Our Stories: Escaping the NAR - With John Krueger

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, John Krueger, former member of the NAR.

John, it's good to connect with you and we literally just met what was at 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes ago. But this timing was perfect, so I said let's go. And so for the audience who's listening, this is how unscripted this program is.

You're welcome to come share your story and I'm not going to push you in one way or another. I literally just want to hear what you have to say. And your email caught my eye as I was scanning through these.

And it sounds like you have quite an interesting story. So thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having me on. So it might be good if you just take a moment and tell everybody a little bit about yourself and how you came to be involved with the NAR.

I actually did the research and listened, humbled myself to listen to people who were calling this stuff out. I thought there's another heresy-honor thing, you know, whatever. But I would say so when I was about seven years old, my parents were part of a church, their cessationist church, but they were weird.

They didn't do worship music on their Sunday morning. They did secular songs because they wanted to reach people. But they had their actual worship happening in small groups. And they're very much into the Greek and expository preaching.

What you would think you would find in a reformed church or something like that. And there is a split that happened and half went to one church or another, half went to the local vineyard church.

And that's where I grew up. From seven years to 14 years old here in Columbus, Ohio. Now, I just want to say, I had amazing time there. I did hear the gospel. We did believe in the continuation of the spiritual gifts.

During the 90s, there was a lot of falling down, shaking and baking, if you will. All that kind of stuff. You know, I don't know about that stuff. Yeah, I'm not I don't completely write it off, but you know, it's it's there and

I I say that all this say that you know That there even though I am coming out of a lot of this stuff and I even Rechecked a lot of it. There was still God meets me met me where I was at and God used a lot of people in that, you know and When I was 14 we moved to California and that's kind of where things started shift. We were in San Diego area ocean side Particularly we did not go to a

It was a non-inominational church kind of hard to say what it was because the pastor was kind of a Associationist like they didn't really they're like we did out that stuff, but we had friends there that did small group that were full on prophetic stuff. It was a family friend. He knew John Paul Jackson He knew Monty Frisbee back in the day Wember he knew all the guys, but he was you know, was a famous or anything It was just kind of like friends with them and he tried to do stuff in in small groups or whatever

Or like a Saturday night meeting at the church something like that. I Think my family if I don't have maybe have all this accurate. This is what I remember as a kid But you know my my dad I remember always feeling Kind of alienated from his Baptist of bringing Really wanted you know God for real was really you know hungry for the the stuff Really was hungry for God himself, you know as we all are and he

And my mom we're kind of on this journey and they they actually went to a

Conference with Graham cook and Graham cook prophetic figure from the UK Who again? I'm not going to judge him personally when judge to talk about the teachings that I disagree with But a lot of his stuff was really good. He actually brought in a good view of the father and That actually because the father in the son are

Homo Usian they're the same substance that they are co-eternal as the ancient faith the Christian Church is that we Know that the father and character and nature looks like Jesus And that it's not a different God that we need to be scared of and That kind of opened me up to that idea of course not the theological terms on using now, but just kind of how he talked about it, and he would talk about kind of this new reformation of the church that included prophetic ministry him, a prophetic office of the prophet, and that, you know, okay, and he was ministering at this church in Vaca

ville, California. You know, I researched it and after high school, you know, I didn't do well in school. I didn't really care to go to college. I was a musician. I just wanted to play guitar. It was either music schools, particularly, or just kind of work and try to play guitar as much as I could to maybe get into a band or something, you know, start a band or whatever. So I wasn't really super on the call saying, but where I was at, you know, I was dealing with, you know, depression and stuff. I really, again, hungry for God.

I was like, look at this church, and I was like, I want to go there. And it kind of, the way people talk about it, you would talk about, like, it's a thin place. Like the Celtics would call it the thin place, which is thin places where to fail, having a miracle, you know, whatever. And he's like, I found a thin place of Vacaville, California.

I've been to a few thin places, I think. Well, it was a little underwhelming to say worship service. And I could, you know, sense the presence of God. And I will still use that language, you know, now that I would say at least I didn't see any tools.

No, it's kind of funny, because I have people who have left the brand of cult when they come here to Jeffersonville, which is the Maca to the brand of cult. And I think underwhelming was the nice term that I've heard used, but some people call it a trash dump or a dump or fire. For years and years, when you drove off the interstate into the city of Jeffersonville, the city had the hair-brained idea of putting the sewage plant right there by where you get off of the interstate. So the first thing you smelled was raw sewage when you drove into the city.

But you and I have a lot in common. You mentioned the guitar, which obviously I'm a musician, but there's so much, even things like the shirt you're wearing. So my family goes through Columbus, Ohio several times a year. My wife's family is all from up near Worcester, near Amish country there. And so we go through there often. And I can't tell you how many Buckeyes games that I have seen because that's all her family, you know, are just Buckeyes or Browns. It's one of those two. But you mentioned the the office of the prophet. I had that same belief growing up, man. They taught you that this was some special thing, and

the prophets were basically untouchable because they had the special office. They're supernatural, the gifts, right? But when you actually read the Bible, these are just normal men who are used as a mouthpiece of God.

People who can humble themselves enough to become a voice that a channel from which God can speak through a human, according to the Bible. But what we were taught as prophet was more like sorcerer. It was, I've heard that phrase used often the office of a prophet which is, you know, now that I'm out, it's just so, so odd to me. But I do get, you mentioned Heresy Hunters, which is the last thing I'll hit on.

It's kind of funny because I get that a lot. If I, if I call out something that I see as fraudulent, everybody starts to outcar. This is a Heresy Hunter. And it's not that I'm against it so much as I, I just don't like the scoundrels.

Heresy hunting is important. If you look into church as soon as this part of my story, too, you'll discover in the church fathers, especially the nice sea of age during the great Aryan controversy where Aryas believed that the sun was created by the father, not cause substantial father.

You read their writings. I mean, they were not pulling any punches. I mean, they're like, actually, no, they are cut off. And to be cut off means that you are apostate. And to be apostate means you, there, there is no sacrifice of safety. That's what that means, you know, and it's not that I'm against it so much.

It's just my personality. I like all people. And it's really hard for me to be condemning of somebody else. And so what I do, literally, I've, I'm fascinated with the history. So I focus on that.

That's that's generally where I go. And that's, I just want to say that's where I'm coming from to I'm not, I'm not here to tell my story. And I will point out certain teachings that I think are not correct, but I'm not going to condemn any person.

I think there is authority to do that. But again, they don't, we'll get into that later, but just about the authority structure. So I ended up going to a ministry school there on in Vacaville. He's one of the teachers that did the ministry school ministry school is about four days a week from either noon.

You do an hour of worship, you do an hour of prophetic activation, two hours of some sort of lesson. The biggest thing was the community aspect, of course, which is great. And the prophetic aspect was good too. Again, I am a continuation as I'm meaning the gifts that are in the New Testament, especially the first Corinthians 12, 12 to 14 is the, that's for today. But, you know, I'm still holding that loosely because I'm still rethinking a lot of this stuff. But like, a lot of stuff started to break down for me when I had summer break. And I wasn't interested in being

spiritual. I was exhausted. And I'm like, hmm, this is interesting. And I get, there's a lot of good stuff in here. It's, it's, there's a mixture of all the kind of this thing. This is all about, all good. So, I mean, we had people that were influenced by IHOP and other other things. I knew a guy who lived off of real estate income or something or inheritance income. He rented an apartment and lived lavishly, but he didn't work all day. And he just had like the 20, the prayer house, my feed, playing all the time would just soak, which is not

the Mormon soaking. It's not to be confused with that, but it's the, just laying down, letting the presence of God and well over you. I don't, I'm not against any spiritual practices or whether it just needs to be done in right order, right, right? And the soaking in itself is fine.

But the problem was is that, you know, you talked to them and they would just kind of be depressed, to kind of be downers all the time. And no one was spiritual enough for them.

You know, that's one of the problems that I see with all of this having been disconnected from it for so long. After you're away for a while, if you don't get in that mindset in that group thing hype, you start to recognize that the emphasis was just so imbalanced.

Like you mentioned the spiritual gifts, right? Anytime I publish anything that speaks negatively of something that is fraudulent, I get called out, they say, well, John must, John must be a cessationist, which I've never said that, right? I've actually never said what I am purposefully so.

But I call things out that are fraudulent. For example, William Brannum pretended that he could speak in tongues. And there's a clear progression of time where he goes to another country, he learns a phrase and another language comes back to the United States. He mentions having learned that phrase where he comes in the United States and says the phrase. And then says, whoa, what did I just say?

The spirit came on me. And then that turned into he was speaking in tongues. It's just ridiculous. It's a stage act, right? That's fraudulent. But what I see is imbalanced when I mention this.

Speaking in tongues, whenever you use the word cessationist or continuous, people always go there. And I don't understand why, because that's not the only gift. There's also the gift of service. People who go and help other people.

This is a gift. Why do we not see this big push for people to have this gift? You know what I mean? It's like the gift of giving, not to the church, but the gift of giving to one another.

That's a spiritual gift that's mentioned. Why are there not givers, right? So for me, after you step back, you look at it and it's not that I'm against it. But there needs to be a balance.

There needs, you don't need to be so, not you personally. But as a movement, the movement should not be so hyper focused on one or two of the gifts. They should be balanced on everything.

Yeah, you're right. And this is kind of where I'm at now where, you know, I've scripture reading is such a big part of my spiritual life now. I will, so some positives though, I do want to say is the actual leader of the school,

Curtin Susie Klein, we're great. They, we had to read scripture every single day and we had to document our scripture reading and we had book readings. One of them was a W Tozer. That's a theology book.

It's not charismatic, woo-woo stuff. Actually, most of what we read was not charismatic, woo-woo, except for the book I never read, because I was always behind on my reading. And I didn't, to the point where I moved away and I had told my old roommate who still lived in the house there, hey, can you turn this back and that was God's Generals.

Yeah, I have to read God's Generals. It's a great book of fairy tales. Well, one I noticed was like, I was like, I don't want to aspire. I hate all these people. They don't basically, I don't hate them, hate them.

But it was just like, I didn't want to be them. I wouldn't want them to be my interest. So I did, I did the first couple of chapters. So whoever the guy who thought it was Elijah started the Zion place where, you know, it's the same thing with Christian nationalism.

We see now, we're gonna, we're gonna set up our thing and bring the kingdom through the, through the world. Right. I've read the kingdom of God through the kings of the world. Yeah, I've read the book, The Kardashians, because I was doing some research.

It's funny because God's generals read much like the book, the Kardashians. It's literally the same kind of agenda of the book, right? Just replace the people. And the irony of all of this is the reason I was researching it is because the Kardashian family was connected to the creation of all of this.

And if you understand the stage presence that these guys have and why they have it, and then learn that it's connected to the Kardashian family, it really makes you stop and scratch your head a little bit, you know what I mean?

It's one of those things, and again, like I'm saying this, there's all this positive stuff there. I still wouldn't recommend anyone do it, although I want to take it back myself because it's just part of my history.

And there was enough good there that I think is especially the relationships, you know. And I wanted to say that we were at the level of a cult, a cult, we didn't really have that necessarily.

But what happened was I moved to LA because I wanted to do music stuff. And me and my buddy from ministry school, he was like, hey, I'll come with you. We go down there and we're like, all right, we're going to find a church.

Obviously, we're going to find a church that's into the same stuff that we're into, which we found expressions 58, church, which is ran by Sean Bowles, who has recently been found out to be a given fraudulent words of knowledge.

And this is where I start to reflect on the main issues was the favoritism. And the lack of shepherds or pastors. And I look by, reflect on my time. And we'll go through Bethel, too, because I moved to Bethel after I got married.

I'll talk about them, too, but like. Backville was better, but outside school, didn't really feel like any pastor was over me. Really, I didn't feel like I could really reach out to someone if I'm struggling with sin.

Like, who do I talk to? We talk to our guys. Well, what are guys struggling with? Well, we're all struggling with the same thing. We're addicted to nicotine is just smoking cigarettes and stuff.

We're drinking a little too much. When we were in ministry school, that stuff was confronted. It was confronted, well, to where we were able to walk into some freedom afterwards. But after school, it was like, there's nothing.

Obviously, less in pornography than everyone. You guys, the old left, you know, is common stuff. Not to diminish this sin. Not to diminishing it. I'm just saying, nothing to what would raise eyebrows. And we're just kind of left to our own devices.

You know? with them, when we talked to a mentor and stuff, it was great, but the last time I talked to somebody, it was on a mission trip. But it's like the normal like I when I went to expressions 58, I just wanted to be a normal guy that was part of a church. You know, a lot of people feel that when they're in these movements, these high demand groups, they get caught up in the engine of the movement. And they don't really feel connected to the church. They instead feel connected to the movements or the ministry. And it's it's flipped upside down, right? The church is supposed

to be for the people, not the people for the church. But in these movements, it's the exact opposite of this. You know, there's this one time where where I was like, I was there. Me and my friend, we were dealing with the same issues that, you know, spoken drinking, whatever, pornography, that kind of stuff, dealing with depression and wounds and some kind of stuff like that, whatever, we needed ministry. And it was just like I felt like I had to pull teeth to get close to leadership. Obviously, they're there on Tuesday night or Sunday morning,

I could shake their hand and talk to them. But I was a little rough around the engines because I was kind of looking back. I was kind of sensing a lot of this stuff. And I was like, kind of had this rebellious like walk to me or whatever thing. And I realized it was because I didn't feel like, I felt like stuff was off and out. And I felt like marginalized. And so I had this, and I had to do. I remember someone who was kind of part of leadership or whatever came up to me

and said, you know, hey, Sean, he loves you guys. He just wants you to know that like if you guys ever want to do any prophetic ministry, you can do it here. Like we trust you. Like we see you guys.

We were not fit to really do any leadership or anything like that. And I do believe that the laity can can do prophetic stuff according to scripture. And we can I still don't quite know what how that works out. So I'm not really going to get too into that. But it was just like, okay. But you know, I only see you guys for a meeting and then it's gone. And then they excuse us, what's LA? Everyone's competing with everything. Like well, but that's the spirit of the world that we're conforming to if everyone's competing with everything and we're not

communing with each other, you know. And then, you know, Sean told it tells me, so when I lived in LA, I didn't have a job there, which was my fault. I looked for a job, but not hard enough really. You know, I would take, I didn't have a car, so I'd walk about an hour to a greyhound.

Go up to Northern California. I'd work for my dad for a bit and come back down with some money. And I would live for it. two to four weeks off of that money and I'd do it again. Well, you know, they're like, hey, we're going to do this prophetic ministry and I think you want to come. And I love doing it because that's when I felt a part of the church. It's when I was doing ministry.

And then now I'm working for my dad and going home a week early because Sean Bulls told me on this night, you'll be doing some prophetic ministry stuff. All right. I'm going to make a little bit less money this time. I worked for my dad, but I'm going to come back down.

I come back down and I talked to him about it. And he's like, oh, we don't have your emails. So we had to reschedule all this and we had to do all this kind of stuff. That's just a lack of like administrative stuff. I'm not really getting to be up about that. I'm like reflecting on this. You know, I was kind of upset and I kind of torn off a little bit. We were at like eating after church or whatever. So there was like community stuff like we would eat after church or whatever. You know, so I don't want to say that there

is no community there. A lot of people had a community. It was just why am I not funny community there? And I think what it was is just the culture. They don't see that you fit their mold. So they want you to be on the outside and kind of you go as you get closer, they're going to mold you, mold you, mold you. Now you're part of the thing. And this is what happens when we go to Bethel. Now, and you know, I moved back to Ohio. I went back to the vineyard church. I went to and I met my wife there. We got married long

sorry short. We moved back to California. But we moved to Bethel or the Reading. One because I'm like, hey, let's let's do the Bethel Reading thing. You know, I didn't in this whole time. I didn't like Bethel because they seem to celebrity culture and all this kind of stuff and whatnot. But I thought it was my issue that I needed to get over. And it wasn't that was actually sensing something that was wrong. Right. So anyways, we moved there. She found a good job there and the prices were a lot cheaper than, you know, other

parts of California. So whatever we go there, we live there just about a year. And the thing is when we get there, it's almost as a privilege to have some sort of contact with any type of leadership there. It's not a given like that's my pastor. You know, when I grew up, even in the vineyard, it was a mega church.

The pastor's door was always open. Like you could schedule a meeting, you could meet with the pastor and talk about issues. They had other pastors for different things and there was something there was there and that was there.

And small group leaders were well trained as well. And so I was like, okay, this is,

this is not just me that's got all these hang-ups about. Stuff. It, I'm there. I'm at Bethel and I'm not really feeling like too much of the love of God from people. I'm feeling a lot of people with walk around with pride and arrogance, like they're on also our football team or something like that.

And you know, I realized the same thing that if you're not a part of a ministry or the school, there's nothing really there for you. And that's exactly what it's like being part of the engine, right?

You're, you're there because the pastor needs this crowd, this audience. I have friends who are, who have escaped a cult and they actually started looking at Bethel not realizing that it also was a cult because when you look at it from the outside in, it looks like this wonderful bliss.

But once you get in, according to the people who have escaped, they describe it like this. It's much like an engine. You're, you're there for the leadership. The leadership is not there for you.

I'm curious, how did, how did that affect your marriage? You know, we were going through rough stuff. She's away from her family. That's a big thing. And I'm immature in the, you know, trying to make her, you know, something that she's not with like, you know, the spiritual stuff and like, no, you don't understand like all this stuff or whatever we, we, uh, she signed up for, for Bethel School Supernatural Ministry and, uh, I was like, okay.

Um, that, that's what would be good because she'll, she'll start to get to see what I see because I was still entrenched in a lot of stuff. And why I say this stuff, a lot of it's basically, um, we have to overcome the flesh and we have to, uh, take our authority to, uh, go against the devil and we have to bring the kingdom and we have to believe for da da da da da.

Right. Basically, open theism, meaning God's waiting for us God's waiting for us to do something.

And then that fell through. We couldn't get our money back. for the deposit wasn't that much money, but we moved to Sacramento, got regular jobs, started going to the Vacaville Church again. Graham Cook left, he left because the word is that I heard was he was trying to be the prophet over the whole thing and wanted everyone to submit to him.

Wow, they didn't like that, he left. Then they were trying to be more of a community church and kind of doing all that kind of thing. I don't really know. I just saw, I'm so with friends with people in Vacaville and that whole thing, but I don't really know what it's like now.

Although I did see a video of them a few years ago where they were talking about, this is a new apostolic reformation or something like that. We, I don't know if they use apostolic man, the new reformation.

Right. It's so covert man, they try to, they try to evade having been part of this because they recognize that the general public is aware that there's a lot of issues with new apostolic reformation.

Yeah, and I say, I don't know how unconsciously involved they are, I just know what I've seen. So I do think that they know more than what we think. Cause here's the thing, when I was in Vacaville, they don't have this celebrity culture.

Even though Graham Cook brought in all these people, Vacaville talked to Graham and he's not very approachable because he's like an introvert and kind of socially awkward, but it was fun. And I still like a lot of his stuff.

It's just, I don't really look at his stuff. I'm more, you know, I have different teachers that I look at now, mostly people that are into bible and theology that's, that's proper. That's based in historical Christianity.

But yeah, I think when it started to fall apart for me was when I was in LA before I moved, so I was in LA, I moved back to Vacaville for a year and then I moved back to Ohio, my wife.

So I moved back and before I left, LA, I had a crisis of faith. I thought I lost my salvation and I didn't know how that came from because when I came into the prophetic thing, or just call it the prophetic world, NAR, whatever we can call it that, the ministry school, I came from a free grace background where it's once saved, always saved.

And if you confess to Jesus of your Lord and Savior, you're born again and you're in. And then I came to a place where I am now struggling with my salvation because I'm struggling with sin.

I eat. I prophesied, but, you know, he might say to me, the part for me, I never knew you, and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, okay, why am I dealing with this stuff?

And I started, we had this guy in, people may not like him, it's okay. I don't agree with everything he says or anything he does, but he helped me in this, his name is John Crowder.

And people may not like him, and I looked at his stuff, and I realized what he taught and what people in life was, he was a charismatic, that red Martin Lutheran. Well, I think most people who take issue with him in his ministry base it off of the fact that he loves to use the word mysticism with Christianity, which those two are generally incompatible, although he does separate the two a bit, but he has, he has differed himself a bit from traditional Christianity, but I'm a big fan of the notion that you can learn something from anybody,

you just need to qualify what it is that you're learning to make sure that it's correct. What was it that you found about his ministry that you liked? Everything that I think I'm doing, it's actually something that he has already done in Christ, and everything else is just an affording of the cross, of his work.

Even faith is a gift that's refesion says. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

You mentioned the crisis of faith, something that's common. If you've listened to this podcast and you've listened to the people tell their stories, that's a very common theme. And I don't think that there's a single person who was in this type of cult who has successfully came out of it that didn't have a crisis of faith.

Because the problem is the God that they teach you is not the same as the God in the Bible. And the interesting part is how deceptive it is in the way that they present that God.

Because they always present it as the phrase was used in the random cults, Christ and His simplicity, God and His simplicity. And you'd hear that over and over and over again, which is a great theme, right?

That's biblical, but then they add all of this stuff on top of that simplicity that makes up the core of the religion, where it's actually not that simple. It is one of the most complicated gods to understand.

Well, when you leave, you have this very complicated God that you really can't figure out by design. They don't want you to figure out God. They want to be the answer to you finding God.

So when you leave and you start reading your Bible, you suddenly come to terms with the fact that, wait a minute, that God that I know, which is the God they've been teaching me, it doesn't exist.

And so you start into this crisis of faith because you mistakenly think that that's the real God and you have to tear that God down to nothing and then start rebuilding what you believe.

The thing I came to was really that what we are, the life that we are living in Christ is one because he accomplished all and we get to participate.

And participation, the picture of participation is, I'm the dad and I'm driving the lawnmower and my son is participating by walking behind me with the toy lawnmower that does bubbles. We don't really, actually, we have nothing on our shoulders.

The government of the kingdom of God is just everything, is on his shoulders. And this language is in throughout the NAR2. Bethel, Poole Johnson will say, Jesus is perfect theology and what that is, is that Karyik Maher or whatever that word is.

And that's something, if you say Martin Luther of Karyik Maher, he is the first, he was one, I think it's three, but the first introduction there says, the son is the stamp of the full nature of the Father.

Right. And so what he's saying is true. But I'm like, okay, what he's saying is true, but that's not really enough to have a couple lines that are true. Yeah. You know, you can't just have a couple lines that are true.

When I was a, I was out Bethel again, like, you, if you leave a church service feeling like,

like, we need, we need that. Not a hopeful, like, There's a hope for the future that we look forward to, but you're leaving the truth so it's just feeling lacking. Like, I need to get stuff together. And I lost my mind with confession, sin, and then attending the change your ways, you know, but like, even in that, under grace, it's like, oh, but he provided a way for me to do that.

And that's one of the problems that, again, it's part of the framework that was created by all of this laddering mess. They taught you that they have the answers, these, they're super apostles, Paul condemns them ironically, but they have the answers. And so the way in which they gave you the answers, however, was they would take one single verse or phrase, sometimes two or three, out of context of the rest of the passage and preach an entire sermon on it. So when you leave, you're actually more confused because as they're talking about it, they have you open up the

Bible where you're, you can read while he's talking. And you can see that in some cases, I would sit there and read my Bible as the preacher was preaching. And I was reading the exact opposite of what he was saying right here in the Bible. And I sometimes I'd look around and I was like, well, doesn't, doesn't everybody else see this? Right. Yeah. And I, yeah, I, I, I, I sell that a lot with like sanctification was one of the big ones where like, hey, we're going to do these freedom groups or we're going to do this other thing. And we're going to talk about sanctification. They would use

these verses. And I'm like, you know, the verse that you're saying is that he is our sanctification. You know, yes. And sanctification is something we walk out. It's not something we ignore, but it's in his hands and it's a work he is doing in us. It's not a robotic. It's not hyper Calvinism where God's just where puppets and whatever kind of thing. But like there, we rest on his finished work. We don't, we don't rest on, you know, my moralisms, you know, like like sanctification, just obviously justification. The whole thing is it's like, what, what really got me is, you know, listening to all this stuff, I told you I listened to

that guy John Crowder and I listened to a lot of stuff there. And, you know, I'm not saying, I'm not necessarily endorsing his stuff. I'm just just part of my story. It's just he was always into like, all right, go to church history too. Let's look at the creeds. Let's look at like that stuff. Let's look at the ancient, you know, if we want to do charismatic mystical stuff, well, let's look at the saints that the Church of, you know, recognize and see what they say.

And a lot of saints that I would read, it was like, a lot of it had to do with confessionists and repentance. And that was the core of their life. We were just confessionists and repentance.

And anyway, so when we moved from Sacramento, we moved back to Ohio about, 80, seven, eight years ago, we were going to like a word of faith types church and I was still kind of in it even though I was rethinking everything.

I didn't really agree with things that were coming from a poll clip. I was like, I didn't want to go to just a normal church because I had that experience is there too. I mean, normal, right?

My grandfather's about this preacher and they have the same thing taken back versus that of context and building it up. It's not just this movement, but there's something happening. I got fed up within it because my interest in history, I went to an Eastern Orthodox church.

We went there for a Greek festival as a Greek Orthodox church. If anyone doesn't know that the Eastern Orthodox split from the Western church, which is now the Roman Catholic church, I would argue Roman Catholic and Protestantism, but it comes from that.

And they continued about 1,000 years ago and I went there and I just started going to their Sunday morning service and I never missed one for almost a few months until COVID hit.

And I wanted to join, but I didn't really want to join. One thing that I found, I was like, okay. This had three priests and a congregation that had about 350 Sunday morning goers, which means they had about 1,000 families are actually a part of the church and they had to juggle this stuff around.

And I met with the priests and I would talk to them and first of all, it's first time I really, not the first time, that's not true. There's people back in the charismatic world that really cared about me.

I knew they cared about me, but I really felt they cared about me. And I also saw that the office of Presbyter priests which is where they argue that comes from, is just this stuff comes with the job.

Like what do you mean? If you're sick, if you visit you in hospital and we can do the sacriof on an unshen which means in James where they do the oil and pray just like James says.

So they're not cessationists in a way, they're not care, it's Maddox, for sure. But they don't really tongues and all that stuff they're not really into. And they obviously, the service, obviously it's liturgical and it's old, it's ageing comes from like probably 1700 years ago, at least, maybe a little bit older than that, but...

You know, they're there and you know, it's the same thing every Sunday and what I realized is that The gospel in one sense is kind of boring and that's good We don't have to make it up, you know, yeah I remember whenever that realization hit me and it comes back to what I said earlier God and his simplicity there are people that They have itching ears and they want more than this, but if you read the gospel it's very simple It's Jesus came he died for you and there's nothing you can do to save yourself. He already did it

But this movement wanted to put so many things on top of that and so many weights on your shoulders That the people just become so burdened and when they leave it's like you're lifting this big weight off your shoulders And you suddenly feel you feel like you've been carrying a load forever and It's funny because the podcast just come out today This is the one that we're recording now will come out a few weeks later, but The people who are getting upset over the the phrase was used institutional church and Institution just literally means it has a variety of means, but in this case it just means a tradition

It means this is the traditional church and What happened with Latter-Rain people had become tired of the tradition and they want to Move out of it. Latter-Rain taught you that these were quote-unquote cold formal churches If you had a tradition and you honored that tradition, they're cold formal so come out of that because that's the devil basically what they taught and when people leave this hyper I don't know what my wife calls it a high-demand group when you leave this high demand of these groups and you go to something that's traditional and It's not some fancy

like you said the stuff It's not Focused on the wrong things People feel so unburdened which I can tell from listening to you that you feel this way and that's what started opening up the door Because I knew church history. Well every church father then you're reading not every single one, but most of them they're a bishop

And you read That and I'm not making the the thing that I'm not in the ecclesial list and ecclesial list would be Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic That means you're saved through the church almost by the church Meaning if you're not in that church you're probably not saved although they always Do gymnastics around that, but if you read what they actually believe that's what they believe so we're not Ecclesi, I'm not an ecclesialist, but when you look at the church structure What it was is like you know, they the apostles would lay hands on people that to ordain them

And Paul would warn that they'll be among you that are wolves and sheathed clothing so you need to be aware and all this kind of stuff, but there is this kind of hierarchical thing going on and that kind of past on you look in the history.

This is what they're saying. Like, yeah, if you're not part of a church with a bishop, you're not really part of the church, you know. You know, if you've read my latest book, I talk about this some, but there was this strong position against the Catholic church.

And William Brannum was not the only one. There were others who were in the movement that were doing this, but they were trying to ostracize anybody who is even closely affiliated with the Catholic church.

And they started condemning the names of the church hierarchy. And in doing so, it's kind of funny because they were condemning history, historical Christianity. But a lot of people didn't really understand that bishop historically is a part of Christianity.

What's interesting is it has come full circle because now you see like Bishop T.D. Jakes, for example. He's developed from the same type of movement, but he's using the term bishop with his ministry.

And there's numerous others that are doing this. So I started looking into liturgical denominations. And then as part of it, I said once like Lutheran and Anglican. And I, Lutheran was a close communion.

So you had to agree with every jot and title that they believed in order for you to take communion. But the Anglican was like, as long as you're a Christian that's bad in baptized, we recognize you as Christian.

And so you can come, come for taking communion. So I started going to an Anglican church. The liturgy was as nice as the Eastern Orthodox church. I mean, they go all out. But it was, it's where I've been up until now.

And our head pastor, we call them Rector, we retired a couple of years ago. We got a new Rector who was actually a charismatic guy. But he probably want to know it on Sunday morning.

Like you would know it knowing to him because he's very willing to pray for you for healing. And you know, that stuff going on. But he's very much like, we do not speak in tongues publicly in this space.

You know, we don't, we don't follow, we follow what the Bible actually says about this stuff. You know, he had to leave his Pentecostal group because he saw the abuses there. So, so when I go and I want to say too,

for we, so the Anglican church, we have the book of common prayer. What it is is all the services of the church that's what we do on Sunday morning, all the baptism, all that kind of stuff is in English.

And that's part of the Reformation, given to the common people. And then we also have the daily office, which is prayer.

And it's, follow us on the NASDAQ. take form. And so they're in a reformation. And we want to take a lot of the, they closed a lot of monasteries because they're like, we're going to make the common folks monastic, we're going to, because spirituality isn't relegated to the, to the people of, to the clergy.

And so they simplified it to two offices morning and evening prayer. It was like 12 offices something out of no. And I started praying those. And it was long comfortable for me at first because at the beginning, it is a confession of sin. My cousin Jesse who has been on the podcast a few times doing psychotherapy, he's a Catholic, he's mentioned on the show and it's kind of funny because I got into a conversation with him about the Catholic confessionals because the way we were raised, we were raised to think this is this really evil thing. And I know that it has,

it has been abused. So don't get me wrong, there are issues with it. But when I heard his argument for it, it was kind of hard to reject some of what he said because it is biblical, confess your sins one to another. The, now, obviously the Catholic church, they, they do this in secrecy. And there, there's a few issues that I still have with it. But it's kind of funny because the church that I came from, which the cult, which condemned it, they had it flipped so upside down. If you were, if you had sin in your life, which literally every human has, if you had sin in your life,

you weren't meeting the goals of perfection. And they wanted the people to have perfection. And if you did not have their form of perfection, you couldn't make it to heaven. So what they did was they, they literally created an environment where people withheld their sins one from, from another because you had to otherwise, you might get shunned. Amen. If you sin, that could, that could hurt the anointing. And you could go, you could have this thing, this spirit of infirmity. And like the demon, you've given demon a foothold. And you have all those kind of weird stuff. Or there's

people that call it the right side of the cross, where, because you've Roman sixes that we've died to sin, and we need to consider ourselves that sin, that, well, we're no longer a sinner anymore.

We're a new creation in Christ. We're capable of sin. No one said they were sinless. I just want to say, but that out there, no one said they were sinless. But because we're not a sinner anymore, you know, we need to find out our true identity and then live it, which, to me, was just, I was always a sinner like, man, I can't wait till a day when I find out my identity, I can live how I drew the anointing. In Christ.

Right. Which there is some truth in what they're saying there. You have a, I have one podcast, two episodes called Life Liberty Litergy or Life Liberty and Litergy. I can't remember if there's a hand there, but the first one I go through the St.

Center dichotomy, which is a little bit different than when you get into the Lutheran and Reformed. But if I do talk about us being sinners, but also us being righteous and it's not just a positional righteousness, I do go through that a little bit.

But when I start confessing sin every day, I'm like, oh my God, I'm actually finding so much freedom. Something I was scared to do all the time was be sin-focused, we're too sin-focused, you know?

Right. Sin-consciousness of something I've heard people say, not from the pulpit, but just people online, like people like, we're too sin-conscious. This is sin-consciousness. I'm like, yeah, I know we need to be conscious of Jesus, but like when we need to reflect on sin and confess it, because as Bible says, when you do sin and confess it, I really understand what we're talking about there.

So what we're doing is like, oh no, no, no, salvation is in Jesus' salvation is in my mindset. Yeah. What do I believe? And it's pretty thorough, it's very much like, oh my God, we have basically gone astray, like lost sheep, following our own waves, and thought word indeed by what we have done and by what we have not done.

And then, you know, I'm not going to do it for word, but it's just like, oh yeah, sin is not just, you know, what I do, but it's what I don't do. And it's thought in my thoughts, in my words that I speak, and also what I do, you know, and it starts to reflect on this.

And then I started saying, oh, but we can't save ourselves. So we go to him, we confess this sin, and God doesn't only pardon us of our fences, but he removes us and he delivers us.

You know, that was one of the biggest issues for me in the year leading up to my leaving the call. I'm a musician, I'm a songwriter, and I kept having this theme come into my music.

I did not come to save the saved, he came to save the lost. And I had song after song coming in my head with that theme, but it's true, man. If you read the Bible and you understand the plan of salvation, you understand the gospel, and literally if you understand every single book that is in it, it is talking about a people who need God.

That's the way it is designed, and everybody has their sins that they have to deal with. So I took issue with the way that the cult structure had made this tier of perfection that you can never achieve.

It was like a carrot on a stick. But anyway, I'm glad that you found comfort in this, and I was thinking maybe if you just take a few moments if you had some advice to give people who are in the NAR. What advice would you give them? If you're interested in the daily office that I talked about on App Store, look at daily office, it pulls everything together. It includes a yearly scripture reading, so you'll get the Bible in the whole year. Also, to go back to the basics of the faith, if you've lost it, I would go to to be a Christian, PDF, Google that. It's our Anglican Church.

It is Anglican. We're Protestants. We believe in justification by grace through faithful loan, so not the weird stuff. And it's a free PDF. Go through it. But the number one thing would be, ask God, hey, show me the truth. Show me who you are. Read scripture wholly. Don't just pick out verses. If you want to pick out a verse and read the whole chapter that it's in, that whole chapter before, whole chapter after it, get the whole thing. And I would stay away from commentaries for now until you get a grasp on like really where God's putting you. But that

would be my pray, trust the Lord, and confess your sin to him when it comes up and trust him to forgive you and deliver you. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and very glad that you found a place that you're comfortable with. If you enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.