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from moon beam Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 11:13 (Agree/Disagree?) These were published in 85 and the volumes were put into books and were distributed to pre-teens and teens in 1987/8 The idea was for everyone to have a copy. They were for members only and Not for the publics view. When we were traveling I was told to cover them with wallpaper or wrapping paper. (reply to this comment)

from ChrisG Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 18:20 (Agree/Disagree?) I think that is a great idea. I need to be reminded of all the crap that was my bread and butter as a kid. I also need it to validate to others that all that we went through originated from the top. (reply to this comment)

from megamouth Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 02:32 (Agree/Disagree?) Great idea! Does anyone have Uncircumcision 1977 (no jokes please!!) if so please post it here! Also any pictures of Zerby would be good. (reply to this comment)

from megamouth Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 02:31 (Agree/Disagree?) Great idea! Does anyone have: Uncircumcision if so please post it here! Also any pictures of Zerby would be good. (reply to this comment)

from Haunted Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 06:27 (Agree/Disagree?) On the same topic, while moving a few months back, I came across a box filled with cult literature. I wonder if anyone else remebers how disgusting some of the interpretations and slides were from the "Bible in Pictures". I thumbed through it and was absoloutely appalled! (reply to this comment)

From Siolo Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 22:59 (Agree/Disagree?) When I left TF way back in 94, I took a few books with me for 'old times sake'. Among the books I choose were the fat brown FN Encyclopedia, 3 of the Mo Letter volumes and Heaven's Girl. I occasionally flip through them and am sometimes shocked. How can it happen that an entire group of 'sane' people could just drive off the deep end like that? Come on! Heaven is in the moon, God wants you to be a whore, you should feel obligated to have sex with everyone who asks it of you, beat your kids for thier own good, trust strangers with the lives and well being of your children, breed like a rabbit even though you have no personal resources to provide for your spawn. I have mostly moved on, I have a good life now and I try to just put all that insanity aside and take reponsibility for myself and my future. I just still don't get it, it baffels me and it seems so pointless. What was the end to all the suffering? Not just ours as children but the single moms, the family women, our mothers who put us in that situation? I know they suffered as well but why did they choose to follow and continue to follow the family way and it's stupid, screwy doctorines, for what? Anyone that has ever visited me and picked up one of The Family books that I own is like "What the Fuck?!" Even without any explanation they just recoil at the Mo Letters. 17 years of my life was eaten up by that crap, that's way more than half my time on the planet and it all seems so inane and trivial. How could anyone have ever fallen for it? Were they all stupid or mental? Moses David, Gandpa, Berg, whatever you want to call him; he was no genius and his writing was niether lucid nor even interesting yet it was the stuff that my pathetic childhood was made of. I'm just angry about it being so senseless, such a waste of suffering. Had I grown up the same way but ruled by some cause with at least an inteligent ideology (Say Marxisim for example), I could just blow it off and know that at least the cause of my neglect was not entirely banal. But this crap? I was raised on the ship of fools.(reply to this comment)

From ChrisG Thursday, October 28, 2004, 18:16 (Agree/Disagree?) Unfortunately, I spent 22 years listening to that crap. I wasn't able to break away from it as early as you were. If you do have a scanner, I think it would be great to upload some of the articles from the FN Encyclopedia to this site. I think the author of this article is planning on uploading Heaven's Girl already. The FN Encyclopedia was a big part of my steady crap diet as a little girl, and some parts of it really affected me, like the article from the girl saying her Dad was trying to come on to her. She asked Berg what she should do, and he wrote back "According to your faith be it unto you". That showed me as a kid that nobody was going to protect me from anything, since I knew most people had "faith" for just about anything sexual. I am at a period in my life where I am trying to come to grips with the cruelty of my upbringing, and seeing some of the stuff the Family used to publish would help me do that. It would also help validate the claims of all of us who post on this site. (reply to this comment)

From Siolo Friday, October 29, 2004, 00:26 (Agree/Disagree?) ChrisG, I don't post here very often and I think that for the most part I am better off spending my time studying and working, rather than trying to sift through all the family flotsom that we already know about. I was caught at a weak moment last night when I read the original post. I, like many others, feel compelled to return to this site or to associate with former members even though we know that there is nothing new to learn. I supose it gives us validation of sorts, yes this happened even if the rest of the world does not know or care about it. I think there is also a component of comfort. 'Normal' people can go home, they can return to the houses they grew up in or the schools they attended. For us, there is no home. We can only return to memories, most not good and we can come back to those others that shared the experience. It almost makes me melencholic, this eventual dissalution of the family. When it's all gone and over will it make what we went through less real? Will we drift farther away and have nothing to call our childhood home? I'm curious about your situation, I can't imagine having stuck it out in the family as long as you did. Now that your out and taking stock of things do you feel differently about the family literature than you did when you were still a member? Obviousl, as you said in your post, you had issues with some of the things that you came across, but how did you last so long? I remember being about 10, sitting in devotions early one morning. There was a new pub out and the adults were pretty excited. They read through the thing and it said that Grandpa had recieved a prophecy about heaven being inside the moon, they used the bible to back up this goofy theory. I'm sure you remembr all this. Anyway, right then I looked around the room at all these grown people with fanatically excited expressions and it hit me that every single one of them was insane. Some guy comes up with this idea and with no proof, no empirical data, nothing to contradict centuries of Astrological study and theological for that matter; but every adult in the room took it as fact. I knew right than that I had to get out, they were all crazy. I should go now, I wish I could stop coming back to this site. But here I am getting paid like 30$ an hour to dwell on my past (I am at work still you see, but not working). Enough. Best of luck to you, i'll see if I can find the article you mentioned. ciao, siolo(reply to this comment)

From ChrisG Friday, October 29, 2004, 15:05 (Agree/Disagree?) I think the answer to your question about why I lasted so long is multi-pronged. Just to clarify, I left a few years ago, but I am at an especially introspective time at my life right now because I quit my job to go to school full time, and academia has really gotten my brain moving. One reason I lasted so long is because I was in situations that were more prone to "brainwashing" than others were. For example, I was in a combo at 7 years old (I'm now 26), which was one of the first combos developed. After that time I was consistently in big homes with heavy indoctrination going on. I went to Jett camp and a teen home. I know of many, like my husband, who never really swallowed the crap, and I think it is because they spent more time with just their families and/or had more exposure to society (my husband went to school for years). I was kept extremely guarded and constantly indoctrinated from a very young age, which I think contributed towards my devotion to TF as a child and teenager. At 7 and 8 years old I already received weekly Mo Letter reading lists (including letters like “The Girl Who Wouldn't”) and wrote daily OHR's and reactions to each individual Mo Letter. Secondly, my personality has always been an “all or nothing at all” type. Since I believed that what I was fed my whole life was the truth (I was never exposed to anything that would have led me to believe otherwise), I went all out for it, and was considered a “good” family girl. I believe those are two of the main reasons why it took me so long to realize TF was full of crap and cut off all ties with it. Another reason is that I had actually started to believe that all the abuse I had experienced as a child was sort of my imagination, because I was told time and again that I was exaggerating when I would tell fellow family members stories of my early childhood. Since all the early sex pubs had been burned, I had no proof, and I started to believe that my mind was making up stuff. During my last five years in the family, I was in a home with only other young people, and we were sort of doing our own thing, so I figured that the past was in the past, and that we were innocently serving the Lord. Of course, being in a young people’s home gave me plenty of opportunity to socialize with the world (and to look up sites like this one), which is what made me aware of how off the family was and also helped me recognize that all the abuse that I had gone through was not a figment of my imagination, but was a direct result of the cult leader’s writings. (reply to this comment)

From roxal Monday, June 06, 2005, 18:56 (Agree/Disagree?) I totally agree with you. I can't belive there are so many grown up people in that group that wholeheartedly belive everything that is fed to them in those stupid letters. My mother wasted 25 years in the group and till this day, is still partially brainwashed. My father is still in TF, and he has pretty much forgotten all about us and doesn't even bother emialing unless it's to send some crap newsletters TF sends out by email. He has been brainwashed into believing that TF is more important than his own children. He has nine kids, and has never bothered sending his wife (my mom) any child support for any of us; she is still brainwashed to the point that she doesn't even want to take him to court because she believes he's doing the "greater good". I wish there was a way to convince, or to at least make her or him question their beliefs. I wonder if you would have any advice (considering you realised at some point how off TF's beliefs were) as to what I could do or say to raise doubt or questions. I'd appreciate it. (reply to this comment)