Thanks, SwampHoss, I appreciate the info.

Best regards,

Ref

I've confirmed that Meade died Saturday at the VA Hospital. Also that there was no announcement of his death at the Sunday meeting.

Neither Meade nor Marlene had been attending meetings for months, with no public explanation of their absence.

Looks like the caste system is being maintained above all.

Ref

I observed from a distance yesterday as they placed his body in the mausoleum. I have not heard from any of my sources as to what is being told to members within the church, but hope to talk to some soon and get an idea of where everything stands.

Thanks, SwampHoss. Much appreciated.

I was thinking of you all as word came today. I know this news will make some happy and some sad and some afraid.

Are you sure he died Saturday. Even wiki has his date of death on April 12. However, I just got home from work and have not looked into it much.

I wish you all peace through this transition

Hello friends,

First, let me say how grateful I am as a former member with numerous family members still involved in MM to have this forum. While I suspect that my loved ones will never leave MM, it is still very important to me to know what is going on in their lives, and this is one of the few places where I can get accurate information about that. I especially appreciate being able to find out about Meade's death in such a timely manner.

Knowing that Meade had been ill for some time now, and especially given his advanced age, I am not surprised to hear of his passing. What I am surprised about is my own reaction. I left MM many years ago (in fact, long before it became known as MM), and have moved on with my life. Those years are, in many ways, a distant memory, kept alive mainly because of the fact that I still have family in the group. And so I was sort of surprised at the sense of relief that I felt when I heard that Meade had died--a sense of release and freedom from a feeling of someone having some sort of power over me. I have never for one moment regretted leaving MM, nor was there any question in my mind that Meade was at best a false prophet, and at worst a con man. Even so, I couldn't help but see his death as the ultimate repudiation of his life and all that it stood for, the ultimate evidence that the emperor has no clothes.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out. On the one hand, Meade has been pretty much a figurehead for quite some time now, and it does seem like the lines of succession are pretty well already laid out, which may mean that they can survive this transition. On the other hand, Meade was in some ways the glue that held everything together, and MM would not be the first group to splinter or dissolve in the wake of the loss of their charismatic leader. Meade himself, no matter how diminished his capacities became, was what separated MM from all the other Pentecostal/charismatic/millenial groups around. He was God's end-time prophet, something no other group could claim. And while, as Refugee points out, the leaders of MM seem to have expunged oft-repeated statements such as the promise Mead that he would not die before Jesus came, he was certainly seen as larger-than-life, even semi-divine. Will his death take some of the bloom of that rose? And will there be a power struggle at this point, or will that have to wait until Marlene is out of the picture? Any thoughts from some of the rest of you?

My prayer is that this will be at time of reconsideration and perhaps departure for the many MM members who have been needing a reason to leave.

My request and hope is that those of you who have sources of information about the internal workings of MM will help keep the rest of us informed. It is so very much appreciated by those of us who are more limited in our ability to know what is going on.

I will keep everyone updated with relevant news and information as it becomes available. If you have specific information you would like, please use the PM feature, and please be patient. I have a large workload of information being requested usually, and these things do take time to research and track down. :) Thank you for understanding.

I am a former MM member. Me and my husband have been in and out of it twice now in the last 5 years. We started with his family and we didnt have money like everyone else did so we were treated differently. My husbands family have been faithful members for the last 5 years and of course have went higher and higher on the popularity scale but we never did because of money. We are honest sincere and had a love for God and all people and would do anything for anyone but we didnt have the money or success that it takes to be of high status.

Its hard to figure out how I truly feel about all of it. I would have never gotten saved and learned the stuff I learned about God and the Bible, but there were so many other things that I couldnt get used to. Every service I went to I got filled tremendously with the spirit and felt so good. And i do understand having enough faith in God to heal you instead of relying on man. I agree with that. there are a lot of things I agree with.

But here is what has happened to me while attending MM. I started to get a judgement for people that I never had before. I was told in the beginning that you had to be absolutely perfect to go to heaven. I was told that brother meade was perfect. I was told that you had to go to that church to make it to heaven and that would be Gods perfect church. But from the people I knew and dealt with there, they were far from perfect. they gossiped about others hardships, they would turn their nose at people having hardships, how is that acting like the image of God. God would not treat people this way.

I keep hearing that brother Meade died in the VA hospital. I find that really hard to believe but I find it harder to believe that anyone would be able to find that out. They have kept this death almost secret. The lake city reporter didnt even report it . I have looked all over the internet trying to find something and first coast news is the only one that I could find. Its kind of important for me to really know if that is where he died because of what I have been taught. Does that person making this claim have actual proof? its important to me because sometimes I feel like I have been brainwashed about certain things and I just want to be able to figure this out. I am still an avid follower of God, but I just want to make sure Im feeling and doing the right things. Please let me know! thanks

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justintime
I keep hearing that brother Meade died in the VA hospital. I find that really hard to believe but I find it harder to believe that anyone would be able to find that out. They have kept this death almost secret. The lake city reporter didnt even report it . I have looked all over the internet trying to find something and first coast news is the only one that I could find. Its kind of important for me to really know if that is where he died because of what I have been taught. Does that person making this claim have actual proof? its important to me because sometimes I feel like I have been brainwashed about certain things and I just want to be able to figure this out. I am still an avid follower of God, but I just want to make sure Im feeling and doing the right things. Please let me know! thanks

No matter who you are deaths are public record. Finding out if someone was in the hospital at the time is also not that big of a deal. Anyone could call a hospital and find out if someone was there, you might not be able to get details unless your authorized family. Medical staff are bound by HIPPA so they can't discuss someone's medical details but that would not stop them from telling someone that a person is in a hospital or that they have died. It takes about two weeks to a month to process a death certificate. There should be a county records office that could confirm that information. IIRC the public can obtain such information in some manner but have to be a relative to get a notarized certificate of birth or death.

My $.02, trust YOUR feelings and Your relationship with your religious beliefs instead of worrying what other people are trying to tell you they should be.

Thank you for replying, I am a somewhat intellectual person so I dont know why I didnt think of that. I just figured with hippa you could call the hospital and they wouldnt tell you either way, all they would say is i cant disclose that information. I am trying to trust my own feelings but my feelings are that when I was at that church I felt the holy spirit and felt really good, but it was all the other unspoken rules like its ok to wear a jean skirt but not jeans with pant legs, or you need to drive a cadillac so you can be in one accord, that I didnt always agree with. They stress to you that they only live by the bible and they wouldnt preach anything but the bible so Im a little confused with what I should be feeling. I dont know if I was just severely brain washed or if they have a point to why they live the way they live. my husband and i have been added to the list of people that are shunned by other family members that go their. We have tried to reason that as long as you are living by the bible it doesnt matter where you go to church but they wont listen. When we came right out and asked them if they wouldnt see us anymore if we didnt go there they said to look at a bible verse to get the answer to our problem. We looked up the bible verse and it interpretation was that if you are a follower of christ, you wont mingle with the non believers. I didnt want to waste my breath to tell them that we are still followers of christ, just not in that church. But I appreciate your feedback. I would really like to start talking with other people that have been in this church and left and get their feedback and what they thought about it. Its just really nice to relate to others so I dont feel like I made a bad choice in leaving. Because sometimes that is what happens. I feel guilty like Im doing something wrong by not going there anymore. thanks