Know the Marks of Cults by Dave Breese

From the Back Cover

How to cope with cults?

There are so many of them . . . all different.

Who has time to study all their weird doctrines in order to refute them?

Here is a better way.

No need to get bogged down in the details of this or that cult. No need to debate the fine points in the original Greek and Hebrew. No need to fight over the interpretation of obscure passages of Scripture.

Each cult is guilty of one or more certain characteristic doctrinal errors. Once you know what these typical errors are, you can know what's basically wrong with a cult, whatever weird or seemingly rational form it may take. Awareness of these characteristics can help you spot creeping errors among true Christians too . . . maybe save you from going astray.

Knowing the Marks of Cults.

They miss the mark.

Don't you.

Introduction

We are living in a day when many are attempting to move beyond Christianity.

Because of the myths of progress in vogue today, the word (beyond) has a certain appeal. Something that is forever fixed and changeless seems in the minds of some to be stodgy and undynamic. In this existential age, things must forever progress, engined by the dynamism of a newly discovered life-force in our time. The prevailing emotion of this civilization is not love or hate or anything so activistic; it is boredom. We demand new fascinations to feed our ever-shortening spans of interest.

This demand for new fascinations has led many to try to move beyond the faith once delivered to the saints to something newer (and therefore presumably truer) and more exciting. I will always be grateful for the words of Dr. Eastburg, my philosophy professor at Northern Seminary, who said, "If it's new, it isn't true; and if it's true, it isn't new."

Christianity should not be thought of as a stone wall behind which we cannot get. It is rather the highest mountain top beyond which it is downhill no matter which way one goes. There is nothing greater, nothing higher, and certainly nothing more magnificent than the mountaintop of divine revelation in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. To move beyond that mountaintop in the pursuit of something better is to lose one's self in the crags and crevices of the slopes that fall away from real Christianity. And beyond the crevices of heresy are the fever swamps of the cults, where the serpents and the scorpions wait. Beyond rationality is insanity, beyond medicine is poison, beyond sex is perversion, beyond fascination is addiction, beyond love is lust, beyond reality is fantasy.

Just so, beyond Christianity is death, hopelessness, darkness and heresy.

Nevertheless, people continue to be offered those side paths whose ultimate direction is downward. The increasingly complicated religious situation of our time is producing an explosion of the strangest religious concoctions ever brought to the mind of man.

This book is presented with the hope and prayer that it will be used to point out those errors most characteristic of the cults of our time. It is not really a study of the cults themselves; they are deserving of no such attention. It is rather an expression of hope that we may develop the spiritual facility to recognize instantly the marks of the cults. This will save us the bother and expense of further involvement.

We may also note that the same characteristics of religions that are out-and-out cults can have beginning tendencies within the true Church of Christ. The recognition of those characteristics which may be cultic, coupled with their early correction, may prevent future spiritual tragedy.

Writing to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul suggested that they examine themselves to be sure that they are "in the faith" (2 Cor. 13:15). This admonition, coupled with the warning that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith (1 Tim. 4:1), should be cause enough for each of us to make careful doctrinal examination of himself.

The clear teaching of Scripture is that if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged by God (1 Cor. 11:31-32). When one corrects his course in time, he shortens the process of sometimes painful spiritual correction. The absence of doctrinal correction produces spiritual ruin. How many disillusioned Christians have stood amid the broken pieces of their shattered lives and said, "If only I had known. Why did not someone warn me in time?"

It is our prayer that our pages will bring a timely warning.

Contents

Ch. 1 - Why Do Cults Prosper?

Ch. 2 - Extra-Biblical Revelation

Ch. 3 - A False Basis of Salvation

Ch. 4 - Uncertain Hope

Ch. 5 - Presumptuous Messianic Leadership

Ch. 6 - Doctrinal Ambiguity

Ch. 7 - The Claim of "Special Discoveries"

Ch. 8 - Defective Christology

Ch. 9 - Segmented Biblical Attention

Ch. 10 - Enslaving Organizational Structure

Ch. 11 - Financial Exploitation

Ch. 12 - Denunciation of Others

Ch. 13 - Syncretism

Ch. 14 - What Shall We Do?

This book can be purchased through www.amazon.com