Sex with the Godesses
By Ed (Hart)
|
2001 |
Sex with the Godesses
David Berg’s spiritual experiences with the goddesses is one of the most
disturbing topics of discussion in the Family. In all fairness, it must be
pointed out that the average Charter member spends hardly any time thinking
about the goddesses. They’re too busy trying to earn a living and raise their
children. Many try to push Berg’s Letters on the subject out of their minds
because it is not a subject they even wish to think about. It would probably be
accurate to say that quite a number of Family members wish that David Berg had
never had his spiritual/sexual experiences with the goddesses at all.
Most Charter members don’t understand Berg’s teachings about the goddesses, and
because they aren’t often confronted with the issue, probably don’t care much
about it. But the unfortunate situation is that Charter members, if questioned
about it, may feel that they must defend the goddesses. Why? Because this is not
a mere doctrine, nor even dreams, but a series of “visions from God” and
“spiritual experiences” that David Berg had over a period of many years, which
he stated were very real, and which he said were from God Himself.
If you are a current Charter member, please know that it is not my intention to
condemn you if you believe this. How could I? For nearly twenty years, I myself
believed that David Berg was God’s Prophet and that every one of his revelations
were from God. I was a WS editor for years and promoted Family doctrine to the
hilt. If I judge you guilty in this regards, I have to judge myself as even
guiltier. For years I didn’t question the goddesses—not because it was something
I wanted to believe, but simply because Berg taught it in so many of his
Letters. I knew this was not a mere doctrine or theory or guess on his part, but
a series of actual spiritual experiences he’d had.
Outsiders reading this may wonder how anyone who calls themselves a Christian
could possibly believe such an unScriptural doctrine. In most cases, I believe
that Family members have simply never had the opportunity to examine the subject
of the goddesses in depth with all the quotes on together in one class. So it
has stayed out of most people’s minds. Some people might ask: Why bring the
topic up? Why not just leave it? Maybe it will just go away. Well, I did bring
this issue up to David Berg himself nearly 20 years ago, and it has still not
gone away.
In April, 1973, a Mo Letter came out entitled “The Goddesses”. It was Letter
number 224. It described the strangest spiritual experiences Berg had ever
experienced, but most people in the Family—myself included—received it without
too many questions. We were used to receiving unusual teachings from Berg and he
was, we were convinced, God’s prophet, proclaiming God’s new truths to this
final generation. If he said that God had showed him something, then no matter
how strange it sounded, we believed it. And from his vivid description of his
experiences, it was clear that something HAD actually happened to him.
Considering that he was in close communion with the Lord, his experiences had to
be good.
It didn’t matter that Berg was having spiritual sex with the pagan Greek goddess
Aphrodite, Diana of the Ephesians, Vishnu of India, the voodoo goddess Mocumba,
the Cat Goddess (the Sphinx) of Egypt, the Sun Goddess—some of the darkest of
pagan idols. Since it had happened to our Father in the Lord, it had to be good.
It had to be of God. In paragraph 3 of this first Letter about the goddesses,
Berg admitted:
“I’ve been a little shocked by some of these strange experiences . . . all those
Goddesses I’ve made love to in the Spirit. In each case, the one I was making
love to would suddenly turn into one of these strange and beautiful Goddesses,
and I would immediately explode in an orgasm of tremendous spiritual power while
at the same time prophesying violently in some foreign language.”
In paragraphs 4 and 20, he explained:
“Do you know what every one of these women was doing?—Each was submitting
herself to our love!—Each seemed like some sort of symbolic conquest!—And do you
know what they really represent?—Each is the spirit of her country, like the
spirit of their religion. And what was I doing with each of them?—I was
literally overcoming, or overpowering them, conquering each of them with God’s
love, loving each into submission by the irresistible power of the Spirit of
God! If . . . these Goddesses of the nations are all waiting in line to be loved
by David, why can we not understand that they represent all the lands that are
waiting for our love, to bring them the love of God! Come, let us conquer them
with His loving! They long for us to come in unto them in love!”
In paragraph 4, Berg named the different Goddesses that he had spiritual sex
with:
“Aphrodite of Cyprus; the Maharishi of Hyderabad; the Queen of England; the
multi-armed Goddess of India (Vishnu);the Cat Goddess of Egypt (the Sphinx); the
Black Girl of the African Nightmare; the bird-like Sun Goddess of the Nile; the
Moon Goddess (Diana) of the Ephesian Asian of Turkey; the Pearl Goddess of
Central Asia; the shy Latin America Indian Goddess; and the queenly
Miss-American Sex Goddess!”
In paragraph 19, he gave what he believed was a Scriptural precedent:
“If the sons of God, or the angels or spirits of God, could have intercourse
with the dreamy daughters of men and thereby have children who became giants and
mighty men of old, why cannot the sons of men have intercourse with these
beautiful spiritual daughters of God, these Goddesses of His spiritual Heavens,
the symbolic spirits or Heavenly Queens of each nation? (Gen.6:1-4)”
Berg said that each of his lovers who had suddenly been transformed into a
goddess represented some sort of symbolic conquest, lands and people waiting for
the love of God, and explained that his sex with them was simply illustrating us
conquering these nations by preaching them the Gospel. So we thought all was
well. This was simply a graphic witnessing message. Besides, in Berg’s Letter,
“Come on Ma!—Burn Your Bra!”, Letter 286, paragraph 23, he promised us:
“If you can accommodate this new wine without asking why or trying to analyze
its ingredients, God has such thrills & intoxications of the Spirit in store for
you and you will be glad you drank it without question.”
If we didn’t drink his new doctrines in “without question, without asking why”,
if we “tried to analyze” them, then we were considered to be doubting. Not
wanting to be doubters, we drank in this new “revelation.” If you have never
been a member of the Family, you’re probably wondering how Christians who love
Jesus could fail to be shocked at such a teaching. When I was in the Family, it
didn’t shock me, and I have to seriously question myself and ask why it didn’t.
This is something all ex-members must do. Before criticizing current Charter
members about the goddesses, ex-members should first take a long look into their
own hearts and ask why they put up with something like this without protest. I
include myself in that list.
For many of us, the answer is that it was simply not a front-burner priority. We
were too busy witnessing, winning souls, pioneering, raising children. And
frankly we didn’t WANT to think about things like this. We should have, but it
was easy enough not to. But one day an incident happened that deeply disturbed
me and FORCED me to think about it, and to start questioning the goddesses.
When I was living in Puerto de la Cruz, in Tenerife, Spain, in 1978, part of a
TK Artists’ Home, myself and three other Family artists were living in the Casa
Blanca, with a tremendous view of the volcano, Teide, illustrating Berg’s
Letters as komics for the public. Eman Artist had illustrated the Mo Letter “The
Goddesses” as a komic some months earlier in Madrid. Eman was the top artist of
the Family, and Berg enjoyed Eman’s art so much that he had commissioned him to
do a very special job. As Eman was living in another Home on the other side of
Puerto de la Cruz, and kept his work secret, I didn’t know about it at the time.
But one day another Family artist and myself were called to Eman’s Home to help
him on a special rush project.
The Family had been putting out our own calendars for a couple years now, and
the illustrations were usually of happy children, beautiful mothers with babies
and handsome men playing guitars and singing. Mostly Michael Christian type
stuff. This year’s calendar was going to be very different. When we arrived at
Eman’s Home, we saw what he had been working on. Eman was a top oil painter and
at Berg’s orders, had done oil renderings of several different goddesses. Each
painting was of a naked or nearly-naked pagan goddess, voluptuous and sexually
provocative. There was a goddess for each month, and we had been called there to
letra-set the Mo quotes underneath the paintings.
Although we did the lettering, the incident troubled me. It had been one thing
to think in vague terns that the goddesses were “symbolic representations of
nations receiving the Gospel”, but seeing them portrayed in full colour as
naked, ravishingly beautiful goddesses, drove the point home: the goddesses were
literally that, goddesses, and putting them before the Family’s eyes all year
long would amount to setting them up as objects of worship.
The painting that bothered me the most was the one of the huntress Diana with a
pale moon behind her. The other goddesses I could rationalise away—I knew little
or nothing about them anyway—but I couldn’t help but think about how the
worshippers of Diana had violently opposed Paul and the early Christians in Acts
19:23-36. Diana had not received the Gospel, she had stirred up her followers to
fight it. She had, it seemed to me, acted more like . . . well . . . an evil
spirit.
Later, back in the Artist’s Home, I mentioned my reservations about Diana to
another artist, Sojourn. “She’s mentioned in the Bible,” I protested. “The
worshippers of Diana were fighting Paul.” Sojourn said, “Ah, Paul was just an
old bottle.” I laughed and answered, “And you would have been in the crowd
shouting, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians!! Great is Diana of the Ephesians!!’”
(Acts 19:34) We both laughed. It was so ridiculous.
Fortunately, the Goddesses calendar never made it out to the Family. I don’t
know why. Very likely it would simply have cost too much to have had all those
four-colour separations made of the oil paintings. Or perhaps Maria realized
that that would be going too far?—Literally setting up the goddesses as objects
of worship. I like to hope that it was her who made that decision and overrode
Berg on this, but I simply don’t know.
At this point I still didn’t have a firm conviction of who the goddesses were,
but I began to be deeply troubled by the whole concept. As much as I wanted to
accept Berg’s revelations without reservation, I just couldn’t reconcile this
doctrine with what I read in my Bible. It just didn’t line up with the simple,
pure Gospel that Jesus had preached in the New Testament.
Two years earlier, on August 21, 1976, Berg had come out with Letter number 554
entitled Mocumba, in which he described having sexual intercourse with the black
Goddess Mocumba. She was, Berg told us, the symbolic spirit of Africa, eager to
have sex with him, just as Africa was open to receive the gospel from the
Family. Berg said in paragraphs 1,14:
“I was getting ready to make love early in the morning when suddenly this huge,
beautiful naked black Goddess descended on top of me, loved me madly, and
quickly made me come! Big beautiful black Goddess, Mocumba! I called for Mocumba
and she came!”
In paragraphs 16,19,53 Berg described a vision of her:
“See? They dance to her! They hung her on like a cross, and they built a big
fire, and the brave ones there run up and fuck her while she’s hanging there!
But they don’t get to fuck her unless they run through the fire and fuck her on
the cross. She hangs there with her knees apart and they fuck her one by one!
There’s all this shouting and yelling and screaming and all this African music
going on! But she came down from the cross through the fire to fuck me!”
In paragraphs 23,25,54 he exclaimed:
“No wonder she was their Goddess and they worshipped her, she was so big and
beautiful, gigantic, powerful! She whirls that thing around like you better get
out of the way, that big stick with that knob on the end and those ribbons and
feathers. She looks down on me like a mother looking at her little baby in the
crib and smiles so sweet. But when she was on my penis she just absolutely went
wild! My God, what does that all mean! She’s like their sacrifice of love.”
Eman Artist had illustrated Mocumba in a full frontal position on the Mo Letter
cover, and the Family’s top photographer, Enoch Cameron, laughed as he told me
that Berg had had him make a giant paper positive of this illustration, enlarged
to the size of a poster. Berg had then hung this picture on strings from the
ceiling, above his bed, so he could look up at Mokumba “astride him” as he was
laying down.
Like so many other Mo Letters, I filed this away in the back of my mind and kept
on my attempts to serve God in the Family. And there was certainly lots to do!
Then, in 1982, when I was in Madrid, Spain, and in charge of the Family’s Art
Department, a new WND (World News Digest) came out. It contained a secular
newspaper article, confirming that Mocumba (spelled Mokumba) was indeed an
actual spiritual entity, but that she was an EVIL spirit that witch doctors in
Brazil invoked when placing VOODOO curses on people. I was horrified. And to
think, Berg had boasted about becoming one with her in sexual intercourse!
What bothered me more than anything was the Berg had merely printed the article
as a “confirmation” that there was indeed a Mokumba. He didn’t issue any
statement of warning about her, nor did he renounce her as an evil spirit, even
after finding out she was a demon who empowered voodoo curses. 1Tim.4:1 says,
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart
from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.” I was
a WS art overseer, I was a loyal Family member, I loved Dad, but now, every time
I read that verse, I would automatically think of the goddesses. I mean, they
were spirits, and they were seducing our Father in the Lord. I couldn’t help but
think, “If any spirit fits the description of a ‘seducing spirit’, it’s them!”
Then I would automatically catch myself. “No, that can’t be. If that was so,
then that means that Dad is ‘departing from the faith, giving heed to doctrines
of devils.” I was certain that that couldn’t be the case. Wasn’t Dad preaching
salvation through Jesus? Of course. And weren’t we, the Family, winning more
souls to Christ than any other Christians in the World? Well, from what we saw
in our own stats, yes. At least we were winning lots! But if the Goddesses
weren’t “seducing spirits”, then who on earth were they? The question would
simply not go away.
Continuing comments in later Mo Letters had begun to make it clear that the
Goddesses were not simply “symbolic conquests.” Whatever they were, they were
REAL spiritual beings. But what could they be? My Bible said that there were
only two classes of spiritual beings: angels and demons. I couldn’t find any
mention of a third neutral class of spirit beings floating around.
With a Young’s Analytical Concordance and my Bible in one hand, and the Mo
Letters in my other, I began to do an indepth study on the subject. I typed out
every Mo quote that mentioned the goddesses, dug out every Bible mention of gods
and goddesses, even researching the words’ Greek and Hebrew meanings. To my
relief, I finally “resolved” the matter! I found Mo quotes where Berg
specifically stated that a certain goddess or god was an ANGEL.
In the ML “Atlanta!—Goddess of Atlantis!” (ML 615, paras. 1–2), after the third
time of having a lover transform into Atlanta as he had an orgasm, Berg said:
“While making love this morning when almost to the point of orgasm I had a very
strange experience: A very beautiful woman covered with green scales like a wet
suit but no clothes appeared to me to make love to me! My excitement mounted so
that I exploded in a tremendous terrific orgasm!—Also while at that point of
climax I changed so I was like her!”
He explained this experience in paras.3, 15, 16:
“Could this be the Goddess or Angel of the Canaries? Countries do have spirits
or gods or goddesses.—The Bible says so! (See Dan.10:13) If she is the Goddess
of Atlantis and bound to the remaining area of Atlantis, a sunken country, she
was appropriate in the form of a fish! Apparently different countries have
different spirits that God has put there to rule them, both good and bad,
according to what they deserve. That’s in the Bible too. (Dan.7:8, Rev.9–13.)
He repeated this concept in “Taurug” (ML 616) para. 27-28:
“They didn’t worship the mountain, they prayed to the angel that lives on top of
the mountain. There’s an angel that governs Tenerife, that lives on top of the
mountain. Everyplace in the world has an angel, don’t you understand that?
That’s in the Bible! There is a king of Persia, and there’s a King of Media . .
. there are angels who rule everywhere in the whole World.”
So the Goddesses were angels? Did the Bible confirm this? It seemed to. I
discovered a couple Old Testament Scripture passages where the Hebrew word
“elohim” (or “god”) had been translated “angel” in the KJV. On the other hand,
it was abundantly clear that some of the Goddesses were demons. In The
Goddesses, paragraph 17, Berg had quoted Daniel 10:13,20 about “the prince of
Persia” to prove that every country had a ruling spirit—a god or goddess—some
good, some evil. He again referred to Daniel 10 in both “Taurug” and “Atlanta”
to prove his case, and clearly stated that some countries definitely DID have
“bad” spirits ruling them. The “prince of Persia” had fought an angel of God, so
he was obviously an evil “god.” In other words, he was a demon.
Then I discovered that the Greek word translated as “gods” in Acts 17:18 came
from the word “daimonion” and meant “a little demon; deified spirits”. The
goddesses as Berg described them were indeed deified female spirits, but
according to this verse, SOME of them were demons!
Loyal Family disciple that I was, I assumed that the deified spirits that Berg
had been having sexual intercourse with must have been the good ones, the
angels. (How I momentarily managed to forget about Mokumba and Diana, I don’t
know.) I sent my compilation off to Berg, sure he would be encouraged by my Word
Study. I included a list of all the references to his Letters as well as Bible
references at the end of my compilation, so there was no arguing either the
conclusions I had come to, nor the fact that I was quoting him verbatim.
To my dumbfounded surprise, a month or so later I received a letter of sharp
rebuke back from Peter Amsterdam, saying, “Leave the editing to those whose job
it is, and stick to your art!” I didn’t get it. I had sent Berg a compilation
confirming his doctrine about the goddesses, and I’d expected him to be happy to
get it. Instead I had been rebuked.
A few months later when I was in a high security WS Home in Silvermine Bay, on
Lantau Island, in Hong Kong, I understood. A new Mo Letter, “Spirit Houses” (ML
1409) came out, and in it Berg and Maria were talking about praying souls out of
hell. Note Maria’s comment and Berg’s reply in paras. 34 & 40:
“(Maria: Maybe our prayers even helped release the spirits of the goddesses &
gods that have had to be bound for so long!) Oh, that’s another whole subject!
Look at those gods & goddesses that I’ve had to deal with! (Maria: Some of them
weren’t necessarily really good ones.) They weren’t all that good, but we did
release them, like Mocumba! She’s still worshipped as a goddess, as even like an
evil goddess in Africa & in South America, particularly Brazil! Yet she came to
me for help & I loved her, she loved me. . .”
“Perhaps a few of those goddesses were maybe angelic spirits before, I don’t
know. Maybe even they were formerly bad, & now being repentant, were asking for
forgiveness & release. I would say that in a sense about Mocumba: I mean it
seemed that formerly in her rites & they ways she is worshipped even today, that
she had been an evil spirit, what do you think?”
When I read, “Some of them weren’t necessarily really good ones,” I immediately
knew that Berg & Zerby had read my compilation and were admitting that I had
come to the right conclusions. Berg even had to confess that Mokumba was
“worshipped as a goddess, as even like an EVIL goddess.” He still would not
confess that she WAS an evil spirit, and almost couldn’t get out that she was
worshipped AS an evil goddess.
Notice how he said, “as even LIKE an evil goddess.” Berg could not bring himself
to admit that he had had sex with a demon. The realization must have come to him
that that would mean he had been experiencing succubus—sexual intercourse with
female demons. So he decided that this “evil goddess,” this “evil spirit,” as he
called her, had repented at some point. By having sex with him, Mocumba (still
worshipped as a voodoo goddess in Africa and Brazil) was showing that she was
now “good.”
In the following months, Family members wrote in asking Berg questions along
this line. While he had clearly stated that evil spirits and evil goddesses
could repent and be saved, he had NOT told the Family to start a ministry of
witnessing to demons or to goddesses to convert them. He had said that even
fallen angels (i.e. demons) could be saved, specifically suggesting that this
was what had happened with Mokumba: “Perhaps a few of those goddesses were maybe
angelic spirits . . . they were formerly bad . . . I would say that in a sense
about Mocumba.”
So there were some questions in Family disciples’ minds. In “Answers to your
Questions” (ML 1566), a disciple named Sheba wrote a question and Berg answered:
18. QUESTION: It’s believed that angels are already saved & don’t experience
salvation. But in the case of the fallen angels, because they have sinned & even
though they believe in Jesus, isn’t it still necessary for them to also repent &
receive Jesus to be saved, just like us, as they also have the free will of
choice of good & evil, accepting Jesus or rejecting?—Sheba, S.E. Asia.
ANSWER: Yes.
Berg’s clear answer here is that fallen angels (i.e. Satan’s demons) can repent
and be saved. This answer backs up what Berg said about the “conversion” of
Mokumba and other evil gods and goddesses. But this is not taught in the Bible.
What is taught in the Bible is that demons are creatures of immeasurable evil,
that they are masters of deception and masquerade as God’s true angels. “ And no
marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into (makes himself to appear as) an
angel of light. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve
through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity
which is in Christ.” (2Corinthians 11:14,3).
What if a demon goddess had pretended to now be a “good” angel to entice Berg to
have sex with her? Remember, Berg hadn’t been asking these goddesses, “Do you
confess Christ?” He was merely open to the experience as they came upon him
sexually, or as his lovers turned into a goddess.
In another question-&-answer in the same Letter, Berg gave the exact opposite
answer:
73. QUESTION: In “The Talisman” it asks what do you do to get rid of evil
spirits. Sometimes I think even the sea is not the best place to rebuke them to
as they continue to cause trouble. So how about praying that they get converted
into angels, or is this not our business?—Joseph & Claudia, Europe.
ANSWER: There is no Biblical record or precedent of praying for their
conversion. They even defied Christ in person! So I’m convinced the truly evil
rebellious angels of Satan, devils, as well as incorrigible evil human spirits .
. . will not repent without severe prolonged punishment like the Lake of Fire!
(Rev.20:10,14,15.) We are simply to rebuke them & cast them out. Ask the Lord
where to send’m!–Mt.9:29.
What is the Family’s stand on this issue? It was never further clarified. So
what did happened next with the goddesses? In the years following, I never read
another comment in Berg’s letters about them. He had realized that some of the
goddesses, if not STILL evil demon spirits, at least HAD been evil spirits, and
he ceased to talk about them. Unfortunately, Berg never did repent of his
sexual/spiritual experiences with the goddesses, and, though it has been buried
over the years, it is, to the best of my knowledge, still a part of Family
theology. If a Letter has come out clearly renouncing Berg’s spiritual
experiences with the goddesses, I have never seen it.
Why did Berg, when having sex, see visions of his various female lovers suddenly
transforming into goddesses? Berg was convinced that he was David the King and
the women he conquered sexually were Queens of the spirit world, goddesses of
entire nations. As Berg said in The Goddesses, paragraph 10:
“I’m supposed to be great King. Everybody comes to celebrate me! Many queens and
beautiful women and all the girls want to love the King! They stand in line
hoping they may be called. See that!—That’s the rod of my authority (His penis).
None of the queens can resist it. They all want it. My rod they all seek—sooner
or later they find!”
While visiting Tripoli, Libya, in his Letter “Houris of Heaven!”, Letter 1237,
in paragraphs 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, Berg describes sexual intercourse with
“houris” which he described as Arabic goddesses:
“To cut a long story short, well, we were in ecstasy! I certainly was. I don’t
know why I was suddenly inspired to pray so, but suddenly just as clear as
anything from my own heart came this prayer, “Oh, houris of heaven, help me!” I
meant it with all my heart!—And they came! They came just floating through the
air, not rushed, no hasty concern or anxiety, but just beautifully! Suddenly she
just settled down on top of me & I couldn’t feel her at all! It was just like a
mist or a smoke or a spirit or a ghost, whatever you want to call it! And she
just came & floated right over & sort of sank right down on top of me! I never
felt a touch, nothing. But the moment I felt her becoming one with me, I just
exploded like that!—Instantly, effortlessly, just beautiful, just a real
explosion!”
“With the other Goddesses it was like a metamorphosis, like Maria suddenly
turned into the Goddess, but not this time. The moment that happened, she just
gently settled down right on top of me, & as she did, it was all over, & Abrahim
was still yelling! He said, “Nothing is too good for thy father! Come on, come
on, help him!”
Berg made a very interesting statement above about his bed partners instantly
transforming into goddesses. Let’s examine his statement to get a picture of
what was happening: In “The Goddesses!”, paragraphs 3,4 he said:
“In each case, the one I was making love to would suddenly turn into one of
these strange and beautiful Goddesses, and I would immediately explode in an
orgasm of tremendous spiritual power while at the same time prophesying
violently in some foreign language!”
The following quotes are from Berg’s letter, ATLANTA!--Goddess of Atlantis!, ML
615, paragraphs 1–3, 5–7, 11, 14, 18, given October 2, 1974. Berg had a
fascination for Atlantis, and believed that the Canary Islands were one of the
last remaining vestiges of that lost continent. One day he met their goddess”:
“While making love this morning when almost to the point of orgasm I had a very
strange experience: A very beautiful woman covered with green scales like a wet
suit but no clothes, appeared to me to make love to me! My excitement mounted so
that I exploded in a tremendous terrific orgasm!—Also while at that point of
climax I changed so I was like her! It was so unusual about this woman: She had
no tail like a mermaid, but she did have two legs. Her hands and her feet were a
little like fins, but more like webbed fingers. She had big soft round eyes very
much like a fish.”
“She suddenly gave me such a terrific surge of power that I absolutely exploded!
When these Goddesses come to me I really want to do it and sock it to ’em! That
has happened three times now, just at that real spiritual moment of orgasm. Just
before it happens she has suddenly appeared, made love to me and made me explode
in a terrific orgasm of power! Could this be the Goddess or Angel of the
Canaries? She is the Goddess of the Canaries, one of the few remaining parts of
the Continent still above water!”
Thinking that the four fallen angels “bound in the river Euphrates” were not
demons, but good angels of God, Berg compared his new Goddess, Atlanta, to them:
“There were four angels that were bound in the great river Euphrates, according
to Revelation 9:24 in the Bible.—Why? It says they were prepared for a certain
hour, a certain time, for a certain work. Could this be her hour, her time, to
help us with our work?”
One of the Berg’s most stunning statements, however, is:
“A very beautiful woman covered with green scales like a wet suit . . . appeared
to me to make love to me! Her hands and her feet were a little like fins, but
more like webbed fingers. She had big round eyes very much like a fish. At that
point of climax I CHANGED so I was LIKE her!”
By now, Berg had become used to seeing his bed-partners go through sudden
metamorphoses and turn into strange Goddesses. But he was shocked that it had
happened to him as well. Consider his own assessment of his spiritual
experiences in Musical Key!, Letter 326, paragraphs 13, 14:
“I suppose that some people who are strictly carnal and unspiritual would say it
was my imagination. But if that’s my imagination, I’ve got one hell of an
imagination!—’Cause I totally flip out and am no longer here.—I am there! I see
things and I feel them.”
Having opened himself up to so many pagan goddesses, some of them “formerly
evil” and voodoo goddesses, it was only a matter of time before Berg began to be
troubled and oppressed by them. In a later Letter, “Mo’ Li’l Jewels!,” (ML 536),
paragraphs 80-82, he said:
“Regarding the Goddesses: I bumped into one of those women the other night when
the light was out in the hall! They were waiting for me and whispering to each
other and I though it was one of the girls for a minute, but I turned on the
light and there was nobody there! So I want to keep a light on so there’ll
continue to be nothing there!—Ha!”
“I don’t want to be bumping into strange spirit girls in the hall in the dark!
(Maria: Was it one of those Goddesses?) I think so. I don’t like it out there in
the dark—the hall fills up with them! They can’t come in here. All these angels
are around the bed, and they can’t come in without permission. I don’t mind them
waiting out there if they want to, but I don’t want to be bumping into them in
the dark—it’s kind of scary!”
In the next paragraph, Berg talks directly to the Goddesses, whom he swore he
could hear whispering outside his room:
“Everybody keep quiet! Don’t anybody say anything more, so poor Maria can go to
sleep! Be still so nothing will disturb the sleep of David! You keep saying
what? It’s not good for David’s sleep! (He was talking about the whispering and
giggling of the Goddesses outside the door where they wait their turn to make
love to him!)”
At first Berg was hearing voices, then in 1982-3, he began publishing Letters to
the Family that he had a severe throat infection, brought on by performing oral
sex and the result of a sustained drinking bout. Soon he was having trouble
swallowing food. When Berg prayed about why, he received a revelation that his
throat was being attacked by a demon named the Sphinx. In “God Knows When!” (ML
1407), in paragraphs 24, 26, 34, he said:
“This was exactly what I was thinking this morning: “What kind of a judgement is
this? Why this punishment? Why am I dying? Why am I going to be choked to death,
starved to death, even unable to take liquids soon? How come, Lord?” And it came
to me that it was . . . of the Devil, the attacks of Satan!—Like it’s the attack
of this sphincter Sphinx demon, the female goddess who choked her victims to
death. It’s the Devil attacking me, it’s this Sphinx goddess who hates me.”
In the original illustrations in Berg’s Letter, and on page 5 of Eman’s comic,
the Sphinx goddess was originally one of the so-called receptive goddesses that
Berg had been having sex with! In paragraph 4 of his very first letter on the
subject, “The Goddesses” he named her as one of his many spirit lovers: the Cat
Goddess of Egypt (the Sphinx). Now his former “lover” had a grip on him and was,
by Berg’s own admission, strangling him.
Berg’s problem became more severe as the years went by. By the time his Letter
“Terror by Night” was published in 1984, he confessed that demons were swarming
all over his walls, their faces leering at him out of the darkness and he was so
terrified that he could almost scream! Soon Maria had us conduct long “prayer
vigils” in which we rebuked the demons attacking Berg, and prayed that he could
sleep without being tormented by them.
I apologise for having shared the above information with you, but it had to be
said. It is a wrenching experience for me to read all these Mo quotes again, and
I understand what must be happening in your heart and mind. If you truly believe
that David Berg was a prophet of God, then HOW could he have fallen so far? Is
it possible? Yes, unfortunately it is possible. The answer is in Scripture. King
Solomon was the beloved of God, he built a temple to God, and God blessed him
with riches and wisdom unparalleled by any man on earth. Yet as Nehemiah 13:26
says,
“Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations was
there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over
all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.”
And look at John the Baptist. He was the forerunner of Jesus Himself. Jesus
said, “a greater prophet was never born of women.” Yet in the end, John doubted
Jesus was the Messiah, and lost his anointing and his life. I’m not saying that
I believe that David Berg was a prophet like John the Baptist, but if you
believe he was, then this parallel may help you understand that even men of God,
greatly used by God, can fall so far.
If you believe that David Berg was a prophet at one point, or at least that he
was a man of God who started a soul-winning movement, then the above Mo quotes
about the goddesses have surely been hard to read. And the end that they led him
to must be excruciating for you to deal with. But if John could doubt Jesus,
Berg could have lost his connection to the Lord as well. And if Solomon could
fall into idolatry through “outlandish women”, David Berg could also fall into
idolatry through the goddesses.
This is a warning to all of us. I think a lot of ex-members (and now even Family
members) will be shocked at the goddesses “revelations,” and it’s so easy to
condemn David Berg. And he WAS wrong. But we must also take a long look into our
own hearts, because most of us never questioned the goddesses, never had the
courage to speak up about them, raise a dissenting voice for fear of rocking the
boat. David Berg’s own goddesses revelations indict him, but each of us have to
answer for why we allowed our Christian consciences to be “quenched.” Each of
us, Family member and ex-member alike, needs to repent. I put myself at the top
of the list, because I was a WS worker in the Family, and should have had the
Christian conviction to question it more. I only hope this compilation helps
some of you.
My heart goes out to the Family who have the “goddesses” as part of their
legacy. I know many people will say to simply forget the dark things and
concentrate only on the good and the light and the soul-winning, but I believe
the time has come for Family leadership to boldly step over this threshold,
repent of the goddesses, and renounce them as the evil they surely are. I truly
pray that Peter and Maria will renounce Berg’s Letters that describe these
spiritual experiences. I beg them to do it for the good of the Family, and the
good of individual Family members who sincerely love Jesus, and young children
who should never be taught such things.
I pray that it’s not too much to expect that Peter and Maria would take the time
to prayerfully re-examine Berg’s experiences with the goddesses and renounce
them. I think they would gain tremendous respect from Family members if they
would publicly admit that David Berg was wrong about the goddesses, that his
experiences with them led him into darkness, and, as the leaders of the Family,
attempt to set matters right. If Peter and Maria are not ready to do this, I at
least hope that many Family members will have the courage to examine these
quotes, renounce the goddesses, draw closer to Jesus, and go on for God. In
closing, consider the following Bible verses:
“What agreement has the temple of God with idols (pagan goddesses)? For you are
the temple of the living God. Therefore come out from among them (goddesses) and
be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch the unclean thing, and I will receive
you.” (1 Corinthians 6:16–18)
Much love,
Ed (Hart)
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