Escape From Joel's Army - With Tiffany Sopher

Hello and welcome to another episode of William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-brannem.org and with me I have my very special guest, Timothy Sofer, former member of the NAR. Tiffany, it's good to be together and finally recording. We've tried a few times and scheduling just hasn't worked out but today we're finally getting to connect and talk about the NAR and you've got quite a, quite a story to tell, the many different groups and aspects that we're going to be talking through. So thank you so much for joining us. Maybe

you could tell a little bit about yourself. So I live now in Southern Oregon in the little town of about 200 people and lived here for about three years. I've lived all over the United States.

I'm originally Canadian, born in Canada and I moved to Mexico when I was 16 and just really excited to share my story today. Oregon is a hotspot in the research. I don't know that I've published everything yet but from Oregon it seems because if you connected to Christian identity, there was some really connected people that were flowing from Oregon and the trails seem to converge there and I haven't yet figured why but they do converge. Maybe you can help us learn more. Yeah, well so I'll start off with Canada because that's where I was born.

So I was born Vancouver BC and I was actually adopted. As an older child, you know what they would call it, I was almost five years old and the family that I was adopted into had one of the longest running private adoption agencies in BC and they actually helped them write the curriculum government. The government, they're curriculum for the government for adoption at one point and when the government or the province of BC couldn't find a place for me, my older brother and my younger sibling to be adopted to, they contacted this private agency and made the connection and

then the people that owned that agency asked their own, you know, daughter if they know anyone who don't want me to adopt her then she said we will. and so we were adopted into that family.

And trying to parcel out what I say, what I don't say,

we know a lot more now about how to support children that have been through foster care and that have been adopted in today's day and age. But back then, there were certain principles about taking care of traumatized kids who that didn't exist as much back then.

Things happened within the family. They really came out when I was about 10 years old. And things kind of hit the fan. And after they did, there was this to my eyes as a young girl, this big switch between how our family operated.

My parents started going to these, I think they call them conferences at that point. They started going to these conferences. And they started now looking back on it. I would consider it maybe grooming, I don't know.

But they started having these kind of life lessons for the children and about calling us for breakfast. There were six of us at this point. And they would have dog food in a cereal bowl and pour milk on it and start eating it.

And all the kids are like, you're that's gross? What are you doing? And they would say, well, yeah, this is kind of like life. There's like the regular life that you see that everyone's doing.

And then there's something better. So more glorious. And then they would, another time, for dinner, we'd come for dinner in all the plates. There's nothing on it. And the woman adopted me with like sprinkle, cake sprinkles, on the plates.

And we're like, that's not dinner, we're not, that's not going to fill us up, that's not enough. And they're like, you're right, there's something better. And so I never connected those actions happening right before they actually started taking us kids to the conferences.

And so basically, we got introduced to Joel's Army back up in Abbotsford BC when Todd Bentley wasn't as well known as he was before the Charismatic Day of Infamy in 2008. So this was back in 2001, I think, was one of the first conferences that we went to.

And I was all for it. I fell for it hard. I was about 12 years old the first time that I went. By this time, my older brother was no longer living with the family.

And my younger siblings were younger and I don't know how much they understood about what was being taught. But one of the things that I wanted to do was One of the consequences of just some of the generational things in my birth family is I'm actually autistic and I can struggle with language sometimes and so when I'd be at these conferences and hearing all this language about teaching us different things, I'm going, well, what do you mean?

Try to get to the real tangible portions of it because it just seemed really grandiose and really like lots of filler stuff that kind of spiritual speak and I was like trying to picture what they were actually trying to say.

And I have finally got to a point a couple of years ago where I could summarize it and it would be that we were being taught that our highest calling in life was to go through a deification process to become immortal and then use our supernatural powers to, in my instance, of what I was being taught, kill people in what you guys talk about like the sacred purge.

It's so widespread. A lot of people don't realize just how many people believe and think this way in these movements. The Joe's Army doctrine spread all throughout Christian identity and then kind of went underground in the 60s, but you'll find these ministers out in remote areas that are teaching it.

What's interesting is the autism, it's kind of like a gift and a curse. I had another lady, I don't know if she mentioned that she had it on the podcast, but I had another lady that also had autism.

And exactly like you said, the brain is wired in such a way that it wants to get all the information to process it, but the way that these cults work, they purposefully withhold information so you can't process it.

So in this weird way, having the autism actually is to your benefit when you're in a cult. And so, and I didn't speak much until I was a little older. And so when they presented all these different supernatural gifts that you could develop as part of being in this army for God, the prophecy didn't appeal to me because I wasn't comfortable with this site coming up with words and put things together because it wasn't accurate enough.

And there were things that didn't, but it was, and this was something that Todd Bentley had said, and it's a quote that I'd carried for me with like a long time. And this is why I wonder how much of his teachings have changed is he said that with this supernatural power, people like me would be able to quote, vaporize their enemies in a mist of blood.

Well. And so I held on to that as by this time, I was like 15 years old and I'm like wanting to be super hardcore, you know, to please my adoptive family because my brother.

actually had to leave. He ended up spending a couple of years and juvenile detention, and then went back into the foster care system. And I was scared that if I didn't like tell the line that the same thing would happen to me.

So to me, I think it was like, that was the most hardcore thing that you could do in being part of this army. And I'm like, I'm gonna go for it. That's gonna be my gift that I, you know, practice because you have to practice these gifts to get stronger and stronger in them.

And as you get stronger in them, you get more purified. And then you reach your, you know, at some point, you know, getting your immortal body and stuff, right? So we went to these conferences.

That was what I internalized as what my highest calling was going to be. And through these conferences, my adoptive parents actually felt like they were supposed to pack everything out. My dad quit his job.

And the eight of us moved down to this place in Mexico. And I'm really trying not to give all the details about this, but this place, about how we got there, but this place in Mexico, I don't know, do you know much about the fundamentalist, the FLDS, the colonial, the Baron in Mexico?

Have you heard much about the Mexican Manson and? I've heard some, but not a lot. Maybe, maybe you could tell us. So when you think of like Mormonism and polygamy and polygamy being outlawed in the United States, and so there were different sex that left to go, somewhat to Canada, somewhat down to Mexico, there are families that went down to Mexico, and they had this blood atonement doctrine where not all sins could be given, be forgiven without having your own blood as being atonement for the sins.

And so there as the Mexican Manson, the guy named Irval LeBaron essentially wanted to take over, he has older brothers' church that he had herited, and so there were these mass killings that happened and just terrible, terrible stuff.

Anyways, the older brother left the colony in Tuwawa, Mexico to go to Baja, the Baja Peninsula, right below Tijuana, right below San Diego, and there was mass murder that happened there in the 70s, and then so the cult splinter that was down there.

And then the group that my parents joined is the group that took over the homes of the Mormon community in this community called Zarambla, which was like paradise or seeds of compassion. And so there's this intermixing between the two different groups that happened, and there's fallout to this day from not just that intermixing, but because there was marriages between...

the two groups, so we come down to, and there was this prophecy that was foretold about the Christians renting the homes from the Mormons or something. I've heard so many different things about it, right?

But so we moved down to this group in Mexico and that's where I meet my husband. I was 16, he was 15, and one of the things that you do when you're in a cult is you get married really young.

So he was 17, and that was 18, when we got married, we are both the oldest sibling, or the second oldest siblings of six, both of the older brothers that were three dates apart, left the family for various reasons.

With his family, his older brother was actually kicked out of the cult as a young teen, which has its own set of consequences, but the movement in Mexico is this convergence

between the Jesus people, IHOP, and 7th day Adventist. And 7th day Adventist, and at this point,

my husband and I spent a year down there in Mexico before we left to go to the United States. And I was still, it wasn't as militarized, and it wasn't as much about the spiritual warfare as it was up in Canada, but my parents tried to bring that down into the group in Mexico,

but it's essentially teaching Joel's army that I know of to the children that were in Mexico. And so they started accumulating even more and more children. And at one point, I believe there was up to like 33 people in one house that were caretakers or the children or family.

It's so hard to believe because this is a very militant doctrine and we're talking physically violent that they're teaching the kids in these other countries. And you have to think about the way in which the culture is spreading.

So as it goes into Mexico, everyone who's around this, they view this as what we're calling Christianity from America. And so it's really hard not to think about some of the other groups that become militant against the Christians because they're seeing this go out.

Well, this is a very militant thing. So this must be American Christianity. So we must rise against it and fight it. So it's actually doing so much more harm than it is good. And it's really interesting too because the spiritual warfare component were brought down, but the, you know, secret purge components of them weren't quite as focused on. Those were kind of skirt around a little bit, as far as like they would still use some of the language, but it's the, you know, when you think things out to their logical conclusion, right? Like nobody thought out that far, but I already come to that conclusion because

listening and gathering all the information about what they're actually saying, if you were to take it, and yeah, it's in very spiritual turns, but you take it so it plight today. Like when they're talking about physically healing people, you know, like using spiritual means to physically heal people, using spiritual means to raise people from the dead, and then so then it's like using spiritual means to destroy people, right? And to destroy the enemy, but like when you're not thinking through it, right? So it's really interesting because this group down in Mexico, there would be jokes about how they're a bunch of misfits. And as I think about it in the

last couple of years, it's basically this group of people who left the United States because of, I mean, sometimes it was because of scandal, you know, we had one, you know, pastor who was in charge of an orphanage, and he ended up, you know, he was abusive and he ended up stealing ministry funds to go on a drinking binge in the States and, you know, he'd blackmail his own children. You've got another person who was one of the leaders and he ended up, you know, abusing someone that was under his care. They call it an affair, but we know it's more

to that because this person was under their care. And like, so there was several splits in this movement and leadership change. It's all based off of scandal, from all this abuse and stuff. And so I'm at the point with my family. I have a brother that is dead. I have another brother that's in prison. I have a sister that's been institutionalized. I have like, there's all of this fallout from it. And I'm trying to like, raise the alarm. Like, you guys, this is not the fruit that's supposed to happen from what you guys are saying that you're teaching. You know, there's these mixed

messages. And it's, so I'm at the point where I have family members that don't talk to me. You know, we've had death threats in our family. You know, and it's like, do you guys see the red warnings? Do you see any of this? But it's just this wall. It's this wall. And I mean, and people are continuously getting hurt. So from the outside looking in, see they'd I don't really make public all of the things that you're talking about when you're in these groups.

All you see is the bright, shiny, happy people and you see, you know, come worship us, we're happy, we're a community, but you don't see what's running underneath it and it's really, really problematic.

I, you know, half of the things that I have found on the website with branemism had no idea existed until after I left and I started digging. Once you, you know, peel the rock up, you can watch all the spiders flee, right?

And I have a feeling that the more groups that we examine that descended from branemism, you're gonna see the same thing because they had the same parent. So as you're talking through some of these things, I'm now going back through my head through some of the different areas that I came in contact with, wondering, well, I wonder if they taught Joe's army.

And I wonder if they were militarized in the same way. Yeah. And like, even, and it's interesting because I'm trying to figure out still, like there's so much through the story that,

like when we think about Michael Flynn going to, I don't know if you know about the conference that he went to in California, where he was gifted an AR-15, right? And he made the joke about, you know, finding somebody in Washington, you know, and everybody that was there at the conference laughed at.

Do you, did you hear that or? No, but I knew that he was attending some and I've actually watched some other NAR conferences where they've got AKs and different weird things in the meetings.

Yeah, so that church that, that particular one that I saw, you know, was at the leaders of that church or personal friends with my in-laws. So in, like, when I pieced together, because for the longest time, I thought I was like making it up.

I thought I was twisting what I had been taught, especially when it comes to like the, you know, the sacred purge part of it. Like, no, Tiff, you're twisting it, you're reading into things, like that's not at all what they said, because I would go back to my parents and be like, this is, this is the concept, right?

Like this is what we're supposed to be doing, right? Because I ask a lot of questions, I need a lot of clarity. And I think that in itself actually is one of the things that led to the loss of engagement that certain people in my family now have with my life, you know, just not checking in with me as a person and, or my family and stuff, is asking those questions and kind of mirroring back what is being taught and kind of like, I would imagine the ugliness of it.

But I thought that maybe it was me just making up this. twisting this doctrine or something. So then when I finally got the courage to look it up, that's when I came across John Robert Stevens in this concept of like throwing curses so that you can kind of kill someone on the spot, right?

For God. And I think about Jim Jones, you know, throwing a curse, you know, at William Branham or the pastor of this church, you know, where Michael Flynn was, you know, given the heir of 15, talking about how he thinks he's the one that killed Anton Leve.

And that's a wild story in and of itself, you know, and this person is like the spiritual warfare instructor for Y-Wam. And so seeing all of these, listening through the episodes and seeing all of these different convergences of the different movements and how somehow it meets all in Mexico.

And then it goes out from Mexico, my sister and my brother were part of IHOP for a couple of years until they just left and are coming out of that.

But when I finally found out, and then I came to your material through researching, you know, am I crazy? Did I really think that this is what they're teaching us? And then coming through it, I'm not.

I'm not. And then the fallout from it is logical. It is disturbing. And I don't think people really grasp how disturbing it is until you're in it and you see it. I was completely shocked whenever I started reading through Michael Barcoon's book, Religion in the Racist Sprite.

He had not fully tied it to Laterane in the same way. He did mention William Brandham a couple times and in the Serpent Sea doctrine, but he hadn't really made all of the links because I don't think he knew at the time he wrote that that Gordon Lindsay, who is the founder of CEF and I, Christ for the Nations, who was also William Brandham's, you know, campaign manager.

I don't think he realized that he was a key figure in identity conferences, but he's going through all identity and watching the development of it in the United States and they're teaching this radicalized Joel's Army doctrine because it is tied to what they're calling what they believe to be an end of days race war.

So if you're of that mindset, you believe that the enemy forces are coming to invade the United States. We as Christians have to defend it because I don't know why, but the United States is the one place on the earth that Christians will defend.

And so all of these people are coming and we need to militarize ourselves. That was what they believed in Barcoon really explains that well in his book. What he didn't know, like I said, is he didn't tie it to Laterane because once you make that leap and you realize that the foundation of it was the Laterane movement from laterane came the charismatic movement all the way up to the new Apostolic Reformation.

So all of these ties come from the same foundation. It's amazing. I mean, in part of it is as I do, you know, my own research and tracing back the movements, even like in Canada, so I would, I think it's been like 10 years now that I've been researching the NIR, and I started asking questions to my grandfather, and this is where I can kind of relate to your story about asking your grandfather questions.

I start asking questions, and when I was a little girl, I'm super curious, very like, what's the word, why is it escaping me right now, existential, you know, even as a young girl, and having these really in-depth conversations, but then after my time in Mexico coming up and being like, what's this, and what does that mean?

Have you ever heard of the new Apostolic Reformation and stuff, and the answers started becoming smaller and smaller to the point where it's like, I don't know, I don't know. And then it's to the point where, you know, when I come up in visit in Canada, you know, he just hides in his room and watches hockey, and we don't have any of our conversations anymore.

And so, it wasn't until researching about the connection with the full gospel, and the new ladder rain, and that's how he was raised, when I would go to him with these flags, you know, like, you know, it should be a screaming red flag when a father calls up somebody and says, hey, God told me he's going to kill you.

You know, it's like, you know, hello, like, wake up, that's not normal, that's a really big red flag, but I can imagine, like, all the different dynamics that go into, you know, those questions of our people malicious, or are they deceived, and I would say, in my case, it's just a lot of deception, but even seeing how close my own ties are to North battlefield to statue one, and we have, you know, when we're talking about some of the current NAR leaders, or those that have fallen out, being William Brannum 2.0, there's now a Todd Bentley 2.0 in British Columbia right now, leading revivals back to North

Battleford, you know, where it all began, and when these groups are talking about buying land and everyone living together, and as I'm researching the history, I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't do that, you know, like, there's like that, you know, instinct or action that have to it, so,

yeah, I mean, I don't know even know what else to say about it, but when I've heard people talk about Todd Bellany, sometimes the focus is on the outcomes of his personal life and how it affects his ministry and people in it, but not always talking so much about the theology, especially when it comes to, you know.

And I think that's just kind of a phenomenon when people hear about cults, is they think about the outcomes of the cults and not the dynamics of the cults. And so I'm really interested in the dynamics because you can see them being repeated across, it's the same patterns across this, you know, whether it's a small group within like a family, whether it's in a church, whether it's in a movement, whether it's in, and it just kind of keeps growing.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org.

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One of the reasons that I've been so fascinated studying John Wimber as I'm studying the transition from what was later reign into Charismatics into new apostolic reformation. Wimber made popular the notion that he called it the feels, the experience.

It was experience over doctrine. And so you had to go, you had to get this experience. And they really amplified what an original, in the modern Pentecostalism when it was rebirth, they had to some extent the same thing as you would experience what they called the baptism of the Holy Ghost once you started speaking in tongues.

They said you had the experience, the Pentecostal experience. But Wimber amplified it so much further that a lot of times the doctrines were just completely overlooked. And in doing so, it seems that it made it easier for those who had these beliefs, the Stoels Army, Christian identity stuff, to kind of slip under the radar because they weren't really preaching.

and a lot of so much doctrine as they were, just the emotions. They wanted to get people to come, have an emotional experience, and then that was the hook. Once they hooked you, and you get into some of these smaller churches, especially in the remote areas, now they're teaching the same things that was woven through the, through the latarine movement, et cetera.

So it kind of, it made it in such a way that these people could really just slip under the radar unnoticed. So I'm curious, like what do you know about, when you talk about Todd Bentley being William Brannum, 2.0, what about him was it that makes you say that I'm curious, because I know like there's the manifested sons of God, doctrine, but is there other things as well that?

Yeah, more specifically it was the IHOP KC and the Kansas City Fellowship were attempting to create a Brannum, 2.0. Basically, what they wanted to do, they wanted to emulate the revival that happened in the 50s, and so they started bringing in many of the same doctrines.

Bentley was a part of it and a component because he was, I think it was Bob Jones that initiated it, but Bentley started popularizing the idea that the same angel that Brannum had was coming to our revival through IHOP KC in this movement, and they called it Emma, the angel Emma.

And so the angel Emma has come down and what they were essentially telling the people is that the same thing that we had during Brannumism, now we're having it again because it's the same exact angel that's coming down.

And even though some of the doctrines are quite different, the foundation was much the same and it was all, the Joe's army theology was woven all through it. So it had the same foundation even though from the surface, it probably looked a lot different.

So yeah, and I'm still trying to figure out, like living in that space between wanting to raise the alarm,

you know, because apparently the trail of destruction is not being noticed, I think. Like one of the common themes that I've seen within, you know, the, especially the children of the leaders of,

when essentially there was, you know, the original group, the group that my family moved down to, and then that group actually splintered up after there were some, you know, horrible things that happened, which created this void.

And then leaders from California came down and didn't necessarily feel that void, but started their own thing along side the destruction of the first group. And that group, and was more destructive than the first.

So there would be times I'd go down to Mexico, and I quite literally couldn't see my own family because they were in their meetings, or it was one of those days where they were on communication shutdown.

And it got to a point, there was a story from my, the woman that adopted me, where, and this is the concept of the spiritual fathers and spiritual children, where the cult leader, who was a breeder of fighting dogs in the States, and actually spent time in prison for it, and counterfeit money and stuff, he's this guy asked my mom, or asked my dad,

to give my mom over to him in spiritual authority. You know, like, and they were holding, like, he had his second in command to technically to go kidnap one of the kids, you know, to try to use this pressure against my parents, although that's not the wording that they would use, but that's essentially what it was.

He sent his second in command to go get this child, and then the guy was like, no, this is a bad idea, so he didn't do it, but he was on his way to do it.

And then it comes to find out that this second guy, like he was a former Sicario, which is used for like a cartel hitman. And so like, you don't have, again, it's this pattern of lack of accountability.

Nobody's checking anybody for their, you know, their backgrounds and mother or not, because all of this kind of situation is around trying to be all these foster homes and all these kids. And so these kids are now, we've had a couple that have committed suicide.

We've had, again, with the intersection between the warming cult and the Christians, the warming cult made their money and attracted the Mexican cartel to the point where even just recently there was that big massacre, you know, in 2019, you know, and there was other murders in 2009.

But the warming cult was making so much money going across into the states and bringing money down and building all these big houses and the cartel is like, what are you doing? And there's other, you know, connections with that colonial baron and other, you know, drug trafficking and things like that.

But because of the cross-section between the two cults, I have siblings that got wrapped up and to some of the business says that happened. And then there was, you know, things that happened in the states too.

So like, it's just this, I have a new sense of what the generational curses mean. Cause I used to, to think the curses were in, you know, the power of the tongue, you know, is, is, you know, that you could throw a curse and you could kill somebody or you could bless somebody and heal them, right? And so that's my kind of voodoo magic, which craft type spiritualism, you know, that I thought generational, generational curses were. But now I see more the dynamics of how the way that you go up affects your decisions and how you're not able to cope with

the real world when you go out into the real world. And so my, my husband and I now do quite a bit to help my siblings as they leave. And they're in culture shock that the world isn't as bad as, you know, on one hand, as everybody told them it was and how to be adults, how you know, save up money and cope with certain things. And so what's interesting to me, though, is the connection between the, the unhealth, obviously, of the groups and the amount of sickness.

Not just mental, but physical sickness. And it's just kind of the spiral that goes downhill. So and I'm glad you brought that up because that's a subject I think doesn't get really talked about that much. When you're raised in this type of environment, I just had the conversation earlier today with somebody. The people, how did he, how did the person say it? So the people have such a negative outlook on life. Everything's bad. There's nothing good. Everything, everybody's out to get me. The world is dying, which if you're in Christianity, you're looking for the, you know, the second coming of Christ and you're looking for the biblical things to unfold. However,

you're looking at the positive side. And in these movements, instead, you're looking at the negative side. And what that does to a person psyche is horrific. Because now you've, you're taken away all ambition. You're raising children to have no future outlook. And then sadly, because this is, this has been going on for almost a century now. So as this Christian identity thing is training these kids and manipulating their heads, well, those people grew up to be adults. And now here are people with this negative outlook who can now vote, who can now be a danger to others because they

have an array of problems. I'll just say it like that to keep it, keep it past the YouTube filters. These people really need more help than can be given. But how do you do that, right? It would be an ongoing therapy. If somebody's say 50 years old and they've been indoctrinated to be that negative for 50 years, how long does it take in therapy to undo the negativity? So this is a, huge huge problem. Yeah and and part of my story I mean like I'm only up to age like 18 at this point and I'm 37 and so I thought that when you think about the seven mountain mandates and and

being you know Christian leaders and the different you know mountains and one of the things I really wanted to be when I when I grow up from a young age is cardio thoracic surgery and so when I was in college doing my undergraduate degree in biochemistry I was incredibly sick I was so sick and I had actually been on an attorney for about five years by then of there's something wrong with my body but I don't know what it is and I eventually led my doctors to discover that I had a really really bad case of a particular autoimmune disease and to the point where my doctors

told me that I shouldn't be driving they were concerned about me falling into a coma behind the wheel on the road I was so sick and my husband was doing the shopping and the cleaning and the tours and like everything because all I could do was sleep and and work and then years later like there's a steady pattern and we're not even talking about like the mental fallout you know I've had three siblings that have been institutionalized on and off that at one point the man that had opted me actually got active tuberculosis and according to his profile you know being like a white

man down in Mexico he would be better off than the workers in the field but why was he susceptible to his body not being able to contain the tuberculosis so they actually did a whole bunch of tests they thought maybe he had cancer maybe they had like something else that was going on but when we talk about like the the nervous system and the chronic state of stress that you're in and the way that it affects your body and makes you susceptible to different things it's a real problem and so I think about that phrase about escaping a cult right like I wonder is like can

you really escape it though because there's so many different there's so much fallout from it that I think you know I have a hard time believing anybody would be able to really wrap up all of the strands of damage that have come you know from it because of the consequences being just really so severe I look at it much like people who were in a prison concentration camp some other country you'll never be able to take away from them the experience of having been in that camp And in some cases, we have prisoners of war who come back

and they have PTSD for the rest of their lives. They struggle with things, right? They can get help, but they struggle from many things. However, some of the people who are able to change the outlook, use that as empowerment to help other people and do other tremendous things.

So it's not like you can take it away, right? I can never take away the fact that I was an occult, but what I can is change my outlook on life so that I can help others and they hopefully don't fall into the same problems.

I see how you've done that and me coming across your material has been probably one of the most foundational turns in my outlook that I'm not alone. And I've been able to share it with other members of family or friends so that they can get context about what happened.

And then I'm also on this journey too of like, how do we help prevent stuff like this from happening? And so even in my work now, it's not sharing so much my story or sharing the research that's more funded on the side, but now I'm trying to converge.

That's been like a theme that we're converging right? Lately, for me, so I say it a lot, is my experiences in researching the effects of childhood, adverse childhood effects and future health outcomes. I work in the healthcare, the intersection between world dynamics, nonprofit and the healthcare sector.

And I've been working on a rural access model for about four years now that has gotten lots of attention from the state of Oregon and even from CMS. And so it's like, how do we help to buffer, you know, in the future this kind of course correction that really starts at a really young age to get people the resources that they need?

Because you see, when we talk about the different stories of people who come up to be some of these, the malicious leaders, because there are some, you know, or the people that become deceived, you look back into their stories about what would make them susceptible to certain things.

And so we got to start there and that's what I'm trying to do. So I figure we all have our different parts and encouraging each other is definitely a big part of it. It sounds like you're making some progress and helping other people.

And hopefully others who are listening can do the same because as this grows in spreads and people help other people, this can change the tide and like the, Army of darkness that has been created by this thing, we have an army of light that is helping.

So what advice would you give somebody who has been in this sort of thing and then suddenly realized, suddenly they've lifted up the rock and they've seen all the spider scatter and they see just the mess that was covered up, what advice would you give them when they first find out?

Actually, I have a couple of, I don't like using the word mantras because it just doesn't sound right to me, but I don't know what else you would call them. But I'd had them up kind of my ways of encouraging myself that I think would be applicable to answering your question.

And so it's something that I've gathered over the years and so one is just affirming to ourselves that we aren't angels and we're not beasts, we're humans. And then two is study everything but don't follow anyone, right?

Three is to love hard but to grieve well. And I think there's a lot of grief if that comes from being in situations like these and there's so much emotional turmoil that it's kind of the split side of people, there's so much emotional control, there's so much pent up anger, there's so much pent up grief, but like continue to love, like don't let your heart crest over, like continue to love, but in that love and you're still going to probably have lots of hearts and grieve it.

You know, you've got to have the both, love hard, grieve well. And then my favorite one though I think is the most applicable is just don't be afraid of the dark. And the reason why I say that is because there's such a focus on like the lights and the darkness and we're trying to combat the darkness but I think sometimes when we're trying to combat darkness be become like monsters ourselves in a way.

Because we fear the dark, can we fear the darkness but to really unravel some of this stuff you do really have to do some deep work and that deep work can be very scary for some people which is why it doesn't get done, right?

But I think that if we can find even just the, just the, I mean find God for one but find that the stillness and that almost like a pilot light and grab hold on to the pilot light that's there to,

and use it, you know, to call. through the dark, through the scary thoughts that you have about coming. What happens if I do this and I do that and there's could be fall out from family members as you want to separate yourselves or as you're trying to heal.

There's a lot of scareiness in it but don't be scared of it. Don't fear the fear, tackle it, head on, find that courage to start disseminating this stuff because that's where the work is.

And I've talked to a few people now who were raised in the very militant version of this. There seems to be a lighter version which they don't really talk about what you're going to do to other people. There's this weird lighter version but then there's this darker version where they really get deep with the Joe's Army rhetoric and it is a literally army, it is an army mindset that they're training children with. So you're the first person who has spoken publicly about it.

I've talked to a few people now. I'm curious to know from your perspective how, after being raised in this, how do you overcome the negative thoughts towards other people and how do you retrain your mind to love other people? I mean, critical thought is definitely it. So I'm very somebody who does the thought experiments following things out to their conclusion. And I would pair that with this idea of don't be afraid of the dark because I think sometimes, especially in the particular subject matter that we're talking about, my job when I was young and there was so much shame

that I had around it. An incredible amount of shame. And that's actually one of the reasons why I want to share my story. Because I know that I'm not the only person who was told that this is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to practice your witchcraft and killing people by, I mean, you might not have a little doll with voodoo and I don't know much about voodoo but minimal concept of it is that you're putting curses on people like you're not doing that. But you are, you are or I was, you know, gearing up and psyching myself because I was told that's what we have

to do. And the consequences of that when you think about that is so scary because I was thinking about this the other day. And I know this is a long answer to your question. I was thinking about this the other day of like I was constantly like I got to practice my witchcraft of learning how to curse people so that they will die. And because I'm quite literal sometimes and that phrase, you know, vaporize your enemy in a list of blood, I thought that I would do my, you know, speaking in from the person would explode.

Like that's literally what I thought it would be like. But I thought that there'd be this time that would be alive and I would hear the shofar from the skies, you know, hear the blow of the trumpet from heaven, like some audible thing.

And that's when I know that all right, it's the time now that Arm is gonna sent out and now you're actually gonna go out in the streets and you're gonna start, you know, anyone that comes against you, you're going to say your words and they're gonna explode.

That's literally what I thought was gonna happen. But I realized now it's probably, it could possibly be even more sinister than that because the reality I spoke of sounds very like a character or right, like it's, I had someone tell me it's some like Christian Dungeons and Dragons and I really appreciated that comment because it kind of really showed the absurdity of it.

On the other hand, I think it would be more like, all these prophets or false prophets of the NIR saying, I heard from God and he said, now is the time. And I think of all the paramilitaries and the militias that are being constructed right now

in different areas and the real nature of what could possibly happen because you've had generations that have been essentially brainwashed into preparing for a war. And so on the one hand, that's kind of scary to think of.

So when I think about how do you dig into those, that realm of I was essentially preparing myself to potentially be like a domestic terrorist is really what it is. And not being afraid of the dark,

giving yourself the grace to think through some of these thought experiments and following things to their logical conclusion so that you can identify and use some critical thinking about what is good and what is not.

And then being able to thinking about the fruits of the spirit because we're used to some of the horrific fruits that are not of the spirit, but thinking of the fruits of the spirit and following things out through some very scary territory thought wise to their conclusion to discern what the outcome would be to start breaking some of the, some of that fear,

because once you do it the first time, it gets, easier the second time, as you start following through about what's right and what's not right, what's loving, what's not loving. It's hard work, but dealing with that shame,

as you go through it and start dealing with the shame of I used to think this way, and then the outcome of it is not loving, and I want to be loving. So I'm not gonna think that way anymore, but you have to go through it.

It's kind of like the can't go over it, can't go around it, can't go under it, like you've gotta go through, you know what? And you absolutely have to find other people too, as well, I mean, there's the whole support network of it, but sharing your story and speaking that story out, finding someone that you can own it, so that you can work through it, because otherwise or not, you're gonna dance around it, and you might not be able to really heal from it.

So it's not fun, I mean, I know it's not, I'm not explaining a fun process. I'm explaining a very scary process, but there's so many people that I do think that have been through that process before, and that's why I wanna share my story, because I've been through that process.

I'd hate to think, you know, what I possibly could've been like right now, you know, like I absolutely, you know, I'm showing a little bit more about my ideas about January 6th, but I could absolutely have been there, you know, and been destructive based on what my beliefs were, you know, when we know about the NAR's connections to January 6th and things like that.

So owning it and then sharing that word with others, I think that's, we have to break that shame. I think there's probably a lot of shame that exists in how we used to think about things.

I love it so much when I get somebody on who logically thinks and always thinks all the way down to the final conclusion. You've brought up a point that I don't know that many people have brought up yet.

So we have all of these people being trained in this way of thinking, but nobody has really asked the question, what happens whenever the minister stands up and says, okay, now it's time, let's go.

I don't hear that question being asked very much, but this has been going on for, gosh, it'll soon be 100 years if you go back and piece all this together. So 100 years of people who've been trained in that mindset and at any given time somebody stands up and says, this is it, bring out your weapons, let's go.

That's a huge problem, right? And it's not Christianity, they're calling it Christianity, but what they've done is they've created a paramilitary organization under Christianity and it's horrific, but thank you so much for sharing your story.

Thank you. 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, 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. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.