Shortly before I left the cult, there was strong messaging every day about the need to sever ties with one’s physical family.

What follows is an audio recording of Iven Rodriguez, a current WMSCOG church leader, to exemplify the type of rhetoric used in the church to separate members from their families.

Audio Transcript:

Rally to me.

All the Levites went to Moses.

And with the swords that were strapped to their sides, they went out and killed their own family members who were against God.

Their own flesh and blood.

They put them to death.

That’s a real, that’s a real thing. That’s a real case inside the Bible.

Nobody’s gonna ask you—

I don’t think, the day could come. I don’t know, actually.

But I I can’t envision a situation where anybody, right? 

Where there comes a day when we need to kill, physically kill our own spirit— our own physical family.

I don’t think that that day will ever come, but it could.

It’s not it’s not an impossibility. Right?

It could. I don’t see that happening.

But we know that the Old Testament is very physical and literal.

New Testament is spiritual.

So that’s how we need to treat— that’s how we need to consider our physical family spiritually.

Is, you you need to, right?

Separate.

Completely separate.