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10/33/097

Cult leader's son counters father's message with his own

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA

Associated Press Writer

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - The last time Mark Applewhite saw his father, he was 5 years old and his parents were divorcing.

Today, Applewhite, now 40, struggles to cope with the death of a man he barely knew while trying to counter his father's spiritual beliefs with those of his own.

"We're of mixed emotions," Applewhite told The Associated Press in an interview at his home Saturday. "My father is dead - that's painful. It's sort of like we've been through a grieving process and now we're seeking closure."

Marshall Herff Applewhite, the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, was among 39 men and women found dead last week in a California mansion. Authorities say they committed mass suicide in the belief they would take a spaceship ride in a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.

Mark Applewhite said he knew little about the cult his father joined in the 1970s, several years after leaving their family.

"It was something we knew he was into, but we hadn't heard from him for a while," said Applewhite, who declined to disclose the names or whereabouts of his mother and 36-year-old sister.

He gleaned what little information there was from newspaper articles and conversations with Marshall Applewhite's sister, Louise, who tried for years to contact her brother.

Mark Applewhite, who released a statement addressed to "anyone hurt by the actions of Marshall Herff Applewhite," said that in the years following his parents divorce, "I came to know a new Father, the Father in heaven."

He said he, his wife and two children are born-again Christians, "with the real ticket to heaven."

Applewhite said he released the statement to counter his father's beliefs with those of the Christian faith.

"I want to get out the message that there's truth and there's eternal life in Jesus Christ, not in what he was into," he told the AP. "There's a real hope out there that has nothing to do with aliens or spacecraft."

In his statement, Applewhite said he was "appalled by the things that have resulted from the actions of my father and others in that cult."

"I am deeply hurt by the knowledge that people have lost their lives in connection with my father. ... I would, however, like everyone to know that this strange bent that my father went off on has not been passed on to his family," he writes.

Applewhite said he prays "that those still searching for answers, as the members of this cult were, would find that Jesus is the Answer."

Applewhite, who took a break from trimming the lawn at his Corpus Christi home to speak briefly with the AP, said he harbored no resentment toward his father for leaving his family or for joining the Heaven's Gate cult.

"It's not ever easy, but when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's easier to forgive," he said.

Related story: Friends, sister say cult leader once loved lifeSend a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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