When did you realize? Oh, crap, I'm in a cult. When I was stationed on Okinawa, late 90s,

I went to this church that seemed to be the pretty generic Christian church, but they met in a

small room above a store. I didn't think too much about that until they got a new pastor.

They owned a house in town and always invited everyone over for some cookouts and Bible study.

The new pastor was actively encouraging the enlisted service members to move into the house

and get the housing allowance to support the house.

Then you wanted to see our LES, which are like our military pay stubs, to ensure you were supporting the church enough.

I think the final straw was when they started taking attendance for their seven days.

And yeah, you were expected to attend some church things seven days a week, with a level of shame for anyone

who didn't make it to everything. I didn't tell them I wasn't going anymore, I just stopped showing up.

They knew where my barracks room was and they sent soul savers to take me back to the church.

The last time they talked to me, they again went with the shame route, that no other church

would get me into heaven, and I told them I think they proved I made the right decision.

I googled my cult's name for the first time, which I thought was just the name of the church,

and I saw many articles about how the leader was charged for a lot of cases of the unspeakable act. I showed my fellow cult members, and they told me,

The leader said that all those articles are lying, and we shouldn't believe them. I reflected some

more and realized that weekday services at 4 a.m. and Sunday services that last seven hours

were absolutely not the norm. I grew up in mine and I

kind of always knew. There wasn't an oh crap moment. It was more like a, I've had enough of this

moment. For me, it was when one of my elders told me I should try and figure out why God was

punishing me by giving me cancer. F you, Kevin, for your sake, let's hope we never cross

paths again. When the leader wanted to split up all the marriages and take the wives for

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