End of Days by Sylvia Browne

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 9th, 2022 in Stories

Countless books have been written about cults, and there are many highly qualified experts on this subject. I would never claim to be one of them. But I’ve done my share of study, particularly about doomsday cults, and my share of working with victims of these cults and their equally victimized and devastated families and friends. So between a lot of reading and a lot of personal experiences throughout my seventy-one years, I’ve learned enough to make some informed observations.

Doomsday cult members are often intensely devout believers in God, Jesus, the Bible, and the concept of Armageddon preceded by the arrival of a Christ-like messiah. They tend to be inherently honest and well-intentioned, making it much more difficult for them to imagine that the charismatic, equally devout biblical expert who’s trying to recruit them is actually a deceptive, manipulative sociopath who uses God, Jesus, and the scriptures as nothing but props and lures. They’re typically searching for a place where they will feel they truly belong, where they get a sense of being an active, important part of something that matters. In some cases their lives have just gone through a major upheaval—maybe the loss of a job, a failed marriage, or the death of a significant other. In other cases, their lives have become mundane, unfulfilling, and, in their opinion, meaningless. Every bit as significantly, many of them have been taught to be blindly obedient to their religion whether it makes sense to them or not, while just as many who are more freethinking have found some inconsistencies and/or leaps of logic in their church’s philosophies. Almost unanimously, though, they believe themselves to be sinners, too flawed to deserve redemption, particularly when the end of the world comes and only the truly worthy will be saved.

And then, if they’re truly unlucky, along comes someone whose charisma, seeming self-assuredness, and outspoken passion for God draw them like moths to a flame. This man doesn’t just “talk the talk,” he “walks the walk,” with plans to create a society separate from the cruel, self-centered, sinful, uncaring, pointless, Godless world, a society where God is actively worshipped, in word and deed, every day, not just on Sundays. Everyone will be of equal importance in this new society (except, of course, its leader), hard at work for the common good, belonging, and absolving their past sins through their new pious devotion to God’s will, translated through this charismatically devout man who has made their faith feel exhilarating again.

That prophet they’ve been yearning for? He is that prophet, and he’ll prove it. But he’s not just a prophet. He’s the messiah their religion has been promising, the one they’ve been watching for, whose very appearance is a sign that the end is near and whose path is the one way to salvation when Armageddon comes. To doubt him or disobey him is to doubt or disobey God Himself, never a good idea but a particularly bad idea on the threshold of doomsday. As for families and loved ones who aren’t enlightened enough to understand or believe, the only defense against their hypocritical skepticism is complete separation. After all, if those heretics were as committed to the recruits’ happiness and well-being as they claim, why were the recruits’ lives so empty, meaningless, and devoid of the true Light until now?

In a life that has reached a point where it’s filled with nothing but questions, in other words, what’s more potentially appealing than a strong, God-centered voice saying, “I’ve got the answers you’re looking for. Come with me.”

And the leaders, like most sociopaths, know how to attract exactly the followers they’re after: the trusting rather than the skeptical; the generous rather than the selfish; the group- oriented rather than the loner; the hardworking rather than the lazy; and certainly those with an eagerness to believe in something far bigger and greater and more sacred than themselves rather than those who are satisfied with their lives and their beliefs.