since Phiily lives in Australia, she might be especially interested in this blog post.

Brothers Chronicle 16 Years in Destructive Cult
Blog post from “Living His Life Abundant”

October 15, 201012:13 pm
The number of active cults in the world today number in the tens of thousands and attract the people you’d least expect to their secretive rolls. This is why books such as the following recently released account by two Australian brothers about life in a destructive charismatic cult are so crucial for warning others about just how easy it is to fall into the trap of mind-controllers.

John and David Ayliff have published My Brother’s Eyes (John Garrett Publishing) which chronicles the involvement of David Ayliff and his wife Margaret in the Zion Full Salvation Ministry, an extreme religious cult.

The cult was formed in 1974 by a woman named Violet Pryor who claimed to have Christ’s Stigmata and to be the embodiment of God on earth. One can only wonder why anyone would turn their life over to someone like this, especially people as “normal” and intelligent as the Ayliffs, but it did indeed happen.

Their nightmare began many years ago when David and Margaret were young and enjoyed living a kind of “whacky” life. They met at an Anglican church in Sydney’s Surry Hills that was eventually disowned by the diocese because it was performing exorcisms. “I think we were so young and naive, I don’t think the warning bells really rung loud enough for us to sort of really - to get out,” Margaret said during a 2009 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

They would go to prayer meetings where people would start shaking and quivering or lying on the floor and “sort of coughing up into little ice cream buckets,” Margaret recalled. Her husband said they regarded these phenonemon with wonder, thinking “There’s a power here at work, and that power is God.”

It was at this church that they first encountered Violet Pryor, a woman who began to claim in the latter part of 1976 that she had the stigmata and began sporting marks in her hands and feet. Within a year, she managed to convince many of her followers that she was God. “You know, I should have known better,” David said. “I should have had my eyes really opened. But by that stage, I’d accepted everything along the way. And, to me, this was just, you know, it was just the next step.”

Violet Pryor gradually took control of every facet of her devotees’ lives, threatening them if they tried to leave. As David recounts, she would say, “If you leave me, I will kill you, and I will kill your wife and children first, and you will see them die agonizing deaths before your eyes. And I can do that because I’m God. ”During this time, Margaret was diagnosed with melanoma, but was told by Pryor to put a banana skin on it. She did so, but when the skin started going bad, they decided to seek outside help and did manage to find a specialist who was able to help her. “I was lucky to escape with my life,” Margaret said. “I really am lucky to be alive.”

Rev. David Millikan, who has dedicated a quarter century to infiltrating, understanding and busting up cults, confirmed that Pryor was a full-blown cult leader. “There’s no question of that,” he told ABC. “She had no conscience about basically destroying people. A group becomes destructive when it takes on a posture of extreme hostility to the world outside its doors, when it isolates its members from family, friends and from the surrounding culture.”

This was exactly what was happening inside the cult, whose members were stripped of all their money and possessions and set up in what was an almost impenetrable fortress in Sydney’s exclusive Palm Beach section. Pryor herself became increasingly more deluded and reclusive, allowing only her closest “disciples” to see her. David was one of those close disciples who was permitted to visit her three times a week.

In 1989, Pryor was arrested and charged with fraud, but it proved so impossible to prove the charges, they were eventually dropped. Two years later, David discovered her body in her Palm Beach fortress. Even though she was dead, he would often lay awake at night listening for some noise from her residence. “If she was God, then, you know, she might have come back again, you know,” he said. At this, his brother John says, “His mind had been taken over. As I said, it doesn’t start out as mind control, you know. Good people aren’t gonna let themselves be taken over just like that. It’s a creeping thing.”

It took almost two decades for the “creeping thing” to lose its hold on David and Margaret’s minds and allow them to begin to make contact again with the family and friends they had long ago deserted. "I see a lot of Christian groups, but I also see a lot of New Agey sort of groups that go off in all sorts of directions,” Rev. Millikan said. “Really, I’ve come to the view that there’s nothing so mad in this life that someone doesn’t believe in it.”

For those who might right now be suffering from the loss of a loved one to a cult, John Ayliffe gives three rules of guidance - don’t fight them, give them love, and be patient.

“Never, never, no matter where you are let somebody else take over your - your ability to make decisions,” David warns. “It doesn’t matter who it is. Because the moment you do that, you’re on very dangerous territory.”

" It's a creeping thing". No one decides to join a cult they just put off leaving the cult... often for years and years.

aww....that's so sad creepy but very encouraging! I'm glad that David and Margaret are out! thnx for sharing this!

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wendyjduncan
John Ayliffe gives three rules of guidance - don’t fight them, give them love, and be patient.

John and David Ayliff have published My Brother’s Eyes (John Garrett Publishing) which chronicles the involvement of David Ayliff and his wife Margaret in the Zion Full Salvation Ministry, an extreme religious cult.

Their blog is [www.goodsects.com.au]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2010 02:59AM by frogla.

It is very much a creeping thing, I can totally identify with that article. At the end of my involvement when the ultimatums were being made, and we were told to separate from our families, it was really just "the next step" to me, like the article claims, it didn't seem off the wall because I had already bought in with everything else.

I wonder when and how it will happen, but apparently at some point before the rapture is supposed to happen Timothy is supposed to be leaving the group somehow, taken away or just off to do some other work for God, I'm not sure which. I'm wondering what that will entail, and to those in the group, I'm sure whatever happens, it will also be just "the next step".

Thanks Wendy for posting, and frogla for the blog post too.

ANOTHER last trumpet call from Trent's website!

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cultaware
ANOTHER last trumpet call from Trent's website!

Hmm, so God's changed His mind again? Must be a woman then? Isn't it a woman's perogative to change her mind? C'mon you trumpeters!! Wake up!!

The link is here: [trumpetcallofgodonline.com]

C'mon TRENT FULLER, JASON, TIMOTHY SPEED, AND ALL INVOLVED IN THE TRUMPET CALL OF GOD......THAT IS THE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GODTHE TRUMPET CALL OF GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE The Last Trumpet Before The Time SO WAS THE OTHER ONE THAT TRENT FULLER READ OUT ON YOU TUBE THE SECOND LAST TRUMPET BEFORE THE TIME???? How can it be final but not finally final!! Bring it on, you trumpeters! Answer, instead of blocking us, ignoring us and all the rest ..... HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND HOW CAN GOD CHANGE HIS MIND

Dear Trumpeters
Firstly, your trumpets need seeing to - they're starting to play increasingly out of tune.
Secondly, I thought you might need a little help for the next letter - you see, you've already used the 'final letter', and the 'last'. You may need some more synonyms. The 'end' letter, perhaps? I wouldn't use the 'apocalyptic' letter just yet, might want to save that till May next year. Here's some others: concluding, closing, ultimate (a personal favourite), absolute...
Hope some of these are of help.
Just a tip - you may start running into trouble if you have more than another half dozen 'final' letters yet to come. There aren't that many synonyms. Hmmm.
Food for thought.

"Come out from among them,
And be separate from the churches of men..." Trent's site


NO NO, come out, be separate from the churches of Timothy!

I don't want to scare anyone...but, the koolaid is looking migggghty sweet from over here and I would know, I was a former sipper.

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philly

My brother is very concerned about this possibility and is worried that our 'trumpeter' will lock us all in the house and do away with us when the 'gathering' doesn't come.

It's such a worry that people can really be brainwashed to that extent.

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frogla
what do you mean by do away with you?