The staff at CARE will be publishing a new training manual for helping survivors of ritual abuse and mind control. The information in it is excellent, and below is a short excerpt from one of the chapters in the book (used with permission). Trigger warning: describes ritual abuse, mind control, cult control.

When encountering ritual abuse and mind control, people often ask, “Why? What’s the point of this? Why are they even doing this?” While different cults can state their ‘reasons’ for the abuse and other activities they engage in, such as “To establish the new world order where mankind will finally enjoy peace”, “To free mankind from the limitations God placed on them”, “To shepherd mankind”, “To be the secret, wise leaders behind the current world leaders”, “To bring the return of the Nephilim,” “To make the children strong and fit to lead”, “To protect our nation”, “To worship and serve Satan who wants the advancement of mankind, unlike God who wants to limit mankind”, “To understand and go beyond the limits of the human mind”, “To gain power”, “To make money” and so on, I believe that to truly understand the why of ritual abuse and mind control, we have to examine the spiritual matters behind the discourses and practices of the cults. That is to say, we have to understand the intent and purpose of Satan and the other spiritual beings who continually seek to destroy mankind.

Ephesians 6:12 states: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The enemy is Satan, not the members of the cult, no matter how abusive, depraved or committed to a satanic or Luciferian agenda they may be. It is critical to keep this truth in mind. While we acknowledge that they are involved in grievous sin, acknowledge with both anger and grief the harm done to their victims, and support survivors in taking any necessary steps to find safety, we cannot have the attitude that cult members are our or the survivor’s enemy (even if you hear they are doing witchcraft against your church, leaving dead animals on your doorstep or other very disturbing things). In hearing the horrific, inhumane activities of the cult, one must not lose sight of the fact that enemy is not the human abusers (who have indeed sinned greatly and must repent of their sin against God and people), but the spiritual forces of evil.

God loves each member of the cult and longs for their repentance. He wants the church to love and help the worst occult abuser. He longs that they would receive His mercy rather than judgment, and that they find healing for the childhood wounds and strongholds that have them repeating the sins of their fathers. In fact, in examining the underlying reasons that any cult member continues in their activities, these reasons are usually rooted in unresolved early childhood terrors of pain, abandonment and death (See Section 2). No matter how high-ranking within their respective cult a person may be, at the most fundamental level there is a frightened, abused inner child; under all the high-sounding philosophy and propaganda of political and/or occult power and ascension, the person’s goal is survival.

Satan, on the other hand, the one described clearly in the Bible as our enemy who longs to devour, is committed to the destruction of mankind to spite both man and God. His ultimate purpose in ritual abuse and mind control can be summed up as follows: to ‘remake’ man and women in his image in order to completely control, use, then destroy them, and in doing so, wound God’s heart. Cults who worship and obey him, who execute the strategies he gives them for administering the cult and whatever affairs they are involved in, who listen to him for ideas on how to torture and ‘train’ their children, who act according to his lies that they will one day rule the earth with him and his son, who believe the lies that it is a good idea to have Nephilim walk the earth again, who believe the lies that they have occult ‘power’, and the lies that they have the right to ‘rule’ in a town, city, country, region or the world in this present day, are frankly very deceived.

The rest of this chapter discusses the attempts of Satan and the other spiritual forces of evil to remake mankind into Satan’s and other demonic images on the individual and collective level through ritual abuse and mind control.

1. Remaking of man and women on the individual level

Through trauma, conditioning and covenants from a person’s earliest years, Satan attempts to ‘remake’ a human being (who was designed in God’s image with a heart and conscience), into his own image: a person who thinks, feels, and acts like Satan would in every circumstance (See Sections 2, 3 and 4 for descriptions of this process). To be like Satan, a person will have to be able to lie without caring, steal without conscience, kill with no compunction and destroy for the sake of destruction. In hearing survivor accounts of cult activities, it would appear that ritual abuse and mind control are very capable of producing people who are disconnected from their own humanity and are willing to do anything Satanic, and even appear to enjoy it. For instance, survivors have shared stories of being impregnated by their own fathers year after year, then being forced to kill and consume the infant upon birth as a sacrifice to Satan, and as they grew older, forcing their own children into similar activities. Survivors have shared other stories of torture, occult activity and murder, both as victims and as perpetrators, that go beyond the goriest horror movie, comic or novel.

A person who thinks, feels and acts like Satan will also hate God and be full of pride, wanting to be ‘like God’ and set his/her throne above God’s throne, whether literally or figuratively. Satan teaches cult children to hate and blame God for their abuse and any pain in the world, and to see God as being ultimately the one who causes mankind pain or as the one ‘holding mankind back’. He also teaches children in the cult (through their programmers) to believe that they can be like God, or ‘ascend’ through the various spiritual practices of the cult, in particular, through worship and obedience to him. Satan also teaches them to hate Christians, and to viciously turn on and persecute any cult member who truly chooses Christianity and to leave the cult, and to attack, discredit and discourage Christians who are helping cult survivors. Survivors have shared about acts of gratuitous blasphemy, as well as missions and assignments to damage Christian churches and organizations. This hate is also directed at any secular organization or individuals endeavoring to help survivors heal or that oppose the agendas of the groups in any way.

Satan is duplicitous, masquerading as an angel of light while being a bringer of darkness with the intent to destroy. Cult members are duplicitous, being satanic, Luciferian or ‘dark’ in one side of their minds, and being ‘Christian’ , ‘normal’ or ‘light’ in the other side of their minds. In one side, a cult member can act like a wolf to destroy others, and on the other side, be the gentlest man in the neighborhood who brings soup to the shut-in elderly. A cult member may ‘infiltrate’ a church masquerading as a gifted intercessor who loves the scriptures and just wants to serve the leadership, but secretly sow discord, jealously and suspicion among the fulltime and lay leadership over a period of years. A cult parent may chide the teacher at his child’s elementary school for unfairly accusing his child of disrespect and insist his child be moved to another class, but hand this same child over for sexual abuse during cult events. A cult teenager may attend the youth group at church to ‘learn more about God’, but have parts who have the assignment to befriend and lead the senior pastor’s children into sexual sin.

In his dealings with men, Satan ‘hijacks’ what God offers mankind – adoption into a ruling family with full sonship where they are loved, secure and have purpose. This is not because Satan admires God – but because Satan knows that these are the very things that the human heart was created to need and want! Therefore Satan imitates these very things to deceive and entice men: Satan offers ‘sonship’ to members of cults who practice ritual abuse and mind control. He leads them to believe that they know his will, a will that he deludes them into believing includes peace and prosperity, a good hope and a future for them. In imitation of how Jesus is seated at God’s right hand, Satan promises cult members that they will rule with him. As Jesus was loyal as a son to His Father’s house and lived to do His Father’s will, Satan expects cult members to be completely ‘loyal’ and live to do what he tells them to do. As the Bible describes one of our signs of sonship is God’s discipline of us and that Jesus himself was made perfect through suffering, so Satan leads cult members to believe that the pain and suffering they endure growing up in the cult is loving ‘discipline’ and ‘training’ to ‘make them strong’, and that any torture for disobedience or failure is ‘correction’ and ‘love’. Alongside this propaganda, survivors have shared being told to call Satan or other designated spirits ‘father’ or even ‘papa’ or ‘daddy’ in certain rituals or contexts, and Satan and other spirits calls them ‘my son’ or ‘my daughter’ in return.

In short, a fully trained and successfully programmed cult member is like Satan: he or she is duplicitous, capable of acts of harm against others without any compassion or hearing from their consciences, hating and wanting to elevate himself or herself above God, is committed to fulfilling Satan’s will on earth and sees himself or herself as being ‘like Satan’ with all the rights and responsibilities; e.g., a son of Satan. This is the person that Satan is able to control, and what Satan knows will deeply grieve God’s heart. His purpose in ritual abuse and mind control is to ‘create’ this person: someone that he can use in any way he pleases with no resistance at all. This is the person Satan hopes has a mind so divided, conscience so seared and is so filled guilt, shame, bitterness, rebellion, grief, fear, pride, abandonment and hate that he or she would never humble themselves to return to God, or allow Him to extend mercy to them. In this way, Satan and other forces of evil hope that he would never lose his control over them, and that these men and women would be judged in the last days.

However, man and women were not made in Satan’s image:

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and all over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

We were made in God’s image. Even with our inclination to sin after Adam and Eve’s original disobedience[1], we still have a conscience (e.g.: Jonah 1:13-14; Romans 2: 14-15) with standards of right and wrong that reflect His image in us. God is loving and compassionate. No one has to tell or teach a little child to have compassion on someone who is being tortured; the little child will be horrified and try to stop the torture, unless they are too terrified or are tied up or caged. The youngest child will choke or gag on blood when it is offered straight, and knows instinctively that murder is wrong the moment he or she views one. These truths stand true, even in the occult bloodlines with unsurpassed generational sin: children have compassion when someone is being tortured, and are horrified by blood-drinking and murder[2]. A cult child’s participation in blood-drinking, murder and the torture of others, numbness or ‘eagerness’ towards these and other occult activities, comes only after much conditioning through extreme trauma and reward, and often, the use of drugs and technology.

God is our creator, and He created us in His image. Scripture clearly shows that this cannot be changed: for God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). It is impossiblefor Satan to remove the image of God in man and replace it with his image, despite the hours upon hours, years and years, generation after generation in many cases, of torture, trauma and reward. What really happens, rather than Satan’s desired and purported remaking, is that he only convinces the person that it is so. It is through this conviction, rather than a genuine sonship with Satan, that the person is controlled.

As the person has been led to believe since early childhood that there is no other way to survive, the person ‘shuts off’ his or her own heart and ‘accepts’ Satan’s values and purposes as his or her own. The person is surrounded by his or her cult community and so has these satanic values and purposes constantly practiced and reinforced, in a world that largely ignores and denies the existence of ritual abuse and mind control and so offers little help or support for those who want to leave the cults and change their lives. However, when the person stops believing that there is no other way to survive than to comply with Satan’s will, and returns to God, God has absolutely no problem removing the personal and demonic distortions over that person’s true identity and restoring him or her to peace, joy and truth in all things. Again, the church must remember that the cult survivor and the perpetrators he or she describes are not the true enemy of the church or of God. Each cult member is a potential Paul of Tarsus. They must be viewed as they really are: the lost who need saving, and the prodigals who the Father longs for.