(Excerpt) Read more at runningawayfrommychurch.com ...
Not taking the clickbait. I’m taking your advice and running away from your church blog.
Don’t see the name of the church or organization here.
Uh, alt left radical liberal extremists?
These things are true of any clubhouse..................
Democrat Party.
“What is a Cult?”
The Democrat party.
Not a word about the church name.
Honeybees work hard making their honey and when fermented into a honey mead, and sipped on a cold winter night by the fireplace, it is a great way to appreciate the hard work of the bees.
“Q”
There are varying degrees of cultism. But one thing that is common in the extreme examples is when the leadership claim that you need them for your salvation. Oh, and send us money now!
Christ? God? Well I spoke to them and they told me to give the gospel. “I am the path to God.” People are extremely vulnerable to this.
Ask yourself, does your church do this? If it does, then you are a member of a cult.
There should be an 'Islam exception' to the 1st Amendment.
I’ve questioned as to whether the “faith” that I grew up in was a cult. I’m not sure what exactly qualifies as a cult, but it was far from any mainstream religion.
1 Timothy 3:15
One of my sisters belongs to a cult.
That’s why I left the Episcopal “church” ... you had to believe a gay Bishop was God’s Law ... c ‘ya ... that “church” is no loss to me, but I am a loss for them! I don’t like socializing with liberals, darned if I’m going to be told how to pray with them.
Well, the writer has an agenda to bad mouth those churches.
By implying that they are by default organizations which shun the *outside* world, just because they are small and independent is intellectual dishonesty.
Being part of a big name organization is not any guarantee of not being a cult or not shunning the *outside* world either.
Scripture gives us the warnings we need to avoid false teaching.
1 Timothy 4:1-5 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
Anyone whoa actually BELIEVES a DemocRAT !
The word “cult” is a club those holding to a majority belief use to bash minority beliefs.
Judaism, the majority view, saw early Christians as a cult, and worthy of being stoned to death.
Roman Catholicism, the majority view in the middle ages, saw dissenters from that view as a cult, and worthy of being burnt at the stake.
The RC in Florence, Italy, burned Savonarola for condemning the Renaissance for its wickedness. They felt justified in doing so because of his conservative views.
Both RC and Protestants burned at the stake, and drowned every Anabaptist (today’s Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites) they could get their hands on, for their minority view that infant baptism was unscriptural the majority view felt justified in persecuting them.
Once Lutheranism had become the majority in Germany, the Lutherans began persecuting other protestants who dissented from Luther...especially the Anabaptists.
The Calvinist Protestants at Geneva, Switzerland, considered Michael Servetus worthy of being burned at the stake for his minority view, and burned him.
Nowadays Christians know its not “Christian” to stone somebody to death, or burn them at a stake (except for some RC’s), the club in the hand of majority view evangelicals now is the word “cult.”
Historic Premillennialists (post-trib) today are shunned and kicked out of their majority view churches. In many pretrib dispensationalist denominations, if a preacher does not hold to their majority pretrib view, he is sent home from the foreign missionary field. They sometimes use the club (”cult”) on them .
Most Christians today don’t know their history, nor the scripture. This is America, where we have freedom to believe the scripture as we see it. We are not Italy, Germany, or England of the middle ages with their national churches. Not everybody is going to see it the same.
What we have today is a bunch of offended snowflake Christians, content in following their particular majority view, ready to wield the “cult” club on dissenters.
When Mormons or JW’s come to my door, they don’t offend me, I have studied the scripture for myself, I stick with the truth I see in the scripture, others have the freedom to see it differently. What people call “cults” are only a problem to the snowflakes, who don’t know the scripture for themselves.
I know of a church that many people call a cult
because they follow the church which we can see
that started on the day of Pentecost.
Some people believe they have to be a cult because
they do not believe the Christian church has any
authority to collect tithes.
They believe the gospel has already been preached and
it is the preachers job just to read what it says.
They do not push their doctrine down any ones wind pipe
they believe if you are not smart enough to figure it
out you can ask.
And much more which I liked so I will just say “ if it
is a cult” it is a darn good one.
If we have been any thing to fear it is from the big
religious institutions.
A lot of nonsense here. First and most importantly, the author is incorrect. His church was not a cult. There are extremely few churches that are cults. Cults are typically not churches. More commonly they are communes.
The distinguishing characteristics of a cult are:
1 - an all powerful leader who demands absolute obedience in all matters large and small.
2 - members are physically isolated from outside family, friends and community. This requires living in a designated place.
3 - leaving the cult is a death sentence, whether emotionally or physically.
4 - all of each member’s belongings become the absolute property of the leader.
5 - all attention is paid to the leader, all eyes are turned inward with no influence from the outside world permitted.
6 - membership involves initiation that puts the mew member in a totally compromised position. This may involve committing an immoral or criminal act.
7 - Membership requires the absolute sacrifice of the self to the leader, becoming his (or her) chattel slave.
If your church adheres to these conditions it is most certainly a cult. If it does not it is not a cult.