Combating Negative Spiritual Phenomena

Characteristics of most cults: (These apply to many other negative groups)

A cult is a group that is committed to a fixed belief system. Cults often use rituals and practices that depart from conventional methods in society. They are normally exclusive and claim to have a monopoly on the truth. Their members tend to be from the general population, although they might need to include some specialised organisers.

Cults deny any belief or mastery to anyone except the cult’s founders and leaders. They are ‘voluntary’, at least initially. An individual chooses to be a member of the organization. Members are forced to maintain standards and rules, with discipline and sanctions against the deficient or disobedient. They demand total allegiance to the ‘group’, the leader and in spiritual cases the demonic entity or entities that they follow.

Cults restrict contact with family and friends. People who wish to leave have no one to turn to, no one outside the group. Members who wish to leave, or indeed who rebel, are told that because they have alienated themselves, or cut themselves off from the group, they are destined to be damned for all eternity.

When you leave a cult you become a ‘non person’. No member of the cult is allowed to help you in any way.
Cut off from their family and friends, they are taught that salvation, life, is impossible with anyone other than the group.

Members often feel depressed and suicidal or simply they feel as if life is not worth living. The group /cult will supply a substitute family life and their total environment. Members are also told that by breaking the rule's they have committed the most atrocious sins possible for them. The only possible salvation, way out, is through total allegiance to the group and it's leader. Without the group the former member feel's damned, cursed in every way.

Cults have a fixed dogma and insight is confined to those in power and the hierarchy. There is the ever-present appeal to ‘authority’, especially the leader / founder.

To sum up, sects and cults are in essence the same thing. They have in general a totalitarian control over their members. They will dictate to the members their relationship to the 'outside world’. A cult totally dictates the rules and regulations of the group. They may also dictate the member’s involvement in the group activities.