Cult Explosion

"The Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demon's" (1 Tim. 4:1, RVM)

The spawning of numerous new religious cults has been a marked feature of the religious scene in recent times.

Paul's prophetic words to Timothy are powerfully relevant to our situation today. For we believe ourselves to be in the "later times", the final phase of the dispensation of the grace of God, with the Lord's coming to the air for His Church soon to be expected. The reference to later times may of course have broader application, including for example the nineteenth century development of such movements as Christadelphians, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. More recently a bewildering variety of cults has blossomed around us, each with its own particular set of false teachings.

That the apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit attributed these departures from the faith to "seducing spirits" and described their erroneous teachings as "doctrines of demons" should be taken very seriously. It is part of Satan's global strategy so to multiply error that divinely revealed truth is more and more obscured. There is an evil spiritual force behind the activities of the religious cults. Their doctrines are not merely the product of human ingenuity, but have sinister elements of antichristian apostasy which reflect the deceit of Satan in his opposition to the Person of Christ.

When God favoured His people Israel with the revelation of truth in the

Mosaic law, Satan worked unceasingly to draw them from allegiance to it. Even while still before Mount Sinai, they "worshipped a molten image. Thus they changed their glory for the likeness of an ox that eateth grass" (Psa. 106:19,20) What lay behind such idolatry? "They sacrificed unto demons, which were no God... to new gods that came up of late" (Deut. 32:17). Through all the centuries until their Babylonian captivity successive generations of Israelites yielded to this weakness of the natural mind-a desire to escape from the sameness and continuity of the divinely revealed law. A variety of different idolatrous practices gave endless scope for humanly devised concepts. "The carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved" (Isa. 41:7). In this, of course, they imitated the Gentile nations, which were largely given over to idolatry. In 1 Cor. 10:19,20 Paul asks, "What say I then? that a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God: and I would not that that ye should have communion with demons".

So the great deceiver who lured men away from the Old Covenant revelation to idolatry with its demon worship, has turned multitudes away from the New Covenant revelation through seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. Knowing that human weakness so often craves for "some new thing", he sees to it that new cults arise in quick succession.

We have seen for example a vast intrusion of eastern mysticism into the western religious world. The Bahai faith derived from Persian Islam, but borrows ideas from various faiths. All ways, it tells us, are of God, but Baha offers the truth for today. The Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon patronises the Lord Jesus as among the "four great sacred men of history", but presumes to plan the completion of what Christ is regarded as having failed to do! There are the Divine Light Mission, Krishna Consciousness and Transcendental Meditation movements, to name but a few. All of them deny the truth about Christ's Deity and advocate "self-realization" rather than the need of a saviour.

Indeed although each false cult has its distinctive doctrinal emphasis, being at variance with all other cults in some respects, most of them have in common the denial of certain great fundamentals of the faith. It is particularly noticeable that the Deity of the Lord Jesus, His atoning work, and the eternal punishment of the lost are so consistently denied. And all of them advocate some system by which human effort leads to salvation, rather than dependence alone upon the finished work of Christ.

As we recognize the teachings of the cults to be doctrines of demons, we shall be earnest in prayer for the wisdom and strength of the Holy Spirit as we bear witness to the truth. Our concern must always be to "preach the Word" (2 Tim. 4:2). In personal discussion it is the Word of God which will prevail as we present it in confirmation of truth and correction of error. What great need there is also to "give diligence to present thyself approved unto God... rightly dividing the word of truth"! (2 Tim. 2:15 RVM).

unknown | Feb 1981
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