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Fallen 49r

There are certainly some devastating facts, and as far as I am concerned, you can't read the Newsday article through and still believe. It's clear as day that Hickman lied about his grandfather, and that he admitted to having a relationship with a young boy. How does one accept these things and still trust the man as a "prophet"?

I've heard people within mention the fact that an article was released in Newsday, and that it was a bunch of doubters and naysayers and... well, they didn't read it because they had no interest in such things. Had they actually read it, they may have avoided wasting the better half of their lives. (Wasting is a relative term, as some people within it say even if it's all a sham, they feel a better person for it, and value their experiences).

I have talked to several people who refuse to discuss the Newsday article. They've been told by their parents that it was lie and they choose to ignore it.

So much of what was in it is true. I have questioned a few older cult members and they admit that many of the things in it happened. Many fall back on the Jonathan and David argument.

I wonder what the fallout will be when everything falls apart once and for all. It will happen within the next five years I think. For me it is difficult keeping up the image of being a true believer all the time. When I have dinner with other cult members or go to meetings it is hard not to stand up and just start pointing out the lies.

Emotionally knowing I spent so many years dedicated to lies is very hard.

I think that the psychological abuse that goes on in this cult has caused most of the youth to drink heavily and use drugs to deal with the pain. The drinking and drug use is widespread and kept hidden.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this before, but one of the more disturbing and "red flag" issues that label this group a cult is that Hickman said everyone's thoughts and actions would be revealed to the world in the "end". He basically said, "there is NO such thing as personal privacy, ever. All will be revealed to everyone."

It's a terrifying prospect, believing such a thing. When you think about it though, you realize how absurd it really is:

-How would this be "revealed" to everyone?
-How long would it take to be "revealed, or is it just a search-able database?
-If so, then how detailed is the writing?
-It is writing what I do this instant? Is it spelling out the keystrokes, or simply saying I'm writing a treasonous post.
-And wait, is it writing what I'm typing AND what I am thinking? They're sort of the same thing...
-What happens when you think a million different things at once?

....What even constitutes a "thought"?

Such a claim completely flies in the face of cognitive psychology and neurology. We like to think of thoughts and words and actions as clearly defined irreducible things but they couldn't be farther from it.

It's absolutely absurd though... and it frustrates me to no end to hear people say things like, "well, I guess we'll find out in the end times, right!"

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Fallen 49r
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this before, but one of the more disturbing and "red flag" issues that label this group a cult is that Hickman said everyone's thoughts and actions would be revealed to the world in the "end". He basically said, "there is NO such thing as personal privacy, ever. All will be revealed to everyone."

Theres more. I remember being told that the merovingians were constantly surveilling all of us and that we had to prove for three generations that we were good enough to be let into the real family.

Imagine the kind of manpower necessary to monitor hundreds of people regularly?

This caused so much paranoia in the people of this group. Just two more things (your constantly being watched and recorded) to add to countless numbers of damaging messages.

I hope that Gary will do the right thing and expose the lies. I don't believe he will. I think things will just fizzle out.

I agree that all these fear tactics; knowing everyones thoughts, merovingians surveiling everyone (watchers), and everything else including instilled fears about the end times has caused great harm among the young people, and as Fallen has said considerable drug and alcohol abuse. SOme young people trully believed that they would not live into adulthood. It is a hard thing to reconcile these ridiculous things in your mind.

In among these really outrageous ideas there were other very detrimental ideas condoned and supported by JH, that were highly injurious and destructive to families. I heard him many times tell various married men that it was fine if they slept with other women due to it being biblically based. He also said this was not okay for women. It was okay for men because they were not "entered". I heard him say as par of his "family counseling" that women should just put up with this, go on with their lives and do other things to stay busy. He would also shrug and hold out his hands and use that smiling smirk, if women let him know these things were going on.

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Confused7609

In among these really outrageous ideas there were other very detrimental ideas condoned and supported by JH, that were highly injurious and destructive to families. I heard him many times tell various married men that it was fine if they slept with other women due to it being biblically based. He also said this was not okay for women. It was okay for men because they were not "entered". I heard him say as par of his "family counseling" that women should just put up with this, go on with their lives and do other things to stay busy. He would also shrug and hold out his hands and use that smiling smirk, if women let him know these things were going on.

I had heard him several times condone polygamy, but I never heard him excuse outright cheating. Doesn't surprise me though. The cult has been led by misogynists.

There aren't any women with any real authority in cult.

I am privy to a lot of what went on in Ben Yishai (later redubbed Shoresh Yashi) since I got involved when it was only an Evangelical Lutheran congregation. I remember the potluck dinner where we decided to become a “Messianic” congregation and how Hickman decided to reformulate the church as a Christian/Orthodox Jewish hybrid. Nevertheless, it says in Galatians that Judaizing is illegal in Christianity and that non-Jews definitely shouldn’t keep the Jewish laws.

[...]

I spent 5 years of my life in that cult. I spit because Tommy told me that the Bible said that David and Jonathan loved each other more than any 2 men ever loved each other before and Tommy said, “Maybe they did it!” I realized something bad was going on and I had to leave the cult.

I was in the ministry for my formative years [...]

Hickman had all of us going to Jewish events in order to learn more about Judaism. Why this so called prophet needed to do that was beyond me [...]

I was deeply entrenched in the cult. [...]Eventually, I left and never looked back as per the household. I was glad to be free of them and tired of trying to live like an Orthodox Jew.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2009 12:03AM by rrmoderator.

There was a 4th Demattteo, Larry. Paul used to brag how Frank Sinatra was a big mafia man. I wonder about Dynell. I think the whole thing was bad news.

Hickman used to complain about children's rights. It turned out that when he was spanked as a child, his family used wood to hit him and he used to get splinters. It seems to me that he was abused himself.
One of the people in the cult told me that my parents could do anything against me at al. I was of age and the cult member told me they could spank me. Well, the day of my 18th birthday, I went back to my folks to get some clothing and my dad let me in but blocked me on the way out. I clocked him one on his face and busted his glasses. Based on his abuse, he's lucky I didn't really mess him up.

It may seem unusual, but I don’t have the same intensity of emotion in my hatred for Jack Hickman as I do for Chabad. Actually, I don’t hate Jack at all and Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus and I corresponded over it. Moishe told me that I should pray for Jack’s soul. We need to analyze why this is so.

The Rick A. Ross Institute classifies Jews for Jesus as a cult and I concur. Rosen can be quoted as saying that Christianity is the greatest Jewish business ever created. In Hickman and also in Rosen’s case, it all boiled down to money.

[...]

First of all, Hickman’s’ cult told me that I didn’t need to disclose to my family my involvement but if they found out, I would have to own up to it. The way it was put was that I “didn’t have to put my neck on the chopping block.” My father complained that I was sneaky about it. I hurt my whole family over this. Many lives have been lost in the name of religion. I pray for the day when all the carnage will end but I don’t see that in the near future.

[...]

One woman got back to me through the forum and asked if I remembered her. She told me she met her husband through the cult, left it but stayed married. She also said that she rededicated herself to Jesus about 25 years after leaving Ben Yishai.

When I came to St. John’s the first night, Tommy Dematteo marched me right up to Jack Hickman. I can tell you that Jack knew a big secret that every business owner knows, “If you want to open up a business, you have to know how to smile!” And Jack had what he wanted in me, and there were quite a few of us in St. John’s – he had a Jew, a rare commodity in most Christian churches.

Hickman had a thing for Jews for many years. He used to open up the Sunday services with a Prayer of Intercession, asking for God to open up the eyes of the Jewish people who he claim were hindered by, “The veil of Moses” so there was some kind of spiritual occlusion on the Jewish people and they couldn’t understand the “fact” that Jesus is the mashiach.

Hickman had predicted that the economy would have massive problems years later and he came up with survival strategies. There were Hickman households all over Long Island and there was one right down the block from my family’s home. I used to go there after school and 3 couples who had little children used to jointly rent out the house. They had to learn skills for living together and they were bound together in a cultic version of Christian unity. But if Hickman had stayed a Lutheran minister, I think it wouldn’t have been so bad.

[...]

Life outside Ben Yishai was never the same for me as life in it.

My needing to leave was based upon Hickman’s’ homosexuality and also because he ripped off a speech from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Once he was unmasked as a fraud and gay, I had to split.

[...]

Darlene Coons is Gary’s sister and if I had married her, I would have become part of the power structure of the cult. It would have been a very powerful political move on my part. I would be the brother in law of Ben Yishai’s (actually redubbed Shoresh Yashi) leader. There would have been monetary ramifications too as I wouldn’t have had to work for a living anymore as Hickman had real estate dealings with Pastor Gene Profeta. (Jessica Hahn brought Profeta down).

[...]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2009 12:11AM by rrmoderator.