Re: Active ways of recovery
Date: October 29, 2015 07:59AM
I first of all would like to say to Judith, i'm very sorry to hear about your experience destiny church.
I can confirm that Destiny church does have a very cult like atmosphere.
They are obsessed with money, especially the leader of Destiny ministries the (false) "apostle" Andrew Owen who constantly brings money into his messages and tells people they can "tap into God's superntural financial resources and on at least one occasion encourged his congregation to do better in their jobs/buisnesses etc so they could put more money into the church to spread out and encourage more people to join Destiny so they can have more of an influence on the nation.
They encourage people to tithe 10% of their wages even though biblical tithing was only ever food and animals and not money, they also neglect to mention that there was also a tithe to be kept by the individual and more importantly that tithes were only to the levite priesthood in the temple both of which are no longer around.
Pastor Peter Anderson once stated during a teaching on the unbiblical doctrine of the "trinity" that if a church doesn't teach the trinity it is a "cult". Not even willing to say they may be mislead or don't fully understand the scriptures, therefore further alienating their church members from other churches.
A technique they use is they teach and encourage a very non biblical version of the gift of tongues (which is known languages) which is a learned behaviour that encourages people babble incoherent and nonsensically, bringing about an elated feeling and a belief that the holy spirit is choosing to work through both them and Destiny causing a stronger attachement to that church.
The pastors often state there are a lot of supernatural occurances and their church to hook people in and often subtly imply Destiny is the only real church.
They have had numerous guests that are either, from or connected to cult like Ministries and teachers such as Casey Treat, Hillsong, C3, Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Ray Bevan, Joseph Prince and Andrew Owen invited Jesse Duplantis over as a guest.
Recently Andrew Owen claimed that if you scanned his eyes or took his finger prints it would say Jesus then went on to joke that he often has to remind God during prayer that it is him and not Jesus praying, which is a fairly blasphemous statement to make.
There cell/growth group system is a very cult like system used by many other cult like churches.
They have so-called faith healers involved with the their ministry making many unsubstantiated hard to believe claims of miraculous healings, who hold infrequent healing meetings, always taking an offering afterword, yet there are still many sick people attending hospital for operations etc throughout Destiny Ministries. Surely if these people could actually do these miraculous healings they would visit hospitals etc healing the sick for free and bringing many people to christ in the process proving God's existance to the world and that actually are being used by him to heal the sick.