How to tell if you are in cult #2 no soul liberty, member problems only through the leadership, the cult comes before your family.
How to tell if you are in a Cult #is continued from part 1. This is a study of some simple elements that are very common in cults, false religions, even bad political groups.
Contents
- 1 E. When there is no soul liberty, and all your major decisions have to be passed by religious leadership.
- 2 F. When offenses and errors between brethren need to pass religious leadership instead of personally, one-on-one resolving.
- 3 G. When God’s commands to tend to your family become impossible to fulfill except in some kind of church activity.
E. When there is no soul liberty, and all your major decisions have to be passed by religious leadership.
Soul liberty is simply the right of each individual to make the decisions of their own lives. Perhaps there is no soul liberty when we talk of the doctrines that God has given us in the Bible, but even there, there are differences of opinion between good Christians that should be respected even though they are different from your point of view.
In matter of our daily lives, each person should be free to make their own decisions. In a family, a husband should discuss decisions with his wife, and perhaps his children. But the daily matters of a person’s life are not to be decided by his pastor. Cults want to get things to that level so that they can control the daily finances. I saw something here in Mexico talking to a lady in Pare de Sufrir, a cult from Brazil here in Mexico. They gave away something akin to old milk cartons that the public schools in the US served milk to school kids. It had a slot in the top. They were to put whatever money they earned daily into it and then bring it to church every week to be their offering. They were teaching that they had to give a tithe, and then they had to give according to their faith. So each day they had to deposit 10% of what they earned plus what they could that day give by their faith. In their services, the offering was longer than the sermon. They formed 5 lines according to the denomination of the bill that they were going to give (after their tithes and offerings). A 500 denomination bill, 200, 100, and 50. (Mexican currency) They berated those in the 100 and 50 bill lines. There is a 20 pesos bill but their ignored that.
- See Cults: Soul Liberty vs Manipulation and Control
- Ch55 Who runs the Local Church posts Aug 8, 2021
F. When offenses and errors between brethren need to pass religious leadership instead of personally, one-on-one resolving.
In a cult, all personal problems between people need to go to the leadership. This is because if they allow two of their members to get together and commune too much, then that opens the possibility of an insurrection happening. So to squash that possibility, everything has to pass through the leadership.
G. When God’s commands to tend to your family become impossible to fulfill except in some kind of church activity.
One of our primal duties besides worshiping and serving God is to take care of our own family. 1 Tim 5:8 says a man’s religion is a farce if he does not care for his own family. In cults and many churches on the fringe of becoming a cult, they have activities every night of the week for their people. If a family wants to have family time with just their own family, it is hard to fit any of that into the church’s schedule for them. This is by design in a cult. It is make the group the center of their lives.
God makes your relationship with God the center of everything in your life. This is different. You can be helped and blessed by a good church, but it is not something that is so filled with activities should it consume your life.
Marks of a Cult
- Mark of a Cult: Deception
- How to tell if you are in cult #7
- How to tell if you are in cult #6
- How to tell if you are in cult #5
- How to tell if you are in cult #4
Ritchie Foundational Truths of the Gospel is a basic doctrinal treatise for Assurance, Conversion, Eternal Life, Judgment, Justification, Perfection, Regeneration, Salvation, Sanctification, and Separation.
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