Some people will believe almost anything except the truth. Christianity is the standard by which all others are judged. All other groups that do not qualify as truly Christian, are cults. The Bible is replete with warnings about deception, so why would anyone be hoodwinked?
And Jesus answered and said to them, “Take heed that no man deceive you.”
Matthew 24:5: “For many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many.”
I was polishing my camper when I observed a fellow camper who had pulled into a campsite near mine. He was trying to hook up his cable TV. He moved the cable from campsite to campsite trying to find a working outlet. I introduced myself and asked if the trouble could possibly his set up, since he had already tried four campsite outlets without finding a good one. I had already told him that my cable TV was working fine. I had also noticed that his cable had electrical tape on one end of it, a sure sign that something had been wrong in the past.
He denied that possibility and continued to search from campsite to campsite. He added an even longer cable to enable him to do so. After putting away my polishing equipment, I observed this man talking to the owner of the campground. Later on, the campground owner must have come by to check out his cable TV set up because I saw his golf cart parked by the man’s camper.
Later that evening I casually walked over to see this man and asked if he had solved his cable TV problems. He sheepishly admitted that he had not noticed his external antenna amplifier had been left hooked up to the TV rather than the cable that he was trying to hook up.
This man thought that the trouble had to be somewhere outside. A trouble inside his camper was not even considered as a possibility. “It couldn’t be me, it has to be someone else’s fault,” so the saying goes. He tried six campsites one after the other, even after I asked him to consider that my cable TV was working fine just two camp sites away.
Such is human nature.
Cult members never think that they are in a cult. Not Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness, nor Moonies, and especially not Roman Catholics. These false religions profess to be the “One True Faith.” Sadly, just the opposite is true. They are really on the outside of God’s will and don’t even know it! Even worse, they think that anyone who is not in their cult is lost!
No one wants to be made a fool of. No one wants to admit that they have been tricked. If a cult member realizes that he has been fooled, he feels humiliated. No one says, “Oh thank you for showing me that I have made a fool of myself.”
People in cults are very hard to reach. They have been inoculated with a dose of false Christianity which makes them immune to the real thing.
Jesus Christ plus anything equals zero.
You are sheep or goats, wheat or tares, saved or lost!
Cult groups do the heavy lifting for you; join up, show up, pay up, and shut up. Cults appeal to the spiritually lazy. Cult members go along to get along. They have to obey cult rules, but they do not have to be honest with themselves. Self-honesty takes a lot of discipline.
Who are the most easily deceived? They are those who are already deceived. It does not take much energy to further deceive someone who is already deceived. They hardly even take notice of the additional deception because it is already very familiar to it.
They reject the word of God and accept the word of man in its place.
Satan takes just a bit of truth and carefully wraps it around a lie to make it delicious. But underneath there is poison and eternal separation from God. A person’s intelligence is neither a hindrance nor a help with deception.
It is a matter of the heart.
I was raised in Roman Catholicism by my parents. But it was not long after I reached the age of reason, about 7 years old for me, that I realized that there was something very wrong with the RCC. I was a keen observer of the lives that the nuns and priests led. I noticed that they did not walk the walk.
As I grew up in age and intellect I asked questions that were increasingly more difficult to answer. I was soon branded a troublemaker when I painted the priest in a proverbial corner by asking a question that he could not give a satisfactory answer to. Much to his consternation, these questions were asked in a class of students who had been forced to attend as I had been. The students were equally unimpressed with his unsatisfactory answers. Because of my questions the rest of the class was able to see through the thin veneer of the RCC.
I wanted to know the truth no matter where it led. My desire for truth eventually led me to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. There were many obstacles and much heartache along the way. But with each setback I would reevaluate and ask critical questions about how I ended-up there.
Very brilliant people have rejected Jesus Christ, and others who are very simple have accepted Him. The opposite is also true. No one is too stupid to accept Christ. I have seen both scenarios play out numerous times. Unfortunately many are too stubborn!
It is not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of the heart! I have often wondered why so many seemingly intelligent people end up in cults. Their hearts have been darkened by sin of some sort. Be that pride or whatever else. They would rather follow men than the Creator God.
This is a place where we all stand on the road to eternity; to accept or reject salvation afforded us by a loving Savior who sent his obedient Son to die in our place for our sins, the sins of the entire human race.
Eventually we must choose; to not choose is to reject!
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NASB).