From Soul Survivor to Deconstruction: A Survivor’s Story

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Sam Housen, filmmaker, YouTuber, and former member of Soul Survivor. Sam, it's good to finally be able to connect with you. It seems like it's been months, I don't know how long we've tried to connect, and one thing or another led to a delay, but now we're finally doing it, and I'm glad we are. You mentioned right before we started recording, that you're

our member of Soul Survivor, and interestingly, just today this morning, Michael Winsidence, I had another email from somebody who was either affiliated with or strongly suggested that I dig into that movement. So anyway, thank you so much for coming on. If you could take a moment and just tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Sure, thanks, John. And yeah, we I think a lady called Monica, who was watching my channel, suggested that you and I have a chat, and that might have been in September. So you've got an incredibly clear system that encourages people to sign up, but I was

playing stupid, I think. So thanks for being very tolerant with me, and putting me in. So yeah, in a very quick intro, essentially, I've been watching your channel, and I really value the videos that you make. I think the kind of forensic approach that you've been applying to characters, to individuals, to people who have really influenced this stuff, has been really useful to me. I started making it the odd video on YouTube, following the news that came out and Britain about Mike Pillivati of Soul Survivor. And I started just sort of asking the question, what was the value in that? What

was the value of Soul Survivor? Where this chap had created this entire movement of young people, essentially to facilitate his opportunity to find young men, the picker of the crop each year to enjoy. And that maybe I'm overstating it, and that sounds incredibly nefarious. But though nothing has been said that he was sort of criminally abusive, he certainly was in a spiritual and lots of controlling ways. And physical to some extent with there being aspects of massage and wrestling, which I, I experienced personally as well. So I'm, I'm sort of, I, I got to this state

where I was thinking, well, what, what was it that got us to this point? This is 20 years ago. I did a gap here with source of one of us. So maybe it might be helpful for me for you to ask questions that you're interested in. That will kind of steer me in a direction that will get us in a, in a conversation. But, but my, my background essentially is I, I did a source of over gap here. I was picked as one of the, you know, special people for that year. I was then ghosted and dropped. I then continually thought, well, what am

I cool to? I then went into television. I've gotten now more recently into sort of digital and, and that sort of thing after working an agency and stuff. So I've, I'm sort of bringing my skills. I also studied theology and all that sort of stuff and I bring those things together at the moment. Yeah, it's just fascinating to me. I've not really dug deep into the soul survivor, but I have looked into it. And for a reason that I don't know that I've mentioned on the podcast. As you know, I'm doing interviews and doing a collaboration

with people who have been affiliated with youth with the mission, Y-Wam, and Jenny, who his co-host, she was a missionary in Y-Wam. And the childhood slash early teen slash early 20s, that really interests me because from my own experience, I just looking back at the timeline of my indoctrination from birth until about age 16, I was just in it because I was raised in it. That's it. Nothing more. Around age 16, maybe it's 15, you start going through this soul, I don't know, this journey to find out your identity, who you are. Well, having been indoctrinated, I had a cult identity. So all of that process was

me learning about the cult identity, not my identity. I was born and raised with a cult identity. And so you go through having been indoctrinated, you go through that phase. Well, from 16 to about 24ish, 25ish, that's your most deepest influence as far as being able to be indoctrinated and to indoctrinate yourself. Because if not guided properly, you're going to take in things that, you know, you really shouldn't be taking in, which I did. I dove really deep into Brannemism. So whenever I learned that there's all of these youth missions, and combine that with my study, like you said, it is, it's very much like a forensic study

of all of the different Christian identity movements, white supremacy. There is a strong connection between Nazism, believe it or not. I'm looking at all of these things. And all of it seemed to really strongly emerge after the Hitler youth programs. And so I don't talk about it much because if you mentioned the name, a YouTube, or even block after videos, have to be really careful. I won't say that name again. But if you mention the name, people will think that you're exaggerating because it's used as an exaggeration. In my usage, it's actually not. I find people like Gerald Winrod who actually went to Germany and he

had counsel with the name that I won't say again. He comes back and suddenly has this instant amount of money that he didn't have before. Start spreading propaganda that wasn't, it was being popularized, but not so much as what he did and what the Anglo-Saxon Federation did. Then you find Gordon Lindsay, who's the founder of Chrysler's Nations, William Brandham's campaign manager, speaking at the Anglo-Saxon Federation. He's working in those conferences. So you have this big build up of something that could potentially be a, I don't even know what you call it, some sort of an operation. I'll just say it

like that. But potentially, I'm not saying that it is. It's potentially. But then you start seeing all of these youth programs spin up. Everything from Billy Graham's youth to various different ones. I want to know more. My grandfather in his resignation speech after I had published all the tax records and he was literally being forced to resign from the Brandham Tabernacle after 50 years. He said, you watch these guys and he's referring to the Brandham and I'm paraphrasing. He says, if they can get to the children, they can get to the parents and if they can get to the parents, they can get to their money. So part of this for me is

a personal mission. Parts of it are forensic study. I want to know why this is happening. Then I hear Soul Survivor and it's the same kind of thing, but it's in the UK. I just simply want to know more. Sure. Got it. So I think I can really speak into and I guess we've got some similar experiences in terms of I was brought up in that environment. My parents were involved in. There was a chap you spoke with from Britain recently, I think maybe from Kane Bridge and some of what he was a worship leader in things, some of what he was talking

about was reflects my experience. So I grew up in an East London town called Rompford, it's like 20 miles from the middle of London to the East and that was seen as a place where in the 80s, the Holy Spirit was doing lots of things. I grew up crawling around in that environment of Holy Spirit, accelerated or encouraged activity and then my parents I think they were, I don't know the full details, perhaps I need to speak with them more about it, but they kind of, they recoiled from something and went to a very traditional

Baptist church in our hometown. But what that did for me, so talking about me rather than for them, what that did for me was it familiarised myself with. that kind of very hot, holy spirit kind of experience that can happen on a Sunday or an evening.

And I grew up within that environment, right? So I went in this then Baptist Church, which I joined at 11. I learned a lot of the Bible. We did a national Bible competition, which I won with three other guys. I learned the Bible through and through. That I was desperately interested in it. 1112 had lever archfiles of all these sort of, you know, for the kings, I could name all the, you know, everything you can think of about the Bible, like on a learn lots of key. Verses, the kings in order, everything you can think of. And so my,

the foundation of my childhood was very much, I had, I had a familiarity with this kind of Yeehaw. But I, but I also had an affinity and an understanding of the Bible. It's kind of, it kind of a quite eruded, but also nutty, you know? I know exactly what you're saying. And for the listeners who were never in this kind of thing and you're on the outside looking in as a researcher or whatever, I want to put that into proper perspective because I too read the Bible over and over.

I know it doesn't seem like I have memorization of verses and, and passages, etc. Because after all of the trauma that I experienced leaving a cult, the, I have, I've not yet been diagnosed, but I have all the symptoms of PTSD and parts of my memory just don't work. And I'm, you know, going through therapy, etc., to try to cure this. But long story short, I did know the Bible. I studied it very, very deeply, especially from the ages 16 to 25, like I said, reading it constantly.

But here's the thing. These movements, what they did, and you can find it early than Brannum, but Brannum really popularized the idea of what you would call in the word of faith movement, the ramah, Brannum called it the spoken word. There's different names that they used for. But basically, in today's world, they call it fresh revelation, fresh mana. Brannum just simply called the spoken word and what it meant was the word itself, which he was referring to the written text of the Bible.

He says, it's not good enough. You really need the prophet for your age because, and he would say these, these weird things like the word for Moses Day wouldn't work in Paul's day, the word for Paul's day won't work in our day. And he was framing it as though when he's using word, he's, he's framing it much like he's saying the gospel at the same time. He didn't really understand that, no, the gospel couldn't have existed at all in Moses Day. That was before Jesus came, but that's the way he framed it. And what he was essentially saying is that we have to read

between those lines and we need a prophet to inject words in between those lines. So when I read the Bible, I read it, I knew it, I knew what it said, but I was also reading more into it than what was written. And that's really the problem. Yeah, okay.

That reminds me then. So I was chatting with a buddy yesterday who he's he's studying as a curate in the Church of England and he sometimes wants to just chat with me so we we have a call for half an hour or whatever. And he reminded me of what he had got up to in his teenage years.

So in this kind of Yahoo house church movement into Baptist church, I then started going to a church that some of my friends went to which again kind of reverted back to this collier rose stuff and they would have invited a lot of the American profits over. Now we're talking this tiny little church that was a school hall it really you know like no money not really well that that I was aware of it certainly wasn't an impressive building because it was a school hall but these profits including the Kansas city profits would come over on their tour of Britain

and each each time I'd go you know it'd be like a Thursday night or whatever they would prophesy at me hey can that guy with the guy with the glasses can he stand up and this is what God's saying God's saying this to you this is what you're going to be in the future this is what he's he's calling you to do and some of my friends not many of my friends are Christians but some of my Christian friends would be with me and they'd roll their eyes oh no Sam standing up again

it became this like I'd hide like a guy that's hiding with the glasses you stand up and I had this like ongoing thing so exactly the age you're talking about 15 16 17 I got baptized by full immersion at 16 and this stuff started becoming incredibly central to me it was it was my beginning middle and end I was offered a TV role as a researcher on a major channel and I turned it down because I wanted to do a gap year which was initially going to be an anaheim in vineyard church so again stuff you're looking at the guy that was running the

worship internship there was unwell I always wanted to go to the U.S. because in the in the 90s everything was about you guys but instead my B team choice was also either so with all these prophecies with me of learning the Bible with having this kind of the centralization of it in my life I thought well I need to do a gap year right that's what I need to do so it cost like two thousand pounds just like what at the time about three thousand dollars to do this five months that's all it was and I was ready you know the all these guys including all of you yanks

that said to me you know your God's got a God's got a plan for your life and it's going to be really significant you're really important you know all this stuff that you're always told and fed and I paid paid that money a lot of people helped me I worked for a few months in a horrible warehouse in a nasty place called Waldenstowe to get money to do it but yeah I I I showed up at Soul Survivor, thinking this is going to be my opportunity.

Now the reason I knew about Soul Survivor was they ran national conferences for young people, like 14 to 18-year-olds. 5,000 kids used to attend this thing and in the UK that's a big deal, certainly in the 90s. What it was cool was how youth worker, youth minister would be with us in the tent, but there were like 20 of us who would just get to do what we wanted, going by drinks and coke and wander around and maybe kiss the old girl or do play football, all the stuff that kids do. But at the heart of it, we went to these huge music

things and then talks that lasted forever and then prayer ministry. But we had to go to the front, you know, there was a huge amount of space at the front in front of the stage where we'd be prayed for. And I started going there at 13 or 14 all the way through to when I did the gap here. So I was kind of, when you say you were, I was taught through these experiences that this went hand in hand with what I read in the Bible. This went hand in hand with what my parents taught me. The authority was up there and as influential or probably more so than both those

things. And so what else was I going to do when I was 18? And you know, people who are indoctrinated like this, until they've really gone through the process of evaluating their indoctrination, they don't catch how big it is. I do a lot of research and I'm still researching John Wembers influence on all of this, especially in the UK. His name comes up in almost every conversation that I have with people from the UK because he's part of this. Well, to the people who are in, you know, whether it's destructive or not, the John Wembers cult, which exists today, who are

vehemently against me talking about anything to do with this with Wembers name. The fact is this, if it were instead, say, a developing nation. And suddenly this army presence from the United States comes into the developing nation. And with this army are the generals and with the generals is one figure who's not a general, not part of the army. But is this other figure who is working in collaboration with that army? And then that army causes widespread destruction. Every single person whose home was destroyed, who's injured, who has a family who died, when they think back

of that army that's coming in, they're thinking of the generals because those are the people leading the army. But they're also thinking of that individual who's partnering with the generals, whether this person participated or not. So Wembers coming in with the Kansas City prophets.

This, for me, this is a big deal. He's part of that group. But it goes beyond that. I've mentioned what I just said before in different ways. But think to the indoctrination schemes. And especially think to the youth because I, like I said, I went through this. I know how it works. You get the youth together, you get them to believe that you can read them between the lines of the Bible.

And what they're injecting in between those lines usually has to do with the leadership. So here's Wemba, here's the Kansas City prophets, here's all these other charismatic guys, Derek Prince is one of them, all of these guys. Well, they're injecting into the heads of the youth, the idea that they are written between the lines of the Bible. That's how this works, right?

And then more powerful even than them saying these kind of things, they will have music that has strong repetitions, the beat, the pulsation of that beat, along with repetition, it gets stuck in your head. And you're associating the beat, the music, the lyrics, with the generals who've now come into the, and I'm using generals loosely, but they've come into the UK. Well, every child who's been indoctrinated, youth, teens, 20s, they're all associating all of this together. It's all one cohesive unit. Whether the guys were cohesive and whether they even stayed on the same agenda is

irrelevant. At that point in time, every person who's indoctrinated was indoctrinated with this as a movement. Yeah. Yeah. And there, along with the music, and I've seen what you've said before, I think music plays a huge role in this. In the 90s, especially, right? So, and you could probably say it from the 80s, I mean, it's only really recently changed, but your tribe was the music that you listen to very often. And what Salsa Viva did incredibly well was appeal to the tribe that liked guitar-led music. And not only that, Matt Redmond and the various other worship leaders and

individuals, they created this not only where you have access to it, go to the concert or the gig, you know, they would call that the meeting or the service or whatever, but not only can you do that, you buy the CD, so that's not too similar, but you also buy the songbook. And you don't just buy the songbook to play at home. You buy the songbook to do your own mini Salsa Viva among your young people that you went to that festival in your tents in. And you sing and you have it on the overhead

projectors you used to have. And we become mini Salsa Vivas. And our vision and our view of God, our understanding of ourself within God's kingdom is a mini Salsa Viva. And we don't do it as well, we don't have the PA, we don't have the musicians, we don't have just the vastness of people.

But we get to experience that each year, again, as a top-up, as a refill. And so when we've experienced that elation and the feeling of being prayed for after that two hour long concert. I'll keep calling it a concert, even though there's a 40-minute conversation at us by Mike Piloverchi or an American or whatever. We have this kind of constant, my identity and my Christianity, my Christianism is defined by my copying of this experience. What I've kind of got to, and I'd like to talk with you a little bit in this chat, is a friend of mine, I then became a youth worker, right? So after being

ghosted, I was told I would start this soul survivor, Australia, but then I was ghosted by Piloverchi. He had me in his flat, he made these promises, and I thought, wow, this is amazing, we wrestled on his floor. The individual I was with, because I was thankfully, actually, thank God, I was with someone in his flat. A lot of guys weren't, and that's where the story is really quite nasty. We both wrestled Mike Piloverchi in his flat, and we almost killed him because he kissed me together. He actually clutched his chest, which I'm not said very, very clearly. So I left

his flat, not feeling done unto, but I felt like I got away okay. So that's kind of enabled me to talk about this without it being too damaging, I think. But what I would like to talk with you about was I then became a youth worker, and the church I was working in, we had a relationship as often we do with a church in Campala in Uganda, and the bishop there, Zach, he and I became friends, he's sort of my dad's age, and apparently he's written about me in a number of times, saying, I'm the least Christian-like church leader he's ever met, which I thought, wow, what an encouragement.

And he got in touch with me like two years ago after he'd seen, and I've made a couple of videos, and he said, you're not challenging, sad, you're not just challenging, you're not just challenging the charismatic evangelical church, you're challenging Christianity.

And I think that's what you're doing as well, John, and I think that's why you're resonating with a lot of people. Well, to make a clear distinction, when you've been indoctrinated in this type of movement, because it is something that's extra that's being added to the text, the new thing becomes in the mind of those indoctrinated, quote unquote, Christianity, but it isn't really Christianity. If it were simply Christianity, it would simply be based on the gospel.

I am challenging the fact that every single one of these movements has added so much to it that they make it a burden to the people who are in it, and those who escape will leave Christianity altogether, or what they thought was Christianity, because they're leaving all of that spiritual abuse.

of the groups, even some of the more benign ones that I have seen, they have some level of spiritual abuse in them. And to a person who's being abused, especially like me, I was born and raised to be abused, you leave it and you never want to come back. And so people leave Christianity altogether, thinking that the God that was being taught is this narcissistic, domineering, vengeful God.

And I grew up indoctrinated with the specific passages from the Old Testament that were used, specifically to show a God of wrath. And you're going to get this God of wrath if you don't obey whatever the leader says. I know that part of the Bible. We were never really taught the other part of the Bible, the one where God loved the entire world, so much that he sent his only son.

We were taught that that sending was to a specific people who were worthy of being sent to. That's really what it comes down to. And most of the movements that have been built on this foundation, that's what they teach. Yes, there's outreach, yes, they try to convert new members, but it's more about the number than it is actually the person who's being recruited. They want to grow the number, they want, in fact, they even call it the church growth strategy. They want to show this massive number of people so that they can seem and feel and look more powerful.

But in the end, that's not Christianity. Christianity, in my opinion, you could have two people who just meet every Sunday at it in their home and have a meal together and talk about God. That's what the Ehrlich Christians did. It's not this big massive thing that they're creating. So I would argue that for me, whenever somebody who has been indoctrinated like that contacts me and they give that push back to me, that's exactly where they go. Every single one of them, John, you're not just fighting this movement or a William Brannum. You're trying to attack Christianity in general,

because in their mind, those who are indoctrinated, that's how they view this. They think it is Christianity. Yeah, great distinction. And actually, the conversations I'm starting to get energized by are people saying, hey, well, we don't need to have all of that in order to be Christian in order to have church. There's so much noise. Well, wave up more vast than singing a bunch of songs with mediocre lyrics and listening to someone talk at us for a while. I think the, yeah, I don't want to go complete into semantics, but essentially, I think that Christianity has

become a lot of what you've said, though. We can view it as being an untouchable example of gospel centered life. But I don't think it is. I think it's been utterly hijacked now. And so, I understand what you're saying. And also, I want to say there's a distinction between the theology or ideology and some more, and some of that more fear-base.

I don't think Source of Ivo was fear-based. I don't think it was sin-based either. I think it was more experiential-based and some of the dopamine effect of getting a bunch of kids together listening to the same music. And actually everyone says listening, but it's actually singing that process of corporate singing actually does something very basic to us, right?

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I think if I talk about some of my experience, which I don't really do this often, I'm going to be cautious how much I do this, and there's a reason why I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to build a follow-up on anything like this. But if I talk about some of my experience, I think the fear scenario that I'm talking about will make sense. So in my indoctrination, we were taught very much a narcissistic version of God who

loves you, who if you please this God, this God will bless you and you will be empowered to be like this God. But if you don't obey the rules, if you question the leadership, if you think critically about anything, that God is going to come down and punish you like with a vengeance, just completely, he may wreck and destroy your life. And if you question enough, the leadership will actually cast you out and turn you over to the devil so that you can be tormented. That's the type of mentality that I grew up with. However,

I've mentioned that a few times because it is a fear-based religion. To the people who are in it, even myself included during the time I was in it, I would never have ever said it was fear-based. In fact, even after leaving, it probably took me about three years before.

I really came to realize that this was a fear-based religion. It reminds you of a, it is spiritual abuse. So if you think, I don't know, a spousal abuse. There are many spouses who spouses abusing them, and during the time they're with them, they don't really recognize that it's abuse, and they think that it is love. That's how we were.

We thought it was love. We thought it was peace, joy, happiness. I would say I'm the happiest person alive while I was in it, right? But what they're teaching you is this happiness, and then what they're doing is they're slipping underneath that happiness, the thought of a narcissistic, domineering, vengeful God who really hates you, but he wants you to obey.

That's really the mentality that's being taught. When I look at people like Wembur, like Mike Bickle, Candaceady Prophets, all of these guys, many people who escaped those movements will tell you that they did not see it as a fear-based religion. They never did. In fact, most of the ones who are focused on the billion-so harvest, the big revival thing, most of them will tell you, it's not fear-based, it's happiness. It's even talking with Jenny from youth with a mission.

She will say it's happiness because that's her frame of mind, but with that happiness always comes the caveat. Now, the question becomes, if you read the Bible, you get some of this because they're preaching from the Bible and they're using specific passages, but the way that they frame it isn't such that God loves you so much as God wants to control and manipulate you. That's really the problem. In its essence, it's spiritual abuse. They're trying to manipulate you. When you're in a manipulative relationship after you leave, it may take you through years of counseling to

understand that you were manipulated, you were abused, especially emotional abuse, which is widespread in the movement. After you go through counseling and the counselor teaches you what is emotional abuse. In our case, what is spiritual abuse? You start to recognize that there was a fear component.

It was always there. You didn't recognize it, but it was always there. I will go so far as to say, if you're in one of these movements and it has spiritual abuse or emotional abuse, it almost can't be that way without the fear component, whether you recognize it's there or not.

So what made sauce of over so pernicious and still people would say there's lots of value in it and I can recognize value in it, so I'm still tall and I'm not throwing all of it out.

But what made it so leading or prominent was the Church of England okayed it. So the board was made up of a bishop, reverend, I think might have been doctor. I might have a professor, I don't know, Graham Cray, who was a senior bishop, he was involved.

Mike Palivarch, he was given an MBE by the British government, you know, that's a recognition from the Queen. He was also made a reverend by the Church of England and supported, and that was really from early days as well.

He had people around him that included, obviously, Wimberg, because he sort of started a Pillow Archie off in a lot of ways with David Pitches, there was another chap, I don't know if you've heard of him.

But essentially what happened was so survivor with all of these things that maybe you and I can relate to, who is bona fide by the state church. And then it's got to a level now on a stage where this is now the leading part of the Church of England, the Evangelicals, along with, as you're calling it, the truth between the Gospel lines.

And so I guess what I, the kind of penitious nature of this character, celebrity led religion is now part and parcel with British institutional church. And so I now, and I don't know your standing with Christ at the moment, your faith, my faith is still, I mean, it's probably stronger, I doubt myself a lot more than I used to, as we do, as the older we get, we're very much more aware of our own weakness.

But I return to a church, and I think, oh, I can't relearn all of this again. I can't, because it feels like that, I've got to learn all these words, I've got to be still and listen to this thing for that long.

I've got to learn to put my hands up at the right spot so everyone thinks my soul is okay. And I've got to, when they invite me to prepare, I should probably go up, because I've got a big business meeting this, this, you know, I'm not ready to go through this whole act again.

And so I go back, and I think, of course, this, this, and so my wife just frustrated, she belongs to a Catholic church where she sings in the choir, and I can't handle that either, because I just see all the money in the hierarchy, which drives me nuts too.

So yeah, I'm, I'm left, I think, like a lot of us in this kind of catch 22 of the stuff I learned as a child, I believe. And I know in myself, I still, you know, have a child like faith, I do.

But I really can't be asked to learn all of the religion in order to be part of the community again. You know, I don't mention it much, because, well, for multiple reasons, when I first left the Brandon religion, I was going to mainstream churches, and I actually mentioned which mainstream church.

And we actually had a prominent cult figure who started going to that denomination, the regional churches to figure out which one we want. to so that he could harass us and another family who had escaped.

And I learned very quickly, don't talk about your religion, John, because you will be attacked. But more to the point, there are people who are burned who, if I come out as overly religious, they're not going to open up.

And what I, a large part of what I do is just, I want to know the history, I want to document it, study it. I want to give people open and talking because history is being written by the leadership who are covering up all of the critical facts.

If you get people to open up about what they experience, you're going to get a raw view into whatever is the religion. So I don't talk about it much. But after we left, we did remain Christian and I'm not going to say which church, but yes, there's a church still involved.

However, I will say it like this. If you've been emotionally abused or a picture, go back to the spousal abuse thing. If you are abused by your spouse for decades, and then suddenly you feel like you're in a world where you must get a spouse because that's how this world works.

And you kind of forced yourself into it. You go on a date and in the back of your mind, whenever the person's talking, they say something that reminds you of the spouse who abused you, you're going to come unglued.

You can't handle this because that's fresh in your mind. That is still in my head. I can sit through a service and just come unglued. So I limit how much I go. I'm very careful not to go outside of my own boundaries and I set the boundaries.

One of the freedoms that I have is I can set the boundaries. Nobody can tell me that I must go. When I do go, I'm kind of like you in that I don't fully understand the tradition that's there.

Much of it matches what I came from. Some of it was actually influenced by what I came from, even though it's not a cult. A lot of it, if you really go back to early Christianity, what was being established wasn't this.

I understand that there's a need for the community and the gathering and all this, but I drive down the street and I count like 15 churches down one road and I think is that really necessary?

Why the different flavors of Christianity? I visited different denominations and non-denominations and in visiting them you can find there is a core element that all of them share that you can find common ground, but they have put so much preference on the doctrines that aren't the core and that's why the denominations exist.

I actually have a problem with this because if you have doctrines that make you want to separate yourself from other Christians, have you not just severed the body of Christ, which the Bible speaks against?

I have this complex thought in my head and again I'm working through this, it may take me the next day. 37 years to go through all of that and try to become a normal person, what is called a normal person.

But on the other hand, I may never get that way because I'm not sure that I even want to understand it. So what I have come to do is this, when I feel like I want to go and I feel like I'm not going to be harmed by going, I'll go.

And if I sometimes out in the looking past the last decade that I've been out of this, there have been times that it was longer than a year between my visits to go because I just simply couldn't do it.

And I have learned to go at my own pace, you can still be a Christian without attending a church. You can still believe the Bible by reading it and understanding it. And the church today, many of the denominations will tell you that you must go to church because of X, Y and Z.

And if you look at the context of the passages that they're saying that you must go to church, if you read that in context, it doesn't really apply to today. If you look in the ancient world, they had together together for the reading of scripture, well, most people couldn't read.

So you had to, you had together together. There are many things that just really don't apply to today's world and it has become a ritual that I may not understand. However, it is a good thing and especially to get a community, to get friends, to get people who have a common view.

That's a good thing in no matter what circle you're in. So my advice is to go at your own pace, set your own boundaries, do what's healthy to move forward. Yeah. Sounds like wise advice.

What's also bizarre is for me is, and I don't know your personal story in that respect, but I experienced this throughout my teens. I then waited to get these invitations, which never came. I thought, you know, all these prophecies, when are they going to happen?

You know, all of that stuff. I then studied, I studied theology, I worked as a youth worker. And that whole process, I began, I began seeing that I was teaching what I'd learned. And so throughout my 20s until I was 26, 27, I was perpetuating the very thing which I now experience as being negative.

That's been a really interesting process. Making myself public on this, I've been wondering how many young people, you know, I was responsible for them, would get in touch and say, you hypocrite. In some respects, I'm ready to hear that.

I don't want to, you know, hide from it, but it's, it's crazy to see how normalized it was in me to the extent where I learnt to behave, to the extent where I encouraged others to behave in that way.

And that behaviour, how useful is it to the world and how reflective is it? of the kingdom. That's kind of, at the moment, that's the process I'm in. So, I guess what I guess I'd like to do, and I don't know how long we've got, how long do we have, like 10 minutes. In 10 minutes, how can we encourage people to question what you're calling the bits between the lines? So, I would probably call that celebrity lead. You'd call it narcissist, narcissism. I'd want to question the role of the music and the centrality of the importance that's placed on it. I'd want to question the filling of your calendar.

I'd want to question the, that I've got it perfect. Have a nice thing. And you demonstrate that you're not perfect by revealing some things that you're happy to talk about, you know, using friends of mine. I think church should be a place where you'd say, don't hide your PTSD, but the church never want to hear it. You know, there's a sense that what are those things and how have they got to be? And when you and I would visit a church, whether it's over in the US or in the UK, I can see so many of those things, I just think, oh,

my goodness. I can't do it. Yeah, for me, I'm a very analytical person. So for me, what works for me may not work for everybody else. But when I realized that I was being indoctrinated into a box, I wanted to think outside of that box. And when I read the Bible, I read the Bible within the context of the box I was in. So I started reading polar opposite opinions.

In some cases, they were polar opposite. Some of them were aligned. Some of them were polar opposite. And I wanted to know what they knew. What did they learn? I've, I've written red books by Christian theologians, atheists, agnostics, historians, ancients, you know, this wide variety of people that I've read. Because the first thing that I had to do is eliminate the fear of reading something that might disagree with what is in my head, what I believe. We were indoctrinated with that was another one of the hidden fears. You can't read from the enemy because Satan will attack you that way. That's nonsense. If you believe

a God is all powerful, all protecting, you can read, you can read anything, right? It doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but you can read it. I read one of my favorite authors who isn't Christian is Bart Irman. And interestingly, I have read and talked with people who are in the UK who are strong devout Christians, whose entire church went to a Bart Irman conference, because they see the value in learning facts, whether they agree with the person or not, the facts or the facts. So I started reading and he talks about this exercise that he has in his

class. where you take the gospels, all you line them up chronologically, you start mentioning what's described and you see the variants. And that exercise for me is one of the most powerful things because it tells you that there are individual voices who are writing, the writing about a common theme, and the end conclusion is that Jesus is God, Jesus is divine, how they get their varies and differs, and what they remember and what they wrote, also differs and varies, which is totally against everything that I was raised to believe. We were raised it was pinned by

God, all of this stuff. It isn't that. It's that there is a, if you want to see it as a movement, it's a movement of grand Christianity from a grand scale through time, who being led by God, moving in a direction and becoming better. And I came across a historian whose he's considered the father of church history, Eusebius, and he basically described exactly this. He says that even the things that are written by the ancient Jews, some of it doesn't match our documented history. However, who better to learn ancient Judaism but from the ancient Jews? And he talks about

the progression from Judaism into Christianity and from Christianity as it spread to the abolishing of human sacrifice. It's a great book if you, I can't remember the name of it, but it's written by Eusebius. So for me, the very first thing is you study outside of the box that you're in, that really helps you. But more to the point, you have to read and understand the Bible from a perspective of what it says individually, not what you're being told that it says or what's being written between the lines, and understand that the Bible is a library, not a book.

So when you read an individual author in the example that I gave with Erman, yes, there are things that are variant between the authors because they're different books. If I were to write my perspective, it might not match your perspective of this exact conversation. That's how life works, right? So the bottom line is this. As I was reading the Bible over and over and over after leaving, I came to recognize different phrases that were common among all of them. And in the New Testament, one of them is pride. Pride is one of the strongest mentioned sins, most frequently mentioned

sins in the New Testament. And yet, my entire movement that I escape was built on pride. And many of the many things that were built on top of this was built on pride. So with that in mind, I read through again, and I read the Bible from that perspective that pride is sin, and things started to stand out. The second biggest one, and this was probably the most foundational one for me, Jesus said the entire law on the prophets has summed up and love God, love your neighbor, has yourself.

And at that point in time, what he's referring to is literally the entire Old Testament, the law, and the prophets, right? So if the entire Old Testament is saying basically, love God, love your neighbor as yourself, who's your neighbor? Well, he tells you who is your neighbor. And he's not saying specifically, the Christians are your neighbor. So then that one against the whole evangelical mindset that I had, and the evangelical world, if you're not Christian, you're the enemy basically. And we must conquer you, we must force convert you. It's not at all what Jesus said. And I understand that, yes, conversion is probably good in a Christian's perspective,

but that's not what is said. So I began to read the Bible from those two things, pride is sin, love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself. When you read it like this and don't inject anything that's not said in between those lines, it reads as a different book. And in that exercise, it'll take you a few times to do it. But if you read in that, in that perspective, you really begin to understand what is Christianity and how all of these, and I'm not just saying the cultish ones, even some of the denominational groups, the

mainstream denominations are visited, some of them can't fit within the context of what the Bible is actually saying. We couldn't have had time, right? We got a few minutes. I wanted to ask you, so you're in the UK and I'm always interested when I get somebody who has been influenced by that because it is quite different than the United States, yet at the same time, it was influenced by the United States. What would you say is the number one issue that came in from either the shepherding movement, the Kansas City prophets, the vineyard movement? What would you say

is the biggest issue that was created in Christianity in the UK because of these? I worked in Charleston for like a year as well, so in South Carolina, so I know the US a little.

From my experience, I'd probably say it was the prophecy show. It was the standing on a stage, for me personally, so I can't speak for everything, but I think it was the American accent on a stage, flown over. I hadn't been on a plane until I was like 18, 19, right? So it was distant and it was exotic. This American guy dressed up a little smart saying, you, God's picking you, and that was the,

it did a few things that were negative. Firstly, it placed power on the stage with a microphone. He, he always had control of the entire room. There was no music at the time, it all just gone quiet. It's completely, um,

It went stark, you know, and then he picked people and those picking and the words were the most important thing, not just at that moment, but for that person. And that was that was lazily done, you know.

I think so it created power out of the stage. It influenced me, it influenced my ambition, it influenced my decision making, and also negatively it influenced the theology and an ecclesiology of what a church is, that there was the front with the answers and there were those in the seats without them until we were told.

And I think that is the most damaging aspects that of my experience. It created in me, my only job was to be receptive. And not only was my only job to be receptive, but I was the lucky one.

What about that guy? What about that woman? A lot of people, whenever I show the foundation and how William Brannon was core at that foundation, they try to say I'm doing some sort of a guilt by association.

But if you understand the loaded language that was created and the scheme that was created, you really can see that the trace elements all come back to the root that he is establishing. And one of the key elements is this, he would go before a crowd, whether it's in the United States or abroad, and he would say at the very beginning, he would say, now I take every spirit in this building under my control by God.

To the person who's sitting in the audience, especially the younger crowd, they're thinking, oh my gosh, look at the power that this man wields, right? Not knowing that most of what's going to come next is either anti-biblical, heretical, outright lies.

I mean, we've basically we've unraveled most of what he said. And the majority of it wasn't true. And he was doing exactly what you're saying, the prophecies. He would spout out all of these prophecies, some of which were just vague enough that potentially they could have come to pass either way, whether you said them or not.

But many of them were based off of facts that he already knew. And his biggest ones were actually claims to prophecy that he had years and years and years ago, long before he ever mentioned them.

So if you're in the crowd and somebody does this, you think that man is wielding the power of God. And you start to look at Christianity differently. Instead of a Christianity where the Holy Spirit is the one who's inside of you leading you, guiding you, you're more looking to guidance from the person.

person who's on the platform. And when I think about how this spread and the individuals that are involved, some of them, like I said, they created somewhat benign religions. I would not call vineyard today a cult by no means, a destructive cult by no means.

To some extent, it is a cult following a John Wember, because that's what was established. But I wouldn't say that it's so much destructive. But whenever somebody, go back to the generalist comment that I made earlier, when somebody comes out with that presence, who's claiming that they are the divine prophet or apostle, et cetera, and the whole audience is agreeing with this.

And then you have a person who's up there with them, who's backing them and supporting them. You're giving, you're turning Christianity on its head. You're basically taking the role of the Holy Spirit, you're moving it out of the crowd.

Now, instead of the Holy Spirit, you got this guy. And look, I support this guy. I'm with these guys, right? No longer do you need the Holy Spirit, we have the apostle, we have the prophet.

For me, when I see that, it isn't Christianity. You can call it Christianity. You can say the name Jesus as much as you want. You can sing about Jesus as much as you want.

But you've really created a new mythology. And it's no different than the ancient mythologies where there was a human element that was the mediator between the gods and man. That's what they've created. And interestingly, if you study what they say about God, there really isn't one God, there are multiple gods because none of them are a cohesive God.

They're different gods that they present. So in essence, they have basically recreated the scheme of the ancient mythologies, called it Christianity, and people submit themselves to it. And pay for it. And pay for it.

Well, thank you so much for doing this. I know we've gone a little bit long, but I really wanted to pick your brain as you were talking to understand more about the influence in the UK.

And maybe we can do this again sometime. There's so much more I'd like to ask you. But before we leave, I want to give you an opportunity to let everybody know what is your YouTube channel.

How can they find you websites, et cetera? Sure, thanks, John. Yeah, so you can find me on YouTube. And I think if we can try and link it in here, it's just my channel is Sam Housen.

So Sam and then H-O-W-S-O-N. And really, what my aim to do is to figure out this through story. There are a lot of people with opinions at the moment when they're talking about Christianity.

And a lot of people are trying to understand where they fit with it. So I'm trying to find people to ask questions of to ask their story. And that's kind of what I'm doing.

And so for me, this is an opportunity to do the same with you. I was hoping, I suppose, to really drill down to how did it get to the UK. We didn't do that.

I had a much better chat with you. So thanks ever so much for your time. And just it was a lovely conversation. I'm glad we got time to make it work. So thank you.

Awesome. We'll do it again sometime. Sure thing. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-branam.org and Sam Housen YouTube channel.

From 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. www.William-branam.org

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