We Know Cults When They're On The Clingy Side: How Cult Recruitment Still Snares People Today

The Cultworld, that culture of cultures bent toward countless sectarian chapters of elitism and control, is an insidious aspect of toxic human nature. These groups are usually at their most visible when actively doing their best to troll entire populaces of targetted audiences associated with schools, seminars and college campuses. Even with the chilling of the world in the blanket of isolation that the COVID pandemic left us all struggling within, cults never quite stopped their aggressive recruitment. They just shifted gears, went online and turned to the Internet like never before.

However, the harvest fields of young hearts and minds found in university communities and beyond have always been one of the softest of targets for their proselytization. An older article we did some time ago has noted how cults recruit freely in such places to great effect and impact because of how readily the young men and women, caught at a time of transition in their lives from young student adulthood , never quite see what is coming when a friendly bunch of people sing a song of belonging and inclusion all pulling together under a shiny idealism.

Such college- aged recruitment of young men and women is one of the most hidden of things in society. It happens, but there's rarely any warning or caution put out about it, despite what horrors it personally brings.  What's all too well known about them is how readily the appealing lure of cultic community seems to attract too many recruits who uncritically accept what they say and jump into involvement .. usually through the most innocuous of avenues like outings, parties, gaming and food fests held not far from the college campuses themselves.  As our article indicated:

As we are all too familiar, people are basically insecure creatures who will spare no effort to find the means to satisfy their need for personal security through personal fulfillment. In short, they will seek "the itch for their scratch." Cultic groups target people struggling with such issues with their astonishingly effective means of personal recruitment based upon meeting those needs, thereby gaining significant means of leverage and control over them. And their recruitment is usually as successful as their group's ability to foster that instant sense of rapport and community with those they seek to convert. It is this kind of immediacy in purely relational issues that most powerfully influences the seeker. Their payoff - facilitated by the recruiter's personal contact  -  is a carefully controlled outpouring of positive regard by the collective group aimed to impress upon them how valued and cared for they are: this is done in three ways

• Immediate Importance -  the prospect is affirmed to the extent that they are made to feel essential and important to the success of cause they are confronted with - since it is how those needs and their fulfillment will be met ..         

• Instant Intimacy - the prospect is provided with a high degree of almost instantaneous caring and sharing with other group members who unhesitatingly make themselves available for the development of deep, close relationships ..  

• Interactive Introduction - the prospect is brought into (and caught up with) a community of people who have a vibrant social life totally centered around their collective involvement with the revelation or philosophy that the group holds is the "truth" that will save the world .. 

In short, this is what we call fast food fellowship. It is quick, delicious and satisfying and can be obtained easily from the right places relatively cheaply. There are no shortage of franchises to choose from. The menus differ to some extent, but the fare is the same. And ultimately, no matter how tasty, the diet is imbalanced and unhealthy and leads into a real rut that is very difficult to get out of! Another terms used by cult researchers to describe this phenomenon is "love bombing".

<snip>

Check out how this same frivolity translates into the kind of recruiting gambits that many cultic movements engage in which focus on broader audiences in our podcast "Target Practice" in which four survivors of four different cults explain how cults will cling to their intended targets so convincingly and how they became involved.  
Cultism is a transformative nightmare only one hope away. 

The Delaware Affair: Understanding the Error of Pastor Sam Rosa

There's nothing more dangerous than a "friend" who has taken up the cause of a very real and very wiley enemy. We didn't go out of our way to discover a grotesque and contemporary example of this - it came slapping us in our face in the fall of 2022 when we were in the midst of producing podcasts on the advance of the Xenos/Dwell cult in Ohio. 

This podcast details the initiative we had to launch to confront an evil so winsomely established within a community of Christians being errantly led by its pastor down the proverbial gates to hell.

 Listen to it HERE.

 

The Absence of Love In Abusive Spirituality: Our EMNR 2023 Video Online

This is probably our most indepth look into the spiritual depravity of cultism we've ever had an opportunity to produce.It takes a long and hard look at why two "cutting edge" churches are just plain cutting cults.

This is a review of how Biblical agape is absent from the indoctrination of cultism, specifically in the toxic formation practiced by two Ohio Valley cults largely off the radar of countercult discernment, who have been enthusiastically abusing their recruits for a total of some seventy years. Our case studies will focus on Xenos Christian Fellowship (now called Dwell Community Church) and Gladstone Community (now called Madison Place Community Church), fulfilling Matthew 24:12.

A video presentation first broadcast at the EMNR conference entitled "Engage 2023: The Cost of Failed Discipleship.' WARNING - Explicit testimony of cult abuses may trigger cult survivors. View it HERE.

Update On Our "Brother Trickster" Ebook on the Gladstone / Madison Cult

Thanks for visiting our blog, which due to the sheer amount of work we've done online, through our podcast and with many other ministry projects, didn't begin to reflect the amount of updating we've been wanting to make mention here. We're sorry for not being more in touch!

THE BROTHER TRICKSTER E-BOOK IS COMING! It is the adaptation of our six part expose on the cult of Zac Kijinski's creation called the Madison Community "Church" in Cincinatti, but is more widely known at the Gladstone Community "Church" about one of the most insidiously parasitical abusive cults we've ever seen.

The editing has gotten more involved than we thought as well as our attempts to , but we hope within a month's time to finally have it ready for distribution. We are still weighing options for how to make it available. We will be asking a donation for a download of each book, and depending upon our delivery system we choose to go with, the amount of that requested donation will vary. We will keep you advised. 

In the mean time, you can read the expose in six parts here.

 

Discerning The Journey of Change Our Fallen World Slouches Along To ..

Why is it so dark?

In the beginning, it is always dark.

We are indeed going somewhere. Our podcast summarizes our direction for the coming year in helping shine a light on the very dark places we are going that are awash in sunshine and flowers.

 

Round Two : A Request For Renewed Dialogue With Dwell

Rafael Martinez with Megan Cox

Spiritwatch Ministries
Post Office Box 2165
Hammond, IN, 46323

Thursday, January 17, 2024

Conrad Hilario and Kate Mizelle
Dwell Community Church
1340 Community Park Dr

Columbus, OH 43229

Dear Conrad and Kate:

It has been two years since our last communication regarding the testimonies we have presented to you about the abuses of a substantial number of people within your church community. We have long wanted to reconnect with you for further conversation on this very matter but our email connection came to a disappointing end. 

At the time, we were affiliated with Everywoman Studios and no longer are. Yet our position then remains as it is now, that a disturbingly persistent subculture involving authoritarian and manipulative domination appears to be far more rampant within your movement then how you have represented it. Additional personal discussion with former members and leaders confirms this over the past 2 years, much of which I am certain you are quite aware of. 

We would like to ask that you candidly respond to this additional evidence and do so in the same format as we previously dialogued with you, using online meetings to do so. We would use Google Meet, record them and make this recording available to you as soon as technically possible afterwards. The recording would be used publicly in our ongoing discussions about Dwell as you used the first recordings from 2021 for your own purposes.

There's far more, Conrad and Kate, then you thought you'd encounter by opening this discussion. We are not seeking damnation but discernment and have approached this not to scandalize but with sobriety. There are very clear problems within your movement that are well documented which you need to squarely address that dishonor the Gospel and militate against your belief that Dwell is an embodiment of New Testament Christian community. 

And I as an activist against institutionalized abuse and Megan as a survivor of it have a real desire for frank discussion on this and are requesting that you - or anyone else in senior X/D leadership at your level - to respond to our invitation and actually do so.

We look forward to your response.

Rafael Martinez
Spiritwatch Ministries ****** USPS Tracking HERE.

The Gladstone Report by Ernie and June Stickler: Courage At The End Of A Weary Day

In 2018, a Christian couple who had come into the fellowship of a band of young disciples helming their own church found themselves compelled to leave it. They loved these young men and women as their own spiritual children whom they tried to offer guidance and light to throughout their time among them. But even though they were initially dazzled by their vibrant spirituality and pragmatic approach to applying their faith to their lifestyle, they learned after 4 years among them that there were profoundly troubling things going on there.

Sadly, these tidings were so disturbing that, conscience torn, they felt bound to admonish the community of what they perceived to be profound errors they were laboring under. They then, heartbreakingly, chose to leave it altogether, knowing that the group was resisting their warnings. This community was the Gladstone Community, now calling itself the Madison Place Community Church of Cincinatti, Ohio as led by a self-proclaimed "elder" named Zac Kijinski. This couple, Ernie and June Stickler, did not leave the community until they made sure that the chronicle of their findings was sent to the entire community's membership by a mass e-mail. We've found that the Stickler's letter is one of the greatest efforts by truly compassionate Christians seeking to warn people bound by the wiles of cultic deception. It is a wonderful epistle filled with heartfelt Scriptural warnings and uncompromising calls for them to change their ways.

With their permission we are providing the full text of what we call "The Gladstone Report", which first surfaced in the inboxes of all of the community members in 2018. Click HERE to download it. 

We will be producing a full report on the Gladstone cult in the near future on our website and in our "Where Are We Going" podcast, we've had guests we've interviewed on the program who were survivors of the group telling their story.  These podcasts have shaken a lot of institutions in Cincinatti, beginning with the Gladstone group themselves and we know more exposes are on the way.

You can hear more about the Stickler's experiences in this episode of our podcast from last summer when we interviewed June about their time there. 

Houses Of The Holy: The 2016 Article On The Queen City's Haight-Ashbury

 

Aside from Reddit links, scattered Facebook pages and it's own hagiographical PR treatments about itself, there's very little information on the Gladstone Community on the internet aside. Their website page has been revised several times. Since we are unable to drive several hours and stay around for a week to try to connect with them, we're forced to start on the web in our research. 

But in many instances, that's a lot to say right there. As you read these forums, you hear and see that there's something about Gladstone's activity that leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Ultimately, some of this is just plain bias and irreverence and can be attributed to a scorn for spirituality so common today. But by no means can that explain it all away whatsoever. The vibe people read from contact with Gladstone's activities as well as their past doings isn't something you can just dismiss out of hand. For a group claiming to be the only true expression of New Testament Christianity on the earth, it's abrasive attitude seems out of place especially when you realize that this is where they've been since their inception.

Social media is not a good place to find primary sources of information about something. When it's all you got, however, you proceed with caution and a good working baloney detector. So we were quite surprised to find that in 2016, Cincinnati Magazine published an article on this cultic movement that was the first and at this time only such source. It described the rise and presence of Gladstone as part of the organizational prowess of one Zac Kijinski, a likable and bright young man whose spiritual fervor, innovative mindset and charismatic personality remind you immediately of another religious innovator by the name of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon heresy whose stature and bearing commanded a likeability and allegiance of so many around him in the 1800's. 

Unlike the gregarious and extroverted Smith, who would go on to found a cultic religion all  his own, Kijinski doesn't like to talk to reporters. Click on the link to find out why. Thank you, Cincinnati Magazine.

The Gladstone Controversy: Another Cult Hidden In Plain Sight

We first want to apologize for not keeping our blog up as current as it should be. Thanks for your patience if you've been coming by for updates and not getting them!  We have been so completely overwhelmed by the responses to our work in helping bring light upon the Remnant Fellowship and Xenos / Dwell cults in recent months. We're going to try to keep this going! Our major thrusts of ministry have been related to our "Where Are We Going" Spiritwatch podcasts and we've been featuring testimony from survivors of both of those movements who've generously given us interviews into their involvement which are truly worthy of download and that's just a mouseclick away above.

Mindy Munoz' testimony has turned out to be the most downloaded episode of our podcasts so far. A well known and well loved member of the Remnant Fellowship in it's earlier years, her testimony -- barely cited in the "Way Down" documentary -- seems to be resonating with a lot of people in Tennessee. Our metrics indicate that the region around Franklin is ablaze with activity and visits from people there to our podcast. May the truth be told. 

Our last blog post was too long ago .. although we are glad to see that perhaps Dr. Loritts had listened to our entreaties and maybe a few others because he's no longer listed as a speaker on the Xenos Summer Institute roadshow of "Christian apologetics." It's amazing what the power of Internet outrage can leverage, but regrettably, there had been no communication from him about his withdrawal, much less any explanation as to why he was involved to begin with, going to speak at a "Christian apologetics" conference helmed by a religiously abusive and cultic movement.

Discernment isn't pretty but it gets the job done. There's no beauty in this affair but the vindication of truth. 

Moving forward, on our most recent podcast, we want to begin an exclusive expose on another controversial movement that has been contributing to the spiritual confusion of the Midwestern community it currently flourishes in. Well known there, this movement is almost completely unknown anywhere else. And as always, it’s a tragic story of good people in an evil situation, of love twisted by deceit, of the ecstasy of fellowship and the agony of bullying. In short it’s a cautionary tale of how there are still those who lie in wait to deceive in the name of God, those who boldly come off as champions of truth and draw so many to follow a path to hell in this world and possibly the next.

You see, when you speak of such groups as cults being in our very midst, it tends to confuse a lot of people with a sensationalism that clouds perception. Many assume that cults assemble in secrecy in well hidden compounds in some wilderness stronghold where they cavort with demonic forces, sacrifice children and wear some kind of robes, paint and feathers. As the great French philosopher Pepe Le Pew once said, Au contraire!   They are embedded in our society everywhere and are your friends, your neighbors, maybe even your family. They are the barista at the coffee house and the realtor with an office in town. They are intelligent, idealistic and sharp people with families and interests like you. Cult members are quite ordinary people who just so happen to be in the bondage ofa  cultic mind control that ties them to their chosen gathering. That’s something all too ordinary as we’ve been sharing in our podcasts.

Our attention now turns in our podcasts and outreach to come to a place calling itself a Christian church of intentional community, but which has become an antichristian den of intentional control.  Hundreds of people have been drawn into its orbit since 2006 or so, young and sharp men and women who believe it to be the only Christian movement under the sun, just as any well mind controlled cult member might conclude after having been love bombed, wined and dined and then recruited into yet another cultic billet to slave away for "the Kingdom." 

Click here to listen to our newest episode on the movement calling itself the Madison Place Community Church, after being known as the Gladstone Community Church, and before that, the Gladstone Community. The old adage of something being hidden in plain sight gets new life when considering the recent history of this controversial and quite destructive cult. We'll be focusing on them for the foreseeable future to come, as well as in research articles on the Spiritwatch website as well. Stay tuned!

We are exploting ways to launch two podcasts a week since the Xenos heresy's ongoing outrages require ongoing responses. Pray for us. We're busier than a two tailed cat in a rocking chair factory and we need God's hand on us. 

 

Let's Help A Xenos Summer Institute Speaker Get Some Perspective ..

 

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.
Dark Helmet, Spaceballs the Movie

The below text was sent in the comments section of Dr. Loritts' website on April 19, 2022.

I am a licensed minister and countercult activist since 1983 and enjoyed hearing Dr. Loritts off and on throughout the years and was particularly blessed by his admonition at the 2007 Precept conference in which he spoke, aside from his presentation, to give seven serious pieces of advise about false teachers and their insidious influence in the church. It was a riveting moment that I blogged about back then. 

So I'm writing now to ask now for Dr. Loritts to be advised that he's engaging in a highly inappropriate and public association with a seriously questionable group. Honestly, I truly hope that Dr. Loritts is perhaps seriously unaware of this .. but the Xenos church movement institute he is preparing to be a keynote speaker is a dangerous and deceptive assembly. 

I am calling on him to reconsider his involvement and even end it. In the past 5 months, I have begun to help assist three generations  of victims of spiritual abuse who were traumatized by Xenos polity and doctrine visible primarily ONLY in private settings.  This is documentable and has been hidden in plain sight. A documentary is forthcoming on Xenos exposing it's abuses and he needs to be aware of this.  His presence there at this institute this summer will be perceived as a tacit approval of their hidden doings and this is exactly the very thing Dr. Loritts warned about in that conference in 2007. I have posted four different podcasts about our findings the past few months and invite you to hear them. 

I must inform you that we will withhold - for now - any public call on Dr. Loritts to disassociate himself from Xenos. I do not want Dr. Loritts to be embarassed, but his embracing of Xenos' leadership is nothing to be commended for. I want to believe he has seriously failed to discern who he is ministering with as 1 Thessalonians 5:12 warns us and simply has believed the ad print and self representations his Xenos connections have made about their "leadership".   

I want to in the most strongest terms possible advise you that if we don't hear from him or a representative about this issue by the end of this month, April, 2022, we will issue on May 1 a public call through our blog and social media resources for him to do so. That is how seriously we take this.

It pains us to have to be so direct and forthright, but in this day and age in which the Christian ministry has to be above board and blameless in all things as 1 Timothy 3 comands, the glory of God and obedience to His Gospel require this direct note to you.  Xenos preaches another gospel, another Christ by the power of another spirit that is alien to the Biblical good news and all while affirming orthodoxy and worldviews that appear rigorously Biblical and at the same time conducting itself as a cultic manipulator of lives, destroying so many for over 50 years. 

You may call me at _________ to discuss this  further.  That God's Spirit will speak very loudly to you from this day forward about this is our prayer. 

No email or phone call was received by Dr. Loritts or his representatives. He either didn't get it or is choosing to ignore it. I have no way of knowing. 

Therefore, we've regrettably but resolvedly determined to post this and make our call public, a week beyond the date mentioned above giving Dr. Loritts time to respond. We will be seeking to spread this information where it needs to be. 

Good is indeed usually dumb. But not this time. 

Like A Thief In The Night: The Doom of Cultism Coming Soon

 

Even as the anarchy, misery and insanity of this world's corruption continues to blaze on the earth, above and beyond the skies above the fires of humanity's miserable state, the Lord isn't surprised, hasty or puzzled. He is still on the throne. He still has all in his Lordship. 

He will root out and utterly pull down all false authority, from the Russian despots to the other cult leaders all over. For starters. 

He has said He will return like a thief in the night and a powerfully orchestrated song by British pop legend Cliff Richard from a Biblical generation ago makes this marvelously and musically alive. Click the link to hear this. 

You? You can fall with the night or rise with the Son. The choice is yours. 

Readings On Cultic Mind Control and Abusive Churches Now Downloads

Our recent blogging and podcasting has made reference to the seminal work of both Dr. Robert Lifton and Dr. Ron Enroth, a psychiatrist and a sociologist, which has provided for us the conceptual framework for understanding the power of cultic persuasion by "thought reform" (or cultic mind control) and for how to recognize it in contemporary movements including supposedly "Christian churches."  

We mentioned you'd be well informed to find their books and study their findings. Lifton's work "Thought Reform And The Psychology of Totalism", along with Enroth's book "Churches That Abuse" are two of the most informative books that can be read to understand the challenge of cults and abusive churches today.  Click HERE to download Lifton's book and HERE to download Enroth's. 

 

The Collegiate Cultism of The Xenos / Dwell Heresy: Three New Articles Just Released

 

In the heart of the Buckeye State of Ohio, the state capital of Columbus stands as a testimony to the passion and industry of the residents there. The city is the home to many typically American institutions, from the headquarters of White Castle, Nationwide Mutual and  Big Lots to the quaintly charming German Village district , the Columbus Center for Science and Industry and the annual celebration of the Columbus Festival Latino. It’s a great place to live and work. And it’s important to remember that Columbus is also the base for the Ohio State University (OSU), one of the most well known in our nation, a point of amazing civic accomplishment that every Ohioan should be proud of.
What is regrettably not as well known is the work of that of a church that regularly accesses the university’s vibrant social life, a place that used to be called Xenos Christian Fellowship until changing its name to Dwell Community Church in 2020. That is until in late February 2022 when a local NBC television channel affiliate began to air a four part series on the church that ended up being stretched into six parts. You may be here reading this as a result of hearing of this reporting, which I and my associate Megan Cox helped to initiate. You’ve come to find out more and we intend to provide you a side of the story you haven’t heard.
Having been an active presence in Columbus as well since 1970, with generations of men and women having passed through their collective doors, Xenos / Dwell’s vast influence is probably one of the best kept secrets of Columbus which many of it’s over two million residents are scarcely aware of. We have mentioned how regrettable it is that more people know little to nothing of their activities. For the Xenos Christian Fellowship, for all of its seemingly upright orthodoxy has tragically harbored scandalously evil social circles under its governance for all of that time, leaving thousands in the know devastated by religious abuse and a perversion of the very Christian principles it purports to uphold. <snip> That's the introduction to the first of three new articles we've released on this group just in the past few days. To read our first article covering a brief analysis of the heretical history and nature of "XD" as we have identified it, click HERE. The second article will explain how Spiritwatch Ministries got involved in helping in the production of an expose on XD and how we investigated them and came to the conclusion that they are a cultic movement, and to read it click HERE. And to view the uncut version of the Zoom Call dialogue we had with XD leaders as well as the full transcripts of emails we had with them afterwards (which they never allude to in all of their public reaction to our efforts), click HERE.

A Trick Of The Mind: The Persuasion Of Cult Mind Control

Our podcasts continue and last week's episode shared a bit of crucial insight into the deceptive power of cults to ensnare and control people. They come out each Saturday and last Saturday's episode that should have come out on March 5th got delayed as we burnt the midnight oil preparing the three part series we just completed providing a brief overview of the Xenos / Dwell phenomenon in Columbus, Ohio. Those articles are not completed and posted to our Spiritwatch.org site.

One of our foundational principles which contributes to our understanding of cultism isn't rocket science: we have always asserted that cultism is more than doctrine. Cultism involves more than just a warping of one's creed. See how cultism's deceptive power doesn't rely on twisted teaching alone, but their ability to change the behavior of their masses by the change of their thoughts through cultic mind control. Check out our podcast here at our "Where Are We Going" podcast episode page! 

Myths About Cults: Not Just "Those People Over There" Anymore

 

When the sad history of cultism's victims comes to light in the smoldering ashes of their devastated lives, it becomes abundantly clear that the ruin is an equal opportunity storm of destruction. It doesn't matter if you're a rich white American executive or a dirt poor Chinese laborer: the power of cultic delusion is such that it drags down any and everyone who yields to its siren songs. 

And, in typical form, someone who thinks they Know Better decides to edify all around them with their excoriating criticism of a cult victim who, they snarl, should have indeed Known Better.  They rattle off a list of glibly intoned rationalizations that they say prove that the cult victim surely could have "done better," and that their involvement was a tragic miscalculation they saw coming, therefore, they hold the lion's share of responsibility for their involvement and the cost they suffered for having gotten involved. If they were more "mature", more "spiritual", more "educated", etc., they would have then "Known Better."

This strident belief is one of the  most persistently cruel charges that supposedly well meaning observers can inflict upon a cult victim. It leaves them twice victimized and abused and unfortunately it's not at all uncommon among the worlds of pain that cult survivors live in. It is bad enough that they've suffered the religious abuse, personal chaos, lost careers and futures that have left them without friends, family,  resources, even their health. Now you have a bunch of "truth tellers" wanting to essentially scold them and reopen woundings with salted knives of verbal abuse.

It's part of human life for people to want to feel superior to others .. and it's particularly disgusting when these myths are completely wrong to begin with.   We wrote an article years ago that is no less true today about seven of the most popular misconceptions that these armchair therapists like to circulate but which are a break from reality.  Enjoy the no-nonsense rejoinder by clicking here.  
 

"The Way Down" 2.0 On The Way: Until Then Not The Good Girl's Awesome Recap Online

The latest information we've received is that the final two episodes of the HBO Max docuseries "The Way Down" which will conclude this hard hitting expose of the morally bankrupt cultism of Gwen Shamblin Lara and her Weigh Down Workshop/Remnant Fellowship business cult empire, will air either in April or May, 2022, which is literally around the corner.  Keep your DVR's ready.

There's going to be some very tough truth to heed in these and it will be as easily chilling and dark a look into the soft underbelly of the spiritual anorexia that this cult actually does pack in around itself. We look forward to the premiere, having contributed quite heavily to the production of the series and being subjects of interviews and a lot of back office discussion that is completely invisible. Without our work, the series might never have gotten off the ground. We're grateful to have had a part in this second and final installment. 

Until then, a Patreos documentary producer calling herself Not The Good Girl has taken the insights and information shared in the HBO Max doc and created her own gripping and engrossing telling of the grotesque Remnant tale. The linearity and well researched narrative summarizes the whole tragic emergence quite well and we'd recommend watching it if you wanted a recap that is fair, detailed and factual. Not The Good Girl's work can be viewed here. Enjoy. 

In Memorium : Lawrence Pile and Pastor Bill Randles

 

                                                 Lawrence Pile                   Pastor Bill Randles                                                      
                                                    1943-2022                           1959-2022

We recently learned of the passing of these two giants of the faith who you likely never heard of.

Larry Pile was a researcher as well as a facilitator of recovery workshops at the Wellspring Retreat and Rehabilitation center in Albany Ohio and assisted hundreds of people onward toward their own healing and growth beyond the impact cultism had made upon them. He was a well known Bible teacher and wrote a book based upon the epistle of Paul to the Galatians for those suffering religious abuse to help in their recovery of spiritual stability.

Pastor Bill Randles a former Word of Faith pastor, renounced his association with that error and continued onward toward creating a pastoral response to the deceptive doctrines and bad practice that the Faith movement had inflicted upon his church and then began a serious retrenching of his ministry, toward exposing the the New Apostolic Reformation culture (NAR) which emerged in the past 40 years and was based on the profoundly warped Latter Rain error from two generations past.

Both men were gentle, yet uncompromising proclaimers of sound analysis of truth from pastoral perspectives and helped untold numbers of those ripped off by spiritual abuse for decades. I knew of Larry and had only met Bill once but they came highly recommened and the work they gave themselves to speaks for itself. Visit our YouTube and Vimeo channels in the next few weeks as we upload three talks Pastor Bill gave on the spiritual deception the NAR has left behind. For an excellent article by Larry detailing the dangers of the shepherding movement, a vile system of cultic control hatched by Charismatic extremists within it which intensified the lure and damage of the proto-NAR churches then in existence, click here. 

We will truly sincerely miss their discernment, their love of truth and their care for those ripped off by abusive. They were good men who ran the race and kept the faith. Godspeed and condolences to the Pile and Randles families.  Please click on their obituaries above for more information and if you'd like to extend any personal condolences. 

The Legacy Of The Leaderless Cult Remnant Fellowship: From Our Podcast

Episode 2 of Season 2 is under way at our "Where Are We Going" podcast and for the first time, we finally tackled the uncertain destiny of Remnant Fellowship for a full 30 minute episode, the longest we've done so far.

Remnant Fellowship, for all of it's public posturing, appears to be struggling through a serious crisis of direction. Since the 2021 death of Gwen Shamblin Lara, there really hasn't been any actual leadership arising to provide for Remnant the needed vision and leadership for her cult to move beyond it's loss of her iron hand. 

In this episode, we offer our perspectives on where this cult truly seems to be going. It's not a pretty picture and we pull no punches. Enjoy the download here. 

 

Some One Has Some 'Splaining to Do And It May Not Be The Twelve Tribes .. In Colorado, That Is.

 

The Twelve Tribes might be guilty of being a maddeningly enduring and abusive communal cult with roots all the way to Tennessee and beyond.

However, despite initial reports to the contrary, they now seem to have been determined of helping set any fires that started the massive Marshall wildfire in rural Colorado that caused massive property loss and a couple of deaths.  

But that doesn't make them any less a destructive force of human nature. Not all that glitters is gold.  Click here for more information on this seemingly harmless group of spiritual entrepreneurs as they operate in Australia. The Twelve Tribes' obsession with perfecting their abusive community standards of living needs to be remembered.

We are grateful that long time associates of ours, Bob and Judy Pardon of the New England based Meadowhaven rehabilitation cente,r were able to help offer further insight in this online report. 

"Where Are We Going?" Back Online with Season 2, Episode 0 Help Wanted: Jeremiahs In Short Supply

We're back online and intend on staying there until Jesus comes. Our weekly podcast is back and you can hear it on our RSS.com site by clicking here.

Our listeners understand what this podcast is about. It’s our desire to provide for you a solidly Biblical perspective on our times and the trouble we’re all finding in them. We tackle a subject that relates to the challenges to discerning what’s going on around us and take about 15-20 minutes to address them.
In one of our last season’s podcasts, we examined the stability of human society itself and what the Bible says about it. It’s no secret that our world has entered a shadowy time of uncertainty that really quite unlike any other time in recent history. Listening to a national commentator's take on the troubles of our nation is a reality check worth hearing.

Check it out and tell your friends, family, enemies, inlaws and all persons inbetween!

Getting Away With Not Quite Murder: A Child Sexual Abuse Story Remembered

This is an all too common affair among the sons of Adam: when child sexual abuse allegations corroborated by witnesses of the depravity can be admitted to by the perpetrator in a court of law but still be dismissed, be ignored by the police and unadmitted to at Christian church where the abuse occurred at. It's all too common and it should be remembered how an escape from any apparent accountability there occurs. In the last days where evil is cloaked as good, this is to be expected and fulfills once again the cutting indictment of Scripture against such wrongdoing. 

What is singularly horrific is when the perpetrator is a school teacher who volunteers at Christian camps and is alone with children whom are groomed by them to accept the sexual abuse as a manifestation of "God's love." The church was the North Side Gospel Center in Chicago (now defunct) and Camp Awana in Fredonia, Wisconsin (in a bizarre twist of irony, the well known Awana children's church educational program was started in the basement of the church in Chicago). As far as we know, the teacher, one Cherie Carlson was not confronted by the middle school, nor law enforcement. Beyond a statement that the church would cooperate in the investigation, nothing else is know if Carlson received any punitive sanction whatsoever.

You can watch the 2013 investigative video produced by WMAQ in Chicago here about this grotesque incident where Carlson had been seen sexually fondling a girl in the 1990s by a third individual in the camp cabin it occurred. Later that year, the girl who is now a mother sought to sue her directly. Carlson was a middle school teacher at Cooper Middle School in Buffalo Grove, Illinois at the time of this controversy several years in the past but was able to walk back and deflect the accusations which surfaced in a civil but not a criminal court.

To underscore her confidence in her ability to move forward, she would go on and be reinstated back to her job at the school the following year in 2014, opening up a YouTube account (which is now devoid of video content but still is active) not long after the accusation of wrong doing surfaced to support her middle school activities. To this day, Carlson remains employed there.

And later in 2017 Carlson would wiggle completely out of accountability solely because of her appeal to the statute of limitations and not a litigated defensive denial of wrongdoing in that civil court. She didn't deny and all but admitted that the sexual abuse had occurred but she had failed to report it in time and this slipshod defense worked. The lawsuit was dismissed and the appeal affirmed it. You can read about the warped opinions offered by an appellate court in Illinois that allowed Carlson to move on with her life, leaving the victim Jane Due in the dust of injustice.

And if you think this is an isolated instance of a complete breakdown in the efforts to make such perpetrators accountable, meet some links that will beg to differ by the Net.

That's the American way. But Cherie, God saw it all. I hope you repented and made restitution to your victim .. or victims. 



 

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

We're reasonably certain that this individual at a 2018 rally is glad that in his past, his parents were binary. 

Yes, we're aware of the confusion of genders and the need for a gainsaying society to make room for such personal choices and the future of our planet seems brighter with it. 

But the perpetuation of humanity kind of, well, NEEDS the traditional understanding of male and female to work out in that old school way.  In vitro birth and same sex gendering can't quite make that difference. 
 

The Segue In Zion: The Shadowy Leadership Change at Remnant Fellowship

The slow fade of Elizabeth Hannah, daughter of Gwen Shamblin Lara, from the life of Remnant Fellowship was not entirely unexpected.

She simply was not ready to assume a role that her mother had obsessively carried for over two decades. When the tragic accident on Memorial Day weekend 2021 took place that took the lives of Gwen and her coterie of leaders, through the shock, horror and grief that swept Remnant members one big question loomed above all else: who would lead them?  The unthinkable had been thrust upon the Remnant faithful in the most terrible way possible and so much rampant worry about the survival of the group seemed to focus on that very question.

This seemed answered in the June memorial service for the crash victims. Elizabeth affirmed she and her brother were “well equipped and fully ready” but “bound and determined to keep the Remnant legacy alive”  There was never any real reason for concern that Remnant would just fall apart as the machine Gwen had created had too much momentum keeping it moving.  Elizabeth affirmed that she had a massive leadership structure as well as church members who would carry it on. “If you are asking if the Remnant Fellowship will continue on, the answer is yes.”

But despite her passionate affirmative, both brother and sister largely have vanished from any meaningful public view or interaction. Despite one or two carefully curated appearances of Elizabeth only, both have completely disappeared. The Remnant church sanctuary that used to be filled with a throng of members leaning on Gwen’s every word have yet to see her teach or preach a single service. During a recent "feast" day observed by Remnant, we heard many people comment on how  half filled their sanctuary was, how contrived and motion-going the activity there was and how thunderstruck the observers, who were RF members, at how empty the place seemed .. events that under Gwen's charisma attracted far more of the faithful.  As it stands, an order of service at Remnant now exists that is quite literally little more than a video watch party of pre-recorded sermons by Gwen accompanied by carefully crafted live exhortations by leadership figures to rally the Remnant faithful to keep on keeping on. 

So the absence of any public appearance by her or her brother or any direction clearly has become a serious concern. In her latest phoned-in exhortation in late fall of 2021, her chief concern was that no one in Remnant was to assume she was quitting. In that rambling call, which was well attended and was an event that obviously had been announced, she once again thanked everyone for understanding her need to take “a break” and that she would eventually return. She claimed that she was at the church every day from 4 am to midnight to help its day to day operation in its offices.  Her quavering recital of a tired old contemporary cliche meant to dismiss any opposition surely found a receptive audience: "haters are going to hate!" It also signalled the hardline Remnant has taken in completely ignoring or engaging the information being shared that critically examines it with a completely evasive proverb meant to frame the controversy as pure persecution. 

But Elizabeth gave no other explanation for her continued and intentional absence from church services. She did say that one of her conditions for return was that a media onslaught resulting in photography of her and her children needed to die down. 

I understand the need for anyone to suffer the kind of loss that Elizabeth has experienced is a crushing blow for anyone. She lost a truly beloved husband and a mother who had directed her entire life. Keep in mind she is now a fortysomething mother of four children and it’s understandable how this whole sorrowful tragedy is weighing terribly upon her. Yet despite her assurances in June at the memorial to her mother and the victims, she was NOT “well equipped and fully ready” to press ahead. There was a brittle fragility behind her tough verbiage that was plainly heard that persists to this day as she exhibits a real hesitancy of even being seen as a leader, unable to handle scrutiny from the outside world. The official response of the cult to its discomfiture via HBO was a classic circling of rhetorical wagons and a mustering of bravado that rings hollower and hollower as time passes (we'll be reviewing that here soon).  

With such uncertainty, I think the question can now be fairly asked “Since the Remnant Fellowship is going to continue on,  then who is going to lead it?”  We have some thoughts on those as well .. Stay tuned.

Why Cultic Churches Are Mistaken For Churches: Guilty By Association And Not By Fact

While the media quickly label groups like Remnant Fellowship (and places like the International Churches of Christ, the Unification Church and so many others) as "Evangelical" churches, it's easy to understand how they arrive at that conclusion.

These groups structure themselves in assemblies and practices most familiar to whom they market their claims. They call themselves churches. They use the Bible. They have affective worship services where interactive and experiential involvement is promoted. They pray passionately and speak of the Kingdom of God. A lot.

They point to a God, a Jesus and maybe even the Holy Spirit. Music is drawn from polished worship bands. Expositors and participants enthusiastically commend you to the presence of a tangible God seen in their friendly people and encounters. Media savvy propagation of their message is streamed, podcasted, borne by people ready to interact with you. Etc.

Yet Remnant Fellowship is not an Evangelical church. I'm an Evangelical Pentecostal pastor and can firmly attest to this (of course, if you are of the persuasion that all churches are cults than nothing else I'll blog here will make any sense, but I can't help that).

It takes the form of a flashy, dynamic church to most deceptively draw hapless and ill-informed candidates into an environment that uses all these above familiar features to move them from the known to THEIR unknown. The familiar "church" expectation held by prospective audiences at large is harnessed cunningly as the vehicle to convey them into the real agenda of RF, which is to parasitically draw away disciples after themselves - something an apostle in the Bible warned would happens, weeping for over two years as he did so (Acts 20:30). Therefore, many never discern that RF doctrine is unbiblical and many of its practices breaking with reality, compassion and decency. They achieve control of thought by stifling dialogue and demanding a blind obedience to authority. Their intrusion and domination of member life using their false practices and doctrines are NOT features of sound Evangelical practice (as much as it seems unlikely, not all churches are like Remnant at all).

But as we said, it's easy to understand why so many media and journalists just don't see the difference. It looks too similar to so many and therefore, Remnant to them is just "another" Evangelical church. And when Evangelical churches manifest actual cultism, we get it. But a blanket identification and association of RF with sound churches is not just inaccurate but quite short-sighted and even unfair. While we'll be the first to agree that there ARE Evangelical churches that ARE cultic, not. All. Are.

In short, there's a reason Jesus called the leaders of such places - including Gwen Shamblin and her tribe of sycophantic leadership - ravening wolves in sheep's clothing in Matthew 7:15. You've heard the expression perhaps .. and it's this proverb you need to keep in mind when Remnant is misidentified as a church. It is an accursed cult (Galatians 1:8) foisting itself off as a church to deceive many .. just as Jesus also said in Matthew 24 as well. We should expect to find more of this arising in the days to come and RF is a poster chile of what spiritual deception looks like. 

HBOMax's "The Way Down" Docuseries On The Gwen Shamblin Lara Cult Starts 9/30 at Midnight And The Remnant Saints Understandably Are Quite Nervous

Behold.

Three years in the making.

Not just since the death of Gwen Shamblin Lara in the muddy shoals of Percy Priest Lake in Smyrna, Tennessee last Memorial Day weekend .. but three years. They refused all invitations to be interviewed.

Everything you've seen on the internet about Gwen Shamblin Lara, her cultic Remnant Fellowship church and the Weigh Down Workshop front group used to troll for fresh Remnant recruits will pale to this standard of investigative scrutiny this docuseries will uncover. Remnant already is feebly trying to prepare its members for a serious jolt. 

It's trying to blow out the candlepower of the sun at noon. Get ready, this cult won't be coddled in this work.  And Godspeed to the truth .. we are honored to have played a part in bringing this to the world.


 

The Rotten Core of Abusive Church Leadership: A Study From Scripture

 

In public church settings, private interaction, and every place that deference to spiritual authority is actively given by trusting followers, not every exercise of this profoundly impactful influence is proper. In fact, it is routinely found that abusive church leadership exerts its most damaging and destructive impact in these kinds of settings. People look up to those who appear to them to be spiritual giants for mentoring, pastoral care and inspirational guidance and find themselves in a horrific quagmire of psychological and personal coercion leading them to obey and submit blindly to demands made on them which cost them dearly in so many ways

It is this infamous common ground that cultic churches warp and destroy the faith of far too many people in the world today. The late New Testament scholar Catherine Clark-Kroeger does an outstanding job in an older online helping show through a sound study of the Scriptures that this abusive church leadership is all too familiar practice shared with cultic movements:

The Corinthians had become the willing listeners of those who worked them ill (11:19). The “super apostles” had brought the credulous flock a cruel aftermath (2 Corinthians 11:3), a different spirit and a different gospel (11:4) and a spiritual servitude.

The stance of these leaders was not much different from leaders in some contemporary cults who exercise total control over their adherents. Under the cloak of supreme holiness and sanctification is hidden a terrifying pattern of abuse. There can be not only beatings and physical abuse but mind control, deprivation, vituperation, intimidation, public shaming and humiliation.

As one expert noted of such a group:

The breaking down, forcing people to do behaviors that are denigrating. The language, the control of behavior, that if you’re not doing what the group wants, you’re violating God’s will. It’s certainly abusive personality control.

Like Satan, the leaders (ancient or modern) may appear as shining angels of light, but there is an appalling exercise of absolute authority (2 Corinthians 11:14). As is so often true in cases of abusive mind control, the victims can no longer acknowledge the abuse or nor are they able to defend themselves. Whether the abuse is in a religious community or a family, victims can become pathologically conditioned into acceptance, as a director of a battered women’s project notes:

Victims of domestic violence are in an altered state. Up seems down. It’s important to understand that if someone is a victim all these years, it’s sort of like she’s been brainwashed. You are in essence a prisoner.

A woman at the shelter added, “They break you down. You feel less than human. They isolate you. They say, ‘No one cares about you. Only I love you.’ And you start to believe it. Then it builds to the physical. It’s worse for people with higher social status. Society puts more pressure on them. It’s more embarrassing."

Read more of this outstanding exposition of Scriptural truth and how it speaks to modern spiritual corruption today that energizes religious abuse everywhere. 

The story behind the photo above is unnerving and gruesome. It looks innocuously pious enough. There's a lot going on there which masked an abusive ministry in action. That's the problem indeed. It looks so normal. Highly disturbing images are at the article linked here. Viewer's discretion advised.

Finally .. The Five Fold Ministry And Spiritual Abuse Conference Video Online

This video is from the workshop our ministry produced, a March 2008 workshop held at the Kansas City Conference on Biblical Discernment held at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Lord, forgive us for being so delayed by so much.

This was webbed as an article series quite a few years ago. But we finally found the time this past year to get it released and properly edited to include the slides and video of the workshop which we felt needed to be included so as to help illustrate our contention that the Pentecostal and Charismatic concept of Christian leadership by a "five fold ministry" has been largely invalidated by contemporary trends within it that lend themselves to heresy, false teaching and spiritual abuse. This is easily one of the greatest sources of spiritual deception hidden in plain sight.

Even though it is somewhat dated, the essential information found that shows how the five fold ministry, in some circles, actually has become quite cultic is still quite valid. We hope the video which you can find here is both a warning and an exhortation to correction of its errors. We are sorry the audio was not as good as we could have replicated, but we did the best we could. 

Cultism In Plain Sight And Not Exactly Hidden Part 1: The Places of the Past

 When alternative religions, eclectic spiritual tourists and sacred spaces intersect, their conjugation often leaves behind structural landmarks that get memorialized so visually that they become travelogues for future pilgrims to trip in and out over. They preserve the zealous passion by these individual cultic groups poured into their own unique expressions of what the divine was to them, where their faith strove for ideals at odds with the larger societal status quo.

Such sites can be seen in this British photospread depicting a few of the remaining relics of past sectarian spiritual ardor that can still be found in the grand hotel of all cults, California, U.S.A.

Enjoy the view. It's definitely easier to view than any footage from Waco, Jonestown or Rancho Santa Fe. 

Principles Of Biblical Discernment Video Now Online

There's no doubt you've heard the saying "better late than never."
Well, here's our own take on that bit of wisdom.

Just in the last few months, we've found time to be able to finally, finally remastering our old videos of our past discernment conference workshops as well as that of others from far too many years ago. Here is one such rework, finally completed, from our old TVBSA conference held at the First Assembly of God in Janesville, Wisconsin.  This is my contribution to the controversial yet altogether needed discipline of spiritual discernment, a workshop on the essentials of Biblical discernment. 

Click here for our Vimeo channel version and get your Bible and notepad out to take notes. This is the clearest presentation on this subject we've ever been able to offer and no stone is left unturned. It's a summary of a life time of my study on this and I'm thankful to finally get this - and other videos - out to the masses.  We will be featuring other ones as time goes by. 

Martin Luther On Trial, April 1521: When You Can't Stand Down For What's Right

His words sparked a flame for truth that the darkness of deception never could put out. 

The Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther was dragged into a heresy trial in the city of Worms, Germany in April 1521. He was compelled to appeared before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to defend what he had taught and written which directly challenged the apostate Roman religion of the day. His revolutionary thought that proclaimed that Scripture alone established Christian truth apart from church councils or tradition had caught the popular attention of medieval German society through the new printing press media.

It had caused a massive uproar in those days that is impossible to overstate. It shook the Papacy to its core and Luther was held in the city of Worms to answer for his "crimes" and this bit of cinema from the 1953 film dramatization is probably the most stirring version of his answer ever filmed.

Although those flames of zeal today are greatly tinged with the alien stink of colorful wild fire that is as just as damaging as Roman Catholic falsehood is, Martin Luther's iron commitment to Biblical truth from just over 600 years ago can't be forgotten.