Has anyone here been in a cult, or had any encounters with a cult? Or known someone who has?
If so, please tell your story!
I would like this thread to be about peoples experiences of cults, not about cults themselves, which is a big topic
If so, please tell your story!
I would like this thread to be about peoples experiences of cults, not about cults themselves, which is a big topic
I have a friend who is in a South Korean cult known is The World Mission Society Church of God. They have coached him to dazzle people with biblical gymnastics with the aim of getting them to join their church by being baptised by one of their pastors. He is good at it and comes over as very convincing. He is totally committed to this church and is very keen to transmit his faith to others. They got to him when he was down and vulnerable. It's quite sad really.
There are just under two million of them. They believe that an elderly woman who lives in South Korea and was born in 1943 is “Mother God” incarnate. And they believe that her husband (who died in 1986) was the second coming of Jesus, which of course violates everything the bible says about the return of Jesus.
But then these people are not interested in Jesus and neither are they interested in the bible.
They believe in two gods – male and female. Give them a chance, and they will show you how they think this is the true message of the bible.
I own two books that have been written to refute their bizarre and baseless beliefs which are supposedly biblical. I have read both and am now impervious to the influence of the WMSCOG missionaries. There are numerous YouTube videos dealing with these people too.
They can come at me with everything they've got but I will never join them. My spiritual armour has a new layer.
Basically, these books and YouTube videos amount to apologetics. And I found them to be entirely convincing. They totally demolished the WMSCOG.
These are the books:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Mother-Who-Art-Heaven/dp/0997332107/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BBMYNL7CGJCH&keywords=our+mother+who+art+not+in+heaven&qid=1674147421&sprefix=our+mother+who+art+not+in+heaven,aps,82&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/150271602X/ref=pe_27063361_487055811_TE_dp_1
I have embedded some videos about this at the bottom of this original post.
The author of one of these books gave some advice as to how to deal with members of this cult when they’re out proselyting. Well, both authors did, but I’m going to go into just one of them.
Basically: ignore all the nutty and fallacious trimmings – their more minor idiosyncratic claims and practices. Which are many. And instead focus on two big things: Who and what is God? And then the nature of Salvation. If you defend the biblical view of who and what is God and how Salvation works and stick to these then their whole thing falls apart. As it is based on an incorrect (to put it mildly) use of the bible.
They don't get things out of the bible, they put things into it. It's not honest. I'm pretty sure the higher-ups in it know exactly what they're doing, even if the lower-downs are totally enchanted and enthralled by it all.
On three occasions I attended the services of this group at a facility located in a nearby city. They are in control of a building that used to be a factory, and that contains a light and spacious space which they have turned into a church.
In their church the women sat on one side of the central aisle and the men on the other. The women wore small veils on their heads. I asked my friend why this was the case and he whipped out his copy of the bible and gave a chapter and verse that required this.
He has been totally brainwashed. He has memorised loads of scripture that he uses to justify his cult and draw others in towards it. I think he is too slick for his own good, it's all too much.
One of the times I attended I was wearing my usual eye glasses so I could fully see things. They were the type of glasses that automatically become shades when the sun shines on them, forcing them to go dark. For some reason their pastor asked me to remove them! Perhaps he was concerned because he thought they’d be a barrier and block out his psychic mind-control beams?
There was a lot of pressure for me to let them baptise me and become one of them. Once, they took me to a quite little room all by myself and showed me some promotional videos, of well-dressed, mindlessly smiling devotees proudly posing in front of their churches or with Heavenly Mother. They then went through the bible with me, constructing tenuous arguments for outrageous and wrong beliefs. They’d refer to a big book of evidence, which they drew on to make sense of what some of the verses they used supposedly meant.
This went on for over half an hour until they had exhausted all their means.
They kept coming at me with various things, in various ways, trying to get me to submit to being baptised by them. I wasn’t having any of it. I deflected all their advances. It was a glorious and empowering experience. Their best efforts were wasted on me. They came at me from all angles but I never gave in.
What they’d do is, they’d find connections between certain verses, which they would then arrange in such a manner to supposedly lead to certain conclusions, that once reached would necessitate becoming one of them. The whole thing was an enormous sales-pitch.
I was effectively being sold membership of their church.
It was more an attempted indoctrination!
They had very nice food though. And they clearly practiced “love bombing” which is a common tactic of cults. Everyone was so smiley that it was sickening They were also super proud of all their community and charity work, boasting of their contributions to the common good by displaying various certificates of appreciation all over their walls. As though good works save.
I dismiss the claims of the WMSCOG. They are dead wrong about the nature of God and they are dead wrong about Salvation. Their beliefs are therefore false. They are unbiblical. It is therefore entirely reasonable (and prudent) to completely dismiss them and their claims. And to walk away from them entirely.
My advice to anyone encountering one of their missionaries is to politely run away.
There is a system of telling whether or not a movement is Christian by applying four tests: The addition test, the subtraction test, the multiplication test, and the division test.
And the thing is, they claim to be Christian, indeed they claim to be the only authentic Christians who exist!
- Does it add things to scripture?
- Does it subtract from the divinity of Christ?
- Does it multiply the requirements to salvation?
- Does it divide peoples interests between Christ and someone else?
They subtract from the divinity of Christ, by saying that a (now dead) human is in fact Jesus. Which in my mind makes a mockery of Christ. They say a normal dead person (who is not divine) is Christ. Which would make Christ not divine. Which is a completely un-Christian belief.
They multiply the requirements for salvation. With the WMSCOG to be saved one must undergo an annual celebration of the Passover and believe in Heavenly Mother.
And they divide peoples loyalties between Jesus and Heavenly Mother and the church leadership (their chief priest is known as The Pastor General and he seems to be in charge)
It is therefore not Christian.
And is in many ways a cult.
(And yes, a thing can be something other than either a Christian church or a cult......)
That’s the experience I’ve had with a cult
Has anyone here ever had anything to do with a cult, or have known someone who has?
How'd you get in? And how did you get out?
I'm fortunate as I didn't let them suck me in. But they almost sucked a friend of mine in. But he's OK now, thankfully.
Here are some videos about them:
Last edited: