Invisible Boundaries: Isolation and Obedience - Jed Hartley

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 co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a profit and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and today I'm a little excited for today's episode. I've never really talked much about this on my podcast. I know that my wife has and Naomi Wright who does a lot of the work where we do support. She's talked about it but boundaries is a big

thing and invisible boundaries is a even bigger thing when you think of a cult group. So you and I were talking beforehand we decided to head this direction and I just got to say I'm glad we are because I don't think people realize how significant this is. Well I think in a symbolic sense we have talked around these things a lot but we haven't spoken very specifically about these invisible boundaries which is the whole point of like that's that's the reality of when you're in the cult communities too is that everybody talks around these things but no one talks about them specifically when thin the church so you can

you can be a part of organizations where you're not even you're not even sure what the doctrine is of the community that you're a part of until you run into conflict with it. Absolutely and one of the bigger problems I don't know how it was with IHOP KC but the more destructive that a group becomes the line between what is boundaries and what is not boundaries gets really really blurred right to the extent that sometimes you don't know the boundaries exist until you cross them right exactly either they're making them up on the fly just pulling

up here's a rule out of my butt as they're preaching or they watch you do it and say well they're doing something that I don't know if I agree with so I'm gonna stop it and so what it creates is a culture where the children are a little bit scared to try things and learn I grew up in that culture so I'm very familiar with it but there's a lot of people who probably are in that same boat but on the outside looking in I don't think people realize how big of an issue this is totally I've and into like hone in very specifically on what we're

kind of talking about when we see day in physical boundaries. The first time I heard that phrase was a friend of mine, Matthew Harky, who went to the international house prayer. He was a part of the school there, and that's where I met him. And then he has been, you know, he's spoken up against a lot of the issues that he encountered that were some of the systemic issues that I hope that didn't have to do with just the, you know, sexual abuse or the behind-the-scenes abuse that we've talked about, but more to deal with like the actual structure of authority

and how he found so much difficulty navigating that world as someone who is trying to learn the principles and learn the doctrine of the community and hating all of these, and this is what he used the term for is that he kept hitting these invisible boundaries where he was like, I didn't even know we believed this. I didn't know there was no option but to believe this within the community. And that's the thing that people aren't aware of, especially because these churches, most of these churches that we talk about are technically they declare themselves to be non-denominational. So, I mean, I've talked with my girlfriend

about this where she gets confused sometimes because she grew up loosely associated with church, but isn't been very like introduced into the nuances of Christian denominational splits in the United States. And frankly, a lot of people, even who are within the different denominations within the United States, don't know about all these different splits, but so she's been kind of like totally unaware of the world, and I will talk with her and I'll be like, yeah, well, within the charismatic church or within the Pentecostal church or within the non-denominational church. And she was like, wait, are these all three separate things,

are these different denominations? And I had to be like, yeah, it's really confusing. And with the non-denominational church, I think it's specifically meant to be confusing where

it's not about, I think I've said this before on this podcast, but like I used to think of non-denominational churches as trying to get away from denominationalism where you have these factions with infections, with infections who, you know, if you don't believe this belief about this topic, then we're...

excommunicating you from this church, and you have to go find a different church. My naive belief about non-denominationalism was that they were kind of being like, if you love Jesus, we don't care. As long as you love God, you love Jesus, you're accepted within this community.

Spoiler alert, that's not what non-denominationalism is. If you go down to your local non-denominational church and you're like, I believe in universal salvation, I believe that everyone is saved through the grace of God.

I don't believe in hell. I don't believe in these different things. You're gonna find very quickly that that community does not agree with you and maybe they might let you attend their church, but you are certainly not gonna get a faculty position.

Unless it's like doing dishes for them or something like that, but you're not gonna have any, you're not gonna be the youth pastor, you're not gonna be the youth pastor's assistant, you're not gonna be involved in any sort of power within that church.

If you don't have these list of beliefs that aren't explicit within the community, and you don't really know what they are, I tell you run up, like you said, John, tell you run up against them, and you meet that boundary, and you are, let's say teaching or you're a part of some school, and then you're like, I don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture, I believe that some of like the book of Job was metaphorical and it didn't literally happen.

And it was, and it may be inspired by God, but it was metaphorical text that probably was in a proto-Abrahamic religion or something like, you know, which is a very like scholarly, like that's a lot of people believe that.

And if you espouse that belief while amongst this community, you would suddenly find yourself no longer preaching, no longer having any authority, and there's different ways that that can happen. Like I've talked before about how the rug was pulled under me in IHOP because I question, I can question biblical inerrancy and was like, not even that, like it's all, not even a super liberal view of the Bible, but just a non-cut and dry biblical literalism of just being like, it doesn't make sense to me, like some of the gospels don't even like tell the exact same story in the exact same way.

So they have to be a little bit flawed, they have to be coming from the perspective of the people who are right. in them and like we have to like kind of understand and know when they may have gotten this fact wrong or that fact wrong.

Or, you know, yeah, just questioning some of that. And the story that I've told before on this podcast, which I'll just retell quickly is that I was a part of an organization that my father was the leader of, along with a man named Bob Frazier and that it was like affiliated with the International House Prayer, but it was called the Joseph Company and they were having a side-faction.

And I had worked for years with the Joseph Company, my entire childhood and my entire teenage years, like I was making sure that that organization was running in ways that I could, like I did their video stuff, I did their live stream stuff.

And, you know, of course I was not getting paid near enough what I now know looking back like I was getting paid pennies on the dollar for doing all of this equipment now that I know how much of like a resource all of that stuff does.

So I was basically volunteering to help this organization stay afloat. And I work for like five, six years for it. And then there's this program that they were doing where they were elevating the voices of young adults who are young leaders who are gonna help influence the world.

And I was supposed to get up and speak and share a little bit about my perspective. And I wasn't even doing a whole lot, but like I was gonna be highlighted. And I go to this conference where this is happening and I'm like sitting up front.

And there's like three or four other young adults who Bob Frazier calls up and he calls them up one by one. And I'm waiting for my name to be called and he just never does it.

And I'm sitting like off, it wasn't quite on stage but I'm like sitting off to the side. It was clear that I was part of this group and I just never got called up.

And it was super embarrassing for me because like people, I don't know if anybody else was thinking about it, but like you could have, you could have looked and been like what is going on?

Why wasn't he let up? And it felt like a very public dressing down of something that I didn't even realize. I had no idea why that was happening. He had never confronted me about it.

And then afterwards I was like, what happened? And he was like, well, until I know that you are biblically sound, I can't give you my platform. And which is just such an egotistical thing because it wasn't his platform.

It was like, several people have built that ministry. And it just was. It was like, it really, it was the last time, I think I've said this before, but it was the last time where I was like, I'm not trying to elevate my voice in this world.

I'm not, this is not a place for me. Like I got hit with this invisible boundary. And it wasn't even, you know, I wasn't even really saying anything radical or whatnot. And it wasn't, it was something different.

Like I had made a blog post about it. So it wasn't even like I had shared this opinion publicly from the pulpit within the ministry. I had just said something different. And then I found out that he didn't even read the blog post.

He had heard someone else tell him about the blog post. And so like, when we were talking about it, he was like, well, I haven't even really seen it. And it was just like, oh man.

And I got hit with that, that invisible boundary of like, okay, you can no longer have this voice in the community because you stepped outside of the, the specific boundary of, of this community where it was like, that was never explicitly clear to me that that was a boundary.

And I don't really understand why. And like, can anyone challenge that boundary? And can it, can I at least ask questions of why that's a boundary? And so that, that happened with me, but like with Matthew Harky, he was within IHOP and, and you know, I, I, to be fair, I totally, I do get, while like biblical in the air and see as like a more conventional boundary, I still don't really totally understand it and how people frame it.

But like, I get how that's like in the upper echelon of like a lot of churches have these sort of firm beliefs and it's not like just my community. It's not like the, oh, plain piano or plain anything with stringed instrument, or not piano, I forgot piano was fine in the, the brand of cults.

It was just the exposed string instruments that were not allowed. But it wasn't like hyper specific, you know, regional doctrines that I bounced up against, but with like Matthew Harky and within the International House of Prayer, there was like very specific views of end times, like your eschatology had to be this very, very specific belief system.

I don't actually even remember all of the, all of what the boundaries were, but like, you know, what one I've talked about this before, but one of the boundaries was like pre-tribulation rapture versus post-tribulation.

Like if you believe that the Christians were gonna be raptured before the tribulation, that was enough to be like excommunicated from the leadership in IHOP, because according to them, it was so apparent and any reading of the, Bible will lead you to the belief that like the tribulation happens and the Christians remain and it's only after the tribulation when Jesus returns that they are raptured up and it's such a pedantic and meaningless argument, but yet that is a boundary that could quite existential look, that could quite literally determine whether or not you are a part of this

community that you have, or you're a part of the leadership of the community that you have spent years and years pouring your life into. I'm glad that we're talking about it specifically because it is really, really corrupt. There's no other way to... The system itself, I think a lot of people and a lot of churches will do this to some extent without realizing completely that they are doing it, but I think places like the International House Prayer intentionally build up these boundaries so that they can have incredible control over everyone within their communities, so that they get to be, they get to decide who is a part of this leadership, who is going to help

direct the doctrines of the community, and I don't even know if it really is about the doctrines most of the time. I think it's just about power. Who's going to fall in line and who's going to not?

Like, let's have this... if John, you and I started our cult and we were putting out our doctrines, we would maybe put in a couple meaningless ones just to see who falls in line and says, oh yeah, you're right. This is totally... God has said that something like you're never to wear the color red on Tuesdays, and we have one pastor in our community or something who says, no, I don't see that in the Bible and it's like, great, we get to excommunicate him not because he's wrong, but because he's not falling in line and it is not going to reinforce these boundaries

of the community. You know, you mentioned the non-denominational groups and it's interesting and fascinating both at the same time because I get requests from all over the nation to investigate all of these different churches. People are writing me and they're saying, is this a cult?

Is this a cult? I can't do all of them obviously because there's way too many, but the ones that I have looked at, each time that I look, 100% of them are non-denominational groups. So the people are in them and they're suddenly scared is this a cult. Well, if you have this question, you probably shouldn't be in the group in the first place, right?

But here's the interesting thing about it. Whenever a group like this forms, they form because there is some ideology that they see as a core tenet of their belief system that is ideologically different than all the denominations.

Otherwise, you would just start a denominational church or join one, right? So they have some belief that is in conflict. But at the same time, I've been to some of these non-denominational churches. At the same time, you go into it and you don't see it heavily advertised in their literature, their books, their sermons.

They don't really explicitly say why we decided that we will sever ourselves from all the denominations. And you kind of have to figure it out over time. And when you do, suddenly you feel a little bit uncomfortable because why did they keep this from you?

If they created this movement and it's no longer part of a denomination, why didn't they tell you up front before you joined? Which is, ironically, one of the strong marks says, is this group of cult or not?

Not saying that they're all cults. But in that one aspect, it is cult-ish. I'll say it like that. But what happens is the more extreme of those groups, the ones that have become more destructive, they try to keep it even further secret because if they're into extremism, they don't want people to readily know their extremism or nobody would join their church and the money would stop flowing.

So then what happens is those groups have to start policing the mind. They can't let the rank and fall members let all of that information out. And at the same time, they can't let them critically think or they would just suddenly leave.

And even though they might not have met all the requirements of being a destructive cult, in that one aspect, they're really insidious. I'll use that. They're insidious in the way that they do it.

And again, I'm not saying that all denominational churches are this way, but out of everyone that I've investigated that people have sent me, this is the case. You know, it's funny because like it's in politics, you'll see politicians who don't ever talk about their specific policies.

That they, you're like, what is this politician believe about this policy? And they will famously, it's a very politician-y thing to wax about everything, but the question that they were asked, you know, because they don't want to clarify what they actually believe.

And I think sometimes pastors of these communities or leaders of these communities also part of the reason that they're non-denominational is one, if they explicitly stated their more radical beliefs, people wouldn't, people wouldn't want to be a part of it, it would give, you know, footholds for people like me.

You who are critical of these communities who are trying to, you know, address what's going on in these communities, they would give us a little foothold to criticize and bring attention. Like a great example of this is gravestoking.

So the Bethel community, I don't know if people are, I don't know if we've ever talked about gravestoking. It's wild that we can be into our whatever 15th episode or how many we've done.

And I don't know if maybe we haven't mentioned this before, but in the Bethel community, there is this unspoken sort of belief that you can absorb the energy and the 19 of the heroes

of faith that have gone before you by going to their grave and laying on their grave or touching their tombstone and absorbing the 19 of Asmith Wigglesworth. So like Sean Foyte, who was the kind of birth from the Bethel movement and is a worship leader there, has like a bunch of different pictures and videos of him doing this.

Like he goes to Smith Wigglesworth grave and is trying to like soak in the 19 of this Wigglesworth.

And then Bill Johnson was someone asked him about it and he was on video talking about it. And he does this like political waxing or sort of like, let me go this way and let me go that way where he doesn't really address like, no, I think that's like,

not, that's like a dangerous belief for that is like new age mixing with Christianity and we shouldn't do those particular things. It's great to like ask for God to annoying to like he did with Smith Wigglesworth or whatever, like that's one thing but going to the grave to like suck in the 19 is like a different level of like, you know, he doesn't talk about the problematic nature of that he's just like, oh, no, we don't, you know, we don't really teach that here.

I don't even know if he explicitly states that they don't teach it there, but he kind of just is like, nah, that's not a thing here. But like I was a part of that world and I saw behind the scenes and there is a lot of Bethlehem leadership who absolutely believe that and are absolutely doing that.

I was there when Bob Jones died, I was at his funeral and I was in the grave. green room, which the fact that a funeral had a green room was really weird and bizarre, but I was like in the behind the scenes area. There was this very political war between different prophets who were trying to soak in the 19 of Bob Jones. Who's going to get access to his grave and burial site was like a thing. That was very much going on. And like I saw behind the scenes, I was there. People can be like, no, it doesn't exist. It 100% does. It 100% does. That's definitely

what you're seeing behind the scenes. And if like I had spoken up and been like, this is creepy, we shouldn't try to like absorb the prophetic energy of Bob Jones. I would have gotten in trouble.

I would have hit that invisible boundary. Because my dad was one of the person who was like really vying for that position. He wanted to be seen as the like

new Bob Jones. And he started talking about how Bob Jones was coming to him in dreams. And after this and all of that. And I remember kind of, I don't know if it was quite confronting my dad. But I remember having a conversation with him behind the scenes and being like, are you sure you want to be doing this? Like is this smart to be like, you don't have your prophetic ministry is very different and distinct from Bob Jones. Do you even want to be like Bob Jones? And he was very dismissive during that time. And it just was it was weird. But anyway,

just like the politics going back to the point that I was making, just like politicians don't want to state their specific policies because they don't want to give traction for the people who criticize them. So this sort of evasive technique. Another big reason is because they want to be able to change their these boundaries. And this is a huge thing too. Like last week or two weeks ago, we talked about the stringed instruments and how stringed instruments were forbidden in the random cult that you were a part of in the message or the gear sect of the message. And

and then that rules kind of disappeared later because it was kind of baseless and and you know, people started liking the guitar and they were like, you know, there's many reasons why it probably dissolved. That stuff happens all the time in these non-denominational cult-like communities because the people who have created these boundaries no longer see these boundaries as advantageous for them.

Like I was talking about the John and Jed cult that we created where we say people can only, you can't wear red on Tuesdays because we were just doing it to see whether or not people would fall in line.

Well then, uh oh, both of us forget there's a Tuesday and we're wearing red because, you know, we're both wearing our chiefs attire or something like that and someone's like, wait, can't you not wear red on Tuesdays?

And we're like, oh no, no, no, no. The Lord spoke to us and that's no longer a thing anymore. You know, like we want to be able to change it because it's no longer advantageous for us and we will need to have different beliefs systems.

So part of this sort of invisible boundaries is because if you have all the boundaries of your community well-defined, you can't easily re-align them. You can't redraw the circle when someone is within the circle that you want out or vice versa, someone's outside of the circle that you want in.

You know, there's not a way to, it's not malleable, it's like more set and stone. And that's what I saw this all the time within the community. I mean, honestly, I'm picking on Bethel a little bit.

I guess I should just embrace the fact that I'm picking on Bethel a lot because they're a cult community and they do this. But Bethel does this all the time. Bethel has you talk with someone at Bethel, they're not gonna have any clue what the actual boundaries of their belief systems are.

Bill Johnson, no one knows what he actually believes because they have a lot of new age, a lot of like new age sort of culty beliefs about like gemstones and about frequencies and about.

I mean, just a lot of the like, you know, if I go to a psychic or a medium here in Los Angeles, and they're talking about astrology or they're talking about gemstones that heal and stuff like that, it's gonna line up with some of the things that like Bill Johnson, and you know, I don't like speaking ill of the dead, but Benning Johnson had this too.

Like Benning Johnson explicitly was just like, and she just had all of her doctrine was super... Spiritualism. Spiritualism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That a lot of people, I'm not even saying that I, I'm not even being specifically critical of those things.

I mean, I think that you can infer that I am critical. the goal of those things, but like not even there just are a lot of people who like there's a lot of evangelical Christians who want no part of that. And it was never really explicitly stated because they would lose a lot of their support because if people were like, Hey, I think you're dipping into the cold, you know, people would, people would leave and funding would leave. And so instead, Bethel is just this amalgamation of a lot of different woo-woo sort of spiritual beliefs. And I mean, it, and it, and it fits really well with the sort

of Toronto revival, you know, ladder rain belief systems about fire tunnels and sozo and all of that sort of stuff. I mean, it merges really well behind the scenes, but of course, you would never, ever have Bill Johnson give you a straight answer about that, which I think is, is, is not talked about enough of how that is. Are you really deceptive and coercive structure? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the ladder rain, 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 Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, we could probably do an entire podcast on just the spiritualism aspect. There's so much history there that people have no idea.

I've mentioned Roy Davis, which if you want to learn more about him, just go to my website, but this was not a good man who meant to avoid Brannum when he began his crusade to gather and create a cult in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which became the Brannum Tabernacle and eventually my grandfather's church. He did so claiming to be a reformed spiritualist. And this man was not reformed of anything. He was bringing teenager across state lines for insidious purposes. I'll just say it like that. And there was the big scandal. He was arrested right off the platform

in Jeffersonville, but during the revival. at which he was arrested, he was claiming to be a reformed spiritualist, and he was exposing how the spiritualists operated. Because during that era, spiritualism was so highly popular in the United States, and we have evidence that strongly suggests that William Brandon was going to spiritualist camps, and I think in one instance, he even mentions it. But what happened is so weird, because in the laterane movement, he introduced spiritualism and called it Christianity, but then tried to separate it. And he put up these invisible walls, these boundaries. A lot of groups do this. They will say they just don't understand. And what you

don't realize is because of the word they, you're separating us from them, you're creating an invisible wall. But what's worse is you're doing the very thing that Christianity stands against. And so they introduced notions of divination, and you know, communicating with the dead, all of this stuff, and it was all part of spiritualism, brought it into laterane, and they made it mainstream. So it became mainstream in laterane. Then that just kind of disseminated and went through the charismatic movement. Now it's re-emerging in a even hyper-focused, vigilant focused spiritualism in the NAR. But what's funny is the things that they do,

if you just read the Old Testament, you realize that, wait a minute, these are abominations to God. Where are they doing this? And some of the things they do are outright blatant abominations. In the Brannum organization, there were several men who, we called them water witches, and in Kentucky, this is a big thing. I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but no, but there's a lot of people in Kentucky that can do this, and they can take a stick, and they can walk in your yard, and as they're walking, the stick will take them to wherever

there's water, and they're digging, and there's a well. This is divination. This is an abomination according to the Old Testament, and they even call it a divining rod that they used to do this with.

I know there are significant figures in the Brannum organization who can do this. I have family members that can do this. I looked at it one day, and before I realized that this isn't quite right, I took a stick, and I tried to see if I had the quote-unquote gift, and I realized as I'm walking around making a fool of myself with a stick, I realized, this is a bunch of who do me, and this is not even real, but I have heard stories of people, even some people in my family who the well that their entire family lived off of for years, they found with one of these divining

rods. So it's a thing. Also in this area, what you talked about, you talked about the gravestoking, I can write a bike. Graham's, Brandon's pyramid tomb. I'm that close to it. And I can drive by and I can watch, you know, these people who come and they lay on it and who the power is coming.

And I've mentioned this not to you, I think, but right across the river is Colonel Sanders' grave. So one of these days, I'm going to do an actual experiment where I go lay on it and then go make fried chicken, and I'm gonna buy some KFC.

And I'm gonna see which one is better. Did it work? Yeah. And not because I believe in this stuff, but as a scientific experiment, does it work? Can you, that's hilarious. Yeah, the anointed with the spirit of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I, yeah. No, I think that's where it is ridiculous. There are so many of these things that are just these, it's either ridiculous or it's clearly of a different spiritual origin than orthodox Christianity.

Like, you know what I was thinking of when you were talking about that? Like, I was thinking of the story and I hope that I'm not misinterpreting this biblical story but I remember when Moses goes to, to, I think it's Mount Zion, but to get the 10 commandments, you know, he is going to have this like spiritual experience with Yahweh and back Aaron is leading the Israelite people

and they get, you know, they get different contents. And there's this sort of like, we gotta create the sort of spiritual practice and they, they, he gets all of the gold together of the community and they, they melt it down and create the giant golden calf.

And I think if you, I don't know if this is the right biblical interpretation, but from a story perspective, that is kind of similar to I think what you will see with these sort of non-denominational Christian practices is that you will see they adopt the doctrines because like just as like the golden calf, it was very much a spiritual symbol of a very different religion in the like, Semitic, you know, but like I can't remember which, which like whether it was the Canaanites or, I can't remember which people group worship the golden calf, but like that was an idol

of a different God and you could see, I always thought that that was confusing because it's like you have these, the Israelites who have literally just been led out of Egypt and out of captivity, they've seen pillars of fire come down.

If you, you know, if you believe a literalist that there actually was the, the seas, partying, and Moses walk through, I was always very confused because it was like, why would you worship a different God?

When you've seen all of these sort of clear demonstrations that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is real and is guiding you, like why would you suddenly start worshiping this different idol? But if it makes sense in this world, where if you didn't realize that you were worshiping idols, like people don't think of Sean Foy as not a Christian, not worshipping different gods, but like he is absolutely influenced, at least heavily influenced by spiritualism and like the cult and like the influences of a full different religious background, and he's adapting this into his sort of world,

and you could see places like Bethel creating their sort of metaphorical golden calves of these different idols of these different religions. And usually I don't like criticizing Bethel or I hop

based off of like their doctrinal splits from what Orthodox Christianity, I am much more rooted in like is what they're doing like deceptive, is it? I'm much more like into the practical, how are they treating people and how is it abusing individuals and not like are they strained from God or not strained from God?

Like that's not as much something that I'm wanting to discuss. So but the point of what I'm saying here is it's deceptive. And then that's what I think that I'm trying to make the point of is that there are all these doctrines that are a part of these different sort of whole spiritual systems, not even different denominational systems, it's not that like they're going back to different Christian iterations.

Like these are full, different embracing, you know, sort of secular spiritualism or different like Celtic roots different like Celtic roots of like I keep forget, there's a specific word that I'm thinking of but I can't remember what it is.

But you know, from entirely different non-Christian traditions, they're pulling these sort of beliefs or like the divination like you were saying of using the stick to find the water. Like that is found in different religious traditions.

Like the roots of that come into, you know, whether that's, you know, Native American traditions or whatever led that sort of spiritual tradition. It wasn't, the roots of it is not Orthodox Christianity. It's in this.

whole different group and they specifically do not talk about these beliefs so that they are not criticized, so that you get into this community and you don't realize what they're doing and don't realize how fringe it is until you're in it and you're already a part of the community and by that time if you criticize the community or criticize those beliefs, then you're kicked out. It's like if you got married to someone and you didn't realize they had these really weird specific traditions or practices that they had or that their family did these particular things or believe these particular things or you get married to someone

and they say their political beliefs are this way and then you get to find out that it's totally different fringe belief systems but you're already married so now you're in this really difficult situation of this person who I married, this person who I committed myself to is now showing parts of them that fundamentally changes what I believe about them and what I think about them. It's a really deceptive and coercive practice and that's absolutely what's happening in these churches where they have all of these invisible boundaries where you don't really realize what's going on until it's kind of too late until you're too absorbed in it and

I can speak very confidently about this because as someone who grew up in this world like I saw the inner workings of these things and it's not just the fringe people within those communities, it's the leaders of these communities that have these very very fringe beliefs and it is it's sort of required amongst the leaders of the community to at least have some acceptance of those. In the irony of what you just mentioned so the bull was worship in an ancient Egypt in Memphis I think is where they were worshiping the bull. I can't remember the

gods I think it was Patah and it transitioned into some other gods but it's fitting because if you think about what's happening they're leaving Egypt and there's this question of whose God is more powerful, is the God of Israel more powerful or is the God of Egypt and you find all of these people who are breaking away and they start worshipping the Egyptian God that we just left. If you think about what's happening in places like Bethel so we left that type of divination and spiritualism all this nonsense they go into it while they're turning back so for them that is their golden calf.

No absolutely I think that's yeah and they're thinking that it's an extension of God rather than as something that's totally separate and in Like just even historical context, if you were talking from a scholarly perspective, it's like, no, the roots of this belief system are not from the Orthodox Christianity and from this Christian tradition, it's from it, and it's the adoption of a total different religious belief from a total different religious system and and putting the mask of Christianity over it.

And so one last, you know, one big thing that I wanted to talk about in this subject matter, though, is I want to talk about the psychology of the psychological difference of like creating invisible boundaries and following invisible boundaries and

bring us distinction to these religious leaders who are creating some of these boundaries. So a lot of these beliefs are either not found in the Bible at all or they're very loosely found in the Bible and it's more, you know, the Bible is used to doctrinally kind of underpin something, but like, you know, if you're reading the Bible and you are not and there's no sort of discussion of like the Holy Spirit inspiring you, if you're just doing a straight reading of the Bible, you give it to chat GPT or something like that and and some AI, you're like, hey, give me

the different like biblical principles of just what is found and here's, you know, even if you get all of the different translations of it, you are never ever going to come up with like chat GPT is never going to be like stringed instruments that are exposed, you know, and not the piano, but like these stringed instruments are banned because they are used by the devil. You're never going to find that from the Bible. Like, of course, that's just like, you're never going to get from A to B there. Yet, it becomes a invisible boundary of the community. So what

happened at some point, someone, whether it was Brandon himself or, you know, it probably was Brandon himself, he had, I can't, you know, I can only speculate why, but let's say he went to, he heard some music that like, mess with him the wrong way where he was like, oh, this is, this feels, I don't know, he saw, was probably was rooted in in racism of some sort. He saw a black man playing a guitar and he was like there there feels something funny about this and he's like something something clicks in his head where he says this is wrong. There is an arrogance and I've tried to I've tried to explain

this so many different times in so many different ways but there is a genuinely pathological arrogance and delusional arrogance that is in the heads of the people like Branum and Mike Bickle and Bob Hartley because they see they feel something within them and they believe wholeheartedly that it's God speaking to them in this instance. There's no check and balance of being like oh okay is this something that I'm just making up like you know it's like if you got a scoop of ice cream and you really didn't like the the flavor of like artificial cherry flavoring and then you were suddenly like the sayeth lord cherry flavors are of the devil

in general and it's like that's just something you didn't like that doesn't just because you have like a negative reaction with this thing doesn't mean that God is coming and like telling you specifically that everything should be banned that has to do with this thing that you dislike and yet so many of the invisible boundaries that were created within these communities and I saw this happen a first person perspective seeing this happen it was just the whims of these men who believed that they had such a clear connection with God that any any whim that they had they

thought without critical thinking they thought oh this must be from God and so therefore I'll put this they pick up their Bible and they have they're reading about the end times and then they get this sort of inspiration of like oh what if it was like this what if God did this and not from the sort of rigor of like they're not going to a they're not going to a get their PhD they're not doing studying and really going through the rigors of what it takes to make you know biblical conclusions and biblical interpretations they just get open their Bible get struck with a whim

and then thus say of the Lord it becomes the rule of the community I don't know how people don't recognize how dangerous that is and that's how you get cults that's how you get radical cults like the cult of like the Jim Jones cults where Jim Jones is that ego maniac and he's in this world where you can keep creating these invisible boundaries and you can keep pushing your community further, further into like fringe territory where all of the sudden everything that everyone believes within the community are just weird whimsical things that you came up with about all of these different boundaries and rules

and there's no difference between the voice of God and the voice of your own inner monologue and that's what happens and I saw it happen, I saw it happen with Mike Bickle, I saw it happen with my dad, I saw it happen with Bob or sorry Bill Johnson and this stuff where it's just like there's no accountability, there's no resources within the community to hold these men accountable because they're non-denominational, there's not a sort of like oh hey this falls outside of the like established doctrine of the community because there is no established doctrine of the community, it's all built off of the whims of these men

and I want to fundamentally point out or I want to point out that this is fundamentally different than those who follow it because there's a lot of followers who believe that they hear a doctrine that is espoused by someone who they believe is inspired by God.

I do think it's dangerous and it's naive because they should be holding these men accountable but like at least they're not coming from this place of arrogance like most people within the community of Bethel and IHOP are not going to just be feel the freedom to come up with whatever beliefs they do and they probably believe their leaders are doing some due diligence in these sort of belief systems that they do. So I think that you can have basically this process that happens is that you can have these arrogant men who hear the echoes of

their own voice and call it God and create doctrines that are so specific to their own whims and desires and then you see this sort of cascading acceptance and adoption of those beliefs because of the authority structure that is established in these communities where the people within the community believe wholeheartedly that their leaders are doing due diligence that they are reading their Bibles that they are working hard to come up with these doctrines and then it's not just coming up on a whim and so then you have these when people ask like how do people get

absorbed in a cult it this is part of that process that's slow boiling process of maybe when they got involved with the cult community it wasn't as much of a cult community and the boundaries of that community were much closer to the boundaries of a more orthodox, normal Christian community, but then it slowly, you know, shifted and like a frog in boiling water, like it, it just slowly, the temperature got rose and rose and there was no sort of system to be like, hey, we've gone too far. There's no system to tell people that the

boundaries have now extended into the cold region. So when people are wondering how that happens, this is one of those ways. You know, you're talking about my grandfather and his guitar doctrine. In today's world, everybody that I've told that story to, they're like, what, what was he thinking?

What is this mess? What is this religion, right? And that's today's world. But when you think about these crazy boundaries that are created that are extra biblical and in some cases unbiblical, anti-biblical, what you realize is at the time, there were people that adopted it because culturally speaking for their era, they saw it as having some value. And I've never understood the guitar doctrine. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm a big fan of growing up. I was reading my Bible.

I'm surprised that they weren't, but you find all kinds of stringed instruments in the Bible, even David. David played the harp. David played the live, all of these instruments, right? So it's an anti-biblical doctrine that emerged. But it wasn't until I was watching the movie, O'Brother Huar Arthal, and the black guy who sold his soul to the devil to play the guitar.

That was actually, not many people know this, that was based off of a real figure in American history. It was his Tommy Johnson. I think that may have been the name that he used in the movie.

This is a real figure, is a Delta Blues guitarist, that allegedly sold his soul to the devil, and the devil gave him his fancy guitar skills. So there was likely a time when everybody was going, oh my gosh, you can sell your soul to the devil, and he'll help you play guitar.

The irony of that is, you have somebody who's saying something that is so nonsensical, but people believe it because he can play the guitar. I mean, the guy apparently was that good. But because he convinced people that he could do this, and the devil helped him do it, now you've got the other side who are saying, well, we're going to take it to the other extreme, and so they create that invisible boundary. Well, you can't play the guitar because the devil helped that guy play his guitar. So, you know, we could go on forever talking about this, but

in the end for me, it really comes down to this. If you're in a group that is creating an us versus them mentality, then they have created an invisible boundary in your head and you're trapped in a cult.

Whether anybody who's writing me and they're asking, is my denomination a cult? I usually don't even dig into them because I can usually just ask a few questions and yep, you're probably in a cult because of their answers.

And it always comes down to that root question, is there an us versus them mentality? Is it you against all of the other Christians? Is it you against the world? Or is your church trying to reach the world and make the world a better place?

It really comes down to one or the other. So for me, to sum it up, I would say, don't be in a group that is us versus them, be in a group that is we.

Well, yeah, and the danger of being in a group where you don't know the boundaries of and the belief systems of that group until you're in, you know, because you can just like those boundaries can change.

People, I've talked with a lot of different people of the same where it's like, is this group a cult or is this group a cult? And it's obviously not just like a clear line.

Like there's a spectrum of cult beliefs and cult practices and you can have a group that's boundaries have moved a little bit versus a group like the Jim Jones group where their boundaries have moved radically far away.

Like obviously international house prayer and Bethel are not as extreme as some of those, you know, some of those cult groups, but it's still a cult because it's still moving those boundaries and isolating you from the rest of the sort of domain of Christianity and the doctrine of Christianity and it's intentionally unclear what those boundaries are so that it's detached.

So that it has mobility so that it can be not brought back to places of accountability. And at some point, we probably should have an episode on healthy boundaries because there are boundaries that are healthy, so we'll put that on the shelf for another day.

Yeah. So 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 NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

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