The first time I really was made to understand the insidious nature of heavily-populated religious cults in America was in 1999. Even upon learning about one cult in particular, I had trouble believing what I was hearing.
We were in Indianapolis, Indiana, to speak at a prophecy conference –invited there by Dan, a person who would become a close friend over the ensuing years.
He and his wife were at the head of an anti-cult ministry and were devoted intensively to bringing the Truth to people of the Mormon cult and to all who would heed what they had to say. And they did indeed have much to say about the truth behind the falsely gentle façade of Mormonism.
There were great speakers at the conference like Dave Hunt, John Ankerberg and others, and I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from those speakers. But what I remember most was private conversations between Dan and myself. His revelations were stunningly eye-opening. Yet, like I mentioned, I had a hard time getting my non-cultic mind around the insidiousness of the cultic dogmas and practices.
The reason for Dan’s and his wife’s intensity in carrying out the assignment the Lord gave them was that they had several years previously to this 1999 conference come out of Mormonism. They had been at the intermediate level, as I understood Dan to say. That is, somewhere in the mid-level of the Mormon Church structure. And their status was about to change. Dan was being looked at for much higher doings in that structure.
I never will forget our sitting in a small anteroom off the big sanctuary of the church rented for the conference. It was just Dan and myself there, having a quick lunch. Dan opened up in telling about his and his wife’s leaving the Mormon Church.
The following news item, when I came across it on Rapture Ready News, instantly pierced my memory of that conversation those years ago with Dan.
A former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was featured in an Associated Press investigation into how the church protects itself from allegations of sexual abuse, was arrested by police in Virginia this week after being indicted on charges he sexually abused his daughter while accompanying her on a school trip when she was a child, according to court filings.
Police and federal authorities had been searching for John Goodrich after a grand jury in Williamsburg on Jan. 17 found probable cause that he committed four felonies, including rape by force, threat or intimidation, forcible sodomy, and two counts of felony aggravated sexual battery by a parent of a child.
Those charges were filed weeks after the AP investigation revealed how a representative of the church, widely known as the Mormon church, employed a risk management playbook that has helped it keep child sexual abuse cases secret after allegations surfaced that Goodrich abused his daughter Chelsea, now in her 30s, at their home in Idaho as well as on a school field trip to the Washington, D.C., area 20 years ago.
“I hope this case will finally bring justice for my childhood sexual abuse,” Chelsea Goodrich said in a statement to the AP. “I’m grateful it appears that the Commonwealth of Virginia is taking one event of child sexual assault more seriously than years of repeated assaults were treated in Idaho.”
Source: Former Mormon bishop highlighted in AP investigation arrested on felony child sex abuse charges – WJET/WFXP/YourErie, by JASON DEAREN, Rapture Ready News, March 14, 2024
As I said, the news story grabbed my attention and transported me back to that afternoon in Indianapolis, sitting there with Dan. He told me why he and his wife, Augusta, born in Iceland and a naturalized American citizen, were so dedicated to their anti-cult ministry and why they believed in Bible prophecy.
They and their children, then grown to adulthood, had been devoted to the Mormon agenda in every way. They saw the Mormon thrust as seeking only to do good and making sure they brought others into that “church” so others, too, would go to Heaven.
Then, Dan said somberly, he came fully to know what the Mormon religion entailed at the elevated level that he was selected to join.
The bishop, or whatever the superior minister was called –can’t remember—took Dan aside, Dan told me. The church official charged with informing Dan of his being chosen, etc., then hit him with the stunning information and subsequent directive.
The church official told Dan that to be in this exalted position to which they were elevating him, he needed to have sex with his daughters.
I don’t remember the whys of this commandment by the Mormon structure, but I do remember vividly the instruction Dan told me he was given. It had something to do with solidifying Dan’s family in Heaven’s eternal positioning. I guess the information so stunned me that I missed the details of why such a heinous thing could be demanded by the cult leadership.
One thing sure, when Augusta heard the demand, she threw what we call here in the south –a FIT! They broke all connection with the cult that very day, Dan confided. They soon came to know the Lord and were, from that point forward, devoted to Christ and to exposing Mormonism and all cults.
Dan and Augusta, both of whom were considerably older than I at the time, are gone to be with the Lord. I look forward to being with those great champions for the Lord again one Eternal Day.
The Apostle Paul, I believe, wrapped within his powerful perilous times prophecy the very things today’s cults are foisting. The news story above, and my hearing Dan’s story and what brought them out of Mormonism, points specifically to some of Paul’s forewarning of things to come as the end of the age approaches. I dissect those prophesied bits here.
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be… unholy… Without natural affection, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was” (2 Tim 3: 1 through 9 dissected).
To my spirit, Paul’s perilous times prophecy here –the specific things I left in— speaks to the Mormon cult and all other pseudo-Christian cults found in America and around the world today.
Now, let me say that there are folks within these cults who are good people, as we define good in our human social relationships. However, they are lost and need to come to know the Lord Jesus for Salvation of their souls –as did Dan and Augusta and as did Terry James.
For there is but one who is good. That is, as Jesus Himself said, God. And Jesus is God, and the way, the truth, and the life. No person comes to God the Father but through Jesus.
Here is the way to come to Jesus for Salvation and to be ready to go to Heaven either through the Rapture of all believers or through the portal of death.
“That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).
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