Cults are everywhere. Some are mainstream and widely accepted. Others are isolationist and hide from examination at great expense. They are growing and flourishing. Some cause great suffering while others appear very helpful and beneficial. Which ever group it is, the ultimate end is their destruction when the Lord returns to claim His own.
Religious groups are smaller movements within world religions. They have specific beliefs, practice and are generally small and have origins all over the world. These Religious Movements have no affiliation with Christianity or have moved so far away from anything related to Christianity as to be unrecognizable in having Christian Roots.
The Christian Identity Movement
The Christian Identity Movement is also known as Anglo-Isrealism, Israel Identity.
Founder: Some think it to be Wesley Swift, born in the 1800's. Others claim it can be traced back to the 1600's.
Headquarters: None.
Membership: less than 50,000. In America only.
Origins: This movement has its origins in the 1800's America where it grew in the shadow of this country’s developing and successful conquering of the American continent combined with racial prejudices. Many of the whites believed that North America was ordained by God and blessed by Him to be supreme in the world. All other racial groups were considered inferior. Early contributing movements to C.I.M. were the Nativist movement and Anglo Israelism.
Nativism was a philosophy that those not born in America (excluding American Indians) and were not Protestant, were harmful to the American System. In particular, a strong anti-catholic disposition was advocated. Manifestations of this philosophy resulted in physical persecutions of many Catholics in New York.
Anglo Israelism (also known as British Israelism) is the belief that the British and, therefore, the Americans and Canadians, are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites — the 10 lost tribes. The present Jews in Israel are really a false group descended from Cain. Identity believers usually act out their faith through social, military, and political agendas.
An early proponent of this movement, Charles Carroll, wrote a book called The Negro a Beast.He considered Negroes to be subhuman. The KKK is usually associated with this group.
Doctrines: a theological system centered on a racist/anti-Semitic and white supremacy. It seems to use religious arguments to justify political agendas.
Practices:
Structure - The movement does not have a centralized organizational structure but has groups in most every Western nation.
Recruitment - through extreme right-wing churches, survival groups, and word of mouth.
Adherents - generally are Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, Nazi Party, White Separatists groups, etc.
Texts: Old and New Testaments of the Bible; some think sections of the U.S. Constitution were divinely inspired.
Comments: True Christianity is Christ centered and focuses on love, forgiveness, and patience and is opposed to racism. However, there is none of that in the Christian Identity Movement which advocates racism and anti-Semitism. It is a dangerous group.
The Christian Identity Movement is also known as Anglo-Isrealism, Israel Identity.
Founder: Some think it to be Wesley Swift, born in the 1800's. Others claim it can be traced back to the 1600's.
Headquarters: None.
Membership: less than 50,000. In America only.
Origins: This movement has its origins in the 1800's America where it grew in the shadow of this country’s developing and successful conquering of the American continent combined with racial prejudices. Many of the whites believed that North America was ordained by God and blessed by Him to be supreme in the world. All other racial groups were considered inferior. Early contributing movements to C.I.M. were the Nativist movement and Anglo Israelism.
Nativism was a philosophy that those not born in America (excluding American Indians) and were not Protestant, were harmful to the American System. In particular, a strong anti-catholic disposition was advocated. Manifestations of this philosophy resulted in physical persecutions of many Catholics in New York.
Anglo Israelism (also known as British Israelism) is the belief that the British and, therefore, the Americans and Canadians, are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites — the 10 lost tribes. The present Jews in Israel are really a false group descended from Cain. Identity believers usually act out their faith through social, military, and political agendas.
An early proponent of this movement, Charles Carroll, wrote a book called The Negro a Beast.He considered Negroes to be subhuman. The KKK is usually associated with this group.
Doctrines: a theological system centered on a racist/anti-Semitic and white supremacy. It seems to use religious arguments to justify political agendas.
Practices:
Structure - The movement does not have a centralized organizational structure but has groups in most every Western nation.
Recruitment - through extreme right-wing churches, survival groups, and word of mouth.
Adherents - generally are Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, Nazi Party, White Separatists groups, etc.
Texts: Old and New Testaments of the Bible; some think sections of the U.S. Constitution were divinely inspired.
Comments: True Christianity is Christ centered and focuses on love, forgiveness, and patience and is opposed to racism. However, there is none of that in the Christian Identity Movement which advocates racism and anti-Semitism. It is a dangerous group.
The People's Temple
The egotistical man behind the tragedy, Jim Jones, came from humble beginnings. Jones was born on May 31, 1931, in rural Indiana. In the early 1950's, he began working as a self-ordained Christian minister in small churches around Indianapolis. In order to raise money to start a church of his own, the charismatic Jones tried various ventures, including selling live monkeys door-to-door.
Jones opened his first Peoples Temple church in Indianapolis in the mid-1950's. His congregation was racially integrated, something unusual at the time for a Midwestern church. In the mid-1960's, Jones moved his small congregation to Northern California, settling first in Redwood Valley in Mendocino County. In the early 1970's, the ambitious preacher relocated his organization’s headquarters to San Francisco and also opened a temple in Los Angeles
In San Francisco, Jones became a powerful figure. He curried favor with public officials and the media, donated money to numerous charitable causes and delivered votes for various politicians at election time. Peoples Temple ran social and medical programs for the needy, including a free dining hall, drug rehabilitation and legal aid services. Jones’ message of social equality and racial justice attracted a diverse group of followers, including idealistic young people who wanted to do something meaningful with their lives.
As Jones’ congregation grew (estimates of the group’s size vary; a 1977 expose by New West magazine put the number of Peoples Temple members at 20,000), negative reports began to surface about the man referred to as “Father” by his followers. Former members described being forced to give up their belongings, homes and even custody of their children. They told of being subjected to beatings, and said Jones staged fake “cancer healings.”
Faced with unflattering media attention and mounting investigations, the increasingly paranoid Jones, who often wore dark sunglasses and traveled with bodyguards, invited his congregation to move with him to Guyana, where he promised them they would build a socialist utopia.
In 1974, a small group of Jones’ followers had gone to Guyana to establish an agricultural cooperative on a tract of jungle in the tiny nation of Guyana. (Guyana, which gained its independence from Great Britain in 1966, is the only country in South America with English as its official language.) In 1977, Jones and more than 1,000 Temple members moved to Guyana. However, Jonestown did not turn out to be the paradise their leader had promised.
Temple members worked long days in the fields and were subjected to harsh punishments if they questioned Jones’ authority. Their passports and medications were confiscated and they were plagued by mosquitoes and tropical diseases. Armed guards patrolled the jungle compound. Members were encouraged to inform on one another and were forced to attend lengthy, late-night meetings. Their letters and phone calls were censored. Jones, who by then was in declining mental health and addicted to drugs, had his own throne in the compound’s main pavilion and compared himself to Vladimir Lenin and Jesus Christ. He was convinced that the government, the media and others were out to destroy him. He also required Peoples Temple members to participate in mock suicide drills in the middle of the night.
Leo Ryan, a U.S. representative from California, heard from some of his constituents that their family members were people being held against their will at Jonestown and decided to go there to investigate. Ryan arrived in Guyana in November 1978, with a delegation that included news reporters and photographers, along with concerned relatives of some of the Peoples Temple members.
On November 17, the congressman and reporters were welcomed to the Jonestown compound, to their surprise, with a dinner and evening of entertainment. Jones even agreed to meet with reporters. However, during the visit, some Peoples Temple members asked Ryan’s group to help them get out of Jonestown.
On November 18, Ryan and his group, which also included a small contingent of Peoples Temple defectors, left Jonestown. While waiting at a nearby jungle airstrip, they were ambushed by gunmen sent by Jim Jones. Ryan was killed, along with a reporter and cameraman from NBC, a photographer from the San Francisco Examiner and a female Peoples Temple member who was attempting to leave.
The same day as the murders at the airstrip, Jones told his followers that soldiers would come for them and torture them. He ordered everyone to gather in the main pavilion and commit what he termed a “revolutionary act.” The youngest members of the Peoples Temple were the first to die, as parents and nurses used syringes to drop a potent mix of cyanide, sedatives and powdered fruit juice into children’s throats. (Jones had reportedly obtained a jeweler’s license at some earlier point, which enabled him to stockpile cyanide.) Adults then lined up to drink the poison-laced concoction while armed guards surrounded the pavilion.
When Guyanese officials arrived at the Jonestown compound the next day, they found it carpeted with hundreds of bodies. Many people had perished with their arms around each other. Jim Jones, age 47, was found in a chair, dead from a single bullet wound to the head, most likely self-inflicted.
The death toll at Jonestown on November 18, 1978 was 909 people, a third of them children. A few people managed to escape into the jungle that day, while at least several dozen more Peoples Temple members, including several of Jones’ sons, were in another part of Guyana at the time.
More than 400 unclaimed bodies from the Jonestown tragedy are buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, where many of Jim Jones' followers were from. A stone memorial to the Jonestown victims was unveiled at the cemetery in 2008.
*Information from History Channel. com
The egotistical man behind the tragedy, Jim Jones, came from humble beginnings. Jones was born on May 31, 1931, in rural Indiana. In the early 1950's, he began working as a self-ordained Christian minister in small churches around Indianapolis. In order to raise money to start a church of his own, the charismatic Jones tried various ventures, including selling live monkeys door-to-door.
Jones opened his first Peoples Temple church in Indianapolis in the mid-1950's. His congregation was racially integrated, something unusual at the time for a Midwestern church. In the mid-1960's, Jones moved his small congregation to Northern California, settling first in Redwood Valley in Mendocino County. In the early 1970's, the ambitious preacher relocated his organization’s headquarters to San Francisco and also opened a temple in Los Angeles
In San Francisco, Jones became a powerful figure. He curried favor with public officials and the media, donated money to numerous charitable causes and delivered votes for various politicians at election time. Peoples Temple ran social and medical programs for the needy, including a free dining hall, drug rehabilitation and legal aid services. Jones’ message of social equality and racial justice attracted a diverse group of followers, including idealistic young people who wanted to do something meaningful with their lives.
As Jones’ congregation grew (estimates of the group’s size vary; a 1977 expose by New West magazine put the number of Peoples Temple members at 20,000), negative reports began to surface about the man referred to as “Father” by his followers. Former members described being forced to give up their belongings, homes and even custody of their children. They told of being subjected to beatings, and said Jones staged fake “cancer healings.”
Faced with unflattering media attention and mounting investigations, the increasingly paranoid Jones, who often wore dark sunglasses and traveled with bodyguards, invited his congregation to move with him to Guyana, where he promised them they would build a socialist utopia.
In 1974, a small group of Jones’ followers had gone to Guyana to establish an agricultural cooperative on a tract of jungle in the tiny nation of Guyana. (Guyana, which gained its independence from Great Britain in 1966, is the only country in South America with English as its official language.) In 1977, Jones and more than 1,000 Temple members moved to Guyana. However, Jonestown did not turn out to be the paradise their leader had promised.
Temple members worked long days in the fields and were subjected to harsh punishments if they questioned Jones’ authority. Their passports and medications were confiscated and they were plagued by mosquitoes and tropical diseases. Armed guards patrolled the jungle compound. Members were encouraged to inform on one another and were forced to attend lengthy, late-night meetings. Their letters and phone calls were censored. Jones, who by then was in declining mental health and addicted to drugs, had his own throne in the compound’s main pavilion and compared himself to Vladimir Lenin and Jesus Christ. He was convinced that the government, the media and others were out to destroy him. He also required Peoples Temple members to participate in mock suicide drills in the middle of the night.
Leo Ryan, a U.S. representative from California, heard from some of his constituents that their family members were people being held against their will at Jonestown and decided to go there to investigate. Ryan arrived in Guyana in November 1978, with a delegation that included news reporters and photographers, along with concerned relatives of some of the Peoples Temple members.
On November 17, the congressman and reporters were welcomed to the Jonestown compound, to their surprise, with a dinner and evening of entertainment. Jones even agreed to meet with reporters. However, during the visit, some Peoples Temple members asked Ryan’s group to help them get out of Jonestown.
On November 18, Ryan and his group, which also included a small contingent of Peoples Temple defectors, left Jonestown. While waiting at a nearby jungle airstrip, they were ambushed by gunmen sent by Jim Jones. Ryan was killed, along with a reporter and cameraman from NBC, a photographer from the San Francisco Examiner and a female Peoples Temple member who was attempting to leave.
The same day as the murders at the airstrip, Jones told his followers that soldiers would come for them and torture them. He ordered everyone to gather in the main pavilion and commit what he termed a “revolutionary act.” The youngest members of the Peoples Temple were the first to die, as parents and nurses used syringes to drop a potent mix of cyanide, sedatives and powdered fruit juice into children’s throats. (Jones had reportedly obtained a jeweler’s license at some earlier point, which enabled him to stockpile cyanide.) Adults then lined up to drink the poison-laced concoction while armed guards surrounded the pavilion.
When Guyanese officials arrived at the Jonestown compound the next day, they found it carpeted with hundreds of bodies. Many people had perished with their arms around each other. Jim Jones, age 47, was found in a chair, dead from a single bullet wound to the head, most likely self-inflicted.
The death toll at Jonestown on November 18, 1978 was 909 people, a third of them children. A few people managed to escape into the jungle that day, while at least several dozen more Peoples Temple members, including several of Jones’ sons, were in another part of Guyana at the time.
More than 400 unclaimed bodies from the Jonestown tragedy are buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, where many of Jim Jones' followers were from. A stone memorial to the Jonestown victims was unveiled at the cemetery in 2008.
*Information from History Channel. com