My life in cults
By Claire Bear ~
Well, I will start at the beginning, as it's a good place to start.
I was a very deep thinking, shy and painfully insecure child. I remember from a very young age wondering what life was about? Why am I here? My parents were and still are evolutionists. This was hard for me to accept, what there's no point to life we just die and that's it? Surely not? There had to be more.
So began my search. When I was 18 I met a lovely Muslim man called Riz, he was the first person I had met who really had a strong religious belief, so I read the Quran, I read it about 5 times. It was very scary, very detailed descriptions of hell, where skin is burnt off and replaced for eternity. I was very frighted by this. I cried when I read at sura 4:34 which says a man could beat his wife if she disobeyed him. None the less there were things that made me believe it, their stance on alcohol as I could see all the trouble it caused, their modesty, I hated how woman objectified themselves in porn, strip clubs and films. It mentioned the birds flying in formation and how God had taught them to do this. This made sense to me. Eventually I met his parents, who were very opposed to me, in fact when I first went to there house the Dad was very surprised that I didn't go and help his wife cook the meal instead I stayed and watched cricket with the men. Then when the doorbell rang, they rushed me into the garden and hid me like I was a dirty little white non muslim. I was very angry at Riz for allowing them to do this to me and we eventually broke up. I came away thinking that if Allah is God then I have to disagree with him even if I end up in Hell, i just couldn't accept a God that would torture people in Hell.
I moved back home and met Anthony who is my husband. He was very involved in the partying scene and I soon joined him. I tried drugs thinking maybe they would make me happy, open my mind, but they didn't. It was a false, short lived joy that left me feeling awful afterwards.
Anthony and I moved in together and started a family. My depression escalated I couldn't stand the suffering in the world, what world had I brought these children into? I broke down in tears, I cried out to God, "I don't know if you exist, but if you do please let me know and please explain why there's so much suffering?". Not long after Jehovahs witnesses knocked on our door. They were decent people, they explained they didn't believe in Hell like the rest of Christianity, that it was just an illustration for eternal death. They gave me a tract entitled, 'All suffering soon to end'. They reasoned with me on evolution, how did an eye know how to be an eye? I cried, there was a God, he was going to do something, he did care and he wanted me. My husband joined the bible study they conducted and we were both soon were baptised. We stopped celebrating all the pagan religious celebrations and lived a life of slavery to an organisation called the Watchtower. As well as my husband working and me caring for our 4 children we had to go to meetings twice a week, door knocking at least once a week to try to bring people in to a relationship with God, conduct a Family study with our children once a week and all the other nights pre studying for the meetings in which we were expected to answer. Basically we had very little free time and that which we did have, we felt guilty for. The leaders of this cult were called The Governing Body and claimed to be the faithful slave that Jesus said would feed his domestics. They claimed they were Gods channel to mankind and we were heavily indoctrinated into believing this.
Eventually things began to unravel. They judged my husband who with his stressful job, wasn't doing enough hours knocking on doors. They took him off the what they viewed as a privilege, holding the microphones in Kingdom hall (church). I cried, it was so unlike the story of the widows might. She gave all she could and God excepted it. My husband gave all he could and it was as if they had thrown those coins of little value back in his face. Then I thought of Jesus' words, that his yoke was easy and light. This way of life was anything but easy and light, I couldn't cope anymore. I remember thinking that if I was to call on my neighbour who has 7 children and she became a JW, she'd have a mental brake down. I only had 4 kids and taking then to 1hr 45min long meetings, which they had to sit through, bored out of there brains twice a week as well as knocking on doors at the weekend was so hard that I wasn't coping, how could she? The JW's judge the world, they are the only ones that will survive armageddon everyone else if they didn't accept them as the truth would die, unless they hadn't heard the message and God read their hearts as good. I cried out to God again, "If this is the truth then help me do this, but if not please let me know".
I went to my husband and told him I couldn't do this anymore, I explained how judging they were and they were!!! They judged what you wore, if a man had facial hair, they thought this was hippy like, how many hours door knocking you did, if you answered up at meetings etc etc. I explained how the yoke was killing me. He thankfully agreed and we looked online and quickly realised it was a cult. The witnesses now shun us and ignore us when we see them, which hurts as we were friends with them for 9 years, but it's the way some cults control people and they are told they are doing it out of love to entice us back in, which if you have other family members in the cult doing this to you it is an awful form of blackmail and very painful. Inreality it just stops their followers form speaking to ex JW's that know it's a cult. Thankfully none of our families had listened to us and believed.
So here we were desperate to find the truth and now thought that God had delivered us from this cult and we still believed the Bible. Needless to say we ended up in a church but only once!! We gave ourselves to Jesus in prayer, even before we went to church. But God still didn't answer my prayers and they were only, please let a real christian find me when I go into town and please let my husband get a sale at work so he can have some relief from his stress of coming out of a cult and enjoy his first birthday that he hasn't celebrated in 9 years. Surely with my faith these would be answered. After all doesn't the bible claim if you have the faith a size of a mustard seed you can move a mountain?
I had by this time read the Bible through and the none witness NIV bible taught Hell. Both the JW bible and the NIV also teach that men would dominate woman due to sin, and then God helped this situation, I say this full of sarcasm, by making a woman under the mosaic law twice as unclean if she gave birth to a baby girl than if it was a boy, allowing men to have multiple wives and that they buy them from their Fathers, but if a girl wasn't a virgin when she was first married she'd be stoned to death. Only men wrote the bible and we were to be submissive wives. Also stupid rules like if a bull gores a person it is to be stoned to death, can you imagine how awful that would be!!! The mosaic law is very much like the Isis we see today. And Jesus said he didn't come to take away one word from any of this but came to fulfil it. I then thought about the great tribulation. So God is going to torture people for 7 years by pouring out his 7 bowls of wrath until they accept him, and if they don't they go to hell. Why not poor out 7 bowls of love and healing? Surely that would work better.
Also if Christians have gods spirit talking to them, why can't they agree on pre or post trib rapture?
Needless to say that I soon realised that Christianity is just an old cult controlling people by fear. Islam is the cult of Mohammed, Judaism is the cult of Moses and Christianity is the cult of Jesus.
I reason like this, that if I saw a woman being raped and did nothing I would feel awful and like I had sinned but The All Powerful God sees this all the time and does nothing. I spend my time beating myself up for the sins I commit but God commits the biggest sin, he has the power to stop all of this and chooses not to.
So I am now exhausted with religion and God and am going to live my life with out fear as best I can.
Lots of love to all of you free people x
Well, I will start at the beginning, as it's a good place to start.
So began my search. When I was 18 I met a lovely Muslim man called Riz, he was the first person I had met who really had a strong religious belief, so I read the Quran, I read it about 5 times. It was very scary, very detailed descriptions of hell, where skin is burnt off and replaced for eternity. I was very frighted by this. I cried when I read at sura 4:34 which says a man could beat his wife if she disobeyed him. None the less there were things that made me believe it, their stance on alcohol as I could see all the trouble it caused, their modesty, I hated how woman objectified themselves in porn, strip clubs and films. It mentioned the birds flying in formation and how God had taught them to do this. This made sense to me. Eventually I met his parents, who were very opposed to me, in fact when I first went to there house the Dad was very surprised that I didn't go and help his wife cook the meal instead I stayed and watched cricket with the men. Then when the doorbell rang, they rushed me into the garden and hid me like I was a dirty little white non muslim. I was very angry at Riz for allowing them to do this to me and we eventually broke up. I came away thinking that if Allah is God then I have to disagree with him even if I end up in Hell, i just couldn't accept a God that would torture people in Hell.
I moved back home and met Anthony who is my husband. He was very involved in the partying scene and I soon joined him. I tried drugs thinking maybe they would make me happy, open my mind, but they didn't. It was a false, short lived joy that left me feeling awful afterwards.
Anthony and I moved in together and started a family. My depression escalated I couldn't stand the suffering in the world, what world had I brought these children into? I broke down in tears, I cried out to God, "I don't know if you exist, but if you do please let me know and please explain why there's so much suffering?". Not long after Jehovahs witnesses knocked on our door. They were decent people, they explained they didn't believe in Hell like the rest of Christianity, that it was just an illustration for eternal death. They gave me a tract entitled, 'All suffering soon to end'. They reasoned with me on evolution, how did an eye know how to be an eye? I cried, there was a God, he was going to do something, he did care and he wanted me. My husband joined the bible study they conducted and we were both soon were baptised. We stopped celebrating all the pagan religious celebrations and lived a life of slavery to an organisation called the Watchtower. As well as my husband working and me caring for our 4 children we had to go to meetings twice a week, door knocking at least once a week to try to bring people in to a relationship with God, conduct a Family study with our children once a week and all the other nights pre studying for the meetings in which we were expected to answer. Basically we had very little free time and that which we did have, we felt guilty for. The leaders of this cult were called The Governing Body and claimed to be the faithful slave that Jesus said would feed his domestics. They claimed they were Gods channel to mankind and we were heavily indoctrinated into believing this.
Eventually things began to unravel. They judged my husband who with his stressful job, wasn't doing enough hours knocking on doors. They took him off the what they viewed as a privilege, holding the microphones in Kingdom hall (church). I cried, it was so unlike the story of the widows might. She gave all she could and God excepted it. My husband gave all he could and it was as if they had thrown those coins of little value back in his face. Then I thought of Jesus' words, that his yoke was easy and light. This way of life was anything but easy and light, I couldn't cope anymore. I remember thinking that if I was to call on my neighbour who has 7 children and she became a JW, she'd have a mental brake down. I only had 4 kids and taking then to 1hr 45min long meetings, which they had to sit through, bored out of there brains twice a week as well as knocking on doors at the weekend was so hard that I wasn't coping, how could she? The JW's judge the world, they are the only ones that will survive armageddon everyone else if they didn't accept them as the truth would die, unless they hadn't heard the message and God read their hearts as good. I cried out to God again, "If this is the truth then help me do this, but if not please let me know".
I went to my husband and told him I couldn't do this anymore, I explained how judging they were and they were!!! They judged what you wore, if a man had facial hair, they thought this was hippy like, how many hours door knocking you did, if you answered up at meetings etc etc. I explained how the yoke was killing me. He thankfully agreed and we looked online and quickly realised it was a cult. The witnesses now shun us and ignore us when we see them, which hurts as we were friends with them for 9 years, but it's the way some cults control people and they are told they are doing it out of love to entice us back in, which if you have other family members in the cult doing this to you it is an awful form of blackmail and very painful. Inreality it just stops their followers form speaking to ex JW's that know it's a cult. Thankfully none of our families had listened to us and believed.
So here we were desperate to find the truth and now thought that God had delivered us from this cult and we still believed the Bible. Needless to say we ended up in a church but only once!! We gave ourselves to Jesus in prayer, even before we went to church. But God still didn't answer my prayers and they were only, please let a real christian find me when I go into town and please let my husband get a sale at work so he can have some relief from his stress of coming out of a cult and enjoy his first birthday that he hasn't celebrated in 9 years. Surely with my faith these would be answered. After all doesn't the bible claim if you have the faith a size of a mustard seed you can move a mountain?
I had by this time read the Bible through and the none witness NIV bible taught Hell. Both the JW bible and the NIV also teach that men would dominate woman due to sin, and then God helped this situation, I say this full of sarcasm, by making a woman under the mosaic law twice as unclean if she gave birth to a baby girl than if it was a boy, allowing men to have multiple wives and that they buy them from their Fathers, but if a girl wasn't a virgin when she was first married she'd be stoned to death. Only men wrote the bible and we were to be submissive wives. Also stupid rules like if a bull gores a person it is to be stoned to death, can you imagine how awful that would be!!! The mosaic law is very much like the Isis we see today. And Jesus said he didn't come to take away one word from any of this but came to fulfil it. I then thought about the great tribulation. So God is going to torture people for 7 years by pouring out his 7 bowls of wrath until they accept him, and if they don't they go to hell. Why not poor out 7 bowls of love and healing? Surely that would work better.
Also if Christians have gods spirit talking to them, why can't they agree on pre or post trib rapture?
Needless to say that I soon realised that Christianity is just an old cult controlling people by fear. Islam is the cult of Mohammed, Judaism is the cult of Moses and Christianity is the cult of Jesus.
I reason like this, that if I saw a woman being raped and did nothing I would feel awful and like I had sinned but The All Powerful God sees this all the time and does nothing. I spend my time beating myself up for the sins I commit but God commits the biggest sin, he has the power to stop all of this and chooses not to.
So I am now exhausted with religion and God and am going to live my life with out fear as best I can.
Lots of love to all of you free people x
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