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RubiesandButterflies OMG...
Well...wow...I am sorry.
Most cults based in some notion of Christianity crucially use the "only WE have THE Truth / the WHOLE story" as part of their message, and they control knowledge by controlling the message.
I always encourage people claiming some level of Christianity to simply read the Gospels.
There was one television preacher--Arnold Murray, I think, from Gravette, AR, on a show called
The Shepherd's Chapel--who was not like the standard televangelists. He sat at a simple desk with a flower on it, the US and Christian flags over his shoulder, and his Bible and a stack of letters. No arena, no expensive set, no audience.
He mostly read the Bible and focused on its plain meaning. And he would talk about the Hebrew or Greek words of the original languages, and often encouraged people to look into the original languages, himself.
He'd go through some questions in his mail, telling the writer where to look in the Bible, and would end up praying over the rest of the questions. He never said he had all the answers, he never demanded money. There is some criticism of his beliefs, but I was surprised to find very little with which I disagreed, and he wasn't in on the "prosperity Gospel" nonsense of so many of the on-air personality preachers. To my point, he encouraged viewers to read the Bible and get into the original languages, themselves. See
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shepherd%27s_Chapel for a little more.
I can't imagine what you went through.
