Biblical Christianity and Other Religions

Session #5 – Characteristics of Cults, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism

Compiled from Kingdom of the Cults and So What’s the Difference.
There are only two worldviews.

God’s view or our own contrivances.

What you believe determines how you behave.

We will conduct an overview of the major religions as they compare to Biblical Christianity. We specify “Biblical Christianity” rather than any one denominational view as to provide a plumb line for comparing the faiths (Amos 7:8).

Amos 7:8 (NKJV) “…Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel…”

God would measure His people by His standards, His words and no others.

Session #1 – Introduction and Biblical Christianity
Session #2 – Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
Session #3 – Judaism and Islam
Session #4 – Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology
Session #5 – Characteristics of Cults, Jehovah’s Witness and Mormonism
Session #6 – A Departure to the Occult and Halloween
Session #7 – 7th Day Adventist, Oneness Pentecostalism, Christian Science, Evolutionism, Freemasonry, Hare Krishna, The International Churches of Christ, Secular Humanism, Postmodernism, Unitarianism, and Wicca (Witchcraft and New-Paganism).

The Tenets (Core Beliefs) of Biblical Christianity:

• Deity of Christ – 2 Peter 1:1
• Holy Trinity – Matthew 3:16-17
• Virgin Birth – Matthew 1:23
• Physical Resurrection – Luke 24:36-43
• Salvation by Grace Alone – Ephesians 2:8-9
• Christ’s All-Atoning Sacrifice for Sin – Romans 6:10
• Bible is the Inerrant Word of God (in the original) – Psalm 119:160 (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20, 21; 2 Timothy 1:13; Psalm 119:105, 160, 12:6; Proverbs 30:5).
Where did cults come from?

When Christians speak of cults, they mean groups which they believe do not hold to “orthodox”
(correct or established or traditional) biblical Christian views.

The word “cult” comes from the Latin for “worship.”

Webster defines “cult” as “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (different from what is authentic).”

In Webster’s eyes, a cult is an organization opposing orthodoxy.

The late Walter Martin (30 years of cult research) defines cults as “groups which hold doctrines contradictory to orthodox Christianity,” and “a group of people gathered around a specific person or person’s misinterpretation of the Bible.”

The Answer: Most cults come from hearts of men that want to be in opposition to the Risen Lord.

Isaiah 14:12-15 (NKJV) “12How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! 13For you have said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; 14I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. 15Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.”

Five Major Characteristics of Cultists

1) Cultists reject the Trinity; specifically they disbelieve in Jesus Christ as God.

2) Cultists usually believe that all Christian churches are wrong and that their group has the only real truth about God.

3) Cultists claim to believe the Bible but they distort its teachings to suit their own peculiar views of mankind, God, the Holy Spirit, heaven and hell, salvation and many other doctrines. The source of the peculiar beliefs are usually their leaders, who claim to have new interpretations of the Bible or valuable additions to it.

4) All cults deny that people can be saved by faith in Christ alone. They claim that they can make themselves right with God through good works and through obedience to the cult requirements.

5) Cults are skillful at using Christian terminology, but they are not talking the same language as biblical Christians. First task with cultist is to define the terms. When a biblical Christian says Jesus Christ they mean the Second Person of the Godhead, the Son of God, and God Himself…co-equal, co-eternal, and co-existent. Cultists will always diminish Jesus to some lesser being or role.

Jehovah’s Witnesses

There is no hell…hard work earns “paradise.”

Officially called The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (WTBTS), they had adopted a new name, “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” which was taken from Isaiah 43:10 (KJV) “Ye are my witnesses, saith [Jehovah].”

WTBTS was founded in 1879 by Charles Taze Russell. After studying Christianity and many Eastern religions, he designed his own religion that fit his more intellectual ideas.

He believed that the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and Hell to be illogical. When Russell was 18 he formed his own Bible study and began developing his own system of theology, emphasizing the Second Coming of Christ. Russell never had any formal theological training and he was in and out of court many times for lying under oath (perjury). He claimed to know the Greek alphabet, but under examination it was proven that he could not read Greek letters.

After Russell’s death in 1916, Joseph F. Rutherford replaced him as President of the WTBTS. Rutherford replaced many of Russell’s writings with his own interpretations. Under his control, he adopted the name Jehovah’s Witnesses (hereafter referred to as JW’s). In 1942, Rutherford died and Nathan Knorr took over as president. During Knorr’s presidency, the society produced the “New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NMT),” (in 1961) which is filled with mistranslations designed to prove JW’s doctrines. When Knorr died in 1922, Frederick W. Franz carried on Knorr’s reign and ideas. Upon his death in 1992, the current president is Milton G. Henshel.

JW’s produce two magazines for their members:

1) Awake! – This is a semimonthly (2X per month) magazine designed to attract and intrigue nonmembers. I n 1997 it hit 18 million copies in 80 languages.

2) The Watchtower – This is a semimonthly (2X per month) magazine designed to instruct the society’s members in doctrine and practice. It has reached 21 million copies in 126 languages.

The JW’s are totally convinced by Watchtower Headquarters that all those who disagree with them – particularly biblical Christians – are not only wrong but are mortal enemies who will finally be destroyed by Jehovah at the great battle of Armageddon, which is yet to come.

JW’s are tightly controlled by the Watchtower headquarters and are constantly told they cannot interpret the Bible for themselves in any way; they must avoid independent thinking; they are never to question the counsel provided by the Watchtower.

JW’s Set Dates for the “End of the World” (Armageddon)…and Keep Getting it Wrong

Charles Taze Russell claimed that World War I was the “beginning of Armageddon” in 1914 – He was wrong.

He later changed the prophecy to mean that Jesus “invisibly” returned in 1874. – He was wrong.

Joseph F. Rutherford set 1925 as the new date for Armageddon and written in The Watchtower, as “being not of man but of God and absolutely and unqualifiedly correct.” – He was wrong.

Rutherford’s innovation was the door-to-door visitation program. As president, one of his main goals was to increase membership by spreading the word that only 144,000 (Revelation 7:4) people were going to make it to heaven. But, in the 1930’s they began to have a real problem. The ranks were filling fast and Armageddon had not happened. So, he announced that everyone who had become a JW before 1935 would go to heaven (the “little flock”), while everyone who became a JW after 1935 would be among the “great crowd” who would not go to heaven but could look forward to living on Earth in a new paradise after Armageddon and the Millennium.

Nathan Knorr shuffled the 6000 years of human history theory of Russell’s around and taught that the latest – and certainly “absolutely final” – date for Armageddon would be 1975. – He was wrong.

Despite yet another failed prediction and huge defections from the ranks, there were still over 2 million active JW’s in 1977.

Frederick W. Franz refrained from setting any more specific dates, but he steadfastly taught that persons alive during 1914 would “definitely experience Armageddon,” Matthew 24:34 (NKJV) “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.” – He was wrong.

Milton G. Henshel discarded all of the 1914 generation prophecy by producing “new light” (a favorite JW term to explain its many changes in doctrine and teachings). It was explained that the word “generation” had nothing to do with individuals who had been alive 1914; now it simply applied to all people of the earth in any generation who would see the signs of Christ’s coming but “fail to mend their ways.” – He is wrong too.

Watchtower scholars assured the world that numerous biblical condemnations of false prophets did not apply to them.

Deuteronomy 18:20-22 (NKJV) “20But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. 21And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ – 22when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”

Deuteronomy 13:5 “But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the LORD your God.”

Some JW facts:

• JW’s believe that biblical Christians worship “a three-headed God.”
• JW’s deny the doctrine of the Trinity, calling it an insult to “God-given intelligence and reason.” JW’s love to point out that the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible, but neither is the word “Bible” in the Bible either.
• JW’s say that Jehovah is the Almighty God who created Jesus. Then Jesus, the might god, created everything else.
• JW’s say that Jesus had been the archangel Michael in heaven before He came to Earth.
• JW’s insist that Christ did not rise bodily from the dead, but only as a spirit who looked as if He were a body.
• JW’s teach that the Holy Spirit is an “invisible act or force” that God uses to inspire His servants (JW’s) to do His will. According to The Watchtower, the “holy spirit” is like electricity.
• JW’s refuse blood transfusions, which they consider a violation of God’s law based on their interpretation of Acts 15:28, 29 and other scriptures (For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.)
• JW’s often reject birthdays as “pagan” and will therefore refuse to participate in them. “Do Bible references to birthday celebrations put them in a favorable light? The Bible makes only two references to such celebrations…Jehovah’s Witnesses take note that God’s Word reports unfavorably about birthday celebrations and to shun these.” (Reasoning from the Scriptures, pp. 68-69). (Genesis 40:20-22, and Matthew 14:6-10. Two pagan rulers are in view: Pharaoh and Herod.)
• JW’s give Christ (by grace) the credit for giving them the opportunity to “work their way to heaven” by perfect obedience to Jehovah – by being and doing exactly what the WTBTS teaches.
• JW’s are taught by The Watchtower that during the Millennium the earth will be repopulated by faithful JW’s who survived Armageddon, plus billions of people who are “resurrected” (re-created from Jehovah’s memory bank).
• JW’s are taught that the dead exist only in God’s memory: the wicked will not be punished with conscious torment but will be extinguished forever.
• JW’s are excluded from membership or disfellowshipped (shunning) not merely for gross, unrepentant immorality or heresy but also for questioning the teachings and authority of the Society.
Jehovah’s Witness
1. Regarding Authority: JW’s cannot think for themselves and must absolutely adhere to the decisions and scriptural understanding that is presented by the Watchtower Society.
2. Biblical Christian Response: Christians depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit as they read the Scriptures and learn to obey God, not man (Acts 5:29; 17:11; 1 John 2:26, 27).
3. Regarding the Trinity, Christ’s Deity and the Resurrection: JW’s find it difficult to worship “a three-headed God.” They call Jesus a “might god,” but not the Almighty God – Jehovah; they say Jesus was raised from the grave, “not a human creature but a spirit.”
4. Biblical Christian Response: Christians believe that God is three coequal, coeternal Persons who exist in one divine Being (Matt 3:13-17; 2 Cor. 13:14).
5. Regarding Salvation: JW’s say Christ’s death provides the opportunity for men and women to work for their salvation.
6. Biblical Christian Response: Christians believe that Christ’s death completely paid for all mankind’s sins and that believers are justified freely by God’s grace through redemption in Christ (Rom. 3:24, 25; 5:12-19; 1 Pet. 2:24).
7. Regarding Christ’s Return and Man’s Immortality: JW’s believe that Jesus returned to Earth invisibly in 1914 and now rules from heaven, “no longer visible to human sight. They claim that man does not have an immortal soul; and at death man’s spirit (life force) goes out and “no longer exists”
8. Biblical Christian Response: Christians believe that Christ will return to Earth physically, visibly and audibly (1 Thess. 4:1-17). Also, that man has an eternal, immortal soul (i.e. spirit) that, at death, either goes to be Christ or awaits judgment (Luke 23:46; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil 1:22, 23; John 5:24-30).

Some famous JW’s are:

• George Benson
• Naomi Campbell
• Venus and Serena Williams
• Prince
• Terrence Howard

Mormonism

As God Is, Man Can Become

Officially called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (hereafter referred to as LDS).

Joseph Smith Jr.: How It All Began

The story of Mormonism started in 1820 when a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith Jr. had a vision in which two personages – whom he believed to be the Father and the Son – appeared before him. He asked them which Christian denomination he should join, and they told him to join none of them because they were all “wrong and corrupt.”

In 1823, Smith, saw the angel Moroni appear at his bedside and tell him of a book written on golden plates by former inhabitants of the continent that would contain “the fullness of the everlasting gospel.” Four years later, Smith, allegedly, dug up the plates and began translating their “Reformed Egyptian” writing with the help of two special stones called “Urim” and “Thummim.”

As Smith translated the plates, he sat behind a curtain, gazing into a hat, supposedly reading lines of the Book of Mormon (BOM) as they appeared on “seer stones” and dictating each line to a scribe outside the curtain. It should be noted that as a youth and young man, Smith was a well-known hunter for buried treasure with the aid of seer (peep) stones.

Note: Using a seer stone to get information is called “scrying”, an occultic practice that is still used today in contemporary witchcraft (wiccan).

In the 1830’s and 1840’s Smith continued to receive revelations that guided him on where to go and what to do n ext, as well as how to establish new and different doctrines. These writings are called the Doctrine and Covenants, with are considered “inspired Scripture” alongside of BOM.

Driven out of Missouri and into Illinois, Smith led in the development of the thriving city of Nauvoo. Here he came up with revelations concerning the Godhead, origin and destiny of the human race, eternal progression, baptism for the dead, plural marriage (polygamy) and sacred temple ordinances.

Smith was jailed in Carthage, Illinois, for the destruction of a local newspaper that exposed the practice of polygamy. A crowd of around 200 attacked the building that Smith was in, but Smith died in the gun-fight using a six-shooter that had been smuggled to him; he succeeded in killing two of his assailants. Mormons claim their founder died as a “Christian martyr.”

Brigham Young took over after the death of Smith and led a large number of LDS w est, where they settled in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847. Under Young, polygamy became a formal practice of the church, and he himself had 20 wives and fathered 57 children.

Not all Mormons followed Young west. A minority, headed by Smith’s wife Emma and his son Joseph III, remained in Missouri and Illinois and formed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) headquartered today in Independence, Missouri.

Polygamy remained the officially practiced doctrine until 1890 when it became a federal offense that included fines and imprisonment. Wilford Woodruff rescinded the practice publicly, but not doctrinally.

The Story of Ancient People

The Book of Mormon has the sto ry of two ancient civilizations, which were located on the American continent. About 2250 B.C. the Jaredites left the tower of Babel and emigrated to the Western hemisphere, but they were destroyed as a result of their “corruption.”

A second group allegedly left Jerusalem around 600 B.C. and crossed the Pacific Ocean, landing on the west coast of South America. This group was a group of righteous Jews, led by Lehi and later by his son Nephi. This group also became corrupt and divided into two warring camps, the Nephites and the Lamanites (Indians). The Lamanites received a curse because of their evil deeds, and the curse took the form of dark skin. Eventually, there was a great battle between the Nephites and Lamanites near Palmyra, New York in 421 A.D. on a hill called Cumorah. This is the same hill that Joseph Smith dug up the gold plates (by the way it was right next to his farm).

In order for this to be true, the Native American Indian would have to be of Jewish descent. DNA and genealogical studies of many Native American Indians have never shown any physiological connection with the Jewish people.

Eternal Progression: Heart of Mormonism

The Mormon view of God is that he – the heavenly Father – is really an exalted man. He is one o f a “species” that Mormons call “gods.” These gods existed before the heavenly Father who rules Earth today. The “god” who created the Father-God did so out of eternal matter. For the Mormons, God is not eternal, but matter is. In Mormon thinking, God is not the eternal creator, the first cause of everything. He was created or begotten Himself by another god who had been created and begotten by someone else, ad infinitum.

This Father-God of this present universe was a man, lived on another planet, learning and maturing in the Mormon belief, dying and then resurrected attained “godhood.” He went to heaven with a body of flesh and bones, where he joined with his goddess wife and had millions of spirit children who eventually populated earth.

When god had all those spirit children, his firstborn “creation” was Jesus Christ, followed by Jesus’ brother Lucifer. He held a meeting called the Council of Heaven, and there he told all is spirit children that they were to live on Earth and to be tested and then return to Him after death. Premortal Jesus was chosen to be the savior, Lucifer (Satan) rebelled, fought a great war against the armies of heaven and lost.

Jesus, with the help of other spirit children, used eternal matter to create the earth with all its animals and the first human inhabitants, Adam and Eve.

1. Some LDS facts:

• One big difference to grasp is that Mormons have redefined many key terms employed by biblical Christianity – a definitive sign of a cult.
• The Mormon system demands celestial marriage as a requirement for godhood, therefore it is assumed that Jesus was married.
• Common Mormon teaching is that God the Father came down to Earth in human form to physically impregnate Mary.
• Smith taught, “You have got to learn to become Gods yourselves…the same as all Gods have done before you.”

1. Biblical Christian Response: Isaiah 43:10 (NKJV) “Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me.”

• Mormons believe that the Trinity is not one God whose essence is found in three persons, but three Gods – three distinct bodies. The Holy Ghost has only a spirit body; He has never been able to become a man, according to the Mormon system).
• Mormons believe that the Bible is the Word of God insofar as it is correctly translated. There are three sacred books in addition to the Bible: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price.
• The earth is one of several inhabited planets ruled over by gods and goddesses, who were at one time polytheistic in its core.
• Humankind is of the same species as God. God begot all humans in heaven as offspring of his wife or wives, who were sent to earth for their potential exaltation to godhood.
• Salvation is resurrection, but exaltation to godhood, for eternal life in the celestial heaven must be earned through self-meriting works.

1. Regarding Scripture: The Mormons believe that the canon of Scripture is not closed and that “modern revelation is necessary…(God) continues to speak, because He is unchangeable. The LDS Church accepts as Scripture the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and the Bible (KJV), with the reservation that the Bible is “the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.”

2. Biblical Christian Response: Christians hold that the canon is closed and accept only the Bible as Scripture, believing it is “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16).

3. Regarding God and the Trinity: Joseph Smith taught that “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” Apostle James Talmadge said, “we believe in a God who is…a Being who has attained His exalted state by a path which now His Children are permitted to follow. the church proclaims the eternal truth: ‘as man is, God once was; as God is , man may be.’” Joseph smith taught that Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Ghost were “three distinct personages and three Gods.”

4. Biblical Christian Response: Christians believe God is a Spirit and creator of the universe. The biblical God says, “I am God, and there is no other” (Isa. 46:9).

5. Regarding Heaven: Joseph Smith taught that most of mankind will enter one of three levels of heaven: telestial, terrestrial or celestial (D&C 76:30-119). Apostle Bruce McConkie taught that eternal life in celestial heaven is for Mormons only.

6. Biblical Christian Response: Christians believe heaven is the dwelling place of God (Ps. 73:25), which will become the home for all believers in Christ’s full atonement for personal sins. To be in heaven is to be in the presence of Jesus.

Some Famous LDS’s are:

• Mitt Romney
• Donny and Marie Osmond
• Wilford Brimley
• Glenn Beck

There are only two worldviews.

God’s view or our own contrivances.

What you believe determines how you behave.

So…what do you believe?