Thread: 🤔🤔⚠️⚠️ what are some signs and practices of a cult❓❓
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🤔🤔⚠️⚠️ what are some signs and practices of a cult❓❓
Posted : 7 Jan, 2022 10:42 AM
there have been many serious studies on the dynamics of cults and behavior of people within those cults. Following is a representative list of characteristics common in cult groups. Not all cults hold to every item
We have to be careful when assigning cult-like behavior to any group. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too, cult-like behavior is subjective. Generally, it takes a trained person who can identify unhealthy patterns and teachings as compared to healthy ones and can then identify a cult. Furthermore, cult-like behavior is more commonly identified through excessive control, manipulation, and esoteric teaching of a group where the group’s members are often isolated and indoctrinated into special teachings and practices.
Social aspects and behavior
For a group to be a cult in the social sense, many of the following characteristics would have to be present. For a group to be a cult in the doctrinal sense, essentials (in this case of the Christian faith) would have to be violated. Some of the characteristics are listed below.
Submission:
Complete, almost unquestioned trust in the leadership.
Leaders are often seen as prophets, apostles, or special individuals with unusual connections to God. This helps a person give themselves over psychologically to trusting someone else for their spiritual welfare.
Increased submission to the leadership is rewarded with additional responsibilities and/or roles, and/or praises, increasing the importance of the person within the group.
Exclusivity
Their group is the only true religious system, or one of the few true remnants of God’s people.
Persecution complex
Us against them mentality. Therefore, when someone (inside or outside of the group) corrects the group in doctrine and/or behavior, it is interpreted as persecution, which then is interpreted as validation.
Control
Control of members’ actions and thinking through repeated indoctrination and/or threats of loss of salvation, or a place to live, or receiving curses from God, etc.
Isolation
Minimizing contact of church members with those outside the group. This facilitates a further control over the thinking and practices of the members by the leadership.
Love Bombing
Showing great attention and love to a person in the group by others in the group, to help transfer emotional dependence to the group.
Special Knowledge
Instructions and/or knowledge are sometimes said to be received by a leader(s) from God. This leader then informs the members.
The Special Knowledge can be received through visions, dreams, or new interpretations of sacred scriptures such as the Bible.
Indoctrination
The teachings of the group are repeatedly drilled into the members, but the indoctrination usually occurs around Special Knowledge.
Salvation
Salvation from the judgment of God is maintained through association and/or submission with the group, its authority, and/or its Special Knowledge.
Group Think
The group’s coherence is maintained by the observance to policies handed down from those in authority.
There is an internal enforcement of policies by members who reward “proper” behavior, and those who perform properly are rewarded with further inclusion and acceptance by the group.
Cognitive Dissonance
Avoidance of critical thinking and/or maintaining logically impossible beliefs and/or beliefs that are inconsistent with other beliefs held by the group.
Avoidance of and/or denial of any facts that might contradict the group’s belief system.
Shunning
Those who do not keep in step with group policies are shunned and/or expelled.
Gender Roles
Control of gender roles and definitions.
Severe control of gender roles sometimes leads to sexual exploitation.
Appearance Standards
Often a common appearance is required and maintained. For instance, women might wear prairie dresses, and/or their hair in buns, and/or no makeup, and/or the men might all wear white short-sleeved shirts, and/or without beards, or all wear beards.
Doctrinal aspects of a cult
The essentials of the Christian faith, as revealed in Scripture, are as follows:
The Deity of Christ
Jesus is God in flesh (John 8:58 with Exodus 3:14). See also John 1:1, 14; 8:24; 10:30-33; 20:28; Col. 2:9; Phil. 2:5-8; Heb. 1:8
John 2:19-21; 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17; John 20:25-28; Luke 24:39
The Gospel, as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
1 Corinthians 15:1-4; Galatians 1:8-9
Monotheism
Exodus 20:3-6; Isaiah 43:10; 44:6, 8
Trinity
Though the Trinity is not explicitly defined in Scripture and stated to be a necessity, it is a logically necessary doctrine since it properly describes the true nature of God.
The Virgin birth is an essential to the Christian faith since, without it, the true nature of the incarnation of Christ could not be scripturally maintained and it could not be said that Jesus is deity.
🤔🤔⚠️⚠️ what are some signs and practices of a cult❓❓
Posted : 7 Jan, 2022 12:19 PM
Quote of CULTISTrsvp - 'Though the >>>trinity<<< is >>>NOT<<< explicitly defined in Scripture'
AMEN, that is all you needed to say! We don't need it then! Thanks! I UN-capitalized it for you CULTISTrsvp!
So true then why do you try to force your CULT doctrine outside Scripture that says there are 3 'gods' that are 3 'persons'??? Oh but WAIT dear readers because he contradicts himself in saying there is ONE deity??? Go figure! Yet that ONE deity is really 3 persons??? So then LOGICALLY it not ONE but THREE!
So in order for him to get his CULT doctrine right, he should ALWAYS address his 'god' as really being 'gods' PLURAL!!! RIGHT???
🤔🤔⚠️⚠️ what are some signs and practices of a cult❓❓
Posted : 7 Jan, 2022 12:23 PM
Now that is what this thread properly identifies as CULTISTrsvp that has - >>>Social aspects and behavior<<< problems toward CONTEXT of Scripture, right readers???
🤔🤔⚠️⚠️ what are some signs and practices of a cult❓❓
Posted : 7 Jan, 2022 12:38 PM
"
Quote of CULTISTrsvp - 'Though the >>>trinity<<< is >>>NOT<<< explicitly defined in Scripture " teddy bugs
🤒🤒 teddy bugs is suffering from a classic case of modalism
modalism is probably the most common theological error concerning the nature of God. It is a denial of the Trinity. Modalism states that God is a single person who, throughout biblical history, has revealed Himself in three modes, or forms. Thus, God is a single person who first manifested himself in the mode of the Father in Old Testament times. At the incarnation, the mode was the Son and after Jesus’ ascension, the mode is the Holy Spirit. These modes are consecutive and never simultaneous. In other words, this view states that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never all exist at the same time, only one after another. Modalism denies the distinctiveness of the three persons in the Trinity even though it retains the divinity of Christ
🙂💯👍😉🤔🤔 now for some logical questions
What Scripture proves this idea wrong ❓❓Well, several. Mark 1:9-11 says “In those days, JESUS came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when He came out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn opened and the SPIRIT descending on Him like a dove. And a voice [the FATHER] came from heaven, “You are my beloved SON, with whom I am well pleased.”
what do Modalists make of this passage❓❓ Is Jesus an amazing ventriloquist ❓❓ Or were the angels talking? And why would the angels call God their son ❓❓ They are forced to make up some explanation for the text that really isn’t there. And when we twist Scripture to fit our own faulty views it leads to a downhill spiral
Another passage is Genesis 1:26a, which says “Let US make man in our own image…” Who is the us❓❓ Is God using the collective “us” here❓❓ Or does God actually exist in three persons in one? (This is not a trick question.)
What about Stephen ❓❓ He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. All three are present. If you are a modalist, how do explain this ❓❓ Were Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father shooting back and forth so quickly that Stephen thought he could see all three ❓❓ The problems just keep going on and on.
So why is this belief so popular ❓❓ Do people just not like the Trinity ❓❓ I think people have a hard time understanding the concept of the Triune nature of God. So they try to explain it away with faulty theories like this. But when they do, they only create more problems, that leave the Bible even harder to explain
We don't need it then! 
Thanks! 
I UN-capitalized it for you CULTISTrsvp! 
Oh but WAIT dear readers because he contradicts himself in saying there is ONE deity??? 
Go figure! Yet that ONE deity is really 3 persons??? 
So then LOGICALLY it not ONE but THREE! 
