Did you know a doomsday cult has just about taken over a Florida city?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2005/05/12/features/doc428427dbc069a118630460.txt

The End Timers thrive in Lake City, Fla.

By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer Thursday, May 12, 2005

-- This is Part II of a four-part series examining the dramatic impact Charles Meade and his "End Time Ministry" have had on the town of Lake City, Fla.

LAKE CITY, Fla. -- Of late, Judy Ayers had been on edge. She'd noticed some peculiar things around her neighborhood: armed sentinels watching motorists through binoculars; brown-suited men fixing up homes into the wee hours.

She had tried to shrug these things off as eccentricities, coincidences. But then, while driving into town one fall afternoon in 1987, she spotted her 21-year-old son, Eric, cornered in an Amoco lot by two angry men in khaki jumpsuits.

Ayers swung her car to a stop. She yelled: "What's going on here?"

One of the men snapped back: Eric had been trespassing.

Eric, pallid as scraped bone, spoke up. All he'd done, he said, was take a picture of the house of Charles Meade, the leader of a doomsday sect whose followers had been moving into Lake City in increasing numbers.


http://www.rickross.com/reference/endtimes/endtimes22.html

In 1984, Charles Meade brought his religious followers to Lake City in northern Florida to prepare for the end of the world. Things haven't been the same since.

Sun-Sentinel/May 19, 1991
By John Hughes

Sandra Smith is driving along Highway 47, a few miles south of Lake City, a North Florida town infused with strangers waiting for Jesus.

She is pointing to homes and businesses owned by members of End Time Ministries --"ET's" she calls them. Others she calls "normals." Smith and a growing number of citizens believe there is nothing normal about what's going on in their community. snip

In addition to believing that Charles Meade has been called to establish God's Perfect community on Earth, they believe:

Newspapers, radio and television are instruments of the devil.

Animals—even images of animals —harbor demons, therefore End Timers don't have pets. (A former member says that she placed masking tape over pictures of teddy bears painted on her child's crib for fear that demons would leave the teddy bears and enter her child.)

To say that you are tired is a sin, as God's people are to be empowered with supernatural stamina.

It is a sin to cry, for if you cry you have "lost your joy."

[SlingBlade]

1. Shades of Jim Jones

Week minds are susceptible to outrageous claims

And on it goes as the little blue marble turns in
the endless vastness of space and time :popcorn:

Hey, It's Free, Enjoy :fistbump:

:kick:

[NeedleCast]

4. Yup, this should be a good show, complete with kool-aid at the end

[Kalyke]

2. "Newspapers, radio and television are instruments of the devil."

In other words, you can't have access to any other information or you might find out that Meade is absolutely nuts.

[Canuckistanian]

10. But they have a website

www.endtime.com/

I ain't going there.

[NeedleCast]

13. They also have live radio broadcasts

[YOY]

3. This can not end well.

n.t.

[Reterr]

5. Isn't that where that insane fundie Todd Bentley holds his "healing" rituals?

I remmeber reading about that around this time last year. That was some scary shit...

[BreweryYardRat]

6. Scientologists in Clearwater, these freaks in Lake City...

Is it any wonder I want to move out of Florida?

[bushmeister0]

17. Don't forget "Enterprise, Fl.," Disney's modernization of Stepford.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

18. It's Celebration, Florida.

There is an Enterprise, Florida in Volusia County, but it's just your ordinary town.

[bushmeister0]

19. My bad. Celebration is actually even creepier.

[Stevenmarc]

7. Found in the Lake City gift shop

[Blue Diadem]

8. beheaded and poisoned pets found.

snip: Then, one morning in 1989, a stray dog was found in a trash bin, headless.

In the weeks following, several other canines turned up in people's yards, stiff as logs. Poisoned, several residents, including Judy Ayers and her daughter, Laurie, said. Sandra Smith, who had spoken out in the local media against the End Timers, said she walked out her front door one morning to see her five kittens beheaded on the walkway.

http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2005/05/12/features/doc427adfb7d0c76859553543.txt

----------------------

I wonder if the old coot is still alive. I see his son in law was the one who sold most of the real estate.

Armani suits and weekly deposits of $3,000-$11,000? So typical of the leaders of these cults.

from the same link above:
snip:
On Monday mornings, tellers at Community National, State Exchange and First Federal Savings could expect to see Meade in one of his Armani suits, looking much like Lawrence Welk, on line to make his weekly deposit.

He would stand self-assuredly, as though smiling to himself, and when his turn came he would stride to the counter with multiple bank bags, each stuffed with $3,000 to $11,000 in cash, checks and rolled coins, according to eyewitnesses and bank employees. (In later years, he switched to briefcases and went straight into the vault.)

[northernlights]

11. exactly the sort of thing I fear

Pets and animals harbor evil spirits?

Time to keep you furkids inside and safe. Just a matter of time before they start slaughtering them. :( :scared:

[Blue Diadem]

15. Crazy isn't it?

I remember hearing that crap as a kid, but then it was just "some" animals can harbor demons. Same old BS, just a different cult.

[Lance_Boyle]

9. not masking tape, you idiot! DUCT TAPE!

How the hell is a little fucking strip of MASKING TAPE supposed to hold back the demons?!? Morans.

[jody]

12. Does Homeland Security target them as potential Rightwing Extremists like returning veterans?

See DU thread Homeland Security targets returning veterans as potential Rightwing Extremists

[MineralMan]

14. This is from 2005, and it seems that most of the other

info is from the 90s. Is there something new about this? If not, I have to wonder why it's posted.

[rrneck]

16. They're just at the

far end of the spectrum. They'll flame out or break up when the old man, or maybe his chosen successor, dies. The scary ones are the ones that are better at designing a message that will appeal to a broader spectrum of faithful, so they can appear to be a benefit to the community while fleecing its members.

[flvegan]

20. I've been hearing about this for some time.

I have agents/clients in that area that are practically being run out of business up there.

[Lochloosa]

21. Even Walmarts sales are down in that town. The ET's won't shop anywhere but their own stores.

[ColbertWatcher]

22. Which is worst? The cult that plans on killing themselves, or ...

... the cult that plans on sticking around?

Cults are dangerous whether they're doomsday cults or pyramid scams.