How to live with cult thinking within a performance-based-religion.
When you belong to a religion that believes in ongoing revelation that principally flows through the Divinely-Called mouthpiece, two things happen.
- Your organization will be subject to an ample presentation of prophesying, seeing and revelating.
- You will be expected to conform to what God tells someone else to tell you.
In the fundamentalist revelation-based religion of my childhood and culture, the following is a summary of how all of us were expected to understand the mysterious mind of Divinity as revealed to us through the ministrations of a chosen One.
How to follow a prophet and hear the will of the Lord. (I invite you to think about the logical extensions of such thinking and ask yourself the pertinent questions as to what is being assumed..
Is it humanistic and natural to be led through life with your disbelief suspended?
First: The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
Second: The living prophet is more vital to us than scripture.
Third: The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
Fourth: The prophet will never lead the Church astray.
Fifth: The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
Sixth: The prophet does not have to say “Thus saith the Lord” to give us scripture.
Seventh: The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
Eighth: The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
Ninth: The prophet can receive revelation on any matter–temporal or spiritual.
Tenth: The prophet may be involved in civic matters.
Eleventh: The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
Twelfth: The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
Thirteenth: The Prophet will choose leaders and form leadership groups that will be led by God as governed by the Prophet.
Fourteenth: Follow the Prophet and church leaders and be blessed. Reject them and suffer.
