Cult's local ties a concern

Girl worried about Jacksonville friend

Jacksonville Times-Union/February 8, 1999
By Margie Mason

Rachel Powell remembers the last time she talked to her best friend. He was leaving for Mexico and wanted her to come live with him in a big house near the ocean.

At the time, she had no idea Dustin Blythe was involved with the Concerned Christians, a cult officials say planned to open fire on Israeli police to hasten Christ's Second Coming.

''He called me up one night out of nowhere and said, 'I just called to tell you that I loved you, and I'm sorry that I wasn't the friend to you that you were to me,' '' she recalled.

Powell, 17, moved to Jacksonville nearly two years ago. It was then that she considered going with Blythe.

''It was between my beliefs and him, and I had to choose,'' Powell said. ''. . . In the end, your beliefs are ultimately what makes you who you are.''

It's a decision she's glad she made.

Last month, 14 Concerned Christians - including one from Jacksonville Beach - were arrested and deported from Israel after the FBI alerted Israeli officials of their arrival and dangerous potential. Blythe was not among them, but that doesn't stop Powell from worrying.

''I want to say they're going to wise up in the next year,'' she said, ''but I think he's [leader Monte Kim Miller] got too tight a hold on them.''

Those who track the cult agree. They say the group's fate is ultimately up to Miller, whose actions are as tough to understand as the religious doctrines and anti-government beliefs he teaches.

''Everything is cryptic,'' said cult specialist Bill Honsberger, a Conservative Baptist missionary who's studied the group for several years. ''Kim gets meaning out of the phone book, to a date Abraham Lincoln got up and brushed his teeth, to the weather, to a football score.''

Miller tells his followers God is speaking through him. In addition, he claims to be one of two biblical witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation. He says he will die in the streets of Jerusalem sometime this year prior to Christ's Second Coming. Three days later, he says he'll rise from the dead.

Anne Marie Biondo Malesic, a 1990 Bishop Kenny High School graduate, was among those deported along with her husband and their 2-month-old son. She and the others have been holed up in four Denver hotel rooms since their return. Her brother, Vince Biondo, also belongs to the group but was not among those deported.

Concerned Christians wasn't always a cult. In fact, Miller used to preach against the evils of joining New Age movements in the 1980s, Honsberger said.

Today Miller teaches that America is Babylon and will be destroyed first when the world ends. He also tells members the only way to receive salvation is to die, just as the Bible says Jesus died.

In addition, Miller arranges marriages and requires unquestioned obedience. He also restricts cult members from having contact with family members.

''It's a living death for people, especially when you don't know where your child is,'' said Sherry Clark of Carbondale, Colo., who has a daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren in the cult. ''It's more than devastating. There are not really words to describe it.''

Clark, like Honsberger, actively campaigns against Miller, whose whereabouts are unknown. ''His ego is so inflated and the power and the pride thing is so inflated that he believes it himself,'' Clark said. ''. . . This evil satanic power behind him is what is controlling Kim Miller and his followers. This is not Christianity. This is certainly not Christianity.''

Clark mentions other cult members who committed mass suicide such as those at Jonestown in Guyana and the San Diego-based Heaven's Gate cult. She worries the Concerned Christians will be next. Still, the only thing she can do is pray for the Denver group's release from Miller's mental grasp.

''I've seen God's hands working in this all along,'' she said. ''I know that God is able to bring this to a completion.''

But Powell says Miller is the group's God. He made Blythe quit school and told his father to abandon the family construction business. Other followers she knew in Colorado disowned their children, sold their belongings and vanished.

The cult was Blythe's first exposure to any form of religion, which is why Powell believes he was so easily convinced. She recalls trying to explain that Miller's teachings deviated from the Bible, but Blythe repeatedly told her she would believe if only she could hear Miller's voice.

''They just sincerely believe that it's the Lord speaking,'' she said, ''and they don't want to disobey God - that's how seriously they take it.''

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.