Is the UPCI a Cult - With Andrew De La Rosa

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, Andrew Dela Rosa, former member of the United Pentecostal Church International.

Andrew, it's good to have you on and to tell your story about coming out of the UPCI. I've actually wanted somebody from the United Pentecostal Church to join me so that we could just have a casual conversation and discuss the United Pentecostal Church because as I was making my journey out of the message called the William Branham as you're aware, I started going through some Pentecostal histories and I started comparing what Branhamism had as its underlying foundation with other churches and trying to understand why is it different.

And one of the people who strongly helped me in understanding all of this mess was Dr. Walter Martin, which I don't know if you're familiar with this name, but he was called the Bible Answer Man and he had a series of, I think there's two or three books I've read one of them and he had several videos, but one of them in particular, he had branded, he was investigating the United Pentecostal Church International and he came down to asking them one question, which I'll mention later in this episode, but he determined basically that the United Pentecostal Church was a cult.

And at that time, interestingly, I was still formulating in my head whether or not William Branham and the message was a cult, and then taking it a step further than that, a cult is not so bad.

You have the cult following of Taylor Swift and you have the Swifties and it's a cult, is it destructive? I don't know, I'm not that big of a fan of the music, but you can have this.

So I began to examine, well there's a difference between cult and destructive cult, and at that time I really couldn't label either one destructive. I had not gone far enough to understand the message or whether or not the UPCI was a cult, so I just kind of put it on the shelf and I've never really examined it again.

So I'm interested to hear your story, I know that you have some feedback about the United Pentecostal Church. chart. So maybe if you could just start and tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, I want to say thank you for taking the time and giving me the opportunity to share my story and my viewpoints on the UPCI and my former church. And just to briefly give you a little bit of a background from where I come from, I was basically born and raised in the UPCI. My family was converted or my parents were converted while they were in the military.

So they were contacted by missionaries when my father's station in Japan and that kind of started our journey through a pentacostal doctrine. So before that, my parents were Catholic. So I really not know anything else. I was raised in it and then later in my middle school and high school years, my parents took me out of public school and put me into Christian schools that were pentacostal led. So deeply embedded in the pentacostal doctrine as preached by the UPCI.

And then I was very involved in ministry at my specific church. So I was accustomed to the rules that they enforce which we might end up talking about today. And very well versed on their specific form of a salvific doctrine. There's very common across pentacostals, not just the UPCI, but and then the one, one of the core monitors that is identifying of the UPCI is their stance on what we would label oneness theology. That's probably the most prominent doctrine that they express.

And eventually I did some personal study into pentacostal history which led me to where I am today, where I have left the pentacostal tradition and trying to highlight through my blog and videos I've been producing some of the contradictions and criticisms of that doctrine.

Awesome. Well, as I mentioned, I was still forming my idea of what was the cult and trying to understand it. And I'm interested to talk to you because I want to hear more about your thoughts on whether or not the UPCI is a cult. Walter Martin and I'm paraphrasing heavily, but in his books and in some of his videos, he basically defined the cult and I'm paraphrasing, but he defined it as a group of people who were gathered around a specific...

person or that specific person's misinterpretation of the Bible. That's how he defined a cult. And, you know, I give him that's probably accurate, but is it destructive? I don't know. I look towards Dr. Stephen Hassan has the bite model, which is controlling people's behavior, controlling and limiting their information, thought control, thought manipulation, and emotional control, emotional manipulation. When I look at the UPCI as a whole,

it's hard to put into a category for me. The funny part is I had a conversation with Adam Short recently. I think that podcast will go up before this one, but I was mentioning the term UPCI because it was the backbone to what created a lot of what we see in the NAR today, New Apostolic Reformation. And he came out of this and he should, you know, this is his heritage, right? And he said, what's UPCI? Which was funny to me. I thought somebody who came out of that movement because had that foundation, I thought they would recognize it, but apparently,

many of the movements today that descended from this have completely whitewash their histories. They don't talk about much about the Laterane or UPCI. I'm curious. I wouldn't know why they whitewashed it. What are they? What are they hiding? But personally, my understanding of the United Pentecostal Church International was that there were several disparate groups that Pentecostal Lism had after the Azusa Street Revival. And there was this wonderful outpouring they said of, you know, the Pentecostal blessings. Well, everybody went back to their places of origin and they started fighting over doctrines. So one group would draw a line in

the sand and say, we're not part of your group. We're a different Pentecostal organization. Some of the ideas were significant, such as the Godhead that you mentioned oneness. So some of them were trinitarian, some of them were oneness. Other doctrines were not so significant in my opinion, but regardless, it made this big band of different groups. And then in the mid-40s, I think it was, they all kind of combined and became the United Pentecostal Church International.

So Walter Martin, when he's defining it as a cult, how do you do this? Because there's so many different ideas and different movements. And I don't know that there's a central flow of theology that is being dictated to the churches. But I wanted to hear your opinion on this. What are your thoughts? Absolutely. So I, it's one of the things that I discovered when I independently went to research.

are the history of our doctrine, how we arrived at our current belief systems, and exactly what you express or I think this is common for most people when they finally start unrooting their history in pedocosalism is you have to confront

one how relatively short-lived or not short-lived but how relatively new these doctrines are to Christian history um you know and people will try to tie some of these um their their theology and their specific doctrinal tenets to much longer heritage within Christian history but the way that it's practiced and embraced today is really conjured up from like the early 1900s and I often say you know in talks with my wife when we we discussed Christian history or pedocostal history um the UPCI I believe was formed around 1945 kind of as you were suggesting where some of the conflicts were arising between the individual groups and they coalesced and became

the UPCI um I think an odd history tidbit is that the spam company you know that that lunch in the can precedes the the formation of the UPCI right and so you know for all the people that claim you know and this is commonly preached within UPCI circles which may lend to its cultish properties that I would argue here in a moment is they argue that we're re re reverting back to the old paths quote unquote our form of doctrine and teaching in our ecstatic preaching that's returning to the old ways and uh spam proceeds these old ways you know I know that might be

a little bit um a little bit silly but um those are things that we have to acknowledge historically that these movements are relatively new yeah well and ironically I get religious spam all the time and that's new or even still then then a cost of movement but yeah I get what you're saying so this is something that I actually it's interesting you say this I actually went through that same thought process because many of the ideas that we had in the random cult were relatively new and they were focused specifically around a specific event or situation that happened in the 1900s

and so I'm looking back through these events one of them was the rise of liberal Christianity versus the fundamentalist debate which was heavily dominating American Christianity in the early what was it 20s and 30s I think it was but it basically this is the foundation the core foundation for a lot of the things that we believed, and the fundamentalists took a specific position in some of the religious doctrines that were—the doctrines were specifically designed to combat the liberal themes, some of which I'll admit were probably true, but some of which their limited understanding of the era may have played a factor in them

going down the wrong trail, and adding some doctrines that were quite—in my opinion, quite false—some of them true, some of them false. But what happens is, as the lettering was being birth, many of those fundamentalist preachers continued the good and the bad into the movement and made it core doctrine. And so now, you know, in 2025, there are still Branamites that are still adhering to doctrines that were created back in the 30s that are—you know, it's built on a false foundation. So it's interesting to hear you say it was conjured from the 1900s. What is it like now comparing some of those doctrines and theologies to the

1900s? Do you feel like some of them are out of place or out of date, or do you feel like some of the core doctrines are accurate? What are your thoughts? I have to speak from my personal experience. So I did some historical study about a lot of the highlights that I observed through my adolescence to now. I think illustrate what you're talking about here, which is one example I think of is that the UPCI is very recognized for what they label standards. But outside of the UPCI, we would kind of deem these extra biblical rules based off of like how you're supposed to dress or conduct yourself in public

and things that you can or cannot participate in. And in the short span of the UPCI's formation to today, there's a lot of rules that have been quietly dismissed without like outright leave defining why these things were first put in the place and then subsequently dropped.

And so an example of that is there used to be a ubiquitous rule across UPCI where they forbid having TVs in their homes. And I mean, this was considered selfish. So like if you had mentioned that you watched movies or going to movie theaters was also forbidden. It was commonplace across and it created subculture where people would judge one another if they even implied that like I had seen a movie or it came out in silly ways as I grew up. But like we used to joke with one another that like I don't know.

watching anything, I just read the Bible as teens and stuff, but now if you were to look at the UPCI in modern times with the advent of technology, obviously this is a very hard rule to enforce. And so churches have quietly dropped this rule without expressing how they got there. And it's common. I mean, if you're on social media at all, practically every Pentecostal young person has social media constantly reference his pop culture, which means they have a knowledge of what is being produced in the entertainment industry, which is what the original rules were trying to address. And so I think one that shows

the hypocrisy of the original doctrines and that it definitely highlights that it's man made and not biblically centered. And so that may be one example. Of course, I can think of many more, but that's one of the more prominent orbs. It's kind of funny because as you talk, I take notes of what I'm going to lead to next and what my discussion is. And my note literally says one of the examples we had was television. It was this rule that had really no no basis in the Bible. And it was silently dismissed in the random cults. So what we're

talking about is the same exact thing. What I have come to the conclusion to believe is that many of the rules are created and established solely for the purpose to prevent change and modernization. And I think that's something that is shared UPC. See, randomism was built on top of Pentecostalism. And random, I believe, based on the history, I strongly believe and suspect he was trying to join the Roy Davis Church, which was a different Pentecostal sect. They're trying to join it into the UPCI as it was being formed and become leadership in this movement. So

many there's going to be a lot of crossover and what we believe and what you believe. But television was one of the things. And I came to a point where just like you said, I started looking at all of the rules. And even if you go to my website and just type in rules in the search bar, you'll find this ridiculous set of rules. Everything from television to man can't wear suede shoes. And I began to look at the ridiculousness of it. The suede shoes, for example, I don't even want to wear suede shoes. I don't like suede shoes. You wear them in the rain and they

get messed up. But back then, it was the movement's attempt to dissuade people from being fans of Elvis. That was just the way it was, man. That was the life and times. But I came to the question, which is a very sincere question from all of my research and study and having lived these rules.

What benefit were these rules to my salvation? Am I going to owe to hell because I worse wage shoes. I don't think so. And why were they introduced? And why did they become so important to these men?

So then I began to examine the agendas. And that's really, that's the trajectory that led me down the path of questioning, was this a destructive cult? And I'm just, I'm curious your thoughts. And I'm going to eventually come to the question for you, was this UPCI, UPCI a cult.

But what was it like with your journey going to that conclusion? What was your thought process as you were examining these rules? What led me to even evaluating them was the effect that was having on my spirituality and my walk with God.

Because initially, as an adolescent, you're told rules and you're certainly rules are important. You're in preschool and you're told you have to hold hands with your partner to make sure you don't get lost.

Keep an eye on the teacher. And then all these little rules that we learn to guide ourself through society look both ways before you cross the street. And so as I'm growing, I'm trying to extrapolate that sentiment towards the rules I'm told are like spiritual guidelines.

Men can't wear shorts. And that was a rule that I think still mostly ubiquitously held throughout the UPCI. And so I'd ever question initially why that was a rule. But then I started asking the question, what impact does this have, whether my knees are exposed playing basketball on my overall spirituality?

And it became a burden to constantly examine myself against the rules they had set. And as you get older, you begin to realize, actually, there are plenty of people that defy, like not actively, they just are unaware that these rules exist within the UPCI.

They're just common average people that you'll walk in and meet on your college campus. And they'll claim to be Christian as well. But they wear shorts. They wear open toe sandals. Some of the women they wear make up in jewelry.

And these are some rules that were restricted in our groups. And they're exhibiting qualities that I would consider Christian, Christ Mike. But I was told that these qualities don't manifest unless you adhere to these rules.

Right. Or that they were a part of the equation of holiness. And so I couldn't understand how they were exhibiting these qualities if they weren't adhering to the doctrine. that we suggested were the only ways you could.

Right. So I'm going to ask you a loaded question, because I've been dying to ask this to somebody who was in the Pentecostal ministry. So after I left the message cult of William Branham, I began reading the Bible over and over and over trying to just wash all of that nonsense out of my head, making the Bible my foundation instead of Branhamism.

And I began to be quite shocked, because not only did I read the Bible, I also studied, as I'm reading each passage, I studied what some of the terms meant that really don't have an application in today's language or society or culture.

And the shock that came on my face, when I learned what it meant to gird up your loins, it's literally to take your robe and tie it up where you make shorts, because you could run faster if this robe wasn't getting in your way.

And I was in a cult that just like you said, you couldn't wear shorts. And some of the children and some of the groups you could wear shorts up to a certain age, I think, that you had hair on your legs and then they would stop it.

As if the hair was devilish, which is kind of funny now that I look back, but the other irony is the church leadership, I remember significant names of leadership in the cult, who did wear shorts.

And they would preach about it on Sunday and say you can't do this and then go home and do it in private or go to a swimming party or the lake or whatever. So there was also the double standards that came with it.

And that's on the men's side. Now on the women's side, I'm reading through Ezekiel 16 and that one chapter just totally undermined the entire theology of Brannemism because it's talking about God's faithless bride and who was God's bride, Jerusalem, not the Gentiles.

And God wanted his bride to be pretty and he adorned her with makeup and beautiful fragrances and a nose ring and the nose and earrings and the ears. And I read this and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, man.

Because these ministers, they all have one job, man. To read the Bible and to preach, I'm certain that ministers who preached against earrings had read that passage. So my loaded question for you is, as leadership in the Pentecostal movement, what do you do when you come across passages from the Bible that completely undermine what you're preaching every Sunday?

Yeah, so it leads you to reverting back to tired arguments with it. So we would, when I encounter scriptures like that,

you, you, a, approach it, assuming your core doctrine is still true. It doesn't conflict. You just have to mold the scripture to somehow fit. You know, it's like taking a star peg and trying to ram it through a square hole, you know?

And so that's kind of how we addressed it. And I think a lot of it too, is that it just gets swept under the rug eventually at some point. And there's a scripture that I can't quite remember the reference one, but maybe you may be familiar that when you criticize certain doctrines and you raise points like that, there's a scripture that I'll paraphrase, which says essentially that there are some that will try to make arguments with so many words essentially like highlighting the meanings of words.

I think the scripture says to no avail. And so they basically will just suggest that you're trying to create conflict when you're just curiously asking the question, well, how do these coalesce? And that's important to me because these are doctrines that you suggest will forfeit my salvation.

So it's not just casual discussion points, but these are things that are, you know, people are earnestly concerned about. And the funny part is that passage, I know the passage you're referring to, that passage reads both ways because if you think of what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees and the lawyers, the lawyers being people who interpreted the law and we're looking for specific meanings of words to build more doctrines and rules off of.

And Jesus condemned the whole practice. So in essence, what you're describing is some of the UPCI may be doing the same thing as the Pharisees in that case. But things like that, another one that hit me, a big one, the passage about a woman shall not wear a garment that pertains to a man.

I can't tell you how many hours I spent going down through the history and the study of women's clothing in the Greek cultures and the Jewish cultures, et cetera. Because man, you look at the man's robes with their wearing what the Pentecostal style religions, the men are wearing this, right?

So if the woman's dress is a pertaining to none of it made any sense to me. And the funny part about it is in that same chapter, I believe it's that same chapter, but it's in the same mosaic law.

Men are not to wear clothes of two different types of fabric. So when you're reading this, the other question I have, which is another loaded question, it seems to me that the Pentecostal movement has picked and chosen specific old covenant laws and tried to reenact them and say that they are still valid under the new covenant of grace.

And so there's really this blurring of law versus grace. And in doing so, they're picking and choosing specific laws and avoiding others. Like I've heard, I can't tell you how many sermons I've heard about, women shall not wear garment pertains to a man.

I've never, ever heard them preach about two types of fabric in men's clothing, never. So you've got this situation where, I think it's in the book of James, there's some more passage that says, if you try to apply the law, but you fail one point, you're guilty of the whole law.

So as leadership in these types of movements, how do you reconcile that? Well, it's very reductive their view of the world and of theology. And so as long as you can, you know, assuming that they view any contradiction or criticism raised towards their doctrine, as they view it as a debate, they incorporate debate principles to focus the argument on their presupposed view of the world.

And so there's not a consideration of like, are there these other rules that we need to encompass into our doctrinal beliefs? They've already assured of themselves that these are the definitive set of rules.

And I think those are drawn, and this is where I would kind of suggest this quality is what drives the UPCI from just being, you know, a generic Christian group to being potentially in a harmfully cultish group, because you have to evaluate the, where does the the hyper focus on these rules originate, if not from the Bible?

And I think that's what I would argue is that some of these rules didn't necessarily originate from the Bible. My view would be that the UPCI created rules in response to certain changes societally and culturally.

And so you take the Bible and you stretch it to meet these to account or counter what was happening in culture, you know, through industrialization, and so to kind of make that more clear, I think of...

the rule of pants for women. I don't know if this is something that was highlighted in brandemism, but in the UPCI, this is a hard fought rule still, which is that they restrict women from wearing pants, and that it goes back to the scripture where you reference a match. I'll not wear that that pertains to a man. But the usage of pants only became more common as fashion evolved through the limbs of, you know, historical change, right? And I don't, you know, I know that could open up a can of worms to discuss, you know, pop culture

history and how that like affects religious viewpoints. But to condense it more, to make it more condensed, I would say it's just the the UPCI in my opinion formed rules in response to culture and not from a conviction to the rigidness of scripture. And then you argue that after the fact.

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 Brandem Historical Research's website, William-Brandem.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-Brandem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So let's talk for a minute about the new apostolic reformation and hero worship. So as you know, if you've watched my videos or listened my podcast, I'm starting to connect after I've done all the background history to from Pentecostalism into Brandemism. Now I started going from Brandemism connecting it to the

charismatic movement and then ultimately to what we call the new apostolic reformation today. And my study is more historical and theme oriented than it is religious and doctrine oriented. So if you studied in that manner, you start to see all these patterns that emerge and the patterns to really, in my opinion, they're a little bit scary because you have people who are basically barreling down a track of a train with no rails.

It can go anywhere that anywhere you want, especially if you're taking human beings and empowering them with so much authority that they literally can change the thoughts of the minds of the people in their congregation.

And we see this happening in some of the movements in the NAR. Well, as I began to study this, and see the patterns emerging, I began to realize that it all stems from one common pattern.

There was a lot of hero worship. And you can find it, if you go back in time, you can find some different groups that had significant figures that it evolved into hero worship. But generally speaking in Christianity, this is not the case.

Usually when people are focused on salvation and building doctrine, they try to build it based off of the Bible, not what a man or human says about the Bible, and they definitely don't turn to men into quote unquote gods generals, men and women.

But the Pentecostal movement had this unique thing that happened when the Azusa street revival began. And there's a lot of misconceptions about what that was, which I'll put that off the shelf for another day.

But the point I'm trying to drive at is there were people who joined into the movement. And some of them weren't really doctrineally sound people. They would go into the movement. Some of them were illiterate, and would claim that they could read the Bible, given this power that came down in the Azusa street revival.

Well, this interested the newspaper reporter. So they want to come see that. This is a great magic trick, man. I want to write about this. Well, when they go and they confront the people who are allegedly doing this thing, they find out that they can't read it at all.

All they can do is just mumble a few words here and there. And they would take the word, and they would build an entire theme around the word of the Bible, rather than the context of scripture, which is problematic, because you're losing the context of what the Bible means.

What happened was after this weird thing happened, and we're talking visions that were clearly written down and recorded in newspapers, you can actually go read some of the visions that these people had, the visions failed.

So you've got a bunch of false prophets who are in this movement. Then as it progressed and it got weirder, you had women who were leaving their husbands, and they were trying to drag men in to become their new husbands in the movement.

Because the old husband thought this was a mass, so you had divorces, you had remarriages, you had a cult. this two are coming in. This thing turned into a mess. But what happened was, in any time during this mess, if a person were to go and be part of this revival and then be gifted with speaking in tongues, all you had to do is get this gift. If you could get this gift, when you went back, these people had authority over the ministers in the local churches. And this is common knowledge, I think, to a lot of Pentecostal historians. It's not common knowledge to regular people who don't

understand this. So, in my church, say, I'm in 1910, and in my church, I have a pastor who's preaching the gospel, he's preaching the Bible, he's preaching it in context, but it is a holiness church. And then suddenly we get a visit from one of these people who went to this revival, who doesn't have any sound doctrine, but just happen to attend the revival. This person starts to influence the pastor, and the pastor changes his doctrine to conform to what is coming out of the revival. That's recorded history. This is common knowledge. I'm not, you know, I'm not

veering too far out of fact into opinion. But what it tells me is, the people who attended the revivals, this began the flow of hero worship, because these people were at a higher status, regardless of whether they had any sound doctrine, just because they attended. Then over time, as you watch this grow and continue, now there are suddenly key figures that become heroes of the faith in the Pentecostal movement. Some of them, if you go back and you study what they preached, it's a little bit off topic from the Bible. So I'm wondering your thoughts on the hero

worship as it exists in Pentecostalism. Do you see this as something that continued long after that, or do you think it just kind of fizzled out after that initial spread? Oh, no. I mean, in my specific group that I came out of, and this is still very prominent, they may change the way they approach, describing these leaders obviously to avoid criticism, but there are several ministers, prominent pastors, and evangelists that are viewed as these larger than life kind of individuals that they look to for guidance for

they look to to establish, you know, spiritual norms. And so I think it's interesting that when I expanded my research outside of the EPCI and started investigating other Pentecostal groups, so the parallels that I was seeing in other groups like the NAR was pretty stark because are pretty jarring because they will claim, I think the EPCI tries to portray itself as like the more sophisticated and polished form of pentecostalism. Their identity is usually

portrayed or exhibited on social media as them wearing suits and well dressed and tailored clothing and so even the way they worship at least have what's caught on camera is very reserved. But in practice when you actually sit in their services they absolutely do

I would say are very close to worship these leaders or like you said, hero worship. Pastors are given essentially unchecked authority in these churches in the way that they govern

the organization. They have zero accountability and I think the reason that they fixate on elevating pastoral authority is what we would call it or spiritual authority. is it reduces the responsibility to doing personal investigation to black and white thinking. We're going to offload our responsibility to investigate for ourselves and use critical thinking onto an external charismatic leader, an authoritarian leader. And I think people prefer that that actually engaging in the study of the scriptures for themselves. And I think that's why it becomes, why it's still very prominent and why it attracts people to movements like the EPCI

because they are allowed to forego that personal responsibility to say okay well whatever they say is essentially second to the Bible. So that ultimately leads me to the main question right. When you see authoritarian control and when you see manipulation to suppress critical thinking for me these are red flags. And for Walter Martin as I mentioned when he came across that alone I think that's what made him decide that the EPCI was a cult. I'm still on the fence I'm trying to decide for myself is it a cult is it not how do you even define it because there's all of these

different groups. And yet at the same time with the hero worship comes authoritarianism you can't suppress that whenever you have a person that you're venerating as a hero while they're still alive this person is going to have become an authority on doctrine and scripture there's No two ways about it, that's the way, that's the way this works.

It's a process. So if you apply Dr. Stephen Hassan's bite model thinking through behavioral control, information control, thought control, emotional control, using that to evaluate the UPCI, would you say that this is a cult and why would you say that?

Absolutely, and that's actually one of the books that was very instrumental to me identifying what I came out of as being a cult. And I would even argue a destructive one because many of those tactics are employed.

I mean, basically if you go across the bite model, the UPCI fills out practically 90% of those qualities. One of the more prominent ones is thought stopping techniques.

I mean, it's so embedded in their practice that it comes off as like spiritual routine. So it's almost difficult to identify as an attendee unless you're specifically looking for these cues that these are thought stopping techniques.

I would argue that the act of speaking in tongues kind of serves as a substitute for thoughtful, constructive prayer because you're replacing the act of thoughtfully going through certain things

you should be praying for, you know, individuals or evit situations. And they give all this power to this abstract function that if you just do more of this thing, it will eliminate whatever issues you're dealing with.

And that's the thing that they lay on pretty significantly within the UPCI is the act of speaking in tongues and the implications it has on their spiritual spirituality.

And I think that you can actually extrapolate this to non-Christian groups, like spiritual groups that incorporate, like, transmutation.

Those, they're more open to say that, you know, like, say, for instance, chance if you would do it in meditation are meant to eliminate thoughts so that you could be completely focused on, becoming one with yourself, right, in spiritual language.

And in the same way, I think inadvertently that's what the UPCI has done with the doctrine of speaking in tongues. those, though they wouldn't define it that way. And so I think that's honestly one of the most prominent things that I think of as being pretty destructive within that group.

Yeah, I'm still, like I said, I'm still forming my opinion, but the red flags are there. When you see the suppression of critical thinking and you see the information being controlled, I had, you don't know this, but early on, I want to say maybe we were 10, 15 episodes in.

We interviewed a UPCI minister. And I've got no problem talking to people who are Pentecostal, especially ministers. I want to hear the information that they have and share it. And we've had others, other Pentecostal ministers who come on the show and they share their information. And by sharing their information, they've got facts I don't have. I've got facts they don't have. Iron sharpens iron. And so everybody learns everybody grows. But we had a UPCI minister who, you know, I got to open up and he started telling me all kinds of really good facts, good histories. And then I guess he realized he was a bit too open because when it came down

to airing it, he had given me approval on the podcast episode. And then right when it come down to the air date, he said, if you put that out, I will sue you. And so I still have it on, I still have it on the backup drive because he threatened to sue me if it goes out. And instantly, this threw up all kinds of red flags, man, because there wasn't a single thing that he said, damaging to himself, not one. The only thing that he did was he started opening up and talking about history that you're not going to hear the Pentecostal movement talk about. And I began to

realize, well, why is he suppressing this? Why is he holding it back? And it honestly, that caused me to dig a little bit deeper into the history of the UPCI. And it's a good thing that it happened because when I did, I started discovering all of the ties from Brannemism to the early UPCI. And they're significant. We're talking as Brannem is touring with little David, the levitating boy. And they have the traveling magic show where the boy would levitate and preach Jesus. Well, they're preaching at the the key auditorium, which was the main facility used

during the Pentecostal days, and they're attracting all the UPCI people. So, Brannem is being entertained by leaders of the UPCI. He's actually one of his early campaign managers was ended up being one of the, I can't remember, superintendent or something of the UPCI was pretty significant figure, right? So he's connected to all these UPCI people. And if this minister was that, adamant to suppress the critical information about it. What other critical information are they hiding?

And like I said, it led me down past the study that we'll never end, but that's whenever I started digging into the Azusa Street revival itself. And you don't really hear any of the critical information when you hear a Pentecostal historian talking about it. You don't hear that they were predicting that all railroads the rail lines would become twisted and deformed and trains can't travel across them.

That was a prophecy that came out of Azusa Street, one of the big prophecies. You don't hear that people were being turned away from the Azusa Street revival if they weren't a believer. The curious people who came to see what was happening, they were actually pronouncing an athema on the unbelievers. So if this was a movement for an end of days revival, well, that's a clear sign of an isolationist group who's saying, okay, where the elite you can't get in because you don't have what we have. But a Pentecostal historian, every Pentecostal history that I have read said that this was an outpouring that was meant for everybody,

not something that was being contained to just the people inside the building. And they certainly didn't mention that anathema was pronounced on the heads of the unbelievers. So as you think through that critical history, it's hard not to think about, is this a cult, or is this a destructive cult? In the bite model, there's also the control of behavior. Speak to that a little bit. Would you say that the Pentecostal United Pentecostal Church controls the behavior? Absolutely. I mean, you alluded to it with the suppression of outside influences and even the ability to discuss certain topics within the UPCI. So it's pretty covered, like they wouldn't outrightly say that

these are explicit rules that you cannot talk about these histories, but it's definitely discouraged. And if you do raise too many concerns, you become problematic. And so you kind of create a culture that discourages people from going that route and really just kind of dwelling on the agreed upon doctrine. So that's an example that with thought suppression.

But we also are, I think one aspect of the UPCI that people are the consider is the significance of,

again, what I earlier said, the standards, which are the extrovertical rules that they enforce. That's part of aligning with an identity that There are implications to maintaining some of these rules on your behavior in the rest of mainstream society.

So for instance, I could speak on some of the rules for women, which are very much more strict than they were for men, but obviously me being a man, I'll speak on what I experience.

There was this rule of clean shavenness, which it's controversial within the UPCI, but they uphold it. You're supposed to be clean shaven, to be a minister, and then also not have long hair. And they would use the military standard of like your hair has to be cut above your ears.

People that don't think about it too deeply will think, well, these are just parameters to like, you know, these are modesty guidelines to help with your spirituality, these are things to help with your humility, you know, your pride and your ego.

And that's very subjective, right? Like if you try to evaluate, does a mustache make me more proud than my cohorts? It's silly, but they have to sit within that argument to make it make sense.

But in the reality, if things, is those rules are meant to create a culture of conformity. And I think that's what would definitely make it more in line with cult than, you know, innocent or generic Christian group.

You know, so it's almost the parallels are two on the nose, because a lot of people will compare some of the standards that are enforced at the UPCI with the military. And the military are very open about expressing that, yes, these are rules to ensure that our personnel conform to an ethos, right, of certain, you know, like military ethos, right?

And we don't extrapolate those rules back to the UPCI and think they're not doing the same exact thing where they're conforming our behaviors and thought patterns through these external rules that were meant to keep that are pretty, you know, frankly, our arbitrary to our overall spirituality.

Yeah. And in the end, it's also a result of hero worship because the Bible says that God doesn't look to the outward appearance, but we have figures in Pentecostalism who had their hair a certain way in the 40s and 50s, who had their, you know, clean shaveness.

That was popular style for a preacher back then. So they're conforming to the hero worship, they're, they're wanting to even look like the preacher, which is, I guess that would be a mark in favor of what Dr. Martin Walter was saying, but yeah, like I say, I'm still forming an opinion. I see the critical thought blocking and the information control as a significant problem in the UPCI. It is a significant problem.

So, assuming it is a cult, and like I say, I'm forming an opinion, what would you say to other people who are either inside and they're looking to get out or people who are on the verge of leaving the UPCI? What advice would you give them? So, my advice is first and foremost, to be open to research and to investigate the scriptures for yourself. So, a lot of what is promoted in the UPCI is to wholly trust your specific pastor. There is this culture within the UPCI. I know they wouldn't be open to admitting it, but there's very much a threat of anti-intellectualism within

the UPCI in form of substituting it for what the pastor does that for us. He's gifted with the ability to interpret the Bible better than us. He has divine insights that we can't get because we're not in his position. Therefore, it does mean no good to personally investigate,

but they contradictingly will say to kind of cover themselves. Like, we'll read it for yourself, but don't trust yourself when you read it. So, I would encourage people that are questioning some of what they're observing. To earnestly and sincerely investigate scriptures and be, don't be afraid to contrast what you're being taught with other teachers within the Christian tradition. I think that's probably the fastest way to recognize some of the contradictions in any group, but for my case, the UPCI is as soon as you compare your doctrinal tenets against external groups, it becomes increasingly harder to maintain your view without having to shy away

from accepting certain scriptural tenets. So, that's the first thing I would recommend.

And the second thing is the UPCI is highly governed, I guess, by supernaturalism. So, outwardly, they'll claim that they're very doctrinally centered, but in practice, a lot of what... goes on within these Pentecostal churches is governed by their view of the supernatural, like supernatural prophecies, speaking in tongues, spiritual words that people give to one another that are like divine and treated as essentially as biblical even. Evaluate those claims.

Really assess those claims and don't dismiss them, like for instance in the case of prophecies. Prophecies are pretty common within the UPCI and I think that's a rubric that people don't often recognize that the Bible has stipulations for, that if a prophet is to express something, especially in terms of forecasting the future, if those things do not come to pass, then that is a sure sign that that person is not in communication with God and that they are a false prophet. And this is pretty unspoken topic within the UPCI is that there are numerous prophets throughout,

like not just the pastors themselves but self-proclaimed prophets within the congregations that are constantly giving these words to individuals and they're not coming to pass. But no one is doing the evaluation to say, hey, is this biblical? Is this line with scriptural tenets? And so I would say that would probably be the second thing is to

evaluate these claims, especially if they exist outside of the Bible. What's very good advice and you've done a lot of research in this, where can people go to find your research? So I wrote a lot from personal experience and so if you want to start with where some of my viewpoints, I wrote a blog called Escaping 350 Utopia.

So you can go to substack.escaping350utopia.com to find some of my articles where I highlight some of the contradictions that I observed growing up within the UPCI. I also have a YouTube channel also named Escaping 350 Utopia. You can easily find me by typing in that into your YouTube search bar. And I'm also on Instagram as well, where I post pretty often some many highlights and excerpts of things that I've observed. Again, my handle would be at Escaping 350 Utopia. Yeah. Well, I'll share the links in the description. So if anybody wants to dig further, they can find your information. So thank you so much for doing this.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me and giving me the opportunity to share this, you know, my side of the story and kind of my experiences. I hope it, you know, may help others.

Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more... information, you can check us out on the web, you can find us at William-Branum.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.