What is a Cult and How Do You Become a Cultist?

Confronting Cults and Counterfeits  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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INTRODUCTION

When I was 13 years old, in March of 1997, my family went on a Spring Break trip with some friends to the Outer Banks.
It was my first time going to the Outer Banks and my memories of the trip are pretty sparse.
It was off-season so there wasn’t a ton to do.
I remember going to the dunes.
I remember going to the Wright Brothers museum.
I remember playing a ton of NBA Live 97 with my friend Chris Joyce.
And I remember there was a story dominating the news—a religious group in San Diego had committed mass suicide over a period of two days.
They wore dark clothing, white Nikes and had $5 bills and rolls of quarters in their pockets.
They were in uniform.
It was a group known as “Heaven’s Gate,” and they committed mass suicide by drinking alcohol and barbiturates.
It was probably the first time I remember hearing the word, “cult.”
As I got older, I became familiar with other groups like the Manson Family and the folks in “Jonestown.”
You learn about these things in school and in pop culture.
After I became a Christian, I found out that there are cults who kind of sound quite Christian.
One day I was home alone watching TV and a commercial came on about a Jesus movie you could get for free.
I had been a Christian for about a year and I thought it sounded great.
I called the toll free number and made my request for the free VHS.
One day I came home from school and my mom and dad asked me, “Did you order something from the Mormons?”
I didn’t even know what a Mormon was.
I told them I ordered a Jesus movie and they kindly explained it was about the wrong Jesus!
That is when I learned that not all cults are committing mass suicide or mass murder.
Not all cults are trying to catch a ride on a comet or sound thoroughly “un-Christian.”
I found out that some cults walk and talk like Christianity, but when you pull off the mask, you find something all together different.
If all the cults were easy to label as “off their rocker,” there would be little need for this study.
But that is not the case.
Many of them are going to use our language.
They might even use a version of our Bible.
They are sneaky counterfeits and we must be able to spot them.
And more than that—since real people with real souls are involved in these groups, we must be able to talk to them with love and gentleness and truth.
And my hope is that by the end of the summer, you won’t panic when the cult member knocks at your door.
My hope is you will feel more prepared to talk to your co-worker who is possibly an adherent to this stuff.
Maybe you have someone in your family.
But we aren’t just studying these things to say, “Look how Loony Tunes these people are!”
Instead, we are studying so that we are prepared to do that which the Bible calls us to do.
1 Peter 3:15 ESV
but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
We want to love cultists enough to be able to show them the difference in what they believe and what we believe and how if they reject the Gospel of the Scriptures, they are in peril.
And we want to make sure we are ready to be able honor Christ as we go about that work.
So over this summer, we will spend our times in Midweek looking at the counterfeits.
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Mormons
Those are the two you are mostly likely to come it contact with and that we will spend the most time on
But we will also look at:
New Age spirituality
The Satanic Temple
And the religion of Tom Cruise: Scientology
But for tonight, we will be focused on the definition of a cult and how one would even end up being a cultist

THE TRUE GOSPEL

Before we launch off into the definition of a cult, we must ask, what is NOT a cult?
1 Corinthians 15:1–4 ESV
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
These are matters of first importance. These are the definers for orthodox, biblical Christianity.
And if we were to capture these truths, along with the crucial doctrines that neighbor them in the Bible, we would have a creed that reads like this:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to the dead.   
The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy universal church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Apostles’ Creed
To deny these truths is to deny the heart of the Gospel.
Or maybe we would consider the 20 Christian beliefs that Wayne Grudem says every Christian should know and understand:
The Bible is God’s Word and it is authoritative, necessary, clear and sufficient
God exists and He is knowable, independent, unchangeable, eternal, omnipresent, Spirit, invisible, omniscient, wise, truthful, good, love, holy, righteous and just, jealous, wrathful toward sin, sovereign, free, omnipotent, perfect, blessed, beautiful and simple or unified.
God exists in three Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit
God is the Creator
God is personal and we can pray to Him
Satan is a fallen angel—the enemy of God and angels and demons exist
Man is created for God’s glory and in God’s image
Man fell into sin and is depraved and cut off from God, bringing death into the world
God’s Son is Jesus who is fully God and fully man
Jesus died an atoning death as a Substitute for sinful man
Jesus rose again as the firstfruits of all who would be raised
Salvation is by grace alone
People must repent of their sin and put saving faith in Christ to receive God’s grace
When people believe in Christ, they are justified and adopted into God’s family
Those who are justified will be sanctified and will persevere in the faith
Everyone will die, unless Christ returns first and this is a result of sin in the world
Those who die in Christ will go to the intermediate heaven until Christ’s return
The Church is all true believers, regardless of what period of history they lived in
Local churches are the local expression of the Church universal
Jesus will return in His Second Coming
Everyone will be judged upon His return—some to eternal life and some to eternal death
Those resurrected to eternal life will live on the New Earth forever with God
When people veer from these teachings, we see cults beginning to form.
When people twist God’s clear teaching on these subjects, we see counterfeits enter the scene
When people outright deny these truths, we see opposing gospels in the marketplace of ideas
But when someone is committed to these truths, we are able to look at them and say, “Praise God—this is orthodoxy. This is right belief!”
We may not all agree on the extent of God’s sovereignty in salvation or the timing of the 2nd Coming or which translation of the Bible we use or even the day Jesus died (some people are adamant He died on a Wednesday)—but we do agree on these doctrines in the general sense.
This is the essence of historical, biblically faithful, orthodox Christianity, as defined by God’s revelation in the Holy Word.

SO WHAT IS A CULT?

So with that foundation in place—let’s ask the question:
What is a cult?
The Kingdom of the Cults Handbook: Quick Reference Guide to Alternative Belief Systems (1. The Kingdom of the Cults)
Dr. Charles C. Braden states:
A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.
So cults that have deviated from the Christian faith would be groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormon and those involved with Christian Science.
And yet, despite representing deviations from Christian orthodoxy, they still want to be known as Christians or feel like they should be known as a denomination of Christianity.
Here is Walter Martin on this:

From a theological viewpoint, the cults contain many major deviations from historical Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, they continue to insist that they are entitled to be classified as Christians.

So in our series this spring and summer, we are not going to spend much time with cults or major world religions that stand distinct from Christianity in a fairly obvious way.
For example, we won’t deal with Islam or Taoism this summer.
We will focus on those cults who use language similar that can seem similar to our faith, claim a version of Jesus, are infiltrating the Christian church or are specifically focused on opposing the Christian Bible.
And then I’m throwing in Scientology for a good time!
Though even that will have its helpful moments.
Another hallmark of cults is that they tend to be focused on the interpretation of one person.

1. Jehovah’s Witnesses are, for the most part, followers of the interpretations of Charles T. Russell and J. F. Rutherford.

2. The Christian Scientist of today is a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy and her interpretations of Scripture.

3. The Mormons adhere to those interpretations found in the writings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

So as Baptists, we do not gather around the teachings of any one man or one person.
The foundational confession of faith for our denomination is the 2nd London Baptist Confession of 1689.
But that confession is not one man’s opinion on a handful verses taken out of context or one man’s claim to some sort of new revelation.
That confession is born from the Scriptures in their totality and was developed by not one man, but a group of men who served together to produce it—much like the Westminster Confession.
None of them claimed authority as have new interpretations or a fresh word from God.
None of them claimed to find plates in the ground with new Scripture on them.
Instead, they worked together to produce a confession that represented the whole of the Christian faith as it is revealed in God’s perfect Word.
We can say that the Baptist Faith and Message, the current statement of faith of our denomination, came about in a similar way.
And with both the 1689 and the Baptist Faith and Message, we are not signing up for a body of doctrine, but for what Jude calls, “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3)
Jude 3 ESV
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
And if you keep reading, you see why Jude found it necessary to write his letter:
Jude 4 ESV
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
And that which Jude was reacting against is exactly the sort of error we see in the cults that have shot off from Christianity into damnable heresy—they pervert the grace of God and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Charles Taze Russell did it with his false claims about the 2nd coming and denying Christ as God in the flesh.
Joseph Smith did it in teaching that Jesus is the twice-sired half-brother of Satan and that man can become a god.
Mary Baker Eddy did it in saying that Jesus is not God and that He did not resurrect and claiming the Bible is filled with error.
Some people say that calling Mormonism and the Watchtower Organization (the society of Jehovah’s Witnesses) a cult is derogatory and crude.
However, the dictionary definition is rather straight-forward:
Cult: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Spurious is another word for counterfeit.
So a cult is not just a small group of deluded people who commit mass suicide in a tragic tale of group-think gone wrong.
It can be a fairly large sect of religious people who have deterred from the orthodox views of a religion and created something that is counterfeit to right belief.
And that is exactly what you see in cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism and so on.

LANGUAGE MATTERS

And I think there is good reason to not back off of speaking of these groups in these ways.
I say that because of what the Bible has to say about false teachers, false Christs and false gospels.

JESUS

First, we start with Jesus who had no doubt that false Christs and false Messiahs would come.
Matthew 24:5 ESV
For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.
Matthew 7:15–17 ESV
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

JOHN

Then we have the Apostle John who said that those who depart from the faith and go out from us prove they were not of us in the first place:
1 John 2:19 ESV
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
He also warned that we have to test the spirits that come to us because not all of them are from the Lord:
1 John 4:1 ESV
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

PAUL

And Paul also warned of false apostles coming with false gospels who are disguised as purveyors of the truth.
2 Corinthians 11:13–15 ESV
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
These cults don’t want the term cult used about them because they want acceptance in the mainstream religious landscape of America.
Mormons are desperate to not be associated with their polygamous past and are eager to separate themselves from past doctrines that stated the skin of black people was a curse from God.
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not want to be chained to all of their eschatology prophecies that have failed time and time again.
The term cult continues to define them as a deviation from historical Christian doctrine and hampers their ability to grow.
But we cannot give an inch.
Here is Walter Martin again:
The Kingdom of the Cults Handbook: Quick Reference Guide to Alternative Belief Systems (1. The Kingdom of the Cults)
Today, the kingdom of the cults stretches throughout the world, its membership in the millions, with about 15 million cult members in the United States alone. The Church of Jesus Christ has badly neglected both the evangelizing and refuting of the various cult systems...
Ground has already been lost because we think that these fringe movements cannot gain steam or followers, but as events have unfolded, that is not the case.
The lack of pushback has given ground.
The term cult is important because it says exactly what these groups are and designates their theological and doctrinal fallacies as strange and perverted distortions of the one true Gospel.
Its keeps rightful hurdles in their path in the cultural conversation.
And it keeps their errant doctrine rightly designated as false teaching, coming from false prophets, proclaiming false ways of salvation through false Christs.

HOW DOES ONE END UP IN A CULT? WHY DO THEY STAY?

Well, some are born into it and it is all they know.

CONFUSION AND CONFLATION

But when it comes to new converts, purposeful confusion plays a massive role in their evangelistic tactics.
Understand that the folks in Salt Lake WANT your lost friends and family to think there is no difference between them and you.
Furthermore, they want YOU to think there is no difference between them and you.
There is a reason why the Mormons have spent $300 million to rebrand themselves as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brand strategist Lindsay Pederson commented on this from a purely marketing perspective.
She said it is like a Cola company changing their name to be known as a beverage company because they don’t want to be ignored by people who are anti-Soda.
They want to be accepted as an option by tea-drinkers and kombucha drinksers and seltzer drinkers.
For example, if Coke can go from being a soda company to a beverage company, they have suddenly been able to broaden their appeal.
The word Mormon was perceived as overly-specific – cola, rather than a beverage, if you will. By repositioning as a type of Christianity, Mormonism broadens the range of people who may find it relevant. Books about Mormonism might move from the cult section to the Christianity section.
Lindsay Pederson, Ironclad Brand Strategy
Just like an orthodox Christian might say, “I am part of the Baptist church,” or the “Methodist church” or the “Presbyterian church,” the Mormon can now say, “I’m a part of the LDS church. I worship Jesus just like you.”
This conflation and confusion of language is standard cult behavior.
Cultists love to use terminology as a way to seduce new followers into the fold.
Here is Mr. Walter Martin one more time:

The average non-Christian cult owes its very existence to the fact that it has utilized the terminology of Christianity, has borrowed liberally from the Bible (almost always out of context), and sprinkled its format with evangelical clichés and terms wherever possible or advantageous. Up to now this has been a highly successful attempt to represent their respective systems of thought as “Christian.”

So if you are talking with a Mormon and you say you believe in God, they we will say, “We do too!”
But what they don’t tell you is that their definition of God is that Father God is one of many gods and goddesses that exist and he is simply the god of this world.
If you are talking with a Jehovah’s Witness, they will say they believe in Jesus too.
But what they don’t tell you is that they believe Jesus is a created being, a secondary sort of god, who is Michael, the archangel.
If you are talking with a Christian Scientist, they will speak about sin.
But what they don’t tell you is that they define sin as an illusion, not disobedience to God’s laws.
If you are talking with a New Age spiritualist and you bring up salvation, they might not reject the term.
But what they won’t tell you is that salvation means becoming one with god and the universe, not reconciliation to God the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son.
Here is an example from a Mormon talk at their 2022 General Conference. Notice how Christian it sounds, from a speaker who denies the Trinity and the deity of Christ:
Being one with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is without doubt the ultimate in belonging. Thus, the doctrine of belonging comes down to this—each one of us can affirm: Jesus Christ died for me; He thought me worthy of His blood. He loves me and can make all the difference in my life. As I repent, His grace will transform me. I am one with Him in the gospel covenant; I belong in His Church and kingdom; and I belong in His cause to bring redemption to all of God’s children.
So in light of their clever wordplay, some people who were raised in the church and maybe not discipled well and are nominal believers—they are prey for the predator of these false teachers and false teaching.
The average cultist knows their terminology thoroughly. They also are prepared to discuss Christian theology with articulation and intelligence—better than some who claim to be Christians.
They want to catch people flat-footed.
They are trained to avoid defining their terms so that they don’t seem to diverge from Christians on major doctrines like the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, etc...
They don’t want to bring all of that baggage out on the first date, so to speak.
They want to win you over with confusion, make it seems as if the differences are semantics, until you trust them enough for them to break out the real heretical big guns.
And these tactics are often quite effective when meeting unsuspecting people who are lonely, broken and inquisitive and looking for hope.
They are received well when the come across someone who was burned by a church and they are ready for religion, but they are longing for something different than their bad experience in their past.

COMMUNITY, BELONGING AND DUTY

Another reason people join up with one of these groups is that they are attracted to the community and purpose it provides.
Particularly in the case of Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, a sense of purpose in belonging is one of the hallmarks of their brand.
Here is Newsweek talking about Mormons in an article:
No matter where Mormons live, they find themselves part of a network of mutual concern; in Mormon theology everyone is a minister of a kind, everyone is empowered in some way to do good to others, and to have good done unto them: it is a 21st-century covenant of caring.
Newsweek, October 2005
In fact, one of the reasons that the Mormons have such a high retention rate is that the adherents are terrified of losing their community. 70% of those raised in the Mormon church stay in the Mormon church.
Here is a Christian convert who left Mormonism, named Micah Wilder talking about how hard it was to walk away:
The mere thought of the high cost I had to pay frightened me and made me feel guilty. After all, every facet of my life was so deeply entrenched in my religious identity: my family, friends, school, career path, relationships, reputation, hopes, dreams, earthly aspirations, culture, respect and more. I couldn’t even fathom a life outside of that which I knew.
Micah Wilder
For most of these cults, consumerism is not an option. Duty is demanded.
Coming to church and slipping in and out without engaging is not just frowned upon, it is unheard of.
If you are IN, you are IN.
In Thom Rainer’s book, The Unexpected Journey, he speaks to people who have converted out of cults to the Christian faith. He spoke to one man named Paul who was very high up in the Watchtower Society.
Paul told him why Witnesses are so bought in to the duties of the organization:
The organization fills you with a life of guilt. You can never do enough, so you keep pushing yourself to work harder and harder, hoping one day you will be worthy of living in Paradise on earth. I guess guilt is the stick and Paradise is the carrot. Both really motivate Witnesses to go to homes and give away their literature.
Paul via Thom Rainer
Community, belonging and duty are powerful anchors to keep one rooted in any club or organization or religion.
But when you add the psychological warping employed by cults, it only becomes more powerful.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARPING

So let’s turn our attention there as our final stop on understanding how cults get people IN and get people to STAY.
Here are some of the go-to psychological effects that cult-think has on the minds of their adherents:
Close-mindedness and Reconstruction: Those in cults are not interested in a rational evaluation of the facts. They have no problem holding to contradictory, inconsistent beliefs because they will tear down and reconstruct reality to fit within the narrow, errant interpretations they have been taught.
So for example, if point out to a Mormon that in the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi 25:30, it says you must keep performances and ordinances to be saved and you show them how that contradicts Paul in Romans 4—a text they also count as Scripture—they have no problem with it.
They’ll find a way to make Paul work with Joseph Smith even though there is a flat out contradiction there.
They will reconstruct Paul with bad interpretation practices to keep their Book of Mormon in tact.
It would be like have two puzzles on your table and I tell you, “You can’t make one puzzle out of this. These two things are different.”
And your response is, “You just don’t understand the truth. Watch me.”
And then you take out glue and tape and you force all these puzzle pieces together and make one big non-sensical awkward picture from it.
Antagonism and Hostility: This is the mindset that says, “If someone disagrees with us, that is just because they are out to get us.”
This is the sort of thinking that leads Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout their history to refer to Christian clergy as “dumb dogs.”
Why do they preach the Trinity and eternal judgment? Not because of the Scriptures. It is because they are uneducated animals.
This is a far cry from the place we started tonight, where Peter tells us to have a ready defense, but to do it with gentleness and respect.
It is a far cry from loving your enemy.
One of the best ways that we can combat this is to show the cultist that we are not actually dumb dogs. And to show them that we do not hate them—we love them.
When you respond to them with intelligent reason and the supernatural love of Christ, you are undoing everything that they have been told about you behind closed doors.
Martin says: (Walter Martin)

Once someone thoroughly “brainwashed” psychologically by his own authority system—The Watchtower Society, Mrs. Eddy’s books, the writings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young—is confronted by a Christian he can accept on a personal basis apart from differences of theological opinion, the possibility of communication improves markedly.

Indoctrination and Delusion: Most of these cults use indoctrination to not only teach their errant doctrine, but to also convince their members that anyone who disagrees is seduced by the devil or dark forces and are operating with prejudice.
They have been taught that the historic Christian church is filled with rottenness, religious exploitation, and ugly division.
The cult has freed them from the tyranny of Christianity Gone Wrong.
This is a tough delusion to break through because anything that they hear from a historically orthodox believer is taken with a grain of salt.
You are still trapped!
The indoctrination and delusion has led them to a place where only their point of view is seen as pure truth without prejudice.
In other words, their indoctrination and delusion has led them to believe that WE are indoctrinated and deluded.
Isolationism and Intolerance: Finally, people join cults and then stay because they become isolated and intolerant toward anyone outside the community.
I’m going to use a very silly analogy to explain this:
When I lived in Tennessee for three years, I discovered that there is no one more disconnected from the reality of what is actually happening in the sports world, than Tennessee football fans.
Every year, they thought they were going to win the SEC and go to the National Championship.
Every year, they thought they were going to beat Alabama and LSU.
Every year, they thought it was finally going to happen for Old Rocky Top.
Now if you watch college football even somewhat closely, you know they haven’t been close since Peyton Manning played there during the Clinton Administration.
Why are they so delusional?
Because they are isolated!
They listen to Tennessee sports radio. They read Tennessee sports blogs. They talk to nothing but other Tennessee fans. They see the whole world with Volunteer Orange glasses on.
And if you dare to bring up any reality-based, “Come back to earth,” reasoning about why they have no chance against Georgia and LSU and Alabama, they lose their minds on you.
YOU DON’T KNOW!
Now, all of that is fairly comical and it is about sports, so it doesn’t matter, but it is sad when you apply it to the matters of eternity.
Those who belong to these groups are typically disconnected from the rest of the world in a way that opens the door for group-think in a small space.
And if you come in from the outside contradicting the group, well you are just part of the worldly opposition.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
It is a hard mindset to break through.

CONCLUSION

We will stop here for tonight and the next time we are together in this study, we will begin by examining the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But as we close, I will say, there is certainly much more we could go over tonight.
This has not been exhaustive.
But I do hope it is informative.
And I hope it sets the stage for our study.
If we understand what a cult is and why people are a part of one.; Why they join and Why they stay…I think we will actually have more compassion on them.
We will see how sad it is that their souls are seduced and secluded by falsehood.
We will see the behavior patterns and psychological warpings and our hearts should break.
God has mercy for the Mormon on his bike.
God has mercy for the Jehovah’s Witness at your door or on her stool down at Yorktown Beach with her literature, six days a week from 7am-9am.
God has pity for the deluded Christian Scientist or Satanist.
Let us gain the the heart of God for them.
Let us love them and pray for them and patiently endeavor to speak the truth of the Gospel, which is the only hope for their souls.
The cults are no trainwreck to rubberneck. They are a mission field.
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