Our Stories: Escaping New Frontiers - An Interview With Andy and Lizzie Manley

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guests, Andy and Lizzie Manley, former members of New Frontiers.

Andy, Lizzie, it's good to have you. So excited to do this, we've tried to connect and you're in the UK, so it makes it a little bit difficult scheduling with my work schedule, so glad we were able to finally connect and maybe we could start with you just telling the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Thank you, John. Yeah, I'm fast Lizzie to start because Lizzie has a history with New Frontiers. It goes back further than me before we got married, so you want to start with what you experienced.

Yeah. You were younger. Well, I became a Christian in Iceland in 1981 and became a Christian at the age of about 17 and went straight into New Frontiers. And it all seemed really great at first.

I really thought like with the worship and everything. I just was so impressed by the fact that people seemed to really mean their work, the worship. But then we started getting into the shepherding type thing, which I didn't realise that, but what it was at the time.

And it never occurred to me to disagree with people, but basically they had this thing that if you were a single woman, you had to submit to your house group leader. And I never forget, I was working with some particularly disturbed under fives.

And I would get home at night and sleep for an hour. And then I got volunteered onto the Girls Club at the church. And when I wanted to give up the Girls Club, they said maybe I should give up the playgroup and do God's work instead, which was one of the beginnings of the nails in the coffin to my face.

Because in the end I lost my face for about 10 years. And yeah, it was tough, because now I... Now I'm coming to learn more about the roots of this organization and the history, partly from your broadcast on, seeing the history and seeing all the con artists that were

involved in it. I can see now that me falling away wasn't actually me being stupid, it wasn't, it was my logic and the cognitive dissonance going on that was the reason that I fell away, but not being a relatively new Christian and not sort of lasting more than five years before I lost my faith. I didn't know anything else, I thought that was what God was like and I didn't like Yeah, that seems common with a lot of people that have reached out to me. They think they're leaving God whenever they're in one of these movements, but it really comes down to the fact that

they're leaving something that just feels uncomfortable and disgusting and the way that the leadership is so controlling, one person in fact one person told me if God looks like this, I don't want God and what they were saying is because the leadership looks like this, I don't want the church is actually what they were saying in its essence. And like you said, you find all these con artists in the trail of their history and you have to wonder why did they choose those specific men? I was talking to a person just yesterday and we were going through

some of the God's generals and in the era that they chose for each one of these generals, there were actually some really good Christian individuals, Christian leaders, back during the same era. Why did they pick the bad guys instead of the good guys? Is the question but you come to find out that there's this history of just deception, I guess is the best word for it and then what it does it continues a framework of deception in the groups. So when people leave the faith, they call it leaving the faith because what they understand to be the faith is all of this

deception and in fact they just left a deception. Yes, yes absolutely. I mean I did eventually come back to God after about 10 years away and some really stupid life decisions, but yeah, I've always but I always blamed myself for falling away and thought obviously wasn't a good Christian but now I'm saying actually the cognitive dissonance was just too much to bear in the end.

And the real problem for me when you look at the deception, it seems as though it's all about the money. You have the deception and then there's always the money drives. There's always some way in which they can better or themselves, bigger churches, et cetera.

Was that the case in the group that you were in? Yeah, there was a big emphasis on typing. We were robbing gold if we didn't ties. And my friend, she wasn't very well paid.

And the government, this is in the 80s at the time, suddenly gave rich people a huge boost of money. And one guy in the church was boasting how much better off he was, like, 30,000 pounds a year.

And she was in a, well, they didn't have a minimum wage then. She was in a really low paid job. And she just went through agonies trying to ties. And she used to come around to me for dinner because she didn't have any food and couldn't afford to buy food.

And in the end, she stopped tying, but really beat herself up because of it. And that was one of the cognitive dissonance things. Because to me, the church should be helping the poor. They shouldn't be demanding more money off them.

Exactly. I've seen similar situations where people, and the real sad part is because I was on the upper tiers. I knew many of the ministers. The ministers were aware of the financial situation. And yet would preach this tithing thing as though it was a heaven or hell issue.

But they're seeing the people give money that they don't have to them and watching them suffer. While they're living like kings, there is no expense spared for their meals, but they'll watch the people suffer.

And I don't, I really don't know how they do it. I personally, I could not watch somebody suffer knowing that I'm the cause of their suffering. I don't know how they sleep at night.

I really don't. So what was it that attracted you to this movement that you were in? Well, the first thing was I had experience of church, but it was all very stayed. And I was young, it was all a bit boring.

And for some reason, I picked up those ideas anyone in church was a hypocrite. And then I saw, I went to this church, and the music was good, and people were worshipping like they meant it.

And yeah, I really felt like I had found my spiritual home. I didn't realize that the music is often a tool to drag you in as well. And also, everyone was really nice. They were so friendly and caring.

And you know, we still know people that are really lovely that are involved in this, and it's such a shame. It is a shame. And I don't think it's nefarious, but many of the groups practice love.

bombing. Whenever somebody's not in the group and they're a potential convert, they will bomb them with love. And then once they get in, the love still exists because everybody's unhealthily close together and in their minds and in their worship. But then when they leave, it's the opposite of a love bombing. You many times you receive a hate bomb.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I remember when I was talking to somebody, one of my one of my health group leaders. And again, she's lovely, absolutely lovely. But when I said, I was having a bit of a doubt, this was before I completely fell away. And I said, you know, I might just have to leave the church. She said, well, you won't be able to come around here anymore.

And I'm like, oh, and then you just sort of realize that you're sort of trapped in it. Yeah, that's the truth. Whenever you're in one of these groups that practices the love bombing, I think the key of what you said, I don't know that I've ever articulated this. But one of the things that you mentioned is it looked like there were a bunch of hypocrites so you didn't join the church. Well, what you're seeing is the manipulation. You see people who are acting in a way that humans don't usually act because they're being manipulated to act in that

way. But cognitively, when you join the group, you realize internally that, hey, I'm acting the same way. And people outside think that I'm like this. So it makes it even harder to leave because now you're forced to face the, I don't know what you call the mental consequences that you have joined something that other people is going to see as hypocritical. And it's, you can't really blame that on the church itself, the what's going through your mind as you're trying to leave. But it is yet a further tool for keeping people inside of the group. And I think to some extent,

the leaders realize this because as you can see with what we have today, it seems like it gets more and more outlandish with time. Absolutely. Yeah. So how about you Andy, what was your story in coming into New Frontiers? Okay, well, Lizzie and I got married in 2004. And for a while, we went to the Baptist Church locally. We came across a new church that had opened up, which turned out to me New Frontiers. And we went along to that. And similar sort of thing really, we liked the music. The people were very friendly. And we came along to it. One of this sort of red flags that

should have spotted really is we were asked to go along to kind of church induction course for becoming members and explaining what their theology was. I'm pretty soon on, I think it might have been the first week of that. We had quite a strict view of Ty, I think, given to us, which I immediately objected to.

probably made sure I was never invited to join any leadership of any sort. I was already kind of in their black works before I started really, but it was quite nailed down. Interesting, I was just looking at some information on you friend who assessed and I did hear their finder saying that he didn't want to nail down their theology with a mission statement because he didn't want people to feel that they were in a kind of theological prison, but our experience was the exact opposite of that. The theology was absolutely nailed down.

In fact, one funny story I can tell you about that is that at one time you frontiers had a theology forum, which you could register on online, and it was an interesting forum in that you weren't allowed to post your own views on it, and if you tried to email their apostles to clarify what they'd said or question them, they told you you can't do that because they're too busy to answer your emails. So it's the only forum I've ever come across anywhere where you're not actually allowed to express your views and the leaders won't actually answer you. So my experience

was the theology was very much nailed down, but they were very big on time, I think. The local churches would tithe 10% of what they made to the head organisation, which at that time was quite unified, and we started noticing some strange things as we were going along there. They wanted to know who was giving cash and how much they were giving ostensibly because they wanted to do a reclaimed tax money on it, but it seemed a little bit prying that they needed to figure out who was giving what. And then after about a year, we suddenly got an apostle allocated to us,

now you might think that the logical thing to do would be to allocate an apostle that was nearby or over a region, but it turned out that this apostle was initially in South Africa, and he moved to Dubai. And then they started asking people to go across to Dubai, you hear the cost of $8 or £900 a trip for conferences to see the apostle. He would come over occasionally, but I just didn't understand the logic behind that. I mean, why would you have an apostle so far away when you have several of the UK that were very nearby? Why spend so much

money on these endless conferences? But by then we've been there for maybe a couple of years, and what you find is that gradually your friendships become more and more involved with the church that there are so many meetings going on in the church that most of the people there don't really socialise very much outside of the church. But then they have a go at you for not having any non-Christian friends.

Yeah, if we can't be in kind of you in that respect. So over time, you do get this view that, because they mix in prophecy with Scripture, it's very easy for people to manipulate how you think and what you do.

And the church itself and the church structure becomes kind of God ordained in a way that you shouldn't question it. They did once have an article in one of their magazines, which describes rebellion against leadership as similar to witchcraft.

I can't remember which Scripture they plucked out the air to try and back that one up. But again, it was trying to enforce this top-down driven theology of apostles, prophets, submit to your leaders, listen to our interpretation of the Bible.

We did once I think we did put some information up in the book store we had. That was removed because it wasn't new frontiers. So the books and the things that were advertised were their conferences with their books.

And we did find out who was earning what locally. I can look at their accounts. I was quite surprised to see how much their ministers were paid, relative to Anglican ministers. They were getting two or three times what they were paid.

In terms of the people running the organisation, it seemed to be much harder to find out who was getting paid, what and where the money was going. I never did find out exactly what they were getting.

I think one document seems to suggest that the people at the top would be getting something around 60,000 pounds, but it could have been more than that for more than one source. Yeah, this was 20 years ago.

But if I wanted to know, for example, in the Church of England, what the archbishop of Canterbury, and so I can look it up within five seconds, I will know. I can never find that with new frontiers.

It was not that obvious. And that again is a red flag for me too, to not know where the money is going exactly. I don't think the finders were living particularly lavish life styles, or I don't think it was on the sort of teleavangerous level of wealth by any means.

But at the same time, personally, I would think in order to be more transparent people, especially if they're preaching timing. The transparency is the biggest problem among all of these groups, because if they were transparent and people were to understand what's going on, they would be forced to reform because the casual listener would not put up with a lot of the things that are happening behind the scenes.

I've had numerous people contact me about new frontiers. You weren't the first one. You're just the first one to be interviewed. But there are a number of people contacting me. They're all saying exactly what you're saying.

They're talking about the spirit. abuse. And interestingly, I've not had the time yet to do it. I want to publish some information about it. But one of the people contacting me connected it directly to Paul Cain, who was William Brandham's protege, and Paul Cain, as you know, he helped start the international house of prayer, the cult that Mike Bickel, and all of the problems that's having right now in that church, Paul Cain was a part of its creation. Could you talk a little bit about your knowledge of Paul Cain being part of the New Frontiers Foundation? I never came across him, but I read it.

I read about it. He had a prophecy about it. But that's all I know. He wasn't really involved in the early 80s. And by the way, I can't believe I did this whole thing twice.

I fell away from gold, went to baptism, went to New Frontiers again. What an idiot. But there we are. Yeah, quite early on. I did come across the other day on YouTube. You can hear the prophecy from Paul Cain, given to the leader of New Frontiers at the time. Was that Terry Virgo?

Yeah, I think it was quite before they really got going. How much should the influence he had after that? I don't know. We weren't part of leadership in any way. I said I was already, that's no chance of me ever being made a leader in there. Because I remember my attitude to tithing as well. A, you're not a leave item if you were. You're only entitled to 10% of my food projects, which at that time is a few runner beans. So I don't mind giving you some money, but if I know where it's going, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't really think you want a

bit of legal tithe if I take it literally. So, yeah, I wasn't particularly popular for saying that.

It is, it is sat in a way. I mean, it's one of the most manipulative doctrines that's used tithing. And, you know, it's unfortunate that people don't get to hear the truth that tithing wasn't for ministers religion. It was for, um, Levites. And they are not Levites. They are not doing festivals in the temple. They're not doing animal sacrifices. And they're not banned from owning land like Levites were. So there's a whole rationale for God saying that if they had to give a tent for their food produce to them, was because the Levites didn't own land. Well,

Newt Ministers and New Frontiers own houses, their own property. They're able to, to make money in other ways. St Paul took a part-time job so that he wouldn't be a burden on believers. And this is something they forget that if they're going to say there are apostles and they want to live like apostles, then why don't they take a part-time job?

and reduce the tide and do what St Paul did. I've never heard any of them say that. And yet, that's absolutely biblical. That is what St Paul did. One thing that really got me doubting was when I found out that they started a food bank, which is fantastic.

It was really needed where we were. But they were making the food bank pay rent on the church. So they had to scrub the food bank. I was on the board of directors of it.

We had to scrub the brand trying to raise money to pay the manager and to get food when we needed it. But the reason they bought it into the building itself was to raise money for the church.

And it's like, no, you shouldn't be doing that. You should just be feeding the poor. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I call it creative accounting. They find ways to skirt the main accounting so that they can offload some of it to other entities.

And all they're doing is basically moving money from here to there so it looks differently. But it's just the whole thing. You mentioned the tithing problem. For me, the bigger problem is if you read the old covenant tithing system, like you said, it wasn't to make one man rich like they're doing, but even worse than that, the priest gave a large portion, almost all of it, back to the people on the year of the Jubilee.

It wasn't at all intended for them to better themselves. It was literally a way in which they could help the people ration their food and their land and their livestock so that they could survive.

It was more of a survival technique than it was anything. It was like social security. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's not taught by them at all. It just goes into this black hole of industry funding.

And if you don't know where it's going, or how it's being spent, it makes it very, very difficult to justify it. As I said, I think there are far worse people who preach this and really do live a very lavish lifestyle.

I wouldn't accuse New Frontiers of Leadership of doing that. I've not seen any evidence of that. But in terms of the transparency, it could have been a lot better. I mean, in terms of whether they're a cult or not, I would say they probably aren't, but they have cult-like tendencies and some of the things that they have going on could be very bad, depending on who the local leader is.

So they're a little bit more, they're a little bit less top driven than they used to be, since they found a step down, they now seem to be a little bit more autonomous. So that could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you have as you're apostle and how they interpret things.

But unlike the Baptists and the Church. England here who have a voting system of members that there is a bit of a check on anybody who's a rogue leader. They don't seem to have that or they didn't have me there. It was an informal sort of a deal of brief what we're doing or not a group of what we're doing.

And the final straw for us was when we had a family meeting to decide how some of the money was going to be spent on training people and who was employed. And because there had been some disagreement about how it was being organised we were told that we were not going to have to say any of us in the meeting. It was going to be the past or only and that it's not a democracy it is a theocracy and so we were going to be told what the decisions were. But the other thing with that is that when you when you come to God you

you have the Holy Spirit so you can talk to God yourself you don't have to go through anybody. That's why we don't need a temple and a high priest anymore and but that went by the Board. It was like we have to submit to our elders and just do as we're told

even when it doesn't make sense. Yeah and then in a way they've created a system that is ripe for people who are narcissistic or abusers to exploit to some of these individuals are very manipulative and are very good at using a system like that to manipulate others and I wouldn't say that was necessarily the case where we were there may be a bit of that going on but but in terms of a safeguarding and a system that's robust against those individuals getting into paths of leadership I don't think it was good enough I think that a system where you have more say from the membership makes it harder for

narcissistic individuals to get into positions of power and then to you know control and manipulate others for financial gain.

If you do a Google search on New Frontiers and you try to find any information linking it to the New Apostolic Reformation if it's out there it's very minimal there is there are no real connections however the structure of how they've organized their church matches exactly what the NAR has adopted and here you find Paul Cane who's helping to promote it now I know Paul Cane was instrumental in the creation of some of these and other churches but you don't find a whole lot of information about his influence on the specific church group however you find that he

has given the prophecy and that the leaders connected so was there more to it I don't know So, but I can see that it's problematic what they've created. The structure is, like you said, it helps whenever a person has ill intent when they get into power.

It helps keep them in power. And the missing transparency is really the framework that keeps them in control of the people. Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, when you're in new frontiers, you're influenced by all the people on God TV as well.

So, you know, this thing about having faith and the ideas that you have to bind the devil and do all this spiritual stuff and God won't act on anything unless you pray. And it gives you this huge sense of responsibility for everything, actually, isn't yours to have its gods.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of pressure put on people to volunteer and to perform and to, you know, to to spend an awful lot of their time sort of working for the organization of the church.

And it became something that sort of regarded as a divinely appointed structure that you can't criticise that you have to slot it into and you have to volunteer and give your time to and then more meetings and more time and more money.

The irony in this is that in terms of actually going out and evangelising, they didn't really do very much of it. Most of the conferences would have been attended by people from their own to nomination.

They rarely went out and spoke to people who weren't Christians, have from my experience. And most of the people that came into the nomination were Christians from other denominations that maybe wanted a more lively service in terms of the music or more charismatic, something like that.

So they tended to draw people in from other churches rather than actually evangelise, which maybe was a good thing in retrospect. It's really so odd because the word apostle just simply means someone who carries the message, somebody who is sent out to spread the gospel.

None of these men that have this structure that we're talking about, none of them do this, but they call themselves apostle. And what they tell you is apostle is that they are to spiritually govern you.

In other words, they're the platoon leaders. So you have this array of platoon leaders and you're in their platoon. None of which is biblical. It doesn't make sense that they're doing it. And even whenever I was in the movement that we escaped, I knew that the Bible had a different meaning, but I never really critically thought about why these people are doing it.

I think if the transparency had have been there and if critical thinking was supported and promoted, which it should be. I think people would have never even adopted this because it's anti-biblical what they're doing.

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I didn't realize how many belief systems that I sort of absorbed that I still had. And I'm gradually, that's why I found your interview with Adam Short. Yeah, he was. Adam Short and I actually have a meeting scheduled with him.

He was in so many different NAR groups. I didn't realize it when I first spoke with him, but we've continued speaking and he's going to be on a few more that we have, so we'll get more information from him.

Yeah, it was so interesting the way he was talking about having to deconstruct his face and put it back together again. Backed up by God TV, I was believing I had to have face and I wrote for my healing and I remember saying to Andy, I hate the word face because I don't know how to fit myself into the shape of face that they demand so that I can set everything off and get healed, which is basically putting the emphasis on works and me doing stuff to get God to heal me, which isn't that a spell where you have to do a certain type of things to get something

to happen. It is, but it's even more than that when they teach the, when they teach the concept of faith in these movements, what they're actually teaching is blind faith. People humans can have faith and they can believe something, but the belief usually produces a tangible result and that's why there is faith.

You believe something and something will happen and then it does, but what these ministers and evangelists and apostles promote is the idea that you can have faith and nothing will happen, but you must believe that it did happen even though you can see no tangible result, in other words, you can have blind faith.

Yeah, I mean I felt really bad if I used to feel really bad if I had to feel a foreman and list You know and actually write down all the things they used to really feel really worried that I would never be healed Because I'd written down that I've got asthma and you know and stuff like that And it was like I didn't have Enough face because I was admitting that I had it It's a horrible place to be it's horrible. I have family members who have chronic illnesses And in fact some of them have died from the chronic illnesses and throughout their entire life as they have this thing

They are just like you if they say if they even mention it in a casual conversation They'll stop themselves immediately. No, I didn't mean to say that Lord please forgive me for saying it Even though they have this condition and again, it just it all goes back to the blind faith They want you to believe in something that doesn't exist and then you get into the conference thing Because you go to the conference and you get on a bit of a high with the worship and you feel like God's presence is there And then you feel like each each time you go to a conference you'll go up a bit in your face

And then maybe you'll get healed from that So you get caught into this trap of going off to conferences and it is just like this hamster wheel And as I've been gradually deconstructing my faith and getting more and more into God's word It feels like this weight is just being lifted off my shoulders and I can just go It's alright Lord, I just trust you. It's it's freeing whenever you leave this thing and you understand that Number one, they were manipulating you number two the so-called religion that they had wasn't really Christianity I think that was the biggest concept for me to grasp. I thought it was a Christian

I thought it was in a Christian movement, but it wasn't Christianity and when you step away What Adam described well the process of deconstruction? Some people when they leave they try to hold on to certain aspects of what they believe because of pride I couldn't have adopted something that was entirely false So I must have adopted something that was partially false and it tricked me And so they tried to replace just certain aspects of what it is they believe not realizing that the whole foundation itself was wrong and it isn't until you can deconstruct Literally come to the point where you become afraid that you have become an atheist because you have completely eradicated a false God

I believed in this God. I no longer believe in this God. Therefore I must be an atheist After you do this then you can suddenly come to terms with the fact that wait a minute I didn't deconstruct God. I do constructed this fake God that they had given me Yeah, I mean to be fair to the one we went to But I don't think they push the healing theology as far as expecting everybody to get healed.

I mean, our pastor wasn't well and he just said, well, we don't understand why. And it was more the influence of Andrew Wormack and some of the televangilists that we were exposed to. I think they would push that more.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. But again, the thing that kind of did it for us with them was that when we went to their meetings, their spaces would be ill and weren't healed. And if you really had the power to heal people, wouldn't you start with the people that are closest to you?

Yeah, because of course, we went to the Andrew Wormack conferences as well. So that was all, it all misses together, doesn't it? Yeah, as I didn't want to blame you frontiers for that one, because I didn't think they pushed that theology, but that's more through the God TV televangilist stuff that we were exposed to.

But yeah, you used to see a kind of unreality about what's going on. I mean, I remember one meeting I was in with Andrew Wormack where somebody who was obviously very ill, they had to call ambulance and the ambulance took him out and it was almost as if Andrew Wormack just ignored it, that's if nothing had happened.

And you think, well, if you're saying you've got the power to heal people and to do these things, why are you getting in there and helping this guy? And my problem with it is that I guess I'm not a cessationist in some ways, but you've got to at least admit where you can't say that you have a gift around him sick if you're not demonstrating it, either with people that are close to you or when there are people in the audience really ill or things like that, and you're making quite a bit of money out of setting your materials, conferences and other things, it just seems to me a bit dishonest

in a way. You're pushing a theology on people that is there expecting to have to do X, Y and Z to get healed and then you're making money out of it, that seems to be wrong.

I really had the question, who is it that they're robbing? It's almost as though they're robbing God because when they're doing this thing that they do, you go to these conventions, there are people who come to the conventions believing in God and there are people who improve.

But in many cases, whenever somebody improves, especially the fantastic cases, these are the people who are called up as examples that these people got healed in my meeting, therefore associate their healing to me.

In other words, it's my fault they got healed. I have the power to make God heal them, in essence, if you follow all paths out to its logical conclusion, that's what they're pushing. What they're doing is robbing the glory from God and what happens is the people who see this, who are in the...

meetings and especially the people that they claim as healed people, they connect their healing to the person and over time what happens is they connect their faith to that person. I know a really good close friend of mine.

He will not miss a Binyin conference whenever Binyin is in any nearby town. He goes and he swears up and down that Binyin has the power of God. Well, he's associated God with Binyin and you know, I'm not saying Binyin is not a Christian, I can't answer that question.

But I can say that what he's doing is deceptive and I just don't believe in my heart that God would be deceptive like this. Yeah, we did go to one Binyin meeting in London, which as it happened due to a visa mixer, Binyin actually couldn't attend, he had to do it remotely.

But I was quite shocked actually, the guy who did the kind of warm-up bit who was now currently serving the jail sentence for tax evasion was linking, getting healed with giving money and the entire spiel that he gave was that if you want your breakthrough, you've got a breakthrough in barriers you're putting in your mind telling you not to give beyond what you think you should give.

And by the way, here's a step where you can put your credit card number on and tell us how much you can give. So he was manipulating people into believing they could get healed from sickness by giving more than they felt comfortable with and donating by a credit card.

And that's about as despicable as you can get. I mean, we've got a bunch of ill people who may not know very much about the gospel or you're linking them getting healed from giving huge sums of money potentially on credit card.

And that was that Binyin's meeting, as I said, that gentleman now is buying bars at the moment. It kind of says it already. Yeah. There's so many that have similar prosecutions over the way in which they teach this.

And for me, it all comes back to this. If it's all about money, is it all about religion? The two don't really mix that well. And so when you have a person that's pushing, give me your money.

And even that problem becomes even further amplified when you have these people, these small ministers who are preaching the old covenant, old covenant tithing system, they're doing the same thing just on a much smaller scale.

And so you have to ask the question, well, is God really in this? Because their focus appears to be money whenever God doesn't work like this. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just recently, I got a letter from one of these ministries.

It did go in the bin, I have to say, but he was saying how we know times are really tough and people are struggling, but you've really got to make sure that you carry on tithing.

for God to bless you. And it's like, how could you do that? You know you're writing to people that are struggling. You've said it. He should be saying, I've got millions of dollars. I will give you some money to help you. Oh, it's just to make me so angry. It never seems to go in that era.

I always say, I'd love to walk up to one of these guys and give them a tenth of my vegetable pot and see how they react. Well, I would love to go and ask them where they're giving their tithes because you know, if it is for Christian people to give tithes to them, where does their tithing go? I have seen examples of ministers who do it properly and they do the old covenant tithing system, but there are poor people in the church and they do help the poor. So I can't say that 100% of ministers are like this, but I can say that I have seen a heck of a lot of them that

were driving Cadillacs. Well, some of the parishioners could not even afford a car and they're taking the tie then they're getting, they're, they're bettering themselves. I guess is the best way to put it whenever other people in their church is suffering. So I'm, I'm one of the few Americans who believe that the entire church system should be taxed because if you did, you wouldn't have all of these people who are entering the ministry just to dodge taxes. And I think that's a huge part of the problem here. So anyway, it appears to be about money and especially when you get into

the prosperity gospel and these movements like God TV that are pushing this notion that if you give God some money, he's going to do X, Y or Z for you, it is pure deception and it's finest.

Chanting the subject a bit, one of the things that I feel bad about is the fact that I was, when I was in it, I was giving prophecies and and all this sort of stuff and and trying to get people to come along and and join in not realizing that I was being as bad. Well, I'm not quite as bad, I don't think, but not realizing that I was, was going to have, it was going to have a detrimental effect on people's face. I mean, one lady left the church that we were in and went there and now

she doesn't go anywhere having had an experience at New Frontiers and I don't know where her faith is and I just feel bad that we came up with the idea for her to come come to that church you know and the prophecies and things I had you know it's like what's that from God or was it me or what it is that whole deconstruction of you know asking God for forgiveness if I did sort of lead people astray and sort of detangling the situate of things in my mind.

Sometimes you just can't work it out and you just have to put it to one side. It's hard. I have had experiences whenever I was in the movement that could be called spiritual. I no longer call them spiritual but they could have been called spiritual and it isn't that I no longer believe in all of it but there is a lot of deception but there is also the situation that is a human problem where when people are in a movement and they're all in a group think mindset they begin thinking alike, acting alike, doing the same things.

And so for me there's a psychological question to it when people have these things that appear to be spiritual, were they really or were they just part of the group in acting like this.

So I too, I carried guilt just simply because of my family name, my family attracted people into this but over time I came to release that guilt because every single person is on their own journey and one of the things, one of the hardest things for me to accept whenever I started working with people who were escaping and I had to go through the deconstruction, it was the hardest thing I ever went through. Whenever I see somebody else deconstruct and they go a different pathway than I've chosen, I'd never dissuade them from the path that they choose

because if you believe in a God who is all powerful and a God who is leading those who are his people, you have to believe that whatever is the path that they're on is for a reason and that God can lead them back. It's not my decision to lead them in or out in a certain way.

Now I can support them, I can be good to them in the way that the Bible says to be good, so that's what I do. But I came to release that guilt because everybody is on their own journey and who they become is based on the experiences that they have and not all of the experiences that mold a person's framework and their outlook, not all of them are good experiences.

Yeah, another thing I've had to come to terms with is what I thought was getting really close to God through them music and through worshipping and I feel like I've lost an intimacy with what I thought was God, but I think actually it was more of a high induced by the worship music and

by the repetitiveness, but I used to strive to go to these conferences to sort of get that high

realized, again, I didn't realize I was doing that. I didn't realize I was that that's what it was. It's it's really hard. It's yeah, and you feel like, well, God, I don't need to have this emotional hide to talk to you, but I miss it. Yeah. Well, that's the rural hard part because the false religion associates the emotion with the God. In other words, you have to have the emotion to receive the God, which isn't biblical at all. And it's the reverse, actually, if God comes, it should give you the emotion, not vice versa. But worse than that, I'm a musician,

and it was I still have not overcome this. We were singing songs that had bad theology in them. And some of the songs that I felt closest to God in had really, really bad theology.

And so I look at the manipulation that can be done through music. And I have come to the point in my life, I almost do not listen to gospel music at all. And that's all it played for years and years. I would rather listen to a CD by sting than what a gospel CD. And part of it, you know, after having been burned once, I was manipulated by the music. I don't want to be burned again.

So I chose not to. And that made change in the future. I don't know. But for right now, I just avoided altogether. Yeah, I find the same thing I rarely listen to it now.

Because I think, like you said, you know, I'm a musician too. And you know, the tricks that you use to make something science-perish or the repetition of the chorus is the suspended chords that go on forever. And it is a formula, really, in terms of the music.

I think that's what it works. It does work on people's minds. It's really funny when you think about it because there is a mathematical formula to making a person feel like they're receiving God. And as a musician, you can recognize it. The average person doesn't see it. But I know exactly what you're talking about. There are there are chord progressions that I can make somebody get into a religious high. And if I know how to do this through a formula, is it really God? I don't believe so. No. And like you said, I agree. It makes it very hard to go

back to listening to the music because it brings back memories of when you were being manipulated. And the last thing you want to do is be reminded of that. But also because you're very, you know, as you said, once burned, you don't want to get burned again, but I kind of think so.

It is difficult to listen to it again. And unfortunately, a lot of Christian music is in that bracket. There are a few that aren't and they tend to be the ones I listen to. But the worship music, some of it, particularly coming out of some of the well-known ministries that have had problems recently. No, I've probably avoided that.

Yeah, I'm always to think, what's the point of secular music? Music should just be there for God. And again, not realising, so if I do listen to music, it's to old hymns now. Because God's very straightforward, there's no big mystery He wants to be known.

There's no sort of, you have to go to this conference or behave like this or do that and maybe He'll reveal something to you. He wants to be known, He's sent us His word.

And the old hymns, usually most of them, just tell a story about Jesus and about God. And it is about God. It's not about how I am in relation to God, if you see what I mean.

It's not all about me and my feelings and what God, and yeah, it's the difficult one, because it's so subtle because you want to acknowledge what God's done for you because He loves us so much. But you don't want to be concentrating on yourself all the time.

You want to be glorifying God, but then you don't want to get on the high. And it's like, woo! Well, thank you very much for coming on here and sharing your story with me.

Like I said, I've had a few others who were in the same group that are sending me information and it's a little bit overwhelming to see how far and wide that this weird framework has spread and into all of these churches. But if you could give some advice to somebody who is in one of these types of groups, what advice would you give them?

Read your Bible. Really read your Bible. Don't just do the one verse and then ten pages of sermon. Get into your Bible and know your Bible. And talk to other people and question things.

And if anyone out there is feeling like they need to talk by email with us, we're quite happy to be put in touch if they buy you John, if they need, feel like they need to discuss anything. Well, if we can offer any help.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure many people are going to be finding encouragement from having similar experiences that you have. I know I was because we musicians connect. So I immediately connect with you.

But I'm encouraged by it and I hope some other people are. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can contact us on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.org.

For more about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon Audible.