Deliver Me From Evil by Alloma Gilbert Read Free Book Online

at the Kingdom Hall, when we would listen to a talk from an elder and have a Watchtower study. There were three other meetings during the week: one where the adults would be trained how to go door to door to teach about the religion; on Tuesdays Eunice would go round to a couple’s house where there were little groups studying religious books together; and on Thursdays she would go to the Kingdom Hall and listen to talks about public speaking.
    At the meetings we children were always told to sit quietly and be well behaved while the adults studied their books and we pretended to study ours. I read in one book that Jesus wasn’t crucified, as I’d been told at school, but that he’d died on an upright pole, which I found both confusing and upsetting.
    I would sometimes be given a picture book of Bible stories, although I could read quite well by then, but at least the pictures would entertain me for a while. However, I did eventually find the meetings quite boring, and I didn’t like it when I had to read a paragraph of a study book and then talk about it in front of everyone. This was called ‘Answers Up’. I really dreaded ‘answering up’ as it made me very self-conscious, especially with Eunice’s eagle eye trained on me all the time, waiting for me to make a mistake for which she could punish me later at home.
    The Jehovah’s Witnesses taught us that Jesus was not to be worshipped or prayed to because he is God’s son but not equal to God, and was resurrected in spirit only. They don’t believe in hell, or that people have an immortal soul that goes to heaven when they die. But people can be resurrected by God. They talked a lot about the fact that we were in the End Times, that Armageddon was coming and when it did only 144,000 anointed would go to heaven. The rest of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (and other people as well) would live in paradise on earth.
    The celebration of festive days, like Christmas, Easter, even birthdays, was forbidden because of their pagan origins. They taught us that as much as possible we should mix only with Jehovah’s Witnesses, keeping our ‘outside contact’ with other people to a minimum. All Jehovah’s Witnesses were to be called ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ even though they weren’t our real family.
    Eunice’s bizarre twist on her religion gave her a plausible excuse for her constant abuse of us children. She explained, painstakingly, that discipline was part of religion. I think discipline was Eunice’s religion, in and for itself. Eunice said that I had to behave, I had to be honest and not lie or I would die. Her explanation of anything about the Jehovah’s Witnesses was always very dramatic and full of gore and nasty stuff. It wasn’t just that I would die, but that I would die in a really horrible, slow and painful way. She was all fire and brimstone and it made my flesh creep. Scared children would be obedient children: I guess that was the general idea.
    She would tell us that we would die if we did not obey and fear God. But, she added, we would also die if we just obeyed God out of fear. So, she said we’d die anyway because we were scared and didn’t love God – it was all very confusing.
    Eunice used to terrify us with stories of what would happen at Armageddon, when the soldiers came to get us and put us to the sword. Our eyes would melt, our skin would burn, and we would feel the most terrible, excruciating pain we could possibly imagine. I used to have nightmares thinking about it, and hated looking at the pictures of Armageddon in the magazines. Eunice made us watch horror films so that we would understand what Armageddon and hell would be like. The films were not age appropriate and were very upsetting, even traumatizing.
    Thomas and I would often fight with each other terribly and on one occasion, when I bit him, Eunice told me he would die from the germs that I’d infected him with. She made me think I was diseased and that this one bite might