My experience with Children of God/The Family, Part V

Part I : Part II : Part III : Part IV : Part V : Part VI : Part VII : Part VIII : Part IX : Part X : Part XI

When thinking about who you are it is very important to look seriously at what you believe about sex and love and marriage and children. Your attitudes and feelings about these issues are a very important part of who you are as a person and how you will react to relationships, especially sexually.

I say this because it is through sex, and/or relationships that many cults break you or change you as a person. This is a very strong form of controlling you emotionally as well.

I guess this began with the time that the leader's wife blew up at me and cursed me out for wearing shorts on a hot day. I mentioned this episode in my last installment to my story but that, you see was only the beginning.

It caused me to not only feel embarrased and ashamed, but at first I was angry to be accused of something I neither felt nor thought. She accused me of deliberately causing the married brothers to stumble, or lust after me. I never even thought about the brothers, to be honest, I was simply sweltering from the heat.

When a leader tells you something, you are not allowed to doubt them, because they are the voice of God. God has put them there to help you to come closer to God and to grow spiritually. So when they accused me of this, I was stumped. I was then told to fast for a day and be alone in a bedroom all day, and pray for God to show me my sin. My very anger and refusal to admit what I was "really" doing, was my rebellion and arrogance.

So as you can imagine, I cried and prayed and begged God to make me feel the guilt and forgive me and help me to repent. By the end of a day of not eating and agonising over this, I actually began to doubt myself, and believe what they had told me.

From there it began to escalate. During the summer months the leaders would gather the whole commune together and load us in to the buses to go to the beach.

We prepared a big meal to eat there, hot dogs and salad and onion rings, koolaid, etc. When we got there we were asigned to a team of 4 to 6 people, girls and guys with whom we were to stay together.

No one was allowed to stray too far from the main group, where the leaders were. We were to spend the day praying and reading the Bible together and discussing our spiritual life together, but no "vain babbling". That was the term used in the group for talking about anything personal or anything except the doctrine of the leader or the bible.

None of us were allowed to wear bathing suits, just jeans or long dresses. Many of the guys brought their guitars and mouth organs or flutes etc.

You can imagine, there were different brothers and sisters that had developed crushes on each other, that were eager to try to be picked to go in to the same team as them for the day, etc.

Tabitha, the regional leader's wife, whose boy I babysat, told me I was asigned to the team with the band.

So, much of the day the guys taught me to sing songs and how to play several songs on the guitar with them.

Everyone was instructed to meet at the lighthouse at about 3 pm. When we did, they organised us in to a big tug-of-war in the water.

There was a contest between several teams. It was actually a lot of fun.

Then they set up a huge bonfire and we lined up to get our suppers. We used paper plates. We toasted marshmellows on the fire and sang songs together .

It was very romantic. Yet everyone was walking on eggs and you were not allowed to show any one person more attention than anyone else.

Then they herded us onto the peer, where we were huddled beside the lighthouse, while Tabitha read the newest Mo letter to us, about the destruction of America. The letter was called Flee. It told of a terrible catastrophic war on the USA by Russia, that this was what the Mo letters predicted as the fall of Babylon the Whore. The United States was labelled as Babylon the whore from the book of Revelations.

We sat mesmerized, terrified as we believed we were listening to an actual prophesy, just like the predictions in the Bible. Mo told us to write our families and loved ones and do all we could to get our passports and money and flee to higher ground, to escape the destruction.

It felt so ominous. I remember when we started the long prayer session afterward, people were speaking in tongues and seeing visions. My hair was standing on end.

I was very confused. When was I to know, when it was God speaking through me? I had had visions and they were said to be false.

Near the end of the summer something very decisive happened. I had been put in charge of writing articles and taking photos for the newsletter that went around the world, to all the communes.

The big honour and thrill of this was that Mo and Maria, (his new wife, secretary) read these entries and approved or disapproved them for distribution. It was like our information link to each other all over the world. It was called the New Nation News. It was my chance to actually communicate with the Prophet of God, Mo.

I was also babysitting Tabitha's boy, so had access to go in to the food storage room and the fridge to feed Josh.

One day I was alone in the commune, I thought, and went in to the storage area to plan Josh's menu from there.

Once inside, the door suddenly flew open and there stood one of the young good-looking brothers who had just come up from Texas.

His name was Nathaniel. He rushed forward and threw his arms around me, squeezing me tight. I was in shock. He started telling me he had prayed and God had shown him that I was to be his wife and he knew I loved him too.

I started pushing him and saying, he must have been mistaken. I did like him a bit but we were not allowed to do anything like this, not without leadership's permission.

Suddenly at that moment, Amaziah burst in and stood there with arms folded, glaring at us, as if he had caught us red-handed committing a terrible sin.

He roared out, What did we think we were doing! He quoted scriptures about lust and sin and Sodom and Gomorrah...

I tried to explain but he pointed his finger and ordered me upstairs to the girls room. As I cried and ran away, I heard him yelling and threatening the brother.

Again I was made to fast and pray and was punished by peeling potatoes and the biggest insult of all, was no longer allowed to mind Josh. I was not responsible enough.

This broke my heart because I really loved this little boy. The brother was banished out of the COG altogether. I was blamed for the falling of one of God's sheep.

The next event happened near Thanksgiving when for no reason at all, I was called in to Amaziah's office and given a lecture about not lusting after him. This really made me feel angry because I couldn't stand Amaziah. I was terrified of him.

He had become the figure that replaced my father in my life. The thought of lusting after him, God's servant and Keziah's husband, horrified and disgusted me.

I began to feel hopeless and very unhappy with myself. It was as if I was an evil woman, a Jezebel. I felt even worse because I wanted a husband or boyfriend so bad. It was everything I could do just to have a shower, I was so ashamed of myself for making guys lust after me.

My parents came to visit me at the coffee house we were at now in Chinatown, in Montreal. They brought me three warm woolen dresses and some chocolate cookies as a gift. My mother was upset because I was not dressing warm enough for the fall weather.

The truth was, I absolutely loved these long woolen dresses. They looked great on me too. The next day, the leader's wife, Keziah came to me and told me that , it said in the books of Acts, that all things belong to all of us because we are God's family. She and two other leaders took my dresses for themselves and they threw the cookies away.

I had to pray for forgiveness because I was supposed to be happy to share with God's servants. The cookies symbolized Satan, using my parents to make me miss the old life, to backslide from God's great work, to make me want go back into the selfish life of the flesh.

The next movement forward for me, or should I say backward, away from reality, was that Mo wrote a letter, saying we had to go visit our families because he was being accused of brainwashing us. He wanted us to prove to them we were not brainwashed.

Tabitha woke me up one morning, saying she had been given a message from the Lord. She said, "Jubilee and Jubal don't you see how similar, how close these names are?" I said I saw the resemblance. She said, "I think Jubal loves you and the Lord could use the two of you as a team for Him, a married team, pray about it and let me know."

I was praying for God to tell me if I should go home, or go overseas, as Mo had instructed us concerning the fall of America. Should I try to save my parents and loved ones before the end, or was it hopeless?

When Tabitha threw this at me, I was even more puzzled. I kept trying to picture me and Jubal together and I had no feelings for him. I was still a virgin and wanted to stay that way for my real husband. Then I would agonize, asking God to show me if it was His will. After all, why would He show the leader and not me?

I tried to talk to Jubal about this and he just kept saying to me to pray about it. He was the lead singer in the band and the fellow who I had first met when I walked in to the coffee house. He had been behind the greeting desk that first night.

Instantly, I began having dreams about being with Jubal and being in a band in South America, where our group were making albums and doing radio and TV shows.

When I told Tabitha, she was overjoyed. I was only 18.

In the morning Tabitha's husband, the regional shepherd, Uriah, loaded myself and the band in to a van and drove us to another city to live at the house of what we called "a King".

This king was simply a young couple with a house and jobs, that were thinking of joining but not quite ready to leave their lifestyle. The couple had accepted to let the band live at their house for several months, until the band raised their money to go overseas. They provided us with rooms to sleep in, and food and even let the band use their recording equipment to record demos of their music.

I was there to be assistant to Uriah, type his reports and write new articles for the New Nations News, and to get to know Jubal before they married us and sent us off to South America.

It was nice, but felt very uncomfortable with this couple because the husband liked us, but the wife didn't. We were to keep most things secret from them, and just pretend to be innocent Christians.

Uriah was the one dealing with them.

Jubal and I were spending days together, handing out literature in the town nearby and spending our free days together. I still felt nothing for him except friendship. I was in torture, praying every night for God to give me the desire to be with him.

One day when I could stand it no longer, I spoke to Uriah about my problem. He said maybe it was because I was so young. I told him how much I wanted my parents to know I was going away and getting married. I wanted them to at least meet him!

Uriah allowed me to phone them and they actually came to visit us. They took us to a restaurant and frankly, were furious with me and especially Jubal.

It upset me so much that Uriah shipped the whole group of us back to the Toronto commune in the morning.

In Toronto again, Jubal and I were called to Amaziah's office and blasted for our rebellion against God's will. Only this time, it was Jubal getting all the flack for having caused all this confusion.

The next morning, Amaziah told me to pack everything up in a backpack and get ready, that we were being sent on a mission for God. Everything was silent in the van as we drove off. There were about 10 of us, including Keziah but Jubal was not there.

It was forbidden to question or ask why. That would be a breach of security. We drove for several hours and when we stopped, we had arrived at a farm, at the end of country road.

This was the Dunnville survival farm. I had been sent here to prepare a survival farm for the coming destruction of America. We had rifles, and we stock-piled blankets, food, supplies etc. The farm was heated with a woodstove and we used a hand-pump to get water from the well.

By now it was mid-November. There was a couple at this farm with a little baby girl. About 5 brothers and two single sisters already here. We brought others to help.

Keziah put a single brother Nehemiah and myself in charge of the commune. I was to get on the phone and get the local businesses and farmers to donate supplies.

I was to pretend we were just young Christians collecting goods to send to missionaries overseas.

I had never been in charge of anyone before, so I was very worried. I kept wondering what happened to the plan for me to be with Jubal, but I was not allowed to ask.

Things started getting pretty well organised except for the baby and his parents. They were fighting all the time and the baby was always sick. I asked advice from the Shepherd, Nehemiah as to what we could do to help. He said he had prayed and God showed him that their marriage might not be of God which was why their baby was always sick.

We were so self-righteous with this poor couple. One of the girls here at the farm, Hepsiba had a medical condition, which meant, if she did not take her medication, she could fall gravely ill. Because of this her father had tried to kidnap her and so she was sent here for safe keeping.

A strange thing started happening.

Every night after supper,Nehemiah, the leader, would gather us all in the livingroom and have Bible and Mo letter reading. Then he would follow this with a long hysterical prayer session, in which one at a time we were made to go down on our faces pleading and confessing our sins and asking God's mercy.

It was getting wild and out of hand. I was scared. It was as if he was going nuts. By now it was mid-December and it was starting to snow very heavily.

About one week before Christmas, I discovered that we were very low on food and firewood. Nehemiah was supposed to have been keeping all of this organised so this would not happen. He was clearly out of control.

When Keziah came to visit I told her what was happening. She ordered all the brothers out in to the woods to look for fallen trees to use as firewood.

That night was a terrible storm and freezing rain. The sisters sat worrying about whether or not the brothers would be alright with just an axe and a small chain saw to chop trees, in the storm.

The door flew open and a wild-eyed Nehemiah raced in, saying God had performed a miracle by felling a tree exactly as they asked Him to.

Later that night, before daylight, Keziah ordered Hepsibah and myself to pack our backpacks and set out for the Toronto commune, hitchhiking.

Luckily for us a truck driver stopped, almost right away. We could have frozen to death.

Amaziah called me in to his office and said solemnly, "The Lord has shown me that it is His will for you to obey the Mo letter, to return home, to show your parents that you are not brainwashed. You will stay there for two weeks and then I will call you to come back. Remember, this is a mission from the Lord, as a good soldier, do not fail!"

It turned out, that several nights before that, I had had a disturbing dream, in which my father was pictured as a little blind boy, whom God was reaching down to and was trying to lead. Every time God's hand brushed up against him, he batted it away in fear, not knowing it was The Lord.

We wrote tribe reports, still every night, and I presume that after Amaziah read this, he figured I must have wanted to go home to preach to my family.

And so I will end this portion here, because this began a new chapter in my life, as a revolutionary for God, A Child of God.

It was not me that went home, but the prophet of God, Jubilee. My parents were in for a big surprise.

End of Part V