Updated
Dec 07, 2018
I Grew Up In The Children Of God, A Doomsday Cult. Here s How I Finally Got Out.
Our leader believed the world would burn when the Great Apocalypse arrived.
By Flor Edwards, Guest Writer
Courtesy of Flor Edwards
Flor Edwards, third from left, and with seven of her siblings in the rural Thai province of Udon Thani. (1987)
Growing up in ― and leaving ― a cult is something from which a person never fully recovers.
My parents met in Spain shortly after they both had joined the Children of God cult in 1978. Mom said she joined because Father David, the charismatic leader of the religious doomsday cult, offered the youth of her generation a purpose in life and a way to serve God without joining a church. One day, when my mother was in Sweden and on her way to buy a ticket to Tunisia in search of some new adventure, she met a man sitting on a street corner strumming a guitar. He told her about Jesus and Father David and living with a group of other followe