Can't You See That I'm
Dying?
By Anonymous ex-member
of GAC in Florida
I was
part of the Florida 'GAC' church for twenty-four years. The name of it was
<name withheld>. If I sat at this computer for a year and typed
continuously, I couldn't begin to record the horror perpetrated on me and those
I love. At the same time, I have experienced God's amazing deliverance from a
destructive cult and the amazing concern from those who walked with me as I
left behind a 'GAC-ian' hell.
From my
understanding, the GAC branch I attended started with William Sowders and
<name withheld>. I'm not sure if this true or not, as those 'in control'
were never crystal clear on the history of the church.
My
history begins with my parents attending the church when I was pre-school age.
The pastor at the time was <name withheld>. I heard that he had tried to 'sever ties'
with the movement called the 'Body'; being a young child, I didn't understand
what this meant.
There
was a woman in the church who was the 'youth-pastor.' Her name is
<withheld>. From reading the other posts on this site, I understand this
was very 'unusual' for a GAC-ian church as women were
generally repressed and thought brainless. I was too young at the time to
attend the 'youth' meetings (THANK GOD!!!) However, the congregation would hear
at the Saturday night meetings how 'amazing' the meetings were- they were so
'Spirit'-packed they would last until four in the morning! Oh, holiness was
reigning!! What they mostly consisted of was the 'youth' minister or her
'favored' young people sensing demons in the other young people and then hours of
'casting' said demons 'out'. It is my belief that the Salem witch trials got a
great revival in Florida in the 'West' wing of GAC. Had execution been
permissible, these 'zealous' 'Christians' would have obliged the world in
wiping out a few more heretics!
When I
came out of GAC, I heard from the 'young' people who had also left that
<name withheld> had repeatedly warned this 'youth' minister that she was
not to keep the youth over an hour. So, she told the young people that they
would keep the length of the meetings a secret between themselves.
BIG RED FLAG HERE! Anytime someone
wants seemingly 'normal' things kept from those in authority (i.e. when and
where meetings occur, length of meetings, who was there, etc.) please do
yourself a favor and spread the word – there is danger somewhere.
Time
elapsed, and <name withheld> found out that he was dying of cancer. He
elected a young man to take the church- believing he was circumventing this
woman 'youth' minister from taking power. There are events and happenings,
layers of story that would take me days and hours to recount. If I have the
time, I will come back to this part of the story in the second section. Suffice
to say, the woman took control of the church.
Almost
twenty years later, the pure hell of this event still affects people's lives.
She was pastor of the church and principal of the 'church' school that now
resided in Florida. One of the most debilitating things that stand out in my
mind was when I was thirteen. The school had a very stringent 'six-inch' rule
between the sexes- of course I see the wisdom in this, but at GAC the
interpretation of this rule actually was:
THOU SHALT NOT EVEN LOOK AT THE OPPOSITE SEX
– YOU LUSTFUL, CRAVEN CREATURE!
NO SITTING AT THE SAME LUNCH TABLE WITH MEMBERS
OF THE MALE SEX!
IF THOU TALK WITH MEMBERS OF SAID OPPOSITE
SEX, MONITORS AND SUPERVISORS WILL SIT IN THE OFFICE AND WHISPER TO EACH OTHER
WHILE GIVING THOU EVIL GLARES.
And you
can be sure the principal will be called and told what a sex-maniac you are. A
group of the girls were playing a clapping game called "Miss Mary
Mack". The game consisted of children standing in a circle and taking
turns clapping each other's hands in fast succession while reciting a rhyme.
(As you can tell, obviously someone pulled this game straight out of the
kinkiest dating sex secrets section from Playboy) We (the girls) were a few
people short to form a circle. I called to one the boys and ask him to come
help us making the circle (where my brain was I'll never know- I should have
known by then what happened to those who touched boys).
|
From another ex-member on
the: Rick Ross Site |
I was
reported to the principal. She came to my house at 10:00 that night and told my
parents that they had to come to the school for a conference. In the office,
she called me a 'female dog in heat' (a bitch) lusting after the boys and
leading them into sin. She said she could see the lust demons coming out of my
eyes and that I needed to be whipped to save my soul. She took my dad's belt
and whipped me, telling me to pray at the same time that God would save me from
my lust. I could hardly hold my head up for days. And in such a manner, life
carried on. Anytime she came into the school, I would cower in my 'cubicle',
pretending to be busy, so I didn't have to talk to her. Usually this just got
me in trouble: I obviously had something to 'hide'.
As I
sit here and write this I can hardly keep from screaming. To blame this tragedy
on a loving, caring Creator makes me hope she burns in hell for eternity.
There, I finally said it! My prayer is that God has mercy on her as He had on
me; and in His mercy which is equally just, I hope that she finds out what the
Scripture means about it being better to tie a millstone about one's self than
to offend a little one.
I have
heard from many other people, some of them still in their teens, that suicide
was often the solution that seemed the easiest. For about a year, it seemed the
easiest solution to me, also. There comes a place and time when you feel so
'dead' after all the yelling, lies, and rejection that it seems a good idea to
just make it true.
If you
are reading this and you feel that you would be at 'peace' if you could 'end'
it all- PLEASE DON'T! THERE IS HOPE! Talk to a
councilor, a real pastor, family member, somebody, anybody!
You are loved by God! You are a special creation- this world needs you in it-
so, please, GET HELP! YOU ARE WORTH IT!
When my
family of ex-GACers get together and talk over all
our experiences, we all agree on one thing: Thank God there wasn’t sexual abuse
that we knew of. As I read back through all the accounts of GAC sufferers, I
mourn for those who were victimized that way. May God grant them justice and
peace.
Today I
opened the Bible I had used in GAC days- in it were some ‘sermon’ notes I had
scribbled during services. (Was it a GAC tradition to have to write down every
word the pastor said? Or was it just a tradition that developed in the <name
withheld> Gospel Assembly?) As I sat by one of the ‘favored’ people, I had
to pretend to scribble vigorously every fascinating, ‘God-inspired’ word out of
her mouth, or be ratted on, then yelled at, etc. One of the things I managed to scribble in
between the words of: ‘Worldly, Worldly thoughts and desires,’ was this:
"It will be a cold day in Hell before I testify again!" I actually
was able to laugh about it – thank God the absurdity of the situation overrode
the pain! I had been accused of being prideful because of quoting Lucado.
She had
become so twisted that in the week before I left, she told the church that
there was no need of reading the Bible, everyone just needed to listen to, and
I quote, "The Word of God over the pulpit". There were also the times
when God would "reveal" things about different members divinely to
her. The actual trick to it all wasn’t all that mystical: she had her home and
the church phone tapped. I found out because I heard two of the young women
(who lived at her house) talking together about how you should be careful about
what you said on the church phone. Another friend found a tape in the church
storage room in which the pastor ranted on and on about different members of
the church.
I have
also heard that different members of the church were sent to spy on each other
to see if anyone had a TV hidden in their house. Only the pastor was allowed to
have one- the flock didn’t have enough moral control to be responsible viewers!
And then there were the services where the "Dreams" were
revealed! She would have dreams about
different members in which ‘God’ revealed the member’s heart to her.
My
heart was full of leprosy- because I was of the --- family. I knew I was in for
a bad time when she would glare at me from her seat behind the pulpit. She
would stare at you in the most hateful way, all the while moving her lips. You
knew she was ‘praying out’ the evil spirits that had taken residence in your
soul. And there were also the prayer meetings in which she asked God to bring
an 'end' to those who had defected from the church. I don't know what it sounds
like to you, but to my understanding, she was asking God to kill them because
they had the gall to disagree with her.
And
then there was the evil sexuality of the flock! As much as the woman thought
about sex, she should have owned an adult store- maybe she could have put all
that thought time to use. I remember one time a family member and myself were
being berated in her office for talking to a ‘rebellious’ member. In the middle
of her tirade, she brought up the fact that one of her ‘favored’ members could
no longer have sex with his wife because of medicine- induced impotency. I
could never figure out what his impotency and talking to rebellious church
members had to do with each other- like I even cared about someone else’s sex
life. It was none of my business, and more importantly, none of hers. She
accused everybody of lust, heterosexual and homosexual. If all her accusations
were true, that church was the biggest group of lustful, wife-swapping,
incestuous pedophiles under one roof.
During
song service, she would walk up to different young people and say she saw ‘lust
demons’ coming out of their eyes. Therefore, the poor humiliated people had to
be ‘prayed’ through the clutch of their evil and there had better be some
‘coughing up’ of some demons into napkins if you ever wanted to get out of church
that night.
As she
was morally responsible for all these young lives, it was up to her to pick the
young people’s mates for them. And you better take her choice and be grateful for it! Thank God the young man she ‘picked’ for
me fought her decision. There were never two more incompatible people on the
face of this earth- we would have divorced in a year. Young people were
discouraged from pursuing college – Christ was coming back in the next year or
the year after that and there just wasn’t time for a degree!
What
there was time for was cleaning her five, six, seven,
or even more buildings, all the while maintaining a regular forty hour job. I
remember at one time when she had seven offices that had to be cleaned
bi-weekly. These buildings were up to forty miles apart and had to be cleaned
in the same day. To my knowledge, no one was ever paid a regular salary for
doing this work. Oh, and did I mention that she would ‘help-out’ only about ten
times a year? I would love to send her a bill for fifteen years of hard work.
Actually, I would love to see her have to do backbreaking work for someone else
at no pay.
Let me
not forget those poor souls who did ‘God’s work’ in the church-school. I really
don’t know how it (the school) is still up and running. There are so many rules
and laws being broken that surely some state or federal office is aware of it
somewhere. What makes me most infuriated, however, is the mental and emotional
torture the older students are put through. I’m not talking about church member
– older students, but rather NON-member students. I have heard of two girls
(thirteen and fifteen) who were pulled into the office and told to stop their
lesbian activities. Another boy was taken aside during a competition trip and
asked point blank if he and another male student had had sex because the door
was partially closed between their room and the supervisor’s room. Two brothers
were also made to change rooms because they supposedly were also engaging in
bedroom activities.
I could
go on and on, for a decade, and not tell every nasty, horrific thing that
happened. Since that is not my purpose in recounting all these incidents, I
won’t try. My purpose is to speak the truth, for as the Bible says, "You
shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".
That is
my hope- that all members of the <name withheld> (or Gospel Assembly, as
they are formally known) will be free of the lies and horrors that have been
perpetrated on them, or that they have perpetrated on others.
As a
family member of mine put it, "No one walks away from a situation like
that without guilt. We all came away from the <name withheld> Gospel
Assembly with cookie crumbs on our faces.” If you are a <name withheld>
Gospel Assembly member reading this, know that there is God and life away from
the cult you are trapped in. There are arms of forgiveness waiting to help you
down the path of freedom and into the arms of the true God- not the god that a
crazed narcissistic woman has dreamed up.
Find
help! Yes, there is life after Gospel
Assembly. I hope there will be justice, also.
As it
says in Amos 5:24, "But let justice roll down like waters And
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream".
For all
those members that have been traumatized, hurt, misguided by <name
withheld> Gospel Assembly school or students who have been the same by
<name withheld> Gospel Assembly Christian School- God knows and he cares.
As I and others have said before- There is life after GAC."
I was
very, incredibly blest in that I had a group of family and friends waiting for
me when I came out of GAC. I also had the help of a wonderful psychiatrist. He
talked to my whole family for over three hours. As we told him as much of our
story as we could in the space of three hours, he told us that, based on our
information, the pastor most likely has an Antisocial Personality Disorder. As
I read over the many testimonies on this site, I began to wonder if that was a
disorder in many of the other leaders. Or was it just that, as in many cults,
the congregation took on the cult leader’s personality?
As I
read over the symptoms of antisocial behavioral characteristics, it was as if I
was reading about most of the church: i.e.
1. Refuses to meld to accepted common social behaviors-
total disregard to what is "lawful" and "law-abiding".
(Everything the pastor says is "right" and "God’s Word".
Church members have lied, cheated, and renounced family because it was
"God’s will".)
2. No remorse when others are injured by one’s actions. (It
was ‘God’s will’ that a young man committed suicide.)
3. Repeated lying perfected methods of deceitfulness. (The
pastor would take other people’s stories and make them her own. When
confronting my family member about a letter their ‘defected’ sibling sent them,
she lied and said "God had revealed it to her in a dream". He hadn’t-
I had told her of it the day before.
As I
mentioned before, the congregation is eerily ‘taking on’ these behaviors- they
have become their own twisted version of this pastor.
As I am
on my journey of healing and learning to live anew, I find myself looking back
over the progress of seven months. When I first left the cult, I was not
emotionally healthy. In fact, I was an absolute wreck mentally, emotionally,
and most likely physically as well. I would have panic attacks in the new
wonderful church I was attending. I had thought that if I could just leave,
just get away from the horrific situation- all would well all at once. Now,
don’t misunderstand me- I was immediately relieved from the abuse. When the
abuse left, however, a healing process had to take its place.
A
healing process that included a rage I hadn’t thought I was capable of, as well
as mourning for the ‘lost’ years of exclusively doing a human’s will, not
God’s. I believe, and will continue to put my trust in Romans 8:28"…All
things work together for GOOD to those who love HIM…" He promises ALL
THINGS – all the rejection, rage, hurt… and the list goes on forever. When I
look back on twenty-four years of mental torture, I think of pain and rejection.
As I look back farther and deeper, however, I also think of a few miraculous
facts:
1. I have no family at all left in that cult.
2. God always, always let me know somehow, someway that He
loved me.
3. There was always someone there when I needed them most.
There are two I remember with all the gratitude in my heart: <name
withheld>, who, as I cleaned the business he worked at, would tell me how
special and beautiful I was. After living in the desert of total rejection all
week-and then to come in to see someone smile at you and mean it, and give you
a brotherly hug when you looked down- it was like an amazing rainstorm of hope
and joy drenching your soul. I hope that somewhere, somehow, <name
withheld> will know that he helped keep a despairing soul from ending it
all.
God bless you, <name withheld>.
Then
there was <name withheld>, who while on active duty in Iraq, e-mailed me
hope and strong encouragement, till I had the strength to leave the terror
behind. You are the brother of my soul, <name withheld>. If God were to
bless you a third of what you blessed me, the world could not contain it. You
were the hands of Christ to my life.
“Behold
what God has done! It is marvelous to my eyes!"
Other members of this same group: