Loyalty or Manipulation? The Hidden Reasons People Stay in Cults

Hello, 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 co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed, it's good to be back and to continue where we left off last time and I'm smiling because the son of a prophet, every time I say it, it strikes me so funny. And there was a commenter, I don't know if you saw it or not, but a commenter, I think it was one of the

little shorts we do or whatever. She's like, he's not a son of a prophet. Do you know what a prophet is? And they have no context of what you and I are doing. So it's all the more funny to me because that kind of humor where it's just really subtle. I really laugh at it. Well, I use, you know, there was always the question of, are you a pastor's kid? And I was like, no, I am a PK, but not a pastor. I'm a prophet's kid, you know. And once you get that label, even if it

turns out he was not a prophet, you know, it just, you still keep that label. So, yeah. Well, in both our brandings, right, a pastor's kid, you usually think that somebody's going to stir up a lot of trouble if you're the pastor's kid. Yeah, and as the prophets kid, I clearly am stirring up no trouble and perfectly well behaved. So, absolutely. So last time we ended up, we were talking about what makes people stay in a cult. And we didn't really get to expand on our thoughts very much, but I thought we'd pick up there and just talk about, you know, you

get sucked into a cult. And once you realize that something's a little bit off here, what keeps you in it? And I have a few ideas. I know that you have some too, but I think it would be interesting for people who have never been in this kind of thing, who are thinking, what makes people stay in these things? How do you, how can you sit under a leader who's claiming that he is your mouthpiece, your mediator between God and man? When you can clearly read in the Bible that says, there's only one mediator between God and man and as Jesus Christ. And the

Holy Spirit is supposed to be sent to lead us in guidance. Why do people who are in religious cults choose to have a person who replaces all of this pattern, who basically becomes your your inner sessor?

between God. Yeah, and I think that, so the last time we talked about the ash conformity experiments and how people need to have agency and social freedom to be able to step away from, so that was my first sort of response to like why people stay there and when you have some of these red flags, if you don't have the social freedom to step away without losing a lot of loved ones, without not even just losing the loved ones, just if everybody, everybody in your world is saying, A, you're going to be sort of gaslit into thinking it's a, even

if you can clearly see it's B, you know, not even from, I know that this is wrong, but I'm choosing to stay because I don't want to lose my friend's family, just even my friends and family and everyone that I know is telling me that it's this way, it feels like it's this other way, but I must be wrong, I must be the problem, it's not this situation, it's not this divine prophet who's the leader of my community, it's not, because of course it wouldn't be them, of course they wouldn't be lying, of course this, and it, and they

would have to be lying, they would have to be doing these really terrible things, and so it must be, it must be this, I must be the problem, it must not be my community, I must be the problem, so I think if that's the big thing and I'm reiterating it today, there's other factors that we'll talk about, but I just want to reiterate that like social freedom is pretty important to being able to step away from a faith or a religious community and obviously co-communities, they are structured to make it near impossible to do that.

So I'm filled with all of these crazy funny stories that, if you haven't noticed already, usually I have some kind of weird story that you're like, what is this, how does this relate? Anyway, so people who join a cult, whenever you join a cult, you're not joining something where you're walking into the room and everybody's holding up these signs that say, hey, we are a cult, you're going to join us and you're going to be different than everybody else, it's not like this.

In fact, most cults, even after they have became destructive, they don't openly advertise what it is that they truly believe until after you get in and over time you're slowly given the information that you need in order to escape, but it's a very gradual process, you're gradually getting information. So I'm a bit of a prankster and by a bit, I mean a lot and I had this one situation office building. There was a friend of mine who worked. His office was adjacent across the offer mine. And you walk into his office and it was set up where he was against the wall,

his computer was there, and his desk was in between the wall and the door. And I thought it would be funny. I'm one of these people who, even if only I laugh, it's funny to me.

I'm one of these people who, it's like the long game of making something funny. I don't care how long it takes as long as I get a good laugh out of it. So every night for maybe six months it may be longer. I'd wait till he left and after he would leave I'd walk in his office and I would push his desk one millimeter closer to the wall. So gradually over time this desk is getting closer and closer and closer and closer. Had I moved the desk two feet, he would have walked in and he would

have said, man, the desk is wrong. I mean, push it back and he would push it back. But instead after, you know, towards the end of the six months, he's, I walked in there one day and he says, John, I don't know what it is, but I just really feel like I'm getting fat. So I'm starting to do some weight loss exercises. He's joined a gym. I'm probably the one who is solely responsible for his improved health, but he went on a diet. He lost goodness. He probably lost 30 or 40 pounds.

Because I had done this and he felt like the walls were closing in on him, which was greatly funny. I don't think I ever told him what I did, but oh, no, you've got slid him and never even revealed the joke. Yeah, but the point of all of this is this had I moved it two feet. He would have suddenly said, you know, this desk is in the wrong place, push it back, but it's very, very gradual and you don't notice it. Your mind just accepts the subtle changes. What's the same way in a cult? You go in there, you don't know everything at first because they can seal it.

Once they start gradually giving you bits and pieces of information, it's slowly over time, and you don't think about it all at once. You think of little changes, little pieces. And so you, I'm a Star Trek fan, it's like the blur. You get assimilated and you don't even know that you are. I think that that's a great cause a point because you're not going to leave a community if you don't have a reason to leave it. You're not going to raise

questions or cause discontent amongst the community unless there's some big red flags. And this is, I think that that metaphor, I think most of what people experienced in, like, let's say, I have, for example, most of people at the international house prayer, it was a slow erosion. It was an astromatic as some of the things that maybe I had experienced or, you know, when you experienced sexual assault or something.

Maybe, maybe it's more dramatic and you get those red flags raised more extreme or instances that I saw with my father where I was like, this is pretty, this is a big deal, you know, these are pretty obvious abuses of prophecy.

But like, let's say for instance, Mike Bickel's prophecies, Mike Bickel was giving more general, large scale prophecies that he was, sometimes it wasn't even him, it was an interpretation of something Bob Jones had said.

And instead of it changing over the course of a week, it would change over the course of five years. And it's the same thing. It's just suddenly pushing the desk a little bit, a little bit, or maybe the prophecy isn't even mentioned for five years and you kind of forget about it.

And then when he brings it back up, you're like, wait, that sounds familiar, but something feels a little bit off, but it's one of those, you know, just subtle changes or subtle enough that you don't really understand what's going on.

And so that's, if the community is, quote unquote, working for you and you are finding, I mean, whatever brought you into that group in the first place or if you were young enough and you were born into it or something, and you know, you have your family and loved ones there already, if you don't have a red flag raised, why would you cause any disruption?

And I think so, along with this sort of like social constrictions that make it almost impossible to step out once you have recognized those red flags, there's also the very subtle movements that make these abuses very, very difficult to recognize

and see and sort of like inculcates you to the larger things that happen, kind of like, you know, getting your vaccine or something like that, where you get a little bit of the virus so that when the whole thing hits like you're kind of, you already have defenses and ways of explaining the way particular things.

And that's where I genuinely think that a lot of the people who heard the Mike Bickle scandal and were in,

still in the world and didn't believe it, I think it's because they were slowly inculcated to like dismiss every single thing that was negative about Mike Bickle. There it's just, there was little bits of this, little, I remember even when the International House Prayer started, we had Metro Christian Fellowship, which was before the International House Prayer and that was the church that we were in.

And I was even, I was a young teenager when that sort of transition happened. But Mike left the Metro Christian Fellowship in a wake like he, especially for the people who saw it kind of behind the scenes.

And even those who didn't, it was abrupt and it was rude and he was very, I'm sure Bob Scott

has talked to you about some of this too, but he was doing a lot of things that were not maybe scandalous, but just either unprofessional or uncaring and a lot of these sort of behaviors that were just like, this isn't what a pastor does.

A pastor just doesn't abandon this flock and blame other people and be rude and consending, and like this isn't just like this is inappropriate and to go start your other adventure that kind of other venture that like meets the community that you had already started, it's just inappropriate and unfair.

And so there was always some smaller criticisms that were being levied against Mike, but there was just this sort of slow incocation to be able to be like, yeah, but we're doing greater things or know these people are just bitter, earning grueling, these other people who have criticized us, it was a misunderstanding and it was just a slow sense of like getting people ready and prepared to dismiss criticism.

And then overt attempts to do this with the black horse prophecy and him, so before all of this scandal comes out, Mike but goal gives preemptive prophecies to sort of undermine any coming criticism of it.

And this is all this process of moving the desk just an inch at a time. I'm sorry that, I mean, you gave that analogy, but I'm using the metaphor to make you a bad person, but yeah, I'm sure had I told the guy, he probably would have thought I was a bad person.

Well, he had much better health after I was done. Right, exactly, consequentialist standpoint, that's, you know, and you got joy out of it, so. Yeah, win, win. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I get what you're saying.

So that's one of the thoughts that I had about this. So how do I say this in a way people understand? So horse racing. So if I go to, if I go to the tracks, I'm not a betting man.

I have one time just to see if it was any fun and for me, it's really no fun losing your money. So I'm not a, not much of a betting man, but there are people who really enjoy going and betting on the horses.

We have the Kentucky Derby here. So when you bet on a horse, you, you know, the process for me at least was, you pick a horse, you put some money down and they tell you the odds, so you learn how much you can potentially win if you win.

And all of this, there's a whole science to it that. I fully don't understand because I've only done it once. But it's a black or white thing. Your horse wins or your horse loses.

There is no in between. So in my case, I put my money down on the biggest strongest, looked to be the fastest horse and he came in last. So I'm not very good better, but it was very black or white.

I could tell that I placed my bet I lost and it was no fun. I'll never do this again. So in prophecy, if you're not in one of these Pentecostal charismatic movements, that's how profits are viewed.

The profit gives the prophecy. And if it happens, the guy had a true prophecy. And if it doesn't happen, his horse didn't win the race. There's no, it's clear. Visibly, everybody who's looking at this can tell this guy is a quack.

He's a fake. But when you're in these movements, it's not like this. Number one, the prophecies change and evolve over time. So what happens is in the example of the horse race, they won't come out and tell you, now bet on Jersey Mike's horse, I can't even remember the name of the horse, but bet on this horse.

Instead, it's like, and I see an animal. And the animal has four legs and it's rounding a corner and, oh, brother, I see the finish line. Now, what are you going to make of this man?

It's so incredibly vague. And so any horse that wins, they'll say, look, my prophecy was right. Any horse that they think is the one, and I've seen this happen in prophetic instances in the churches, in that situation, they will pick the wrong horse.

And when the wrong horse loses, they'll shift back to the initial vague prophecy and say, oh, but look, this other horse, that fit the description better. So everybody's thinking it's one horse and then they change horses.

In other words, the goalpost keep moving for prophecies in these movements. No matter who it is, no matter, you can pick, I can't think of any, but if you can find one of the prophets that they consider, quote unquote, accurate, you're going to find that their prophecies are more vague than the rest of them.

Yeah, I know we've mentioned it before, but just in the spirit of the betting on horses. I mean, I literally saw people bet on the chiefs so often because of the very specific prophecy that, or I guess it wasn't very specific because it was just like when the chiefs when the Super Bowl revival come.

And of course, this chiefs won the Super Bowl and then COVID happened. And there was no feeling of the stadiums or anything like that because no one was in the stadiums right after that.

But it was, and I know I've said this before on here, but I will just repeat it again. And Bob Jones also told Rich Joyner in Carolina, the same thing about the Carolina Panthers.

So he's just betting on all the horses, right? He goes, I'm sure if he went to, like if Bethel cared about the 49ers or whoever they were closest to, I'm sure he would have said the 49ers too.

And the funny thing is, is he gave his prophecies in early 90s or even late 80s. And so it was legitimately, almost 30 years. And there's only 32 teams. So like, if you split in the middle, it should be 15, 16 years.

It's like that would be on the average when the chiefs would win the Super Bowl or whatever. But in the course of 30 years, neither of the two teams won the Super Bowl and then finally the chiefs won the Super Bowl and won it several times.

And there's still people who are just like, even Norma Hunt, I think, I can't remember Norma but one of the owners of the chiefs was referencing the Bob Jones prophecy and was like, this is a sign from God.

And it was just like, it's very, very similar to the like, I see this horse rounding the corner sort of thing and then waiting 15 years and then being like, yeah, this one's close enough to fit the fake prophecy.

And you're like, this is not special, but yet totally, like you said, on the outside, everyone's like, he missed it, he got it wrong. That's the easiest thing. If you wanted to look at a reason why Bob Jones was wrong, he gave two prophecies about Super Bowls.

Only one of the teams has even won the Super Bowl and Revival did not happen right afterwards. Like the cut and dry, he got it wrong. The horse didn't win. And yet in the community, not only is it excused but it's actually being used as a indication of his, of his accuracy.

So this is the whole pushing the goalpost or pushing the, like it just becomes so much easier for everybody within the community. And as much as that seems and sounds ridiculous, it makes sense.

It makes sense because that's the way that things are just being pushed slowly and surely and it's easy to be deceived in that. It is. And it contributes to another factor which keeps people in the cult.

So outside of the community, everybody's looking and saying, okay, this guy's a quack, he's a false prophet. And even if they were to have seen the vagueness of some of these prophecies, they're like, yeah, but man, anybody can guess this.

And so you mentioned the chiefs game and the different games. Paul Cain did this too. Some of his prophecies were based off of things that just, you know it's going to happen at some point.

One of the examples I think in one of my books I'm talking about when he's out with John Wimber and he's saying, and an earthquake is going to happen here in Los Angeles. Well, of course it's going to happen, man.

Look at the number of earthquakes. It's crazy, right? So what they do is outside of the group, you look at it and they're like, no way. But inside the group, because they're constantly getting reinforcements on the prophecies, they're essentially building up walls of defense against any critics.

And then whenever somebody does come, they have doctrines against the critics. So whoever's saying, look, man, that's a little crazy. I don't know if I believe that or not, they get branded. So it's a very much and us versus them type of mentality.

You have those who understand the quote unquote true nature of the prophet. And then those who they're so blinded, they can't see it. That's usually one of the doctrines that comes out. They have eyes, but they cannot see.

And so because you've built this invisible wall of secret knowledge, you've essentially created what is similar to the mystery cults of the ancient world. You have created such a scenario where the people on the inside, they think they have something that the others do not.

And they feel more special and that feeling of having the secret wisdom keeps, it hopes to keep people in it because they think they have something others do not. Yeah. And I think that what's, so I think that leads to the third thing that I was wanting to talk about.

And this is the, I don't think this is as discussed as much when people are talking about why people don't leave cults. And it's a little bit more of a, it takes a while to get your head around it.

So, so let me try to do my best to explain this, but the world that I grew up in, as much as it did all of these horrible things, it also was so meaningful for me and so far as all of my like early childhood memories and my own internal conception of myself, my view of God, my view of God is like they're close to me and like that I could potentially hear God.

So, I mean, that was so foundational to who I was. Maybe not in a necessarily good way, not in a necessarily bad way, just it was. It just was a part of me and I didn't have any other option but to have that be a part of me.

Like, it's the story that I was told growing up. It was always going to be the story that I believed until I grew old enough and had enough agency to believe something different. Like, that was...

I never chose to believe those certain things, like those were the stories that were told to me. And of course, I believe them until I grew up and got old enough to become skeptical.

And to then question those stories is also to lose some of the things that protect me against the abuse that I'm encountering. And so let me put it this way. I may have given this metaphor before on this, but if not, do you know the story of Jay Pistotter?

Yeah. Well, we also have an audience, so I'll explain it anyway, just in case people don't know, because it's not the most common biblical story, but Jay Pistotter was, I think I have told this story before, but I'll repeat again.

Jay Pistotter was a general for the Israeli army and he goes off into battle, and he makes a promise before he goes into battle that if the Lord is to deliver the enemy into his hands, that the first thing that comes from his house he will offer up as a burnt offering unto the Lord.

And he says this, you know, thinking that the livestock or something like that, he would return and need sacrifice sheep or something. But anyway, of course, the Lord does like they are victorious in battle, and as he returns from home, his daughter hears him from a long way off, and she runs and comes to greet him at the street, or in the street in the road.

And he like follows to his knees in English because he realizes that he has made this promise to the Lord that the first thing that comes from his house, like the first thing that he sees that he will offer up as a burnt offering to the Lord, and in fact, it's his daughter.

And so he weeps and he tells his daughter what happened, and she says, you've made a promise to the Lord, like you have to fulfill this promise, but then she asks for just one thing, she asks that if she could have a month to go into the wilderness so that she might mourn.

Now, depending on there's biblical interpretations that say she wasn't actually sacrificed as burnt offering, instead, she was like sent,

she never married, and her life was like consecrated to the Lord. If you read like apocryphal scripture, it's very clear that she... He was offered up as a burden offering onto the Lord. But anyway, so she goes out into the wilderness and she's there for a month, and then she returns.

And there's not a whole lot of very specific detail about why she returns or what happens when she returns. But it's left to be like, she probably was a sacrifice whisper offering. And I have always, that story has always messed with me because A, I spoke about this few podcasts ago, but there's this theme of children being sacrificed on the altar of their father's faith.

And this is like a very salient example of that that has obviously always been a very harrowing theme for me, as that's something that I like identify with, of just feeling like a father's faith dictated the life of their children and the sins of the father were then punished onto the children, same with like David makes this mistake.

And then his first born, or first born of Bashiba is killed and it's like, what did the first point do? Why are we having to pay dependence for our father? And I don't love that thing throughout the Bible for obvious reasons.

But even more so, I think about, what if, J.P. Sutter, in that moment, she gets the red flag, her father comes back and it's like, hey, sorry, got to kill you. And that's significant enough for her to be like, oh, something's wrong here.

What if she goes into the wilderness? She spends a month in the wilderness and she comes to terms with like the cold nature of the world that she grew up in. And she's like, this is horrific, there's, you know, there's no truth to it.

They're like, I could leave and like, God's not gonna punish. Like this is just all something that, on the other side of the battlefield, the amonites were also making prayers to their gods. And like every battle we've lost before, we were making prayers to our gods.

Like, none of this makes sense. None of this matters. And instead, I'm being sacrificed for nothing.

I can imagine her still returning in that situation because in this wilderness, you are faced with the whole severing of your entire identity to recognize that you're a part of a community and a cult or something and to flee off into the wilderness is a death in of itself.

Like, you have to die. You have to give up the person that you have become, the family that you love, the community that you live in, and the legacy that you have created. Whatever, whatever people believe, if you, whatever, people...

but care about you like all of that goes away. Everything is left. Sure, you save your life in this case, but like there's a death into it itself and then you have to face the wilderness.

You have to face, you know, losing your community and everything. So I can imagine a scenario in which Jacob's daughter would return and choose to believe the stories because it's the only way that her life has given me in this because otherwise she is never going to be recorded in, you know, biblical, analogue of history, like it.

She's never going to be praised for her actions. She is going to be seen as a villain in this community who's who didn't have faith and who abandoned her father.

And so rather keep, if you're going to die, keep some agency and return and believe in the things that you were taught and embrace the story that was told over your life because it literally is the only, only sense of redemption for all of this persecution

that you have felt or persecution that you're going to feel. And I think that, I think of this in the way that like, I think of this in the way that like,

there's a very deep tension in Christian history, like, especially in American Christian history, think of the slave plantation and how the,

like both the slave and the slavers believed the same Christianity, right? But the slavers were using Christianity to excuse the persecution that they were doing and to excuse sort of dominionism and taking over the land and being the prime hand of God and used it.

Like we know there's a lot of racism that we've seen in even the Pentecostalism and like the story about like serpents seed or the sham and like the curse of ham and there's different ways that people have used in the United States specifically have been able to use the gospel or the ideas of Christianity to persecute and enslave peoples.

And then yet you also have groups of individuals who they're only sort of agency was in this belief that they had and in the freedom of like believing that God was gonna set the captive free.

So you have these slaves who are in. being enslaved, finding hope in the very religion of the masters. And I think that's a really, really complicated tension. And I don't really know how to deal with it.

And it's something that is very difficult for me to explain to secular audiences, too, of like, when people use religion to abuse other individuals, to step away and recognize the abuse, you almost have to let go of the very thing that is giving you the strength to persevere during that those abuses.

And I do really think you have to give up your faith to leave.

The whole, I have not seen a whole lot of people who have gone out of the community of like a Christian cult and who have remained unflinchingly Christian throughout that time. There's a lot of people who lose it and then find it again.

Like you leave your, and then you deconstruct. And you're like, okay, where was the cult stuff? And then now let me become a Christian again. But I've also just seen a lot of people be like,

I can't do it. I can't believe any of this. Like this Bible I read, like they use this Bible to abuse me. And it is no longer a something of freedom for me. It's no longer something that empowers me.

Like I've had to give all of it up. So I don't know if that's making sense to you. I know I was just talking for a long time, but I think that that's a really, really complicated tension of like you have to give up the things that make this, this abuse tolerable by losing the religion.

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 Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

So the story that you mentioned, I'm actually glad that you mentioned this because I was trying to think of a good way to say the next point that I have. and it's actually the perfect tie-in, the way in which the people in these cults are taught the Bible is different from what the Bible actually is. They learn this version of the Bible that quite honestly it turns into a fantasy book. It's not really the text and the complexity of what this is. The Bible is a library of books and it's a library that's telling history. Sometimes the

history is good, sometimes the history is bad. I actually like this verse or this passage that's talking about the sacrifice of the daughter for one specific reason. If you can ever get a minister to preach on this subject, you can tell whether or not this preacher is a parrot or whether he's actually critically thinking and wants to be open and discussing truth because you either fall in one of two categories with this passage. In the passage, like you say, this is, I think it may be the only instance of actual human sacrifice in the Old Testament. You could argue that maybe

Abraham and Isaac, maybe that story was talking about it, but Isaac actually wasn't sacrificed, so it's not in sacrifice, but this truly was human sacrifice. You fall into one of two camps. There are people who believe that every single passage in the Bible, talking about ancient Israel, is talking about them in a good way, in a way in which they're good people and it's God's chosen people, but they did very bad things, some of them. In this instance, human sacrifice, it's clear violation of the mosaic law. The mosaic law says you will not worship the other,

our God, you will not worship them like the other gods, wherein there is human sacrifice. I can't do dronomy something. I can't remember the passage, but so ministers who are parroting other ministers who don't understand what the Bible is, they will often say, well, he didn't really sacrifice her. Instead, I'm trying to think what are some of the ways that they dodge it. I think one of the ways they said instead, she took a vow of celibacy or something like this.

Maybe that's plausible, but that's not what the text says. You have to go outside of the text to make your answer. In doing so, you can make the Bible say anything you want. If you're going to go outside of the text and say, you could actually go outside of the text and say, well, Abraham actually did sacrifice Isaac later on and it wasn't written in the text. In the same way that you could say this person didn't sacrifice his daughter and it wasn't in the text. You make it say anything you want. I like this because you can tell if a minister is actually parroting or if he's

thinking about what he's saying and studying and this is not the only passage like this. You can find passages where they're told to plunder and where there are actually specific passages that talk about how you what to do when you conquer another nation and you take their women for your own, which is essentially rape.

This is raping. This is a bad thing, not a good thing. So if you read the Bible in the way in which it's being taught in these movements where everything they do is good and by God, well, it's rape good, it's sacrifice good, no, it's not.

And the point that I'm building up to this is if you can rewrite the Bible in that way and confuse people to where they don't understand what is in it, and you have to go outside of it to get the truth, well now your leader can go outside of it to make up his own truths.

And most of those own truths point back to themselves. So when you understand the complexity of the Bible and understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, suddenly you begin to realize that in the end they're creating their own narratives.

I think that this is such a good point because there are measures of this that are more understandable and then less. Like it's a spectrum of things, but you have your like, like I grew up listening to Adventurous Nauticy and watching vegetales, you know, and the destruction of Jericho, you know, I remember that being of vegetales, you know, story.

And of course, the raping and pillaging is not in the vegetales. They keep it out for some reason. They keep it out for some reason. And another very, very good example of this is the story of David and the way the vegetales portrayed it, of the king and the rubber ducky, and like he steals the rubber ducky from someone else or something like that, and it's like, okay, that is a deeply problematic way of like telling the story of David and Meshiva.

But it's, you know, you understand, like you can understand that these people are villains who are writing the vegetales stories, like you're just wanting to make it accessible to children and you can't be like, oh, you know, Larry the cucumber saw and murdered someone so that he could take his wife for his own, you know, like that's not something that you tell children.

But yeah, we're always told that story of David, like we're given that story a little bit. And I think that this is something that people don't talk about near enough, but there is like a deep whiplash when you get old enough to know what the story is.

really are. And to read, like again, I've said this, like I've read the Bible through like 12 times because that's what I was told to do. And I, when I read the Bible, you know, you're not reading the commentary right next to you that like excuses some of these things.

And so when you get on the passage of J. Pistata, you're like, oh my god, this is horrible or the story of David or a lot of the different, you know, stories that in the Bible where you're like, wait, are we the good guys? Like I guess the good guys. And like the story of Abraham was like that too. And what I think is really missing there is that it's a gospel that isn't real. Like you grow up with a gospel that's not not even accurate to the thing that was ever being taught. It's this sanitized modified version. And then you can totally

see like you, like the point you were making, then you have cold communities. Like the sanitized modified version is something that's just true throughout, you know, modern American Christianity. Like the traditional Christianity in the United States, like does some of this at all times.

And some of it's understandable. Like, you know, you can, it's not people trying to be insidious, but there's this sort of like, oh, we got to reframe these stories to make it more airtight or to make these characters look like they are heroes when they weren't heroes or something like that. And then you can see then the people like Bob Jones and Bob Hartley and Mike Bickle then taking passages and making it. This is actually a story about Kansas City, Missouri. And this is a story about the Lord returning in 2012. And it just, it's like clearly that's not, and you've

kind of hopped into the cold version of that where it just becomes so malleable that it practically isn't a whole new religion at this point. And that's what like, I think even like with the whole slave, um, slavery dynamic of like genuinely, I said that it was that you have both the slavers and the slaves having the same religion, but they're kind of different religions because one has taken the Bible in a particular context and used it to excuse those worst parts of them.

And like, anyway, you cut it. That's a bastardization of the Bible so much that it might as well be a whole new religion. And I think that that's the stuff that we've kind of seen and experienced.

But it makes it so much harder to leave because that's still my Bible. Like, and I don't that distinction of like, oh, I was taught a version of Christianity that's practically not Christianity. It's not an easy one to make.

It's not an easy distinction. Like I said, like I genuinely think it is much more likely that people drop it entirely than drop just the bad stuff. I think I just don't think that that's very easy to do.

I think that you have to almost lose your faith entirely before you're able to recognize the to gravity for lack of a better word of the situation that you're in. Yeah, as it relates to why people don't leave.

Why do they stay in a cult? You're right. It does play a factor because in essence, what they're doing is they're creating their own mythology. And a cult will create not only a mythology of themselves, what is their central figure, what is his ideologies, et cetera, but they build that on top of a mythology of the Bible.

And so this is, I think this is the last point I was actually driving to and you kind of hit there slightly before me. So when you're in a cult and you've been indoctrinated with the cult's ideology, it is a mythology, many of things fiction, many things covered up, built on top of their own mythology that they've created of the Bible.

And whenever a person goes outside of the cult and a friend says, hey, come try out our church. Well, they go to that church and they're not hearing the mythology, reading from the same Bible, you know, the preacher's preaching from texts sometimes that the cult leader may preach from, but they're not preaching the cult's ideologies.

And so people see it as a different religion altogether. And they feel like, well, these people don't know what's in the Bible. They don't know what's in it, you know? And they start having these conversations, it turns into arguments I've seen, some of these arguments online.

And it all comes back to the mythology. And I know it's a much larger topic than this podcast episode can hold, but you're right in that once people realize that the mythology is false, where do you go from there?

And that's why when people leave a cult, buy and large, they question their faith entirely. Because in the end, it's not really their faith, they're questioning, they're questioning that mythology that isn't true. And like you said, to some extent, mainstream Christian churches do this.

They like to water it down because you can't have a room filled with five year olds and you're talking about rape and incest and all of the many things that should be abhorred. But they preach it as though this is a blessed passage and these blessed people are doing these blessed things.

And to the adults who are sitting there who actually know what the passage is talking about. but they're like scratching the heads, well, okay, whatever, pastor, that maybe it ties to something else in your sermon, so I'm gonna ignore what you just said, and usually they end up in the New Testament, because that's where you end up with the happy notes.

Right. Love your brothers as yourself, love God above all. But there comes a point at which, as you're growing, as you're coming of age, and you start to realize what's in the text, if you have formed the mythology in your head, even in a mainstream church, you're suddenly gonna become disenchanted.

Every sermon that you hear, that is turning the Bible into a mythology, not what it actually says, you're thinking, this guy doesn't know what's in it. And so it turns into, you know, it's like a subcult then, you're going to a sub-mythology that's not as bad as, maybe I hop KC, but it's a mythology, because they're not really saying what's in it.

I wrestled with this heavily when I left the cult. And what's interesting is I spent, I can't remember how long I think it was like two years, I spent working with in apologetics forums, trying to help people who were questioning the faith.

And I'm coming to terms with learning some of these things. And the simple truth is, if you were to, if these churches that teach it as a mythology, if they were to actually teach the truth of what's in it, where it came from and where it ended up, is actually a much bigger, more powerful story than the mythology that they created to water it down.

We came from an ancient world where human sacrifice existed everywhere. And here's this one instance where here's a man who challenged God and says, I'm going to do this thing. If you show me who comes out the door first and his daughter comes out, well, that's pride, you know, he's thinking that he's something big and he can tell God what to do.

There's different ways to preach it than the way that they preach it. And there's a way to preach it that's true, but they have to admit, if you preach it this way, you have to admit that, you know, this guy did a really bad thing.

He should not have done this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And like the story with Abraham and Isaac, you know, and like this sort of what was separating to some extent the Jewish faith from iterations of, you know,

proto-Jewish communities. Like what the religious communities that preceded Abraham was this like it was during the time where human sacrifice was a large part of like the Bronze era and that sort of expression of religion.

And so it was very normal for Abraham to be like, okay, you know what? God's asking me to kill my son because that was a lot of what was the tradition and like, you could totally be like this was this was an indication of a different type of religion when when God like intervened on this half but like you have to get into the the native grade of it and be like this was a really horrible thing and like Abraham was ready to kill his son and it wasn't this group this is it wasn't necessarily this crazy act of faith because that was pretty

normal for what was believed back in that day and era and and just even you know people can have different interpretations of what is being said but this sanitized sort of version of the gospel then makes itself like it turns everything into vanilla you know just makes it sort of loosely palatable and then you have these cults that throw in everything else and then separating it out becomes really difficult and that's there's always this term and then I'm one of the most I've said this on this podcast before but one of the most frustrating experiences that I have

is telling my story and people being like yeah but you can't throw the baby out of the bathwater and I'm always like I don't even know what the baby is in this like I don't even know if there's bathwater you know right exactly like the analogy is way more like you know if you bake the cake or baked cookies and there was all of these like rancid ingredients in it and you're like yeah well like you know you got to take the rotten eggs out and it's like it's baked in there there's no you can't

like get in there and separate the rotten eggs from the batter like it's or from the the product because it's like it's you have to throw the cake away and then you got started new batch and the impatience that more you know that Christians have with individuals who are leaving their cult faith is a really really frustrating reality and I hope that people listening to this can resonate with this and think twice before they curtail other people's sort of natural healing process with this but like it's the one I appreciate when people are like I hope that you can

like rediscover the love of God or you know do it like when people are expressing sort of like I want this is something that has really done a lot of good for me and I want you to also have that that it's a little bit different it feels like okay like but when it's like hey you can't come to these conclusions you can't throw everything out you can't do this it's just like yet you know what I'm gonna go about figuring this out in the way that I need to figure this out and then if I then rebake the cake

it can, like, that's great. Like, if you believe that you believe in a religion that is independent and sufficient on its own, you shouldn't be worried about this. Like, I'll be able to come back and put things together and it will be appealing and, like, it's just so fresher.

I think I've said this before, but like, I had a family member one time where an extended family member where I was like talking with them about, this was a while ago, but a lot of like the frustrations that I had with my dad and the expression of Christianity that I had seen and I was kind of wrestling with my faith and they were like, you gotta just let go of this stuff with your dad.

You just gotta do it. And I remember being so angry and not knowing how to articulate that in the time, but because it's like, what the hell are you talking about? That's the cornerstone of how I've interpreted everything in my life, like, my father taught me the Bible, but Bob Jones taught me the Bible, Mike Bickel taught me the Bible.

And I think now I have better ways of expressing it and because, well, A, I didn't even then know how much of a call it was. I wouldn't even have called it a call back then.

I would've just been like, oh, there's this stuff. But this dismissive, just impatient, like, oh, you gotta, you gotta, that's not God. That's obviously not God. And it's like, that's the God that I was met.

That was the God that I was told about. Like, the God that was casted in front of me was made in the image of these men. And there is no way for me to separate that in a way that's like convenient and quick for you.

And so like, either I'm gonna have to, I'm not saying that everyone has to pitch everything out. I definitely think that there are some people who are like, I'm gonna hold these two to five core principles that are true, and then I'm gonna rebuild from there.

But it's just, it's such a difficult process. And it's so frustrating because it's a very courageous process.

Like, and I'm saying this, I don't wanna say this is like self aggrandizing, but for everyone who has had to step out and let go of their faith because they recognize that something in their community was really wrong, is like an incredibly brave and noble thing to do.

And we would praise it in every other community. If a Muslim let go of like song abuse in their community and was like, I'm gonna let this go and then convert to Christianity, we'd praise them for being the most like brave and compassionate individual, but like when we are having to let go, you see Christians who are having to let go of their Christianity or let go of core aspects of their Christianity, they're not seen as heroes, they're seeing those villains of...

Community is so, so frustrating. And it's another reason why people don't leave, because like why? Why do it? Absolutely, and you know, so there are a lot of people like me who have critical minds.

I always have questions. I can talk to somebody and we can talk about any subject and I'm gonna come up with many things that I need to go research for my own knowledge and understanding just to learn.

Children are especially this way. Children are filled with questions to the extent you get tired of answering some of their questions when they're kids. Yeah. Why, why, why, why, why, why, and they're in these services.

So I heard the same stories, Abraham and Isaac growing up. And the problem that I have with the way that people overlook the context of the story is that in doing so, sometimes they're more concerned with their agenda for the sermon than the actual meaning behind the text.

So if you think in the grand scheme of things, you have a world filled with human sacrifice, you have God using Abraham as an example that, hey, I have a better way. Don't sacrifice your kid.

If you look at it like that, this can be the first milestone in a entire world of people that there may be some human sacrifice now in some remote countries, but it's almost nonexistent, whereas it used to be the main stream.

Everybody believed that as part of the culture. And if you understand that culture, so Isaac, who's living in a culture like this, many people who sacrificed, who were sacrificed, some of them did so willingly, because that's also part of the culture.

They believe they're going to a better place, whatever it is, they'll suffer the pain. The culture was totally different than it is now, but what you instead hear is people, I grew up with sermons where they say, look at the extreme faith of Abraham, and they totally missed the point of, well, what did this make Isaac feel like?

How was the relationship? And the problem is, had they understood the culture, the relationship probably was pretty stable, because that was widespread. That's how people lived back then, millennia ago, but in the context of a child's mind, who's hearing this story, where this very scary thing is happening to this boy, and oh my gosh, it's the father who's going to do it, it's a totally different story, and by not explaining the full context, back to my previous point, you're really creating mythology, you're going outside of the story, you're creating your own mythology of what was the meaning behind this story,

and you have to really go outside of the text to do it. The text actually says what it says, it's pure plain and simple. If you allow the mythologies, even if you're in a mainstream church, and you allow it to turn into a mythology, rather than the text, you open the door for...

somebody who hears it, to also build upon that mythology, and then they can create another cult. So because of, I'm not saying that the mainstream church is a wrong, it's, if you have kids in the audience, obviously, you don't want to scare them.

But you have to have just a little bit of truth in there so that you don't have somebody who doesn't understand the things that you understand, who might spin off into something worse. And I think largely that's the, that's part of the reason why America has so many different destructive cults.

It's in the five, I think it's over 5,000 now that exist in the United States. It's crazy. So in the end, to wrap it up and bring it all back together, why do people not leave a cult?

One of the main reasons for me that I really think is the root cause of the problem is because they have adopted the mythology. And the mythology has became part of their identity. Once it becomes part of their identity and they believe the mythology, they don't care.

You can bring them a Bible, you can bring them a Christian pastor, a pastor, an apologist, no matter what you bring them, they have their mythology and whatever you say, they totally ignore. Yeah, yeah, and it becomes impossible to extricate that mythology from a person.

They have to either want to do it or not, like, and that's, yeah, that's why it's so difficult. It is, but hopefully we have adequately answered the question, why do people stay in a cult?

So thanks for doing this. This was crazy fun. Yeah, of course. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-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 Automotive.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.