Our Stories: That Moment My Eyes Were Opened

Hi everyone.

I had been asked a while back to give my testimony but I was going through a serious family issue and I just couldn’t do it.

I saw some people getting triggered by Russia and Ukraine and I thought sharing how I exited the cult might be of some help to people.

Everything I say is 100% as I remember things. Feel free to interpret as you wish.

After 12+ years of being a brainwashed cult drone, there was a multitude of things that went as far back as 6-7 years before exiting, that led to my shelf overloading, my conscience burdening and my patience wearing thin. I had reached a point where I had stopped reading the Bible because I knew that everywhere I looked there was no support for Branham’s message nonsense.

At the time of course Branham not only was beyond suspicion but he was untouchable. Even if he was deceived, he was still an honest man of God…

The straw that broke the camel’s back was me leading my business partner and his wife (both fellow Greeks with very similar backgrounds to mine) to Christ. The only people in all those years that I ever led to Christ.

And the reason that happened was because unlike past attempts with others, I never tried to push anything on them and definitely no cult. In every honest opportunity that naturally arose to witness I would witness but only things that I knew were Gospel truth (even if I might have been wrong for a couple of those things). The husband in particular, coming from Eastern Orthodox background (like all three of us) was quite excited with the Evangelical approach to Christianity, the directness of the gospel, some hymns I used to listen etc.

For three years working on our project, they never came to the church we used to go, which as far as Branhamites go, was quite liberal when it came to doctrinal issues and the focus was on Christ and the cross and not on Branham. You could go through a sermon at times and not realise that it was a Branhamite church. But events changed and we all moved to another city where I introduced them to the cult there.

As the cult pastor was related to our previous one I thought they were on the same page. But as soon as they met my fellow Greek friends, they immediately started pushing Branham on them and gave them the “life of Branham according to Branham” blue books (you all know which ones I mean).

I really thought they would never speak to me again. Unlike the real gospel, that message stuff is extremely incompatible with Greek culture. But Greek culture works differently when you are an immigrant in another country (New Zealand), love bombed and manipulated by a cult.

The trust they had in me let their guards down and to my total surprise I saw them getting swallowed and manipulated by the cult. I felt guilt and shame, because what I witnessed to them was honest and what this new church was witnessing to them, I myself was questioning.

And worse, they knew nothing of my horror stories of how I got into the cult in the first place, which had they known, they would have kept away from all this.

And even worse, they got baptised and the wife’s parents came over from Greece, because, as I found out later, they were kind of freaked out!

And the ultimate horror of all: I was the one who had to explain the nonsense that they were hearing and that were in my own shelf and I myself was even struggling with. I felt so fake, guilt ridden, to the point I was avoiding contact, especially when the wife’s parents were in New Zealand, despite the fact that they were really nice.

That was when I had had enough. I had seen genuine Christians in Greece that had almost nothing in common with the Branhamites, in terms of their morality, the lives they were living, their honesty with scriptures etc.

I had heard testimonies from those same Christians that were out of this world, edifying the faith, not like Branhamite ones which almost had no deeper meaning other than to promote Branham and his message.

I had read the Greek New Testament and had seen Branham’s blunders and complete nonsense that he could get away with only with the KJV.

I had seen all the different non-answers I was getting from all the Branhamite pastors when I was asking the same questions.

And every time I prayed “Lord please show me this in your Word”, which interpreted meant “Lord please show me how Branham claimed he saw this in your Word and not what you clearly mean with it”, I literally felt like God was answering something like “What would you like me to do for you? You know the truth. Do you want me to change my Word to suit your wishes?”

Then came the time for the long postponed “serious Bible study”. It didn’t last long at all. The frustration had grown so much, yet still Branham was at worse mistaken but honest. But deep inside me there was a different reality ringing alarms which I had been brainwashed to ignore to the point of not even being aware of it anymore.

The thing that had started becoming most intolerable though was the total manipulation of the Word, the actual slaughtering of it, to fit all sorts of nonsense. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Then the unthinkable happened!!! One of those days as I was praying, my frustration had grown so much that without thinking, without planning it and completely spontaneously, I prayed this prayer: “Lord, this thing is evil, Branham is evil, I want it out of me and out of my life!”

It was as if God had orchestrated all these events, all these experiences, all those years and patiently led me to that very moment. The moment that I overcame the “fear of Branham” (NOTHING to do with the fear of God) and finally see the truth that He was about to reveal.

Immediately after this prayer it was like I woke up from an over a decade-long nightmare. I saw Branham, the message and even my walk in it all those years, how truly evil they were.

This was a completely spiritual revelation (nothing like the Branhamite nonsense). They were not evil because this or that. I just saw it in my spirit that it was all evil. The reasons came and fitted in PERFECTLY later. I can only compare it with how I understand Paul seeing the spirit of Python in that damsel. The damsel didn’t say anything technically wrong, what she said was even true but Paul’s spirit saw her spirit, by the Holy Spirit of course and was grieved and disturbed.

The next few minutes everything I knew about the message that came to my mind (no books in front of me), all those verses I couldn’t get my head around about false prophets and “Lord, Lord didn’t we do this and that in your name…” etc , started becoming so real, in the light of the truth behind the Branham and the message. The reason I could never get my head around those verses was because I was following the very man that these verses referred to.

What I saw was so evil that I felt nauseous, physically sick. And at the time, apart from the municipal bridge “mistake” that Branham “made”, that managed to go through before MB pastors caught on to BTS, I knew nothing about the real life of Branham. I had not read the “Antichrist” material (John’s and Rod’s stuff).

The amazing thing though was that despite seeing all that evil and me being part of it, and feeling sick, I immediately felt love, peace and forgiveness that were so joyfully and plentifully given that I was in awe. After over a decade in the mess, I felt the love of the real God of the Bible for the first time. NOTHING like Branham’s god.

Unlike the nonsense Branhamite revelations (which is just some mystical type of aha moments that make no sense in the long run), here I had the Holy Spirit revealing something from my life directly into my spirit and the Word testifying to it in full agreement. It was as real as real can be. No twisting of the Word to fit some nonsense, no manipulating, no nothing. The revelation was truth setting me free, right there in my life. The Word spoke on its own. I was not revealed the entire Gospel but I was truly revealed what this message was in the eyes of God. Two witnesses, the Spirit and the Word, fully testifying of each other, establishing the truth.

I was in such peace with God for the first time, that I thought my life is going to be an easy walk from now on, as my wife and kids will see the truth and follow on. Little did I know.

I started reading little bit of John’s work and BTS until I came to the jaw dropping realisation that Branham was KKK (now came the physical reasons why he was evil). The things I discovered, his lies and everything else put another 50ton seal on top of the original one of that revelation and shut the message off me forever.

Since then not only a single doubt about what Branham and the message is has ever crossed my mind but I’m always grateful that God woke me out of it and opened my eyes to it.

The reality of the situation though didn’t take long to come out. I felt SO alone in this and SO burdened, not by God, but by the environment. (I never lost that peace and certainty with God, even if the environment would at times almost completely crash me. This is how I understood what Jesus meant with the seemingly contradicting statements, “my yolk is light” and “pick up your cross daily”. His yolk was that peace and assurance I had with Him and the cross is all the burden and the trouble the world, not God, puts on you for His sake, once you follow the truth).

But in a recurring theme that would go on for a long time after my “awakening”, of getting almost crashed and God opening up a way right the last minute, I got the first good news and an extra witness came along (as if one was even needed after what I saw).

Without knowing about each other, at almost the exact same time as each other, another family left the cult. I was only told by my ex as I had already stopped going to cult-church for a while.

That family was three generations, grandparents, three sons, their wives and the grandchildren. With the exception of the grandmother that left a bit later, the entire family left in one go!!!

When I was told by my ex, who although felt that there was something “wrong” didn’t know what was happening with me, it was as if 100 tons of bricks were lifted off my shoulders. We so didn’t know about each other that when I called one of the sons he thought I called to tell him off!!!

When we met and talked about what happened he also had a similar experience, where when he realised what the message truly was he also felt physically sick!!!

To cut a long story short, since then my family broke to pieces. The cult leader and some other “brothers/friends” to my shock not only were not wiling to look into and address the issues but the cult-pastor went full on and demonised me in front of my children from behind the pulpit, saying that someone like me is “Satan in the flesh that hates them and seeks to destroy them”.

I managed to get my fellow Greek friend out and I was horrified that it took two discussions to wake him up, instead of a single sentence, as I was expecting, after three years of cult free friendship and a common cult-free culture, background, language and education!

In short all hell broke loose and since then I have been fighting for my children both for shared custody and to protect them from the cult. But as my life kept falling apart God has been providing a way to take me out of the latest ruins into some safety and on again.

It’s been 3.5 years now and I know that what God showed me back then about the cult is as real as the apostles seeing the risen Jesus. Denying it would be lying. It’s the only thing I know that God Himself has shown me. And the more I read, and the more I engage, the more it is confirmed from every direction without any need for manipulating information. That’s the true nature of truth!

The ultimate confirmation for me is when I later realised how Branham worshipped a pagan, Luciferian, Masonic entity, the All-Seeing Eye, and called it at different times Jehovah, God and Jesus and served it to his followers. A true servant of Satan and for me the main reason why he is a false prophet (Deut 13). It is his own words and the Bible that expose him.

I hope that this testimony is of help, especially to those who are still triggered about some of this cult’s rubbish.