Chapter 4 - Doomsday

One question, if your cult doesn’t have a doomsday property and plan for the apocalypse, is it even a cult?

I would argue no, and so as you might’ve guessed, mine certainly had one.

If you talk to literally any Christian person and asked about the return of Christ, I’m sure every single one of them would be able to tell you something about it.

What they might not be able to provide however is deadlines, dates, doomsdays plans while waiting for the “rapture” and conspiracies about who the anti-Christ is (it’s King Charles FYI).

The topic of the end of the world was in fact such a major point of discussion in this group that as a child I used to think constantly about it.

I remember hearing often about how when Christ returns you would not be taken with him if you had committed one sin that you had not yet repented for. The basis and premise of all these conversations and sermons was so fear-inducing that I used to have an anxiety attack anytime I couldn’t find my family, thinking I had missed the rapture and searching my brain for anything bad I had done in the past months.

This anxiety would dissipate obviously when I would see my family had just popped out to the shops or something.

I recall attending countless sermons and seminars on the “end times” and the feeling it would give me was never anything other than fear. Each of these seminars would be filled with conspiracies and ‘evidence’ on how we were living in the end times and the proof that the world was quickly coming to an end.

Some of the evidence provided were as follows:

• Debit cards -supporting the concept of a one- world currency

• Barcodes - believed this was opening the gateway to us eventually getting “the mark of the beast” and being barcoded ourselves with a microchip

• genogram research - further supporting the idea that we would one day be forced to be microchipped

• The UN - first step into making a ‘one-world government’

And many more points that were twisted into supporting an idea that the world was ending and we were doomed.

All in all it’s fair to say that the point of these seminars was to induce fear into the cult members and manipulate people into believing that the world was doomed- and this cult was the only chance of survival.

Fucked up I know.

Another major point of discussion correlated to this, was the topic of time.

How many occasions did I hear “redeeming the times because the days are evil” (a bible verse in the New Testament).

In other words, make the most of your time because you don’t have much of it left.

The topic of time was always presented in a way of suggesting that we were running out of it.

Every decision had to be exactly right because don’t you know, we have no time to change things if we make a mistake.

There was also a concept that a lot of things didn’t inherently matter because we were all going to be raptured soon anyway, so what’s the point of planning for your future?

This mindset heavily ties into a later chapter where I will talk about money.

The only thing that mattered with the little time we had left was trying to save as many people as possible by bringing them to the church.

If that doesn’t breed an entitled and egotistical perspective of yourself I don’t know what does.

The concept that we somehow had all the truth in the world, all the answers, and everybody else was doomed if we, the chosen ones, did not help them by converting them to the cult.

Even as a child I had the pressure of trying to “save” people and if you weren’t actively trying to bring people to the cult you were made to feel as if you were wasting precious time.

Recently I discovered my child-hood journal.

I have to admit, it made me cry.

Over half of my journal entries from the youngest age were about feeling guilty that I hadn’t saved enough people…

What a burden for a child to carry.

Also, what a clever way to ensure that people never left the group, considering it was the only safe haven in an otherwise doomed world.

I’m sure you can speculate how some of these mentalities have affected me in my adulthood.

My anxiety of wasting time.

My saviour/savee complex in relationships and the type of connections I’ve built.

My indecisiveness when it comes to decision making and no doubt countless others.

The other point about doomsday I want to make, is the constant conversation of how all Christians would be tortured during the apocalypse. I remember having nightmares about this as a child and telling myself I would be brave enough to be killed for my faith if it came down to it.

I can still specifically recall every detail of a nightmare I had when I must’ve been around 10 or 11 where I saw myself and many others being burnt alive for the sake of our faith.

I don’t know why or how this dream has stuck with me for so long, but it has, and maybe it’s just to remind me of the detrimental effect of living with this type of mentality.

Even now, 10 years after leaving this cult, I still have a strange anxiety of one day being tortured. I don’t even consider myself a Christian now, and I certainly don’t believe in the idea that all Christians will suddenly be outlawed, so why I should still hang onto this is a mystery…

To be perfectly frank, It’s not something I’ve ever talked about or willingly admit but I feel it’s important to be honest and clearly show the long term effects of these extremists views.

Something I’ve already touched on is how the cult believed that everyone would one day be forced to take “the mark of the beast” as talked about in the book of Revelation in the Bible.

If we didn’t take it of course we would be hunted down and killed. On the flip side, if we did take it we would be condemned to hell.

As mentioned earlier, this group believed the mark of the beast would be something in the form of a human microchip that would be inserted into your right hand or forehead.

There was a season of time where we weren’t allowed to even put stamps or stickers on our right hand because of this.

Strange, I know.

Other random facts about the apocalypse is I recall being told that someone in my family had had a prophetic dream that the end was coming sooner than expected and it would happen before I turned 14. I was told this at age 7 .. (cue in the fear of running out of time again)

I’m 28 now and while the world might be a little fucked it certainly hasn’t ended yet.

I remember being so upset thinking that I would never live long enough to be an adult…

The final point I want to make about this is the property and food storing.

I don’t know what year it all started, but sometime in the 90’s the pastor got together with one of the men in the church who owned a lot of property and somehow convinced him to let the church start building makeshift houses (huts they called them) on the property in order to prepare for the end of the world.

And so they did.

The pastor was so convinced that the world would end in the year 2000 that he sent multiple families out to this property in the bush to live full time in order to prepare it for everyone else.

We also started storing food, canned veggies, meats, drinks, whatever would last a long time.

When New Year’s Day came and went on Jan 1st 2000, the families realised the world wasn’t ending (as did everyone else) and decided to move back to civilisation.

This property still exists, however the owner had a falling out with the pastor some years ago due to them not using insurance when building on the land and him being liable for possible injuries.

We also found out that the leader had been sending men out to chop all the timber down on the property and sell it without the owner’s permission.

So the work on the huts ceased and the owner was publicly shamed.

I don’t know if they have purchased another piece of land yet to hide in, but sometimes I do wonder if they still have their canned goods tucked away somewhere.