OVERCOMING THE CULT CYCLE

Stage 1

You are committed to the cult and can kill for it. You are serious about cult business. You buy and read all their materials. You serve with all your heart and resources in all offices the cult gives you. You actually pray, play politics and kill to get an office in the cult. Cult leaders are vicars of God, and you fight whoever detects a wrong in them. You persecute those outside the cult (Acts 7-9). This is a good stage for if you are just a weekend pew member who takes nothing seriously, you will never be moved by anything.

Stage 2

Because you are too aggressive in the first stage, no one can preach and convince you, so all you need is a THEOPHANY – either a burning bush or being struck down by lightning, or any eventual accident or phenomenon to help you review (Acts 9-13). You become humble and start over again. You look at your former marked Bible and realise you marked the wrong texts and got the message wrong all this long. You spend sleepless nights searching and for the first time doubting yourself.

Stage 3

Denial. Because the THEOPHANY that has hit you is unbelievable, you delve into the self-deception of cleansing the cult. You develop an idea that the problem of the cult can be fixed, you start sympathizing with the cult, because of the sociology (relatives, friends and clients) you are about to lose. You start working hard towards fixing the cult. You start planning how to live within but not believe all their rubbish. You are encouraged by the opportunists who are in the cult for a cheque and popularity and advise you to stay within and keep queue. You hold meetings with them to pave a way forward but all these hit a dead end. You then realise that it is not that the cult has a problem, but instead it is the problem. Again you cry and hurt because the bargaining has failed. (Acts 9:19-22, Galatians 1:18-19)

Stage 4

RAGE. You feel bitter. All your honesty have been put in a wrong and corrupt system. You regret the choices (personal and public) you made in the context of pleasing the cult leadership and false doctrines. You ask WHY…WHY. You pour all that rage to the cult and abuse, write, copy and paste everything you come across against the cult. You attack leaders in writing and in person. You ask them why, and what hurts you more is that they don’t deny, neither do they challenge your new revelations. You feel pain, and this takes time for you feel the urge to be evened with this cult. (Galatians 1-3)

Stage 5

THEOLOGY. You are rebuked by God himself when he boldly tells you, that you and the cult are equally wrong. He reminds you of Prophet Jonah who prayed to God to destroy the sinners. God rebukes your irrational anger and asks you to stand and go to Nineveh and preach two things, GRACE and warn them about the JUDGEMENT.

Theology humbles you by revealing the 99 you didn’t know in relation to the single 1 you are bragging about and hitting others with. God teaches you to teach not to taunt and haunt others, so you stop copying and pasting other people’s content who actually had their motives and different experiences and you begin to write and speak.

You quit the cult (for social order) and you launch your new mission field in Antioch. You lose many people and remain with a few like Barnabas. You stay in Antioch, and for the first time, you start going overseas (something you could never do in the cult). You meet new people, you create another sociology. You sleep hungry sometimes but again you feed the hungry in the cult. You start fellowships and home churches. You answer questions, resolve conflicts. You work for yourself, get good associates and sponsor the mission, the gospel is preached and you are free at last. (Romans 15:14-33, Acts 15).

Finally, God succeeds…

These stages were chronological to Paul, they were chronological to me, but they could be in a different order for some. Either way, you need to overcome evil but not be overcome by evil.

We need to stop injecting a corpse, no one celebrates winning a dead man in a ring. So let the dead bury their dead and we hunt for the living with the gospel. We need to sacrifice our time and resources for the right cause just as we did under coercion (physical and psychological) while we were in the cult.

Pr ITM White
The Gospel Hawker