Bethel Church Ponzi Scheme - With Adam Short

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and today I have my very special guest, Adam Short. And Adam, I just earlier today, I mean not two hours ago, had a interview with another person who, um, man and his wife, who said that they escaped the NAR because they had listened to your podcast that you did with me. And they just kind of, yeah, they just kind of, they, I think they were already out, but mentally they were still in and everything that you said

just resonated and they, they mentioned you specifically. So, um, that's so cool. Yeah, it is really cool and they, it's really weird. Their story is a bit different. They're in another country and the church they're in isn't probably isn't considered NAR, but their church is building the exact framework of the apostles and all, you know, all of the NAR stuff they've got. And, it's, it's quite a story. So, I, I don't know which is going to come out first. This one or that one, I think this one may actually go before it, but anyway, good to have you back. Yeah, great to

be back. Like I said, Fridays with John, man, it's, it's a highlight of my week. So, absolutely. We were talking, I was, I was doing some research and I was digging into Cal Pierce because the whole thing just fascinates me. The, the God's general thing and the NAR fascinates me of all of the guys that they could have chosen in that era. There were some really good Christian figures. They chose all the con artists for the God's generals and then you have people like Cal Pierce in this healing rooms. They're trying to resurrect the John G Lake thing and it's hard for

me to look at it and you know, I don't, I don't know much about it other than the research that I have, but it's hard for me not to label it as a scam, which I'm not saying it is, but it's hard not to when they're taking one of the most notorious Christian scam artists of his decade. And they're saying that, oh, I soaked his grave and now I've got the power of John G Lake. And anyway, as I'm going through that research, I come across a newspaper article and here is Adam Short talking about the

healing homes. Yeah, that was quite the full circle. And when you texted me that, I guess it was, it was, last week. You text me, you're like, hey, is this you? I'm like, yeah, that's me. That's me, what, 15 years ago, I guess it was 2008 or 2009 or something. And there's an article in the Reading Record search light, which is the local newspaper in Reading, California, which is where Bethel is. And I used to live there from 2007 to 2011. And interestingly, that article was part of the project that the search light was doing at the time to, they

were trying to, as I understand it, this is what the reporter told me as I recall, they were trying to get more insight into what was actually going on at Bethel, specifically in the context of the healing rooms, which Bethel does have its own healing rooms. You're talking about Cal Pierce. And Cal Pierce is considered the sort of the patriarch, if you will, of the healing rooms movement. And I don't know all the backstory of how the healing rooms got established at Bethel. I think you have a lot of that history that you've researched.

But Bethel had, and it still does, to my knowledge, have a healing room that's affiliated with the International Association of Healing Rooms, IHAR. That's a tongue twister. And, but back to the article. So somehow, I don't know how they got connected with me, but they interviewed me in the article about certain healings that I actually witnessed firsthand and still know to this day they happened, still believe that they happened. And you know, one of them was in Mexico City, one was in Reading, and I can think of others that weren't referenced in that article. And so now, fast forwarding 15 years later, you know, I'm post church,

I'm a post church person now and have been for 13 years, still believing the Lord is still following him, but have not really darkened the door of a church in a long time. It's wild to look back, John, on that, you know, that frame of your, that time frame of your life, where you did believe a lot of things that you don't believe the same anymore. But yet, you still believe in the supernatural healing power of God, the miraculous power of God. But it's like peeling back the layers of what part of this was, what, what part of

this was sort of these false constructs that were cropped up by people that were money hungry and power hungry. And I think that's kind of some of what you may be alluding to here. Yeah. It's so complex, right? Because in the cult, you're taught a very black or white reality. It's either true, it's false, you're either a believer, you're an unbeliever, and you know, it's more complicated than that in real life.

I sometimes laugh when I look through the comment feeds because people will attack me having no idea what I believe on certain subjects and let's say, well, you must be one today said, well, you must be working for the Catholic Church because that's how they're indoctrinated.

Oh my God. Yeah, it's quite the accusation. It's created. It said something like the Catholic Church was paying me to do the stuff that I do. Another common one I get is that you must not believe in divine healing because you're calling out the frauds and divine healing.

And the thing of it is, for them, I get it. I was there. I had that same mentality, you either believe or you don't. It's true or false, but it's more complicated than that.

My own father is a person who was in the healing lines and he claimed that he got healed. And I've got no reason to believe that he didn't, but there are a lot of frauds along with it too.

So for me, it's not a black or white issue. There's a heck of a lot of gray. Oh, absolutely. And this is back to my wife and I talk about this quite frequently and it is the both and continuum, right?

It's the both and spectrum. And everything, just about everything lives in a continuum like that where it's both and probably the exception to that is the world of electricity where the circuit is either all for own.

I don't think there's really an in between unless, I guess the in between is if you have a spark that jumps across the positive and negative, the poll and you have sort of both, you know, it's often on at the same time, but largely speaking, like we're in a continuum.

And so when you start to peel this stuff back and you're like, well, do I just throw it all out? And that's what I'm wrestling with. I'm wrestling with that all the time right now, especially as it's like every week we have another pastor that falls or quote unquote falls.

I don't even like the word fall, but you know what I mean? Like the media says, well, another pastor has fallen into sexual immorality. And it's like, you have bored layers to face and it worked through and navigate.

And so it's like in our brain, I think we're wired to just say, well, all that's bad. I just want to just, let me just throw it all away. Like this is all gobbledygook, you know, baloney, one big scam.

And I mean, to be fair, I don't blame it, but I don't blame people one second for doing that. I've done that at times. I've been, I've said like, hey, just throw the whole thing out.

But are there things that were actually genuine? I'm just asking the question because I'm still wrestling with that myself. Like, I can tell you what my experience has been, right? And encountering the Lord and watching him heal people and, you know, things that I could not explain other than the fact that God did it.

But when it comes to somebody else's experience or a leader in one of these organizations that is monetizing a stri- structure. They're monetizing a structure. It's money and power. That right there is the part that we really need to scrutinize and examine. And I think that's what you're doing, which I love what you're doing. Like your work is so important to so many people that are still kind of maybe they're one foot in the door, one foot out the door, or maybe they still have two feet, you know, in or maybe they're starting to question or ask questions

or consider like, is there any part of this that's off base? And so I think that's why conversations like this are so important. Yeah. I try for the most part to remain neutral because if you truly write it as historical content, you can't you try to avoid your opinion. However, I focus I lean towards the critical because there's so much of the non critical out there that it's just I'm trying to bring balance to the scale. But the problem that I have with all of these things that these guys are doing, they want you to have it though they call it faith.

And I have no problem with faith. You can, you know, people can be believers. But what they have framed as faith isn't really faith. They want you to have blind faith. In other words, I'm going to heal you and you're going to go home and you're going to still be sick as a dog dying on your deathbed. You need to have positive confession and pretend that you're actually healed when you're not. And that's blind faith. That's not faith. Faith produces a result and you believe because you expect that there's going to be something that happens. That's what faith is. And they they've

switched it into blind faith. And for me, you know, I have no problem saying that a miracle occurred, you know, things happen that I too cannot explain in some of these movements. But when they do happen, you and I had this conversation last week as well, when they do happen, there is a logical means to verify that it did. And we were throwing out some simple examples like in the Bible, it talks about the walls of Jericho falling. So in the Bible, this is this great miraculous event. Well, if you were there at that time, there would have been something that happened. God, you know,

God may have induced it to happen, but there would have been something that happened that you could verify, okay, maybe it was an earthquake in the walls fell, something happened that it fell. And there's a tangible result to what happened. Right. Same with, you know, so somebody has a cancer and they get healed of cancer, they should be able to go in with the microscope and or whatever there's the tools and verify that no, there's no cancer cells. It did get better. And they would also probably find that there was some sort of a, you know, I don't know how cancer healing works,

but maybe there were some good cells that overtook some bad cells. What we'll call it that. Right. And the doctors can correct me on the comment feeds, but there's always a way to see, take what has happened, the thing that you had faith in, and then go backwards.

The problem is they want you to go forward, but they never want you to return backwards to verify it. And for me, that's problematic, because if you require blind faith for your religion, it's not a real religion.

You have a fictional religion. You bring up so much good stuff, man. So, and you brought up things, like in our conversation last week, when we talked about this, things that I had not thought about before, from that standpoint, where it sort of reveals some of my thinking that I still have that still baked in my brain, right?

Like, and so it's causing me to examine, well, what do I believe about this when a miracle happens in a person's life, or like you mentioned in the case of Jericho, in a physical structure, like a wall, they built around a city, and it fell down.

It's recorded in the historical record that that happened. So, what are the signs and verifiable sort of, I guess, marks that are left, or breadcrumbs, or whatever it is? And I think what you bring up about the cancer cells is a great example.

I remember, and I told you about this in our conversation last week, there was a lady in Reading, and we would go every Thursday to her house, it was not a church service, it was actually our outreach with BSSN, which is Bethel School's Supernatural Ministry, so every Thursday we'd go out there, it was a group of us, it was this apartment complex.

And there was a lady there, one of the residents, and she was older, I think probably 60 years or 70s, I'm not sure exactly, and she had stage 4 lung cancer. And so every Thursday we'd go, we'd lay hands on her, we'd pray for her.

And we had every intention to see her healed. You know, one of the things we were taught at Bethel is there can be measures of healing, and I actually have seen that in my life.

I've seen that happen in people where they have a measure of improvement. Maybe it's a 10% improvement, maybe it's a 20% improvement, they couldn't do this before, now they can do that. But for her, it wasn't like you could, if you've got stage 4 lung cancer, there's not a way to know if you're progressing or not other than to your point, to go back and get another MRI or X-ray or whatever it is that detects the cancerous tumors in the lungs.

So we kept going week after week, praying for her. And then one week we went, and she told us she had just been to the doctor, and they did a scan on her, and they did not find any cancer.

And remember this is not in a hyped up church service where there's somebody on a microphone saying, oh, you're healed of cancer You're blah blah blah. This is somebody who you know had visited the doctor after There had been repeated times of prayer and the doctor told her that she didn't have cancer anymore now What I wished we would have done that we didn't do is say hey, can we see it copy or can we see like your X-ray or your MRI or whatever scan they do doctor in the comments can tell us But we didn't do that and and that's what I want to mention and highlight as a flaw

in What we were taught and what this movement is teaching and I did not realize that I had this flaw until I talked to you last week And I'm like wow You know and the flaw is we were actually and it wasn't it wasn't this was not like a blatant teaching But it's like a byproduct. I think of the teaching is this if you need to go ask for a scan of Or it or some type of verifiable evidence whether it's an X-ray or some type of blood test or whatever Then you actually have less faith

Then you should you you shouldn't so we were taught you shouldn't have to you shouldn't ask for the verifiable Evidence you your faith should be sufficient to know that that person got healed God broke in and did the thing and it's done So what's so ironic is though wouldn't it be wouldn't it be faith though?

to Go and Get the verified evidence It's the difference between faith and blind faith they want you to have a blind faith So so I'm I'm making the point and I credit this to your questions John um Is that not faith? I mean the Bible says that faith is the evidence of things unseen in Hebrews I think I'm quoting that correctly. It's been a while since I've read it Yeah, it's the the assurance of think something to that effect. It's the it's the the evidence of things unseen So you you can see why the teaching is put forth that way because it's like well you need to believe it without seeing it right

But I don't know I feel like I'm having a hard time particularly when I'm trying to say why why is it Why is it bad to go ask for an x-ray like If I have a health condition and you know, I do have a health condition um, and I went to the doctor and they did a scan or a blood test actually could do that and they could tell me my levels of xy and z or high low or medium and Is that a lack of faith though? I think that's the question Yeah, we're asking yeah, and I don't think it is

I think the problem is they want you to have blind faith so I'll simplify it for the audience Thank you my wife my wife has goes to work every day and she comes home about the same time She's not here now and I could take my phone and video camera the entire house and show solid proof that she is not in this house but I have faith that she's going to come here and I don't know when it is 30 45 minutes from now I have faith that she's going to come in because I believe she is and that is me having faith she's not here now when she arrives I could

take the same phone and I could video camera her pulling into the driveway and what they want you to do in these divine healing nonsense say that she got delayed at work and say that she's going to be an hour later well they want me to accept that she's here when she isn't in other words you're healed go home you're going to still be sick but the healing will come later and so they want you to claim your healing before it actually happens so that's blind faith but then they don't want anybody to go back and verify it so like I'm

doing when I'm recording and she's she's she's she's not here and then when she comes that's evidence it's not that I don't believe that she's I mean she's in my driveway I believe she's here that I have faith that she's here because I see her in my driveway but the way that they frame it if she's not even in the house she's not even in the city they want you to believe that it happened and they don't want you to verify that she's not here because other people will suddenly have questions questions yeah the questions so check this out I just thought of

something that's a great way of describing it way better than what I said I was trying to mumble my way around in my southern accent over here John you you simplified it so but here's what's crazy think about this I don't know if I've thought of this before this is a light bulb I'm I'm having a light bulb moment right now and the light bulb is this think about Luke who wrote the gospel of Luke wasn't he a doctor I believe he was yeah I believe Luke was a doctor so here you have a disciple of Jesus and Jesus was very intentional about who he picked as this disciples right

well he picked a doctor and Jesus knew full well that he was going to be doing some miraculous healings along the way I'm sure I'm sure like he had some kind of idea hey I'm probably going to be healed in the sick you know and he picks this doctor and it just so happens that one of the gospels in our Bible is written by a doctor which if you think about it can be considered a medical record can it not it's not just a historical record but it's a medical record isn't it because it's coming from a professional who is an expert in medicine so my point is the very the very

notion that we that we can't go look for verifiable evidence is an antithesis to the gospel of Luke. Yeah. Well, and if you take it a step further, it's an antithesis to the entire Old Testament because the Old Testament contains prophets who had scribes and they wrote down the prophecy before it happened and then they had the chronologies like, you know, the Book of Kings, etc. So they're logging what happened. And so they've got both sides of the equation. They've got, here is the prophecy, here is what is coming. And then here is, as we see it, this is

how history records it. And, you know, God doesn't punish people for wanting to look at the evidence that was supplied. Faith is the evidence of something unseen back to my example. I can't see my wife. She's not here. But when she comes, I can certainly verify she's here. The evidence of things unseen, that's right. That's what it says. It actually uses the word evidence. Yeah.

Oh, and by the way, a question for you, you mean so the Old Testament prophets didn't prophesy it after the fact. Well, say that they had the encounter before. They didn't do like the guys in the the ladder ring. And by the way, I didn't make this up, but you know what, that's called it's called profiliant. But people do that stuff, man, when they pull that card, I'm so sick of that card.

Well, so that's the, that's the funny part about all of this. And this hit me like a brick wall. You mentioned things that hit you. This was the biggest thing that hit me like a brick wall. A fortune teller is a person who tells you're fortune. A fortune teller is somebody who you go to and say, I want to know my future. That's what a fortune teller is. And fortune telling was a horrendous thing if you read the Bible fortune tellers are evil people.

A prophet is somebody who is a mouthpiece for God. Think of it like, so we're in a, we're in like a zoom recording, right? Or it's not zoom, but it's something similar. So I'm speaking, but I'm nowhere near you. The mouthpiece is your speaker that's in your computer. That's what a prophet is. A prophet is nothing, but a mouthpiece. So sometimes it is future. But it's more, if you look at all of the prophecies, it's something that really impacts the spiritual lives of the people whenever it's futuristic. It's not, if you read through all of the prophecies, not all of it is futuristic. The, the mosaic law had two

sides to it. If you do these things, you'll be blessed. If you do these things, you'll be cursed. Well, sometimes God's mouthpiece spoke about things in the past. Speaking through the prophets, he would say, because you did this, this is the curse that is coming. So yeah, the entire, the thing that hit me the hardest was we were falsely taught what a prophet even was because they wanted to create this.

It was a scam they wanted to create this scam that they could predict the future and for the Laterane movement that future was I know that you wrote on your card that your address is such and such And I know that you wrote on your card that you had you know, that's a gimmick man. That's not that's not even Prophecy. Yes, it is. That's a used car salesman gimmick actually's worse. It's at least the used car salesman That at least to the to the used car salesman credit, right?

To their credit at least they have a car to sell or what looks like a car, but like these guys that You know harvested prayer card information and now we we call it Facebook mining, you know from the stage You know, they've got the phone up their own thing and you know and by the way, I listen to Jedadiah's interview with you earlier today and amazing like you know going through his

You know his story of knowing his dad Bob His dad prophesied over me years ago at his house in Kansas City like he and to this day, I feel like he read my mail and now knowing that

That information came from somewhere else That's you talk about a ton of bricks. That's a ton of bricks to hit you Yeah, and the problem is I see being in the upper sides of all of this and being connected to other people Not even in the in the same cult who were in the upper echelons Many cult leaders have entire back in the day they had entire files like paper files There was an entire one cult the the person was the filekeeper and they said They knew more about the people going to that church than the people knew about themselves. They had everything

Okay, and you wonder why there's a connection between those movements and the frickin CIA

I mean if they're keeping files on people who else is keeping files on people You know and I don't know how far he went it got out that road, but I mean it sounds like espionage and I'm getting kind of out there now but Like that's what it sounds like you're keeping files on people and ultimately probably to blackmail them and control them and You know take their money and whatever else, but It's all a jaded sort of stuff. I mean, I've had I've talked to many people now who it through the mouth of I don't know how many and probably ten fifteen witnesses now Paul Kane recorded every conversation and he kept the recordings and

When you live a life like this where you have all of the information about somebody And the prophecies are so incredibly vague and silly like they're not they have nothing to do with their Salvation right, it's just ridiculous stuff He's got all the information he can talk to other people who know I put a specific person and then from the platform He can say whatever he wants and that person themselves would be like well, how did he know that I ever told them. Well, of course you didn't. Somebody else told them. And they keep these

files because they can get in your head by thinking they are, they're divinely receiving words of knowledge or whatever is the nonsense they call it. But instead it, like you said, is just simple espionage. But here, here's the, and this is back to my personal experience.

This is where it's so hard because I've actually experienced word of knowledge, the legitimate word of knowledge before. And, and I won't go into the story right now, but it was, it blew your mind actually. And it, it was information that there's no way I could have known this about a random person that was 400 miles away in another state. And it's, so, so I make the point like, yeah, there's all this, this gimmickery going on here. And probably, and, and if you were to say, well, what percentage of it is a hoax and what percentage of

is real, I don't know is it 80, 20, I have no idea. But somewhere out there, there's a, there's a real version of this that came from God. And, and that's what's hard. That's what's really hard about this is like, you have real gifts of the spirit that the Bible talks about.

You have real miracles. You have real healings. You have real encounters. People like, people encountered angels in the Bible. That actually happened. Bob Jones, you know, description of Emma is different than what we read about in the Bible. You know, it's, it's like a, it's a counterfeit of what we read about in the Bible. So there's real stuff there. But it's hard because when you've been neck deep in these movements, I still, I still have a hard time with it. Like, I mentioned this last time, when I listened to some of these guys talk, it's like, you won't believe that what they're saying is real and true. And I still struggle

with that. So I don't know if that made any sense, but just trying to like pick apart and navigate the real from the fake. And I guess that's where discernment becomes so important. Yeah. Well, back to the simplified example. If my wife say, say 515, whatever time, if she says that she's going to be here every time at 515 and I go out there and she's there at exactly 515, I can trust what she's saying. But if she says it and then continually is two hours late, three hours late, four hours late, never does what they're saying, but keep saying

that they are, I'm not going to believe, I'm not going to trust what she's saying. But the problem is because we're in churches and these leaders are saying things that it's completely nonsense, easily provable false in many cases. But they're telling you that if you go investigate what I'm saying, if you try to, if you try to find out whether it's true or not, you don't have faith. So you're a center. Well, they've convinced people not to, not to do their duty.

due diligence on whether or not they're even trustworthy. And so then it comes beyond that, it goes to a bigger problem. If you can't trust the preacher, then after you leave that church, you have a hard time trusting any preacher.

So they actually burn people for religion in general. Yeah. Oh, it's so true. Yeah, I've experienced some of that myself, like in various waves and degrees and seasons, the overall like distrust, mistrust of church leaders in general, and, you know, especially after this past year with Mike Bickle and IHob, it's like the whole another round of that.

Like just every day, it's like getting slammed in the face with another revelation of just absolute evil. So yeah, it's easy to come away from that and say, well, gosh, they must all be that way.

And I've said that myself away, they must all be bad, but there are some good ones out there, for sure. And most of the good ones out there are not on the visible platforms, they're just, you know, they're probably pastors of churches that are small, they don't have a big following and they're relatively unknown and they're just doing the right thing over and over again every day and following God and helping people, you know, believing him.

So yeah, I know some good pastors too. People, men who have escaped the cult, who were ministers in the cult and then they left and they're no longer. I struggle to trust them because they were ministers in the cult and how do you deceive somebody for this long, but some of them, they were deceived themselves.

So it's really, even that is not black and white, you know, they, they could be good people who are just not behaving like a normal person would because they've been manipulated. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

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So we're like 30 minutes in. We're here to talk about Bethel and the Ponzi scheme. I was digging through information and you gave me a heads up that I was probably going to find it.

I found multiple Ponzi schemes that hit Bethel and I- Suddenly, you know, that's what made me really fascinated to dig deeper because in the brand-um churches, there was a similar situation and I'm not going to name the names, but several people had set up a Ponzi scheme and they were swindling the parishioners.

And then you go back, John G. Lake was said it wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but Lake was setting up what they call a blue sky fraud or something against his parishioners. I mean, you can go through the trail of history.

You can find Charles Fox Param. He's in a magic gold from God's scam. He's one of the investors in this magic elixir that turns ordinary rocks into gold. So he got all these scams and the thought hit me after I was, after I researched what you said, people who are in the type of movement that is a prosperity gospel type movement, which the faith healing was and the modern prosperity gospel is, they seem to be more susceptible to this because they take that blind faith that when we've talked about for 30 minutes and lo and behold, one of the articles, one of the first ones I found,

they had an entire section talking about the people who are in the prosperity gospel are more susceptible to be duped like this. Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you. I have so much to say about this.

And so back in 2007, I was a firsthand witness to the Pondzai scheme and I know you said, I say it differently. Pondzai. You're red neck. That's my red neck. That's my accent on the wrong syllable.

But so here I am, first year student at Bethel School, Supernatural Ministry, moved to Reading. I actually moved back to the United States as I was a missionary in Africa prior to that. And then went to Bethel in 2007 and incidentally, everybody was talking about this guy named David Sousa that sort of came out of nowhere.

He came to Reading from another part of California and everybody's like, David Sousa, David Sousa, you got to meet David Sousa. And so I eventually met him not long after moving to Reading through a friend and who introduced me to him.

And so, you know, a lot of us would just go over to his house on a regular basis and it's kind of weird thinking back on it now, but he lived in this really big mobile home.

It was like a double wide mobile home with, I don't know, four or five bedrooms. I'm not sure exactly how many in a big living room and you come in and there's this big, I'll never forget.

It's so crazy. There's this big recliner in the middle of the living room, this big, lazy boy, cushiony recliner. And everybody, there's this unspoken rule that nobody sits in this chair, okay? Nobody sits in David's chair because he would flip out if he did.

And anyway, one thing led to another... But the stories you started to hear from other Bethel students, there would be certain Bethel students that would be highlighted, and they would just, you know, unsuspectingly receive a check from David Susa, you know, randomly, like, hey, God highlighted me to you, and I'm giving you this money to help go towards your mission strip or your tuition or whatever.

And all of us Bethel students were frickin' poor, like we were doing good to eat one meal a day. So when that happened, like, we were in this environment that was primed. Yes, the prosperity, even though it was never called the prosperity gospel there, you know, every service we're doing, the offering declaration where we say, raises and bonuses as states and inheritance as rebates and returns, bonuses, gifts, surprises, checks in the mail, debts paid off, blessings and increase.

It's been 15 years since I've been to a Bethel church, service, I think, or maybe 10 years, I can't remember. But I still have that in my head. It's like a, it's a mantra.

And in the Bethel environment, you are primed to believe that it's your destiny to be wealthy. Like, and the whole thing is this, if you can become a steward of what God's given you now, then you can become wealthy, so you become a blessing to other people.

That's really, so like prospering you in every realm, financially, spiritually, all of the different realms. So here you are as a Bethel student and incomes as God, David Sousa. And it turns out that this friend of mine introduced me to him, had an MBA.

And so, you know, looking back, this particular friend helped him sort of do his business stuff and he didn't know, my friend didn't know that David was a fraud. He had no idea. Because David was pitching to people 158% return on your investments.

He said there was this, there was this property project they were doing down in Calexico in Southern California right on the Mexico border. And there was this water bottling plant in Oklahoma, you can invest in.

So there are all these different promises that David was making. And really when it comes down to it, what David did is he saw an opportunity for people who really had this faith, if you wanna call it faith, to really latch onto a wealth that they could access.

And he saw himself as, man, I'm gonna come in and I'm going to take advantage of that. And that's what he did. And he built, I think, over a million dollars out of people.

I mean, people liquidated their retirement accounts. They sold their houses. They took out second mortgages on their houses invest their money with them. And he didn't invest. one dollar. It was it was one big wash machine and you know money came in and then he would write checks to it's the classic Bernie made-off like the people that came in the the ponds asking the soonest for the people that got the checks the soonest and eventually some checks started bouncing and you know people started asking questions and like okay there's something not right here yeah you know you can't really say that this is a fault of Bethel Church I'll make that clear

right now yeah but but the framework of doctrine makes people more susceptible just like the news said and yeah to prove that point it wasn't just one time that a Ponzi scheme has hit Bethel I was as I was digging I found there was another one in 2020 that made major news because it ended up in some weird chase where the guy had he ran into into the lake and he had some kind of underwater scooter that he was trying to have right them with yes and so you have two Ponzi schemes hit the same church and I mean how many more will there be when you have a group of

people that are trained to not critically think trained to have blind faith instead of faith trained never to look at evidence or you're questioning your blind faith you're going to have predators hit it left and right because they have literally set up guinea pigs for the predators to prey upon yeah it's exactly right and this is what I wanted to say there and I wrote this down before we started the meeting it's it's really three ingredients here it's faith or whatever you want to call this faith plus desperation plus poverty equals exploitation and so you had all these

Bethel students that were man we were so excited we were so excited to see miracles and we did we saw some was all out of them um honestly full disclosure we saw a lot of amazing stuff happen but the faith plus the desperation like we were desperate for God in a good way but also in a not good way like healthy or I should say unhealthy way like where it crossed the line into desperation which which then you it's like you've talked about you you sort of you check your critical thing in at the door you sort of um don't listen to the warning signs and the flags and stuff

and then on top of that poverty so it's really hard to get a job in writing people are struggling financially and so you have this guy come in and promise the moon and and heck you're going to believe it and so yeah it's was it Bethel's fault no I don't want to slam Bethel for it um but it is one of the byproducts of an environment like this where wealth is sort of this promise that you know if you follow God you're going to be a wealthy person and that is not the gospel I'm sorry it is not the gospel the fact of the matter is Paul said um that he

learned to be content when he had a lot, and when he didn't have anything. So I don't think that's what we're promised. And so yeah, that was just like one of the fruits and byproducts.

And I will say this, though, to Bethel's credit, when this happened, when we're starting getting out, because he made his way, David made his way up the echelons of Bethel leadership, and there were even leaders at Bethel that, quote, unquote, invested their money with him.

I don't know exactly which ones, but I know that some did. And so it eventually got out and the leadership called a big meeting with all of the students at Bethel at the BSSM, and then also at the church.

And everybody got into this big meeting and they said, they warned everybody about David Susa, they said, don't invest money with him, he's fraudulent, he is not a safe person. So at least they did that, but how much headache and heartache and loss could have been prevented, if that had been done before all the damage had been done.

And for me, nothing is black and white, it's all complex. And I'm hearing what you just said, and the good person in me would love to believe that's transparency, and that's what a church should do.

And it is, it's transparency, that's what a church should do. The critical thinker in me is looking at that thinking, okay, they know the feds are fixing to crack down on this thing. It happened in a church.

We're about to be investigated. We have to draw a clear line in the sand that says we are not part of the Ponzi scheme. So it's, whenever you look at it, you think, why on earth is their transparency in one particular issue and never in the other stuff?

You're absolutely right, though. That's a great point. It's just like with the clergy sexual abuse come out like it's when the heat gets put on that you get some kind of quasi statement from the stage or publicly, but they're distance themselves from the minister or whatever, and they're just trying to see why.

But that's absolutely the case. It's just, anyway, there's just a lot I could say about that, but yeah. And the feds did come, the SEC in this case, they came in and not only was he pursued and the SEC went after him, which is the Security and Exchange Commission's federal agency, and then the Shasta County authorities went after him.

He was sentenced to prison for 18 years, I think it was. So as far as I know, he went to prison. Wow. So at least he went to prison for it. I mean, it's more than can be said for some of the other scandals that happened.

Yeah. It's just, it's hard to believe, man. I look at all of this and again, this happened in the random churches as well. The difference is, I don't know that there was that level of transparency, but they may have been just so naive that they didn't realize there would be a federal crackdown.

So who knows, even that is not a black or white thing, but I look at all of this and I just have to believe that if a church were popular, you know, say there is a lot of a large population of poor people.

Poor people are often preyed upon by scam artists. In fact, I've seen it outside of the churches. I've seen people who were really poor and they came and tried to sell me multi-marketing schemes, they fall for this stuff, but tried to sell me some ankle bracelet that had magnets on it and said the magnets would cleanse my blood and I'd feel better and all of this stuff.

You know, it's all nonsense, right? Well, I did, I critically thought about it the moment they said it, but when you're poor, and you're struggling and you're thinking, oh, wow, I'm gonna make all kinds of money on this new thing that's come out, you shut off critical thinking because you're thinking more about the carrot on the stick that you're never gonna get.

If a church were to truly love the poor, it's not just the gospel that a church can help with. The church is the community. They could educate people on the scam artists and they could prevent some of this stuff from happening.

And I'm not saying that it's Bethel's fault again. This is outside of that, but what they're teaching is blind faith, which isn't biblical at all. So if they're gonna teach something that isn't biblical, why not teach how to apply critical thinking and avoid scam artists?

It both sides are unbiblical doctrine. So, except for the fact that the Bible does say to have critical thinking. So I guess there's that. Yeah, and I think, the thing that comes to mind here, especially, and I thought about this past couple of weeks, actually, this is a phrase that Bill Johnson said a lot.

And I think he still says it. And it's a very widely quoted maxim that Bill was known for saying, and it's this. If you want the peace that passes all understanding, you have to give up the right to understand, okay?

And, but if you actually go and you read that verse in the Bible, that's not a verse, sorry. That part that I just quoted is not a verse, but he's referencing the verse in the Bible that talks about the peace that surpasses all understanding.

The thing is though, if you look at that statement, it's not true. It's not true. That's not what the Bible promises. The Bible promises peace that surpasses all understanding. It doesn't mean that we give up the right to understand.

Like, so. One of the things that I've learned, I think it was from Stephen Hassan, I believe this is for him, is that when somebody says something very slow and profound, the human brain is more likely to believe it.

So just by me doing that right there, by slowing down my speech, it almost sounds like, oh, it's more true. It's more impactful. It's this got to be true because I say it with a microphone and I say it slowly and I say it with a lot of finesse. And so I think that's an example of what you're talking about. Where critical thinking is,

it's like, check my brain at the door and just fill me with, you just tell me what I think. And it just so happens that what you tell me to think is actually not true.

And I go back to the predators praying upon the poor people, selling magnet bracelets. This wasn't the only scam that I've seen hit a person who is financially struggling. I've seen multiple scam artists. Well, think of this. You have the churches that are teaching this prosperity gospel nonsense. And in effect, they're doing the same exact thing. Give me your money because God's going to bless you out of the money. They're praying on the poor people because it's the poor people that are going to give them the money. The rich people stay rich because they don't they don't give them the money. Well, we'll say though, there actually are rich

people that fall prey to it too, but I'm with you. It's probably proportionally much larger percentage of people that are poor and financially struggling, right? That end up, it's like the old grandmother's that watched the televangelist that call 1-800, bless me now. And so $50 seed into Kenneth Copeland. And I mean Kenneth Copeland's over there in his, you know, one of the nicest jets in the world. I think he's got $700 million net worth. And it's like, what on in what universe is that even okay? Like and that's that's like the ultimate sort of word of faith like prosperity gospel, you know, movement that's even probably even far way further

down that road than even the NAR, but still like very much steeped in it. Yeah. And you know, I've got no problem with a rich person. In fact, I've got some friends that are very wealthy.

No problem at all with it. That's, you know, there's a way to do business in the right way and to get ahead in life. But when you're doing it on the backs of poor people and you're getting rich off of poor people, that's problematic for me. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's not that being wealthy. I mean, they're plenty of wealthy people in the Bible too, you know, kings and people like that. But it's not that having It doesn't say having money is the root of all kinds of evil. It says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

So, and I'm with you, like, there's nothing wrong with doing well. But if you're a preacher and you're supposed to be preaching the gospel and you're grifting off of people, and you're making people poorer, and you're causing them to suffer because of your ridiculous nonsense that you're telling them to sow a seed into your ministry, and you're going to buy in a jet, or you're building a $200 million building and writing.

Give me a break. Yeah, that's ridiculous. It's funny because you triggered me. It's funny. You're talking, and I give you things that make you, you know, think outside of the box. Well, you say things that bring back all this programming that's in my head, and you're talking about rich people.

I'm sorry. No, this was a good one. You're talking about rich people in the Bible. Actually, I can't say this was a good one, but this is a good example, I should say. We heard over and over. They love to use the phrase from Matthew. What is it?

19, I think it is where it talks about. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go into the kingdom of heaven, and then pass the offering plates.

In other words, we do not want you to have money. So give it to us. We want to be the way we want to be rich. Make me, make me the camel that can't go through the eye of the needle. So it's like they're preaching that to the people, but they're the ones that are the camel.

We can't break and fit through the eye of the needle, like you know exactly that's the only but all my grandfather, not the one that was the pastor, the brand of tabernacle, but my other one, he was a humble, very simple man, and he is a humble, very simple man.

The pastor started harping on giving him money and ties. Every service was like using this verse and others and saying, you're not going to need the money for this world. The kingdom of heaven is almost at hand. They would use another phrase, the Bible says, for the rich to give the money to the poor, well, my grandfather confronted him finally and said, look man, if I give you all of my money, then I become the poor.

Are you going to give it back to me? And you can imagine the way the pastor reacted. They love getting it, but they don't love giving it back. No, they don't. No, they don't. And I'll tell you, it's, it really, I get triggered when I see pastors posting on Instagram, you know, they got their bathrooms renovated, they got the most beautiful granite cords, whatever, you know, get your granite bathroom, but don't put it on Instagram.

You know what I mean? Like, people are writing checks to your church, and they're trying to, they actually, these, people actually believe that when they donate to your church that they're doing something in faith and you're going to rip them off and buy a, you know, $2 million house or however many millions of dollars over here, that infuriates me.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. Every time I have a conversation with you, it's like, I don't know what we're going to end up. First we start talking about faith healing and then we go to Ponzi schemes and now we're talking about bathrooms.

I got something else for you. You got to hear this. I didn't tell you this yet. You can edit this out if you want, but along that same time, okay, when David was pulling his grift, I'm going to say it.

I remember Bill talking about the Iraqi currency denar. I remember Bill talking about that and other people at Bethel and they said, you need to invest. It's like a prophetic word. You need to invest in the Iraqi currency denar, okay?

Suppose it is the next best investment. It's going to go to wherever. Go to the moon and back. And of course it didn't. And you know, all these people, not donated, all these people invested in the Iraqi currency.

And it's just another example of, even though I don't think they were profiting off of it. You try to mix prophecy and finance. It doesn't go well. It's back to the fortune telling stuff.

Like it literally is fortune telling. You're trying to tell people to invest in a currency to make a fortune. So anyway, I'll just threw that in. It's kind of like a side context. And now my head's going back to the CIA direction.

Why did Bethel Church need money to be moving into Iraq? That's the real question for me. So I'll dig, but I'll never find it. I bet if anybody can find it, you can. Let me know what you find out.

Well, this was incredibly fun, man. When I found your name in the paper, I knew we had to get you back on. And then it sealed the deal today when I was talking to this couple and they mentioned you specifically.

They said that you gave them a lot of help. So thank you for doing this. Awesome. It's my pleasure. Happy to chat, John. Thank you. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.