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A couple of months ago I read an article entitled “Walter Martin Was Wrong: A Critique and Alternative to the Counter-Cult Approach to Cults” by John Morehead. Now, I believe Walter Martin was wrong about Adventism (see Stephen Pitcher’s story in this issue of Proclamation!), but I reacted strongly against Morehead’s article.
I acknowledge that Morehead is a prominent figure in his field; he is the director of the Western Institute for Intercultural Studies and Custodian of the Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. Nevertheless, I believe he misses the true need and the desperation of those who are bound in false gospels.
In a nutshell, Morehead disagrees with Walter Martin’s “counter-cult” method of summarizing a cult’s aberrant beliefs and contrasting them with what the Bible says about the same doctrines. This method is sometimes called the “heresy-rationalist” approach, and Morehead rejects it as unnecessarily “hostile and confrontational.”
Morehead acknowledges that former cult members often validate Martin’s method. Nevertheless, Morehead dismisses such testimonies as “anecdotal” and thus unreliable, and he argues for a different way to engage with “new religious movements” (the term now replacing the old “cult” label because it is less marginalizing). Instead of “counter-cult” strategies of theological comparison, Morehead advocates what he calls “cross-cultural missiological approaches.”
In a cross-cultural model, new religions are not seen primarily through a “lens of theological heresy”; instead, they are viewed as “dynamic religious cultures.” Therefore, instead of contrasting the truth of the gospel with a cult’s destructive beliefs, Christians are encouraged to attempt “to contextualize the gospel within the subculture of the new religions.”
Truth or syncretism?
I believe that Morehead is wrong. I understand his concern that the doctrinal, rationalist approach may sometimes be abrasive and offensive, and I agree that some people do exhibit a counter-productive arrogance when they confront the cults. Arguments alone do not change minds. His cross-cultural solution, however, misses the point. There actually is absolute truth; God has given us His Word, and it is living and relevant for all people in all generations. Morehead, on the other hand, seems to elevate cultural sensitivity and gospel contextualization above preaching Christ and Him crucified.
To be fair, I believe that some gospel contextualization is necessary when introducing Jesus to people who have no prior knowledge of Christianity or Scripture. For those caught in cults that grow up on the fringes of Christianity, however, only the completed work of Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection offers them freedom. Contextualizing the gospel inside a false religion too easily creates a kind of syncretism, and its prisoners can remain as bound as if they had never heard the gospel.
Morehead appeals to “the neglected example of Jesus” to build his case for a more culturally sensitive approach. Using John 4:40-42 as his reference, he describes Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well as perhaps the most powerful example of Jesus’ demonstration of “mutual exchange, patience and respect, and a willingness to listen as well as speak.” He notes that the Samaritans and the Jews disagreed on the proper place to worship as well as on what constituted Scripture. Yet Jesus, Morehead says, “does not denigrate either Samaritans or the religious doctrines of the Samaritans,” and he suggests that evangelicals employ this culturally sensitive model themselves when they talk to people of other faiths.
In fact, Morehead’s citation of John 4:40-42 is only a fragment of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. These verses say, “So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, 'It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’”
Jesus’ actual conversation with the Samaritan woman is recorded in John 4:7-26. Morehead is wrong that Jesus took a non-critical approach to the woman at the well. He quickly revealed her sin—in an amazingly compelling way and without shaming her—but He clearly declared she had had five husbands and was living with one who was not. He did expose her religion as false and cast doubt on her own behaviors and beliefs by telling her that salvation was from the Jews (a pretty culturally insensitive and divisive statement by Morehead’s standards), and declaring that, unlike the Jews, the Samaritans worshiped what they did not know.
Moreover, Jesus was doing far more than arguing the Samaritan woman into the right religion; He was declaring Himself to be God. She realized that in order to know what He knew about her He had to be the Messiah (v. 29). Moreover, He was revealing Himself and preparing the Samaritans for their not-too-distant role in forming the church in Acts 8. The story of Jesus with this woman is not an exercise in non-judgmental cultural sensitivity at all.
What we need
As a former member of a new religion, I say the rational approach is both scriptural and mandatory. If we who were shaped by false gospels don’t have a way to understand why we feel such dissonance and craziness, we can’t find a good reason to go through the loss, pain, shame, and blame we experience when we leave. There is a subjective component that we need, however, and Morehead completely misses it. People who have been shaped by a false gospel are often victims of abuse, and we need Christians to understand this fact. I realize that this statement is really strong, but I have come to believe deeply that it is true.
The spiritual abuse that almost inevitably accompanies a false gospel and a false god warps one’s entire approach to life. Because false religions are not based on truth and reality, they breed manipulative enmeshment; they permit interpersonal transgressions because there is no accountability and no ground of truth to teach a person that, for example, being molested or physically traumatized does not equal honoring one’s parents. They create fears and aversions from earliest childhood because the prophet’s pronouncement that meat eating will prevent people from being taken to heaven without dying, for instance, trumps the Bible’s statements that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mk. 7:19) and that it is a doctrine of demons to forbid the eating of foods (1 Tim. 4:1-4). False religions establish cycles of co-dependence and hostility. Families’ existence and success within the group depend upon looking good. Over-achieving, shame, guilt, fear—all these things drive parents who need their children to make them “look good,” and they in turn end up creating traumatized offspring who perpetrate the same sorts of manipulation on their own children.
In our 15 years of working with people exiting Adventism, Richard and I have found the prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse on top of the obvious spiritual abuse to be shocking—if only it weren’t so “normal.”
So, what do we need?
First, we need to know Scripture. We need Christians to be able to engage with us in Bible study and to give us rational, biblical explanations showing that our cultic beliefs are wrong, and why. Cognitive knowledge of truth is necessary in order for us to be able to know we aren’t crazy and to know how and why we can and should leave our religion and its entire subculture.
Second, we don’t need to be offered a rationale for staying in a false religion. Leaving is hard because we have been both deceived and traumatized by the real fear of permanent loss and isolation from all we have loved. The divisions that develop between those who leave for the sake of Jesus and their loved ones who remain in the religion usually don’t resolve but grow worse with time. Former cultists are trauma victims who lose all that was familiar to them, including their emotional support, their family members still in the cult, and sometimes their employment.
Third, we need Christians to understand that cults do two things: they both attract and create trauma victims. People ministering to cult members need to understand that they can’t accommodate the cultist’s attachments and cultural entrenchment. People in false religions need reality, not respectful caution. They need the sort of direct, truthful exposure Jesus gave the woman at the well—without anger or shaming. And evangelicals ministering to people caught in cults need to understand that they need Jesus. Pure and simple—people in new religions need to know Jesus and the gospel. Furthermore, they need to know that the “unpacking” only starts there. Once a person learns the truth about Jesus, He shows them the truth about their lives. The process of examining and healing from one’s past is just beginning. Yet knowing Jesus is worth it all.
Where do we go when we leave?
Because I have experienced the loss, grief, and trauma of leaving Adventism and of discovering that what I once believed about God, salvation, and myself was untrue, I know that the postmodern emphasis on cross-cultural sensitivity does not offer true hope to people caught in cults.
So, what do we do when we begin to see how painful and confusing our lives really were?
Being made spiritually alive finally gives us the clarity to acknowledge what shaped us. In fact, the pain of reality sometimes becomes overwhelming; it is only because we have Jesus’ life and forgiveness and His indwelling Spirit that we can address our sin and the sins done against us.
When we leave Adventism as newly born Christians, we don’t yet have a biblical worldview. We have begun to know Jesus, but we have no internal compass by which to gauge which new ideas or practices are “safe” and which are not. At this point, many of us fall prey to the first compelling Christian teacher we encounter. If people quote Scripture to support doctrines, formulas, ways to pray, or methods of increasing our spiritual maturity, we think they are “safe.” After all, the teacher presents himself as an authority and underscores his points with proof texts.
How can we know what—and whom—to trust?
Ultimately, we have to rely on the Lord Jesus to teach us what His Word means and how we apply it to our lives. God sends teachers as one of His gifts to the body of Christ, but we as His children must test every teacher against His Word. We have to be like the Berean Jews described in Acts 17:10-11. They received the Word eagerly as Paul taught them, but they didn’t just take his word at face value. They searched the Scriptures (for them, that meant the Old Testament) to be sure that what Paul was telling them was right (also see 1 Thess. 5:21–22).
A faithful teacher of God’s Word will never ask us to believe his teaching or explanations without encouraging us to go to Scripture ourselves and check out what he (or she) says. We who have come out of false teaching have only one way to know what is true: we have to immerse ourselves in Scripture and ask our Father to teach us what is real.
We can trust the Holy Spirit who has indwelt us to teach us. Sometimes a passage or a subject seems unclear to us, but that lack of complete understanding does not mean God’s Word has failed us or is in error. What we must do in those situations is to trust God and wrestle with the Word. We have to know that every word Scripture says is accurate, and the words convey their normal meanings according to the established rules of grammar. We must pray and ask God to show us what He wants us to know, and sometimes we have to trust God without completely resolving every question. As we trust Him and trust every word He says, He shows us how to apply His truth to our lives.
Watch out for these
There are several categories of teaching that those transitioning out of Adventism must question. I want to briefly examine four of them, with an overall caveat: proof-texting is the stuff of cultic indoctrination. Without exception, false teaching that masquerades as Christian will bolster itself with proof texts, and we can never assume that because someone gives us a text, we can trust his agenda. Before we believe any preacher or teacher, we must examine the context of the entire chapter, if not the entire book, from which the cited passage comes. A proof-text is invalid if it’s used to teach something different than the original passage was meant to convey to its first readers.
One category of false teaching—which has the potential to derail us subtly but profoundly—is a return to works disguised as spiritual growth. Within Christianity, this agenda is not generally taught as a means of being saved (or justified); instead, it is taught as a means of sanctification. Proponents of this type of teaching will appeal to passages such as James 2:14-20, saying, “Faith without works is dead,” or to verses such as Psalm 46:10, which asks us to “be still, and know that I am God.” Using these texts, they will suggest “formulas” for good works designed to discipline one’s mind and desire to be selfless, compassionate, meditative, internally quiet, and persistent in seeking to experience and to practice the presence of God.
In context, however, James is discussing the result of God working inside a believer to produce His fruit; he is not advocating doing good works in order to develop faith. If the good works spring from us, they are not the works God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10). If, on the other hand, we trust Him and surrender our desires and temptations and dreams to Him, He will produce good works that demonstrate true faith. James is saying simply that when we believe God, as did Abraham, we will do God’s will as He has revealed it. If we are not submitting to God’s will and Word, our professed faith is suspect.
Even more surprising is the context of Psalm 46:10. This is the next-to-the-last verse in a psalm extolling God as our refuge, fortress, and strength. The psalmist is not asking us to practice silence and hear God in the inner stillness. In context, he is reminding us that God is the one who desolates the earth, who causes wars to cease, who breaks chariots and shatters spears. It is God who protects us and destroys the enemy; we are simply to be still while He fights for us. This psalm emphasizes what Moses said to Israel as they stood on the shores of the Red Sea: “The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent” (Ex. 14:14).
We are sanctified exactly the same way we are saved: by trusting Jesus and submitting to Him. We give up our right to manage our own spiritual growth. Instead, we submit our struggles to Him and surrender our desired outcomes to His will and Word. We trust Him with the big picture, and we submit to His Word so we can take the next right step. Our sanctification, like our justification, is God’s work; He does this work as we trust Him and surrender our control to Him.
Commanding God’s power
Another false teaching is the Word-Faith movement in its various manifestations. This misunderstanding of how to exercise God’s power in one’s life assumes that God wants our happiness and will give us all our dreams if we just believe. Psalm 37:4 is one of the texts this movement misunderstands: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Another text they use outside its context is Mathew 21:21-22 where Jesus says “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
Faith, however, is not just believing something will happen. Biblical faith is trusting Jesus, being alive in Him, and being submitted to His will. This passage is about trusting God, not about deciding one wants something and commanding God’s power to make it happen.
Jesus never promised us that we would prosper materially or be healed of every disease, nor did He promise that our lives would be happy and we would be safe from all harm. Jesus said, rather, that those who leave parents, families, and property for His sake would receive a hundredfold in “houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”—but here’s the rest of His promise—“with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mk. 10:30).
Paul, moreover, was thankful that for the sake of Christ he was content “with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). Furthermore, in this very passage Paul says that God gave him “a messenger from Satan” (v. 7) to harass him so he would not be conceited because he had been taken to the third heaven and had seen things he was not permitted to tell. He begged God three times for Him to remove this torment, but God’s response was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 9).
The belief that we can command God’s power on our behalf, moreover, is not taught anywhere in Scripture. We submit to God’s power; He does not submit to our demands. Isaiah said, “You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, 'He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, 'He has no understanding?’” (Is. 29:16). Paul quotes part of this passage in Romans 9:20 after he asks, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” Job also learned this important lesson. At the end of the book of Job, after God has turned the tables and asked Job where he was when God made everything on the earth, Job the righteous repented and admitted he had spoken of things he did not understand. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).
God is holy and omnipotent; we are His creatures. He is sovereign, and He glorifies Himself through us as we submit to Him. We never command God.
Directing demons
Closely related to the Word-Faith movement is the “spiritual warfare” approach. In this case, however, the practitioner takes the position that whatever our persistent temptations and struggles are, a demon is probably behind them. Spiritual-warfare prayer addresses a demon that’s identified as the source of the problem and commands it to leave.
Unfortunately, such interventions tend to leave people in a worse condition, long term, than at first. To be sure, demonic harassment is real; nevertheless, when people who have suffered trauma are “exorcised” instead of having their trauma addressed, they are only re-abused. The biblical examples of casting out demons occurred not in cases of persistent sin or emotional distress; they occurred in cases of actual possession by a demon—and a demon cannot ultimately control a believer who has submitted himself to the Lord Jesus in trust and faith.
Jesus Himself explained that if a person who is delivered from a demon but whose “house” is left empty will find that the demon will return with “seven other spirits more wicked than itself.” Being delivered of a demon leaves a person vulnerable to far greater torment if he is not filled with the Holy Spirit. That demon could not re-enter the house and take up residence if the Holy Spirit were there (Mt. 12:43-45).
Believers, on the other hand, must be willing to repent and own their own sin. If a person has persistent temptation and sin, blaming demons transfers the guilt from the person to a non-human party. Instead, repentance and submission to the discipline and comfort of our Father and to His will as revealed in His Word is our proper response to sin. If a believer was involved with demonic influence before trusting Jesus, his proper response is to acknowledge that he was involved with evil and to repent of it, giving himself to the Lord Jesus and surrendering the attachment to Him, asking God to deliver him from it.
To be sure, Satan and his demons are real, and we are commanded to resist him (Jas. 4:7). Jesus also gave us a spiritual warfare prayer to pray to our Father: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Mt. 6:13). The Bible never instructs nor gives an example of a believer assessing what spirits might cling to him from his or her family, nor does it even suggest that we resolve our sin or emotional issues by commanding demons to leave. We are to confess our sin, and He is faithful to forgive us and to cleanse us from our unrighteousness (1 Jn. 1:9). We, not demons, are responsible for our sin.
Finally, Jesus’ promise to those who are broken and hurting is His fulfillment of Isaiah 42:3 as recorded in Matthew 12:18-21: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”
Free grace
There is one more heretical teaching that has grown in popularity among former Adventists. This teaching comes under the category of “free grace,” although specific teachers vary in how they teach it. One of the variations circulating among many former Adventists today is that when we are born again, we are completely “new,” and no sin remains in us. We not only have imputed but imparted righteousness. This teaching insists that God does not just see us as righteous, but we actually are intrinsically righteous. The sin in the flesh described in Romans 7, then, is an external power that tempts our flesh. It is not actually still in our mortal flesh as Paul declares.
Moreover, this theology insists that the new covenant is completely new and different from the old covenant. It does not explain that the Lord Jesus actually lived out and fulfilled every single shadow of the old covenant and has become the embodiment of all sacrifice, righteousness, and salvation that God promised to Israel. This heresy teaches that if we are merely hidden in Christ and God sees Jesus’ perfection when He sees us, then our righteousness is a “legal fiction”.
This teaching sounds good on the surface because it insists we are completely secure in our salvation. Under the surface, however, it denies the biblical truth that our flesh is sinful and at war with our new hearts. Moreover, because this teaching denies Jesus’ intimate connection to the Old Covenant as the embodiment of all its shadows, it fails to see Him as our complete Substitute. Moreover, it denies that Jesus’ own words apply to us as post-cross Christians.
Yet the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the gospels to record Jesus’ words for the church. They were not books written as part of the Old Testament but as part of the New. Christians, to be sure, do not obey the Pharisees and perform the works of the law now that He has fulfilled it. Rather, Jesus’ teachings show how He became the fulcrum in all history, the one in whom all the righteous requirements of the law were fulfilled. Even more, they reveal Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah and explain that He is the Life and the Light of the world, the One in whom we have life and forgiveness of sins. He is our righteousness.
Conclusion
As people who have been rescued by the Lord Jesus from a lethal false gospel, we know that cross-cultural attempts to contextualize the true gospel within our old worldview would not have given us life. Only God’s gospel, as lived out in the Lord Jesus and as revealed in His Word, has the power to free us.
Even though we are bombarded with attractive deceptions and proof texts luring us into new interpretations and practices after we find Jesus, we are not helpless against them. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, giving us His wisdom and discernment and teaching us God’s Word. We have the finished work of Jesus that has broken the curse of death, forgiven our sin, and seated us with Him at the Father’s right hand (Eph. 2:4-7).
We have absolute truth revealed in Scripture, and only God’s Word has the power to pierce the veil of deception and reveal Jesus. Only God’s Word can show us how to trust Jesus, to grow, and to honor Him.
It is God’s Word, not social relevance, that releases us from hopeless despair.
It is Jesus who saves us and reveals the truth about our lives as He teaches us how to live according to His Word.
It is objective reality, not a contextualized gospel, that offers the only hope of rescue from the stranglehold of a cult. †
Copyright 2013 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Casa Grande, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised October 1, 2013. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
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VOLUME 14, ISSUE 3
Colleen Tinker is editor of Proclamation! magazine. Her husband Richard, president of Life Assurance Ministries, and she co-lead Former Adventist Fellowship at Trinity Church in Redlands, California. Richard and Colleen left Adventism in 1999 and have spent the last 15 years ministering to people, both online and personally, who have been questioning and leaving Adventism. They have two sons and two grandchildren.
