Escaping Jim Jones - The Camp Verde Story - With Steven Burris

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Stephen Burris, former member of the message under pastor Jim Jones.

Stephen, it's good to hear from you and to have you on the podcast to share your story. I know everybody is going to hear that introduction and they're going to think, oh my gosh, Jim Jones.

But we're talking about a different Jim Jones that was also in the message quote following of William Branham. This particular Jim Jones we're talking about was in the... He was the pastor of the spoken word tabernacle and phoenix, if I remember correctly, and they did not quite end up into a Jones town scenario, but they get pretty close.

So maybe if we could just start and you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Okay, first let me say how grateful I am that you're having me on, John. I've been watching your podcast and getting into your...

You go so deep into this research. I'm truly impressed and you know, I'm excited to be here today. Thank you. I saw that it's about an 11 minute video that you have called Death Cults and you have the snippet from the newspaper in there and it does call him Jim Jones, which is something that the media, I guess, they try to make the connection between him and Jim Jones from, you know, the Guyana massacre.

So your research is fascinating. I'm just really... When I saw that video I wanted to come and talk and because I was involved in that church. But we have to go back in time back to the 70s and 70s were an interesting time.

I mean, it seemed like there were so many military and groups out there that were trying to usher in the millennium. You know, there were Jehovah witnesses and Mormons every 15 feet knockin' on doors.

There was the Jesus movement, the children of God move. movement, you know, it just seemed like it was everywhere. And I had, I mean, I was a hippie and I had no intention of, you know, being a Christian or anything like that.

I was out there, you know, with a super long hair, throwing beer cans at the law and shouting peace, peace. And I had no intention, you know, of, of ever being a Christian. Well, I started my journey and I had a girlfriend that was, she was Nazarene. I went to a Baptist church for a while, tried to pin a hospital church. And so my brother had given me the album, Jesus Christ superstar.

And of course, a lot of the Christians, they didn't like it and they were griping about it. But I listened to it anyway and it affected me in a positive way. And so I met James, his name is James L. Jones. And L stands for Lennville, by the way, he never wanted anybody to know that.

But what happened was I was in my room sitting on my bed and I had read in the Bible Ephesians chapter 4 verse 5 where it says there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, right? And I was just a young Christian at the time, you know, just barely, you know, wet behind the ears as it was, you know, just got baptized maybe a few days earlier. And bear with me, I have allergies.

So a friend at school invited me to a revival. It was at the Glendale Women's Club. This is back in 71. And so I went to this revival. And there was a guy up there on the platform, kind of a Andy Griffith licking dude. And he preached like a house on fire.

I'd never heard anybody preach that way. And he was so good, best I ever saw at creating group thought or what I call the mastermind. And I got that from Napoleon Hill's book where he talks about the psychology aspect of the Pentecostal revival. And so, you know, he's very dynamic in his approach.

And I'd never heard preaching like that before. The sermon was called here, he, him. And it was based on the scriptures, you know, about the Mount of Transfiguration experience, you know, where the voice says, this is my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased.

here, he, him. And anyway, like I said, he was a fantastic preacher. And when he would, when he would preach, there was a vein that would stick out on his neck. This is my first time seeing him, right? And I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, you know, he's going to, he's going to break a blood vessel in his neck. And so he was like, I'll demonstrate, he's up there, preaching away, you know, and God said, here he, him, raise your hands and shout amen some, you know, he was, he was really wound up. And then he turned and looked

right out and he goes, and there's a young man here tonight to think I'm going to break a blood vessel in my neck. And I was like, well, what just happened? Wow, but that would freak you out, man. You know, people accuse me of being against all of the doing the stuff, all of the signs and wonders, et cetera. But I've been in, I've been under ministries who had some figure who would say something not quite to that level, but something similar. They would say something that afterwards, whenever it happened, you're scratching your head thinking, wait a minute, how did he know

that? And I can't say that all of them were prophetic revelations, but some of them may have bordered on that edge. And the problem is, as we'll get further into this and I think people will understand, there are ministries where people have something unusual, whether it's a gift or whether they have inside knowledge or maybe they did have a vision. I don't know, but it doesn't really mean that the person is a number one, a safe person, because as we'll get into this is a horrific story, what happened.

But also, you can't really say that as a movement by God, just because some person is doing something, you can't really equate that to a divinely inspired movement as we get into this. But what happened after this? What did it make you think?

I'd had experiences like that with my mother, one time the phone rang, and she, before we answered it, she said, oh my God, it's Fred, he shot himself. And that's what happened. My uncle Fred tried to end his life. And he shot himself and ended up being quadriplegic for the rest of his life. And so I knew a little bit about those gifts. And so anyway, without missing a beat after he said, there's a young man here that thinks I'm going to break a blood vessel in my neck without skipping a beat. He went right back to a sermon. And then when the sermon was over,

he started ministering to people. And he walked up to me. And like I said earlier that day, I was reading Ephesians four or five, and I thought How can it be possible to have one Lord, one faith, one baptism with 969 different denominations?

And why I thought 969, I don't know, but it's important in my story because when he had me stand up, he said, young man, you were sitting in your room today, you were eating Ephesians chapter four, verse five, about one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and you wondered, how could that possibly be with my 169, it was word for word perfect.

And then right after that, he said, I'm gonna prove I'm not reading minds here. And he put his figure on a scar that I had and told me how old I was and how I got it.

He had a jar without a hole in it with a tumor that had two long roots on it. That I wasn't there for that meeting. It was like a two prior where he had called a woman out and prayed for her cancer.

She got sick, went into the restroom, and she passed this tumor.

I saw him do things like wipe a cataract out of a man's eye and wipe it on his suit, cross thighs, healed,

the whole nine yards. And so when he was telling me the thoughts of my heart,

he gave me an answer, he said the book of Acts is a record of the church in action. And if you believe like they did, and act like they did, you can have what they have.

And so that was where the first seed was planted. You know, it wasn't like our church at the time thought it was mandatory. If you're a Christian, you're gonna work miracles, right? But it was like, if you're not working miracles and if there's no signs and wonders, then you really have no confirmation that what you're preaching and teaching is correct is kind of how it was presented.

You know, and for me, that's one of the real problems with this type of movement. I've mentioned it in a few of my podcasts, but it isn't so much that I'm against those things.

Doing the stuff, it's the fact that the stuff, the quote unquote stuff gets overemphasized. So in the balance scales, you've got the Bible and you've got sound doctrine, you've got focus on Jesus, et cetera, as a Christian.

Well, then some of these movements, they really lessen that so that they can lift up the stuff and they can have people focus on it. So I'm curious, you, before we recorded this, we talked a bit.

and you were, I guess, in the ministry with this person, this James Jones. How did all of that come about? How did you become, I guess, a leader in this sect? I asked him to mentor me and he said, yeah, you know, I'll take you under my wing and eventually I was ordained and licensed through the James L. Jones Evangelistic Association. We outgrew the women's club, we bought a church, and I don't know, I got up to around 150 or so regular type pay-in members. We were on the radio, KSA, 1540 on your AM dial down there in Phoenix and people started coming into the meetings and

so after this, this is like baby steps over a few years and this is how we ended up being a message church actually. The tone of his sermon started to change. One day he came out and he preached a sermon called Cain, Son of Satan, which is a serpency. It was a rebranded, you know, and he acted as if it was his revelation knowledge. People in the Pentecostal movement at that time, they would mention Brannum, of course, and he said, well, I never met Brannum, I don't know Brannum,

I don't know what he taught or anything like that, but when I would go visit him in his house, I would see the Brannum books in his library, and I would do a critical analysis of these serpents that he did, like, you know, free out of my generation, you know, Son of Satan, which is rebranded and all of that. And it seemed like at that time, there were different classifications in the message. Some of them were just the ministers, they would just cow-tow, and Brannum was it, and I don't want to be a carnal impersonator. And so they wouldn't, you know, pray for the sick,

even, or whatever, but then there were the other guys, which is a category that James L. Jones ended up falling into, like, well... Neil Frisbee would be one, you know, where they were going to outdo Brannum.

If Brannum was Elijah, they're Elisha, if Brannum was Moses, then they're Joshua. And so I started getting to sense that because we got all the books, all the, you know, the conduct order and doctrine and all of those, and I made a connection.

I realized how closely related that was to the Mormons, you know, they got the Pearl of Great Price, they got the Bible, they got the Book of Mormon, you know, and then what did we have?

We had the seven seals and the, you know, all of that stuff. And there were a couple of ministers that started coming to our church and they were both pastors of message churches. And they came to our church and basically I looked at them like they were sheep wrestlers, you know, and they would take away people and, you know, whatever.

So I'm curious how the main sect of Brannumism, the, well, the collection of different various sects and splinter groups of Brannumism, influenced this group. You mentioned that they were starting to adopt some of the core Brannum teachings, such as Serpent Seed, which is Brannum's rebranding of the Christian identity doctrine, very destructive.

This would have been about the same time that they had the heavy, heavy Doomsday focus. Because in the 70s, about the time frame you're mentioning, they were leading up to Brannum's Doomsday, which was 1977, they claimed was his final Doomsday for the Earth and the United States would be destroyed, et cetera.

How did this impact the group that you were in? Did they talk about the 1977 date at all? John Ribbon and Stephen Flegum and they wrote a book called The Jupiter Effect. It was about in 1977, there was going to be a planetary alignment to planets.

We just had that, you know, just what, yesterday. But anyway, the planets were supposed to align and then we're going to be tsunamis and earthquakes and, you know, death, doom and destruction and, and of course, being in that environment, we wanted all of that to happen, you know, because we wanted to, you know, usher in the coming of the Lord.

And so, of course, that, you know, didn't happen in critical thinking would have thought, wow, as long as the solar system has been here, how many times have the planets lined up? But there were people in the message at that time that were putting dates on the rapture.

One of them was April 14, 1977, because of Brannum's talking about the closing of the age in 1977 in his book, you know, the Seven Church Ages, and so I bought him to a hook line in Sinker. I got up that morning and I really thought the rapture was going to happen.

And of course it didn't, and I was so disillusioned, brother. It affected me in ways that, well, I've been institutionalized six times if that tells you anything. You know, that's something that I don't want the listeners to take too lightly, because when you're in one of these groups that has such a heavy, heavy doomsday focus, it takes a toll on your mind. And I know that there are some people who get through it and they're of sound mind and they would probably blast everything about to say. But there's also other people who suffer significantly. And what I've come to conclude is that the ones who really,

really adopt the doctrines and get emotionally tied to them, because they're so emotionally tied, it really wreaks havoc in your mind. And so I don't want the listeners to take that too lightly. There are people who suffer significantly because of this type of doctrine.

Brother Jones, as we've called him, when you get angry at a particular person over whatever, maybe it was they weren't adhering to the dress code. Maybe a woman had a slid up or skirt or something weird like that. He would blast you from the pulpit and bearish you beyond.

You would never want to come back again. And anyway, he did that to me one day because instead of being entered on Sunday, which I was using there every time the doors open. But there was a Sunday and I needed to finish a job. I was painting a house. And man, he landed on me with all four feet and unloaded with both barrels. And so I just said, not I'm never coming back here. And so I left. I had a few revivals of my own over with a kid long at the heritage by I will assembly, he's the guy that introduced me to Paul Cain, and so I did that for a

little while, but I was so disillusioned by all the nonsense of it that I just finally I left the ministry, left the church. I threw the baby out with the bathwater, which is why I'm so impressed with you guys, you and Charles, and everybody, because you're still Christians, you maintain your Christianity through all of it, through the Depression, through the lies, through all of the nonsense, and you're still good Christian folk.

Well, I rebelled, I spent a lot of time drinking, spent a lot of time doing drugs, and I didn't want to have anything to do with anything spiritual whatsoever. People ask me whenever I bring somebody on the podcast who is atheist or struggles with some sort of sin that Christianity condemns, why I allow them on the podcast, everybody's journey has a origin, and some of these people go through just like what you've been through, it is so severe, what they've been through, you really can't blame them for having just walked away from all of it, and I'll tell you this, there are people who, as they're

deconstructing what is indoctrinated in their head, there comes a point whenever they have to deconstruct the God that they've been taught, and in most cases, whenever they're deconstructing that God, it isn't the God of the Christian Bible, so really they're tearing down this false God, and they mistake this for atheism, and it leads people down further pathways of self-destruction, so I'm glad that you were able to come out of this, so you mentioned the origins of the group, how did they come to be in, what is it, Camp Verdi?

He moved the church up to Camp Verdi, and he was in a copper canyon, and he saw a rock that looked like a loaf of bread, and he hears a voice, so go break it, he breaks it open, it has his initials in it, so anyway, he builds this bigger church up in Camp Verdi, and then we get the news, you know, that he had molested some kids, and a lot of people you know, just didn't believe that he would even be possible for him to even do something like that, and they put their houses up for some people's sold their houses, and some

put them up for a bond, money, and all of that, and apparently this happened a couple times in his life and eventually he did die in prison. If I remember right it was some kind of pancreatic condition and anyway that's the brief reader's digest condensed version of where I was at the time. Yeah I remember coming across that news. I was looking actually for the for the Jim Jones of People's Temple and I came across this and I was like wait a minute is that the same guy because I had already tied Jim Jones of People's Temple to the message

called and then I found this person but like you said the middle initials difference I recognize that this was not the same the same guy but it's just yet another case of something like this where a predator has been put into a position of power they have some sort of a spiritual gift that they're using to make the people think that they're more of a spiritual person than they really are and they turn out to be a predator which is it's sad and it's turning into a pattern that we're still seeing today that has tied directly to this movement's history. So you I'm curious you were

so you were leadership in this and I can imagine what would be going through your head after leaving it. Did you ever take the time to like process and study what it was that this thing what it was and how it became the movement that you were in did you study the message and the history what all did you do after you realized that this person is not a person of God. Around I'm gonna say 13, 14 years ago I took another deep dive into it and I put some videos up that were they're not as

in as much detail as what you guys do but I covered the basics like the Maryland Monroe prophecy right you know and when you when you first read that prophecy he doesn't mention Maryland Monroe he just talks about a blonde woman who died in a heart attack but you know isn't that just the weirdest way to say it to she died in a heart attack and then later remember right wasn't her brother Neville that came to him and said oh yeah Maryland Monroe died and then you know it's a game of pin the tell on the donkey you know and and that's I noticed it a lot of his

best say at the Lord stuff was nonsense you know and then I did one on the cloud

you know and tied it into the rocket launch it everywhere air force base I don't know I think I did Oh 8 or 10 videos of his prophecies that had failed, you know, the 1977, and of course the big apologetic cop out is, well, Brandon never said that was a prophecy. He said it was a prediction. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't know how you feel, but I think a prediction that's made by a prophet is technically a prophecy. Absolutely. You know, and I know a lot of people would disagree with that, but by definition, it's a prophecy. And so I did a videos on

that. And the reason I did was because of the internet, you know, Facebook came out and I had reconnected, you know, with the people that, you know, used to be my ushers or my deacons or, you know, people from that church and I couldn't believe that, you know, there it was, you know, 2000, whatever. And they're still believing in that, you know, and if an earthquake happened anywhere, they, oh, that's that's that's Brandon, you know, and all of this garbage. And so I wasn't trying to be bombastic. I wasn't trying to be trying to want up anybody or anything. I just

wanted people to know that like, you know, Brandon's or the other one was that Billy Paul wouldn't be an old man when sharks would be feeding, you know, front of the May company in LA. And, you know, at that time, I don't think Billy Paul had passed, but he was definitely an old man, you know, by even by Brandon's own definition of what a what an old man is, you know, and man, all those people that I used to love and fellowship with and we were so close and everything. I even got death threats, brother. 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 Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.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. You know, you mentioned the shark swimming at May Company and to a listener who's never been involved with a message called the William Brannum, but as aware of its history and the implications that it has to the

NAR, that is a significant statement because Brannum claimed to have prophesied that before Billy Paul, his son was an old man and he used the term, the term old man. Before you're an old man, there will be shark swimming right here where you're standing and he was standing in front of the May Company in downtown Los Angeles. Billy Paul is now dead, but like you said, at that time, he was still alive. I'm curious what the people, how they responded because after 1977 had come and gone, a lot of a lot of people would look at this and say, well, why didn't they, why didn't

it just disband? When you found out that this was a failed Doomsday prediction, 1977, why didn't it disband? And I look at the prophecy of Billy Paul, now that he's actually dead, we would have thought that the group would have just imploded after the death of Billy Paul because that was a significant prophecy. I remember going to different churches and watching Billy Paul say, but I'm not an old man yet, brother. He was very, very old whenever he was saying these things and people were just kind of eaten it up. He's not an old man yet, but he looks old. But then after he died,

now what do you say to this? And what has happened by and large is that the people just make up excuses for it. And they're trying to claim that in some way, shape or form, this failed prophecy had been fulfilled. What was it like for the people after 1977 happened? What did the people, how did they respond? They're still out there apologizing and confabulating the prophecies and all that stuff just to fit their agenda. So you mentioned earlier, you mentioned Paul Cane who was significant, a significant figure in the Kansas City Fellowship and the International

House of Prayer. He was also William Brannum's protege. And I'm curious, there was a point of time in which Paul Cane just disappeared. He was in the Brannum Laterane movement. He was connected to Chuck Smith. I think he said Chuck Smith was his campaign manager. But there's a point of time in which he disappears and just kind of goes into hiding. Do you remember what years that you came in contact with Paul Cane? Oh my gosh. Um, 80s, something.

81, it was a full gospel businessmen meeting and Kent Long took me there and introduced me and we had a good, you know, little short conversation, but you know, I mean, I heard the, the stories, you know, about how Brown and used to send him in proxy, you know, when there were certain countries that, you know, he wasn't allowed to go into, or the scheduling was messed up.

And then I had issue with the prayer cards. You know, it's it's it's it's easy to tell somebody their name and phone number and address when you got it written on a prayer card, all you got to do is use memory by association, you know, and then act like you're, you know, seeing purple visions and green angels and and and what not.

But I had a dear friend that I've known since I was 13 years old, who was actually mentored by Paul Cain, they went to the same church and Phoenix and down in the basement was where he used to print his magazines.

And he and I have stayed in contact for, you know, many, many decades. So you also mentioned the Jesus movement, which I've been trying to piece all of that history together. As I mentioned, Paul Cain was connected to Chuck Smith, Chuck Smith was his apparently his campaign manager.

And placed them in and at least one significant revival in Phoenix. But there were others in this Jesus movement that were closely tied or some way shape or form tied or influenced by William Brannum.

Did you come across any of that? Did you notice the the Jesus movement people being affiliated at all with the message? I think some of them were. I mean, I end deal first because book even has quotes from Brannum and red letters, you know, as if it was an extension of the Bible.

Right. You know, like I said, there were there were the ones that we cow-tow and we can't do nothing no more because when that which is perfect as calm, which was the message, we can't do this no more.

And if you do your carnal impersonator, you know, if you pray for the sick and they get healed, you know, you did something bad, you know. And then there were the other ones, like I said, like Frisbee and James L Jones, that they were, they were going to want up Brannum.

You know, they were going to bring in the rapture. And so it's very confusing. But yeah, we had all the tape. and the literature, and the books, and tracks, and what you call it, and all of that stuff.

Brother Jones went headlong, you know, into the message, and was, you know, I guess, I don't know, how would you say, I'm trying to pick up, or Brandon will have to off, maybe? Right. You know, with the tent vision, and all of those other weird things.

Yeah. So another thing that matches the pattern in all of this mess with all of the splinter groups is that William Branham presented himself as the last messenger for the last church age. He was teaching dispensational preaching, and he said, basically, we've come through all these ages. This is the last age. I am your messenger, and I will be the one to carry you into heaven.

He obviously didn't do that, and his 1977 Doomsday failed, and so the cult kind of, I don't know what the word for it is, but they just kind of went into this weird state of limbo.

And then what happened is, because some of the prophecies that he had really required him to be on the scene, on the earth, whenever the prophecy was fulfilled. So as a messenger, the quote-unquote message would fail unless something were to happen, and another man were to carry the torch.

So what has happened is, there are many new leaders that step up, and they say, I'm it. I'm your new messenger. I'm wondering in this sect, this splinter group that you were in, did they do the same thing? Did your Jim Jones believe that he was the last messenger for the age?

Yeah, he did. He started calling himself Joshua, and he had that experience with the bread, the rock that looked like a loaf of bread, and you know, found his initial in it. But each little step that took our independent Pentecostal church into, I don't know whether you would say we were technically a Brannemite church or a message church, but he wanted to pick up where Brannem left off and reveal the thunders and, you know, all of that stuff.

And I guess the next question, which kind of goes along with that, because will your Brannem taught such a Doomsday-focused message? Whenever these new leaders emerge, they also focus so heavily on Doomsday that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They want it to happen. They want it to, you know, for them to be the messenger, there has to be the Doomsday that William Brandt prophesied. And so they invent new ways in which they can do this. Ironically, with the name Jim Jones, Jim Jones of People's Temple, as you know, there was the mass suicide done in Guyana. And this too appears to be somewhat of a pattern in some of the groups.

We also looked at recently in the Chocohol of Forest Massacre, for example, Paul Mackenzie, who was influenced by William Brandtum Sermons and was preaching exactly like your Jim Jones. He was preaching the serpent C. Doctrine that William Brandtum had rebranded from Christian identity. Well, these groups end up going into such a Doomsday focus that when it doesn't happen many times or sometimes in the most severe cases, they go towards some sort of a suicidal attempt at Doomsday. That's the same case with your Jim Jones. Am I correct?

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if it was the name Jim Jones or, but I remember in Camperry, they were on Suicide Watch because he had set a time, you know, for the end of the world, basically. And I think it was Christmas day of, I don't know, 1996 or something like that. Anybody you could get online, if you look at James L. Jones, a spoken word tabernacle camp, Verdi, you know, there are articles that do a better job than I can explain it, you know. But the people that you read about in those articles that were interviewed like Kenny

Lee can deed principle and I mean, they were, they were all, you know, my friends from back in the day, you know, that's just so sad. You know, a lot of times whenever something like this happens and some leader has gone rogue and they bring people into this mental state where they can take their own lives. Whenever in the aftermath, when all of the group is examined, they, you know, they focus on the leader and they look at how the leader manipulated the people and paint them as pure evil, which they are. But a lot of times it's really lost what happens to

the people themselves. I can't even imagine what it is that you went through whenever all of this happened. And then even more to the point after this happened, I can't imagine what it was like coming out of this. That's why I wanted to come and do the show with you, you know, is maybe it could be a cathartic for me, you know, in addition to giving some, you know, a little but inside information about James L. Jones and how it started and how he was,

he used to say that he had a twin ministry to leave Roy Jenkins, brother Jenkins. Yeah, so I'm familiar. They had different approaches, but kind of the same thing, where he would tell people about scars on their body and operations they had, and he'd break crutches and all of that stuff too.

He was very dynamic. I was just so enamored, I guess you'd say, you know, because that first time I saw him, he's telling me the thoughts of my heart, you know, and I wanted to fashion my life like one of the guys

in the book of Acts. And so, you know, I don't know how many people out there that are still longing for that. But I don't know, it's just interesting to me that all of these failed prophecies and all of this bad theology that condones racism

and, you know, basically evil stuff like that, that people are still buying into it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, so. So let's talk a bit about the end of this group. So towards the end, things got really bad.

They were, you know, everybody's looking for this doomsday that is about to come and then the leader gets caught and goes to prison. What happened to the rest of the people in the group?

So you're with all of these people and they see the leader going to prison, what was it like when that happened? Well, he got arrested, okay. So yeah, there was, like I said, they put the church on suicide watch.

And since a couple of the girls that had been molested when they were younger had come out and talked about it,

there was a big church split there too. And so a lot of people left. Some of the, you know, the diehards still stayed there and I'm only assuming, but I guess they're still there today.

Oh, wow. The group still exists, I was not aware that the group still exists.

It's just so weird how... in this cult of personality that there's such a dark underbelly to it that you know you find out about molestations and gosh all that stuff but yet they're really harsh on running your life you know like I said I used to have really long hair and that was the first thing that had to go you know and you know the dress codes you know the women have to dress like men and nights and can't cut their hair and all of that stuff you know and I just I that takes away so much

uh from grace yeah it's just so sad you know branamism was focused so heavily on the outward appearance you know like you mentioned your long hair the way the women dress they're so focused on that and they lose sight of the really really big things like in this case you have a predator who's bleeding the entire flock and that's not you know I realized this is an extreme example of branamism but if you look at just typical I don't know if you can call it typical but if you look at branam churches as a whole it seems as though there is a pattern of the abuse sometimes

it's by the leadership but other times it's just by other people who the leadership help sweep it under the rug we've had many people who are in the um you know who in their support groups that they're telling very similar stories not to the extreme of being on a suicide watch but having some predator who is involved and this was supposed to be a movement that brought the people you know the hearts of the children closer to the fathers this was supposed to be the Malachi 4 ministry and it appears to be quite the opposite I'm curious so the Malachi 4 ministry

you mentioned serpent seed I'm curious how much into branamism he he went as he started incorporating these doctrines was serpent seed the only doctrine or were you aware there were other doctrines that he taught from William branam yeah he started to um and we were still in Phoenix at the time but that's when he started to do it like I said there were a couple uh uh they're the last name was migra and rolin migra I don't know if you know those names you know in the message or not but they were coming around and you know trying to take people away and and get us to go to their church

or whatever um very very cutthroat kind of a Denomination or whatever it is, cult. Right. You know that is the real irony of all of this, what you're describing. So you were in a church that was far more extreme than some of the others and they were on a suicide watch.

But all the while you had the main cult that was trying to indoctrinate the people who were in this sect. In other words, we're in a cult, we're in a cult, our cult is better come to us, basically is what was happening here.

But in doing so, what I have seen, many of these cult groups that are doing this and that's really how they grow the churches, they either grow from the inside through birthing children or they try to suck people out of other groups that are sometimes more destructive, sometimes not as destructive.

So what they're doing is they're essentially cross pollinating because these groups, as the people start to go to the church and they start to try to attract people out, they're doing so by spreading the doctrine.

So in essence, brannemism is spreading through this, which creates even more splinter groups and more extremist groups. So this really becomes a problem. If you could give some advice to people who are leaving these types of groups, what advice would you give them?

Would you leave, don't throw the baby out with the bath water, figure out a way and find people that are like-minded. So you can maintain your Christianity. I know it's difficult because of the disillusionment and like I said, I was institutionalized six times and one of those treatment centers, they told me I had to turn my will and my life over the fear of God as I understood them and I was like, good Lord, what do you think got me here?

It was tough, it took me decades and that's why I'm so grateful to hear out there, John, because if there had been something like this going on back in 77, 78 when all this maniacal stuff was going on, I probably would have had a better chance at exiting more gracefully than I did.

Well, that's a very good advice and I think I will add to that, don't be afraid to process very deeply and examine what parts of that baby were real and what parts of that baby were false that was in the bath water because there is quite a bit of fiction mixed in the nonsense and it takes time to process.

Thankfully, you've been able to process and come through it and I can't even believe the thing- that you would have went through and the struggles that you would have had processing that. It makes my journey out seem easy, and it was for me, it was the most difficult time of my life. So, thank you very much for doing this.

Hey, no problem. Glad you're there. Well, if you enjoyed our show and you want to share your story, 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 Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.