I have seen a lot of people claim their church to be a cult.\u00a0\u00a0Most commonly,\u00a0the cult was the last church they attended.\u00a0 The new church is perfect but Praise the Lord for freeing us from the last church.\u00a0 And a year later, they find themselves Praising the Lord for they have been delivered yet again from another cult.\u00a0 Often, ex-church members treat their former churches like the wife on her 5th husband.\u00a0 Yes, the church has it’s share of problems.\u00a0 After all it is a membership who’s main claim to fame is they are sinners and when you put a bunch of sinners together it doesn’t take long for problems to surface.\u00a0 In fact it only takes putting 2 sinners together for problems to pop up and reveal our hidden inner selfishness.\u00a0 This proves itself in marriage more often than not.\u00a0 However, most of the time it is us who are the problem, not the church, not the leadership, not strict biblical teaching.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t mean the church is never wrong.\u00a0 Some churches can have some cultic habits.\u00a0\u00a0 Some churches can have some cultic doctrines.\u00a0 But what I find is most often, if you are at a church that preaches more truth than error, most of the “cultic” claims are excuses.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We tend to blame others and circumstances for life not going our way. Church is no different.<\/p>\n
First, I need to clarify Bible doctrine.\u00a0 First, the Bible teaches you cannot earn salvation.\u00a0 It is a free gift.\u00a0 Many churches teach otherwise, and that puts you on the wrong foundation.\u00a0 If your church cannot get salvation right, you are starting off wrong and you won’t recover.\u00a0 Some churches teach church tradition TRUMPS what the Bible says.\u00a0\u00a0 God says what is in his word has the final say.\u00a0 Some churches teach that all religions get you to heaven. Jesus said HE is the WAY.\u00a0 Some teach salvation is from something you do — a baptism, confirmation, whatever.<\/p>\n
The Bible says it is not by works of righteousness.\u00a0 Heaven will not be full of people bragging how wonderful they are.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Heaven will be full of people completely in awe of how wonderful God is, knowing full well that they would be in hell —and rightly so— if it were not for the shed blood of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
There are many though out there that claim any church that believes in any form of sanctification process or has strong Bible convictions or wants to try and live differently from the world’s way of doing things as a cult.\u00a0 They theorize that a group of people that don’t line up with the opinions of the world must be a cult.\u00a0 Many of these claims come from former members who then leave for greener pastures, but most of the time they are only greener because they use astroturf for the foundation.<\/p>\n
Jesus still\u00a0doesn’t change.\u00a0 Good is becoming evil\u00a0today, and evil is looking good.\u00a0 The Bible said that would happen.\u00a0\u00a0 Today the world’s agenda is getting louder and bolder and more confident.\u00a0 The church is backing up and apologizing if it doesn’t cave in to the pressure.\u00a0 The easy straw-man that someone can build is to just use the cult word.<\/p>\n
Many ex-fundamentalists claim they were in a cult.\u00a0 After studying this out and prayerfully looking at it, I think the majority of the time, the problem was instead external obedience and no inward heart obedience.\u00a0 Meaning, you don’t have the Holy Spirit controlling you, but you have merely external rules and church practices pressuring you to conform.\u00a0 It is like a stallion that is chained up but once the controls are off the stallion busts out full speed.\u00a0 If the stallion is broken it is different.<\/p>\n
What I am saying, is you can externally get someone to “act like a Christian.”\u00a0 They might dress right, act right, and smell right.\u00a0 But if the heart has never been changed, they will re-conform\u00a0to wherever else they end up, and will fit into the mold of the moment.<\/p>\n
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I have seen a lot of people claim their church to be a cult.\u00a0\u00a0Most commonly,\u00a0the cult was the last church they attended.\u00a0 The new church is perfect but Praise the Lord for freeing us from the last church.\u00a0 And a … Continue reading