Anonymous account of a 2006 visit to a "Family" meeting. For more on "The Family", see Wikipedia.
I met members of "The Family" (formerly called Children of God) at one of their home fellowship meetings about three weeks ago where a group of young people from that group were heading their Prophet Bus back to their base of ministry down in the Houston, Texas area. I was invited to their meeting by a friend who is involved with that cultic group, as he thought I might find it interesting to meet them in person. I have done a lot of online research about them, so I know a lot about their weird doctrines (occultic, new age or whatever, mixed in with fundamental or evangelical Christian Biblical doctrines ).
For the most part, the home meeting looked more like a typical evangelical youth home church meeting. But, oh yeah, I got the typical love bomb treatment.
Each one of them in the group passionately hugged and embraced me, and again before I left that evening! That did not surprise me!The young people on that Prophet Bus team were so excited to tell me how they want to win the lost for Jesus, especially the youth across this nation, etc. Anyway, it was an interesting evening as the last time I had encountered the COG was in Europe back in 1975 when I was in the Navy, but never really interacted with them like I did at this meeting.
I thought the group had disbanded years ago, but, what a bizarre history that group has had. I pray that the Lord through the move of the Holy Spirit would cleanse that group from their occultic, false teachings and other unbiblical and fleshly practices, including allegations of physical and sexual abuse, introduced by the former Missionary and Alliance pastor, David Berg, their former leader and so-called Prophet. There must be somewhere between 9,000 and11,000 members in "The Family" scattered around the world, two-thirds being SGA kids who were born into that cult from the first generation members. They referred to me as a ''friend" (sounds like they were trying to make me feel accepted or something!) and I am sure there was an agenda as to why I was invited to meet with them.