Beware The Antichrists
The world is filled with religious groups. With every religious group there are followers and of course when you have millions of adherents to your religion, like Islam and Christianity then there are bound to be a few people who take things to extremes. One such cult that will be discussed in this paper, is Mormonism, while many people have heard of them few truly know what they believe, and of course no cult paper is good without a totally new religious movement known as Raelianism, this is not an offshoot of any religion but is very strange.
Not long ago in the news the truth came out about a cult know as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, this cult was held in a compound in Texas. Like any good cult leader, their leader Warren Jeffs held them under his thumb. They were shut off from the world and the world was shut off from them. This branch of the Mormon church practiced the long banned, tradition of polygamous marriage. This an extreme case of a cult but there are those types out there. What is a cult? There are three definitions out there one is the secular and the other the Christian, while the other is the one we will use for this paper.
Definition number one is from Webster’s New Student Dictionary, 1964, it says that a cult is a cause, principle, or system of belief held to with ardor and faith. This seems like a good definition, it looks concise and nearly nothing in it is disagreeable. Sadly, this definition is a cop-out, it is so broad that any religious group, based off of this definition is a cult. Christianity is a cult, Islam is a cult, Buddhism is a cult, and of course the religion of modernism and naturalism is a cult. Many people hold to this definition but it is not true. Maybe the next definition is better.
This next definition is from the European American Evangelistic Crusades, they state that a cult is any group of people that worship anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ and believe anything contrary to his word. I truly like this definition it would be the definition I hold to if it weren’t for the word ‘and’. The first part of this definition is fine since it states that a cult is anyone that worship anyone or anything other than Jesus Christ, but the second part is what throws this one down the drain. The word ’and’ in this sense means that it has to be the first and the second part, not just one or the other. This definition removes Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesus Army and other since they worship Jesus. The final definition is the best.
The final definition states that a pseudo-Christian cult is any group that adds to God’s word, subtracts from the deity of Christ, and multiplies the terms of salvation. This definition encompasses all religions, cuts and sects that preach something contrary to God’s holy word. Sadly this definition I nearly never abided by since few know it.
Christianity is the worlds leading religion, and with any large religious group there are bound to be some rather peculiar sects and cults. Many people know about Mormonism, of course few know what their basic beliefs are, and how contradictory to the Bible it is. Some of its adherents don’t even know how “wacked” out it is.
Their founder was Joseph Smith. When he was a teen he prayed for guidance on which church to join, this was the first major spiritual event in his life. The second event happened in 1823 when the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph. Moroni told Joseph about a group of golden plates that would he would later translate into what would become the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants as well as three other minor books. Their basic belief can be summed up in one sentence, “ As we are God once was; as HE is we can be.” This sums up the beliefs of the Mormon faith. They believe that we, before we were born, lived in heaven with God, then we were sent here to earth as test. Once we die we either go to the Celestial Kingdom, Terrestrial Kingdom, and the Telestial Kingdom, it is a three-tiered heaven. This is contradictory to Scripture since there is only one heaven and we cant be like God.
Aliens, the search for life on other planets, E.T., we are surrounded by science fiction. We love the intrigue and mystery behind the theory of life on other planets, no cult does a better job at this then Raelianism. This is a cult that is growing in popularity. Its history, and beliefs tie in very well so I will explain both in one paragraph.
In December 1973 a French journalist by the name of Claude Vorilhon felt an urge to go to a mountain. There he met a four foot creature that “could have passed as human”. This creature told him these words: “We Were the ones who designed all life on earth you mistook us for gods, we were at the origin of your main religions, now that you are mature enough to understand us, we would like to enter official contact through an embassy.”
Raelianism is the “atheists religion” they don’t’ believe in God or the supernatural what about the, cough, aliens? They also practice a “free love” sort of thing at their seminars since they believe that we are to enjoy life as it is.
Understanding these two faiths, Raelianism and Mormonism, is important since they both are growing and are so open about how they twist the Bible to mean what they want it to. My conclusion is brief but it is because there is one passage in the Bible that warns about this in such a great way, and shows that we need to understand our own worldview.
Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
John 2: 18-20
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