|
The local churches are composed of genuine redeemed and reborn believers in Christ; their beliefs and practices center on the unique Person and work of Jesus Christ the Savior, and their teachings are based solely on the Bible as God's infallible Word. The local churches reject all heresy. Nonetheless, a few people have instigated and propagated an accusation of cultism out of a misplaced feeling of rivalry, attempting to discredit our Christian testimony in favor of their own “brand” of religious practice. Sadly, this accusation has also been spread by believers who have no personal knowledge of the local churches or their beliefs. Thus, they are unknowingly passing on unsubstantiated rumors as truth.
Such rumors and opposition are not unprecedented. In the Lord Jesus' own day He endured much persecution, due primarily not to what He taught, but to the envy of zealous religionists whose disciples were drawn away to follow Him (John 9:22; John 11:45-48, 53; John 12:10-11, 19.). The Lord also warned His own disciples that they would suffer persecution—not only from the world, but even more at the hands of the most zealous religionists (John 16:2). This pattern of false accusation was repeated among the Lord's followers: John the Baptist (Luke 7:33), the apostle Paul (Acts 5:17; 17:5), and many significant Christian groups throughout history often suffered from the opposition of their religious contemporaries.
The pattern of the Lord's persecution, His warning to His own disciples, and the testimony of church history confirm that while persecution alone is not an indicator of orthodoxy, many crucial moves of God have been subjected to opposition based on religious envy and even silenced by it. Spiritual warfare is a stark reality; history testifies that God's enemy strategically rises up to damage or destroy that which the Lord most desires and cherishes. Thus, a genuine move of God among any group of believers should expect to encounter opposition, for whatever God loves, His enemy hates and specifically targets for persecution and slander.
Any genuine concerns regarding whether the local church is a cult or possesses cultic tendencies should be readily dispelled by a consideration of both the testimony of our beliefs and practices and the authoritative ruling of the California State Superior Court in a 1980 libel case. The Court decisively settled this matter in its judgment on the source material which originated the initial accusations and all successive iterations. Upon thorough examination, the accusation that the local church was a cult was found to be (1) libelous, in that such claims were emphatically “false, defamatory and unprivileged,” and (2) made with actual malice, in that the claimants made these accusations knowing them to be false, with the intent of destroying the local churches. Given the highly sensationalistic and destructive nature of this accusation, it is extremely serious to raise or propagate such charges against any person or group without proper and adequate investigation.
For more information, please see:
Judge's Decision |
Open Letter |
Experts Speak |
Retraction
|
