July 14, 2021 • 57 mins
Episode 39: End time prophecies? Memorizing the bible? Required church vacations your family can't afford? Snap Judgment host and creator Glynn Washington shares his experiences growing up in the apocalyptic religion the Worldwide Church of God. He tells the girls about believing the end of the world was imminent, the white supremacist roots of the group and how he was forbidden from dating outside of his race, and the book that began to change his thinking.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group, or if you've had
an experience with manipulation or abuse of power you'd like
to share, leave us a message on our hotline number
at five one three nine hundred two nine five five.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Or shoot us an email at trust Me pod at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Trust Me, Trust trust Me. I'm like a swat person.
I've never lived to you, and we never have a live.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cults, extreme
belief and the abusive power from two former members who've
actually experienced it. I am Lola.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Today our guest is Glenn Washington, whose voice you may
have heard already because he hosts Public Radio's storytelling show
Snap Judgment, which is so good, as well as the
podcasts Heaven's Gate and Spooked, and probably more so. Glynn
is here with us today because he actually grew up
in an apocalyptic religious cult called the Worldwide Church of God.
He's going to tell us about what it was like
(00:58):
believing that the world could end at any minute. The
Special Trips members of the church would go on to
intentionally blow a huge chunk of their income, and how
thanks to the group's white supremacist ideologies, he wasn't allowed
to date outside of his own race. He's also going
to tell us about the book that began to change
his thinking, the trip that solidified that change, and what
he believes now. Very excited to get into that, But
before we do, Dearest Megan, what is the cultiest thing
(01:20):
that's happened to you? This week?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
My boyfriend's mom started selling a like skincare line. Okay,
it's called Rodin and Fields or something. Everybody knows what
I'm talking about. I'm sure, but uh.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm just
going to act like I do.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's a skincare line, and she was like you should
try it, and I was like, okay, whatever, But I did, right,
And people keep saying that my skin looks good and
saying what are you using? And then I have to
basically give them like a cult spiel back.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Like a little little MLM.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You order it on and you can get a discount
if you'd pay the seventy five dollars and like all
the shit, and I'm like, oh my god, this is
so embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I need to just say I'm using like something else.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Have you found them any customers yet?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah? You have?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh my god, the great Yeah this is great. Yeah,
so you're embedded in a pyramid scheme now, exactly. So
that's cool.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
That's pretty cool. Did anything, as could tea happened to
you this week?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, this week I have been dealing with the past
couple weeks. Actually, I've been dealing with some physical problems, okay,
health things, and they have to do with my bladder.
Oh tmiy'all love me some TMI.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Why aren't bladders sexy? They they touched the vagina to me?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay, oh my god, yes they do touch the vagina
and it's a fucking nightmare. But as a result of
these issues, and as a result of having terrible health insurance,
I'm like, don't even get me started on the fucking
stupid healthcare system in America. But I have been unable
to see a competent doctor. And so now I'm like
(03:10):
in a place where I am feeling rather desperate and
I feel like I am one hundred percent vulnerable in
this moment I spoke to my friend's mom on the phone,
who's like a homeopathic healer, which you know, is so
not something that I do. And if someone came up
to me and was like, Lola, I have the solution
(03:31):
for your thing. All you need is this five hundred
dollars program, I'd be like, I'm in. I'm sold. I
will join. Just make it stop, just someone make it stop.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Please.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
My old roommate, I remember once I came home and
she had all of these bottles of tequila and the
nice tequila, those like white.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And blue bottle, weird bottles.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
You know, And I was like, are you having a party,
And she's like, no, I went to a natural healer
and she said to cure my bladder infection, I need
to take a bath and tequila.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And I was like, that can't be true. You have
to not do it. But she did it and it
didn't go away.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So yeah, well that's I feel like generally what happens
when you see someone who's not a doctor. Sometimes it's great.
Even actual doctors don't know what the fuck they're talking
about half of the time, which is what's especially maddening.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is the true cultiest thing of the week. If
it was happening to men, there would be forty thousand curious.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
It's not. It's happening to women. So they're like, we
don't know, it's weird. Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I mean, I know so many women who are struggling
with recurring chronic mystery diseases that science is just like, oh,
needs more research.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
You're imagining it probably stressed. Yeah, stop wiping from back
to front. We're not.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I'm like, oh doing that. I am so fucking If
another doctor tells me that, I will scream. I know
to not. I don't not to get disgusting, but we
know not to do that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
But anyway, it's it's rough life over here, y'all. I
will survive. I'm a survivor. I'm gonna make it. I'm
a survivor. Keep on surviving.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's beautiful, right, beautiful Dusty's child lyrics. Okay, how about
we start talking to Glenn.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now sounds good. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Welcome Glenn Washington to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Thank you so much for having me here today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Ah, we really appreciate you coming on. I am such
a big fan of you and your voice and your podcasts.
You have such a soothing but also incredibly engaging audio presence,
so I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Go on, go on, and now you can admire his
face too. We can see his face, so wow, God,
full package, no make up, no, no fill up.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I would never have known.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
One thing that is a fun fact about you as
the host of Snap Judgment and other shows including Heaven's
Gates and Spooked, is that you yourself grew up in
a cult.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I'm a cult baby, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Cult baby gang.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So you grew up in a group called the Worldwide
Church of God now called Grace Communion International. It was
founded by a man named Herbert w Armstrong, radio and
televangelist who built his following through religious broadcasts in the thirties,
forties and fifties. I actually listened to one this morning,
and yeah, I found it very fascinating because it was
like from nineteen forty one or something, and he was
(06:47):
talking about how Hitler was evil, and I was like, yeah, well,
if I heard that on the radio, I probably would
find that appealing. You know, can you please tell us
how your family came to be involved in this group.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, it's interesting you were listening to something from night
teen forty one, because I'm not sure if you listen
to the whole thing, but he probably would have said
that Hitler's rise foretold the end of the world and
that Jesus was gonna come soon. That was something he
starts selling in the forties. He sold it again in
the fifties every so often the world was coming to
(07:19):
an end, and that he had a secret access to
unlock the Bible that no one else knew but him.
Herbert taught a very fundamentalless view of Christianity, and the
big thing was he would always say, it's prove all things.
Go see it if it's in the Bible yourself, and
(07:39):
growing up that's what we did. We're always studying the Bible.
In fact, as a kid, I spent a lot of
time memorizing the Bible. That's something you can only do
as a child. Yeah, adults can't really do that, but
you can do another kid memorize huge passages of the.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Bible, Like how much of the Bible are we talking here?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Chapters and passages, so much. I can't so many, so
much stuff. The church sponsored something called Bible Bowl. I'll
just have y'all know I was the Bible Bowl Champion
of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
We are talking to the Bible Bowl Champion, the.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Bible Bowl champion. You better believe it. What passage? What
did you say, Jeremiah ten, verse three? I know what?
It is.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
So competitive about it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It's so funny, too, right, competitive about not just reciting
passes the Bible. Everyone had to basically follow along with
the Bible when you went to church. If the pastor
says Zachariah is three sixteen, if you take longer than
ten seconds to turn there and your Bible, then that
means you need to study more because you should be
able to just flip to it right away.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And I say all that because yes, it was a crazy,
Yes it was absurd, Yes it was all these things.
But I just same time, there was that element where
you had to go in and engulf yourself in this
book that you supposedly believed. It's been my experience that
since then a lot of people claim to believe that
(09:16):
book who've never read it.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And as crazy as that crazy cult was, and it
was insanity. It was insanity squared. At least they read
the book.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, true.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And I think in reading the book, at least in
making that young generation that I was, I grew up
in the church and making us memorize it, it kind
of sowed the scenes of their own destruction because later on,
if you tell my group of teenagers that it says
so and so and so in the Bible, I know
(09:51):
it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah right where.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
I don't see you show me that way. It says that,
And you're digging the hole in your own ship if
you do that, And that's what happened, and a lot
of people did. It's like prove all things. That's good
if you kind of have a oh a casual relationship
with the book. But once you get past that in
a mediary period, there's a lot of things that's going
(10:16):
to be hard to prove.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Right, were you memorizing the Old Testament and the New
Testament or just the New Testament?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh? Yeah, Old Testament and a New Testament. Okay, the
Old Testament is quoted one hundred and thirty seven times
in a New Testament. These books cannot be taken apart
from each other. They are one in the holes, what
was teaching them? But it is true. And you know,
(10:42):
I don't want to get too much into theology because
I've left obviously. I will just tell you this. When
you start looking at the book, the Old Testament and
the New Testament together are extraordinary documents. It's amazing that
they were preserved and that you have them. And then
you have this looking to the past, and you have
this idea of what people were thinking, what they were
(11:03):
grappling with, what they were wrestling with from a theological
from a political point of view, trying to create a
type of early history, and a sense of identity, whatever
you want to go on about. These are amazing books.
But my question was where'd they come from? Who wrote them?
Where did this thing come from? It wasn't I got
(11:25):
past the point, well, well God wrote it? How did
that work? When I was on my way out and
I'll get you a little bit later on when I
was on my way out from but when I was
on my way out, I asked my pastor that question.
So who wrote these books? Where did they come from?
And to his credit, he gave me a book It
was called Who wrote the Bible? And this is when
(11:45):
I was in my late teens, and I read that
book and I read it again and I was out, Wow,
it was kind of one of those things, and I
got to I should explain what I was out from
the Worldwide Church of God was an apocalyptic end of
day Jesus cult which white supremacy elements thrown in the
idea was that Herbert w Armstrong, who you mentioned, had
(12:09):
been given revelations directly by God that gave him special
understandings to unlock the kidden keys of the Bible, and
those hidden keys to his way of thinking were mainly prophetic,
and that he could tell that the end of days
was nine and he had special ability to read world
(12:31):
events and pair them with the Bible and be able
to come up with what's going about to happen. And
you better get your act together now. If you are
again a casual believer of the Bible, and you watch
world news and you hear somebody melding the two, that
could be very persuasive to somebody. Sure it says, here,
(12:53):
here's a beast power, and the beast power does this
is in that and it's in eastern Europe, And boy,
that looks like Hitler and this is what's going to happen,
because it's foretold in the Bible, and this, this, and that,
that's what we believe. But you go back further. Herbert
came from the Seventh Day Adventist tradition, and he also
was an admin. Yes, right, he's an admin. So when
(13:18):
he went through his own searching when he left, I
think probably got kicked out of the Seventh Day at
Venice organizations and he started searching and basically created his
own situation. Christian based culture generally gonna have somebody praying
overnight and sweating and wrestling with the truth or whatever
it is before God speaks to him. He has his
(13:39):
own story of that where he was filled with this
type of enlightenment, almost a Joseph Smith type story. I
was gonna say that, Yeah, this happens again and again
and again. But again he was an admin.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So yeah, do you think he believed it for real?
Or do you think he was just an admin?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's such an interesting idea. A lot of the people
who I grew, well, we go back and forth. Did
he believe it for real? I still honestly don't know.
It got to be such madness. I'll say this, he
believed the money for real. He knew how to make
(14:16):
a pitch for real. He lived high on the hog
for real. He was one of the first sort of
people to justify buying an airplane for real.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
An airplane, Wow, he had airplane money coming in. Well,
he was charging people thirty percent tithing.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Right at Oh yeah, the thirty percent that was an innovation.
But did he believe it? Did he believe it? I honestly,
I think that some people really love to hear themselves talk.
They can convince themselves of whatever it is. Sometimes this
stuff end up being so contradictory and ridiculous it's hard
(14:54):
to believe anyone believed it when you actually listen to
the words. But I think that maybe he did believe.
I think he was one of those people who it
didn't matter. He would make himself believe anything, and that
whatever he believed just happened to be for his own
benefit hery.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
He was an ad man and customer.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Exactly, and if he needed to believe something else, we could.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Leave that too, right right, But yes, you.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Mentioned the thirty percent. That was an innovation of the
Worldwide Church of God. Lots of people know about tithing
but have you heard of the second time. We did
not celebrate Christmas, Easter, all those types of holidays that
most people who consider themsels from the Christian faith celebrate.
We celebrated Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, which was
a fasting day, which is essentially Kapor. This is again
(15:40):
like he was taken from a lot of religions. These
are oftentimes more associated with the Jewish faith. The Feast
of Tabernacles, the Last Great Day. These are our holidays
that nobody's ever heard of. And most of the people
who were drawn to this organization they didn't have a
lot of money. Was a rural community and no one
(16:01):
had a lot of money. But you had number one,
you had to tie. But because we didn't celebrate Christmas,
had that. The deal was, we had something different than Christmas,
better than Christmas. Yeah better, I said it.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Better than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
It was called the Feast of Tabernacles. And so the
idea behind the Feast of Tabernacles is you save ten
percent of your income. In addition to the tie, save
another ten percent of your income, and you keep it
and you go every October on a seven day festival
(16:38):
where you were commanded to blow it, to spend hotels,
fancy dinners, whatever it may be. Because the idea is
that you are giving yourself a taste of the world tomorrow,
a taste of heaven on earth. Wow, go and you
blow it. So imagine a poor family like us now again,
(17:00):
I'll put you in my position for a little bit.
I'm poor. I live in the middle of nowhere, rural Michigan,
and I'm in some religion that nobody understands. I feel very,
very isolated, especially at school and stuff like that. We
don't celebrate birthdays. I'm always talking weird stuff. I'm an
outsider just by default almost every single thing I do.
(17:21):
Then they pulled me out of school in October because
we're going to the Feast of Tabernacles, which means we
load up our country Squire station wagon and we get
in we start driving to we call it the festival location,
which is different sites all over the country. The closest
one to where we are in Michigan was usually in
Wisconsin westcontin Dell's area. There's a big place in wescontin Dell's.
(17:43):
It's a resort community. So before you start driving, you
have to put a green sticker on your car that
comes directly from headquarters in Pasadena, California. That lets me
know that you have all privileges to go to this
festival or whatever it may be. You put that on
your car and you start driving now again in the
middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere, and start driving. Then
(18:06):
you got ten percent of your entire income for the
year in your pocket. My dad. Everybody's happy. Like nobody
ever asked me if I want to stop them putting
that downalds or something in the way that didn't come up.
Now y'all want to stop. Yeah, get some extra fry
we can. Yeah, we're balling up in this piece. We
want the cheese. Put some cheese on, some extra cheese.
(18:28):
We start riding. We start riding, and you're riding down
the street, down the road, down the highway, and it's
like wait, wait, wait. You see it off in the distance.
There's another car and you think you see they got
a green sticker on their car too, And you try
to pull up beside them, and they got kids, and
you got kids from you're howking and wave them. You're
(18:50):
not alone anymore. There's another family with a green stick
and now y'all gonna ride together. In fact, you might
even pull off the side and have kids go back
and forth. And then y'all keep on rolling and you
see another green sticker and another, and they're closer. You
get to the feast site, you're seeing dreensticker, dreenstickt dreenstick
(19:10):
a green sticker. You're gone from being alone in the
middle of the wilderness to being part of this excited, crazy,
happy plan of people who have got more money than
they know what to do with. And you get there.
You can stay in a hotel. I never stay no hotel.
I can stay in a hotel with a swimming pool,
(19:31):
what what? And everybody there, and you can only stay
at select hotels that man deals with. So everybody you
see that's at that hotel is part of your group,
every single person. You're not alone anymore. This is all
the kids, aud the adults. Everybody is part of your group.
Now go to Weisconsin Dallas. They have a big facility.
(19:51):
They could see ten thousand people in this facility. Everybody
again is part of your thing. Now. Unfortunately, you got
to go to church twice the day during this time period,
but the rest of the time is yours to go
out and do your thing. Now it's off season too,
so Wisconsin does they're like thrilled in the middle October.
(20:11):
What all these people running around? That's great. Wh's good
for us as well. Basically, if I saw somebody going
into the Wax Museum, I see somebody getting some fudge there. Us,
that's us, Them is us. Everywhere I go, it's just us.
That's how you spent that money. You spent that money
for that time period. Now, of course when you're there,
they had something called number one, the tithe of the tithe,
(20:35):
so that ten percent you were supposed to put ten
percent of that and go to the church. And then
they had something called you got to do offerings, and
then you had excess tithe, which is like how much
excess money? Have you ever had excess money? But if
you did, you got to get out over there to
them as well, put that in the basket and then
(20:58):
bring your broke asshole.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Wow. I mean, you did convince me that it's better
than Christmas, other than the part where you go home
broke at the end.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Gave me two church things a day.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Oh yeah, well, I will say this as well. This
was technology like never before heard in the seventies and
the eighties. I'm a little kid, and there's like, you know,
seven to ten thousand people in this facility, which is crazy.
And then they have these white coded scientists people come
(21:31):
up and they got all this technology and they got
wires and cables and stuff. They would say, okay, everybody,
get ready. They turn out all the lights and they
will project microwave transmission from Pasadena, California. So this is
back in the day, and you would see the church
in Pasadena, which is the headquarters. Then like all good cults,
(21:53):
by the way, are based in California.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So the microwave transmition they're in Passing. And then they'll
be like, all right, is London online? Is Florida online?
Is Saskatchewan? You go around the world, you know, Tokyo Da,
and everybody would lose their shit because we're like, I
can't emphasize it enough. You always felt alone, but for
(22:21):
this moment you were part of a community. It wasn't
even just this ten thousand people you were with. It
was people all around the world saying they can see
the microwave transmission from Passing to California, and everybody was
sing Everybody was sing and you felt like you were
singing with people all around the world.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Wow, I mean you were. It's beautiful in a way.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, that must have been a powerful communal moment and
a beautiful reprieve from your general loneliness. I mean, I
totally get the appeal of that.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, that was that, and that was I just say,
have to say, that's where our second time went. The
third time, every three years, we were supposed to come
up with another ten percent. Now again, this is ten
percent of your gross Like, this is pre tax I know.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'm thinking, like you guys get ten percent at the
end of taxes and everything. I don't understand how anyone's
supposed to live, right.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Well, let's just say some people weren't exactly as exacting
about throwing that in as they could have been. People were,
A lot of people were, A lot of people were not.
If we didn't do any tithing, we would still be broke.
So I don't know how in the world that was
gonna work for us.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
We're in Michigan. Did you grow because I also grew
up in rural Michigan.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Oh, I'm gonna do this right here, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm showing the hand Michigan to show the hand to
each other, to show them where they grew up. But
I was born in Detroit. I lived there twice five
until we moved to the Thumb of Michigan. I moved here,
Oh the Thumb, Kingston Caro, a near Bay City, this
type of area. This is where I was a farmer, Marlette, Michigan. Okay,
(23:58):
it's a crazy story from there. Lived in the Midland
area for a while Mount Pleasant, then went to high
school in the Grand Rapids area before going to University
of Michigan.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Oh As. I grew up an hour north of Grand
Rapids in a little town called Newego.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Do you know grand Haven, Lola, Grand Haven? No, because
that's where I grew up for a while. Wait, what.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
An established this? Yeah, I was on a farm.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Do you know where grand Haven is?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Glenn, of course I know where grand Haven is.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Wow, okay, all right, Yeah, you grew up in a farm, Lola.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I grew up on a farm.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Wow, Michigan unrelated to my cult experience. We just happened
to be on a farm before my cult experience. But yeah,
that's cool. Wow wow, look at us.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Well then, Lola, we got more than our thought in
common good Lord, Yeah, I know very well where you
grew up. Our cult that we meet in every week
was in Grand Rapids. It included your area.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh so yeah, interesting because I was just a regular
Mormon when I was living in Michigan before, like pre cult,
when our church situation was weird, we had to go
to Grand Rapids for our like Mormon church. So look
at that. Curious. So there was this prophecy about nineteen
seventy five, but you keep saying late seventies, So did
you join after this prophecy year was already done?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I was like really tiny during then, so I missed
that kind of situation. I mean, I think that nineteen
seventy five things what drew my mother in for the
first place, Like, oh my god, nineteen seventy five, that's
going to be the end. But then when nineteen seventy
five came and went, they stopped mentioning that. So every
church basically had a library of books that were written
(25:41):
by Herbert w Armstrong that you could kind of check
out or whatever, and some of those books would disappear,
Like it was very very hard in the eighties to
find the nineteen seventy five and Prophecies book out of circulation, right,
they took that outlation right, But thenbody would find it
(26:01):
at home or something like that, that in some back
room or something like that, and they get to, you know,
fussing at us about we gotta do right because of
prophecy and something like that, and they're like, what prophecy. Huh,
Well this nineteen seventy five and Prophecy, where did you
get that? Where do you get that book? That's that? Well,
they don't update it. They updated of whatever they need.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
My god, I.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Had new revelations something I don't know. I don't remember
exact terminology, but I remember they did not appreciate teenagers
in the eighties taking out the nineteen seventy five booking
Prophecy and waving that around. I know that for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I am sure. So was there like oh JK wasn't then.
But it's going to happen soon.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
This is what's crazy about it. Like you mentioned that
you heard something from nineteen forty one. They would call dates,
specifically the world's going to end such and such and
such and such, nineteen forty one, nineteen forty five, fifty six, nineteen,
this is the net. I think nineteen seventy four in
Prophecy book was they finally learned a lesson. It said
(27:10):
soon instead of calling specific dates. I do remember this
being in Midland, Michigan, which apparently all of us know
when I was a little kid. And I'm saying, Brethred,
if you think we're gonna make it through the end
of the eighties without seeing the return of the Lord
Jesus Christ, well you got another thing coming. So that
(27:35):
was an exact date. And I will say what's interesting
as well, it was like there were some people This
was not technically supported by official church doctrine, but there
were several respected brethren and lay ministers or whatever. I
remember going to one person's house. I don't know. I
(27:57):
was trying to get out of this. I don't know
how they caught me in his basement. I was one
of my buddy's dads, and he's got a chopboard and
he's taken us through. Okay, it's nineteen eighty whatever. And
you will divide that by the year of completion, which
is six times the Tower of Babel and the sun spots,
(28:21):
and you turn that upside down with the number of
pages in the original King James version of Bible. And
then you get to the end time is going to
be June seventeenth, nineteen eighty six something like that. We
had the date. He said, Okay, put that down, and
it's like any questions and I'm just like, man, you
gotta let me about this piece. I don't know what's
(28:44):
going on. Especially as young kids at the time, we
thought that was mad crazy. I was told as a
kid that I would not graduate high.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
School because you'd be gone to heavens.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I'd be gone. Yeah, yeah, I'll be gone. Wouldn't be married,
I wouldn't have a family, I wouldn't do any of
that kind of stuff because that will just do with
it in the card for me.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
And did you believe that, Like how fervent of a
believer were you as a kid?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
I believe the general idea. I had a lot of
quibbles about specifics, and I had a lot of quibbles
about the racial situation there. I thought that they were
crazy racists, but I thought that the overall idea of
the Bible that they had that they were doing was right.
I did believe that.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Did you know any other black families in this church? Reason?
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Only there were a couple. This is crazy. I'm going
to tell you something. This is the deal. I'm a
young man, you know, doing what young men do. The
problem was like in our area there were no black girls,
and the inter racial dating and fragtnization like that was forbidden.
It was evil or whatever. And I thought, you know, hey,
(29:53):
I like sisters just fine, but there aren't any of
them over here. I don't know what y'all want me
to do. Right, It's really sucked, It really really sucked.
But there's a Lanting church, and that Lanting church they
had one black girl there and so I was supposed
to loh, there's one for you. Great.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
She was actually very cute, very cool. But she was
in the same fix, right, But I think her father
was white and it was they coming before they got
into the church or something like that, and I didn't
know any of that stuff. She was black. To me,
it's like cool, Well, you know, I don't know leader,
but she put a backstage past just what she did.
(30:34):
So there was a secret policy for people who are
they called an indeterminate racial classification. And what you could
do is they call it the look see administrative review,
which meant that you would send a picture into headquarters
in passing to California and they would look and they
would see how to classify You're sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
And so what she did was she got a picture
of her, put on a lot of extra flash in
the picture, and she sent it in to pass through
to California. And they came back and they said, for
all privileges and rights, you are now Caucasian and this
is not. And so the one black girl in the
area she got reclassified by look si wow. I say
(31:20):
all that to say, so I was out of lucky.
I was out of luck right now. I say, I'll
have to say this. I'll just fast forward little bit.
We'll get back to it. But I fast for a
little bit. I left the organization. I lived in Japan
for a long time, lived in Malaysia, went to law
school at University of Michigan. And my second year of
(31:42):
law school, I was having a party for grad students
of color at my place. And it was just a
dumb excuse to meet women, but it worked out great.
So people start filing in their filing and filing in,
and I see this beautiful black girl, So I go
over it. I started talking to her, and I said,
wait a minute, wait minute, Well I know you, and
(32:03):
she said like that is not a very good line.
You know, you to game a little bit. And I
was like, I'm real, I'm real. And then it hit
me and then I sang a hymno from our church,
Last and Happy, and she looked at me and it
was her this look. See no, Well yeah, my god, man,
(32:34):
I might forget a name, but I don't forget a face.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Did you guys talk about it?
Speaker 3 (32:39):
We did. We laughed ourselves silly that night. Yeah, And
I told her how much I didn't appreciate those tricks
she was pulling back in the day, and she's like,
what do I suppose to do? I don't want to
relitigate the past.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
But that's funny.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
She gained the system. That's kind of great. But what
a crazy premise like for you to even be in
this group? I mean like, yeah, what was that?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
How did you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I advise all the kids I see these days don't
grow up in a colt.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
We do too, Yeah, a strong recregnation that we have.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Also, don't join one as an adult. You know, that's
also not great.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Coming go the other way. Yeah, it was tough. It
was difficult, I especially, you know, the ratifications of a
lot of it. We cut off my family, extended family,
my cousins, and that really hurt and it still hurts
that I have a deeper gulf with them than I
should because of that cult stuff. I had to always
(33:45):
avoid them or sometimes we would go for almost a
year without having contact with them because the church said to.
And that was just hurtful.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
It sucks.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Did that apply to you like at school as well,
where you're not supposed to like hang out with outsider
kids or was this just a family thing?
Speaker 3 (34:02):
No, you could. I just had a bunch of rules
that basically made it, and people didn't want to hang
out with me. I mean, it was hard to classify.
I'm already in rule Michigan. I'm black, I'm a crazy farmer.
We're broke.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
You have the entire Bible memorized.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I got to please. I'm memorizing the Bible. I'm telling
kids the truth about Santa Claus.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Me too. That's my problem too.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
But like if you have a birthday party, I can't participate.
I gotta go stand in the hall of while everybody's
eating cake. You're creating a social outcast. Put just one
of those things and you're gonna have trouble. Had a
bunch of stuff going on. It was tough. It was
just really really tough. But I did have friends at
the church. We spent a lot of time together. There
(34:51):
wasn't like we're in a compound situation. But because you
meet so much, Like if you're meeting four five times
a week, you might as well be in a compound, right,
you know, that's kind of what you do. I went
to regular school, but it was just a lot. It
was a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
I mean, man, being a kid is hard enough. Making
friends is hard enough as it is, just like being
someone who does fit in in theory.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
I added, and the special little thing of telling everybody
I met who was wearing makeup or anything that they
were going to hell.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
So that was a fun little.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I would talk about how hot
the fire was gonna be, you know that type of stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Man, same, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
See, I just had those thoughts privately. I knew not
to alienate the children at school.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Well for you, Lola, I wish I would have known.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, so did you ever actually meet Herbert or No?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I did a couple of times. He would come through
and be a big deal and we kind of get
in a line and we go and meet him and
we kind of stand in the line. He wrote a
book almost a year, whatever new book it was, and
oftentimes he would fly around and hand out these books
like prizes to the brethren. And I met him a
(36:13):
couple times. Like I mean, when I think met him,
I was in a line and I saw him.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Or something like that, or his hand like a book signing.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yeah, book signing, that's right, was a book signing. That's
not what we called it, but yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Did he seem like special to you? Like what did
you think?
Speaker 3 (36:29):
But I gave you that. I was a very little
kid when I saw him, and they were like, look,
don't pull any of your tricks. We get up to
meet this great man. You know, you stand up straight,
you look them in the eye, and you're meeting an apostle,
and this is a big deal. You're meeting an apostle, the.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Last Apostle, right, that's what he would call him.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
The last Apostle.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, Wow, there's two witnesses that are left correct and
he's one of them.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Well, that was the whole deal that you notice stuff, man,
this is what I'm talking about. So the Bible speaks
of the end time being two witnesses that are going
to preach until the final days. The old deal was
that he would see that he was probably one of
the witnesses, but we didn't know who the second one was.
And that was my aspiration. I thought, if I got
(37:15):
these Bible verses right, and I did the right thing
and got right with Jesus, I would be the second
witness because oh wow, he's old anyway, he was always
old from from the fact that he's always been old
as hell. So I thought, you know, maybe I could
slide in. They're gonna need somebody younger and charismatic and
a broad wouldn't hurt, maybe, you know, to kind of
(37:38):
help get that second witness.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So you had that like kind of on your shoulders, like, oh,
I'm going to be the second.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It was an aspiration, Yeah, it was an aspiration. I
didn't see anybody else that seemed to fit the bill,
so I thought maybe I could do it.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I've heard you talk on other podcasts about how you
you're dealing with all this stuff and all this isolation,
but at the same time, you felt really special. And
that's something that I can certainly relate to because at
one point in time, I thought that my mom and
I were the only two people on earth who knew
about this prophet and this second coming that was happening.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, can you talk about that special feeling? And I
mean clearly you felt special if you thought you were
going to be potentially the second Abustle are the second Witness.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah. Wow, I really did feel like I guess said
I had a lot of issues with various things, but
I thought that we were being revealed a special truth
that no one else knew because in the Bible, the
End Time talks about saving one hundred and forty four
thousand people who would go and meet Jesus in the end,
(38:46):
And one hundred and forty four thousand people isn't a
lot of people. No, And you look around and you
see all these people, they're all gonna burn. They're all
gonna burn in this tribulation that's coming. Our deal was
we thought that this this big war was imminent and
that we were gonna be wisked off to a place
of safety. That people speculated it was Petra that we're
(39:09):
gonna go to Petra for some reason and live in
a cave for three and a half years, and then
Jesus was gonna come as an aside. Let me just
just say this. When we were living in the Grand
Rapids area at one point, this is rare in my household.
There was just nobody there. No one was at my house.
And my little brother was in the bed taking a
nap in the middle of the afternoon, like four in
(39:30):
the afternoon something like that, and it was my big chance.
He's a year younger than me. So I went downstairs
and I started screaming, you gotta go to the seven
eleven because everybody's going to the place of safety and
you got to get there right now and meet Jesus warriors.
They're gonna take you to Petra. I'll meet you there,
just waiting a parking lot at seven eleven. So he
(39:51):
wakes it out of the sleep and he takes his
bike and he goes off to wait at the eleven
and it gets to be dinner time, and my mom
and dad asked me, like, where's your brother at I
don't know. When he came back. He was hot. He
(40:13):
was hot.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
That prank has every layer on it.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
It's like, you know, just every single layer that a
prank could hide, so mean.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So crazy. Anyway, Yes, I felt special, I felt chosen.
I felt sorry for people who didn't have a special knowledge.
You know, I really did. And I remember too when
I had left organization. When you first leave it, I
still think that fire is going to rain down from
(40:48):
heaven for me or what it may be. But I
tried to escape and I ended up getting this fellowship
to go study in Asia. I was living in Japan.
It's this area that had never seen any foreigners really,
and my Japanese is the time, basically non existent. And
I'm trying to ask me what I believed and what
my religion was, and I'm trying to explain it in
Japanese to them, and they would laugh and laugh and laugh.
(41:12):
I remember me at bars and I'm listening to myself
speak like a two year older about what my beliefs are,
and I'm laughing at myself because it sounds so freaking stupid,
but it was the truth. I will be forever grateful
for that experience. I think that trying to explain what
you really believe in a different language, it just gives
(41:35):
you a slightly different perspective on what the words coming
out of your mouth, and you're like, what, what did
I just say? That don't make any kind of sense?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Did you tell them you thought that the end was
coming at any more?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
I probably did. But we were near the end times
and this book had the prophecies that foretold what we're
going through right now, and I probably said a lot
of things that were baffling me, that were literally baffling
me even as I came out of my mouth. Wow.
But the crazy thing is that, yes, I felt special
coming up, But even when I abandoned that belief system,
(42:11):
I felt like I was Harry Potter and everybody else
was a muggle, right, I really did. I felt like
I had the force even after I abandoned that belief system,
that feeling didn't necessarily go away for good or ill.
And my current sort of model of the world of
(42:33):
the universe, that feeling makes no sense. It really doesn't. Yeah,
but there it is, right.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
I mean, I relate to that so hard. Not to
shout out my own writing, but I wrote about my
cult experience five years ago or something, and it specifically
talks about the feeling of being special and how once
I no longer had those beliefs, I needed to find
some other outlet for my feelings, and so I pursued
(43:02):
music full time because I was like, well, I'm clearly
special in some way and have to make my mark
on the world. And if it's not because I'm chosen
to save the world, it's going to be through my
music or whatever. You know, totally totally get that. Do
you have that, Megan?
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't know in my mind.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
I think like everybody probably feels a little bit like
that from some different way in childhood.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
They you know, like I'm the best at this, I'm this,
I'm that.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I don't know, but definitely we have an exaggerated version
of that. I'm sure I feel very separate from the
rest of the world for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, you know it's true, and well, especially in LA
probably a lot of Yeah, I feel.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Exactly specially that's probably my reference.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, Glenn, can you tell us about that
process of leaving? So you read this book? Who wrote
the Bible? And what were the revelations that you had
and how long did that process take and what was
going on?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Yeah, I read the book and knew that This wasn't
really for me, but the people I was still close
to with my friends that were in that organization, those
are my people, and I didn't want to leave them.
And more importantly, I guess in a different way, if
you leave the church, everyone is obligated to disfellowship you,
(44:14):
which means basically shun you and not talk to you
and disassociate with you. I didn't want that to happen
to me, but I really didn't necessarily wanted to happen
to them. That process is just so hard and jarren
and weird and crazy and hurtful, and a few of
us in the past when we're oh, you don't talk
to them anymore or something like that, we wouldn't do it.
(44:36):
That's one of the things where we would try to
not go along with the program are But it's hard
to say to someone that you've grown up with since
the little kid, now you're supposed to just fellowship me.
I'm not not part of that thing anymore. It sounds
weird because I was almost ready for it, But it's like,
do you want to impose that on somebody else? Because
(44:57):
when you leave, it's not just you leave it and
you do that to your family, and it's just a
ramifications about that that happened. At the age I was
when it was happening, was in my late teens. You're
supposed to get baptized. Everybody got baptized. I didn't do that.
And I kept on asking me when I'm gonna be back, Oh,
you know, and don't think about that. That's interesting anyway,
(45:19):
what's for lunch service situation? I go back again to
that whole going to Japan thing I had left again.
It hurt people, and I remember I was sure. I
was absolutely sure this is the right thing to do.
But when I remember when I told people that I
was doing it, I felt the sky was going to
open up and rain down.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Fire, meaning leaving the church or leaving for Japan.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Leaving the church, leaving the church. But then when I
did go to Japan, I flew into Tokyo, got on
a train, took a bus, another train, TAXI got to
my new place where there's a thunderstorm going on out there.
I don't know the city I'm in. I've never been
there before. I don't speak a word of the language.
(46:01):
I don't even know how to use a phone in Japan.
My parents don't know what city I'm in. But I
go to my new apartment and the phone is ringing.
The phone is ringing, I'll surprise somebody. I pick it up.
I was like hello, and I'm back to someone to
be surprised, the wrong number whatever, And they're like, hello,
this is so and so from the Blobi Church of God.
(46:22):
And we heard you was in Japan right now. I
want to know that. You know, we have meetings duch
and such, down and such and such. I was like,
there's a bad connection. I can't really hear what you're saying.
But click, Yeah, that happen. How they got I couldn't
do it. I don't know. Nobody knew where I was.
(46:45):
I didn't know where I was.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
WHOA that is creepy.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
That's like stocking you.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
You got to get that money some kind of way.
You gotta have the systems in place.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
How do you even do that before the internet? It
doesn't even brain.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
This is what I will say. Let me leave you
with this. When I first started Snamp Judgment. If people
don't know, Snamp Judgment is a public radio show. It's
a stage show. We've done some television work. This is
a decade ago. We want to be Really The time
award was multimedia want to be Really Crazy Multimedia. It
was built into the DNA of the launch. There was
(47:21):
a magazine, which is really dumb. We didn't want anyone
to see that part, but we had to do it
for the grand all this stuff. But when I was
initially pulling together the initial business plan for it, our
initial funder was a corporation for public broadcasting, and somebody said, well,
this is a lot of stuff. We wanted to do
some work and see if there's any other people who've
(47:42):
kind of combined the same sort of multimedia bing into
one unit that you've done before. And somebody came and said, well,
there's this guy, Herbert w Armstrong who did something like this.
I'm just like, as fast as you run, as far
as you run, you end up right back where you started.
Almost lost my life mind. Someone came out here with
(48:02):
just herbd w Armstrong stuff. Have you ever heard of
a Herbert w Armstrong? Yes, I heard him. I don't
want to do that. What was interesting about leaving in
the first place is when you do leave. I grew
up in this crazy organization, and when I was leaving,
I felt stupid, I felt tricked, I felt angry, I
(48:22):
felt like I had wasted my youth, and I felt
all those things. And I felt as well that the
only thing I really knew anything about was how to
run a cult, how to be in a cult. That's
what I knew. Yeah, I didn't want to do.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
That, but so why Yeah I didn't.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
There's enough cause I didn't want to do that. But
that was where the whole storytelling evolved from. I realized
I did learn something from those clowns. I was trying
to find a positive takeaway from my time with them.
The only thing that kept us in those seats all
those many years listening to all that crazy stuff was
a collective sense of story, a shared story. And so
(49:10):
I know firsthand how important narrative is. A narrative can
make you do the most ridiculous thing. A narrative can
make you give away thirty percent of your income even
though you're broke. A narrative can think you think that
the world's gonna end next week. And a narrative can
make you come back to a church even though they
said Jesus is gonna be there last week and he
(49:31):
didn't show up. We can make you come back again
the next week after that and the next week after that.
Narratives and a shared story is maybe the most powerful
thing of all. And so I think that they really
did give me something like we're all on this line.
People oftentimes think all those culties are crazy. I wouldn't
join no code. I wouldn't do that, and maybe you wouldn't.
(49:53):
Maybe you would. But honestly, I don't see them as
those other is that oftentimes they're depicted up at the
media or wherever. I know that they're regular people. Often
sometimes they're really good people who have a desire to
follow their convictions, and that's sometimes twisted in turn by
(50:16):
a charlatan in a certain way. And it's a shame
to see someone who with a good heart have that
turn on them, have that very sense of search and
seeking that they have turn on them. I g it's
a real evil thing to do to somebody. I think
it's a real a wondrous type of evil. Yeah, And
instead of being I guess mad in the same way,
(50:37):
I'm grateful that my background is such that I don't
have to utter those people. And hopefully if you meet
someone where they are, you can lead them away from
some of this stuff, and at least that was my thought.
I would just say this, People want to make fun
of religious cults or whatever, but we just had a
(51:00):
national cult, you know, wanted to desecrate the Capitol building,
run around crazy doing the stuff. I would say that
the cult I grew up in was far less pernicious
than this national cult that we've just been experiencing. And
nothing that we believe was anything more absurd than anything
(51:21):
that came out of these people. As you said, tell
somebody a climate change doesn't exist, and the immigrants all
want to come and kill you, and this andette, what's
more pernicious and who's really in a cult? And it's
scary to see the same techniques that were used in
that cult be used in our national political dialogue as well.
(51:43):
Because I've been gone for so long, I thought obviously
was in a small little thing off in the middle
of nowhere. That's not how the world works, That's not
how things really go down. Well guess what it is anyway,
that's what I think about stuff.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
Damn, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, I mean, we'll let you go soon, But where
did you land on your beliefs?
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Can I ask you that.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
I'm a born again agnostic. We see so little of
what is out there. I think it's so ridiculous for
me to start saying how the universe is structured. Our
galaxy is just a spect on aspect on aspect, and
I'm talking about the way the world works and what
(52:27):
God did this, this, and that. I'm gonna have to
pass on all that and just say, can I treat
people with respect when I'm here and hopefully have a
positive impact. I know I got this, I got this life.
I don't know about any all the rest of that stuff,
and so I can only do the best I came
with this. I didn't think that was enough when I
(52:48):
was coming up, and now I know that it's more
than enough. It's more than I can possibly do anything.
I mean, God, everybody won't see themselves as a hero
or this, this, and that. I fall short of my
own deal of myself every single day. Yeah, So I
got enough to do without sitting in a basement talking
about the end times.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah right, we're sitting in a basement talking about what
you know isn't true, because that can be equally religious.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Right, all the smugness of the atheistics, who I probably
caunt myself more towards I was very fortunate to live
around the world, and I know this. What you believe
is the least important thing about a person. What you do,
that's what really people believe, all kinds of stuff. Whatever
(53:36):
you want to believe that, we're going to, you know,
get in the UFOs and all this kind of stuff.
What are you doing? Whatever it is, you're compelled to
improve this world. There is nothing that doesn't need to
be done. You want to make more drinking water, we
need that. You want to save cats, We need people
to do that. Let kids, We need people to do that,
whatever it is, and you will never run out of
stuff to do that thing. So what are we arguing about?
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Agreed, Yes, yeah, I feel like I'm in church.
Speaker 4 (54:05):
We're in church. Preach.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
If you turn when your handles, would be pleased to
pay thirty three?
Speaker 4 (54:11):
Do we owe you all of our money? That's what
I need.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Thirty coming right up.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
That's what it says. You can read it yourself, rather
you can really just I don't want to read it
for you, but please I like the time that jingles.
But a lot of current faults.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Oh man, this has been such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, thank you so much for talking to us, Glynn.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Thank you for having me on the show. I really
appreciate it. I really appreciate my community of cultings. Whatever
we can get together and share some some laughs. I
always appreciate it because we can speak in full speed
to each other.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Right, Okay, that was great. I'm so happy we got him.
Thank you, Glynn. He's so cool, So cool, Megan, So
what do you think would you join? I mean, you know,
Glenn was born into it, so it's a bit of
a different situation. Would you join the Worldwide Church of God?
(55:07):
Do you think?
Speaker 4 (55:08):
No? I would not.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
It involves way too many things I don't like, like
giving all my money to people that aren't me, And.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
But don't all cults make you do that though, I
feel like that's just sort of a built in true
But they think really took a lot. They did, although
look at Hoy, he gave them like four million dollars
or what I know.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
I know, but Hoight had money, and Hoy was completely
exploited and so unfair.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
But to be like a family on.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
A farm giving your like money away is a whole
different beast in my mind. So I don't know that
that's fucked up, And I would be so mad if
I was a kid and my parents were like giving
money that we needed to eat to this religion.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Well, the caveat that I will offer to that is
that many religions require a percentage of your income as tithing. Absolutely,
Mormonism requires ten percent of your gross income as well
as tithing. Such a strange setup to have ten percent
of it be for your own like fun. That's something
I've never heard of, like ever in theory. That's like
(56:20):
kind of a fun idea, like, oh, you know, you
should devote a certain percentage of your income or your
life to like leisure and you know, self care or whatever.
Like there's something interesting in that idea. But as a requirement,
not so much. It's more like, oh, if you want
to like carve out space in your life to make
sure it's not all about work, you know, But struggling
(56:45):
families living in poverty, very very different story.
Speaker 4 (56:47):
Completely. It made me really sad that they had to
do that.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
And everybody, like you said, everybody we've talked to, has
been exploited horrifically and it.
Speaker 4 (56:56):
Just breaks your heart.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
So no, didn't like it involve like wigs and magic
and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
So I'm out no nudity, no right out the rituals.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Exactly, so it's not for me, but uh what a story.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Indeed, Well, I guess we'll just leave it at that
for this week, don't you think?
Speaker 2 (57:18):
I think that might be all we can do. Thank
you for listening to trust me, have a wonderful week,
and remember to follow your gut, watch out for a.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Flags, and never never ever trust me. Bye bye.
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group, or if you've had
an experience with manipulation or abuse of power you'd like
to share, leave us a message on our hotline number
at five one three nine hundred two nine five five.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Or shoot us an email at trust Me pod at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Trust Me, Trust trust Me. I'm like a swat person.
I've never lived to you, and we never have a live.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cults, extreme
belief and the abusive power from two former members who've
actually experienced it. I am Lola.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Today our guest is Glenn Washington, whose voice you may
have heard already because he hosts Public Radio's storytelling show
Snap Judgment, which is so good, as well as the
podcasts Heaven's Gate and Spooked, and probably more so. Glynn
is here with us today because he actually grew up
in an apocalyptic religious cult called the Worldwide Church of God.
He's going to tell us about what it was like
(00:58):
believing that the world could end at any minute. The
Special Trips members of the church would go on to
intentionally blow a huge chunk of their income, and how
thanks to the group's white supremacist ideologies, he wasn't allowed
to date outside of his own race. He's also going
to tell us about the book that began to change
his thinking, the trip that solidified that change, and what
he believes now. Very excited to get into that, But
before we do, Dearest Megan, what is the cultiest thing
(01:20):
that's happened to you? This week?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
My boyfriend's mom started selling a like skincare line. Okay,
it's called Rodin and Fields or something. Everybody knows what
I'm talking about. I'm sure, but uh.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm just
going to act like I do.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's a skincare line, and she was like you should
try it, and I was like, okay, whatever, But I did, right,
And people keep saying that my skin looks good and
saying what are you using? And then I have to
basically give them like a cult spiel back.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Like a little little MLM.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You order it on and you can get a discount
if you'd pay the seventy five dollars and like all
the shit, and I'm like, oh my god, this is
so embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I need to just say I'm using like something else.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Have you found them any customers yet?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah? You have?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh my god, the great Yeah this is great. Yeah,
so you're embedded in a pyramid scheme now, exactly. So
that's cool.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
That's pretty cool. Did anything, as could tea happened to
you this week?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, this week I have been dealing with the past
couple weeks. Actually, I've been dealing with some physical problems, okay,
health things, and they have to do with my bladder.
Oh tmiy'all love me some TMI.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Why aren't bladders sexy? They they touched the vagina to me?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay, oh my god, yes they do touch the vagina
and it's a fucking nightmare. But as a result of
these issues, and as a result of having terrible health insurance,
I'm like, don't even get me started on the fucking
stupid healthcare system in America. But I have been unable
to see a competent doctor. And so now I'm like
(03:10):
in a place where I am feeling rather desperate and
I feel like I am one hundred percent vulnerable in
this moment I spoke to my friend's mom on the phone,
who's like a homeopathic healer, which you know, is so
not something that I do. And if someone came up
to me and was like, Lola, I have the solution
(03:31):
for your thing. All you need is this five hundred
dollars program, I'd be like, I'm in. I'm sold. I
will join. Just make it stop, just someone make it stop.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Please.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
My old roommate, I remember once I came home and
she had all of these bottles of tequila and the
nice tequila, those like white.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And blue bottle, weird bottles.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
You know, And I was like, are you having a party,
And she's like, no, I went to a natural healer
and she said to cure my bladder infection, I need
to take a bath and tequila.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And I was like, that can't be true. You have
to not do it. But she did it and it
didn't go away.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So yeah, well that's I feel like generally what happens
when you see someone who's not a doctor. Sometimes it's great.
Even actual doctors don't know what the fuck they're talking
about half of the time, which is what's especially maddening.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is the true cultiest thing of the week. If
it was happening to men, there would be forty thousand curious.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
It's not. It's happening to women. So they're like, we
don't know, it's weird. Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I mean, I know so many women who are struggling
with recurring chronic mystery diseases that science is just like, oh,
needs more research.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
You're imagining it probably stressed. Yeah, stop wiping from back
to front. We're not.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I'm like, oh doing that. I am so fucking If
another doctor tells me that, I will scream. I know
to not. I don't not to get disgusting, but we
know not to do that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
But anyway, it's it's rough life over here, y'all. I
will survive. I'm a survivor. I'm gonna make it. I'm
a survivor. Keep on surviving.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's beautiful, right, beautiful Dusty's child lyrics. Okay, how about
we start talking to Glenn.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now sounds good. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Welcome Glenn Washington to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Thank you so much for having me here today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Ah, we really appreciate you coming on. I am such
a big fan of you and your voice and your podcasts.
You have such a soothing but also incredibly engaging audio presence,
so I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Go on, go on, and now you can admire his
face too. We can see his face, so wow, God,
full package, no make up, no, no fill up.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I would never have known.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
One thing that is a fun fact about you as
the host of Snap Judgment and other shows including Heaven's
Gates and Spooked, is that you yourself grew up in
a cult.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I'm a cult baby, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Cult baby gang.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So you grew up in a group called the Worldwide
Church of God now called Grace Communion International. It was
founded by a man named Herbert w Armstrong, radio and
televangelist who built his following through religious broadcasts in the thirties,
forties and fifties. I actually listened to one this morning,
and yeah, I found it very fascinating because it was
like from nineteen forty one or something, and he was
(06:47):
talking about how Hitler was evil, and I was like, yeah, well,
if I heard that on the radio, I probably would
find that appealing. You know, can you please tell us
how your family came to be involved in this group.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, it's interesting you were listening to something from night
teen forty one, because I'm not sure if you listen
to the whole thing, but he probably would have said
that Hitler's rise foretold the end of the world and
that Jesus was gonna come soon. That was something he
starts selling in the forties. He sold it again in
the fifties every so often the world was coming to
(07:19):
an end, and that he had a secret access to
unlock the Bible that no one else knew but him.
Herbert taught a very fundamentalless view of Christianity, and the
big thing was he would always say, it's prove all things.
Go see it if it's in the Bible yourself, and
(07:39):
growing up that's what we did. We're always studying the Bible.
In fact, as a kid, I spent a lot of
time memorizing the Bible. That's something you can only do
as a child. Yeah, adults can't really do that, but
you can do another kid memorize huge passages of the.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Bible, Like how much of the Bible are we talking here?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Chapters and passages, so much. I can't so many, so
much stuff. The church sponsored something called Bible Bowl. I'll
just have y'all know I was the Bible Bowl Champion
of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
We are talking to the Bible Bowl Champion, the.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Bible Bowl champion. You better believe it. What passage? What
did you say, Jeremiah ten, verse three? I know what?
It is.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
So competitive about it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It's so funny, too, right, competitive about not just reciting
passes the Bible. Everyone had to basically follow along with
the Bible when you went to church. If the pastor
says Zachariah is three sixteen, if you take longer than
ten seconds to turn there and your Bible, then that
means you need to study more because you should be
able to just flip to it right away.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And I say all that because yes, it was a crazy,
Yes it was absurd, Yes it was all these things.
But I just same time, there was that element where
you had to go in and engulf yourself in this
book that you supposedly believed. It's been my experience that
since then a lot of people claim to believe that
(09:16):
book who've never read it.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And as crazy as that crazy cult was, and it
was insanity. It was insanity squared. At least they read
the book.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, true.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And I think in reading the book, at least in
making that young generation that I was, I grew up
in the church and making us memorize it, it kind
of sowed the scenes of their own destruction because later on,
if you tell my group of teenagers that it says
so and so and so in the Bible, I know
(09:51):
it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah right where.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
I don't see you show me that way. It says that,
And you're digging the hole in your own ship if
you do that, And that's what happened, and a lot
of people did. It's like prove all things. That's good
if you kind of have a oh a casual relationship
with the book. But once you get past that in
a mediary period, there's a lot of things that's going
(10:16):
to be hard to prove.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Right, were you memorizing the Old Testament and the New
Testament or just the New Testament?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh? Yeah, Old Testament and a New Testament. Okay, the
Old Testament is quoted one hundred and thirty seven times
in a New Testament. These books cannot be taken apart
from each other. They are one in the holes, what
was teaching them? But it is true. And you know,
(10:42):
I don't want to get too much into theology because
I've left obviously. I will just tell you this. When
you start looking at the book, the Old Testament and
the New Testament together are extraordinary documents. It's amazing that
they were preserved and that you have them. And then
you have this looking to the past, and you have
this idea of what people were thinking, what they were
(11:03):
grappling with, what they were wrestling with from a theological
from a political point of view, trying to create a
type of early history, and a sense of identity, whatever
you want to go on about. These are amazing books.
But my question was where'd they come from? Who wrote them?
Where did this thing come from? It wasn't I got
(11:25):
past the point, well, well God wrote it? How did
that work? When I was on my way out and
I'll get you a little bit later on when I
was on my way out from but when I was
on my way out, I asked my pastor that question.
So who wrote these books? Where did they come from?
And to his credit, he gave me a book It
was called Who wrote the Bible? And this is when
(11:45):
I was in my late teens, and I read that
book and I read it again and I was out, Wow,
it was kind of one of those things, and I
got to I should explain what I was out from
the Worldwide Church of God was an apocalyptic end of
day Jesus cult which white supremacy elements thrown in the
idea was that Herbert w Armstrong, who you mentioned, had
(12:09):
been given revelations directly by God that gave him special
understandings to unlock the kidden keys of the Bible, and
those hidden keys to his way of thinking were mainly prophetic,
and that he could tell that the end of days
was nine and he had special ability to read world
(12:31):
events and pair them with the Bible and be able
to come up with what's going about to happen. And
you better get your act together now. If you are
again a casual believer of the Bible, and you watch
world news and you hear somebody melding the two, that
could be very persuasive to somebody. Sure it says, here,
(12:53):
here's a beast power, and the beast power does this
is in that and it's in eastern Europe, And boy,
that looks like Hitler and this is what's going to happen,
because it's foretold in the Bible, and this, this, and that,
that's what we believe. But you go back further. Herbert
came from the Seventh Day Adventist tradition, and he also
was an admin. Yes, right, he's an admin. So when
(13:18):
he went through his own searching when he left, I
think probably got kicked out of the Seventh Day at
Venice organizations and he started searching and basically created his
own situation. Christian based culture generally gonna have somebody praying
overnight and sweating and wrestling with the truth or whatever
it is before God speaks to him. He has his
(13:39):
own story of that where he was filled with this
type of enlightenment, almost a Joseph Smith type story. I
was gonna say that, Yeah, this happens again and again
and again. But again he was an admin.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So yeah, do you think he believed it for real?
Or do you think he was just an admin?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's such an interesting idea. A lot of the people
who I grew, well, we go back and forth. Did
he believe it for real? I still honestly don't know.
It got to be such madness. I'll say this, he
believed the money for real. He knew how to make
(14:16):
a pitch for real. He lived high on the hog
for real. He was one of the first sort of
people to justify buying an airplane for real.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
An airplane, Wow, he had airplane money coming in. Well,
he was charging people thirty percent tithing.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Right at Oh yeah, the thirty percent that was an innovation.
But did he believe it? Did he believe it? I honestly,
I think that some people really love to hear themselves talk.
They can convince themselves of whatever it is. Sometimes this
stuff end up being so contradictory and ridiculous it's hard
(14:54):
to believe anyone believed it when you actually listen to
the words. But I think that maybe he did believe.
I think he was one of those people who it
didn't matter. He would make himself believe anything, and that
whatever he believed just happened to be for his own
benefit hery.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
He was an ad man and customer.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Exactly, and if he needed to believe something else, we could.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Leave that too, right right, But yes, you.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Mentioned the thirty percent. That was an innovation of the
Worldwide Church of God. Lots of people know about tithing
but have you heard of the second time. We did
not celebrate Christmas, Easter, all those types of holidays that
most people who consider themsels from the Christian faith celebrate.
We celebrated Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, which was
a fasting day, which is essentially Kapor. This is again
(15:40):
like he was taken from a lot of religions. These
are oftentimes more associated with the Jewish faith. The Feast
of Tabernacles, the Last Great Day. These are our holidays
that nobody's ever heard of. And most of the people
who were drawn to this organization they didn't have a
lot of money. Was a rural community and no one
(16:01):
had a lot of money. But you had number one,
you had to tie. But because we didn't celebrate Christmas,
had that. The deal was, we had something different than Christmas,
better than Christmas. Yeah better, I said it.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Better than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
It was called the Feast of Tabernacles. And so the
idea behind the Feast of Tabernacles is you save ten
percent of your income. In addition to the tie, save
another ten percent of your income, and you keep it
and you go every October on a seven day festival
(16:38):
where you were commanded to blow it, to spend hotels,
fancy dinners, whatever it may be. Because the idea is
that you are giving yourself a taste of the world tomorrow,
a taste of heaven on earth. Wow, go and you
blow it. So imagine a poor family like us now again,
(17:00):
I'll put you in my position for a little bit.
I'm poor. I live in the middle of nowhere, rural Michigan,
and I'm in some religion that nobody understands. I feel very,
very isolated, especially at school and stuff like that. We
don't celebrate birthdays. I'm always talking weird stuff. I'm an
outsider just by default almost every single thing I do.
(17:21):
Then they pulled me out of school in October because
we're going to the Feast of Tabernacles, which means we
load up our country Squire station wagon and we get
in we start driving to we call it the festival location,
which is different sites all over the country. The closest
one to where we are in Michigan was usually in
Wisconsin westcontin Dell's area. There's a big place in wescontin Dell's.
(17:43):
It's a resort community. So before you start driving, you
have to put a green sticker on your car that
comes directly from headquarters in Pasadena, California. That lets me
know that you have all privileges to go to this
festival or whatever it may be. You put that on
your car and you start driving now again in the
middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere, and start driving. Then
(18:06):
you got ten percent of your entire income for the
year in your pocket. My dad. Everybody's happy. Like nobody
ever asked me if I want to stop them putting
that downalds or something in the way that didn't come up.
Now y'all want to stop. Yeah, get some extra fry
we can. Yeah, we're balling up in this piece. We
want the cheese. Put some cheese on, some extra cheese.
(18:28):
We start riding. We start riding, and you're riding down
the street, down the road, down the highway, and it's
like wait, wait, wait. You see it off in the distance.
There's another car and you think you see they got
a green sticker on their car too, And you try
to pull up beside them, and they got kids, and
you got kids from you're howking and wave them. You're
(18:50):
not alone anymore. There's another family with a green stick
and now y'all gonna ride together. In fact, you might
even pull off the side and have kids go back
and forth. And then y'all keep on rolling and you
see another green sticker and another, and they're closer. You
get to the feast site, you're seeing dreensticker, dreenstickt dreenstick
(19:10):
a green sticker. You're gone from being alone in the
middle of the wilderness to being part of this excited, crazy,
happy plan of people who have got more money than
they know what to do with. And you get there.
You can stay in a hotel. I never stay no hotel.
I can stay in a hotel with a swimming pool,
(19:31):
what what? And everybody there, and you can only stay
at select hotels that man deals with. So everybody you
see that's at that hotel is part of your group,
every single person. You're not alone anymore. This is all
the kids, aud the adults. Everybody is part of your group.
Now go to Weisconsin Dallas. They have a big facility.
(19:51):
They could see ten thousand people in this facility. Everybody
again is part of your thing. Now. Unfortunately, you got
to go to church twice the day during this time period,
but the rest of the time is yours to go
out and do your thing. Now it's off season too,
so Wisconsin does they're like thrilled in the middle October.
(20:11):
What all these people running around? That's great. Wh's good
for us as well. Basically, if I saw somebody going
into the Wax Museum, I see somebody getting some fudge there. Us,
that's us, Them is us. Everywhere I go, it's just us.
That's how you spent that money. You spent that money
for that time period. Now, of course when you're there,
they had something called number one, the tithe of the tithe,
(20:35):
so that ten percent you were supposed to put ten
percent of that and go to the church. And then
they had something called you got to do offerings, and
then you had excess tithe, which is like how much
excess money? Have you ever had excess money? But if
you did, you got to get out over there to
them as well, put that in the basket and then
(20:58):
bring your broke asshole.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Wow. I mean, you did convince me that it's better
than Christmas, other than the part where you go home
broke at the end.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Gave me two church things a day.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Oh yeah, well, I will say this as well. This
was technology like never before heard in the seventies and
the eighties. I'm a little kid, and there's like, you know,
seven to ten thousand people in this facility, which is crazy.
And then they have these white coded scientists people come
(21:31):
up and they got all this technology and they got
wires and cables and stuff. They would say, okay, everybody,
get ready. They turn out all the lights and they
will project microwave transmission from Pasadena, California. So this is
back in the day, and you would see the church
in Pasadena, which is the headquarters. Then like all good cults,
(21:53):
by the way, are based in California.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So the microwave transmition they're in Passing. And then they'll
be like, all right, is London online? Is Florida online?
Is Saskatchewan? You go around the world, you know, Tokyo Da,
and everybody would lose their shit because we're like, I
can't emphasize it enough. You always felt alone, but for
(22:21):
this moment you were part of a community. It wasn't
even just this ten thousand people you were with. It
was people all around the world saying they can see
the microwave transmission from Passing to California, and everybody was
sing Everybody was sing and you felt like you were
singing with people all around the world.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Wow, I mean you were. It's beautiful in a way.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, that must have been a powerful communal moment and
a beautiful reprieve from your general loneliness. I mean, I
totally get the appeal of that.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, that was that, and that was I just say,
have to say, that's where our second time went. The
third time, every three years, we were supposed to come
up with another ten percent. Now again, this is ten
percent of your gross Like, this is pre tax I know.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'm thinking, like you guys get ten percent at the
end of taxes and everything. I don't understand how anyone's
supposed to live, right.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Well, let's just say some people weren't exactly as exacting
about throwing that in as they could have been. People were,
A lot of people were, A lot of people were not.
If we didn't do any tithing, we would still be broke.
So I don't know how in the world that was
gonna work for us.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
We're in Michigan. Did you grow because I also grew
up in rural Michigan.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Oh, I'm gonna do this right here, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm showing the hand Michigan to show the hand to
each other, to show them where they grew up. But
I was born in Detroit. I lived there twice five
until we moved to the Thumb of Michigan. I moved here,
Oh the Thumb, Kingston Caro, a near Bay City, this
type of area. This is where I was a farmer, Marlette, Michigan. Okay,
(23:58):
it's a crazy story from there. Lived in the Midland
area for a while Mount Pleasant, then went to high
school in the Grand Rapids area before going to University
of Michigan.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Oh As. I grew up an hour north of Grand
Rapids in a little town called Newego.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Do you know grand Haven, Lola, Grand Haven? No, because
that's where I grew up for a while. Wait, what.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
An established this? Yeah, I was on a farm.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Do you know where grand Haven is?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Glenn, of course I know where grand Haven is.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Wow, okay, all right, Yeah, you grew up in a farm, Lola.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
I grew up on a farm.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Wow, Michigan unrelated to my cult experience. We just happened
to be on a farm before my cult experience. But yeah,
that's cool. Wow wow, look at us.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Well then, Lola, we got more than our thought in
common good Lord, Yeah, I know very well where you
grew up. Our cult that we meet in every week
was in Grand Rapids. It included your area.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh so yeah, interesting because I was just a regular
Mormon when I was living in Michigan before, like pre cult,
when our church situation was weird, we had to go
to Grand Rapids for our like Mormon church. So look
at that. Curious. So there was this prophecy about nineteen
seventy five, but you keep saying late seventies, So did
you join after this prophecy year was already done?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I was like really tiny during then, so I missed
that kind of situation. I mean, I think that nineteen
seventy five things what drew my mother in for the
first place, Like, oh my god, nineteen seventy five, that's
going to be the end. But then when nineteen seventy
five came and went, they stopped mentioning that. So every
church basically had a library of books that were written
(25:41):
by Herbert w Armstrong that you could kind of check
out or whatever, and some of those books would disappear,
Like it was very very hard in the eighties to
find the nineteen seventy five and Prophecies book out of circulation, right,
they took that outlation right, But thenbody would find it
(26:01):
at home or something like that, that in some back
room or something like that, and they get to, you know,
fussing at us about we gotta do right because of
prophecy and something like that, and they're like, what prophecy. Huh,
Well this nineteen seventy five and Prophecy, where did you
get that? Where do you get that book? That's that? Well,
they don't update it. They updated of whatever they need.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
My god, I.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Had new revelations something I don't know. I don't remember
exact terminology, but I remember they did not appreciate teenagers
in the eighties taking out the nineteen seventy five booking
Prophecy and waving that around. I know that for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I am sure. So was there like oh JK wasn't then.
But it's going to happen soon.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
This is what's crazy about it. Like you mentioned that
you heard something from nineteen forty one. They would call dates,
specifically the world's going to end such and such and
such and such, nineteen forty one, nineteen forty five, fifty six, nineteen,
this is the net. I think nineteen seventy four in
Prophecy book was they finally learned a lesson. It said
(27:10):
soon instead of calling specific dates. I do remember this
being in Midland, Michigan, which apparently all of us know
when I was a little kid. And I'm saying, Brethred,
if you think we're gonna make it through the end
of the eighties without seeing the return of the Lord
Jesus Christ, well you got another thing coming. So that
(27:35):
was an exact date. And I will say what's interesting
as well, it was like there were some people This
was not technically supported by official church doctrine, but there
were several respected brethren and lay ministers or whatever. I
remember going to one person's house. I don't know. I
(27:57):
was trying to get out of this. I don't know
how they caught me in his basement. I was one
of my buddy's dads, and he's got a chopboard and
he's taken us through. Okay, it's nineteen eighty whatever. And
you will divide that by the year of completion, which
is six times the Tower of Babel and the sun spots,
(28:21):
and you turn that upside down with the number of
pages in the original King James version of Bible. And
then you get to the end time is going to
be June seventeenth, nineteen eighty six something like that. We
had the date. He said, Okay, put that down, and
it's like any questions and I'm just like, man, you
gotta let me about this piece. I don't know what's
(28:44):
going on. Especially as young kids at the time, we
thought that was mad crazy. I was told as a
kid that I would not graduate high.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
School because you'd be gone to heavens.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I'd be gone. Yeah, yeah, I'll be gone. Wouldn't be married,
I wouldn't have a family, I wouldn't do any of
that kind of stuff because that will just do with
it in the card for me.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
And did you believe that, Like how fervent of a
believer were you as a kid?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
I believe the general idea. I had a lot of
quibbles about specifics, and I had a lot of quibbles
about the racial situation there. I thought that they were
crazy racists, but I thought that the overall idea of
the Bible that they had that they were doing was right.
I did believe that.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Did you know any other black families in this church? Reason?
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Only there were a couple. This is crazy. I'm going
to tell you something. This is the deal. I'm a
young man, you know, doing what young men do. The
problem was like in our area there were no black girls,
and the inter racial dating and fragtnization like that was forbidden.
It was evil or whatever. And I thought, you know, hey,
(29:53):
I like sisters just fine, but there aren't any of
them over here. I don't know what y'all want me
to do. Right, It's really sucked, It really really sucked.
But there's a Lanting church, and that Lanting church they
had one black girl there and so I was supposed
to loh, there's one for you. Great.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
She was actually very cute, very cool. But she was
in the same fix, right, But I think her father
was white and it was they coming before they got
into the church or something like that, and I didn't
know any of that stuff. She was black. To me,
it's like cool, Well, you know, I don't know leader,
but she put a backstage past just what she did.
(30:34):
So there was a secret policy for people who are
they called an indeterminate racial classification. And what you could
do is they call it the look see administrative review,
which meant that you would send a picture into headquarters
in passing to California and they would look and they
would see how to classify You're sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
And so what she did was she got a picture
of her, put on a lot of extra flash in
the picture, and she sent it in to pass through
to California. And they came back and they said, for
all privileges and rights, you are now Caucasian and this
is not. And so the one black girl in the
area she got reclassified by look si wow. I say
(31:20):
all that to say, so I was out of lucky.
I was out of luck right now. I say, I'll
have to say this. I'll just fast forward little bit.
We'll get back to it. But I fast for a
little bit. I left the organization. I lived in Japan
for a long time, lived in Malaysia, went to law
school at University of Michigan. And my second year of
(31:42):
law school, I was having a party for grad students
of color at my place. And it was just a
dumb excuse to meet women, but it worked out great.
So people start filing in their filing and filing in,
and I see this beautiful black girl, So I go
over it. I started talking to her, and I said,
wait a minute, wait minute, Well I know you, and
(32:03):
she said like that is not a very good line.
You know, you to game a little bit. And I
was like, I'm real, I'm real. And then it hit
me and then I sang a hymno from our church,
Last and Happy, and she looked at me and it
was her this look. See no, Well yeah, my god, man,
(32:34):
I might forget a name, but I don't forget a face.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Did you guys talk about it?
Speaker 3 (32:39):
We did. We laughed ourselves silly that night. Yeah, And
I told her how much I didn't appreciate those tricks
she was pulling back in the day, and she's like,
what do I suppose to do? I don't want to
relitigate the past.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
But that's funny.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
She gained the system. That's kind of great. But what
a crazy premise like for you to even be in
this group? I mean like, yeah, what was that?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
How did you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I advise all the kids I see these days don't
grow up in a colt.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
We do too, Yeah, a strong recregnation that we have.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Also, don't join one as an adult. You know, that's
also not great.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Coming go the other way. Yeah, it was tough. It
was difficult, I especially, you know, the ratifications of a
lot of it. We cut off my family, extended family,
my cousins, and that really hurt and it still hurts
that I have a deeper gulf with them than I
should because of that cult stuff. I had to always
(33:45):
avoid them or sometimes we would go for almost a
year without having contact with them because the church said to.
And that was just hurtful.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
It sucks.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Did that apply to you like at school as well,
where you're not supposed to like hang out with outsider
kids or was this just a family thing?
Speaker 3 (34:02):
No, you could. I just had a bunch of rules
that basically made it, and people didn't want to hang
out with me. I mean, it was hard to classify.
I'm already in rule Michigan. I'm black, I'm a crazy farmer.
We're broke.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
You have the entire Bible memorized.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I got to please. I'm memorizing the Bible. I'm telling
kids the truth about Santa Claus.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Me too. That's my problem too.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
But like if you have a birthday party, I can't participate.
I gotta go stand in the hall of while everybody's
eating cake. You're creating a social outcast. Put just one
of those things and you're gonna have trouble. Had a
bunch of stuff going on. It was tough. It was
just really really tough. But I did have friends at
the church. We spent a lot of time together. There
(34:51):
wasn't like we're in a compound situation. But because you
meet so much, Like if you're meeting four five times
a week, you might as well be in a compound, right,
you know, that's kind of what you do. I went
to regular school, but it was just a lot. It
was a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
I mean, man, being a kid is hard enough. Making
friends is hard enough as it is, just like being
someone who does fit in in theory.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
I added, and the special little thing of telling everybody
I met who was wearing makeup or anything that they
were going to hell.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
So that was a fun little.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I would talk about how hot
the fire was gonna be, you know that type of stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Man, same, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
See, I just had those thoughts privately. I knew not
to alienate the children at school.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Well for you, Lola, I wish I would have known.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, so did you ever actually meet Herbert or No?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I did a couple of times. He would come through
and be a big deal and we kind of get
in a line and we go and meet him and
we kind of stand in the line. He wrote a
book almost a year, whatever new book it was, and
oftentimes he would fly around and hand out these books
like prizes to the brethren. And I met him a
(36:13):
couple times. Like I mean, when I think met him,
I was in a line and I saw him.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Or something like that, or his hand like a book signing.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yeah, book signing, that's right, was a book signing. That's
not what we called it, but yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Did he seem like special to you? Like what did
you think?
Speaker 3 (36:29):
But I gave you that. I was a very little
kid when I saw him, and they were like, look,
don't pull any of your tricks. We get up to
meet this great man. You know, you stand up straight,
you look them in the eye, and you're meeting an apostle,
and this is a big deal. You're meeting an apostle, the.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Last Apostle, right, that's what he would call him.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
The last Apostle.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, Wow, there's two witnesses that are left correct and
he's one of them.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Well, that was the whole deal that you notice stuff, man,
this is what I'm talking about. So the Bible speaks
of the end time being two witnesses that are going
to preach until the final days. The old deal was
that he would see that he was probably one of
the witnesses, but we didn't know who the second one was.
And that was my aspiration. I thought, if I got
(37:15):
these Bible verses right, and I did the right thing
and got right with Jesus, I would be the second
witness because oh wow, he's old anyway, he was always
old from from the fact that he's always been old
as hell. So I thought, you know, maybe I could
slide in. They're gonna need somebody younger and charismatic and
a broad wouldn't hurt, maybe, you know, to kind of
(37:38):
help get that second witness.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So you had that like kind of on your shoulders, like, oh,
I'm going to be the second.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It was an aspiration, Yeah, it was an aspiration. I
didn't see anybody else that seemed to fit the bill,
so I thought maybe I could do it.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I've heard you talk on other podcasts about how you
you're dealing with all this stuff and all this isolation,
but at the same time, you felt really special. And
that's something that I can certainly relate to because at
one point in time, I thought that my mom and
I were the only two people on earth who knew
about this prophet and this second coming that was happening.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, can you talk about that special feeling? And I
mean clearly you felt special if you thought you were
going to be potentially the second Abustle are the second Witness.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah. Wow, I really did feel like I guess said
I had a lot of issues with various things, but
I thought that we were being revealed a special truth
that no one else knew because in the Bible, the
End Time talks about saving one hundred and forty four
thousand people who would go and meet Jesus in the end,
(38:46):
And one hundred and forty four thousand people isn't a
lot of people. No, And you look around and you
see all these people, they're all gonna burn. They're all
gonna burn in this tribulation that's coming. Our deal was
we thought that this this big war was imminent and
that we were gonna be wisked off to a place
of safety. That people speculated it was Petra that we're
(39:09):
gonna go to Petra for some reason and live in
a cave for three and a half years, and then
Jesus was gonna come as an aside. Let me just
just say this. When we were living in the Grand
Rapids area at one point, this is rare in my household.
There was just nobody there. No one was at my house.
And my little brother was in the bed taking a
nap in the middle of the afternoon, like four in
(39:30):
the afternoon something like that, and it was my big chance.
He's a year younger than me. So I went downstairs
and I started screaming, you gotta go to the seven
eleven because everybody's going to the place of safety and
you got to get there right now and meet Jesus warriors.
They're gonna take you to Petra. I'll meet you there,
just waiting a parking lot at seven eleven. So he
(39:51):
wakes it out of the sleep and he takes his
bike and he goes off to wait at the eleven
and it gets to be dinner time, and my mom
and dad asked me, like, where's your brother at I
don't know. When he came back. He was hot. He
(40:13):
was hot.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
That prank has every layer on it.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
It's like, you know, just every single layer that a
prank could hide, so mean.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So crazy. Anyway, Yes, I felt special, I felt chosen.
I felt sorry for people who didn't have a special knowledge.
You know, I really did. And I remember too when
I had left organization. When you first leave it, I
still think that fire is going to rain down from
(40:48):
heaven for me or what it may be. But I
tried to escape and I ended up getting this fellowship
to go study in Asia. I was living in Japan.
It's this area that had never seen any foreigners really,
and my Japanese is the time, basically non existent. And
I'm trying to ask me what I believed and what
my religion was, and I'm trying to explain it in
Japanese to them, and they would laugh and laugh and laugh.
(41:12):
I remember me at bars and I'm listening to myself
speak like a two year older about what my beliefs are,
and I'm laughing at myself because it sounds so freaking stupid,
but it was the truth. I will be forever grateful
for that experience. I think that trying to explain what
you really believe in a different language, it just gives
(41:35):
you a slightly different perspective on what the words coming
out of your mouth, and you're like, what, what did
I just say? That don't make any kind of sense?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Did you tell them you thought that the end was
coming at any more?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
I probably did. But we were near the end times
and this book had the prophecies that foretold what we're
going through right now, and I probably said a lot
of things that were baffling me, that were literally baffling
me even as I came out of my mouth. Wow.
But the crazy thing is that, yes, I felt special
coming up, But even when I abandoned that belief system,
(42:11):
I felt like I was Harry Potter and everybody else
was a muggle, right, I really did. I felt like
I had the force even after I abandoned that belief system,
that feeling didn't necessarily go away for good or ill.
And my current sort of model of the world of
(42:33):
the universe, that feeling makes no sense. It really doesn't. Yeah,
but there it is, right.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
I mean, I relate to that so hard. Not to
shout out my own writing, but I wrote about my
cult experience five years ago or something, and it specifically
talks about the feeling of being special and how once
I no longer had those beliefs, I needed to find
some other outlet for my feelings, and so I pursued
(43:02):
music full time because I was like, well, I'm clearly
special in some way and have to make my mark
on the world. And if it's not because I'm chosen
to save the world, it's going to be through my
music or whatever. You know, totally totally get that. Do
you have that, Megan?
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't know in my mind.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
I think like everybody probably feels a little bit like
that from some different way in childhood.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
They you know, like I'm the best at this, I'm this,
I'm that.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I don't know, but definitely we have an exaggerated version
of that. I'm sure I feel very separate from the
rest of the world for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, you know it's true, and well, especially in LA
probably a lot of Yeah, I feel.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Exactly specially that's probably my reference.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, Glenn, can you tell us about that
process of leaving? So you read this book? Who wrote
the Bible? And what were the revelations that you had
and how long did that process take and what was
going on?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Yeah, I read the book and knew that This wasn't
really for me, but the people I was still close
to with my friends that were in that organization, those
are my people, and I didn't want to leave them.
And more importantly, I guess in a different way, if
you leave the church, everyone is obligated to disfellowship you,
(44:14):
which means basically shun you and not talk to you
and disassociate with you. I didn't want that to happen
to me, but I really didn't necessarily wanted to happen
to them. That process is just so hard and jarren
and weird and crazy and hurtful, and a few of
us in the past when we're oh, you don't talk
to them anymore or something like that, we wouldn't do it.
(44:36):
That's one of the things where we would try to
not go along with the program are But it's hard
to say to someone that you've grown up with since
the little kid, now you're supposed to just fellowship me.
I'm not not part of that thing anymore. It sounds
weird because I was almost ready for it, But it's like,
do you want to impose that on somebody else? Because
(44:57):
when you leave, it's not just you leave it and
you do that to your family, and it's just a
ramifications about that that happened. At the age I was
when it was happening, was in my late teens. You're
supposed to get baptized. Everybody got baptized. I didn't do that.
And I kept on asking me when I'm gonna be back, Oh,
you know, and don't think about that. That's interesting anyway,
(45:19):
what's for lunch service situation? I go back again to
that whole going to Japan thing I had left again.
It hurt people, and I remember I was sure. I
was absolutely sure this is the right thing to do.
But when I remember when I told people that I
was doing it, I felt the sky was going to
open up and rain down.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Fire, meaning leaving the church or leaving for Japan.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Leaving the church, leaving the church. But then when I
did go to Japan, I flew into Tokyo, got on
a train, took a bus, another train, TAXI got to
my new place where there's a thunderstorm going on out there.
I don't know the city I'm in. I've never been
there before. I don't speak a word of the language.
(46:01):
I don't even know how to use a phone in Japan.
My parents don't know what city I'm in. But I
go to my new apartment and the phone is ringing.
The phone is ringing, I'll surprise somebody. I pick it up.
I was like hello, and I'm back to someone to
be surprised, the wrong number whatever, And they're like, hello,
this is so and so from the Blobi Church of God.
(46:22):
And we heard you was in Japan right now. I
want to know that. You know, we have meetings duch
and such, down and such and such. I was like,
there's a bad connection. I can't really hear what you're saying.
But click, Yeah, that happen. How they got I couldn't
do it. I don't know. Nobody knew where I was.
(46:45):
I didn't know where I was.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
WHOA that is creepy.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
That's like stocking you.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
You got to get that money some kind of way.
You gotta have the systems in place.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
How do you even do that before the internet? It
doesn't even brain.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
This is what I will say. Let me leave you
with this. When I first started Snamp Judgment. If people
don't know, Snamp Judgment is a public radio show. It's
a stage show. We've done some television work. This is
a decade ago. We want to be Really The time
award was multimedia want to be Really Crazy Multimedia. It
was built into the DNA of the launch. There was
(47:21):
a magazine, which is really dumb. We didn't want anyone
to see that part, but we had to do it
for the grand all this stuff. But when I was
initially pulling together the initial business plan for it, our
initial funder was a corporation for public broadcasting, and somebody said, well,
this is a lot of stuff. We wanted to do
some work and see if there's any other people who've
(47:42):
kind of combined the same sort of multimedia bing into
one unit that you've done before. And somebody came and said, well,
there's this guy, Herbert w Armstrong who did something like this.
I'm just like, as fast as you run, as far
as you run, you end up right back where you started.
Almost lost my life mind. Someone came out here with
(48:02):
just herbd w Armstrong stuff. Have you ever heard of
a Herbert w Armstrong? Yes, I heard him. I don't
want to do that. What was interesting about leaving in
the first place is when you do leave. I grew
up in this crazy organization, and when I was leaving,
I felt stupid, I felt tricked, I felt angry, I
(48:22):
felt like I had wasted my youth, and I felt
all those things. And I felt as well that the
only thing I really knew anything about was how to
run a cult, how to be in a cult. That's
what I knew. Yeah, I didn't want to do.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
That, but so why Yeah I didn't.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
There's enough cause I didn't want to do that. But
that was where the whole storytelling evolved from. I realized
I did learn something from those clowns. I was trying
to find a positive takeaway from my time with them.
The only thing that kept us in those seats all
those many years listening to all that crazy stuff was
a collective sense of story, a shared story. And so
(49:10):
I know firsthand how important narrative is. A narrative can
make you do the most ridiculous thing. A narrative can
make you give away thirty percent of your income even
though you're broke. A narrative can think you think that
the world's gonna end next week. And a narrative can
make you come back to a church even though they
said Jesus is gonna be there last week and he
(49:31):
didn't show up. We can make you come back again
the next week after that and the next week after that.
Narratives and a shared story is maybe the most powerful
thing of all. And so I think that they really
did give me something like we're all on this line.
People oftentimes think all those culties are crazy. I wouldn't
join no code. I wouldn't do that, and maybe you wouldn't.
(49:53):
Maybe you would. But honestly, I don't see them as
those other is that oftentimes they're depicted up at the
media or wherever. I know that they're regular people. Often
sometimes they're really good people who have a desire to
follow their convictions, and that's sometimes twisted in turn by
(50:16):
a charlatan in a certain way. And it's a shame
to see someone who with a good heart have that
turn on them, have that very sense of search and
seeking that they have turn on them. I g it's
a real evil thing to do to somebody. I think
it's a real a wondrous type of evil. Yeah, And
instead of being I guess mad in the same way,
(50:37):
I'm grateful that my background is such that I don't
have to utter those people. And hopefully if you meet
someone where they are, you can lead them away from
some of this stuff, and at least that was my thought.
I would just say this, People want to make fun
of religious cults or whatever, but we just had a
(51:00):
national cult, you know, wanted to desecrate the Capitol building,
run around crazy doing the stuff. I would say that
the cult I grew up in was far less pernicious
than this national cult that we've just been experiencing. And
nothing that we believe was anything more absurd than anything
(51:21):
that came out of these people. As you said, tell
somebody a climate change doesn't exist, and the immigrants all
want to come and kill you, and this andette, what's
more pernicious and who's really in a cult? And it's
scary to see the same techniques that were used in
that cult be used in our national political dialogue as well.
(51:43):
Because I've been gone for so long, I thought obviously
was in a small little thing off in the middle
of nowhere. That's not how the world works, That's not
how things really go down. Well guess what it is anyway,
that's what I think about stuff.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
Damn, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, I mean, we'll let you go soon, But where
did you land on your beliefs?
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Can I ask you that.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
I'm a born again agnostic. We see so little of
what is out there. I think it's so ridiculous for
me to start saying how the universe is structured. Our
galaxy is just a spect on aspect on aspect, and
I'm talking about the way the world works and what
(52:27):
God did this, this, and that. I'm gonna have to
pass on all that and just say, can I treat
people with respect when I'm here and hopefully have a
positive impact. I know I got this, I got this life.
I don't know about any all the rest of that stuff,
and so I can only do the best I came
with this. I didn't think that was enough when I
(52:48):
was coming up, and now I know that it's more
than enough. It's more than I can possibly do anything.
I mean, God, everybody won't see themselves as a hero
or this, this, and that. I fall short of my
own deal of myself every single day. Yeah, So I
got enough to do without sitting in a basement talking
about the end times.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah right, we're sitting in a basement talking about what
you know isn't true, because that can be equally religious.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Right, all the smugness of the atheistics, who I probably
caunt myself more towards I was very fortunate to live
around the world, and I know this. What you believe
is the least important thing about a person. What you do,
that's what really people believe, all kinds of stuff. Whatever
(53:36):
you want to believe that, we're going to, you know,
get in the UFOs and all this kind of stuff.
What are you doing? Whatever it is, you're compelled to
improve this world. There is nothing that doesn't need to
be done. You want to make more drinking water, we
need that. You want to save cats, We need people
to do that. Let kids, We need people to do that,
whatever it is, and you will never run out of
stuff to do that thing. So what are we arguing about?
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Agreed, Yes, yeah, I feel like I'm in church.
Speaker 4 (54:05):
We're in church. Preach.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
If you turn when your handles, would be pleased to
pay thirty three?
Speaker 4 (54:11):
Do we owe you all of our money? That's what
I need.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Thirty coming right up.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
That's what it says. You can read it yourself, rather
you can really just I don't want to read it
for you, but please I like the time that jingles.
But a lot of current faults.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Oh man, this has been such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, thank you so much for talking to us, Glynn.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Thank you for having me on the show. I really
appreciate it. I really appreciate my community of cultings. Whatever
we can get together and share some some laughs. I
always appreciate it because we can speak in full speed
to each other.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Right, Okay, that was great. I'm so happy we got him.
Thank you, Glynn. He's so cool, So cool, Megan, So
what do you think would you join? I mean, you know,
Glenn was born into it, so it's a bit of
a different situation. Would you join the Worldwide Church of God?
(55:07):
Do you think?
Speaker 4 (55:08):
No? I would not.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
It involves way too many things I don't like, like
giving all my money to people that aren't me, And.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
But don't all cults make you do that though, I
feel like that's just sort of a built in true
But they think really took a lot. They did, although
look at Hoy, he gave them like four million dollars
or what I know.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
I know, but Hoight had money, and Hoy was completely
exploited and so unfair.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
But to be like a family on.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
A farm giving your like money away is a whole
different beast in my mind. So I don't know that
that's fucked up, And I would be so mad if
I was a kid and my parents were like giving
money that we needed to eat to this religion.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Well, the caveat that I will offer to that is
that many religions require a percentage of your income as tithing. Absolutely,
Mormonism requires ten percent of your gross income as well
as tithing. Such a strange setup to have ten percent
of it be for your own like fun. That's something
I've never heard of, like ever in theory. That's like
(56:20):
kind of a fun idea, like, oh, you know, you
should devote a certain percentage of your income or your
life to like leisure and you know, self care or whatever.
Like there's something interesting in that idea. But as a requirement,
not so much. It's more like, oh, if you want
to like carve out space in your life to make
sure it's not all about work, you know, But struggling
(56:45):
families living in poverty, very very different story.
Speaker 4 (56:47):
Completely. It made me really sad that they had to
do that.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
And everybody, like you said, everybody we've talked to, has
been exploited horrifically and it.
Speaker 4 (56:56):
Just breaks your heart.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
So no, didn't like it involve like wigs and magic
and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
So I'm out no nudity, no right out the rituals.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Exactly, so it's not for me, but uh what a story.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Indeed, Well, I guess we'll just leave it at that
for this week, don't you think?
Speaker 2 (57:18):
I think that might be all we can do. Thank
you for listening to trust me, have a wonderful week,
and remember to follow your gut, watch out for a.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Flags, and never never ever trust me. Bye bye.
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