8

Mind Control

I have explained in other publications[11], that we tried for years to clear our names of the slander WCG ministers threw at us, and to find reconciliation. But their mud stuck firm – because of the mind control members are subjected to. For decades WCG folks were indoctrinated in philosophy which claimed that the WCG was God’s only true church on earth, that no other church organisation was God’s instrument, that their ministry were divinely appointed and divinely led, and that what the church taught was “the truth”. These claims were all untrue. Some were blatant lies, some were clever half-truths.

But they formed the foundation for WCG dogma and behaviour, which still continues today. Although the church claims to have relinquished its cultic past and to have dramatically reformed, it still has not adequately dealt with the most serious aspects of its cultic philosophy which grips unsuspecting minds.

There are still many members in the group who are cloned by the same cultic thinking that dominated the WCG in its heyday. And, even though many have left (the church in 1998 was about half the size it was a decade before; now it is much less) to give their support to breakaway church groups run on similar lines to the old WCG, most of them still believe these age-old lies and are held in spiritual bondage by the same self-blinding exclusivist philosophy (howbeit with slight variations).

During the nineties, we spent thousands of pounds trying to reach Worldwiders and help them to see daylight, but God told us early on that it would cost £1,000 a word – which in real terms means that the total cost of their deliverance would run into millions, and that it was humanly impossible! He did tell us, however, to go ahead and try and reach them. And our efforts were not worthless. We reached many and helped many, but it was a small percentage of the whole. Most don’t want to be delivered! They want to continue down the same well-trodden paths.

Effects of Mind Control

In our mission to alert the membership of the WCG to their spiritual subjugation and demise, we wrote letters, printed booklets and articles, but the majority of these were returned unread. Since the minds of WCG members were conditioned by the leadership, they rejected anything from outside their confines as being spiritually inferior and suspect. Anyone ‘outside the church’ was regarded as being spiritually deficient. This close-mindedness is still prevalent in many.

Regardless of the topic, any spiritual literature was simply unacceptable to WCG members if it did not emanate from WCG headquarters or was ‘officially’ approved by the ruling junta. When we sent them articles of spiritual value, they were returned in the post, often without even being opened. Member and minister alike refused to objectively read anything we wrote. They could not conceive that they could learn anything from us (or from anyone else outside their borders).

Such spiritual myopia was a result of the church’s diabolical exclusivism. Though the organisation has appeared to officially modify that stance in recent years, the change is only cosmetic. The majority of members continue believing the old lie. While they think they are the ‘one and only’, they are in an unfit mental state to be able to receive anything of value from elsewhere. Thus, the leadership have won huge control over members’ minds.

That is a primary characteristic of a cult, not of the true Church of Jesus Christ. Cults even use psychological coercion to control people’s thinking and take away their freedom to think for themselves. They may also emphasise that salvation is by affiliation – to them. True Christians, however, are free – free to learn from any source as God directs them through the Holy Spirit. Each person must make up their own mind what they should believe. The Holy Spirit is given to lead us into truth (Jn 16:13). The Holy Spirit is our spiritual tutor (I Jn 2:27), not men in ministerial capacities. They are to feed the flock, not control it.

In the WCG there is such subtle mind control that few can perceive it while within the organisation. My wife and I saw it much clearer from the outside than when we were within. Human loyalties can easily blind people to right spiritual discernment. God showed us quite clearly that men are not meant to be our masters; we are all brothers, equal in God’s sight (Matt 23:8). Nor are we to elevate men as our teachers (v 10). Ministers are to serve (v 11), not to lord it over their congregations, no matter how subtly (Matt 20:25,26). And they ought to be there to feed the flock spiritually. (False ministers, however, are also present.)

We soon saw the depth of satanic control that is exerted by the WCG ministry when we received a large proportion of returned literature from members who defaced it, scribbled all over it, wrote malicious epithets on it, or simply mutilated it with scissors just so it could be no use to anyone else. One was returned with the words ‘SPIRITUAL PORNOGRAPHY’ scrawled in bold capitals all over it! This vile response was as a result of a WCG minister disaffecting his congregation through evil words spoken against us from the pulpit.

The only justification this minister had for such a slanderous outburst was that he had been told by his mentors above him that we were “attacking the church”. He could not perceive that we were not attacking the true Church, rather the false church; that we were exposing spiritual abuses, not genuine spiritual rights; that we were attacking lies, and supporting truth; that we were attacking vile attitudes and approaches. He didn’t read our material with an open mind – because he had been conditioned against it and against us, no matter what we did or said. He had allowed other men to steal away from him any benefit he could have received from the spiritual materials we were making available. He had shut his mind – and made sure he shut the minds of all in his ‘domain’ – to the value of anything else other than from within the WCG.

This approach was typical of the ‘loyal’ WCG member in the nineties. It still is very much the ascendant attitude, howbeit much more subconsciously held than before, because of the more recent attempt to exonerate the WCG from its evil past.

What Jesus said to the Pharisees is just as applicable to the WCG:

Hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You your- selves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you... You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you (Matt 23:13,15, NIV).

Mind control is no new thing. It is as old as mankind.

Ironically, people prefer someone telling them what they should do and what they should believe. This submission to human authority was prophesied by Jeremiah:

A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies and the priests rule by their own authority, and My people love it this way. But what will you do in the end? (Jer 5:30,31, NIV).

That is the question few stop to ask themselves.

Injustice

Wherever God’s people are, Satan tries to subjugate them and capture them. What Jeremiah prophesied has been fulfilled in the WCG (and other groups where similar mind control is exerted:

Among My people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. Like cages full of birds their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor (Jer 5:26-28, NIV).

The WCG ministry did, true to the prophecy, become rich and powerful, and such riches and power were not entirely blessings from heaven. They were the ‘rewards’ of operating a tightly controlled system. WCG ministers controlled and trapped people, like caged birds, through deceit[12]. They have given them part of the truth and then claimed it is all the truth. With that in gullible people’s minds, they do not look outside the confines of their group of fellowship. Who needs to look elsewhere when all the truth is available within the body to which you have been called? The real truth is that all the truth is not available there. No group on earth has a monopoly on God’s truth. Every group has a mixture of truth and error. Some have more truth than others, but no one denomination or church has exclusive possession of all spiritual understanding.

However, this is the bait with which the WCG have been able to capture and hold captive its members for decades. It is not the only cult which has promoted such a lie to its members. There are many others who follow suit: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Church of Christ, Moonies, Christadelphians and many others. It is one of Satan’s favourite tricks because it works so well.

While they believe this fallacy, ministers feel justified in exerting control over ‘their subjects’ to retain their membership and members’ loyalty. The WCG has traditionally believed that the perceived ends justify the means. Manipulation and coercion are therefore acceptable. Lies, innuendo, and making black look white have all been part of their evil scheme to exert influence. Jeremiah prophesied, “their evil deeds have no limit” (Jer 5:28).

Isaiah predicted:

No-one calls for justice; no-one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil. They hatch the eggs of vipers [Satan begins to cause mayhem by planting his eggs amongst the brood – false teachings start from a small beginning] and spin a spider’s web [the Russian name Tkach means weaver]. Whoever eats their eggs will die, and when one is broken an adder is hatched. Their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are evil deeds… (Is 59:4-6, NIV).

It is no coincidence that the name of the present leader of the Worldwide Church of God, Tkach, means weaver in Russian. He is of Russian descent. The cobwebs that the church has spun under his direction have got people entangled, not liberated them inside. They are no use as spiritual clothing to put on.

Isaiah continues,

So justice is far from us and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows (v 9, NIV). The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no-one who walks in them will know peace (v 8, NIV).

The WCG teaching is now so deeply entrenched in liberal heresy that they cannot offer the spiritual peace talked about above to their ‘converts’.

Fear

Since our illicit expulsion from the WCG, we have on occasion ‘bumped into’ former friends from the church. In conversation, we tried to explain that we were ejected without a fair trial; that we were lied about; that the ministry behaved deceitfully in getting rid of us. In every instance, former friends did not want to listen to our words. They feared to do so. They shut their ears and closed their minds.

That sort of fear is not of God. Fear to face the truth is cowardice. It is instilled by the devil. It is a fear to do anything that their ‘superiors’ would disapprove of. That is the kind of loyalty those who rule the WCG imperceptibly demand from their members. WCG members are conditioned through a system of fear. However, it has become a fear of man, rather than fear of God. Those afflicted with this sort of thinking cannot see how they are trapped and controlled by Satan.

The WCG filled people’s minds with the false notion that any outside their organisation are of the devil. So, they thought that by listening to an outsider they are listening to satanic lies. It is well nigh impossible to reach their minds, they are so gripped with organisational loyalty. They don’t see that they are the ones who have believed the greater lies!

Oppression

The Isaiah 59 prophecy is not directed at those who don’t care to know God. It is pointed at those who do! In chapter 58 God calls His people...

...to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke (Is 58:6, NIV).

Oppressed people within the WCG cannot see that they are oppressed. Even many who leave for one reason or another are not able to break completely free of the oppression that has held them mentally and spiritually in bondage. This form of oppression is very often difficult to discern. It is spiritual. It takes place deep within.

Satan’s main objective in oppressing Christians is to divert them from the purpose of their calling. That purpose is to become sons of God – to become like Him in our spirit. It is not a cosmetic or superficial change that needs to occur within us. What must take place is a radical transformation in approach – from the heart. If Satan can divert our attention from this inner change and get our attention fixed on ‘externals’, such as doctrine, ritual, self-generated ‘deeds’, or focus on church leaders, he can oppress us.

Church organisations often unwittingly encourage this oppression via dogmatic emphasis on these ‘peripherals’. The WCG has certainly done so!

The Lord says: These people come near to Me with their mouth and honour Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men (Is 29:13, NIV).

God reveals here the source of the rot. The heart is not right with God. Their motivation is selfish, not God-centred. The result is ritualism.

This is what happens when hearts are not right with God:

...the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish (v 14, NIV).

It has led to the demise of the WCG. Their spiritual wisdom evaporated, and they made many wrong decisions and doctrinal mistakes They permitted oppression and injustice, instead of delivering the fatherless and the poor. They even contrived to oppress: they “do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know?’ ” (v 15.) They think their misdemeanours will be ignored, and because it looks like they get away with their duplicitous actions, they do not turn from sin.

After my wife and I were thrown out of the WCG on fickle and false charges, I remonstrated by way of lengthy detailed letters. I showed that their accusations against us were not worthy of the treatment we received. We had been discharged without justifiable cause, without a fair trial, without any witnesses other than the minister who had falsely accused us. In response, rather than rectify ministerial wrong-doing, the church hierarchy conveniently covered up for it by moving the ‘goalposts’. They “turn things upside down” (Is 29:16).

Because I had objected vociferously to the way we had been framed and ejected by a wolf in sheep’s clothing they used that against me, when it was really against them. They accused me of ‘railing’ (I Cor 5:11). I had written at length, detailing the misdemeanours of the minister who had turned on us. I did this to set the record straight, not because I had any malicious intent against the man. We had invited him into our home in the past and given him meals, as well as supported him in his official capacity. I only submitted my critique of his behaviour so they could see where the fault lay. That is a biblical command (Rom 16:17,18; Eph 5:11). It was not slander; it was the truth. I was not the one slandering; they were the ones slandering us! However, they did not want to face the truth; that was too embarrassing and hurt their pride. So, they oppressed us.

There is nothing that God permits that has not been predicted.

Your brothers who hate you and exclude you because of My name, have said, ‘Let the Lord be glorified [this was ostensibly their reason for excommunicating us], that we may see your joy!’ [Sheer hypocrisy!] Yet they will be put to shame. Hear that uproar from the city, hear that noise from the temple! [there will be an uproar as a result of the abuse God’s people have suffered] (Is 66:5, NIV). [See also Jn 16:2.]

God is not mocked, what you sow you will reap (Gal 6:7). The church hierarchy have sown the wind; they will reap the whirlwind (Hos 8:7).

Those who with a word make a man out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice (Is 29:21, NIV) ...

... God says they will be cut down and will vanish in due course (v 20).

I’m sure the men who lead the organisation think they do the right thing. Their minds have become corrupted by Satan, the arch-deceiver. Jesus said “they will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me” (Jn 16:3, NIV).

Footnotes

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