation with them.

Mormon missionaries and all the rest. And I've got to say this to encourage this kind of ministry. Although I feel like I'm preaching to the choir in this room.

Is this ministry necessary? Absolutely it's necessary. There are Mormon families all around me. But I cannot engage with all of them in a friendship. But I know where they're at several times a year where I can engage the community to preach the gospel.

And as a result of going there and laying our lives down. The missionary sacrifice to the Mormon community in Arizona. We've lost count as to how many people have come to Christ out of Mormonism. And have received Christ.

Have come to Him in a saving relationship with Him as a result of us just being there. And I want to just give you a story as a word of encouragement as we leap into the discussion here. Because I want you to hear how mighty God is.

Which we already know. I want you to hear how amazing He is when you step out in faith and you just obey Him. So we're at the Mormon temple.

There's times where you hand out tracts by the thousands at this thing.

Sometimes they get thrown back at you. Sometimes they're received with graciousness. I'm at the west side of the temple and outside the gate.

And I'm talking to a woman.

And a Mormon missionary comes out. And he's wearing the full Mormon missionary garb. He's got the white button-up shirt. He's got the plaque, Elder so-and-so on his plaque. And he comes out and he sees me talking and looks really curious.

And so he starts sort of listening to the conversation. Then he starts to interject. So as I'm talking to her, I end up talking to him as well. And so now I'm going back and forth between her and him.

Her and him.

He would say, yes, but. And I would say, well, the Bible says this. Give him a text. And so he would sort of chew on it a bit.

And then I'd talk to her.

And everything he said, I would just come back with a rebuttal from Scripture. And I'd point him to the Word of God. And then I went back to her. And I started seeing he was getting very frustrated with this.

So I've got a backpack full of tracts next to me.

He reaches down, kneels down quietly, places his hand into my bag, and scoops a handful of them like this.

I see it out of the corner of my eye.

And I very gently kneel down, put my hand in his hand, and I said, listen. I have 75 ,000 of those. I said, so if you take them, I'm just coming back with more. And I said, so here's the deal I'm going to give you.

I said, you show me from the Word of God that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that the Mormon gospel is true and the Mormon God is the true living God. And I said, I promise you before God, I will leave this place.

And I will never, ever, ever come back.

Deal?

And so he takes his hand back and he says, that's fair.

So we start preaching now.

I'm giving him the Word of God, Isaiah 4310.

Before me there was no God before and neither shall there be after me.

I'm the first and I'm the last.

Besides me, there is no God.

He's God alone in the heavens above and on the earth below. There is no other. I said, you believe God was once a man who became a God one day. He had bombing gods and damning gods before him. And they had bombing gods and damning gods before them.

It's an infinite regression of gods. And you believe you're going to become a God one day in yourself. God says, you're never going to make it. And so he starts to cry.

And so I said, are you OK?

He says, yes, man.

I've got to go.

I've just got to go.

I said, no, just come back. Let's talk for a second. His name was Wesley. I said, Wesley, come back.

Let's talk for a second.

He says, I can't.

I can't.

I've got to go.

And so he leaves. And he ends up, he keeps coming back day after day after day.

And he says, hey, Jeff.

I said, hey, Wesley, what's up? He said, you got a verse for me? I said, go read Isaiah 43 and 44. Before me there was no God before and neither shall there be after me. You believe there was and you're going to become one one day.

He says, great, man, thanks.

He walked away.

After about two weeks of ministering to him, we end up actually hiding with him in alleyways,.

Looking through the Bible, like, together.

My friend calls me, final night, and says, Jeff, you're not going to believe what I'm.

Saying.

Wesley has called me up and he's turned to Christ. I said, praise God. The very next day, Wesley shows up, didn't expect it. He shows up with us at the temple, wearing regular clothes, with my tracts in his hands, handing out tracts to Mormons.

And you should have seen it.

This guy had one of the most incredible Mormon testimonies you can imagine. Mormons are jealous of his testimony as a Mormon.

Believe me.

I won't go into it now, but they're jealous. He's a temple Mormon. I'm sorry, at the visitor's center.

He is out there now.

All the missionaries inside, and there's a lot of them, they all come flooding out.

They're like, Wesley, what are you doing?

What are you doing? And so he starts to preach to them the gospel from the scriptures right there. And he starts saying, no, the word of God says this. Joseph lied to us.

You've got to turn to Christ.

You've got to trust in Christ.

It was the most amazing experience ever, was this Mormon missionary turned to Christ. Life totally transformed. And amazingly, I had been told all these years, at churches that I had gone to, as a Christian, and I would go out and invite people to come with me to do this work.

I had been told by pastors and by Christians, do not engage in that work. It is too abrasive. You make friends with them. You invite them to dinner. You have a relationship over a course of years. That's how you reach those people.

And I would watch the dozens of people come to Jesus out of Mormonism as a result of laying.

Your life down for them by going to reach them where they were at.

You need to do this.

The Moral Duty of Christian Apologetics

So what I want to do today in talking about how to reach the cults is I'm going to try to lay something down that will help us in ministering to anybody from any different type of cult. And we do want to approach this issue as Christians.

And we've heard a lot about this this week. Zion is a good friend, and he's a blessing to the church with presuppositional apologetics,.

Which is fabulous.

Praise God for his work. One of the things you've heard a lot during this conference is the power of 1 Peter 3 .15 and the moral obligation that we have as Christians with 1 Peter 3 .15. It's always quoted as, always be ready to give an apologia, a reasoned defense.

Anyone asks you what the hope is within you, you do it with gentleness and reverence.

Right?

That's how it's always quoted, and it should be quoted like that. That's the word of God.

Except that's not all there is.

Amen?

The first part of the verse says, but sanctify Christ as what?

The Lord in your hearts.

Always be ready to give a reasoned defense. Now that is absolutely vital. You must understand the importance of that first part of the apologetic mandate. We call it the charter verse of Christian apologetics.

Okay?

That's the commandment.

Always be ready with a reasoned defense. It's everyone who asks of you. But the first part of the verse says, what? Set Christ apart as Lord. In a debate that Dr. Bonson had with R .C. Sproul, both my heroes in the faith, both these men, amazing men of God, without question.

But in that debate between Dr. Bonson and Dr. R .C. Sproul, it was obvious who was standing on the word of God consistently.

Obvious.

And one of the things that Dr. Bonson brought up that I think needs to be highlighted is the issue of how do we reach people in a reasoned defense, highlighting this point here, and that's very important.

What moral obligation do we have as Christians when we defend the faith? It's a moral issue as to where you stand. When we engage in a defense of the faith, apart from a commitment first to Christ as Lord in our hearts, we are engaging in a moral issue.

If I defend the faith against an atheist, and I assume that God may not exist, or that Christ isn't Lord over everything, including my reasoning,.

That's a moral issue.

When I engage with a Mormon, and I do not start with Christ as Lord in my encounter with a Mormon, that's a moral issue. It's a moral issue.

Standing on Christ as the Foundation of Knowledge

Quick foundations. I know the signs aren't going to give you most of them,.

But you need to see it as we build this quickly. I have two chairs here. Over the years, I've tried to explain the necessity of standing on Christ and His word in our defense of the faith.

What I've done is I've done it with two chairs.

I think it's a very helpful way to do it, so hopefully these chairs will kind of stick out in your mind as you think about presuppositional apologetics, or I would like to say biblical apologetics. When we look at these two chairs here, we're thinking about foundations.

Jesus says there are two kinds of people with two kinds of foundations with two kinds of results. You've got a wise man and a foolish one. You have someone that builds a life on the rock and someone that builds a life on the sand, and you have one that withstands the storm, and you have one whose ruin is great.

Amen?

And Jesus says that the one who has their life on the rock is the one who builds upon His commands, His teaching, right?

And so we don't want to be fools, amen?

Jesus says very clearly, whoever's not with me is what?

Against me.

Is that something that we can bring into every area of life? Is it true that in the science class, you are either with Christ or against Him?

What, guys?

Amen.

Absolutely.

That needs to be shouted to our generation, our brothers and sisters today, as an encouragement. You are either in the science class with Christ or against Him.

Amen?

Amen.

In any area of life, in any realm, whether it be political, whether it be theological, you're either with Christ or you are against Christ. The Bible says, Proverbs 1 -7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Bible teaches us in 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, that all Scripture is what?

God breathed.

The word there is theanoustos.

It gives the idea of,.

You put your hand in front of your face, and you start speaking, and you feel your breath touch the palm of your hand. That's the very breath hitting your hand. That is the Scripture.

Paul says, theanoustos.

It's the breathe out word of God. So we hold in our hands the revelation of the living God.

He has spoken.

You need to know this.

Christians believe in a revelational epistemology.

We believe we can know a helping us God.

Watch, this is profound.

Okay, ready?

It's very intellectually rigorous. High level, so prepare yourselves. We know we know because, ready, God said so.

How's that sound?

Now you can put that in a bunch of different philosophical terms, or spice it up, make it look really fancy, and put bells and whistles on it.

Fundamentally, we believe we can know. We know because God talks to us.

Because he spoke, and he revealed himself through history. We know he speaks through general revelation, and that he is shouting to people constantly in creation. Nobody can avoid his revelation, and there's not a single person in the image of God that doesn't know the true and living God, right?

The Bible says in Romans 1, verse 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. They are in an active suppression.

Simon wrote the issue that Dr. Bonson used to do, and he said it's like you have a ball in the water, and you're suppressing that ball underwater. But I want to point something out as well.

That is an active suppression.

What happens when you remove your hands from that ball that's under the water? The nature of the case is the ball will come up automatically.

It's unavoidable.

So how do you keep the ball down?

You have to actively suppress it. Another great example of this in the area of ministry in the secular world is it's very much like a game of whack-a-mole. The image of God in a person is inescapable.

They know him.

Not some God, the true and living God.

It says that God himself has shown it to them.

That's what Romans 1, verse 19 says,.

That God himself has shown it to them. So think through this for a moment, that living God in the universe is all-powerful, who spoke in the universe, left into existence, who decrees the end from the beginning.

This God has revealed himself, according to Romans 1, verse 2, to every single person, made himself known to them. So if the all-powerful God reveals himself in creation,.

The way that it says he does,.

With that special knowledge of himself, is there any person that doesn't get the message?

No. What's the problem?

It's suppression.

It's the game of whack-a-mole.

The image of God in us is inescapable.

We can't help being what God has made us to be.

Amen? Amen. Okay?

Jumping into the water.

And pretending to be a fish.

Doesn't make you a fish. Amen? Eventually, you're coming up for air. You're pretending. And the person who's in the image of God and rejects his creator and says, I don't know him, there's not enough evidence, is pretending to be a fish.

And he'll come up for air,.

Or it'll be the game of whack-a-mole.

The image of God is so inescapable in all of us.

It will pour out of us constantly. You cannot help being what God made you to be. And so the unbeliever is engaged in a life-long game of whack-a-mole. The image of God pops up, he smacks it down. But guess what?

He missed one.

And you've got to look for it.

We know God. Amen? God's screaming to us. But God also gives us his word in history.

He spoke him a special revelation.

And that's how we can know things with certainty.

When they claim as Christians.

So as Christians, we're supposed to be standing on the rock, on Christ, his word, his commands. His word is supposed to be the very foundation.

Of everything we believe and we think. What I say out of my mouth.

Is supposed to be consistent with what I am standing on.

Amen?

As a quick example, as we leap into the cults for a moment here,.

I want you to think about foundations.

Everybody has a worldview.

I'm not going to go heavily into that right now, we've already done that. A worldview is basic beliefs, pre-beliefs, presuppositions about life, reality, knowledge, ethics, whatever. And that's what we're supposed to be standing on.

Amen?

That's supposed to be underneath us.

Now as Christians, we have a revelational epistemology. We have the word of God.

We're supposed to be standing on that.

And so what comes out of my mouth is supposed to be consistent with what I am standing on.

Right?

Now over here, just quickly, let's look at radical unbelief. Say a Dawkins, or a Dennett, or a Dan Barker, or a... By the way, Dan Barker, Cy and I spoke with Dan Barker on a redemption radio a couple years ago.

Excellent, excellent talk that Dan Barker has never mentioned since it happened.

It's true.

So radical unbelief is also a worldview. There's basic presuppositions and pre-beliefs about the world, about ethics, about knowledge,.

And what have you.

They're supposed to be standing on them. The unbeliever says there's no God,.

There's no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose,.