Our Stories: Moving Forward

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast or actually I should say the moving forward podcast. I was about to say I'm your host John Collins the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research but today this show isn't about me and I'll introduce my guests I'll let I'll let my wife Jennifer take over but we have something new and exciting planned.

Thank you John yes I am Jennifer I am John's wife also known as the host of the moving forward talk show and we've been excited and thinking about starting this little talk show for quite some time and today John just wants to sort of let all of his listeners know what we have going on right it's so exciting to have you all in here and kick this thing off a few years ago I had the free and clear podcast with Naomi Wright and I really enjoyed that but I'll be honest I'm not female so it's very it's very difficult for me to talk about the female topics and so

like to introduce the hosts of the moving forward podcast which will go on the free and clear podcast website on the free and clear download on your Spotify or your Apple and we have as as I mentioned my wife Jennifer and Christy who everybody remembers from my old seek the truth website years ago I'll let Christy come forward and and give an introduction hi I'm Christy it's been several years since I've been on seek the truth and lots has changed so I am excited to be here and be a part of this podcast to help the next group of people

leaving the message understand that there's something that we're moving forward to and last but not least Emily who has been our sidekick for gosh how many years is it now Emily I'll never forget you coming here and going to the music store and entertaining us around the town here in Jeffersonville because we we do this thing that we do and we don't we don't get out of the house very much and you took us and showed us around the town and what year was that hey John I don't know what year that was but I think the first time we met was in 2012 when I was passing through the area raising

support to go overseas and then probably came over maybe 2016 2017 and that's when we went to the music store and did all of our adventures and took some fun little Photos around town that made Jennifer cringe and

Yeah, it's been it's been so many years it's like my life has changed so much since then and I honestly Back in 2012 whenever all of this began I had no idea that I would be doing it as long as I was Was honestly, I thought I would you know dig into William Branum and I would find a few You know, uh jaw dropping things and everybody would flee and mass droves because it was a scam and there was There was enough to make it a scam and then it kept going and I kept finding stuff and more stuff and more stuff and

Honestly Sometimes due to last year the year before I decided I'm done. I could keep finding stuff through There's so many problems with it but um anyway to Back to the topic at at hand for this we're kicking off the new free and clear moving forward podcast and maybe if you all could just give a little bit of A little bit about what the show will be about whenever we officially launch it so The vision for the moving Forward talk show is to conversationally demonstrate how that people can leave What you like to call this thing

And we can live rich lives we can there can be lots of healing You can just keep moving forward life will go on healing will happen and there's a restoration People people thrive. It's not that you leave and suddenly your life ends You have no more friends ever for the rest of your life and you Don't get to doing thing fun anymore because um We have found that you can have a great life even after you leave This thing Unless like me you're locked in the basement because you know, I've got the wife upstairs who's got the honeydew list up there

But all that aside it's a great idea and You know, there's an element to this that My website is just missing I do the history and As funny as it may sound to the listeners. I still get triggered very easily by a lot of This thing that we escaped. I I've referred to to as this thing so I don't have to think about it But There's also the female aspect and me not being a woman. I have no idea what it was like and so the watching you guys and the interactions of What you did in the first episode that I edited it's it really brings an element that I can't just simply can't do

even if I'd have a female guest, it's not something I can do, but the idea is we will be dropping them on this on the YouTube channel, leaving the message and then it will go on to Apple and Spotify has the free and clear show and the website free and free and clear show.com listeners can go there and find it, but I would like to know one of the questions that I've had and even though we live in the same house, I've not really asked. What is the direction for the show? What kind of episodes do you expect the listeners to have whenever they're downloading

the podcast? Well, one thing I went to do is rely a lot on my co-host for the things that they're interested in. We've already done that because I had an idea for a topic and they're like, that really doesn't apply to me. So I thought, well, that's a horrible topic. And then we also want to have guests, so anyone who has had a certain amount of time to separate themselves from their high demand, religious group, and they have had healing and experience success, then they could come and talk to us and we could have a topic. Some of the topics we

are thinking about doing in the future include therapy and why you should do it. You know, like dating, romance, courtship, and weddings, what that's like. Christmas, did you have a tree or not? And all of this is just spit-balling, right? Because we want it to be a project that grows and becomes better as we go along with feedback from our listeners and of course conversation among ourselves. Yes, we can talk about cigars and whiskey. And while the first time I had my first cigar, I was a leader at a church retreat overseas and my British and South African friends, one of them, actually a couple of them, were

rotational pastors at church. They said, hey, come on over. If you ever smoked a cigar, we're sitting around, fellowshiping and relaxing and smoking cigars. And they had some really nice cigars. And I enjoy that occasionally. And you actually learn there are a lot of Christians that smoke cigars. And there's a lot of freedom in Christ. You're not in a black and white world anymore. So it's yeah, not only do we escape this thing, but we can thrive. And we aren't just all, you know, doom to misery and despair and all of those things that keeps us

fearful in this thing when we start questioning. Yeah, I never will forget, you know, leaving this thing. And the idea of... You mentioned whiskey. Well, actually, I mentioned it because you mentioned it in the episode that will come out after this one. But in the message, you had this notion that if you even got a little bit on your tongue, you're going to get fallout drunk. That's basically the way they portrayed it. And then to, you know, to find out that there are actually Christians in the world who entertain a drink. And they do, they'll drink to get, you

know, a sense of friendship and community. Everybody comes together. It just kind of eases your mind a little bit. But they won't, they won't get drunk in at least the circles that I was in. But I never will forget the first church that we went to after leaving the message. I was extremely down. We were going through some really hard times. And the one of the ministers asked me, called me up and said, Hey, I'm going to take you out. We're going to have a good time. And I was, you know, this is a minister. I was

expecting he's going to take me to some Bible study or whatever. And he took me to a blues bar. And he's in, he was in seminary. So he wasn't allowed to drink. But he ordered me a drink. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm sitting in front of a minister. And here he is. He's ordered me a drink. And I'm at this point, I still don't like to drink a lot. But at this point, I was like afraid of the stuff, right? But he took me to see this musician call, his name was Hamilton Luma's. And to this day, I still love this musician.

It has that song that he, one of the songs that he sang at that blues bar impacted me significantly. It was a song called Give It Back. And basically, it, it's the pay it forward concept. You know, I'm going to give it back to the world. Somebody did something good for me. I'm going to do something good for other people. And really, that's what I see this moving forward podcast as each one of you have, have, you know, been through, been through a lot while you're in this thing. And then you came out of this thing. And now

you're helping others. Christy, what's it like? Getting your mind back into this, this after having left the, the seek the truth back whenever you took over my website about the same time I met with that pastor because that was about the time I was extremely down.

If I remember right, your life has changed significantly. What's it like now doing all of this? Yes. So coming back to it after being away for so many years has been kind of a natural growth of where I am in life now. I have a lot more stability. I have a lot more things that I'm working on for myself.

So I'm in graduate school. I'm still stay at home mom doing all the mom things. But I find myself in this position where I'm kind of in this gap in time with my studies and I have a little bit extra time to give.

I never really stopped keeping up with the research because it was such a huge part of my life. Leaving a high domain group is still to this day, probably one of the top most difficult things I ever went through. And I think that's true for a lot of people that leave.

So even as I stepped away from the group, I stepped away geographically from the circle that I had when I was in the message. My mind and my interest in knowing and understanding what it was that I went through is still there and has been there.

So coming back and having the opportunity to help others see that there's there's a progression in our lives, right? We don't stay stagnant in one place for the entirety of our existence as humans, as people, it's good to grow.

And the change is good to go through different seasons and to explore your interests in different periods of your life and different seasons of your life. So coming back, having the chance to sit down with with Jennifer and Emily and talk about what it was like in a high domain group, what it's like since leaving a high domain group and the wide variety of experiences that we have.

Leaving and at different times, I think all of that is really valuable. And I really look forward to lending my voice to this conversation. And really, my goal with the podcast is to highlight the diversity that exists in the ex message community and then, you know, the community of people that have left high domain groups, because we don't all land in the same place.

And all different places and sometimes we end up somewhere 10 years down the road from leaving that we never thought we would a year out of the high domain group. I certainly would not have expected myself to be where I am now, you know, when I was helping you to see the truth.

So that was such a different time in my life. It's, it's weird. I would be so embarrassed to go back and watch some of those videos because I would feel like an absolute fool for, you know, acting so confident.

I thought at the time, and now my, my mindset has completely shifted and changed. I think that's normal. And I want people to see that that's normal. Yeah, and I'm going to let the cat out of the bag.

I've, I've been asked this question many, many times about you. And I've actually never answered it not once. So today for the first time to the world, I'm going to answer the questions that people ask about you.

I, I always got the question, why did you do that? Why did you hand it over to Christie? And why did, why did you come? back, right? And that whole story, I just kind of, I just avoided it for so long. But now that you are back, I feel like I can let this out a bit. But I, I tried to walk away from this several times. It isn't something that I really pictured myself doing for very long. And each time I would walk away from it, there would be somebody who is desperately in need of help. And I've got the personality where if somebody needs help and they're asking

me for help, I simply cannot say no. In fact, I, if one of my clients, I had to take this personality test. And my altruism category was off the scales so much so the person gave me the test said, John, you have to be careful. You will literally kill yourself to help somebody else. Do you know this? And I'm like, yeah, I kind of know it. But I tried to walk away from it several times. And I was on the cusp of finding all of the connections to Jim Jones. I wasn't there yet. I had only made one single connection. And people don't

know this either. I'm saying this for the first time. But at that point, by that point, I had enough information that the people at the Jones Town Institute were excessively interested in learning more about William Branham. So we were on a first name basis. I had them on speed dial. And it got very quickly. It got to the point where they realized that I had the information they were missing in vice versa. And whenever people would send questions to Jones Town Institute about William Branham, they were communicating with me so that I could help them answer because they had no answers. And you were writing into Jones Town Institute

asking for help. They connected us. And then you and I got to talking afterwards. And I realized very quickly that the level of detail in your research was slightly better than mine. And I'm not afraid to admit that you were diving in pretty deep. And so we got to work in together. And that's how we connected. And I, you know, like I say, it wasn't long after that. I was just so burned out and I handed everything over to you. Honestly, not as a walking away strategy, but so that I could have you do it until I could find somebody

and just walk away from all of this. But you did it so well. And people liked it. On the one hand, people who were desperately looking for information loved it. And I started to realize I probably should have started wearing a wig or something because having the female with the long hair, it was just more entertaining than me.

But then after a period of time, we started getting all of the cult drones who just squat on your side and all the comments and you're letting a woman preacher come on the website and why are you letting this woman preach?

And what do you say to this, right? Yeah, I really had no response to that because I had never spoken publicly in like a church setting, like ever. I didn't know that YouTube counted as preaching.

I didn't think I was preaching anyway, but even if that's what I was doing, like, there's all kinds of random stuff on YouTube. Certainly that doesn't count, but yeah, there was a lot of criticism there.

And Emily, you've had a ministry for a long time. That's, you mentioned that you were getting ready to go the first time. Maybe if you could tell the listeners a little bit about what you were doing.

Yes, John. So I went over to Uganda and East Africa, served with Christian veterinary mission and worked with some semi-nomadic cattle keepers in a rural area of Uganda and Caramogia in an area where it is such an atmosphere that they won't even allow a peace corps volunteers to go up there because it's a little bit rugged.

They lived up there 18 months and then moved down to the capital city of Campala and taught at the university there for the remainder of my five and a half years in country. And ironically, started working with the Africa Centers for Apologetics Research.

I had connected with their US president, the Centers for Apologetic Research Paul Cardinus his name and he connected me with the group over there and there's over 600 churches of our former religion. And so if you name drop anywhere on the street, everyone has heard of Mr. William Brano.

And it was quite interesting. Did the student outreaches and met with some pastors leaving and actually went and sat through a four-hour church service at a message church in Caramogia with minimal translation. That was a real joy.

But yeah, it was a good time doing ministry over there and I was thinking when you're talking about your blues song or reminds me of another famous quote and it's with great power comes great responsibility.

In Spider-Man if you're a Marvel fan, but you know people ask why do we do this? Why don't we just be happy? Why don't we just move on? Why do we have to say disparaging things about the prophet and why can't we just leave well enough alone?

Well, the blue- with some spider man, they kind of get their information from some other source and that might be this says for everyone who has been given much much will be demanded that comes out of Luke 1248. So I guess that's kind of my one of many driving forces to keep opening my mouth and putting my face out there much to the chagrin of my family and former friends still in the message ran into a relative in the post office just yesterday and said relative turned around didn't know I stay there looks at me goes oh hi and then just like high

tails are out there I'm like I can feel the love of Jesus just oozing out of your body right now so I just smile say hi and go about my day and you know had the opportunity several times to have people come to me and say hey I'm glad that you're vocal I absolutely hated your guts for many years couldn't stand you but then slowly my eyes were opened I started seeing the discrepancies and I'm really sorry that I hated you so much and I'm like great I'm happy we're friends again let's talk wow that's amazing it's just so different after you've

left for a period of time I know that there's a lot of people right now there's actually a mass ex that is happening at this moment with the message with the death of William Brannum son and everybody starting to realize wait a minute California didn't quite sink before he and there's a lot of people you've got that going on and then you've got the mass suicide in Kenyan and what appears to be a connection we we're still investigating them working with the investigative reporters on that but thing just around the globe things are happening that

people are realizing the end of day scenario that was the picture that was painted doesn't quite match and people are starting to wake up to this so there's a lot of new people new faces leaving and seeing people who have gone through the process of deconstructing which is the most painful thing it's more painful than leaving the message having to deconstruct and find your identity and then reconstruct that it's it's a heck of a lot of work but seeing faces that of people who have made it to the other side and aren't you know burdened down with all the pain I think is it

is paying it forward it's helping people those people who are now going through the process now they have somebody to look forward to and and hopefully listen to the podcast and get some encouragement the other thing that's different and I won't have experienced this being a male but But in the message, the men did the chatting about the topics of heavenly enterprise, right?

And it was usually a group of men I would be standing there and I can picture my father and I actually I can name all the names, but it was this battle of Brother Brannum said.

Brother Brannum said. No, Brother Brannum said and they would argue with each other because each one had the random set of quotes that contradicted the other guy's random set of quotes and they would stand around and it was like this battle of wits of Brother Brannum said.

I don't know if you ever saw this being female, but I can remember at least three churches where I witnessed this outside the doors of the church and I was really young. I wanted to get in on the battle because it looked like so much fun, but I hadn't yet memorized those.

But for a female, you weren't allowed to really discuss things like this and after you leave you get into these, you know, Bible study groups, et cetera, Jennifer has been crazy involved with all kinds of things more than like I can't even keep up with all the stuff that she's involved with.

She should just walk out the door. I'm going to this Bible study. Maybe if you could tell people a little bit about what all is going on with the many different things that you're doing.

For the past four years, I have been the director, though, of the next gen director. That's that they changed the name for community Bible study here locally. Today, they announced the person who will take my place.

So it's sort of sad to see that go because it was such a big part of my life and I really enjoyed it. We're entering a new season in our family, so I have a job interview tomorrow for a part time job, and I'm looking forward to that.

It's with junior achievement, and if you have had kids in school, you probably have heard of junior achievement. So I'm hopeful, you know, I don't know for sure that I'll get hired, but I would love to.

It's part time, so that'll give me a chance to continue with the other irons I have in the fire. I also just started seeing in the church choir for the first time ever, and I'm also the director of children's ministry at my church, so that involves driving a bus over to the poor section of town, picking kids up, bringing them over to our church, feeding them supper, giving them a little Bible lesson and a craft as many as people will do the craft, and then driving them back home before I take the bus back to church and get my car and come back

to that house. So that keeps me excited on Sunday evenings. So that's kind of what I have had going on, that and family, family stuff. There's always family stuff, and every family stuff goes on all the time.

Yeah, the changes in the family, we can... announced this to the world too. We're expecting Jennifer to be around us more. So things are gonna be nice around the house. We've been quite busy all of us, myself with the research.

And I don't know how she puts up with me because we'll be like watching TV and I've got my computer, I'm researching, I'm typing, I'm writing books, I'm doing all this, multitasking, while watching TV, while talking about what the kids did during the day.

And trying to, trying to be a father while doing all of this is sometimes a bit challenging. And as you may have noticed, I've slowed down a good bit this year. We're doing the podcasts and a lot of the research, all of the research on Brannum has, I've now shifted away from that.

And now I'm looking into the Nazi stuff, which is highly fascinating. I'm once I made that connection and we started going back and understanding where this thing came from, for me, that's more interesting than the Brannum thing and Brannum's off to the side.

So I got a little bit excited and I don't have to work as hard because it was a lot of work taking sermon after sermon with contradicting life stories and histories and statements about what he did and trying to piece together out of all of these half-truths and some blatant lies.

What is the truth? That was a lot of work. Whereas, sad to say the Nazis, you can just go see what they said and yeah, that's pretty much what they did. They were not good guys, but they were at least telling somewhat of the truth about themselves.

So it has made my life easier. But Emily, I'm curious, so you were in Africa for years and I only recently came to know that there are actually groups in Africa where they teach the Serpent Seed doctrine and they teach the racial component to it.

And all of your time there, did you encounter this? In my time there, I was not aware of that. So no, I can't really speak into that part, but I do know that the message was kind of all about at least in our area getting members and putting numbers in the books and it was hard as missionaries trying to do sustainable work in a community to combat that because would you rather follow the religion of someone who is coming into the community and giving you trainings on how to start businesses, better care for your cattle, so on and so forth.

Or would you like to go with exhibit B who is gonna build you a free church? give you free bicycles and give you all sorts of things in the hopes of maybe going to America.

So a lot of cultural understanding, they get all the yeses, they get all the raised hands, they get all the great photo shoots, and all of these great things that can be written on their voice of God website. But it's just kind of, you know, follow the money. It all comes down to follow the money and where am I going to get my next free thing from, unfortunately. So that's why it was great working with the indigenous leaders of the apologetics for or the Center for Apologetics Research because they could kind of navigate that a little better and but no the the serpent seed

did not run into that over there. But I do know there was a big issue with the with the Church of Christ, a Latter-day Saints over there because someone of color cannot be a priest, even though in America they've kind of tried to shove that to the side. That was a pretty big component that they did still teach over there and that created some conflict in their in their circles and their high demand group. So when you were there and they weren't talking about serpent seed, but they were giving them free bicycles which is another funny story that I'm

just not even going to touch that I'll I'll let it go. But did you see them having the battle of wits with the brother brand them said this and brother brand them said that. They were speaking another language most of the time so I don't know if they were having those battle of wits but I'm sure given the cultural kind of feel of of men superiority, I would say that definitely would have been a thing. Knowledge is power and and the feeling of ego and you know just I don't see how it didn't exist because growing up that was part of actually it wasn't discrepancies because

the research did not exist really. There was one individual online that had research when I came out back in 2001. So I kind of thought I was the only one that had these doubts but I remember I was just this short skinny little kid that nobody really paid attention to. So I'd hear and see tons of things and when you're talking about men and the battle of wits I remember you know the are you saying before the seals or after the seals and seeing all this and I'm like if there is a god like this is messed up and these people are not following because this is just ridiculous

and then also the little kid kind of lurking around and as a total silent introverted creeper right I remember one time being in the sanctuary and the pastor going up to the ties, offerings, and missions boxes that everyone had so dutifully distributed their money appropriately. So God would end in the pastor be pleased with them. And I just saw the pastor take out all three boxes in his hand and shove it in his pocket. And I was just like, whoa, what did I witness?

And then much, much to my surprise when you go to one of these healing denominational churches, they actually at the end of the year present you with an entire spreadsheet of all the ins and outs down to the sins, you know, and it's not just like, well, you got to trust the pastor to pocket the money and get a new vehicle every two years. So yeah, follow follow the money. But yeah, overseas, I don't know, I wasn't I didn't infiltrate the group that much. I kind of stood out a little bit for some reason. Well, being a Collins, I got to see

some pretty weird things too. And I was, you know, as there for many conversations, I'm certain that they are they're curious to know how much I overheard because I overheard some good stuff. Not not all of which I have yet published. I'm still thinking through how best to do that. But I also saw some weird things. At the Brannum Tabernacle, it was a tape-only church. And this meant that every Sunday you would put on your suit and tie and you'd go sit down in the pew for like two and a half hours. And my grandfather would come up to the

pulpit and say, Hey, brother, press play on that tape player back there. And they would proceed to play the recording. And if he didn't do that, there were actually people that got violent. And I'm talking physically violent. And the deacons would have to carry him out because they didn't want to hear anybody preaching except for the dead guy on the recording from 1947 to 1965. So the deacons in the Brannum Tabernacle were like bouncers. And I got to witness one of the people being balanced, who was a physically violent person. I knew him because I went to churches from Arizona to Georgia and everywhere in between. I

went to this guy's church in Georgia. I knew this guy personally. It was the physically violent man. So I got to watch him come in. I got to watch him be balanced. And then years later, I watched my aunt come into the parking lot during service. Now picture the service. Everybody's in the pews. They're listening to a recording. So the kids are counting all of the dots in the ceiling tile. Unless their parents let them bring a book in. And those who aren't fortunate enough to be able to bring a book or are bored with counting

the ceiling tiles, they snore and they're sleeping. So you got this whole array of children. in sleeping in the building. Then up on the platform you got my grandfather seated, he and his later years was also sleeping and then you had the assistant pastor on the throne next to his throne and off times he was sleeping. One time I was outside and I watched my aunt drive up and she'd had a fender bender and she I watched her drive up during service I was taking my son out because he was a little unruly and she drove up made a phone call and

one of the deacons came out and looked at her fender that had been demolished by some car. Well he goes and goes inside brings the whole deacon board out so everybody's like looking at her car scraping you know this thing is like it's dented in at least six inches and they're like wiping it what can you do about this dance at six inches well they go back inside they drag out my grandfather and the assistant pastor and at this point you've got the kids sleeping in the pews you've got at least a third of the adults sleeping in the

pews the rest of them pretending to enjoy this guy screaming on recording and not a single elder in the building not one. You could tell everybody talking about the dead guy you could tell everybody is saying well you know they slept through it but I had him preach at my wedding I mean that's like that's pretty funny.

She's saving that for the wedding episode. Don't give all the spoilers out you guys have. That is too good like that is the most messaging thing that I have ever done in my whole life is how William Brown preach at my wedding so it's gonna be a hit. Yeah and my grandfather gave some great advice to my wife at our wedding but I'm not going to bring it up on this episode because it's a doozy and people wait to hear hear the real like Paul Harve used to say the rest of the story. When I went back Emily and went through our introduction and you were

talking about them talking about people being saved before the seals and after the seals and so forth that brought back a memory to me when I was about oh probably 15 years old someone brought the peruja doctrine to the local house church we were actually I think I don't yeah there was a man preaching in his home very rarely did they play tapes but so this man came with his flip chart and he explained something about the inner veil and the the outer cord of the temple and then everything had a date I think and a sermon by

William Brannum and and the whole gist of it was that I think in 1977 was the cut-off date or something like that for getting saved and then I was like, well, but you know, so I got, I was born in 1970, but I got a brother who was born in 1980 and I was, I was giving them some pushback because I'm like you, I was a weird kid who listened and not only that, I was a mouthy kid who talked back and oh no, you'll be all right, your family will be all right because, you know, you're your children of the bride. So they make up

their little pet doctrines and they argue over their little pet doctrines and then they make the rationalizations for their little pet doctrines and it's just, it's really just gnausticism, dressed up in modern clothing, prancing around on, you know, in the backwoods of, you know, Ohio or I grew up.

Well, and I had the blessing that the prophet guy gave to my grandfather, all your, all your children and your grandchildren will be saved. So every single person who condemns me for what I'm doing, their prophet said that I was included in this blanket statement of free salvation and it was, I mean, it was for some people who got this, I was not the only one. It was like you're get out of jail free card in Monopoly, right? You could do whatever you want because you got your free ticket to heaven. He said you're going to be saved. So go, go smoke the cigars

and drink the whiskey. We don't care, you know, I wasn't that way. I actually was a pretty good little message boy, but I do know some who got the same blessing and they just, they went wild because why would you if you got a free ticket to heaven? And so that's one of the biggest differences, right? The gospel that they teach in the message is a, it is noctisism, but it's more than that. It's an elitism. The people who were like my family, my only claim to fame.

I was embarrassed to say this. I had this in a, I did it. One of our stories interviews earlier today and I was talking about why, why I use the phrase cult royalty. And as the first time it really clicked, you know, the only claim to fame we had as my grandfather knew William Brennan personally. And so I have this cult royalty status because this one guy knew this other dead guy and it's so embarrassing to say this, but that's what we had. And that was, it was so tightly linked to your salvation that even in this area, I was a little surprised when I moved

here. I didn't know this was a thing. There's this whole be kind to the bride doctrine. In other words, your neighbor who has never ever listened to William Brennan sermon, some of them who may be atheists, by the way.

If they mow your lawn for you or they rake your leaves for you whenever you're struggling they're kind of the bride and God's going to have a special place in heaven for those people and it's just bypassing the normal plan of the biblical plan of salvation, right?

What was it like Emily, whenever you left the message and started understanding what is Christianity? What was that like when you first discovered how different the two things were? What was that like? You talk about kind of the contrast and royalty. I have my own dead guy connection story.

Net Iverson of Augusta, Georgia prayed for my parents to have a child because they had been married for many years and had no kid. Now, leave the backstory to why I really think that is out of it.

So, you know, Net Iverson saying on the tapes with brother Brannum, so he was, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon. We have the three degrees of William Brannum, so that it's all good.

So, I was nine months later, I showed up and I was the prayed for baby. And apparently even before my parents told any of their parents that they were pregnant, they had to let Net Iverson know.

So, I remember this one older lady, she'd always have to sit at the end of the pew and sit kind of near me. She's like weird. She smelled like noxema and sometimes she had fleas on her, right?

It was just creepy. And when we'd have our special services, she'd have to like drag me over and go, this is the little girl I was telling you about. So, leaving the message, you know, I remember when I was in my teen years, I asked somebody, how do I know that I'm saved? And they said, well, because you're, you know, born into the family, you're born into an et cetera, et cetera.

Of course, you're going to be saved. So, I had zero idea. So, I leave the message, start going to a local mainstream, he then denominational lodge church. And, you know, here's the name of the Trinity dare be uttered across the pulpit.

And there's music with a beat and Bob haired makeup women all over the place. And then I hear the pastor preaching the simple gospel and the simple plan of salvation and teaching things out of the Bible that I thought we were the only ones who knew it.

And then teaching other things out of the Bible that I see black and white right in front of my face. And I'm like, that is not what I was taught. So, I remember the night that I actually gave up doing life on my own. I sat down and shared some things with the pastor and his wife that I would have been judged terribly for in the message.

And had great. fear and years earlier it's that I'm taking this knowledge and what I'm doing to the grave with me I'm not telling anybody and I simply remember the pastor's wife looking at me and going it's okay Jesus loves you just as you are and you don't have to be somebody or not you don't have to clean yourself up that's the Holy Spirit's work so what was the contrast of growing up versus going and and seeing a denominational church I mean there was it's it's night and day difference you know um God does work on your heart and and things yeah the legalism stepping

away from the legalism and stepping into grace is amazing and seeing cultural differences back when we were talking about whiskey and cigars can you believe there are Christian cultures in this world because of the culture they grew up in that they actually see American Christians as being weird that they judge people who use marijuana so harshly I personally have no personal desire to try it but to them it was like drinking a casual beer they're like I don't get Americans you know and hear their Christians it's like whoa okay the world is way bigger out there that I

ever had any idea oh so yeah I'm still learning and it's fun and I love to ask the questions and kind of you know rabble rouse people a little bit because it's not a black and white world and what's it mean to follow God I don't know what's it mean in your life I'll never forget I was a little bit shell shocked when I started working with Christians in other countries as as I began to research and piece things together this is virtually untapped history because the biographers for William Branham have so far twisted the truth that historians in other countries they don't

have access to what we have here they can't go into the courthouse and when I started working with them I began to realize very quickly that Americanized Christianity is a flavor all of its own and it's not a flavor that other countries so much like or enjoy now if you go into some of the developing nations where the cults have invaded and they've you know stamped their mark on developing nation society it's a bit different in those cases but like in Europe or in Germany in Germany where the whole culture is drinking beer right they would they'll be shocked to know that they're

not supposed to drink beer and we only have it in America because of the prohibition days and you know I did a deep study in and just drinking in general not because I want to I actually don't enjoy drinking that much but my curiosity of well why do Christians in Germany drink beer and why did the American ones not? I was just curious what this was, why this was, right? So for me, just understanding the difference and why things came to be, because of my curious mind, it sort of helped me put that as a

chapter in my past. I don't have to think this way. I can, like I was with the minister in the blues bar listening to Amanda still love. I can enjoy this and not have that monkey on my back that, you know, in the message, I'd be like number one, oh my gosh, I'm in a bar. I'm going to go to hell because I'm in a bar. Number two, there are people around me drinking. I should condemn and scold and be rude to every single one of them because that'll lead them to Christ, brother. If I can, if I can insult them to their face, I

no longer have to be that person. And I wasn't like that to begin with. I love people. I just can't, I can't be like this, you know? But well, to wrap this up, I thought since in the years gone by, people referred to Christy as the one who's ministering to the people.

So I thought we would end with a sermon from Christy. I'm joking. But anyway, in this by talking about, you know, the first episode of the show, maybe Christy, if you could give a little bit of an insight as to what's coming and talk about when, how often you're going to be recording and dropping the episodes and what can the listeners look forward to?

We are going to be starting the movie forward podcast. It's going to be the three ladies that you've gotten to me today. Myself, Jennifer and Emily, we will be recording by weekly schedule every other week. The videos will drop every other Wednesday. The first episode is coming out. We've already recorded it. It's, it's basically a casual conversation.

We wanted to introduce ourselves to you a little bit more in depth than we, we have today, give you a little bit more understanding of where we came from and how we came out of our high demand group. And then we also wanted to give you a taste of sort of what we're going for in terms of the conversation. So we're looking for, you know, casual, more, more personal experiences shared. We hope to have guests onto the show on a regular basis so that we can get more voices involved. And new listeners can have a better understanding of how

why the diversity is for those of us who have left. We're really, really excited to... bring a podcast that focuses our energies on. The female experience in a high demand group because unfortunately, high demand groups tend to make the highest demands of us lady folks.

So it's really exciting to get to share that with all of you. And I'm looking forward to getting some feedback, figuring out what it is you want to hear from us on. What topics would be interesting to you?

So if you have any ideas for topics, please feel free to share, we will take that and probably run with some of those because we're still brainstorming ideas ourselves. And if you're interested in being a guest on the show, you can contact the ladies on free and clearshow.com or you can contact me on William-Brandom.org and I will obviously forward it to my wife who is upstairs while I'm usually locked in the basement and keeping all of the things moving down here and in the guitar room.

But I usually in the show myself and I give some fancy spiel about how excited I was to talk through it. But I'm gonna let my wife Jennifer do this because going forward, moving forward, this is her show and this is something that fortunately for the listeners and especially fortunately for the viewers, you won't have to see my face in this thing.

Well, first of all, John, thank you so much for introducing us and putting us forward on your channel because that's just really kind of you. And we just went to encourage every single one of you wherever you are, wherever you land, just know that you will be able to continue to grow.

You know, you don't have to get stuck in a rut in any of the situations you find yourself. Just keep moving forward. Life will go on and healing will happen. So you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will come out on the other side and you will be happy that you did.