Dangerous Doctrines – Is Tony Miano in a Cult? - Part 2

Yeah, in fact, let me go as far as to say this, if you are a member and you're even allowed to listen to this program, and there certainly is reason to question whether or not that would even be allowed, but if by God's providence, if by his grace, you're able to listen to this program, and you're in fear, and you're afraid to leave the group, please contact us, and I will personally call the law enforcement in that area and do whatever I can to have them come and safely escort you off the property.

We can help, and we would love to help you in that way. And beyond that, if it is a situation where you are afraid to leave and you are able to leave, we will do everything we can to help you settle into a good church home, a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church home, safe church home, men of God who rightly discern the word of God and who know what it means to be a true shepherd over a flock.

Again, we're doing this program because we care about you. We're doing this program because we love you. We're doing this program because we want to do whatever we can to fulfill the second of the greatest commandments, and that's to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So please hear our heart in that. So we want to be very, very careful how we address this tonight. We are hopeful that people with the church are listening or will hear this at another time. Our desire is not to malign them as individuals.

We hope tonight to speak the truth in love. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Continuing the Discussion of Grace Fellowship Church

All right, we are live. We appreciate you guys coming in and watching. This is, again, going to be a very important episode. We know that last episode was very long, actually the longest we've ever done.

I am, for the record, blaming that on Anthony. He butted in over an hour just to make me break his record, just for the record. But I'm the host, Andrew Rappaport. We're going to continue what we started last week in addressing some dangerous doctrines and asking the question, is Tony Miano in a cult?

If you have not gone and listened to that whole episode, I encourage you to do that. Before we get in, just some housekeeping things that we have for you. We want to invite you to join us with Justin Peters Ministries in Israel.

You can go to IsraelTour2021 to get all the details. We are opening that up because we've had some cancellations because of COVID and all that. We had to move the dates, so it's now going to be the last week of 2021.

Second thing to let you know, as we get close to the end of the year and people are thinking about end-of-year donations, if you care to help us out at Striving for Eternity, if you'd like to support us, you can go to strivingforeternity .org donate.

We have, with COVID, we have lost a number of donors. We have had some that have retired and stopped giving, some that no longer can give because of job loss and whatnot, and we're still trying to continue with everything that we're doing.

We had our trip to India and Guatemala cancelled. We had Japan didn't happen. We're looking to do those in 2021. Now remember, folks, when we go to India and Guatemala, we're going there. In Guatemala, we're going to help out with some churches there.

In India, we actually have 75 churches that we're looking to work with there in Guatemala. Actually, we're looking to work with pastors to train up folks. Both those trips is going to be with Justin Peters and myself.

Japan is when we're trying to bring a team to Japan for the Olympics. We want to get a team of people to evangelize at the Olympics. You have the whole world come in for that. It's a great opportunity, but here's the reality.

The churches in India, the churches in Guatemala, the churches in Japan, we're going to help. None of them are paying for us to go. If we go, we go because people are supporting us. Right now, we're kind of under our monthly needs, so we need monthly donors if we could, but if you want to help us just for some of those trips, that is a big help.

Tony Miano, Grace Fellowship Church, and the Church of Wells Comparison

Let's get into what we talked about last week, what we're continuing to talk about this week. Last week, what we did was we had basically played from a three-hour show where I was on and one of the other people you'll hear tonight was on.

We both were with Tony Miano on a show that he did on a cult called the Church of Wells. The way that that was structured is we had two people, myself and another guest that you're going to hear, who were the experts on the area of cults.

Then we had people who knew the people that were involved in this Church of Wells and giving firsthand knowledge. We're going to have even better this time. We're going to have the same two experts on, but now we're going to have people that actually have firsthand knowledge because they're not people who know of people in the church.

They're actually people from the church, from GFC or Grace Fellowship Church in Iowa. We've been talking about this church a couple times with Pastor Mike Reed. What I want to do is encourage you to go to strivingforeternity .org.

You can look at the articles, just type in dangerous doctrines, and you'll get the article written by Kevin Jantz. Now, that article will link all of the information that you have that you'd want to do the research.

And with that, what I want to do is reiterate some things. Now, first off, I'll say I'm very touched by the many people who have reached out to me this past week. It's been good and bad in some ways. I say good and bad because there's been some counseling of people who came out of this church and have really been struggling still now.

There's others who are glad that they are aware of this now. I had one person who called to actually ask my forgiveness because when Anthony started researching this, I warned him about some of this stuff, and he just didn't want to believe it.

And when he listened to Tony in his own words, speaking about the church of wells, and then knowing that Tony's in a church that has some of these same doctrines or practices, he realized he was wrong and asked my forgiveness.

Now, when I say about the research, Anthony himself has put in, I think, about 100 hours, I would say, of research, of talking to dozens and dozens of people who've come out of this church. And so, he's got firsthand testimony, people who don't talk to one another.

So, this is the thing you see is that the stories are not going to be manufactured. I talked about this on one of the previous episodes we did where it was a Q &A, and I went through the email exchanges that I had with Mike Reed.

You see some tactics there that are concerning. And what I want to mention is that the reason we're doing this show is the same reason we did the show with the church of wells. We want people to be able to look and see if this is something that we need to call a cult.

Is this actually at that level? Now, when we did the intro, you heard Tony with things he said on his show about the church of us. And we are doing this out of an act of love. I know that some are not seeing that.

I know one person who was in touch with him this week. As soon as he heard the show, listened to everything, he contacted Tony Miano. Tony told him I was slandering him. And that's what the person told me.

I said, really? Did I slander him by playing his own words? Like, how is that slander? Then Tony went on to say, no, this is from years ago. Well, if it was from six years ago, I said, well, then you just need to ask him to do two things.

One, be very specific in what is the slander. And two, he needs to be able to, because the two is that he needs to not just be specific in the slander, but he needs to answer why he's never tried to reconcile with me if this is true, if it's from six years ago.

I've done that. I've said this on this program several times. I flew across the country, attended Shepherd's Conference just so that we could see each other face to face so that I could try to reconcile with Tony with some things that were happened.

And he refused it. In fact, we did meet at Shepherd's Conference. And we've said on previous programs here that one of the witnesses he brought in was a pastor on his accountability board, Chuck O 'Neill.

I brought Dr. Silvestro. Both witnesses agree that Tony is unrepentant in the sin against me. Now, if he says I've sinned against him by slandering him, he's never brought that to my attention. And that would be a sin on his part to then say it to anybody else because he's violating Matthew 18 and not coming to me first.

So that's one thing. And that's something you always notice, but he never gave a specific. In fact, when the person pressed for specifics, he said he's done with this conversation. He's not going to talk about it anymore.

The reality is with that is that now what is he doing? Well, if his claim that I'm slandering him is untrue, then he is slandering me. That is not good. He's actually the one doing the slander then. So since I've heard through the rumor mill that Tony says I've slandered him, Tony, you need to come to me with the specifics of what I've said that is slanderous.

Okay? That is something that you would need to do. But I have questions that we have for Mike Reed. I'm going to read these again, and I want you to see that these questions, these are in the article that Kevin Jantz put together, the 12 questions that I've asked.

And these are simple questions or should be. Many of them are yes or no questions, but these questions are designed to really get to the bottom of what it is that they teach here at this church. If he doesn't believe these things, then fine, let's discuss them.

But he's refusing to dialogue on them. That's concerning. That, I think, speaks volumes that Mike Reed will not answer these questions. So here are the 12 questions. I'll read them as they are at strivingforturning .org in the article, The Dangerous Doctrines of Grace Fellowship Church.

One, do you meet alone on a regular basis? Do you meet alone with women on a regular basis? Two, do you ask for details of spousal intimacy? Three, have you ever said to not trust the elders is to not trust God?

Four, have you ever said whatever the elders would counsel you for, your life is perfect? Five, have you ever said that GFC is the only true church in the Quad Cities? Six, do you believe the elders have nearly unlimited authority in the lives of their congregants?

Seven, have you said if someone owns a gun, is in the military or police, they have premeditated murder in their hearts? Eight, do you share details about counseling sessions with other members? Nine, did you ever imply that men and women should be able to kiss someone else on the lips that is not his or her own spouse?

Ten, have you ever shared details of your own sexual intimacy with other people in your counseling sessions with members of the opposite sex? Eleven, do you believe you are infallible against sexual immorality?

And twelve, by name, what specific pastors, theologians, and or teachers have condoned the practice of meeting with women alone in counseling sessions? The reason we ask these 12 is because these are the 12 that you've heard through the hours and hours of programs here that we have been bringing up over and over again.

And so what I want to do is before we bring Kevin in, I'm going to bring.

Justin in. Hi, brother. How are you doing? Doing great. I have a question for Tony and for Andrew. The definition of slander is a criminal act, making false spoken statements and damaging to a person's reputation, or you could say it's making a false and damaging statement about.

Someone. So my question is, I'll give you my definition of it. Go ahead. So slander is to, this is the difference between slander and gossip. Gossip is idle talk for the purpose of damaging one's reputation.

Your slander is false information for the purpose of damaging.

One's reputation. So that's the difference I see with them. So here's my question. And I'm speaking on behalf of Andrew. When have Andrew or myself or Anthony or anyone in here slandered or made any slanderous statements towards Tony Miano?

And if that's not the case, then this is what's by definition a straw man. This is trying to build up something so that you don't have to answer the questions so that you don't have to do the reconciliation.

And I want to strongly suggest that instead of trying to make the straw man and make the arguments that, oh, well, I don't, I haven't done anything wrong. Andrew's obviously the one that's wrong because he's slandering me, quote unquote.

Rather than doing that, search your heart and ask yourself those 10 questions, those 12 questions that have been popped up every time that we've been on here. Do they apply to your pastor? The one that you're allowing to lead your family?

And what would be the purpose of Andrew and all the other gentlemen and ladies that have gotten on here? What's their purpose? Does it try to hurt you or try to promote the body of Christ to heal the body of Christ and proclaim the truth?

And that's all I wanted to point out because I'm going to defend Andrew. If he was wrong, I would say, hey, this is wrong, but he has not slandered anyone and I'm not going to just sit by in the back and not say something about it.

Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.

God bless brother. You know, because that is the thing is, is that we're, you know, we are trying as, as you heard in the clips last week, we're not going to play all four and a half hours of them. We're trying to do this rightly, not maligning people.

Eyewitness Testimony and Cultic Control at GFC

All right. So Kevin, I want to bring you in. I want to play a clip from last week. Now, last week was long. Let me give a summary of what people heard last week. And I want to replay the bombshell of what I called the bombshell.

What you heard last week, if you, if you didn't listen all the way to the end, the last five minutes was the key. That was the most important part. That's why I want to play it first. What you end up seeing is we played Tony in his own words over and over again for the purpose that people would see that the Tony that many people think of the Tony from yesteryear is not the Tony from today.

The Tony from today is, is in a church that he was calling out the same practices six years ago. In fact, he was calling out the practices one year before he went to that church. And I wanted you all to be able to hear in his own words.

So there was no question of, you know, is Andrew making something up? You heard Tony in his own words. You heard Kevin confirming, yes, these things happen. You're going to hear others confirming this today.

But at the end, I want to play what the last five minutes, Kevin, of what our conversation was for folks. And, and then just reiterate this before we get started. So let's play this. We've done this whole thing, all of this talk of Churchill Wells, for one thing that I want to ask Kevin, and I told you there is a bombshell.

This is the bombshell. When Kevin, you and I talked about this, when, when you and I discuss this thing, and I told you, I said, this sounds so much like the cult of Wells. And I suggested doing a show like this.

You told me about a conversation. Now, let me first say, I gave some dates, Tony, Matt Slick, myself, we were working to do stuff with the Churchill Wells. We're actively trying to call this out. All of a sudden, Tony dropped from this.

Matt Slick and I actually had conversations going, what's going on? Tony doesn't want to be involved. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Nothing. Matt and I were planning to go down to Wells, Texas by ourselves.

Originally, it was going to be the three of us. We were still talking, the two of us, because Tony just dropped off. We never understood why until I had a conversation with you about doing this episode.

Can you please explain to the audience, the conversation you.

Were an eyewitness to? Yeah, so I would meet with Mike on a semi regular basis, once a week, once every other week, we would have lunch or something to that extent. I suppose I was, you know, being considered for eldership in the church at some point in time.

And, I'm grateful to the Lord for saving me from that. But, when Tony moved to Iowa, on one particular occasion, I had lunch with him, Mike, and I believe Tyler was there as well, who's one of the other elders, Tyler Bokoma.

And we were sitting at the Hy-Vee, they have a, it's a grocery store that has a restaurant. We were sitting in there and the Churchill Wells came up. Tony was still pretty hot on the trail at that point in time.

And Mike said to Tony, you know, I think we have to be really careful because Grace Fellowship could easily be construed as being the same as the Church of Wells. And I, you know, I'm not going to say this exactly, but there was something to the effect like, you know, it's something maybe that you ought to start thinking about, Tony, or you should consider.

Oftentimes when Mike would say, you should consider, that meant that we're going to have more discussions about this, or it's going to be something that's going to be an ongoing thing. So, although I never heard Mike say to Tony, you need to stop pursuing Wells, I never heard a thing about Wells out of Tony's mouth after that day.

And so, I would believe that Mike told Tony that he needs to stop going after Wells because Grace Fellowship could draw the attention of other people, or who knows what he said. But I guarantee, as Mike mentioned, you know, Mike brought it up in that meeting.

And at that.

Point in time, Tony never pursued Wells anymore. And that's, that would be why we, Matt and I, realized it was cut off. The danger of that, the thing that blows me away, the bombshell of that is that Mike Reed is fully aware that he and his church has cultic practices.

And Tony should have had alarm bells going off saying, wait, what? He should have realized right then and there, he is in a church that is the same thing that he spent all this time criticizing and saying to put an end to.

That is what's scary. That is the bombshell. Because that tells us, folks, Mike Reed is fully aware he is cultic. And Tony would be equally as aware that this whole thing, you heard Tony in his own words over and over and over again, teaching against the very practices he now sits under.

Please pray for Tony Miano. And he not only sits under them, he supports.

Them fully. He's a cheerleader for them. He, you know, his ministry is now under the full control of it. And, you know, it's going to, it's hard to walk back off the ledge that he's on right now.

So the final question, we end the show with this. Dangerous doctrines. Is Tony Miano in a cult? You decide. And that's what we're going to be looking at more today. I think that, you know, for folks who do support Tony, they have to realize the church we're talking about, this is where your money is going.

Tony says that on the website. The people who endorse Tony, this is what you're endorsing. Now, Kevin, let me just read some comments that we had in here earlier. Chris Brown had said that because, I mean, the folks watching live can see this, but folks who are on the podcast don't get to see all the comments.

That's why you should watch live. Chris Brown says, I thought Andrew and Kevin did a great job. I appreciate your tone and attitude. No compromise on truth slash sin. And love Tony Miano through it all.

Humble Clay, who said, Andrew, Anthony, and everyone had been extremely gracious over this entire ordeal. And so that is, you know, we appreciate that because we're, you know, I think that when Tony did that show with Churchill Wells, he was showing them a great amount of grace as well.

I think all of us did. I want to bring in, I was actually trying to look for the clip that I had out of the 150 clips that we had from last week. I was trying to find Tony's introduction of our special guest here, but I can't do that.

I can't find it. Only the five minute version that introduced everyone. So I'll just, I'll have to introduce the lovable Sasquatch. And if you ever get to meet Ken Cook, you know why we call him the Sasquatch.

If there is a Bigfoot, he's about that size. So Ken is a very big guy. And he works with CARM, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, did back then as the marketing arm. And I think I loved how Tony introduced you back then is your job was trying to keep Matt Slick in line, which no one can, can contain him.

They just try, something like that. But the reality is that when we look at your background, you not only have a friendship with Tony, but you have seen this in many churches, many cults, in your years of study with CARM.

This one's a little personal. So suffice it to say, when I first called you to say, I wanted to try to redo what we did with the episode with Churchard Wells. And I wanted to have you on as the expert that you were back then.

I had less, I have less of knowledge, I guess, going into this until Anthony did the shows and started giving me all this research. You have gone in the past couple of weeks, right? You have done your own study and you were pushing very hard against me.

Would that be fair? That you were, you were very much against doing this and you wanted to get some questions answered. And Kevin, you brought Kevin and Anthony on and Kevin, I think you'd agree, he was asking some hard questions.

He was apologizing beforehand, like saying, I'm not being a jerk, but I want answers. So real quick, Ken, for folks, can you just bring people up to speed with where you're at with some of what you've been researching?

And I know that you've been trying to have some exchanges. I don't know if you want to share any of that, but just where are you at with this and from your study? And then obviously you and I want to hear from witnesses and get more.

Yeah. So I wasn't just Tony's friend. I'm not just Tony's friend. I also helped him set up his ministry, the logo, the website, the headers, all of it that's still there today, we built. When he left Living Waters, I helped connect him with Matt over at CARM and we did a lot of ministry together.

He, I used to talk to the man hours every single day. He was more than a friend. And I would say when Chuck first came to me with this stuff, I actually looked, the email was 2016. Chuck probably sent a 20 ,000 word email to me and I reread it today.

And I've reread it a few times since he sent it this past couple of weeks. And in talking to Kevin and talking to eyewitnesses that what Chuck was worried about in 2016 was spot on. The witnesses I think that we're going to talk to today are going to show that and we will hear that I think firsthand.

What I think I've seen in my research is when I look at a cult, I look at a few different things. I look at their social practices, right? Things like submission to authority, isolation, their persecution complexes, their indoctrination practices, groupthink, et cetera, right?

We want to look at all of these practices. We also want to look at their theology and we want to say, what's going on theologically with them and in talking. And then we also, I think the other big thing, and this is the hardest thing, right?

Especially with eyewitnesses is we want to make sure that the eyewitnesses aren't out to grind an ax, right? We want to, and Kevin will attest to this as Andrew kind of just said, I did not go into this believing what was being said.

Despite my friendship and relationship with Andrew and Anthony, it is unfathomable for me to think that Tony is where he is right now. It is unfathomable to think that the things that you will hear this evening are true.

And that is kind of what's led me to where we are right now, brothers, is we have to go where the evidence leads us. We have to honor Christ and we have to most importantly, love our brother, even if they're wrong, right?

And I'll say this, Andrew and I don't agree on all of our points here, right? There's disagreement even between us. Hey, we've talked it all through and we're a hundred percent together. I think we see some things a little bit differently and we want to be open with that and honest with that and say, look, you know, let's show you what we've seen.

Let's talk through the issues. And I'll also say this, I've repeatedly tried to have discussions with Tony. I have proof on this very phone that I've repeatedly tried to have discussions with Tony, a man that I literally would spend hours upon hours upon hours on the phone with, talking, enjoying life, a man that I would go shooting with, a man that I ministered with, said that he had to pray and think about whether he could even take my phone call.

And ultimately did not take my phone call. That in and of itself, I think speaks volumes. Not because there's a must that we have to talk to each other at all times, but as friends, as brothers, if I'm coming to you and saying, look, we got to talk, I need to have a serious chat with you and you can't even be bothered to answer the phone.

And I think we're going to learn that maybe it's because there is some control from Grace Fellowship Church occurring in your life. That's a problem.

So let's do this real quick. So we want to get to hearing from each other, people, and you're right. You and I do have some differences. Actually, you and I disagree on a bunch of things at times, and that's actually what helps us so much because we can disagree with one another.

We can discuss those disagreements and it doesn't change our relationship. In fact, I think it strengthens it. Let's do this. I have the shorter list, so I'll go first. You have the list from CARM. We want to give a definition of what is a cult.

So when we think about what a cult is, in my book, What Do They Believe?, I have five points that define a cult. Scripture twisting. Scripture twisting is going to be where you have people taking scripture out of context.

You have people who are going to, what I call, lack integrity with language. In other words, they're not clear. They purposely are not clear so that they can't be nailed down. It's even worse when they're going to twist the scriptures to try to make the scriptures say so and it doesn't.

A second one is authoritarianism. You have either a person or an organization that sets themselves up as the authority in other people's lives. Ultimately, they're an authority in the area of interpreting scripture.

And so with that, that ends up coming from the one. The other thing that you end up seeing is that often will lead to an exclusivity to the truth. The thing that you end up seeing is that once they think that they're the only ones that can interpret the scriptures, that is going to give them the exclusiveness to the truth.

And then what ends up happening is isolationism. They separate themselves from others. But the ultimate thing that you end up seeing is because of all the control, you have harm. And that is an issue, is the harm.

So Ken, can you go through your, or Karma's definition? It would probably help if you unmute yourself first, though.

Probably would. There are a number of social aspects of cult. We've got a list that's a little bit longer. There's 14 things. So I'm going to try to quickly go through these. And I think that one of the things that you might notice in this is, this is not specific to just Christian cults, because there are atheistic cults, there are Buddhist cults, Hindu cults, et cetera.

And so we try to have a broader definition that might encompass more things. And so that may be a core reason for some definitional differences here. First is, there's the issue of submission. This would be complete, almost unquestioned trust in leadership.

Leaders are often prophets, apostles, or somehow have a unique connection with God. And most often this person exerts a psychological control where others are required to trust them for their spiritual welfare.

There would also be an issue of within submission, that more submission gets you more rewards. Within the group, that means roles and responsibilities, that means praises, et cetera. And so that's one of the things that we want to talk about tonight.

Exclusivity. They often say that they are the only true religious system, or that they are one of the few true religious systems. Mormonism, for example, right now, I don't think would claim to be the only true religious system simply because Mormonism has gone postmodern, doesn't even necessarily believe in truth anymore, just as a brief example.

There's often a persecution complex. We saw this incredibly clearly with the Church of Wells, cult of Wells as it's been referred to, where anytime you speak out against them, you're persecuting them.

Politely. I don't know that I had heard prior to just a few minutes ago, Andrew, you saying this Tony saying, you're being slandered. He's being slandered simply because you played his words.

Politely, that's a persecution complex. Well, I think he did update that. He was saying it was from back years ago. Okay. It's at least what he said to the person. Fair enough.

This issue of control would be, they want to, within a cult, what you see is control of members actions and thinking, primarily through repeated indoctrinations, especially through things like threats of loss of salvation, loss of status within the group, loss of a place to live, even more extreme things, curses from God, etc.

If you look at a number of the, especially African cultic groups that are growing in popularity, the charlatan, you know, faith healer types, this is a huge thing that they do, is if you speak against me, God will curse you because you may not touch God's anointed.

Huge thing. Isolation. This is the thing I was talking about earlier. Minimizing of contact with church members or group members with those outside of the particular group. What this allows you to do is it allows you to control their thinking.

A way that you get people into your group is this tactic called love bombing. And love bombing essentially is this idea that as a cultic group, what you'll do is you will show massive amounts of care to a person to basically facilitate emotional dependence upon the group.

These are the people who love me. They love me like no one else has ever loved me. They care for me like no one else has ever cared for me. Often within cults, there's a claim of special knowledge, right?

This could be instructions. You know, Joseph Smith, for example, said that all the other religions were wrong and God told him so, right? This could be things like visions, dreams, new interpretations of sacred scriptures, including the Bible, the Quran, what have you, or you create your own just like the Quran.

Indoctrination. This is the repeated teaching of things. Now, I don't want to go too harsh on this, but I'll just say one of the things that I've heard a lot of is these Q &A sessions that would occur at GFC.

And in these Q &A sessions, Mike would basically preach a sermon, he'd give you an idea, and then what I heard anyway was people saying, oh, I've been so sinful in this area, standing up and walking through exactly what he's saying is true for them, right?

This is very similar to what we see in Mormonism with Testimony Sunday, where the group gets together on a particular Sunday, and everyone just bears their testimony on how they know the church is true.

Salvation. This is the idea that without the group, the judgment of God is going to come upon you, and you maintain your safety from God through submission to the group, its authority, or its special knowledge.

For example, if you give up your temple recommends as a Mormon, you're put into what's called outer darkness, a place that you cannot be redeemed from. Number 10 would be this issue of groupthink. The group's coherence within cultic structure is maintained by this strict observance to policies or processes or ideas that are handed down.

And so what will happen is, and I've heard a number of people say this, within the group, within GFC, you would see this thing where it's like you have women keeping other women in line, you have men confessing that it felt sinful or it felt wrong to spend time with each other without examining each other.

This idea of there's a cultic control there of trying to make sure that everyone is kind of thinking in the same way. And there are truly rewards and punishments for those who do not or do accept the teachings.

I'm going to skip cognitive dissonance for just a minute because I want to come back to it. Number 12 is shunning. The only way you can leave the group is death or expulsion. This is an explicit teaching of GFC.

It is an often repeated teaching of GFC. You can't come into the church on your own and you can't go out of the church on your own, right? The only way that this can happen is through the church. And if you leave the church, we are going to remove all of the social benefits so as to work to bring you back.

Number 13 would be this issue of gender roles. There is often within cultic groups, strict control of gender roles and definitions. And this is something that often leads to sexual exploitation. We're going to get into this a little bit more.

One of the biggest concerns that I have within cultic groups in general is the area of exploitation. And this is emotional. This is often financial. This is very often sexual. And this is a huge area of concern.

And so this piece, which I believe we have very clear evidence on, and we will no doubt hear testimony on this tonight, about Pastor Mike Reed having women in the congregation detail sexual activity and him prescribe sexual activity.

This is a form of sexual exploitation. There is no other way to look at it. It is purely, simply sexual exploitation. We often think sexual exploitation is closely related to intercourse. And while that is sometimes true, it is not always true.

There are many forms of sexual exploitation, and this is certainly one of them. Going back to this issue of cognitive dissonance, there is a push to avoid critical thinking because there are contradictions that the group needs to hold in tension.