Be more watchful of cults and spiritual scams than ever

Oh, indeed there is more of an unction in my spirit than ever to say this right now.

There are movements in the world right now that everyone abiding in Christ need to know about.  These movements are endeavouring to fracture the one true church and to break its stable pillars; which among them are humility, wisdom, justice, love, grace, discernment and truth.

These movements against God will not succeed.

But that doesn’t mean these movements won’t carry unsuspecting persons off to a living hell in the meantime.

These movements are about making God small, and putting God in smaller and smaller boxes, even though the appearance of said movements is to make God look larger than ever.

How will we know?  There is always a single hero driving such a movement, and there is always a bevy of support underpinning the hero.

There is always a central figure who is charismatic and supremely gifted, and who just seems to have all the answers.  They hold influence and exert influence, when good leaders have influence and are careful to never lord it over anyone, anytime.

We must learn to run from these controlling people.

One of the ways that these movements will happen, and are indeed happening, is through the capture of people who are searching more than ever for hope and are more than ever finding their hope in something that takes them away from hope.

People are going to their spiritual deaths right now.  They are being ushered away from the God of life and are being whisked away to a panacea that only leads to a living hell.

How will we know?  The more incredible the promises of miraculous transformation, the more we ought to be suspicious.  The more signs and wonders are done at will, the more we ought to ask how much of God is really in it.

We live in sensational times and people are looking to the sensational as a way through to cope and to find answers.

We must be more watchful than ever regarding cults and spiritual scams simply because we are living in times where people are more desperate than ever for a solution to the kinds of problems nobody really has the answers for.

It is very inconvenient for those who believe in God to not have the answers, but it is nonetheless a fact of life for all true believers.

The answers to life are contained in accepting what would otherwise be unacceptable.

That is the entire point of belief in Christ; that we are equipped by faith not to need answers, not to need to manipulate God, not to need life on our terms, but to accept life on God’s terms.  That’s the point of faith.

Spiritual scams and cults will always attract those who are vulnerable to needing the answers, and who indeed demand answers.  They will be attracted to movements away from God that supposedly provide answers, which not only provide no answers at all, they cause destruction.

You see, we live in a time where any answer will do, when any answer will not do!

Every one of those kinds of answers is wrong.  We are deceived in the looking for answers.

THE VALUE OF INSIGHT

It is so unfortunate that spiritual scams and cults pick us out when we are weakest and have least insight.

Insight is a paradox in that we can be so fooled to believe we have ‘special insight’ when it is evident, especially to others, that we are deceived.

The more ‘special’ we think we are, the more ‘special’ is our understanding of God and truth, the more deceived we are.  The more we’re deceived, the more dangerous we become, to ourselves and to others we’re connected to.

Without insight we cannot tell whether we are part of the problem or not, and we begin to see helpful things and people as unhelpful, and unhelpful people and things as helpful.  Judgement is skewed.  At its worst, a lack of insight means there is absolutely no compass for right and wrong.

When there is no compass for right or wrong, it is scary for every bystander, because a spirit of unpredictability consumes the perception leading to the extension of a spirit of control.  In being controlled, we exert control.

A SPIRIT OF CONTROL

When someone is on fire for something so passionately that they cannot be reasoned with they may make all sorts of accusations that our faith is wrong and that theirs is right.  Pushiness is a red flag.

We can tell they’re unbalanced when they put pressure on us to agree and to side with them and to commit to what they’re doing.  It is spiritual and emotional extortion.

We can tell in our spirit, God truly helping us, when someone is placing inordinate pressure on us to submit to their will.  It is the clearest sign of not only ungodliness but the tyranny of evil working through a deceived person.  This is where discernment is more important than ever.

A spirit of control is the clearest sign that something is wrong, and we do well to run from these situations, or at least begin to plan our move, because if we’re genuinely stuck in a situation like this, getting out of it won’t be so easy.

SIGNS OF THE TRUE CHURCH

The true church is one where everyone is free in Christ.  Free to come and free to leave. Free to be as one without pressure to be someone different, ever, provided that one is a safe person — according to the standard of loving community.  Free even to hold one’s view, provided it dignifies others, and be respected all the same.

With neither pressure nor compulsion the environment is safe and conducive to grow in.

Anybody may enter the sanctuary, which is not a noun but a verb — a sanctuary in terms of church is not a place, it’s a state of being.

When people are planted in a place where there is no fear of impartiality or judgement, they sense that they are safe, and they know that they can grow in such an environment.

How else is the grace of God to be embodied here on earth other than for human beings to know that they have a safe place?

Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash