Our Stories: An Interview With Melissa Ray

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 William-brannum.org and with me I have my very special guest, Melissa Ray, former message believer. Melissa, it's so good to have you and I'm so glad that you decided to share your story with us. I know our guests, our listeners are going to be very excited to hear your story as well. So I thought maybe if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and you know a brief overview of your history in

the message. My name is Melissa Ray. I'm recently started in the message when I was 12. It's one of my parents joined the message and I was in the message until I was early 30s and I'm now been out of the message for almost 20 years but there's still a lot of lingering issues that I didn't realize that I was still dealing with. I'm now a divorced registered nurse.

I'm a mom of four beautiful children that are grown and doing well on their own and figured it was time to go ahead and say some of these things that have been kind of shoved, you know, back deepened to a recess of my mind for a really really long time. Like I said it's so good to have you and from what I understand you went to some of the churches in the south and I've actually been working with a few different people from Alabama. So I'm excited to meet you and hear another story from from that area. Maybe you could tell us just a

little bit about the church itself, the church that you attended. The church that I attended here was in Alabama was a lot of rough things that happened here and it was a lot of things that made me reconsider, you know, what was I doing? You know, and where I got to the point where I just could not tolerate the, I just couldn't tolerate the way people were treated. I'd had some issues with my husband at the time, went to the pastor for some counseling.

of my problem and the pastor had a daughter about my age and her and I did not get along. I am just our personalities clashed really badly. So I went to the pastor and of course his wife was there too which was appropriate for some counseling because of course we didn't do therapy because therapy was considered, you know, a weakness and you're not trusting God to take care of you and you're lacking in faith and all these other things and relying on man's medicine instead of relying on God.

So I went to them and told them it was a very sensitive subject and about two days after I went to them about my problem and what was going on, their daughter called me to counsel me about my problem.

And that would have been horrendous in any church but for me it was one of the biggest betrayals and one of the final that and then the things that were going on with my daughter looking at her and thinking, you know, I can't do this to her, I can't do this to another generation.

And deciding at that point, you know, that I can no longer be in the message. You know, like you said, it's horrendous that they did this and when you go as a message believer to a pastor seeking help, usually you go thinking that what you're saying is private and in many cases they're very intimate details of your life that you're sharing with a person who you trust and then that trust is betrayed either, you know, some people say that even right from behind the pulpit, they will share the very intimate details of their lives right behind the pulpit to the entire church.

But I find it really odd that so many people that's their first step on the way out is to go to the pastor for help, which is like it's their one job, right? Now you also went to some churches out west and I'm extremely interested to hear that because I, there were some churches I attended out west myself, but they were in Arizona, but the ones you attended I've never actually been to so I'm really excited to hear more about those.

One of my first memories of being in the message was before we actually moved to Rapid City, I was born in Oregon and my dad, it was Easter Sunday and my dad made us sit in the car while all the other children at church did their Easter egg hunt.

All the other years we were able to go and do the thing and it wasn't even a real church, it was like a lodge and they had a big church, they had a big Sunday Easter Sunday service and then they did...

the, you know, the Easter egg hunt and everything. That's one of my earliest memories of the message. And we sat in the car and I remember my mom was so angry at him for doing that to us girls from, you know, we're all dressed in our Easter, he's pretty Easter dresses.

And I remember my mom being very upset at him for that because she hadn't quite accepted everything. It was all still really new. And then after that, we did go to South Dakota. And not only was I, you know, immersed in the church there, but we went to a private school that was run by the church there as well.

So I was completely encapsulated from any kind of, you know, outward influences at that time. A church in Rapid City was, they were, they were Joseph Believers. Real big. A matter of fact, Joseph came to visit.

His picture was hung up in the church right next to where the Brannum's, oh God. Wow, I haven't called him that in years. Wow. Wow. So it was, you know, we had the, you know, the, the picture of a Brannum with the pillar of fire on one side and the picture of Joseph sat next to, I think it was one of him sat next to his dad.

That was a real other side. And of course, I often said, of course, it was in the center, you know, because we, we have to have white Jesus there, too. So.

And, you know, the, the pastor there, they started in the church there, you know, the church had been established for quite a while, but it was all, you know, I really think it was a bunch of hippies that just didn't know.

They just, they, they kind of were lost and were looking for answers and they all kind of end up coming together and they have some great amazing stories. There was a huge flood and God saved them from the flood in this upper room of this building they were in.

And all these amazing stories and all I could remember is that they were really big on teaching that the rapture was coming any moment, you know, any moment, any moment, any moment. And I kept on thinking, boy, I would really hate for the rapture to come and I haven't had a chance to grow up yet.

I hadn't had a chance to be married. I hadn't had a chance to experience any of these things, but. You know, I wonder if that's also, you know, an experience of a lot of other young people did when they started in the message from an early age, you know, you always think that, you know, you're not going to get beyond the next year, you know, let alone the next 10 years.

And purity culture, of course, is. Something that was real big in the late 80s and early 90s, just in evangelical culture. culture, but it seemed in the message it was just beyond, beyond even what the evangelicals taught.

So as girls were taught from a very early age that we were to dress appropriately, not show our knees. We didn't wear open-toed shoes, we didn't wear makeup, we didn't cut our hair. All of these things, because if we did, we would cause men to stumble, if they were to look at us in a wrong manner.

We would cause men to stumble and we would be responsible for sending them to help. And at 12 and 13, it wasn't just, they weren't just talking about other boys, my age. They were talking about grown men, looking at me as a young, you know, developing female, but I had to cover myself because of grown men, not just because of boys, my age.

And I was wondered why they didn't have to be responsible for themselves. And that was just something that I was just told not to ask. You know, the rapture end of days, doomsday theology that the cult teaches.

I remember the night-and-day difference from being in it. And then, it took a long time to kind of unravel that in my head and then wake up. But then, it suddenly dawned on me as children, it's entirely different than adults because, as an adult, you're thinking, you know, you're not really thinking in the way of a child.

Like you said, you want to live your life as a child, you're not, you're really, you're not thinking of the end of days. You could care less about the end of days. You would rather play with your friends.

And while in the cult mindset, you know, you're taught to think, well, this is a good thing. The world is ending and Jesus is coming, which most churches do, but the emphasis is backwards.

The emphasis in the cult is the doomsday. It's not the happiness that comes. And as a child, they really, it's like they rob you of your happiness. Not just your happiness, but they rob you of any hope of the future, you know, because you don't plan on going to college, you don't plan on having children, you don't plan on what you're going to do with your life, eventually, because there isn't going to be one.

You're going to be in heaven and everything's going to be wonderful. If you, of course, you're going to be in heaven, if you do ABCD and E and, you know, the entire alphabet correctly.

And if you screw up or, you know, get caught kissing a boy in a parking lot, you know, and you think, find out about it later, you're just going to go to hell. And that's just the way it is, you know, and...

and you're not taught, you're not taught how to, how to live as a human, you're not, you're not taught anything other than obey the rules or you're going to suffer forever. Yeah. And I'm really not self-respecting the good.

Yeah. I laughed when you said it because I'm one of the few men that my first kiss was actually my wife on our wedding day. And I'll never forget it because I, you know, in the, in the cult royalty circles that I was in, I got to know all of the people who are of the upper status.

And I never forget, I can't remember who it was that set it, but they were, they were talking about this and they've been asking me specifically, okay, so how many girls have you kissed?

And they were like shocked that I had not kissed any other girls, but I was shocked that they were saying this because that was one of the rules, man, you didn't do this. Are you going to straight to hell?

And there was this joke made that not a single man obeys this rule. And I'm like, what religion are you guys in? Yeah. You know, it's funny that you kind of bring that up because it, I'm not sure exactly how to put that.

I went to a small Christian school and we were taught that, you know, as, you know, there was more girls than there were boys. And the part where I got caught kissing the boy in the parking lot of school, that was the one year I went to public school.

And that was my year of rebellion, I guess we're going to say. And I got caught by my aunt. And mom wasn't even going to tell dad. She knew it was just going to cause a bunch of trouble.

And she was just like, OK, you're never going to see this boy again. You're not going to be going to, you know, school is almost over for the year. You're just never going to see this boy again.

You're not going to be in a situation where you can. And then my aunt tells her best friend, who happens to be the pastor's daughter, who told the pastor, who told my dad, who happens to be a, who happened to be a deacon.

And dad was very, very angry. I remember waking up to him, sitting on my bed and he had smacked me across the face. I was 16, called me a slut in a whore. And I didn't stop seeing that boy.

So you know, I mean, it was, but that was more out of anger that it wasn't that, I mean, it wasn't that boy's fault in any way whatsoever. He was a nice boy. And he wasn't raised the same way I was.

It was more of an entire. of you telling me that I can't do ABC or D, but then not everybody has to follow those same rules. So I'm gonna back up just a little bit.

Like I said, I went to the Christian school and in that Christian school, there were boys there. And I was, you know, a deacon's daughter and my mom taught at the school and, you know, I was one of the good girls and didn't do anything wrong.

And I remember trying so hard to make sure that I was correct in my conversation when I was talking to boys and correct in what I was wearing. And we didn't go swimming with boys and we were these huge kool-ots, you know, for gym class.

And, you know, we didn't, you know, intermingle yet. At any time I would have a conversation with young boys, you know, 13, 14, 15, those conversations always turned sexual, even though it wasn't what I was trying to do.

And I kept on thinking, why is it that I'm doing all the things right? And yet, what am I doing wrong or these boys don't respect me the way I'm told would happen if I did everything right, that these boys would treat me with respect and treat me with, you know, an honor, an honor, an honor me because of, you know, because I'm doing these things right.

I'm being modest, I'm being pure. I'm acting correctly. Then why is it any time I have, you know, any time any of these boys, and I were alone, even if it's just like after school in a parking lot sitting in a car, just visiting.

You know, there's other people around and everything, but it may be a conversation where maybe not everybody could hear. But they start talking, they start talking dirty. And it's like, well, because they are boys that have hormones raging and they're not taught to regulate those.

They're not taught how to handle themselves. They're taught that the girls have to do all that. Right. And I remember hooding, feeling that that was all my responsibility. And yet, even when I was the one acting correctly, I was still being treated in a way that was disrespectful.

And I always kept on thinking, what am I doing wrong? Why am I not quite doing it right? And, but I never could go talk to anybody about it because then we would just get in trouble because we were having conversations we shouldn't be having.

And really wasn't the boys fall either because they weren't taught. They weren't taught that they had to. They weren't even taught with those hormones and those emotions and those feelings were. They were just told that the girls had to cover up, so they didn't look at them.

It's always the girls fall. Yeah, and at least that was my frame of reference in our youth group. I'd even been told by some of the older boys that I had to practice the act of...

submission as far as how I was talking to them and how I was, how I was acting around them so that I would be prepared for a husband when I, when I, when the time came, that I had to practice talking and acting submissive towards towards these, these, these boys that are a couple years older than me, that, um, you know, I had no, um, there was no reason whatsoever that I should do anything, even, I mean, they had no, no right to expect that of me in any way whatsoever, but we were taught that women are supposed to submit to men and, um, and he

thought it would be a good idea to tell, to tell me that I needed to practice. I never really thought about that until I think it was our podcast with Naomi Wright, she was talking about how, you know, you're in, in this weird thing and the women aren't, like you said, they aren't respected, but more than that, they're, I don't know what the word is, they're, they're treated in such a way that they're, they're just there. It's, the religion is for the man and the women are just off to the side. But then what happens is because of that dynamic, the women start to feel like

they're being groomed for the man because they're let so much lessen status than the man that they feel like cattle being, being led to the slaughter of marriage. I wanted to go to college. I have the grade score and I was smart enough. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but that was nipped in the bud really quick because I might actually learn things and, and get ideas and, um, and everything and, and so instead we, um, kind of my later teen years, my 11th and 12th grade, I'd end up going to a, for my 11th grade year, I end up going to a, a public school just because of the circumstances

of my dad's job and, and some other things that were going on, but they really didn't have anything to do with the church. They were just about, about life in general. And, um, that was actually the year that I actually did start thinking of that there was a life beyond, you know, what was afforded to me in the message. Um, and I did things like I, I got a job, um, waitressing, um, several things I, I tried getting a job at another, um, as some other places, but then they wanted me to work Sundays, and that was, that was not going to happen. Um, so I had to go, you know, back to, back to my other

jobs. And I remember testifying in church that, uh, about losing my job because I, um, I felt that I had to, to be there to, to my place was to be in church on Sunday instead of being, you know, at the job and they were insisting that I work Sundays. I remember that vividly.

It sounds like there were some differences between some of the sex that I had experienced in for instance, in the main sect, there are churches that, don't even allow women to wear cool lots.

And it sounds like you did. There are also churches in the main sect where women are strongly forbidden to get a job. So how was that dynamic? Were they like were they accepting of the fact that you got a job or was this outside of their control?

I was still I was still a teenager. So I was still considered a child and not married. And so to them, that was a little bit different. And I didn't seem nobody said anything about me having a job.

And the cool lots, those were made by the ladies in the church just for PE class for the school that we went to. Because it was a school requirement. It was a school requirement, yeah.

And they had to teach because of the status of Dakota in order to be a school. They had to teach a certain amount of physical education. And so in order to meet those requirements, they had to find a way for us girls to participate in PE class and still do it modestly.

So cool lots was the thing. But it was strictly separated boys and girls. And I don't think that we were quite as conservative as some of the other sex. Because there are some things, we didn't wear makeup.

We didn't cut our hair. We didn't wear shoe polish. No open-toed shoes. We didn't show our shoulders. But we were allowed to do things like the women in the church like play piano. And I played the organ.

So we were able to participate as far as that was concerned. We were able to sing church. Same with my dad for Easter Sunday's service at the Brannum Tabernacle one year, which was an experience.

And my grandfather probably said, thank you, sister, for that number. That was his catch on after every song. I don't remember. I know it was just me and my two sisters and my dad.

And we sang it as well. And my dad played the guitar. And I don't remember much more than that. But so actually having a job really didn't. I don't really ask anybody. And the pastor never really said a whole lot about it.

It didn't seem to be a problem. We weren't forbidden to have a job. The women in the church, a lot of them had jobs surrounding the school. So they were like, they were teachers.

They were custodians. They were, they worked for the school. A lot of them, my mom worked at the school so that we were able to go for free. So we didn't have to pay the tuition.

Because my mom worked instead, which I'm pretty sure that there were some labor laws broken in that. But that's just his way it was. But that led us to, you know, eventually, who were we going to marry?

My sister married one of the boys in the church. And there really wasn't a whole lot of options. And then we found out about the thing called Louisiana Church Camp. And it was the Easter Sunday, it was the Easter weekend.

And I got it because I wanted to go. And had the opportunity to go and me and my older sister, we flew down and went. And we got in a lot of trouble because it was a different sect.

They didn't believe in Joseph. And we did that instead of going to Jeffersonville for Easter. And we did, it was the, did you really make a wise choice? Did you make a choice based on what brother Brandon would want you to do?

And Louisiana Camp was where I met my husband. You know, back then, I would have envied you. Now in hindsight, I'm actually kind of glad of this. But I was never allowed to go to these camps as a Collins and, you know, and we're in the main sect in Jeffersonville.

These things were evil by my family. Now there were other people in Jeffersonville at the Brannum Tabernacle that went to them. But for us, man, we, we actually, I hate to say, but we actually looked down on people who went to these camps because we thought that these camps were just unruly, vile places.

And now I look at the videos and I'm like, man, I'm so glad I wasn't allowed to go to these things. You know, the best part about it was getting to go and meet with other kids, just getting to go meet other faces and, and, you know, and that part was fun.

You know, they had fun activities and, you know, games and in Louisiana, we learned how to eat crawfish because that was amazing. And you know, I'm from South Dakota, right? And we went down to Louisiana.

It's already spring in Louisiana. We saw snow up in South Dakota, so that alone was an amazing reason to go. But basically what they were, just big marriage marks. And I'm completely convinced of that.

Of course, there were the hours, long services within the prayer lines and, and all of these things. And, and, you know, you, you talk about how being being Jefferson, Jeffersonville royalty, you were kind of, you know, looked down on the, on the, they, they, they didn't talk too nice about Jeffersonville either.

Oh, I know. It's amazing. And I always thought, you know, why can't everybody just get along and it's like, well, no, well, they believe in the seven thunders and they believe in this and they believe in Joseph and they believe in this.

And when, when we came down there and we realized that we were one of those, those, those, those Joseph. believers. Then we kind of stayed quiet about that because, you know, it really, they kind of looked at us funny. But I remember when the Arizona group showed up, they looked perfect. They all had the same haircut and they all are not haircut hairstyle. And they all had the same dresses that everybody looked just. And years later, I went and visited Tucson and met them there. And they were all so normal. And when I was a kid, it was

like, it was like, they're from this huge church. And they go to the, they go to Tucson where Brother Brown has spent so much time and preach so much. And he talks about Arizona like it's the most magical place on earth. And these people live there. And to me, that was an amazing thing. Part of the reason why the Collins family didn't like this is because there were so many different beliefs and different sects. And they were all coming together in harmony, quote unquote, harmony. And, you know, the cult is like this big baskin robins,

31 flavors, where none of the flavors mix. It's really, really weird religion. So I'm curious to know more about the marriage because from our perspective, we, there's no way if you had of sent me to this thing, if I was forced to go as, as a Collins in this religion, I would have never even dreamed of choosing somebody to marry there because they're in this thing. So what was, what was it like getting married after going to one of these camp meetings? I don't remember asking permission of my pastor to marry someone who didn't have the same, wasn't from the same sect. But truthfully, I think it was because of the

situation that my ex-husband's family was in. They weren't really in a, in a set church. His, his dad had died and his mom was raising all 12 of those children on her own. They just happened to be in Oklahoma. They didn't have a local church close by. And so she actually bounced around to different churches in the, in the Arkansas Oklahoma area there and didn't have a real set church. And she didn't really believe in just one sect or the other she believed in the message. And they coming from a men and I background herself into the message,

all of it was, was foreign to her. You know, they, they'd been in the message. They got, they actually got kicked out of the men and I religion and their family because they bought a car after they got married. And then they hadn't really found or been in the message very long when he died. He died in 82 and they had been in the message maybe a year or two.

And so she was kind of, she'd had a, a pastor tell her that since her husband had died and she, was a widow that he was going to be, technically, be her spiritual husband and her spiritual head and tell her how to take care of her children and take care of her family and take care of her money and everything else.

And she's like, no, I'm not having anything of that. And she left. Which, you know, I mean, Kudos to her. That's great that she managed to do that, you know, to tell him that she wasn't going to, you know, be under his rule like that.

And I was kind of applauded her for that because that took guts. So I think that was why it was OK for me to marry who I did

was because it wasn't that he was from some, you know, some big, big mainstream church that, you know, was part of the, you know, one of the other sex. So I think I, if that answers your question, that's kind of how it went.

And he, we moved to, or he moved from Oklahoma to to Rapid City about six months before we got married. And we stayed there for almost a year after we got married and we got married in the church there.

So I think that's part of why because I kind of brought him into our fold instead of me going out. And so I think that's why it was OK. So we have an unusual connection that, honestly, until this call today, I had no idea that we had, but you knew, you actually married somebody from my past.

As you know, I went to churches from South Carolina to Arizona and everywhere in between. And one of them in between, there was a family that I met. I won't mention the name. Obviously we'll keep the names out of it.

But there was a family that I knew. And I saw, actually, I met them several times in our own, they weren't nearly so big as what you consider your camp that you went to, the Louisiana camps, but they would have these dinners on the ground in the middle of the hills of the Ozark Mountains.

And I met your husband for the first time. And he, you know, I don't know that much about him other than he seemed like a nice guy at the time. Maybe tell us a little bit about your marriage and how that went.

I'm trying to picture taking somebody from one sect into another how the dynamics would be if you were to do that in the message. We'd met that first time in Louisiana camp. And then the next year at Louisiana camp, we kind of reconnected.

And we chit-chatted and talked to each other that entire weekend. And then we kind of dated long distance, you know, just with back then it was phone calls, you know. There wasn't any text messaging or Facebook or anything.

And so we dated long distance for, I guess, about about a year. And then went down to Louisiana camp again and on the way back from Louisiana camp that year was when he asked me to marry him.

And then that was in April. And we got married in October of that year. So I guess in June of that year, he moved up to Rapid City and kind of came into our church there.

So I guess, you know, like I said, it was more that the fact that he had gone to another church and I kind of, like I said, pulled him into our church, kind of made it okay in the eyes of my pastor after he met him and everything else.

And so we got married within six months of being engaged. And I don't know if this was the experience of a lot of message girls. I just know it was my experience. That even though you're technically once you get engaged, you're technically married.

And if you become unengaged, you can't marry anyone else. I don't know if that was the widespread thing but for our church it was. You know, once you were engaged, you were married. But we still had to keep ourselves pure for, you know, for our wedding night.

That was very common. You, it's almost like you don't need the wedding, right? In the message, you get engaged and that's it. You're married. But that is a very common belief among all of the sects.

Right, only there was no, there was not supposed to still, I mean, we weren't even really allowed to be alone with each other very often. You know, I mean, then I was supposed to just marry him and be, you know, be along with him all the time at that point.

But, you know, he kept, you know, he's a, you know, we were 18, 19 and he was, let's just say he was very eager.

To get married, I'll just put it that way. And I kept on having to tell him, no, you know, look, it's, it's, we're getting married in just a couple of weeks, you know, we're getting married in a couple of days, no, you know, and once we get married, I won't tell you no anymore.

Two weeks before, or week before our wedding, I let him know at every single point everything about the wedding itself because this was my big party where I was planned to, you know, to every little detail.

And I had found a vintage dress in a, in a consignment shop and it fit me perfectly. It was had, you know, long full sleeves. It was up to the, you know, up to my, you know, my, my chin with the color and beautiful, beautiful lace embroidery.

But the only thing was it was off white, it wasn't pure bright white. And because of that, and there was no changing the color because it was, it was antique lace, you know, you can't, you can't bleach antique lace without it falling apart.

But I love this dress, and so what I did was I made sure that every single little aspect of everything else, anything else that had any kind of white in it had to be off-white, so it didn't show that my dress wasn't pure white.

And he was aware of all this from the very beginning, and so it was his mom, everybody had, you know, he hadn't seen the dress, but his mom had. And he came to me, and he goes, my mom wanted me to ask why your dress is not pure white.

And I'm like, well, you know, because this is the dress I found, and this is the color it was when I found it, and I really liked this dress, and I've worked really hard to, you know, to make this dress, you know, look really good for all of this.

And he's like, yes, but she's concerned that maybe there was some things that happened prior to us getting engaged that you need to tell me about before we get married, because you chose to have a cream color dress or an off-white dress.

So basically a week before my wedding, this man of my dreams and love of my life was basically letting his mom insinuate that I was a whore. Wow. Um, I didn't tell anybody. I just looked at him and I said, no, I said, you know, I won't even, I've been telling you know, all of this time from the minute we got engaged, I've been telling you know, why would I do something with someone else prior to our getting engaged and then tell you know during all this time prior to our wedding, why would I do that?

Um, and I remember it just, it broke a little something in me. It just, it, it went back to the, am I really, you know, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not adequate, maybe I'm not enough, maybe, maybe there's something in me that is, that is sinful or is wrong and, and I did a lot of soul searching, it was in my Bible and trying to figure out what it is that was wrong with me to where I would pick a dress that wasn't completely white, um, we got married, um, and because things didn't happen the way

he expected them to on the wedding night, he once again accused me of doing things without a people prior to our wedding. And at that point, I couldn't, you know, what, what would I do?

You know, I mean, it's like, well, are you, are we going to stay married or, or what? That's terrible. And one of the things in the message that if you're a listener and you've never been in this thing, once you get engaged, you're married, well, once you're, are married, you're stuck.

You can like, as a woman, there are some sex, you're not even allowed to, to break off the wedding, to separate. If you do, you can never get married again, obviously in this type of religion.

So I'm sure that you probably felt trapped if you were going through this at that time, especially on, you know, that... That's soon after your wedding. I felt betrayed. I felt like You know, I've been trying to do everything right and yet still Yet still I was told that I wasn't good enough that I wasn't enough um And whether or not that was His upbringing the message or just his personality You know, I don't know that we'll ever know it whether you know that's that you know That's the whole nurture and a nurture

Argument, you know, is it is it because of you know the way he was born? Is it was he born that way or was it because of his upbringing? um Or because of you know The narcissistic family that he was raised in you know, I you know, I don't I don't know and I look back on it now and a part of me Christ for that young girl For what she went through and I and I think I think how How did I stand that and I didn't tell anybody?

Not even my mom and dad I didn't know who could I tell you know who could I tell that I was being um Accused of being impure by The one person that I thought was going to protect me for my entire life Um and his mother Um, they did I did tell them later on you know What it happened and my mom was My mom was enraged Um, but this was years later before I told them and there was nothing at that time that she could do about it um Anyway, uh My mom and dad we're gonna go to

We're gonna go to Oregon for a visit and I was pregnant early. I'm early on. Oh, it was

Three four months along just just early stage of pregnancy with my first check my first son and um My My ex-husband was working out of town um, you know, because it was it was summertime and um

Um That was when you know the work was and so he would be gone for a couple weeks at a time And they said well, why don't you just come with us out to Oregon you you can see grandma and and do all these things And so I was like, yeah, sure, I you know, I'd love to do that and and my ex was like, yeah, sure That's great, you know, why don't you go do us a good opportunity? And so I went and when we got back Um, he wasn't home We couldn't find him you knew we were coming home

Couldn't find him anywhere um and he had been out He'd been out running around um He swears up and down that he wasn't with anyone else at the time um, but I Here I was pregnant and married and Nothing really that I could do about it if it was um because it was just not Once you're married, that's just the way it is um And I tried to believe the best of it.

And continued on, I'll pass forward a little bit, was two children in. My son, my second son, was already born, and we were actually living in Texas at the time. We couldn't find any work in South Dakota and we were just having a hard time making ends meet.

And so my dad and mom had moved from South Dakota at that time, it's kind of how we made it down to the South. And my dad worked industrial maintenance and are not maintenance but industrial construction.

So he would move around a lot, doing big, putting in big machinery and building big plants and stuff. And so he invited my ex-husband to come work with him. And so we did that and we traveled in a travel trailer for a couple of years.

And we ended up in Texas. I had two kids under the age of three. And that was the first time that he cheated on me. I was at his moms in Oklahoma. I'd taken the boys to go visit her.

And he calls me and says he's sick with the flu and I need to come home. And so I get myself together and I rush home and he's laying in bed crying. And I'm like, you know, what's wrong?

Are you OK and all of these things? And then he starts to tell me that this woman had come over and he in a moment of weakness allowed her to come in. And they proceeded to be together, I guess.

And then she left. I was shocked. I really just didn't know what to say. But as I'm processing this, the next words out of his mouth were that it was my fault. Because I obviously wasn't meeting his needs as a wife should for her husband.

Two children under the age of three. But I wasn't meeting his needs. And that's why he in a moment of weakness was able to go and be tempted by somebody else. In a religion where the men are somewhat indoctrinated to believe that everything is the woman's fault.

In fact, there are quotes, if you listen to William Brannem Sermons, where he says 90% of every crime has caused because of a woman committing it or a woman is behind it, he says, it's not hard to believe that a man would think this way.

And as a male myself, I didn't have it to that degree, but I had it to the extent that I really felt like there were things that the women did to, well, he said that the women were the deceivers.

They were created by Satan to deceive. So disind�rination creates problems, but it sounds like the problems that are created for you were much worse than some. Well, even for him, it wasn't that he messed up or he made the mistake that woman tempted him.

So it was even that woman that came in, it was her fault because she seduced him. And then it was my fault. She would not have been able to seduce him if I had been caring for his needs.

So in neither of those, in that entire thing, he didn't take any of the blame for any of it. And whether, like I said, whether that was indoctrination or whether that was, I tend to believe that it's probably a little bit of both, indoctrination maybe fed into the narcissism or one or the other.

I think it all kind of worked together, but then once again, I'm still stuck. Not only my stuck, because I'm in Texas, there's a church there, there was a church there in Dallas. And I went, we went to the one where it was in Fort Worth.

We went to that one a couple of times. And I remember talking to that pastor there about a few little things, like little things that we're causing some turmoil in my marriage. I didn't talk to him about the cheating or anything like that, because I just was too, I couldn't.

But a few other things. And once again, it was like, well, you need to get into your Bible. You need to pray. You need to look at the power of 31 and be a sweet soul and all of these things and your husband will act appropriately.

If I fix what's wrong in me, then he will act appropriately. And I heard that a lot. I heard anytime I would go to any pastor just crying and begging for help in the marriage that I was in, it was always, well, you need to pray harder, you need to get into the word, you need to listen to more tapes here.

Listen to this tape. He's got a lot of interest. He's got a lot of things on this about marriage. You know, you know, pray more, you know, get into your Bible more, all of these things.

It was never, it was never, no, your ex-husband is doing things that are wrong and he should not be doing those things. And I will talk to him and we will talk to him about, you know, his behavior is wrong.

It was never that. It was always that I needed to pray more, I needed to fix what was wrong with it. me in order in order for him to change because if I was sweet and and holy and and a good wife, then then all those other things would click into place. I tried for 29 years. None of those things clicked into place. And marriage counseling in the cult is not only taboo in a lot of sect. It's probably forbidden. I'm assuming it was in the sect that you were in. It was it was something that we didn't even think about and it wasn't until we gone

we did try marriage counseling once, but that was mostly as we were already on our way out of the message that because you know I stayed I stayed with him even after we left the message. And there was a lot of there was a lot of turmoil. That infidelity led to us having an arrangement of having an open marriage. And in what kind of like this we would meet and go to parties and on Friday and Saturday night we'd go to parties and we'd meet other couples and I would entertain the male part of the other couple so that he could enjoy

himself with the female part of the couple. And if you have to edit any of that out just let me know. But then Sunday morning I was expected to put my dress back on and wipe off my makeup and put my hair right and look the part of the perfect message girl and go to church.

It's terrible. And I went along with it. I went along with it because I was searching for any way I could to make him happy and nothing I was doing I was exhausted. I had two little children and it wasn't much longer after that that I was pregnant with a third. And I remember when we moved here or when we moved here to Alabama we moved here in 98 and we had we considered moving to Louisiana we couldn't find work and we couldn't find a place we liked there. And so we ended up moving to Alabama to the church here in Ohatchee. That was in 1998. He found a good

job here. We liked the church. And during all of this time there was still the shadow part of our lives that nobody else knew about right the the the partying and the the makeup and the drinking and all of these other things right and the meeting with other couples and nobody knew about that right but on the outside we still look like the perfect message couple.

Um we moved here to Alabama and I begged him. begged him to make this be a new star and to stop the seeing other people. Stopped the open marriage part of it. I begged him and he told me no.

He told me he couldn't, he couldn't let it go. And that's when the physical abuse started.

There were horrible, horrible fights. By then I had four children, my two youngest children were born here in Alabama.

Horrible knockout, a poor, just, just horrible fights. He would lock me in, lock me in the closet. He would, there was a time that he,

I was in the shower and he would turn cold water on me because I wasn't responding the way he thought I should respond. He wasn't saying the things, or I wasn't making him feel right about whatever infraction I had done.

And he kept turning the cold water on me until I saw, I don't know, it felt like in my mind it lasted forever.

And I was desperate for help. And that's when I went to my,

I went to my pastor because I was, this, the, the, the, the, the, the, the fighting and the, the, and still going to the parties and doing all of that and, and, and the thing is that this, the hard thing is I enjoyed the parties.

I enjoyed the attention from other people. I enjoyed the forgetting that my life was really a horrible mess. I enjoyed that time of where I would, you know, I would, I would drink and, and all of these things and I could forget, I could forget for a while and I could enjoy being someone else for a little bit.

But then if I, if I enjoyed too much, I would pay for it the next day, or the next week. And he would find some way to make me repay him for the fun that I had.

But nobody knew, nobody knew about the verbal abuse and the mental abuse and the, and all the rest of it.

He was, he was the perfect Christian message husband. He didn't do any of those, he didn't do anything wrong. He went to church with me on Sunday and he took such good care of our kids and he was, he was a good, hardworking man.

And, and I was dying. I, there was a point where I was, I was suicidal, I thought about ramming my car into a tree over and over and over again on the way home many times from whether it was I'd gone to the store to get groceries and it was never, never when I was in the car with my children, ever, but if I was in the car alone, I would have, it took everything in me to continue to get the car home safely.

And like you mentioned before, therapy was very, very hard frowned upon and I was desperate. I didn't know what to do. I would talk to my parents and my mom and dad didn't really know what to do either.

They were like, well, if you're not willing to leave, which they offered me a safe place. They did. But they didn't know about the open marriage part. They just knew about the fighting and I don't think they knew the extent of how bad it was, but they knew about the fighting.

And they offered me a safe place and they said that I could always come home, but I had to be willing to let him go and it was ingrained in me that you don't do that and I had to keep on trying and anytime that I talked about how horrible things were, he'd be like, well, you just haven't tried it and after you're just going to give up.

And then I would try some more, I would try harder, I would read my Bible more and I would pray more and I would say, okay, we're not going to go to the parties anymore, we're not going to do that anymore.

And he would next time one came up, it was like, well, we're going to go again and finally went to my pastor with the whole story. And that was, that was when a couple days after that, his daughter called me to counsel me about my issue, about my problem.

I shut down, I completely shut down at that point. The betrayal I felt was astronomical because I had thought I had been going the right direction to talk to my pastor about an issue and that I thought, well, maybe I was going to give some help and I got the trade instead.

And mixing that up with, you know, the fact that my daughter started, I had to start making her wordresses, she was at that age and I couldn't do that to her and so that was the start of my out, that was the start of me leading, the message part anyway.

And I really did feel betrayed from something that I had, I had the, I had the, I had the be for so long and had tried to do everything so right for so long, even back when I was a young girl and remembering to dress correctly and dress appropriately, and still these boys would talk to me inappropriately to keeping myself, yes, there were two other boys that I had kissed prior to to my marriage and those were confessed prior to the marriage right and I'd kept myself for my marriage and then all the way through all of that I still

kept even though we were there was a lot of other things going on I was still trying to do everything right as best I could and it was it was pure survival mode from what I mean when I look back now at it it was it was survival and kissing is I know it's not in the message so I'll get hate mail for saying this but kissing is such a small thing in the grand scheme of things you're one of the first person you are the first person actually that I've got on record I've actually been trying to find somebody who gave a testimony

like yours because believe it or not your testimony is not unique we you and I actually haven't had this discussion so you're hearing it now for the first time but there there were a number of open marriages that I have came to know after doing what I do there have been several people who have escaped the message who've told me in fact one person one lady in particular she joked that our church was like the church where you put your keys in the jar that's it was so it was so commonly done and I'm like wait a minute which which

church was that and they uh they partied a lot more than our church we were in the Brandham tabernacle we were known as the church of the wax the wax museum because everybody dresses alike they talk alike and here's this church where you put your keys in the jar and to the message people who don't know what this means you grab the set of it's a thing you do at a bar you grab somebody else's set a keys and that's who you go home with but that was a joke that was made early on when I first started doing my website and I didn't

believe it and then I heard another and another and I'm like there's something wrong here and you can't really say that all of this you know if you're in the the cult and you hear this you're going to think well that's just an odd case that's that's just that's that's this person's fault you know that the husband should have never done this which is true but there was a framework of missteps that would have never happened outside of the cult there would never be the situation in a normal church where the female is the one who is always

at fault that was mistake number one then mistake number two you go to a pastor for help that's who you're going to see for help any normal church going to say, well, it sounds like you're in a bad situation. You need counseling and be careful because there may be something wrong with this man. Watch yourself. If there is a problem, you need to get out of it quickly. That's a normal church. So there's a series of missteps that would have never happened, you know, outside of the cult. I'm curious, you know, after having gone through that, if you could look back and talk to your younger

self and say something to your younger self to give an encouragement or help, what would you say? So I'm, of course, in therapy now. I would look at her and say, you know what?

You weren't doing anything wrong. You weren't doing anything wrong. You were doing the best that you could with the knowledge that you had at the time. And you weren't the one making the wrong steps. You were just a girl. And you fell in love with the wrong boy and didn't have a way out. And I tell myself this a lot, that I wish I would have told him that I wasn't going through with the wedding the day he came to me about my wedding dress. But then I wouldn't have my children. And there's a lot of, a lot of things that

got me to where I am now. And I wouldn't be who I was now if I didn't have to go through what I did. And I, in my glad that I went through it, no. I hate that I had to go through it. I have a lot of feelings about what I had to go through. I, fun enough, my pastor here in Alabama wasn't the only pastor to tell me that.

So, you went to multiple pastors for help and they weren't able to help you? I did. I went to another pastor. I actually called him on the phone. I had left. There had been another big fight. And I left. I left my kids at the house. And my ex-husband at the house and I left. I went to a hotel room. And I was told to either get my attitude right or don't come back. I had a journal and I called this pastor and I spoke to him and I asked him, I said, I know that you're not my pastor. I said, no, you know me. And

I know you know my husband. And this has been my life. And I don't know what to do. And I was told the same thing. I was told to continue to pray and get my life right. And if I got my life right then...

everything would turn out right. Again, so I was told the exact same words, exact same. The only difference is he didn't have his daughter call me later, or of course he didn't have a daughter, but he didn't have anyone call me later to counsel me about my problem, so he didn't talk to anybody else about it, which I do appreciate.

But I wrote down some things in a journal and I found that journal after my eventual separation, which has only my divorce will be final, will have been final for a year on February 1st.

So even after I left the church, it was after that time that I just, I never did go back to church after that point. I was maybe 30, 31. I started wearing jeans. I cut my hair.

First time I cut my hair, I had separated from him and gone to my parents for a couple weeks. I'd taken the kids. And during that time, I cut my hair. And he told his mom that I cut my hair.

And I bet you can guess what her response was. You have a reason to divorce her now because she cut her hair. I'm sure this story is hard for our listeners, but it's also doubly hard for me because I know some of the people you're talking about personally.

And the thing about cutting your hair, it's so unbiblical that this is even a thing. And it was said, thus say at the Lord, you can put your wife away if she cuts your hair.

But again, it goes back to that same framework, right? It's the woman's fault. She did this thing. Now you can get rid of her. In other words, she's less to you than a pair of scissors.

The thing is, it wasn't just indoctrinated into the men. It was indoctrinated into me that I was the problem and that I had to continue to work on myself to fix this problem. And I believed it for so long.

But after I cut my hair and he said that, he talked me into coming back. And I told him I would under one of two conditions. Either I'm going to either get a job I love because being a stay-home mom is not working for me.

I'm not going to just stay home and take care of your house and take care of you. That's not going to happen anymore. It's not who I am. I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to church. I'm no longer going to wear dresses and I'll do whatever I want with my hair. Or I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to go to school and get a degree in some way.

And he agreed. He agreed that if I come back and bring the kids back, that all of those things would be OK. I could either get a job or go to school. And this is the thing.

beginning of where my life changed and the happy part and I was waiting for us to end on a happy note. Yeah, so we're going to end up on a happy note. So when we get back and I decide that I want to go to nursing school and he's like, okay, when do you want to go?

And I said, I don't know, I'm going to start looking. And so I start doing the research and I get ready and I said, okay, I can sign up and start classes on this day and he's like, oh, but our daughter is only, she's not quite in school yet.

Can you wait till she goes to school? And I'm like, that's not what you promised me. That's not what you told me. And I said, but I will wait and go to the next, the next time to sign up.

And that was, that had been in August and the next enrollment was, was in January. Well, actually, you enrolled in December and you went to school in January. And he was at work and I called my sister-in-law and I said, hey, you want to go and roll in classes with me?

And she's like, yeah, let's do this. I need to put that back. My ex-husband's oldest brother and my sister-in-law were very supportive of me during the entire time that I was going through the really rough time in my marriage.

They knew everything. They knew every bit of it and my brother-in-law did try to speak with my husband about his actions and it didn't do any good. I do want to put that out there because I love them to death and they are wonderful people and I don't want anyone to think that I was completely alone because I wasn't because they helped me in so many ways.

But anyway, so she goes, yeah, let's go. So we went up to the school and I signed up for classes but what I didn't realize is that this is how much I didn't know.

At 30 years old, I didn't know that I had to, I had to actually pay for the classes immediately when you hit roll. And so I called him at work and I said, I am here at the college and I've signed up for classes and I need your credit card.

And he's like, what? And I repeated myself. I said, I'm here and I need your credit card because I'm signing up for classes and he's like, he's like, but I thought you were going to wait and I said, I did wait.

This is me waiting and this is me now starting and he gave me his credit card and I went to nursing school. And that was my, that was my, the beginning of my way out.

It seemed like after I went to nursing school and I was really good at it. And our kids are, is there still fights, there are still problems, there are still issues, but there's a little bit of respect that me having a backbone and saying, this is what's happening, this is what I'm doing.

I'm doing regardless of what you say, you can either get with the program or I can do this on my own without you. And that was basically what I told him.

Things got better. The fighting got less, the problems got less. Throughout this entire thing, we still had the open marriage thing, but it was different. It was, I didn't have the guilt that I didn't have the guilt from, you know, parting and then going to church.

And then, you know, things got a lot better, you know, we had money and I kind of felt like, well, this is, this is okay. I can live this life, right? And then in this open marriage thing, I met someone who convinced me differently that this wasn't going to work.

And my husband went, he went insane. He started back with the mental and the physical abuse and he threatened to commit suicide if I continued on the path that I was going. And so I went to him and I said, I don't want you to touch me ever again.

And I want you, because at the time I was doing travel nursing, so we were in, we were in Oregon. We still had the house here in Alabama.

And I told him, I said, go home to Alabama. I don't want to see you again. And within six months, we had the divorce paper signed and within, you know, within a month after that, the divorce was, was final.

And the end of this month, it'll have been a year that we've been divorced. And I'm still with that friend that I met that made me see that life can be different. And I'm still a little nursing and a lot happier than I ever will be.

And when my sister showed me your Facebook page, I didn't realize, I knew there's a lot of deconstructing of my of my marriage that, that I still had to do. And I'm in therapy for that and it's going well.

Highly recommend therapy, you know, just because we were in the message just, we can't have therapy now.

And I didn't realize how much deconstructing of what part the message had in my marriage that I still have to do.

The part that it played in, in, kind of, I didn't realize how much deconstructing of what part the message had in my marriage that I still have to do. The part that it played in, in, kind of, of molding me as to who I am now.

There's a lot of that that I still have to deal with. And part of that is telling the story to you today. It's a lot of weight to carry. As a male, I have nothing even close to as hard as what you went through, but there's this mental baggage that you carry just from being in the religion and escaping, then you have that mental baggage and then if you're in a situation like you had and many others share the same, not the same, but very similar stories.

They've got that baggage on top of the cold baggage, which is a burden that is really hard to bear without therapy. So I too recommend therapy if you've gone through it. What would you say to encourage people?

Like I said, there are people who maybe not as bad, but they share similar stories, especially with regards to the abuse. And what would you say to the people who are right now going through this process of escaping and now they're healing and some of them are in therapy, some of them are a little bit scared to go because that's how they've been indoctrinated.

What would you say to encourage somebody who has escaped? If it feels wrong, get out. You can decide later whether it really was or wasn't, but if it feels wrong, listen. If it feels like, and that's whether it's, it's you're trying to escape the church, whether you're trying to escape a marriage, whether you're trying to escape, whatever it is you're trying to escape from at this moment.

If it feels wrong, it probably is. Get out and get yourself to a place of safety. And once you get to that place of safety, the clarity that you will see from your situation will be astounding.

The amount of opening, once you have some distance from that, when you stop going to church and you have some distance from not being in that constantly, every three times a week, or every day having to read your Bible, every day listening to a tape, once you have distanced yourself from that, the mental fog lifts, and you can see that there's a lot wrong with the entire thing and be gentle with yourself.

And it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be mad, it's okay to have some resentment, just don't let it change who you are inside. I'm so glad that you came to share your story with everybody and I'm certain our listeners are going to find a lot of encouragement and some, some will find some help for some of the situations they're going through just by hearing another person who has overcame.

So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research, Church of William Branham in the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branham in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

The Church of William Branham in the Healing Revival in the Healing Revival in the Healing Revival in the Healing Revival in the Healing Revival.