A Study Of The Letter Of First John – Personalities Of The Children Of God – Part Iii Series

Today you will find many spiritually gullible and naïve people. We are shocked when we hear reports of religious groups creating pacts toward mass suicide. Someone has called them “Killer Cults.”

Reverend Jim Jones & the People's Temple (900+died)

Jim Jones, the son of a Klansman, considered himself the reincarnation of both Jesus and Lenin.

On November 18, 1978, Jim Jones ordered his followers to drink from a tub of grape-flavored Fla-Vor-Aid laced with potassium cyanide and tranquilizers. 900+ died. Children died first; babies were killed by poison squirted into their mouths with a syringe. Then the adults. Most were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by security guards. As the ritual suicide progressed, it is unclear whether Jim put a bullet through his brain, or someone did it for him.

David Koresh & ATF (90 died)

He was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, to a 15-year-old single mother. Koresh allegedly believed himself to be a modern-day Cyrus the Great, who had permitted the Jews to return to Judea upon liberating them from Babylonian rule.

Moving from one church to another he attracted a followership and began to give the message of his own "Christhood," proclaiming that he was "the Son of God, the Lamb who could open the Seven Seals."

On February 28, 1993, the ATF tried to enter the Branch Davidian compound where hundreds of Koresh’s followers, wives and concubines lived in the outskirts of Waco, Texas. The raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and six Davidians. The ATF raid resulted in a standoff that lasted for fifty-one days.

The 51-day siege of the Mount Carmel compound ended on April 19, 1993 when U.S Attorney General Janet Reno approved recommendations of veteran FBI officials to proceed with a final assault in which the Branch Davidians were to be removed from their building by force. In the course of the assault, the church building caught fire. Reports claim FBI sharpshooters killed members of the Branch Davidian cult that attempted to flee the flames. Other reports made the claim that David Koresh had his followers shot.

Heaven's Gate (40 died)

Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religion based in San Diego, California and led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Heaven's Gate members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. The group believed in several paths for a person to leave the Earth and survive before the "recycling", one of which was hating this world and their bodies strongly enough.

Applewhite came to believe that he and his nurse, Bonnie Nettles, were "the Two", that is, the two witnesses spoken of in Book of Revelation 11:3 in the Holy Bible. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to run an inspirational bookstore, they began traveling around the country giving talks about their belief system. As with other New Age faiths they combined Christian doctrine (particularly the ideas of salvation and apocalypse) with the concept of evolutionary advancement and travel to other worlds and dimensions.

On March 26, 1997, 39 members of "Heaven's Gate" decided to hate their bodies enough to "shed their containers" and get on a spacecraft hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. The resulting mass suicide of 21 women and 18 men, ages 26 to 72, all sporting buzzcuts, dressed alike in trendy black pants, oversized shirts, and brand new black Nikes, was unlike any other mass suicide.

I must admit that the religious groups that we have just cited may be considered by some as the extreme—only because they resulted in mass suicides and killings of men, women and children. But according to the writer of the New Testament book we are studying, there are other groups that are even more dangerous; not because they result in the taking of lives but in the destroying of souls—effectively sealing a person’s spiritual state for eternity.

In chapter five of our LIFE Group study booklet, John MacArthur let us know that in chapter four of 1st John, the author focuses once more on the doctrinal test and emphasizes the need to obey sound teaching. Ever since the temptation of Eve, Satan has sought to distort and deny God’s Word. He is the ultimate demonic source behind all false teachers and false doctrine.

In Genesis chapter three Satan attempts to get Eve to doubt God’s Word: Satan said to Eve, "Hath God said?" (Gen. 3:1), planting doubt in her mind. (3:1)

After this Satan leads Eve into a distortion of God’s Word: Eve replied that God had said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it" (Gen. 3:3). But God didn't say anything about not touching the tree.

In verse 4 Satan outright denies the Word of God: Satan told Eve, "Ye shall not surely die" (Gen. 3:4), a direct contradiction of what God said previously (Gen. 2:17).