This book is the testimony of a former Mason. Someone who was once deceived by the false and unbiblical teachings of Freemasonry. Great insights of the Masonic lodge are provided with biblical perspectives.

The Cult Around the Corner is dedicated to bringing reason, understanding and open communication to an often explosive subject: the involvement of oneself, a friend or loved one in a group that might be called a "cult."

This research explored how identity transitions are accomplished when individuals experience distress in relationship to the social systems in which they are embedded. Study participants grew up in cultic groups, where they were parented by committed members. Twenty-two people who chose to leave or were ejected from 12 groups provided low point, high point, and turning point stories for an exploratory narrative analysis. Life story narratives revealed a jarring disconnect between what participants were expected to believe and become and how they experienced themselves. The research interviews provided richly textured data about the experience of growing up cult, the process of leaving, and what helped or hindered as participants navigated new social contexts. A categorical content analysis showed that participants experienced pressure and a sense of isolation. Adverse events such as neglect, abuse, and violence were reported. Many experienced the loss of family and friends as the exit cost for leaving. The research showed that a crystallization of discontent motivated participants to leave despite resource deficits and considerable uncertainty. During the process of constructing identities more congruent with an emerging sense of self, participants rejected worldviews inculcated during childhood. Results challenge theories that situate identity negotiation as a stage-specific dilemma that occurs during adolescence. The analysis indicates that exposure to diverse views and role models; exploration of personal truth and experimentation; and skill development in critical thinking and reality testing were important to successful adaptation. A key finding suggests that existing therapeutic approaches grounded in cult education and recovery from abuse would benefit from a complementary focus on identity development.

This is the story of a young man who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, seemingly destined to spend the rest of his life following the instruction of God's 'Spirit Directed Organisation'. He soon came to discover however, that things were not as they had first seemed. Following a patch of doubt and subsequent in-depth investigation into the religion, the young man began to realise that the things he had previously accepted without question no longer made sense. His eyes were opened to the various powerful methods that were, and still are being used to control the minds of the faith's followers. The story contained within these pages describes the author's life, from his upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness, his struggles along the way, and the challenges he faced as he tried to break free. His extensive research into the religion's history is also documented, including apparent accounts of questionable teachings and manipulative methodologies.

This book is the true account of how I gave my life to a cruel and criminally insane cult leader, and how I was miraculously able to take it back and emerge a stronger and more compassionate person. Escape is the first book that tells an insider's story of daily life ruled by a psychopathic cult leader. The book shows how easy it is to become brainwashed by a charismatic personality into thinking that torture, starvation, and complete isolation are essential to a spiritual life. It is also a cautionary tale for the parents and family members of anyone belonging to a cult, and for people recovering from cults, extreme religions, or abusive relationships.

A book that questions whether the current activities and practices in the Osho International Ashram in Pune, India are what Osho would really sanction today.

The first critical treatment of Scientology that seeks to identify and correct what is wrong with it rather than to merely expose or advocate against the subject. A handbook for former, current and prospective members. The book can help to heal any damage done by misuse while rehabilitating any positives derived from Scientology. The book also serves to proof up an individual against being harmed by misapplication of Scientology in the future. As the first simple, accurate description of the philosophy from its introductory to its most advanced levels, the book will inform those interested in Scientology as no other available work has.

Rizwan Qureshi is from Columbus, Texas, USA. He writes all his personal knowledge, experiences, and 100 percent true information about demons, pains, painless diseases, and cancer/infection insects. He writes pure truth and only those things in this and book 1, whatever he was dealing and experiencing by himself. His source of knowledge is purely his own experiences with dealing with supernatural, invisible demons, different kind of invisible pains and painless diseases. According to him, cancer is a very easily treatable and curable disease. As he sees it, thousands of demons are residing in our houses around us. According to him, demons cannot perform any physical activity by themselves. He explains that, by nature, demons are very arrogant and extremely negative. The author suggested several practical ideas, procedures, and theories for common people, medical and modern science, on how they can learn and handle demons, pains, painless diseases, and insects responsible for cancer by themselves. The author is 100 percent sure that after reading his books, everyone will be aware and will be able to control the invisible parallel world around them. In this book, he writes clear instructions for individuals on how they can communicate and interact with the demons around them, how to make demons around them their friends, and how to ask demons to do some stuff for them. Author describes in detail how much stuff we can expect our demon friends to do for us. Author writes very clear and very easy instructions for an individual once someone decides to learn how to communicate with demons. He advices everyone to start practicing.

Let's sell these people a Piece of Blue Sky: the new, unexpurgated, unabridged version of the classic history of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. Exposing Hubbard's false claims to be a war hero, a nuclear physicist, an explorer and a protege of Eastern gurus, and showing the true malevolence of Scientology. "Invaluable for its history and insight into the character of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard." Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief "If you only have time to read one book about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, this landmark work is the one." Miles C. Ferguson "This is the best book I have read about Scientology." Steve Cannane, ABC Lateline, Australia "A Piece of Blue Sky is the standard reference among serious students of authoritarian belief systems. Newer books about Scientology have been released, but none reproduce the detail and narrative clarity of Atack's book." Christian Szurko, DialogCentre UK "Since 1976, I have met, interviewed and counseled countless former officials and ex-members of Scientology. Of everyone I have ever met, and every book I have ever read, Jon Atack is the definitive resource of all things 'Hubbard.'" Steven Hassan, author Freedom of Mind "When I first read Jon Atack's amazing book A Piece of Blue Sky it was a series of revelations. I had been on the receiving end of the false promises, heavy ethics pressures and greed-motivated financial stresses for decades without being able to reconcile these things with Hubbard's writings. Jon's book gave me considerable relief as to what was really going on behind the facade" Michael Pattinson, ex-OT 8. "As someone who has been at the top of organized scientology, and seen much of what really went on there, I would like to express my appreciation for what Jon Atack has done to get out the truth when it was not safe to do it." Denise Brennan, former Watchdog Committee Member "Throughout my professional life, I have seen so many victims of poisonous ideologies from communism and scientology to Saddam Hussein's "return to faith" and Al Qaeda's "martyrdom." In my attempts to help those sufferers, I applied a lesson learned from Jon Atack's writings that freedom cannot be delivered, granted, or enforced. The true and complete freedom comes only with the freedom of mind and Jon Atack's book is the best guide for all who want to achieve that freedom." Professor Khapta Akhmedova, expert on terrorism "Honestly written, amazingly accurate, and beautifully assembled, which is why it stood the test." Gerry Armstrong, former Hubbard aide "This book is fascinating.... and fresh. I've read every expose and this one is on the top of my list." Paulette Cooper, author The Scandal of Scientology "A Piece of Blue Sky was my first introduction to the real truth about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. It's still the most reliable of the many books on the subject. No one seems to have worked harder to get things right by relying so carefully on rare and crucial documents that spell out the history of Scientology's abuses." Tony Ortega, former editor, Village Voice "All future scholarship on Scientology will build upon his contribution." Professor Stephen Kent "When I first read A Piece of Blue Sky, it became more than instrumental in helping me to understand my experiences and put them into a meaningful context that changed my life." Bonnie Woods, ex-OT3 "Atack's book displays mastery of his material and subtlety of analysis and discussion that would be praised at the typical final doctoral examination." Richard de Mille, ghost author of Hubbard's Science of Survival "This book delivers like none other. We used it extensively during the fifteen years we helped families retrieve their loved ones from the cult of Scientology, and we still recommend it today to those who want to know the truth about Scientology." Jerry Whitfield and Hana Eltringham Whitfield

The Ghosts from Mama's Club is a fast-moving tell-all story about escaping from the clutches of a cult. Children molded by a high-control religious experience are cursed with toxic residue-ghosts-that make it a challenge, crazy at times, to walk away unscarred, as adults. This book is a sequel to Growing Up in Mama's Club, a memoir about the author's sixteen-year experience growing up as a Jehovah's Witness. Ghosts not only chronicles Mr. Kelly's unlikely adulthood but the improbable lives of his wife of forty-eight years and a sister who paid dearly for her dysfunctional childhood.

As a Mormon, I carried a Bible to church with me for thirty years. I was told that it had been translated incorrectly. I did not realize the pearl of greatest price that I had in my hand. The Bible and Mormon doctrine cannot stand together - one must fall. When held up against the Bible, Mormon doctrine crumbles. A sure foundation found only in Jesus Christ emerges. This book will answer the question - What does the Bible say about Mormon doctrine? Why can the Bible be trusted? What does the the Bible teach about prophets and prophecy? What does it say about priesthood and temples? Who is the God of the Bible? What is the Trinity? What are covenants? What is the difference between law and grace? What does the Bible teach about the Church? Most important of all - What is the Biblical plan of salvation? Are you carrying a Bible around and don't really know what it says about these doctrines? If you read this you will realize that you may already have the pearl of greatest price and not even realize it. Do you really know the truth?

Flying Free thoroughly covers the background of the Worldwide Church Of God (WCG) cult - its history, leadership, doctrines, beliefs and its membership. This book contains never previously published research explaining Herbert Armstrong's Holiness Quaker upbringing. It also includes extensive research on the WCG's comparison to a cult, and the characteristics that actually define a cult. Flying Free documents the impact of the Armstrong teachings on individual lives, but then goes on to show a priceless freedom - found in life beyond fundamentalism. Flying Free is a valuable, practical resource for ex-WCG members and for relatives or friends attempting to come to terms with the reality of loved ones joining a cult. It should serve as a warning to those contemplating entering a fundamentalist church. The book also includes a balanced assessment of the origins of the Bible, the authority of the Bible, and an appraisal of organised Christianity's influence on the individual Christian.

What sets this book apart from the many books on cults and controlling relationships, is the focus on the heart of the individual caught up in the control of others and the steps needed to rebuild life once the person has the courage to leave. The author lived for 24 years inside the Watchtower as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Her story is not unique, but her ability to rebuild her life and move into relationships of the heart instead of rules to obey is an encouragement to everyone who is either in a similar situation or who knows someone who is. Practical help is given to the person who has the courage to leave any controlling situation to take back authority over their life and to make that life one of purpose and fulfilment.

To a Mormon, happiness may be Family Home Evening, and families may be forever, but becoming an actual god is the ultimate goal of every member of the church. Mormons believe the reason for coming to earth from the planet near the great star Kolob is to gain bodies for our spirit beings and to be tested. To become gods, they need to be Mormons, to go through the temple to learn the signs and tokens for entry to the celestial glory and to be obedient unto death to the holy prophet. Everything else is tied to, and wraps around, this one goal. Today, Mormon Mitt Romney is a major candidate for the White House. A man who would be god. An entire chapter is devoted to the Mormon Plan for America and the rise of Mitt Romney. It is a warning and a must read for every Christian. Ed Decker is the International Director of Saints Alive in Jesus, a ministry that actively brings the gospel of grace to those lost in the darkness of cultic bondage. He is a former Mormon who spent twenty years of his adult life as a member of the LDS church before becoming a Christian. He was a member of the "Holy Melchizedek" priesthood, a "Temple Mormon" and active in leadership in local LDS churches. Ed has spent the next 30 years researching and writing about Mormonism.

1930. Among primitive races, in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. This volume is a survey of the history of possession from the most ancient times down to the present day and in all countries of the inhabited globe, together with an analysis of its nature and relationship to other phenomena, such as hysteria and the manifestations of spiritualism. The subject treated is a very fascinating one, to the general reader as well as to the student of psychology and ethnology. It would be difficult to see the human race in a more fantastic light than that cast by these stories of possession.

This book compares Christianity with the false religions of the world today based on the accuracy of fulfilled Bible prophecy. No other religion has used prophecy fulfilled in our lifetime to prove its authority, except the Bible. With more than fifty prophecies fulfilled since AD 1948 and Jesus' teaching that He is the only way to salvation, we can conclude we must be a Christian to gain eternal life. Jesus declares you must follow His teachings in order to obtain eternal life. Among these teachings is the fact that Jesus is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity. Numerous church fathers' quotes dating back to the first century AD show this fact as well, and the ancient church defined a cult as a group claiming to be Christian but denying the Trinity. Listing over one hundred cults and numerous subgroups, this book shows that virtually all of them are nontrinitarians. A detailed, yet simple, study on the Trinity will enable you to witness to all the cults using only this one doctrine.

2012 Reprint of 1954 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" analyzes religion as a social phenomenon. Durkheim attributes the development of religion to the emotional security attained through communal living. According to Durkheim, early humans associated such feelings not only with one another, but with objects in their environment. This, Durkheim believed, led to the ascription of human sentiments and superhuman powers to these objects, in turn leading to totemism. The essence of religion, Durkheim finds, is the concept of the sacred, that being the only phenomenon which unites all religions. "A religion," writes Durkheim, "is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into a single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." In modern societies, the individual and individual rights evolve to become the new sacred phenomena, and hence these may be called "religious" for Durkheim. Durkheim examined religion using such examples as Pueblo Indian rain dances, the religions of aboriginal tribes in Australia, and alcoholic hallucinations.

VectorsBackCover French philosopher Rene Guenon (1886-1951), who spent many years searching for a true esoteric Way, crossed paths with many false and subversive spiritualities before arriving at the threshold of Islamic Sufism. In his prophetic masterpiece The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times he classed the worst of these spiritualities as examples of the Counter-Initiation. Anti-Tradition-secularism and materialism-opposes religion; Counter-Tradition inverts it; and the esoteric essence of Counter-Tradition is the Counter-Initiation. The author expands on this concept, recognizing the action of the Counter-Initiation in such areas as the politicizing of the interfaith movement, the anti-human tendencies in the environmental movement, the growing interest in magic and sorcery, the involvement of the intelligence communities in the fields of UFO investigation and psychedelic research, the history of Templarism and Freemasonry, and the de-Islamicization of the famous Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. Vectors of the Counter-Initiation is conceived of as a sequel to The System of Antichrist: Truth and Falsehood in Postmodernism and the New Age Sophia Perennis, 2001]. The Counter-Initiation has six main features: syncretism; inverted hierarchy; deviated esoterism; the granting of the temporal transmission of spiritual lore precedence over the vertical descent of Revelation; the reduction of religion to utilitarianism (magic) and esoterism to a purely technical knowledge (Promethean spirituality); and the mis-application of the norms of the individual spiritual Path to the supposed spiritual evolution of the collective. The Counter-Initiation is the ego's idea of spirituality. It appears in the Old Testament as the Serpent in the garden, Cain's murder of Abel, the "sons of God who looked upon the daughters of men and found them fair," the Tower of Babel, the degeneration of Sodom, and the magicians of Pharaoh whom Moses defeated. In the New Testament it is personified by Judas, and in the Qur'an by the figure of as-Samiri, who forged the Golden Calf, and the angels Harut and Marut-testers of man by God's design-who taught magic to the human race in Babylon. For both traditions, it is destined to culminate in Antichrist. This book brings together two schools of thought: the Traditionalists or Perennialists (writers on comparative religion and traditional metaphysics) and the conspiracy theorists who are investigating the origin, nature, and plans of the New World Order. The NWO researchers can throw a penetrating light on the social and political dangers presently threatening the Perennialists, while the Perennialists can provide these researchers with a deeper and wider spiritual context for their vision of human evil. In Guenon's time the Counter-Initiation appeared in terms of this or that secret society operating in the shadowy underworld of European occultism; it has now come up into the open, and moved inexorably toward the centers of global power. In the words of American Eastern Orthodox priest Seraphim Rose, "in our time Satan has walked naked into human history."

What do divorce, alcoholism, kidnapping, radio evangelism, ancient prophecies, the collapse of the Soviet Union, church schism and the Stockholm Syndrome have in common with the music of the Beatles? The People of he Sign effortlessly weaves these together, proving once and for all that truth really is far, far stranger than fiction.

Franz-Valery-Marie Cumont (Aalst, Belgium, 3 January 1868 - Brussels, 25 August 1947) was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who brought these often isolated specialties to bear on the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism. Cumont was a graduate of the University of Ghent (PhD, 1887). After receiving royal travelling fellowships, he undertook archaeology in Pontus and Armenia (published in 1906) and in Syria, but he is best known for his studies on the impact of Eastern mystery religions, particularly Mithraism, on the Roman Empire. Cumont's international credentials were brilliant, but his public circumspection was not enough. In 1910, Baron Edouard Descamps, the Catholic Minister of Sciences and Arts at the University of Ghent, refused to approve the faculty's unanimous recommendation of Cumont for the chair in Roman History, Cumont having been a professor there since 1906. There was a vigorous press campaign and student agitation in Cumont's favor, because the refusal was seen as blatant religious interference in the University's life. When another candidate was named, in 1912, Cumont resigned his positions at the University and at the Royal Museum in Brussels, left Belgium and henceforth divided his time between Paris and Rome. He contributed to many standard encyclopedias, published voluminously and in 1922, under stressful political conditions, conducted digs on the shore of the Euphrates at the previously unknown site of Dura-Europos; he published his research there in 1926. He was a member of most of the European academies. In 1936 Franz Cumont was awarded the Francqui Prize on Human Sciences. In 1947, Franz Cumont donated his library and papers to the Academia Belgica in Rome, where they are accessible to researchers. His works include * Texts and Illustrated Monuments Relating to the Mysteries of Mithra (1894-1900, with an English translation in 1903) is the study that made his international reputation, by its originality and massive documentation. * Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (1906, widely translated) * After-Life in Roman Paganism, lectures delivered at Yale University, published in 1922, was cautiously expressed, but it corrected many false impressions of pagan rite that Christian apologists had made. * Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans After his death, critics of his interpretation of Mithras as the descendant of the Iranian deity Mithra began to be heard, and surfaced at the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies in Manchester England, 1971. Modern interpretation of Mithras as the astronomical bull-slayer have continued to move away from Cumont's interpretations, though his documentation remains valuable. In 1997 the Royal Library, Brussels, observed the fiftieth anniversary of Cumont's death appropriately, with a colloquium on syncretism in the Mediterranean world of Antiquity.

It is God who sets apart and sanctifies the Sabbath day. He determines when it is. Today there is a group of believers targeting Messianics called "Lunar Sabbatarians" who teach that the weekly Sabbaths are "reset" every month to coincide with the new moons. We shall explore this issue in this book.