Weird Doctrines: Relics, Iconography, and Idolatry

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at www.William-brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, James Goad. And together we're discussing the very weird things that preachers say, why they say them, and how they relate back to the latter-rain healing revivals of the late 1940s through the 1960s.

James, this is an episode I have been wanting to do since, gosh, I want to say it was like 2012, right whenever I first escaped. This is something that hit me like a brick wall.

I mean, it's night and day different between where I am now and where I was. And in every way, I can't even just pinpoint one single aspect of my life that is very similar to what I was before.

But this in particular, it bothered me so badly while I was in the thing, but yet internally I wrestled with it, so I didn't fully accept how badly it bothered me. But then after I left, I was like, oh my gosh, man, what in the world were we thinking? What were we doing? And that is the subject of relics, iconography, and let's just be open and honest about it, idolatry.

Yeah, it's something that, you know, when you step away, like you said, it, and you start to deprogram, and you start to revisit all these things that you saw and witness on a daily basis inside of some of these churches, and, you know, like you said, iconography and the things that take prominence in these places and the amount of reverence they have, and you're just like, oh my god, this is so problematic.

Because, you know, I mean, you have all these instances throughout the, throughout the Bible, where, you know, even the Israelites would take certain things like the golden calf, and they would make images and stuff of things that they revered, and all these different things, and, you know, and then the Bible is very, very strict and says, this is wrong, we don't do this, this is not what we do, and then it never fails, you have all these movements that spring up around.

Christianity that are pseudo Christian movements, and they all have these, these, this iconography, all these things that take such reverence. and preeminence inside these movements and people become, they identify with them so heavily that they feel almost a kinship with these things like these pictures or these books or things like that. And yeah, it's a problem. It is, man. And you know, for me, it's a curse because you know, I spent, I don't know how many hundreds of dollars buying the iconography while I was in the movement. And then when I left, because I was reading the Bible and I read

by example, after you leave idolatry, what do you do? You destroy the idolatry, you destroy the iconography. So my sons and I, we had this celebratory, celebratory event where we were taking all of those old relics that we had. And I made a public display of destroying them in my backyard. My sons present. They helped me. And it has been to my detriment, right? Because now I needed that stuff from our research. And fortunately, last year, I had a very gracious donor who also escaped the cult, gave me boxes and boxes and boxes of not just everything that, well, almost

everything that I had destroyed, but also all of the other stuff that, you know, I hate to say it, we weren't that rich. Well, in fact, we were quite poor. I did not have all the iconography like some of the other people who had collected over years and years. People in this movement, James, I don't know if you've seen it in your sect, but in the main sect, they would produce a set of materials. And that set of materials might be, I don't know, let's call it beige. And then after that run was complete, they would invent brand new covers and make it blue. And everybody

would buy the blue ones. Then they would make this cloudish scheme, this new marketing scheme, and they'd buy those leather bound ones. And that's just the books. They also had photographs, images right down to, I have family members who had this fabulous, expensive hand carved cabinet that you could open up and you could put all of your relics in your idolatry. We're talking, we're talking the doors had these, these fancy, I know it was a fancy wood carving of the quote, unquote, profit on one side. And I think it was an eagle or some other weird cult icon on the left

side. And then you open it up and there were individual slots that were just large enough for cassette tape to fit in. And you have books. And you know, it became a shrine in the house.

This was the holy revered, revered spot, right? And that's just the recordings of the transcripts in the books. But We also had photographs, images, we had statues. It was, it's unbelievable when you really take a step back and you think about this because whether people in the movement are willing to admit it or not, and I'm going to say this and I'm going to get backlash, people who did this sort of thing were embarrassed by it.

And I say that from my own experience because while I was in it, I pretended to be very proud of it. But when I say embarrassed, it's like this, when you witness to other people who weren't raised with this idolatry, you don't mention all of the stuff, right? You don't show them that there's this weird cloud photograph. You wait until the right moment to inject it because you know they're going to laugh at you. Yeah, yeah, because even you and being a human, like you know that there's a problem here, but you've got all these layers of cognitive dissonance and all

these things that have been applied in the cult programming that you've suppressed those things, but it's still there. Like your rational mind is still, you know, you can't function on a daily basis without your rational mind, even if elements of you are suppressed very heavily in a lot of these cases. You know, so it's still there. So like you said, yeah, you go to you go to witness to somebody and be like, oh, I have this great thing. They're like, well, tell me more about it.

And you're trying to rope them in with the least amount of information because you know, once you get them in, all the confirmation bias that you're around on a daily basis, you're like, okay, well, that gets on them and then they'll see what I see. But the thing about it is, yeah, if you go and start like, you know, throwing a halo photograph and all these things to people before they, before they've even darkened the door, you're like, I'm probably going to lose these people.

Yeah, it's just, it's so wrong, man. And I have in the past, I've shared all these pictures of the worst case scenarios, right? It's not the general public in the movement, but the worst case scenarios where people in developing nations are bowing down and they're actually prostate praying to these icons. And some of the churches across the pulpit, they've got a smattering of all of these pictures of clouds and eagles and who knows what all. Basically every relic, every icon, every idol that the cult has produced and its splinter groups in many cases have produced.

They use these things as their new idols. And like I say, I was so disgusted by it whenever I left the cult that I had a celebration and we took our idols made of not stone, but our idols made of plastic and paper and totally demolished them. And like I said, I'm rebuilding my collection for my research. Yeah, yeah, for all the different reasons. And you know, it's just like that. Like you said, you know, there's even stuff that, you know, stuff like this that they have buried and they don't want you to even know it exists anymore. But this is,

this is by 1970s. Seven, this was the track that was leading up to the 1977 Doomsday Prophecy. And this was something that was, and John, you know more about this than I do because you were around in those times.

But yeah, this caused a lot of problems and it's something that cult leaders today, like they would probably, I mean, they know I haven't now, but I mean, it's like they don't want these things to exist.

How old do you think I am, man? I was born in 1976. I was one of those 1976 babies, right? They were, and I can't say my parents did this, but I can say a lot of people did.

The world is supposed to end January 1st, 1977. So what happened was you had all of these couples who got together so that they could experience what sex was like before they transitioned to the other side to another world.

And there was this whole massive population of growth in the cult and it splinter groups right before 1977 so people could experience sex. And sadly, a lot of the parents didn't really want to have kids in the first place.

So they know what children they didn't want. It's really unbelievable. And that thing that you have there is worth gold. You, they don't sell it obviously in the cult headquarters, but you almost can't even find it.

The people who had it realized just how wrong it was because it is the first widely publicized example of a failed prophecy. So people just like me, they destroyed it. It was an idol.

It was wrong. It was false doctrine. They destroyed it. And now the general public in the cult and it splinter groups have no idea that that publication was produced by cult headquarters. Yeah, and it's one of those things that by the time I came around, it had been so thoroughly buried that I discovered this kind of more on my way out.

I heard rumblings of some things back in the 70s and stuff, but most people just didn't talk about it. They wanted to forget it and move on because they reframed it as these are the heretics that believed this stuff, even though some of them also believed it.

And they reframed it, reorganized in their brain, renegotiated what was going on and then everybody just moved on. And so, yes, like you said, finding stuff like that is very difficult these days. And like you said, I don't blame people who have, when they leave and they're like every bit of this stuff that I put time, effort, belief into, and they go and burn it, throw it away, do whatever they can because it's a symbol of, I'm rejecting this thing that I so thoroughly believed in.

So I don't blame anybody for doing that, but there is some things out there that if people do have, and it is of importance that we don't widely have access to, maybe before we should burn it, maybe shoot John in the email and see if he needs it.

Exactly and like I said I appreciate the person who sent me it. I want to say it was hundreds of dollars worth of just shipping to get it to me. There were boxes and boxes and boxes of books and it has been extremely helpful in my research especially once we got into the little known history because there were some artifacts that they had in this that well yes they were called called icons and iconography. They represented a stage persona that had been completely erased at time. One of the things that they sent me was a booklet

that came from before the earliest known version of the stage persona that existed and opened a door to all kinds of new research especially with regards to the rise of the populist movement, rise of the Christian identity movement, British Israelism and it was a large part of the reason why we're shifting the the areas of research to go back even further. We're starting approximately the late 1800s, early 1900s to set up the foundation for this but whenever I say different and weird and we're talking called iconography you remember William Brannum said that the first Bible was the zodiac, the second Bible was the pyramid. Well this was a phrase in what was called

the British Israel message which transitioned into eventually the laterane message and the towards the end the message that we have today as a movement. Well one of the icons that they had during this phase was the great pyramid of Giza and they made these little replicas of the pyramid because they said that the measurements in the pyramid actually foretold of the things that were happening at the end of days which they said was back in the early late 1800s, early 1900s and that premise actually made it into the laterane movements and it was reinvented. So picture

the weird icons that we have today which we'll get into a bit further but picture before this everybody walking around with photographs and even little tiny replicas of the great pyramid of Giza saying to other normal non-cult Christians, see this pyramid my friends, this is the way my brother. Well, it's too real, stop. Yeah, no, it's crazy the the amount of you know all you examine all these these movements you know there's always there's always some weird centralization around iconography and the thing that my mind sort of comes to when I when I begin to think about

this it it's something that because you always have a real heavy spiritual element to these movements but something that can bring it into the realm of reality that people People can be tangible and can touch, is a photograph, is a picture, is a statue, things like that that make the thing that you're trying to present to people feel more real.

And it's something tactile that they can sort of interface with. And it does serve a heavy purpose of the conditioning phase. Because if you can get people to believe in the importance of these ritualistic objects and even get them to bring them into their home and put them in a place of prominence, you've got them, they're there.

And it doesn't take much further to get them wherever else you want to get them. Yeah, exactly. I mean, think about this, James. You look at some of the other rituals that have been passed down through history.

You've got, like in Mexico, they have the day of the dead. And if you go to any home of a person who actually believes this as a religious system, you'll find this wall where they have their, you know, whatever's the iconography of the past deceased loved ones that they had.

And it becomes a shrine in their home. Now if you ask them, is this an idol, many of them will say, no, this is not an idol. It's just become part of their way of worship and they don't realize that it is idolatry.

Well, in the homes of the message cult and it's various splencher groups, they often have similar things. They've got this wall set up and there's the photograph of, I don't know what it is, the halo or the cloud or whatever is their icon.

And it becomes a sacred wall and you won't find too many homes where they've got, you know, I don't know, some painting, some store bought painting of a scene that you would normally have in a painting in your house right next to the halo photograph because that whole wall becomes sacred to them.

And they don't even realize it because they've entered into idolatry and they've, in essence, they've taken whatever is the icon that they have and they've merged it with their faith system. And now the home becomes the shrine to that faith system.

I will, I'll never forget this and I'll guarantee you that many of the younger people in the message don't remember this, but they used to pass out these, their size of baseball cards and they had the halo photograph and one of the cloud and there are a few different laminated baseball cards that you could get.

And they wanted you to keep it in your wallet. In fact, there were these leaders in the cult that were going from church to church, passing these things out and then advertising that you keep them in their wallet.

Now their intent from everything that I can tell was just simply to try to grow the cult in other words, people would have it in their wallet. It becomes a topic of conversation. They pull it out, they use it to quote unquote, witness to people, which is idolatry.

But what happened was different. It's because as children growing up in this thing, like myself, you were never told that you were supposed to witness, but you were told how special it was to keep this in your wallet.

Well, then it became an idol in your wallet, and you had now the sacred thing in your wallet that you revered in your wallet, which is an idol. It's idolatry. Yeah. And the thing about it is, is that this stuff, especially the brand of iconography that we're talking about a little bit here, it takes such a place of prominence in even the churches themselves, not just the homes, but it enters into the churches, and it becomes such a massive part of the service, and from the minute you enter the doors to the minute you leave, you're constantly seeing this iconography in front of you, and it's always placed

in positions of prominence and reverence in these facilities. And it's kind of funny, because I do know of, especially the church I grew up in, there was one situation where a picture of Brannum, because it was in one service, I was really young at the time, I remember it was there, and then it was moved out to the lobby.

And at some point, somebody had, I guess, raised a problem with a bit, maybe this is problematic, but it didn't quite leave the church, but it just wasn't in the sanctuary anymore. But yeah.

So people do kind of raise problems with this, because like I said earlier, your rational mind is still working, and it's like, sometimes you just wake up for even a first, plus second, be like, wait a minute, this is a problem.

Yeah, you know, when my wife and I first got married, we had our sacred wall and our cheap apartment, my apartment was so small, when we got married, I could plug in a vacuum cleaner in one outlet, and I could vacuum the whole apartment, so in this tiny apartment, we wasted an entire wall space of our sacred wall with a picture of the Hoffman's head of Christ, which is another cult icon, the, I can't remember the name of the actual painting, but they have snipped out just a portion of that painting with the face, because the

white Jesus was the cult approved Jesus, and so we had the white Jesus, and we also had the Halo photograph gifted to us by a family member, I won't mention the name. Well when they gave us this special gift for our sacred wall and our apartment, the picture of Brannum was, and it's an old memory, so I'm slightly guessing at the dimensions, it was about three feet tall by a little over a foot and a half wide, if I remember correctly, it was a big, big picture of the Halo, and then the picture of Jesus, the white Jesus,

it was about half that size, so here we have one our sacred wall of icons and a cult idolatry. this massive picture of William Branham and his alleged halo in this little small picture of Jesus.

Well, even back then, I was embarrassed and I told my wife back at the time, I don't know what to do, right? Because this was a special person who gave me this and they gave me this massive picture of the, it was, it was a colorized version, which was a level special beyond what other people had, because they all had the black and white halo. But there was this massive picture with this little Jesus, and it made Jesus look inferior to William Branham. And I didn't know what to do, right? I can't call them out because of the rank and status of this person. But this was wrong, man. And I

knew it was wrong back in the cult. Yeah. But I guess that kind of seguized this nicely into, into this, this first clip I have here. So this is a very interesting clip that I ran across. And you've got a minister defending the role of some of this iconography in prominence in the church.

And yeah, it's kind of problematic, but we'll let the minister speak for himself and we'll take a look. Now, don't get mad at me. But sissy five preaching around this message has opened the door for illusion. Shock factor, right? Sissy five preaching has opened the door wide up to let spirits just walk right in the church. And now they're influencing the pulpit. They're influencing the pews. They're influencing the young people. Come on. When man put gloves on. Oh, God. When they put gloves on and started preaching this message is when we started hearing people get up and say

the cloud didn't happen. Well, come on, church is when we started to debate whether that picture should be in the church house or not. Well, if it don't belong in a sanctuary, somebody stand up and tell me where in the name of the Lord does it belong? If it don't belong in a sanctuary, then somebody pray tell me where does it belong? Does it belong in your barn? Does it belong in your wood shop? Hey, man, come on. Hey, man, I go ahead and preach some here. Hey, man, I tell you where people own it. They don't want it at all. Because if there are two ashamed to put in the

church, they're ashamed to have it in their home. They're ashamed to have it among their kids. Hey, man, but I say thank God in this age that Jesus Christ come down in the form of the pit of fire and he give me a place to stand. And right here's where I stand. I stand with this picture. You can mock me, criticize me, laugh at me, do what you want to. But I stand with a visible return of the pit of fire. My home is God. It's my office is God and come on, church.

It's on my phone, but Sean. God, brother. Thank you, sir, for splitting it in the church. And let the world know we stand with the indicated word of God. Yeah, James. So this is exactly what I was talking about. It You know, when we were in it, we never really thought about the level of idolatry.

And I know to a person who's in the cult who's hearing this, you're going to say, no, we don't worship the halo photograph. And we don't even call it that, John. It is the quote unquote pillar of fire, right? But people have a hard time. Once their brain has associated something with their religion as an icon, and it becomes elevated in status to a spiritual icon, which in effect is an idol. They have a hard time realizing that they have transitioned to that level where it is idolatry, where it's worship of idols. And I'll say it like this,

picture the children of Israel who had the actual pillar of fire, according to the Bible, who were led, you know, out of Egypt land. And they had, they saw the pillar of fire, and some guy decided, hey, I'll bet I can sell a bunch of these things. If I take a stone and a chisel, I make a pillar of fire that people can put in their homes. And then everybody starts worshiping this. And this is our sacred place in our house, because that right there, friends, is the pillar of fire. You won't find that because if you read through the mosaic law to make such a

thing was actually punishable by death. It was not a good thing, right? And that's the equivalent of what we're talking about here. They believe in the cult that this was a quote unquote pillar of fire, which say that it was that argument is for another day, but say that it was actually a pillar of fire. Well, then they've made a relic of the pillar of fire, and they hang it in their homes, they hang it in their churches, they turn it into an idol. And James, these are the same exact people that condemn the Catholics for their worship of Mary and the crosses, and they talk about

how the Catholics use the cross as an idol. Those same people sell you a cross to hang from your mirror in your car. And people, I know I'll get backlash for this because people who haven't really thought through it, the cross itself can become an idol. If you're taking any object that is of this earth that you have made, either idols made of stone or wood or paper or whatever you've made it out of plastic, and you elevate it to a spiritual status where it now becomes part of your worship, that is an idol. And they were condemning the Catholics because the Catholics

had the cross, and they always carried it with them, and they would say the Hail Mary, etc., which that's another argument for another day, whether that's right or wrong, but these people are condemning those the Catholics for it while they're doing the same exact thing. And what's interesting about all of this is that if you go to the Brannum Tabernacle.

In fact, look at the old photographs. It's different than other churches, James. They have the actual idolatry icon that they're condemning the Catholics of a statue of Jesus nailed to the cross. While all other Christian churches have a cross with a wreath or a ribbon about around it, showing the risen Jesus.

And here's the cross that we're not worshiping this cross, we're worshiping the thing you don't see, right? Well, the cult churches have the actual physical Jesus nailed to the cross and their idols that they hang in the churches.

So the point I'm trying to lead up to is while condemning other people for their idolatry, many people are raised to become idolatrous in this type of movement. Yeah, it's crazy because you look at this one in particular, this one in particular.

And I grabbed a screenshot of the actual church just to kind of show like what's going on here. And you literally have Jesus's picture off to the left of the speaker placed in the exact same height as Brannum's picture off to the right of the speaker.

And the speaker sits in the middle in between both kind of like standing in the gap, which is a, you know, that phrase, called people, that I'll ring a bell. But yeah, so, so yeah, and it's one of those things

where when you're in it, you become so desensitized to, especially if you grow up in it, because it's there from the moment you set foot into a church and that's just to you, that's normal.

But when you really break it down, these churches are putting Brannum on the same level as God and because he's equal spacing, equal height and pictures are both, are the same size. And there's multiple examples from multiple churches that follow this same pattern.

You know, maybe the spacing's a little different, but it's always equal height, equal distance separation. And, you know, and what you're saying is Brannum is equal with God. Now, people say, no, we don't say that.

Well, you don't say it verbally, but your actions, my mother was just to say action speak louder than words. You know, and I'll pull a photograph up for the visual audience,

the people who are watching this podcast, but the old photographs of the old tabernacle, which, you know, I've talked about this before, at the top it has this big sign that says, be still and know that I, him, God, with William Brannum standing right underneath it, right?

Well, it's worse than this. If you look at his height where he's standing, they have purposefully put the two photographs, one of the white Jesus and one of the halo, you know, to either side of him, at almost the same level, like I think if you were sitting down, it would, look like it's at the same level.

The photograph I have somebody standing, and so the central figure of the cult is a little bit lower, but when you look at this photograph, there's so many problems with it, man. I mean, think of how the nerve it would take for a person to be standing next to a photograph of himself that he has turned into an idol before the people, so that everybody who's worshipping this idol, which, oh by the way, is hanging on the church wall, right next to me, as I preach to you.

They've associated this with their form of worship, and in doing so, now the central figure is also associated with the same worship. And then, while he's condemning, think of this, it's just blows your mind.

While he's condemning the Catholics for all of the relics and idols, he has the Catholic cross, where Jesus is still nailed to it, right next to him, on the other side, with a picture of the white Jesus, proclaiming that I won't go there.

This is a wrong thing that he's doing. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, and the beast still know that I'm God. That, it's so crazy because we've examined this and other things where one of the desires inside of a movement like this is to be more like the central figure.

And if the central figure did something, or in this case, the central figure did something in his church or decorated his church in a certain way, then therefore it is okay to decorate our churches in the same way.

And one of the things that you see copied into other churches, and some have since changed, I think when this has kind of become exposed how problematic this is, some have removed this wording, but the beast still know that I'm God behind the minister is something that I've seen in multiple message churches.

One in particular has since renovated, and it now says something different. It's another scripture, it doesn't say he's still know that I'm God. But it's the same situation we've got, Bram's photo, and then Jesus's photo equally, equal distance and equal height across from each other behind the minister.

And yeah, there's so many red flags, and I know in one of our previous episodes, we talked about signs of a healthy church versus signs of a destructive church. If the group that you're becoming associated with or learning about, or are in, has these similar types of things, that is a massive red flag, and you should probably reevaluate what's going on.

Well, and think of the levels of idolatry, it's not just within this cult and it's splenching groups. It goes far beyond this. This was a national movement that had so many different complex elements to it that we're only skimming the surface of its history, and it'll take the rest of my lifetime to even still skim the surface of this history.

But think of this, James, you know the Bible, Pat. So, gin the beginning was the word. The word was made manifest among us. Who is that talking about the word? Jesus! Absolutely, right? Every Christian knows this.

If I were to say this to any Christian in the United States, who is that passage referring to, they would all say Jesus. But think of this. This movement has ministers who stand up and they hold their bibles up and shake their bibles.

This is a man-made Bible. And they say, this is the word of God. Now, yes, they're kind of correct in that this is something that there are passages that say it's breathed by God.

And it is the scripture, right? But what they're doing is a level beyond this. There are churches that actually turn the Bible itself into an idol. And before I get the comments of backlash, just hear me out.

In the cult, they had cult-produced bibles. I had one of these things and I never used it because once I saw it, I actually in the cult was embarrassed of this. But they had the Scofield Bible.

It had to be the Scofield. And if you open up the cover, they actually had the Halo photograph was made into the Bible. So you had the icon in the word of God, the physical book, that they would all stand up and say, this is the word of God and you would associate your brain with those passages from the Bible that this idol that they're holding up, which is the Bible, which contains an idol inside of it.

And all of it, it's just so wrong, man, because the text, the words which were written through the humans was pointing to the God. It was not the word of God. It's not the low-ghost that they talk about.

So there's this fine line that you walk between, am I using the Bible to learn more about God or am I using it as an icon that is for, that I'm without knowing it, using it in idolatry?

And the reason I'm saying that, with the point I'm leading up to, there are people in this movement, myself, I repent, I was one of them. You could not be seen in church without holding it.

Some people will carry it with them everywhere they go. It's got to be there as a status symbol. It's beyond just them carrying it to want to read it. They actually want to be seen as a status symbol that they hold it.

And you can't set any other book on top of it. I mean, there are all of these rules that have deified the thing that they're holding, which is a, it's not even a book.

It is a library of books. And there are people that turn this book, this Bible, this set of books, they turn it into an idol. And I know I'll get back last year after trying to explain that, but anything that you take, It is a physical object that is made by man, and you turn it into a form of worship by definition that is an idol no matter what it is.

Yeah, and what's even more interesting in this situation, when you talk about the idol worship and these movements is that these are the same ministers that will tell you that you can't enjoy sports because it's an idol, you can't enjoy movies because it's an idol, you can't enjoy any form of entertainment because it's an idol.

While at the same time promoting their own idol and telling you at the same time this is not an idol, this is normal. We're actually by holding these objects in a place of reverence, we're worshiping Jesus.

That's what they'll tell you in some of these churches. And it goes to further to warp your mind and warp your rational thinking around this confirmation bias and this cognitive dissonance. And it creates such a crazy concoction in your mind where you'll say, I don't pray to idols or I don't worship idols, but then you have a photo of the central figure in with a halo, that's just a light behind them.

You know, and all these things and all these other cult iconography, you have the books, you have the tapes, you have all these things and you hold them in a place of reverence. You wouldn't, you'll take music CDs that you have and you'll treat them worse than you will these sermons because these sermons are your condition to believe.

These are the word of God for your hour. They contain food and do season. And there's all these sort of like key words and stuff you're programmed with. And yeah, and at the same time, they'll tell you that you can't partake in normal stuff because those are idols, but you have to take our idols home with you.

Oh yeah. And again, building on that same theme, that same point, they called these recordings, the quote unquote, the spoken word, the voice of God. This was a Bible. In fact, you'll find some ministers who will tell you, this is the Bible for our day.

This is the spoken word for our day. Well, those same people, the reason why they built these cabinets that I was talking about is because you can't take, if you're of this mindset, you can't take the physical casing of the cassette tape and put it next to another cassette tape.

You're not going to take the sermon cassette and put it next to Johnny Cash, right? Because you're actually worshiping the idol of the cassette tape, the physical object of the cassette tape. That's how bad this goes because these people won't do this.

Go find any single one of them and find their collection of these recordings or these books. You're not going to find anything except for the holiest of holy cassette tapes or books next to it.

They will have a shelf dedicated that has became a shrine. that these things are their idol. And think of the difference. If you are in this cult and you're listening, you're thinking, well, I don't worship it.

I just do keep them separate. Well, think about if somebody gave you a sermon by, I don't know, Billy Graham or whoever, would you have a problem taking the Billy Graham cassette and putting it next to, I don't know, the Kingsman quartet, some religious group?

Would you have a problem with that? Because most people would not. I would not when I was in it, but there's no way I would take one of the quote unquote profit and put it next.

Do the Kingsman quartet because that would be lowering the status of this physical idol that I had in my hands. That's the mindset that you're programmed with when you're in this cult. Yeah, and it's that equivalency that you're programmed to accept that this thing that is extrabiblical is equal with the Bible.

And then you're, you know, this has been exposed to ad nauseam, but you've got all these situations where the ministers and even the central figure is trying to tell you that this very same thing that I'm telling you is backed up by the Bible, but then you go and look at all that stuff and it's it's it's it's it's warped, it's changed, it's renegotiated in ways that does that's completely different from what it actually says or just makes stuff up, you know, and it's it's so completely far and away from anything that is represented in the Bible

in a normal understanding of what's going on. And, you know, but it's but you're told that it's on the same level. It's like you said, you won't put anything on top of it, you keep it in a special place and you approach it with the reverence and these are the things that, you know, like we said earlier in the thing, when you start deep programming and coming away and more of your rational mind starts taking back control and taking so the forefront in front of the programming and deconstructing that stuff, it it's like a night and day difference.

You look back on that go, oh my God, I cannot believe, I cannot believe that I even thought that or I put that in that place because, you know, yeah, it's such a it's so it's completely different when you're outside of the programming because it looks as loony as you know that people thought of you while you were in it but now you see it and it's loony and you're like, wow, I can't believe I saw it any different.

Think about the rules that were created when the children of Israel left Egypt. They created rules, do not create idols made of stone. You're not going to say that to people who didn't have an inclination to do this in the first place which tells me that there were people among those who were in Egypt, who had fallen into this, not knowing that they were falling into a Dollar Tree and it's commonplace in Egypt, right?

I mean, you can look through all of the photographs that you have of Egypt of all of the statues and all of them, I actually have visited two different archives of actual artifacts from Egypt and they had these all the way down to these little miniature. If you were a match box car collector, I don't know if you remember the little tiny cars that they came out with in the in the 90s or something, but little tiny versions of the vehicle, well they had little tiny versions of the idle that they created and you carry them in

your pocket. I mean that's how these things were. I think some of them put them around necklaces and these things were just sold in the marketplace. It's common place and when you're in that culture and you don't realize that you are being manipulated into idolatry, I have a strong suspicion that many people who left Egypt had become like this and so they had to make all of these laws to tell them no, don't fall back into this. This is wrong. This is wrong what you're doing and unless you've experienced idolatry and then woke up and realized that you're in idolatry, it's very difficult to

distinguish the two, right? People who who I grew up with who are still in the message, good friends of mine who are still on idolatry, they will argue with every single bit of this thing that we've just said because they'll say no, I don't worship the tapes, no, I don't worship the white Jesus, no, I don't worship the halo photograph of the prophet but they don't realize that they're doing it and it goes so far beyond the message in its plunger groups. Like I said, anything that you bring into a level of spiritual significance that was human made either can be or is an idol.

Yeah, Egypt is such a fascinating subject on so many levels and especially when it comes to the religious realm and stuff because so many things were influenced by Egypt because Egypt is just so grand and massive and it has such a wealth of history there and like you said so many people, they look at this conversation of idols and they say, well I don't bow down to some statue of random, some people do. But they'll look at those people and say, well they're different because they're actually bound to the thing. I just have it up in my home and it's like

it's still the same thing but you look back into Egypt and they believe that a person's soul or part of their being could reside inside of objects and objects like these statues of these different gods and these past pharaohs and stuff had such a place of prominence in their religious and societal structures. It's even one of the things you'll see when you look at any images and I haven't had the chance to go to Egypt as one place I'd like to go but one thing you'll see is a lot of the statues and a lot of the monuments have been defaced.

And like a lot of times the noses have been broken off because it's one of those things where if you want to Prove how puny someone else's God is you deface his idol you deface his thing that people Hold up and in reverence because you're like hey if your God was if your God was this great Then your God wouldn't let me deface their statue. Yeah, I mean that really hits the nail on the head for me because Many people who are indoctrinated in this mindset and this type of religion I Know people who have no problem listening to other preachers

They're very few but I do know some that do not and they'll listen to I don't know John MacArthur Or whoever it is that they listen to and they'll say well, this was really good I didn't agree with everything but he told me more about God and that's the view they take of it So back to my cult idolatry if they had a cassette tape of John MacArthur today It's MP3s before that it was DVDs back when I grew up. It was a cassette cassette tape So if they had a cassette tape of John MacArthur they would say this man was a good man

He told me about Jesus and I don't I don't worship this I this is not an idol to me and I'm gonna put it next to Johnny Cash in my collection Well, I know other people who are in the same movement who would take a cassette tape of the quote unquote profit And they would tell you that I could play this recording and I received my healing Through that recording through the magnetic tape of that recording in other words God is on that cassette tape God healed me Many of those people James unfortunately had Chronic illnesses that never ever got healed some of them to the day of their death

They would tell you that like you said the inferior God who is on the cassette tape has came out of that cassette tape and healed me That is idolatry and like you said it is such a weak God I'm laughing just at the absurdity. It's really sad to me Because like I say, I know really good people who have died who died with a chronic illness believing that this idol made of plastic and Magnetic tape was actually a God that could heal them out of that magnetic tape It is so wrong. It is so bad and this is the lowest form of evil

Yeah, and the thing about it would so it's so Sad and tragic and we've looked at this in some other episodes But you know the very fact that the entire Healing movement was was so it was so put back on the person themselves It was like okay, you got your healing and it's like even even today It's like you got your healing, but it's like they say if you lose your faith or you doubt for one second or if or if a contrary word from a doctor You know, you know hinders your faith at all then God can remove the healing that you already have even if you don't feel it

Even if you don't see it even if it's not made manifest in any physical sense spiritually you already have that healing, and people will cling to these things, and they'll cling, and I know we all know stories of people who have gone to their death, still saying that they're healed of something when, because they were told, you cannot, for one second, let go of this belief and profess anything different that you have got your healing.

And it's sad that the iconography and all these things take such a sway and such a hold on people. But if you pull back and look at it from the point of the central figure and the movement's point of view, it is completely necessary to achieve the goal that they want, which is complete dominance of your mind and your actions.

And it's deadly. I mean, it is deadly what they're doing. I have, I don't think I've ever mentioned this to anybody publicly, and everybody knows my laundry list of health conditions at this point, but at an early age, I developed high blood pressure, which is something that ran in my family, and it doesn't matter.

What I eat, I grew up with eating things that tasted like cardboard. My father was diabetic, my mother had high blood pressure, so we had no salt, no sugar, no fat, no fried, no grease, we ate things that tasted like cardboard.

And I grew up like this, so whenever I do experience fried foods, I get extremely sick because I didn't eat a lot of that growing up. But at, I want to say age 20 or 25-ish, I develop high blood pressure.

In the mindset of the cult, I tried to faith heal myself. I did. That's what we did, man. That's the way it works. Exactly. And even though my mother took high blood pressure meds, I still tried to faith it out.

Faith it away. And the doctors told me, there's nothing that you can do. You're not going to, you're not going to die and get rid of this, you're not going to exercise because the, the hardness of the arteries through my hereditary physical being, there's no way that I can cure myself with this.

But I was looking to God through this quote-unquote prophet to heal, and I believed. They can't say, there's no way they can say that I did not heal myself because I did not have faith.

I believed it. Hook, line, and sinker. But after I got, you know, out of this religious mindset and realized that I'm going to die if I don't take care of this, I took a little medicine and I am cured of high blood pressure through the pill.

No. I'm not cured and, you know, I still have it. I can eat anything I want. I've not had to, I've not had struggles with it in years. I want to say probably 10 years, I've not had any trouble with it because medical science gives me this little pill.

But you raised in this mindset. of this idolatry, believing that these cassette tapes can heal you. I live like this. I can assure you it did not heal me. And many of the people who are still devout faithful believers of this thing that I grew up with that are still in it. They will tell you that they're healed and severe chronic illnesses, lupus, cancer, diabetes. I could go off and I could name probably 50 people I grew up with who are suffering to this day, who sometimes go off of their medication thinking that they've faith healed themselves, and then go in the hospital because

they nearly killed themselves. That's how bad this is. And that's in the end, James, that's where this idolatry will lead you. Yeah. And when those people, like you said, end up back in the hospital, they've been so conditioned to believe it's not because I'm not healed. It's because I failed. I displeased God. I let my faith slip because of my faith because I felt good for a while.

And usually it's because they've still got medication running through their system. They still got good habits they've built up because they've listened to doctors. And then all of a sudden, they fall off of these things. And it takes sometimes it takes a little while for these things to start getting back to the point where it does put you back in the hospital. And they'll say, oh, I was going good for a while, but then my faith meant must have. I got, you know, I flew too close to the sun and God clipped my wings because he needed to show me that I still have to

re-consecrate myself to this thing. And it's so sad, like you said, because all this stuff goes to the point of controlling your mind and your beliefs and your actions. And it's so destructive because your faith in a healthy environment shouldn't put you in the hospital. You know, those things shouldn't, that shouldn't be the outcome of your faith.

Exactly. I mean, to sum this episode up, which is kind of difficult to sum, we've kind of been all over the place. Number one, don't fall into idolatry. If you're in it, get out. Number two, number two, take your meds.

Don't let these guys rob you of good. I mean, think of how bad my life would be. If I continue, I'd be dead, but think of how bad my life would be. If I didn't just take the little pill that they gave me years ago, I mean, there were things that I had to limit myself from doing, from eating. I couldn't have pizza.

Think of that, James. No pizza. How can a man survive with no pizza? That's horrible. But I was, I was trying to faith heal myself. And in essence, when you're trying to faith heal yourself, you're really looking for alternative medicines and diets. So I was dieting. I was taking herbs and all of these different concoctions of people who quote unquote believe the prophet told me this will help you heal without medicine because that's the way brother. It's all wrong, man. It helped to a little degree but once I actually got the actual pill and my life changed. I mean significantly change. I

can, I still to this day, I ate what I want. Now, you know, later on I had some health problems but all of that is in my past and it just took a little bit of faith in doctors and I'm embarrassed to say this but even after leaving the cult, I still, because I was raised like this, I still sometimes block the idea of taking medicines and I was joking with a person the other day.

Even if I get a headache, I won't go take Tylenol like your average person. I'll wait until it turns into a migraine and I'm in the bed with suffering with it. Before I'll take medicines, because that's the way that they have ruined the lives of these people. So all of this to say, don't be like John. Don't be like, don't be like you're right. Go get the medicine if you need it.

Get rid of your idols. This is nonsense. There are other words that I could use for what this is and I won't use them on the show but this is bad. This is no good what you're doing. So if you have weird doctrines that you'd like for us to discuss on the show, you can contact us on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org. And for an in-depth look of the dangers of being in these groups, you can read Weaponized Religion from Latter-Rain to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Horrible.