June 27, 2018 • 55 mins
In small towns, neglected glades and college campuses across America, small groups of bearded wanderers in homespun clothes are spreading a message -- that the End of Times is upon us, and only the truly righteous shall be saved. Living primarily off the grid and on the fringes of society, this group has proven extremely effective at hiding its converts from law enforcement and concerned relatives. In fact, it's difficult to get a grip on exactly what this group is and what they wish to do. Join Ben and Matt for a closer look at the mysterious group 20/20 called "The Garbage Eaters".
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Nola
is not here today, but we'll be returning soon. They
call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled Decond, uh you know, maybe for this
episode he is our elder evangelist, Deck Decond. But most importantly,
(00:45):
friends and neighbors, conspiracy realists and skeptics alike. Welcome to
the show. You are you, and you are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
That's right. And today we're going to delve into another cult.
We've discussed them on this show before, how to start them,
how to identify them, how to deprogram yourself from them.
(01:09):
Cults are, you know, a troubling but fascinating thing to discuss,
and much more common, especially here in the States, than
the average person might guess. There's there's something very American
about cults in the global idea or concept. You know,
when you if you ask somebody in the United Kingdom
(01:31):
about a cult, they might tell you something about Charles
Manson or Jim Jones. You know, Yeah, there's something very
American about the need or the want to be an
independent or breakaway group from a major thing. Oh good,
call man, I didn't think about that yet. That's that's interesting. Now. This,
this group we're discussing today, goes by many names, and
(01:57):
we started thinking about this off air when we ran
into some some strange stories on the edge of the
news for the most part, So here's the skinny. We've
all heard of dumpster divers or survivalists, other people living
off the grid for one reason or another. Often people
are driven to this lifestyle through some sort of necessity,
(02:20):
maybe poverty, homelessness. Escaping law enforcement also happens way more
often than you would think. Or they may be pursuing
a philosophical position. It may just be a temporary situation,
a form of vacation. In some cases, however, people are
driven by something deeper. Yeah, that the spiritual movement of calling,
(02:42):
and they'll just latch onto a set of beliefs or
find a set of beliefs to be latched onto that
compels them to leave just the everyday mundane, all the stress,
the studies, the career, the family, the expenses, everything, Just
leave it behind. Just hit the road, right, hit the
old dusty trail, and light out for the territories. As
(03:05):
Mark Twain was wont to say, so when people disappear
because of this spiritual calling, this revelation, right, this imperative
from a supernatural force. Right, when this happens for most people,
(03:26):
at least most people here in the States, it's just
another example of freedom of religion. If you're not hurting anyone,
you're allowed to do what you feel like doing. Right,
If you're over eighteen, you can move wherever you want
to move if it's within the legal you know, constraints
of citizenship and everything. Right, Yeah, so if you want,
(03:48):
if you just decide, If if Paul one day, for instance,
halfway through this recording says, you know what done, I'm
don zo, I'm out of this. I am going going
to Mississippi, Mississippi. I'm going to Mississippi. I'm only gonna
wear blue clothes. These are the two things I realized.
(04:08):
I'll build the religion around that. Then he can absolutely
do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing
wrong with people doing this as individuals or as intentional communities,
unless that is there's more to the story, but let's
start as the Mad Hatter was rumored to say at
(04:32):
the beginning those yeah, I believe that he doesn't. I
don't believe he actually makes that quote. He is also
not called the mad Hatter. Oh yeah, yep, yep. I
remember we discussed that on this show before, did we.
Oh yeah, yeah, I think we briefly brought that up.
The mad Hatter not actually being the mad Hatter. He's
not that mad, just the hatter, I think, Oh man,
(04:55):
but he is. Okay, so he is mad, but he
is not the Mad Hatter, right, and he's mad because
that's an allusion to the mercury right used to form hats,
the felt of hats. I remember we talked about this.
Oh man, the past is blurring, you know, a watercolor
in the rain. Oh, thank you. We're done that. So
(05:17):
so here are the facts. We're talking about this group that,
according to itself, doesn't really subscribe to the concept of names.
You know what I mean. Correct, It's not about the name.
It's not about the name. It's the system, man, that's
what it's about. And we would like to introduce you
to the leader of the group we're exploring today, brother
(05:40):
evangelist jim Roberts. According to Jay Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of
American Religions, this gentleman Jimmy T. Roberts was born in Paducah, Kentucky,
on June five, nineteen thirty nine. He was the son
of a part time Pentecostal preacher named Koy Roberts now
jim Me was one of six siblings, and his family
(06:04):
was not very well off. Their impoverished living in poverty,
and Coy couldn't seem to hold a steady job. This
is the father, Jimmy's father, and most of the family's
income came from the mother, Mrs Roberts job down to
the town drug store, absolutely Matt And for the Roberts family,
we see that the idea of material gain is it's
(06:29):
not the primary focus of their lives. They're the primary
focus of their lives seems to be religion or spiritual calling.
Both parents deeply religious. We mentioned that he the father,
was a part time Pentecostal preacher. He was at a
place called the Church of Jesus Christ granted not the
(06:51):
most creative name. It was a small independent church pastored
by a man named Herby Reid, and Jim's mother was
a member of an anti Trinitarian United Pentecostal church. And well,
we'll discuss what that means a little later. Yeah, I
thought I thought of you. I was reading some of
this stuff. I think I knew you were going to
(07:11):
be our go to pick to explain this, because you
know some of the doctrinal differences there. It's a bit strange,
but we'll get to it. So Jim himself was preaching
by the age of fifteen, and Herby Read's relative recalls
him at a very young age saying, hail is hot
and there's no ass water. Oh man, Just such an observation,
(07:34):
you know, it's I think it gives us a sense
of the type of oration he was he was presenting. Yeah,
it's a it's a simple image that he's giving you.
There's something that you won't be able to have while
you're in this place that's really bad, so you've gotta
keep yourself away from it. And also it is a
(07:55):
a fire and brimstone message. Very it's a very much
like that early American work centers in the hands of
an angry God. It's dwelling not on the good stuff,
the nice things that might happen, or you know, the
glory the kingdom of heaven. It's dwelling on the punishments
of the dangers. This is really interesting for as we're
(08:19):
getting into this a little later, what Jim's views are
are the way he shaped his beliefs about spirituality. Yeah,
he kept this consistent theme. He was also a smart
kid who was only child and his family to finish
high school. And we're not equating intelligence necessarily one to
(08:40):
one with going through an educational system successfully, as anyone
who has experienced with rural America or rural parts of
the world will know, often very very intelligent children are
not able to participate in the education system because they
have to work on maybe an agricultural field or some
out provide income for their family. But despite these obstacles,
(09:03):
Jim Roberts made it out of Paduca. In nine fifty eight,
he joined the Marine Corps. He became a sergeant. He
served until nineteen sixty one, and he was a Vietnam veteran.
He returned to civil life and he moved around the
United States working a number of jobs. He ended up
in Chicago, with the chance that the American dream version
(09:26):
of life in the sixties, you know, he found love
and he thought, is this my chance to have a spouse,
my two point five kids, my nine to five job
for a few decades with the gold watch at the end.
You don't get those anymore. He probably would have yeah
at that time, but the answer is no. His his
(09:47):
romance failed, and around the same time he encountered a
very eccentric group known as the Jesus People on the
North side of Chicago, in a neighborhood called Uptown. It's
one of those intentional communities there. You might find a
few around. I know in Atlanta there are several you
(10:08):
can go and visit. Um just a group of like
minded people living together who how do we describe them
in a previous episode, These these sorts of communists, people
who are extremely on the same page about very specific fate.
And there's a lot of stuff that a spiritual, intentional
(10:29):
community is just not going to care about. They picked
like a number of very small things and then they
everybody is in lockstep ideologically about them. This encounter, you know,
his experience spending time with the Jesus People provide some
high octane fuel to Jim Robert's spiritual journey, and he
(10:52):
doubles down on his lifelong dedication to religion. He moves out.
You'll hear a couple of different stories about this. One
story will tell us that he moves to Missoula, Montana
in nineteen seventy one, and you'll hear other people say, no,
he joined a movement in Colorado. He met a small
group of fundamentalist, extremist Christians. So these would be people
(11:20):
who recognize a Bible as and and use it right,
read from it, and study it as any other Christian would.
Christians in the audience. You know, there are multiple versions
and iterations of Bibles, which also were setting up as
a little bit of foreshadow in here. But but Roberts
(11:44):
began to exert influence on this group. He was not
content to be a member. He wanted, you see, to
be a leader. And coming out of the Vietnam War,
his experience as a marine as a Marine sergeant, gave
him some hardcore take no poop uh skills when it
(12:08):
came to leadership. Oh yeah, everything from the stone cold
stare at someone when you're having let's say, a theological
argument to keeping someone in line when they're incorrect, or
when you believe they're incorrect. They're all kinds of things
like that. There was a quote that he had a piercing,
(12:30):
mesmerizing gaze, kind of respute and esque, perhaps so he
would stare people down, it would mentally dominate them, kind
of a Darren Brown. Probably a little bit of pickup
artistry in there, you know, the same thing that charismatic
religious figures will use. And he successfully became the leader
(12:52):
of the group. He had also grown to hate the world,
the modern world. Yeah. Remember, now this is him coming
off of this relationship that didn't work out after he
probably saw it as the golden opportunity and his entire
life was ahead of him and he saw it and
then it failed. So now he's kind of in a
way spiraling into this Like in a way, you could
(13:14):
say that, but we're not. You know, you can't ascribe
all of this person's actions to this one thing that
happened to them, but you can definitely see how it's morphing.
And uh, and Roberts realized that, oh my god, the
end of the world. It's about to happen. The world
is going to end. He felt like his world was ending.
He thought he was seeing the signs. You know, there
(13:35):
wasn't some date that he told everyone the world is
going to end, but you know, he knew it was coming.
He could feel it, right, He had a divine revelation.
It was something where he thought, you know, people have
always said this before, but now I know the end
(13:56):
truly is nie. And this means that we must purify ourselves.
We have a very small window of time TikTok tik
tiktuk TikTok, and a lot of work to do as
individuals and as a group. Return to homespun clothes, don't
own a car or a house or a bank account,
(14:19):
live off the land, and bear a witness or proselytized
evangelized so that other people get the message. It's the
only way we can be saved. He planned to drop
out of society entirely, and he ordered his followers to
do the same. In the decades afterwards, this group traveled
(14:40):
widely and separately. If you attended college in the United States,
by the way, you might have seen one or had
a conversation with a small group of people. If they
thought you were vulnerable, right, uh so, they would scour
college campuses looking for the quote called out. These are
the people all the group believes will join them to
(15:02):
escape the imminent looming judgment day. This is the birth
of the group that would come to be called the Brethren,
and we'll continue to explore that group after a quick
word from our sponsor. Well, old friend, what do you say, Uh,
(15:23):
shall we play the name game with the Brethren? Oh? Yes,
let's begin with what they're known as externally to the
outside world. Laid on me, the Jim Roberts Group or
the Roberts Group. I get that that's probably from some
law enforcement or cult hunting networks, right, yeah. And also
the parents of of group members they have they have
(15:45):
a group, and they call them the Roberts Group. Internally,
we'll hear conflicting things. There will be some ex members
or survivors of the group who say that it never
has a name. Maybe was referred to as the Church,
or or they would refer to each other as the
brothers and sisters the Body of Christ, the Brethren. But
(16:09):
there is another name that has as recently surpassed the
other names in terms of popularity, the garbage Eaters. And
you did some, you did some digging on this matt.
Where did that come from? Well, it comes from their
mode of attaining sustenance, at least the group's preferred mode
(16:31):
of getting food and water, and that's by either making
arrangements with stores that have food that's about to expire
and then taking it from them, or just by scavenging,
going through dumpsters and dumpster diving. Right, yeah, dumpster diving.
And oh yeah, and it was named this or it
was coined this on an episode of that was discussing
(16:53):
the Roberts Group and they called them garbage eaters. Yes,
I believe the host said that name. So that's a little, uh,
a little hyperbolic, little derogatory. It does not describe in
any way the beliefs of the group or what it
stands for anything besides the way that they get food
(17:14):
and freaking is um. I know we have a lot
of people who have done dumpster diving before in the crowd.
Freakidi is um is not an objectionable thing, especially when
we consider the sheer just staggering, tragic and disgusting amount
of food waste, things that are thrown out when they're
perfectly good and they could be feeding starving people. But Yeah.
(17:39):
Of course, we can't legally tell you that that's a
good idea to go dumpster diving and live off the
wasteful spoils of these supermarkets. But we can tell you
that in many places is against the law. It's trespassing,
and some cases, if you don't know what you're doing,
you could easily give yourself some word of food poisoning. Yeah,
(18:01):
but we can say that you can make some kind
of arrangement with maybe a local store or something. I mean,
you can at least reach out and see what they say. Yeah,
you can go to the manager of a store at
the end of the day. A lot of places like
bakeries have to throw stuff out, delis things like that.
(18:21):
So they're living in a very low impact weight and
they've been mocked or I guess characterized as somehow vile
or repellent because they're doing something with the noblest of intentions,
you know what I mean. And it's it's strange that
that would be what people latch onto. So we do
(18:45):
want to say very clearly it's not a it's not
a cult that worships garbage and eating it. I would
be fascinated by that. I think you would too sure.
But but okay, so we know so are this is
what we've established. Jim Roberts is the head of this
group that where let's I guess we'll call them the
(19:06):
Brethren because that's what they're known as internally. Um, and
we know that they scavenge for food. Let's talk about
what they believe? Yeah, what are their actual beliefs? Matt? Okay,
So they officially they follow the teachings of the Old
(19:28):
and New Testament, so both books major books of the Bible,
but it's taught as interpreted by Jim Roberts, the leader,
and literal meanings are given to passages in the Holy Writings,
and they tell you know, they we go through some
of these, right, don't We have some quotes somewhere in here.
We'll get into that, like specifically what pieces of scripture
(19:48):
argused to develop the group and kind of control the
group and maintain it. Yes, And as we established earlier,
there's not just one Bible, you know, there's just one Torah,
there's just one Koran. There are different translations, but that
doesn't mean the books are different, right, and then there
are when we get to the Bible, you at all,
(20:12):
you've got all kinds of stuff you got some some
have extra books added, some have books taken away. All
of these, by the way, are created by people who
feel like they're reaching the purest form of it, and
then others will rely on different translations. And this great
game of telephone essentially proceeds from the ancient eras to
(20:35):
our modern day. And they the Brethren, have a particular
version of the Bible that they feel is the best,
and it's the King James version. You might have seen
that one coming. Um, It's according to Roberts, this translation
is the one, and all other translations are corrupt, as
(20:57):
well as the beliefs of most other outside Christian organizations
besides the Brethren. And it sounds strange at first when
we think about the King James version being touted as
the purest version of the Bible, because of course the
original books that would later come into the Bible were
not written in English, right and the I believe that
(21:21):
the King James version is the third English translation improved
by English church authorities. But I don't know, man, Although
it sounds crazy, I've heard this reasoning in other rural
communities where someone says, well, the King James Bible, and
I heard someone say this, Matt, is the closest to
(21:44):
what Jesus Christ actually set. Oh yeah, that that was
big where I grew up, particularly with members of the South,
the Southern Baptist Church, some of those, which is is
still do you see what I'm saying? It's still confounds
me because when I first heard it, I thought, well,
Jesus Christ didn't speak English, so what in the purest
(22:06):
form of whatever was said be something that occurred in
the language in which was spoken and then originally written. Rationally, Absolutely,
I would say in my experience, I did not think
about that at the time. Really well, I mean again,
it's a it's a spiritual matter, right, So yes, According
to Roberts, the King James version, that's the one, that's
(22:28):
the only one except no substitutions. And when it comes
to the nature of God, like his mother, Jim Roberts
is a staunch anti Trinitarianist, believing that God is not
three separate things. Instead the Brethren or Modalists, they think
it's all one thing, one God. But Matt, what what
(22:51):
exactly is Trinitarianism? Because I feel like we can only
get a rough sense of what it is by saying,
you know, just by the etymology, it's against three is um.
What does that mean? Yes, Trinitarianism or the trinity doctrine.
This is the belief that God exists as three separate
but equally important persons. And the word persons is used
(23:14):
a lot when describing these separations of God. The only
thing is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Those three separate things are each made out of the
same essence, the same being, the same matter. It's the
same thing, it's but at the same time as three
separate persons. It's a little weird. The way I think
about it is um. Water. You know, water exists as liquid, gas,
(23:38):
and a solid, and it can be that the same
water can be each of those three states at any time.
But it's still h two oh, it's still made of
the same exact essence or matter. Um. But then when
you get into modalism, this is this one is a
bit confusing for me. This is the belief that God
is a single being or person that has revealed itself
(24:01):
to people in different ways at different times in history. Okay,
so when God created the universe, God manifested itself as
the creator. Then when Jesus was born and came down
to earth. It was again the same God, but manifesting
itself in a different way. Um like an incarnation of
(24:24):
sorts kind of. But again, when you when you talk
about it this way, it seems like it's the exact
same belief system, right, Oh, that they're built of the
same substance. Yeah, yeah, it is definitely a deep doctrinal point. Yes,
but what what you're saying about modalism makes me think
of the old story of the mice and the elephant,
you know, where these tiny mice run into an elephant
(24:48):
for the first time, and one hits against its leg
and thinks it's discovered a tree. One hits its nose
and thinks it's discovered a snake and snow on without
realizing that this is all a greater, single thing. That
that's a that's a great point. I just I I
kind of don't want to sit in a room and
(25:08):
have an argument with somebody who's a a trinitarian and
a modalist and just have them argue, because I don't
think I would enjoy that. I would watch it, but
only if I could have snacks and leave whenever I want. Okay, totally,
totally if I would love to hear this doctrinal argument,
so long as I do have popcorn with like the
(25:31):
option for I don't know what's your what's your snack
of choice when you go to the movies? Oh, I
bring my own, I don't. I mean um that we
can't legally tell people to do that. I don't do that.
I just don't go to the movies anymore. Oh man,
you are a man of principle, my friends. Well, speaking
(25:53):
of principles, yes, let's get into the key scriptures. Yea,
the Brethren uses there are several key lines of scripture
guiding the brethren. Uh. One is from Luke four three.
So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not
all he hath, he cannot be my disciples. Literal interpretation.
(26:17):
If you don't give up everything, you're screwing up already
from the jump. And then there's Matthew as well. Right,
I'll read Matthew. There we go and says, and everyone
that hath forsaken houses or brethren, or sisters, or father
or mother or wife, or children or lands for my
(26:37):
namesake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life.
So if you give up everything, you forsake, all the
people in your life, all the stuff in your life,
you're gonna live forever, at least in a way. Tight. Yep, No, seriously,
I think that that sounds like a cool promise, right
(26:59):
if that's a old thing. Yeah, but you're the look
what you're given up. Yeah, you're inheriting everlasting life away
from everything you love, well, away from your worldly loves. Okay, right,
that's the idea, is that your real family is going
to reward you, your real family being God and your
proximity to God. There are a few more you can
(27:22):
look up and read to yourself, such as Acts four
thirty two. Matthew. Their big Matthew fans. I mean, who
isn't I'm I'm I'm a Matthew fan. Parents in the
eighties were huge Matthew fans. And there we go. What
else do we have? Mark eight thirty five and second
Timothy six seven and eight, And we'll just read that
(27:44):
one really quickly, For we brought nothing into this world,
and it is certain we can carry nothing out, and
having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. As
we mentioned before, there are no metaphors in this church,
which in this group, all of these things are literal interpretations,
(28:04):
and they have a rigid, one would say, militaristic hierarchy.
The members of the group are put into smaller groups,
subgroups cells, in other words, similar to the organizational principles
used by some terrorist groups. And they are small, they
are nomadic. They might squat in a house, they might
(28:26):
find a cabin, they might camp in the woods. They
can range in size. It can be just one person
sent to a city or area as a scout, as
a harbinger of sorts, or it can be as many
as fifteen people. Yeah, there are there are stories of
groups that will find a house that's abandoned and then actually,
(28:47):
rather than just squatting per se, just being in that
house while there's no one living there, making an arrangement
with the property owner to clean the house, to keep
the you know, the yard and everything spick and span
and looking nice, but be able to live there, which
sounds kind of cool if you're a if you're a
landowner and you're aware of these folks, they they seem
(29:11):
like pretty cleaned up people. They're not out doing drugs, right,
They're not um, They're not going to be committing crazy,
heinous criminal acts on your property. I can see it
being really troublesome though, because if you've got a house
that's either abandoned or maybe just no one has rented
for a long time, and then you have someone a
(29:33):
tenant like that in your home, and then let's say
somebody is interested in renting that home or buying that home,
you can't just kick them out. There's some very complicated
rules and laws having to do with that. Oh, even squatters, right, yeah, yeah,
they kick in at various times, depending on the state
or the country you're in. So when and where these
(29:56):
groups move is ultimately going to be up to the
Brother Evangelists Jim Roberts, who's known as Brother Evangelists, he's
the elder of Elders now, which is important to the group.
The membership of these groups always changes. So let's say you,
Paul and I were a three man unit when we
(30:20):
were sent out to maybe scout for a place in
New Orleans or near New Orleans, right, and then well
let's say we hung out. We were we just got
too cool with each other. We said, you know, well
this this has been a fun ride, but maybe we
should just stay in New Orleans, you know, start a band,
(30:40):
I played the oboe or something whatever we play in
that situation. Well, that would damage the overall group and
as a result, the membership of these groups, these subgroups,
these cells changes frequently and they're sent in different directions
to prevent them from getting any kind of relationship, whether
(31:02):
a friendships, something like a collegiate thing or even romantic thing. Uh,
to prevent that from ever becoming a competing focus. Right,
And it's a very effective way to control people. The
the additional control system for every cell is what's called
(31:22):
the elder. Yes, this is the person who has been
in the group the longest. It's not we're not talking
to elders as in the oldest alive person. We're talking
about the oldest member of the group, right right, the
oldest in terms of if we count them joining the church, yes,
like day one, absolutely, absolutely absolutely. And then an elder
(31:43):
is placed in charge of each group or sell or camp,
whatever you want to call it. And these elders, then,
as these cells function, take orders directly from Roberts. Yes,
and there are they're not going to be questioned by
the people who are beneath them. They're just going to
(32:04):
jump when they're told to jump. Because Brother Evangelist roberts
to change his name to Evangelists. By the way, he
has the first and last word on any and all issues, questions, declarations,
and decisions. Furthermore, they have stark gender division with prescribed
(32:28):
duties for each person based on Oh, and we should
go ahead and say they only have the two genders
male or female, and uh, and what kind of stuff
are they required to do? Well, let's say you're a
brother of the brethren. You're gonna need to gather all
the food. You're gonna have to protect the sisters physically,
you're gonna have to witness to people wherever you travel.
(32:51):
And then if you're a sister, you're gonna have to
cook and clean and so and serve all the meals
to the brothers, and on top of that witness. So
everybody's got a full plate here of things to do.
The big issue here is that women are subservient to
the brothers. There's and and you know that is a
biblical thing. If you're taking the Bible literally, that is
(33:14):
one thing that you will find in there. Unfortunately, but
here's the weird thing for a group of this kind,
in my opinion, the weird thing there is, according to
the Parents Network, there is no sexual or intimate physical
relationship of any kind between these members, the male and
female members of the Brethren, not even for the purposes
(33:37):
of procreation. No, just they are I don't know that.
They're brothers and sisters literally anyway, right, soldiers for their cause.
The one common task for both genders in this group
is to witness, in other words, to evangelize. And that's
a little bit about how they interact with one another.
(33:58):
But we have to get to the biggest question, which
is this how do they interact with the rest of
the world. And we'll get to that right after a
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. It's
the end of the world as we know it, according
(34:18):
to the Brethren. And while there is a certain allure
to the idea of shucking off all these social constraints
and living as a wandering ascetic or a monk or
a none of sorts, survivors of the group and the
relatives describe it as much less romantic than we might believe,
(34:40):
much more oriented toward the belief in a coming apocalypse, right,
and much more rigid than outsiders maybe initially lead to think.
So we talked a little bit about their recruitment tactic,
or we we mentioned it, but let's let's dive in.
(35:01):
Let's dive in, because I think long time listeners are
going to recognize some of these tactics from earlier works. Right. So,
one of their their big recruitment tactic of quote unquote
calling out people, finding lonely, vulnerable college aged individuals and
converting them works as both the carrot and a stick
(35:22):
in a very very smart and somewhat subtle way, because
the carrot is hello, welcome, this is the one true church.
We are doing the literal work of God, and you
can be part of this community, the only one that
will survive Judgment Day, the only one. And along the
(35:43):
way you will experience such freedom as you've never felt before,
a freedom from all financial incumbrance and material goods. And
if you don't go for that, you get the stick.
What's the stick? Oh? You remember that thing Judgment Day
where everything burns and be comes just charcoal on everywhere.
Well about that everybody else on the planet, every other
(36:08):
human that you've ever met, that has ever existed. They
are damned and they've well, here's here's why they've turned
away from the true church. Obviously, even mom and dad. Yeah,
even mom and dad. They didn't accept the carrot. So
there you know they're going to hell. This is literally
the first and last chance. This right here, me coming
to you and talking to you about my thing. This
(36:30):
is the last chance you get before just fire. Well,
I was going to go to biology one o one,
but now I'm freaked out. You're gonna go to biology.
Why what are you gonna What are you gonna study
in biology? I was gonna be a doctor. Oh, I'd
recommend chemistry because all you're gonna have is carbon. That's
all that's gonna be here. Just carbon. Uh. And at
(36:54):
this point, I guess the prisonans say, and you've convinced
me away with these Adidas that I'm wearing away with
this book of biology. There's only one book I need, right,
That's that's how it would happen. It's this King James.
It's this King James specifically accept no substitutions. What's fascinating
(37:16):
about this carrot and this stick is it sets the
first precedent for interaction between the initiatives and existing group members,
whether their brothers or sisters or elders or what have you,
because it puts forth a dichotomy and for the rest
of their lives, if they're in this church, there is
(37:39):
no gray area. There is only the black white yes,
no followed, don't follow, salvation or damnation for every decision,
which is amazing and terrifying. Uh. And additionally, as as
you said, Matt, the inner hierarchy of the church is absolutists.
They're determined entirely by when someone joined and how long
(38:02):
did been a member of the group. We found a
pretty interesting crowdsourced interview from a survivor who wished to
remain anonymous, and he said, if you joined the church
one week before someone else, you had to quote obey
that dude as if he was a servant of God
that was sent to be your elder. The women that
(38:23):
were in the group for twenty years were to be
subject and obedient to a brother that was there for
only a year. Young women were subject to everyone. One
thing that comes to mind is that there was a
seventeen year old boy there was an elder according to
the length of time that he was in the church,
which was all of his life, so members must be
totally subject to him, even forty year olds. If you
(38:45):
were fifty year old and joined eight years ago, you
were subject to anything that seventeen year old said, unless
it was super unreasonable, like told to do some atrocious
act right right, or told to do something physically impossible. Yes,
grow another hand, no, out of your but you know,
(39:06):
I I hopefully this kid wasn't say that sort of stuff.
But yeah, it's it's entirely time based. I don't sorry, man,
I just I went blue. I went to blue. I'm
with you, I'm trying it. Just no, please don't try.
No one listening to attempt that. So that's that that
(39:31):
internal communication is troubling communication with family and authorities. This
is where we find the really sticky stuff and the
most direct stuff. They don't want you to know in
regards to this organization, whether you want to call it
a church, whether you want to call it a spiritual movement,
whether you want to call it a cult. They do
(39:52):
not want you to know where they're going, what they're doing,
or why they have been told old that they must abjure,
hate and loathe everything from their past life, their life
started over when they joined the church. Yeah, there's no
(40:13):
contact with family members who are outside of the structure
whatsoever at all, unless, of course jim himself, old Jimmy says, hey,
you can talk to these guys, and if and if
he says it's okay, then it's okay. But the majority
of the time, just parents, siblings, friends, the rest of
(40:33):
the family. They're just completely locked out of the lives
of the members of the Brethren, right, and it can
happen suddenly. You can reaccounts detailing how Roberts would instruct
people to isolate themselves or to maintain contact and write
a letter to their parents. That's one of the first
things they did, to write a letter and say, hey, sorry,
(40:53):
I can't be in your life anymore, right, and I
don't want you to be all glory to God. You know,
this is consensual on my part, That's what their letter says, uh.
And for it to be sent en route while they
are traveling by bike or by bus often or occasionally
by train hopping. And I think if you still do that.
And additionally, we have to mention several of these these
(41:17):
people who are joining this movement or we're joining it
are not on necessarily on the fringes of society. We're
talking about the owners of multimillion dollar businesses. We're talking
about people who were attending Harvard, which, from what what
you may have heard, is an okay school, and there
(41:38):
throwing away all their worldly possessions to to join this thing.
They're throwing away their relationships, and they are chastised if
they attempt to reach out to their parents. And you
can see or their parents, or their their spouse or whomever,
and you can see the way that this splinters the group.
(41:58):
But you can also just imagine if you don't have
access to a cell phone, you'll have access to an
internet connection unless you go into a library, right or
unless you find a quarter for a pay phone, you
can you can use a payphone if you can find
one in That's the only way you can communicate. I
guess you. You could also send a letter, but you
(42:20):
can't wait around for that letter to return, because you
don't know when you're leader will tell you to move
somewhere else. You don't know where they're going to just
tell you to move. It's complete speculation. But I imagine
if word got to Roberts that you had sent a
letter of any kind to someone in any way, you
might get a notice to get on the move, just
(42:41):
because that idea of you've got a from address. You
know there's a return address on there, and that could
you could give up the whole cell awful to thing
about it that way, but you can. It's just so
easy to use a fake address. Just write down a
name of building in the zip code where you happy
to be mailing the letter from. Yes, but when you
(43:03):
mail the letter from that zip code, it's going through
the postal services or however you got it there system,
and you're you know, you can at least get a
rough area of where it came from. That's true, that's true.
But who doesn't love getting mail? Also in this stage,
I feel like I have to point that out. You
can always send us mail, by the way, if you wish.
(43:25):
And that's a little bit of levity because we're going
into some dark territory here. Discussion with outsiders is only
allowed to the extent that it encourages more people to
join the group, or that it attends to a need
of the existing group. Discussion internally, the way that we
would understand discussion is not allowed at all. Verboten, the
(43:48):
Germans would say, similar to the Marines. Oddly enough, the
Brethren follow a strict chain of command. Wearing contradictions are
not only not allowed, they do not exist. They're impossible.
They are impossible. That it's uh, it's it's bad double
plus I'm good, yeah, exactly. Due to the eminent approach
of the end of days, single members are banned from marrying, as,
(44:11):
according to Roberts, there's not enough time. In other words,
members are supposed to dedicate themselves entirely just spreading the
message of the church. Couples with children were allowed to
join back in the day, but the rules for those
kids were incredibly strict, including get this, a ban on playing,
which is just disastrous to me. That's the way you
(44:32):
become a human as you play. And the bulk of
their conversation is conducted through pay phones only they we
don't know. In the modern day, for whichever members of
the Brethren are out there, we we still don't know
if they're using burner phones not as effective anymore as
(44:55):
concealing for concealing your location, they still work. This work,
and you know, it's still better than buying a cell
phone service plan. When you have renounced all worldly possessions.
I guess the cell phone is a worldly possession. Yeah,
but so we're closed, right, But they make those? Do
(45:17):
you think they can make cell phones? Maybe if they
make self this changes everything for me, I might think there.
I would just be impressed by the mcgiverishness of it. Yeah,
it's tough to dumpster dive for all those rare earth minerals.
But maybe I don't know, who knows, maybe the recycling
program for electronics. So in the darker realm here we
(45:42):
see the allegations of abuse. The good news is that
they're not allegations that we can find of sexual abuse,
other than forcing people to ignore their own sexuality, right,
which is a form of abuse. The big thing we
(46:03):
found was emotional abuse. Members are held hostage to this
group by the fundamental belief that leaving the Brethren is
tantamount to committing suicide. It's actually worse than committing physical suicide,
because you are sacrificing your soul. Yeah, the real thing
(46:23):
that matters. And when members are suspected of straining off
the path, they are harshly warned they're probably putting a
new cell with strangers or people they don't know very well,
and if they are ex members, they are completely and
successfully shunned because, you know, like the practice you've probably
(46:48):
read about with the Amish or maybe some other groups,
this group will as a community, as a unit, ghost
on its ex members, and they're very very very good
at hiding. At least, you know, they don't sue the
pants off of them their ex members the way some
other conversations you know have m hm anyway, Um, Lauren, Yeah,
(47:16):
that that's what it is, Laurent, laurn hubbish Yep, I'm
almost there. Who is it? I can't think of it.
All I know. All I know is that when it
comes to going to the doctor or getting medicine any
kind of prescription, there is some weird stuff going on
with a Brethren. Yeah. The second the second tier or
(47:41):
type of abuse would be negligence in terms of medical treatment.
You see, the Brethren believe that the use of medicine
and doctors does not give the example of living by faith.
That's a quote. So in some cases members are believed
to have died from curable conditions or injuries do entirely
to the group's position to modern medical treatment or any
(48:04):
medical treatment. So for anyone wondering why we're using the
phrase are believed to have, it's because again, a lot
of people go off the grid. And like we discussed
in our Missing for one one episode, is a couple
of other things. It is still in the age of
GPS and spookily sophisticated satellites. It is still possible to
(48:27):
this disappear in this country easier in fact than you
might think, certainly and disturbingly so correct. But they have
found some people, right, yes, they have, and some people
have come forward. Some We found a Reddit thread where
people were discussing this group and a couple of people
saying that they were four members. Um, it's out there,
(48:49):
m hm, and you can get out. And that's the
big thing. I don't know how you would be listening
to this if you are um a member. It's much
more likely that family members of someone who became a
part of Brethren is actually listening to these words. And
let's let's take a moment in describe perhaps what you
(49:12):
can do. The first thing that we found when we
were looking into this is something called the Roberts Group
Parents Network, and it has a website n f I
s H E L dot tripod dot com. It's an
old tripod website. It's pretty great though, if you go
through there. The mission of the website says in the
(49:34):
group is to release the members of the control of
the Roberts Group and established two way communication and an
open and loving relationship between members and their families. So
they just want to reconnect family members with members of
the Roberts Group, right, And it goes on to say
that if you recognize anyone on these pages, or if
(49:55):
you suspect your loved one is a part of the
Roberts Group, we empathize with you. We know the pain
you feel and deeply regret that you share our situation.
On the other hand, we'd like to welcome you into
our fellowship. We've been brought together from all parts of
the country by our common loss. Our sorrow is the same.
In supporting each other, we find new strength to make
(50:16):
it through one day at a time and the new
hope that we will be reunited with the loved ones
that were taken from our lives. So really, I mean,
it's it's a sobering thing to go through that website
because it describes exactly the types of people that are
usually joining this group. UM. It talks about in full
(50:37):
the scriptures, It talks about how the recruiting occurs, and
their even letters there written to the sons and daughters
of people who have joined the group and chosen to
leave their family behind. UM. I would say this is
probably a good group to join if you are dealing
(50:57):
with something like this. If you don't like to join groups,
maybe you don't do that. If you're suspicious of all groups.
Now at this point I can I would understand that. However,
this is one to at least look at. Yeah, well
said met and agreed. And currently this brings us up
to speed on the background and the nature of the
(51:20):
very very secretive group traveling off the grid entirely here
in the US and possibly in Canada, Mexico at times
known as the Brethren or thanks to the garbage Eaters.
We do have one last piece of news here in conclusion,
Brother evangelist Jim Roberts passed away at the age of
(51:44):
seventies six in twenty fifteen, likely due to cancer. He
had not seen a doctor in forty years who was
practicing what he preached UM, and he had been alternately
described vibed as a sweet and harmless man or a
quote paranoid meglomaniac who wanted to control every aspect of
(52:09):
his followers lives. As of a few years ago, the
population of the group, which was never super super large,
had reduced to around sixty or so members. Are they
still out there today riding the rails somewhere? Is there
still someone who wants to contact their loved ones and
(52:30):
people from the life they left behind, but are too
intimidated to do so. These are open questions. We do
not know the answer, and there are very few people
who do. Many of those who do know the answer,
I don't want to be found. I don't know where
we go from here, Ben, Besides just saying, beliefs are
(52:54):
tricky things. They they they can be like viruses. Sometimes
they function almost exactly like virus. Is a good belief
can spread and infect and reproduce itself in the minds
of others, which is a beautiful thing and a terrifying thing.
And one of the most important parts of this show
(53:16):
that we have to touch on here is the following.
If you are or someone you know is involved in
a cult like group, or let's say, if we don't
want to use the c word uh. Let's say an
organization that is forcing them to do things against their
will and isolating them. And you're starting to see some
(53:38):
of these red flags. Do not be afraid to reach
out two groups like the Jim Roberts parent group that
you mentioned, Matt. Don't be afraid to call someone for
advice or look on forums. The resources are there, and
many times it sounds easy to say, oh, there's nothing
(53:58):
physically keeping someone in a spot, but we must remember
that the heaviest, strongest chains we have ever put on
a human being are always chains of ideas, not change
of steel or iron, and the chains that exists in
your mind, and sometimes you need help to be free
(54:19):
of them. You can find Ben and Nolan I on
Twitter where we're conspiracy Stuff, the same on Facebook. On
Instagram we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. We have a website
stuff they don't want you to know, where you can
find every podcast we've ever made and some videos and
other stuff on there. You can call us we are
one eight three three st d w y t K.
(54:41):
Leave a message and you might end up on a
show sometime in the near future. And if you don't
want to do any of that, you can send your
suggestions or your questions, or your comments to conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com, m
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Nola
is not here today, but we'll be returning soon. They
call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled Decond, uh you know, maybe for this
episode he is our elder evangelist, Deck Decond. But most importantly,
(00:45):
friends and neighbors, conspiracy realists and skeptics alike. Welcome to
the show. You are you, and you are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
That's right. And today we're going to delve into another cult.
We've discussed them on this show before, how to start them,
how to identify them, how to deprogram yourself from them.
(01:09):
Cults are, you know, a troubling but fascinating thing to discuss,
and much more common, especially here in the States, than
the average person might guess. There's there's something very American
about cults in the global idea or concept. You know,
when you if you ask somebody in the United Kingdom
(01:31):
about a cult, they might tell you something about Charles
Manson or Jim Jones. You know, Yeah, there's something very
American about the need or the want to be an
independent or breakaway group from a major thing. Oh good,
call man, I didn't think about that yet. That's that's interesting. Now. This,
this group we're discussing today, goes by many names, and
(01:57):
we started thinking about this off air when we ran
into some some strange stories on the edge of the
news for the most part, So here's the skinny. We've
all heard of dumpster divers or survivalists, other people living
off the grid for one reason or another. Often people
are driven to this lifestyle through some sort of necessity,
(02:20):
maybe poverty, homelessness. Escaping law enforcement also happens way more
often than you would think. Or they may be pursuing
a philosophical position. It may just be a temporary situation,
a form of vacation. In some cases, however, people are
driven by something deeper. Yeah, that the spiritual movement of calling,
(02:42):
and they'll just latch onto a set of beliefs or
find a set of beliefs to be latched onto that
compels them to leave just the everyday mundane, all the stress,
the studies, the career, the family, the expenses, everything, Just
leave it behind. Just hit the road, right, hit the
old dusty trail, and light out for the territories. As
(03:05):
Mark Twain was wont to say, so when people disappear
because of this spiritual calling, this revelation, right, this imperative
from a supernatural force. Right, when this happens for most people,
(03:26):
at least most people here in the States, it's just
another example of freedom of religion. If you're not hurting anyone,
you're allowed to do what you feel like doing. Right,
If you're over eighteen, you can move wherever you want
to move if it's within the legal you know, constraints
of citizenship and everything. Right, Yeah, so if you want,
(03:48):
if you just decide, If if Paul one day, for instance,
halfway through this recording says, you know what done, I'm
don zo, I'm out of this. I am going going
to Mississippi, Mississippi. I'm going to Mississippi. I'm only gonna
wear blue clothes. These are the two things I realized.
(04:08):
I'll build the religion around that. Then he can absolutely
do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing
wrong with people doing this as individuals or as intentional communities,
unless that is there's more to the story, but let's
start as the Mad Hatter was rumored to say at
(04:32):
the beginning those yeah, I believe that he doesn't. I
don't believe he actually makes that quote. He is also
not called the mad Hatter. Oh yeah, yep, yep. I
remember we discussed that on this show before, did we.
Oh yeah, yeah, I think we briefly brought that up.
The mad Hatter not actually being the mad Hatter. He's
not that mad, just the hatter, I think, Oh man,
(04:55):
but he is. Okay, so he is mad, but he
is not the Mad Hatter, right, and he's mad because
that's an allusion to the mercury right used to form hats,
the felt of hats. I remember we talked about this.
Oh man, the past is blurring, you know, a watercolor
in the rain. Oh, thank you. We're done that. So
(05:17):
so here are the facts. We're talking about this group that,
according to itself, doesn't really subscribe to the concept of names.
You know what I mean. Correct, It's not about the name.
It's not about the name. It's the system, man, that's
what it's about. And we would like to introduce you
to the leader of the group we're exploring today, brother
(05:40):
evangelist jim Roberts. According to Jay Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of
American Religions, this gentleman Jimmy T. Roberts was born in Paducah, Kentucky,
on June five, nineteen thirty nine. He was the son
of a part time Pentecostal preacher named Koy Roberts now
jim Me was one of six siblings, and his family
(06:04):
was not very well off. Their impoverished living in poverty,
and Coy couldn't seem to hold a steady job. This
is the father, Jimmy's father, and most of the family's
income came from the mother, Mrs Roberts job down to
the town drug store, absolutely Matt And for the Roberts family,
we see that the idea of material gain is it's
(06:29):
not the primary focus of their lives. They're the primary
focus of their lives seems to be religion or spiritual calling.
Both parents deeply religious. We mentioned that he the father,
was a part time Pentecostal preacher. He was at a
place called the Church of Jesus Christ granted not the
(06:51):
most creative name. It was a small independent church pastored
by a man named Herby Reid, and Jim's mother was
a member of an anti Trinitarian United Pentecostal church. And well,
we'll discuss what that means a little later. Yeah, I
thought I thought of you. I was reading some of
this stuff. I think I knew you were going to
(07:11):
be our go to pick to explain this, because you
know some of the doctrinal differences there. It's a bit strange,
but we'll get to it. So Jim himself was preaching
by the age of fifteen, and Herby Read's relative recalls
him at a very young age saying, hail is hot
and there's no ass water. Oh man, Just such an observation,
(07:34):
you know, it's I think it gives us a sense
of the type of oration he was he was presenting. Yeah,
it's a it's a simple image that he's giving you.
There's something that you won't be able to have while
you're in this place that's really bad, so you've gotta
keep yourself away from it. And also it is a
(07:55):
a fire and brimstone message. Very it's a very much
like that early American work centers in the hands of
an angry God. It's dwelling not on the good stuff,
the nice things that might happen, or you know, the
glory the kingdom of heaven. It's dwelling on the punishments
of the dangers. This is really interesting for as we're
(08:19):
getting into this a little later, what Jim's views are
are the way he shaped his beliefs about spirituality. Yeah,
he kept this consistent theme. He was also a smart
kid who was only child and his family to finish
high school. And we're not equating intelligence necessarily one to
(08:40):
one with going through an educational system successfully, as anyone
who has experienced with rural America or rural parts of
the world will know, often very very intelligent children are
not able to participate in the education system because they
have to work on maybe an agricultural field or some
out provide income for their family. But despite these obstacles,
(09:03):
Jim Roberts made it out of Paduca. In nine fifty eight,
he joined the Marine Corps. He became a sergeant. He
served until nineteen sixty one, and he was a Vietnam veteran.
He returned to civil life and he moved around the
United States working a number of jobs. He ended up
in Chicago, with the chance that the American dream version
(09:26):
of life in the sixties, you know, he found love
and he thought, is this my chance to have a spouse,
my two point five kids, my nine to five job
for a few decades with the gold watch at the end.
You don't get those anymore. He probably would have yeah
at that time, but the answer is no. His his
(09:47):
romance failed, and around the same time he encountered a
very eccentric group known as the Jesus People on the
North side of Chicago, in a neighborhood called Uptown. It's
one of those intentional communities there. You might find a
few around. I know in Atlanta there are several you
(10:08):
can go and visit. Um just a group of like
minded people living together who how do we describe them
in a previous episode, These these sorts of communists, people
who are extremely on the same page about very specific fate.
And there's a lot of stuff that a spiritual, intentional
(10:29):
community is just not going to care about. They picked
like a number of very small things and then they
everybody is in lockstep ideologically about them. This encounter, you know,
his experience spending time with the Jesus People provide some
high octane fuel to Jim Robert's spiritual journey, and he
(10:52):
doubles down on his lifelong dedication to religion. He moves out.
You'll hear a couple of different stories about this. One
story will tell us that he moves to Missoula, Montana
in nineteen seventy one, and you'll hear other people say, no,
he joined a movement in Colorado. He met a small
group of fundamentalist, extremist Christians. So these would be people
(11:20):
who recognize a Bible as and and use it right,
read from it, and study it as any other Christian would.
Christians in the audience. You know, there are multiple versions
and iterations of Bibles, which also were setting up as
a little bit of foreshadow in here. But but Roberts
(11:44):
began to exert influence on this group. He was not
content to be a member. He wanted, you see, to
be a leader. And coming out of the Vietnam War,
his experience as a marine as a Marine sergeant, gave
him some hardcore take no poop uh skills when it
(12:08):
came to leadership. Oh yeah, everything from the stone cold
stare at someone when you're having let's say, a theological
argument to keeping someone in line when they're incorrect, or
when you believe they're incorrect. They're all kinds of things
like that. There was a quote that he had a piercing,
(12:30):
mesmerizing gaze, kind of respute and esque, perhaps so he
would stare people down, it would mentally dominate them, kind
of a Darren Brown. Probably a little bit of pickup
artistry in there, you know, the same thing that charismatic
religious figures will use. And he successfully became the leader
(12:52):
of the group. He had also grown to hate the world,
the modern world. Yeah. Remember, now this is him coming
off of this relationship that didn't work out after he
probably saw it as the golden opportunity and his entire
life was ahead of him and he saw it and
then it failed. So now he's kind of in a
way spiraling into this Like in a way, you could
(13:14):
say that, but we're not. You know, you can't ascribe
all of this person's actions to this one thing that
happened to them, but you can definitely see how it's morphing.
And uh, and Roberts realized that, oh my god, the
end of the world. It's about to happen. The world
is going to end. He felt like his world was ending.
He thought he was seeing the signs. You know, there
(13:35):
wasn't some date that he told everyone the world is
going to end, but you know, he knew it was coming.
He could feel it, right, He had a divine revelation.
It was something where he thought, you know, people have
always said this before, but now I know the end
(13:56):
truly is nie. And this means that we must purify ourselves.
We have a very small window of time TikTok tik
tiktuk TikTok, and a lot of work to do as
individuals and as a group. Return to homespun clothes, don't
own a car or a house or a bank account,
(14:19):
live off the land, and bear a witness or proselytized
evangelized so that other people get the message. It's the
only way we can be saved. He planned to drop
out of society entirely, and he ordered his followers to
do the same. In the decades afterwards, this group traveled
(14:40):
widely and separately. If you attended college in the United States,
by the way, you might have seen one or had
a conversation with a small group of people. If they
thought you were vulnerable, right, uh so, they would scour
college campuses looking for the quote called out. These are
the people all the group believes will join them to
(15:02):
escape the imminent looming judgment day. This is the birth
of the group that would come to be called the Brethren,
and we'll continue to explore that group after a quick
word from our sponsor. Well, old friend, what do you say, Uh,
(15:23):
shall we play the name game with the Brethren? Oh? Yes,
let's begin with what they're known as externally to the
outside world. Laid on me, the Jim Roberts Group or
the Roberts Group. I get that that's probably from some
law enforcement or cult hunting networks, right, yeah. And also
the parents of of group members they have they have
(15:45):
a group, and they call them the Roberts Group. Internally,
we'll hear conflicting things. There will be some ex members
or survivors of the group who say that it never
has a name. Maybe was referred to as the Church,
or or they would refer to each other as the
brothers and sisters the Body of Christ, the Brethren. But
(16:09):
there is another name that has as recently surpassed the
other names in terms of popularity, the garbage Eaters. And
you did some, you did some digging on this matt.
Where did that come from? Well, it comes from their
mode of attaining sustenance, at least the group's preferred mode
(16:31):
of getting food and water, and that's by either making
arrangements with stores that have food that's about to expire
and then taking it from them, or just by scavenging,
going through dumpsters and dumpster diving. Right, yeah, dumpster diving.
And oh yeah, and it was named this or it
was coined this on an episode of that was discussing
(16:53):
the Roberts Group and they called them garbage eaters. Yes,
I believe the host said that name. So that's a little, uh,
a little hyperbolic, little derogatory. It does not describe in
any way the beliefs of the group or what it
stands for anything besides the way that they get food
(17:14):
and freaking is um. I know we have a lot
of people who have done dumpster diving before in the crowd.
Freakidi is um is not an objectionable thing, especially when
we consider the sheer just staggering, tragic and disgusting amount
of food waste, things that are thrown out when they're
perfectly good and they could be feeding starving people. But Yeah.
(17:39):
Of course, we can't legally tell you that that's a
good idea to go dumpster diving and live off the
wasteful spoils of these supermarkets. But we can tell you
that in many places is against the law. It's trespassing,
and some cases, if you don't know what you're doing,
you could easily give yourself some word of food poisoning. Yeah,
(18:01):
but we can say that you can make some kind
of arrangement with maybe a local store or something. I mean,
you can at least reach out and see what they say. Yeah,
you can go to the manager of a store at
the end of the day. A lot of places like
bakeries have to throw stuff out, delis things like that.
(18:21):
So they're living in a very low impact weight and
they've been mocked or I guess characterized as somehow vile
or repellent because they're doing something with the noblest of intentions,
you know what I mean. And it's it's strange that
that would be what people latch onto. So we do
(18:45):
want to say very clearly it's not a it's not
a cult that worships garbage and eating it. I would
be fascinated by that. I think you would too sure.
But but okay, so we know so are this is
what we've established. Jim Roberts is the head of this
group that where let's I guess we'll call them the
(19:06):
Brethren because that's what they're known as internally. Um, and
we know that they scavenge for food. Let's talk about
what they believe? Yeah, what are their actual beliefs? Matt? Okay,
So they officially they follow the teachings of the Old
(19:28):
and New Testament, so both books major books of the Bible,
but it's taught as interpreted by Jim Roberts, the leader,
and literal meanings are given to passages in the Holy Writings,
and they tell you know, they we go through some
of these, right, don't We have some quotes somewhere in here.
We'll get into that, like specifically what pieces of scripture
(19:48):
argused to develop the group and kind of control the
group and maintain it. Yes, And as we established earlier,
there's not just one Bible, you know, there's just one Torah,
there's just one Koran. There are different translations, but that
doesn't mean the books are different, right, and then there
are when we get to the Bible, you at all,
(20:12):
you've got all kinds of stuff you got some some
have extra books added, some have books taken away. All
of these, by the way, are created by people who
feel like they're reaching the purest form of it, and
then others will rely on different translations. And this great
game of telephone essentially proceeds from the ancient eras to
(20:35):
our modern day. And they the Brethren, have a particular
version of the Bible that they feel is the best,
and it's the King James version. You might have seen
that one coming. Um, It's according to Roberts, this translation
is the one, and all other translations are corrupt, as
(20:57):
well as the beliefs of most other outside Christian organizations
besides the Brethren. And it sounds strange at first when
we think about the King James version being touted as
the purest version of the Bible, because of course the
original books that would later come into the Bible were
not written in English, right and the I believe that
(21:21):
the King James version is the third English translation improved
by English church authorities. But I don't know, man, Although
it sounds crazy, I've heard this reasoning in other rural
communities where someone says, well, the King James Bible, and
I heard someone say this, Matt, is the closest to
(21:44):
what Jesus Christ actually set. Oh yeah, that that was
big where I grew up, particularly with members of the South,
the Southern Baptist Church, some of those, which is is
still do you see what I'm saying? It's still confounds
me because when I first heard it, I thought, well,
Jesus Christ didn't speak English, so what in the purest
(22:06):
form of whatever was said be something that occurred in
the language in which was spoken and then originally written. Rationally, Absolutely,
I would say in my experience, I did not think
about that at the time. Really well, I mean again,
it's a it's a spiritual matter, right, So yes, According
to Roberts, the King James version, that's the one, that's
(22:28):
the only one except no substitutions. And when it comes
to the nature of God, like his mother, Jim Roberts
is a staunch anti Trinitarianist, believing that God is not
three separate things. Instead the Brethren or Modalists, they think
it's all one thing, one God. But Matt, what what
(22:51):
exactly is Trinitarianism? Because I feel like we can only
get a rough sense of what it is by saying,
you know, just by the etymology, it's against three is um.
What does that mean? Yes, Trinitarianism or the trinity doctrine.
This is the belief that God exists as three separate
but equally important persons. And the word persons is used
(23:14):
a lot when describing these separations of God. The only
thing is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Those three separate things are each made out of the
same essence, the same being, the same matter. It's the
same thing, it's but at the same time as three
separate persons. It's a little weird. The way I think
about it is um. Water. You know, water exists as liquid, gas,
(23:38):
and a solid, and it can be that the same
water can be each of those three states at any time.
But it's still h two oh, it's still made of
the same exact essence or matter. Um. But then when
you get into modalism, this is this one is a
bit confusing for me. This is the belief that God
is a single being or person that has revealed itself
(24:01):
to people in different ways at different times in history. Okay,
so when God created the universe, God manifested itself as
the creator. Then when Jesus was born and came down
to earth. It was again the same God, but manifesting
itself in a different way. Um like an incarnation of
(24:24):
sorts kind of. But again, when you when you talk
about it this way, it seems like it's the exact
same belief system, right, Oh, that they're built of the
same substance. Yeah, yeah, it is definitely a deep doctrinal point. Yes,
but what what you're saying about modalism makes me think
of the old story of the mice and the elephant,
you know, where these tiny mice run into an elephant
(24:48):
for the first time, and one hits against its leg
and thinks it's discovered a tree. One hits its nose
and thinks it's discovered a snake and snow on without
realizing that this is all a greater, single thing. That
that's a that's a great point. I just I I
kind of don't want to sit in a room and
(25:08):
have an argument with somebody who's a a trinitarian and
a modalist and just have them argue, because I don't
think I would enjoy that. I would watch it, but
only if I could have snacks and leave whenever I want. Okay, totally,
totally if I would love to hear this doctrinal argument,
so long as I do have popcorn with like the
(25:31):
option for I don't know what's your what's your snack
of choice when you go to the movies? Oh, I
bring my own, I don't. I mean um that we
can't legally tell people to do that. I don't do that.
I just don't go to the movies anymore. Oh man,
you are a man of principle, my friends. Well, speaking
(25:53):
of principles, yes, let's get into the key scriptures. Yea,
the Brethren uses there are several key lines of scripture
guiding the brethren. Uh. One is from Luke four three.
So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not
all he hath, he cannot be my disciples. Literal interpretation.
(26:17):
If you don't give up everything, you're screwing up already
from the jump. And then there's Matthew as well. Right,
I'll read Matthew. There we go and says, and everyone
that hath forsaken houses or brethren, or sisters, or father
or mother or wife, or children or lands for my
(26:37):
namesake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life.
So if you give up everything, you forsake, all the
people in your life, all the stuff in your life,
you're gonna live forever, at least in a way. Tight. Yep, No, seriously,
I think that that sounds like a cool promise, right
(26:59):
if that's a old thing. Yeah, but you're the look
what you're given up. Yeah, you're inheriting everlasting life away
from everything you love, well, away from your worldly loves. Okay, right,
that's the idea, is that your real family is going
to reward you, your real family being God and your
proximity to God. There are a few more you can
(27:22):
look up and read to yourself, such as Acts four
thirty two. Matthew. Their big Matthew fans. I mean, who
isn't I'm I'm I'm a Matthew fan. Parents in the
eighties were huge Matthew fans. And there we go. What
else do we have? Mark eight thirty five and second
Timothy six seven and eight, And we'll just read that
(27:44):
one really quickly, For we brought nothing into this world,
and it is certain we can carry nothing out, and
having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. As
we mentioned before, there are no metaphors in this church,
which in this group, all of these things are literal interpretations,
(28:04):
and they have a rigid, one would say, militaristic hierarchy.
The members of the group are put into smaller groups,
subgroups cells, in other words, similar to the organizational principles
used by some terrorist groups. And they are small, they
are nomadic. They might squat in a house, they might
(28:26):
find a cabin, they might camp in the woods. They
can range in size. It can be just one person
sent to a city or area as a scout, as
a harbinger of sorts, or it can be as many
as fifteen people. Yeah, there are there are stories of
groups that will find a house that's abandoned and then actually,
(28:47):
rather than just squatting per se, just being in that
house while there's no one living there, making an arrangement
with the property owner to clean the house, to keep
the you know, the yard and everything spick and span
and looking nice, but be able to live there, which
sounds kind of cool if you're a if you're a
landowner and you're aware of these folks, they they seem
(29:11):
like pretty cleaned up people. They're not out doing drugs, right,
They're not um, They're not going to be committing crazy,
heinous criminal acts on your property. I can see it
being really troublesome though, because if you've got a house
that's either abandoned or maybe just no one has rented
for a long time, and then you have someone a
(29:33):
tenant like that in your home, and then let's say
somebody is interested in renting that home or buying that home,
you can't just kick them out. There's some very complicated
rules and laws having to do with that. Oh, even squatters, right, yeah, yeah,
they kick in at various times, depending on the state
or the country you're in. So when and where these
(29:56):
groups move is ultimately going to be up to the
Brother Evangelists Jim Roberts, who's known as Brother Evangelists, he's
the elder of Elders now, which is important to the group.
The membership of these groups always changes. So let's say you,
Paul and I were a three man unit when we
(30:20):
were sent out to maybe scout for a place in
New Orleans or near New Orleans, right, and then well
let's say we hung out. We were we just got
too cool with each other. We said, you know, well
this this has been a fun ride, but maybe we
should just stay in New Orleans, you know, start a band,
(30:40):
I played the oboe or something whatever we play in
that situation. Well, that would damage the overall group and
as a result, the membership of these groups, these subgroups,
these cells changes frequently and they're sent in different directions
to prevent them from getting any kind of relationship, whether
(31:02):
a friendships, something like a collegiate thing or even romantic thing. Uh,
to prevent that from ever becoming a competing focus. Right,
And it's a very effective way to control people. The
the additional control system for every cell is what's called
(31:22):
the elder. Yes, this is the person who has been
in the group the longest. It's not we're not talking
to elders as in the oldest alive person. We're talking
about the oldest member of the group, right right, the
oldest in terms of if we count them joining the church, yes,
like day one, absolutely, absolutely absolutely. And then an elder
(31:43):
is placed in charge of each group or sell or camp,
whatever you want to call it. And these elders, then,
as these cells function, take orders directly from Roberts. Yes,
and there are they're not going to be questioned by
the people who are beneath them. They're just going to
(32:04):
jump when they're told to jump. Because Brother Evangelist roberts
to change his name to Evangelists. By the way, he
has the first and last word on any and all issues, questions, declarations,
and decisions. Furthermore, they have stark gender division with prescribed
(32:28):
duties for each person based on Oh, and we should
go ahead and say they only have the two genders
male or female, and uh, and what kind of stuff
are they required to do? Well, let's say you're a
brother of the brethren. You're gonna need to gather all
the food. You're gonna have to protect the sisters physically,
you're gonna have to witness to people wherever you travel.
(32:51):
And then if you're a sister, you're gonna have to
cook and clean and so and serve all the meals
to the brothers, and on top of that witness. So
everybody's got a full plate here of things to do.
The big issue here is that women are subservient to
the brothers. There's and and you know that is a
biblical thing. If you're taking the Bible literally, that is
(33:14):
one thing that you will find in there. Unfortunately, but
here's the weird thing for a group of this kind,
in my opinion, the weird thing there is, according to
the Parents Network, there is no sexual or intimate physical
relationship of any kind between these members, the male and
female members of the Brethren, not even for the purposes
(33:37):
of procreation. No, just they are I don't know that.
They're brothers and sisters literally anyway, right, soldiers for their cause.
The one common task for both genders in this group
is to witness, in other words, to evangelize. And that's
a little bit about how they interact with one another.
(33:58):
But we have to get to the biggest question, which
is this how do they interact with the rest of
the world. And we'll get to that right after a
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. It's
the end of the world as we know it, according
(34:18):
to the Brethren. And while there is a certain allure
to the idea of shucking off all these social constraints
and living as a wandering ascetic or a monk or
a none of sorts, survivors of the group and the
relatives describe it as much less romantic than we might believe,
(34:40):
much more oriented toward the belief in a coming apocalypse, right,
and much more rigid than outsiders maybe initially lead to think.
So we talked a little bit about their recruitment tactic,
or we we mentioned it, but let's let's dive in.
(35:01):
Let's dive in, because I think long time listeners are
going to recognize some of these tactics from earlier works. Right. So,
one of their their big recruitment tactic of quote unquote
calling out people, finding lonely, vulnerable college aged individuals and
converting them works as both the carrot and a stick
(35:22):
in a very very smart and somewhat subtle way, because
the carrot is hello, welcome, this is the one true church.
We are doing the literal work of God, and you
can be part of this community, the only one that
will survive Judgment Day, the only one. And along the
(35:43):
way you will experience such freedom as you've never felt before,
a freedom from all financial incumbrance and material goods. And
if you don't go for that, you get the stick.
What's the stick? Oh? You remember that thing Judgment Day
where everything burns and be comes just charcoal on everywhere.
Well about that everybody else on the planet, every other
(36:08):
human that you've ever met, that has ever existed. They
are damned and they've well, here's here's why they've turned
away from the true church. Obviously, even mom and dad. Yeah,
even mom and dad. They didn't accept the carrot. So
there you know they're going to hell. This is literally
the first and last chance. This right here, me coming
to you and talking to you about my thing. This
(36:30):
is the last chance you get before just fire. Well,
I was going to go to biology one o one,
but now I'm freaked out. You're gonna go to biology.
Why what are you gonna What are you gonna study
in biology? I was gonna be a doctor. Oh, I'd
recommend chemistry because all you're gonna have is carbon. That's
all that's gonna be here. Just carbon. Uh. And at
(36:54):
this point, I guess the prisonans say, and you've convinced
me away with these Adidas that I'm wearing away with
this book of biology. There's only one book I need, right,
That's that's how it would happen. It's this King James.
It's this King James specifically accept no substitutions. What's fascinating
(37:16):
about this carrot and this stick is it sets the
first precedent for interaction between the initiatives and existing group members,
whether their brothers or sisters or elders or what have you,
because it puts forth a dichotomy and for the rest
of their lives, if they're in this church, there is
(37:39):
no gray area. There is only the black white yes,
no followed, don't follow, salvation or damnation for every decision,
which is amazing and terrifying. Uh. And additionally, as as
you said, Matt, the inner hierarchy of the church is absolutists.
They're determined entirely by when someone joined and how long
(38:02):
did been a member of the group. We found a
pretty interesting crowdsourced interview from a survivor who wished to
remain anonymous, and he said, if you joined the church
one week before someone else, you had to quote obey
that dude as if he was a servant of God
that was sent to be your elder. The women that
(38:23):
were in the group for twenty years were to be
subject and obedient to a brother that was there for
only a year. Young women were subject to everyone. One
thing that comes to mind is that there was a
seventeen year old boy there was an elder according to
the length of time that he was in the church,
which was all of his life, so members must be
totally subject to him, even forty year olds. If you
(38:45):
were fifty year old and joined eight years ago, you
were subject to anything that seventeen year old said, unless
it was super unreasonable, like told to do some atrocious
act right right, or told to do something physically impossible. Yes,
grow another hand, no, out of your but you know,
(39:06):
I I hopefully this kid wasn't say that sort of stuff.
But yeah, it's it's entirely time based. I don't sorry, man,
I just I went blue. I went to blue. I'm
with you, I'm trying it. Just no, please don't try.
No one listening to attempt that. So that's that that
(39:31):
internal communication is troubling communication with family and authorities. This
is where we find the really sticky stuff and the
most direct stuff. They don't want you to know in
regards to this organization, whether you want to call it
a church, whether you want to call it a spiritual movement,
whether you want to call it a cult. They do
(39:52):
not want you to know where they're going, what they're doing,
or why they have been told old that they must abjure,
hate and loathe everything from their past life, their life
started over when they joined the church. Yeah, there's no
(40:13):
contact with family members who are outside of the structure
whatsoever at all, unless, of course jim himself, old Jimmy says, hey,
you can talk to these guys, and if and if
he says it's okay, then it's okay. But the majority
of the time, just parents, siblings, friends, the rest of
(40:33):
the family. They're just completely locked out of the lives
of the members of the Brethren, right, and it can
happen suddenly. You can reaccounts detailing how Roberts would instruct
people to isolate themselves or to maintain contact and write
a letter to their parents. That's one of the first
things they did, to write a letter and say, hey, sorry,
(40:53):
I can't be in your life anymore, right, and I
don't want you to be all glory to God. You know,
this is consensual on my part, That's what their letter says, uh.
And for it to be sent en route while they
are traveling by bike or by bus often or occasionally
by train hopping. And I think if you still do that.
And additionally, we have to mention several of these these
(41:17):
people who are joining this movement or we're joining it
are not on necessarily on the fringes of society. We're
talking about the owners of multimillion dollar businesses. We're talking
about people who were attending Harvard, which, from what what
you may have heard, is an okay school, and there
(41:38):
throwing away all their worldly possessions to to join this thing.
They're throwing away their relationships, and they are chastised if
they attempt to reach out to their parents. And you
can see or their parents, or their their spouse or whomever,
and you can see the way that this splinters the group.
(41:58):
But you can also just imagine if you don't have
access to a cell phone, you'll have access to an
internet connection unless you go into a library, right or
unless you find a quarter for a pay phone, you
can you can use a payphone if you can find
one in That's the only way you can communicate. I
guess you. You could also send a letter, but you
(42:20):
can't wait around for that letter to return, because you
don't know when you're leader will tell you to move
somewhere else. You don't know where they're going to just
tell you to move. It's complete speculation. But I imagine
if word got to Roberts that you had sent a
letter of any kind to someone in any way, you
might get a notice to get on the move, just
(42:41):
because that idea of you've got a from address. You
know there's a return address on there, and that could
you could give up the whole cell awful to thing
about it that way, but you can. It's just so
easy to use a fake address. Just write down a
name of building in the zip code where you happy
to be mailing the letter from. Yes, but when you
(43:03):
mail the letter from that zip code, it's going through
the postal services or however you got it there system,
and you're you know, you can at least get a
rough area of where it came from. That's true, that's true.
But who doesn't love getting mail? Also in this stage,
I feel like I have to point that out. You
can always send us mail, by the way, if you wish.
(43:25):
And that's a little bit of levity because we're going
into some dark territory here. Discussion with outsiders is only
allowed to the extent that it encourages more people to
join the group, or that it attends to a need
of the existing group. Discussion internally, the way that we
would understand discussion is not allowed at all. Verboten, the
(43:48):
Germans would say, similar to the Marines. Oddly enough, the
Brethren follow a strict chain of command. Wearing contradictions are
not only not allowed, they do not exist. They're impossible.
They are impossible. That it's uh, it's it's bad double
plus I'm good, yeah, exactly. Due to the eminent approach
of the end of days, single members are banned from marrying, as,
(44:11):
according to Roberts, there's not enough time. In other words,
members are supposed to dedicate themselves entirely just spreading the
message of the church. Couples with children were allowed to
join back in the day, but the rules for those
kids were incredibly strict, including get this, a ban on playing,
which is just disastrous to me. That's the way you
(44:32):
become a human as you play. And the bulk of
their conversation is conducted through pay phones only they we
don't know. In the modern day, for whichever members of
the Brethren are out there, we we still don't know
if they're using burner phones not as effective anymore as
(44:55):
concealing for concealing your location, they still work. This work,
and you know, it's still better than buying a cell
phone service plan. When you have renounced all worldly possessions.
I guess the cell phone is a worldly possession. Yeah,
but so we're closed, right, But they make those? Do
(45:17):
you think they can make cell phones? Maybe if they
make self this changes everything for me, I might think there.
I would just be impressed by the mcgiverishness of it. Yeah,
it's tough to dumpster dive for all those rare earth minerals.
But maybe I don't know, who knows, maybe the recycling
program for electronics. So in the darker realm here we
(45:42):
see the allegations of abuse. The good news is that
they're not allegations that we can find of sexual abuse,
other than forcing people to ignore their own sexuality, right,
which is a form of abuse. The big thing we
(46:03):
found was emotional abuse. Members are held hostage to this
group by the fundamental belief that leaving the Brethren is
tantamount to committing suicide. It's actually worse than committing physical suicide,
because you are sacrificing your soul. Yeah, the real thing
(46:23):
that matters. And when members are suspected of straining off
the path, they are harshly warned they're probably putting a
new cell with strangers or people they don't know very well,
and if they are ex members, they are completely and
successfully shunned because, you know, like the practice you've probably
(46:48):
read about with the Amish or maybe some other groups,
this group will as a community, as a unit, ghost
on its ex members, and they're very very very good
at hiding. At least, you know, they don't sue the
pants off of them their ex members the way some
other conversations you know have m hm anyway, Um, Lauren, Yeah,
(47:16):
that that's what it is, Laurent, laurn hubbish Yep, I'm
almost there. Who is it? I can't think of it.
All I know. All I know is that when it
comes to going to the doctor or getting medicine any
kind of prescription, there is some weird stuff going on
with a Brethren. Yeah. The second the second tier or
(47:41):
type of abuse would be negligence in terms of medical treatment.
You see, the Brethren believe that the use of medicine
and doctors does not give the example of living by faith.
That's a quote. So in some cases members are believed
to have died from curable conditions or injuries do entirely
to the group's position to modern medical treatment or any
(48:04):
medical treatment. So for anyone wondering why we're using the
phrase are believed to have, it's because again, a lot
of people go off the grid. And like we discussed
in our Missing for one one episode, is a couple
of other things. It is still in the age of
GPS and spookily sophisticated satellites. It is still possible to
(48:27):
this disappear in this country easier in fact than you
might think, certainly and disturbingly so correct. But they have
found some people, right, yes, they have, and some people
have come forward. Some We found a Reddit thread where
people were discussing this group and a couple of people
saying that they were four members. Um, it's out there,
(48:49):
m hm, and you can get out. And that's the
big thing. I don't know how you would be listening
to this if you are um a member. It's much
more likely that family members of someone who became a
part of Brethren is actually listening to these words. And
let's let's take a moment in describe perhaps what you
(49:12):
can do. The first thing that we found when we
were looking into this is something called the Roberts Group
Parents Network, and it has a website n f I
s H E L dot tripod dot com. It's an
old tripod website. It's pretty great though, if you go
through there. The mission of the website says in the
(49:34):
group is to release the members of the control of
the Roberts Group and established two way communication and an
open and loving relationship between members and their families. So
they just want to reconnect family members with members of
the Roberts Group, right, And it goes on to say
that if you recognize anyone on these pages, or if
(49:55):
you suspect your loved one is a part of the
Roberts Group, we empathize with you. We know the pain
you feel and deeply regret that you share our situation.
On the other hand, we'd like to welcome you into
our fellowship. We've been brought together from all parts of
the country by our common loss. Our sorrow is the same.
In supporting each other, we find new strength to make
(50:16):
it through one day at a time and the new
hope that we will be reunited with the loved ones
that were taken from our lives. So really, I mean,
it's it's a sobering thing to go through that website
because it describes exactly the types of people that are
usually joining this group. UM. It talks about in full
(50:37):
the scriptures, It talks about how the recruiting occurs, and
their even letters there written to the sons and daughters
of people who have joined the group and chosen to
leave their family behind. UM. I would say this is
probably a good group to join if you are dealing
(50:57):
with something like this. If you don't like to join groups,
maybe you don't do that. If you're suspicious of all groups.
Now at this point I can I would understand that. However,
this is one to at least look at. Yeah, well
said met and agreed. And currently this brings us up
to speed on the background and the nature of the
(51:20):
very very secretive group traveling off the grid entirely here
in the US and possibly in Canada, Mexico at times
known as the Brethren or thanks to the garbage Eaters.
We do have one last piece of news here in conclusion,
Brother evangelist Jim Roberts passed away at the age of
(51:44):
seventies six in twenty fifteen, likely due to cancer. He
had not seen a doctor in forty years who was
practicing what he preached UM, and he had been alternately
described vibed as a sweet and harmless man or a
quote paranoid meglomaniac who wanted to control every aspect of
(52:09):
his followers lives. As of a few years ago, the
population of the group, which was never super super large,
had reduced to around sixty or so members. Are they
still out there today riding the rails somewhere? Is there
still someone who wants to contact their loved ones and
(52:30):
people from the life they left behind, but are too
intimidated to do so. These are open questions. We do
not know the answer, and there are very few people
who do. Many of those who do know the answer,
I don't want to be found. I don't know where
we go from here, Ben, Besides just saying, beliefs are
(52:54):
tricky things. They they they can be like viruses. Sometimes
they function almost exactly like virus. Is a good belief
can spread and infect and reproduce itself in the minds
of others, which is a beautiful thing and a terrifying thing.
And one of the most important parts of this show
(53:16):
that we have to touch on here is the following.
If you are or someone you know is involved in
a cult like group, or let's say, if we don't
want to use the c word uh. Let's say an
organization that is forcing them to do things against their
will and isolating them. And you're starting to see some
(53:38):
of these red flags. Do not be afraid to reach
out two groups like the Jim Roberts parent group that
you mentioned, Matt. Don't be afraid to call someone for
advice or look on forums. The resources are there, and
many times it sounds easy to say, oh, there's nothing
(53:58):
physically keeping someone in a spot, but we must remember
that the heaviest, strongest chains we have ever put on
a human being are always chains of ideas, not change
of steel or iron, and the chains that exists in
your mind, and sometimes you need help to be free
(54:19):
of them. You can find Ben and Nolan I on
Twitter where we're conspiracy Stuff, the same on Facebook. On
Instagram we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. We have a website
stuff they don't want you to know, where you can
find every podcast we've ever made and some videos and
other stuff on there. You can call us we are
one eight three three st d w y t K.
(54:41):
Leave a message and you might end up on a
show sometime in the near future. And if you don't
want to do any of that, you can send your
suggestions or your questions, or your comments to conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com, m
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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