Our Stories: Golden Dawn Tabernacle - With Robert Roa

Music 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 with me I have my very special guest, Robert Roa, former member of Golden Dawn. Robert is good to have you on, and I guess you're the second guest now I've had from Golden Dawn. I've spoken with many members of Golden Dawn, as you know, long time now, members who were escaping and trying to understand what was this mask called Golden Dawn, and it's kind of funny because we in the main sect of the cult, we considered many

of these other groups as cults, but we didn't know we were in one as well. So it's kind of like, I don't know how you say it's like the fool looking at the other fools, calling them fools, right? That's how I was. Forrest for the trees, right? You were in it deep, you had no idea that you were also in the same thing, happens to all of us. Yeah, and sadly, as I'm reading through the newspapers, I guess you are too, and the saying, it's went viral all over the United States, the exposure to this, and you read through it and it's kind of painful because you get a glimpse

into what you were, and I'm not the man I used to be. I can say that very clearly, but you read things like male supremacy cult in the headlines, and you're like, oh my gosh, man, that was me a few years ago. What was I thinking to be like this? You know, it's actually one of the biggest things I think that I struggle with is looking back and just thinking, wow, how could I not only buy into that, but so strongly try to live it, knowing that somewhere deep down, these just didn't feel right about it, and ultimately, thankfully, some of those questions are what led to many of us,

you know, walking away, but we were definitely part of that system. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, whenever I first escaped, I don't know if this is the same for you, but when I first escaped, I looked at all of the bad things that were happening, which I knew many, many things that even some people in the main sect had no clue were happening, and I looked at it and I thought, you know, I can't really blame that on the cult. There are bad people do bad things. There's that philosophy, right? And...

You can't attribute somebody who has an inward evil, an inside evil that makes them do evil things. However, when I read one of the other article headlines that hit me, I was ready made for abuse.

It wasn't for a long time after leaving that I started going through some of the things that we believed and comparing it to some of the things that I saw happening and realizing that some of those things, while yes, they may happen in other religions, it wasn't as frequently happening in other religions.

And also, there were a lot of checks and balances in the other religions that should it happen. There was the right protection and the victims, the blast radius was much smaller, if you will.

So, as I'm reading through this and I'm reading through the stories of what was going on in your sect, I'm just, I'm a little taken back that the abuse was so harsh there. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what it was like in Golden Dawn as compared to what it was for me.

Yeah, I mean, it's always hard to know what everyone else went through and one of the things that my fiancee and I do constantly is talk about, what did your church do this? And we'll mind it this.

But I think for sure, when I look back, the patriarchy is strong in the church. And not that it's not strong in other churches too, but they really take it to the full maximum.

I mean, they want almost like you have to follow this law of servitude to your husband and servitude to the pastor and servitude to God. You know, and sometimes it just felt like, was there anything left of you?

You know, I think Saturdays from like noon to four, probably the only free time that I had for myself, at least, because you're in constant, you know, ministry, you know, whether, so in my case, like my family is a lot of singing, a lot of musicians.

And so we were always at the church preparing for the next, you know, service, practicing with the band, practicing your song. So like, it just seemed like I never had downtime. And that's on purpose, because they don't want you to be able to question any of the things that are happening.

And I think that's the big thing is they keep you so busy with doing things like that that you don't even have a chance to decide, am I doing the right thing here? Is this right? And then, you know, questioning that is almost as bad as, you know, turning your back on God, just any kind of questioning whatsoever.

So I think a lot of us sure knew that things were off, but, you know, you're kept in such a position, there's no chance for you to even think about it. Yeah, I remember one of the churches that we attend.

growing up was somewhat benign. They weren't as extreme as some of the others. Many of the churches I grew up in, the people, all of them, the people were really good. But in some cases, the doctrine wasn't as extremist as some of the others that I attended. And I never will forget, I was in this small, humble, genuinely loving group of people. And those were one of the churches that entertained traveling ministers from the cult. And so they bring in guys from different parts of the sect, right? And what you're describing is a high demand group, the cult, especially when

they get more destructive, they're very high demand, or more that the effort they can put on the backs of the people, the more controlled they are. It's all part of a strategy, right? Well, this guy, it's traveling minister, came into the church I was in, and he apparently was of that same mindset. So where our church, we were used to going in and we'd sing a few songs, preacher might preach 45 minutes if that. And then everybody, they were exiting the building sometimes before noon, talking about where they were going to go get dinner. That's how it was.

Yep. Everybody's in fellowship. It's a grand time. Well, they invited this guy in. And good Lord, man, it was like one, 32 o'clock. He was still going. And everybody was just, they were getting angry. Everybody wanted their food. And I never will forget one of my best friends, dads. He stood up, he raised his watch in the air, and he started tapping it, and looking at the guy really angrily in the almost service. That's so funny. That kind of reminds me a little bit. I don't know if you guys had something similar that you guys did,

but we had something called the April meetings. Oh, yes. And the April meetings, you know, were the huge, like, just display of, look at our wealth almost, so to speak. Let us house everyone, you know, hundreds of people would be coming from other countries. And it was always like a competition, it seemed to see which pastor could just push it the longest, right? Which one, two and a half hours? That's what we saw. All right. Come on. People will sit through with three hour Avengers movie. We've got this, right? So, and it definitely always reminded me where I would

just be like, at some point, you know, you've lost the crowd. There's no way that you can keep someone engaged for that long, especially if you're just kind of going on and on about the same topic, you're never really changing your direction. But yeah, there were many times where, you know, Pastor Isaac at Golden Dawn would go three hours. No problem. And, you know, you were there for the ride. Absolutely. Now, one of the churches we attended, we went, I can't remember why we visited this church, but they were high demand, just like you're describing. And we went for the morning

service. And we thought we would stay for the evening service. And, you know, I with the crowd or whatever, I want to say that they broke at maybe 2pm and they only broke for about an hour and then they went back and kept going. It was like seven, eight o'clock.

So this was like all day long the service was and that's how it was whenever you're listening to those sermons all day long. Number one, the minister has trouble speaking that much. He has to kind of reserve his voice but also his thoughts aren't really, you can't prepare a sermon for all day. You're just rambling and a lot of them they get stuck in this repetition.

So they'll get a thought and keep saying the thought over and over and many of them don't really have the mental capacity to even do that. One of the ministers we heard he kept saying this phrase over and over again to try to prolong the duration of his service. It was like see what I mean, see what I mean, something like this. All of the kids were starting, what the guy next to me had a pencil and paper and he was keeping tally of the see what I mean to count how many there were and I can't, I can't remember the exact count it was in the hundreds but it was crazy because the

audience isn't really paying attention to the substance. They're really watching the repetitions and you know what, what can this guy do to drag the sermon on that long? Yeah, because at this point you're doing everything you can to keep yourself interested in what's happening. So you're latching on to pretty much anything which you know, you kind of mentioned something that I always that always stuck out with me with the church and parenting in general but like you mentioned, you know, the kids would probably start getting restless and crying and all of that stuff and it was always seen in our church as like a negative thing, right? Control your

child, you know, get them out of the service so you have all of these women, you know, huddled in this one room with like 30 loud screaming kids, how are they supposed to even understand what's going on, you know, I mean, and to expect a child a baby to be able to last more than an hour and a half, two hours to me is crazy too. Yeah, I think I've mentioned this but as part of my waking up and exiting this call, we were in one of these groups and they were holding some sort of a revival

but they had, you know, the children, if you're unruly, you have to take them out of the service, that's how it is and because they're going so long, the children are going to be unruly.

With this particular church had like a basement under the church and I had never been down there since they were modeled. So I took my child downstairs and well, man, this was amazing. They had this room for the men with recliners and leather couches, Legos over here, all kinds of toys everywhere and then this big, I think back and it was plasma TVs, but this big like 50 inch plasma TV with the service.

And so here I am, let my kid just wander around, do whatever he wanted. I'm in the recliner with my feet kicked back, watching the service, my hands propped up like this. And I'm sitting and thinking, this feels wrong, man, in the church, I'm here.

The pews are hard, you have to sit there for hours and your butt hurts. And I thought, well, I'm gonna let him stay on really for a while. And so. Oh, I mean, why would you?

Yeah, so I did. And the longer I sat there, it was odd to me because I had seen televangelists. And even in the cult, I had my parents had a TV off and on.

So I got to see this kind of stuff. But I would always listen to my mother and father just ridicule the televangelist because he was toying with the emotions, getting the people up into this hype.

And here I am sitting in my recliner, watching the message cult service on TV and watching them do the same exact things. And suddenly, it clicked like, this is no different, man. This is no different than what they're doing.

I always thought it was weird with the evangelist in general because it always felt like, well, especially with our pastor, because pastor Isaac was so controlling, it always felt like there was always a follow-up sermon to correct everything that this, you know, traveling evangelist would tell us.

And I always thought that was really weird too. Like, why does it need correction? Aren't you guys all coming from the same source? I mean, what's going on here? Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about Golden Dawn itself.

They, everybody's wanting to learn more. I'm getting, you know, news reporters obviously have came here and I'm getting all kinds of comments and feedback. They want to know more about what was it like Golden, being in Golden Dawn?

And you read the headlines of some of these newspapers are like cult within a cult. And so, especially people from the main sect, some people have shared with me videos of pastors of the main sect of the cult who are now condemning the cult within a cult, we're not like that.

Those guys are different and not recognizing that it's the cult within the cult, right? So tell us a little bit about what it was like to be in Golden Dawn. What were you as a believer in Jesus Christ?

What was your lifestyle like? Yeah, so I mean, you know, when I first got into the church, I was 12 when my parents moved from Indiana, or sorry, yeah, from Indiana to Tucson to be in this church.

And, you know, at first I was kind of struggling because up until that point, my mom had been through the door, the potter's house, like, you know, all of these, you know, non-denominational groups that are essentially trying to...

to do the same thing. And, you know, so when we found, you know, Golden Dawn, or Tabernacle of Manuel, is what it was at that time, because Golden Dawn hadn't been built yet, you know, I was already on the path to trying to be a good Christian, and so I really dived head in. I really just kind of assumed that my parents wouldn't take me somewhere, we shouldn't be. So I dove head in, and by that I mean, every day was filled with something.

I had very little downtime, constantly in service to the church, you know, music. And, but in addition, you know, it was like even when you weren't, you know, doing something specifically for the church, there was always some church member that needed your time, you know, for anything. So if you, you know, somebody was building something, and you weren't there as part of that building that, you know, whatever it is that they were doing, you know, you were being selfish, you know, you weren't being helpful. I was encouraged at 15 to drop out of high school so that I could help build Golden Dawn Tabernacle. And, you know, because

they wanted all the free labor, because what church doesn't love free labor, you know, and so my like 15 and 16th year were definitely spent digging, you know, trenches, learning how to build stuff, of course, but all, of course, in service to the church. For me, I think it was kind of easy at first because I really did buy in. And so I was just, I was trying to live it, you know, I did not mess around, you know, watching TV when you weren't supposed to. I didn't have friends outside of church, you know, I was very much by the book until

I would say I was probably around 18. And, you know, definitely was not the rebellious type. I was definitely thinking that we were all doing this together, trying to do the same thing to, you know, only find out, of course, that only a few of us were actually trying to live it. And the rest of us were just living within a system that allowed us to do what we wanted to do. I would say that, you know, the misogyny and the patriarchy in the church is 100% real. I didn't get to get into the phase of like dating or anything like that

or courting, sorry. So I didn't really get to see like the intricacies of relationships and what it would be like to be one in my own. But I knew that I didn't want to be that kind of husband. Yeah, the irony that I have found is that most of the people that I talked to who have escaped were hardcore devout followers. And they would consider some of the people they left behind is just kind of, I don't know what the turn is, wishy washy, you know, half believe, half don't, lukewarm believers. I was like you describe. I believed it hook line and sinker and it was very, very on fire for this

thing. And what's funny is in hindsight, I almost said this, but I was on fire for the message is just what I almost said. But in Christianity, you should be on fire for Jesus Christ in the message, you're on fire for the message. And one of the things that hit me after leaving was, what was the message? If this was the messenger for the age and there was a message, what was it? Yep. And I started shortly before we made our escape. I just started asking that question to a few people. What was the message? What was, what was

he bringing? And you'd ask one guy and you'd get one answer, ask another one, it's another answer. No matter who you ask, some people would go to the serpent seed doctrine, which, you know, is based off of white supremacy. They say, that was the message. And I would say, well, why? Man, if that was to bring our hearts, hearts of the fathers back to God, how did that, how did that help? What did that do? And it seems more like that was a separation of the colors of skin, you know, what, what was this, right? So I began to understand

that we, we were, you know, believers in the message more than Jesus Christ. And the reason I asked the question, the way that I did earlier, I said, as a believer in Jesus Christ, what was it like in Golden Dawn? As a believer in Jesus Christ, your faith and your foundation is in Jesus Christ. But whenever you would go talk to another Christian who's also placing their faith in Jesus Christ, it wasn't Jesus that you talked about to them, you'd say, hey, did you know that God sent a prophet? So I'm curious for, for your sec, what was it like

when you were witnessing to other people or did you get the chance to? Were they talking about Jesus or were they talking about Brannum or something else? That is a great thing that I glad you brought up because one of the things that at least when I was going, proselytizing is not a thing that Golden Dawn does. Golden Dawn truly believes in the predestination. If you are meant to find us, you'll find us. But, you know, there was no proselysation of any kind, you know, we weren't out there preaching. In fact, we were almost kind of discouraged, you know, to not talk

about it, which only leads me to believe it's because they knew how crazy it was. And that people would tell us, hey, there's something wrong, you know, with what you guys believe in. So, you know, we didn't really do that, but when we did or somebody asked like, hey, you know, what do you believe? Because eventually they get curious.

because we don't talk to anybody, it would definitely be about William Brannum, 100% about William Brannum, and all of the miracles that he allegedly performed. And Jesus was certainly secondary within that group, for sure.

And to further cast light, one thing that I did want to mention when you asked earlier about what was it like living in Golden Dawn as a follower of Jesus, I think it's that you were never, ever good enough.

You could live 100% of your days in service to Jesus. And with predestination, it wouldn't even matter, because if you were his, you were, and if you weren't, it wouldn't matter how much you did.

So like the whole time, you just thought, no matter what I do, I'm still going to hell. No matter what I do, I'm still going to burn. And that's kind of the feeling that you have in Golden Dawn.

There is no security in Jesus. There is insecurity in Jesus in Golden Dawn, for sure. Yeah, that was another feeling that I had whenever, right before leaving, as you can probably tell, I'm a musician, songwriter.

I do all the background tracks on the podcast and the videos I do all the music. As a songwriter, I would get these songs that came to me daily. Some of them I'd write down, some of them I'd just sing in the shower, you know, and take them later.

But one of the, some of them were recurring because they were really deeply troubling to me. One of the songs that hit me right before I left was Jesus did not come to save the saved.

He came to save the lost. And this song just kept coming through my head. And as of the words are forming, as I'm scrubbing in the shower or whatever, I really stop to think about it because you would go here, these ministers just blast and condemn the rest of the world, the rest of the Christians.

All, you know, basically all of Christianity was condemned as what they would call cannon fodder when you're in these cults, whether you're in the cult within the cult or you're in the main sect, whatever you're in, they condemn the other Christians.

And yet not a single one of them goes out to reach the other Christians. And this thought just began to plague my mind. Why, why do they so strongly condemn the other Christians and not go try to help save them?

What good does that do to sit there and ridicule them Sunday after Sunday after Sunday? And so the song came to me and I'm, you know, going through forming my opinion on it through the music.

And I came to realize that it was beyond even that. They also condemned the people in the churches. And I got to thinking about you mentioned the misogyny. I can't tell you how many sermons that I heard where the minister is just- this blasting women who cut their hair or wear makeup or have, you know, putting on pants or whatever, yet not a single woman in the congregation.

And I knew them in some of these churches. None of them would have ever thought about doing it. So why are they blasting it to these people and not telling the rest of the world?

And I'll never forget this conversation I had with one of these ministers. I was talking about, you know, how, you know, if we wanna reach the lost, we have to actually go reach the lost.

And the response was something to the effect that God has already sent a prophet. The prophet came and condemned the rest of the world to hell. There's really nothing we can do because we're the predestinated seed.

Exactly. And then I got to, you know, I'm a logical person. So I got to thinking of the logical flaw in this. Why were we preaching in the first place? And why are we preaching condemnation if they've already been condemned?

None of this whole thing made any sense to me. Yeah, I mean, it's really the big flaw slash plot hole, you know, in the whole thing, right? Like predestination has to be some of the laziest writing,

you know, for a story. Like, hey, you're in or you're out even before you were born. So it doesn't really matter how much you do. But just in case, let's make sure that you're in service to us 24, seven for the rest of your life, even if you're 100% believer.

And I think that's the thing that I think many of us really just hurts your soul when you think about the fact that you know in your heart that you were living such a hard life because you thought it was the life you were supposed to live.

Following all these rules, never having fun, you know, really just constantly in service to God. And even then, no matter what you did or how much of it you did, it didn't matter because predestination was there.

And so, yeah, yeah, crazy stuff. Yeah, and I have even still today after leaving the cult, I have some Christian friends who believe very strongly in predestination. And the logic loops that my head has to go through for this, I can't do anymore.

So there are certain things that I just kind of, you know, I'm not saying that I've discredit fully, but that's not for me. And so as I'm talking to the friends who believe in predestination, these are the same people that try very, very hard to reach the lost and try to force their religion upon them.

And my question is always, well, what good does that do if they're saved or not saved, right? It's very much like, I don't know if there's this way for your sect of the message, but funerals was this rare oddity because the guy who's dying can live whatever life he wants.

And the minister is going to say, if the parents are in the cult. The minister is gonna say, this guy made it to heaven. And he could have not believed a stitch of the message and gone party, drank, smoked, you know, watch movies, television, whatever he wanted.

Cause I know some of the people who did this. Oh man. And then when they died, they were revered as a saint. And I was like, man, death is like this free ticket to heaven.

All you gotta do is die. And it doesn't matter how you lift, you go to heaven. That's predestination, brother. Yep. Yeah, I mean, predestination is definitely like you said. It is that, it's that rabbit hole that some mental gymnastics you have to put yourself through to even try to conceptualize what it is.

It's just wild. But I think that's the other thing too, is part of the disillusioning for many of us is that we were really trying to live that life, to turn around to see that there were people who weren't even trying at all.

They were literally just there for what, I don't know what motivated them to be there, to be yelled at every weekend, to go do the very thing they're being yelled at for. Whereas I'm being yelled at and I didn't even do that thing.

And I said, you'll see, I'm like, why are you? It's something else, man. And so let's talk about that a bit. The things that they were harping against that you couldn't go do. So here's what I've learned.

You had the main core sect of the message, which was based on Christian fundamentalism. And what happened was, if you know the history, the latter reign revival happened, there's this big, there's this big means to draw everybody out of the denominational churches into this movement.

And then the movement began to spin off cults. And so everybody who did have freedoms, all the freedoms were taken away when they got in here. When the cults happened, the cults became more destructive.

And one of the consequences of a destructive cult is the rules get greater and greater the more destructive it gets. So you had the main core sect of the message and we had far more rules and ridiculous rules.

I've got a list, if you go to my website and just type in rules in the search bar, you can see everything from men weren't allowed to wear a blue suede shoes to women were scolded for using a washing machine.

That's how weird this was. But then what happened was, when William Brandham died, many of the core leaders were trying to overcome this predestinated thought because they had to acquire rapturing faith because the prophet's gone, now we did not have sufficient faith to rapture ourselves with him.

How do we get into that stage of life? And so what they do is, because they learned from the best, they learned from Brandham that you save yourself by these rules, they would add more rules and more rules and try to save ourselves in the end, you can't do it.

because that's the opposite of the gospel, right? So the rules got very heavy. What were some of the rules that your sect had? Oh my gosh, really. You know, I think we had all the same general appearance rules, you know, regarding men and women.

But I think it was really more like the shaming, so okay, so when I left, when I left, you know, everybody has the two Sunday, you know, sermons and then the one Wednesday. Then when they started adding prayer meetings, and these prayer meetings kind of became mandatory, they would say they weren't, but if you were in any kind of, I don't know, I guess, like church member facing role, like a musician or something like that, you had to be there.

And that, remember when I told you the Saturdays were kind of the only day that I really had to myself, I think having to go to church literally every single day from seven to nine for prayer meeting at that time was insane.

I mean, the level of praying that I did would, I think, make other people think we were insane, you know, just that. But that, and then, like I said, you know, because I left at 19, you know, there was a lot of the rules that really apply towards like adults and couples and things like that.

I didn't get to experience those things, and because I was such a rule follower, you know, for the most part, I really didn't think that there were any rules at that time that were crazy, but the TV one was always a strange one to me, because the only reason is that the pastor is literally telling us what he saw on the TV.

But we couldn't watch it because I don't know. But for some reason, he's strong enough for whatever spirit is there to jump on him, you know, that would jump on us, you know, from that thing.

But that was always weird, you know, the hypocrisy for me was always hard or the double standard, I would say, you know, was always hard. And I think I saw that more for sure, with the men, where the men could essentially, you know, do whatever they wanted, but women were certainly scolded, you know, every time.

I mean, I'm really sorry. I'm trying to think back to, you know, anything that was crazy from my understanding, Golden Dawn has become increasingly more, you know, more increasingly tight and more world-based, but they really were legalistic.

When you really think of like, when they would put people up for, you know, putting them up, if I'm under the blood, it was like he was a prosecutor, you know, telling you every single reason why this person should go to jail, flash hell, and they were never there to...

and themselves. So, like, how is this, how is this legit? So I always thought the putting out from under the blood thing was wild because it was ceremonial. It was like communicated in such a way where it was very final.

You would always, I would always feel terrible for the, for the people that were having to cut off family, you know, so if they were the ones who were left behind, to, to, to know that they could not be sad or mourn and sadness about it, I thought was also really weird because, and the same thing in death, like, if you cried at a funeral, like, oh my gosh, that that was like, you're not supposed to feel sad.

They're in heaven now, right? And it's like, yeah, but I still, I still feel that loss, but I always thought those things to me were weird. It wasn't so much the rules as like the, what was considered holy and righteous in your, in your emotions and in your attitude towards these things.

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On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I'm actually glad that you answered like you did because it sounds like you left before it got progressively more destructive, right?

The irony is what you describe describes the main sect whenever I left it, and I don't know. It could be more destructive now. I actually don't pay that much attention to it, but what happens within each of these sects, because it's based on legalism, and they realize that they can't save themselves by the rules that they have, so let's add more rules, add more rules.

What I left isn't the same cult that it is today. In fact, I want to say it was just two years after I left, one of the rules was regarding the women's clothing. Most of the appearance rules are targeting the women, right?

Well, whenever I left the cult, the women could have a dress as long as it covered the knee. You know, part of the calf could show or whatever, but it had to cover the knee.

Well, not long after I left, I want to say... It was just maybe two years after I left the cult. They had posted on this website, this FAQ of how women are, how, quote, holy women are supposed to dress.

And it was all the way down because they had to cover the ankles now. How did that change, man? And why did that change? And I got to thinking about the dress styles that existed when I was there.

With some of the way the dresses kind of curve in at the bottom, right? If you went all the ankle, these women would trip and fall. So how did that work? And I asked somebody in one of the support groups and they said, well, when it goes down that far, you just have to cut the back of it.

And that way it can move with you, but it still covers your ankles, right? Well, that was called, whenever I was on the cult, it was called a scandal skirt if you had a slit in the back.

So now you have rules that are counterproductive to the new rules and vice versa. The whole thing, none of it makes any sense. But what you described captures exactly what I'm trying to show with the golden dawn.

The main sect could very well spend off into this because the rules change over time. And what we're seeing now is not what the cult was when you left it. Yeah, I mean, I think that speaks to goalpost moving, right?

You can keep people coming back. It's like what we're seeing right now in medicine and healthcare. If we cure the disease, you don't need us anymore, right? You don't need the doctor anymore. Same thing applies to the religion.

If you are saved and you have salvation, what do you need them for anymore? But if you keep moving the goalpost and you keep making it so that it's impossible to ever achieve, hey, you've got lifelong members in a system that they don't even realize they're trapped in that keeps moving the thing away from them.

And they're just like, well, I guess I just got to try harder. And that's the whole thing, right? Absolutely. In sales, I briefly had some work that I did that targeted sales. One of the thing, one of the philosophies is you want to find something that nobody knows that they need, once they have it, they have to continue having it.

They have to have more of it. And then sell them on the idea that you're the only person that has it. And if you think of the monetization of the cult, now the finances of the cult, that's really what they've said.

They William Brannum had the answer. He's the only one that allegedly had this answer. And so he could sell it to the crowds and the crowds came by the 10,000s. Well, when he died, now you've got all of these ministers especially in the Brannum cults, they claim that they have the only item for sale.

That is the ability to be saved through Brannum's messages because they're the perfect interpreter of his messages, right? And so it sets up in his financial scam. One of the headlines that hit the newspapers was it's all about the money and You know on the on the front they have the weird plane that Some some guys bought and we and Brandon was supposed to resurrect and go in this plane Yeah, the news are gonna see those kind of things is absolutely absurd and ridiculous And so that's what's gonna make the headlines But the substance of what they're saying I don't know that people in the cult really grasp it

It is such a financial scheme that they've set up because you can't go to any other Christian church and find your salvation Even though they have the same exact Bible, right and so then Anybody who has the ability to critically think about what's happening?

So church a has a preacher who's preaching directly from the Bible the reading Letter for letter word for word the Bible, right and that's Christianity Well now this cult they have the answer that they can sell you and that answer is I know what the prophets said And I know it better than all the other churches in the message come here. Don't go to those other churches That's how they spin this right come here give me your ties because I have the best answer and so what they're doing they're selling Receiving the prophets through their tithes and offerings to the people and the people are being sold this bill of goods that they're calling

Christianity we have the pure Christianity But if the pure were to be based on the Bible would not the other church that I mentioned that preaches Directly from reading the Bible Wouldn't that be the purest form of Christianity and that's one of the logical flaws that hit me Yeah, I mean I always thought it was really strange that you know We'd have these April meetings and sometimes you know like the Sierra Vista Church would come and you know These are closer churches, you know from within the you know the Tucson area and You know they would come and preach and and all that good stuff, but don't you dare ever think about going on a Wednesday or a Sunday

To one of their services and not appear at yours. Oh my goodness. I mean I Never understood how we could believe the same thing and yet somehow you tell us they're they're wrong or they're bad yet You have them here on your pulpit preaching Clearly what was probably an approved, you know You know sermon, but like I never understood that until until I got out and realized oh man. That is control That's just another element of control and all of your money should be coming here not to a different church and that sets me up to the

The next question and this may be before your time, but hopefully you know something about it One of one of the news reports is that the church acts as a bank and This one caught my eye because I'll be honest with you. I've seen a variety of of the message churches.

Some of them, like I said, are quite benign. You go to them and you think this is a normal Pentecostal church, preaching Jesus. In fact, some of them actually preach the gospel, believe it or not, even though it's, it's the Pentecostal variation of the gospel.

But on the other side, you have ministers who also do this, who preach, some of them preach the gospel, but they have these financial schemes. And some of the financial schemes are very, very dirty.

I know I can, I'm seeing the faces of the men who do this, but especially the widows. They will try every means possible to get to the money that that widow has, sometimes over the family member.

And some of them, there's court battles. If you go, if you know who to look for, you can go look it up. These ministers have devious schemes, which again, it's counterproductive to the gospel.

One of the gospel, if you read the New Testament, it's specifically telling you to take care of the widows. Well, these guys are robbing them blind, right? Some of them, like is advertised in the newspaper here.

Some of them have banks set up. There's all kinds of weird stuff. What do you know about the finances in Golden Dawn? You know, I don't know a whole lot, but I do know that, you know, at least with my parents from what I saw with my parents, like my dad was like, you know, a machinist flash, you know, becoming an engineer, you know, making parts for missiles and things like that.

And my mom, who obviously doesn't work anymore, my dad, before we moved to Tucson, was making a good chunk of money back in the 80s, you know, certainly enough to take care of us.

But when we moved to Tucson, it was definitely a different story with just my dad working. And you know, we got by for sure, but there was not a lot of money. But just, I just remember the offering going by many times until we need, until we reach a specific mark.

And sometimes that could be a little intense because everybody's trying to pull out that last dollar, but they're like, man, they're gonna ask for more. So I just got to make it seem like I have this much.

But later on, my parents ended up building a house. And I was always curious how that could have come because I can tell you for sure. Also, I think that the church, at least when I was there was definitely not against you forsaking all of your other finances as long as you're donating to the church and to the point where my parents left of a purchased home vehicles, they left all kinds of stuff.

When we got to Tucson, that means my parents credit was probably trash because they didn't sell the home. They just walked away from it. who were renting for quite a while, because you couldn't have the credit for mortgage or anything like that.

And then, bam, all of a sudden, they have a home that they built, maybe a year or two after I left, and I just never understood how that was possible based on the financial picture that I left.

And so while I'm not saying that's 100% evidence that that happened with my parents, it is suspect for sure. Yeah, for somebody who's a researcher, it's a good target to begin with, because I came across similar things that I had noticed all along growing up in the cold.

Many of them are now on the website, and you can type in the government documents, et cetera. You can find them. And when you see something that's happening that I'll just say is abnormal, it's a good cause for concern, because if you go to normal churches, you don't see this kind of thing.

And why is that? If they, if their version of the gospel is flawed, why are all the flaws on the message side, right? You know, why not just go to a normal church? And what's funny is, I want to say it was just last week, I don't know if it's been published yet or not when this podcast comes out, but the government was actually monitoring William Brandham's campaign manager, one of them, Baron William T. Ferry von Blumberg, because things were not as it seemed.

This guy who is working with all of the elite Christian evangelists in the United States, full gospel businessman, voice of healing, he was Brandham's campaign manager, so all of the laterane guys were under this umbrella.

Well, this guy, it wasn't as he seemed. He would go overseas and he was apparently getting into a lot of, I'll just say it like this because we're, this is going YouTube and it'll be censored.

There were some sexual activities that weren't on, that weren't quite legal in the United States. I'll say it like that. And so they got to thinking, why is it that this guy who's in bed with all the Christian elite is going and having these sexual activities sometimes, with the men who's in the United States.

How is this a Christian minister? And so if you go to the FBI's archives, you can now type in his name and you can see the investigations trying to determine, is he a foreign operative?

Because he was working with the Germans, right? He was the adopted cousin of Warner von Blumberg, Hitler's minister of defense. So was he a spy? What was he? And the conclusion was that he wasn't a Christian, but he was doing all of this work with Christians so they confronted him.

And right there in the government document, his response, It's to the FBI, while working as a brand new campaign manager, is that this operation that I'm running is not a Christian operation. Yep. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Yeah. It's just, it's the method of delivery that they're using to get money. That's it's their, their MO, you know, that's all it is. Which sets me up to the next question that I'm going to ask you, right?

So he was operating outside of the law, this Warner von Blumberg, well, one of the other strange things that I find among all of these groups is that whenever something happens that concerns the law, especially in the more destructive cults, you find that they tell you do not go to the law because Satan controls the government.

That was one of the shocking things that hit the newspaper and the, the big headlines read, we do not go to the law. And yep. That was, that was a doctrine there, but that was not limited to Golden Dawn.

I have been in other churches that it was the same exact way that's, that's man's rules. We do not follow man's rules. So if this man in our church is praying upon your daughter in our church, don't go to the law, go to me, the pastor, and I'll handle it.

I've seen that time and time again. Oh yeah. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I think that was definitely a cultural thing, you know, the, in fact, you know, I think one of the things that really struck me as odd was, you know, when, and you know, not trying to get political, but when, you know, when the whole Trump thing came up, I was very surprised that many churches got behind him as a spiritual person or leader.

And I was like, you know, how was that, how is that possible? I don't, my, the church that I left would have said, well, he either way, he's part of the government. So he can't be a good person either way.

But yeah, I definitely saw many things that the law should have been brought into, but they weren't, you know, was handled in the church, but I think the, the most important thing that I saw and, you know, I don't have 100% facts on everything, but I do know that many of the, you know, it's like a thing to own your own business in, in the, in the message, right?

Like being, you know, be a contractor, be a landscaper, be whatever, but own your business. And the dealings that I saw in certain times where I, I could tell that, you know, people weren't being paid what they should be, you know, taking advantage, I was take, I remember I went to work for someone's landscaping company for like three days because they just couldn't figure out what would work for me because I work with my mind.

out of physical labor kind of person I can, but that's not really like what I prefer to do. But in the message, that's like not a good thing. They want you to do one of these jobs that has you busy with your hands so that your mind, you know, cannot be busy.

And so I worked for three days and when I realized like this is not for me, I don't like it. You know, I went to the, I can't remember the guy who owned that business and I told him, hey, I'm not, I don't think this is right for me.

I'm going to go ahead and quit. You know, the usual thing is you get a check, you know, you still get a check for whatever time you worked, never got it. And when I asked about it multiple times, like, you know, it was not going to happen.

And of course, who am I going to go to? The labor, you know, labor. They're not going to do anything, right? And so that to me at least tells me the character of the people there that are doing those things.

I've heard of those kinds of things multiple times, taking jobs on and then, you know, not doing the work right, having taken the money, but then not completing the job, doing that to like members of the church, shady dealings with those like business owners, with people in the church.

And then what can you say? Because they're a deacon or they're a trustee. Anything you say can't possibly be true, saw many of those things happen over the course of my time there for sure.

Oh, yeah. When I moved here, I was a IT consultant that worked at the time, I worked with members of the cult as part of my clientele. And when I moved here, it was quite a different breed of members of the cult.

I'll just say it like that. And I, two of the more elite members of the cult were my clients. And they contracted this piece of software for me. They wrote out a down payment check for it and told me what they wanted.

So I started building it. I was about a month in and they were doing exactly what you're describing. They wanted to pile on more and more features of the software, not pay me for it.

Hey, we gave you the initial check. And I could, I could tell very quickly what this was boiling out to was the down payment, which was only like 10%. I could tell that they were trying to whittle the overall payment down to the down payment and then triple the features, quadruple the features.

And so I took them both out to put, I said, I want to meet you at Penaer Bread. We both went to Penaer Bread, me and the two owners and I set them down and I slid the check they wrote for the down payment over to them.

They looked down and said, what's this? I thought you were to cash this months ago. I said, well, I held it. And I just want to know, this is the check that you gave me for the down payment for this work and they looked at it and what's this for?

I grabbed it back. picked it up in front of him, let's let it back and said, we're done. And that was the last time I ever did business with anybody who was in the cult because exactly like you said, they will try to rob you blind.

But that, you know, some of these things you find in, in other religions, you're going to find people who are scoundrels and people who are not. So I can't really say that was 100% the cult, but I could say that because of their status in the cult, they thought that they could make me subservient.

And no, man, you're not going to do this to me. Yeah, I also think it was just weird that you know you're doing something shady. You know, you're, you know, you're going to stiff this person for whatever the bill is. And you can, and you can pray the next day, guilt free.

You can live your life guilt free. Me, that would have tore me up inside in the church like because I really believed it. I just think that these people found a system that allows them to pray on people. And because that system puts safe guards in place, like don't go to the police, man, you've got free reign to do whatever you want without getting caught.

Well, my favorite of all of the articles that was published is this one, the finding freedom. Yeah, because it really captures, you know, the work we do with the support groups and many of the people that have worked on one-on-one, the difference between what their life is after leaving versus while they're in it, it's a night and day difference. And maybe it'd be good if we ended this by having you say, what would you tell to somebody who's in the cult or thinking about leaving?

What would you say as a comparison between what it's like outside of the cult versus what it's like inside? Yeah, I think the main thing and for me is your curiosity is not a bad thing.

It is, it is what makes us humans as who we are. And I think that when you continue to ask questions, the more you continue to ask questions and the more insecure the person or the group is of the questions you ask, the more likely it is that they're hiding something because someone who's standing on firm ground and knows that they're doing the right thing and is doing right by people would never need to defend themselves the way the church feels they need to defend themselves.

So I would say if you want answers, if you're looking for answers, you may not get them even when you leave, but you definitely won't get ridiculed for asking the questions. And I think that's important because so many of us had questions that we never got answers to or even were listened to because they were just dismissed.

And I think that, you know, when you start to realize that there's so much information now, there to help you and all the resources that we have today, oh my goodness, if we had the resources today that we would have had, you know, when I left, you know, 27 years ago, I think I would be further along, you know, I think of my friend Joanne Malena, who's a very recent person who left the church, who has made such huge changes in her life already by just being fearless and taking the reins, and I know that's not for everyone,

not everyone can just come out and be fearless and take those reins, but I think that when you start to realize that you have some control of your life and that you can choose the path that you want to take without anyone telling you whether it's right or wrong, that that is the best place to be, you know, I live my life the way that I feel I should live it.

I'm not a believer anymore, but that doesn't change the fact that I am living how I am choosing to live, you know, within the bounds of law and all that good stuff, but that, you know, your own life and journey is yours for the taking, it's yours for the making, and no one else can tell you what that path should be, but I think that, you know, as your group, you know, in the Facebook groups and things like that, I think that it's nice to see such a blend of people in various stages of leaving, and sometimes that can be really

tough and hard because the people who have been out for a long time have had time for all that stuff to kind of get out of your body and for you to deal with it, and other people are still dealing with it and figuring out what their path is, but I think the main thing that we can all do for each other is not judge, you know, where we're coming from because I think it is the thing that we left was the judgment, and so I would say, you know, live your life the way you want to, and you will find happiness when you really finally just

be yourself, and I think that's the thing that the, you know, at least the message and golden down tabernacles stripped you of yourself, specifically so that they could break you down and keep you down and never, you know, let you think that you're good enough, but you are, and, you know, you just got to find your path through this life, and you will find happiness if you are true to yourself.

Awesome. That's very good advice. Thank you so much for doing this, and thank you for sharing all this information. Some of the things I knew, some things I didn't, some very glad that you came on to do this.

Yeah, thanks, John. I really appreciate you having me on Granted. You know, it always goes based on feeling, so you could ask me those same questions tomorrow and I might have different answers, just based on what, you know, what comes to mind, and as I uncover things, but I really appreciate you and the medium that you have here for people to be able to tell their stories.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out. But on the web, you can find us at William-Branum.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 Audible.