Inside Manhattan’s secret ‘cult’

It’s a secret society that claims that its followers descended from a “master Aryan race” on Atlantis and that ­humans once lived on the moon.

Homosexuality is banned, corporal punishment encouraged and members atone for bad karma in past lives. Young women, denied higher education, are often married off to older men in the group, former members say.

Some male devotees have ­undergone weapons training to prepare for the end of the world, which is coming soon.

But this doomsday cult isn’t hidden away in some rural ­bunker — it operates out of a brownstone in Murray Hill.

Every Thursday evening, dozens of congregants line up on East 35th Street for the group’s weekly meeting. Their leader of the flock, Tom Baer, 73, preaches from the center of the room, reading from pieces of paper. Members don’t have religious texts to follow along and aren’t allowed to take notes.

In official documents, the 200-member, tax-exempt church is called Congregation for the Light. To members, it’s just “the Light.”

The group has about 200 members in New York, and there are congregations in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Baer and ex-followers say.

http://nypost.com/2014/11/02/the-secret-society-cult-that-operates-out-of-murray-hill/