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In Reply to: Re: Statement of Mr. John LaMattery (Sr) posted by Coordinator on February 06, 2005 at 17:16:58:
Thank for your letter of encouragement. The real goal of many of the children of the Children of God is to hear their parents confess to the fact that we did make a grave error in staying in The Family after we saw that things were not right. Many of us, myself included, turned a blind eye to writings which were "off" and many others which were clearly wrong and not of God's spirit. I dare say that the majority of us FGA's originally joined for good and pure reasons--to serve our Lord, to make the world a better place to live in--and we accomplished those goals and many are STILL accomplishing them, perhaps. But, it's sort of a case of "this ought ye have done and not left the other undone." In other words, preaching the Gospel, winning souls to Christ are what we dedicated our lives to doing and that was good and fine, but when the "heresies" and "lies" and "deception" started coming into our lives we should have stood up then and there and put our foot down and taken a stand. Some of you did, but regretfully many of us, myself included, didn't. But, now is the day, now is the time to repair the damage and right the wrongs and admit our errors even if it means saying that the past 30 years was primarily time of mistaken choices, bad decisions.
The Family doctrine must first be viewed as false (I mean here many of the core doctrines) and full of lies and deceptions and then we can, in our heart, begin to receive the healing light of God's word once again. It is no less than another conversion. We became "prisoners of the chains of conformity forged by our own hands". When our children left our communities and went out into the world they could begin to have their eyes opened and could begin to see how bound their parents were. They have tried to "witness" to us of the truth but we turned a deaf ear. Ricky (and some others) found the only solution was to kill themselves (and even kill another) as a "final witness" to their parents. Maria is too deceived to see it, too deluded in her own spirit and too given over to the devil to see it. It will take more than her own son's suicide to wake her from her slumber. (See II Peter 2 for God's view.)
This war is now being waged on many fronts. Todays San Francisco Chronicle article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/06/CULT.TMP
is one avenue of attack--at the money source--but this war must be fought on a one-to-one witness in the final analysis because we parents have lived under the delusion that there was something good about our life and therefore The Family must have been (or still is) basically good. But, the fact is that any "good" we may have gained through our association with The Family was wrought through our personal love of Christ and our personal dedication to His truth and the true sample of Christ's love that we saw demonstrated in some of our leaders and not because of "Family" doctrines. I think we became blind to the perfidy and the evil doctrines coming down from the top and have just sort of excused a lot of it and turned a blind eye and went on the best we could with the work of the Lord but still remaining under the "umbrella" of TF because we feel "indebted" to it for some reason. This has contributed to our children's estrangement from us and the breaking down of our families. The tearing apart of brothers and sisters, children and parents. These bonds were intentionally severed by leadership and it is our responsibly as parents to now re-dedicate ourselves to righting the past and speaking the truth from a pure heart.
It is my hope that each of us contemplate our personal family relationships and look deep into our hearts to discover our errors and mistakes and take the step to come before our children (and in some cases the whole world) and simply say--"I blew it. I see it now. And I want to stop it from happening any further." We should encourage our friends or relatives still in or out of The Family in this direction. We have the work of the evangelist: "In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves (the FGA's); if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth". It will be a tough job but I call on each of my generation to seek out those you know who are still living in confusion and despair and separation from their families. And, once you win one convert back to the truth you have helped to repair another broken family and strained relationships and you will have pulled another source of revenue from the selfish grips of false doctrine. And, ultimately The Family as we know it today with it's present leadership will be destroyed. I sincerely pray that in its place will be a restored family of broken lives and shattered relationships and the beginning process of healing.
