Cults and Charismatics

During the westward expansion of the United States, there was a shift towards individualism and Enlightenment-style thinking. The Second Great Awakening emerged as a spiritual movement in the early 19th century, aiming to recapture the passion of the First Great Awakening. However, this movement indirectly led to the rise of numerous cults in America. The preachers of the First Great Awakening focused on the content of their sermons, while the preachers of the Second Great Awakening, like Charles Finney, emphasized emotional experiences and revivalism. This led to a belief that the Christian life should be marked by constant spiritual highs. The Second Great Awakening also introduced the idea of making a decision for Christ and the practice of calling people to the front for a direct sermon. Many elements of modern American Christianity can be traced back to the Second Great Awakening. So, last week, we covered the Great Awakening and the impact that it had on the budding United States. It happened right before the Revolutionary War and contributed a lot to the mindset of people at that time. But now the U.S. is a free nation, America is America, and it's beginning to expand westward. So it's going from the East Coast, now it's going all the way to sea to shining sea. And with this expansion, there comes an attitude of very radical individualism. If you're going to do sign language, at least do it correctly. So we're just going to do it in English? Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'll do it. Actually, you're great. I love how you lean into all the stereotypes. I don't know how I would do with someone who is super offended at all that stuff. Anyway, so with this westward expansion, with what's called Manifest Destiny, which is the attitude that God wants Americans to go out and expand west, there's an attitude of individualism. It's like, we can do it, we've got it in ourselves, you can go out, go west, young man, and conquer the wilderness. And, you know, make your fortune, right? There's that attitude that's in the American spirit now. It's very common to the American spirit. Likewise, at this time, there's also an increase in Enlightenment-style thinking among the elites on the East Coast, but even within the churches. And so with these big changes to both America as a nation and to the church at large, there was another spiritual movement that came about towards the beginning of the 19th century that wanted to recapture that seal of the Great Awakening, right? That fiery preaching, that spiritual passion that people had. Unfortunately, this movement sort of indirectly spawned a lot of cults, which continue to plague the nation to this day. And this movement was called the Second Great Awakening. So we had the First Great Awakening in the past, and now we have a Second Great Awakening. According to Wikipedia, there were four Great Awakenings. I don't know where the other two happened. They must have not been very great. I know, they maybe just were Awakenings, but not Great Awakenings. They were like the alarm that goes off, but then you hit snooze. The lesser one. I don't know if that is the name of the alarm clock, but that is Wikipedia. Yeah. Anyway, so last week, if you remember, I said that the First Great Awakening is the reason why America is still a very religious nation in comparison to other Western nations at least. And that is true. The Second Great Awakening, however, is why America has a lot of weird religious groups, right? America has probably spawned more cults, at least more Christian cults, than any other nation. And the reason for this is because of the difference in focus between the First and Second Great Awakening. The preachers of the First Great Awakening were well-trained, intelligent men who weren't trying to reinvent the wheel, right? They weren't saying, like, we've got to make Christianity cool for the modern generation. No, if anything, they were going back. They were going back. They were like, we need to go back and bring historic Christian teachings to these people because that's what they need. Because historic Christian teaching is just the gospel, and the gospel is always relevant, regardless of culture or time. So they just wanted to proclaim the same message that the great preachers of the past had done, okay? And this meant that they were far more focused on the contents of their sermons and of their preaching than on the experience of the audience, right? We talked about, like, Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards spoke in a fairly monotone voice, right? He was not a very flashy speaker, but his content was great, and that's what people grabbed onto. And that's what people grabbed onto, right? That's what they found engaging. The preachers of the Second Great Awakening took a different path. The most famous preacher of the Second Great Awakening, the only one we're going to look at here, was a guy named Charles Finney. That's him over there. That's probably the best-looking picture I could find of him. There's one where there's an actual photograph. There's cameras around this time. This scary-looking man. Scary-looking man. Not the scariest-looking person we'll look at today. There's a scarier person here. That's good as a painting. No, it's not Hitler. Doesn't look anything like Hitler. Yeah, that's probably true, except he was... I think he was... I don't know when Abraham Lincoln was born, but everyone looked like this at that time. This was the style back then, okay? This was the style. I don't think you're going to go back to that style. I don't think that's possible. Yeah, that's true. Anyway, so, Charles Finney. So Finney was the Presbyterian minister, but he had a different outlook on revival than what his predecessors had. Everyone in the past, virtually everyone, agreed that... Everyone in the past agreed that revival was not really something that humans could cook up, right? You can't just start a revival. Revival is something the Holy Spirit does to individuals, right? He revives them, he regenerates them, he caused them to be born again, okay? Finney did not agree with that. Finney believed that revivals were something that Christians could muster up through the right amount of passionate preaching, singing, and the right atmosphere, okay? So Finney's focus was not really on the content of his sermons, but on the emotional experience that his revival gave to people, okay? And you see this today. Actually, I'll save that point for the next one. So this gave way to revivalism, right? Revivalism is different than revival, right? Revivalism is the belief that the core of Christianity, the essence of Christianity, is not about knowing and believing certain truths, but rather it's about a spiritual experience from God. So it's experience over belief. Now they would still say you have to believe certain things, of course. They still believed orthodoxy, at least in the broad sense. But they valued the experience far more than the content and the belief and the doctrine. And this completely changed how people thought about the Christian life. Now, after the Great Awakening, the Christian life needed to be marked by a spiritual high, right, this kind of spiritual euphoria that you're always in or else you're not saved or you should doubt your salvation, right? And you see this everywhere today. I mean, you see, it's probably more common here in the South than anywhere else, but you see churches that say, oh, we're going to have a revival, you know, this Saturday or Sunday or, you know, that thing. It's like, if someone ever says that to you, you should ask them like, oh, how did you get the Holy Spirit on your schedule? Who's the Holy Spirit's booking agent, right? I'd love to get his number, right? Because what they're doing, when they say we're going to have a revival, that is code for parents, bring extra coloring books. Because we're going to be singing way longer than we need to, we're going to be preaching way longer than we need to, there's going to be like 85 people giving their testimony. Okay, that's revival. Yes? I have seen people collapse and like fall over. They're slain in the Spirit. We'll get to that. I've also been scammed by one. No, no, no, not scammed. I have worked for them because they said they were going to pay me and then they didn't. No. No. But, yeah, that's tragic and there's lots of people with experiences like that. But, no, this is where that comes from. If you ever wondered like, hey, where does this very emotional kind of Christianity come from? It's not the Apostles' Christianity. It came from the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening is the birthplace of the modern church. It is where the modern church came from. So many elements of what we think of as just normal American Christianity comes from the Second Great Awakening. And so, the point of this emotional experience that Benny was making with the environment, that the preaching was happening, the preaching, the singing, everything, the point of it was to get people to make a decision for Christ. You've probably heard that term, make a decision for Christ. Accept Jesus into your heart. If you've been here for any amount of time, and all of you have, maybe you haven't noticed, but I never say that. Ever. Because it's not biblical. The Bible never says to accept Jesus into your heart. That language comes from the Second Great Awakening. And in fact, Benny had a particular method for getting people to make a decision for Christ. Here's what he would do. So, the front row of his church, or his tent revival, or whatever he was speaking at, the front row was reserved. Because, at some point during his sermon, Benny would, as he was giving his sermon, he would kind of look out in the crowd, and he would look for people who were feeling, who were looking very kind of like, you know, anxious, and that they were struggling, and not like struggling with the message, but like they were being convicted, right? And he would kind of keep an eye on them. And at some point, he would call them out. And he would say, you, come up to the front here. Come up to the front. That's where the idea of come forward to the altar and pray or whatever, that's where that comes from. He would have them come up to the front, and he would sit them in the front row so he could preach directly to them. He called that front row the anxious bench. Which already, I was learning about that, and I was like, Gen Z would never survive this. Like, every one of us would die as a result of doing that. We would just, our souls would leave our bodies, and we would just ascend into heaven. Like, no, sorry, not happening. Not happening. But that's what he would do. He would call it the anxious bench. Maybe he didn't call it that. But people came to call it that. Because he would preach to them directly, and he would try to, like, pressure them into making a decision. I think he even described it as like an emotional pressure cooker. Right? This pressuring, this emotional, you know, experience to try to get them to say, all right, I'll accept Jesus. All right, I'll make a decision for Christ. Now, contrast that with the revival of the past, where preachers called for trust in Christ and repentance. Right? Not just make a decision, or not just, you know, feel the Holy Spirit. It was trust in Christ and repent of your sins. This is what Peter does in Acts 2.38, right? They say, what should we do? And he says, repent and be baptized. Okay, that's what he said. He doesn't say, all of you come up here. We have nice cards that say, do you want to accept Jesus as your Savior? And you can all mark yes, and put them in the basket, and we'll count them up at the end of the day, and we'll see how many conversions we get. And then next week we can come back and baptize you guys. No, he doesn't say that. He goes to repent and be baptized. Because that is the response to the gospel. It's not, do you choose this or not? That's not what the gospel message is. So this combination of revivalism and decisionism, which you could call that decisionism, was perfect for a traveling evangelist like Vinny, right? Vinny, he did pastor some churches, but he was most known as a revivalist, right? He would travel from town to town doing these revivals. So he could show up in town, throw up a tent, right, have a revival, and then move on to the next town. So he didn't have to shepherd these people, right? He didn't bring them into faith and then he wasn't there with them through the years and decades of their questions and life experiences and struggles. No, he put on a show and then he left. He got a bunch of conversions and then he left, right? But sheep need a shepherd, especially brand new sheep, baby sheep. They need a shepherd, okay? But he didn't have to do that. He just preached to them and left, okay? And after about two weeks, these towns would go back to how they were, right? Back to how they were before the revival, right? And I've seen this. I haven't seen something like this happen in a town, but I've seen it happen in schools before. In the school I went to for the first 10 years of my education, the Christian school, and they had something called Disciple Now, where basically it was a revival. It was a week long or three days long thing of preaching, singing, emotional experiences. And after everyone got born again for the 85th time and everyone's crying, I saw the guys in my class weeping. And I'm stone-faced, because I'm just mad at what's happening. Yeah, I was just like... And then what happened? A week later, everyone's back to the same old, same old, same old drama, same old arguments, same old everything, right? Because that's the effect, right? Christianity is not just a one-time decision thing. It is a life thing, right? It takes shepherding and guidance. And sure, at least in my case, the teachers and people who were there were still there to guide us along if we needed it, but maybe people didn't reach out or they just expected that it would work magically, and that's not how it works. That's not how people work. So, Finney and the Second Great Awakening also marked the American church's departure from church history. What I mean by that is that they abandoned the historical theology of the church. So instead of using creeds and confessions and the theological knowledge of the past, these new evangelists thought they could just figure out the whole Bible on their own, no help from the past. So naturally, this meant Finney had pretty bad theology. He believed that sinless perfectionism was possible, but that most people will still sin, which is Pelagianism. That's what that heresy is, if you remember back to our lesson on Augustine, I think. He also had a very confusing view of Christ's atonement, sometimes implying that Jesus merely died as a good example, but then other times saying he did die for sin. It was very messy. But the worst one, though, is his view on assurance, by which I mean he did not have a view of assurance, because he did not believe in assurance. He said that when a Christian sins, he is, at least for a time, removed from the grace of God, and that he's got to, I guess, go through a time of repentance, which you only repent if you know you have the grace of God, which doesn't make any sense. But he believed Christians can and must live lives of sinlessness, and that we are not truly justified until we do this. That's from his systematic theology. So, horrible views of salvation, right? The attitude that the Second Great Awakening was spreading was one of disregarding the past, and instead trusting in radical, individual experiences. And this shift from the collective church that has its history passed down to generation to generation, this shift from that to the individual gave rise to a number of offshoots or cults from Christianity. Because when you say it's all about your personal experience, you abandon any guardrails. Only I know my personal experience, so I don't have to obey any guardrails that Scripture or the men of the past have put before me. No, I can just take this personal experience and run with it. And so these cults, there's quite a few of them, but they can be organized into three main groups. The first group of cults was the Restorationist Movement. The Restorationist Movement, as the name implies, these groups were trying to restore the true church. This is different than the Reformation, because Reformers believed the true church was still there, they just needed to reform some elements to it, but they believed the church was still there. It was the true church. The Restorationists believed that the true church had ceased to exist some point after the Apostles died, and that they had been called by God to restore the true church. So, in that mindset, that means that the church has basically gone for about 1,700 years without being the true church. Apostle John probably died in the early 2nd century, and now we're in the 19th century. That's their view, is that Christianity got lost somewhere way in the past, and now we have to restore it. And there's two groups we're going to talk about here. The first one, you all know what they are, they're the Mormons. Also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Because apparently, I think there is a movement among Mormons today to kind of frame Mormon as though it's a slur, because technically that wasn't their name. They were called Mormons because of the Book of Mormon. Originally, apparently they preferred to be called Latter-day Saints. Well, actually they preferred to be called Christians, but I'm not a liar, so I'm not going to call them that. So I'm just going to call them Mormons. So Mormonism was started by Joseph Smith. There he is. This is before cameras, so they can make their heretics look nice. So according to Joseph Smith's testimony, Smith was trying to decide which church he should join. Which denomination should he join? And he was so in anguish over being unable to figure out which one he should join, he went into the woods. And then in the woods, the angel Moroni appeared to him. Moroni is not in the Bible, by the way. The angel Moroni appeared to him and said all the churches had gone astray. So this is a message from God. All the churches had gone astray, and that he was being called to restore the true church. So just restorationism right up the middle. He was then given golden tablets, which he translated into the Book of Mormon. He was the only one there when these tablets were given to him, though apparently there were other people that said, oh yes, we totally saw these golden tablets. Yeah, except that it was written in very tiny words. Apparently, I believe he said he had to look through the hole of a hat in order to read them, if I remember that correctly. There's a very weird way he said he had to translate them. I don't know. It doesn't work at all. By the way, I should just say, this lesson is not going to go in depth on any of these cults because we just don't have the time to do that. This is an overview. We're going to talk about the basic points where they go wrong, but we're also just talking about the history of them, right? You could do a whole series on any of these cults. They were taken up into heaven. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. So, long story short, Joseph Smith gained the following. So he's in New York, by the way, at this point. He's in New York in what's called the Burned Over District, which it was called Burned Over because there have been so many revivals there that they say, oh, it's been burned over, like so much spirit fire has been here that's been burned over. So he gets a following there, but he gets kicked out of New York because Joseph Smith was a con man. He was actually indicted in court for being a con man. So he gets a following. They move out west and found the state of Utah. Mormonism departs from historic Christianity in several ways, but the main one is that it is polytheistic. Yes, sorry, Michael. I'm a pastor. That's very admirable. Yeah. Utah is the one state that has never been majority Christian. The only one. That's good for them. They can play on the big salt lake. Anyway, so it's polytheistic. Now, they may not say it's polytheistic, even though it is, because they believe in multiple gods. So they believe that God, the God of the Bible, according to them, was a creature, meaning a person, like not a person, but like a created being, at some point on some other planet, and that he did enough good works to become God of his own planet, which is our planet. And this God has a wife, and the two populate their world with their spirit children, which they believe all humans are spiritually, like the actual offspring of this God and his God wife. I say God wife and not goddess, because in Mormon theology, women don't get to become gods, they become wives of gods. So men get their own planet, and women just get to help them populate that planet. I mean, I guess maybe there's still, I don't know. Anyway, so, with our God, I'm going to say Elohim, because that's what they call him. So with Elohim, his first, him and his God wife, I don't know what his God wife's name is, but their first child was Jesus. So Jesus is also a created being, and I believe the second child was Satan. So Jesus and Satan were brothers in Mormonism. And, yeah, and apparently what happened with that, was that God, well yeah, I guess they did, all of us are brothers with Jesus according to Mormonism. He's in shock. Well, actually, actually, actually, in Mormonism did not allow blacks into the priesthood until 1978. No, no, no, in 1978 God changed his mind about black people. Maybe, I don't know. Anyway, we gotta keep moving, I realize we're running back on time. So, Mormonism is polytheistic, they also believe you can communicate with your dead relatives. Yeah, this is just a, this is a quick thing. No. We're talking about Christian cults here. Anyway, so lastly, Mormons believe that if they do the right amount of good works, they can become a God, if they're a man. Alright, so that's Mormonism, Latter-day Saints. Obviously, like I said, you could do so much research on them, because they're one of the biggest Christian cults. But we're going to move on to a smaller group called the Church of Christ. Okay, now the Church of Christ is a little less heretical than the Mormons. They're not polytheistic, they don't believe you can talk to the dead. They don't believe you can become a God. But there are still major concerns here. Maybe. Well, yes. If anything makes you want to bring back the Inquisition, it's this lesson. I have very violent urges. Anyway, so the Church of Christ was started by a man named Barton Stone, and then it was advanced by Thomas Campbell. They're not super important. They don't have any, like, super weird beliefs. But they were kind of the purest example of the Restorationist spirit. They wanted to return to a pre-denominational Christianity, by which they mean replicating the early Church as much as possible. Okay? And this is why they simply called themselves the Church of Christ. I think there's another version called the Church of Christ's Disciples. Yeah, Campbell too. So, as a result, they, like I said, they reject all creeds, all confessions, all historical teachings of the Church, and they are solo scriptura. Not solo scriptura. Solo. Meaning just me and my Bible, and I can figure it all out on my own. Don't need any church authority, don't need any, you know, help from those of the past. Nothing. I can just figure it all out on my own. So, some of their concerning teachings. By the way, if you guys have ever watched the show Duck Dynasty, the family in Duck Dynasty is part of the Church of Christ. Yeah. I'm not saying that they're... So, yeah, we'll get into some of their beliefs. Because I listened to a podcast from a guy who was mentored by Phil Robertson, and he vouched for Phil. He said Phil is a solid guy even though he's in the Church of Christ. But, some of their beliefs. So, they reject original sin. They teach that all babies are born righteous, and that they don't become sinners until after they reach an age of accountability. Which is language... Okay, don't slurp like that. We're not talking about succubus cults here. So, age of accountability is a phrase you might hear sometimes in, like, in regular evangelical churches. It's not in the Bible anywhere. Typically, it's used to... It's used to kind of say that babies who die go to heaven. Which I believe that babies that die go to heaven. They don't go to heaven because they're babies. They go to heaven because God's going to save them. I believe that. Do I know that absolutely certainly? No. But, I read in the Bible God is merciful. God is kind. I think that makes sense, but maybe it's not that way. I don't know. Anyway, so they teach that basically everyone's born sinless until you reach an age of accountability and then you sin. Okay? It varies. Some teach it's 12, some teach it's 15. Some teach it's just whenever you learn the difference between right and wrong. Which I'm like, well then just... That's what I said. I was like, well just never teach it, then they're always going to be sinless. Yay! That's how it works. So, but, they believe that once a person becomes a sinner, they can be saved by repenting, confessing to trust Jesus' sacrifice, and by being baptized by immersion. Right? The Church of Christ believes immersion baptism is essential for salvation. And this is not like in the Lutheran way of saying baptism saves, or we just mean that baptism is a means of grace that God gives to us, it's God working to give us grace, but that faith is still essential. No, they believe that if you have faith, but you do not get baptized by immersion, so no sprinkling, no pouring, you have to get baptized by immersion in a Church of Christ, or you're going to hell. So if you get hit by a car, and you're... Wait, wait. If you get hit by a car, and you're dying on the side of the road, and some Church of Christ disciple comes to you and says, Yes? Well, they weren't built at that point, so... I guess they don't count that. Yeah, you're going to be scratching your head at all the logical inconsistencies here, but... Just to kind of keep going through this, because they have to keep moving. So, they also believe salvation can be lost, though. Which doesn't make much sense, because they think, Oh, you get baptized, if you're baptized, you're saved. But then if you lose that salvation, you've got to get baptized again, because they'll say it didn't take first. So I'm like, if it didn't take, whose fault is that? As many as you need to. No, getting baptized is not... No. So... They deny... Guys, come back to it. We have to keep moving, because we've got more cults to get to. And they get crazier than this. So, just skipping to the end of this part. So, the problem with the Restorationist movement is that, one, well, I'll just keep it simple. It rejects the promise that Jesus gives us in the Great Commission. What does Jesus promise us at the end of the Great Commission? I will be with you... I'll be with you when? No, there's a word before that. I'll be with you... Always. He doesn't say, I'll be with you unless you get bad theology. Or, I'll be with you until the apostles die. No, he says, I'll be with you always, until the end of the age. Until he comes back. Until he comes back. But if the Restorationists are right, then that means Jesus either lied, or he failed, and neither one of those are acceptable. So, I understand realizing that the Church can go off the rails sometimes, but it never means that the true Church is lost. Never. So, moving on. That's the Restorationist movement. Now we go on to healing cults. There's really only one healing cult that we're going to talk about, and that is Christian Science. Which is neither Christian nor scientific. So, Christian Science was founded by a woman named Mary Baker Eddy. Yes? Oh, no, that'll come later, I think. Yeah, prosperity gospel. We'll touch a little bit on that. So, in 1866, Mary apparently had a hard fall on some ice, and had severe injuries as a result. And according to her, after trying all these different medical treatments, she opened her Bible to an account of Jesus healing someone, and she was immediately cured of her injuries. Pretty incredible, right? Not to the actual healing, but she did get out of bed. So, I mean, something happened. Did she actually fall on ice? Yeah, I mean, we have no reason to doubt that she fell on ice, but maybe she could have been lying about that. So, shortly after this, Mary began to teach people this new perspective on the Bible, which she called Christian Science. And she wrote these teachings down in a book titled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Which is online, you can go to the Christian Science website and read it. I did not read all of it, because I don't want to kill myself. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you fake being sick to stay home, but then you remember that you had something you wanted to do that night, and so you pretend to be better. Maybe she was just trying to get out of going to someone's funeral, and then they were like, how are you better? Oh, no. But what are these new teachings that she discovered somehow? First, Mary Baker Eddy believed that the spiritual world is the only true world, and that the physical world is an illusion and evil. So this is kind of like Gnosticism. This is just warmed over Gnosticism. So matter is an evil illusion. You okay? There was someone who was like... I've heard something, anyway. It's an illusion. We'll get to that. Hang on, hang on. We're going to get to her beliefs about that. She said, spiritual is true. If physical and matter, that's all an illusion and it's evil. So she accepted Genesis 1, which you might think Genesis 1 is about creating the physical world. No, no, no. She believed that it was about creating the spiritual world, but Genesis 2 and 3 were false. Where did she get that? She made it up. I don't know where she got that from, but they're false because they talk about the physical world. Now, if the physical is evil, you might be asking, how can healings take place? Well, in Christian science, healing is really more of an affirmation of the unreality of matter. Basically, prayer in Christian science is not asking for God's grace. It's a silent argument with the part of your mind that still thinks matter is real. So really, healing is just realizing you're not sick. So it's just mind made up of matter? Yes. That's really what it is. Yes, Aubrey. So, matter doesn't matter. It's made up of matter. So is it mind that's made up of matter? Is your mind made up of matter, though? No. So, her healing is basically, you need to deny the illusion of matter, and then you realize that you're not sick or dying. Mary also rejected the Trinity. Shocker, there. She said that the Trinity is love, truth, and mind. And she also referred to God as she, and called him the Father-Mother. Yo! Again. Again. The Inquisition wasn't that bad, guys. Maybe that's some good points. Love, truth, and mind? Though she switched that up. She would say, like, she would say the Holy Spirit is Christian science. Like, this lady was nuts. And there's an explanation as to why she's not here in a second. I'll tell you why. There's a maybe. So, the most controversial part of all Christian science is the rejection of all medical treatments or medicine. And this, this is the saddest part. Because, well, to partake of medicine or medical treatments in Christian science is basically blasphemy. Like, you are abandoning the faith at that moment. And so, as a result, there have been many lawsuits that have been filed against Christian scientists, especially Christian science parents who won't give their kids medicine or take them to the doctor for life-saving instances. And their kids die. And their parents are charged with manslaughter, as they should be. But, this is, this is a reminder that bad theology actually does affect people's lives. Theology is not just a matter of intellectual, you know, filling your head with stuff. Like, it matters. Bad theology can kill you. Okay? That being said, it is very likely that Mary Baker Eddy was addicted to morphine, which may have been why she was crazy. She was super addicted to morphine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Granted, I think, like, everyone was on morphine back then. Maybe not everyone, but she was very addicted to morphine. I don't know. Your mom's a nurse, right? Ask her. She does something in the medical field, right? Ask your sister. How do you get morphine? All right. All right. We're about to, all right. So that's, that's the main healing cult. Now we're going to get into the last one, which is end times cult. So these may not be like the, these are all, we'll get into them. There's three ones we're going to talk about. They kind of build off of each other. So, this last group of cults were built around the idea that Jesus was coming back very soon. So, the first group were the Millerites. Now the Millerites are not around anymore, but they're important to understand these next two groups that we're going to talk about. So we'll talk about the Millerites. The Millerites were started by a guy named William Miller. Miller was raised Baptist, but he became a deist. We talked about deism last week. But then he returned to Christianity after a traumatic experience when he was fighting the War of 1812. So, well, it ended in 1815. So, historians don't know how to name things correctly. So, after this experience, he says, okay, I want to go back to Christianity. He says, I'm going to study the Bible from beginning to end without looking at any, what anyone else has written about it. I'm just going to figure it out on my own. Like I said, this is the spirit of the age at this time. You can figure it out on your own. You can do it on your own. You can do it. No, you can't. Dora, wait, wait, is that the, no, that's, um, Bob the Builder. Can we fix it? No, because you're a wretched thing. Anyway, so, he decides to study the entire Bible verse by verse until he's figured out everything. And wouldn't you know it, while studying, stop holding it. Yeah. So, while he's studying the Bible, wouldn't you know it, he figures out when Jesus is going to come back. Whoa! How does he do this? When? Well, what he says, so, in Daniel, in Daniel 8.14, he found where it says, this is the King James Version, unto 2,300 days, then the sanctuaries shall be cleansed. Okay, you don't have to look it up, that's Daniel 8.14. Alright, so it says, unto 2,300 days, then the sanctuaries shall be cleansed. Okay. So Miller took these 2,300 days to be 2,300 years. Okay, that's not actually that crazy because the Bible does speak like that sometimes. And he figured that the cleansing of the sanctuary meant Jesus would return to the earth and cleanse the world. Okay, so, doing some math, he started in 457 B.C., counted 2,300 years, that would land you in 1843 or 44. I think it was 1844 is where he landed ultimately. So he said, oh, Jesus is coming back in 1844. And he was writing about this, I believe, in 1821. So, he shares his views. A lot of people laugh at him, as they should have. But he starts to gain a following and this following called himself the Millerite. Okay, or the Adventist. Which might give you a little hint as to where this is going. So Miller became so confident in his prediction that he stated that Christ would return no later than March 21st, 1844. Wow. I think we missed it by a little bit. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. So, he said March 21st, 1844. And when Jesus didn't come back, Miller said, oh, made a mistake. I used the European calendar, we need to use the Jewish calendar. So, new date, April 18th, 1844. So everyone's getting excited again. Alright, he's going to come back. Didn't happen. Okay. That's true. Anyway, so when this didn't happen, or when this failed, one of Miller's followers suggested the real date was October 22nd, 1844. I don't know where they got this one from. So, in this one the Millerites were convinced. They were like, alright. And so they started quitting their jobs, selling their homes, and they believed he was going to come back. He was going to come back. But, October 22nd, 1844 would come to be called The Great Disappointment. Which is not my birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Although it is one day after my brother's birthday. He wasn't born in 1844, by the way. He's much older than me. So, following, or actually I should skip to this one. So, following The Great Disappointment, many of the Millerites completely lost their faith. They became atheists, agnosticists. They couldn't take it. And I don't blame them. That makes a lot of sense. But there were many who tried to make sense of what had happened. And this gives birth to the next group called The Seventh-Day Adventists. This group is still around today. The Seventh-Day Adventists were started by Ellen G. White. That's the scariest woman I've ever seen. And that's the least scary picture I could find of her. So, Ellen G. White, her family were Millerites. Her whole family followed William Miller. And they were in the group when The Great Disappointment happened. And Ellen was incredibly sad. Her whole world was being flipped on its head. But shortly after The Great Disappointment, she claimed to have a vision. Stop showing people pictures of Ellen G. White. No, no, you can look at it afterwards. Put the phone down, Bethel. Alright, so, she had a vision. And in this vision, she saw the Millerites ascending this road to heaven. And so she took this to mean that the Millerites, or that Miller was right about the date, October 22nd, but that he misunderstood what it was referencing. And so, another Millerite proposed that what actually happened on October 22nd, 1844, is that when Jesus, when it says, cleanse the sanctuary, it meant Jesus entered the inner sanctum of heaven. Whatever that means. This is called the inner sanctum theory. And so Ellen adopted this as a way to explain her vision. Okay? And another key part of Ellen's new movement, because they're called the Adventists, you get why they're called Adventists. They invented Advent calendars. That's it. That's why. Another key part of their movement was the belief that Christians are bound to worship on Saturday, instead of Sunday. That's why it's called Seventh Day Adventists. Which I guess that makes all of us First Day Adventists. I don't know. In fact, worshiping on Sunday is considered to be the mark of the beast. Yeah! Okay. Retracting. Yeah. Like, no kidding. That's what they consider the mark of the beast is Sunday worship. So this, this combined with the belief that Jesus is coming soon is why the movement is called Seventh Day Adventism. That's why they have, that's why they go to church on, or church on Saturday instead of Sunday. Yes? So it's just like, starting out, starting out on Sunday. You just have to wait. No, they believe, because they believe, you know, oh, the Sabbath and the Old Testament was on Saturday, so it stays the same. You know, ignoring all the parts of the New Testament where it says, on the first day they gather together. But, you know, not worrying about that. That's pretty much as far as we're going to go with Seventh Day Adventists. There are other weirdies they have, but they've kind of adjusted things over the years to try to sound more Christian. So, it's a bit of a, you know, a bit of a mess. Last end times cult we're going to do, because we have, we have a lot to get through here, because there's something that's not going to add to this. Jehovah's Witnesses. Last one. So Jehovah's Witnesses were started by a guy named Charles Taze Russell. He doesn't look that bad. So after, so Charles Russell, after he heard an Adventist preacher speak about the return of Christ, he joined the movement. And this preacher said that Christ was going to return in 1874. So, they're still trying to predict when Jesus is going to come back. They said 1874. It's going to happen then. Of course, 1874 came and went. No Jesus. Okay? However, one of Russell's friends suggested that Jesus did come back in 1874, but it was invisible. It was an invisible return. And so Russell said that sounds good to me, ran with this idea in his writing and preaching, and he eventually started a magazine called God's Watchtower, which is where you get the name Watchtower Society or Watchtower Organization, which is the ruling body of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Although at this point they're not called the Jehovah's Witnesses yet. So, he could publish these ideas through God's Watchtower magazine, through the magazine. Russell believed that Christ had returned invisibly to the earth, and that he was looking for people who could spread his message. I don't think Russell read the part of the Bible where Jesus already did that. They were called the Twelve Apostles. But he was back here, he was looking for people to spread his message. Okay? And, later, he developed the idea that Christ would return 40 years after this. So, 1874, 40 years later, 1914, the start of World War I. Now Charles Russell didn't know that, because despite his claims he was not a prophet, but that is when World War I started. So they said, alright, Jesus is going to return in 1914. This also didn't happen, and then Russell died two years later, in 1960. So, one of his followers reworked his prediction to mean that in 1914, Christ began his active rulership, whatever that means. And, that now he would begin judging the world through the Watchtower organization. And then later, this movement came to be called the Jehovah's Witnesses. As the years have gone on, Jehovah's Witnesses have predicted the real return of Jesus several times. I think the most recent one was in the 70s. So they've kind of calmed down a little bit. Just to kind of, they deny the Trinity, I know that all of these cults deny the Trinity, pretty much. They deny the Trinity, they deny the divinity of Jesus. I believe it is their Bible that says, in John 1, 1, where it says, the Word was with God and the Word was God, there it says, the Word was a God, which, they try to make an argument that that's what the Greek means. It's not. There's a great, funny YouTube video that explains it perfectly. I'll probably send it out with this lesson. But, the reason they call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses is because they believe Jehovah is the only name for God that can be used. Which, again, there's another great YouTube video explaining why that's not true, despite their claims. I'll probably send that out too. They also believe that 144,000 special Jehovah's Witnesses will get to rule in heaven over the other Jehovah's Witnesses. Because of, you know, the 144,000 number in Revelation. Anyway, those are the cults. That's a lot. But there's one more group we've got to talk about. No. Alright, we're back to this. This is the last group we're adding. And these are Pentecostals. So we've completed this map. I'll make the full map at some point. But, Pentecostals is the next one. Okay, so, this movement is tricky to talk about. Because it's a mixed bag. Pentecostalism is the newest Christian tradition on the block. It's the new kid on the block, right? Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, they've been around a while. Even Methodists have been around a while. Pentecostals really have only been around a little over a hundred years. There are faithful, true Christian Pentecostals out there. Don't think I'm trying to say all Pentecostals are heretics. They're not. Not all Pentecostal churches are heretical churches. But there are concerns. And so we should familiarize ourselves with the history and the beliefs. So, history of Pentecostalism. In the late 1800s, a Methodist evangelist named Charles Parham basically started Pentecostalism. So he began preaching about the divine gift of healing. And he eventually started a Bible college where he and his students would travel around Kansas and Missouri preaching about this healing, speaking in tongues, prophesying, and they called it the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. He later teamed up with one of his students, named William Seymour, who was a one-eyed black preacher. And they began ministering in Los Angeles. Now, while in Los Angeles, a revival began at 312 Azusa Street, which is that right there. And this is called the Azusa Street Revival. That's 312 Azusa Street right there. It's nice that we have, like, actual camera pictures now. We're at that point in history. I like the paintings a little bit more, though, if I'm going to be honest. So, at this revival, people began speaking in tongues, falling down in the Spirit, as they call being slain in the Spirit. Even more incredible was the fact that both whites and blacks were worshipping together, because that was, this was during... This was during... This was during segregation. And so that really didn't happen. Now, this was in Los Angeles, so California, you know, wasn't one of the confederate states. Granted, the confederacy is long gone at this point, but... Or so they think. No, I'm kidding. I have a relative that fought for the confederacy, so... It was like... I think it's my great-great-grandfather. So, this movement really is where Pentecostalism started, and it spread around the U.S. This is the first movement. This is the first wave of Pentecostalism, is with the Azusa Street, and then it spreads throughout the U.S. Later in the 60s and 70s, you had the healing revival. This is where many so-called faith healers got their start. This is where you get the rise of televangelists. The most popular one was William Branham, who basically did start a cult of his own. But this is where that comes from. I'm not going to go into much more detail than that. And then after this, you had... Sorry, so up until this point, people who experienced these healings or speaking in tongues would either leave their normal Protestant churches, or they would kind of be bullied out, in a sense, because people thought they were weird, and a lot of them probably were weird. And they would join a Pentecostal denomination. But in the late 70s, there was a movement within other Protestant denominations, like Presbyterian or Methodist or whatever, for people who believed these gifts were still active, but they just didn't leave their church. And this was called the Charismatic Movement. This is why some people would call themselves charismatic, even if they're not in a Pentecostal church. And the word charismatic, or the word charismatic has come to describe people who practice spiritual gifts regardless of denomination. The main denominations of Pentecostalism are the Assemblies of God and the Church of God. I believe the Assemblies of God is the largest one, the largest conservative one. Like every denomination, there are liberals and conservatives. So, Pentecostal beliefs. What do they believe, or what makes them distinct? Yeah. I almost found one that was like the Fire Nation emblem. Yeah. Anyway, so, they believe in three kinds of baptism. Now, they're not talking about getting dunked in the water three times. What they mean is that the first baptism is your baptism into Christ, which is just another way of saying your salvation. Right? You come to faith, you're baptized into Christ. Then they believe in water baptism, which is your, according to them, is your confession that you are a Christian. And then, after that, is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So, and then, after that, is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, where you receive the Holy Spirit and gain the ability to speak in tongues or prophesy or heal or whatever. Now, there is a difference in views on this because older Pentecostals, by older I mean the ones that existed in the first wave, they believed that all three were essential for salvation. But modern Pentecostals have softened that and said, no, really, the only thing that's essential is that first one, baptism into Christ, being saved through faith. The other two may happen. They should happen, but they're not essential. Right? So they've kind of adjusted their position there. Water baptism and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Next is practice of spiritual gifts. That's what they are known for, is spiritual gifts. This includes speaking in tongues, both human and angelic tongues. Because they believe that the apostles didn't just have the ability to speak other languages that they didn't know, that they could speak in the tongues of angels, which they get from a verse in 1 Corinthians, as well as they could prophesy. Now, views on prophecy also vary within Pentecostalism. Some believe modern-day prophecy carries the same authority as Scripture, while others believe that a modern-day prophet can receive a word from God, but they might misinterpret what God is saying to them and get it wrong. Okay? So, again, there are... And so they will say that prophecies need to be measured up to the Bible, which the Bible does say that's what you should do, 1 Thessalonians 5, 20 and 21. It says, Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. The gift of healing, divine healing. This is practiced by Pentecostals. Again, with some putting more of an emphasis on it than others. Some believe that all prayers for healing work all the time, or that all laying on of hands work all the time, while others accept the fact that God will not always heal people, that God is sovereign, and He may choose to let the person die, or just be sick, or whatever. Okay? But all Pentecostals agree that healing is part of the gospel, because it was part of Jesus' ministry. And so this may require the laying on of hands. Now, while we may disagree with some of these views, most Pentecostals fall within the realm of Orthodoxy. They believe in the Trinity. They believe in the forgiveness of sins. They believe in the Incarnation, Resurrection, all that great stuff. But there is one subset of Pentecostals that reject that. They are called Oneness Pentecostals. And they are a heretical group that teaches modalism. Does anyone remember what modalism is? Yes. Correct. Right, that's what modalism is. So, Oneness Pentecostals, they believe that there is one God, and that the Father, Son, and Spirit are just different roles or modes that He takes on. They get this from Acts 2.38, where Peter says to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And he doesn't mention the Father and the Spirit. So they say, oh, well what that must mean is that Jesus is actually, or Jesus is the name of God, and that the Father and the Spirit must be different modes. That's where they get that from. It's a very backwards reading of the text. Because in Matthew, he says, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. And then Peter says, you must be baptized in the name of Christ. Now, rationally, you would say, okay, well, Peter's not saying, but not in the name of the Father and Son. He's just emphasizing Christ, because this is a Jewish audience that just killed Jesus, so they should know that. But they say, no, Jesus is the only God, but there's no Trinity. There's other bad views that they have, but we're moving on from that. I'll end with this, the religion of the flesh. So, I'll go ahead and read this passage from 2 Peter 2. Peter says, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. Looking at most... Yes? That is true. And we need to throw them out of the ship. So, looking at most of these movements from an outside view, right? Just so I can be clear on this. Has anyone here been affiliated with these cults in any way? Yes? I don't know. The faith healing? Yeah. That kind of stuff. He hasn't been kind of believing that for a while. And he's not like fully into that. Right. And I've learned it's not true. Right. Okay. Alright. I just wanted to see, because where I'm coming from this is that from an outsider's view, which is what we are, we are looking at these cults from an outsider view, as people who have never been part of a cult before. It's natural to wonder, like, what attracts people to these cults? Because not only do the beliefs of these groups have numerous inconsistencies and logical holes, but their leaders are either proven con men or crazy or morphine addicts. Or all of the above. Right. And so you're like, how can people rationally stay in these cults? And I'm talking about people who join the cult, not kids that grow up in it. Obviously, I get why they believe it. But I'm talking like grown men and women that join these cults. What's in their mind that's causing them to stay? Maybe. I don't know. But it's because these cults appeal not to the mind, but to the deep, sensual appetites of people. Now, sensuality, it's often just associated with sexual morality. And yeah, that does fall under it. But sensuality comes from sensual, senses. It's about just base physical appetite. So it can be sex, it can be food, it can be drugs, it can be alcohol, it can be money. It can be anything that just appeals to these base level desires in us. All these groups appeal to natural cravings in human beings. Mormonism appeals to that desire for power, to be of God. And it also appeals to sexual morality because you can get married to a bunch of women. Although, I think that's legal in Utah now. I'm not sure. Christian science appeals to that desire to be free of all physical ailments. And even death itself. And even end times cults appeal to that desire for the world to just be perfect now. And for all the concerns about the future to be unnecessary. I don't have to worry about where I'm going to go to college, what I'm going to do for a living. I don't have to worry about planning because Jesus is going to come back next month. So it's appealing to these deep desires that we all have. And the thing about these desires is that they can be good when placed under the authority of Christ. We will have the power to rule under Christ's authority in the new heavens and new earth. We will be free of physical ailments and the world will be perfect. But not yet. And that's the part we don't like. We don't like the not yet. We love the already. We hate the not yet. We want the promises now. And if old-fashioned Christianity can't give it to us, we will look elsewhere. And that's the American spirit. If I don't get it now, if I can't make it work for me right now, I'm going to go somewhere else. And this is not a unique thing to these cults. This is what all false world views do. They are all Satan offering that apple to eat, saying, you can be a god now. You can have it now. You don't have to work for it. You don't have to be patient. You don't have to accept your position in the cosmos. You can have it all now. And it's all a lie. And when people are lured in by these appeals to the flesh, then they're made slaves to these arbitrary laws of men. Virtually all these cults are super-legalistic, which may cause you to think, well, they're not really about central appetites. No, they are. But they just take one central appetite, place it up here, and then you're trying to get to it, and they bog you down with all these laws and all these regulations and all these restrictions to try to keep that promise just out of reach, that you stay within this cycle. And if you think about leaving, they say, oh, well, you're going to be cut off from the promises. You're not going to become a god. You're not going to be saved, right? It's this fear-mongering. Look up the psychology of cults. It's very interesting. It's very dark as well. And to outsiders, this only damages the reputation of the church. And that's Satan's plan. Satan doesn't need Mormonism to grow and be a huge religion. He wants these groups to be tiny, little, weird groups, because then non-believers can say, oh, if that's Christianity, I don't want anything to do with it. And they can shut out the entire Christian church because of these cults. And also, that's why we see people leave these cults when they do, and they just have a seething hatred for all religion in general, because they think all religion is what they experience. They think Christianity is just what they experience, but maybe a little bit different. So, since these people stay in these cults out of irrational desires, they can't be argued out by logic. You're not going to reason these people out of cults because they're not there for a reason. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use scripture and logic. You should. You use that to rob them of their excuses, but then you have to present the gospel just simply and plainly, and trust that the Spirit's going to do the work that's needed. That's how every believer comes to faith, not just people that come out of cults. Christ has defeated all these enemies before. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and all these groups, they're just warmed over Arianism. The Church beat that over a thousand years ago, and they'll do it again. Christian science has just warmed over Gnosticism. The Church beat that, and they'll do it again, because Christ is the one that's gaining these victories. And as for you, what should you do? You should know what you believe and why you believe it. You don't need to become experts in all these cults. Now, if you have a burning passion to minister to people in these cults, yeah, you should learn about them. But as a general rule, know what you believe and why you believe it. Or as Peter puts it, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.