Bible Versions. I should start off this post by saying that I believe and use the KJV as my Bible version when I use an English Bible. I am a missionary fluent in Spanish, and use a Spanish Bible version in my church in Mexico City. Let me just say that people who are honest and look at this issue from all sides, and if that person is a modern day “Fundamentalist”, he would have problems “getting into bed” with any one of these theories floating around out there.
How to tell if you are in cult #5 teaching by personal example is lost, biblical phraseology is lost to unique terms of the cult, authority is in people and organizations instead of the Bible. This is a study of some simple elements that are very common in cults, false religions, even bad political groups.
In this post we example how Job’s righteousness was declared by God to Satan, and Satan did not presume it to be “all of God”, but God attributed it to Job’s will and actions. The piety of Job (Jobs Piety) is a problem for Calvinists because in God’s eyes, Job was just. Not just to get into heaven, but just in his life before God.
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Cults are dangerous period. There are no “good cults”. All cults work against the form and susbstance that God gives us to work towards, so there is nothing good in cults. But many people are in cults or cultic and abusive churches, and they don’t understand that what they see as “good” is not really good at all. But when a group turns against the Bible doctrine of Soul Liberty (that God has given each individual the ability to discern and decide God’s will in his or her own life) then the group gets “ugly”. By ugly I mean that they get quickly identified as a cult by outsiders.
Rom 14:4 “To his own Master he standeth or falleth.”
Romans 14:12 “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”
2Cor 5:10 “So, then, every one of us must give account of himself to God.“
Joshua 24:15 “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
“Every individual, whether a believer or an unbeliever, has the liberty to choose what their conscience or soul decides is right in the religious realm. This also involves the personal and individual accountability of each person before God.” (North Eulalia Baptist Church)
The concept of “soul liberty” is that between God’s inspired Word, the Bible, our conscience which is manipulated, influenced, and guided by the Holy Spirit, God gives us the resolution to our problems and allows us to individually and without “THE NEED” of other people to enter into our decision making process. While soul liberty defends the “right” of the believer to make his own decisions with the help of God, there are legitimate exceptions.
Soul Liberty is the deep conviction that every man or woman can enter into direct relationship to God without outside mediation… “It is easy for us to yield our integrity and responsibility to some accepted authority: beloved pastor, honored teacher, influential book-even an edition of the Bible, respected parents or dynamic church. These all have their proper role of influence, but the final choice of belief and practice must be made in the secret of the soul’s naked presence before God alone.” – Brownlow Hastings, 1981 taken from firstbaptist-slc.org
This liberty is given to us by Christ in order for us to better serve God, not to run around pleasing ourselves. 1Pet. 2:16
Husband-Wife – The Bible clearly sets the man as the leader in the home, responsible for the major decisions of the household. But at the same time, a marriage is a partnership, so soul liberty should not be used to exclude the wife from decisions.
Parents-Children – In a family, the parents are the responsible parties for the family until the children are of age and move out. Soul liberty should not be used by children to override their parents’ decision making responsibility.
Employee-Employer – While we have liberty to make our own decisions, when we enter the workforce, we enter work obligations, so soul liberty should not be used in the case of an employee which wishes to overrule his employers orders.
Calvinism and Soul Liberty – With Calvinism overrunning most of Christianity in the last decade or two, it is no wonder that nobody hears of this doctrine. Calvinism fights against any kind of liberty of the soul to act, because they teach one is a preprogrammed puppet, and you cannot be a moral independent agent.
The issue of soul liberty is to refuse the forcing of other people under the control of somebody else. Church leaders can exhort strongly that all should believe and practice what is clearly dictated in the Bible. This does not impinge on soul liberty. But soul liberty is best seen when the leader wants some belief, practice, or particular decision in the church context, and he has no biblical basis for that. If the force of his desire gets him what he wants, and if his desire is not shared by the others that are really paying for it, then there is no soul liberty. Soul liberty is to not force things when there is no clear, valid expositionally correct reasoning based on Scripture for doing something.
Biblical Church: Leadership “suggests” with reasoning based on scriptural principles, but accepts the general consensus of what God’s will is for a particular issue.
Biblical Church: Leadership never “budges” from the clear teaching of Scripture, and never insists to the point of dissension, disunity, and conflict or hard feelings when Scripture is not forcefully clear on the issue.
Cults: The will of the leadership is the same as God speaking from heaven, so normally there is no open discussion, and never is there a vote unless they have rigged it somehow.
The person of the leader is very much in focus usually in a cult. There are cults that are raised up on a cultic personality of a charismatic leader, and there are cults that a group of men form, basically taken laid back roles in the group. The obvious is often overlooked. The leader is an “antichrist”. The concept of an “anti-” something comes from the Greek anti, and means someone who takes the place of or is positioned opposite or overpowering some thing or person. So an “antichrist” is somebody who takes the place of Christ. Instead of focusing on being like Christ, the cult focuses on a human substitute, the charismatic leader.
Cults are people that are very manipulative. The longer they are at this, the better their control of others. They instill fear instead of respect and honor. They position themselves as the very representation of God on earth, so any disagreement with them is like telling God that you disagree with Him. They heavily teach their authority over any others.
Examples – Watchman Nee wrote a book, Spiritual Authority, (if your church requires you to study and read this book, it is most probably a cult) in which he proposes that the local church’s leaders are the members only biblical authority, and if these men ask you to do something unbiblical, then you are to do it, and the blame is put on them, not you. Unlimited submission to human leadership is a common among cults. Nee also taught that each Christian needs “a covering” which is a term for an earthly authority over them, and that Christian shoul dgive blanket unquestioning submission to that authority. This goes beyond the realm of religion, belief, and moral conduct, and extends to secular matters such as marriage, marriage partners, employment, living conditions and quarters, etc. All those had to be approved by a person’s spiritual covering.
In general, the members of a group should not be constantly opposing almost everything the group and the group leaders is doing. If that is the situation, the church member should find another church to attend. Having said that, most cults do not admit ANY DISSENSION AT ALL, and there is great social and psychological pressure against any differing opinions.
The point here is not to maintain unity of the church members, but rather to maintain the control of the church leadership over the group. Calling dissenters by names, publicly embarrassing them, or using other tactics to “silence them” are typical in a cult.
A true church of God will hear out differing opinions. The leadership may not follow every dissenting opinion, but they will always be respectful, couretous, and giving them a hearing in some way.
Many times in cults, the members of the cult actually know a good bit of the Bible, and this is a problem when the cult clearly disobeys the Bible. Some member will point this out and become the center of scorn. The leaders and their puppets will “rationalize” incorrect behavior in the light of the Bible, and this is where in a true church, both members and leaders will look to the authority of the Bible to define what is right and what is wrong. Cults also do this when it is to their favor. For example, if the leader steals from the church funds or diverts them, then it is rationalized. If a member steals, then they will quote the Bible condemning the person for theft.
Soul liberty is a key essential in being Baptist, but there has come on the scene a generation of Baptist churches and Baptist preachers who have never once preached on Soul Liberty, and that is because at their heart, they are Baptist cults. (Read here allaboutBaptists.com excellent 5 paragraph article on Individual Soul Liberty.)
These Baptist cults teach and preach control and submission by their leaders. They keep their people in tight rein under the group and leaders. They teach that the Holy Spirit is not sufficient (though not in so many words) because they teach that only those who have a higher education in Bible, learning Greek, Hebrew, theology, etc. can really interpret and understand the Bible.
1 John 2:27 “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”
One of the pillars of Calvinism is t
he doctrinal of Total Depravity. The doctrine is stated simply as man is totally depraved or evil, and there is no good in him. From Wikipedia.org they define “
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Kundalini and Tongues
The Power of the Serpent
By David Cox [email protected]
[pent03] v1 ©2006 www.coxtracts.com
This tract can be freely photocopied for non-commercial
This post is a copy of my tract on Tongues Speaking and the Kundalini experience. In brief, the Oriental religions of Hinduism and Buddhism believe in the power of the serpent, and a person can summon this power through Yoga. When the person reaches the higher proficiencies of Yoga, they can command the power of the serpent to enter them, and as it works its way up their spine, it will eventually come out through their mouth in the form of estactic speech through the mouth. This is pure demon possession and influence.
The modern speaking in tongues (ecstatic speech, losing control) is not a biblical practice, but is part of a religion of demons. This phenomenon appears in various religions, and one of them is in Hinduism (Yoga). According to them, this phenomenon is the bursting forth of the power of the serpent that comes up through a person’s spine. They define this as “going through a door”, but alter seeking it, it takes control of your own body. Continue reading
In this post, I want to analyze some things about how the false prophet works, and how you can use this knowledge to identify a false prophet. The idea here is that there are ways to identify a false prophet, and rather than listing correct and incorrect doctrines (because he will read this list and say he is teaching the correct, and invent new false doctrines), we examine how a false prophet thinks and works his work.
For an overview of this, see
False Prophets and Teachers Overview
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Damaged Disciples: Casualties of Authoritarian Churches and the Shepherding Movement, Ron and Vicki Burks, 1992. Ron was taught to subject himself totally to his disciplers in the shepherding movement. Vicki was taught to submit to her husband. This is their story of struggling to break free and rebuild their lives. For Vicki, it is the story of rescuing her “self” from non-being. Ron later earned his PhD. in counseling and was on staff at Wellspring. Here is his dissertation, Cognitive Impairment In Thought Reform Environments.
Unitarianism (also called monarchianism)is a religious position that denies the historical concept of the Trinity. Historically Unitarians began as a denial of the doctrine of the “TRInity” and therefore believing in a UNIty (thus “Unitarians”). They believe that God exists in a single being AND a single person. In order to come to this position, they have to deny full deity to Jesus Christ. Thayer’s lexicon for example (Thayer is Unitarian) has under the entry for Christ, “mistakenly thought to be deity“. Because of their erroneous beliefs on salvation and the person of Christ, they must be understood to be unsaved and heretical. Their religion is not defined on the basis of doctrines (positive declarations of faith) taken from Scripture, but rather in that of denials, denouncing specific statements of faith with which they disagree. Their main target as far as denying is mainstream Christianity.
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By David Cox
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.
Many Congregational churches claim their descent from a family of Protestant denominations formed on a theory of union published by the theologian Robert Browne in 1592. These arose from the Nonconformist religious movement during the Puritan reformation of the Church of England. In Great Britain, the early congregationalists were called separatists or independents to distinguish them from the similarly Calvinistic Presbyterians. Some congregationalists in Britain still call themselves Independent. continue reading wikipedia.org
I think that it is improper to judge men of times past by our standards today, thinking that every Christian and preacher from the time of Christ has to be and think like we do today. Would I change my beliefs and positions to theirs? no, not necessarily. Some would say Martin Luther was a great man of God, and some Baptists even make him to be the “best Baptist” that ever walked the earth from their praise of him. He was a Catholic priest. You cannot get around that main point. However, in his day, in his situation historically and religiously, he was a great man, because being a Catholic priest, he was honest with his Bible, and he took a standard for the truth, and paid a heavy price for that stand. I can give the man that praise very much. Lutheranism reflects Luther, and their beliefs about the Lord’s Supper, for example, would show where Luther didn’t separate himself sufficiently from the Roman doctrines.
I would consider that the Congregationalists are a group “coming out of” or “in the same vein as” the Puritans. I think that they desires were purity and faithfulness to the Scriptures, and they reacted against the Anglican and Catholic church structures and heresies of their day. I would highly recommend them for these stands. Furthermore, they understood the error of “rule by select few” that the Roman Catholics and Anglicans drove into the extreme. Their charter Savoy Declaration clearly rejects an earthly government more than the local assembly. The Congregationalists placed a tremendous importance on decisions being made at a member level instead of behind closed doors by Popes and Archbishops. Again this is a heroic stand that they made against all religions of their day that did things in an unbiblical way. According to this article, The Congregationalists, (http://www.pamphlets.org.au/australia/acts1213.html) the forces and tendencies within the group today are working to overpower the individualism and replace it with an over arching organization, and basically that is the way things go with all independents, they succumb to pressures to “join”, “associate”, and “submit to” losing their independence.
I would also see a lot of the historic Baptist beliefs and practices being completely in sync with this group, such as universal priesthood of EVERY believer and no special priests.
Moreover, some of their main preachers were men of God that God greatly used in their day to do the work of God. Their basic mind-set was/is to find out what the Bible says, and believe that without getting so involved in church polity, religious political movements, etc. as the deciding factors of doctrine and practice. In heart, I would see them as basically the same thing as a good Baptist, a good separated Fundamentalist, although those exact words may not have been applied to them.
I would heartily recommend Congregationalist works in general.
George Campbell Morgan – After Spurgeon, I consider G.C. Morgan to be one of those “princes among preachers”. I say that not so much from examining and studying their sermons, (I don’t get a whole lot out of Spurgeon’s sermons either even though both he and I are Baptists), but because of the rapport that these men had with their audiences. God has men for each age, and the men that have a ministry like these men preach in such a fashion as that they “strike a note” with their congregations, and because a “success” (probably more in men’s eyes than God really), and they become very popular among Christians in their day. In general, some of their sermons would seem to be “light” on Bible exposition, and light on applications, but I say that judging them from our perspective of today. In their day, their sermons were what God sent for those people. The people of yesteryear were more simple, and life was not as complicated as today, and a preacher’s resource were not what we have today with all the volumes and volumes of books available, and even computer programs and libraries that are available (www.twmodules.com). Having said that, let me recommend Morgan, because his works are very good, even though they may not be exactly what a sermon of today would be, his sermons are very good instruments of God for probing the heart.
Dwight Lyman Moody – This is another man that was a “prince of preachers” in his day. His works would all be highly recommended as well as Morgan’s
Having recommended Congregationalism, and having identified it with the basic tenets of Baptist and Fundamental doctrines and practices, I must digress and add that there are some logistical and theological problems with Congregationalism. See the article in the link below. I would agree with Burk that there are logistical and theological problems in submitting everything to a vote. While the NT churches did involve the members in the activities and decisions of the local church, there are problems with this. My view is that a church, a family, a business, a country are all the same. The value of the whole is made up by the value of the individuals, plus or minus some by putting them together. If a church has strong men of God, the church will probably be strong. If the men there are weak, of poor discernment and doctrine, and don’t stand for God and His principles (i.e. aren’t true men of God), the church will reflect this plus some.
See also Denny Burk – Is Congregationalism from Satan?
While this system could be good, I see it as a reaction against regular ministers running a local church. The New Testament has Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Titus, Timothy, etc. as being in charge of works. These are ministers obviously. What do you get by removing this “minister” element and replacing it with a straight vote of the congregation?
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Why do I Attend Church? Biblical Reasons for attending and participating in Church.
Description: Salvation, in part, is communing with the saints.
TOPICS: Salvation is to be part of the Redeemed | Who do you get together with? | What do you declare with your actions? | God's Worship | God's Praise | The Sacrifices: Singing with Joy | The Sacrifices: The Offerings | The Sacrifices: The Prayer | A Community of Perfect Love (Fraternal Love) | Serving the Brethren | Heavenly Clothes: Good Works Here.
Read/Download the Tract:
Why do I Attend Church? Biblical Reasons for attending and participating in Church.
More Tracts on Attendance, Participation in Church:
● Ch09 Our One another Relationship
● ch15 Congregating because we Love
● ch17 Why do I Attend Church?
● ch28 Difference between sheep and goats?
evc05 A Young Earth: There is not enough Time for Evolution explains why our earth is young, and evolutionists are wrong.
Topics: What do Christian scientists believe? | The Law of Uniformity | The Laws of Physics | Rapid Erosion | The Fossils | The Decay of the Magnetic Field | The Accumulations of Millions of Years | DNA and Mystery | Carbon 14 | Why does this problem exist?
From the Tract: Evolutionists use the Law of Uniformity that everything happening in our world is uniform as a basis to make their calculations. If a river removes one centimeter of stone every 10 years, then they measure how many centimeters there are uncovered and calculate the time that has passed in this erosion. What they do not consider is the possibility of natural disasters such as the explosion of Mount Saint Helens in Washington. We saw “live” within hours the erosion that was supposed to take millions of years to happen. This reveals the error of the principle of uniformity because it cannot be assumed that everything remains “uniform” for all ages, that natural events of a dramatic nature happen.
Read the Tract: evc05 A Young Earth: There is not enough Time for Evolution
ch16 Example of the man of God ch16 Example of the man of God explains how the man of God is to be an example of what God wants from all of us.
Topics: Marking what is Good | Marking what is Bad | Imitating Christ | Marking or Imitating the Man of God.
Excerpt: It is a grave error in Christianity of our day to gloss over as unimportant the idea that each minister should be an example of a man of God, see 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1, which marks the requirements of a man of God. We should insist that our ministers be good examples of what is a man of God, a copy of Christ, and if they aren’t, we should remove them, or leave that church.
Read the Tract: ch16 Example of the man of God.
Buy me a Cup of Coffee! To make an old Christian work into a PDF, a module for theWord, MySword, or eSword takes time. These works are scans from old books, and as such, I have to go through the text some dozen times looking for places where the OCR is incorrect, blurred, or just skipped something.
Text Editing.Then there are the old Bible references like John iii. 16. Many young Christians and even preachers do not know the Latin system for books of the Bible. I convert Roman numerals in these books to Arabic (iii. to 3).
I have had to invest days and days in writing macros to read a long text, and make substitutions (for the above, search for "iii" and replace with "3:"). Unfortunately, with Psalms you have to start with 150 in Roman numerals (CL) and work your way backwards. But using macros, it is almost instantaneous the next time I need this. Work smarter, not harder. All this takes time and patience, (and being smart enough to do it in a macro language) (as well as a lot of coffee) and then making the text into theWord or eSword, mySword or a PDF.
Please donate something to me once every 6 months or even once a year, even if it is only $5, so that I can pay my bills for hosting, and also keep things moving along. It costs me about $10 per month to keep a website on the Internet. My websites also contains ads which have links to my sermons, tracts, books, that I have written. These keep my works before visitors, even if they are not visiting the specific website where I have them stored. It is my own "web" internally of my own sites with links to good Christian literature. May God bless for your prayers and donations.
Take a look at a few of our tracts:
salv76 suffering should seek his Savior - explains how we should react to problems and sufferings, we should seek the Savior.
pc15 How to fight against depression - we treat the problem of depression. Depression is not a physical disease, it is an emotional and spiritual disease that "bleeds over" and causes aggravation and physical consequences if not attended to at the spiritual-social-emotional level.
ch15 Congregating because we Love - a tract about why we attend church. Our relationship with our brethren in Christ is highly integrated with our salvation and our sanctification.
SSTeen1-01 Existence of God - Does God really exist? This is not a tract but a teen Sunday School Class that I wrote answering this important question.
fam48 Men are God's Agents - Men are God’s Agents to accomplish His Will, looks at man as God wants him to be. Manhood and the husband-wife relationship.
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Have you ever eaten Fried Ice Cream! Donate! It is delicious, like apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top. But you know that you cannot have what is good without somebody paying for it. If you have enjoyed things on my website, please consider helping me out on the expenses and keeping it on the Internet. Can you consider at least a one time donation to this ministry of $10 or $20 dollars? I have a monthly total of about 96 gigabytes total being downloaded monthly from all of my websites. Be a blessing to me and donate any amount. It would be really great if you could gift me and my wife (she wants oa fried ice cream too) this money so that we could enjoy eating out at least once in a while. (I pay the expenses for these sites out of our living expenses.) God will richly bless you and repay you for your generosity. 1 Timothy 5:18 For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. If you received some value from my websites, consider at least a small donation. A big donation would really be nice, too, though.
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They deep freeze the ice cream ball, and coat it with batter only a few seconds before they deep fry it, and then only fry it for a few seconds.
Dagg Manual of Theology (and links to this work in various other formats).
Dagg Manual of Theology (MySword for Android)
Dagg Manual of Theology (theWord Bible Format)
Dagg Manual of Theology (esword format)
Dagg Manual of Theology (PDF Format)
Is WW3 beginning or something worse? Is an analysis of President Joe Biden in the face of the Palestinian provocation. Biden's clumsiness and ineptitude may well have opened World War III on the world. Can he fix things? No. Just make them worse. IF Biden gets re-elected for another 4 years, then the world as we know it will not exist anymore. We will be under the burden of a war-torn world.
Read the New article by David Cox: Is WW3 beginning or something worse?
