John Crowder claims he met Jesus while on an acid trip. He and his wife now run “postmodern prophetic healing ministry devoted to cultivating the Presence of the Lord in the lives of believers and reaching the nations by demonstrating the Kingdom of God through raw displays of supernatural power.”

But if you think the teachings and manifestations associated with controversial ‘revival’ movements like the Toronto Blessing were bad, wait till you see what Crowder teaches.
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New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award nominee Stephen Singular discusses his new book When Men Become Gods: Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back. [video]
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Dr. Ronald M. Enroth:: “Leaving a restricted and abusive community involves what sociologists call the de-socialization process whereby the individual loses identification with the past group and moves toward re-socialization, or reintegration into the mainstream culture. There are a number of emotions and needs that emerge during this transition process. How one deals with these feelings and affective experiences has a significant impact on the overall healing that is required.

Many have described the aftermath of abusive-church involvement as comparable to that of rape victims, or the delayed stress syndrome experienced by war veterans. It is recovery from what might be called spiritual rape. You feel like something has been lost and you will never be the same again.”
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Most Christians view the Local Church (known to followers as “Lord’s Recovery”) as, theologically, a cult of Christianity. Nevertheless, two well-known Christian apologists have in recent years changed their views, and now attempt to persuade Christians that the movement is compatible with orthodox Christianity.

It is therefore good to take another look at Local Church quotes regarding the Godhead — an essential doctrine on which the movement views differ from those of biblical Christianity.
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Research resources on cult leader Wayne Bent, who heads the Lord Our Righteousness Church and considers himself to be the Messiah.
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The Voice, a new Bible ‘translation’, pays more attention to form than to content. In doing so it ends up smuggling false doctrine and teaching into the text.
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“The Voice inserts peculiar teachings into the text that do not belong. The end result of these ‘insertions’ is a text that obscures the gospel, distorts Jesus substitutionary work on the cross, teaches Pelagianism and promotes a liberal form of works Righteousness.”
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Research resources on The Voice, a new Bible ‘translation’ that introduces false doctrine.
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The authors of the New Testament claimed to be writing true accounts of the life of Jesus, and the historical reliability of their writings is important because it protects the Christian faith from modern revisionism.

But can we have confidence that the New Testament was accurately recorded and transmitted to us, and that what it contains is the product of early and eyewitness testimony?
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Baptism for the dead, or baptism by proxy, is one of countless unbiblical practices of the Mormon Church. While the church — which calls itself the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — claims to be the restoration of early Christianity, its doctrines and practices clearly demonstrate that it is, theologically, a cult of Christianity.
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Excerpt: On the three FBI disks were two quite intimate letters, written independently of each other by Phyllis and Gene and addressed to Jim Jones at a moment when both the Jonestown community and the Chaikins’ relationship were beginning to unravel in the jungles of Guyana.

These letters witness the moral destruction of a married couple shortly before Jones brought about their physical annihilation. Above all, they reveal two very different responses to his influence, as half of this couple advocates genocide and the other attempts in vain to defy the minister at the eleventh hour and to save their children’s lives.
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Dr. Norman L. Geisler is a Christian apologist, teacher and author on the subjects of Christian apologetics, philosophy and the Bible.
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Dr. Ronald M. Enroth: “Virtually all authoritarian groups that I have studied impose discipline, in one form or another, on members.

A common theme that I encountered during interviews with ex-members of these groups was that the discipline was often carried out in public-and involved ridicule and humiliation.”
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The Institute for Religious Research desires to promote — in a thoughtful and gracious manner — the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, as revealed in the Bible. “We believe faith in Jesus Christ requires us to go beyond reason but not against it.”
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Good aliens are watching bad aliens interfere with the earth. The bad aliens want to eventually take over our resources. The good aliens believe only in etical contact: information vs. interference. And thus they have been giving messages to Marshall Vian Summers designed, he claims, to warn mankind.
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We have seen nothing that suggests University Bible Fellowship’s teachings and practices should not — at the very least — be cause of concern for Christians. In our opinion, the UBF is an unhealthy organization whose teachings and practices provide a breeding ground for spiritual elitism and spiritual abuse.
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David Kowalksi: “I have spent hundreds of hours over the past several years conversing with “emerging Christians” as I have listened to them and tried to convince them of their need to embrace true, biblical faith and historical orthodoxy.

As a result of this experience I have learned that despite the diversity in the emergent movement there is a behavioral culture to the emerging church movement as a whole and I have learned to adapt my communication strategies for most effectively interacting with its participants. “
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Timeline covering the birth through the latest arrest, Sep. 2008, of Tony Alamo.
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While mainstream evangelical churches have always encouraged a life of holiness before the Lord and urged moderation in dress and other aspects of life-style, authoritarian churches demonstrate an excessive focus on such concerns. The restricted life-style and limits on personal freedom that follow are just other examples of the need to control that all abusive churches exemplify.

If life-style rigidity is a characteristic of most abusive churches, the role of subjective experience is equally crucial in understanding how such groups drift toward religious marginality.
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The spiritual elitism of abusive churches can be seen in some of the terminology they use to refer to themselves:

“God’s Green Berets,” “God’s End-Time Army,” the “faithful remnant,” the special “move of God.” As one ex-member put it, “We believed we were on the cutting edge of what God was doing in the world. I looked down on people who left our movement; they didn’t have what it took. They were not faithful to their commitment. When everyone else got with God’s program, they would be involved in shepherding just like we were.”

A former member of a group known as The Assembly (headquartered in Fullerton, California, and discussed later in this book) said, “Although we didn’t come right out and ’say it, in our innermost hearts we really felt that there was no place in the world like our assembly. We thought the rest of Christianity was out to lunch.”
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...Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group a religious movement a political organization.

They change so gradually, by the time you realize you're entrapped - and almost everybody does - you can't figure a safe way back out....
- Deborah Layton, Survivor of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple

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