The

Psychology

of

Cult

Domination

© 2015 Veritas.

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i.
He taught no doctrine in secret.

John 18:19-20

ii.
 Table of Contents:

Table of Contents …............................................................ iii

Introduction ….................................................................... 1
The initial breaching effort ................................................. 2
The Domination Gospel ..................................................... 5
Recruiting new converts ..................................................... 10
Thinning the herd ............................................................... 15
Exploiting existing beliefs/scriptures ….............................. 19
Adding to and taking away from the scriptures ….............. 24
Bait and switch: Stolen credibility …................................. 25
Supplanting truth with the cult “testimony” …................... 29
Building “the classic con” ................................................... 32
Preemptive canned responses …......................................... 33
Eroding mental resistance to reprogramming …................ 44
Transitioning to the darker cult doctrines .......................... 47
Working to mask the harsher reality …............................... 50
“Catch-22” and the secret society ….................................... 51

The moral of this story …..................................................... 57

True religion vs. cult …....................................................... 61

Escape and Deprogramming …........................................... 68

Concordance ….................................................................... 73

iii.
Introduction:
With nearly unlimited amounts of information available at our
fingertips today, it is almost incomprehensible to hear of yet another
cult disaster splashed across the latest headlines. Yet despite a
number of tragic examples in recent memory of cult-related horror
stories fresh in our minds, many otherwise intelligent people still
seem to find the cult siren song too seductive to resist.
Examples of a few of the more infamous cult tragedies in
modern times include:

● The Federal raid and subsequent rape charges in 2008 against

the polygamist cult known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (i.e fundamentalist mormons) in
Eldorado Texas, led by Warren Jeffs.
● The 2006 serin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the
Aum Shinrikyo (“supreme truth”) cult of Tokyo Japan, led by Shoko
Asahara.
● The kidnapping, rape and brainwashing of Elizabeth Smart in
2002 by self-proclaimed prophet, fundamentalist mormon and
aspiring cult leader Brian Mitchell.
● The September 11th, 2001 suicide attacks in the eastern US and
the subsequent suicide bombing attacks in England, France, Spain,
Turkey, Iraq, etc. by Islamic terrorists.
● The 1997 mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate/Hale Bopp comet
cult, led by Marshall Applewhite.
● The 1992 federal raid and mass suicide/homicide of the Branch
Davidian cult in Waco Texas, led by David Koresh.
● The 1981 federal raid on the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult of
eastern Oregon.
● The 1978 mass suicide of the “People's Temple” cult of northern
California/Guiana, led by Jim Jones.
● The 1857 premeditated mass murder of 120 men, women and
children in southern Utah by followers of self-proclaimed mormon
prophet and polygamist cult leader Brigham Young.
Etc.

The groups listed here, and many others like them throughout
history, represent some of the better known examples of cults.
Though somewhat less sensational, other groups with very similar

1
characteristics and tactics likewise continue to operate around us
today, including the “Jehovah's Witnesses” (founded by Charles
Russel circa 1880); the Moonies (founded by Sun Myung Moon);
and the bane to every retro airline traveler's existence, the Hare
Krishna's, etc. Some of the more manipulative techniques used by
cults can even be found among certain “businesses” such as pyramid
scheme organizations (e.g. Amway), stock market Ponzi schemers
(e.g. Bernie Madeoff), etc., as well as more ancient cults described
briefly in movies (e.g. Raiders of the Lost Ark II), and both the Old
and New Testaments, etc.
Considering the ability of these organizations to manipulate
otherwise intelligent people into granting complete control over their
lives to a total stranger, only to then become caught up in some
heartbreaking cult tragedy, begs the question as to how such a thing
is possible? How do otherwise normal men and women go from
being average, everyday people with a clear internal moral compass,
to mindless drones with no compunction about maiming or killing
innocent people – including their own loved ones – at little more
than the behest of some self-proclaimed cult leader?
To answer that question, one must come to understand what a
cult is, as well as the psychological manipulation techniques they use
that effectively defines them as a cult, and which enable them to
develop the level of absolute control they hold over the mind, body
and soul of all their “converts”.

The initial breaching effort:

Like a foreign army seeking to breech a walled city, or a virus
attempting to invade an unsuspecting host, cults look for weaknesses
in our natural defenses which they then work to exploit. Of all
human weaknesses, some of our most vulnerable are those that
revolve around our most basic needs and fears. And it is therefore on
these basic aspects of human nature that most cults tend to
concentrate the bulk of their efforts.
To that end, newly minted cult leaders begin their career by
proclaiming to a small handful of carefully selected and devoted
followers that they have been “chosen by God” to serve as God's
mouthpiece, “called to reveal” to mankind what is effectively a new
gospel that they claim is the answer to all of mankind's problems and
basic needs. All they demand in return is only that their followers

2
grant them total control over their souls, and give them a blank check
commitment of everything they hold dear in life, now and forever,
including their own lives and the lives of their children.
In an effort to sell himself and his newly formed cult to the
wider public, as well as help neutralize the natural mental defenses
most intelligent adults have against such self-aggrandizing, self-
appointed prophets and con men, these cult leaders go to
extraordinary measures to create an idyllic illusion of themselves and
their organization, typically describing their society as “the one and
only” path to “supreme truth”, “harmony” and/or “eternal
happiness”.
Such claims of divine right are nothing new. False prophets,
soothsayers and witch doctors have been conning people into
believing they represent a variety of mystical religions since the
beginning of time. Under close scrutiny however, all such claims by
self-appointed prophets and/or conduits to “universal truth” and
“perfect harmony” almost immediately begin to ring hollow.
Consequently, in order to blunt such scrutiny (while simultaneously
masking all of the uglier truths about the cult these false prophets
don't want the public to know), most cults follow the lead of virtually
every con artist and used car salesman in history and deploy their
own version of camouflage, typically in the form of a classic “charm
offensive”. Flashing their best forced Vaseline smile while extending
a firm handshake, they do all they can to build up their illusion of
“perfect happiness” and “cult harmony”, using this artificial facade as
not only camouflage, but breaching tool as well. Once perfected, they
then use this tool to mount their assault on mind, body and soul of all
who are lured within reach by their seductive siren song.
The only way to blunt such an assault, is to strip away this
camouflage illusion and expose the darker truths the cult seek to
conceal from the uninitiated. In stripping away this facade, it
becomes almost immediately obvious that these cults fail the
simplest of all tests for truth, namely Christ's very concise statement
about false prophets, and the “fruit” their teachings produce:
“Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. Ye shall know
them by their fruit. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or
figs from thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good
fruit, [while] a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit” “A tree is

3
 known by its fruit.” “Therefore by their fruit ye shall know
them.” (Matt 7:15+, 12:33. Mark 11:20).

Talk is cheap; it is therefore not what these wolves in sheep's

clothing say about themselves that matters (particularly in their
carefully scripted and highly polished self-promotions), but what
they do, and how they do it, that reveals the darker reality of what
these cults actually are, and how they operate. And it is precisely for
that reason that these cults work so very hard at constructing their
grand illusion and facade. There is after all good reason why the
term “cult” carries with it such a heavy stigma. The evil concealed
behind a cult's carefully engineered facade can no more nourish the
soul of those who embrace it towards the true benevolence of God,
than thorns and thistles – noxious weeds – can bear fruit that
nourishes either body or soul.
Much of this stigma surrounding cults comes from the fact that
beneath that well-polished facade of “ideal cult bliss” and “perfect
harmony”, is an array of very dark and often cruel tactics that is
nothing like the kind and benevolent society the facade is meant to
portray. In fact, with very little scrutiny, it soon becomes clear that
the well-scripted illusion the charismatic cult leaders try so hard to
sell is developed and maintained only through the use of some very
cruel and deceptive means – tactics that more closely resemble those
used by Christ's enemies, and which are the complete opposite of the
benevolence of God whom they claim to represent.
What's more, under closer study, one finds that the true nature
of the cult and the cruel methods it employs in order to orchestrate
its illusion of perfect bliss and harmony, has an almost primal nature
to it akin to that of “ravenous wolves” – a darkness that effectively
defines all such organizations as “cults”. This dark primal nature and
the doctrines/tactics born of it is one of the primary reasons why
those reshaped under the cult's influence and teachings, end up so
far removed from the pure benevolence of God – all in direct
contradiction to everything they claim to be.
In many cases, this more primal nature often drives cult leaders
to an obsession towards total animal domination over everything
within their grasp (e.g David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, Brigham Young,
etc.). As this dark primal nature plays out, it forces the otherwise
average people within the influence of the cult to abdicate their will
to that of the cult, and over time transforms them into mindless

4
drones who become willing to do anything at the behest of their cult
leaders – including not only “sacrificing” the lives of those who reject
the cult, but even the lives/souls of their own children, should the
cult dictate it.
Such a mental transformation is no trivial thing. It is something
that is deliberately developed by the cult slowly over time, using an
almost continuous and highly perfected psychological conditioning
process (i.e. “brainwashing”) designed to “train” cult members to
comply, without thinking – a conditioning that is nearly identical to
the process by which one might train a lab rat or pet dog to
automatically salivate or bark at the ringing of a bell (etc.). When
this mental conditioning/reprogramming process is coupled with the
near constant “drum beat” of the various cult mantras, while
simultaneously isolating the target from all other outside definitions
of right and wrong, it not only redefines each cult member's entire
value system, but in the process creates a deep psychological need
within each convert to outdo themselves in order to earn the praise
and approval of their cult leaders. It is this heavily conditioned
psychological need that ultimately drives cult members to ever-
greater displays of sacrifice and blind obedience, until they reach a
point where they become willing to perform even the cruelest of acts
“when directed to do so” by the cult, including sacrificing their own
loved ones to the will of the cult.

The Domination Gospel:

Though each cult has its own unique dogmas and culture, most
tend to develop many of the same characteristics and tactics that
effectively define them as cults. One of the most prominent
characteristics many cults tend to share in common is the obsessive
drive by their founder to build an “empire”, and therein dominate
over the lives of everyone within their “domain”. In typical cases
such as those mentioned at the outset, this obsession soon creates a
mindset towards “re-educating” everyone into “compliance” with the
founder's wishes, gradually reshaping the minds of each new
member into a state of total and complete submission to the will of
the cult. Though most of this “retraining” is often portrayed by the
cult as God's “gift” to each convert (e.g. the mormon temple
“endowment” [“gift”] ceremony), the sole purpose of this
conditioning effort is not for the benefit of the individuals within the

5
cult, but ultimately serves only as a means of furthering the interests
and ambitions of the cult itself – often at great harm to the
individual and their families.
At the heart of this push for total control, is typically a highly
dominating cult founder or leader (e.g. Brigham Young, David
Koresh, Warren Jeffs, Brian Mitchell, etc.), obsessed with being the
master of everything brought within their grasp. Over time, the
animal obsession for total dominance by these “wolves in sheep's
clothing” often intensifies, as these cult leaders become caught up in
their own rhetoric and soon fixate on the need to control virtually
every aspect of the lives of those around them. This obsession over
total control even includes dictating to each cult member how to
dress, how to speak, how to present the cult's artificial marketing
image to outsiders, how to steer the conversation away from problem
doctrines or history, what cult doctrines/tactics to discuss, as well as
what cult doctrines/tactics are forbidden to discuss (both to
strangers, as well as other cult members), etc.
In order to develop this extreme level of control, most cults use
a number of carefully developed tactics, including an array of
apocryphal doctrines they have concocted as “tools” they use to
increase their control over converts (see below), as well as many
primal reward and punishment techniques. Examples of these
primal techniques include Brigham Young and Warren Jeff's
rewarding their most zealous followers with multiple wives, coupled
with a harsh threat of violence and/or death to those who question
their edicts or doctrines, or who in any other way threaten their
“power and authority” (e.g. the “Mountain Meadows Massacre”,
perpetrated by Brigham Young's followers in the 1850's against a
wagon train of settlers that disapproved of mormon polygamy; see
below), etc. With very little analysis, it becomes obvious that such a
primal/animal level of behavior effectively betrays these cult leaders
for what they are, defining a glaring contradiction with what they
claim to be, as well as the true example of divine leadership that
Christ Himself exemplified.
When confronting exactly such draconian abuse of power
during His ministry, Christ harshly condemned these behaviors and
tactics, describing them as being born of the doctrine and nature of
the devil himself (John 8:44, Luke 9:54-56). A great deal of His
efforts in fact were focused on combating exactly such dark tactics
used by his opponents (Matt 23, 26). At one point He even

6
highlighted the fact that the product (“the fruit”) of such dark
methods was the creation of mindless zealots who often become
“two-fold [more] the child of hell” than those who converted them to
their doctrines (Matt 23:15). This description underscored His
metaphor that “a tree is known by its fruit”, i.e. the end product
forged by the secret and typically cruel doctrines of such an
organization is to produce a warping effect on the souls of those
exposed to such darkness, dragging them downward towards the
nature of the devil himself, rather than elevating them up towards
the perfect benevolence and purity of God.
During the cult's “conversion”/“re-education” process, the
portrayal of the cult leader as God's chosen mouthpiece is not merely
a means to help sell the cult as a solution to all our basic needs and
fears. As it turns out, this doctrine becomes the primary tool by
which the cult slowly builds its total control over the minds of its
converts. Those who are initially drawn in to the seductive promise
of total cult “bliss” and “perfect harmony” are told that before they
can receive this “reward”, they must first accept the cult leader's self-
declared role as God's one and only true representative. Being an
obvious example of a “bait and switch” tactic, this requirement
effectively allows this self-appointed leader to lure converts in by
exploiting their basic needs, and then establish himself as the “alpha
prime” over their lives in his closed society.
Once drawn in under his spell, the cult leader then sets himself
up in the minds of all his converts as the savior of mankind, and the
conduit through which each convert is to be “re-educated” on how to
behave in what is effectively a “new gospel” – a redefinition of the
principles of Christianity that eventually unfolds into a dark world of
secrecy, cruelty and spiteful domination (see below).
Creating the perception in each convert's mind of the cult leader
as “standing in God's place”, effectively grants the cult a “carte
blanche”/“blank check” technique that allows them to justify slowly
“revealing” a series of “new commandments” over time which they
then impose on each new convert as part of a gradual “re-education”
process. This technique allows the cult to begin imposing new
doctrines and “commandments” on each convert as they are
“progressed” through the cult's “re-education” process.
Though the cult spin typically describes this as being all about
following God, the addition of a host of new apocryphal cult
commandments, and the steady mindless conditioning towards blind

7
obedience to the will of the cult leader, ultimately pulls the focus very
far away from God's will and instead makes it all about blindly
serving the needs and ambitions of the cult – often at great cost to
each individual and their families. Using a process that is nearly
identical to what an animal trainer might use to condition a show
horse or dog to mindlessly respond to commands, the cult gradually
reshapes each member's thinking, redefining their perception of
right and wrong as well as the very nature of God Himself into
something cold and dark, and thus gradually pushing each convert
very far away from the purity of God. Over time this reshaping of the
mind gradually erodes away each convert's preexisting belief system,
replacing that with a total blind faith devotion to all dictates
prescribed by the cult – now, and at any point in the future.
Couched as “God's new guidelines” for happiness “brought forth
in modern times” by this self-appointed prophet, this “new and
improved gospel” effectively supersedes any and all previous
doctrines, including those found in the New Testaments (though
typically not stated quite so bluntly). With these new cult-defined
doctrines thus established as supreme, they become a carefully
crafted set of logical “axioms” through which the cult leadership then
slowly redefines the very nature of God (effectively remaking God in
their image) – all while “coincidentally” setting up the cult leader in
the place of God. Interestingly enough, this obsessive effort to
assume God's role in the universe (through any means necessary) is
remarkably similar to even their own description of the all-
consuming obsession of satan himself.
Though these newly imposed requirements ultimately come to
completely dominate all aspects of cult members' lives, the cult
knows from experience that it cannot impose them all at once.
Instead they are applied to new converts gradually over time so as to
not trigger the normal “fight or flight” response to such an aggressive
assault. In fact, during the initial exposure to the cult, these “newly
revealed” guidelines start out relatively benign, and may include
nothing more than forbidding followers to consume coffee, tea, wine,
meat, etc. These moderate initial “commandments” typically serve
not only as a “testing” technique for submissiveness and malleability,
but more importantly as the initial “baby steps” in what ultimately
develops into the extensive cult “re-education” effort (i.e.
“brainwashing”) as time progresses.
To help drive what amounts to a Pavlovian conditioning

8
process, those who comply with these initial testing requirements are
at first rewarded with a showering of praise by cult leaders for thus
“passing God's test”. Initially this outpouring of praise comes thick
and frequent, however over time this praise is gradually reduced to
little more than a trickle, and then eventually withheld entirely.
Those who've had any exposure to the study of psychology will
no doubt recognize this tactic as a deliberate yet subtle form of
psychological manipulation, and one with two primary objectives for
the cult: 1) it serves as a seductive lure that initially helps draw the
inductee deeper into cult society by appealing to one of our most
basic human needs (who doesn't like being told how “special” they
are), and 2) while fulfilling this basic need, the cult effectively begins
conditioning the new convert to position the cult leader as their
“father figure”/master that over time becomes the entity that defines
each convert's internal sense of self-worth, which role they then
exploit to serve their needs (something Christ specifically warned His
followers against; Matt 23:8-10).
Once a convert has developed a dependence on the cult for this
praise and validation, the cult then gradually begins to withhold its
approval from them. The intent of course is to trigger a subconscious
response in converts thus conditioned to need this praise, who then
find themselves going to ever-greater lengths in an effort to illicit
additional doses of this badly needed validation from cult leaders. In
fact, prolonged exposure to such appeals to our most basic needs can
have an almost narcotic effect, particularly on those who have
experienced a desperate lack of such validation in their lives. As a
result, this deliberate psychological manipulation tactic can be very
effective at steadily deepening both the commitment to, and the
psychological entanglement of, each convert to the will of the cult.
Ultimately converts who show the greatest need and/or
malleability during this conditioning process, are eventually
“progressed” to the point of committing to the cult “everything they
own, or ever will own, even their own lives if necessary” (e.g. as
expressly stated in the mormon temple “endowment” ceremony). In
many of the cases cited previously, this even includes sacrificing their
welfare and the welfare of their own children to the will of the cult,
without hesitation, and without thought.
To help facilitate this conditioning/brainwashing process, cult
leaders will even go so far as to assign “fellowshipers” (effectively
handlers) to each new convert, giving them a specific charge to

9
monitor the compliance of converts to each new “commandment”
imposed on them (and thus gauge the success of the conditioning
process), as well as “teach” them the importance of compliance to all
cult edicts. These handlers then “report back” on the convert's
”progress” in each new requirement imposed on them by the cult. In
so doing, these cult “proxies” help prepare each convert for the
ultimate show of commitment to be “revealed” to them “at some
later time”. 1

Thus at the outset, cults almost immediately begin a deliberate

process of brainwashing all who fall within their grasp. The primary
goal in all of this is to condition each new “convert” towards
accepting, without thought, the cult's total control over their lives,
using more “seasoned” members as handlers and “proxies” that serve
as tools to extend the cult leader's influence over each convert during
this on-going “re-education” process. We note again that all of this is
very similar to the tactics, doctrines and “fruit”/product of the
corrupted religion that confronted Christ during His ministry (see
below).

Recruiting new converts:

Having recruited and thus “re-educated” a few devoted
followers to their cause, newly self-appointed cult leaders then use
these converts as “proxies” to aide in building their empire. To that
end, these proxies are then assigned the task of recruiting as many
friends and family members to the cult as possible. In essence, the
cult leader uses these minions by exploiting the established trust
between them and their friends and family 2, using this trust as a
means to give him “back door” access to these people in order to
circumvent their natural resistance to the bizarre “rumors”
circulating about the cult.

1 The use of “proxies” and the locution “report back” [to the cult
hierarchy], as well as building the expectation of a greater sacrifice “to be
revealed at some later time” are all concepts heavily used throughout the
mormon temple “endowment” ceremony.
2 This exploitation of proxy relationships is a common tactic not just of
religious cults, but also Ponzi scheme and pyramid marketing groups (e.g.
Amway), etc., for the simple reason that it is a very effective means to
circumvent people's natural resistance to all such “creepy” cults.

10
 To drive this proxy recruitment effort, cult leaders will exploit
the carefully cultivated need for approval conditioned into each of
their followers by subtly suggesting members can “prove their
devotion to god” (i.e. the cult) by overcoming any queasiness they
might naturally feel about exploiting their relationships in this way,
and in the process help expand the empire of this self-proclaimed
“prophet”.
Should any of these outside friends or family subsequently join
the “flock”, the cult then works hard to “co-op” and eventually
transfer that same trust they had exploited between them and their
proxies, onto the cult leaders themselves. Once this transfer has
been affected, the cult will even attempt to eclipse the trust between
this new convert and the proxy friend or family member as a
preemptive measure to minimize the influence of the very
relationship they had earlier worked so hard to exploit. They do this
in order to limit any risk of “contamination” should the more
“seasoned” proxy begin to discover some of the darker aspects the
cult previously kept well hidden behind the artificial cult facade, and
begin to express second thoughts or concerns to their friends or
family members. This double standard of course only underscores
the duplicity and darker nature of the cult, showing that their only
concern is the furthering of their own objectives, even at the expense
of destroying a marriage or driving a wedge between friends or
family (etc.). In fact cult leaders like David Koresh, Warren Jeffs and
Brigham Young routinely split husbands and wives up, “giving” the
wife to another more “faithful” follower (despite Christ's very clear
condemnation of such a practice, stating that “What God has joined
together, let no man put asunder”, Matthew 19:6).
This recruitment of new converts is much more than just an
incidental part of cult activities. It is in fact an absolute imperative
for the cult, for two key reasons: 1) to fulfill the cult leader's
obsession towards building an ever-growing number of devoted
followers (i.e. “empire building”); and 2) to replace those cult
members who begin to see past the artificial facade of the cult and
start having second thoughts about some of the cult's many darker
methods and doctrines.
Thus in practice, the cult's artificial facade is intended to do
more than simply help lure new converts in under the false promise
of “cult bliss” and “harmony”. It effectively “buys time” for the cult,
allowing them to slowly condition each naive new recruit to a point

11
where they begin to trust without thought everything the cult tells
them. Without any of the darker aspects of the cult visible to
“distract” (frighten) them, the cult gradually cultivates a “blind faith”
devotion in these converts, which it then uses to draw them into a
deeper commitment to the cult, long before the convert knows
anything about these darker truths. Without the deliberate
concealment of these darker realities and the time it buys, the “fight
or flight” response of most rational, intelligent adults would send
them running as fast as they could go from these cults at the first
whiff of the true, darker nature and tactics at the outset, and thus
effectively kill the cult before it could grow to any appreciable size.
As part of the effort to build the illusion of cult bliss, cult leaders
constantly “train” their members on how best to “talk up” the cult
facade. This includes stressing requirements on dress, grooming and
presenting the “warmest and fuzziest” plastic cult smile at all times.
In addition to stressing these key elements of appearances, cult
leaders also “instruct” members on the importance of going out of
their way to make all new converts feel “love” during their initial
encounters with the cult, and thus help build a sense of “blissfulness”
that supposedly comes with being intertwined with the cult. Having
cult members conditioned to think of cult edicts as “God's new
commandments” of course helps negate any possible hesitation cult
members might otherwise have about their “acting” out an artificially
scripted role to help sell what many know is an absolutely false and
deceptive depiction in the “loving” cult facade.
Though some converts may begin to see cracks in this facade
earlier than others (possibly detecting hints of the real truth about
the cult and its many hidden secrets along the way), the heavily
engineered “warm and fuzzy” pretense of “love” showered upon new
converts at each orchestrated interaction is usually more than
sufficient to distract them from digging too deeply into such
contradictions, allowing the cult to gloss over any glaring problems
with some pre-taught canned dismissive brush-off (see below).
Of course this highly artificial showering of “love” on new
converts as a recruiting/distracting tool is not a long term solution
(as the cult leadership knows it cannot maintain this level of
deception indefinitely). However the “cult bliss” illusion only needs
to buy the cult enough time to “progress” each convert far enough
into their “re-education” program to cultivate a “blind faith” belief in
cult infallibility. In truth, little of this belief is based on the cult's

12
spiritual purity or divine connection, but instead on the gushing
maudlin displays of “love” and “cult bliss”. In other words, the
primary reason most converts join these cults is the heavy
psychological manipulation achieved through the exploitation of one
of the most basic needs there is: the need to feel loved.
If all goes as planned, this engineered “blind faith” devotion
towards the cult, coupled with a strong dependency/entanglement of
the convert's life within the cult culture over time, slowly replaces the
“cult bliss” illusion, becoming the means by which the cult gradually
solidifies its control over its members in the long run. In the mean
time, to help create this initially critical artificial illusion of “warmth”
and “affection”, cult leaders tell their members: “God wants you to
show all potential converts how happy the cult has made you,” and
“If you're not smiling, then you're not one of God's chosen”. The
fallacy of this argument of course is that the cult leadership typically
cares nothing about the average cult member's happiness (aside from
any utility they might derive from using it to serve their agenda).
Whether the cult member is actually happy or not is completely
irrelevant to these cold-hearted despots. The only thing that matters
is that they appear to be happy to the outside world, and all of the
potential converts it holds. Hence the constant push by cult leaders
to maintain that “happy, Donny and Marie Vaseline smile.”
Concealed just below this heavy emphasis on constantly putting
cult “bliss” on public display (i.e. “to be seen of men”, Matt 6:1-5), is
an even harsher emphasis that absolutely forbids the more
“progressed” cult members from discussing any of the cult's many
secret doctrines or darker tactics to the outside world. The more
fully “re-educated” cult members are told that if they discuss these
forbidden topics to outsiders, then they are “not one of God's
chosen.” In Brigham Young's case, followers are told to conceal
certain facts or “suffer your life to be taken” 3.

3 This secret mormon temple phrase first became public knowledge

following Federal investigations surrounding events related to the ill-fated
emigrant wagon train ambushed in southern Utah in September 1857, in
what became known as the “Mountain Meadows Massacre”. From this
investigation it was found that this temple blood oath and the psychological
conditioning related to it, was a key driving force that enabled the violent
massacre, in which followers of Brigham Young killed 120 unarmed men,
women and children in southern Utah in September of that year, under a
flag of truce, simply because they disapproved of mormon polygomy. The

13
 Stressing that cult members emphasize only the highly artificial
“warm and fuzzy” approved version of things, while forbidding the
mention of any of the darker facts or secrets society aspects of the
cult, are both essential to the spin effort used to whitewash all the
darker elements of cult life (to both new converts as well as the more
naive cult members, e.g. hiding secret mormon “comply or die”
temple rituals behind a “warm and fuzzy” “happy family” sugar
coated facade, etc.). This tactic enables the cult to selectively apply
harsher means of control on their more “seasoned” cult members as
they “progress” further along in the “re-education” process (and thus
begin to see enough glaring contradictions in the cult facade to start
questioning things), while at the same time conceal these same
darker methods from the more naive members as they are slowly
conditioned into the “right frame of mind”.
As a result, throughout all of this highly structured ”re-
education”/conditioning process, most new converts are completely
oblivious to the deceptive manipulations being used on them, as well
as the harsher realty deliberately kept hidden from their naive view.
This cult brainwashing process is so constant and so pervasive in
massacre was planned out several days earlier behind closed doors under
the direction of cult leaders, and then executed at the moment a
predetermined signal was given. Those involved complied completely with
all the specific instructions they were given, killing every unarmed man,
woman and child above the age of three (to whom they had promised safe
passage only moments earlier) – all with absolutely no compunction
whatsoever as a result of years of prior conditioning, and all while
professing a complete belief in Christ (as gradually redefined by Brigham
Young), triggering what became known as the “mormon rebellion”/“war”.
Following this massacre, Young imposed another blood oath derived
from their temple ceremony on those who had any knowledge of the
planning and execution of this cult massacre, forbidding them to discus any
facts related to this event, especially to Federal law enforcement, or they
would “suffer their lives to be taken”. This phrase was in fact part of the
mormon temple “endowment” ceremony up until roughly 1990, at which
point it was removed from the script due to the growing backlash mormons
suffered (particularly to their all-important efforts to recruit new converts),
as the truth about these darker facts began to become public knowledge.
The fact that mormons go to such great lengths to conceal this and
many other darker truths, makes it very clear their leaders know these
things are evil, and as such puts them in direct conflict with everything
Christ taught – while at the same time making them almost identical to
Christ's enemies, in word and in deed (Matt 2:12-18; Matt 26:1-5).

14
fact, that members reach a point where they even begin policing one
another, “reporting back” any and all infractions to those over them
(again due to a well-conditioned need for approval and any token
“pat on the head” they might illicit from their cult leaders in
response).
As new cult members “progress” further along in this “re-
education” process, the “commandments” “revealed” to them begin
to transition away from the benign “milk toast” level of control,
towards more of the darker reality that is the cult. For example,
more “advanced” members are sometimes taught specifically to
manipulate the conversation away from any facts or scriptures that
contradict cult teachings (a tactic commonly used and taught by
“Jehovah's witnesses”). In the case of suicide cults (e.g. in the
Branch Davidian and Jim Jones cults, etc.), these more “advanced”
members are eventually told they are being “entrusted” with the all-
important task of helping to execute and thus fulfill “god's prophecy”
of the “final solution”, leading to the much anticipated “apocalyptic”
end.
Though new converts are eventually exposed to some of these
darker realities along the way (either by accident, or as a deliberate
means to measure their response to the conditioning process), the
intent is to have it occur well after the cult has bought themselves
enough time to “prepare” (brainwash) new converts to a “blind faith”
devotion to all “newly revealed truths” portrayed as “God's will”
(secret, dark and brutal aspects notwithstanding). That is to say,
these more “advanced” doctrines are brought out from behind the
artificial facade only after the cult has had sufficient time to cultivate
a false sense of trust/confidence in each new convert, even as they
redefine all previous definitions of right and wrong in these converts'
minds by exploiting the trust in the cult they've developed (much the
same way a skilled con man might do; see below).

Thinning the herd:

In any given population, some percentage of individuals will be
either more needy (e.g. lonely, physically or emotionally abused,
psychologically scarred, etc.), less educated, or otherwise less wary of
such psychological manipulation tactics than others. These
individuals consequently tend to be easier for cults to manipulate,
making them key targets in their proselytizing efforts.

15
 Conversely, some percentage of the population will be better
educated and thus able to recognize such attempts at brainwashing,
and consequently be more resistant to the cult's attempt to remold
them into part of a herd of mindless drones conditioned to comply to
the cult's every command, without thought. These more wary
individuals are a problem for the cult, as their resistance is a clear
indication that the standard cult brainwashing tactics aren't effective
on them. Once identified, the cult deals with these individuals by
treating them as borderline “apostates”/”infidels”, marking them as
something that needs to be “humbled” into submission, or failing
that, selectively “thinned” from the herd. Those who resist either the
obvious conditioning process, or the various subsequent efforts to
bring them into “compliance”, are then subjected to less subtle
manipulations, including using a more “advanced” family member as
a cult “proxy” (e.g. parent, spouse, etc.) to force the “malcontent” to
“repent” and comply, “or else”. Should these efforts fail to succeed,
these “apostate” “infidels” are marginalized and blacklisted, which
the well-conditioned cult herd then shun without hesitation or
thought. Being thus labeled, these “problem” members are
effectively brushed aside by those still under cult control, including
family and so-called cult “friends”.
This discrediting and ostracizing effort is not just a reflection of
the baser nature and vindictiveness of the cult, but is a deliberate
response by the cult leadership intended to eliminate anything that it
cannot control. In a very real sense, this tactic effectively
acknowledges the fact that once a convert sees through the artificial
marketing illusion projected by the cult, and rebuffs the thinly veiled
attempts at brainwashing towards cult domination, no amount of
repeated use of these same deceptions and tactics will work on them
in the future. As a result, these people are seen not only as a source
of frustration for the cult, but a clear threat to its goal of developing
absolute control over everyone within its grasp. True to form, these
“infidels” are then “disposed of” accordingly (though with
widespread public scrutiny, this treatment now tends to be done in a
somewhat covert fashion, in order to help maintain the deceptive
illusion of cult benevolence “to be seen of men”; see below).
Should the cult actually treat these more wary members with
patience and understanding as their claimed belief in Christ would
require and allow them to continue to associate with other cult
members (e.g. their friends and family within the cult, etc.), their

16
highlighting the clear contradictions between the darker cult tactics
verses their claimed belief in Christ might prompt other cult
members to begin questioning things as well. Such voices of reason
could easily “contaminate” the herd, and thus undo much of the
cult's effort towards total control in the process.
In reality such rational thinking “malcontents” actually
represent a far greater threat to the cult than any external opponents
working outside the group to expose the cult for what it is. And yet
interestingly enough, the cult leadership rarely describes these
internal “malcontents” in these terms (lest they tip their hand and
thereby cause other members to actually think twice about what the
“malcontent” is saying). Instead, the case against these problem
members is typically filtered and spun, presenting only those
selective bits and pieces of their comments in such a way as to
portray them as heathens who have “rejected God” by rejecting the
cult. While thus carefully avoiding any mention of the true nature of
the “malcontent's” objections and the clear contradictions between
Christ's teachings and the darker tactics and teachings of the cult, the
cult effectively manipulates every aspect of this discussion (as it does
every other aspect of cult life), spinning all “malcontents'” objections
in such a way as to effectively assassinate their character.
In no time this character assassination drives a wedge between
them and the rest of the herd, marking them as nothing more than
“heathen” “apostates” who by voicing their concerns have “rejected
their chance” to receive God's “new and improved” gospel. Having
thus “shot the messenger” while skillfully misrepresenting their
message, the cult leadership thus effectively “blinds the eye” and
“shut the ears” of all their faithful cult followers, manipulating them
to discard the “malcontent” to “burn in hell”, or perhaps even stone
or otherwise execute them (as was the case with the disciples of
Christ in New Testament times, or any vocal opponents of Brigham
Young in the mid 1800's, etc.).
To a true Christian, such dark, brutal and primal methods
clearly flies in the face of everything Christ was and taught, including
when responding to people who posed genuine questions to Him (e.g
the young rich man asking Christ how to inherit Eternal Life, as he
tried to differentiate between the commandments given through
Moses and the apocryphal doctrines added later by “the elders”; see
Matthew 19:16+). Christ's entire life, was the quintessential example
of ideal leadership that demonstrated a level of compassion

17
diametrically opposite that of cults (e.g. the widow of Nain, Luke
7:11-16), as well as to all other religious leaders of His day, who
likewise used everyone around them like cattle. One of the more
fundamental tenets of Christianity in fact is that all true disciples of
Christ be allowed to make up their own mind through observation
and prayer, acting through a willing heart, with nothing done by
compulsion (2nd Cor 9:7), or deception.
Those who opposed Christ on the other hand, including all of
the above cited cult leaders, used heavy-handed and often brutal
tactics to keep their converts in “obedience” to their “power and
authority” (particularly once they begin to see past the facade and
start to see the illusion for the darkness it is), forcing all within their
grasp to “comply or die”. Consistently placing their own interests
ahead of all others, Jewish leaders like Annas and Caiaphas worked
to achieve total and complete domination over everyone around
them, through any means necessary. It is instructive to note that
modern cults leaders including Brigham Young, David Koresh,
Warren Jeffs, Brian Mitchel, etc. all used exactly these same kind of
dark draconian methods, drawing a sharp contrast between who they
are, and who Christ is.
Such brutal methods are the very antithesis of Christ, being the
clear product of a baser approach to life akin to that of satan himself.
Paralyzed by myopic, primal thinking, these dark-hearted cult
leaders invariably become drunk on power, pressing all within their
grasp towards a comply “or suffer your life to be taken” world in the
process. The long term consequences of such methods also sharply
contrast with the long term effects and phenomenal success of
Christ's life. In fact, the unprecedented level of freedom and
prosperity achieved in Western Civilization over the past 2000 years
are all direct products (“fruits”) born of the influence of Christ's
teachings interwoven throughout Western society and culture.
In the case of cults however, using a “comply or die” approach
to religion, while “weeding out” less malleable minds and leaving
only the simple or otherwise easily manipulated souls in the herd,
creates a society of simple-minded individuals whom the cult then
brainwashes towards a conditioned and simplistic “check list”
mentality when it comes to religion – again, all very similar to the
“religion” constructed by Christ's enemies, and all in direct
contradiction to everything Christ and His Apostles taught.
Having thus created a pool of malleable minds incapable of

18
reasoning out the obvious contradiction that is the cult, these cult
leaders then begin to “reshape” all within their grasp into mindless
drones conditioned to accept even the darkest edicts of the cult as
“gospel”. While dangling the illusive plastic carrot of cult “bliss” and
artificial “harmony” represented as the ultimate solution to all their
problems, the cult attaches only one “slight” catch to their sales pitch.
This of course is the requirement of complete and unflinching
compliance to all current and future teachings or “counsel”
“revealed” to them now, or at any time down the road.
Under such an open-ended and self-serving arrangement, such
“counsel” almost always turns out to be the very definition of
“conflict of interest”, in that its underlying goal is the furtherance of
the cult's interests and ambitions, and not the welfare of the cult
members being “counseled” (e.g. “instructions” that drives a wedge
between husband and wife, mother and child, etc.; see Matthew
10:21,36, John 16:1-3). In many of the above cited examples of cults,
the ultimate result of establishing such a mindless society of drones,
used and manipulated like cattle, is to drive many cult members
down a path that leads to bitter disillusionment, isolation, pain and
often a violent death.

Exploiting existing beliefs/scriptures:

During this initial conditioning phase, new converts often note
the odd “coincidence” of the cult's message dwelling on key interests
and concerns of theirs. This of course is no accident, but comes
instead from the fact that their handlers work subtly to determine the
new convert's priorities and concerns (e.g. a belief in Christ, a need
for a high degree of structure or imposed order in their lives, an
obsession to dominate over spouse and children, concerns about
social decay, drugs, family values, etc). This information is then
passed on to the local cult leadership who then tailor the cult
message to align with the interests of each new convert.
In the process, this uniquely tailor-made presentation
“coincidentally” resonates with the new convert's interests, while at
the same time works to reshape their views to align with the cult's
message. This allows the cult to exploit the established beliefs and
basic needs of the “investigator”, and thus “cloak” themselves in
terms of those beliefs to serve its own purposes. Having exploited
those beliefs and needs, it then reshapes them to more closely match

19
the cult's “teachings” and objectives. “How strange; the missionaries
were just reading that passage to us. It must be a sign.” Of course a
few years down the road, all of this careful effort towards arranging
and spinning the message of the cult tends to take a back seat to the
more direct “shut up and fall in line” approach, but only after the cult
has had sufficient time to fully entangle the convert's mind, soul and
life towards more fully serving its needs and ambitions.
By tapping into the new convert's concerns and beliefs, the cult
not only builds its “credibility” with the convert, it also works to
subtly “co-op” many of their beliefs as cult doctrine, while adding a
slight cult-favorable spin to these principles along the way (e.g.
“marriage was one of the first commandments given to Adam and
Eve... which later included polygamy, but then was taken away from
fallen man... only to then be 'added back' through the 'more perfect'
cult doctrines of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Warren Jeffs”, etc.).
Tandem to this tactic, cults often work to mingle valid principles
(e.g. “we reap what we sow”), with a few “newly revealed” cult
principles (“God tests our worthiness by testing our willingness to
follow the newly revealed laws added by the cult leader”, or a
perennial mormon favorite: “The true test of a man's character is
how he suffers through the trials of affliction that come from obeying
the cult leader.”). This often comes with a sprinkling of scriptural
sentence fragments to help legitimize cult teachings, while equating
them to holy writ (e.g. the teaching of Christ that if you follow His
word you will know if it is God's will or the will of man, which the cult
somehow redefines into “if you obey the cult's teachings you will
come to believe it is God's will”, again elevating the cult's teachings to
be equal to that of Christ, etc.). We note however, that Christ
Himself warned His followers to be wary of such “wolves in sheep's
clothing”, and those who attempt to “redefine” God's word with
“added” doctrines, giving us the simple litmus test: “by their fruit
you shall know them” (see Matt 7:15; Gal 1:6-10).
Using a variety of similar deceptive tactics, the cult effectively
tells the new convert “ten truths, to help sell one lie”. A classic
application of this is the using of a verse from scripture (or
fragments of a verse taken out of context) as the “spoon full of sugar”
to slip the “poison pill” doctrines past the convert's natural defenses.
One example of this tactic was Brigham Young's use of a
sentence fragment taken out of context from the New Testament
book of Hebrews about sin not being purged without blood. Brigham

20
Young used this sentence fragment to legitimize his adulterated
version of “blood atonement”, in which he taught followers that any
who disobeyed his edicts can only have their sin purged through the
shedding of their blood (i.e. by their execution). Such a very dark
and primal perversion of something pure and noble is almost
identical to how Jewish leaders in Christ's time warped and distorted
God's word to further their own agenda – even as it lies in direct
contradiction to everything Christ was and taught.
Aside from such obvious contradictions, it is clear to anyone
who has read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament that this
doctrine is a complete adulteration of what is clearly taught in this
book (e.g. chapters 9 and 10) – not to mention the message of the
entire New Testament itself. The suggestion that the blood of goats,
lambs, bulls, or even mortal man could redeem anyone from their sin
is expressly contradicted by the key message of the New Testament,
namely that mankind could only be redeemed from its folly by the
sacrifice of something pure enough to be sufficient to redeem –
something that was without sin, namely Christ. Anything less than
that had no unique redemptive value whatsoever, and thus could not
redeem anything or anyone. There was after all nothing special or
magical about the blood of goats, or bulls, or fallen man. They were
all mortal and thus carnal, and as such had no power to elevate
themselves or anything else beyond the mortal state, any more than a
handful of dust had the power to elevate itself into a living being.
The only means for such things to be elevated to a higher existence is
for something that already exists at a far higher level to intervene in
their behalf. By the same token, the only hope for man to exist
beyond mortality, is that something with far greater purity and
intelligence takes pity on us, and reaches down to intervene in our
behalf to redeem mankind, and thus in the process elevate our
existence to a level beyond this mortal realm.
Anyone familiar with con artists will note that the tactic of
splitting and spinning fragments of fact are virtually identical to what
all successful con men and politicians do (in one form or another) to
hook their “mark” and then reel them in. Likewise, the cult
leadership works very hard to construct an array of such “newly
revealed” doctrines (carefully mingled with similar scriptural
sentence fragments for an added sense of legitimacy). Over time,
these spun scriptural fragments become the “axioms” of cult logic,
which they then use to brute force the darker cult doctrines and

21
tactics into legitimacy.
Another good example of this tactic is the apocryphal mormon
doctrine that distorts Moses' promise of a prophet that would come
whom the people should hear (Deut 18:15+). In a monumental
display of conceit, mormons tell people Moses was predicting the
advent of Joseph Smith (of all things), and that we today should
therefore see this scripture fragment as Moses' endorsement of
Joseph Smith, and by extension Brigham Young (Smith's successor).
Though Moses as well as most of the other Old Testament prophets
did speak of a future prophet that would come and who would be the
fulfillment of a great many significant Old Testament prophecies,
they were all speaking of someone far greater than any mere prophet
(self-proclaimed or otherwise). The advent of that prophet in fact
defined the meridian of time, as this promised “Anointed One” (i.e.
the Messiah) was the one soul who would come and Redeem all of
mankind, namely Christ Himself (John 6:45+). Nothing any other
prophet before or since accomplished could even begin to measure
up to such a pivotal event, and thereby warrant such special mention
by Moses or any of the other Old Testament prophets – least of all
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, or Warren Jeffs (etc.).
Another scriptural distortion commonly used by mormons to
justify Joseph Smith's claim as prophet and his “revealed” doctrine
defining the age of baptism to be at eight years old, is 1 st Peter 3:20-
21 which notes that eight souls were saved by water (i.e. during the
flood). In verse 21 Peter notes that “The like figure whereunto even
baptism does now save us.” Most “seasoned” mormons know full
well that the term “figure” used in this verse was a “figure of speech”
(translated from the original Greek manuscript: “antitupon”, or
“symbol/likeness”), and not a “number figure”. Thus Peter was not
referring to the number eight as somehow having magical
redemptive qualities, but was instead clearly referring to the
symbolism of washing away sin through baptism in water as an
essential first step towards becoming like Christ. Despite knowing
this inescapable fact, these mormons still use this deceptive abuse of
scripture to dupe their unsuspecting converts into believing it
somehow validates Joseph Smith's claim as a prophet.
Another apocryphal mormon teaching is that “obedience is the
primary attribute of God”. With this quasi-biblical axiom firmly
stated as fact, they then assert that anyone questioning Brigham
Young, or any of the cult's revised “gospel”, or any of their darker

22
practices (etc.), is thus by this doctrine “an enemy to God”. We note
again that this is remarkably similar in approach to how Christ's
enemies used and twisted elements of religion to brute force their
self-serving agenda into domination. Further, Christ never taught
this was the primary attribute of God. On the contrary, Christ was
compelled by the distorted cult doctrines of His time to remind His
opponents that the primary attributes of God were Justice, Mercy,
Faith and Love (Matt 23:23, Luke 11:42) 4 – even as he harshly
condemned those around him for distorting God's message of
healing to justify their brutal “comply or die” version of religion in
furtherance of their own short-sighted, self-serving agenda.
Another good example of a scriptural sentence fragment being
deceptively used to prop up apocryphal cult doctrines, is the use of
Heb 11:40 (“they without us cannot be perfected”) to justify the
mormon practice of temple proxy baptisms for dead ancestors (i.e. to
give them a second chance to join the mormon church). It is very
clear however from reading not only the verses, but whole chapters
preceding Heb 11:40 that the author of Hebrews was not advocating
giving the dead a “second chance”, or performing temple rituals for
dead ancestors. Instead, he was stating that all generations prior to
Christ who performed Mosaic Law ritual sacrifices were not
redeemed from sin by those sacrifices through the blood of lambs, or

4 With very little thought, it becomes immediately obvious that these must
be the primary attributes of God. The concept of Justice must be supremely
established throughout the universe, or all of human existence (mortal and
eternal) descends into chaos. Yet without a significant place for Mercy in
the equation, all of mankind would be lost, for all have sinned, with Christ
being the only exception. When Christ therefore was falsely condemned
and executed during a clear breach of Justice, the rigid clarity of Justice
itself was violated, putting the very concept and validity of Justice in
jeopardy.
With Christ being the wronged party in this breach, the disposition of
Justice fell to Him. It thus became His choice and unassailable right as
Sovereign over all the Earth to define Justice not as a rigid and heartless
mechanical thing, but as something that can now be balanced against Mercy
for all who placed their Faith in something greater than themselves and
sincerely turn their hearts away from our carnal state, towards the pure
Love of God. Thus in this one selfless act of sacrifice, Christ provided a
redemptive path out of our fallen state that did not exist before (Heb 9:8-9),
enabling the undeserving sea of humanity a means to move beyond our
terminal fallen and lost state, towards something pure and infinite.

23
bulls, etc., but through their faith in God's promise of a true atoning
sacrifice that God would provide in Christ (as He did symbolically for
Abraham and Isaac in Gen 22 – at the very location Christ himself
would atone for mankind). Since the animals involved in Mosaic
sacrifices had absolutely no redeeming power whatsoever (Heb 7:19,
10:4), had Christ not come and fulfilled this key promise, all these
past generations the author mentions would have been lost. Hence
the author's statement that they [i.e. those of old under the Mosaic
Law] could not be saved without the key event of Christ's atonement
which occurred during his and his audience's lifetime. Even a casual
read of the book of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that that was
the point of this statement, making this particular fragmented use of
Heb 11:40 to prop up the doctrine of temple conversions of dead
ancestors nothing less than a deliberate deception.
Taking a slightly different approach, the “Jehovah's Witness”
cult went beyond spinning fragments of verses, and instead rewrote
the entire Bible in order to force it to conform with their “new and
improved” version of “the gospel”. In this “reformulated” version
(their “New World's Translation”), they not only reworded entire
passages to change their meaning (e.g. Exodus 3:14, John 8:58), but
even went so far as to completely delete whole verses they could not
manhandle into alignment with their “revised” “gospel” (e.g. Matt
18:11, Matt 23:14, Acts 8:37, etc.).

Adding to and taking away from the scriptures:

Of course the deliberate adulteration of Holy Scripture in an
attempt to feign legitimacy for new cult versions of “religion”
represents a huge red flag in the minds of most true Christians. This
is particularly true since changing Christ's teachings is in direct
violation to both His and His Apostle's clear admonition to never
“add to” nor “take from” (and thus “pervert”) the Gospel:

“In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the

commandments of men” – and thereby they make “the
word of God of no effect” (see Matt. 15:4-12).

“I marvel that you are so soon removed... unto another

gospel... But there be some that trouble you, and would
pervert the gospel of Christ.

24
 “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any
other gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:6-10; see also Gal
4:9-11).

“If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book...” (see
Rev 22:18-19, etc.).

As new cult converts are thus slowly reprogrammed to embrace

the “new and improved gospel” of the cult, they are subtly pushed
further away from the truth, and instead towards false “principles”
that directly contradict those taught by Christ and His Apostles (see
Acts 15:5-29, and comments below related to prayer).
To help sell the more difficult poison pill doctrines, converts are
told God is “testing” them (i.e. “you don't want to disobey the
prophet and fail his test now, do you?”). Examples include Brigham
Young and Warren Jeff telling followers (particularly women) that
they cannot go to heaven unless they embrace polygamy (see
mormon Doctrine and Covenants section 132) – “coincidentally”
giving Brigham Young over 50 wives (some being 15-year-old
teenage girls while he was in his upper forty's). Aside from the fact
that Christ never taught any such carnal doctrine, this implies that all
the billions of Christians over the past 2000 years who failed to meet
this unknown requirement, as well as all of the Apostles and Christ
Himself, can never be exalted (while Brigham Young, Warren Jeffs
presumably will be).
As this “re-education” advances, ever-darker doctrines are
progressively imposed on each new convert. During this process cult
handlers help spin each encounter while observing the convert's
reactions to each additional level of control, “reporting back” their
“progress” before each convert is “advanced” to the next step. In the
process, each convert is thus slowly pushed further away from the
promised connection to God that initially attracted them, moving
them instead towards a mindless “blind faith” devotion to the cult's
will as a means to bind them fast (see below).

Bait and switch: Stolen credibility:

In order to circumvent Christ's clear admonition to shun all who
thus seek to “pervert” the Word of God, many cult founders will take

25
the “scripture fragmentation” tactic to extremes. Working to “co-op”
existing Biblical tenets, these false prophets attempt to transfer the
credibility of those established beliefs onto themselves (i.e. cloak
themselves in “sheep's clothing”). This tactic can include something
as subtle as speaking the Lord's Prayer while injecting praise and
adoration for the cult leader half way through the prayer; by
claiming Biblical passages describe them (e.g. that they were the
prophet Moses foretold, or one of the other great prophets in a past
life, or they were one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, etc.);
or by creating cult “scripture” that interweaves excerpts from sacred
writ such as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapter five) into
the “scriptures” of the cult, etc. An example of this classic “bait and
switch” tactic is Joseph Smith's copying of whole passages of the Old
and New Testaments into the book of mormon.
When a con man attempts to sell someone a counterfeit forgery,
he knows most people will naturally want to test the forgery's
authenticity, typically by taking it to an expert. If the con man can't
control the expert, the next best thing is to somehow slip in the real
McCoy for testing. Once the expert verifies the real item is genuine,
the unsuspecting victim is convinced the con man's lies are true, and
they're hooked. Afterwards, the con man simply uses a little slight of
hand in a classic “bait and switch” move to substitute back his
counterfeit in place of the real item, and the victim is none the wiser.
Joseph Smith's copying entire sections of the King James Bible
into what he called “3rd Nephi” is exactly such a con man's ploy. By
incorporating whole passages word-for-word taken from Matthew
chapter five into the book of mormon, and having converts read and
pray about these (and only these) sections, mormons dupe
unsuspecting people into believing the book of mormon has the feel
of holy writ. (Of course the other parts they have you overlook
during this phase are a poor hack job spun by a guy with little more
than a fourth grade education and a knack at confabulating yarns,
but through careful manipulation they keep you from reading these
parts, at least until after the “bait and switch” ploy is over.)
The obvious problem with all of this is that mormons claim “3 rd
Nephi” was written 2000 years ago by people living in Central
America and then later translated by Joseph Smith (using what he
claimed was a magical brown “peep stone”) into English in the
1820's. Since the King James version of the Bible was written around
1607 AD, there is no honest way of explaining how a manuscript

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supposedly written 2000 years ago could contain whole sections of
the King James version of the Bible 1600 years before that version
of the Bible even existed. Such a claim is analogous to someone
offering to sell you a Roman coin stamped “2000 BC” as somehow
being an authentic historical relic. The language of King James
(medieval English) didn't even exist 2000 years ago. How then
could anyone claim to have a document written by people living in
Central America 2000 years ago, containing whole sections that
exactly match word-for-word, page after page, both the wording
and syntax published in a medieval version of the Bible that wouldn't
be written for another 1600 years – using a language and syntax
that itself wouldn't even exist for another 1400 years?!
What's more, as any police officer or detective can tell you, no
true description of the same event is ever described by multiple
people using exactly the same word-for-word description. In fact,
anytime two eyewitnesses do describe an event using exactly the
same words and description, it becomes immediately obvious to
investigators that some kind of deception is taking place. This is
even more true when the witnesses speak completely different
languages, and come from completely different parts of the world,
living in completely different cultures and yet “somehow” manage to
choose exactly the same words and syntax to describe the event.
By contrast, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all came from very
similar cultural and language backgrounds, and yet each describe the
events in Christ's life that they witnessed using very different
emphasis and wording. People living in Central America had a
dramatically different cultural and language background from those
living around Jerusalem. Their eyewitness accounts of any event
2000 years ago, while speaking a completely different language,
would not be anything like an exact word-for-word match (page
after page, no less) with a description of an event taking place on the
opposite side of the globe near Jerusalem around the same time.
In a classic con man counterfeit ploy, mormons manipulate
potential converts into reading and praying about only this specific
section in “3rd Nephi” (“to simplify things”). Such a tactic attempts to
pass off a segment of New Testament scripture as somehow being
Smith's own work, and thus steal the credibility of the Bible as his
own. This ploy attempts to exploit a convert's prior beliefs to
generate a “Gee, that sounds oddly familiar” response from those
reading this passage. This theft of credibility thus attempts to trick

27
potential new converts (particularly those who have only minimal
knowledge of the Bible) into accepting the cult leader as divine, based
not on his works, but on a very limited selection which he has
effectively stolen from holy writ – all while going to great lengths to
deliberately conceal all his other work, including secret doctrines
and blood oaths they do not want the “unprepared” to know. In
essence, working to focus all potential new converts on this passage
(and only this passage, “to help speed things along”) serves the dual
purpose of 1) cloaking the cult leader in the credibility of the Bible,
while at the same time 2) keeping the reader from exploring any of
the other darker cult teachings or practices – even as they rush
converts into joining them before they have any chance to research
the cult via any alternate sources (e.g. ex-cult member co-workers,
local ministers, library books, the internet, etc.).
In essence, this tactic attempts to make God an unwilling
participant in this deception, in that if God answers the question “are
these words [taken directly from Matthew chapter five] true?”, how
else is God to answer but “yes”. Once a new convert receives such an
answer, they are then told that that validates Joseph Smith's claim as
a prophet, and that therefore implies everything else the cult teaches
“must be” from God. After all they argue, “if this [tiny and stolen]
section of the book of mormon is true, then Joseph Smith must be a
prophet, and that therefore implies credibility should automatically
be granted to everything else he and his subsequent proxies did both
in the past, as well as into the future (openly, and in secret) – gross
concealment, deception, plagiarism, violent massacres and glaring
contradictions with Christ's teachings notwithstanding.
Adding peer pressure to this deception helps further
psychologically manipulate simple minds into believing in the “new
and improved” version of the mormon gospel, even to the point of
“testifying” they “know the book of mormon is true”, if for no other
reason than to simply “fit in” with the rest of the cult cattle. So
thorough is this manipulation and conditioning process that even if
converts begin to discover the book of mormon's obvious weak and
glaring deceptions, most continue to overlook them through the
persuasion of their new-found cult “friends”.
Those cult members who have been around long enough to see
all the completely artificial displays of piety and “love” poured out on
new converts completely evaporate and morph into the darker reality
that is the cult, know deep down that these maudlin displays of

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affection are little more than part of the manipulative ploys designed
to press converts ever closer to achieving the total domination the
cult seeks. However, having been strong-armed into compliance,
most of the more “seasoned” cult members say nothing to the naive
new convert that might hint of the real truth hidden from them, not
wanting to suffer any backlash from the cult for not helping to sell
the con.

Supplanting truth with the cult “testimony”:

Having successfully wrapped their “newly revealed” “religion” in
the guise of sacred writ, the steady “re-education” of each convert
continues in one form or another for the rest of their lives. Since any
logical or rational comparison of the darker cult tactics against the
ideal standard of Christ's teachings (as recorded in the New
Testament) would inevitably reveal very clear contradictions between
the cult's teachings and those of Christ, cults work hard during the
initial “re-education” phase to nullify rational thinking long before
the cult facade illusion begins to wear thin.
In order to sidestep the many such contradictions that soon
begin to develop as the “re-education” process continues, the cult
begins conditioning into each convert a thinking process that is
largely devoid of logic, working instead to develop a mindless
devotion to the cult for nothing more than devotion's sake –
something based entirely on a blind faith view in cult “infallibility”
many refer to as their “testimony”.
Applying a great deal of peer pressure, proxy influence and
“newly revealed” “commands” from the cult leadership, the cult
presses all its members to “proclaim”, in a very public way, that they
“know” the cult leader is a true and infallible prophet. The constant
repetition of this “mantra” repeated almost continuously by everyone
in the cult, leverages the dynamics of group psychology to the point
where many converts begin repeating this mantra entirely without
thought, if for no other reason than to simply “fit in” (i.e. meet what
is obviously the cult's expectations of them).
Before long the “chanting” of this “mantra” begins to feel almost
like a well-documented truth in their mind, even though the vast
majority of these cult members may never have even met the cult
founder, let alone spent sufficient time talking with him to have any
real knowledge as to the validity of any of his claims. After months of

29
chanting this mantra in unison, bathed in the “love” of all their new
found cult “friends”, converts are soon thinking not in terms of logic,
facts, or even prior beliefs or scripture, but instead based on this
well-conditioned “testimonial” incantation, and their naive
confidence in what they believe the cult to be.
This mindless “testimony”-based form of religion may include
fragments of scripture (applied in a very selective way), but only
when those elements can be made to appear to align with cult
doctrines and objectives, and thus serve the cult's needs (see
previous examples). Over time, this blind faith form of religion
comes to dominate the convert's thinking, forcing logic to take a
submissive back seat to a parroted and typically mindless reciting of
this cult “testimonial” mantra. When developed to its fullest extent,
this “testimony”-based decision making process completely eclipses
both a cult member's prior values and beliefs, as well as their prior
perception of who God is and how He sees mankind.
Thus the parroting of the cult “testimony” mantra (in chorus
with all the other cult members barking out this same “testimony” in
true Pavlovian fashion), becomes the ultimate “silver bullet” cult
“trump card” designed to supersede and negate even the word of
Christ. This tool effectively allows the cult leader to redefine God as
nothing more than a cold-hearted despot fashioned after the primal
character of the cult leader himself, rather than the being of pure
benevolence Christ described (or even the warm and fuzzy being the
cult originally claimed to represent).
The intent in all of this is that this mindless and naive “blind
faith” devotion in the cult comes to dominate the convert's thinking
well prior to seeing any of the glaring contradictions that is the cult.
Thus negating reason and basic logic to the point of nullifying all
other ideals, cults replace them with nothing more than a
conditioned “lower brain” “knee-jerk” response to all cult mandates
– including the many darker doctrines slowly introduced down the
line. In fact this repeated parroting of the cult “testimony” soon
makes receptive converts blind to even the most glaring
contradictions and darker realities that is the true nature of the cult.
In many cases, this misplaced trust eventually reaches the point of
accepting not just the highly self-serving “guidance” and “counsel”
from the cult leaders, but its total and complete control over
everything attached to their lives, without thought. All of this, in
complete contradiction to everything Christ taught – including His

30
very clear admonition to never give any mere mortal that level of
control over your soul (Matt 23:8-10), and to shun all who attempt to
negate the Word of God by teaching “for doctrines the
commandments of men” (Matt 15:4-12).
When developed to its fullest extent, this carefully conditioned
“testimony”-based reasoning becomes one of the cults primary tools
in reshaping mind and soul of all under the cult's spell, nullifying any
and all contradictions that inevitably begin to come up once the
convert begins to see the darker reality carefully hidden behind the
artificial facade. After years of conditioning the minds of each
convert to see everything through the distorted lens of this blind faith
cult “testimonial” mantra, all logical contradictions that begin to
arise between the darker realities of the cult, verses Christ's teachings
are simply glossed over through the invoking of this cult trump card
(e.g. “I know that Brigham Young was a prophet, and therefore
whatever he had people do must be God's will... including the
premeditated mass murder of 120 men, women and children in cold
blood”; Matt 2:12-18, Matt 18:4-6).
Such a mindless reasoning process effectively grants all such
primal “wolves in sheep's clothing” a blank check, allowing them to
issue any edict they choose, including those that sharply contradict
everything Christ was and taught, to the point of even justifying
something as brutal as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the
poisoning or violent fiery death of all cult members to achieve an
“apocalyptic” end, or the rape of a cult member's teenaged daughter
at the hands of a forty-something-year-old cult leader, etc.
Having conditioned a no questions/blind faith obedience
towards everything the cult prescribes, reason, logic and even
compassion soon disappear, effectively locking converts on whatever
path the cult dictates – even after they come to discover the glaring
contradictions and harsher realities previously concealed from view
by the carefully constructed artificial image the cult worked so hard
to construct, and which false image was the basis of the convert's
initial decision to join the cult in the first place.
As the previously cited examples of cult tragedies demonstrate,
when this complete subjugation of the mind, heart and soul has been
achieved to its fullest extent, it becomes so powerful that those under
its spell will sacrifice anything – including their own children – to
comply with even the most dark and sadistic cult evil against others
around them, “when instructed to do so” by their cult leaders.

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 The ultimate goal throughout all of this is to condition each cult
member so completely that their very perception of right and wrong,
truth and fiction, Justice and Mercy, are all completely overridden by
the dictates of the cult. Once a cult member has been this deeply
conditioned, no amount of fact or even glaring contradiction between
cult and Christ has any affect on their mind whatsoever. And in that
state, it is a very short distance between mindless cult drone worker
bee, and heartless mass murder cult “proxy”.

Building “the classic con”

In order to condition this level of “total devotion” into converts
that cult leaders seek, every aspect of cult life must be controlled and
manipulated to help build the completely artificial illusion of cult
“gospel” “infallibility”. Cult leaders therefore work constantly to
manipulate every brainwashed cult drone under their spell into
serving as “proxies” to help them “sell” the con, and thus develop a
similar mindless “blind faith” devotion in each new convert.
To that end, cult leaders will use more “advanced” proxies not
only in recruiting, but also in helping to develop the illusion of the
cult's seemingly supernatural abilities. This includes the
orchestrating of what are effectively classic cons in the form of
various staged events intended to serve as self-fulfilling “prophecies”
to build a new convert's belief in the cult, as well as their belief in the
infallibility of the cult leader's “new and improved gospel”.
To accomplish these classic con deceptions, cult leaders simply
manipulate the more fully conditioned cult members to serve as
handlers, informants (spies), and foot soldiers which it then uses like
chess pieces to help manipulate new convert's minds deeper into the
cult illusion. This manipulation may be something as subtle as
arranging “mystical” fullfilments of various cult predictions, or a
more direct coercion by family and friends to “just fall in line” with
the cult agenda, “or else”. With these chess pieces themselves
conditioned to crave the cult leader's approval, they are often more
than eager to do anything they are told to do without thought in
order to please their handlers. Cult leaders then simply couple that
willingness to perform any task the cult assigns them, with the
information supplied by various handlers/spies/proxies, to thus
arrange whatever is needed in order to further the cult's agenda.
Examples of such basic cons include creating an “answer” to a

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convert's prayer that “proves” the cult leader's mystic powers; or
telling cult members that if they don't obey the cult leader their
family will fall apart, and then privately poisoning the attitude of
family and friends against those who resist the cult's darker
teachings and methods, driving a wedge between family members
(see Matthew 10:21,36; John 16:1-3), etc. The more “entrusted” cult
members who help set up the dominoes in such cons, do so eagerly
out of their blind faith “testimony” in the cult, seeing their actions
less as deceptions, and more as a means to do anything to gain
acknowledgment and validation in the eyes of the cult leadership.

Preemptive canned responses:

Though cults put a great deal of effort into concealing their
hidden manipulation tactics and darker nature from public view,
when using brutal methods so obviously evil as: comply “or suffer
your life to be taken”, it is next to impossible to keep such dark
truths completely concealed forever. To help counter the natural
objections to such evil (from outsiders, as well as their more naive
converts), most cults teach a set of well-scripted canned responses as
a preemptive attempt at damage control should any of the darker cult
truths find their way to people “not sufficiently prepared” (i.e.
conditioned/brainwashed) beforehand.
For those who have had some exposure to these cults, these
deceptive canned responses tend to almost leap out of any cult
“discussion”, particularly when multiple cult members begin almost
chanting the exact same phrases nearly in unison. For example,
pointing out that teaching secret doctrines sharply contradicts
Christ's statement that He did not teach doctrines in secret (John
18:19-20), and that adding “or suffer your life to be taken” threats to
such secret doctrines is nothing more than a secret society blood
oath, almost immediately triggers the obvious conditioned response
from mormons that: “it's not 'secret', it's 'sacred'”.
When the bulk of cult members are repeating the exact same
plastic line verbatim – particularly in defense of something so
obviously dark and evil – it all but leaps out of the conversation as a
clear example of a preconditioned canned response. People don't
normally all repeat exactly the same well-practiced phrase word-for-
word purely by coincidence (anymore than multiple eye witnesses
will use the exact same words to describe an event they observed).

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As one hears such knee-jerk, robotic responses regurgitated in
unison, you almost wonder if these same people had been
hypnotized, and that if you snapped your fingers or rang a bell, would
they then start clucking like a chicken, or barking like a dog.
Hypnosis however would imply an involuntary act developed by a
trained hypnotist accessing the subconscious. The conditioned
response of cult behavior on the other hand, involves a cognitive and
willing participation by the subject, controlled not subconsciously,
but by slowly redefining their thinking over an extended period of
time (i.e. “brainwashing”).
Stated another way, anytime a so-called Christian “religion”
routinely teaches its people to obey them or “suffer your life to be
taken”, in secret no less (for the obvious reason that stating such
things in public would trigger an absolutely certain backlash that
would kill their ability to recruit further members), and scores of this
so-called “Christian religion's” followers then deny the obvious
secrecy involved – while calling such a practice somehow “sacred” no
less – something is obviously very badly broken in these people's
moral and logical thought processing. Christians know that secret
blood oath doctrines that imply a “comply or die” threat for total
domination, clearly violate the very nature of Christ, and in fact are
virtually indistinguishable from satan's methods and personality.
These professed Christians know that threatening to kill
someone who doesn't comply with the will of the cult, is how Christ's
enemies manipulated people, prompting some of Christ's harshest
rebukes in response (Matt 23, 26). Using threats of physical violence
and murder to control people is the most primal approach to human
interaction possible. In fact, such methods are exactly how groups
like the mafia, the Nazi's, and Columbian drug lords manipulated
people. This tactic is exactly what created the same pathological
thinking that made the whole premeditated mass murder of 120
men, women and children (under a flag of truce no less) by disciples
of Brigham Young in Southern Utah in the 1850's all seem like a
perfectly acceptable way for professed disciples of Christ to behave.
Likewise, this kind of twisted redefinition of Christianity is also what
allowed those who orchestrated this violent premeditated mass
murder to then order those involved to never tell the truth about
what happened “or suffer your life to be taken”, and who then
subsequently lied about this mass murder for over 150 years.
Since the whole basis of legitimacy for religious cults is their

34
claim as God's representatives, cult leaders lean heavily on the
doctrine that they “stand in God's place”. This tool gives them
freedom to introduce “newly revealed” and more “advanced” “truths”
as needed, which they effectively claim supersede and/or replace any
conflicting information found in the New Testaments. These “new
revelations” include such things as a “truer order of worship” (e.g.
the mormon practice of polygamy, and their “true order of prayer”
in which converts are taught to simply regurgitate the words their
“leader” tells them to “pray”), the aforementioned use of violent
threats to dominate all within their grasp, as well as the “newly
revealed” “updated” nature of God (not as a perfect Father with
infinite compassion and love, but as a vindictive and cold-
hearted/iron-fisted despot – very “similar” to the cult leader), etc.
Though this harsher version of things is typically not phrased quite
this bluntly, it is the essence of what their god must be if he/she/it
and the darker/hidden “obey or die” dogmas of the secret society cult
are truly one in the same. 5
Once a convert has been “re-educated” to embrace this darker,
more malevolent, and hidden version of their “religion”, this gradual
shift in perspective slowly and deliberately reshapes not just their
thinking, but in so doing the behavior of these converts towards a
similarly cold-hearted, deceptive and spiteful character devoid of
anything resembling true Christ-like compassion (and thus making
these converts “two-fold [more] the child of hell” than their handlers,
as Christ described it, Matt 23:15). This redefinition of their god is
key to how cults eventually persuade converts to support their darker
nature and methods, and thereby enable them to move everything
that much closer to their secret society cult and its ultimate goal of
total domination over every mind, body and soul within their grasp.
5 Founder of the mormon church Joseph Smith, went so far as to attempt
a ready made dismissal for all doctrinal contradictions verses the teachings
of Christ (as found in the New Testament), stating that the Bible was the
word of God only “so far as it was translated correctly” (as stated in the
mormon “articles of faith”). Though this statement attempts to imply all
“discrepancies” are little more than minor “translational errors”, the many
dramatic differences such as those cited previously (not to mention the use
of premeditated mass murder and a ”comply or die” approach to the
Gospel of Christ), prove this weak justification as false as those used by
Christ's enemies to legitimize their similar attempts to justify negating the
Word of God by “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (see
Matt 15:4-12).

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Thus the cult's newly “revealed” “improved gospel” effectively
negates the “outdated” doctrines converts might have absorbed from
the New Testament. This again sharply violates what Christ and his
Apostles taught about rejecting all such attempts to revise their
teachings, particularly those that might come from the many
“accursed” “wolves in sheep's clothing”, etc. (see Matthew 7:15-20,
Matthew 24:24-26, Galatians 1:6-10).
Should any cult member point out that adding such new (not to
mention secretive) doctrines contradicts everything Christ taught on
the subject, they are chastised by the cult as “twisting the scriptures”
and disobeying the far more “perfect” and “infallible” revelations
given by the cult leader. Examples of such contradictions would be
in the harsher mormon doctrines discussed only in secret (including
obey, “or suffer your life to be taken”), as well as the doctrine that
drinking coffee, tea and wine is a sin.
On this subject, we note that the doctrine that defines drinking
coffee, tea, or wine as a sin creates a huge doctrinal paradox for
mormons, particularly since Christ's first miracle was the turning of
water into wine at Cana (John 2:1+). If drinking wine was a sin, then
that would not only make Christ a sinner, but someone who
encouraged others to sin. Such sins would obviously negate Christ as
the only sinless sacrifice required for the redemption of mankind (see
Hebrews chapters 9-11), while simultaneously contradicting their
public claim in the belief that Christ is the only sinless Savior of the
world. (In addition, Christ taught that it is not what goes into the
mouth that defiles a person, but instead any evil that comes out of
the heart driving choices and behaviors; see Matthew 15:8-11).
As converts join a cult and thus accept the blank check
endorsement of any and all future “revealed” doctrines issued by the
cult leaders as “god's will”, they are effectively committing to obey
anything the cult might later dictate with complete blind faith (no
hesitations, no logical reasoning, no questioning). Somewhere down
the road this commitment is used to expand these mandates to
include the requirement that they effectively deceive others by
helping to conceal all darker hidden realities of the cult that might
eventually be “revealed” to them, as well as using these darker
methods on others “when instructed to do so”.
If new members didn't initially wonder about the artificiality of
the “happy face” facade of the cult before now, many typically begin
to do so at this point (“this wasn't in any of the brochures”, and

36
“didn't Christ teach it was the truth not deception that shall make
you free?”; John 8:32). To balk after “progressing” to this point
however, is harshly rebuked by cult leaders as “failing God's test”.
Any “advanced” member that thus hesitates and “fails” such “tests”
therefore begin to experience something quite different from the
original “warm and fuzzy” response from the cult. Instead the cult
leaders (being unable to resist their true nature) invoke a more
spiteful response, telling the new inductee he is “demonstrating
carnal pride”, or otherwise “opposing God”, and thus will “suffer the
full wrath of God” for opposing them.
At this point such “problem” converts find the well-conditioned
cult membership suddenly treating them as lepers, distancing
themselves from all such blacklisted “troublemakers”, lest they be
lumped in with them. Should this fail to put a stop to the
highlighting of cult contradictions, they are then “cut off” outright
and rejected by all family and so-called friends. Just when and to
what degree this treatment is measured out, depends on what
potential utility the cult might think they can still extract from them
(e.g. any potential missionaries/brides amongst their children, etc.).
In the end, those who cannot be “re-educated” to serve the cult's
interests are blacklisted as “apostate enemies of God”, marginalized,
discredited and finally discarded (see John 9:1+). At that point, all
cult members are taught to treat such discards as “apostate”
”infidels”, and to ignore anything they might have to say. This
effectively “blinds the eye” and “stops the ear” of those within the cult
from seeing/hearing the truths the cult does not want them to see.
Conversely, those on whom this kind of conditioning does
succeed, are then progressively drawn ever-deeper into the cult and
its conditioning process, until they have been transformed to the
point of becoming so brainwashed into mindless cult thinking that
no amount of solid facts, logic, or even appeal to New Testament
scriptures in which they profess to believe, can have any affect on
them. At that point, even when shown whole passages of scripture
(e.g. the entire New Testament book of Hebrews, Matthew 24,
Ezekiel 34, etc., as clear condemnations of Brigham Young's
redefinition of “blood atonement”, or his mass murder of children, or
the creation of a secret society and its blood oaths in the name of
Christianity, etc.), the befuddled convert simply retreats to the
carefully cultivated “silver bullet” trump card of the cult “testimony”
mantra. To these well-conditioned cult members, the fact that their

37
trust in cult doctrines completely contradicts their professed belief in
the teachings of Christ, or that their cult leader and his alternate
version of “the gospel” makes him more closely aligned with Christ's
enemies in complete opposition to Christ, means nothing to them.
At this point, their faith and devotion is no longer in Christ or His
teachings, but in the cult leader, as they have now made him their
new master (see Matthew 23:8-10).

Those familiar with the New Testament will note that all of this
is nearly identical to what confronted Christ during His ministry. In
a very similar way, the religious leaders of His day had likewise made
themselves the master over all the souls within their “domain”,
caring nothing for their welfare but instead only using them to
further their own agenda. They too had redefined religion with a
wide range of “new commandments” (referred to by Christ as the
“traditions of the elders”) which they had likewise used to make the
word of God “of no effect” (see Matthew 15:4-12). The cult leaders of
His day also employed very harsh tactics, developed and maintained
through secrecy, against all who dared to threaten their self-
appointed role as the master of souls (e.g. John 12:9-11). This
included against Christ, His Apostles and anyone who dared defend
Him or point out the obvious contradictions with scripture such
tactics and “added doctrines” represented (e.g. the man born blind
discussed in John chapter 9, Stephen, Peter and Paul in the book of
Acts, etc.).
Similar tactics of deception, brutal reprisals and concealment
used by modern cults should therefore also represent huge red flags
to any rational, intelligent adult and Christians in particular. Christ
never used such dark or cruel tactics, least of all anything remotely
close to “comply, or die” extortion. The Law of Moses which they
professed to follow had even expressly forbid holding secret meetings
at night (as when they passed sentence on Christ), and yet these so-
called Teachers of the Law repeatedly violated all such very clear
guidelines (e.g. Annas, Ciaphas, etc.; see John 18:12-14, 19-24).
Again, the Word given via Moses, as well as by Christ Himself
during His ministry was very clear on this subject, warning all to
beware of anyone who attempted to change what He taught into
something else (Gal 1:6-10, Rev 22:18-19). Christ and His apostles
even went so far as to warn us of “wolves in sheep's clothing” who
attempt to redefine the Gospel (and the very nature of God in the

38
process) – such “accursed” false prophets will arise with great
wonders, to “deceive the very elect”, leading them out into the desert
and into their “secret chambers”; “believe it not” (Matt 24:24-26).

Through exactly this kind of manipulation, all who follow such

false prophets are gradually “reprogrammed” in such a way as to
continually increase their dependency on, and commitment to the
”power and authority” of the cult leadership. As this process is
escalated over time, it continues to deepen the psychological
conditioning in the convert, ultimately leading toward an ever-
deepening posture of absolute blind obedience to the will of the cult.
To that end, cult leaders work hard to position themselves as
the only source of emotional and spiritual support for these new
converts, while at the same time isolating the new convert from all
prior support mechanisms and values/beliefs. As these cults slowly
erode away all existing beliefs and outside definitions of right and
wrong, they go so far as to teach their followers that all the other
religions are the false and distorted religions, “led by ministers
employed by the devil” (also a key element in the mormon
“endowment” ceremony), leaving cult leaders like Brigham Young,
David Koresh and Warren Jeffs (etc.), as the only remaining
connection to God, and thus further deepening the dependency of
cult members on their claimed “truer” version of religion.
To help build that exclusive dependency on the cult, they will
work extensively to solidify the hierarchical power structure of the
cult over the minds of its members (and hence the cult leader's role
as “alpha male” within that power structure). One of the primary
methods of extending this power over others is by “co-opting” the
power structure of each individual family. To that end, cults will
often build an obsession over “power and authority” in each cult
father over their wives and children 6. Accentuating the focus on
power in the minds of fathers/husbands builds a preoccupation with
“power and authority”, while motivating them (particularly those
with a strong lean towards domination) to support the idea of the

6 Cults also tend to cite scriptural fragments to justify their tacit approval
of abusive husbands and fathers. That too however contradicts what Christ
and His Apostles taught, namely that husbands should lead with love “as
Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Eph. 5:22+). This
and Christ's clear condemnation of His opponents brutal lust for power
clearly excludes any justification of exploiting primal domination.

39
cult power structure, since it is through that structure that they
derive the legitimacy of their own power over their family.
Through this tactic, a father becomes further committed to, and
aligned with the cult's harsher definition of authority, even as he
becomes an enforcer of the cult's teachings and methods within his
own family. This arrangement builds the notion that each member of
the cult occupies some rung in this hierarchical ladder (albeit a
rather low rung), and thus further builds the psychological legitimacy
for the cult's authority, particularly for those at the “higher rungs”.
At the same time, this also helps accelerate the “redefining” of all
past notions of family and social dynamics that new converts may
have previously held, replacing them with the new definition of
power and personal positioning, centered around the cult hierarchy.
Obviously the establishing of a hierarchical power structure in
an organization in and of itself is not an evil thing. Any organization
that seeks to accomplish some great task must organize its people in
order to focus their efforts towards a common goal (e.g. win a team
sports competition, defeat an invading army, succeed in a
competitive business marketplace, land a man on the moon, etc.).
The differences between these efforts and those of a cult, is that
normal “team efforts” do not treat the individuals involved as little
more than cattle to be used and finally discarded once they have been
bled dry (at least not in the free world anyways). Nor do they
cultivate a growing obsession over power and domination by fathers
and husbands to the point of becoming self-absorbed and abusive (as
is often the case in many cult redefinitions of family roles). Nor do
normal hierarchical organizations involve secret blood oaths, or
practices that demonstrate the disemboweling or slitting of the
throat 7 of any who object to such dark tactics, etc.
One could argue that these darker definitions of “power and
authority” are not unique to religious cults, nor are they unique in
human history in general. In fact it is not hard to find many
examples of such tactics used in other societies throughout history in
their regimes, such as in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and under
Mao Tse Tung (etc.). The end result of these regimes however (and
the abject misery they inflicted on tens of millions of people in the

7 Gestures demonstrating disemboweling and the slitting of the throat

(described as “tokens of god's priesthood”) were also part of the mormon
temple ceremony prior to 1990, and were used in conjunction with the
comply “or suffer your life to be taken” locution.

40
process) only underscores the metaphor between an evil tree, and the
bitter fruit and misery it produces throughout the world. All of
which is in direct conflict with the peace and benevolence God seeks
for mankind, hinting at the true driving force and inspiration behind
such evil organizations.
To help build this darker implementation of power towards the
ultimate goal of total cult control over mind, body and soul, the
harsher redefinition of Christianity imposed on each new inductee is
often legitimized by the cult through careful distortion of scripture
(e.g. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son in Genesis ch 22,
Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter in Judges ch 14, and Christ's
sacrifice on the cross, etc.). By selectively using only certain verses
from the Bible (particularly from the Old Testament), while going to
great lengths to gloss over the entire message of the New Testament
as a whole, cults are able to cast their draconian methods as
appearing to be perfectly in keeping with Christ's teachings. This
tactic thus presents the illusion of a Biblical basis, while pressing
things towards a darker doctrine justified by selective fragments of a
Mosaic Law version of religion, something Christ and His Apostles
harshly condemned 8.
Over time, this mingling of selective fragments of scripture with
“newly revealed” “improvements” to the gospel, the cult is able to
brainwash their members to the point of believing that to win God's
love, they must be willing to sacrifice everything, “even their own
lives” should the cult dictate it (e.g. as described during the mormon
“endowment” ceremony, in Jehovah's Witness literature in order to
become one of only 144,000 saved souls, in the Jim Jones cult by
drinking poisoned Kool aide, or by David Koresh prior to a fiery
apocalyptic end, etc.).
Once the new convert has passed through the initial “milk toast”
conditioning phase and been deemed sufficiently “prepared”, they
are then exposed to these harsher realities of the cult. To help “keep
them on track” (i.e. keep them from bolting for the doors), the
revealing of some of the darker elements of cult doctrine is often
done in something of a surprise “ambush” disclosure with little

8 We note that Christ and His Apostles were constantly fighting against
false prophets of their day to keep them from forcing a harsher Mosaic Law
version on the early Christian Church, something Peter describes as a yoke
that “neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (e.g. Acts 15:5-29, Gal
1:6-10, Gal 4:9, 21-24, 28-31; Heb 7:19, Heb 9:8-12).

41
advance notice, coupled with a great deal of peer pressure. This
sudden surprise disclosure prevents the new convert from having
sufficient time to carefully consider what is being “revealed”
(expressly or merely suggestively, e.g. during the mormon
“endowment” ceremony), or considering the darker methods
employed in the “revealing” process. For example the secret Free
Mason temple ceremony which involves a variety of secret symbols,
handshakes, death threats and blood oaths – and which became the
model copied by Joseph Smith (once a free mason himself) and
expanded by Brigham Young in the Utah Territory. The added use of
peer pressure is but one more calculated and deliberate tactic that
serves to force the inductee to ignore any inherent internal “warning
voices” or impulse to flee from such evil that might otherwise
interfere with the cult's ambitions.
In order to minimize any potential backlash as cult members
implement these more brutal teachings (e.g. by power-obsessed
fathers/husbands following the cult's recipe for a “happy family”,
local cult leaders measuring out harsh reprisals against those who
discuss any of the forbidden facts and/or practices, etc.), cult leaders
will typically coach this harsher behavior well out of public view, and
thereby both deepen their minion's obsession over power and
control, while insuring a degree of “plausible deniability” or
disassociation from the brutal behavior, including in cases of child or
spousal abuse.
Where such child or spousal abuse exists, it is typically obvious
enough to be well known by cult leaders, yet is often ignored or even
legitimized as it helps extend the cult's reach. At the same time, such
abuse helps condition the abused into a mindset of subservience that
further serves the interests of the cult. In keeping with their true
darker nature, these same leaders that legitimize and promote this
abusive behavior in secret, will go so far as to play the role of
“benevolent shepherd” to the abused by expressing mock kindness
(even as they privately “counsel” “ruling with a firm hand” to the
abuser behind closed doors; Matt 18:4-6). By establishing themselves
in the abused individual's eye as a benevolent messiah figure, they
effectively “play both sides of the field”, or “play the middle against
the end” (both of which mormons are particularly experienced at
doing), despite knowing the permanent scars such abuse inevitably
leaves on each abused life (not to mention promoting an abusive
mindset nearly identical to satan's).

42
 This double-faced tactic often includes legitimizing the
withholding of basic essential developmental experiences from a
child (e.g. love, confidence building support, social involvement
outside the control of the cult, etc.), until the child begins to
demonstrate the requisite level of cult mimicry (e.g. as a reward
during the conditioning process). Having promoted the “harsher” or
more abusive approach during childhood, these same cults will often
then feign “warmth” and “fellowship” as a carrot in order to
manipulate these same children as young adults into serving some
function the cult needs (e.g. mormon youths as they approach
prospective missionary or bride age).
These harsher/two-faced tactics benefit the cult in two ways: 1)
by furthering the Pavlovian conditioning process of both the abuser
and the abused, even as the cult works to place itself as the foremost
thing in each of their lives (i.e. even above their own child's welfare),
and 2) leaving the abused spouse/child emotionally scarred and
hence dependent upon the cult for their future sense of self-worth
and social success as an adult. This tactic is often used by traditional
mormons, fundamentalist mormons, Jehovah's witnesses, etc., even
as they constantly attempt to shave the fine line between cult and
publicly respectable organization.
Despite such obvious contradictions between their claimed
belief in Christ, and the deliberate use and concealment of this
darker/more spiteful nature, no mention of any of these tactics or the
harsher reality of who they are is ever mentioned in any of the “meet
the mormon/Jehovah's witnesses” discussions or literature. On the
contrary, part of what makes a cult a cult, is their extreme effort in
masking all such hidden tactics and cruelty from public view, all
while going to great lengths to prop up the completely artificial
“warm and fuzzy” public image facade in furtherance of their broader
recruiting efforts. Of course deliberately concealing all such darker
cult realities behind such a false image can't honestly be described as
anything other than a deliberate deception. And yet, due to the years
of constant conditioning, none of the cult members involved have
any problem with such obvious contradictions.
Worse yet, if any cult member does leak any of these darker
aspects or tactics to the general public, such individuals are
immediately blacklisted as “infidels/apostates”, and are then made to
pay a heavy price, including being maligned to the fullest extent
possible (typically covertly) for defying the cult by openly discussing

43
the truth. Anytime such an expose' does occur, the darker tactics
involved are then (and only then) quietly discontinued (not out of
concern for their direct contradiction with the teachings of Christ,
but to avoid damaging their ability to lure in new converts).
All of this makes it very clear that those involved know full well
their tactics and behaviors only further demonstrate their direct
contradiction with Christ, and yet even that obvious fact has no effect
on them. Such is the extent of the level of conditioning each member
undergoes at the hands of the cult, all in furtherance of nothing other
than the cult's own agenda.

Eroding mental resistance to reprogramming:

With our personal space constantly under threat of
encroachment, most of us have a natural resistance to all such
intrusions, making our minds the last true realm of personal
sovereignty left to us. Consequently most people tend to resist any
attempt by others to take over this last bit of personal space by
forcing them to think what these individuals tell them to think. This
is particularly true with those who already have a well defined belief
system, especially when that belief system has been useful in helping
make sense of the world around them (hence a cult's preference for
recruits with no established religious affiliations or background).
Since any such prior beliefs or definitions of right and wrong
can present a barrier to the cult's goal of total control over mind,
body and soul, cult leaders will actively work to erode away all such
mental barriers, replacing these beliefs with their own. To discourage
any resistance to this effort, cults will cast this natural response as
“rebellion against God”, or a display of “carnal pride”. Combining
this psychological pressure with emotional or physical stress (i.e. the
military boot camp approach), chanting and/or group “prayer
echoing”, etc., they will press weak minds to erode any existing
mental barriers and notions of “individualism”, mentally “reshaping”
the new inductee until they are nothing more than a mindless cog
that fits within the larger machinery and objectives of the cult.
Physical exhaustion (e.g. long hard days marching, or doing
field work in the cult commune, etc.) and emotional/physical stress
wears the subject down, physically as well as mentally, making them
much more susceptible to manipulation and reprogramming. The
more extreme kinds of forced “rethinking” found in hostage

44
situations is an obvious example of the effects of this tactic,
commonly referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome”. Though this
method can be effective over more malleable and/or preconditioned
minds (e.g. during the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart), it is more of a
brute force technique and thus tends to draw far too much negative
public attention to be commonly used by most cults seeking to
maintain a “happy cult bliss” image in the public eye.
Consequently most cults typically use a less obvious stressing
approach, often coupled with the previously mentioned private
ambush approach, laced with subtle elements of peer pressure,
and/or techniques like “repetitive chanting” and its close cousin
“prayer echoing”. These less obvious applications of mental stress
can be more effective over time than the brute force methods due
largely to their subtlety, particularly when applied so that most
people exposed fail to even recognize their minds are under assault.
In “repetitive chanting”, inductees are made to recite a cult
mantra, doctrinal verse, cult “testimony”, etc. as frequently as
possible. A close cousin to this is chant reading of a text (as is
commonly used in a muslim madras setting). This repetitive
chanting effectively “quiets” (subdues) an inductee's normal thought
processes in such a way as to mollify their natural mental resistance
to the words of the chant. As the dominance of one's own internal
monologue is subdued in this way (particularly through fatigue), the
words of the chant begin to dominate the inductee's thoughts. Over
time, the chant begins to feel less “foreign”, even as it slowly takes on
more of an internal feel to them, eventually seeming as “natural” as
one's own thought structure (largely because over time it actually
become the target's thought structure).
“Prayer echoing” is similar to chanting (though slightly less
obvious). In this practice a group of new inductees are placed in the
center of the secret “congregation” and then made to repeat in unison
everything the group leader speaks (typically in the guise of a
“prayer”, as is done during the mormon “endowment” ceremony,
where this is referred to as the “true order of prayer” – as opposed to
all those “false” prayers people have uttered for millennia from the
heart).
Placing the inductees at the center of attention applies a high
degree of peer pressure on the inductees, motivating them to
“perform well” (i.e. repeat perfectly whatever words the cult leader
feeds them). Under such extreme amounts of peer pressure, the

45
inductees immediately comply and say/do whatever they are told to
do, typically out of a desire to “fit in”. The use of the “ambush”
element of surprise along with peer pressure that results from being
placed at the center of attention, compels the inductees to repeat
every word the leader utters, and in the process thereby effectively
commits these individuals to every concept the leader dictates. Thus
tricked into agreeing to virtually anything the cult places in their
mouth without contemplation, they are made to agree to give
everything they own to the cult, even while gesturing ways in which
“their lives will be taken” should they fail to comply (e.g. the Free
Mason and mormon temple ceremonies).9
As with the use of a hierarchical command structure, there is
nothing inherently evil about stressful activities, physically hard
work, marching, or even reciting a well known text. The difference
between the cult's use of such tactics and, say, reciting the Pledge of
Allegiance, or the Lord's Prayer, or the Preamble to the US
Constitution, etc., is two-fold: First, in these more benign examples,
everything you repeat is well known in advance – i.e. you have
already made a conscious (and well-informed) choice to participate
in what is being discussed long before you come to this event. You
are not being made to give a complete (and somewhat insidious)
stranger what is effectively a “blank check” over your mental freewill
or beliefs through a surprise ambush, nor recite unknown pledges
without your foreknowledge or consent based on a false belief in the
benevolence of the cult. The second difference is that cults
specifically use these covert practices, riddled with hidden meanings
and/or vaguely defined implications that are never to be questioned
(typically with a considerable amount of peer pressure and little
advance warning), specifically as a way to erode away any resistance
to their control over the inductee's mind. This often incorporates the
planting in the weaker minds certain insidious thoughts that include

9 The mormon “true order of prayer” is particularly ironic, considering the

fact that mormons go to such great lengths to deride other religions' use of
memorized prayers (e.g. the Lord's Prayer) for being something that “is not
from the heart”. To then “ambush” and force converts to repeat the words
their cult leader tells them to pray, without any foreknowledge or choice, all
with the clear implication that this “pray what I tell you to pray” is the only
“true” method of communing with one's maker, all completely contradicts
everything Christ taught on the subject (see Luke 11:1-4).

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suicide as the only atonement for those who disobey the cult.
Coupling this with all the other conditioning and peer influence
pressuring the new convert to “fit in”, most naive individuals
eventually accept the efforts of the cult hierarchy to invade and take
over their minds. Soon any resistance to even this intrusion likewise
fades away, as the act of parroting the leader gradually becomes
more and more familiar, and thus over time, comes to seem
completely “natural” to them. Once these last remaining mental
barriers are eroded away, the inductee's mind and will is no longer
their own. Before long, the inductee becomes willing to do
whatever, sacrifice whatever to the will of the cult, giving up
everything they once held dear to them. This includes all prior
beliefs in a benevolent God, as well as all worldly possessions,
wives/husbands and even children – often in a sad and futile attempt
to merit some additional fleeting hint of praise or acknowledgment
from the cult leadership.

Transitioning to the darker cult doctrines:

From all of this it becomes obvious that such cult tactics, and
their manipulative leadership in particular, have a very clear primal
characteristic underlying virtually everything about them. This
primal thinking becomes particularly apparent in these cult leaders
as they demonstrate their obsessive need for total control, asserting
themselves as the “alpha prime” over the cult “pack”/”clan”. Such
cult leaders typically rely heavily on base motivations to achieve their
goals (e.g. exploiting basic animal lusts for power/sex, coercion
either in the form of “proxy” peer pressure or direct threats of
physical violence/death against all who disobey them, etc.).
Exploiting people's most basic needs and fears using such very
primal methods, the cult leadership slowly builds their power and
control over all within their grasp until it is total and complete.
Typically this effort escalates over time as these cult leaders become
deluded by their own rhetoric and a growing throng of adoring
followers hanging on their every word (e.g. David Koresh, Jim Jones,
Brigham Young, etc.). Eventually this deluded extreme culminates in
some garish event so far beyond the pale that any rational person
would immediately see it for the evil that it is. And yet cult members
caught up in the rhetoric and conditioned into a total blind faith
devotion swear it to be “god's will” – right up to the very end.

47
 Other examples of this primal/base nature of cults is in their use
of what can only be described as animal tactics to motivate their
followers, including the aforementioned use of rewarding zealots
with multiple wives by polygamy cult leaders such as Brigham Young
and Warren Jeffs; Islamic leaders promising followers 70 virgins in
heaven for completing suicide bomb attacks; exploiting the
domination mindset of some fathers or husbands within the cult by
legitimizing this pathological trait in order to use these individuals as
proxies to extend cult control over individual family members; the
deliberate effort to exploit member's emotional needs and/or
psychological scars to deepen their dependence on the cult as the
perceived answer to all their spiritual, emotional and social needs,
etc. Once such emotional, social, mental and even financial
dependency has been created in each cult member (to as great an
extent as possible), the cult has effectively “locked” them into
compliance, making it much more difficult and costly for any
members to break away – even after the “warm and fuzzy” and
completely deceptive artificial facade phase wears away, and converts
suddenly begin to discover that the cult is very different from what
they originally portrayed themselves to be.
As one studies the carefully engineered and extremely deceptive
methods these cults use to manipulate everything to serve their
agenda, many other examples of their primal nature soon become
apparent as well, in both their culture as well as in their “new and
improved” doctrines and tactics. The fact that cults go to such
extraordinary efforts to conceal their darker side is itself a clear
indicator of the more base nature that defines them. After all, such
extraordinary efforts towards concealing these dark and often brutal
methods – even from their own cult membership – is itself a very
clear indication that they are fully aware that such evil flies in the
face of everything Christ was and taught. For cult leaders to speak of
representing God in one breath, and then work so hard at deception
and the concealing of its darker doctrines and tactics in the next,
clearly makes them more closely aligned with Christ's enemies, than
with Christ.

To a true Christian, all these darker cult behaviors represent

huge warning signs, in that everything about them sharply
contradicts everything Christ was and taught: “Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the Earth”, Matt 5:5+; “The truth shall make

48
you free”, John 8:32; Christ taught no doctrines in secret (John
18:19-20); make no man your master on this Earth (Matt 23:8-10);
many false prophets/wolves in sheep's clothing will arise and deceive
even the very elect, leading many out into the dessert or secret places
– “believe it not” (Matt 24:24-26; etc.).
For people who claim to represent God to live such an
undeniable contradiction with everything Christ was and taught out
of their blind devotion to “the doctrines of men”, makes them almost
indistinguishable from those who opposed Christ during His
ministry. After all, Christ's enemies likewise operated on exactly the
same primal level, using an array of “added” doctrines of men,
hidden ploys and extortions (etc.), all in furtherance of their own
agenda, and all at great harm to the very people they were charged
with the responsibility to lead back to God. In fact, Christ's enemies
worked constantly at secretly manipulating everything with the same
kind of harsh and deceptive tactics used by modern cults to serve
their own agenda, including proxy manipulations and deceptions,
hidden brute force cruelty and negating God's word by teaching
instead “the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:4-12).
With very little study it becomes abundantly clear that the many
apocryphal commandments added to the Mosaic Law served only to
advance the agenda of men, all while reducing both religion and the
souls it was meant to heal to nothing more than tools they used and
manipulated like pawns. Adding threats of complete emotional,
spiritual and social ruin – not to mention threats of violence and
death (e.g. beatings and stoning) against all who threatened their
“power and authority” in any way – these cults pressed to reduce the
people around them to little more than herd animals. Christ and
later many of His disciples (e.g. Stephen, Peter, Paul, etc.) on the
other hand repeatedly opposed such warped versions of religion, and
as a result came under violent assault from these dark-hearted
despots, and were ultimately killed after expressly condemning such
evil (e.g. Matt 23, 26; Acts 7:54+; Acts 23:12+; etc.).
What's more, we note that many of the people living at the time
knew what these cult leaders were doing was wrong, and yet went
along with it due to the strong hold their cult had over them (e.g.
John 9). Consequently when the judgments of God came in response
to this evil, it fell upon not only those who orchestrated it, but also
on those who tacitly enabled it as well.

49
Working to mask the harsher reality:
Knowing that their harsher tactics and secret doctrines would
repulse most rational people, cults work very hard to keep such evil
well hidden from view. In fact a great deal of emphasis is put into
“teaching” members how best to present this idyllic version of the
cult, while at the same time specifically forbidding any mention of
the darker doctrines or practices the cult uses to work their
membership into submission, all so as to not tarnish the carefully
engineered cult facade. Cult leaders in fact spend a great deal of
effort at both building this illusion, as well as orchestrating every
official encounter with potential new converts to insure their
members present only the most idyllic view of cult life to all
prospective converts. This completely artificial “warm and fuzzy”
facade is key to the success of the cult, in that it serves as much as a
lure, as it does a distraction meant to draw focus away from these
many darker contradictions.
As a result, most naive converts are completely deceived into
believing these artificially engineered encounters accurately reflect
who and what the cult actually is. This carefully engineered
deception thus works to satiate people's natural curiosity on one
hand to prevent them from digging too deeply, while at the same
time cultivating a misplaced sense of trust in the cult, based entirely
on a completely false and highly artificial foundation, deliberately
using this facade to conceal these darker truths from both the general
public, as well as many of the more naive cult members themselves.
Consequently, those who join the cult based on this very
carefully scripted and highly deceptive view of things are doing so
under the completely false belief that these highly artificial, “warm
and fuzzy” initial encounters the cult puts on display, accurately
reflect the true nature of the cult. Therefore, those who do naively
agree to the vaguely defined, and completely open-ended, one-sided
arrangement prescribed by the cult, do so based entirely on a
completely false representation of what it is that they believe they are
embracing.
Having thus been deceived, these new converts begin this very
one-sided commitment with almost no understanding of what awaits
them down the road, and the darker/harsher methods in particular
used by the cult to manipulate them into accepting even the most
primal and twisted secret practices imaginable.

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“Catch-22” and the secret society:
Considering the potential backlash that could easily result from
trying to force converts to abandon their original beliefs based on a
benevolent God in favor of the more vindictive and brutal despot
(fashioned in the image of this self-proclaimed prophet), the cult
effectively risks being trapped in a significant “catch-22” snare of its
own making. In fact with basic Christian principles once being a
fundamental element in most Western nations, this resistance during
the “re-education” process was almost inevitable. Those who hold
true to their beliefs in a more benevolent God (or worse, who try to
remind cult leaders of their initial blissful image claims) become
something of a significant problem for the cult. After all, how does a
cult that originally marketed itself using the “warm and fuzzy” image,
then argue against it in order to move towards total domination
without “skewering itself on its own pitchfork” and in the process
create more enemies than “friends” (i.e. mindless, heartless, soulless
drones).
Despite the pitfalls and repercussions of this significant
contradiction, the “bait and switch” tactic centered around the
artificial facade lure is too essential to abandon outright, in that it is
the only means by which cults can draw significant numbers of naive
converts into their “re-education” snare. After all, how receptive
would you be to a con artist who began his sells pitch with: “let me
brainwash you into total submission to my will, while I covertly drag
you and your family down into the dark recesses of my secret society
cult”? Assuming you don't have something seriously wrong with
you, it's a fairly safe bet the answer is “not very”.
In an attempt to remedy this growing “catch-22” problem as
converts are “progressed” deeper into the darkness, cults apply the
primary axiom of logic that all converts are required to accept at the
outset, namely the doctrine that the cult leader “stands in God's
place”. After initially agreeing to accept a blind “commitment” to this
key doctrine, the cult then exploits this naive commitment with
arguments such as: “Aren't you man enough to keep your word, and
honor your promises [elicited from you while deliberately
concealing vast amounts of the darker reality of the cult that would
have sent you running away screaming at the top of your lungs]?”.
In using this tactic, this arm twisting effectively begins the
coercion phase of cult life as they attempt to leverage this tool to help
get past such glaring contradictions. Applying this more brute force

51
approach, the cult is able to move the “re-education” process past
some of the more obvious hurdles, while at the same time using it to
covertly prepare the minds of their converts for even darker
techniques looming just down the road.
Since these darker and often brutal realities that are the cult
cannot co-exist openly along side the “warm and fuzzy” “cult bliss”
facade without undermining the illusion of the facade (and hence its
usefulness as a recruiting lure), and since these darker characteristics
are fundamental to the very nature and goal of the cult, this “catch-
22” only promises to get worse as the cult attempts to press each
member deeper into the “re-education”/conditioning process that
begins to unveil some of the darker cruelties the cult depends on for
total control.
At some point, in order to deal with these mounting
contradictions and the instinctive recoil they tend to trigger, many
cult founders will introduce a new element into the mix, namely an
“us verses them” mentality in the minds of their followers. They do
this by preaching a rhetoric laced with hints of threats from often
vaguely defined external foes. Creating this “besieged” mentality
serves as much as a distraction from these many glaring
contradictions, as it does a means to justify introducing a layer of
secrecy underneath the superficial facade version of cult society.
Using this tactic, these cult leaders warn of threats to the cult from
enemies (real or imagined), who for partially specified reasons want
to harm the cult (e.g. New World Order conspirators, the FBI
building a case against Warren Jeffs in southern Utah, the FBI and
ATF building a case against David Koresh in Waco Texas, Federal
Marshals pressing for evidence related to a wagon train massacred in
the Utah Territory in the 1850's, etc.). This “us verses them”
mentality thus serves as justification for a trend the cult develops
towards isolation that they then build into a layer of secrecy,
ostensibly as a means to buffer the cult society against these outside
threats. Having thus legitimized secrecy as an integral part of “doing
god's work”, cult leaders then leverage this tool to justify building a
growing undercurrent of secrecy, rife with layers of hidden
dimensions within the cult society, its teachings and all its core
practices.
Overtime this undercurrent of secrecy is slowly expanded until
secrecy and deception become a major characteristic of life within
the cult (“we must work in darkness to bring forth the light”). Once

52
this element of secrecy and hidden operations within the cult is fully
integrated into each cult member's world view, it becomes the means
by which the cult founder and his subsequent proxies justify
manipulating everything and everyone through an array of secret
doctrines, proxy-enabled self-fulfilling prophecies, blood oaths and
“comply or die” death threats concealed from the outside world and
its many perceived enemies (and “coincidentally” from its many
potential or new converts, who of course would immediately run the
other way at the first whiff of such secret society blood oaths, etc.).
As this darker “secret society” dimension of the cult is slowly
folded into the mind of all cult members as their perception of “the
true religion” 10, it creates an unspoken yet very significant aspect of
what the cult is, and is thereby able to move so many people towards
an ever-darker end game. Once members begin to accept this secret
society aspect to their religion as “right and true”, and its many
darker doctrines/control techniques that underlie the whole of the
cult society, the cult leadership then uses this blind devotion as its
most powerful tool to pull each convert into its darkest reaches of
subjugation over mind, body and soul.
This “secret society” undercurrent and its hidden darker reality
thus give the cult leadership extremely wide latitudes with its version
of “the truth”, allowing them to create the completely artificial
“warm and fuzzy” “cardboard cutout” deception of “blissful cult”
facade “to be seen of men”, while at the same time secretly
manipulate everything using half-truths, coercion and brute force.
Working to make this hidden dimension of secrecy (and its
associated threats of harsh reprisals) somehow seem perfectly in line
with its claimed belief in Christ, the cult slowly reprograms each
convert's view of God from the benevolent “Father of light and truth”,
to a much darker, much more deceptive, underhanded and cold-
hearted despot remade in the cult's image. In the process, the cult
thus realigns each member's concept of god to match the darker

10 Considering the layer upon layer of cult deception, enabled through

hidden manipulations and secret blood oaths (etc.), the glaring
contradiction of repeatedly invoking the words “true” and “truth” with such
a gross deception that is the cult, is profoundly ironic. And yet despite this
glaring irony, some version of the phrase “the true religion” is used by
virtually all cults throughout their literature to describe themselves, even as
its painfully obvious contradiction is completely ignored by those
individuals willfully participating in this deception.

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methods and attributes of the cult founder.
This dark undercurrent of secrecy thus slowly comes to
dominate every aspect of life within the cult for each convert in a very
gradual way, almost without them noticing the change, until it
eventually forms into one of the primary characteristics of the cult, of
religion, of god, of their very concept of the universe itself and their
place in all of it.
Since this secrecy is so vital to the cult's ultimate goal of total
control, the response of each convert to this dark unspoken
undercurrent is another key “testing” metric closely watched by the
convert's handlers and the cult leadership itself. Should any converts
reflect upon the condemnation of those who used identical tactics
against Christ in the New Testament and express any objections over
the obvious similarities with the modern cult's tactics, they are
chastised for having “failed god's test” and as such are then
subsequently thinned from the herd lest they “contaminate” the
mindless thinking of the rest of the cult cattle.
Throughout all of the re-education process and beyond,
members are absolutely forbidden to discuss any of these hidden
truths, even amongst themselves (for the obvious reason that if they
compared notes about such evil kept hidden from them for years,
their widespread reservations would likely snowball into a revolt).
To suppress any chance of these objections finding a voice, harsh
threats of brutal reprisals are issued as a preemptive strike against
any who should question or disobey these cruel mandates. This in
turn effectively intensifies the level of secrecy and deception into an
even darker and more deeply rooted characteristic. Yet even this
level of darkness (coupled with all its supportive secrecy and
brutality) is accepted by the bulk of the cult drones due to the heavy
conditioning used by the cult. Even Christ's oft quoted principle that
“The Truth shall make you free” (John 8:32) is dismissed as
irrelevant to the fully initiated – even as the cult's clear opposite of
truth leads many under its spell to a very bitter end.
The “fruit” and end product of all these deceptive and hidden
cult tactics is to create a religion that is nothing more than
machinery, and the people given over to it little more than either cogs
in that cold, heartless machine, or as grist for the mill in furtherance
of its own darker ambitions. In the process, this primal force
masquerading as religion warps something that was intended to heal
and refine souls into a purer and more benevolent state, into

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something that is cold blooded and heartless to its very core,
transforming each convert into a state that is far removed from the
pure benevolence of God, and into something that operates below the
level of most warm blooded animals – exactly as did the cult that
confronted Christ during His mortal ministry.
The fact that cults actively conceal their darker and more brutal
nature, makes it very clear that they know perfectly well that such
behavior is evil. In fact, most normal people have a natural inherent
instinct to recoil from such dark and underhanded manipulations,
viewing it as the clear indicator of the pathological thing that it is.
Indeed, anyone with any knowledge of the teachings of Christ, would
immediately see such dark and self-serving tactics as the very
antithesis of Christ, and in their extreme forms, pure evil. Yet
despite that huge liability, cult leaders and their well conditioned cult
members still cannot help but act out their darker nature, being
something that the cult has worked hard to cultivate into their souls
through years of conditioning.
Despite the stark contradictions between the evil that is the
cult, and the purity of Christ, cult leaders still cannot resist their true
nature. Obsessed with the dark obsession towards total domination,
they press forward despite this contradiction, for they know that they
are effectively racing against the clock when it comes to their
“blissful” “divine origin” illusion. Truth always eventually bleeds
through any facade, particularly in the case of cults, since not even
the best con artist can maintain a deception as dark as this forever.
Moreover, the level of total domination over everything that the
cult seeks, is clearly in complete contradiction to everything Christ is,
and the benevolent nature of God Himself. Consequently, in order
for cults to move their members towards accepting their darker
hidden reality in order to achieve the level of absolute control they
seek, the “imperfectly translated” New Testament portrayal of God as
a perfect, loving and benevolent Father, must be “updated” with the
cult's “newly revealed” darker version of things. In the process, the
very nature of God must be redefined into a cold-hearted, iron-fisted
accountant that cares nothing for the souls He has sacrificed so much
to create and redeem. Instead, this rendition of god makes religion
little more than a mechanical ritual that focuses its “faithful” only on
the raw number of accumulated “brownie points” bestowed by the
cult leaders upon “the faithful”, even as their secret society
reconditions everyone within reach into a Pavlovian state of

55
mechanical compliance equivalent to that of well-trained attack dog.
In essence, for the cult to achieve the level of total control it
seeks over everything within its grasp, at some point in the
conditioning process the benevolent version of God must be replaced
in each new convert's mind with the cult's harsher depiction at all
costs. Those who balk at this point against such a darker redefinition
of God, suddenly encounter the exact opposite of the “warm and
fuzzy” behavior that first drew them in, and are instead brutally
rebuked, often with threats of harsh consequences for resisting the
“new and improved” cult “gospel”. Should these threats go unheeded
at this point in the “re-education” process, these “black sheep” meet
ever-increasing levels of pressure, including threats of being cut off
from the cult (and thus god and family). Having their whole world
now completely redefined by, and entangled within the cult, such a
prospect is usually very persuasive. Should it still fail to whip these
“troublemakers” into shape, they are blacklisted and discredited
(which typically includes “leaking” any confessed sins previously
discussed under sacred trust), and then driven away from all friends
and family members still under the control of the cult to insure their
“apostate” thinking does not “contaminate” others dominated by the
cult. In the harsher cults (e.g. under Brigham Young in the mid
1800's), the cult may even send the “avenging angels” after them to
permanently silence their dissent and thus make clear examples of
them for all the other drones to heed.
The truth is, the initial approach based on a feigned Christ-like
benevolence can only get the cult so far towards its primary objective
of total domination. The “God is Love; I give you love; therefore
obey me as your God” approach only works so long as you continue
to act with a truly benevolent character (something that is all but
eradicated in each member after years of cult reconditioning in a
dark and secret society). Trying to push followers to the point of
sacrificing everything they own, “including their own lives” and the
lives/souls of their loved ones (should the cult demand it) to serve
the cult's agenda in order to merit God's love, clearly is in total
contradiction with any rational understanding of the benevolent
character of God. Consequently, most cults find they must transition
the newbies past the initial “warm and fuzzy” phase towards the
harsher methods needed to mentally recondition (i.e. fully
brainwash) converts' minds into embracing the cruel secret society
that is the cult.

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 This graduated progression of conditioning thus begins with
simple sacrifices (e.g. no coffee, tea, meat, wine, etc.) as the essential
first steps in a long line of steady progressions that eventually
culminate in a comply “or suffer your life to be taken” level of total
control. Through it all, this brainwashing/conditioning process
ultimately gives the cult the ability to overcome even the strongest
natural resistance to such an obvious evil, and thus move each
convert ever closer to that bitter end the father of lies has sought to
inflict upon all of mankind from the very beginning of time.

The moral of this story:

The teachings of Christ, His Apostles, history and indeed even
the plain facts now widely available of modern cults today, offer a
very clear and unmistakable moral to this story: Do not put your
faith in the doctrines of men. If any come to you bearing anything
dressed up as a “new gospel”, “revealed” in modern times by a self-
appointed prophet and/or conduit of “cult harmony” (particularly if
this involves secret tactics virtually indistinguishable from those used
by the mafia or ruthless dictators), run the other way. Those foolish
enough to ignore this warning and allow themselves to be taken in by
the well-polished marketing image of such people and the array of
clever deceptions propping them up, will find their lives turned
upside down and dragged through hell should they later begin to see
past the well-engineered con and develop second thoughts about
their new master.
The history of the actions of such people since forming their cult
is far more telling of who they actually are than any carefully scripted
version of things they try to project as their well-polished marketing
image. Though most such cults will make little or no mention of any
premeditated mass murders they may have planned or committed in
any of their glossy pamphlets, a few minutes invested in researching
well-documented facts published by third parties not affiliated with
such groups in your local library or on the internet, will help fill in
many of the missing pieces the cults work so very hard to keep you
from knowing. This includes the practice of teaching hidden
doctrines in secret, as well as such undeniable historical facts as the
Mountain Meadows Massacre, and any “comply or die” methods
used by cults that make such atrocities possible. It is these kind of
facts, which the cults work so hard to conceal, that provide a far more

57
accurate picture of what the cult actually is than you will ever get
from even the most well-intended and/or naive cult proxy that might
come knocking at your door.
There is after all, a stark fundamental difference between an
intrinsic truth (e.g. the law of gravity, or the teachings of Christ, etc.),
and the false principles concocted by man that must be manipulated
and forced to completion through mechanical intervention or brute
force (e.g. communism, or the false “principles” taught by cults, etc.).
An intrinsic truth stands the test of time, as it automatically leads
everything under its influence towards its well-defined end. False
cult principles on the other hand, cannot achieve their objective
without the constant intervention and manipulation of the cult,
typically working covertly to improve not the welfare of the
individual, but the secret ambitions of the cult. Intrinsic truths are
ultimately unaffected by the many transient events that occur over
time, while false principles on the other hand are easily distorted and
corrupted by transient events, largely because they are themselves
nothing more than the product of imperfect transient beings. As the
fruit of an imperfect tree, the best the most noble mortal mind can
achieve pales in comparison to what God seeks for mankind. Cult
leaders however, being driven by much darker, more self-serving and
much more primal motives, invariably end up concocting
“principles” that ultimately work in direct opposition to God's will,
pressing all under their spell towards something far removed from
God's true nature and the peace He presses so hard to establish.
Lacking the wherewithal to consider cults in light of such self
evident truths, most of the people drawn into a cult's “re-education”
snare fail to realize they are being deceived by the false doctrines of
men, until they are in so deep that they find they have unwittingly
been made part of the covert manipulating mechanism themselves.
Once progressed this deep into the cult however, any objections they
might then express about the glaring contradictions they discover
along the way are met by the brute force cults rely so heavily on as
various severe repercussions are then inflicted upon them. All of
which makes it highly unlikely that any cult proxy will be honest
about the hidden truths they might have discovered about the cult.
Once “progressed” to this point, any pretense connected to the
“warm and fuzzy” “carrot” approach is gone, and has instead
transitioned wholly into the brute force phase of control that is the
true character and nature of the cult. Consequently none of the

58
uglier cult methods are ever mentioned in any of the carefully
engineered proselytizing presentations. If pressed to explain such a
deception, cult proxies simply fall back on the hollow justification
that this is one of those “newly revealed” apocryphal doctrines
describing the “true nature of god” – i.e. one of those “newly
revealed” axioms of logic conjured to make the “comply or die” brute
force seem perfectly in-line with the nature of their god.
With very little thought, the combination of a culture of
unspoken secrecy, an obsession for absolute control over everyone
within reach that filters out all but the most malleable minds, and a
perpetual brainwashing of those under its spell, almost immediately
presents itself to be a recipe for disaster, often taking cults and their
followers “over the edge”. Once such mindless devotees are brought
to the point where they abdicate not only the total control of their
lives to such dominating groups, but also any semblance of a healthy,
well-adjusted sense of internal responsibility for cult-mandated
actions, they all but lose their ability to think like normal, rational
people. Sadly, many this deep under the spell of such a mind-
warping influence often reach a point where they are almost
incapable of functioning without the cult leader's “direction” on what
to think, what to do, and how to differentiate between right or wrong.
And as we have seen, cult members in this state become highly
susceptible to persuasion, committing even the most brutal and
barbaric actions with little hesitation or thought.
This clearly pathological, mindless herd psychology, coupled
with the leader's own sense of infallibility (often drunk on their new-
found level of power and control), easily becomes a disaster in the
making. With any and all otherwise rational voices of dissent
systematically eliminated from the cult as “apostate enemies of God”,
little remains to serve as a counter balance to prevent these pending
disasters from unfolding. In an environment where cult members
have been deliberately conditioned to go to extreme measures to
curry the approval they desperately need from cult leaders, zealots in
the group often help propel this tragedy into ever more extreme acts
in a desperate attempt to garner even only a token acknowledgment
from the cult dictator 11.
What is perhaps even more disturbing, is the fact that many of

11 Many examples of this can also be found in the behavior of those

surrounding Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pott, Nicolae
Ceauşescu, etc.

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the individuals involved in these dark cult behaviors remain
absolutely convinced their twisted and secret actions are perfectly in
keeping with the teachings of a loving, rational and compassionate
God – right up to the very end.
If one believes God is a perfect being of infinite compassion,
with absolute power over time and eternity, a being who has gone to
such extreme measures to create billions of living souls (not to
mention a perfect world on which to live), why would He then seek to
form such dark and evil organizations that perpetrate hidden evil
through a self-appointed, iron-fisted despot? For someone who
believes there is both a God and a devil, how does the effort to
manipulate and/or extort God's children into mindless machines
operating at no higher level than that of a well-conditioned trained
monkey or attack dog, not stand out as more the behavior of the devil
than of a perfect loving Father?
If God so loved the world that He even sacrificed His most
beloved Son to redeem a clearly vulgar race of beings as mankind –
while going so far as to give us complete freedom to choose as a key
part of our developmental process itself – why would He then
contradict everything He is and has done for thousands of years by
constructing such a dark and malevolent Pavlovian conditioning
process masquerading as religion, and maintained through such
secret, deceptive and brutal means? Why would He use tactics
designed to reduce individuals down to little more than mindless
drones through a brutal dictator completely devoid of anything
resembling compassion and incapable of operating at any higher
level than that of an animal, working specifically to both exploit and
cultivate the most base animal thinking and behaviors?
In short, why would God go to all that trouble to help souls
develop towards the benevolence that defines Him, only to then
order some cult leader to act in a way that degenerates people away
from His nature and towards the nature of the devil himself? How
does turning a human being into a machine devoid of compassion
that responds coldly and blindly to a command to cripple or murder
unarmed men, women and children without hesitation or thought,
align with anything Christ ever was or taught? Why would such a
perfect, benevolent being, the Father of light and truth, stoop to
using such dark, cruel and deceptive tactics more closely aligned
with the character of the devil?
The answer to such a paradox is in the asking of the question.

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All of these tactics and the ultimate goal of domination through the
most heartless, brutal and hidden tactics, betrays these cults for what
they are. These are not the characteristics of the Father of Light, nor
do they align with anything He has sacrificed so much to achieve
through creation and the Atonement for what He clearly views as the
most precious things in the universe, namely his offspring. With very
little reflection it becomes immediately obvious that these more base
characteristics and tactics used by the cult to advance such hidden
malevolence reflects the very nature of the being who is the exact
antithesis of God, i.e. the father of darkness, deception and misery;
the being who is consumed with spite and malice, and who as a result
has constantly sought to dominate mankind through misery from the
very beginning.
More than anything else, it is this stark difference that betrays a
cult for what it is, all in direct contradiction to everything Christ is.

+++++

True religion vs. cult:

Knowing what we know about the various cults disasters in
recent years, it seems hard to believe that anyone today could still be
drawn into a cult, or that their distorted teachings could even be
thought of as representing God in the first place. But once drawn in,
to then allow themselves and their family to be manipulated into
handing over total control of their lives to a cult, while being “re-
educated” to embrace secret and malevolent cult practices as
somehow in keeping with the benevolence of God, strains the
imagination.
It becomes even more mind boggling to hear that any collection
of people that claim to believe in Christ on one hand, could then have
no qualms about embracing secret practices that involve such primal
methods, including a “comply or die” approach to manipulating
followers into killing innocent people, or otherwise mimic exactly the
tactics and thinking of Christ's enemies. The whole attempt to
conceal such evil itself betrays the fact that those behind these
organizations know very well that such malevolence not only violates
even the most basic aspects of who Christ is and what he taught, but
that these two great contradictions are themselves such extreme
polar opposites that reason alone would cause people the world over

61
to naturally recoil from them. And yet in the all-too-familiar tragic
headlines today announcing yet another case of cult
suicides/homicides (etc.), we find ample evidence of the continuation
of such unfathomable contradictions of human behavior, as well as
the carnage it too often leaves behind as a result.
Those who have a solid and rational foundation in Christ's
teachings have something of an inherent defense against the darker
tactics employed by cults, enabling them to identify and avoid the
more garish cult entanglements and even some of their more overt
manipulation techniques. Most practicing Christians, for example,
are familiar with Christ teaching that “many false prophets (wolves in
sheep's clothing) will come deceiving many”, calling people to follow
them out into the desert, and Christ's warning to “believe it not”, and
to not make such men your masters.
Christ stated very clearly that He taught no doctrine in secret,
but rather openly for all the world to see and consider (John 18:19-
20). He taught that you will know a prophet not by his claims, but by
the product of his actions. The Father of Light does not spawn dark,
spiteful cruelty, nor does He need to create a society centered around
a culture of secrecy to conceal tactics that are indistinguishable from
those used by the devil. Likewise, Christ never used such “comply or
die” tactics, nor forced people to follow His Gospel. He did not use
deceptive ploys to trick or manipulate those around him into
compliance with His teachings. He did not have to. He had the
truth, and that was all He needed.
His opponents on the other hand, who could not stand against
the truth, relied on deception, secrecy and brutal tactics as their tools
of choice, as have all baser, dark-hearted souls before and since have
done. And as Christ taught, it was the end product produced by each
of these very different approaches that very clearly differentiated
between those who speak God's truth, and the false prophets that
work only to further their own ambitions: “By their fruit you shall
know them”.
A firm grasp of Christ's message and His teachings provides a
very clear means of differentiating between true religion, and the
dark, poisonous doctrines of a cult. Put very simply, placing Christ
first above all other influences and teachings in the world can offer a
very powerful shelter from the destructive storms of life, including
the latest claim of the many false prophets springing up all around us
today (whether in the form of religious cult leaders, power hungry

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and corrupt politicians, pop culture icons, etc.).
When it comes to the darker influences of the world, there is
one very simple and yet powerful litmus test that clearly separates
“the wheat from the tares”: Do the secret teachings of the leaders of
such organizations more closely resemble the example Christ gave
us, or the example of His enemies (as described in the New
Testament)?
In Christ we find the perfect example of God's true nature, as
He literally spent Himself trying to heal lives and lead those who
either wandered away, or were driven away from the light, back to
God (Ezekiel 34). Everything He did, up to and including his final
ultimate sacrifice, was characterized by unbounded compassion,
benevolence and perfect love, seeking nothing for himself in return.
It was that complete selflessness, Godly compassion and perfect love
unfeigned – devoid of any focus on power or domination – that
defines who He was and is. His teachings, and indeed the very
example of His life, defined every perfect ideal necessary for
humanity to ascend, even as He progressed towards the ultimate
sacrifice, all in behalf of a completely undeserving sea of humanity.
Everything His enemies did on the contrary, represented the
exact opposite, focused not on the will of God nor on the betterment
of mankind, but on a constant obsession to further their own self
interests, using any means necessary to achieve that one all-
consuming dark ambition. These malevolent individuals cared
nothing for the souls around them, seeing them not as God's
children, but as little more than objects to be used like cattle, and
then discarded when they outlived any self-serving utility. Their core
motives and methods were as base as that of any other animal on the
planet, all but indistinguishable from that of the dark master whom
they unwittingly followed. Their efforts were rife with hidden ploys
and blood oaths, hatched in secret, and legitimized by vast amounts
of self-serving apocryphal doctrines they had conjured and added as
“improvements” to God's word. Thus supplanting the truth meant to
heal lives with dark and twisted doctrines of men devoid of any
healing power, they brushed aside G0d's focus on Redeeming
mankind, as that was the least of their concerns.
Christ struggled to teach humanity the difference between such
base animal behavior and the poisonous fruit it breeds, compared to
the purity of God's perfect benevolence and compassion (Matthew
23-26, Ezekiel 34, John 9). Fixated on their own priorities and self-

63
serving definitions of piety however, His enemies not only ignored
the self-evident truths He taught, but instead only deepened their
resolve, hatching an array of secret schemes that ultimately
culminated in Christ's betrayal and assassination.
Adding insult to injury and plumbing whole new depths for
humanity, many of those whom Christ had miraculously healed
during His ministry abandoned Him out of a well-conditioned fear of
those who sought His death, and in so doing enabled and empowered
their evil. And yet even through all of this, Christ continued to
demonstrate the clear difference between these two extremes,
offering Himself as the ultimate sacrificial lamb during the one true
Passover event which defines the pivotal point of human history. In
so doing, He gave us the purest example of boundless, selfless
compassion and perfect benevolence known to man; the single corn
of wheat that fell to the ground and died so that others might be
born up (John 12:24).
Unlike His enemies and many of today's cults that are near
carbon copies of them, Christ taught everything He did openly
before the world, rebuking any suggestion of teaching doctrines in
secret or using secret/brutal methods to do God's work (John 18:20,
John 8:44, Luke 9:54-56). His call to mankind to take the high road
was always left as a matter of each person's own true free choice, as it
must be – nothing by compulsion (2nd Cor 9:7), deception, or brute
force. By definition that of course excludes any brainwashed or
brutal control, veiled manipulations, or direct threats of physical
harm or death. In His every action, including His final sacrifice in
the Atonement, He defined the very essence of selfless and
benevolent compassion. All of this He did not out of a focus on
power or empire building, but out of pure love of, and devotion to a
perfect and benevolent Father, seeking nothing for Himself. Christ's
life and example defined the high road as no other life has ever done
before or since. Indeed, His selfless example changed the course of
human history, as it became the ultimate paradigm that men and
women such as Charlemagne, Luther, Washington, Gandhi, mother
Teresa and many others have since sought to emulate.
Truth be told, it is this same pure benevolence to which we owe
our very existence, as it has expended a great deal of effort and
expense from the beginning of time in our behalf – all in an effort to
shape the course of events, just to give us the opportunity to choose
to rise above the primal animal behavior that is our nature, and move

64
to a higher level of existence.
This effort is analogous to the kind of sacrifice a loving parent
makes in behalf of his or her children through what is often a heart-
wrenching attempt to shape their children towards becoming a well-
adjusted adult and ultimately a future ideal parent themselves, so
that they too may eventually come to understand the true meaning
of love. The young child that is the object of this affection cannot
understand the ultimate goal of their parent as it is something that is
far beyond their childish grasp of things. As a result, the parent has
no choice but to take it “one day at a time”, working to steer their
children away from the crippling effects of the base temptations in
life, hoping that their accumulated efforts and the choices of the child
ultimately lead towards the desired goal of a happy and well-adjusted
adult life.
As it is true that a mortal parent cannot make their children
develop into a well-adjusted adult through self-serving, warped
and cruel manipulations, so too it is even more true that the kind of
benevolence our perfect Father seeks for us, His children, cannot be
achieved through secret self-serving and cruel extortion, using
primal methods or blood oaths. These are the tactics of those that
follow a darker path – tactics which reason and history clearly show
only serve to whither the soul, not enlarge it. You cannot beat,
extort, or trick someone into becoming a selfless, benevolent and
compassionate person – anymore than you can beat, extort, or
manipulate someone into loving you. If even we as imperfect beings
understand such basic, self-evident truths, how much more so then
does God, being a perfect Father, know this far better than any
mortal parent. Such a truth is obvious to anyone who has come to
know Christ, His teachings and the example of His life (Luke 11:11-
13).
Those who opposed Christ during His ministry worked hard to
trivialize and obscure such obvious truths, reducing religion to
nothing more than a list of mechanical rituals supported by a host of
added apocryphal doctrines. Likewise so too do today's cults work
hard to trivialize Christ's opposition to such darkness, downplaying
the many similarities between their tactics and those of Christ's
enemies, while attempting to redefine Christ's Gospel with vast
amounts of new and apocryphal teachings. Relying heavily on
deceptive ploys hatched in secret as their methods of choice, these
cults then work to portray such tactics are perfectly aligned with

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God's nature, even as they work to create a society of mindless
drones rife with spiteful vindictiveness and deception, and wholly
devoid of anything resembling Christ's compassion and pure love
unfeigned.
Similarly, Christ's enemies brutally used and discarded all that
fell within their grasp in a futile effort to brute force their agenda into
dominance. In a strong parallel with today's cults, these people
violated every standard of Godly behavior taught them by Moses
whom they claimed to revere. They operated almost exclusively
through hidden ploys, veiled manipulation and spiteful deception,
warping both sacred writ and sacred trust, while repeatedly violating
one major law and principle of Godly benevolence after another. All
in an effort to further only their own agenda, at the expense of
everyone who came within their reach. Such a primal and diabolic
focus ultimately mirrored that of their dark master, who in the end
will come to own the souls of such men as a natural end product of
following such a dark path. In fact it is all but an immutable law that
such malevolent self-serving abuse of people, driven by a fixation on
power and its spiteful mindset, only serves to wither the soul,
ultimately trending all things towards the exact opposite of ascent.
The “fruit” of such darkness is amply demonstrated not only by the
shriveled souls of the enemies of Christ who brutalized all who dared
threaten their efforts towards power and prestige, by the disastrous
end they brought down upon their society, and indeed by the
ultimate end that most certainly will befall the dark master whom
such men served.
The contrast between these two opposite poles in human
behavior, the tactics used by each, and the ultimate end result each
develops, could not be more extreme. Christ defined the high road,
and in the process changed the course of human history and the very
nature of human civilization. Truth, compassion and love unfeigned
defined everything He did and everything He was. Hidden
subterfuge, dark plots and selfish cruelty on the other hand became
the hallmarks of His enemies, and serve to highlight the stark
contrast between the lowest wrung of human behavior, against the
brilliance of Christ's highest example of perfect purity of soul.
Secret society blood oaths, subterfuge, spiteful cruelty and a
focus on “power and authority” (domination), defined His enemies.
In fact, all of these characteristics describe the exact antithesis of
Christ. To suggest that Christ would ever tell any of his followers

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“do what I say, or I will slit your throat” – in God's name no less –
is born of the very essence of evil. If you claim you believe in Christ,
and suggest He would operate in such a way, then you do not know
Christ, and your piety has been completely in vain. To even suggest
Christ would use such tactics, or that He is that kind of being, is
beyond the worst kind of blasphemy there is. Which is exactly why
those who use such tactics (including the threat of death on any who
oppose them), do so under the cloak of secrecy (e.g. the mormon
“endowment” ceremony, the Mountain Meadows massacre, etc.).
Such evil, soul-warping tactics are propagated in secret because
they cannot stand the light of day. Such methods came to define
men such as Caiaphas and his minions as they attempted to bend
everything in their myopic grasp against Christ to serve their own
selfish ambitions. These efforts even included arranging false
witnesses to testify against Christ through half-truths, character
assassinations and petty manipulations, as they attempted one
underhanded ploy after another in an effort to create the appearance
of some violation of the Law by He who was the very Giver of the
Law, and thus the very essence of the Word of God. All of this they
did while working their manipulations in secret from a distance,
using a variety of willing proxies, each conditioned to act in mindless
compliance to a host of apocryphal “doctrines of men”.
Eventually these warped individuals did succeed in murdering
Christ and many of His disciples through covert manipulations in an
effort to remove what they perceived was an impediment to their
agenda. However, through it all they only managed to do so by
violating everything they professed to hold sacred, even to the point
of bringing a curse upon themselves and their posterity to help seal
the deed (Matt 27:24-25). In less than four decades that terrible
curse began to unfold, beginning with the Diaspora in 70 AD which
scattered the Jewish people to the four corners of the Earth, and
which then continued down through time for nearly two millennia,
culminating in the horrific Holocaust of WWII.
The irony of these contrasting examples is that Christ worked
openly and honestly in complete selfless benevolence, devoid of even
a hint of self-serving motives, and in the process not only changed
the course of human history, but ultimately achieved what no mortal
in history could even imagine possible. His enemies on the other
hand, who used the darkest methods imaginable to force everything
to bend to their will, ultimately not only brought themselves to a

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bitter end, but inflicted an unspeakable curse upon their posterity for
countless generations to come, underscoring the highest of contrasts
between He who defined the “high road”, and those who willingly
choose to take the baser path of the “low road”.
This then, defines perhaps the simplest means of differentiating
between the way of truth, as opposed to that of a cult. One operates
openly in “the light of the full day sun”, in perfect selfless
benevolence, Truth, Justice, Mercy, Faith and Love unfeigned,
seeking only to elevate lives towards the Father of Light; while the
other uses and discards souls like cattle through dark, self-serving
manipulative means, lurking in the dark for fear of their efforts being
exposed to the light of day.

Escape and Deprogramming:

As those who have lost loved ones to the control of a cult, or
have themselves once been entangled in a cult can testify, the gradual
conditioning one undergoes at the hands of such people leaves a very
deep scar on a person's mind, heart and soul. In many cases this is a
scar that takes a great deal of time to heal, once they begin to grasp
what was done to them. Only then can anyone even attempt to
“deprogram” from the extensive brainwashing used by most cults.
This deprogramming is all the more complicated by the fact that one
of the most fundamental parts of the typical cult “re-education”
process is the whole entanglement of one's entire life within the
hyper-defined social and doctrinal structure of the cult. Having
spent years, or in some cases their whole lives being told by the cult
what to do, what to believe, and even what to think, most “escapees”
are typically devastated to find everything they had trusted in was a
complete lie. Overwhelmed and confused, most “escapees” are at a
complete loss at how to heal such deep wounds born of betrayal, and
are often left struggling after the fact with the task of rebuilding their
shattered lives.
During the “assimilation” process, the cult had worked
specifically to eliminate all prior social, emotional and spiritual
support inductees may have had outside the cult, for the specific
purpose of deepening the inductee's emotional and psychological
entanglement within the cult. As an escapee struggles to escape the
hold of the cult, they therefore lose what few friends, “spiritual
advisers” and emotional/psychological support mechanisms they had

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been conditioned to depend upon while under the control of the cult.
In many cases, the typical cult member has their entire existence and
world view completely intertwined with, and thus dependent upon,
the cult social structure, as well as its doctrinal world view. Like
unseen tentacles that reach deep down into one's mind and soul, this
entanglement makes leaving a cult and adjusting to the world outside
their control, that much more difficult. All of which of course, is
exactly as the cult intends.
Escaping from this entanglement means not only losing contact
with all social and emotional support within the cult (particularly if
one's family and friends remain under the control of the cult), but a
soul wrenching struggle to exorcise these unseen tentacles from the
mind and soul. Those who leave the cult, may struggle for years to
make sense of it all, even as they try to understand just what was
done to them. In many ways, these people are effectively forced to
start their shattered lives over again in something of a complete
“reboot”. Such a disorienting loss of everything that once defined
their lives, and the struggle to regain one's own mind and will, can be
an extremely painful and lengthy process. Those who have not
suffered through such a total emotional, social and psychological
“reboot” cannot understand how difficult it can be, nor the true cost
an inductee pays to escape the influence of such evil.
Leaders of these cults on the other hand, not only know how
difficult and painful such an experience can be for those they use and
subsequently discard, they count on it. In fact, this is but one of
many cruel and spiteful things cults use to punish, discard and
discredit anyone who begin to voice too loudly any questions about
the obvious contradictions surrounding the cult illusion. Having
seen many flee their clutches, cult leaders fully understand the
subsequent turmoil this upheaval has on their lives. And true to
form, instead of acting in a truly Christ-like or compassionate way
towards such individuals as their claim as God's messenger would
require, these cult leaders routinely exploit their pain and confusion,
working to use it as “proof” of how “lost they are without the cult
there to guide [control/use] them” (and thus by implication you
would be should you likewise step out of line by questioning these
things).
The darkness that drives such efforts cares not one whit for the
souls within its grasp, nor is it satisfied to simply threaten to
condemn those who flee its darkness. Instead it extracts a price so

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cold that it often can't even speak the threat publicly, as it eventually
forces a wife to betray her husband, a mother to betray her son, a
father to betray his daughter (etc.), and thereby orchestrate a
betrayal few would normally commit on their own. In the process
they extract from those they assault in this way even the price of
sacrificing their closest loved ones through an effort that is focused
solely on the self-serving ambitions and interests of the cult.
Such a coldness is the very heart of evil, and stems from the
same dark place that enables cult leaders to tell their followers
comply, “or suffer your life to be taken”. Those lives who cannot be
made to bend to serve the cult's agenda, are then coldly destroyed
with complete callousness, without even so much as a fleeting tinge
of guilt or a moment's hesitation over the obvious contradiction with
everything Christ was and taught. Nor does their exact resemblance
to those who had Christ and many of His Apostles murdered in cold
blood give them pause. These cults after all, despite the showy public
displays of “happy family” and “cult benevolence” they work so hard
to project, are not in the business of saving souls. Their goal is to
build their empire and thus advance their own self-serving agenda,
through any means necessary. For all their maudlin displays of
proclaiming “the worth of souls is great in the eyes of God” (Joseph
Smith), their cruel treatment of the souls within their grasp makes it
very clear people are nothing more than herd animals which they
routinely use and discard as it suits their interests, to achieve
whatever self-serving goal they deem expedient at the time.
Considering the depth of the conditioning efforts born from
such a dark-hearted evil, physically escaping the control of a cult is
far easier than escaping from the mental, emotional and
psychological control conditioned into the mind and soul of those
under its control. In fact, in many cases it can take years to
“deprogram” someone who has undergone the psychological
conditioning of a cult. Those struggling to come to terms with the
experience can often have a difficult time just trying to return to what
might pass as “normal”. Unfortunately, since the recovery process
can often take a very long time itself, many such escapees continue to
lose ground in life, suffering what is for all intents and purposes
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD) during this phase, a
condition that continues to rob them of the normal experiences of life
that might otherwise follow (e.g. normal healthy social interactions,
marriage, family/children, grand children, etc.).

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 As with all shattered lives, the greatest cure for any such deep
emotional, spiritual and/or psychological wounds can be found in the
pure love and compassion of Christ. Unfortunately, many of those
who suffer through such a deeply scaring event inflicted by those
masquerading as “God's mouthpiece”, are often so jaded by the
pseudo-religious pretense of the cult (particularly where the cult has
mingled scripture with its own warped doctrines), that many
escapees recoil at the hint of anything that even sounds reminiscent
of the teachings of a cult, unable to make the distinction between
true religion and the dark counterfeit that is the cult.
As a consequence, many escapees often end up distancing
themselves from the healing that could otherwise be found in Christ.
Some escapees may even resort to trying anything to numb the pain,
including alcohol or narcotics. Rational people know that such a
solution only exacerbates one's problems in life, but in the
psychologically distressed and confused state of those fleeing the
brainwashing of a cult, they often fail to see even this most obvious
truth – and instead grope blindly at anything to ease the pain
through this recovery phase. This alienation from God is itself a key
part of the cult's deliberate control scheme, thereby leaving
individuals “nowhere to turn”, and in the process making the evil of
the cult that much more clearly aligned with the devil himself. Those
the cult deliberately drive away from God through such an
experience and who might seek escape through alcohol, drugs, illicit
affairs, etc., only make it that much easier for the cult to discredit,
and in so doing thus “stop the ears” of those who might otherwise
benefit from the warnings of those who experienced the dark side of
cults first hand.
All of this of course is exactly what the cults intend, as it is
perfectly in keeping with the cruel nature that lies at their core.
Adding insult to injury, cults will even go so far as to then use the
pain it inflicts on such people as nothing more than a means to
tighten its grip on the remaining cult members. Souls after all, are
nothing more than cattle to a cult, and those it spitefully drives away
from loved ones and God alike, are then exploited to the fullest
extent possible, even as they are then in parting made to serve one
last cult purpose. Highlighting the very pain and loss the cult
worked so hard to create, while at the same time masking and
spinning all valid objections of hidden cult practices and
contradictions, the cult uses these discarded souls as nothing more

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than a spiteful allegory meant as an object lesson to all within the
cult's grasp of what happens to those who dare question its methods.
Despite knowing that in so doing they reveal their true darker nature
in overt form, they still can't help themselves, as they press the issue
and demonstrate what will befall any who likewise dare to oppose the
darkness that lies at the heart of the cult.
Thus subtly blinding the minds of all within their grasp, the cult
whitewashes and conceals all such darker cult realities from view.
Carefully omitting any mention of these facts, the cult then turns and
without even the slightest tinge of guilt, projects anew the
completely deceptive illusion of cult “bliss” and “god's new and
improved gospel of love” to yet another new crop of naive inductees
that have had the great misfortune to have stumbled within its grasp.

+++++

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 Concordance:

Abraham's symbolic sacrifice of Isaac (God shall provide), Genesis ch 22

A prophet shall rise among you whom you should hear, Deut 18:15+
Condemnation for brutal disregard for the welfare of souls, Ezekiel 34
A virgin shall conceive a son Emanuel, Prince of Peace, Isa. 7:14, 9:6
Christ's Atonement foretold 700 years beforehand, Isa 49:15-16, Isa 53

Herod, then Jewish leaders seek to kill Christ Matt 2:12-18; Matt 26:1-5
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth, Matt 5:5+
Christ's condemnation of religion based on being “seen of men”, Matt 6:1-5
Beware of false prophets; know them by their fruit, Matt 7:15+, 12:33
Driving a wedge between families, Matthew 10:21,36; John 16:1-3
Doctrines of man, making the word of God “no effect”, Matt 15:6-12
Not what goes into the body, but what comes from the heart, Matt 15:8-11
Christ's condemnation of a religion that harms a child, Matt 18:4-6
What God has joined together, let no man put asunder, Matt 19:6
What must I do to inherit eternal life? Matthew 19:16+
Making converts two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves, Matt 23:15
Call no man your father/master on this Earth, Matt 23:8-10
Attributes of God: Justice, Mercy, Faith and Love Matt 23:23, Luke 11:42
Many false prophets shall arise, deceiving the very elect, Matt 24:24-26
Beware of false prophets; by their fruit ye shall know them, Mark 11:20
Seeking to destroy souls is not of the spirit of God, Luke 9:54-56
Christ's teachings on the true order of prayer, Luke 11:1-4
If you being imperfect know what is best for your children... Luke 11:11-13
Moses wrote of Christ, John 6:45-46, (Deut 18:15+)
The truth shall set you free (not a cult of deception), John 8:32
Cults follow the father of lies, John 8:44
A clear example of cult priorities, tactics and cruelty, John 9
Jewish leaders plot to kill someone Christ raised from the dead, John 12:9
The single corn of wheat that died so others could be born up, John 12:24
The trial of Christ (in violation of Mosaic law), John 18:12-24
Christ taught no doctrine in secret but openly, John 18:19-20
The brutal assassination of Stephen for defending Christ, Acts 7:54+
A secret plot to kill Paul, Acts 23:12+

Returning to the Mosaic Law, Acts 15:5-29; Gal 4:9-11, 21-24, 28-31
Those who pervert the Gospel of Christ to be accursed, Gal 1:6-10
Mosaic Law/sacrifices could not redeem mankind, Heb 7:19, 10:4
The way back did not exist before the Atonement of Christ, Heb 9:8-9
They [under the Mosaic law] without us cannot be perfected, Heb 11:40
The curse that falls on all who try to change the word of God, Rev 22:18+

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