Some years back I knew a woman who got involved in a religious group. It caused many issues with her family and friends. This wasn’t too bad a thing because her family and friends were not the best people anyway. The religious group didn’t like me because we disagreed on many things and had arguments in the past. I was not a religious person myself at this stage.

One day I got a phone call from a crying teenager. It was the daughter of this woman. The daughter did not like me much, we had argued in the past over her wanting to party etc, and her mother came to me for advice and the daughter resented my advice because it limited her time with friends etc who were badly influencing her.

The day that the teenager rang me up she was desperate, and completely horrified about what the religious group had done to her mother. She told me things that amazed me. The religious group had completely taken over the mothers life, guiding her, taking her here and there, involving her in all their religious studies, and keeping a close watch on her life and her activities. Cults do this, they take control of a person’s life, they put down other religions and claim to be the one’s that God is guiding. It is often very hard to tell that you are in a controlling cult while with them, but once free it all becomes clear.

These religious people this woman was with were seen by the public as normal decent people. They were in well educated professionals, were well liked and well known in all local businesses, yet were clever narcissists, and used God to take in insecure people who were easily led and easy victims to seduce into their religion and to control them and how they lived.

Thankfully I knew a friend who had a few contacts in that religion. Once the contact between the mother and the religion was made final, the mother snapped out of the mental hold that they had on her and was ashamed of herself, but very grateful to be free of them. Her daughter, for the first time in years, hugged me with gratitude and thankfulness.

We need to realise that not all people who use the name Jesus and God are following Jesus or God. If people are walking in love then they know God, if they are not then they know not God. Many try to claim that God is with them, but they are held up by tithes, donations, and a flock that is well controlled using tactics such as narcissism and the Stockholm Syndrome and they create a friendship with the victim to hold and control the trusting victims life – next thing the victim knows he or she is doing things and living a life that they are not happy with, but they feel obliged through “friendship” to obey and stay with them.

Matthew Chapter 7, verse 21:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

All the best from

James M Sandbrook.