In Reply to: Fascinating posted by CB on November 04, 2005 at 12:38:04:
I was scared to be "out from under the umbrella of the Lord's protection" and "out of God's will" "Not obeying the prophet" "failing the test" and so on. It took me literally years to get out of the mindset that bad things happening in life weren't a resutl of my not listening to God or not learning a lesson, or needing to be taught a lesson, or because of my sins. It always came down to ME, something I was doing wrong in some way. I realized I was under this HUGE cloud because of all those letters you mentioined and years of listening to Berg's rants. How about "backsliders beware" remember the one with the guy in the wagon and his brakes had gone out? That terrified me.
Even when I first joined back in 1971, there were some guys travelling around to the different "colonies" and they had this newspaper article they were showing everyone of some guys who had run out of a colony and got on a train to get away. There was a train accident and they died. Supposedly, this was proof of what God did to backsliders. The fear was always, always there.