People still join CoG/TF.

I am an ex-member who "joined", although it was over 30 years ago. I left in '79.

TF operates in US in numerous forms, and under different names.

if you want to talk with me you can on this forum, via PM or my email.

Re: Im lost about all of this

I'm sure people still join, but I would be surprised if it is more than a couple dozen people a year. They certainly aren't getting enough new recruits each year to counterbalance the number of members they lose in one year.

Actually, they seem to maintain somewhere around 10'000 members. Probably most of the reason for maintaining that number is because of children born in TF. By any reasoning, TF should be growing, IF people weren't leaving as much as they are. They are leaving though. All the time. "It's a Gideon's band - an endtime army for Jesus..." etc. so on and so forth.

Being slapped in the face with the horrifying reality of TF's abuses was one of the most demoralizing events in my life. As the mother of two children born into the cult, I remember how difficult it was for me to abandon everything I had lived for during those years. I'm inclined to think that TF will use anything, including one's children, to hold on to membership. Usurping a woman's reproductive, sexual and parental rights, insisting that they produce as many offspring as possible for the cult while villifying any reasonable objections she may have to their regulations, places her in the unenviable position of "being damned if you do and damned if you don't." Motherhood is wonderful, but being badgered and coerced into bearing children that one has little say in how they are raised, and particularly without a committed spouse, leaves one at the mercy of the cult.
After leaving TF, explaining mine and my children's circumstances was painfully humiliating. However difficult it was to make a life for myself and my children, it was well worth it. I am afraid though, that many women who find themselves pawns in TF's ugly scheme, may feel they have no other option, whether they're just beaten down and robbed of their inherent strength, or feel they are so disenfranchised from society at large that they have no other choice than to stay.

They've been steadily losing about 10% of their membership each year since 1999. (http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Statistics). Also, although their combined FM/MM/FD statistics are around 10,000, their core FD membership has dropped by 45% since 1999.

If they keep going at that rate, they'll be at half their total current membership in about 12 years.

An encouraging prospect.