Wedding Nightmare

[rapt]

I was married in a Christian (Pentacostal-type) cult from Horseshoe Beach, Fla. We were in Mississippi at the time, running from the authorities. We had fled Horseshoe because one of the member's children had just died of spinal meningitis, and the "LORD" told us to flee, to avoid innoculations against that deadly and contagious disease.

We were all induced to believe that the women who spoke in "tongues" and "prophecied" or "interpreted" their own tongue were speaking directly by the Spirit of God, and we were warned to never question them, or we were told that we would be "blaspheming the Holy Spirit".

I became totally dependant upon these women's tongues and interpretations for every move I made in life. I "prayed about" (meaning that I asked a question before one of these women) whether to marry that woman or not, and asked when it should happen. "The Lord" said "When the moon shows forth it's brightness in it's fulness again, then will I set my blessing upon them". Now listen to this:

We waited the two weeks after that "message" until the full moon. There was a church meeting that night, and the women prophetesses went on very late into the night speaking in tongues and "interpreting". Most everyone had fallen asleep, but, expecting that since it was the full moon, and the message to me and my wife to be should be fulfilled, I asked the preacher, (who seemed to have forgotten all about our scheduled wedding) if that was all. He "asked the Lord" if it was, and the "the Lord" said "Let them make their vows before me this night", and indicated that we should take care of the legal end of our marriage later. I don't believe that most of the church was even awake when we did.

How humiliating it is to think back on it all now: done in the dark, except for the moon, and in our grubs. It almost makes me think it was not ordained of God from the start, since now I have no confidence in the so-called "prophetesses", because they were manifested as liars. No one else that was married in that church was ever subjected to such bizzare circumstances.

That night happened to be the fiftieth day after our leaving Horseshoe. We had been crammed together in two or three vehicles, (some of us in the back of a tarp-covered pick-up truck) in the cold of early January, travelling as far north as Indiana. It was memorialized from that day on as the "50-day Journey", when we had ran from the law in order to avoid innoculations for spinal meningitis. (Where is the wisdom in THAT? They later even claimed that if anyone in the church had survived that trip, then they would surely be saved. It was a form of "once-saved always-saved", except with a twist: "If a veteran of the 50 day journey- always saved."

Seventeen years later my wife fell in love with a man she was cleaning for, and told me so, and got offended at me when I told her she couldn't have us both. Then she dumped him and took my youngest child 3500 miles away and shaked up with another married "Christian" (her childhood sweetheart from Horseshoe!) for a few years, until she divorced me, and he too got a divorce and they "married". Now they go to church as if nothing is wrong.

At least I am free to remarry, but I am certainly in no hurry. Even people who profess to be Christians are many times only phonies. Who can ANYONE trust anymore?

[Kate]

Thank you for your openness and courage in sharing your story. Cults can do so much damage first and foremost to the people involved, but also in getting true Christians a bad name.

Your experience illustrates how important it is for a marriage to have a public side to it, where the whole community is aware of the step the couple are taking and recognises it's responsibility to support them. Also I think God doesn't dictate every move we should make but gave us brains, hearts and consciences to enable us to take responsibility for our own decisions, even though we may take His or others' advice.

The hardest but most important thing in situations like yours is learning to forgive, so that bitterness doesn't take hold of your life, isn't it? It's harder to trust someone again when you've been badly let down, but remember there is always an element of risk involved in trusting someone. I hope you do find someone you can trust and find happiness with.

[rapt]

Thank you, Kate, for your encouragement.

Just today, I met a man that said it makes no difference to him if a woman is married, he would still go after her. I said it makes all the difference in the world to me, because that is how my family was destroyed. He told me that his had been too, and that it is almost impossible to trust anyone anymore, the way things are now in the world. I agreed, but I don't agree with his response to how to deal with it.

I said that I think that the problem in this culture is that we have put our spouses above God, and have worshipped them, so that when they prove to be human and sinful, we are so let down that we tend to forsake God completely. To my surprise, he agreed, and said that God will take away from us everything that we put ahead of Him!