Indoctrination Camps or Leadership Training: The Battle Over Young Minds

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.

Jed is good to be back and today I'm a little excited for today's episode if you can't tell by my bright shining face but we're talking about the youth culture which interestingly has been researching this a lot.

A lot more than people really would expect me to just because I'm curious and it kind of stems from my grandfather's resignation speech. So picture this moment in time. I had left the cult.

I had begun publishing some of the more critical research, not all of it, but some. And some of it was tax-related. And I'll just say questionable. I'll use that word questionable and you can think of it what you will.

But it was questionable enough that deacons in my grandfather's church started contacting me who is banned from the entire cult around the globe because they wanted to know how I got to those tax records.

So they could do it too. So I told them where to go, you know, where to get the records. There's a few different places to get documents etc. And they did. They confirmed everything that everyone was chastising me for publishing saying John made all this stuff up.

And they learned no John didn't make it up. So there was a moment in time in which this gets weird but they figured out according to the tax records and the property records that the Brannum family who weren't pastors had no percentage or anything were claiming percentage when my grandfather was the pastor and they had bought half of the land underneath the church, not all of it, but like right down the middle.

They had bought a big plot of land. And so, you know, the church was owned and governed by the people. So the church had half of it on the right side, I think, and then the Brannum family on the left.

So, long story short, there's a moment in time in which every Deacon, every elder, every everybody except for the treasurer, which was one of Brannum's sons, they already... resigned. At the same time and said, we quit. And during my grandfather's resignation speech, his advice to the church was this. He said, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, but he said something to the effect of, now you know when you're being manipulated and he didn't use the word manipulated, but he used other words. He says, because you can watch what they're doing, they're trying to get to your children. If they can get to your children, they can get to the parents. And if they can

get to the parents, they can get to the parent's money. That's what my grandfather said. So after all of this, I've been researching because youth is a huge, huge part of everything that we've been talking about studying every one of these groups. There's this large youth component.

And not to give away too many of the secrets, but I've been digging and other people have actually sent me some really good information on this. This all seems to have began about the same time that the Hitler youth program started launching in Germany. And news of that started coming back to the United States. And so after this happened, oddly enough, I don't know if it was because of this or if it's coincidental. I'm still digging. But then you have like the Billy Graham youth and you have all of these different youth programs. You have this weird appeal to the children.

You've got the youth, like the levitating boy that traveled to William Brannum. You've got these youth evangelists. And to the extent that if you read the things called the Raven about Jim Jones, part of what attracted him to Brannum in Laterane was the youth. And he started doing youth programs for the children. So youth is a fascinating topic for me. And I'm a little bit excited if you can't tell to get into this with you. Yeah, I mean, I think it's such a like I'm even as you're talking, I'm coming through my own history and all of the different

charismatic ministries that I interacted with that were all geared around youth, whether at colleges or whatnot. Like if I didn't get sucked into IHOP, there was about four other ones that were probably going to get me anyway because that is that there was a not even a

like it wasn't hidden or anything. There was absolutely an explicit intention to train up not just like youth as in like young adults. Like there's a lot of young adult ministries, but like with the international house prayer before well before IHOP, there was the Metro Christian Fellowship, which the church that I grew up in. And this was they literally had a school that was called Dominion Christian school. Like they weren't hiding it. It was it was explicit to me.

with the young, and like, I only went there one day a week with my sister for a while, and I have only really foggy memories of, because those were like real early days before international hospital prayer got started, but that was, it was, I mean, just pretty explicitly in indoctrination schools and when you get older, less about like indoctrination and more about like radicalizing, about getting, there's a certain level of like fervor and intensity that is in these cult communities that really only appeals to people who are like 17 to 25, because after you're 25 years old, you start being like, this is exhausting,

and you get burnt out, like everybody who I knew who went through any of these sort of young adult missions movements or who went to the international house prayer and who did a lot of this stuff, like I'd say 9 out of 10 by their mid-20s just felt burnt out and had to like leave the community entirely, even if they still really wanted to be a part of the community, like I know so many different people who were like, they started raising a family and they were like, we're gonna have to keep only one foot in,

because this whole apocalyptic, intense prayer, fasting, night day prayer, you know, missions going across the globe, doing these different things, like it really is a very zealous religion, and it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of energy.

It does, I have seen and witnessed people who exhausted that energy. Fortunately, my parents and grandparents were kind of against this whole thing. My grandfather really summed up his thoughts about it in his resignation speech, but growing up, they would have all of these youth camps and these youth retreats, etc.

and I was never really allowed to go. I'm sure if I had a bag, they probably would have let me or if I even asked, but I was like, the children were conditioned to go to these things.

I was conditioned to think, this is nonsense, you shouldn't be doing this. So I never even wanted to ask, and as a result, I never really went to one, but having learned what was going on afterwards, it's really weird and scary in a lot of aspects because children, their brains are still forming, and what you teach them at an early age, they hold on to for a very, very long time, and it plants this foundation of ideology in their head that everything that they learn and grow, as they're learning and growing, it builds on top of that ideology if you plant it.

Correctly. So we had in the random cult they have these cult and doctor nation camps. They have other names for them, but essentially that's what it is. And they they do it very well. I've read the book. Oh, what's the name of it? Sigmund Freud's nephew wrote a propaganda, read the book propaganda. Oh, right. Yeah. And it talks about how to create mass, basically mass mind control, mass persuasion. I think it's what it frames it as. But every single element of that, every technique that they have in the book propaganda, they're using upon these kids. And I don't I can't say that

they've read this book or anything, but they're using the techniques, which is scary. And they get the kids to I've been told by the parents. I've never went. I never sent my children, but other parents have told me they get their kids to, you know, believe the cult's ideology, etc. And then they give them these little, I think they're MP3 players now, but they get them to go alone and spend two hours alone with this MP3 player listening to this nonsense. And usually the nonsense is William Brannem Sermons, but I think there are some other things too. But essentially what they're

doing is they're indoctrinating the children early because these are the people, these are the assets. These are the people who will grow. They will produce other assets if they once they get married and have offspring. So targeting the children is a very important component for a cult.

It's more than just trying to indoctrinate. It really is, like these movements are fueled by the young individuals. Like if you go to Bethel, if you go to IHOP, if you go, there's obviously leaders who are in their 50, 60, 70s, you know, who are kind of leading the movement. But most of, I think of all of my history in both the International House Prayer, and then when I was in my late teens, I went and did Y-Wam for a while. And I think of that,

I was always being taught or mentored by someone who is two or three years older than me. It was never like, I didn't have a whole lot of leadership that was 30s, 40s, 50s. It was a lot of like 25-year-olds teaching 22-year-olds who were teaching 18-year-olds who were teaching 16-year-olds.

There was a lot of like, we ourselves are the movement. And it's, you get indoctrinated in the process of teaching others too. Like I was as much indoctrinating young students. Like I think of the Daniel Academy. I went to, this was the, the school.

that was with the International House Prayer, that my dad and Bob Frazier and different core, IHOT figures started. And I very much was a leader in this, and I was trained to be a leader.

Like, I remember so many conversations that I had of adults who were telling me, Jed, you're a leader because you're a heartily, because you grew up in this community, because you have a leadership anointing on you, because you have a teaching anointing on you.

And I was sort of pressed to take the things that I didn't really even know if I believed myself, and I was kind of pressured to teach those things to younger individuals around me.

And that sort of like, you know, it's like you don't get a break. You don't get to stop and think about the things that you're doing. You don't get, you're not allowed to slow down and think about what you want to do in your life.

It's, it's, the, oh, this is a perfect analogy. One time when I was, when I was in YWAM, I remember hearing a sermon by this guy who's like, imagine you're in an apartment complex, and you smell smoke and you come out into the hallway and you realize that there's a fire.

If you know that there's a fire and you hear the fire alarm, are you going to knock softly on your neighbor's stores? And the whole idea he was like, no, you know, if you have to break it down, you're, if you're helping other people get out of the burning building, you're not going to wait to be courteous to them.

You're going to break down the door, you're going to drag them out, even if they don't understand what's going on, because the building is burning then, if they're not out, then they're going to die.

And I remember that being the metaphor for salvation and for missions, like, okay, we're going to send you out into these nations around the world. They don't realize that they're going to hell. They don't realize that they're going to die.

And we have to drag them, kicking a screaming, break down the door. Who cares what they think about you? Who cares if they're like this dumb American or this, you know, this person was obnoxious or, you know, like, throw social constraints to the side.

This is about life and death. This is about whether or not people are tortured for eternity. And I remember having this feeling and wrestling with this feeling, both in my high school and my early, I guess you could call them college years, although it was my early missions years.

We'll say it that. where I wasn't even sure the things that I was saying, but I didn't have an option, right? If the building is burning down, I can't wait to figure it out.

I can't slow down. And I have all of this adrenaline and teenage angst that is causing a lot of emotional stirring anyway, and the way to solve and capture that sort of, emotional turmoil is to channel it into the only thing that I know is right and appropriate, which is firey zeal for God.

That's the whole idea. It's just get radicalized, take everybody's discontent, shove it into one area, and have them double down, triple down, quadruple down on the fact that God is good, and I'm doing this for him, and I'm saving lives by doing these things, whether healing, whether prophecy, whether spreading the gospel, whether doing these, these are the things that I was built and meant to do.

And if you feel discontent, it's because you're not doing it enough. If you feel like you're asking questions, it's because you're not pressing in enough. If you feel depressed or you feel anxiety, it's because you aren't spending enough time in devotion.

It just makes it all very simple and very straightforward. And the mandate is clear for all of those who are youth within the community. It's to spread the gospel and to not look back.

It's the whole lot's wife thing. Like, don't turn. If you turn, if you think about these things, if you slow down, if you say, hey, hang on, maybe the building isn't burning down. Maybe we don't know everything.

Maybe I am just a dumbass 19-year-old who's like talking about a bunch of stuff that I don't actually know. If you pause at all, you're going to be turned into the pillar of salt.

You're going to, like, it all fades away. So it's put the blinders on, keep going, don't stop. And then by the time you do stop at 25, 26, 35, however old, it's too late.

You spent much of your youth doing and perpetuating and propagating the same, frankly, bullshit that you spent much of the same thing that you, that ate up your childhood and your teenage years is the same thing that you then pressed upon others.

So that I still am racked with guilt for the fact that, like, I wish I would have stopped. I wish I would have said something more. I wish I would have stood up and said, this isn't right.

But it just, we had the blinders on and we had to keep going and we had to hurry up and couldn't ask questions and had to fight for... What God was doing and there just wasn't any, there wasn't any stopping.

So no one will get asked the question and I'll go ahead and head it off at the pass right now. Sure. Is not this a good thing? So there are many denominations, mainstream denominations that have youth programs and they have very similar themes. They want to create young leaders.

So they're teaching leadership, they're mentoring them, they're teaching them the Bible, they're teaching the boys to grow and how to grow and have a healthy mind, how to have a healthy Christian mind in these churches. And so the first question we're going to get in the feedback, I can assure you, even though I'm not a prophet, you probably have a greater gift of that than me, but they'll ask, is not this a good thing? But here is my thoughts on this.

Leadership is creating leaders and while the mainstream churches are doing this and I'm not saying by and large all of them don't have flaws, some of them might and I'm not a good example to ask because I never went to one of these things. But from my studies, the mainstream youth programs that I've looked at that are healthy, they create leaders and they create leaders who help other people, they learn to grow, learn to help others grow, it's a good thing. And I'm going to mention that up front, that's a good thing. I am all in favor and support of this. In the cults, however,

they have very similar marketing material. We're creating young leaders, come help your children grow and they get them into the programs and from the feedback that I have been given by the parents, which some of it is really, really scary. I'll just say it like that. I don't want to go into details. They teach them to become leaders while disabling critical thinking in a child.

For a child, this is very, very unhealthy, not to miss, you know, aside from all of the cult stuff, just from the development of a child to suppress their critical thinking is disastrous to a child's mind. But that's what they do. They indoctrinate them to become leaders who are drones essentially.

They want parrots is really what it comes down to. But like you said, they're using themes that are specifically designed to excite the children to become this. Like they will tell them, hey, you're a, I can tell that you're a budding young leader. You're going to grow up to be somebody someday. Well, to a child man, that's, oh, wow, really me. They picked me. And so they, with all the excitement that they can gather, they're trying to become the leader. And then whatever the leaders tell them in these cult retreats or cult youth programs, they're going to accept it.

And the first, very first thing they do is they try to control and limit critical thinking. And another technique that they do is children's curiosity. This works great in a cult because in the cults, it's very much like the mystery religions of the ancient world.

They have a secret knowledge. The world doesn't know this. My children who are listening to me, we have the secret. And then the curiosity comes up in the children. Well, what is the secret?

I want to know. And it's like a carrot on a stick. You know, you're never going to find this secret thing that they're giving you, but the children want to. They're encouraged to, but they're encouraged to suppress the critical thinking.

So they don't ask, well, what is the secret? And ultimately, it comes down to the one word that you use that sums it all up. The difference between a healthy group's youth program and a cult group's youth program is the radicalization.

The children in the cult groups, they're being radicalized to whatever is the cult ideology, whatever is the cult mission, whatever they can take the children and make their children become more aggressive towards learning and spreading.

That's radicalization. In the Christian groups, they really have only two things. They want to teach them one, to become a better person, two, to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I have had, so my children did go to a somewhat healthy youth program and they came back and they shared some of the documents, et cetera.

It's all focused on the gospel. There is no secret mysteries and there is no targeting your children's mind to try to suppress their critical thinking. It is a healthy program, at least the ones that I have seen.

So you have to, as we're talking, you have to separate those two. Yeah, and I don't think that it separates cleanly always. Like I think that you have a gradation of like, to what extent are, is this radicalizing and what it takes, is this like conventional Christian sort of teachings, it's not a, there's not always like a very clear tipping point, but when you step back and you measure sort of the activities that we're going on, I mean, if you saw, if you saw the like Daniel Academy and some of the things that we were doing,

when we were going on these mission strips and we were like trying to, praying tongues and then lay hands on people and we were trying to divine their names. Like I remember we went, I think I may have told this story before, but I went on a mission strip to New Orleans and I was with my little sister.

I remember, and we went to a homeless shelter and we prayed for the unhappiness. as individuals who were there, and we were trying to witness to them. And I remember going up to one man, and I remember being asking the Lord that I would divinely get this man's name to show him power that I am communing with God.

And I had my little sister there, too. And she was also praying, and we were in cooots with each other. And so I was like, is your name David or something? He was like, no, and is your name this?

And he was like, no, and then I do think, I do think like the third or fourth guess, I did get his name, but he was like, well, if you guess, if you guess enough times, you're gonna get it, you know, like that.

But I remember just being like, which I'm not saying that it was, if I did get it, it was just pure luck. But it was one of those things where, when you look at that, it's like clearly this is a radicalized group.

Like that clearly this has passed the point of like good, healthy, Christian fun. This is that we're now in a world that is foreign to the rest of the world, and I think that one of the key things was so too thin, I had two big thoughts when you were like, people are gonna have pushback of like, is this bad or not?

Like because of course, you want to be, if you're a Christian, you want your children to be in a Christian community, and you want your children to be taught good Christian values, and you want your children to be expressing those Christian values by sharing gospel or doing whatever.

So with the question is this bad? Two thoughts that I had. First of all, you can't ask that question honestly and ignore a large portion of the individuals who are sharing their testimonies or what their experience is growing up in that world.

Like if you genuinely want to know whether or not it was good, you have to listen to the children who grew up in the community, and not the community. Who grew up in the community, and not the children who are still in the, you know, not the adults who are still in the community.

This is a huge problem and it's not just with the more cult group, like again, this is a gradation of like, if someone left your community, use their such a tendency to then ignore their testimony to ignore their experiences.

So like right now at the Daniel Academy, I am sure that the frasers and like the people who have ran the organization are like, this is a fantastic school. It's doing great. Here, let's ask the kids.

Let's ask the children who grew up in it, and they're gonna ask, like, the four or five people who are still within the community. And they're gonna be like, it was great. I loved it.

Now, there are dozens of us who grew up in this community, hundreds of us who grew up in this community who are looking back and being like, that was a terrible experience. It was academically negligent like it.

It made my life harder. Not just like was not beneficial, didn't give me, not only did it give me the proper tools for life, but it actually set me back. I would have rather just stayed at home and like learned English and math and grammar and that sort of stuff on my own than going to this school.

And like I know there are many people who experience that. But because we're no longer Christians or because we're no longer this type of charismatic Christian, leaders of this community will like totally ignore

our testimonies because this happened explicitly with, I don't even mind calling him out by name because he called me out by name. And I've talked about him before, but Bob Frazier, who was the leader of him and his wife started the Daniel Academy and he was a ministry partner with my father and was a big mentor to me growing up.

When I started speaking out against my dad and speaking out about the experiences that I had had in the community, Bob Frazier was going around and telling people not to listen to me because I was a backslidden believer.

He was like telling people that I was, I don't know if he said that I was lying or whatnot, but I had several individuals come to me and be like, hey, Bob Frazier has warned me about you because you're a backslidden believer.

And it's like my testimony still matters. Like it's not like if I don't believe the same stuff that you do, I still experience the world that I grew up in regardless of whether I'm a Christian atheist, agnostic Buddhist, my dad still did the things that he did.

Like Mike Bickle still did the things that he did. Like my life doesn't disappear. It's not this, it's like object permanence. As soon as you're not a Christian, you disappear from existence. No, I still grew up in this world.

I still experience the things and whether or not you don't have to agree with me. But if you genuinely want to ask the question, how is this world affecting the youth that we're bringing up?

You can't ignore half of the community that comes out of it. You can't ignore all of these different testimonies for it. So if you genuinely want to ask that question, ask that question and listen to the people who are in it.

answering it. So that's my first thought. Second, if you want to test whether or not something's radical, like if we want to find a good test for, are these children being radicalized or is this just normal Christian values that we're teaching?

A big test that I do, and I don't, this is my thing, maybe not everybody is going to agree with this, but I've always thought that if I found out something about the belief system, if I found out the corner belief or a cornerstone belief was not true about, like let's just say, if I found out definitively, I'm in some afterlife and I find out for fact that Jesus didn't race from the dead. I would still look back and be like, well, I don't mind being a Christian because even if, yes, Christianity was based on this belief that Jesus

race from the dead, but like if it taught me to be a better person, it taught me to be kind of compassionate. If I, like it brought me contentment in my life, if like the fruit of the tree was good, independent on whether or not the like root of the doctrine was true or not, then it's fine. If you send, if you send people to a church camp and it's like are they learning to be better people? Are you equipping them for life? If they, if they don't even, if they choose not to live as radically or if they choose to live a different life than

what you think that they ought to, like, are you still equipping them to be good, compassionate people or is this about virtues? Is this about, like there is the fruit of the tree still there? And that's what I think that the, a good way of really testing the international house prayer and why I am to extend and some of these charismatic, more radical cult communities is like 99% of their doctrines. If they're not true, it's totally worthless. Like if, if God is not coming back in the next generation or this generation, then all of the international

house prayer stuff is absolute garbage. Like the whole, the whole doctrine is built around. We are ushering in the end times. If the end times don't happen for, you know, another thousand years, then it's all...

Clear garbage, and it's like what did I spend all of that time in the prayer room praying to a god that I clearly didn't understand the way that I thought I did and You know the same with like Mike and like using that doctrine of like if if All of it all of it is contingent on the very radical premises that he and the whole analogy of the apartment built burning down If I am going in and breaking down the doors and I'm pulling people out of apartments and I'm saying hey There's a fire and it turns out that there is not a fire then I just I just committed to kidnapping and breaking and entering

Like the difference between that being a good behavior or a bad behavior is totally contingent on whether or not There actually is a fire in the apartment building and so I Don't know what you think about that But I I have tried to push people to have that test of like If it was not true if whatever whatever we're talking whatever premise whatever belief if it was not true Would you still be okay believing that if it if it's like okay?

This turned it out to be not true, but this may be a better person. This may be more compassionate. It brought me comfort It brought me stability All of those different things then it's like okay. This is I'm not saying that every you should drop every

belief that is valuable independent of its validity But I think that it's a very very good way of testing how radical of a belief it is Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism Transition through the latter reign Charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic Reformation 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 McCummery 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 You know as you were talking it really reminded me of a funny story A kids will kill me for telling this because I'm giving away one of the big family secrets.

But one of the things that you find in these types of movement, they're so heavily focused on the gifts. And prophecy is the biggest gift, like you were mentioning what's the name, you know, that kind of thing.

It's directly from the way the random movements were spinning off these, come to the prayer lines, I'll guess your name and you can be healed. That was really the flow, right? So if you could do this, you had the special gift, but there were lower gifts, the gifts of healing, the gifts of, you know, whatever it is that they put emphasis on.

Well, when we left this, we, I'm talking to some families that they were still somewhat mystified by the fake gifts. And even though I've published enough information by now, they should know that, you know, even if a gift truly exists, these things that they're claiming, these guys didn't have it, man, they're faking it.

It's totally different than something real. And they were, they were specifically curious about, I can't remember what it was. I think it was some kind of prophecy or something, but they got into that discussion.

And I've reached the point in my life where I really don't entertain that if they can't yet accept the fact that they were duped, I can't convince them that they were duped. The conversation really doesn't go anywhere.

And so they went off into whatever was their topic of choice. And at the end of it, I'm like fully disconnected, not paying any attention. At the end of it, I said, well, you know, there's good gifts and there's bad gifts.

And their eyes got this big. They're like, John's going to give the special spiritual insight. And I said, we had to get our kids out of the movement because my kids know black magic.

And their jaws like dropped to the floor. I called my son over. I said, John, I'm not going to give the name. I called my son over. I said, yeah, you know black magic, right?

And he looked at him. He grand and he, yeah, I know black magic dad. I said, okay, show your, show your magic. And he walked out of the room. He went completely where he could not be seen at all.

And I said, my son has the gift of visions. He can see whatever, but it's a black magic vision. I said, pick any object in this room and they did. And I call him back and I said, son, is it this?

No, dad, that's not it. Is it this? No, that's not it. Is it the, and I went through like five, 10 objects. And when I got to the one that was there, that's it, dad.

I saw that. That's the one. I saw it as I was walking up. I knew that's it. And their jaw dropped to the floor. Man, how did my son do this? What's black magic?

You pick a red object, a green object, a blue object, a black object. And then the very next object after the black object is whatever they picked.

And so the, you know, I probably shouldn't have done that to them because they were still kind of shell-shocked, but it did serve the purpose because suddenly they realized, wait a minute, if he tricked me, these other guys can trick me too. You know what I'm saying? And to the point I'm building up to, this random story actually does have a purpose. This is the kind of things that are going on in these kids camp, maybe not to that extreme, but what they're doing in the radicalization, they focus on experiences more than they do doctrine. They could really care

less about the doctrine unless it is a doctrine surrounding an experience. So they get the kids together and they start talking about personal stories. Usually it's hero worship. They want the children to know who their heroes are and they're usually figures within the cult. And they want to know that they had this special gift, this special power. They had this black magic, right?

And so the children go away from this. I've been told by the parents who've witnessed it firsthand. Their kids come back really worshipping the men who were in the camp and some additional figures beyond the camp. Versus if you're in a normal healthy and like you, there are, I know that there are some that aren't healthy, but my experience, the one wasn't so bad, I sent my children to you.

They come back and they're talking about Jesus. They're not talking about the heroes of the camp and the heroes of the church cult faith, right? They're not talking about black magic. They're talking about the gospel. Yeah. And, well, and I love like the black magic that was also hilarious.

And that would 100% be something that my sister and I would do. And I'm surprised we didn't do something like that. But I remember a lot of different times where like we would give dreams.

Like this was a big thing. You would share testimonies of dreams that you had. And people would be encouraged. Young children would be encouraged to come up to the microphone and share their dream. And they're amongst peers and some adults and whether camps or whether this is, this is just at the school, you know, every day we would have have morning prayer meetings where we would, you know, people could come up and share their experiences. And there became a hierarchy within the actual students and young adults, or I guess this is just children, not even young

adults yet, where, you know, there was a level of prestige of like, I'm having these big dreams. I'm having these like, I saw this fish in and this is what is going to happen. Like, you know, all of Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl and like I saw a revival coming, you know, this was the type of dreams that we were sort of having. And I genuinely think some kids were having real dreams or like I remember having dreams that were certainly very weird, you know, and especially if you if your brain is working and thinking about these different things,

it makes sense that you might have dreams and then you spiritualize it and you say it very genuinely. But also a lot of, I mean, teenagers lie all the time, kids lie all the time. And like if you're in a community where you're like, oh, I I want to have a dream, I want to be special, I want to also have people believe that God is talking to me or you're in this sort of cognitive dissonance place where you're like, God hasn't talked to me, but but I believe that God does talk to me and he should. And and so I'm going to say this dream and I'm going to kind of make it up,

but but it's for good because like that's something God would say to me. And this is like explicitly, this is something I did when I was young, I would like go up and I would say that I had a dream about this particular thing. And like it never happened, I never had that dream, I never had that experience. But I wanted to be a part of the movement that was happening. And I felt like I needed to be a part of the movement that was happening. And I was having some little dreams. And so I could kind of shift it and make it about this and be like, well, maybe that's

what God was trying to say with the dream that he gave me. And then it gets into this place like the same test that I was talking about earlier of like if you realize, if you have to reconcile with the fact that like I didn't have that dream, God didn't speak to me. That's a really, really difficult thing to even come to terms with because then you're like, I lied about these different things. I said this like, what does that say about me? I felt pressured to like come up front and say this dream. And like it was a total lie. And for me to then, if then I was to

step out of this community and say that it was not real and to say, hey, this is not good, then everyone knows that I lied during this time. And everyone knows that when I was saying these spiritual experiences that I was a part of the deception. And this is explicitly what people will do is like you become, oh, what's the word for criminals? Accessories to the crime.

Because kids become accessories before they even know and make moral decisions about the things that they're doing or making very small moral decisions to lie here and there. And then suddenly Like, oh, I'm a deceiver too.

I'm a trickster. I'm a part of the black magic thing, not in a joking way, but like in a very serious, salient way of like, I remember realizing that I was a part of my father's like prophetic gift at some point, because I was like, I helped this and I was deceptive and I could have said these things or these things and I didn't and like when I just recently, when I personally was speaking out against my dad and talking to leaders at Bethel about, hey, this is an issue like that they used my sort of

accessory, complicit, you know, nature against me and I remember Chris Felton, I was talking with him on the phone and he was like, well, if you knew that this was wrong, why didn't you speak up earlier and it was this very kind of sending like, you think you're higher than us?

Like you were a part of this thing too and I remember it didn't really affect me because I was like, yeah, I wish I had. I wish I had spoken up earlier, but also I was a kid.

Like I was a child grafted into this community. I didn't have a clear sense of moral awareness and like I didn't have an option to not say this. I couldn't just not go to my school.

I would have gotten expelled from my school if I like didn't go along with everything that was going on and they make the children complicit in the deception that is going on and to separate yourself from it, you have to recognize not only where you being deceived but yet you are a part of this deceptive system.

You have to take responsibility. So I guess the question becomes after we've talked through all of this, I'm certain we're going to have parents who are just freaking out. Oh my gosh, I sent my kids to one of these things.

What do I do? Have they run their heads? And I'm hesitant to say, yes, they indoctrinated your kid. Although that's probably a very strong possibility if they went to one of these you thought indoctrination camps.

So the question we're going to get asked is what do we do? What are your thoughts on if a parent has sent their children to one of these things and their kid has come back and they're acting weird and they've been indoctrinated?

What do they do? Well, I love this question because I've been thinking about a lot of our previous two podcasts. We were talking about how hard it is to get out of a cult community once you get sucked in and how enticing it is.

And this is obviously especially true when you're young and impressionable. So if you believe that you or that one of your own children or niece of his nephews or someone that you care about was sucked into one of these things.

camps as a young child. One thing that I really wish that people would have done in my life is spoken up about things that they thought were wrong. So we talked about, this is a couple podcasts back, but the Ash conformity experiment, it was the analogy if people didn't hear that podcast it. There was an experiment where basically there was a round table, there was 11 people who are all in a part of the experiment and then there was one person who was being tested and there was three lines A, B and C and A was clearly the longest B was like the second longest and C

was the shortest and everyone in the group all of the 11 said that B was the longest did not A and the one person who didn't know what was going on they could clearly see that A was the longest but I think it was something like 75% of the time in these experiments they would always say say B, they would say whatever everybody else has been saying they would not say what they saw with their own eyes they would say the same thing that people are saying at the table because we are social creatures and there's this sort of pressure to align what you believe with

what everybody else is reporting that they believe. But in that experiment I think that it drops to like 30% if just one other individual in that group says B so if it's A, A, A, A, A, A, A and then there's just one person who says no I see it's B then it's something like only 30% of the people still say that it's A and the point is that this social conformity really relies on total social cohesion when everybody in your world is saying this thing and if you go to this is what's problematic about these camps is that it creates these little worlds where everyone's saying one thing

there's no disagreement you might have some of the kids who are grumbling and being like oh I don't like this but they are quickly like shunned and pushed to the side and there's this sort of social dynamic that is created and so you could have someone you legitimately can have children who go to a camp where they are absolutely radicalized because everything around them is saying this is what reality is this is how you speak in tongues This is how you do this.

If I would have had one adult just be like, you know, I've really loved the Lord my entire life and I have never gotten a prophetic word. And I think that that's okay. Like not even saying it's not true.

Like even if someone had just been like, yeah, I don't know about prophecy. I don't, it never, I have believed in God all of my life and I have never once had a dream where I felt like God was speaking to me.

I have never once prayed for someone and they got healed. And I'm not sure if I totally believe it or I do or I don't or I don't believe it for me just any of that sort of, any raising the questions.

And we don't, I know there was a bunch of people in my community who did have a lot of questions but of course they would never speak to me because it's like, well, I don't, I don't wanna overstep.

I don't wanna, you know, they're gonna stay quiet. Well, everybody else is saying a, they might be thinking b, but they're not gonna say it out loud. And I think that this is a, like if you have had somewhat, like even if my aunt and uncle have been like, hey, like we don't believe this just so that you know we don't believe this and we think that it's fine if you don't believe it too.

I don't know, it's kind of over. There's like, I'm sure there would have been infighting if like one of my aunts and uncles told me as a kid that like, hey, we don't believe what your dad says is true, but it would have meant a lot to me.

Even if there's ways to do that without like causing confrontation, but I think that it's worthwhile. Like I think that letting people know that they're not alone, letting people know that there are other belief systems out there or there are other, you know, versions of Christianity even.

And that even just letting them know that this particular type of radical thing is not only what is expected, is not just what's expected, but like can be dangerous. If there was some warning flags that were like, hey, this can be dangerous and we gotta be careful with this.

I think that that breaks so much of the like social pressure to go down this sort of radical road. It allows, because like I said earlier at the beginning, we have all of this discontent as youth, you know, all of this emotional turmoil, and we are taught to channel it into one specific sort of domain and arena and not give space for the questions, not give space for the frustrations, not give space for the doubt that we have.

If there is one individual who comes along to us, along side us and says, hey, maybe it's okay to doubt, maybe it's okay to, not have this radical belief, maybe it's okay to like feel lonely when everybody else is having these miracles and and you're not, you know, I think that that could have meant the world to me.

Well, my advice is simple. Embrace it. There are a lot of people who whenever they're coming to terms with the fact that they've been in a cult, they want to say we went to that place which will never again be mentioned or talking to the children, we're never going to talk about this again. Well, the children whose minds are easily moldable in these indoctrination camps, they're also easily moldable outside of them. And even if they're turning into young adults, it's an experience that forms, literally forms the makeup of their being. They went through, they understand it, tell them what it is, teach them what it was, teach them why they did it,

learn more about what it was and how different how wrong it is and use that as a lesson for them. Like, like the family who learned my black magic because I told them what we did afterwards, they'll never again be duped by this. So that folded their character with black magic in the same way that a child, you tell them what it is, you explain it, they learn from it and then they learn in their minds, they start to compare, okay, that was the faults, what is the real? And they start searching for the real and you can use many of those same techniques in a healthy way. That was

the fault. But would you not want to learn more about the real, learn what they're keeping a secret from you in these cultures, right? And that's a healthy thing. Even though it's the same type of psychological effect that you're doing on the kids, it's leading them towards a healthy goal and it's not manipulating them when you do. I think that's the key difference. You are not radicalizing them. You are teaching them and that's a big difference between what they're doing in the cult. Yeah. And it totally goes to what I was trying to get out of this. Like, it opens up

the world of experiences that are associated with this or it explains the consequences of the world that on the front end looks entirely enticing. That's the sort of, that's the, you know, join this radical group and you are going to be transported into the world of magic and and all of these, all of the spectacle that goes along with the like radical cult communities.

And I do think that there's not enough people who are speaking up who are like, yeah, I went there and I got burned out, you know, like an end. I believed this. I got married and I tried to implement these beliefs in my marriage and my marriage fell up.

You know, like that, just the truth of like this zeal, this radicalism, this obsession over the gifts of the spirit and the magic of the world and the heroes of the world. Here is what, here's the cost of that. And you never ever have anybody within that world explaining the cost because the people who are aware of the cost either don't want to say anything or they're not they're totally alienated from the community to begin with. So yeah, that speaking up helps keep the sort of it helps break against that sort of total social cohesion that says everybody

within this community is only talking about the good things. They're only talking about the healings. You go to Bethel right now. They're going to give you 45 testimonies at the beginning of every prayer meeting or worship service and at the end of every worship service that they are going to talk about the most unbelievable things that you have ever heard in your entire life.

And not once is it going to mention like, I prayed for someone and they died and I like had to watch them die because I was praying over them and God didn't do anything. Like, never is there the discussion of the horrific consequences of living in this radical and false world and what that entails. Well, this is incredibly fun. I think I can talk about this for the next hour or to. There's so much more we could talk about maybe next time or soon after we can talk about some of the groups that their primary existence is to focus on the children like why we

and some of the others. I think we get a lot of interest about talking that. But anyway, thanks for doing this. My 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 William-Branum.org. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.