Leaving Apostasy: An Interview With Steve Montgomery - Our Stories

Hello, and welcome to another episode, a piece of take-off video from different than we usually do. I have had for several months now, people asking me to know more about Steve as background. How did he come to seek out and find the converging apostasy?

And even Charles, I think, is one of the people who has asked for you to tell your story. So today's gonna be a little bit different than usual. We're not diving so deeply into the converging apostasy, but today we're going to talk through your story and everybody who's listened to the podcast kind of knows who you are.

So maybe we'll skip the background and just talk a little bit about what led you to this life of seeking out the converging apostasy. Yeah, well, that's a mouthful right there. I don't wanna be too self-absorbed, but I guess that's the nature of this podcast, right?

Tell about myself. Well, I would start with my grandfather because he's very influential in my life, but obviously my dad's life too. My grandfather was a librarian and a genealogist and he actually came to the forward Texas area in a covered wagon.

And he was quite a bit older than his wife, something he was born in 1886. And he came from Missouri to Texas. So in his work as a genealogist, what he sort of did that professionally, but also as an interest of his, he traced the Montgomery name back to the 1000s and William MacArthur.

And so I have two really big tomes, I guess you'd say, on the Montgomery name, the Montgomery Deweyne's, unfortunately, we were very rich novelmen and we had castles and serfs and servents. And we took advantage of all of them and did battle with...

neighboring clans. If anybody is seeing Braveheart or anything about, is it William, the Bruce, or Bruce the William? What are those guys? They have what they call a tartan, and it's basically like a class that you put on your robe if I've got that straight. But ours said, this little class would say, where are they being? And this basically meant, watch your back, and it showed to the fear of my fifth grade students, it showed a severed head being held by one of the gummers, meaning, hey, don't mess with us. And actually, if anybody in our audience

knows anything about Shakespeare, one of them, the gummeries, was at the Battle of Hastings and captured some of the other noblemen. So, yeah, we had the kind of checkered past and descriptions of some of the people that were with gummeries. They'd say they were cruel and cunning and all this kind of stuff. So, I just laid that into my fifth grade, so they got a kick out of that. Some of them looked a little frayed, though.

So, I'm the middle son of a Presbyterian preacher and a school teacher, and people that try to predict how you're going to come out of life, preacher's kid, PK, teacher's kid, you know, that's, they get some of it iffy sometimes. My mother's name was, get this, a list of both my gummeries. So, people that have seen older TV shows might remember that name.

And my sister's name is Elizabeth Taylor. So, when the two of them weren't shopping together,

you know, people were looking and like, are you for real? Is it a joke? No, that's just, that's the names. My father died of a rare disease called poems, and you can find it on Wikipedia.

It's p.o.e.n. dot s dot. So, peace standing for pulmonary on down to s standing for skin and essentially. And what it, it's, it's, it's incurable, and it usually hits in later years of life. And so, a lot of times doctors will think, oh, the, the guys kind of slowing down and getting more susceptible to different diseases. But the way we caught it, my dad's going to be doing fine.

He was in good spirits. And then we'd say, they go purplish bruise on his hands. And said, that is that hurt? I said, no, that's, that's morning. And then the next day it moved kind of like a cloud to a new section. And so, that was one of the first indicators. And then he's start to get nowhere, it couldn't breathe very well.

And so we did hospice with my dad and his dying words were well like this. He says, he motioned for everybody to come close. He told us the whole hands. And we thought maybe he's in pain, he needs some more morphine or something, but his last words were, the Lord blessing keep you.

And I've shared that story many, many times because as you can think, they had a had a real impact on me, but I think it's a testimony to his life and his service. My brother died of cancer when he was 58.

And he started, he said, oh, my back really hurts today. And thought maybe he just strained it or something. Turned out he had a football-sized tumor on his kidney. And so they removed that and said, you're cool.

You're great, no more problems. And then about, seems like about seven months later, it had no pesticides in going to, bringing to, forgot what they called the sheaths around the lungs, pleursus, something like this.

And so that's what he passed away from. But he was living in Tennessee and he was really lamenting the fact that they didn't have good ex-mix, Mexican food up there. So he was on a lot of morphine in the hospital.

And so I was with him at his bedside and he shot him, bolted up like this. And he says, I'll have cheese and chaladas.

So I mean, it was painful at the time, but it was kind of just a memory of my brother that I hold onto. Then I was playing in a jazz band in the Houston area playing bass and a really exceptional piano player, and a great drummer who played with some big-time folks and all that.

So the piano player, he's maybe 20 years older than me. He started coughing a lot and said, man, you better get to the doctor and check that out. So he was playing at a place where this is before they said that you couldn't smoke in public places.

So he'd be at his piano playing and there'd be somebody sitting maybe a yard away blowing cigarette smoke. So he actually got lung cancer from secondhand smoke. The drummer in the band had played with lots of famous people and so on.

And he was a really tough guy. He'd been in the Korean War and he didn't complain about anything. And so he started saying, man, my back is killing me. Can you guys... tell me, carry my drums to the car.

We thought that was a little bit unusual, maybe straight up muscleer who knows. And it turned out, and I said, he smoked like a chimney, he's smoking all the time. And so he died of lung cancer also.

Well, I have never been a smoker, but maybe from secondhand smoke, somewhere around the year 2000, I got colon cancer. And so my dad and my brother had these moments with their last words.

And my wife will say, have you ever run out of words yet? And so anyway, no, not yet, I'm still talking. So my wife and I, who's been 31 years now, we had one son, Steven Jr., he was really good, athletic guy, super kindhearted and very intelligent.

So he was five foot four and played on the soccer team. And it was very quick. And if you know the game of soccer, you can be a ball hog, or you can get a cyst and set up somebody else.

So he was great at the cysts. And so I gave him, because he short-filed, I gave him the nickname, big. I said, hey, big. So he was like 20, 21 years old. And he never seemed embarrassed.

It said, come on, dad. I'm here with my buddies, which would quick call to me big. But that's what I called him. And unfortunately, he was killed by a drunk driver when he was 22.

Sounds like you went through quite a lot with all of the people who were getting sick with cancers and some of them dying. I'm certain that had some impact on your life. Yes, it did, but like a lot of things, you don't really realize it as you're going through it.

Maybe hangs around inside, and then later on manifest. But living in the Houston area, one of my ambitions, and I was a PK, so I heard my dad preach all the time. And I wouldn't say it went in one ear and out the other, but it was just, okay, I've heard this before.

Yeah, that sounds good. That's good, good speaker, good servant writer. And actually, he was better at, if I would say this, more of a pastoral care, just endless hours of helping out those in need, 24-7.

And he wasn't firing brimstone whatsoever, but he was more of a teacher and pastoral help. Of course, we get a lot of floods and issues like that down here in tornadoes in the Houston area.

And so he was in disaster relief issues, which he could say it's boring. A lot of paperwork being a presbyterian. There are plenty of... jokes about us drowning in paperwork as compared to some other denominations, and I appreciate him at that in another way, because in his library, he had just a bit of everything.

He had early church fathers, he had writings of Luther, Calvin, of course, and just a big variety of different kinds of things, which sometimes I'd ask him about, or there would be a scripture and we discuss it.

And of course, as you get older, you don't have these on as much for your dad to speak as like, oh, yeah, dad, I've heard that, you know, I began, he actually became my best friend for a while there.

So what I did was I was working as a jazz guitarist and a bassist and I started around 1718. So thanks for guys pretty quickly, and I got to play with what you'd say, your name, artist, and that all depends on who you're talking to, you might say, huh, never heard of that person.

But I did get to play with Bob Hope, Tony Taneel, Marvin Hamlish, Rita Morena, and Marilyn May, who has a distinction because she's really great singer, great performer, but Johnny Carson preferred her to any other singer, and she was on his show, I think it was 76 times due to his, you know, like in the way she's seen it in her interviews with him.

And so I played in a band called, a lot of small jazz bands, but I played in an orchestra with sort of like the Boston pops, they call it the American pops, and then we had another band in Houston called the Houston pops.

Well the Houston pops got their funding from Exxon, we didn't. So an oil gasoline issues struck, Texas, we kind of petered out. But before that happened, we got to play in Mexico City, Tokyo, and Puerto Rico, and we had plans to go to Sydney, Australia, but that was before we had to bite the bullet financially.

So having played in a lot of different kinds of settings, I became a little dissatisfied with playing other people's music, I still enjoyed it, but I did want to change and have my own ideas.

So I decided to go to Boston, which in those days was the guitar player's mecca, you want to put it there, and I went to what they called witchhead, which is to work on your ideas on your instrument, and it's kind of like taking a sabbatical.

So that's what I did, I saved up money for about three years work, three years worth of not having to work and play music in bands, but just to work on what I was doing.

So one of the things I did was I developed a two-hand courting technique, which probably won't make sense to people unless they've actually had an experience with playing guitar and others. Also, I started tuning my guitar in force. I've only heard of the two people that I'm aware that are well-known guitars, even mentioned doing this, because guitars too, a certain way, to facilitate playing certain styles of music. And me being a jazz player, I really didn't care about playing those other styles so much. So tuning in force is, I guess you could say more symmetrical, more logical. I have to leave it at that, or else it's

going to get too technical. And speaking of too technical, I developed my version of what some composers call pan-diatonic harmony. So pan, meaning all, diatonic is the usual doh-ray-me-fossilic, you know, the usual scales that you hear a lot of music based on.

Pan-diatonic means that you can, it's polytonal. You can connect different keys together and play them simultaneously. So you had quite an exciting life there for a while, playing with different bands and whatnot. What led you from that life into the life of religion? Well, like I said, I had a background of, you know, I've heard my dad preach, and you know, just being in the house where I could ask him questions about different things that came up. But when I became a little bit not so pleased, which is staying in Houston, playing the St. Oggigs, St. Oggigs, with the

St. Walbans, I decided I'd like to go to Boston. It was either the North Texas State or Boston in those days for jazz guitar players. So my dad had some connections in Boston, and there was a pastor friend who said, okay, you know, this is going to be my first time away from home. It seems like I was 19 at the time. And it would be helpful if I would be able to go to a Christian house of other fellow musicians. So I did that. My dad located a house, and we're basically all starving artists types. And so three of my five fellow starving artists roommates

happened to be attending a non-dedominational charismatic church to follow the teachings of word of faith like Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagen, Robert Freeman. And when there was a TV show on, say like the 720 Club or Jean Baker show.

Quite often, these folks would appear there or they'd have their own TV program. So this kind of stuff was going on all the time and it was a bit confusing to me because I'd never had had any contact with that kind of style of worship or content, I guess you'd say.

So I became curious and like you can figure that there's a big push, come on, come up with us, come to our church, you'll love it. So I became curious and I started attending the church and like I said, it was very strange to me at first, but I'd be getting to get hooked.

And as a result of this, it began to show more and more in my behaviors and the things I talked about with Dad is like what he said, right over my head, what I said, right over his head, because he wasn't really familiar with the word of faith stuff.

So as a result, I became more and more isolated from family, friends, reality and my musical pursuits. As a matter of fact, I threw away all of my record collection, which I was pretty proud of, and some of the compositions I've been doing some writing that would use this special technique that I developed.

And I'd talk to a couple of high level, I say high level meaning nationally or internationally known jazz guitarists and I'd show up and say, hey, look at this. And they'd say, well, that's pretty good, keep going with it, you got something there.

So because of my obvious differences and some of it were just kind of like the beginning of the thousand hours there, where I wasn't all there, my parents decided it was time to seek help.

I can imagine that would be difficult on them because when you're in these type of groups, you start learning the group's loaded language and you don't even realize it. As soon as you get away from people who are in the group and you start talking to people who have no idea what this loaded language is, you're literally talking to different languages to each other, and especially for parents who watch a child leave and then come back and they can't talk to them anymore, it's very, very distressful for the parents.

This is so true, especially, I mean, just parents that love you, of course, family members, but especially in my dad, you know, nobody has perfect exposition of scriptures, but he had his feet on the ground, you could say that, he's rounded in scripture, it wasn't going like a wild tangents, and when he saw that I was, and this might hit...

Lister's in different ways, but the idea that Healing is in the atonement. That was a big issue with co Copeland and hey, they said that and my dad showed me the scriptures and says no, that's not really yet If you're looking at the Greek language and how how this this idea got off off track So as a result in my parents concerns They contacted a group that used to be called can meaning cult awareness network I wouldn't go to that on Wikipedia if I was you because it's basically been taken over I forgot It's the Moody's or Scientology has taken over the bottom out and

sued sued sued because both of those organizations have very deep pockets and can basically how do you and put you out of business So we are where the kind of under the radar you could reach and what in those days was called a deep programmer nowadays or more often you might hear exit counselor so They contacted the a fella who had been working through cult awareness network And they hired him to infiltrate the group that I was in and then report back his findings So based on his advice a deep programming team was put together

And I think this is a very good thing For me because I was beyond the stage of being able to talk to anyway kind of like what you're saying John use You got loaded language and you've redefined the ability to communicate and there's techniques of I think you really call them self-self hypnosis or mild States of hypnotic suggestion In which your worship the form of worship you're doing makes you sort of like an open book to just receive whatever the leader's going to say But the deep programming group was very diverse and they were composed of

an ex-moony and ex-scientologist an ex-cut or church of universal and triumphant A biblical scholar or expert from Christian research institute A couple of security guys and I'll get into that later while you would need them And then the head the head the programmer Was an ex-children of god member and he had gotten high enough up in that organization that religion that Moses David Berg put him charge Of all of Israel all the converse to that group And so as hard as it seems when you think about legal matters, a compulsory intervention was planned.

I have sat on those intervention teams and it is a whole new experience if you've never been to one, but you learned so many things that you really did not even know existed. When I went into it, I had no idea that mind control was something that was a real actual psychological science.

I thought this was science fiction. And it's only for the movies and I got there and we had to go through this crash course to learn what is mind control, how does it work?

And I'm watching these real people who you can watch their eyes glaze over. When their diaries will actually shift like they do in the horror movies, their eyes just shift and get blurry. And then you can communicate with the alter ego or communicate with the authentic person.

And I was watching a skilled person, skilled psychologist do this, talking to one person and just watch it flip. And learning all of that was quite an experience, but I wasn't on the side of the person who was in the cult at that time.

So I'm sure that was quite an experience for you on the other side. Yes, it was. And like I said, I was way beyond the ability to talk rationally or scripturally or anything with my parents or these programmers.

But in the course of took, I think, two and a half days, that's usually common, two or three days of the whole process, pretty high successful rate or success rate of getting people out of groups.

So in my case, did you programming began like this? To get me to a so-called safe house where there would be no interruptions or distractions, a good friend of mine who is the church youth group leader at my dad's congregation, he called me in Boston.

He said he had a business in Boston. I would like to get together for a lunch. So I said, sure, and he came up and he said, I'll take you out to eat. So he started driving out of town and said, first, he wanted to meet some friends.

I did become a little suspicious, even on my logical mind was not up to par. But I figured out that I would convert all of them anyway. So I could bring them on, you know.

You get somebody, you know, I've got the spiritual power and I'm going to, you know, dominate whatever kind of thing you get set. So we entered into this house. Supposedly Gary's going to pick up some friends to go with us.

There, I saw my parents, my younger sister, my best friend, and several strangers who, of course, reported that team. I knew that I was going to be a little suspicious, to have a battle and I was going to have the battle with the spiritual forces that were controlling i.e. possessing them. Because of this, I closed my eyes, completely zoned out, like you're saying, just another world, and began to repeat them, and I did what we called, I pled the blood, saying the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus over and over, as if it was a

magical formula or a mantra. I can remember doing that, and I remember the thought afterwards, after I realized what this was that I was doing, ironically, it came out of the deprogramming session I was in, but you're chanting, you're mentally chanting, and you're trying to isolate yourself in your own head, so that they can't get into your head, and if you really think about what's happening, it's disturbing to think that some group can control you in that level, but there's a phrase that I use, I knew people who used the, I claimed the blood, like you're saying, over

and over, they would repeat this, I had friends that did, but I had a different phrase, not going to go down the path of explaining what that was or why, but I had a different phrase that I used, and whenever I would get into a situation where I thought the enemy was attacking me, usually it was good normal Christian people who had good Christian values, and they would try to influence me away from the church or whatever. I had this phrase that I went over and over in my head with, and if you're a cult member, you understand the significance of this, and to anybody listening

who was never in one, whenever you engage a person who is in one of these groups and they start doing this, you'll know that they're putting their defenses up, their guard is coming up.

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 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

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to do. They said that they were going to do some talking and it would be who would need to listen if possible. And they were going to talk about their experiences. Because as I said, there was quite a variety of folks from different backgrounds. But when you get to, as you say, John, thought reform, really the details of the cult or the religion that you're in, they don't matter that much, it's more the process that you go through. So loaded language, spiritual exercises that help you zone out. And there's many more that people can look into

about that. What else did I experience? I just know that nobody beat me on the head or gave me, you know, mind-altering drugs to help me lead the group I was in. I ate well. That was one thing.

I slept well because I generally did not when I was in the group. And I learned a lot about thought reform, mostly from the writings of Dr. Robert J. Lyfton. His writings initially were to delineate the issues that people in communist-red China went through when they were being brainwashed.

So he looked at those factors and he and others began to say, huh, that really fits with some of these new religious cults we're doing. And so he became, along with some other people who you're aware of, John. His writings became kind of the gold standard and they were very influential.

So we also watched videos of people in thought reforming cults and compared them to the ideas and practices of my group. And as I said, the emphasis was not so much on what I believed, all those partially that, but it was mostly on the process that I went through to come to those beliefs. But the turning point, which I'll obviously never forget, went like this. I didn't gradually get out of the group like some people do and they're kind of wandered around for 10 years, trying to figure out what happened. There was a definite turning point and it went like this.

The moment I snapped out of this mind control came in a very unexpected way. The team happened to have a national public radio presentation about Jim Jones and not to go down that rabbit hole. But if you're watching the news, you may not have a national public radio or a TV for much longer or it's going to be harder to get it. So this presentation was called the Jim Jones referred to himself as father, father Jim. So This was called our father, who ardent hell.

And obviously, Jim Jones might qualifies that. But as it presented this, this tape and this information, I was very stubborn. I've told them they were crazy. My church wasn't a cult and we weren't anything like Jim Jones.

But in my church, we often talked about bodily sensations, like tingling on the back of your neck or the top of your head, or feeling like oil is being poured over your head. And we said, this was the anointing.

And we could tell if a person we could so-called discern if a person was anointed or followed a spirit because we'd feel these sensations. As much as we said faith is not a feeling, we very hypocritically applied this test.

And so as I listened to Jones in his earlier years, as a Pentecostal faith healer, I was surprised to learn that I felt the spirit. And I figured this must have been based on the idea that he started in the right path and it got off track somehow.

But the moment of truth came, when he forcefully threw his Bible onto the ground, stood on top of it and said, I am God Almighty. Okay. When he said this, I felt this supposed anointing very powerfully.

The implication of this hit me so hard in the soul, the mind, and the body that I got up and it ran to the bathroom. As I was vomiting my guts out, excuse that my body came up behind me, put us hand up my shoulder, and said, it's over, Steve, you're free.

I had chills going up my spine as you were saying that because the first time that I heard Jones from those early years, I had many of the same emotions, maybe not the same conclusions that you got to, but I had the same emotions.

You could feel what we called the quote unquote spirit on Jones. And what we heard essentially, I've thought long and hard of this and I've analyzed it. Jones had the same techniques that Brannum had.

Unfortunately, you go forward in time, you can find people like, hey, again, is doing the same thing. Go backward in time. All the way back to Dauy, they're all doing it. They're praying really heavily upon your emotions.

And they strategically lay out their sermon content in such a way that they're warm and welcoming in the beginning, they bring you in, they capture your attention, they get into the subject matter and then just pound it into you, screaming, pounding, pounding your ears.

And it's more complicated than I want to go into in this episode, but I came across a study that was talking about the way. these guys are doing it and the rhythm they get into.

As you get tired and they're going for very long periods of time, your heart rate goes down, their rhythm comes up, and the moment in which they match, they can wreak havoc upon your mind.

And I read through that, I thought there's no way. And I went back and I started analyzing the sermons of Brannum. And sure enough, you find those long, long sermons. He starts out kind of slow and they get us in this rhythm, in this rhythm, and he's screaming and screaming at the people.

And the gist of what the article that I read, and I wish I had it, I would throw it on the screen if I did, but the gist of the article was this, they get you into that rhythm where your mind starts to be numb to sleep.

They're pounding you with information, but more than that, they're verbally attacking you and you get into the state of like a beaten stepchild. They become a father figure to you, which is probably why Jones used the phrase father.

And when you get into that childlike state, they can program your head. And when I read that, I was like, this is some terrible, terrible stuff. But all of that journey came, the first time I heard Jim Jones.

One of the things that came to mind when you were saying that rhythmic thing, kind of similar, was I saw, during the programming, I saw videos of a televangelist. He would step away from the podium and halt up the Bible and say, the word of God says, and he'd go back to the podium and he'd speak more in the first person, talking about things that were going on and how he was continuing to see growth in the church and so on.

Then you go away from the podium and he'd hold up the Bible and he says, but you see the Bible says this. And a lot of Amiens and Oliver used, then he goes back to the podium and it becomes like Pavlog's dog.

Then he doesn't take the Bible. He leaves it at the podium and he says, and I tell you and says something like, we're raising money and we need more, you need to give more and more and more.

So somewhere in the back of your mind, if he sets it up properly, you're thinking that's God speaking, that's God speaking through him. And of course, I don't do say God speaking through me, but if they set it right psychologically speaking, they really don't have to have any kind of blatant saying that I'm God or God speaking through me.

So with the life after my programming, I did get back in the music, that was great. I gradually got back in, but I learned of something, I don't know if people still use his phrase, but in those days, called it floating.

And so floating was a very vulnerable time when you've left a group and the practice mind control. So you leave a group like that. And for a time, you're extremely vulnerable to either go back and you have questions or doubts or find something equally as bad.

And man, I've heard that so many times were, even from people that made comments at your podcast, that said, I used to be into this, but I'm feeling like it's OK. They'll start describing another group.

And no, no, please. You're getting back into the same old garbage. And it's really difficult. The head deprogrammer that got me out with the team said he didn't have any assistance, but to get out.

But for 90 years, he felt like he was going to have a car wreck or lightning bolt strike him. And he had to, and the reason for that is that he had left God's group.

And he was worse than Judas. He was going to pay the penalty. And it's going to happen any day. So keep your eyes open. But he had, once he found out how corrupt and how how corrupt and hypocritical Moses David Berg was the leader of the screw.

He confronted him and he said, look, you're telling the people this, but why are you saying this? And David Berg basically said, I am the prophet of God. He just kind of shoot him off.

Well, this fellow, my deprogrammer, his wife, he confronted his wife and said, or brought this information. And she says, no, you just, you're losing your faith. You need to hang on. And they had a young child at the time.

The young child died because he didn't get medical attention. And David Berg, I think this is an Israel somewhere, just says, we don't have time for this. There's three of them on the side of the road and covered them with rocks.

And my deprogrammer said, you think a man of God would do that treat our child that way? And his wife again, she wouldn't buckle. So he had to make the big decision, I'm leaving.

I got to get out of this. It's not right on so many levels. So he left, and like I said, nine years later, you finally began to get things together. So floating, yeah, that's an interesting one.

I did experience that, say, for about a year to after I left the group I was in. The people that my parents hired to help get me out also suggested a place. It's called Unbound, and that was in Iowa.

And essentially, it was a halfway house run by ex cult members. And some of them seemed like I was born in 1960, so some of them looked like intelligent, releducated, old hippies. That's what they looked like to me.

That was the first time I experienced a spaghetti, the way they served it. I said, ooh spaghetti, this is great. I haven't been eating so well in that cult. And so I was spaghetti with peanut butter, green peas, m&n's, just all kind of thrown together.

Now I said, OK, it's figured I'll eat it. But that was a very good experience. And again, you're meeting people from different kinds of groups, comparing notes, and saying, ah, I'd get it now.

And so I also got to participate in support groups. And sometimes I'd go to talk to church youth group. And share the experiences that I had and the progress that I'd made afterwards. And then finally, research began.

And I was still living at home with my folks. And this was before cell phones. So they realized that doing research and talking on the phone with people was kind of therapeutic. And so I think I'd get up to like $300 or $400 a month for the phone bill in those days.

And that I began to gather stuff. And for sure, the leader of, I'm trying to avoid his name, the leader of the deprogramming team, having been an ex-member of the children of God with most of the state of birth.

He had a lot of information about the later reign, manifestants of God teachers like Bill Britton. He also did a fair amount of Wesley Swift. And he run stuff by me and said, nothing, does this sound like later reign to you?

I say it sounds like later reign plus the wacky stuff I've ever heard, like the flying solstice, and all that other bits, Swift gets into. But yeah, that was very therapeutic. It's getting into research.

It's kind of funny because it went full circle. The Wesley Swift flying saucer stuff. You can actually find that in Jim Jones's transcripts. And it's all from the same route. Branum obviously was heavy influence on Jones.

And Branum was in Christian identity, you know, all of that story. But one thing you said is for certain, you called it floating. I use the term revictimization. Whenever people leave the cult, they are very susceptible to revictimization by a different group or by the same group.

And I have had people, I've had people enter the support groups. And they go through all the joys and emotions. sadness of leaving. Oh, it's a flood of emotions. And then suddenly go right back in what they came out of and send me all of this hate mail and I had this one guy that he started bombarding me with hate mail when he went back in. And then five, I think it's five years later, he escaped again and then apologized for all of that. So it's a real problem. I, when people go through it, I understand

what they're going through and I wish I could help them. But there's really, once they go down that pathway, it's really hard to help them out a second time. They really have to come to that conclusion by themselves. Yeah. And I guess one of the real crowning, I would say in moments, but a period of time for me after during the research was I get invited on by the same head deprogrammer to participate. And so I was, you know, he would run the thing, but I was one of those ones that would participate and and talk about my experiences and show them as best I could, how

that was the same as their group. And so we, we deprogramed folks from the, the way international, which was run by Victor Paul Railroad. We did, we did some folks from San Fife, the move.

And there's one young lady from that group who is really our only unsuccessful deprogramming. She had been in his in San Fife group for like 10 or 12 years. And she was her, I think her brain was just gone to mush. She was just kind of stare like so. Maybe she had some emotional or psychological problems that we were unaware of. But we really couldn't make much progress with her. We had to just say, okay. And then we did, this is in England. We went to England for an offshoot of most of the state of birds and children of God. And that was called the

star family. And it's been a long time, but it seems like that was the profit in charge of that group was his ex-wife something like that, which he disowned when he found out he could have multiple lives and whatever relations he wanted. And then one of the more unusual groups that we did, it was like a reverse version of what's a pregnancy, it was called the Black Hebrew Israelites. And so that one was very alarming at first because the guy that that I had mentioned that was the head deprogrammer, he came and he was on the phone and said, look Steve,

I've got another deprogram and I really got to get to you. And so he kind of went plop, here's the information, good luck. And so I had a very small team and I would put it this way is I had a very sincere, helpful, but not really great speaker person as an assistant and another person who was very, very shy, and just unable to say much.

So I basically had to do the whole thing. I mean, they helped, but I had to do a lot of the the groundwork and all that. But something came with the programming, which doesn't happen as much nowadays, thank goodness.

But I would, I would say I would be glad that I was in program, but I wouldn't want it to be left to my decision. I guess, I don't know, I could still be, I could be headed towards the NARA, you know, going from where to faith into the NARA could have been me.

But there were potential criminal charges that could have been brought against me and the team I was in. One, of course, had to do with the violation of first amendment, right, a freedom of religion.

Because you're taking somebody who, apparently, of their free will, is in, say, like, we're going with brand, I'm a Sam Fie for whoever. And that's because psychologists and the legal system are not really up to stuff when it comes to understanding the processes that these people go through to get into that cult or that religion.

Another obvious one that I could have had potential charges against me was kidnapping. And I give you a very, a very bizarre, but I mean, I would do it again was one of the guys in the programming team.

He's kind of like my guy for a type of guy. And so we followed this young lady in the way international and knew her past tune from work. And so this is going to sound really spooky and freaky to some of the listeners.

But it got this kid out and she thanked us for doing this. I'll say that up front. So we followed her and he know about cars, which I've done. But something in the car that had to do with the addition, whatever it was, he attached some kind of remote control.

And so we're going to go in a pirate 45, which is the main interstate that goes to East and from from Dallas and up to Houston and on to Dallas. So we got to look like a safe spot and he flipped the square switch and laundry hold her car stops.

And we got one of the less assuming easygoing ladies who is actually children of God. She got out of the van. We were in and says, Oh, I'm so sorry. Looks like you've had car trouble on my brother.

It's about cars, and here it comes. We had to grab her and put her in the van.

We didn't do anything via it like, you know, hurt her, choke her, put ropes around her, anything like that, masking tape, no drugs involved. But we quickly as possibly got here to the so-called safe files and safe meaning, like for the child, there's nothing that the cult member can get a hold of to hurt themselves because that has happened many times.

The moonies can give you great examples, they're not great, but they give you examples of that. And nothing to hurt the team members that also happen. And no way for the person to leave the safe house and bring the police down on you, okay.

And yeah, actually my head, your program or the eye had, I think he had to pay a $10,000 fine, he didn't do any time, but some people faked like they get out of the cult and then rushed for the door and overcame the security, which I told you I mentioned that, overcame the security and just bolted out and made their way to a telephone and, you know, said these guys were kidnapping me and holding me against my will, okay.

So he got holding against the will, kidnapping, eating and abetting, all this kind of stuff. And of course, he gets worse when you cross the state line which the folks in my deprogramme had done.

We went from Boston, I mean, Massachusetts, where do we go? I don't really remember, but we had already crossed the state line where it was happening. And then on authorized use of a vehicle.

So in this way international deprogramme, the guy in charge says, okay, we need somebody to get her car and go park it at the main airport in Houston area. And I said, well, I can do that.

And I said, but yeah, you know, I don't really want to have fingerprints all over the steering wheel. And so one of the young ladies fished on her purse and said, oh, we're here.

And I tell you, it looked just identical to Michael Jackson's class diamond-studded glove and thinking, ah, and there was something with her, I'd driven standard before, but the clutch was messed up, so it's like, ah, ah.

And so when I got into the airport, there was an officer right ahead of me. And here I am with this, you know, this glove that looks really suspicious and my car's going, and I'm thinking, okay, time is about to begin for me.

The only thing I can tell you. Other than the one deprogramming that just it just didn't happen, every one of the people that we did have deprogramming for, none of them went past three days and all of them said, with tears generally, thank you. I don't know what I was doing.

What can I do in the future to prevent this? You know, they were just really, really realizing what they, how they've been deceived so badly. But probably the last thing, John, that I can think of that really, really struck me, was, okay, so we had this group called the Black Hebrew Israelites. And there's different versions of it, different splinter groups, but there's a really, really violent version. And you could probably compare them to some of the, some of the, you know, violent homegrown, whatever you want to call them, white supremacist groups in America. And it's the only thing is they have more of a Malcolm X viewpoint

where the white men are devils and we are the treat Israelites. Okay, so after they had deprogrammer left and I was born to be very careful. I said, by, I really got to go steep. He handed me a newspaper, opened it up and it said, too dead in decapitations related to attempting to get folks out of the Black Hebrew Israelites. And I said, oh, okay, this is, this is a little bit unusual. So the young lady that we were getting out of this group happened to be a white young lady and I'll tell you where that kicks in and what we should do in the Black Hebrews.

But she said, she said, yo, this is at first before we got much headwashed. She goes, you're going to be sorry, brother Isaiah is going to come here and what happens to you, you know, she's like really laid it on thick and we'd already read the article of what can happen to you.

And so why was a white young lady seen, you know, educated a nice kid? It turns out she was in her last, last year at the University of Texas and was going to graduate in accounting.

And I was such a good student. She was set up to probably make 40,000 years. And those, that's pretty good nowadays, but in those days that was really good for a young person.

So it turns out that brother Isaiah, the main prophet of her version of this sect, had been prophesied and signed. that this young lady is sent here by God and we know that we will have all the you know all the riches and blessings poured upon us through her and she's gone yeah amen amen I'm willing to hand over that money so yeah they had they had certain certain plans for this young lady well it kind of got down to a spot where like I said I was the only one that was very verbal had all the materials

but after two days of attempting to get her out and reasoning with her he got to kind of a kind of an impasse and nothing's been to work and I said something that I think I'd probably regret and not say often to anybody but I basically said if you had any you would sit here and listen to us and think about what you're doing because this is this is it you know this this is either your life on the right track or possibly going down the wrong track and suddenly maybe because of my harsh statement her eyes look like so and she

looked around and she just started weeping and saying you're right also wanted to do a serve God and this Isaiah this brother Isaiah is obviously a charlatan and a violet one of that and so to this day I mean I haven't really kept post-track with her but at least three to four years maybe five years after she left that group she was living in a fairly affluent part of Houston had a husband two kids and it's not in the black Hebrew Israelites you know I read some of those stories in the cult I thought there were horror stories but

if people being kidnapped and then taken out of the cults and I really had mixed emotions because I think mentally I knew I was in one but I couldn't come to terms with it and I would read that now it's I would just say that's wrong you shouldn't do that to people and interestingly I had a situation I guess I was out of the cult maybe maybe three years four years interestingly I had a situation wherein a group of people I was with was going to go and kidnap somebody out of the message cult and they I was actually if I remember correctly

I was in their vehicle when they inform me that they were gonna do this and I said no I'm out I'm done I'm not gonna do this but it's really if you read and I've even have some of the stories on the websites of successes where the programmers are doing this it really gets into this really gray area because on the one hand the people are already kids they're being held hostage mentally and yet at the same time you can't break the laws to get them out of that and you have to get them out of the environment so that they're not continually

programmed. So it's a no-win situation but quite an exciting story that you've had. What is your advice for people after going through all of this? What would you advise people that might be in a culture might accidentally get into one? Well that's not an easy question to answer fully and accurately but the first thing that comes to mind is that pretty much all of these groups in one way or another wants you to shut off the rational mind and just sort of go with the flow receive the words of the prophet they're not to be gathered intellectually or rationally because

if you're in a new age type group or Eastern meditation group they'll do something through chint and you're whatever they get you out of the rational mind, mix them or vulnerable and then the Cedar Christian groups that I can think of have had their own spin on how to get you out of the rational mind. I can see very clearly in my mind at the church I was going to the two folks there's a man a young woman who led the the praise and worship services and everybody said oh so and so she's such a blessing she's such spiritual and you know she sang

well and and played guitar reasonably well and all that so I was accompanying her somewhere I think we're just going to go pick up some donuts for a meeting and I noticed even with my state of mind that anything I said she processed it this way she would she didn't have an evil mean looking face there's kind of a blank stare as if she was waiting for the spirit to tell her something or holding back before she could speak and it was it was kind of unnerving even in the group and so I would say

that shutting the mind off is such a crucial issue and we would say oh yeah the devil is the mind is the play pin of the devil however worded it and well you might say yeah but to a certain extent but if you if you take away any of the safeguards you have that would help you prevent yourself from getting into a group but this, that would be one. Another one, depending on the group you're in, is becoming isolated from your family, from information. I know that that's really, really big on the cults that ship off people to communes. Of course, they get total control of everything

they see, eat, drink, and learn about. And so we would do that without going into a commune by where it had tapes, like what you said, John, where you play these tapes all the time.

And so that was part of it. And it's hard to come armed with this sort of stuff, but in hindsight, if I would have known better, I had read something by Gordon Lindsay talking about William Brown, and I said, well, this guy was something. And you know, part of my mind might say, for real, he had that halo above him. Maybe not, but oh, he said, man, he got it. Okay. And then we, we had one of my roommates was willing to dare prince. And I couldn't quite put my finger on him, but I thought he sounded kind of boring, honestly.

But yeah, he was into that. Okay. So there you go, shepherding discipleship stuff. So we had a hodgepodge of different kind of influences, kind of, oh, and I'd read one of Bill Hammond's earlier books. And of course, him being one of the main prophets in the North. So if I had known ahead of time, if I had been forward about some of the stuff. So in a way, John, yeah, that comes kind of full circle is hopefully people that are a little bit on the fence can hear things like your podcast and others you're doing somewhere kind of work. And I can just tell you this is that,

like I said, just about 100% of the people that I was involved in a deep programming might end the rest of the team. And they'd start adding on. And yeah, they did this and this and this, I can't believe I was such a sucker. And they start to really start to even deprogram themselves.

But when I was learning about that, and I was attempting a cult awareness network meetings in the early and mid 80s, I met quite a few of the big well-known deprogrammers. And I can tell you I probably shouldn't give names, but one of them was X the walk from John Robert Stevens, a cult. And he was a solid Christian and did this and risk his life constantly and his freedom was going to jail.

and very intelligent and I mean he was somebody to look up to he was a good guy and he was involved in this I would say the same thing about the guy that deproved me and he was oh yeah and part of his team was this lady from our Claire prophets the cut and another another good saw the Christian so the proper I mean doesn't have to be done by a Christian but in my mind it's it's better and yeah we we heard the horror stories about like Ted Patrick here you know he got some really really bad press for the kinds of stuff we were doing

but all the people I was involved with were headed folks in the right direction and if I if I knew where they were today I would love to contact them but it's kind of better to you know close that chapter close to the door and and hoping pray that they're doing all right well it's very good advice thank you so much for sharing your story no problems on well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Branum.org for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic

Reformation you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR and for more about the converging apostasy you can read the book the converging apostasy and also a quick outline of hands-on eschatology a matter of timing and agency both available on Amazon

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