Inside YWAM: The Cultish Secrets Behind the Mission

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 we teased that we were talking about why WAM today, for anybody who doesn't know its youth with a mission. There's a lot that we can talk about. I don't know that we could even talk about all of it in one single podcast episode, but it

was connected to the International House of Prayer in ways and it's connected to other things in various ways which I've talked about some in my videos and it's interesting the number of comments and emails that I get whenever I do.

I have this detector whenever I put a comment out about a specific group. I can always detect whenever it has gone to a level of being a cult and sometimes whether it's a destructive cult by the type of feedback that I get because you see all of the people just suddenly flood. No, no, no. We need to conceal this history. We need to cover this up. This person was a good person so don't say anything that is factual about them. Usually there's something wrong here and I have to say that, you know, I'm not going to outright call it a cult, but I

will say that many of the comments that I get about why WAM are very, very interesting. Yeah. Well, and we might need to update your bio of me because former member of the International House of Prayer, I also as a former member of why WAM for quite a few years as was a lot of people because as we will get into why WAM is incredibly broad and it's not like these other churches where it's one centralized location. It really was like a franchise. It's the only way that I can kind of put it is that it was it is and continues to be one of the

most prominent evangelical or charismatic evangelistic missions movements that I'm aware of. Certainly that you know that why WAM was the most prominent, you know, if you think about missionaries and especially the charismatic world.

Raising up ministry or missionaries. You think of why I'm there's so much history there, too Like you can find some of this out there if you search and know where to search, but a lot of people are just kind of scared to say it But yeah, whenever Hitler did what he did in Germany and Created that you know the Nazi youth all of these things. There's some really good movies about those that Program that was set up, but What what happened is Hitler indoctrinated a nation and it was fascinating after people realized what he had done

And they wanted to know how and why and There are some research articles out there. I'm working with another guy who Is sending me some really good stuff that I'm still processing, but It seems the evangelicals wanted to replicate what was happening there But use it for purposes of good in their mind, right? So they're they're creating youth programs and you know if if Hitler can sway the Swae the nation towards Nazism. Maybe we can sway it towards Christianity. It's not that that's a bad idea but how far do you go with replicating what he did because what he did was very

immoral and not not really compatible with Christianity and And the timing of is is interesting whenever the guy first sent me all of the information that he had on You know these connections there and their weird connections I kind of discredited because No, I'm not going to connect why I'm to Hitler. That's that's probably a bad idea I'm probably going to get a lot of negative feedback more than I'm getting However, I did continue to read as he continued to send it and I started piecing together the timeline and it gets really really weird because

Pentecostalism for example, we have this structure where Only the men can be ministers in most cases. I don't think back in the 40s I don't think there were any legitimate female ministers. I think it all had to be men and Because of the hierarchy and structure they had to be very controlling in their doctrine They were coming up against an opposition of social movements that You really had to be rigid in what you preached Yet they were letting ten-year-olds preach the captive audiences in Pentecostalism little David is one There's I can't remember the name of the others, but there there's more than one

Jim Jones joined into the Pentecostal movement because of the youth programs and he's there holding his own youth programs Billy Graham held his own youth programs. So everybody's kind of getting into this But then where it gets really problematic as you start to see some of them Turning into destructive cults not all you know Billy Graham's youth programs I don't I haven't read anything yet that suggested it was destructive But there are others that did and they turned into Weird cults that spun off of them. So when you look at all of the history of this and then now merge the timeline of

what we have with the timeline of Y, Y, M and later on introducing the Seven Mountain mandates into their software program. This gets really weird. I think that when I was thinking about how to prepare for this and when I've talked with people either from the various churches that we've already talked about or the various communities that we've already talked about, you know, when you tell someone who grew up at IHOP, well, maybe not anymore because there's not as many people who are as defensive of IHOP anymore. But, you know, five, ten years ago, if I had told someone that I think

that the international house prayer is cold, there's this sort of bristling defensiveness because people will have, oh, good memories, bad memories, you know, they have commitment and an emotional, even if they are like, you know, I don't like some of the teachings there and I've left it and may not have the best feelings towards this community. Calling it a cold is just a different level of intensity and that can draw the eye of a lot of individuals.

I think that more than just like a strategy of how to talk to these people, I think a good way of conceptualizing it is that there are a lot of red flags and a lot of cult-like behavior, cult-like tendencies, cult-like teachings that I, of course, and you yourself, John, grew up in communities that adopted a lot of these cult-like tendencies. And so instead of thinking of it as like a cut and dry, you're either a cult or you're a Christian community that's totally fine, you know, like it's a spectrum of things. And this is how it is if you

were diagnosing somebody with narcissistic personality disorder, you know, or there's like a spectrum of these concerning behaviors and usually it's after a certain amount of these concerning red flags that you can like actually diagnose it as narcissistic personality disorder or, you know, like a cult in this case. So with Y-WAM, I think there are so many different, with the way that it raised up and created and the mandate of trying to spread it as quickly and fast as possible. And we'll talk about this more, but some of the mechanisms of Y-WAM are to church plant with young people. So you have young people training, young people training,

young people, you know, it's a Russian doll situation of like baby Christians teaching baby Christians teaching, you know, and just going out, especially internationally, where they They just want a foothold in all of these different places.

And so it has leaned less on particular systems and more of just like, let's get this out there as quickly as possible. And with that lack of structure and accountability, all you have had a bunch of these hotbeds for different cult-like behaviors to grow up very quickly because there isn't a whole lot of structures of accountability and whatnot.

So when we're talking about Y-WAM, in my personal opinion, I think that there are many, many cults within Y-WAM at different bases. I think different bases have different levels of how deeply

they are into how authoritarian is the leadership of the base, how much is it like us versus them, mentality, how much is there like an excesses focus on the specific teachings of the individual who is leading that community.

I think there's a bunch of different questions. And you might go to your local Y-WAM and be like, it's fine, it's a youth movement, there's a few of these red flags. But generally, it's pretty safe.

They have good procedures in place for accountability and whatnot. And then you might go to another one and realize, this is a full-fledged cult. This is just people on the base are being controlled in every way possible.

And it's hard to talk about. I have so many friends that I still really respect and admire who were either in Y-WAM or are still in Y-WAM. And I know that there will probably be some backlash of speaking up against some of the cult-like behaviors in Y-WAM, because there's a lot of people who really hold Y-WAM sacred to this day and who are good friends of mine.

But the reality is is that yeah, we... There's just too many red flags. There's the way that it was created, the way that it continues to exist. There's just a lot of things that frankly need to be addressed for it to be considered.

Like if someone was asking me, hey, my son or daughter is going to join this Y-WAM base, I would be like, I would want them to pause and think about it because there's just a lot.

I'm not saying, it's not like I hop where I'm like, shut the whole thing down. If anyone's going to I hop, I'm like, no, it's just not, like it's just, there was extreme abuse going on behind the scenes and this thing needs to be shut down.

I don't have that level of conviction with Y-WAM, but I certainly have all of these red flags that. that give me significant pause, but yeah, tell me more about how your research on how it kind of like was formed and some of those questionable.

Yeah, the interesting part of this is, like I said, it bears so many striking similarities to all of the other groups. And I don't, you know, you can't say that it drew upon direct descendants from branemism or anything like this.

But it's happening at the same time as a parallel universe that's being created for some similarities and strategic purpose. I think that's the best way that I would say this. And they're drawing upon many of the same influences, which as a society for its era, I think would be common widespread.

Like Billy Graham, his Billy Graham youth for Christ, I think it's called that, whatever his group was called, they also bore many striking similarities. It all really comes down to the structure and agenda.

The structure is we want children to help other children learn, grow, become like us. And again, I'm not going to use the reference too much, but I'll bring it up one more time. It's very much like the Hitler youth.

The Hitler youth program was established in that same way, but the children indoctrinate the other children. For me, that's where the line gets really fuzzy because there was, and there's no way to stop it.

There was a level of indoctrination. There had to be because your kids teaching kids. And like you said, you can't really apply the same level of criticism across the board because they're kids teaching kids.

There were obviously some adults who were kind of mentoring and guiding and overseeing to some extent. But adults can't control what kids say when they're out of the adults here. That's how children work, man.

So you can't really control where this goes. That's why actually the Hitler youth programs were so popular and so powerful. They were able to indoctrinate in ways that Hitler himself never could. And that structure, just in hindsight, the structure is very, it's concerning.

I think that's the way that I'll put it. But as far as cult or not cult, you can't apply it to across the board. However, my wife uses the term high demand group. And I have had, I can't remember when this was.

It was a few months back, but we had a lady who had escaped the Y-Wam. She was saying many things that she brought up as clear signs that her group was probably destructive or at least was withholding information that it shouldn't have.

I can't remember if she used the word cult or not, but what she was describing essentially was a very high demand group. And that label can be used on a cult. A cult can be a high demand group and it can demand your own.

motions and sometimes your physical activities, your time, your money, it can be very demanding when you're in one. Well, the time and the physical activity, many people overlook in a cult. So whenever we published her story, it came out on one of our story Fridays, I watched some of the feedback from other people who were in Y-Wam from different regions and they would completely deny or reject some of the things that she actually literally experienced because in their part of the world and their little group, the flow of influence was slightly different, so their experience was different. And so while one group may have cult like tendencies,

the other one may not, but that's the nature of it. You look at, again, look at the Hitler youth programs, some of them turned into military forces and they were supplying their military with these people. Other groups, I mean, the way that it works, children are indoctrinating children, so the way it works, you can't control the outcome of the whole thing. But while that's, you know, as far as labeling it as a destructive cult, that's in its favor. It's also very scary, man, because it's like a train going down the tracks with no rails. Where is this thing headed,

you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and there isn't this sort of like clear doctrine of what the goal is. I mean, the goal is very, very broad in Lauren Cunningham, the leader who established Y-Wam, who I met and spent time with in, because I was on the base in Kona and, you know, I don't, I'm not speaking against him personally. As a person, he seemed like he had good high character and everything like that, but his vision was this very generic, very like, we just need to get Christianity to the ends of all the earth. You know, it was this sort of like very simple, very

expansionistic, and there's a lot of problems with it from like a social politics perspective of just like proselytizing and evangelizing. But that's, you know, that's going to be true with a lot of these missions movements. So there's some like generic criticisms that you could put towards Y-Wam, but you could also put that towards really any missions movement that's going on. But specifically, I think that it was just so, it was so intense on just like, we need to get there. There was this sort of like consequentialist

perspective on how we get there. If who, you know, if you crack some eggs, who cares? sort of thing. And that was always the frame of reference with that was always, you know, if people get in trouble, if people, if we're in regions of the world where you can get put in prison or you can have, you know, some really serious backlash against you, you can, you know, it's dangerous. This was sort of like it goes with the territory. Like, this is what we're doing. We're missionaries. And it was this sort of like old school view

of missionaries where it's like if you, if we put kids in danger, like so be it for the glory of God. And again, I understand, you know, if you really believe in the mission, I understand why people do that and want to be a part of that. But I think that there was a lot of ways that students were being put in danger, not just in so far as they are missionaries and they're going to, you know, territories where they shouldn't, shouldn't be going and it isn't safe. But also, not safe within the community itself, sending missionaries out to isolated individuals where

they are led by someone who's two years older than them, who has been, you know, four years previously was drug addict and just, you know, converted to Christianity or even, it's not even necessarily that they had to be a drug addict in the past. They could have been, you know, whatever.

But it's, it's just there was not a whole lot of accountability and structure. And so like, I've heard many horror stories of things that are happening when you're on outreach, you're just kind of out there by yourself. And you got to really trust the group that you're with.

And some groups were really trusted where they some great individuals, others, not so much. And especially because they were holding a lot of these really problematic beliefs, similar to like the Bethel and IHOP views on like prophecy and spiritual manifestations, not all of Y-WAM is like this, but like there are definitely sex or some sex of Y-WAM that are hyper spiritual where there is prophecy. So like, let's say that you're on a mission's movement, you're in rural, you know, Uganda and you have someone within your community of like 10,

20 something year olds who are doing this mission movement in Uganda, who want the leader of the group who's some 24 year old believes that he's starting to get prophecies about things that he ought to do in that group and crosses sexual boundaries, crosses boundaries of like just putting people in danger for no good reason.

and having really intense expectations. So if we are going too fast, we are going to pray. We are going to get up at 6 a.m. and go to bed at 1 a.m.

because we're going to be interceding for this nation. The sort of radicalism that is launched through Y-WAM can be extremely terrifying and dangerous. And I've definitely seen some of these... like this is not just me making fictionalizing horror stories.

Like there are a lot of different indications. I personally know individuals who have experienced to some degree this level of like, I was just out there on my own, suddenly under the leadership of someone who had really leaned into a lot of these latter-rain belief systems that are dangerous in non-isolated communities to then be in a very isolated community where you have very little contact with your friends of family.

You have very little contact with like your home church. You have very little interaction with people who even speak your language. Which, and just to back up a little bit and to give for people who don't know what Y-WAM is and how it's structured, a quick overview is that they basically have outreach programs which are, I might be forgetting the time period, but they're very short.

It's like, you go to a base. So like, Kona, Hawaii was the biggest, is the biggest base, I think, for Y-WAM. And that's where Lauren Cunningham resided and that was where I went. And I spent like six months there at the base where you get trained up, you get taught, different missions, Christianity sort of minded stuff.

It isn't very structured. It isn't like we're going through this textbook. These are the central tenets of our faith. It's, we have different people come in and speak to the group, so you're kind of like whatever you're taught is relatively determined

by whatever speakers are coming in during that six month period, but you get trained and then after those six month period where you're trained, you get launched where you go on outreach to someplace usually overseas, usually international and like I went to Garmshawar, India.

So I was way up in the like foothills of the Himalayas, preaching to Buddhist monks about Christianity with my like little outreach team. And for me, like, it actually wasn't a horrible experience. Like I went, spoke with the Buddhist monks, realized I didn't know it.

anything. And that was a good transformative experience for me. So like no harm, no foul for sort of my experiences. But what kind of what I was saying there is that like during that outreach time, you're off on your own. You're not a part of like a local congregation.

Some may be connected with like local congregations, but you very much are kind of Christian pioneers and kind of old school Christian missionary. And usually it's being led by 20 year olds, early 30 year olds. It's not being led by individuals who have been a part of a very well established long tradition of Christianity. It's a lot of like people who are just getting in the thick of it. And it's that very structure that makes the outside look in and wonder is this a cult? I mean, think of it. So you're going into other countries. I don't know if you do,

but I have had to work with many people of different cultures and religions and faiths and not faiths. And when you're dealing with another culture, it's not like you can simply come in and say, hey, I'm a Christian. And then they suddenly join in. Right. So the mind of a child who's coming into a territory isn't going to be the one who's literally converting. So you have to wonder what is the strategy there? If there's a strategic purpose, what is it? And why is it? Why are they doing this? Right. I could assure you that I've been to have a neighbor who is Asian Indian. And I have

to been to many of their ceremonies where they come in with all of the, they're all wearing the Indian garb. And it's really cool. The food is phenomenal. I mean, the best food I've ever eaten.

But I can assure you that if my child were to walk into this meeting and say, hey, I'm a Christian, I'm going to tell you about Jesus, there's no way on earth that a single person is going to be converted to them. So what's the strategy? And so let's think of this from the perspective of somebody who isn't in it, who is in one of these territories. You see these people come in. What in the world are they doing? And so any government who has any sense is going to look and see, what is their agenda? Who are these people? What are they doing in our territory?

And they go find things like, you may not know this history, but they're the Y-WAM group is connected to the Fellowship Foundation, the family, which is connected to Branemism. So they're, I guess there is a flow of connection there. But one of the most infamous things that is in the history of the family, the Fellowship Foundation, is this house on C Street, where they were having senators were coming there and they were having all kinds of sexual parties and things happening in this house. And the family was apparently helping allegedly, I should say.

allegedly helping to cover this up, Hillary Clinton visited the Sea Street House, Michael Jackson visited the Sea Street House, Senators after Senator, Congressman, et cetera, and they're going to this house where it is openly known that there are sexual activities in this house.

So this turned into an infamous house. That house was owned by Y-Wam and was transferred over to the family. So a foreign nation who sees that, wait a minute, this is connected to the family. Those are the people that are trying to control and influence Washington through this weird cult that exists in Washington, they see influencing the Senators. You mean that's connected here? And so, although it's conspiracy theory, there are no proven links. They can easily read the same newspapers that I did and find this. So you see these people moving into a territory. And then the next thing you see is, wait a minute, they're

all kids. There aren't enough adults to have an intellectual conversation that is persuasive enough to convert the region into Christianity. So then you're thinking, well, why are they doing this? Are they planning to grow a commune here and set up a compound? That's the next thought that's logically going to come in your head. And maybe they have, I don't know. But as an outsider looking in, these are the questions that they would be asking. And for that reason, people who are in the United States who aren't in this group and who are skeptically looking at it from the outside, it's the same thoughts that's going through their head. What are they

doing and why? This doesn't make any sense. If there's a strategy here, it's not a good one. So there must be something going on behind the scenes. And I think that's why there are so many conspiracy theories about Y-Wam. What is happening? What is going on behind the scenes? Whether there is or not, the structure itself raises all of these questions.

Yeah, totally. And in my personal opinion, I think that it's a great example of there's a lot of times where people have conspiracies about someone behind the scenes who is orchestrating a lot of stuff. And I think that Y-Wam is a good example of not an instance in which there is like someone who's pulling strings behind the scene. But just this sort of like, when you have an individual who has like a great and very grandiose vision and then a lot of other individuals sort of lash onto that vision, there can be this sort of shotgun situation

where everybody's just doing everything and they're all writing the momentum. And like I saw this firsthand with like the, I got sucked into the videography and the sort of, there was this idea that Lauren Cunningham's son, David Cunningham, who was like this Hollywood director was going to...

to start creating these movies that weren't going to bring the Bible back into popular culture. And there was this sort of grandiose vision again of like, it was with the whole Seven Mountains mandate and like the Christian Dominionism, this idea that like, we just need our our type of Christians.

That's not explicitly said, but it's, it's, we need Christians in all spheres of society. When you step back and you're like, okay, Christians already are in all spheres of society, especially in Western culture and have been since like the Renaissance era, like that, you know, Western culture has always been determined by Christian and Catholic movements.

Like, that's just the history of Western civilization. So when you ask the question of like, what do you mean, get Christians in every aspect of culture, there has to be the like, oh, there's this type of radical Christian that they're trying to get in every sect of society, the same thing, like I remember talking with David about this, of being like, what do you mean the Bible back in popular culture?

Like, I remember I was in, I was in Hawaii right after Les Mis, the musical with Anne Hathaway and, and, oh, I'm forgetting his name, Hugh Jackman and, you know, this big spectacle, well, like, Les Mis is an explicitly Christian story.

Like it, it is thoroughly a Christian story about like forgiveness and redemption and it's like one of the best like classic Christian stories. That is like, you can watch it and be not a Christian and still appreciate it, but like, it is quite clearly very like high character, high Christian values and was written by a Christian author and, you know, and so, and then I go back to this community that's like, we, oh, popular culture is just like so, Christianity has been, it is so popular culture is so devoid of Christianity.

I'm like, the, the most popular movie of this last, like, cycle was literally a Christian film. Like, what are we? Yeah. What are we doing? And do we have to create our own little Christian bubble and make it all of, it only, the only people working it on it are Christians and normally this type of Christians and so it was this sort of like, what are we trying to accomplish?

What are we trying to do? And again, I don't think that there was like, I don't think David or Lauren Cunningham were behind the scenes being like, we're going to make a bunch of money by pulling these people in or we're going to have these sort of like political strings that we are going to be pulling at this point.

I think they just had this general vision of like, it's good to get... It's good to get our message out. It's good to get our message out in every way with that we can.

David was like, oh, I want to do that as a filmmaker. A lot of people rallied behind it. It was just the sort of all vision, no plan, just total shotgun of like, you have the grand architect, but you don't have any of the building structure.

It's like, well, let's just put things together and hope that it kind of cobbles up. Anybody who's been in Y-WAM would 100 percent, even people who are the biggest defenders of Y-WAM, would know what I'm talking about right now because it's totally a leap before you look situation where everybody's just like, catch the vision, go, go, go, go, go, think later.

And when it's all 20-year-olds who are doing it, it kind of, I don't want to say works because it doesn't work and there's a lot of people who are left like holding the bags and like, when disaster strikes, like, I don't know how they handled COVID.

I don't know how they did these situations when like problems arise. You have people who are extremely ill equipped to handle those problems because there is no segmented, let's like slow down, let's build, let's have a firm, you know, let's have a firm theology even before we go.

I mean, so many people were preaching Christianity and had no idea what they were preaching. And that's this sort of like idea of the having the youth convert, the youth mentality of like, you radicalize young individuals by forcing them to evangelize.

Like that's a proven method of radicalizing the youth is like, make them convert other people. But you know, it's part of the Mormon mission is to like, everybody has to go on missions movement and has to do some of this sort of like evangelizing because there's a few ways more effective to solidify and radicalize a certain set of beliefs than having someone go out, be isolated, be off on their own.

Maybe they're not going to like convert anyone, you go like me, you know, I was in Darmsol, India, I wasn't converting any of these Buddhist monks that I was talking to. And unfortunately, it didn't work for me where I started being like, maybe I don't know what's going on.

But for a lot of people, that's not what happens. What happens is like you have to deep, you know, you have to like really situate yourself deep in this sort of cognitive dissonance of being like, I don't know what I'm talking about.

But if I preach with more conviction, I'll feel like I'm knowing what I'm talking about. And then I'll preach with more conviction and then I'll feel like, you know, it's just this cycle of like reaffirming these things that you don't even know you believe, but you have to sort of...

it make it salient and make it like a solidified as soon as you speak it out loud, and it's a very proven way of rackilizing a lot of young individuals. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So very few times on here do I give my opinion, but today I think I'm going to give my opinion because we'll never know all the answers. There are

some things that you would never know the answer to because we weren't there. And interestingly enough, the people who created these sort of things, a lot of times they don't really have the answers. They just had some grandiose vision and move forward with it. That's funny how that works, but that's usually how that works. So here in Jeffersonville, this is the Mecca of the Brandham Colt. And here at the Mecca, there is a multi-million dollar building, not far from my house, where they, for years and years, I don't know if they're, I guess they're still printing them,

but for years and years they had all of these printing presses from like the 1950s, and they had this massive staff that was printing, boxing, translating, printing, boxing, translating, and shipping crates and crates of this printed material overseas to quote unquote, spread the gospel. And in fact, they were spreading brannemism.

I never stopped and thought about it. I just looked at it and all, wow, this is great. They're doing God's work. And after leaving, after there came a point in which my website and communications went global. And I started getting people who were escaping in other countries.

Some of those people escaped in the destination regions where these crates of books and materials were sent. And they said, John is really weird. There's all these books and materials, but there are crates and crates and crates that are just full. They're, they're not spreading them as fast as they're sending them. And so I did a little bit of research and one, the first thing I found out that hit me, the first and largest initiative to spread the quote unquote gospel of William Brannum was in the Spanish speaking regions. And yet for it was at that point, almost 50 years, not all of the sermons

had been translated to Spanish. And unlike what on earth, why not? They've had 50 years to do this and they have Spanish speaking staff who that's their job. Why on earth have they not done this? And why are the crates sitting there? And then the businessmen in me kicked in and I slapped myself up the back of my head thinking, oh my gosh, the whole business strategy, none of it makes sense because you wouldn't print them here and ship them there. You would print them there. And they would, you would have much less costs. You've already got the cult following in the other countries, right? If I'm printing

in India at that time, I had I knew the math. I can't remember what it was, but they could have reduced their cost by probably 40%, maybe 50%, just by printing in the destination regions. And that's one of the, that's in the areas that are more civilized. You could go to other regions and you people would do it for free. It's kind of odd. But the whole business model didn't make sense. And then it finally clicked. Every single person who comes here to Brana Mecca who sees this operation is thinking, glory to God, this thing's going

on and we're spreading it. There is more money to be made by having that structure there so people could come see this moving, see that they're part of a bigger thing. And then somebody gave me and instructed me that I had to read the book Propaganda. How does Propaganda work? I recommend, if you've been an occult, I recommend you read Propaganda because it is mind-blowing. Yeah. You'll understand how you can achieve mass psychology, get people to start thinking in a different way. All of this makes sense when you look at it. So, as it applies to Y-Wam, here's this whole structure, none of which makes any sense. Not

absolutely from start to finish, none of it makes sense. Yeah. But now, look, don't think of it as a single entity cult. Remember the new apostolic reformation, there's all of these networks, these apostolic networks that comprise the entire global NAR. All you have to do is bring this into some sort of convention. Look at this global work that's happening. It's the same as the printing presses in the message. Here's this thing that's happening. We want to be part of this thing that's happening. Come sponsor this thing that's happening. Even if the thing produces no fruit at all outside of the United States, everybody who sees this kind of thing taking off

in these meetings, they're thinking, wow, I'm part of a bigger thing. I'm going to continue being part of the bigger thing. I'm going to contribute to this bigger thing. So, it is my opinion and You know, you can take it or leave it.

I could be completely wrong with my opinion, but it's my opinion that the entire entity is more powerful just for the simple fact that it exists. Not that it's doing any good, not that the strategy makes sense, but the fact that it exists serves a purpose.

Yeah, that's a very, very astute, like analysis. And then certainly, you know, that is, that is what's going on when you see these missions movements. I mean, the Y-WAM is fueled by home churches.

Like, that's how they make any of their money. The Y-WAM training itself isn't like terribly expensive, but it isn't cheap either. So you have to, like, go to a, you have to go to some base, wherever that may be, and then you have to pay to be trained.

And then you have to then also the pay to then go on this mission strip, which mission strips are expensive. And, you know, you flights to very remote areas of the world, like it's expensive.

And typically, like, everybody in Y-WAM is poor. Everybody in Y-WAM, I mean, they're typically 20-year-olds who have not gone into a career. So they don't have, like, built up money from a career. So they're either being sponsored by their parents or their home churches.

That's a huge thing of, like, if, you know, you have your small sort of Christian, sort of mainline church that is in your small town, rural town, and they want to be involved. And like, they can't, they can't themselves send out missionaries.

They don't have the resources or connections for that. But they're like, well, if we send these five different young adults to a Y-WAM base and then they're launched, we're sort of fueling the global missions movement.

And we are getting people into remote areas of India, like my group, it was a very appealing thing to tell people, like, we are witnessing in the, like, foothills of the Himalayas, where there is, like, very little Christian influence.

And there's all sorts of, like, Buddhists and Hindu and Islamic influences, like, we are helping bring a light to what would be a dark place. This is how we would talk about it. And like, we were just a bunch of kids who were kind of, like, trying to survive in Darf Saleh, India.

And like, maybe we did some good, like, helped other, like, it wasn't, like, all bad. But the effect that we were having was pretty... minimal but it was I understand why the industry works and the organization works because like it's easy to raise money to be like we are we're going and converting the Buddhist monks like I met the Dalai Lama I shook his hand I did not witness to him when I met him but I can leave that out of my mission's fundraising letter you know and yeah so it's for lack of a better word

it's sexy to be involved in these like grand oh we're going to reach every corner of society through these big missions movement and you can see how a lot of these like both when it comes to like money and when it comes to like young passion and zeal you can understand why like something like y-wam has huge huge like connections all across the world I mean if you look even the most random places like just think of you know if you're listening to this think of some random city the most obscure city you can think of in some random you know country and then go

on google maps and see if there's a y-wam base nearby and like chances are there's going to be a y-wam base that's like maybe a couple hours hey you know in all of these different countries and these random random places like y-wam has like definitely gotten around everywhere and I think that

I think one thing that we really have to talk about in this is like the dangers of Christian dominionism and like I remember being in y-wam and trying to defend Lauren Cunningham against you know accusations of Christian dominionism and being like I don't know if I really can defend it because he was one of the he was one of the individuals who like championed what is now becoming what is like super nationalistic super scary Christian dominionism that is going on in the United States right now I mean he was part of pushing that that seven

mountains mandate and very like using very like militaristic language of like to just give a brief summary this seven mountains mandate which has been championed by like Lauren Cunningham Bill Brite Lance Wall now a lot of different individuals which we talked about Lance last time and and his phony PhD you know like there's a lot of different individuals who have kind of like champion this seven spheres or seven mountains or seven mole hills of society or where it's basically like we need to get Christians in to each one of these things.

And I saw the manifestations of that. I was in a backdoor, and this is where I do think people's conspiracy theories about what's going on in Christianity. This is where it is. There explicitly is a group of individuals who are coming up with schemes behind the scenes to make sure that their group of people have the most influence as possible within the United States.

That's not a conspiracy. Like that is just explicitly what is happening. And I remember going to, because I was with my dad, and my dad would travel and speak to these different individuals, speak to Lauren Cunningham, speak to Bill Johnson.

And we would have these behind the scenes meetings where I would see all of these individuals like scheming about how they're going to take over the United States. And that's, I'm not being dramatic.

That's exactly what was happening. It was obviously couching very spiritual language. So it didn't feel like that. But there is a state senator in California who I met with. I'm forgetting what her name is right now.

But we met with her and Cheyon, who's the leader of a church in Pasadena. And behind the scenes, this was in 2010. But we went to a restaurant, and there was a backroom restaurant that she came in the back way.

And they clearly were wanting to not be seen together in this restaurant, which I thought was super weird, because I had no idea what was going on. And so we all met. We were celebrities.

And the paparazzi would be following us and stuff in this backdoor, or this backroom of this restaurant. And for an hour and a half, we talked about the gay agenda in California, and how the gays were trying to get a hold of all of governments and push their agenda.

And it was one of the first moments where I just sat back. And I was like, isn't that what we're doing? Are we not projecting onto them? Because we're talking about we need to get everyone who's gay out of leadership.

And it was very specific. It was like all of these gays. And I'm speaking very offensively. So I apologize for that. But I'm just rehashing the language that was spoken in that. But all of these different politicians who either supported the gay agenda or who were gay themselves, we needed to make sure that they were out.

did from government positions and we needed to make sure that everybody who is Christian in, again, not just Christian, but this type of Christian were placed within the group leadership. And it was really weird because I had been a part of YWAM and it was this sort of like, I've seen the nasty underbelly of Christian dominionism of it being like, this is just a plot to take over the United States. Like, this is a plot to turn the United States into a radical sort of ladder rain style theocracy, not like just a generic Christian theocracy because like,

Christians who believed gay marriage was fine dating count as Christians, Christians who like supported, you know, were pro-choice those weren't Christians, Christians who were like, you know, said that there was multiple ways that you could kind of be saved or that were against tell, you know, like whatever it was, those weren't Christians. So it was like this specific type of Christianity that they were trying to get their people, including me, like, I was a part of that group. Like, that was the, that was the plan. It's like, how do we take over all of these

different spheres of society? And as much as like, people really like Lauren and and, you know, he was more understanding of cultures than these other leaders, he was more appreciative of people who are different than him. Like, I definitely think of that's true. He also was like, absolutely peddling some extremely dangerous Christian dominionist rhetoric and to a bunch of Russian doll youth missionaries who had just, you know, like I said earlier, baby Christians, teaching baby Christians, teaching baby Christians, catching the zeal of Christian dominionism, which is 100% led to like, there is a huge outbreak of like, young men who are like,

frankly, neo-Nazi Christian nationalists. And that's just like very much a thing that is happening right now. And like, I don't think people are aware of how much like Y-WAM and the Latter-In Movement really fostered that sort of environment that created these people.

The historian and researcher in me is just dying to dig deeper in exactly what you said. So maybe we'll, maybe we'll put that off for the next episode because we're almost getting an hour here. But one thing that you said, I can't help it laugh anytime I hear it. Whenever I hear the term, the gay agenda, I'm like, do you guys know what agenda means and how agenda's work? And I had, actually, I had one person who started emailing me whenever I said something similar. And they said, yes, but the stories in Hollywood, they have now written in people

who are homosexual. And I'm like, you know, they're writers and they write about what's happening in the world. They're also writing, I love a good murder mystery. They're writing about murderers, but you don't hear the outcry of the murderer agenda, right? It's a story, guys. It's a story, come on. But I understand where it's coming from. But to end this properly, again, picture the nation where suddenly you have this group of people. And I'm glad you brought up the Seven Mountain Mandate in this episode because it helps me end it. Picture yourself as a foreign nation

who's watching this silent invasion. Like you said, there's, pick any city. They're everywhere. So there's, there's the silent, silent invasion of a group who wants to take dementia and proclaim dominion over our people. And they send their kids. What on earth is going on here? So it leads you to, and again, I'm not going to go too far with this, but consider that same network of Y-WAM institutions spread throughout the globe. And think of the potential, if it were to be espionage, which I'm not saying it is, think of the potential there because they're everywhere. And they've

sent the kid. Why are they sending the kids? What? I can imagine foreign leaders of foreign governments thinking they're invading to push dominionism on our region with those children. What's happening here? But again, I think in my opinion, the strategy isn't really for the agenda of Y-WAM itself. It's a bigger strategy of making it look like something is happening, whether it is or not, because people, they buy into this. That's how psychology works. Read the book Propaganda if you don't understand how that works. But we'll cut it off here. There's so much more I could say, but I want to dig deeper into how similar this was to Latter-Rain and some of the

ways in which they're, they both kind of cross-pollinated, I think, a little bit. So we can go there next time. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I saw a lot of that cross-pollination of the way that these different leaders were talking. I mean, it was quite explicit that they were all kind of sharing the same message. So I think it would be great to explore further.

Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.