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~programmers
use force. They
bodily kidnap their victims, take
them toa room and forcibly keep
them from leaving.
Prophesled In God 's Word
Western society prides itself on
its tolerance. Fanatic religious
persecution- burning people at
the stake because they believe
ditferently from the majority of
the community- supposedly is a
thing of the past. And yet we
have-in a world that will toler–
ate almost anything in tbe area of
lifestyles- deprogramming, a
brutal practice, identical in kind,
if not degree, to what went on in
the worst of the Middle Ages.
It should be no surprise to
those who take Bible prophecy
seriously. Christ, expressly refer–
ring to the time near His return,
predicted that in an era of perse–
cution H is followers, too, would
be persecuted:
"And great earthquakes shall
be in divers places, and famines,
and pestilences.... But before all
these, they shall lay their hands
on you and persecute you, deliv–
ering you up to the synagogues
and into prisons, being brought
before kings and rulers for my
name's sake" (Luke 21 :12).
Christ here is describing a gen–
eral persecution of His Church
just before the Great Tribulation
that precedes His return. The book
of Revelation also predicts such
religious persecution, even actual
martyrdom in the last days:
"And when he [the Lamb, i.e.,
Christ] had opened the fifth seal,
I saw under the altar the souls of
them that were
s/ainfor the word
of God,
and for the testimony
which they held:
"And they cried with a loud
voice, saying, How long, O Lord,
holy and true, dost thou not judge
and
avenge our blood
on them
that dwell on the earth?
"And white robes were g iven
unto every one of them; and it
was said unto them, that they
should rest yet for a little season,
until their fcllowservants also and
their brethren,
that should be
kil/ed as they were,
should be
December 1980
fulfilled" (Revelation 6:9-1 1)
(emphasis added).
With the attack on the Church
of God by the attorney general of
California, the very beginning of
this persecution has already be–
gun in America. While, to my
knowledge, no member of God's
Church has yet been a victim of
deprogramming, widespread ac–
ceptance of deprogramming adds
to the general climate of religious
oppression. Society has come to
t ake religious beliefs for
granted.
The very idea of deprogram–
ming evidences contempt for reli–
gious freedom, indeed, religion
itself. For example, Ted Patrick,
t!t!
Deprogramming is not, m
one law professor's
unfortunate phrase, 'a
form of marathon
encounter therapy.' It is
a medieval inquisition
' '
the world's most renowned depro–
grammer, is plain about his con–
tempt for religious freedom. De–
scribing freedom of religion, he
told one interviewer: "Everybody
is afraid of it. It 's one of the
biggest rackets the world has ever
known, this religious bit."
And believe it or not, depro–
gramming can even be done with
court sanction. Parents, disliking
their children's new-found reli–
gion, go to a court and convince
the judge to put thei r children in
conservatorship. The legal theory
behind conservatorships is that
the person cannot take care of
himself so someone else must run
his life for hi s own good. A
conservatorship can be ordered
without the person whose rights
are being taken away even know–
ing what's happening! In one
case, the parents convinced the
judge through testimony of a psy–
chiatrist who himself had never
even seen the person in question.
Note the eerie paraJJels with
the attorney general's attack on
the Church of God! A conserva–
torship is like the receivership
that was imposed, in the early
months of 1979, on the Church.
The person loses his rights and
finds himself totally under the
control of someone appointed by
a court, just as the Church was
denied its rights and put under
the control of someone appointed
by a court. A conservatorship is
supposedly done for the person's
own good, regardless of what he
may think about it himself, the
same way the receivership im–
posed on the Church was justified
by saying it was for the Church's
own good. (As if courts knew
better than the individuals-or
churches themselves-what was
good for them.) And often the
person about to have his rights
stripped from him is denied even
the opportunity to present his
side of the case, the same as when
the Church was denied its rights
by an illegal court hearing held
without any chance to respond .
And there may be one more
parallel- perhaps most outrageous
of all. Harry Stathos, a columnist
for a Moonie paper, the
New York
News World,
has charged that
t here have been cases where
judges have been paid off–
bribed-to sign conservatorships.
As readers of my book
Against the
Gates of He//
(excerpts of which
appear in this issue) have discov–
ered, greed similarly motivated the
main characters who tried to
impose the receivership on the
Church of God.
Deprogramming has set the
stage for a more widespread reli–
gious persecution, prophesied by
the Bible. The fact that there are
courts today that will tolerate it
reveals how close the time of
general persecution really is.
Christ said, "The time cometh,
that whosoever killeth you will
think that he doeth God service"
(John 16:2). The time has already
come when whosoever kidnaps
and torments you thinks be's
doing you a favor. o
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