|
Since the pastor was seeing that I was motivated again and had been participating in the church more, we once had a meeting with several of the youths to talk about what we could do to help promote the church. Before beginning, the pastor first mentioned how a couple of the members had left, including the one who gave me the "talk", because of the apostle. Apparently, they didn't like him or agree with his teachings. I didn't understand why, but I knew very little about him, and I still did not realize that he was a leader and that this was a cult.
In this meeting, the pastor was talking to us about church promotion. The pastor mentioned he was thinking of providing a Saturday service because some persons were missing Sunday. We were also talking about our methods on promoting the church. I remember witnessing how passionate everyone was when trying to get new persons to join their church, and why it was so important. I know that finding God was important and all, but sometimes it just seemed like getting new members was more important than actually finding God. It reminded me of how passionately they preached tithing. It was as if both getting members and donating money were the two most important things of the church.
Anyways, the pastor had asked me why he brought a church member to our first personal Bible study. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something about someone giving a testimony to help enforce the truth of the church. When we were to evangelize to other persons, having more than one person to enforce our beliefs would help others to be convinced of the "truth". This of course is a programming method called "group enforcement", and I didn't realize it at the time, but I was now being trained on how to program others!
In the same meeting, the pastor even mentioned how he wanted to use a different word other than "evangelizing", because so many persons associated that word with negative feelings towards religion. I forgot what word he suggested that we use, but it was definitely a tactic to disguise our true intentions while still promoting the church. It's a simple psychological trick. For instance, a detective might have given an interrogation to a suspect, but when giving a testimony for the prosecution in court, the detective might say that he "interviewed" the suspect instead, in order to not make the detective himself look like a bad guy. That's basically what the pastor was trying to do.
When the anniversary came, I remember that I could barely stay awake. But it was all worth it. The anniversary went well. I remember being at the church one night and watching some of the members singing, and I was just thinking to myself how much I wanted to sing with them, and how much I enjoyed being there. I realized all too well that I did not agree with everything they taught, but like I said before, I still believed in God, and even if the church wasn't perfect, it was still a way I could worship and express my love for him. But those feelings wouldn't last much longer.
I knew it was coming, but I guess I just was hoping it wouldn't. I heard one of the higher pastors during the anniversary give a message about how immoral the country was getting, and how homosexuality was a big part of it. I was quite angry at the stance that the church obviously had about this human sexual behavior, but I wasn't surprised. But it just reminded me about how much Christians loved to hate others. I remember thinking long and hard about this. I started to feel very disappointed in myself. How could I have let myself get involved in a group that hates love? It just wasn't me. How did this happen? I mean, I knew how it happen, but how did I allow it to happen. That is what I couldn't figure out.
Around this time, I started to think about everything that I've learned and witnessed. I thought about all the times that the church told me I was a bad person and unworthy of God's love. I thought about how wrong they were about scientific facts. I thought about their moral misguidance. I thought about their fixation with taking money from their members and their obsession with finding new ones. I hated how they were always trying to push me to sing and cry with them and to go to church almost every single day. I thought about how much they seemed to love me in the beginning and how much they distanced themselves from me when I could not give them money. I also thought about how much they bashed my best friend.
Speaking of my friend, one day when we were done with the services, I was sitting down when the pastor came up to me and asked me how she was doing. I told her she was good. He looked at me and with a smirk and said that she's not good if she doesn't have God. I didn't say anything, but almost did. I was really getting to the point where I knew eventually I wouldn't be able to keep quiet anymore. This just had to stop. I just thought in my head that this guy didn't realize that she was much more religious than I was. But despite that, how could he say that she's not good, just because she's not in our church?
I had already reached the point where I was no longer relying on the church for the truth about God anymore, but now I was really upset. I said to myself that I was just too good of a person to be associated with bigots. How could I be part of such a group? I didn't want to deal with it anymore. I wanted to leave. But it was difficult to leave. In fact, I couldn't. I tried. I wanted to. But it was hard. Even with everything that I learned and witnessed, I still enjoyed going there and spending time with everyone. They had provided for me a family that I so much desired. Not going to church would make me feel empty inside. The church gave me a purpose. It gave me something to work for. And it also provided me a place to worship God with other Christians. I was like the wife who couldn't leave her abusive husband.
It was really troubling me. One day I started talking to my close friend who I talked to on my first day there. I wanted to talk to her for a long time about my feelings on the church, but I was afraid to because I didn't want her, like the others, to stop "loving" me. After all, she was the one who really brought me to the church, because they were her friends, and she was the reason I was there in the first place. She was my genuine friend, and I didn't want to disappoint her. It would really hurt me if she got upset. But I needed to tell her.
We sat down and I told her that I was having some trouble with my feelings toward the church. She asked what they were, and I told her, honestly, that they were just so wrong about so many things. They were against science and tried to teach everyone that the Earth was so young and that evolution wasn't real. And I told her that I did not agree with them at all about their views on homosexuality. I didn't quite tell it to her like that. I just told her that I believed love was love, and it should not matter who you love. She actually told me that she was like me, and felt the same way. But I guess like me, there were other reasons why she was there.
Now that I look back, I can honestly say that she suffered the same problem I was having. I wanted to leave. I knew I should have left a long time ago, but for some reason, I just couldn't. But I remember that I asked her if she would be okay if I was ever to leave. Again, she was the one who got me here, and I didn't want her to think that I was ungrateful. She said that she'd love me no matter what. That was something that I really needed to hear. Because in a sense, that kind of gave me the permission I needed to leave, even though at the time I was unaware that permission was one of the things that I needed.
Time was running out for me to be in the church. As I entered my fourth and final month, I knew I no longer wanted to be a 4th Watcher. I stopped considering myself to be one. I wanted out. But the question was how to leave. I wanted to leave in a proper way. I'm not sure what I mean by that, I just know that I wanted to do it right. How was I going to inform everyone of my departure? Would they even care? As of now, I was only going to the church because I was trying to figure out how to leave. I stopped dressing nicely and I was starting to make my frustrations known through my behaviors at the church. Persons could tell that something was wrong.
I must also admit that my belief in God was also starting to fade. I'm not sure if it was because of my growing frustrations with the church, the fact that I didn't seem to be in trouble anymore, or simply because my mind was healing and I was learning to think reasonably again. I believe it was probably a combination of all three. But I can tell you that at this point in time, I still had much more faith in God than I did in this church.
A while ago when I was starting out in the church, I was asked to give a testimony about how bad of a person I was before I came to God and found the church, and how great my life was after joining. I told them that I wasn't ready to do that. But now, I was being pushed more and more to give a testimony. I certainly wasn't going to say anything like that now. Honestly, what were they trying to do? I wasn't going to admit something that obviously wasn't true. Of course, not giving a testimony also did not sit well with church members.
One of the last main events that I took part in with the church was a huge weekend carwash that the church was doing in order to make more money. Again, I was asked to help with the event, and while I really didn't want to, I played the nice guy and helped them anyway. Even though it was another way to give back, I didn't really care about that anymore. In fact, I now had money that I could give to the church, but there was no way now that I was going to give them anything.
During the carwash event, I was there pretty much the whole weekend washing cars and attending church services. It was a long weekend, and I wasted all that time working for a church I despised. I also realized that I needed to get out, because it wasn't right for me to be helping a church I believed to be a hate organization. I remember being outside during the carwash, and the pastor was talking to someone about the church. I was thinking to myself, I am representing this people, and I don't even like them. I'm promoting a church I couldn't stand and didn't believe in, a church that advocated issues that I was completely against. What the hell was I doing here?
It was also this time when I caught on to another thing that was going on in the church. Gossip. I hadn't realized before, but gossip was everywhere in the church. Everybody loved to talk about everybody. I knew who were criminals, I knew who was beating his wife, I knew who didn't like who, I knew who was the church slut, etc. I just didn't notice it until they started gossiping about me. Apparently, some persons didn't like me very much. I don't know why. I was a pretty likable guy, but with this church, you could shed a tear out of the wrong eye, and you would be considered a bad Christian. Even person who I thought were my friends apparently had issues with me. This made me really hate the church, even more so than before. These were not kind loving persons. They were not my family. They were a group of haters. That's all they were. I don't know how I could have been so wrong before.
Now, the next event that I am going to briefly discuss about is what made me finally announce my departure from the church. This was the main deciding factor. Unfortunately I cannot go into great detail. I met with my friend who I had enjoyed spending time with at the church, and like always, we were having a good time. But we started talking about difficulties in our lives. While it is true that I was struggling to leave the church, I was still a pretty nice guy to everyone there and as you know, I still participated in the church. But my friend told me something that evening that made me do a complete shift. I can't say what it was, but it really pissed me off. It made me so mad, that I was never going to be the same with these persons ever again. I told her that okay, it was over. I told her I had been thinking about leaving the church for a long time, but I was now done with it. I told her right then that I was leaving the church. She seemed disappointed and no doubt regretful of what she told me. I wish I could tell everybody what it was, because it is very instrumental in my hatred towards the church and would give me a much better explanation as to why I felt about the church the way I did, and maybe some day I can reveal this information, but that will have to wait, as it is not possible right now.
That night, I was very upset. I was really hurting inside. I felt so betrayed. I felt so sick. I wanted to beat someone up. I went to church that night like I was supposed to, but I waited in the other room. I could not bring myself to attend the services. Persons there could tell I was angry about something. I texted my best friend and told her that I was finally leaving. I don't remember how long I stayed or why I even went there in the first place, but when I left I had a hard time concentrating on the road going home.
I was depressed. I ended up not going to the Sunday service the following week, and that was the first time I missed it in the three and a half months I was going. I wasn't sure if I was going to go back there again, but my friend from church, the one who had told me something earlier, kept asking me to come back. I didn't want to, but I decided to go for her. But my heart was not in it anymore, and she was the only reason why I went.
I ended up going to the Sunday night service with my other good friend there. When the sermon was over and everyone was leaving, the pastor asked me how my best friend was doing again. I told him that she was doing fine. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something again about her not being good and probably how she was destined for Hell or something like that. That was it. I was going to let him have it.
At first I acted real polite. I told him that she was much more religious than I was. He asked what I meant, and I told him that she prays to God much more than I do, and she believes in God much more than I do. He told me that God doesn't listen to her. I asked him what made him believe that. He said because the Bible says you must be in church and pray with others for God to hear you. I said to him, that you mean to tell me that every time my friend prays, God doesn't hear her? He got out his Bible and read the verse as if it was proof. I told him the Bible was written by men and that there was no way to know that it was inspired by God.
This led into a huge debate that the two of us were having in front of several other persons. I don't know how long it lasted, but it was at least a half hour. I told him the church and the Bible consisted of stupid rules that made no sense, and that they were wrong about so many things. He asked who I was to have any say about the Bible. I asked him who he thought I needed to be. He kept trying to change the subject and neither of us got anywhere, but at least he now knew how I felt.
I went only once more so that I could properly say good-bye to anyone, at least that was the idea. When the service started, I did not sing or clap my hands anymore. I just stood there. While they prayed and some of the ladies were speaking in tongues and looking like fools, one of the little girls there was trying not to giggle, and I rolled my eyes at the foolishness that these persons displayed. When communion came along, I refused to eat and drink the damn wafer and fruit juice.
When it was over, the pastor said that he was glad I came. My friend from the other night talked to me about my argument with the pastor. I told her how I felt and that how the church was stupid and it was not my intention to be here anymore. She was offended. She told me that she still wanted me to come, and to start dressing nice again, and to partake in communion. I told her to forget it, but she kept asking. I didn't want to, but I kept thinking about her. I was concerned about her, and I thought perhaps I would do it for a friend. But I made it clear to her that I was only doing it for her.
Shortly after, we all went to one of the member's houses to have a youth meeting. A few weeks earlier, when I was still trying to give the church a chance, I was trying to come up with ideas on how the church could be more helpful for everyone, including non-members. Today, we had all gotten together and we were learning about CPR. I thought, okay, this is good. This is actually a helpful thing. Next week, they were planning on making cookies, and going door to door offering cookies to everyone. I thought that was nice. I even volunteered to help make the cookies. But then, she started talking about the tracts that we were going to hand out, and how we were going to talk about membership. I couldn't believe it. I gave them one more chance to try and redeem themselves, and all they were interested in was "recruiting" new members and making more money for the church. They really didn't care about anyone.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but it didn't matter any longer. A few days after that, my friend form church texted me and told me that she didn't want to see me anymore, and that if I was to come to church, it was because I wanted to worship God and not just to see her. In the text, she admitted that the reason why she was trying to get me to go to church was because the pastor was having her do it. I couldn't believe it. He was using her to get me to come to church this whole time. She wasn't really my friend. She was the pastor's puppet, and I meant absolutely nothing to either of them.
I didn't go back after that, and I haven't been back there since. I was finally done with them. Before I left, I watched the church get out of control, and members were constantly leaving. I just seemed to be breaking apart. I knew that members were going to other churches. Gossip was one of the main culprits, but not everyone there was fooled by what was going on.
Once they knew I was gone and never coming back, they stopped trying to entice me with promises of miracles and all that other bull. My friends who I believed were friends were nothing of the sort. The only person who I remained real friends with was my good friend who helped get me into the church. When they knew that I no longer believed in their god and about my views on homosexuality, I was told that I had a dark heart. But that's okay, because the nightmare was over.
All of this left me with confusion. It was ironic, but I entered the 4th Watch to learn about God with my faith strong, and they ended up making me hate Christianity more than ever. I was uncertain about where I stood about God at this time. I still believed, but after everything that I had been through, I was left looking for him again, and he just didn't seem to be there anymore. Where did he go? Was it his policy to only be with me during a traumatic experience? Perhaps I was wrong all along, and that he just wasn't there to begin with.
But I tried to hold onto what little belief in God I had left. After a couple of months, my legal situation was finally over. Nothing ever happened to me and after talking to the police, I found out that I was never in any trouble to begin with. They said that they were only after the other guy, and that they were just keeping me around in case they wanted me to testify against him, but I never had to, and he ended up going back to prison. Yes, I was being used, but I didn't care about that anymore. I was just glad it was over and my life could continue. Though after my experiences with the cult, my life would never be the same.
After months of this ordeal, I still kept in contact with my close friend who still went there. I was trying to get her to leave, but she remained. However, she told me that the church was getting out of control. She told me how everyone was getting mad at the pastor. Apparently, he was actually still considered a student pastor, and was recently promoted to an official pastor. It would seem that he was letting the illusionary power get to his head. He was now claiming that God talked to him and was giving him special messages and commands. I was told that he was getting very mean, and telling several of the members that they were going to Hell for one reason or another, such as for working on Sunday. I am happy to report that my friend finally did leave.
But my faith and belief in God also eventually left. My mind was back. I tried so hard to believe, to hold onto what I felt before. But it just wasn't there anymore, and I knew why. What I felt was wonderful, but it was all in my head. I had created the fantasy to cope with my situation. All the poor religious persons who do this cannot make the realization that it's all a delusion. I could no longer find cause, reason, or justification to believe in any god. There was no evidence. I would pray, and nothing would happen. I could try to make up excuses, but it was time to face reality again. Fantasy play time was over.
However, I would not become a full atheist this time. Being part of a religion again and being involved in a church exposed me to some new ideas and forced me to think more about my own knowledge and beliefs. I thought about all of the things that they taught, such as their "reasoning" for not believing in evolution, and why certain parts of the Bible were still good and true, but misunderstood. I felt that if I was going to truly believe in something, that I should know all I can about it. So that is why I then considered myself to be an agnostic. I didn't want to have absolute beliefs at this time. I wanted to research and learn all I could so that I could have the most knowledge about religion and science as possible. I was also motivated after what happened to me to teach others and to help them avoid the same mistakes I made.
That is mainly why I am so knowledgeable about such topics today. After learning more and more, I started to debate others, and today I am a much better person because of it. I did what any person should do. I turned a negative situation into a positive one. I used my troubles, mistakes, and trauma to better myself and to educate others.
Now, after I had left, and while my legal situation was coming to an end, I was still dealing with the small trauma I suffered from the church. At this time, I still did not realize what I had been a part of. I went through a recovery period that lasted for months. I couldn't quite understand why, but I felt sick. I don't mean that in a figurative way. I actually felt sick. I would wake up in the morning feeling genuinely depressed, and I remember feeling like I had just done something very wrong. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. What was wrong? What was it I was feeling? I knew that the church had affected me somehow, but it was something more than just simply being angry at their behavior and beliefs, it was something I just couldn't quite figure out at the time.
So I started to reflect on all that I went through during my time there. I had decided to look into their religion a bit more and did some research on the computer. It was then I learned more about their apostle. And link by link, I started to make those connections that I could not earlier, and I now understood everything that I had missed before, all those red flags and signs that should have given me warning, and the alarms that did go off in my head, I could finally understand as to why they went off. I couldn't believe what I had done. But it was all too clear now. There was no sense in denying it. The PMCC 4th Watch was a CULT. I had joined a Goddamn cult!
It was all getting so clear now. I found out that their apostle was just a typical cult leader. He wasn't anything like I thought. Had I known a few things about him before, I probably would have figured it out. But he was just some scam-artist who claimed to have a vision one day and God appointed him as the leader of all Christians. I found out that if you didn't belong to the 4th Watch, then you were destined for Hell, even if you believed in the same exact things. And of course, he needed your money.
Now I understood why they preached so passionately about tithing. It was nothing more than to milk as much money out of superstitious persons as they possibly could. And to get as much money as they could, it was no wonder why they tried so hard to gain so many new members. It was nothing more than the type of recruiting you do in network marketing schemes. I don't know why I couldn't see it before. Was my mind that clouded?
Now knowing that it was a cult, I looked into cults in general and learned about brainwashing and psychological manipulation that cults use, and I couldn't believe how obvious it was now that the whole time I was in the 4th Watch, I was being programmed by them. All the fasting, all the lying, the repetition of saying how I was unworthy, and the camps and conventions where they used professional speakers, just like a network marketing scheme...were all just programming methods being used on us, and that was only a fraction of the many various techniques that they used.
And this was why they tried so hard to get me to sing and to cry. The singing and crying produced emotional states that opened the mind and made it more vulnerable to suggestion, and we would repeat lyrics of songs over and over again praising God, and after we had just gone through several rounds of this, that is when they preached how we were robbing God by not giving the church money, and how bad things would happen to us if we did not. And these fools would give their money to the church, which went right into the pockets of the cult leader.
But perhaps the most heart-breaking thing I learned was the fabricated friendship. I learned that cults often employ a technique in which a new member is assigned a "friend" by the leader, and it is this friend's job to be nice to you and to earn your trust, and they learn as much information about you and then report it to the leader in order to know where you stand in the cult and how to better program you. Now it made so much sense. Before when I had the feeling that the one friend somehow just fell into my lap, it was true. As soon as I started to withdraw from the cult, that is when she came along, and it was her duty to try and get me motivated again. She even admitted to me that the only reason that she was asking me to go to church was because the pastor ordered her to. I was really hurt. Of all the things that happened to me in that place, that was probably the worst. I was a victim of a fabricated friendship.
Realizing what had happened to me, I suddenly felt even worse than I did before. I could now understand why I had been feeling so bad. I was part of a cult. I felt victimized. I felt sick everyday for a long time. I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow raped...spiritually and mentally. I sometimes felt like throwing up. I had to find some way to deal with the pain. Together with other victims, I spent several months researching all we could about the 4th Watch and cults. I wanted to educate and inform the public, so that fewer persons would have to go through what I did. Through our efforts, we formed the Truth Project, to expose the truth about the PMCC 4th Watch. They lie. They say that they're a legitimate church, not a cult. But they are a cult. They are a Goddamn cult.
What you are seeing now is the project we created. Through all of the research and past experiences of victims like me, we uncovered much more about who these persons are, their history, their beliefs and practices, including all of the various methods that they use to program their victims. It took about a year to really gather all of the research and to create the project, but it is here at last. Now victims have a much better chance of avoiding the cult.
Looking back at what had happened, I had to really think long and hard about the meaning of it all. I had completely lost my faith in God. A couple of years after leaving the cult, and increasing my knowledge in religion and science, I am now a hard-core militant atheist. You just cannot be a reasonable person and believe in God. But all of this left me wondering about superstition and its effect on our lives.
When I was faced with a traumatic experience, I had nowhere to turn, and I did the only thing that I could think of. Even though I know there is no God, I must admit that believing in him really got me through. Without the belief, I would have been more panicky, more fearful, and less hopeful. Believing in him helped to make the time go by faster, and I would worry less, instead of constantly worrying all of the time about what was going to happen to me, with every second going by feeling like an hour, hours like days.
So there is no doubt that superstition had carried me through. It didn't matter that it wasn't real, it worked. So I'm left with the quandary of not believing anymore. Even though I know that God is not real, is this knowledge more beneficial? Was it better to believe than not to believe? Suppose I was to engage in religious practices regardless of what I believed, would this be more beneficial in the end than just being an atheist? After all, I couldn't deny that superstition had helped.
Here is the answer. It is true that superstition helped me. And when faced with such a problem, I can understand why some would resort to such behavior. But I maintain that superstition is almost always the wrong path to take. True, superstition helped me, but look at the cost for that help. Look what superstition put me through. I had seen first hand on how out of control religion and superstition could get. It just wasn't worth it. If you're not careful, it will control you. The next time you think about allowing superstition into your life, consider the following:
Think about what possible negative consequences there are in abandoning reason in order to believe in fairytales. How do you feel about being lied to? How do you feel about constantly being told you were a bad person and that you were not worthy of God's love or to live, and that God would put you in Hell if you did not believe in what you were taught to believe? What problems do you believe there could be in putting more hope into prayer than in constructive action? How would you feel about risking your health by believing God will heal you, rather than seek medical help? How do you feel about being tricked into giving up your money, time, and effort for promises that never come true? What do you think about wasting so many days of your life praying and spending your time in church for a god who isn't there, when instead you could be out living your life and doing the world some good? How do you feel about the religious constantly putting your friends down and telling you to stay away from them? What do you think about being exposed to psychological attacks, being subjected to various forms of brainwashing and manipulation? What are your thoughts about being pushed to cry and forced to sing, only to make you more vulnerable to psychological programming? How do you feel about you and your children being taught incorrect Bronze Age ideologies and facts, while rejecting science and thus limiting social progress? Do you want to believe that immoral things like murder, torture, and rape are in fact moral? Would you want to live your life constantly trying to alter your reality in order to defend immorality? How do you suppose you would feel having your heart broken by a fabricated friendship? Would you like to enter a lifestyle in which you might not ever be able to get out of? How do you feel being gossiped about by those who you believed were your friends? Do feelings of depression, sickness, and rape appeal to you? What would you say if you were told that you must believe what someone else believes in or else you'll be thrown in eternal fire? And then, how would you feel if you later found out that all of this which you accepted and embraced in your life was all done for the benefit of one man...a cult leader?
If all of those things sound enticing to you, then you are probably already a programmed cult member. This is also a good description of a dedicated 4th Watcher.
If you read this whole piece on the experience I had with the PMCC 4th Watch cult, then I thank you and appreciate you taking the time to hear my story. If you are a free-thinker, I hope this has enforced your resistance to religion. If you are religious, but not a 4th Watcher, I hope this has helped you to make the right decision and stay away from the 4th Watch and all cults. If you are a religious person thinking about joining the cult, I would seriously consider my options if I were you, and to please review this project. If you are actually a 4th Watcher, I hope you learned something about your religion, and I hope you leave your cult.
See More Personal Experiences
|
Page 17
|
|
|
|
