Our Stories: Escaping NAR - Bob Jones the Occult and Evil Deception - With Melissa Entas

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Melissa Intis, former member of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Melissa, it's good to have you on here. We've talked a little bit about some of your story. I'm wanting to hear more of it, but we were talking about the experiences that you had and the connections back to William Brannum, which are insanely interesting to me, but I'm certain that our listeners are going to be very excited to hear it and also how you were able to escape the NAR.

So maybe if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself. My name is Melissa Intis. I actually live in and around the Kansas City area and have so quite some extensive history in the area with both vineyard movements and the IHOP establishment that's here, including their prayer room.

I was a part of the prayer room. I was also a part of the fellowship. Back when it was met, like Metro Fellowship and the big conferences that they would hold here. My history has been pretty extensive and to just jump to the final point, the Lord delivered me, the Lord Jesus, delivered me from NAR in starting in the year of 2019 and then completing it, I completely came out of NAR in May of 2020.

And I think the most important part of my story that I feel like needed to be communicated is twofold. Number one, how the Lord himself exposed not only who William Brannum was to me, but how he did it.

And then the second part was how the NAR and what I learned while I was in the NAR and as I've come out of the NAR movement, what I am taking away from that as I now really move into a more sound doctrine place, a more really quite literally more stable relationship with the Lord.

There's no longer the highs and the lows and the constant press for me. or that it seems to be hand in hand with an arm movement. So I was in the arm movement for almost three decades.

I was born again by the spirit of God and when I was 20 and I am in my 50s now and I have been walking with the Lord the best I can, pretty much this entire time.

Awesome. I'm very glad that you were able to escape and I'm curious what brought you into the New Apostolic Reformation? To splice in a little bit of my personal life, I was not raised by my biological father.

My parents divorced when I was a very small girl and up until the age where I was about 19 to 20, I hadn't had no relationship with him or no contact. But he had found me and I was living in Illinois at the time and I now live in Missouri and we had a dialogue and I was young and decided that I wanted to move to where he was located, which was here in Kansas City, to get to know him.

And so when I did in that same time frame, I had had my born again experience with the Lord that was separate from my biological dad. And I do want to say his name.

His name is Wade Hankins. And Wade passed away a little over a year ago now. And anyway, I moved here to Kansas City to get to know him. When I moved here and I was starting my relationship with the Lord,

Wade was in the process and I don't know much about this history but I think it is important to note. He had come out of what was called the RLDS Church, which I, from my understanding in my research, is an offshoot of the Mormon Church, the LDS.

They're no longer called the RLDS Church. They're called, I believe it's called the Community of Christ and their headquarters is an independence Missouri, which is gosh, probably 20 minutes from IHOPs headquarters. So he had come out of that and was beginning a journey of I think going free from some of the false teachings in that cult because that's what it is.

And he was very much a part of and wanting to be a part of IHOP and so there was direct connection with the IHOP fellowship at the time and him wanting to get on board with them.

And he was asked that if he wanted to get on board with them that they wanted him to sit for about a year, let them get to know him and that kind of... thing and he did not want to do that. So he decided to start what was called a vineyard and I knew very little about that. However I do remember seeing a plethora of like John Wimber books and at the time I remember there being a lot of cassettes. There were cassettes I remember in the library because I of course automatically went to the vineyard church.

This was my biological dad. I was getting to know him or trying to get to know who he was as a person and he was in the process of starting a brand new fellowship which actually grew pretty quickly. There was quite a bit of influence from like John Wimber and like any conference that I would have like we would go type situation. So not teaching I was inundated with it just from the get go and of course I was young. Number one and number two because it was never taught from the pulpit that your that scripture is your basis. What was taught from the pulpit was

experience experience experience experience it was talked about nonstop. So you saw me distracted I was looking off to another computer while people talk I look things up because all of a sudden my my head started to explode you're talking about the RLDS. Well there was an independence Missouri there is a offshoot of the latter of the the Mormonism and the leader the head of that organization was William Draves from Independence Missouri and they claimed that they had a prophecy that William Brannum was the the latter day saint that was coming and William Brannum even mentions

it on his recording. If you go to my website and you type in the search bar William Draves you'll find the research page about him and I even I think I have the document that Draves published where there was some alleged prophecy that William Brannum is coming and then I've got some quotes on the page where William Brannum was mentioning this on his recordings and he said he's tying his his own ministry to this very weird cult like this was a splinter group of Mormonism that turned into a a very destructive cult so Brannum connected his ministry to this. So the history of my

biological dad is in that I don't know his history there because I mean I know very little of it because I wasn't around for it thank God thank God but I know that he came out of what what was referred to as the RLDS church which I know they've changed their name and they now go by the community of Christ and they're everywhere in this area like that those churches by that name the community of Christ and they still follow the book of Mormon and they have the little bit of research I've done, which I have done some research on it.

They have a priesthood and they have rituals that you do. They have a temple. They actually, the temple is located, I'm 20 minutes from their temple. And it's a very large, I mean, it is huge.

In fact, most of the high schools around here use their adjacent building for their graduations as creepy as that is. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. So whenever I'm talking to people in these interviews, it's more than just letting people tell their story.

I'm collecting random facts and I store the facts as you're talking them. I'm quickly typing these things up. I had another person tell me that, and I can't prove or verify this yet, but he is supposed to be back on the podcast with more information.

But I'm told that Mike Bickel was out of either that or something connected to that. So there's even a broader connection between IHOP KC, but this RLDS church that you're referring to, the reason why I suddenly started looking up, this is the same group.

So auto-fetting, I think, is the name. If you're searching for more information, you'll search for auto-fetting and you'll find the RLDS controversy within the, I think it was called the reorganized church of Jesus Christ of Lodysame.

Yeah, that is what it is. Because you can see there's still some churches in the area that when you drive by, you can see that whole thing is written out like that. So the other thing I just want to share with you and whether you air this partner or not, it's up to you.

But here again, the Lord used the spiritual gifts with me to expose all of this because for me, I think he knew if he didn't do it that way, I was going to really waver in my faith because I was born again by a power encounter with Jesus.

And so if I started, you know, so he used the spiritual gifts to show me the false spiritual gifts and the very, very real, dark power, I don't know what you want to call it, it's demonic power, that poses as the Holy Spirit.

And so here, I'm going, so I'm kind of going and right into my story here as far as the vineyard and he started the vineyard, he took no time to decompress from leaving the RLDS church to starting the vineyard.

Of course, here again, I didn't know any of that. I was young, I had dreamt my whole life of what meeting my dad was gonna be like and I was really caught up into this, what was very powerful to me, experience.

and really a dynamic life. And so I didn't know how to weigh things spiritually. I was not taught, although I take full responsibility for my ignorance there. That being said, it wasn't taught in the church, the vineyard that I was a part of for many years.

What was emphasized was spiritual experiences. So on any given Sunday, you would come to church and the teachings would be on the latest, this, that, or the other kind of just like I hop, frankly.

The prophetic dreams, the prophecies, this is what God's gonna do. And then teaching out of scripture, like maybe out of first or second Corinthians about the spiritual gifts. So there was just a heavy influence.

Never was the cross talked about, never was character development, repenting of your sin. Those basic core things of walking with the Lord and being part of the kingdom of God were just not a part of my experience in the Nar movement for all three decades.

That being said, that went on for quite some time, many years. And we saw lots of people come in, lots of people go out,

and I was asked at one point if I would be, work is my dad's secretary. And he asked me if I would quit my then job and come and work as a secretary for him, in which I did.

I thought it would be good because we still weren't having the relationship that I had dreamt of. And, you know, I think I will just end that part of who I am by saying that relationship never did happen.

And I've come to a lot of peace over that, not because I didn't want it, but because quite literally I believe that my own biological dad was incapable of the kind of relationship. He was very much a man of, he was very much drawn to anything that was powerful, anything that was dynamic, anything that was charismatic, but the character of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, self-control, those kinds of things were not evident in his life.

And when I agreed to work for him, I got to see that at close and personal. And I saw, began to see quite literally abusive situations

behind the door, behind closed doors. And because I was his daughter, I didn't know what to do with it. But I knew it was wrong because I was, at that point, learning the script.

for myself. And I had my own relationship with the Lord and had an intense prayer life and wanted the truth and wanted to be salt and light in the world. And so slowly over time I began to grow more uncomfortable with that. Of course, throughout my walk with the Lord, one of the main things that I experience with him is I do have prophetic dreams. They happen very sporadically. I can go years without them. So it isn't something that I have every week, every month or even every year. But when I do have them, they are remarkably different. I

usually note that they are from the Lord when I am having them. And during this time frame, so I'm going to say it was in the early 90s. And the vineyard was up and running. And my dad, Wade Hinkins, Wade, introduced a man to our fellowship by the name of Bob Jones. And he brought him in, introduced him on from the Get Go. This man, Bob Jones, was ministering from our pulpit from our platform. Even that wasn't like the big ones. We were just, you know, a small little fellowship of 100, 200 people. But Bob Jones came to our fellowship for

quite some time. We were not told where he was from. I think I knew a little bit in the back of my head. I even sat in Bob Jones's living room countless times, countless times. And of course, history bears out that this was the time frame that Bob was under discipline from IHOP. And my dad, Wade Hinkins, took him into our fellowship and allowed him to minister. I don't remember anyone questioning it or wondering where this person came from. And of course, he was a, he was very dynamic. And every, every Sunday, he was sharing things. Every

Sunday, he was ministering profitically or laying hands on people and praying for them. And I, I was one of them. And I remember, and I just, I want to begin to, to unwind how the Lord began to open my eyes that something was really, really wrong. I remember one time being in Bob Jones's living room with many quote and international profits and they were talking ministering to me and they were saying, oh you have, this is something I had heard from the get go, oh you have a big calling on your life, big calling on your life, big calling on your life, which all that did was create

pressure on me to be, to try to figure this out or try to be this thing. All I knew is that when I was at home, I was a little girl in my heart in my relationship with Jesus.

I wasn't this thing that everyone kept talking to me about and anyway I remember one particular time when Bob Jones was praying for me and he took my hands and he took my hands, I put my hands like this and I literally experienced electrical surges.

It was physical and I remember thinking, if this is the Holy Spirit, why can't I do this when I'm by myself because I have the Holy Spirit. That was the first indicator, something was really different, wrong, off and I began to grow more uncomfortable.

You know you were talking about just the simple basics of Christianity was missing in the experience with your father and then even worse when Bob Jones came. I'll never forget whenever I left the Brannum movement and we started attending normal churches and we tried several of them.

I had heard the word gospel all of my life growing up and it was never fully explained and after I left I actually went back through all of the recordings I could find a Brannum.

There's not one instance where he actually says what the gospel is but he refers to it as being a power and whenever a minister was preaching in the Brannum movement they would say, and we have the gospel, we have the power.

They were always associating it with power. They were never associating it with the actual gospel of Jesus Christ and so we started experiencing new churches. I heard the gospel actually for the first time I was 37, 38 years old whenever it first happened.

I'd never heard it before and I was like, it's that simple. You've got to be kidding me. Why did they not tell me this when I was in this cult? But they associate it with power and then now you bring Bob Jones into the picture.

Jones and Paul Kane were trying to recreate Brannumism 2.0 so they were bringing this thing that they were calling the gospel but they were instead wanting to associate it with this quote unquote power.

That was exactly my experience and I guess what I want to make super clear is that it wasn't made believe. I think people that haven't maybe experienced this virtual dynamic of that really, really grapple with how can all of this even happen.

So it was, it was a very real power. It was something you could tangibly feel and experience. These men that I would interact with and talk with, they knew things about my past. They knew things that only, that I thought only God knew.

And so it was all very toppling. It was all very, it was very powerful quite frankly. And so of course, when you're experiencing that, those kinds of things, when someone has spiritual knowledge about you, that only God knows, then you automatically think it's God.

And in my immaturity, you know, I was swept up in the flood. But that particular moment was my first kind of crack through, if you will, something this isn't right. And then I was at first, of course, this is what I always do.

I was like, well, what's wrong with me? Oh, do I really have the real Holy Spirit? If I can't do these things when I'm by myself with the Lord, right? And so over some time, Bob Jones eventually left our fellowship.

I don't even know where he went, frankly. If I remember correctly, he went somewhere to Florida. If I remember correctly, he actually moved because his, his house was not far from where our church was.

It was in Independence, Missouri. And that being said, once he moved, we ended up going through a lot of turmoil in the church. And then there was a huge church split, which those are common these days.

It seems like. And it was at that point that I began to walk separately. And so in my journey there with the Lord, I would periodically do some things with my biological dad, Wade.

And then over just over the years, I was getting further and further away from the Narba. Still was heavily influenced by it because it was in the core of my teachings. But I began to learn different things and, and I would view other Christians who went to normal churches if you want to call them that.

That's what we call them, right, normal church. And I would like, I would notice they had more peace than I did. Like, why do they have more peace than I do when I have this dynamic, you know, I have a, this dynamic relationship and I've seen all these things.

It didn't matter how much I had seen or experienced, I still didn't have that peace. And so that really began to, to work on me. It all came to a, a cumulative time in 2019.

And this is where, where my exodus, if you will, began. In 2019, my husband and I at the time, we were, we were hosting like home groups where people would come and we would, we would have a meal together.

We would actually read the Bible, like we would open the Bible and we read the Bible, we would pray for one another. And quite frankly, those time frames and that kind of experience has been my favorite thing all along.

But this particular night Wade had asked if he could come. And of course, always in the back of my mind or really in the bottom of my heart, I was always hoping for that moment with him where I could be the daughter and he could be the dad and we'd have that final connecting moment.

So I always had my heart wide open to him. So he came and it just so happened that my brother who was also a believer came and his son came, my nephew. So we're looking at about, I don't know, ten, we're talking about fifteen people minus the kids.

We're sitting around and my nephew actually shares that he's recently engaged and he is sharing this news with us and he's asking us with everything that he has to help him to be a good father, a good husband and that he wants to please the Lord with that.

And so we all just open the Bible and we're all taking turns reading from scripture about what God's expectations are and what God does to help facilitate that and like husband-late husbands, you know, lay your lives down as Christ says for the church, love your wives, all the scriptures that are commonplace for that and here comes the defining moment.

When Wade would experience what we called a word, what he would call a word of knowledge, he would literally have a visible, a visible thing happen to him where he would get really almost stiff like and close his eyes and if you knew him for any length of time, you knew that was when God was talking to him because it was visible.

He would get a very strange look and I asked him one day, do you know that you do that? He goes, I can feel when it happens to me and I said, interesting, anyway, this happened to him while we were discussing all this and he says, this is a quote, that all those things are well and good, but I have a word from the Lord and he got up and he went over to my nephew and he put his hands on my nephew and he said, I break the power of all the false responsibility off of you and the entire room fell into the most deafening silence ever

and it felt like the longest two minutes of my life, no one said anything and so me and my ability to pick up a moment or work through it was like, I literally said does anyone like I didn't even know what to say it was it was so tense and I did I went into the kitchen like start cutting up dessert servant dessert that being said over the course of the next couple days several people came to us and said what he did there was wrong I was uncomfortable this he was in diabolical error why

did you guys not say anything and it caught me to my heart because they were right and I didn't say anything and I was cut to my heart and I knew that my nephew had given his heart to this discussion and he had just experienced something horrific and so of course I dealt with that first and then I began to fast and pray probably I mean I truly fasted and pray just a few times in my life and the Lord answered me and the Lord answered me and I knew I wasn't gonna want to know the answer I could feel the foreboding of it and the

Lord answered me by giving me a dream I had a dream where I saw second Thessalonians two ten written out on a wall and then I had the next part of the dream there's three parts to what God had given me I saw weighed holding hands with a very very large what looks like a man but it would be seven to eight foot tall who literally had no eyes so not even splits there was nothing for eyes but this being he was holding hands with and it was his best friend in the dream and he thought it was the Holy Spirit and in the dream he came he came

over to me and he said he was trying to introduce me to this thing and the Spirit of the Lord and the dream said to me no no no Melissa you be you you do not you do not do that and Wade said to me show him how you can prophesy and this is when the Lord said to me no no no you don't do that you it's not on command and that segment ended the next segment was when I was in a building in a corner observing a man again in this brown suit older suit it's all it's an

old school look but he was laying in a casket the casket was glass and he was hovering in the casket by occult power and I knew it I just want to interject here I've never had any real occult teaching or I don't know much about it so it is something that I I learned along the way.

That being said, in the dream I too, typically knew it was Oakle Power. He was hovering and his followers kept coming in and out of the room to see if he had resurrected, the dream ended.

I got up, wrote this all down, and I was to be quite honest with you shook. And so for a good three, four, five days, I'd kept to myself trying to process what was going on.

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I began to research the scriptures and wades background. And wades background is in the RLDS church, which is an offshoot of the LDS church, which is Mormonism. And what I discovered is that they go through ritualistic ceremonies, they take oaths, and that this spirit that was posing as the Holy Spirit was a demonic spirit, and the Lord identified it from Acts 16 to 16 as the spirit of divination.

And that is how the Lord taught me what it was. And the reason it had no eyes is because it has no eyes. It doesn't see. It's not the real thing. It's blind, but it is a very real power.

And so in Acts 16, you can read the context there. They're proclaiming the gospel, really. They're going city to city at this point, but this woman is following them around, saying, these men are of the most high god, so she's accurate.

She's on point. She knows exactly what they're doing, but they turn and review car and actually deal with what is called the spirit of divination that she has. So the thing that I have learned in part, That I believe was functioning there and is functioning even that even functioned in William Brandham was the same thing.

It's an occult power that is a spirit of divination and so the entire my entire point here is it can have accurate information, but it is not the spirit of God and this spirit will lead people to the kingdom of me, myself, and I.

It will always point to self and the rise of the up of self and that was even in the dream with Wade holding his hand, Wade wanting to showcase that I could prophesy on command, showcasing power, being about power, that's what it was about and the Lord wanted me to remain little inside humble, small, reliant dependent on him.

One of the things that excited me a bit about your story when we were talking before the podcast, I've mentioned this before in the podcast and I haven't really gone too far with it and I probably still won't, but I also have dreams and I have all my life.

Like you said, they don't happen frequently but when they do, oh my gosh, I have mentioned this one, I don't mention it much because there is a huge problem whenever somebody has a large following and they start saying these kind of things, people start to make them out as being more than they are and I'm not, I'm just John, I'm just this little guy, but I have had dreams.

Before I left the cult and I started going to normal churches, I've talked about this, I think this is the only dream I've talked about on the podcast, but I had this recurring dream where I would walk into, I was walking into a bar and at this time I had just left the message that they were T totalers, like I would never do this at that point in my life, but I walk in and it was pitch black, I couldn't see very far back, but the further I got, the more I started shaking and trembling and then I saw my grandfather who was the

pastor of the Brannum Tabernacle and seated right behind him was this dark figure that I could not see until I got back there and when I got just close enough, I could see his face, it was Brannum and I would wake up in a cold sweat, I had the same dream over and over and over and over and over after I left the message and I just shared more details that I think I ever have in the podcast. We were, we started attending small groups where we would gather together, we would hear the actual gospel instead of this thing that the cult had

and one of the houses happened to be on a route in this little town that I live in that I never take and I was driving home from that house and I saw that exact bar.

I kid you not the bar for my dream and I'm like, oh my gosh, so I did a title search and I this is what led This is what actually opened the door for me to learn that Branham and his family were actually working closely with the mob Because I did a title search on the building. It was owned by one of the Branham's and From there that exploded into me studying. I wanted to know every aspect of that dream So I studied everything I could about the mob. I started studying Jeffersonville history the liquor production

All of it So when you read my book and you find all of that all that door was open because of this dream that I had But more than that Because the way the figure was Presented in the dream It wasn't a holy thing and so I started studying the occult. I wanted to know what this was Then I started studying the occult and Jeffersonville history So that's what opened the door to me finding about Davis and all of his spiritualism and all of the weird nonsense All of that came from this one this one dream

So the way that you describe Branham and before this podcast it's like oh my gosh That it's very similar to what I had in my experience, but again That's probably all I'll ever say on the podcast because I don't want people to think I'm more than I am I'm just I'm the least among you Yes, I mean I So get that I and and I wrote I completely empathize and relate to it because I think one of the reasons why I say I like to remain small or a little girl on the inside is because of that that very thing

I don't I don't want to think I don't want anyone to think that I have anything other than any other Grand of saying or blade of grass of humanity other than the fact that When I needed God's help he came and when I cried out for the truth he showed it to me And here again, I guess I want to reiterate that I cried out with all I was Yeah, it wasn't lip service by any means um I think maybe a good segue would be to go back to that last part of that dream then was um

You know the man hovering in the casket and his followers were keeping him hoping he would resurrect So that very next day after I had the dream I was on YouTube and I was listening to a teaching um, I don't even know what teaching it was, but they made reference to a man whose followers have kept him kept his body in hopes that he would resurrect and I remember literally gasping pausing because I thought maybe I'd heard it wrong Rewinding it listening I probably I probably rewinded and listened to it 1520 times And then they didn't mention his name, but just a little couple minutes after that then they referred to William Brand

So that was the first time I had heard William Rannam's name and God connected the dots. While I didn't even listen to the rest of the teaching, I just began to do research online.

And it wasn't hard to find who William Rannam was and the fact that his followers did keep his body for a good amount of time thinking he was going to resurrect. And so God began to take me through a journey, which ultimately I think maybe day two or three into my journey.

I found your website, the William Rannam Historical, the research site. And I listened to all the videos that are posted there. So it wasn't even on the YouTube site. I just went through it and I would take a break and I would eat and I would come back and then I would sleep for a while.

But I was so excited because I knew God was revealing so much to me. And he showed me, you know, even down to William Rannam's... I wouldn't call it a headstone, but, you know, like, he...

William Rannam referred to the pyramids. Yes, he referred to the pyramids. He was very surrounded by occult. So that was when I started connecting the dots that there were people currently talking about William Rannam.

And idolizing who he was saying, you know, we need to get back to what he had. And so that was how the Lord began to just really peel back and show me the connection into NAR.

And how he's... William Rannam, the connection to Paul Kane, the connection to IHOP, the connection to Bethel. And how Bethel is heavily William Rannam. They talk about him on a regular basis, including, I guess, some have claimed that they have William Rannam's angel.

The angel that William Rannam had, Todd Bentley had had on that. So all of this went on for, you know, throughout the end of 2019, throughout the spring of 2020. During that time frame, I was equally learning scripture for myself.

I began to learn the name and claimant wasn't the Lord. I began to learn the statements like decree and declare wasn't the Lord. Just all the basic things that NAR teaches, I took it to the scripture and shorted up.

And one by one, all those ways of living fell away. And until I came to the point where the only thing I could pray for a while was the Lord's Prayer. It was the only thing that felt good to my heart and felt safe.

And I knew that the Lord had delivered me. And of course, I went through a really deep season of repentance myself. And just saying, I didn't know. Thank you for showing me. Please, you know...

forgive me for anything I've ever done, Lord God that was not you or was by your spirit and please sever me completely from any influence in my life. And so that's where I have been since then.

And since that time, I just continue to grow in the Lord and I'm so grateful for your podcast. And here again, as the IHOP scenario that we're currently going through, right, that's going, that's happening. And now Rick Joyner has come under scrutiny as well. I did have a dream in that same timeframe about Rick Joyner that he was hiding things. So that period of time, there was a lot that the Lord had given me, but I think ultimately God is shaking what he can shake and he's bringing his own out of it. And if there's any hope that I have, it's knowing that

I knew absolutely none of these things, but because I put my trust in the Lord and he is so trustworthy

that he will show his own. He will absolutely bring out his children and separate them out from the things, the deception that's there, the heavy spiritual influence that's there, and really the spirit of divination that I have come to believe is completely embedded into the Nar movement that poses as the Holy Spirit, which is why they're into dominionism because they're again, that's about we're going to take over the world, we're going to we're going to go in and dominate every sphere of society, we're going to do this, and the complete focus is off of the Lord. And so when I learned that the basic Hebrew, really the basic Hebrew meaning of

anti-Christ means in place of, because I was taught it was this big evil figure, but it's a movement that will look like the Lord, feel like it's spiritual, but it will actually be in place of the Lord.

It will be just like the scripture say, an angel of light, or and it will be accompanied by false signs and wonders. I now see how it's going to unfold because it's very real. And so the answer, the cross, because that's never what was taught in the Nar movement, the cross for me, the cross for humanity and dealing with your character and becoming God light. I remember the day that I realized that spiritual warfare wasn't yelling at, at spirits in the sky or binding them over this city or that kind of thing, but it was godly character form within me was spiritual warfare.

You know, it's funny you and I, we came on very, very different journeys, but we came to almost the same places because when I began this journey, I was in the cult, similar to your NAR, I was in the movement that it branched off of.

And the way that they taught the Christianity, it was more of sorcery. And I didn't really grasp that. And so, and I have to tread very lightly when I'm describing that to other people, especially in some of the movements with the big names that are still popular among even escapees of I-Hop Casey, because they don't yet grasp the concept of the difference between what is spiritualism and what is Christianity.

They see these things as Christian, whenever somebody prophesies, but instead they're fortune telling, they're telling the future, they're telling fortunes, or whenever they communicate with the dead, all of these things that they're teaching in these movements, if you really read the Bible and you really understand what those words mean in the Bible, these are the forces of evil, these are not the forces of good.

But it took me years to grasp that, because I was so trained to believe that these evil things were Christianity. And it wasn't until, gosh, I want to say it was like seven years later, that it suddenly dawned on me, I have to look deeper than what I was taught was the basics of Christianity.

I needed to actually study the dark side, because they had confused us as to what they called Christian, they were actually teaching dark, dark world concepts. And so I began to study divination and occultism and communication with the dead, all of these things are mentioned explicitly in both the Old and New Testaments as the forces of evil, but they were doing them under the guise of Christianity.

So it wasn't until I grasped that, that I could realize that it wasn't just that the movement was false, but the framework that was laid, that all of these movements built on top of it was also false.

And deeply entrenched like a strong foundation, like deeply entrenched. So when people say the word deception now, I have a whole new respect for the word deception for that word, and I think it's the very nature, it is the very nature of deception to not know you're deceived.

So just like my, just like Wade, for his entire life, he was in relationship with something he believed to be the Holy Spirit, but he really did, I know he believed it was God.

And ultimately he didn't have much fruit at the end of his life to show, to show for that. And the other thing I wanted to point out as you were talking, I was thinking back to what you're saying about the cross and character and the basics of following the word, just the gospel, like you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that every...

that's written there and all the words of Messiah Jesus, right? So I was thinking the stark reality was is Wade didn't care about Bob Jones' character. He wanted the power. And Bob didn't care about what was going on in his life. He continued to minister. So it just kind of reveals the bottom line of that is that when the when character or when we're not dealing with our character or taking the cross into our lives, we really open it, open ourselves up to deception.

So May 2020, I renounced not only the Naur movement but the charismatic movement as a whole. I did it publicly. I lost all my friends and I lost most of my family. I escaped all of that with my own children who the Lord and his graciousness had spared some of this but also had revealed to them as well. And so we're still very much on the journey of walking with the Lord and learning of the Lord ourselves. We love the simplicity of life. We still have moments where I personally still have moments where I mourn. Knowing that my dad wanted to have certain

things happen and he didn't, I do want to say that I was next to him when he passed away. We were able to pray together hours before he died and I was able to forgive him. Obviously he never was open to hear any of these things and that caused a massive rift in our obviously in our relationship. But at the end of his life, I was able to sit with him and we prayed together and I know that the mercy of the Lord is far reaching. So I just set my dad in that place and

only the Lord knew the true motives of his heart. So I do know that that my dad left a very long lineage of spiritual abuse to many, many people and I spent my dad's memorial service listening to people come forward about how he had abused them. So it's been a difficult journey and I've done it pretty much by myself. I will say that outside of the Lord, I did reach out for help and in my area because it's so saturated with both the RLDS and the NAR, it's just been really difficult to find people that could help me but the Lord started this

process with me. So I trust he'll see it through and he is seeing it through. So just even for me today, being able to tell my story finally is is proof in the pudding that, you know, I get to use my voice to break silence.

And really it breaks the shame of it off of me. So as a, I am a licensed Christian counselor. I work in behavioral health. And the Lord has me on the front lines of humanity, serving my community.

I help people on their worst days. That's what I tell people. That's my job. I help them. And I hope, and I help them. And help save them from their worst days. And when it all possible, I point them to the Lord.

So I'm grateful for deliverance. And I'm grateful. I mean, I don't think that's a strong enough word. I don't think there's a strong enough word for it. I really am in awe.

And you know, the Lord's throne is established on righteousness and justice. And I see the justice of the Lord in going after his children who have been so deeply deceived. And I think that we're what we're seeing as far as the non-movement as a whole really coming into the light now.

And it's shaking and people are waking up. And there's so much confusion and there's so much to learn. But I'm really grateful for people like you who have spent countless hours, days, months, years creating material to help us along the way.

So thank you so much. Thank you so much for all you've done. I'm glad that you got to share your story. And I'm really glad that you're doing it with me. I'm most glad, however, that you use the word deliverance correctly.

There are people, if you've seen my website in the comment post, there are people that say that I'm against deliverance, not at all. I'm against the sorcery that they're calling deliverance. It is not deliverance that they're calling.

What you describe is actual deliverance. And that's, it goes back to another thing that you said, which was beautiful, you use the phrase simplicity of life. Whenever you're in these groups, my wife calls it a high-demand group.

And there is no better term for it, because they want to keep you in this hype, in this emotion, and it's emotionally painful, because you can't keep this, you can't keep this up for very long without just getting burned out.

And then when you actually get into a real church that teaches the gospel and its simplicity, and you understand that there is a simplicity of life, and there are people who can help you find true deliverance, and that true deliverance doesn't come from a sorcerer.

I think that's the biggest takeaway. So you as a Christian counselor, if you were to give advice to somebody who is either thinking about or has escaped the NAR and is trying to cope with all of the things that go with life.

leaving, what would your advice be to them? Well, first of all, my advice would be twofold. It would be in all things, prayer and supplication. So you want to be praying to the true and living God, the living Jesus Christ, the truth away in the life.

You want to pray. Number two, you want to couple it with taking your own eyes into a version of the scripture that has been verified over history, over time. I want to give a warning that there's many, many, many forms of interpretations of scripture.

So you want to really know what you're reading and why you're reading it, but do it for yourself and let the, the ruak, the spirit of God, the living breathing spirit of God will teach his word to you one-on-one, that's his promise to us.

And he will do that. Second of all, tell your story. Tell your story, break silence, because as you begin to come out of this, very, a very real, what I'm going to call PTSD, comes in tandem with realizing you have been in a deceptive church system, have been spiritually abused, have, have faulty understanding of what it means to follow God.

You're going to need support. For me, I would recommend finding a Bible-based small group, even a small group, or a church, because for myself, I had a very difficult time going into a church sitting.

I would get very triggered. I couldn't even hear what was being said because I was reliving everything that had happened and I knew that I had been so deceived, that how would I now know I wasn't deceived?

And so it took me a while to get my walking legs, if you will. That would be probably my best reaching out to people that are Christian counselors who specialize, maybe in spiritual abuse, would be something else I would recommend, because they're out there.

You can find them. Spiritual abuse defined as being exploited for spiritual purposes, whatever that looks like. And I think it's the most hideous form of abuse on the earth, because if an abuse can happen, that hinders your ability to even want to relate to the unseen father, the living God, then all sorts of life is cut off from you.

And so I see spiritual abuse as the most lethal form of abuse on the earth.

And maybe that's why I'm a Christian counselor, I don't know. I'm kind of just saying you're putting the pieces together. Like, okay, okay. So we got some things to go through here, but yeah.

ultimately the Lord is the is the counselor. He is the he is our counselor and he sends the Holy Spirit to be our comforter and our counselor. So that would be my recommendation. Inundate yourself with scripture. Take those teachings. Take the things that you've been through.

But definitely share your share your story. I was personally so overwhelmed with shame and still to this day when people know that I am Wade's daughter I experienced a twinge a twinge of shame because of the spiritual abuse that was tied to him and the deception that I know took place. And so I always say I made peace with my dad before he died and I trust them in the mercy of the Lord and at the same time it is the Lord himself that has revealed everything that happened. And the ungodly character that really was the gateway to being deceived

and the press for power I would say would be the other thing. I want to be somebody in the world instead of being a grain of sand or a blade of grass or one of humanity. So that's my story.

Really really good advice. I think that's one of the other reasons why I really connected whenever you started talking because I can sympathize with almost every aspect of what you say even what you just now said. I have this severe crippling pain whenever my name is associated with my grandfather's name, my grandfather with the abuse of the church and all of this. It really that's what drove me for several years whenever I first began what I'm doing is there's no way to correct the wrong of all of the harm that has been done. But if I can just do my little part and then if

other people can do their part too we can hopefully make the world a better place. And that was my ambition. But the shame is crippling for somebody like me. I fully get it. The other thing I'm really really glad you brought back memory. So PTSD everybody who leaves it called they just they experience it to some degree. I have a heavy amount and you forget things. There are things that your mind just blocks away. One of the things that you said that actually now I can include this in my support again because I had forgotten this when you first leave it is crippling pain to

try to enter a church because you have been spiritually abused in a church. However the small groups you can do and it's not so crippling. I remember that feeling. I remember feeling when I go to church it was like the worst thing I had experience was trying to pressure myself to go back into a church when I first left. But the small groups were heaven man and the food was great too so what helps me with that just to pass this along and I'm sure I already know this, but when I studied what the word church meant, in the actual original

word, in the Greek, and then, of course, ultimately into the Hebrew, the word church is ecclesia, or the ecclesia, and what that actually means is the called out ones, the people of God called out. And originally, God called his people the very first time, was at Mount Sinai, called his people that, you know, that. So it is the people of God. When I understood that church wasn't a building, and church was God's people, then it made it a little safer, I thought a little safer, because God had equally taught me to weigh people's character, you're going to know them by their fruit. And then the other part of that was, is you don't see

trees fruit quickly, you must watch for seasons to see what's really in a tree, right? So the Lord taught me, you weigh someone's character over time. And so to do that, even with people who claim that they're Christians or followers of God, that you have to weigh who they are over time, before you decide to what level of relationship you want to have with them. I think there's just a lot of wisdom in that. And so in God's mercy over me, he has sent people into my life through my workplace, you know, just the happenstance meetings of people that I've gotten to know that I feel

safe with, that I've been able to share my story with. And then I'm able to reengage, really, I'm able to reengage with the body of Christ in a way that I feel safe for me. So even in that, he was gentle, not the don't forsake, you know, don't forsake the gathering, you know, that that was part of the nar for me too. Like, if the door's open, you got to be there. And for me, you know, five, six, seven meetings a week, I was in this, I was in this, I was in this, you know,

so not going to church felt like a relief. But at the same time, there was that guilt for not going. And then then when God delivered me, I was like, I don't think I can ever go into a church again, God. And so, you know, he helped me with, with all of that to understand that he has his people all over the world and that he is more than able to connect us to one another. So yeah, yeah. We could talk forever on this. I remember going through all of that. And one of the things that

helped me, I was studying just the history of the church and the history of the culture. And the phrase that they beat you over the head with is forsake yourself not for the gathering of the reading of scripture. Well, if you understand the time period, most of the people couldn't read.

So they had together to read the scripture. But church wasn't just that. Church was such a bigger thing. And they met in people's houses. And they had dinners together. It was a community. Church was a community where people could grow and learn and so much more than an apostle who's coming to show you that he has the divine connection to God. So anyway, we could talk about that forever, but thank you so much for doing this.

You're welcome. Yeah, of course. Thank you as well. I'm really glad I'm sure that, you know, this will be a marker in my life. This today will be a marker in my life. So I'm really grateful for it. And I hope that that it'll help even if it's just one person that has an aha moment or is helped or comforted in some way. So yeah, my pleasure. Thank you. It's been great. Hopefully the listeners enjoy it too. So 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-branam.org. For more about the dark side of the

New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.