|
Heaven's Gate: Sign of the Times
A former cult member discusses the whys and wherefores
of this recent tragedy
by Marlene Jones-Skurtu
Mark Applewhite, son of Heaven's Gate cult
leader, Marshall "Do" Applewhite, was quoted on ABC this week as saying,
"People need to go back to the Word of God to find out what it really says."
I wish I had done that.
In the interviews I have seen this week on
Nightline, Good Morning America, and CBS News, the interviewers have repeated
often the phrase that we (as a nation) are "trying to make sense of this".
The ex-members and other estranged family members have often repeated that "I
would not define what they did as suicide," and "we accept our brother's
decision."
Cults and cult-like churches have a way of
creating their own certain brand of truth by taking a normal, Biblical concept
such as "the Kingdom of God" and making it into something completely
unidentifiable as "the mother-ship" where you can go once you have
"evolved" to where you can "become the Level Beyond Human",
to quote Heaven's Gate. By the view on the their web page, this character appears
like something out of E.T. or some other science fiction creation. Ultimately,
they were deceived enough to believe that "suicide" was not suicide,
but that it would be suicide to stay in this world when "then next Level
is Being offered," as their document "Our Position On Suicide"
says.
What a complete reversal of terms!
I was a member of a Christian cult called
"The Family" or "The Children of God" for over 10 years
and had been involved in other cults before that. The changing of meaning of
terms is commonplace among cults, not to confuse the rest of the world, but
rather so they can have their own special spin on things to make themselves
feel superior.
Change of terms, exclusiveness, powerful
leadership, new "private" revelations from God, and strict regulations
are the essence of most cults, to contrast them from a normal religious sect
or church. All of these qualities show up in the Heaven's Gate home-pages, even
on their business page, if one knows what to look for.
On their page called "Higher Source",
an ad for their web page business, they proclaim that one should use them to
design his web page because of "the difference". They say, "The
individuals at the core of our group have worked closely together for over 20 years.
During those years, each of us has developed a high degree of skill and know-how
through personal discipline and concerted
effort". This alone not only
shows their communal living, but also the concentrated efforts that cults generally
have, the strict rules (discipline), and the superiority of exclusiveness.
Their leader's Messiah complex may even outweigh
that of the Moonies' Sun Yung Moon or my cult's "end-time prophet",
David "Moses" Berg. "Do" believed he was the 2nd coming
of Jesus, incarnate. They say on their internet page, "Two thousand years
ago, the Kingdom Level Above Human appointed an Older Member to send a Representative
(His 'Son') (sic), along with some of their beginning students, to incarnate
on this garden...Again an 'away team' from the Level Above Human incarnated
in the 1970's in the mature (adult) bodies that had been picked and prepped
for this current mission. This time the "Admiral" (the Older Member,
or 'Father', incarnate in a female vehicle) came with the 'Captain' and his
crew."
People join cults to restore that father
image they may not have had as a child, as well as to have a cause to live for,
and to be loved. So when a charismatic leader reveals that he is God's end-time
prophet or come to finish what Jesus failed to do, or in this case, is actually
the new incarnation from above, the sheep are literally led to the slaughter.
The leader can persuade you to leave parents, children, give them all your possessions,
and put yourself through excessive disciplines that not only can keep you up
all night, eating little or meatless food, but also lead to castration and suicide.
The fear factor works in this (as it did in Jonestown--where they feared US
Government intervention), as well as the feeling that the follower is less spiritual
or knowledgeable than the leader. So when Do (Applewhite) told them that this
was the time they'd been waiting for, they believed it. Their opening page says,
"The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human
(the 'Kingdom of God') has made it
clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach
is the "marker" weíve been waiting for...to take us home...to
leave 'this world' and go with Ti's crew." This not only shows his powerful
leadership, but the private "revelation" that all cults seem to get.
Now, cults are not the only ones that believe
we are in the end-times. The Bible is full of descriptions that many preachers
discuss, relating to these days. Was Hale-Bopp a sign? Could be, but nothing
so rash as to take matters into our own hands. Rather, in Matthew 24, when Jesus
was asked what would be the sign of the end, His
first response was that "many
shall come in my name, saying, 'I am Christ,' and shall deceive many";
in other words, the cults themselves would be a sign of the end-times.
I ended up leaving my cult, partly because
of my family ties. If the parents of the Heavenís Gate group had not
resigned themselves to their childrenís fate, maybe they would still
be living today. It is up to us as individuals to not only know the truth, but
to also "be our brotherís keeper" when such power-hungry cult
leaders are wanting to gobble up anyone who needs love or a cause to live (or
die) for.
-end-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marlene Jones-Skurtu is the director
of Sword of the Lord Ministries which reaches out to cult and ex-cult members.
Her web page is www.post1.com/~sword. She co-hosts "NightTalk" on
KJRT on Sunday nights at 9 pm.
Email: sword@post1.com
|