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Cults Less Spoken Of
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-08-23 20:15Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-08-23 20:15Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-cults1.php
Our religious community has sometimes been designated as outside the mainstream. Recently, a member of our congregation was told that we are a cultic group.
What triggers this kind of behavior? Was this member sacrificing chickens in her backyard? Singing strange songs? Did she throw away her Bible and replace it with one read only by members of our church?
None of the above. In fact, our religious community can agree almost completely with the statement of faith offered in the religious community whose members told our member that she was part of a cult.
Comparisons
For example, speaking of the Bible, here is an excerpt of what their group says (By the way, their statements, and ours, are accompanied by numerous Scripture references not included here):
It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
An excerpt from our own statement says
The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history.
Pretty cultic, eh?
Their group teaches that there is one God represented in three distinct persons. So do we.
On the nature of man, they teach that Adam’s
posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God.
Our statement says
When our first parents disobeyed God, they denied their dependence upon Him and fell from their high position under God. The image of God in them was marred and they became subject to death. Their descendants share this fallen nature and its consequences. They are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil.
The statements are almost the same.
Regarding salvation, they teach
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
We teach
In infinite love and mercy God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might be made the righteousness of God. Led by the Holy Spirit we sense our need, acknowledge our sinfulness, repent of our transgressions, and exercise faith in Jesus as Lord and Christ, as Substitute and Example. This faith which receives salvation comes through the divine power of the Word and is the gift of God’s grace. Through Christ we are justified, adopted as God’s sons and daughters, and delivered from the lordship of sin. Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God’s law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life. Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment.
The differences in expression are few.
They teach
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead.
Our teaching? Listen:
By baptism we confess our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and testify of our death to sin and of our purpose to walk in newness of life. Thus we acknowledge Christ as Lord and Saviour, become His people, and are received as members by His church. Baptism is a symbol of our union with Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, and our reception of the Holy Spirit. It is by immersion in water and is contingent on an affirmation of faith in Jesus and evidence of repentance of sin. It follows instruction in the Holy Scriptures and acceptance of their teachings.
These teachings differ little from each other. The same holds true in many other places, including our understanding of the biblical teaching regarding giving, resurrection, religious liberty, and more. So many commonalities! But still some insist that we are a cult.
Insecurity, Sibling Rivalry, and Wild Cards
All of us have heard the reminders: When you point one finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you. Or, that in drawing a circle around ourselves we define those outside the circle so as to exclude them.
I attended a conference in Michigan where Wesleyan Church Historian Donald Dayton reminded us that the fiercest polemics often mark sibling relationships between religious communities. His conclusion (here offered in my own words) was that actually, Adventists and groups such as the one we are here comparing teachings with, share numerous similarities. The rivalries and the definition of which groups are and are not cults often has more to do with the insecurities of the definers than of the alleged heresies of the defined. In short, it is the very perceived legitimacy of the group that is being labeled so loudly as a cult, that calls forth its denunciation. The urgency to define it as cultic, as “outside” the circle, rises from an insecurity shared by those applying the label. It is the urgent declaration that “you are not us.”
This urgency is interesting. After all, if our beliefs were preposterous, if they were very, very strange, not credible, so loopy that no one would begin to take them seriously, then why go to the trouble of labeling us? Why even make an issue of it? Could it be that some are nervous about their own beliefs? That they have doubts, and their solution is not to examine closely their own views, but to declare the views of others as being dangerous?
God warns us to test teachings by His Word. Isaiah 8:19, 20 says
And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
That is, when someone proposes an alternative source of spiritual authority outside of God’s Word, the true Christian will reject that source. Here in Isaiah, the alternative spiritual authority is the supposed magician, the spiritualist, the one who claims a direct connection with such hidden beings. He is the one standing outside of God’s Word. When it is suggested that they be referred to in order to determine what is spiritual truth, Isaiah says we are to go instead to the law and the testimony—the Bible. The Scriptures are our measuring stick. If a teaching is in harmony with the Scriptures, if it is approved, then it has a positive standing. If out of harmony with the Bible, then there is no light in it—none whatsoever. That teaching is not to be considered valid or binding in any way.
There was a period of time during the past century that saw the rise of a class of specialists, self-proclaimed experts in examining the beliefs of religious groups and then declaring them to either pass or fail, to be either “orthodox” or “cultic.” Articles would be published, books authored, sermons and lectures delivered. They would tell whether or not a church fits in the list of legitimate Christian groups or of the cults. There was a day when these experts were quite revered. They peeped and muttered and piped, and those scrutinized either danced to the tune or were placed on the list of doom.
The Christian’s authority is the Bible. Yes, the Bible is a deep book. But a problem comes when we begin to rely too much on experts. Each person, and this includes experts, is influenced by countless experiences, numerous ideas true, false, simple, complex. We all bring our presuppositions to the Bible with us. So do the experts. Not only do they bring with them ideas and attitudes which they themselves may not be completely conscious of, but they also come with vast theological structures in place. All of their evaluations are made through that obscuring lens. The lay-person often makes the duel mistake of (a) trusting in the fairness and objectivity of the expert, and (b) often being little aware of the theological edifice that the alleged “cult” is being measured against. These things influencing the expert, which may be invisible to the lay-person, are almost always determinative; they determine the outcome of the analysis.
The upshot of this is simple: the availability of “experts” is no substitute for the need of personal study of the Bible. We must study for ourselves. We are not relieved of that responsibility. In the end, how many will be lost because they trusted in the experts? They did not study for themselves, but they had a moral duty to know “the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17).
One must also beware of “bitterness bias.” When I was investigating the teachings of the different churches, I reviewed the teachings of the Latter-day Saints and of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and more. I read books by former LDS and former JW persons. I also read the actual teachings of these groups from their own presses, their own viewpoints. I found that most of the time, the “formers” presented a very distorted view of the teachings of those groups. No, I did not find the LDS or the JW representations of what they were teaching as matching the Bible. I did not join their groups. But I did learn something very helpful: caution. Sometimes those you think would be the most helpful because of their special insight from having belonged to a group, are actually the most misleading things you can read. We can always afford to be fair in evaluating the teachings of others. In fact, we can never afford not to be.
And so, we may say that we must be careful of the impulse to delegitimize other groups—to define them as being outside of the work of God because they are not part of our own group. In this light, Jesus’ teaching is sobering. Consider an incident from the New Testament:
And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us (Luke 9:49, 50).
Ponder Jesus’ words. Why is He so positive about an outsider?
One thing that is clear, is that something is happening—there is action. Someone is doing something in God’s behalf; or at least they think that they are. There is a wide way that leads to destruction and a narrower, confined way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13, 14). Many take the wide road and only some the narrow. Jesus said, here is someone who is laboring on behalf of My kingdom. If they are on the narrow road, then what business does another traveler on the narrow road have of blocking their way?
Notice that the outsider was casting out devils in God’s name. Jesus did not suggest that there was any pretense involved; this person was truly laboring in His name. That is, he was doing gospel work while manifesting the character of God. Name always stands for character, and so someone reproducing the character of Christ was doing God’s work. And then the disciples of Jesus came and forbad him.
The reason that they forbad him was because he was an outsider. “He followeth not with us,” he was unknown personally to the disciples. And yet, he must have been known to God. In developing a Christlike character and doing the work of the gospel he knew God and God knew him.
Jesus’ reply to His disciples is, Do not forbid him; do not aim to shorten or suppress his labor. There are outsiders who are serving God, too. In that they serve God, their labor tends toward the same end as does ours. Their work complements ours. In cutting short their labor we increase the difficulties in our own service for the gospel.
At its center, the impulse to define other groups as cults is an attempt to say what? That “you are not us.” That is true. But there is something more. Marking you as being a “cult” not only says that “you are not us,” but that “you are dangerous people.” The real issues are that we are outsiders, that we are laboring in God’s name, and that therefore we are dangerous people. We are not under their control. We are a wild card.
So, our community of faith and the community whose members insisted that we are a cult more or less agree on several items, some quite important. What about disagreements?
There are several significant doctrinal differences. Perhaps we will treat some at a future time. There are several ways that groups are defined as cults. Some use their understanding of doctrine as a measure. Others use a sociological definition. Some aim for a historical metric. These can be meaningful and helpful. But at the root, the issue is always this exactly: identifying people as being dangerous and then withholding the Good House-keeping seal of approval from them.
Dangerous Beliefs and Dangerous People
In this light then, consider another excerpt from the statement of Faith from the people who told our church member that she was part of a cult:
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society… Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love.
On a personal level we should make the will of Christ supreme. But if this means to the believer that the coercive power of the state is to be used by Christians to enforce their interpretation of morality onto others, there is a problem. Because who will decide what penalty for not believing the approved doctrines? Who sets it? Who executes it?
The same group states that the “Bible urges individual Christian involvement in the political process.” In 1973 this same organization “called on local and state governments to ‘preserve the unique character of Sunday as a day for rest and human welfare.’”
If this was just talk about observing their preferred Sunday on a voluntary basis, that would be fine. Then we can study the matter of whether God commands the observance of any particular day. But apparently the making of God’s will supreme “in human society” involves more than voluntary consent. This group believes that their adherents should be involved in local and state governments, and that the United States government should be “brought under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth and brotherly love.”
But those who 232 years ago sought to form America as a different kind of nation said that people should be free to pursue life, liberty, and that which they viewed as inducing happiness. If we would have true liberty, we must avoid imposing our views on others by means of the strong arm of the state. Being “brought under the sway” is not American. More than this: it is not Christian.
If anyone is free, if anyone has liberty, it is the Christian. Christians are made free only through Christ, who came to set at liberty the captives (Luke 4:18). That is, He came to demonstrate that there was another way of living; an anti-force way. Satan’s kingdom can only be sustained by coercion; Christ’s kingdom can only be sustained by liberty.
The most dangerous groups out there—or to use other words, the most cultic—are groups that would use force to sustain their beliefs. At the bottom line, any law or rule, any legislation by the state that would impose the regulation of activities on Sunday, is a usurpation of liberty. And don’t give me the democracy argument. We should not forget that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. If morality can be legislated, then the majority will legislate it according to the spirit they are of. Every human being has a nature that is inclined toward sin. But Jesus’ spirit is that of delivering from coercion.
It cannot be thought that all persons who see themselves as members of the group that believes these things think that Seventh-day Adventists are a cult. But some did. That is, they said that we have dangerous beliefs and therefore are a dangerous people.
And yet, we force no one to believe. We are apolitical. We seek not to use the power of the state to enforce our teachings or our practices. We, as they, claim to be seeking to follow Jesus. In our case, we follow Him in upholding liberty. In their case, using the force of the state is an option.
Who is more dangerous? Those who seek to persuade those who are willing to hear their views on the basis of Scripture and reason? Or, those who see as valid the use of the power of the state to coerce, i.e. to force others to practice their group’s beliefs?
A man seeking to become conscience for you is a man who is seeking to become the Holy Spirit for you. He wishes to place himself in the place of Christ for you. He is an antichrist. And it is an unholy mixture that combines the influence of the church with the gun of the state.
Religious Liberty
Although others have not always been fair with us, we should be fair with them. We should note that the group we have under consideration says many things about religious liberty with which we agree. Indeed, our denomination invests considerable resources to defend freedom of conscience, both for us and for others. Not only that, but we share with this group a common heritage, both tracing significant spiritual roots back to Anabaptist Protestants.
So, we do not protest their words, their affirmation of the values of religious freedom. Rather, we apprehend a mismatch between their expressed ideals and their current behavior. Nor are we alone in this. Other observers warn that the group we have in mind
formerly seemed to exult in the challenge freedom offers to the church… unencumbered by state ‘assistance’ the church is at liberty to share an authentic gospel. Recently, however, a more coercive and strident flavor seems to seek every possible advantage and point of leverage.
Indeed, author Ronnie Prevost, warns that the movement away from this group’s roots has drawn it far from where it stood just a half century ago. That is, there is a historic shift, a move away from separation of church and state. There is an apparent disconnect between words and actions.
Hear a warning:
Christians and the church have wanted an alliance with everything that represents power in the world. In reality, this rests on the conviction that thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, the powers of this world have been vanquished and set in service of the gospel, the church, and mission. We must use theiir forces in the interests of evangelism. Wealth and various authorities receive recognition in this way and are put in the church’s service.
But what happens is the exact opposite. The church and mission are penetrated by the power and completely turned aside from their truth by the corruption of power. When Jesus says that His kingdom is not of this world, He says clearly what He intends to say. He does not validate any worldly kingdom (even if the ruler be a Christian). (Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, pp. 20, 21).
No religious community is immune to this. A subtle blending begins. Church entwines with state. The church always finds a way to affirm the legitimacy of the state. Soon, people are being squeezed. This is a warning for all of us. Any church that becomes unvigilant about religious liberty is doomed. Thinking to influence the nation for good by means of combining with the state, a church will be corrupted. It will at last facilitate coercion, the use of force, of a deadly church-state combination. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; but aromatic red lentiles always simmer nearby enticing, drawing, and tempting (Genesis 25:29-34). Let our words in favor of freedom of conscience always match our actions, and may we keep always far away from the halls of political power. Better not even to smell the cooking lentiles.
Conclusion
Now then, our conclusion. All this began with a charge that one of our church members belonged to a cult. But If the question is, who are the dangerous people who have dangerous beliefs—who are those who should be defined as dangerous, i.e., cultic, then would it not be those having the mindset of John when he forbad the man who was doing the Lord’s work but was an outsider? Are not the most dangerous people those who would enforce their beliefs upon others by means of the state? Indeed, might not such themselves be considered members of cults less spoken of? GCO
Resources Consulted
The “Cult” (Seventh-day Adventist Church)
- Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Beliefs
http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/fundamental/index.html
The “Orthodox” (Southern Baptist Convention)
- The Baptist Faith and Message
http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp - Baptist History and Heritage, Spring 1999, “20th Century AD” by Ronnie Prevost.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NXG/is_2_34/ai_94160859?tag=artBody;col1 - Resolution No. 11, Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1981, 52.
- Resolution No. 8, Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1973, 84.
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