Our Stories: An Interview With Katie Holder

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, Katie Holder, former message believer. Katie, it's so good to have you on today. We've tried this a few times and life just seems to get in the way but we have found a way to get together and to talk about your time during the message and what it's like post message after leaving the group. I thought it would be good if you could just

take a moment and introduce yourself and how you came in contact with the message. Hi, it's nice to be here and yes it did take a while to finally get this going. We had about seven or eight inches of snow this past week so we were snowed in and everything was crazy but I'm glad we finally made it. So yes my name is Katie Holder. I was born into the message so I'm 32. I was in it until just recently. I was born into it in California. My parents were witnessed too by a message believer shortly before I was born and I so I was

born what as they say born onto the pew I guess. My mom played piano in church. My dad was a preacher so this is all I knew my whole life. I moved around a lot throughout the message so I've been to a lot of different churches. A lot of the main I guess you consider the main sect churches in the message throughout my life and then finally landed in Tennessee which is where I've been for the past oh gosh 20 years I guess makes me feel old. Well so you were one of the few message believers who came from California. Tell us a little

bit about that because California is this weird place in the message in the main sect. We feared going there but I recently think it was just last year I took a trip out there and there are churches in LA and this is the city that is supposed to well was supposed to have sunk before Billy Paul became an old man so that's William Brannum son Billy Paul. Tell us a little bit about the California story. Yeah so it's really interesting to me.

that there are a lot of churches in California still. You would think, you know, there's this big stigma and the message California is going under, don't be in California, but it is crazy that there are churches out there. And yeah, that was something that I followed very closely coming from California was the whole, you know, Billy Paul was supposed to have, you know, shark swimming where he was standing before he was an old man. So when Billy Paul died recently, that was a huge stepping stone for me in my journey out of the bridge because suddenly this whole, you know,

prophecy or whatever it was that I have followed my whole life because of where I came from was suddenly, you know, totally proven wrong. So that was huge for me. I didn't live in California very long. The church that I was born into split over some sexual misconduct very shortly after I was born, I think I was three. And we moved up to Washington and went to a very large church in Canada after that. And we were there for like five years. So I don't really have a lot of memories of being in California at that age, but I do remember things from when I had moved up to Washington

and we crossed the border into Canada a lot. And then when we left Canada, we came back to California actually to one of the ministers in that church that had split, had started his own church, like just a small garage church. And that's where we ended up in California. So I do remember that part of being in California because I was, you know, I don't know, eight years old at that time or so. I don't know at that time I was young. I didn't know anything about California going under.

So I was just, you know, happy kid in church oblivious. But it is looking back. It is strange to me that so many message believers still live in California. I mean, you know, you would think there would be this huge movement to get out. But yeah, I don't know. It's strange. I don't, I wonder what they are thinking. It is odd. One of the places that I had to visit when I was there was the, where the May company used to be because the alleged property prophecy went like this before you are an old man or the exact word, the exact phrases, you won't be an old man until,

which essentially means this is going to happen before you're an old man, right? But it happened in front of this May's department store. And so I actually paid the, paid a cab to take us out there so I could get some photos. And I was expecting some fancy place, but it was under construction.

It was a museum of some kind like the film industry, I believe it was. And it's just so odd because at that time, Billy Paul was still alive. And And now I'm told after he has passed, I'm told that several ministers are saying, well, that prophecy was actually fulfilled because they had some temporary tank that held a shark in it in this building and it's absurd the way that they've twisted and spun it.

Because I remember when I was in the message, I had to take a business trip out there and just like literally walking off the plane, I could fell my breath was taken from me, I was trembling and the people with me looked at me funny, what's wrong with John?

And I thought I was walking out and preparing to die. I mean, that's how bad it was. But so you have, you share the story very similar to some of the others we've talked about.

You've been through some church splits and as we go forward with these testimonies, you'll see this recurring theme of there was sexual misconduct and then the church split. There was sexual misconduct and then that church split.

There's more sexual misconduct and then that church split. So it seems like this is this recurring theme. How many times in your past were you involved in a church where that happened? Was it just that one time?

So I have been to two churches that actually actively split while I was attending. I know that the church in Canada that we had gone to when we left California the first time, that church did subsequently split.

I wanna say maybe 10 years after we left or so, I'm not exactly sure, but it did as well split over sexual misconduct. So we weren't attending at the time. So you know, and then yes, there was another church here in Tennessee when I was around 11 or 12 years old that we were attending that split wide open on a Wednesday night service.

And I remember that very vividly. That's a good story. Wow, tell us the story. Okay, so we actually, my dad was on a business trip. I can't remember he was overseas somewhere and oddly enough, the friends who had started the garage church in California that we had gone to for a while, they were visiting my family and kind of spending time with my mom while my dad was gone.

And so we thought, well, we'll take you to church at our church tonight. It was a Wednesday and you can visit our church and all of the things. And so they came to church with us and kind of the backstory to it was, it was two churches that had merged.

So the pastor of the original church was very elderly and was looking to kind of bring in someone to take over. And pastor who lived in Georgia had come up from Georgia and moved his entire community.

congregation. Up most I would say 90% of his congregation moved with him from Georgia. It was a fairly large church to come to this church kind of integrate and then this younger pastor from Georgia was supposed to take over. And I guess it was two very different dynamics merging. The original church here in Tennessee had a very pentecostal leading, stoic, very legalistic preacher, you know, women couldn't wear flip-flops, we couldn't show our feet, skirts to the floor, no jewelry, you know, of course, no cutting hair, all of the typical things in the message, but a little bit more overboard as far as the conservativeness went in the church. And then

the church coming from Georgia was a little bit more on the opposite end of the conservativeness in the message and they were a little bit more liberal. So it was just, it was already not working quite well, I think, the merge of the two churches. And then the original pastor, the older gentleman, I think he realized that he was not quite ready for this and that it wasn't what he wanted anyway to come in and take over his church. So I don't remember too much about the service until the split started happening, but suddenly both pastors were on the pulpit

and they were yelling over each other. It was kind of after the service like when there was an altar call of that type of thing. So the preaching had already been done and they were suddenly both on the pulpit. They were yelling over each other and I remember the younger pastor who was coming in to take over. I just remember him shouting the words, two heads as a monster and there's a monster in this church. And I vividly remember those words and he said, I want everybody to bow your heads right now and close your eyes. So of course me being the little child that I am,

I'm peaking and looking around, you know. And he said, you know, whoever wants me to be pastor of this church, I want you to raise your hands. We're having a vote right now. So he calls this vote while all this is going on. There's women crying and screaming and freaking out and the pastor's wife is having a melt, the original pastor's wife is having a meltdown over in her spot to the left of me. And I don't remember if people were even voting. I can't remember if people raised their hands because chaos pretty much ensued after that. Everybody got up, started leaving. Us kids were

kind of ushered outside by some adults because there was a lot going on in the sanctuary. There was a lot of crying. There was a lot of arguing, a lot of shouting. And I remember that the church had a big front porch and I was on the front porch with some of my friends and we were kind of like all huddled together and you're...

Like, oh, my God. The world is ending. Yeah, because you've never seen adults act like this. It was a whole new experience for us. And people started pouring out. And I remember they were carrying the original pastor lived right next to the church.

And a couple of the deacons were carrying his wife to the house over there because she couldn't walk. She was crying so hard. She was completely breaking down and having a panic attack. And they're a big fist fight started out in the parking lot.

I can't remember who it was. I remember who was breaking it up. I still know those gentlemen to this day that I can't remember who was actually fighting. But two of the brothers were just duking it out, throwing fists, parking lot over something.

I don't know what it was. But so yeah. And it did. It split wide open. That was the original pastor stayed there at the church. And pretty much I know all of the younger pastors congregational members left.

And they had church in various places until they finally established a building after a while. So that was fun. That was a good one. Until you have experienced a church where the leadership got into a knockout, dragout fight, you've not experienced the message.

There's so many. Yeah, that was one for the books. Yeah. There's so much there I'd like to talk about. But I'm one of these people that Christ quarrel. And you mentioned the open-toed shoes.

This just fascinates me. I mean, to no end, it fascinates me. Because growing up, I went to message churches from South Carolina to Arizona everywhere in between. But there was a good part of my life where I would go to churches in Georgia in the summertime, and I would go to churches in Arizona during the rest of the time.

And so I was going back and forth from the, you're not allowed to wear the open-toed shoes to, you are allowed to wear the open-toed shoes. And I was too young really to care at that time.

I just, I didn't even think it was nonsense. In hindsight, I probably should have. But as I got older and got thinking about this, this is just so absurd to me. As a male and all males growing up, you go through this period where your hormones are raging.

And there are parts of a woman that becomes sexually attractive to a man. But the feet just aren't one of them. So tell us a little bit, I feel stupid saying it, but tell us a little bit about the open-toed doctrine.

How on earth did they spin that? Where that was even a thing? Because in the Bible, they were sandals. Right, I really don't understand. I don't have a good answer for that. It was just...

a doctrine. I don't know where it comes from. I think showing as little skin as possible is the idea. I don't know, like you said, where you can't, you know, when I think of people who are attracted to feet, I think of freaks. So I'm not sure, you know, why the feet thing was a big deal, but it was in that church. No flip-flops, no open-toed shoes, sandals, anything like that. Our feet had to be covered. You know, it wasn't even at that particular church skirts, you know, below the knee. We're not even really a thing, you know, it had to

be two-year ankles, like very, very conservative at that particular church. And I was kind of in the same situation as you, because there was another church in Tennessee. The churches were about 30 minutes apart. And at that particular time when that church split, we were kind of bouncing back and forth between the two. I can thank my dad for that. He had a lot of doctrinal issues with pastors. And as soon as he didn't agree and couldn't make the pastors see his way, we would, you know, uproot move. So we were back and forth between two churches. And that other

church that we were going to at that time was much more lax on the conservative. So it was kind of like, you know, when we go to church over here, we got to wear this. And then when we go to church over here, we can wear this. So I get that a little bit. We kind of had that going on too, but yeah, it was, it was extreme over there, I would say. I mean, not as extreme as some people have experienced in the cult in general, but there was a lot of strange, strange stuff going on

over there that probably even more than I even remember, my mom could probably tell you a lot more about the doctrines, especially, that were, you know, going on. So it's, it was crazy. Yeah, there are, there are a lot of message believers who contact me and share some mail that is not quite friendly with me. And a common theme is we weren't like this. You're, you're painting the message with this broad brush and we weren't like this. But until you've been to several different message churches and not even churches because there's this home, home church movement, right? You go, you play tapes in a garage or in your house or wherever.

And there's all of these scattered, desperate, different groups, right? And it's, it's almost to the detriment of the movement itself because in a cult, you're taught a very black and white mentality. It's either right or it's wrong. There's no room for gray in a world that's filled with the gray, right? And add to this, the psychology of different people, the backgrounds of different people. Like you said, once Pentecostal and Stoic, one is not, well, you have different men with different ideologies. And so as it grows in spreads, it can't be black or white because if you

are in this group and you're blue. black as somebody else's gray or your black, like the shoe thing, maybe somebody else's white, it's incompatible. And so for people like me that have went from church to church to church, what you end up with is you start feeling as though there is no truth in any of the churches, and where do you go?

What do you do? Yes. It was very confusing for me, that's very true. I went to so many, I mean, before my dad left, I think he left when I was 14, I think we moved 16 or 17 times before he even left, all over the United States.

So I've seen, you know, from one end to the other extreme to not so extreme, you know, one foot in, one foot out type churches. We had so the preacher in California who had started his own garage church after that church had split up there, we ended up staying with them for quite a while.

And he, him and my dad preached together and kind of formed, grew the church a little bit on their own. And then I don't know why they got some revelation that we needed to move to Texas.

So we moved the whole church to Texas. And they grew the church there for quite a while, it lived in Texas for a good little bit. We went on some mission trips down to Mexico.

And at that point when we did move to Texas, we were having church in our house. So you know, sometimes we did play tapes for services. And then it was always a by, always bilingual because that preacher from California was married to a Hispanic woman.

And he spoke Spanish himself. So he, they attracted, you know, the Hispanic crowd. So the church was always bilingual. So services were always twice as long because he would preach in English and his wife or someone would translate into Spanish.

And then as the church grew, it grew to be tri-lingual. A lot of French African people started coming. And so then it was three languages that we were, you know, listening to all sorts of songs.

So I literally has sat through two and a half hour sermons, most, you know, through that part of my childhood. It was just, you know, it was normal. I didn't think anything other. You know, at that age, you're just going to the flow, basically, you're not questioning things.

But it does get very, now looking back, I wonder, why was I not confused, you know, because we would move here and we would change so many things to conform to that church. And then we would move to a different church and, you know, totally different thing of the way we dress, the way we act, you know, what we're allowed to do, what we're not allowed to do.

So looking back, you know, I should have been a lot more confused than I was. I guess that's part of the brainwashing, you know, that whole, the whole brainwashing thing to me still is surreal of how, how much you don't question and how much you don't think.

to ask a question or think something is off, because you're just, you know, you're in that mentality of this is normal, this is my life, and when you're born into it like me and very involved in it, I was, you know, I was in 100%.

I was, I read all the books, I listened to all the tapes, I fell asleep at night listening to random on the tapes, you know, I just, I took notes every service, I was read the whole Bible all the way through, you know, I was just in it.

Never, never occurred to me that anything was wrong. I just, never, it was, it was really amazing how much I was brainwashed coming out and looking back and realizing, yeah, insane. And you're newly out of this. So your perspective is going to be different than even my perspective, because the way that the brainwashing the mind control works, you don't even realize what is happening to you as it begins to unravel.

And as you begin to shift, so it's, it's actually really fortunate that we're capturing this right now so that we can document what is it like going through that process. But before we do, I went down another squirrel, I raised another squirrel segment, you started talking about the tape homes. We did this, right?

I grew up in, in little small town sometimes where there was no church. And so we had a tape home church, which is to the whole rest of the world who was never in this thing, they're like scratching their heads, what in the world are they talking about.

So I've waited to have somebody else who did this like me so that we can describe this thing and get it on record what this actually is and how weird this is because for the rest of the world.

This is, this is complete nonsense, but I have been in, I've been in places where they had a tape home church and we would dress up all decked out in our Sunday clothes, suit and tie to go sit in somebody's living room in a corner.

What was it like for you in these tape home churches? Yep, pretty much exactly that. So we went back and forth between having it at our house and then having it at the other preacher him and his wife's house.

And it was exactly that I remember that we would get up early, eat breakfast and you know get the house clean and then we would get our dresses on, we would fix our hair, everything just like we were going to walk out the door and go to church.

And people would start showing up and we would just kind of set up some chairs around so everybody had a place to sit. And my dad or the other preacher would get up and you know we would sing songs, we always had a piano in our house.

My mom played piano and then I learned to play in my sisters as well so somebody would play piano, we would all sing songs just like a normal worship service and then press play.

And as they say, and yeah, listen to a tape, sometimes they would preach. like a strictly only tape services, but we did listen to tapes quite a bit. And yeah, you listened to the tape and then sing songs again at the end and then everybody fellowships and maybe eat something if we had cooked or whatever and then everybody goes home. So it's really strange. I can see where a lot of people from the outside looking in would think, what in the world is that? But that's what it was. You know, you dress up just like you're going

to church. Yes, just so odd. I mean, to a normal Christian who goes to church on Sunday and they go because there's a desire to fellowship and there's desire to plant a church community where the community can have outreach and help the community grow and influence the community in a positive way. This idea is just so foreign to them to sit in seclusion in your home where you can't have any impact on the community whatsoever and press play on a tape from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It reminds me, I don't know if you saw the show called WandaVision where the Marvel

Superhero is stuck in the, I think it was the 40s or 50s that she's stuck in and she's playing, she's watching the old black and white TV shows and it's this black and white world. But there's this recurring theme in fantasy and especially in horror where somebody is stuck in the mindset of something in the past. And for me, that's what it was like because we were literally listening to sermons talking about events that happened long before I was even born. And after you leave that a new experience in normal church where there are efforts to help the homeless people, for

example, that's one of the big things in the church that my family tends now. And there's all of these motives to help the community grow and become better. And the church is a good place to do that. But yet we said in seclusion. Sorry for the rabbit trail, but I had to talk about that because that's something we have in common. Yes, definitely. I think you're right. I also think the way I rationalized it once I came out was we are kind of subconsciously programmed to be isolated like that. I think there's a big fear in a lot of the churches in the message that if you

do explore or you do go to a denominational church or you do get too big, you know, outreach and things like that were always kind of negatively looked on at most of the churches that I went to.

It was we're elite, you know, we have our own path. That's not what we're called to do. We're called to get more revelation. We're called to be the bride. And, you know, we stick to ourselves kind of a thing. And that never really bothered me until toward the end when I started to wonder Why, you know, why are we elite?

Why aren't we helping people? Why aren't we doing more outreach? And of course, I was not, I'll explain that in a minute, but I wasn't, you know, in the message, so to speak, at that point, I had kind of went out into the world, as they say.

So I was seeing more of those denominations and we were visiting some churches and I was seeing the outreach and seeing the difference in, you know, the involvement in the community. And I really started to wonder at that point, why don't we do that in the message?

Because we preach all day long, save those souls, you know, bring everyone to God, but the outreach isn't there. At least it wasn't at most of the churches that I went to for any amount of time.

So, but yeah, I think they are, I think they're very much, even if the pastors don't realize it, I think that we are programmed in a way to be secluded and to, you know, things like those home churches that people have where they just, you know, get together and a really small group and listen to tapes to them, that's kind of an ideal scenario where, you know, we don't, we're small, we're, you know, we got our own thing going, we're not involved with the outside world and I don't know, I think it's kind of a good thing

in their eyes when, in reality, I look back and I'm like, that's so strange, you know, it's crazy. Yeah, it's so odd. You know, I'm one of the few people who actually, I'm one of the few Christians who's actually read their Bible, I'm learning that this is the thing and I'm actually very shocked that in a world where people are going to churches and they profess Christianity, they don't even read the book, that is like the thing that should be, the thing that helps them know their religion, they don't read it, so I'm a little surprised,

but take that to a message believer. I'm also one of the few that actually listened to the recordings and paid attention when I listened. There's a vast majority of people have no idea what are on these things and what I did not have at the time that I was in this thing was the ability to critically think, analyze and piece together the flow of this thing because it wasn't just one message.

This is the most shocking thing to me of all. It wasn't one message. There were messages. There were different platforms and different stage personas that he would enter into. And I didn't know this because I had not critically thought about the timeline and line them up, but in the early years, as with any cult, it's always, everybody's welcome.

I don't care who you are, you can be Catholic, you can be Baptist, come join us. We're all one people and if one of the quotes that Brandon used was, if they draw you out of your circle, I'm going to draw a bigger circle and draw you into it.

We're all going to be one. And that's a good thing. He said some good things and that is one of them, but like all distra- cults as time went on and he started introducing some very heretical, very evil things.

Well people started cutting them off and then he says, okay, if you're not going to play with me, I'm just going to take my group of people away from you. I'm going to draw them out of your circles.

And so you go to the latter years and it's a isolationist religion. And people unfortunately are stuck in that isolationist mode because before he died, it became that and then it became hyper isolationist.

And to the extent, I've actually said in churches where they would talk about the people who were in the same city that were cannon fodder. And this term means basically, these are the expendable troops that we know we're going to send them into the battlefield and they're just going to be blown to bits by cannons.

And we don't care because it's going to strategically advance our troops. That's how they saw every other Christian in the city instead of coming together in a community which is so wrong and so backwards.

So I'm also interested because you are one of the few people who left the message but didn't leave the message mentality and had to address that later. I was very surprised the first time I encountered a person like this.

He had been away, gosh, I want to say it was like 20 years. And he'd been in different churches. Now he's real big in the leadership and in the church that he's at now.

But he had almost lost religion altogether because he would try a church and this stuff they had grilled into our heads was stuck in his head and he didn't realize what it was doing to him psychologically.

So I'd like to talk through that a bit. What was it like leaving the message but not leaving it from your head? Yeah, so that is very interesting and I have not met very many people like myself who have gone through that.

So most of the people that I know who have left the message are, they left, they don't believe it anymore, they don't want to go to church, they don't believe any of the doctrine.

They just quit cold turkey kind of a situation. But for me, we left, it was shortly after we got married in 2014. So maybe 2015, we got very, very hurt at the church we were going to.

So we, my husband was from that church that came up from Georgia. He was part of that congregation and we reconnected years later, long series of events. And we all, we ended up going to that younger pastor's church.

He had now established a building here in Tennessee. We started going there, my mom and my sisters and I and that's where I met my husband. So we got married in that church and that was a fiasco, the wedding.

So many stories, but anyway, that particular pastor has a habit of, if you do something that is wrong, he will call you out from the pulpit. Sometimes by name. Wow. And that's just the way he operates in his church.

So I guess my dress had been not as conservative as he would have liked, which looking back, I feel like it was a pretty conservative dress. My mom was very conservative. He would have never let me be in a wedding dress that was considered non-conservative.

We put panels in because it was a little low. We had sewed panels in the front and the back and added sleeves to it. They were cap sleeves, which that's a no-no with a lot of people in the message.

Those cap sleeves, so thin you know how. So he had preached from the pulpit. It was a series of things that he had been saying from the pulpit that were offensive to me and my husband.

We had one foot out anyway. We were on the fence at that point. And then he directly attacked me about my wedding dress in a sermon one Sunday morning. And made a huge deal out of the fact that nobody was allowed to get married any more unless he approved their wedding dress.

And after that sermon, he literally tacked a poster to the bulletin board in the church about this huge list of requirements for a wedding dress and that it has to be approved by the pastor and all these things, which everyone in the future can thank me for that.

I was the cause. So that was it for me. I was like, okay, this is not, this is not Christianity. I was mad. I was like, yeah, I was like, this is crazy. I'm not going to sit in church.

And everybody in that church knows he's talking to me. He's looking right at me. He basically could have said my name at that point, you know, and it wouldn't have made a difference. Everybody knew what he was talking about.

So we left. And we went sporadically here and there at that, not long after that, my mom left that church and went back to a different church in Tennessee. And so his family was at the one, mine was at the other.

So we kind of bounced around back and forth and would go a little bit. That's when we kind of really had our, our wild child time, I like to call it. We did all the things that we were never allowed to do, you know, we went drinking and did all the things that, you know, as a message kid, you just, you know, you're not allowed to do.

So, and then we calmed down after a while. And the whole time I never, I never had this thought like the message is not the truth. I didn't like that. I was upset with that pastor and I didn't believe that he was preaching as he should.

But I didn't believe that like the message was false or anything like that. And I always thought in the back of my head, I'll go back. I'm going to do my thing for a while.

I'm hurt. I'm angry. I'm having fun right now. I'll go back at some point. And I continued with that mentality. That was when I was 22, 23. And then I had my first child in 2018.

And that's when I started to feel the urge. I had this like motherly, you know, I gotta have my kid in church. I want my kid to know about God. I want my kid to know all the Jesus stories and all that kind of thing.

So that's when I started feeling the urge for the first time that I need to get back in church for the sake of my kid. I didn't really want to go back, but I wanted my child in church as crazy as that sounds.

And it was just really important to me that they have some kind of biblical foundation, I guess. My husband was not interested. He did not want to go back to church. So I would take my son sporadically to my mom's church, not the one where I'd been ousted.

So I went, you know, here and there and the whole time, of course, my mom has been very supportive of me. I have a great relationship with my mom, but she's always got that bug in my ear.

You gotta get back in church. You gotta get back in church, you know. And so she was so excited when I started coming with my son because she's like, oh, this is it. You know, this is what's gonna push her back into the message.

And I was kind of thinking the same thing too. I was thinking this is my, this is my, you know, road back in. This is my way to come back. But I didn't realize how many questions I would have when I went back.

It's like that time in the world kind of, I mean, we did visit some denominational churches and like I had talked about the outreach thing and the community thing. I saw a lot of that.

And I, you know, going back to this message church, it's so isolated and so not involved in anything. And I started to think, you know, this doesn't feel right, something's wrong. And then that led to different questions.

And I just started literally questioning everything. And I was afraid too. I was so scared too. I didn't tell anybody. I never even said it out loud because you don't question anything in the message, you know.

So I didn't even tell my mom like I was so, I was almost like, I felt like I was sinning because I was, you know, thinking these questions. And then I had my daughter in 2022.

And continued same thing kind of going back and forth. And I can't remember when it was exactly, but it was sometime in the spring of 23 that some friends of ours who were very close with my husband and him grew up together very close.

They were given the off the shelf podcast. And just left immediately. That was it. And another young couple in the church as well were head left at the same time. So they shared that with John, my husband.

And John started listening. into this podcast and he was like, baby, you got to listen to this thing. I'm like, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever. And so finally he sent it to me on, I think it was on Spotify.

And I started listening to it and I didn't even get through the first episode. I turned it off. I was like, oh my God, this is blessed. I mean, like I'm gonna go to hell for even listening to these things.

I was like, what is wrong with these people? Like William Brown, it's not a profit. What are you even talking about? I couldn't even listen to it. I was scared to death, literally scared to death.

My heart was racing. I turned it off and I left it alone for about a month. But of course, the questions that I had already developed were like raging now at this point because of the little bit that I did here on that podcast.

So I picked it up in the summer of 23 again and it was torture listening to the first few episodes, hearing some of the things that people were saying and hearing this man that I had followed my entire life and my entire life has been built around.

And even though I wasn't living it for the past however many years, eight years, nine years that I still believed it. I always thought I'm gonna come back. I would always tell mom, I'll come back, I'll come back.

I'm not ready or whatever. I never once questioned that he wasn't a true profit, anything like that. So my world literally just flipped. I mean, I was physically sick listening to these episodes. I would drive down the road with the kids in the car because that's about the only time I could listen.

And I would just cry. I was just, I couldn't even barely see the drive. Like I was just, even though I wasn't, quote unquote, living it, word for word, I still never doubted it.

And I still was just floored at the idea that my whole life has been alive. Maybe some people, my husband didn't struggle with it like that. He heard the first false prophecy that they did in like the first episode and he was like, I'm out.

These false profit, I'm done. Very simple for him, cut and dry. But for me, no, you know, it was hard. I listened to every single episode on that podcast and I wrote down, I have a notebook and the husband was like, what are you doing with that thing?

Because I carried it everywhere with me. I took it in the car every time I left. It was part of my, grab the kids, grab the diaper bag, grab the notebook. And I would write down questions and I would write down things that I was hearing.

And you know, was studying and researching and just, you know, basically losing my mind there for a little while over the whole thing. So it was, it was very hard because even though I did leave, quote unquote, physically, I never mentally left.

I still believed it 100%. God's in a profit. We're going in a rapture. That's the end of it. Like never doubted it. So it was probably just as shocking as if... I had been, you know, living, quote unquote, living in the message and going to church regularly.

It probably wouldn't have affected me much differently because in my mind, I was there. It was still a believer. It is hard when you have invested your entire life into something and then there's this trust that's betrayed and you feel betrayed and internally you're like, no, this can't be.

And so you have to, you have to research this and then this other thing. Well, if this can't be true, then this other thing can't be true. And this leads you on a rabbit trail of, I don't know how many hundred different things that can't be true now.

I'll never forget, I sat down with my brother and I was just explaining one little thing and he's like, oh, really? That was false. Well, I'm out. And I just, you know, the whole thing is just so shocking because everybody handles it differently.

I think it depends on mentally where they are. And my brother had recently gone through some severely traumatic experiences. And in fact, his was so traumatic that it's part of my leaving. I went through the same trauma.

And what he went through, I think kind of shook him enough that he was able to break free. But mentally, there are some people that just can't. And so it develops into this lifelong journey of research and like I've done, I just, I can't stop.

But then for other people, they are able to finally rest at peace. Okay, now I know that this was false. Now I know that I've been lied to, I can move on. So let's talk a little bit about the moving on part.

How, you know, you're recently escaped. How is it going through that transition mentally? It's very hard still, I feel like I've gotten past the physically sick and crying, while I listen to podcasts. I'm going through your podcast right now with Charles.

And I don't cry anymore. Well, I'm listening to the podcast. Well, that's a lot.

But it has been hard. We started going to a secular church. It's got a Baptist background. It's a very large, very large church here in Tennessee. And I think it has helped. I want to be in church and my whole, my whole thing when I first started seeing this and first started coming out was, I didn't know how to be a Christian without the message.

I didn't know how to serve God without the message. Had no clue. I've always thought of myself as a relatively intelligent person. But coming out of this thing, I was like, I don't know how to do this without a message without a profit.

And that's when I've realized just how much my Christian journey was about a man and not God. You don't see that when you're in the message. You don't see how much it is about William.

random and not God until you get out. And I really struggled to find, I'm still struggling honestly to find my place in Christianity, I think. I like the church that we're going to. My husband loves it, which is mostly why I'm going. He's never really been interested in church before and he loves this church. So, you know, that's where we are and I do like it. But I think we talked a little bit before about the triggers that sometimes, you know, in churches like that. I get triggered a lot and my husband's like, what was that with trigger?

You know, he's out. He's done, you know, he doesn't understand my mentality. But, yeah, I get triggered a lot. I'll hear a song, you know, or they'll read a scripture and it's said, I don't know, it's hard to, I'm still trying to find my footing in a lot of ways on what do I believe now? What do I need to believe? You know, Christianity, the way I always explain it to people is I think Christianity is a lot more simple than I was taught. You know, you believe God, you try to do the right thing and, you know, that's pretty much it. And in the message, it's a whole list of

things, you know, you're not going to make it to heaven unless you do this and you do that and you wear this and you don't watch that. And, you know, it's been hard for me, sometimes it's hard for me to listen to the sermons that the church that we're at because I feel like they're so simple.

And my husband's like, yeah, but that's how it's supposed to be, you know, you're supposed to be able to understand what you're hearing from the pulpit. And I'm like, well, that's valid. Yes. I was under a lot of very theological preachers. And sometimes I was just lost, you know, just taking notes because that's what I do. Don't really understand what's going on. So to hear a sermon about, you know, God died on the cross. He died for your sins. All you need to do is believe it and accept him and you're saved. You know, to me, that's very, I describe it as simple.

But I think it's very needed. I do think it's helping me heal. It's just I still struggle with a lot of fear. I still struggle with a lot of anxiety. I wouldn't say a lot. I would say that's diminished. But some anxiety about, you know, I'm not going to make it because my whole life I was taught that once you have something revealed to you, that's what you have to believe in order to make it to heaven. So God reveals what he reveals to back to his people. And that's all they need to make it to heaven because they don't have the revelation that we have. But because you're in the

message and you have the revelation of the seven seals and the five Lord ministry and this and that, you know, that's what you have to believe in order to go to heaven. That's how I was raised in most of the churches that I went to. So, you know, that fear was so real at first that...

I can't go to a different church. I can't go to a different denomination because I already have this revelation and I have to believe that or I'm going to hell. So there's a lot of fear that is involved, I think, with leaving the message for most people.

And it doesn't just go away overnight. You know, it's something that I'm still working through. Sometimes I still go down some rabbit holes and think, you know, I'm going to hell. Like, you know, it's hard to explain, but I was so indoctrinated with that, this is it.

You know, once you're in the message, that's your only way to make it to heaven. If you leave, you can't just go be a Baptist. You can't go be a Pentecostal. You know, you're not going to make it. So that's been mentally challenging for me.

Yeah, it's kind of funny because one of the sermons was God in simplicity and then he proceeded to make it so complicated that not a single minister in the entire movement can explain it. And if you get two of them in a room, neither one of them are going to agree on what was the simplicity thing that we had. And I think I mentioned this recently, but I took one of these little, you know, how to be a Christian courses at the, I think it was a Baptist church we went to afterwards and they gave me this little tiny book of what is the gospel. And I was like,

there's no way you can fit it in this little tiny book, man, it's got to be at least this thick to explain what is the gospel because that's what we were taught, right? And God is in his simplicity is this big, thick book twice as big as the Bible. And, you know, yet here's the gospel, believe in Jesus and be saved. It's just so backwards. So, well, if you could turn back time and you could tell yourself something to encourage yourself on what life would be like later and how life would change after you left, what would you tell your former self? I would tell my former self to

be more aware to ask more questions and to look at things from an outside perspective, not get so lost in where you are. I struggled with a lot of that just with everything in life. It took me a long time to learn how to step back and really examine a situation. A long time, like I'm talking just the last few years, a couple of years maybe. And I don't know, I would tell myself to not

not go so all in, I guess, with something until you're sure because I tend to do that. I get excited about something or I believe in something and I go all in and I end up getting hurt, which, you know, for a lot of us in the message that we're in the message, I guess you can't really blame yourself for it when you're born into it because...

all you know, but I really was all in, you know, I just never questioned anything. I never, even with all the things going around me, there were so many things that happened along my journey in the message that looking back, I'm like, was that not a huge freaking red flag, you know, waving in the wind? You just, I guess that's part of the brainwashing. You don't see it until you're out. There's so many things you don't see until you're on the outside. So I wish I had been a lot more conscious about what was going on around me. I don't know how much it would have

really saved me from struggling on this journey out because I was born into it. But yeah, it would have been interesting to see what my life would have been like. Had I grown up a little differently, you know, it's just, it's crazy. It's been, it's been wild.

I think that's good advice, even if you weren't in something like this, you should always critically think about what it is you're doing, what it is you're in, and things change. People change, you know, you may have a, you may be in a church where there's a really good minister who's preaching the good gospel. And then suddenly he has some sort of a mental health issue that twisted into something else and he becomes, okay, that you need to critically think about. You just don't know. Fortunately, many of the churches that we've experienced post-message, they have a set of

checks and balances where it's very difficult for this kind of thing to even happen. And you know, if one guy starts to go off the rails, well, the other guys are going to either reel him in or replace him with somebody who's not off the rails, which is another problem for that we could describe in this thing for another day. But anyway, I'm very glad that you came on and did this. I think a lot of people are going to be encouraged to see somebody who has successfully made it on the other side. And I just want to say that yours was doubly difficult because I know I've worked

with the people who have left the message physically, but not mentally. And the physical part is easy. You just walk out the door, but the mental part going through that is very, very difficult, especially if you've been away and it's been stuck in your head for so long. It means that the indoctrination was still in your head for all that time. And so my encouragement to you is that it will get better even where you think you are now. Ten years from now, you'll look back and think, wow, I was still mentally in this thing. Even though I'd left and I thought it was no longer

mentally in this thing. Yes, I know that I still am struggling with a lot. There's a lot that I'm still processing. I'm still I'm deep diving into the history of William Brown and I can't help it. I can't stop myself. I want to know every detail about this man. And that's just how I am when I or something new, I got to know it all, especially it was something like this, where it has been my whole life.

I had this whole idea of who he was, and that was so wrong, you know? So I know it's gonna continue to be a journey. I also know that I've made it through a lot more than most people have in my life, and that I can do it.

Things also, you know, that I look back on and wonder why I didn't quit. And you know, I had a lot of things happen to me that most people would really start to question, and I just didn't, you know, my whole situation with my dad leaving, and, you know, starting over, bringing a woman back from Russia to Mary, and starting a whole other family, and just kind of dropping us in the dust, a man who'd been a preacher, who'd been married for 20 years, and, you know, other men in the message who became father figures to me,

who had an affair, one of them, was a preacher in the church, had an affair, and totally left the message over it. And I've seen a lot in my life that I should have said, what's wrong with these people?

This is not normal. You know, this is not what the message says, we're supposed to be, you know? But I just, you know, I ignored it all. I guess it was part of the brainwashing.

So, it's a lot coming out and looking back, and still looking back, and remembering things, or, you know, trying to be sneaky and ask my mom, because she has no idea, and, you know, bring up some memories, and try to get information out of her, and I look back, and I'm like, oh my God, I don't know, I don't see it, you know?

So, I know my eyes have been significantly opened, and they're still being opened, you know, every day I think of something new, where I'm like, oh my God, remember such and such happened? What in the world?

So, it's a journey. It is, and I think that's just, you know, every single group of people, I don't care, what church it is, whatever group it is, people have people problems, and you're gonna find people problems.

You're gonna go to your new church, you're gonna find people who have people problems. But we were told in this cult that we were the elite group, and we were maintained by God, and, you know, we were above all of the rest, and in the end, you're left thinking, well, how is it better?

It's the same, people have people problems. Last question I'll ask you, of all of the different things that you found shocking about William Brannum, what is the thing that you found so far that has been the most shocking?

Oh, okay, so that's probably going to be a close tie between the fact that his mentor was second in command of the Ku Klux Klan, that Roy Davis was the man that kind of really brought him in and got him started in all of this, and that he was,

such a different the idea it's hard to explain I'm trying to think of how to put it into words so he comes across you know you read his life story and he comes across as this poor humble trying to serve God you know giving up everything for God person and yet all this tragedy in his life he was super sick you know he had all those stomach issues and his eyes you know he had these big thick glasses just every little detail about him was brings you know it makes him feel sympathetic toward him when you read his life story books and then to see

some of the stuff that he was involved in some of these conventions that he was involved in where they were stage acts going on and that he was with this whole Ku Klux Klan some of the things he said about them you know that he'll love them forever because they paid his medical bills and he's such a different person than what I was told my whole life just him as a person not even what he preached just him as a person that was shocking to me that his background and where he came from who really introduced him into this religion and the

start of the whole message and the fact that I don't know if those life story books were doctored you know things were changed stories were changed but the fact that he was just absolutely a completely different person than I was told about him and read about him that's what was so hard for me it wasn't like you know he was just a little bit different or you know well this was a little off no the whole thing was grossly off like beyond that's that's what has been the most shocking for me yeah it was for me too it was one little thing that was a lie

you're like okay well you know he lied so what but when it's all a lie you're like for me I was just I was overwhelmed and that's part of what drove me to continue researching because no it can't all be false there's got to be I actually went down my research because I was trying to find something that was true and the further and further I went I'm like no man not this too not this too and the further you go you're like in the end you're just step back and you think okay this whole thing it was a scheme and there were a bunch of men involved

and maybe that's not so problematic but what types of men were behind this scheme and that's for me at that point I could not you know I couldn't go with this anymore this was this was wrong there were some very bad people involved so yeah that's that's the same for me I was just I was floored by the fact that this was not you know it was more of a business in some ways anything else and that was very hard for me to except, you know, I was always told that it was this huge lifelong, you know, thing of

scraping up enough money to go preach abroad and bring souls to Christ and foreign lands and, you know, having these big tent meetings because they couldn't afford buildings and, you know, scraping by his entire life and then you see the reality of it, you know, that no, they had money.

They had to have money to do these things. He wasn't this poor, you know, physically sick, had all this tragedy in his life, you know, backwards preacher. That was not who William Brandon was and I just had no idea.

It absolutely took my feet out from under me and I'm still struggling to get back up in some ways because it's just, it was all such a lie. That's been the hardest thing for me to process and to believe in that, you know, I don't blame my parents for raising me in the message, but it's very hard to not be like, how did you not ask, you know, how do you not look something up because it's not hard to find once, you know, looking back now, I'm like, it's all right there, you know, you guys have

found it. You have found so much and I'm like, you know, I guess, well, we're just programmed, you know, question, you don't ask. So that's where it comes from. Well, I'm so glad that you did get out and I'm glad that you're on a journey to healing.

I know it takes time and it takes a lot of work. I think that's the one thing that people miss is once you leave, it's not just simply walking away. You're not, you're not walking away and then it's done.

You're walking away and now you have to heal and that is a process that takes a lot of work. And thankfully, I can look at you and I can already see that you're already being successful in this and the way that your facial expressions light up when you talk about your new life.

So very glad that you did escape. Yes. Me too. I'm thankful, I'm still very, I'm in a bit of a limbo situation with it because my family doesn't know my mom and my sister, I'm still very close to and they are still die hard in the message.

So it's in my husband's parents, his dad knows that he does not believe in William Brandon anymore but that's kind of the end of it. So we really haven't had that conversation with them.

So I'm a little stressed about, that's the next hill I have to climb, I guess, is trying to find the balance between telling my family and maintaining the good relationships that we have which I'm not really that worried about but it's still a little apprehensive nonetheless.

But yeah, it's been a little tricky to hide it and the more I hear, you know, my mom all the time. Now William Brandon said, such and such and every, I feel like at each time.

And I hear it, I'm a little bit more like, ugh, you know, just, it's getting a little hard to listen to. I'm getting a little bit more angry at the whole situation, the more I uncover.

And yeah, that eventually, I've got to, I've got to put a stop to the brand on talk or I'm going to say something that is going to ruin it, you know? My advice to you is have that conversation soon, but have it once you're past the anger stage because it should be done as peacefully as possible.

Your mother can't help it that she, she was duped in the same way that we were duped. You know, your family can't help it. And you know, if approach properly, maybe they can wake up to and then one big happy family escapes, right?

Yeah, my husband keeps telling me, you need to invite your mom and your sister to church. We need to get him to come to church. I'm like, babe, babe, you don't understand. That my mom is die hard, you know, just like I was never questioned, nothing, all of it.

So, you know, I don't know how that's going to go, but I do know that my mom is a very level headed person, thank goodness. And, you know, she will have a relationship with me no matter what I choose to do, you know, going out into the world proved that she didn't, you know, we never lost our relationship over the fact that I wasn't going to church anymore.

So it's just, this is a little bit harder, I think, for a parent, you know, when you're in it and you're convinced that it's the only way to heaven and your child is telling you, no, it's not, you know, that's going to hurt any parent.

So yeah, I need some wisdom on them going through that. But I know, like, you know, eventually we'll get there. So we're just taking it one step at a time. That's all you can do at this point.

Well, that's the best way to do it. And you've got a great support group of people behind you. So you have questions, you know, you can contact us through the, through the website or through the support groups and we're always glad to help.

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 of William Branum in the Healing Revivals, like preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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