📖 Cults & World Religions — Unit 10: Witnessing to a Cult Member or Person of Another Faith

Anchor: 1 Peter 3:15; Acts 17:22-23; 1 Corinthians 3:6-7; Matthew 28:18-20 (NKJV)

Bringing It All Together

We have come a long way. We have learned to recognize a cult, to test its teaching at the root, and to see how the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Latter-day Saints, the prosperity gospel, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism and Buddhism, and the folk religion of our own land each depart from the gospel of Christ. But all of that learning has one purpose, and it is not to make us clever, or to win arguments, or to feel superior. It is to help us love people well enough to bring them the truth. This final unit turns from the error to the person — from what these groups teach to how we may reach the men and women caught in them. For behind every false system is a soul that Christ died to save, and the whole point of understanding the error is to be able, with wisdom and love, to point that soul to Him.

The Person Is Not the Enemy

The first thing to settle, before a single word is spoken, is that the person in front of us is not our enemy. The Jehovah's Witness at the door, the Muslim at work, the Catholic relative, the neighbor who visits the curandero — these are not opponents to be defeated but people to be won. "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood" (Ephesians 6:12); the real bondage is spiritual, and the person is its captive, not its author. So we come in love, and we begin on our knees, for no argument ever saved anyone; only God opens a heart. And we watch our manner, remembering Paul's charge that "a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance" (2 Timothy 2:24-25). We are not out to score a victory over a person. We are pleading with a captive to be free.

Listen First, and Ask

Much of our witness fails not because we say wrong things but because we say them too soon, and never listen. When Paul came to Athens, a city full of idols and false philosophy, he did not open with a rebuke; he walked among them, looked carefully at what they believed, and found a point of contact — an altar to an unknown god — and from there he preached Christ and the resurrection (Acts 17:22-23). Follow him. Ask the person what they actually believe, and listen until you understand it, not the caricature of it. Ask honest questions: What do you believe about Jesus? How do you hope to be right with God? What happens when you are afraid, or when you sin? Questions open a door that assertions slam shut. They show respect, they make the person think, and they let you answer what is really there rather than a position no one holds. A good question, gently asked, often does more than an hour of argument.

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

When the conversation comes, keep it on the one thing that matters most. This whole course has turned on two questions — who is Jesus Christ, and how is a person saved — and those are the two questions to hold before any soul, of any faith. It is easy to be drawn off into a hundred side-issues: a date that failed, a point of history, a scientific claim, a philosophical puzzle. Some of these have their place, and may clear away an obstacle. But they are the scaffolding, not the building. Always come back to Jesus: who He is, the eternal Son of God in the flesh, and what He has done, dying for our sins and rising again, and the free gift of righteousness received by faith. Paul, facing the cleverest city of his age, made his resolve: "I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). Make it yours. Win the argument and lose the Christ, and you have lost everything.

Let the Word Do the Work

We are not left to our own eloquence, for we carry a living weapon. "The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12); the Scriptures are able to make a person "wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15). So open the Bible with people. Do not merely tell them what it says; show them, and let them read it with their own eyes. Many who have been taught a false system have never actually seen what Scripture plainly teaches about the deity of Christ, or grace, or the finished work of the cross. The Spirit of God works through the Word He inspired, and a verse seen for oneself can pierce where our arguments only bounce off. We do not need to be brilliant. We need to bring people to the Book, and trust its Author.

Be Patient; God Gives the Increase

We must also make peace with time. Very few are argued into the kingdom in an afternoon; most come slowly, as the truth works its way in against a lifetime of teaching, family, and fear. Remember Nabeel Qureshi, who wrestled for years before he bowed to Christ, and counted the cost every step. Our part is not to force a decision or to manipulate a prayer, but to sow and to water faithfully, and to leave the harvest to God: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase" (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). We cannot open a heart; only the Spirit can, for "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:14), and "no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). This frees us from despair and from pride alike. We are not the Savior; we are only a witness pointing to Him.

Give a Reason, with Gentleness and Respect

Scripture gives us, in a single verse, both our duty and our manner: "always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15) — that is, with gentleness and respect. We are to be ready, to know why we believe and to be able to say it; but the how matters as much as the what. A truth flung like a stone wounds; the same truth offered in love can heal. And our lives must not contradict our words: the people we hope to win are watching us, and a gentle, honest, joyful life adorns the gospel we preach and makes it believable. Finally, we do not do this alone. We are not lone soldiers but members of a body, and the goal is not merely to win an argument but to bring a person to Christ and into His church, where they can be taught, loved, and kept. Bring them to the fellowship of God's people, and let the whole church help you love them home.

The Uniqueness of Christ

And so we come to the end of the course, and to the one truth that has stood unshaken through every unit of it. We have surveyed the great rivals — the Watch Tower and the Latter-day Saints, the prosperity preachers, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith, the wisdom of India and the peace of the Buddha, the powers of the folk altar, and the additions of Rome — and after all of it, Christ stands alone, like no other figure who has ever lived. No other founder of any faith was God come in the flesh; they were prophets, teachers, sages, and messengers, but He is the eternal Son. No other lived a sinless life. No other died for his followers — others killed, or fought, or taught men how to save themselves, but only Jesus was crucified in the place of sinners, bearing their guilt. And no other rose. The tomb of Muhammad in Medina is occupied; the ashes of the Buddha were divided among his followers; the grave of Joseph Smith lies in Illinois — but the tomb of Jesus is empty, and He lives. He is not a teacher of the way; He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). And "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). This is why we may go to anyone, of any faith, without fear and without contempt: not because we are right and they are wrong, but because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and is Lord of all, and He is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God through Him. Go, then, and tell them.

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