Linda’s Reviews > The Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin > Status Update

“New revelation outside of Scripture is a mark of all of the cults.”

“Adherents of the cults ….are, almost always, victims of what might be termed a mass delusion of grandeur coupled with a dogged sense of personal pride.”

Also true that the reprogramming/exit counseling method (with the assumption of inevitable victimhood) “makes the cultist not responsible for his cult membership, the gospel extraneous, and the solution a social reorientation rather than salvation by grace alone”.

True enough about the “psychological barrier…that cultists must be a special breed of individuals impervious to standard techniques of evangelism and generally well enough versed in the Bible to confuse, if not convince, the average Christian.”

“I learned much about cult methodology on the mission fields…the cults generally are happy to remain virtually anonymous until they have established a bridgehead. This is important in an area where a work has already begun or has been functioning for many years.”

“The persons deceived into believing false teachers…come from a wide cross-section of the Christian community. Sometimes followers…band together to form a tight-knit group that is based primarily on the prophetic scenarios…put forth by their leader. When the leader additionally incorporates heretical doctrine and enforces allegiance to heresy by his followers, an apocalyptic cult comes into being.”

“Scientologists announced the L. Ron Hubbard decisively ‘discarded the body’ to move on to the next level of research, outside his body. How this new research would become available to planet earth is left unsaid.”

Love this summary of repackaged occultism. “The only substantive difference between Hinduism and the New Age movement is that Hinduism is world denying while the New Age movement is world affirming. No ‘yuppie’ is going to adopt the Hindu tradition of abandoning all worldly possessions to go meditate under a cliff, gonna mountain, or in a cave.”

The weirdness of the denial of evil (I.e. the only reality is that the unreality of sin, sickness, and death seem real) is heightened by Eddy’s replacement explanation of Malicious Animal Magnetism.

Interesting, the contrast of absolute idealism (denial of existence of matter) versus the inevitable “calculating materialist…thoroughly enjoy(ing) all the material comforts derived from denying their existence.”