Christ Gospel Cult: Mystery Cults and Modern Faith - With Scott Huddleston

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my very special guest, Scott Huddleston, former member of Christ Gospel Church. Scott, it's good to have you on and to talk all things Bernice Hicks and Christ Gospel Church. I've mentioned a few times my house is not too far. I can literally walk to the headquarters of that church and I see people from time to time. In fact, we're having a big blizzard right now. It's a

big white out and I just took my wife to the grocery store and I'm fairly certain I saw some Christ Gospel Church members in there shopping at the last minute during the white out like I was. So anyway, it's good to have you. Thank you.

It's good to speak with you finally. Awesome. Well, maybe you could just if you could just take a moment and tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your connection to Christ Gospel Church. I was introduced to Christ Gospel Church when I was just a toddler, probably five or six years old. My mom had discovered the church through my hand. This was a satellite church near Knox, Indiana and my mom jumped in with both feet. She had five children. I was the youngest of five and we were all pretty much groomed and raised in a Christ Gospel setting. Our very

first pastors were the parents of one of your last guests, Renee, on your show. So that was our first pastors, her parents. And we got to know them pretty well. Good people. We had about four pastors throughout the 30 years I'd spent in Christ Gospel and I've been going about 10 years. I married my wife in 1998 and she was Catholic, raised Catholic. I was raised in a costal or non-denominational and she came that direction. She came to church with me and couldn't quite understand everything and I tried to explain it to her the best I knew how and we

finally come to the realization that we might be actually an occult and as painful as it was to reconcile that. I was in my thirties at the time. I had heard things throughout my year, throughout the years of going to Christ's gospel.

They didn't quite, you know, make sense. Some of the phrases I heard, like, there are some devils that we fight were prehistoric and they don't know the name Jesus. They only know the tetragramaton, the Yudhe Vahey.

So you have to use that name against these prehistoric devils that come against you. Even as a 17-year-old boy, when I heard that, I'm like, that doesn't make sense to me, you know? Jesus, the name of all names.

How could it be? These demons don't know the Alpha and the Omega, you know? So that's pretty much when I started questioning things. Just as a teenager, things I'd heard, there's a lot of beliefs that you may not be aware of, John, that Christ's gospel teaches that's different than Brannum, I'm sure, but similar in some ways, I've always wanted to ask you, if Brannum taught that there were three separate eternal abodes, you know, New Heaven, New City, New Worth, but, you know, even though John saw in the vision, those three places, Christ's gospel teaches that they're literally

three separate places you go. You know, you don't, the church doesn't go to heaven, the church is fragmented, and you got good, better and best. And, you know, as a works-based Christian, you're always striving for the best, hoping your efforts are enough, and that was the mindset I went into.

Most of my life being a works-based Christian, totally ignorant that I was, would have defended it, if somebody called me a works-based, I would have laughed at them, called them a baby Christian, and this continued about my business.

Yeah, Brannum taught a lot of things, and not all of them are cohesive, but, so I do know a good bit about Christ's gospel church, believe it or not, I've got close friends who are, who are former members of the sect, and in fact, one of them just two weeks ago, we took their family out to dinner and spent some time with them, so I'm familiar with some of the doctrines, obviously not all, because I did not grow up in it.

But from what I can tell, based off of the types of doctrines that they have, it was largely a British Israel doctrine that created the foundation for the cult, and what's really interesting is I would not consider what I know from Bernice Hicks, I would not consider her to be racist by no means, but she had edged closely towards the Christian identity doctrines.

She taught the manifested sons of God doctrine, which was widespread through Brannum. and laterane. The third dimensions, the third heaven, that's straight out of branemism. I can go back. I want to say it's early is the early 50s. I think he started teaching the three heavens. It might have been before that. He didn't stick with it. He changed it from three into seven and you can find different variations. But there are some similar doctrines and if you recognize the time at which Christ gospel kind of split off, I'll be willing to bet that it was more

common than the three heavens. It was probably more common right up to the split. I know they've had two splits since I was familiar with them. I think the first one was in the early 80s, 1982. I'm trying to remember. I was just a small kid. And then the last one in 2015, that was the the split I'm more familiar with. And I had actually had spoken to the people, some of the people that had left. And I was actively going to the church. Then my mom had passed in 2013. She was an active member still. She loved the Lord. She was a good

devout Christian, but she was also very devout in her belief to Christ gospel. You know, it's it's crazy because people hear the word cult. And if they're ignorant, they think, oh, cult. And they laugh at you and think, we don't serve Satan. Well, we're not saying that. We're saying that you have direct obedience to a hierarchy in this one person as a as a profit. You see here is a profit that has come. And she has this divine, you know, telephone to God. And that's clearly not scriptural. You know, there's no private interpretation. It's so laid out in

the gospel that, you know, it's grace by we're saved. We're all Calvary. It's all level ground of Calvary. We're all the same. We're not we're none better than one another. And I think ultimately why I wanted to come on your show is because for me, leaving Christ's gospel was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life because I was completely indoctrinated into it. I didn't come into it as an as an adult. I came into as a child and it was just everything was the norm. I thought their truth was the biblical truth.

And we were raised to when we had any kind of thought that came against their teaching, we were raised to believe that was the devil, the enemy fighting us. And I literally believe it was the Holy Spirit trying to show me things now. But back then, I just brushed it off as the devil. You know, the devil is not omnipresent. So I don't know how he's fighting everybody at once. But and then a good friend of mine, we would strike up conversations. And we noticed, hey, are you noticing this? Yeah, I'm noticing this. And we, over the years,

we just, when we left the church, we couldn't stop. talking about it. We couldn't, it's like we were reconciling with it for years. And like I said, it was very taxing on me to leave it. It was hard, very hard.

And I actually, our local radio station has a Christian radio station has like a pastor's line you could call. And as I was leaving the church, I decided to call that pastor's line. And I told the gentleman that I spoke with, he said he was a third generation pastor and I told him, I said, I think I've been raised in a cult. And he said, well, it makes you think that's got.

I said, well, and I start explaining some of the odd beliefs and how it's a woman that's leading you know, the charge. And she's been doing it for 50 years, 50 some years at that time. And and I said, everything they teach is there's got to be a deeper truth, a deeper meaning, more mysteries.

It's surrounded mysteries. And he said, Scott, what I've noticed, any kind of church that really has to have a deeper truth or has to have these mysteries, he goes, it's all rooted in pride.

And I said, well, that makes sense. It made a lot of sense to me. And there was a website, I don't know if you're familiar with Romans letter. He had a website in around 2007, 2008.

He was friends with Gail Batke. And the website he created, I just stumbled upon. I was googling CGC cult one day just because my aunt used to call us a cult. She never attended.

I had another aunt. And so I just googled it and found this website that totally broke down everything that I had ever questioned. And I never even knew what the word ex you know, I said, Jesus meant at the time. And he, this person had went to church for Christ's gospel in Jeffersonville for over a decade. And I just, I couldn't believe it. He was like literally reading my mind, my thoughts. And yeah, that, that, when my mom died in 2013, I tried talking with her. And, and I said, Mom, I've been looking into the church. I said, I literally have proof

that there was plagiarism. I have proof. I can show you. You know, there, there was a book. Carlos Sirrez had written song of songs. I said, I've looked at pages that are identical word for word to the song of Solomon, a song of love. This sister Hicks had written. And I said, there's another book. There's Clarence Larkin and his charts. And I, I said, do you want to see this stuff? And she said, no, she goes, if I, if I look at it, I'll have to relearn everything.

And I'll have to start from the beginning. I said, I said, you'd rather put your head in a sand. And that was my last conversation with my mom before she passed about Christ's gospel.

That's awful. Yeah. It was just you know, she loved the Lord. She was a very humble person. She had a walk with God in spite of being an occult. So you can go to a cult church and love God and be sincere, but be sincerely wrong at the same time. Yeah. You know, that's that's a sad thing because people when they when they watch this video that know me, they think, well, Scott, he's just angry. I'm not angry.

I did have a righteous indignation. And I was angry for years when I realized I've been duped for 30 years. My mom was misled. You know, there's a lot of corruption. And I I didn't see it.

I was ignorant to it. And now that I'm out of it, you know, my life has completely changed. I understand what the true gospel is. I always thought I knew what the gospel was.

And maybe you can relate, but we always looked at other churches, other sects like they were just baby Christians. You know, you know, going out witnessing that's for the Baptist, going out and sharing the gospel. That's that's their ministry. We we are the the crem de la crème of of Christianity. We are the 144,000. That's what we thought. We are the bride. We didn't think the church was the bride. We thought 144,000 is taught to be the bride. So we thought we were that. And everybody else was less than, you know, we didn't we weren't supposed to judge them,

but you know, they're baby Christians. And they they only fight little devil's. We fight these big, you know, that's that's the mindset. And I believed it, you know, yeah. Well, the key is in the mysteries, right? I after I left the cult, I began I deep dive on studying all religion, both modern and ancient. And I was a little bit surprised when I came across the mystery cults, because I had no idea what this was. And I was like, well, you know, what is this? What is a mystery cult? And I began to examine the ancient mysteries, like the cults of Dionysus, for example,

they had the Dionysian mysteries. And it was this divine knowledge imparted to the sect leaders that they had. And it was an esoteric belief that they held and nobody else knew. And so they were they were the elite. They were the special ones. And at that time, I was still kind of unraveling what it was. I believed I was still in the cult. But as I was looking through this early in the cult, I began to see similarities. And I just kind of put it on the shelf. And then after I left, I went back and looked at those mystery cults. I was like, oh my gosh, this is very this is

exactly what we were in just a modernized version of it. And the other key you said the devil is not omnipresent. Well, the mystery cults want, especially the Christian mystery cults, they want you to believe that the devil is all powerful. In fact, Brannum in Brannumism, he taught that God in that Jesus and Satan were equal at one time. And so you have this Thor versus Loki kind of relationship between God and the devil. Well, that's, you know, that's part of the ancient mysteries. That's how it works. And, you know, like you said, people will, people think I do this

because I'm angry and I'm, I'm not. I just, I can't live something that is a lie anymore. Right. I just, you know, for me and my family, I just decided we've had enough. It's time to move on. It's funny because when you said put it on a shelf, we were told if we didn't understand something, I didn't agree with it, but we were told if we didn't understand it to put it on a shelf. And I had a library of Congress of stuff on a shelf. I can't put any more on a shelf.

There's so many questions I had, you know, some of the beliefs are just not biblical. But one thing about Christ's gospel is they don't take away from the Word of God. I've never noticed that.

It's always an addition. It's always an added to. For instance, I'll give you a couple examples. They believe that the veil of the temple, when Jesus died, instead of being torn, like the Bible says from top to bottom, they believe it was torn in the form of a cross. That's, that's what they teach. And that's, I've looked it up and they'll use Hebrew and Greek to try to justify that by saying too, and for all means, left to right. No, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't. And the Bible.

But, you know, the crosses at Calvary, mainstream Christianity teaches there were three crosses, two thieves, and then Jesus in the middle. Christ's gospel teaches there were five crosses, two thieves, two malefactors, and then Christ in the middle. Because Luke is the only book in the Bible of the of the gospels that mentioned malefactor. So, you know, Luke wasn't even there at the crucifixion. Yeah. He was a physician. He was a little more educated. He used a different word than thief and replaced it with malefactor, which just means evil doer. You know, criminals are evildoers, thieves are evildoers. So, it's, it's just, you know, so things like that got me,

my brain was like, wait a minute, five crosses, you know, you look into that. There's nothing about it. There's, you know, many Christian philosophers that are way more intelligent and studied than me. There's no mention anywhere on the internet. Yeah. And they weren't just five crosses. They were shaped in the form of a cross even. It's just, there's so much. I could sit here for an hour and tell you all the mysteries that I was taught. Right. It's that way with all of the mystery cults, right? They want to, well, they want you to believe that they have some special

secret knowledge that nobody else has. Right. And then what's worse is, so the Christian mystery cults, you have the gospel. what they try to convey to the people is that, yes, we have the gospel, but every other church out there has that. That's not important. These divine mysteries that we have, that's more important than a gospel. And so the focus becomes wrong. They're more focused on the esoteric knowledge than they are actually the gospel.

So, you've heard of the three heavens and you have heard that they're different, eternal of bodes, not just different descriptions of the new Jerusalem. You've heard that. Yeah, Brandon taught it as dimensions and he later introduced, I think, seven dimensions, if I remember correctly, which is quite funny because I work in IT and for a long period of time, I was managing groups of people from different countries and one of them was from Asian, Asian Indians. And I was working with people from India who some of them had Hindu beliefs and different, the different gods. And I sat down with this one gentleman

who was a Christian and also, I can't remember what other God it was. It was Sirisha. I can't remember some other God. And I was like, how does that work? How can you be Christian and this other thing? And he's explaining to me Christianity, and I was in the cult at the time and it was, I'll never forget this. It was funny because his knowledge of the Bible was greater than any cult pastor that I'd ever heard. This guy knew his Bible forward, backwards, every single bit of it. But he also believed this other God. And I was like,

what's wrong with you, man? Well, he also believed in the dimensions and he was explaining to me that when you go to heaven, John, there's different levels. There's different tiers of heaven. There's different dimensions and they're quite different from each other. And he explained how this worked. And years later, I started studying some of the different Eastern religions.

And that's a common theme that there are these other dimensions. So, Brandon was just tapping into some esoteric, I don't know where he got it, but he got some kind of esoteric knowledge about the dimensions. And I guess at one point in time there were three, but they changed to seven.

Wow. And you know, the thing that gets me, I guess Jehovah's Witness also teaches that they're the 144,000 and that they will inherit, you know, the kingdom. But I guess a lot of cults think they are the 144,000. Really? Well, it's a common British Israel theme.

So, British Israelism is the notion that the people from the British Isles and later incorporated America into this, North America, were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. And when this bread with Christianity in the United States, Pentecostalism was being born. The leaders of Pentecostalism were deeply rooted in the British Israel notion.

And what they did is they took the ancient passages that were written to Israel and they tried to morph them into saying, part of it was meant for Israel, but it also can apply to us today.

And so when you hear terms like the 144,000 and many, like the Jewish feast, for example, they would say, now this feast was in under the old covenant, you had these feasts and you had these blessings that came with the feast.

Well, they're going to be resurrected in the end times and we'll start having these feasts again and we'll be part of Israel. And the whole thing is just really weird because it's not really Christianity, but yet they're using parts of the Christian Bible to make it say what they do.

The book that I mentioned earlier, I think it's called Song of Songs, Carlos Orrez, who had written it many, many years before Hicks had written her book. She was a known Kabbalist and I looked in the Kabbalah, the religion of Kabbalah and it's Jewish mysticism.

So it's like somebody else had mentioned it is the religion of Badana. It's, there was talk many years ago that Hicks was going to meet Madana. That was supposed to happen. It was a big thing in Christ's gospel, this was 20 years ago.

And I'm like, why would she want to meet Sister Hicks? That doesn't make sense. I don't understand. She's not a Christian. Well, she was a devout Kabbalist and she's seen some of the teachings.

We're very similar to her belief system. That never seemed quite right to me. When we were growing up in Christ's gospel, we believed in standards, all the typical Pentecostal standards, but TVs were the one thing.

If you had a television in your house, when the rapture took place, you weren't going to make it. Just like, that's a prerequisite. If you have a TV, you're not going to make it and so my mom was terrified to have a TV.

And I remember my stepdad snuck a little black and white TV because he wasn't quite believing it. He snuck that little black and white TV to the basement, me and my brothers and sisters would gather around and watch that little thing.

And this dingy old basement just to get some entertainment, just to get some semblance of the world outside of our cult. My aunt, one of my aunts used to say that we were a cult when I was a kid and I just laughed it off.

My mom just kind of hurt her feelings, but she kind of just let it brush right off her back. And it's funny because it's like being in the eye of a storm. You don't know you're in the hurricane until you get out of the cult, you don't see what it was.

You have to be distant to yourself from it. And then you can see, wow, that is weird because we had our own language. You know, if somebody went to church you would say did you get in tonight they know exactly what that means They means did you go up front and demonstrate and you know do what they do shake yourself and all that I used to do it I used to do it and I believe the hundred percent is what God wanted me to do you know, I didn't do it because

I did I did it because I was raised to believe that's what you do when you feel the presence of God and that was you know the biggest struggle for me John leaving was the fact recon reconciling but the fact that how can this not be true when I Feel the presence of God when I feel God in this church. How can how can this be a cult and not be the truth, right?

And it took me a while for God to show me that when you lift up his name when you praise God blessings will fall If you're to Justin Bieber's And a Christian song is sung and God is praise legitimately praise you will feel the goosebumps You will feel the presence of God. So God doesn't Come and drop when he's impressed with our biblical prowess our intelligence He's just impressed by when we lift up his name. He's so good and gracious He drops blessings. So when you when you feel the presence of God when people are praying or or whatever singing a worship song

It doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing everything right It just means God looks at the motive and intense of your heart and that was the struggle for me because I thought you know if if I'm in a false religion Why do I feel God?

Why can I feel his presence? I shouldn't you know what I mean? And so that's what was a struggle for me when I left realizing that Even though I've been ignorant and I've trespassed and I've you know I've I've tried to serve God out of works more than out of grace and tried to you know attain heaven through my works You know God's just in merciful and forgiving and he sees that and he sees your motives And I think a lot of good people go to church there still and that love truly love the Lord

But they're just they're they're bound with works that they don't even know they have they don't know they're they're completely you know In bondage they have no idea until you're freed from that bondage. You don't know. Wow I had such a weight on my shoulders that I didn't even know I was carrying and I remember I had a you know what really helped me transition out as God had moved Baptist preacher right next to me and We struck up a really good friendship. We were friends for a good eight years and before he moved and

I started explaining to him my Christianity and You know baptists are really grounded in the Bible So he was just using nothing but King James, you know, just hit me with truth after truth after truth and And at first I was just like almost laughing at him because I seen myself is this you know, you know, you're just a baby Christian and your little Baptist preacher, let me help you give you some of these mysteries and really, you know, that was my prideful stance, you know, and over the years, I began to realize that, you know, I'm going off somebody's interpretation that I don't even understand.

He's reading the scripture and it's making sense. And I remember one specific night we were up really late talking and he's just trying to make me understand, you know, we're saved by grace, not by works, less than he managed to boast. And he's just going scripture after scripture, then he reads the scripture in Matthew that talks about Jesus's, for take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And when he said that to me, when he read that scripture, it something clicked and I felt like a presence, a weight was lifted off my shoulder,

I can't explain it was like my salvation experience all over again. And I could literally feel God saying, you know, it's not that hard to serve me, you're making it, you're making it so much harder than you think it needs to be, you know, if we truly let the Lord carry the weight, that, you know, that he wants to carry and we stop trying to save ourselves through our works, because it's a lot of work to try to save yourself. You always feel like you don't measure up.

I'm never good enough, you know, you feel like, you know, you're running on for God and then you fall, you have this big fall and then you're pride, you're like, and then you're like, I was never real, I never really grew in God, I was, I'm just a baby Christian, there's no hope, I can't make the bride of Christ, you know. And when you have different tears and you're striving for the best and we were told that, you know, you're judged according to what you know. And since you guys are exposed to so much truth and so many of these mysteries, then you're going to be held according to that.

So therefore I, we were always working, working, working, trying to pray hard or trying to, you know, and if you don't have tears, God's not even acknowledging that prayer, because you, you don't really mean it. You know, if you're not in your prayer closet and you're not interceding and travailing, you know, and doing all this stuff and your prayers are kind of just, you know, not really going to get answered. Your sins aren't going to be forgiven.

You're not sincere enough. So you've got to get more sincere, you've got to get more tears, more of this, more of that. And it took a, it took a lot of convincing for me to recognize, you know, God, you know, I believe there's a special place for a prayer closet and all that. I believe that's, you know, there's a time and a place for that. But when you're just driving down the road, casually talking to the Lord and praying, that's fine. He's not going to reject those prayers and, you know, he's not, he's like, well, you know, when you get back home in your prayer closet,

then I'll really listen. And it's like, there's nothing too small you can talk to God about. You know, the reveal little things that we think he don't care about, you know, like, Lord, should I eat here today or should I spend this money in this way? And that, you know, all those little things are important to God, in my opinion. And that's how you have a relationship with him is through communication, through reading his word, through prayer. But, you know, the works based of my ideology always was about what can I do to be worthy? Nothing.

You know, I did a little mean test to my sister. She's still, she still believes Christ gospel and she thinks that I just don't understand or I'm angry or whatever. I love her, but she just, she doesn't see eye to eye with me. And I said to Kim, I said, what is the requirements of heaven? I asked her. And I was waiting for that works based answer to come, because I knew it would. Well, we got to do this prayer life this and I said, don't, Kim, it's perfection. The requirements of heaven is perfection. That's why we have to have the blood of Jesus

to cover. That's the only thing that makes us worthy. It's not, it's not things we do. And I said, it's perfection. And God, when God sees us covered in the sun's blood, that's, that's the requirement of heaven. And I said, if you, I didn't say this to her, but I've always said it, if, if the blood is the requirement of heaven, what's the requirement of the new city, this higher realm that they teach? Well, you have to attribute works to that. Has to be works somewhere coming into that to go to our higher realm, because if the blood is just

get you at the baseline, and then you're, all your works with the blood. That's how you get to the higher realm. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources

and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Whenever I left the cult and began examining all of the different cults that spun off of this, and some of them that were in the history of the making of the cult that I left, But my first thought was that there must be some sort of a master plan that all of these guys are following when they create this because they're all the same.

They, especially the Christian cults, they take, they want to take the gospel where Jesus died for you and it's not of yourself, but it's what the Father's love did for you. And they flip it upside down where it's not about what Jesus did, it's about what you can do to earn what Jesus did.

And my wife likes to call it a high demand group because they demand so much of you. But yet at the same time, they present the central figure as the answer for what you cannot do.

Because as you know, as the Bible says, you cannot save yourself. But these cults want you to believe that you can save yourself. And when you fail, the cult leader is always the answer.

And it's this carrot on a stick type of mentality, right? You'll never reach that carrot no matter how hard you try. And the similarities between the cults are just uncanny. I, you mentioned Kabbalah and Steve Montgomery and I, we have this spin-off series that we call the converging apostasy.

And he's going through all of the different connections of Kabbalah to these different religions. It's unbelievable how many there are. And the influence that Kabbalah had on America, American Christianity, one of the beliefs in Kabbalah ironically is the three heavens in the Jewish, not just in Jewish mysticism, but this was a largely because of the influence of the pagan religions on Jewish mysticism.

But in Kabbalah, I'm drawn a blank on the names of the, you know, the different tiers. But basically it means like one tier is a curtain, another is a firmament, another is the skies.

And you've got these different layers of heaven. And you can, you can kind of journey through these and ascend. And it's the ascension that is the importance. Because like all cults, they too, it's a high demand group and you have to, you have to become so enlightened that you get to that highest tier.

And it's your journey to enlightenment, basically. And it's putting the spiritual journey on the shoulders of the victims of the cult. Because they have to try to strive to get higher, to a higher place.

Right. You know, where Matthew talks about the Sower and the thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundredfold, you know, the reaping. Christ's gospel, that's correlated to new heaven, new city, new earth, all those three eternal destinations. It's also white, you know, they equate white robes, white rain and white linen being, you know, good to best.

They believe that God will only be in the new city in those, the wedding supper with the Lamb. Will only be there. So people that Didn't make it to that realm won't be with God. And I'm like, wait a minute. Isn't God omnipresent?

Isn't he ever where once? How is he not there? Is he gonna limit himself? You know, it's just So out there In the end, it's really a different God and that's that was really the unusual part of this for me after I left I read the Bible again and again I lost count of the times between 10 and 15 times and read it for what it said not for what I was told that it said And what I found is the first time I read through it's you know, it wasn't that much different But as I'm reading it and trying not to think about my preconceived notions

What the text says is so far different from what I believe that it's not even compatible. It's not the same Bible It's not the same text and We had this I'm certain that you had the same because all these cults have the same kind of interpretation of reading scripture we believe that the Bible where it says the Bible is of no private interpretation We were manipulated in our heads to believe that meant that you as an individual can't read it and understand what it means We instead have to have a central figure to go to as our mediator between God and man

To understand what the Bible means and that is so common among all the cults When I was younger and in it we used to look at Cap the in priests and like what's the need for a priest?

You know, we got Jesus Jesus is our mediator the priest what why do we why do we go through a middle man? That never made sense and then but Christ gospel in a sense does the same thing with that witness room They have the spiritual year in Tumim and they would have church members go to this I did it once go to this witness room and They call it layer life before the Lord. Well, I I believe Jesus when he said that he will send the comforter that will lead you to all truth You know, I believe we are to have a personal relationship with Jesus and we shouldn't need other people

I mean you can have pastors to give you advice. You can have mentors whatever, but as far as You know relying on somebody else's relationship with God to direct yours and Then have no real You know communion with the Holy Spirit to lead and guide. You know when I was I Used to think that the word intercession meant Stammering of lips. That's what I thought it meant like when you prayed your lips would stammer like almost Like you went through a traumatic event and I didn't even understand that that doesn't mean Intercession intercession is you praying for somebody else on their behalf. That's intercessory prayer

But just the language that I was used to I didn't even know that You know, I thought because a buddy of mine asked me what do you think intercession is a subwats a stammering of lips?

He's like, what? And I looked it up and, well, I'm wrong, you know, it's not that. It's, you know, we literally have angels. The Bible says we don't know how to pray as we are, but the Spirit itself makes an intercession for the saints with groaning, which cannot be uttered.

So I thought, wait a minute, you know, what's the Spirit is literally praying for us on our behalf. That's what it means. It doesn't mean this other, you know, thing that I was raised to believe it, man.

I'm not saying that, you know, you can't have a sincere prayer but, and have that effect. But, you know, just, there's so many, so many different things from cults, from mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity gets it wrong too, right?

But, you know, the church, it's kind of eye because my wife and I were talking the other day and I was mentioning about speaking with you and she says, I said, you know, it's so clear in the Bible that a woman isn't to use her authority over a man.

It's in the Bible at least four or five times. And there's, how do you justify that? But when you look, all the Christ's gospel churches, the only church that had a female pastor was the main one.

No other churches had a female preacher. And if it's really okay, why isn't it, why isn't there more of it? Yeah. And the female preacher in that case, as with all cults, she became the mediator between God and man.

Exactly. There were two books that hit me really hard as I'm going through this journey and reading from the reading the Bible for what it said. The book of Hebrews completely undermined the entire religion because it's talking about how we no longer have a high priest that we go to instead, we go to Jesus.

It's a new covenant. Well, they didn't even teach covenants in the cult. They did not want you to know that there was a new covenant because we needed, we needed in our sect, we need our central figure as the high priest, right?

But the other one was in First Timothy. There's only one mediator between God and man, that's the man Jesus Christ. Well, we were taught that there was a mediator. You had to go to the authority of William Brannum as the central figure.

In some cases, some of the sects actually would believe that your pastor was your mediator between God and man. Some of the people actually had to submit to the pastor in different various groups, but there was always this idea that for you to understand God, you had to have a quote unquote prophet.

And the prophet was the voice of, but the passage where it says, the Bibles of no private interpretation, they would say that you have to have a prophet to understand and interpret the Bible for you.

There's always a mediator in these cults. Once I began to understand that the New Testament wasn't written like that. The Holy Spirit, why would God send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth if we can't follow the Holy Spirit to lead us into?

that truth. That was the conundrum, right? So the more I read it, the more I'm like, you know, it is a different religion. They have used the name Christ, they've used the name Christianity, but they falsely taught the people what this was. It was not Christianity that they were teaching.

One of the last times I went to a church service, the leader was meant to come down and visit our local church for the first time ever. And I walked in, my wife and I walked into church about 10 minutes before the service to start, and I noticed they were literally drywalling over the windows. Like, there's wet drywall. She was supposed to have been there that that Sunday, and this was Friday evening. I'm like, what's he going on? And somebody come up to me and said, it was told to another church, there were no windows in the courtyard. And they're talking

about the Old Testament tabernacle. And that was laid out. I'm like, what? There's no windows in the courtyard. So they're drywalling over the windows so they don't get maybe reprimanded for having windows, stained glass windows in the sanctuary. And I'm like, wow, that was like, so I opened to me something's wrong here. That's not normal. And the previous church did the same thing. The previous church we were in, the building, they, they, I was young, but they had drywalled over the windows. And you know, maybe these shoes with sound deadening or whatever back then. But

now it's just, they're in the middle of nowhere by an airport. There's nothing around. There's nobody to disturb. So it's not that. It was, there's no windows in the courtyard. And I'm like, that's the weirdest thing ever. Are we going to bring in goats, you know, and start slaughtering them because, you know, that's what they did in the courtyard back then. You know, it's like, where do you draw the line between the law? I've always said that that particular church was married to the law.

They flirt with grace, but they're married to the law. Yeah. Because ultimately, the law is everything. I mean, like, like it's been said in your previous broadcast that they have a picture of Christ overlaid over the tabernacle. And, and the whole, the whole tabernacle is supposed to be laid out in the form of a cross. You know, that's, that's their depiction of how it was laid out. And it wasn't. It was more of a square, but you could see the pieces of furniture laid out. And it's like there's so much emphasis on the picture, shadow, and type being the tabernacle of Christ.

We have the real thing. We don't need a picture or shadow or a type. We have Christ Himself. Let's not, let's worship Him and not the shadow of Him. You know, we entered that new covenant.

And I never understood that growing up. It's, you know, we, we actually read the New Testament, but man, love is such a loving your neighbor is not the focus. There always is a focus and a cult is self.

You know, I always picture this vlogging yourself like with cat and nine tells because when you fall, it feels like that's what you're doing because you're never measure up. When you're in a workspace mindset, you'll always feel I never spiritually measure up.

I'm never, I'm never good enough for the kingdom. Well, you never will be in your own efforts. You know, Jesus came to fulfill the law because you knew we couldn't. And it's that simple.

But the cult mindset tells you, you know, you've got to measure up. You've got to, you've got to do enough to be worthy, you know, and it's almost like the analogy of when a husband upsets his wife, what's he do?

He goes out and tried to redeem himself by buying her flowers or chocolate or whatever. He tries to earn forgiveness and we try that with God. We literally try to earn his forgiveness. So I didn't pray hard enough.

I didn't fast. I didn't, you know, I wasn't sincere enough. So I better repent again because that one repent repentance I did was have hearted. So let me get a little more serious and let me earn God's forgiveness.

And that's the mindset that I grew up with. And I see God as the sky bully. You know, I didn't see God as a heavenly father that loved me, that adopted me as a son.

I never heard of that phrase my entire life that I was an adopted son. God and Christ imputed his righteousness to me. Either it didn't click or I never heard it, but I don't remember being taught that kind of stuff.

It was all about, you know, measuring up. I remember even as a little kid, I would go to Sunday school. And I think out of ignorance, Sunday school teachers would literally have me comparing myself to my other classmates because, you know, you get a gold star because you brought your offer and you get a gold star because you brought tiding and all that.

And then what I'm literally doing is comparing myself to the other guy in the classroom that didn't bring that. And he's not measuring up like me. So the Bible tells us, don't measure yourself by other Christians.

Do it by the word of God. You always fall short, but, you know, just works, works, works is, is always a cult foundation. They want to put the weight on your shoulders. And then they want you to suffer with that weight.

That's, that's the really difficult part for me is understanding that the leadership really wants you to suffer because if you're suffering, then they are the answer to your suffering and you come forward and then they feel the glory of whatever it is that they do to ease your burden.

And in many cases, it's just easing it just a little bit. It's not enough to really help you. But that's, that's the way it was. You mentioned drywalling the, the windows over it, which is kind of funny.

But as you were talking, I thought about it. The brand of tabernacle has windows, but they are covered with some sort of tantra film you actually can't see through them. So it is the same in the brand of tabernacle.

I never really thought about Why? Until you just said that and it's probably the same thing. They're probably back whenever they covered up. It was probably the same doctrine. I've never... You know, the saying goes, you can be so spiritually minded, you do know earthly good. And, you know, we are to compare yourself to Christ. You know, a lot of times, you know, we never really visualized the church as being the body of Christ, if the building was the church. Exactly. The body believers, it wasn't taught that that is the body of Christ because, because, you know, they believed that they literally

believed we were the head, you know, how you have the, the, the arc of the covenant. That was the bride realm. That was, that was the head realm. That was us, the ones that, you know, were performing well enough. And I think that's straight out of Larkin's book, if I remember correctly. So, Brannum plagiarized Larkin as well. And Brannum taught the dispensationalism. He taught the seven church ages. And he literally took the dates out of Clarence Larkin's drawing and said, I had this divine revelation from God and God told me and he gives the dates that are, you know,

straight out of the book. I think he changed two dates and that, that was intended to apply to him and to support his doctrine of, I think it, I think it was the Christian identity doctrine, the manifestant sons of God. But change two dates, plagiarized it. And you can go look these up.

If you go to Google and just type in Clarence Larkin drawings, you can see the drawings. And oh my gosh, man, you start, you start looking at what's drawn out. Well, you can, entire sermons will pop into your head if you've been under this thing. And you start to recognize, well, that's where he got that. And all of it was this esoteric, extra biblical mumbo jumbo that had no relevance, whatsoever to Christianity. But we were thought it was, we were taught it was a divine mystery that we were special because we knew it. And here's this drawing that has every single thing that

was said. Yeah. Yeah, over the years, you know, I have forgotten a lot of the mysteries that I used to remember because they did nothing for me. How is that helping me to love my neighbor?

How is that helping me to get closer with Christ by knowing these crazy mysteries? You know, there's mysteries in CGC about 99 universes. How Jesus, when he left the 99 to go after the one, well, she's got that to be in, you know, 99 universes. He left the 99 universes to come to this one and to save this lost universe. How does that help me? How does that help me walk with Christ?

You know, it doesn't. It just makes me know something that I can't prove that's not true, because, you know, you know, I haven't been to Calvary like some people, literally. And Some people have been there and supposedly walked with Christ and did all that and You know, we'd always hear things like you know Citrix had prayed for 13 hours 16 hours straight And when you hear that kind of thing, it's like wow, that's insane You know, I can't even muster the you know, Jesus got on the disciples because they couldn't even pray an hour with him

You know right before he was crucified and I'm thinking man We pray half an hour at church before the service and that's my knees are killing me 13 to 16 hours and Friend of mine said you know if you really prayed that long you'd tell nobody Because you would be so humble so filled with humility. You don't need to brag about it It's like fasting and I'm fasting today telling everybody that you're doing it You know you're literally not supposed to tell anybody you're fasting when you're fasting And if you're walk with God is so deep you should have the fruits of those

You should have the fruits to show You know all that all that prayer Your face would be shining like Moses coming down with the 10 commandments I think that was really the straw that broke my camel's back was the fruits Because as you can probably tell if you've listened to me for even two minutes I'm very much a people person. I like all people. I don't care who you are what you believe. I'm still gonna like you But I was in a religion where I was supposed to be condemning of people who did not have our mysteries

And even worse other Christians who didn't have our mysteries We were to look down upon them in our religion We called them cannon fodder which means basically The troops that you don't care about they're the ones that go out first and take all the cannonballs I'm certain they had a different term in your side But it's the same philosophy, right? We're the elite everybody else. We don't care about them And so they're they're little they're the little people we don't care they're smaller than us Right and and it was their ministry to do the things we didn't

That we felt were spiritually beneath us Yeah, you know when when we my wife started going to a normal mainstream church You know one thing I really struggled with is not judging people Yes, we were looking for a Christ gospel type church without the mysteries and we couldn't find one It was frustrating because it's like these churches are a bunch of fake Christians You know they they wear jeans to church and they wear yoga pants They're doing all this and that and so I could see the judgmentalness in me It's like wow, I'm so judgmental of these people that love God

I mean who am I to to say whether or not the relationship with God how it is Just because they don't wear what I think they should wear or have their hair or wear makeup or jewelry and I'm sitting there judging them Wow That was an eye-opening experience to realize how judgmental It that mindset makes you of other Christians. Oh, yeah, it's a big deal I remember when I first went to our first church after the cult I started attending Sunday school, which was a big deal for me. We had we had what we called

quote unquote Sunday school, but it generally meant we were having the discussion that venerated the prophet who died in 1965. It truly was not a study of the Christian Bible like it should have been. So the first Sunday school that I went to, and they started talking about the ancient histories and cultures, my mind was blown. I could not get enough of this. And it, that's really largely what spun me off into studying ancient religions and cultures. I wanted to know more. But I'm hearing things I've never heard. I really enjoyed it. And yet at the same time, there are people sitting around me. A lot of times

they had, you know, where you could see each other. You said in kind of a circle. Well, there'd be women wearing shorts in there. And in our church, it was Pentecostal style. They had to have the long dresses. And then they would call upon the women to pray to dismiss the Sunday school class. And so that's so wrong. Man, that's not what I was taught.

Number one, her hair's cut, her hair's uncovered. She can't pray. Number two, she's, we, we were trained and manipulated to say she was dressed like a harlot if she had a, so here's this whore who said my Sunday school class is praying. Literally, and that's, but the first time I heard one of the ladies pray, I had never, even in the message called, and they were good, really good God-fearing people in the message called. I had yet to hear a woman pray like this woman did. She opened her heart up. She prayed for the sins of the city. She made

me feel so insignificant in the way that I prayed. And here she is. Here I am in my mind. I'm calling her a harlot. And she's just opening up. It was such a, it was a shell shock.

That's really what it was. But so if you had, if you had advice that you could give to anyone who is either still in the Christ gospel cult or who is thinking about escaping, what advice would you give them? Start reading your Bible and try to take the lens of I don't understand.

I'm not going to understand this out of your mind because that is a lot of what Christ gospel people will tell themselves is I can read it. But I need, I need her interpretation to really fully understand it. No, you don't. Jesus went around and he recruited fishermen. He recruited people that weren't highly educated. The gospel isn't hard to understand. Jesus didn't make it difficult and not everything is meant to be a mystery. There are mysteries. But the biggest mystery that I care about is why does Christ love me? I'm not worthy. And ultimately read your Bible.

Don't go to notes and tapes to dispel anything you've heard us say today. Just read your Bible. And like you said earlier, try to read it without that lens. of your history, of what you've been told your whole life, just try to read the Gospel and start with Matthew and read Romans and Ephesians and understand what the grace of God is and how we're non-worthy and how works can't save us.

They were never meant to save us. This is a byproduct of grace that when you have true grace, you can't help but think be thankful and works come automatically. You don't have to fake it, you don't have to force it.

It's a byproduct. You have grace of God, you see the grace of God in your life and you have gratitude, works will come and it's just that simple. Don't over complicate the Gospel. It's very good advice.

Well, thank you so much for doing this. I'm glad we were able to finally connect and I'm really interested to hear from more people of Christ's Gospel Church because like I said, I've got close friends who were in it and most people don't realize that it was a spinoff from the Brannum Tabernacle and their Charles and I as we're going through the revival history, I think that we covered a whole episode where this happened but we were able to determine that Sister Hicks basically took half the congregation or maybe even more than half.

If you read William Brannum's, it's what's it called, I think it was called, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. This tract that the Brannum headquarters made it very inaccessible to get and actually changed some of the text if I understand correctly to try to obscure what happened but Brannum kind of lost his church and apparently from all signs point to him losing it to Sister Hicks and he gets very angry about it.

So I'm interested to hear from more people from the sect because I'm trying to piece together all the little details as I get them. So if you're listening and you've enjoyed this then maybe you can come and share your story if you have any information but thank you so much for doing this.

You're welcome, thank you John for having me. Awesome. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web, you can find us at www.William-brannum.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 Audible.