Radical Obedience and Spiritual Abuse: A Survivor’s Story

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Browns, I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my very special guest, Catherine Clemens, former member of the Jim Roberts Group.

Catherine, it's good to have you on. I've, as I mentioned on the podcast a couple of times, I've been fighting the flu and so we've had to postpone this but I'm finally getting over it. I've got my breath back, my air back and this will probably go out long after this based on the schedule but know that I have wanted to connect with you, have just been, you know, desperately trying to get over this thing so it was a nasty one this year.

But anyway, if you could just take a few minutes and tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Well, way back in the 70s I joined the Jesus movement and ended up in a cult and it was led by a man named Jim Roberts and Jim Roberts had been a Marine. He had been raised in the United Pentecostal Church and so it looked like two kind of go together. He had, you know, he was very strict authoritarian and he had all of these strange rules that us former hippies were not very used to. You know, women, of course, we were used to having long hair.

That wasn't a problem but wearing the long dresses all the time and that was very strange and then all the other rules, no artwork, no pictures, no Christmas. There was all, started making a list because it was, I think we didn't believe in more things than we did believe in. But I was in there from 1971, I think until 78 and in the group, I'm not sure what I met my first husband and we had two children in the group and the group lived by hitchhiking all around the country and so even when we had our babies, we were expected to hitchhike

and that was pretty tough. Then we lived, well, we thought we were, well, we were told we were the little flock, we were it, we were the only ones on earth who were saved. Everybody else.

was part of the world, they were going to hell, and we were the chosen ones. But the outrageous, huge breasts, you know. So we were out to save the world kind of sorta, because it didn't take long before our, I would just say like our true love for Jesus and sharing about Jesus to people kind of just evolved into talking about a lifestyle. So the lifestyle was based on a few scriptures. The rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus said to sell everything, give to the poor and follow me. And Jesus

saying that he didn't have a place to lay his head. So we couldn't have a permanent place to live. We had to just be nomads. And we didn't really talk about it too much, but kind of in the background there was this urgent last days thinking and feeling that the world was really lost. It was a mess. And we didn't want to be part of it. And we wanted to escape all of that.

And there was this rapture. We really talk about it very much like some of the groups, excuse me, some of the groups that I've heard on your podcast. But it was there. It was just this end times the world is ending and we're gonna be the only one saved unless we can grab a few other people.

And we were just led into thinking that we were living by the Bible. The rest of the church people, they don't really live by the Bible because they are regular normal people living houses and go to work and hit raise their families. But we were special. And so it's just pretty messed up. And it really messed us up too. Being so dependent on a man to make all the decisions for us.

Our lifestyle, if we got married and who, if you get married too, there weren't too many married couples in the group because he didn't know how it after a while. And the married couples tended to leave. This was just a little too much. You know, these kind of groups fascinate me. I've not, I've been starting my research from way back long ago, even in the ancient world, and tracing it through up into Pentecostalism. And I'm in the 60s with my research right now.

I eventually want to get into the 70s because the 70s fascinates me every single aspect of the 70s. In fact, whenever I'm new to most kinds of music and I gravitate towards the 70s, happy, free music from there.

the people who have the peace signs in all of this. I like that era, but as from a religious standpoint, it fascinates for me for multiple reasons. So anything that was an offshoot of what I came from, we had all of the elements that you describe, except for the nomadic elements.

However, my family had this, so I can relate to some extent, because I went to, I lost count. It's like 13 different schools. I was born in Indiana, moved everywhere from Arizona to South Carolina in between.

And we had the end of the world, Doomsday, everything that you just mentioned, the rest of the world didn't have it, we had it. We were the right ones, but I have watched documentaries and television shows about the people you're describing, maybe not that specific group, but if I remember correctly, the group you're talking about was, there were some names that they called themselves, the body of Christ, if I remember right, the travelers, or I think it's a one newspaper article that called them the garbage eaters, because that was the one.

I think the National Enquirer coined that one for us, because one of our members had lived in Hawaii, I think, and he survived for a while by checking the dumpsters behind the grocery stores.

And so it's actually pretty good eating, you know? So it's not exactly garbage, but it is the produce that they throw away and the dairy products that are passed a date or passed on the date.

You know, so there's all these things, and things aren't really bad. We didn't eat, we didn't eat spoiled food quite honestly, you know? But, you know, when you're not working for money,

you know, you gotta eat. And we weren't the kind that went out and begged people or sold things. And there was, if I remember correctly, and again, I may be mixing the groups because I've not really focused heavily on the 70s yet, but it seems as though I remember there was a strong discipling type aspect for the movement.

Is that true? Did your group teach the shepherding, discipling, that kind of thing? I wouldn't say formally, I think that all came after, but the whole frame of mind, maybe, you know, when it's just so authoritarian, everything was dictated by Jim Roberts, everything.

He controlled everything. And your, what would you call it? Where your ranking had to do with when you joined the group. So I joined at the very beginning. When I came in, I had been, I had been a runaway, teenage runaway.

It was only, like, ran away when I was 15. So I got into drugs and all, because I lived in the San Francisco Bay area and the hippie movement was the thing. And so I had been part of that.

And up in a commune that I lived in, up in the mountains, a man came up to tell us about Jesus, and that's when I met Jesus. I had an experience with him, and then a few of us in our fear to get away from the evil of the San Francisco Bay Area, we took off in a car and headed towards Minnesota.

I made it as far as Missoula Montana. I went into an assemblies of God coffee house and got baptized in the Holy Spirit, but then got tempted and got back into drugs again, and I was in a very, very bad place after an LSD trip.

And somebody told me about this house in Missoula called Jesus House or House of Jesus, something like that. So I went there, and Jim Roberts had just found that too, like, I don't know, a week or two or something before I showed up.

And the former leader of this little group, which was true, it was a Jesus people group, but it was not so authoritarian at all. They'd go out every day and witness at the university and all.

Well, anyway, that man had a dream that Jim Roberts was supposed to preach for 40 days and 40 nights, and then we were all supposed to assemble and travel down to California where he was going to be.

So that's what happened on the way down. Jim Roberts and another man who had been leading that little group, like co-leading, they got into a discussion. It seems to me now looking at a hindsight that perhaps this was a little bit manipulated.

Maybe Jim Roberts kept his true beliefs to himself until he had an opportunity to manipulate himself into being the leader. I don't know for sure, but kind of think about it. So he and this man, they got into a discussion, and Jim Roberts revealed that he didn't believe in the Trinity.

He was won this, and this man, of course, was pretty traditional Christian, and they got into a disagreement. So when we met up at the campsite where this other man was in Northern California, they decided to present both sides to everybody, and everybody could make their decision.

Well, the other man was older. He had children, was married, and Jim Roberts was about 30, and he was very dynamic, charismatic, persuasive, and talking to a bunch of idealistic teenagers, basically all of us.

I was the youngest, but... others had just been in a university for a year or two and so we're talking about 19, 20, 21 year olds. So very idealistic and he's talking about how we're going to live just like the early church and we're going to do all this great stuff for God and we have the right beliefs and all that because after all, Acts 2.38 says baptized in the name of Jesus, right? So yeah. So we're the ones.

Like I said, it's very much similar to what we came out of. Obviously we were at least my version of Brannemism. We were one to Spentecostal. As Brannem was all over the place, but the other thing that I think I'm hearing in what you're saying and if I remember right from the documentaries that I've seen, there was this idea of radical obedience and the radical obedience was striving towards a perfection and it was a doctrine of perfectionism because to be the elite chosen ones, you had to be perfect and if you were perfect and you go on this journey, then you're basically going to

journey into heaven. For you, it was like a road trip for my version, my flavor of Brannemism and there were multiple flavors. We had the same thing and our journey was to eventually land with this great tent meeting and if we were perfect when we entered the tent where Brannem was going to be there and give us our new bodies, we would go into heaven. So there are so many similarities.

You know me saying that I'm an adult man. I just turned 50 yesterday. So yesterday was my birthday. Thank you. And you can celebrate birthdays now. I can celebrate birthdays, which I kind of could in the call, but as a 50-year-old man saying something like that, it's a little bit embarrassing because it's so foolish, but when you are indoctrinated like this to believe that it's the absolute truth and you must be perfect, your focus is actually more on the perfect than you are of how absurd all of it sounds. And so you get so wrapped up and caught up in it for 37 years of my life. I did this

thing. Glad that my family got out, but there are a lot of issues that come with that radical obedience doctrine. So I'm sure you and I share some of the same horror stories about it.

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you caught on that. I hadn't really focused on that. However, our first Bible study we ever had was on being perfect. And so that was definitely that hanging over us all the time to be perfect. And part of being perfect was being perfectly obedient. Like you said, as obedient to Jim Roberts, making sure that we looked good before him, that we didn't mess up where he could see us or anything. And just fear. So much fear. Why? I don't know. I really don't know why we had so much fear. But because of all that, when we had that split, which

was actually, basically, just the beginning of Jim Roberts' group, well, there were, I don't know if there was anybody had been in the group longer than me, maybe, but nobody stayed who had been, as far as a woman was definitely women and men, so very, very separate, and I was the oldest sister, and I became quite the Nazi, I am so embarrassed about that, and I think some people that I've hurt, that I did hurt, and they were going back 50 years now, I don't think they even want to talk to me, because I did start back in 2000, I

started a Yahoo group for the people that can't come out of it, but then Yahoo groups closed down, and another member started a Facebook group, so we have that going on, and we have some discussions, but a lot of people just don't really want to talk about it, some people had good experiences, and they think Jim Roberts was pretty nice, because when they were cold, he gave him a sleeping bag or something like that, and yeah, there were times when he did look over as kind of like a father, but no, for the most part, we're all, I mean, we're dirty all the time,

we're, you know, well, women didn't have to go scrounge in the dumpsters, but, you know, we're living in campgrounds, hitchhiking, we're not able to shower and get clean clothes all the time, I just imagine getting into some of those cars that picked us up, they must have held their noses, you know, had to be bad. The thing that tipped me off on the perfectionism, you mentioned some of the people who had been in a longer had higher rank, well, in a movement like this, I use the word shepherding and discipleship, because I know the framework, and it is

an authoritarian framework, a lot of people can't recognize it until they're really trying to understand the architecture of how it works, but discipleship is often not enforced, but it's measured, it's like it's encouraged, you want to be perfect, you must be perfect, and they don't say this as a doctrine, but what they do is they give you the, if you're not perfect, here's what happens, and they'll go off and they'll try to enforce it like this, so there's this pivot where devotion becomes evidence of your perfection, and that's how like my group wouldn't, what they would never say that they were discipling,

but a lot of what they did was exactly this, if you did not conform to the norms of the group think, if you went outside of this, they would, not maybe not preach at you, but they would preach about those people who do this, and you know who they're talking about, right, they're talking about you, and so discipleship is kind of measured by the, by the negative of the discipleship program, in other words, you're somebody who's not fitting the norm, those are the people that get preached at, and and knowing the history of the group,

at least from what you've said and what little bit I know, there was this, to travel like this, you have to give up a lot. You're giving up all your possessions, and those who had any ties back to their possessions, well, those aren't the chosen ones.

They're of the world. As I understand it, that's how the mindset was. Is that correct? Yes, oh, and another doctrine, which really impacted us because we were young, was Jesus said you had to hate your parents, and hate your mother and father, and we took that very literally.

But you know, you really can't. I mean, in your heart of hearts, you don't hate your parents. And so, but there was always this thing, well, we can't communicate with them unless they come to join us.

Yeah. And no, no, that wasn't going to happen. So it was, it was always very difficult. You know, the consequences, like in your congregations, you got preached at. No, our people got kicked out.

So there they are kicked out, offset literally to the side of the road with nothing, but maybe a change of clothes and a toothbrush and a tent, maybe, or sleeping bag. That's awful. And you know, that was, that was really bad.

And I think somebody, if I've probably heard it on some of your podcasts, the same kind of dynamic where somebody is shamed and called out or whatever, and everybody stays silent. Nobody says a word.

So I remember the first sister that got kicked out. She didn't even know why. And he's just berating her and going on and on, and she's thrown out a, no, we none of us said a word.

And there she was on her own, said that. I don't know what happened. It's awful because in a group like that, and again, we share so many similarities between what you had and what I escaped.

But obedience becomes the measure of salvation. It isn't faith in Jesus Christ. It isn't anything biblical. It's obedience and I'm talking specifically, obedience to the leadership. Whatever is the leader's opinions, his doctrines, whatever he, how he interprets the Bible.

If you disagree with him on how they interpret the Bible, well, you're disagreeing with God, my brother, my sister. That's how this was, right? So the measurement of your salvation is literally based on your obedience.

Yes, and obedience to what? I mean, he was really a very ignorant man. He really was. He knew nothing but the King James Bible and what he had learned in his United Pentecostal Church.

And that's extremely narrow understanding of the Bible and of history, of the nature of God, of the love of Jesus. We knew nothing about that. All we knew is Jesus. judgment and harshness and obedience. And if we didn't, it was, it was bad. And, you know, he had the nerve to change his name to brother evangelist. Really? I think that was from Pilgrim's progress. Wow. We called him brother evangelist. You know, again, there's so many similarities that there were doctrines that we had about how your spiritual significance is tied to your name. And there were names we weren't allowed to name our

children because of this. And there was heavy focus given onto the reason why Abraham changed his name to Abram Saratis, Sarah. And so we had some very similar things. But the thing that fascinates me the most, I think, when I read about your group and there's some others like yours that were kind of emerging at the same time, largely because of the doctrinal platforms that was created and laid down not only by Brandon, but many other people in that same type of movement. The people who hit the roads were actually enacting the doctrines that as they were being taught by the latarine movement and post-World War

2 healing revival. They were enacting the logical conclusions to those doctrines. While the rest of them just kind of fizzled out and faded into other different doctrines, groups like yours were actually doing the things that if if their doctrines were to come to their fruition, you had to become like this. You had to leave everything. You had to become isolationist. The we were isolationist only in our minds. But think of a traveling road group. You're you are it. You're the last ones. And you're in a lost and dead world. You're on a journey that nobody else in the world can go on with you. So you were living out

what we were creating as a bedrock foundation of doctrine. Yes. So Jim Roberts before he came to Missoula Montana, he had actually his church was where he grew up as Paduca Kentucky. And he had traveled around to probably people in those circles, United Pentecostal church circles and looking for people who are willing to sell everything to sell out and be you sold out for Jesus. And you know, it was a little hard to find, but us, you know, hippie types. Sure.

I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but one of the call pastors goes to my grandfather, not the not the grandfather who was at Brannum's Tabernacle as the headmaster, but the other one and said, you must sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And my grandfather looked at him straight and said, look, man, if I give everything I have to the poor, then I'm the poor. You're going to turn around and give it back to me. So he was thinking logically, but the doctrines were there. And I don't think people today realize how widespread

some of these doctrines are. They would say things like this, knowing full well that most of their congregation is not going to give everything that they have to the poor, but they would preach it with such intensity that you would think you have to.

And again, you had these groups springing up and emerging that when you're in a doctrine that is teaching you that your salvation is tied to the works that you do, and people are giving you ideas like this of things that the Bible said about works that you should do, and then the rapture hasn't happened, that people haven't seen the end of the world, and now the next logical step of this is, well, we're not doing enough, the burden is on us.

If we're going to be taken to heaven, we have to go further, we have to go deeper. So groups like yours were actually just taking what we had and bringing it to perfection, the doctrines that we had, they were bringing it to perfection, which is really odd if you think about it.

So we ended up getting out because Jim Roberts had heard, there was always this little envy stuff, especially with the brothers of positioning, who's going to have the most clout or whatever. At one point, Jim Roberts actually named someone else as a kind of a co-leader, but then he demoted him not very long after because he really couldn't share the power.

So anyway, there was talk, again, amongst some of the brothers against my now ex, accusing him of the most absurd things that some were partly true, but they were absolutely ridiculous. And in this culture, whatever is not a faith is sin, and you don't speak of doubts, you just don't talk about those things.

But we didn't even be married, we didn't talk about things. But when those accusations came, he started talking to me and telling me what happened because he was like on the brink of being kicked out, you know?

And when I heard all these things and his side of it, just the accusations were ridiculous, I just knew that they were wrong. And Jim Roberts was wrong, horrors, Jim Roberts be wrong. We looked at him, I don't know how or why, but he was the voice of God.

And I guess it's the same with Brandon too, but he was the voice of God for our life. How could he be wrong? So I started praying for him, and it's like that was so weird, I'd never even thought of praying for him before.

You don't pray for God. I mean, you know, he's perfect, I don't know why we thought he was. But anyway, after we were having conversations and Jim Roberts never apologized, because you know, a truly, a true Christian does admit their faults and they do apologize when they're wrong, but no, there was no...

Oh, nothing from him. So we made a decision to leave, and we were given, believe it or not, we asked permission to go out on the road. And so we did, that's how we got away.

Oh, one thing I was gonna say before was when we were all dirty and hitchhiking all the time, we actually found him, we and some other people, found him at different times, coming out of bus stations, and we realized, oh, that's why he's always nice and clean and neat.

And you know how a military person dresses, they always dress very neatly, they always have their shirt tucked into their pants, and they're always very neat, and that's why he always was. We weren't, but he was.

And so it's like, okay, so we're hitchhiking cross country with babies, in horrible weather, in horrible situations, no money, maybe a couple of dollars. And here he's taken a bus. I wonder what else he's doing.

Is he taking planes? You know, he's finding places to shower, and keep himself all nice and clean. So it kind of started leaking out, that there was another side to him. And when we got away, we spent a few days writing a letter, knowing that everything we said would be just examined under a microscope and refuted.

So we tried to cover every single base that we could without accusing or incriminating anybody else, just what we'd observed. And here's the funny part. We sent this letter, the way we got mail was that we'd go to the general post office, whatever city we were all heading to.

And so somebody would go get it, and we put clearly on that envelope for Jim Roberts' eyes only. Well, Jim Roberts was out of town, and he wanted to know our letters. The next older brother got the mail and read it to him.

Well, then he was in the doghouse, because he knew all the stuff, and he was kicked out not long after that, and told us that everything we said was all, we were just talked really bad about.

And here we'd been the older brother and sister for years, and we were in the doghouse. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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Earlier you were talking about the urgency, the coming apocalypse, the fear doctrine that they were teaching. I don't think many groups realize how dangerous that is. I remember whenever I first came out of that mindset, part of the reason why I came out of that mindset was Martin Luther, the man who really started the Protestant Reformation, the reason why we have these churches. He said something to the effect. And I wish I could find it some day. I need to go back and find this. But he was talking about the hell doctrines that the Catholic church were using as a as a fear based tactic to keep people in. And he

says, I don't know why anybody would want to preach this. He says, if you are preaching about hell, not a single person in the congregation wants to go there. Nobody's interested in it. Let's preach about the good things. Let's talk about the good things. And I'm paraphrasing greatly. And I may be slaughtering it to somebody who knows Martin Luther. But the essence of what he's saying was this, if you try to preach the fear doctrines, you're doing it only for the purpose of control. And whenever I look at the group that you came out of,

the group that I came out of, they frame this end of days theology. It's like a whip. It's like a taskmaster's whip. They frame it such that you're so scared that you're going to be caught up in this. And then they beat you over the head with it every Sunday. I was beaten over the head every Sunday for 37 years. But more to the point, while you're in that fear, it makes sense why you were brainwashed. So you can't be too hard on yourself because that was your whole world. Absolutely. But while you're in that framework, you're

so caught up in the fear and how to avoid it, the perfection doctrines, whatever they mix in with that fear, you're so caught up in it that there's not really time to think about what's being said. And the leadership uses this to their advantage. If they can keep you bound by fear, if they can keep you caught up trying to try to do the better things so that you can be better than the rest of the Christians down the street, then you can't think about the things that they said and determine how wrong they are. And some

of them even push it even further than this. If you are thinking about critically about anything that we said, well, that's the devil in you. That's the spirit of the devil in you. So many groups have this kind of thing, but it's that urgency that keeps you bound.

Yes, so much fear. So when I got out, um, wasn't easy, but I could not read the King James Bible because that's the only Bible I had been reading. And I couldn't read it without hearing.

brother evangelist voice and all his the grid that we read it through with all that fear and the literalism because we thought well you have to take it literally but um hello we don't take the book of Revelation totally literally do we know so there's a lot of things a lot of different genres in the Bible that you are not meant to be taken absolutely literally and we don't even know uh well especially in the group but in our world we don't know the idioms that Jesus used that's why sometimes things don't make sense but in his time it meant this is what it meant

you know this is this was common knowledge absolutely I spent I can't tell you how many years just trying to understand exactly that because there were things that were used as whips and our minds that Jesus was using as a metaphor at write down to when he's talking about the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth he's literally talking about a literal valley where you took your people who were too sick who were about to die some of them dead but many of them would later die and they're laying there they can't do anything there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth

it was a physical place and he was using it as a metaphor and they've turned that into something entirely differently well then then it got the value of the henna the henna what I don't know you know got turned translated into hell well how come there's several words that are translated hell and they mean different things so there's there's there's questions but you know if you're so afraid of hell you're not going to question it well that's just it and and I'm not saying that there's not a hell there are arguments for both sides and I've read both arguments but the point

I'm trying to use trying to make is you can take something without understanding its context you can take it and you can create a whole doctrine on top of it and then when you do this now you have a doctrine that isn't really biblical but yet it reads like it's biblical and people can't see the difference unless they take the time to study what are those idioms what are those metaphors the funniest Bible teaching I guess you could say that we ever had in the group and it all was because of Jim Roberts being from the south and his ignorance

he's reading a verse we're all mostly college educated people I wasn't but I was still intelligent we're all standing there looking at the archbibles while he speaks and translates it so crazy the prophet said to set on a pot and see the potage he meant that to be you set like in the south you set you sit you sit on the pot and you will see a potage no it's not what it's said

and so we're all looking at each other and it's like no we dare not say any can't say anything at the time anyway. Next morning we saw somebody who was a Bible student from before he came to the group and he's talking privately to Jim Roberts and then next thing we know he's walking off and that's it. Never saw him again. You know you can't contradict the prophet.

Are they evangelists? And if he if any in other times when people did talk to him and he did receive it he would gather us together and he's saying I wouldn't want any of you to misunderstand and then he would re-teach it more correctly but it was our fault we might have misunderstood.

Well it's all of that framework where the central figure is the spiritual authority on doctrine and scripture and more than that he used a different word I think but we call random the voice of God. In word of faith you've got the ramah you've got all these different words but it's essentially the same thing. This is God speaking this is not man and so anything that said can't be a mistake but what happens when it is? Yeah so I always had a hunger for the Bible and you know I had mentioned to you in our correspondence that I had gone to Christ for the nations and

I know that's intricately tied in which I had no idea. Gordon what was his name? Anyway Lindsay yeah that he'd been part of Branham because I knew nothing about Branham I had heard about Branham one time and heard that there were these churches that listened to his tapes and I thought that was very strange but I had no idea what more we had what we had in common we had that in common at all but yeah so I did go to Christ for the nations actually for only one semester that didn't work out. Later I did get a bachelor's in it with the masters in theology that always

had a hunger to dig into the the Bible and see what it really says and what it means and so I'm really glad I did. Let's talk about that for a second because with a nomadic group there's this other problem which is similar to what we came from if you join the group and you're nomadic it's impossible to go to college so if you have children who are of an age to go to school you you kind of can't let them go to school and at the same time if your group is like ours you're actually

preaching against the schools so you want to take them out and that's literally how I want to say literally 80% or maybe more of the Branham call it's were they were so heavily against education I was unusual because I was one who got to go to school public school but in a group that you're in were there a lot you mentioned a lot of college people what about the student age members were they ever taught you know they were very no they weren't there were hardly any children and no children of school age everybody left before then yeah well one of the things that might be

similar that I'm not 100% sure of it with our groups was the the treatment of women it wasn't there was just access sub education, treatment and the teaching of women being subject to their husbands and being submissive. It was just really, it was so oppressive for women. It was really bad.

Not too long after I'd gotten married, Jim Roberts called the married brothers. There were a few others at the time together and had a talk with them. I probably something about keeping your women in line or something to have effect. My husband actually took me off into the woods and spanked me with a stick. I have no idea why. I think it was just to make sure that I knew who the boss was. That's why we're divorced is because of his abuse because it was continual. One of the things that you're doing that's so valuable

is seeing not just where things came from but where they're going, where they're gone and permeated Christian culture, American Christian culture anyway. But there were so many pastors that I had and teachers on the radio or whatever that I would try to talk to about the abuse. They would all say, I had to stay. I had no grounds for divorce. It got to the point where I was losing my mind because I have a mind. Sometimes I would pray, just give me a lobotomy because I just can't be this robot that has to just obey every single

thing that I'm told. Without thinking, without figuring out stuff on my own. After all, I'm running the household with five children at the time, at the end before I left and no money. I'm very lived in a lot of poverty. I had to be pretty smart about it. It was just horrible. I finally got to the point where God, I can't live like this. I just sat down with my Bible and a notebook and the daily bread devotional. The first story was amazing because it was my story. From another perspective, it was a man telling his story about how he

knew his father loved his mother because of all the things he did for her. The mind did nothing for me. He didn't lift the finger at the house. Nothing. But there were all these specific things that this man's father would do for the mother that were specific things that my husband refused to do for me, which just put me in tears. I just knew, God, you just ordained this moment. It just broke me. And so I...

spent about six weeks continually seeking the Lord, reading the Bible, writing down what he was showing me, writing down my experiences of abuse daily, and until I was completely convinced, especially by so many scriptures that even know we're in the Bible so many times how God loves the widow and the orphan.

I believe that God's speaking to me day after day how He loves and cares for the widow and the orphan, and I realize that I'm not loved, I'm not cared for. My children aren't either.

And I know that regardless of what all these other pastors have said and Bible teachers, you know, focus on the family was a big one. I know that God says, I do not need to stay in this.

In fact, it's bad for me to stay in this because I realized I was teaching my children, teaching my girls how to be a wife to an abuse of husband, teaching my son, how to be an abuse of husband to his wife is like, I don't want my children thinking this is normal.

And so I had to get away. And just because I'm saying all these bad things, I do have to tell you that my ex-husband and I are now friends. He does a lot of things for me now.

He works around the house for me. It's really great, you know, to just be neutral. And we know we realize we have five children and we have gatherings and everything. It's kind of silly that we should not be friendly and there's no reason not to be.

And he is apologetic for the way that he behaved. So not that I'm getting married to him again, but I forget. You know, it's a lot easier to live with forgiveness than resentment. It really is.

Just let it go. You know, I, one of the churches that we attended, the minister, this was the day that we stopped attending. He preached a whole sermon on how if you're part of the bride, the elite group, we called ourselves bride.

That was our cult name, but if you're part of this elite group, you won't like anything on the outside. You won't like the people on the outside. And he went so specific as to say, my family often asked me, how come I never come around, how, how come I never see them?

And he says, it's simply because you don't believe our message. If you believed our message and believed our prophet, we would, we would participate in everything that you have as an event. But since you don't, we won't.

And that's the moment in which we left, we're no longer, we're no longer that cultish. But groups like yours, we're taking that to whole new levels, you know, you're going on road trips, you can't even possibly go see the, go see your parents.

And the thing that really hit me as that minister at that time, I was still actually in the group. I, it wasn't long. until after that that I left the whole thing all together.

But at that point in time, I was thinking, you know, Jesus never called people, he called people to follow. He never called them to disappear. And so there wasn't this idea that you would join Jesus.

And I know the passage that you're talking about about, you know, if you, if you follow Christ, you'll, you come to, I can't remember the exact verbiage, but you come not to love the mother, not to love the father.

Well, you can't balance that with the, the commandments that he gave that, and the examples that are given all throughout the Bible about love your mother, love your father, you know, obey your father, obey your mother.

If you can't reconcile it, it's not a doctrine that makes sense. And I kept thinking along those lines. And basically what was happening is I was critically thinking about everything I've been taught. But then it really hit me.

And this is part of the reason why I finally decided to leave when you're in that type of leadership where there's one person who has the full authority, it, he is essentially he has become your God-profit to your people and God-profit, meaning he's claiming to be human, but he's also your God, that's essentially what it is.

It becomes leader-mediated, obedient, silver scripture. And I just couldn't go there once I recognized that. So I never really severed my family like, like they wanted us to in some of the groups. I was always friends with people even if they weren't part of it.

But groups like yours took it to whole new extremes. And I'm thankful to listen to stories like yours where you were able to come out of that mindset. If you could give some advice to other people who were in that mindset, what advice would you give them?

God is so much better than you can even imagine. He's so loving. He is love. Everything about him is love. And if you find things like you were just saying contradictions, that are rethink God's nature is love.

And he loves us so much more than you can even imagine. And he wants only good things for us. And he's not a harsh punitive, angry God ready to just get rid of us with any infraction.

So search for perfection, like you nailed it. I can't remember exactly what you said, but it's nebulous. That's the way I have felt. You know, you try, try, try to be perfect and you finally realize, well, what is perfect?

Okay. If I don't make any mistakes, maybe, but it's just impossible to really define, especially if you're trying to go farther than the physical realm, right? Spiritual realm. Think, what is this perfection for a human?

No. Jesus is perfection. We're in him. He loves us. He died for us. There's nothing. he wouldn't do for us. And yeah, life is hard sometimes. I've gone through a lot of hard things besides the group. I've gone through other hard and the abuse, you know, other things. And God's always there. He's always a comfort. And we just have to rethink the way we've thought about God. He's not Zeus. You're not ready to strike us down. That's a pagan belief. And I don't know. Ever since Augustine, I think, you know, we've thought of God as very harsh and

punishing. And I know he is not. I know he is not. I know him. Absolutely. And one of the things that I was processing, as I was processing all of this, is the punishment. Because not only was it a fear based religion, it was also a punished based religion. And much like you described, and I'm not certain that he could have possibly gotten this from Brannum. But Brannum did spread this idea throughout the revivals that you need to keep your wife in line. And his example was, if my wife stepped out of line or one of my daughter stepped out of line, I would get a barrel

slat and I would beater with it. And if you understand what a barrel slat is, that's a pretty thick board. That's not something that's taking lightly, right? And he would often talk about praising the mothers who are beating their children to the point where they're a waltz on the skin.

That is not love. That's not how you show love. But yet, that's the mentality. And men would, I know men who took that right down to the literal teaching that he was trying to give them.

And they would do these kind of things to their wives. And then the wives were stuck in the religion. They were trapped. They, if they were to try to go. In fact, I know people who went to my grandfather and said, my husband is beating me. What do I do? And I know my grandfather sided with the husband who's beating the woman over the woman who's being abused. So it's horrific. And that's the type of mentality that this kind of control and manipulation brings you. So I'm very glad that you got out of that. If you could go back and give some advice to yourself back whenever you were just

starting into that journey, what advice would you give yourself? You know, all the waltz kush it is. I've lived there. I've lived with just embarrassment and beating myself up. How can I be so stupid? How can I believe such stupid things? I'll go all the way back to the day that I ran away from home. Why did I do that? Well, my stepdad was trying to molest me and my mother didn't believe me. So at 15, I knew everything. So why not leave? I had a 18-year-old hippie boyfriend so it was easy for me. But I had options that I didn't even see. So I really can't say

it's really hard to know. It's just you got to know God. You got to know who is. And and and if you just to follow all the rules of a man, you know, there's a lot of churches, regular churches, regular denominational churches that are really run-cult like whatever the pastor says, that's the way it goes. And you know, I'm really, I'm sick of all that.

I've been in it for just too long to real, so I don't know what kind of advice, because you, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, because because when people get sucked into it with the fear, they're not going to listen to anything else. But for people who've never been impacted by that kind of thinking, praise God, you know, and just get to know the real true nature of Jesus. He is love. And you know, so don't get caught up in the fear. You know, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know if, you know, from I got brought into it into

even Christianity by the teaching of like Matthew 24 and the end of days and thinking this is for us now. And now I see, I don't think so because AD 70 pretty much fulfilled an awful lot of that. Maybe not everything. But, you know, I just don't think I need to live in fear.

I think that contradicts what Jesus said. He says to fear not so many times, right? You know, so whatever's going to happen, things happen in this world all the time that are terrifying and they're horrible and just bad things. But we're not supposed to fear. So it's a trust.

And God always comes through. I can say that 100%. He always comes through. So, you know, when I got out of the group, you know, now I don't know if you've probably heard the phrase of the word the term deconstruction. A lot of people come out of these, a lot of different groups like this room with a lot of wounds and they have to deconstruct. In other words, I have to rethink. It doesn't mean they're leaving their face. Some people do, but not all people do. When I came out of the group and it was 1970, I mean, I came out in 78,

I think it was 1979. That term wasn't in use at all. But I did have to rethink and I got healing like what you're doing is part of the healing of the talking about it and the hearing about it, all the different stories because it helps us to see things with a better perspective.

Well, when I in 1979 actually had a vision of a house that was at all the building parts, but they were all in the wrong places. It was just really bad. And so I'm asking God, what is this? And he's telling me all these building materials, windows, shingles, doors, all the parts. Those are all my experiences that I had in the group.

And they're valuable. They weren't right, but they were valuable, but I had to take them apart and in taking each part of this building apart, it was like I was discussing things. They my experiences and the doctrines and stuff with other people who had also come out. A lot of people came out right after we left.

And one domino falls and the kind of was a chain effect. And so we were communicating on the phone, this is way back before internet. And I got such healing from talking about it myself, like people get healing at least some relief with talk therapy. It was the kind of same kind of thing, just talk it out, talk it out.

And when I felt like I had like another dream or vision and I saw a foundation, it's like, okay, let's get the bulldozer. We're getting that rid of this whole thing. Nope, God's saying no.

Again, it's because there was a good part of the foundation. That was my belief in Jesus. But all those buildings, I didn't have any more visions after that. After all those, all the building parts were all valuable, but they were all in the wrong order, the wrong priority.

So I had to put it back to get like my spiritual houses, what I figured it was. I had to put it back together so that it was a proper priority. You know, all those ex there were amazing experiences. It wasn't all just obedience and all, but you know, there were times when, you know, we had just sweet fellowship with each other or many miracles.

You could really call them that when you're stuck on the side of the road and the weather's horrible, especially you have babies, I mean, you need a miracle, you need a car, pick you up.

And we had people pick us up and take them into their home and give us a shower or laundry and, oh, that was wonderful. It was wonderful. And so, you know, we weren't so right. We thought we were righteous by the things we were doing. No. But God used those things to teach us lessons.

And we grew. And that's why we left. Unfortunately, today, this group is still going on. It's a small group. I hear bits and pieces from different people who are in communication with some because they don't like to communicate with, you know, what were they called?

You know, us backsliders or whatever they want to call us. But I hear bits and pieces that there are some people in communication and they're still living this nomadic lifestyle. I don't think they hitchhike anymore. That's not really the thing to do anymore. The 70s, it was kind of common.

But they're still holding on. Oh, and Jim Roberts died. But they're still holding on to something. I don't know what they have no. Let's nominate. or anything like that, so it's not that. Well, I'm so thankful you were able to get out and I thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

I'm very honored to come and be part of what you do. I got up, found you in my research with one of my professors from Christ for the Nations, Dr. Michael Brown, and his scandal, which is disgusting to me, that a man that I held in high honor could have no conscience.

It makes you really think, you know? It does. But anyway, thank you so much for doing this. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Brandom.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.