Thumper's Gospel- A Cautionary Tale of Deceit, Manipulation and Destruction in the name of Jesus.

Thum per ?s Gospel A Cautionary Tale of Deceit, Manipulation and Destruction in the name of Jesus

Jim Killon

Thu m per ?s Gospel A Cautionary Tale of Deceit, Manipulation and Destruction In the name of Jesus Copyright 2019 by Jim Killon All Rights Reserved

The intellectual property of the author has been asserted.

No portion of this work may be reproduced in any manner without prior permission from the author except as allowed by law for critical commentary or fair use purposes.

The following story is based on actual events and real people. Names of individuals have been changed to protect their privacy. In some instances, people represented in this story are compilations of several individuals for the sake of literary expediency. Events depicted herein are derived from the author ?s memory, his numerous journals, audio tapings and diaries, recorded during the years that he was involved with this organization. The recollections of several other individuals have also been shared herein. Their stories, collaborated with the author ?s, are included with the intention of warning others of the destructive and insidious power of religious cults and their leaders. Readers should be advised that this story may trigger memories and uncomfortable emotions if you are now or at one time engaged in a religious cult.

This book is dedicated to the family and friends of those who are trapped in destructive religious cults. I hope that your heartbreak and despair will one day be abated.

?If God exist s, h e bet t er h ave a good excu se? ~~ Woody Allen

Other Publications by Jim Killon; A Gringo in Peru- A Story of Compassion in Action Living Large Living Deliberately Atheists Don?t Eat Their Children The Best Damn Book About Sales That You Will Ever Read The Changes That You Deserve Infringe Me? A Solution to Consider For Gun Violence in America Silver Linings Changes for New Hope Humanitarian Magazine (Monthly publication)

In t r odu ct ion The notion of destructive religious cults doesn?t really reach out and grab folks in the mainstream public until something happens that is newsworthy and horrific. Usually, it is the family members and friends of someone who is in a religious cult that rattles a cage and raises awareness about some remote organization that nobody else gives a tinker ?s damn about. They end up on the 11 o?clock show when the body count climbs or a leader ?s hypocrisy is so outrageous that it offends the sensibilities of decent folk. Most cults you will never hear about.

The jungles of Guyana, South America was the well concealed sanctuary of a self-styled messiah who lorded over the daily lives of over nine hundred followers. The Reverend Jim Jones ran The People?s Temple like his personal fiefdom. The followers were powerless to resist his manipulative and barbaric treatment which ultimately cost them their lives in a mass suicide/murder that dominated the late 1978 headlines for weeks. The cult went unchecked for years until Congressman Leo Ryan, at the urging of families of cult members, took his staff and the media down to personally check out the situation in Jonestown. As the list of defectors grew, so did Jones?s paranoia and fear that it would all come crashing down, exposing him. Drastic measures were implemented to silence negative stories. Congressman Ryan, members of his staff, along with the press and defecting members, were shot to death by a team from Jonestown as they tried to board their plane. Jones then commanded a mass suicide of his people, including children, by drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Those who refused were shot. The few that escaped alive, told their stories to a stunned media audience back in the United States. The ubiquitous question being asked: How could this have happened? The tragedy of Jonestown had sparked the outrage and fears of everyone from the United States political arena to mainstream churches to other questionable religious organizations.

Everybody had an agenda. The Constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state were under new scrutiny.

The questions arose asking to what degree a church should be able to mandate, dictate, order and control the lives of their members. What constitutes a religious cult as opposed to a recognized church of a long established denomination? If the government is legally hog-tied from interfering in the practices of a church, then gaining an I.R.S. 501C3 status as a church would be the golden ticket to becoming tax exempt, using the Bible (or charisma) to persuade individuals to donate their money, order strict obedience to a megalomaniacal leader who claims a divine calling, (though unable to prove it), amassing a fortune in property, creating a powerful voting bloc, as well as a myriad of nefarious activities completely unchecked by law enforcement, medical authorities and regulatory agencies. The state cannot interfere with Appalachian churches from practicing snake handling of poisonous vipers or drinking arsenic. Only recently have parents been held legally accountable for allowing their desperately sick children to die while waiting for the deity?s healing, which never came.

If Rastafarians can smoke marijuana as part of their religious ceremonies, can Satanist occult groups sacrifice animals on crude alters as a religious practice and circumvent animal cruelty laws? Can the Catholic Church be held in violation of underage drinking laws when giving sacramental wine to children? Can the government intervene when polygamy is practiced, bloodletting ceremonies take place or fasting for days upon days without food or water is demanded of parishioners by fanatical church leaders?

What determines the actual definition of a religious cult? Who decides and where would that individual or agency derive their authority to make such determinations? If previously sound minded individuals want to sell their property, empty their bank accounts and submit to excessively restrictive, cloistered conditions while surrendering their free will to a religious fanatic, should there be a government regulation to stop them? Should a family member be held criminally liable to forcibly intercept their adult-aged relative and bring them home for mental health care against their will? More questions than answers exist and most are agnostic regarding the issue, until it lands in their own backyard.

I have been on both sides of this issue. This book is written with the intent of doing the only thing allowed by law to help those in religious organizations that practice coercive methods of persuasion, also called, mind control techniques, to absorb, alienate, control, intimidate and ultimately destroy the lives of people who may only want to know a better way of living.

I want to share my story and the story of many people that I was associated with. How does anyone fall into a cult situation and more importantly, why in the hell don?t they just walk away when they realize they made a mistake? If it were just that easy, nobody would become victimized. I am going to help you to understand how the brain works, explain how decisions are made and why, once a belief system is embraced, going against it is nearly impossible. Bear in mind, most people are ensnared when they are in a vulnerable place in their lives and a church, seemingly innocuous, comes along to help, in the name of all that is good and holy. A process begins that strips the person of their individualism, critical thinking abilities and resistances to normally recognized red flags. Family and friends are now strangers to them. Once the conscious and subconscious minds agree, it is nearly impossible to re-wire that mind, whether it is a cultish religion, a military engagement, a political persuasion or a multi-level marketing scheme. I was part of an organization called, innocently enough, The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Baltimore, Maryland. The year it all began for me was 1973. I was just sixteen years old. I left in 1988, devastated, broke, demoralized and lost in a world that I had never lived in which most would call, Real Life. Over the next ten years I battled with guilt, fear, anger and resentment that surfaced mostly during the night in the form of horrific nightmares. Many of us suffered from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Some crawled back to the ?church? because it was the only familiarity that they knew, the Real World was too much to handle.

To be able to find some sense of equilibrium, I elicited the help of those who understood and empathized with my plight. I then began a series of phone calls to officials that could bring the leader, a megalomaniac with a messianic complex, into accountability. I became a hunted man at the order of the leader of this cult by members of the ?church? to silence me because of the evidence that I was sharing with investigators. I was forced into hiding and lived in fear of my life. Anne Frank move over.

Jim Killon

West By-God Vir gin ia

In 1945, a child was born to Lewis and Naomi Denton in Buckhannon West Virginia.

His name was David Stephen Denton. Lewis was a fiercely devout Pentecostal preacher and raised his children in the faith. The ?faith?, as he perceived it, meant long sermons several times a week with hours of prayer, kneeling before an alter rail, shouting out for mercy for whatever sins may have been on the menu that week. Right and wrong, salvation and damnation came right out of the King James Version of the Bible. The real translation of the Holy Scriptures, not those new watered down versions that make it easier to understand. Yes sir, the 1600?s Old English was God?s language, even if poorly educated people, such as Lewis, who only attended grammar school, could barely understand what he thought most of it meant. Not that it mattered because in the coal country of West Virginia there was nothing to do but work, raise a family and go to church. The pulpit of a church then became the soapbox for anyone with an inkling of what the Bible really meant. Usually, the loudest voice or the most passionate found his way up to the pulpit declaring himself, ?Called of God? to preach the gospel. When everybody attended church regularly, (if only for something do and to keep up on the community gossip,) then the man in the pulpit was a powerful voice in the community. There was just one problem with that, which is, ?Human Nature.? Just like bullies in the schoolyard, there is always a bigger, badder bully to come along and say, ?I had a vision from God? ? and suddenly the flock would gather around the New and Improved version of the divine calling. Ego, when cleverly disguised as religious fervor, becomes a guiding source of manipulation, control and hatred. On a larger scale it was referred to as ?The Holy Crusades? to wrest the Holy Lands back from the infidel Muslims who were fighting the infidel Christians to keep their turf themselves, as God mandated. Irish brothers fought against each other for years, drawing lines between Catholic and Protestant ideologies. On the smaller stages, backwoods preachers declared themselves ?The Real Deal? opposing anyone who had a slight variation on what the deity actually meant.

The scriptures could mean almost anything depending on who was holding the light at a certain angle. ?Gang wars? broke out among preachers with differing points of view. People were accusing each other of love-ins, drunken parties, dishonesty of anyone?s vivid imaginations, adulteries and assorted gossip mill stuff made true if only in the minds of people with nothing better to do in West, By-God, Virginia. A legalistic interpretation, such as Lewis held, made pretty much everything a sin. Not just the regular, well regarded sins like smoking, drinking alcohol and pre-marital sex, but going to doctors instead of letting God heal you, dancing, socializing with anyone that isn?t a Christian, wearing clothing that is too short, (as determined by Lewis) television, or looking at a member of the opposite sex with sexual desire and even having sex on your wedding night.

Not only did Lewis preach these and many other ?virtues? but went to more liberal churches and openly castigated them for not adhering to his interpretations. Lewis was beaten up in churches, ordered to leave meetings, he was the subject of restraining orders and was labeled a trouble maker who was threatened with incarceration and other violence if he continued his attacks.

Lewis was proud of his accomplishments because the Bible says the righteous will be persecuted so he must be on the right path. A lack of common sense managed to blind him to the fact that you can also be persecuted for being a horse?s ass too. Years of stories of people who were blessed by God for following Lewis?s doctrines and stories of people who God struck down for disobeying Lewis?s rage continued for the remainder of his life and was told by, Lewis himself. His church congregation was his long-suffering wife Naomi, a few followers, and their children, including David Stephen. Needless to say, when the rules are wrapped that tight around your throat, it is inevitable that rebelliousness will follow. After all, how long can you hold your breath before you turn blue and pass out? David Stephen passed out every chance he got according to his ?Conversion story.? A hell raiser in school, he went into his adult life with a violence temper and reputation for being a bar fighter, a womanizer and had a penchant for manipulating his co-workers and superiors into blackmail-able situations. He had no conscience about sleeping with his friend?s wife and playing cards with him the next night. By his own admission, his preferred night time companion was a bottle by his bed.

He had abandoned the church, his father ?s teachings and a faith that he saw as a crutch for weak people. Leaving West Virginia as far behind a he could manage, he moved to Baltimore County, Maryland. His initial objective was to become a millionaire by age thirty and he was going to accomplish that by heading down to Texas to the big oil fields. Though he never made it, he did manage to get married to a woman named Kathy who, by his own admission, was to give himself added credibility in his community standing. He went into sales and apparently did well enough to support his wife and three nieces that were dropped on him after their mother died of cancer. The three nieces had also turned blue from holding their breath in grandfather Lewis?s long, gruelling sermons and super-structured life which the girls resisted at every opportunity.

Unable to control them, Lewis and Naomi sent them to Baltimore County, Maryland to live with the intolerant, heavy handed David Stephen, now known simply as Steve.

Denton?s lifestyle was being cramped considerably by two teen nieces with headstrong ideas about how they were going to live their lives and a pre-teen niece who was not far behind in driving Denton and his young wife Kathy absolutely nuts. The surprise financial strain was an added burden. That dream of becoming a millionaire was becoming more elusive as was his dwindling sanity. He installed locks on the door to keep his girls inside while he slept because they would squirrel away shortly after Denton and Kathy went to bed to meet up with their love interests of the week.

At wit?s end, he decided that he would make a last ditch attempt to resolve his issues with his incorrigible nieces that no amount of discipline seemed to quell.

Desperate people do desperate things. Denton decided to leap into an abyss in which he would tumble for the rest of his life and at the same time, drag hundreds of unsuspecting well-meaning but gullible people with him to their utter destruction. He went back to a Pentecostal holy-roller church.

Oh How I Love Jesu s Now, as you may have read, throughout history some of the most ruthless leaders and dictators did not start out as cunning, murderous sociopaths. It takes time, circumstance and opportunity to develop a mindset that sees a weakness in the human condition and exploit it. Somewhere, while deciding between compassion and exploitation, the psyche takes a wrong left turn and the person and becomes Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin. Imagine if Hitler got accepted to that art school in Vienna that he applied to. If Lewis chose to be the best damn coal miner in Buckhannon, West By-God Virginia that ever lived, maybe Denton would have been smoking smuggled Cuban cigars, poolside at a Las Vegas Resort hotel in which he owned a minority stake. Instead, Old Lewis had to be a sky pilot and the die was cast. Denton?s go-to familiarity was destined to be a Pentecostal church, complete with rules, dress codes, revivals, praying at the top of one?s lungs, fasting, speaking in tongues and waiting for the next miracle to be revealed while waiting for the Holy Ghost to come into him, which would make everything become all right finally and forever. Then Jesus will come again and save us all from ourselves, which was going to be, any day now.

If it were only that simple. Denton had become accustomed to being a bully since high school or before. He had become a general manager of one company or another because taking orders from others just rubbed him the wrong way. He was arrogant and self-assured, if incorrectly so, that his way was the only way it was going to be. People that disagreed with him were cockroaches. Shaking off that mentality that he perceived to be working for him was not going to be easy.

Besides, who was going to tell him that he was an obnoxious, arrogant man-child whose treatment of others teetered on outright abuse? Certainly not the pastor of the United Pentecostal Church of the Holy Spirit, not when Denton was making some large contributions to the church and directly to the pastor himself. It was a matter of time before Denton, true to form, would make himself right by making the most center-staged person in the church wrong, the pastor. Denton studied the Bible constantly. While most would study for enlightenment, Denton studied to see what he could use to show up the pastor as wrong. It was childish and immature but insecure people, who have a gnawing urge to be right

at any cost, seem to feel it is necessary. The Bible can be interpreted in a thousand different ways. That is why there are a thousand different religions within Christianity. The loudest voice is not always right but the sharpest sword usually is, as many martyrs have found out. If the Catholic Church decides that the earth is the center of the Universe, it was wise in those days, five hundred years ago, to agree, else you might be keeping Galileo company in the prison of Rome.

Questioning the accuracy of the actual number murdered during the Holocaust is a jail-able offense in more than a dozen countries to this day, did you know that?

What Denton was doing had long lasting implications. The Pentecostal brand of faith dates back to the turn of the last century when a massive revival of religious fervor rocked America. Ask a Pentecostal person who isn?t one hundred and twenty years old and they will tell you their religion started in the upper room on the day of Pentecost shortly after the resurrection of Christ. The cool thing about religion is that you can pretty much say anything you want because nobody can prove otherwise. It is all based on faith, (ie: whatever you want to believe) Denton wanted to believe that the bits and pieces of the Bible that he was performing autopsies on and Frankensteining together to create his ?Truth? would show the congregation that he was, in fact, wiser, more astute, had the true calling and superior to the celebrated pastor of the church. All he had to do was get people to listen to him long enough to persuade them.

Denton, fortunately, was a sales person. His profession required him to be able to persuade his clients that his product, his service and he himself was the only way for them to go. Sometimes this required him to fill the air with questions to which there was only one right and obvious answer. (You want your company to outperform your competitors, don?t you?) Sometimes it required him to promise the impossible and claim later when challenged, that they misunderstood him.

Other times he would undercut, or utterly trash, the competition by claiming they were so inferior there may soon be legal consequences against them. He could out talk or out volume his competition, his supervisors or just choose to walk out on them. His utter lack of scruples in business carried over into his life as a messianic-complex, paranoid, sociopath many years later.

He used these same tactics against anyone who disagreed with him as you will later read in subsequent chapters. He loved to debate, argue and insist he was right regardless of the facts. In the Pentecostal church, to the utter dismay of the pastor, his family, and his flock, Denton was going to do it again. Speaking in tongues is a useful tool among Pentecostals. It is believed that when you are praying out loud, fervently, for a long period of time that you fall into a trance-like state. Suddenly, the words that come out of your mouth are no longer your own but the Spirit of God himself is now talking through you. It is ?documented? in the Bible so you just have to know it is true. (Of course, it is also ?documented? in the Bible that Jesus is coming back soon according to Peter, who wrote it about 2000 years ago, which has launched massive interpretations of the true meaning of the word, ?soon?.) As with cosmetic Christian prayer in general, people kneel to ask God to grant them everything that they ask for. That whole, ?Thy will be done,? part apparently is for the birds. People pray for what they want in the same manner as kids who sit on Santa Claus?s lap and pull out their wish list, fully expecting to see everything all wrapped neatly with bows under the tree on Christmas morning. It is utterly amazing to me how God?s will just happens to be exactly what they were going to do no matter what. Denton was no different.

Pentecostals don?t pray for God?s will, they dictate it by speaking in tongues. When everyone hears someone speaking in tongues in the church, they all get very quiet because no one wants to miss what God is trying to tell the congregation. If you happen to have a touch of narcissism and need to be the center of attention, this is a great time for you if you are a Pentecostal. People will speak as God and there are no controls whatsoever, the gloves are off. People condemn others for imagined sins or slights against others. They may ?reveal? something about another ?s thoughts or intentions, even before the other person is aware of them.

They may ?prophecy? about a coming event that people do their damndest to make true and usually can because the ?prophesy? is so ambiguous that it could mean anything. And if you happen to be David Stephen Denton, you prophesy that God is calling you to lead the church. Self-serving as it is, people actually bite into this hook, line and sinker. The line between religion and superstition is a matter of interpretation. If you believe in it, it is your religion, if aboriginal tribes in a 3rd world jungle do the same thing, it is superstition.

The cheap seats version of this is to have a dream. Extract a slice out of the Bible that says, ?Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.? Everybody has a dream sooner or later. Whether it is a dream that can be construed into something of celestial magnitude depends on whether or not you want to believe it. How powerful is a dream that you want to believe has a God-message enclosed? Consider dear Kathy Denton dreaming that I died in April of 1988 after I left the church/cult. David Stephen Denton, by then a self-appointed Bishop, apostle and prophet, deep in messianic sociopathy, stood before the church people claiming that his wife ?prophesied? that I would die in April, 1988, which, at that time, was just a few months away. With a voice exuding total authority from on high, he concluded that it was God?s will that I should die and asked who was ready to go out and do God?s will? Hands raised, plans were made to murder me and phone lines to my apartment glowed with warnings from stunned members still among the congregation, but loyal to me, informing me that Denton had persuaded people that killing me was the will of God, a righteous act and proceeding was under his divine providence. When I did not die in April, 1988, they re-interpreted the dream to mean a ?spiritual death.? God forbid that Kathy would be deemed a false prophetess. Those who had armed themselves and stalked me at Denton?s direction must have defecated themselves with concern. It wasn?t the kind of mistake that you can just say, ?Ooopsie, my bad!?

The Pentecostal Church refused to remove the long-time pastor, in favor of Denton, so he chose to conclude that God wanted him to leave and start his own church. There are always disgruntled members of any organization, company or church. Denton?s decision convinced several to leave with him and nine members, in the basement of his rented house, began what became the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Kn ock , Kn ock , Kn ock in g on Heaven?s Door May, 1973 was an odd time to be sixteen years old. The Viet Nam war raged on becoming the longest war in American history at that time. Nobody seemed to know why we were there. If it did not end soon, I could be drafted into the military and sent to fight. My former elementary school P.T.A. president resigned from the Vice Presidency of the United States amid income tax evasion charges that he pled no contest to. Spiro Agnew left the office in shame and the country was stunned. Nixon would resign a year later after the Watergate scandal rocked the nation?s confidence in its leadership. Drugs were becoming a popular recreation and there were very few of my friends who, like me, did not indulge. The sexual revolution was in full swing but I had not yet joined the battalions of condomed legions marching toward post virginity glory. College unrest and violence was on the news every night. My parents had informed me that I would not be going to university on their nickel because, ?College was for lazy people that don?t want to work.? I had no idea what my future was going to look like and the outlook was uncertain for everybody, based on national issues. Sixteen was just an awkward age anyway, limbo-ed between childhood and manhood. I was too young to go off on my own and too old to still be considered a child. My opinions were still in semi-gel form and ideas came and went a thousand times a day. I had no idea what should happen next in my life.

The oldest of Denton?s nieces was in one of my high school classes and sat with me at lunch. She had cleaned up her act and was actually engaged to a guy who was in the new church at the time. She invited me to come to their church service and because I couldn?t think of any reason not to, I agreed to visit. I was raised by a non-practicing Catholic mother and a non-practicing Baptist father so, religiously speaking, I was an ecclesiastic mutt. I had no idea what to expect except that she said after service they would have refreshments and snacks which was the hot button for me.

They picked me up on time and took me to the Denton?s rented house. I was introduced to everybody as sister this and brother that. People greeted me with a cheery ?Praise the Lord!? The service was in the basement. People sat on whatever

chairs were available or picnic benches. I was not familiar with Pentecostal traditions so praying out loud, waving hands in the air and the holy-roller modus operandi kind of freaked me out.

To be fair, this is not what made them a cult. I believed that these people were sincere about what they were trying to do and if I didn?t understand it, I couldn?t leap to the conclusion that it was somehow wrong, evil or satanic. I was open-minded if nothing else back in those days. There was about an hour of church hymns that I did not know and handing me a hymnal book was not much help anyway. There were ?testimonies? sprinkled between songs. People thanking the Lord for being there, being alive, for delivering them out of drugs and all sorts of debauchery. There was a certain power in mass agreement that I found in later years to be a tool of persuasion. If we are all doing the same thing, looking alike, acting alike, then we have this cohesion that makes us one. The military uses it, for example, to make a platoon of men act as one unit. Cults use it to cloister their own people as insiders and everyone else as outsiders. Denton would use this tactic to extremes in coming years. The sermon was an impassioned, heart tugging plea to embrace God with all your heart and soul. It was impressed upon us that we can either have an eternity in a beautiful place with streets of gold and pearly gates or burn forever in an everlasting torment that is unimaginable. (I?ll take pearly gates for $1000, Alex) There was no third option. Then it was time for alter call where everybody dropped to their knees on this cement floor and prayed long drawn out calls for mercy and deliverance all around me. I pictured this was what the people in the water after the Titanic sunk must?ve sounded like.

I prayed as a child at bedtime with my parents. I was done in five minutes and that was my extended version. These people weren?t even warmed up after five minutes. I sat there looking around for the next hour wonder where the snacks were. Church service lasted almost three hours. In time this would be considered a brief service. As the church derailed into full-fledged cultism, we would come to church with a bag containing our work clothes. Service began at 7:30 p.m. and we didn?t need to be at work until 7 a.m. the next morning. If the ?Spirit was moving? we could quite possibly be there all night.

Add that to a three day fast where you do not eat or drink anything and you are pretty much dead on your feet the next day on your job. You become a walking zombie, just the way Denton preferred us to be. Easier to manipulate and control.

Agreeable to anything.

Denton zeroed in on me at snack time. With Bible in hand, he was eager to convert me and have me join his little flock. Bible verses were flying at me at the speed of sound, none of which I could understand or relate to. Jesus was God? Ok cool, but that was followed by another thirty minutes to explain why and how.

You?ve got to be baptized the right way, by full immersion, in an outdoor river or stream in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, not by sprinkling in the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost because that is false teaching mandated by Trinitarians. The trinty of gods was created by the Catholic church and therefore pagan. Of course I knew nothing about cults and how they worked back then.

Denton and his little flock probably weren?t even aware that, what they were doing, setting up alliances between ?Us? and ?Thems?, in time would morph into more lines to be drawn between those that had the Real Gospel, (Us) and all those other sinners, pretenders and deceivers (Them). Once you have drawn lines, the next domino to fall is to prove it by showing your loyalty to your Real Gospel.

Whether that is ridiculing other faiths and beliefs, dressing differently, speaking differently with your own religious shorthand or cloistering yourself away from those who do not share your own personal brand of values and rules, (including your family and friends) it all adds up to an isolationism that breeds hatred, discrimination and witch hunting. In time lines were drawn between each other as suspicions flew.

Whether I was gullible, needing to be part of something bigger than myself or not wanting to roll the dice on that greased pole into the fiery damnation that lasts forever, I do not quite remember. It was a long time ago. Maybe it was a combination of all three and the larger than life charisma of David Stephen Denton notwithstanding. He could be quite charming, making you feel like you were the most important person that he has had the privilege to meet all day, I saw that it was another sales pitch, selling me a bill of goods and with my acceptance, his little flock became a bit larger. He had a lot to prove to people, both in this flock and also to the church he left behind.

If this group became a successful church then somehow that equated to just how right he and his ?prophecy? was about being a leader. At this point in my life I had nothing else going on. I was confused about everything in life and this gave me some sense of meaning and direction. Jesus Christ was a pretty safe bet because he had been around a few thousand years. You can?t go wrong joining a church for direction in life, can you?

I later learned it was like joining the army. Depending on who the general is you could be led to victory or you could be walking into an ambush. What the hell did I know, I was only sixteen, I decided I would join the church, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, get a Bible and read it, learn to pray like they did and become a born again Christian, dyed in the wool and devoted, to the chagrin and absolute humiliation of my friends and family. Oh yes, I found God and I was driving everybody crazy by never shutting up about it. I was every cult leader ?s dream candidate. God was going to protect me from all those demons waiting to jump into my soul that Denton preached about. Good thing I was in the Real Gospel believing church and not in one of those churches that believed differently than us. How fortunate it was for me that of all the denominations out there I fell into the right one on the first try. What luck! I was sure to tell Denton if I ever saw one of the others talking against him or expressing doubt about what he was preaching because, after all, I had to be ?My brother ?s keeper.? I learned that everything fell into one of two categories, Of God or of the devil. The litmus test was whether it agreed with us or not.

It was not until the Jonestown massacre in Guyana five years later that it became crystal clear to me that the direction the church had gone into, under the heavy and maniacal hand of David Stephen Denton, was textbook cultism. Aside from drinking the cyanide-laced Kool Aid, there wasn?t a nickel?s worth of difference between the Reverend Jim Jones and the Bishop, apostle and prophet David Stephen Denton who I had dedicated and sacrificed my young life, savings, family and soul to, in the name of Jesus. The walls were closing in and I never saw it coming.

At this point in time however, the manipulations were just being placed. If I saw something that just didn?t seem right, well, it must be the devil trying to put a stumbling block between me and him.

Certain new rules were being put in place that did not come from anywhere in the Bible. Women wore dresses below the knee, for example. Denton considered this half-hearted attempt at modesty. He mandated that women must now wear dresses, never pants, to the floor. That, he decided, was true holiness. Then he decided that, in the name of being modest and holy, we should not bare our arms either. Everyone was required to wear long sleeves buttoned at the cuff regardless of the sweltering heat of the Baltimore summers. Denton told us, ?If you think that it?s too hot, think about how hot it will be when you are burning in hell for your disobedience.? He made it a full three hour sermon to silence the ones who thought this was ridiculous, overbearing and outside of the scope of biblical guidelines. The little children were breaking out in heat rashes. Declaring himself the one God had ordained to lead the church, he demanded total loyalty because dissention is a sin and sinners will all have their part in the Lake of Fire. We were hearing an awful lot about the consequences of sin and that Lake of Fire and hardly anything about the reward for being a good Christian and servant to all. Everything seemed to have a negative flavor. Perfection was the only way to be saved. ?Without spot or blemish?, he would preach. Of course no one is or can be perfect, therefore we were never good enough. It was a tool of manipulation to keep us all, doing more, giving more and never straying.

It seemed that if we were confused, questioned what we were hearing or spoke to anyone else about our concerns, we were being influenced by the devil.

Hours of prayer would root out the devil. Free thinking was slowly being posed as a Very Bad Thing. I believed that God was with us, being the one true church and all, so anything that was not quite right in his church was up to him to correct. My prayers were directed toward the guidance of my pastor to be aligned to God?s will. After all, God was in charge here, Denton was just the vessel God used. Right?

Then a man came in from Boulder Colorado that slammed all the doors shut.

M on ey Talk s

I was asked to join one of the members named Bob to go to Boston. His sister Barbara and her boyfriend, a local unemployed rock star, wanted to follow Jesus with us and needed a ride. The plan was that we would drive up on a Friday night, load them up, and bring them back the next day. They would pay for gas and food. I had never been anywhere so this was a welcomed treat for me. It was a quick overnight run and I could tell these people all about Jesus for the next eight hours coming back. Still sixteen and still far too trusting. I had $25 in my pocket.

We arrived in Boston early Saturday morning. Ken, the hippie boyfriend, played guitar as his German Shepard size dog sprawled on the floor of the one room basement level studio apartment. Janie was their one year old baby. Barbara was at work. She was full time at MacDonald?s. There was nothing packed, boxed or moved out. ?Yeah, Barbara won?t get paid until Saturday so you guys can just hang here for a while ok?? Ken explained.

I told him, ?Today is Saturday, Ken?. ?Next Saturday, Jim?. Ken informed me. We were stranded in Boston for a week in a one room studio with an un-housebroken dog, a screaming baby, a guitar playing hippie of questionable sanity and the burger flipping Barbara who kept us fed on stolen Big Macs and fries for a week while we waited for her Saturday payday and money to get home again. I had no change of clothes, slept on the floor anywhere the dog had yet to relieve himself and decided that I?d rather be anywhere but here. Saturday came. Ken and Barbara could not bear to part with many of their belongings so the dog was on the floor of the front seat, which was was pushed back as far as it would go against my knees.

Ken?s guitar was between my knees and pressed against my face, Barbara to my left was trying to calm down Ken who had taken to getting drunk on the small salary Barbara was using to get us back to Baltimore. At 3 a.m. the George Washington Bridge in New York City was shut down for some sort of an emergency and we sat for two hours in diesel and car exhaust fumes that were inescapable. By time we reached Maryland again, I couldn?t think of anything that would possibly present itself as worse news. We walked into Denton and Kathy?s house in time for breakfast and to meet the newest arrival from Boulder Colorado. The news just got worse.

His name was Florido Leonardo Martucci. Age thirty six at the time and decided that his life was miserable, lost and he decided that he would begin seeking Jesus for his answers to his life?s problems. He was loaded up with more than his share of them. In Boulder, he was a hairdresser, the owner of his own hair salon. They told me his hair was long and flowing down past his shoulders but, before I arrived, he had shaved himself bald because, the Bible says, ?It is a shame for a man to have long hair.? Not wanting to take any chances he shaved his head just to be sure. Leon, as he liked to be called, walked across the room to greet me, walked being generous as what he did was more of a sashay. ?Praise the Lord, brother,? he said in a voice reminiscent of Kathleen Turner as he took my hand to shake it. It was a dead fish shake with delicate fingers. I looked at him as if he was offering me shares in his unicorn ranch. My new brother in Christ was as flaming a gay man as I have ever seen before. If he wore a feathered boa it would have been complete. Of course attitudes towards gays have changed a lot since the mid-seventies, even in churches, but as part of the Real Gospel, (not those pretenders and deceivers out there) Denton had wailed on the notion that homosexuals were total and absolute abominations to God and every last one of them will burn in hell forever. Along with Catholics. Now here stands one right in front of him asking God to accept him into the fold of the saved, among our growing flock. He was not a ?practicing? homosexual and knew what the Bible said about being gay. Denton was caught in a cross fire between his head and his heart for reasons that would not be revealed for years and then only under threat of a State Attorney investigation.

What Leon shared with Denton, and apparently no one else, was that he was fully prepared to dedicate his life to Jesus, in this church and follow this pastor.

He had read in the Book of Acts where the early Christians sold all their possessions and laid them at the apostle?s feet for the distribution to the necessity of the others. Leon?s wealthy father had recently died and left him a substantial inheritance. Leon read where his ?alms are to be done in secret? and Denton couldn?t agree more. As churches go, Christians seem to have a grapevine like no other. Gossip is justified in a number of ways. Sharing a brother ?s secret so we can watch out for him and keep him strong was a typical excuse. Denton confided routinely in everyone about everyone else?s shortcomings, secrets, confession and sins. Except his own of course. This maintained the perception of superiority among the people, keeping everyone in doubt of each other so no one would ever peer into his direction..

Being above reproach had a different meaning to Denton. For the people of the church it meant living a life upright, strict and sinless. To Denton it meant not getting caught. As the years worn on, Denton would deny the most obvious of transgressions regardless of the glaring evidence witnessed by dozens.

Th e Plot Th ick en s

However, when it came to this secret, Denton maintained absolute radio silence.

Relying on a sliver of a scripture that said, ?Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing?, he had to conceal a donation from Leon in excess of $240,000. 1974 dollars. It is the equivalent of a few million dollars in today?s money. Leon played his part by appearing destitute, wearing a rope for a belt and never mentioning anything about money to anybody. Many people had come to us, most were destitute and looking for handouts. We thought Leon may have been another one. Denton dodged any questions about a donation that he was glowing about ever since the checks cleared. The only purchase that was made that was common knowledge was a store front church in downtown Baltimore City. $20,500 purchased the home base meeting place for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ at 5 South Broadway. Until that time we were borrowing an unused Methodist church in the countryside of Baltimore County in Timonium. It was an unheated, large stone structure and regularly vandalized. This new location had a long narrow church meeting area on the first floor, a ?fellowship hall? and kitchen on the second floor and an apartment on the third floor. Of course God told Denton to move his family into it the day after settlement. Leon had a room there to himself.

The books required to be kept by the I.R.S. rules show the donation. Nowhere is listed the distribution of the remainder of the money. Denton hid behind ?Don?t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing? to the members of the church and relied heavily on ?Separation of Church and State? laws to avoid having to explain anything to anybody in the government agencies. He actually believed that he was accountable to no one about anything that he did. Even when called into deposition type meetings, he stuck to his guns until the agency head would have to either subpoena records and make a full criminal investigation into it or realize that someone?s boss, or a judge would consider this a tempest in a teacup that

nobody wants to see appear in the newspapers. The money was never seen nor explained to anyone.

I found this particularly disturbing because Denton poor mouthed constantly, pressuring us to give our tithes, offerings, income tax returns, any gifts from family members for birthdays, any overtime pay from our jobs and condemned us from the pulpit during his hours long, bellowing sermons that he knew we still have money secreted away that the Lord needs. There was a grocery store behind the church building that our growing group found was throwing away out-dated, but still edible food. Denton encouraged some of the brothers to do regular ?Dumpster diving? to provide food for the members daily. The man was sitting on well over $200,000 (1974 dollars) squirreled away somewhere, that no one knew about, while he watched his people eating dumpster food. I noted this in my journals which I began keeping. It was forbidden to talk to anyone about what might be considered nefarious actions of Denton so I wrote it down, privately. I had no idea how valuable these writings would become in years that followed.

Many of the accounts in this book derived from them. Meanwhile, Leon decided that he wanted to introduce stricter rules regarding the church and its members. ?Fellowshipping with darkness? was a favorite of his. Darkness, simply put, was anyone who was not in ?the Light? or ?one of us?. That, according to the gospel of Leon, included your parents, friends, neighbors, co-workers, business associates and anyone one else unless you were ?witnessing? to them, telling them about Jesus in an attempt to convert them. This was the beginning of the cloistering of the people and a huge leap into cultism. Leon had no family and was a stranger in Maryland so; of course, it did not impact him at all. He read where the people of God should be a separate people. One way to make sure is to be a freak show that nobody wanted to be associated with. He decided and insisted that all the men should shave their heads and ?be humble?. By now Denton had browbeat everybody into subservience and with his nod of approval, heads were shaved. I protested and was deemed ?proud.? A standard was compromised upon because of the freezing Baltimore winters which everybody was getting sick from exposure. ž of an inch was the new rule for men?s hair length. Denton was allowing a large berth for Leon to buffalo his personal views into church standards and doctrines,

after all, Denton wanted to become a millionaire and Leon got him well on his way to that goal.

The women were already wearing long sleeves, dresses to the floor and now, ?head coverings? based on Denton?s interpretation of something he came across in Corinthians. A woman?s hair is her glory and only to be shown to her husband, it is her nakedness. Denton, who seemed to see everything as a sexual sin, a woman showing her hair is no different that showing her breasts. So the women looked like Amish people. They were constantly adjusting their bonnets saying to one another, ?Let me fix your head covering, your nakedness is showing.? Many of us wondered how long it would take before Denton or Leon would decide that the woman?s face is the most beautiful part of her and faces should be covered like Middle Eastern Muslim women. Women had a particularly rough time of it. The Bible is largely misogynistic, placing women barely above cattle. They were to be subservient to their husbands, bear children, keep silent in the church, had no say in any business matters of the church, obey the ever lengthening list of rules and standards nor could they look at a man directly in the eye when they spoke to them. Shame-faced was the term the Bible used. The men in church, trained by scripture to be misogynists, just ate this up. Most were young, immature and inexperienced men and the notion that they were over anybody was an oppression waiting to happen. Obviously, when lifestyles are that strict and overbearing,something has got to break. Leon found himself knee deep in conflicts where people would lash out at his ?toe the line? demands, not realizing that Denton would back him up because, heaven forbid, Leon would ask for his money back. The idea that, any place outside of 5 South Broadway, was outside of the protection of our loving God became an incarceration.

Our activities were limited to reading the Bible, praying, talking about what you read in the Bible, meditation, working, and eating or sleeping. Women took care of the children, did housework and went shopping together for groceries and fabric to make their clothes because no store sold the oppressive styles they were wearing. Unless of course, you were shopping in Saudi Arabia.

Television was a devilish distraction as were newspapers, magazines, movie theatres, amusement parks, swimming pools, telling jokes, visiting historic land-

marks, libraries, boating, vacations or most forms of self-expression, like drawing or journaling.

As with any cult, all of this did not happen overnight. Bit by bit things were determined to be, ?Not of the Lord? and were eliminated from our lives. The level of our tolerance to lose, one more thing, grew thinner. How much more could be taken away before people said, ?Enough!?? That answer came in the form of the Ten Commandments, misread by Leon during one of his long sequestering sessions in his room. He would lock himself in his room and not come out to eat, bathe, engage with anyone else and was only seen coming to church service and then returning to his room. Denton proclaimed him the holiest among us all. I suppose that had to be true considering he was all but in a coma. It was like declaring that you never lost a tennis match because you never played the game.

Leon enlightened us with a passage from the scripture that declared, ?Thou shalt not have any gods before me nor to make any graven image, nor likeness of anything that is above the earth, on the earth or beneath the earth.? Well, that was all Leon needed to read to go on a rampage starting in the kitchen by tearing off the labels of every can that had pictures of corn, beans, fruit or anything else that God made.

Photos of family members were banned, even those of long departed, beloved members. I walked into a fracas in the fellowship hall when Leon was arguing with Kathy who was desperately trying to keep him from destroying her little daughter ?s baby doll. The limit had been reached and it was time that I intervened. I allowed this nonsense to go on long enough to become absolutely ridiculous. I did not want anyone slipping out of my ?revelation? by saying I misunderstood them and when it was outrageous enough that it had everyone?s attention, a few calm words would have maximum effect. ?Leon, brother, read where it says she cannot have a baby doll.? I requested.

He was on it like Marshall Dillon at high noon outside of the saloon. His Bible was in hand as fast as any gunslinger. ?Right here? Thou shalt not make any image or likeness? etc. etc? ! ?Keep reading please, Leon? I requested. He read and I saw the color go out of his face,

?To bow down to it, worship it or pay homage to it.?

In one of my favorite ?egg on his face? moments I slowly asked Leon, ?Was anyone going to worship a can of corn? Does anyone think that baby doll is going to be an idol anytime soon? Are people going to worship photos of their kids in the park? Can we kindly jettison this ridiculous notion of smashing up, tearing up and destroying people?s precious memories because you read into the Bible what you wanted to understand and picked out just the parts that made sense to you without reading it in context?? Denton opted to stay neutral to the great frustration of Kathy. ?We should live simple and modest lives?, was all he was going to say. Leon was such a firebrand and outspoken to the point of offending everybody around him that Denton knew confronting him would be a challenge that may have dire consequences. What if Leon decided this was not the great Real Gospel and vocalized it and announced he wanted his money back after Denton neither had it in hand any longer nor told anyone that it was Leon, the rope belt wearing, flamboyant sashaying, un-bathed, anti-hero of the church that donated it and exactly how much. Questions would be asked that Denton was not prepared to answer and it was conceivable that others may walk away regardless of the threats of consequences. Denton?s potency would be lost because if this wasn?t the Real Gospel then Denton isn?t the Real Deal, God?s selected man on earth. The whole thing would be revealed as a fraud and he had no cards to play to prove otherwise. He chose to quell Kathy who was getting over nothing very soon, gave the baby doll back to his hysterical young daughter and hoped this would be the last issue Leon would make such an outrage over. There was no acknowledgement to my role as solution finder. Leon retreated back to his room and was heard praying at the top of his lungs for hours until hoarseness silenced him.

Leon was an outspoken fanatic, completely unaccountable to anyone. He was on God?s mission and that was to be the end of it. He was arrested for standing in front of a liquor store ?preaching? about the evils of alcohol and not letting customers pass. At his trial, he rebuked the judge for having a cross on top of the Maryland state flag in the courtroom because Jesus was crucified on a cross and it should not be considered a Christian symbol.

He once walked into a neighborhood church during one of their services and commandeered their pulpit. They had a large picture of Jesus hanging on the wall which he objected to. While a can of beans may not be an object of worship, a picture of Jesus sure was. He kicked a hole through the center of it in front of appalled members and walked out. He agreed that the practice of medicine flew in the face of God?s amazing ability to heal and was repulsed by anyone who went to the doctor when they were sick for any reason. Dentists were doctors too. He had a mouth full of gold capped teeth placed there years before his conversion. He worked them loose and eventually they came off, exposing raw nerves underneath which had the effect on his mouth much like being set on fire. Without the benefit of a skilled dentist or even an aspirin to numb the pain, he suffered the excruciating effects on exposed nerve tissue against air, chewing food or drinking water. So was the tortured life of a fanatic that followed Christ on his own terms and interpretations. I had heard through sources that Leon mellowed out a bit in his later years. He grew hair and took on the look of any normal man walking down the street. He had relaxed many of his oppressive rules upon himself and others. In the mid-2010s, I understand that he died of cancer. I do not know whether he sought medical attention or endured the disease as he had the dental fiasco.

Som e ar e Called, Som e ar e Sen t , Som e Ju st Pack ed Up an d Wen t What better way to keep someone from ever jumping ship than to make them a captain? After one of our heavily emotion laced services I experienced what I now recognize as a mass hysteria episode. Pentecostals call it ?Receiving the Holy Ghost.? Your pre-frontal cortex of your brain releases serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin into your blood stream during excitable moments and happy experiences.

When a massive group share this experience it is electric. The energy of the room lights up everyone with a common thread of belonging, shared joy and it becomes a physical as well as emotional manifestation. It can also be experienced at high school pep rallies, among fans of winning Super Bowl championship games, game show winners and high points of motivational speakers?events.

I was eighteen years old and dyed in the wool as I ever was. The ever tightening noose around our necks was something I was sure the Lord was going to work out.

I wrestled with my doubts as to whether they were tricks of the devil or something that I should take notice of and consider a solution to. I believe that if God called Denton then I had a duty to stand by him and whatever is less than correct about him, God would straighten him out. Worst case scenario, remove him as he did with Saul in the Bible and replaced him with David. The ambiguity of the Bible allowed me to see solutions even when there weren?t any and believe things were all right when the entire ship was sinking. Denton loved that control. He had a problem that only I could resolve for him.

I wanted to lead the church. I wanted to be a pastor and minister because I was adept at helping people wherever I could anyway. I was always that guy in school that people with problems seemed to gravitate to. Most of my girlfriends cried on my shoulder and my friends came to me asking for advice in their lives. In the Boy Scouts, I was a patrol leader and a First Class Scout. The way I managed Leon?s baby doll episode was another example of how I could find a solution in issues. I wanted to be a leader in the church and I wanted to preach the gospel that I had embraced and I knew I could bring many people out of their misery and into the light. Denton knew that and saw an opportunity that would save his own marriage and sanity once again. He just had to con me into it.

Among those that came into our growing flock was a girl named Rona Barton.

She had come over from the Pentecostal church when Denton made his exodus. For reasons never quite clear, she left home at eighteen and was living with Denton, Kathy and his wayward nieces. Unlike the nieces who were outgoing, energetic and pure extroverts, Rona was an introvert to say the least.

Not to put too fine a point on it but Rona was an emotional cripple. She seemed to be terminally depressed, easily upset and anything she considered a slight, pushed her further down into her silence and misery. When she was animated it was usually in the form of shouting at Kathy, some attention seeking measure of acting out or crying uncontrollably complete with shaking spells. Based on what we now know about mental health issues, Rona could be classified as probably bi-polar, manic depressive. I had known Rona for years by this time having met her in high school, and never remember seeing her happy. As far as the church thing went, she was along for the ride. Denton had confided in me about how she was driving his wife absolutely bonkers and was deciding whether it was best to cut their losses in trying to help her and send her on her way or finding another solution that they could live with.

The ambiguity of the Bible served him well once again. ?A pastor shall he the husband of one wife.? No more calls please, we have a winner! ?The Lord showed me that he wants you to marry Rona. You want to be a pastor and she will be your wife. Her myriad of problems will pass away as she has someone to love and to love her. What she needs is what we cannot give her, affection, love and attention. It is God?s will.? Denton was in salesman mode again. I was eighteen years old, unemployed, no place to live, no assets because I still was living at home with my parents. This plan was utterly inconceivable even in the best of times. To suggest that this was the ?Will of God? was ludicrous. I knew Rona as a person in the church, I had no romantic feelings for her unless a deep sense of pity counted. Denton preached several sermons about people in the Bible who did not do God?s will when they were called to do so and the wrath of an angry God was upon them. As impossible as this sounded could this be a test of my faith? Could God actually want me to marry her and what if it was the cure all to her deep depression and violent outbursts? Robin was deeply jealous of the other women in church who were

all having babies, sharing baby and maternity clothes and picking out names.

Robin, single, alone and without options, sat isolated from their happiness adding to her depression, confirming the fact that she was unwanted, unloved and miserable. At just twenty years old, she had her whole life to figure out what to do, who to marry, if ever, how many babies to have and how to get herself out of this bi-polarism and depressive state every damn day.

But Denton intervened with the perceived Will of God plan that was encouraged

by Kathy with so much enthusiasm that I had to wonder if it was a plot. I got the only job available in the current state of the 1974 economy, a recession where no one was hiring even skilled people, let alone a recent high school graduate with no work experience whatsoever. The Baltimore City Sewage Treatment Plant took me on as a maintenance mechanic trainee. I hated it with a passion. It paid about $100 a week after taxes. Starvation wages. We were married on December 13th , 1974 in a civil ceremony in Towson at the Baltimore County Courthouse, Maryland. I had never kissed Rona, nor held her hand and Denton kept us apart as much as possible to prevent any ?carnal activity.? The Bible says, ?It is good for a man not to touch a woman.? So women in the church would not even shake a man?s hand after church service, let alone look at him in the eye or speak before being spoken to first. We probably had a dozen conversations outside of talking about God. Neither of us were terribly convinced that we were part of some celestial plan. If common sense was to be considered, this was a plan that was doomed from the outset, complete lunacy and if I peeled back the ulterior motive, it was obvious this was for the sole benefit of Kathy and Denton having their lives back without Rona?s wet blanket attitude to cater to every single day. They considered her driving me nuts a much better option, and of course, it was God?s will. The only benefit to me was that, as a man having one wife, I could become a pastor and the only benefit to her was that she could now join the baby maker brigade with her own pregnancy, but not immediately however. Denton ordered us to start a fast on our wedding night. Fasting forbade any sexual activity. That was the degree of control he wanted to have over his people that even the most intimate of details were subject to his orders A baby was something we had not discussed. I thought, as outrageous as this

whole thing was, the notion of having a baby at age eighteen with a sketchy job at best and starvation wages to live on, a baby would be the very last thing on anybody?s mind. For Rona, it was all that was on hers.

The civil ceremony was done as casually as renewing your driver ?s license. There was no excitement, no happiness, no rings because jewellery was a forbidden vanity and the kiss was quite sisterly, a quick peck. Denton did not offer to marry us because he was not aware as yet that the state does not dictate who can be a considered a legally ordained minister. If you are a recognized minister of a recognized church, you can marry, bury and baptize anybody. Confessions to you are private and you have every right that a minister, priest or rabbi has even without a doctorate of divinity degree. Once we knew this, it was a right we used liberally to get into prisons without being on visitor lists, hospitals after afters and pretty much anywhere that we could insist on using the validity of our calling. I stepped into the pulpit of the church February 12, 1975 and never left until I walked out of a church-turned-cult in the early morning hours of January 1st , 1988. I stayed in the church long after I was aware that it was a destructive cult that had enslaved people because I was using my position to make every attempt, most of the time in clandestine ways, to bring the church around to its former objectives, if that would be even possible. I was a dissenting voice of reason to many of Denton?s abusive mandates. At one point he suggested that physical discipline, not mere verbal assaults, would do some of these brethren a world of good and bring them into line. In his mind it made perfect sense, considering he virtually owned them, to beat them into submission. I could never come right out and say, ?Are you crazy! Who do you think you are anyway?? I used gentle diplomacy and let him reconsider his actions, ?All you would need is one person to show a bruise to someone who calls the police, and you would be arrested, jailed and everything you hold dear would be destroyed. Are you sure this is the direction you want to go in??

The thought that he could even consider such an act of violence and terror upon his own people was traumatizing to me. It wasn?t the first time the subject of violence had to be addressed and it wouldn?t be the last.

One of his wayward nieces, Cindy, decided that she wanted to return to West by-God Virginia for reasons best known to her. She knew that leaving the church was not going to be easy but her plan, which made perfect sense inside of her eighteen year old head, was to make herself too much trouble to keep around. A visiting minister named Elder Dixon appeared on our horizon. This guy had some bizarre notion that he knew more about God than all of us put together and he should be the leader of the church. I didn?t know where he came from and I didn?t care where he went. Of course Denton entertained that idea for a mere microsecond but, for some odd reason, allowed him to sit, preach and be part of our little group. It was a huge mistake. Dixon was one lecherous son of a bitch.

Cindy, who was attractive by any standard, cozied up to him. The details are unclear but somehow he invited her to his place and she went. She said he raped her, he said she willingly had sex with him. She was apparently quite upset regardless of what happened and on the way home she was involved in a traffic accident. It was not a very good day to be Cindy. It got worse for her however. I saw her a few hours later when I heard about the accident. I did not hear about anything else as yet. Her face was swollen, her lips were cut and bleeding, her eye was blackened and she had obviously been crying. ?How bad was that accident?? I asked, assuming the injuries were from that. ?Denton did this to me.? She told me. ?Denton beat you like this? Why?? She wouldn?t tell me but he did when I confronted him. ?Dixon raped her. She asked for it because she told him that she and I had been having sex for years.? Denton was half explaining and half justifying his rage that led to his violence. I did not believe that he was engaged in incestual relations with his own niece, I could be wrong but the way she was beaten was an outrage and many of the people of the church decided that it was too much to stand. Cindy, her sister, her brother in law and a few others who thought this was a good time to exit stage left, departed.

I knew that one phone call to the police would end this church, Steve?s position as a pastor, the whole thing would implode with a simple 911 call. Had I known then what I knew years later, it would have saved us all a lot of heartbreak, misery, impoverishment and trauma. It would be like killing Hitler while he was a young soldier in the First World War. This was supposed to be a church, not a gulag.

I knew that if I walked out of the church, there would be no one else to speak sense to him. I stayed for that reason. Another reason was that I had a little son on the way that needed me. It was common practice in the church that when someone does leave, Denton does all he can to isolate their family from them in an attempt to force them to return. Denton took defections as a personal insult.

My marriage to Rona was anything but. She was eager to get pregnant and insisted on constant sex into the wee hours of the morning. Church services ran until 11 p.m. six nights a week, I had to get up at 6 a.m. to go to work. Rona kept me engaged in her mad dash to fertilization until 4 a.m. if necessary. We were not allowed to use birth control because preventing life is murder, just like abortions. (using a condom is the equivalent of having an abortion?) It was taught if God wanted you to get pregnant he would make it happen, if not, the Lord?s will be done. (Crippled logic 101 continued: If God wanted you to get cancer from smoking then you will, if not, you had nothing to worry about, puff away)

Rona got pregnant within the first month of our wedding day. She decided that she really didn?t like sex, it was too much work and that she would no longer be having sex again. She did it to get pregnant and with that accomplished, it was her body and she didn?t have to submit it to anybody, and that included her husband.

I was eighteen, at the height of my sexual peak, married to a wife who refused to have sex with me, regardless of what the Bible says, as a Christian, I could not commit adultery and masturbation was a sin as well. Add that to the fact that her bi-polar manic depressive rages did not subside with marriage, if anything made them worse. We could not be in the same room at the same time without fierce fighting. Rona was violent and beat me often. There was nothing I could do or say to anyone about this horrific situation I was conned into. Even the thought of an annulment was impossible because I had a child to consider. Rona knew my hands were tied and felt free to say or do whatever her mind could conceive to hurt me. As a pastor it was important to be an example in all things. She would throw herself on the floor screaming bloody murder, pleading for neighbors to call the police saying that I was beating her. They didn?t because I was sitting with them at the time drinking tea at their table in their downstairs apartment. She had not noticed that I slipped out of the apartment when she started her charade.

She was completely without shame, compassion or consideration. She could go totally ballistic in a restaurant if I didn?t pass the salt when she asked. She would wake up and start punching me in the night because she had a nightmare and blamed me for it. She would routinely make dinner, walk into the room where I was sitting and say, ?Here?s your dinner ?, and throw the plate of food at me from about six feet away, covering me with it. Remorseless and knowing that there were no consequences, she was only limited to the cruelty of her imagination. I endured her for the sake of my son. She had found my journals where I kept my most private thoughts and concerns. She called Denton, who was the subject of most of those concerns, and read to him, page by page, everything I had written. Denton?s paranoia went through the roof. Now he viewed me as an enemy to be watched and if possible, neutralized. Denton used Rona to spy on me, inform him of my comings and goings, who I talked to and what we discussed. Rona had undermined many of my attempts to recover the church from its cultism and oppression, not because she disagreed, but that it was me making the attempt to help the others see clearly. My life was an unending cycle of going to a miserable job that I hated, coming home to a wife that hated me, and spending most of the night in a church/cult that was an exercise of mental and emotional beat downs as Denton roared his venomous sermons into a microphone about how close to the Lord?s wrath we all were. Yeah Buddy, those were the days, and there was no escaping it.

When she had exhausted her viciousness and our son was eleven years old, she decided that she was leaving the church and me. That was 1986. She never remarried, never apologized and ended up keeping a team of shrinks in very nice cars for many years afterward. My divorce a year later became my 31st birthday present to myself.

If I Bu ild It , Will Th ey Com e?

I had a strategy that if I threw myself into the church in such a way that it would serve as an example of what we should be doing, others would follow. If I created a variety of programs within the church, inevitably the good things that would come out of that would overshadow the abuses Denton was inflicting on people for their many and minor infractions. If you missed a church service, he was at your door afterward wanting to know why. If you happen to be sick the question was insensitively asked, ?What sin did you commit to deserve this affliction?? Sickness, he perceived, was the wrath of God, unless of course he or a member of his family got sick, then it was a trial of their faith. Would he rescind his abuses in favor of promoting programs that actually helped people in meaningful ways? I had instituted several new ideas, most were immediately rejected or resisted by Denton who was certain the only ideas worth promoting were his own. I took sign language courses for the deaf and became fluent in signing. I then found deaf people who could join the church and enjoy our new agenda. I created arts and crafts for children to give them something to do that was creative and fun. The children had almost no activities at that time. Later, going to the park and playing on the swing sets was allowed. I initiated a program where we would load up a van and go visit nursing homes to talk to the forgotten elderly people. Another program was to visit the prisons and talk to the inmates. A couple had a family member in prison for murder and with the interest there, I took our people into many other prisons. It served two purposes. To share the gospel with inmates and it showed some of our people on the verge of illicit activities what they can look forward to. There was a food program where we had donated cans of out dated food given directly to us and eliminated the need to go through dumpsters. I studied and began teaching classes in self-esteem building, assertiveness training and motivation. That hit a nerve with Denton. His diminishing of people?s self-esteem and instilling ?The Fear of God? in them was his manner of controlling them. If they suddenly had self-esteem, self-confidence and felt they were valuable and worthy individuals, his control over them was severely throttled. That would cause them to possibly leave the church and with them, went their tithes and offerings. God forbid that they would talk about what they endured under his reign

of terror. That seemed to be the key element to turn the church around. The micro-managing of Denton over every aspect of people?s lives was permitted because they felt that they themselves unfit to manage their own lives. What if they had self-confidence, self -respect and self-worth?

Their actions would certainly follow and their families, their home life, their attitudes and personal growth would follow. I began reading the Bible from the perspective of God?s promises, his love for each of them and loving your neighbor as yourself. How can you love your neighbor as yourself is you do not love yourself?

Self love is not arrogance, sinful pride or vain-glorious. It is a command from God, that has been obscured by Denton who wanted everybody to be self loathing and then he could dole out love, acceptance and fellowship as some sort of gift only he could bestow upon them.

Of course they would have to deserve it, which is interpreted as doing whatever he wanted them to do, whenever he wanted them to do it. I had found the key to the lock that would lead the people to freedom within their own church. I was still busy seven nights a week and working five days a week. Usually, after about three weeks of constant here and there, meetings and visits to prisons, nursing homes, deaf schools, visiting our own people and working through their problems with them, I would come home after work, take a shower at 3:30 p.m. and go to bed not waking up until 6 a.m. the following morning. Then I was ready to do it all over again. The church was beginning to take shape again. It started be become a place where people had activities and things to do aside from sitting in a chair and reading their Bibles or praying all day and into the night. Most of these people were in their twenties as I was at the time. We acted like we were in our eighties. Denton?s constant suspicions mandated that if anyone went outside they must have someone from the church with them. Be your brother ?s keeper. In Denton?s mind, he was afraid if they went out alone they might be tempted to go to a movie, talk to a friend, or read a book that wasn?t the Bible and see there was a whole world outside of 5 South Broadway, Baltimore Maryland. After some recent defections where people had become close friends and they decided to leave together, he was particularly paranoid of any two or three people getting together too often. He would accuse them of sedition, homosexuality or somehow plotting to overthrow the church.

The human brain works in such a fashion that what you think about often enough becomes your focus and you start seeing it everywhere. Denton saw defectors and plans against him in every shadow. He was not far off because of his constant need to be in conflict, just for the sake of argument, had become too much for any of us to bear. In conversations about the people, concerns and issues within the church, he would hear whatever you said and take the opposite view, regardless if he actually agreed with it or not. Especially with me.

It was a mind control technique used to keep people off center, to make them doubt their own thoughts. When I would suggest that we might want to learn some new songs for the services, he would go into a full hour monologue of why all the songs we now sing are sufficient and how overbearing and time consuming it would be to teach everybody new ones. If it was a serious point that I needed a mutually agreeable decision or where time was of the essence, I learned to go into the meeting declaring all my reasons why plan A was absolutely essential for the success of the program. I secretly wanted plan B to be instituted as soon as possible. He would, true to form, launch into reasons why the only sensible course of action was plan B, chiding me for even considering plan A as a viable solution. I would agree that he was clearly correct and walk away with Denton agreeing with my plan and allowing his ego to think it was his own idea. Such mental gymnastics were inevitable because he would always, without fail, take the opposing viewpoint.

It was how he asserted himself as right in every situation. An ego maniac.

Case in point, eventually the church set up its own school. There was a P.T.A. type meeting where the students would demonstrate their skills and the parents could all be proud of their children?s progress. They had a game they wanted to do with the parents asking us questions to see if we could answer them. There was a geography question. Which direction is England from Maryland, East or West? It played directly into Denton?s ego. ?WEST!!? He shouted. I thought he was making a joke but I looked at him and saw that look of determined arrogance that was so common it could have been frozen on him. ?West?,? I asked, ?You would fly to England from Maryland by way of China?? Everyone else in the room shouted East!! East it is East!!? The young student said, ?The correct answer is East.? Oh no, that was not going to fly with Denton.

? Oh no, that was not going to fly with Denton. If he said it was West somehow it was going to be West because after all he was the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. He shouted even louder that it was West, said it over the explaining voices and finally when his wife, who was the principal of the school. She assured him it was in fact, East.

Instead of conceding the point, he said, ?It?s both! You can get to England going East or West. No one asked which was the fastest route.? Denton had a childlike insecurity that demanded he be right regardless of what was correct. It would later lead to his undoing when we were at serious odds. As if this wasn?t hilarious enough, he had to double down.

Next question, ?If you are standing on the South Pole, which direction is up?? I was nearly on the floor laughing as he pointed to his feet. All the children pointed to the ceiling, the reason being that ?up?is defined as any direction away from the center of the earth, regardless of where on the earth you are standing. Denton was nearly in tantrum mode. He accused people of plotting to make him look stupid and deliberately humiliating him. He stormed out leaving everyone staring at each other. P.T.A. meetings would no longer have questions to the parents ever again. My all-time favorite however was one particular Sunday when he was preaching, (under the alleged anointing of the Holy Spirit no less) about a passage in the Bible that referred to the ?Admonition of the Lord.? He misread it and for the next three and a half hours we sat and listened to him rage on about the ? ammunition of the Lord. The word of God was a weapon to defeat the devil and prayer was our ammunition. Those of us that had, even a tenuous grasp on the English language, were in stitches, bowing our heads as though in prayer, trying not to break out into full guffaws in his face. After service, one of the elders went to him and pointed out his error. ?Admonition, ammunition, it is the same thing!? Denton insisted. I broke out a dictionary and showed him both words and their definitions. Clearly they are two different meanings. ?Webster wasn?t anointed of God, I am.? The man could simply re-write history, the dictionary and apparently the Bible to suit whatever he wanted to believe and defend it, at the top of his lungs if need be. It was a very dangerous attitude.

People were coming to me, quietly and discreetly. They were concerned that their leader was out of control. He had set himself over me, as the pastor of the church, by self-ordaining himself the bishop. He later decided that as a bishop he also was the apostle and prophet, basing this promotion on nothing more than his whim. It was becoming ludicrous because there were only about one hundred people in the church and maybe another twenty five children. Almost every one of the church?s programs had been created by my efforts, time and money. When people were sick, they called me to come pray for them. I was preaching every Wednesday night and Saturday night. Denton preached on Sunday mornings. His sermons were becoming more hate filled, and seemed to take on a flavor in direct contradiction to what I was teaching on Saturday, the night before. If I preached self-love, before you can love your neighbor as yourself, he was ready Sunday morning to tell the people that ?You must hate yourself, you are a sinner and loving yourself is to love sin.? When people were going to him about something urgent in their lives, he would drift off into some totally unrelated topic, never answering them directly. He seemed to be making comments about me without using my name but everyone knew who he was talking about. Certain phrases that I used in sermons or in meetings he turned ever so slightly to give a more acidic tone to it. No one could understand why but the surmising was that I had garnered a lot of respect and attention for my efforts to turn the church into a church again. It flew in the face of his heavy handed way of manipulating and controlling everything. People preferred to hear me, seek my advice and counsel and spend time with me. As time progressed they seemed to only endure Denton.

I had given him two books about cults that I had read which motivated me to steer the church back into safe harbor. One was written by a former member of the Unification church cult about the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. The guy considered himself Jesus Christ incarnate, insisted his followers called him Father, married hundreds of couples at the same time, some of whom only recently met and demanded total and unquestioning loyalty from his followers. The other was written by a former member of the Hare Krishna sect. He wrote about the methods used to lasso new converts and ways that were used to manipulate them once they were in. A week later I asked him what he thought about the reading material. ?Gave me some good ideas.? He said smugly, hoping for a reaction.

It was clear he didn?t care if the church was a cult just as long as he was running the show and everybody knew it. Being a cult in the eyes of any government agency observing at his activities was thumbing his nose at them knowing separation of church and state kept him just out of their reach. He considered himself above them, above anyone. He was the Bishop, apostle and prophet of a church and secretly he knew that almost a quarter of a million dollars lay somewhere, outside of anyone else?s reach, in case it was needed to effect an exit strategy. The fact that his own people would consider what he was doing as cultish in nature by any definition did not bother him at all. He did not even care to defend himself or address them. There was a reason.

As the programs were gaining momentum, Denton decided to show them his own ability to make things happen. In a meeting one afternoon, he informed us that he was in negotiations with a man that wanted to sell us three properties that contain eight apartments. The reason is that the Baltimore City government has decided to start selling run down, empty houses that they own to the public for just one dollar.

The new owners would have to spend a minimum of $30,000 to renovate them and promise to live in them for five years of longer. It was a massive gentrification plan.

The man with the houses was afraid that the city would be requiring property owners of run down housing units to renovate or lose them. He wanted out and this was a prime opportunity for investment. We agreed to buy them, live in them and fix them up as we went along. The money would come from our income tax returns that year. We agreed to pay $100 per month in rent that would be pooled to continue renovations and purchase more property. Other church families would live in those as well. It was a domino effect and soon the church was a major property holder in Baltimore City. It also assured that Denton controlled the people in an ever tighter grip. The people lived in church houses, their children went to a church owned school, they attended the church where he was the bishop, apostle and prophet, if anyone wanted to call him a cult leader they could be put out on the street with nothing. He had already commandeered their life savings, their income tax return checks, drained their pay checks with tithes and offerings and he had yet another plan to lock them in forever.

People complained that working at their jobs was hard because of the restrictive lifestyle imposed on them.

Fasting for days at a time weakened them so that they could not do long hours of manual labor or focus on their tasks.

His cousin, Ronald, also in the church, had created a home improvement company in answer to the massive renovation projects in Baltimore at the time. It was boom time in Baltimore?s housing market. If you sold any product or service in that field you were making serious money. People quit their jobs and started working for Ronald. Many of the abandoned houses had old furniture in it which Ronald took to Denton who sold it in the store front of one of the houses the church bought.

Other people quit their jobs and worked in the second hand furniture store the church now ran. Others quit their jobs and went to the city landfill scavenging the dump for scrap copper, brass and aluminum to sell as recycled material. They also would go to another landfill where the city and the power company would dump downed or removed trees. They cut the wood and sold it for firewood. In time, there were more than two dozen properties owned by the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, second hand furniture was booming, wood was being cut, split and sold to families around town and metal prices continued to rise. Everyone was living in church properties, working in church companies their children were educated in the church school, eating from the church food supplies of expired dated products and church services continued four times a week or more. We had our own little community of self-sufficiency and nobody saw anything but blue skies ahead.

Except me.

People were engrossed in working for the church instead of a job that paid benefits, a living wage and learning some sort of marketable skill. I was not going to quit my job with the city as much as I hated it because, if the worst ever happened, such as, Denton decides he no longer wants to be merely the bishop, apostle and prophet but maybe Jesus Christ himself, (and I was not the only one to consider this a possibility) and anyone disagreed, they would be on the street with nothing but the clothes on the backs. The lure of a job that they could go to whenever they finished their morning coffee, maybe around 10 o?clock, couldn?t be fired from, worked around their Christian brothers, had unlimited sick time and no actual bosses to harass them was just too tempting for these people who, it was sad to say, came from pretty much the dregs of society. That is just who inner city churches attract as a matter of fact. Mostly uneducated, poor, some were criminals

unskilled labor was what most were used to. This was where they would always be in life because they did not think they were capable or worthy of anything more.

Denton reassured them of that on a daily basis. He made sure they knew that it was him that gave them a job, a home, food on their tables, clothes on their backs, furniture in their apartments and a shining path into heaven when it is all over. The admission price was their absolute loyalty and obedience to the great bishop, apostle and prophet, David Stephen Denton. I had been circumvented by a con man who just gave everybody whatever they wanted, promises of more, better and forever. I smelled a rat. It was a page right out of Fidel Castro?s plan for revolution.

Denton had admitted to me many years earlier that he had read and admired Marx?s Communist Manifesto. Now he was following it. I saw ahead that problems would inevitably emerge. First, the people worked for the church so their ?salaries? were zero. They received what they needed for toiletries, coffee in the morning and perhaps a few incidentals. If they needed more, just ask Denton, but any money that they could earn and maybe put away was considered greedy and selfish.

Denton would determine what they needed and how much it should cost. Secondly, there is just one problem with lazy people, namely, they are lazy. It was like working in Cold War era Soviet Union. People made the work of others harder by doing the bare minimum. If Denton would send someone to the hardware store to get a bag of cement, he might see them return by lunchtime. Production was slow and there was neither work ethic nor pride in what they were doing. It was for almost no money at all, it was hard labor in outdoor conditions that was usually scalding hot summer days or freezing, unbearable winters. As Denton appeared on the worksite people started moving, when he left, it was hard to tell if they were still alive. Things got done but at a snail?s pace. Properties were being mortgaged to pay overdue bills. Denton refused to take out homeowner ?s insurance, to save the money. When the water bills came due, then overdue, the city came out and turned off the water to the houses. Denton had a wrench at his disposal and went out and turned it back on. Free water until the next meter reading. It was a house of cards and everybody was buying it. If housing prices soared, which is what he was waiting for, everybody would be part of a huge windfall after the sell off of the properties.

Nobody knew where they were going to live after that, but Denton, our beloved bishop, apostle and prophet wouldn?t leave us hanging or would he?

As metal prices went up and the church?s aluminum, brass and copper stores were sold by the barrels, the money was quietly secreted away by Denton. He also had exclusive say, unilateral decision making power over any and all transactions regarding the real estate. (Smell the rat yet?) All profit from firewood sold was delivered to Denton. The curious thing was that the quality of life never seemed to increase. The people were still living in apartments that lacked walls in many cases, plumbing fixtures or lights. All the apartments were heated with wood burning stoves. Those who complained about Denton in any way did not receive wood and were left to freeze. Nobody was eating a healthy diet and empty calorie foods were making the people ever wider as the months wore on. The part that was most noticeable were the church sermons.

Denton had become an absolute tyrant in the pulpit. Raging his suspicions upon people and openly humiliating and criticizing them for perceived disloyalties. It was like he was quoting a Thesaurus instead of a Bible, using every synonym for terrible, sinful, evil, deceitful and underhanded. In my experience, liars think everyone else is a liar, thieves think everyone else is a thief. His projections onto others drew attention to what was in his own life, not just in his own thinking. One day he and I had a frank chat. I ran down a list of what I saw were his actions that had run far afield from what the Bible says we should be doing.

He told me ?You know what your problem is? You are listening to that Bible more than you are listening to me.? Conversation ended. Though still in my early twenties, I had been in the church for almost ten years. Promises were not being fulfilled. In many cases what he was telling people were outright lies which he would simply say, ?I?ll just repent for it later.?

He promised that everyone who was in the church for ten years or more would receive a title to one of the houses. Of course that never happened. He would borrow money from people and refuse to pay it back, ?The Bible says a borrower nor a lender be? which he interpreted as ?you shouldn?t have loaned me the money in the first place.?I had loaned him $500 one day. About a week later he needed to borrow $500 more and promised to pay it back within a month. A month came and went and I approached him for the money. He said that someone owed him money and I should go to them to get my money. I refused and said that I loaned it to him, my car insurance was due and I expect him to be

his word immediately. He said he was insulted that I would suggest he was less than honest. He paid me $500 that he had in his pocket. When I asked for my other $500 he said he just paid it to me. I said then where was the first $500? He insisted that that was paid with what he just gave me, and laughed it off.

I told him, using small words and in an almost infantile simplicity, ?I loaned you a total of $1000, you repaid me $500. I want my remaining $500, thank you.?

He repaid it a week later telling me that I was greedy, selfish and lacked the qualities of a charitable brother in Christ and a few other assorted put downs that I did not stand around long enough to listen to. Denton, by everyone?s account who had dealings with him, had become a con artist, flim flaming, using word scrambles to, for lack of a better word, outright steal, from those he got close enough to con. This guy was in charge of the financial well-being and security of over one hundred people who trusted him to do the right thing. If people made any comment regarding him in any negative or complaining way, they received no money for essentials that week. Their electric might be turned off because all bills were in the church?s name and he could make one call to kill the power to their houses. Denton had zero tolerance for criticism unless he was making it about others.

Just like it was in the script, there were some major disagreements between him and one of the men working in the wood yard, whose name was Gerald. Gerald said he had enough of Denton?s promises and he was leaving the job, the church and he would be out of his apartment in a week. Denton went to the Gerald?s apartment that night, told him and his family to pack their clothes and leave immediately. The furniture that was given as payment for his work was to stay.

They had nowhere to go and were standing in the January weather in the middle of the night suddenly homeless, penniless and cold. He made sure everyone knew it and basically dared anyone to complain. He did not have to justify his actions to anyone. His leadership was completely based upon fear instilled on those whose lives he completely controlled. He seemed to miss the point that it was our initial income tax return checks, our tithes, donations and offerings that bought the houses. It was the church people?s collective virtual slave labor that earned the money that he was doling out piecemeal. It was their trust in God and belief in

him as their bishop, apostle and prophet, albeit self-ordained, that kept them together for many years. He had deceived and failed them and they were absolutely stuck. With no money, job, a place to go to, with friends and family alienated years ago and no resources outside of the church itself, Denton had become a virtual slave master and overlord. He took advantage of their eagerness to get out of ?The Real World? that they considered so cruel and unfair, promised them paradise and gave them the cold, blowing wind.

I was the fly in the ointment still yet. I was the dissenting voice that he could not silence. I was as ordained as he was, spending years in a pulpit, winning hearts and minds with love, kindness and compassion. To crush me was like stepping on Disney?s Jiminy Cricket. He insisted several times during heated discussions between us that I should just pack up and go, leave the church and him in peace. I told him that I had donated over $40,000 to the church over the years and if he would refund it to me, perhaps out of the remaining assets of the $200,000 that he had yet to reveal its location, I would be happy to explain to the people that I am leaving and why. He knew that I knew too much to have me on the outside looking in. Theft after trust, charity fraud and comingling assets of a charity into your private accounts are all outside of the protections of separation of church and state. Besides, how would he explain my departure? Was I an evil person who he allowed to stand in his church and preach so eloquently to them for a dozen years? Or was I a good and decent man that he, out of pure jealousy and paranoia, drove away to protect his little fiefdom that he had created for himself?

I had positioned myself as his necessary evil. To pay me off would be to admit there are funds squirreled away that no one was supposed to know about. He was continuously bashing me during his sermons. I was taking a high road, quoting the book of 1st Samuel when David was being chased down by a jealous King Saul to kill him because the people preferred David over him. The parallels were uncanny and I used them often. It became so close to real occurrences that when people asked me secretly what will happen in the church next I responded, ?Read 1st Samuel, it seems to be running like a script.? Denton realized that he was the jealous and vindictive Saul to my longsuffering David and it outraged him even more.

Denton was completely out of control. His paranoia was causing him to have people called on the phone by other people sitting with him. He would eavesdrop to see if the person would reveal any sort of disloyalty to him while they spoke to them. Once this was known, people were afraid to have any conversation on the phone for fear that their conversations were being monitored. Denton would open people?s mail, have people followed, including me. He was not making sense much at the time and people began murmuring about his mental state. He would do things in front of people that were outrageous just to get a reaction from them and to show that their sensitivities did not matter to him.

I was in the kitchen of the fellowship hall one day. I am a mannerly person, I don?t talk with my mouth full and excuse myself from a table when I am finished.

Denton ate a jar of pickles in from of me with his fingers. I didn?t care, I assumed he liked pickles. When that got no reaction, he drank the pickle juice and began gargling it loudly, watching for my reaction as he did it. I gave him one. I stood up and left the room in disgust saying to him, ?Bishop, apostle and prophet? and vulgarian!?

I had co-created, built and supported this church, he had turned it into a cult, virtually enslaving the members, lying to them, stealing not just their money and labor but their sense of dignity and self-respect. Everything was under his oppressive control. There was no particular reason to further oppress and abuse them, aside from the sheer twisted pleasure of making people bend to his will. He enjoyed imposing himself upon them with the same sick thrill that rapists get as they force vulnerable women to have sex against their wills, knowing that anyone can get sex almost anywhere from willing lonely women at the end of any bar. He knew that no one could go to the police or any other law enforcement agency because, technically, they voluntarily put themselves in the position they were in.

He may have coerced them to fork over their money but unless violence or the threat of violence was used, there is no crime. Churches excommunicate members all the time for breaking rules that may seem strict but it is the church?s prerogative to make the rules and the members prerogative to obey them or not.

Denton knew where the lines were drawn and he knew how to stay just on this side of them.

What he did not know was that, while I came along at age sixteen, I had grown up a bit. I was still part of a culture that influenced much of the way I thought and understood things but I never surrendered my will to do the right thing for a cheap easy life where I would be taken care of. I still had a job that paid me enough to make it on my own. I was teaching self-esteem and assertiveness quietly to those who secretly were learning how to stand up when the time came.

Th e Ch u r ch Wit h in t h e Ch u r ch What the self-appointed bishop, apostle and prophet David Stephen Denton did not know was that I had created a clandestine church within a church. I had created a network of followers who were questioning just what the hell are we doing here, we were all thinking the same questions, of cultism, abuse and oppression and greed, all happening before our eyes and together we made sense of it. If we all understood that what was happening was contrary to the Bible, God?s will and the Christian way then we need to get back on track, even if we cannot leave physically, we can connect within the church, acknowledge that what we are hearing is clearly cult mentality, mind control, coercive persuasion and manipulation. Empowered with that mutually shared understanding, the church/cult became a new learning ground for us. It was dangerous, precarious and exciting. I propped up the followers with the knowledge that Denton could not kill us and eat us. He could not condemn us to hell because he was not actually anything more than a man with a loud voice trying to scare those who could be scared. The curtain was pulled back on the great and mighty Wizard of Oz and revealed just an insecure bully who hoped no one would learn his secret.

Now, instead of being confused, we played along. We knew what the true Christian message was and we knew that all of his roaring and outrage was just smoke and mirrors. Laughably, one of our people, Tommy, used the term ?ZAP the BAP?. I asked what that meant. He explained, Zap the Bishop Apostle and Prophet. Denton would be zapped in ways he had yet to begin to imagine. When Denton would do something outrageous, we said, ?ZAP.? The early Christians had a series of catacombs under the city of Rome to escape persecution. They had secret codes that only they knew. There were signals of recognition to each other that the general public couldn?t perceive.

We did the same thing. One of our people was a man who, to this day, I honor his memory. His name was Taggart Smythe and he represented what any Christian should and could be. Tag was my brother, best friend, confidante and appeared at the very worst of times with a smile on his face like everything was going to be all right. He and I spent almost all of our free time together and we could find humor in the pits of hell if that was where we happened to be. We made life in a cult bearable and we both understood why we still had to be there though we could have walked at any time. We gave hope to the hopeless. We had brought in another friend at the tearful pleas of his parents trying to get him off of drugs, whose name was Wil. On Kent Island, news of Taggart?s conversion was big news.

Everybody knew everybody on Kent Island and when it seemed that Wil was going to kill himself on an overdose one day, his parents called Taggart to ask if he would try to help him. Tag brought me in and together we stayed with Wil during some rough drying out sessions. Wil got cleaned up. We were like the three musketeers to the deep frustration of Denton who hated to see anybody getting too chummy.

The energy around us in action was infectious and everybody wanted to be closer to what we were doing even if it was just washing our cars. Were Christians supposed to have this much fun together? Denton believed that fun would lead to some sort of ungodliness though he couldn?t pinpoint it. He just knew which, in his mind, was enough. I tried to explain to him on many occasions that if you squeeze a puppy too tight you aren?t showing it how much you love it, you kill it.

There was also my other best friend in the world, Katy Paulson. This is where it gets a little sticky. Katy was me with long hair. I was the male version of Katy. How two people were so much in tune with each other without being lovers was beyond anyone?s imagination. Especially Denton who saw an opportunity opened up for himself. Katy was married to Tom, who ironically was the male version of Robin. She had married Tom at age eighteen literally a month after Robin and I got married. Tom was ten years her senior and about as much like Robin as I was like Katy. People saw us all together and said the wrong couples married. Tom and Katy?s relationship was also arranged. Someone declared it was a dream prophesying that should marry, so they married on the mere strength of that.

Another loveless marriage wrought with fights, bitter arguing and hatred but with the added hell of four small children to bear witness to it all.

Katy and I hung out together all the time, at first with Taggart and Wil and later and more often, just Katy and I. Anyone knowing the ugly situation between the marriages would easily conclude that Katy and I had ditched our spouses for each other. Denton immediately leaped to the conclusion that we were having an affair, by-passing suspicious activities or emotional attachment. Straight to adultery. Without a shred of proof aside from the fact that we were always talking to each other at church functions and obviously enjoying each other ?s company. We were never alone or outside of the plain view of a crowd of people, which we decided eliminated the appearance of anything unseemly. We heard the accusations and laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Katy and I were first and foremost devout believers, Christians and understood that adultery was wrong. Just as wrong as squirreling away $200,000 while watching your followers eat out of dumpsters I would imagine. You can make any situation look ugly depending on the words that you use to describe it. The Pharisees trashed Jesus for hanging around publicans, prostitutes and drunks. Controversial people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were considered witches and burned at the stake. Denton just preferred to diminish my influence in the church by spreading rumors about Katy and I. He had good reason to, regardless of the truth. I had gained considerable respect and favor with the people. I was the one showing up at their door with a bag of food when Denton denied them grocery money. I paid their bills when they didn?t have money. I listened to their problems late into the night when Denton slept at home. I was loved, Denton was feared. People saw a polarization within the church. I preached that we should love one another, Denton preached suspicion, mistrust, under the guise of ?Being your brother ?s keeper ? which was wearing thin. Hatred and suspicion take a lot of energy. Katy and I continued our friendship, undaunted by the accusations that were so outrageous that nobody except our own brand of Pharisees gave it any consideration. In fact, it actually hurt Denton?s credibility to make such a disgusting inference about his own pastor who served the people with such dedication. It was Denton?s ulterior motives that fuelled his attack. His position of unquestioned superiority in the church, the absolute power that he possessed and he wanted to eliminate my ?second guessing? of his demands and strangle hold on the people.

If he could turn the people against me, trashing me as an adulterer, no one would be able to red flag anything he wanted to do again.

The church within the church continued to grow and we strengthened each other.

Whenever Denton met his demise, whatever form that would take, we could simply step into the light and continue without being clandestine any longer.

Denton was in his mid-thirties at the time so it was apparent that his ousting, not attrition, would be necessary to fulfil our plans. As powerful as he thought he was, he could not see through walls. We kept the walls up pretty high. Those codes and signals were enough to let him know something was happening but he never what it was or who was involved. Nobody was talking. Katy and I were able to keep him busy by dropping certain hints that he would chase after like throwing a stick for a dog.

We had church picnics every Sunday in a state park, which we decided would be good for everybody, I saw certain eyes on me. One in particular was Bill Tengal. Bill was from the American South West, New Mexico as I recall. He was picked up hitch hiking by Leon and brought back to Maryland where he became Denton?s most dedicated, unquestioning loyal puppet. If Bill was in Guyana he would have been first in line to drink the Kool Aid. Bill had the personality of a zombie complete with a thousand yard stare. He had no leadership aspirations which frustrated Denton because he needed a loyal, unquestioning person to be his ?Yes man?. Bill was assigned to follow me around at a distance and report back to Denton about what he saw, or what he was told to see. This became a game for Taggart, Wil, Katy and I because we thought it ludicrous that a church needed spies to watch each other. I particularly enjoyed the challenge. I worked for the City which gave me a lot of free time, like 7 ½ hours a day or so. Most of my time was spent escaping and evading supervisors or their snitches. I was trained by other employees who spent their military years in jungles where escape and evasion was a matter of life and death. I never got caught. I learned how to slide up to a wall and become the wall. I could create a diversion out of flashlight batteries and a strand of copper wire. If you turned me loose in a typical kitchen, I could wreak havoc.

So here was Bill, walking like he was loose at every joint, tailing me. I signaled Tag and Will, a bit too overtly and slid my finger across my chin, pointing to a spot down a trail into the woods. They smiled and nodded an acknowledgement.

Bill would spend the rest of the afternoon hiding behind a tree waiting for us to appear for some sort of nefarious activity while we sat at a picnic table eating and laughing. I would look over my shoulder and walk up to someone just to ask what time it was. Ears grew into tall hairy points as the spies closed in to see what we were conspiring. One of us would drop a folded piece of paper behind a tree and someone else would walk by a few seconds later and pick it up. Denton would rush over and demand to see it. It was blank. Denton fumed. He made no attempt to hide what he was doing because there was no one to call him on it. He already made his accusations and simply was looking for evidence to support it. Cart before the horse so to speak. He was making a fool out of himself, or we were helping him in the process as much as we could. One of the best ways to hide what we were doing was to create a dozen various ?clues? for him to find and as he was looking in a dozen places for his ?evidence?, we were in location number thirteen. It was hilarious. Almost all of his sermons were about adultery, sex sins of one kind or another and people who were making him think evil.

I asked him after one such sermon, ?Do people committing sin, inspired by the devil, actually have the power to make you think evil? Are you that weak emotionally and spiritually that you can be led into thinking evil by them?? Egg on his face again. My counter sermon was from the Bible where charity (Christian love) thinks no evil and believes the best of people. There was no pretext of a church any longer. Denton had blatantly come out as the all-powerful ruler and claimed absolute power as the manifestation of Christ himself. His ideas were synonymous with God?s. He claimed to have ?The gift of discernment? which enabled him to know the thoughts and hearts of people. His thoughts were all the evidence that he needed. ?You may as well confess to adultery brother Jim because if I believe it to be true, it is true.? Denton told me. Those words came back to haunt him many times afterwards. They were spoken out of a frustration and arrogance so belligerent and over the top that repeating those words to a tribunal, called by him, was an embarrassment to him, not the evidence he hoped to ascertain. With the help of Taggart, Katy and I had developed a relationship out of our friendship. Still not a sexual tryst, but our feelings for each other went beyond platonic. Our marriages were in name only, the abuses we were suffering at home, the lack of affection,

love or even the pretense of a relationship left us looking at each other with an appreciation of our feelings, long missing in our marriages. We respected each other, cared what each other felt, thought and said. She knew that her feelings mattered to someone, that she was more than a baby making machine that did laundry and cooked. I knew that I had someone who shared my feelings, concerns and actually understood me. Though we tried to explain it several different ways, the fact was that Katy and I were in love. The lines were already blurred, stretched out of recognizable shape, erased in places and finally disregarded. Five years of failed attempts to make two arranged marriages work had taken its toll. Denton?s constant accusations, thinly veiled, then overtly attacking us for what we had never done nor conceived of doing, served as a catalyst to throw us into each other ?s embrace for love, support and comfort.

Taggart, knowing the whole situation said he couldn?t blame us. We were just human after all. As impossible as it might be to believe, we never had sex. There was a line that we decided not to cross. We were still married, albeit miserably, to spouses that did not deserve either of us. I had integrity that I was determined that I would not make Denton right, I just couldn?t give him that. There is also the fact that when you are guilty of something and you lie about it, it is obvious, especially if your interrogator wants to believe it anyway. For all of my sacrifices and perseverance to maintain a secret church within a church, that would serve to deliver the innocent people out of oppression, it would all be ruined if Katy and I were to actually, ?do the deed.? It didn?t stop Denton from going to Tom and ?confiding? that he knew Katy and I are secretly having sex then going to Robin to tell her the same thing. He was undermining our marriages or at least what was left of them. This was exactly the kind of thing he told me he used to do in business to get advantages over co-workers or supervisors. Underhanded, lying, manipulations and manufacturing evidence. This guy wasn?t a Christian a leader of people but a destroyer of anybody or anything that got in the way of his grand plan. I was getting the impression that I knew what that grand plan was. (Smell a rat yet?)

Katy and I were in love. That was refreshing to us as well as a tragedy. She had three children, I had one, we were incarcerated in a cult, locked in two bad marriages and there was not enough money to leave and support ourselves.

The thought of shocking and disappointing people that I had led, taught and promised to support for many years was unconscionable. We maintained a clandestine relationship under Denton?s nose and everybody else?s. These were the days before cell phones or the internet. Communication was tricky. If we wanted to talk we had to do it when our spouses were asleep. Tom trusted me and did not believe Denton?s accusation. He knew his wife and I were close but never knew just how close we had become. I doubted that he even cared. He brought Denton?s accusation to me with almost a chuckle. He was not a big Denton fan by any stretch of the imagination. Tom, like Robin, was in the church, just going along for the ride out of a convenience more than anything else. Robin however, hated me and believed every word Denton said but knew that, short of walking in on us in the act, there was nothing she could do. She knew that she was as responsible for our situation as I was, if not more. The cruelty she inflicted on me almost daily, the violence and abuse would drive anyone into someone else?s arms. She would search for any trace of evidence that she could find to turn over to Denton which could destroy me, relentlessly.

We left clues. We almost held their hands and walked them through it. Denton was now aware that I had left false leads for him in the past and was sure that my clues were also dead ends. Liars think everyone else is a liar. On simultaneous nights, Katy took pottery classes in the Mount Washington area of Western Baltimore. I took sign language classes across town in the North section of the city. Anonymous calls were made to make sure we were there. We expected that.

Then we left and arrived at a location where no one would ever find us. It served them right for hunting us down like animals. Denton demanded to know if we were committing adultery and we denied it, emphatically. It was a damn good thing that he never asked us if we secretly met at Lake Roland down a long dirt road and swam nude in the cool waters of the lake almost weekly during the hot summer nights. It was a damn good thing that Bill never came into Provident bank in Eastpoint Mall to see where she and I were after we both arrived within thirty minutes of each other. If anyone searched our pockets, we had validated bank receipts showing we both had legitimate business there. Most of the church banked there. However nobody in the church had a safe deposit box like the one that I wanted to take to the private back room with my ?assistant? to examine

some documents for an hour or two. Denton asked if we were committing adultery but he never asked if we were affectionate, passionate or expressing our love for each other in dozens of unique and romantic, sensual ways. He never asked what we were doing on those long walks along the beach just as the sun rose on Chincoteague Island during our vacation as Tom and Robin sleep in our rooms. It was strange that we felt the need to always tell the truth to a man who could not give us the same courtesy, who was plotting our destruction anyway and whose questions were insulting and demeaning.

The church people, as I later learned, found ways to circumvent the truth. You never actually lied, you found ways to make it true. Why can?t he come to the phone? He is in the bathtub. He might be standing in a dry tub with all of his clothes on but he is in the tub, isn?t he? So it isn?t a lie is it? If I was asked a question I did not care to answer, I would rub my chin in a contemplative way and say, ?That?s hard to say.? Why was it hard to say? Because you will crucify me with the information, that?s why. Denton did not bother with such verbal semantics. He would outright lie. If I would ask him some details about a particular incident that I was checking into, he would invariably say, ?I have no idea what you are talking about.? As I explained the details he would correct me. ?I thought you had no idea what I was talking about? It was clear that Denton was using the church for some other ulterior motive, as a means to an end and I was in the way. There is no perfection in anything. The notion that you need to be perfect to go to heaven is another manipulation to guilt people into paying for penance, pry confessions out of people, or bring the threat of hell closer so they will adhere to the cult leader, usually with their wallet opened. However, using the notion that no one is perfect should not excuse people for committing atrocities either. Sociopaths have no conscience regarding their actions or true compassion for the feeling of others.

They can fake it very well however. Denton could watch people eating out of dumpsters, throw families onto the street in the cold or steal from destitute people and never lose a wink of sleep. His overbearing cruelty and his penchant for screaming into a microphone during sermons deafening the members as he pounded his Bible earned him the code name, ?Thumper ? as in Bible Thumper.

This book?s name appropriately came from that moniker. Thumper was creating his own gospel, turned the church into a cult and declared himself a deity.

Su f f er Lit t le Ch ildr en t o Com e Un t o M e While everybody was chasing or hiding from everybody else, there was an evil lurking among us that was more serious than any of this cat and mouse silliness.

Albert, an older brother in the church who had been a musician, a deacon both an ally and enemy of Thumper depending on the week, had called me and needed to meet me right away. I was there inside of five minutes. It sounded serious. Hi son, Little Joe, was clearly shaken up as was Albert. ?Ok, I?m here, what?s going on?? I asked. I wished it could have been almost anything else. Most of the children had been experimenting with each other sexually. They were too young to understand what they were doing, most of them were too young to speak clearly yet. Those that could speak clearly were telling their parents that a person in the church taught them these things. His name was Paul Tobert. He had been with the church almost from the beginning, probably around 1974 when he made his appearance. He was an odd duck to be sure but so were almost everybody in the church, why else would they join us? He blended in and made himself useful, as least as he defined useful. He would arrive at someone?s house ready to re-pipe the copper tubing plumbing for them. He knew all about plumbing, claiming he learned it in the Navy. After ripping out two walls reducing them to rubble and soldering pipes together so haphazardly that water gushed from the joints, he secured the tubing to the wooden stud by driving a nail through the center of it which of course leaked. He fell through ceilings while replacing floors above them on several occasions. He would always be available to give you a ride if you needed it but drove his car like he was stealing it. He would give couples money to go out to dinner to give them a little treat and was even good enough to watch their child until they got back. He was Thumper ?s darling.

Always available to give a hefty donation whenever Thumper asked for it, which was the kind of brother Thumper knew was going to heaven, first class. Thumper blamed the parents for leaving their bedroom doors open while they had sex because he just knew Paul couldn?t be that sort of guy. The parents said that they did not engage in the sex acts that their children were doing but Thumper knew better, ?You should be ashamed of yourselves for accusing a fine brother like Paul.? He told them.

Little Joe nervously explained what he experienced with Paul, step by step and in enough detail that I was sure no eight year old child could make up anything like this. There was a knot in my stomach. I wanted to throw up thinking about this guy, who I always considered a little weird. He was in fact, a child molester, a predator on our vulnerable kids. There was just one reasonable thing to do, we had to call the police and let them handle it. ?Let?s call Thumper first.? suggested Albert. It was his son and his call. Sure let?s get Thumper in on this and see the look on his face after he defended Paul and chided the parents for bringing this to him. I made the call. ?You are going to need to come to Albert?s apartment right now, we have a bit of an emergency.? I told him. ?I?m busy right now.? He said. Probably in the tub again I thought to myself. ?Well, get un-busy because we have something that you need to listen to. If you are too busy, we are going to call the police and you can explain your version of the story to them.? I told him.

He was there in five minutes demanding an explanation for disturbing him and pacing back and forth, ?What?s this all about!? ?Your golden boy is a pedophile, Paul molested Little Joe.? I told him. ?I don?t believe it, kids will say anything maybe the parents? .? He chided.

I cut him off mid-sentence, ?Well, believe it now because he just described in detail things that no eight year old knows about unless it happened.? Little Joe repeated the story. Every word was exactly the same. I could see Thumper ?s mind racing.

Consequences, how to minimize the damage, could any of this come back on him, what do we do about Paul. ?Go get Paul.? He said emotionless.

I walked down to his apartment in the next building. The church properties were side by side and cut up into separate apartments so we basically all lived above, below and next to each other. There was a 2x4 board in the hallway near his door.

I considered holding it like a baseball bat and when he opened the door, bludgeon him with it. How many children did he do this to? He answered the door, ?Paul we would like to have a talk with you upstairs in Albert?s place.? ?Is it about Little Joe??, he asked. The bastard knew it was. The board was sitting there calling out to me to grab it and drop this pervert right there on the spot. I was shaking with restraint.

Thumper, Albert, Little Joe, Paul and I sat for two hours. Initially he denied it but when he saw the consequences were not going to be good, he reconsidered in thirty seconds. He unloaded stories in a confession that I would have done anything not to have had to hear. In a voice as calmly and casually as you would describe what you had for lunch, Paul confessed in full detail how he orchestrated the molestation of dozens of children. Almost every child at one time or another was one of Paul?s victims. When he arranged for a couple to go to dinner, his treat, he treated himself to their son, raping him as he slept initially. The boy was four years old. He explained that he manipulated them into coming over to his place for candy or to play games while their mothers were doing laundry and the games would lead to his predatory sickness as he smiled and laughed the whole time. The children were too young to know any better and what felt good to them at the hands of this trusted individual, they tried on their little friends. He was not upset, scared, and not even ashamed. To Paul it was like he was recounting his normal daily routine. What happened next was worse, if that was even possible. ?So, I suppose now you understand that we need to go to the police with this Paul.

You are a sick and disgusting individual and you will rot in jail for the rest of your life, you get that don?t you??, I insisted. I was rather hoping that he would go home and find a rope saving us the trouble. ?Not so fast?, Thumper was reaching for his Bible. ?Dare any of you having a matter against another take it to the law and not to the brethren??

Now he wants to start quoting scripture? The brethren that he controlled? I remembered years earlier, when he created the ?Board of Elders? at the recommendation of the attorney setting up a series of insulations between Thumper and anyone who wanted to pull him into an investigation. In churches around the world, the board of elders was the final word and whose decision superseded even the bishop?s or pastor ?s orders. In a business meeting he stated, ?The vote of the board of elders is the final and binding. However, if I disagree with the decision of the board of elders, I will over ride their decision and go with my own.? In other words the board of elders was merely a rubber stamp of Thumper ?s ready made decision. It just gives the appearance that it was a democratic process.

Paul was Thumper ?s boy. He made a large financial impact every year. Thumper was not going to let his cash cow go to the slaughterhouse.

There was another reason he was going to protect him. Imagine the absolute humiliation Thumper would suffer when a public spectacle was made and the media descended upon the church and at his front door. ?Mr. Bishop, Apostle and Prophet sir, this man was among your children every day and they complained that he was molesting them and you blamed the parents sir?

The man is being charged with dozens of counts of child abuse, sex crimes and multiple sodomy charges, and you knew about it and chose to do nothing sir, can you explain why?? I knew what he was thinking. It was his church lock, stock and barrel and nothing happened without his order and permission. How could something this big go unnoticed? It was apparent he knew and either chose to do nothing or he deliberately covered it up. Then follow up investigations in every other aspect of the church would surface. ?Why do your women dress like bee keepers? Is it true $200,000 is missing? Are you actually running a gulag sir? Do the people actually eat out of dumpsters sir?? There was no fall guy for this one, it was going to land directly on his shoulders and whether the state would find charges against him or not is secondary to the fact that he was about to be crucified in the press. He could not depend on every single person to keep quiet about everything.

If Paul had become Thumper ?s Watergate, I was happy to be his John Dean. We already had a clandestine church ready to put in place when Thumper sat in prison writing his version of Mein Kampf.

Thumper ?s wheels were turning. ?We will handle it in house,? he declared. There you go, decision made, it?s settled. Paul was clearly relieved and was as happy as a pig in a synagogue. By the way, what?s for lunch? ?We can handle it ?in house?in about twenty years after he is paroled.? I insisted.

Thumper ?s eyes went narrow with contempt. He tried to dance around with Bible verses and reasoning that a lot of innocent people will be hurt by a scandal. ?More hurt than what these kids suffered through??

Then he said something that chilled my blood, as corrupt as I already knew he was, I never expected this. ?If Paul goes down, I will go down too. I will not go down alone. I will take every one of you with me. I know things about everybody in this church and I will tell everything I know if I am called onto the carpet about this.?

I wondered what he could be referring to. Sure we had some embarrassing issues that nobody would want publically aired but nothing of a criminal nature that I was aware of. However, whether a bluff or not, he was prepared to destroy the entire group if I made the call to the police. Now it was apparent that even blackmail was not beneath him. I wasn?t sure who I hated and despised more, him or Paul. There is a statute of limitations that I could fall back on. Minimum is three years. If whatever he had in mind was unsatisfactory, I could always pick up the phone within that timebframe. ?What do you propose?? I asked, expecting major ass-covering and I wasn?t surprised.

He considered it for long minutes. Probation, mental health counselling, a full confession and ask forgiveness before the full congregation, have no contact with any children at any time. I liked my 2x4 solution better.

It was all done according to Thumper ?s plan. People somehow felt vindicated, their complaints to him about their children acting strangely was on him, not them. The problem was, a pedophile is not like a bank robber that goes to jail and decides that they aren?t going to steal anymore. Pedophiles are sick, mentally warped individuals who have impulses that cannot be prayed away, medicated out of them or punished sufficiently to abate their sickness. A pedophile will spend twenty miserable, hard years in prison and come out looking for a playground.

Thumper ?s long term solution, ?He is lonely, he needs a wife. He would make someone a great husband. He would be a better husband than you!? He never missed an opportunity to take one last jab.

Thumper had his own addiction. Power. I could make one call and he and the whole church would get sucked into the center of the earth yet he still had to flex his ego. ?Besides, I cannot say what happened for certain, I didn?t see anything personally, did you actually witness him molesting any children?? I couldn?t believe what I was hearing. Did you actually witness Katy and I committing adultery before you ran to our spouses with your slanderous accusations? Paul admitted to crimes that would put him in jail for life but Thumper just couldn?t quite buy it?

Why not? Because he didn?t witness it personally. I wish I had one more 2x4.

He married Paul to a young woman, named Gloria, barely twenty years old in a ceremony that I refused to attend. It was not a romance, a marriage of two loving people joined for life in wedded bliss. It was another arranged marriage to give this guy someone to have sex with in the desperate attempt to prevent him from sexually gratifying himself with our children. They had nothing in common except for his last name. She wasn?t his wife as much as she was his orifice of convenience.

One evening during church services, some months later, I walked upstairs to use the rest room. Paul was coming out of the rest room? with Thumper ?s youngest daughter right behind him looking dazed and confused. He was ordered out of the church that night and was told never to return under any circumstances. Paul and his wife separated shortly thereafter. Two years later, his wife contacted me asking if I would come to divorce court with her, as a witness. He was resisting giving her any alimony and was trying to minimize child support for their son. He arrived with his attorney. She had an attorney as well and it looked like this was going to be a brutal encounter. Paul had a witness as well, a neighbor that she also knew. When Paul looked around and saw me sitting in the courtroom, his eyes widened and he abruptly grabbed his attorney by the sleeve and whispered to him anxiously. Her attorney conferred with them and the proceedings were concluded a short time later. The attorney told me, ?I don?t know what you have on him, but as soon as he saw you he told his attorney to give her whatever she asks for but do not let that guy testify in this courtroom.? He remarried some time later.

In the Maryland court database system you can look up any case by name, open or closed, unless it had been expunged. Years after his departure from the church, a criminal case involving him was filed. Third degree sexual misconduct on a minor. Probation and a suspended sentence. I contacted the mother of the young boy that he raped. She in turn contacted another woman, now in her forties who, as a girl was part of the church and was molested by him. It got back to him that she was going to file criminal charges against him because of the years of mental and emotional trauma that she endured, and still endures, based on what he did to her. One week later he was found dead of an apparent heart attack. He was sixty years old.

Taggar t Taggart had been in the church for five years. He had pulled Wil out of a drug addled haze of a spoiled childlike existence and, between he and I, brought him into adulthood fairly unscathed. Wil was under our collective wings and really wasn?t exposed to a lot of the church?s inner workings and minimally exposed to Thumper ?s bombast. Thumper was aware that Wil?s father was one of the wealthiest men on Kent Island and believed that a donation would soon be forthcoming for ?saving his son?, though Thumper had nothing to do with his recovery.

I could tell that Taggart was no longer the happy-go-lucky guy that he had been for most of his time with me. Something was off. At first I was afraid that Thumper had gotten to him. ?Not a chance brother, you know that couldn?t happen, we both know what he is.?, he reassured me. ?Where does it end Jim? How long can you be accused, verbally assaulted, threatened, humiliated and hang in there?? he was asking hard questions and he was serious. ?I am tough Tag, I can endure anything.? I told him. ?But why should you have to? Life wasn?t meant to be suffered, was it? You dodged the bullet with your relationship with Katy. He never found out about the secret church you have going. But what?s next? What?s the next battle and the next one after that? It?s never going to end until one of you is dead or gone nuts.?

He had considered this for a long time.

I knew what he was saying. I had been enduring trials and tribulations almost exclusively at the hands of the one person that is supposed to be my spiritual mentor and supporter. ?I understand, so tell me Tag, what do you see happening?? I asked him and already knew the answer. ?I think it is time to go Jim, I really do. I don?t want to leave you hanging in there alone, but after five years I can?t suffer anymore. For what purpose? To what final accomplishment? Just to say we endured it? The man is a dictator, a cult leader and we both know it. Does anybody who would be honest about it, not know it?

Wil sees it as clearly as we do. It?s time to accept the obvious and get out.? He was right. I couldn?t remember a time when Taggart was not right. He always thought things through before speaking his mind. ?I still think we can turn it around Tag, I want to hang in there and try. This guy can?t live forever. I?ve been there for ten years now, I don?t want to just throw away ten years.? He understood and we wished each other well. We had the brotherly love as close as any two brothers could have. ?We will stay in touch, get together and hang out still.? I told him. I knew we didn?t have to be in the church together to be friends. ?No brother, I think this is it. I want a clean break from everything. Everything that is 5 South Broadway. I want new memories, not these memories. I couldn?t look at you and see anything more than the past. We need a clean break here, I?m sorry brother.? He told me almost in tears.

What could I say? It was his decision and I had to respect that as much as I respected him. I could leave with him and Wil or stay and try to salvage the church-turned-cult. I still had my child that I wouldn?t be able to see if I left. I despised the wife but I had to try to give my son a fighting chance. ?You can tell Thumper when you are ready, I will leave that up to you. If you ever need me, I am a phone call away, you know that.? We hugged a long heartfelt goodbye. I got in my car and drove away not looking back.

He told Thumper who was outraged. Taggart was a fine example of what we were supposed to be as Christians, no one ever had a bad thing to say about him.

He supported me with total loyalty and what he didn?t agree with was dealt with in a private discussion between us alone. He never had a single conflict with anyone even when Thumper tried to drag information out of him about Katy and I or what he suspected about our underground church. Thumper called him disloyal, a traitor to the faith, the church and the people. He accused him of conspiring against him with me and told him not to contact anyone in the church again. Taggart expected nothing less from him.

I got a call within the hour, ?Did you know Taggart was leaving the church??

Thumper was livid and always looking for conspiracies against him. He construed Taggart leaving so abruptly as a personal attack on him.

?Taggart?s decision is between Taggart and his conscience. What he had decided to do is his decision based on his observations of the way you have treated your pastor and the other people of this church. Take that under advisement or ignore it. I do not care at this point. Goodbye.? I hung up the phone before I could listen to any of his ranting. He called back. I did not answer. I knew he would be storming over to my house. I left before he arrived and saw him in my rear view mirror by the time I got to the first red light. He looked like a man who was scalded with a gallon of hot soup.

The church members were disappointed and shocked. Taggart wasn?t some miscreant that was caught with a child in the bathroom, like Paul. He wasn?t someone who fought and argued with everybody and had to go. He was a friend to everyone. He was kind and patient and was there if you ever needed him for anything. And now he was gone and Thumper was trying to think of some way to explain it so that wouldn?t make him look like a tyrant. ?It was Jim and his liberal attitudes and ideas that filled Taggart?s head with ideas that there is something more to life than being here, among the people of God!?

I just sat in the church seat and looked straight ahead. It wasn?t one of my better days as it was and this guy is making Taggart?s decision my fault? The man made a decision for his own life. He spent five years in a place that no longer seemed like a place he wanted to be. Let?s move on. I was his scapegoat. God forbid Taggart should walk in and explain why he left and tell the people Thumper was an overbearing, self-important, bloated, con artist.

But that is exactly what he did. Without coming to me first, he took it upon himself to march into the church on a Sunday Morning, asked to speak and unloaded one of the most impassioned speeches of all time. I considered it right up there with ?I have a dream.? And ?Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!? Half way between saying Thumper was dishonest and a con artist and saying that we should all consider removing him or leaving as well, Thumper broke into a loud song, which meant everybody had to sing along and sing it loud enough to drown out Taggart?s final words. He walked out satisfied that he made his heartfelt thoughts known. Thumper was livid and said I put him up to it.

?I had no idea? I said. "Liar!" he said, Was I surprised?

I saw Taggart just one more time, about a year later. On the way to the church?s Sunday picnic in a state park, I saw his blue van parked alongside the road. I thought maybe he was broken down and stopped to see if he needed help. The van was empty. I walked down the bank along the roadside and further down to the riverbed. He was there with Lisa who had been Wil?s girlfriend at one time.

They were both surprised to see me out in the middle of nowhere. ?How are you doing Jim?? Tag asked without emotion in his voice. ?As well as can be expected I suppose. You ok here or are you broken down up there?? I asked him. ?Just taking a Sunday walk Jim. You know Lisa here. Guess you?re wondering why I?m she is with me and not Wil.? He felt the need to explain for some reason. ?Crossed my mind Tag, it?s your business but if you care to share, I?ll listen.?

Apparently Lisa wanted to get married and Wil didn?t. The three of them were living in Wil?s house on Kent Island. Lisa ended it with Wil and with Taggart there, alone and available, they decided it would be them instead. The new arrangement made Wil furious and he kicked them out. Taggart and Lisa got married a few months later in a private ceremony. ?Congrats guys.? They thanked me. It was congenial but not altogether welcoming. The years in the church was something they both wanted to forget and I sat there as a larger than life reminder. I took the hint as a silence filled the air. ?Best to you both, I miss you man. Take care.? I walked back to my car and went to the picnic without saying anything to anybody about seeing Taggart or the news of him and Lisa getting married.

Katy signalled me. We drifted over to the side of the playground. ?We passed over the bridge on the way here, we saw your car parked behind Taggart?s van.

Thumper saw it too as his car passed by. As we were all getting out of the cars, he approached me and asked if I knew that you and Taggart were still conspiring against him.? ?What did you tell him?? I asked her, knowing it would be a smart ass answer.

She winked at me and said, ?I told him I had no idea but if he were Taggart or Jim, what would he do?? ?Thanks, always good to have friends? I said with a hint of sarcasm and as she turned to go back, I discreetly pinched her backside.

A month later, I received a phone call from Lisa. It was completely unexpected considering Tag?s decision to make a clean break from everything that reminded him of the church. ?How are you Lisa? How?s Taggart?? She didn?t answer but instead launched in what seemed to be a prepared statement. ?Taggart went to work yesterday morning. There was a moving van that ran a stop sign at an intersection out there on the country roads of Carroll County. It hit him broadside at high speed? . And he died. You had been good friends and I thought you would like to know.? Her voice was a heartbroken monotone. I said thank you in my own stunned voice as she hung up. They had been married just seven months. She was only twenty-four years old herself. Taggart turned thirty-seven, on the day of the accident.

I called his parents?house. His mother explained to me that she, his dad, Lisa and his teen age son from a previous marriage, were waiting for him at the dinner table with a birthday cake, candles and all. They were confused why he would knock at the door instead of using his key. The mother answered the door.

Instead of Taggart, there was a Maryland State Police Trooper and he had some very bad news to tell them. It was the most depressing moment of my life, and I had had a long list. He had made it out against all odds and wrestled with the consequences. He found love, got married and expected to have a wonderful life, happily ever after. I sat for what seemed like a millennium, in stunned silence. I wonder how long it would take for the church to find out, or even if they would.

Taggart was in contact with no one. People that leave the church are not to be contacted per Thumper ?s rules. They are no longer ?One of us.? I was up in the air as to whether I would tell anyone, even Katy. For the next several days I was absolutely out of character, silent, motionless, clearly depressed and no one seemed to know why or could get me to say anything to them. I was not eating, I wasn?t leaving the house. I wasn?t leaving the bed. People were getting concerned.

Rumors were floating around, prompted by Rona, that maybe I was on drugs.

People were too curious and I was too withdrawn. The ban on evil influences, such as newspapers, had been lifted a few years earlier and someone found his obituary and ran to Thumper with it.

He made a self-serving sermon out of it that night. ?Taggart Smythe left this church and disobeyed my voice. I am the Bishop? I am the Apostle and I am the Prophet, anointed of God and Taggart Smythe rebelled against my voice. This is the wrath of God that struck him down as punishment for his sin. Who else among you will dare to disobey my voice??

The people were outraged. Taggart was the best among us. He did not leave the church to become a drug addict or drink himself into a bottle, he left because Thumper was a religious dictator and he had endured enough. No one shouted ?Amen? as was customary throughout a sermon. They sat in stunned silence, saddened by the death of a brother and friend who was in his mid-life, with a new wife and his freedom. Further stunned and upset by a man who would capitalize on his death to terrorize the people into believing that this was not an accident but some form of punishment from God himself because Taggart disobeyed Thumper ?s voice? Could the man refrain from throwing flowers at himself just long enough to respect our friend?s passing? Apparently not. I had never seen the people refuse to say ?Amen? when demanded of them. It was like refusing to applaud at a concert after a song ended. It was embarrassing to Thumper and it was embarrassing to watch. I realized that collectively, the people were speaking loudly with their spontaneous silence. I know there was a group of us, the church within the church, that would sit silently, but everybody? The people loved Taggart, they loved me. They feared Thumper and silence was the only protest that they could manage. It was justifiable. They were all grief stricken. There was an exclamation point to their statement which came in the form of me standing up amid the silence, Thumper obviously expecting a statement from me, but instead I walked out. The squeaking of the hinges on the church doors amidst the silence was deafening. Thumper called me a few hours later. He wanted to ask about my reaction to the people?s silence and his statement. ?You milked the death of the finest man I have ever known to stroke your own ego and assert your terror over the people of this church, how do you think I feel about it?? It was probably the strongest rebuke I ever had made to him.

He tried to blow hard in protest but I hung up on him. He was interested in justifying himself and rubbing his statement in my face, not comforting me or anyone else.

As it turned out, he got frosty and stunned reactions from many of the other elders. While they may not have come right out with as strong of a reaction as I gave, they either remained silent or commented in some neutral manner that refused to support his statement. The tide seemed to be turning against him.

When their children were molested and the pervert was exposed, he claimed he didn?t see it so he couldn?t say with 100% certainty what actually happened, Paul?s full confession notwithstanding. He had openly accused his pastor of adultery without a shred of proof and claimed it was his belief that it happened and that was all the evidence that was necessary. Now he is claiming that the finest man to sit in our church was struck down by God because he left the church, even though Taggart was still a Christian in all aspects.

True to form, Thumper, anytime he feels confronted, doubles down. I researched the Bible and found that there is no place that clarifies a burning fiery pit called hell that everybody who doesn?t follow God, (or Thumper, as the two had become synonymous) will burn in forever. In fact, I found much to the contrary, a soul that sins, will die. Eternal death is not being alive in a burning hole. Other passages said, ?The dead know nothing.? If I were screaming for a million years I would know it. I learned that other religions also reject the notion of a literal burning hell. It was invented to scare people into submission starting around the 4th century by the Catholic church and had been doing a pretty good job ever since. Thumper used it as a convenient way to keep people in line. ?My way or the Fry way.? Was a phrase Taggart liked to use in mockery of his threats.

Doubling down, Thumper called back. ?I misspoke; God did not kill Taggart as punishment for leaving the church.? I thought it was a joke because he never apologized for anything in his life. Then he continued, ?He committed suicide, because he believed your doctrine that there was no literal hell.? Ah there it was, the damn nitty gritty.

I retorted, ?It?s not my doctrine, it is the Bible?s, first off. Secondly, the man just got married and was happy as a clam. He continued to be a Christian. Thirdly, just because there is no literal burning pit to scare people into submission, doesn?t mean everyone who knows this will commit suicide. I haven?t.?

I told him that I was going to the crash site to get some closure and he was welcome to join me if he would also like to see evidence of the accident. I punched the word accident to emphasize that Taggart did not deliberately run into a wall just because he knew he wouldn?t burn forever in hell. Thumper was willing to make ridiculous statements to somehow prove just how correct his assertions were. He could never be wrong. If he had to invoke the deity to support his assertions, he would.

I picked him up at his house and listened to his babbling to justify all the reasons why everybody who disregards his words will surely burn in hell. I had nothing to say to him and seriously considered making this my exit strategy.

Who could blame me?

We arrived at the site of the crash based on what I read in the newspaper about it. The direction and photos were clear. There were still some bits of glass and plastic pieces on the ground but aside from that, there was nothing else to indicate that anything happened here out of the ordinary. I stood at the spot where the papers indicated the van was struck. A row of trees lined the opposite side of the road blocking the view of any oncoming traffic from the intersection.

As the moving van, reportedly fully loaded and running late, blasted through the stop sign at full speed, assuming perhaps sixty miles an hour on those open country roads, would mean that it hit Taggart at almost ninety feet per second.

That is almost a third of a football field in a blink of an eye. The tree line would have obscured Taggart?s view even if he was looking in the direction of the oncoming driver. Add in the weight of the truck at that speed and it was obvious Taggart never had a chance. Literally two seconds sooner or later and they would have missed each other. Time and chance happens to us all.

A woman saw us in the road and came out of her house which was at the corner. ?Are you looking into the accident that happened here the other day?? she asked.

Gaby was a very nice older guy and was able to take us to the van after we told him who I was and why I was there, mostly. ?Help yourselves gentlemen, just lock it up after you?re done with it,? he left us alone with the remains of a van that looked like a tornado hit it. I was afraid that I would see his blood everywhere but there wasn?t any. Apparently, his injuries were internal which was what killed him.

I learned in a physics class that if you take the weight of an object and multiply it by the speed it is traveling, it equates the impact force. Meaning a five pound bowling ball thrown against a bathroom scale at ten miles an hour will register fifty on the scale at the exact second it hit. I imagined a fully loaded moving van weighting maybe three tons moving at sixty miles an hour would equate to Taggart getting hit broadside with 180 tons of impact force. It takes a mere seven pounds of impact to break a femur bone in a human leg and only three pounds of impact to break an arm. I felt a wave of nausea coming over me.

Thumper had shown no emotion whatsoever up to this point. People considered him strong in the face of tragedy, I considered him a sociopath, unable to feel what the rest of us feel as part of being human. Sociopaths can only imitate emotions, like a chameleon that changes colors depending on the leaf they happen to be sitting on. I believed that Thumper could drown a puppy in his bath tub and his only concern would be whether his watch was water resistant.

There were no real personal effects to recover, the insurance company would have a fit if we took his toolbox or anything of actual value, so we left them. I knew Taggart well enough to know that he always listened to music while driving.

There were long, lonely hours in that van going from jobsite to jobsite installing aluminum storm doors. ?Watch this? I said to Thumper expecting a reaction. I pushed the eject button on his cassette player on the dashboard. A gospel tape popped out. His face twisted as though he was thinking of something intelligent to say but couldn?t. ?Imagine a God that would kill Taggart while he was listening to spiritual Christian music. Praise the Lord.. BAM!? I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. ?You?re not going to let this go are you?? he asked already knowing the answer.

I spoke to the church in the next service about what we found out. I read the news clipping to them, and told them what he was listening to as the truck hit him. He died as he lived, as a Christian, a brother who deserves to be honored and respected. He was neither stuck down by the wrath of God nor did he commit suicide. People die in car accidents every day, it was just his time to go. Thumper sat silently, it was humiliating and he knew that if he tried to save face this time, the backlash was going to be un-survivable, especially if I walked out too. I finished and turned the service over to the musicians. They played Amazing Grace and as everybody sang. I walked out of the church service and home, not wanting to answer any more questions about the life and death of my friend Taggart Smythe.

It ?s M in e, All M in e

I smelled a rat and I knew it was just a matter of time before we found it.

Thumper saved us the trouble for having to wait any longer. At a business meeting, the men of the church sat at the long table, Thumper at one end, me at the other, elders on the left, all other men who were in the church for one year of more to the right. He got right to it. ?I propose that all church property currently in the name of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ Inc. be transferred into my sole name and responsibility. This is for expediency when I make decisions to buy and sell, I can do so unencumbered by waiting until we can all meet here like this.?

Though he was already making unilateral decisions without proper charter-mandated votes by 2/3 majority church memberships, he now wanted to actually own the properties that had mounted up to well over a million dollars in value. His dream of becoming a millionaire, while not by age thirty, was being realized. It was happening with the nod of zombied out approval of those who worked to build everything with virtual slave labor, bought with our money donated faithfully and here he was trying to simply make it all 100% exclusively his to do with it as he wished. My first concern was that he would find a way to throw

everybody out as hypocrites or some other sanctionable offense even if he had to make it up, as he did with those he already jettisoned when they disagreed with him a bit too often. At any point he could simply declare the church defunct and walk away with what would then be his property. I knew why it was necessary for him to put everything into his name. I strenuously objected and drew his rage for openly defying him. ?I think we should neither consider this a good plan nor any alternate version of it. What is wrong with the church owning the church property?

We worked for it, we built it, it was our collective labor, time and effort to develop everything that we see here, it rightly belongs to the church and its members. Any decision regarding the purchase or selling of the properties is, according to the church charter, a joint decision among the elders and by permission, all the members. Real estate deals are not made on a whim but takes weeks to settle therefore there would always be sufficient time to meet and decide. I therefore vote absolutely no!? Needle across the record. ?What are you afraid of brother Jim? That I would somehow cheat the people here, that I would somehow take the money and run?? He said it with a laugh as he usually did when trying to sneak in something over you. As though the thought of what he was planning was so ridiculously impossible it was laughable. But I knew that was exactly what he intended. I fortunately had read a little law, enough to be dangerous. ?I did not say that, you did. But let?s imagine for a minute that all of the properties were personally owned by you, meaning, you personally own it outright, no one else, just you. Let?s now assume that you were in a bad accident, like Taggart for example. No one can see into the future, not even you. If you happen to be in a coma, or if you died, the properties become your estate. Are you prepared to make a will to give title of the properties back to the people here whose labor, time and money purchased them?? I could see his eyes darting about looking for an answer that would make his plan plausible to the people. ?Well, yes of course. I can draw up a will leaving the properties to the elders listed on the charter and they would own the properties just as they do now.? He smiled a self-contented smirk. ?Then why would it be necessary to transfer the properties into your sole name in the first place? It seems to me that to do so would needlessly create estate issues

that no one wants to spend the money to address. Let?s just leave everything as it stands and everybody would be satisfied. All in favor?? I hoped to push this through without an all-out confrontation.

It was not going to end just that simply. He called this meeting with the intention of walking out of it a millionaire with the approval of those who he virtually owned and controlled. Dare anyone oppose him? It was clear that this was a meeting of wills and it clearly, at least in my mind, was why I had to be neutralized with ridiculous beat downs in sermons opposing pretty much anything that I proposed, said or did. Scandalizing me, if possible, diminished my influence in a vote like this. ?Well, it doesn?t have to be put in my name, if you wanted, it could be in anyone else?s name, it could even be in your name Jim.? A bluff that I hoped was too obvious for even the most cowed member to miss. ?Ok, great, then let?s put everything in my name, I?ve been a member for the last ten years, I am a pastor of the church, an elder as well, so that will do just fine and I thank you for your confidence.? I countered.

Rule one: When bluffing someone, always prepared to have your bluff called. I could see the color draining out of his face. He just bet all his chips, a million dollars, on black and it came out red. I knew that it was a matter of time before he found a way to throw me out, and he would be damned if I left owning all the properties. Then a surprise voice chimed in that made it all laughable. ?If it has to go in anyone?s name I would like it to go in my name. I am an elder as well as anyone else. So I submit my name to own the properties.? Albert, deacon and musician, sometimes in and sometimes out as far as Thumper was concerned.

Some years earlier, he had a falling out with Thumper, quite adamant about some of his over bearing and manipulative ways of handling things. Albert was short-fused, when he thought he was right about something. He wasn?t a genius by any stretch of the imagination but he didn?t have to be to see what Thumper was trying to do here. So that people wouldn?t get the idea that it was Thumper and I arguing over the ownership of the properties, I stepped back and punted.

?I can agree with Albert. Let?s make him the sole owner if it has to belong to anybody.? I said cheerily. Thumper saw it was getting out of control fast. He thought he had a slam dunk and instead he didn?t even hit the rim. It was becoming clear that the decision to put the properties in anyone?s sole name was a bad idea. I tried to allow Thumper to save face by inferring that death or disability would make it unfeasible, not suggesting his dishonesty which he had to know I saw through as did Albert.

About a year earlier, both Albert and I were livid to learn that Thumper ?s cousin Donald?s home improvement company was losing money and was on the verge of collapse, Thumper secretly mortgaged one of the properties for $30,000 (1984 dollars) and gave him the cash to bail him out with zero collateral. The outrage was that he mentioned it to no one until after the transaction was completed with the bank. Only then did he ask the board to vote in favor of it and chuckled, ?You may as well vote yes because I already signed the papers and gave the cash to Donald.?

It was with the understanding, and then only verbally, that Donald would pay the monthly mortgage as repayment of the loan. Donald made three payments and said he couldn?t cover the loan beyond that, sticking the church with the debt. What would he do if he owned all the properties in his sole name? ?Ok, let?s shelf this motion until a later time. For the time being, we will keep the properties titled as they are now. Meeting adjourned.? He stated with a tone that shown his extreme disappointment. He made a decision and expect it to be rubber stamped into being. He now saw that there were dissenters among the church and they had to be dealt with. It was clear to those of us paying attention that it was this million dollar enterprise and not the God-sent salvation of lost souls, that was his true mission in life. As was his strategy when he was in the business world, crushing his opponents, without mercy, was all part of what had to be done to win the game. While many of the others in the church either believed themselves Christians headed for heaven or just coasting along with nowhere else to go as they attended services, sang the songs, amen-ed the sermons and endured the ever tightening rules, it was clear to me that the church was a charade, a tax exempt cover for a growing enterprise that was a profit machine that only one man was benefiting from. And whomever he graced with a gift for their loyalty and devotion.

People were being found out. Whatever our rules were, they were being broken all over the place so ubiquitously, if not out in the open, that it was hard to fathom that rules even existed. As we had more people arriving that places to house them, many homes were loaded, even overloaded with people. Closets in some cases became bedrooms.

Robert and Denise met each other in church and were a cute couple, planning on getting married soon. It was not unusual to see them cooing and smiling in each other ?s company all the damn time. One morning, they were absent for breakfast at one of the communal church homes where Denise lived. Robert and Denise apparently overslept after a night of wild sex and were awoken by Thumper who already had their bags packed.

Larry was the official collector of electric bills each month. He went from apartment to apartment to collect people?s money with the stack of bills in hand.

Larry was a conniving little bastard who would collect around the 5th of each month and again around the 27th for the same month, explaining that the 5th was the month prior. People, unwittingly were being double billed. Larry pocketed the extra money. Greed is what brings down most thieves. Larry was writing out checks for the electric bills but while he was at it, in a ?what the hell? moment, he started writing out checks to himself too. As the church?s bank account was dwindling, Thumper started overseeing Larry?s management of the bills. When he started showing up for a 3rd payment each month it became obvious to even the dimmest lights on the porch that he was stealing. When Thumper and I sat down with him and produced a check he had written to himself, he offered that he was reimbursing himself for an out of pocket expense. A second check he explained was another reimbursement. I reached into an envelope and produced over a dozen such checks. He sat and stared at us. The tension was broken by his wife, Linda, who was herself, another product of an arranged marriage to Larry. They hated each other and domestic violence was their only common interest. Linda was slightly mentally challenged from a botched procedure at birth. Larry was a homosexual that Thumper believed a wife be what cured him would cure him. Linda laughed and told him, ?You may as well confess it because they would find out sooner or later.?

You have to be pretty low down to steal from your fellow church members. I thought no one would question why we had to call the police. Except Thumper, who thought a police investigation might turn up some poking around where he didn?t want anyone sniffing. A full auditing of the books was the last thing he wanted. ?Repent and the Lord forgives you and if the Lord forgives you then so shall we!? he declared as though he was untying Joan of Arc from a stake. ?Make reimbursement and we will let this go.? Of course he wanted the money back. It was all about the money at this point anyway. ?We will huh? Pedophiles, thieves, real estate fraud, domestic violence, child abuse, virtual slavery, what isn?t excusable? Murder?? I retorted. As I was to experience in just another year or so, murder would also be on the ?It?s the will of God menu, the ends justifying the means.

By time it was all said and done, from what I was told after my departure, several people were arrested and convicted of being sexual predators. Sam molested a baby niece and was caught in the act by his wife. Without a hint of second thought she called the police, he confessed and went to jail. It made their pending divorce much easier for her. Walter molested his step-daughter as she slept and was arrested claiming that she wanted it. It wasn?t his first time up to bat and the courts are fairly reluctant to give sexual predators a second chance. Thumper ?s uncle, Jed, raped his own teen-aged daughter repeated night after night until she left the church and him. She told only Thumper, who conveniently covered it and not a whisper was ever known about it. Henry, who was awarded the position of pastor for reading the script that Thumper had written for him to say at my tribunal, had raped his two daughters in our Western Maryland retreat church. His longsuffering wife said that God had forgiven him and she did as well. The daughters, not so much. Dell, the first principal of the church school, ?fell in love? with a six year old student, that happened to be one of Walter ?s step daughters as well. They spent quite a bit of time hanging out together. Dell and Walter took the kids fishing, appearing innocently enough. Dell, for some bizarre reason that maybe only pedophiles can justify, announced that when the six year old turns eighteen, it was his intention to marry her because he loves her and knows God has chosen her for him. It was one of the only decisions in the later church?s chronicles that Thumper and I agreed upon without debate, ?OUT!?

Then there were assorted inconsiderations that were not crimes but just shitty things to do to each other. Cars were always being borrowed from each other and brought back on empty. Or late, like the next day late. No one wanted to pay for burned out light bulbs in communal stairways of the apartment buildings. The communal food store was raided by one of the sisters who stocked up her pantry and left nothing for anyone else. Baby diapers that were changed in the church nursery or in the fellowship hall were left for others to find and throw away. The apparent policy about lying, taken from the example of the bishop apostle and prophet was, ?A lie is as good as the truth if you can get someone else to believe it.?

Deceit was a matter of survival. The church had become a cloistered group who did whatever they thought they could get away with. Those of us who wanted to do the right things, even in a culture such as this, did so as a matter of our personal convictions, and no longer as an example for others to follow. It was akin to the old expression, ?The crazy people were running the asylum.? There were those who played mental gymnastics. George would deliberately find fault with others and imitate their transgressions whatever it may be. When he came home drunk one night and was confronted by his wife, he named another person who was out drunk and evaded consequences because of their family ties to Thumper. He became the sum total of everyone?s misdeeds, transgressions and sins and basically dared Thumper to do anything about it. He had the tool that turned the water back on when the city turned it off for non-payment and as a master plumber getting union scale wages, Thumper couldn?t part with a contributor of his calibre. He and his wife were one of the only marriages in the church that wasn?t arranged. A cute couple that in time hated each other so passionately that they were at each other ?s throats literally and savagely. They were dangerous to each other. The wife, Annie, had a young son from a previous relationship that George was massively jealous of and tormented him continuously. She was a doting overly protective mother with a wandering eye for other men which didn?t help. They had a puppy that she adored. One night during a church service, George exited the church, went home and laid the puppy?s head on a board and bludgeoned it to death with a hammer from his tool box. He casually disposed of the body, wiped up the blood and returned to church service singing hymns along with the rest of us. After church service he came to me and wanted to share something with the promise I share it with no one.

He told me about the puppy killing as casually as he would tell me what he had for lunch as I sat appalled and stunned. ?Just between us, you promised, remember?? and he walked out to his car to go home. The absence of the puppy and George?s evasive attitude was a fight that would rival Ali vs. Foreman. My hands were tied as a pastor who a member confessed a crime to. Thumper was enraged and when George was confronted, he told him what he had done. ?What?s the difference Thumper,? he told him, ?You said one sin is no worse than another, lying is as bad as murder or vice versa. So this act of cruelty is right up there with, say, not paying my tithes according to you.? Thumper was beginning to regret his self-referencing rewrite of the Bible. The intention was to assess guilt on everyone that any sin is the equivalent of another, borrowing from passages that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you have committed adultery already. The thought is the deed. George took it a step further and made the deed as bad as only the thought. ?Are you going to dismiss me from the church oh bishop? Dismiss me but still hold dear thieves and liars and child molesters? You wouldn?t be that big of a hypocrite would you?? In the words of President Lyndon Johnson, he would rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. George was allowed to stay because he knew how to manipulate others every bit as well as Thumper.

I blame Thumper for the demise of his church. His intentions may have started out as pure as any other individual who wanted to create something for a group of social misfits, but greed and power were just too much. Why be a brother when you can be the bishop, apostle and prophet? Why share $240,000 to build a church when you can squirrel it away and have it all after people have stopped asking about it? Why serve people when you can have people serve you? Why be a corporation when you can claim 501C3 church status and be tax exempt. Why tolerate dissenters when you can just scandalize them, trash them and throw them out with tomorrow morning?s garbage? It might mean drifting deep into the arena of sociopaths but where are the consequences? If you stand on separation of church and state and the members in the church are adequately fearful of you, with the mistranslated ?Fear of God? then who is there to question your authority and decisions?

I don?t think Adolf Hitler wrote his high school essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up as, ?National Socialist dictator of Germany and Furher of the Third Reich. He said, artist. He was rejected as an artist and world events pulled him into a direction that ultimately made his name synonymous with absolute evil. Some people read the news and others make the news. At what point did Hitler cross the point of no return? At what point did a preacher selling monkeys door to door in Indiana cross the point of no return and ultimately demand the mass suicide of over 900 of his own people in a Guyana jungle? Does anyone ever realize that it would be this decision, or the next one that will make this journey the one that no one can come back from? Maybe they wouldn?t want to. Maybe the thrill of getting away with it, or the applause of thousands was just too intoxicating and they actually believed themselves as great as others imagined they were. Who was the first one to call the general, Alexander the Great? Was it Alexander himself and others just went along with it? More importantly, for those in unaccountable positions, Presidents?for-life, dictators of countries, televangelists with massive followings around the country, kings and queens or spoiled sons of billion dollar corporation owners, the question becomes, how does anyone control the uncontrollable? Short of anything illegal, how do you bring about a turnaround of the corruption and oppression that causes so much suffering of others? Nelson Mandela tried and sat in prison for twenty seven years. Hitler, Mussolini and Castro as well were jailed, came out and became the worst nightmare for millions. Is there any way to stop a crazy little man in North Korea before he plays with fire one time too many? I believe the answer lies somewhere between our passion for a better life that others are promising us and being intent on what we want to create it for ourselves. What if we created our own fulfilled promises? What if we collectively joined hands and made this world a better place if only in our own communities?

What if there were no one winner at the expense of us all? What if we were strong enough to see clearly what was going off the rails and said, ?No more, enough! We will not follow this path to destruction!?? Leaders, for good or evil, are only able to lead if others follow. Evil leaders have always preyed upon the weak and vulnerable among us. The starving will always accept bread at the hand of an oppressor because not starving today is better than the noblest of resistance against evil. the evil ones morph into sociopaths that become their point of no return.

Let?s take a look at what a sociopath is by definition; A sociopath: * Glibness and charm * Manipulative and cunning. They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear charming yes are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victims as merely instruments to be used.

They may dominate and humiliate their victims. * Grandiose sense of Self, they feel entitled to certain things as ?their right? * Pathological lying. They have no problem lying cooly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. They can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extreme convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests. * Lack of remorse or shame or guilt. A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. They do not see others around them as people but as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way. * They have shallow emotions. When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. * They are outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises. * They are incapable of love. * They have a need for stimulation. Living on the edge, verbal outbursts and physical punishment are normal. * They are callous and lack empathy. They are unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others?feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. * They have poor behavioural controls and have an impulsive nature. * They express rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval. * They have early behavioral problems and juvenile delinquency issues. * They are irresponsible and unreliable. They are not concerned about wrecking the lives and dreams of others. They are oblivious or indifferent to the

to the devastation that they cause. They do not accept blame themselves but they blame others, even for acts that they obviously committed. * They demonstrate a lack of realistic plans and have a parasitic lifestyle. * They make all-encompassing promises for the future but have a poor work ethic but can exploit others effectively. * They have versatility when discussing their life stories or jobs skills. They can change their image as needed to avoid prosecution.

Now, let?s apply this information to the commonly accepted definition of what a cult is; While the specifics vary from group to group, here are some general characteristics of religious cults that distinguish them from genuine Christian beliefs: * All-knowing leadership. An individual or group of people claims to be sent by God to "rule" the one true religion? which only includes members of that particular cult. * No room for differences. Cult members must believe exactly the same way and in exactly the same things; there is no room for disagreeing with the cult's rules or doctrines. * A new and better way. Cults often claim they've been given a "special revelation" from God that's superior to the Bible, or explains what the Bible is really trying to say. * Down on Christian doctrine. Cults often depict basic Christian doctrines and beliefs (like the Trinity, deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith) as "full of holes" and completely illogical. * Scriptures get an added twist. Bible verses are often taken out of context or twisted to mean something very different than what was originally intended. * "Christians are wrong." Cult members believe God has given their group the job of pointing out "heretical and evil" teachings of Christianity. * Works prove faith. Cult members often claim their good works are superior to those performed by Christians, and they say their works prove their religion is the one-and-only truth.

* Salvation is a big unknown. Since cults often teach that salvation is based on performance, cult members can never know if they've done everything necessary to get to heaven. * No exit. Leaving the cult is not an option, and intimidation is often used to keep cult members from even thinking about getting out.

Sound familiar? Ironically, while trying to convert others out of their various denominal churches, the people of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ were deemed to be a cult by them. Instead of considering why, they called such accusations persecution which Jesus said we would suffer as the true believers.

Everything can be justified and whoever doesn?t accept it is the one who is wrong.

Goodbye, Far ew ell an d Am en

It would have been convenient to have a Congressman Leo Ryan and press corps arriving at the church steps demanding to talk to the people. It would have saved me and others who were going ?over the wall? a lot of needless covert actions and retaliations. As it turns out, a crime is a crime regardless who commits it.

Permission to commit the crime does not make it any less of a crime. As a lawyer friend of mine put it; if I gave you a notarized letter allowing you to stab me, the act of stabbing me is still a crime. As it was with the church school and the severe beatings the children received regularly with a thick, wooden paddle at the hands of Thumper who administered them. I had seen him actually break the paddle across one boy?s bottom and he was forced to bend over a chair, assuming the position as it was called. It was a regular occurrence.

I had visited a church in Memphis Tennessee during an opening of a mission for homeless people that I helped to create. A woman named Janice from there came to visit us. Thumper, who always had to show off his authority by thumbing his nose at convention, met us in my apartment. ?Well, the school children were acting up today, so I had to bring out the paddle and beat five of them.? Already, Janice was offended. This was his way of saying ?hello?. ?Some of the parents are going to complain because they will have bruises on their bottoms but that?s discipline of the Lord, ?Spare the rod and spoil the child?.?

I tried to throw a quick lid on this show of contempt in front of my guest. ?Of course you are not talking of intentionally bruising the children are you??

He wasn?t backing up a step, ?Absolutely I am, some kids bruise easier than others. If I paddle them and they don?t bruise, I paddle them again!? Janice turned pale, squirmed in her chair and attempted a smile as though this may have been a sick joke of sorts. What else could I say; he was showing off, clearly and deliberately trying to get a reaction. How could this 5?10, 275 pound brute of a man act like he enjoys beating children so much as to brag about it. I was reminded of the incident with his wayward niece, Cindy, when he pummeled her face until it was hardly recognizable. My only retort came instantly, ?

?You know the State of Maryland child abuse authorities may have to disagree with your ideas about discipline, I hope no distraught parent considers that an option, you preach tonight and that would be hard to do in handcuffs.? His face flushed with anger but not shame. No one counters his actions with rebuke. Janice left a week later and never wrote or called again, nor was I invited back to Memphis by anyone who she obviously shared her experience with.

It was obvious why he did it, to close a door of escape. He knew I enjoyed the people in Memphis. They were a great church, believed much of what we did minus all the cult stuff. He knew that if I ever defected, I would most likely head for Memphis as a safe refuge but also would share my traumatic experience to comforting ears who may tell others that may be more of an authority figure.

Thumper would not allow anyone to just walk away in peace. He was quite vindictive. He would consider it his obligation to make sure he called their boss, if they worked an outside job, to report that they were stealing from the company, though it was a lie. He would contact the landlord of their new apartment and report himself as their former landlord and confide that they trashed the place they just left, stole plumbing fixtures and broke the windows. If he had sufficient information, he would cancel their car insurance, have their utilities turned off, have their mail rerouted even report them to the I.R.S. or state tax agencies, just to harass them with an audit. He had preached that anyone leaving the church would suffer terrible consequences, the devil would enter them, bad things would happen, and then did all he could to create those nightmares and disasters for them. He considered what he did to them inconsequential because they were just ordinary sinners now and if it makes them repent and return to the church well, the ends justify the means. God be praised. It also served as a warning to anyone else who would consider leaving. After all this was the one true church, wasn?t it?

After Janice left, my open rebuke and my push back about signing all the property over to him, as well as the fact that I still had considerable influence among the people, he realized that I was the last person who posed a threat to his nefarious plans. It was time to begin a series of traps and spread false information about me that would turn peopleagainst me which in his mind equated turning them into loyal ?Thumperites.?

People were instructed to not have fellowship with me. Shunning me as it were.

People who loved me apologized because there was no cause for this but as one sister confided, who had fed me every day after Rona left the church, ?I am afraid that if I fellowship with you he will cut off our food money and electricity. I am so sorry Jim.? Layla was in tears telling me.

Conversations with people I had known for years and were close to suddenly were limited to, ?Praise the Lord, brother ? and they would turn to someone else to talk to. There was hurt and anguish in their eyes, it was obvious. People who did speak to me did so clandestinely and with obvious fear of the consequences. The church within the church still hung tight but most of the people had decided to follow Taggart?s lead and go. Thumper ?s numbers were dwindling and he knew why.

According to Wikipedia, the practice of shunning is a form of psychological punishment and torture according to mental health providers. Imagine that.

It came to a head as Albert the elderly deacon and musician came to me with some disturbing information. ?I am not supposed to tell you this brother but it is so wrong it is devilish. There is going to be a tribunal. Thumper set it up posing it to be to help a couple whose marriage is in trouble. It is really to attack you in front of all the members hoping that it will humiliate you to leave the church. I have been told by Thumper what I am supposed to say about you because I am a deacon and my words supposedly carry weight, but it is his words and not how I actually feel about you. I am apologizing here and now, in advance and I feel terrible about this.? ?So he wrote a script and told you to lie, his words out of your mouth? Why stick around for this, why not use this to blow him out of the water? Could he be any more corrupt? Why would you even consider going along with this nonsense??

I already knew the answer. ?He pays us our food money, he has my family?s life in his hands, if I don?t do this, he said that I can go with you when you leave. In other words, if I don?t do what he wants, my family is on the street. I am sorry.?

The same day, Henry (later accused of raping two of his own daughters) came to me. He told me almost the same story. Thumper had written his script telling him exactly what to say and with the threat of expulsion if he didn?t but with one carrot to dangle in front of him. ?He told me that once you were gone, there will be an opening for a pastor here. He promised that if I played ball on this one, I will be the next pastor of the church.?

Thumper couldn?t sit at the table without first stacking the deck. I wondered how many others were acting as sock puppets for Thumper in his relentless quest to seize the assets of the church.

The only reason to even continue in the church now was a sense of familiarity and that somehow God was watching and would turn it all around. That was like waiting for a mountain to erode and there was no chance of recovering from this one. I could have just as easily walked away and refused to sit in a tribunal but I was never one to run from a fight. Besides, when I did what had to be done, I wanted every single person there to know why. No one could question that from the outside I was the catalyst of what was about to come down on the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and David Stephen Denton, cult leader. It was a tribunal designed to scorn, humiliate and castigate me. Every mistake that I ever made since I was sixteen was talked about. Thumper tried to make a case, yet again, about Katy and I but we stonewalled it so well he couldn?t make his case. I slammed him with his absurd statement, ?I think it brother Jim so you may as well admit it. I think it therefore it is true.? I quoted him and everybody laughed. I insisted that the only way I would sit for the tribunal was if he would also sit for another one and let these same people tell him about himself because they sure had plenty to say to me privately. Divide and conquer. I was told I was not to justify, respond, question or refute anything anybody was going to testify about. I said even in a court of law among the sinners, anyone accused has a right to defend himself and so I will.

When Henry and Albert said their scripted pieces Thumper had written for them, I asked the question, ?Brothers, are these your observations, thoughts and your feelings from your heart?? They sat in stunned silence. Thumper saw what was coming and tried to intercept, ?What are you trying to say here?? ?I am sure that you know, and I would like an answer to my question, so brothers??

Thumper nearly flew out of his chair in a roaring tone of contempt. ?I demand to know the meaning of your question!? I couldn?t believe his anger was making it this simple. ?I was informed before this kangaroo court thing you?ve set up, that you have gone to certain individuals with a virtual script telling them what you want them to say.

Your words out of their mouths, making these people nothing but sock puppets,

now deny it and I will call you a liar!? ?Who?! I demand to know who told you that?? he was turning red and hoped his shouting would double as righteous indignation. It didn?t. ?One; you know who you told to say what about me. Those individuals felt so ashamed they came to me apologizing, and two; I am not naming names so you can throw them out onto the street with their families like you have done to so many others. You own these people. They do your bidding or they get no money for food for the week.? I was quite enjoying the way this was shaping up. I kept referring to the legal system and if this were a real trial in a court of law, none of this would be admissible evidence but hearsay and lacking proof, would be thrown out. ?If you have evidence, let?s see it. ?Some say?and ?some think?is not evidence. My words and feelings are just as relevant as anyone else?s wouldn?t you agree dear bishop, apostle and prophet?? People were squirming. Would this end up being a court case? Would anyone want to speak up if they knew that their words would have to be repeated in an actual court of law for defamation and slander?

Suddenly fewer people had much to add even though the shark feeding frenzy attitude was in full swing. Mob mentality, as mental health professionals can tell you, will take a meek and mild person and turn them into a killer if they are part of a mob and not an individual. Thumper knew this which is why he opted to bring this tribunal together, even if he had to use fake blood to get the sharks aroused. ?I am going to insist that we use the same measure of compassion and mercy that we used on Paul, the child molester. Thumper, the things that you are trying to accuse me of, did you or did you not personally witness them? No? Then you do not know what happened, what was said, to whom or when. For Larry the thief who robbed us all, we had to forgive him because who knows what the police might find if investigating our books huh? I?d like to have the same mercy and forgiveness that Larry and Paul received, thank you, is there anything else?? I was confidently smug. I had been in too many meetings, hearing too much, to let it go.

What else could he say? His years of ?Do as I say not as I do?hypocrisy caught up with him. I knew every trick he would pull. The only thing he had left was to out talk me, accuse me of doing the same, shout at me or find a way to intimidate me,

which was his hail Mary pass. ?I rebuke you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!? he shouted like he was Moses parting the Red Sea. I assumed that neighbors many houses away could have heard it. That was his best shot? We just sat there and looked at him like he just told a joke that was not funny. Was he expecting me to grab my heart and fall over? ?Okie dokie, consider me rebuked but you have yet to make any point against me. I still do not know why I am sitting here listening to any of this. Do you know Albert?

Do you know Henry?? It was time for the grand finale. ?I am the Bishop the apostle and prophet of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ! I want you out of this church, you are not a brother!?

Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War (required reading for anybody that will ever be engaged in a conflict of any kind) ?If you are close to your enemy, appear to be far away. If you are far away, appear to be close. If he is stronger than you are, enrage him so he will make a mistake. If you are stronger than he, attack,? I attacked. ?I have dozens of believers in this church and outside who know about the kind of brother that I am. You are indeed the bishop, apostle and prophet of this church, SELF-ORDAINED! Your rebuke falls lifeless to the ground, you are a man enraged by fear and jealousy and your own insecurities that anyone else would garner respect and love in your stead. If you want me to leave the church, I will, but first, refund me the money I donated to build it, I believe the number is around $40,000. But before I go, you must answer me one question first as a courtesy to all my years of sacrifice and for the benefit of these people who are your virtual slaves. Where is the balance of $240,000 that Leon donated to the church in 1974? Prove that to me and I will be on my way. Keep that a secret and perhaps proper authorities, not those you have manipulated here, will be asking the question. Now, one last favor, I want to go around the room and have each of you tell me one thing that I have done for you that made you a better person.? Faces looked to him for a response.

These same people had their children molested, served him blindly, gave everything to this man and ate out of dumpsters, was he a fraud? Had they been duped by a con man? Their pastor seemed to think so. Whether it was a revelation or confirming their suspicions, it was strong and it neutralized what he was trying to do to me. It set a stage.

?No!? Thumper was not going it let me change gears of the tribunal and it was his show. ?I think we can conclude this meeting with a prayer ? and just that abruptly, it was over. There was never a tribunal addressing Thumper but just the mention that there were others who had plenty to say about him kept his mind busy for weeks. I was sorry to betray the trust of Albert and Henry but it had to be done. I hoped that they would remain and not be tossed out in the street as traitors. The gloves were off. He had imagined that even with my comments, he could still pull off the real estate scam and become a millionaire. But now he had to wonder what I would do on the outside of the church where I could not be bullied or manipulated. There was nothing to promise me and I wasn?t in the promise buying mood anymore. His worst nightmare was about to be realized.

Ou t side Th e Ten t Pissin g In I had been in this church since the age of sixteen. I had watched it emerge into a larger church and like the Hindenburg, drift into a power line and burst into flames. I watched people burn. It grieved me that there wasn?t a damned thing that I could do about much of it. There was only saving myself now. The only real insecurity was the fact that I was stepping into a world that I had never known.

Real Life. People on the ?outside? do not say ?Praise the Lord?when greeting you, they say, ?hello?. In the hot summer time they wear short sleeve shirts and short pants. Couples walk in the park, they hold hands, they kiss. People outside, they go to ball games, and movie theatres and amusement parks. They read whatever they want to read and they say whatever they want to say without having to justify themselves or clear it first. If they get sick they go to a doctor and take medicine.

There is no book of rules for them to check with and elders to give them permission before they make decisions for their own lives. These are normal people, happy, every day average American people going about their everyday lives and they don?t look like they are evil, sinners sliding down a greased pole to hell. They can wear their hair any length they want and they can associate themselves with anyone that they care to. They do not walk around with a sense of guilt or condemnation to do anything. Now I was part of this world and it wasn?t bad at all.

It was a huge rock rolled off of me. It was different, a culture shock but something I would get used to.

I had not left yet. I had to find a place to live, buy some sort of furniture because when Rona left she decided that she would take everything that wasn?t nailed down to the floor. Out of pure spite she gave away whatever she didn?t want to other people just to deprive me the use of it.

I had an old car, a Ford LTD with 218,000 miles on it that Katy?s father gave to me. I had my job with the city that, though I hated it, found it manageable and it afforded me a small life of near dignity as opposed to being on the street with nothing at all. That was the situation with several of the people. Needless to say Katy had already made her own plans to exit and we had met a few of her friends that she contacted to talk about what was to be the future. Culture shock from years of cloistered living under a culture of constant scrutiny and criticism. How to blend into Real Life was still a question that I had no way to answer yet. If there was some organization to help manage such a situation, that would be great. Katy found it in the phone book. The Cult Awareness Network. We would have a meeting with them at a house Katy rented in the Hamden section of Baltimore.

The meetings with them proved what we already knew. The church was a cult and Thumper was a sociopath with a messianic complex and quite dangerous. He had to be stopped. I had contacted another church and met with the pastor. Pastor Gilfren was a kindly, old, black fellow who knew Thumper and the church. They had a church about a block away and tried to fellowship with our church but the people found it too, legalistic and restrictive. After my meeting with the pastor and his elders they had an understanding why. They were stunned and agreed it was a cult. I decided that I would attend this church, in part to show those in Thumper ?s church that I hadn?t gone off the deep end into a pool of sin as they believed everyone leaving did, and because it was a familiar thing for me. Cold turkey into a strange new world may take some adjusting. Their deacon, a brother Johnson was going to help me move. I knew when people leave the church the members gather around and scowl in condemnation instead of just letting them go. Leaving the church was something they took very personally. It was like saying that they had no value for them any longer which was actually the case. I was fortunate that the apartment that I lived in was down the road from the others and the downstairs

family was away for the weekend. I had a moving van parked around the corner the night before, a new studio apartment on the 5th floor of an apartment complex to go to and a secure underground parking garage below it, I was not taking any chances.

The final service of the year was December 31st 1986 at 10 p.m. No one told me the time had been moved from 7 p.m. I asked Thumper as I walked in late, ?Why didn?t you tell me that you changed the time for service tonight?? Not that I cared actually, it was my final service but he didn?t know that yet. ?I?m sure your spies told you.? He said smugly. Bastard!

I was going to make an announcement but I knew it would be a shock and bring everybody down so I decided that they would know soon enough. What difference did it make now when I was leaving? After service I asked Thumper to step outside. I had something to tell him. ?I have been at the end of my rope for a long time. I tied a knot to hang on, now I am letting go. I am leaving the church, you win, and it?s all yours.? I could see the absolute delight in his eyes, like a man who just won a million dollars. ?I was expecting this? he said like he knew all along. ?Of course you did, you orchestrated it. Telling people what to say to me, gossiping about me. Telling people to shun me, ostracize me, telling people not to allow me to eat with them, slander and defamation. These people love me and many told me all about it. They only fear you. I want to live in peace now, I hope that I have your promise not to interfere with that.? ?I promise.? He said and I already saw the wheels turning as he said it. We shook hands and he almost tripped over himself getting back inside. The news would be instant.

At 6 a.m. January 1st , 1987 the good deacon arrived and we brought the van around. I loaded up a bed and a few personal items that Robin left me that were important to me. She had taken the nice wooden furniture and left me a card table and a few folding chairs. Inside of thirty minutes I was gone. Most of my new furniture over the next few weeks came from the side of the building that people were discarding as they moved out. I had turned my studio apartment into this eclectic, refugee motif that had a certain style of its own.

It wasn?t much, but it was mine and I was free. Now I knew why Taggart felt so good after his escape. The phone was turned on later that day and the calls started coming in immediately. My number was unlisted but I gave it to my son who was eleven at the time. He was living with his mother and later, he had moved in with me. Apparently his mother got it from him and passed it out to anybody in the church who wanted it. I let the machine get it. The days before caller ID, phones were push button units attached to the wall or a desk mounted thing and you could listen to your calls to see if you wanted to pick it up. They must be antiques by now. My people got back to me as soon as they heard. I couldn?t risk telling them sooner. The walls had ears. In those final days, people?s loyalty vacillated.

Donny Everhart called me first with the news. ?Glad you made it out safely.

Everybody is reacting to your leaving. Some are crying and can?t believe that you would ever leave. Some are saying you are a traitor and were never actually part of us anyway.? I figured that. There is a passage in the Bible that say, ?If they were of us surely they would have remained with us, but because they left us they were never truly of us.? ?Right, I must have been faking it for the last thirteen years huh?? I said. ?Are you ready for this? Several families have decided that if you are leaving, they want to leave too. Katy and her kids are leaving tomorrow. They want to meet with you to talk about how they can come with you, maybe start a new church with you.? Donny sounded enthusiastic. He was the spy who fed me information for almost a year after my departure until he as discovered and throw out. He was even threatened with legal action because all services were taped and Thumper accused him of stealing them to give to me. He was duping copies for me, the originals were never stolen. I wanted to see if I was being slandered. I was of course. Not being there to defend myself, Thumper had the only voice and could say anything he wanted. It would prove to be grievous error.

As he stood before the church trying to justify why his pastor of more than a dozen years was castigated, shunned, abused and ultimately forced out of the church, he fell back to his go-to accusation.

?I am here tonight to tell you that Jim and Katy were in fact lovers that had been committing adultery against their spouses, against God and against this church for years. I knew it, God revealed it to me and though they denied it, I knew it to be true. It is debatable whether her last child is even from her husband but quite possibly, Jim?s child.? He declared it like it was an already proven fact. People knew Katy and I were close, Xerox copies of each other, engaged in many of the same programs that I created. But lovers? For many, it was a pill too big to swallow. For those who wanted to believe it, solely because Thumper said so, it made perfect sense. People were confused and they didn?t know what to believe. The church had fallen into a miserable state of affairs and hardly met the basic requirements of even being a church aside from the dead hand of traditions, the dress code and Thumper ?s gospel which seemed to take on a new interpretation every few days depending on which way the wind was blowing. As luck would have it, there was a little church up in some no name burg of Pennsylvania. Church of the Brethren. As luck would have it, there was a woman in that church who was having an affair with the mayor of that little town and she was a member of that church. As luck would have it, the elders of the church were outraged when they found out about it and told her that she had to confess her sin in front of the full congregation but she refused. The elders said that if she would not confess, then they would do it for her. She instead, decided to resign from the church to avoid such humiliation, making the telling of her sin quite unnecessary. The elders went ahead anyway and stood before the church, a public venue, and announced her name and her sin. She was informed and retained legal counsel and filed a defamation suit against the church. As luck would have it, she won to the tune of enough money to bankrupt the church. Her simple statement was, ?I didn?t say I wasn?t guilty of committing the sin, it just wasn?t anyone else?s business to publicly share that information.? As luck would have it, that story appeared in Time magazine about a week after Thumper ?s very public defamation of Katy and I. The only difference was that he had absolutely no evidence that we ever committed adultery because, until that day, it never happened. We had a legal precedent recently decided in favor of the defamed. We had one hundred people who witnessed Thumper ?s speech and Donny?s tape recording that he provided of the service where it was said. I was beside myself, almost giddy, as I made a few dozen copies of the article mailed it to every member of the church.

Because it was already said publicly, naming names, it was actionable for anyone to reference it because everybody knew who they were talking about. Thumper ?s million dollar baby was about to be aborted and of all people to lose his money to, the one person that he was afraid of foiling his plot. I could not have imagined a finer end to a horrible story and I wish I could have ended it right there.

Any lawyer would be happy to take this case on contingency based on the evidence that we had and the precedent set in a Pennsylvania court on an almost identical case. There was absolutely no defense and a quick six figure settlement would save Thumper the public spectacle of his arrogance and blatant abuse of power being examined by a court as well as salvage what could be an otherwise million dollar settlement. We lost our families. He went to our spouses and told them we were adulterers. They both would testify to that. He announced it to the church body even after we had left. There were a total of five children affected by the break-up of our families. It couldn?t have been a stronger case and it couldn?t be derailed even if we gave Thumper a written confession and sent him a video tape of us in the act, waving at him. It didn?t matter that we did or didn?t do it, the defamation was the crux of the case. I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall in his meetings. He, no doubt, would start adding up everything else that would surface to build the case stronger against him. If he put the properties in his name and we sued him personally, we had him. If he left everything as it was, he acted as an agent for the church so we had him either way. Could he silence everyone? Could he erase a tape that I had a copy of already? No doubt by now, everybody was thinking back to that tribunal and Thumper roaring out his indignation at a man who now has his feet in a fire. It was a Very Bad Day to be the bishop, apostle and prophet David Stephen Denton.

All I needed was for Katy to agree to do join me as an aggrieved party to the case.

We would split the settlement 50-50. We could finance our new life and do it with Thumper ?s Million.

But she wouldn?t go for it.

Katy wanted to start a new life, clean and fresh. She, like me, had endured the last dozen years or so in a church-turned-cult since joining at the age of seventeen. She married at age eighteen and had four children by then, who were getting old enough to understand words like whore, adultery and slut.

Words that no doubt would be bantered around in the media if not a courtroom.

She had intended to start college to become a school teacher.

She intended to become a decent, stand up member of society and a legal case, tying her to the cult for several more years to come, and in a most humiliating way, publicly, made the thought of a defamation suit out of her realm of reality.

She reflected on the article that prompted all of the attention. The woman?s name, what she did, where she lived. She was subject to public ridicule which Katy found unpalatable. In 1987, the shame upon a woman, even an innocent woman, was a stain that was hard to wear off. She had family that were affluent in society and undoubtedly they would be ill-affected. Add that to the fact that it was not just a church that made such defaming comments but a religious cult which would make us look like Jonestown dupes. No, not even with a million dollars at stake and the opportunity to hang Thumper out to twist in the wind for all time was enough to convince her that the public spectacle would have been worth it.

For me however, it was an easy decision. I was a sewage plant worker, shaming me was impossible. Plus, I was a man, so if I was accused of committing adultery with a beautiful woman in a religious cult, cool beans! A man in a sexual scandal in 1987 was the stuff movie stars dreamed of for ratings. The double standard that slighted women for the same acts that a man was applauded for, was quite prevalent in those days. I had everything to gain and Katy had everything to lose.

The money, as far as she was concerned, was not worth the humiliation. Had we both known what the future held for each of us, perhaps she would have reconsidered.

Fear of death is worse than death itself. I don?t know who said that first but it is quite true. Thumper found that out himself. Had he simply let us go, to live in peace away and apart from his little fiefdom, I could have tried to forget the past almost fourteen years. He had to continue to attack, make himself taller by standing on my back and bloat his ego by gloating about his victory over his former pastor. Sir Isaac Newton said, ?For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.? In physics he was right. In this case he was dead wrong. .The reaction that I was prepared to bring upon this cult leader was anything but equal. With no restrictions, threats of consequences and considering I was far out

of his reach, I was free to bring upon him full and effective retribution for what he had done to me, to Taggart, to Katy, to the children and to hundreds of those who trusted and believed him to be the light of God if only because he said so. He had no idea that we would not pursue a defamation case against him, in fact he now expected it. There was a three year statute of limitations allowing us to file until January, 1990, time enough. With that anchor around his ankles and my careful information fed back to him through channels that he was sure to receive, he could only sit back and wonder where the next attack would come from. He was virtually defenseless when the charges were from outside of the church. He knew I was sufficiently motivated to make sure he had a very bad day, in fact quite a few very bad days from then on.

I only had a few personal rules. I did not want to create any firestorm that would hurt any of the innocent people still there if that could be avoided. However, people react to only two stimulations, pain and pleasure. If the pain of being under his tyranny was more painful than the uncertainty of living as a free person outside, then perhaps I needed to turn up the heat for everyone.

I was limited in my resources to go to battle with him, which he already knew. It was that lack of financial backing that he counted on to be able to continue his cult without my interference. Only if a lawyer would take my defamation case on contingency would he have to worry about me. However, I was aware that the best resource anyone could have is resourcefulness. Add motivation to the mix and I could rain hell upon him. That hell came in the form of the phone book. The white pages are the residential phone numbers. The yellow pages are commercial numbers. The blue pages sandwiched in between those two were the Federal, State and local government numbers. It turned out that those blue pages were the equivalent of sticks of dynamite to someone breaking a myriad of codes, laws, regulations and statutes.

I started with the local agencies. As it turned out many of the agencies that I called were well aware of Thumper and his little tax exempt fiefdom and only wished they had an opportunity to launch legitimate investigations into his dealings.

Building inspectors gained entrance via Donny who walked them through the houses which they listed several violations that needed to be fixed.

Thumper had his slave labor force doing most of the work and bribed licenced contractors to sign off on the work when it was completed so he had proper documentation. Notes were made by inspectors to take appropriate action. The people were living in dilapidated houses and ordered not to let inspectors in. Now they would be lifted out of slum conditions. The battle began between the City of Baltimore housing authorities and the self-ordained bishop, apostle and prophet David Stephen Denton. The City had unlimited resources and was motivated to make their cases stick. As it turned out, when someone comes to the attention of a government agency for violations, they pass along the information to other agencies that also would have an interest and proper authority to investigate.

Thumper had decided to make one of the houses the premiere property with full amenities and touches. He announced that this house, divided into three apartments, is what all the houses would look like in the near future. Of course he had no intention to spend money on houses that people were already willing to contend with just as they were, but the promises sounded great and were reason enough to stand behind him. According to sources, he had spent over $100,000 of the people?s money to renovate, and refurbish the building. It was painted with buckets of unopened paint found in the basement of the house. Free paint was what they would refer to as a blessing. The reason the paint was abandoned with the building was because it was lead based paint and strictly illegal to paint anything with it. It was a health hazard and quite dangerous. Thumper ?s team of slave labor used every drop in each room and on every floor.

Just as it was completed and people had moved into it, I made the call to the city agency in charge of lead paint inspections. Suspicion of lead based paint in a house where children lived was not something Thumper could brush off and ignore the knocking at his door. They were going to gain entrance or they were coming in with a subpoena from a judge, the choice as his. He reluctantly let them in, tried his best to out talk them, direct them away from the walls, the window sills and doorways. Nothing was going to stop them. All samples were completed in an hour and they left. The empty cans were discarded in the back of a pickup truck and driven to a dump miles away in the meantime. Worse than using lead based paint was knowingly using lead based paint. The tests were back within two days.

The order was clear; Abate the lead based paint where ever it was used. The current residents must leave the premises while the abatement is being done and a retest will be conducted afterwards to assure it is then safe to re-inhabit.

Thumper didn?t know whether to shit or go blind. Scraping the walls and woodwork was a long and tedious job. I called again to have OSHA inspect the worksite because no safety masks or goggles were being used. The workers were inhaling the lead dust as they scraped it down. The building was completely razed and nothing but a shell was left in its wake. I wished that was the end of it but it was worse.

Thumper ?s crew had painted a baby?s crib completely with the paint. Of course the baby?s mouth was all over the railing and rungs of the crib and she became infected with lead poisoning. Thumper denied any knowledge of the crib being painted and went so far as to claim the baby did not have lead poisoning. When the mother, Angela went to the hospital and it was confirmed, he castigated Angela for going to the doctor which was against faith in God. Angela was soon told to take her baby and leave the church.

I had no idea there were so many inspectors for so many things. Sidewalk inspectors will make a property owner fix the cracks in the walkways. If your house has chipped paint, you can be fined $100 a day after thirty days if it is not re-painted. When Thumper failed to pay the water bill, the tool he had to turn the water back on after the city turned it off was of no use. I had called to inform them what he was doing and they returned to turn the water off again and attach a lock on the valve to prevent future tampering. If they put out their trash before a certain time, he got a fine. If their cars were parked more than eighteen inches from the curb, they were ticketed. Apparently the city agencies had long awaited an opportunity to stick it to Thumper who had been thumbing his nose at every attempt to bring him into compliance, hiding behind church and state separations and declaring discrimination on religious grounds, selective prosecution or simply ignoring them and hiding from their subpoenas. They were doing a fine job keeping Thumper at bay which gave me the opportunity to see who else may be interested in his activities. The I.R.S. who issues the 501C3 status for churches to be tax exempt was informed that the church was in the firewood business, the second hand furniture business using tax exempt properties for commercial uses.

Their exemption status was changed from a church to a religious organization where all commercial profit was taxable. A further drain on his financial base. Of course the Federal government contacts the state government and he became taxable to the State of Maryland as well.

I received a call from Pastor Gilfren to come in for a chat. ?Your former church is angry with you, in particular, the bishop.? He seemed slightly annoyed. ?You are no longer a member there but a member here. I think you should forget about him, and whatever you have against him, forgive and cease from further harassment.? ?Do you fully know what this guy did to the people there?? I asked him ?Children were molested, raped in some cases, beaten in the school. The workers are virtual slaves earning almost zero. People have lost their life savings, dignity and any hope of having a life regarded as even close to normal. He is a cult leader by any definition and I believe what I know is enough to bring him to justice.? ?Be that as it may, you have made your point. I asked if he would be willing to meet with you and I and he emphatically declined. He is clearly afraid of you. It is time to cease, let?s move on with your life Jim.? Pastor Gilfren said. He spoke as though his words were conclusive and final. ?If Thumper is still walking around, with the absolute power over the people who I cared about and loved for many years and he is abusing them, especially the children, then I am sorry to disagree with you, but my campaign against him must continue until he is either in jail where he belongs or he is dead.? I was not negotiating. ?Then I am sorry to say that you will no longer be welcomed into out congregation.

We are a people of peace; you seem to want to battle with your past.? He said with words that indicated a hope I would reconsider. ?I understand and I regret I will no longer be with you good folks. Good bye and I wish you well.? I stood up and shook his hand. In my heart I was there to show I was not a reprobate as everyone who ever leaves the church is accused of being. I didn?t go off the rails, I joined another church and I was sure it confused the hell out of the people back in the church. It flew in the face of everything they thought they knew. I made my point and now I could leave and forget about going to any church.

Though the farmland in Emmetsburg Maryland was in a flood plain zone and the county commissioners strictly forbade Thumper to use it for anything other than open grassland, Thumper had promised everyone that they would have a cabin built for them on the property as a vacation or weekend getaway. That meeting was taped, copied by Donny who got it to me and I in turn presented it to the county commissioners in Fredrick County Maryland. Investigators called for his explanation. Was he lying to his people or was he lying to the commissioners? No one trusted him. No one should. His only criteria when speaking was whether he was believed. Whether it was the truth or not was never here nor there with Thumper.

Fire inspectors made their appearance and all too often for Thumper ?s liking. A first floor jam packed with old used furniture, that fire officials saw as kindling that would go up in flames in about two minutes killing everyone living above, had to be managed. Sprinkler systems must be installed. The cost was several thousand dollars.

The school was owned, operated and controlled by the church. Children were subject to disciplinary action which included corporal punishment. Spankings with a wooden paddle as they bent over a chair. It was supposed to be done by a member for the same sex and only as a last resort. Ben, a wood worker in the church, had fashioned a brutal looking instrument, worthy of being exhibited in a Spanish Inquisition museum. He was told by Thumper that it was symbolic only and would never be used to actually discipline the children. He lied. He routinely beat the children with it and left bruises on their bottoms. He would boast about how he broke their sprits and beat them until they cried out. If parents cared to complain, their children would be removed from the school and be forced to go into the zoo known as Baltimore City Public Schools which had a history of violence and substandard education qualities.

I called the child abuse authorities when one child got a message out to Ben?s wife Tammy, that Thumper had beat a child so badly that he extracted blood. They arrived post haste and made an inspection of all of the children, asked questions and police officers pushed the protesting teachers aside so they could not interfere with the investigation. They wanted to see this infamous paddle being used. It was at Thumper ?s desk in the second hand furniture shop and a quick phone call to him

during the raid caused it to simply vanish, never to be seen, or used again. It saved the children from the torture that they had been subjected to and also alerted Thumper that I was not limiting my campaign against him to just him personally but everything that he was involved in. He was safe nowhere.

I received a call from Annette. She was a secretary for Thumper and she and I had been friends over the years. That friendship waned when her protests of Thumper were neutralized and she was turned into yet another Denton drone. ?How have you been out there? I understand that you had been quite busy causing turmoil among the people here in the church, Jim.? She began what I knew was a choreographed conversation that Thumper was listening to on the other line. ?You know, you are hurting a lot of innocent people here Jim.? ?Annette, you know how I feel about the people. There are no innocent people if they remain loyal to a religious dictator that insists on enslaving them in a cult-like culture.? I told her. I could already hear his breathing getting heavier with the stress of wanting to say something but knowing he couldn?t. ?If he is not in violation of anything he has nothing to worry about. If he is using a symbolic paddle to beat small children bloody, subjecting people to lead paint toxicity and defame me as some sort of adulterer when I am not even there to defend myself, well then we have quite another kettle of fish, don?t we?? Did I hear her turning the page? ?What if he was to cease and desist? What if he apologized and asked for forgiveness? Would you stop your campaign against him?? I knew she was reaching. He never apologized for anything. ?The damage has already been done. The children have suffered in ways that they may never recover from. People have lost everything. $240,000 in Leon?s donation is unaccounted for. He stole it, you l know it and I know it. When the investigators come crawling into every piece of his books, if he can?t show where it is or where it went, he will be going to jail. Separation of church and state cannot protect him from outright theft. I have made copies in case he decided to cook the books before they arrive. He can intimidate everybody else there but he can?t scare me or a judge that he will face before his inevitable sentencing. No amount of apologies will give me back my fourteen years. It won?t bring back

It won?t bring back Taggart, and it won?t unmolest those children. He is toast and will receive everything he deserves. I am seeing to that.?, I was on a roll.

I thought that should be the end of it but she had more, ?Are you willing to take down the rest of the church with him?? ?What church, Annette? With him out of the way the people can be free. It will be hard at first but in the end, they can live as free people, make their own decisions for their lives. No longer puppets. Normal lives.?

It was awkward because she knew she was almost reading a script prepared for her by Thumper. I knew he was listening to our conversation and I knew he was bursting inside wanting to shout me down but couldn?t risk it.

He was no better than any other dictator or despot who forced their way into power by demonizing anyone who opposed them. Promising what he knew he would never make good on to keep the people following along. Hitler used national socialism. Mussolini used fascism. Chairman Mao used communism.

David Stephen Denton used religion, as did Jim Jones and to the same end. The destruction of people who were too blind to see it coming. Is there a difference between them all? Is enslaving and destroying the lives of a few hundred people any better than exterminating a million people in concentration camps? There is no word in the dictionary as semi-bad. Evil has no degrees, just numbers. Was Thumper not as evil as Jim Jones in Guyana just because he had not yet forced us to drink cyanide-laced Kool Aid? Had they been caught, Hitler, Jim Jones, and Thumper would have all met there expected ends, probably with the same degree of mercy that they mete out to their victims. What made it particularly evil is the culture that it created and people that were surrounded by it daily, knew nothing else. Especially the children who were born into it. It was a culture that spiralled down as the monster fed on itself until there was nothing left. I was accused constantly of ?Liberalisms? meaning thinking for yourself, deciding what is good and right for yourself. On the contrary, Thumper was so deeply embedded with legalisms, strict and exactly measures of every word uttered, by others, (he himself was self-exempt) that people had to justify and explain everything they said and did.

For example, if someone asked for the time, and a brother would look at his watch and say, ?It?s ten after one.? The a-ha would be launched. ?You have to

repent for that lie, it is twelve after one! I have to be my brother ?s keeper, repent for that lie.? Thumper said anything that was not the truth was a lie. I modified it with my ?liberalisms? to clarify that a lie was a willful intent to deceive. This eliminated the necessity to respond to the question, ?What time is it?? with, ?According to my watch, which I set this morning to the time message on the phone, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the time is ten after one in the afternoon.? It was just that ridiculous. As long as all the dogs were chasing their own tails, he never need worry that any of them would consider biting him.

Now he had plenty to worry about. It was time for full accountability and in the process the people would either realize that they had been duped by a master con artist or that the inspecting agencies would force him to clean up and make conditions liveable in the houses for their comfort and safety. The very real possibility that I would sue him and take it all away still loomed in the background with a three year ticking clock. With that, I realized that this project had consumed every free minute of every day for the best part of a year. How long could I keep him crushed under threats of jail, inspections that would cost thousands of dollars to bring everything up to minimum standards and play this game of nerves that he loved forcing so many others into? I decided that he was sufficiently being watched and investigated by those with the authority to do something about him. I was no longer relevant to the pursuit of one David Stephen Denton. I made my point, in fact I made lots of them, sharp points like a thousand daggers into him heart that he could never recover from. It seemed like a good time to consider my exit strategy.

Then the world changed colors and the sky took on an ugly hue of terror. In the belief system of Pentecostal people, the notion that God actually speaks to you is very real. Speaking in tongues was one way which people used for all sorts of verification and admonition against one another. Then there are dreams.

Everybody has dreams from time to time and they mean nothing more than your subconscious unloading as you sleep.

Unless of course you happen to be the wife of a religious dictator who needed to silence an adversary once and for all. Dear sister Kathy Denton had a dream.

She dreamed that I died in April, 1988.

She could have rolled over and gone back to sleep but she, for reasons best known to her, shared this dream with Thumper. Seeing an opportunity, he immediately raised its net worth from dream to prophecy. The church that night had a message from on high and God was leading his people, through Thumper of course. ?My wife had a prophesy last night in the form of a dream. God showed her that Jim Killon was going to die in April 1988. (which was just a few months away) Instead of the people nodding in acknowledgement and saying, ?Ok that?s nice, let?s sing Amazing Grace,? Thumper had more. ?It is obviously God?s will that Jim Killon should die. He is no longer one of us and his death, like Taggart?s death, is God?s wrath upon him. Therefore, who will volunteer to do God?s will for him??

This was his God-sent message to the people and he expected it to be taken as such.

In, what was probably the greatest ?Oh Shit!? moment in the church?s history, the people were stunned at what they thought they heard and hoped that they were misunderstanding him yet again. Was he actually asking for volunteers to go out and kill the former pastor of the church? Hands rose. There were three who volunteered to do God?s will and hunt me down, eliminate me in whatever fashion they deemed necessary and God?s will be done. There were enough people who still believed in me, in my goodness and had seen what was unacceptable in the church but with no escape possible, had to endure it at Thumper ?s hand. The phone line to my apartment glowed red from the several calls incoming to warn me that Thumper had told people to go out and kill me, and there were volunteers. They told me the names. No one knew just yet how it would happen or when.

Had Thumper actually lost his damn mind? His ulterior motive now was obvious.

He was going to steal the properties by putting them all in his own name, and that plot would be unstoppable if the one person causing all this close inspection, were dead. I was sure he would claim that the killers misunderstood him, like he denied Paul molested any children because he did not see it. It appeared that I was not yet finished in my total annihilation of Thumper and dismantling his tremendous ego. The next several weeks were touch and go.

Could I go to the police with this? Would they do anything more than take a report? It was preposterous to assume that a man of God, bishop of a church would actually announce the plot to murder a former member just on the strength of his wife?s dream. Especially when I had been calling everybody in the world that might have an interest to derail him. As it turns out nobody in law enforcement gives a rat?s fuzzy ass about what might happen or what could happen until it actually does happen. But that would require me to be a grease spot on the sidewalk first.

I had to take matters into my own hands. First, defense mode activated. I had to circle the block several times to shake off any tails before I put my car into the underground secured garage of my apartment building. Of course to a hammer everything looks like a nail. Any car that turned when I turned, stopped when I stopped, might be them. I received a package wrapped nicely with my name on it and left at the front desk. It was cube shaped, in brown wrapping paper and with a handwritten address. No return address which, in pre-9/11 days, was not necessary. I cut a small hole in the side of it with a mat knife and smelled it for cordite, a bomb making material. I knew better than to pull the string that tied it all together. A string could be attached to a small sheet of cardboard that separated two copper wires that would be attached to a lantern battery. Pulling the string would connect the wires completing the circuit, which would make a spark igniting a pound of gunpowder that filled the box. One cubic inch of gunpowder would instantly expand to fifteen cubic inches. Imagine a small shoe box full of gunpowder and the expansion it would cause. Now consider a killer hedging his bet by adding steel ball bearings, BBs, broken glass or the like. That is called shrapnel to those of us who had too much time on our hands and listened to ex-Army Rangers who worked for the City like I did. I never needed to make a bomb but I knew what to look for. I carried a tiny flashlight to check my light bulb before turning the lights on in my apartment. An emery board used by women to file their nails can also be used to carefully file away the glass of a light bulb near the screw in part. Pour gunpowder or gasoline into the hole and tape over it to avoid spillage. Some killers like to roll the bulb in glue then into a pile of BBs to add a shrapnel effect. The light switch gets flipped and the room is a pyrotechnic masterpiece.

Kids, don?t try this at home. The box contained a candy dispenser from a former member who was thinking of me and wanted to send me something nice.

Fortunately it was made of plastic so soaking it in water before I opened it did not ruin it. I wore rubber surgical gloves to open my mail, tissues to open exterior door handles because of toxins, like parathion used for pest control, could be obtained easily enough. Four drops will kill a human, and whatever pests you might have. I hesitated to buy a gun. As jumpy as I was getting, anybody who walked up to me and asked directions could be someone sent by Thumper or his killers. In Baltimore, a junkie will knife you for $50. Why take chances? I carried a knife, and pepper spray, and a piano wire woven loosely into my belt. My belt buckle was a push dagger, undetectable. My car was a virtual arsenal. A knife over the visor, under the seat was a club, a radio antenna lay between my seat and the door. One of my co-workers went to South Carolina to buy illegal fireworks, the good stuff. I bought several blockbusters, Âź sticks of dynamite in case I needed them. In actuality, all I needed was eyes in the back of my head and a little common sense. I was at Katy?s one night for dinner. One of our new friends had joined us. It was late and we were leaving, saying our goodbyes on the front porch. I scanned the street discreetly. Son of a bitch there they were! Two of the ?brothers? from the church sitting down the block in one of the cars that I recognized. Still smiling and chatting lightly, I excused myself without alerting them and blowing our advantage. I slid back into the house.

Quickly, I raced down the basement stairs and out the back door leading to the alley. I knew no one would be covering the alley if two were in the car. I raced down the alley and around the corner to the street behind them. I saw they were sitting up alert, watching the door, apparently waiting for me to emerge again.

Had the driver looked in his side view mirror he would have seen me at a dead run coming up behind them. I could not see their hands so I knew the weapon or weapons were going to be on their laps. It was Spring time so the car windows were down. That worked well for me as I jammed my hand into the car window up to my shoulder that banged against the door frame. I got the gun just as he reached for it and pulled it out just as his fingertips slid across it. It was a stubby .38 caliber pistol, a revolver made in blue steel, non-reflecting.

I grabbed it by the handle which allowed me to aim it at them. The other guy was unarmed. They were shocked and scared to see me. I was the enemy. The enemy of the church and the enemy of God and they were there on a mission from God to execute me. How could this go so terribly wrong? I jammed the short barrel of the gun into the driver ?s left ear, hard. I wanted to shove it through his brain and out the other side. I could hardly contain my composure. ?How does it feel to know that you?re about to die, gentlemen? Self defense covers me, what about you? Are you ready to die for Thumper over a dream? It was a dream guys, a damn dream, nothing more.? They began to whimper and make sounds that probably would have been some kind of prayer or plea. I cracked open the cylinder and dropped out the bullets onto the street. Fully loaded. ?You tell him, next time I see or hear anything that makes me nervous, he won?t have to come looking for me. I will show up like I just did here and I won?t be very happy. Get out of here.? For some odd reason, I threw the gun back into the car and let them pull out and drive away. They were incredibly careful and slow as they pulled away. I walked back up to the porch. Katy looked at me panic stricken, knowing what it was, our friend had no idea. We couldn?t tell her either, what would we possibly say? ?I guess it ain?t over until it?s over huh?? I tried to smile. I was a kaleidoscope of emotions. Swirling between fear, anxiety, rage, bravado and cold terror. I knew that, as much as I wanted to believe that this ?Jim dies in April? thing was wishful thinking at best, these fanatics were taking it as seriously as if it came down from the mount chiseled in tablets of stone.

Was it a pill too big to swallow? Over nine hundred people committed suicide in Guyana just ten years earlier. Terrorists were strapping dynamite to themselves and blowing up Middle Eastern market places in the name of Allah. Protestants and Catholics were shooting each other in Belfast. How was this any different?

When the human brain believes that something is right, deep within the subconscious level, whatever actions are taken in response to that belief will seem reasonable and necessary, regardless of its illegality, immorality or consequences.

I knew there would be another attempt. I also knew that the message that I sent back with them would create such paranoia and defensiveness that to approach

him under any circumstances would be suicide. There had to be an effective way to end this. Tit for tat would put me in jail and that was not going to happen.

Everything that happened up to this point seemed so bush league. Now I was playing in the big leagues, and both sides were playing for keeps.

I ordered food to be delivered to my apartment. I rarely went outside and when I did I altered my comings and goings. I never took the same route to work in the mornings. My apartment building was secure, people needed to be allowed into the lobby by a security person, visitors were announce before being allowed to take the elevator to anyone?s place and deliveries were pre-arranged with the front desk before they could proceed. Katy?s place was less secure. A hundred year old house with large windows front and back. A basement door that no one would see anyone entering even by force. It had a front door that was secure enough to withstand a strong wind but nothing beyond that. She parked on the street allowing for anyone to wire her car in the darkness of the night. Only the fact that she was a woman, a mother of four small children, would possibly deter anyone from acting against her. When I slept there, I always had one eye open. Any loud, uncertain noise and I was out of bed and reaching for a baseball bat. I could just imagine Katy and I being shot, coitus-interuptus and Thumper standing there looking at the shooter saying, ?I told you so.? There were a lot of nightmares. There were a lot of nightmares for the next ten years. Before it had a name it was just fear, nightmares, skittishness. Now it has a name. Post- traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD. It was the same thing that people suffer who went through wars, violent incidents like rape or bad car accidents. Punctuate the years of denigration, abuse, anxiety and buried rage with people trying to kill you and it was no surprise that I was a trauma victim. I knew there were others who were still inside and many outside that suffered it too. Thumper ?s list of victims was quite lengthy.

I had very good health care at work. The City didn?t pay well but the benefits were excellent. I arranged to meet with a psychiatrist. Most shrinks seemed to be crazier than their patients in my opinion but what did I know. It was free and I made the appointment. I explained why I was there. I was an escapee from a religious cult that now was trying to kill me and unlike paranoid delusional people, I already thwarted one attempt on my life. He listened, took notes and closed his notepad.

?You don?t need me.? He counselled. ?No, not a psychiatrist. I treat people who think someone is out to get them. That is paranoia. The government, aliens from outer space, angels of death and the CIA. That is not you. You?re not paranoid; you actually have some people coming after you. That is real fear and quite reasonable under the circumstance. What you need, isn?t a shrink, you need a moving van, get out of town, get away from these fanatics before they actually do kill you. As far as the cult, they are extremists just like any other extreme group.

The Marines for example, for good or bad they are extreme in their thinking. Your group was just a touch under them. Totally dominated and controlled by a leader who is nuts himself. Get away from them and you will be all right.?

I knew that was not going to be possible. I still had a son to take care of. I knew Katy was never going anywhere away from her family who lived in Baltimore County. She wasn?t a target unless it was to get to me. I was the target however. I had one shot to push them back and out of my life.

I had been writing in my journals for years and years. I kept my work journals at home and my life journals, all the things chronicling the activities in the church, in my locker at work. It had been necessary to do it that way since Robin would go into them when I was at work and read my inner most feelings and reflections to an eager and suspicious Thumper. Nothing I thought, said or did was private. I had complied about six large volumes of information. All of it was dated, names were named, reflections were as objective as I could possibly be with few exceptions. I listed what I had for evidence should a day like this ever arrived.

Today was the day. I made a call to the one place I knew would shake Thumper to his absolute core. I saved this as my final shot, not wanting to blow it on anything superfluous. There was no doubt in my mind that the authorities were now interested in Thumper, based on the swift raid by child abuse authorities, the Secret Service raid on the farmland when the brothers were target shooting. It came to nothing but the fact that the U.S. Secret Service arrived was reason enough to raise an eyebrow as to who else had an eye on Thumper and this fanatical group that nobody could seem to touch. I was told years before that the government relies on tips about the goings on, in and around communities. They neither have the manpower nor the interest to go out and find evil doers on their own volition.

I had already seen where the telephone is the most powerful weapon known to man. Information is power. I called the Baltimore City Attorney General?s office.

There are divisions for all sorts of investigations and I found the one that had a particular interest in a cult led by what seemed like a megalomaniac with a messianic complex. They had been watching and waiting for years but without anyone willing to talk to them, their hands seemed to be tied, until now.

With an eagerness that was likened to a lottery winner counting his millions, the assistant state attorney named Harold Benhurst and a police officer name Officer Jacqueline Gold listened to me unfold my experiences at the church, the messianic rages and craziness of one David Stephen Denton and the series of reasons why we all thought a man that far over the edge needed to be investigated, arrested, charged, jailed, boiled in oil, eaten by jackals and his remains left in a pile of alligator excrement. They took notes, asked questions, asked if I would go back in to gather more evidence. I explained why that was never going to happen. Their ears perked up like a Doberman that heard a can opener. I laid it all out for them, how it was, who was involved, thefts, violence, molestations covered up by him, virtual slavery. When the question came up, ?But what proof do you have?? I told them I have journals. You would think that I just broke out the Holy Grail. I went home for a much needed break because I had been interviewed for the last six and a half hours, talking almost non-stop. I returned with the journals and turned them over to them. They shared my outrage. Whatever happened to Thumper now was going to be between them and him. This was better than the defamation lawsuit. This could put him away for life. They had it and my promise to testify if it came to that. I went home, called Annette and told her that I had just spent the day debriefing the state attorney?s office about Thumper, the church, the crimes and their many misdeeds. I heard another phone being picked up. I knew Thumper was listening. I said what I needed to say, ?I am now protected by the state attorney?s office. If anything happens to me, even by accident, they are coming directly to him. They know about the plot to kill me and why. They know there has been one attempt. If there are any others, it will be his ass. His freedom depends on my safety and staying alive. Make sure he knows that, good night.? It was over. I was safe as safe could be as far as Thumper and his maniacal effort to have me whacked, in the name of Jesus was concerned. I could get on with my life now and figure out what should come next. I didn?t have the first clue.

Lan d Ho!!

When the Pilgrims left England, and all that was familiar to them, to sail to ?The New World?, they had no idea what they were heading into. They knew it was going to be a lot different, more primitive and that they were going to have to make some major life adjustments. They had not counted on a smallpox outbreak onboard the ship as it crossed the Atlantic which killed many of them.

They had not counted on stormy seas and seasickness nor had they imagined what the place they were to arrive had in store for them. All they knew was that it had to be better than the place that they had just left. Freedom, a new start in life and unlimited possibilities. There would be challenges but somehow, whatever they might be, they would face them with courage.

I felt like those early Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, tearing apart the ship because they knew they were not going back and using the fragments to start building houses and barns. The winters were harsh and they used what skills they had and the friendship of the natives to create what we now know as Massachusetts. And then there were the Boston Red Sox and the rest is history.

Those first few months after our escape were like being in a country we had never seen before and didn?t speak the language. We had no televisions, movies, radios or interaction with communities so the culture and customs were all very strange. I remember going to a grocery store and at the check-out line the cashier asked me, ?Paper or plastic?? I had no idea what she meant. ?Paper or plastic? what?? I thought it was slang for cash or debit card. ?Cash? I said. She still looked at me inquisitively like I had a decision to make. ?Paper or plastic ..bags sir?? she said looking at me like I might be special. ?You get a choice?? plastic bags had not been available when I first became cloistered. Only the women went grocery shopping and always came home with paper bags. I had no idea plastic bags were an option.

I recall Katy and I walking with the kids in the park and realized it was a Wednesday in the late afternoon. I started walking faster. Katy pulled back on my arm. ?Where are you rushing off to?? she asked me.

For the last dozen years or more, Wednesday night was church service. Whatever you were doing, when it was getting late you started hurrying to get home and change for church. Got to be there on time. It?s the rules. I realized that instinctively, without meaning to, I was hurrying to get to a place that I will never be again. ?Old habits die hard I guess Katy?, I told her. It felt very odd and out of place. What do people do on Wednesday nights when they aren?t in church service? I never thought about it. Everybody we knew was there sitting among the ?faithful? and now it was all different. Katy had taken off all the clothing that was ordered by Thumper to be holy and according to his personal standard. She bought pairs of pants. Took off the head covering, the bonnet thing that all women were ordered to wear because their hair was considered nakedness. Short sleeve shirts in the hot summers felt much more comfortable. Season appropriate clothing, colorful things and sandals. We laughed together quite a lot at how different and liberating life had become and the ground was not going to swallow us up because we were somehow, ?Anti-christs.? Not unless the ground was going to swallow up everybody in the country. Or the world. It was all nonsense and superstitions made up to manipulate and control us. It was all gone now. In the night, after the kids were all tucked into bed and asleep, Katy and I had time alone together. This was incredible because no one and nothing could dictate to us, hunt us, condemn us for what we felt for each other. We had been friends since she came into the church at age seventeen. We always got along great. After a few years in loveless, abusive marriages, we found each other as more than just friends, though not yet lovers.

Then we had perhaps a half dozen years in that passionate connection that defied everything we were told was right, but our passion was right for us. It was saving us from extinction and it freed us from the crushing existence of what was supposed to be a marriage. We found our passionate expressions anywhere and at any time that we could steal them. We found what being wildly in love was and we were ready to sacrifice everything to be together. When Thumper was abusing people, screaming at them, threatening to throw them out into the streets, accusing us of crossing lines not yet crossed, we could withstand all of it because of the love we had for each other. We flew higher than he or anyone else could reach. We emotionally supported each other in the darkest times.

We made our lives make sense in the most senseless of circumstances and situations. We found a purpose in life being together. Now we could be together.

We could talk without speaking in code, talk out loud about our feelings without fear of consequences. We could hold each other intertwined in an embrace that seemed like it could last for days. We spoke softly in gentle murmurs of our love that surpassed words as our still glistening bodies eagerly reached for mutual completion again and yet again. We could look into each other ?s eyes and communicate from the depths of our souls without saying a word. We made assurances to each other that we would always be like this. Never would anything ever be allowed to hurt us, tear us apart or diminish our love for each other.

I only wished that reality was as loving and kind as the dreams we had. Reality was cruel and there was nothing that could ease the pain of the inevitable. She had four kids, I had one. There was no way I could support them all. She was going to be a school teacher, a professional in an honored profession. I was and had been a sewage worker making barely enough to support myself and my son. The influences that came flowing into our lives confused us. I resisted them as intrusions while Katy embraced them as new experiences to be explored. Katy was meeting new people and enjoying friends at the college and social gatherings. I was reclusive, still suspicious of anything unfamiliar which was just about everything. Obviously being at ground zero for so many years affected me far deeper than Katy who was on the fringes of the cult?s daily grind.

We both knew it was going to happen but neither of us wanted to accept it. Me, because I refused to let her go and her because she knew that she deserved a fuller, more developed life than I could ever give her. She had been my best friend, my confidante in some very ugly times, my lover and the only bright spot in my life for many years. I now had to let her become who she was destined to be, without me and I had to find myself again, without a dependence on her. I thought that we could at least stay in touch, still be friends and share birthdays with the kids and laugh at the familiar things. I thought I could bear seeing her with her new boyfriend, knowing that those passionate times with me were now going to be spent in his arms. I thought I could find solace with another woman who could somehow replace her, make me forget her, or maybe the next one, or the next one? There is a certain sense of deep loss, worse than the death of a loved one, worse than hearing a doctor say those words that will alter the way you see whatever remaining days that you have left. That sense of utter and complete loss changes you forever. It makes you compare this experience with the ones with her.

It is an overlay of her superimposed across every new lover, every happy

experience that somehow is a little less happy because you don?t have her to share it with. There were solutions that weren?t solutions at all. Waking up in her arms again and smiling when you realize that it was all just a bad dream until you glance around the room and suddenly realize that this isn?t her room, this isn?t her bed and this isn?t her. Then the room turns dark again. Bad choices, risky behavior, words that you can?t take back. You look at your watch and it is three in the morning. It dawns on you that you haven?t eaten in days but you?re not hungry and besides, there are no restaurants open at this time at night as you drift aimlessly along empty sidewalks. Finally you stop punishing yourself for wanting what is gone forever. Katy was never going to be the same person ever again.

Even if she begged for forgiveness and wanted to be held in my arms again, I would sense the stranger who was there last night, and another one the night before. It would be too much like standing in line.

After too many mistakes of my own, I accepted the inevitable, the loss, the hurt that would diminish one day and I knew that what I had done to myself over the many months it took to move on would heal as well. Today Katy is teaching school out there on the west coast, probably getting ready to retire. Her kids, as well as my own son, are middle aged adults living their own lives with their own families. I hope they are doing well where ever they happen to be now. I don?t remember who said it but somebody, smarter than I will ever be, wrote, ?Don?t be sad that it?s over. Be happy that it happened.? No doubt, we are two very different people now, different from each other and different from what each of us once was. Nothing remains but a shimmering memory of what was once so brilliant. Like starlight that flashes across the night sky but the star itself had burned out centuries ago. I cherish the memory that, more than half my life ago, there was an incredible woman, a dear friend and a relentless lover there with me and there for me. She gave me absolute joy and total, complete love so incredibly full that when I die one day, I will rest assured that yes indeed, I knew what real love actually was.

Th e Af t er m at h

My son called me one day out of the blue. ?David Stephen Denton is dead.? He told me, knowing I would be elated at the news. He was right in that assumption.

Involuntarily, I smiled. ?Really? How?? I asked. I guess it?s what anyone asks next when someone dies. I really didn?t care, unless he was set on fire by cannibals that ate him afterward, which I would have found satisfying. ?He had been suffering for years with a series of heart issues and a stroke. He had been in the hospital getting heart surgery but it hadn?t seemed to help much.

They found him slumped over the steering wheel of his truck in front of the properties on Baltimore Street. They said it was his heart that finally gave out.

Years of stress, anxiety and fear. Some say you caused it. He was fifty two years old. There is going to be a memorial service for him at the church. Should I let them know to expect you there?? he already knowing my answer even before asking.

I had been out of the church for ten years by that time. My life had gone through quite a few twists and turns to get where I was, to find some sense of equilibrium for myself. Another marriage, and a divorce with a few years in between, another child by yet another woman who was so bizarre that I needed a court order to get her out of my house and out of my life. I worked in a bank trying to establish some sense of respectability in the community and was becoming fairly successful. The days of a church-turned-cult was far behind me as were the nightmares, traumas, memories of the horrors that I endured at the hands of a sociopath and megalomaniac who believed himself to be the incarnation of Jesus Christ. My late teen years and all throughout my twenties were dominated and stolen by this person whose name I never mention. Thumper is all I ever referred to him as. A Bible Thumper creating his own gospel because he knew better than Moses or the apostle Paul or the apostle Peter or even God himself.

Thumper ?s Gospel was a gulag, a nightmare that one man had created, then incarcerated and subjected hundreds of naĂŻve, trusting people into it.

Many of whom never escaped. I wondered if they ever would, now that he was dead. ?No son, I won?t be going. We should only speak good of the dead, he is dead, good.? I replied. ?Still bitter after all these years Dad? It might be time to let it go.? He said but knew there was no use trying to tell me that, not about this man. ?Some memories are permanent Greg, some get branded into your consciousness and you learn to live with them but the care you have for others makes it impossible to forgive it or forget it.? I explained. I understand there at the memorial service, attended by everybody who ever went to the church and anybody who was a former member. Former because they were kicked out or escaped. No one ever just stopped coming. Everybody there had a story and every one of them had a common theme. For some reason the human element wants to remember the dead as though their life was better than it actually was. I had seen it among police officers killed in the line of duty while running a drug racket and about to be indicted. They memorialize the bastard like he saved the planet. I couldn?t stomach seeing Thumper so honored. I understand that his wife wailed and clung to the coffin in her grief saying, ?Stephen, you said you would never leave me, what will I do now?? I heard she remarried just a few years later to someone who is nothing like the late husband whose coffin she lamented over. If she suffered even a fraction of what the rest of us did, I can imagine her remarriage was a scrubbing away of a life she endured and silently tolerated if only because of the five kids they had together.

I understand that his kids were grief-stricken as well with the exception of his son, the only boy he had, Roy. They were at odds constantly and his son hated him with a passion. He was smiling, laughing and talking congenially at the wake and service as though it were cause for celebration. I supposed he would be happy, though no one knew it at the time; he inherited some of the properties. Bonnie and Danny celebrated by getting drunk. As children, both were victims of sexual abuse by predators covered up by Thumper.

I understand they cremated his body and half of his ashes were buried in West By-God Virginia next to his mother. The other half buried on the farmland in

Emmetsburg, on the floodplain zone, where they indeed built a church and residence for a few families to continue living. Albert, the old deacon and musician became the pastor there. A plaque made of bronze lay on the spot where his remains are buried saying, ?David Stephen Denton 1945-1998 Beloved bishop, husband and father.?

The church-turned-cult went all to hell after the final farewells were said and done.

He had, in fact, put all of the property in his sole name after the smoke had cleared and I had moved on with my life. Apparently, no one was watching him as closely as before on the government radar so he made himself a millionaire after all.

I had to laugh because I knew him well enough to know that after the last of the people were disposed of, those properties were going to be sold off and Thumper ?s life would be spent somewhere warm and where the stresses of accountability would never find him. But he died first. He never got to enjoy any of it, time ran out too soon for him.

People gathered around to discuss the fair and equitable way the properties would be broken up. People had invested twenty or more years into the church and they wanted their slice of the pie. After all, they were promised a house for being in the church for ten years which never happened. Hancock in Western Maryland was given to Henry and his family. He maintained his position as pastor, which was his reward for betraying me at the tribunal, and remained a pastor even after raping his two daughters. Albert took Emmetsburg in Fredrick County.

The two groups broke into fierce fighting and finally decided to disfellowship one another. The reason; Henry said that Jesus sits on the right hand of God symbolically because Jesus is God. Albert vehemently resists such as nonsense because he believes that Jesus is the son of God and sits on the literal right hand of God. I have no doubt that if they were Muslims, their fanaticisms would have put them in jetliners with box cutters on September 11. 2001. It was like arguing over the bar tab on the Titanic.

As for the church in Baltimore, the building was sold, money was divided among the people according to their time in the church, their loyalty to Thumper and whether or not Kathy liked them well enough. Most of the property remained in

Most of the property remained in the possession of Thumper ?s wife and adult children who he willed it to. No apologies were made for such theft of the people?s life savings, years of slave labor and dedication. The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Baltimore is now defunct and its people scattered. It long overstayed its usefulness and toward the end, only a familiarity of a church and what it once stood for remained.

Though he condemned into the fiery pits of hell anyone daring to go to a doctor or even take an aspirin for pain, because it denied faith in God?s wondrous healing power, Thumper was a regular heart patient and treated for a stroke when he needed medical attention by doctors. I wondered how he justified his hypocrisy, allowing himself the very best medical treatment when he needed it after condemning hundreds of people for doing the same.

His children had fallen quite far from the tree from which they were seedlings. His son, Roy, being true to his nature, came out as a homosexual man which must have scalded Thumper every time he thought of it. Gays were destined to the deepest pits of hell according to his teachings. His oldest daughter and first born, Sally, after years of wearing clothing becoming of an Amish beekeeper, was clad in a bikini made of the slightest of triangles as she strutted along stages photographed as a competition bodybuilder. Daughter number two, Sarah, who was cheated in both personality and looks, joined the military and against the teachings of her father who considered killing or assisting killing as a soldier morally wrong, served in forward areas of Iraq, doing what soldiers do best.

The visits to nursing homes, prisons, ministries to the deaf, the lost souls that were supposed to be the whole reason for creating the church in the first place were left as memories for whoever cared to sit around a campfire and say, ?Hey remember when?...?

Was it all just means to an end? Was that end just power, money and unadulterated ego enrichment? Had he lived another twenty years what would Thumper have become? It is a curious question that we are grateful we never had to find out the answer.

I understand from sources his wordplay semantics went from declaring, ?We are the body of Christ? to, ?I am the image of Christ?

In the later years, as he finally lost his moral compass altogether, began telling people, ?I am Christ, I have overcome the world, I am without sin.? A mechanic, named Johnny, who was renting a garage near the properties recalled a story when Thumper brought his car back to him for repairs. After it was fixed he gave Thumper the bill. He looked shocked and insulted, ?You would charge Jesus Christ money?? he said to him.

Johnny told me he was shocked, ?I told him outright, ?No I wouldn?t but you ain?t him and it?s $475, cash or check.?

During church services he read the Bible accentuating the words that made a certain point. ?I am the way the truth and the light, no man comes to the Father except by ME!? People began questioning if he was indicating the he, Thumper, was saying he himself, not Jesus Christ was the way to God. Everything he did and said sure seemed to be consistent with it. He was clearly delusional, insecure, a sociopath and megalomaniac whose messianic complex consumed him completely. He considered everyone either for him or against him with consequences following either way. His death was a sigh of relief for many people.

Every so often I will get an email, or a reach out on social media from former members of the cult. Some still embrace God in some fashion, perhaps their lives are such that it serves as a floatation device in a stormy sea. Some are as wildly fanatical as they ever were.

Frank is one such example. Tucked away up there in West By-God Virginia, in every social media post he reflects some sort of hellfire and brimstone solution condemning anything that doesn?t glow in the dark with his approved flavor of belief. Frank?s world gets a little more narrow with every passing every year. Most however, seem to be content to live and let live.

It is the attitude of people mellowing in their later years, most of us are now approaching retirement age and what happened to us forty or more years ago was unfortunate, but today is what matters. Especially when you have a lot more yesterdays than you do tomorrows.

I had debated whether this book would ever be written. Within the first ten years after my escape, I simply couldn?t because the memories were still too raw,

too bitter, the nightmares still fresh and there wouldn?t be enough constructive objectiveness to make it worthwhile. Nobody wants to read a rant.

After twenty years I was coasting along becoming what I always thought I wanted to be. A day trader chasing the NASDAQ, sporting around in my BMW, sailing across the Baltimore harbor in a J-17 sailboat, enjoying the company of grateful ladies and experiencing ?The Good Life?. Who has time to remember the horrors of my twenties? Now, after thirty years, my life actually is what I always wanted to be. This is actually the good life. I am a humanitarian living in the Peruvian Andes, helping thousands of poor and disadvantaged children in my non-profit project called Changes for New Hope. (Check it out www.changesfornewhope.com) I have found my purpose and true mission in life. I know my ?Why? for my existence and I fully intend to die on empty one day, having given everything I had to give for the betterment of this piece of the world that I have been graced to live in. I am an exhibited artist with eight exhibitions, as of this writing, five of which were in national museums. This represents my eighth book published. I write and do speaking engagements about living to your fullest possibilities, being limitless, being a person of value to the human family, and other motivational and inspirational pursuits. I publish a monthly magazine about humanitarianism and feature obscure heroes around the world in it. This year ?s objective is to meet with 10,000 children and provide anti-parasite medicine and vitamins which will address the ubiquitous anemia issue in this region. I am a minimalist by choice and live a simple life void of clutter mentally, emotionally or materially. My daily meditations and mindfulness exercises center me every morning and enable me to reach out to others. My days are filled with contentment, happiness and most importantly, Gratitude. Many consider me a great man, a hero, an inspiration and a sage. After seeing what egomania did to one man and everyone he encountered, I resist such accolades and declare myself as simply, Jim, an ordinary man that gives an extraordinary damn.

Is this book a contradiction of the values I now hold dear? Not at all, in fact, now was the time I wanted to share this horrific story with people. I wrote it as a warning and as an escape route for people who are now or have been incarcerated in destructive religious cults or belief systems that would attempt to smother you as a person and diminish your life and potential.

For so many years people that are trapped are forgotten. Others considered their plight, ?Their own damn fault for being so stupid.?

I disagree. People, such as myself, were just looking for some answers in life at a very young, impressionable age. There was no ?fault? involved, especially when something that started out as well-meaning morphed into something destructive.

There are thousands of adult men who suffered as children at the hands of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. Thirty years ago there was no accountability. YouTube videos are now loaded with people who share their warning messages about a variety of religious organizations that would be deemed as destructive cults. If the internet existed in 1978, would it be conceivable that Jim Jones and the People?s Temple in Guyana could have been stopped before over 900 innocent people were killed?

I will no doubt be ridiculed for writing this book by people whose memories of the man I refer to as David Stephen Denton differ greatly from my own. I don?t care as long as the story goes out and touches people who need to hear it for their own deliverance from religious tyranny. Consider in September 11, 1856, the Fancher-Baker wagon train heading west to California and had the misfortune to cross the lands of the militant Mormon Church settlement where they were massacred after being betrayed with a promise to lead them to safety from a hostile native tribe. That is not to say that the Mormon Church is a cult but if my child was going to join them, I sure would like him to know what that church?s history entailed. Did you know that even after the Waco Texas standoff between Federal agents with cult leader David Koresh and the Branch Davidians that there are still Branch Davidians? Many others that make the news are just the tip of the iceberg and cults that no one may ever hear about are engulfing children, loved ones and friends at an alarming rate. If no one sounds an alarm and shares their story, eyes will remain naively closed and the destruction begins again.

So, you might be wondering where I now stand, what do I believe in, what church

finally got my vote of confidence? I had been so traumatized and scarred by my experiences that I chose not to allow anyone to ever get a second chance to do this to me again. I go to no church, embrace no religion and like the Dali Llama, I

I believe that my religion is love. That seems to be working out pretty well for me.

I went further to resist a deity that would allow 785 million people on the planet to live in starvation every day, most of whom are innocent, vulnerable children. I cannot embrace a god that could cure diseases and suffering but won?t. I looked into the attributes of Jesus and found that almost every one of his miracles, signs and wonders were lifted right out of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian mythology, including his birthday. The same religions, deemed pagan by Christians were borrowed to become the Jesus story. The Bible was written, interpreted, rewritten translated, doctored, retranslated, parts added or rejected according to whoever was on the team constructing it and finally, the end result gets twisted into whatever you want to believe or reject in the first place. Do statues of saints actually bled, or cry? Did mother Mary appear in a slice of toast in Paraguay? Will blessed beads and chants get me closer to heaven? Is one religion right and all the other billions of believers in different religions going to hell? There are more people who have been killed throughout history in the name of their preferred deity than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dong murdered combined.

In my opinion, a religious conviction, whether cultish, or some mainstream denomination, serves to justify or condemn people according to rules which are manmade and largely arbitrary. A self-referencing book that is the true word of God because it says within its own text that it is the true word of God is likened to a man claiming to be invisible and it is true because he said so himself. Religion does not discriminate. Whether Christian, Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, VooDoo, Snake Handlers, Krishna or Hinduism, it is like getting a passage aboard the Titanic. Whether you have a first class ticket, steerage, and show up at every dinner in your finest tuxedo or gown or in rags, everybody ends up getting wet when the unsinkable ship hits the iceberg. When prayers aren?t answered, when disasters still bury thousands under rubble of earthquakes or when week old babies old die of HIV in Africa who only had time for one dream. I see unspeakable suffering every day in the Peruvian Andes. People who deserved better, more humane treatment but sit on a sheet of card board, in their own feces, starving and waiting for a welcomed death. Christians that I had contacted with stories like these ignored any request to help us. ?The poor you shall have always? is the quick referenced scripture out of their Bibles.

Said another way, ?I got mine, it isn?t my problem, leave me alone.? Of course it isn?t, yet heaven awaits them? I cannot stomach it. Can you?

With that said, I am an atheist, and content to know that what I do, I do because it needs to be done to relieve the suffering of children where I can help them. I do what is right because it is my personal dedication to being a good man, not because of the promise of pearly gates or fear of a burning fiery pit. I look in the mirror and see a man looking back who I admire or, if I find a chink in the armor, I make the corrections necessary to become a better man, immediately. I do not have a confessional booth with a man to absolve me so I can go out and do it all over again. I cannot chant away my errors but I can change my attitude, my direction and my actions, and so I do. People are free to believe whatever they care to believe. If I attempt to force them to stop then I myself would become a cult leader oppressing them from their choices. I live and let live which has been working pretty well for me over the last several decades.

I hope this book has served you toward an enlightenment of some kind. I hope parts of it made you laugh or made you angry or caused you to consider what you are doing with your own religious convictions. It was over thirty years in the making. I wish you well and invite you to live large and live deliberately, just like I am doing today.

************************************************

Abou t t h e Au t h or Jim Killon is an American born, humanitarian, author, exhibited artist, motivational/life enhancement speaker and publisher. He moved to the Peruvian Andes in 2009 where he currently lives with his wife, Yolanda and their three children. His non-profit project, Changes for New Hope has reached over 4000 disadvantaged children in its first nine years. In 2019 his goal is to reach 10,000 children suffering from

anemia by using

vitamins, anti-parasite

medicine and bars of soap to encourage better sanitary conditions. He is the proud recipient of the David Chow Humanitarian Award for his work in Peru.

"If you want to see the impossible accomplished, attempt the impossible." ~~ Jim Killon