“The teachings of the group are viewed as the ultimate, unquestionable truth. The leader of the group is likewise above criticism as the spokesperson for God on earth, whose Truth should be applied to all humankind. Anyone who disagrees or has alternative ideas is not only irreverent, but also unscientific. Mystical manipulation often lends credence to the group’s doctrine.”
Mike, the main Leading Brother, preached that to please the leaders was to please God. If the leaders weren’t happy with you that was a sign that God was unhappy with you. You aren’t brainwashed with this idea at Stage 2 of mind control, because you wouldn’t accept it. The idea that your leaders are God’s mouthpieces to you is introduced in Stage 5 of mind control.
Men were the leaders and women were called the under-rowers, i.e. the slaves that are chained to the bottom of the ship. Cheryl, Mike’s wife, always loved to share the illustration of the under-rowers as a picture of the duties the sisters actually did in the work of the Assembly. We were taught that without the work of the under-rowers, the ship would actually not go anywhere.
This was especially true of the work that the women in the Assembly did as compared to what the men did. The women did the lion’s share of the work, while the men preached and “gave direction”. This was all justified by the teaching that when a sister lived under the authority of their leaders, they were safe and these leaders would protect the women from the terrible evils that were in the world and even more so from the terrible evil that was inside each person.
The verse, “God led the children of Israel by the hand of Moses and Aaron,” meant that God would lead truly committed Christians by the hand of their leaders. The bible verse that says, “Whatsoever is bound on earth will be bound in heaven”, meant that whatever the elders and the leading brothers agreed on earth, was taken as law in heaven.
This was translated to mean that the way to be pleasing to heaven is to obey the Assembly leaders and take their views as your own. Mike Zach once preached that whatever God’s people think of you is what God thinks of you. If the Assembly excommunicated someone, they taught that this person was excommunicated from heaven.
The bible verse that says, “Some people will have their part in the lake that burns with fire,” meant that some believers, because they didn’t trust God enough to be ‘Overcomers’, would have their part (about 1000 years) in the lake of fire. Some children in the Assembly would cry, thinking that if they lied that they would go to the lake of fire. The list of verses and their twisted applications is endless.
This is the reason that some people who leave the Assembly and see its evil have trouble listening to scripture afterwards. In the Assembly, the leaders took the Holy Word of God and twisted it to break down people’s souls.
It was a common thing for the brother preaching, especially George Geftakys, the founder, to skip all over the Bible, taking verse after verse out of context. When they did this, it appeared that they knew their Bible so well that they could tie it all together. In reality, the Assembly added to and took away from the word, which is an atrocity. They stole the word of God from many of their members.
A Geftakys Assembly Blog 