Cults, etc.

Lord Willing, I will soon begin teaching a class at our church on cults and similar subjects. When they arise I will post some questions here and maybe at a certain other forum since I don't have as much personal experience with some of them like Mormons and JW's as some of you may.

Sounds great! Looking forward to it.

Pilgrim wrote:Lord Willing, I will soon begin teaching a class at our church on cults and similar subjects. When they arise I will post some questions here and maybe at a certain other forum since I don't have as much personal experience with some of them like Mormons and JW's as some of you may.

I don't have a lot of experience with either of the two you mentioned, but I am familiar with some of their doctrine.

The big one in Mormonism is the idea that God is not the one true God. They believe that He was given Lordship by higher beings due to his good behavior. They also believe that when we follow God we too will become God's of our own worlds. A good indication that Satan is involved is the "You will be like God" promise.

The Jehovah's Witnesses change the Bible based on an interpretation written by self taught scholars. "The New World Translation" makes minor changes, but these minor changes have a major impact. For example, "And the word was God" is changed to "And the word was A God."

Pilgrim wrote:Lord Willing, I will soon begin teaching a class at our church on cults and similar subjects. When they arise I will post some questions here and maybe at a certain other forum since I don't have as much personal experience with some of them like Mormons and JW's as some of you may.

Hey Pilgrim.

Your efforts are noble, but you can get wrapped around the axel pretty fast with what you want to teach. Your first determination is what in fact you are going to teach about the cults. Are you just going to represent how wrong they are in their beliefs or are you going to teach how to witness to a cult member?
Teaching how to point out the errors of a cult member will only alienate them from you and mark you as someone to avoid. Thus goes your opportunity to win someone to Christ.

A good approach would be to teach your students how to witness to a cult member and how to recognize their language on the topic.

An example: A Mormon will tell you that we all believe in the same Jesus Christ, which on the surface will seem quite true. Ask them to describe their Jesus and his origins and there you will see a different person. The Mormons diminish his roll to just a really nice guy who's death only opened the door for people to obtain salvation. Despite their doctrine that one must spend a bit of time in human flesh before being eligible for advancement to a god status, their own materiel describe Jesus as a god prior to his earthly life. No explanation for the deviation.
Another example: A Jehovah Witness will tell you that the return of Jesus in 1917 was intended to be spiritual. We read something a bit different in the passage in Acts when the angels tell the sky gazers that Jesus will return in the same fashion. They were seeing him with their naked eye. The very person who ate fish and could be touched. The JWs will want to tell ya that he was only in spirit form in each of the instances of his sightings. His name before being born into this world was Michael, yeah, the angel. God's word though asks, "When did I ever ask an angel to sit next to me"?
The original New World Translation, published in the early 1950s was revised from the KJV by the New World Translation committee as presented in the front matter of the book. Of these five men, 4 were only high school graduates with no foreign language training and 1 who made it to his junior year in college with some Hebrew and Greek language training. Hardly enough to challenge a single scholar of the five companies King James of Scotland hired to compile the KJV.

Tons more of stuff about them. Just ask.

Welcome Ken!

Thanks Adam.