It all started 5 years ago when I started going to a college campus church (I had already been born again for 2 years). During winter break I had a dream that I was in the auditorium of the campus church and in a relationship with a young man and I heard the name “X.” That next semester I randomly ended up in a small group with X and got to know him (during the time of the dream Id only heard of the name and didn’t actually know who it was). Through the small group I noticed he was kind, smart, and very knowledgeable about the Bible among other qualities, and at some point a very strong feeling came over me that he was my husband. It’s like I believed it (but without reason) and it wasn’t long before I was head over heels.
I kept my feelings a complete secret from everyone in my life because the way I grew up wasn’t conducive to accepting them. He payed no special attention to me for 7 months but I prayed to God that if it was His will, we’d end up together.
And then after the 7 months had passed X fell head over heels in love with me. At that point I admitted my feelings to him and he said we should have a DTR talk one day after church. Since we needed some privacy he suggested out of the blue (without me having told him my dream) that we go into the auditorium to talk because he had the key (the same auditorium as in my dream).
There we made it official and started what turned out to be a very special relationship! There were of course the hard times, but we deeply loved each other and had a God-centered relationship.
The problem was he wasnt my same nationality and my parents greatly opposed that to the point of emotionally blackmailing me and threatening disownment, public shaming, and telling me Im the equivalent of Satan in human form (yes, quite extreme!).
Id been scarred from certain childhood situations and his care healed a part of me that was angry and bitter. I never thought I could be in this type of loving relationship, but it happened and I was on top of the world. He and I stopped our relationship for a while to respect my parent’s wishes but then resumed it once they behaved that way.
For 1.5 years X and I were inseparable and spent every day together. However, my world came crashing down one day when I discovered he had been deceived by a mind control group.
It started one day at the train station when he was on his way to an internship. A stranger approached him and asked him if he wanted to do a Bible study to which he replied yes. Throughout his internship he continued studying with this man who introduced him to the concept that it’s wrong to forsake Sabbath day worship. That led to him attending Sabbaths at the stranger’s “church” where they slowly and surely indoctrinated him with strange “prophecies” they came up with by cleverly linking together obscure Bible verses to twist their meaning.
For some reason X never told me the details of what was happening, and by the time I found out through my own investigation, it was too late and he was already hooked. Those deceivers had convinced him he’d be destroyed in a great war if he didn’t do exactly as they said by attending their services, Passovers, and feasts. They also convinced him that a certain man had fulfilled the prophecies of Christ’s Second Coming.
I was utterly devastated. I wept all night and cried out to God afraid that he had lost his salvation. It was the most intense dread Id ever felt but as I wept I subconsciously opened the Bible and looked down to see the encouraging words “X will be saved”.
The next part of the story is the breakup. God was speaking to me saying I needed to break up with him and sacrifice the thing I held on to so much. Through certain events God spoke to me that I was to sacrifice what was mine the way Abraham had also been willing to sacrifice.
I told X I now knew everything that was going on and we needed to end things because being unequally yoked wasn’t going to work. By this point he had also been sure we would marry so it was heartbreaking.
After hours upon hours of studying I found a ton of dirt and refutations on this mind control group (they were spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and financially damaging but not physically dangerous). I presented to X my findings and told him he was in a cult and needed to run. That was the wrong thing to say because the group had convinced him that anyone who talks along those lines is being used by Satan to draw you away from your salvation.
He was deeply hurt by what I said but we continued to talk for a year during which I explained to him a million aspects of his situation and why his group wasn’t right. I researched everything and this led to an effort to help other members. I found a way to locate them and wrote document after document explaining to them the situation they were in. Praise be to God that some of these people made it out.
After that year nothing had changed with X. He still firmly believed he needed the group for his salvation. One day we cut contact and went our separate ways which devastated me yet again. We loved each other but agreed we needed yo have the same religious basis to marry.
I cried out to God begging Him to be near and to speak to me (I specifically asked that He would speak to me in dreams, through other people, and through Scripture).
That’s when I began to hear His voice but I really didn’t know if it was Him or not. Scripture references would come to me and Id feel God wanted me to look them up.
God literally told me to read the short book with a P (which I found out was Philemon) and it reads:
Philemon 15-16
15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.…
I cried out to God asking why all this happened. Immediately He spoke to me with this:
Judges 14
His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?”
But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.” 4 (His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)
I took the above Scripture as encouragement that I should continue working with the cult members in my little “ministry” I had started (and that just because my parents opposed his nationality it didn’t mean God didn’t have a plan for it). God also told me to read Isaiah 34 where I found this:
Isaiah 34
16 Look in the scroll of the Lord and read:
None of these will be missing,
not one will lack her mate.
For it is his mouth that has given the order,
and his Spirit will gather them together.
Three days after our separation, I got a video of a lady saying she had dreamed that night that there were 2 people in love who had been separated and the girl was waiting on the guy. She said she’d had the same story and shared how she and her husband were separated for a while before they married because he needed to find God.
This happened over and over again. Someone also mentioned the temporary separation was because of the demonic strongholds in the man’s life and because he needed deliverance. (Certain trusted Christian friends of mine had told me before that X was my husband although I was surprised that theyd say that given the circumstances).
I held on to hope he’d be saved, but was skeptical not wanting my feelings to cloud my judgement.
One day my sister told me it had been put on her heart the day before that she should tell me I was going to have a beautiful love story. It was encouraging because at this point I felt as if everything was going sour.
Another day I was feeling depressed again (worrying about X’s salvation) and watching a church service. I was thinking how much I wished someone would prophesy about X. A second later someone random said “God is a promise keeper and will redeem X.”
Next, I had lots of dreams (God has spoken to me through dreams in the past).
In one of them I dreamed X was calling me and I answered. He was saying how much he missed me and wanted to marry me except he was being married off to a lizard. He asked me to come visit his place which happened to be a desert. There were lizards everywhere and some other type of strange creatures guarding his home. Everything was dry as a bone except water poured down from heaven on the creatures guarding his home. X and I walked around his house until we reached the cross which was beaming light. Suddenly the lizard that X was engaged to appeared. It prophesied that it would “die by the cross.” That’s where the dream ended.
I told it to my mom during which she opened the Bible by accident to the verse in Job about God giving a dream, a vision, in the night and she proceeded to tell it to me. I felt that was God’s confirmation it was from Him.
Next I ran into a Christian lady who said she could interpret dreams. I asked her what a lizard meant in a dream (without telling her anything else) and she said it meant a spirit of deception. That seemed to be exactly what X was bound to.
Thirdly, I stalked my ex () and looked at his new social media profile picture and it was a picture of the DESERT. Why? Because he had traveled there with his cult group (which I later found out).
The other part of God’s signs to me were unrelated to X and had to do with the cult itself and my efforts to open the eyes of some of them by the grace of God.
I continued my online work doing Bible studies with them, posting content to deconstruct their “prophecies”, and connecting with members, ex-members, fellow Christians trying to help, too, and ex leaders as well.
One day I prayed and asked God to give me more ways to reach these people. I wanted to do it in-person as well (they’re a new and obscure group so it’s not like they have locations around the corner).
I went to walmart with my sisters one day and they ran over to me laughing about someone who had asked them in the store to come join their house church. Through my sister’s description I knew it was a member of the same group (by the way, I was in a new city very far from X and very far from the group). I was shcoked and asked my sister where that person was. She showed me and I ran over to go meet the lady. I explained to her that I knew what group she was part of and why she should leave. We talked for a while and I hoped I had made progress. But I took this as a sign from God because I was in a big city where the group supposedly wasn’t present and had just started a house church. What were the chances??
A few days later I returned to Walmart and the same lady was shopping there once again!! Then the encounter happened a third time but this time I ran into them proselytizing a certain couple who had also been shopping there. I stopped them and exposed the truth.
After that I saw this lady and her cult leaders again in walmart a few days later (just causally shopping). Then it happened for the final and 5th time (mind you Id never seen anyone I know in this Walmart more than once because like I said I live in a big city).
Those 5 encounters happened over a 1.5 month span and then suddenly stopped. I was worried the cult members would think I was stalking them Maybe they left that walmart entirely but I felt the whole occurrence was a God thing.
Next, a friend invited me to his city (a city of millions) to visit his church. I was going to fly there and looked up this church on the map to see where it was. It was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE CULT (this friend knew nothing about any of this).
I quickly put together a 13-page document that refutes the cult and made copies. Although I was quite terrified to go there, God spoke to me saying He wanted me to and I did. The next day I delivered the copies and left.
Anyways, back to X. At this point we hadn’t spoken in 1.5 years but one night I had yet another dream that his friend had called me and told me to talk to him. The next day I got a call (for the first time ever) from the same friend as in the dream and this man told me to REACH OUT TO X. I was shocked once again. He told me that I should send him a video of a Christian pastor who broke down the cult’s deceptions.
Despite the dream, I said no. By now Id recovered my emotions although I still loved X deeply. I wasn’t about to break no-contact so I refused.
However, 6 months later it started to itch at me that I had not listened to what looked like a sign (was it God??). So I talked to my Christian friend and was encouraged to send the video after all. I decided to send a slip of paper to X’s address with the URL to the video so that we’d not be in contact again over social media. I didnt want to open any doors that shouldn’t be opened.
A month passed and I was sure he’d seen the letter and was just over me.
One day I told my mom, “I know you dont want to hear this but sometimes I really miss X.” That very moment my phone rang.
It was X.
I was so excited. I believed at last that he would indeed come back delivered. We talked for 9 hours and it was as if nothing at all had changed. The love was still strong but he wasnt yet delivered. I was broken by that but still so happy to hear his voice again. He encouraged me through some tough things Id been going through. He was also in isolation and loneliness and seemed sad. The cult had him in a rough spot. For 3 months we maintained contact and were delighted just to be able to talk. It was fun and lighthearted. We completely avoided the cult topic but both of us had faith we’d be able to end up together once our difference was reconciled.
Our happy reconnection ended one day when he spent the whole day with the cult and called me that night to say we needed to stop talking if he was going to “make progress within his church.” The leaders had done a thorough job of indoctrinating him that anyone outside the group was destructive to their opportunity for salvation. We chatted the whole night and ended contact the next day.
But 10 days later he reached out again, overwhelmed by the separation. We resumed our connection until it happened again just 3 days ago.
Once again he called me after spending the day with the cult and told me we needed to cut contact again, and that if we end up together it wont be through holding on to each other and trying to control the outcome. I agree with that. I just wish the group would stop manipulating him and stop putting him in these excruciating situations that cause internal conflict when making decisions that tear the heart to pieces.
Im grappling for the meaning behind these events and struggling to let go, but I know that one day the spirit of deception will lose its power through the glorious light of the cross that shines its rays of salvation given to us by our Savior Jesus.
We will see what God has in store next, but Im sure Hes not yet done working.
Can anyone give me advice on how to handle all of this?
I kept my feelings a complete secret from everyone in my life because the way I grew up wasn’t conducive to accepting them. He payed no special attention to me for 7 months but I prayed to God that if it was His will, we’d end up together.
And then after the 7 months had passed X fell head over heels in love with me. At that point I admitted my feelings to him and he said we should have a DTR talk one day after church. Since we needed some privacy he suggested out of the blue (without me having told him my dream) that we go into the auditorium to talk because he had the key (the same auditorium as in my dream).
There we made it official and started what turned out to be a very special relationship! There were of course the hard times, but we deeply loved each other and had a God-centered relationship.
The problem was he wasnt my same nationality and my parents greatly opposed that to the point of emotionally blackmailing me and threatening disownment, public shaming, and telling me Im the equivalent of Satan in human form (yes, quite extreme!).
Id been scarred from certain childhood situations and his care healed a part of me that was angry and bitter. I never thought I could be in this type of loving relationship, but it happened and I was on top of the world. He and I stopped our relationship for a while to respect my parent’s wishes but then resumed it once they behaved that way.
For 1.5 years X and I were inseparable and spent every day together. However, my world came crashing down one day when I discovered he had been deceived by a mind control group.
It started one day at the train station when he was on his way to an internship. A stranger approached him and asked him if he wanted to do a Bible study to which he replied yes. Throughout his internship he continued studying with this man who introduced him to the concept that it’s wrong to forsake Sabbath day worship. That led to him attending Sabbaths at the stranger’s “church” where they slowly and surely indoctrinated him with strange “prophecies” they came up with by cleverly linking together obscure Bible verses to twist their meaning.
For some reason X never told me the details of what was happening, and by the time I found out through my own investigation, it was too late and he was already hooked. Those deceivers had convinced him he’d be destroyed in a great war if he didn’t do exactly as they said by attending their services, Passovers, and feasts. They also convinced him that a certain man had fulfilled the prophecies of Christ’s Second Coming.
I was utterly devastated. I wept all night and cried out to God afraid that he had lost his salvation. It was the most intense dread Id ever felt but as I wept I subconsciously opened the Bible and looked down to see the encouraging words “X will be saved”.
The next part of the story is the breakup. God was speaking to me saying I needed to break up with him and sacrifice the thing I held on to so much. Through certain events God spoke to me that I was to sacrifice what was mine the way Abraham had also been willing to sacrifice.
I told X I now knew everything that was going on and we needed to end things because being unequally yoked wasn’t going to work. By this point he had also been sure we would marry so it was heartbreaking.
After hours upon hours of studying I found a ton of dirt and refutations on this mind control group (they were spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and financially damaging but not physically dangerous). I presented to X my findings and told him he was in a cult and needed to run. That was the wrong thing to say because the group had convinced him that anyone who talks along those lines is being used by Satan to draw you away from your salvation.
He was deeply hurt by what I said but we continued to talk for a year during which I explained to him a million aspects of his situation and why his group wasn’t right. I researched everything and this led to an effort to help other members. I found a way to locate them and wrote document after document explaining to them the situation they were in. Praise be to God that some of these people made it out.
After that year nothing had changed with X. He still firmly believed he needed the group for his salvation. One day we cut contact and went our separate ways which devastated me yet again. We loved each other but agreed we needed yo have the same religious basis to marry.
I cried out to God begging Him to be near and to speak to me (I specifically asked that He would speak to me in dreams, through other people, and through Scripture).
That’s when I began to hear His voice but I really didn’t know if it was Him or not. Scripture references would come to me and Id feel God wanted me to look them up.
God literally told me to read the short book with a P (which I found out was Philemon) and it reads:
Philemon 15-16
15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.…
I cried out to God asking why all this happened. Immediately He spoke to me with this:
Judges 14
His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?”
But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.” 4 (His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)
I took the above Scripture as encouragement that I should continue working with the cult members in my little “ministry” I had started (and that just because my parents opposed his nationality it didn’t mean God didn’t have a plan for it). God also told me to read Isaiah 34 where I found this:
Isaiah 34
16 Look in the scroll of the Lord and read:
None of these will be missing,
not one will lack her mate.
For it is his mouth that has given the order,
and his Spirit will gather them together.
Three days after our separation, I got a video of a lady saying she had dreamed that night that there were 2 people in love who had been separated and the girl was waiting on the guy. She said she’d had the same story and shared how she and her husband were separated for a while before they married because he needed to find God.
This happened over and over again. Someone also mentioned the temporary separation was because of the demonic strongholds in the man’s life and because he needed deliverance. (Certain trusted Christian friends of mine had told me before that X was my husband although I was surprised that theyd say that given the circumstances).
I held on to hope he’d be saved, but was skeptical not wanting my feelings to cloud my judgement.
One day my sister told me it had been put on her heart the day before that she should tell me I was going to have a beautiful love story. It was encouraging because at this point I felt as if everything was going sour.
Another day I was feeling depressed again (worrying about X’s salvation) and watching a church service. I was thinking how much I wished someone would prophesy about X. A second later someone random said “God is a promise keeper and will redeem X.”
Next, I had lots of dreams (God has spoken to me through dreams in the past).
In one of them I dreamed X was calling me and I answered. He was saying how much he missed me and wanted to marry me except he was being married off to a lizard. He asked me to come visit his place which happened to be a desert. There were lizards everywhere and some other type of strange creatures guarding his home. Everything was dry as a bone except water poured down from heaven on the creatures guarding his home. X and I walked around his house until we reached the cross which was beaming light. Suddenly the lizard that X was engaged to appeared. It prophesied that it would “die by the cross.” That’s where the dream ended.
I told it to my mom during which she opened the Bible by accident to the verse in Job about God giving a dream, a vision, in the night and she proceeded to tell it to me. I felt that was God’s confirmation it was from Him.
Next I ran into a Christian lady who said she could interpret dreams. I asked her what a lizard meant in a dream (without telling her anything else) and she said it meant a spirit of deception. That seemed to be exactly what X was bound to.
Thirdly, I stalked my ex () and looked at his new social media profile picture and it was a picture of the DESERT. Why? Because he had traveled there with his cult group (which I later found out).
The other part of God’s signs to me were unrelated to X and had to do with the cult itself and my efforts to open the eyes of some of them by the grace of God.
I continued my online work doing Bible studies with them, posting content to deconstruct their “prophecies”, and connecting with members, ex-members, fellow Christians trying to help, too, and ex leaders as well.
One day I prayed and asked God to give me more ways to reach these people. I wanted to do it in-person as well (they’re a new and obscure group so it’s not like they have locations around the corner).
I went to walmart with my sisters one day and they ran over to me laughing about someone who had asked them in the store to come join their house church. Through my sister’s description I knew it was a member of the same group (by the way, I was in a new city very far from X and very far from the group). I was shcoked and asked my sister where that person was. She showed me and I ran over to go meet the lady. I explained to her that I knew what group she was part of and why she should leave. We talked for a while and I hoped I had made progress. But I took this as a sign from God because I was in a big city where the group supposedly wasn’t present and had just started a house church. What were the chances??
A few days later I returned to Walmart and the same lady was shopping there once again!! Then the encounter happened a third time but this time I ran into them proselytizing a certain couple who had also been shopping there. I stopped them and exposed the truth.
After that I saw this lady and her cult leaders again in walmart a few days later (just causally shopping). Then it happened for the final and 5th time (mind you Id never seen anyone I know in this Walmart more than once because like I said I live in a big city).
Those 5 encounters happened over a 1.5 month span and then suddenly stopped. I was worried the cult members would think I was stalking them Maybe they left that walmart entirely but I felt the whole occurrence was a God thing.
Next, a friend invited me to his city (a city of millions) to visit his church. I was going to fly there and looked up this church on the map to see where it was. It was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE CULT (this friend knew nothing about any of this).
I quickly put together a 13-page document that refutes the cult and made copies. Although I was quite terrified to go there, God spoke to me saying He wanted me to and I did. The next day I delivered the copies and left.
Anyways, back to X. At this point we hadn’t spoken in 1.5 years but one night I had yet another dream that his friend had called me and told me to talk to him. The next day I got a call (for the first time ever) from the same friend as in the dream and this man told me to REACH OUT TO X. I was shocked once again. He told me that I should send him a video of a Christian pastor who broke down the cult’s deceptions.
Despite the dream, I said no. By now Id recovered my emotions although I still loved X deeply. I wasn’t about to break no-contact so I refused.
However, 6 months later it started to itch at me that I had not listened to what looked like a sign (was it God??). So I talked to my Christian friend and was encouraged to send the video after all. I decided to send a slip of paper to X’s address with the URL to the video so that we’d not be in contact again over social media. I didnt want to open any doors that shouldn’t be opened.
A month passed and I was sure he’d seen the letter and was just over me.
One day I told my mom, “I know you dont want to hear this but sometimes I really miss X.” That very moment my phone rang.
It was X.
I was so excited. I believed at last that he would indeed come back delivered. We talked for 9 hours and it was as if nothing at all had changed. The love was still strong but he wasnt yet delivered. I was broken by that but still so happy to hear his voice again. He encouraged me through some tough things Id been going through. He was also in isolation and loneliness and seemed sad. The cult had him in a rough spot. For 3 months we maintained contact and were delighted just to be able to talk. It was fun and lighthearted. We completely avoided the cult topic but both of us had faith we’d be able to end up together once our difference was reconciled.
Our happy reconnection ended one day when he spent the whole day with the cult and called me that night to say we needed to stop talking if he was going to “make progress within his church.” The leaders had done a thorough job of indoctrinating him that anyone outside the group was destructive to their opportunity for salvation. We chatted the whole night and ended contact the next day.
But 10 days later he reached out again, overwhelmed by the separation. We resumed our connection until it happened again just 3 days ago.
Once again he called me after spending the day with the cult and told me we needed to cut contact again, and that if we end up together it wont be through holding on to each other and trying to control the outcome. I agree with that. I just wish the group would stop manipulating him and stop putting him in these excruciating situations that cause internal conflict when making decisions that tear the heart to pieces.
Im grappling for the meaning behind these events and struggling to let go, but I know that one day the spirit of deception will lose its power through the glorious light of the cross that shines its rays of salvation given to us by our Savior Jesus.
We will see what God has in store next, but Im sure Hes not yet done working.
Can anyone give me advice on how to handle all of this?
