Detangling IHOPKC: Hidden Dangers of a Doomsday Cult - With Jed Hartley

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-brannem.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of International House of Prayer. Jed, we talked about son of a prophet before I started this and it's hard for me not to laugh because I understand what all goes with that and I guess I should do air quotes son of a prophet.

Yeah well I feel like it just is the it's the world that I've lived in and I've kind of had to embrace it a long time ago I I thought about even my name Jed a Daya you know you introduce yourself some people will already know that there's some religious context to the name and everything so right now I'm just kind of going with it I'm embracing it that is the world that I grew up in so as ridiculous as it is yeah you know it's it is what it is you know what can you make of it I'm the grandson of the head of the Brannem Tabernacle and I've

came to just embrace it it is what it is I wish it were not that way but that's what it is but anyway thank you we're detangling the International House of Prayer and you've joined us as the co-host to help further detangle the mass and Brandley's done a good job leading up to this point so very glad to have you on here to help with this yeah my pleasure I'm excited to be on here and appreciate everything you do and so appreciate being on the series awesome well the synergy is unbelievable this morning I was I was thinking about this

podcast and we actually did not talk about beforehand what we were going to speak on today and this song came into my head from a band you probably never heard of but the Cathedral's quartet which is Southern gospel music that's what we were all raised on in the in the Brannem cults and I was thinking about this song they got this song called this old house and it's about a person who is you know got a broken down house that needs fixing up and they could fix it up but the theme of the song is I'm not gonna fix it up because I don't need

this house because the end of the world is here and I was just thinking of how horrific that is it is doctrinally it's just it takes a person where it makes them of no use to this earth They don't care about anything.

They don't care if the house is broken down. That is a song that was one of my favorite songs. And I was in that attitude growing up, man. It was the end of the world.

The rapture was coming. We did not care for tomorrow. What don't care for today. What tomorrow may bring. That kind of themes. Those were all embedded in the sermons that we listened to. And I grew up just not caring about the world.

And raising my children, I have a different perspective now because I'm no longer in this. And I want them to care. I want them to think about the future. And the choices they make today affect the future generations.

So just thinking of the balance of that. And then I asked you what we're going to talk about. And you're talking about the apocalyptic cult today. And I mean, it just fits. It's the same exact thing repeated over and over through time.

Yeah. And I think that the reason why I wanted to talk about it is I think that it's something that can be forgotten when talking about some of these organizations or at least be minimized because obviously there are some very large scandals and sexual abuse scandals.

And I think that for a secular world that's outside of these communities, that's easier to latch onto because it's easier to understand some of that. But understanding prophetic apocalyptic, what it's like to be raised in that community or be a part of that community, that's more difficult for people to empathize and understand.

And if you were a part of the community, that was an apocalyptic community, and you're out of it, that's something that's easy to forget or not talk about. Sometimes I'll talk with my sisters about those elements of it.

And it just feels foreign when you're looking back upon your childhood or your early adulthood and thinking about how, yeah, I mean, I really thought in my lifetime, Jesus was going to come back, split the sky, be riding on a horse and that there was going to be a battle.

You might have believed that the good Christians would be raptured before the tribulation, but at the international house prayer, we were taught that that is not the case, that it is post-tribulation rapture. And in fact, we would be there to see all of the atrocities.

So I would read the left behind books, the whole left behind series. I would read all of that. And the big difference is that the Christians would be there for all of... the crazy things that went on. And whether, you know, whether I would like to admit it or not at times, that shaped my, not only my childhood, but shapes who I am today and the way that I think about the world and how I've had to unlearn and re-contextualize a lot of my own quest for meaning, for value, for, you know, work, for my relationships, all of that,

the way that I grew up, everything was oriented around the end of the world. And that is always going to affect me throughout my entire life. Absolutely. And there's a lot to unpack there.

If you are a, if you are a Christian and you're just curious about International House of Prayer and you're listening, you asked the question, well, doesn't every Christian believe Jesus is coming back? I have seen that in the comment feeds from people who don't understand the complexities of what it is we're talking about, because most Christians do believe in a return of Jesus Christ. And what you mentioned pre-tribulation rapture, post-tribulation rapture, I try not to get caught up in that because when you're dealing with a doomsday cult, it doesn't matter the order of events. Your mindset is still focused on doomsday. And in the

Brannemism, there was a change in the, in times theology that happened after Brannem died and leading up to the International House of Prayer. Brannem, like every doomsday cult leader, they believe that their small group was the special ones, the elite of the Christians. And they did believe in a pre-tribulation rapture for those Christians, but they believe by and large the rest of the Christians would go through the tribulations and suffer and all the, the end time battles that were being fought in IHOP, they believe that. So it actually falls within the same realm of theology. The difference is we considered ourselves to be the elite and we

would consider you to be the inferior Christians who fought the battles. So there's that. But like I said, I try not to get caught up in that because for a child growing up in it, I think it's different than an adult who joins later in life. Our frame of reference as a child growing up in this is always that there is a doomsday. That's always the elephant in the room. Whereas, you know, I've talked with members who came in later, they were probably in the cult for about 10 years, 15 years. They had a different frame of reference. And so their foundation

of the world as a place that they could make better, whereas I, you know, I didn't care if the world was better or not. You know, after I die, it doesn't matter what happens next, because if I die before this rapture comes or the end of the world, it's going to happen anyway, and I believe that it might happen tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. So I did not try to do things better. And I remember having this conversation with Dr. Stephen Hassan, after I left the cult, and realized, it took me a long time to realize that it was a Doomsday cult, because that phrase

isn't commonly used when you're in one. Once I realized it was, and then I started looking at this old house, like the song said, my house was falling apart, and I spent the better part of a year just going through fixing everything from the shingles to painting the wall, things that every person should do and, you know, in normal upkeep of a home. I wasn't doing. And so I was talking, talking about this with Stephen Hassan, he said it's very common whenever somebody is in a destructive cult. After they escape, they re-evaluate their entire worldview, and a lot of that

worldview includes making their own lives better in their own environment. I know that you were going to ask me questions, but just to ask you a few, was there a moment where you realized you were not, the end times, wasn't coming in your life, or that aspect of it was wrong, or was it a slow burn? Yeah, so I actually liked the back and forth with the questions, because I have, I'm still detangling what I came from, and in my head there are things that I still have to unravel, but for me, see I left a doomsday cult, and I left almost instantly, because I started asking

questions, and everyone cut me off just overnight. Within 48 hours, churches around the globe had said John Collins has gone rogue, he's asked a question, and now we must cut him off. However, that played out, I'm not certain. So I was instantly taken out, but I'm such, I have such an analytical mind, I want to understand things. So whenever I left, I started attending different churches, and good and bad experiences with many of them, but one of the churches had a plurality of elders, so that no single person was in power, no single person could become authoritarian,

which I did like that model, but I started talking to them about the end times, because I'm still of that doomsday mindset, and I talked to one of them, and he was a preterist.

It just didn't make sense to me. How can you be a preterist and believe the Bible was my first reaction? And then I talked to another one. He was similar to what I believed. At that point, it was apocalyptic futurism, I think, is how you describe what we believed. But I learned that there were four different views of apocalyptic text in the Bible. And there were interestingly four pastors who had different viewpoints, which for me was fascinating because in the cult, you had to have the same, or they would just oust you. But here are four different leaders with four different

views. And so I got to understand their perspectives and why they believed it. And every single one of them had good, solid arguments for whatever it was they believed. I'm not going to say that I agree with one over the other one, but at that point in time, I could see that they're all using Bible references for what they stand for, all in conflict. And I realized that if it were meant to be black or white, it would have been written in the Bible, black or white. And I know that I can already foresee in the comment threads. We're going to have people say, but it is black or white.

You must believe this version that I believe, right? But over time, I adopted a panmenolated, pan-millinious view where it's all going to pan out in the end was that how I adopted it. I learned that phrase from a guy who also escaped a random cult. But I decided for myself, at least for the first few years of me being out of it, I was not going to pick one or the other. I wanted to explore them all and understand them all. Yeah, that makes sense. I, it's interesting looking at my upbringing because you have these principles that you believe early on and you don't realize

like just like you were talking about how there will be people in the comments saying that it's black and white, you know, you grow up with all of your leaders being in what seems to be agreement.

Now I've grown up and realized that they're even within the international house prayer there was infighting. But ultimately, Mike Bickle was the one who got the final say on a lot of the stock trend. But it felt like, no, there's one way to interpret the Bible. It clearly says this thing. And you would have people who were the numerologist, you know, I think Brannum did this for a while too, where clearly that there are seven sets of 700 years. And if you do the math that you come to this date in the Gregorian calendar or something, and therefore May 17th.

1967 is the day that the you know tribulation comes and then May 17th comes and it's like well Oh, yeah, we forgot to carry the one here and it keeps going them To some extent that that would happen at the international House of Prayer They were careful. They were more careful to not give specific dates But the one thing that was always said by Mike and by the leaders at the international House of Prayer was that

This what we were raising up not we I was of the generation but the generation before me So my parents generation was raising up the last generation on earth and that's as specific as you need it to be My generation was going to be the final generation on earth that that I We were going to see the end times My my my parents generation was going to see it with their own eyes and I would be Of the generation right in the midst of this it was going to be the these Millennials who wish now

They must be really disappointed in the Millennials because They're they're not moving in prophecy in the spirit like I would We were supposed to do But anyway that that was that was sort of the statement and so growing up That was the fixed belief that I had and Because I didn't I wasn't first a Christian who then Went to the international House of Prayer. I didn't have like the form and Conventional Christian beliefs and then adopted a more radical position So I had no idea what was radical and what was conventional Because so the idea that Jesus roasts from the dead

was no more or less radical than the idea that The end times was going to happen during my generation those were of equal principles and in fact we probably talked about it at Equal lengths And so and the same was true for a lot of different prophetic promises I believed that my dad and I believed that Mike Bickle spoke with angels of the Lord just like I thought You know The Lord spoke with Noah or Moses or any of the Heroes of the Bible because that was what I taught and I was taught and I believed it

Unquestionably like that that the faith of a child that I had total and utter faith that these Larger principles were true. I still was I always thought of myself as like a rebellious kid because I would ask a lot of questions But I was just trying to make sense of the things that they taught me and I was holding all of those principles I didn't know that I could choose to not hold those principles and Now I think back on it, and even within the last couple of years, I didn't realize how fringe a lot of the IHOP beliefs were.

I was talking with my sister, and I was like, we were a leaf on a twig on a branch of a tree in the midst of a forest. It was so specific, and there was people who would open up the Bible and say, look, it's clearly right there in black and white, and it's like, okay, well, if it's that clear in black and white, why is it no one thought of this until 1985, and why are we, I mean, there's only a thousand of us who probably have this specific view.

Why has Jesus not revealed this truth to everyone, and why didn't the early Christians read the Bible and realized that God was going to come back in 2000 years? You know, if it's that obvious, why is there so much disagreement about it?

But I genuinely never even really had that thought until, I mean, decades, decades after I've been taught all these principles. Yeah, see, I came to a very similar conclusion, but the path that I took to get there was much different.

I wanted to know, I want to know how things work, I, the kind of guy who, you know, when I got a radio for Christmas as a kid, I took it apart to see what's in it, right?

That's the kind of person I am. And when I realized that not only were we a Doomsday call, we had this theme, which I think it's shared between IHOP and Brannemism, but we thought that there would be an end profit for the age, which I guess that would be Mike Bickle in the IHOP circles.

And Brannemism, it was obviously William Brannem, but from the, from the items of research that I published, I started noticing other commenters who were never associated with Brannemism or even IHOP or anything like this, making similar comments, well, that profit was obviously false.

Our profit is the profit for the age, the last age. And so I went down this big study, well, what does it even mean last age? But in the world, how is that biblical?

Because if you read the New Testament, it's not talking about things like this, right? Jesus is the answer. He's sending the Holy Spirit. So I, that went into a study of dispensationalism. There were numerous texts talking about how the seven churches of Asia Minor, which were listed in the New Testament as the seven churches.

And the messages that went forth to the seven churches. So there was a movement called dispensationalism, which added the word age in addition to the text of the, of the New Testament. So everywhere where you read church, which was a specific location, you would instead read age and it was a dispensation of time.

And since there were seven churches, they divided the world history into seven different ages and then the last age was apparently us. And so that led me into realizing that not only had they mentally trained my head to believe that we're in the doomsday, but they had mentally rewritten the DNA of the Bible to make me understand that instead of reading the Bible for what it says, which literally says, I'm sending these apostles and missionaries to different churches around the globe.

Instead, those are ages and we just happened to be in the last one which is doomed. Right. Well, and if you look at any religious scripture, Christian, if you see yourself as the center of a religious doctrine, so you open up the Bible and you think this was all written for me specifically, you're gonna be able to interpret a way in which it's like, oh, these are all these different ages and dispensationalism you look and see it and you're like, ah, well, we must be on the precipice of the final age of humanity, the millennial kingdom

or whatever it is in your, you know, obviously there are different interpretations of that. But it all comes from this point of view of inserting yourself into the center of the religious doctrine. The same thing can go for every, I mean, legitimately, every religious text and religious community, this is every single religious community you see people taking their religious texts that have been made over thousands of years and making it all sort of culminate in the individual and whether that's the individual community or whether that's the individual person and within Pentecostalism, you see this like Dauy did that

and you have all of these different individuals claiming to be Elisha and at some point, you're like, well, you can't all be Elisha and maybe we should stop when someone claims that they're Elisha, maybe that should be a good red flag of, okay, they're inserting themselves into this end times narrative, right?

And they have been reading the Bible and saying, I am, this is all for me, this is all about me and this is all gonna end here. But it's hard because we are locked in the time frame that we live and so Mike Bickel can still kind of be like, The end times is coming.

It's just right around the corner. And when will it be? I think we can look back and say, okay, Dow he was wrong, his early 1900s. And clearly there's been much that has progressed since then.

But at what point do we get to say, you weren't right, you know? And it's difficult because it's probably not in my life, throughout my entire lifetime, I will be 85 and I will be talking with people who I grew up with and I hop and they'll be like, it's just, it's right around the corner.

It's just right there. Like, you know, when does it die? When do we realize, no, this wasn't the time. The entire gospel wasn't written for us specifically. This entire narrative of the world isn't leading to Kansas City, Missouri, you know?

Or Los Angeles or wherever you are. This is bigger than us and we're just a, we're a part of that and that's fine. That's the whole problem. I think one of the biggest problems that I've had growing up is realizing like, it's okay to be a name within many other names in a larger story.

I don't have to be a part of the end times church. I don't have to be the son of the grand prophet, you know? I don't have to lead tens of thousands to the Lord or do whatever.

This is, there's so much ego wrapped up in these end times church movements and it was destructive to my sense of being in self. I felt like I had to also take on that level of ego and believe that it was me and that I was gonna work and do miracles and raise the dead and that Jesus was gonna return in my time and say, well done, good and faithful servant and that I was gonna reign by his side for a thousand years.

And you know, I can, I wish I would have just like focused on being a good brother, being a good son, being a good Christian or agnostic or whatever religious,

like being a good person and be satisfied with the more mundane but true stories of the world

and of my life. I don't know if that resonates with you at all. I don't know, you were getting into it because you were transfixed, I'm figuring out all the details of it. I got into it because I, of the ego of all of it.

So maybe you were just a better person. But no, I definitely had some ego there. One of the things that was most humbling. to me was once I escaped and started re-evaluating my life, I started noticing that the word pride is mentioned. I didn't account one time. I lost the number, but it's mentioned so many times in the New Testament as one of the sins. I mean, you're reading these lists of sins from the Apostle Paul and pride is in almost every list. And I realized that I was very prideful and rightfully so, because I was in a group that we were trained to be prideful. We were the elite

of the Christians, right? But I wanted to, like you said, I did want to understand. And it drove me down paths of research that I don't think has an end. The problem is this. We were raised in a religion that liked to take certain phrases from the Bible literally. And then called the literalists or the fundamentalists, we would call them in error because the Bible has different genres and different parallels and different analogies. And you can't read everything literally, but we fell into the same error because we would make the same mistakes. And I realized

very quickly that the Doomsday focus isn't something that was new within our lifetime or even Dauy's lifetime. As far back as I could go in research through time, back all the way back to the early Nostics, you had problems like this. In first Thessalonians, I think it's four, Paul says, we who are alive and remain should be caught up together with them in the clouds. Paul is literally saying there that he will be alive and he will remain when in the rapture comes. So then every single group of Christians after that statement was made, who took that as literal prophecy, or I don't

know, I don't even know what you call it, but believed Paul, his statement to be accurate, they all were looking for this any day, any day this will happen. And you had two categories of people. You had people that understood the meaning and the themes that were written in those letters from Paul. Then you had the others that are so hyper focused on, oh my gosh, the end is coming. What do I do? What do I do? How do I save myself? And they literally separated into two categories of people, one in grave error. And so that's that's what birth like the aesthetics. So

people were abusing themselves, trying to deny themselves pleasures of the world because the world's going to end. We don't need it. Let's save ourselves by becoming more holy by omitting different things. And you had, it's funny and sad all at the same time. I was reading through, I think it's the book against Heresies by Irenaeus, the first topologist.

Anyway, there was a specific group of Nostics that they went so far as to condemn sex and This group died out because if you can't have sex you can't produce offspring and your group just dissolves So that group is no more right but it went forward and through time every group that took the theme of Apocalypse now and And tried to save themselves by getting into a hyper state of Awareness of their own spirituality. They all failed and they all went into some error and Like you said earlier, I don't want to make light of the sexual things that happened at IHOP

But the core of the problem isn't that. That's just the smoking gun and if you look back through time all the way back dating back to the What is it 300's I think maybe early 400's you have time and time again where similar Errors are happening, but they're all get working themselves into such a frenzy that literally they're going insane so you have You have the mental issues that come with that sense of Urgency and I think that play I can't say that that was all of it because we have some of the history with Mike Bickel, but

It played or it played a factor. I'll just say it like that Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism Transition 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 McGummery, 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 What's tragic about all of it is that the people who are most affected by these apocalyptic communities and apocalyptic teachings are the individuals who have the most faith in the community It's it's the irony is that you had all of these faith dealers these prophets who would blame

Individuals for not having enough faith when you don't get healed don't know when these things don't come true. But in reality, those who do have the most faith

are the ones left holding the ticket. Like think of it this way. If me and let's say my sisters get a call from my dad

and he says, hey, we're all leaving. We're going to, we're moving. God has called us to move and da, da, da, da. And we're going to move today. Get your stuff packed up, get ready.

And I pack up all my stuff and my sisters are like, nah, it's not really that big of a deal. Eventually we're going to move. God has said some of these things. And I'm like, no, I'm taking it seriously.

I saw what my father said. He said, pack up, I have it. I'm there. I'm waiting at the bus station and days go by and he's never there and we never move. It's the person who believed it.

It's the person who packed up their things, who waited at the bus station, who suffers the most from these apocalyptic communities and what's really frustrating even now is that when I've spoken out against my father and I've spoken out against international house prayer, I've had some really personal attacks against me which largely don't bother me that much.

When it's individuals I grew up with, it does a little bit more. Like if I knew you and you saw me, like I believed I went to the bus station because you said so, you know, and you saw that I did go to the bus station.

Like for people who don't know me very well, they don't know that I was a kid who was really trying to do all of these things, who really believed it, who was fasting. As a 14 year old, I went on like a 12 day fast and that is not good for the constitution of a 14 year old.

That's not healthy. And I've had like even when I grew up and when I went from high school into college, like I didn't go to a conventional college because I still had this sort of taking time bomb idea that the end times were near and I needed to do missions work.

And so I went to Y-WAM. And I mean, my entire life was affected because I believed these individuals. And now I'm speaking up against these individuals and people were being like, you were never a part of the community.

If I was never a part of the community, I would have never suffered like I did. The whole point that this is hard for me is because I believed Mike Biko when he said that his brother was gonna walk again one of the core prophecies and was about Pat Biko, Mike Biko's brother.

And I can tell the story in more detail. if you'd like, but Pat Peckle was a paraplegic and I mean before I was born he was in a wheelchair and I grew up, I would go to the church services and I would see this man who was in a wheelchair and I mean not just like a full body wheelchair, he would lay out and it was very visceral memory for me and that was one of the core prophecies is that revival was going to come to Kansas City, the chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl and Pat Peckle was going to walk again and I believed

all of those things just as much as I believed that Jesus was raised from the dead just as much as that Moses part of the seas that Noah you know 40 days and 49 to see Noah was out on the ark in the water and like all of all the stories I believed them all and then Pat Peckle died and the chiefs won the Super Bowl which is great but the chiefs won the Super Bowl but there was no revival the end times didn't come and I was left at the bus station just kind of sitting waiting

there and even going into high school like I remember or sorry going into college I remember there was a friend of mine who she went to she went to a college and studied accounting and I remember being like 18 and she was in my same like grade and I remember thinking what a silly thing to do the world is gonna end and you're studying accounting and which was a horribly egotistical thing for me to think can I regret that I did it but you know that was just this sort of such a condescending thought and now she's got probably a great job and I don't actually know what she's

doing with it but you know that was just my mentality is that I was like what why would you go why would you get an accounting degree when the Lord is gonna split the sky and we're get you know what a ridiculous way to spend your 10 20 years before Jesus comes back and that affected me and I think that that's really difficult to pinpoint and hold people accountable for like I can go into the iHop community and say hey you guys wronged me because all of these prophecies didn't add you know didn't come true no one would listen to me no one care about that because they've

moved on there's new prophecies to replace the old ones there's new promises that yeah there's new carrots at the end of the stick and now there's just other people having the same process that I did there's other young children who are either being raised there or, you know, coming as 16, 17, 18 year olds who are getting drawn into this community who are given the same type of promises that I was given and 10, 15, 20, 30 years down the road.

They're going to be like, oh, none of that was true, but they would have, you know, now I don't want to say wasted 10 years of their life waiting for it. But it certainly is, you know, it's like a, it's like a marriage that didn't, you give everything to something and realize that it was all for not.

It's really difficult. Yeah, there's so much to unpack there too. The one of my studies of late, I wanted to understand why Christians did this because it wasn't just in the brand of movement.

It wasn't just in Latter-Rain, it, you know, it developed so rapidly across the United States. I knew that it had to be something besides the religion that was causing it. And that's what got me into studying British Israelism and its later child, which was Christian identity.

But in British Israelism, they believed, as you know, that the people of North America, US and Canada and the British Isles are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. And what they tried to do, it was, it was more of a political movement than it was a religious movement.

They were saying that they were better than all the other nations and it kind of grew out of British elite. But then it embedded itself in Christianity and it came in through people like Dowie, you mentioned earlier.

Also Frank Sanford was big in this and he was, he's one of the people who literally helped father the Pentecostal movement. I believe that their commune actually had speaking in tongues before Parham did and the Pentecostals did.

But what they did was they were able, through the British Israel doctrine, they were able to take specific passages that were written for ancient Israel and then apply that to the world today. And if you think about the timeline of ancient Israel, there are very apocalyptic scenes all throughout the Old Testament.

You have the warring nations that are rising up, the judgment that's coming from breaking the laws of Moses, etc. All of those could be applied and compound that with the book of Malachi. So in Brannemism, in Latter-Rain in general, they believed that in this last age, they were using a dispensation that the Elijah figure mentioned in Malachi 4 was coming to the earth to fulfill that twist.

That twisted version of the prophecy. And then they combined it with revelation. So after he came, then you would see Elijah and Moses going through after the during the tribulation at the end times and When I realized that Paul Cain is one who helped I hop it kind of makes sense because Branham fifth the Malachi foremold and then you've got now the new Elijah or I guess he would probably consider himself a I don't know how Cain fits into this but but anyway You've got these two people and you see the connections to Israel. They're all trying to get back and and

Create strong ties to Israel. So all of that started to make sense to me but where it got really problematic for me is that to do that Like I said earlier you're rewriting the DNA of the Bible you're taking every single passage and instead of its original Meaning and context you have to twist the context and then you have to add your own context to it So in the end you're writing a new book that doesn't even exist Yeah, and again for me My takeaway from that is it is just A lot of ego. It's a lot of you like British, Israeliism

Being like seeing all of these promises for Israel and seeing that Israel is God's chosen people and being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or British, you know individual or whoever it was being like you know what?

That's about me. That's not about and I'm gonna actually twist this have this weird proven false genealogy of my ancestors were actually from Israel and I am the true descendants of Israel and I am God's chosen people

It really is just it and You're so enamored with your own religious identity you create this Either organization or narrative to put your put yourself At the end and at the pinnacle of God's story and

That really is what a lot of people will ask me sometimes hey, did your dad? Did he really believe some of these things did Mike Bickel really believe this? Absolutely they believed it in my opinion, you know Did they also have some?

They knew they were speaking falsities at certain points. Yes, true like there's always a little bit of Telling a little bit of a lie, but primarily I genuinely just think that they're a whole

The whole history of the international house prayer was shaped by the ego of a few men and These men who just could not help but insert themselves into God's story. And there's a story of my dad when he was,

this is before I was born, but when he was on this missions trip in Israel and with my mom, and they were working on this farm and there was this big tree that they were having to uproot for whatever purpose on the farm.

And my dad, who's a pretty thick, like strong dude, went and for like an hour apparently, he was just angry and like trying to rip the tree out. And this is a big tree with its roots spread out, you know?

There's no way that he's going to rip uproot a tree with his own strength, but he later would talk about it and he was like, I was sure that I was Samson during that time.

I mean, he thought that God had given him the strength to rip the tree out. And if you know, you know, people who interact with my father, he had a lot of that sort of on one end, it always felt like child like faith, which was fine.

That's good. Like believe that God is going to use us and if it's about God. But then it also is just like grandiose delusions of thinking that you can uproot a tree is just what a great representation of the world that I grew up in is these men who just thought that they could uproot trees and had it just been about leading to the glorification

of God or whatever that they would talk about. Then maybe it's less dangerous, but it quite clearly was about their own ego and their own elevation of their own names. Yeah, absolutely. And it goes along with another point that you mentioned earlier, you're talking about how messity is after you leave.

The way that people react to you and the way that people think about you. This is a common problem. Whenever I'm talking to people and working with them and the brand of support groups, which the problem exists between all religious cults, they create a very us versus them mentality.

And because when you're in these type of doomsday cults, you've worked yourself into this mental frenzy where you do mentally unstable things, like believe that you're Samson, that kind of thing. We tried to keep ourselves into that mental frenzy as much as we could.

And we did some very stupid things. At least, I know I did. Working with people in the support groups, they did some stupid things, but even worse than that, once they... realize it's a cult, it becomes even more messy because you've already got the mentally challenging things that you were trying to achieve in your head.

Now, all of that's unraveling and it's a mess, man. There are people who do things that they regret, say things that they regret. And people have confided in me things, I wish I didn't know about them.

In many cases, my response is always, but have you changed? Because we all, myself included, I went through a mess trying to leave the cult and I'm ashamed I was in it. I'm ashamed of the way in which it all came out whenever I accident, but am I a better person now?

That's the way I look now. Have I changed for the better? And I can say certainly for myself at least, it's an everyday battle to continue getting better, but that same battle exists with every person who is in a cult.

And if you let yourself focus on the way that people will assassinate your character after you leave, you'll be dragged down forever because that's their nature. They've been programmed to do this. And I look back while I was in it, I did the same exact thing.

If somebody left the cult, they went out because they're unbelievers and they're filled. They're not, I'm embarrassed to say what I thought about people who left. But now I understand why they left. And it's really hard.

And it's all of it comes back to, we had this apocalyptic focus that we were trying to save ourselves in our head. And it wasn't working. We were doing some very stupid things to try to save ourselves.

Yeah. And I totally understand how that leads to, for some individuals, very aesthetic thinking, which is definitely what it happened with me is, is this sort of like, I'm supposed to be working in miracles, I'm supposed to, these are the things that are supposed to be happening.

They aren't, it must be my fault. And I must punish myself for it. And while also then having some of the grandiosity of the world, like I've had to, I've both had to learn humility and self-worth since leaving that group, which is hard to do at the same time.

Because I've had to get away from those self-flagulating tendencies that this very critical examination of who I am. But at the same time, I've had to accept a much more humble, a much more,

like, I've had to separate some of my own grandparents. The biggest problem that it always has been for me is just work to a lot of your life consists of a lot of mundane tasks and it is very hard for me to accept mundane tasks because I feel like that I shouldn't be doing this.

I should be doing these great things and being a part of these great, like I was supposed I have all these expectations on my life and even now it's hard to just be like, you know what, I'm gonna just have to slow it down and do my taxes and do these more simple things and

or in like relationships too of like have letting it be, oh I'm figuring it out, I don't know what to do in this situation being like, oh I can't, it's just difficult to to find that balance of both humility and self-worth after leaving a world that was so grand in its scale both in its criticism of you and it's sort of praising of you as an extension of the rest of the group. I mean it's so extreme, such highs and such lows. It is and some of the things that you're mentioning every single person who has escaped any destructive cult, no matter which, they all struggle with it, boredom

for example, whenever you leave boredom will rip your mind apart, but to a person who's never in this they just simply say, well I'm bored, let's go do something, but whenever you escape this you're trying to keep yourself in this mental hype your entire life and it's mentally exhausting so you're either mentally exhausted or you fall asleep when you're in these these cults that are what does my wife call it, she calls it a high control group, a high demand group, when you're in a high demand group it's very demanding so you're in that state and you'd never really learn to cope

with boredom. The other thing is aloneness because in these type of cults it's so unhealthy the way that we we were so close and in each other's business that whenever you have some time to your to yourself alone you really struggle you're you're like what I need to connect to somebody and I need to you know get back with the group get back with the group but normal people experience boredom normal people experience alone time and it's for me it's also struggling like I can't just sit down and watch a television program yeah and I've been escaped from this thing for it was 2012

on our left January, 2012. I can't just sit and watch. I've got my computer up, I'm writing a book. I'm always multitasking. And it's part of the development. And it all comes back to, I was in this destructive cult.

The world was ending. I don't have time. Rush, rush, rush. Totally. And that everything that I have to do has to be important. I mean, that being able to sit and watch a movie or play a video game or something like that, I feel like I'm wasting my time.

I'm supposed to be furthering some grand purpose. And now it's difficult because I don't believe in any of those grand purposes. So I'll feel this sort of discontent. But it's this absolutely aimless discontent where I'm like, well, I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do.

But I feel like I ought to be doing something. And it keeps me from just enjoying the simpler things in life. And I fortunately have kind of worked through some of that. But for a very long time, that was a big thing for me is that I just couldn't, I couldn't watch a football game.

Quite literally, there was a lot of times where my dad would get angry with me if I did these things, if I watched a football game, or because it was like, hey, we were, especially when it was traveling with him, I would be like, hey, the chiefs are playing today.

Let's go watch the chiefs. And he'd be like, no, we got a, we're on a mission strip. We got a, I mean, it was a ministry trip, but we got to meet with this person and this person and this person.

And I was just like, I felt guilty every single time where I was like, I just kind of want to have fun and eat some good food and watch a game. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Although I will say recently, I discovered the video game Starfield and it's so entertaining, I'm, it's kind of in a different world so your mind kind of does unravel. I did waste a little bit of time on that but not as much as I would like, it is difficult.

And one of the key concepts I try to help people with whenever they contact me from the support groups is that immediately when you leave a destructive cult that was focused on Doomsday apocalyptic themes, you have to rewire your thinking of urgency because every single person who leaves, they're instantly, they've got to plug themselves into some other church and say, you hear this all the time in the comment feeds.

If this wasn't the prophet, well, who is the prophet for our day? And so they've got to go find it, they've got to plug in, right? And I tell them first, just take a step back because if God is all powerful and God is gonna lead you, he's not going to care that you keep this urgent, this urgent.

thing in your head, you've got to let him deal with the timeline, you know, let him control the time. Go try some new churches. If you want, if you're a church goaler after you leave, go try some new churches. Some people, they've just been burned and from religion, religion has so destroyed their lives when they leave. They don't want anything to do with it for a period of time.

And I, you know, the urgency for them, now you've got this group of people who are urgently trying to get them back into church. And I see that just as problematic. Let them heal, then go back.

You know, if I was a, if I was a carpenter and I'm swinging a hammer and I rip one of my biceps, I'm not going to immediately go try to swing that hammer again. I've got to let it heal before I do.

And I'll sit off on the bench for a while. So I tell people if you have to sit out on the bench for a while, but keep thinking about making yourself better and keep, you know, keep your focus.

If you're a Christian after you leave, keep your focus on Christ of the Bible, not of this thing that they were teaching you. And if you're not, just try to think what, what is it? How did this world come to be? Think of the things that we weren't allowed to ask ourselves that every other person in the world did. You know, every, every person goes through that, that phase. If you're not in a cult, you go through that phase of what made this earth, who made this earth? Somehow, all of this came to be. How did it come to be? dwell on those questions and you know, you probably

find you in back in the same place that the other people who left and plugged in would have gone anyway. Yeah. Well, and what's, what's interesting is that if you talk to

isopipologists right now, because there still are many, a lot of them either are going to be focused on the next prophecy, right? You are going to be, God is still doing all of these things.

Look at what's happening in Israel and you're not going to be able to have a concrete conversation about past prophetic promises. So either they're going to be forward focused and it's just going to be a difficult conversation. Or a lot of individuals who I know and who have grown, I've grown up with will be like, well, but I hope was still good. And a lot of times what they will describe are going to be some of the more mundane things are going to be like the prayer room. There was this 24 hour house of prayer and I would go there and I would feel spiritually healed. I would be able to

pray and, you know, and it's not the grand things. It's not going to talk about the one thing conferences. They're not going to talk about, you know, the awakening that happened in 2010 or whatever, they're not going to talk about the healings because they weren't...

Miracles weren't what was promised. So no one's gonna point to the miracles. What people will point to is the relationships they had, they will point to how they felt like God communed with them during that time.

And it's like all of those things could be found without all of these grand prophecies, without all of this end time apocalyptic rhetoric. All of you could just have the house of prayer, doesn't have to be international.

You could just have a place where it's like what has been for several thousand years where people will have religious organizations be about communing to the individual, about being a place where you get healed.

I was talking with someone right after all of the Mike Bickel scandal and they're like, should we be on team burn, I hop to the ground or should it be reformation or should it be reconstructed?

And I was like, well, if the international house of prayer did very little other than what, like if they basically adopted the international house of pancakes idea where it's just a place where people can come get fed 24 hours, then that would be great.

You know, if people could just worship, come there, find whatever they're looking for in communion, then that would be fantastic. But I hop is so fixed, it's identity on the ground,

that's never gonna happen, that they're never gonna be able to walk it back to be just those basic things. And so yeah, and I wanna recognize that I understand like when people see me criticizing the international house of prayer, there will be a lot of like, but it meant a lot to me and I get that.

I totally get that, it wasn't all terrible. A lot of it was pretty bad, but like even in my own relationship with the international house where there was a lot of times where I like would go to the prayer room and I felt a spiritual, you know, I felt spiritually fed and that was good.

But those moments became very far, few and far between for me to be quite honest. I'm pretty much the same way. I actually, while I was in it, I would say that there was nothing bad.

It was a good place. I enjoyed a lot of my life in the cult and I had some very, I still have some very fond memories. I still enjoy thinking about those memories and the people that are in them.

But it wasn't until after I left and realized that my frame of mind was so far off from what it should have been, that I wasn't in a good place and it was making me become worse and worse that the place that I was in while I was in the cult, my focus was in the wrong place.

My... wasn't on making the world a better place or loving people as Christianity teaches you. It was all about this Doomsday focus. What can I do to hasten my escape from this world and I don't care about this world because I'm going to escape it?

So I'm just glad I was able to get past that focus. But even more so, I have children and I'm just really thankful as I watching them grow up and having the right focus. I'm watching their lives and I'm in many ways I'm envious because I'm watching the way that their lives are playing out in the way that I wish mine had whenever I was in this thing.

So it's a lot to learn and we're all getting there and after you escape I think every day is a learning process. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much for doing this. We'll pick back up.

We've got so many topics to explore and I've sitting here making a mental list as we're talking today and I'll probably come up with 10 different topics that we could go over. Yeah, for sure. There's an endless amount of stories too.

We have plenty to talk about. Absolutely. 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 more about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

Available on Amazon. Available on Amazon. Available on Amazon.