Our Stories: Escaping NAR - An Interview With Jesse Aldrich

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-Branum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Jesse Aldridge, former cult member.

Jesse, we've been exchanging emails talking about some of your history and it was becoming so fascinating, I just paused and I said let's stop the emails and let's bring you on the podcast and let you share your story to the world. So here we are today and that's what we're attempting to do. So maybe it would be good if you could introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about yourself. Sure. Well number one, John, thank you for having me on.

It is humbling and I'm not going to lie here. I'm nervous. I really was kicking it. It's screaming to get on this. I didn't want to and my wife just sat me down and says, Jesse, you need to tell your story. It's important and I think it's going to bring healing to others as well. So yeah, so I basically, I've got, I was married previously, married and I'll talk about that in my testimony, lost my wife and had four children with her. I've since been remarried. I brought in three additional children and so now there's seven of us. Some of the

children are of course older, 18 and out of the house. We still have two that are in the house.

So that's kind of where we're at, we're busy. We have a busy life and yeah, so we're trying to put the pieces together and and continue on, you know, living life to the fullest. Awesome.

Well for the listeners who might be interested in giving your story and sharing it with the others, I tell everybody just like I told you right before this, it's a casual conversation and the intent is to have fun, share your story and maybe everybody can learn from it. Everybody's welcome if you have escaped something like this and to help people feel better. Like I say, it's a casual conversation that we have and one lady we were talking and I could tell she was just so incredibly nervous. I stopped like mid-sentence and I said, okay, Okay, let's talk about the weather.

I can't remember what it was, but let's talk about something else for a while, and let's calm down a bit. Because this is for fun, but also to help people by sharing your story, other people can find encouragement.

So don't be nervous at all. Just tell us what happened and what got you to the point you are today. Yeah, well, so going back in my history, I grew up in a family that you could consider a Christmas, a CE family, Christmas and Easter family.

We had lived in another location and they were all into the Methodist church, but Christmas and Easter. And that's kind of what I experienced and then gradually went into the Lutheran church. And so I was baptized and confirmed Luther.

At the age of 13, became close friends with a young man who was in my class and invited me to a Bible camp. And of course, at that point in time, there was an altar call that was given the classic type of Billy Graham altar call.

And I had went forward to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. It wasn't, at that point leading up to the age of 13, you know, you basically do what any child does.

And at the age of 13 and onward, things began to change and spiritually speaking. I began to think about God more and wondered what my life was about.

At the age of 15, I began to have spiritual experiences. Now I wasn't in a Pentecostal or charismatic or anything like that. Nor had I ever even heard of such things. I didn't, you know, wasn't really into the Bible, but reading it a little bit.

But at the age of 15, I had a spiritual experience. And the reason I want to share this with you is simply because I look at those individuals that are in NAR, those that are in the fivefold ministries.

And I see so many of them that have spiritual experiences. And they can justify in their mind that next layer of spirituality. And so at the age of 15, I had this spiritual experience where I had a vision.

And I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but in this vision, there was one part of it where I was standing at the Vatican, on the steps of the Vatican. And I was standing.

something to the Pope and I was very upset with the Pope and telling him there was a lot of false things that he was doing. Now I'm not crazy, I'm 15 years old. There were spiritual words, there were doctrinal words that were coming out of me, but I didn't know what it meant. And so from there my life began to become more spiritual. I was very literate, I couldn't read very well. I remember when I was very young, I used to have to take special ed classes. And I had to learn how to read and

it was horrible. And my brother's friend had left a Bible here in the house, some odd reason, and I picked it up and it was a yearly Bible. And I made it my mission to read the Bible in one year. By the end of the year of reading that Bible, I was very fluent in reading. It was truly a miraculous encounter that God had done in my heart. And ever since then, I've been able to read fluently, three to four or five books a week I could read. So it was pretty incredible. And so I

was looking and seeing what God was doing in my life. At the age of 18, the friend that I had become very close to at the age of 13, decided that he was going to go to Bible school in Germany.

And I wanted to go with. And so I went to Germany to a six-month intense Bible school. It was hooked on to torchbearer Bible school with major eontomas. It was the first time that I had ever heard of the teaching on Christ in you, the doctrine of Christ in you out of Colossians.

And it was it was a beautiful message. And I got to meet major eontomas. He was back in the 40s and 50s and 60s and he ended up starting these Bible schools. It was non-denominational. There were 17 nationalities that were represented there. And people came from from from all over the world and got to learn their culture and their background. And the beautiful thing about this Bible school was is they would have speakers come from all over the world. And they would teach all different types of denominations. Well, this is what this denomination teaches and this denomination teaches this and so on and so forth.

Well, I remember there was one week where we had some Jehovah witnesses that came to our school a couple elders. And the president of the Bible school grabbed me. Now I was still so new to so many things, John. And I sat down and I began to hear what these Jehovah witnesses believed. And I really didn't know. I was very ignorant still at that time. Just learning the scriptures, line of pun line. And so after sitting down with them for about three hours, there was something that stirred within.

me that just wasn't right with their character, with their opinions, with so many things, and it caused me to really, that was something that caused me to just really get into scriptures, to try to understand, what do they believe?

Not do I believe, you know, and began to really begin to study the trinity as well. And I became, you know, I had a Bible that I had for about three years. I mean, I had studied it so much that the pages began to wear through, but I called it my Trinitarian Jehovah Witness Bible.

And those elders would continue to keep coming back and I would sit down and that's kind of where my ministry developed in, in ministering to the Jehovah Witnesses. And then it began to develop into ministering to cults, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, just multiple, but the mainline cults that, that most, you know, fundamental churches know.

And so there was one incident that occurred after meeting with some Jehovah Witnesses. In our Bible school, we had a prayer room and everybody was at class and my heart was so heavy after meeting with these Jehovah Witnesses and I was praying for them.

And I remember going into that Bible school, our prayer room and I got down to my knees and began to pray and and all of a sudden I just felt a strong presence of the spirit of the Lord and I began to speak in tongues and I had never heard of speaking in tongues before.

You know, the school that I was at, I later came to find out there was a couple of charismatic Pentecostals that were there from Africa that I got to talk to a little bit.

But I don't know how, I don't remember how long I spoke in tongues but I remember my heart just poured out such love for these Jehovah Witnesses to pray that they would receive you know, salvation, truth and so on.

And what happened was, is that after I kind of gathered myself and wiped away the snot and the tears and the moment that I had with the Lord, I was, I didn't know what happened and I didn't tell anybody.

A week later at the Bible school, there was a teacher that came from England and he spoke on the spiritual gifts. And of course, once again, he said, well, Baptist, believe this, some of God teach this, Lutherans believe this and so on.

And I remember when the class got done, I was heading out the door and there was about six of my friends and one of them was my best friend from high school standing there and I heard my name Jesse, come here.

come here and I came walking over and he said, Jesse, what do you think about this speaking in tongues? And I was put right on the spot, John. And I said, well, I said, uh, to tell you the truth, I said, uh, I did last week. And I'll never forget the look on my friend's face. It was, it was complete disgust. And he said to me, Jesse, don't you know that speaking in tongues is of the devil. Now I had looked up to him, his family was, was like a family to me. And uh, for the next

year, John, I, uh, every time I would get into deep prayer, these, the tongues would rise up in me and I would immediately stop it. And I would just say, devil, this is, this is a view, this is not of God. And, and I would just cut it off about a year after that of, of doing that. I remember one time out, my, my heart was so heavy and I was praying and all of a sudden I could feel that the tongues were rising up in me to, to speak in tongues. And I once again just said, devil and all the

sun as soon as I began to do that, it was as though the Holy Spirit came into me and just gave me the scripture, why are you grieving me? Why are you grieving me? And I remember just breaking down and bawling. And I said, Lord, I, I don't know if this is, if you were not, but if it is, reveal it to me. My heart's prayer, John, from when I came to know the Lord and as I began to develop was always Lord, you're the truth. You're the truth. And I want nothing but the truth.

And so I said, Lord, if this is the truth and you have to reveal it to me. And so about, uh, a week later, I'm in a house church and uh, someone had had come into the house church and, uh, and began, and began, he was, he was a Pentecostal. And I shared with him about what my experience was and he began to give me the scripture verses. I said, I need to, I need to see it. I need to see it.

And, and that's what it really came down to for me. So, so my heart was constantly looking for more of Jesus. I was having the spiritual experiences that I was having. And, uh, and, and of course, I, you know, beautiful experiences at a Bible school in Germany. I was, uh, I was asked to stay on and, and, and go into Romania and to missions work and so on. And I did that.

Then I came back home and, uh, and went to a secular college for a couple of years. And I only went there for, for one simple reason. And that was to start a college church. And I didn't really care about, you know, getting, uh, getting any, any type of diploma or anything, John, I, I, I just simply wanted to tell people about Jesus. I just love Jesus. You know, you were mentioning about the Jehovah's Witnesses. And I've, I've told this before a couple of times, but when I was working with Dr. Stephen Hassan, he was, I'm a Star Trek fan if you can't tell from the, you know, all

of the different, I've got a spaceship right here. I think this one is the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, but he, he found out I was a Star Trek fan and he mentioned that he had helped, he had worked with the guy on the set of the next generation Star Trek program and that guy said that his wife had been converted into the Jehovah's Witnesses and he said, this was the greatest form of evil I have ever encountered.

Help me create a villain that resembles that in Star Trek and that is how the concept of Star Trek Borg came about and, yeah, it's a, and, you know, it's crazy if you think about the similarities between the Borg and a cult, but what's, what's even more interesting, you also mentioned Mormons and witnessing to them.

When I was in the cult that we escaped, we had a couple of the, couple of Mormons coming, you know, they come door to door and most people turn away while I let, I let them in because I'm one of these people who let anybody, you know, come talk to me and, so they got in and they started talking to me and they, I don't know what you called the two of them.

There's one of them that is very professional, very skilled, has a used car salesman, kind of smile on his face and then there's another one that's like in training and in Star Wars they would call this the Padawan learner and so as we get to talking, you know, I'm talking to the skilled used car salesman guy and I'm asking him some very, very targeted questions because I know even back then I knew Mormonism and I knew it was a cult and the irony that was that I was in a cult, but I kept asking questions and you could see in the Padawan

learner's eyes is eyes got like this big and you could tell that I had pretty much de-converted him while they were trying to convert me and I was still in a cult. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, we, my wife and I, we were so bold, John, we would go and stand outside their congregations, waiting for them to come also, we could witness to them.

And yeah, we just, that's what we felt our ministry was intended to look like it was going to go. So, and we were young, you know, my wife and I, we were 20, 21 years old at the time and we just, we weren't going to stop, we were going to tell everybody the truth.

So, oh boy, yeah, so, so we were, what we ended up doing was as we stayed in the secular college for a couple of years and then we felt that the Lord was leading us to another Bible school and so we ended up going to a Bible school and it was associated with Christian machine alliance and, and of course, I've, I've, I've watched.

plenty of you know your podcast and so on and the website and it's fascinating to hear just some of the history of AB Simpson and others that are connected to all that as looking back on it now. And so I also became a youth pastor at that time with the United Methodist Church.

And so it was kind of interesting because I just continued to grow in my spiritual gifting but of course these these denominations and so on. That's not really where Pentecostalism is and so there was definitely conflicts that were arising.

In this Bible school that I was attending they had a massive library and so of course this was right when the internet was coming out but you know you didn't really have computers and you had dial up and so on but I remember I began to do a study and somehow and I don't remember I remember it started with FF Bosworth that I that I was looking into and I remember hearing the name William Branham for the first time and I thought who is this man named William Branham and I just started to consume this you know there's a quote it says ego is able to convert anything to its own use

even spirituality and I just wanted more spirituality and so I'm looking at FF Bosworth and then all of a sudden I come across William Branham and I'm seeing here is this man that can you know heal the sick and and just massive healings and he's all over the world and and and so all the Sun I I can't quite remember I I know I got I've got several Hibba's books I don't remember the timeline of how I got them all but the very first one I ordered was the Seven Church Ages and and I started looking into other material as well but here was the one thing when I looked

back John this is the one thing that caused me to question where I spiritually was and the doctrinal beliefs that I had and that was the whole idea of of the Trinity and and in associate associated with that connected with that was come out of her my people now when when when when reading into that I remember back to that vision I had about the Catholic Church and it connected with me and I began to get deeper into what William Branham was saying I thought, well, who could question this individual?

You know, I mean, he's got all the signs and the wonders and everything else. And now he's got this understanding of the Catholic church and who it is. And that must mean, that must kind of be the interpretation of what my vision was when I was younger.

And so he had me hooked. Hookline and sinker, he had me hooked. And so it ended up where I remember going to my wife, we began to read more and more on this. And I wanted to be more spiritual and I wasn't getting the spirituality that I wanted, that I was longing for where we were at.

And we ended up leaving. I was a youth pastor, I left the church, we left the Bible school, and now my wife was raised.

And this all would come back, it would all be interconnected. But she was raised in a small little house church type setting where the woman that was her teacher was associated with Bill Britten and the whole sun shit movement.

Now all of this began to connect to me. I had thrown it off in my early days when we were in Bible school. It was like, that's crazy talk. And they preached Jesus Christ baptism, just like William Brannum had.

And so of course, here I am, I start studying this and William Brannum made sense. Baptized in the name of the father's son and Holy Ghost. Well, who is that name? If you remember William Brannum said, who is that name?

Well, it's Jesus Christ, and so I just began to just eat up everything he was saying. Yeah, and the funny part about that, I remember the same thoughts. And I went through a lot of similar journeys that you had, believe it or not.

But I remember clearly when I left the cult, I kept going through my head, who is the name of God and it's Jesus Christ. And we were taught that Jesus was the first name in Christ was the last name, which isn't at all correct.

And the way that he had his baptized and everything, it had to be, there's like the specific word phrase that you had to use. And so it became like this enchantment. The power of your salvation was literally in the words that were being spoken.

And after a while I started scratching my head after I left and I was like, wait a minute, that's kind of witchcraft, man. That's not the Christian faith. But I went through very similar, I read the Bible constantly when I was in the cult.

And I... I was told falsely by that man who I was listening to these ridiculous sermons of. He was saying incorrectly what trinitarians believe. He said that trinitarians believe in three gods and therefore they're false and how can you deny this?

And of course I can't deny this, right? The man, it's a red herring. It's not true. Right. And I remember getting in this argument with this guy who's a trinitarian, I think he was maybe bad, just I can't remember.

But anyway, he and I went back and forth and I was rattling off scriptures. He was rattling off scriptures and I was telling him that trinitarianism is of the devil because that's what I was told.

But I was explaining to him the exact thing that he believed, which was that there's a father, there's a son, there's a holy ghost and he's three or one and he's like, wait a minute, man, you're saying what I'm saying.

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. It's so true. And this is the incredible thing about the deception here, John, is, you know, here I am, you know, I've got a Bible that I used, you know, to go to the Jehovah witnesses, to go to the Mormons and to be able to see how these little twists in the truth begin to make you step back.

And of course, then you add on the healings and the, you know, all these miracles that William Branham had and how can you deny it? How can you deny it? And so then of course, we get, we ended up leaving Bible school and we go back to what my, my wife had been raised up to the age of seven is, is she had been in this, you know, this kind of cult like commune.

They believed in, you know, not to be of the flesh. You had men had to wear corduroy pants, which was really hot during the summer months might I add. Jean's were denim, that was of the world.

You couldn't wear that. Women had to wear the dresses, no, no makeup. We even had a home delivery, no, nobody that, we didn't have a nurse, we didn't have it. We had to, we had to believe that Jesus Christ, you know, he was, God was going to be the one that would deliver it.

And we had a beautiful home birth, believe it or not. And I look back at it now and I thought, wow, was I crazy, we were crazy. We wanted to be so faithful, John, we just, we wanted to be faithful.

And so of course, you know, I got stronger and stronger in believing that, you know, that the churches, the denominations, that, that they were the great Babylon, the, the great whore of, of revelation and, and we just continued to, to break ourselves away from the church.

And we had, we had beautiful moments while we were in the churches, you know, all different denominations, beautiful friendships and, and we destroyed them. It was, it was on us because we had believed this.

lie that they were the ones that had been seduced and lied to and of course what happens when that occurs. Now your doctrine begins to change because now you no longer believe in the Trinity. You believe that all the denominations are the great horror of Babylon and now you're beginning to be looked at as a cult. Well then your mind starts going to the place of you know, well we're being, we're the ones being crucified for Christ. It's us and that just means that we're in the truth. It's just it's such a lie that ends up happening in our mind and we just

got stronger and stronger and I got in and but study more and more in it. You know I ended up reaching out you know to to build Britain's ministry and you know got into the George Warnock and E.D. Preston E.D. all you know all these different individuals and began to read the history and you know bringing William Branham in it and looking at the Nicene Council of you know all these different things and just kind of honing in on understanding you know the Jesus Christ baptism and the oneness and it wasn't really oneness according to Branham but you know just just looking

into that and trying to get that doctrine set in my mind so that I could go out and tell others about it and so we get up to that point and the the the the teacher I don't really want to say pastor because that was considered Catholic as well so we didn't like to use any of those types of names but but she was kind of the leader and she said you know it was kind of a commune in a lot of ways and so she passed away and now we were in limbo what were we going to do

this woman she actually she right before she died she laid hands on me and as that as that saying goes she passed the mantle on to me and and of course this terrified me and I and I so thank the Lord because for me I felt I wasn't ready I didn't want to be a teacher I didn't want to be any of those type of things still down in the in the depths of my heart I just wanted truth I want to know Jesus I thought I had found the truth and and so what it happened was is you know

I spent the next year of of just searching and of course now we have you know greater extent of at this point in time of of the internet and I'm looking online and of course I get more associated with the apostles and the the prophets of of the build britain group and and so I start getting involved in in in their online you know message centers and so on and messaging back and forth and adding my little information to it and of course I began to grow in that and then of course I started getting accepted to come and speak and so we began to travel

to other locations in the Wisconsin and to Illinois and of course this name started floating around that I was now this young apostle and I was about 24, 25 years at the time and of course John you get a name associated with that you know a young apostle while your head begins to get bigger and I ran from it you know but yet it was enticing that this didn't say the least but but I just they bring you in and and so we spent a couple years doing this and of course we became more caught like in the communities eyes and so on and radical and so on believing the type of

beliefs we did because I was still very involved in trying to get those that were in the churches out of the churches over to our side but so so that's kind of where we were at that point in time.

Yeah 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 Steven Montgomery 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 and as always be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support. You know it's funny you were running from being called the Young Apostle wherever since I've started this podcast I get labeled the Young Devil so it's your fossil my devil you know when I left the cult like I said I read the Bible constantly and even after I left I read it more because I wanted to wash all of that stuff out of my head there's this weird thing when you're in a cult you read it through the lens as though you're looking through the glass of the cult's doctrine and so everything

that I read was different after I left once I realized that this was false yes I can clearly remember reading a passage in the Bible. and my head had like snapped out of it.

And I read that same exact passage the next day and it said the polar opposite of what I had just read. And I'm like, no, there's can't be. So, you know, flipping back and forth.

But I got to, I read the Bible cover to cover, like I lost count 10, 15 times. But I got to Ezekiel 16. And when you go back into, you look at the laterane movement, which William Brannam was a part of, even go back further, look at what Bosworth was in.

He was in a cult. All of the cult strategies that they teach you is the come out of her, my people. It's come out of whatever you're in because you can join our cult.

That's basically what this is, right? And I was reading Ezekiel 16. We were taught, not corduroy, but we had a lot of the same things. You're not allowed to wear earrings. Don't dress yourself up to look haughty, pretty.

Because God doesn't like beauty. That's another one of these cult things, which is a strategy they want the cult people to be able to identify one another. If they can make them dress differently, they're a cohesive group and they can see outsiders versus insiders.

So, I'm reading Ezekiel 16 and, oh my gosh, here's God who loves beauty and he takes Jerusalem and I gave you beautiful jewelry and an earring in your ear and a nose ring in your nose.

And I'm like, this minute earrings are off the devil, man. We call those the devil stirrups. But there were very clear things in the 60s and you know, you fast-forward today, there's also very clear things that they associated with Sodom.

And there were all of these Sodom doctrines. Sodom was condemned and burned and destroyed because they did X. And then a few generations later is because they did Y. And then Zee, and who knows how many different condemnations of Sodom that you can come up with.

But I got to verse 49 where it said, and also by the way, Jerusalem was the queen of all the harlots, according to Ezekiel 16, which totally defies the Catholic stuff that we had.

But I got to, again to verse 49, this was the sin of your sister Sodom. So it said Jerusalem was the sister of Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned and did not help the poor and needy.

They were haughty and did detestable things and therefore did away with them. But Samaria did not commit half the sins that you did. Jerusalem. Yes. And so I'm reading this in arrogance. Well wait a minute, our cult indoctrination was an arrogant indoctrination.

We were taught and trained and manipulated to be arrogant. And every single thing that I read in Ezekiel 16 applied to the cult. And suddenly I woke up, wait a minute, which is the real harlot here in the Catholic church or this cult?

just escaped. Yes. Yes. So true. That's, that's really good, John. I, you know, the more as I have, have left everything that I was in, I, I do, I, I, God, looks at the heart. You know, it's, it's truly fascinating of, of this exterior and everything that we attempt to do workwise. And it, and it, it's just, it's, it's pride and it's arrogance and it's, it's, it's competition and it's, it's all of these different things. And, and yet, God just keeps coming back to the heart, the heart. I look at your heart. And, and, and so, yeah, we,

we, so, so we were involved, you know, in Bill, Britain's ministry and, and, and Brandon, just kind of a collection of all these different cults and beliefs and so on. And, and here's where it came to, John. So I had experienced all of the, the gifts out of 1 Corinthians 12. I had been involved in deliverance ministry and, and this wasn't done and, and, you know, big, glamorized type, you know, mass, mass churches and, and so on, but they would be in little house settings and so on. But, but deliverance of, of, of casting demons out and seeing people manifest

and, you know, the speaking and tongues and the interpretation of tongues and the prophecy, the healings, you know, even the raising of the dead had seen God do some miraculous things. And here was the thing, John. I wasn't satisfied. I remember telling people I would talk with, because I had friends within the summons of God Church and the Pentecostal churches and I said, you know, I said, I've seen all these things. I've experienced the, the book of Acts chapter 2, I've experienced those things. And yet, I'm not satisfied with those things. I even wrote a song

back in the late 90s about that that I've seen the visions and, and, and dream the dreams and, and cast out demons and healed the sick. And yet, there's one thing that I still long for.

And that's just to sit at the throne, at the feet of the throne of Jesus Christ. Well, here's what happened. Mystery comes into play. The mystery of the gospel. What I had heard back in the, the early, the mid 90s out of major eontomuses and the Bible school had been to and about the whole doctrine of Christ and you out of collations, it, it, it manifested into this whole new concept of, of the, the, the mystery of, of scriptures.

What is it? What is this divine doctrine? And, and so I began to, to look into that. There was a passage in, in Romans chapter 16, where it says, now to him, that is a power to establish you according to my gospel.

the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began. Now, of course, you cut it off right at that verse, but the rest of the verses, but now is made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets according to the commands of the everlasting. See, it happened, but yet you don't go that far. You stop right there and you say, oh, what is the mystery? What's the mystery of Christ in you? That was one of random strategies as well. And I'll never forget when I read that next verse without the cult lens.

And I'm like, what in the world were we thinking, man? The mystery is right here. Yes. Yes. It's truly amazing because it keeps you captured into this belief that, you're learning these new mysteries and you think there's something new that's never occurred before. But here's the reality. The reality is that there's nothing new. There's truly nothing new under the sun. But for my wife and I, we got into this whole mystery idea and what is the mystery of this Christ in you and this gospel and so on. And so I began to search. I wasn't satisfied with

just the gifts. I wanted something more. I had this incredible spiritual experience. And in the group that I was in with the the Bill Britain type group and there's apostles and prophets all over the world, I had this incredible vision and I sent this vision to them. None of them could interpret it. And I thought, well, that's strange. And I remember one night I'm sitting there about 2 a.m. and I typed it into the computer a couple of the words of regarding this vision that I had. And only seven hits came up on my computer. Usually when you do that, it's about a

million hits. And one of them seemed to be glowing off of the screen. And so I clicked on it and brought me to this website. And this website taught that what was called the doctrine of Christ.

It was considered to be the divine doctrine of Christ. Now, what this teaching taught was that the fivefold ministry of apostles and prophets and evangelist teachers and pastors that that was under the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is only the down payment, the foretaste of things to come. And what is that thing to come? Christing you, the hope of glory, the hope of glorification.

So now I step back and I go, William Brandon didn't have it. Bill Britain didn't have it. They only had they had the gifts and the healings and they had all these different things and you know they had teaching but it stopped in the Holy Spirit realm.

See, now Christ Jesus, now this next realm, he's the man, he's the one who is the righteous one. Well that's why I want to get taught from you. So I'm eliminating out because I no longer believe in the Trinity. We look at the Holy Spirit as this dunamis power, a force. It's an aspect of the spirit of God. And so my wife and I began reading. There was hundreds and hundreds of transcribed messages online as I'm reading through this. And so we ended up getting connected with this ministry.

And not only was this ministry teaching the doctrine of Christ but in even more advanced doctrine. Now you have to be very spiritual to be able to understand this advanced doctrine. And what it did was is that this teacher weaved together the doctrine of Christ with Lurianic Kabbalah. Now for those that don't know what Lurianic Kabbalah is, it is Rabbi Isaac Lurian who was back in the 1500s. There was a book that his student, Hayam Vital wrote called The Book of Life.

And of course it's Kabbalah. And so this goes into detail with Kabbalistic teachings. And it's the spiritual understanding of scripture is what it was. And so what my past or then we came into this new ministry. We ended up being in this ministry for about 16, 16, 17 years. My four children and my wife and I raised our children up in this. Now here's the problem with this John. And here's just a little simple example. Genesis 1 verse 6, it talks about separating the waters from the waters. If you would look at it into the teaching of

Kabbalism, you would see that looking at that separating the waters from the waters, if you look at it into the strong concordance, you will see that it's a euphemism, that it should be interpreted as, or I should say translated as seminal fluid and urine. So all of a sudden a little creation is no longer a little creation. It's a spiritual creation.

Like what Kabbalah teaches? Well, when I saw this even out of the Strongest Concordance, I went, wow This is amazing You know, and I just began to eat it up just began to eat it up and my wife began to eat it up And we were just so excited because We were doing There were messages on Thursdays that this my pastor at the time would give and Sundays my pastor would speak on on Thursdays for about four to five hours And then on Sundays We started our own fellowship in in our state and this her fellowship was out in in in New York and

So we would have our fellowship for about two hours three hours and we would read messages So we had to start at the beginning of message one so we could learn and understand and then when we got done around 11 at 12 o'clock then she would then Teach and that would go on for another five to six hours So we would have a good eight to nine hours on Sundays of of just teaching and of course we looked at it as this is a college course This is a doctorate, you know, it's not your normal type of church setting and it would just be word upon word upon word

Of studying the mod of scripture and then having a spiritual understanding Behind it and so it was always fresh. It was always new. It was always new revelation that we were getting every week and Of course We became very close to our pastor to the point that not daily But close to daily where we would talk on the phone an hour a night two hours a night sometimes three hours a night and of course We have our children and our children are beginning to get neglected as we are Being raised up into this ministry Yeah, that's so sad and very common and it's a mystery cult and the mystery cults this kind of thing happens and

I'll never forget whenever I was when I just left I began studying just history of religion in general what what is religion and I got Fascinated when I got into Kabbalah and Nosticism and Discovered the mysteries cults of ancient Rome and ancient Greece and then I started realizing that the Strategies that they were using was very similar to the cults of today They can take something that is common knowledge and then they say that we have the special detail that the rest of them Don't have and then they create a cult around whatever is that detail and

You compare it to the NAR today They're taking little words and phrases. They'll say if you read the Greek it means X Y and Z and now we know what this is my brother, right?

But the the basics of of the religion such as apostles the basics of the Greek translation to possible means simply a man who sent out Because Jesus was sending them to spread the gospel, but you don't find any of the NAR apostles that would even be willing to leave their fancy churches and big home mansions and actually go out and try to spread the gospel.

But they'll call themselves a apostle because that too becomes part of the mystery. Yes, absolutely. You hit it right on the head and that's, you're so intrigued by that because for so many people and it's one of the reasons why I share a little bit about my background just of the spiritually experiences that I had and I had a whole lot of them through my life.

Because in the depths I believe that at that time I had had a true experience with the Lord in my younger years and I had built the foundation, my wife and I had built the foundation in our life.

That was built I believe on the truth of who Jesus Christ was. But our minds got captured into this grandiose type idea that it was beyond what we were getting and where we were at.

And so we began to just get into that spiritual doctrine and we spent, as I said, 16 years in it. Well, through the years we became elders of the fellowship and my wife and I basically became kind of the two that would kind of be the successors if anything happened to our pastor.

Now what's interesting is that my pastor actually teaches or still teaches and taught that the reason people die is because of sin, physically die, but that you can enter into physical longevity. Now this is based off of the difference between the Holy Spirit and Christ.

So Christ is the soul man. And so when you look at passages, for instance, like Galatians 2.20 where it talks about being crucified to Christ, what we need to do is we need to be crucified to Christ so it's no longer us who lives, but Christ who lives in us.

What it basically is saying is that you become fused and it's in stages. But you want to get to the point of where your personality is so enveloped into the personality or the soul of Christ Jesus, the new man, see an inhibition to talk about the entity, becoming one new man, the two becoming one new man.

So making peace. And so that's basically what's being taught. So if you're fused together and you become one with the new man, then you'll be sinless in Christ and you'll no longer physically die and you'll continue to keep living.

Pastor at that time said, I still get sick. So that means I still have sin. Therefore, I haven't entered into longevity. But my hope is what she would say is, is that I hope to enter into that longevity.

And so there's a lot to it, and I'm just giving you just a very basic, broad overview of that type of teaching. So here we are, what's happening to my wife and I is, we're becoming more spiritually minded.

And so it got to the point, John, where we would read the scripture. And what was the point of reading the scripture? See, my pastor would say, and it's called translator's license, it's what it's called.

And she would share that, all the translations that are out there, whether it's the King James Version, the numeric and standard and the international version, whatever it might be, that it was based on the revelation that the translators had.

And they did the best that they could with the revelation that they had. And that was their interpretation. That was their translation. However, however much they knew God, but it was limited, see. But now what she was bringing forth was the spiritual understanding of the scriptures.

And she ended up now creating through her experiences with God that she began to get a spiritual translation. And so she wrote, she would rewrite the Bibles. She would take the Hebrew and the Greek and she would look up the words and she would get the spiritual meaning from them, using Kabbalistic as well, understanding of it.

And she would incorporate it into these new scriptures. So there are several books, it's not the whole Bible yet, but there are several books in the Old Testament that she's translated, several books in the New Testament, as well as the Book of Revelation.

That she's translated into a spiritual understanding. I almost interrupted you and made the joke. So she's found the fountain of youth. When can we expect the book sales? Because that's usually what comes next.

Let's make money. And then here it's a different set of books. Yes, yes. And she has written, I believe she's up to 50 or 60 books now that she has written. So they are out there, unfortunately.

And so she's got close to about 1,000 messages that she has transcribed on her websites, her two websites. So we, of course, my wife and I, my kids, we no longer can, and now here's the thing.

See, you still need to read those versions. See, the King James or the New Living Trans... Whatever might be the translation, see? And you get a good grasp of the foundational teachings. But see, in your...

I mean, you start thinking to yourself, well, I'm advanced, you know, even though she went teach it that way, yet she would. And and you're you're being impacted by that. So I remember my wife and I, my kids, we would sit around the table and it'd be like, let's just have a teaching on scripture.

Well you couldn't do it, you know, a simple scripture as Jesus walked on water. Well kids, unfortunately, it's not really water that Jesus walked on. If you look at that word and water in the Greek and you, you know, compare it with the Hebrew, it's actually the the urine of Satan.

So Jesus is actually walking on the mind. He's stepping on Satan's mind. Well, try telling this to a six year old or a 10 year old in your family. See, you can't that their little minds can't grasp that.

And so for for myself, my wife, we began to slowly drift away from just reading scripture. I just stopped reading scripture and when I attempted to try to read scripture, I would attempt to try to read it with the spiritual understanding because see, I needed a doctrine of Christ because it fed that Christ and me that could eventually bring me into longevity.

See, we looked at the fivefold ministry. We looked at these other ministries and we say, they're okay and that's their perspective. See, on the scriptures and and they've got their ministries and it's good, but they're still going to die.

And I've got Christ. See I'm at a higher level so they don't understand and they probably won't understand, but it's where we are. So you try to stay humble, but you're not. Right. Yeah.

It's just such a confusing mess when people try to add their mysteries to it and they confuse it to such a extent that you can't even read your Bible like you said and when you can, you're reading it through their lens.

So even then you're still not reading the Bible. So this, I can't even imagine leaving the cults that you went through and then going through that and how did you come out of this mess?

Well, it's a great question, John. So what had happened was my pastor began to also incorporate a lot of political things and it was grandiose at times that all of these past presidents and these big globalists that were out there that they were no longer the actual individuals, that they had been shot by firing squads and that they had died and that they were, you know, it was just incredible types of things.

And for a while we were in that and then it just, it didn't make sense to us anymore. My wife and I began to have these conversations between her and I. And every year my wife and I would invite our pastor out to stay with us.

And I remember the last time we had her out, she needed to talk to us and she especially needed to talk to my wife. And so we sat down and like always, we got strong corrections and there's so much there when it comes to that and what we went through because we had to be righteous.

We had to be holy. We had to get rid of every sin based on whatever she would tell us that we had to get rid of because she was the one that could identify things in us that we might not be able to.

And so we sat down with her and she began to tell us, began to tell my wife that she had a Jezebel spirit, that she had idolatry for the four children. And it was the first time that I saw my wife really.

My wife did everything she could in this ministry and I did as best I could as well. But it was the first time I saw my wife really get impacted by it, it really hurt her.

And because she thought she had done all she could. And so we had, she had my pastor ended up leaving the following day, a week later my wife began to experience physical things. And she began to vertigo have issues of vertigo and began to lose her balance and so on.

And we had went in, we had gotten tested for Lyme's disease and those types of things, things, everything came back negative. And after about two weeks of this it really started getting out of hand where she would fall over and kind of pass out.

And I finally brought her into the hospital. We had an MRI done and ended up finding out that she had brain cancer, glioblastoma grade four. We rushed her to a major hospital where she had surgery.

But for those that don't know, there are four stages of glioblastoma. She had the worst and the surgery was done. They removed it, but even when they remove it, it's almost like you take sand and you just pull it out, but there's still always going to be a grain that's left there.

For the next year and a half, we remained in the ministry and my wife, she couldn't grasp things to the fullest. And yet she was being hammered with, you got a Jezebel spirit, you got to confess a thing, that she didn't have the ability to be able to do it.

And after a year and a half, and there's a lot that's there, but after a year and a half, she passed away. And the very following day, I don't know. My pastor did a service for my wife, and it was just our small net church group that she did it for.

In this message, it stirred and it struck everybody through everybody off, and it was very, very difficult, but basically the message said that the reason she had died was because she had a Jezebelian spirit.

And she wasn't able to overcome that. And of course, you're in this major spiritual seduction, John, where you're still believing that this is truth, but it rattled everybody. Everybody was struck with it, and everybody was scared because they looked at my wife, and they said, how, if she didn't make it, how can any of us make it?

And so my pastor went on and on talking about judgment and what all that meant. And so for the next few months, I couldn't grief. I had to be this spiritual elder. I had four children that were young adults

to all the way down to the youngest being 13 years in age. And I'm trying to do the best that I can, still trying to work and everything else. And I can't grief. I have to believe that, in the beliefs that I have, that we're gonna overcome this.

We're gonna, I was, let me say this, I believe so strongly, because my pastor had said this, that she would not die, that she would be raised from the dead, that I told the funeral home.

I said, do you want us to involve the body? I said, no. I said, leave it. I said, because she's gonna be raised from the dead. And they said, okay. I said, is anybody ever told you that?

And they said, well, actually, yes. I said, but has anybody ever done it? And they said, no. And I said, well, you just wait and see. I said, because she's gonna be raised from the dead.

I believed in my heart, John, because of what my pastor had said, that she won't die. And even if she does die, she'll be raised from the dead. But what happened was after her death, she said, I never said that.

That's not what I meant. It shouldn't be interpreted that way. Or I got greater revelations. See, that's what it always says, well, it was this, but it was this. Now, as the months went by and I wasn't grieving, I was just trying to figure things out.

My wife died in spring. By that fall, I really started getting hit with grief. Started to step back and go, what is going on? And I met, it was one of my wife's good friends and somebody that I knew from when I was in grade school, who had lost her husband two years earlier.

And she... He was able, we just connected through messenger and we just became friends. It was the only person that really brought healing to be John, the most difficult thing when you lose somebody is for me at nighttime is being able to reach over and to just grab her hand and it was gone.

And so in the evenings, I would call up this friend of ours and we would just talk and it would just ease my heart. And of course, we just started becoming friends, started healing and my pastor came at me and said, you are to remain single.

You are to be married to Christ and you're to be a spiritual eunuch. And I had visions and I had dreams and there's others in the ministry that have dreams and visions and this is what they're being interpreted at.

It's like you love her and all these different things and I'm super, whoa, whoa, whoa, just wait a second and I'm trying to and they're sending me all these messages and dreams and there was one particular day and I'm just getting bombarded with them and finally I had to just shut it off and I just went, oh Lord, help me, you know, help me.

And it came to the point where my pastor said to me, Jesse, you've got a choice. It's either the world or it's Christ, maker decision. And I couldn't understand John why I couldn't be friends with this woman.

That was bringing healing to me and so I stepped back and deep down in the recess of my spirit, something was wrong and I knew something was wrong, John. And I stepped back and I said, I said, I guess I'm choosing the world and she said, okay, and cut me off.

Yeah, it's so hard. In the divine healing cults, I've watched people die too and you know, it was never anybody I was married to but I had strong connections to these people and we were told that these people would be healed.

They had faith in God, they believed it. Even though they had the signs of whatever was wrong with them sometimes cancer, sometimes something else, we were told that if they confess their faith and their healing, they would be healed because that's the framework of this type of cult.

And then when they die, it just ripped your heart out because not only are you losing someone, you're losing the hope that you had, that this false hope that they'd given you and you know, it's painful.

I can't even imagine going through it with your wife. How did you overcome this? Well, there was one last encounter that I had with my pastor and she took my four children and I and two other elders, one of the elder was my best friend for many years that had come.

to the ministry with me and my father-in-law. She sat down one night with all of us. I'm like a Zoom and said, kids, I want you to know that you might be scared, that you've lost your foundation, but you've got a foundation of Jesus.

Your dad, he's become the anti-Christ. He no longer has Christ. And he's going to even be putting witchcraft towards you, which could result in death curses, spiritual death curses on your life. But you're going to prevail because you have a strong foundation.

And I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this. And Johnny had to understand, I'm still through the grieving process. I'm still trying to understand things. And I'm stepping back, and I'm a green with her.

I come to the realization that if I don't have Christ, then what's the point? John, I came to a point in my life, and that was the last contact I had with my pastor, and not only that, but my four children turned on me.

They had been raised in this belief. Their connection to their mom that had passed was this ministry. The father-in-law, the pastor, my best friend, we were so close, and now I was considered an outsider.

And so I lost my wife, and now my four children. Even though my last son was still in the household, my children ended up getting up and just leaving. They had to get out, and they were over 18.

Even my 14-year-old at home was just cold towards me. And I was patient with him, as patient as I could be. And so I came to the point in my life where I remember praying to God and saying, Lord, I'm not going to take my life.

I know suicide is wrong, but take it. Take it, Lord, because I've got nothing to live for. If I can't have you, Christ, I've got nothing to live for. And I remember the Lord just placing just this thought in my heart.

And the thought was that what about your son who's still at home? He's not going to have anybody then. And I said, OK, well, then at 18, at 18, once he's an adult, then take my life, Lord.

I'll take care of him, tell you he's 18. And all of a sudden, John, it's been a hardship. And what I went through. And with this new friend in my life, she was so gentle, so loving, so compassionate towards me.

And that we began to grow together. And I ended up marrying her. And we've been marrying now for almost two years. But here's the incredible miraculous thing, John, all for my children. have done a circle, not a circle, but a 180, and we've had reconciliation. I had one son almost two years, had just small little conversations with him, and he allowed me to just share my experience, and he just started crying. He says, they had, I never knew. I never knew they had. And we hugged, and we loved on each other, and our relationship is, as my one daughter, she says, I've never had such a

strong relationship as I do now with my dad. And all four kids. And what I can say about this, John, to all those that are out there that are struggling, that have lost their children because of these types of situations, or their spouses, or so on, but mostly their children be patient. Patients, you know, time heals. It really does. I, I bit my tongue so many times, and in my, my wife now, she helped me along the way. There would be times that I would type out things that I'd want to send to them, and try to defend myself. And, and she would

say, just tell me, love them. That's it. Just send, I love you. Just every once in a while, send a text, send an email saying, I'm so proud of you. Even though where they're at, they just want to know that they're loved, that you're here, and that's all I would do, John, is just send little text, little emails saying, how much I love them, how much I appreciate it. And when, when we got married, my, my youngest, of course, was still at home and had to go to the wedding, my three oldest, and I sent them an email, all over my email, and I just said, I

want you to know that I'm never going to hold anything against you. It's not even about forgiveness because it's not something I could even forgive you about because my heart has been so made so full because of what God did in my life.

There's a Bible verse, John that talks about his grace is sufficient enough. And I lost everything, John. I lost my wife. I lost my children. I lost my father-in-law, my family on that side. I lost my best friend. Everything I knew, John was gone, lost it all. And I found Jesus again. I found my identity in Christ again. And when I recognized his love, being outpoured on my life, I just stepped back and went, wow, and all of a sudden God began to just move in little ways, individuals that I had not known before of just him pouring out his love

to me, just in the most simplest ways that you couldn't step back and go, that it wasn't God because it was so miraculous of some of the things I, if I had kind of loved to share with you, how miraculous they were, but they were incredible. What God did. And so, so hold on. That's that's that's that's the message that I have, you know, to so many that that out there that are suffering right now, that are right in the storm, right in the midst of it.

Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. It is a heartbreaking, tragic, happy, happy ending story that I'm sure is going to encourage a lot of people, and I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that, but I'm so glad that you came through on the other side, and you're like Job. You know, Job with a Bible, you know, so things do get brighter, and it should be encouraging to everyone. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, John. I appreciate it, and God bless you. 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-Branham.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-Branham and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branham in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. 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-Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of

John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, 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, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William-Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.