Like his partner, John Warwick Montgomery, Walter Martin was a great apologist, but was naïve about politics and theology. There is a study here of the cults but no mention about the catalyst of their origin. Ravi Zacharias's update is worthless since it fails to correct these defects in the book.



The defects are as follows. Walter Martin seems blind to the fact that freemasonry and cabala underlie all of these cult systems. For example, the Lance Owens demonstrated the cabalistic sources Joseph Smith of Mormonism relied upon. Similarly, Bent Corydon and Brian Ambry showed the cabalistic sources L Ron Hubbard of Scientology relied on. A prominent feature of Swedenborg was the cabalistic doctrines he found so fascinating in freemasonry. Yet, these matters are passed over in silence. In fact, it borders on the preposterous. Ellen White's Seventh Day Adventism was drowned in freemasonry. With all due respect to Walter Martin, the book seems to be a mere paraphrase of the 1930's book of Jan Karel Van Baalen `s "The Chaos of the Cults." I don't think it is a case of Cryptomnesia (which is just junk science that lawyers use to defend their clients, along the lines of belated memory syndrome or the twinky defense). Although Dr. Martin did some original research, it wasn't much of an improvement except for the fact that the man himself, Dr. Walter Martin, was an articulate defendant of this apologetic. On one of his tapes, Walter Martin alludes to a possible second Creation regarding the dinosaurs, asserting them as a product of satanic meddling in God's Creation which God had destroyed. This is the so-called Gap Theory which Dr. Martin clearly got from his mentor Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse. This probably was a case of cryptoamnesia. Nevertheless, it too is a serious defect of clear thinking.



Walter Martin failed to include three other dangerous cults: Freemasonry, Rabbinical Judaism, the New World Order Cult (which has infiltrated our entire federal government and economic infrastructure - John F. Kennedy alluded to this cult in his speech on secret societies).



I recall Walter Martin saying that Roman Catholic countries were impoverished because of Catholicism. Here, his naiveté in politics is evident. He overlooks the role Freemasons and Communists played in bringing about dereliction in these Catholic countries. Even President Fox (2000-2006) of Mexico noted this in his autobiography. Glenn Beck demonstrated that the juwes are employing the Cloward-Piven strategy to bring economic collapse in America. George Soros is clearly involved in this, based on his interviews where he says he wants China to lead the New World Order and undercut the value of the U.S. dollar. Catholicism has nothing to do with it. In fact, Catholics, as shown in the marvelous case of Mother Teresa, have been spending their time and resources rebuilding what the cults (such as Hinduism and Communism) have destroyed.



Evangelicals complain that Dr. Martin didn't include Catholicism in his book as a prominent cult, yet not one of the evangelicals considers rabbinical Judaism as a cult. This shows the fractured logic that runs that institution of kooks. Here, Walter Martin seemed blind to the heresy of Scofieldism. Any theologian worth his salt would have included Scofieldism, with its rapture nonsense and glorification of the juwes (in spite of Christ's words to the contrary) as the first chapter in this book.



I give the book three stars for its practical value of reaching some of the cultists. However, in the long run it shortchanges the Christian Church as a whole by blinding us to the disease and focuses only on the symptoms.