u/Extreme-Ad9831 — reddlx

For my first ever reddit post, I thought I would share my story relating to this cult in the latter period of my first uni semester.

Like many others, they first approached me on campus inviting me for their bible studies. Being an Orthodox Christian, I wrongly assumed they were your average protestants looking to build a christian space on campus and I agreed to meet up. After a few bible studies I noticed that they were a bit pushy with me trying to get me to accept certain doctrines and treated me like an unbeliever, but I excused it as them trying to make better christians and a result of them being "fIrEd uP!" as they like to say.

The breaking point came during their bible study on false doctrines, specifically concerning infant baptism. Up until that point the studies consisted of relatively surface level theology, with a strong emphasis on the "kingdom of god" and what it means to be a disciple, and although it definitely didn't sound like orthodox teachings, it didn't blatantly go against the limited orthodox theology that I was aware of at the time (I know a lot more now).

They claim that infant baptism is wrong because babies don't have faith and don't have sins that need to be washed away, and that the early church didn't have this practice. This of course meant that my baptism as a baby was void and that I needed to be baptized again. To substantiate this claim, they made drastic inferences from cherrypicked verses, and appealed to a 21st century, secular theory about the origin of infant baptism, that after doing some research came to learn that absolutely no serious scholar, theologian or historian believe to actually be the cause of the church practice.

When I questioned them about this, they deflected from actually getting into the details and resorted to "what the bible says", as if they weren't the ones who are basing their theology on this historical claim that they can't actually prove. When I told them that I would do my own personal research, they spent 40 minutes trying to convince me NOT to do so, using a false analogy like "would you do research into Islam and Hinduism?", completely forgetting that Paul tells us to watch our doctrine closely (1Tim 4:16). When I didn't budge, they quoted 1 Timothy 4:1-5, basically telling me that I was gonna go to hell if I didn't accept their lousy interpretation. This was psychologically scarring for me, especially because I started to actually buy in to what they were teaching me, and developed a certain level of trust and friendship with them.

One piece of advise. DO NOT let them guilt trip you and pressure you into submitting to their manipulation. The organization is rotten from the core. God will never pressure you into doing something you are uncomfortable doing.