Encounter with a Former Member
This report is about an encounter with a former member of the Holic group. However, as he still argues in the same way as the group, he has probably been excluded against his will, but still sees the Holic group as the only truly Christian community.
Summer 2012, I was with a group of young Seventh-Day Adventists in Bergen, Norway, doing some outreach on the street. We talked to lots of people. At one point, I talked to a young man. He was humble, polite and sincere, but also extremely critical of our outreach, of all churches and of us as self-proclaimed Christians. He argued incredibly well. At the time, I knew my bible very well, but not like this man. We talked back and forth for hours.
In short, everything he said resonated with me. You could say that he drew the conclusions to its logical end, or you could say that he was black and white, without any nuance. Either way, during the course of our conversation, he more or less convinced me that I was not a true Christian and that the probability that anyone I had ever known was a true Christian was close to zero. At the time, Jesus was my identity and passion, so during the conversation my whole world collapsed. Also, he planted the idea that we all might be on our way to eternal hellfire - an idea that I didn't even believe as a Seventh-Day Adventist.
At the time, I dreamed about re-creating the first Church, according to the book of Acts. So when he described his former Church, "die Kirche", as he called it, how they shared everything and loved each other with Christ's love, I was spellbound. I say "former" because he was no longer a member. Why? Because he loved his bike too much to sell it and share with the church. He said he was lost and heading towards hell. At the end of the conversation, he wept and shaked and was in so much visible distress that I thought he might kill himself. I tried to say a few encouraging words, but he rejected everything as the flattering lies of Satan (not his exact words but the idea was there). He certainly didn't want any sympathy from me - an unrepentant sinner.
My peers saw that I was in an intense conversation for hours, but no one stepped in because they trusted me completely. I was in my early 20s, but already had big responsibilities, due to my ability to speak with people and biblical knowledge. No one could have imagined that I had just been through the most difficult and impactful conversation of my life.
The following months, I went into an existential crisis and major depression. I had suicidal thoughts continously. Looking back I might even have been experiencing something close to psychosis, as I convinced myself of a few very weird ideas. The most distressing one was my total conviction that I was on my way to hell, and the only way to maybe avoid eternal hellfire, was to join "die Kirche" somewhere in Germany.
He had given me an email-address to "die Kirche", hand-written on a postcard. I was young, but not ignorant about sects. So I was scared to death both by the thought of meeting them (as I felt that joining a sect could ruin my life), and by the thought of not meeting them (as I felt that not joining could ruin my only hope of salvation).
After a few weeks, I sent them the first email. I wrote that I would like contact, but wasn't sure if I would go to see them just yet. No reply. I thought they might have ignored me, due to the lack of commitment on my part. As time went, I got more desperate. I sent two more emails, and in the last one, I literally begged them for a reply, saying that I was ready to leave everything behind.
What ended up saving me, I can best describe as God's grace. I could go into details, but that would be a sidetrack. But sometime during spring 2013, things got a little better. And one day, I tried to google the email-address. (I don't know why I didn't think about that before.) The address was something like "folge-Jesus(...).de". At first, I found nothing of relevance. But then I tried to make small changes. "_" instead of "-", and so on. And suddenly, I started to get relevant hits, which provided me with more search words. At last, I found an article written by Gerald Kluge about some "Holic Gruppe". With my slim understanding of German, and some google translate, I was able to read it. I also found the group's website. Everything on the website, and what you wrote in your article, was in perfect accordance with what I was told about the group by the young man.
God alone saved my life (I believe). But your article stopped all ideas about reaching out to the group once and for all, as I realized the danger that would pose.