• If you’re not allowed to criticize your leader, even if the criticism is true, you’re probably in a cult.
• Cult leaders convince members to forfeit their critical thinking ability in return for a sense of belonging, authority, and purpose. To members, it doesn’t matter what the evidence or logic may suggest, the leader is always right, and their misdeeds are always justified. 
• If former members speak out, they are dismissed as bitter, angry, dishonest or evil. Cults often impose some kind of shunning to shame former members and prevent them from infecting other members with the truth.
• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
• Does it appear that there are secrets? Is information restricted in any way? Is there some information that you are told must not be shared with outsiders? 

The First Amendment is being tried in our nation.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I encourage you no matter what cultish behaviors are coming to us....that you have a voice. Refuse to be silenced. 

Luke 19:

³⁹ Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

⁴⁰ “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

The goal of persecution is to silence witness.