Deliverance or Damage: Mental Health Crisis Among Cult Children - With Jennifer Johnson

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, Jennifer Johnson, former member of a Faith Assembly splinter group. Jennifer it's good to have you and to talk all things Hobart Freeman. Chino and I have been talking offline. We're very excited that you can come tell your story so I'm very glad to have you on here. Maybe if you could just start by telling everyone a little bit about yourself. Thank you

John. It's a privilege to be here. I have been looking forward to this and a little nervous at the same time but really appreciate the opportunity to share my story. I grew up in a Faith Assembly associated or splinter group in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I attended somewhere between the ages I believe of about eight to ten years old until I was 20 or 21. So through my formative years a part of that group initially as a child we started out in a Presbyterian church and somehow with my mom and my brother ended up in a church pastored by a man by the

name of Harvey Geese who believed God had particularly called him to be a pastor and a man who was associated with Faith Assembly. We initially started in the basement of Harvey's home until the neighbors became quite uncomfortable with the parking and the noise and ultimately rented a room behind a laundromat in Milwaukee Wisconsin and that's where we were through the duration that I was part of the church. So you were fairly young whenever you came into this right what was it like being a kid growing up in this type of religion? That's a really good

question. It is a very difficult place to grow because you don't develop like a normal child will. There is so much pressure in conformity in following the rules in remaining unseen that kids that find themselves in these places do not develop a sense of who they are or sense of self. They are not taught to develop boundaries or things that make them distinct. Some of their gifts are not encouraged to develop. And so from a really early age, I learned to conform. I know that you and Chino have talked about some of the roles that

were associated with faith assembly. And while they may not have been overtly told to you as roles, you certainly can pick up the way to look, the correct way to talk, the correct way to think, and the correct way not to think about different things. And so for me as a young child, I really absorbed those roles because what I wanted to be seen as a perfect kid who followed the rules. And I was a really by nature, scrupulous kid. And so when it came to things like the correct dress, what kind of brands you could and could not wear of clothing, what kind of music

you could listen to or not listen to, whether or not one could participate in sports or not participate in sports, whether or not one could go and see a doctor. All of those things impacted my life. And even as a child, it didn't take very long for me to recognize that there were some things that I saw in the church that didn't match what I was hearing at the church. But that space is not allowed to develop in a high control religious group. Because if you start thinking like that, what you might hear is, and don't forget, the heart is deceitfully wicked above all

things. Don't trust what you're thinking. Don't trust what you may be seeing. And that is really the beginning of some deep internal turmoil from me as I developed. I think that's a good point and I'm glad you brought it up because I don't think there's a whole lot of focus on the childhood aspect. People, when they escape a call, it's one of the most traumatic things that they've ever been usually as an adult. And they have to come to terms with the fact that most of their friends and family will cut them off. But not many people really think about how much their life would have

been different if their childhood had been different. Especially those like me who has a curious mind, as a child, a lot of that curiosity was suppressed. And I was told that this is the way things are and it's it's black or white. I remember that phrase over and over. It's black or white. It's black or white. And that's really the mentality that you have. So you don't find a lot of, you know, rocket scientists, astrophysicists coming out of these movements because their brains don't develop in the same way. They're not allowed to. You do have some smart people in it. Don't

get me wrong. But I think the focus on the child is it's a good thing to bring up. I would agree. And because it is some of the most important developmental times and there is really no one there for you to say, yeah, you're curious about that.

That's a great thing, let's explore it together. And in fact, the things that I loved and wanted to pursue were highly discouraged. In my case, I actually love horses. I wanted to ride horses, I wanted to compete.

And the problem with that is Harvey, our pastor, came to my mom and said, you don't wanna hang in around horse barns. Do you know what happens at horse barns? I mean, you wanna keep her away from horse barns.

And pursuits outside of the church were often identified as idols. So I was very conscious of why I don't wanna have an idol. I don't wanna, I don't wanna anybody to think I'm pursuing something other than God.

And so, as much as I was passionate deeply about pursuing riding, I did have a horse eventually, but I was never allowed to fully develop in that area. But that's small compared to a kid who sees one thing happening within the church and something else is preached from the pulpit.

And you have to figure out as a child without those skills how to navigate that. And for me, that ended up being a deeply conflicting place. And I ended up a very anxious child, a very hyper vigilant child, because I just felt no safety.

It's odd when you think about growing up in one of these movements because the security blanket, the invisible security blanket that every child has with their parents, it's really robbed from the child in these movements because the parents aren't really focused on the well-being of the child so much as they are how to conform to the group and how to conform to the group leader's instructions or his rules.

And they really want to follow those rules to the extent a large number of people that I've spoken to in the support groups, they felt like they were really second place to the cult.

The cult took priority over everything. And then especially that's the case after they leave because many of the parents will just cut them off and the cult is more important than the child who's left.

So I agree, the safety and security of the child is completely gone in these type of movements. I agree, and I think what's difficult is there is no one that you can go to and say, how come what I see and what I hear from the pulpit do not match?

You can't go to the pastor and say that because he's in a position where you don't question him. He's the anointed one of the- bad. So the last thing you do is want to question your pastor. And then it may not be safe to tell your parent either. And in my particular case, my dad was not a member of this cult.

And so he was in the background saying, I don't agree with this. This is not biblical. This does not line up. And so I had that that conflict at home as well that made it also quite difficult because not many other kids in our group had to navigate a parent not being a member. And the other problem with these groups because the parents are so focused on the cult, the parents don't seem to protect the children when they should. That was definitely my experience. And I believe you're right in that my mom was managing, again, she was in the cult,

she was also managing the fact that my dad was not in the cult and did not agree. So she had that level in her marriage. She had that discord, but what ends up happening to is the children are not protected. And so the very people that you believe are there to protect you in your life aren't able to protect you. And as an adult, that means looking back and saying, my parent didn't keep me safe. And how am I going to process that? What am I going to do with the potential for anger and disappointment? And what is the work I will put in here to process that?

I came in contact with some of the family who had left the cult after I left. And there's this weird disconnect, this weird separation. I had family members who had left years ago. But there's this weird dynamic that happens when you're in these groups. When somebody leaves, mentally, you almost block their existence. And by and large, the cult as a whole blocks their existence. We have had, I won't go into details because of the family that's involved, but we had family functions where people who had left the cult who were really, really close to the family.

They weren't permitted to be at the event because people in the cult might see the person who is left. So that dynamic is just, it's wrong. It is. And as for children, particularly, that's not a skill set that we have to navigate that kind of conflict, whether it's within the church group itself, and then also with our families. And for example, in my case, again, being a faith-assembly associated or affiliated group, we did not believe in going to medical doctors, which my dad, who was an attorney and very well educated, did not agree with. And so I remember

Or as I think I probably was maybe 10, I fractured my thumb, went to the doctor, ended up with a cast on. But as a child in that kind of a group, if you go to church with a cast on, everyone knows you went to the doctor.

It is blatant failure of your faith. And so I was so distraught about it, I actually went into the bathroom of the laundromat because we had the room behind the laundromat. So I was in the bathroom behind the laundromat and I soaked that plaster cast off.

Because I could not stand the feeling that everybody could see that I had failed and I had gone to the doctor. And to anybody who's ever tried to do it, taking a plaster cast off is no easy task.

I've done it myself because we didn't have the same level of removal from the medicine and the doctors that you did in Hobart Freeman's sect. But we did frown upon it because Brannum in the faith even revival is frowned upon it.

And so we would always try to do things that either limited the amount of medical care we had or avoided altogether in some cases. Like I, even still today, I struggled to take Tylenol when I have a headache because it's so mentally programmed into me, well, if I have enough faith, I can overcome this.

And if you don't have faith to cure a headache, what faith do you have? I remember that phrase over and over. I do take it, but it's in the back of my mind, it's always there.

But as a child, I had to have a cast also and I had the cast until I just couldn't take it anymore. I took it off and it was a big deal to remove it.

I honestly cannot tell you what happened to that sink with all that plaster. I have no idea. And I can tell you my dad was pretty upset with us. Yeah, it was a very difficult place to be in.

And actually I'm a medical provider now. So I'm sort of, oh, you need something done, I'm pretty supportive of doing that. But at the time, really very difficult. And I do want to, John, keep just being a child growing up in that way until you leave that high control group, your development is arrested because it cannot be developed.

But in our case, we also, the pastor of our church also decided that it would be a really good idea to have counseling sessions. Now he had no theological training. He had no counseling sessions.

training and actually was a 20 year military member and he decided to form these co-ed high school counseling groups and that also proved to be very detrimental to all of the young people in our group. We have very small church but probably one of the most demeaning and exposing invulnerable places to put teenage girls is in a mixed group of boys. I remember some functions that we had they would separate and isolate the boys from the girls and there were times whenever you know there were some events that they could get together but anything any function that was outside

of the church we had this one particular deacon at this church that I went to that you're going to isolate yourself you're not going to be together because boys and girls shouldn't be together which it again to your point about the development of a child what does that do to the mind of a child it completely separates the way that they think about each other and you start you start to see the other gender as a different type of animal. Yes and you think the only way we can develop these relationships is under the direct control of the church and so any relationships with

boys or girls had to be done within church settings with church members which in our case was pretty limited although once a year we did travel down to faith assembly they used to have a kind of a conference around Christmas time since we didn't celebrate Christmas we would head to Indianapolis and stay at a hotel for about three days where they had a faith assembly driven conference. The other aspect of this this is something that is similar between Hobart Freemans and the main sect of the message it was a doomsday called you're always focused on the impending doom

that was coming and that's why you're part of the group because you're in the group that's going to escape the doomsday I know family members who as children they cried their heads off whenever they had to go get on the bus to school because there was that fear that they might be at school whenever this thing happened and instead of instilling a sense of comfort from the gospel instead you have this fear that you don't step out of line because you might miss it well then to a child it makes it all the all the worse because they don't they can't really

connect the dots as to well how do you make it so if I'm in school what's this what does this scenario look like and ironically if you really think about it it suggests that the child while thinking through this process is actually critically thinking later on in life they start to suppress this a bit but at that age they're trying to critically think yes I I agree, and you're trying to critically think, though, within a very narrow spectrum of options.

There, you don't know very much because I remember being introduced to that idea of Jesus impending return, of virgins trimming their lamps so that we're ready and we're not left behind, and that there were 144,000 people that it will be raptured.

And as a kid, I kept thinking, gosh, if they make it, that's one person that's in 144, I hope that doesn't push me out. And then we start to learn ways to survive. You're trying to survive constant fear, and I was a very fearful child.

I think baseline, I might have had a little bit of underlying fear, but then one of the things that I learned to kind of work through constant fears, I learned to recognize patterns, because I could figure out when there were times, when I could ease up and not quite be so afraid, versus times where I had to brace myself.

So, for example, there was a lot of prophecies in our meetings, and there were two people in particular that would prophesy regularly, and I knew that their prophecies would always start out kind of gentle and kind, and then they would escalate, and then God would be very angry at us.

And so, I just learned all I had to do is ride out this two to five minute tirade that was about to happen, where we would all be yelled at, and thus say at the Lord, whatever was going to happen because he was angry at us.

I also learned some of the patterns of our preaching. So, for example, we would often cycle through the end times, which terrified me as a child. I had one watching of left behind, and that was enough to scare me, but I learned that if I could just ride through the next series on the end times, that would be followed by a series on proper roles of men and women in children.

And for me, that was almost a rest period, because it was like, okay, the pressure's off. I think I know how to be a pretty good kid. I just have to follow the rules.

So, that was one thing, and then when our pastor would go on vacation, that was just the ultimate. And I knew every summer he was going on vacation. Unfortunately, I often went along with his daughters who happened to be my age, but even if he went down to Rockford, or if he went to Faith Assembly for a visit, we had relief, and it was almost a visible sigh in the room of like, okay, it's better now.

It's not going to last, but it's better. And then I think the other coping mechanism I developed, which was anything but healthy, was, I developed an eating disorder and because there is so little in our lives growing up in a high control group that we can control, I can control two things.

What I ate and my grades in school and so I became absolutely obsessed with my grades, which was kind of funny because I wasn't going to college, you know, we weren't allowed to do that and what I ate and it was a sad decline of a kid screaming for help and I lost quite a bit of weight with that and it was kind of recognized that I was struggling and so I went through a deliverance session because rather than find out why is this kid struggling, it's got to be a demon, right? Because it's a faith assembly thing. It's a the group I grew

up in, you just cast the demon out and I should be okay, but I never was. I was not okay until I left the group. And now you're edging towards one of the aspects that is most troubling and that's really the mental health of the child. The children suffer and they suffer in ways that the adults don't really understand, but when you're in a religion where the medical profession is forbidden or taboo, many people aren't and the children struggle and suffer. I remember there was a point in my life as a child whenever I was coming of age to an adult, I thought

I was happy, go lucky, I was free, I was mentally, mentally secure and then, you know, years later looking back after I went deep into depression, I started recognizing that the symptoms of my depression that I was facing age, you know, in my mid-30s, many of those symptoms I had at age 16, they just were trivial at the time, I thought they were trivial, but they grew into becoming what they were. The child who is in these types of groups who is constantly being told that every friend that you have, every friend that you see

that's not part of this group, they're all doomed to hell and they're all going to die. And, like you said, if you do the math on the 144,000, you start to worry, well, how big is the group? Who's going to make it? William Brannum had this one sermon that I heard over and over and over again called one in a million and then in the midst of that sermon, he goes off into this weird rant where he's talking about, in Noah's day, there was just this little tiny family and he started inventing Bible verses to fit that. So he took it from

one in a million down into one into it, this very, very tiny group. And so I'm looking around that group would have fit our church, the one that I was currently going to. But if I included all of the churches that I'd been to, it would not have included them.

So mentally I'm doing these math problems in my head, kind of like you describe. And there's a fear that's there, maybe not a fear for yourself, but it's a fear for everybody else. And you start to feel if God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son, how can you apply that scripture to God's going to just wipe off every Christian who doesn't believe this little sect?

That's true. But in my case, I actually was worried I kept... I was going to be one of the 144,000 and one. It was me that was going to get left behind. I didn't assume that it was other people necessarily.

And I was such an over-scrupulous kid. And I think if you'd have watched me as a child, you probably would have said, she fits a lot of a kid with obsessive compulsive disorder. But again, that speaks to that mental health part.

You'll never develop feelings in these types of groups. You're never allowed to express them, I should say. Because you can't say I'm angry. Well, no, anger's a sin. You can't say I'm sad because the joy of the Lord is your strength.

You can't say I grieve that I can't see my family that doesn't follow this religion because they're not believers. They're not peculiar people. The Bible says, you know, Jesus is going to divide families.

This is just what happens. And so there's no ability to express feelings. And that internal suppression, I think, often comes out as depression later in life. And for me, as I approach the time of me leaving, my mental health is what really pushed me out.

It was the fact that I was so hyper vigilant, so fearful, so confused. Because again, my brother and my mom were still, were also there. But they were going through what I was experiencing and what I was being told were so chaotic that I could not make sense of what was happening internally.

You know, I think that's a good point. The depression that you have as a child. For me, it was unrecognized. But that depression builds up. It's like a snowball going down a hill. It builds up to a point where you can't contain it anymore.

You can't control it anymore. And it overtakes people who have it. And, you know, looking back at some of my friends, many of them who are still in the cult, I wouldn't say that they're a depressed person.

But if you look at the way that they act and behave in the cult, versus what they would be if they weren't in the cult, to some extent that mental health, the issues that you're describing.

has to have suppressed their lives in some way. And what's interesting, and you may speak to this, being in the medical profession, what's interesting is the effect that it has on the appearance, the outward appearance, because in the support groups, we've even had pictures of this, where people share what they look like while they're in the cult, and then after they leave, they actually look younger.

I don't know what it is, even without the makeup, some of the women still won't wear makeup, but even without the makeup, they look younger, they look obviously, you know, in some ways they look happier, depending on when the photo was taken.

But there's also this appearance that looks almost sickly when you're in the cult, versus after they've left, their picture looks different. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think if you to see me back then, versus when I first came out, there was a difference.

Like you said, there's no makeup at that point. However, there are so many things that you can't do before you leave, and your life, at least my life, was defined by the cants, and that won't.

My life was pretty well looked like it was going down the route of getting married young, having a lot of children and not going to college. It's important in my family to note that one goes to college.

For those that were not raised in what, the name of our church was charity faith church, they went to college. And so I was, I looked pretty, pretty bad, partially because I was very underweight, also at that time.

I was not eating well. If you to tell me and ask me, are you eating okay at what's going on, I would lie to you. I would say I'm okay. I'm all right, I'm controlling everything.

But the closer I got to the time of my leaving, the more I recognized that what I was in was completely, was not normal. But I don't think that can happen until children have developed enough and seen enough to see that there's outside of where we are, is different than inside of where we are.

And for me, one of the first times I saw that is my sister-in-law, she wasn't my sister-in-law then, but she's my sister-in-law now. She came to visit our church and she came in and she was wearing denim, she had makeup on, and she had pierced ears, like many rolls broken right there, the trifecta right there.

And I watched her love Jesus and she displayed the love. of Jesus. And all of a sudden I thought, we need a minute. She's not following the rules. And she actually demonstrates Jesus. And so I think that was the first crack. And I was probably 18, 19 years old at that point. And I started to recognize she doesn't look like us, but she loved better than we did. Because the thing about growing up in these high control groups, and I think you and Chino have talked about this and it's really struck me, is there is not love.

There is the love of Christ of who Jesus is day to day is not seen from the pastoral leadership. They don't love well. They didn't love me well. They didn't live my family well. Hobart didn't love his flock well in my opinion. And it isn't until you get out of that though and you realize, there's this pastoral kind of love that I've never seen before. And one is that normal because I had never seen it. And two, it's a denominational church. I'm not sure this is safe either. Because when you leave, you have a lot of questions. But then you begin to experience the

world in an entirely different way. 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 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

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We actually called people who did not believe the message theology. We call them Canon Father, which is the lowest form of life, basically. These are the people during the war that you send them into battle first so that they take all the cannons and they're expendable. That's how we viewed other Christians. But my mother always had Christian friends that weren't cult members because we lived, we moved a lot and we lived in cities that didn't have a lot of cult people to hang out with.

So I'm hearing these recordings and being told that these are unbelievers, these are cannon fodder. And I would travel to the churches. Sometimes I would travel, some churches were like an hour and a half drive.

So we would drive every Sunday, sometimes Sunday night or Wednesday. And we would hear the same thing being preached. So here I am. The earliest memory I have of my mother having a non-cult friend was, I want to say it was like fourth grade.

From fourth grade up until I'm in my 20s, I'm seeing this. And there's this tug of war happening in my head. Do I look at this person like cannon fodder? And if so, why is my mother friendly to them?

Or do I, do I believe that they, when they say that they love Jesus, do I believe it? Because if they don't believe our quote unquote profit, how can they love Jesus? They would, they should surely love the profit, right?

So I'm going through these exercises in my head, trying to reconcile what is this mess that I'm in. Not everybody who was in the cult had that opportunity because there were some families that they just would completely shut people off.

I have other family members that even if somebody were to a neighbor or something would come over to their door, they would turn them away from their house because they're not a cult member.

Especially if they were wearing a female wearing blue jeans that, that's not allowed in my house. So, so you play these mental gymnastics. But as your mind is developing, especially during the teenage years, it play, it wreaks havoc on your head because you, you can't reconcile that.

It doesn't make sense. So there reaches a point whenever your mind just really wants to break. He wants to just shut down and not have to try to fight this tug of war internally.

So I'll, I'll never forget, I experienced what you're describing after leaving the cult. When I was, I visited my first non-culture, and I saw a woman sitting in our Sunday school class wearing shorts, which, oh my gosh, man, it was hard enough for me to attend the class while she's wearing shorts.

And every Sunday that I was there, I couldn't, you know, like mentally, I didn't know what to do. Here's a woman in shorts, in church, in a church building. And then she started, they went around the room and they had people give testimonies and I can't remember the exact scenario, but she started opening up to the group and telling her story.

And I suddenly realized what a fool I had been to think that all of these other Christians, because they didn't know the quote-unquote profit, were bad people. This was the first time it really hit me how wrong that was.

Yes, we didn't call them cannon fodder. I think we were more refined. We call them heathen or Gentiles. And I say that completely, completely tongue in cheek, because that creates such a separation, like, do you really want it, you know, you're taught, you're in the world, but you're not of the world. So if we can keep that separation by calling them heathen or cannon fodder, you keep your kids from wanting to interact with those people, right? Those people. And I went to public high school.

So at the time that I was growing up, that was the beginning of the homeschool movement. And so I really did not want my mom to homeschool me. I am confident my dad would not have gone along with that anyway. But so I had more contact with public school. And so that made me feel a little bit less of a Christian, because I had to go to public school. But you're right.

As we start to interact with people, and I'm going to interrupt myself for one moment, because I remember specifically in high school meeting a girl who was a joe of his witness. And thinking, oh my gosh, she's in a cult. I mean, I cannot possibly interact with somebody who was in a cult. And retrospectively, I think, I wonder what she thought about me. Who knows?

But there came a point as I got late teens, early 20s, because I graduated from high school. I graduated early because I just wanted to get out of the public school system. At the same time, in my junior year of high school, my dad passed away. He died of alcoholism.

And again, in that high control group, you don't see a lot of single mothers. And there was some level of pity for us, because since my dad did not join the cult, maybe he was into Christian. And so I wanted to get out of high school as quickly as possible.

And I kind of broke a little bit of the mold, and I went to travel agent school, because at that time, travel agents were highly valuable and used. And so I did that, but that's when I started to have more exposure to people outside of the church. I started to see different things.

And work, it's interesting, is in today's world and in today's economy, there are many teenagers who have to go out and work. If you want a car, you have to go out and work. And suddenly, there's this collision between worlds, because now you're seeing teenagers who might be in a cult, and they're making friends at work who aren't in the cult. And so that tug of war that's happening in their head is happening every day at work, accelerating this process. Yes. And I was one of those teenagers. I worked. I did see that. I always felt a little bit different, because here's this girl

comes to work in her skirts and never wears pants and that kind of thing, but it may accelerate things because you start to see things and experience them and the dissonance gets a little bit louder and it gets a little bit harder to quiet the questions down.

And when I ultimately came to the point of leaving the church, again, I had so much internal turmoil and I had had a dream that I was being lowered into the ground in a casket and I called our pastor and I was just distraught.

I'm like, and at the same time, I'm being exposed to travel, I'm being exposed to the outside world. I'm starting to see more than I've seen before and I told him, I had this dream and I explained it and he goes, yeah, that could be God warning you.

You're starting to stray from the fold and this could be God telling you and I don't remember the exact words. I think they were stronger than this could be. I think it was more of this is God telling you.

But I can't remember, so I don't wanna say. But I remember getting off of that phone call where he endorsed that I was straying

and was so deeply distraught and so upset and depressed and hyper vigilant and at that time, I actually talked to another one of the pastors at the church briefly who encouraged me to reach out for some help because we did not do that.

You don't go get any psychological help even if it's Christian based or faith based because that is the arm of the flesh as hard as Hobart used to say, but I needed something and that associate pastor kind of encouraged me to reach out to somebody.

He's like, look at the history of your pastor. Look at his history. I think you need to get some help and I called a very large local church and I said, I need to see a therapist.

I desperately need help and I met with a PhD trained therapist who specialty was shame. And after I answered his questionnaire, the intake form and started to sit with him, I think he saw an absolutely devastated young adult and his path toward walking me toward healing was absolutely remarkable.

And I do believe that was God who had his hand in that because he was so gentle in his guidance and at the same time, he knew where I needed to go. And so one of the things early on in our meeting together is he said, I want you to say, a contract with me that you will not go back to your church for six weeks. And I'm like, but he's like, yeah, I think you need to sign this. He said, I know if you sign a contract, you'll do it. I know you've got integrity. And that was the most profound thing because

in signing that contract, he created space for me to get away, to put some distance between what I was experiencing. Because when I went back six weeks later, I knew I could not stay.

I didn't know where I was going to go. I did not know what that was looked like. But I sat there in that church where people had been encouraged to share from the microphone devastating things as a way of confessing our sins, where people had been called out and embarrassed and prophesied to and I could not stay. And I think that was probably the second big moment of me saying there's something else besides this. I don't know what it is. And I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I cannot come back. And that was very good advice. We've, I recently was talking with some

people who their high demand group literally imploded whenever COVID hit because whenever COVID hit, you couldn't go to these churches. And so you can't be in the high demand group. And that separation, it really breaks the cycle. And I think once you separate from the cycle, then it opens the door to critical thought. Once you start critically thinking, you start examining what is this group that I'm in? And why am I here? So it helps you to wake up. So that was excellent advice.

It was incredibly good advice. It was also timed at a point where I was traveling more. And as I traveled, I remember I actually went to Australia and I meant to Chris, I meant Christian in Australia, like who knew the world's full of them. But we met in a she was my cashier and I was buying something there. And I met someone who loved Jesus in another country, meaning God is working not just in this little group of peculiar people that we were told we were our little insulated group.

He was actually at work other places. And then I remember standing outside of a bar in Australia. And of course we could never go to a bar ever. And I remember thinking, you know what?

I have the freedom to go into this bar. I can choose not to because I don't believe God wants me there, but that's an entirely different way of looking at it. Then I cannot go in there because if Jesus comes back and I'm sitting in the bar, I'm getting left behind.

very different. And that space is valuable, as you said, that six weeks, but it also has to be timed with some cracking in the facade. Because if you to ask me two years earlier to take six weeks away from the church, I could not have done that. The hold was very tight. It probably would have pushed me closer to the group, then it would have created some space. I guess say that was excellent advice. And I don't think people realize until they've been separated for a little bit, when you're in a high-demand group, you don't realize and recognize

that it's high demand until you have that space. And then after you do, it's weird. This weight just kind of drops from your shoulders and you're you're wondering, what was that? Why was I like that? Yes, you're think I remember sitting in a church. My first church I went to after this faith assemblies of charismatic church. So I went to another charismatic type denomination. And I remember sitting there and thinking, what if this is normal? I mean, is this what normal church people do? I mean, I'm not sure. And I think if we can, as we

leave these types of churches, hold loosely that we don't know what we don't know about the church. We don't know what's normal. And that is okay. It is okay to be in a space where we're letting go and things will fill in over time. But it's a very disorienting place to be. And I remember specifically saying to myself, I am letting go of everything. But the fact that I know Jesus died for me. That's all I've got right now. And that actually takes a lot longer than that one little sentence to yourself. A lot longer. But that was that conscious saying, I

don't know. And what I really found out is I did not know who God was. I knew who Harvey Geese who ran that church was. I knew who his wife was. But I didn't know who God was. Yeah, I remember when that feeling hit me after leaving. And it probably, like you said, it's not something that comes quickly. It probably took me a couple of years before the gravity of that hit me. But we believed in a God that was narcissistic. Because when you're in the cult groups like this, the cult leader, the central figure, usually has some sort of a narcissistic personality

this order. And that in France. himself is also how he portrays God, he or she, some female cult leaders. And so you start to think that there's this narcissistic God, and that's why this God will cut off the other Christians because they don't know our cult leader. When that hit me, I suddenly realized that it wasn't the God of the Bible that we believed in. This was something entirely different. Yes, and I agree. And I think what goes with that, John, is that if your father, earthly father is authoritarian, and you have a cult leader who's got a very self-centered

narcissistic type personality, the two people who are most influenced in developing who we experience God, how we experience God are absolutely endothetical to who he is. And so there's this building that occurs after of who is God and what is his role in my life. Because I've had a God who I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop and my world to fall in. And that probably followed me. I would say more than 10 years after leaving the church. Still, I think I see it today where I keep things are going pretty good. I wonder what's going to go wrong next.

I did say something in gossip about somebody recently. And not that there aren't rules and values and consequences, but the fear that we lived under that you didn't meet the conditions. And therefore, God will not answer your prayer. Or the idea of I remember after leaving the cult tonight, my husband is just the most wonderful human who has walked through this with me.

He went to seminary, though. And one of the hard parts was like bringing up the sovereignty of God. Because that was represented to me and to us as I think very strongly faith assembly, if you meet the conditions, God must answer your prayers. If he doesn't, it is something you did wrong. But then when you transition out and pray and God does not answer in the way that you expect him to, does that mean there's anything wrong with you or God? God is sovereign.

And he may be in places we're not looking. But you're trained to look for God in very specific places, in healing, in prosperity, in in those types of things, but not necessarily in a dedicated relationship with you. Yeah, and that feeling of fear.

So the number one email that I get from people is, how do I proceed from here? How do I go from here? And usually what they're trying to address is they have a fear of the unknown, now that they've left. What do I do? That fear of the unknown is crushing. And my answer is always first take out the sense of urgency that was indoctrinated into you. Because you have a lifetime to learn and grow and become a better, if you're Christian, you become a better Christian. And if you're, if not, you just become a better person. You have a lifetime to grow and learn. But if you remove

that sense of urgency, eventually that sense of fear leaves with it. Yes, although I would say for my journey personally, it's taken a very long time and I still see that fear pop up periodically.

But that sense of urgency that you're talking about in retrospect, you're right. If we can let that go and I remember specifically thinking, I don't even know how to pray anymore. I don't. I, you know, we prayed in tongues and we prayed a lot, but I didn't know what to pray for anymore because I wasn't asking for the same things anymore that I was when I was in the group. And so for me, what I did is I said, I'm going to pray the Psalms because at least I know I'm praying God's Word. And it's, it's got to be as will I mean, it made it to the Bible. And literally I was thinking

like this at the time. And so for me, it was because so many of the patterns of David's Psalms are this happened and this happened. And then I prayed and yet you were with me. And so I did that and I just

make right here. I honestly at times just sat with the Bible on my lap because that's all I could do.

I don't, I didn't necessarily have a strong desire to walk away from God. Although people who leave these types of cults, I understand why they want to or why they do because

you know, when you leave a cult and you say, go to church, you're going back to serve the very God who was weaponized against you. And that is very hard to separate. And so I, I can appreciate people walking away. I did not walk away personally, but there was so little left at that time. And it's taken a very long time to grow, grow and start to form and develop some spiritual formation. And it looks very different than the charismatic.

movement. I started my life in. I think that it is the time and it is the support of people who have either gone through it like you and Chino. It is, I have met other cult members and it's almost like your friends and you hardly even know each other. Or at a very dear friend of mine, she was actually the maid of honor in my wedding. She grew up with me in that cult and she has left to and we will sometimes refer to our Colton days. You know when we were back Colton because we understand it. If you could go back in time to that little

curious girl back whenever you're in the Colton, give some encouragement and advice. What encouragement and advice would you give? The first thing I would do is I would go to her and I would hold her a little face and look at her eyes and say you are not alone. You do not have to navigate this world alone. There I am here with you and I want you to honor the feelings that you experience and recognize and hold what you see as dissonance as true. And I think I would say to her you are right. Something here is wrong. Well that's very good advice. Thank you so

much for sharing your story with me. Thank you so much for your time. What a privilege it is. Well thank you so much. If you've enjoyed our show and you want to share your story you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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