The word cult describes a manipulative and dangerous religious group. Cults usually appeal to the dissatisfied, fearful, and vulnerable. They draw people into their scope by offering expectancy in a hopeless world, identity in an anonymous world, and security in an unstable world.
Of course, in some sense, those benefits are not so different from what Christ’s church offers to genuine believers—not to mention what other groups and organizations, religious and irreligious, offer their members. Not all belief is wrong belief, not all zeal is wrong zeal, not all submission is mindless submission, and not all authority is wrong simply because it is authoritative.
But in an age of widespread secularism, radical individualism, and increasing antagonism to biblical faith, it’s no surprise to hear people describe local churches in cultlike terms. In the face of the world’s contempt, how can we be confident that our churches are forming us in the truth, under the authority of Christ, and without manipulation? We need to be confident that they are operating within the bounds set by the Scriptures.
No church is perfect, and we should neither judge our local congregations with severity nor jump to conclusions about motives. But if we’re concerned about the churches in which we (or our loved ones) find ourselves, we can look for these seven stakes for assurance that the tent is really grounded firmly in an honest proclamation of God’s truth.
1. The Authority of the Scriptures
It is first of all imperative that Christian churches follow the example of the church in Berea. Acts 17:11 describes the response of Berean Jews to the Gospel preaching of Paul and Silas: They “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”
In a Christian church, everyone is subject to the Scriptures—even the leadership—and believers have the responsibility of measuring the teaching they receive against the rule of Scripture. It is vitally important that believers bring their Bibles, read their Bibles, and check their Bibles to see if the things being taught really are in God’s Word.
God has given the calling and responsibility to some in the church to teach, but those who teach the Bible are not to come up with novel interpretations. They are simply to set forward the truth provided in God’s Word. And while it takes some work to understand, biblical truth is not hidden; it is available to anyone who is willing to open Scripture and study it, with the help of God’s Spirit.
2. The Whole Counsel of God
Secondly, in light of the authority of the Scriptures, it is vital that we have pastors who are faithfully “declaring … the whole counsel of God,” as Paul did among the churches he served (Acts 20:27).
When Paul preached, he didn’t ride hobbyhorses. He was not obsessed with a particular theological framework, isolated passages of Scripture, or a contemporary controversy that he banged on every time he stood in a pulpit. Instead, he did what John Stott summarizes so helpfully: “He shared all possible truth with all possible people in all possible ways.”1
A preoccupation with the end times is usually a danger sign—and definitely so when it is not marked by purity of living.
Practically, this means pastors should, to the best of their ability, teach the Scriptures in their full scope, without confusion or embarrassment. Also, they should avoid letting a theological framework or fear of a cultural boogeyman rule over what the text of Scripture actually teaches.
To take one common example: The return of Christ is a necessary element of biblical teaching, but a preoccupation with the end times is usually a danger sign—and definitely so when it is not marked by purity of living. First John 3:3 teaches us that everyone who hopes for Christ’s return “purifies himself as he”—that is, Christ—“is pure.” Setting aside the moral imperatives of Scripture to obsess over dates and numbers and disaster prepping is a symptom of a church (or leader) that has departed from a true hope in Christ’s return.
3. A Plurality of Leaders
In a Christian church, the plurality of leaders is a vital safeguard against the kind of autocracy that so often characterizes cults.
Authority and leadership within a church are necessary. Sometimes, one individual may even have a privileged place among the leadership of a church. Yet church leaders are always to be within the framework of other men who watch out for, counsel, guide, and question one another as they shepherd the flock—with the Word of God, again, providing clear direction.
The danger is real, and the Scriptures anticipate it. Paul, in asserting the necessity of the whole counsel of God, warned about “fierce wolves,” saying, “From among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). So it is crucial that within the church, leaders are able and ready to humbly hold one another accountable to the Word.
4. A Rejection of Isolationism
Isolation from the world was not God’s plan for the church . In John 17:15, Jesus prays to the Father for His disciples, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” When Christians find themselves corralled into ever-diminishing circles, they ought to look out.
Cults dominate by isolating—isolating the group from the larger group, family members from one another, spouses from one another. The church is never to be that way. Jesus did not call for that, and Paul seems to suppose such isolation is impossible in true churches (1 Cor. 5:9–10). It’s important for Christians to have non-Christian friends and to live their lives openly before their neighbors.
Isolation from the world was not God’s plan for the church.
This means neither that Christians should participate in sin nor that severing ties to flee sin is off the table. It does, however, mean that Christians recognize the impossibility of quarantining themselves from worldliness and the responsibility to be witnesses to the world.
5. Wisdom in Nonessentials
God’s people are not called to an unrealistic level of agreement over nonessentials. When churches demand top-down concurrence and submission to extrabiblical demands, that is a danger sign.
It’s a foolish naivety and not an expression of biblical love to tolerate unbiblical teaching.
In debatable matters, it’s impossible to have one-hundred-percent certainty, even among agreeable people. We should recognize that even Paul thought himself imperfect in his understanding and obedience (Phil. 3:12–13). He desired unity for the congregation, but his ultimate confidence was in God’s sanctifying power. We can trust that God will bring people to maturity. That takes great confidence in the Scriptures and in the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, it is not an expression of biblical love to tolerate clearly unbiblical teaching. John the apostle writes, “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God.” (2 John 9). When it comes to such core doctrines as the Gospel of God’s forgiveness through Christ’s atonement, the literal truth of the resurrection, and the doctrine of God (such as we have summarized for us in the ecumenical creeds), there can be no compromise.
6. Loving, Mutual Accountability
It is absolutely imperative that Christians watch out for one another—not, as is often the case in cults, to report on one another but to build each other up in the Lord.
The Scriptures command us to love one another, to care for one another, to exhort one another. “We urge you, brothers,” Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:14, “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” A church characterized by mutual distrust is not a healthy body, and neither is a church characterized by mutual disinterest.
We who are members of Christ’s body ought always to help each other serve the one Head by serving one another (Eph. 4:15–16). To the doubter, we are to give mercy and thoughtfulness; to those who are playing with fire, we are to make direct and speedy intervention (Jude 22–23). And to those embedded in sin, we are to display mercy with care, because any compromise with evil will inevitably take a negative toll.
7. Confidence in God’s Keeping Power
Finally, a healthy Christian church will be confident in God’s power to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with great joy (Jude 24).
In a wicked world, with wicked people and wicked powers at work, are we to be tyrannized? Should we run and find a hole? Should we isolate ourselves? Should we drop out? Should we give up the world to the Evil One? By no means! Christ’s church can go on doing good in the confidence that Christ has already won the victory at Calvary.
Satan can rage and roar; “spite of hell shall have its course.”2 The world, indeed, may wound us. Yet the Christian may be, with Paul, “sure” that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of Christ” (Rom. 8:38).
And though they take our life,
Goods, honor, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small;
These things shall vanish all:
The city of God remaineth.3
This article was adapted from the sermon “A Biblical Perspective on the Events in Waco” by Alistair Begg.
John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: The Spirit, The Church and The World, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1990), 328. ↩︎
Martin Luther, trans. Thomas Carlyle, “A Safe Stronghold Our God Is Still” (1529, 1831). ↩︎
Luther. ↩︎
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