Cult Studies Free Course 2, Lesson 2
Cult Studies Free Course 2, Lesson 2
Mind Control Methods of Cults
Gospel is the message of freedom, but the gospel preached by the Cults is the bait of slavery. By virtue of its origin in God, the Christian message is a message of freedom. There is no attempt at forcing or coercing people. But by virtue of their origin in man or in doctrines of demons, the Cults cannot preach anything except ultimate slavery.
All Cults are large prisons where freedom of independent thinking is absent, Imprisoning such large groups for all their lives is not easy, and thus the Cults use very sophisticated and well-proved methods for mind-control. The basic aim behind all this is to thoroughly brainwashing people. Once the brainwashing is complete, the new recruit loses his discernment partially or even totally. The first and most important step in religious enslavement is complete, and the rest of the affair becomes rather easy.
The brainwashed and discernment- deprived people are them manipulated throughout their lives through lectures, peer-pressure, and auto-suggestion or self- hypnotism. These techniques work very well for the rest of the victim’s life, who is actually not much more than a Zombie.
The above facts must open our eyes to another very sobering fact: many people try to convert Cultists by reasoning with them, without realizing that this is a mental faculty destroyed by the Cults with a vengeance, Worse, many parents grieve about their children, husbands and wives about their mates, and believers about their Church members who have been seduced by Cultists. Their pain is intensified when their cult-trapped dear ones fail to see the truth of the Bible. Reasoning-power is the culprit again. Once the Cults destroy a person’s power to reason, and once they brainwash these people, it is well neigh impossible to win them back by using human or spiritual reasoning alone.
A combination of crisis, plus much introspection, prayer, love, and divine intervention are needed before a few of them see the truth. But usually the brainwashing is so powerful that not many are easily touched. This warns every Bible-believing person about another aspect of the subject: friendship and fellowship with Cultists is laying with fire. Very few escape unhurt.
This is not to imply that all Cultists are bad people. Among almost all Cults are can find as many good people as we find among Bible-believing christians. Rather, our focus is upon the doctrinal perversions and the practical implementation of their outlook. Both are contrary to the Bible. Thus people who get into intimate fellowship with the Cultists will eventually find themselves trapped in their net.
The same is the case with marriages. In our generation of spiritual compromise, many people have forgotten the spirit of separation of our Fathers. They also forget the tremendous cost and consequences borne by these great men. Consequently now many Christians have started entering into marriage alliance with the Cultists, beginning mostly with the CPM (TPM) cult. All such alliances end up either with the Bible-believing becoming a Cultists, or in marital disharmony and bitterness. Such is the powerful hold of Cults.
It is not possible to play with fire and be left unhurt, consequently, prevention is better than cure. With this in mind, it will be good to study the mind-manipulation and brainwashing techniques adopted by worst Cults.
1. Love And Flattery: God created man to be a social being. Every person needs a cluster of strong relationships, uncritical acceptance, sympathy, and willing ears to listen to his pains, frustrations, and yearnings. Biblically speaking, one’s family is the primary institution from which all these needs are to be met.
The way is which God has designed family, with a cluster of siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents, these needs are automatically met. The relative position that a person has in this relational hierarchy, and the positions that a person would occupy during his growth and maturity all give him a sense of belonging and self-worth. He is needed, and it turn he makes others feel needed. This is one reason why cults find it difficult to steal away people from strongly-kint families and societies. However, the gradual breakdown of the Biblically prescribed family model is altering the picture.
With the meteoric rise of nuclear families, and with increasing mobility of the job-seeking crowd, an exceptionally large number of people today are deprived of the essential cluster of strong relations. While they might be able to continue for sometime without such relationships, sooner or later most of them begin yearning for such relationships. The Cults provide them what they desperately need, and end up controlling and manipulating the new “sheep”.
Cults express love variously by praying, feeding, listening, touching, embracing, or by doing other things depending upon the needs and culture of the recipients. The end result is a firm control through love and need dependence.
2. Isolation And Insulation: Most converts won by the Cults already have a sea of beliefs embedded in their minds. Thus knowingly or unknowingly they tend to evaluate every doctrine and philosophy imposed upon them. Cults isolate and insulate their victims so as to suppress reasoning and critical evaluation.
One’s family, friends, Church members, etc. would naturally pose a host of troublesome questions to the convert. Books published by non Cultists can also awaken the critical thinking of the victim. Thus in the earlier and formative days of the new convert, the Cults effectively isolate their sheep from all these.
Deprived of other points of view and critical reasoning the victim is brainwashed, and eventually becomes totally one- sided and prejudiced in his outlook.
3. Indoctrination: While the Christian faith demands faith, this faith is neither a blind one, nor a closed one. It is based upon historical events, and the Bible itself encourages believers to examine everything. The believers at Berea were labeled as better than other because they than others because they examined all apostolic teaching daily in the light of scriptures.
Bible encourages believers to examine not only doctrinal matters but also practical subjects and even historical and similar apologetic subjects. All things are to be examined and only the right and good ones are to be entertained. Contrary to this spirit of examination and evaluation, the Cults control people by indoctrinating them. They indoctrinate people to accept the pronouncements of their leaders and hierarchies blindly, without examining, and emotionally. this opens the way for the leaders to manipulate and control people.
4. Fear And Insecurity: Fear is a powerful force, paralyzing even the mightiest. Thus the almighty God made us free from fear when we were being taken away to everlasting death. Instead living in terror all life about our destiny, God gives us a destiny to begin with, removing all fear about future security. God wants people to love and obey Him out of love, and not out of fear, but the Cults turn this order upside down.
Right from the earliest days of brainwashing, the Cults instill a sense of fear and insecurity in the hearts of their victims. Fear about losing salvation is the greatest of these. The new recruits are taught that question the leader or his words, questioning any aspect of the cult’s teaching or practice, or even independent thinking invites divine displeasure, discipline, or even eternal damnation.
The minor and everyday misfortunes befalling the lives of the dissenting disciples are exaggerated and presented to them and others as a definite manifestation of divine retribution for questioning spiritual matters. Similar misfortunes in the lives of those who left the cult are also exploited to reinforce the idea that outside the Cult there is neither divine blessing not spiritual salvation. In an emotionally charged Cultic atmosphere where (due to the suppression of Biblical doctrines) nobody is sure of his or her salvation, it is possible to perpetually terrorized the followers. The method is powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
5. Peer Pressure: In a previous point we mention man’s inherent need for love, acceptance, and belonging to a group. Everyone unconsciously searches for such a peer-group, and becomes greatly attached to it on discovering it. However , the attachment with the peer -group most often turns into a dependence. Like drug-dependence, this person reaches a stage where he cannot live independently of the group. Peer-dependence often becomes so chronic that people are terrified at the mere thought of r ejection by the group. At this stage the group can manipulate this person in any way it wants merely by using a judicious combination of approval and disapproval.
Thus even of a person is convinced of truth, he would never express it if the peers would mock him. Similarly, even if he is convinced that a certain thing is inappropriate, he would still indulge in it when their is group pressure . Till recent times many people considered peer-pressure as a minor factor in human behaviour, but recent researches have revealed that is an unusually mighty and coercive force. The Cults know it and use it effectively to manipulate its victims.
6. Repetition And Reinforcement: Once a person passes through the first five stages, he is totally conditioned to blindly serve the group. He is safe for the group like a vaccinated person who now needs only periodical booster doses, and these come through repetitive teaching and preaching. The actual frequency of such teaching varies from Cult to Cult.
Prayer-letters, study-notes, sunday-school curriculum, TV/ Radio, Audiovisuals, and the ever-present pastoral sermons are all exploited for repetition and reinforcement of error. Everyone from the Moonies up to the Roman Catholics use this approach, and this solidifies their control over people’s minds.
Cult Studies Free Course 2, Lesson 2
Mind Control Methods of Cults
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