How I Know

This was my experience in a cult, from ages 14 to 19. I’m 29 now. Leaving was the choice I had to make in order to survive.
We were told that Kenneth Hagin had special visions, that those visions came from God and, therefore, whatever he said was to be believed and followed. Since most of the pastors attended Rhema Bible College, they were also to be followed unquestioningly. There were many other leaders and traveling ministers who would come preach too. We were told that our pastor was our “true shepherd”.
We were to “submit”. This was reiterated by scripture (Hebrews 13:17), which essentially says that if we don’t obey we won’t go to Heaven, but, if that wasn’t punishment enough, isolation or shunning or corporal punishment could be used. I once asked “Why can’t I just obey and be like everyone else?”. My youth pastor response was: “Because you’re too smart”. We were constantly told to “be sweet” and knew that if we weren’t “sweet” (aka sit down, shut up, smile, “Yes, sir”, “No, sir”, constantly dressed in our Sunday best, seen and not heard), we would be punished.
We “prayed in the spirit” (tongues) a lot. We would meet an hour before youth group to pray for the service. We were encouraged to pray in the spirit every day and to not be distracted by our thoughts. But my thoughts are endless (I have ADHD and actually now consider this a superpower). At the time, I always felt like I wasn’t a good enough Christian, because I couldn’t silence my thoughts.
We were not allowed to date and to listen to secular music, or even Christian music that didn’t glorify God. We couldn’t ride in cars alone or be in a room alone with the opposite sex. We couldn’t watch certain television. We had to wear swim trunks and t-shirts in our own backyards, we couldn’t wear regular swim suits. We had to “dress modestly” and wear long shorts, no tank tops. If we questioned something or brought up something that bothered us, we were “offended”, and being offended was considered ungodly.
We weren’t allowed to have “associations” or casual friendships, even just talking to others at school, with people who weren’t godly. So, if someone didn’t obey, their friends would shun them for a period of time, or until they “got right with God”. Anyone who didn’t attend our church was considered a bad association. We were to limit our time and “exposure” to them. We weren’t really allowed to have other friends. And because of all of our other weird beliefs/actions/etc., no one at school wanted to be our friends anyway.
We were constantly told to bring friends to youth group. That’s actually how I ended up there during the “Back to School Bash”. Our church was obsessed with membership. We had to fill out cards at every service to see how many people were there. We were supposed to be recruiting people because we were the ones who were saved and the ones who were going to go to Heaven.
Lots of people had to meet with the pastor regarding wanting to get married. The proper way to discipline children was a common thing that was preached about both to the congregation as a whole and to the youth group. Basically, any decision you paused and didn’t ask “What does God want for me?”, you asked “What does the church say I have to do?”.
There was an event where the youth pastor had sex with a member of the youth group. But she was 18. So, the police were not told. We were all convinced that the blame was “equal”, and by equal I mean it was really on her for “tempting” him.
The woman in the first set of youth pastors used to beat me. She would hit me with her hands, shoes or whatever else. I wasn’t always sure why she was hitting me. Once, I was at their house and the couch cushions were off the couch, because we had been laying on them watching a movie. Then we all started roughhousing and she pushed me onto the couch and accidentally made me hit the side of my head and my ear on the hard part of the couch. I reacted by pushing her away from me. She then grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed in my face: “Knock it off!”. I then got up and ran down to our bedroom (we often spent the night at their house). The other couple that started helping them with the youth group and eventually also became co-youth pastors, the wife in that couple also hit me at least twice. My much older cousin and her husband, who were also members of the church, also hit me. One time, a friend and I set off fire crackers in the back of the youth house. After the Wednesday night service that week, when I went to shake the pastor’s hand he flipped it over and smacked the top of my hand because he had heard of the fire cracker incident.
We were kind of adopted by the youth pastors, because they didn’t think that our actual parents were godly enough. I never told my parents about the abuse or what was happening, because I had been brainwashed to believe that she wouldn’t understand that what they were doing was right (basically, my mom wouldn’t get that they were trying to save my soul by beating a kid that wasn’t theirs), or that I deserved what had happened to me. Also, as much as I hated them, I didn’t want my mom to actually kill them.
If we didn’t submit, the other kids would disown us and the youth pastors would frequently “ground me” from communicating with them. If I asked questions or disagreed or disobeyed any of their rules (which weren’t always clearly stated), I would lose communication with everyone. If I wasn’t “good”, I was ungodly and a “bad association”, which meant that I wasn’t right with God, which ultimately meant that I wouldn’t go to Heaven. And because I always had questions, I always felt like I wasn’t worthy of Heaven and that, if I died accidentally, I wouldn’t get in and would burn for eternity… for asking questions.
Tithing is preached constantly. The whole congregation reads Malachi 3:10 in unison during every single service. Everyone who has any sort of income is expected to tithe. Even children. I started tithing when I was 15. On top of the tithe, you are expected to bring an offering, as a sign of respect for the preacher. While we were trying to raise funds for the new church, on top of your tithe and normal offering you were supposed to contribute to the Building Fund, which had its own special envelope. So, if you didn’t put two envelopes in the bucket, everyone could see that you weren’t contributing.
I was finally able to separate from this cult by lying to the pastor that I was “called” to attend a college four hours away. I chose that college because I was hopeful that it was far enough away that they wouldn’t come after me there. While I’ve been separated from this group for almost 10 years, I still see the way that it has affected me in my everyday life. It’s affected my personality, my biases and my knowledge of History, religion, Science and politics. It’s stunted my growth in romantic and sexual relationships. It’s forever altered my relationships with my family members. I have not a single friend from before 2010, not one person from high school that I would want to see at the reunion. I fear going to the grocery store on Saturday after 4pm, because the church is a franchise and there’s one right next to the grocery store I go to.