The Voice They Don’t Recognise
Why Answering the Call to Leave Babylon Is Not a "Cult"
There is a predictable pattern that occurs whenever people begin to untangle themselves from the machinery of institutionalised religion and cultural compromise.
The moment you step outside the accepted consensus, the system panics.
It cannot comprehend a horizontal pursuit of truth, so it assigns a vertical hierarchy to it.
Lately, I’ve been hit with a familiar accusation: that I am leading a “cult,” that the people I walk alongside are somehow under a spell, and that our shared community is built on human isolation rather than spiritual freedom.
It’s a serious accusation, but it falls apart under the weight of scripture.
When you look at what is happening here through the lens of John 10, it becomes clear that this isn’t about people following me.
It is about the remnant recognising the voice of the only true Shepherd and finding the courage to answer His call to come out of Babylon.
1. The Shepherd Calls His Own by Name
In John 10, Jesus lays out a beautiful, stark contrast between true spiritual authority and the counterfeit systems of the world:
“The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:3-4)
Notice the sequence here.
The Shepherd does not tell the sheep to stay in a corrupted pen just to keep the peace.
He leads them out.
Throughout biblical history, Jesus has always had a remnant, a small group of believers who refuse to bow to the cultural or religious status quo.
When the world had become so depraved that Yahweh decided to eliminate humanity (Genesis 6), He saved just 8 humans, Noah’s immediate family, and that was it.
That remnant was but a typology of the remnant of Laodicea; when, upon completion, at Jesus’ return, only those on the narrow path (Matthew 7:13) will survive.
In our day, “Babylon” represents the grand, synchronised system of institutional compromise, religious consumerism, and worldly deception. It is a system that demands your total compliance.
When people begin to wake up to the spiritual decay of Babylon, they don’t do it because a human influencer told them to.
They do it because the Holy Spirit has pricked their hearts. They hear the voice of the Shepherd calling them out of the confusion, and they follow Him.
2. Cults Point to a Man; The Remnant Points to the Gate
Let’s address the “cult” accusation directly.
By definition, a cult centres around a human leader who positions themselves as the ultimate authority, the exclusive source of truth, and the mandatory mediator between the follower and God.
Look at John 10:7. Jesus says:
“Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”
My role, and the role of any true brother in Christ, is not to act as the gate.
I am merely a voice in the wilderness pointing at the gate.
A cult leader says: “Listen to me, obey me, and I will protect you.”
I, a true slave to Jesus, says: “Listen to the Word, obey the Shepherd, and step through the Gate yourself.”
The people I commune with are not blind followers.
They are fierce, independent, deeply faithful searchers who spend hours in their Bibles testing everything. They didn’t leave institutionalised systems just to bend the knee to another human institution.
They left because they realised they didn’t need a human middleman to experience the living God.
3. The Stranger’s Voice vs. The True Shepherd
The religious establishment of Jesus’ day looked at His followers and called Him demon-possessed and mad (John 10:20). They couldn’t understand why people were leaving the pristine, managed safety of the temple system to follow a man into the wilderness.
My “thorn in the flesh” is doing the exact same thing today.
When he sees a community of believers leaving the corporate church structures or the worldly matrix to pursue organic, radical, biblical fellowship, he has to label it as dangerous.
Why?
Because a remnant they cannot control threatens their monopoly on truth.
Jesus assured us of something vital:
“But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognise a stranger’s voice.” (John 10:5)
If what we are doing here was based on the voice of a “stranger”, on human charisma or clever manipulation, it would naturally wither and die. Cults require intense psychological maintenance, control, and fear to keep people in line.
But freedom requires none of those things.
The remnant doesn’t stay together out of fear; they stay together because they share the same Holy Spirit. They recognise the same truth.
To the Remnant: Keep Walking
To those who are currently walking out of the confusion of Babylon and into the clarity of the Kingdom, do not be surprised when the religious world labels your obedience as rebellion.
Matthew 10:34-39 LSB “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. (35) “For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; (36) and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (37) “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. (38) “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. (39) “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.
They called our Master a madman; they will call you a cultist.
We are not building an empire.
We are not gathering followers for a human brand.
We are simply a gathering of sheep who have realised that the walls of Babylon’s sheepfold are crumbling, and the Good Shepherd is calling us out into the open pastures of His grace.
If you are part of the remnant, you know who you are, and you need no teaching from any human.
I certainly do not profess to be a qualified, theologically trained seminary Teacher, but I do have a gift of teaching the Gospel through The Single Eye, which uplifts and edifies the elect, the remnant.
What will follow quickly is The Single Eye Podcast daily devotional. It is free to all my subscribers, starting with the foundations of the Gospel, found in Genesis 1-11, chapter-by-chapter, then followed by every book of the New Testament in chronological order, starting with Galatians, all from the single eye to the Tree of Life - Jesus, the Messiah.
Listen to His voice.
Ignore the noise of the critics.
Walk through the gate.
Move into your calling in the end times.
Time is running out.
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Many blessings
Geoff