my history as a forum poster is relatively short, 4 + months. my history with lw/shiloh, about 6 years, is also relatively short. from the multiple accounts offered on this forum, i was first awakened to an incredible sense of antipathy towards gary hargrave, one who claimed to be a "christian". i sense that my sense of antipathy would have been equal regarding the queen of the realm
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

dear puddington, you are correct, the more important work has been done and continues regardless how hargraves and his minions fare. may not be "fair" but scripture does state that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike; it also states that vengeance belongs to god. frankly, i would prefer to see some temporal justice meted out but at least for believers there awaits for hargr
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

dear merries/forum followers, is it possible that this steam-rolling train is losing some of its steam and, if so, hargraves and minions are exulting. i propose that "they" would prefer that this forum did not exist but it does. i also propose that "they" are winning this battle, playing the long game while this steam-rolling train runs out of steam. so given this sentimen
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

richard m, indeed a lot of sad stories but many in transition to enlightenment. perhaps one of the saddest stories in this complex saga is your former wife, marilyn and consequently, you. you can best imagine in whole what us others can only in part imagine should we care to. in my composing this in the very now i cannot help but wonder how the trajectory of the entire lw/shiloh enterprise
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

reepicheep, i purposed a response to your private message to me sevaral days ago but am uncertain if you got it as i failed to see it appear. so i sent you another earlier tonight with my providing you with a different email address. hope you got those. thanks for your candor. we are family, we are kindred spirits. i am an agnostic in a sea of believers and yet i feel loved and do love ba
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

oh puddington, you are going to love this as maybe all other forum readers should/will. it's a story about a record by fraction called "moonblood" and how that record, several months ago, provided my initial exposure to rick's forum; the good, bad and ugly of my multiple posts. shall i continue? - i prefer 2 yahs but will accept one. be noted, this may rival robin hoo
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

the forum folks, aka "the merries", i hope y'all continue with your ribald, snarky and humorous posts in addition to all the informative, insightful and myriad historical accounts and perspectives. inch by inch, your contributions entreat listeners to become posters and new voices added to the old voices, more light now shining into what was once darkness and isolation. and for
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

sometimes reading all these accounts can be so damn overwhelming. on the other hand, and the bright light that emanates from all these accounts, is that freedom eventually triumphed over servitude; that truth triumphed over deception; that community triumphed over isolation; that resolution triumphed over acquiescence; that the near powerless contended. with the very, very powerful. the power
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

changedagain, wow, i am still allowed to post! be snarky and get a drink, changedagain. my recollection, enos bender sold his farm to lw a dime to a dollar. harvey bender, did something similar or even for less. certainly this recollection could be errant. "marilyn farms" - what a joke, what did the she god know about farming? thanks rick, for allowing me to continue to post.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

is it not needful for all of us to come to terms that we were played, used and abused? is it not needful for all of us to come to terms of how that all came to pass? it came to pass because, in our varying roles, we were complicit. i contend that we were caught up in a mindset of a cult whether we knew it or not. yet, we are not exonerated by our ignorance. i much disagree with the notion tha
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

i meant to include one other thought in my previous post - the merries are not going away. they are like nile crocodiles waiting to get some teeth on hargrave meat.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

enlightened465, welcome to this forum and thanks for your informative first post. to keep holbrook quiet and safe it is necessary to provide for him until this shit storm subsides and the merries return to watching reality tv, march madness and/or the ensuing baseball season. hargraves must certainly know that holbrook is a key weak link, a michael cohen sort if you like. cannot allow holb
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

dear reepicheep, indeed, it is time and way long past time for these abuses to end and not just the abuses, and perhaps with greater significance, the coverups, the willful, very willful coverups of those abuses. to be complicit with the crime by trying to cover it up is no less equal to committing the crime. who to despise more?
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

onion, regarding your very serious query 2 pages ago how much i paid honeybutt. well, no $ stipend, just free room and board, full access to vehicle use, full access to a basement segment with growing lights for his favorite plant and no household duties (which is immense given he is the literal slob that hargraves is the figurative slob). i've yet to hear from him since his departure to
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

little red flag, hello in there, i just read the link you provided and in my reading that i was reminded of a woman that i had dated many years ago. she was born into a jehovah witness family and had been sexually abused, actually raped per her account to me, by an older brother. when finally, she gathered the wherewithal to alert her parents and church leadership of the sexual abuse, she was
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

you folks are so lovely and principled; what a pity it was not the collective you who were not at the helm of the lw ship (with alphonso as a stowaway)
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

to the queries of alphonso honeybutt, my personal driver, from ohman, onion and changedagain, i am sorry to say he left, while in colorado a few weeks ago, he had , what i characterize as a bit too much "green", as in colorado dispensary green, if you know what i mean, if ever you had seen, the green scene, the hargrave machine which was never too clean, but alphonso was keen (all he w
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

reepicheep, oh, kboy has to be robin hood, that is unless hargraves rescues us all from himself and the nephillim hoard and claim the title. if kboy becomes our robin then of course little red flag need be marian - who else to keep kboy in line. oops, i'm getting a bit too jolly perhaps for this very serious forum
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

kbyrne, i got a chuckle out of your $80/mo - i got $20/mo, must mean you were 4x my worth. given that, you must be very wealthy today! happy trails, prettyboy
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

gary hargrave, where are you? you most likely follow these posts. i doubt that you do not. but you fail to respond. why? i'll put my words in your mouth "the fear of power has no hold here and i am fearful of engaging in a forum in which i am absent of that power". to the hanger-ons, i just invited the supreme leader hargrave to make his case, here and now, to an audience of
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

the exposure of the ruse continues on the steam rolling express of the merries. red flag, onion and others continue their assault/exposure/misgivings on the lw hierarchy, past and present, and we all should be quite thankful and comfortable with their historical perspectives. what have they to gain, personally, from their respective accounts? perhaps, some sense of absolution but certainly, an
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

onion, i assume you know me well enough by our mutual postings that you know i am not at all "jolly" when any one is abused, in any sense of that adjective. also, i encourage you to "share" (god, i hate that word used in this instance but cannot think of a better one!) your next "nasty" with a very trusted friend prior to posting, and no merlot or other wine (no be
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

hi puddington, i moved to iowa in the early 70's to help build shiloh. i knew absolutely no one here when i arrived. my family was enos bender, john and elisabeth bender, daniel nicely and his family, f sharp who gave me the "prettyboy" name, and then all those nicely girls wanting to sit beside me in church because i was prettybboy or a pretty boy, who knows. in recollectio
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

sorry for the interruption, but earlier i had written "stuff", similar to what i just posted and more, then pushed the wrong key, and kaboom all gone, then back to the first draft. any of y'all done something of the like and then say "oh, shoot" or something not fit for 1st graders ears? back to the merries. i did not say robin and his merry men. early on in my exp
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

dear forum folks, deborah's quote "we've got the corner on god" reminded me decades ago how jrs characterized the walk as the remnant of the remnant. how could one not be completely enthralled with that notion? onion recently wrote "so afraid to disagree or leave" which made me recall how afraid i was upon leaving lw. did that make me apostate in god's e
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

amos, indeed "the house is on fire and the ship has sunk" (or rather, is sinking). and what are the merries to do? i suggest to continue what they have been doing for years; early on, just a few voices and now a crescendo. truth has a dynamic of its own, at least to the rational. if the house is on fire and ship sinking, there are those hoping and willing to be rescued. on the othe
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

hi merries, hope all is well about your campfires. to richard m., your posts are so illuminating and i cannot but imagine how curious and perhaps, painful, to read all these posts about your former wife, one you much loved and failed to rescue with your insights and rationality. to readers like myself, it seems we have to understand that there were 2 marilyns; the one you were married to and th
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

hi all you merries, first, i need to explain why i use the term "merries". months ago when i first logged on to this forum and posted a comment, sometime afterwards kboy wrote me that robin and the merry ones were at the task or something the like. hence, my embrace of the term, in my subsequent posts, of the "merries" - in my thinking, the "merries" are all of t
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

richard m, someday i hope to meet you, albeit i am in iowa and you in calif, i have so relished your posts over the last month or so. i read pain but not bitterness, clarity but confusion and a total sense of who you were all those years ago and who you are today. i think had you and i met years ago or even tomorrow, the embrace would be the same. your contribution to this forum is unparall
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

dear typer, already you must have certainly discovered that being "excommunicated" from lw hoppycock due to your "failings" was a blessing and one that has liberated you. and your voice and testament adds to the crescendo of the many "merries", particularly of those new voices added to those that have fought this fight for years. each voice, each testament, fro
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families