For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm. That's Ephesians 6, 12, through 13.

Well, what are these cosmic powers? What does this present darkness look like? Who are the spiritual forces of evil? Is it obvious demonic possession? Is it in the signs and symbols covertly shown in shows, on children's toys, by celebrities, in music videos? What about the seemingly innocent things? Yoga? Anyogram, self-help? What role do the new age and modern day witchcraft play here? And how focussion

Christians be on this? Is it possible to be too careful, too paranoid? How does the goodness of God, the gospel of Christ, help us discern in a healthy way between good and evil, the things of God, and the things of Satan?

Well, we will get into all of this today, episode 666 of relatable with the host of Coltish, Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Sonskrant. Their podcast explores the impacts of cults from a theological, sociological and psychological perspective.

If you haven't listened to their podcast, I highly recommend it. They've got a lot of insight into this realm today. You are going to love it. As always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodrangers.com slash alley for a discount. That's goodrangers.com slash alley.

Jeremiah Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. Jeremiah, if you could tell us a little bit about Coltish and why you guys started this podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having us on. So Coltish started roughly about four years ago, and it came as a byproduct of the church that we attend. You've had Jeff Durbin on your show before. He is our pastor, and he also oversees the studio that we are a part of.

We've had a long extended history of just doing outreach and ministry to the world of the Colts. And so Jeff had the idea a couple of years ago about having a ministry section of our church that was strictly focused on outreach to the Colts, and Coltish came out as a byproduct of that.

And it's been amazing. We've covered a lot of broad variety of topics, everything from different aspects of the new age, the occult that we're going to talk about today, everything from Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, Mormonism, just a broad variety of topics. So it's been a real, it's just been amazing so far. All the people we've been able to talk to.

Andrew, tell me a little bit about Coltish. What have you loved about it as it has developed as a podcast is all podcast do is there anything that you have learned in your time of studying and talking about Colts?

Yeah, what I love most about Coltish is when we get those messages from people who tell us that they have come out of a Colts or that Coltish in some way has helped them actually notice that they're in a Colton, and they get out because as the late and great Dr. Walter Barton said, he says,

I love you. You're an occult. I want you out of it and with Christ. So that's the main purpose is for people to come out of these false assemblies and come into a relationship with the true and living God who is Jesus Christ, the eternal God who took on flesh and died on the cross for our sins.

So within all the research that I've done for Coltish, what I find the most amazing is the fact that the Bible is our soul and fallible rule of faith and practice.

We have it all in the word of God. And when you look in research and go to Colts or many other false beliefs is that there's always some type of external standard that they have to rely on other than the Bible, but they always these standards always fall short, right?

Like the Bible has all the answers that we need in order to have peace with God through our relationship with Jesus Christ. So I think that's the most beautiful thing for me is actually through Coltish.

Even developed a more personal relationship with the Lord throughout Coltish. So I think that's an amazing thing.

And Andrew, is that the technical definition of a cult, what you just described or there's some other aspects of it that people could kind of look at and recognize.

Oh yeah, those are the tell tales signs of a cult.

Absolutely. So there's two different ways to look at it. We like to go through Dr. Walter Martin's definition of a cult, which is any group or person central, central leader who has a misinterpretation of Jesus Christ and the Bible, but there's also other ways to look at it in terms of we can go to secular people like Steve Hassan or Hassan, however you want to pronounce his last name, but we can think of the bite model behavior control, information control thought control and emotional control.

So we can look at certain groups and situations to how information is being fed to them, whether it be through one central leader or organization that is controlling those aspects of their lives, which is typically manipulation for a person to not think for themselves, but to actually replace their personal identity with the identity of their leader.

Whereas in with Christianity, biblical Christianity, we can actually know truly who ourselves are through the right relationship of Jesus Christ because it takes us from a fallen state and Adam to a relationship with God in which now that we can actually understand what it means to be human and to how to think biblically and to think critically around about the world around us, whereas cults don't allow you to think critically.

...