The Christian Cult

JANUARY 1973

On the Opa Locka base there was a group of Charismatic Chrisians who lived in a house off the station. They invited me to a dinner at their house so I accepted the offer. I always felt uneasy with these guys but thought that I needed to at least check them out.

When I arrived everyone greeted me with a holy kiss - the type of greeting that the French give each other. Now I lived in Belgium for one year and had no problem with guys greeting me in that culture with the 3 kisses like they traditionally do. But in Miami when they gave me their holy kisses, I was totally creeped out.

Before dinner one of the guys from the stations told me that he liked to smoke marijuanna while he read the Bible and the leader showed me dozens if not hundreds of cassette tapes from Charismatic teachers - these and not the Bible were the center of the group. They associated the Bible with the Law and the Charismatic teachers with grace. For them the Bible was Law was good to read, but needed to be interpreted through the teachings of the leaders.

After dinner one of the girls who lived in the house felt sick, so we all got around and prayed for her, after which the leader told her that God was telling him that the reason she was sick was that there was a man at her work she needed to forgive. She got concerned and told him there were no men at her work, but upon the insistance that there was a man at her work she needed to forgive, she remembered that there was a man who cleaned up the office after hours, but she didn't remember ever having anything against him. Nevertheless, she confessed her transgression before the group.

Before that day I had seen many times when God spoke to people about sin, and every time there was recognition and solution to the issue - not in this case. She had no recognition of guilt and I saw that very clearly.

From then on I stayed away from the group, but they hounded me down until I got out of the service.

UPDATE 2018

For years I have assumed that this group was unusual and more like a cult than a legitimate Christian group, but he more I am looking into the modern Charismatic movement, the more I am realizing that the group mentioned in this post is not all that unusual. More and more groups are turning away from the Bible and focusing more on new revelations by self-named apostles and prophets.