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The Children of God
The Inside Story By The Daughter Of The Founder, Moses David Berg by Deborah (Linda Berg) Davis with Bill Davis, 1984
How could David Berg, once kind and tender as a father, become so perverted and base, leading thousands of people into sinful darkness? Is his mind diseased? Is he mentally deranged? Is he a psychopath? In that I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist nor a sociologist, I am forced to see my father through the eyes of a daughter—through the relationship of flesh and blood, through emotion and filial love. He is my father, and I cannot alter the fact. In viewing him as such, I have a perspective no one else has. However, human weakness can cause that perspective to be distorted, and consequently dull the sense of vision. Because I am his daughter, there exists the temptation not to see him as he really is. My father is a man of exceptional intelligence. He is a most charming man, highly mannered and quite gracious to those he meets in public places. I often tell people that a child could not have had a more concerned and loving father. I remember vividly the day I graduated from eighth grade. My father had been traveling in another state on business, but he flew hundreds of miles just to be there. He came late to the graduation ceremony, marched right down the main aisle, and pinned a beautiful corsage on my dress just as I was walking up to receive my diploma. There wasn't a sacrifice he wouldn't make for his children. Yet, like a psychopathic killer, Moses David calculates with an uncanny genius the realization of his desires. A psychopath, according to medical definition, is a person with a constitutional lack of moral sensibility although possessing normal intelligence. This definition fits my father's character acutely. What causes psychopathy? Psychologists or psychiatrists would most likely interpret Moses David according to the dynamics of the mind. They would cite the behavioral patterns developed as a result of his personality, social environment, parentage, and so on. Through inductive reasoning, they would establish why "he is what he is" by looking back on his life, and piecing together past actions and circumstances that resulted in his present condition. Thus the phenomenon of "Moses David" can be explained in many ways in the social sciences. Yet none of these explanations deal with the vital issue. They do not confront the moral problem, namely, the presence of evil. Given that others were exposed to the same circumstances of life as he, the question persists, Why did my father become psychopathic? Secular psychology doesn't have all the answers. To answer the question, we must view David Berg from a greater perspective than mind science or even filial bonds. I began to understand my father's condition when I was able to see him through the eyes of a repentant sinner. There is but one way to view my father honestly. There is only one way to account for what he is and why he has become Moses David. It is to recognize the overpowering and consuming consequences of sin. Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote: This self-centered personality reflects the very nature of sin. Chafer writes, Satan, through whom sin entered the universe, has a distinct and predictable nature, because his being is wholly evil and self- centered. Chafer explains, Does David Berg consciously know that he is an unrestrained tool in the hands of the devil? No, I am sure he does not. Do his followers know that their works are evil and that their Prophet walks in darkness? No, I am sure they do not. Satan is the deceiver of the whole world, and, Chafer reminds us, "Few indeed would knowingly march under his banner. Yet, it will be seen that there are but few who do not, to some degree, give allegiance to him."98 How else can we explain why husbands in the Children of God would continually give their wives to other men? It is unnatural. Why would thousands of youths throw their lives away following a sex-mad old man? It is not normal. Why would people, infected with herpes and other venereal diseases, knowingly pass these afflictions to other people and call it "the love of God"? Why would men feel no obligation to the children they have fathered, walking off at a second's notice, and abandoning wife and child, so that they might be free to "serve God"? These questions can be answered only by understanding sin. I cannot look at my father in any other way. Scripture teaches us that "sin is any want of conformity to the character of God, whether it be an act, disposition, or state."99 There is abundant evidence in my father's writings of the self-centered life and its destructive consequences. Mo Letters expound the "All Things" doctrine, perverting the words of the apostle Paul and becoming Moses David's license for immorality.*
For example, Mo berates a husband who worked on his personal staff during the FF revolution in Tenerife, because the young man had countermanded his orders. It seems the husband was reluctant to let his wife commit adultery. Mo wrote: If you flatly refuse to let her follow the Lord, and you start giving her orders contradictory to my counsel, then what's going to happen? (Hubby: I'll have to go.) If she wants to stay and continue but you don't, yes! But the choice is yours. What do you want to do? (Hubby: I want her to be bait.) Why? (Hubby: Because I know it's the Lord's will.) For whom? (Hubby: For both of us.) For whom? (Hubby: For Jesus!) Right!"101 I could easily fill this book with examples of his depraved mind, and how he treats both adults and children like objects on a game board, to be moved around, used, abused, and exploited for the sake of his personal pleasure and the "cause." He revels in the sexual immorality of his followers throughout the world. Through video cassettes he has begun to circulate pornographic films among the Colonies. Yet he calls it just "seeing the beauty of God's creation." Disciples are required to participate in these videos to prove their "spiritual freedom." This is not the man I once knew as my father. Moses David is not my father; Moses David is a man consumed by sin. I still love David Berg and pray for his soul. But I came to a point in my life when I decided I must be honest with myself and others: David Berg is a man given over to evil. The Scripture has been fulfilled in his life: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. . . . For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections! . . . As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind . . ." (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). Three times in Romans 1, the apostle Paul declares, "God gave them up." Paul deals with the condition of reprobation in Romans 1. Reprobates are people who see this world through the tainted glass of wickedness. In verse 28 Paul writes, . . . God damn them! O God, if I had a gun, I'd shoot them myself. Lord . . . do something to annihilate them! There's not one of those civilians that's innocent! May God damn every Israeli! They're all guilty. They all deserve slaughter.103 Scripture says that God has no alternative but to give up a person to be totally consumed by his lusts. I am shocked at what my father has become. There is a definable path to reprobation. Individuals and societies alike follow this route. It begins with natural curiosity, the temptations common to all people: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life. Drawn by lust, we fall into sin. Once drawn into evil, our conscience—the awakening of guilt and the law of God within us—sounds an alarm. As the conscience amplifies the guilt, we feel frustration, spiritual irritation, and a sense of alienation. These are God's warning signs, His method of drawing us to Him. The pain of guilt can be relieved only by the remission of sin. But rather than turning to God, confronting our sin and confessing it, our tendency is to deny its reality and our accountability to God. My father's involvement in sexual immorality, incest, and adultery, (beginning when he was a boy), caused him to reexamine the laws of God as revealed in Scripture, and twist and interpret them to satisfy his moral condition. In 1980 he wrote, "No, I don't have to keep the ten commandments! All I have to do is love and do whatever I do in love! Nothing else, no more! That's all there is to it, thank God!106 More recently he wrote: By the time I was twelve, I knew about all there was to know about sex. I can remember at the age of four I was very interested in little girls and what they . . . (Sara: That proves how sexy the Holy Spirit really is! Because you were filled with the Holy Spirit from your mother's womb, yet as far back as you can remember, you were always interested in girls and sex, and Davidito has your spirit, and he's the same way!) Fascinated! So I started at an early age and engaged in sex all my life, but I don't think it's hurt me, thank the Lord! Maybe it was good for me. After age seven, when I finally learned how to do it with my little cousin, I was a confirmed addict!"107 My father eventually reached a state of total frustration. He was bound in sin and he knew it. Pride and rebellion hindered him from seeking true forgiveness in Christ; and consequently, he was unable to "let go" of those sins. Unable to find freedom, only one alternative remained for my father: Define Scripture in such a manner as to make room for sin. Hence, the "All Things" doctrine was promulgated. Bill Gothard wisely observes, "There is a continuous mental effort to justify personal moral behavior on the basis of the existing moral code [in my father's case, biblical morality]. Thus, if that code can be 'reinterpreted' to include as 'moral' what was previously immoral, the mind is eager to accept this, and to reject previous codes as 'straight-laced,' 'mid-Victorian,' etc."108 This is precisely what my father did at some point in his life. I can't specify exactly when, but I believe at some point in his marriage, perhaps during the time he worked for Fred Jordan, he con- sciously rejected scriptural morality and redefined God's laws to suit his lustful passions. Reprobation is seen in its final, completed stage when a person begins to argue and teach others his redefined morality. A reprobate will attempt to bring others into his perversion, because sin loves company. The apostle Paul states, "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness" (2 Thessalonians 2: 10-11 N IV). Moses David has steadfastly taught thousands of people a corrupt moral code based on his weakness and inability to conquer moral impurity. Perhaps the cruelest thing the Prophet has done is to set thousands of people on a sexual rampage without any thought for its results. Specifically, what will happen to the children? Mo casts the future well-being of thousands of children to the wind and says "Oh, just let the Colonies take care of them. Everyone can be a mommy and daddy!" In July 1976 he announced: Marriage in the Family is to Jesus, and they are all "Jesus Babies!"—and we are all married to each other in His love. Read "One Wife", "Law of Love", "All Things Tree", etc.110 "In November 1977, I fell in love with a brother named Elkanah. He was already married when I met him. (It was his third wife, and she was pregnant with his baby—his fourth child by three different women.) Having two wives is not uncommon in the Family, and at first things seemed to work out quite well in our threesome. In fact, things were going so good, that Elkanah and I prayed for a son. Shortly thereafter, I left our Colony in Naples for Malta to begin an FF ministry among the Libyans that frequent that island. I was pregnant with Elkanah's baby when I left. Visa restrictions to Malta are strictly limited to three months, and although I would be gone just a short time, Elkanah encouraged me to go, as he strongly believed it was the Lord's will to FF the Arabs. "I returned to Naples several months later, but the tables had turned. I was no longer wanted in his Colony. At that point, Elkanah decided to move from Naples to Sicily, and so the Colony packed up and headed South. About two weeks after we arrived, things went from bad to worse. He literally threw me and my two children out on the streets. At the time I was four-and-a-half months pregnant and of no apparent value to him. I was in a terrible predicament, as I couldn't speak enough Italian to get by. My five-year-old son translated for me. "We returned to Naples and squatted a deserted villa. Each day I went litnessing with my two children, (aged five and one and a half), in order to survive. It was the rainy season in Naples, and for two months we were forced to go out in the freezing rain and distribute Mo Letters. I'd have to say it was one of the most depressing periods of my life. For four months we lived like that. Due to the stress and difficult living conditions, I started premature labor. I sent word to Elkanah informing him of my condition, and the potential threat to the baby's life—the danger of death was imminent. I asked him to pray for the baby, but the only reply I received was, 'Work out your own salvation.' "At that point, I contacted all the Colonies in Southern Italy, and none of them would help. No one wanted the extra responsibility of a pregnant mother with children. No Colonies would take me in. It was a time in my life when I felt it was not worth it to go on living. Little did I know worse things were to happen yet." In the experience of just this one disciple we see the reality of my father's All Things doctrine. Sin has caused this man, Elkanah, to become a self-centered, insensitive, product of Moses David's teachings, and, like my father, devoid of natural affection. The abominations of Moses David are thus being passed on to his followers. We cannot look at what he is doing as anything but sin. There are many people who have in their minds a knowledge of God, but as the Scripture says, "they do not retain Him there" (Romans 1:28). The knowledge of God is cast aside because it inhibits the full expression of lust. What does God do in such a case? He patiently endures for a season. When I was seven, Dad's lusts burned within him and drove him to desire incest. When I was twelve, he attempted it once again. When my sister reached the age of ten, he burned with lust toward her. Now he teaches his followers that incest is not forbidden by God. God's patience can endure only so long. There comes a point of rejection. Consequently, because of Dad's stubborn willfulness, God gave him over to unrestrained desires to commit the grossest of sins as a reprobate. My father is chained in sin, his conscience is seared, he is beyond the point of feeling. I have witnessed, in the life of my father, one of the most frightening punishments of God—to be cut loose from restraining forces and set adrift in the boundless sea of sin. Matthew Henry writes, "It is a great aggravation of sin when it is committed against knowledge. It is daring presumption to run upon the sword's point. They 'not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that do them.' To be pleased with other people's sins is to love sin for sin's sake: it is joining in a confederacy for the devil's kingdom. Our own sins are much aggravated by our concurrence with the sins of others.111 How painfully the words struck me: "to love sin for sin's sake." I see the thousands upon thousands of people following Moses David in his insanity, "running upon the sword's point," as if in gleeful madness impaling themselves upon the deadly sword of sin—and my father praising it, glorifying it, reveling in it. He has joined "a confederacy with the devil's kingdom." Abrahim. Goddesses. Flirty Fishing, Jesus Babies. To varying degrees, COG disciples are taking on the nature of Moses David. Sin never sits still. With our finite minds we cannot begin to estimate the essential wickedness of Satan or the unbelievable horror of sin. The apostle Paul writes ". . . that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful." (Romans 7:13). So too, it is beyond mv finite mind to fathom the wickedness flourishing under my own father. Moses David is indeed a psychopath. But he is far, far more: he is reprobate. In consequence to the unrestrained lusts of his unregenerate heart, God has given him over to a mind of reprobation to do those things which are purely wicked. He has created for himself a world of unmitigated evil.
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