Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 03, 2025


Ep 1166 ｜ Ex-Cultist Gives Harrowing Insight into Mysterious '2x2' Cult ｜ Guest： Elizabeth Coleman


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 8 minutes

Words per Minute

167.5303

Word Count

11,445

Sentence Count

808


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The cult with no name. Elizabeth Coleman left a highly restrictive secret religious group
00:00:09.000 in Australia over 30 years ago, and her testimony is incredibly powerful and encouraging as
00:00:17.220 now we are seeing documentaries and all kinds of testimonies explode about the abuse that
00:00:24.260 has occurred for decades in this cult. You will love Elizabeth's story and learn so much
00:00:30.640 from it. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to
00:00:35.120 goodranchers.com, code Allie. That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.
00:00:48.120 Elizabeth, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. If you could tell everyone who you are
00:00:52.660 and what you do. Okay. My name is Elizabeth Coleman. I'm from Canberra, Australia. I'm
00:00:59.340 a school administrator. I've been a Christian for about 30 years and came out of a very high
00:01:05.840 control sect cult group that I grew up in. It was born into third and fourth generation
00:01:11.600 from both my parents' sides. And what is the name of the cult?
00:01:16.560 So this is the controversial part. They officially have never given themselves a name because they
00:01:22.000 believe they are the only way. They don't need a name. And so they have never officially given
00:01:28.100 themselves a name. We as ex-members have called them two-by-twos and we now officially call them
00:01:34.380 that. It's not derogatory. It's just descriptive of the way that their ministry works going out in
00:01:39.760 pairs. A little bit like the JWs or the Mormons, but probably a little bit more hardcore. So we call
00:01:46.160 them the two-by-twos. They would deny having a name.
00:01:48.680 Okay. So take us back. You say that you were born into this kind of nameless cult.
00:01:54.980 Yeah.
00:01:55.280 How long had your parents been in it?
00:01:57.380 So my dad, it goes back to his mother and my mother, it goes back to her grandmother. So
00:02:05.420 I'm fourth generation on my mother's side, third generation on my father's side, every single
00:02:10.960 aunt and uncle, cousin. And we had seven siblings on my mother's side, nine on my father's. I didn't
00:02:16.260 have a single relative outside of the group. So I was born into that, grew up in it. We
00:02:22.960 did go to a secular school. And the reason for that is we're really strongly conditioned
00:02:29.000 against other Christians and other churches, really strongly conditioned. So all other churches
00:02:34.540 were literally called churches of the devil and false churches. So we were actually quite
00:02:42.360 scared of other Christians and other churches. That's how strong the conditioning was. And
00:02:47.640 the important thing to know is that we were told continuously that we were the only church
00:02:53.480 not started by a man, that we went all the way back to the original apostles. So they take
00:02:59.520 their ministry from Matthew 10 and Luke 10, where Jesus sent out the disciples two-by-two.
00:03:05.880 Um, they actually ignore some pretty important parts of those scripture where they were going
00:03:10.400 only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They weren't taking a bag. They weren't taking
00:03:15.580 a script or purse. They were only to go to the villages that Jesus himself was about to
00:03:19.420 go. But one of them, a Scotsman by the name of William Irvine in the late 1800s had a sudden
00:03:26.600 epiphany that maybe this was Jesus' plan for ministry for all time. So they literally started,
00:03:32.720 he came out of the faith mission. He was a member of the faith mission, had been converted.
00:03:36.740 What's the faith mission?
00:03:37.600 Uh, it comes out of Ireland and, um, William Irvine himself was converted
00:03:43.160 by a Presbyterian minister in Ireland or in Scotland.
00:03:47.960 You said he's a Scotsman from the 1800s?
00:03:49.960 Yes, late 1800s.
00:03:51.920 A lot of these weird belief systems came out of the 1800s.
00:03:56.280 Yes. So the two-by-twos arose at a very similar timing to the JWs and the Mormons and the
00:04:01.780 Seventh-day Adventists. There was this, and the thing-
00:04:04.100 And JWs is Jehovah's Witness, just in case people didn't know.
00:04:06.840 Yes, sure. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so he was part of a ministry group of an evangelism group
00:04:16.800 called the Faith Mission, which was a, I think a, um, an Irish organization and they still exist
00:04:24.740 to this day, but they were not a church. Their idea was to go out preaching the gospel
00:04:29.680 and people would then join local churches as Christians. Um, but he got frustrated with people
00:04:38.540 joining other churches and somewhere along the way, he developed a real hatred of clergy
00:04:45.540 in the established church and started to really bad mouth them.
00:04:50.480 This Irvine person.
00:04:51.420 This Irvine person. And somewhere along the line, um, and I think it was through the influence
00:04:56.320 of what somebody else had said to him. He started to believe that he was the chosen one, risen
00:05:03.820 up by God to restore his true way on the earth. And this was in sending out ministers two by
00:05:11.200 two, going out without money, going out on faith, um, not taking anything with them. And
00:05:17.600 this is why all the other churches were false because they didn't go purely on faith. So they
00:05:22.320 actually go out as unmarried, celibate, supposedly penniless preachers across the world. And they
00:05:30.220 do it in males and females, pairs of both males and females. So William Irvine, rather than sending
00:05:37.140 converted people back to established churches, started establishing his own church meetings in houses
00:05:46.260 and having groups of converts meet in houses. And then they eventually developed their own
00:05:52.920 baptism, bread and wine, became a completely separate group. Um, he ended up being excommunicated
00:06:00.000 from the group as often happens with these groups that rise up. The leader can go a bit haywire.
00:06:07.020 William Irvine had delusions of grandeur. He was one of the last prophets of revelation.
00:06:12.060 This is what he believed. This is what he believed. Yes. He actually, he was, uh, it's very strongly,
00:06:18.540 strong evidence that there was some womanizing going on. He ended up being cast out of the group
00:06:24.440 and back in the early 1900s, before the internet, before easy world communication, they said,
00:06:32.860 we'll just pretend this guy never existed. So they literally tried to do away with his existence.
00:06:38.160 They destroyed all the records of his letters. They said, nobody's ever to mention his name again.
00:06:45.140 We are the real McCoy. We go right back to the beginning. We are the only church not started by
00:06:51.900 a man. We go back all the way to the shores of Galilee, which is what I was told.
00:06:56.440 So they believe that they're Christians. And again, we keep saying they, because they don't call
00:06:59.900 themselves any particular name.
00:07:01.380 The two by twos.
00:07:02.180 So, but they believed that they are Christians. Do they call themselves Christians to this day?
00:07:07.380 That's a really good question because
00:07:08.980 they don't like using terms that any other churches use. So they've tried to shy away from
00:07:15.980 terms like that. Um, but they would call themselves followers of Jesus, probably more readily than they
00:07:25.300 would call themselves a Christian because they don't want to be associated with other people who call
00:07:29.140 themselves Christian. They call themselves, if they're referring to their own group, they would
00:07:34.220 call themselves the truth or the way, both of which are names which should only be assigned to Jesus.
00:07:41.240 But they have made those terms absolutely synonymous with themselves as a group so that they're
00:07:47.260 inextricably linked, which has become, uh, actually quite a heresy as you'll see their doctrine
00:07:55.120 further down. Um, so I was always brought up being told that we're the only church not started by a
00:08:03.480 man and they pretended this guy didn't exist. And as they moved outside the British Isles, they sent
00:08:08.820 a number of their older workers. They call their ministers workers, uh, over to America. So there
00:08:16.800 was some, um, pivotal people who came to America to start the group here to Australia. And as they moved
00:08:24.060 outside the British Isles, the name of William Irvine was never heard. Yeah. So there was a guy in the
00:08:31.140 1980s who was going to become a worker and ended up having an argument with some of the workers about
00:08:38.740 going in. They were supposed to give up everything. He just wanted to take his parents on a trip to
00:08:45.560 Ireland, uh, and across to some, some war places for his parents to see before he, um, joined the
00:08:52.100 ministry. When it was discovered, he was going to, I think Ireland, uh, there was a lot of concern
00:08:59.560 about that because they were worried he might uncover some of the truth about the past. Things
00:09:06.320 went very bad. He ended up being declined to go into the ministry and he ended up researching the
00:09:13.240 group and uncovering this truth of the origins and discovering this man called William Irvine.
00:09:17.580 That's how William Irvine, how his name was kind of resurrected because you said that this cult worked
00:09:24.320 very hard to ignore who this person was because if they acknowledged that, yeah, William Irvine was
00:09:30.360 the guy who got this revelation, then their whole claim that this is the only true church that goes
00:09:35.080 all the way back to the apostles, that would kind of be discounted by this Irvine guy. So this man,
00:09:43.240 what's his name from the 1980s? William Irvine. No, from the 1980s. Oh, sorry. Doug Parker. Okay. So
00:09:49.660 he was the man in the 1980s that kind of started pushing some things and trying to show people,
00:09:56.460 okay, the origins of this are very sketchy. So bear in mind, this is still well before the days of the
00:10:02.080 internet. Yeah. So he wrote a book called The Secret Sect. Okay. And very carefully researched,
00:10:08.740 documented, footnoted. He knew that he would be in for a lot of trouble with people denying it.
00:10:15.200 So he published the book himself. He put out newspaper advertisements for people to be able
00:10:21.480 to see it. And it caused a lot of consternation, as you can imagine. People were ordered to buy the
00:10:28.720 books to burn them. So other people couldn't buy them and read them. People were forbidden to read
00:10:33.540 them. So they obeyed. We're talking about a very high control group that controlled
00:10:38.020 many aspects of our lives. Women could not cut their hair, could not wear makeup or jewelry,
00:10:44.680 could not wear pants. That's what I'm curious about. Let's get into some of their practices
00:10:48.000 and doctrines, because some people might be thinking, okay, well, what actually made them
00:10:52.760 a cult? So tell me about what they practiced and believe. So first of all, they're a cult because
00:10:58.000 they don't believe in salvation by grace. They just don't. They do preach a false
00:11:02.600 gospel. They teach that Jesus was the perfect example and he came to show us how to live and
00:11:10.100 to show us the way, the way being their ministry, their form of ministry. That is the way. So you have
00:11:17.120 to follow them as the middlemen that now stand as the gatekeepers between you and God, between you and
00:11:24.160 Jesus. And in following them, you have to obey them. So whatever laws they make, however arbitrary
00:11:30.240 they might be, that's what you need to be obeying. So I grew up in the 80s, 90s in Australia. And
00:11:39.640 I have friends and relatives who have females who have never cut their hair in their life.
00:11:46.640 Certainly no makeup, no jewelry, no television, no recorded music, no sports that's watching it or
00:11:54.280 playing it. I desperately wanted to do ballet when I was younger, but it's too worldly. Anything that
00:12:02.600 was too, so we had to be completely separated from the world. But if you got involved with
00:12:08.620 an outsider, anybody outside, we called an outsider or a stranger. So it's always us or them.
00:12:18.720 There would be punishments. So if you were a professing member of the group, which meant that
00:12:24.480 you took part in their Sunday meetings. So they don't have any established churches, buildings. They
00:12:31.320 don't believe in church buildings. They say that God doesn't dwell in buildings made by hands.
00:12:35.680 Obviously, there's a lot of weird things around there, you know, hands-made houses as well. But
00:12:41.840 they will only meet in a house, a personal house for their fellowship meetings. And then they will
00:12:49.180 rent public schools or community halls to do their public preaching. But they say that they don't have
00:12:55.520 their own church building. So you cannot find an actual presence of them anywhere. If you try to
00:13:01.720 look them up online, you won't be able to find a location anywhere. They're very, very opaque
00:13:07.960 and almost impossible to find, which is ironic for being the only true way. You're not going to find
00:13:12.820 them if you go looking for them. No name, no buildings, no established presence anywhere.
00:13:17.580 So Sunday morning meeting would be 10 to 20 people who are professing, coming together.
00:13:23.420 They sing a hymn. They give a testimony.
00:13:27.960 Not like typical Christian hymns or their own hymns?
00:13:31.180 Really good question. So they did actually take a lot of older, well-known Christian hymns written by
00:13:37.960 Christians and incorporate them into their hymn book. But they changed wording that they didn't
00:13:43.280 like. For example, there's a lot of controversy around the deity of Christ. They do not believe Jesus
00:13:48.840 is God for the most part. Now, things I'm telling you will sometimes vary from person to person and
00:13:55.060 region to region. But overall, they do not believe that Jesus is God because he's our elder brother.
00:14:01.760 He's our perfect example. But God, no. And they have that in, I think, in common with the Jehovah's
00:14:11.120 Witnesses and the Mormons. And I think there's a verse that says it's only by the Spirit that people
00:14:15.980 can say, Jesus is Lord. And I think that that might be what comes into play here. They deny the deity
00:14:22.980 of Christ. And they downplay who he is. And we didn't worship. And worship and praise would be quite
00:14:33.920 foreign phrases to them because we're there to follow the way and to follow the ministry and to
00:14:40.620 believe in the ministry and to obey the workers. They would say, oh, yes, Jesus is our example.
00:14:47.440 But Jesus is God. No. They start to get very uncomfortable with that sort of language.
00:14:53.800 Okay. And what was your experience like? From an early age, you went through all of these motions.
00:15:00.720 You said you did go to a secular school. And yet you were told you can't be a part of the world.
00:15:06.400 And we're also told that you're in basically hostile opposition, especially to these other
00:15:13.780 people who call themselves Christians. So what was that like when you were a child?
00:15:19.740 Look, I was actually very blessed in that I had a pretty normal and safe and secure childhood.
00:15:27.620 So no drinking, no drugs, no smoking. It was actually a very clean childhood in that regard.
00:15:32.820 And I am one of the very fortunate ones who was not abused in any way. We'll come to that a bit
00:15:39.620 later. But it is a vehicle which sadly has been allowed terrible abuses to perpetuate. I myself did
00:15:48.380 not suffer abuse. But it was a very rigidly, it was emotional and spiritual, particularly very strong
00:15:57.260 spiritual bondage and very difficult to think for yourself. It's always an us and them mentality.
00:16:07.820 And you develop a cognitive dissonance over everything that you come across. Everything
00:16:13.920 that you read, we were especially not exposed to, I couldn't read any sort of Christian or theology
00:16:22.980 books because that's them. That's the false religious world. And we always referred to them,
00:16:28.880 ironically, as the Pharisees. The religious world is the Pharisees and we're not them. We're the only
00:16:36.640 true Jesus people.
00:16:38.680 Wow. I hear so many similarities to a lot of subsections of like professing Christians today
00:16:44.180 that may not be considered actual cults, but there are some similarities there. You do hear from
00:16:50.460 some people that, oh, those who actually care about what the Bible says and want to apply it.
00:16:55.040 They're the Pharisees. They're the others. We have the true Holy Spirit. It's interesting.
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00:19:10.000 Did you ever think it was strange that, for example, the workers, they believed, if I'm correct,
00:19:15.880 that they had to sell all of their earthly possessions and be homeless, correct? So did you
00:19:21.160 see that? What did that look like? So they, because they don't have any home per se, they
00:19:27.740 travel around, they would come and live in our region for one to two years at a time before they
00:19:33.880 would swap out for another incoming pair, always in, or nearly always in pairs. And then they would
00:19:40.380 stay in the homes of members. So you're looking at a priesthood, a little bit like the Catholic
00:19:46.400 church, unmarried celibate, but living in the homes of members. And I'm sure you've already
00:19:52.320 got some red flags going up. So they would only come to see us maybe for a night or two, but they
00:20:00.700 had absolute authority in our lives. So they would ring and say, we are coming on Wednesday. We are
00:20:07.340 staying three nights and you didn't argue or what they said went. So if they said they were coming and
00:20:15.480 it was a huge privilege to have them in your home. But it was also difficult because you had to put on
00:20:25.200 the absolute best possible front. Everything had to be perfect. You had to make sure you didn't say
00:20:30.900 anything, that you were doing anything, that you were allowed to be doing, that they saw anything in
00:20:36.400 your home, that you, I mean, there's very funny stories about one of the, when microwaves first came
00:20:41.960 in, one of the workers going to a house and becoming very angry at the couple who lived there about their
00:20:46.920 television set. And they had no idea what he was talking about. They didn't have a television. And then he
00:20:51.680 went and pointed to the microwave oven. So, and then there were people who, if they got separated or
00:20:59.900 divorced for any reason, including adultery, could be stopped from taking part in a meeting. Their testimony
00:21:08.400 and bread and wine stopped, which is effectively a form of excommunication. People who remarried
00:21:14.880 in some parts of the world and particularly so in some parts of America here would be told they
00:21:20.840 were not welcome to come back to the church unless they actually divorced the person that they had
00:21:26.140 married. And, and many people have done that. They have divorced the person they were married to
00:21:32.120 because they were told to by the workers. And the, I don't know the American scene as well,
00:21:39.080 but I know that out of the West coast and the East coast, that one side is much more strict.
00:21:43.800 One allows remarriage. The other one absolutely does not. And there was a division back in the
00:21:49.940 earlier days where they're still part of the same group, but one of them took a much more hard line
00:21:56.640 and they sort of separated into Eastern coast, um, doctrines on some of those matters. Yeah.
00:22:03.120 Interesting. Um, so when you were a child and you were going to school with these people who
00:22:12.400 obviously did not believe the things that you believed, were there, was there ever a moment
00:22:17.600 where you thought, huh, my life looks a little different. I'm not allowed to cut my hair. I'm not
00:22:23.960 allowed to wear pants. I'm not allowed to do ballet. These people are, do you remember ever a
00:22:29.200 moment? All the time. All the time. It was a, it was an absolute constant, but we were always taught
00:22:34.580 that, you know, we were the special people. Yeah. We were the special people and we were privileged
00:22:40.220 people. We were told this a lot. And the thing you learn about growing up in a high control group,
00:22:46.780 and I, I didn't know this until I started to dissect it when I was older, these mantras,
00:22:53.080 these thought stopping cliche phrases are conditioned into you from a young age. And they're what you
00:23:00.700 always repeat in your mind to stop yourself going outside the thought boundaries. So you develop
00:23:07.120 these very strong thought boundaries that stop you moving outside the, the comfortable and the
00:23:15.440 accepted. So one of the phrases was don't give the devil a foothold. So if you started thinking
00:23:22.060 outside the box, you go, ah, don't give the devil a foothold. And you would physically stop yourself
00:23:26.940 thinking any further on that front. And we're not talking about actual sin. Giving a devil a foothold
00:23:32.900 in this context could have been you asking, but wait, the Bible doesn't say that.
00:23:38.540 Absolutely. And that is a really good point because asking questions was about the worst thing you could
00:23:43.360 do. You do not ask questions. You do not contradict a worker. You never question a worker. What the
00:23:49.680 worker says goes? And things get pretty uncomfortable very quickly. And you learn from a young age not to
00:23:57.400 ask questions. But one of the big questions I had, I remember as a teenager, and I, look, I did buy into
00:24:04.000 the whole thing. I professed in the group at 16. I wanted to be faithful. I wanted to be zealous. I
00:24:09.200 completely bought into it. But I remember sitting there under the preaching and hearing about Jesus
00:24:15.820 and the way and the ministry and following and going, why did he have to be crucified? Like the
00:24:21.540 crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection did not fit into the gospel at all. Like what was the point?
00:24:29.040 There was absolutely no point in Jesus being crucified.
00:24:32.400 If he's just an example.
00:24:33.440 And risen because he's an example and we're saved by being in the way and we're saved by following
00:24:38.380 the workers. Jesus came to show us a perfect way. And they always say Jesus was, he came to give us
00:24:44.680 the pattern. He was the pattern maker. And all of that, what about the crucifixion? Like where does that
00:24:51.580 fit? Oh, it's just because people hated him. So that was a huge question in my mind that I just
00:24:58.880 couldn't reconcile and couldn't work out at all. So yes, there were always questions, but we weren't
00:25:05.520 allowed to ask questions. And one of the ways I described it was I felt like there was a cage around
00:25:13.200 my whole head with bands that were there in place. And if I would start to think too much, those bands would
00:25:20.680 start to press and hurt. And I became later when I, when I met my husband, I, that really became a
00:25:30.260 problem to the point where why am I not allowed to think? And I even, you know, went back to God
00:25:36.720 created me with a mind. God gave me the ability to think and reason. Is God saying I can't think or
00:25:43.000 reason? That's the point I came to, um, early on when I was wrestling with how do I step outside the,
00:25:51.060 the boundaries, the conditioned boundaries that I had been learned that you could,
00:25:55.660 you couldn't think past the, the letting the devil in, which was a really big fear and having a
00:26:01.100 doubting spirit or a rebellious spirit, all of these things that we were taught that we had if we
00:26:07.300 questioned or tried to step outside the boundaries. Yeah. Does this group teach that all other people
00:26:14.560 outside of the way are going to hell? Effectively, yes, literally no. So if you ask them, they will say
00:26:23.140 almost without fail, we don't judge. But if you leave, they will say you have lost out, you're going
00:26:30.480 to hell. They will say that to you. They will never say that to an outsider. Um, but it's effectively
00:26:36.420 true. They believe that in their heart of hearts. Um, if you leave your parents, your friends, your
00:26:42.640 family will be absolutely devastated and, um, know that you're going to a lost, they'll say you're
00:26:48.780 going to a lost eternity. But if you specifically ask them that, they will say, well, we don't know
00:26:53.960 and we can't judge. Yeah. And what does the doctrine making look like if William Irvine and his
00:27:01.680 principles or some of them, I guess, had been abandoned? What does the leadership and the
00:27:08.120 rulemaking of this group actually look like? Really good question. So they would deny that
00:27:15.940 they are like other churches in having a hierarchy and an establishment and an organization. One of the
00:27:22.580 things they very often say is we are not an organization because they're just a ministry. Um,
00:27:27.940 it's completely false. They do actually have now a well-established organization hierarchy.
00:27:32.380 They just keep it completely hidden. So, um, over the house churches, they have elders,
00:27:39.160 which are just ordinary members who are married and have families. And it will usually be, um,
00:27:44.740 the father whose house the meeting is in, who's the elder. Out of the workers, there are junior
00:27:51.420 workers, there are elder workers, there are senior workers, there are overseers who would be in
00:27:56.860 charge of a state or a country, depending on the size of the place. Um, and we've even found out
00:28:04.560 more recently that now and then overseers from each state or country will come together for more
00:28:11.840 worldwide or world specific meetings. Um, they very careful not to record anything officially or to
00:28:22.340 have anything written down. So all the rules, they absolutely exist, but they will say,
00:28:28.180 we don't have any rules. What rules? And we'll say, well, what about, you know, the things that
00:28:32.920 we're not allowed to do? Oh, they're not rules. The spirit just will convince you of those things
00:28:36.660 and the spirit will convict you. And if you're truly professing that you will naturally start to
00:28:42.920 do all these things because the spirit's convicting you of that. So they're very careful not to have
00:28:47.180 written records anywhere. Wow. Another pause to remind you guys about share the arrows. We just
00:28:59.920 locked in our last two speakers to be announced, but we've already announced an incredible lineup
00:29:06.780 with Elisa Childers and Katie Faust. We've got Taylor Dukes from Taylor Dukes Wellness and Shauna
00:29:13.380 Holman from A Little Less Toxic for our health panel. Uh, we have also got Francesca Battistelli,
00:29:21.580 Grammy award-winning artist, leading worship. Ginger Duggar Vuolo and I will be having a really
00:29:28.500 good conversation on stage. It's just going to be so solid. And then we will also have a panel that is
00:29:34.940 focused on motherhood and child discipleship, but this is for women of any age in any life stage.
00:29:42.880 And I want you to come. I want you to come by yourself. I want you to come with friends or
00:29:47.220 with family. If you do come alone, don't worry. You will make lifelong friends. This is such an
00:29:52.380 edifying and unique day. Women need good theology and solid apologetics. We can stand being challenged,
00:30:00.460 being pushed. And that is what share the arrows is about. It will imbue you by the grace of God with
00:30:07.780 the courage that you need to contend with the powers that be and with the hostile culture that we are
00:30:13.740 facing, that our children are facing. So go to share the arrows.com, get your tickets. The seats are
00:30:21.680 limited. And so once we run out, we run out and I don't want that to happen to you. So go to
00:30:26.100 share the arrows.com, get your tickets, book all of the logistics and everything today. Share the arrows.com.
00:30:32.260 Obviously, one of the hallmarks of a cult is being extremely legalistic because even though they are
00:30:42.900 calling other people Pharisees, a cult believes that you have to abide by all of their doctrines.
00:30:48.040 As you said, no matter how arbitrary, that is the way to salvation. And you tell a story about
00:30:54.720 a family who had to attend a meeting and their son said, I've got these stomach pains. And they said,
00:31:02.520 well, we can't miss this meeting. And then a tragic outcome resulted from that. Can you tell us that
00:31:10.640 story? Yeah. So it wasn't until I wrote that story and it appeared in my book that someone related
00:31:19.260 to me came and said, that was actually my uncle. So you couldn't miss a meeting no matter what.
00:31:25.680 You go to every single meeting. So we had Sunday morning meeting, Sunday night meeting. They were
00:31:31.140 in generally in homes, Wednesday night meeting in a home. And then they would have public preaching for
00:31:36.480 a good part of the year that we had to go to when the workers were in town. So it could be a Sunday
00:31:42.700 night and a Thursday night as well as the Sunday morning. And so sometimes we were going to
00:31:47.780 meetings four times a week, sometimes up to an hour away. And you did not miss a meeting. People
00:31:53.280 would come after you and ask, especially the workers, if you were missing meetings. So you
00:31:57.560 could not miss for any reason. And this was some decades ago now, but yes, the younger boy had
00:32:04.820 terrible stomach pains and said to his parents, he was in terrible pain. They said he had to go to
00:32:09.940 meeting. Everybody goes to meeting. They all went in the car. He was in too much pain to get out of the
00:32:14.600 car. So they left him in the car and went inside to the meeting. And when they came back out, his
00:32:20.200 appendix had actually ruptured and he died. Yeah.
00:32:27.440 Wow. So that is the stock that they put into following the rules.
00:32:32.740 Yes.
00:32:33.100 That it doesn't matter what it is.
00:32:35.660 No matter what.
00:32:36.200 We don't want to be excluded from this. You mentioned when you were 16 that you professed.
00:32:41.880 What is that?
00:32:43.720 So they, I find it's interesting. They don't actually make a public profession of faith the
00:32:49.360 way that we would as Christians, but in their gospel meetings, everybody comes along and just
00:32:55.500 sits and listens while the workers preach. So one worker will preach, there'll be a hymn in between,
00:33:00.560 the other worker will preach. And then once or twice a year, they will test the meeting. So they
00:33:06.440 will say, if anybody wants to follow Jesus in this way during the last verse of this hymn,
00:33:12.660 they're to stand to their feet. So that means you're committing yourself to life in the group
00:33:19.520 as a member. You can now give your testimony. But you still have to prove yourself for up to
00:33:27.160 several years to see if you're worthy to ask for baptism. And it's not until after baptism that you can
00:33:33.740 take bread and wine in a Sunday morning meeting. So I could never actually bring myself to be
00:33:39.580 baptised in the group and I wasn't. But I did stand to my feet when I was 16, which sounds maybe
00:33:47.660 young, but I was like the latest of my peer group. A lot of my friends had professed when they were
00:33:54.180 13, 14, even 12, some as young as 11 or 8. So I was actually pretty late coming to the party and
00:34:02.620 that was probably due to some of my questions about it. But at the time I was 16, the thing was though
00:34:12.480 that I felt when I professed, I felt as though I was committing my life to God rather than to the
00:34:19.960 group. And afterwards people are coming up and nearly crying and hugging me and congratulating
00:34:25.480 me. And I was a bit bewildered by that and thinking this is to do with me and God. I don't
00:34:32.100 know why you're all so excited. So I really did feel it was my relationship with God and I felt
00:34:40.180 convicted to do it. I wasn't doing it because I felt that I should. I know many people would and did do
00:34:47.960 that, but I felt like it was the right time for me and I felt like I was committing my life to God
00:34:53.100 at that time. Yeah. Tell me about meeting your husband pretty shortly after that when you were
00:34:59.020 17. Yes. So this is a really unusual story. So in Canberra, we finished high school at the age of 16
00:35:07.720 and then there's often two years called college, the ages of 17, 18, before we go on to university,
00:35:13.380 if we're going on to university from the ages of 18, 19 onwards. So I, it's a new school,
00:35:21.140 new buildings. And the first week, I think it was the first time I'd walked into my English class in
00:35:28.160 this new school. I, I saw this guy across the room and something went through my mind, like writing on
00:35:34.100 a wall. What would you say if someone told you that was the man you were going to marry one day?
00:35:38.340 Uh, well, I, I freaked out a bit, like, what was that? Where, where did that come from? And then
00:35:45.140 my immediate follow-up thought was that's never going to happen. Because he's an outsider. Well,
00:35:50.580 he's an outsider and, um, I, I wasn't even attracted to him. My, my husband says it was hate
00:35:55.860 at first sight. I wasn't attracted to him. I had no idea. I thought that was, that was weird and I'm,
00:36:01.420 I'm never going to talk to him. And so then I will never marry him. I'll never have anything to do
00:36:05.080 with him. You were disturbed by your own thoughts though. I was very disturbed. Because it felt like
00:36:08.420 it was coming from the outside. It felt like it had come from the outside and that's the weirdest
00:36:13.920 thing ever. And that's not going to come true. And I'm going to make sure it doesn't come true.
00:36:17.640 Yeah. Those, those were my, that was my response. So anytime we did have to interact and we were
00:36:23.120 putting a group assignment together, I was quite rude and abrupt to him. Yeah. Um, but as that year
00:36:29.820 went on, I started to get a really pressing burden that I had to speak to him and I ignored it for
00:36:38.060 months. I just ignored it. You know, my mind playing tricks on me. This is ridiculous. I've
00:36:42.540 got to make sure that this premonition or whatever it was, doesn't come true. Um, and then I eventually
00:36:47.880 started praying about it. And for a long time, I just said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
00:36:54.440 it was not going to happen. And then I said, why, why, why, why? And then my friends started
00:37:00.420 saying to me, cause obviously I wasn't going to tell anybody about this. Um, my friend said,
00:37:04.520 look, something's eating away at you. We don't know what it is, but you need to get it sorted.
00:37:09.600 And I got to the point where I wasn't eating or sleeping properly. And it was on my mind all the
00:37:14.940 time. Like I just couldn't function. So I, I finally literally said to God, Lord, I give up. I just give
00:37:22.960 up. Like I will, I will talk to this guy. I have no idea what you want me to say, but I give up.
00:37:28.440 So the next day at school where we crossed paths, where he came out of a building and I was going in,
00:37:34.700 um, he had a hole in the side of his nose and blood all over his face. And I said, what happened
00:37:42.360 to you? Um, he'd been attacked by a bird on the way to school that morning. We have these birds that
00:37:48.540 get very violent during breeding season. Australia things. Yeah. Australian things.
00:37:52.840 So magpies. Um, so he'd been attacked by a magpie as he'd ridden his bike to school.
00:37:57.740 Wow. That's terrifying.
00:37:58.860 Yeah. So they go for the eyes and fortunately it didn't get his eye. And you, if you're riding,
00:38:03.180 you wear glasses to make sure they can't get, I know, I know. Sorry, normal part of life in our
00:38:09.460 suburbs. It's protected species.
00:38:11.540 You know what? But God sent that magpie to spark y'all's conversation that day.
00:38:16.620 Yeah. But of course that's not the way I, I saw it. I mean, that was certainly the opening.
00:38:21.080 Um, and, um, I invited him to come and have lunch with me and we became friends from that
00:38:25.600 day. And from the very beginning, he told me straight up that he was a Christian and
00:38:30.840 I was like, Oh, well, God wants to introduce me to the, he wants me to introduce him to
00:38:36.580 the one true way. Obviously.
00:38:37.980 Yeah.
00:38:38.240 Like I have the true way. He says he's a Christian. Well, obviously God wants to bring him into
00:38:42.300 my group. So that was my aha moment. Like, Oh, that's what it's all about. Um, so we became,
00:38:50.400 we developed a solid friendship and were friends for, um, probably a good year before things
00:38:57.460 developed more romantically. And then that's when things got really difficult. Um, because
00:39:03.300 my, all of my faith and what I believed was starting to be queried. He was trying to find
00:39:13.100 out what I believed and what this group was and what they believed and came along to some
00:39:18.060 of the meetings and told me some of the concerns that he had. So, um, we had a courtship over
00:39:23.980 three to four years, but certainly after the three year mark, um, things were really difficult
00:39:30.260 and I couldn't see a way out of where we were. Um, I believed something very different to what
00:39:37.920 he believed and how could there be a future in it? And I just kept saying, Lord, why did
00:39:44.780 you, why did you put me here? There's no future in this relationship. I've become involved with
00:39:49.460 this person who isn't going to join the way and I can't leave. And things were really
00:39:55.840 difficult. So were you thinking at that point that your purpose in dating him all those years
00:40:00.060 was to bring him to the way? Yes, absolutely. Or did you, okay. So it wasn't like you were
00:40:05.600 in defiance or in rebellion. No. You thought that this was evangelism. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So of course
00:40:13.640 he was asking lots of questions that started sparking difficult things in my brain. So one
00:40:22.160 of the earlier things he said to me was, look, I had to talk to your workers and they don't
00:40:27.960 believe that Jesus is God. And I'm like, what do you mean? Jesus is not God. So that was one
00:40:34.600 of the earlier things that was raised. Um, but the further things went along and I tried to
00:40:39.920 talk to the workers about it and they had, this was a little way, probably two to three
00:40:44.720 years into our relationship. And one of them said, look, we've had a talk to him. He has
00:40:48.780 too many questions. We don't think he's ever going to come on board, but don't worry. You'll
00:40:52.360 be right. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Like, you know, this is obviously this
00:40:56.420 relationship's a dead end time to cut him off. Um, yeah, but I finished college and started
00:41:05.280 going to university and I actually, I didn't never finish my degree. I was only there.
00:41:09.600 And I have to say that was quite unusual. Um, most of my female friends had left school
00:41:14.460 at 16. They had not even gone to college. My mother was always, um, never quite with the
00:41:22.740 rules and she really wanted me to get a further education. Um, my father didn't, and that was
00:41:29.280 his background. You didn't get a further education, particularly as a female. So me going to university
00:41:34.460 was unusual, but my mother was pushing quite hard for that for me. So they had, um, on
00:41:42.980 campus preaching, evangelical preaching. And so I started going along to that because it
00:41:50.020 was the only place I could go that my parents and the church didn't know I was going. Because
00:41:54.320 if I went to church, I would be missing our usual meetings. So, um, that was my rebellious
00:41:59.980 days at university was sneaking into evangelical preaching on campus. Um, and they, I, they
00:42:07.560 had it on a Tuesday and a Thursday lunchtime and they were actually using the same sermon
00:42:12.880 for both, but I didn't, but I, so I would go along to both and hear the same sermon and
00:42:16.680 then different one the following week. Um, and one day the preacher was speaking on Hebrews
00:42:23.980 and the Old Testament sacrifices, um, and dealing with the sins of the people and then Jesus
00:42:31.840 being the once for all sacrifice for the sin of the people. And it was like the roof had
00:42:38.220 lifted off and I was like, how can I have been looking at the Bible my whole life and sitting
00:42:44.880 under preaching my whole life and nobody ever told me this. Jesus is the once for all sacrifice
00:42:49.620 and all the Old Testament sacrifices, uh, you know, a picture of this to come. And that was
00:42:57.640 the first really major revelation to me. But from that time, uh, came the period of what do I do now?
00:43:09.720 How do I leave? Leaving still seemed incomprehensible, but I got to a point where I realized it was too
00:43:16.980 late to walk back inside the dark room and shut the door. It felt like the door or the window had
00:43:23.560 been opened and I had to walk through it. And it was terrifying to leave the room where I'd grown
00:43:29.660 up. It's actually more like a village. It's a whole cultural tribal village that you belong to. And
00:43:35.140 once you leave that village, the gates close behind you and that's it. You know, you have none of your
00:43:41.140 former life. You lose all of your friends and family in the group. You're now an outsider and
00:43:46.980 that's a huge thing. Um, but I also realized I'd come too far to just shut the door. I couldn't
00:43:52.700 stay in there. My mind had been opened, um, to too much and I'd seen and learned too much to be able
00:44:00.940 to close the door. So when I, and I was sitting on the fence for a very long time when I finally left
00:44:07.960 because I was, I'd gotten to the point of being in tremendous emotional and mental and spiritual
00:44:15.040 turmoil. 19. You're 19. I'm 19. And did you still have a relationship with David at all?
00:44:20.840 Yes. So we were still seeing each other and he was getting a lot of counsel from friends and family
00:44:28.140 that I was too brainwashed. I was never going to leave. He, he needed to think about ending this
00:44:34.600 relationship and he prayed about it a lot. And he said, the only answer he got all of those years
00:44:41.680 was just wait, wait. He said, that's the only word God would give me weight. Yeah.
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00:46:04.620 Okay. So you're 19, you're struggling with all of this. How does it actually come to a head? When do
00:46:12.520 you actually decide to leave and what does it look like? So it got to a point where I realized I had to
00:46:16.540 leave. So I, because we had the meeting in our home and my dad was an elder, I had to set up the lounge
00:46:22.720 room every Sunday and vacuum it and set up the chairs. And on a Sunday morning, um, before the
00:46:29.340 meeting, before people arrived, I was in the kitchen and I said to my dad, I'm not, I'm not coming to the
00:46:36.560 meeting. And like, that was a huge thing. Like, and I said, I'm, I'm, I'm going down to, and David's church
00:46:44.820 was actually within walking distance, um, about two kilometers, probably a bit over a mile in, in your,
00:46:51.000 um, distances. And dad was, um, pretty gentle. And he, he looked at me in bewilderment and he said,
00:47:00.820 but, but you know, that this is the true way. And I said, dad, I really don't, I really don't know
00:47:07.520 that. So he went out and told my mother and then a storm came in the door, um, in that my mother
00:47:15.320 just came in and in a rage, she was absolutely distraught and she yelled and she cried and
00:47:22.060 you're going to kill your father and he's going to have a heart attack and die because of your
00:47:26.680 rebelliousness. And I can't believe you're doing, you know, all of this sort of really, she was just
00:47:31.740 absolutely distraught. So I never went back to meetings from that day. Um, but I was also
00:47:39.700 plunged into a really time of terrible darkness where I couldn't find my feet. Yeah. And I
00:47:50.520 really felt like, was I actually leaving God in, in leaving the group? I,
00:47:58.280 I knew a sense of the gospel, but I didn't know how I could grasp hold of it personally.
00:48:07.940 How could it be mine? Um, and I didn't find out until a year or two later that I was actually
00:48:14.420 suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and that many other people in circumstances similar
00:48:21.400 to mine go through very similar thing. Um, being completely separated from everything that you've
00:48:29.180 known, trying to break free of that conditioning, because I still had all of that conditioning.
00:48:33.700 There's still a very deep fear in me. What if I've done the wrong thing? What if I'm leaving for David?
00:48:39.560 What if I've, it just felt like a massive spiritual battle.
00:48:44.120 Were you cut off from your family from that point on?
00:48:46.340 So they don't do official shunning, but, um, it, it does happen in various ways to various people,
00:48:53.920 depending on the circumstances. No, I was not cut off from my family, but it became impossible for
00:49:00.340 me to stay living there because, um, my mother in particular at that time did everything she could
00:49:07.200 to stop me leaving the house on a Sunday morning. Um, she would try and delay me. I still had to set up
00:49:12.380 the meeting room and I was trying to, to get out before members would arrive. Things just got very
00:49:18.240 tough and she was genuinely terrified for me. So whenever I would come home from work, she would
00:49:25.180 be crying and saying, um, something terrible is going to happen to you something because they have
00:49:30.400 this deep belief that if you leave, you're going to die suddenly. You're going to have a car accident
00:49:36.320 or God's going to punish you and you're going to be struck down dead. And she was absolutely terrified.
00:49:42.560 So she was always, um, crying and telling me something terrible was going to happen to me. And I was
00:49:47.360 already not in a great way myself. So I ended up having to move out. Um, I think within about six months
00:49:53.840 of me leaving and I did some house sitting jobs and then I, I rented an apartment with a friend. So it did
00:50:00.880 become very, but all the rest of the members of the church, even the workers, nobody contacted me,
00:50:06.960 nobody at all. So it was as though I had ceased to exist effectively. Yeah. And do you remember
00:50:13.100 when you fully not only understood the gospel, but accepted it and realized where you actually
00:50:21.720 belonged in the body of Christ? Yes. And I might cry here somewhere. That's okay.
00:50:25.860 So things got really bad and I was working by now. I had taken a public service job. I had left my
00:50:32.040 degree to start a public service job, um, in, in a traineeship, a work study program. And I was in
00:50:38.360 a bad way. And the people I worked with had, didn't really know what was going on in my life, but they
00:50:44.040 were very compassionate. And my supervisor actually found me curled up under my desk one day. I was just in
00:50:49.960 such emotional pain. Yeah. And he told me I really needed to go home and, um, do whatever I needed
00:50:57.260 to do. And I went to David's pastor and I was very much at the end of myself. I, I had an understanding
00:51:06.320 of what the gospel was, but I just didn't understand how I could take hold of it. And he sat with me for,
00:51:11.960 I don't know, it might've been an hour or two and he really explained the gospel to me and he used a,
00:51:20.300 um, a telephone directory. And, um, I'll, I'll use one of these books if you don't mind as example.
00:51:26.020 So he said, you know, here is you and, and God looking at you and here are all your sins. This is
00:51:33.680 between you and God, everything that you've ever done, will do, um, the whole past of your sins,
00:51:39.620 all of that is on you and between you and God. And Jesus, when he died on the cross, he, he took
00:51:46.720 that punishment and he took all of your sins and put them on him. When Jesus, God looks at Jesus,
00:51:53.420 he sees all those sins on him being punished. And when God looks at you, you can be seen as
00:51:59.420 completely clean and righteous as Christ because your sins are no longer on you. They're all on
00:52:04.800 Christ. So he used that example and also explained to me how much the workers sounded like the Pharisees
00:52:13.800 putting heavy burdens on people, taking the place of pride at the, at the, the mealtimes and in their
00:52:22.340 lifestyle. And it was, we, we adulated them. Um, they were, uh, our authority. And to me, that was a
00:52:31.280 complete flip of everything that I had ever known because the religious world was the Pharisees,
00:52:36.840 right? But no, these men I had grown up under the authority of, they were the Pharisees with,
00:52:42.400 with the rules and the regulations and, um, putting themselves in, in the place of Christ. And I really
00:52:49.080 understood and I still said to him, you know, but what do I need to do? And he said, that's it. You
00:52:54.660 can't do. It's not about doing. You need to accept. You need to believe. Um, that's all you
00:53:01.820 have to do. There is no doing. Jesus has done all of the doing. And I fully accepted and believed from
00:53:08.360 that time. And, um, later when I read parts of Pilgrim's Progress, I felt exactly like Christian when
00:53:16.020 the, when the rock, the boulder rolls off the back. Yeah. That I had set down this heavy load of,
00:53:22.720 because the language we use in the group is, um, about being worthy. You know, we're, we're not
00:53:28.920 worthy and we're trying to be worthy and we're trying. And the language in testimonies is, I just
00:53:33.600 want to go out and try and do better in the coming days. I want to try and be worthy and Lord, make me
00:53:40.320 worthy. It's the language they use all the time because there is no assurance because it's all based
00:53:45.340 on their own performance, on the keeping of rules, on the following of the workers. You never know if
00:53:50.400 you're doing enough. Um, so all of that was gone. So I was a Christian and a believer from that time.
00:54:01.320 And, uh, a few, probably a few weeks or months, I'm not sure of the timing later, I was praying by
00:54:07.560 the side of my bed one night and that voice came from the outside again. You need to be baptized.
00:54:13.200 Baptized. And I went, what? You need to be baptized. So I was, yeah.
00:54:19.380 And you were how old at this point?
00:54:21.860 Um, I was either 20 or 21 by this point. Um,
00:54:29.160 I think it was about July when I was 21 because I got married the following year when I was,
00:54:37.480 yeah.
00:54:38.060 Yeah. And where were you baptized? Were you baptized at David's church?
00:54:41.180 Yes. Yeah, I was. Yeah.
00:54:43.220 And then you got married. So that outside voice that you had tried so hard to suppress in the
00:54:48.900 beginning.
00:54:49.540 Yes. Which I never thought would, um, ever come true. Then we, yeah, we got married when, um,
00:54:53.940 we were around, Dave was 20 and I was 21. Yeah. So we'd been together for almost four years by,
00:55:00.540 by that point or about four years. Yeah.
00:55:02.060 Yes. And how long have you been married now?
00:55:04.160 It'll be 30 years this December.
00:55:06.140 Wow.
00:55:06.580 Yeah.
00:55:11.180 Last, I just want to remind you guys to please support me, support the show and support everyone
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00:56:42.020 I'm sure that after you became a Christian, there was such a burden on you for the people that were
00:56:51.360 still in that cult, especially your family. So I'm sure you tried to explain to especially your
00:56:59.340 parents. I did. And especially the workers, none of whom contacted me, which is very strange. These
00:57:04.500 are supposed to be your spiritual leaders and you disappear and they never contact you or follow
00:57:09.580 you up or anything. And I thought, they don't know the gospel. I have to go and tell them. Like,
00:57:15.260 I have to go and tell them. So I rang them and said, want to see you? Want to talk to you? And
00:57:20.620 they were like, no. And it took quite some pressing on my part. And eventually one of them
00:57:28.240 on the phone said, we will only come and see you if you never tell anybody we came to see you.
00:57:35.600 You are not allowed to repeat any of the conversation we have with you. If you tell anybody that we
00:57:40.860 have been to see you or repeat anything that we have said to you, we will deny it. So we will call
00:57:46.480 you a liar for telling the truth. Wow. Okay. So they came and I tried to explain. Well, there
00:57:56.000 were several different instances with several different lots of workers. One of them, I tried
00:58:03.560 to explain how we can have full assurance and salvation now. They called me presumptuous and
00:58:08.960 arrogant. And I said, well, you know, what are you going to say when you die and God says why he
00:58:15.360 should let you into heaven? Well, I've done my best. And I said, well, I'm going to say I'm trusting
00:58:20.940 in Jesus' blood. And when I tried to tell them who Jesus really was, they used the old King James
00:58:28.940 version. And I had an NIV at the time. And they said, oh, that's just a clever NIV translation.
00:58:35.240 They didn't know that it was a legitimate copy of the Bible. And I said, you know,
00:58:41.440 scripture clearly says that Jesus is God. And they refused to open their Bible and read the same
00:58:47.380 passage from theirs. They just said, we're very sorry this has happened to you. We want you to go
00:58:52.040 home and pray that Jesus will open your blind eyes and we will take you back when you come to your senses.
00:58:58.140 Wow.
00:58:58.240 That's what they told me. The other ones, I think that was just after I'd left. And the following
00:59:07.300 year I tried with the next pair that came into town. And by then I had come in contact. So
00:59:13.200 the internet was in its earliest sort of days of common use by now. And I started finding other
00:59:20.720 people overseas in America here who had left and become Christians. And this was such
00:59:26.760 a massive thing for me because I didn't know anybody who had left. I wasn't in contact with
00:59:34.420 anyone else who had left. Certainly not in contact with anybody who had become a Christian. So
00:59:38.100 you really, it's hard to have a lot of confidence. You think, am I the only one who this has happened
00:59:48.180 to? So got in contact with people overseas. They had started writing books about their experiences in
00:59:54.460 coming out of the group and also pamphlets. You know, what does this group believe? What's the
00:59:58.680 gospel? What is truth? And they had sent me some of those and I gave those to the workers. And I said,
01:00:04.560 look, I've been lied to. I've been deceived about the origins of the group. I discovered the truth
01:00:10.140 about the history. They were really angry about me bringing that up. We are not going to talk about
01:00:15.140 this. It's none of your business. Because you've left, it's none of your business now. Leave us alone.
01:00:19.780 And I said, well, I'm one of the people you deceived and you have a responsibility to tell
01:00:25.280 people the truth. And I will be telling the truth to anybody who asks me. Well, from that time, they
01:00:31.320 officially and publicly put out a smear campaign against me. I got some really weird phone calls
01:00:39.240 from people I didn't know in other states saying, who are you or what have you done? Because we've
01:00:44.440 been told that no one's allowed to contact you or talk to you, but we don't know why. Like there was
01:00:49.500 just one or two brave people who said, what have you actually done? But they were so afraid,
01:00:55.680 which is ridiculous. Like I'm a 19, 20 year old, 21 year old woman and they're just all
01:01:01.220 running scared and saying, nobody's allowed to talk to Elizabeth because what I had was
01:01:06.840 that dangerous.
01:01:08.180 And your parents?
01:01:09.660 Yeah. So 18 months after I left or was married around that time, when I got some of the books
01:01:19.900 and pamphlets from America, I left them at my parents' house and my mother picked them
01:01:25.420 up and started to read and bells and flags, red flags started going up in her mind. And
01:01:32.440 she ended up being accused of giving some of the pamphlets that I had, two new converts that
01:01:38.100 were coming along to their public meetings. She actually hadn't, but she was accused and
01:01:45.260 excommunicated because of that. And also because, I think it was mostly because she had started
01:01:50.640 asking questions of the workers and they suddenly saw her as a huge problem. And so they just
01:01:58.080 excommunicated her and she refused to go along and just sit silently in the meetings as a person
01:02:05.360 under punishment when she hadn't done anything that they'd accused her of doing. So that was the
01:02:10.300 end for her. And she started ferociously reading her Bible and suddenly seeing the gospel for the
01:02:17.600 first time and then coming to church with us. My dad remained as an elder for another six years.
01:02:26.520 And when his mother died, he contacted the workers to have them come to take the meeting out of his
01:02:33.920 house. The day they arrived on the doorstep, a major firestorm had swept through Canberra and the whole
01:02:40.640 suburb had been raised. Theirs was one of the only houses left standing, but substantially damaged. And
01:02:46.160 so my dad never went back from that day either. So both of them became Christians and had left. And I
01:02:57.580 have two younger brothers who have both left. So all my immediate family is out. All of my aunts and
01:03:04.380 uncles, both sides are still in. But I do have quite a few cousins who have come out now, some who are
01:03:11.900 Christians, some aren't. Yeah.
01:03:13.380 And you mentioned, before we close, I want to make sure that we talk about this because you alluded to
01:03:20.260 earlier that when the workers would come stay at families' homes, since they were essentially
01:03:26.120 homeless, this caused some problems. And you've written about some of the sexual abuse allegations
01:03:30.920 within the cult. Can you just talk about that a little bit?
01:03:35.000 So back in the time I left, it was very hard. I didn't know much about this at all. And it was very
01:03:40.260 hard to know much. It was all very hidden and quiet. As the years went on, I started to hear stories of
01:03:48.140 people having been abused by workers staying in their homes. And we're talking child sexual assault.
01:03:54.460 And almost exactly two years ago, or two years ago this week, things blew wide open here in America
01:04:01.760 that one of their most revered overseer workers was found dead in a motel room, which is strange in
01:04:07.540 itself because they didn't stay in motels. They stayed in the homes of members. It turned out that,
01:04:13.120 well, there's been a lot of money stockpiled behind the scenes. They don't actually go out
01:04:18.980 on faith, but everything's completely opaque. There's no transparency. Nobody knows how much
01:04:23.080 money is back there. But he had been staying. He had a card from a motel chain. He had a credit card.
01:04:29.060 He had been meeting multiple sexual partners, including underage partners, for a very long time,
01:04:36.540 this whole secret hidden life. He was so revered that when he died, several hundred eulogies were
01:04:44.860 written about him by members, so many that they actually published a book of them. And then a few
01:04:51.120 of the sister workers, I believe, started coming forward and saying, we have a problem with this
01:04:57.860 guy being so revered. He abused us. And that letter from them or information about that, which was
01:05:07.300 supposed to stay contained within the group, got leaked and went viral and suddenly opened the
01:05:14.400 floodgates to a whole Me Too movement within the two by twos within the last two years, especially here
01:05:19.660 in America. And we had people coming forward in the dozens and then the hundreds and then the
01:05:26.640 thousands. And last year, the FBI announced a worldwide investigation into the group because
01:05:34.760 workers who had abused were often then shifted across state lines and across countries to re-offend
01:05:44.040 in other places. So they would take the offender, move them somewhere else, try to smooth things
01:05:49.760 over in the local area, send the perpetrator elsewhere. And the whole group is so perfectly,
01:05:56.400 unfortunately, set up for abuse because of the authority that these people hold in the minds of
01:06:03.740 the members. You don't question a worker. A worker cannot do wrong. They're God's only true agent.
01:06:08.040 How could they possibly be doing these things? They're the true way, the true ones.
01:06:12.560 So there's been a massive exodus of thousands of people in the last two years and more stories
01:06:21.860 being uncovered. And now there's just an explosion of YouTubes and TikToks and documentaries. There's
01:06:28.500 been some Hulu documentaries about abuse within the group and they're starting to be recognised on the
01:06:34.580 world stage for the first time. Because you have to remember beforehand, there were lots of
01:06:38.960 occasional stories and they'd be reported somewhere locally, but they're unrecognisable because there's
01:06:45.120 no name to attach to it. So something happening in three different places, you would never put it
01:06:50.540 together as being the same group, but they're starting to be internationally recognised. And it'll
01:06:55.880 be really interesting to see what comes out of the FBI investigation. And anybody who knows of this
01:07:02.300 group who has been in this group, who knows of abuse, now is the time to contact FBI. Even if you don't
01:07:08.440 live in America, there are, they will come and see you and interview you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for
01:07:16.020 being a part of that and for sharing your story. Can you tell people where they can find your book?
01:07:21.900 Um, my book, Cult to Christ is available pretty much anywhere online, um, through Amazon and ebook and
01:07:29.680 Kindle. Um, so yes. And also, um, I would really like to mention that because the history has been
01:07:37.480 so hidden and disclosed, Doug Parker's book, The Secret Sect is no longer in print, but, um, my friend
01:07:44.360 Cherie, who was one of the first people I came in contact with, who sent me all those pamphlets years
01:07:48.500 ago. She has written the definitive book of the whole history of the group called Preserving the
01:07:53.660 Truth. And that's designed to be a really, um, non-confrontational book, which just has all the
01:08:00.380 facts of the history that you can find out. Um, it's not meant to be a theological book. Um, it's
01:08:06.060 supposed to be non-threatening for, um, anybody in the group to be able to learn more about the history
01:08:10.840 of how the group evolved and where it's come to today. Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much.
01:08:15.980 I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story. Thanks, Sally.