July 2, 2025 • 57 mins
Trust Me has joined Exactly Right Media. Hosts Lola Blanc & Meagan Elizabeth will be back with new episodes on Wednesday, July 30th.
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. Original Airdate: 07/14/2021.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're about to listen to one of our favorite episodes
of trust Me from July fourteenth, twenty twenty one, about
Glenn Washington's experiences growing up in the apocalyptic religion the
Worldwide Church of God. If you're new here, follow the
show so you don't miss the July thirtieth return of
trust Me on the Exactly Right Network. If you have
your own story of being in a cult or a
high control group, or if you've had an experience with
(00:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Five, or shoot us an email at trust Me pod
at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Trust Me, trust Me.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
I'm like a swat person.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I've never lived to you, and we never.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Have a live.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't Welcome to trust Me, the podcast about Colts, extreme
belief and the abusive power from two former members who've
actually experienced it.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I am Lola.
Speaker 6 (00:51):
Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
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. Glenn
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
(01:14):
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
(01:36):
that's happened to you?
Speaker 5 (01:37):
This week?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm sure, but I don't know what you're talking about,
but I'm just going to act like I do.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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 up, my skin looks good and saying,
what are you using? And then I have to basically
give them like a cult spiel back.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Like a little little MLM.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's this thing. You order it online.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
You can get a discount if you'd pay the seventy
five dollars and like all the shit, and I'm like, oh,
I thought, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
I need to just say I'm using like something else.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Have you found them any customers yet?
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
You have?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh my god, the great Yeah that's great. Yeah, so
you're embedded in a pyramid scheme now exactly.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
So that's cool.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's pretty cool. Did anything as cult tea happen to
you this week?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, this week I have been dealing with the past
couple of weeks. Actually, I've been dealing with some physical problems. Okay,
health things, and they have to do with my bladder.
Oh tmi, a'all love me some TMI.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
Why a flatter is sexy? They they touched the vaiba
to me?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
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
(03:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Healer, which you know, is so.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Not something that I do. And if someone came up
to me and was like, Lola, I have the solution
for your thing. All you need is this five hundred
dollars program, I'd be like, I'm in.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I'm sold. I will join. Just make it stop, Just
someone make it stop.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
Please. Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
That's where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
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 and.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
Blue bottle, weird bottles.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You know, And I was like, are you having a party,
And she was like, no, I went to a natural healer,
and she said, to cure my bladder infection, I need
to take a bath in tequila.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
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 (04:28):
So yeah, well that's I feel like generally what happens
when you see someone who's not a doctor.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Sometimes it's great.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
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 (04:43):
This is the true cultiest thing of the week. If
it was happening to men, there would be forty thousand cures.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's happening to women. So they're like, we don't know,
it's weird. Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
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 2 (05:03):
You're imagining it probably stressed. Yeah, stop wiping from back
to front.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
We're I'm like, oh, I am so fucking If another
doctor tells me that, I will scream. I know to
not I don't okay, not get disgusting, but we.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Know not to do that.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
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 6 (05:32):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
It's beautiful, right, beautiful Dusty's child lyrics.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Okay, how about we start talking to Glenn.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Now sounds good. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Welcome Glenn Washington to the show.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Thank you so much for having me here today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
Ah, we really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
So I'm very excited.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
What go on? Go on?
Speaker 6 (06:16):
And now you can admire his face too.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
We can see his face so wow, full package, no
make up, fill up.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
I would never have known.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So. 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 (06:39):
Yeah. I'm a cult baby, that's for sure.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Cult baby gang.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
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
(07:05):
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 4 (07:15):
Yeah, it's interesting you were listening to something from nineteen
forty one, because I'm not sure if you listened to
the whole thing, but he probably would have said that
Hitler's wise foretold the end of the world and that
Jesus was going to 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
(07:37):
an end, and that he had a secret access to
unlock the Bible that no one else knew but him.
Herbert taught a very fundamentalist 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
(07:57):
growing up that's what we did. We studying the Bible
In fact, as a kid, I spend a lot of
time memorizing the Bible.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's something you can only do as a child.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Adults can't really do that, but you can do another kid,
memorize huge passes of the Bible.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Like how much of the Bible are we talking here?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Chapters and passages?
Speaker 4 (08:20):
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 (08:34):
We are talking to the Bible Bowl champion.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
The Bible Ball champion.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
You better believe it. What passage? What did you say?
Jeremih ten verse three? I know, I know what.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It is so competitive about it.
Speaker 6 (08:48):
It is so funny too.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Write competitive about not just reciting passes of the Bible.
Everyone had to basically follow along with the Bible when
you went to church. If the pastor says Zachariah is
three six, if you take longer than ten seconds to
turn there in your Bible, then that means you need
to study more because you should be able to just
flip to it right away.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
And I say all that because yes, it was a
crazy cult.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yes it was absurd yes, it was all these things.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
But at the 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
book who've never read.
Speaker 6 (09:36):
It for sure, right, And.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
As crazy as that crazy cult was, and it was insanity,
it was insanity squared, at least they read the book.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Yeah, true.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
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 it.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
Doesn't Yeah right, where right?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
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 it's like prove all things. That's good if
you kind of have all 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 to be hard
(10:35):
to prove.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Right, were you memorizing the Old Testament and the New
Testament or just the New Testament?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Yeah, Old Testament and the New Testament. Okay, the Old
Testament is quoted one hundred and thirty seven times in
the New Testament. These books cannot be taken apart from
each other.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
They are one in the holes was teaching, but it
is true.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And you know, I don't want to get too much
into theology because I've left obviously. I would 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 look into the past, and
you have this idea of what people were thinking, what
(11:21):
they were grappling with, what they're 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. Right.
What my question was, where'd they come from? Who wrote them?
Where did this thing come from? Wasn't I got past
(11:43):
the point? Well, well God wrote it? Well 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 I
(12:04):
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
gotta I should explain.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
What I was out from.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
The Worldwide Church of God was an apocalyptic end of
Day's Jesus cult, which white supremacy elements thrown in. The
idea was that Herbert w Armstrong, who you mentioned, had
been given revelations directly by God that gave him special
understandings to unlock the kidden keys of the Bible, and
(12:35):
those hidden keys to his way of thinking were mainly prophetic,
and that he could tell that the end of days
was nighe and he had special ability to read world
events and pair them with the Bible and be able
to come up with what's going about to happen. And
(12:56):
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
can be very persuasive to somebody. Sure it says, here,
here's a beast power, and the beast power does this
is in that and it's an Eastern Europe and boy
that looks like Hitler, And this is what's going to
(13:18):
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 he went through his own searching when he left,
I think probably got kicked out of the Seventh Day
(13:40):
in Venice organizations and he started searching and basically created
his own situation. Christian based culture, you're generally going to
have somebody praying overnight and sweating and wrestling with the
truth or whatever it is before God speaks to him.
He has his own story of that where he was
filled with this type of enlightenment, almost a Joseph Smith
(14:02):
type story.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I was gonna say that, Yeah, this happens again.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And again and again, but he was an admin.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So yeah, do you think he believed it for real?
Or do you think he was just an admin?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It's such an interesting idea. A lot of the people
who I grew up with, 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, right, He knew how to
(14:34):
make 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 (14:44):
An airplane, Wow, he had airplane money coming in. Well,
he was charging people thirty percent tithing right at different.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Oh oh yeah, the thirty That was an innovation. So
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 it's
stuff ended up being so contradictory and ridiculous it's hard
to believe anyone believed it when you actually listen to
(15:15):
the words. But I think that maybe he did believe it.
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 6 (15:27):
He was an ad man and customer.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Exactly, and if he needed to believe something else, we
can believe that too, right, right, But yes, you 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 themselves in the Christian faith celebrate. We
(15:50):
celebrated Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, which was a
fasting day, which is essentially I'm kapoor. This is again
like he was taken from a lot of religions. These
are awesome, sometimes 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
(16:15):
a lot of money. I was in a rural community
and no one had a lot of money. But you
had number one. You had to tie. But because we
didn't celebrate Christmas, treing like that, the deal was we
had something different than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah better, I said.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It, better than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
It was called the Feast of Tabernacles. And so the
idea behind the Feast of Tabernacles is you saved 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
(16:56):
where you were commanded to blow it, to spend it
buck hotels, fancy dinners, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Because the idea is that you are giving yourself a.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Taste of the world tomorrow, a taste of heaven on earth.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Wow, go and you blow it.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
So imagine a poor family like us now again, 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
(17:34):
outsider just by default on almost every single thing I do.
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
(17:55):
one to where we are in Michigan was usually in
Wisconsin westcontin Dell's area. There's a big place in Wisconsin,
Dallas that'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
you know that you have all privileges to go to
this festival or whatever it may be. You put that
(18:17):
on your car and you start driving now again in
the middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere, and start driving.
Then you got ten percent of your entire income for
the year in your pocket. My dad.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Everybody's happy.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Like nobody ever asked me if I want to stop
them peck downald or something in the way that didn't
come up now, Yeah, I want to stop. Yeah, get
an extra fryn. Yeah, we're falling up in this piece.
I want the cheese. Put some cheese on, some extra cheese.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We start riding.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
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 stick
on their car too, and you try to pull up
beside them, and they got kids and you got kids.
When you're honking and waving them, they're not alone anymore.
(19:09):
There's another family with a green sticker. Now y'all going
to 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 then you keep rolling
some more, and you see another green sticker and another,
and they're closer. You get to the feast site, you're
seeing greensticker, greenstick of greenstick a green sticker. You're gone
from being alone in the middle of the wilderness to
(19:33):
being part of this excited, crazy, happy clan of people
who have got more money than they know what to
do with. And you get there.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You can stay in a hotel. I never stay no hotel.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
You can stay in a hotel with a swimming pool,
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, audi adults. Everybody is part of your group. Now,
go to Wisconsin Dells. They have a big facility. They
(20:09):
could see ten thousand people in this facility. Everybody again
is part of your thing. Now. Unfortunately you got to
go to church twice a 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 Dells, they're like thrilled in the middle of October.
(20:29):
What all these people running around? That's great, which is
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, mus 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
(20:52):
tithe of the tithe, so that ten percent you were
supposed to put ten percent of that it goes to
the church. And then they had something called you got
to new Offerings, and then you had excess tie, which
is like how much excess money have you ever had
excess money, but if you did, you got to get
(21:12):
out over there to them as well, put that in
the basket and then bring your broke ass home.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
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 5 (21:26):
Two church things a day.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh yeah, Well I will say this as well.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And then they have these white coded.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Scientists people come up and they got all this technology,
and they got wires and cables and stuff. They would say, okay, everybody,
get ready to 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 thing. Like all good cults,
(22:11):
by the way, are based in California. So you see
the microwave transition. They're in Pasadena. 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.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Their shit because we're like.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I can't emphasize it up. You always felt alone, but
for this moment, you were part of a community and
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 Pasadena, California. And everybody was
sing everybody was sing and you felt like you were
singing with people all around the world.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
Wow, I mean you were. It's beautiful in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, that must have been a powerful communeral moment and
a beautiful reprieve from your general loneliness.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I mean, I totally get the appeal of that.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Yeah, that was that, and that was I just say
out have to say that's where our second tithe went.
The third time every three years, you were supposed to
come up with another ten percent.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Now again, this is ten percent of your gross Like.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
This is pre tax I know, I'm thinking, like, you.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Guys get ten percent at the end of taxes and everything.
I don't understand how anyone's supposed to live.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Right.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
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 will still be broke.
So I don't know how in the world that was
gonna work for us.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
We're in Michigan. Did you grow because I also grew
up in rural Michigan.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Oh, I'm gonna do this right here, ladies and gentlemen,
I'm showing the hand Michigan. So 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,
(24:19):
crazy story from there. Lived in the Midland area for
a while Mount Pleasant, then went to high school in
the Grand Rappert area before going to the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Oh As, I grew up an hour north of Grand
Rapids in a little town called Newego.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Do you know Grand Haven, Lola, Grand Haven? No, because
that's where I grew up for a while.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Wait, what a bunch of established this yeah, I was
on a farm.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Do you know where Grand Haven is?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Glenn? Of course I know where Grand Haven is.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
Wow, okay, all right, Yeah you grew up in a farm.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Blow up.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I grew up on a farm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Wow, Michigan unrelated to my CULTI experience. We just happened
to be on a farm before my cult experience.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
But yeah, that's cool. Wow wow, look at us.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Well then, Lolo, we got more than I thought in comment.
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 6 (25:17):
Oh so oh yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
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.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
So look at that. Curious.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
So there was this prophecy.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
About nineteen seventy five, but you keep saying late seventies,
So did you join after this prophecy year was already done?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
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
to be the end. But then when nineteen seventy five
came and went, they stopped mentioning that. And so every
church basically had a library of books that were written
(26:01):
by Herbert w Armstrong that you can 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 in Prophecies books that'd be
out of circulation, right, they took that out of circulations, right,
But then somebody would find it at home or something
(26:22):
like that, that in some back room or something like that,
and they get to, you know, fussing at us about
we got to 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? That book? That's that why
they don't update it. They updated of whatever, they had
(26:44):
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 book and prophecy
and waving that around. I know that for sure.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
I am sure.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So they're like, oh, JK, wasn't then, but it's going
to happen soon.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
This is what's crazy about it.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Like you mentioned that you heard something from nineteen forty one,
they would call dates specifically the world's gonna end such
and such and such and such, nineteen forty one, nineteen
forty five, nineteen fifty six, nineteen this is the net.
I think nineteen seventy four the Prophecy Book was they
finally learned a lesson. It's said soon instead of calling
(27:33):
specific dates.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I do remember this being in Midland, Michigan, which apparently
all of us know when I was a little kid.
And I'm saying, Bretherd, 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 was an exact date. And I
(27:58):
will say what's interesting as well. I 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 was trying to get out of this.
(28:19):
I don't know how they caught me in this 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 were divided that by the year
of completion, which is six times the Tower of Babel
(28:40):
and the sun spots, 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 question. And I
(29:01):
was just like, man, you got to let me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
About this piece. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
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 6 (29:15):
School because you'd be gone to heaven.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I'd be gone, Yeah, yeah, I'd be gone.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I wouldn't be married, I wouldn't have a family, I
wouldn't do any of that kind of stuff because that
will just with in the card for me.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And did you believe that, Like, how fervent of a
believer were you as a kid?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I believe the general idea.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
I had a lot of quibbles about specifics, and I
had a lot of quibbles about the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Racial situation there.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I did believe that.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Did you know any other black families in this church? Reason?
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Only there were a couple. This is crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I'm going to tell you something.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
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 interracial dating.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
And fragnization like that was forbidden. It was evil or whatever.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
And I thought, you know, hey, 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. It 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, Oh, there's one for you, great.
Speaker 6 (30:34):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
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 by 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,
I was like, cool, well, you know, I don't know leader.
But she pulled a backstage past just what she did.
(30:55):
So there was a secret policy for people who are
They called it determined 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
the pastating of California and they would look and they
would see her how to classify you're sorry, wow. And
(31:18):
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 into passing in 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
(31:38):
by look see wow. I say all that to say,
so I was out of love. 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 fasted for a little bit. I left the organization.
I lived in Japan, for a long time, lived in Malaysia,
(31:59):
went to law school at University of Michigan, and my
second year of 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
in and filing in, and I see this beautiful black girl.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
So I go over there. I started talking to her.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, Well I
know you, and she said like, that is not a
very good line.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
You know, you need to.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Game a little bit.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And I was like, I'm for real, I'm real.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
And then it hit me and then I sang a
hymno from our church, Last and Happy.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
She looked at me and it was her this look,
see no, Well yeah, my god.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Now I might forget a name, but I don't forget
a face.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
Did you guys talk about it?
Speaker 4 (33:00):
We did.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
We laughed ourselves silly that night.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And I told her how much I didn't appreciate those
tricks she was pulling back in the day. And she's like, well,
I don't want to relitigate the past, but.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
That's funny.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
She gained the system.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That's kind of great, But what a crazy premise like
for you to even be in this group.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
I mean, like, yeah, what was that?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Like?
Speaker 5 (33:28):
How did you feel about that?
Speaker 4 (33:29):
I advise all the kids I see these days don't
grow up in a coat.
Speaker 6 (33:34):
We do too, Yeah, a strong recognation that we have.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
Also, don't join one as an adult.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
That's also not.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Great people coming the other way. Yeah, it was tough.
It was difficult, especially the ramifications 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 golf with them than I should because of
(34:04):
that cult stuff. I had to always avoid them or
sometimes we would go for almost a year without having
contact with them because the church said to.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And that was just hurtfault.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
It sucks.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Did that apply to you like at school as well?
Were you're not supposed to like hang out with outsider
kids or was this just a family thing?
Speaker 4 (34:23):
No, you could. I just had a bunch of rules
that basically made it, and people didn't want to hang
out with me.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
I mean it was hard to classify.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
I'm already in rule Michigan I'm black, I'm a crazy farmer.
We're broke.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
You have the entire Bible memorized.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I got to please. I'm memorizing the Bible. I'm telling
kids the truth about Santa Claus.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
Oh me too, that's my problem too.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
But like if you have a birthday party, I can't participate.
I got to go stand in the hall of what
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.
(35:12):
It 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.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Yeah, I mean, man, being a kid is hard enough.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Making friends is hard enough as it is, just like
being someone who does fit in in theory.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
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 6 (35:43):
So that was a fun little.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
I would talk about how hot the fire was gonna be,
you know that type of stuff.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Man, Sam.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, see, I just had those thoughts privately, not to
alienate the children at school.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
For I wish I would have known.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah, So did you ever actually meet Herbert or No?
Speaker 4 (36:14):
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
(36:34):
couple times, Like I mean, when I think met him,
I was in a line and I saw him.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Or something like that, or shook his hand like a
book signing.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Yeah, a book signing, that's right. It was a book signing.
That's that what we called it.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
But yeah, it was something like that.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Did he seem like special to you?
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Like?
Speaker 5 (36:49):
What did you think I did me that?
Speaker 4 (36:51):
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 5 (37:07):
Last Apostle, right, that's what he would call him.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
The last Apostle.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yes, Wow, there's two witnesses that are left correct and
he's one of them.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Well, that was the whole deal that you know this 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.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And that was my aspiration.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I thought, if I got these Bible verses right, and
I did the right thing and got right with Jesus,
I would be the second witness because 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 brown wouldn't hurt, maybe, you know,
(37:59):
to kind of help get that second witness.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So you had that like kind of on your shoulders, like, oh,
I'm going to be the second.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
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 (38:14):
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 4 (38:34):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Yeah, can you talk about that special feeling?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
And I mean clearly you felt special if you thought
you were going to be potentially the second Abustle.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Or the second Witness.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
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,
(39:07):
and one hundred and forty four thousand people isn't a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
And you look around and you see.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
All these people. They're all gonna burn. They're all gonna
burn in this tribulation that's coming. Our idea was we
thought that 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 gonna go
to Petra for some reason and live in a cave
(39:33):
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 the
afternoon something like that.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And it was my big chance. He's a year younger
than me.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
So I went downstairs and I started screaming, you got
to go to seven eleven because everybody's going to the
place of safety and you got to get there right now.
And me to Jesus warriors, they're gonna take you to Petra.
I'll meet you there, just waiting the parking lot is
send eleven. So he wakes if out of the sleep
and he takes his bike and he goes off to eleven.
(40:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
He was hot.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
That prank has every layer on it.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
It's like, you know, just every single layer that a
prank could hide.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
So mean crazy anyway, Yes, I felt special, I felt chosen.
I felt sorry for people who didn't have the special knowledge.
You know, I'm 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
(41:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I was living in Japan.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
It's this area that had never seen any foreigners really,
and my Japanese is at 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.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
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
(41:56):
you a slightly different perspective on what the words coming
out of your mouth. What did I just say? That
don't make any kind of sense?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Did you tell them you thought that the end was
coming at any more?
Speaker 4 (42:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
But the crazy thing is that, yes, I felt special
coming up.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
But even when I abandoned that belief system, I felt
like I was Harry Potter and everybody else was a muggle, right,
I really did. I felt like I had to force
Even after I abandoned that belief system, that feeling didn't
necessarily go away for good or ill. And my current
(42:51):
sort of model of the world of the universe. That
feeling makes no sense, It really doesn't. Yeah, but there it.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Is, right, I mean, I relate to that so hard.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
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 of specialness,
and so I pursued music full time because I was like, well,
I'm clearly special in some way and have to make
(43:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
You know, totally totally get that.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Do you have that, Megan, Yeah, for sure, Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 6 (43:38):
In my mind, I think like.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Everybody probably feels a little bit like that from some
different way in childhood.
Speaker 6 (43:44):
They you know, like I'm the best at this, I'm this,
I'm that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
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 5 (43:54):
Yeah, No, it's true.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Well, especially in la probably a lot of Yeah, I
feel exactly special.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
That's probably my reference.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, yeah, Well, Glenn, can you tell us about that
process of leaving?
Speaker 5 (44:06):
So you read this book? Who wrote the Bible?
Speaker 1 (44:08):
And what were the revelations that you had and how
long did that process take and what was going on?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Yeah. I read the book and knew that this wasn't
really for me, But the people I was still close
to were 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 this fellowship you,
(44:34):
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.
(44:57):
That's one of the things where we would try to
not go along with the program on. 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
(45:18):
when you leave, it's not just you leaving, 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, don't think about that. That's interesting anyway, what's
(45:40):
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 fire.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Meaning leaving the church or leaving for Japan.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Leaving the church, leaving the church.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
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. I don't even know how to use
(46:24):
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 picked 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, and we heard us in
(46:44):
Japan right now. I want to know that. You know,
we have meetings such and such down and such and such.
I was like, there's a bad I can't really hear
what y're saying. But click, yeah, that happened. How they
got I couldn't do it. I don't know. Nobody knew
(47:05):
where I was. I didn't know where I was.
Speaker 5 (47:07):
WHOA that is creepy.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Yep, that's like stucking you.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
You got to get that money some kind of way.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
You gotta have the systems in place.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
How do you even do that before the Internet? It
doesn't even compute in my brain.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
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 was
built into the DNA of the launch. There was a magazine,
(47:43):
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, wow, this
is a lot of stuff. We wanted to do some
work and see if there's any other people who've kind
of combined the same sort of multimedia thing into one
(48:07):
unit that you've done before. And somebody came and said, well,
there's this guy, Herbert w.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Or Armstrong who did something like this.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
I'm just like, as fast as you run, as far
as you run, you end up right back where you started.
I almost lost my mind, and someone came out here
with just Herbert 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
(48:34):
grew up in this crazy organization, and when I was leaving,
I felt stupid, I felt tricked, I felt angry, I
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
(48:56):
run a cult, how to be in a cult. That's
what I knew.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Yeah, I didn't want to do that, but so why not?
Speaker 4 (49:06):
Yeah I didn't. 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.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
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
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
(49:41):
though you're broke. A narrative can think you think that
the world's gonna end next week. And a narrative can.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Make you come back to a church even though they
said Jesus is gonna be there last week and he
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 in this line.
(50:07):
People oftentimes think all those culties are crazy. I wouldn't
join the colt. I wouldn't do that, and maybe you wouldn't.
Maybe you would. But honestly, I don't see them as
those others 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
(50:31):
their convictions. And that's sometimes twisted in turn by 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 gues it's a
real evil thing to do to somebody. I think it's
(50:52):
a real, a wondrous type of evil.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah, And instead.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
Of being I guess mad in the same way, I'm
grateful my background is such that I don't have to
other those people. And hopefully if you meet someone where
they are, you can lead them away from some of
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
And at least that was my thought. I would just
say this.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
People want to make fun of religious cults or whatever,
but we just had a 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 believed was anything
(51:39):
more absurd than anything 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 isette what's more pernicious and who's really in
a cult?
Speaker 3 (51:55):
And it's scary to see the same techniques that were
you use in their cult be used in our national
political dialogue as well.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Because I've been gone for so long, I thought I
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 6 (52:17):
Damn, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Yeah, I mean, we'll let you go soon. But where
did you land on your beliefs? Can I ask you
that I'm.
Speaker 4 (52:26):
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 un aspect right, and
I'm talking about the way the world works and what
(52:48):
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 can
with this. I didn't think that was enough when I
(53:09):
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 idea of myself every single day. Yeah, so I
got enough to do without sitting in a basement talking
about the end times.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah right, we're sitting in a basement talking about what
you know isn't true, because that can be equally religious, right, all.
Speaker 4 (53:37):
The smugness of the atheistics, who I probably caught 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 you want
to believe that, we're gonna you know, get it, the
(54:00):
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 6 (54:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Agreed, Yes, Yeah, I feel like I'm in church.
Speaker 6 (54:26):
You're in church, preach.
Speaker 4 (54:28):
Because you turn when your handles would be pleased to
pay thirty three.
Speaker 6 (54:31):
Do we owe you all of our money?
Speaker 5 (54:33):
That's what I need coming right up.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
I like the time that jingles, but a lot of
Courdent faults.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Oh man, this has been such a pleasure.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
Yeah, thank you so much for talking to us, Glint.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
Thank you for having me on the show. I really
appreciate it. I really appreciate by commune of cult teams.
Whatever we can get together and share some laughs. I
always appreciate it because we can speak in full speed
to each other.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Right, Okay, that was great. I'm so happy we got him.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
Thank you, Glenn.
Speaker 6 (55:16):
He's so cool.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
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?
Speaker 5 (55:28):
Do you think?
Speaker 7 (55:29):
No?
Speaker 6 (55:30):
I would not.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
It involves way too many things I don't like, like
giving all my money to people that aren't me.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
And but don't all cults make you do that though?
I feel like that's just sort of a built in.
Speaker 6 (55:44):
True But they think really took a lot.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
They did.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
Although look at Hoy, he gave them like four million
dollars or what I know.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
I know, but Hoy had money, and Hoy was completely
exploited and so unfair.
Speaker 6 (55:58):
But to be like a family on.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
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 (56:18):
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
(56:41):
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.
Speaker 5 (56:51):
Like there's something interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
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, yep, you know, but struggling families living
in poverty, very very different story.
Speaker 6 (57:08):
Completely. It made me really sad that they had to
do that.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
And everybody, like you said, everybody we've talked to, has
been exploited horrifically and it.
Speaker 6 (57:17):
Just breaks your heart.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
So no, didn't like it didn't involve like wigs and
magic and all that stuff. So I'm out, no nudity,
no right out the rituals exactly.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
So it's not for me. But what a story.
Speaker 1 (57:33):
Indeed, Well, I guess we'll just leave it at that
for this week, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
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 flags, and.
Speaker 5 (57:49):
Never, never ever trust me. Bye bye
You're about to listen to one of our favorite episodes
of trust Me from July fourteenth, twenty twenty one, about
Glenn Washington's experiences growing up in the apocalyptic religion the
Worldwide Church of God. If you're new here, follow the
show so you don't miss the July thirtieth return of
trust Me on the Exactly Right Network. If you have
your own story of being in a cult or a
high control group, or if you've had an experience with
(00:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Five, or shoot us an email at trust Me pod
at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Trust Me, trust Me.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
I'm like a swat person.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I've never lived to you, and we never.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Have a live.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't Welcome to trust Me, the podcast about Colts, extreme
belief and the abusive power from two former members who've
actually experienced it.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I am Lola.
Speaker 6 (00:51):
Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
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. Glenn
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
(01:14):
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
(01:36):
that's happened to you?
Speaker 5 (01:37):
This week?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm sure, but I don't know what you're talking about,
but I'm just going to act like I do.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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 up, my skin looks good and saying,
what are you using? And then I have to basically
give them like a cult spiel back.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Like a little little MLM.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's this thing. You order it online.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
You can get a discount if you'd pay the seventy
five dollars and like all the shit, and I'm like, oh,
I thought, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
I need to just say I'm using like something else.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Have you found them any customers yet?
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
You have?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh my god, the great Yeah that's great. Yeah, so
you're embedded in a pyramid scheme now exactly.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
So that's cool.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's pretty cool. Did anything as cult tea happen to
you this week?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, this week I have been dealing with the past
couple of weeks. Actually, I've been dealing with some physical problems. Okay,
health things, and they have to do with my bladder.
Oh tmi, a'all love me some TMI.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
Why a flatter is sexy? They they touched the vaiba
to me?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
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
(03:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Healer, which you know, is so.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Not something that I do. And if someone came up
to me and was like, Lola, I have the solution
for your thing. All you need is this five hundred
dollars program, I'd be like, I'm in.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I'm sold. I will join. Just make it stop, Just
someone make it stop.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
Please. Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
That's where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
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 and.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
Blue bottle, weird bottles.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You know, And I was like, are you having a party,
And she was like, no, I went to a natural healer,
and she said, to cure my bladder infection, I need
to take a bath in tequila.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
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 (04:28):
So yeah, well that's I feel like generally what happens
when you see someone who's not a doctor.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Sometimes it's great.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
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 (04:43):
This is the true cultiest thing of the week. If
it was happening to men, there would be forty thousand cures.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's happening to women. So they're like, we don't know,
it's weird. Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
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 2 (05:03):
You're imagining it probably stressed. Yeah, stop wiping from back
to front.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
We're I'm like, oh, I am so fucking If another
doctor tells me that, I will scream. I know to
not I don't okay, not get disgusting, but we.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Know not to do that.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
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 6 (05:32):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
It's beautiful, right, beautiful Dusty's child lyrics.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Okay, how about we start talking to Glenn.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Now sounds good. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Welcome Glenn Washington to the show.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Thank you so much for having me here today. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
Ah, we really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
So I'm very excited.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
What go on? Go on?
Speaker 6 (06:16):
And now you can admire his face too.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
We can see his face so wow, full package, no
make up, fill up.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
I would never have known.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So. 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 (06:39):
Yeah. I'm a cult baby, that's for sure.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Cult baby gang.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
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
(07:05):
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 4 (07:15):
Yeah, it's interesting you were listening to something from nineteen
forty one, because I'm not sure if you listened to
the whole thing, but he probably would have said that
Hitler's wise foretold the end of the world and that
Jesus was going to 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
(07:37):
an end, and that he had a secret access to
unlock the Bible that no one else knew but him.
Herbert taught a very fundamentalist 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
(07:57):
growing up that's what we did. We studying the Bible
In fact, as a kid, I spend a lot of
time memorizing the Bible.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's something you can only do as a child.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Adults can't really do that, but you can do another kid,
memorize huge passes of the Bible.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Like how much of the Bible are we talking here?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Chapters and passages?
Speaker 4 (08:20):
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 (08:34):
We are talking to the Bible Bowl champion.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
The Bible Ball champion.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
You better believe it. What passage? What did you say?
Jeremih ten verse three? I know, I know what.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It is so competitive about it.
Speaker 6 (08:48):
It is so funny too.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Write competitive about not just reciting passes of the Bible.
Everyone had to basically follow along with the Bible when
you went to church. If the pastor says Zachariah is
three six, if you take longer than ten seconds to
turn there in your Bible, then that means you need
to study more because you should be able to just
flip to it right away.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
And I say all that because yes, it was a
crazy cult.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yes it was absurd yes, it was all these things.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
But at the 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
book who've never read.
Speaker 6 (09:36):
It for sure, right, And.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
As crazy as that crazy cult was, and it was insanity,
it was insanity squared, at least they read the book.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Yeah, true.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
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 it.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
Doesn't Yeah right, where right?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
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 it's like prove all things. That's good if
you kind of have all 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 to be hard
(10:35):
to prove.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Right, were you memorizing the Old Testament and the New
Testament or just the New Testament?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Yeah, Old Testament and the New Testament. Okay, the Old
Testament is quoted one hundred and thirty seven times in
the New Testament. These books cannot be taken apart from
each other.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
They are one in the holes was teaching, but it
is true.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And you know, I don't want to get too much
into theology because I've left obviously. I would 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 look into the past, and
you have this idea of what people were thinking, what
(11:21):
they were grappling with, what they're 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. Right.
What my question was, where'd they come from? Who wrote them?
Where did this thing come from? Wasn't I got past
(11:43):
the point? Well, well God wrote it? Well 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 I
(12:04):
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
gotta I should explain.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
What I was out from.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
The Worldwide Church of God was an apocalyptic end of
Day's Jesus cult, which white supremacy elements thrown in. The
idea was that Herbert w Armstrong, who you mentioned, had
been given revelations directly by God that gave him special
understandings to unlock the kidden keys of the Bible, and
(12:35):
those hidden keys to his way of thinking were mainly prophetic,
and that he could tell that the end of days
was nighe and he had special ability to read world
events and pair them with the Bible and be able
to come up with what's going about to happen. And
(12:56):
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
can be very persuasive to somebody. Sure it says, here,
here's a beast power, and the beast power does this
is in that and it's an Eastern Europe and boy
that looks like Hitler, And this is what's going to
(13:18):
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 he went through his own searching when he left,
I think probably got kicked out of the Seventh Day
(13:40):
in Venice organizations and he started searching and basically created
his own situation. Christian based culture, you're generally going to
have somebody praying overnight and sweating and wrestling with the
truth or whatever it is before God speaks to him.
He has his own story of that where he was
filled with this type of enlightenment, almost a Joseph Smith
(14:02):
type story.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I was gonna say that, Yeah, this happens again.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And again and again, but he was an admin.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So yeah, do you think he believed it for real?
Or do you think he was just an admin?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It's such an interesting idea. A lot of the people
who I grew up with, 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, right, He knew how to
(14:34):
make 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 (14:44):
An airplane, Wow, he had airplane money coming in. Well,
he was charging people thirty percent tithing right at different.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Oh oh yeah, the thirty That was an innovation. So
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 it's
stuff ended up being so contradictory and ridiculous it's hard
to believe anyone believed it when you actually listen to
(15:15):
the words. But I think that maybe he did believe it.
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 6 (15:27):
He was an ad man and customer.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Exactly, and if he needed to believe something else, we
can believe that too, right, right, But yes, you 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 themselves in the Christian faith celebrate. We
(15:50):
celebrated Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, which was a
fasting day, which is essentially I'm kapoor. This is again
like he was taken from a lot of religions. These
are awesome, sometimes 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
(16:15):
a lot of money. I was in a rural community
and no one had a lot of money. But you
had number one. You had to tie. But because we
didn't celebrate Christmas, treing like that, the deal was we
had something different than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah better, I said.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It, better than Christmas, better than Christmas.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
It was called the Feast of Tabernacles. And so the
idea behind the Feast of Tabernacles is you saved 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
(16:56):
where you were commanded to blow it, to spend it
buck hotels, fancy dinners, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Because the idea is that you are giving yourself a.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Taste of the world tomorrow, a taste of heaven on earth.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Wow, go and you blow it.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
So imagine a poor family like us now again, 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
(17:34):
outsider just by default on almost every single thing I do.
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
(17:55):
one to where we are in Michigan was usually in
Wisconsin westcontin Dell's area. There's a big place in Wisconsin,
Dallas that'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
you know that you have all privileges to go to
this festival or whatever it may be. You put that
(18:17):
on your car and you start driving now again in
the middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere, and start driving.
Then you got ten percent of your entire income for
the year in your pocket. My dad.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Everybody's happy.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Like nobody ever asked me if I want to stop
them peck downald or something in the way that didn't
come up now, Yeah, I want to stop. Yeah, get
an extra fryn. Yeah, we're falling up in this piece.
I want the cheese. Put some cheese on, some extra cheese.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We start riding.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
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 stick
on their car too, and you try to pull up
beside them, and they got kids and you got kids.
When you're honking and waving them, they're not alone anymore.
(19:09):
There's another family with a green sticker. Now y'all going
to 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 then you keep rolling
some more, and you see another green sticker and another,
and they're closer. You get to the feast site, you're
seeing greensticker, greenstick of greenstick a green sticker. You're gone
from being alone in the middle of the wilderness to
(19:33):
being part of this excited, crazy, happy clan of people
who have got more money than they know what to
do with. And you get there.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You can stay in a hotel. I never stay no hotel.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
You can stay in a hotel with a swimming pool,
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, audi adults. Everybody is part of your group. Now,
go to Wisconsin Dells. They have a big facility. They
(20:09):
could see ten thousand people in this facility. Everybody again
is part of your thing. Now. Unfortunately you got to
go to church twice a 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 Dells, they're like thrilled in the middle of October.
(20:29):
What all these people running around? That's great, which is
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, mus 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
(20:52):
tithe of the tithe, so that ten percent you were
supposed to put ten percent of that it goes to
the church. And then they had something called you got
to new Offerings, and then you had excess tie, which
is like how much excess money have you ever had
excess money, but if you did, you got to get
(21:12):
out over there to them as well, put that in
the basket and then bring your broke ass home.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
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 5 (21:26):
Two church things a day.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh yeah, Well I will say this as well.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And then they have these white coded.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Scientists people come up and they got all this technology,
and they got wires and cables and stuff. They would say, okay, everybody,
get ready to 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 thing. Like all good cults,
(22:11):
by the way, are based in California. So you see
the microwave transition. They're in Pasadena. 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.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Their shit because we're like.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I can't emphasize it up. You always felt alone, but
for this moment, you were part of a community and
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 Pasadena, California. And everybody was
sing everybody was sing and you felt like you were
singing with people all around the world.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
Wow, I mean you were. It's beautiful in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, that must have been a powerful communeral moment and
a beautiful reprieve from your general loneliness.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I mean, I totally get the appeal of that.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Yeah, that was that, and that was I just say
out have to say that's where our second tithe went.
The third time every three years, you were supposed to
come up with another ten percent.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Now again, this is ten percent of your gross Like.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
This is pre tax I know, I'm thinking, like, you.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Guys get ten percent at the end of taxes and everything.
I don't understand how anyone's supposed to live.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Right.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
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 will still be broke.
So I don't know how in the world that was
gonna work for us.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
We're in Michigan. Did you grow because I also grew
up in rural Michigan.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Oh, I'm gonna do this right here, ladies and gentlemen,
I'm showing the hand Michigan. So 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,
(24:19):
crazy story from there. Lived in the Midland area for
a while Mount Pleasant, then went to high school in
the Grand Rappert area before going to the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Oh As, I grew up an hour north of Grand
Rapids in a little town called Newego.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Do you know Grand Haven, Lola, Grand Haven? No, because
that's where I grew up for a while.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Wait, what a bunch of established this yeah, I was
on a farm.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Do you know where Grand Haven is?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Glenn? Of course I know where Grand Haven is.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
Wow, okay, all right, Yeah you grew up in a farm.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Blow up.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I grew up on a farm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Wow, Michigan unrelated to my CULTI experience. We just happened
to be on a farm before my cult experience.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
But yeah, that's cool. Wow wow, look at us.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Well then, Lolo, we got more than I thought in comment.
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 6 (25:17):
Oh so oh yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
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.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
So look at that. Curious.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
So there was this prophecy.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
About nineteen seventy five, but you keep saying late seventies,
So did you join after this prophecy year was already done?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
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
to be the end. But then when nineteen seventy five
came and went, they stopped mentioning that. And so every
church basically had a library of books that were written
(26:01):
by Herbert w Armstrong that you can 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 in Prophecies books that'd be
out of circulation, right, they took that out of circulations, right,
But then somebody would find it at home or something
(26:22):
like that, that in some back room or something like that,
and they get to, you know, fussing at us about
we got to 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? That book? That's that why
they don't update it. They updated of whatever, they had
(26:44):
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 book and prophecy
and waving that around. I know that for sure.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
I am sure.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So they're like, oh, JK, wasn't then, but it's going
to happen soon.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
This is what's crazy about it.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Like you mentioned that you heard something from nineteen forty one,
they would call dates specifically the world's gonna end such
and such and such and such, nineteen forty one, nineteen
forty five, nineteen fifty six, nineteen this is the net.
I think nineteen seventy four the Prophecy Book was they
finally learned a lesson. It's said soon instead of calling
(27:33):
specific dates.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I do remember this being in Midland, Michigan, which apparently
all of us know when I was a little kid.
And I'm saying, Bretherd, 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 was an exact date. And I
(27:58):
will say what's interesting as well. I 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 was trying to get out of this.
(28:19):
I don't know how they caught me in this 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 were divided that by the year
of completion, which is six times the Tower of Babel
(28:40):
and the sun spots, 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 question. And I
(29:01):
was just like, man, you got to let me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
About this piece. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
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 6 (29:15):
School because you'd be gone to heaven.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I'd be gone, Yeah, yeah, I'd be gone.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I wouldn't be married, I wouldn't have a family, I
wouldn't do any of that kind of stuff because that
will just with in the card for me.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And did you believe that, Like, how fervent of a
believer were you as a kid?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I believe the general idea.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
I had a lot of quibbles about specifics, and I
had a lot of quibbles about the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Racial situation there.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I did believe that.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Did you know any other black families in this church? Reason?
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Only there were a couple. This is crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I'm going to tell you something.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
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 interracial dating.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
And fragnization like that was forbidden. It was evil or whatever.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
And I thought, you know, hey, 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. It 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, Oh, there's one for you, great.
Speaker 6 (30:34):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
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 by 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,
I was like, cool, well, you know, I don't know leader.
But she pulled a backstage past just what she did.
(30:55):
So there was a secret policy for people who are
They called it determined 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
the pastating of California and they would look and they
would see her how to classify you're sorry, wow. And
(31:18):
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 into passing in 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
(31:38):
by look see wow. I say all that to say,
so I was out of love. 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 fasted for a little bit. I left the organization.
I lived in Japan, for a long time, lived in Malaysia,
(31:59):
went to law school at University of Michigan, and my
second year of 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
in and filing in, and I see this beautiful black girl.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
So I go over there. I started talking to her.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, Well I
know you, and she said like, that is not a
very good line.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
You know, you need to.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Game a little bit.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And I was like, I'm for real, I'm real.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
And then it hit me and then I sang a
hymno from our church, Last and Happy.
Speaker 7 (32:42):
She looked at me and it was her this look,
see no, Well yeah, my god.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Now I might forget a name, but I don't forget
a face.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
Did you guys talk about it?
Speaker 4 (33:00):
We did.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
We laughed ourselves silly that night.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And I told her how much I didn't appreciate those
tricks she was pulling back in the day. And she's like, well,
I don't want to relitigate the past, but.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
That's funny.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
She gained the system.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That's kind of great, But what a crazy premise like
for you to even be in this group.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
I mean, like, yeah, what was that?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Like?
Speaker 5 (33:28):
How did you feel about that?
Speaker 4 (33:29):
I advise all the kids I see these days don't
grow up in a coat.
Speaker 6 (33:34):
We do too, Yeah, a strong recognation that we have.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
Also, don't join one as an adult.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
That's also not.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Great people coming the other way. Yeah, it was tough.
It was difficult, especially the ramifications 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 golf with them than I should because of
(34:04):
that cult stuff. I had to always avoid them or
sometimes we would go for almost a year without having
contact with them because the church said to.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And that was just hurtfault.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
It sucks.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Did that apply to you like at school as well?
Were you're not supposed to like hang out with outsider
kids or was this just a family thing?
Speaker 4 (34:23):
No, you could. I just had a bunch of rules
that basically made it, and people didn't want to hang
out with me.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
I mean it was hard to classify.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
I'm already in rule Michigan I'm black, I'm a crazy farmer.
We're broke.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
You have the entire Bible memorized.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I got to please. I'm memorizing the Bible. I'm telling
kids the truth about Santa Claus.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
Oh me too, that's my problem too.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
But like if you have a birthday party, I can't participate.
I got to go stand in the hall of what
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.
(35:12):
It 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.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Yeah, I mean, man, being a kid is hard enough.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Making friends is hard enough as it is, just like
being someone who does fit in in theory.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
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 6 (35:43):
So that was a fun little.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
I would talk about how hot the fire was gonna be,
you know that type of stuff.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Man, Sam.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, see, I just had those thoughts privately, not to
alienate the children at school.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
For I wish I would have known.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah, So did you ever actually meet Herbert or No?
Speaker 4 (36:14):
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
(36:34):
couple times, Like I mean, when I think met him,
I was in a line and I saw him.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Or something like that, or shook his hand like a
book signing.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Yeah, a book signing, that's right. It was a book signing.
That's that what we called it.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
But yeah, it was something like that.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Did he seem like special to you?
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Like?
Speaker 5 (36:49):
What did you think I did me that?
Speaker 4 (36:51):
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 5 (37:07):
Last Apostle, right, that's what he would call him.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
The last Apostle.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yes, Wow, there's two witnesses that are left correct and
he's one of them.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Well, that was the whole deal that you know this 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.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And that was my aspiration.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I thought, if I got these Bible verses right, and
I did the right thing and got right with Jesus,
I would be the second witness because 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 brown wouldn't hurt, maybe, you know,
(37:59):
to kind of help get that second witness.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So you had that like kind of on your shoulders, like, oh,
I'm going to be the second.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
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 (38:14):
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 4 (38:34):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Yeah, can you talk about that special feeling?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
And I mean clearly you felt special if you thought
you were going to be potentially the second Abustle.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Or the second Witness.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
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,
(39:07):
and one hundred and forty four thousand people isn't a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
And you look around and you see.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
All these people. They're all gonna burn. They're all gonna
burn in this tribulation that's coming. Our idea was we
thought that 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 gonna go
to Petra for some reason and live in a cave
(39:33):
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 the
afternoon something like that.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And it was my big chance. He's a year younger
than me.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
So I went downstairs and I started screaming, you got
to go to seven eleven because everybody's going to the
place of safety and you got to get there right now.
And me to Jesus warriors, they're gonna take you to Petra.
I'll meet you there, just waiting the parking lot is
send eleven. So he wakes if out of the sleep
and he takes his bike and he goes off to eleven.
(40:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
He was hot.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
That prank has every layer on it.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
It's like, you know, just every single layer that a
prank could hide.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
So mean crazy anyway, Yes, I felt special, I felt chosen.
I felt sorry for people who didn't have the special knowledge.
You know, I'm 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
(41:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I was living in Japan.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
It's this area that had never seen any foreigners really,
and my Japanese is at 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.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
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
(41:56):
you a slightly different perspective on what the words coming
out of your mouth. What did I just say? That
don't make any kind of sense?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Did you tell them you thought that the end was
coming at any more?
Speaker 4 (42:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
But the crazy thing is that, yes, I felt special
coming up.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
But even when I abandoned that belief system, I felt
like I was Harry Potter and everybody else was a muggle, right,
I really did. I felt like I had to force
Even after I abandoned that belief system, that feeling didn't
necessarily go away for good or ill. And my current
(42:51):
sort of model of the world of the universe. That
feeling makes no sense, It really doesn't. Yeah, but there it.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Is, right, I mean, I relate to that so hard.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
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 of specialness,
and so I pursued music full time because I was like, well,
I'm clearly special in some way and have to make
(43:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
You know, totally totally get that.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Do you have that, Megan, Yeah, for sure, Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 6 (43:38):
In my mind, I think like.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Everybody probably feels a little bit like that from some
different way in childhood.
Speaker 6 (43:44):
They you know, like I'm the best at this, I'm this,
I'm that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
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 5 (43:54):
Yeah, No, it's true.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Well, especially in la probably a lot of Yeah, I
feel exactly special.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
That's probably my reference.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, yeah, Well, Glenn, can you tell us about that
process of leaving?
Speaker 5 (44:06):
So you read this book? Who wrote the Bible?
Speaker 1 (44:08):
And what were the revelations that you had and how
long did that process take and what was going on?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Yeah. I read the book and knew that this wasn't
really for me, But the people I was still close
to were 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 this fellowship you,
(44:34):
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.
(44:57):
That's one of the things where we would try to
not go along with the program on. 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
(45:18):
when you leave, it's not just you leaving, 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, don't think about that. That's interesting anyway, what's
(45:40):
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 fire.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Meaning leaving the church or leaving for Japan.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Leaving the church, leaving the church.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
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. I don't even know how to use
(46:24):
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 picked 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, and we heard us in
(46:44):
Japan right now. I want to know that. You know,
we have meetings such and such down and such and such.
I was like, there's a bad I can't really hear
what y're saying. But click, yeah, that happened. How they
got I couldn't do it. I don't know. Nobody knew
(47:05):
where I was. I didn't know where I was.
Speaker 5 (47:07):
WHOA that is creepy.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Yep, that's like stucking you.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
You got to get that money some kind of way.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
You gotta have the systems in place.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
How do you even do that before the Internet? It
doesn't even compute in my brain.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
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 was
built into the DNA of the launch. There was a magazine,
(47:43):
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, wow, this
is a lot of stuff. We wanted to do some
work and see if there's any other people who've kind
of combined the same sort of multimedia thing into one
(48:07):
unit that you've done before. And somebody came and said, well,
there's this guy, Herbert w.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Or Armstrong who did something like this.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
I'm just like, as fast as you run, as far
as you run, you end up right back where you started.
I almost lost my mind, and someone came out here
with just Herbert 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
(48:34):
grew up in this crazy organization, and when I was leaving,
I felt stupid, I felt tricked, I felt angry, I
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
(48:56):
run a cult, how to be in a cult. That's
what I knew.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Yeah, I didn't want to do that, but so why not?
Speaker 4 (49:06):
Yeah I didn't. 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.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
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
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
(49:41):
though you're broke. A narrative can think you think that
the world's gonna end next week. And a narrative can.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Make you come back to a church even though they
said Jesus is gonna be there last week and he
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 in this line.
(50:07):
People oftentimes think all those culties are crazy. I wouldn't
join the colt. I wouldn't do that, and maybe you wouldn't.
Maybe you would. But honestly, I don't see them as
those others 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
(50:31):
their convictions. And that's sometimes twisted in turn by 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 gues it's a
real evil thing to do to somebody. I think it's
(50:52):
a real, a wondrous type of evil.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah, And instead.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
Of being I guess mad in the same way, I'm
grateful my background is such that I don't have to
other those people. And hopefully if you meet someone where
they are, you can lead them away from some of
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
And at least that was my thought. I would just
say this.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
People want to make fun of religious cults or whatever,
but we just had a 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 believed was anything
(51:39):
more absurd than anything 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 isette what's more pernicious and who's really in
a cult?
Speaker 3 (51:55):
And it's scary to see the same techniques that were
you use in their cult be used in our national
political dialogue as well.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
Because I've been gone for so long, I thought I
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 6 (52:17):
Damn, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Yeah, I mean, we'll let you go soon. But where
did you land on your beliefs? Can I ask you
that I'm.
Speaker 4 (52:26):
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 un aspect right, and
I'm talking about the way the world works and what
(52:48):
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 can
with this. I didn't think that was enough when I
(53:09):
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 idea of myself every single day. Yeah, so I
got enough to do without sitting in a basement talking
about the end times.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah right, we're sitting in a basement talking about what
you know isn't true, because that can be equally religious, right, all.
Speaker 4 (53:37):
The smugness of the atheistics, who I probably caught 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 you want
to believe that, we're gonna you know, get it, the
(54:00):
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 6 (54:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Agreed, Yes, Yeah, I feel like I'm in church.
Speaker 6 (54:26):
You're in church, preach.
Speaker 4 (54:28):
Because you turn when your handles would be pleased to
pay thirty three.
Speaker 6 (54:31):
Do we owe you all of our money?
Speaker 5 (54:33):
That's what I need coming right up.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
I like the time that jingles, but a lot of
Courdent faults.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Oh man, this has been such a pleasure.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
Yeah, thank you so much for talking to us, Glint.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
Thank you for having me on the show. I really
appreciate it. I really appreciate by commune of cult teams.
Whatever we can get together and share some laughs. I
always appreciate it because we can speak in full speed
to each other.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Right, Okay, that was great. I'm so happy we got him.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
Thank you, Glenn.
Speaker 6 (55:16):
He's so cool.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
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?
Speaker 5 (55:28):
Do you think?
Speaker 7 (55:29):
No?
Speaker 6 (55:30):
I would not.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
It involves way too many things I don't like, like
giving all my money to people that aren't me.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
And but don't all cults make you do that though?
I feel like that's just sort of a built in.
Speaker 6 (55:44):
True But they think really took a lot.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
They did.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
Although look at Hoy, he gave them like four million
dollars or what I know.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
I know, but Hoy had money, and Hoy was completely
exploited and so unfair.
Speaker 6 (55:58):
But to be like a family on.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
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 (56:18):
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
(56:41):
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.
Speaker 5 (56:51):
Like there's something interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
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, yep, you know, but struggling families living
in poverty, very very different story.
Speaker 6 (57:08):
Completely. It made me really sad that they had to
do that.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
And everybody, like you said, everybody we've talked to, has
been exploited horrifically and it.
Speaker 6 (57:17):
Just breaks your heart.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
So no, didn't like it didn't involve like wigs and
magic and all that stuff. So I'm out, no nudity,
no right out the rituals exactly.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
So it's not for me. But what a story.
Speaker 1 (57:33):
Indeed, Well, I guess we'll just leave it at that
for this week, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
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 flags, and.
Speaker 5 (57:49):
Never, never ever trust me. Bye bye
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