Cold Open: The Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps.

That’s a mouthful of a cult name.

It’s also our topic this week.

They’ve also gone by the Holy Tribal Nation, the Free Love Ministries, and the Life Force Team.

That last one makes it sound like they were some kind of Avengers- esque band of superheroes.

They were DEFINITELY not super heroes. Not super in anyway. Except maybe super insane.

A very recent Christian militant cult, Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps was founded in the late 1970s by married couple Lila and Jim Green. Lila would later change her name to Deborah, after the biblical prophetess of the God of the Israelites and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible.

Oh, continual name changes.

We’ve been down this road before. And recently with the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors cult. New name, new prophet or prophetess identity - same ol’ cult game.

This name transition, like most cult leader name changes, was of course a power move. It reflected Deborah’s leadership status in the cult and her absolute authority.

Very rare and interesting for a woman to be in charge of a cult.

So many dirtbags who make cult headlines are men, I think it’s become easy to think that the quote unquote “fairer sex” isn’t capable of perpetrating acts just as fucked up as their male counterparts.

Deborah would do so many horrific things— to her community members, to her own family, and to many of the children unlucky enough to grow up in the Training Corps’s compounds. That’s compounds, plural, because the group moved around a fair amount due to un-indocrinated locals refusing to patronize their businesses or they’d move once they got into legal trouble. They’d eventually settle just outside of the TINY little community of Fence Lake, New Mexico.

Population 42.

A very small, very isolated “census designated place” - can’t really call it a town - stretched out along a lonely, little used state highway not close to much of anything.

A great place to get off the grid and reduce the number of ears and eyeballs paying attention to the crazy little backwoods god game you’re playing.

And, being a cult, what a weird little game they were playing. MAY be still playing somewhat. It’s hard to tell if they still have any adherents or not.

The heads of this particular snake have definitely been cut off and incarcerated, but their website, while not updated in a few years, is still online. Aggressive christianity dot net. I’d be surprised if a few followers aren’t still out there, scattered around, some probably living in or around Fence Lake, waiting for the end times apocalyptic battle Deborah had them training for for so long.

Partially based on the original structure of the Salvation Army, the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps was originally founded in Sacramento, California, as Free Love Ministries.

But it wouldn’t be a place for freedom or for love. No surprise there, right? It’d be a nightmare.

As their little group grew, Deborah started wielding tighter and tighter control over her followers. She claimed she spoke to God directly - as one does as a cult leader - and that, one day, members would be called to wage a holy war against demonic forces.

And now she sits in prison. The big war she spoke so often of, still of course hasn’t come. I have to imagine she’s still mumbling about “any day, now. Maybe tomorrow,” to the few fellow prisoners and/or prison guards who either have to be around her or are paid to be around her.

Deborah’s army’s members wore green berets and khaki military outfits and addressed each other by rank, with Deborah and Jim as their ‘generals.’ Deb being the undisputed leader.

You can find a lot of pictures and videos of them online, and it’s so absurd, it feels like an SNL parody of a weird cult, rather than an actual cult. Bunch of weird, doomsday-focused looney tunes playing army.

The ACMTC flew under the radar until 1988, when a former member named Maura Schmierer successfully sued the Greens for forcing her to live for months in a storage shed with no bed or bathroom, punishing her for refusing to beat her infant and toddler.

Spare the rod, spoil the baby who can’t yet really understand why they’re being hit.

Forced to flee, the group tore down its commune and headed north, and then south soon thereafter. And what would follow would be nearly thirty years of the abuse of more members.

FINALLY, in August 2017, Deborah Green and her son-in-law Peter Green were arrested on various charges of abuse, including sexual abuse of children.

Peter Green, a manager at the ministry's Fence Lake location, would be charged with 100 counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child, while Deborah Green also faced charges of child abuse, negligent abuse and criminal sexual penetration.

Of course. Of COURSE those would be the charges.

How? Why? Why do these cults SO OFTEN end up in this exact same place?

Digging into more wolves in sheep’s clothing today.

Some snakes hiding in the grass of some faithful.

I find it so interesting that it’s so hard to find examples of powerful men in cloaks, secret society-types molesting kids. All that Pizzagate, QAnon, and Satanic Panic mumbo jumbo.

Real easy though to find self-righteous religious extremists doing that shit. Real, REAL easy, time and time again, to find people claiming to speak for the good God, doing the Devil’s work.

Maybe we should all worry less about the possibility of Devil- worshipping illuminati-types hiding in our communities and snatching our kids. Maybe we should keep a closer eye on the people sitting in the pews around us - or standing behind the pulpit.

Deborah’s daughter, Sarah, would be one of the main witnesses in her mother’s ensuing trial. Thankfully, in 2018, the group’s leaders would be sentenced to prolonged prison terms.

We’ll follow a lot of Sarah’s story today.

Luckily, Sarah made it out.

Many others weren’t so lucky.

And even Sarah still isn’t entirely emotionally out.

She still bears psychic scars. She still struggles with guilt over not being able to bring her children out of the cult before so much damage was done, as do other members.

Let’s get into the rise and fall of Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps and the insanity of Deborah Green in this week’s true crime, CULT CULT CULT! - militant-as-fuck edition of Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome!

A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday Meatsacks!

I’m Dan Cummins, Possible Tool of Satan, Definite Idolator, for sure, proud worshipper of Lucifina, and you are listening to Timesuck.

Hail Nimrod, Praise Lucifina - she’s been good to me lately, Good Boy Bojangles, and Hail Triple M.

Real quick - if I seemed negative at all about the Sumerian research last week, I apologize. I was so damn tired. More tired than I was aware of.

Feeling refreshed as of writing this. Randomly, went on a tour of ancient Minoan ruins in Crete on vacation between the last episode and this one, and talked at length about the Sumerians and early civilizations, and was so happy to know what I did. And to see ruins built not long after theirs, and hearing the tour guide talk about how smart we meatsacks had to be to navigate the sea by the stars, and build without modern tools and blueprints, and make such an incredible jewelry and bravely train for and wage war so long ago - and figure out how to farm, store, and trade goods so long ago- I had an attitude adjustment.

We can access more knowledge now - but we were also so, so smart thousands of years ago. We had to be to survive. I gained a lot of respect for our ancient ancestors and feel very humbled today.

Happy to be a human. Happy to be alive and appreciative of the many modern conveniences we have thanks to those who lived before us.

To the engineers, the doctors, the teachers, the construction workers, the truckers, the shippers, the farmers, the repairmen and repairwomen, the shopkeepers, the cooks, the waiters and waitresses, the military, the artists, the housecleaners, the crop pickers, and everyone else out there working, creating, and providing services that make modern life so great in moments - thank you so fucking much.

Hail to working meatsacks! And the homemakers who give them the space to work. And the retired who worked before. And the young who will work. Hail all of you beautiful bastards. Many, many, many thanks.

B.Tour Dates/Meet and Greets Explanation:

Quick upcoming tour note for the Symphony of Insanity standup shows.

My whole career I have made myself available after shows to sign whatever, take pictures, say a few words, sell tour shirts or albums, etc.

Unfortunately, that will no longer be happening for the foreseeable future for multiple reasons.

I personally, am no longer worried about Covid.

I’ve had it, I’ve had the vaccine, I’m not around anyone who’s vulnerable, and I’m a greater good guy. I think it would be best at this point to open everything up in the name of saving businesses slash the economy and I think a greater return to normalcy would be in the best interest of a lot of people struggling with their mental health. I think the media is selling irrational fear with their constant beating of the Delta Variant war drum. I think it’s more about clicks and ratings than it is science at this point. If it bleeds and leads, and Covid still bleeds right now, so it still leads. But that’s just me.

I understand you might feel very differently and have valid reasons for doing so. If you work in a hospital you may feel differently. And if you work in a comedy club, you might feel differently. And, since I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of fans go to basically unregulated meet and greets after the shows, I need staff help to sell merch, take pics, whatever. And I don’t want to pressure staff into doing that if they’re scared, concerned, whatever. I don’t want to push my beliefs on them. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not right.

Also - because of Covid, I haven’t done standup for a year-and-a- half, and I need time after shows to review material, think about what worked and what didn’t and how to fix it, and do my job the best I can.

I apologize if this really bums some of you out and I do understand. I hope, down the road, to resume some form of meet and greets. I have immensely enjoyed meeting so many of you. I like a good handshake and love a good hug.

Things keep changing, and I’ll keep doing my best to roll with the changes.

If you do want a tour shirt - they are available at bad magic merch dot com.

C.Charity: Proud to donate $15k from Patreon this month thanks in large part to our Space Lizards to the August Bad Magic Productions Charity, The Wildland Firefighter Foundation.

Since 1999, the Foundation has provided emergency support services to the families of firefighters, seriously injured or killed in the line of duty and more. Families left behind, many with young children, often find themselves with few resources, and the Foundation steps in to help.

Go to https://wffoundation.org/ to learn more.

Thank you Firefighters. Great charity. Thanks The Wildland Firefighter Foundation for all that you do.

D.Merch/STREET TEAM: Reminder that this next Monday, August 16th, the Bad Magic Street Team stickers will go live on badmagicmerch.com.

Head to the ever evolving store - Logan Keith our merch wizard has made it look so good - to get the details for how to participate in this year’s Street Team and possibly win some free merch, and definitely get some free stickers if you check the store fast enough at Noon PST, August 16th.

ALSO - Cult of the Curious Cult Robes are back in the store - a limited amount - just in time for this very culty episode.

E.Segue to Topic: Now let’s get dive into today’s madness.

CULT! CULT! CULT!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

First up today, we’re gonna see what was going on, culture and cult-wise back when Jim and Deb first began experimenting with spiritual extremism. Gonna revisit why so many cults seemed to have been born in the US in the ‘60s and ‘70s. One of my favorite historical periods.

We’ll examine what the ACMTC was responding to from a cultural standpoint, including a look at the roots of evangelical Christianity, the type of faith they morphed out of.

Then we’ll look into how unique the ACMTC was as a female-led cult, before hopping into today’s Timeline to see how this cult developed and what they became before the eventual incarceration of their leader.

F. Counter Culture of the 60s and 70s: Though the ACMTC didn’t make many headlines until a few years ago, it grew from the same seeds of the 1960s and 1970s flower child-hippie movement we’ve covered here before.

Its core members were living the communal lifestyle and doing some pretty weird shit by the late 60s.

Ah, the Counter Culture. The hippie revolution! Flower power and all that came with it. A lot of people were doing some pretty weird shit in the late 1960s.

Most of them sobered up eventually and realized it takes more to run the world than talking a lot about how great peace is, getting high all the time, and selling wild flowers and hemp anklets.

The late 60s and early 70s was a - to be fair - great and healthy awakening for some. Many used America’s social revolution to start living much more examined lives. Many starting living a new life of purpose and intention, and no longer just mindlessly walking in the footprints of their parents.

Others maybe rejected the trappings of conformity a bit too… “aggressively,” to use our word of the week. Went a bit too hard - a little too balls to the wall when it came to running away from the life of their parents - without thinking enough about what life they were running towards.

New and different isn’t always better.

Curiosity is a beautiful thing, but some doors are pretty hard to shut once you open them.

And some doors should probably never be opened. What lies beyond them isn’t always worth exploring.

G.Other Counter Culture Cults:

1. 1960s/70s cults: Charles Manson was one of those doors. That bat shit crazy wanna-be rock star started spouting a whole bunch of race war mumbo jumbo when he couldn’t get a record deal - his idiotic and convoluted notion of Helter Skelter - and he convinced his small “Family” of followers to murder to help kick off that race war.

If you listened to that early episode, do you remember how absolutely bonkers Manson’s ideas were?

Manson actually seemed to truly believe by the late 60s that tensions between blacks and whites in the counter-cultural boiling pot of the 1960s would erupt into a cataclysmic race war that would end in the slaughter of nearly all white people.

This particular doomsday scenario was what he called, “Helter Skelter,” named after the Beatles song.

In Manson’s Helter Skelter, black Americans would emerge victorious from an apocalyptic race war.

Shortly after Manson kicked this race war off - he preached that he and his followers would crawl down a secret hole in Death Valley - yup - a secret hole out in the desert - and they would then wait out the bloody war in a hidden underground city.

All seems pretty plausible, pretty reasonable so far.

And then when the war was over, he and his followers would rise up from beneath the desert and rule over the victorious black victors, at their request of course, whom Manson thought would be incapable of governing themselves and desperate for some white men to come help them out.

So…. THAT seems to at least partially explain the reason his little cult didn’t have any black members.

For fuck’s sake.

Manson had heard about a water-filled cavern in Death Valley called Devil’s Hole. Cool spot actually. Only natural habitat in the world for the cute little blue, one-inch long Devil’s Hole pupfish. Manson wasn’t interested in some rare species of fish though. Ol’ batshit thought he’d found himself a magic door.

A couple years before he came up wit his mumbo jumbo, in 1965, twenty year old Paul Giancontieri, and nineteen year old David Rose went “skindiving” in Devil’s Hole.

Equipped with only snorkel masks and flippers the two teenagers dove into the hole which is said to extend to a depth of over 450 feet, possibly over 900 feet - and is shaped like an inverted funnel.

Despite a rigorous rescue effort - there are pockets of air trapped within the cave where someone could theoretically survive for a time - neither of the men were found.

Charles in Charge knew what all this meant. God DAMN he could read between the lines like almost no one else.

HE READ THE SIGNS!

Water cavern in the desert of an unknown depth? Two dudes dive in and their bodies are never found?

C’mon! It’s right THERE!

OBVIOUSLY - when combined with legends of underground cities in the American Southwest written about by other lunatics BEFORE Manson’s times, and also combined with some Beatles lyrics - if you were smart enough to piece everything together, you could conclude that those guys had made it to an unknown and amazing city to wait out a race war. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/devils-hole

And where did Manson get his ideas about this “race war” from?

The Beatles.

Wasn’t kidding about that Beatles lyrics reference.

Manson became especially obsessed with the Beatles’ White Album, which included the song, “Helter Skelter.”

Manson thought the Beatles were leaving him subtle, coded messages about the race war through the songs on the album that predicted both the war and the Manson Family’s eventual rule over the survivors.

Makes sense. Adds up.

OF COURSE the Beatles - who’d already released numerous worldwide smash hit albums by the late 60s and were arguably the most famous and wealthiest band in the world - of COURSE they would want to sneak a broke, ex-con, highly mentally unstable small-time cult leader and former pimp doomsday messages.

Did the Beatles make the White Album to demonstrate their absolutely fucking melodic mastery of rock-based music? Did they record a post-modern, avant-garde masterpiece still considered by many if not most music critics to be one of the top ten albums of all time because music was what they loved making, were at the height of their considerable creative powers, and they wanted to blow their fans fucking minds?

NO!!!! TOO EASY! ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID??? WAKE UP!

They did it for Charles in Charge.

Manson was completely out of his fucking mind by 1968.

He first heard this album not long after it was released in November of that year.

He’d already claimed to find hidden meanings in songs from earlier Beatles albums, but the messages were bigger and more important. More urgent.

He interpreted prophetic significance in several of the songs, including “Blackbird" and "Helter Skelter.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album) https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/ article185581763.html

Dude heard, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly, All your life, You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”

And he was like, “AHA! We need to get to the desert before the blacks kill all the whites!”

And then he heard the Helter Skelter lyrics, “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide, And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride, And I get to the bottom and I see you againnnnnnnnnnn, yeah, yeah, yeah!”

And he was like, “Bingo, bango! There’s an underground city waiting for us to hide where we can wait out the war before climbing back up to rule the world!”

How desperate does one have to be - how long do you have to stay really strung out on hard drugs to get to a place where you hear that from a dude who looked as crazy as Charles Manson, and think, “Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s IT! Thank you Charles! Thank you Ringo, Paul, John, and George! I always thought I was a Stones guy, but the Beatles really know what’s going down, man!”

Manson did all this back when the Greens who would found the ACMTC were young counter culture hippies - out in the woods of California - living as part of what they called the Bear Tribe. The same cultural shift that helped produce Manson helped produce them as well.

Another crazy cult from this era we covered was The People’s Temple, led by Jim Jones.

The People’s Temple started out as an idealistic, multi-racial utopian community and ended famously in the jungles of Guyana with Jim Jones’s followers committing the biggest mass suicide of all time.

Well… some of them committed suicide on November 18, 1978.

Many were murdered.

Jim pulled off all kinds of crazy. He got poor, disenfranchised young men and women, angered at the racism they saw in America, and made them believe it was all the fault of white capitalists. He got his followers to first buy into extreme christianity, and then eventually took them to a place of anti- religious communism.

Things got so fucking bonkers in his cult, he convinced followers by the end that he was the only true heterosexual left on Earth, and that he would and could take the sin of homosexuality off the hands of male followers, men who were gay whether they knew it or not, by sodomizing them.

A very different kind of poophole loopholing going on than the one we talked about with Jodi Arias from a few weeks ago.

Fricken’ that butt to save you from sin! You get it! I mean - you can SEE THE LOGIC AND POWER OF GOD’S ROCK HARD POWER OF GOD’S REDEMPTION CAN’T YOU!?!

There was the Synanon Cult, which we covered in our suck on the Elan School.

Though initially meant as a drug rehabilitation program, the 60s and 70s-era Synanon grew far more radical, strongly encouraging its members to get abortions and vasectomies, and eventually attempting to murder an attorney prosecuting them by putting a rattlesnake in his mailbox. https://sfist.com/2017/07/21/most_infamous_cults_bay_area/

And there have been so many others we’ve covered. Father Yod and the Source Family, David Berg and the Children of God. Tony and Susan Alamo’s Alamo Christian Foundation. Even the recent Dwight York Nuwaubian Nation of Moors Cult.

All these cults founded in the late 1960s or 1970s.

Why were there so many cults forming at this time?

I’ve talked a lot in past episodes about the counter culture being responsible for creating a lot of disillusioned youth seeking different spiritual belief systems than those of their parents.

And that’s very true.

To be clear though - before digging into this era a bit again and what about seemed to have created so many cults - there HAVE definitely been plenty of other cults formed in different eras. I just don’t cover them as often as others here due to generally, two reasons: 1) A lack of thorough source information, or 2) they cult hasn’t completed its life cycle yet.

2. PRE-1960s CULTS: Speaking to source information, pre-1960s cults didn’t receive the same documentary treatment and thorough investigations that cults of more recent years have received.

Cults that kicked off prior to the 60s, we just generally don’t have the same quality of info on them because documentaries didn’t start to become popular until the 1960s, and gritty, investigative journalism wasn’t also wasn’t common prior to the 1960s.

But there were definitely cults forming all over the place before the 60s.

The 1950s saw the formation of the still-around Atherius Society, often described as a Cult.

Founded in 1955 by a former British taxi driver, Aetherius soon became a New Age religion whose belief systems are built around the theosophical idea that a series of "Cosmic Masters”, mostly from Venus and Saturn, control the fate of humanity.

Additionally, they focus heavily on prayer and "spiritually charging" the Earth to make way for the "Next Master, a messianic figure who will descend to earth in a flying saucer armed with "magic" more powerful than "the combined materialistic might of all the armies."

Uh huh.

Same shit as a Christian Doomsday Cult, just repackaged with alien mumbo jumbo.

Instead of waiting for God’s wrath, their followers await an alien messiah in a flying saucer who COULD obliterate the Earth with his magic but hopefully won’t.

The subtitle on their website, Atherius dot org, says “Co- operating with the Gods from Space.”

They have a website where you can buy “cosmic transmissions” downloads or CDs, pendulums, books on space yoga, a DVD on how to realize your inner potential, and so much more. Most of their transmissions only cost six pounds, but the Twelve Blessings costs 60 pounds. I’d play it for you, but I’m not about to risk someone stealing my credit card info because I used it to buy alien blessings.

There’s also the crazy cult, the Freedomites aka The Sons of Freedom, that started in Saskatchewan, Canada way back in 1902.

Originally formed after a fracturing of different religious groups who had fled Russia to escape religious persecution, the Freedomites were really into communal living, nudity, and anarchy.

Not kidding.

They quickly became infamous for all-nude public demonstrations to show opposition to the material tendencies of society, and in the '20s and '30s even burned and bombed a whole slew of public buildings WHILE NAKED - to show their disdain for the government.

Nothing like flopping your dick and your tits around in public to gain some respect for your protest. That’s how people know you’re serious AND ALSO mentally stable.

There were the Amana [uh man-uh] Colonies of Iowa that began in 1856 and existed in a very cult-like fashion until 1932, when they relaxed a bit.

Seven little villages on 26,000 acres governed by a “Great Council of Elders” who used to decide who got married, who got thrown out of the colonies, who ate with whom in communal kitchens. Basically, most of your life choices were made by the Great Council in this cult- the council always being comprised of old, stuffy white dudes - in a cult that outwardly came across as kind of Amish or Quaker in nature.

Now their descendants make a lot of fridges and freezers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies

There was the The Oneida [oh nide uh] Community, a cult that operated from 1848 to 1881.

A group that used to make a lot of fine silverware. And also - get their fuck on.

This cult was REAL big on fucking everyone. To give them some credit, it wasn’t just the cult leader fucking all the other members. It was everybody fucking everyone through their system of “complex marriage” aka “free love.”

I’m listening, Oneida Community - I’m LISTENING! Hail Lucifina!

Of course this got pretty creepy pretty fast.

Women over the age of forty were to act as sexual "mentors" to young adolescent boys, because these relationships had a minimal chance of resulting in pregnancy. One could define this mentorship as, you know, pedophilia.

Likewise, older men often introduced young women, or, for legal purposes, “children,” to sex.

The niece of founder John Humphrey Noyes, Tirzah Miller, would write a lot about the cult’s sexual practices in a journal not made public until 1993.

She writes about having sex with Uncle John and another Uncle, George. When these perverts talked about “free love” they weren’t fucking around. Or, I guess, in a literal sense, they were. Didn’t matter if you were related or not. Very pro-incest, this cult.

Founder John even tried kicking off a eugenics program in this cult, setting aside some members, the most spiritual, and only letting them fuck each other. A breeding program designed to create what he called “Super-Perferctionists.”

And there were so many other pre-1960s cults.

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=6878 https://www.thrillist.com/culture/the-10-craziest-cults-you-ve- never-heard-of-obscure-religious-sects-and-societies https://cjtm.icaap.org/content/4/v4art4.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community

Of course there were.

There have been cults for as long as their has been religion - and there has been religion for longer than there has been civilization.

3. POST 1970s CULTS:

There have been plenty of cults that have kicked off since the 1980s.

Keith Raniere’s NXIVM Sex Cult that came out of the MLM world didn’t kick off until 1998.

HAIL the GOOD GOD AMWAY! Maker of quality and affordable skillets, like the iCook 12-inch Nonstick Frypan with Lid available for home delivery for the HOW CAN YOU NOT BUY IT PRICE of $167!

HAIL AMWAY! Blessed be the Savings!

There was Lou Castro aka Daniel Perez and his little Angel’s Landing Cult that didn’t get started until the 1990s either.

And SOOO many others.

Up to 10,000 cults still exist today in the United States, according to psychologist Steve Eichel, a recognized international cult expert and president of the International Cultic Studies Association.

And we don’t about a lot of them yet because no investigative journalism has been done on them, no documentary made - at least not yet, often times because their stories are still being written. And many of them are very, very small. Like that Children of Thunder Cult we once sucked. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-identify-a-cult-six- expert-tips/

So, more than any other era, back to the Cult sweet spot of the 60s and 70s we go today!

The counter culture revolution years.

PRIME American cult formation years.

That particular era of cultural turbulence just seemed to kick off a lot of interesting and horrific compounds. H. THE HIPPIE REVOLUTION:

Let’s do a quick refresher on just how turbulent these years were.

After World War II there was a surge in the number of young people with the baby boom. Lot of families being started. Lot of kids being born who would become part of the counter culture.

The birth rate went from a low point of 19 per year per 1,000 US citizens during the Great Depression, to a high of almost 27 per 1,000 in 1947.

So you had a bigger youth population coming of age than in previous years in the late 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-20th_century_baby_boom#/media/ File:US_Birth_Rates.svg

At the same time, tech and media evolved to the point where you could make and distribute commercials, magazines, phonograph records, TV shows, explicitly for young people.

There was more sales money than ever before in marketing to the youth. More kids and the economy was more stable than it had been during the WW2 years, or during the Great Depression that preceded the WW2 years.

This generation was being marketed to in an entirely new and more aggressive way, which ended up giving them more cultural cohesiveness than previous generations. They were watching, hearing, and reading the same commercials, talking about the same TV shows, movies, and music.

Also, the birth control pill was approved for public use in the US in 1960. And no surprise, it’s a big hit. 10 out of 10 boners approve. Hail Lucifina!

By 1962, 1.2 million Americans women are on the pill. By 1963, that number almost doubles, to 2.3 million. By 1965, 6.5 million American women are using it. American sexuality starts to change with less and less concern about an unwanted pregnancy. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-of- the-birth-control-pill/480/

Previously, if you had premarital sex, due to high chance of pregnancy and guys not loving condoms - “I’ll pull out in time I PROMISE!”, “Just this ONE time, and THEN I’ll start wearing condoms again!” - there was a good chance you’d be spending the rest of your life with your new husband due to the social stigma of raising a child as an unwed mother. You hoped that would be the case, whether you really loved the guy or not. Getting married eliminated the powerful social stigma of being shunned from your family and struggling to raise the kid on your own.

But now, in the 1960s, there was this new found sexual freedom. A sexual liberation that was reflected in the music of the era which leads to further sexual liberation. It snowballs. More casual fucking leads to more talk of casual fucking which leads to more casual fucking.

Rock n’ roll! Rock stars become more sexualized. Mick Jagger sang “Let's Spend the Night Together” on the Ed Sullivan show in 1968 and blew America’s puritanical mind.

The Stones get banned from the show because of outcry from parents… but the kids fucking LOVE it and the Stones sell more records than ever. The band then releases “Let it Bleed” the following year in 1969, the title track including the lyrics of: ”Well, we all need someone we can lean on, and if you want it, you can lean on me; She said 'My breasts, they will always be open - baby, you can rest your weary head right on me... Bleed it alright, baby cum all over me."

Two years later, in 1971 the Stones release, “Sticky Fingers” with a close up of a dude’s crotch for the cover.

This was all SHOCKING to many parents at the time.

And so many other bands were making a sexual shift. In 1969, Robert Plant of Led Zepplin is singing about “I'm gonna give you my love,” in “Whole Lotta Love.”

And by “love,” he means “dick.

Also - a lot of drugs are suddenly more available than ever. Bands are singing a ton about them too. Openly and blatantly. On the Stones “Sticky Fingers” album, which went triple platinum in the US, selling over three million copies, there was the track “Sister Morphine,” with Jagger singing about faceless doctors, cocaine, morphine and crawling on the floor.

Speed, barbiturates, codeine, quaaludes - they were all legal in the 60s and early 70s.

AND STILL SHOULD BE - DAMN YOU NIXON!

Argument I’ve already made and explained. I’ll be quiet about it today.

The Vietnam War is also dividing the youth. And creating a fair amount of heroin addicts.

The previous generation had not rebelled against WW2 - fighting Hitler was the pretty clear right thing to do.

Not so obvious with Vietnam.

While young men were ready to die to save the world, not as many are as eager to, as they see it, feed the wealthy old men making money off the military industrial complex.

More and more young people are starting to question Uncle Sam’s motives. They’re not unquestioningly saluting the flag anymore. They’re questioning the integrity of US political motives.

Such a new thing. At least new in terms of how many people were doing this. There weren’t too many anti-WW2 or anti -Korean war protesters.

They were around, but not in nearly the same numbers. And any little protests that did occur didn’t tie in to the ethos of a massive cultural shift full of new music, new movies, new art, new lifestyles. SO MUCH NEW IN the countercultural movement of the 60s and then 70s.

Freedom of expression fueled the Civil Rights which led to further questioning over America’s racist past.

The level of freedom of expression displayed in the counter culture revolution - so many protests - was new in America.

Soon, many youth were questioning damn near everything. They disagreed with their parents over Vietnam. They disagreed about drugs and sex.

And, naturally, this new questioning bled over into religion.

They wondered if maybe their parents were wrong about God, too.

This led to a lot more spiritual seeking than the previous few generations had engaged in, and THAT would lead, inevitably, to some con artists and/or people deluded enough to actually think they were a prophet or prophetess, to take advantage of these young spiritual seekers - Cult! Cult! cult!

As more and more youth turned away from the organized religion that many of their parents subscribed too, and as many also began to explore other options that just getting married, getting a “real job” and starting a family - some dirty ding dongs figured out that it was a GREAT fucking time to kick off a cult.

And then…. there was the backlash to all this new questioning. A conservative withdrawal which would ironically lead to even more cults.

As more and more people broke away from religion and from the more conservative lifestyle the previous generation embraced, others moved in the the opposite direction.

The ACMTC would be born from this pushback.

Many saw the counter culture revolution as a sign that the world was on a spiritual path to damnation.

God was growing ANGRY! God HATED the Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin! Jimmy Page is obviously SATANIC!

Soon, the soul piper will have to be paid!

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll - that was all the Devil’s work.

The hippies are in bed with Satan!

Some crime and divorce stats fueled this fear, especially with the mainstream media reporting on it constantly.

The violent crime rate increased by 126 percent in the US between 1960 and 1970.

In 1958, the divorce rate was 2.1 per 1,000 people, with 368,000 divorces.

By the end of the 1970s, the annual divorce rate more than doubled, reaching 5.1 divorces per 1,000 Americans.

Satan using cheap sex and drugs to destroy now godless American families! The end is near!

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas- faulty-perception-crime-rates

Certain religious fundamentalists - particularly extreme evangelicals - saw rising crime rates and drug abuse and the hippie movement as hard evidence that Satan was here on earth.

The end times were fast approaching.

I. THE RISE OF EVANGELICALISM: In the 60s and 70s, Evangelicalism experienced major growth in America. The New Evangelicalism movement - also called “the Jesus Movement” was popularized by charismatic evangelists like Billy Graham.

Born in 1918, Graham earned the title of America’s Preacher, and his popularity reached the White House by the late 1940s. He was President Truman’s spiritual advisor, and would advise every US President from Truman to Obama.

He became widely popular in the 1950s, and even more so in the 1960s and 1970s.

The annual Gallup poll of the most widely admired American men in the US, that began in 1955, featured Billy Graham in the top ten for the first 61 years in a row. Worldwide, an estimated 215 million people attended his live events, and an estimated 2.2 billion heard him preach in his lifetime. And yes - that was BILLION. Born in North Carolina, he passed away in the same state in 2018 at the age of 99. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham https://lifewayresearch.com/2018/02/21/billy-grahams-life-ministry- by-the-numbers/

And the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps cult would arise from the evangelical Christianity he espoused. Not that Graham approved of these type of groups AT ALL.

Previous Suck topic The Children of God Cult also came out of this movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement#Growth_and_decline https://www.thearda.com/timeline/movements/movement_50.asp

And this movement remained sizable during the Counter Culture years.

According to Gallup polling, despite the number of spiritual seekers looking for a new religion or no religion, the percentage of people who identified as protestant - under which evangelicalism falls - didn’t drop much during the 60s and 70s. From a 1950s high of 71% in the 1956, in had only dropped to 58% by 1979. And in the 1960s, it didn’t fall below 65% until 1969.

It was harder to find stats on how many of those Protestants were evangelical, but worth noting that many different sources spoke to a massive rise in evangelicalism and the majority of protestants in the US being evangelicals.

Lot more fire and brimstone sermons coming from the pulpit as the counterculture became more and more popular. Lot more pastors worried about eternal damnation.

Makes sense. More perceived sinning. More perceived punishment.

In the US, evangelicalism, by the way, is an umbrella group of Protestant Christians who believe in the necessity of being born again, emphasize the importance of evangelism, and affirm traditional Protestant teachings on the authority and the historical authenticity of the Bible. Evangelicals are diverse and drawn from a variety of denominational backgrounds, including Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Methodist, several other denominational churches, and almost all nondenominational churches.

The term “Christian fundamentalist” is nearly, but not quite synonymous with Christian evangelical.

Evangelicals are a broader group. They compose anywhere from 30-40% of the US population when you include “cultural evangelicals,” those who don’t actively go to church or really even think deeply about the Bible but still identify as being a Christian who would go, if they did go to church, to an evangelical denomination.

Fundamentalists are a subset of this group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Evangelicalism_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Wheaton%20College's %20Institute%20for,church%20but%20identify%20as%20evangelic als

Hallmarks of fundamentalism include a belief in the literal accuracy of the bible. The earth was created in seven 24 hour periods. Humanity began with a man named Adam and a woman named Eve around 6,000 years ago. So… we all have a lot of brother and sister and first cousin fuckers in our family trees. And if dinosaurs did exist, our first ancestors had to deal with some T-Rexs and velociraptors roaming about in the garden of eden.

This kind of literalism doesn’t mesh well with science, and frankly -academia in general - as you can probably imagine. It’s a “God said it and don’t question it” system of faith, and if you can’t wrap your head around it, “God works in mysterious ways” so just leave it at that.

And while I have no doubt that many have found solace and comfort in this belief system, I always have no doubt that a belief system so at odds with critical thinking as always led many into the arms of a cult leader.

Why is Jim Jones sodomizing me? God works in mysterious ways. Why is David Koresh fucking my young daughter? Mysterious ways. Why is David Berg molesting all of the children? So much mystery!!! So much confusion!

A lot of evangelical and non-denominational churches, while originating in Europe, experienced substantial growth for the first time in the New World of colonial America, or early in the US’s history.

Baptists, to use one example, started off in England at the dawn of the the 17th century - an offshoot of Puritanism - a small group of believers soon bouncing to Holland to avoid religious persecution, than fleeing from Holland back to England due, primarily, to religious disagreement with Anabaptists [anna baptists] there. And their take on god soon took root in the New World.

The first Baptist church was formed in the US in Providence Rhode Island way back in 1638. And in America, a land of new ideas - like many other newer denominations - across the Atlantic from big, established Christian churches like the Catholic Church or the Church of England, it caught fire.

And so did many competing Protestant offshoots.

America was founded as primarily a Protestant nation. And many if not most of the early Protestants were evangelical.

Significant minorities of Roman Catholics and Jews did not arise until the period between 1880 and 1910. Significant numbers of other religions wouldn’t come until even later. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anglican-Evangelical#ref84601 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anglican-Evangelical

The US has now long had the greatest overall number of evangelicals of any country in the world, with over 93 million identifying as some form of evangelical. Guess who’s second? Really. Play along. I bet you won’t get it. I certainly didn’t. Have a place in your mind?… it’s China with 63 million. Followed by… want to guess again?… Nigeria with 58 million.

Three out of five evangelicals, thanks to decades of missionary work, now live in Africa or Asia. There’s a lot in Brazil as well - 47 million. https://lifewayresearch.com/2020/03/02/3-in-5-evangelicals-live-in- asia-or-africa/

America’s expansion west led to substantial growth of evangelical Christianity.

By the early nineteenth century, Americans increasingly had become a people in motion, constantly moving across social and geographical space.

Due to all this movement, families, towns, and occupational structures lost much of their traditional capacity to regulate individual and social life.

Various evangelical groups stepped in to fill the desire for structure and community. New groups popped up during a period now known as the Second Great Awakening that lasted from 1790 to 1840. Tent revivals became a thing - traveling charismatic ministers whipping listeners in town after town into religious ecstasy. An emphasis on salvation was preached to those made anxious or even frightened by a continually changing world around them. Spiritual messages gravitate not towards God’s love, but God’s anger and wrath. Fear has always been a powerful recruiting tool.

Aggressively exploiting a wide variety of new print media, evangelicals began launching their own newspapers and periodicals and distributed millions of devotional and reform tracts.

By 1835, the cross-denominational American Tract Society and the American Sunday School Union alone distributed more than 75 million pages of religious material and were capable of delivering a new tract each month to every household in New York City.

By the 1830s, these devices, in conjunction with the aggressive revivalism that was the hallmark of the new evangelicalism, had assembled a huge new evangelical public. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/ nevansoc.htm

Also, during the Second Awakening, more and more of these churches fractured into more and more churches. Offshoot after offshoot. Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are some of the bigger offshoots. Non-denominational churches, which began to sprout up for the first time in the 18th century, exploded in the 19th century.

According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there were 500 different Protestant Christian denominations in 1800. Five hundred different ways to interpret the Christian Bible. And that doesn’t count the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, or any other church that separated from the Catholic Church prior to the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

Holy flipping shit. Over 500 different Christian churches who all think they are interpreting the Bible correctly, and everyone else is wrong to various degrees.

And that number would FUCKING EXPLODE in the 19th and 20th centuries.

By 2012, over five hundred different churches would continue to spiral out into - wait for it - roughly FORTY-THREE THOUSAND different Christian denominations worldwide, by 2012.

By 2025, that number is expected to hit 55,000.

FIFTY-FIVE THOUSAND versions of “No, no, NOT - THIS is what God meant when this was written.”

So much disagreement has lead, of COURSE, to SO much confusion. How could it not?

Get these people in the same room and your head is gonna spin so fast your fucking neck is gonna break trying to keep track of how you’re supposed to worship the Christian god and what the Christian God expects of you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ History_of_Protestantism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches

A big rise in these numbers comes from a Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy in the 1920s and 1930s.

All these Protestant churches - many evangelical, became divided over new intellectual and theological ideas, such as Darwinian evolution and how strict Biblical interpretation must be.

Those who embraced more liberal, secular ideas became known as modernists, while those who rejected them became known as - bringing this back now - fundamentalists. https://brewminate.com/a-history-of-evangelicalism-in-the-united- states/

And out of the fundamentalist branch came the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps.

A lot of cults seem to come from fundamentalism.

Like other churches in the evangelical movement, these early fundamentalists preached - and continue to preach - that Satan’s demons were coming to earth.

And thanks to the rise of evangelicalism, this was a message many American Christians were already used to hearing. The ACMTC’s scriptural interpretations were fucking crazy, BUT, with SO MANY different interpretations, it was easy for people to get spiritually lost and confused and - consciously or not - they took advantage of that.

This groundwork I’ve just laid out is why the overwhelming majority of cults in America seem to shout of out Christian fundamentalism.

It has gotten SO UNBELIEVABLY FRACTURED - I don’t think the average parishioners really knows what the Hell is going on anymore. Most of the fundamentalists I’ve talked to about religion over the course of my life don’t seem to have much intellectual understanding regarding their belief. They just believe. They want to go to heaven, they don’t want to go to Hell, their friends and family go to the same services, it’s comforting to all be on the same team, so they listen to the confusing messages their pastor preaches and try and make sure they’re not fucking up too much to get denied entrance to heaven.

And I don’t say this to say they’re stupid. I find most aren’t stupid at all. Of COURSE it’s hard to explain or fully understand their beliefs.

There are roughly over 50,000 different opinions regarding how you’re supposed to worship Jesus right now.

How the fuck are you supposed to understand anything other than a core message of “I love Jesus and he loves me and if I pray and ask for forgiveness and try my best, he’ll let a sinner like me live in heaven forever and ever, amen.”

With that much lack of a consensus over what the Bible is actually telling us, coupled with the basically universally agreed upon fear that if you don’t get it right you’re gonna burn in Hell - OF COURSE there are going to be so many cults based in evangelical Christianity.

You have a large number of confused, scared people - many of them really, really GOOD people - who just want to get it right.

Convince a few of those people who are probably extra desperate and down on their luck due to unfortunate life events and circumstances - people who are also maybe not born with a strong bullshit detector - people who have been victimized by their parents or others already and don’t possess a strong sense of how to stand up for themselves, and bingo fucking BANGO - you got yourself a new cult.

NOW - let’s really get into the ACMTC.

First establishing how unique it was to have a female cult leader, and then, Cult Timeline time.

J. FEMALE-LED CULTS:

Lila Green, AKA Deborah Green.

Of the many, many cults we’ve covered here on Timesuck, this is the most truly female-led one. From start to finish.

Susan Alamo and Bonnie Nettles ran the Alamo Christian Foundation and Heavn’s Gate Cults, respectively, but then, when they died, shit got way crazier with Tony and Marshall taking over.

From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, it’s male fanatics who usually run the Cult show.

For Christian groups, the Bible has served as a helpful justification for these patriarchal structures. As 1 Timothy 2:12 commands, “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

There have been plenty of cults with women in positions of power, however. In fact, female higher ups have been crucial to the growth of many male led cults. They’re the ones who reassure new members that the dude in charge is good and wholesome and holy and al that bullshit.

In the NXIVM Cult, Keith Raniere’s second-hand woman Nancy Salzman helped develop the multi-level marketing scheme and many of the cult’s tactics. In NXIVM, many of the higher-ups were women who recruited other women to be victimized - like Smallville actress Alison Mack.

Jim Jones had Carolyn Layton, his lover for around a decade and the person who, aside from Jones, was most instrumental in the massacre at Jonestown.

FLDS cult leader Warren Jeffs, while he was still a free man, had Naomi Jessop, his “favorite wife,” and the woman who most often provided counsel during his trial and sentencing for child abuse and molestation.

These women and women like them - often just girls when they became involved with cult leaders - are indoctrinated in the same way as any other member of their cult.

And then they managed to gain some sort of trust with the leader, which led to a bit of power.

And we meatsacks, men and women alike, have always seemed to crave power.

They’re often tasked with recruitment, often with bringing new women or girls into the mix for the leader’s sexual gratification.

In the presence of a matriarchal figure, new members often feel more comfortable or cared for - even though they are anything but safe.

Such a strong instinct in us to be nurtured by mommy.

Non-cult leader Rose West from our serial killer suck a few weeks ago, used that instinct to lure a fair amount of young women to their untimely deaths. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/power-female-cult-leaders

So, women definitely play power roles in a lot of cults— they are often matriarchs, sympathizers, and silent leaders, wielding power from behind the scenes - but the leader tends to be a man.

Generally a ridiculously sex crazed man.

Think of unparalleled American pedophile Dwight York from a few weeks back.

These dudes - whose primary motivation seems to be the objectification, commodification, and sexual enslavement of women, reinforce a theme that cults are led mostly - by walking, insatiable boners.

But not all.

Sometimes a puss wants just as much power as a dick.

Some vagina owners are just as batshit crazy power hungry monsters.

Like Deborah Green.

A leader of one of several female-led cults we haven’t covered … yet.

Of course there are many others.

Between 1968 and 1975, Australian Anne Hamilton-Byrne - leader of a cult named “The Family” preached a mix of Christianity, Eastern religious doctrine, yoga, and insanity.

Members of her sect were reported to have stolen babies, while others were brainwashed into handing over their children to Hamilton-Byrne and “aunties” to be raised as part of a so-called master race.

The children reported having their hair dyed platinum blonde, being drugged with LSD, beaten and starved. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/14/family-cult-leader- anne-hamilton-byrne-dead-at-98

As recently as 2012, Silvia Meraz was both a practicing serial killer and a cult leader, using the bodies of her members for human sacrifice in Sonora, Mexico. She had two ten year olds beheaded to gain favor and power from Santa Muerte - Our Lady of the Holy Death.

But those ladies - and many others - tales for another day.

Today we’re covering Lila Carter and the Christian Mission Training Corps cult.

Lila Carter aka Deborah Carter.

A self-proclaimed prophetess, she spoke for an Angry God and ruled like an Angry God.

And she was the ONLY one who spoke for god.

When her husband asked why he didn’t receive visions, too, she told him,“You’re not the source. You’re not the vessel.”

Yeah, JIMMY. Sit down and shut the fuck up!!!

I’m trying to listen to God right now and you are ANNOYING US BOTH.

Like so many cults, Deborah and Jim controlled members by keeping them confused, tired, and increasingly dependent on the cult for their survival. Their finances were controlled. Their contact with the the outside world was limited.

Their access to proper food, water, and even basic hygiene and medical needs strictly controlled.

Shit was REAL strict in their cult.

They were GOD’S ARMY!

The cult structure they imposed to do that was a militaristic one.

And their fearless leader was General Deborah.

Members walked around in public in marine-style clothing with a golden winged logo on their jackets. Male members donned short hair and polished shoes.

Jim and Deborah Green started out as "Colonels" and later came to be considered "Brigadier Generals" and then "Generals" by their converts.

I love it.

I love that leveled up as time went on. First time I’ve come across something akin to stolen valor in a cult setting.

All their military talk makes me think of that Monk Drill Sergeant from the Dark Ages Suck.

(Angry Jesus Drill Sergeant) “What the flip are you doing, Private Anderson!?! Are you passively being a follower of CHRIST!?! Are you HOPING and PRAYING that heathens just casually find SALVATION!?!?

That ain’t gonna gosh dang get it done, MOTHER TRUCKER!

Start screaming! Get in people’s FACES! Wave sings wildly around on the side of the road! YELL INTO THEIR SOULS! Make your eyes wider when you go ape shoot for the Lord! Beat the GOSPEL INTO THEIR FLIPPING BRAINS FOR IT IS BETTER THAN THE FIERY PITS OF HECK!”

Like many Christian fundamentalist groups, they believed in "spiritual warfare," the idea that angels and demons fight for our souls at all times.

"God ordained war," Deborah Green is heard saying in one video clip.

“War is of God… God is a militant God.”

Now let’s go to battle with these flipping fuckers, in today’s Timesuck Timeline….

MIDROLL PAUSE

…. right after today’s sponsor break.

PAUSE

Thanks again for listening, Meatsacks. I appreciate it. And now we head into an Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps timeline, uninterrupted….

PAUSE

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

II. Timesuck Timeline

https://www.thecut.com/2021/06/sarah-green-escaped-mother- cult.html 1. 1947:

Starting in 1947.

Not gonna be a lot of concrete dates in this timeline.

The ACMTC kept a pretty low national profile to skirt by for years. No one’s written a definitive book on them and Lila aka Deb and Jimmy haven’t been real forthcoming about all the dirty shit they’ve done or who they actually are.

Also - the local press back in Fence Lake, New Mexico - they didn’t do a real good job thoroughly covering the Cult’s activities because they didn’t exist.

Hard to keep a paper going when your max circulation is about thirty different homes.

Not having any local press really helped the ACMTC stick around awhile longer.

BUT - we were able to patch plenty together through various New Mexico press coverage and some national articles.

And we have the cult’s website, thank god, for some extra comedy.

Back to ’47 now. Lila Carter was born in 1947 to a working-class family in Sacramento, California.

Born the right year to become a California hippie. She’d be twenty years old for 1967’s epic summer of love.

Not a lot is out there about her early childhood. Her father was allegedly an alcoholic and her parents divorced when she was young.

She was dirt poor. As a college student, she worked at a movie theater where she ate popcorn to save money on food.

Apparently she was really into Elvis and the Beatles, prompting her to confess later:

“The seeds of ROCK MUSIC were planted deep within me. Little did I realize that as the years passed and the ROCK MUSIC got rockier, that my life would follow the trend and as the music which was to lead a generation into rebellion, drugs, illicit sex, and bondage to sin, that I too would become one of many caught in the web of mesmerizing sounds. [...] I seemed to flourish on wild, wanton music.”

So - it sounds like at one time - Lila was pretty fucking cool.

Doing drugs, maybe fucking in a van outside a Jefferson Airplane concert like your supposed to do when you’re a teen and early 20-something in the late 1960s.

In her early 20s at the end of the ‘60s, her younger brother died of lung cancer; and grief-stricken, she seems to have stopped going to college and joined a so-called “back-to-the-land” collective called the Bear Tribe.

Oh, fuck yeah.

Based in the remote Sierra foothills of northern California, the Bear Tribe hosted a mix of hippie and Native American ideologies.

I’m assuming they definitely smoked peyote and a shit ton of weed, for sure had a drum circle, and absolutely fucked each other’s brains out out in the woods. I also believe the for sure had wild, untamed and unkempt pubic hair, said “far out” a lot, and that the smell of patchouli ALMOST drowned out their powerful hippie BO.

Lila, who claimed Sioux heritage, threw herself into this new life, marrying another member, Jim Green of Kentucky.

Lila and Jimmy weren’t casual hippies. They lived out in the woods as part of the Bear Tribe. They went hard. As later born-agains often do before their born again, they went deep into having a great time, and then eventually felt so much guilt over all that fun sinning they were ready to over-correct!

I grew up around that crowd. My grandpa, Papa Ward used to joke about the bar crowd and the church crowd in Riggins being the same crowd. They just swapped members back and forth every few years. Go get drunk and chase your dick or lady ween around town for a few months or a few years, then repent, repent, repent… then get bored and go back to drinking and fucking.

Not true of every place I’m sure, but definitely true of Riggins in the 80s and 90s.

Bear Clan lover James Green had been born in 1945.

As a teenager, he hitchhiked to California where he later became involved in a hippie lifestyle and the 1960s revolution that led him to Lila.

Jim, then known as "Buffalo Sun," was experimenting with "blood ceremonies" where he found "pleasure inside of pain."

Ohhhhhh shit. These two went REAL hard. Getting real weird in the woods. I read this as getting way, WAY fucked up on some hard drugs and doing some real freaky fucking.

I bet they even encountered a few shrub sluts from time to time out there, hiding in the bushes, waiting to slide into to someone’s relationships.

Throw back to the Vampire of Sacramento suck if you’re confused.

Buffalo Sun and Debbie Ding Dong living that minimalist, hedonist lifestyle.

"We used to run around the mountains and live in teepees," a former member of the ACMT said who followed the Greens from the Bear Tribe to the cult. “Jim used to run around in a loin cloth and howl at the moon."

Why was Jim howling at the moon? Jim was doing a bunch of crank.

You might now crank by its more common of METH! WHOOO!!!!!

Buffalo Son snorting meth in the woods, throwing on a loin cloth, cutting himself, howling at the moon, and fucking Debbie Ding Dong.

Noice!

‘Bout time we had some METHHHH! in one of our tales again.

When Jimmy Buffalo Sun was high, he’d apparently spend a lot of time throwing his hunting knife around and screaming, "KILL, KILL, KILL."

I love details like this.

Jim was clearly very mentally stable.

Jim would later blame his crazy antics on the music he was listening too ‘cause that makes sense, saying, "the blaring HARD ROCK MUSIC provided inspiration to my insane frenzy.”

Uh huh. I don’t think it works like that.

I’ve listened to a lot of hard rock music - real loud - a lot of metal that I’m sure is a lot harder and more explicit than what Jim listened to, and it’s never once given me the urge to snort meth, run out in the woods, start throwing a knife around, and yelling “KILL! KILL! KILL!”

I think that was all Jimmy Buffalo Sun. He clearly had some demons.

Also - I bet the crank was doing more of the heavy lifting there than the music was.

Especially awesome late 60s music.

What “HARD ROCK” is he even fucking talking about? Black Sabbath? Zepplin? Were the Stones or Beatles riling him up? Maybe Jim Morrison?

Remember when you pumped up the volume to the Doors “Light my Fire” and were like, “I NEED A FUCKING KNIFE RIGHT NOW!!! KILL! KILL! KILL!”

2. 1971: In 1971, the Greens had moved to Montana. Lila is twenty- four, Jimmy Buffalo Sun is twenty-six.

They were, Lila would later write on the Aggressive Christianity website, “hippie wanderers, desolate, chasing false gods, and living only for darkness.”

I read this as the good times were catching up with them a bit. Doing a bunch of drugs in the woods in your early twenties is awesome - FOR A WEEKEND. Not for several straight years.

All good things in moderation.

It seems like the Greens were living in hard times in the early ‘70s.

The Flower Child movement was winding down to an end, and those who hadn’t found any commercial success in the counterculture were now suffering the effects of drug addiction, a lack of education and opportunities, and - and I think is the biggest one - having no real life plan.

Lila attempted suicide three times in the years before her born- again Christian conversion.

And then one day, as fate would have it, Jim brought home a man he’d met while hitchhiking. The man told him and Lila about Jesus’ message of redemption.

“My heart broke,” wrote Lila later. “I was such a miserable mess … sin had done me in.”

The man led the couple in a prayer. With that, according to Jim, “we changed Gods.”

Oh boy.

This message always annoys me. “Sin had done me in.”

No it didn’t.

OVER-INDULGING in hedonism and not having a realistic fucking life plan did you in.

Don’t need the Devil to just make dumbass short-sighted choices. We’re all real capable of doing that on our own.

Saying “sin did you in” reads to me as illogical as someone who got really obese saying, “cake did me in.”

Nope. Way TOO MUCH cake did you in. Plenty of people have a healthy relationship with cake. Cake is not the problem. Choosing to forsake vegetables, lean proteins, and complex carbs in favor of continually praying at the altar of CAKE - that will fuck you up.

I’ve done plenty of drugs, engaged in plenty of quote-unqoute sin - poophole loopholing and so forth - and I’m doing fine.

I didn’t get carried away.

I realized early on that I don’t have that addictive gene. I could go hard, and then stop. I paid attention to how my body and mind responded. If the pull would have been too great, I’d like to think I would’ve stopped or eventually gone to rehab.

Easy for a non-addictive person to say, I know.

But I did think about it. I wasn’t mindless. I found out what was right for me.

And look - good for anyone who finds God and then pulls themselves out of the gutter. Truly - if that’s what you think you need. But a good secular rehab center, better choices, and finding your “Why” ala Victor Frankl - that has also worked for many.

Focusing on a positive tomorrow, putting in daily work to put a practical plan together and stick to it and pay your way through life - that can be its own redemption.

3. 1972: In 1972, Sarah Green is born to Jim and Lila, their first and only daughter. Her younger brother, Josh, will be born the following year.

The family - all-in now on fundamental evangelical Christianity now goes on a series of missionary trips to Panama, Aruba, and Nicaragua where they blame their previous wanton and hedonistic ways on the Devil’s music and a Satanic counter-culture.

And then Jesus saved them from METH!

And also from that dang Beatles music, and from a fun sex- life, good weed and what not.

4. 1978: In 1978, after becoming Christians, Lila and James Green both serve in Miami's Salvation Army. They will later give this group credit for ACMTC's military structure.

Like the Salvation Army, ACMTC's emphasis is on spiritual warfare against Satan and his demons. And here you thought they were about thrift stores and donation drives around the holidays.

The ACMTC may have even taken its name from a sermon by Salvation Army co-founder Catherine Booth, titled "Aggressive Christianity."

And Lila may have found inspiration in the Salvation’s Army’s female leadership.

Catherine Booth was the co-founder of the Salvation Army with her husband, William Booth.

Born in 1829, Catherine was raised in the pious and sheltered world of small-town Victorian England, where her mother was a model of Methodist piety.

In her teenage years, Catherine suffered from a spinal curvature and was forced to lay in bed months at a time.

She read theological literature voraciously, especially the writings of Charles Finney and John Wesley, and she soon not only became assured of her own salvation, she also felt that she was called to join the public ministry.

When she heard many fellow Christians suggest that a woman's place was in the home, she wondered why the Christian church, which preached a liberating gospel to both men AND women, could keep women from occupying positions in the ministry.

In the early 1850s, she met and married William Booth, a young preacher who was just starting to make a name for himself.

When she shared her emerging convictions with her new husband, he said, "I would not stop a woman preaching on any account."

And he’d remain true to his world just under a decade later.

Before then, he pushed his own new brand of aggressive street ministry.

William Booth had embarked upon his ministerial career in 1852, desiring to win the lost multitudes of England to Christ. He walked the streets of London to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the poor, the homeless, the hungry and the destitute.

He found a market for this kind of preaching that was untapped at the time.

He preached to the people who weren’t allowed in traditional churches because of their nefarious reputations: thieves, prostitutes, gamblers and drunkards.

William Booth abandoned the conventional concept of a church and a pulpit, instead taking his message to the people. His enthusiasm and nontraditional methods led to disagreement with his original Methodist church leaders in London.

As a result, he withdrew from his church, became a member of the more evangelical Methodist Reform Church, and traveled throughout England, conducting evangelistic meetings.

But that church also wasn’t comfortable with a guy who wanted to be a full-time street preacher, so he struck out on his own and began non-denominational preaching.

In 1865, William Booth was invited to hold a series of evangelistic meetings in the working-class and crime-ridden East End of London. He set up a tent in a Quaker graveyard, and his services became an instant success.

His renown as a religious leader spread throughout London, and he attracted followers who were dedicated to really fight for the souls of men and women.

In 1867, Booth had only 10 full-time workers, but by 1874, the number had grown to 1,000 volunteers and 42 evangelists, all serving under the name “The Christian Mission.” Booth assumed the title of general superintendent, with his followers began calling him “General.”

Known as the “Hallelujah Army,” which is a lot like a regular army but 100% worthless in any sort of actual battle, the converts spread out of the East End of London into neighboring areas and then to other cities.

While reading a printer’s proof of his ministries 1878 annual report, Booth noticed the statement “The Christian Mission is a volunteer army.” Crossing out the words “volunteer army,” he penned in “Salvation Army.”

From those words came the basis of the foundational deed of The Salvation Army.

Catherine, meanwhile, would finally start preaching in 1860.

One of her sons later remarked, "She reminded me again and again of counsel pleading with judge and jury for the life of the prisoner. The fixed attention of the court, the mastery of facts, the absolute self-forgetfulness of the advocate, the ebb and flow of feeling, the hush during the vital passages - all were there."

Or as another unnamed man put it, "If ever I am charged with a crime, don't bother to get any of the great lawyers to defend me; get that woman."

Lila Greene would be inspired greatly by Catherine’s status with the Salvation Army.

Though Catherine cared for a household of six at the time - she would eventually raise eight children - she maintained a hectic preaching schedule.

While Catherine would never actually lead the Salvation Army, she did take a significant leadership role in her church that was unheard of in the late 19th century, weighing in along with her husband and other men who had leadership roles beneath him, and she added the administration of the Army to her duties when her husband’s preaching duties left him with no time to run the church’s growing administrative duties, and she earned the matriarchal role of "the Army Mother." https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/ catherine-booth.html

Catherine would also write a book called Aggressive Christianity— which would define Christian warfare and influence Lila and Jim.

Through a series of analogies, Booth describes Christian warfare as:

1. Aggressive: having a passion to reach the lost with the message of the Gospel.

Now I picture street preachers in high school or college cheerleading outfits.

(Cheerleader) “Be aggressive. Be be Aggressive. B-E-A -GG- R- ESS -IVE Beeeeee aggresive! Kick Satan’s BUTT!”

2. Adaptive: communicating the gospel in relevant ways without compromising the truth.

3. Anointed: living as a credible witness for Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit. https://wmresources.org/blog/book-review-aggressive-christianity/

Here’s a passage from that that’s kind of illuminating about the Salvation Army’s messaging and how they thought about converting people— which would reverberate in the ACMTC.

Let’s throw some military music behind it to give it the proper spirit.

Play at 39:53 (The Washington Post) https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOnkLKq1rLY&t=352s

“Oh! people say, you must be very careful, very judicious. You must not thrust religion down people's throats. Then, I say, you will never get it down.

What!

Am I to wait till an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try to save him?

He will never want to be saved till the death-rattle is in his throat.

What!

Am I to let my unconverted friends and acquaintances drift down quietly to damnation, and never tell them about their souls, until they say, `If you please, I want you to preach to me?' Is this anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No.

Verily we must make them look--tear the bandages off, open their eyes, make them bear it, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God and get their souls saved. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it that they would get saved in very self defense, if we were only up and doing, and determined that they should have no peace in their sins.

Where is our zeal for the Lord?

We talk of Old Testament saints, but I would, we were all like David. Rivers of water ran down his eyes because men kept not the Law of his God. But you say, `We cannot all hold services.' Perhaps not.

Go as you like. Go as quietly and softly as the morning dew. Have meetings like the Friends if you like.

ONLY DO IT.

Don't let your relatives, and friends, and acquaintances die, and their blood be found on your skirts!!!”

Don’t be Satan’s BISCUIT! Don’t be some kind of wishy-washy Christian Frick, gosh dang it! What the HECK!?! Get out there and scream at people until they call the police and lock their doors! Be relentless with your families until they ban you from future get togethers. Antagonize co-workers until you’re fired! Antagonize friends until you don’t have any anymore!

Sounds like Catherine - if they could just drop the cursing and violence - would really like Whipple.

PLAY FROM BEGINNING https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=vUg39QRrFzg

Worried you’ll ruffle a few feathers trying to get the good word out!?!

Well Frick You Then, Sister Christian!

I’ll pray for Jesus to kick your sweater stretchers off at the Second Coming.

Jesus didn’t just turn water into wine. He turned WEAKNESS INTO FLIPPING WHIPPLE!

OUT NOW - WHIPPLE CHRISTIAN EDITION!

SAME STIMULANTS AS REGULAR WHIPPLE, MINUS ALL THE SATAN!!!

Didn’t know we put the Devil in every 48 ounce can of regular Whipple!?!

SHUT THE FLIP UP and DRINK UP, BUTTERCUP!

God didn’t crucify his only son TO THEN HAVE A WEAK BOTTOM ARMY FULL OF NOTHING BUT TIMID FLIPPIN’ FRICK-FACES!

JESUS LOVES EVERYONE BUT WHEN YOUR DUMB BOTTOM HAS LONG BEEN BURNING - he will not have WEPT!

Only Jesus Saves Souls!

And only FLIPPING WHIPPLE lets you reach those souls month after month with zero sleep!

FLIP YOU! FLIP YOUR FAMILY! And drink WHIIPPPPLLLEEEE

Now available in Christian edition flavors Strawberry Crusades and Chocolate Crucifixion.

PRESS STOP http://www.gospeltruth.net/booth/cath_booth/ agressive_christianity/cbooth_1_agressive.htm

You can listen to the HP Lovecraft if you’re real confused about Whipple. Or, you can just ACCEPT THAT IT’S A VERY IMPORTANT ENERGY DRINK THAT ISN’T MEANT FOR WHINY FUCKING BABIES!

Anyway, The Salvation Army expanded to the US in 1880 after a few of Booth’s “soldiers” moved to Philadelphia.

Its now-ubiquitous Red Kettle Campaign — for which bell-ringers collect donations outside stores and shopping malls every holiday season — didn’t start until the 1890s, and it didn’t begin as a well- planned fundraising campaign either.

Instead, one Salvation Army member in San Francisco came up with the idea on the fly when he needed to raise funds for a Christmas banquet. Today, the money collected through the Salvation Army’s annual bell-ringing fundraiser helps provide services for more than 25 million people in the US each year, according to the organization’s website.

General Booth died in 1912, having laid a firm foundation for the work that The Salvation Army continues to perform today in 131 countries.

The Salvation has done a LOT of good. Homeless shelters, disaster relief, humanitarian aid and so, so much moore. Over the years they’ve spent billions on helping those in need.

The ACMTC will take some structure notes from them, but will completely miss all the good parts. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/16/21003560/salvation- army-anti-lgbtq-controversies-donations

Now - back to the Debbie Ding Dong and Jimmy Buffalo Sun.

Sometime around 1980, they run out of money in Miami.

Despite being born again in Christ and servants to his heavenly vision, they still haven’t put together a financial plan for how to pay their fucking bills and raise a family down here on Earth.

They still haven’t spent much time trying to hold down jobs. They traded loin clothes, meth, and hippie living in the woods with no real life plan for missionary work with no real life plan.

The Green family now returns to Sacramento where they have family to help them get by.

Lila soon gets a job working nights at a hospital. Jim does not work. He rests his “bad back.”

Why am I not surprised at ALL that Jimmy Buffalo Sun can’t hold down a job? I know some people LEGITIMATELY have bad backs and can’t work. I also know it’s the disability claim people tend to file when their back only acts up at the prospect of actual work and is somehow magically fine when they’re doing shit they enjoy.

I’ve known that person.

Now eight years old, their daughter Sarah finally has a bit of a normal childhood. No longer being dragged on missions, she starts attending a local school and makes some friends.

5. 1981: In 1981— some sources say 1979— Lila and Jim founded “Free Love Ministries,” a religious community based out of their new Sacramento home.

The very beginnings of what will become the ACMTC.

They open their doors after a psychotic episode - I mean, REVELATION, they apparently had in 1979.

Their website describes the founding of Free Love Ministries like this:

“In 1979 James and Deborah Green entered the prayer closet and God was there. Speaking to them prophetically, He made it clear that He was raising up an army--His Spirit army. True, there had been other armies claiming the Lord's name, but this was something new. It was by the prophetic Word of the Lord that the Aggressive Vision came to be. Believing what God had said, the Generals took it to heart and began to give their lives so they could live their lives to fulfill the vision. True to His Word, after many years of seeking and sacrifice, determination and hard work, God has brought into existence an army. And that's just the beginning. Over the years God has expanded and embellished the vision, bringing others into the revelation as well, until today God's Holy Tribal Nation shines like a beacon on a high mountain, lifting others up and calling people around the world to give their lives in His service. Yes, God is raising up His army, an army of fearless, obedient disciples--The Army That Sheds No Blood! This is how the Aggressive Vision came to be. The Word of the Lord shall never fail!”

http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/av.htm

Interesting that out of ALL the people on Earth, God would choose Debbie Ding Dong and Jimmy Buffalo Sun, a 34 year- old whose back flares up at the prospect of gainful employment, to be one of his top Earthly generals.

Does that seem a little sus to you? Seems a little sus to me.

Their name, Free Love Ministries, seems to clearly be a nod to their 1960s youth: flower children teaching peace and universal brotherhood.

But they weren’t so flowery now.

They built up a compound built on a message of hellfire and God’s impending wrath.

The dozen or so people who would soon live at “the camp,” as they called it - four communal houses on X and 22nd Streets in Sacramento that made up the ministry’s base - saw themselves as warriors doing battle daily with the world and all its many, MANY demons.

Cult! Cult! Cult!

The Greens attracted followers through a program they hosted on local radio and passed out evangelizing “tracts” at bus stops and on college campuses.

Lila soon began to believe she was a prophet of the apocalypse.

Fuck yeah! Here…. we…. GO!

(Cheerleader) “Be aggressive. Be be Aggressive. B-E-A-GG-R- ESS-IVE….. Come live on our compound, hear the message we have found, make some angry Jesus sounds! Be aggressive. Be be Aggressive!”

Lila and Jim’s radio messages grew more vigorous in their condemnations of homosexuality, psychoanalysis, rock and roll, and other SATANIC forces. For being a wee bit too hateful, eventually, the Free Love couple was kicked off the air.

Therapy and New Wave early 80s music - it’s MAKING EVERYONE GAY. Damn you Satan! Damn you Tears for Fears and Culture Club!

By convincing recruits to sign over all their earthly assets - ONLY SATAN WANTS YOU TO OWN YOUR OWN SHIT! - Cult! Cult! Cult! - the Greens moved into an old single-family house off a noisy freeway in downtown Sacramento when the cult began in earnest. They bought three adjacent homes, or “barracks,” that shared a backyard.

“The Camp.” Compound number one!

About 50 followers ultimately moved into “the camp,” - and it was soon re-dubbed “Fort Freedom.”

Sarah lived with her parents in the main house, or “the Citadel.”

Sarah’s life at Fort Freedom was getting pretty tumultuous. In sixth grade, she was pulled from the local public school and homeschooled but not really. She now studied the Bible and not much of anything else.

When Sarah had problems and brought them to her mother who was now leading this cult, Lila told her to “fast and pray and deal with it.”

Noice!

I should start doing that with my kids. It would make parenting so much easier.

(Kyler) “Dad! I REALLY don’t feel good. I still have a fever and now I’ve had diarrhea for three days straight.”

(me) “Eh. Not good. Sounds like you need…. to PRAY HARDER! Clearly you are also not fasting if you still have something to poop!”

(Kyler) Dad, can you help me with this camp application!”

(me) Go fast for awhile and then ask Jesus to help you fill it out. COME ON! We’ve been over all this.”

6. 1984: Around this time, approximately 1984, Lila, as a dark horse of the apocalypse, now starts conducting unsettling ceremonies in the basement of the Citadel. And by Citadel I mean “Shitty downtown Sacramento dilapidated house.”

There, one of God’s favorite children prophesied, often performed exorcisms BECAUSE HER FOLLOWERS WERE RIFE WITH DEMONS! - good thing she was there to save them - and she led these strange, what the fuck is going on here rituals where participants lay on the floor, violently “birthing” new souls into God’s army.

Women laid down and pretended to have babies, and these pretend babies were souls for God’s army.

Not sure what verse that one’s based on. I must have consistently been given the wrong bibles to study growing up over and over. That probably comes from the Book of Ding Dongs or 2nd Wackadoodles or something.

Imagine watching that ritual.

If you can see that shit and not pack up and leave the compound, I think you’re probably sticking around until the end.

Also - sources don’t say only women are doing this. I just assume that. But who knows? Maybe men had to lay down and push spirit babies out of their poophole loopholes.

For comedic purposes, I hope so.

“PUSSSSSH Bobby! PUSSSSH that soul out of your loophole! (fart noise) Not so hard Bobby! We can’t build god’s army with gas.”

Within a year of forming this compound, life for followers had grown significantly more structured.

Meetings were now held daily. Members now began wearing military uniforms.

During the day, they worked random jobs, some at local frame and art shops, infiltrating the secular world to make some of cold, soulless cash; the overwhelming majority of their income was then folded back into the ministry.

Jim Green - HIS BACK TOO OUCHY NO-NO FOR REAL WORK - filled his new monthly publication, “Battle Cry: Aggressive Christianity,” with illustrations of swords, soldiers, knights in armor, battlements, grotesque demons, devils, lists of feared black arts and a barrage of scenes of violence and confrontation.

I found some pics and Jimmy Buffalo Sun is not surprisingly NOT good at drawing. His back probably hurt too bad for him to put any real focus into it.

The Greens constantly passed along Lila’s “revelations” to followers, even ones so over-the-top obviously stupid they probably should have kept it to themselves. In the July 1984 issue of Battle Cry, Lila Green told followers how God spoke to her and gave her a recipe to prepare “travel bars,” - listing out ingredients such as health-food store powdered milk and directions for wrapping the bars in aluminum foil.

It feels like she mistook hearing god speak to her here with reading an old issue of Betters Homes and Gardens or Good Housekeeping.

Members were now instructed to cut off contact with friends and family who weren’t willing to also join the cult.

“I’m doing this for Jesus,” a 13-year-old girl explained in a farewell letter to her grandmother. “I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.”

NO THANK YOU, NANA SATAN! You made your fricken bed! You chose watching Magnum PI and MacGyver, sleeping in your own bed, cooking casseroles, and watering your tomatoes over sleeping on the floor of God’s Salvation compound and feasting on the Lord’s travel bars.

7. 1985: Somewhere around 1985, the now 38 year-old Lila marks her status as an oracle of the divine by calling herself Deborah, after the only female judge in the Bible. She also gave the group a new name, one that better telegraphed its growing militancy.

Free Love Ministries was FRICKEN OVER - there’s a new sheriff, I mean fake army in town, and its name….. is Poop Pickle Mc Loophole and the Provo Floats.

BOOM SHAKA-LAKA!

JK.

It’s Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.

Jim and Deborah called for the creation of a “holy tribal nation,” a theocracy where “militant holiness” was demanded of all.

Members gave their money to the group - which most were already doing, but now it was ALL their money - and they avoided all forms of popular culture.

There was also particularly intense fixation on the sins of the body.

Per one group document, “We don’t pamper the flesh, for it’s never satisfied. Following Jesus’s example, we die to our desires and crucify the carnal beast within.”

Nice try Wet Pussy! You just got crucified!

No I will NOT slide my hard dick in and out of you, building to climax, thank you very much.

NOPE! Begone Lucifina!

Jesus loves his children, but he HATES their WET PUSSES AND BONERS!”

8. 1987: Two years later, in their 1987 "Responsibilities of Command" officer's manual, the ministry states its new beliefs:

“Our ministry, sometimes known as ACMTC, Holy Tribal Nation, Free Love Ministries, and Life Force Team is completely founded on the Bible and the doctrines therein.

We are also Biblicists.

We believe in Theocratic rule, which means we believe in the divine dictatorship of God Almighty.

We subject everything to the Lord and He takes care of us. We are an intentional community of Christians. The ministry was founded in 1981 by General James and General Deborah Green…

We believe in a military structure, which is partially based off the original pattern of the Salvation Army, commenced by William and Catherine Booth in the mid 1800’s."

I like how they make themselves seem nicer than I’m sure they were, and much more legitimate here, by connecting themselves to a more well known and famously humanitarian Christian organization.

The 1987 description also states its spiritual beliefs:

“(1) His grace is demonstrated that we might be free from captivity, but this freedom is to be used for and unto His ultimate intention.

Your life must be dedicated to God and God alone! No Motley Crue! No Poison! No Warrant! Do not partake in a slice of hair metal Cherry Pie - it will lead only to your damnation!

(2) God always asks that which is impossible to the natural man in order that His people will be dependent upon divine, spiritual resources.

Listen to Debbie Ding Dong. She is God’s most important spiritual resource. Jimmy Buffalo Sun also has some kind of cool drawings of monsters that might help you on your pilgrimage.

(3) God designs all things to function properly under His control. He is not content to merely set us free, but longs to "turn our capacity"; that is, He longs to bring us back into His captivity.

God wants us to lay on the ground and make spirit babies. I know it’s hard to understand that’s what we interpret from that statement, but, mysterious ways and all that.

(4) Man must either submit to God's purpose or become captive to some other law. God's plan will not allow us to live long in liberty apart from law.

Easy on the METH!

(5) God's pattern is not spurts of consecration and dedication, but a consistent walk leading into a continuous unfolding revelation of His plan and purpose.”

You can’t just give your whole paycheck SOMETIMES. God demands more consistent devotion for that. And Jimmy Buffalo Sun needs more expensive art supply pencils for his cool drawings. http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/articles/ what%20we%20believe.htm

Mornings at Fort Freedom are now starting earlier than ever, with a 5 AM service in the Citadel. Gotta keep those recruits tired! Helps keep them confused. All the big cult leaders figured that shit out. Dwight York, Jim Jones, David Koresh. Cult 101 move.

After breakfast, Sarah and the group’s now approximately seven other children received a few hours of homeschooling. Make sure that they can read and write, and learn very little else.

In the evening, there were more services, more prayers, and more chores. Whenever Sarah pushed back against this rigid schedule, her dad Jim beat her with a belt or a switch.

No sparing the rod in the ACMTC.

Sarah tried doing something small, just for herself, like a hobby. She landed on collecting antiques, but even this was forbidden by the group. Thinking the items idolatrous— meaning they thought Sarah worshiped the objects more than God— other members literally chopped them to pieces. One woman still recalls hearing Sarah’s wails from the courtyard.

What were you THINKING going ANTIQUING!?! You’d be better off sucking dick in an opium den, Sarah!

NO PLACE has more sin than an antique shop. Everyone knows that.

Deborah started to demand more enthusiastic worship.

SPEAK IN TONGUES ALREADY! God wants you to babble like an idiot! THAT is when he knows you really love him.

Maura Schmierer, a member in her mid-30s at this time, remembers Deb chastising her for not screaming, vomiting, and writhing on the floor like other members did.

(Cheerleader) “Be aggressive. Be be Aggressive. Writhe on the floor if you don’t want to be Satan’s whore!”

Once, when she was pregnant, Maura’s husband - completely buying into Deborah’s bullshit - told Maura that their baby would be born possessed if she didn’t let go of her demons.

She went full drill sergeant on Maura regarding this, I’m sure!

(Drill Sergeant) Corporal Maura! Do you WANT your baby to be filled with demons you weak-faithed fricken maggot!?! How many of Satan’s children do you hope to fill your infant vessel with, Harlot of Babylon??? 1,000??? One Million??? Let go of your doubt and buy my message completely, Maura Moron! I am god’s apocalyptic oracle - there will be snacks for the final showdown and I will be baking them because God has given me the recipe. You can eat my travel bats, wash my feet, or you can give birth to HELLFIRE! Throw up and babble before you push a demon out your Satan Tunnel!”

Soon, another sin of Maura’s was that she refused to beat her children— well, not her children, exactly.

Her BABY.

She was standing at one of the services and her baby made a little noise, like a gurgle. It wasn’t even crying. It was just a cute noise that was a little distracting. Deborah commanded Maura to go and beat her six month old infant.

That’ll teach that disrespectful little fuck with a stupid little baby brain that can literally not comprehend what disrespect means. PRAISE GOD!

Maura refused.

Deborah called this defiance “spiritual adultery.”

Maura also refused to beat her 2-year-old for not using the toilet.

I’m starting to hate Maura. It’s almost like she WANTS her kids to be infested with Demons.

For this continual disrespect, Maura becomes a target of Deborah’s anger and is now often beaten and abused.

At a service one evening, Deborah ended up banishing Maura to a shed in the backyard where she would have to live for several months.

Maura would claim she was forced to spend so much time in the shed she had a hard time standing fully upright when she was finally released.

A fair punishment. It’s just like God said in a verse that now escapes me, Maura - “If thou art too evil to beat thy baby and thou Almost-Baby, thou must be banished to the sin shed, so sayeth the Lord our God.”

Deborah also gave Maura a new name, “Forsaken,” and made her perform constant menial tasks like carrying rocks and cleaning garbage cans when she wasn’t shed bound.

After she got out of the shed, two other women would later receive the same punishment. Deborah named them “Barren” and “Despised.”

So dramatic this lady.

After several months, Debbie Ding Dong banished Forsaken.

Deb told Maura she had to go. Her non-baby beating ways were really dragging down the spiritual morale of the whole group.

Deb told Her that God said he had no place for Maura in his army. He only wants baby-beaters. They make the strongest soldiers.

At the time, Maura was so tired and brainwashed, she actually felt thankful that her children were permitted to stay behind with their father— it seemed like a great kindness.

But then once she got out and got some rest, she’d come to her senses…

9. 1989: Though initially she was deeply upset at having been asked to leave, Maura soon began to recognize that what she’d experienced was abuse, not a godly community.

In 1989, she sued the ACMTC over how she’d been punished, and she won a $1 million judgment. AND she was reunited with her kids.

The lawyers who represented Maura and spoke with other community members got a good look at this strange community, and, not being cult members, they didn’t like what they saw. They surmised that the Greens were intelligent, crafty fuckers who’d gotten real good at controlling others.

“Lila Green is the real power behind the group,” lawyer Robert Blasier said. “She’s one of those people you look in the eyes and you feel real strange – a Charlie Manson type.”

https://www.apologeticsindex.org/2743-aggressive-christianity- mission-training-corps

I’ve watched some of Lila Deb’s videos - and I agree.

Jim and Deborah Green lost their case partially by refusing to appear in court. HOW DARE the court ask God’s Generals to defend themselves against baseless accusations from FORSAKEN!?!

As part of the judgement all of the group’s buildings were seized by the court.

Deborah, or course, was furious.

Deborah - I mean, GAWD - suddenly called for the compound’s destruction. Time for some smitin’!

Sarah and other members snuck back on Deborah’s orders, climbing over a chain-link fence near an old pomegranate tree.

They destroyed their former compound with sledgehammers, tearing up floors, severing beams, and punching through sheetrock.

Like Christ would have done, they turned the other cheek, grabbed a sledgehammer, and got to swingin’.

A little nod to this can be found today on their website:

“One of the most opposed Scriptures that we believe in is, 1st Corinthians 6:9-10: “Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality, nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor GREEDY GRASPERS,(LIKE SUING ANOTHER CHRISTIAN FOR 20 MILLION DOLLARS!) nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and SLANDERERS, nor EXTORTIONERS and ROBBERS will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.”

http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/articles/ what%20we%20believe.htm

I’m surprised they didn’t just write: “Nor EXTORTIONERS and ROBBERS - looking at you MAURA, you fricken backstabbin’ biscuit!”

10.June 1989:

In June of 1989, the fledgling cult fled Sacramento.

They briefly moved to a location near Cool, California - little town of around 4,000 now about 40 miles northeast of Sacramento.

Real place. Never heard of the town of Cool, California before. Love that name. Wish it was near towns called Siiiick, Drippy, So Awesome, and Fuck Yeah, Bro.

“Should only take you about an hour to get to Cool. Drive towards, SIIIICK, then take a right on Main Street when you get to Drippy, than drive right on through So Awesome and take the Cool cutoff just outside of Fuck Yeah, Bro!”

In Cool, the group was accused of conducting militaristic training exercises.

There, the group called itself Free Land Mountain for a while.

Next, they settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The tumult of the lawsuit and subsequent loss of their compound took a toll on membership, which by that September had declined to just nineteen people.

Yikes.

Wonder how Debbie Ding Dong spun that? I’m gonna guess she sold some story of God was testing their faith. God wanted to make sure the ACMTC wasn’t a bunch of wishy washy band-wagoners just sticking around during the fun times when they’re giving all their money to the compound, getting barely any sleep, constantly hearing about how Satan is everywhere, beating the shit out of infants, studying the Bible every day, and pretending to give birth to spirit babies in the compound basement.

I mean - OF COURSE you’re gonna stick around for all that fun. But what about when the going gets tough!?!

Quality of life fell along with membership numbers in late 1989 and 1990.

Much of the group’s food was now coming from dumpsters. It was tough for members to get steady jobs to help cover cult bills.

Locals mocked the Amish-style clothes that members wore while selling random goods around town. Baked goods, arts and crafts type stuff.

In Klamath Falls, they were soon able to open up a restaurant, but residents were so suspicious of the group that they refused to eat their, cutting off the group’s primary source of income.

I bet service was a little weird too.

I picture the waiters and waitresses wearing cammo and combat boots, and aggressively taking your order.

(Drill Sergeant Style) “Welcome to God’s Wrath Cafe, Heathen Maggot! You are not worthy of our divine nourishment but we will serve you anyhow because we are pious and righteous!

Today’s special is God’s Fricken’ Travel Bar! We also have a mean spaghetti BOLOGNESE. Deborah was given both recipes by the Almighty, so if you don’t like them, you are with THE DEVIL! Are we clear HEATHEN!?!

We also have FLIPPING COKE PRODUCTS including Fanta and Barq’s Root Beer which I feel pairs nicely with the SPAGHETTI!”

A local Klamath resident named Sue Todd remembered the group years after they left, saying: “They called themselves the Aggressive Christian Ministry Oregon. The girls all wore blue skirts, knee-high socks and red or maroon sweaters. Some had babies. The community pretty much ignored them. They bought a couple houses – left them in shambles.” https://www.apologeticsindex.org/2743-aggressive-christianity- mission-training-corps

Weird that they ditched the military garb for a bit. God must have told them to chill for awhile on that. Build their numbers back up first before getting militant.

Or maybe they couldn’t afford them at the time. STUPID MAURA has ruined SO MUCH for them.

Things don’t go well for them in Oregon.

Sarah becomes depressed. Her weight dropped to just seventy- nine pounds.

She wanted to attend midwifery school, but she knows that her mom will never let her leave. When she approaches the topic, her mother forbids her from applying.

Her parents also encourage her more intensely to get married— something they’d been doing since she was twelve.

In her teenage years, Sarah had already rejected numerous proposals from various men in the cult who saw marriage as a way to gain status with her parents.

11.1990: In 1990, not long before Sarah’s eighteenth birthday, she finally gives into her parents’ demands to get married.

In an unofficial ceremony, she weds a 28 year-old cult member.

She’d later say she didn’t particularly like this guy, but worried her parents would match her with someone else she liked less who was much older if she kept resisting.

There was also the hopeful promise of motherhood; she thought, that perhaps a baby might give her something to live for.

Doesn’t sound like life is real fun in this cult. FUN IS FOR THE DEVIL!

12.1993: At some point in 1991 or 1993, the group relocates to some land near Berino, New Mexico, a small farming town of about 1,500 just north of the Mexico border, right on the New Mexico and Texas border.

A place with, based on some yelp ratings, some REAL good bbq and taco joints and not a lot else. I’m sure it’s lovely. Actually, I’m not sure. I HOPE it’s lovely.

In 1993, when Sarah is twenty-one, she gives birth in an old, brick former schoolhouse that the ACMTC was then calling home.

The child, a boy, arrived early and was tiny. Sarah pressured her parents to let her visit a hospital, where the medical staff insisted that the baby boy was too premature to not leave in the hospital.

But Deborah argued and an elderly pediatrician finally relented, allowing Sarah to take the child back on the condition that they return for a checkup in a week’s time.

They didn’t go back. Luckily, the kid survives.

Back at the schoolhouse, Sarah now tried to find something to do for herself by transforming a desert plot into a garden. She planted vegetables and herbs, as well as plants like clematis, passion fruit, and trumpet vine.

She threw herself into cult work, making incense, soaps, and baked goods that members sold while seeking new recruits in neighboring cities.

Somehow, the cult made enough money doing this shit to to fund some missions to a variety of countries including India, Nigeria, and Malawi, where Deborah would look for new recruits.

I bet she focused on potential members with deep enough pockets to help bankroll her bullshit.

There was also another motivation for these trips - Deborah was scouting out new places to flee too and build a new compound if they ever got into expensive legal trouble again.

Almost cult-member Bob Heddon was able to provide a little insight into what life was like in this cult at this time.

13.1995: In 1995, Bob 65, who was living in El Paso at the time - just under thirty miles from Berino, thought about joining the ACMTC but quickly changed his mind.

Heddon was still recovering emotionally from the recent death of his wife, and was looking for Christian fellowship and Bible study.

What he found in Berino was something quite different.

Instead of a Bible study, he found that group members wore black uniforms with berets, and saluted and addressed each other by military titles.

“There wasn’t a Bible in sight,” Heddon said. “They had sort of holy roller-type prayer meetings in the mornings and in the evenings where everyone rolled around on the floor and talked in tongues.”

Sounds fun.

He noticed that the group’s members were REALLY isolated from the rest of the world.

No televisions, radios, or even children’s toys for the kids were anywhere in sight.

On the bottom floor of the converted schoolhouse was a huge kitchen, where ”soldiers” baked hundreds of loaves of bread every morning.

The upper floor was full of copies of Wisdom’s Cry, a tabloid newspaper currently being published and mostly written by the group’s leaders.

First they had “Battle Cry” and now they have “Wisdom’s Cry.” I really tried to find a copy of one of these publications online and I’m not sure that exists. The links on their website no longer work properly.

I did find an excerpt of one of her sermons online though. Let’s see what Debbie Ding Dong was talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA3OLD0YUa4 PLAY FROM 7:00 - to end.

BE AFRAID, MEATSACKS! BE VERY AFRAID!

Felt like she was speaking directly to me calling me a fool for my mockery there.

I wish I could have sat through one of Deborah’s sermons. I would’ve loved to interrupt her and watcher her try to beat me like a baby.

“Excuse me, Deb! Sorry to interrupt but I was told there would be snacks. When are we having the snacks?”

And then, after she gets back into it, interrupt her again about 30 seconds later. “Hey Deb, are you sure you were paying close attention to God when he gave you the travel bar recipe, because, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, it feels like they could use more sugar. Maybe a bit more butter. Salted butter. I’m sure God knows that everything’s better with a bit more butter and sugar.”

Then after being screamed at for awhile and promising to let her continue uninterrupted, letting her go for about 15 seconds before,

“Sorry Deb - don’t mean to mess up your flow yet again, but, I think I might have a spirt baby in my bottom. I want to let it out, but I’m afraid it might just be gas. And I don’t want to toot or, heaven forbid, shart during your sermon.

Should I roll the dice and see what loopholes out of my poophole, or go to the bathroom? I also don’t want to flush a possible soldier in god’s army down the toilet. Follow up question: Deb - can a turd be one of god’s soldiers in disguise?

What? God just told you to give me my dishonorable discharge papers? Fine. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been real impressed with your army.”

Bob Heddon wasn’t impressed with her army either. He estimated only 10 to 12 people lived at the Berino compound, most of them adults, a few in their teens.

https://www.apologeticsindex.org/2743-aggressive-christianity- mission-training-corps

They’d soon leave Berino and settle in Fence Lake, New Mexico where they soon have THOUSANDS OF MEMBERS! THEY’D GROW STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE THE US MILITARY FEAR THEM!

US Secretary of Defense at the time, future VP Dick Cheney, was quoted as saying, “Iraq concerns me. North Korea bothers me. Russia and China SCARE me. But only the Aggressive Christian Military Training Corps, under General Deborah Greene’s leadership - TERRIFY me and keep me up at night. Even the full might of the US military might not be enough to defeat God’s Army.”

JK of course.

They’d stay small and pathetic in Fence Lake.

14. July 1997: In July 1997, Deborah and Jim Green purchase 640 acres that had been parts of the old Tingle Ranch in Fence Lake, New Mexico.

They got a good deal on the land because almost no one wants to live anywhere near Fence Lake.

Apologies to all my Fence Lake listeners, but this place is an absolute and total fucking shit hole.

Thanks to Google Street and Satellite Views for letting me look around long enough to be absolutely certain I will never ever waste even a minute of my life traveling to this land of a few dirty, dilapidated buildings, surrounded by dusty parking lots, one paved road - the highway - and miles and miles of flat, barren desert.

It’s not a town. It's a post office surrounded by dusty ranches. Literally not one restaurant.

As of least a few years ago, it still didn’t even have cell phone service.

It looks like a place where you’d film a dystopian horror movie. It looks like where a clan of inbred, cannibal hillbillies would be holed up in an abandoned shack 50 years after some kind of atomic apocalypse wiped the world out, looking for drifters to fuck and eat. Not necessarily in that order.

But, you know, if you live there and you like it, and you listen to this podcast, I am fucking…. SURPRISED.

Sell your land and move. Gosh Dang. You’ll be happier being homeless on the beach around San Diego than you’ll be as a land-baron in that dusty wasteland.

As of the 2010 census, Fence Lake New Mexico had a population of 42.

According to local residents, the name was derived from the original settlers having to fence off the only good pond in the area, to keep animals from shitting in it.

Perfect.

The ACMTC settled about ten miles east of the town and called their compound Shim Ra Na Ekklisia, or sometimes Miracle River.

The Greens used the Fence Lake Post Office to mail out their publications.

And what brought them to Fence Lake? Why leave when they were killing it in Berino?

Well - they kind of stole a baby and felt they had to flee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_Lake,_New_Mexico

15.1997: In 1997, after a mission trip through East Africa, Debbie Ding Dong returned home with big news.

She claimed to have met a pregnant young woman who had agreed to give the group her baby.

Why did the group want her baby? Or any baby? That’s never made clear.

The ACMTC would accept the child through what Deborah called a “closed adoption”; the handoff would involve no government agencies or official oversight.

Not suspicious at all.

The young mother had apparently agreed to the plan because Deborah had promised to give the child a better life in America, and because the mother worried a newborn might derail her dreams for the future.

At least, that was what Deborah said.

Deborah assigned her daughter Sarah to go get this baby. She would take it to the local American Consulate and claim it as her own. Sarah, who had recently had a second son that lived and was still lactating, was told to claim the baby as her own.

To explain how Sarah, a white woman, had given birth to a Black baby, Sarah was told to tell the officials that the father was a local man and had returned to America.

Obviously, this is seeming less and less like adopting, and more and more like… kidnapping now.

Sarah thought she was doing the right thing - she actually thought the mother wanted to give up the baby. But she also knew that she had no choice and that she and her sons would be punished if she didn’t go.

16. November 1997: Shortly before Thanksgiving in 1997, Sarah got on a plane to retrieve the newborn. Strapped to her legs was $10,000 in cash.

Deborah’s scheme was going exactly as planned.

On accepting the baby, Sarah gave the mother $1,000, money the young woman seemed not to have expected. She then secured a Consular Report of Birth Abroad declaring herself the mother.

Together with the baby, she boarded a plane and headed home.

She returned back to Berino, where Sarah started raising the little girl as her own.

Several months later, however, the group heard from the girl’s aunt, who was in the U.S. and wanted to visit. Deborah panicked, afraid that the woman would take away the child.

So maybe the aunt did NOT want to visit. Maybe she wanted to retrieve her kidnapped baby.

Deb decided to pack up and move again.

ACMTC members wandered in a caravan for several weeks, making their way through Utah and Colorado. They last they landed back in the desert of western New Mexico.

Sarah now thought about leaving.

She’d thought about it for years, and the same roadblocks still existed. What about the children? She loved being a mom and desperately wanted to get her kids access to education and healthcare. But at the same time, she knew life outside the cult would be just as insecure, as she only had a couple of day’s worth of money squirreled away and didn’t have a real job or even a resume.

She wondered if it was even possible on a physical level— how would she leave with three small children?

Soon - she’d meet a possible way out.

17. Summer 1999: In the summer of 1999, a young man briefly became involved with ACMTC.

He was a wanderer from either Australia or New Zealand — Sarah wasn’t sure which.

They started taking long walks together. Before long, Sarah began to have feelings for him. She soon revealed she was thinking about running away.

As fall approached, a plan began to take shape.

The young man was headed to Canada to renew his visa. Sarah said she’d go with him. This meant leaving without her kids— which broke her heart— but she made up her mind to return for them when she’d established herself.

The day before she left, Sarah packed a backpack with photos of her kids, her parents, and her brother along with some granola bars, a water bottle, and a stack of evangelizing tracts. She planned to use the flyers as an alibi if she got caught, saying she wasn’t running away, she was looking for more recruits.

That night, she read her kids stories and squeezed them tight. She wrote them each a letter, telling them she loved them and would return to them soon.

Then she got in bed and waited.

18. September 1999: At around midnight on a night in September of 1999, Sarah Green got out of bed and crept from the house. A full moon illuminated her path to a small stack, where she’d hidden a backpack in preparation for her escape.

Sarah was twenty-six.

Rushing past some flower beds, Sarah glanced back at the shacks and scattered trailers on the compound.

Nervous sweat ran down her back as she listened for the yelp of dogs who prowled the property. She crouched by the wood stack and waited for the young man.

Soon her hero appeared.

The two now walked quietly to a stone wall at the edge of the compound. They threw their bags over and climbed to the other side.

And then they ran and ran and ran.

Eventually they hitchhiked their way to Los Angeles, where they then took a bus north to Seattle, where they camped out under a bridge.

The young man continued on to Canada without Sarah.

Despite her feelings for him, Sarah was worried about actually leaving the country.

She moved into a church shelter and got a job at a coffee shop.

Once she’d saved up a little money, she rented a room from a pair of nudists and slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.

Wish I knew more about her time there. What a strange life transition, to go from people preaching every day about how sinful sexuality is, to moving in with some dude who probably starts his day making pancakes with his balls out.

Though she worked constantly and missed her kids, Sarah was also enjoying her newfound freedom.

She ate whatever she wanted. She wore whatever she wanted. She went to art galleries, and to the park, and to the library. At the grocery store, she bought processed foods like cup ramen, almond Hershey’s bars, and powdered mini-doughnuts. Fuck yeah. Mini-doughnuts - those might actually be one of god’s miracles.

She saw a play called Metamorphoses.

She’d literally never done things like this before.

Still— she felt overwhelmed with guilt on a daily basis. She worried that she had condemned herself to hell by fleeing. Everyday frustrations made her wonder if God was judging her. She worried about her kids. She struggled with feeling like she’d abandoned them.

Then, nine months after her escape, Sarah got a call from Deborah.

She was shocked her mother had tracked her down, perhaps through cards she had sent her kids. After begging Sarah to return, Deborah put Sarah’s husband on the line, who also begged her to come back.

Sarah refused - but now stayed in contact with the cult.

Deborah played things somewhat cool back in Fence Lake, but, had gone ballistic over Sarah’s escape.

“She went cuckoo,” former ACMTC member Julie Gudino said. “I watched that lady go crazy in front of my face.”

And that’s saying something.

This is coming from someone who DID NOT thing Deb was “cuckoo” back when she was just telling her that god spoke to her, the the end was coming soon, and was wearing a general’s outfit, demanding that crying infants be beaten, and presiding over crazy sessions of speaking in tongues and kicking out spirit babies.

All that shit and more was totally sane. But NOW - she’d gone “CRAZY!”

Deborah began going on ferocious fasts, not eating for days or weeks at a time and demanding the same of her army.

In particularly fiery sermons, she raged about Sarah’s wanton ways.

She lost her shit. What little shit she had left by this point.

She began subjecting members to more appalling punishments than ever, especially to the little girl Sarah had brought to America.

According to claims later made in court - claims that would lead to guilty verdicts - in the years following Sarah’s departure, Deborah tortured this poor girl physically, emotionally, and also sexually.

Is that why this sick fuck wanted this kid?

She forced her to perform hard labor and beat her with a whip that a detective compared to a cat-o’-nine-tails.

She deprived her of sufficient nutrition to the point she developed rickets out in the New Mexico heat.

Her softening bones grew visibly misshapen.

According to another former member, she justified some of the physical abused by explaining to followers that God might want to return the girl to her home country, in which case He needed her to be strong and tough.

She needed rickety bones to brave the trials and tribulations of her homeland!!

19. June 2000: Meanwhile, back in Seattle, by June of 2000, Jimmy Buffalo Sun and Debbie Ding Dong’s daughter Sarah was still trying to eke out a life for herself in Seattle while also communicating with the cult, hoping to figure out how to reunite with her children without having to rejoin her parent’s cult.

“Praise God, we are all glad to have had contact with you after so many months,” Deborah wrote to Sarah in a June 2000 email. “You are coming back, you are going to be delivered of the demons that have held you in captivity.”

I wonder if she’s referring to those mini-donuts when she talks about demons? Eat enough of them, and it will feel like your stomach’s full of demons.

Sarah wrote her mother back about her “little sinfull [sic] binge” in Seattle.

“I still love you all very much no matter what a mess I’ve made of my life,” she wrote in one letter. At the end of an email to Deborah, she signed off as “your worthless daughter who is finally starting to see herself.”

Not sure how much of that self-loathing was genuine, and how much was just what Sarah knew her mother would want to hear.

Some of it probably was self-loathing. She found it hard to escape the brainwashing or her entire childhood - OF COURSE she did.

She was conflicted.

Though Sarah was glad to have left ACMTC, she still carried her mother’s teachings with her, sometimes mentally, sometimes literally. Sometimes Deborah mailed her religious tracts to distribute, and though Sarah discarded most of them, she also left a few around town, thinking perhaps they could help someone.

Her first year on the outside was marked by mixed belief and unbelief.

“Many days I just wake up hating my whole existence of every thing that i have every done,” she emailed an old friend from the group in December 2000. “I turned 28 yesterday and I felt a lot older than that.”

Sarah took a few nursing classes. She met a man at the coffee shop she worked at, started dating him, and soon got pregnant.

Ten months after their baby was born, she decided to fulfill the promise she had made to return to New Mexico for her kids, now ages 7, 5, and 4. She wrote letters home falsely suggesting she might rejoin the group; she knew that without such assurances, her parents would never allow her on the compound.

The letters worked and she was invited back.

20. Spring 2002: In the spring of 2002, with her new baby in tow, Sarah arrived back in glorious old Fence Lake. The land where dreams go to die and be buried in the dust. Unless that dream is to be a cattle rancher who hates the color green, loves the desert, hates eating out, going to the movies, high speed internet, coffee shops, civilization, and seeing other people who don’t also work on your ranch. THEN - it’s paradise.

Two and a half years had passed since Sarah had last seen her children. Her oldest son wouldn’t come near her. The younger boy was happy to see her, and her daughter ran and clung to her and wouldn’t let go.

“I want to take you home so bad,” Sarah whispered her daughter’s ear.

When Sarah broached the possibility of taking the children, she and her baby were quickly driven back to the bus stop. Believing she would never see them again, she broke down and started sobbing.

She later learned the raincoats and books she’d brought as gifts had been burned with the trash.

21. 2003: In 2003, Sarah had another baby with her boyfriend in Seattle. She then moved to New York; and her relationship with the children’s father ended soon after. She worked at an engineering firm, at a café, and also as a movie extra while also helping with friends’ births as a midwife.

Life continues on as crazy as ever back at Fence Lake.

22. September 21, 2006: On September 21st, 2006, Maura Schmierer goes on the Dr. Phil show to speak about her experiences in ACCM with her daughter, Rebekah.

https://www.drphil.com/shows/756/

On the show, Rebekah described her childhood in the cult.

”I became a member of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps when I was 12 years old. My parents were friends with Jim and Deborah Green. They appointed themselves to be generals, and they assigned ranks, basically, on how dedicated people were."

Rebekah says that when she was 17, the Greens ordered her to get married. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to a son. She says the Greens even tried to dictate her child's discipline. "I whipped my son because I was instructed to,” she said. “I was afraid of Deborah Green. I did it because I was told to, and I knew it wasn't right.”

https://www.drphil.com/slideshows/cult-confrontations-maura/

Another former member, Paula, would speak on the same episode, about the trauma of watching her daughter Stacy still be in the ACMTC.

Paula would say:

"After college, Stacy got a job in Missouri.

Brian, her now husband, was working there.

He started talking with her about religion and things like that. Stacy told me she had gone to one of these prayer meetings, and there was a prophet there. She said, 'Mom, the prophet told me that I'm going to marry Brian, and you're going to have a son within a year.' Less than seven months after Stacy and Brian met, I got a phone call and she said, 'Mom, by the way, we're getting married next Saturday. You can come if you want to.' It was in a little country church, and it was a frightening experience.

This was more like a funeral. The wedding service was like hellfire and damnation."

Shortly after the wedding, Paula learned that her daughter had joined the group Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps in New Mexico.

She received a disturbing letter from Stacy. It said: “Do not try to contact me and please leave me alone. Let me go and live my own life the way I want to.”

Cult! Cult! Cult! Fuck your family! They will only drag you down into Hell! We’re you’re family now!

Paula fell to the floor and sobbed. How was she supposed to get her daughter back?

Situations like this make me think, randomly, of mass shootings.

Stay with me.

Why can’t a mass shooting ever be productive?

Hear me out.

You hear about yet another mass shooting and your heart aches, right?

BUT THEN - what if you hear that the mass shooter was the parent of a cult member, who went and lit up the cult hierarchy, putting a bunch of angry, adult lunatics who don’t seem real happy to be alive in the first place down in the desert in order to retrieve their child and save those not yet totally brainwashed?

Probably NOT a great idea - I know, I know - but real fucking fun for me to entertain as a vengeance-filled fantasy.

Hail Nimrod!

In 1997, Paula’s daughter Stacy had been there about a year, a year and a half. And all contact had been cut off. All the letters she were coming back. No phone calls.

Not willing to just let go of her grown daughter, STRONG MAMMA BEAR Paula called the sheriff’s department in New Mexico.

The sheriff told her that he’d take Paula down there and that he advised against going down there by herself.

Hail whoever this Sheriff was!

I bet he was curious as Hell about these zealot weirdos.

The two went to the compound, knocked on one of the doors, and asked for Stacy. When Stacy came to the door, Paula was shocked by her eyes— so glassy and expressionless. She told her mother that she was no longer Paula. She was now Gracious River.

Great.

Stacy was allowed to stay at the compound for a few nights.

The last day of the visit, Stacy said, “Mom, you can come back, just let us know and please bring Wendy.”

Wendy was Stacy’s sister, Paula’s other daughter.

Paula, of course, would never do that.

She also, as far as we know, has never seen her daughter again.

Soon after her visit, Paula received an ominous phone call from Stacy, who said: “This is Gracious River. I'm calling to inform you to never contact me again. You're no longer my mother. This is my family now.”

She hung up the phone.

Paula tried to go back, twice, to see her but now wasn’t allowed inside.

How maddening.

Dr. Phil arranged for Paula to travel to the group's compound with one of the nation's top private investigators and former FBI agent, Harold Copus.

Harold and his crew were NOT welcomed with open arms into the compound.

A bearded man warily approached them when they walked onto the ranch. Harold reaches out to shake the man's hand, but the man doesn’t offer his.

“What did you need?" the man asks.

Harold tries to placate the stranger. "I'm a private investigator. I'm working with the Dr. Phil show. This lady's daughter joined y'alls group."

"There's nobody here," the man replies.

Haha! What a weird reply.

“NOPE! She can’t be here ‘cause there’s NOBODY here. Not even me! I’m a hologram. You’re seeing some Obi-Wan Kenobi shit right now.”

Paula shows the man a picture of her daughter. "This is my daughter. This is Stacy. Gracious River. I come from a long way. I came to see my daughter."

"She's not here,” the man maintains.

"Help us out and tell us where she is," says Harold.

"She doesn't live here," the man insists.

Harold asks several more times, and each time, the bearded man answers in the negative, and then asks the crew to leave.

When the Dr. Phil crew stands its ground, the bearded man becomes aggressive, pushing the cameras away. "I'm just telling you to get back in the car and go!" he yells.

At that point, a second man briskly emerges from the compound. "Who are these people? Dr. Phil, is that it?”

Whoa! I thought NOBODY was there? Is this another hologram?

"Yeah, I know who they are. To me, I don't trust them as far as I can throw ‘em," the bearded man tells Harold brusquely. "If they don't get off the property, we're going to physically remove them, and you guys are going off with them."

Right here. This is where my cult execution fantasy begins. These are the first two guys to get blasted. 9mm. Hollow point bullets. Silencer. Two quick head shots.

Yes I know body shots are more practical but it’s MY FANTASY where I am the best shot on earth.

"I don't mean any trouble. I just want to see my daughter," Paula says.

The men aren’t budging.

"If your daughter is not here, what are we supposed to do for you?" the second man lies. "She's not here, and that's as far as this is going to go."

It would be real hard for this guy to say that in my inner movie, ‘cause he’s dead and gone at this point. I’ve already moved towards the main entrance of the compound with plenty of bullets.

With no ability to legally force their way past them, Paula and the crew return to their hotel. NOT in Fence Lake because there is no hotel there.

Later, Paula would be interviewed again on Dr. Phil about the cult’s behavior.

“Were you shocked at how aggressive they were when they were talking to you?" Dr. Phil asks.

"No, I've seen them almost that bad before," she replies.

Dr. Phil tries to make sense of the sect's logic. "Doesn't it seem odd that somebody who is supposedly a God-based group, is out there threatening you, and putting their finger in your face?" he asks.

Paula agrees. "It's directly opposite of what they profess," she says.

"Do you believe she was there that day?"

"I know she was. I have no doubt in mind she was there," Paula insists. "I felt her presence there."

At the end of the interview, Dr. Phil assures Paula that, even though she was unsuccessful in seeing her daughter at the compound, he won't give up. "I left a message for Deborah Green. I would like the opportunity to sit down with you, and Stacy, and her two children away from everybody else, and let's just talk about it," he tells her. "You're going to continue looking. Harold, we'll stay on this."

Of course— Deborah Green would not take him up on this.

Like many other people in this story, Dr. Phil makes clear that rescuing Stacy from the compound is more complicated than it appears. "Everybody is saying: 'Why don't you just get the law and go in there and do an inventory?' These are complex questions, but we're drilling down on them," he says. https://www.drphil.com/slideshows/cult-confrontations-paula- and-stacy/

He’s right. It is sadly so complicated. Even if Paula did forcibly remove her grown daughter, what would stop her from returning?

I’ll tell you what - her old cult being gunned down in the desert!!! Liam Neeson taken style. A man with a special set of sills that mostly involves gunning down cult leaders and cult upper management.

That would, whether being a moral decision or not, prevent Paula’s daughter from continuing to be trapped in THIS cult. 23. 2006: In 2006, back at the compound in New Mexico, Sarah’s daughter breaks her femur in what Jim and Deborah said was a swing-set accident.

The injury is bad enough that it prompts them to finally take the girl to a nearby hospital.

Crazy that General Debbie Ding Dong wasn’t spiritually strong enough to pray the bone back together. Fucking WEAK, Deb. WEAK.

Immediately suspicious about the possibility of abuse, the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department gets involved and the girl is taken into state custody and entered into foster care.

Jim and Deborah, through their continued correspondence with Sarah, inform her they’ve lost custody of the girl, but provide no other details.

Sarah reached out to New Mexico authorities in an effort to find her daughter, but her efforts go nowhere.

As for her boys, Sarah didn’t know what to do.

She worried that if she tried to involve the police, her other kids would also be taken into foster care, or her mom would take everyone had go on the run, perhaps to another country like she’d previously talked about and planned for.

Sarah sent her sons emails on their birthdays but she never received a reply. For her part, Deborah wrote Sarah to claim her older boy had “manifested some of the spirits that were trying to take control of your life. But he is very profound for his age and he readily admits when he has been tricked or duped by the devil.”

“Profound”? Or… “brainwashed”?

Deborah told Sarah’s children that Sarah “was no longer a living soul, that she was just a dead person on her way to hell.”

You know, Deb and I don’t always agree, but… this feels fair.

Deb’s letters to her daughter Sarah start getting angrier around now.

“STOP BEHAVING AS A SPOILED CHILD BEFORE GOD,” Deborah wrote in a 2012 email. “REALIZE YOU ARE A SINNER AND REPENT BEFORE YOU SPEND ETERNITY IN HELL.”

Again- not Deb’s biggest fan, but, this also feels pretty fair. I thought earlier Sarah was kind of acting like a spoiled child before god but didn’t want to say anything.

Though Sarah still wondered and worried about the children she’d left behind, she was finding some happiness in New York.

Raising the kids she’d had outside the group, she got to be the kind of mom she wanted to be, sending her kids to school, treating them well, not beating the fuck out of them and lecturing them day in and day out about god’s wrath.

24. 2012: In 2012, Maura Schmierer, that member who’d sued Deborah and Jim back in the 90s, now goes on the National Geographic Television show “I Escaped a Cult” to tell her story.

I love Maura. Not giving up exposing these clowns. She has a Youtube channel were she still posts about crazy Deb is.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4716264/

Meanwhile, life continues as it has been for years for the cult in Fence Lake. Very little is written about their day to day details. They just keep surviving.

25. January 1, 2017: On January 1st, 2017, God apparently tells Debbie Ding Dong that God put Donald Trump into the oval office to defeat Satan.

QAnon babble here WE COME.

On April 7th, 2017, the publish on their website:

“ON JAN. 1, 2017, God’s Spirit declared (to us) that it was time for “Holy War” against the nations of the world. The Spirit also told us that God put Donald Trump into the office of President of the United States. He said that Trump was “His choice.” That is all He said. Whereas when Obama became president in 2008, the Spirit gave a long Prophetic Word about Obama being a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

Four and-a-half years later, still no holy war.

Huh.

What God will use Trump for is yet to be seen. We do know that the Spirit told us that God used him to “cast down Jezebel - Hillary — HELLary Clinton,” as He used Jehu in the book of the Kings (see 1 and 2 Kings). What he will use Trump for after this, He did not say.”

Weird.

What IS God doing with Trump? Still waiting and he’s no longer President. And - HELL-ary is alive and well. And so is Obama.

It feels almost like the three of them have played no role whatsoever in any type of spiritual plan.

Mysterious ways! So, so, so mysterious. ‘Cause MAGIC!

The ACMTC continues in 2017 with their infinite wisdom, posting on their site:

“It is not a new thing for God to use “evil” men / nations to punish other “evil” men / nations. Our stand on the Trump issue is that God CHOSE him to do what needs to be done — for “good” or for “evil.”

That's a weird fucking take.

“Look everyone - ALL I know is that God wants to do SOMETHING with Trump. Maybe use him to defeat Satan. OR - maybe use him to help Satan win and bring so much misery and pain to the world.

It’s hard to say!

Maybe use him to do what nearly every President in recent history has done and complain that they’re not able to follow through on a variety of campaign promises because of political opposition and corruption in Washington and that’s why the rich keep getting richer and the middle class keeps shrinking.

It’s, again - not to keep beating this word to death… mysterious.”

THE ACMTC post continues:

America has committed a sea of sins / crimes. Blood of the innocent (and guilty) runs deep! Unless this nation REPENTS, I mean really REPENTS!!!, God is going to bring Holy War upon her like never before. This is not a mere threat; this is a solemn promise.

So many sins, you guys. Like… the MOST ever. I feel like Pornhub consumption may be responsible for about 50% of them.

Damn you Lucifina! Every time I jerk off to the images you tell me to check out - which seem to have pretty much consistently revolved around pinup style lingerie, light BDSM gear, and curvy lades for the last two decades - you bring a Holy War a little bit closer.

Begone Lucifina! I have a Devil boner right just talking about those images.

They continue:

And, America is not the only nation that is GUILTY. I said from the get-go of my preachings and writings: GOD HAS DECLARED WW3!

WW3? Hot dang.

So, don’t be surprised at what you see and hear. There is a terrible WAR being waged right now for the soul of America. There are many players and many nations involved. None of us know how things will go. But we can count on the FACT that God wants men and nations to REPENT, including the backslid Church. Especially the Church.

Thank God.

At LEASTI don’t go to church where the most evil is. Thank God it’s spiritually safer to beat that Sunday morning boner back down at home.

Wait….

Wait, wait, wait!

Maybe that IS spiritual warfare? Maybe my dick gets possessed by the Devil from time to time - not as often as when I was in my twenties but still pretty often - and then my RIGHT HAND OF THE RIGHTEOUS - with God’s help, of course - beats the Devil out!

Whoa. I’m having a spiritual breakthrough right now!

Maybe I’m not even really jerking off?

Maybe Jesus is - hear me out - kind of giving me a holy handy - NOT IN A GAY WAY - just in a HOLY - Go on, Devil, GIT!!!! - kind of way.

Aaaaaaa-men.

The ACMTC continues:

We’re not to put our trust in prez D. Trump or any other man, woman, or system. Don’t be drug into a phoney “patriotism,” for it has been this very thing that has grieved the Holy Spirit — IDOLATRY. God hates idolatry as well as adultery and all forms of sexual and political perversions.

Interesting. Don’t worship HELL-ary OR Trump. Okay, Debbie Ding Dong… I’m listening. Trying to figure out where this is going.

We must continue to sound the Battle Cry against all forms of crime and sin that covers this land. Continue to lift up JESUS CHRIST THE LORD, not any man, woman, or system.

It is God’s prerogative whom He chooses to use or abuse. The sane thing for all of us to do is keep repenting and keep trying to obey the LORD.

Don’t look for a “rapture,” my dear fellow believers, but look to “endure” and “persevere.”” http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/index.htm

Endure and persevere in the New Mexican desert everyone! Keep baking that bread! We’re doing right. Doing it RIGHT!

Anyone else blown away by the irony of Debbie using the word, “Sane”?

Further 2017 and 2018 writings from the website reveal the ACMTC got pretty real into some things we’ve covered here a lot — like Pizzagate and QAnon Deep State shit.

I’m not surprised at all by that.

But very surprised these fuckers had internet access.

Jim Green wrote a series of articles called “Pedophilia Explained. Pedophile Predators Exposed!”

Pretty ironic considering what’s going to be revealed about the cult soon. http://www.cultofthelivinggod.net/Homo/ Preying%20Peds%201-6/Preying%20Peds%201-6.htm

Jimmy Buffalo Sun - former Mr. METH, the artist who formerly threw a lot knives around in the woods all hopped up on Satan’s Soundtrack AKA The WHO and LED ZEPPLIN, wrote:

“THE NECROPHILOUS LEFT are obsessed with MURDERING the TRUTH. Queen Jezebel of the Old Testament had the true Prophets of God MURDERED! It goes without saying that we know who their father was and is—SATAN (John 8:44; Mt. 13:38)

Holy shit. The Left is fucking corpses now?

I’m okay with Biden fucking a corpse here and there, actually.

I mean, he’s what? 105? 116? It feels with him, necrophilia is like less about having sex with a dead body and more about being attracted to others your own age.

C’MON! That low hanging fruit joke was right there. Hey-O!!

The ACMTC then writes:

Practitioners are burning Trump’s photo while chanting “so might it be!” or Trump’s famed catchphrase, “You’re fired!” over and over… visualizing President Trump being blown apart into dust or ash.

These death/filth eaters wholeheartedly believe that President Trump, his GOP staff, and the whole Christian camp, are garbage! And poor Madonna, it was reported that she too placed a CURSE on Trump–with a broken heart…DEVASTATED!”

Oh Madonna! Sure, you may have great health, fame, and hundreds of millions of dollars - but do you have the blessing of the ACMTC? Frick no! Get ready to feel some flames - harlot!

26. Summer 2017:

Let’s reconnect with Sarah now.

She still doesn’t have all of her kids, but she also still hasn’t returned to the compound and she’s surviving out in NYC. And I find that beyond impressive for someone raised by Jimmy and Debbie. Mr. and Mrs. General Dumbfuck.

She has overcome SO much.

One day in the summer of 2017, Sarah gets a call from an investigator.

At first, she thought it was a prank. Then she gets another call.

After a third voice-mail, Sarah finally called back.

A year earlier, the local sheriff’s department had learned that a 12- year-old boy had died on the compound; he was denied medical treatment and eventually became septic from a case of originally easily treatable flu.

According to one witness, after three weeks of being sick, the malnourished 12-year-old's head became deformed and pus began leaking from his forehead. He’d gotten some kind of abscess.

He first lost his ability to speak. And then his ability to move his right side.

And still he wasn’t taken to the hospital. Not after Sarah’s adopted daughter was taken from them. General Deb now knows he’ll be taken too - and once authorities see him, an investigation will likely open up.

Like really sick, untreated people often do - this poor boy dies and was then illegally and improperly buried on ACMTC property.

No authorities were notified.

And the Sheriff’s office, when they finally heard about it, put out a warrant for the boy’s mother’s arrest.

When she was arrested, the woman explained to investigators that she did not take her son to the hospital because "she wanted to trust God.”

Not sure what verse explicitly states that God hates hospitals.

“Frick hospitals! They are corrupted with Satan’s jezebels!” Chapter 7, verse 4, book of Debbie Dumbshit.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywwnzm/cops-accuse-christian- commune-of-smuggling-and-raping-children

Looking into the boy’s death, detectives began to learn of other abuses and contacted former members to ask about their experiences.

And this investigative process brought investigators to Sarah.

And then Sarah started to tell them her story.

27. August 2017: In August 2017, after LOTS of interviews with Sarah and others, Deborah was arrested in the middle of one of her Sunday-morning services.

Hail Nimrod and about damn time.

The General - wearing her weird ass uniform - was put in handcuffs by some of SATAN’S MINIONS.

She was charged with a horror show of crimes: two counts of kidnapping, eight counts of child abuse, three counts of evidence tampering, and four counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13.

In a statement posted to their site, the ACMTC called the allegations, of course, “totally false.”

They’d say:

"The accusations are just re-runs of old lies that have been investigated and shown to be malicious attacks against a legitimate ministry, time and again… It has never been ACMTC policy to withhold medical attention or deprive anyone from going to the hospital. In fact, many people have received hospital care over the years." https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywwnzm/cops-accuse-christian- commune-of-smuggling-and-raping-children

Interesting that the post doesn’t address the sexual charges.

Three other ACMTC members were arrested that same day, among them Sarah’s ex-husband Peter, who was charged with 100 counts of sexual penetration of a child under 13 and another 100 counts of sexual contact of a child under 13.

Oh my god.

In particular, he’d abused Sarah’s adopted daughter, raping her around four times a week starting before her tenth birthday.

He’d tell her that Deborah would beat her if she resisted.

Horrors stacked on horrors. Kids on compounds. Does it ever go well for them?

Deborah also molested her on several occasions. She would bathe the girl and use her fingers to aggressively penetrate the child, causing her to bleed.

I can only imagine what fucked up messages she relayed to the girl while doing this. What kind of scripture she twisted to make it seem like she was doing God’s work. Getting some kind of demon out of her womb or something.

Definitely going back to that Cult mass execution fantasy in my head right now.

How satisfying to put a bullet right between Debbie Ding Dong’s eyes. Her life holds less value to me than that of housefly.

Jim, too, was subsequently arrested and charged with kidnapping and child abuse, among other crimes.

Interestingly, he was not charged with sexual abuse. It wasn’t a male cult leader this time sexually abusing anyone. Leadership-wise, it was a woman.

Also, according to the Cibola County Sheriff, when the compound was raided for these arrests, authorities found 18 children living with the group.

No one on the outside had any idea that many kids were there.

According to the accounts in the warrant of the former members, an alarm bell would ring whenever cops arrived on the property, at which point the children would hide in the nearby desert or in and behind an outhouse. https://people.com/crime/aggressive-christianity-missing-training- corps-leaders-sex-abuse/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywwnzm/cops-accuse-christian- commune-of-smuggling-and-raping-children

28.September 15, 2018: On Saturday, September 15th, 2018, Sarah took a red-eye to Albuquerque for her mother’s trial.

An undercover cop car met her at the airport and drove her to the city of Grants, about 80 miles east of the compound. The Cibola County Seat. About 10,000 people.

State officials had assured Sarah it was Deborah they were prosecuting, not her, but she was still worried. What if they held her responsible for bringing the girl Debbie and her ex-husband molested and abused to America? What if Deborah tried to pin the crimes on her?

The prospect of being taken away from her other kids in New York, now 15 and 17, was terrifying.

Before leaving for the trial, she had told them, “If for some reason I am indicted and I have to take the blame for my mother’s complete fuckup, just know that I love you.”

Walking into the courtroom on the day of her testimony, Sarah got her first good look at her mother in many years. She barely recognized her. Deborah’s hair, once thick and vibrant brown, had turned gray and stringy. Her cat-green eyes were now vacant, staring someplace just beyond Sarah.

She’d withered in the desert. She’d been living on delusion and hate and little else for so long now.

Once Sarah was on the witness stand, the questioning began.

In an apparent effort to undercut Sarah’s credibility, Deborah’s lawyer leaned heavily on the self-lacerating emails and letters Sarah had sent in the months following her escape.

“You acknowledge that you were extremely selfish and only thinking of yourself when you abandoned your kids, correct?” he asked, according to a court transcript.

Sarah later tried explaining to the jury the confusion, guilt, and shame that had defined that period.

“When you first come out of a cult, you blame yourself for everything,” she said. “It’s like when you’re in a really bad relationship, you blame yourself for everything that went wrong … and as you finally distance yourself, and you grow and you mature and you get away from it, you realize it wasn’t always your fault.”

Good on you Sarah for clearly having gotten some help - likely therapy - and worked past so much trauma.

29. September 16, 2018: The next day, Sarah got in a car and headed to the airport. On the way there, she received a message from someone at the trial.

The girl Sarah had brought to America— Sarah’s daughter, who was now twenty years old — had just testified against Deborah. Now she wanted to see Sarah after SIXTEEN years.

Heartbreaking.

Sarah was overwhelmed.

She’d wondered about the girl’s involvement in the trial, but because she’d been told to remain isolated from other witnesses, she’d assumed she wouldn’t see her. After arriving at the airport, Sarah waited anxiously at a restaurant. She had no idea if the girl would be happy to see her or if she was angry about Sarah’s abandonment.

“We’re like 20 minutes away,” the girl texted. “Please don’t leave.” Sarah looked at the clock - her flight was departing soon.

But she stayed.

Just ten minutes before Sarah’s flight departed, the girl and her adopted mother appeared, riding up an escalator. Sarah dropped her bags and ran to them.

Crying, Sarah and the girl — now a young woman — hugged.

They were thrilled to see each other. “You’re so beautiful,” Sarah told her. “Thank you for being so brave.”

The girl told Sarah that she thought she’d lost her forever.

Sarah promised to explain everything when she got back to New York where her other children were waiting for her. “I’m so sorry,” she said, preparing to leave. “I love you so fucking much.”

30. September 21, 2018: On September 21st, 2018, a jury finds Deborah guilty of kidnapping, child abuse, and criminal sexual penetration of a child.

At the sentencing hearing, Sarah’s daughter described the emotional and physical toll of Deborah’s abuse.

“Emotionally, she broke me as a child,” she said, “to the point where I still today struggle with my own self-confidence, my self- esteem, my sense of worth.”

She asked the judge to give Deborah, 71 at the time, the maximum penalty: 108 years in prison.

He didn’t give her that but he gave her plenty - 72 years. Effectively a life sentence.

Following Deborah’s conviction, Jim took a ten-year plea deal, pleading no contest to charges of child abuse, evidence tampering, and accessory to birth- and death-reporting failures.

Debbie Ding Dong’s lackey, Jimmy Buffalo Sun, will be in his eighties when he gets out, if he’s still alive.

31. October 2019: In October 2019, a judge ordered the sale of the Fence Lake compound. Last Sarah heard, her younger brother Josh was living in Albuquerque. According to a letter from Jim, Sarah’s two sons born on the compound, now ages 24 and 26, were also in Albuquerque.

According to the most recent updates available anywhere online, Sarah and her sons still don’t speak.

Sarah suspects they want nothing to do with her because she rejected ACMTC, AND because they resent her for leaving.

When asked in late 2019 if this estrangement hurts, Sarah says, “Yes and no,” comparing ACMTC to a drug addiction. “There’s nothing I could possibly do to unwind that,” she explained. “I mean, I could try, but they’re so deep in it. That’s all they know.”

Still, she continues to live with the guilt from leaving them.

As for the girl, twenty-three years old in 2019, she and Sarah have stayed in touch since the trial. Sarah helped her reconnect with her birth mother.

The girl and her birth mother are now also in frequent contact.

“All my family did was try to destroy her soul, break her down, give her nothing but scars, destroy her as a human,” said Sarah. “And all these years later, it took one little email to find her mom. It’s fucking awesome.”

I like how Sarah says fuck a lot. Truly. I feel like Sarah now, to borrow a term a listener used to describe her best friend awhile back in a Timesucker Update - is “a boss bitch.”

Sarah also feels guilt about her daughter. If she hadn’t agreed to take her to America, the girl wouldn’t have suffered Deborah’s abuse.

But Sarah is also aware she has a lot to be proud about.

Against all odds, Sarah forged a version of the very life she once thought she would only ever dream of creating.

She takes her dog running in the park; she makes her kids loaded nachos; and she still helps with the occasional baby delivery, fulfilling her teenage self’s dream of becoming a midwife.

32. July 2019:

At least as recently as the summer of 2019, Sarah was also still staying in contact with Jimmy Buffalo Sun and Debbie Ding Dong.

“You may not know it but I still love you,” Jim wrote from prison in July 2019. “I can still see you and Josh putting your faded suitcases in our old 1966 panel truck — going here and there in His service. I miss the good ole days before we started ACMTC.”

I bet he does.

I bet listening to some classic rock out in the woods of Northern California and howling at the moon sounds pretty fucking good to ol’ Jim right now.

In another letter, Jim told Sarah a story that, he said, illustrated his and Deborah’s feelings for her. And also - how fucking crazy they are.

“I know mom would not want me to tell you this,” he wrote, “but I feel I must.”

According to Jim, Deborah had been so distraught after Sarah left Fence Lake that she’d performed a violent prayer lamentation on her behalf. She crawled from the highway to their compound garden, apparently a real long distance, “bleeding, crying and praying all the way FOR YOU!”

Jim joined in the spectacle halfway.

“Can’t begin to describe the pain on the hands/knees, on the gravel road,” he wrote. “We prayed for your return. I won’t mention this again.”

Fuck Jim. I wish he had to crawl on gravel on his hands and knees every day in prison.

33. November 2020: Deborah has spent the two and a half years since her conviction fighting for a new trial.

After her sentencing, she identified several new pieces of evidence that were previously unavailable to the defense and, she claims, prove she did not sexually abuse the girl.

In November 2020, a New Mexico judge vacated the convictions and sentence associated with the girl’s allegations of abuse, ordering a new trial for only those charges on the grounds that the state unlawfully suppressed “exculpatory” evidence.

Sarah was notified in mid-May 2021 that she’d probably have to testify.

Don’t worry - even if she’s found not guilty during her next trial, she’ll still die in prison where she belongs.

And that’s where the story of the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps leaves off for now.

Let’s hope we don’t hear about them again.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

III.Recap: The Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps!

Not a whole lot of info out there about this cult - a few articles keeping up with them over the years, Dr. Phil episodes, a long form article by Sarah Green about her time in the cult, the cult’s jenky ass website, entries in some websites dedicated to tracking and archiving cults, and not much else.

I wonder - how many similar cults like this are still operating somewhere in America?

According to that psychologist and recognized international cult expert Steve Eichel, up to 10,000 cults still exist today in just the United States.

Based on current American culture and religious history, I bet the majority of them are evangelical offshoots.

How many little mini-compounds scattered across America are housing some version of David Koresh or Debbie Ding Dong? 6,000? 7,000?

How sad.

What a terrible way to go through life. Fearing an angry god that no part of me believes in any way has ever existed.

Does so sort of God exist? I hope so. I think so. I have no proof.

Does the vengeful, merciless God Debbie spoke of exist? I also have no proof but I doubt it.

And if he does, he sounds like a real psychotic asshole whose just gonna burn us pretty much no matter what so fuck him.

If you’re hearing this and you’re in one of these cults - which won’t call itself a cult but WILL oppose questioning, likely monitor your communication with the outside world, ask you to limit if not cut off ties to family not in the organization, and ask you to believe in special doctrines not associated with any large, organized religion, ask yourself - does what my leader is saying actually make sense? Does it feel like I’m being exploited? Abused? Does it feel like I’m being controlled? Does it feel loving? Does it make me happy to belong?

And - if God is who your cult leader says God is - wouldn’t that god take you back if you left for awhile to explore what life feels like outside the cult?

Are you forbidden from doing that? Why? If your cult leader clearly is in the right, why not let everyone leave and be confident God will bring them back? Isn’t God supposed to be stronger than the Prince of Lies?

Your life - and the ideology you’re being sold - doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it?

So get out. You’ll make new friends. I promise. Find the Cult of the Curious Facebook Group. Go buy some mini-doughnuts. Go listen to some Stones - Jagger’s still got it by the way.

Let Lucifina enter your mind and allow you to imagine mind- blowing sex with whatever gal or guy you think is hot. Don’t feel guilty for thinking their hot either. Use the imagination you were born with.

Don’t feel guilty for grabbing that ween or dj’ing that lady ween. Enjoy those nerve endings. Stick a finger in your loophole. Live a little. It’s your body. And some creepy spirit isn’t watching you like a sex offender hiding in the bushes.

Try not to be an asshole. Help others when you can. Pay good deeds forward. Let your heart love. Let your mind be curious. Know that all that’s enough.

Turn the fucking music up and enjoy the true miracle of being alive right now.

And hail fucking Nimrod.

Time for some takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO IV.Top Five Takeaways

1. Number One: Number one! The Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps was a cult that lasted from sometime between 1979 and 1981 when it was founded as Free Love Ministries in Sacramento, to 2017, long after it had planted roots in the New Mexican desert. In 2017, it’s leaders, Deb Green and her second- in-command Jimmy Green, and also Sarah Green’s ex-husband Peter Green, were arrested for child abuse, molestation, neglect, and a whole roster of crimes. Styling themselves as God’s army, the members wore military uniforms. They were wearing them while arrested.

2. Number Two: Number two! The ACMTC was modeled off the Salvation Army in its earliest incarnation, when husband and wife duo William and Catherine Booth took to the streets of England— and then the globe— to save souls and convert others to Christianity. Catherine Booth’s writing Aggressive Christianity directly inspired the name of Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps and also probably emboldened Deborah to lead a cult.

3. Number Three: Number three! The 1960s and 1970s were especially culturally turbulent times in the US and in many other Western nations, during which damn near everything seemed like it was up for question, including religion, letting gurus and leaders with all kinds of intentions take advantage of people who were looking for new meaning in their new lives. During this identity chaos, some Christian groups pushed back against a new spiritual rebellion, by stepping up their response and talking more vigorously about fighting societal problems— like crime, drug abuse, and poverty— problems they believed were indicators of Satan’s increased presence and strength on earth. Some pushed this message so strongly, they became cults.

4. Number Four: Number four! It’s very, very hard to leave a cult. Sarah Green, after escaping in the summer of 1999, agonized for years about her decision to leave, both in regards to her soul being sent to hell and also dealing with her guilt about leaving her children with Deborah and Jim. Other members described similar circumstances.

None of what happened to her was Sarah’s fault. Life hands many of us tough choices, and Sarah did not luck out in this regard. Fortunately, Sarah has been reunited with her adoptive daughter and continues to heal from the abuse she suffered.

I actually did a little cyber stalking and found Sarah on Instagram.

She seems to being doing GREAT! She is also in PHENOMENAL shape. Like, seriously inspiring me to start eating a little more consistently better and working more consistently as well.

All her kids are grown now, and she seems to be real into quality coffee, gardening, marathon running, hitting the gym hard, surfing, doing artsy, sexy photo shoots - she really seems to have embraced her inner Lucifina and done a lot of nature goddess, body-positive, age is just a number photo shoots. And she really, really seems to be living life to the fullest out in New York City. I’m so impressed. FUCK YES. Good on Sarah. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, and Hail the fuck out of you.

Love that she turned out to be the real strong woman, not her fucked up mom.

5. Number Five: And number five - new info! We talked a little bit about the ACMTC views on rock music… now let’s hear about it from General Jim Green himself. The video was originally recorded on October 25th, 1987.

And he’s talking about - to be clear - watching a Christian rock band perform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gBntmu6qMY PLAY FROM BEGINNING

(Commentary thoughts)* The long hair? The beard? Oh you mean, like how the ACTUAL JESUS LOOKED YOU DUMB FUCK? * By “sensing the flesh” do you think he’s talking about getting a boner? I do. * By certain areas, he’s for sure talking about dick. * Church of Satan because they played Christian Rock. Haha! My dad’s mom, not kidding, would have loved this sermon. She truly believed all rock music was of the Devil. Grandma Carole was batshit fucking crazy, if I haven’t made that clear before. * Marijuana??? The DEVIL’S LETTUCE?? * No one said that about cocaine. At a Christian rock concert? Nope. Bullshit. Not even in 1987. * Do they have a physical abused and sexual molestation problem like your church does Jimmy Buffalo Sun?

STOP AFTER STRYPER REFERENCE.

WHAT!?! Did he just accuse Stryper of being Satanic???

PUSH STRYPER BUTTON

To Hell with the Devil!

And to Hell with the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

V. Final Announcements

A.Episode has been sucked!: The ACMTC has been SUCKED!

Hope none of Deb’s former followers have decided to pick up where she left off.

B.Thank you to Timesuck Team:

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions Team for all the help in making Timesuck every week.

Queen of Bad Magic Lynze Cummins, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley, Sophie “The Fact Sorceress” Evans for running point on this week’s research, Bit Elixir for continuously refining the Timesuck app, and Logan “Art Warlock” Keith running BadMagicMerch.com, , being the visual artist for all things Bad Magic, and working on our socials along with Liz Hernandez - her nickname is long overdue btw, I need to do some cult housekeeping - Liz runs our Cult of the Curious Facebook private page along with her All Seeing Eyes.

Thanks also to Beefsteak and the “Mod Squad” running Discord!

You can link to the Timesuck Discord group through the Timesuck app.

C.Next Episode Preview:Next week on Timesuck, we cover a man whose bloodlust was only outshined by his other trait… his EXTREME nerdiness.

And third would be his stupidity.

Mark Twitchell, a native of Edmonton, Canada, was a would-be serial killer whose obsession with the TV show Dexter led him to be given the moniker “The Dexter Killer” when he murdered Johnny Altinger after luring him to a garage by claiming to be a woman on the dating website plentyoffish.com.

Dexter was only the latest of Mark Twitchell’s obsessions at that point. The man was a super-nerd. He spent countless hours on Star Wars forums, making costume replicas of his favorite characters, and even putting together his own prequel movie, which he called Secrets of the Rebellion.

But Mark Twitchell will never be known as a famous filmmaker. He ended up going down as a wannabe-serial killer, instead.

I say “wannabe-serial killer” because, though Mark Twitchell wanted to kill many - only the very unfortunate Johnny would die at his hands.

He did, however, try to attack another man just a week before.

And, if the police hadn’t caught him in the weeks following Johnny’s murder, it’s likely Twitchell would have killed again.

Mark Twitchell idolized Dexter Morgan, the blood spatter analyst- serial killer character who hides in plain sight by working at the Miami PD.

Twitchell had fantasies of being the real life version of this fictional man, and since he considered himself to be a filmmaker, he thought he’d be able to use elaborate horror movie sets as a cover for any murders he committed.

He’d be wrong. Once friends and family of Johnny Altinger got police to start taking Johnny’s disappearance seriously, the trail almost immediately led to Mark Twitchell’s garage and to Mark himself.

And then, when police obtained Twitchell’s laptop, they found a document called “SK Confessions.”

“SK,” as in, “serial killer.”

He made it real, real easy for them to convict him.

They read Twitchell’s account of how he lured Johnny to the garage, attacked him, and then disposed of his body.

They ready about how Twitchell reveled in keeping his dark thoughts from his wife and eight-month-old daughter.

Mark tried to convince them that what he wrote was not a confession, but was the plot of a film.

This is the insane story I’ll tell next week on Timesuck.

D.Segue to Timesucker Updates:

And now let’s head on over to this week’s Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO VI.Timesucker Updates

1. Opening with a nice reminder from Cool meatsack Allen Neva this week. Allen writes:

Wackadoodle Reminder; Hello Master Sucker! I am a long time listener and started about 15 months ago and making my way through the back catalog. I just finished the Harriet Tubman suck and something came to mind when you talked about the "Underground Railroad". You talked about how many people on the web thought that it was a literal underground railroad of hundreds of miles of train underground. When I was a young kid in early grade school I absolutely remember thinking, "How did anyone build a literal underground railroad in the 19th century?"

I am a now a firearms instructor and I have been literally asked in a class, "What end does the bullet come out of?" I could have asked something like, "How fucking stupid are you!", but Nimrod thankfully intervened and I calmly told them the correct answer. If I instinctively reverted to thinking "This idiot is a fucking moron!" I would have never advanced the will of Nimrod and increased the average knowledge of my fellow meatsacks.

I once thought in early grade school that Harriet Tubman ran a real underground railroad. It wasn't until later in school that I realized that the "Underground Railroad" was figurative in its name. I just wanted to bring up my story to remind us all that Nimrod does not always make himself aware to everyone early on. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that everyone does not have the same experiences that we do.

Someone can ask a question that might seem stupid in the moment; but that person might be someone that has been misinformed throughout their life and does not really know any better. We all must be aware that all meatsacks have our own inherent flaws that are unique to us in our life experiences. Everyone of us has something to learn from everyone else. Please don't take a single experience from a fellow meatsack as the absolute "gospel" on who that meatsack really is. You don't know the previous experiences that meatsack has had. I know I am rambling but I just wanted to remind everyone of empathy. Hail Nimrod and praise Bojangles, meatsacks!

Love this message, Allen! You’re 100% right. We don’t know where someone else is coming from most of the time, and our interaction with them, or what we’re seeing of them online could be the exception to the rule, not the rule. We could be catching them at an exceptionally bad moment. Or - they could have been dealt a much different hand than we have which led to them saying something we recognize as ignorant, hateful, crazy, etc. They might know a lot in other areas where we might be comparatively ignorant.

I like your message of empathy. Something I need to constantly work on.

Keeping making sure anyone shooting knows which end of the gun the bullets come out of. I’m no shooting instructor, but I know that’s pretty important.

2. Now for a very timely update considering this week’s topic reminiscing sack Emily Couture. Emily writes:

Hello Suck Master

This may be a little lengthy, but stick with me: My friend and I were recently talking about our memories from our Wisconsin college. We remembered a strange week in 2018. Her and I were both approached by and invited to join a cult. I was at my cheap apartment with my then boyfriend. There was a knock at my door and we weren’t expecting anyone. I opened the door and there were two college-aged girls. They asked me if I believed in god, which I responded “not really”. They then went on to say they were all about peace and love and the usual culty things and invited me to join them for a seminar that day where they’re pastor could explain it all.

I lied and told them I had to work.

I don’t think they believed me, but they left.

Meanwhile, my friend Kay was shopping at Walmart when she was approached by a group of two boys and two girls, all college aged. They asked if she believed in god, and she said she couldn’t say yes or no to that. They began to question her so aggressively that a Walmart employee approached and asked if everything was ok. One of the guys was so upset that she wouldn’t go with them that he was visibly shaking. One of the girls said they were only asking about homework and they all turned and walked away.

Within two days, our university had sent a school wide email, warning of a “religious” group going around town and asking people to go places with them. The email told use specifically not to go with them. From my research all these years later, I’ve determined the group was The Narrow Pathway, a religious cult with its roots in Wisconsin.

When allegations of spiritual abuse were made public in 2016, the group left and moved to Texas. There isn’t a lot of information out on their group, but I did include their “Who We Are” page from a website that no longer exists. Guess I missed my chance to join a cult. Oh well, next time! Em

Yike, Em! I looked at your link, and tried to find a bit more info. There’s a wordpress site dedicated to exposing this cult, called Tales from the Cult.

From their “Who We Are?”

“The Narrow Pathway has one goal: to help people enter God’s Kingdom. Nothing else matters to us. We aren’t interested in religion of traditions. We’re not influenced by the current trends in church ministry. We know our purpose - to enter through the narrow gate and walk the narrow pathway that leads to life. We wouldn’t leave it for anything.

The Narrow Pathway isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t made for the masses to travel. It doesn’t comfort a lot of people because it leaves no room for negotiation with Jesus. He laid out a clear-cut pathway that is difficult to walk, but the reward is totally worth it. It’s everything we’ve ever wanted: love, joy, peace, rest, freedom, and life to the fullest. These aren’t theoretical for us: they’re our reality.”

Cult! Cult! Cult! Allusions to suffering. Allusions to having some kind of special “Outside the church” angle on heaven. Promises of having everything you ever wanted if you just FOLLOW THEIR PATH, EM!

They never make it clear over a few pages what this fucking path entails. Of course not. I’m sure it’s too fucking crazy to post. It would scare people away. Gotta drag you in slowly.

Gosh dang. Glad you’re not on a compound having your poophole loopholed by some David Koresh type.

10,000. Roughly 10,000 of these cults out there in the US alone.

3. Important message regarding sexual assault survivors and Jodi Arias now, coming from an anonymous and awesome Sucker, who writes:

Hey team of all names,

Jodi Arias is the embodiment of false reporting. A lot of women who suffer sexual assault don't report to police out of fear of not being believed, and this bitch is why.

I was assaulted when I was 21 and I never even thought to report. I was at a bar with a girlfriend, let a guy buy me a couple beers, we all played some pool, then he kissed me. It was a little magical. My friend went off to call her boyfriend and shit got bad. If that guy had asked me back to his motel room I would have accepted, but that's not what happened. Without getting graphic, I did not unbutton or take my own pants off in a parking lot that was visible from the road.

After that night, I struggled with anorexia, depression and PTSD, which I'd already been struggling with. The friend I was with didn't believe me, so I just withdrew. I eventually was voluntarily committed to a county run mental hospital. It was... An experience in gratitude.

I've come a long way, I have a good understanding husband and a healthy happy family now.

Fuck Jodi for setting women back 20 years for faking abuse. That bitch should have gotten the chair.

Love you all!!!

Love you Anonymous! Sorry you had to experience that. Good on you for pushing on and fighting and building a beautiful life despite being assaulted by some roofie-ing rapist coward fuck.

Hope he’s getting his poophole loophole in prison somewhere.

And yes - women who cry wolf where rape is concerned do set things back for women who are actual rape survivors. Women who have to fight a lack of belief and support from those around them like you did, partially BECAUSE of people like Jodi Arias.

How about we all agree not to rape or falsely report rape anymore? Can we all shake on it? Wish it was that easy.

4. One more. A big one from a big-brained meat sack.

Right reverent and worshipful and my right well-beloved Lord Dan of Suckton, I recommend me unto you full heartily, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech Almighty Nimrod long for to preserve unto his pleasure and your heart's desire. And if it please you to hear of my welfare, I am not in good health of body nor of heart, nor shall be till I hear from you. [Dear Dan,]

I am writing to day to offer my thoughts on your not recent sucks of unusual mental disorders and killer kids. I would have written earlier, but I am still catching up on episodes. As a forensic child psychiatrist, I had a few thoughts. Overall, I think you did an excellent job of presenting these topics in a way that can help all of us appreciate that meat sacks go through a whole lot in life, and we all have different experiences. I continue to appreciate your message of get help for yourself if you need it.

But first, the important part of this message… My wife and I get to come see you this coming up weekend in Spokane! Yay! We will be traveling from Butte and will be waving like mad idiots as we transit through Coeur d’Alene as we have no idea where you live or where the Suck Dungeon is. But should you feel a strange gust of air on Saturday, know that it, well, probably isn’t us because you shouldn’t really feel us waving.

So, back to the original topic of this message. I thought I would share with you a few thoughts about mental health, and in particular, child mental health.

13% of youth aged 8-15 live with mental illness severe enough to cause significant impairment in their day-to-day lives. This figure jumps to 21 percent in youth aged 13-18.

Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14 and three quarters by age 24. Early identification and intervention improve outcomes for children, before these conditions become far more serious, more costly and difficult to treat

Despite the availability of effective treatment, there are average delays of 8 to 10 years between the onset of symptoms and intervention—critical developmental years in the life of a child. In our nation, nearly 80% of youth with mental illness do not receive treatment.

Unfortunately, there are significant individual and societal costs associated with untreated mental illness in children. Approximately 50% of students aged 14 and older with mental illness drop out of high school—the highest dropout rate of any disability group. 90% of those who die by suicide have a mental illness. ix Suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth aged 15-24; more youth and young adults die from suicide than from all natural causes combined. 70% of youth in state and local juvenile justice systems have mental illness, with at least 20% experiencing severe symptoms. At the same time, juvenile facilities fail to adequately address the mental health needs of youth in their custody. Given the early onset of emotional and behavioral disorders, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that their subsequent indirect and direct costs total $247 billion annually.

We know that early intervention is important and that just treating the child is not sufficient. We need to involve families in care to help families learn to better support their kids and one another. This directly speaks to the notion of killer kids.

In your killer kids episode, you discussed the ideas of nurture vs. nature. I think that you hit it right on that the combination is what predicts a perfect storm. As to nature, for example, we know from Dutch twin studies that certain genetic make ups will produce amazingly successful people if they are raised in a positive environment but sociopaths if raised in a negative environment. (Of course, this also speaks to nurture.)

But, let’s take a look at nurture and, specifically, trauma. We know that trauma is dose dependent. That is, the more trauma we receive, even if small traumas, builds up and can be damaging to our brains. The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study has show us the impact that trauma has on development and later life.

So, what is an adverse childhood experience? (At least for the purposes of this study.) These include emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect, sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in the household, parental separation or divorce, or an incarcerated household member.

This study shows clearly that the more ACEs you experience, the greater your risk for negative outcomes throughout all aspects of life. This includes increases for risk of smoking, alcohol use, depression, asthma, stroke, heart disease, unemployment, dropping out of high school, teenage pregnancy, involvement in sex trafficking, and difficulty forming relationships – all just to name a few.

Unfortunately, these events are not uncommon. About 61% of adults report that they have experienced at least one type of ACE and 1 in 6 reported four or more types of ACEs. The lifetime economic burden of substantiated child abuse and neglect is approximately $401 Billion.

So, we can do better in society. We need to support our kids. We need to learn to be better meat sacks. Perhaps that is why I like Time Suck so much. While you, Dan, are often irreverent, your humor brings us together to address dark topics in a way that allows us all to learn. The community you developed pushes people towards acceptance and support rather than derision and isolation. Well done!

Now. Two random thoughts.

1) I grew up in Great Falls. The 8-Ball Inn. Heh. Good times. 2) Misophonia is a bitch. I have it. No question. While not an official diagnosis – yet – there is active research into it. If only for effective treatment…

Thank you for what you are doing with this podcast and for the community you have created.

I do not apologize for the length of this email. See you next weekend.

Respectfully submitted in the name of Show Biz and Bojangles,

The Lord Reverend Thomas Hoffman, M.D. Faithful Space Lizard

Thank you for all that info, Lord Reverend Thomas! I hope I didn’t suck too bad in Spokane. My first show in 17 months.

And - “more youth and young adults die from suicide than from all natural causes combined” - how terribly fucking sad.

Thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for trying to catch kids before they fall too far and it’s so much more difficult to catch them and help them back up.

And yes - “GET HELP if you need it.” The alternatives - continued suffering and/or death, don’t sound so fucking good, do they?

And come back to another show that wasn’t essentially my first night back from a force retirement!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

VII.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!:

1.Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions Podcast, Meatsacks.

Please don’t scare anyone into believing your a snack-recipe receiving, military garb wearing, Stryper-hating prophet sent to save souls from the fiery pits of Hell this week.

Just keep on sucking.