Overcoming Cult Trauma: With Adam and Melissa Short

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guests, Adam and Melissa Short. Adam, Melissa, it's so good to have you on here. I've wanted to have Melissa on for a while now and I'm glad she finally did. Adam and I have been talking about all things Bethel and Morningstar and IHOPKC and today we have some very special news from both Adam and Melissa and Adam will just let you hand it over to you and let you describe what we're going to

talk about today. Awesome. Thanks, John. Always a pleasure. Appreciate the opportunity and the space to talk to you and share what we're up to kind of on our side of the world and this has been for those that haven't seen or don't follow us. We don't really have a big following but we've been working on and talking about doing a podcast for a long time. I don't remember how long it's been that we've been talking about it but we officially launched our podcast back in December 2024 and we've released our first episode and so we're super excited about that. It's going to be

about a lot of things but primarily centered around spiritual abuse, toxic faith, high control groups, trauma and a lot of it is going to also be centered around our own experience and stories and a lot of the stuff we've learned kind of the hard way and our our goal is really to help as many people as possible who either are in one of those groups or are in the process of extricating or maybe you know maybe they're not asking questions yet and they want to ask questions they just don't know how to start kind of peeling those layers back so we're just excited to kind of unpack. We've got a

lot to talk about a lot a lot a lot of topics that probably won't fit in all the nice little buckets but we're super excited and this is something that's been like I said a long time coming so I need you want to add change or delete anything about that.

No I yeah I think I agree with everything you said and just we're excited to do this yeah it has been probably about a year we were just talking about it and finally decided it was time and so which is perfect timing, as we can see, the landscape of all the things that are coming out into the open, I think it's really good timing to talk about these things even more now than ever.

Awesome, well you mentioned fitting things into buckets and I don't know if you can't already tell from my podcast, but I gave up a long time ago on trying to fit things into the bucket.

I've got podcasts for all kinds of variety of different subjects, so I think it'll work out well. You'll find people will be receptive. Melissa, I'm probably going to put you on the spot a lot on this podcast because we know a lot of Adam's backstory, but I want to hear more about your backstory.

What brings you into this arena of talking about the NAR and the spiritual abuse? Yeah, I think really kind of our own, I use the word trauma and pain that it's caused and the damage to our own faith journey and just kind of navigating through that the past, well it's almost 14 years this year.

And so I think just our own process is what brought us here and in our own healing too. I know for me personally, I've kind of got into a place in my journey where I've been really hesitant to want to talk about it, like do I have to share this?

Is this the right thing to do kind of wrestling through all those parts of sharing your story? And for me, it's been kind of coming to a place where I know that this is the path forward that I need to share and talk about these things for my own healing personally to move forward in this.

And I just feel like it will be helpful for others. If I can spare others some of the heartbreak or give voice to some of the things they might be experiencing but maybe don't have words for, I just, I find that.

I feel like that would be helpful for some. Yeah, I'm certain it will be. There's a lot of people who are hurting right now as you probably have been able to tell. I started, a lot of people don't know this and I can talk about it now, I couldn't back then but I did, I've done a podcast and I've done a blog for years.

I started purely by accident. I started my blog in 2012 and it really started as just, I think I told this to Adam. I know I've told it publicly somewhere. I can't remember but I have a somewhat of a bad memory due to the fact that I have so many things that I have to remember and so I make myself notes and I use note-taking tools and when my blog started it really wasn't even a blog.

I was just trying to prove that this false cult that I was in was true and I had some notes that I put up on, I'm a IT guy so I just threw it up on a website that I had where I could pull it up on my phone back before I had an iPhone or anything like this and so it literally just started as me asking.

a few questions and I threw up on a little domain and the intent was to go to my grandfather and ask the questions and the cult discovered it before I could even ask my grandfather.

So they assumed falsely that the whole thing was for me to go explosive, which ironically it did happen, but it all started as a pure accident. And then it grew from there into blogs, etc.

But other than the support groups, I really didn't do much with the victims until last year I began doing every Friday in our stories, talking through what people were experiencing. The reason that started is because there was a cult that went really destructive, a random cult sacked in Phoenix, and I did have the newspapers over here, I don't right now.

But the newspaper reporter, investigative reporter, spent an entire year undercover working with the random cults trying to learn what it was, brannemism. So they were going and attending churches, but I don't know how many, you know, like 20 churches they attended, spent time with me, spent time with some of the other researchers, and really did their homework.

Well, during the course of this, they realized that this was a very destructive cult, and they wanted to have some of the victims speak out. And that's how my Friday thing actually started. It really started just for brannemism.

But when people started talking brannemism, all of these other cult people were starting to hear similar things in what they said with their religion. So then that developed into now IHOP KC, all of the people who heard the brannem quotes are like, wait a minute, IHOP KC sounds like brannemism 2.0, and so then they came.

So this grew into this great big thing by pure accident, and if you take a step back to my entire history, the whole thing was accident. But there is such an outcry of victims who are being manipulated and suddenly coming to the realization that what they are in was false, and they need voices to speak.

There's not enough of me to go around. So having somebody like you to launch a podcast is a great help. Thanks for what you do too. We really appreciate it. Yes, I'll echo that.

It's like I've said before, John, your content, your research, your interactions with so many other people. This provides such a cross-section of experience, honestly, of people that have had backgrounds in different organizations but have a lot of common threads, and it's exactly what you said.

I had no idea until late last year, I think it was when I had come across a lot of your research around where... The roots of IOPKC theology actually originated like it was mind-blowing because for me and my personal story You know, it's it's kind of like You know, I'm a millennial so I got kind of plopped into the middle of a multi-decade story that had predated my birth like back to the 1940s and even probably earlier than that and And then you here you are as a teenager you get dropped into this movement and you have no idea that so much stuff has been recycled reused and

repackaged and whatever else and then You know, here you are 20 some years later and you're like, oh my gosh. They've been pitching this stuff to people literally probably a hundred plus years and so it just reminds me we've talked about this too There's nothing new under the sun. Yeah, the version of the ecclesiasties and it really is it's like rinse and repeat and Each time a new scandal hits we've had several new ones here over the past couple months It is almost invariably the same playbook every time It is and if you go backwards even further than the hundred years you'll find it just repeats itself

Well as far back as I can go it has repeated itself and You know, it's it's kind of funny because when I first began this journey I was fully Investigating all of this based solely upon the doctrine and When you compare the doctrine of the original group and then the splinter group the doctrines sometimes get really different And so you mistakenly think well, this is a different thing that they've started But when you begin to look at what they've done architecturally just from the the design of The philosophy and the theology of the cult structure

You begin to recognize that every splinter group that patterns itself after this They're exactly the same if you can look beyond the doctrine They set up the same hierarchy. They set up the same structure a lot of times a group will spin off and they won't have a central figure But they have the framework that enables a central figure so over time after they spin off Suddenly, there's a central figure and then there's this pyramid of authoritarian control and I've learned to look beyond the doctrine and You and I've had this conversation a few times that I'm over the phone

But it gets to where you you can start to see it after you look at the patterns and Whenever you link some of the patterns to individuals that are well respected and I'm not going to give names right now, but You get the sudden outcry because that is their new central figure and they're all surrounding themselves around the Ideology of this person not realizing that they're worshiping the man as much as they are worshipping the God The level of destruction may not have met, you know, what we see with iHOP KC or branemism, but the

The architecture for creating the destructive cult is there and that just it blows my mind to think how many times this has spun off So as as we go forward with this we're gonna find all kinds of new faces and new new groups new sects new leaders etc Yeah, 100% and I'm excited because just in the past year or so and Finding the courage to speak out for the first time ever publicly and and my journey has been you know primarily centered around Twitter and X and Trying to advocate for people that are survivors and also hold accountable

church leaders Until they block you which you know that's happened too but like the whole Journey for me has just been I wanted to connect with people and I have and it's been so that's actually been very life-giving To connect with people some of whom I had not Talked to in 20 years like there are a couple people I'm thinking of and some like 10 years and and so and and you realize the Bore you talk about it the bore people are in that boat like they are in their process of asking questions They're confronting their own pain

Disappointment grief and loss loss of their community loss of financial Provision because they walk away from a salary position at a church or ministry or Or simply they're blacklisted and there's so much fallout that happens and so many layers and levels whether it's financial spiritual emotional family professional There's so many different You know levels of fallout and areas of fallout and to reconnect with those people has been very life-giving and It's unfortunate that that stuff had to happen in order for you to like come full circle reconnect with those people and then make new connections with others

But I think one one of the things we're discovering is there are a lot of people a ton of people and I know Melissa you're Seeing that too and your work You know people are contacting you. You're in forums and

Forgot what you call it groups close groups, especially every Bethel and there are a lot of people like Own various levels and stages of their journey trying to figure out what has happened like what is actually going on? What am I?

What am I going to do about this? How can I talk and people are scared to talk like and but You see the door crack open just a little bit and you realize oh my gosh there are all these other people out there People who we knew or some who we didn't know who are in the same boat or similar boat and so I'm excited I did to connect with more of those people and just offer our two cents of what we've learned and hopefully help.

I mean, that's really the goal is help people, hold church leaders accountable and expose and like advocate for victims and survivors. So I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that, honey on, like what you're doing because you work a lot with women and traveling.

Yeah. Yeah. And I forgot to mention this. I met trauma recovery coach in a certified trauma support specialist, so a mental health kind of coach practitioner. And so I work with trauma specifically. And I just want to jump back to something you said, John, about like, and I probably won't say how you did, but about how the same kind of ideology is in these groups, even though the doctor is different.

And I think that's so much a part of our story in something that I really like to focus on in the work I do with my clients is because if we don't heal and recognize what is drawing us also to these groups, we just rinse and repeat.

And that's what's happened in our own life is you think, oh, will these people are different? This is different. When really it's the system, right? That's rotten. And I think that's a really important part to coming through some of this cult recovery and trauma recovery is recognizing those patterns and being able to spot them so that we're not just going right from one cult to another and just experiencing more damage and more disillusionment and more harm.

So I think that's a really important piece. I think what you're doing with the history has been really helpful. I know for me to go, oh, like the history and this whole movement is based on these certain men that we're not godly and not good.

And I think that's really important. And yeah, I think to honey, just to jump off of what you said, yeah, it seems to be, it's very lonely, right? Speaking out, it's not mainstream to talk about these things and the evangelical church.

And so you definitely feel like you're pushing against a wall talking about these things and bringing them to light. But I think we're realizing is there's a lot of people in the shadows like they're there.

They're on the sidelines and they're watching and they're listening and they're considering and they do want to have a voice and they do want to speak, but it's costly to come out and share.

And so I think we're seeing to write Adam, I think you said this, like courage begets courage, like the more that we're able to do. do this, and survivors share their story as educate people, bring awareness. I think we're going to see more people find the courage to share their stories and come up to.

Yeah, there's a lot of need there. What you're describing is revictimization. When people are in these type of groups, they get revictimized because that's all they've ever known is this type of architecture of a religion and they don't realize that it has really nothing to do with Christianity. It's a bunch of groups who are claiming to be Christian and they have all of these other doctrines in that framework, that architecture that I'm talking about. And there's a lot of need for people like you to help. When I began all of this, one of the things I

did as an IT guy, I started building out a portal where brand-a-might people could collaborate, communicate with each other, help research. And on my website, there's this little log-in which is vastly outdated, but the intent was sort of a means for people to connect with each other and collaborate. But the problem was, I was focused on brand-a-mism, and I didn't realize at that time, when I created all of this, that it was going to explode into a thousand different cults that were descendants of brand-a-mism. And so you've got all of these different voices and different people

connecting them in a portal like that. It's not really possible. There needs to be, and hopefully somebody out there will either collaborate or come up with it. There needs to be a way to connect people and avoid the problems of connection. I've been doing this for, gosh, well, since 2012, we've tried a few different ways of connecting people. And the cults are very deceptive.

When we first began this, there were these online forums back before Facebook had all of their communities, et cetera. And you get into the forums, and me and some of the other admins would watch the cult leaders join pretending to be victims, and they would open up their hearts as though they're victims searching right. And then suddenly start to change and shift the tone into condemnation for the victims. And then it would turn into this big mess. And so we, it became very dangerous to work in that kind of arena because you're putting victims with possible predators, right? So we've had to strategically operate this, it's almost like

this underground railroad of support networks where it's kind of hard to get in, but once you're in, it's kind of filtered. There needs to be some means and mechanism to help collaborate and protect the victims. And I'm hoping this year I'm planning on investigating ways to make that grow as well. And if I can do that and find a way to connect everything, it would be connecting you and your support network.

works with all of the other support networks that I'm working with. Hopefully that comes to fruition, but it's a big ambition that I've had for years, and it's overwhelming to think about. I love that, John. That's a great idea. It's definitely a huge need. Tons of people, and I think sometimes, and we've been calling Twitter kind of the dumpster fire, and we do our best on Twitter slash X, but yeah, you do get the gamut, like you get every thing from bots. We were calling them Bickelbots last year, because when all the stuff actually now, it's not last year, it's the year before, because they were in 2025 officially. But anyway,

when all the stuff hit the fan of Mike Bickel back in the fall of 2023, oh my gosh, like a whole army of Bickelbots came out, and they were just hookline and sinker stonk supporters of Mike Bickel and, you know, just toe in the line and stuff. So you have that group kind of like what you're talking about where they don't even weasel their way in. They're just categorically pro-call, really. And so you have those kind of people, then you have disguised people that don't even share their name. And so you don't really know a lot of

times who you're working with. So it's really through, I think, established trust, like, and that's hard. That's hard to do on line, right, where everything's on line. It's hard to do, and it's hard to sift through. Who can I trust here, especially as a survivor slash victim, because, you know, a lot of the people that are survivors of victims eventually become advocates because they want to help other people avoid the stuff that they went through, but also help them heal from what they already went through. But like, so you're almost you have two roles, you're like, your victim slash survivor, but then you're also an advocate and trying to hold other

leaders accountable. So it can be very hard sometimes knowing what hat you're wearing and giving a point in time. And then also trying to filter through, well, who, who is actually on the other side of that screen that you're dealing with, like, is this really you say it is or is this somebody else? So I love that you have the idea and I hope that I hope that you figure out the billion dollar question of how to make that happen.

Like I said, it's a big ambition. I've tried for years. The problem is the cults do not want the people who are escaping to collaborate and become healthy. And that's really, that's the irony of this, right? If you're going to a church, you're expecting you're going to a shepherd who's leading you and guiding you and wants the best for you. Well, whenever you escape and you want to try to find the best for you, they want to try to block it. And they want to control those who are leaving. And worse than that, they want to corral those who are under their authoritarian

dictatorship so that they don't leave and better themselves as well. So it's this war that will never end. But anyway, to sidetrack and not to hijack your podcast, that's one of my ambitions. The reason why I brought it up is because having people like you who are launching podcasts with different silos of people who have different experiences. Those people, while in that silo, they're helping the people in the silo, they have a shared experience. Well, what they don't realize when they first step out of this is that their experiences are very similar to all of the other groups. So whenever you have all of these

different silos who are now opening up and talking to each other, it it overcomes the same feeling that I had when I escaped. You feel like a freak for lack of a better way to say it. You're like, what in the world was I in and people are going to think that I'm stupid because I was in this. Well, you have a whole network of people who some of them like myself will say, well, no, you were born and raised this way. You had no choice. That was your lot in life. But now you can overcome this and you can step out and be a help to others.

So if there's a way to bring all of these different silos of people together to help each other, think of the think of the good that you could do across the world with a group of people helping each other. Absolutely. And honestly, like in our American culture, we I think we so often gravitate towards quantity rather than quality and depth. And I really don't care if we ever get more than a hundred subscribers. I mean, I would love for it to go bigger than that. But it's this is not about money. This is not about creating content to make

money. Like we each of us have our own businesses and trust me, they both keep us busy. This is solely to help people. And so even if it's a handful of people that get helped or one person gets incrementally better than to me, that's worth it. Like so that's our goal. Like we don't have to be some what they do podcasts, whatever. It's just we owe it to ourselves first and foremost to share our own story. And then secondly to help other people period. And that's the whole point. So if it's one person or if it's five hundred

or thousands, you know, that's we're just doing it to help. Yeah. And I think, you know, I just this keeps coming to me to you, you know, back to using your voice like in part of trauma recovery, like one of the big components is like regaining your choice, right? Your choice and then exercising your Voice are really important for people who've been victimized or abused.

And so I think, you know, thinking about like how you're saying the cults kind of want to shut that. These kinds of groups down, it's like as soon as we are able to use our voice, we're not people to be controlled anymore.

And so I think it's, yeah, it's really important like for survivors to find that. And that might not look like starting a podcast like we are, you know, getting online and sharing about it.

But yeah, being able to name what has happened and not be afraid, I know for me, like even just naming the word trauma, like I thought that was kind of extreme, but I'm like when someone was able to name it and define that for me, I'm like, oh, that's what's, that's what's been going on.

Like not that there's something wrong with me or defective, but I've actually had an experience that's deeply impacted me. And I think it's the same with these cults, right? We're living with these experiences.

People are walking around either coming out or just waking up to something has impacted me deeply and I'm not okay. And why am I not okay and why am I not able to move through this?

And so I think it's helpful again, just to be able to name for other people, right? What's happened and find that common quality in their story. Yeah, it's like when you get diagnosed with a health condition, like, and I've been in that situation where I didn't know what it was, it was wrong with me.

And to have a doctor tell you, this is what's wrong with you, like there's, there's actually some relief in that. And for, you know, if you take that example from health or, you know, medical and put that over here in spiritual for a second, like for somebody else to validate your experience and say, Hey, actually, what you went through over here was straight up spiritual abuse or worse.

That's what happened and you have trauma from that, like, like you're saying, honey, to name it and to give it language. And for the person that went through that to come to grips or come to terms with what happened to them and actually say it out loud, like that is such a huge step.

Um, I've seen that happen with people so many times over the past year, just with I have KC and the morning star thing and gateway and date now we got day star. All of them.

There's so many more. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can Find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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The whole empire of cult hierarchy is crumbling right now. It's kind of crazy. You know, you talked about the trauma. That is something that it hits home for me because it was very traumatic leaving.

It was one of... At that point, it was the most traumatic thing that I had ever experienced in my life was leaving. When I was close to some of the leadership in the cult, I know many of them personally, and while I can't say about all of them, many of them would be mortified to think that they had traumatized people who were in their church.

And they would even further be mortified the fact that I'm using the word cult. My wife tries to use the phrase high demand group for the groups because technically that's what a cult is.

They require high demand whenever you're in it emotionally, mentally, sometimes physically. But a lot of the leadership would be mortified to think that they're traumatizing their victims. However, they have been manipulated themselves to think that the way in which they teach the people or lead the people, they've been manipulated to think that it's not traumatic.

And so whenever a victim steps out in trauma, their first response isn't to think well, this person's in trauma and I should recognize this. Instead, they think this person's a sinner, this person has been influenced by Satan.

Satan is trying to invade the flock and therefore we need to sever them. That's the first response. And if they, if the leadership could just look beyond that, there are many good leaders in the cult.

If they could just get past that, they could easily recognize it. No, this is a person who is dealing with trauma. I need to first respond to the trauma, then I can respond to the spiritual needs and in doing so, they themselves would come out of the cult, which is the real irony here.

You speak to such a good point. It's really interesting because something similar happened in one of the BSSN groups. I was a part of a victim came forward and openly she shared her story as a student and I mean, it was so interesting the response.

Like you said, I would say the majority of the people their response was to immediately defend the institution, not one ounce of... compassion to even listen to what this human had gone through, like, right, just sending aside what you think about the organization, this is a human who is saying, I'm hurting, I've been harmed. And it's just mind boggling to think right for organizations and even these high control groups, like you said, that claim to be Christian, you know, that we can't even, like bare minimum, just hear the person out, regardless of what our beliefs,

the belief is about the institution or the organization. And this person, this victim, was just, gosh, I just feel so bad for them because how quickly the culture of honor and the defense or the institution came in, I didn't hear very few people came with any kind of compassion, concern, curiosity, empathy. And it just shows the level of brainwashing that we just, there's not even a thought that the organization you're in can do any wrong. And there was a lot of statements, I trust Bethel, I know they would do the right thing. And it's like, well, they did. And for us, the experience was a little bit broader

because we left the cult and we went to a denominational church, I'm not going to mention the name, but many of the same things with regards to trauma, we were noticing in that church that we did in the cult. And there were people who were suffering severely that they were victim, further victimized inside of the denominational church. And there's not a white spread awareness that this can happen in any church, whether it's cult or not, there almost needs to be some sort of an education that happens, especially if you're going to church, there needs to be a church sponsored education that if our leadership goes off the rails, here's

what you do, because it can happen anywhere, it can happen to any church. And I have yet to see anything that even remotely resembles that in any of the churches that we've been to. A couple of things came to mind. What if we had, what if then this will never happen, by the way, but what if we had a terms and conditions, you know, you go into church like, okay, I'm walking in the door, let me pull out my phone and I have to click that and I'm agreeing to all of these terms and conditions before I come in. But then I reserve

the right to with, I guess to withdraw my consent. If you start violating your terms and conditions church, I mean, and you know, you get to the legal implications of that stuff, it's like adhesion contracts, right? Like anytime you agree to a terms and conditions, you as the person that's agreeing to the terms and conditions, don't have the right to change the terms and conditions. But the church, when they violate their own terms and conditions, what do you do about that? Like, who's, who's able to blow the whistle and say, hey, How committed a foul over there, or worse?

So, and that's what the elders are supposed to do, bivically, the elders of a church are supposed to step in and be that terms and conditions, but unfortunately, here's what an elderboard looks like, most commonly in a hypercarsomatic church right now is, the elderboard is not an elderboard.

It's simply a figurehead. It's like the king or queen of England. I mean, technically, could the king of England go in and say, hey, I want to appoint a new prime minister? I mean, I don't know.

Somebody who's an expert in Constitution of Mararchy can answer that question. But when it goes back to a church, like, you look at all of these scandals that have hit the past year and a half, every one of them, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, every one of them, it has been the central figure, right?

And then they've got some type of, whether they call it a ELT, an IOPKC, executive leadership team, or they've got a, quote unquote, elderboard.

But at the end of the day, the elderboard, even over at Daystar, they're just basically, yes, people. And they actually don't hold anybody accountable. It's all on paper. Yeah, they could probably choose to remove another elder, or they could vote to remove the pastor and appoint a new leader, but they don't do that.

Like, they're not doing that stuff. And so, I don't know why I got off on that tangent. I think we're talking about terms of condition or something or some type of ability to opt out, like, John, I think you were saying, right?

Like, yeah, nobody, no church has the ability or has the mechanism in there to sort of warn people up front and say, hey, if this, that or the other, what happens then, here's what we, the people can do to sort of rise up and change it and do something about it.

Well, many of these cult churches, they portray themselves as the quote unquote true bride of Christ. Well, if they're the true bride of Christ, we need a true prenup before we join them. That's true, how did all of that?

That's a really good idea. We need to have a bride of Christ prenup, bro. There's a lot of stuff that came with that, marriage that wasn't supposed to be in there, yeah. Well, you know, there's a small group, I, you know, in my circles that I'm in with some of the trauma spaces, there's a small group of pastors that are trying to do what's called like trauma informed right churches.

And I know that sounds extreme, but it's like when you look at the principles of that, they're very much aligned with scripture. And so I think just like you're saying, John, like a basic understanding of these principles and basic understanding of abuse, right?

Like let's define abuse. Like I was blown away that what abuse is, like we don't understand. And it's very hard to recognize or gaslighting, right? Narcissism, those should be common things that we're all educated on as Christians, you know, emotional literacy.

Like we're, that's one area, personally, you know, the more that we dumb down the emotions, there's a lot of talk in these groups about emotions, and I could go on about that. But you know, emotions are actually very powerful when they're harnessed, right? For good, they're a very helpful way to keep us safe. And so just write so many of these things, I think would be important to help make churches safe again. Yeah, I was just going to say too, it reminds me, we've talked about there's a very well-known YouTuber who had, we were just

talking about this last night, who had an incident, I don't know if it's last year or what, but one of the employees of this YouTuber, there was, there were allegations that came forward, and this is, this is not a Christian YouTuber, by the way, this is just a, anybody who has ever watched YouTube would know this person, their channel. And anyway, so one of the employees there were allegations that came forward. And I think it was within a day or two, the YouTuber initiated a third party investigation, like a full-blown investigation. And this is not even a Christian company that did this. And we're comparing

this to how the church, like Iop KC, for example, still has yet to formally agree to the third party investigation is currently being done by Firefly, and Tacoon's heading that up. And we're over a year in, we're a year and four months into this. But, but you compare the church can't even agree to a third party investigation, but yet a total non-Christian, they don't even believe in God, for all we know, and they did the right thing within two days. Like that, that is like, we're not even living in the same galaxy as the rest of the world. And so

back to your point, honey, on being informed on emotional literacy, being informed on what is abuse, what does it look like? I think that we've all, a lot of us have been so influenced and brainwashed by these high control groups that we don't actually know what is healthy. We've experienced so much abuse in these organizations that we've actually lost a baseline of what human decency actually looks like. And so I think that is absolutely on point with reestablishing and educating and raising awareness around what is just healthy people interaction, right? And what does spot like what to

look for? What are the, you know, the I guess litmus test of abuse and narcissism and all the stuff that seems to go with these eye control groups. Right. I mentioned earlier the architecture.

If you can see the architecture, how these things are created, you can see the similarities. That's a broad subject. It should probably be three or four books that I should write in the future.

I just don't yet have plans to, but one of the things that I see happening among these movements, there's this notion that to be a leader in one of these church communities, it should come directly from God, not from man, and therefore if they go to a seminary or they go to some sort of educational training of what is religion, what is the Bible, they're from the Satan side, not from the God side.

And so they actually shun any sort of proper education on what it takes to be a minister. And the result of this is that many of these churches, the ministers who are teaching the Bible don't understand what the Bible actually is.

And in many cases, I think you and I talked about this in one of our episodes at them. They've turned the Bible itself into an idol. They're worshipping the text where they're then the God that it should be going to.

But there are many things that come with that that I think a lot of people don't realize. Bob, Scott and I, I don't know if you've seen those podcasts, but we talk through some of this.

We're taking a deep intellectual dive, which is offending a lot of people, which is kind of funny. But one of the statements he made is truly accurate. The medical science that existed back then is different than what we understand now.

And the authors back then were writing according to what they knew. And so whenever somebody had a mental health issue, for example, every mental health issue described in the Bible is a demon. Well, what happens is carry that forward into today's world.

We would never say that somebody with bipolar disorder has a demon. We know what it is. We know, you know, the medication that helps it, et cetera. And on the, that's on the extreme scale.

Take it down to just the clinical depression scale. You would never say that person has a demon. This person just needs some sleep and sometimes some anti anxiety, et cetera. You can understand the science, the medicine behind it, right?

But these ministers are forced and constrained to believe that every example for today is found in the Bible because that's the architecture. And you can see this in some of the comments. They'll say, well, where do you see, I don't know, where do you see mental health education in the Bible?

And they'll condemn me because I talk about mental health. Well, back then they didn't even have it, right? It can't be in the Bible, but they've been constrained to that mindset that if it's not described in the Bible, we can't do it today.

Rather than the Bible was an example, and that was their example back then, and we need to build upon this example. And I think what you find is the leadership, because they're in that mindset, they can't look to new ways to tackle the problems that exist in today's culture that didn't exist back in the old ancient cultures.

And this develops into a new problem that could probably spin off at least 40 podcasts for you guys. Well, it's interesting, you're talking about something, and I have a degree in Bible, and actually formally studied theology in college and Greek syntax and all that stuff, and had to unlearn a lot of stuff too.

So what you're talking about, theologically speaking, is what we call normative. What is made to be normative in the Bible, right? And we were just actually talking about this other night, just because the Bible records historical events and details does not make it normative.

It does not mean that, oh, I'll give you an example, Paul sailed on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. It's a historical fact, right? Well, does that mean that in order to spread the gospel, we all need to sail on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea?

According to some of the ministries that I've heard. Yeah, that's kind of a stupid example, but it helps us to understand like, okay, a historical account in the Bible does not mean it's normative.

Like, just because Jesus didn't drive in a car with an engine doesn't mean we shouldn't drive in a car with an engine. They didn't have cars with engines back then. So yeah, there's just a lot there like.

It's funny because I use that same exact example, somebody in the comment feeds. I can't remember which podcast it was, but they said, well, where do you find a mental health physician in the Bible?

In my response, well, where do you find the automobile you drive in in the Bible? You know, you can't look at it through that lens, but the problem is under that architecture, they've been trained to look at the Bible like that as though it is the guidebook that you cannot go beyond.

Instead of the guidebook that gives you examples so that you can better yourself for today, and that's the real problem. And I think back to my point about the ministers who don't want people to better themselves, I think that's really the root of the problem.

Because they've been trained that you can't better yourself from the Bible. You basically have to be stuck in this world where you can't better yourself. And so when people start to do this, they see the bettering of themselves as sin.

So I think to a lot of people think like right, the only way to better yourself is just by prayer. Like it's only Jesus. that's like you can't step outside to see that maybe God provided the mental health provider or the doctor or the, you know, yeah, kind of stepping outside to see God providing your needs might look like somebody, you know, bringing this over here, right? What's that story of like the person standing on the roof and God sent like the boat and the plane and something else to rescue them, but like, no, God, you didn't rescue me. It makes me think

of that like we get so narrow focused. I think sometimes on it's supposed to look like you're saying like exactly like the Bible that we can't broaden our perspective to see the different ways, right? In our current culture, based on research and science that aligns with how we were designed, aligns with, it's not against scripture, it's just a broader like perspective. So, man, then you add the financial component, right? So back to your point, John, the architecture that is constrained to be Bible only, and it's an old reformation concept, solar, scripture, it was one of the tenants of the reformation of the 1500s, and I think that the intent

is good, but it gets, it can get off base and you can get into this extreme like what you're talking about where you've got this architecture of Bible only, right? Like we have to go to the Bible for every decision. Well, we all know that the Bible is not going to answer my question on whether I should drive down Black Street on the way home today or if I should take white street, and actually there's a black street right next to white street just right here. And so like the Bible is not going to tell me that if I wanted to ask the Bible. And then the other thing that if you add on top

of that, an insecure pastor at the top of this leadership structure that's insecure and narcissists and greedy, then all of a sudden you have just mixed gasoline and fire, right? Because now we, we're, we only, maybe we only have the Bible or in the hypercarsomatic movement, we only have the word of God expressed through the prophetic movement and the message that comes to that pastor directly from God. And anybody else that says otherwise is wrong, okay? So mix that in with money and control, and that is a recipe for just mass casually. So it's like authoritarianism mixed with

greed. And then you wonder why people are basically built out of all their money, they end up being poor. And you got these grandmalls, you know, 1-800-donate now on these televangelist TV shows. And these poor, you know, these poor people literally are being exploited financially because they believe that the the word It's been conditioned and believed that the word coming out of that man's mouth is such a high level, you know, authoritarian word that I can't not live without it, like, so and then, and I have to give my money to keep getting it.

So it's just an ongoing cycle of just, you know, damage that happens. And the irony of all of that, there's in the random cults, and it's not unique to the random cults, but in the random cults, there are ministers who are of that exact mindset hyper focused on it.

So if the people have a question, they have to go to the Bible, and the Bible has every answer for today's world is the philosophy. The problem is the Bible doesn't have every answer for today's world, and so what the people do is then they go and ask the pastor.

And over time, what this has become, and there's more than one example, there's so I grew up near a church where this happened. The people went to the pastor so much that the pastor then became the authority on what they could and could not do.

That led to the authority on what they could and could not buy, who they could and could not marry. And literally, the guy just took hijacked their entire lives, and the people who, I know some people who escaped it, they had no life whatsoever.

This guy controlled everything, and it all comes back down to that root, and I think if people could just see through that, that's not the way the Bible works, man. It's not written as a guide for today's world in the way in which you think it is.

It's more of examples from which we can learn by. Yeah, and some of that made me think of John as like a mental health word for some of that. It creates dependency and co-dependence on a person and a system when I, I mean, I don't, I think it's interdependence, right?

It's like we can make decisions on our own, and we can also lean on others, that interdependence versus this, these systems create a lot of co-dependence on leaders, which is really disempowering, right? Like any time, and I think that can become addictive in these systems too, right?

That power, like, oh, it feels really good. People are coming to me, and again, that's something in the work I do that's so important. I have clients that don't say, well, what do you think?

I'm like, no, it's really important to know what do you think, like giving back the choice, giving back that empowerment, like you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, what do you think? That is so important, right, to empower people to trust and hear from God for themselves too.

Just the human agency, and that is one of the primary things that is beat down and eroded when you experience spiritual abuse, and, you know, CSA, SA, you know. your sense of agency as a person is undermined.

And it really seeks to erase it. And like being able to find that again is such a hard process, such a hard journey. I mean, we're in it. We've been, I mean, my first spiritually abuse experience was in 2007.

And, you know, and we didn't, you know, as a couple start extricating from it until 2011. So, you know, coming up on 14 years, and I'm still like on a journey to rediscover my agency as a person.

And it's, you know, it can be a long drawn out process, finding your voice as a part of that. And as part of many reasons, one of the reasons why we're choosing to speak out is helping to like rediscover our agency as people.

So yeah, it's, that's a massive part of this whole journey. So that's absolutely correct. And there are so many topics we could probably talk for the next two or three hours and not even skim the surface.

So instead, I'll point people towards your podcast where you'll be talking more about these things. Where can people find you? So we're on YouTube at grit in the wild. So it's GRIT, IN, THE, W-I-L-D.

That's our YouTube channel. Awesome. Well, so good to have you both on here. So good to see you for the first time, Melissa. And I hope to have you back again soon so that I can have you tell your story of what you've been through and how you came through on the other side.

So I look forward to that podcast in the future, but thank you both so much for doing this. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, John, always a pleasure. 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 www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org