NXR Podcast - THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Scientology | EP 8 with @TheCultishShow
Aired: 2024-08-23
Duration: 01:13:45


=== Scientology Origins and Dianetics (08:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Scientology is a religious movement founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s.
[00:00:07]  It is based on Hubbard's teachings and a set of doctrines outlined in his writing, particularly in his book Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, published in 1950.
[00:00:18]  Central to Scientology is the concept of auditing, a form of spiritual counseling aimed at helping individuals overcome past traumas known as engrams and achieve spiritual enlightenment.
[00:00:30]  Auditing often involves the use of an electronic device known as an e-meter, which is believed to measure a person's mental state and can help identify areas of spiritual distress.
[00:00:42]  Scientology teaches that humans are mortal beings called thetans who have forgotten their true and spiritual potential.
[00:00:50]  Through auditing, as well as other Scientology practices, followers seek to free themselves from spiritual limitations and achieve higher levels of awareness and ability.
[00:01:01]  The Church of Scientology founded in 1953 Continues to serve as a central organization for the dissemination and practice of Scientology beliefs.
[00:01:17]  Scientology.
[00:01:19]  That's our episode for today.
[00:01:21]  Go ahead and kick us off.
[00:01:22]  I mean, Scientology.
[00:01:24]  Did you guys ever watch In the Clear?
[00:01:26]  Going Clear.
[00:01:27]  Going Clear.
[00:01:28]  Yes.
[00:01:28]  Yeah.
[00:01:29]  I thought it was really cool.
[00:01:29]  That was my first sort of introduction to that world.
[00:01:33]  And man, what a crazy world.
[00:01:35]  Right, that it is.
[00:01:36]  It really what's that kind of the history of exposes on Scientology?
[00:01:42]  It kind of shows you know, people had limited information in the 1950s as far as how information could be disseminated.
[00:01:50]  You had the major news networks, uh, things like that.
[00:01:53]  And as time progressed, you had in the 1970s, you had you know, cult awareness groups really starting to spawn out, where it's kind of really uh, grassroots movements of people communicating because you had a At a time, a lot of young people in the wake of the sexual revolution and kind of the hippie movement of just the rebelliousness of that time period of just getting sucked into all sorts of different movements, specifically in California.
[00:02:20]  And so that's where you had a lot of, you know, the cult awareness network.
[00:02:23]  You had a lot of the people who are doing like almost like kidnappings, you call like cult interventions or cult deprogrammings.
[00:02:32]  And so there was this huge sort of grassroots movement.
[00:02:35]  And then the internet came along.
[00:02:37]  And that's where a lot of Scientology began to truly be exposed.
[00:02:41]  And now people who are leaving Scientology now had a place to go to hear their voice.
[00:02:47]  And now you've seen it with documentaries like Going Clear.
[00:02:51]  You've seen there was a recent series that came out several years ago with Leah Remini from the King of Queens, who was a former Scientologist called Scientology The Aftermath, where it was a really good opportunity to where, while it wasn't a Christian show, they did a really good job.
[00:03:07]  Really documenting the abuses of Scientology.
[00:03:10]  It was co hosted by Leah Remini and Mike Rinder, who's a former spokesperson for Scientology.
[00:03:16]  So, really, in many ways, Scientology is a case study for a historical cult, a very recent cult in contrast to Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses that started very recent here in the 1950s.
[00:03:32]  And it's very much a case study of what once was done in secret will now be shattered from the rooftop.
[00:03:38]  I.e., now Twitter, Facebook, X.
[00:03:41]  And so, what you really have now, which once was a very surging organization that really had a grassroots movement and interest in its growth, was growing quite heavily.
[00:03:52]  It's now very much dwindling.
[00:03:54]  And the only really thing that's happening right now, as far as Scientology growth, is really them having to do stuff with their funds.
[00:04:04]  So, it's really just a lot of them continuing to build buildings, facilities, things like that, that are.
[00:04:11]  Empty, so it's sort of becoming an empty shell of itself in a sense.
[00:04:15]  So, yeah, it's a very there are many layers to the story of Scientology, but they're definitely when people think of a cult, um, Scientology is one of the definitive ones come to mind because you, of course, you have major you know celebrities like John Travolta and Tom Cruise who had they have a notable history, uh, with Scientology.
[00:04:34]  So, I'm really excited to unpack this.
[00:04:36]  Yeah, people when they think about Scientology, they also think about South Park.
[00:04:39]  Yes, you know what I mean.
[00:04:40]  South Park did wonderful episodes on Mormonism, but they also did some pretty funny ones.
[00:04:44]  On Scientology, you may be like, oh man, Andrew, you're a Christian, you're referencing South Park.
[00:04:48]  Hey, at your discretion, if you want to watch the Scientology episode on South Park, go ahead.
[00:04:52]  They do actually have a really good explanation of Scientology.
[00:04:56]  But L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of Scientology.
[00:04:59]  And L. Ron Hubbard, when I think about him, I think of a pathological liar.
[00:05:04]  And who better to create, quote unquote, a religion than somebody who writes many science fiction books prior to even.
[00:05:11]  Isn't that funny that he started his own religion, but he was formerly a fiction.
[00:05:17]  Novelist.
[00:05:17]  Yeah.
[00:05:17]  And I think he was very pragmatic, right?
[00:05:19]  So when he wrote Dianetics, what he was trying to do was combat Freudian psychology or psychology that was very prominent during that time.
[00:05:29]  He noticed that there was a need for people to talk to someone and tell them their problems.
[00:05:34]  So he goes and writes Dianetics.
[00:05:36]  You don't need to go to your psychologist.
[00:05:39]  Here it is.
[00:05:39]  We have the book Dianetics.
[00:05:41]  And Dianetics literally means it means through thought or through the soul.
[00:05:44]  Let me give you an explanation of what Dianetics is about.
[00:05:47]  So, mankind, according to Hubbard, is basically good.
[00:05:50]  And that the basic instinct for all people is survival.
[00:05:54]  Man's environmental conditions and painful experiences result in failure.
[00:05:58]  So, in Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard breaks up the mind into three parts the analytical mind, the reactive mind, and the somatic mind.
[00:06:06]  So, the analytical mind works as a perfect computer and never makes a mistake.
[00:06:11]  So, when we're talking about this, you'll notice how within Dianetics or in Scientology, the body is more of like a vessel for something called a thetan.
[00:06:21]  Okay.
[00:06:23]  So within this mind is also the reactive mind, and that holds mental images of pictures from the past, which are called engrams, right?
[00:06:32]  They're the source of aberrations or any type of psychosomatic illness.
[00:06:35]  Any mental illness that there could be is coming from some type of memory from the past or trauma, right?
[00:06:41]  So there's also reincarnation for these thetans here.
[00:06:45]  The somatic mind, as well, is the mind that keeps the body regulated and functioning by the analytical and reactive minds.
[00:06:53]  Placing solutions to the effect on the physical level.
[00:06:55]  So we have the somatic mind, which is really just governing our body's functions, right?
[00:07:01]  So the issue within Scientology is that we have these engrams that are creating psychological problems, and we must get rid of engrams.
[00:07:10]  And you mentioned it in that open there that through the process of auditing, through somebody who, you know, of course, you're paying for sessions, your type of psychiatrist, remember, he's.
[00:07:23]  Trying to combat modern psychology will help you find these engrams and rid yourself of these engrams.
[00:07:30]  And that is not done for free, right?
[00:07:34]  That's done for a price.
[00:07:35]  So, before coming, what they would call an operating thetan, which is someone who's rid of all of their engrams, you must become clear of your engrams, right?
[00:07:48]  So, in Christian terms, we can almost think of engrams as of like sin, but it's in his own redefinition of sin, right?
[00:07:56]  And so, let me just look at the classes here.
[00:07:58]  So, before you can go clear, there's about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, almost 13 different classes that you must take.
[00:08:11]  13 different things you must pay for in order to become clear of all of your engrams.

=== Becoming Clear of Engrams (02:23) ===

[00:08:18]  Interesting stuff, right?
[00:08:19]  Yeah.
[00:08:20]  And all those classes, you have to pay for them?
[00:08:23]  Yeah.
[00:08:23]  They all cost.
[00:08:24]  And guess what?
[00:08:25]  If you can't pay for it, what do you do?
[00:08:26]  What do you think?
[00:08:27]  I don't know.
[00:08:28]  Well, you join the Sea Org.
[00:08:30]  So we actually have a solution for you.
[00:08:32]  Our solution is this you can sign something called the Billion Year Contract, and you will devote all of your life.
[00:08:39]  All of your finances, everything to Scientology.
[00:08:43]  And what do you do in the Sea Org?
[00:08:44]  Well, you can become an auditor.
[00:08:45]  How do you become an auditor?
[00:08:46]  Well, we've got classes for that, right?
[00:08:48]  Well, if you don't want to be an auditor and you just want to pay for sessions, guess what?
[00:08:51]  You can sign people up.
[00:08:52]  Go talk to your friends, get them to hold two tin cans and talk about your problems.
[00:08:56]  And when that meter blurs or moves one direction, we can see that's an engram.
[00:09:00]  And let's help them get rid of their engrams.
[00:09:02]  Yeah.
[00:09:02]  I'm going to backtrack just for a second.
[00:09:04]  When you talk about Elon Hubbard, we only briefly mentioned him being a science fiction author.
[00:09:09]  He, L. Ron Hubbard, actually holds the record for the most amount of published works.
[00:09:14]  In fact, the Guinness World Record, public record, the most amount of published works by one author is 1,084 by L. Ron Hubbard, whose first work was published in February 1934 and last in March of 2006, which that was published after his passing.
[00:09:30]  But he holds the Guinness World Record.
[00:09:31]  So, really, he wrote the most amount of science fiction of any science fiction.
[00:09:36]  Anybody who's a writer of science fiction, he's published the most amount ever.
[00:09:40]  And then.
[00:09:42]  When it comes to Dianetics, the one thing that I think would be important to understand is that he truly believed what he was writing.
[00:09:50]  Now, he did have motivation, I think financially, he had many different motivations, but what he wrote down, he truly believed and he submitted it to a lot of different boards of psychological boards with confidence, saying this is going to be really accepted.
[00:10:04]  And it was basically became a laughing stock.
[00:10:07]  And his ego was definitely hurt by that.
[00:10:11]  But really, what ended up happening is that Dianetics, Sort of, it became kind of like a viral post, right?
[00:10:17]  You may know a thing or two about viral posts, right?
[00:10:20]  So he, it really, there became all these like groups that people just got a hold of this book and was really no help of his own, aside from publishing it.
[00:10:30]  It became a New York Times bestseller.
[00:10:32]  You have people who are doing their own on their own accord, their own Dianetics classes.
[00:10:39]  It just took a life of its own.

=== Occult Beliefs and Viral Fame (08:27) ===

[00:10:41]  So once Elrond Hubbard got wake of this, That's where it's like, okay, how do I central?
[00:10:47]  How do I capture this momentum?
[00:10:49]  And then there was the motivation.
[00:10:51]  Let me see if I can turn this into a religion.
[00:10:53]  So it wasn't the religion at first.
[00:10:55]  Then I'll publish Dianetics.
[00:10:57]  It came about of it really going viral by just people at that time when it was published, just getting a hold of it on their own accord.
[00:11:06]  And that's where you see that.
[00:11:08]  And again, one of the motivations for Elon Hubbard was money.
[00:11:12]  And the one appeal of creating it into a religion was that he could get tax exempt status.
[00:11:19]  He would fall into the category of a religion.
[00:11:22]  So that's definitely a very interesting component that really became a catalyst to him to kind of build all these other moving integral parts when it came to the e meters, the bridge to total freedom, whether you are an OT3, all the way up to, I believe, the highest rank is OT9.
[00:11:43]  And that count, and OT means operating thetan, which is some of the descriptions that was described in our opening sequence.
[00:11:52]  So, Andrew, you want to go ahead?
[00:11:53]  Yeah.
[00:11:54]  Let me jump back to you.
[00:11:55]  In definitions of Scientology, a thetan is a timeless energy that reincarnates in interplanetary life forms.
[00:12:03]  So, the thetan would be what inhabits the analytical, somatic, and reactive mind, right?
[00:12:09]  To get rid of engrams, to become an operating thetan, one has the ability to manipulate matter, energy, space, and time.
[00:12:16]  So, we can find that there's even occultic beliefs within Scientology to where once you have this supernatural ability, You can manipulate the world around you because the spirit supersedes matter, right?
[00:12:32]  Scientology.org describes an operating thetan as someone like this In quote, operating thetan is a state of spiritual awareness in which an individual is able to control themselves and their environment.
[00:12:43]  An OT is someone who knows that they know and can create positive and pro survival effects on all their dynamics.
[00:12:49]  They have been fully familiarized with their capabilities as a thetan and can willingly and knowingly be at cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space.
[00:12:58]  And time.
[00:12:59]  That's what an operating thetan is.
[00:13:01]  But what you'll notice is within this framework of these classes, we can find a similarity to Nexium, right?
[00:13:10]  Nexium, what was his name?
[00:13:13]  Rainier?
[00:13:13]  John Rainier?
[00:13:15]  Something Rainier.
[00:13:16]  David Rainier?
[00:13:16]  David Rainier.
[00:13:17]  Yeah, I think it was David Rainier.
[00:13:19]  What we can find is almost like an MLM structure in terms of people being your product, and you must do this class or that class, and then you can actually have.
[00:13:30]  This control over your life, you can make your life better in this way or better in that way.
[00:13:34]  We know with Nexium, it became a really bad, horrible sex cult.
[00:13:38]  But within Scientology, it just took a different form.
[00:13:42]  But I think that David Rainier took lessons from L. Ron Hubbard when creating Nexium in terms of being this self help, self achievement class.
[00:13:50]  But yeah, the goal is essentially to become an operating Thetan, but that's not where it stops, right?
[00:13:55]  They had to keep making more and more and more.
[00:13:57]  And even David Miskovich, who's the current leader of Scientology today, states that there's still some more classes that they're waiting for.
[00:14:04]  Right.
[00:14:04]  The bridge to total freedom is never completed.
[00:14:07]  It's still being constructed.
[00:14:09]  Point in being.
[00:14:10]  Right.
[00:14:10]  Well, I think it's actually Miscavige.
[00:14:12]  Miscavige.
[00:14:13]  There you go.
[00:14:14]  Yeah, but it's, yeah, Miscavige.
[00:14:16]  There's probably some people out there who have called him that.
[00:14:19]  Oh, no, me for sure.
[00:14:20]  I remember I used to say instead of Alistair Crowley, I kept going Ali Esther Crowley.
[00:14:23]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:23]  Get corrected on that as well.
[00:14:24]  Thankfully, we always have the YouTube comment section to make sure we're always fully corrected.
[00:14:29]  That's where all the actuallys go.
[00:14:30]  Get rid of our engrams.
[00:14:31]  Yeah.
[00:14:32]  Anyways, there might be a YouTube comment section for that, which I won't, I'll make sure not to read.
[00:14:37]  But feel free to fully express yourself there.
[00:14:40]  But yeah, what you really end up seeing is this purse, very much a personal self improvement type of cult structure.
[00:14:50]  And what's very interesting too is that you kind of see at that time this sort of an attempt at re enchantment, this idea of sort of blending in science, but also part, sort of giving a supernatural, spiritual element to it.
[00:15:07]  So that's where you think of the theology.
[00:15:09]  So, Scientology, you see like the blending of the material and the immaterial together.
[00:15:15]  And so, yeah, and then you have this continued progression.
[00:15:21]  And what you'll end up seeing is that L. Ron Hubbard, his gain, his motivation was in many ways just financial and seeing the opportunity to be tax exempt.
[00:15:32]  He really spent a majority of his life on the run just because of a lot of different shady dealings.
[00:15:40]  A lot of it, I think, did have to deal with him believing he didn't have to pay.
[00:15:44]  The government.
[00:15:45]  So, when any of the reputation that L. Ron Hubbard has was always him on the boat.
[00:15:51]  You'll see when you kind of look up L. Ron Hubbard, you always see pictures of him sort of being the sea captain.
[00:15:56]  One of the main reasons why is because he wanted to be in neutral territory where he could always be evasive, innovating the government.
[00:16:04]  So, that's a big, big part of it.
[00:16:07]  And what you'll see consistently throughout the story of L. Ron Hubbard, and you think about, you know, one thing leads to it, what goes around comes around, is that there's always Discontinue like physical abuse.
[00:16:22]  That, particularly, there's something indicative within the nature and the culture and zeitgeist behind spirituality are those who physically, you know, abuse, excite, and also mentally and spiritually abuse their assailants.
[00:16:38]  And there's many ways in which that happened.
[00:16:39]  I think a great resource is not only the documentary done by Lawrence Wright, who's done a lot of really great work.
[00:16:47]  He's one of my favorite journalists, is the doc, both the documentary Going Clear, but more particularly.
[00:16:53]  The book Going Clear.
[00:16:55]  Again, this is, it's been a while since I've read the book, but I believe he gathered a lot of just independent lines of testimony and witness of even those who are on his ship.
[00:17:06]  Do you remember the name of his ship?
[00:17:08]  Oh, man.
[00:17:09]  I'll look it up.
[00:17:10]  Look it up.
[00:17:10]  But it's like there's times in which he would not be happy with a particular performance with someone on his ship and would just throw them overboard, like just for kicks, and would do all sorts of ways.
[00:17:23]  And they would, hold up, and they would swim back, or he would straight up kill them.
[00:17:27]  I wouldn't kill them.
[00:17:28]  It was done in such a way to just terrify and very much create a Stockholm syndrome environment.
[00:17:36]  L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:17:37]  Wow.
[00:17:37]  L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:17:38]  And so you'll see that.
[00:17:40]  And then what ends up happening is that as Scientology progressed, one of the persons who is up and coming, who leads Scientology to this day, is David Miscavige.
[00:17:51]  Now, David Miscavige's testimony is that he, I believe, grew up in Scientology.
[00:17:57]  His parents were attracted to it.
[00:17:59]  And that he had a lot of issues with asthma.
[00:18:01]  His claim is that the process of auditing actually helped cure him of his asthma.
[00:18:08]  So he became a true believer.
[00:18:10]  What is fascinating, though, you think about somebody, you know, someone of a young stature in their 20s acquiring great powers, happened all throughout history.
[00:18:20]  There is a moment in which L. Ron Hubbard passed away where David Miscavige was in the right place at the right time.
[00:18:29]  Where he essentially did a big power grab.
[00:18:33]  He did an immediate audit of those who were unequivocally loyal to him.
[00:18:38]  Anyone who was nobly questionable about his decision making, he went and just drove them out.
[00:18:44]  And he did that with an iron fist.
[00:18:46]  In fact, the comparison I could think of, if anyone's followed the Iraq war or Saddam Hussein and his rise to power, there's this very notable moment where he gathers all his military officials in.
[00:18:58]  You can see the footage where all of a sudden he's there, and all of a sudden you see people who are.
[00:19:03]  Grabbed and they're let out of the room and they are done with.

=== Iron Fist Control and Expulsion (02:50) ===

[00:19:09]  They are disposed of.
[00:19:10]  It wasn't quite to that extent, but what you did see is that those who were in any way questioning on any level, and again, David Miscavige would be the judge, jury, and executioner of this, at least as far as excommunicating them from the Church of Scientology, would be just, you're done with.
[00:19:29]  So there is a part where he did a full, like, just cleansing of anybody who was opposed to him.
[00:19:36]  And so then, and that was, so after L. Ron Hubbard passed, that's where David Miscavige took over, and that's where Scientology sort of took a, Uh, different, it became sort of a different animal and a different uh beast per se, as far as its involvement not only with um the U.S. government but also in relation to celebrities.
[00:19:56]  There's a lot of different aspects.
[00:19:57]  Do you have any commentary you want to give on that?
[00:19:58]  Real quick, before we continue with the show, I wanted to let you know that this is actually just one episode of a 10 part series that we will be slowly releasing to the public on places like YouTube and your favorite podcast platform over the coming months.
[00:20:14]  However, if you want to get all 10 of these episodes, Right now, early access and ad free.
[00:20:22]  We are making them available exclusively for our Patreon members over at patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[00:20:32]  Here are the titles for just a few of those episodes.
[00:20:35]  We've got transhumanism and artificial intelligence, we also have DMT and the astral realm, we also have neo paganism, and another of my favorite episodes is an entire episode devoted to.
[00:20:51]  The grays.
[00:20:52]  So again, head on over to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries and sign up for our silver tier, which is just $5 a month, and you'll be able to get all 10 of these episodes ad free right now.
[00:21:08]  And if you join us at the gold tier for just $10 a month, you'll get early access ad free for the full 10 episodes plus an additional live stream that I and the guys who join me for this series that's Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Suncrant.
[00:21:24]  The three of us will be doing live streams where we'll be taking questions from you, our gold tier Patreon members, and providing for you the best answers that we possibly can from the Word of God.
[00:21:36]  So don't delay.
[00:21:38]  Go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries and become a supporter today.
[00:21:43]  In terms of thinking about Scientology, I think what's really helpful for the Christian is you can go read Kingdom of the Cults.
[00:21:50]  Dr. Walter Martin does an excellent explanation of what L. Ron Hubbard taught about Jesus, the nature of God.
[00:21:59]  And salvation.

=== Mental Binding Systematic Breakdown (15:21) ===

[00:22:00]  So, one thing I do want to talk about quickly is what did L. Ron Hubbard teach about Jesus Christ, right?
[00:22:08]  So, there was kind of like an evolution in thought at first.
[00:22:11]  L. Ron Hubbard was saying that Jesus Christ was just like a master, like a teacher, great one, that he was just a level above clear, wasn't even God in the flesh, right?
[00:22:20]  So, later it came to that Jesus Christ wasn't even actually a person, he was just an engram that was implanted in Phaetons millions of years ago.
[00:22:28]  So, you don't.
[00:22:30]  He was bad.
[00:22:32]  Yeah, essentially, right?
[00:22:33]  Like he stops your bridging.
[00:22:34]  The programs are bad, right?
[00:22:35]  Yeah.
[00:22:36]  He's just a memory.
[00:22:36]  He's not even real.
[00:22:38]  He is a memory planted in Thetans for millions of years ago.
[00:22:42]  But that's not even information you get until I think you're operating Thetan level three.
[00:22:46]  I could be wrong there, but it costs a lot of money to get that information.
[00:22:50]  That's very important information for them.
[00:22:53]  But to say this, we've talked about this before with Scientology is when we talk about this, it almost is like, wow, this is.
[00:23:00]  Crazy.
[00:23:00]  How can anyone believe it?
[00:23:01]  But the truth is, it's like a frog in boiling water, right?
[00:23:04]  So, they get you in and they're just slowly turning up the temperature.
[00:23:08]  And by the time that it's so hot, you can't move from the water.
[00:23:13]  You know, they've got all of your life in their hands.
[00:23:16]  So, when we think about Christ and we're confessing our sin to Christ, it says he remembers our sins as far as the East is from the West.
[00:23:23]  We have forgiveness for our sins, we don't stand condemned.
[00:23:26]  But within Scientology, which was Jerry was starting to explain here, we find that all of your sins and engrams are recorded and put inside shelves to be used against you at any time of need that they want.
[00:23:40]  Right?
[00:23:40]  Because you're going to an auditor.
[00:23:42]  You're telling this auditor, of course, all of your secrets.
[00:23:44]  Typically, it starts with memories from your past, actually, things that happened with you.
[00:23:50]  And then they'll try to help you go clear of those events.
[00:23:53]  So, well, not just past, past lives.
[00:23:56]  Well, that's what I was going to get to.
[00:23:57]  So, first it starts with your past and then it gets into your past lives.
[00:24:00]  Remember, you're a Thetan.
[00:24:02]  So, you've been reincarnated or rebirthed multiple, multiple times.
[00:24:05]  So, within Scientology, your sins or your engrams aren't.
[00:24:11]  Forgiven as far as the East is from the West.
[00:24:13]  No, they're stored in a box to be able to be used against you if you ever need to leave.
[00:24:17]  I mean, we did an interview with Mike Rinder, who left Scientology.
[00:24:22]  And what was his book called again?
[00:24:25]  Oh, man, I can't remember the title.
[00:24:26]  Why am I blanking on his book?
[00:24:28]  Anyways, awesome interview with him.
[00:24:31]  And he can give you a brief description of what it was like living within Scientology.
[00:24:34]  And then when you're trying to leave, they've got everything against you, right?
[00:24:38]  Not only that, they have a policy that's called the Fair Game Doctrine.
[00:24:42]  And the fair game doctrine means that if you're trying to leave and you're going to tarnish the works of Scientology, it's fair game.
[00:24:48]  We can follow you.
[00:24:49]  We can go to your house.
[00:24:51]  We can terrorize you.
[00:24:53]  They won't kill you, right?
[00:24:55]  But they'll go pretty far as to try to make your life a living hell so that you don't tarnish the works and names of L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:25:04]  His book's called A Billion Years.
[00:25:05]  A Billion Years.
[00:25:06]  My Lifetime Inside Scientology.
[00:25:08]  Right.
[00:25:08]  Amazing book.
[00:25:09]  And think about how crazy it must be, okay?
[00:25:13]  For Mike Rinder, for example, his parents became Scientologists.
[00:25:18]  Well, what do you do with your children, right?
[00:25:20]  What do you do with your children if you were to join the Sea Org?
[00:25:22]  Jerry, give a brief explanation of what happens to the children of parents who are in the Sea Org.
[00:25:28]  So, this is an example.
[00:25:29]  We have a slogan that's been kind of our popular t shirt that we've had called Bad Theology Hurts People.
[00:25:37]  How the underlying presuppositions of Scientology that children are no different.
[00:25:44]  Than adults, they are adults trapped in humans' bodies.
[00:25:48]  So, when so basically, children are just taught and are viewed no different than adults.
[00:25:55]  So, there are many times because of the fact that the parents are committed to being in the sea org and to give their unequivocal life at that time to Scientology.
[00:26:06]  There are many times, and this was really depicted on many different cases, uh, with people who grew up in Scientology in Scientology, the aftermath, and Lee Roney and Mike Rinder's show is that you would have just a lot of these sort of uh.
[00:26:19]  Camps, camps in which you really would just be like child labor, where you were the only education that you really got were Scientology classes.
[00:26:29]  You would be spent a lot of time away from your parents because there's not really true ownership of like they're your mother and father.
[00:26:38]  I mean, they're the ones who birthed you into the world, but there's not, there's no real difference.
[00:26:43]  No one is truly taught as a child.
[00:26:45]  So anyone who grows up in Scientology, they're ultimately.
[00:26:49]  Robbed of their childhood.
[00:26:51]  And usually, those who escape Scientology, the only time they've been able to connect with is kind of like the sort of like being like a lost boy, like in Peter Pan.
[00:27:02]  Like the only equivalent I can give to it would be Warren Jeffs, who is the leader of the FLDS, who's now in federal prison.
[00:27:10]  And he was, I think it was in the early 2000s when it got exposed of all the different, you know, underage, you know, polygamous cults, polygamous wives, and even underage wives that he had married.
[00:27:21]  There was a point in which, and there's a parallel here, and I forget their note, they're kind of known as the Lost Boys.
[00:27:28]  I forget the actual name and title of it.
[00:27:31]  But as these boys were growing up, Jeff saw them as competition because eventually they're going to hit puberty.
[00:27:38]  They're going to be start being attracted towards women.
[00:27:40]  But I need to bring more women.
[00:27:42]  I need to be sealed to more women.
[00:27:44]  So he would find these boys who are around 12 and 13 years old and would find some way to excommunicate them and isolate them from their whole upbringing, their whole tribe of what they grew up in.
[00:27:58]  So you actually have this areas in Utah where these boys would just show up a bunch of 12 and 13 year old boys who were just orphans.
[00:28:04]  Typically Salt Lake City.
[00:28:05]  Yeah, typically Salt Lake City.
[00:28:07]  So, you would really see the same thing happen.
[00:28:09]  Your parents would still be a part of Scientology.
[00:28:12]  Oh, he's talking about Warren Jeffs.
[00:28:14]  Warren Jeffs, give me a comparison.
[00:28:16]  So, Warren says, So, you'd have the same thing where just because they're the only education that they really get are Scientology classes, there's not, they don't have practical real life world skills.
[00:28:26]  And they come to a point where they just say, I have to leave, I have to get out.
[00:28:29]  So, many of them, they're held against their will.
[00:28:31]  And sometimes it's really like a Stockholm syndrome, like mental bind, like you're told if you, and this is similar with any cult.
[00:28:38]  That usually, if you leave the group, there's no salvation outside of it, terrible things will happen to you and to your parents.
[00:28:45]  And so, there's all these sort of like a mental binding and breaking systematic breaking down.
[00:28:52]  So, usually, it's like there's a mental prison.
[00:28:56]  And this is something we articulated our interview with Mike Rinder.
[00:28:59]  There is a literal that theology and worldview behind Scientology and those who become believers, like you think that you're climbing this bridge.
[00:29:08]  To total freedom, but when in reality you're building this mind prison.
[00:29:14]  So, to try and describe it, like Mike Rinder in our interview with him, he was talking with somebody who was in the FBI and was talking about, well, couldn't you just go and like bring them out or like have a conversation, just talk with them?
[00:29:28]  It's like it's not just that simple.
[00:29:30]  Like they're so ingrained that this is their life.
[00:29:34]  And if they leave, then everything that is possibly terrible that could happen to them and the people that they care for.
[00:29:42]  Like, there is this mental prison that is created through the inklings of Scientology, and that's and then the children they're taught that they're basically taught that.
[00:29:53]  And, um, and yeah, they're the way that children are treated is terrible.
[00:29:58]  Um, and you can see that depicted in the show, Scientology the Aftermath.
[00:30:01]  And again, this is having and again, this comes from an underlying worldview that children are adults, are just adults trapped in these little bodies.
[00:30:12]  Yeah, and when therefore we should treat them no different than adults.
[00:30:15]  And how they treat adults is awful as well, too.
[00:30:17]  Right.
[00:30:17]  Well, in reality, too, having children was kind of frowned upon within Scientology because it takes away the aspect of work, in the Sea Org.
[00:30:26]  So they work people 80 hours, 90 hours a week, small amounts of sleep, pay them very little bits of money, right?
[00:30:33]  Because everything that they're working towards is trying to get more classes so they can level up on their journey to the bridge to total freedom.
[00:30:39]  I mean, there's stories of even forced abortions for individuals who got pregnant within Scientology.
[00:30:45]  It was.
[00:30:46]  Frowned upon.
[00:30:46]  But we find that within many different cults, like the leaders always want to control the sexual appetites of their followers, right?
[00:30:53]  Like even with Jim Jones, it's noted that he would separate families.
[00:30:57]  He would have sexual relations with different people that were once family units.
[00:31:01]  You know, he wanted that control over the minds.
[00:31:04]  The same thing happens within Scientology.
[00:31:07]  But within Scientology as well, there is a ruling cosmology.
[00:31:11]  And I want to talk about their story, essentially, of the Phaeton, of the earth, of who we are, what they believe.
[00:31:20]  And this is something, again, when I talk about this, it's going to sound extremely funny to you.
[00:31:26]  But remember, the people who hold to this have paid, man, I forgot what the amount was last time I looked up.
[00:31:31]  I think it's somewhere around $500,000 to $750,000 already.
[00:31:35]  To receive this information.
[00:31:37]  So once this stuff became public, it was a big deal for Scientology.
[00:31:41]  But let me give you some of their cosmology.
[00:31:45]  So there's an existence of a cosmic ruler named Lord Xenu, who is believed to have lived approximately 75 million years ago.
[00:31:56]  And this was the narrative there was massive overpopulation.
[00:31:59]  So Xenu was the ruler of a galactic confederacy, an ancient intergalactic civilization that was facing severe.
[00:32:06]  Overpopulation.
[00:32:08]  So, in order to make there less overpopulation, what did Xenu do?
[00:32:13]  Well, he took these people, these Thetans, and he brought them to another area, right?
[00:32:20]  He brought billions of beings to Earth, which was known as T Giac or T Gi.
[00:32:26]  That was what Xenu called the Earth.
[00:32:30]  And these beings were frozen and transported in spacecraft to various volcanoes on Earth.
[00:32:35]  Okay.
[00:32:36]  And then Xenu dropped hydrogen bombs into the volcanoes and triggered a massive explosion.
[00:32:40]  Killing the Thetans, their bodies.
[00:32:42]  But the spirits of these Thetans, known as body Thetans, were released from their physical forms.
[00:32:47]  Then these beings were brought to implant stations.
[00:32:51]  So Xenu then subjected these disembodied Thetans to a complex implantation process.
[00:32:56]  And this involved implanting false narratives, engrams into the Thetans' minds, which were indeed intended to control and manipulate them.
[00:33:04]  So there's implant stations, which also implanted false religious narratives and beliefs.
[00:33:09]  There we go for the idea.
[00:33:10]  Of Jesus Christ throughout history, the idea of Buddhism, Hinduism, none of those are enough.
[00:33:14]  Those are all false implantation narratives, although, you know, he creates his own religion from these religions.
[00:33:22]  But that is the effects, right?
[00:33:25]  It creates traumatic experiences and false beliefs as engrams and individuals.
[00:33:30]  So we're trying to overcome what Lord Zeno once did through Dianetics in the process of Scientology in order to go clear, become operating thetans, and then preach this gospel to the rest of the world.
[00:33:41]  So, the hope of the Scientologist is to spread Dianetics to everybody, right?
[00:33:46]  The only way you can get rid of drug addiction, trauma, to control yourself, to control any demiurge that you may have is through the process of Dianetics and auditing and becoming an operating Thetan.
[00:34:00]  That's their post millennial hope, in a sense.
[00:34:03]  Yeah.
[00:34:04]  It's pretty wild, but really, that is what they teach.
[00:34:08]  So, yeah.
[00:34:09]  Here's some of my questions I've been listening the whole time, it's been super helpful, fascinating.
[00:34:15]  What, I guess my, I have two main questions.
[00:34:18]  One, how did Scientology take off?
[00:34:21]  Because at one point, like you were talking about a little bit, Jeremiah, like they read this, people just organically read this essay.
[00:34:29]  It would be the equivalent of something on social media today going viral.
[00:34:32]  Like he submitted it to certain, you know, journals and peer review and everybody mocked, you know, mocked him.
[00:34:38]  But then, you know, but then the, what is it called?
[00:34:41]  The dialectics?
[00:34:42]  Dianetics.
[00:34:42]  Dianetics.
[00:34:43]  Like it just kind of took off.
[00:34:45]  And so, So, my question is Is there anything beyond that?
[00:34:48]  Like, what made Scientology successful?
[00:34:52]  Because there was a time where it was growing quickly.
[00:34:56]  And then my second question is, and how come that doesn't work anymore?
[00:35:01]  I wonder, like, just practically, not just the power of Christ, you know, revealing and exposing falsehoods and lies.
[00:35:08]  Praise God for that.
[00:35:09]  But I feel like there's probably also some practical dynamics.
[00:35:13]  I'm thinking about, like, could something like Scientology exist?
[00:35:17]  Because it seems like it requires secrecy.
[00:35:21]  Like, it can only be something like that type of cult.
[00:35:26]  Cults still exist and some of them are growing, but that particular type of cult seems like it thrives on you know, like you have to take these classes and there's certain information that you don't get to access.
[00:35:39]  Like, but we live in the information age where everything is publicly available, you can't really keep something under tabs anymore.
[00:35:49]  I wonder if I guess what I'm saying is, I wonder if the internet and social media more particularly kills Scientology.
[00:35:55]  Yes.
[00:35:56]  Yeah, I'll give a couple of reasons why I think.
[00:35:58]  And again, it's multi layered, but I think one of the areas in which it really grew in popularity was when they established the Celebrity Center in LA.
[00:36:08]  And because of the nature of LA and Hollywood and people who are aspiring actors, it is a lot of confidence in trying to get your audition, your audition after audition after audition for your first big break.
[00:36:20]  You think of any notable celebrity, you look at some of their earlier videos, it's them showing up in some Coca Cola commercial from the 1980s.
[00:36:28]  Those are always fun videos to see.
[00:36:30]  Well, someone like John Travolta would have been attracted to Scientology because he, there's a lot that there's some general classes that deal with, you know, confidence, controlling your emotions, you know, knowing that certain things are with your reactive mind and giving.
[00:36:45]  And he, John Travolta, attributed a lot of the first roles that he got, including, I believe, his role in Greece, which was, you know, a move that really kind of put him to the forefront, and also Saturday Night Fever.
[00:36:57]  Like those, those are two of the really big breaks that Travolta got.
[00:37:01]  And then he gave and created Scientology to that.
[00:37:05]  And then, of course, you've had Tom Cruise, who was very notable.
[00:37:08]  So you kind of had different people.
[00:37:10]  Leah Remini at that time, I mean, she got her big break when she did the sitcom The King of Queens along with Kevin James.
[00:37:18]  And at that time, she's a true believer in Scientology and gave that.

=== Celebrity Influence and Mind Prisons (08:29) ===

[00:37:21]  Wait, hold up.
[00:37:22]  The actress who's the wife of Kevin James and King of Queens, she was Scientologist.
[00:37:26]  I didn't know.
[00:37:26]  Yeah.
[00:37:27]  So the show Scientology The Aftermath is co hosted by Leah Remini and Mike Rippi.
[00:37:31]  Isaac and Mike Rippi.
[00:37:32]  Back to get in time.
[00:37:34]  Yeah.
[00:37:34]  Go ahead.
[00:37:35]  Sorry.
[00:37:35]  That show was funny.
[00:37:36]  I enjoyed it.
[00:37:37]  But yeah, so that would be an example of just it.
[00:37:39]  I mean, and cults always, they're seeking out a particular group of people.
[00:37:44]  And I think they were trying to show prejudice towards those who are aspiring up and comers to show the glamour of that.
[00:37:53]  And so a lot of the growth happened really like pre internet.
[00:37:56]  And I think just with, because cults do operate in secrecy.
[00:38:01]  So there's always not a lot of transparency.
[00:38:03]  I mean, if you look at, for example, Mormonism, when Mormon missionaries come over to your door, They're giving you, they're clothing everything in very basic, generic Christian terminology.
[00:38:13]  They're not going to go on day one and start talking about what happens inside the temple that you're going to put on this white chef's hat and along with this green apron and start, you know, talking about, you know, the Garden of Eden and ascent to Godhead and everything that takes place inside of the Mormon temple.
[00:38:28]  They're not going to do that on day one.
[00:38:30]  That's not till later.
[00:38:32]  In the same way, you know, Scientology just starts off hey, take a personality test, come in here for a free personality test.
[00:38:38]  And they do that to this day.
[00:38:39]  Then Then it's like, oh, well, buy this course and buy that course and start scaling the bridge.
[00:38:44]  And so, people, there's a lot of those who are attracted, I think, to Scientology, were those who are trying to, were very heavily in the personal development space.
[00:38:53]  And so, I think a lot of what people who want to become an actor, a notable star, you know, and I get that sometimes being in front of a camera and going into those roles, you know, you deal with your own internal monologue, you know, like you see a YouTube when you're first brand new.
[00:39:08]  I remember seeing like a YouTube comment of somebody saying something about me, about what I look like or how I sound or how I'm talking or I'm using too many ums and ahs and just seeing that criticism and just being racked and like, oh, I can't, I'll never amount to anything because somebody on YouTube said something.
[00:39:26]  And so, there's levels in which I need you to want to embrace how to deal with the emotion of somebody criticizing you.
[00:39:34]  And that's exemplified too in Hollywood.
[00:39:36]  You know, you're going before an audition against like three people, and you're going to do this one quick audition and you'll get it.
[00:39:43]  You'll do tons of them, and you know, dealing with the ups and downs of trying to get your big break, you know.
[00:39:48]  So I think that area creates a lot of that.
[00:39:51]  And honestly, what is so foreign to me?
[00:39:53]  I've like what you're talking about that experience of receiving criticism.
[00:39:58]  Yeah, on YouTube.
[00:39:59]  I've never, never, never, never experienced that.
[00:40:01]  I've never, I know nothing, barely anything about that.
[00:40:05]  I don't know, I don't even know what you're talking about.
[00:40:06]  Right.
[00:40:07]  Maybe once or twice.
[00:40:08]  Yeah.
[00:40:08]  And honestly, I think just the, they're, again, as mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, they would just be a pinnacle example of information being readily available on the internet.
[00:40:18]  One of the most notable, fascinating stories he passed away, but it's David Miscavige's father, Ron Miscavige.
[00:40:25]  He was in a position to where he was highly questioning Scientology.
[00:40:29]  They are starting to view him as a sp, which stands for suppressive person.
[00:40:33]  And he was being questioned.
[00:40:36]  He was in some sense, I believe he was actually being held against his will um, or he was in a place he was still inside that mind prison and he had the audacity.
[00:40:49]  He had an Ipad which he snuck into his room and somehow he got outside of the ip address of servers where it can be detected and found a way to access the internet about The truth, about Scientology.
[00:41:03]  And then he saw something he could never look back, seeing all the different cover ups and scandals and things of that nature that would be completely cut off from anybody loyal to Scientology.
[00:41:17]  They would say, do not look at that.
[00:41:19]  That is the only thing that suppresses people's information happen.
[00:41:23]  Most of the time, cults are conditioned, are mentally conditioned to what's called a siege mentality, where they'll interpret any sort of level criticism.
[00:41:32]  Of their group as unwarranted persecution.
[00:41:35]  That's usually how a cult member is, that mind person is built to have that siege mentality.
[00:41:41]  But Ron Miscavige would be an ideal case of having the internet allow him to, you know, to all of a sudden really question the church and ultimately allowed him to escape.
[00:41:53]  And that's happened with multiple different people within Scientology.
[00:41:57]  And I think that that's one of the reasons why it has dwindled.
[00:42:00]  And so now with it being readily available, now you have those who sort of have a network.
[00:42:06]  Where people can connect with.
[00:42:08]  That's why you had the show, the AE show, Scientology the Aftermath, which won multiple Emmy Awards, where you would have people who would connect with them.
[00:42:17]  Now there's a place where people can connect on the internet, on social media, on different Reddit groups where people can talk.
[00:42:22]  And it's not just Scientology.
[00:42:24]  We did an episode on this cult, this Korean cult called Shinshanji.
[00:42:28]  And it's the same thing.
[00:42:30]  They sneak people into, hey, let's go do this Bible study.
[00:42:33]  And they ask a question, oh, we'll get to that later.
[00:42:35]  We'll get to that later.
[00:42:36]  We'll get down to the road.
[00:42:37]  And they keep on.
[00:42:38]  Feeding them breadcrumbs and start getting them conditioned into accepting and believing what they say and to ultimately give adherence and reverence to whoever is the messianic figure that they're trying to adhere them to.
[00:42:52]  So, really, there is a mind prison that surely was slowly built about.
[00:42:57]  And I think the difficult challenge is when it comes to Scientology as it has, it is dwindling down.
[00:43:02]  I do believe it's dwindling down.
[00:43:03]  I don't know what the history will be like or what Scientology, if he even has any future outside of David Miscavige, I think at this point he's in his early.
[00:43:12]  60s.
[00:43:13]  He's probably sometime in his late 50s, early 60s, I would guess.
[00:43:17]  So there's, I don't know how much you're looking at maybe a couple more decades at the absolute max because he ruled with an iron fist.
[00:43:25]  So I don't know what that vacuum is going to be filled.
[00:43:27]  But I think the challenge, I'll let you jump in, Andrews, as we kind of wrap up here and give a basic overview.
[00:43:33]  This is the challenge with the important why this meant, why we've done what we've done, why we even launched Coltish is because when you look at a show like Leah Remney in Scientology, The Aftermath, you would look at all this abuse that has taken place and you see the people who have just been chewed up and spit out of this machine, being promised a bag of goods and being thrown to the wayside like an empty pack of cigarettes.
[00:43:59]  They're not really given something truly tangible to leave.
[00:44:03]  And okay, well, now I can think freely for myself.
[00:44:06]  Well, how do you know you won't be deceived again?
[00:44:08]  One of my favorite quotes is by G.K. Chesterton, who said that an open mind is no different than an open mouth.
[00:44:14]  Eventually, you have to bite down on something, and our hope within cultish is that the majority of those who experience spiritual abuse, who experience an abusive cult like Scientology, the majority of them become atheists and agnostic.
[00:44:30]  And you end up really seeing that in the show, and that was the heartbreaking.
[00:44:33]  I'm thankful and I give thanks to God that Lee and Mike were able to expose the abuse, but there's no place to put them, there's no true hope.
[00:44:43]  And that's where you know, thankfully, Andrew, you got to give Mike the gospel, and he was on cultish, which was awesome.
[00:44:48]  But yeah, I think that the challenge is that it's giving people who, it's not just the people who are in the cults and evangelizing them and giving them the hope of the gospel, it's that those who have been spit out of the machine of not just Scientology, but really any destructive cult, and giving them true hope in Christ.
[00:45:06]  Yeah, amen, man.
[00:45:07]  So when thinking about the deterioration of Scientology, we also got to think about the death of L. Ron Hubbard, right?
[00:45:13]  He was their revelator, he was the one creating all of these new classes.
[00:45:16]  I mean, they're still waiting for the resurrection of L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:45:19]  There's a whole Floor in a Scientology building dedicated to his house that he will inhabit when he comes back from the dead.
[00:45:26]  He's still dead, right?
[00:45:28]  He won't come back from the dead.
[00:45:30]  So there's this idea of ongoing revelation from L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:45:34]  So when he was still alive, he was saying, Oh, well, there's gonna be another class that comes out, another class that comes out.
[00:45:40]  So all the revelation wasn't out yet, which gave them something to look forward to.
[00:45:44]  Well, now it's out.
[00:45:45]  And not only is it out for them, but the cat's out of the bag and everyone can read it because of the internet.

=== Waiting for Hubbard's Resurrection (06:58) ===

[00:45:51]  Right.
[00:45:51]  Right.
[00:45:52]  But in terms of not going into Scientology, we have the internet to protect ourselves from there.
[00:45:57]  But what about the people who are already in it?
[00:45:58]  Right.
[00:45:59]  That's the question.
[00:46:00]  So since they have that mind prison and they're not able to get to the internet, we still see them in there, but it is slowly dwindling out.
[00:46:07]  But one of the main reasons would be number one, there's no more revelation.
[00:46:11]  Number two, we can see all the revelation that has been given and it is demonstrably false, right?
[00:46:17]  False Christ, false gospel, false salvation doesn't lead to freedom.
[00:46:21]  When the sun sets you free, you are free indeed.
[00:46:23]  It leads you to a mind prison.
[00:46:24]  Prison where you're literally just supporting a business.
[00:46:32]  Right Response Ministries 2025 conference is a go.
[00:46:36]  This is a three day full jam packed conference with eight main sessions, three to four hour and a half long panels, and an all star super based lineup of speakers, 15 speakers in all.
[00:46:49]  Who are they?
[00:46:50]  Steve Dace, Jeff Durbin, Orrin McIntyre, Stephen Wolfe, Brian Sauvet, Andrew Isker, John Harris, Eric Kahn, A.D. Roblis, Dan Burkholder, the Christian Prince himself, Dusty Deavers, Ben Garrett, David Reese, and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
[00:47:08]  Again, this is April 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
[00:47:11]  Twenty twenty five, and the early registration is open right now.
[00:47:15]  This is the longest conference with the most speakers we've ever offered, and yet it is our all time lowest price.
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[00:47:42]  The last thing that I want to end with is I'm just thinking of, you know.
[00:47:46]  Play the contrarian for a moment and just preemptively maybe answer some of their questions or provide an explanation for some of their criticisms.
[00:47:58]  You know that somebody has been listening, and if they actually made it this far, which maybe they didn't, but maybe there's a couple, and they're probably thinking, if some unbelievers are listening and they made it this far, they're thinking, you guys are sitting here talking about this cult.
[00:48:16]  But you're a cult, you know, like you guys are part of Apologia Church, and I heard that Apollo, you know, Apologia and Jeff Durbin and this and that are like their views on abortion, you know, and uh, equal protections for the unborn, and uh, you know, Joel, like you're part of a church I've heard about, you know, you hold the biblical patriarchy, your views on you know, men and women, like you guys are are cult leaders, you're a part of the cult,
[00:48:45]  and I would just want to end and I'm you know, I'm Curious to hear, you know, if you guys have a quick answer.
[00:48:50]  If not, we could save it for another episode.
[00:48:52]  But my answer is fairly simple.
[00:48:54]  There's more that could be said, but here's three distinctions.
[00:48:57]  Number one I have one wife.
[00:49:00]  How many wives do you have?
[00:49:01]  One.
[00:49:02]  How many wives do you have?
[00:49:03]  Right.
[00:49:04]  So we don't each have 10 wives.
[00:49:06]  One wife.
[00:49:07]  That's a, and that is a distinction.
[00:49:10]  Cult leaders typically, it's like, well, what's the common denominator?
[00:49:15]  They're wanting to get laid by multiple women.
[00:49:18]  That's just to put it frankly, that's what it is.
[00:49:20]  So, we all have one wife.
[00:49:21]  That's one distinction.
[00:49:22]  Uh, here's a second distinction um, people leave my church all the time, all the time.
[00:49:28]  They move away geographically, or they just decide that they disagree on a secondary doctrine or something like that.
[00:49:34]  They're not reformed, and they're you know, or they uh disagree on you know, whatever, whatever it may be.
[00:49:40]  You know, they're continuationists.
[00:49:42]  I'm more of a cessationist.
[00:49:43]  That has to do with those two different doctrines dealing with gifts of the spirit.
[00:49:47]  Um, all the time, you know, I've we planted the church here in Texas, covenant Bible.
[00:49:52]  Church that I pastor in central Texas about three years ago.
[00:49:55]  We're right at the three year mark.
[00:49:57]  And we went from, you know, 20 people in my living room, including kids, to well over 200 people.
[00:50:03]  And yet, we've gained at least 200 people.
[00:50:08]  But we've also, it's not the same people.
[00:50:11]  We've cycled through a few people.
[00:50:13]  We've had at least, probably at least 50, 60, 70 adults leave just in the last three years.
[00:50:21]  Right.
[00:50:22]  And a lot of them I still talk to, I'm still friends with.
[00:50:26]  You know, and still share a lot of things in common.
[00:50:29]  My wife is friends with some of the women who came and went, and still friends.
[00:50:34]  We didn't cut them off and we didn't shun them, and they were allowed to leave.
[00:50:40]  And people were actually even surprised because I do have strong convictions.
[00:50:44]  And when I preach, I don't preach, I don't pace back and forth with skinny jeans and a deep v neck and with a plexiglass pulpit and an Instagram coffee mug and say, Well, I just think and I feel.
[00:50:59]  No, when I preach, I declare, let the one who speaks speak as though he is speaking the very oracles of God.
[00:51:04]  So, I preach with confidence, not in the flesh, but confidence in the risen Lord and that God wrote a book.
[00:51:10]  So, I say these things confidently, not because I'm great, but because God is great and He wrote it down.
[00:51:16]  We do know the answers.
[00:51:17]  So, when I preach, it's not just the opinions and preferences of men, it's thus saith the Lord.
[00:51:23]  So, my style of preaching is confident, and there are theological reasons for that.
[00:51:27]  I think that's right.
[00:51:29]  But outside of the pulpit, when someone comes and says, Hey, I think we're going to move on, we're going to go to this other church, as long as it's somewhere in the realm of orthodoxy, it's Presbyterian.
[00:51:39]  Had people leave the church because they developed Presbyterian convictions of pedo baptism, baptizing their babies.
[00:51:44]  Well, I think we're going to go to this Presbyterian church, or I think we're going to go to this Anglican church, or I think we're going to.
[00:51:50]  That has happened dozens, dozens of times just in the last three years.
[00:51:56]  And sometimes people in the church who stay in the church who are faithful members and these get frustrated with me because I let people go too easily.
[00:52:04]  I can't believe you let them.
[00:52:05]  And I'm like, they're allowed to leave.
[00:52:07]  Right.
[00:52:07]  Like church membership means something.
[00:52:09]  I don't want to make it mean nothing.
[00:52:10]  It's not trivial or trite, it means something.
[00:52:13]  But the church membership covenant, it is a covenant, but it is not on par or the same degree of covenant as a marriage covenant.
[00:52:22]  Right.
[00:52:22]  You're allowed to leave.
[00:52:23]  So, one, we all have one wife.
[00:52:26]  Two, people leave.
[00:52:28]  That's a huge difference.
[00:52:30]  Yeah.
[00:52:30]  Right.
[00:52:30]  They leave and with relative ease, frequently and easily, people leave our churches.
[00:52:38]  That would be another big difference.
[00:52:40]  And then the third thing that I would just throw in there is I'm not a millionaire.
[00:52:46]  Are you a millionaire?
[00:52:47]  Nope.
[00:52:47]  Are you a millionaire?

=== Cult Stigma and Membership Meaning (08:05) ===

[00:52:49]  How many jets do you guys have?
[00:52:50]  Euro.
[00:52:52]  Yeah.
[00:52:52]  So for the troll, who probably didn't make it this far, but if there's a troll or two that made it this far, and they're like, well, you guys, well, you're hypocrites.
[00:53:00]  You're talking about this cult Scientology, but you're a part of the patriarchy cult, or you're a part of the post mill cult, or you're a part, grow up, get a life, and you don't know what the heck you're talking about, respectfully.
[00:53:12]  These, just for the record, these jeans, if someone does an audit of my clothing audit, this is a $10 shirt from Ross.
[00:53:19]  This is a $50.
[00:53:20]  $15 pair of jeans I bought from Costco.
[00:53:22]  It's actually the first pair of jeans I bought from Costco.
[00:53:23]  Costco actually has great clothes.
[00:53:25]  They're durable.
[00:53:25]  They do.
[00:53:27]  I saw a meme that talks about it was like when you finally realize you're old enough to buy Costco clothes without shame.
[00:53:32]  And it's like, it is time.
[00:53:33]  It is time.
[00:53:34]  Yeah.
[00:53:35]  So I'm very proud to be sporting the new $15 Costco jeans.
[00:53:39]  So good job.
[00:53:39]  They're, dude, they're flannels.
[00:53:41]  Yeah.
[00:53:42]  Like two of my favorite flannels, which, you know, I'm a 30, you know, mid 30s, you know, white male with a beard.
[00:53:49]  So naturally, half of my wardrobe is flannels.
[00:53:52]  Yeah, my two best ones are from Costco.
[00:53:54]  They like they just they're like the flannel that will never die.
[00:53:58]  They're thick.
[00:53:59]  Yeah.
[00:53:59]  And they last.
[00:54:00]  Yeah.
[00:54:00]  Well, I will say I will say this in regards to, you know, those.
[00:54:03]  I mean, cult a lot of times now just tends to be a pejorative.
[00:54:06]  It's like anything that I don't like.
[00:54:08]  Exactly.
[00:54:08]  That's why I wanted to bring it up here at the end.
[00:54:10]  Even a secondary issue of, you know, a staunch disagreement.
[00:54:13]  So people have said, oh, are you going to talk about the charismatic cult?
[00:54:16]  Right.
[00:54:16]  You know, and it's like, no, okay, there are elements of hyper charismatic that can be cultish.
[00:54:21]  We can talk about the prosperity gospel as a heresy.
[00:54:23]  Right.
[00:54:23]  But not every charismatic.
[00:54:25]  Falls under the banner of the prosperity gospel.
[00:54:27]  Right, right.
[00:54:28]  And so a lot of times they'll use cult as just sort of this emotional impact pejorative.
[00:54:32]  And that has to do with that we're dealing with the nature of language in general in a postmodern culture where words aren't based in the inherent meaning of what they and the etymology of what they actually are.
[00:54:44]  Words are basically conformed to how it makes you feel.
[00:54:47]  Right.
[00:54:47]  And so when that's the root etymology, is your, you're the, the here and there of your emotions.
[00:54:52]  And so many ways, like I said, the word cult is the pejorative, just something I don't like.
[00:54:57]  Right.
[00:54:58]  Cause I had people, even as I was, I was announcing this, we're going to do this series, you know, I had people on YouTube, you know, saying, as we did some preview videos and saying, like, are you going to cover, you know, You're covering 10 different cults.
[00:55:08]  Are you going to cover one of the most deadly and dangerous and quickly growing cults, the cult of Calvinism?
[00:55:14]  You know, oh, yeah.
[00:55:15]  And it's funny, like, so stuff like that, you know, so like saying exactly what you said, it's a pejorative.
[00:55:19]  So saying, well, you're a part of a cult.
[00:55:22]  No, there are actual criteria to define.
[00:55:26]  Cults are definable, definitive criteria to define cult versus a major world religion.
[00:55:36]  Like, for instance, Islam is not a cult.
[00:55:39]  It's wrong.
[00:55:40]  But there is a difference between a cult and a major world religion, even if the major world religion happens to be a false religion.
[00:55:48]  So, yeah, just saying it's a cult, it's the same as, you know, that's just what people do now with language.
[00:55:52]  So, like saying that you're a racist or saying that you're anti Semitic, you know, or what?
[00:55:56]  Like, I saw a meme the other day on Twitter.
[00:55:58]  I thought it was hilarious.
[00:55:59]  It was Bane from Batman.
[00:56:03]  And it was like the line, but the words are changed slightly.
[00:56:06]  The guy is looking at Bane and says, You're a racist, bigoted, anti Semite.
[00:56:13]  And it shows Bane, and he likes to hold him by the clone.
[00:56:15]  He says, And you think this gives you power over me?
[00:56:18]  Do you feel like you're on charge here?
[00:56:21]  Yeah, dude.
[00:56:22]  Do you think this gives you power over me?
[00:56:25]  He's like, Who cares?
[00:56:27]  Like the Donald Trump, you know, like response.
[00:56:29]  He's like, Who cares?
[00:56:31]  Yeah.
[00:56:31]  Like that's the response.
[00:56:32]  Like, honestly, if somebody calls you racist today, 99% of the time, you can biblically and appropriately, in a God, a Christ honoring way, respond by saying, Who cares?
[00:56:43]  Because you're not actually a racist.
[00:56:45]  It's not to say, in the objective sense, that you shouldn't care about racism.
[00:56:49]  It's just to say, no, you're lying.
[00:56:51]  I'm not actually a racist, not by any objective, definable measure.
[00:56:55]  That word has no meaning anymore, not because I ruined it, but because you emptied it of its meaning.
[00:57:02]  You're literally just using it as a pejorative to dismiss the truth of scripture that I'm preaching.
[00:57:07]  And so when you call me a racist, no, it does not.
[00:57:10]  I don't lose a moment of sleep.
[00:57:13]  I do not feel bad.
[00:57:15]  It does not give you power over me.
[00:57:18]  I'm going to, according to your definition of racism, I am going to racist even harder from here on out.
[00:57:24]  So, all that being said, no, Christianity, to stop making it just personally about us, let's broaden it now.
[00:57:31]  Christianity is not a cult.
[00:57:33]  Right.
[00:57:34]  Yeah.
[00:57:34]  And also, I'll give like two examples, Andrew, I can give you maybe your thoughts on it too.
[00:57:39]  So, one would be just a small microcosm, look at like Apologia and just, you know, I've known, like, I've had a relationship with Jeff Turban that goes back, you know, 20 plus years, like, even pre Apologia.
[00:57:49]  And it's funny just because I've just known him for who he is.
[00:57:53]  So I have just this disconnect from the perception that someone has who's seen him on YouTube.
[00:57:59]  But within our congregation, I think whenever there's been somebody who comes in who's starstruck, who has that, and again, it's not just our church or Apologia or Response Ministries.
[00:58:12]  I think just the nature of social media in general is that we tend to create a perception of somebody.
[00:58:20]  Through the avatar of themselves that we perceive through the realm of social media.
[00:58:24]  So, someone comes in and they see Jeff is just like, wow, this amazing superhuman celebrity pastor and all this stuff, these preconceptions that are made through social media.
[00:58:36]  There's probably preconceptions that people would have about us regarding that.
[00:58:40]  But anybody who's ever come in because of that, we've always been there.
[00:58:44]  We've always had a lot of reservations, being kind of like, okay, let's have you just simmer down a little bit.
[00:58:51]  Right.
[00:58:51]  And I think one of the things I've noticed is that those.
[00:58:55]  And this is probably indicative of churches elsewhere's.
[00:58:58]  Those who have sort of looked up to Jeff or other pastors in our church as sort of this sort of notable celebrity like figure end up having the hardest time and struggling because once they're viewed without partiality,
[00:59:16]  both with men and women, whether someone is in sin and judging a situation without partiality and they're dealt with and they're confronted on something, they don't know how to handle that because all of a sudden that.
[00:59:29]  Celebrity who's made me feel good and nostalgia and on cloud nine.
[00:59:33]  And now I feel like I'm part of this grandos thing bigger than myself.
[00:59:38]  And you have, and then you're also making a misconception of even what the church is.
[00:59:44]  This is a body of people in covenant community with very different backgrounds.
[00:59:49]  And sometimes for you, you're going to grind in each other and bump shoulders and hurt each other and sin against one another.
[00:59:56]  And all of a sudden, when that parent, the other edge, the paradigm shift, The glass is shattered of normalcy, where you're saying you're just confronted on a particular sin, or there's somebody who, you know, unbeknownst sins against you, like two different scenarios.
[01:00:13]  All of a sudden, their paradigms are shattered and they don't know what to do with that.
[01:00:17]  And then they leave, and then later they just become embittered.
[01:00:23]  And then those are the ones who give the biggest cry of, you know, spiritual abuse and being abused because of the fact that they didn't, they had these preconceived expectations that they brought upon themselves because they saw.
[01:00:35]  The pastors is something that they are not.
[01:00:37]  So, those, so, and again, a cult mentality is that you look at the leader as this grand messianic figure.
[01:00:45]  You think about, you know, the people in North Korea who would look at Kim Jong-un or Kim Jong-un just crying and saying he's the devoted messianic leader.

=== Shattered Paradigms and Spiritual Abuse (11:54) ===

[01:00:54]  Those who do that end up having, end up being the most incompatible with a biblically based church.
[01:01:00]  So, there's that.
[01:01:02]  The other thing I'll say as far as just dealing with Christianity in general, as far as the gospel, and again, we get the stunningly original blessed.
[01:01:09]  Five years, the one star review is oh, you're just a podcast on cults hosted by a cult, thinking that they're stunningly original.
[01:01:15]  It's like, oh, wow, you put so much intellectual thought into that.
[01:01:18]  That's okay.
[01:01:20]  I thought it's time for me to throw in the towel.
[01:01:22]  We had a good run.
[01:01:23]  We're done.
[01:01:24]  That's basically your ace of spades on us.
[01:01:26]  No, well, here's the distinction between Christian, biblical Christianity, and every other false religion, and particularly cult, is that they're always based in a private, esoteric revelation, private experience.
[01:01:40]  You see this with L. Ron Hubbard.
[01:01:42]  You're going to see it with Charles Taze Russell, which we're going to talk about, and also Joseph Smith, that we'll continue to talk about.
[01:01:48]  You will see all of these, and specifically in this example, L. Ron Hubbard was this private, internal, esoteric experience by how I came to knowledge about everything that's depicted in Dianetics and about Xenu and the fact that we are operating Thetans.
[01:02:04]  This all was internally verified, where you are looking, the paraphrase of Odie Bacham, you're looking at an external revelation, an external standard, a reliable collection of historical documents that was written.
[01:02:16]  By eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.
[01:02:19]  It was a public accounting and a public record.
[01:02:22]  That's the account that Paul makes when Jesus rose from the dead.
[01:02:25]  He said, Hey, we've had 500 people who saw him.
[01:02:28]  We have 500 people who saw him.
[01:02:30]  Some have passed away, some are falling asleep, but hey, some are still alive.
[01:02:33]  You can go downstairs.
[01:02:34]  There's, there's, you know, this is, you know, a thing I'll bring to the modern day.
[01:02:38]  Like, hey, there's, we've got some friends over in Austin.
[01:02:41]  Let's go talk to them.
[01:02:43]  They'll talk to you about where they saw him last Friday.
[01:02:46]  We've got somebody over here who saw him over here.
[01:02:48]  And so that's really what you had a very openly, publicly verified historical account of a public record.
[01:02:56]  That's independently verified by those who are followers of Christ, but even independent historians like Josephus.
[01:03:03]  Whereas you have other areas where it's private esoteric revelation.
[01:03:08]  That's one of the reasons why the first battle that Christians came in contact with was the Gnostics.
[01:03:13]  They were public enemy number one because all of their spirituality came from secret gnosis, secret power.
[01:03:23]  And again, there's nothing new under the sun.
[01:03:26]  Scientology sort of had that modernity.
[01:03:28]  We figured out something else that no one else has done before.
[01:03:31]  No, this is just, they were first century had probably a lot of different L. Ron Hubbards that were doing this, that, and the other.
[01:03:38]  And that's what Christians were doing in the first century.
[01:03:40]  And, you know, once if Scientology dwindled away and crumbled tomorrow, you would see it fragment and you would see it syncretize and re syncretize.
[01:03:49]  There will be cult leaders who might take, in the same way how L. Ron Hubbard took elements from a lot of different components, there are those who would incorporate elements of the works of Scientology.
[01:04:00]  In fact, one of the areas that was depicted in season three of Scientology The Aftermath was a blending.
[01:04:06]  Between Scientology, it was the loose Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
[01:04:09]  They actually are utilizing the Scientology curriculum now as part of how they're implementing.
[01:04:16]  So they're syncretizing.
[01:04:18]  That'd be a real life case study of those who are doing it.
[01:04:20]  So, yeah, I think that would be, generally speaking, internally, like those who view pastors as this celebrity in an improper way.
[01:04:30]  And people could do with you too.
[01:04:31]  You know, like I have misconceptions.
[01:04:32]  I thought your chair was a lot bigger.
[01:04:35]  Wait, what?
[01:04:36]  I thought the chair was bigger.
[01:04:37]  Oh, what's that one?
[01:04:39]  That's that one over there.
[01:04:40]  Okay, I was trying to make sense of it.
[01:04:41]  That's the Morpheus chair.
[01:04:43]  Yeah, welcome to the desert real.
[01:04:45]  But yeah, those are my two assessments.
[01:04:47]  But anyway, Andrew, what's the final thoughts you have?
[01:04:49]  Yeah, let me take a stab at this.
[01:04:50]  This is a fun one.
[01:04:51]  So when I'm thinking about the trope, really, that, well, you are a Christian, you are in a cult, your cult leader is Jesus, he had esoteric revelations.
[01:05:02]  Typically, when we're hearing this type of argument against us, it's coming from an atheistic materialist, right?
[01:05:09]  So the first question I have for them is, What does that matter, anyways?
[01:05:13]  Right.
[01:05:14]  So, and then my other question would be according to your standards, let me put the shoe back on your foot.
[01:05:19]  So, let's take Steve Hassan's bite model, for example, which is behavior control, information control, thought control, emotion control.
[01:05:26]  Let me apply that standard to post modern atheistic agnostic experience in the world today.
[01:05:32]  Behavior control.
[01:05:32]  So, how are you supposed to act?
[01:05:34]  Where do you learn to grow up?
[01:05:35]  What's your epistemology?
[01:05:36]  So, how do you have a justification for the knowledge that you have?
[01:05:38]  What are you learning?
[01:05:39]  So, let's think about that.
[01:05:41]  In regards to a cult, what I believe is that there is truth.
[01:05:45]  There is objective truth.
[01:05:46]  And the atheist doesn't like that because if there's objective truth, then there's objective judgment for sin, which is transgression against the law of God.
[01:05:51]  And there's wrath that is coming for wrong actions against that God.
[01:05:56]  But when I'm thinking in terms of atheism, behavior control.
[01:05:59]  So when you're going to your government schools, what are you learning, right?
[01:06:02]  Oh, you are part of a random chance explosion that came from nothing without actually good evidence for it.
[01:06:09]  But you were once a fish, right?
[01:06:11]  That protoplasm, fish to philosopher.
[01:06:14]  Today.
[01:06:15]  So, within that framework, you have your own different set of presuppositions about what humanity is and who you are, right?
[01:06:23]  So, once you get out of that framework, see me, I'm a biblical creationist.
[01:06:27]  I say, no, the world was created in six days because that's what God says.
[01:06:31]  Well, I'm not allowed to think that according to you.
[01:06:33]  So, you already have some type of information, thought, and behavior control because you have a different set of presuppositions than I do.
[01:06:39]  I'd say that the atheistic cult is the cult of Darwin in a cult of scientism.
[01:06:45]  So, I would argue using the same standard that you are also in a cult.
[01:06:49]  But then let's stack up against each other the wrongs that these cults have done, right?
[01:06:53]  So, within biblical Christianity, I have the standard of God's word that says, Thou shall not murder, okay?
[01:06:59]  It is wrong to kill people.
[01:07:01]  Within the cult of atheistic Darwinianism, there is nothing wrong with killing in general, right?
[01:07:08]  You can't have a justification for it.
[01:07:09]  It's just one person doing something wrong against another.
[01:07:12]  There's no moral accountability for it.
[01:07:13]  There's no such thing as morals in the first place because they're transcendental, they're not material.
[01:07:19]  But in regards to our death count, let's think about the fruit of the atheistic worldview.
[01:07:23]  We've got Mao, we've got Stalin, and guess what?
[01:07:26]  We have the same people who call Christianity a cult who are redefining what life is in the womb and killing babies before they're ever even born.
[01:07:34]  And what's the death count?
[01:07:34]  I think the last time I looked at the world abortion meter, it's somewhere upwards in between, I think it's like 1.6 to 1.7 billion humans have been slaughtered in the womb because there's people who seek to redefine what life is and they kill them before they even exist.
[01:07:49]  That's called genocide.
[01:07:50]  But Andrew, the Crusades, all of them combined.
[01:07:53]  Killed almost 50,000 people.
[01:07:57]  Right?
[01:07:57]  Like, I mean, you know, like, I think it was like maybe 30 something thousand Muslims were killed and all the crusades combined over the course of multiple centuries.
[01:08:06]  So, Christianity is really, really icky, you know?
[01:08:09]  Like, we're talking about tens of thousands of people, you know?
[01:08:12]  And over here with the atheistic Darwinian view, it's only a little, you know, a shade above a billion.
[01:08:18]  Right.
[01:08:19]  I mean, it's insane that this conversation even.
[01:08:23]  Happens on a regular basis.
[01:08:25]  It continues.
[01:08:26]  I mean, in the ironies, it just shows how much more education we need.
[01:08:32]  How little we know about history, how little, how ignorant, because atheists tend to pride themselves in being educated, but they're so uneducated.
[01:08:42]  Historically, they don't.
[01:08:44]  Christianity on its worst day, like Christendom, I mean, whoever your bad arch villain of Christendom was, take Constantine, take whoever it is, like Christianity.
[01:08:58]  Throughout history, with all the documentation, all the records, on its very worst day, cannot even come close to the best day of a secular humanist, you know, nation, ruler.
[01:09:12]  Like, I mean, goodness gracious, if it was a contest, like we are of who can kill the most people, we are losing by, you know, by almost an infinite chasm.
[01:09:24]  You just don't understand history.
[01:09:26]  I think that's a big part of it is like, okay, atheists, like, that's great.
[01:09:29]  You're studying biology and you're, you know, poorly, you know, but.
[01:09:32]  Studying physics, studying quantum physics, whatever it might be, but you certainly don't understand the history of the human race.
[01:09:39]  Yeah.
[01:09:40]  And going back to like Judaism, real quick, if we were to think about someone to argue, well, Christianity is a cult of Judaism, well, we have to go back even to Genesis 3.
[01:09:47]  There's the promise of the Messiah to come.
[01:09:49]  They're always looking forward to the one individual who would be that true prophet, Deuteronomy 18.
[01:09:53]  And the argument from Jesus is that he is that fulfillment of that true prophet, right?
[01:09:58]  He says to the Pharisees, if you believed the words of Moses, you'd believe in me because Moses wrote about me.
[01:10:02]  John the Baptist echoed, He who comes after me is better than me because he came before me.
[01:10:07]  He existed before me, who is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
[01:10:11]  So, in regards to what we believe about the Messiah, he's the fulfillment of Judaism.
[01:10:15]  He is Jesus Christ, and there's an empty tomb, and he defeated death.
[01:10:18]  Christianity is objectively true.
[01:10:20]  And when you actually argue against him, you argue against the very grounds of logic and justification and uniformity of nature.
[01:10:28]  Like, it's just that's just the reality of it.
[01:10:30]  And you can't actually have an argument.
[01:10:31]  So, right.
[01:10:32]  And it really is a consistent thread.
[01:10:34]  When you look at the Old Testament and you go straight through the New Testament, it's just this one consistent thread.
[01:10:41]  Because I think a lot of people, in terms of Christianity and Judaism, they think Christianity is a cultish offshoot of Judaism.
[01:10:50]  But the reality is, no, this is just the consistent fulfillment.
[01:10:53]  The offshoot is Talmudic Judaism.
[01:10:56]  Talmudic Judaism is not like people think Christianity is Old Testament plus New Testament, and then Judaism is Old Testament only.
[01:11:06]  No, Talmudic Judaism has its New Testament, it has its, you know, It's an extra book.
[01:11:13]  It's not just the Old Testament only.
[01:11:15]  It's the Old Testament plus the Talmud, which interprets the Old Testament, but really just the way to think about modern Judaism today is the same way you should, very similar to how you would think about Mormonism.
[01:11:29]  So it's like, well, but Mormons have the Bible.
[01:11:30]  They just have an extra book.
[01:11:32]  Yeah, but that extra book unwrites all the Bible.
[01:11:35]  Yep.
[01:11:35]  That's what the Talmud does with the Old Testament.
[01:11:37]  So it's not, well, you know, Judaism, it can't be that bad because it's half of the Christian faith or two thirds.
[01:11:43]  You know, they got the Old Testament, we got the Old Testament plus the New.
[01:11:46]  No, we have the Old Testament and we read it very much in light of the New.
[01:11:51]  The New helps provide those lenses that help us to see all the rich treasures and prophecies and promises of the Old Testament.
[01:12:00]  And they have their New Testament that works as a lens to read the Old Testament too.
[01:12:03]  Except their lens, our lens is the New Testament, which is the gospel and apostolic account of Christ.
[01:12:10]  Jesus is our lens for reading the Old Testament.
[01:12:13]  And they have a lens also, the Talmud, but it is a demonic lens.
[01:12:18]  Our lens is Christ.
[01:12:20]  And their lens is demonic and it causes them.
[01:12:24]  So it's not that they have half of the truth.
[01:12:26]  The half that they have, the Torah, the Old Testament, has all been twisted by the Talmud.
[01:12:32]  And so not only is Christianity not an offshoot cult of Judaism, modern Judaism, Talmudic Judaism, is actually an offshoot cult of the actual Old Testament and the Word of God.

=== Demonic Lens and Series Conclusion (00:56) ===

[01:12:49]  Amen.
[01:12:50]  All right.
[01:12:50]  Well, thank you guys for that.
[01:12:51]  That was a long one, but thanks for tuning in.
[01:12:53]  And.
[01:12:54]  Yeah, we will hit you with the next few episodes.
[01:12:57]  This is a part of a 10 part series.
[01:12:58]  It might become an 11 part series.
[01:13:00]  I don't know.
[01:13:00]  We'll see.
[01:13:01]  But yeah, tune in.
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[01:13:16]  God bless.
[01:13:17]  Real quick before you go, we hope that you enjoyed the episode and we hope that you're eager for more.
[01:13:22]  However, as I already said, these will be slow dripping out over the course of weeks and even a few weeks.
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