Escape From Legalism: Church of God of Prophecy

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Kathleen Chilapoulos, former member of the Church of God of Prophecy.

Kathleen, it's very good to have you on and to tell your story about the Church of God and Prophecy. I am just vaguely familiar with this from a distance. I've been studying how things evolved into what they have become today.

And there's this weird intersection with the Brannum cult religion and the Church of God and apparently the spinning off of the Church of God and Prophecy. I think that's actually how we connected through the internet.

But you had more to tell and I'm very excited to hear your story. So maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Well, I live in Florida and I'm a retired nurse and I maybe four months ago I recently came out of the Pentecostal Movement.

But I was not a slash charismatic. I was not attending the Church of God of Prophecy for that entire time because after eight years of the Church of God of Prophecy, I decided I didn't want to go back to that.

But I did not understand that maybe there were further issues with the Pentecostal of slash charismatic movement. So I recently have come out of that and I'm in a I call it a period of detox.

I can imagine that that's quite an adventure coming out of it and experiencing something else. I'll never forget whenever we left the Brannum Movement which was very similar to the Pentecostal Movement. I know it is different in some ways.

But it was for us it felt like shell shock going into a new church and meeting new people and finding the way that they behaved in act and church was for me it took a lot of a lot of work to get used to it.

I would say my first obstacle was how quiet it was and not the charismatic rock band music or very lively music and just very quiet. It was very hard. For me, it was the opposite experience because in my grandfather's church, my grandfather apparently had this distaste for music and he even clapping.

If you started clapping, it was like you had committed the great offense and he would get up until the song leader, that person, claps, so let's slow this song way down where they don't clap.

And then I went to a new church and they had the, you know, the whole band in the back. For me, it was, it was shell-shock in a different way, but I have seen the Pentecostal services and watched the bands and the, uh, the runners.

Did you have any runners in your church? Yes, and I will have to sadly admit I may have participated in that. Wow. Yeah, I was, that's what, that was probably one of the first things that attracted me to the Pentecostal movement, which I mean, nothing about when I became part of it was the, um, the worship in my naive mind at that time.

It was, wow, these people love God like I do and have a relationship with Christ like I do and they're showing it externally. The happiness and the joy they have now that they found Christ.

So, um, but as they said, um, I had, I had no knowledge of the Pentecostal movement. At the time, and probably not, I fully really didn't understand it up until maybe 10, 15 years ago.

And I still did not think it was, um, any, my personal opinion, wrong teaching in a lot of areas. I'm interested to get into that a little bit and talk through some of the wrong teachings, but the, the running just fascinates me.

We did not have that either. And I have good friends who have escaped other similar movements. And one of my friends was also a runner. See, I was not and towards the end of my time in the brand of cult.

I was much, I was a little bit larger than I am now, but had I been a runner like you, I would be just a skinny. Okay. I'm a cyclist of that. I'm no longer a runner, not a cyclist, not as a motorcycle, but as a bicycle.

And to anybody who's listening who is not familiar with what this is in some Pentecostal groups, whenever the spirit hits your feet, you get up and you run circles around the congregation and you can find videos of this.

And it's, you know, and I understand if you're in it, it's probably offensive for me to be laughing like this because you associate that with the Holy Spirit. But to somebody who wasn't in it, you have to understand that this is just a little bit odd.

So I became a follower of Christ or born again, whatever term one feels comfortable using when I was in my early 30s and my husband and my to children who were living in the United States.

He's a Greek descent, and we felt it would be better quality of living for our children and us to move to the country of Greece. So we did move there a little bit outside of Athens.

Initially, the American bases were there, so there was a variety of English-speaking churches. Mainline, I had been going to a Baptist church when I lived in the United States. And so I did go to a mainline Baptist church in Greece.

It was English-speaking, and it was basically all Americans, mainly 99% from the bases. The, for exact reasons I do not know, the Greeks asked the American bases to pull out mainly. And so all those churches left an American community.

The church that I was attending at the time was then taken over by a Greek American missionary and his American wife. And being a, I think they called them M-Cas, empathetic people, were very vulnerable to narcissistic behavior.

I was taken aback by the overfriendliness, especially of the pastor's wife, and felt like I was her best friend immediately, so I felt very comfortable that they had taken over. And I knew they did not say they were a Pentecostal movement.

I believe they, well, I would say they say the Church of God, which I was familiar with, because my mother came from the Church of God, but not out of Tennessee, Cleveland, but out of Anderson, Indiana, which I think there's some differences in.

So the Church was probably 95% women who were in a similar situation. They were foreign women, foreign to not Greek, but Ann married to Greek gentlemen. We were all raising children, so we had a lot of similarities.

And so there was a lot of commonalities and friendship. And we felt like family, because most of us didn't have families that maybe are Greek in laws. So at the beginning of the Church, it was not anything hyper-pentecostal or charismatic, although the worship was, but everybody...

you mentioned that you weren't aware that it was Church of God and that's one of the things that I don't know if it's purposefully this way but it's somewhat insidious whenever some of these groups move into an area they really don't advertise what they are you have to get in and they want to get their hook into you before you really see what's going on and I you know again it's probably not on purpose but the design of it seems a little bit for me it's just a little bit scary well this was before access to the internet and there were not that I'm aware of

books that would have any information on that in the city of Athens as well so there was no way to check also and I would say most of the probably most of the women who were there were really relatively new Christians and none of us probably had an awareness of cult type behavior most of us thought and speaking for myself a cult would be defined as to over witness on Mormons or our Krishna that sort of thing so there was a lot of ignorance on all of our parts and also I think being in a foreign country makes you a bit more vulnerable in a lot of ways if you don't

have support as well as so you tend to find people with commonalities when you and you kind of stick with that group as as most humans you stick with that where we feel comfortable yeah I can imagine that would be the case because you're in another country and here's a church that is somehow you've got a tie to from back in the states and you're not expecting it to be what it you know what you found out that it was so let's talk about that a little bit deeper what what was it like whenever you first discovered that this this isn't what I really thought it was because

I was so naive and such a brand new Christian the only thing that was a bit peculiar to me was such a lively worship and then slowly I heard the wife who was worship leader throwing out sentences of tongues but not in a intelligible language so I don't know if you want to call stent speech or gibberish whatever one feels comfortable where they're at and that was very curious I'd never heard that before but the sermons themselves in the beginning, although they were pretty loud, I would say. I did not find anything that could have put a check in my spirit. But as a young Christian myself, I don't think I

could have identified it, not unless it was a complete heresy that any young Christian could identify. But I have to say, basically, the probably most would be the worship was made me wonder what's going on when I start hearing the speaking at times. And that had not been

that subject had not been broached in any of the sermons yet. So I did, she did have have women's Bible studies. And also, she did have a lot of socialization with individuals by, I guess, trying to make us feel like she's our friend and be part of the church, etc.

And so I did ask about that with her. And then she started telling me about the second occurrence, which is called the, what they call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which the Pentecost, most Pentecost慑 is the second experience after one is worn again and baptized. And that it entails with the church it got a prophecy believes that the evidence of baptism of the Holy Spirit is speaking at times. And then subsequent gifts can be given as God feels that that's appropriate. And then those are used in the church or outside to, as God wills, or gifts us with.

But so I wanted, as I hear, a lot of Pentecostal people say when they after they receive tongues, or that's a, I don't want to say that word, you see, after they start speaking in tongues, that I wanted these gifts. I wanted everything that God had to offer me. And if this was going to bring me into a stronger relationship with the Lord, and that's what I wanted. And I heard this said from other Pentecosts who are willing to say it, it kind of made me feel like I had an edge always a bit superior shamefully to say that. But it's sort of, and I know

that I can only speak for this church in Athens. I'm sure there are other churches in America who are at Chircutta Prophecy that will be completely different. But she would say that she verbally did say but it was mainly insinuated that this church got a prophecies the only church.

And so that if you're mature like I was, that gives you maybe a feeling of looking at others as less than, which I did. Of course I would never admit it then, but I did.

And that's one of the top 10 signs of a Christian religious cult whenever you have a group that sees themselves as the elite and they're the only ones. And what they essentially, they're doing, they're separating the body of Christ. They're saying that we're the special Christians you are not.

And I'll never forget that feeling whenever I first had to apologize myself for being such an elitist because we really, it's so deep, people who have never experienced this can't understand, but it's so deeply embedded into your personality that you start to feel yourself superior in all situations. You can be at the grocery store, you can be in a restaurant and the people who are serving you at the restaurant, they're lower than you because you're this elite Christian.

I would probably have to confess to that at some level, I probably wouldn't guess. I know it was definitely that way towards anyone in another religion, that's for sure. Another thing is that during that period of time in the country of Greece,

any outside church from Orthodoxy was considered theoretical except the Catholic church, but all other churches were considered theoretical. And there were one or two occasions that I'm aware of, where the Orthodox priest came into the building that we were meeting in.

It wasn't an official church, it was like a storefront type of thing. And they did threaten them. I don't think, I think it was more a scare tactic, I don't think anything came up out of it, but that was greatly publicized within the church and it all gave us a feeling of martyrdom and again that expanded the feeling of superiority. Also, at that period of time, the Orthodox church was very involved part of the government politically.

In order for your children to go to a Greek school, you had to show proof of baptism and excuse me in the Orthodox Church. And this is a side note. But it being a foreigner and not having a citizenship, if you wanted to, let's say, leave your husband and take your children, he could avoid.

He could prevent that from happening. If he was angry at you and wanted to make you have a difficult life, he could report you as being a heretic and bringing proselytizing your children. So all those things were made known to us, which I personally had no idea, but it didn't affect me.

That wasn't the case with myself and my husband. But those were definitely fear tactics that also fed into being maybe martyred a bit and a bigger head, but I'm contending with to follow Christ, imparting a lot of the foolish thoughts of young women.

It's really sad whenever a group does this to a person because it's human nature to want to connect with other humans and help each other. As humanity, we help each other grow, we help each other learn.

But these groups come in and they change the very makeup of human DNA such that other humans become inferior and you can't really connect in ways that people outside of the church do. And sadly, people who aren't even Christian don't behave this way.

So whenever you see a group that's like this, it becomes a very destructive cult in that it's destroying humanity. So again, as I can say, this particular church, there's no way I can compare it to current or past church, you got a prophecy, thought and atmosphere, because I wasn't part of them.

The only thing I could probably compare to the American Church of God of Prophecy were it is the legalism that was standard in all churches.

But because I think it was a little bit, as I know they have a very, although it's e-stuff a bit, they had a very strict dress code not wearing jewelry and adornments who you're not attracting, causing attraction to you.

So not a lot of makeup. But that was never enforced in our church, and I don't think she could have enforced it because of the variety of the women who were there. It wasn't all American. It was Burmese, English, Australian. There was some Greek Americans. It was just a big combination.

I do not recall any Mary couples except them who attended the church together on a regular basis. There were a few random men here and there who would be maybe working for a short period of time in Greece looking for a church, an English-speaking church, which there was a very few to pick from.

So it was pretty imbalance, I would say. And that imbalance is a little bit odd too, because even in the states, in the Pentecostal sects that still practice the very rigid, fundamentalist rules of dress code, it's usually the women that they target.

It's never the men. There's always this imbalance of you women should not do this and this and this, but it's okay for the men for whatever it is they want to wear or do.

Also, part of the Greek society is they enjoy going out in the evening, going to listen to their ethnic music, drinking wine, and so there were many of us who were married to Greek men who did go out in the evening when we did listen to the ethnic Greek music, and we would drink and I smoked at the time.

But those things were addressed, but very slowly and very subtly, and mainly those things were addressed through the pastors like, but also slowly slowly, the, I'm not even really sure how to say the word to use, the sermons and the, maybe fear and shame, and based sermons escalated as time went on.

So, start with Christ loves you and you're under grace and forgiveness, but then a sermon would proceed a lot from the Old Testament. Sermons based on the Old Testament. And speaking about this particular incident that happened and then are you doing this, is this going to happen to you? You really need to reflect on your life.

And so, that constant, and of course everybody has a different personality, mine is like... very serious. I was filled under condemnation, actually. And it never feeling good enough is a tough thing. And although I didn't recognize it, that's what it was and why it happened.

It's a heavy yoke, a heavy burden to live under. And although, again, I did not attend Frichard at a prophecy after, I did stay in the Pentecostal movement. And I would say that that is a continuing thing through a lot of the Pentecostal movement that I was in. Some were mainline, some were not, some were independent. And even somewhat the last church I went to was a charismatic church, which I didn't know was charismatic until I listened to one of your podcasts to be quite honest. And it's an undercurrent, let's say an undercurrent of never accepting degrees of Christ,

that's actually free. It's always a bit of shame, a bit of works based, I've got to do more, I've got to volunteer in this area of church, I've got to be there so many times a week. I've got to read my Bible, I've got to pray when it becomes legalistic. And it's not the reason Christ, Christ, obviously, I understand you that more and more now. And so I just really prayed for those who are continuing on in those groups that their eyes would be open. I don't think they're not saved.

I just think they're under such heavy burden of legalism that they can't enjoy their food in Christ. And that, even though it's been a short time since I've come out of these movements,

even the small amount of burden it's been removed from my neck is just overwhelming, overwhelming, overwhelming the joyful. It is joyful to be free. And I thought it was, but it was not. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery.

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 Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So let's talk a little bit more about the doctrines. You mentioned whenever you were first joining the church, you were early in your Christian walk, and there were many things that you didn't know back then, and I'd like to compare that to what you know now.

Based off of what you had just said about, they like to go back to the Old Testament. It's one of the things that hit me like a brick wall, because I read my Bible over and over, and you know, even when I was in the call, but what really hit me was that they had robbed me from what is described in the New Testament as the New Covenant.

And they did so because they wanted to take you back into the Old Covenant. They like what you described, the Brannem cults, and this is not unique to any of this. The any group that descended from the British Israel train of thought is that they're trying to portray the idea that we are the new children of Israel, and therefore these passages in the Old Testament apply to us, and yet it was a different covenant.

It wasn't really what, like you said, it's not what Jesus came to set and establish. What was it like whenever you first began to learn the difference between what is Christianity and what is this thing that's called Christianity that tries to push people back into the Old Covenant?

I was a new Christian, and even though I was voraciously reading the Bible, and I love the book of Isaiah, that was still, I love that book. I was not educated enough, I did not have enough foundation as a new Christian to be able to recognize that this manner or focus of teaching was not healthy, per se, and so I did not recognize it, and probably quite the contrary, when they slowly started introducing some of the beliefs of truth that a prophecy, which I remember, it was after repentance, justification, which is mainline Christianity, regeneration, sanctification, holiness, with purification, and then I was also...

told that we had the capacity to become perfect. And so as a young ignorant Christian, I thought that sounds wonderful, but I can become perfect. You know, rid me of all those things that I battled with, the smoking and the swearing and the...

Again, I did not have a good foundation of teaching when I left America and came to Greece. So for me, and I don't think any of the people there did to be quite honest, I don't recall any of them, any of the women saying they grew up in a Christian church and they have this foundation.

I think they were all relatively newer Christians. I could be wrong, but the ones that I spoke with or associated with did not have that understanding. So this was very enticing to me to be able to attain perfection.

And so, again, that's another burden and works-based, and, again, never being able to achieve. Whereas, foolishly, I thought that this pastor and this wife had achieved this, and that's how they were the leaders of the church, as well as occasionally we'd have interaction with people from different countries in Europe who would come for, that we had a general conference.

And they all, especially the leaders, presented themselves as having achieved this, and this was a goal set, you know, that we should look, try to obtain. Now that I am slowly coming out, again, it's only been a few months, I go between anger at myself, anger at them, feeling ashamed, feeling stupid, the few people who tried to speak to me, but when I would come back to visit family in America, I apologize to them, apologize to my other family members for involving them in this.

And then, after all that self-being, I just feel so free to have obtained the little detoxing as I have already done, that enormous freedom in Christ, it's like being a lack of a better term, being born again, again, set free out of such harsh expectations that no one can live up to, except the ones who pretend they're doing it, to make you think that you're less than you.

The strive for perfection is always the carrot on the stick, because no human can ever achieve this, but yet they dangle this out there as though you can, and it becomes like a never-ending quest for the fountain of youth.

You can look for it as much as you want, but you're never going to get there. And I remember being in that same mindset, it's not, like I said, it's not unique between what you're in and what I was in.

There's so many legalistic sects of Christianity that they're all teaching that, and they have their favorite passages of Scripture that they back it up with, and be there for perfect. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard that over and over, but they largely omit the rest of it, right?

There's a reason why things, you know, there's a reason why the Bible says that Jesus was sent to, you know, for the sins of the world. So making that separation for me, it was quite a journey, even after you leave, and I'm sure you'll experience this as you continue to go on.

After having that mindset for so long, it starts to impact the way that you think about everything, and once you're able to separate from it, you start to realize that instead of having the burden on your shoulders, the burden gets lifted because it's what Christ did for you.

It's not what you have to do in order for Christ to have done it for you, right? Great, I would say that your last sentence has had the greatest impact in my understanding or detoxing from that works-based salvation, is what he did for me, and the understanding that is enough, that I don't have to keep.

Well, okay, well, just let me do this for you, just let me do this. I would say that that has had the greatest impact, and again, as in many Pentecostal churches, I think that people could understand that in their minds and their hearts, that the Pentecostal churches would probably be empty.

And the Baptists and the Lutheran and the others would be packed full, standing room only. But when it says, said it's free. That's 100% what it means. Wonderful thing. But like I said, I have a lot of a long road to go. I keep going back and forth back and forth. But again, as I kind of don't want to compare my Church of God of Prophecy experience with others, if I have the other day I looked up to see maybe if I could find responses from other people their experience. I didn't really find anything to

detail. Of course, I'm not an investigator. I'm not sure where to look. But the main complaint was the overwhelming burden of legalism is why others had come out. Despite the fact that they've

maybe stepped back a little bit on their stand on divorce and remarriage as well as some adornment or outside activities. Before I had gone to the church, I was attending Greece for probably several years before I revealed to the pastor's wife that I had been married briefly before my marriage now. And that really shook her up because that meant I was an adulterous

in her eyes. There was an extenuating circumstances that the marriage was not consummated. There was maybe some domestic abuse, whatever. But in today's legal terms, I would have been legally accepted to not be in a double marriage being adulterous. But at that particular period of time, the church of God prophecy had a strict stance of no divorce except in, and you could re-marry rather after death, after the death of the spouse. But she did send me to the pastor and he did tell me that I should release my current husband and try to make restitution with my formal

former husband, which I did not do. There's no way to do it anyway, and that there was, I won't say the name of the person, there was this person single woman within the church that he could happily re-marry and help raise her children.

So when I think that I, all I can say is thank God I did not divorce my husband, but when I think of the help foolish, this is where I go back and forth between the anger towards myself. I think of the foolishness of me going along with that or even listening or even participating in that conversation, all they can do is shake my head.

The marriage and divorce is a touchy subject, even outside of the Pentecostal circles. I have seen some Baptist circles. It's a very touchy subject, but all I say is this, the way that it's handled sometimes, it doesn't really accurately look at both sides and understand the whole situation. What it has become is a letter of the law type religion. It goes through their favorite verses and they'll enforce those verses and totally ignore the rest of the situation in some cases.

But so I have friends that are Pentecostal, believe it or not, and what I do you would think that they would all be my mortal enemies, but I actually have some pretty good friends.

In fact, one who texts me quite frequently from the Pentecostal church. Some really good people, and like you said, not every church is the same. There's a lot of differences. So I'm curious, once you started making your journey out of the church of God, what made you decide to leave Pentecostalism altogether?

Well, that's a very funny story. I have a friend who had begun listening to a lot of the YouTube prophets, and she would tell me about them. She lives in a different state. And because my after being in that, what I would say would be a cult in Greece, I always have red flags up for false teaching, apparently not enough to get me out of the Pentecostal movement at that time. But so I was looking up these particular people and a particular pastor that she was following.

So researching on Google said he was part of the New Apostolic Reformation. So then I started trying to find out what exact three are the beliefs of the New Apostolic Reformation. And then that led me to a series that you have put out, which is I think Pentecostalism, the beginning of the history of Pentecostalism to the current New Apostolic Reformation.

It's almost like a... For lack of a better word, it's an animated, multiple series. And I started listening to that, and within that, it spoke about the beginnings of penicostalism, all the lovely characters involved, and all the crazy things that occurred also with the speaking and tongues and their different assessment of what initially they thought it was like the day of penicostalism, and then they reassessed and said, well, apparently, it's an angelic or whatever it is, language static speech or garble, whatever one wants to say.

And it was basically from that series that I had met to find out about the new episodic reformation for my friend, and listened to what you had to say, and then started doing a lot of other research and listening to some pastors who are sound teachers, who have come out of the penicostal and charismatic movement, and they were speaking of what I probably had learned or what they had learned, but what the Bible actually says.

And doing my own research on Google, so it was a combination of the factors, but I would say it started out for me trying to help my friend, and I ended up seeing and learning what I did learn.

So that's how I, and I had left about two years ago, I left the penicostal church, I didn't want to go anymore because we did receive a new pastor, I was going to a December of God, and he had kind of a Benny Hen type of manner, I gave it eight weeks and I said no more penicostas, so I went to what I thought was, and I did check out the website, I did my new diligence, the local church's website, what I thought was just a mainline church, which was the church's church, Calvary Chapel, it was great teaching, great teaching, but

I did not know their history until I saw your podcast and I also did some research on that. And I will not, I can't say that, and I'm not going to call them heretics or bad teaching or whatever, I just don't want to be in part of that anymore.

And because I no longer believe that the second occurrence that happens after salvation, which is considered the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, and then all these gifts will begin with you, I still believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but not in that charismatic kind of hostile interpretation.

So for the first time in my life, I did an exit interview with the pastor from Calvary, and I said, I feel a little bit could wink because myself and my adult child, we researched your website before we came to your church, and there's absolutely nothing in there about the gifts of the Spirit or your beliefs in that.

So since then, I did go back and look at his just a curiosity, I just went back and looked at the website and it completely revamped it. It is on some of the websites of the larger churches like in California, but you really have to do some search to find it, and if you don't know what you're looking for, then you're not going to find it.

So for me, that was a bit upsetting because maybe this is a strong word, but I felt it a bit deceptive that it's not upfront for everyone, so you can make an informed choice.

But the manner in which they teach, I think, is great, and I really learned a lot, and so did my adult child who came to me. You know, it's interesting because we, after leaving the cult, my family tried several different churches and denominations, and the one, the non-penta-costal denominations, they have the reason the denominations exist is because they have core values that are incompatible with the other denominations, and so they've kind of separated.

But they're very upfront about what those core values are. You would go to a church, and in fact, when I would visit a new church, the denomination, either the first sermon or the second, they would list their core values in the sermon.

Here's what we believe, here's why we believe it, and then here's the sermon to back it up. It was very out in the open, versus in the Charismatic Pentecostal Circle, you really have to dig, and what they want to do is they want to seal it in this mystery, so to give you these little puzzle pieces so that mentally you make that connection, and it's very insidious, I'll just say it like that.

I'm not going to say that it's fully evil, maybe they're not doing it on purpose, but the movement itself has been trained and manipulated to conceal the past. Because of all of these characters, and like you said, the...

characters that were involved in the creation of all of this, it's unbelievable, it really is unbelievable. The series that you mentioned, I think I titled it NAR, the series, it's a little graphic novel style comics.

It's actually made off of my latest book, which is Christian identity, it's the NAR, the Christian identity from Christian identity to the NAR weaponized religion, it's called. It gives that full history, so you go through, you know, it's not that every single person in the movement was evil, but here's an entire trail of evil people that are spreading their doctrines from one person to the next.

And it's like a snowball going down a hill, as the light gets bigger and bigger as it goes down the hill by the end, you're in something that's so deep and so dark in sinister that they're obviously not going to advertise what they are and why.

My dope child had reminded me just because we were there in the 80s and 90s, so as well as trying to block it out, it's been quite a while, so I don't remember a lot of details, but she reminded me that the hypocrisy is that it was a constant feeding of sermons of purity and staying away from and shame-based and re-examining ourselves because obviously we really, and the sermons were very demonstrative and very loud voices as common in a lot of Pentecostal churches, but this particular pastor, so we found out not too long after we left,

was struggling with his sexual identity and maybe participating in activities that we were being yelled at, ungodly, let's say, activities that we were being preached at very rigorously every Sunday, so that really, and later on he left the church and went to Amsterdam and changed his gender physically, surgically, and that has kept my adult child away from the church, and so this was something, it really...

It really was a tough feel as well being part of that feeling again going between anger feeling foolish, just shaking my head at myself and then stay there for a while and then remember that Christ set me free and forgive myself for allowing myself so so badly to be off wanting to be part of something and to have this exciting experience that I was willing to overlook a lot of things that were said to me and what's the term cognitive decisions where you tell yourself that no you know they do know and you do have an issue so even at my ripe old age

I'm still learning and hopefully we'll continue to learn it really becomes the difference there are churches that it is all about what Christ did for you on the cross and there are churches that it's all about what you can do for Christ so that his cross was valid it's one of those two and whenever you see the difference between the two you really start to think well why why do they want to be this way it's the gospel so simple if you read it in the Bible but if you could go back in time and give yourself some advice whenever you're in

Greece when you're early in the early in the church and you're suddenly realizing that this is a Pentecostal sect what advice would you give yourself I would tell myself to remember the words of my mother if if if you feel it in your gut that something's not right it's because something's not right and if it's too good to be true then I mean if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is same thing as I would tell my own children but chose not to listen to my my own gut when I would see things that were not correct and foolishly say

well say to myself well they are the leaders so who am I to correct them or to say something and actually there was a time it was right after the incident of night mentioned about the divorce and remarriage I wrote a letter letter of resignation although I was not a member of the church I don't think they had any members except the leadership to them and the I gave it to the cast pastor's wife and she loved bombed me back into and say, no, it's okay, you just can't have official membership, and I'm not in the mood.

And I knew something was right when they were doing that whole transaction, but again, on the other hand, chose to fool myself as well as where would I go after that? There was no choice except the Orthodox Church or the Catholic Church of which either I would want to go, and all my friends in support system were there.

They were like family, and there was not another church to go and find another family. It kind of felt that I was in the cult. I was. Well, I'm glad that you were able to find your way out and to find peace and happiness, and lift that burden from your shoulders.

I'll never forget what that felt like, and anybody who's listening who's gone through it, I think they can relate. It's quite a feeling whenever you feel that, so thank you so much for sharing your story.

And thank you so much for having me. And thank you for all your amazing research. It's truly amazing. It's helped a lot of people, and sure. I'm glad it helped. If you've enjoyed our show, and you want to share your story, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. From 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.