Detecting cult religion is really quite simple. The
characteristics of a cult religion revolves around fear-mongering. The
naive and fearful who are seduced into cult religions, are uninformed church goers. Anytime a
church goer thinks that some character
standing in a pulpit speaks for God/Jesus Christ, they have been seduced.
No preacher or pastor speaks for God. God speaks
for Himself and you have yet to see God or hear His voice. After all don't you
speak for yourself? Should someone pretend to be you and speak for you,
would that not be preposterous? The same is true for God.
When those who penned ink on paper and called it
"the Bible", they had no real authority from God to do so, but they
made the claim that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God" and that "God commanded" and
so forth. What overwhelming vanity and
ego for those who made such fraudulent claims.
The greatest deception on planet earth is that "God
said" something, or "God commanded" something or that "the
Bible is the word of God", as if humans had a right to put words in the
mouth of God. It is as easy as falling off a log to accept that
because someone long ago said something, it is
true, but is it?
You read that God supposedly spoke with some character
named Moses out of a burning bush, and yet all that is, is ink on paper and
there is no proof that such a thing ever happened. Do we assume
"truth" just because we read a myth, a legend, a fiction or a human
fabrication? Should you
or I today make the claim that God spoke to us out of a
burning bush, would anyone believe it? Not likely. So why believe ancient myths as valid?
Cult preachers are great pretenders. They have an
aura of "authority", when in reality they have none. You can be
positive if free $money, were not involved, these preacher pretenders would be
reduced to common and normal human beings, who have no desire to rule over or
control others.
The real motive for churches, preachers and all
religions, is free $cash and the love of power and control, which equates to
super vanity and ego of the overlords.
In reality the self-appointed "lords" in the
pulpits are driven by extreme
self-importance, all the while the simple minded in the pews tremble in false
fear of these religious clowns. Jesus
came to set the captives free, and if you are captive to a church lord, the
only way you will ever be free, is to exit and exit now and forever from the
cult, because it is a cult.
All religious cults thrive on FEAR, but God is LOVE and
He does not exist by compelling fear. Tithing, Sabbath keeping, Feast
days and such are all man-made concepts, which give religious overlords false
power over the gullible.
Why quote "the Bible" as if God is the
author? Men penned the so called bible and it is the greatest source of fear-mongering
on planet earth. There is NO FEAR in love and if God is love then
God does not compel humans on the basis of fear. God compels
humans on the basis of LOVE, COMPASSION MERCY, EMPATHY and HUMILITY.
Proof that your preacher is a fraud, is that he compels
you to comply to the false doctrine of tithing and other legalistic nonsense.
Van Robison
5 comments:
Religions are based on sacred scripture written 1.5 thousand-3 or more thousand years ago. No one knows who wrote any of the books of the bible. There are many contradictions in the bible. There is evidence that many of the writings where revised and changed. Words and phrases where subtracted or added to many books of the bible. There is no evidence that many of the events that are mentioned in the bible didn't take place or where physically impossible, such as the global flood and Joshua's long day. How can this book be divinely inspired when we don't even know who wrote it and it is filed with so many errors and inconsistancies?
Much if not most of this true especially concerning those who are self appointed to be or do all they claim to be and need to do. Their lack of formal training and theological and historical church history is appaling and telling.
The Bible itself also has huge historical and errancy issues but few are willing to address them or concoct an appropriate apologetic to keep their false views on inerrancy and "God breathed" in place. The Bible is a very man made book and the books got in it by vote not by inspiration. A number of the NT books are pious forgeries.
Most seminarians and such start out young and naive with very good intentions. Ministry fits them and they believe the Bible is what they were told it is. Only as years pass in ministry, questions arise, circumstances unfold and new information becomes available does a man or woman in ministry find themselves faced with "questions"
If they have none, they are ignorant or just comfy in denial. If they pursue them, there is a price to pay.
None of the COG ministry and offshoots of WCG are well trained in theology and are mere Bible readers and talkers for the most part. Most fundamentalists are.
Christianity today is just as caught up in their new holidays for Jesus as the Jewish Christians were and are in the OT Holydays with a Jesus spin.
Well no, just no.
“Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships” by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias in the Chapter Defining a Cult in the subsection What is a Cult? uses the definition of a cult from the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA as noted above in the article), adopted at a 1985 conference of scholars and policymakers:
A cult is a group or movement exhibiting great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing, and employing unethical manipulative or coercive techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it), designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.
It's good to get definitions straight so we can all be on the same page.
Thanks for the definition DB. This is a good definition, and one that also happens to be a thoroughly accurate description of WCG and its many splinters.
A long time ago I was seated next to a guy, I think I was at the Emergency Ward for stitches or something, and we started conversing and eventually the topic turned to religion, and when he finally got it out of me exactly what "church" I was in, he told me point-blank, "That's a cult and you should get out of it." At the time I didn't think much of that opinion, but he was right. However, life is complicated, and you don't change up your life simply because somebody tells you that you should, even if they are right. Eventually I did get out, but it happened because of Dennis' "questions" and because I began to see it for what it was directly, with my own eyes as it were, not second-hand. But I look back on that and just say, yep, he was right, and thankfully I did manage to do what he told me to.
There is always an aura of mystery where this topic is concerned. We know the conditions of our own existence in the current space and time. Particularly based on the failures of modern day false prophets, and the personal consequences we have shared as a result, it is easy to extrapolate backwards and to assume that this has always been the way things were. Was there an era of miracles in the past? Were there ever any prophets who got it right? Is there such a thing as theophany?
We know that there were dinosaurs in the distant past, and that the earth experienced glacial ages, because the records are literally "written in stone" for these things. The basic problem with corroborating the spiritual is, aside from manuscripts, how would it be documented? We have evidence that a meteor impacted planet earth eons ago, right here in my state. But how could you document, let's say, the healing of a blind man in the first century? Does high sulphur content on some real estate somewhere in the Middle East definitively "prove" that Sodom and Gomorrah were supernaturally destroyed? Does the remnant of an ancient temple prove the postulated spiritual component to the legend that God lived amongst the Israelites?
My problem in all of this is not so much that events may or may not have happened, and that we are left to guess, or to speculate, based on the differences between evidence for the physical and evidence for the spiritual, but that people become cocksure about their speculations regarding the unknowable, and co-opt and use them to manipulate others, and to collect susceptible ones into their causes, forcing them to pick up the tab for these causes. That is a recipe either for wasted lives, or for later disillusionments which could come about in hundreds of different ways.
Does anyone know of a Mormon who looks forward to being caught up in the air with Joseph Smith, or a JW who looks forward to being ressurrected with Charles Taze Russell? We've got people floating around, driving the highways out there right now who can't wait to be swept up into the stratosphere with Herbert W. Armstrong! Their entire lives have been patterned after and governed by his. This goes way beyond simply believing that miraculous events may have transpired in the past, and drawing conservative inferences. They've made him into a type of character worse than they mocked the Catholics for making out of the popes. Is it any wonder why peoples' minds have become a little fried?
BB
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