The verse which best describes what this course
will be, from a biblical perspective, is 1
Peter 3, verse 15.
Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and
be ready always to give to everyone that
asks of you an answer, a reason for
the hope that lies within you with humility
and with reverence.
What we are being told by Peter is
that before you can effectively defend the Christian
gospel against its enemies, Christ must be enthroned
in the heart and in the life.
Once he is set apart as sovereign, then
it is possible to be prepared to give
to everyone that asks of you an answer.
And that is what the science of apologetics
is all about.
It is to every man an answer, a
reason for the hope that lies within you.
We are involved in this series of meetings,
in this course, on the subject of cult
apologetics.
We call it a cult clinic or a
cult seminar, but we're really involved in cult
apologetics and evangelism.
Giving reasons for faith and then evangelizing people.
Because after we communicate the gospel of Christ
to someone, it's important for us to be
prepared to give them reasons why we believe
in it.
When you're talking to a Jehovah's Witness or
a Mormon or a Christian scientist or a
Unitarian or someone in the kingdom of the
cult, and you give that person your witness
in Christ, the person is going to respond
and give you their thoughts.
Now when that happens, you cannot retort with
John 3.16. You cannot come back with
Acts 16.31. You have got to be
able to answer the question addressed to you
in the context of that question.
Not just give more evangelism, because you will
lose the respect of the person unless they
see that you are concerned with their questions.
That they have genuine concerns and are looking
for answers.
That's why there has to be giving reasons
or answers for our faith.
That's why the Greek word found about eight
times approximately in the New Testament, apologia, put
up a strong defense.
A strong spiritual fight for your faith is
included in New Testament theology.
The Lord Jesus, the apostles, the disciples of
our Lord, all of them were apologists as
well as evangelists.
They not only proclaimed Jesus Christ, but when
they were questioned, they had good solid reasons
for their faith.
That's why Peter says, always ready to every
man an answer.
Reason for the hope that lies within us.
That is primary to our understanding of this
field.
Secondly, we have to understand something else about
the world of the cult.
We are dealing with approximately 24 million people
in the kingdom of the cult.
And according to Time Magazine, approximately 60 odd
million involved in our culture practice.
Put them together and you have a good
round number of 84 million who are desperately
in need of a communication of the Christian
gospel.
That's the object of evangelism and of apologetics.
Give them the message and be prepared to
give some answers.
Now there are many things that have to
be learned.
And in the time that we have together,
I don't think we're going to cover everything
that we ought to cover or would want
to cover.
But I want to assign reading for you
in the text because this will give you
some background and cover some material on your
own time that will be supplementary to what
we cover in our class lectures.
I would like you to read between now
and our next meeting together, the first two
chapters of the kingdom of the cult, with
particular emphasis upon the chapters scaling the language
barrier.
And the chapter entitled, Jesus of the Cult.
The Jesus of the Cult.
Those are orientation chapters.
Chapters which will give you a perspective on
the world of the cult.
We define a cult, incidentally, as a group
of people polarized about the interpretations or the
teachings of a specific individual or organization.
It always claims to be in harmony with
Christianity.
But it always ends up denying that Jesus
Christ is the Lord God himself in human
flesh.
For the purposes of our study, that is
what a cult is.
Simple meaning of the word in Latin, cultus,
means a group.
But as we look around us and see
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Christian Science, Unitarianism, Spiritism, the
Unity School of Christianity, Herbert W.
Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God, and
go on naming all of the various cults
that surround us, you will notice that each
one has its own guru, if you will.
Its own interpreter.
The one who makes plain to them what
God has said.
They're always trying, almost tumbling over each other
sometimes, to say, we're in agreement with the
basic Christian message.
But when you start penetrating deeper into the
system, you find out that there is an
essential denial of the person of Jesus Christ.
Let me illustrate what I mean by this.
When you are talking to a Jehovah's Witness
and you say, Jesus, that means to the
Christian, God the Son, Second Person of the
Holy Trinity.
That means to the Jehovah's Witness, Michael the
Archangel, the first and greatest creation of Jehovah
God.
When you say, Jesus, to a Mormon, that
means to you, God the Son, Second Person
of the Trinity.
It doesn't change.
To the Mormon, it means a polygamous offspring
of another god and the Virgin Mary, who
is one god in a pantheon of gods.
And every Mormon member of the priesthood, male
member, is attempting to attain godhood so they
can be like Jesus.
When you say, Jesus, to a Christian scientist,
to you, God the Son, Second Person of
the Trinity.
To the Christian scientist, the divine idea of
God is the divine idea of a true
man?
Of course not.
Because there is no such thing as true
manhood because the physical world doesn't exist.
Christian science says, and I quote Mrs. Eddy,
founder and discoverer, allegedly, there is no life,
truth, intelligence or substance in matter but all
is infinite mind and its infinite manifestation.
God is all and in all.
Translated, there is no reality to the world
of matter.
This is known in philosophy as absolute idealism.
The only thing that exists is the ideal,
the idea itself.
It has, however, a basic flaw.
That basic flaw is people persist in getting
sick and dying.
And this does create somewhat of a contradiction
in Christian science reasoning process.
Death rate is still one per person.
And the Christian scientists keep on making it
like everybody else.
Therefore, idealism does have its problems.
For if God is all and all is
good, where did you ever get the idea
that there was evil?
And when you have to account for the
existence of the idea, you are involved in
logical contradictions.
That, of course, we'll get to when we
start studying the mind sciences and how you
talk to people who think their bodies aren't
really there.
I went to school with a Christian scientist
for a number of years and he used
to teach me Christian science theology before I
was a Christian.
And I had terrible hay fever.
And when the ragweed was in bloom, so
was my nose.
And I used to sneeze interminably.
And he would always tell me that if
I could learn to demonstrate over error that
my nose wouldn't run, my eyes wouldn't run
and it would disappear.
And I said, how do I demonstrate over
error?
He said, well, you only really think that
you're sneezing.
You only really think that you have a
physical body to be irritated by ragweed.
Now, if you can realize that the real
you is in the image of God and
what you are seeing here is an illusion,
you can get rid of your hay fever.
And I said, fantastic!
That's great!
I mean, that sounds wonderful.
I said, how come you haven't gotten rid
of your broken nose?
He said, what broken nose?
And he had a nose that was stuck
over at an angle like this.
And he was looking right down it over
there, talking to me and telling me he
did not have a broken nose.
Anybody that can look at you with a
broken nose and tell you they don't have
a broken nose can certainly tell you you
don't have hay fever.
These are really philosophical problems you run into
in dealing with the world of the cult.
They're there and they're going to have to
be faced.
But our primary concern, and I say this
very seriously, our primary concern is not to
show the cultist that we're smarter than he
is.
Not to dazzle him with our biblical footwork
or with our apologetics.
Our task is to communicate Jesus Christ, the
real Jesus, the real spirit, and the real
gospel to the cult.
And to show them how terribly deceived they
have become through the forces of darkness which
dominate the world in which we live.
It is also imperative, finally, in dealing with
the world of the cult, that you recognize
the origin.
There are many contributing factors, many explanations which
can be given.
But the scriptures give one absolute explanation for
the world in which we live, the kingdom
of the cult.
2 Corinthians 4, verse 4.
If our gospel is hid, it is hid
to them who are lost, in whom the
God of this age has blinded the minds
of them that believe not, lest the glorious
light of the gospel of Christ, who is
the image of God, should shine to them.
You are dealing fundamentally with people who are
in darkness spiritually.
We are not better than they are.
We are sinners saved by grace.
And God has made us righteous in Christ.
If they ever get the idea that a
Christian thinks that he or she is better
than they are, a Christian will never communicate
the gospel for that person.
And all too often, in attempting to reach
cultists, our approach is, I'm saved and you're
lost.
Now, theologically, that's true.
But emotionally and psychologically, that will turn them
off about as fast as anything you could
possibly imagine.
Try and find some synonyms for what have
become biblical clichés.
Try and find some words for saved and
lost.
Try and find some words to describe the
great theological doctrines that are meaningful to the
people while at the same time not turning
them off to the truth of those teachings.
Illustration.
Don't ever say to cultists, you've got to
be saved to get under the blood of
Jesus.
Because the average cultist doesn't even know what
you're talking about when you use that kind
of vocabulary, that in-house vocabulary.
That is not vocabulary the cultists understand.
What you can say to a cultist is,
I can remember when the Lord redeemed me
from my sins.
I didn't deserve it, but Christ delivered me.
And he did it on the basis of
the cross of Calvary, where God paid the
penalty for human sin.
Now given the entire gospel, only you've used
the synonym structure.
The cultists get the message that you have
not climbed up into a pulpit and are
engaged in a preaching mission to him.
You are talking with him, using just as
forceful language but not with the theological definitions
that so often evangelical Christianity is not only
familiar with, but guilty of using to excess.
I wrote a chapter entitled Scaling the Language
Barrier.
Why?
Because the world of the cult has a
completely different language than yours and mine as
Christians.
I pointed out to you before the difference
in the word Jesus.
Well that goes all down the line.
For instance, if I were to say to
a Christian scientist, the atonement of Christ, a
Christian scientist would have a redefinition lightning fast
in his or her mind.
And it would mean, I am at onement
with God.
They hyphenate the word atonement until it becomes
at-one-ment with God.
But atonement in Christian theology means the covering
of our sins the payment for our sins
by the substitution of Jesus Christ's life on
the cross.
Not so in Christian science.
When you start talking to a Mormon about
atonement, the Mormon will say oh yes, I
believe Jesus died for my sins.
I believe his blood was shed for me.
I'm trusting in it.
Christian gets a little nonplussed at that point.
What's going on in the vocabulary structure?
It sounds the same.
How many of you read George Orwell, 1984?
You remember doublethink?
You just met it again.
That's doublethink.
Same words, completely different thoughts.
Who is Jesus Christ?
God himself in human flesh who died on
the cross for our sins.
Who is the Jesus of the Mormons?
The spirit brother of the devil.
The offspring of sexual relations between Adam God
and the Virgin Mary.
A polygamist who produced children before he died
and was married to at least three women
according to Mormon theology.
Does his blood cleanse from all sins?
No.
According to Mormon prophets Brigham Young exactly.
There are some sins the blood of Jesus
cannot atone for.
Your own blood has to pay for it.
How did they arrange that?
By executing you for your sins.
Better known in history as the doctrine of
blood atonement.
So here you have someone saying, I believe
in the blood of Jesus and trust it.
And you've got another Jesus an incomplete atonement
and one that cannot meet the sins of
the whole world.
You can follow it through step by step.
Have you tried this kind of reasoning in
the world of medicine?
You never get away with it.
Can you imagine going into a doctor and
having him look in your throat and poke
and push, examine you and then tell you
that you had to be in the hospital
the next day because he intended to operate,
you had appendicitis and you were very upset
of course and you went in and the
doctor operated.
And you woke up and you still had
the pain in your side and you had
a sore throat to boot.
You suddenly realized that you couldn't talk and
when you looked down your throat with a
mirror you found out you didn't have any
tonsils.
And when the doctor came in you said
to him I thought I was having my
appendix out.
That's down here.
My tonsils are out.
They're up here.
I'm not a doctor but that much I
know.
What's going on?
The doctor said to you with a smile.
No, no.
Let's not be narrow and bigoted.
Be broad minded.
Tonsils to you, appendix to me.
Now the absurdity of the thought grabbed you
immediately.
You know a doctor wouldn't last more than
one operation with that kind of reasoning.
You'd never know what he was going to
take out.
If you went into a courtroom and stood
before a judge and he didn't know the
difference between a misdemeanor and a felony you
could go up for murder on a parking
ticket.
You've got to know that terms in context
refer to a specific thing and can be
defined as such or we have lost the
capacity to communicate.
Now Watergate should have taught us at least
one thing.
Words are definitely in need of definition in
the American culture.
When people can stand up before Congress under
oath and with a straight face swear that
they never took a dishonest dollar and then
under pressure from an attorney they're asked the
question, did you take $20,000 to Mexico,
deposit it in the Mexican bank and bring
it back again?
Yes.
Was that $20,000 an illegal contribution?
Yes.
Did you give that $20,000 to somebody
in order to get that person to do
what you wanted them to do in this
election campaign?
Yes.
Then you actually bribed that person.
No sir, I did not bribe that person.
Well what did you do?
I simply utilized funds that were available to
extradite the solution to a difficult problem.
Now you know and I know that I
did not invent that.
We lived through that.
Parades of people going back and forth, lie
like troopers.
One lie, the other swear to it.
And then everybody say, who me?
No, never.
Now, not to belabor the point.
If terms do not mean in context what
they are by definition, we're dead.
Politically, medically, legally.
May I extend it?
Theologically.
And if you think you can talk to
the people in the kingdom of the cult
and tell them about Jesus and how he
loved them and died for their sins and
rose from the dead, and you think you're
communicating with those people, you're sick.
Because as fast as you are giving them
that vocabulary, they are going through double think.
And it's coming right out the other end
of the computer in their own frame of
reference, and it doesn't mean anything at all
to the Christian message.
Now what do you do in order to
short-circuit it?
Very carefully define your terms.
Define your terms.
When you're talking to somebody and you want
to communicate Christ to them, when you use
the name of the Lord Jesus, and the
person says, I believe in Jesus, then you
ought to say, but which one?
And that takes people up.
What do you mean which one?
There's only one?
Oh no, didn't you know?
There's lots of them.
I only know about one.
Ah, but have you got the right one?
That's a good conversation starter right there.
They're not ready for this.
You'll see this when you read the chapter
of Jesus and the cult.
2 Corinthians chapter 11, there's another Jesus, another
spirit, another gospel.
And it's possible for you to be using
all the terminology of Christianity and be going
down the primrose path to semantic destruction without
even knowing what's going on.
So terminology, vocabulary, is enormously important.
Scaling the language barrier by the definition of
terms, by taking nothing for granted, and by
testing all things.
1 Thessalonians chapter 5, test all things, put
everything to the test.
Cling tenaciously to what is good.
We know what is good in the context
of the person of our Lord, teachings of
the New Testament, and the ministry of the
Holy Spirit.
What I'd like to do is to give
you some of the do's and don'ts of
witnessing to cultists.
Because that's really what we're dealing with, isn't
it?
How to witness to cultists.
So let me give you some of the
things I've learned after 24 years of dealing
with virtually every variety known, and a few
that haven't yet been classified.
Hopefully that in sharing this, you will be
able to utilize the information and communicate with
people also.
Marshall McLuhan has given to the world priceless
gifts.
It is the gift of emphasis upon the
meaning of communication.
Namely, if you cannot say it so that
people can comprehend it, you have not said
it at all.
Donald Barnhouse, who was my teacher, said get
the hay down out of the loft onto
the barn floor where the cows can get
at it.
Jesus did not say feed my giraffes.
He said feed my sheep.
So don't try and impress people with your
newfound biblical knowledge.
Don't try and whip off the text the
four spiritual laws, the navigators, and whatever else
you may have gotten your hands on as
the pièce de résistance to the cultists.
Because you'll find out, not only don't they
know what you're talking about, but believe me,
they couldn't care less.
They have their own system of thought.
You've got to get inside that mind and
inside that system of thought in order to
communicate.
The first do is do recognize the need
for identity.
You have to identify with the cultists.
You've got to convince them.
And you really must do it because you
believe it.
Not because it's a message, but because you
believe it.
You've got to convince them that you consider
them to be a person in their own
right, worthwhile, basically honest, and not trying to
put something over on you.
You've got to identify with the fact that
they're people before they're cultists.
They have families.
They have children.
They have needs.
They have frustrations and fears.
They are flesh and blood and they are
our brothers and sisters in Adam, not in
Christ.
In Acts chapter 17 we are told, all
men are God's offspring.
The word is child.
What does it mean?
It means that in Adam all of us
share a common heritage.
We are all homo sapien, for better or
for worse.
And I can call a man brother in
the Adamic sense.
And it's valid because we are children of
Adam.
It sometimes disturbs Jehovah's Witnesses when you put
your arm around them or the Mormons and
say, now brother.
And they say, what do you mean brother?
Jehovah's Witness when I was witnessing to him
one time said, I'm not your brother.
I said, well that depends on what level
we're talking on.
What do you mean by that?
I said, well, didn't you have the same
father that I did?
What do you mean?
I said, don't you believe Adam is the
father of the human race?
He said, yeah.
I said, all right, brother.
Let's talk a little bit.
Let's shake them up.
Because they have never thought of the family
of Adam to which we all belong.
Let's talk from the family of Adam perspective,
prayerfully hoping to bring them to the family
of God perspective.
We are all God's children by creation in
Adam.
But we are God's sons and daughters in
the new creation by adoption through faith in
Christ Jesus.
That's biblical theology.
With them as people.
And feel for them as people.
Remember what you were like before you found
him.
If you want a good description of yourself
and myself, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 will tell
you near the end of the chapter what
an awful mess we were.
And how Jesus Christ put our Humpty Dumpty
back together again.
That's what we want him to do for
them.
Do identify with the cultists as a person
and accept their basic integrity.
Secondly, do labor patiently and exhaustively and prayerfully
with the cultists.
Never give up unless the cultist openly and
decisively refuses further contact.
Plant the seed.
Nobody ever won a race who stopped running
halfway through or six feet from the finish
line.
You and I are in a race.
We're in there to give our best and
we want those people to come to Christ.
Until they pull the plug out, we hang
in there.
Remembering that the Lord blesses his word.
Scripture says, My word will never return to
me empty, but it will accomplish the thing
whereunto I sent it and prosper in what
I have ordained.
Do we believe that as Christians?
Then if we do, we ought to redouble
our efforts to plant the seed of the
word of God and to water it.
Identifying with the people and laboring patiently with
them, never giving up unless they are willing
to break off and turn away.
Christ taught there is a point when you
do not cast the pearls of the gospel
before the swine of unbelief.
But until that point is reached, Christian labors
to bring the person to the Savior.
Another important do is exhaust every effort to
answer the questions of cultists.
There are people who are so busy listening
to themselves witness that they never hear anything
that the other person is saying.
Nothing turns somebody off so quickly as when
they're trying to communicate with you and you
have turned off the channel.
I find when I deal with a Jehovah's
Witness, a Mormon, or a cultist of any
variety, if you are willing to listen, disagree
lovingly but listen, the person is responsive.
If you just simply say, yeah, okay, okay,
okay, and then go on.
The person quickly gets the message you don't
care.
Result?
Termination of contact.
They're not going to buy it.
There's another important do that you may misinterpret,
but I'll say it anyhow.
Do let cultists save face.
You know what I mean by that?
I mean that when you're witnessing to people,
and that time will come, when you have
made a convincing presentation of Christ, answered their
questions, and they're pretty shaky, they're on rocky
ground, you have an opportunity to present the
gospel to them in a very loving manner.
Or you have the opportunity to come on
so strong that the person will end up
fighting you even though they know in their
soul they're wrong.
And I've seen that happen sometimes to the
point of disgust.
Where a group of Christians and people who
don't agree in the cults will be having
a lengthy discussion.
And one or two of the cultists will
just run out of gas.
Some of the Christians will descend upon that
person.
You see?
You were wrong on this point, and this
is why.
Boom, boom, boom, it starts.
And the person gradually becomes quiet, and then
hostile.
Because you know when you back somebody into
a corner, what happens?
Even if they're wrong, they're going to do
what?
Fight!
Human nature.
Corrupt human nature.
But it's there.
You know it's there.
I know it's there.
We don't like to have that happen to
us.
All right.
What do you do?
When you sense that the person has really
had it and there's no place to go,
that's the time to be, as Winston Churchill
said, in victory magnanimous.
In defeat defiant, but in victory magnanimous.
And say to the person, lovingly, I realize
that we can get awful uptight in these
areas if we let ourselves.
Let's just forget that you're a Jehovah's Witness
and I'm a Baptist or whatever you might
be.
And let's just think of ourselves as two
people who want more than anything else to
know the whole truth and the whole counsel
of God.
Right?
I've never met a cultist yet that wouldn't
say, right.
Well, you're halfway home.
You've avoided that catastrophe.
And then you can say, you know, it
isn't your fault that always is a good
way to begin.
Because the real fault lies with the organization
which has deceived the person, not with the
person who is deceived.
They've bought the deception.
The Watchtower deceived them.
The Mormon Church deceived them.
The Christian Science Church deceived them.
Maharishi Mahesh Yoga deceived them.
Guru Maharishi deceived them.
But fix it upon the leader of the
organization or the organization itself, preferably.
And say, you know, you don't have to
stay in that.
You don't have to be pushed.
What you can do is find the wonderful
liberty of the sons of God.
You know, that's what the Lord did for
me.
I was pushed around an awful lot by
whatever it may have been in your life.
But then I found out Christ doesn't want
to push us anyplace or pull us.
He just wants to make us truly free.
And that's what I want for you.
I want you to know I love you.
I care.
And I want you to know that I'm
not hostile or angry.
In fact, let's have a word of prayer
together.
I have seen some pretty hardcore cultists shake
apart at that point.
Because they expected and were told Christian love
didn't exist.
And that if they ever got backed into
a corner, they were going to get clobbered.
And instead they were loved.
I was at Calvary Chapel, Chuck Smith's beautiful
tent before the now even more beautiful building,
and had a series of marvelous meetings.
In one of those meetings, a Mormon boy,
a missionary, stood up.
I think they still have the tape, but
I hope they have it.
And really asked me some questions from his
heart.
You could tell from the way he was
asking the questions he was hurting.
Joseph and Brigham and their theology had been
pretty badly bruised that night.
And Mormonism as such wasn't in too good
a shape in his eyes.
And now he stood up to face the
antagonist.
That was me.
I had not attacked Mormons.
I had criticized Mormon theology for what it
was doing to the Mormons.
And his voice was trembling.
And he asked me a question.
I answered it.
And somebody thought that what I said was
funny.
You know, sometimes you say something unintentionally that
is funny.
And it just came out that way.
It wasn't planned.
And 3,500 or 800 people all laughed
at once.
That was quite a loud noise.
And you could just see that fellow standing
there in that middle aisle.
And he just wilted right where he stood.
He just fell apart.
Here he was trying to talk, and he
felt he was being laughed at, looking for
an answer.
The Spirit of the Lord touched me that
night.
I saw his face.
I saw how he was standing and his
voice.
And I said, just a minute to the
audience.
Nobody here means to laugh at you.
And I'm sure none of us meant that.
Everybody said, Amen.
I said, sometimes you say something and it's
interpreted the wrong way.
I'm sorry this was.
We love you.
Be glad to answer this question and any
other question you've got.
I apologize to you if your feelings were
hurt.
We are interested in talking.
Stay afterwards, and we'll have a chat.
Well, you know, he stayed.
And a couple hundred of our dear Jesus
people stayed, too.
And they all came down front.
I was so proud of them.
Nobody leaped forward.
Nobody started poking a finger in the chest.
Nobody started hurling Scripture verses.
Everybody just gathered around and sort of softly
spoke to him and asked him questions.
It was a beautiful time.
I finally got down there to him after
some of the mob had cleared away, and
came up to him and I said, What's
the problem?
He said, Well, you said the Book of
Mormon was wrong.
I said, It is.
He said, No, it can't be.
And his voice began to shake.
I said, Look, if the Bible is the
oldest revelation and the Book of Mormon and
the Bible don't agree, which one are you
going to believe?
He said, The Bible.
I said, All right, let's look.
So we looked for 20 minutes together, page
by page.
And at the end of that 20 minutes,
there was no place to hide, no place
to run, no place to go.
Everything was gone.
And he was in the middle of what
appeared to be an enormously hostile environment.
At that moment, after years of having done
it the wrong way, I did it the
right way.
I put my arm around him and loved
him for Christ's sake.
And let him off the hook and say
faith.
And I said, You can't help this.
They taught you this, but it's not the
truth.
Jesus is the truth, the real Jesus.
And we love you.
And those kids all gathered around him, and
they hugged him.
And he didn't know what to do in
the face of all this love.
It was just too much.
And I said, Let's pray together.
He said, Okay.
I put my arm around him, and he
put his arm around me.
Let me tell you, for a Mormon to
put his arm around me, that's victory.
And I prayed for him that the Lord
would open his eyes and his ears and
his soul and his understanding and redeem him.
And two nights later, Christ saved him.
At Calvary Chapel, down front, twenty or thirty
of the kids kneeling with him in prayer.
And that boy went out to be a
witness for Christ.
For years, I made the mistake of thinking
when you win the argument, you've won the
soul.
That's utter nonsense.
You can win the argument hands down and
lose the soul.
Like that.
If you win the argument, be willing to
back off in the name of love and
compassion and concern, and let that person save
face.
Don't humiliate them.
And go for the soul.
Do do that.
And the Lord will add blessing on top
of the effort.
Now there's some don'ts that I would urge
you to list.
By no means is this list exhaustive.
Don't approach a cultist with a spiritual chip
on your shoulder.
Some people say, what do you mean by
that?
A spiritual chip is communication of a feeling
to the cultist.
You are looking down on them because you
have something they don't have.
It took me a long time to learn
about this one, but I learned it.
Christians have a tendency because they have been
redeemed, I know it, to be so secure
in the liberty wherein Christ has made us
free that we automatically make other people insecure.
And there's nothing worse than insecurity if the
person buys that you are on some kind
of a superior or superiority trip.
The spiritual chip on the shoulder is if
they get the idea you've got it, they
haven't.
My aren't you lucky in how poorly off
they really are.
Condescension syndrome is lethal at this point.
And I don't know how many cultists have
said to me who have come to Christ,
so often Christians spoke to me and I
got the impression they were looking down at
me instead of reaching out for me.
That's a terrible feeling for people to have.
I'm not saying that Christians are that way,
and I'm not saying that Christians try to
be that way.
I'm saying if the cultist ever gets to
think that way, that's the end of the
communication.
They become antagonistic.
So don't go with the spiritual chip.
If you ever got it, get rid of
it.
I'm saved, they're lost.
I'm going to get that across to them.
You may get it across to them, but
what will come across is a condescension on
your part and an absence of love.
And that ought not to be.
Secondly, don't attack directly the founder of any
particular cult.
Don't!
When I lecture on Mormonism, I do not
attack Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as people.
I criticize the theology they taught.
Because if you deal in personalities, people become
instantaneously defensive.
Someone wrote us a letter at the Christian
Research Institute a few years ago, and they
said, I have heard that Mary Baker Eddy
had five husbands.
I hope this is true.
Please let me know.
Now it was obvious from the letter.
The person was doing what?
Looking for a juicy piece of scandal to
go back and beat that nice little white
-haired lady in the Christian science reading room
to death with.
And I mean, this was totally contrary to
what the Holy Spirit would have you and
I do as witnesses for Christ.
I wrote the person back and ruined their
whole day, I'm sure.
I said, Mrs. Eddy always enjoyed a reputation
of puritanical morality.
She was married three times.
Her first husband died.
Her second husband ran off with another woman,
and she quite properly divorced him.
And her third husband died of a coronary,
and she never remarried.
How one can deduce from this the immorality
of Mrs. Eddy, I do not know.
So stop trying.
They not only didn't return our contribution envelope,
they didn't even write me back a nasty
letter.
So I assume that they were in a
very bad frame of mind.
That is not the approach.
If you are going to ever bring up
anything about a person who founded a cult
or was in it, there's only one way
to do it.
From the perspective of history.
Whenever I get into a problem with the
Jehovah's Witnesses and how the Watchtower has taken
advantage of them, I always say, well, you
know, Judge Rutherford was a very gifted man,
but an awful lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, historically,
had to pay for Judge Rutherford's brilliance and
luxuries.
The average Jehovah's Witness would say, what do
you mean by that?
Don't you know about Beth Sarim?
What's Beth Sarim?
Well, right down here in San Diego, you
can go down and see it.
Beth Sarim is the house of princes.
You never saw the house of princes?
No.
What's the house of princes?
Well, back in 1925, Judge Rutherford was teaching
all you Jehovah's Witnesses that Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and Joseph, and all the patriarchs were
coming back to Earth, and they were going
to live here in happiness during the Millennial
Kingdom after Armageddon.
He did.
Yes.
And he bought a home down in San
Diego, which you people paid for.
And he refurbished it for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph, and all the patriarchs.
And then he moved in.
And he stayed there waiting for Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Joseph, and the patriarchs to come
back to Earth.
And they never came.
And he never moved out.
He stayed as the gardener until he died
in 1942, and then the Watts powers sold
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's house so that if
they do get back, there's going to be
a very grave housing shortage in San Diego
for the patriarchs.
Now, you don't have to say much more
than that.
The average Jehovah's Witness peddles an awful lot
of papers to make a buck.
The thought that the president of the Watts
Tower Society was living in a quarter of
a million dollar mansion in San Diego generates
considerable interest in Beth Sarim.
And immediately they go home and write the
Watts Tower headquarters in Brooklyn.
What about Beth Sarim?
And, of course, the Watts Tower comes back
and says, well, now this is what happened.
And then they come and tell you, and
then you have the pleasure of showing them
a photostat of the deed.
And the whole story all written out, and
you've got one good Jehovah's Witness and his
or her family listening intently on a historical
note, not a theological note.
And from that, into the theology of the
Watts Tower.
How much can you trust somebody who made
out this well on the Jehovah's Witness?
This is the only way that it can
effectively be done.
You come right out and say, Judge Rutherford
ripped you off for 250 Gs.
Forget it!
That is the end of the communication.
You're not getting anywhere.
But time it again, the Jehovah's Witness will
come back and say, I don't like that
Beth Sarim business.
It's thinking.
It's kicking away.
It's a little historical time bomb that's going
to bear fruit sometime.
This is the only way it can be
done.
Then, let me add another don't.
Don't lose your patience, regardless of how dense
cultists may be.
I know some people that say, how can
they be so thick?
Answer, you and I were pretty thick too,
until the Lord managed to break through.
There is no describing the thickness and the
darkness of sin.
When one is bound in the chains of
slavery to sin, things just aren't coming through.
You've got to be patient, because the Scripture
says the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace.
What is longsuffering?
Patience!
Oh, along with the gifts of the Spirit,
God has mentioned the necessity of the fruits
of the Spirit.
One is a bestowal, the other is a
natural outgrowth.
The life of the Christian is supposed to
be showing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness,
temperance, faith.
Patience.
That means being willing to go over something
ten times, if necessary, believing that the Lord
will give the increase.
Finally, on the don't side, don't dodge questions
that a cultist asks you, and don't expect
that all cultists can be appealed to on
the same basis.
You can't.
Never dodge questions.
If you don't know the answer, just forthrightly
say, you know, I never thought of that
before.
That's a good one.
I'm going to write that down.
Please give me your name and address, and
I'm going to get back to you so
we can find the answer to this, because
I'm sure there is one.
And you will earn the respect of that
person.
But if you bypass it and say, well,
this isn't important, that's the end of your
capacity to get to that person.
They just write you off as another religionist
or another person involved in religion who just
doesn't care.
But if you make it a point to
follow it up, they respect you, even though
they disagree with you.
They respect you.
And there is no guarantee that all cultists
will respond the same way to biblical verses
or methods of evangelism.
You will hear tapes by people giving you
surefire ways to communicate with Jehovah's Witnesses, the
Mormons, and everybody else.
Permit me to make the observation in a
loving manner.
There are no surefire ways.
There is no series of propositions that are
absolutely irresistible.
There is no forensic logic that will crush
all opposition of the cults.
There's no panacea, no magic wand, and no
push-button panel with a computer that's going
to kick out your answers.
Neither will the Holy Spirit give them to
you by the process of osmosis.
You will get the answers by studying and
showing yourself approved by God, a workman who
doesn't blush with embarrassment, rightly interpreting the word
of truth.
If you're going to get to these people
it's going to take sweat.
It's going to take prayer.
It's going to take identification and compassion.
It's going to take wisdom and knowledge from
the Spirit.
And most of all, a mastery of the
word of God.
It's going to be a hard thing to
learn that oversimplification is lethal.
It is.
And that what you have been taught many
times about how to get to these people
just isn't true.
After all is said and done, the way
we most effectively communicate with the people in
the cults is through the agency of the
Holy Spirit, taking the word of God and
the knowledge which we have absorbed, and the
experience which we have had, and applying this
to the situations in which we find ourselves
so that it is he who touches their
souls.
It is he who convinces them of sin
and of righteousness and of judgment.
And we become in his hands the vessels
which by grace have become fit for the
Master's use.
With this approach it is possible not only
to penetrate the kingdom of the cults, but
to launch a full-scale invasion and to
bring people out of that darkness into God's
marvelous life.
I've seen that happen.
I've seen Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and Christian
scientists and Unitarians and witches and warlocks, male
witches, and wizards, high priests of Satan.
I've seen people from every strata of the
cult and the occult touched and changed by
Jesus of Nazareth.
And I want to tell you, he's doing
it today right here in California, and you
and I have the opportunity to participate in
it.
CRI Box 500 San Juan Capitano, California 92693.
Or you may call 714-855-9926.