What Is a Cult?
“That you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9b). In Judges 18, we see the idolatry begun by Micah take root among the people of the colony established by the Danites on Israel’s northern frontier. Doing what was right in their own eyes, they veered away from the true worship of the God of Israel and fell into apostasy. We might say they established their own “cult.” Nowadays, there is vast disagreement over what is true about God and how He is to be worshipped. To make matters worse, the various groups that weigh in on spiritual matters often classify themselves as “the one true church” and their opponents as cults. How can we tell the difference between an orthodox church and a cult? What makes a cult a cult? What are some of the significant cults today? The word cult comes from the Latin cultus, which means “to care for” or “to take care of.” The word cult initially referred to a group of people who had sim...