WHAT IS A CULT? Part (I)

IS YOUR CHURCH A CULT?

The words you are about to read are not intended to offend anyone or even malice any institution, but facts that can be searched, tested and tried before I am accused of anything. I am going to attempt and define a cult, but I must mention, in form of a disclaimer, that am not aiming at any individual but systems and institutions.

The term Cult has different meanings, but to me a ‘Cult’ is a group of religious (or non-religious) people grouped, organized and at a certain level institutionalized, whose belief system and practices directly or indirectly deviate significantly from, and often contradict the Holy Scriptures as interpreted in Biblical Christianity.

The term Cult might be encumbered by massive emotions and intentional bias by many who define it, but as a Christian Theologian, I would define a Cult as a system that mathematically tampers with the five Biblical and Orthodox protestant Solas which are:

• Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.
• Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through Faith in Jesus Christ alone.
• Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the Grace of God alone.
• Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King.
• Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.

A Cult does not have a standard and limited definition. You can only tell whether it is a Cult by evaluating how much mathematics it exercises on the five Christian Solas. When it comes to SOLA SCRIPTURA (Scripture Alone), Cults exercise four basic mathematics symbols; ADD, SUBTRACT, DIVIDE, and MULTIPLY.

Cults do not practically consider Scripture as the sole authoritative source of truth and doctrine. Their documents might declare the supremacy of Scripture, but in belief and practice, it is not the case. Cults subject Scripture to the interpretation of their leaders, the writings/books of their founders, and policy/institutional documents. They argue that since the same Spirit (God) inspired and spoke directly to their cult leaders and founders, what they write and say, stands on equal footing with the Canon books of the Bible.

Allow me to use Catholicism, SDA, and Jehovah’s Witness as case studies here. The Roman Catholic Popes formulated the Catechisms, reduced and restricted the Bible to the New Testament in the Latin Vulgate (Vangil). Charles Taze Russel managed to found the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, as I speak, have come up with their own version of the Bible and many other inspired literature works.

The founder of the Jehovah Witness had also drunk from the founder of the modern Seventh-Day Adventist Cult known as William Miller who, in his teaching of scripture, gave an answer where Jesus Himself didn’t (Mathew 24:36), and set the date of the second coming as April 14^th 1843. That failed and another date, 20^th October 1844, was set. That also failed and gave birth to a prophetic movement spearheaded by a one Ellen G. White whose writings shape 80% of the church beliefs and doctrines.

As I speak now, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church also have their own version of the Bible known as the Clear Word Bible. The Seventh-day Adventists, through the writings of this woman, have produced many other cultic groups and sects like the Davidians, Health Reform, etc. which the mainstream cult is also fighting.

The same happened as the Islam Cult evolved when its founder Prophet Mohamed, in his cave isolation, deduced, added, and punctuated the Bible with literature of the Monophysitism Christian sect in Arabia to formulate the Quran and other writings known as the Hadiths that, in practice, are also a source of truth.

Until today, global politics is struggling with the doctrine of terrorism which has split the Islamic scholars into two factions, with some proving it is Islamic while others dismiss it. All this confusion in mainstream cultic religions and more is due to the abuse of the first sola which is SOLA SCRIPTURA.

When it comes to SOLA FIDE (Faith Alone) and SOLA GRATIA (Grace Alone), Cults will in their interpretation ADD (+ sign) WORKS to Faith and to Grace. When the Bible says we are saved by Grace through Faith alone, Cults, through proof texting, add works either in the process of salvation or after salvation, and will tell you that good works are necessary for your Sanctification and Glorification.

In the end, it makes the Righteousness of God, by which we are saved, an insufficient provision that is always fulfilled and completed by man’s works.

By this, Cults institute a performance based salvation and rituals like fasting and other forms of inflicting pain to self, walking long distances bare foot, or walking on coals of fire, etc. purchase of holy water, holy rice, handkerchiefs, scarfs and whatever the leader mystifies to be holy, manipulated tithing and other materialistic and financial donations directly to the organization or to the leader, exercising strict dress-code, fashion and color like the priesthood gowns, mystifying church instruments like holy cups, holy bread, holy pews etc. ritual baths and cleansings, special sacred days, dietary laws, veneration of both the living and dead saints, chanting and reciting written prayers, ritually mandatory morning, lunch time and night prayers, routine visits to Prayer Mountains and occasion pilgrimage to gazzetted geographies and all sorts of righteousness by works ecclesiastical behavior become part of the process of one’s deliverance by God.

These do not have to be written dogmas but they are procedurally established through consistent practice. Cults identify what is good or right then multiply it more and more until it loses sense and direction. Cults then go ahead to threaten followers that salvation depends on membership in their organizations which creates the US verses THEM attitude.

A Cult claims to be the only exclusive representative of God on earth and encourages its followers to look at other fellowships as false and dangerous. Cult members are directly or indirectly psychologically prepared to believe that if a person leaves the group, they lose their Salvation. Followers are told that they will be blessed or cursed depending on how much they perform, and finally, they will be judged by these works to either inherit heaven or hell which basically makes the Grace of God irrelevant and incoherent.

About the SOLUS CHRISTUS (Jesus Alone) and the SOLI DEO GLORIA (Glory to God Alone), all cults subtract divinity from Jesus Christ. Some, like Islam, consider him to be a man and just another prophet. Others, like Catholicism, reduce him to the second person of the hierarchy of the Trinity. Cults do not look at Jesus Christ as the great God (Titus 2:13), but as a god lower than another God.

Cults do not look at Jesus as God the Father himself who was dressed in flesh, God Incarnate (John 1:1-3, 14) but as just another man whose claim to be God was substantiated. Cults are not monotheistic (worship of one God), but they entertain a disguised polytheism (worship). The Biblical shema, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy. 6:4) is not emphasized.

Cults then, in the process, divide the nature of who God is in bits they like calling three in one or one in three – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The danger of hierarchy in divinity raises other issues of some people worshipping Jesus at the expense of the Father, and others emphasizing the Father at the rejection of the Son, etc. Glory that belongs to God and God alone ends up being shared and given to images of all these deity-like replicas that cults create.

Salvation then, is no longer by Christ alone but by the Holy Spirit, then through Jesus Christ, then God the Father decides whether you are saved or not. In fact, the Catholics have replaced the Holy Spirit with the Holy Virgin Mary. So you go through the earthly virgin mother of Jesus, who then pleads with her Son on your behalf, and then the Son also takes your case to the angry Father.

This is addition to what the Bible teaches, and it is subtraction of the divinity of Jesus Christ and reducing him to another man. At the same time, it is dividing the nature of God and splitting it into more than one. Eventually, God is given the glory that belongs to him but this glory is diverted to other dummy gods.

If Christianity, at any point, looks at Jesus Christ of Nazareth as a man and not as God Himself, then it becomes another Cult built around this historical Palestinian man. This is why in Theology, we emphasize the Historical Jesus and the Jesus of Faith and make sure we draw a distinction between Christianity and all other religions or cults in the world.

Jesus was NOT just another man or other philosopher like Siddhartha Gautama Budha who founded the Buddhism Cult, Confucius who started Confucianism, Prophet Mohammed who started Islam, Zoroaster who founded Zoroastrianism, Abraham who founded Judaism, Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism, John Knox who founded the Presbyterianism, Charles Taze Russell who founded the Jehovah’s Witness, William Miller who founded what we know as the Seventh-day Adventists, Emperor Constantinople who instituted Roman Catholicism, Sanatana Dharma the founder of Hinduism, John Smyth who founded the Baptists and many more.

If Jesus was just another man, then Christianity too would be another religion and therefore, a Cult. But Christianity unlike all these cults, was founded on Jesus Christ alone. None of all these founders even died for his followers, none of these founders is alive as Jesus Christ the Living God is.

Jesus Christ is the founder of Christianity and, while the church has apostles and prophets as agents of this true God (As Ephesians 2:20 puts it), Jesus Christ the one true God, is the linchpin upon which the church is built and holds.

Jesus Christ is the true shepherd and those who came before him are thieves and robbers as John 10:8 puts it. The Bible reminds us that; “No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1Corithinans 3:11).

There are two criteria which I have outlined in this presentation that will help you tell whether your Church or religion is a cult:

The first is for you to dig deeper and find out how your church/religion treats the five Solas (Scripture, Faith, Grace, Christ and Glory), the second is who they understand Jesus Christ to really be. Is he God the father incarnate or just the Son of God? Jesus of Nazareth, or just a prophet like any other modern and historical prophet? Is he just savior or Lord of hosts?

How your church understands and appreciates Jesus has everything to do with whether it is a cult or not. In the next presentation I will address the question: Is there a difference between a cult and a religion in the Bible?

God bless you, I invoke TRUTH, REASON, and FAITH

Am Pr. I.T.WHITE
The Gospel Hawker