Polemics, Miscellaneous Cults

Okay, we have today miscellaneous cults. This is a subject near to my heart. I wish I could say it was dear to my heart, but it is near to my heart. I happen to have a lot of personal and fairly intense background with a number of these groups. We won't be able to go into all these miscellaneous cultures. There's way, way too many of them, just literally thousands of smaller cults. Some of them have died out even within our own lifetime. Some of them have come into existence even within our own lifetime.

As I've shared before, we've got on the right there, Jim Jones. He was my sister's 7th grade teacher. I can remember sitting in PTA meetings and eating food right across the table from him. I remember my brother sat down to my left as my brother told him about how crazy his teacher was, not realizing that Excuse me, yeah, her teacher, my sister's seventh grade teacher. So here's my older brother telling Jim Jones how crazy he was as my sister's teacher.

At any rate, a good number of the kids I went to high school with died there in Guyana. Someone that Nancy and I still have contact with was the Marine in charge of picking up the bodies. Anyway, so it's tough. There are other contacts that I've had with some of these others and I'll share as we go through them. They can be pretty intense.

Nonetheless, we bring them up because you are quite likely to have already encountered one or more of these miscellaneous cults or you may encounter one or more as time goes on. So there are the major cults, of course, we tried to cover that have numbers in the millions, many of these have numbers in the hundreds of thousands and less. Some of them have very small numbers. The Jim Jones group had say less than a thousand that were actually in the group, but died out there in Guyana with a few exceptions that happened to survive it. Our idea here is to look at What are some of the characteristics of these? We're going to find that there's some things in common with the larger groups.

One of the things that tends to be more commonly characteristic of these smaller groups is that there is danger at such a level that goes beyond just my saying it's spiritually dangerous, but there's often physical danger, as with my experience and my high school buddies losing their life with Jim Jones. there is also psychological danger. And I've dealt with people that have been in that mode. By psychological danger, I mean people becoming entrapped by the cult and unable mentally and emotionally to leave. Sometimes damage that will last them for their lifetime.

So anyway, these cults can be hugely significant even though their numbers may be small. I didn't get up here, we've had one in Waco that's an offshoot from the Seventh-day Adventists, by the way. That's the David Koresh and the Waco catastrophe of a little over a decade ago. That was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist cult.

Now, one of the things we point out here in the middle of the page, one can vary the proportions, but it's always just a bad recipe. You're going to see variations, but number one, we see salvation is gained or sustained by keeping the laws adopted by the organization, whatever those are. And what happens is each group tends to make up their own. It's interesting how you can have all these absolute total authorities and have them varied all over the place. People have the ability to cook up laws and regulations of all kinds.

Secondly, loss of salvation, as the eternal consequences of annihilation or diminished standing. Many of the groups have, one, the belief in loss of salvation, so they hold that over people. And then frequently along with that, either annihilation, when you die, if you lose your salvation or you never were saved, when you die, you're done, or you die and you get some lesser standing, oftentimes not hell, interestingly enough. Thirdly, the interpretation of elements of prophecy is by allegory. That is a very common characteristic of a great many of the cults, is they look at scripture when it comes to prophecy. How are things going to happen in the future?

They allegorize. I was just sharing with somebody recently that, remember the scorpions and the locusts in Revelation chapter nine? I think, John, you had a nightmare about that. The Jehovah's Witnesses say that's them. That they're the scorpions and locusts. Yeah, that that's them. Yeah, they come out of the abyss. So how they do it now, the abyss that they come out of is the lull of activity right after World War One. That's the abyss that they say they come out of.

So strange allegorical interpretation. And fourthly, the organization has some exclusive role of interpreting scripture supplementing scripture or dispensing rituals that keeps the organization in some degree of control. I remember at the PTA meetings, Jim Jones would walk by my mom, who would be standing talking to a group of people, and he would lean his head into the group and say, incredible superstition, and then walk away. And he'd do that sometimes several times in an evening. and always coming to my mom looking at her, incredible superstition, then walk away. The idea is trying to get people to distance themselves from her belief in the Bible as literal, and the ability that you can read the Bible and understand what it says. Okay, the Unity School of Christianity, we picked as the first one here, Unity Village, Missouri.

They're a cross between Christian science and Eastern religions, if you were to give it some sort of a simple explanation. Christian science, Randy covered for us just a few weeks back. I tell you, Randy really struggled with preparing that. He repeatedly kept, you know, of course, he and I communicate electronically, he repeatedly kept coming up and saying, how can anybody believe this stuff?

So at any rate, you have, One life with Christian science, unity is different in that it teaches, like Eastern religions, reincarnation. So it's the science of mind thing, and you've got to have the right mindset, similar to Christian science and science of mind, religious science, but with reincarnation as the thing. You've got this life and the next one, the next one, the next one. So it's a Hindu or Buddhist view with a Christian science, you know, it's all about how you think, approach to how do I get on the right path to reincarnation.

All right, two by twos, next page. This is a group that Nancy and I have had some contact with when we were down in Texas when I was going to school there at Maryland. Yeah, in other words, you can have unity. Yes, in other words, now is it unity or Unitarian? It could be either one. Unitarian and unity are not identical in spite of the similarity of names. but there is enough flexibility and latitude that a person could be Buddhist in either one.

Isn't that strange? So yeah, a person could be Buddhist and of course that goes along with the reincarnation thing and what the leaning that that has is towards state of mind kind of approach. I don't know if Randy shared it, my great aunt, was a Christian science practitioner who died of a goiter she didn't have. Anyway, the next group, the two-by-twos, Nancy and I had met up with two families that had come out of the two-by-twos group. They have alternate names, Bunheads, Cooneyites, and a lot of other names.

I put a big long list at the bottom of page two because the list is really long. The reason that they have so many names is because they have no buildings, and so you won't see any sign out front. They tend to shun or, you know, grabbing a specific name. So all these different names tend to get some degree of sticking. And interestingly, I am told by the folks that we met down in Texas, that when we told them we were going to Denver, they said, oh, that's a really strong area of two by twos. Now, that may come as a surprise to you, but it's because you won't drive by and see a two-by-twos building, a Cuneites building.

Those were the two names that they most commonly used with us. They have names that sometimes sound like other churches. Some of them will come up here that you'll have the undenominational Christians, the Way, which I'm familiar with that as the name of another cult. They will have the Friends, which is another term that's often used for the Quakers. So you have some sometimes confusing names that come up there.

They basically have salvation by works. It can be lost by failing to abide by the list of works of the group. I know from what these people described, having come out of the group, In places where particularly, and they use the King James Bible, the King James Bible will say, in order that you might be saved, they put the might as a, oh, you just might be saved, but you don't know. See? So, might is not a provision in their book. They use might as a sword to dangle over people because you might be saved, but you might not if you don't abide by our rules and lists and do everything we say you're supposed to do.

So this is another one of those groups that you could encounter. I know Jessica's mom, Randy's mother-in-law, had asked us, have you heard of this group called the Bunheads? She ran into them up in Washington, and that's one of the other names for this group. The Bunheads, based on the hairstyle that the gals frequently wear, because they're not supposed to do anything fancy with their hair.

So it's like you got one hairstyle you're going to wear and that's what you're going to wear. I'd be in a tough shape. Okay. Now, the next one I put is the Hutterites. Let me put a picture. Here's a group of Hutterites here. Hutterites came out of the Anabaptist movement in Europe. They were heavily persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church to the point where their number actually got reduced down to 19. And so they just killed them off. But they were able to come, you know, get those 19 to the United States and Canada. So along the northern states, mostly, and in Canada, Montana, South Dakota, I mean, North Dakota, you know, and Alberta, those areas. are largely where they're located.

Here's the way they operate. They have isolated colonies of about 60 to 150 people in each colony. If they get up to that number, they'll start another colony. All totaled, I think the latest count I've heard is about 30,000 of the Hutterites. They obviously stay within their particular group.

They speak a specific dialect of 15th century German. and they're suspicious of anybody who does not, you know, comes up to them speaking English, because that dialect of German is what they want to stick by. They generally are against implementation of technology except in their agricultural production. In terms of, you know, use of electronics like a lot of us are accustomed to in the home, that's absolutely outside the realm of what they're going to do.

They do communal living. And they basically locked into a culture of about 15th and 16th century Europe in the Alps. That's what they've done is, you know, the language, the culture, everything, they have substantially locked in on that culture and living that way.

And that's how you get saved. Salvation by works would generally be denied. If you said, are you saved by works, they would generally say no. However, how do you know you're saved? It's the way you work. And the way you work is the way they live. And if you're not in the group, you're not saved. So it's that simple. So I would say, yeah, salvation by works.

Similar groups of Anabaptist history and background would be the Amish and some Mennonites. I say some Mennonites because some Mennonites have retained kind of this, you know, holding on to 15th and 16th century, you know, lifestyle and others have not. Some of the Mennonites have remained close enough to the Hutterites that they talk with each other and even in the common language. Others, very much distant from that. So there's a spectrum of the Mennonites that means we would not include them all in this group, but there are some.

Questions so far? Or just totally baffled? Okay. Next one, Aryan Nations. Aryan Nations, I have had some contact with prior to moving down to Texas and then coming to Holly Hills. I led a group up in Northern Idaho. We worked with the Idaho Transportation Department. They don't like to say Idaho Department of Transportation because the acronym looks too much like idiot, but the Idaho Transportation Department, ITD. Okay. Anyway, I worked with them and of course we went to Northern Idaho Sandpoint in Coeur d'Alene and that is an area that's a concentration of them.

Remember back in the early 90s there was an incident with Randy Weaver and the FBI, shooting him. Well, the FBI and BATF met him at Connie's and that was where we used to eat breakfast every morning when I was, you know, staying up there. And then this highway that went to the north, that was the highway they drove to, you know, for this event with Randy Weaver. So I was right up in that territory and I pulled off the road at one point because we were working on a roadway project and some erosion control because it was a creek that they were having erosion problems with. And I pulled into this parking area and I looked and, well, heaven sakes, it was an Aryan Nations church. And of course, this was one of their great meeting places.

The fellow you see in the middle is Richard Butler. He was alive at that point in time. He died a couple of years ago. Anyway, he was the fellow who was heading up the group. Now they've got another fellow who's kind of taken his place. The group goes like this.

They say, that the Jews that claim to be Jews today are usurpers of the most evil kind that need to be eradicated and that in fact the white people of Europe and North America descended from those in Europe are the Jews and so and those those are the the right race and that the others are that claim to be Jews are false and evil in the highest degree and need to be eliminated. That's their belief.

So this fellow, you know, with this Nazi swastika behind him, and that's definitely what they hold to, they very much align themselves with the Nazis and oddly enough with the Muslims. Why would they align themselves with the Muslims? Because of the hatred for the Jews, right? So they see themselves as allies with the Muslims because the Muslims likewise want to get rid of the Jews. So strange alliance.

So these guys here in Northern Idaho and other places where they're scattered across the country actually like what Al-Qaeda is doing. And they say that's a very Christian thing to do. That's their thought. You're shaking your head. What's the matter? Anyway, these guys are really strange folks. Here's Sandpoint, which is really quite a small town.

And it was the place we were staying at. And I was surprised they had a very substantial army surplus store. So it was just astounding. And we have friends who live up there now. So anyway, they have, quote, churches. They have pastors, like this fellow here, until he died. They have churches, they have pastors, and they study the Bible.

But of course, all their stuff is looked at as, you know, if Jesus spoke against the Jews, then that was obviously in support of his hatred for the Jews, just like they had. And so they got some things very scrambled, It's all to really hate the Jews a lot. Not to just be sort of resentful or mildly antagonistic, but to take them out every way and everywhere you can. So here's a Jew.

Now they also, of course, would put other groups in that as well. Blacks they're not too fond of and some of the other, you know, what we would call minority groups. What they will do is basically take the action of the more radical groups during New Testament times, the Zealots and the Sicarii. They'll look at those groups who did more violent things against the Romans and basically adopt their violent actions because they say, you know, we are, and talking about northern Northern Europeans, those who came from Northern Europe, you know, into the US and Canada, those people are the true Jews.

And that's what they keep fighting for. The reality is that, and some will call it a fake religious group, because the religious aspect is only a guise, some would say, for the ability to cast hate upon the Jews. And the religious aspect is not as big a deal to them as, well, I really hate those guys.

So real interesting. Nonetheless, if you encounter them, and I've had conversations with them, and I didn't go visit their church, but I've had conversations with them, contact with them. They'll sit there and argue about scripture passages and things of that sort. Where Romans 13, for example, says to be subject to the government, they'll have all kinds of gyrations as to why that isn't true. So, real curious.

You know, I haven't seen a figure as to how many. One of the things that I know in places like northern Idaho, it's far less true in southern Idaho, but in northern Idaho, Montana, There's a cluster of them in South Carolina. So they're scattered areas where there's a number of them. Some of them are involved in some of this border stuff that's going on, you know, the southern border. But the Mexican issue is a secondary one to them, because that's not the Jews. Unless you talk to the Mormons.

Okay, now the Unification Church. This is, oh, you had a question. Yes, right. Well, what I'm saying is that's what they claim is the case. Oh, what they say is that what the people who call themselves Jews now are usurpers. and fakes, and they're really out of other groups, and they're fake Jews. And they say, we are the true race, the ones truly descended, and that the ones who claim to be Jews now are fakes, usurpers, and they need to be eradicated. Yeah, that's a reach, yes. Yeah, it's a pipe dream. But I've seen, I mean, elaborate genealogies and all kinds of things they come up with, Really strange. I mean, it's phenomenal. Pardon? Yeah, that's what they would say.

Now, the Unification Church, otherwise known as the Moonies. Anybody run across this group? Unification Church, Moonies? Used to be fairly common. You'd run across them and the, what's that? And yeah, Hare Krishna groups in the airports. Those were kind of the people looking for a handout or, you know, hey, we'll give you this funny smelling stuff if you'll give us some money. So anyway, the Unification Church, the Moonies, it was a group that I've had some contact with again. In the place where I went to high school, the Moonies bought a 600 acre piece of property. that they got for a training camp.

And so a couple of experiences that I had were one, my brother, younger brother, about 10 years younger than me, slept with a friend of his just on an overnight type thing at the house right along the border of the 600 acre training camp. He didn't sleep all night because of the screaming going on at the camp. There was this all night brainwashing session. And so my brother had a tough time sleeping just because constantly screaming.

Another event that took place, and this was some many years back, was we were going along the highway and right at the front gate, we noticed that there were two people running towards the front gate and the front gate was locked. They climbed over and right behind them was a car screaming up the road trying to catch them. But we got the people in because we knew they're running away. We got the people in our truck and hauled off and the other people of course had to unlock the gate so we lost them. And of course we'd been around there a while and familiar with all the back roads.

So anyway, we went tearing off and lost them and we made arrangements through the night to pass this couple of people who were trying to escape from the Moonies, made arrangements for them to to meet with other groups of Christians and move them up the coast and get them out of the area secretly. So anyway, it was a real interesting kind of experience to take part in getting them out of this Mooney camp. Anyway, the camp eventually got shut down because they were violating zoning codes and things of that sort. But that was some of my experience with this group.

Now this is real interesting. It's now called the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. Oh boy. It's centered on its now aging leader, and good news, he's completed his tax evasion sentence. So he's out. As far as I know, he's still alive. He claims to have been commissioned by Jesus Christ to bring unity into the world, noting that Jesus Christ failed in his admirable mission to bring unity to the world. Jesus Christ tried real hard, but just didn't get there.

While the Unification Church speaks of unity as its goal, its prime characteristics have been using a church as a shield for property acquisition, avoidance of taxes, ownership of several business chains, as well as national and international political influence. And that's why some young moon went in for tax evasion, because it's basically, is it religious? Well, yeah, but it's also used as a tremendous shield for all sorts of activities and not all that's valid.

Anybody heard of Christian Bernard Jewelry? That's a Some Young Moon jewelry chain. It's not real popular here, but it is popular in some places. Happy Toys is another chain of Some Young Moons. And another one, Paragon House Publishers. So those are three of his businesses that he's got. Again, he's got all kinds of other properties and hotels and things all over the world. Made a lot of money with this stuff. Well, it's amazing what progress he has made. Really strange. Here's the way he looks.

They have a history of heavy indoctrination, similar to my brother's experience where, you know, screaming all night and these people who said, hey, this is too much and tried to leave when we had to help them get out. Heavy indoctrination and control of its adherence. They want the adherence What they'll do is they've got this arrangement.

They've got a Bible of their own making, written back in the 1950s, 57 here, and the Bible itself. The Bible is not the truth, however. It's a witness to the truth. If you really want to see what's happening, it's Sung Myung Moon's book. Moon is on the left there, and we'll talk about why they've got a couple up there with crowns on their heads. That's some young moon and his third wife. Here's the way it goes. Salvation is gained only by works in order to partially pay off the debt of sins. You've got to pay it off so that God will forgive the balance. Christ died to save you from some of them, but you've got to pay for the rest of them.

Okay? Those properly saved can then hope to bear sinless children Do you see there's some young moon and his third wife and you see the crowns he has 12 children He claims the 12 children are sinless and will thereafter bear sinless children So all descendants and so what he wants to do is have people get married in large group Ceremonies and you may have heard of thousands getting married at once many of these people have never met each other He'll marry thousands of people at once, have these special weddings where thousands get married at once, sometimes not having known each other. And this is the true parents, Sun, Young Moon, and his wife. And those that he marries and those that are descended from him are those who are then sinless and have sinless children. Okay, cool. They teach that God does not know the future, which is open theism.

We'll talk about that in a couple weeks here. God doesn't know the future, but by pursuing Moon's plan of salvation, we can make God happy. Okay? God's sad now, but you can make him happy. You want to make him happy? Oh, come on. You do, don't you? Okay. Jesus was viewed as a perfect man, but not God. And the Holy Spirit is the feminine expression of God. So, how do you like that? Okay.

In the end, however, they say that all spiritual beings will be saved, including Satan himself. Satan will be saved. Isn't that sweet? Moon is seen as the King of kings, Lord of lords, and the Lamb of God, and the one whom Jesus will one day bow down. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that sun, young moon is Lord. How about that? Okay? Don't bother reading your Bible, it's not all that important, but do make sure you get the divine principle. That's what you really got to have. So, are you impressed so far? Yeah? Okay.

Christadelphians. Anybody know any Christadelphians or run into this group? Nancy and I knew one couple, a Christadelphian, Randy, where I used to work in Carson City. Paul? No. He had an office next to mine. He and his wife were Christadelphian. Their teaching derives from a British-born man, John Thomas.

He was initially involved with the Church of Christ. Then he left the group and returned to Britain to found this Christadelphian thing. So you get all this interaction between the different cults that we've painted a picture of before. You get the Seventh-day Adventists, the Church of Christ, the Christadelphians, the Jehovah's Witnesses, All these groups are all intermingled with each other in Seventh-day Adventists. A lot of contact back and forth. So he ultimately made a few trips back and forth between the U.S. and Britain, finally dying in New York in 1871.

They teach that Jesus, who was not deity, had a sin nature, so needed to save himself before he could save us. So when they tease Jesus on the cross, you know, save yourself, and that's what they say he did. He saved himself, and then he saved us. They teach, and these are some of the deviant beliefs. I won't list everything, but these are the deviant ones. Baptism is necessary for salvation. Where have we seen that before? Just going through it, how many different groups have we talked about where baptism is necessary for salvation?

You've got the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox, and you've got the Jehovah's Witnesses. And you've got the Church of Christ. What's that? Right, Church of Christ. And any others? Well, think about this. The Mormons studied genealogy. Why? They want to baptize for the dead. So they not only want to baptize for you, but they baptize for the people that have already died so that they can be saved, right? So there's another group. So it's a real common thing.

And as we mentioned before, the early church did not know anything about this baptism for salvation until about the year 220. So it was over a century after the last apostle went home to be with the Lord before this doctrine came up as a recognized teaching in the church. Nonetheless, here you see it again. Jesus did not exist prior to his incarnation. He was just a human being. And so that was it. The Holy Spirit is neither personal nor deity. Just a force. Christ did not die in our place for our sins, nor can one be saved by grace through faith alone.

Subsequent works are required as evidence of the validity of that saving faith, therefore it is possible to lose one's salvation. Well, where have we heard that before? It seems like all these groups fall into this same pattern, even though they have varying teachings. You're all losing salvation, you all get to have that held over your head, you've got to work for it, you've got to go by law, you've got to have allegorical interpretation, and then some weird concept of God.

Souls exist here on earth only, and only those shown to be saved while on earth the first time are recreated at Christ's second coming. You see, when you die, you're just done. So what happens is if you are saved, which is demonstrated by your baptism and by your works, if you're saved, you still just annihilate or get annihilated and die. But if you're saved, you get to be recreated when Christ comes again. That's the way they look at it. Because you were saved, God will make you again. But between the time you die and the time Christ comes again, you don't exist. Okay? You're gone. Okay? So that's lots of fun, isn't it? Okay, souls which are not saved or simply not recreated, Satan is not real. He's just lots of fun, okay?

Subsequent offshoots of the Christadelphians, okay, so they've got splinter groups off of them, have changed names and joined and re-divided and rejoined numerous times again since 1874, so that the various present-day Christadelphian subgroups call themselves the Old Paths Fellowship, and by the way, Fellowship is lower case. The Berean Fellowship, the Dawn Fellowship, and the Nazarene Fellowship. Not to be confused with the Church of the Nazarene, as if you weren't confused.

So, you got that. Now, have we covered all the different groups? Oh, by no means. Not even sort of. What are some other cult groups that I haven't listed here? Can you think of some? I mean, there's thousands of them out there. You run into any of them? Not particularly, huh?

The Unitarians, Unitarian Universalists, and over at Hamden and Colorado, they've got a church building over there. As a matter of fact, the Unitarian pastor in Palo Alto was last named Peterman. But anyway, yeah, they're very broad. I mean, do all kinds of things.

I heard about one Unitarian church that even had a stripper come in and do her thing in front of the church, and that was okay. So, what's that? Yes, that's right. Entertainment. So yeah, almost anything goes with a lot of those, the Unitarian Universalist Church. They can be very broad in what they will include as a part of our group. So that would be one. Some of them will come and go.

The Jim Jones thing is one that obviously, once the guy left, pretty much it's gone. Pardon? Yeah. There was a gal I went to high school with, you know, Bay Area cult group. Oh yeah. Anyway, this gal and my friend Randy Aleshi, he was my best man, he and I went to try to get her out of this group.

And it's called the Children of God. And the way it worked is you had this network of house churches, and each house church had a heavy-handed couple leading the house church. And so you are supposed to obey, now get this, remember Ephesians 6, obey your parents in the Lord? You don't obey your own parents, you obey your parents in the Lord. Who are the parents in the Lord? The people leading the house church. That's the parents you're supposed to obey.

So even though these people had a bunch of personal articles that were from this girl's parents' household, They wanted their typewriter back and a few other things. No. The young lady that was trying to get out of there was supposed to stay with the group and listen not to her parents, but to her parents and the Lord, this heavy-handed control group. We got very close to getting her out, but then they noticed that we were getting too close and they started swooping in and basically pulled her back. So yeah, that was another one that we ran into. The Shakers is another group that is largely, I'd say, gone. The Shakers is a group that used to be significant.

Basically, Mother Anne was the embodiment of Jesus Christ, and there was a lot of physical manifestation similar to what you see in the vineyard. But they didn't believe in marriage, which is it's hard to maintain a church for very many generations with that.

And they would have, you know, various kinds of, you know, supposedly miraculous expressions of the Holy Spirit. And the ultimate expression of holiness and purity, they would have a man and a woman dance nude together while speaking in tongues. And if they were unaffected and unstimulated, then that showed that they were truly holy and following the path that they should be. So get that.

Very strange group. And mostly what we've got left over from that group is not people because they don't reproduce very well when you're not supposed to marry, which also that's one of the doctrines of demons that Paul lists when he writes to Timothy. It's not marrying, right? So anyway, they came up with very odd teachings and now mostly we've got to shake our furniture. You can get shaker furniture more than you can get shaker people. But yeah, that would be another cult that's kind of come and gone. Last I read, there were a few remaining shakers, very old, and about to die out. And that was a while back, so there may be none now.

I went to high school with, as if enough cults hadn't taken people out, I went to high school with some guys who spent some time with Charles Manson and took drugs with him and that kind of thing and were impacted by him. That's a group that he was trying to develop a following and basically ended up getting, by the murder and prison convictions, ended up stopping the group. But that was another one where there was an attempt to get control of people and have I mean, this is dangerous. This is pretty dangerous stuff. So Alan Rosenthal is one of the guys I remember that got caught up with him. David Pronsolino and some others. Yes?

How about Benny Hinn and his radioactive thing? Benny Hinn has a headquarters in Texas not too many miles from where Randy and Jessica lived. Well, and that's where his residence is located. The last figure I heard, and this is a few years old now, the last figure I heard is the income of about 120 plus million dollars a year. There is a group that is actually organized just to watch Benny Hinn.

But yeah, there's lots of frauds like that. We will get into those. And what you have with those is a variation on this cult theme. Some of these televangelists, and Benny Hinn is one of them, I question whether they're even saved. Benny Hinn has taught that there's not a trinity but nine persons in the Godhead. He taught that he got special energy from God by going to the graves of Katherine Kuhlman and Amy Semple McPherson.

So wild, crazy stuff. And I think it's a very well done charade. But we'll get into this televangelist thing because it's a significant business. Probably in the neighborhood, last figure I saw was about $3.5 billion a year total for these televangelists. If you look at any of their personal history, a great many of them have very sad stories behind them. Really disgusting, frankly. But it's a big business. A person can make very good money in the charade.

Jim Jones did while he was alive. Made very good money because he had people sign their personal property, their houses. I did a survey on one of the houses that the people had signed over to, you know, Jim Jones. Because the county where I worked in and where all of our kids were born, that's where he was centered.

The vineyard, if you look at it strictly, they teach a saving gospel, but you may have people who are drawn in so much by the experience and it's so distorted that you may have people who are not Christians in there. I think it's a significant distraction from the truth, and it varies from vineyard to vineyard. My younger brother, who is a pastor at a Bible church in California, was actually invited to speak more than once at a vineyard. And it's basically that local vineyard church was concluding that they needed to follow scripture more carefully.

But that's an individual case. Others would be quite different. Other thoughts, questions, comments? Scientology, okay. Yeah, this is one we're seeing a number of celebrities that are involved with Scientology. Any of you know some of the names of the celebrities that are involved with this? Tom Cruise is one who's made a big name. Jen Elfman is another one you may have heard of. John Travolta. John Travolta. Yeah, John Travolta is another one.

And the Scientology thing is not science by any means, but it is basically a religion that looks upon, it's a mixture of some Eastern ideas with some ideas about outer space and UFOs and things of that sort. It's certainly not Christian, certainly doesn't teach the gospel. and it's invented by this fellow Ron Hubbard. Dianetics is the book if you ever run into that. It's a bunch of hocus pocus. I've never run into anybody who took it seriously. The place where I've encountered him is looking into legal things about Holly Hills and that sort of thing and trying to steer clear of trouble.

Scientology church sues just at the drop of a hat. They will sue anybody who tries to go after them. And so their records in the legal system are substantial because of the number of lawsuits that they've initiated. If you speak anything very public at all, you're at risk of getting sued by them if you come out against them. So now you know how to get sued. Others. Yeah, you were very likely to run into all sorts of strange ones.

I remember when I was going to San Jose State Engineering School, I had a gal who caught hold of me at the bus stop, and of course I had to stay there because that's where the bus stopped. And boy, I was sure glad when that bus came because she sat there and just reamed me, you know, you got to understand, the Sabbath is on Thursday. Okay. And boy, that was just, that was just, you know, immensely important for her to get across, you know, so you'll have people come up with everything imaginable. I think Randy's brought up this one that's, you know, this space thing and, you know, whatever. Yeah.

Pardon? What's odd is, yeah, Christadelphians, you would think, you know, it's Adelphos's brother in Christ, you know, so you have this, Christ and brother idea put together. But the interesting thing, he just almost cooked up the name instantly. He was in some legal situation where he needed to say, OK, what was the name of your group? And he just, Christadelphians. OK, all right. And so it wasn't something that was a lot of, you know, everybody thought about it and all that. They just came up with almost spur of the moment, so far as anybody can tell. And that's what stuck.

But then they have all these subgroups from it, you know, these different fellowships. And some of the subgroup names have stuck. Some of them have died out. Some have been lost in merges. So they've had splits and merges. So you have different subgroups within the Christadelphians.

Amazing. And I would not be at all surprised if you run into other groups we haven't talked about this morning. And if others are invented yet in times to come. People have the latitude to do that. Yes. It's interesting what's happening around the country because just in the last two weeks, we read in our paper from back in Kansas, the county next to ours, near Smith-Bedder, which is out in the middle of nowhere, followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or some other have bought a big tract of land and they're going to start something there.

Well, they like the isolation. Groups like the isolation. That's one reason why, you know, they have the 600 acre, you know, Mooney camp is, you know, I went to this little tiny high school out in the middle of nowhere and it takes a while to get there from places like San Francisco and that kind of thing. It's accessible, but it's not a hop. And they like those places where they're isolated because they can, once you get people there, boy, leaving is a real tough thing. And of course you get out in the middle of especially flat land where a lot of that country is pretty flat out in Kansas and Oklahoma, places like that. Yet one person stand by the side of the road trying to hitchhike their way out. They're pretty identifiable.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's strange, some of them will actually get something going that'll work. And I know the Mooney camp, they had problems because they're really a bunch of city folks and they alienated a lot of people in town so they couldn't get any help. Well, they kept losing chickens because the chickens weren't given milk, you know. So, you know, they'll have things like that where they're trying to make something out of it and have a tough time doing it, you know. That'll lead on to a different story, but yeah. But yeah, you will find a number of different cult groups of different kinds.

Now, I want to introduce something here before we completely run out of time. We have been looking at what's this outside circle. Remember about our fourth meeting, we introduced this circle and you have this reproduced on your handout there on the last page.

We've been looking at this outside circle what the world would count within Christendom. It's some things where it's almost a head-scratcher. Is this within Christendom or not? And we've been looking largely at those kinds of groups, groups that are generally or might conceivably be called Christian by someone who doesn't know what's biblical and what's not. We will be moving in now towards the center. There will still be some fog and head-scratching, and that's why Randy and I have titled this Christian limbo, because you get it farther towards the middle and yet still some puzzlement. Is this really Christian yet?

But nonetheless, the idea is that there's at least some sense of holding to a biblical and therefore saving gospel message, but differing from biblical faith in other matters and in varying degrees. So we'll be moving on to some other groups beginning next week. And so we'll do that as we get on to our next section, if you will, of different Christian-ish church groups. And so we'll proceed there starting next week.

Let's pray. Lord, we look at this collection of different groups, and a lot of them scratch our heads, a lot of them make our heads shake, a lot of them are very puzzling, and yet, Lord, they're out there. Thousands upon thousands are caught up in these groups, some unable to get out.

And Lord, we would pray that as you bring us in path with that we would have wise words, words that would resonate in their ears and in their hearts as the truth. And we pray for your guidance and leading at those moments. Thank you, Lord, that it's not we who are the truth, it's not so much even that we have the truth, but that we know Him who is the truth. Lord, what a wondrous thing. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.