Leaving A Cult to Find My Faith in Christ w/ Dr. Paul Cooke

What if your hunger for God is influenced by mistaking a bad shepherd for a good one, and you don't even realize it? That’s the tension Dr. Paul Cooke lived for nine years inside a communal Christian movement that slowly shifted from gospel language to leader loyalty. He walks us through the moments that felt noble, the verses that sounded convincing, and the tiny checks in his spirit that he kept pushing aside—until one letter after Jonestown shattered the spell and forced an honest look at what devotion had become.

We get specific about how spiritual manipulation works. Scripture gets sliced out of context—Acts 2 becomes a yardstick for “real” faith, family becomes the enemy via weaponized verses, and references to “David” or the “key of David” get recast to crown a modern prophet. Music tilts toward the man, not the Messiah. Isolation becomes proof of purity. Dr. Cooke explains how good desires—community, sacrifice, mission—can be co-opted when the cross fades and charisma fills the gap. His story shows why breakthroughs often hinge on a single undeniable moment that reveals the system behind the stories.

We then turn to healing and discernment. Recovery from brainwashing is possible; time, truth, and safe relationships help the mind reset. If someone you love is in a controlling church or movement, keep the lines open. Ask questions that invite reflection. Be a place to land, not a cliff to jump from. And for anyone searching for a faithful home, look for accountable leadership, plurality of elders, transparent practices, and preaching that consistently leads to the cross rather than the personality on stage. When leaders can be told “no,” when Scripture is taught in context, and when love outlasts hype, people grow.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more seekers can find a safer path to a deeper faith.

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome Back And Today’s Aim
• 1:00 Dr. Cook’s Background And Conversion
• 3:46 Entering A Communal Group
• 6:24 Early Red Flags And Scripture Misuse
• 10:57 Jonestown Shock And Awakening
• 14:43 Leaving, Illness, And Rebuilding Life
• 20:13 How Verses Were Twisted To Obey A Leader
• 26:41 Parents, Opposition, And Legal Pressure
• 34:35 Deprogramming, Brainwashing, And Recovery
• 40:15 Can You Leave While Inside A Cult
• 46:03 Keeping The Door Open For Loved Ones

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:06

Alright everyone, welcome back to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. Coming back again with another great episode, two episodes actually. These will be back to back. And I've had this guest on before, Dr. Paul Cook. He has joined me on the podcast. We had such a great conversation last time, it only made sense for us to do it again. So, Dr. Paul Cook, thank you for being here today.

SPEAKER_02: 0:31

It's my pleasure to see you again, Sam.

SPEAKER_01: 0:33

Yes, sir, yes, sir. I'm excited about our topic, similar to the one we discussed last time, but I think one of the things that I remember from our last conversation was that I almost I wish we could have gone deeper and explored a little bit more. I mean, we covered so much already, but I think with the questions that we have for today, I think we'll go even a little bit uh more deeper and uh and really cover this topic in in full. But um, but yeah, I mean, Dr. Cook, uh, if you can just give uh a brief intro of yourself and your background and uh why this topic is important to you as well, and then we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09

Okay, Sam. Um, I grew up in Houston uh when I dropped out of college in 1969, in the middle of my sophomore year, um, to look for the truth. And uh about uh nine months later I became a Christian. I grew up in a Jewish home. Uh my parents were quite um upset by that. Uh and then uh a few months after that, I met a group of people, they looked like a bunch of hippies, but they were Christians carrying Bibles and uh saying, living communally, saying, We are we are more committed than the churches, this is the way to be a Christian full-time, not just on Sundays and Wednesdays. And uh you can join us full-time, you have to forsake all and live communally like we do. And I was only 20 years old. I said, That's what I'm gonna do. So I joined them, and um I did not know that what I was joining was a cult. The cults were not on people's radar very much in uh December of 1969, it was just the beginning, it was also the beginning of the sort of Jesus movement, Jesus people. Lots of um young people were getting uh excited about the gospel, uh, and this looked to me to be the way to go. Um, but over uh a period of time, things changed, and uh what became evident was that the leader um had distinct ideas about how to be a Christian, and we slowly began evolving in his direction because we trusted him. And um we did not know, I did not know that I was involved with a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is what Jesus said about false teachers, and um he led us into um some bad stuff, yeah. And uh I won't go into the details now, but uh after nine years I left. My I saw I had an experience with I said, Oh, that's what's going on, and that changed my mind. Um uh I'll just in a nutshell, it was I was in South America, and uh it was just in November of 1978, and one day I saw on the news that a group of religious people had committed mass suicide on the other side of South America in Guyana. I was in Chile, which is on the very southern part. Guyana's in the very northern part next to Venezuela. Was that the gym? That was Jim Jones's people's temple. And um, I thought that there were some things I read about it because it was a sort of a fascination. I read the news. They all drank the Kool-Aid. It was laced with cyanide. That's where that phrase, drink the Kool-Aid, comes from. Uh so about two weeks later, we were communicated with regularly in our group. There were about 8,000 of us scattered in hundreds of little communes around the world. And uh, our leader regularly wrote to us, uh, guiding us about what the Lord wanted and so on. And he wrote to us about Jonestown. And on the cover of the missive that he sent, they were always well illustrated by some very good artists that were in the group, were the bodies that were lying on the ground at Jonestown, and from each body ascended a sort of spirit with arms outreached as though they were joyously going to heaven. And it was like a beautifying what was, in my view, a kind of surreptitious mass murder. And I thought, I can't believe it. And then we began to read the myths that we used to read them in our communes when the leader would read them, and in the letter, our leader justified what Jones's people had done. He said they had been pushed into a corner by the Americans who were against them, that's why they fled from San Francisco, California, to Guyana a few years before, and the U.S. was still pursuing them and persecuting them, and they took the only road out they had up. And I said, No, that can't be right. And so it was shocking to me because it was the first time I really said no to the leader. He wasn't there, it was through his missive. I I said, it was such a shock. I was for a day or so, I was um I was in a strange place because I said, if this is what's going on, I can't stay here. And yet this is my home, this is where all my friends are. I've been doing this for nine almost a decade. Uh and then a few a couple of weeks later, he sent another missive to us saying, so that the world doesn't think we're like Jonestown. I want all of you who can go home and visit your families to show them that we're free. And I said, That's what I'm gonna do. And I I wrote, I called my parents, they sent me a round trip fare, but I suspected, I couldn't admit it to myself, yeah, that this is a golden opportunity to leave, and I just may not be coming back. And that's what happened. Wow, but it took me a long time to realize once I'd gotten home and I was away from living in the atmosphere, the bubble created by the cult and by the leaders' letters and by our mutual belief in them. When I was outside of that for the first time for weeks on end, I began to see in some way that it wasn't the end of everything to be out of the group. Because in the group, the only real existence, the only real joy, the only real Christian life is in the group. And I saw when I was out of the group for about a month, I began to see it wasn't necessarily so. Uh and then but I was gonna go back anyway because it was such an old habit in spite of everything. And on the eve of returning, I came down with hepatitis. I couldn't travel. It was a I I I would say now that God providentially stopped me. Uh but I still was so in uh committed and mixed up that after I got over the hepatitis about a month later, I tried to see about getting my ticket. I learned that the charter airline, which had provided me the one-way home, the return ticket was no longer good because the charter airline had gone out of business.

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 7:29

So the longer I was home, the longer I began to, and then I got in touch with a few other people who had left the group. I thought I was the only one, but I realized that at this time, over the next eight to ten twelve months, almost one ninth uh about a thousand people left the group who had uh of the old timers like me. You said a thousand there were eight thousand in the group, and over the next year or so, about a thousand left. And so this apparently, I didn't realize at the time, I thought I was the only one. This triggered a kind of awakening to the fact that we had been taken for a ride. Though it took the longest time to really begin to put it together that the word that would define what we I didn't think, oh, I've been in a cult. It took a while to figure out that this being deceived in this way and following a false prophet, this is what's called being in a cult. Yeah, it was took me a whole year or so after leaving to realize, yep, I was fooled, I was in a cult.

SPEAKER_01: 8:34

And uh was nine years, huh?

SPEAKER_02: 8:36

I was in it for nine years from twenty to twenty-nine. Wow, nine years and twenty-six days, Sam, to be exact. And um so uh I had to sort of start over. Um I got a job uh re I was first I got a job being a um a uh shipping and receiving clerk, and I was making money after I made I was living with my parents for about five months. I made enough money so that I could get my own place. And um there was a certain joy of go going on Friday getting my paycheck, being an independent guy, going to the bank and putting it in the bank, having enough money to rent a place. Uh, you know, there's a story, uh a kid's story I read about a dog who belonged to himself. He didn't need anybody to take him for a walk. He when he wanted to go for a walk, he went for a walk. When he wanted to eat he ate, it's kind of a kid's story. But I I felt like for the for I was the the dog who belonged to himself instead of the dog who belonged to Moses, David, and the group. I could go what I wanted to, I could do what I wanted to. I had my own money, I could, I, I could uh buy things, I could make plans. I I was and yet I was also said, but I I thought I was serving the Lord. What am I doing now? Yeah, and and so for the next 10 years or so, I uh I I started, I went back to college eventually, I and I went to Harvard and got a PhD even. And so over the uh first I went back to Brown where I dropped out. Well, first I went to the University of Houston for a year, then back to Brown for two years, and then to Harvard. And during this time, these times of study and contemplation and starting life anew were like an antidote, gave me time to think about where I'd been and what had happened to me. I wasn't going to church, but I was reading the Bible. Um, I left the group in uh 1979. So 40, let's see, 47 years ago. That's wrong. But that experience defined my life and recovery from it. And and uh I've written when I when I went back to Brown in 1983, I wrote a long uh autobiographical uh piece. It was 375 pages long, and it was the story of my experience. And I sent it off to some publishers who wrote back, two of them at least wrote me back nice letters saying this is all very interesting, but it's clear to us, to me, they said it separately, but they both said the same thing, that you still haven't made up your mind what happened to you. You're still not clear about what it was that happened to you. And in fact, I showed that manuscript to uh uh uh Professor William McLaughlin, who was a senior professor of the history of American religion at Brown University. He was an expert on the history of religion in America. I gave it to him. He said it was he really loved it, but he said, after he gave it back to me, he wrote me a long uh reader's review, and he said, When I finished the book, I realized that Paul Cook still doesn't know what hit him. And this is this is uh four years, five years after I'd left the group. It's gonna take him 20 years before he really understands, but he was too optimistic. It took me 40 years.

SPEAKER_01: 12:04

Yeah, I I think uh I you know I appreciate you sharing this. And just so the audience knows, you know, obviously we've been talking a little bit about Colts and what that experience was like for you. And the reason why I thought that this topic would be applicable to um this episode or this podcast is that a lot of people are searching for God. And their their attachment to God is shaped in a lot of ways by the relationship that they have with people in the church, by their parents, and so on. So when you shared about your story, one of the things that that struck me was that at the beginning you said you were 20. So you're kind of really still figuring yourself out. And a lot of my listeners are from like 22 to 45. So still in that developmental stage where they're still trying to figure themselves out. So yeah, with the time that you got introduced to the group, if I remember correctly, you said you were also in a very vulnerable position or in a vulnerable spot where you were searching and it seems like we're willing to do whatever it takes to find some sort of connection to God or be blinded by some of the things that we see that do we start to feel a little iffy about, and I something's off here, right? So can you can you share a little bit about that um deception, or maybe, or maybe just the honest desire to want to know God and how that led to you accepting the things that were happening within the group? Because I feel like a lot of people get to that point.

SPEAKER_02: 13:32

Yes. Well, uh I had been working as a carpenter's apprentice, and the reason I became a carpenter's apprentice was because I, as a Jewish kid, I thought I admired Jesus, I wanted to be like him in some way, or be near him in any way. I didn't think I could be like him, but I wanted to be near him. Yeah, and it I didn't doubt that he was alive, even though I didn't believe in the resurrection. He seemed real to me. Uh and so I became a carpenter's apprentice thinking that uh something good would happen to me. And that's what did happen. I met a carpenter who started telling me about Jesus. He invited me to his church, and in August of 1969, I was led to the Lord by the pastor, Joe Wall, in Houston, Texas. Uh and Joe uh got me a little tracked, uh, it's called Four Spiritual Laws, and it had a little Star of David, especially written for Jewish kids. And I became a Christian, started going to his church, and uh he took me under his wing. Uh and then around uh December, he went to India on a mission trip and he asked a young couple at the church to keep an eye on me, a new believer, while he was away. And so I went to church on December 7th, 1969, and there was this couple. They were very they were a little bit older than me, not much. They had two little kids, and uh um they said, Oh, did you read in the Houston Chronicle? There's some hippie Christians camped out in in the park, in in Bear Creek Park, which is a county park outside of Houston. We're gonna go take it's cold outside, we're gonna take them some blankets and some toys for their kids because we're getting near Christmas. Uh, would you like to come home and have lunch with us and come out and visit them? And I said, Sure. And so that's what happened. And they didn't know. I mean, there was a nice article on the front page of the Houston Chronicles, the main paper in town. Uh, these wandering Christians going around sharing the gospel. And my friends were wanted to share the gospel, and they said, Let's go look visit them. And when we visited them, uh, it was a very interesting experience because they they claimed that if you really want to be a dedicated Christian, you have to live communally. They quoted Acts chapter 2, and indeed the Jerusalem church at the beginning did live communally. And they the verse was all that believed together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And so the um guy talking to me, he took out his little New Testament. They all were carrying New Testaments and he showed me the verses. And I said, He said, Are you living communally? I said, No. He says, But we live communally and we live full time. How often do you go to church? Well, twice a week. He said, We don't have to go to church. I said, Oh, we are the church and we are living together full time 24-7. And he said, Can you match that? And they said, and uh, what are you have your own private world, your own little private place? He said, Because the Bible says, Jesus said, so likewise he be whoever he be of you that forsakes not all that he has, can't be my disciple. Have you forsaken all your worldly goods?

SPEAKER_01: 16:38

I said, Wow, no.

SPEAKER_02: 16:41

So they took verses out of context.

SPEAKER_01: 16:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:45

The early church, you know, the the church in Thessalonica, the church in Ephesus, the church in in F in uh Philadelphia, in um uh the Philippians, that says nothing about them living communally. They were the epistles to those churches are full of all kinds of advice, but it doesn't say, are you living communally? It was only the Jerusalem church. And I read a few years ago I found a uh a book by uh uh John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, and it's called Jerusalem Sinners Saved. And it talks about how the worst sinners of all, that is to say, the ones who actually were responsible for the crucifixion of the Lord, they made the biggest repentance of all. Because when they were convicted, when Paul preached to them on in Acts chapter 2, they were so cut to the heart that they they they they repented in such a way that they lived communally. He says no church has ever been like that ever since. And uh and so that gives you some context of why the Jerusalem church, it says in the book of Acts, lived that way. And by the time you get to Acts 15, it doesn't say anything further about them living communally. Maybe they were no longer doing that uh after you know after 20 or 30 years had passed in Jerusalem. But at the beginning they were, and yet the group was claiming this is how you ought to live. Now, there's nothing wrong with living. I mean, the Catholic Church has monks living that way in the early years of the church. That was a lot, there was that sort of thing. And as far as forsaking all, being a disciple, well, that's something you do daily. It's not you you get rid of all your stuff once and you've now forsaken all. Uh it's it was as though you do this once and you're you've done it. And so it's like if you're living communally, if you've forsaken all, you're justified. As far as God's concerned, you've now joined his green berets. And so that was that was sort of instead of saying except for Christ, you're utterly lost. And if except for the cross of Christ and the substitutionary atonement, you have no hope. And if you do believe he saved you, then you want to give yourself to him daily. But that's not what was said. And in fact, over the years, Sam, there was very little attention given to the cross. The cross was not, you know, uh uh Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century Baptist preacher, said, if your sermon doesn't bring you to the cross, there's something wrong. He says, every sermon, he said, and he might have said, if you're in England, every road leads to London. And if you have to, if there is no road, you have to cross the hedge, the hedges, and the fields until you get to a road to get to London. And that's how your life ought to be in terms of preaching. If you if it's not evident that this passage takes you to the cross, take the road from that passage to the next road that does take you to the cross, because that is where the business of the church takes place. That's where your sins get paid for. That's the heart of the Christian message is that God gave his only begotten son and who was innocent to pay for you who are guilty. And Jesus took it all, he paid it all. And so that message, I think everyone in the group would agree that was true. Did they never preach that? It wasn't preached. It wasn't well, in the early days, we used to go out on the streets with little New Testaments and preach to people on the street. And and that would be part of it. But uh the second part would be well, if you believe it, you've got to come live with us communally. So that was the real emphasis. The communal living was the main because the church and and continual attacking of the churches for not living more committed lives. Now, the truth is that the churches are guilty, or at least in 1969, there was a lot of failure. The churches were, you know, well, you talked in your email about the seven churches in Ephesus. You get seven churches, they're going to get seven different that not all churches are the same. They have problems. That's why Paul wrote these epistles to the some of the churches like uh the Philadelphia uh in Philippi, they were doing great. The churches in the church in in Ephesus was having some problems. And the church in Corinth, oh, they needed to but it it the churches have problems. And um, so the night I joined, I went, I heard the uh the son of the leader talking in the tent. I went, I was invited to the tent where all the people were. It was a cold night, and everybody was in there communally, and he was talking. He said, Those people who came out here yesterday, those church people, they think they're living for the Lord, and all they do is they look down at us, but you know what? We're living for the Lord, and they're not. And I said, Well, I came out with those people yesterday, and to the best of their ability, I thought they were living for the Lord. But I thought, this is so exciting. These people are, I'm just gonna let that pass. There was a little check. The Lord gave me a little bit of check. That's an unfair criticism. It's it's not right. There is something to be criticized, but it was not done with love, and and and I was aware, but I said, I'm just gonna let that pass because I was so excited about being with these people, and so many of them were so and so that kind of thing over the next few years, every now and then, little things like that would happen. Let me give you one more example. Some of the people in the group started, there were some terrific songwriters in the group and guitar players, very talented musicians. And they some of them wrote some really wonderful songs that were really gospel-centered songs, but some of them, the songs, one of the songs used to say, We have come to serve him, David our king. The leader of the group was named David Berg. We call it, or he changed his name to Moses David. Everybody took a Bible name. And like they wrote that song for him specifically. Yeah, he says, We have come to serve him, David our king. He said, Uh uh and I thought, I don't like that. I'm here to serve Jesus. That's off right away. Yeah, yeah. And I thought, well, these are just some overly enthusiastic new babes who've joined the group and don't know any better. And if if Mo, we called him Mo, if Mo knew he wouldn't approve. And so I buried it, I repressed, and but I was getting little uh checks that that's something, and when when I finally did leave the group, I saw that all there was a whole chain of little things like that, which revealed and to some extent uh a lack of love, um and a strange uh twisting of scripture.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

Um Do you have other examples of that of how they twisted scripture?

SPEAKER_02: 23:08

Because that informs a lot of how they view God. Well the leader, his name was David Burke, and after a while, in 1972, it was about three years into the group, he wrote us a letter, and it was called David. And he said, I I was it took me a long time to be brave enough to send this to you. But now I have to tell you, the Lord, I I he pushed me so much that I had to share it. But I'm gonna tell you who I really am. I'm the David that's in the scriptures that says that at the last days there's gonna be a David, and he had a verse like uh uh in Hosea and in Jeremiah, you know, in uh Ezekiel 34, it talks about uh uh the great the good shepherds and the bad shepherds. In Hosea 3, it talks about my servant David. This is after David had died, these are the prophets like Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel came hundreds of years after David died around 900 AD, uh BC. So traditionally, Bible scholars will tell you that those references to David are to the Lord, to the Messiah. And he later became called there's the son of David, the blind man by the road to Jericho said, Son of David, have mercy on me. You know, and Jesus healed him and gave him his sight. But Mo said, because we're ignorant of the Bible. I mean, we read the Bible, but he was our teacher, so he twisted, he said, This David is the Lord showed me, that's me. I'm in the Bible, I'm I'm the David of the end time. And he took the verse in in Revelation, you know, in in um one of the three, one of the seven, I think it's uh um is it Philadelphia? One of the seven churches says the Lord says, I have the key of David. Right? It's a verse that says something like that in one of the seven churches in Revelation, I think it's in chapter three. Uh it might be Philadelphia, but it's one of the churches. And um so Mo said that three different prophetesses of God had come to him over the years and independently said, That verse is for you. That's about you. You are the key of the death. And so here we had people, this is, I think, an example of uh the gifts being misused, you know, the chapters to do with the gifts of prophecy and so on, but which is a big thing at the Pentecostal circles. It's really intrigued with the gifts, sometimes to the expense of not caring very much about the giver of the gifts.

SPEAKER_00: 25:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 25:43

And and uh there was a there was a strain of that in our group where, especially regarding the leader, the different prophets, and he began getting prophecies from God and and using verses in the scriptures to confirm. So uh this sort of thing, yeah. And and by the time once he decided that he was God's prophet, as one time he said, I've got the fire, no matter what I say, they'll follow me now that I'm they know that I'm from God, right? And there was too much truth to that until finally, and he was the thing about him was he was a charming character. Did did you ever see um the musical uh movie that was a musical on Broadway called The Music Man? No, you know that story? Well, the music man is a is a flim flam man, he's a con artist. He comes from goes from town to town and he persuades the people that the kids need to learn to play the musical instruments and get beautiful band uniforms, and he also he'll teach them. And so he collects money from everybody, orders the and then he pretends to order the band uniforms and the instruments, but then he skips town with all the money and goes to another city and does it again. And he's very charming. He sells everybody, and uh finally what happens in the story in the movie is that he goes to one town and he falls in love with the town librarian and he fesses up that he instead he he waits, he stays, and and it turns out that he can't teach him to play the instruments at all. But then the movie ends in this sort of fantastic thing where they're all playing 76 trombones. That's what that 76 trombs, and it it's sort of a uh a leap of faith that he it all works out because he falls in love with the librarian. But the the main part of the story is he charms people into believing a bunch of baloney, and that's what Moses David was like. He was a charmer, uh or uh you can read it in lots of fiction. Um or or he's also a little bit like the wizard and the wizard of oz, sort of awesome, you know. Who was he really? It's a little guy behind you remember the Wizard of Oz you've seen the movie where uh the dog pulls the curtain and and there's the wizard, he's just this little guy, but he's got all these controls and he makes this huge head in the front of the uh the building, steam comes out in a scary voice. That's the leader was just a little guy, too. But he he he had this way of making himself seem awesome. And we were also he he he understood. I mean, so many people in the group were dropouts, hippies, ex veterans, uh radicals, people uh hit looking for, especially in the late 60s, early 70s, there's sort of the youth revolution. Yeah, all kinds of authorities were being um rejected, and people were open to the truth, it could be anywhere. And the uh the truth's in Christ, it could be, it doesn't necessarily be in the churches. This guy could be the truth. And and he started wearing a beret, and uh he's talking about your parents are the real rebels against God. You are they they call you rebels, but the real rebels are your parents, they've turned from God, but you've turned back to God, and so he would praise us, flatter us, and um, our parents were the enemy. And so when my parents came out to visit, I would already have been, you know, here's another verse that was that was misused. John uh Matthew 10, 36. It says, A man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross daily and followeth after me is not worthy of me. So we memorize that verse, and then it almost seems as though we did our best to make it come true by being uh unpleasant to our parents. And so parents began realizing when their kids joined that their kids suddenly were turning against them, and they got all upset. And my father got particularly upset. Uh it took a while, but when my dad got angry, he really got angry, and he organized a group called Free Cog, Free Our Children from the Children of God. And he was one of the four leaders, and hundreds of parents uh got in touch with him saying, My daughter, my son is drawn off from this group, and I don't understand it. I can't even get find them anymore. And they began putting out newsletters and having meetings, and um eventually there was some bad publicity in the newspapers, and finally the attorney general of the state of New York um published a white paper uh uh really exposing the children of God as a kind of uh um cult. It was so bad that the leader, David Burke, fled the United States. He knew he was in danger of being arrested. He wasn't particularly fond of the United States anyway, and he lived began living abroad. And um my father, of course, it was terribly embarrassing to me. I was a loyal member of the group, but I said, Dad, I want you to leave us alone. And the group finally sued my dad and three other men for a million dollars. Um, and it was that that finally my father said, I've had if you want to be with them, go ahead. If you want to waste your life, go ahead. After spending lots of his money and lots of his time for three or four years. Um my father said, After I left the group, I thank God I had 10 years with my father after I left the group. You know, he never he never said I told you so. He never tried to rub it in. He was just glad that I was out.

SPEAKER_01: 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:18

In fact, he once said to me, You know, now that you're out, I can see how it's good for you. Because you're wiser now. You're not going to be deceived as easily. You're you're wiser for all your trouble. And I thought it was really big-hearted of my dad, considering all the things I put him through, to say such a thing. But he said, I gave up on you, but your mother never gave up on you. So yeah, there's that that's one riff I've asked me another question.

SPEAKER_01: 31:48

No, no, that's good. That's good. I I was I was thinking as you were sharing that because it sounds like he pitted you guys against your parents. Did you guys start to see him as like a substitute parent in a sense? Because I don't know how old he was.

SPEAKER_02: 32:00

Oh yeah, in fact, uh, yes, exactly. He was he was uh when I joined, he was 49 and I was 20. So he was 30 years older than, and most of us were the oldest among us were in our mid-30s, but most of us were in our mid-20s, younger 20s. Young people, very few older people. They were rare, they were a few. And um he he uh backed off of that for after a while because he realized that there was no need for it. He was just making enemies for the group, and uh so beginning in 1972 or so, I started, I could I've I would go to my parents' apartment and spend the night, and we'd have an argument. Once my parents brought an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, they were almost as alienated from that form of Judaism as they were from Christianity, but because they were so pitted against what I was doing, this Orthodox Jewish rabbi comes and we have this debate. And of course, in the group, one thing we did do, which was a good thing, is we memorized the Bible all the time. I memorized thousands of verses, and so though we had the wrong interpretation, about half of them, so the rabbi and I fought for half an hour. It was quite a quite a scene, but nothing was accomplished. Uh and then another time later, my father told me that there was a a man, his name was uh Patrick, I forgot his first name, uh, but he was involved in deprogramming people, kidnapping them, taking them to a motel, and sort of reverse brainwashing them. That was the idea. He had been a California state official, and uh he said to my father once, because my father was about to be well known as leader of Free Cog, he said, one time when your son comes home, I'll just I know some linebackers for the Houston Oilers. This is when the Houston Oilers were still in Houston. We'll just nab him, take him to a motel, and we'll deprogram him. Wow. And my father had said, no, he's too stubborn, it'll backfire, something will go wrong. If he wants to be with him, let him be with him. And so he left me alone, and I eventually left under my own steam. I I would not say that this sort of behavior is absolutely should not happen. Because I know some people have been rescued through this process of an intervention and a you know deprogramming. Uh, who's, for example, a famous, well-known um uh authority on cults who's been done a lot of good. Uh his name is um Steve Hassan or Hassan. He's written a lot of books on he was a Mooney for a couple. He was a Yale student, he was an Ivy League student. He went to Yale, he dropped out of Yale and became a leader actually in the early Mooney days. This is in the early 70s. And his parents uh had him kidnapped and deprogrammed, and um, that's how he got out. And then after he sort of recovered, he became, he gave his life to fighting cults. And he's written a number of books about it. He's he's perhaps one of the most well-known former cult members. He was never a Christian, he was a boonie, but he he has come to understand a great deal about cults. He made friends with uh Robert J. Lifton. Lifton is an expert on brainwashing. He first began learning about brainwashing uh by interviewing American soldiers who had been captured by the North Koreans in the Korean War and brainwashed, and studied how they were brainwashed and how they recovered. And he discovered that recovery from brainwashing is quite possible. Uh, it's not a permanent thing. Yeah. Uh but it's certainly while you're under the influence of your captors or those who are you've yielded to, you can certainly be the uh a brainwashed person, no doubt about that.

SPEAKER_01: 35:41

And that's a and that's a pretty uh extreme solution to helping someone get rid of all those thoughts and beliefs that they had. So I'm curious, Dr. Cook, did was I know you mentioned throughout the time that you were there, you noticed some things that just ah, that doesn't seem right. Uh I'm not sure about that. Oh, that's way off, whatever the case is. Do you think then, because you know, people who are listening, if they're in this, they're hearing this for the first time and they're saying, oh, now they can start asking the questions, right? Oh, is this an actual cult or is this drawing me closer to Christ? Are we playing too placing too much emphasis on the preacher or whoever it is? Um, do you think that it's possible for people to figure that out while they're in the cult, or is it something that you notice after the fact? Because you talk a lot about it, it was maybe you know, a year or two after that I start to realize and see these things. Oh wow, all of these things were very manipulative or they were very wrong. So, do you think it's possible to see those things as you're in the process of it and get out, or is the pool of the group too much where you feel guilty for leaving the group, you feel like you're gonna be the outcast, they're gonna say bad things about you. You know, it almost seems like a very difficult decision to make. So I don't know. Well, do you think that's possible?

SPEAKER_02: 37:00

Both scenarios that you've outlined are real and possible.

SPEAKER_01: 37:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 37:05

Both seeing things that oh, oh, it's really difficult, but it happened. I knew people that left over the years, and ultimately, that's what happened to me. Uh something happened. It was, you know, we called our league.

SPEAKER_01: 37:21

What led you to ultimately leave?

SPEAKER_02: 37:23

Well, just that when uh the the thing that really flipped the switch for me was when the letter, the letter we call the Mo letters. When the Mo letter came in, I guess it was December of 1978, about a month after the Jonestown horror took place. Uh he when he justified, I described it to you earlier. Yeah. When he when he in some way uh apologized, justified what Jones's people, and and Jones led them to do this, had done. I said, and they called Jones dad, by the way. We called Mo Dad. That the similarity, you know. I said, when I when I first read that, I remember I bought a Newsweek magazine on the streets of Santiago, Chile. I wanted to read about it in English. I mean, I spoke Spanish a little bit, but uh and I saw there were some similarities, but I said, We're not like that. We're Christians, that I don't know what they were. Uh and then we get the letter from Mo, and Mo Mo defends them. I thought, you know what it was like? I'll tell you another picture. Uh, you you probably didn't read this in high school, but uh there's uh an English uh during the days of Queen Elizabeth, his name was uh Edmund Spencer, and he wrote uh an epic poem. It's just it's a huge book, and nobody can read it anymore. But in the book, it's about knights and ladies and uh and serving the Lord, and it's ultimately a very Christian book. Uh the the there's a character, he's called the Red Cross Knight. He's actually a picture of the Christian warrior, Christian soldier. And he has a lady. This is in the days of knights and ladies, and he serves her. Her name is Una. She's very beautiful and she's very pure and good. Una is like one.

SPEAKER_01: 39:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 39:07

And uh there's an evil magician, Archimago, who hates anybody go serving the Lord that way. He's always trying to destroy people who are devoted to the Lord, just like the devil. And he has an assistant who's a wicked witch whose name is Duessa. She says, Una, she's one. Duessa is two, she's two-faced, you can't be trust her. And Duessa is a wicked, ugly witch, but she has a magical power. She can turn herself into um, you know, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn, she can make herself look utterly beautiful, you know. And uh, so he's given a dream by this wicked magician that Una has been unfaithful to him, but Una was never to be unfaithful. And so he leaves her, and then he meets Duessa, and she becomes his lady, and he serves her. And one day, by accident, because he's a pure guy, he's not a peeping Tom, accident, he sees her. Her bathing with her clothes off in the river. And when her clothes are off, she's not the beautiful Duessa that he thought she was. She reverts to being this horribly gnarled ugly witch. So when I when we read that Mo letter, it said that Jones was uh actually they did the only thing they had that they had to, they had to do it. It was a good it was okay. Suddenly, it was like seeing, like the Red Cross of the Night seeing Duessa with her clothes off. Instead of being beautiful, instead of being God's end-time prophet, our pastor, our leader, suddenly he looked like a stranger to me. Who is this person who could say that what Jones has had led his people to do was a good thing? And suddenly I was like, it was I was in utter shock because I I thought I was following this beautiful thing. And and this was an ugly thing. But it was I was so into it. After about it for a day, I didn't tell anybody because you you can't share your doubts in the group. It's it's yeah, it destroys it. So, but I I sort of buried it. But then a week or two later came this new letter uh that said, Go home and show your parents we're not like Jones's group, because everybody was assuming that we were, and uh in the outside world. And so I saw this as an opportunity to leave, but I couldn't admit it to myself. I wrote a chapter in my memoirs why I tiptoed out of the children of God, not to disturb anybody else, but so that I wouldn't realize even I wouldn't admit to myself that I was being a backslider because that was the most evil, horrible thing you could do is be a backslider. It's like you're leaving your plow in the field, you're turning your back on Christ. That was how it was meant to be. If you left the group, you were, and I and yet I said, This can't be Christ. So I was completely confused, Sam. I I I don't think I could have been more confused than I was, but I was not so confused that I didn't realize that there was something wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 41:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 41:58

And and and that's what can happen. You wake up and you say, it happens, it took me nine years, but it could happen. Usually, once you're sucked in, you're you're you're so uh enamored of it, charmed of it, that it takes a while. And so what what my advice is to people who've seen a loved one go in is do everything you can to keep communications open. You know, don't don't alienate your loved one because the day will come. It may be nine years down the road, but when it does come, you want the road to be open so they can come home. That's my parents kept they they kept the road open, and I gave them a hard time about it. I mean, I I did I did my best to alienate them, but they persisted in loving me. And uh, and so my advice to parents and loved ones, or husbands or wives who is keep the door open by God's grace. It's good, it can be hard, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01: 42:56

Yeah. Um that's good, sir. That's good. Um, I think, I mean, you covered a lot of what we were planning to discuss regarding the theological beliefs, maybe or teachings that they would give about um or how they would misinterpret scripture. You talked about the importance of community, living together. Um, and yeah, I just think that there's so many people that can easily be deceived. And just that last question of can people actually see this and leave when they when they see these things happening? Or does it have to be an after after you know, number of things happen where they finally say, you know what, this is just way, way too much. And to your point, there's a lot of conflicts, inner conflict. Uh if I leave, I'm gonna get criticized, or you know, do maybe you make friends with people within the group that they're maybe genuinely wanting to know more about Christ, and they're also confused. So, yeah, there's there's I can see how that can be a huge struggle. So, I guess just as a a last takeaway from our interview today, what is something that you want the audience to leave with?

SPEAKER_02: 44:14

Well, here's what's kept to me because a lot of people who left the children of God did not um stick with the Lord. They they sort of they've been burned. They're like the kitty who had jumped on a hot stove and burned itself and would never go near a stove again. Yeah, because all stoves look like they'll burn you. And there have been there were a lot of people who did that. Some people gradually moved over in the direction of a stove, but it took a while because when if you're a believer, you've got to find other believers to be with. You need fellowship, you need to be hearing the word of God preached, the true word of God. And it's hard to do that all the time over the podcast or over uh you know, over the internet, uh, or just reading at home. You eventually need fellowship.

SPEAKER_01: 45:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 45:11

And so I would say you want to find a church where Christ is honored and the Bible is believed as the uh true word of God, and where leadership has accountability. Because you can have a church in which the leader is something of an autocrat. And so you want to have accountable leadership that doesn't rule by itself, by himself or or or in some places herself. Of course, we don't believe I don't, I'm pretty orthodox now. I I don't believe that a head the head pastor should be a woman, um complementary, and I believe women have a vital role in the church, but they shouldn't be the leader. Uh but in any case, you need fellowship, and you need a body of elders that the the the that the pastor doesn't try to do the whole thing himself, and people who can say no to the pastor, say, uh Pastor Jones, uh I I'm not sure about that. Or uh so the pastor doesn't rule by himself, and um, and then you need friends who are maybe a little bit older than you in the Lord, who you can sit down with and pray together about problems you have. People, when you're when you're sick, people can pray for you. Uh so God's sheep tend to go in flocks. Uh the trouble with with the leader of the children of God was he was a lone ranger leader. Nobody was nobody around who could say no to him. He didn't want anybody around saying no to him. And it turns out his mother was the same kind of person. He learned it at his mother's knee. There's a whole history of uh of um heterodoxy, of, of heresy, really. Yeah, um, and um so I guess my word to you is if you're if you are a believer, you need to be with other people, but you have to be discerning in picking a church. Yeah, uh, you have to find a place where the Lord is loved and honored, and um the leadership is uh what's the word? They they do justly, they love mercy, and they walk humbly with the Lord. And um there are there are plenty of churches like that.

SPEAKER_01: 47:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, that's a good word, Dr. Cook. Um, well, this was an important topic. I think uh it's gonna be helpful for those who are listening. And um, again, if it's not you, and if you're listening to this podcast and you feel, well, no, I don't think this is me, or maybe it is. We have some good advice here, but also maybe you know someone who is going to a church where you see these characteristics and maybe again kind of open up uh this conversation and having that door open, not pushing them away. I think for me, at least many years ago, it would have been a lot harder for me to keep that door open. I think today I'm more uh ready to know that people are gonna make decisions and that I can still leave that door open if they need to come back or if they decide to come back. Um, before I think I would have been more of a cutoff person, like, okay, well, you don't think that way, then you know you're gonna suffer the consequences, and it is what it is. Um, so I'm glad, I guess, that that's an area where the Lord has has worked in my life. But Dr. Cook, thank you for sharing about your experience and also your wisdom on the topic as well. I think it will be a blessing to many. And uh, yeah, as I mentioned before at the beginning of the podcast, we're gonna do another episode, and the next one is how the modern church reflects the churches in Revelation. So we'll talk about that next time. Hope you can't join us then. Take care.

SPEAKER_02: 48:35

God bless you. Thank you, Sam.