Welcome to the forum Northerngate.
I have enjoyed reading your posts. You have added enhanced the puzzle picture with more pieces. Your questions are valid. So, I will had my typ-o input here and there to the already excellent answers.
Every one, have you noticed how it feels like a brand new chapter in the saga of the Fall of the Walk?
Northerngate Wrote:
Date: November 28, 2019 09:46PM
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> Duly noted Reepicheep. Interesting how it plays
> out. I’ve noticed that my children are having
> extreme trouble that is different from my
> struggles. I was trying to physically escape. I’ve
> been in fight or flight mode for a very long time.
> This affected my children but again their struggle
> is different.
My heart grieves for the children stuck in The church of the Living Word Fellowship under Hargraves.
Personally, I got out about 35 years ago with my children. They still have long term wounds. However, with the explosion of truth, I see some kind of of peace as an option vs confusion of this or that happened in our family dynamics . ( Our lives were chaos because of the influence of the
Church of the Living Word /
Lying Word.)
Here is my take for what it is worth.
The damage done to lives, especially the children, is variable depending on numerous factors.
[*] what years that connected to The Walk
[*] What location and under whose leadership they joined
[*] What years they participated and their age during those years
[*] Why they decided to join the group- parents or child or spouse [*] where their income source came from
[*] Did they live at Shiloh for how long?
[*] Who they married or who they were related to
[*] Did you have a strong Bible basic background before the Walk or not?
Each of us came into this cult with our own stuff. Every human being has their own strengths and weakness. Every family has areas of dysfunctional-ism. Each of us or family had some kind of need that we wanted met when the decision was made to visit the group and then stay for ever how long. We have to own that is WAS the choice of the adult to decided to check it out and not walk away after the first visit for what reason..What ever the reason the first adults who ended up with families in this cult were vulnerable and fairly easy prey to be 'captured' by the group leaders.
For many of us the hardest part of leaving was the amazing bonds we had with follow captives - good people who most of us will always love and cherish as family and friends. Those people may not be the part of the cult we wanted to escape from.
We all had to escaped from the toxic leadership of the Hargraves family Ministries and its minions. The JRS era, where the fraud began is a very different story
Does that make sense to the rest of the forum members? Can you think of any other variables?
IMO, I think that the old time/ core families have an extremely different perspective than those who maybe came in the group in the '80's.
IMO I think the core group that I came from was fed a very different 'song and dance' than other groups, to say the least.( I'm a Washington, Iowa girl from the 1950's) I know the early lies to build Shiloh were not fulfilled as promised. But, some how, what was fed to the core people buffered out all the crap as " It's assault of the enemy. We are being lied about." Correct me if I am dead wrong.
Basically the lies were different in what ever group you were sent to, or left at.
Can any one word that better or correct my opinion from my perspective? I really don;t think we will have simply one exact generic answer for each person in each setting.
But, for many who gave up everything to follow 'Christ in the Flesh" there was no place to turn back to. There was no place run to if you wanted to leave. You have no connections; no resume other than 'doormat' who lost 2 to 10 in making decisions for your self and 'paranoia of Babylon". You had no money and no friends outside. You may have burnt too many bridged because you were told to.
If you left you were put through Hell.
Were people possibly "held against there will?"Excellent question. See my bullet points above.
I think that there were no visible bars; no visible guns to the head; No visible chains - yet, people were compliant to the will of a few heartless/ narcissistic dictators in the name of "Christ in the Flesh".
The slavery and imprisonment were psychologically binding.