FALSE CULTS

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.

—I Tim. 4:1

1524 Over 350 Cults

America alone has more than 350 sects and cults, and most of them claim to base their doctrines on the Word of God.

1525 Trend Among The Cults

A new Gallup Poll shows that about 12 percent of American adults are engaged in non-traditional religious movements. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was found to be the most popular, supported by 4 percent of the 1,553 adults surveyed or six million of the nation’s population. Yoga was listed by 3 percent, the charismatic movement and mysticism by 2 percent each (or an estimated three million people each), and eastern religion by 1 percent.

The followers of TM and yoga tend to be young adults under age 25, said the Gallup report. It also stated that most of the new religions tend to place value on the inner self and the attainment of mental, psychic, or spiritual states of peace.

1526 Nothing New To Dr. Parker

Dr. Joseph Parker of London said many years ago, “In the last thirty years I have seen enough dead theories and discarded hypotheses to fill a good-sized cemetery. They entered the world like an amateur band and coughed their way out like a squad of consumptive tramps.”

I wonder what Dr. Parker would say if he lived in this age? America has been invaded by troops of new prophets with new theories which remind us of that quaint verse by Rudyard Kipling:

The craft that we call modern;

The crimes that we call new;

John Bunyan had ’em typed and filed in 1682.

—Pentecostal Herald

1527 Praying Over Unburied Man

New York City police are investigating a bizarre case involving a group of cult members who were found in an apartment praying over the decomposed body of a man who had died of cancer in early October 1976. Oric Bovar, 59, and five of his followers, were exhorting the deceased, a 29-year-old graduate student from Greece, to rise from the dead, the police said. The prayer vigil apparently had lasted two months.

The police went to the apartment after receiving a call from a woman identifying herself as Mary Magdalene, who described the vigil. The body was covered with a shroud and lying on a bed surrounded by six praying men. One of the men said the six were not part of a cult but simply members of a prayer group motivated by a deeply shared “faith in Jesus Christ.”

1528 Cult Leader “Coming Again”

Two years after the death of their pastor at age 49, members of the Colonial Village Church in Flint, Michigan, still await his return from the grave. They now believe that a second person will also be resurrected—Mrs. Mescal Mcintosh, the woman they have seen as their human link to God. She is still alive but has been unwell for some time, leaders of the independent congregation say.

In the meantime, the congregation does little—as a group or individually—without first checking with Mrs. Mcintosh, who inquires of God, she says, and passes along the answers. Mrs. Mcintosh, a resident of Flint for about twenty years, has five children and three grandchildren. She is separated.

The church members maintain a twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil at the church; someone is always there to pray and wait for the return of clergyman Bernard Gill. Gill, who founded the church, died in a Flint hospital on July 17, 1974, of a perforated ulcer and is buried in a Flint cemetery.

The story of the church began in 1968 when Gill, believing that God did not intend to have denominations, quit the pastorate of one of Flint’s larger, more prosperous Nazarene churches and founded Colonial Village Church.

A year before his death, he told of a vision he had in the middle of the night, when he came to an understanding from God that he was one of two messengers of the last days to the church mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Revelations. Mrs. Mcintosh was the other, he said.

—Christianity Today

1529 Death Via Yoga

Pathologists and yoga experts are puzzled over the strange death of Robert Antosczcyk, 29, an Ann Arbor, Michigan, yoga instructor. Antosczcyk announced to friends that he was going into his room to attempt a state of astral projection and did not want anyone to disturb him. Two days later his body was found on the floor of his room in a yoga position used for deep meditation. It was theorized that he had gone into such a deep trance-like meditation that his heart slowed to the point that it did not furnish enough blood to the brain. Yoga specialists are now saying that astral projection should be avoided as it is not a “safe spiritual path.”

—Christian Victory

1530 Australia’s Hot-Foot Cult

In Brisbane, Australia, a 30-year-old man by the name of Douglas Birch dabbled in the cult of the Yoga until it cost him both his feet. Believing he had heard the voice of the Yogi commanding him to do so. Birch stood barefooted in a bed of hot coals until his feet were cooked to the bone. Then he crawled quite a distance to a main road, where someone saw him and summoned an ambulance. After his feet were amputated Birch told a friend, “I am through with that stuff. I can see now how silly it was.”

—Evangelistic Illustration

1531 New Kind Of Santa

In cities across America the Salvation Army bell-ringers manning the Christmas kettles and the Volunteers of America Santa Clauses got some unexpected—and unwanted—competition. Members of the Hare Krishna sect stopped their chanting, donned Santa Claus outfits, and hit canes or flowers to hustle donations in exchange for the freebies.

VOA leaders complained that the super-sales-men Krishna Santas had given a bad image to street Santas in general and that contributions to the VOA were down drastically.

In some locations competing Santas almost came to blows, and police ticketed a number of Krishna Santas who failed to move on when told. Authorities warned the alien Santas against misrepresentation.

The Krishna people say they didn’t want to confuse anybody. “When people see Santa, the contemporary emblem of Christmas, we want them to think of God,” explained one leader.

1532 Prediction Fails In Japan

On June 13 Katsuichi Motogi, 69-year-Old founder of the 2,000-member Ichiganno-Miya cult, predicted that a big earthquake would hit Osaka at 8:00 a. m. on June 19, 1974. The religious leader had 200,000 leaflets containing his warning distributed in Osaka and Kobe. When the quake did not occur, Motogi tried to commit hara-kiri, slashing himself across the stomach with a samurai sword. He said he wanted to commit suicide to “assume responsibility for causing public disturbance.”

—Prairie Overcomer

1533 Withholding Insulin

San Bernardino, Calif. (AP)—Lawrence and Alice Parker, who threw away their diabetic son’s insulin in the belief he had been cured by a faith healer, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse.

The charges stemmed from the Aug. 22, 1973, death of 11-year-old Wesley Parker, three days after his daily shots of insulin to counteract the blood disease were stopped by his parents.

Sentencing was set for Sept. 3. Maximum sentence 15 years for manslaughter and 1 to 10 years for felony child abuse.

Attorneys for the Parkers argued that the defendants made an honest mistake based on their strong religious convictions.

1534 Belief Of Unitarians And Universalists

What do Unitarians and Universalists believe? Just about anything, in theory—since they have no requirements of belief—but an exhaustive survey of every fifteenth adult in the denomination shows an emerging doctrine of disbelief.

Less than 3 percent now believe that God is a supernatural being who reveals himself in human history. Just under one-fourth believe God is real but not adequately describable, while 44.2 percent think God is the natural processes in the universe.

The debate about Christ also seems to be dying out, with 59 percent no longer considering themselves Christians and a majority believing they know next to nothing about Christ.

As might be expected, Unitarians and Universalists turn out to be individualistic (but with pretty unified liberal views on politics) and have education and income well above the national average.

—Selected

1535 Unnecessary Widows

In a news item, snake-handling and the drinking of poison in connection with religious services were reportedly banned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The five justices ruled unanimously that the state “has the right to guard against the unnecessary creation of widows and orphans.” Liston Pack, a lay pastor of the Holiness Church of God in Jesus Name near Newport in eastern Tennessee, had been barred by a county court from handling or exhibiting poisonous snakes during services in his church. Several people had died as a result of such rites. The high court’s ruling upheld the injunction against Pack.

1536 Moonies

Over 1,600 couples were wed in a mass ceremony in Seoul, Korea, by Korean cultist Sun-Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church. In the cult, marriage has special religious significance: couples must serve the church for 3 years before being eligible for the rite and partners are often picked by Moon and approved by him.

Core workers of this sect must work as missionaries for the first 3 years of marriage, separated from their mates.

Moon believes that a Korean Christ will soon appear to finish the work of salvation.

1537 India’s Religious Taboos

A strange dilemma was created by Hinduism in India involving Bahadur IV, the Maharaja of Mysore from 1895 until his death in 1940. Being an orthodox Hindu, he would not eat with a European or, in fact, with anyone from a meat-eating country. On the other hand, his chef would not eat with him. The man was a Brahman, or of a higher caste than his master and monarch, and therefore could not engage in any social activity with an inferior.

1538 Sikh’s Repetitious Prayers

Sir Monies Williams once related: “I met an intelligent Sikh from the Punjab, and asked him about his religion. He replied, ’I believe in one God, and I repeat my prayers, called Japji, every morning and evening. These prayers occupy six pages of print, but I can get through them in little more than ten minutes. ’ He seemed to pride himself on this rapid recitation as a work of increased merit. I said: ’What else does your religion require of you? ’ He replied, ’I have made one pilgrimage to a holy well near Amritsar. Eighty-five steps lead down to it. I descended and bathed in the sacred pool. Then I ascended one step and repeated my Japji in about ten minutes. Then I descended again to the pool and bathed again, and ascended to the second step and repeated my Japji a second time.

’Then I descended a third time and bathed a third time, and ascended to the third step and repeated my Japji a third time; and so on for the whole eighty-five steps, eighty-five bathings, and eighty-five repetitions of the same prayers. It took me exactly fourteen hours, from 5 p. m. one evening to 7 a. m. next morning. ’ I asked: ’What good did you expect to get by going through this task? ’ He replied, ’I hope I have laid up a great store of merit, which will last me for a long time. ’ “

1539 Armageddon Date Revised

September 1975 had been the date set for the world’s end, according to some zealots within the Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, it now appears that it was a slight miscalculation and has been corrected by the sect’s 81-year-old theologian, F. W. Frantz. The octogenarian squelched the idea of the September date by recalculating that Armageddon will come to pass only after the equivalent number of days that it took Adam to name the animals and God to create Eve elapses. By the Witnesses’ chronology Adam was created in 4026 B. C. making Autumn of 1975 the 6000th anniversary of his creation, one reason for the speculation that this time of year could be the Armageddon date.

—Pastor’s Manual

1540 World’s Largest Press

Who owns the largest printing press in the world? The New York Times? Look? No! It is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They have one press that puts out 500 pieces of propaganda every second. From that one press alone, comes out 84,000,000 books and pamphlets.

1541 Joseph Smith On The Moon

“The inhabitants of the Moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth, being about 6 feet in height.

“They dress very much like the Quaker style and … live to be very old; coming generally near a thousand years.”

1542 Saving More Souls In Utah

Years ago a wealthy lady from the east made many trips to Salt Lake City to be baptized for the dead. Over the years she was baptized 30,000 times! She did it for relatives and friends and former people like Alexander the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Cleopatra. A Mormon elder commented: “I believe that this lady, in the day of judgment, through being baptized for the dead, has saved more souls than Jesus.”

1543 Birth of Mormonism

Mormonism owes its birth to trifling employment of time by a minister of the gospel! Its Book of Mormon, on which it is built, was written by one Rev. Solomon Spaulding during a period of delicate health. To beguile the time, he composed a silly religious fiction, intending to publish it as a romance. This was certainly a trifling employment for a man of God, a minister of Christ.

What was the result? He died without sending his manuscript to the press. Joseph Smith, by some means not known to the public, gained possession of it, and conceived the scheme of publishing it as a revelation from heaven. He executed his plan, published the book, founded a sect, and became the apostle of a most successful and dangerous imposture of modern times.

—Biblical Treasury

1544 Working Harder

Fuller Brush Company salesmen get into 1 in every three homes knocked, and sale is made in one of every six homes entered.

By comparison, young Mormon missionaries enter 1 in every 7 homes knocked. And an estimated 500 hours of work is needed before one person is converted. But they start one new church a day.

North American evangelical missionaries number 21,000 but the Mormon church has 20,000 missionaries worldwide, mostly young men, with an increasing number of young women and married couples.

1545 CCC Challenging The Cults

Campus Crusade for Christ hosted a “Campus Cults Summit Conference” attended by representatives of nine other Christian groups that work among college-age young people. The result, say spokesmen, will be a coordinated effort to reach cult members and “those who are subtly influenced by cult teachings.”

A “campus cults resource kit” will be produced as part of the plan. Organizations discussed included Transcendental Meditation, the Unification Church, the Children of God, The Way, and the Local Church.

See also: False Prophets ; Occultism-Meditation Cults ; Matt. 24:23; Mark 13:21; II Tim. 3:7; 4:3, 4; II Pet. 2:1.