Episode 29 – Two Men and a Mic Podcast: Cults 2

Two Men and a Mic Podcast - By Erik Smith Christianity

Cults 2

In Cults 2, we discuss the second part on cults.

Comments From Previous Comments from #26

In reply to JL.

This podcast was a bit absurd and I have to admit, I didn’t listen all the way through. I agree with you that Christian pride is a negative thing but there were several things in this episode that were just not good. This wasn’t a good episode but it showed that these guys are legit. They are sinful, imperfect humans who are learning everyday just like we all are.

I find disagreements to be refreshing. Not when they are fights or arguments but when they lead to understanding someone else’s point of view. I, personally am guilty as charged and know that I have even been mistaken for getting upset or angry when I’m disagreeing with someone because I get more passionate, oftentimes even loud with my dispute/disagreement; however, not angry. I really try to curb my loudness but it just happens. While the disagreement may be frustrating to hear, if we are open minded, we can take the information away and think about it and learn from it. It doesn’t mean we have to even agree with the other viewpoint but it gives us insight.

Issues in the Church

There are so many issues that are dividing our churches right now that it is reaching outside of the actual building and into our communities. It is making Christians look crazy and turning people away from Jesus which, no matter how you cut it, is our ULTIMATE goal. When I discuss being judgmental with others, I try to be the best example I can be. Again, I am also a sinful, imperfect human who has to learn everyday, but I try to show my true love for people as Jesus commanded us to “love one another”. And, yes, that means all the people no one else wants to love.

The murderers, the thieves, the liars (this is, truly, the MOST difficult for me), the judgmental people who claim to be “Christians”, homosexual folks, transgendered folks, people who are on all angles of what they believe and how crazy I must be to believe in all this “Jesus stuff”…I WANT to judge some of them! But I do my best not to do that. And I try to be an example to others on how not to judge either. Though, I must admit…if I see someone with bad shoes and it isn’t a financial issue, judge I must. We are ALL sinners and no sin is better/worse than another. (Does God consider bad shoes a sin like I do? Maybe I need to talk to Him about that…)

Compliments

Ultimately, I think these guys do very well MOST OF THE TIME…this episode was DEFINITELY the exception and it was such a cluster that I bowed out early because I couldn’t even keep up but I think just the fact that they are able to move forward in love shows us a great example of forgiveness and acceptance of one another’s sins.

Great to hear other folks and their insight as well…it only makes them better. “Iron sharpens iron…” Onward and Upward!

Be Blessed, Guys!

t

Comments From Previous Comments from #28

This is a fascinating topic to me…I need to have my two cents on these.

YOU NEED TO GO DEEPER INTO THESE! Don’t be so surface with this stuff! This is important stuff! People are too easily swayed by “the right words”…and too many of these cults exist. Some that people don’t realize are cults even.

Worldwide Church of God that was founded by Herbert W. Armstrong https://g.co/kgs/Lxi3zE

Mormonism founded by Joseph Smith https://g.co/kgs/EcMHwo

Fundamental Mormonism an incredibly skewed off-shoot of Mormonism founded by Lorin C. Woolley https://g.co/kgs/2KVsux

Jehovah’s Witness founded by Charles Taze Russell https://www.jw.org/en/

And there are many more…I can provide you with as many as you would like but these would be of major interest to me and I’m sure MANY more.

This Week in the News

Golden State Killer

Once again, our good friends at Coast to Coast AM reported this story.

Through exhaustive research of case files and interviews, Keith Komos has meticulously chronicled the brutal crimes committed by arguably the most elusive serial killer of the twentieth century – a psychopath and predator so steeped in criminal culture and law enforcement that a suspect has only just been arrested – some forty years after his infamous spree.

The suspect was dubbed the “Golden State Killer” by the press. In the first half, Komos described his experience in the technology field to apply modern scientific techniques to help resolve cold cases, and those used to catch suspect Joseph DeAngelo. One of the main tools used to track DeAngelo was DNA evidence, which Komos indicated has advanced to the point that it can “now show actual visual characteristics of the person you’re looking for. This, combined with more classic police techniques, contributed to the arrest.

A Police Officer!

DeAngelo was a police officer for part of the duration of his alleged crimes, and Komos remarked that this definitely kept him from being caught, since he would adapt his techniques to stay ahead of law enforcement. The accused killer had a stint in the Navy and raised a family.

Komos said that two of DeAngelo’s three children are currently cooperating with the investigation. The suspect would sometimes call his victims before and after his crimes, in one case, some 25 years after the fact, and showing military training, was reported to prowl a victim’s home for hours. Many of the events in the timeline of DeAngelo’s life and the crimes of the suspect match up favorably, said Komos. He added that the suspect “got off on control and the fear he could instill in his victims.”

GQ Says the Bible Is Overrated. Here’s What They Got Right.

Patheos reported the following by DAVID RUPERT.

GQ Magazine recently ran an article called, “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read.”

They roll through some of the classics that people pretend to like, but the editors have found reasons to dislike.

Lonesome Dove is taken down for it’s “cowboy mythos.”

The Catcher in the Rye is called a “waste of adolescent’s time.”

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is called “tedious” and “meandering.”

Lord of the Rings is “barely readable” as is Gulliver’s Travels

For some, these are fighting words.

But there are other books that thrown into the pit that we might all agree on, like the Keith Richards memoir, Life. Or Slaughterhouse Five.

But in the middle of this list is a curious choice. The Holy Bible.

Here’s the narrative that accompanied the selection.

“The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it. Those who have read it know there are some good parts, but overall it is certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced. It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned. …..Jesse Ball, ‘Census’”

They are right. There’s a disconnect.

Here’s what Jesse Ball gets right. There is a huge disconnect between those who claim to be people of The Book and yet have never read it. Our biblical literacy is plummeting. The pastors in the pulpit who ask the congregation to turn to a passage while he reads it are far and few between. Instead, they project a verse or two on the screen.

I remember flipping pages, trying to keep up. “Joel. Amos. Obadiah. There, got it.” And I used the acrostic Gentiles Eat Pork Chops to remember Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.

But beyond flipping pages, it’s obvious the writer is correct. We don’t know our Bible. Just look at the rush from the pulpits to embrace gay marriage and such concepts as ‘everyone goes to heaven’ because ‘God is love.’ Newly created views on hell, sin, humanity, and Jesus himself become social causes and fads that sweep up believers at an alarming rate.

We aren’t reading the book we claim to contain truth!

According to Christianity Today, a LifeWay Researchstudy “found only 45 percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week. And a little more than 40 percent of the people attending read their Bible occasionally, maybe once or twice a month. Almost 1 in 5 churchgoers say they never read the Bible.”

And if we aren’t reading our Bible, then where does Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, and the Good Samaritan fit in our cultural lexicon. Are they just fantastical stories, or are they part of a mythos like Superman, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the Hunger Games.

The culture is biblically ignorant, just watch the show, “Living Biblically” for a lesson on that. (see my article hereabout the show) They think its a book of rules for another time and place instead of a book about a relationship.

Just look at history

Some have used the Bible in unbiblical ways. We all recognize that — crosses on iron chests, swords slaying the unbeliever. People taking the book and pounding societies and peoples into submission. I acknowledge those deeds if you will acknowledge that billions of lives throughout history have been changed for the better because of its words.

GQ gets it wrong in simply calling it a book of literature. Sure it’s not always consistent with its phraseology, its literary value, or its images. It counts dozens of authors over a span of thousands of years. From an English professor perspective, it might be overrated.

But ask the history teacher. The Bible has been censored for thousands of years. Leaders have seen its value in changing lives and have consistently tried to minimize it or eliminate it altogether.

There’s a reason for that. The Bible ultimately points believers to an authority higher than government and gives answers that have stood the test of time. It has changed billions of lives over the centuries and continues to do so today.

And for this reason alone, it’s not overrated. However, it would be even more powerful if we actually start to live it.

7 conspiracy theories that are actually true

by PAUL RATNER

Conspiracy theories are generally relegated to the fringes of society, considered to be beliefs that are unsupported by evidence but that make very big claims about reality. A conspiracy theorist says that what you think you know is not how it really is, and most likely, there’s some nefarious group that is actually ruling your life and arranging events in the world.

Most of the conspiracy theories do turn out to be patently untrue and created by the insecurities of people who feel they lack of control over their lives, as says Professor Galinsky. He studied conspiracy theories and found a connection between the feeling of lacking control and a propensity to believe in outlandish tales that may somehow explain why your life is not the way you want it to be.

But are there times when conspiracy theories actually do pan out and are, in essence, true? While nothing that has truly shaken the foundations of our societies has recently been uncovered, there have been times when suspicions of conspiracies were proven correct. Here are 7 such instances that involve the favorite topic of conspirators – the government:

1. The government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition and killed thousands –

a classic government-centric conspiracy maintains that the government is not telling us the full truth and often does dangerous things to enforce its power over us. One strange and deadly episode of American history can provide much fuel to such a fire. In the saga of the American attempt to prohibit alcohol consumption that began with the passage of the 18th amendment in 1919, a little-known story emerged that when the efforts to prohibit alcohol sales and consumption were failing, the government attempted to poison the alcohol supply in order to convince people to stop drinking.

While there are nuances to this story, it is generally true that from even before Prohibition started the government encouraged manufacturers to add dangerous chemicals to industrial alcohol in order to make it undrinkable. When this practice was combined with the explosion of an unregulated black market for alcohol under Prohibition, thousands of Americans died as a result of a vicious cycle of bootleggers trying to find new ways to purify and resell industrial alcohol for drinking and the government ordering the addition of more and more dangerous chemicals like kerosene to the mix. While the government cannot be exclusively blamed here, it is true that its policy contributed to the deaths.

2. The government is trying to control your mind –

it would certainly make the government’s job easier if it could directly tell its subjects what to do and no shortage of rulers have tried to do just that. But is the government actively trying to tell you what to think? While that may not be true on a large scale, there is evidence that the government has attempted to do just that.

There was a CIA-run program called MK-ULTRA that from 1953 until the late 1960s involved experimentation on subjects using the hallucinogenic drug LSD. While the program was first using volunteers, it had offshoots like the “Operation Midnight Climax”, whereby the CIA for eight years had prostitutes drug unsuspecting clients with LSD who would then be monitored via two-way mirrors by field agents. With most of the records from the program destroyed by now, it’s hard to know the full extent of the government’s attempt to control minds but the precedent is certainly there.

3. The government is spying on you –

while they may not be looking into every single person individually, rest assured the government is aware of your existence and is not above taking a look at your Facebook profile. In 2017, Facebook received 78,890 information requests from governments around the world, with 41% of those coming from the U.S., which saw 85% of such requests granted. The government is also making similar requests of Google, Apple and other companies that don’t even reveal they are being asked this information.

4. The government is spying on the media –

the extent of this is not entirely clear but it seems true that the government is very much interested in creating a database of media outlets and social media influencers as well as their political leanings. This has been revealed recently in a posting by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security which was looking for contractors to create just such a system.

It would feature “24/7 Access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc,” says the posting. The database would also have the “ability to analyze the media coverage in terms of content, volume, sentiment, geographical spread, top publications, media channels, reach, AVE, top posters, influencers, languages, momentum, circulation.”

5. The government lied to get the country involved in wars –

take your pick on this conspiracy. The government lies? You don’t say. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is one example where the U.S. military used a supposed attack by the North Vietnamese on the American naval ship “Maddox” on August 2nd, 1964, as a pretext for escalating the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The only problem – no such attack ever happened, according to even to the former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.

And who can forget Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2013 speech at the U.N., showing us charts of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs – “weapons of mass destruction”. No weapons like that were ever found among his stockpiles even after the Iraq War, which claimed thousands of American and millions of Iraqi lives.

6. The government knows where the aliens are –

ok, we don’t know exactly what the Feds know about this issue but we do know they have been interested in it for a while (despite years of denial) and actually had a program as recently as 2011 that was looking for UFOs. It was reported that a five-year initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was gathering video and audio footage of possible UFOs and building storage facilities to contain any alien materials recovered.

While the Pentagon denies that any such efforts are continuing, Luis Elizondo who ran the program, says it’s definitely still going on.

7. The government can control the weather –

we don’t know how much of this it cares to do but we know that the government can, to some extent, influence the weather. During the Vietnam War, the CIA would seed the clouds in monsoon season to make it rain even more. The goal of this tactic, which was in use between 1967 and 1972, was to wash out roadways and provoke bad landslides that would prevent the North Vietnamese troops from moving their weapons and provisions, says this CIA blog.

Cults 2

The Church of Latter Day Saints

In more than half of the states in the U.S., Mormonism is the fastest-growing religion.
Although Mormons consider their church to a restorationist movement within Christianity (they believe the Great Apostasy occurred between the time of the New Testament church and it’s restoration under Joseph Smith).

Who is Joseph Smith Jr.

Joseph Smith Jr. (Founder of the Mormons was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817, he had moved with his family to what became known as the burned-over district of western New York, an area of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw “two personages” (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization.

In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called “Latter Day Saints”, or “Mormons”, and in 1838, Smith announced a revelation that renamed the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Smith’s Vision

Smith claimed to have received a vision that resolved his religious confusion.] In 1820, while praying in a wooded area near his home, he said that God, in a vision, had told him his sins were forgiven and that all contemporary churches had “turned aside from the gospel”

Smith said he received golden plates from the angel Moroni.

According to his later accounts, Smith was visited by an angel named Moroni, while praying on September 22, 1823. Smith said that this angel revealed the location of a buried book made of golden plates, as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of interpreters composed of two seer stones set in a frame, which had been hidden in at the Hill Cumorah near his home.

Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning, but was unsuccessful because the angel returned and prevented him. Smith reported that during the next four years, he made annual visits to the hill, but each time returned without the plates.

According to Latter Day Saint belief, the golden plates (also called the gold plates or in some 19th-century literature, the golden bible) is the source from which Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon, a sacred text of the faith. Some witnesses described the plates as weighing from 30 to 60 pounds (14 to 27 kg), being golden in color and being composed of thin metallic pages engraved on both sides and bound with three D-shaped rings.

Plates

Smith said he found the plates, at a Hill, near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. Smith said the angel at first prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. In September 1827, on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve the plates, Smith returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box.

Though he allowed others to heft the box, he said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original “reformed Egyptian” language. Smith dictated the text of the Book of Mormon over the next several years, claiming that it was a translation of the plates. He did so by using a seer stone, which he placed in the bottom of a hat and then placed the hat over his face to view the words written within the stone. Smith published the translation in 1830 as the Book of Mormon.

Smith eventually obtained testimonies from eleven men, known as the Book of Mormon witnesses, who said they had seen the plates. After the translation was complete, Smith said he returned the plates to the angel Moroni. Therefore, the plates cannot be examined. Latter Day Saints believe the account of the golden plates as a matter of faith, and critics often assert that either Smith manufactured the plates himself[7] or that the Book of Mormon witnesses based their testimony on visions rather than physical experience

What it Teaches

The Book of Mormon teaches that only fools say the Bible is sufficient and that other scripture is not needed (“Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible.” (2 Nephi 29:6)). The Book of Mormon contains many linguistic similarities to the King James Bible, including entire passages duplicated word-for-word. For example, the Book of Mormon contains 19 chapters of the King James translation of Isaiah in their entirety.

The actual teaching on the Holy books from the Mormon church website

We, the Latter-day Saints, take the liberty of believing more than our Christian brethren: we not only believe … the Bible, but … the whole of the plan of salvation that Jesus has given to us. Do we differ from others who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? No, only in believing more. Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F.D. Richards & Sons, 1851–86), 13:56

To be sure, we love the Bible. We cherish its sacred teachings and delight in reading and teaching it. We seek to conform our lives to its marvelous precepts. But we do not believe that the Bible contains all that God has spoken or will yet speak in the future.

Occasionally we hear certain Latter-day Saint teachings — like some of those concerning the Savior that I have detailed earlier — described as “unbiblical” or of a particular doctrine being “contradictory” to the Bible. Let’s be clear on this matter. The Bible is one of the books within our standard works, our scriptural canon, and thus our doctrines and practices are in harmony with the Bible.

There are times, of course, when latter-day revelation provides clarification of additional information to the Bible. But addition to the canon is hardly the same as rejection of the canon. Supplementation is not the same as contradiction. All of the prophets, including the Savior Himself, brought new light and knowledge to the world; in many cases, new scripture came as a result of their ministry. That new scripture did not invalidate what went before nor did it close the door on subsequent revelation.

The Belief

One tradition is that John the Beloved, aware of the teaching of the synoptics, prepared his Gospel in an effort to “fill in the gaps” and thus deal more with the great spiritual verities that his evangelistic colleagues chose not to include. How many people in the Christian tradition today would suggest that what Matthew or Luke did in adding to what Mark had written was illegal or inappropriate or irreverent? Do we suppose that anyone in the first century would have so felt?

The Gospels

If Luke (in the Gospel, as well as in Acts) or John chose to write of subsequent appearance of the Lord Jesus after His ascension into heaven, appearances not found in Mark or Matthew, are we prone to criticize, to cry foul?.

The Bible does in fact contain much that can and should guide our walk and talk; it contains the word and will of the Lord to men and women in earlier ages, and its timeless truths have tremendous normative value for our day. But we do not derive authority to speak or act in the name of Deity on the basis of what God gave to His people in an earlier day.

Just how bold is the Latter-day Saint claim? In a letter to his uncle Silas, Joseph Smith wrote the following:

Perhaps you may be surprised at this assertion that I should say ‘for the salvation of his creatures in these last days’ since we have already in our possession a vast volume of his word [the Bible] which he has previously given.

But you will admit that the word spoken to Noah was not sufficient or Abraham. … Isaac, the promised seed, was not required to rest his hope upon the promises made to his father Abraham, but was privileged with the assurance of [God’s] approbation in the sight of heaven by the direct voice of the Lord to him.

There is a possibility that Enoch walked with God. However, I may believe that Abraham communed with God and conversed with angels. … And have I not an equal privilege with the ancient saints? And will not the Lord hear my prayers, and listen to my cries as soon [as] he ever did to theirs, if I come to him in the manner they did? Or is he a respecter of persons?

Thoughts of the Mormons

Latter-day Saints feel a deep allegiance to the Bible.

Our challenge is hauntingly reminiscent of that faced by Peter, James, John or Paul when they declared to the religious establishment of their day that God had sent new truths and new revelations into the world, truths that supplemented and even clarified the Hebrew scripture. And what was the response of the Jews of the day? “Who do you think you are?” they essentially asked. “We have the Law and the Prophets. They are sufficient.” Any effort to add to or to take away from that collection of sacred writings was suspect and subject to scorn and ridicule. And so it is today.

Does Not Believe

The Church of Latter Day Saints does not believe in the Trinity. Instead, Mormons believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate gods. They also believe the Father and Son each have a “body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” but that the Holy Ghost “has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.”

God the Father was once a mortal who lived on an earth. He died, was resurrected, glorified, and grew into his deified status. (According to Joseph Smith, there is a “God above the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”)

“Like most Christians, Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Creator of the World. However, Mormons hold the unique belief that God the Father and Jesus Christ are two distinct beings. Mormons believe that God and Jesus Christ are wholly united in their perfect love for us, but that each is a distinct personage with His own perfect, glorified body” (see D&C 130:22).) (LDS church website UK and Ireland)

Mormons Believe

God wanted each of us to come to earth to gain experience, learn, and grow to become more like Him. But God also knew that His children would all sin, die, and fall short of His glory. We would need a Savior to overcome our sins and imperfections and reconcile us with God.

Mormons believe that everything in the universe — including God —is ultimately governed by eternal transcendent laws and principles. In LDS teaching, all the Father’s children (including humans) possess the same potential to become gods (like the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost) since they are of the same species. Every human spirit once existed as a divine intelligence before becoming the spirit-children of the Father.

Mormons Believe 2

• Terrestial Glory — The terrestrial kingdom is for unworthy Mormons and good people who knew about Mormonism on earth but rejected it until after their death.
• Telestial Glory – The telestial realm is for wicked people who rejected Mormonism even after death. They will experience suffering and pain for their sins. It’s similar to the Christian version of Hell, only not eternal.
• Hell (Outer Darkness) – Eternal hell is for Satan, demons, and “sons of perdition” (e.g., those who deny the Holy Spirit after receiving it:).

Who is Jesus?

Jesus became the Son of God after the Father chose his plan to redeem humans over Satan’s plan,

“Satan wanted to implement a plan one that would have involved loss of moral agency. Jesus opposed Satan and offered an alternative plan.

Fundamental Mormonism:

Fundamental Mormonism different from Mormonism in two distinct ways

Fundamentalist Mormonism consists of splinter groups from Mormonism who have usually split away from the main church due to their continued practice of polygamy. These smallish groups often live in self-imposed isolated communities and often end up taking on the nature of cults.

Erik’s Final Thoughts

The greatest of all journeys is for the elusive prize.
The imponderable nucleus for the truth’s fugitive.
A scared and imperishable truth is used to explain
what is unexplained. If such a quest is revealed to you,
do not fail to seize it. If one day you can grasp the impalpable object,
the convoluted enigma can be identified.
As the treasure is within your heart
The purest truths are what desperately holds us together,
or what keeps us agonizingly and desperately apart.

The post Episode 29 – Two Men and a Mic Podcast: Cults 2 appeared first on Two Men and a Mic Podcast.