Our Stories: An Interview With Mark Leyba

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Mark Leyba, former message believer and leadership facilitator and coach.

Mark, it's so good to have you on here. We've known each other for, gosh, I don't even know how many years it's been now through the support groups, and you and I have spoken offline several times or online, I should say, through the various chat messages, et cetera.

Very good to see you in person for the first time, and I'm very excited to hear your story today. Well, thank you, John. It's really an honor to be here. Before I jump into my story, I just want to take a moment to thank you for all of the hard work and the diligence, and even the persecution you've received for uncovering everything you've uncovered about William Brannum.

I wish that research would have been available years ago for all of us people who had questions about Brannum and the message and so on. So thank you. You have done such an incredible service that I know will live on for generations.

Thank you for the encouragement. It is quite a beautiful persecution. As you can imagine. My goodness, I just can't imagine. I consider myself kind of a lower level of message believer. You're from message royalty.

You came from a very high profile name in the message. That's one thing we all share. To some degree is the persecution we've received and the banishment and the treatment from making the choice to leave a toxic environment occult.

Absolutely. Well, you've got quite an interesting story, and I think before we get into that, it might be good just to take a minute and tell everyone a little bit about yourself. I know you, obviously, but tell the others who you are, what you do, and what is your connection to the message, and let's go from there.

Sure, sure, sure. Well, my name is Mark Leba. I am a resident of Denver, Colorado. I have deep, deep roots in Southern Colorado, Northern New Mexico. My wife is an amateur genealogist, so we've been able to trace my mind to the early Spanish colonists and the Pueblo natives.

How I got in the message that's going to be that's why we're here right to talk about that. So right right now I've been out of the message for you know close to 40 years I work part-time. I'm semi-retired. I work part-time as a leadership facilitator and coach I work for a government entity that's most of my career has been in government State government and county government. I also do work with non-profits. I do a lot of work with a personality profile called the anygram The anygram actually was really helpful for me and just understanding the dynamics the personality dynamics of

You know all the people in my life my family people who were in the message and so on so So that's basically the short version of who I am as I understand that you weren't raised in the message and So your perspective is a little bit different than mine who like you said I I was called royalty I'm one of the odd balls Who is raised to believe this from birth?

So it might be interesting for the listeners to hear a little bit about what that's like, you know What's it like being raised in something else? How are you raised and how did the shift and transition happen Sure, sure. So you know being a Hispanic family from from Colorado You know, it's like a lot of Hispanic families in this area. I was raised as a Catholic But my mom had a Genetic difficult time with the Catholic Church Mostly because of the situation that happened with my middle brother. So she left the church You know, my brother was probably first or second grade. What would it happen? And you know, you talk about a cultic influence. I mean

My brother was left-handed and when he was at first or second grade His the teacher who was a nun tried to force him to wipe with his right hand and told him that left-handedness was of the devil And you know my brother being just a little boy in and terrified of the nuns and feeling that he was maybe of the devil Didn't tell my parents any of this But he developed this this nervous twitch that my parents noticed So finally a little girl that had come over told my mom what the nun was doing And my mom confronted the nun and the nun basically said well Mrs. Laybutt

This is what we believe you don't like it you can leave and my mom took him out of the school put him in public school And she had a very tenuous relationship with the Catholic Church since then Her sisters were still very you know very staunch Catholics When I came along so I had two brothers my oldest brother was sixteen years older than me and my middle brother was 11 years older When I came along They from the pressure from her sisters. They Kind of pressured my mom to have me get my first communion But after that

She pretty much didn't want to have anything to do with the Catholic Church in fact You know, I don't know what her influences were but I you know, I have a old Bible and in revelation. I think it's thirteen but this part about the Great War of Babylon, she has written in this side, the Catholic Church.

So my mom's looked, she searched, she had a lot of her own demons that she had to deal with. She had a very difficult life. She had polio when she was two. Her mother and her aunt, they were sex workers and she was raised by her grandmother.

Her grandmother's name was Daria Leba and I have Leba on both sides of the family. When I was a kid and I asked my mom about that, she, my mom had a great sense of humor.

She said, yeah, you know, that's why your brother's, you and your brother didn't turn out quite right. You've got that Leba on both sides. Well anyway, my mom had gotten an illness too later on when I was younger, she got cancer and she also got a prescription drug addiction.

So she struggled a lot and she was a very loving kind woman, but the drug addiction changed her in a lot of ways and it was a aspect of her personality. It was a very, very difficult deal.

She put the family through quite a bit, but she still was trying to find her path. So she checked out the Jehovah witnesses. She checked out the Mormons. I remember going with her to a Mormon church and actually really liking it because there was that sense of order and that sense of family, there was that sense of connection.

Jejana, I could have been following a different false prophet, right? But when we probably would have become Mormons, but when she talked to my dad and my dad didn't go with her, he kind of followed along kind of letting her do what she wanted and he was like, I don't care, you want to become a woman, that's fine.

But then she told him while they want 10% of your earnings, he said, hell no, this isn't going to happen. So she ended up going to a Pentecostal church for a while and that kind of stuck for a little bit.

But my mom would get easily offended at things and then when she got offended, she was like out of there. He made some kind of comment about our ethnicity. I think what he had said was he said, Mrs. Leyba, I think it's interesting that you're you and your husband don't have that Spanish probe that they didn't talk with an accent.

So it offended her as she left and that was kind of it with my religious experience with my mom. Then what had happened was, so I mentioned I had two brothers. So my oldest brother was he was a jazz musician and he'd gotten a lot of trouble with the law and he had his difficulties too.

And he wanted to clean up his life and start a new path so he moved to California. So in California, he started going to, I think it was a full gospel church of some kind.

And I think the reason he started going was he started first sending his children there and at one point. One of his kids said, Daddy, when are you and mom are going to start coming to church with us?

So he felt guilty and he started going. He ended up becoming a born-of-year Christian. So he started conversing with my mother again about God and about religion. And my mom started getting religious again.

He started sending me stuff. I wasn't that interested at the time. I was like 14, but he'd sent me a new testament. So I didn't think much of it until my mom passed away.

And she passed away the only time I ever had the opportunity to go to church with her the day after. So we went to church that evening, and then she passed away the next day.

So it was through that that I became a born-of-year Christian. And that's where my religious, my spiritual journey started. My brother Richard went back to California, and we would converge. So I started going to, you know, full gospel types of churches at that point.

You mentioned your brother's left-handedness, which is the superstitions in these religions just fascinate me to know in, because when you think about the Bible and Christianity, superstition isn't something that you're supposed to be mixing in this, right?

You know, right? Yeah. And see, I share with your brother in the fact that I'm left-handed. But for, I don't know if it was superstition or just because I was different. I was encouraged to be right-handed.

And so most everything I do is right-handed. And I was in, I'll never forget this. I was in, I think, third grade. And I may have mentioned this in the podcast before, but my teacher in elementary school was telling the class, explaining how the brain works.

And they said, if you use, it's left-handed people are more apt to become inclined to music and art, et cetera. Everything that I wanted to do. And here I'm writing right-handed. And I was, at that time, I was predominantly right-handed, because I had done everything right-handed.

Well, I decided at that moment, I'm going to learn to write with my left hand. And so I began, I would write sentences with both hands at the same time. And over time, I got to where I could draw, I'm a cartoon artist.

I used to draw batons. Equally with two pieces of paper, two pencils, and they would look exactly the same. But the superstitions just, like I said, it fascinates me. Being cult royalty, I also had access to people in their private lives that other people did not see.

And I can't give their names because they're still alive. But there are high-ranking people in this cult who are to get books on like the zodiac. And they're big into the, you know, the studying, what is your horoscope and all of this stuff, which, you know, growing up, I never thought about it because these are respected people that I know, who are like, I- looked up to these people and then once I got out of that and started we started attending other churches and I started thinking about it, you know, that's just really odd, why

the horoscopes. Right. Right. Yeah, it's really fascinating how it's in some ways people have these secret parts of their life that nobody really knows about. I think that applies to a lot of people.

So to continue on with my journey, so for a couple of years there, you know, and I really looked up to my brother. He was my mentor. So my father was a house painter and he, you know, he learned his trade coming out in the Navy and then he came out during the Painter's Union and he taught me and my two brothers that trade.

That was my first profession and my oldest brother taught me a lot, probably more than even my dad did taught me a lot about that profession. And he, you know, he was my, he introduced me to Christianity and he introduced me to a lot of things and he was my support system.

My dad never really, he never really got involved in the cult, he never really got involved in any kind of religion. He kind of just stood back and watched what was happening. So I would call my brother and he would give me, you know, inspiration.

He sent me, he'd send me all sorts of things that he was into. So he'd send me books by these full gospel people like Kenneth Hagen and Derek Prandt and Bob Mumford. And I just devoured them and I was just, you know, just a teenager, he's just a kid.

So then at one point, he had told me, he said, he's called me Marky, he said, Marky, he said, I'm going to send you some stuff that I want you to read that the Lord's been showing me.

And I want you just to really be having an open mind about it. And I said, sure, no problem. So he sent me these two tracks first. So he knew and my brother was very charismatic.

He was a, he was actually a really good preacher, he was very charming. He had a really a good way of connecting with people. So you know, he took it slow with me to introduce me to the message.

So he sent me this first track on the Godhead. And I read it and I thought, well, you know, it kind of makes sense. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't, because I was so young, I wasn't so steeped into the trinitarian theology.

And I thought, well, you know, this kind of makes sense. So, you know, I kind of accepted that. And then he sent me, he sent me this, a serpent seed track. And when I, when I read that, I thought my brother had completely lost his marbles.

And at the time, I, I had a girlfriend who eventually became my wife. I showed her this and, you know, we were going to, you know, different Christian churches here and there in Denver.

And I just told her, I said, I think this is crazy. I said, I don't know what, you know, what I'm going to do to my brother. Why do you believe this? So I called him on the phone and he said, market, this is, this is from this man I believe he's a prophet.

And then he started telling me the story. So my brother was introduced to the message in California, right, of all places, the place that it's supposed to eventually, according to the brand, I'm falling to the ocean.

What had happened with... My brother was, he was attending this Focusp church of some kind. And this itinerant preacher shows up there, just as a participant is, just does not mod in part of the church, but he was just kind of coming in and going and he started talking to my brother about Brianna.

And at first my brother was very resistant to it. And eventually, in this old, in this guy's, I'm sure he's long dead because he was 60, in the 60s back then. His name was Forest Nanny, and he eventually convinced my brother that the message was correct.

So my brother told me this whole story and my brother had a way of telling stories that were very dramatic and very way of influencing people. So he said, I'm going to send you some books about brother Brianna and his ministry.

So he sent me a man sent from God and the seven churches book. And I got him and I just completely devoured him. And then I too started to believe in the message. So that's how my message journey started.

You mentioned the serpent seed. And I'm a little interested to hear about your perspective of that. See, and I'm certain it was the same for you. We weren't told that this was a racist doctrine or where it came from.

And it wasn't true. Yeah, exactly. Years later, I discover, no, this was the core of the racist theology. Christian identity, right? And I've recently, I've been, as you know, I'm studying the white supremacy history of the United States.

I, it really didn't click with me. I know I'd read it before, but it didn't click until I guess it was last year that when white supremacy spread throughout the United States, there were different flavors of it.

And the agendas were different for the varying groups. So you had, you know, in the South, where you had the problem with, after the Civil War, the people with black skin were highly oppressed.

And white supremacy rose up to be elitist over those people. Well, you get up north and the biggest threat in Indiana were the Catholics. And so the clan rose up against the Catholics. And out west, interestingly, I'm learning, I think it was just last week.

I learned there were clan groups that were anti-Mexican. And I didn't even know they were supposed to be anti-black, some of them. So, wow, interesting. Yeah, growing up in this thing, I did not realize, you know, we had the high breeding doctrine where if you were an African-American, you're not supposed to mate with a white person, they explicitly state that.

And in the Southern churches, I grew up with that belief. And it never really clicked until I read this last week that there were churches I went to out west where it was the same a Hispanic person could not marry a white person.

Did you experience that at all? all in the groups that you well you know what's interesting because i remember when i was really questioning in the things that that you know coming into the message not being brought up in the message there were some things that random said that they didn't set right with me and the thing that he said about uh... against in racial marriage really bothered me and i remember even talking to my brother because we both married white my my girlfriend was white we got married yes we as wise white and i said well

why wouldn't that apply to us too that would he be against our marriages because we you know we're Hispanic and we married uh... angle women and he had a way of explaining it and i don't even remember exactly what he said but in his perspective it didn't apply so you know it's it's a it's a really good point though you know it was it was definitely taught that black people should not marry white people but thought when it came to Hispanic it was kind of a gray area so that's that's kind of uh... you know and then well you know reading my

perspective of the uh... certainty does i have no clue that it was a racist kind of message uh... i did remember though that the Mormons had a teaching about uh... can enable and about the mark on uh... canes head and that that was you know being black and how racist that was so you know i never really saw the connection early on i never made that connection really on what it had at once we got in once i started and registered sending tapes and message books and so on there was a uh...

a and i don't know i don't know what they call it in the mess and now but a revival of some kind of a big meeting that was going to go on in flagstaff Arizona in 1975 and i was a junior in high school so uh... i talked my dad let me go and uh... i had convinced a friend of mine who i had who had introduced to christianity and he'd become a born kind of christian we went to school together and i also convinced him of the message so uh... we drove out in my car

both he was about a year older than i was so he was like a senior in high school i was a junior to meet my brother to attend this big camp meeting i mean what do they call what did they call those meetings they were the camp meetings or revivals or i don't even remember john you know it's it's different for different sacks that usually it's just like gathering or we're have special meetings is the phrase of you know they're the most special means yeah so uh... you know in my brother said well you know

brana brana son is will be their billy paul and uh... i we were really excited and was interesting because we hadn't fully grasped the the uh... the uh... what's the world i'm looking for just how did how harsh it was um...

in in the expectation so we both come my friend i both can't have a long hair you know i had hair over my ears yeah hair down to probably down to town it was knack um... and we didn't really realize that that was a Oh no, in message churches.

So, you know, we got there and we actually, my brother was camping, so we all camped out. I don't remember how many days this was. But people looked at us kind of suspiciously because, you know, we didn't really fit in.

But of course, my brother, in this guy, this minister that had introduced my brother to the message was there. And I don't remember all of what was taught, but I do remember a couple of things that stood out to me.

One, what, this was 1975. One was they were really pressing 77 as the year the rapture was supposed to happen. That, you know, it wasn't, I don't remember how they termed it, but it's pretty, maybe not a prophecy, but it's a pretty sure thing that's probably going to happen.

It's something. Yeah, and then the other thing they talked about, and I remember preparing Billy Paul Brannum to talk about this about California falling into the ocean. And he was saying, because, you know, it's scared to crap out of me.

He said, because my brother lived there in California. He said, you know, my dad said that, before I'm an old man, California's going to fall into the ocean. And I'm going to, I'm 39.

I'm going to have my 40th birthday next year. And he said, you know, my dad also said that you're an old man when you turn 40. So it's like, we're thinking, this is all going to start happening, you know.

The feces is going to hit Dawes Laney device. And boy, it's going to, it's going to be tough. So like I put the praise, I'm going to have to use that. Well, you know, I know there's a lot of religious people that maybe the real term might offend them.

So, yeah. So, you know, I went back to Colorado. My Richard went back to California with the intention of moving, because, you know, he wanted to get away before California fell into the ocean.

And I went back and cleaned up my act on a haircut. And, you know, my wife started, we were still in high school. And we found out, my brother found out that there was a message church in Denver already.

It was a home church. So my wife and I, so my girlfriend at the time, we started attending this church. And the minister there, I mean, his name was Ken Southworth. And he is a very small church.

And the thing that was, I thought was really interesting initially, and I caught on this right away. It was, how often men kind of dress the same. You know, they all had cowboy hats and cowboy boots.

And, you know, they all, they like cherry pie with molasses. And it's like they were kind of like becoming little brannos. And so we went there, and he was actually Southworth, who was actually very kind to us.

You know, and another kind of an interesting happened thing happened, too. There was another young man who was going there about my age I met. We ended up becoming really close friends. And he was associated with another church in Midwest that we later on started becoming a message church that we later on became associated with, too.

So. You know, my wife and I went there, Richard finally did come. He ended up, and I don't know what the history is behind this, but he ended up going to Sedona, Arizona, and spending like three months living in a tent with him and his family. And what's really sad is that as I look back on this, my brother had established himself in California and done relatively well.

You know, he joined the Paners Union. He was like a superintendent for a union shop. He was able to buy home in San Diego, and things were going well for him. And this message thing just could completely uplift his life. He sold everything, moved initially to Arizona for a few months, and then he came to Colorado. Now, so happy that he was there, and he started attending Southwest Church too. The cult has so far dumbed down all of the things that you and I knew and experienced in the message. That's the other reason I'm glad to have you on here to

talk to you this, because I grew up in the old message before they changed it. And California is sinking was a thing. It was a big thing. It was all huge huge. It was imminent, right? And you mentioned Billy Paul, who is, you know, well, so well respected in the message that I grew up in, that that's why they called them special meetings when he would go, and he would treat you think they were both special meetings, right? And every single one that I attended, and I attended several of them, he would say, I'm not an old man yet, because before I'm an old man, this thing

supposed to sink. And now that he's dead and gone, we have all of these people saying, no, what was the latest one I heard? They had a fish tank in the building where I heard you said that. It's like, come on. That's that's not the message that I grew up in, right? Well, before the message that I grew up in, 1977 was the big thing. And I know several people, like you mentioned, that up ended their lives. They had one guy I was talking to had a, his father had a very successful business. He would have been heir to that business. And now,

you know, he's not struggling, but he's nowhere near what he would be if they had have continued that. And then on the flip side, you had all of these people who, because the world's about to end and you don't need your money, well, let's all give it to the church. Well, what do the church need it for, right? If the world is ending, they don't need it either. So true. Yeah, exactly, right? Right. But they wanted to pass the money basket because the world's about to end. So give me your money. And when you take a step back, this whole thing is just so foolish.

I know. It really is foolish. And it's just so sad how it devastated people's lives over time. So anyway, Richard finally moved back. And what's interesting is that the itinerant preacher that convinced him of the message he ended up staying in California.

Now, he felt that his calling was to just like he did to my brother infiltrate these churches and try to convince people to leave. So he felt like he was like on a sinking ship trying to get people into the lifeboats to leave California.

So we actually hardly really hear from him after that, and I don't know what happened to him. Like I said, you know, that was 50 years ago and he was in his 60s, so I'm sure he's been long gone since then.

So we start as a family brother and his family and me and Southworth ended up, you know, my wife and I graduated and, you know, we changed a lot of our life plans too because of the message.

You know, we could have gone on to college, but because education was demonized, I'm just so thankful that nobody convinced us to leave high school because, you know, I know a lot of people who they took their kids out of school and they ended up not getting educated at all or getting a very poor, educating education being homeschooled.

So we graduated from high school and we literally got married a week after high school. And my feeling was was that, hey, the Lord's coming in 1977, I want to get married and maybe have a kid, right?

So we did. We had a kid. We had our first kid in 1977. And I said, well, then after that, man, it's over, right? So we, and as I look back, my wife and I've talked about this quite a bit and I showed to this with my children, why will attracted us to the message initially?

And we both come from somewhat dysfunctional families and, you know, my wife's father was an alcoholic. He was very abusive, you know, my mom's issues with drug addiction. Neither one of us had a really tight firm family structure to support us.

And that's what we were looking for. And the fact that it was my own brother who brought me into this kind of reinforced whole idea of, of, you know, my family with my brother and also this new message family that I was now a part of.

It was like something that I had that I'd never really had before. And it was, you know, ultimately it was fake, but it was, it was meeting that particular need for us. So one of the things I noticed about Southwest was he'd always talk about in these almost like riddles about a deeper knowledge or a deeper sense of the message and turned, come to find out he was a returned ministry preacher, right?

He believed that Brandon was going to come back and she'd bare and have a tent revive on all these things. And I thought that was just ridiculous. And I was just a kid. Now initially my, right, that was the one that I came from.

Is it really that you were returned ministry? My grandpa, yeah, my grandfather and Billy Paul and Perry Green were the ones who spread that the heaviest. The heaviest. Wow. I've come to the conclusion that it was literally a means to keep the cult from imploding whenever he died in 1965.

Because instead of having everybody focus on the dead guy that's in the casket, they can focus on, well, he's going to rise up at Easter. So let's. Let's have the burial at Easter, takes their mind off of it, right?

Yeah, exactly. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

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So I rejected it, and I said there has to be another explanation for these prophecies that were fulfilled. Richard accidentally accepted it, but he actually came around very quickly to recognizing that it was false.

So I had left that southwards church, I couldn't go anymore, and then my brother left shortly after I did. So what we started doing was we started meeting in my wife and I, we were renting a home from her mom and her stepdad, and we had a basement that was partially finished.

So we started meeting in the basement. So my family, his family, and the people that we had both brought in, we were both, I felt like I was called to preach later on when I realized that my calling was very different.

I became a public speaker, but at the time I thought that I had a religious calling. So I brought in some of my friends, and he had people, so we had probably 12, 13 people on this basement that we were, and initially we just listened to Brannum's tapes, and then we would discuss them.

So but in the meantime, remember my friend, I told you that I met in southwards church? He went back, he moved back to the Midwest, this church. And this was, I don't know if you've encountered this John, in your experiences with message churches, but I call this church message light, right?

So one of the things that I really had trouble with was the belief that they believed that Brannum's words were inherent, just like the Bible, and at the time I believed that the Bible's words were inherent.

So I was like, how could you put Brannum's words on the same par as the Bible that didn't make any sense to me? I said he was human, he was fallible, but there was the belief that why he was a prop of God, sort of thing, he said was perfect in it, and the things that bothered me the most was, and this never set right with me.

the race of statements he made, and some of the really, really damning statements he made about women. You know, I still bought into the patriarchy, you know, the thing about man being overwhelmed with all of that.

I bought into that back then. But I just thought that his perception was so harsh towards women. So it was really hard for me to accept his words as an error. Now this other church, this, this, this I call the message light church, they did not believe that Brannum's words were an error, right?

So I thought, well, hey, I think I maybe I found my people here, right? And they weren't nearly as strict. So they allowed women to turn their hair. You know, I never, I never see, I didn't see any women like with bangs and stuff like that.

But they've turned their hair. They were allowed to wear a little bit of make it. They had blemishes or whatever to cover stuff up. I don't think they were strict about the dress, how long their dresses had to be.

You know, I think maybe just a little, just like at knee level was, was considered okay. I know there are some message cults that, that they were like against women wearing sandals and stuff like that and this, it was okay in this church.

And they weren't as enamored with Brannum, they believed them to be a prophet still, you know, the film of Melachyre IV and all of that. But the pastor spent a lot of time and he, it was more like these, I would, I would, I would say it's where it's somewhere to a lot of the churches now where he just talked about being a Christian and living, and living, you know, being a good Christian and what that meant.

And, and, and referring periodically to the end times and all that, but there wasn't as much of a emphasis on that. So my wife and I got connected with that church because it's, and I'll get to this here in a moment, we eventually ended up carting ways with my brother.

So, but we were, so I was, I was, with my brother and we're also listening to tapes and we took vacation, at least two vacations out to this Midwest church. Well, my brother was very fended that we were going to, because he felt like this pastor was totally off the mark, right, and he even accused me at one point of he used the term pouring after this man's ministry.

And it's, my brother had gotten hooked up with the Martin brothers, do you remember them? I do. I do. Were they out of Arkansas? I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He got very hooked up with that.

And I remember telling him, I said, well, good, and I said, that's something about you and them, the Martin brothers, that you're pouring after their ministry. I said, you just like them for some reason, and I like this, this guy said, why do we have to call it that?

So at, at one point, what had happened was, and you remember this church was a lot more liberal in their perspective of a woman's role and so on. And in my house, and this is still the case, my wife handles the finances.

I've just been never very good at that. She pays the bills and tells all this. So I was, I would, we were, we were, uh... demonized because they felt that was a man's rule to do that.

So at one point, so we were on the verge of leaving and my brother ended up becoming the pastor. And I don't even remember how exactly that happened of our little group. And a couple of people, men that I brought in, young men, they ended up becoming his deacons and at one point they came over to our house and they confronted me, the fact that I was not living because I was allowing my wife to take care of our finances.

Right? So I pushed back. I said, look, all right, number one, show me a scripture with that strong or show me a quote that Brandon said that that's wrong. They just said, well, she's just serving authority over men.

I said, I still have authority over it. I'm just delegating it to her, right? And that was my perception back then. I mean, now, we were totally even in how we see our relationship.

But at that point, they couldn't prove anything to me. And I even, I think I even remember talking about Proverbs 31 about the virtuous woman in buying land. It's like, this woman did stuff.

This woman that the Bible exemplifies as a good woman, she had authority and she did things out in the world, you know? So anyway, that was for my wife and I, that's fine for all. We're like, we're done.

We're vicious. And at that point, I severed my relationship with my brother. And then we started getting more involved in this other church. Yeah. I don't know if you remember the old little rascal show, but I had this conversation.

I had this conversation when we first left the message and began to realize the different splinter groups of, you know, how each one developed differently. And I made the joke and it's actually less of a joke now that I know how it works.

But it was like each church with their own he men's woman haters club because whatever was the, whatever was the thing that the men could do to feel superior to the women, that became doctrine. And like you said, half the time, you couldn't even find it in Brannam's ministry.

You couldn't find it in Pentecostalism. You couldn't find it in the Bible, obviously. But it was a he men's woman haters club. And, you know, growing up, I went to churches from South Carolina, to Arizona, everywhere in between.

So I got to see some of the more liberal churches like you're describing. And I think, you know, I think I may have heard the term whoring after those. But we, we felt like they weren't part of the message because they did not follow all of the cult rules, basically.

And then this created this bigger problem for me because I'd go to one church that I was told did follow the cult rules and then we go to another church that quote unquote did follow the church, the cult rules.

But their rules were different. And so I'm trying to reconcile my head. Well, why can you do this in this church and not this other thing in this other church? And they're both, right?

Every one of them is different. ran it literally come down to what whatever was the human woman haters club agenda of that church right right yeah for sure and it would so sad john is that and all all of these cults and not just the message cults you know i think cults even if they're non-Christian cults women seem to take the front of it it's like it's like patriarchy has infused in all of it and it's just it's just so incredibly sad the stories i hear about people who've come out of the message and other other types of cults

uh... the damage that's been done to women is especially especially hard and it's just and it's just so sad that it happens that way you know yeah i know uh... hearing stories of uh...

you know women for for such petty little things being called horse you know and it's just it's devastating so good so john remember i mentioned i had two brothers so my brother Richard who was sixteen years older than i was uh... he's the one who who you know got us all involved in and and originally Christianity and then in the cold then i had my middle brother who was uh... eleven years older than me uh... and he and his wife also got involved in the cult uh... and he he became very dissolutioned with my brother

uh... because he could see the authoritarianism uh... coming in to the to the ministry and so he left but his wife did not his wife ended up staying so he and his wife split up so he went his own direction and my wife and i still tried to stay you know we stayed in the message with this message like church my brother danie well i guess you would say he using their terminology back so he went back into not being a christian uh... and i will revisit danie here and later on as to his what happened with with with him

but uh... as we were attending this uh... message like church we're getting we were getting tapes from the ministry uh... from the pastor there and uh... they instituted uh... according to what brand-of-metallic gift room right so where people would put have prophecy that was mostly women in the gift room and now you know now that i you know i i started to realize this most of what came out of the gift room was basically what the pastor in the ministry wanted but it was is being filtered through the so-called prophecies yes so yeah you're probably familiar with that too

i am in fact one of the uh... weird doctrines episodes we covered a woman who is quote-unquote speaking in tongues but she's literally just scolding the the people as if god is scolding the people through them yeah yeah it's it's it's that but anyway a prophecy prophecy came out of the gift room then my wife and i were supposed to move to Wisconsin as i was supposed to be where god wanted this right so i was really perplexed it's like well you know what if god wanted to say why did he tell us why did he want to go to school

so uh... but i can't we were we were Fixing on moving to Wisconsin to this this midwestern church. And so what happened was was this young man That I that went that I was friends with he he was moving out as well And so I ended up we ended up putting a lot of our furniture sitting out there to Wisconsin and So we sent it out there and at the time I had a temporary position I'm still working as a painter at the point and my brother Danny got me a job at a University working as a painter, but it was temporary

But what happened was is that they were gonna have a full-time position come open So I decided to apply for it and when I told the pastor and other people this why would you even bother doing that because God doesn't watch you there anymore God wants you up here So I went ahead and applied anyway, and I got ended up getting the job Which is interesting because now I ended up spending 40 40 year or 30 years in state government And end up being my career But at the time I had no clue. That's where my you know, my life was headed. But I

Started having questions about that too Because one of the things they believed in was they believed that their ministry superseded that of Brannum's So the way the way they they framed it was that Brannum was sent as a prophet and You know to to give the bride right teachings, but he was not an apostle So he really wasn't didn't have the authority to establish churches. Yeah, but guess who was guess who was given the authority to establish churches the pastor The other the other this other ministry, right? So And I remember even hearing him and I don't remember the exact reference

But there's another scripture in Revelation about three angels somewhere about him referring kind of alluding to the fact that his ministry was one of those angels And he was very really very brilliant man, but it was like, okay, this is really getting out of hand This is I was starting to question Brannum totally and it's like we just decided we're done with the whole thing So I ended up going to Wisconsin taking a getting a plane ticket going there running a truck and I didn't I don't talk I didn't talk to the pastor directly And I don't know why didn't I could have just been fear on my part

But I talked to some other people I talked to my friend and I said, you know, we're not moving We're just going to stay where we're at I know what we're going to do, but we're just going to stay where we're at because I don't feel good about any of this So we ended up severing ties there too So then we were just kind of like on our own right I still wanted to be a Christian at the time and you know, we tried to go to other churches But it just isn't nothing really seemed to fit

So I started I've always been Since I'd become a Christian I'd always been an avid reader, right when Richard would send me before before the message You know the Kenneth Hagen and the Derrick print all those kinds I just devoured them and then I devoured message books and the tapes and the transcripts, I just devoured all of them.

And I think that's one of the reasons I started to see where a lot of people who don't really get into it. They started to see the inconsistencies and the discrepancies and the strange, crazy stuff that Brandon said.

So I needed to find a way out of this. So I found some really positive Christian influences. I started reading, have you heard of watching me? I have not. So Watchman, he was a Christian in China who was persecuted by the kind of news Christians.

And he wrote prolifically, right? And it really grounded me just in some basic Christian understanding of grace and, you know, it helped me understand my theology straightened out. And watchman, he probably wrote, probably several dozen books, right?

So I got very interested in that. But then, all right, then this is going to find this really interesting. So Watchman, he had a disciple by the name of a witness Lee, right? Another Chinese gentleman.

And their whole thing was that God, there's only one church in a city. They called it the local church. So they established this mission and Watchman, he ended up dying in China, but witnessed Lee ended up taking this ministry and using a lot of Watchman, these teachings and creating another cult out of this.

And the whole prime, it was a much kinder, gentler cult than the message. They didn't have all the rules about, you know, how women should dress and all of that. I mean, they had some, but not nearly as strict.

But they did believe that the church was localized and that's, they call themselves the church that was in Denver or the church that was in San Diego, whatever it happened to be. So I tried that.

I said, well, you know what? I'm going to check this out. So I checked it out and I realized this is a lot better than the message, but it's still cultic in some capacity.

And I ended up meeting a guy there who also, he had been an elder there in the church and he started to see the discrepancies. So we became friends, he was older than me.

So, you know, I was in my mid 20s, he was probably in his mid 30s and we became friends and I told him about my experience with the message, he told me about his experience with the local church.

And he ended up leaving the local church while we only went to maybe a couple of services. And he and I, he started, so I'm going to start a Bible study for people who have been hurt by toxic religion.

So he started this Bible study and he invited me to be a part of it and I thought, wow, this is great. So the very first Bible study he had, I went to and, you know, he was, he had been an elder and a teacher and, you know, he knew the Bible really well and he was, he was very good and I really had a really, really good experience at this Bible study.

Well, do you remember me talking about my brother Danny, what had happened? Yeah, so I'd only gone to this Bible study once right and it was April 11th This is how how powerful of what I'm going to share with you the impact of that on me April 11th 1985 Um, I came home that night and the way my wife and I did when I would why would check out a church my wife did night I was the scout I would go and check out a church or Bible study and if I liked it I'd say this was pretty good. We should check it out and then she would come with me

She didn't like to go and just because it was like just too much because of everything we'd experienced with a message and so on So I came back from the Bible study and I was pretty happy and I thought oh this is the maybe this is the path I'm we're going to go and My wife met me at the door and she just looked so down front and And I go what's wrong honey? What's wrong?

Then she said they found Danny. I said, what do you mean? They said Danny is Danny to hide And I said he was only 37 And I said oh my god, and I know my everything my heart just sunk You know because 12 years later I'd lost my mom now and my brothers only 37 And I said what happened and this was the thing that really floored me. She said they think he was murdered

Wow wow so That that completely ended up ended my life It ended my other brother Richard's life my dad of course losing his son to something he he was he was murdered And what had happened was that So he had split up with his wife He had a so-called friend That he granted rented an apartment that was next to his And they had been on the outs they had they had gotten into some disagreements And they had gotten into a fight and my brother was a big man Remember the game he was a bodybuilder and he was a big man kind of intimidating

And I get apparently my brother had gone on the better of this other man in this fight And this other man went back to his room. They were like in the laundry room and he got two guns and he shot my brother So Yeah, horrible horrible So for a very short time this horrible experience brought my family together again So we ended up having coming together in my in my house Which was kind of centrally located just to try to figure out what was going on You know, we we kind of figured out right away that it was his room that was his so-called friend

That he that he lived in the same apartment complex that he lived in and It took about 18 months for I don't remember if the man turned himself in or if he was caught but eventually found him And he went to he went to trial and

The murder trial came up And I'll tell you John that was probably the one of the hardest things my family's ever had to experience was going through this murder trial And for me personally it was the time where I realized that I had lost two brothers I lost one through a murderer and one through a cult And what it had was through the course. So up to that point, the family was joined together to try to figure what happened to Danny and also joined together just in our deep grief for what had happened.

So by the time the murder trial rolled along and we were in the thick of it, I was abused as a character witness by the district attorney. So I was able to see everything that happened. And one of the tactics that the defense uses is to try to make the victim look bad. So they did everything in their power. And my brother Danny did have some things to get done. They were very unsavory and things that you know, but he didn't deserve to be killed for any of that. So what had happened was to make a long story short, this whole murder trial.

At the very end, a lot of people from my brother's church had come to support my brother, to support all of us. And they were talking religious talk, message talk. And there was a lot of talk about how this man needed to be the man that killed my brother. I needed to be executed and that he needs to go to hell and pay for what he did. And you know, I wanted him to be punished too, but I just felt like there was so much hatred and vehement. And then talking about the profit, all these other things that is part and parcel of the message. I just remember at one point,

me looked talking to him, he was talking telling me something. And I don't even know what he was telling me, but I remember I did not agree with any of it. And I just looked at him in a separate picture. I love you, but I don't agree with you on any of this stuff anymore. And I remember him looking at me and not saying anything and just walking away. And at that point, that was the point I realized I lost two brothers at that point. You know, one forever and the other one, I had no clue.

So at that point, we are our relationship, my relationship on Brother Richard, pretty much was severed for quite some time. Now things did start to get better eventually, but it took about 10 years for it to happen. And one of the reasons I did want to share my story here on your podcast was that just to maybe give people hope that things can get better, they may not with family, but eventually we started calling each other. We didn't see each other very much.

And I don't remember the impetus for all this, but the thing that I've realized too is that, you know, we all have complicated legacies. You know, we've all done things that are great and things are not so great. And that's including the people that influenced us in the call.

And when I talk, and this is, I know this frustrates my members and my family when I call my brother up. Old pastor. That doesn't mean, I don't think he was in many ways a good man, that he had parts of himself that were incredible, that he did some good things for a lot of people.

But, there's that other side too, the side that was damaged, a lot of people that heard a lot of families. And, you know, we need to be able to hold both those perspectives when we see. And at some point, when I'm gone and when you're gone, we're going to have these legacies too, that the paper going to have to recognize. Hopefully, you know, the things we've done well, the good things we've done will outweigh, the other things we've done.

But, you know, we've all have these complicated legacies. So, when we can see, I was able to see my brother through a different lens, and not just demonizing for, because he had his own reasons for getting involved in the message. And it takes a lot of courage to leave something like that. And even though I think he saw some of the inconsistencies, he had risen to a point where he was over a lot of people. He had a, how difficult, I was just at that point, just a low level believer. And even as hard as it was for me to leave,

I can't imagine somebody in the position of being a pastor coming to the congregation. So, hey, you know, this guy, Brandon, brother, Brandon, I not only think he was not a prophet, I think he was a con man, and all these other things, things, all the stuff that you've been able to uncover in your research. That would, that's really difficult. It takes so much courage to do that. It's hard to admit you're wrong.

Yeah, it's incredibly hard. And so, now, in my life now, as a leadership facilitator and coach, I've, one of the things I've been able to do is really get into how people develop, you know, how people grow in the tour. You know, it used to be up until like the 1970s, most psychologists believe that once you hit your early 20s, that you just stopped growing emotionally and intellectually, is that you were done. But they've, they've since that point, a lot of some incredible theorists, psychologists, and so on, have realized, no, that's not the case, that we can, that we can continue to grow. Not everybody

does, obviously. But we can continue to grow for our entire lives. And one of the things I've learned, I learned this actually from an author by the name of Nick Petri, who studies leadership development. He says there are three things that it takes to grow to the next level of our development. The first one is heat experiences. These are difficult things that we go through. The second one is colliding perspectives. So, in order for us to change our mind, we need to have input from other sources. And this is one of the reasons to cults keep those resources away from people. They don't want people

to see different perspectives. They want people just to hear... or what they're saying, whatever that message happens to be. Because when people hear other perspectives, then the possibility becomes that they might change their mind and see something different.

So in the last one is then that it's called elevated sense-making. So the heat experiences are those experiences raised. This stuff that I'm saying just doesn't make sense. You find other resources, you get different perspectives, and then you start to make your paradigm complete in changes.

You have an elevated sense of sense-making. They do not want you to learn anything that is logical or anything that could cause you to explore the critical thought. Critical thinking is suppressed, but one of the weird things that I've learned is that when you're in these cults, they don't even allow you to do many of the self-help studies and courses and self-help books.

They don't want you to better yourself. Right. They really don't. They want to keep you subjected to them. It's a form of patriarchy. It really is. And authoritarian, it's power over is what it is.

Another, it's funny. I'm not Catholic. I never went back to the Catholic Church, but I do admire some Catholic teachers. One is a guy by the name of Richard Roar. And he's a French-Suscan Christian mystic.

And one of the things he said was that the only thing that people, only reason people really change is either two things, great pain or great love. And I think it's both that when you're in the message, and you're dealing with this great pain that the things aren't making sense, you have to love the truth enough to make the courageous steps, to make the decisions, to do what you have to do, to leave, to confront the authority, to do whatever it is.

You have to love the truth enough. You have to love yourself enough. You have to love your own family enough to be able to make those decisions. And it was some of the hardest things I've ever done was making these decisions, too, because I had looked up to my brother.

He was an early mentor. And I still believed that my brother cared for me, that he still loved me, but he had a warped perception of what that meant. There's another saying, and this is in the business world, but the saying is that if you put a good person in a bath system, the system wins every time.

And that was related to organization, but I think the same thing applies to any system, especially churches. You know, you put good people in these bath systems, and the system wins out every time.

Yeah, that's, that is a terrible heartbreaking story. What happened between you and your brother after all of this? So once that, you know, when I shared that, that we had that confrontation right after the murder trial, and I wasn't in the courtroom, it was in the hallway of the courtroom.

We were on the Heritage List for probably about 10 years, where we pretty much had no or various... little interaction with my brother, and my dad, remember my dad's here too, right? He never had gotten involved.

And my brother Richard demonized my dad not so much because he didn't accept the message because he never really got involved in any of the religious stuff. He was kind of like a bystander.

When my mom died, my dad started dating again, right? And he had lots of girlfriends, you know, he had that, that, that, I call it the labor charm. He had a lot of girlfriends and, you know, my brother didn't think that was right.

So he demonized my dad for his lifestyle. So my dad was pretty upset about that, that Richard was demonizing it for that. So at that point, the only family that I had connection to was my dad, right?

So eventually though, my brother did come around, and he did come around to the point where he realized that the way he was treating my father was inappropriate. So he, he went to my dad and he apologized to my dad.

And he started talking to my dad and my dad actually started going to the church. Now my dad, my dad was a funny guy. He never believed any of it, but he wanted to be a part of Richard's life, so he would go to church, right?

And then he my dad also said, and he said, plus they take me to lunch afterwards. So, so he'd go to church with my brother and he told me about my brother apologizing to him.

And my dad asked me, you know, did he ever apologize to you for the way he treated you? I said no. So my dad had three things that upset him about my brother, that he never told him, I wish he would have talked to him about this, but my dad was very passive, even passive aggressive in some ways.

They're a good man, kind man, gentle man, but he was very conflict boy. The first one was that he apologized to my dad, but he never apologized to me. The second one was he didn't like the way he treated his wife, my brother's wife was named Dorothy.

Dorothy was one of the kindest, sweetest women you'd ever want to meet. You know, I'm very devout, message follower. And my brother was very harsh with her in a lot of ways, just like a lot of message man alarm.

You know, I know you loved his wife very deeply, but still, you know, Dorothy, get me this, Dorothy do that. So that was the second thing, and the third thing, and my dad saw through a lot of the cult influences, even though he may not have had the frame of reference that we do to look at it.

He said, I don't like the way he treats his church. He says, he snaps his fingers and those people come running. And he saw the authoritarianism that was there in the church. So my dad had a lot of repressed anger, and my dad eventually passed away in 2003.

Someone, even though my brother did try, my dad did not have the, I don't know if he didn't have the skill or afforded to. to really talk to my brother about these things, but he died somewhat alienated for my brother.

And, but thankfully, the last week or so before he died, it was my wife who was able to talk to him about his anger issues towards my brother. So, in his heart, he started to make amends.

He never talked to my brother, I wish he would have. And I never, after my dad died, I never shared with my brother the reasons that my dad had had animosity toward him. Now that I look back, I wonder if I made an mistake, if maybe I should have, but I felt like that was not my story to tell.

So, I never did share that with my brother. So, my brother, my dad passed away in 2003. And we both talked about, you know, now it's just me and my brother, Richard, we're the only ones left.

We talked about maybe getting together and at that point, up until my dad, towards the latter years of my dad's life, we were starting to do more things together as a family. We visited the church, they did a special thing for my dad, first birthday or something, and we visited the church.

And we were able to talk even a little bit about religion. You know, my brother had said that God had told him that he and his wife would be alive when the rapture happened, right?

So, you know, and now I've since learned that the rapture is a doctrine that wasn't even original to the church that it came in later. I think it's a silly doctrine, but, you know, very, very much people believed it.

I believed it at 1.2. And I didn't push back. I just said, well, I thought the Bible said that no man knows that they are the hour. And he said, yeah, but I'm not saying I know when it's gonna happen.

I just know that we're gonna be alive when it happens. I said, well, okay. And then I would joke and we both had a good sense of humor. He said, so when the rapture happens, gonna have your stuff and he laughs, he says, sure, I'm not gonna need it, right?

Well, what had happened then later was that his wife, this is after my father died, his wife started getting ill. And eventually, you know, she started having these mobility issues. She came down with ALS.

And, you know, she's the first person I've ever known that has ever gotten that disease. But I'd read about it. I read how devastating it was. And it wasn't incredibly devastating. So, she eventually passed away.

And I think this was like 2013. And I think what happened with my brother was he started to be confronted with the fallacy of his thinking. Well, there goes that, right? That Dorothy's not gonna make the rapture now because she's dying.

The other thing he told me when she got it, she said, I know for sure, God's gonna heal her. She's gonna get over all this and God's gonna heal her. And I remember talking to him and saying, I hope you're right.

I hope God does heal her. But obviously that never happened. So, she passed away. And, you know, for several months before she passed away, my wife and I were trying to go to see her and my brother kept giving me excuses, you know, well, now it's like the time or she's not feeling good or whatever.

And it wasn't until the graciousness of another family member who called and said, if you want to see Dorothy, you're going to have to come because she's on her last last days. So we finally got to see her.

And what was so sad was just not just seeing her, but my brother was so defeated at that point in his life. You know, his own health had started failing drastically. So he had stepped away from the minister.

He was still officially the pastor, but other men had taken up the slack. He wasn't really preaching much anymore. He was morbidly obese, very, very heavy. I even don't even want to guess how big it was, but very, very heavy.

Had all sorts of health problems. And it was just like his life was starting to fall apart. It was so incredibly sad. So Dorothy passed away and it was so heartbreaking for him. Because even though they still had that patriarchal message kind of relationship, I really do believe they loved each other very, very deeply, very, very deeply.

So he was devastated. And what had happened, I didn't mention this, but a few years prior to that, his oldest daughter committed suicide. And she left the message early, and she was put out from under the blood.

I don't know if my wife and I were ever put out from under the blood, but I know she was, because we had heard that that happened. She ended up getting into drugs, and she wasn't young when she took her life.

She's like 45 had a family. But the sad thing that one of the things that grieves me is that because we left the message fairly early, we never really got to see his kids grow up, we need to get to see my kids grow up.

And so there was that disconnection. And after his daughter commits suicide, I remember talking to my brother. And I wish I had talked to his daughter a couple of times on the phone, but we didn't really have much of a relationship.

And my brother and I kind of had this unspoken rule that he wouldn't try to influence my children, to try to go to the message, and I wouldn't try to influence his children and whatever it is I happened to believe.

But I said, I wish I could have talked to her, because I had struggled with severe depression in my life at times, and even had suicidal ideation. I said, I wish I could have talked to her and maybe I could have helped her.

So that had happened in between the death of, so he'd now he'd lost his daughter, and now he's lost his wife, right? So two years later, Richard passes away in 20... 50. I talked to him a few times between the death of his wife and the time he died.

And there was a part of Richard that I think in some ways maybe only I saw. The part of him that was pre-message, that the part of him that where he was still my big brother, that he really loved me, and I really loved him. And it was like a part from all of the toxic influences of religion and the cult and all these things. I felt like I was able to reach a little bit of part of him in that. And that's the part I want to remember about him.

And you could find this really interesting, John, and I'm kind of saving this part for last, remember my brother Danny, right? So after Danny had left the church, he was a painter, sometimes we worked on projects together. My brother Danny was not a very spiritual person, he wasn't one to dream or talk about prophecy or anything of that sort. He told me about a dream he had. And even sharing this, I don't want it to make it seem like I am putting more on this than possible. But I think it's kind of profound at least, at least for me. He had a dream that

this skeleton and a cowboy outfit was riding a horse and was asking for my brother Richard. And Danny said the dream he felt like to kill him. And my brother Danny said, no, you can't have him take me instead. And this was even after my brother Danny was very alienated for my brother Richard. And we had no clue what that meant, right? And shortly later my brother passed away. And my brother died. He was murdered on April 11, 1985. 30 years to the day on April 11, 2015. My other brother dies from natural causes. Wow. It's such a tragic story. And I can't

even imagine going through some of the things that you went through. It's hard for all of us, obviously, when you leave a cult, people say it's the most difficult time of your life leaving.

But then on top of all of that, you had things that were even far more difficult than going than leaving the cult. If you could go back in time and say something to your former self while you were in this or to your brothers, to your family, what would you say to yourself?

Well, that's a really good question. Because when you're going through it, you can't really say the end of it. And you don't know what you're last going to be down the road. You know, you make these decisions to cut off relationships, to do what you think is right. And you don't, you don't know what's going to happen. But I guess what I would tell my younger self is that that I did make the right choice, that it was worth it. You know, the pain that I was going through, be worth it in the long run.

For my children, my children's children, because, you know, John, you and I, we are cyclebreakers. You know, we made the decision that we, our families and our future generations are not going to have to go through this because we made those hard decisions to do that.

The other day, I had posted something about, on Facebook, about toxic religion. And some people had commented, I made a comment, I said, toxic, toxic religion, almost destroyed my family. And, I'm gonna get a little tear up here.

My, my oldest son, who's 47, now my kids didn't really experience much of the message. Probably my oldest son, the most, he was very small when we left. But he came back on and he posted, and this is what he said, his name's Mark as well.

He said, I'm so glad I didn't destroy our whole family. Your family is here and loves and appreciate you and mom more than anything. The strength that took you both to leave that toxic environment, even though it meant losing some dear family connections, has it made all the difference for your children and everyone that comes after us, you did a good thing.

It's so hard, Mark, I can't even imagine. Like, I'm struggling myself not to cry. It's thinking of all of the many things that you had to go through, and on top of that, experiencing the cult and experiencing different cultish groups that were even levels beyond what I grew up with.

Can't even imagine. But I am so happy that you're out. Like I said, we've known each other for many years now, and it's been, yeah, it's been great just knowing you and talking to you through the...

Oh, you're doing it. It's an honor to know you. And let me know if there's anything I can do to help you in your cause with, you know, the ex-message believer stuff, I mean that...

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Well, 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, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branum, and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.