The Cult Church

A Spirit of Control.

In every situation, though in varying degrees, these leaders will have a spirit of control over individuals or the total group.  Barbara Ancheta, a young woman with three children who was involved in a Cult Church for about six months, tells of the intimidation that was felt in their small group.

"We studied two and a half hours per session, four times a week, with our Bibles and Concordances open," she reports.  "Brother Alby would close his eyes and receive a Scripture reference that we would look up and it would always relate to the new doctrine we were studying." (It was never in context of Scripture, though.)

"If you had a doubt, he would read your mind and tell you what you were thinking, and then begin to rebuke and reproach you in front of the others." This would keep people from questioning what was being taught.

"If you needed to travel, you needed to ask him if it was God's will.  One time when I needed to go to a family get-together, he reminded me that I hadn't asked him first and that I could possibly get into a car wreck or something.  He did give me permission to go," she says, "But only after I backed down in my spirit to submit to his counsel."

This spirit of control also prohibits anyone from discussing doubts on doctrine or the set of rules their particular church inflicts upon them.  David Johnson, in his book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, says, "The most powerful of all unspoken rules in the abusive system is what we have already termed the "can't talk" rule...If you speak about the problem out loud, you are the problem.  In some way you must be silenced or eliminated.  Those who do speak out are most often told, `We didn't have all these problems until you started shooting your mouth off.  Everything was fine before you started stirring things up.'"