Mechanics of a Cult
The mechanics of a cult deals with the origin and operation of false cults. In these end times the number of cults will increase and will be harder to identify because these cults cannot be distinguished only by doctrines or actions alone. Their deception will be much more subtle than those overt cults which force people to drink poison or committed acts of terror.
Mind Submission Cult
The bottom line of a false cult is that they work on having their followers submit their minds to the cult leader until they are no longer thinking for themselves but just follow blindly without thinking.
Instead holding members using ropes or a jail cell with steel bars, false cult often employ flattery and make the followers feel like they are the only one’s worthy of having the revelation and everyone outside of their cult is deceived. When the members start believing that they are the only group that has the “Real” revelation then they become proud and isolationist and are effectively held within the cult without restraints.
In these end times, cults will be far more deceptive and imitate the true church more closely. Even under careful examination there will typically not be a single false doctrine, which could identify them as being a cult.
But most often their teaching will carry a spirit attached to it that puffs the followers up with pride telling them that they are elite and everyone else outside the group is in error.
The reason that many believers fall for cults is because of spiritual dissatisfaction. They become totally dissatisfied with the churches they attend and are looking for something new and different. Fake Christians who display hypocrisy also add to the frustration because the disorder in these churches is obvious to see.
Many mainstream churches have fallen into the rut of following the same old rituals and traditions year after year leaving people bored and unsatisfied. When people are longing for something new and different and are sick of the same old thing then that is when the danger of being deceived by false cults increases. Spiritual dissatisfaction causes people to be open to cults which prey upon those who are dissatisfied.
Spiritual dissatisfaction comes from a lack of power and authority in the church. Without the gifts of the Spirit in operation and revelation of God’s word, the church becomes just another dead organization that has no power to impart life to the people.
Apostles and Prophets and Teachers are the “top-three” Fivefold Ministry Gifts ordained for the body of Christ and the real church is established upon the ministry of these gifts. This means that the real church is to have the foundation of divine order provided by the ministry of an Apostle and fear of the Lord and holiness which is the fruit of a Prophet and revelation of God’s word that is provided by a Fivefold Ministry gift of Bible Teacher.
Spiritual dissatisfaction occurs when the “top-three” ministry gifts are replaced by laymen theologians who have a degree in Divinity from a seminary but do not have the supernatural gift and calling of a Fivefold Minister called and gifted by God.
See the link “Fivefold Ministry Gifts” for more details.
The carnal church typically replaces the Apostles and Prophets with football coaches and success motivation speakers and men with only intellectual training from a seminary. None of fake preachers are going to help the people in the least and after years of dry material put out by these impostors the congregation will be left as spiritually dissatisfied.
See the link “Purpose of the Church” for more details about a real church.
The word or phrase to describe this present generation and time is “spiritual dissatisfaction”. Dissatisfaction comes from a lack of power and authority in the church. Without the gifts of the spirit and revelation of the word, the church becomes just another dead organization that has no power to impart life to the people. This occurs when those called by God are replaced by laymen who are not called into the Fivefold ministry and display no gifts or fruit of such a calling from God.
Such churches are run by humans rather than by God through the Fivefold Ministry Gifts as God has intended.
God’s “real” church on earth is to be powerful, overcoming, and supernatural but the fake carnal church is nothing but a dead religion without any power at this present time. They have replaced the gold with the brass of human works of the flesh. This is why the carnal church has become so disgusting. This causes great dissatisfaction among the people and this causes them to be searching for someplace to feed them spiritually.
Humans are created for a desire for the supernatural and that is why even witchcraft movies have become popular. When the church does not provide supernatural then even unbelievers will turn to the devil looking for something that is supernatural. But this will only bring them into bondage and send them to hell.
There is a great void on earth because of the lack of supernatural in the church. This causes the unbelievers to hunger and thirst for witchcraft while the Christians are also hungering and thirsting for the supernatural and this causes them to search far and wide trying to find a church that feeds them.
Replacing Pure Gold with Bronze Alloy
2 Chronicles 12:9-10 (7KB)
9 When Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, he carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including the gold shields Solomon had made.
10 So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.
Solomon made shields of pure gold but these were lost in the time of his successor Rehoboam and were replaced by shields of bronze. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin but this alloy it is a mixture that is vastly inferior to the value of gold. Bronze has a golden type of color but it is nothing in value compared to real gold.
This provides an illustration of how the carnal church as replaced the Gifts of the Spirit and Fivefold Ministry Gifts with human effort and human talent that is vastly inferior to that of the working of the Holy Spirit.
Carnal churches run by human effort and human talent may vaguely resemble a real church but they have no power to change lives or cause people to be blessed or bring divine order to the congregation. Human run churches are like the bronze shields of Rehoboam that replaced the pure gold shields that were lost during his reign.
In the same way the things of the Holy Spirit were lost in the carnal church when men began to run things instead of God. That is why the church has become so powerless and weak and unable to change the lives of the people in the least bit.
When the flesh of human self-effort enters the church [the brass replacing the gold] then the revelation will cease and the sermons will become dead and lifeless and will not feed the people spiritually. All of these factors lead to spiritual dissatisfaction and this makes even believers susceptible to being ensnared by false cults.
God-Void Within
As countries become civilized and modern there are more comforts, entertainment and pleasures available and people begin to focus on themselves and trying to make themselves happy. But these things cannot fill the void God created in the hearts of mankind which can only be filled by God alone.
Even marriages cannot be satisfying or become fulfilling unless they are based upon principles of God’s word. Following the ways of the world only produces the fruit of divorce and broken homes and more dissatisfaction because the fake church is not providing people with answers to their problems or practical instruction about how to put their households in order according to the divine order of God!
Churches are supposed to have answers for life and teach the people how to live victoriously in all aspects of their lives. But this purpose is all trashed by replacing Apostles and Prophets and Teachers with intellectual seminary graduates who have no calling or gift from God and who are unable to provide any practical instruction for people to live by.
Passing off Intellectual Confusion as Revelation
When dissatisfied people come to a cult they will typically be met with intellectual confusion. Intellectual confusion is produced by a cult leader in an attempt to mimic something of so-called “deep-revelation” but in fact this is nothing but empty “verbiage” which means the words are only “garbage” that have no meaning at all and are powerless to help anyone with real life problems.
If a new arrival should ask a question and say, “What does that mean?” then the other cult-members will make responses like, “Well, you know!” but they themselves are unable to explain what it means because in fact it is all nonsense. It is soon evident that everyone is supposed to shut off their minds and choose not to “think” for themselves anymore. Then everyone in that cult congregation will just surrender their minds to the one teaching the class. Asking questions is discouraged and they even use group pressure to get everyone to just accept things without reasoning as they are drawn deeper into the cult by teaching them to stop questioning and let someone else do their thinking for them.
The bottom line of a false cult is that the members have surrendered their will and their minds to a cult leader and no longer think for themselves or question but just follow blindly.
But this is in great contrast to a real church where people are trained to use their minds and think in logical manner. God’s people are to have a sound mind and they are to ask questions and not settle for intellectual confusion. The kingdom of God is not confusing but rather even a child can understand it. Deep teaching is not “intellectual confusion” as the devil has been deceiving people to believe.
A sign of a cult is when people follow without question and without thinking at all. When someone is no longer making their own decisions that is when they are in bondage to a cult leader and they are in bondage that is stronger than ropes and stronger than a prison cell with steel bars.
False cults work to program people not to think but to just surrender their minds without question.
Revelation 2:2 (NKJV)
2 I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars;
The Ephesian believers learned how to think for themselves. When someone came to them who claimed to be an apostle (in order to try to get them to submit to him) then they would test them and prove them to be liars. If the impostor could not produce the fruit of an apostle then they were proven to be false. A thorn bush does not produce figs and grapes are not gathered from a thistle and in the same way false apostles have no fruit to help anyone.
But the point here is that the believers in Ephesus did not just shut off their minds and blindly follow everyone in general who came to them and demanded their submission. They did not stop thinking or surrender their minds and nor did they follow blindly like sheep!
If a man has a real ministry gift, he will be able to produce the fruit of that gift and a real apostle will bring divine order and real practical teaching about how to put the lives of families in order. If the fruit of an apostle is present then submission to authority is a good thing because the one in authority is working to help and improve their lives.
If following the teaching of a real apostle brings peace and order to the home and their finances improve and their quality of life improves in every way then there is no need to resist or fight them. Why fight someone who is helping you? That would be as foolish as if someone was fighting a dentist or a medical doctor who is trying to help them?
No, resisting does not have to be employed toward everyone in general but only toward those who are false apostles or false prophets who have no fruit and no ability to help anyone. Why should believers submit their minds to idiots who speak only intellectual confusion and try to pass off meaningless nonsense as if it was deep revelation from God?
The teaching of a real Apostle and a real Prophet will make good logical sense and questioning them will produce solid answers that are practical in nature. A real Apostle and Prophet should not be resisted because they bring benefit and blessing and order to families. They help them improve and solve problems and put things in order. Resisting someone who is helping you is only detrimental to the one who is being helped!
No, resisting should be reserved only for false apostles and false prophets who demand submission and want people to shut off their minds to follow them blindly and discourage them from answering questions as simple as, “What does that mean?” If the false apostles and false prophets cannot answer such simple questions it is because they are spewing out intellectual confusion that is meaningless! That is why they cannot answer the simplest question from those who inquire of them.
A real Apostle or a real Prophet will not discourage people from asking questions and they do not try to shame people into silence and work to get them to stop thinking only to follow them blindly. Instead, the more a real Apostle or a real Prophet teaches the more it makes good common sense as they provide practical solutions for everyday life!
If dissatisfied believers join a cult, they will be led down a progression of bondage that goes down into increasingly deeper levels of intellectual confusion. All the while they will be trained not to think or question what is being taught. Soon they become confused and disoriented and anxious and even prideful when they are deceived to believe they are part of the elite group that knows more than all outsiders. Thus, the false cult will not hold them with prison bars, chains, or ropes but with flattery and pride.
This process of programming someone into a cult to become a mindless follower does not happen in a single day. This process takes time but these cult leaders will take all the time necessary and will not say anything to scare them away in the beginning. But they will wait until the minds these followers have been surrendered completely into their hands. Then they will bring them to hell with their doctrines of demons.
Even a false healing can be imitated by the devil because the devil can put sickness on people and remove it to fake a healing. Also, cult members may testify that they were made free of vices but in fact that bondage can be placed on them and removed by the devil to imitate setting people free. Such things can be employed in the beginning to cause people who are apprehensive to relax. The cult leader needs time to bring them to deeper levels of deception until they have submitted their minds completely and no longer think for themselves. Typically, the cults will appear to be benign or harmless in the beginning as they process a new follower to surrender their minds to the cult leader. Once the cult leader is doing their thinking for them then they will be in deep bondage.
There was a cult leader who rose up in Korea and gave a specific date for the return of the Lord saying it would be on October 18, 1993. He was able to deceive thousands of believers to sell their property and homes and invest the money into advertising in every country to warn people of this coming end time date. People were not thinking for themselves nor studying the scriptures otherwise they would not have been deceived like this.
Matthew 24:36 (7KB)
36 “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
The scriptures say that no humans know the day or the hour for the return of the Son of Man. Not even the angels of God have access to this information and not even the Son of God himself. Only God the Father holds this knowledge.
If the believers will study the scriptures for themselves, they would see that when someone predicts a specific date for the return of the Lord then these people are deceived and they are liars! But again, these followers went through a process to be taught to shut off their minds and let the cult leader do their thinking for them!
When the cult leader said that they should sell their homes and property and possessions then they obeyed without question and followed blindly like sheep to the slaughter! They should have thought for themselves and held onto what they owned and they would soon see that the predicted date would come and go without incident! But many of these people were shipwrecked and lost everything they owned only because they were blindly following a cult leader who told them to sell everything and give the money to the cult to spread the news! The devil destroyed all of these people and brought irreparable damage to their lives because they believed in a lie and surrendered their minds to a cult leader and stopped thinking for themselves.
Acts 17:11 (NIV2011)
11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
The Berean Jews were of more noble character because they received the message of Apostle Paul with great eagerness and they themselves examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul had said was true.
Paul was a real Apostle and a real Apostle does not require everyone to shut off their minds and follow blindly. The listeners were able to question and study and see for themselves that what Paul said was true. The more someone questions the truth the clearer that truth will become. There is no problem with questioning the teaching of a real Apostle because it becomes clearer the more that they study what was being said. A real Apostle does not require them to shut off their minds. Only a false cult leader works to get people to stop thinking and follow blindly.
The doctrines of false cult leader may even sound good in the beginning as the cult leader works to gain a reputation with the new members. But the longer the members stay they will discover that the doctrines of the cult leader are more and more removed from the truth. The cult leader will work to deceive the new members step by step with so-called “new-revelations” that are in fact doctrines of demons! He will then lead the people further and further away from the truth with these demon-inspired doctrines.
All of this demonic brain-washing conducted by a cult leader can be instantly stopped as soon as someone will stand up and question what is being said! If people shut off their minds and are shamed into silence (to follow without question) that is when they are in danger of satanic bondage designed only to ensnare them and ruin their lives!
2 Timothy 3:13 (NASB)
13 But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
These cult leaders are evil men and they are impostors and they proceeded from bad to worse. So there is a progression involved with their deception. They start off bad but they go deeper into deception until their followers are blindly following everything they say without question.
But these impostors are emissaries of Satan and they themselves are deceived to believe the doctrines of demons that were given to them by Satan. They are deceived and they are deceiving others so that both the cult leader and his followers all end up in hell.
Titus 2:15 (NIV)
15 These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.
It should be stated that real men of God such as Apostles and Prophets will frequently deliver words of rebuke and exercise authority over their congregation. While someone could accuse them of being a cult leader (because of the exercise of authority) there remains a big difference between a cult leader and a real man of God.
The real Apostle or Prophet will rebuke with all authority but these rebukes are for the best interests of the one being rebuked! A father rebukes and corrects his son and the son knows that his father loves him because the rebuke is for his own good to correct bad behavior or correct bad attitudes or to stop sin which can lead the son to hell. The rebukes given by a real Apostle or a real Prophet are always for the best interests of those being rebuked. It is for this reason that those being rebuked can know that they are loved and someone cares about them enough to speak the truth.
The cult leader however has no love for his followers and everything is being worked toward their own destruction. A person in a cult must learn to question and resist when authority is applied against them for their own detriment!
But again, it would be foolish to resist the authority of a real Apostle or a real Prophet who is looking out for the best interests of those they correct. Resisting their authority would be equal to resisting God who is seeking to improve their lives so they will quality for heaven. Submission to a real Apostle or a real Prophet is beneficial but submission to a false cult leader will lead to the destruction of those who follow them.
People should learn to submit to the authorities God placed over them for their own good but then resist those who only seek to ensnare them into bondage and destruction. Submission and resistance should have proper application because resisting all authority in general is also detrimental to those who are being helped by that good authority.
Again, the fruit of a ministry can be judged by the results. Suppose a real Apostle delivers many rebukes just like a father does to his own son. This may sound harsh or authoritarian but if the rebukes result in bringing improvement and divine order then it is a good thing. In fact, if a family has the fruit of peace and order and they increase financially and prosper and all things improve by following the authority of an Apostle then they know they are following a man who as a true calling from God.
A family should see noticeable improvement in overall quality of life so that they are better off than when they first met the Apostle. If they are not improving, they should separate themselves from such a man because such a leader is not helping them in the least. The fruit of a real Apostle will bring divine order and peace and healing and financial increase to a family who is submitted to his teaching. It would be foolish to call him a cult leader when in fact their family improvement can be measured as increasing from the time, they first met the Apostle and submitted to his teaching. A real Apostle should always bring improvement (over-time) to the families who submit to his authority and follow his teaching and instructions.
So, it is a good thing to submit to authority when that authority is causing improvement and blessing and increase and leads to them inheriting eternal life.
Resistance should not be directed toward those who help them but only toward those who seek to ensnare them and bring them to complete ruination.
Never should people shut off their minds and follow anyone blindly. When a real Apostle teaches them, they can study the scriptures for themselves and see that what they are being taught is true and they should also have fruit of improvement and peace and order and prosperity from God by following the biblical principles taught by a real Apostle.
This lesson is about the mechanics of a cult and its operation and the bottom line of all of this is that when someone begins to think and question for themselves then the power of the cult leader vanishes. The devil has no other weapon except that of deception and this is instantly dispelled as soon as someone questions if these lies are true or not.
Therefore, all believers must never surrender their minds to anyone to do their thinking for them. They should always study and think and see if what they are being taught is true or not. They should have a noble mind like the Bereans who questioned and studied to see if what they were being taught was true!
If something is true then the more, they study the clearer it will become. There will be no contradiction with any of the scriptures which all follow the same theme and the same principles. This is how a believer can know that they are being taught the truth.
It is only cult leaders who try to program people to shut off their minds and follow blindly without questioning what they are told.
2 Timothy 1:7 (7KB)
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
This scripture says that God has given the believer a sound mind. The believer should have a sound mind of good reason and logic and be able to think for themselves and judge if something is good and logical and if it produces the fruit of divine order and peace and increase for their personal lives and family.
If they are following a real Apostle or Prophet, they should see measurable increase and improvement over time compared to when they first met their mentor. If their lives are not being improved or enriched then the one, they are following has no fruit or evidence of being an Apostle.
False cult leaders have no power over those who refuse to submit their minds and thinking to others. Believers should mature to a place where they can question and challenge a false cult leader and expose them as liars!
Resisting those who are detrimental is a good thing but resisting those who are helping the believer is also detrimental. Therefore, believers must consider the fruit being produced and if they are being improved and enriched by the teaching ministry of a real Apostle then they have no need to resist him.
But only when they are being harmed or are required to follow without thinking should they rise up to resist and rebuke someone who is seeking to lord over them as a cult leader!