My name is Jennifer and the Lord set my mother and I free on October 7, 2007. My mother and I were in a cult for 10 years. This is my story…
My aunt was in a Christian bookstore looking for a card for her son when the owner of the store approached her and starting talking to her. After speaking to her for a few minutes he said that he had a word for her from the Lord. My aunt had been seeking the Lord’s face for several years asking Him to send her to someone who really knew Him because she was not seeing the Lord in the churches she had attended. At this point in her life her son was going on a missions trip and her husband was quite ill. So she thought could this be the person I had been praying for.
She wasn’t quite convinced but continued to go to the bookstore and then started “Deliverance Counseling” with him and his wife after hours at the bookstore. At first she was skeptical but later felt that this was of the Lord and had seen some changes in her life. She told my mother and sister about this counseling because they too had really started to search for the Lord. My mother and sister also started going again being skeptical at first but then convinced this was of the Lord. They shared with me and suggested I go but I was married at the time and was fearful of anything “Spirit” filled because I did not understand the gifts of the Spirit.
In January ’98 this man and woman were sending my sister out to California to marry a man she had never met and they were to be the west coast side of their ministry. I went to say goodbye to her not knowing at the time she was going to get married and that is when I met them. They were different – especially him. He seemed to know so much about God and His word and then he had a word of knowledge for me. He asked me if I would pray a prayer with him to tear down my idols of having a child. He said that anything could be an idol and since I wanted it so badly I was putting it before God. I said yes of course because I really wanted to serve the Lord. After praying he then gave me another word about my husband and how he would serve the Lord – at the time my husband was not saved so I was really excited.
So began my involvement with this “ministry”. Deliverance ministries deal a lot with generational sin and curses as well as deliverance of demons. This was all new to me and although I was skeptical I felt different like I was able to hear the Father’s voice more clearly.
My husband was very upset about my involvement with this “ministry” and wanted me to stop seeing them for counseling but I did not because I felt that he was asking me to choose between God and him and of course I was going to choose God. After several months he left me and later filed for divorce.
At this point the leader of this cult told me to quit my job, sell everything I owned, put my house up for sale and leave everyone behind. I was to ex-communicate myself from everyone who was not involved in the cult. He used scripture to back up everything he told me to do – such as “let the dead bury their dead” “ anyone who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of me” etc,…
So I sold everything I had, clothes and all, put my house up for sale, moved to another town and quit my job.
I didn’t work for one year – they supported me for the most part however I did a lot of cash advances on credit cards for them. During that year I was with them every day I helped them around the house and ran errands with them. We watched a lot of movies because that is how he got his revelation on how the spirit realm worked and names of demons. He said that Satan revealed things about his kingdom through movies. Sometimes we would stay up all night watching all kinds of movies from drama, horror and even some x rated movies.
After about 6 months he hit me for the first time and then hugged me and told me that he was displaying the love of God that although He gets angry with us He still loves us. I had seen him in rages before but this was the first time he hit me.
All this time I was not able to see my aunt and my mother (who was living with my aunt) whenever I wanted – my mother couldn’t even know where I lived. I was not to call her mother anymore because he had said that the Lord had given them to me as my parents so I was to call them father and mother.
I know as you are reading this you might think how could I have not seen the red flags but all I can tell you was that it was so subtle so gradual and he used the Word to back up everything he did and because I was a baby in the Word I could not discern the half truths. Not to mention the fact that he told us if we left we would go to hell.
Jumping ahead a few years my mother and I eventually moved in together because they said we had to – they picked the house and our furniture. He decided even what we wore. Shortly after this point my aunt left the cult and we were to have no contact with her because we would go to hell if we did. We had to throw out everything she gave us and never talk about her. About one year after that my sister and her husband also left the cult and again we were not to ever contact her or even say her name.
About 4 yrs ago things started to get really bad – I was being beat every couple of months. He gave me black and blue eyes, broke my rib, broke my hand, threw me out of a car and left me on the side of the road till he came back for me. One beating he put a chair in the middle of the kitchen made me sit there while he beat me on the back with a slotted spoon. I had welts on my back for days.
He was taking more than half of our income. My mother and I were living in the same house but were not allowed to speak to each other or go anywhere. He had me working 72 hrs a week and my mother was working 60 hours a week as waitresses so we had cash to give him.
Then he even started abusing me sexually. This is hard for me to talk about because the enemy wants me to feel stupid and ashamed but I know that by this point I was so worn down and I was so afraid of going to hell that I would do anything not to mention that I just didn’t care anymore. This went on for 1-½ years. I became pregnant and he made me have an abortion. This is the day I died – there was absolutely nothing left of me anymore – especially not spiritually.
I never told anyone not even my mom. When he would rebuke me I would threaten to tell my mom so one day he told me that he had told my mother and that she believed him that it was all my fault. But he also told me that if we ever spoke about it that I would go to hell. So I suffered in silence thinking that even my own mother blamed me and had deserted me.
During the last year I was told almost daily how much God hated me and that I was going to go to hell lest I repent and God hated me worse than Satan and would punish me worse than Satan. I was also told that if I left the group then whomever I came in contact with would go to hell because of me. He would have me up for hours on the phone at night while I was working 72 hours a week. There were days I wouldn’t get any sleep at all. He had a key to our house so we lived in fear that any minute he would come over. It was not uncommon for them to show up in the middle of the night.
Finally God broke through and put a book in my hands called Spiritual Warfare by Richard Ing. In this book it talked about deliverance ministries and how sometimes the person doing deliverance can become prideful because of the power. He had heard of ministries that controlled the people in their ministries with things such as telling them what kind of car they could drive, who they could marry, where they should live and some even used deliverance as a reason to have sex with someone they are ministering to. This was everything that had happened to us – everything and he was saying that this appalled God.
At this point my mother and I started fasting and praying and talking. We couldn’t talk in our home because he would always find out so we started taking drives after work and crying out to the Lord. During one of these times my mother told me she knew what happened to me and she did not agree – I was so happy – there was hope.
The Lord also put Ira and Grace in the restaurant that we worked at who had a prayer-counseling ministry. And after a series of events I finally got up enough courage to call her and ask for help. I didn’t tell her anything I just asked her to pray with me to find out if what we were involved in was truly of God because if it was we would stay if not we
would leave. She started praying and the only thing she could sense was extreme fear and control which is not of God – she told me she felt we should leave.
Later that week we tried to leave but he came to our house at 2 AM and convinced us to stay. But the next week when Ira & Grace were in the restaurant my mother asked them to continue to pray for us because she wasn’t convinced that it was of God anymore. At that point Grace was able to tell her all the Holy Spirit had revealed to her that week about what was going on – she knew that he was taking a lot of our money, he was controlling us with fear and that he was abusing me. We never told anyone this at all so this was all we needed and that night Praise GOD we left the ministry.
What God did for us after that makes me weep to think of how he showered His love on us – one of my counselors says they are kisses from heaven.
Since leaving the cult – God…
- Gave us a new place to live – we had to move out right away so he couldn’t find us – our new landlord after hearing our story didn’t even make us pay a security deposit and let us move in 10 days before the end of the month with out charging us – so I could be and feel safe for the first time in years
- Gave me credit to buy a new car – I had horrible credit because most of the time I didn’t have enough money to pay my bills because I had to give him so much a month
- Gave us furniture – mostly from friends – because we had sold all of our furniture
- Gave us an inheritance that my uncle had been holding for my mother because my aunt told him that one day we would get out and we would need that money
- Gave us wonderful counselors who worked with us diligently to set us free
- Confirmed His word over and over again to us when we started going back to church
- Restored my relationship with my father – who I hadn’t spoke with in 10 years
- Restored our relationship with our family especially my aunt and my sister
- Gave me a new husband – that is a miracle in itself and is a whole separate story
And so much more……
God is so good – I cannot express to you enough how grateful I am to Him for setting me free – I am a completely different person. I still weep a lot especially during worship because it is overwhelming to me to think that He loves me so much and would do all this just for me.
I am only now starting to be able to read the Word – I stick mainly to Psalms and just praise Him for who He is. It’s not as bad now but it’s hard for me when I come across a scripture he would use – it’s hard – sometimes the old familiar fear comes back but God has given me Psalms 35 as my weapon which I pray out loud. He has also given me a
wonderful Christian husband who prays over me and with me when I get overwhelmed with the fear that I cannot fight for myself.
I am currently involved in counseling with a wonderful Spirit filled Christian woman for the abortion which is also helping a lot.
There is so much more I would love to share with you. I only told you the physical part but the spiritual part of the cult would take too long to write.
My prayer since I have been out is Lord please don’t let all of this horror be for nothing may Your name be glorified through it. I want to share my story not because of the horrible things I went through but for all the wonderful ways God is restoring my life – He is truly restoring all that the locust has eaten.
