“Cults and Strange Phenomena”. The Unabridged Transcript of a Talk Given in Bridlington in 1996.

[Below is the transcript of a talk I gave in 1996 — 30 years ago — in Bridlington, Yorkshire in the UK, at the invitation of an Orthodox pastor who ministered in the county and was concerned about the flourishing of cultishness in the Christian churches in his area. The reasons for the location was because many people in the area had been lured into fellowships which practised the “Toronto Blessing” style of ministry (majoring on slain in the spirit, so-called “Holy Laughter”, and many other weird phenomena) and/or so-called “Deliverance” ministries. So I was not guaranteed a wholly friendly audience but I also knew that there would be many there who were seeking answers to their quandaries. I hope you find it helpful].

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INTRODUCTION

THE TITLE WHICH I’VE BEEN GIVEN as the brief for this talk this evening is “Cults and Strange Phenomena”, which I suppose you might think is a rather provocative title. But it’s indicative of the particular period of history that we’re living through at the present time. The very word cult is an emotive one. And you might say, if you were of this way of thinking, that one person’s cult is another person’s religion. That’s the stage that we seem to have reached at the present time. But what do we actually mean by the term “cult”?

I think that perhaps we ought to get into a definition at the outset before we go any further. How would you define a cult… or better still, who determines what is a cult, and what is not?

Let’s just distinguish here between a sect and a cult, because sometimes people use these two words interchangeably.

Now, the word ‘sect’ comes from the Latin ‘secta’, which is derived from another word, which has been influenced by another word, which means ‘to cut’. And what we can say about a sect is that it involves the creation of a body of followers on the basis of a particular school of opinion. In other words, we are talking about a division or a schism. And therefore a sect, strictly speaking, is a subdivision, a schismatic branch of something larger than itself — hence we get the word “sectarian”. Now on this reckoning we can say that, sadly, within the realms of Christianity there are countless sects and divisions.

I think we must also distinguish between a sect and a cult. The word cult comes from the Latin ‘cultus’, which comes from ‘colere’, which means “to worship”. So we can say that a cult is an organisation within its own right, that goes further than a mere sectarian philosophy because it involves something in the way of worship. And that may not involve actual acts of worship, it may include the adulation of a person, but it is an all-consuming thing that we are speaking about and there are even modifications of those. You know we can also talk about a group being “sectarian” that isn’t necessarily a sect, but it might have sectarian tendencies. In the same way, we can talk about a group that is becoming “cultish” without actually having yet become a full-blown cult.

So I’ve got this title, “Cults and Strange Phenomena”. I don’t know what you expected to hear about tonight. I do know that this talk is not being given in a vacuum, for this is my assigned topic. There is a relationship to certain things that are happening in the Christian scene today and as we move along tonight through a variety of different areas, we’ll get a chance to tie a few things up in the Christian scene with cultism. For there are more cultish scenarios in the churches today than there are in the secular scene! That is the context in which I have been invited here.

But I am assuming that by “cults” what we mean is any grouping which purports to offer spiritual answers to life’s problems — which involves a psycho-religious experience, which comes to dominate the life of an individual in an unhealthy manner, although that unhealthiness is ordinarily unknown to the victim. In fact getting cult-victims to be aware of that unhealthiness is the first step to getting them out of it, and it is often very difficult even to reach that first step, as many of you will already know.

So if we want to get into this subject tonight — and I shouldn’t have to apologise for this, but these days it’s almost as if one does — If you want to get into this subject tonight, we are going to have to talk theology. How does that grab you? Well I am unashamedly a Bible-believing Christian, and if I want to find explanations about religious phenomena, I’m going to turn to the Scriptures. That’s where I am going to look first and foremost.

There are four main areas that I want to look at this evening. First, we are looking at the spiritual reasons why people are attracted to cults. Second, we are looking at the psychological reasons behind people’s attraction to cults. Third, we are going to identify the universal hallmarks of cults — and really that is the heart of the talk this evening, identifying the universal hallmarks of cults (14 of them). Fourth, we will discover why there appears to be such an increase in sects and cults during the past few decades? (I use the word “appears” quite deliberately, as you will see).

What we are going to do now is this: We are going to look first of all at spiritual reasons why people would be attracted to cults. I think we have to start really going into this, more than just touching the surface here. Because what we are really speaking about is false religion and how false religion actually becomes a harmful influence in a person’s life. Now one might say that any kind of false religion is ultimately harmful because it has eternal consequences. We could go down that road tonight, but that’s not the road we are actually moving down. We are looking at harmful consequences in the here and now in a person’s life, rather than from an eternal perspective. And we are looking at the spiritual reasons for that.

 I. The Spiritual Reasons for Attraction to Cults

The first spiritual reason why people are so easily attracted to cults or to false religion is:

1) The Corruption of the Human Heart

I am referring to the corruption which has been inherited as a result of the Fall. We have to go back to the Book of Genesis for this. And I’d like to just concentrate on that a little bit, because I think it is important to understand everything that is encapsulated within what is described in Genesis chapter three. I think it has ramifications for the whole of the religious life of the world.

The first direct legacy of the Fall on the unbelieving mind is that we see human beings’ setting themselves up as autonomous little gods. That’s the first natural consequence that arises out of the fall. You know the promise, the satanic promise; “You will be like God, knowing…”. So what happened at that point, instead of continuing in the image of God, in terms of righteousness and true holiness, human beings came to set themselves up as little gods.

In other words, “it’s me determining for myself what is right in my life without any reference to my Creator. I know what’s best for me”. We are talking here about a one hundred percent humanistic approach. And it leads to the bazaar (not bizarre, although it is bizarre) approach to religion, where I can pick and choose the things that I like or don’t want according to my own personal desire, the imagination of my own heart. And what happens then, is that the religious search thereby ceases to be a pursuit for objective truth, and becomes the quest for personal (self) fulfilment. That’s what happens — that’s the crossover that takes place, and that’s the seed that’s inherent in the search that results in false religious ways or in falling into some kind of cultic mindset.

Thus, the religious search ceases to be a pursuit for objective truth — which is what should be at the heart of the search. So if you pursue that (it is not our place to go into this in great detail tonight) you can only end up with the Lord Jesus Christ who is “the way, the truth and the life”. But if the objective pursuit for truth ceases, a person then becomes caught up in a quest for entirely subjective self-fulfilment, and that’s the essence of false religion and cultism. So that’s the first legacy. That a person puts himself in the driving-seat; “I can just go and do what I like”, and then also finds out that one person’s reality is just as valid as another, and so on and so forth.

The second direct legacy of the Fall on the unbelieving mind is that it has a tendency to seek after extra-creational wisdom. In other words, wisdom beyond that which has been endowed by God as being healthy and good for His creation to pursue. In other words, there’s a thirst in the fallen creature to find wisdom which is false — I am speaking here about esoteric knowledge. You know that’s what’s behind the sentence that says that when the woman saw the tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree “desirable to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). You discover here how that legacy fuels people’s spiritual searches, especially if they are hell-bent opposed to truth. Once you take people away from the quest after objective truth, they just wind up seeking after self-fulfilment.

A third direct legacy of the Fall on the unbelieving mind is that people have an in-built tendency to believe in unconditional eternal life. And again that is caught up in the satanic lie at the beginning of history that said: “You will most certainly not die!” Which was contrary to what they had been told by God. And that also fuels spiritual development — it conditions attitudes to death. And again we don’t have time to go into all the various aspects of this during this time together. But thinking in terms of ideas about reincarnation and the assumption that everyone, no matter what one has done, will simply go into a better place after death. All those things result from that satanic lie at the beginning of history. And people become very easily bewitched by groups which promise reincarnation or a sort of spiritist survival after death, regardless of how one has conducted oneself in this life without any sort of repentance.

And a fourth direct legacy of the Fall on the unbelieving mind is that it always attempts self-reformation. And I guess you can say that this is insinuated in that phrase “And they sowed fig leaves”. Humanistic self-reformation. You will find that people are continually trying to find ways in their own minds and out of the imagination of their own hearts to try and reform themselves or ‘put things right’, instead of realising that true reformation is divinely given, and that it must be received from the Lord, and sought after first and foremost from Him.

Now I’m just really skimming the surface of this at the beginning, just to set the scene for what we are looking at (though I have gone into it in much more detail in my book, “The Serpent and the Cross”). But I believe that all religious seeking in this world, when conducted according to purely humanistic aspirations, is in one way or another rooted in the legacy of the Fall. Human beings have an inbuilt tendency to make themselves into little gods and think they can pursue whatever avenues they want to pursue, regardless of what the Creator has ordained. Human beings have an inbuilt desire to seek prohibited wisdom and love being part of secret organisations. And they also have a tendency to believe that they have unconditional everlasting life, and people are forever trying to save themselves through humanistic means. Now perhaps you can begin to appreciate how an unbelieving mind or such a mindset will be naturally attracted to false religion and cultic scenarios. This is the mind that we are up against in our evangelism.

So how do we respond? With great compassion, remembering that,

“You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

That also means, of course, that there is hope. You see, in spite of this appalling corruption, there is another aspect of the unbelieving mind which means that it is a mind that we can at least work with, which brings us to the second spiritual reason why people are attracted to cults and false spiritual pathways:

2) The Seed of Religion in Every Human Heart

Regardless of the depravity of human nature brought into being by the Fall, human beings have always retained what Benjamin Warfield refers to as a notitia Dei insita (a natural knowledge of God) or what John Calvin calls a Divinitatis sensum (awareness of divinity) and a semen religionis (seed of religion) in their hearts. This has nothing to do with the mystical/New Age concept of “The Inner Light” or the God within all people. We are simply speaking here about an inbuilt “seed of religion”, a vague knowledge of God — or, rather, a tacit awareness of the fact that there is higher being to whom we are answerable. Naturally, this becomes corrupted and suppressed if it is pursued; but that does negate the reality of that awareness, for it is all around us (cf. Romans 1:18-23 for Paul’s exposition of this). As Calvin puts it: ‘There are two principal parts of the light which still remains in corrupt nature: first, the seed of religion is planted in all men; next, the distinction between good and evil is engraved on their consciences’.

People have a conscience. There is an inbuilt inkling of what righteousness is. They quake at the mention of Divine judgement:

“After several days, Felix returned with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul expounded on righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, “You may go for now. When I find the time, I will call for you’” (Acts 24:24-25).

However, in spite of this fact, the bulk of humanity has generally opted for whatever seemed right in its own eyes. Our Creator has waited patiently for His people to seek Him, “and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:27), for He is always near and ready to respond. Yet, tragically, human history shows that this world has consistently “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom.1:25).

Having originally been created in the image of God, after the Fall the true righteousness and holiness was entirely obliterated from that image (see Ephesians 4:24 with Colossians 3:10). There is a barrenness of spirituality; but yet there is still this “seed of religion” and an “awareness of the divine” — however filtered, suppressed and warped it becomes. It involves a kind of ingrafted knowledge of God. There’s a consciousness and there’s this inbuilt inkling as to what righteousness is (which is why most people, most of the time, do not drive through a red traffic light!). But the problem is, as Paul puts it in Romans chapter 1, that there’s this holding down of the truth in unrighteousness, this suppression of truth, so you get this problem of always gathering knowledge but never coming to an understanding of the truth. This is the basic unbelieving mindset which fuels the spiritual quest in all people — a quest which always gets messed up and so the person continually gets waylaid into various false religions, bizarre beliefs, weird sects and downright cults.

This has a profound effect on the way that an unbeliever’s mind works. In a way, he’s caught in a trap. There are these religious and conscience-pricking inklings — there is the evidence of the divine fingerprint in creation all around him. But everything he does in pursuance of true religion becomes twisted and perverted by his corrupt nature. He deeply desires to adulate, worship — even to worship something he can call ‘God’ — but it just comes out as some kind of idolatry, or materialism, or even narcissism (the love of self).

The third spiritual reason why people are so easily attracted to cults and false religion is because

3) Human Nature Deliberately Denies Spiritual Truth

We can read about this in Romans 1:18-25, and I have already alluded to it above. We see that unbelieving people deliberately “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (“in unrighteousness”), v.18. They resist truth, like Jannes & Jambres who held sway over the magic cult of the Egyptians:

‘…who are always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth. They are depraved in mind and disqualified from the faith” (2 Timothy 3:7).

So there’s this suppression of the truth and a continual gathering of head knowledge. This has a great spin-off with regard to the main subject of this talk.

The fourth spiritual reason why people are so easily attracted to cults and false religion is because

4) There is an Enemy of Souls

I’m sure those of us who are Christians here tonight know that Paul, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 says that “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age (or world) has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Well, who is he speaking about there? I don’t believe, as some of the liberals would say, that Paul is simply referring to the dazzling array of materialism when he speaks of the “god of this world (or age)”. I think he is specifically referring to the leader of the fallen angels, whom we know as Satan or the devil, who set Himself up as “god of this world” when he fell through pride and self-exaltation (cf. Jesus calling him “the ruler of this world” in John 12:31).

There’s this suppression of truth and this darkening of the understanding which takes place (cf. Romans 1:21; Ephesians 4:18). As John says in his first letter: “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). And this is the sorry state of the unbelieving mind. At the moment we are just looking at why unbelievers are so naturally attracted to false religion and cultic scenarios.

A fifth spiritual reason why people are so easily attracted to cults and false religion is because of…

5) An Obsession with New Spiritual or Philosophical Discoveries

Do you remember the description of the ‘agora’, the market place, in Athens? In Acts 17:21, all the Athenians and the foreigners that were there spent their time “in nothing else than to tell something and to hear the latest thing”. In other words, they were “seed pickers”. That is actually the meaning of the Greek term, σπερμολόγος, spermologos, used by some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as quoted a few verses earlier to refer to Paul. And is that not what we human beings are? We go around just picking up a seed here and a seed there and never actually finding that one which will flower and blossom. This is part of the spiritual legacy of the Fall: An endless search for something but we know not what. We may think we’ve found it in this religion or that — in this philosophy or that — in this boyfriend or girlfriend — in this new pop group or that — always searching. Seed-pickers. That is what humans are, unless they are regenerated.

A sixth reason why people are so easily attracted to cults and false religion, is that

6) The Human Heart is by Nature in a Perpetual State of Hostility Towards God

“The mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). Those opposed to the work of God are said by Jesus to be “of their father the devil” and they “want to carry out the devil’s desires” (John 8:44). The whole unbelieving world is said to be “under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). If the devil is in a perpetual state of hostility towards God, you can guarantee that his subjects are also.

And a seventh spiritual reason why people are so easily attracted to cults and false religion is because

7) They are so Easily Bewitched, Fooled and Inveigled

Do you remember Simon the sorcerer in Acts chapter 8, who had previously practised sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying this man is the great power of God? And they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time. Unregenerated people are so very easily attracted to hucksters — to people who come along, quacks, pretending to peddle miracles, or even perhaps believing that they are peddling miracles, which are no true miracles at all but pseudo-wonders!

And sad to say there are even a great many of those. It’s a horrible shame to say, but there are a great many of those even in the Christian scene today. I’m speaking about very well-known people like Morris Cerrulo, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Rodney Howard-Browne and Benny Hinn, who many of you may have heard of. But I believe these are spiritual con-men of the highest order and seed-planters of the great apostasy They pretend to practice miracles, but as with Simon the sorcerer, the mass of people heed him because he astonishes them with his sorceries.

So those are just some facts about the chaotic unbelieving mind. Now we know that the regenerated mind has the mind of Christ, is a sound mind, is renewed in the spirit of its mind — a great contrast to the unregenerate mind. When we think of the picture we have of the demoniac with the legion of demons (Mark 5:1-20), we see that he is heaving around in an incredibly confused state. It’s a very interesting picture that I believe we have there of the unregenerate mind, spiritually speaking seen in all its nakedness, but after he has come to Christ he is described as sitting quietly and, as the Scripture says, “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind”. I believe this is a lovely picture of the transformation that takes place when a person is taken out of the authority of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light.

So those are some of the facts about the state of the unregenerate mind. Is it, therefore, surprising that such a mind should be attracted to sects and cults?

How does it compare with the regenerated mind?

1) We have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2:16.

2) We have a renewed mind: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:23-24).

3) We have a sound mind, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The Greek word translated there as “sound mind” is σωφρονισμός, sophronismos, from sozo, saved, and phrene, faculty of understanding — a “saved mind”. Picture the Gadarene demoniac: Sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and “in his right mind” (the same word sophroneo being used again right there, Mark 5:15; Luke 8:35). Compare that with his former self for a picture of the saving work of Christ. This “saved mind” or “sound mind” is sanity — the sanity of the regenerated mind which will have no truck whatsoever with cults or cultishness, nor even with sects if it is a progressively sanctified mind.

But let’s just move on here to our second main point:

II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS FOR ATTRACTION TO CULTS

What are the psychological reasons behind peoples attraction to cults or cultic groups? Some of these reasons obviously have spiritual undercurrents. But I believe that a very major psychological reason is quite simply…

1) The Desire to be Loved

This is endemic in the human heart. And I believe that is because, spiritually speaking, every human being by nature is a spiritual orphan without a spiritual Father, for the only way to get out of that orphanage is to be adopted into the family of God (Romans 8:15-17). Until they come to Christ there’s a gulf between them and God. And I believe human beings in their heart of hearts sense that — that alienation, that separation from God with they can cover up in a multitude of ways and through numerous continual distractions. And there is this great desire to be loved — to be in the kind of love that is not like any human love, ultimately desiring to be basking in Divine love. And I think that the desire for that can drive people into cultic situations. The great desire to find security, the need to be part of a real family, anything that is a substitute for being in God’s family. And of course cults are extremely good in exploiting that. They use a technique that is officially known as “love-bombing”. If you “love-bomb” people, so that when they come through your doors they feel that they have landed in heaven, they will never want to leave.

I am not speaking here about the kind of genuine love that any church should show when people arrive for the first time, when they come through their doors, which should not be love-bombing but quiet and deep care. I am speaking about unholy, smarmy, unnatural, almost overwhelming love-bombing that takes place. That is so bewildering to a person, who is often feeling insecure and lost, that they latch on to this and then they are completely sold on it. Cults know very well how love-bombing with ensnare the masses.

The second psychological reason behind people’s attraction to cults is:

2) The Desire for Power

There is no need to go into this too deeply, but this is how many get involved with a cult. They see that within that cult they can work their way up to wielding power over others. Simon the Sorcerer was a classic example of this. He manufactured his own cult for a long while, when “all the people, from the least to the greatest, heeded his words and said, ‘This man is the divine power called the Great Power’” (Acts 8:10). That is a cult. But when Phillip began to poach Simon’s cult members, Simon thought that if you can’t beat them, join them, and kind of believed (though I do not believe that he was truly regenerated). After he encountered the Apostles Peter and John and saw what miraculous power they had, Simon “offered them money and said, ‘Give me this power as well’” (Acts 8:18-19). The cult leader wanted the abilities of what he could see was a superior “cult” (in his mind). He was simply wanting to step up the rungs of the cult leader’s power-ladder. That desire for power in the unscrupulous is what can attract people to cults, where manipulation in the name of the game and there are so many easily-manipulable subjects.

The third psychological reason behind people’s attraction to cults is:

3) The Desire for the “Feel-Good” Factor

The idea is that any religious situation has to make you feel great all the time, otherwise it is not real religion. If we could have Paul the apostle come up here and give his testimony tonight, do you think he would say that his life was “great” from start to finish? Well yes we know he would on one level, but he would tell you about all his stripes and his ship-wreckings, his thorn in the flesh, and his beatings and all the rest of it. And the agonising over souls, and all the other heartaches that go on in the daily Christian life, especially in the lives of a pastor and teacher. But you see so many people simply want to make themselves feel good. They are looking for an experience — because the reality is that most folks (i.e. unregenerate folks) put subjective experience on a higher level than objective truth and reality. So rather than finding out what is true spirituality, which can sometimes be extremely arduous, they are simply looking for kicks.

With others there is a desire for esoteric knowledge, hidden knowledge, and there are a number of cultic groups that will offer that and it makes people feel good. They are plugging into certain traditions which have been handed down over generations and you can have entities from other galaxies (alias demons) channelling through you!. Of course Paul makes an illusion to all this in Colossians, speaking about those who cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshy mind, and then shows the way to avoid that sort of thing, which is to hold fast to the head, which is the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:17-19). And we all know Paul’s statement to the pastor Timothy; “Guard what was committed to your trust, avoid the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis)”. That falsely-called knowledge (gnosis) there is what so many cultic groups will offer to a person and it makes them feel special.

We’ve skirted through those things really, because we are just scene-setting. Because we are entering now the point where we are starting to look at, or try to identify the universal hallmarks of cults. To help us identify a cult, we’ve got fourteen key characteristics of cults. Now not all cults will necessarily have ALL of these characteristics. But to a greater or lesser degree they will have some of them and there will be some which will indeed have all of them.

III. The Hallmarks of Cults

The very first hallmark of a cult, is

1) Extra-Biblical Revelation

You will repeatedly find this. Cults will generally claim that they have been given some kind of divine revelation. In order to justify their existence. And the revelation is very often given through certain kinds of ‘prophets’ and ‘seers’. And we all know that the Bible of course lays claim to itself as the only genuine source of Divine revelation to the world. A number of times that statement is made (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5-6; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Revelation 22:18-19).

But a repeated claim in cults is that there is some kind of doctrine that has been specially revealed in some kind of a way from ‘the other side’ (woo-woo) as it were. And as a result of those teachings then, that cult begins to develop on that. And really one has to say that it has developed apace in cultic churches (surely the ultimate contradiction in terms!). Do you know what I mean by a cultic church? Have you experienced a cultic church? Have you ever been to a cultic church?

Now there are many people today who are suffering in cultic churches and I know that there are many here today who have done so. Such churches develop a number of these hallmarks that we are looking at now, and in them all extra biblical revelation takes on an enslaving significance; not to mention that it subordinates Scripture to highly stylised personal revelations.

We find today that the phrase “words of knowledge” is used to justify all kinds of heinous things that are taking place in churches. People will tell you they have had a “word of knowledge” about you, in order to manipulate you. They tell you that they have had some special divine revelation about you. Whether it is about what happened to you as a child, or in some instances they will even tell you what has happened to you in the womb. Has anyone here experienced that? [Hands go up]. I’ve met a number of people who have been terribly damaged through this process. And they are bogus prophecies of course. You see what has actually been happening in the middle of this scenario is that these things have been used as a form of control. And what you find is that extra-biblical revelation is being used as a form of control. So, instead of things that saints deliver to the church being used for the edification of the church, and for the upbuilding of the church, and for the encouragement of the church, you find that things are being used in order to manipulate people and manipulate groups within the church.

I remember once going to a conference and I sat next to lady and noticed that she never opened a bible or had a bible, but she would constantly make reference to a little book that she had, and eventually I asked her what the book was. And she told me it was a collection of all the various “words” that people had given to her and that she had had for herself. And she had written them all down in this book. And I said, “don’t you have a Bible”. And she said, “I don’t need a Bible, this is my bible”. Now that is a cultic mindset, you see, because that woman can very easily be controlled. Any old person could come up to her and say: “I’ve got a word for you”. And she automatically assumes that it’s something that comes from God. And it’s a pitiful lack of discernment in so many churches today. And so the Scriptures then become subordinate to personal experience. And of course this is the very opposite of walking by faith rather than by sight. So we’ve got that first hallmark of a cult, which is extra-biblical revelation. Revelation which purports to be from the divine, but is not and instead is being used as a form of manipulation.

A second hallmark of a cult, involves

2) A False Offer of Salvation

Christian salvation as we know, comes through faith in Jesus Christ and all that He has accomplished on the cross, whereas cults can only ever offer salvation based on one’s personal actions. A cult can only ever offer an obscure and uncertain future after death. Whereas the Lord Jesus Christ, as we know, promises the certainty of eternal life. Now you may say, “Well yes, I understand that; I know that’s what cults do, you go along to a cult, and they will tell you this is the way to find their spiritual salvation”. But you see, the problem is that, today, we have this happening in professing Christian churches also.

They say; if you come and plug in to our experience you will be saved. So that’s what happens now: How many people going into churches today are being sold another gospel and a false christ? But a person can only be saved through the hearing the preaching of the true Gospel — through which a remarkable supernatural event takes place. It can also be directly through reading the Scripture, as it was in my own personal case. But again, we are talking about words that come from God. A preacher preaches, proclaims the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. Those words come in through your ears, into your brain, and something extraordinary happens if you are having a meeting with the Divine at that point; if the word is being sown within you, an extraordinary supernatural event occurs.

But what happens in these cultic churches, is that instead of actually telling you, giving these verbal propositions about what Christ has done on the cross and about the resurrection and the atonement and the ascension and all the rest that is involved in the redemption process, you are not told that. You are told to come along and plug into an experience. It’s a false offer of salvation. I remember reading the so-called “testimony” of someone who had previously been a topless model in one of the tabloid newspapers and had allegedly been born again. And she was now telling people about her remarkable experience. And when she was asked to describe her conversion, she said, “Well I went along to this church, this man laid hands on me, and I felt what was like an electric current coursing through my body and I knew it was the Holy Spirit”, and that was her conversion. There is no mention of any kind of repentance, no mention of any understanding of what the cross was about, or even about Christ! This isn’t to say that somebody who is coming to Christ needs to be a theologian. God forbid! But you need to have some understanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. But there was nothing. And it is very sad.

I was in a music store recently, and I noticed that on a stand there was a whole pile of videos of this formerly topless model lady who’s bringing out a 1997 calendar full of tantalising poses. I don’t think she is quite so naked as she used to be before she underwent this “conversion” experience but the pictures on the front were extremely provocative. And the whole ambience was sensual and seductive. I won’t mention the name, you know exactly who I am speaking about. But is that an advertisement for genuine “born-again Christianity”. No wonder the phrase is in such disrepute in the media. But you see that’s all because, I believe, of a false offer of salvation. What was happening was this: One day her make-up lady was doing her up, and she noticed that the make-up lady was very bubbly, and she said; “Oo, you’re very bubbly, why’s that?” And she said, “Well I went along to this meeting at a church, and I became bubbly through what happened at this meeting” and so the topless model felt, “Well I need something of that too”. So she went along to this meeting and got “zapped”. She plugged into an experience but it was a false offer of salvation. It’s a cultic church that does that. And now the whole “Christian scene” is stuffed full of them!

A third hallmark of a cult involves

3) Inflated Personal Claims of the Person who Heads it Up

Cults are generally led by a rigidly authoritarian figure, who often claims divine status for himself or herself. Now we know that the Bible, of course, tells us that there will be false Christs and false prophets and so on. But I think we need to just consider this for a moment, because again relating it to the cultic church scenario (and my brief here in this talk is to stress the cultishness of so many churches today), well in an increasing number of churches today you will find at the head of them a personality, a very powerful personality who is extremely manipulative, and knows how to put people on guilt trips — how to bend people around, using his power over people. Very often, when people first come into a situation like that, they want to obey the biblical injunctions, to have great respect for elders of the church and so forth, so then they just become abused. But yet we know, in Peter’s first letter, he speaks very clearly about not being heavy in shepherding the flock, and the importance of that (1 Peter 5:3), knowing that the Chief of the over-shepherds is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And those who have oversight in the church are called to greater account before him at the end of the day. And you will always find in these cultic churches that there’s a person who has an extravagant claim for himself. For instance, they speak about themselves as being specially gifted with this thing they call THE anointing — which is a remarkable perversion of a genuine biblical term. I wish we had time to go into identifying what is the TRUE anointing, which as a matter of fact, I believe every Christian has. We already have an anointing from the Holy One (1 John 2:20). And you most certainly don’t need to get any kind of anointing from one of these UNholy ones.

But you see they claim to have this thing, that all you have to do is come under their hands, and BANG it’s happened to you — THAT is cultic manipulation. So that all you have to do is just come near them. I remember reading about a lady, I think it was Katherine Kuhlman walking down an aisle somewhere, and as she walked down all the people who were sitting at the ends of the rows were all just collapsing on the floor as she came within range, making a sort of wind from her presence on them. That is pure cultism, and not anything to do with faith in Christ!

So you’ve got these inflated personal claims of a cult leader.

Fourthly, there’s what we can call:

4) Doctrinal Double-Talk

You’ll find that the teachings of a cult, when you trace it back from its inception, have gone through some remarkable changes, so that they will even contradict each other at various points in history. But that doesn’t seem to bother them. It is rather like Orwellian double-think, except it is regarding doctrine, so that the teachings contradict one another. You can even point this out to people, and they just blank out on you.

Have you ever had that happen by the way? When you have actually spoken to somebody who is caught up in a cultic situation and you try to speak to them graciously, compassionately, kindly, you try to help them to come to an understanding of where they are, and they’ll just blank over. Have you had that? It’s a remarkable thing when it happens. I remember once I was sat at a table with a couple. We’d invited them over for lunch and we were trying to help them understand that the church they were in was a cultic church (a John Wimber influenced church). And as soon as we began to get into the nitty-gritty of the thing, talking about the contradictions and the falsehoods, they just suddenly went into this spaced-out hypnosis mode. They just blanked out, staring into the distance and saying nothing! And I even said; “Look at them! They’re somewhere else”…  and they weren’t even aware that I was saying that. It was some seconds later that they kind of came out of it and changed the subject. But they had just blanked out.

Now we could go down that alley tonight if you wanted and look at that one, (maybe we will in our post-talk discussion). It’s quite a horrendous thing when you see the kind of mind control that you are actually dealing with here.

Doctrinal double talk, trace it back through anything and you will find that various aspects of their doctrine will actually contradict each other and go through strange changes. There’s no consistency there at all. However, as we all know, the teaching of Christ, apostolic truth, as held within the true Church, is the pillar and ground of truth and it cannot be changed under any circumstances.

The fifth hallmark of a cult is:

5) A Pseudo-Christology

A cult will always deny central truths about the Lord Jesus Christ. But they will also magnify certain falsehoods which they ascribe. So often, for instance, in New Age type cults, you will hear references to “The Christ”, or “Christ Consciousness”, along with various aspects surrounding that personality — that is not the Christ of the Scriptures.

You’ll find in cultic groupings that the central truths that are denied usually revolve around his deity and his humanity. You can see that when you look in John’s first two letters, for instance, where it’s plain that John is taking issue with certain seed ideas of what would later become Gnosticism (a kind of proto-Gnosticism and Docetism) and spurious Christology (e.g. 1 John 1:1; 2:22; 2 John 1:7).

Well let’s just think about some of these cultic churches for a moment. Because one of the first things that I noticed when I had my very first contact with one of these cultic churches is a complete misunderstanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ is, and yet a willingness to use the term ‘Jesus’ over and over again, in completely the wrong context.

Some of you may have seen a well-known video tape of a gentleman called Kenneth Copeland doing and performing crazy things. It was called “the laughter video” — lots of laughing taking place on it. And all the time he’s saying things like “Ah Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus”, and people muttering the name. I believe that it is almost blasphemous the way the name of Jesus Christ has come to be used in so many churches today. You just say: “In the name of Jesus”, and then you just dispense something to somebody. And what is it that you are dispensing? It’s a heinous twisting of spiritual truth, and it involves a spurious Christology at the very best. In fact, what these people are dispensing via what they call “impartation” (a term which first came to prominence during the so-called “Latter Rain Revival” in 1947–1948), the dispensing of weird experiences through laying hands on people, is identical to its counterpart in Hindu cults, known as “Shaktipat”, where a guru touches an adherent on the forehead and they then get “zapped”.

Have you heard of a gentleman called Rodney Howard Browne? Well he wrote a “theological tome” called “The Anointing”, and in this little booklet, he claims that nothing that Jesus did on earth was done as the Son of God. That’s what he says. Now that’s a remarkable thing to say. He says that everything Jesus did was carried out solely as a prophet under the Abrahamic covenant, but not as the Son of God. That’s more than just spurious Christology, that’s what people… well when you actually look at what he says, it seems to be almost like what people used to call Kenotism — a heresy in which Christ is supposedly emptied of all his deity, which is not a fact at all. We know when it says He “emptied” himself in Philippians 2, it is speaking about how he came as a Servant and he withheld the fullness of the display of all his glory. But is has nothing to do with not being Divine anymore. We know for instance that demons came up to the Lord Jesus Christ and said; what have we to do with you Jesus, you Son of God? They knew who He was. Even unclean spirits knew he was operating as the Son of God. And yet these people don’t know that at all. Remarkable. The demons have more knowledge than they do! Even his disciples knew that; “Then those who were in the boat worshipped Him and said; Truly you are the Son of God” (Matthew 14:33). “The high Priest said; tell us if you are the Christ the Son of God. Jesus said to him; it is as you said” (Matthew 26:63). And John says at the end of his Gospel. “Truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 21:25). Not that you may believe he was a prophet operating under the Abrahamic covenant. That’s ridiculous. He says that the Son of God laid aside his royal robes of deity and walked the earth merely as a prophet. That’s what Rodney Howard Browne says, well that is rubbish, isn’t it?

That’s what I mean by spurious Christology. He walked this earth being both God and Man and he never stopped being God while he walked this earth. But you know why these guys have to reduce the Lord Jesus to a mere prophet? Do you know why? It’s because they say, you see, he received His anointing at his baptism. And he was able to do all these remarkable miracles. And so if I receive this anointing, I can be just like this prophet under the Abrahamic covenant, and do all the things that Jesus did. Now how can these guys fool themselves that they do all the things that Jesus did? Do they? …do they? Do they?…No! Of course not…! Have you ever noticed how many of these charlatans wear glasses? Healer, heal thyself!

You remember Morris Cerullo was asked by the BBC’s Heart of the Matter to produce evidence of his best cases of healing. And this is a guy who has been working in this way now, working the crowds as they say in the show-business scene, he’s been working the crowds for 25 years. Seeing thousands upon thousands of people at a time many times a week, so he must have clocked up millions of people who’ve actually come to him, allegedly for healing… produce your best cases. Can you imagine coming to the Lord Jesus Christ and saying, “Produce your best cases”. What does Morris produce? He produces was it 13 or 15 files… okay? And of those there wasn’t one that was found to be…who was it?… I think Peter May investigated it, and didn’t find one to have any miraculous connotation. Well isn’t that pathetic? What sort of advertisement is that? But do you see, at the heart of a cultic group you will find, and most especially in the Christian scene, a completely inadequate understanding of who Christ is. I don’t believe these guys could have met Christ, otherwise they couldn’t speak about Him in such a playful and dismissive manner.

The sixth hallmark of a cult is — well we’ve already had spurious Christology — so what about…

6) A Fallacious Pneumatology

I told you we’d get theological this evening! I’m speaking about the Holy Spirit here. So we’ve got a False Christ being extolled in cultic circles. What about a false Holy Spirit as well? If you’ve ever read one of Benny Hinn’s books — I had the misfortune to read through one once, solely for research purposes you understand…! But he says, he speaks in his book about himself having personal chats with the Holy Spirit. And he speaks as if there’s this Holy Spirit which just comes and has chats with him. And on one occasion he describes where someone calls Benny to come and have a meal. And he says; “I’m sorry Holy Spirit; I’ll just have to go and have my supper now”. And the Holy Spirit apparently says; “Oh please don’t leave me Benny… I’m so much enjoying these conversations with you”. This is remarkable isn’t it? That’s what I mean with a fallacious pneumatology.

And also there seems to be a totally unhealthy obsession with the Holy Spirit. But what is the Holy Spirit’s role in the Christian scene? In the Churches? In the midst of the seven candle-sticks? Well the Lord Jesus Christ said, “He will glorify ME, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). And the Holy Spirit is — if we can say this without sounding too irreverent — surely the most self-effacing member of the Trinitarian God-head. And He doesn’t draw attention to Himself such as we see in the crass churches which go on and on about “the spirit, the spirit, the spirit” spoken about all the time, essentially because it is by the notion of such a “spirit” that they can more easily manipulate and control people.

And I remember seeing some video material of a gentleman in the USA, his name is Randy Clarke. He’s been one of the instigators in the so-called Toronto Blessing. Reporting approvingly how Rodney Howard Browne had said, “Tomorrow morning, we’re all gonna have a Holy-Ghost blow-out!” Now can you imagine that people can watch that video… I’ve critically put on a video extracts where that is said and subsequently people have phoned me up and said, “You’re a blasphemous man…you’re a blasphemous man for putting these things out…these are godly man that you are criticising”. Where are these people at? Where are they coming from? And I would say, they can’t possibly know the glorified risen Christ, they can’t possibly know the Holy Spirit either, or they wouldn’t talk in these terms. Is this just me? Is this just me here who imagines these things? Well it’s a very strange business. And there’s also a tendency to speak of the Holy Spirit, as if it’s like… as if he’s like a sort of force-field or a sort of laughing gas that descends, and you say, come down Holy Spirit, and this force-field comes down. It’s a very pantheistic view isn’t it? It denies the personality of the Holy Spirit. It reminds me of the genie (spirit) in Aladdin’s lamp who could be summoned up to perform tricks by just rubbing the lamp.

I can recommend a very good book on the Holy Spirit as well. It’s a deep book; “The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit” by George Smeaton. I can definitely recommend that work as one which will lead you into very deep waters regarding the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

The seventh hallmark of a cult is:

7)  Unjustified Spiritual Proof-Texting

This is a classic hallmark that we see. Cults will always twist the Bible to suit their own purposes. You will find it happening left right and centre, I am speaking even now about secular organisations, secular cults. They will use certain portions of Scripture to suit their case. It is maddening when anybody does that, isn’t it?

Have you had people come up to you, when you’ve pointed out something that is absolutely right and true and you know it’s upstanding, you haven’t meant it in a hypocritical way at all? You’re just simply saying something in the way it is. And they say to you, “Do not judge!” That’s taking that verse out of that situation’s context and making it apply to something (in this case, discernment) to which it was never meant to apply.

And you find that the material that’s coming out of anywhere that has been affected by the “Toronto Blessing” is simply riddled with scripture twisting. We all know those cultic phrases; “drunk in the spirit”…yes? “Times of refreshing”. If we were to do an exposition of those verses, we’d find that they meant something completely different. In fact; drunk in the spirit is not a biblical phrase, but is an interpretation of a passage which is totally false and taken out of context. And I’m sure you know the one that was in the “Catch the Fire” book, where verse 2 of Psalm 23, “He makes me lie down”, was applied to the sort of crass phenomena that are going on in churches today, where people are falling down. Psalm 23 refers to that…did you know that? No I didn’t either. For thousands of years God’s people have been entirely bereft of that interpretation!

And Kenneth Hagin, who is another perpetrator of the kind of mindset that we are speaking about, he’s another cultist in the States. And I have no hesitation in saying that these guys head up cults without a shadow of doubt. But, he said in one of his magazines: “First decide what you want from God, and then find the Scriptures which cover your case. And then let every thought and desire affirm that which you have asked for”. Now that’s an entirely heretical approach to Scripture. First decide what you want to believe and then plunder the Word of God for text which you imagine may support it. But again we see that scripture twisting is a classic stance in any cultic organisations.

An eighth hallmark of a cult is:

8) The Concealment of a Hidden Agenda

You will find that what is really going on is never portrayed openly. There’s a hidden agenda to what’s happening. And before you know it you have actually been caught up in something, if you had really seen what was going on, you’d never have actually got into it. But what happens is…Well you read about people going to Toronto for example to that church at the airport, and you hear them saying; Well at first I went in, and I must admit before I went, I was rather sceptical, but I just thought well I’ll just go along and see what it was like. And then they stay there…and it’s all quite interesting and entertaining really, nothing much has happened to me yet. And then you’re there for a second day…and then a third day…and then on the fourth day they get you! Yeah? You read it happening about to great many people. If you could have seen beforehand what was going to happen to you, what you’d get caught up in. you’d have kept away from that place….stayed away from it by a million miles. But there’s a concealment of what’s actually going on. It masquerades as genuine Christianity. But that is just a front. Instead you’re getting into something that is one hundred percent addictive, and you don’t realise that. Concealment of a hidden agenda.

And then of course, a ninth hallmark of a cult is something we have already touched on earlier…

9) Love-Bombing

We don’t really need to go into this any further, but it is another classic hallmark of a cultic situation. This is where you grossly overplay the card of love when somebody comes to your organisation. You are made to feel so tremendously loved and welcome… people give you lots of hugs and all that sort of thing… and make you feel that you’ve found your ultimate tribe. And a lot of people who already perhaps are rather screwed up will get off on that. They will find it very encouraging and that will lure them in.

Of course, one has to make people feel welcome, but not in an underhandedly manipulative manner. That is the difference between love-bombing and welcoming. One is humanly manipulative, the other is spiritually receptive.

A tenth hallmark of a cult is…

10) Hypnotism or Trance-Inducement

Techniques of hypnotism and trance-inducement can come in any number of ways. I mean at its most basic you can see it happen in some cultic organisations through some sort of meditation technique, to work on altering your brainwaves, so you start to have alpha brainwaves, which will make you feel really nice and so you then pursue that pathway, becoming hooked because that is the gateway drug.

It can sometimes happen through music. I believe that here we can show that in a number of cultic churches, music is used in a very hypnotic fashion. Things are repeated over and over again, endlessly mindless ditties go on and on and on, your hands are waving around in the air while your eyes are closed, and the singing becomes part of your being, till you just totally go off on it, until you’re just gone… you’ve gone somewhere in your head and then you’re very easy to manipulate after that, once you have reached that kind of mind state, where you have departed as it were and you have just let this thing take over. Well that’s what you very often find in cultic meetings, especially “Christian” ones. There’s an hour of music before the other stuff happens that’s been softening you up and putting you into a trance-like state, ready to receive what it is that the “great teacher” (manipulator) is about to pour out. When one adulates a person whose aims are nefarious, one can becomes prey to that person and is thereby very easily manipulated at the hypnotic level of suggestion.

Sometimes this will happen through the use of what we can call phoney-deliverance techniques, which I believe rely on hypnotic influences rooted in the power of suggestion in order to manifest certain symptoms and performances in their victims. Now touching on this point, I have received letters from time to time saying things like this:

“The reason you don’t accept the Toronto Blessing as being from God, is because you still have at least one, maybe even more evil spirits dwelling within you from the years you were in the New-Age scene, and you haven’t got rid of them yet and these spirits very naturally resist the Holy Spirit, and that’s why you’re coming out against all this stuff”.

Or somebody else wrote a letter to me saying… it just said this… one sentence, it just said: “May I prayerfully suggest that you seek deliverance ministry at Ellel Grange”.

Now, we need to just look at this for a moment. I didn’t want to go into this in too much detail, but in view of the nature of the audience here and the fact that I think it’s a manner of hypnotic manipulation that takes place at a very deep level, when it’s abused in a kind of a way that I am speaking about, I feel I need to develop all this a little. I believe that in order to uphold the integrity of the atonement, one has to believe that a believer, a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, cannot possibly be possessed by a demon. We are speaking here about a fallen angel! We know that believers can certainly be harassed by demons either because they have failed to get their house in order properly or because they are being taught a lesson in chastisement for some higher purposes. But I do not believe that believers can be possessed by demons. I can recommend some interesting books on this subject, there’s a very good one by Thomas Brooks, who was one of the puritans. He wrote a book called “Precious Remedies Against Satan’s devices”, in which he shows very clearly how the demonic realm can put a believer in a sad, doubting, questioning and uncomfortable condition. But possess you? In the very heart of your being? Surely Not! Or you might want to read “ Satan cast out” another book. I’ve got them in a box over there and I can show them to you after. But to say that a genuine Christian believer can actually be possessed by a demon or an evil spirit, is surely a blasphemy which denies the effective power of the blood of Christ to deliver a person from the power of darkness. Christianity…what’s Christianity all about? It’s about redemption from being under the dominion of sin and the power of darkness. Isn’t that what Christianity is about? But suddenly you are in a church…I mean let’s face it…church should be some kind of retreat from the horrendousness of the world, and most certainly from the dominion of Satan. It should be a place where you can find solace among the Lord’s people. And you go to church and a man stand up and tells you that you are possessed by one or even more demons. Well do you mind if I just share with you briefly, because I think this is a moot point. You see I come here having already counselled a number of people from the Bridlington area here, who had received this so-called deliverance ministry from a Ellel Grange influenced church. You probably all know which one I am speaking about. So in a sidebar here this evening I’d just like to scotch this nonsense that a believer can be possessed. So before continuing with the eleventh hallmark of cults, I would therefore like to give you sixteen biblical reasons why a believer cannot be possessed. I’ll just give you headings, don’t worry about it being too much. Just sixteen reasons from scripture.

Sidebar: Sixteen biblical reasons why a believer cannot be possessed.

I think it’s very important you see, because this is being used for tremendously manipulative purposes. I remember when I first realised there was a problem up here in the Bridlington area (I’m based more than a hundred miles away): I had a phone call from a young lady, and she was just washed-out, she was at the end of her tether. Because what happens is that you’re told first of all that probably some kind of demonic entity has entered your being through some means or another (often they tell you it’s entered through an orifice). And generally one of the kind of things you are told in these circles is that if your mum had a miscarriage before you, then there is the likelihood that the spirit of that dead child has entered you. This is what people are told, I’ve got it documented, people have written me their testimony about this. And it is a horrendous thing you see, because it is a way of controlling people. They are effectively saying to them, “I know, cause I have had a word of knowledge from God that you have got a demon, and I am the only one who can cast it out. And I can now control your life completely”. Now that’s what’s happening, that cultish behaviour. Because what happens is, you find that these people don’t have one demon, they have umpteen. They have cast out one, and they say, I’m sorry, but there’s still some others remaining there, and it goes on for months, even years… 2 years in the case of this Lady I am thinking about. And this is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now what’s your faith going to be like after 2 years of thinking… walking around, continuing your daily life, believing that you’ve actually got fallen angels dwelling in your being, while really you should be filled with the glory of the assurance of having the indwelling Holy Spirit?

So in order to provide cast-iron evidence to the contrary, here are the sixteen Biblical reasons why a genuine disciple of Christ cannot possibly have demons dwelling in them:

First reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is described as “a new creation. All things have passed away, behold all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Whereas before you became a new creation through regeneration you were under the power of darkness, now you are no longer.

Second reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian has been “sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). Sealed! Get it? There’s no way anything gets through those orifices — not because you are physically sealed but because you are spiritually sealed. That takes care of everything!

Third reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian has been fully delivered from the dominion of darkness (and therefore from being under the power of Satan) and brought into the kingdom of the love of God (Colossians 1:13; cf. Acts 26:17-18). We have been delivered. It is something that has happened already. It is not something we need to go and have counselling sessions about. You are not under the dominion of Satan any longer.

Fourth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian has not received “the Spirit of bondage, again to fear”, but he or she has “received the Spirit of adoption”. That’s the Holy Spirit being spoken about. You have been adopted into God’s family, by whom we cry out Abba, Father! (Romans 8:15).

Fifth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is one of the company of whom the Apostle can say; “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The Greek word there translated as “a sound mind”, σωφρονισμός, sophronismos, literally means a saved mind, one that is disciplined. If you are a disciple of Christ, that means being under the power of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to being demon controlled.

Sixth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian has “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), not the mind of Satan or some crazed demon.

Seventh reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is not his own person, but belongs to Christ in both body and soul (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 2 Corinthians 10:7; Galatians 3:29). Would somebody who belongs to Christ in both body and soul, be walking around possessed by a demon? Let’s face it, “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ in me” (Galatians 2:20)! Where is there room for any wretched demon?

Eighth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

When John tells his flock to test the Spirits, he then goes on to say: “You are of God, little children and have overcome them, because He [that is the Spirit of Christ] that is in you is greater than he [Satan/spirit of antichrist] who is in the world” (1 John 4:1-5). What is that “he” who is in the world? Who does it actually refer to? You don’t need me to tell you, do you? How can a demon possibly possess a person who is already indwelt by the infinitely superior Holy Spirit? Surely there can be no house room? To suggest otherwise must be a serious blasphemy.

Ninth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is clothed with the whole armour of God, which is Christ (Ephesians 6:10-18). This armour — truth, righteousness, the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the sword of the Spirit — is the great panoply of gifts which every Christian has received from God through Christ. They cannot be cultivated by human endeavour.  When you put on Christ (Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14), you put on HIS truth, HIS righteousness, etc.  Christ is all in all.

I remember seeing a leaflet once put out, I believe it’s an increasingly widespread practice. What you do is, what this business is about having the armour of God, is you have to put it on every morning. So you have to do a visualisation exercise. You get up in the morning and you visualise yourself putting on this armour. And then when you go to bed at night you take it all off again and put it by the side of the bed. This is an absolutely outrageous superstition which brings the believer into an entirely unnecessary enslavement.

Tenth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is described as the temple of God and is told that the Spirit of God dwells in him (John 14:23, 1 Corinthians 3:16). And Paul then says: “If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is Holy, which temple you are” (1 Corinthians 3:17). There is no place for any demons in that temple.

Eleventh reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is one who has received the greatest freedom possible: “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). No more bondage for the Christian — to sin, to Satan, or to anyone or anything. Where is the room for possession there? I’m sorry if I am labouring this point, but it seems to be that these cultic churches thrive on people’s ignorance of true Christian teaching.

Twelfth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is part of the body of Christ, the Church, against which the gates of Hades can never prevail (Matthew 16:18). If the gates of Hades cannot prevail, then how can a measly little demon?

Thirteenth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

Jesus said that no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand. “My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Fathers hand, I and my Father are one” (John 10:28). No human can and no demon can either.

Fourteenth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is one who has only to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). That’s the golden formula there for the Christian believer. This simple antidote is overlooked by so many brethren today. Personal resistance is the key through progressive sanctification, not some pseudo-deliverance ministry!

Fifteenth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

The Christian is described as one who can never be separated from the love of God, at the end of Romans chapter 8 Paul says “Not by anything”, and he says not by principalities and powers as well, which includes demons. Nothing can separate you from that. So, what’s this? Where’s this demon intervening between those two things? Can’t happen can it? As Paul puts it: If God is for us, who can be against us? Exactly!

Sixteenth reason why a believer cannot be possessed:

This, above all: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom.8:28). That verse is the biggest slap of all right in the face of “deliverance” ministries.

The reason why these people have to uphold the idea that believers can be possessed by demons is the desire for naked power. So long as you can be possessed in this way, they have power over you to manipulate you, to exploit you and ultimately to control you. And it is for this same reason they make people in their flocks believe that they need to unravel all the traumas of their childhood. And it is all so that they can control you, because they are on a power trip masquerading as “deliverers”, when they are nothing of the sort. And as to the suggestion that those who oppose this sort of thing, should seek deliverance from Ellel Grange or, as some people have called it, “Hell-hole Grange”, you are far more likely to leave that place possessed by a demon than before you went in.

Anyway, we could go on at great length more about all that, because it is necessary to deliver people from these false ideas, to deliver them out of these cultish churches. Manipulation through hypnotism and trance-techniques. That’s what the Toronto Blessing is all about as well. Mind-manipulation. And all that is a mainstay of the occult, incidentally, but we won’t pursue that now, as I have already done so in many other places.

Now, after that little (but I believe necessary) diversion, we go back to the hallmarks of cults. The eleventh hallmark of a cult is this:

11) Having an Authoritarian Structure

This is what gels it all together. Rigid authoritarianism is generally practised in a cult, with awful consequences promised to those who dare to question or defect. Now that is a standard hallmark of a secular cult, but has it not also become a standard hallmark of these Christian cults? Do you know about this? I get repeated testimonies from people who tell me about the threats they have received, what they are told about themselves, how they are blasphemous against the Holy Spirit, how their lives will be in tatters if they dare to leave this particular situation in this church.

But that’s not the way we should carry on in our churches is it? Sometimes in a church you may have been prepared to let somebody go. Somebody might have become very rebellious, and might want to explore this and that and sometimes one has to do that. Let them find out for themselves and you cover it all with prayer, and you don’t forget about them. You don’t need to manipulate them into staying in your church. You have every confidence that if you treat them with love they will come back to you eventually and so on. And there are always people challenging you in the church. If you are a pastor, you will know all about that. The people who come to you with a Bible which they are pointing at on the way out through the door, and telling you all the things you said wrong, and all that sort of thing. And you don’t hurl a hand-grenade at them each time they do that. You meet it in love. And sometimes people do actually say something that is right. But in the churches that we are speaking about, if you walk up to the leaders and just very gently say (and I have known people who have done this) “I’m just concerned about this or that”… then this huge thing comes out of the sky and lands on them. And it’s very devastating, if you are a person who has trusted this leadership and you are very much involved in this church, and suddenly you are ostracised and all the rest of the things that happen to you. This is an authoritarian structure. If you do not get out of there, it will eventually either destroy you or make you into a pathetic minion devoted to a lost case of darkness.

The twelfth hallmark of a cult is this:

12) Vicious Condemnation of Anybody who Disagrees with their Standpoint

It’s a common feature of cults and cult leaders: Vehement censure of anybody who dares to question their practices, or who dares to attempt to rescue members from their clutches. It is so in the secular cultic scene, and it is so in the Christian cultic scene as well.

Well you don’t need me to go into all that in great detail. There are probably some of you here who have actually experienced it. But if you dare to even try and have a debate with some of these people, they eventually use ad hominem arguments against you. They can’t debate, because they can’t think logically. Their brains are so addled by countless bizarre experiences that they can’t debate anything rationally. And so finally if you force them into a corner, they begin to display some very vicious behaviour.

The thirteenth hallmark of a cult is:

13) Financial Extortion or Exploitation

That’s certainly the case in secular cults, as we well know that’s how secular cults thrive. You will always find that the person at the head of it all, internationally, is usually a very wealthy person, with a yacht and Rolls-Royce (or even multiple luxury vehicles) and all the rest of it. And it is generally about financial extortion.

Sad to say, that we find this also in the Christian cultic scene today. Vast amounts of money. These guys that we have been speaking about are very rich, very wealthy people, multi-millionaires, and living the kind of lifestyle which is totally unfitting for a genuine Christian person. I just remember seeing a video-clip of one of these characters and he was really turning on an emotion as the evening was drawing to a close after a crazed extended session of making people fall down, laugh hysterically, and speak gibbersih, and the old hanky comes out. And he is saying: “Money just couldn’t buy what we see here this evening, money just couldn’t buy all these things…”. And he is wiping his eyes. And everyone is getting all kind of sentimental about it… and all of a sudden his voice changes and he says: “But if you do feel willing to give, we take MasterCard, Visa, etc.”. Just like that! Yeah and the buckets came round. I have never passed a bucket round in my church. Utterly crass. You know. Huge buckets go around, and they get filled up with notes. I don’t see notes that often. Financial extortion, a great hallmark of a cult.

The fourteenth and final hallmark of a cult is:

14) Syncretism, Syncretistic Practices and Associations

What do I mean by that? Well syncretism is when you just have a whole hotch-potch of religious ideas being thrown into the melting-pot as it were, and you no longer have a pure spirituality. You will find in these churches, these cultic churches where you will find them drawing on all kinds of religious and psychological elements in order to create their own special brand of religion which they tout as apostolic Christianity. But what they don’t realise is a lot of the practices that they are drawing on are established occult operations or are things that have been practised in numerous world-religions that have nothing to do with Christianity.

If you go along to their churches and get zapped by all the kind of stuff that they are promoting, the occult is all there, right there in their churches. I’ll prove it to you, alright, I’ll show you a very interesting photograph now. See if you can identify which church you saw this in. This is coming to a church near you shortly. Okay? Now which church is all that happening in you think? Well I’ll tell you. It’s not in a church, though it could be. This man here is the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh and he is administering something that is known as Shaktipat, whereby a Hindu guru touches his disciples on the head and then they go into a rapture. You see all the girls in the back in hysterical laughter because he is touching them on the forehead down here. This is established practice in Hindu circles and these cultic leaders — he is dead now, you may remember him, he had 47 Rolls-Royces, as cultic leaders are wont to do — that was how he got all of these people into his cult, because they were being initiated through the “impartation” of this extraordinary subjective experience where they would go off into a trance, enraptured. Now the amazing thing is, you could have looked at this a number of years ago and thought, well that’s a cult. But who would have thought that we would see these kind of things in churches multiply so much as we do today. It’s the same kind of stuff. They say they are “imparting” manifestations of the Holy Spirit but they are inducing an occult experience. You tell me what the difference is between that and this…..there’s none is there…there’s none. Where does it all come from, this ritual that people call being slain in the spirit, that you go up to the front and there’s a guy up there who puts his hand on you, and you fall down on the ground as if to order. It is bound to happen, you know. It is an ordered spirituality, and you can just do it. Yeah, all you have to do is just go to the front, and it will happen absolutely! Do you know where it comes from, well, apart from this sort of thing, if you read up on Babylonian cults, you will find something that is known as “temple-sleep” or “incubation” which was practised in ancient times. It was also practised in Roman and Greek circles as well, but most particularly in Babylonian times, whereby a person would go to some kind of sacred place and go into a sort of sleep, and they believed that during that sleep, the gods were operating on them, as it were, and doing all kinds of healing things to them. It’s just the same kind of stuff as this! Tell me when this has existed in the true church of Christ before this century. For 18/19 centuries, this kind of stuff was completely non-existent in churches, though there have been “holy spirit” cults on occasion down the ages (e.g., Johannes Tauler, the Zwickau Prophets and other “enthusiasts”, as the puritans called them). We are talking here about people queuing up in order to receive psycho-religious experience. Well it’s cultic. That’s how you build a cult. The feel-good factor. You make people feel great and then they will join in with all the stuff and nonsense that you have to offer, so much that is just taken for granted these days that will happen.

CONCLUSION

Well, now I’m coming to a close. Why do you think there seems to be such an increase in sects and cults during recent times? Well I would say first of all, is there really an increase in sects and cults comparatively speaking? I think there have been times in history where there has been the same amount of attention. If you had been around in the first couple of centuries AD. You would have discovered a phenomenal number of mystery cults and mystery religions in every street, you know, people were meeting in all kinds of secret little places and so on. And if you read up on some historian speaking about church life in the first couple of centuries, you will find out that the vast majority of churches had some kind of influence of Gnosticism in them or various other -isms that were around at that time. And then we all know that from then on, a couple of centuries later, Aryanism hit virtually every church in Christendom, and people such as Athanasius were completely marginalised because of his singlehanded opposition to it. And he was called “contra mundum”… against the whole world. Sometimes you have to stand against the whole world, whatever it takes, however much is the cost to yourself.

The cult of Aryanism faded away eventually, but these things do happen, and have done throughout church history. But nevertheless, there are certain things that make it different today. I think one of them is the media. We’ve got a situation where at one time if you started a mystery cult in one part of Europe, in Crete or something, well somebody living in Londinium isn’t going to know anything about it. Whereas today you just get it all on the Internet. If you want to know anything that is going on, plug into the Internet and you find it all out instantly. Within five minutes you can have all that material printed off on your laser printer. Well, that wasn’t able to happen before, so I think that the media has also given rise to this problem that we have today.

I think there is also an increasing amount of angst. What sociologists call anomie, a kind of lost-ness in people’s souls at the present time. People are desperately searching for something spiritually and the sad thing is that the church is seen as something that can’t offer a certain hope to people these days. That’s all our fault isn’t it? Yeah, we take responsibility for this, don’t we? I think we are not communicating properly what the church essentially has to offer, and very often what we do say which is of good then gets undermined by all the nonsense out there. I’ll probably have my head bitten off if I say this, but I have just become very aware today that Bishops are very much better at pronouncing on poverty in a city than they are on the atonement. Do you know what I mean? They seem to get more press coverage as well when they talk that talk. Rather than actually directly saying why Christ… why the Son of God came into incarnation and actually letting people know that uniqueness of spirituality.

So there’s that anomie/angst generally throughout the world, and the church isn’t speaking into that properly and so cults are just taking over. And all these cultic churches which are so very well organised and have such huge buckets of money they can do all these things. And then there’s what we can call “Millennial twitchiness”, isn’t there? As the year 2000 is approaching, there’s all this kind of strange anticipation of something extraordinary happening…what’s it going to be…is maybe a UFO going to arrive, and some ET’s going to get out and say; well, we have come finally to help you out into your next phase of evolution?

What’s everybody waiting for? Everybody is waiting for a saviour aren’t they? They are! All these politicians are weak today, aren’t they? And not politicians like they used to be, able to deliver a great speech and all this kind of thing, they are just wet immoral people, and that also increases people’s insecurity and they are looking for a leader and one day some cultic personality is going to provide that leadership. I won’t go into that one right now as I’m sure you know exactly who I mean.

And then of course there’s the whole thing opened up in the sixties through sexual liberation so called and drugs as well. See it’s remarkable, until the 1960’s, drugs were relatively unavailable; the only people who ever smoked dope were a few wacky Jazz musicians living in Chelsea. And then all of the sudden in the 60’s the whole thing just opens up and you can just walk down the road to a shabeen in Manchester and buy half an ounce of cannabis, and anybody can do that. And there you are, the drug thing just changes everything completely and you wind up with this whole autonomy thing.

I remember even in a church speaking to a young man, and he was desperate to hold a rock music service in the church. He wanted the whole works, the real McCoy. And I was talking to him about this, and I knew, you know you have that horrible feeling, when you are talking to young people they just think you are just nothing you know, you don’t know anything at all, you are completely out of it. And he looked at me with that withering look and said; “You see what you don’t realise is, that today, we have been taught to think for ourselves you see, at one time we would have looked up to you and see you as our elders, but we don’t need to anymore, I have been taught to think for myself in school”. And it is that kind of autonomy that means you don’t need to refer to an elder, in the true sense of the word, an old grey-haired one who is wiser than you anymore. You just thrust your way through life, and smoke your dope and drop your XTC and all the rest of things that you do. And that also, I believe leads to the whole situation that we have today, where cults can just move in. and exploit people.

Well, finally, let’s ask a question here, a horrible question to have to ask and that is; Why are so many Christians, “professing Christians” I think I have to say here, attracted to cults? What says the scripture? “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons”. Or “the time will come when they will not endure sound teaching but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears…” That’s it, itching ears, “they will HEAP up for themselves teachers, they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3). And Paul the apostle speaks as well darkly in his second letter to the Thessalonians, he says to them: “Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day, the great day of the Lord will not come, unless the falling away comes first”. Referring to the apostasia. Is that what we are on the cusp of at the present time? There seems to be an awful lot of mayhem in churches today and no certain sound being delivered from many places. And you think about how in Galatians Paul said; “Who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1). Who has fascinated you, that’s what the Greek word, βασκαίνω, baskaino,has brought us. That’s where we get our English word, fascination from that Greek word right there. Who has fascinated you? Who has lured you, drawn you into this by giving you false promises and all the rest of it? And Romans 16:17 says: “Now I urge you brethren, note those who cause divisions and offences contrary to the teaching which you learned and avoid them. For those are such who do not serve the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly and by smooth words and flattering speech, deceive the hearts of the simple”. Christians need to stop being simpletons (which is not the same as ‘simplicity’). Christians need to get genned-up on what true Christianity is really all about. If the church is going to discharge its responsibility, it is going to have to take some fairly drastic action to stand the tide of cultism within professing Christian churches today.

It was that great Church of England puritan William Perkins, who said in 1596 that the role of the Christian minister is to first gather the sheep into the kingdom, and secondly to protect them from the wolves. Well, we might be good at gathering sheep into the kingdom (though not so great at it), but we don’t do very much to protect them from the wolves do we?

How many more butchered sheep will it take for us to wake up to the abattoirish travesty in the churches today and fulfil our God-given calling as Pastors and teachers and protectors of the flock.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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