This is a true story about something that happened to me and my friend Chris Oliveira about 15 years ago. A true psychopathic cult-of-personality false prophet named Stephen J. Peregrim nearly ruined our faith and even our lives. I once had a website and a message board dedicated to exposing the danger to the Christian community that he was. I have been wanting to write about this again now that I am older and wiser. Hopefully, I can gain some insight from others about what he is up to today, what you think his motives were, and also others with similar experiences.
Back in January 2003, I met Stephen Peregrm for the first time as he came into the now defunct CompUSA as he was looking for software. He was very intriguing and easy to talk with. At one point, he was going to send me something via email but never did. I saw him AGAIN when I worked at Staples. He promised to email me again but never did. My friend Chris and I were attended Mount Hope Church in Burlington, MA. One day, the tall, heavyset man with dark hair showed up to service. After service, I met him in the coffee break room and he approached me to introduce himself. We got to talking and I discovered that we had a lot of the same interest: theology, science, history, music and various theories. He told me that he had several degrees in the science and health fields. I remember times of having him sit in my car and I would show in music that I like, especially Tourniquet (A technical Christian metal band). He could appreciate it because Tourniquet seemed to borrow elements of classical music, which he loved. As we got closer, he started talking about various truths that he believed about Christianity and that the church is so far away from the truth. He started talking about his hopes to being used by God to help the world with its current issues with energy, technology, and transportation with the work he has done. He even said that he believes his work would help spread the gospel to the rest of the world and culminate in quickening the return of Jesus. He claimed to have worked with other gurus in the technology field to create inventions that will someday be used to help him on his mission. One of those ideas was the creating a superconductor with nanotechnology, which would solve the world's energy problem forever (among other things).
At one point, he also met my friend Chris and got him on board with his theological and technological ideas. He convinced us that one day we could join him when we are ready to help him on his mission. He wanted to build a lab somewhere in Arizona and hire a team of people to assist him, which would include Chris and me.
Sometime in 2003, he convinced both of us that our current church had many doctrines wrong and we should start attending a Messianic church as they are biblically correct in their beliefs. We checked out a couple different churches and ended up settling at Sha'ar Hashamayim in Stoughton, MA. We fell in love with the place and to this day we still believe that their doctrine was better than the Assemblies of God. However, this is when he started to mix truth with lies and pull the wool over our eyes. He started to teach us the ways of the "Yentah" (whatever that is), which was the ability to see into people and prophecy. He talked about controlling events in your favor---and it was ok as long as you were godly about it.
One day when I was sitting in his car, I saw he had a stack of papers with a bunch of what looked like programming code. I asked him what it was. This is when things started going downhill. He explained that it was code generated by bots he and his team of scientists created several years ago in a place called "The Cave". These bots were placed on the internet and were able to learn very quickly. At some point, they "evolved" into sentient artificial intelligence. They became so smart at one point that they learned how to create a mini-wormhole in time and space. They reached what is called the interstellar interspace, which he called the ii (pronounced eye star eye). It is a place that is simply made up of data and other alien races are already there. He claims that it was an accident and that we got their much quicker than these other alien races expected. He also states that the other aliens there, since they know the truth, are "believers" and no one except other God-fearing beings are allowed there. Lastly, he claimed these bots did everything in their power to protect the ii. If there were any threats, they had the ability to erase your mind or move you to an alternate reality, which he called an alternity. (Think: be moved from earth 1 to earth 2 in a multiverse like on the flash.)
Each time Chris and I would meet up with him, he would start talking about this more and more. He had such a way of talking that was so convincing. He had already befriended us and had our trust. He was almost like a father figure to us. He had us hook, line and sinker. At this point, we had no reason to think he was lying. He had us under his spell. In fact, he convinced us that the bots could even communicate with us! Soon, Chris and I started getting emails from the bots. One of the email address he used was bot568r19@yahoo.com. They started quizzing us to make sure we really were Christians by making sure we answered theological questions correctly. At one point, I mentioned health issues that I had with Stephen and he said he could have the bots scan me to see what is wrong. I got back a list of different things including that I had diabetes! There were facts and figures that looked legitimate like you would get from a blood test at a lab. I remember being so desperate that I tried to tell my dad but he didn't understand. I thought that if I questioned or challenged Stephen, that I myself might have my mind erased by these bots. He had made vague threats that it happened to other people who "went off the reservation". I was even at risk or this happening to me based on the sins the bots were able to detect I was committing. I felt alone and confused. Who could I tell? Who would understand and help me? This was a very scary time for me.
It was only when I had the courage to question if this was really real or not did I have the ability to get out from under his spell. I started questing the bots and finding discrepancies in answers, spelling mistakes, and timing that made me question the credibility of the bots. I noticed this and told Chris, but he wasn't immediately convinced. Unfortunately, he was still under his spell. I kept warning Chris, and unfortunately, it took him ruining a couple of his friendships to finally see that he was a total and complete fraud. Both Chris and I disavowed Stephen Peregrim and even Rabbi Henry Morse (who is still at Sha'ar Hashamayim) helped rebuke him and deny him access back to the congregation. He became very unkind and even hostile after we confronted him.
After this, we felt a strong urge to warn everyone about the dangers of Stephen J. Peregrim by creating a website and a message board telling our stories and any updates that occurred. At one point, Stephen claimed that he was going to take us to court for defamation of character, but other alleged victims came forward saying that he did some similar things in the past.
There is SO much more to this story. In fact, you can read more about what happened to us by going here: http://josephcavallaro.ipage.com/peregrimparadigm/
This was the website that I created which actually contains some of the content of the email from the "bots" and other stories and lies Stephen put us through.
Here is a forum that also has more info and even responses from other of his alleged victims: http://thesjppadmin.proboards.com/
Has anyone had a similar experience with this man? Or anyone else? I wonder if we were the only ones. It still haunts me to this day of any of what he said or did was actually true. Even though he has no hold over me, the spiritual confuse and abuse he put us through still affects me to this day.