RAZD, God loves you and your colorful O.P. In it, you say:
RAZD writes:
The purpose is to help a Christian distinguish between legitimate mainstream churches and cults. Taking this in a broader context, the question that comes to me is, how can a normal non-church going (& not necessarily christian) person determine when any church (christian or other) crosses the line from proper faith to cult faith?
It seems to me that all churches engage in some of this type of redefinition to distinguish one branch (splinter) of faith from another - Southern Baptist, say, from Protestant or Catholic faiths - and to promote their specific form of {church} more than the {general} faith.
Does that not make these splinter faiths cults? Does that make all 'established' religions cults? My (lack of) knowledge of the differences between these groups and what one could call {core faith} is very limited to non-existent, so I am asking this more for my own interest in the perceptions of others than to provide any.
I once was in a cult. They never associated with other mainstream churches. They met often. They were aloof and were always to themselves. They had a fiery leader...Paul Schell. We all naively thought of him as a super christian...with access to Gods powers.
I did not have a lot of problems with what he preached, but in HOW he acted...(his behavior).
This is what he sounds like:
Apostle Paul Schell
™ Version 4.2
